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The Descent's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #103 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Graphics | #134 | 3.708 | 3.708 |
| Overall | #159 | 3.368 | 3.368 |
| Audio | #194 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Theme | #202 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| Game Design | #216 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Innovation | #323 | 2.875 | 2.875 |
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?
In The Descent, you *dive deep* into a cave system to find an ancient artifact, all while battling off hordes of monsters trying to stop you.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
I did all the code myself and I modified all the assets. Some of them are free assets from the Unreal Marketplace and Quixel Bridge.
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Comments
I got to the artifact and reached the ending in a very frantic rush on low difficulty (and low graphics, anything higher was too system-intensive). The game page and screenshots show a crossbow, but I must have missed out on finding it, I just used the knife all the way to the end.
Graphic style is pretty cool, would like to see more weapons.
Thanks for playing! Yeah, there is also a crossbow weapon that you unlock after killing a few enemies in the second arena room with the hole in the floor. If you jump straight into the hole then you can miss it. I probably should have made it easier to find because multiple people couldn't find it lol. Thanks again for playing and the feedback!
Damn, I love old shooters despite being not skilled at this genre at all, and I enjoyed this game a lot, it was very fun. I like the movement (I’m not sure, was there bhopping? :D). I really enjoy the overall feel, I enjoy the sounds. Enemy animations though make this game look a bit like some asset flip on Steam, lol, also, despite overall liking the feel, combat doesn’t really feels this good, like there is not enough feedback. I like the sounds, especially the damage ones, very Quake-ish. Nice!
Thanks for playing! I agree about the enemy feedback, I'm working on improving that currently with things like hit reactions and blood effects. The running animation for the melee enemy is just from an asset pack I already owned, and the floating enemy animation is also kinda jank lol.
Good job but the combat feels really bad and unforgiving :( the game seemed to be promising but it was just frustrating to me
Sounds like a skill issue to me ngl
Great game with overall graphics and gameplay! well done
Thank you!
Very cool and fun game, but the combat is flawed
Aiming the crossbow is difficult because of how much precision it needs in relation to movement speed. The knife attack range is also way too short
Unrelated to the game itself, but the performance is awful in quality settings above Low, and I have a GTX 1650
Still, very nice
Thank you for playing, I appreciate the feedback and I'm sorry it didn't run well on your computer. UE5 is incredibly bloated so there's not much I can do about it unfortunately, I disabled lumen and some other features but UE5 just requires a pretty decent PC even without those I guess. For the crossbow aiming, I understand what you mean, some players who are new to the movement fps genre found it hard to aim, so in the future I might add an accessibility option to reduce the movement speed or something. As for the knife swings, I agree that the range is pretty low, I will change that in the future. Thanks again for playing and I appreciate the feedback!
Also about the game not performing well above low graphics settings, it would make sense that it does not run well above low settings because the 1650 is a pretty old card that wasn't particularly fast even when it came out
Artifact get! That was really fun! I liked the graphics style and I thought it fit the theme well. I thought the movement and mechanics were crisp too. I ended up only using the crossbow because the knife was too short-ranged and the delay when attacking was rough. I think it would be more smooth if the slash was instantaneous and a bit longer. Other than that, great game and I'm happy to be your 20th! Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with the knife slashing issue, that is probably due to the input buffering system, which I have since realized is not very good in an fps game lol. I'm glad you enjoyed playing, and thank you for being my 20th rating, I really appreciate it!
Nice! Movement and combat felt great :) Also I liked the background music. I was overwhelmed by the ranged enemies. Definitely a fun FSP ... oh! And I found the "secret" too!!
Thank you! I've gotten other feedback about the ranged enemies being too difficult, I will adjust their difficulty in the future. Nice job finding the secret, I think you're the only one who's found it so far. Thanks for playing!
Diving deep through the levels!
Things I enjoyed ✔️
Things I would like to possibly see with your title. 🤷♂️
Overall 📓
I loved the movement so much, I liked sliding and jumping around to go really fast, I honestly feel that the game could be released as a full title! Be very proud of this game!
Thanks for the kind comment! I agree with the feedback completely, I tried to add another weapon but I ran out of time unfortunately lol. And also, I definitely will try to continue developing it into a full game. Thanks for playing!
Really decent and atmospheric FPS.
EDIT: grammar
Thank you!
Neat idea :D I felt the combat againts ranged enemies was a bit too difficult as they can shoot you and you HAVE to get close to slash them. So much wished I could have thrown the knife.
Also a BUG REPORT: Jumping into the void on "level 2" crashes the game after you get hit down there :D
Impressive use of Unreal especially the opening scene.
Thank you! You might have missed the crossbow weapon, I have learned that it is somewhat difficult to find sometimes based on some other comments. Thanks for the bug report, I will look into it! Thanks for playing!
Oh and yes, I did miss a crossbow 😂
Unfortunately, the game is lagging on my computer, so much so that it's unplayable at about 2 fps, I'm not sure why as I have a pretty good computer, any ideas on how to fix this?
Oh that sucks, I'm sorry. What resolution is your monitor? I had a few reports about monitor resolutions not switching when in windowed full screen mode. For example if someone switched from 1440p to 1080p on their 1440p monitor, it would say it switched but still be running at 1440p. Also, make sure you're playing on low settings, you can change this in the main menu options menu. I tried to optimize it to run as well as possible, but UE5 is quite heavy by itself, so it requires a pretty solid PC to run. Also, if you don't mind, what are your specs?
