Throwing Science Out The Window! by SimplePotential 2018-08-17T19:37:13Z
The car was a little bit too floaty for my liking, but I very much liked the bouncing "science" when your truck was fully loaded, overall I found your idea very likable :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → honey
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Lasso'em up! | jam | 1298 | 3.13 | 3.05 | 3.15 | 3.67 | 3.83 | 2.45 | 2.72 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Hatching Dragons | jam | 1939 | 3.17 | 3.15 | 2.85 | 3.75 | 3.45 | 3.35 | 2.50 | 2.95 |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Ronin Sacrifice: The Tale of the Last Rabbit | jam | 273 | 3.70 | 3.43 | 3.10 | 4.11 | 3.87 | 3.43 | 2.95 | 3.63 |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | 👥 | Captain Graphite | jam | 807 | 3.18 | 2.89 | 2.65 | 2.67 | 3.90 | 3.34 | 2.48 | 3.48 |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Tour de Arizona | jam | 604 | 3.43 | 3.41 | 3.12 | 3.43 | 3.76 | 3.36 | 3.56 | 3.50 |
The car was a little bit too floaty for my liking, but I very much liked the bouncing "science" when your truck was fully loaded, overall I found your idea very likable :)
I haven't discovered any deeper mechanic apart from choosing which tile to step on during my playthgrough, which is a shame, I think it would help the game a lot. Also the duel would be much better if there was some more feedback apart from (not so well readable) UI, but I get it was probably out of time scope. The artstyle is however really stylish and animation is well done, so my overall experience was definitely positive! Thanks for that and keep it up!
@kromeboy Try clicking one more time, it worked for me (Chrome).
In web version after I clicked start game, the screen just started blinking and nothing seemed to happen. I'm using Chrome.
This deserves much more ratings as far as I'm concerned! Definitely a great one, though not very "in theme." But feels tight, it's fun and challenging and it messes with my brain :)
Got stuck under the elevator! :( Apart from that - great one - very good idea, very good execution, felt very good to play! Thanks for that!
Very condensed, very funny and most pleasing to play, lots of juicy feedback, great entry! I would just suggest a bit faster spawning, but on the other hand, the bat animation is super sweet! Overall very well done!
Hey, pretty cool, though it took me a while to get a grasp of controls, numbers shown on your "instruments" would definitely help to inform the player. Also the web version lagged a lot when the water level was rising. Graphics are pretty strong, I like the artstyle and the palette, music is well chosen as well. Thanks for the experience! :)
When the furry creatures started to replicate, soon the game became laggy and unplayable (in html5 version). Apart from that, the game was really fun, the controls were okay, even though I agree that they could be more precise, overall I had a good time with this entry, thank you for that! :)
Great job! Funny premise, well told, great visuals! Very good one!
One tip - set your particles to world space, it would be a huuuge improvement :) The game never allowed me to third level, don't know why :( Also part of the book is offscreen which makes it a bit difficult to read. I liked the visuals and also movement felt pretty good, and very underwater! Keep it up, and thanks for the experience!
Very atmospheric! It feels very good, lots of juicy feedback really takes you a huge leap forward! Just when you die, it would be better not to jump right into menu, but also burst player into some particles and wait for a while and let the player contemplate her mistakes ;) Apart from that, I had more fun than I expected! Great job, thanks!
My playthrough went goat simulator all the way :D Not a bad thing though, physics is fun even like that! I had fun, and that counts! Thanks for that!
Hey, very nice experience! Plays smooth, plenty of power ups, enemies, all works out pretty well! Thanks for that!
When my character was in "out of memory" state, it was falling through the moving platforms, was that intended or is it a bug? Made me stuck :( Apart from that, the platforming mechanic was pretty neat and felt pretty tight, so I enjoyed playing your game, thanks for that! Also the graphics and idea both pleased my heart!
Very charming artstyle - if it had a little more frosting (like making that grass move in the wind and when player is moving through) it would be totally stunning, but still, very awesome. Music was very well chosen to this kind of epic adventure. I think that even in this kind of game, the movement controls should have been tighter, it nearly drove me away in the beginning, but I'm glad it eventually did not! Overall, this game is a piece of a art! Still want to play more!
The music didn't work for me, ther was some blinking of menu screens in the beginning and then just me on the planet. Still, I would play this game much longer, if there was at least a bit of gameplay. I would find something to do. Its artstyle is amazing and I hope you guys make something out of it!
Is there a way to fire any of the current hookers and hire new? Or what's the whole point of new applicants? However, still spent much more time playing this as I probably should have. Maybe even thanks to your writing :) But I must agree, that this was basically just matching numbers. Graphics would work very well both gameplaywise and kinkdywise :)
@team-infernus So if I continue to develop relationship of harlot and customer, that customer will eventually buy her off?
@team-infernus Oh my, I thought the relationship status is a bad thing, that you should not allow your workers to fell in love with your clients :D Okay then!
Hey, very good one! Nicely balanced difficulty, fun concept, great execution! The only little drawback for me is absence of feedback when you hit a cave wall, your air depletes, but that's the only way how to tell you hit something. Probably the bouncing mentioned above? Apart from that, I had plenty of fun, thanks for that! :)
Great concept, unfortunatelly the jam version is lacking any UI and game info, as well as sfx and stuff. However, it's very fun to play, control scheme is pretty intuitive, so it doesn't matter that much. Artstyle is also great! Very fun experience, thank you for that!
Interesting take on the theme! I found it pretty unclear which seeds turn off which platforms (not all red seeds turn off all red platform, there are also multiple seeds of the same colour, you get it), so it's a bit trial and error, you can't properly plan in advance in your first go through a given level. Also the seeds sometimes blended too much with background. Apart from that playing it was very comforting and calming and smooth experience, maybe thanks to graphics and music it felt nice. Thanks for that!
@zessirb Enemies stacking on the right wall is shocking news for us, as enemies always got stacked on the left one. Seriously though, thanks for leaving feedback, we'll have a look into it and we'll try to force enemies to stop being cowards and stop stack round the walls. Thank you for taking the time to play and leaving a feedback :)
@guladam Thank you, we're glad to hear (read?) that! There's actually an end somewhere up there, but yes, maybe the progression is little too slow, we'll have a look into that. Still thanks for playing and leaving a comment, very appriciated!
@simonaura Thanks so much. Agree with the shrinking mechanic, but we had a hard time coming up with anything that looks better and still works :/ Thank you for stopping by!
@jin9310 @flower @alexrose @anna-petrova @team-infernus Thank you guys so much, our graphic sure will be very pleased to hear that, as well as our art style designer :) Thanks for taking the time to play and leave the comment!
@panurge You're right, we were so afraid that the difficulty would be too high (you never know when nobody else than developers is testing) that we dumbed it down too much :( Definitely a thing to learn for next time! Thanks for playing and leaving a comment!
@jesusache Yep, agree with that, too many lines make it a bit hard to find a cursor :( Thanks for playing and leaving your comment!
@captainchoones Thanks for nicely formated feedback, very appreciated! :)
@gaming-night Hey, I'm glad that you noticed the sound too, seemed like the art is stealing all the show! Very glad you liked it, thanks very much for playing and leaving your kind words for us! :)
@nerdyherbivore Hey, thanks for sharing your experience. We kind of hoped, that the ship starting position would be a visual hint where to go, but apparently we should've add some more. Enemies should have hunt you down, but they sometimes don't. I hope that you enjoyed your flying around even so :) thanks a lot for playing and leaving a feedback!
@patrickrmc @leodesigaux @kromzem @velvetlobster @weine @joloujed Thanks, looks like we moved the right way with artstyle direction :)
@nam-nguyen Thanks for giving it so much time! Yeah, we really let the player down with instruction, definitely need to keep that on mind next time (or in postLD version of this, you never know).
@fakefirefly There actually isn't much more to do than shooting enemies and stuff around, maybe we should add something more :) Still hope you had at least some fun flying around!
@simplepotential Hey, you were collecting graphite, but no wonder you didn't know, the sprite was actually last-minute repurpose of what originally was some bullet. When you read through the feedback, you're probably the only person who found the goal of the game "overly obvious" :D What do you mean by off? Too floaty? Too slow? If you could tell us, it would be really appreciated! :)
@dwemthy Hey, there actually is final tile up there, but it probably should come sooner. Overall all the game should have been more condensed considering the feedback.
@smbe19 Yep, that was the final portal. Unfortunately, the game kind of fell apart just before the end of time limit, so we had to cut off plenty of stuff to get it error free and compilable, there was no time left to reintroduce the winscreen. However, you did it! You found the final portal, you won the game! Congratulations! :) We glad that someone eventually did!
@hi-irie Hey, sorry to hear that, were you playing the browser version? If so, what browser? Were the sound effect working or no sound at all? Hope you had at least a bit of fun not doing anything in general :)
Guys, I can't see any papers in the itch.io version, which makes the game unplayable, unfortunatelly :(
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@sachay just to clarify, I'm using Google Chrome v. 68.0.3440.106, on win10 PC. If this helps..? Anyways, keep it up! :)
Very original idea!
I really wanted to play your game, but I won't download a GM2, I'm sorry, just to far beyond the point of inaccessibility for me :(
The mouse control doesn't work at all, at least for me, somehow it only turns left or goes forward. Also the azerty layout isn't very accesible to me. But the dragon was so beautiful, and so was the universe, that it made me to go and get my gamepad :) thanks for the experience, I really enjoyed it!
Pretty high production quality for a jam game! I had fun and there's basically nothing that bothered me or seemed to me like it could use some improvement. Tough job when trying to give a quality feedback :( Thanks for the experience, definitely glad I played your game!
This game would be hell of a fun if you could control where you shooting! I know you've already addressed the issue, but still... Even though, the game is fun, artstyle is very spot on and I like it very much, so is the music in my opinion. I would just reconsider the gun sound, which is pretty uninteresting to me. But overall great experience for me, thanks for that! :)
Great entry, really! I found it a bit unclear where the collision box of jetpack enemy is exactly, but still really had fun. Hope you get enough ratings, this is very polished!
Pretty deep and interesting concept. However, I can't see why there's a time limit still running when I'm waiting for the queue to move on and for the seating interface to show? That's not me who is wasting my time, it's those lazy visitors (and menus). That got pretty irritating, but maybe I overlooked something? Still a fun game, graphics was very neat and the little snippets of character of visitors, very nice touch :) Thanks for the experience!
@filgreen3 I totally get it and it actually is kind of funny. But it would feel much better if you stop the timer during the time player is absolutely without control of what is going on. In the end, the time limit doesn't need to change at all, just let the player feel he's in control even though the queue is so slow. If you make the timer one third of the current time and make it go only when player is actually assigning chairs, then you changed basically nothing gameplaywise, but remove one irritatingly frustrating point of "why they are so slow when my time is running?" I mean - don't let the player watch his time running out when he can do absolutely nothing about it. No fun there :(
When you don't want players quitting your game, be careful of those difficulty spikes. NO ONE will ever rather skip level than quit the game. First you can expect the next level be even harder, second you're a proud player, you either beat it or beat it! ;) The game is very interesting though, very nice effects and mechanic, what keeps me from higher rating is very steep difficulty curve, but overall I had fun (though a bit of frustration as well :) )
First the negative stuff - the footsteps are too harsh, to sharp, too loud, too unbearable, really kills it. Which I'm very sorry I have to say, because apart from that this is one of the best entries I have played so far. The mechanics are great, interesting formula, you really have to think about the puzzle, and also the visuals are super cool. But would love the game even more if the footsteps could be a little more subtle... Still, thanks for making this game that kept me having fun for a quite while! Good job!
Art was very cool, also the minigames (flying rockets, shooting asteroids). I think that it would be really helpful (it would be for me) to know incoming asteroids and also the Sun position before you mount the gun/rocket (allows for better planing). To me, asteroid always spawned on the exact opposite side of the planet than my gun was, so my planet was always destroyed before I had a chance to destroy the asteroid. Is it intended? Also would be very nice, if asteroids were stopped during the time you are flying the rocket, otherwise there's no way you can protect your planet.
Overall I like the rocket flying minigame, bit neutral about the crafting part, felt frustrated about the shooting minigame, cause my gun was always on the "dark side of the planet."
Still thanks for the experience, keep it up! :)
Did I save the planet? Did I? I need to konw! I am not very keen of rhythm games as well as I'm not very good at them. Fortunatelly yours is very forgiving so I always won the match even though I shouldn't have. Still some parts of the battles were nicely sync in a way that made sense to me and actually felt satisfiying, not chaotic as the games of this kind often are for me. I love the rest though, weird game, weird premise, weird characters, I like that very much! Interesting experience, thank you very much! :)
Great game, lots of fun. What keeps it from 5/5 fun rating for me is the mouse sensitivity as pointed out above and mostly that when one buddy dies and you are switched to another buddy (e.g. already standing on the button) I'd very much prefer that the switch-to buddy will ignore any input for a little while so I won't keep running off the switch into the water, sometimes even before camera is fully adjusted on switch-to buddy. Not sure if it was on purpose, but I think that at least wait for the camera to move would be a large improvement.
I also finished the last level only with two planks each on one side of button pillar because I've thrown both of the tables in the water and couldn't pick them up or move them so they were totally useless for me. But still I was able to finish the level, so I guess you achieved some non-linearity, whether you wanted or not. This is great, I felt really smart when I managed to finish the level even when I wasted both tables :)
Your game is great all around, was really fun (and challenging enough) to play, the graphic style and models were just stunning and animations were full of character (especially that dance at the end!). Really great work!
Pretty fun and challenging game! I don't get the point of the floaty jump, but otherwise it feels and plays great and looks awesome! Enojyed it very much! Thanks!
Wasn't very clear what does what, also I had no sound (a bug or is there none?). The guessing game was fun, many different ways to die enlighten the point in micromanaging those numbers. Once you actually get the game then it's pretty fun :)
How come you have so little ratings? Very solid entry, my highest ranking in mood so far! That snow stepping sound was exquisite! Apart from stuff that can be blamed on 72 hour timespan (a bit samey environment, unpolished or underexplained UI etc.) what really bothered me was two things - first there's no reason for me to track shooting and melee to mouse buttons when you don't use your mouse to aim. I had to play on touchpad and it was really weird. Button bindings would work much better (and if I just missed them, then I swear I tapped all the common shifts, controls and alts, so they must be well hidden). Second, there was no way to tell how many enemies I am attacking or are attacking me - the sprites aligned perfectly, so it could've been one or thousand, nobody can really tell. Also I had a weird camera bug - sometimes the camera did not follow me, but just let me run close the screen boundary and then it started moving (like it was a screen to screen camera, not follow camera), but that wasn't a real problem for me. Still one of the most feeling heavy games I've played so far! Gonna check some of your work if there by chance isn't a game like this! Thanks for this game, it was a pleasure to play!
Hey, smooth gameplay, nice graphics, solid game!
Stunning graphics, really! The course was too long, at least for beginning, and the sheep were as stupid as real sheep are. But the graphics stole the show!
