Play game
Gizmo's Quest's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #26 | 3.450 | 3.450 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
You explore the ancient, post-apocalyptic ruins left behind by humanity a long time ago.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I finished it! It took multiple attempts and 90 minutes but I finally reached the top!
I would have loved to give this game 5/5. But it's frankly impossible for me to do that because despite being incredibly polished and having amazing art, sound effects, level design, UI, and even enemy AI this was the single most frustrating experience I've had in this jam.
For starters, despite the control options available this game really needs the option to have A/D as strafe and Q/E as turn. That may be a subjective issue as other entries in this jam use the same scheme as this, it's just that it trips me up every single time.
I would also advise making Escape not exit the game entirely. I pressed it a few times subconciously thinking it to be the menu button.
I love the idea of the platforming, and clearly a lot of time and effort was put into it but man it is just too strict and punishing. I mentioned earlier it took me an hour and a half to beat the game, because I spent most of the game falling off ledges accidentally, jumps not registering, and most annoyingly the ledge grabbing would push me UNDER a ledge rather than ONTO it. It was also incredibly easy to end up overshooting the number of squares to move, so that would also make me walk over the edge.
I probably spent 20-30 minutes in the first area with the patrolling bots trying to get through the ceiling light platforming section. I got really sick of walking back up to the second level every time, a shortcut back to the start of that section would've been nice. I did eventually discover that I could load from the main menu, after accidentally exiting the game. But in this section it didn't help because it spawned me in a room on the second floor, but BOTH doors out of the room were locked and there was no button to unlock either of them. So I had to restart the whole game. And then of course I was still getting stuck on that section for several more minutes because sometimes the jump just didn't seem to register. The first time I actually made it to the end, I made the mistake of walking to the left and not the right. As I just mentioned the load didn't work, so I had to go through it all AGAIN.
When I finally made it out the second time, I then spent the next hour trying to figure out how to get to the top of the main area and being very confused about how the ledge grabbing worked. By far the most frustrating part was when I was at the top of that long ladder section, and I'd try to jump across the long gap and 95% of the time I would grab the ledge, and then my character would move under the ledge and fall down. Fortunately in this area the load option did actually put me back at a reasonable point, but it always started me with the ledge grab turned off for some reason. So half the time I'd miss the jump because I forgot the ledge grab function defaulted to off. To be honest, I don't know why there's even a toggle for it, there's no platforming sections that require the player NOT grab a ledge.
Also I should mention I think I found a bug, where one time an enemy spawned in the main area and killed me in a couple seconds while I was on that top area. And after I died the menu screen showed up for about a second and then disappeared as my player character slowly floated up into the sky. So I had to exit the game and reopen it that time. Also a note about loading a save point to retry a platform attempt, it's kinda annoying having to skip through that opening intro each time to get to the menu. And you can imagine by this point how many times I had to do that.
I even looked at a couple of the recorded playthroughs posted here and despite doing ostensibly the same thing as them I still wasn't getting through.
Of course, I did eventually get to the end, and my god the catharsis. I think my blood pressure went down about 30%.
So in conclusion, I think this was a great 15-20 minute game. That ended up lasting 90... If you could have either clearer instructions on the platforming and polish up the movement this would be awesome! But in it's current state it can be really, really frustrating.
Very nice ending animation.
The game is fun. In the context the environments look great and are quite detailed. Movement feels alright, not perfect but fine. I really like the music when inside the building while the music outdoor fits the gigantic environment. I love the verticality, that you get to go there and that there are a few dead ends as well there, the environment is super fun to interact with, I really enjoyed solving the game. It is satisfying to reach the summit.
I think the commands are perfectly fine yet not super intuitive at first. It's not completely evident you got the jumping ability and holding Space and pressing W is not super intuitive at first either even knowing Space is used to jump. The first times I grabbed a ledge I always kept Space pressed afterwards and then jumped into the void instead of moving up so judging only by my experience it should simply move up instead of jumping when Space is kept pressed and you move up while holding a ledge.
I wish there were combat of course, I'm sure you do to.
As is the game is already a cool game I enjoyed playing to the end and I'd be super excited to explore the same kind of levels but with combat too.
