MetRiko

Jelly Gang by Split82 2024-10-08T19:24:57Z

Haha I see another blob enjoyer! We also made a game about blobs so I had to check it out once I saw it :D

Fantastic entry with a very good polish and well implemented smooth and bugless movement/controls. The core concept gives me feeling of something between innovation and "Oh, I know those controls!", which is great because I don't have to learn everything from scratch to play well enough to have fun with it. I really like how much you were able to squish out of those simple rules.. especially, the camera big boi was a very well thought out design decision.

Art direction and music was on point! Simple but charming and eye/ear pleasing.

A little bit too short for my taste but overall that was a very fun little adventure :D

Drooplets! by tukisboolukis 2024-10-17T21:22:47Z

Innovative and matches theme on point! I like that you can try different strategies, however it feels like the best one is just the most obvious one - spamming everything in small area. I think this game could improve a lot if it would be little less random and if more tactical approach would be more rewarding. I wasn't sure how to beat level 4, but overall I like the idea a lot and had fun trying different strategies.

I like little detail that reset button wasn't just a simple reset but created immersion of burning all creatures in the lab environment. I can still feel the smell of smoke after level 2 so very immersive indeed (or maybe it is my.. wait..).

Time speed button was really helpful addition. I didn't notice it at first but after that the game became much more fun to play.

Walk the Planck by alexrose 2024-10-19T14:00:01Z

Short and sweet well polished game.

This is definitely a top tier audio-visual work! Clean and readable shapes, good contrast between background and main gameplay, just generally consistent art direction through out entire game and above it all very well accompanied dynamic audio/music with a level progression with narration in the background for additional mood.

From the gameplay standpoint the game is very simple but challenging. I really like how much was squished from such a simple sling-based mechanic. Especially the obstacles, that need to be dodged by the proper timing, were a great addition. They made that player needs to think in both states and not just hold space and wait for a good moment.. that was a good design decision.

There is a lot of levels/rooms/stages (not sure how to call it) and each one introduces little different challenge so the game doesn't have time to became boring. My only complain is that some levels required little too much waiting because of how they were constructed.

This is a jam-highest quality entry and you can see a lot of experience went into that. Good job!

Swamp Axe by Erik Tate 2024-10-17T22:05:42Z

I ate bugs.. I used axe.. and after a while got this screen :D

There is just soooo many levels, I had a blast playing it!

swamp_axe.png

Fantastic audio-visuals! Quality of animations, clarity of the shapes, good contrast between middle-ground and background, everything from that side was a jam-highest quality and just pleasing to look at.

The core mechanics.. so tongue and axe, felt great to use. They are well polished and just satisfying to use.

Gameplay was a little to fast for my taste. I think some limiters for speed would be nice or at last little aim support because sometimes I just wasn't able to click on time.

From the level design perspective.. 1. Good introduction to main mechanics overall however I think the difficulty increased too high too fast. 2. Some last levels felt much easier than middle ones.. not sure if that was intention or not. 3. And the last thing.. I didn't like an introduction to a new (and hard to pull off) secret mechanic at the end of the very hard level. I think if it was introduced at the beginning of the level and also at the end, that would make it much easier to learn and still would be required to make the jump at the end.

Overall very polished and well done challenging platformer!

You made together a great game and you should be proud of it.

Tiny followers by PatBGames 2024-10-22T07:27:29Z

I like the concept and it fits the theme perfectly! Thanks you the counters on the HUD understood the game just by playing. Felt little too short, few more levels that would gradually increase the difficulty would be nice to have. I was worried the tiny creatures will stuck somewhere but surprisingly this didn't happen even once. Well polished game!

Gull and Ray by Mathstr0fficial 2024-10-22T00:10:27Z

Really good writing and the story was engaging. I was hoping for a little plot twist of some kind because of the way how the characters were talking (it was giving me vibes of some kind of bigger mystery). That said any kind of ending is an achievement on its own when it comes to game jams :D Story wise, I was absolutely satisfied with what I got here.

Audiovisuals were top notch and matched gameplay perfectly. The art direction in this game is really well executed. The art style is simple yet detailed enough to distinguish things very well. On top of that it was very consistent across all the game so I could feel like everything was part of the same experience and it helped to keep immersion a lot. Additionally the audio with waves ambient and SFX also helped creating a really good mood (with a nice water shader as a cherry on top!).