Amazing idea! As guys said above - if there was more to play, I definitely would! I also very much liked the mixed graphic style! Hell of a fun, sure wish there was more!
Hey, great concept, awesome graphics!
Picking up abilities after first wave, when I only discovered the throwing daggers, wasn't very informed decision on my side. Also I didn't quite get the graphics of skill menu, those orange and black lines, what do I do with them? Couldn't really make sense of them. But apart from that, the gameplay feels very tight and polish and the graphic work is really neat, even the subtle animations, attack has nice feel of impact, very pleasant to play! Thanks for the experience!
There's absolutely no need to feed them nor give them water, just waiting game for power bar to fill in. Miracles and words are both awesome though, and so is the graphic style! It's not easy to grasp and I don't think it works like you intended, but there's something appealing about it and I had fun while both losing and winning my playthrough!
Great music, great visuals, but controls are pretty unclear, together with no restart/replay button means a lot of annoyance. However the core concept despite being very simple is great and the gameplay is solid! Thanks for the experience!
Very interesting idea, but still a prototype, I would say, for it lacks plenty of polish. If you ever wanted to expand on it, here are few things that crossed my mind - the sheep reaction was a bit unclear, maybe stronger push away from zap would be also more fun as they would build a momentum harder to control. Also - randomness is your friend when it comes to making lot of content in short amount of time, but enemy when it comes to controlling the experience - sometimes I there was no zapping needed the whole time, much less a sacrificial one. Very good was the visual feedback of zapping itself and also hitting sheep with it as well as the telegraphing of the wolf's next position, that made the game feel really thought through and also made it feel like you really know what you doing and what you going for! Overall pretty solid basic playability with a huge potential (especially for mobile platform!) to work with!
Hey, pretty interesting take on the theme! We went for similar concept and tried to lower the repetition using really short one screen levels instead of one huge open world you have to walk through everytime you die. The controls are very floaty, but you probably know that already. I really liked the artstyle, that has a lot of potential when used properly! Overall solid entry by yourself in 48 hours! Keep it up!
EDIT: I forgot about backstory - how come you come to live again when you die? That would help with immersion I think!
@folex70 Yep, tuning the unity physics system to feel good in 2d platformer is very very difficult if not downright impossible. It's not made for 2d platformers and you probably be much better off making custom simplified physics system, but jam is on tight schedule and sacrifices must be made :) We went for modified unity physics, but we still weren't fully satisfied with the results, and so weren't the players as you can see in the comments ;)
Great idea, great visuals, simple yet effective gameplay! The "noooo" altough superfunny, got a bit annoying during the game and sometime it is hard to get the bullet trajectory and timing right, but not sure how to implement it better in this kind of projection. But even though, I had plenty of fun playing that I must say! :)
Hey, nice entry, fun idea. Those side spike colliders were pretty harsh though and it was often very difficult to spike the soldier where you needed it.
Not sure how (and if) it fits the theme, but... I don't care honestly. This was awesome! I think it is a simple and short game by it's premise and it probably would not be fun stretched to something bigger, but that makes it even better - perfectly fitted for the game jam entry. Humor is strong with this one, I like it very much! Also the technical side is interesting, if you decide to post some post mortem blog, I'd like to read that ;) Thank you for bringing me joy and entertainment!
Guys above picked already the most painful points - laggy movement, unclear path on the volcano - that was it at least for me. Otherwise very pleasant experience, lots of character, lots of funny but fitting sfx, nice work done on graphics. Overall I had fun playing your game, thanks for that!
Very fun game, though very grindy. Maybe if at least some of the crafted progress can be carried through then it would be less of a grind. But the premise is great! Should you make it less grind heavy and more progress heavy, then the idea of elements and battle preparations is awesome! Also the artstyle is great, audio is nice, the overworld map, though not really good for anything, is awesome touch that hooked me in the first place! Add some story here and there and I'm in! Overall pretty solid entry!
Even the standalone is incredibly laggy on my laptop. Many full fledged 3D jam games, even AAA titles run smooth, but your jam game in UE is downright unplayable. I'd suggest picking your tools with more care, the same game could have been done in Game Maker, even in Flash, and could've run smooth even on much weaker machines than mine. Many of the UE jam games share the same problem and I don't think that there's much time for optimisation during the game jam. So either focus on optimisation or consider using different engine. I'm sorry I can't give you anything better than this :(
You have it all, you have it right. I had fun and had to talk myself out of playing your game more and more so that I could also play something different. Great flow, splendid work. Thank you for the experience!
Very nice game, nice idea with the textbooks about the goods helping you through the game!
Since it is basically a board game, it would help to explain some more of the mechanics, when there's no visual feedback in the game. I like the backstory and also the graphic, even though they're simple. The music is also spot on. Overall it is very good submission! :)
Hey, great idea! Just jump up and fall down should be much faster I think, left/right movement is alright, but overall platforming experience is quite laggy and weird. That being said, I very much appreciate the work you spend on modeling - you've done a great job and the visuals are pretty impressive! Looking forward to your next projects!
I did not get the mechanics - why are the fangs transporting me? I was unable to run post jam version and the original one was pretty bugged, still the graphics is amazing and the few sfx (except touching light) were pretty spot on! The game was fun before it started to be too buggy, so thanks for that! P.S. The bat vertical movement - didn't get that either, but maybe it just needs more time to get it. Also the animation! Cute as heck!
Beautiful art, very interesting mechanic as when being noob, the game gets even harder! Also the game is very polished, tight controls, felt great, so there's basically nothing that bothered me big time. Little stuff was not that consistent projection or empty feeling rooms. Overall great experience for game jam, especially with all that time the intro sceen must have taken! Very much liked it, thanks for that!
Totally need some UI improvement as guys above mentioned, especially when there's card game going on, so there's very little visual clues what does what. I played your last jam game and very much liked the artstyle and overall adult direction you took. This one did not let me down, very nice take on the theme, I didn't even mind that consequences of some plays weren't really clear from the beginning (looking at you, Search Warrant!), that made the exploration part possible and fun. Well, I guess that the Cultist Simulator is fair comparison. Of course the realization of the implicit drawbacks of some cards set the theme nicely. I will remember to keep an eye on you for the next jams, so far you keep me interested and entertained! Very much thank you for that!
Just one balancing feedback - I found myself drawning in food (still up around 50 or so) and barely ever under 15 money, just so you know, if that's desirable by design.
Great job on this project! Especially the artstyle feels well thought, well picked colour palette, very promising! As most of commenters already pointed out - next time you should definitely try to tell as much information about the gameplay actually in the gameplay. That's what game designers do anyway :) Give your player chance to learn about your game playing it, keep them away from putting it down in confusion and never to come back to read the manual (no rtfm with your players). You should incorporate that in your game-developing mindset rather than it being an afterthought. Try to ask yourself "how will the player know this?" I know that time is short, but with this in your mindset, you'll be able to finish maybe smaller project but with much clearer vision both for you and your player!
In the means of your current game it means that nobody really knew where skeletons are coming from unless they read the manual. I wasn't sure what the skeletons are doing or how they work until I read the manual second time (some visual clues of skeleton attacking knight, knight dying, particles, screenshake... would help). Even when hit with the beam, lowering your HP bar is not enough to get the information through! On the other hand, you really did nail the beam telegraphing! Sure, be there more time it could've been something more in theme visually, but still, the beam felt pretty well! That definitelly is the way! Remember that your player is like John Snow - he knows nothing. It's your responsibility to teach him how to play your game!
I like the overall idea of your game and it's microeconomic system and after reading the manual, it was actually rather pleasant experience! Thanks for that, keep it up!
@gizmolo There's no need to defend yourself, we've all been there, really :) That's the point of game jams (at least for me) that people are trying to give you the best advice they can. The LD voters are much more likely to sit and read a game's manual than any other player would be. We really want to know what your game is about! :)
I was getting stuck in motion as well :( Also agree that there was not much of a choice sometimes - lose heart anyways. I don't know if the stucking was the problem, but sometimes I wasn't sure which direction I attack or wheter enemies can reach me and I can reach them or not. Still pretty strong foundation, when not bugging, the movement felt pretty nice, sfx were good, graphics really stylish. Overall good fun for a while! Thanks for that!
@nkrim Hey, that brought tears of happiness into my eyes! Really glad you had that good experience! Awesome!
@kroute Thanks for that, we're very glad to hear that. Yes, we did all the sound effects by ourselves, including the seppuku voices :) More levels will probably come soon :)
@gucio-miszcz We tried not to annoy our player if possible, so if you could tell us which level in particular (or which part of that level) was the annoying part for you, we'd be really glad, especially when more levels are about to come!
@gucio-miszcz You mean this one? We'll look into its design and see what can be done :)
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@shendev Hey, thanks for the insightful comment and also for posting those numbers! We're very glad that you took the time to play the game and post your comment! You are totally right with both jump and hitboxes, we decided we don't have enough time to produce custom physics engine for the game, so we went with bit modified Unity's native one, which sometimes does weird things like sliding colliders side to side and it's hard to prevent it (if you know how, don't keep it to yourself! :D ). Also we took a long time to fiddle with jump to feel good, but even a long time during 72 hours game jam is not long enough to make it feel perfect :( You know, every game could use another month or two of development :) Thanks for stopping by, it is very appreciated!
@shendev Yep, that's annoying even for us, as it started to behave like this few hours before deadline for no apparent reason and I haven't figured out why yet. But it can be overcome using different approaches, so it's fortunately not game breaking.
@gucio-miszcz I consulted it with our level designer and there are actually only 4 sacrifices needed to finish this level, all of them on your way up. Hint: plan well before you kill the fox :) still thanks for pointing it out, we probably need to learn player to think about it before this level.
@stending Thanks for your kind words! Jump is kinda in need of further care, we agree :)
@chaosthelegend Well it depends - if you really ended up - like at the end of the game - then it was supposed to be played like that - we wanted to give player oportunity to seppuku the hell out of his rabbit, so that last level is kinda asking for it. The levels before are more about efficiency and even the last level can be finished with only a few rabbits (much less than @shendev 48 :D ). Thank you for your time spent to play and comment our game, it is highly appreciated!
@abso Hey, thanks for that, we hope your wish will come true for it is our wish as well! Thanks for taking the time to play and rate our game!
@team-infernus Thanks for your feedback, maybe mixing up the level design could blunt the feeling of repetitivness a bit? We'll look into that! Thanks for your time taken to play and leave a comment!
@corbak Hey, you've reached our best score for the last level! What was your total I wonder? Thanks for playing and also commenting here!
@nikolaj @chriscorr @folex70 Thanks guys, that's very warming and appreciated! Thank you for playing and taking the time to leave your kind comments! :)
@gizmolo Hey, thanks, we tried to make the backstory with enchanted sword that keeps rabbit soul even when the body dies, so that it feels less depressing, but we didn't have the time to really tell that backstory in the game :( But also thank you, we're glad that you enjoyed our style choices and had at least a bit pleasant experience!
@occultone Hey, we know that the physics/movement wasn't the strongest part. You're right that when building a proper game, it is much better to go custom, on the other hand when jamming, building on built-in systems is much faster. Still it's true that you haven't got full control niether of built-in system and niether of your custom one. The controller support wasn't actually a thing due to lack of time, so what works works only because of unity native input manager (horizontal and vertical controller axis, fire button...). That was definitely a big mistake to forget about controller support and not having it in mind from the beginning when making the control scheme. Thank you very much for all the valuable feedback, we're still actually not sure what's causing the weird jump feeling/behaviour, cause the math behind seems pretty simple. Also the button prompt for the seppuku could work much better. Thanks for playing and leaving lot of stuff for us to think about :) And yeah, despite all that said above, we do feel pretty good, the progress is heavy during our three jam entries :)
@dk5000p Hey, thanks for playing and leaving your feedback! First - the music loop is actually more than a minute, but the motive itself is too short to not bother you in a long run, shame that we didn't noticed ourselves in time :( For controls, you can read above - we went half way, it was better than going with built-in, but still not as good as custom could've been. We were actually thinking about going with ragdolls and pushable dead bodies, but we decided for unmovable bodies, so that the player actually have to kill the enemy in the right spot. We thought it adds a little of extra depth and tactics when traversing the levels, and also makes the mistakes (killing in wrong spot) more punishing (need to sacrifice more rabbits instead of using enemy body). We think that the minimum of sacrificed rabbits in current state of game is 26 :) Anyways, thank you so much for stopping by and glad you liked the game (at least some aspects of it) :)
@zuzupd Hey, it's a shame that you did not post your score (or beat the lowes one), cause judging by Bob and Bobek reference as well as your game credits, you'd actually be able to claim the prize! :D Yeah, known issue with the damn foxes, I think that best solution would be to not allow the fox to collide with dead rabbits, so even when mistake is made, the fox can carry on on its usual path. But it's actually unbelievable how many problems show up when you add a simple mechanic like leaving dead bodies around as platforms :) Thank you for playing and leaving a comment, really, much appreciated! And glad you liked it!
@king-kujito Man... You actually made us laugh. Like out loud. For a while. That's awesome! :D We kind of hoped from the beginning that we made enough room for this kind of rabbit fun, but we weren't expecting anything like this! :D How did you do that? We need to know! Maybe the dev beer prize is coming to you instead! :D Thank you very much for playing and especially for leaving your comment that prolonged our life expectancy at least a few days :)
@kiv Hey, thank you very much! We're very glad you like it!
@lilkrit Hey, yeah, some people already pointed this out and I actually wanted to have a look into that, but I haven't found anything on this topic. So my question is - is it really objectively bad? We kind of went with that old Prince of Persia control scheme and it worked well back then. I know that the controls definitely should be rebindable, no doubt about that, but is the "never up to jump" matter of fact or more of a personal taste? Can you maybe point me out to some knowledge resource on this topic or at least some interesting discusion? That would be awesome! Still thank you very much for taking the time to play our game and leave your feedback! :)
Hey, nice work, the voice acting was a great idea! Still needs a bit more polish - your cowboy comments on shot missed even before the shot reach the enemy, the voice of enemy plays simultaneously with your cowboy comments, it's just all over the place sometimes. If you manage to make some timed queue of events, then it would be at least 20 % cooler ;) The graphics is what it is and I kinda dig the MS paint style, but I'd spend more time on polishing UI, as much of it is often hidden behind enemies or at least cannot be read properly. The idea is pretty fun though!
Needs a restart button, I managed to summon a lot of powerful demons but then a run out of food (I didn't build anything) so it took a while until I lost the game... Very nice entry, well thought, looking good, nice sound and music, plays well! :)
I bet nobody has ever told you yet that you did an amazing job on the artwork and animation, did they? But yeah, it really is that great! Apart from that, I'd like to highlight a bit more that twist on leveling "up" - it was really unexpected and really well played, for me, that was really the best part of the game - the most clever toying with our expectations :) Sure, there's some ballancing issues (at least I felt it that way), but that won't take away the positive feeling your game gave me! I'm glad I get to play it, it was a great experience, thanks for that!
