Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

Adventure HeartView game page

Will you risk your title for nobility or rebellion?
Submitted by Dendrobyte, viirens — 1 hour, 56 minutes before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Adventure Heart's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#9812.7502.750
Gameplay#10142.7502.750
Visuals#10773.0003.000
Enjoyment#12152.6672.667
Overall#12932.5142.514
Innovation#15132.0832.083
Theme#17751.8331.833

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does the game fit the theme?
Risking your life in the dungeon for the thrill of one of three possible romances!

What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
All code was written during the jam time frame.

Visual assets (itch.io, opengameart & Kenney), Background Music (of my own creation in 2019).

More specific credits on the game's itch.io page

How many people worked on the game?
2

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted

The game looks nice and sounds nice! I really like the background music, it's quite calming and enjoyable. I am originally going to praise that you've gone through the effect of adding three endings and multiple dialogue, but for some reason, the game keeps bugging out, and got stuck at the dialogue. I wanted to read them so badly. There seems to be different storylines too, such a shame. The gameplay is decent, yet a bit simple in it's current form. It boils down to spam clicking the mouse button to hit everything in the way. Speaking of which, would it be way better if you could just hold down the button and fire automatically? My finger hurts after doing that for a while. The graphic is also a bit inconsistent. It would look nicer if we increased the size of the game objects while keeping the scene as it is. It felt a bit out of place right now.

Anyway, though the game still needs a bit more work, it's certainly going somewhere. Keep up the good work!

Submitted

I love the pixel art style it really gives me old Zelda vibes! :)
I did miss some kind of indication when hitting enemies with the daggers, like having the enemy sprites flash or something similar.
The music and sound effects are also really well done. :)
Great job overall!

Submitted

I really enjoyed the idea yall were going for, even though the execution I think just wasn't up to snuff with the vision. I have a few things yall could consider for future projects, or even this one if you plan on an update. I can see from your itch page that both devs haven't made too many release yet, so I was a little extra nitpicky so you guys could know exactly what to improve on for future projects.

  • Mixels: Using assets from different sources (for sprite work), is usually discouraged due to not being cohesive in artstyle, but you could get away with it as long as you kept the pixel sized consistent. The issue here is that the character's are finely detailed, while the environment has massive pixels. You almost never want to mix different pixel sizes, and it is the biggest contributor of the game looking chaotic and half baked.
  • Color pallette: This goes back to using assets from multiple sources. With the environment being basically all green, the character icons not following this color even slightly makes them looks jarring. A quick fix to this would be to tint your characters green as well, to cement the green lighting, but a better way to go about it is to not use clashing palettes from the very start.
  • Dashing: The dash being a teleport forward without any animation (or cooldown) just feels bad. Usually a dash wants to be a speed up rather than a teleport, but if you do want to make a teleport, consider adding some camera smoothing and a disappear/reappear animation, so it doesnt look like the game was just fastforwarded. (Also a cooldown for balancing reasons in other games)
  • Attacking: I really liked how the daggers spun off after they hit an enemy, but I don't see any reason that the attack shouldn't just be hold to attack. In the current implementation, there's no cooldown so the optimal way to play is to mash the hell out of lmb, and that's just not very fun. Also, attacks have no oomph. No weight to attacks contribute to stale combat.
  • Enemies: I couldn't tell you what the enemies do. I found no reason to approach and let them attack, so they all just slowly moved towards me (or literally didn't even notice me) while I went around in circles. This is a let down mainly based on the combat.
  • Combat: Combat just wasn't fun. I'm sorry if I'm being harsh, but the combination of movement being too quick, ranged combat, mashing the attack button, and enemies being too dumb to actually pay attention to me made combat more of a shore than an actual enjoyable activity.
  • NPCS: I liked the idea about pursuing a different romance option. There isn't really much depth to it though sadly, and I can contribute that to mainly a time crunch. What I can't really contribute to a time crunch is the lack of consistency when talking to NPCs. I can only interact with them sometimes, and there's hardly a reason for that. I talk to them, go back in the dungeon, talk to them, repeat. Feels more like a poorly communicated checkpoint system for a quest.
  • Gold..... What does gold do? 
  • Audio: I like the hit effects, and the shoot effects, but the overall track doesn't feel like it fits the vibe? it feels very ethereal, but the game visually doesn't follow this energy.
  • Misc: I just found it very jarring that leaving the dungeon doesn't put you in front of the dungeon, but the starting location. Also, what's the point of the bomb objective if you have to kill all the enemies to leave in the first place? That's the true objective, but isn't portrayed in the story at all.



Overall, this was a pretty cool entry that was just undercooked due to inexperience. Great job submitting and getting something to run though. That itself is an accomplishment, and jams are the perfect environment to learn.

Developer

Really great feedback- thanks so much!

It's funny because "what does gold to" is a recurring theme- one of those things through QA. Gold is to the princess as bombs are to the rebel- we just forgot to account for the fact that gold often has a purpose in games and since we didn't call it out explicitly, it completely lacked fundamentals here.

I think the 'true objective' is to romance one of the options, hence either bombs or coins. Monsters are just... there. Originally ideas were had for the ghost girl for them, but we had to cut them for time.

No harshness taken, we both have full time jobs and were glad we were able to submit what we were as two programmers. Ultimately our risk of choice was a narrative one, with a subpar combat system; but it fell short of even subpar haha. Ty for all this! Really appreciative.

Submitted

Hi there, I saw that you were giving some really detailed feedback to other folks, and I really appriciate that! ❤️

So here's some of my thoughts about your game as a thank you for your work.

