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A jam submission

Venture McGee and the Dungeon of Lost KeysView game page

A procedually generated dungeon crawler game about exploring ancient ruins
Submitted by Whullum, cecilia, Daniel Finch Music (zenith soundscapes) (@danielsfinch), Hi_Jr, Joshua Wood, cod3monk — 11 hours, 17 minutes before the deadline
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Venture McGee and the Dungeon of Lost Keys's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#403.2633.263

Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
Game takes place in an ancient ruin with an adventurer delving into it for treasure and riches

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Yes, I completed it!

Nice graphics and music and sound effects. The map helps a lot to orientate. It took me a while to realize what was the life bar. Combat is a bit to simple, could have some deeper mechanics that makes it more interesting. All in all a very good entry! Nice!

Submitted(+1)

I love the art in this game! The animation is so well done!

I enjoyed the exploration but ran into a bug. I could no longer move the character when I transitioned to the second floor. This was on the web version if it helps.

Otherwise, this was a really cool entry, good job!

Submitted(+1)

Very nice animations and pixel art! Game feels really solid also, got minor troubles with mushroom enemies, but overall it was a breeze completing this game.

I ended up navigating the map, as it felt faster and was just easier. Maybe there could be done something to make map useful, but will not make player crawling the map, instead of dungeon itself? Removing enemies, potions and keys from the map could also help.

Randomly generated dungeons felt same-ish, so while enemies changed and topology changed the grand idea of each floor was almost the same - corridor leading to a room, then again and again, rinse and repeat. I feel like adding variety to random generation will make each level more remarkable.

Submitted(+1)

Obviously the quality level here is very high, the detailed sprite-works and original music is all nice.

The random generation mechanic was cool and worked well to keep things interesting after deaths, however I think revealing the whole map from the start made me end up relying pretty heavily on just looking at the map unless I had to do some combat which is a shame as the sprite-work on the environments is good. 

Personally I'd have liked to see different tile-sets for each dungeon you go through as it was difficult for me to actually remember which dungeon/level I was in after a while. as there's nothing on screen telling you that either.

One frustration I ran into which I admit is partially my fault is, since I'd just played a dungeon crawler withQ/E turning and A/D strafing, getting into this one I kept accidentally strafing into the lava at the start and actually completely wiped out my health in like 3 moves in a few seconds doing it. For some reason the lava does a crazy amount of damage like 1/3rd of the health bar from one movement. That mixed with how little the potions healed caused more deaths than the enemies themselves.

For some reason the keep going button at the end wouldn't work for me (Playing in browser)

I found the actual combat to be quite satisfying dashing out of range of enemies and quickly dodging in with a whip-attack. Simple but effective!

Host (1 edit) (+1)

This right here is a solid crawler! Beautiful graphics and nice sound to go with it. All the mechanics work well and it's a gorgeous map. I would prefer that player uncovered map when exploring instead of seeing all of it at once. Whipping enemies from a distsance is very satisfying. The perspective is a little bit odd since the camera is pulled very far back. Sometimes I get confused near exits left/right, but it works.

+1 for a snappy instant step

Submitted(+1)

Good little crawler! I loved the art from the monsters, to the potion/whip animation and the tiles as well. Movement was implemented well, fast and responsive. I liked the map too, although having it reveal as you go would be easier to track ("Did I go there yet?"). 

Submitted(+1)

Short and sweet and very well put together. I think it looked really good and the levels were just the right length and difficulty. It took me a while to figure out how to drink a potion - I just pressed every key on the keyboard until I drank one. They don't heal very much and so I found taking damage very punishing. But overall I thought this was very fun and looked very nice. Especially the map, the map was great.

Submitted(+1)

I especially liked the attack animation and the UI design, the character getting more and more injured as you lose health is a nice touch, and the mini map looks really good. However my favorite thing was the actual animations of the enemy sprites, there was so much life and bounce in the animations, very cool. The music also added a lot to the ambiance of the ruins.

Great art, great sound, fun gameplay. Nice work!

Submitted(+1)

U, very nice graphics and I am happy with the instant stepping, it makes the game feel very snappy. The graphics and animations are nice and the sound and music complement the experience quite well. Very good entry.

Submitted(+1)

Yay, a really good one! Was quite entertained, one of the best entries yet, because it is so on point. Simply would have loved smooth movement, if you go 3d anyway.

Developer

You can enable smooth movement opening the menu inside the game hitting 'Esc'

Thank you so much for your kind words!

Submitted(+1)

Nice job! great presentation and atmosphere!

Submitted(+1)

Gorgeous art work, simple game play mechanics, and endless game play with proc gen! Who could ask for anything more?

A fantastic jam game :D Thanks for sharing it.

Submitted(+1)

Best attack animation in the jam so far, haha! 

Okay, this was a fun play, once I got the hang of it. As Cryptrat said, the distance to perils can be a bit confusing at first, but you get the hang of it. Snappy movement, good atmosphere, was quite fun to play!

(+1)

Very cool little game.  The graphics were great along with the music.  Solid gridder base.

Submitted(+1)

"CONGRATULATIONS!"

This was pretty cool.

At the beginning I fell into lava because the next tile is unusually far ahead of the player and for sure the enemies could move. However I quickly got used to the view and past the first few seconds movement felt great. The art is great, the minimap is among the best I've seen and the player character animations as well as the enemy ones are very cool too. I really like this kind of settings and it's appropriate to the themes. The generated dungeons feel like surprisingly good dungeons with good rooms, kudos for that, and the game is simple but fun to play.

Thanks for sharing!