This game is so cool. I really like the movement and the rewind mechanic. It is very fun to play!
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VaporRunner's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #176 | 3.607 | 3.607 |
| Fun | #213 | 3.607 | 3.607 |
| Overall | #335 | 3.470 | 3.470 |
| Graphics | #367 | 3.679 | 3.679 |
| Game Design | #399 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Theme | #547 | 3.357 | 3.357 |
| Innovation | #560 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
In what way does your game fit the theme?
Rewind mechanic on left click and retro/vapor/synth aestethic.
Did you write most of the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
Most of the code is written by us. The only asset used is a Royalty free song under CC attribution.
Comments
I realized at the end of writing this that I MIGHT have written more than I needed to write, but I'm hoping this long critique helps your game in the future.
I really like the visuals that this game has. The game almost has some TRON-like aesthetics with a twist since it's using a hot neon palette, rather than the regular neon palette that TRON has.
I also enjoy the hand animations that play out throughout the game; it's small details like this that make you feel like you're playing a human-character. Perhaps in a future update, you could add more hand animations for the jumping and sliding to give it some variety.
One of the notable hazards I liked was the thin wall that moves either to the left or the right. The reason being that it stops the player from just constantly spamming the rewind button in order to win since they could potentially rewind the wall right into their face. I find this to be a great design choice.
I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the walls and ceiling having the same grid, it's giving me a bit of tunnel-vision looking down the path with all the squares surrounding me. I personally think the walls and ceiling could be either darker colored, or not colored at all while keeping the grid on the floor. This is so the hazards can pop out more easily, and so players don't get sick looking down the end of the hall with a repeating texture.
There also seems to be a few moments where it's hard to tell how far away the hazard are. Perhaps if there were some small dust particles floating around that glow near the obstacles, it would reinforce the 3D space of where the obstacles are placed. It would also be helpful if the hazards had some sort of texture on them, it's hard to tell how far away the hazards are from my face if they remain as one static color the whole time. I would suggest having some sort of wavy static effect as a texture for the walls, similar to the walls used in Beat Saber:
The floating orb really doesn't seem fit with the square-styled look of the game. Everything in the game seems to have a rectangular shape style to it, and the roundness of the orb seems to stick out like a sore thumb. It's also kind of distracting having a random spot sticking out within a game that involves a lot of visual reactions. One suggestion I have for is to remove the orb, and instead have rewind action involve the player's hands doing a quick clenching animation (or any kind of magical hand gesture) to show that the running character is using their powers.
It would also helpful if there was a visual representation on what section of the grid the player is standing on. It would be helpful if the section of the grid that the player is standing on changes to a different color so the player can visualize if the oncoming hazards are going to hit them or not.
Thank you for the feedback! We actually thought about that.. You're saying we should let the player "hit" a little more of the obstacle or something, right? To make it more forgiving. That's what I understand. As for it being "tough as nails", we agreed we should tweak the difficulty. It's a bit frustrating that you get used to your own game and aren't as objective, the more you test it haha.
3 years ago(+1)
Hello! Thanks for the feedback! I just tested and you can switch lanes while mid-air, there's no restriction to that? Maybe it's a problem with the build, I'll look into it. And as far as I know, my friend made canvas responsive. Does the canvas not scale correctly on your screen? We'll look into this anyways, thanks for bringing it to our attention. It really helps!
3 years ago(+1)
Our intention wasn't to create an "extremely difficult" game, so we will definitely look into the "difficulty" aspect. The main idea was to incrementally increase the difficulty as the player reaches longer distances.
On the flip side, really glad that you like how the game turned out in the end. We really think that, with some improvements and adjustments, we can make this game playable for almost any skill level.
3 years ago (+1)
Love to hear that. Our ASAP priority: changing the difficulty of the game. We really got used to play testing it ooops haha. Also, going to add WASD as primary keys next update, don't worry :)
3 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the review! I think I get what you're saying with changing 'CTRL' for 'S' and 'SPACE' for 'W'. Maybe we can come somewhere in the middle and do both :) (We already want to add lots of settings as we had no time left in the jam for that sadly). And we'll make the game start easier, or at least give different difficulties.
Thank you so much for the comment! I would definitely look into the camera, as I think I know what you're talking about, sometimes it feels like the camera is not necessarily looking straight ahead at spawn. (It's because you load when you press play and move it around before you actually see what happens). We will look into making instructions more visible and as of the game being a little to unforgiving, I could make it ramp slower, but the jumping lasting longer could hurt the game as the forward speed increases in time and you could hit a wall before you jump again.
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