Impressive idea! However I did not manage to crack the way it chooses the closest ressemblance. A bit shame that there wasn't enough time to add some sound, but the art very much compensates for it - it is very nicely made, on point and hilarious! I enjoyed your game very much, thank you for that!
I accidentally jumped off the village platform and then I was falling eternally - guess some sacrifice has been made :) Well, you know it is not particularly excellent in any area, but still - you pushed your first project to publishing - took me more than ten years to finish and publish my first game (you can find it here). That is something. Key things I'd focus on - go even smaller, make more condensed experience, and also work on your presentation - even with stick figures some colours 101 and animation 101 would do one hell of a difference. But still, your idea behind the game is very good and your skills will only get better, so keep it up! Looking forward to your next jam entry! EDIT: Also I very much agree with dk5000p.
Nice one. Graphics sure need some polishing, but the gameplay is pretty huge for a jam game. Nice work on bossfights. Still I didn't always get what part of the boss to shoot and also the shooting speed already felt sacrificed from the beginning :( Still cool foundation, with some further work and polishing, it could work pretty great! :)
Hey, very solid entry. Collisions definitely could use some fiddeling - when I went too close to wall (or Henry), I wasn't able to jump. Nice touch with the story, though you probably should have been less explicit about what is going to happen with Henry. Or not, depends what you were going for. Still pretty solid basis for next jams, definitely keep it up! Looking forward to next submissions of yours!
I think you fitted the music very well to your chosen setting, as well as graphic style. Unfortunatelly I didn't quite get the proper timing and rhythm of combat, probably more visual and sound clues could help with that. I also was getting stuck between serpents and on the corners more than I would like to, but maybe that was just design decision that did not resonate with me. Overall very solid entry!
PS: If you make a webGL/HTML5 build and put it on itch.io, you probably will get lots more ratings as it will be less complicated for people to try your game ;)
@chaosthelegend Oh, sorry, then it must have been some other problem, now the html5 version runs okay, so I'm not really sure why I downloaded the standalone, sorry for confusion :)
Nice entry, smooth controls, pixel graphics definitely the strongest side of the game. On the other hand, even the first level felt pretty long, which isn't that good I'd say. Also I think that environment would be much better if it was more in the viking theme, this one, though very nicely done, felt just a bit generic. Music loop is bit too repetitive for my liking, but I totally get that the jam schedule is harsh. Still, cute kitten as a bait is genuinely genious! Overall the game was beautiful, with tight controls and it was fun to play it! Thanks for that!
Hey guys, very neat idea, even though we apparently had very similar! My zombie was dying even when touching horizontal spikes from side, which is not very desirable I'd say. I liked the visuals and the overall feel with music and sfx, it seemed all very coherent and well thought to me. I think that more sense of progression in terms of increasing dificulty of levels would be great, it seemed to me even less difficult as I progressed and actually learned the controls. Overall, though short, still pretty fun and enjoyable experience! Thanks for that, keep it up!
Very solid entry, nice artstyle! As said above, it definitely needs better learning curve and also to be better adjusted for different resolutions (I too couldn't see the resources panel). But still, very solid base!
Very nice entry! Great visuals, nice idea, gameplay is fun and challenging enough! Though I agree that "coin-op" style difficulty is very artificial and not really pleasant in modern game design. I liked the game very much though! Keep it up!
The artstyle is great, well picked colour palette, well drawn, well thought out characters, very nice overall Metropolis feel! The gameplay on the other hand is bit on the weaker side, the monster ate babies left on the floor behind his head, jumping felt weird. Also was the level randomly generated? I ended on the gap that I think is impossible to jump over. But most importantly - I think you are unnecesarilly pushing that "social commentary" stuff too hard. I think that you should think more about implementing that social commentary to game mechanics so players will notice and percieve it on their own. Having it as subheader of your game steals most of its magic. I think that for example this one https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/santas-list have strong social commentary without needing to be that explicit about it. Subtle is better, let your player translate your game on his own :)
Interesting idea! I was kind of expecting some classic clicker mechanics to develop, but sleep reaper twist was pretty interesting as well! :) I too finished the game first try without any problems (actually noticed the reaper in second playthrough because I was clicking to sell all the stuff as soon as it got available just to know what it does). The artstyle is very stylish, and that animation is very on point! Fun little thing, thanks for that!
Strong experience, I like it very much like it is - bit repetitive, bit upleasant, not that fun after first few slaps, but just something that must be done within a deadline to please the boss. The only thing that kills it form me is the music, it should have been all the happy sang orchestral songs about hapilly making and delivering all the presents and happy children and stuff, just like those typical in authoritarian regimes, with radio effect on it, that's what's in my head. But still, very dark and great experience, really! Don't add anything to make it traditionally fun - that will half kill the point - you work for Santa too, as well as they do! No fun for you, just productivity! Love it! Seriously!
It's positive and beautiful and cute and funny. Really great 9 minutes and 31 seconds of my life! :) That music with the snowball pushing face - amazing! Even though, the door opening mechanics is underexplained I think, it took me some time as well to notice the paintings on the ground and to get which snowball size they are reffering to. But I got it eventually and it was mostly pleasing experience. Thank you for this, really!
Very nice, controls pretty intuitively, the voice acting is great and hilarious!
It is obvious that you took a big bite, so many things stayed half-way done. I'm not sure why you went 3D when on tight schedule 2D would done fine if not better, but maybe you just wanted to, and that's alright, that's what jams are for :)
Weirdest thing for me was the movement, but you can eventually get used to it. Still for this kind of movement (and possibly any kind of it) the collision boxes were way too small, so that made it really frustrating, especially when picking up food. Also weird glitch is when you stop moving but the run animation is still playing, as well as playing animation for putting the log into the fire while character can move again all around the place. You really should've checked for that!
Still pretty solid entry, random world generation is interesting addition!
Very interesting idea and pretty impressive graphics for one person in 72 hours! What bugged me a bit was the UI. When all my interaction with the game is just drag'n'dropping stuff and thus changing stats, it would be nice to be able to see better which part of equip would be enhanced, or at least have the UI better structured. In this kind of game, I think it is crucial. It was kind of bothersome to having to remember all the stats and stat changes, when there could (and should) have been UI that showed you the information for you to dig into and think and plan.
Also I would like to know at least something about the next encounter, so I can pick the right equip for it. But still it is pretty neat idea that could be build upon!
It was hell of a fun! When's the dawn? Always died at 5:00 :( It felt fair though, I feel like I could do better next time - that is one hell of an achievement for you!
What bothered me a bit was campfire collider, I got stuck where I felt I should "float" around the round campfire, which cost me few deaths. But apart from that the gameplay felt very cool, very responsive, hitting the foes felt very satisfying and the challenge was there!
I enjoyed it very much, thank you!
Uff, it runs incredibly slow on my notebook, gotta play it again on desktop PC. Wouldn't do that if it wasn't for the music and art that is so good that I want to experience it properly!
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I got stuck here, have no idea what am I missing, even side quest didn't push me any further :) EDIT: I am not lost, you achieved to make the areas sort of memorable. I just can't find where to go next.
It feels amazing, the music and the graphics. It is a shame though that you didn't make it work well enough even on normal computer.
I also encountered some minor bugs - when you step on ungrowed mushroom and press interact, the shroom will grow up, but the character starts twitching weirdly. Also sometimes when you jump close to mushroom, u got the additional push, but don't get it once again when you fall back on the shroom. Also annoying part is when shroom (or anything other) is close to fountain, so the fountain text window pops up when you try to grow a shroom. Maybe you can have dedicated grow button when you're not bound to X and Y only button controller nowadays (also pain of a binding on qwertz keyboards) :)
Still I played much longer than I intended to, it was very soothing, the music is really great. After the jam, I probably give it another go so I can finish it. Now I need to play some other games so I can't spend more time looking for where to go or what to do next. Great job! Thanks for this game, really enjoyed it! :)
@lunacyecho Oh, well, totally missed that! Thanks!
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I really expected that something is up there since I went so far away from everything else :) Otherwise pretty neat, jumping felt good, controls felt responsive, never encountered any weird behaviour.
I sometimes felt that platform colliders were a tad bit too small, like I was supposed to land on the very edge but fell through it instead. Also I'm not sure about the platform graphics, the title screen and the character is beautiful, but the platforms themselves are just... well, they're okay, which is a high contrast to the title screen :)
Good one, short fun, perfect jam length, pleasant experience!
Why my fence is degrading on it's own and this fast? :D But in the end, I was okay with just watching the sheep falling out of bounds of the game and screaming to peaceful sound of your guitar. Very zen experience :)
Hey, very nice game, although pretty difficult. Your tips helped me a little, but still the struggle is real! :) Not the bad thing though, definitely keeps you playing much longer just because you feel getting just slightly better each try!
What was a bit weird was that game didn't end when my character fell down off the screen, was that intentional? Sometimes I found myself watching bouncing potato for a while and unable to do anything :)
The mechanics mashup is awesome btw., had it been the "combine two incompatible genres" theme like in one of previous jams, you'd have definitely won the theme category! :)
Hey, nice entry, lots of work making all the stuff stick together. I don't know exactly if your constraints were lack of time or lack of skills graphics-wise, but both could've been at least partially solved by switching to 2D and using some zelda-like or similar projection. That would achieve very similar experience with much less effort. But if your goal was to try out 3D then ignore it completely :)
The camera work was really good and I never encountered any view obscuring glitches, well done! What I'm not sure is the overall speed of the game, it is much faster then your common stealth game, but also it is not really that hectic or preassuring. I cannot put my finger on it precisely, but I think that there's definitely room for improvement. Maybe also give the player more viewspace? Not sure, should it struck me later I definitely come to tell you! :)
Overall pretty solid entry, everything worked well, controlled easily, camera felt nice, and I like the take on the theme! Thanks for this game, I enjoyed it!
Awesome! :) The aiming mechanic is interesting and I got into it pretty quickly. Also the number of upgrades is pretty amazing! It seemed like the arrows were pretty inefficient in the beginning in comparison to just stomping on everything, but with later upgrades it was really fun to throw stones around :)
What I think is a bit off is the directional arrow when aiming, I think it doesn't set the expected direction properly, so it takes some time to get used to where you should actually aim. Also I think there could be better indication both of you dealing and getting damage.
But overall I felt preassured enough to actually think what am I doing, I was using everything you provided and all the hitting and stomping felt pretty good! Nice entry!
Beautiful and atmospheric, 5/5 graphic and mood without hesitation! Also love that sound your flame does when you bury it in the snow, that was a splendid touch!
What was not that good - collisions were bit weird, it seemed like there's enough space to the edge of a cliff or between the trees to squeeze into, but suddenly the path was blocked for no visible reason. Also the last puzzle felt a bit trial and error more than actually learning something somewhere, but maybe I just missed something?
And the text speed mentioned above - that was definitely by far the most annoying thing, and it is not that hard to implement second E press to uncover the whole text, which is also kind of a standard nowadays I'd say. Devil's in the detail I guess :)
Still AMAZING game even for much longer than 72 hours, you guys surely know how to do stuff :) And the game actually left me both wanting to play some more and uncover more of the story of the world and the characters! Great job!
@gnocchi Hey, thanks a lot for stopping by. We are fully aware that we should play and rate other games, and in fact I can't decide which part of the jam I like more, but unfortunately the dev team is catching on all the work we left behind for the jam weekend, so we're looking forward to weekend, when we hopefully will have some time to spare and play all the gems that surely are out there, definitely starting with you and the other guys that actually found, played and commented on our game :)
We're aware of lacking gui and other visual cues, that should have told the player much needed info about how to play the game, sadly we didn't make it in time. However we stand by the "where you look is where you shoot" mechanic, though maybe we should have put in more info for player so they could grasp it better. Basically the aim can be very precise when using all the mechanics right. We'll probably do some "about aiming" stuff when we get to it during the weekend for those people, who don't feel like going in blind.
Still thank you for stopping by and I'm looking forward to playing your game as soon as possible! :)
@ion-programming Hey, thanks for playing and rating our game. We purposefully decided to make aiming kinda hard as it is basicly sole mechanic of our game, besides movement, that player can learn and master. If it wasn't for that, the game would be just top-down shooter, and as such would require much more content, especially enemy-wise, for player to have something engaging. We went that way in one of the previous jams and it didn't go very well, unfortunatelly. And as I wrote before, the aiming mechanics is harder to grasp because we didn't manage to make enough cues to guide the player to learn the rules, but still you can control the aim very precisely once you get it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have done better job teaching the player, just that there's more to it than it seems in the beginning :) Thanks for stopping by, see you in comment section under your game soon :)
@skeletor Hey, awesome to read that, we wanted to make the experience pretty short and intensive, so you were actually just one hatch from ending screen. It's not very good one though, so it's worth trying once again more for the feeling of accomplishment :) We're very glad that you got the shooting mechanics despite our obviously not perfectly managed showing the player. And we're mostly pleased that you had a good time! See you soon when we play your game! :)
@brachistosauro @joseph-andrew Sorry to hear that, thanks for reporting, I'll look into it and try to fix it. And also we're very glad that you took the time to explore the bow shooting mechanics!
@shredmer @whatnamegames Thanks, glad you liked it! :)
@nsadie Hey, sorry to hear that, do you know which rock was it? That should not happen, so it would help with bugfixing if you post a screen or something :) Thanks for playing, rating and leaving a comment! :)
@joseph-andrew thanks a lot for that extra effort made to help us, much appreciated!
@turncoda Really helpful, informative and comprehensive feedback, thank you for that! Really helps us to see better where we went right and what needed further explanation.
Was the death frustration caused simply by being so close, or were there any cheesy or unfair deaths in your opinion?
We also think that the drawing slow down also helps with aim, as the basic speed is quite high and precise movement gets bit tricky.
Thank you very much once again for taking this much time playing our game, going so deep and leaving so comprehensive description of your experience! Hope you enjoyed it as well!
@turncoda By the way, enemy dealing damage and then leaving is basically a workaround so the enemies wouldn't stack on top of each other around the egg without the need of some sophisticated pathfinding and crowd behaviour.
@turncoda thanks for clarification, it's quite interesting, definitely worth addressing those issues, as soon as we found out how :)
@joseph-andrew Looks like I found the bug - you actually died there but something weird happened in animator that prevented the death animation to complete, thus prevented the game to change the state. It's fixed now along with another few bugs that occured.
@dennerbougo Hey, thanks for playing and leaving your comment! The arrows are doing raycast, when they hit something, they actually despawn and spawn another, inactive arrow that should just stick out of enemy. There's probably a bug, that sticks the new arrow on the position of despawned arrow instead of position of the raycast hit, so that's why it floats outside the enemy body. I'll try to fix it when I have some time.
We also didn't manage to make enemy healthbar in time, so it's poorly communicated, but you cannot always one-shot the enemy, sometimes the enemy needs two or more hits, depending on your draw timing.