  1. Bit of onboarding feedback: you don't want to bombard the player with lots of dialogue from the get go without hooking them in with gameplay beforehand. It's hard to care about story without caring about enjoying the game first. If I were to do this story choice thing, I would let the player go through a dungeon or two to get some context about the game, and then let them decide whether they want to go with the princess or with the rebels. I didn't even realize that I was going to choose one or the other in my first playthrough until reading the description.
  2. The enemy patterns are really nice! They feel like swarming enemies, but they move in a much more interesting way which scratches my brains
  3. I pretty much never used the dash and it's a bit pointless since there aren't any projectile based attacks or large ramming hitboxes to dodge.
  4. Both the enemies and player lack visual feedback. The most common ways to do this are: sprite flashes, shakes, screenshakes and particles. The few times I got hit, I didn't realize I took damage. This is the sort of stuff you have to write code for once and then you just reuse the same thing for future projects, so I would recommend investing some time into making a library for that sort of thing.
  5. The throwing daggers stuff reminds me of ROTMG (Realm of the mad god) which is fun. You could definitely spice it up by adding charged throws, or you need to collect your thrown daggers to be able to throw them later etc. but that's more for a post-jam update than for anything else.

Not too sure what else to say. I could go on a rant about stuff you can obviously tell about the game, like the use of premade assets, or missing a bunch of polish here and there, but I feel like making a polished and complete game wasn't the primary goal for you, and for what it is currently, it's a nice project.

Developer(+1)

Super appreciative of all this feedback! Couldn't agree more (and you definitely touched on something valuable in #1). Just two devs with jobs trying to squish something in their spare time, so you just about nailed it at the end- just getting in our three romantic interests with just any game loop was our goal.

Kinda cool that the daggers reminded you of FOTMG, taking that one as a compliment haha! Really really appreciate the feedback; idk if we'll go anywhere with this idea but we're so glad to have submitted something, and it's really cool seeing people engage with it on various levels.

Submitted

Hey, your game is pretty cool! I would love to play with s̴͚̠͚̙̥͔̈̇̍͊̽̓̔̓͌̿̽͗͂̋̏͝d̷̬̥͙̭͇̙̦̣̘̰̯̑́̈́͋̏̆͘͜͠g̸̡̛̣̙̯̟̦͖͍̩̺̘̾̉͜͠ͅ-̷̨̧̢̨̩̠͕̲̹̯̈̉̒̀̑̌͆͐̄̚≠̡̙͕͕̘͚̞̳͖͈̼̦̥̘̈́̈́̏͛̈̃̅͋̒͛̊͆̕͜ͅa̶̞̝̦͔̙̾̑̔̏̇̈͋̃̇͜͜͝͝͝͝ ̵̱̦͙̭̯̯̗̠̠̤̰̜̄̔͂́͒̽=̷̼̙̭̱̅͐͠ä̷̛͓̬͕͙͂̎͋̅͘͜ͅs̷̨̢̖͔̩̜̋́̍̌̐̑̿͆͂̅͗̚͘̕͝-̶̮̙͈͔̯͉̗̺̝͐̊̐̇̓̌̐̉͌̚͜͠d̴̡̗̻͈̃̓̍=̷̢̲͍̻̈͋͆-̸̫̦͚̻͉͈̺̝̠͓͚͊͆̄̎̾͛0̶̦̹̥̬̊͗̊̒́̓̄̓̾̈́̋͒͠-̴̨̡̡̟̦͚̖̜̳̩͆̓̄͑͐͋͆͌͐̚͠3̸͉̮̮͚͔͖̭͚̟̭͓̼̰̠͎̗̼͌[̸̨̨̠̲̫̯̲͌̋̆̆͑͊̒́̓́̀̊]̵̨̭̻̼̰̮̪͔̩̈́̽̂̅̅͆̆\̸̟̪̰͈̦̘̩̮͙̔̅̃͘]̵̡̛̱̗̗͖̹͓͓̩̼̣͉̺̤͈͆̏̽͊͜ͅ2̵̯̝̥̍̒͒̄̈́̎̓͘]̸̧͍̩͙̘̭͕̳̝̪̔̌́̕̕͝\̵̨͓̬̟̦͕̖̞̘͇̊̈͋́̾̐̔̏̈́̀̌̄̏͝3̴̖̌̇̑̓͛́̊̿̏̒̈̐͘͝-̸̧̪̝̝̯̇-̶̧͔͇̜̞̗̿̊̄͋͗̋̾͆̆̚͜-̷̢̫̣̠́̈́͒͒̊͑̇̽͆̓̅͗́͝ ̷̢͇̈́̇̎͌͐̄̂̈́̍͑͆̍  sometime, maybe for the next update haha, nice job!

Developer

Thanks so much for playing! 

She is a romanceable character currently so definitely make sure to stop by on your way out of the dungeon (or did you mean as a playable character?)

Appreciate you stopping by!

Submitted

Super cute! The character runs a bit fast, but I liked the dagger attack a lot.

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for playing! I wash oping to make character speed configurable but alas... haha. Thanks for dropping the comment too

Submitted(+1)

Love the audio and the cute visuals. Good to see some role playing games in the jam. I enjoyed the game!

Developer

Ay, thanks! Funny enough, part of why I liked your game a lot was beacuse we were originally playing with the idea of having a timer on each dungeon level and you could leave early on, at the risk of not collecting enough of your romantic interest's objectives. Was really cool seeing that come to life in another game.

Thanks for dropping by!