The gameplay was a little too long and passive for my taste. I'm not sure if you wanted to create a puzzle game with nice riddles or storytelling driven experience, because for the puzzle game the gameplay required from me too much walking but on the other hand from the story perspective it all was too condensed in one place so the flow of storytelling wasn't consistent enough for me to create good dynamic. There either was info dump in one moment or nothing was happening when I was just walking long distances to get a thing after a thing (I was playing/talking with one NPC at the time without any notes so maybe that's why beating the game took so long).

I think if you would focus more on the UX for the player, it would create much better experience overall and could fill the gap between puzzling and talking phase. For example an option to display logs with messages under a specific key or option to skip text animation with spacebar or small indicators showing where is what if we already found those things. It would already significantly reduce amount of the total distance you need walk through to beat the game.

Overall it was a really nice and engaging experience. Looking at the fact it was a compo game, you definitely created a jam-highest quality mood.. and I really liked it! Good job!

Cullbot 56 by GaryS 2024-10-21T13:50:52Z

Simple sci-fi vacuum cleaner simulator.. maybe outside of the burning poor blobs alive haha. A short linear game (with about 7 levels).

The visuals are great! I really liked the lively animations. You can see that _burning_ passion that went into it!

Collisions in the tilemap seems little bit too big, not sure if that's intended but I'm guessing it was just caused by the jam's time limit :D

I always like to spot some little details in games so I can appreciate them. Here I found out that vacumed blobs are not just a number on the HUD but when we are shooting we can exactly see which blobs were vaccumed (you can see this after red ones are introduced). Also after some testing I can say controls are not so simple in this, the character controller is trying to imitate a droid movement that cannot turn that easy in motion and needs to stop first to turn more.

The core mechanic is simple and easy to understand. You suck -> you shoot. Gameplay core needs a little bit more polish but again.. I guess you know this very well and you just didn't have time to polish/implement more stuff.

In the current state game required from me a little bit too much waiting when I was shooting blobs (I was just staying holding 1 key and waiting for counter to reach zero). One way to fix it would be to gradually increase shooting speed while holding a shoot button. However shooting itself and vacuuming small blobs felt really nice to play with :D I can also hear that you made a sound little different based on the current speed of the robot.

Very clear concept and good foundation to make something more out of this. That was little nice experience with space alien vibes. I had fun playing this game, thank you for making it! :D

Tinygotchi Creatures by Vinicius Veronese 2024-10-17T20:48:11Z

Top notch visuals and audio is on point! It might be cute but this is definitely a very challenging game. The gameplay loop is simple but well designed. I can see a lot of thought went into this.

The only thing I would add would be a some kind of small indication where cursor is pointing at. Sometimes I was pressing mouse button multiple times because I wasn't sure if I aimed properly on the object/button.

This is a well polished and innovative entry that creates exactly the experience it was meant to create.

Get in ma Blunderbuss by Logic Monkey 2024-10-23T18:38:35Z

Took me few tries to get to this screen but I finally got it :D

get-in-ma-blunderbuss.png

I'm not sure if I missed something or there really is just one level. I'm guessing the time limit hit you hard in this project.

The artstyle is sooo goood.. I mean.. just look at those details on the ending screen! Also I'm really fan of the color palette :D The characters are clean and everything is animated (even jump has a different animation frames).

There is exceptionally a lot of polish in the main menu. There is a nice fading animation when switching between screens and you even added options panel with audio sliders. And for some reason that panel with credits looks aesthetically so good!

I really like the idea of using beaten enemies as an ammo. I wasn't sure where I can use it because it didn't work for enemies (but didn't try it in the boss fight). This game is a little bit short in comparison to how many mechanics it introduces at the start but has a lot of potential for possible future development.

I'm always focusing on the details in jam games because that way I can appreciate them more. Here I was able to notice that jump has a different jump height based on the key holding time. That's a nice touch and very useful feature that helped with killing enemies.

Feels little bit incomplete as a game but it's a really nice prototype with unique mechanics and well executed art direction! Good job for making it! :D

King Nut by Abdul Zakkar 2024-10-19T17:06:35Z

My finger is dying haha!