Thanks again, glad you like it! :)
@thibaud-ligneul Hey, thanks for playing! Could you be so kind and elaborate a bit on how the hard controls had manifested in your playthrough? We'd very much appreciate that!
I already had time to play and rate your game, cool stuff! :)
@invixel We fell bit on the easy side with previous entries, so this time we went a bit souls I guess :) We actually tried to accomplish a bit uncommon control scheme, more our own (but still managable), so that the player actually needs to learn that (unlike twin stick shooter, where most people know the drill).
The game is not infinite, the goal is to allow three dragons to hatch (should've been comunicated better though as I can clearly see now :). We wanted to keep the mechanics simple so we can make it feel good both animation and sfx wise, so I'm glad that resonated with you! :)
Thanks for playing, gonna check out your game too!
@lovetocode999 Hey, thanks for playing! We intentionaly went for this kind of aim where you basically can both walk and shoot in four direction only. We tried to compensate that with really fast movement and also pretty wide draw window where the arrow goes in straight line. Glad you liked it!
Very nice and funny idea! It might not be necessary to allow the player to see the level beforehand, I think it would be sufficient to have level checkpoint, so that the player won't have to play all the levels again when they die. That was pretty annoying for me at least.
But overall it is a very good game, stylish graphics, music fits the style! Good job!
Checkpoints would help very much, repeating once solved puzzle is no way fun. Also the room with golden rods didn't react even though all the pillars were turned correctly, possibly a bug. Sometimes the preassure plate turned the pillar twice though.
Impressive amount of work for a jam!
There's not much of a feedback you can give to a game like this, you clearly got your stuff together :) Fun little game, feels good to play, everything's crowded just right, highscore table is a neat idea. I wasn't particularly good (scored bit under 2000) so maybe I just didn't grasp the mechanic fully, but - is there any reason not to mash the attack button like crazy? Jump felt pretty useless to me, as you could attack bounce all around the place, which was super fun, so that's what I was doing. Was it intended? Not much of timing, just bouncing around like crazy? :) If so, well done, if not, well done anyways! And thank you, I really enjoyed playing your game! :)
Some visuals for gun cooldown would help, but still there was too much going on in my opinion and nothing was clear enough to make any sense of it for me, so I was overwhelmed by meteorites pretty quickly and died before I got to know how to control all the stuff. The pacing and learning curve is the culprit here I'd say.
Nice game, digging the turkey sound. Obviously the game could use some more polish, but hey, it's only 72, we didn't do much of it in our game too. But graphics is nice and gameplay feels responsive, interesting enough for the scope and also challenging enough.
What bothered me a bit was hit testing for the turkey. It feels like the hitbox is reacting even when you hit just its corner, so no visual part of turkey, is hit, e.g. when you stand right behind the turkey, so the gun is way above it's head and should not hit it at all. That part felt like the game is cheesing you, which didn't feel very good.
Also once or twice I found myself in situation that felt like it should have been last minute save, where the enemy was really close to turkey, but visually not close enough, when I hit it, but then hitboxes just collided and enemy killed the turkey, so instead of that "wow that was close, but cool as hell" feeling I had just "damn, that shouldn't have been so close!" I think you always should allow your player to do this kind of last minute save, it feels really amazing. Even when you need to bend the rules to not be completely fair :)
So better turkey hit testing and allowing player to kill the enemy in the very last second and feel tense but also great about it, that would be my suggestions :)
Overall it's a very solid game, managable scope, fun mechanics, neat execution, looks good, has style. Totally would play again! :)
@francescopanini what we did is raycasting for projectiles. That way I think it's easier to tweak the collision in higher speed and you are also in control of collision testing direction (eg you can test two units in the direction of projectile movement and none backwards, or something like that). I used to be a bit afraid of raycasting myself, but it is quite simple and powerful tool for this kind of mechanics.
Just to be clear, I mean that the projectile does the raycasting, not the gun. So it's more of a "where will I be in the next one/two frames," not really a hitscanning. I like it the way that it actually takes some time for the projectile to hit the target, makes it more fun, I'd say :)
Is there a goal of the game? Any ending? I tried different approaches and found out that staying in an engine room is pretty safe tactics, police will come, but it takes a long time and there's no cover for them. Got bored before anything happened though, optimized the fun outta game again :) Also I had no idea where am I shooting, why am I missing or hitting what I was aiming for (I was pointing to policeman with my cursor, still particles spawned on the roof, except the times they did not and I actually hit for no apparent reason). Reload button would be nice.
I'd suggest the game starts in the engine room so that you know it is somehow important - I didn't notice it at all on my first playthrough (I usually go in blind first, then read the description for the other ones) - and have finite amount of coal and have it spawn in the train somewhere so player has to go out there.
The cover mechanic is pretty neat and I like the idea that you can gradually get into and out of cover, that it is not instant, sure can be built upon! Also when stuff worked (like hitting enemies) it actually felt pretty satisfying!
Did I win?
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For the whole time I just got bit low on ammo, that was about it. Just when I started to think that maybe I'm in a bit of a pickle. But then the screen came (played web version in Chrome on win7, in case you decide to find a fix). So definitely not challenging enough for me to feel that I cracked the code and outsmarted the game.
As I was writing this I realized that maybe the player hasn't really got a viable option. You either pick a good/bad card or pick whatever is hidden, it's just not really interesting decision making I'd say. You're not making trade offs, you just avoiding what you think would be worse. If you can see monster card, then the other one is probably not worse, most likely better, so what you even should think about? Maybe you just need to give player more viable options, so he can make tough choices and feel under preassure, but also rewarded afterwards?
I don't really think that stretching the game would help much, cause the core loop stays the same. Maybe you should give it one more go to see if you can patch it up somehow? Just for practise's sake? I'm not the best when it comes to designing card games, so I cannot put my finger on it precisely, but there's clearly something important missing in the game core-loop-wise. So take aforesaid with a pinch of salt, maybe the problem is elsewhere, but I'm trying my best to point you in the best direction I can provide.
That being said, you all (your wife included) did a great job on the game, the artstyle is atmospheric and moody, it fits well together, and also the blend of turn based combat, cards and the iso/3D background feels pretty nice. Also I didn't encounter any bugs or problems (except the text one that apparently goes with webGL build), so I'd say everything worked.
You should've totally made some audio though, these kind of settings cannot go without one, even if it's just night ambient insect noises. You need to hear to fear! :)
Still good job, very nice work! Hope you find the right loop and feel soon, I'll be back! :)
@nsadie That is weird, gotta try it again in standalone. What made me play web version was that 7zip archive, that in win7 cannot be natively extracted. I'll dl something and give it another go. Still you opt-out from audio, so it's licensed audio I guess?
Yeah, the narrative card game idea is very interesting to me, so I very much looking forward to your progress! :)
Very nice idea and great artstyle! Really finger breaking key binding for me though, would appreciate to have charge on space or something. Even though it was fun to play! Every action felt responsive and juicy :) Good work!
Made it to the end! Played few times, the initial runs were pretty challenging, the latter ones though I kinda optimized the fun out of the game, herded all my dinos to the corner and survived there throughout the history :) I'd say a little less randomness for the next strike would be better, so that nobody can live peacefully in the corner like me :)
I love the artstyle and the idea you went for, dinos are cute and their personalities in different periods are fantastic :) Also the mechanic that all the area gets more and more cramped and navigation is more and more difficult is pretty well thought out! Graphics of meteorites and volcanos are also great and the impacts and erruptions do feel good!
I would prefer better control over the dinos (maybe more stamina, faster replenishing, faster dinos or something like that) so that there were a bit more interesting situations like hitting volcanos when running from meteorite, which rarely happened to me because I rarely run any greater distance due to low stamina. I found myself in what I thought to be the optimal strategy (even before cornering dinos) when I move the dinos only as little as possible, which meant not moving at all for some time.
Still great few minutes spent with your dinos, overall it was very, very uplifting and pleasant experience! :)
I don't think there's any point in adding power ups and enhancements before the game core loop is fun. I don't mean to be mean, more of pointing out the stuff that I think you should focus on next time for your game to be much better.
First - you should actually take the time to prepare your sprites so that they'd face the mouse (and enemies face whatever they heading towards), which was not the case in my playthrough. In Unity, the sprites need to be facing certain direction or need to be rotated inside parent object, which is then rotated via script. Aim would be and feel milion times better had you taken the time to do this.
Also the pacing is very weak. You should never make your game fun by buying upgrades - nobody gonna want to buy them unless they already like playing the game. You should make your game fun without upgrades, and then make it even fun-er with them! The arrows should fly fast from the beginning, the shooting should feel responsive and snappy.
When you get aforesaid right, then try to add some visual feedback - how do I know if I can or cannot shoot right now? By just clicking and seeing what happens? Is there a better way? You don't need to have complex animation, maybe have just two or three frames with ready and recovery poses, or maybe just change the color somehow. Just let the player know, they need to know, it is crucial!
When you done that, focus on enemies - are they fun? Are they ACTUALLY a threat to a player or are they just a cannon fodder? Some enemies can be just cannon fodder, but some need to be actually threatening to the player, otherwise there's no challenge, no preassure. Then you can mix and match enemy types, so that the player actually has to prioritize which one to shoot first, e.g. low threat enemies and high threat enemies.
After you have this kind of game, that is actually fun to play on it's own, then you can ask yourself "what would make this game even more interesting/fun?" Whatever you try and find good you can make as an upgrade. But never put all the fun somwhere in upgrades, nobody is gonna play that far (at least outside of game jams).
BUT!
This was your first jam, and you actually finished a game that has menu, some content, is playable, isn't broken somehow (didn't find anything at least), stuff just works. That is a huge thing and you should be proud of yourselves! You tackled all the different parts of game development and struggled through it and finished your project. Next time you'll be better, faster, smarter. Work on what you did, build on the good, improve the not that good, carry on! See you next jam, looking forward to what you can do next time with all the feedback you got! :)
@spacestrawberriesstudio Work smarter, not harder! I would recommend you to study all the awesome resources out there and maybe try to add stuff you learn to this project, so you can see how stuff is changing.
Besides Unity knowledge base itself, which is more technical, there are plenty of design or both tech and design resources, especially YouTube is full of great stuff, e.g. videos of GDC talks (check also GDC vault, which is paid, but contains full archive of talks) but also other content creators (could recommend Game Makers Toolkit, if you don't know that).
Stuff's just out there, go and get it! And most importantly, try out what you've learnt, do some small projects focused on one simple thing, or expand this one. Grow! KEEP IT ALIVE! :)
The flashlight charge mechanic was a great idea! Also the atmosphere was pretty dense! The combat lacks a bit though, it's hard to say when wolves attack.
Hey guys, pretty nice game for this little time. What bugged me was that in slower speed (until I realized that I can "sprint" with shift) the character couldn't overcome some stupidly small barriers like first step of steps or the plank around the playground, so I had to circle around to find basically a ramp spot, where I can actually go in. I also think that you could've done much better with smaller and more dense, cramped game space.
It's clear that you didn't have nearly enough assets to put in and that's definitely okay, it's just 72 hours, so just go with it. The sprint was too slow anyways and traversing the same patch of grass again and again gets frustrating even in decent atmosphere. So I think that your game wouldn't be worse but even better if all the stuff like bbq and fireplace was there only once and the space was much smaller overall and everything was closer together. Don't go with "my open world is much bigger than yours" insanity that flows these days :)
What is totally great design is that you put more than one "quest item" in the level, so player can reach his own and also there're higher chances that player reaches at least one of them :) That was very clever and it slightly reduced the uncomfortability of decreasingly enjoyable traversal.
So I had pretty good time with your game, but I think that the game could benefit more from realizing the scope and make the experience a little more compact and denser :) Still thanks for it, it was most pleasant and I definitely agree with all those guys above about the humor, atmosphere and the underlying idea being very soothing and enjoyable! :)
Hey, pretty neat idea, but maybe too big of a bite for 72 hours? I mean - awesome to have an editor, but I don't think that people gonna use it much if they have problems grasping basic gameplay loop as I had :) Did I win? Did I lose? Was I supposed just the start the fire or could I feed it by clicking or something? How do I know if my destruction was better then the previous one? At least score counter would be very nice, maybe some score bubbles poping out of the buildings? More of the stuff like that so people actually know what they're doing and whether they're any good at it.
By the strong foundation you clearly put in the game I'd say that you just overshoot the scope massively and didn't have time to finish most of it the way you wanted, which totally fine, but also a real pitty as you are clearly capable of doing some interesting and complex stuff have you had less complex and more achievable scope in mind.
At least some basic sfx and/or music would be great enhancement as well. I really dig the artstyle though, it is simple yet clear and effective, it matches all well together both style and color wise! Definitely strongest part of the game in the current state. Still it's clear that there's some strong foundation for future game that could be pretty fun, so wish you good luck with that!
Pretty fun! Managed to get all the badges without feeding the campfire though, not sure if it is intended. I very much like the character graphics. Also the platforming was nice, though it could use some coyotte time :)
Nice entry!
Really nice graphic style! How do you replenish your ammo? I thought that the fish skeleton does that, but it doesn't seem like so (and it took me while to get what they're really good for :) ). That confused me a bit. Also the audio is way too quiet, had to crank up my volume significantly to hear anything. It is good audio though! :) Love that you can skip the dialog in the beginning for all but the first time, but maybe let player skip it even the first time, cause you know, they might not care or they might've just reloaded the game, so they technically read it already but you cannot check for that. And it doesn't explain the gameplay in any means, so it is not that important either.
Very nice entry! Thanks for that!
Hey, nice entry! At first I didn't exactly know what to do, I thought I just need to shovel the middle tree for it to grow, then tried few other things. After I read the tutorial, things started to be more interesting, cause killing aliens on was pretty easy on it's own.
I often struggled to guess both attack and damage distance to enemies though, as well as recovery time of the shovel swing. I also noticed that you move faster diagonally, which was probably not intended and due to non normalized movement direction vector :)
What struck me immediately as a thing I would do is that when carrying the bag of tree growy thingy, I would put it physically in my character's hands, so it could not attack and carry the bag at the same time. This way it would not only indicate that you already carrying one bag much better than in the UI panel, but also it would add another depth layer and increase difficulty in terms of decidion making, which is alawys a good thing, according to people of the internet :) But that's a design decision so that depends on what game you want to make.
It seems that we both went the kind of same-ish way when tackling the theme. We actually did a lot of decisions (like the four way movement only and some AI behaviour) just to avoid some pathfinding and other AI difficulties like enemies getting stuck behind the wall (which happened to me a few times when playing your game). Maybe consider that next time, pathfinding is better avioded in tight schedule :)
I very much like the hero of your game as well as graphics in general, it feels really refreshing and positive! Also great you managed to do pretty good menu, adds a lot. Overall there were some minor issues that bothered me (see above) and I could handle a bit more preassure, but still playing your game was very pleasing and fun experience! Thank you!
The bears are just wondering around while your child is being eaten by those monsters! Evil little swines they are!
