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A jam submission

Parallel TrailsView game page

Traverse through time going to past and future while freezing objects to pass through!
Submitted by Kajak — 2 hours, 48 minutes before the deadline
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Parallel Trails's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#153.9583.958
Graphics#2063.5423.542
Overall#2103.2783.278
Game Design#2163.2503.250
Audio#2663.0833.083
Theme#3803.1673.167
Fun#4442.6672.667

Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
You have been chosen as the one to go deeper into the time warp, traversing through time and affecting it by the technology developed by the army.

Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Every asset was made by me, and all the code was written by me.

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Comments

Submitted

Great idea! Good job! :) Voted!

Submitted

Very creative concept and a fresh take on this jam's theme! Given more time this could become a very unique platformer. 

Submitted

Great job. Very funny idea)

Submitted

Very cool idea!

Submitted

Really fun game! I *LOVE* Time travel stuff! We actually really wanted to make something time-travelled, but couldn't find a way to connect it to this theme (although we've managed for basically every other theme we could vote on). The game is fun and the puzzles are quite challenging and require good execution, which makes it quite challenging (the fun kind of challenging). The only two issues i have with the game is the fact the the time-stop is time based (i think it would've been a lot more forgiving to let the player disable it themselves instead of having to wait out a timer), and the lack of checkpoints. It would've also been a cool thing to add foresight and hindsight where objects from the past and future are shown transparent, but that's just a thing i would've added if i'd were making something similar, so that doesn't affect my rating, just saying it as a suggestion

TL;DR: Great job! awesome game and awesome idea.

Developer(+1)

I've seen a lot of people saying a preview would be nice and that letting people control stopping time more! Which i will probably do in the future! Thank you for the feedback!

Submitted

Nice game! Really cool mechanics! The visuals are amazing. I think some more soundeffects would be nice though! Good job!

Developer

Yes I think some soundeffects would be nice, I will be implementing them in the future! Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted

Like the crash test dummy in the tutorial. The game mechanics are cool; I like the 3 times variant. Good jam, especially if you all did this alone (respect).

Developer(+1)

Thank you! I've tried!

Submitted(+1)

Interesting game mechanics! 

I suggest breaking up the tutorial into 2 parts, one teaching time warping, one teaching freezing time. Currently its teaching everything in one go, which may be overwhelming for some. Give players opportunity to digest what they learnt

Don't know if it's just me, but I find the game to be too hard due to the precision required, and so I didn't finish the game, unfortunately

A quality of life change is to allow players to skip dialogues, having to read the same dialogue after dying is very annoying

A game with interesting ideas and potential!

Developer

I will improve on the game after the jam! Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Cute graphics. Well done tutorial. It was a bit hard to me solving puzzle and move fast at the same time. When I die and restart It would be  better to not see dialogs again. Other than that creative idea. Neat jam game! Good job!

Can you try and rate my game ?

Submitted

Nice game, I really like the music and pixel art, I think the training dummy sequence at the start was very clever as an introduction! The movement feels smooth and fluid as well. I think the only minor feedback I have is to let the dialogue be skippable a bit faster, like maybe if they spammed space or some key during the dialogue, it would skip through it. This is a very minor issue though and not very important in the overall game. Good job, I really enjoyed it!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! The game will be getting massive improvements after the jam (with dialogue skipping which was missing that was annoying)

Submitted (1 edit)

Let's start by what I like: The mechanics, it's definitely an interesting concept, and a creative take on the theme. The game is quite polished in some places, for example the animation of the tutorial guy talking, the fall and get up to look around animation, etc.

As many has mentioned, it's way too hard. I spent more than 15 minutes to get past the tutorial, and was greeted by a harder level, very discouraging honestly.

So here's some suggestion I think could make the game easier:

1. Slower time / weak gravity, to make the platforms fall down slower so player can have time to response and freeze it at the place they want. This will make the it more of a "play with your brain" game instead of "play with your reflex" game. Unless the latter is what you're going for.

2. Preview for what's in the past/future, sometimes I get really lost and forgot which time is the one I want to travel to.

3. Tutorial needs to be improved, possibly split into smaller chunks, don't try to make the player learn everything in a level.

4. A way to schedule the time changes (basically a macro? player can hit a key and it automatically plays J 2 secs later, then L 2 secs later, then K, etc). So the player won't need to control the character movement and time travelling at the same time.

I understand that this is a game jam submission and every thing is done in a limited time frame, so those above are just suggestion instead of criticism. Good job for the amount of work done in 7 days.

Developer (1 edit)

There is a preview of time you are in at the top of the screen, i should make it more clear tho i think.  I will be working on the game after the Jam so i appreciate it!

Thanks for the review!

Submitted
There is a preview of time you are in at the top of the screen

I noticed that, what I meant is that a preview of the platforms (the things that changes) in different times.