The core design of this is great! I love how incremental it feels and how game is natural flow to it has when it comes to learning new mechanics. Every time I feel like game became too hard I know it's time to change strategy and try different approach and then.. it works! Different units, specific upgrades, picking up seeds with specialized units, it just creates feeling of natural not forced progression. This is not an easy feat to achieve.. and you did it!

I feel like this game really needs some improvements for UX. After I switched to pressing spacebar, I was frequently missclicking on the unit selection box and in the end I was sending army of expensive fighters to pickup seed and such. Instead of spacebar I would love to have keybinds for specific units like [1]/[2]/[3]/[4] or something, that way would be able to send specific unit where I want every time.

Another UX problem I encountered was in the very late game. It was hard to select between seed and enemy. An example of how it could be solved would be simple toggle under a key that allows for selecting only seed/enemy based on the last thing that was hovered with cursor when pressed like this: 1. hover on the seed/enemy -> 2. spacebar -> 3. now you can hover only seeds/enemies -> 4. spacebar -> 5. now you can hover everything again.

I think something like this would allow for avoiding missclicks in the late game.

But outside of those small issues.. overall it's a fantastic entry! Entire game is designed around one simple concept but because it's so well balanced and polished I definitely had fun playing that one. Thank you for making this!

Right To Bear Fins by deadroach 2024-10-21T11:59:56Z

Finally got it!

right_to_bear_fins.png

Right at the beginning the contrast between the title screen and the actual gameplay really got me haha! That was a surprise for sure.

The animations are sooo good, like.. top tier quality good! The death animation especially was a nice touch.

The art style is so simple yet it matches this type of gameplay really well! It might feel "cheap" at the beginning but you can quickly see this art style has a lot of hidden details (even elements on the HUD are very detailed and not plain and simple). I really like how this game looks.

One more reason why this art style and gameplay makes good combo. Creatures are very distinguishable, and at the same time.. because they don't have any shading (just solid colors), they blend really well between each other (either when dead or alive). This makes game automatically more difficult (in the good way).

Another detail I was able to spot is that the most dangerous enemy (jellyfish) is the only enemy that evaporates with its own sprite completely during the death animation. This is a great design decision, thanks to that you can spot this enemy instantly when it appears on the screen. Such a small detail but helps a lot.

I'm not sure if dodge is working correctly because I didn't success at using it even once. I wasn't able to dodge either slow or fast enemies with that. Maybe it's only for bullets (if so I didn't notice that) or maybe it's just a skill issue on my side.

When it comes to gameplay at the beginning I wasn't able to tell why I was dying so fast. I slowly started noticing things like bullets, but it took me embarrassingly long time to notice that grey big bois need much more bullets to be killed (I thought they just have bugged animation and that's why they look like alive even when they've been shot). I think small animation for them when they are getting hit or when they are live would solve this issue with readability. Also I like how you can shoot with angle based on the mouse velocity, that is something that distinguishes this game from similar ones.

Overall I had lot's of fun shooting fish, and shot them more than I can count. Not sure if that's good, but I had great time playing this game. Good entry! :D

A Bug's Wife by Aurailus 2024-10-22T21:25:01Z

Got the stars! :D

bugpush.png

Great interpretation of a classic sokoban-style gameplay. It reminds me a lot Baba is You (especially the 2-frames animation style feels heavily inspired :D). That said this game absolutely stands own its own with its own charm and character.

The art direction is just fantastically executed! The artstyle matches gameplay perfectly and is consistent across all the game assets. Sprites have very clear distinctive shapes and are readable (you can tell exactly which animal each sprite represents). Even tilesets are not boring and repeatable, for example you can clearly see it by looking at the tiles especially when looking at the shape of the river or when new player-only tiles were introduced.

This game is also extremally polished! The UX is just great! Option to undo one move, option to restart, intuitive and responsive controls. On top of that there is just juice everywhere, especially proper visual (and audio) feedback that matches perfectly all possible actions player can do (for example by pushing things into the wall player gets audio-visual cue which informs that action cannot be done).

The gameplay is just great! I love all the unique ideas for the mechanics/animals (the snake was especially my favorite ^^). I can imagine that interactions between animals took most of the development time, you can tell they are extremally well implemented. So much possible interactions could cause a lot undefined behaviors yet I didn't spot a single bug when it comes to that. Well done with that one!