Nice one, very funny! You somehow managed that I never got lost in the samey forrest, that's great. However I would love to have some checkpoint in the game, it's still plenty of going back and forth through stuff you already know and did. Also it seems to me that the difficulty spiked a bit too much. The combat would very much benefit from some audio and particles.
However I love the 8-directional movement and the artstyle is simple yet expresive and very neat and nice. The player character feels very good to control, which is superimportant! Overall I had fun, thanks for that! :)
I was getting stuck here pretty often, even the slide didn't get me through, sometimes it helped to "jumpslide" or any other button mashing
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The arrow keys to move, space to jump (not being able to use WASD) felt a bit unintuitive and caused me a bit of trouble. Also I felt that the cleaner moves a little bit too fast to actually collect anything. Still interesting idea, making a feel-good platformer controls within three days is hard :( Still good work, you definitely have something to build upon!
Oh boy, this is a great amount of work incredibly done for a jam game! The concept is awesome and pretty well thought out, and definitely something worth expanding, especially for mobile platform. I agree with guys above that the combat phase is very passive, which is a shame, especially during boss fights, which plays basically the same as normal enemies.
Also it is prone to optimalization - I set up the best circle I thought possible and change it only when new heroes arrived. Maybe it would be worth trying allowing the player to change the circle between each round of battle, so that they could react better to boss's moves.
Is the game endless? I finished five worlds and am not sure whether to carry on, as I got more gold than I could ever spend and things started to drag a bit.
Still the first few levels, characters and discoveries were awesome! If you could keep that tempo, shorten the game or change things around a bit, it could be an impressive full game.
So basically my biggest problem with the game as it is and considering the jam character of it is that you just made it longer than it could be, which made the experience fade unnecesarilly.
But that cannot change the greatness of the idea and the execution as well, awesome artstyle, atmospheric music, juicy enough, both visual and sound effect are good. Great work!
The last wheel also didn't show for me, though I'm pretty sure I collected all of them on my second playthrough (the monkey wall one was by far the trickiest, but also the most rewarding one). The game is pretty robust, so all the issues are pretty minor - sometimes the monkey would wall grab even where there's apparently nothing he should grab at, it did it on the column in the background (darker part of actual platform) and also to the tree in the background near the wall wheel while facing the wheel. Also the wall jump was a bit fiddly to my liking, as you had to press the opositte directional key with a split second timing, but that might've been intentional. Even the monkey controls were pretty consistent though, so there was no cheap deaths, just getting to know my character. The human jump felt a bit off, bit floaty or something, but still was consistent.
Using the same levels for multiple different characters is an awesome idea that deserves to be explored further and more often! The game wasn't much difficult, but the wheel challenge was nice, the last human wheel was pretty interesting and way to reach it was pretty unexpected!
I'm not sure if the lo-fi cutscene matches well with the levels artstyle, but both were really interesting artstyles. Also kudos for the characters and animations, that must've taken a lot of work in such a small amount of time!
Overall very solid game, plays nicely, works well, very good job!
I have an issue with controls - anytime your character changes direction, he does a turn with more than zero perimeter, which made me bump in to door frames or walls repeatedly. I think you should just allow the character to turn in place, even when lacking the proper animation, the controls would feel much better.
Otherwise it's really promising concept and great game for a game jam! Congratulations!
@maliyshock @katamary I'd like to know what @vivien-fargette wants, say we took all the passengers with a star through the depo and miracle happened, will it ever stop happening or finish in some way, or is the miracle looping forever and the miracle itself is the end?
Also I though that miracle happening was the last stop and I'm supposed to open the door and let them out. And I'm still pretty convinced that this is what miracle is about, though maybe that wasn't your intended interpretation. If it was, maybe you should allow them to get off the train after miracle happens, that would make nice though bitter ending.
Anyways, this was amazing and the (at least percieved) depth of so simple game is breathtaking, the artstyle is beautiful, I love it! Do more, more like this, more of this, more whatever, just please do! <3
It felt like the character is increasing and decreasing speed at random, or at least going faster when airborne, which makes little sense to me. That also made controls unnecessarilly tricky, as your jump distance varied greatly and I sometimes jumped way over intended platform to my death.
The idea of looping runner is very clever and you managed to add mechanics that go well with the concept and improve it well! With a little more work this could be very addictive experience! Congratulations!
The artstyle and overall mood is definitely the strongest part of this game, but still I feel like you could use a bit more of LUT or some tweaking of it. The sound design is great and puts in really deserted, lost feel, very moody indeed. I don't quite get why are you able to pick up and throw object when there's no need for it during the whole playthrough? I was constantly picking up stuff and expecting I could use it somehow, but never did. Still had some time throwing stuff around, but I didn't know how to add some force to throw, so I couldn't throw those lizards of the roof. Why the mechanic was there?
Anyway, cool project, I'm really interested in what comes out of it!
I tended to hit enemies going vertically, which didn't seem to work, which bothered me a bit. Also, as pointed above, the mouse controls seems to be pointless, and maybe full keyboard binding would prevent me from trying to hit enemies above or below me :)
Apart from that, it is a solid work!
Awesome take on the theme! And pretty well done too! It was bit hard for me to control how and where I shoot the blue/yellow arrows as I still didn't get how it works precisely, but apart from that the game plays extremely well and intuitively and the concept is great! :)
In the html5 version, it gets pretty laggy when you have lots of cars and therefore lots of bullets in game, I guess some pooling and GC issue, but that might be the limitation of html5 platform, dunno :)
Also why mouse to aim, space to shoot? Why not LMB? Maybe even RMB to pick up passengers, scroll wheel to increase and decrease the speed? It could've been all mouse controls, but keyboard is okay except for space to shoot, that doesn't make sense to me :)
Still I had fun, even with the minimalist artstyle and sfx it felt suprisingly good to shoot the enemies, their popping/clicking sound felt so good! I couldn't see much of a challenge or change in a gameplay, but still spent good amount of time just riding around and shooting those skeletons! And the graphics, though minimalist, is very good, the cloud shadows are an awesome touch! Very good work!
Really polished game, but I think the gameplay is really hit or miss here, people with a thing for a memory games will be very pleased, others not so much, because there's not much more to it. Is there a highscore table? Or is there an end game screen?
But it is clear that you know your craft, it is really polished, smooth, bugfree experience of very high quality!
Despite a lot of issues that are not perfect (or even good in some cases, unfortunately), I enjoyed the playthrough very much and do like the game. You came up with solid puzzle mechanics, clever twists and interesting levels, which during a game jam is not easy at all! And I'd actually play more if provided :)
What nearly made me quit in first level though is the movement. Haven't I found out that you can also control the character with mouse, I wouldn't continue, the keyboard movement was too floaty and unprecise to be at least plausible and was downright frustrating to keep losing just because the weird momentum of Unity physics. Don't do that next time, please, it would be shame if you'd lose players of good puzzle game because of bad controls. You're making a thinking game in a first place, the execution shouldn't be this difficult.
Minor stuff is that sometimes collisions won't trigger, so you have to wait for third or fourth bump to cause paradox, which with missing "R to restart" is causing unnecessary delays in play when you know you already messed up and there's nothing you can do. Also the graphics could use a lot more love, but since you made it all by yourself in 48 hours, I'm glad that you rather spent the time to actually think through the concept and some level design and I can totally go with the looks, as the core puzzles are fun enough :)
So overall I'm very, very glad I accidentaly discovered the mouse control which allowed me to have a good time, but please, be careful with your controls next time!
Also I think that what you have is good foundation for further development! Congrats, good job! :)
@staircase27a Yeah, I can imagine the pain, Unity can be very difficult to reason with sometimes :) It's usually better to not use Unity physics at all unless you really need physics calculation, like ragdolls or some box throwing/stacking fun or something like that. But movement is always tricky to get to feel right.
I'm glad that someone went the same way as me with the loop theme :) It's quite challenging to hit the cow, maybe some more feedback would help. But it is simple and very functional concept! Would be nice to have a highscore table to know how am I doing :) Big plus points for cow-nter!
Oh, THE HAT! I didn't realize I can click the hat! Maybe some highlighting of stuff you can click on when mouse is over would've helped me. I noticed that the text is changing, but somehow didn't pay enough attention to it so I thought that the hat and the guy are one object. Apart from that, I had an awesome time, the game is clever and funny and the art is great and also you picked awesome music so the spaghetti western mood is really strong! Great entry, congratulations!
I didn't figure out that you lasso yourself further when running, I noticed only in gameplay gif on itch.io, so that way I realized how to get over the canyon. Still the execution on it's own was pretty difficult being it the time you just introduced the mechanic (or at least made the player use it) and the stakes were pretty high as well. So I'd say the difficulty curve is bit steeper than it should be.
But on the other hand, controls are precise and consistent enough so that the player actually can git gud :) That depends only on their will. The gameplay feels good and the game is not long enough to start to feel boring or lacking new mechanics. I am not sure if the arcade style lives to go through the whole game is a good idea, but you compensated very well for that with lives getting out of enemies that dealt you no damage, if I noticed correctly the rule, which is very, very clever and I like this idea very much! :)
Sometimes the enemy placement and their AI didn't feel much fair on the first go as enemies were seen last minute and there were pretty fast on the draw, but then again you could memorize position of every one of them, so it compensates with time. Still I would at least reconsider it once again, especially the very first enemy in the game, which again, like the long lasso jump, is introduced very unclearly and the stakes are very high, giving the player little to no chance to prepare. But it would be more of an issue in longer game where you could better keep the introduce-reinforce-challenge mechanic loop. Since the game isn't that long, it is not that big of an issue, but definitely is something to consider in the future :)
The artstyle is great and visuals are close to perfect, I find the audio part unfortunately much weaker, which weakens the mood a bit. Also the volume levels of the audio I find very all over the place and I think that overall volume is pretty low.
Overall I had a lot of fun with your game! Thank you and congratulation!
Just started the game and went here to give you five stars for the audio instantly, that music made my day!
The gameplay took me a while - I somehow get that I'm supposed to be collecting those bubbles, but I didn't know what to do with them (I didn't read the description), so I first tried to put one over the other, which didn't work, so I took it to the ship, which did work and I was very happy about myself being so clever :)
It took me a while to understand the gravity of the situation, but then controlling the astronaut felt pretty good and satisfying, in a souls-like manner all the damage taken was totally accountable to me :) I experienced a weird glitch, when my astronaut just disappeared on the left side of the screen, in still visible area where there was nothing apparent to collide with, so I assume that was a bug? Or an invisible black hole, as both space and black holes are black, so it cannot be seen? :)
Also I somewhat assumed it's gonna be endless but then my spaceship just flew to the right and left and I was brought to the main menu again, so I suppose I won? Didn't see any lives count, so I must have won, yeah? :)
And once again, THAT MUSIC MAN! You're awsome!
@no-grapes-games Thank you very much!
@kassie-kitsune Hey, that's a good idea with the grid overlay, didn't think about that, but I like it and will try to implement it just for practice's sake :) Yeah, I know the AI is on the weaker side, I tweaked some numbers pre-release as it was previously too "clever" which made the cows basically untamable, but now it is on the contrary :/ Still I'm glad you stopped by and enjoyed at least some parts of the game! :)
@heyycap Hey, yeah, the horse riding needs further improvement, feels somewhere between a car and a boat, I'm not really satisfied with it either :) Well the lasso breaks if it is extended too long, so maybe that's what happened to you? You can tell that the lasso is going to break when it gradually changes colour to red. If it's not the case, I would very much appreciate a gif or vid of what happened, cause apart from the breaking mechanic I have no idea what could happen and cannot replicate it myself :( Thank you very much for your time spent playing my sort-of-game! :)
@gonzalol Thank you, there was actually more to the mechanics intended, but most of the stuf was cut due to lack of time, like obstacles which would make the lasso tangle around or even break it, getting hurt when you ride to those obstacles or even more animals to catch with different behaviour, but tweaking the basics to at least this playable stuff took almost all the time I had, unfortunatelly. What seems to be a really simple idea usually takes much more time than expected to feel at least sort of good :) Thank you for stopping by!
@sollu Thank you for your nice comment! :) Hope I can get better gameplay with this kind of artstyle next time :)
@flazone Thanks, I'm glad that the artstyle resonates! Thanks for playing!
@ctpeepee Thank you for stopping by, yeah, what seemed to be a simple idea was still pretty complicated stuff with lots of tweaking to get it feel at least a bit ok :)
@craftwill Thanks, I made the throw direction indicated by the arrow, but that maybe wasn't clear enough, I was thinking that maybe more arrows would be better for different purposes (lasso aim, cow and barn position, like that). The clicking though I still am not sure how to communicate it other than flashing mouse icon on screen, but I'm glad you eventually found out :) How did you realized that the clicking works? What helped you?
@harrm Thank you for playing and commenting, yeah, there definitelly weren't enough clues and feedback and I'm not satisfied with the horse riding feel as well. Still thinking about how to communicate the mechanics better.
@staircase27a I guess that the problem is the same - you should click to pull the lasso and hence the cow to the right direction, but yeah, that wasn't taught very well, was it? :) I noticed the glitching, not sure why it's happening, need to look in to that. Thanks for playing and leaving a comment! :)
@ividusk Thank you very much! Sadly I didn't have time to animate rest of the horse, I was fiddling with some skeletal IK for horse head turns, but then I realized that I have no time for that, so the horse itself stayed static as well as the cows, which was the same, because I really wanted to try it out, but the schedule made me choose between something playable and something animated, so here we are :) Btw you actually can escape the rock circle area as there is some part missing down south, but that's more of a bug than intentional :)
@nandelind Thank you! One of the things I wanted to try was this "grappling hook" mechanic, so that's why I choose this concept and why I focused on the handling once lassoed cows. But still the cows should've been much more stubborn and difficult, I think, they're too nice now :)
@joedev Thank you very much! Yes, the controls should've been explained much better.
@raphiell Yeah, controls weren't explained very well, but I very much appreciate that you took the time to discover the actual mechanics! Thanks for playing and commenting!
@dans17 Thank you, I'd like to see at least v1.3 myself :) I never thought about lassoing more cows at once, that could actually be very interesting, but very difficult both gameplay-wise and design-wise. Now I'm gonna be thinking about it!
@cargamoni Thank you for playing and I'm glad you liked the theme! I always play and rate and leave feedback to everyone who played and commented on my game :) I'd do it even for the people who just rated, but I don't know who they are :(
@spacecadet Yeah, limiting lassos, as well as basic cash for cows - lassos for cash mechanics, was all in consideration, but I had to cut it because of time constraints, as most of the time I tried to make the movement feel at least plausible as I felt that this is the core gameplay. Thank you very much for playing! :)
Thanks very much to all of you for your time and feedback!
Interesting concept, very atmospheric game, well done!