Developer (1 edit)

Ohh yeah, i kinda wanted for player to look at all of them and work with them like that, because there would be too much clutter, but i can think about it

Submitted

Hey you asked for in depth feedback on discord so here it goes. Note that:

1. My own submission is not perfect by any means
2. I don't generally play puzzle platformers, you may want to pay closer to attention to feedback from your actual target audience.

I spent way too long trying to get past the tutorial level and eventually just gave up. I am assuming you were supposed to freeze the falling blocks in mid air, but it is way too fast and difficult to time, you have no way to unfreeze and quickly refreeze time to adjust it, and your jump height is not enough.

 The tutorial difficulty was too much for anywhere in the game, let alone for the tutorial.

Here's what I would improve if it was my game and I had infinite time to work on it, based on the tiny amount I was able to play.

1. First, add a skip level button. Every game jam puzzle game should have it regardless of how difficult the game is, and your submission is in extra special need of it. 

2. Add gifs to the itch.io page, you have nice animations and pixel art looks significantly better in gifs than in screenshots.

3. I would slow down the idle animation for the robot, and move the body slightly less. Your game doesn't seem like a high adrenaline shooter, you want the animation to reflect the speed of the game.

4. Keybinds very unintuitive though I appreciate you showing them in game.  I would use space or enter (or both) for moving dialogue forward, and add the ability to skip dialogue. I would use maybe space for slow time and Q / E for forward backward, or some combination of number keys. Whatever you use, make sure it is reachable by the left hand and left hand only, you should not demand for players to have both hands on the keyboard unless there is no way to make the mechanics work otherwise.

Sorry I wasn't able to make it further in but judging by the other comments I am not alone in finding the controls overly difficult and frustrating. Remember that as the developer you have played the game for hours and hours and if you try to make it challenging for yourself, you will make it very difficult for the average player. One rule of thumb is to make it quite a bit too easy for yourself, and then it will prove a satisfying challenge for the player. Also make sure to add a skip level button on game jam puzzle games. 

Developer

I was originally going for Q and E but controlling was hard and straining, since you need precise movement while changing time, i will make an Unfreeze option after the jam ends tho and add dialogue skipping and other QoL updates, im planning on expanding on the game adding new mechanics etc..

Thank you so much, i appreciate the feedback i hope you will comeback to see how my game improved in the future!

Submitted

Cool and interesting concept, but hard to play. Good job!

Developer

After the jam i will try to improve it while keeping the difficulty and making it more enojoyable

Thanks!

Submitted

It's not the type of game I enjoy, but it's well-made. I'm not sure why there's a robot for the tutorial, it's also very difficult to time everything just right. I feel like with a bit more forgiving level design this would be a hit

Developer(+1)

Unfortunately i had no time to polish the game, but after the game jam i hope to improve it alot. Also the robot was the original player, but i changed the idea halfway through the jam  because it didnt fit the gameplay, but more as a tutorial!

Thanks for the review!

Submitted

The controls and mechanics honestly are pretty frustrating in how they're implemented. It's pixel perfect and unforgiving and it feels like you need to do a frame perfect combination of input in rapid succession just to get past a small hurdle, and failing that sets you back further than where you started. So for that reason I didn't find this game fun and I quit relatively early in the game :(

However, the game does look pretty decent, it definitely feels like a lot of effort has gone into making that. So good job! But the gameplay is sadly not for me :D

Developer

After the end of the game jam i will improve on the game, add new levels, and revamp the system to be (hopefully) better, i can see why it may seem frustraiting, i will be making the levels bigger and add checkpoints!

Thanks for the review it defo needs improvments!

Submitted

There are things to love in this game, there are things to hate.  It's impossible to explain this game in one word, or even in one sentence. The graphics are not bad, you can understand what is going on, and overall everything looks nice. Music is also nice, it doesn't distract, but helps to concentrate.

But gameplay is frustrating. I had bad time traversing through the first level, only to get greeted by second, even more frustrating. It felt like Getting over it, but in pixel. Player's jump is unreasonably small, as for a videogame, and he is too big for most of the places to fit nicely (or the interior is too small), which was the biggest issue while playing.

The idea of the game is very interesting, and has a huge potential. I'd love to see a more polished, better version of the game, with these mechanics being explored even deeper.  As for now, it's 21/30.

Developer

Appreciate it! After the jam ends im planning to expand size of levels and make more of them! Also add some new mechanics later on to make the game feel fresh!

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Great game, The use of time travel is very well implemented for some very interesting puzzles. The game looks great and is a lot of fun to play, And I really like how the character falls face first in the ground every time you respawn, its a nice touch. Had a lot of fun. also the menu music is so good!

There are some bugs here and there, like you can be inside of a wall sometimes, or how the game lauches with the pause menu open, But its not that big of a deal.

Great game. Keep it up♥

Developer

The issue of the settings menu being open is now fixed!

Thank you for your feedback, glad you enjoyed the game!

Submitted

I wasn't able to play because the game showed the settings menu when I entered, and it would not go away.

Developer (1 edit)

Fixed!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game and creative level design! , the time warp system could be a bit annoying tho,escpecially when you have to start again

Developer

Noted!