It was nice to see medkits after evert stage. But please consider to make them bigger :) Neat fps game. Movement was a bit hard to me. Overall good job!
Thanks for playing! I understand what you mean about the medkits being small, I'll for sure make them larger in the future. For the movement, it's definitely not the easiest thing to get the hang of, but it feels really good once you do :)
I could make some accessibility options in the future to help players who are new to the movement FPS genre. For example, maybe I could have an option that makes the player and enemies slower or something like that. Thanks again for the comment and feedback!
Honestly one of the most fun games of this jam, challenging as heck but fun! I had jumping around with the knife and jumping enemies and slashing them! The only problem were the attacks queueing input, but still a lot of fun!
I love the style of the graphics and the whole aesthetic! The music really fits, one of my favourites (I'm being honest)
Some things that would be to change:
-I couldn't find the crossbow, so i just beat the game with the knife, but i think it should be easier to find (Or either i'm blind, or this was designed that way)
-There was no point in sliding, besides the beginning
But other then that, amazing game, it should have more rates!
27/30
Thanks for the review! I definitely have heard feedback about the input buffer system, and I'll definitely change that if I continue working on this game. The crossbow can be missed if you fall into the big hole in the floor in the second arena, otherwise it should be revealed after killing the first wave of enemies in that room. For the sliding, I think it depends on who's playing, my friend really liked sliding around everywhere but for some it might be easy to forget that it exists lol. Thanks for the feedback and kind words, I really appreciate it! Also great job on your game as well!
Very fun game! I am honestly not the best at first person melee combat so I can't really say how good it was but just how I was playing I very much liked playing with the bow more as its faster and can kill basically any enemy easier. The sword is basically useless after getting the bow as It does the same damage as the sword as far as I can tell ands its a lot safer to use. This is a really great game just and I just wish I had the bow by default honestly.
Thanks for the comment, I also found the bow easier to use for a lot of the game. I was trying to go for a risk/reward thing where it's more risky to use the knife, but has a higher possible damage output. I think I need to work on this a bit more though because it didn't really turn out this way lol. Thanks again for playing, I really appreciate it! And great job on your game too!
very good game, only thing i didn't like is the attacks that queue input.
Thanks for playing my game! I've heard some feedback about the input buffering from some other people too and I think I will modify/remove it in the future if I continue with this project. I appreciate the feedback!
Nice game, definitely feels inspired by old-school fast pace shooters. Using the crossbow is very fun and the atmosphere is very fitting with the theme.
Thanks for the comment, I was heavily inspired by old-school shooters so you're totally right, I also took a lot of inspiration from the game DUSK. I'm really glad you liked it, thank you for playing!
Also, great job on your game, I really liked it as well :)
Really fun game, gave me old school arcade vibes.
Thank you! That's definitely what I was going for, and also good job on your game, it was really cool!
great game! Felt like a fast paces old-school FPS, on point controls, music and SFX fit well. One thing I'll suggest is adding a V-Sync option on the menu (since you implemented quality settings already should be an easy addition) cause when it is uncapped the framerate fluctuates a lot in some places and that can cause a bit of weirdness/jankness with the mouse movement, and makes the GPU almost take lift as it try to squeeze every single frame it can from the game even when it is not needed. Good job on the little short and fun game.
Thank you for the comment, I will definitely add Vsync to my future projects, I generally don't use it in games but it is a smart option to add so more people on a variety of pcs can play. Thanks for the suggestion and for playing!
Cool game. It feels kinda like The Forest. I think you were inspired by the movie Descent which also inspired that game. Anyway, lox res textures make the visuals very blurry, for a moment i thought you wanted to capture the 90's boomer shooter look but i don't think that's the case here. Character moves way too fast for me. This wouldn't be such a problem if we were using fire arms, but we only use a knife in this game and the oversensitive controls make it too hard to hit the enemies. Another issue i have with the controls are, the character doesn't feel like it's walking, it's like sliding on ice. There needs to be some headbobbing, camera shake effect in a FPS game. Also there's no HUD in the game. You can't see how much health you have left, that's a bit of a problem. Other than that, i think it's a good project for a 7 days game jam. I appreciate your hard work and wish you luck on your future projects
Hey, thanks for the feedback! I appreciate all the details. So for the first thing, I was actually going for a retro look, and in-engine all of the textures are pixelated. For some reason when I packaged the game, all the textures just turned blurry instead, and I didn't realize this until after the submission period had ended.
Relating to the game only having a knife, I'm not sure how far through the game you got, but there is actually another crossbow weapon, so it is not only the knife.
About the sensitivity issue you had, I didn't have sensitivity issues probably because I play on a pretty low sensitivity, so sorry about missing that.
For the sliding on ice thing, I kinda wanted the character to feel like he's sliding, as opposed to walking, because the point of the game is to be super fast and utilize movement mechanics like slide jumps. I initially had head bobbing, but I feel like it is too distracting and doesn't really fit in a movement FPS game. For example, I don't think the game DUSK has head bobbing, and that was heavy inspiration for my game.
Also for the not being able to see the health, your screen gets desaturated and there's a blood overlay that shows more when you're low health, but i might not have made it obvious enough, sorry about that. Thanks again for playing, and I appreciate all the feedback!
good but size of game is very large
Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't do very much about that because Unreal requires about 300 megabytes by itself in the packaged game, and then the rest of the assets like a few megascans took up the rest of the space. Sorry about that but thank you for playing!