Lots of people here seem to have been confused by the lasso mechanic and so was I. I know that you put the techniques in description, but I think we're a bit past the "game manual" era :) As my experience goes, I first succesfully lassoed the rocks, so I just expected that everything gets thrown in the direction you move the mouse into after relasing, but that didn't work much. So then I had to rtfm :) I feel this a bit shame, cause that didn't make me feel very clever for figuring out myself what to do, and also I don't think that I would've ever guessed that the right direction to the carriage is up (not even mentioning the bisons). I sort of expected that the direction would be towards the carriage. But once I've been told what to do, I got a hang of it and it worked pretty well, though it was a bit difficult for me (got to about 150 gold).
Still nice entry, very clever take on the theme!
I'm sorry to inform you that your character's walk seems to be rather silly :) Very interesting concept, very interesting ending (though not very obvious). There's not much one can say about gameplay. I like you kept the loop around the town pretty short, so the player can talk basically to everyone on his way, but it doesn't feel very tedious.
What I don't get is the key binding - why can't I continue in conversation with space as well? What's wrong with it? Why so many keys for such a basic few functions? I'd suggest to go with even more keys but with equivalent binding (e.g. space, enter, f and LMB all do the same, so the player can decide what to use according to their taste), this is not confusing, but unnecessary :)
I like the art very much, the parallax background looks like a paper diorama, very nice art direction indeed!
Nice entry!
Awesome atmosphere! And also great take on the theme, I haven't encountered any like this so far, and I'm actually pretty interested in some post mortem explaining how it was done!
Minor annoyances - I feel like the torch was really unnecessary upgrade as there should've been bigger visibility radius from the beginning, the atmosphere would have been as dense in my opinion (and the boots of faster movement are pretty questionable too, as it adds nothing to the actual gameplay). The smaller visibility circle just made it more unpleasant than moody. At least there could've been as big circle, but more of it would've been lit just more dimly without the torch. Still the lighting work was really well done and helped the overall atmosphere a lot!
Second minor annoyance is that entrances felt too tight, sometimes I got stuck on the corner, so maybe smaller colliders or some way of letting the character sort of flow around the corner would have helped.
I would suggest (in case of further improvements, as there was probably no time for that during the jam) to make areas more distinct. I get that player is supposed to feel at least a bit confused about where he is and how he's looping around, but then he should also be able to wrap his head over it and get to learn how the stuff works, which is close to impossible with all the same corridors everywhere. So maybe some different carpets, wall paint or style or even some pictures hanged, so that different corners of the manor/maze are recognizable, so that the player would get even more "aha" moments than he got from seeing the gazella in really unexpected place for the first time. Oh my, there's just so much space for pushing this concept further that I'm bit jelous of you! :)
I really enjoyed the game, the spider spooked me properly, and also addition of checkpoints before points of probable death (or other fail state) was very clever from you and saved many players from some serious frustration, myself included! And the concept is really clever, can provide many exceptional puzzles on it's own, as few games explore this idea! I'm glad I found your game and I wish you keep going!
Those screams will haunt me in my dreams!
Very impressive. I'm not a big fan of this "all around the place" artstyle, but I enjoyed that one bit of the story, the premise is really lovely and over the top :)
The gameplay itself sucked me in and some levels felt really great when you got the timing and movement right (I think that level 5 really hit me with this feeling first and I got really into it)! I really enjoyed the playthrough, like really :)
Great work!
When you get me stuck in a time loop, just make it looping, please. The most annoying thing I can imagine is getting back to main menu and having to click two buttons to get back to game :) The gameplay is designed the way that no one ever could complete the game first time, so you should've designed the fail state apropriately. This way it makes no sense and doesn't even go with the "stuck in a time loop" thing.
But apart from that, the amount of work is amazing, character controls felt really good, the circle for looking through buildings you're behind is a nice touch, and even the story is pretty functional. Some sfx would help a lot, but hey, time's low, right. And the overall artstyle, environment and models...wow!
If you're planning on further improvement (which you should, everybody would love an interesting twist to Sexy Brutale), I think that most important would be to have things loop seamlessly, so that the player knows when time loops back, but he can investigate at his own pace, se how things unwind and what changes with his actions.
Great piece of work overall!
At first, I expected more smaller levels slowly introducing new mechanics, the one huge level is pretty novel in this kind of game. It added an interesting challenge with space getting slowly cluttered with yourselves, so you have to carefully plan your route, but still be fast enough to fit within the time limit.
There's one minor issue with colliders that are bit strict when walking through the doorway, BUT otherwise those colliders are awesome, are forgiving enough when colliding with spikes or your past selves, but they're HUUUUUGE when stepping on plate or pushing a crate, so it won't become frustratingly fiddly. And also saved my playthrough few times :) Big thumbs up for that, really, this is done incredibly well in my opinion!
The level design is very clever and the challenge is certainly there with all the bottlenecks, a good amount of waiting and timing. Still I think the game could benefit from smaller and more dense levels - there was pretty much always enough empty space to wait in, so the tight spot was only in bottlenecks, which you could avoid by waiting in an empty room before with a bit of planning. Shrinking the level a bit would also shorten the pure waiting time, where you literally do nothing but wait for your past selves to move.
Overall really great entry! Had plenty of fun, finished the game and seen the credits till the end (of the music loop at least). Considering the amount of work you all had to done during the jam, those credits were well deserved! :)
Have you considered pausing or slowing down time when drawing the line? Or limiting the max length of the line? I agree with @invixel that movement of the enemies was too complex to plan for, also the visibility wasn't the best. I think that little zoomed out camera and slow-mo would allow the player just storm in instead of carefully waiting for the right setting of enemies. But maybe you went for the slower pacing, I don't know. Maybe I'm shooting off target, but something just felt a bit off and kept the game from reaching the maximum potential.
That being said, general concept is a cool as heck idea and you've done good job. I personally like the 2D/3D visual mix very much! Congratulations on this, it's very well done!
Hey, I know the time is tight and it probably took lots of it just to get this up and running and it's still a great job from you guys, but the point of the jam is feedback, isn't it? So take this as a suggestion for improvement, not dissing your effort!
I had fun from the beginning, but then the gameplay got a bit samey. You know - your attack frequency stays the same, even when upgrading your shield, the basic green enemies still deal you the same amount of damage, and most importantly, all the enemies are the same. They may have different animations, but mechanics wise they're the same - they aim at you at constantly, they attack at the same distance just directly forward, they just deal less or more damage. Once you realize that, the experience turns from fun to grind.
I think that there're basically two ways out of this, depending wheter you want more diablo-like aproach or more souls-like approach. The first one you should vary your gear - different attack timing, different area of attack, and spice it up with some skills and magic, that can help you in a tight spot. That way the player always have some interesting decisions to make.
The latter one needs more thought out movement patterns of both enemies and the player. You need more visual/audatory hints - that the player is ready to attack again, that the enemy is going to strike and so on. For this to work, you need to "dumb down" the enemy, or better said not make the enemy so perfect - the enemy has to have some chance to miss the player and the player has to have some chance to dodge the attack (or block or parry it). Give the enemy some rotating time instead to snap-aim it to the player, some decision making time, some stun. Give it predictable but still challenging enemy attack patterns.
Right now, you stuck somewhere inbetween, so once the player realize they can't even properly dodge, nor do anything except for sword swing, then it becomes just the game of grind and rising numbers, and there's barely fun in that, unfortunatelly. As for me specifically, I prefer the player-skill based design as opossed to in-game-skill based, but the choice is yours in the end.
But all of this probably is way over the scope of game jam game, at least for me would be for sure, so it's more of a "dig into this in the future" suggestion, which I feel is a strong part of a game jam :)
Apart from said above, I never got lost, confused or anything, so you did a pretty good job with overall design. Only thing that lacked information for me was the player animation - I would like to know better what is my weapon's reach as well as when I'm ready to attack again. Without it it's just spamming LMB and hoping for the best. Still, no bugs, no getting lost, well done.
I died a first few times before the timer ran out, so when I finally reached the end of the timer, it scared me for real! :)
Overall you did a great job!
@craftwill Thanks, I try my best to be of some use :) Wish you best of luck with further development!
I have no idea what's going on, but that actually made for very calming experience. I love the elder naming places thing, it actually makes lot of sense, no matter what is going on :) I had no sense of orientation though, the game started with zoomed out, but zoomed more in eventually, so most of the time, I saw just green grass and my character slowly heading to demise. So even when I tried just to name stuff with elders, I didn't know where to go or what to do. Also I didn't know how or where the babies were born, so lot of confusion. But it was being lost in a pleasant way, somehow :) Good job! :)
I see someone already pointed it out, but in one level, I exploded the enemy (right on my checkpoint/spawn point I lead it, clever me) and the box nearby flew over half the map and fell down to spikes and kept me from putting it on the button completely :)
The concept is pretty interesting though, and the gameplay feels good. I'd say a little coyote time would help as well as recording jump before hitting the ground, so that the player doesn't need to be as pixel precise as the program is, otherwise it feels a bit unfair, feels like you hit the right button on the right time but the game just dumped your input :)
But those are little details that need lot's of tweaking to get it feel right in the context of your game. You laid the foundation very well, the robot doesn't feel floaty nor it is impossible to control, all the basics work well. Give it some care and polish and it could really be great!
Nice work, wish you the best in further dev work! :)
@convg Yeah, definitely it was meant as "dig into this in the future" suggestion, one can do only so much work during a jam :) Try starting here https://youtu.be/yorTG9at90g or here https://youtu.be/8QPmhDYn6rk or, preferably, both, they are bit different, but incredibly helpful!
Awesome! The premise is silly, turns out even sillier with the boat part, post signs are funny, the gameplay feels very good and the last boss fight is really satisfying! On of the best experiences of mine this jam. The artstyle is also great, the shooting knockback mechanic which could sometimes accidentaly hit you as well is genious. Great job! :)
It's clear that you are currently learning the engine and how stuff works, so there's a lot of things you will learn, that will help you next time, but if you carry on, I bet you'll surprise yourself soon enough with how big of a progress you've made :)
For the game, I'd say that you should've at least tweaked the physics, the cow felt more like a ship than an animal, also the cow started rotating after I hit the fence once, so maybe freeze z rotation on rigidbody component next time. It is also probably better to learn to code actual movement instead of using Unity physics, as you have both better control over the movement and less cpu overhead.
With controls this floaty and objects randomly spawning and despawning, it was actually unnecessarily hard to collect points, as when you finally manipulated the cow in the right direction, the object just despawned right in front of you, which was a bit infuriating, and it also took away any planing and strategy.
Also some at least basic animation would improve the feeling of the game.
It's good you managed the lasso loop to follow the cow tightly enough that it was actual threat, but not that tight that it was unavoidable. I'd be proud of that if I were you and I think it's definitely something you can build on!
Keep it up, I'm looking forward to see you next jam!
Pretty neat entry! It got me a while to get used to the camera movement, I think it's a good idea that it shows you where you aim, but maybe there're still some numbers in need of tweaking? I'm not sure, cannot put my finger on anything specific, just that it felt a bit off.
The difficulty curve was pretty good and also the enemies variety was there, so it really kept you playing! Good job!
I have to disagree with all the positive feedback about controls. Both the ground drag and air drag felt nice, the character wasn't floaty at all, but you're still stuck halway to "feel good." The game felt as it is ignoring my input at times.
This has one common denominator - too precise ground check. You're not allowed to jump when you're just a tad bit on the edge of the platform, and then you're allowed to jump again only when you're back on the ground. This means that if the player hits the jump button just a little bit later, still on the edge of the platform, but out of range of the ground check, or just a little bit sooner, a frame or two before the ground check returns positive, the character just won't jump.
That is perfectly alright, it's not a bug, it works as intended, but it FEELS wrong and frustrating! So what you do when you want the player feel good is you actually cheat the physics, you record both player input and player ground check and do the action as long as those two overlap each other, but not necesarilly when they happen simultaneously. As I did to many other platformer devs this jam, I do recommend to you as well these videos which are just great both as inspiration and as knowledge base https://youtu.be/yorTG9at90g https://youtu.be/8QPmhDYn6rk
Unlike some others, I like the artstyle very much, especially the animation work, which is like the artstyle itself very subtle but works well enough and makes the game feel more alive! Also the colour scheme worked well for me :)
What I didn't get was the last level - I left only with one heart and only then I realized how I lost the other hearts (some feedback is missing) and I was unable to finish the last level - is that the intended behaviour? Should I have just more hearts to spare? In levels before I encoutered many deaths that lead me to abovesaid - I didn't jump off the edge of the platform or was unable to do a fast land-jump on a platform and just fallen to my death.
But the foundation is really strong, the movement feels really tight otherwise which usually isn't the case with Unity, so you did a great job! Congrats!
It's incredibly cute! I feel like the game area is unnecesarilly big, lots of hopping here and there, much of the time the visible area is just grass and flowers, which also doesn't help orientation. Maybe even increasing the hopping speed (I used shift hop) would help as well. Very good idea is that the berries grow again once picked but in different colour. You hop faster diagonally btw., that's probably unintentional as it used to be :) Very cute stuff, good job! :)
Very clever idea! But I struggled to practise the beat without metronome and knowledge of the level/beat. Also it felt like there's some lag between hitting the key and the sound effect, which was pushing me out of rhythm. Are you sure that there's no silence on the beginning of your sfx or something like that? Still I liked the game very much, picking up notes that play into the track was great detail! Good job!
Does your brother have a name, or does he have "mrchickenboy's brother" in his ID? :) Considering your workflow, it is actually rather an achievement that you have at least something playable, when you went with a new engine just for the jam :)
Getting platformer feel good is a lot of work even for skilled masters of craft developing full length game, so at least for me the platformer, though very popular, isn't an easy go-to genre, just because though it might seem simple, the proper, or at least plausible execution is pretty difficult. On the other hand, you have to start somewhere, you have to start somehow, what better place than here, what better way than LDJam :)
For further research I recommend GMTK's video about Celeste https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yorTG9at90g (but the whole channel is just superb).
As my playthrough went:
I was pretty confused what was going on in the beginning, as first I couldn't jump over the spikes, then I realized that there's a lever I can pull with mouse (that is not very common in platformers, mostly you have to get your character to the lever), so I pulled it, but it was too late and me and the box disappeared in the middle of the jump. Then it took me a while to get in sync with the timer, so I looped in the middle of the jump a few times over. But I calmed down, waited a bit and then got the timing right. Still I felt a bit confused, as the loop wasn't signaled in any way except for the change of the position. Some VFX would really help with this in my opinion.
As the first level was a pretty rough practice, I had no problems with succesive ones. I got stuck in the last one, where I thought there was a bug that I looped back from the maze, but soon I realized that the level is a tad bit different and that it is supposed to happen, then I waited again to get in sync with the timer and finished the game. What didn't cause me a problem, because I read the instructions, but cannot understand the reasoning behind, is why you have different control scheme for platforming and different for labyrinth?
Once it occured that the timer went to negatives and nothing happend. Also the character is able to do a wall hang, when you cannot make the jump on the first try, and then kind of wall jump again on the platform. As the character is lacking any animation, I couldn't tell, if it is intended behaviour, or just some weird physics/collision bug. It helped me to finish the game though, so I went with it :)
Solid entry, congratulations!