Hey thank you for your review and thank you for playing! We're glad you liked the vibes both visual and auditory, as well as the openness. A lot of the dead ends are alternate ways of getting around, that were meant to facilitate easier access to cut areas, but oh well, haha.
I get what you mean about controls, there will definitely be a need to refine them slightly. The reason space is used to get off a ledge is because I thought jumping off would make sense but I agree that it's unintuitive.
As for combat, it was all I could do to code the robots' movement and pursuit AI before the end so unfortunately you can only run away from them. But alas, thus are the overscoping dangers for gamejams.
Thank you again for your insight and for playing!
I'm not sure if I encountered a bug or not but I attempted to play this twice. I eventually got to a locker room with a robot and a keycard in the next room. I'm not sure how to use the card, but I couldn't open the door where the card was found. If I tried to go back to the room before the robot, you fall into a pit and the jump button doesn't seem to do anything. I've tried interacting/attacking/jumping on the robot and the buttons and the doors to no avail.
If someone has any idea what to do I'd like to keep playing as everything was really solid up to that point but I got stuck.
Hey, thank you for giving it a try!
The buttons in the robot rooms unfortunately don't do anything as that content was cut, however you can progress from getting the key! All you need to do is use it on the button in the same room with the interact button, and that will allow you to walk up to the door next to it and it will automatically open. You will know that you used it correctly as a happy beep noise will happen when you interact with a button while holding the correct key. I hope this helps!
Editing to add: the jump and ledge grab abilities are found similarly to the key cards
Thanks I'll try to hit it up again to give some proper feedback!
Great visuals. I was blown away first by the title screen and then by the game screen. Overall, It is polished. However, the controls are a bit quirky. I was confused at first because I couldn't figure out that holding Space to move makes jump. It is even more complicated when Grab is added. There were many times when I held down the move key and ended up falling because of the momentum. Maybe it's because I'm not good at action.
Nevertheless, it was a fun game. Good work!
Thank you for your review!
Tutorializing was our biggest blind spot so I don't blame you for having difficulties with the controls. We will need to be more diligent in player training next time, that's for sure!
We're glad you liked the title screen and the general presentation so much! Considering this was our first foray into the third dimension of game dev, we are quite proud of the results.
Thank you again for playing!
Oh man, that is so cool, you actually found a way to make verticality work together with the gameplay. Some kind of puzzle platformer like Prince of Persia or Flashback, this is such a good idea for a crawler, this fits the step by step movement well. You just need to iterate a bit more on the systems and add some context sensitive feedback, where what things are possible and make all actions be able to use either by mouse or keyboard as I did not care for some things onle to be done by a mix of both. The graphics are migthy fine as is the sound. Movement is spot on and generelly it is impressive, that such a Gamemaker games gives most bigger engine games a run for their money.
Hey thank you for the review and we're glad you had a good time with our game! Verticality was something important for us to include from the start, so we are happy to hear it works so well!
I am not sure what you mean by having certain things possible or not on mouse versus mouse/keyboard, as all the controls should be available for all control schemes. Though I will admit that they're not the most intuitive so maybe that is at fault here.
Thanks again for playing!
Then I did not understand the tutorial screen, as mouse Left/Right was for Attack and Use, but there were no keys for it?
There are different controls for WASD + mouse, WASD no mouse, arrow keys + mouse, arrow keys no mouse, numpad + mouse, numpad no mouse, and controller :)
You change the layout by pressing left/right in the controls screen
Jeez, I am so dumb ;)
Interesting idea with the traversal mechanics, though I found the grab frustrating until I figured out how it works. Maybe some more UI feedback on whats going on with that would be helpful for smooth brains like me. I'm not sure if there was ever a situation where I wouldn't want grab to be enabled.
The rest of the movement is snappy and feels good. I really enjoyed the jump. I definitely over shot a few times and had to circle back, but I again I just had to slow down and be more deliberate with my movement. The fact that it unlocked a bunch more of the level built a great progression to the game.
Strong presentation with the vibey opening and closing cut scenes and the presence of the cute little robot dude. I think this game looks and sounds really good, the environments are varied and the space is large and logically consistent as a kind of mine or something. There was also just a ton of polish and variety and environment art that made the space fun to explore, it wasn't just a bunch of corridors. I especially liked the cafeteria with the posters and tables and stuff, then to come back and be able to jump across the rafters was a cool way to revisit the space in a new way.
