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Gridlock Jumpers's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #17 | 4.273 | 4.273 |
| Originality | #21 | 4.318 | 4.318 |
| Presentation (graphics, audio) | #81 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Fun | #83 | 3.591 | 3.591 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game represent Mode?
You change the 'mode' on a remote control robot which makes the game play switch from platforming to sokoban and back
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Comments
It's a cool concept with an interesting game flow. It became overwhelming pretty fast as I'm not great at these types of puzzlers but I stuck it through as long as I could and saw some of the real levels. I'll also echo the calls for a nicer control scheme and some resolution settings so it's easier to appreciate all the good art but I know gamemaker is unfriendly about resolutions.
Thanks for the feedback! There will be some resolution settings for sure, options for making the game more approachable are also being thought about
Very nice game. Love the idea of combining the changing of player's mode with changes of the level itself.
Very nice art & music.
Great job!
Thanks for checking it out!
wow, great idea for a game. very original puzzle platformer. all the modes feel good to play and make for fun gameplay when combined together. my only issue is with the UI which i found to be confusing, tedious, and not visually striking. i love the art style and the music. very charming. great game, just needs a bit of UI polish. Awesome job!
Thanks for playing! I would've liked a better UI, I do plan on making things more intuitive by making relevant information more visible as well as other small inclusions. Still i think it would be a bit confusing because of how the tutorial is currently. I was short on time and just had to make sure it could teach the games mechanics but all the mechanics are introduced in way that's really different from the context that you ultimately use them in so i think that makes the UI more unintuitive and harder to grasp. At present I don't see a way to significantly reduce button presses but if the UI is more intuitive then you would navigate the menu much faster regardless.
Combining all 3 modes was really interesting and it felt satisfying to start piecing together the best way to tackle a given scenario. For the platforming mode, I’m not a big fan of when horizontal character movement stops as soon as input stops. However I do appreciate coyote time and jump buffering being implemented, and the ledge grab is very convenient.
I’m not sure how I feel about RNG in turn-based tile puzzle games, but maybe that’s just me being burnt out from games like Into the Breach lol. I found it frustrating when I thought the situation was in the bag but suddenly 2 extra portals would spawn. Also it was only while writing this review and looking at one of your little gameplay GIFs that I realized that each enemy on the screen spawns a spike ball at the end of the turn—I was confused about why spike balls were seemingly spawning at random. Perhaps some way of indicating what’s coming up would make the experience less blind for players.
I love the sprite art and chill music. I’m curious to see where this goes if you do decide to keep working on this.
Thanks for checking it out!
the tool tips for enemies will tell you that they'll spawn spiky balls on their turn, there isn't much variety in enemy behaviour for the time being.
I’m not sure how I feel about RNG in turn-based tile puzzle games, but maybe that’s just me being burnt out from games like Into the Breach lol.
I was actually hoping it will feel similar to into the breach lol. Thing is, this game probably isn't the best use case for procedural/RNG puzzles (at least with the current, less feature-complete, jam version). Of course handcrafted puzzles will be better then RNG in isolation. With handcrafted puzzles you're just after the a-ha moment where with something like into the breach you're motivated to find a more optimal solution because you don't want to lose the run. Its more high stakes so there's tension from turn to turn -which is the important thing. That's the thought process as to why there are more portals when you are close to winning.
Ideally you'll feel a tension that motivates you to optimise your turn but this game is too low stakes for that (I just leaned into the core gameplay loop being fun for now). Maybe it wouldn't have felt frustrating if it was somehow communicated that the difficulty is increasing from turn to turn (kind of ran out of time to implement something for that though i also didn't want to steepen the learning curve or add to the UI). Its done so the player will have a reason to try and optimise their turns (you'll get the win by either playing aggressively and finishing early or gathering loads of actions to win later). Also if you feel like the final turn was easy then there wouldn't be any tension which was the goal (it would be a boring turn otherwise, maybe tedious that you have to go through it like the level should've ended last turn). I also found it lends to the feeling of getting a checkmate against the game on the last turn which i found sort of interesting.
I'm not 100% sure how this'll change since the only other opinion I got on the matter was along the lines of "I love how you get really close to winning, makes me wanna try it again" which wasn't the intension but cool for him at least. It is flawed in that losing can be a slow process so you're probably better off restarting if things are looking bad (I'm gonna change the hp system so this'll go away). I was so focused on making sure every turn was interesting (when winning) that I forgot to check what it was like when losing.
I might have the character animation show acceleration and deceleration when starting and stopping to improve game feel (like hollow knight or with shmups) but at current i think tight controls suit the mechanics better. Maybe ill execute this concept differently in the future with momentum based platforming as a sequel or something.