@mrchickenboy Maybe if you like the feedback, consider hitting the heart in bottom right corner of each comment to give some of the love back! :) And hope to see you next jam as well!
Took me a while to realize that the stone head is not a boss fight, very clever of you! :) Also I noticed that the torch is still in your inventory after you die and respawn. The key is not however, so I had to walk for it everytime I died because of that weird spawn of slimes that spawned basically on your position and almost immidiatelly hit you four times behind the lock. I think that spawning enemies out of nowhere in the visible area feels very unfair, especially when you spawn them very, very close to character. Combat mechanics aren't very deep so I guess you had to raise stakes somehow, but still this feels unfair. I also kind of expected that I could use the torch to fight slimes as well, like the fire damage kills them faster or something. That would actually deepen the combat mechanics a lot without much effort, just with different coloured stone slime immune to fire damage or something like that :)
Music felt a bit not as strong, and the player getting hit sfx is way too much for my liking, but it gets the job done.
Otherwise it's an awesome game, very robust, lots of content for a jam game, nice artstyle, everything worked bugless it seems, controls feel good. Very solid work! I would definitely play more if there was more to it! :)
EDIT: I forgot about the destroyable grass with lives in it - that was a great touch that I liked very much!
Guys up there are totally right, the lasso feels so heavy it's hard to believe it's really a lasso. Still great idea that it actually loops around, so you have to think where to go not to cut your reach. What I don't get and hopefully is a bug is why would you obscure so big part of the game with a wall? I was expecting the front wall to disappear or get at least transparent as soon as I enter the corridor, but none of that happened, so I just guessed where stuff was and the gameplay felt rather frustrating in there (the level on the picture). Also I managed to escape through the wall in the level before, where the guy is patrolling outside, through the bottom right corner of the sheriff's office. The artstyle is pretty good though and the idea is really clever and surely looks like something that could work well with further improvement :)scr.png
This is great idea! The controls sometimes confused me, not sure why though. During the first or second level a bookcase was obstructing my view, but I zoomed out and managed to get to the end. I loved the last bookcase level, it was pretty hard, but tapped the true potential of this concept! Maybe the controls confusion was caused by the camera position, or maybe the controls just bugged out. Have you thought about fixing camera to player or to gravity or have you tried that?
Awesome game, great artstyle, subtle moody audio direction, very interesting concept with great potential! Congratulations!
Very interesting choice of background for the arrows to go on. As it was pretty noisy and colorful it was kinda hard to see the arrows (btw. google and then try the "squint test"). Also I couldn't tell how well am I doing as the only way to tell was the score counter and there was no time to look at it. Usually the rhythm games have lots of flashing, particles, text bubbles and so on to let the player know. Also the timing wasn't very in sync with the music, but wasn't terribly out of sync either, which is kinda strange, but worked somehow :)
Also I think when the loop is endless, there should've been some losing condition, so you could actually beat your own records, if not highscore table of other users. This way it is just about how patient you are.
Solid entry though, you can definitely build upon this! Best of luck in future development! :)
I kept getting lost and got frustrated that I couldn't find a way to prevent it. First I thought that the level stays the same, so I have to memorate it, but that didn't happen. Then I thought that maybe water is only on the right path and I should follow it, but the the water lead me to the wrong path again. Also I thought that I'm far enough from the snakes and hyenas but still they got me. Also the gradually increasing the speed felt bad for me, I think that linear would control much better, either you go or you don't. You only have two directions, so that inertia doesn't feel right for me. Also took me a while before I realized that I take damage when not hydrated, cause there's no visual cue (red overlay would have sufficed I think).
What I expected was that the game plays in kind of lanes, and that enemies can hit you only when you're in their lane. When I realized that the movement is smooth all around the vertical axis, I expected that the colliders would be something like on the picture. scr.png
Still I kept playing for a while cause I really, really like the graphics, and also I wanted to know if I'll ever reach the caravan or if I'm just stuck in a loop of procedural generation. I like the enemy variability, even though there's just two of them, they're very distinct by their behavior as well as player reaction to it. You got some good stuff going on, some neat ideas and very interesting art direction which rubs me the right way, you definitely should keep it up!
@spacecadet By inertia I mean the up and down movement, the vertical acceleration, the horizontal speed is the same all the time of course. I went back to the game after reading your comment and even knowing that there are footprints still it took me a while to wrap my head around it, but then I finally found the pattern and finished the game. Meanwhile I got used to the controls and started to press and letting off the keys a bit earlier to compensate for inertia. The finish is very nice graphically as well! :)
Chrome works fine for me.
[SPOILER ALERT] Is there actually any way out? I tried to click everything in every level, but the loop went on and on. [SPOILER OVER]
Neat work, a bit obvious take on the theme, but the art direction and music made dense mood, levels are interesting enough, though there're just a few, but hey, it's three days :)
At first I was afraid to move through the black spinning thing as that looked like it's gonna kill me. Also I had a minor confusion with the first encounter with movable wardrobe. I noticed something's wrong with the flooring (great job with environmental hints!) but I was too focused on the spinning thing and what I'm supposed to pick up and so, so I actually realized I'm supposed to move the wardrobe just as I moved it by accident. I was on the left side of the wardrobe though, so it was pretty difficult to move (and judging by the night stand, it was not supposed to be moved from left side). Next "playthrough" a moved it from the right side and that felt good.
Good job you guys!
I got what you're going for, I actually recently played another jam game with similar idea, but still this is pretty unique. What they did a bit better was that they had distinguishable central hub, so once you went straight south and arrived to the hub from north, you realized what was going on. So in your game I expected it's gonna loop, but I couldn't tell wheter it already happened or not, cause everything looks the same. I noticed the loop only when volvox globator pushed me down some corridor and suddenly disappeared and some torches appeared instead. Still, when everything looks the same, it's close to impossible to figure out where you are and how things loop and work. So my suggestion is basically to add something distinct to the maze, so that the player can tell how the loop works and where he is. In your case, it'd probably be different flooring in different areas, maybe different torches and so on. The creatures themselves are too sparse and shapes of corridors aren't unique enough. Also I'd cut on the dead ends - you're looping, you don't need any.
The lighting was very nice and the normal mapped ground looked awesome, sometimes corners didn't cast shadows though. The creatures were interesting, weird in a good way and enhanced the atmosphere. What I absolutely loved was the graphic of the crack/hole in the ground. Maybe I'd consider more coherent artstyle though as the character, creatures and the hole didn't really match the flooring. I think you can make handdrawn flooring looking as good with normal maps and lighting.
Overall great idea with impressive graphics that's missing a few bits of work that would make it really fulfilling experience.
Really great idea and great concept! :) However, I noticed the same issues as guys above - jumping is unresponsive, the obstacles are kind of blended into the road and the waking up after hitting anything is wayyyy toooo sllloooooooowwwww. On the other hand your voice acting is funny as hell, so if that was your focal point, I can get why :)
I don't really get how the combat system is supposed to work or to be any fun :( Close-to-impossible to hit what you want and avoiding hits is nearly the same. Maybe some introductory enemies that let you know the combat system better without killing you in instant? Besides that I very much like the fluffy lion taco and the work you actually put into the characters ;)
Good one, man! Movement sometimes feels a bit floaty (should it?) and most of the weapons (or have I just spawned only the bad one?) are irritatingly slow in fire rate. On the other hand I very much like the body immune system (?) theme. Think weapons should be a little more abstract to fit it, but that's really subjective. Of course absence of SFX is a big downer in overall feeling, but given the time... :)
I have no idea why boss was angry, all the work was done :(
Awesome, there's never enough local coop games, especially interesting ones! Wouldn't say that it strongly fits the theme, as it is more of a combination of superclassic, than incompatible genres, but doesn't really matter to me when it's fun! :)
It's beautiful and despite it's flaws it's much more than anyone can expect from a 72 hour game jame :) My personal pet peeve - dialog should end/continue automatically after a certain time, not just after click, that stuff annoyed me a bit, but not like quitting annoyed. But I'm sure that and plenty other things is that polishing you don't have enough time for in game jam, otherwise amazing work and I like it very much! :)
Also thanks for playing and rating my game to @svdvorak who brought me here in the first place!
EDIT: Oh man, and that classroom! <3
Awesome work! Idea, graphics, sound effects and that very familiar but still unexpected ending! Enjoyed it very much, thank you for that!
This is very unusual! Like what you did both with the theme and with the time!
I found what seems to me as bug - I bought something in the shop, equipped it in my inventory, when suddenly my money went to zero and stopped increasing. Very beautiful game, great sounds and brilliant mash-up idea!
Definitely needs to put discovered items right into inventory and items should swap in the crafting boxes (the dragged one should go in, the previous one should go automatically back to inventory). That's kind of basic UX. The idea is very clever though, interesting storytelling indeed :) Not sure how to go about the trial and error proneness of this concept :(
If more time was put into the sprites and lighting to be a bit more atmospheric, it would be definitely "sleeping with lights on today" stuff, but still the mood is strong with this one, and the audio is very guilty of that. If you're gonna expand this into a bigger game, do some more work on the sprites and lighting, and (most importantly?) let the player explore some lore or story (in the books?) to hopefully find out what the hell is that librarian creature and what the hell happened in this library, then I'm so into your game! Controls feels smooth and comfy and librarian navigation feels very good, like you do have a chance, but still there's pretty strong sense of threat. Great work, thank you for that, I really enjoyed it!
I probably shouldn't mention the controls when it was already pointed out in every comment here, but I don't want to break the combo and also the controls are pretty bad, renders shooting with mouse totally useless, it would be much better if you'd be shooting with space or whatever, then maybe it would work better. Apart from that it's very cool idea and pretty good start of possible future project!
Dude, pretty difficult right from the beginning! But seems to me that it has potential if you work on it and think it through. Right now it took me pretty while to even realize what to do and what not. Even though - very interesting experience!
Playing on keyboard is really complicated :( still an interesting idea and pretty good execution in five hours :)
@Christian-Koch Sorry for being so short, the problem I meant is the proximity of Del key from arrow keys, would it been control or shift or something bit closer to arrows, then it would've been much better. Or was it on purpose? I know that there's kind of close Del key on num pad, but not everone has one, so I would definitely recommend to think it through one more time :) Hope this helps more! Thanks anyways, playing with controller was definitely more fun ;)
@Christian-Koch Oh, no, it did not, I just realized that information value of "playing on keyboard is complicated" is zero, so I wanted to be of little more use to you with my feedback. That's how feedback really should be, isn't it? :)
Very nice idea, would be great to see what you can develop it into! About more critical feedback: that background might be great, but that dimms a bit the foreground where the action is, so I think it'd be great if you reconsider balancing your contrasts and palettes, so that it will be more balanced (That doesn't mean I didn't love that background sunset stuff, sure I did!). Also part of the problem, look up something called "the squint test" - basically it is very difficult to distinguish which objects should be avoided (or are in any way important for the gameplay) when they're the same visual level as everything else, so the crates or barbed wires should stand out instead of blend in (as they pretty much do now) so they can be distinguished even when player squints her eyes. Besides, the position of the crates relative to player's looks like they're not even in the player's way. Player always needs to be sure which objects are just background and which should she avoid or interact with.
Overall I liked your game very much, I think the idea could be expanded to a great game and also it looks like your team is capable of very neat production quality, but still you need to keep an eye on very important aspects of the gameplay that could potentially harm the outcome! Good luck with it and thank you very much for the experience!
I don't know, I really didn't like the car movement, felt too floaty and slippery. But I loved the artstyle and idea as well as setting in that war zone! Very well done!
Two things on my mind - I would suggest making the firefly snapping stronger, sometimes I had to go back chasing firefly that i missed just by milimeters because it couldn't catch me. I don't really see the point to be able to escape the firefly you wanted to hit. Second - it's kind of luck game, you just have to hope you hit the right turn (or have I missed something?), so it would be great if there was something you had to actually think about more than just roaming randomly. Second one is minor for the actual rating because of the time constraints, but maybe for the future development I think it'd be great to think of something like that.
Apart from aforementioned, I loved the experience - the idea of time dependent changing is really clever, visuals are great and audio really helps to set the mood, which is overall very strong! So thank you for that, I really enojyed playing this game!
Nice idea, just the goalie feels a lot floaty, I don't find that very good, but maybe it is on purpose?
I have no idea what to do. At least controls would help very much. But looks good, so it's a shame it's that messy :(
Great idea, great execution, really fun game! Thank you for that! :)
Is there anything you wanted to do differently or didn't make in time? Cause it doesn't seem like so to me, feels pretty much finished and pretty deep and complex gameplay :) Just had some trouble controlling it on keyboard (block sometimes doesn't get noticed, no idea why), but apart from that, I had some serious fun! Thank you for that!
PS: Maybe just one thing - allow player to rebind keys, a bit uncomfy playing on qwertz keyboard with Y down the left shift ;)
Good looking and smooth feeling game, very polished, finished game. Unbelievable :)
Sometimes towers can't be placed on some spots without any noticable reason. Also the fishing on/off space key thing doesn't always work precisly, no idea why. Although very nice game, spend a while playing it and would probably be still playing, if it weren't for the last boss wave that ended my experience. It seemed to me that money was never enough for upgrades and renewing your towers, but I know that balancing economics in such a short time isn't the easiest stuff. Also agree that music does exact opposit of supporting mood and theme of your game, which is a shame, the rain was very nice touch and had it been accompanied by proper music or sfx and maybe a bit of lighting/color change, the mood could have been pretty dense! Still I had fun for a pretty while, so thank you for that!
@Carvster Oh, I see, that tower stuff is explained then :) About the music I thought that it could be the intention, but still the feeling is stuck somewhere inbetween funny and moody, maybe the contrast is not clear enough or something, hard to put my finger on it. I just hope you'd be able to find out why it didn't work for me and some other guys given the feedback, that's why we're here anyways :) Maybe when the visuals and sfx would've been a bit darker, then the music would stand out more as an intentional contrast? Not sure, hope you work it out! Thanks for your response and once again for a very pleasurable experience! :)
How do I do like... anything?
Actually pretty clever genre mixing, too clever to get it at frist glance it seems :) I played only on gamejolt and all the enemies were getting pretty quickly down the bottom edge of the game screen. Also there's no way to resize or fullscreen (properly) the game, which is a shame. Don't know whether or how you can adress it, but it would be appreciated :) Also seemed like enemy hitboxes are not up to their "heads," but maybe the reason was also gamejolt.
@gdort works much better now, thanks for response!
Why have you opt out of humor category? I found your concept extremely funny! And execution as well, like it very much!
Great idea with that microphone stuff. I just roamed around for a while and nothing was going on until I found the first whatever you collecting, and then it happened! But man, what have the world ever done to you to deserve invisible walls around the game space? :( Nevertheless, very nice game!
This is genuinely awesome! You should play and rate other games to make your game more visible, because it would be shame if you couldn't make it to 20 ratings or just if people would not know about your game!
