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The Gorge's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #66 | 3.656 | 3.656 |
| Overall | #133 | 3.418 | 3.418 |
| Innovation | #134 | 3.312 | 3.312 |
| Game Design | #153 | 3.409 | 3.409 |
| Graphics | #155 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Theme | #176 | 3.688 | 3.688 |
| Audio | #380 | 2.774 | 2.774 |
Ranked from 93 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?
The game is based around going down a mysterious pit, in a sense, diving deeper inside the earth.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
The graphical assets are made from scratch by me and my team, but some are not, like the sound effects.
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Comments
Good job! The grappling is very dynamic and well implemented.
However I feel the overall movement speed you reach and the level design goes a bit against it. I felt more frustrated than in control as whenever I tried to descend fast I always ended up dying in less than a second, so I found myself descending very slowly and carefully, without using none of the tools I had to go fast, because then it was game over. I also went slow because I didn’t want to miss the checkpoints! Maybe to have them as a horizontal line that crosses the full pit would have helped me to take more risks as well.
I think using the double jump as a momentum break would be interesting as then it would give a breather when going very fast and encourage you to take risks. I noticed the double jump is available at the beginning but when you reach some momentum it’s disabled, which is when I wanted it most. I only used the dash at the tutorial, because every time I used it descending it killed me against something or made me lose the platform I was aiming for. I never tried to pull my character with the rope because I didn’t find any reason for it.
Some of the spikes were very hard to notice, specially the yellow ones and the death felt weightless: would have been cool to stop the movement and adding a camera shake so it felt a bit better to die and retry.
Overall, I think the game goes a bit too fast and it’s too unforgiving to encourage you to use all the tools you have. Reminded me a bit of sonic, that you are going too fast and end up being hit because you just can’t see what’s comming next, but in sonic you can gather back your rings and continue whereas in here you just die. It becomes a bit into a memory game, trying to go through the same paths you know.
All that said, I kept trying to go down so it’s an engaging entry. Thanks for the game!
Thanks for playing and taking your time to review the game in-depth, every critique helps us a lot in making the game better! Yes, for now the descent is very much trial and error, but we plan on flashing out each mechanic in a future update. We'll probably rework the player controls and the dash (making them more like Celeste, where you have more control over where you are going), and polish the level generation a bit better, to make it possible to have the character fall for long distances!
Excellent job! I loved the movement and kept laughing out loud at the death sound haha.
Obviously, some music wouldn't hurt, but beyond that, great start!
Very cool game, traversal mechanics feel really good. One suggestion - maybe checkpoints in tutorial? Because of unusual inertia and some small things like inability to harpoon midjump, it became pretty challenging for me. Maybe skill issue :D
Thanks for playing! The tutorial has a checkpoint at every explanation, so the player can try again and again with the mechanic without losing progress. Tho I must ask you when you died, did you press "Reset Level"(start from the first checkpoint) instead of "Retry?"(start from the last checkpoint)?
Many told us "Retry?" looks more like a title, so we plan on making the death menu more intuitive with future builds! :D
Ooh yeah, I was hitting the "Reset" one. Can confirm - "Retry" doesn't give off clickable vibe :D
Very fun game to play, really enjoyed it. I love the art and the gameplay, the part where you got the newspaper when the players dies is funny as well. I found the level quite hard to do, since you can't see much of the lower levels.
Really fun take on the theme. The grappling hook worked great and was polished. The visuals look great everything was nicely drawn and beautiful. The UI also does a great job at communicating to the player. I personally found some of the sounds annoying but other than that the game was incredible.
Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed! Sounds will probably be updated in a future update ;D (will go along with a soundtrack, probably)
Wow! Really fun to play. Smooth well made mechanics. Good use of fall damage. Polished neat game. Music would be the cherry on top. Good job!
Can you try and rate my game ?
I really enjoyed the game! I would work on the sound to make the game feel more polished. Great tutorial too :)
this movement is so addicting and i have no idea how you even made the tutorial enjoyable, amazing game!
Great and very fun game! Enjoyed a lot of it, even though it was very hard for me (couldn't even beat the tutorial xD)
The grappling hook physics were perfect, and I really liked the level design. Good job!
Enjoyed the game although I was unable to finish it, really enjoyed the swinging but I found the double jump to be relatively pointless as most of the time I was moving down too fast for it to do anything
Hi, thanks for playing and leaving feedback! In future versions we'll think about adding more sections where every mechanic will be equally useful. Stay tuned! :D
It's definitely a challenging game, but even after I died many times I still wanted to play again and again. The game controls well and the pixel art looks nice. Well done on the submission!
Awesome
devilishly difficult, but tight controls and a bit of a twisted sense of humor! love it!
Thanks for playing our game, glad you liked it ;D
I died so many times learning the controls but once I did it was pretty simple to descend. I love grappling hook games, and this was fun to play! I liked the little news clipping pop up whenever I died, that was a nice touch and quite funny.
We only had a week to build these games so none of them are perfect, but I'd have loved more audio with the game., it would have helped build the atmosphere a bit more.
Thanks for playing our game! Audio was added in the last hours of development so it is not perfect at all, but we plan on adding much more ambient sound (and even a soundtrack) in a possible future update! :)
Your grappling hook shoots out very quickly, which is nice. I didn't see much opportunity to swing around on it though, whenever I tried I ended up swinging into a spike, and it seemed much simpler and safer to nudge down slowly. The character also feels very heavy, which could be why I had trouble building momentum for a big swing.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback! :D
Very fun game, I liked to grappling mechanic! I feel like the character accelerates too fast, it took me a while to get used to the controls.
Also the Game Over screen is not designed well in terms of button placement, me and my friends did not realize you could press the RETRY button at first, we assumed that was a title or something xD
Thanks for playing and leaving feedback! Yes the death menu was slapped together without much thought, in hindsight (my friends who playtested the game told me the same criticisms). It will be improved upon in future versions by making each button more recognizable! :D
Game is very good! The movement lends itself to so many complex techniques and such. With time, a game like this could become a speedrunning game. I did my best to master the jump, dash and grapple as much as possible in the time I played it. Might just go back to this one to play again!
Glad you enjoyed it so much! Yes, we made it so it was also fun to speedrun! In the future we plan on adding many new mechanics, and tweak those already present to blend them even better with the gameplay, so stay tuned! :D
Really nice, compact, and well-made. One of the most polished games I've tried so far. The only thing I would add is an audio track in the game to create more atmosphere. The attention to detail in the UI is also excellent.
I got to the bottom by spamming space and grappling hook while hugging a wall and got out the map...
Yes, we forgot to put something to prevent the player doing that...gues it's an effective strategy, tho😅
We will iron out bugs like these in a future build!
Tends to happen alot in game jam games :/