At the beginning I thought stars are for making as low possible moves as possible. I was surprised when I got 2 stars without 2nd one. In that moment it wasn't clear for me for what I exactly get 3 stars but I think you get each 1 for different things, 2nd seems to be for beating level without using undo, 3rd for using least possible amount of moves. If so I think it should be better mentioned somewhere in the game. But it's just a small issue ^^

The only thing that seems missing is a some kind of counter for moves. Not sure if you planned to add but here is a small tip just in case: if you want to avoid spoilers (how much should player get to get star) you could just display current number of moves and best achieved number so far (if level was already beaten). Maybe you will find it useful :D

Overall this game without a doubt has a jam-highest quality you could expect here. And the fact that it was all done as a compo entry is a huge achievement on its own. You made a fantastic job with that one and you should be proud of it. Thank you for making this. I had lots of fun! (AND I NEED MORE...)

TUSK by NBumgardner 2024-10-25T01:20:48Z

Hello! I'm a UX guy from the stream :D

Finally found some time to play your game. Let me just say it straight.. the concept is fantastic and the execution is just awesome! The entire art style and the mood it creates is just top tier! This is extremally high quality entry, period.

What impressed me the most is how well balanced this game is.. every turn and every decision matters! That's not an easy thing to pull off, especially in such complicated game like yours! There are variables everywhere and it still.. just works like a charm. Also I love how every crew member has its one character embodied by the art, animal it represents, voice and even by gameplay mechanics!

The tutorial is a great addition and explained the game really well and absolutely fulfilled its purpose. I didn't have problems to understand gameplay rules thanks to that feature.

Ok, that's it.. I will not spend any more time on praising this game, people above me already did that and you already know your game is awesome :D Instead (like I promised) I will give you some thoughts on the UI/UX because I think in this field the game is lacking the most. I split it into 2 parts: tutorial and interactive HUD.

Tutorial

Let's start with the tutorial. It's implemented really well and definitely works however it takes too long to complete. Seeing multiple categories and so much text just in the "tutorial" section can create such first impression that game is extremally complicated, which in fact it's not. You can lose potential players because by this screen alone.

There is a lot of things in the tutorial that could be simplified making it much shorter. For example you can reduce text by avoiding things like "*The top of the panel contains...*", you already have arrows for that ^^ And when it comes to arrows.. it's a small thing but I would change arrow color to the same like tutorial panel to create visual connection between those two UI elements. Everything on the interactive HUD is mostly black and white already so it would create a good contrast between gameplay elements.

Another nice trick to reduce tutorial length.. don't explain UI components (players don't need that information) and always explain UX instead. Here is a simple example, instead text like "*On the left, we can see buttons, each with a picture of a crew member*" you can just say "*Here are your crew members. You can click them to see more details.*"

Interactive HUD

Now it's time for the interactive HUD itself, so all the dark panels that are the core of the gameplay. The HUD in the current state works well enough so I don't have many issues with that when it comes to UX. That said there are few things I was able to think about that could slightly improve the overall experience. So I will just share it with you in bullet points:

* I would replace current status panel (with "current actions") and crew panel with just one panel. It creates too much data redundancy. For design I would try something like long horizontal line with portraits with current action below it and if you hover on the portrait, above could be displayed all possible actions for specific crew member. So it would be like that:

``` [1. action] [2. action] + small visual cue which shows this is a current action [3. action] [portrait][portrait][portrait(hovered)] [curr. a.][curr. a.][curr. a.] ```

* You can display amount of upgrades of the crew member in classic "level" style (something like small circle with number in the corner of the portrait).

* The general rule for good UX is to reduce amount of actions to get somewhere/do something. In this game most of the time actions are just one click away.. except hiring and upgrading. To reduce amount of clicks required to hire/upgrade unit I would allow players to press "Current applications" label to open hiring menu or get to upgrade window directly by pressing unit level icon (mentioned in previous point).

Ok, that's it. I hit character limit xD I had fun playing it! Absolutely a 5 star game!

Blob, To the Top! by MetRiko 2024-10-08T00:13:10Z

@nickhellquist We uploaded native builds (for Windows and Linux). Can you give them a try and see if it fixed the issue?

Blob, To the Top! by MetRiko 2024-10-17T15:14:00Z

@scrapmetal Thank you so much for such positive feedback :heart: I see you really liked our little blobby game haha

Like you noticed.. charging is slow, but it is "by design". We wanted players to manage time and make them decide if they prefer to go with full power and lose some precious time or try smaller jumps instead. Time is a resource here ^^

When it comes to lags.. visuals in this game relies heavily on the GPU shaders so it sometimes doesn’t perform well in the browser. In such case it's worth to try a native build instead. We added warning just in case if more people will have the same issue. Thank you for letting us know about it ^^

Blob, To the Top! by MetRiko 2024-10-17T20:22:18Z

@nickhellquist From the last time you tried our game we fixed many issues and bugs (including the ones relative to camera work and different screen resolutions). We also significantly improved performance. Can you check out if the game works properly for you now? That would be very helpful :D

Blob, To the Top! by MetRiko 2024-10-18T19:26:44Z

@patbgames Thank you for the feedback!

The real problem with the performance is the blob shader. There is a lot of data that is constantly send from CPU to GPU to keep track of each blobs data like position, velocity, looking direction, state, radius etc.

To simplify an explanation.. we are sending in total about 9 arrays of data to this shader (that's a lot). Godot doesn't support structs for uniforms in the shaders so we have to do it that way.

That said I know it's still possible to improve performance a lot.. for example we could calculate visual effects like looking direction inside the shader directly (just by using mouse position) which could already help a little bit. But even if we will improve performance there is still too much data to make it work well on the low-end hardware inside the browser.

That said after optimizations which we already did in previous patches I'm not getting any lags in the browser version either. So there is that too.

AntVasion by SoloAdventurerGames 2024-10-21T16:25:56Z

Ok, first of all, the concept for the game is hilarious! You are playing as a toy tank in the kitchen trying to clear this place from the running around ants. On top of that the real metallic/shooting/engine sounds add a really nice contrast to this "toy" theme.

The highlight of this game is clearly a vehicle movement and shooting, and both (even if little janky :D) felt really good to use. I was especially impressed by the physics of driving on the non-flat objects (like rocks). As for a jam game.. that is definitely well implemented character controller (including camera movement).

Ballistics for bullets felt "just right" and predictable. And on top of that the range indicator was put right in the perfect spot making it a great support for the bullet physics. All those little details made that shooting from various distances and trying to adjust an angle was just fun. I also liked that you could see a bullet flying from the side when you were driving.

Having a working AI within a obstacle-filled 3D environment in the compo entry is an achievement on its own but you even added on top of that a migration behavior. I am sure I saw it multiple times.. after a group of ants was reduced to a small number, they started running to somewhere else. That's impressive taking into account a time constraint.

I know this game is about precision but I feel like hitbox for the ants could be just a little bit bigger. It felt like I was sometimes missing shots that shouldn't miss looking at its trajectory. I was also missing a little bit of visual clue where the bullet hit. When bullet was flying too far it was hard to see where it landed therefore I wasn't sometimes sure how to adjust the angle.. it was especially the case for the level 2 where I was shooting from the edge of kitchen sink.

Overall this is a really good tank simulator wrapped around a toy-like theme. That was a great experience and I for sure had fun playing this. You should be proud, thank you for making this :D

Hive Havoc by Tkap1 2024-10-19T11:47:16Z

This game hooked me! It's well balanced and has well thought out gameplay core based on the "risk and reward" rule. Good polish, shooting is satysfying and vfx is pleasing to look at and.. it's just fun to play really. Outside of that replayability is huge! Even during first playthrough you can already see there is a lot of strategies to try.

I was also impressed by the amount of details that went into UX. SO MANY keybinds but also tutorial toggle, option to show timer, leaderboard, time is paused on the free reward popup so it's not stressful, UX work here is just great!

This is a fantastic entry and I had a lot of fun playing this. Good job! :thumbsup:

Particle Wars by NickHellquist 2024-10-17T20:21:15Z

Got it! particle_wars.png Once I got explosions and +15% movement speed I knew this is it! :D

I had fun playing this. I liked small animations for green orbs, it was clear for me which I picked in the range and which not. Also enemy size representing health was a really nice design choice it helped a lot with the hardest difficulty.

The hardest challenge was probably time race to keep amount of enemies to the minimum because when there were too many circles on the screen, the fps drop was too brutal.. and I had to start new run. Also I feel like "attack size" either didn't work or was giving me so little that I didn't notice it.

I was promised a simple rogue-lite, survival game, and I definitely got one. Very nice little game that took too much of my time haha. Good entry for sure!