Man, I suck in this kind of games! But still I agree with @Flaterectomy - the notes don't match the beat (at least not all the time) which is a big shame in this kind of game. Also some penalty for randomly mashing buttons (like multiplier for precise streaks) would help to avoid button mashing issue. I hade a similar issue as @jcwelgemoed with the car blocking notes, even worse, from the beginning I expected that the car should hit the notes, not the bumpers down. Maybe it would work that way too? I however very much like how (even when not in the precise rythm) notes change with music pretty joyfully and the song itself matches the game very well! Overall I enjoyed playing it, thank you for that!
Actually suprised I didn't notice any Kingdom reference throughout the comments, the water striked me with it, even though it could use a bit of a displacement map :) Still like the game very much, very dense atmosphere, great art style, well chosen palette, super sweet gameplay with tight controls (I mean - you surely know your stuff with that jump allowance <3 ) and the game over screens made me smile when it insulted me with drowning in a puddle :) Glad I found this game and I'll be definitely looking forward to more of it!
I actually had fun for that little while between I found out how to play it and when I won the game, so that's happy me it happened and sad me it didn't last longer (don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, 48 hours is not much).
In the game current scope I would definitely say that the biggest issue are those invisible walls - better graphical representation is neither hard to implement nor it is anyhow time consuming to do so, so that is wholly up to your head that you're confusing your players.
That being said, the rest is quite tight and good feeling and looking, so that's why I had fun, even though I first had to learn that things are not what they look like :) I also pretty much agree with @Richard Weug and @TwinGhosts with their pros and cons, although I don't think that lack of features or enemy types is that big of an issue when you make your game during a weekend. Thanks for your game, it was a very intense experience :)
I just couldn't get into it, I'm sorry =( Maybe some greater allowance in the begining, or hitting the walls not being instakill, just rises damage bar? Just any sort of "getting used to" level. As it is, it was too floaty and incomprehensible for me, so I put it down pretty soon :( But that's pretty subjective I guess, hope someone's gonna have great time with it :) But I very much like the steampunk-ish setting!
Dude, the mouse control is bug-level broken, I don't think it's against the rules to fix this kind of problem, it's not like enhancing the gameplay, it's more like making it controlable. Besides that, the idea is great and the artstyle is cool and cute, audio is good as well, so playing on controller is actually pretty fun! Congrats on that!
Got to go back and read the comments to actually understand that I have to hold space to move the parts unless I wanted them to disappear! Which I instantly forgot after I succesfuly made first command plate so it disappeared soon after I let go of space after I picked it up and then the basic plate dispenser (dark green) bugged out and stopped working - it only gave me glitched half plate which could not be picked up and also never gave me another working plate. Besides that, the controls feels a bit floaty, I think that is partly on purpose (as the ride on that little wheel), but still think it is a bit too much for my liking. The idea I find briliant and with more precise control (and few debugging rounds, but hey, 72 hours) bursting with potential. The game is fun when you finally get what you need to do and the artstyle is really cute and awesome! Thanks for making this, enjoyed plaing it!
Great idea, really! Even the presentation, dropping pieces of a story! Really clever and fun! Thank you for the experience!
Thanks for commenting and rating my game, played your as well, it's very confusing in a very fun way :) not sure if my ammo is limited or is it resuplied during time? Had fun playing it! I agree that it is really difficult to predict any exact outcome, but for me it was actually part of the fun, just flying around and trying to manage it a bit. I would just like to see other players thrown around as well, to make it a bit more chaotic :)
Great one, only thing that really bothers me on this game is there aren't more levels! Good work!
Nice one! Though the platforming feels a bit floaty and also has the unity well known "wall stand" issue (just literally try to stand on the wall and you'll see), still the music set pretty good mood and some visual effects were very well done! Overall I enjoyed the experience, thank you for that! :)
@velocity7 yep, the built-in colliders and physics engine is very prone to that due to the default calculation of collision so it's probably better to use custom raycasting or at least fiddle a bit with colliders. But custom raycasting is the least expensive workaround as far as I know (e.g. sphere collider would be much heavier).
Great concept! Very slow and with not very good controls though :( But love the idea of color mixing potion brewing! Definitely work on that more! :)
Pretty fun game, but I don't quite get why the ball doesn't bounce more, instead just stays in place of last hit enemy? I think that more bouncy ball would really add a bit of frenziness, one shot could bounce all around on multiple enemies, but also player would have been more careful about where he's shooting and with how much energy not to completely lose control of the ball. Anyways pretty nice entry, thanks for that! :)
Everything was already written, I think. It's beautiful and can be even more given a bit more polish. But the gameplay isn't much fun when you have to run twice the same long and uninteresting way. Also the camera is bit awkward and so are animations, but I guess that happens in game jams and is pointed out just because the beautiful graphics of yours promised something of much higher production quality.
On sidenote - I thought it was a local coop game until I realized how to switch between players. If you consider that as an opportunity and try to rethink level design and point of view (or at least camera manipulation), it would make a great and beautiful local coop I would definitely play with my gf ;)
Harder to get into, but great idea, great execution!
I'm sorry, but I quite didn't get what am I supposed to do :( I found bouncing blobs, ran from them for a while, couldn't locate a weapon (or key to use any) then found out blobs were instakill. Hope you can avoid it next time and our next game will be less confusing and more fun ;)
Did you spend all the time making environment graphics? Kind of worth it though, looks really good. But I got stuck in the second room, other were unaccesible. Also definitely any sfx would be much better, or actually attacking enemies or chance to quit the game. I know it's hard given the time, but should it been a smaller environment, it would be much better game I bet.
Thanks everyone for playing and pointing out bugs and problems - I will try to adress it as soon as possible, but first need to check the rules to know what is considered a bug and what would be actually okay to fix and not be considered cheating. Independently of the jam I will expand it a little to make it more fun and also learn some other stuff (so I have learned plenty).
@cenullum thanks, suppose similar is @Rohan issue, still trying to find what's causing it, but will definitely repair, no zombies in my game!
@Zeriver thank you for your kind words and for your suggestions as well :) I wanted to add some graphical frosting like particles and projectile pathways, but three days are much less than I thought :( But I definitely will add that after the zombie bug is fixed.
@svdvorak thanks a lot, it is appreciated! Increasing difficulty is missing because of poor placed code, so I think it counts as bug and as so I will try to patch it up!
@MrMordem thank you for playing and your comment, I will do my best to increase fun factor of post ludum dare version! :)
@theamazingb Yeah, I realized that I should be more specific in those controls. It is always the same - it is in your head, so it should be in others as well, or..? Will improve controls text, thanks for playing and leaving your feedback! Sound effect coming soon after the bugfixes (hopefully).
@jk5000 Do you have any suggestions how to make the cycling mechanic feel better for you? I somewhat feel that it is not the way I wanted it to be, but can't put my finger on it :( Or does just the whole concept of mashing buttons not clicking with you? And would you be so kind to elaborate a bit in what way it is difficult to hit the enemies? Like where do you click or so? I tried to make the hitbox very generous so it would be possible to hit rivals even when they have much higher speed, but maybe I didn't accomplish it the way I wanted too :( Anyways thanks a lot for playing and for leaving a feedback!
@La-mecanique-du-plastique Thanks a lot, the UI element shouldn't be kept on last minute I would say :) definitely an important stuff to learn for next game jam. Apply adequately to sound effects. To this game I will add some more pleasant UI to post-jam version of the game. Thanks a lot for playing and leaving your feedback!
@jk5000 I see, thanks a lot! Yeah, I intended to make some other visual hit hints other than animation that you can't see properly when the rivals are too close to left side of the screen, some particle effect probably, but didn't make it in time. I will add it to post-jam version :) There are certainly gonna be some changes in cycling mechanic as well as I agree that the ratio between button hits and cycling speed is not right, but I couldn't get it better in time as it would take some further iterations. I will definitely work on that some more. Thanks again for your input! It's very appriciated! :)
@Elmeri Thanks for your feedback, that could be the way :) I actually spend a few nice hours just iterating that, so I forbid myself to continue with it unless I wanted to iterate till now :( I wanted to give it another go in polishing phase, but that never happend. But distribution of production time to different features definitely wasn't my strongest ability, hope it will be better next time, as you said :) Thanks for taking your time to play my game and leave a feedback!
@Darkwing00Duck I don't want to sound overexcited, but thank you so much for support and subscription, never expected that to happen :) Also thanks for playing and leaving feedback! Yeah, I probably make the slowing down ratio more dynamic, so that the lower speed you have, the bigger push every key tap is, but to achieve higher speeds, you would have to tap more quickly (but not quicker than now, I suppose now is more than enough). Does that make sense to you? Never considered the second option, but it doesn't sound bad at all, I'll give it a go and see how it goes :)
@cenullum @Rohan seems like I finally found the "dead cowboy issue" cause and hopefully repaired it. Also I made some other bugfixes!
@svdvorak bugfix causing the non-functioning increasing difficulty feature is here! Took time, but hopefully worth it...
@Carvster @NickMarcha @blu3bird Hey guys, sorry to hear that, I knew that the mechanic is a bit off, but I actually never imagined it is so far off that it would be actually unplayable for some players. Sorry for your bad experience, if you're interested, I'll let you know when I publish the altered mechanic, which should definitely ease the cycling mechanic, so you can eventually enjoy even some shooting. Still many thanks for taking the time to play my game and even leave feedback!
@Christian-Koch Very sorry to hear that, I suppose I shouldn't let game like this be tested only by guitar players (not a joke unfortunatelly, gotta find different friends), it seems to be much bigger burden than I expected. I mean, it meant to be hard, but not painfully close-to-unplayable hard :( My offer to let you know when I work out better cycling so you could have a bit more fun stands for you too! By the glitch you mean that when you shoot the rival, only his bike (and legs) fall down and the upper body floats in the air, is it right? If so, it is known glitch to me (still thanks to point it out, you can never know ;) ) but unfortunatelly even during the last bugfixing session I couldn't get rid of it, but never give up, never give in! Hope I will get rid of it tomorrow-ish :) Thanks to you as well for taking the time to stop by, have a play and leave a comment!
By the way to all you guys, is any of you, by chance, playing on AZERTY or other not very standard keyboard? I mean - could also mutual position of the action keys be the part of the problem, or is it purely just the tapping speed? Thanks for helping me to make a better game out of this!
@SubZtep Hey, thanks a lot for taking the time to play my game and leave a feedback. If you could spend just a little bit more and tell me, if the tiredness was more of the repetition or more of the speed necessary to move, that would be very appriciated! I would very much like make the cycling mechanic challenging but still accesible to any player, so any help, any piece of information or insight is great!
@kevin-mooney Thank you, Kevin, I'm really glad to hear that! Thanks very much you took the time to play my game and left a comment!
@Lost-Dutchman-Software Thanks a lot for playing and leaving a comment! :)
@Zlabya Thanks a lot for playing and for your comment! :)
@mic-matrix91 Hey, thank you, seems like I'm getting a little bit better with all that animation stuff :) The difficulty will be altered in post jam version. Thanks for taking the time to stop by, much appreciated! :)
@Floc Thanks, I always play every game of everyone who actually takes the time to leave a comment here, I think it's the least I can do to show my gratitude for their attitude! Glad you like it, thanks for playing and leaving your feedback!
@cristiano-m-garcia Thanks a lot, I hope so as well, and hope that you come back for post-jam version! As I mentioned above, I will gladly play your game and leave a feedback! Thanks for stopping by!
@Diego-Manarim Hey, I actually editet a bit the introductory text to make it easier for players to know how to move, but still I know that this movement mechanic is a bit "early 00's browser flash athletic sports game" thing, so it's not that accesible. I already played (and rated of course) your game before and it was one hell of a fun! Could recomend to anyone reading this to try it out! Thank you for playing my game and leaving your comment!
@Annie-Owl Thank you for both your kind words and feedback. This is basically how I thought the increasing difficulty could work when I tried to implement it only a few hours before deadline, but, apparently, it doesn't work that well. I will work on that further in post-jam version. Leaving the original build seems reasonable, but I have no idea how to label it so people know which one is which. But I'll try to reupload and label it somehow!
@FrostGunn Hey, thanks, and also thank you for playing and leaving a comment!
@Annie-Owl Yeah, my concern isn't really the rules (I was really careful to not change anything not considerable as a bug and also I am waiting with uploading the enhanced post jam version till the end of rating), but really the labeling of the links themselves, but I suppose that filename must be enough. I will retrieve the original build and reupload it asap ;)
@Annie-Owl Ok, I seriously feel dumb now, the labels are kinda obvious... Original build is up and running, have fun with it ;)
@Velocity7 @luckyLars Thank you, guys! Sound effect would have been great, I agree, I will add them to the post jam version, as well as other feedback frosting ;) Hope next time, I could finish even sound effects in time for jam :) I'm still learning a lot of basic stuff :) Thanks for your time taken to stop by to play and leave a comment ;)
The jumping feels very bad - that was the leaving point for me, you float in the air for an uncertain amount of time and sometimes cannot jump again after landing for a while. Should you make a platforming mechanics, you definitely should make it feel like player is in control. A bit shame, I like the artstyle and mood of the game and probably would enjoyed it much more if it weren't for the frustrating jump :(
"So I'm supposed to drive or... Oh, what are these cute little creatures? What am I supposed to do... oh no, why would you do that? Why would anyone do that? They're too cute and too young! They don't deserve it!"
Nice work, great artstyle, cute little fellas!
It works well, looks good, plays fine, it just feels like there's not much to it. Great work though, keep it up! :)
The mouse sensitivity was damn too high, the jumping mechanic not very well done - the jump should allow you to hit the button in the very last moment, maybe even a bit after that (meaning when you already a bit off the platform), also you should always keep in mind how high and long your jump is when designing levels, otherwise the game would feel frustrating instead of fun. And dude, the pendulum, that's not how swinging works, go out to see some kids in the park ;) There's really lot of stuff you have to get into when making games, even when it comes to basics, but you never learn if you never try, so I think it's great you joined and I'll be definitely looking forward for your next jam (or any other) game, where you use all the stuff you've learned from this jam and from feedback :)
The spike pit never stopped me even when I didn't hit both the spells in time. But great experience overall, very nice effects, nice artstyle, fun gameplay! In the first run, it caught me totally by suprise that more spells are needed for obstacles, so maybe I would introduce double spell obstacles sooner in lower speed so it breaks a bit the boredom with slow coming one spell obstacles in the beginning (didn't seem that long to me, but some guys actually pointed it out in comments) but also informs player that the difficulty will be increased also in this way. Overall I enjoyed it very much! Thanks for that!
Also audio is great, both music and sfx (even though there's still room for a bit more effects), but didn't work for me in chrome on gamejolt webGL version of the game, had to download it. Don't know if there's anything you can do about it though or if it's just gamejolt's fault.
Man, this is just the "why haven't I thought of this" kind of game! It was fun playing this! Maybe I would just make the shooter part feel more "heavy" - more bullets, more rapid fire, more zombies (one-shot kill?). But still the best LD game I have played so far.