Super original game! I really like the polish on all the little modes like the satisfying spin the guy has when jumping or the grabbing arm when in pushing mode. Keeping all the different bits of functionality was a bit much for me to process once I started to get to the part of the game where actions were recorded. I really quickly found myself running out of actions that I could do. Really cool puzzle game you've created here!
Oh and also big kudos to making a tutorial in game for this project!!! Helped me get a lot further than other jam games I've tried. Very polished entry.
Cool stuff! There are some very interesting mechanics at play here that I think are only held back by some confusing UX and a somewhat wordy tutorial. Spending some more time with some basic puzzles that aren't accompanied by a new mechanic or idea might help ease the player into more complex gameplay. Also, you definitely need an option to play at higher resolutions! Other than that, I really like the elements you've got working together here. Great work!
Well-designed game, I would love to play a full version! A few quality-of-life changes would make this a really solid puzzle platformer. I think switching modes is a bit tedious, there's a lot of buttons you have to press if you want to cycle through the modes and it kind of breaks the pacing since you're ideally switching often, testing an idea, undoing, switching back, ect. Options menu and level select would also be nice but I understand if you couldn't get it done in time. Also default volume is like 15% too loud imo (gave me a heart attack). I think this is a really good game though, nice one!
thanks for the feedback!
The UI/UX will definitely be improved. There will be hotkeys for different modes and end turn at least. I'm thinking of a couple alternate control schemes like just having the menu constantly open (and more out of the way visually) so all you do is cycle through the modes with two buttons and confirm a new one when you're ready. Either that or holding shift to keep the menu open and just select with the arrow keys (though this will likely lead to mistakes).
Options menu and level select would've been nice for the jam but ran short on time
This is a really cool game, and I'm surprised at how well the disparate gameplay modes come together to make a really challenging but satisfying-to-complete strategy game. It's funny how you can come up with a great pusher strategy that makes the best use of your limited actions to get the spikes all in just the right place, knowing that all you need to do is complete one totally-doable jump in jumper mode, then you enter jumper mode and whiff your jump and fall into nothingness and waste your turn. But the player has nobody to blame for that but themselves, so it doesn't even feel bad when that happened to me a few times.
Great presentation, the music is the perfect pace for the combination of puzzle and action gameplay. The pieces of this game fit so well together that it's easy to forget it's a jam game, great job!
Wow thanks - I was kinda hoping for jumper mode to have that effect, like a sort of 'roll the dice to succeed/fail' but you don't get frustrated when failing because you were in control of the character
Fantastic game, though the control scheme could use some work. Loved it regardless.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm still trying to think of what to do with the control scheme, i would at least like to prevent people from panic pressing shift when jumping as well as hotkeys for different modes
Tough puzzles with a neat presentation, good job!
thanks for checking it out!
Had a good time playing it; good and balanced learning curve.
Kudos to you 👍
thanks for playing!
Very fun game! Great job on the graphics and music! Impressed you were able to put this together during the jam! I liked the ability to undo actions in repel/pusher modes! And as other have said, full screen mode!
thanks for checking it out!
Really solid game!
The art, music, and gameplay were all fun and well implemented. As others said, full-screen mode would be helpful to see all the text and graphics. I did get stuck on one of the levels. I wasn’t able to do a 3rd action, but I thought I was supposed to be able to do an action and it would de-select an older one.
In any case, great work on this!
thanks for the feedback! alt+enter to full screen (i should've just wrote that on the game page to begin with)
Great job! I really enjoyed the combination of turn-based combat with block puzzles. There was a surprising amount of thought I had to put into each turn as the levels got more and more compact, and I think that overall the presentation is great too.
The main thing I would have asked for is a fullscreen mode, as I felt I had to squint sometimes while I was playing.
Other than that, though, I think you did a really good job designing this one. Awesome work!
thanks for checking it out! I didn't get time to implement an options menu but you can press alt+enter to full screen (I've added that to the game page now thanks for bringing it to my attention)
There are some really interesting mechanics here! Admittedly, I never quite wrapped my head around a solid strategy to use and I'm pretty sure I was still on the first non-tutorial level when I gave up, but I still had fun experimenting with the different modes. Good work!
thanks for playing! i think there's too much of a difficulty spike when getting to the first level (the game is difficult regardless). I'll make sure smooth that out
While I think the jump mode is not as fleshed out, the game is really good and surprisingly difficult.
thanks for checking it out! ive been thinking about platforming mechanics that might potentially offer more advanced manoeuvres and also add to the decision making in the other modes, so its definitely something that’s on my mind
Loved the game and the music. I'll play this one again later for sure, crisp gameplay
Thanks for playing! glad you liked it