Overall a very impressive game with a ton of content, a lot of polish, and some really interesting gameplay ideas.
Thank you for playing and I am glad you had a good time with it! Also please don't feel like not figuring the grab out right away is on you, probably the biggest mistake I made in making this game was not toggling the autograb on as soon as you pick it up, haha. As for when you would want to have that off, there was more platforming planned where falling straight down would have been more beneficial than clinging of of a ledge would have been, but we never made it that far. UI for it was also planned, but I ran out of time and couldn't fit it in.
We are particularly proud of the presentation and level design, so I am glad you found those two categories to be to your liking! The little robot is the titular Gizmo, who was meant to have more dialogue but alas, jams and time limits haha.
Either way, thank you again so much for your review and for playing!
Charming! There is a lot going on, with nice graphics and textures and unconventional mechanics like jumping and getting on ledge. The timing to perform a jump is a bit too strict and I fell many times. However it was very nice and the music at the start fits the game.
Thank you for your review! The game is essentially the answer to the question of "what if dungeon crawler but parkour" haha
i am wondering if you were pressing jump and direction in quick succession, rather than holding space and pressing a direction, as there shouldn't be timing issues with the jump. We did have an issue with not managing to tutorialize it very well so that is on our priority list for the post jam fixes.
I'm glad you liked the vibe! I am neither the artist or the composer of the team but I am happy with how it all came together in the end :)
This is really impressive overall.
It looks fantastic, sound is nice and the movemet feels great. The first section through the doors was mostly intuitive, even if I got a little stuck trying to figure out how the jump worked. But I got really stuck on the second platforming sequence in the open area.
It took me a while to find the main lead. That's mostly on me. I didn't go to the top of the winding ramp and kept getting distracted by other routes I couldn't reach yet.
But after that, I got the Grab power, without really understanding what that was.
When it finally clicked, I had trouble performing it. If I held Space before I held Shift, it wouldn't register.
I figured that out, but then came a combination of other issues.
Basically, I'm used to Q/E turning and A/D strafing. This is the first year I've encountered the reverse, and I admit it caused me some trouble. I've never reflexively gotten used to it. So I made a bunch of mistakes just walking off edges.
But then the queuing kinda got me too. Sometimes I just carelessly over-shot. But when it gets to the point where I'm having to hold down Shift and Space, my brain is reflexively holding buttons, so quite a few times I massed up ledge climbs or walked off edges because I kept holding Up. Could be a skosh sensitive for prescision platforming.
Not to mention Esc being just a press to close the game. Again, my brain reflexively associates Esc with 'Back', so I think I accidentally closed the game about 3 times. (If you keep that, a 3 second hold would be safer.)
I had a bit of luck on the last one though. I had just fallen off the last bit of platforming section before the end, and when I reloaded I was back at the top. 20 seconds away from the ending.
And it's still a great entry despite my troubles!
I'll post my gameplay when it's up.
EDIT: Gizmo's Quest Field Trip Pt1 by Team SunForge
Hey! Thank you for the great in-depth review! We're glad you enjoyed your time with it even despite the more unintuitive aspects :)
With the disclaimer that this is an explanation and not an excuse, a lot of the issues you cited come down to cut content we ran out of time before we could implement. For the ledge grab, you can toggle it on/off, and you only need to hold shift when it's toggled off, otherwise t behaves as if shift is always being held automatically.
Esc closing instantly was a holdover from the debugging stage, I will have to add a confirmation window for that definitely.
I planned on being able to toggle between QE strafe and AD strafe but I'll be honest, I just plain forgot I was goin to do that by the time I got to the control schemes. That one is my bad, haha.
The game essentially autosaves your position every minute, which is how the reload works! It's mostly there in case there's a game breaking crash so that players don't have to start over. Glad it was useful :)
Thank you again for the amazing review and the opportunity to watch you play it! It's always a great resource for learning to see others go through your game.
I admit that I am not a parkour guy.
That being said, this was an amazing entry with great visuals, just not exactly my cup of tea.
It did crash, but you know... getting a game working in 9 days ain't easy.
Good job.
Bit late of a reply but thank you for the review! It was a pleasure and a privilege watching you play through it and we're glad you enjoyed your time with it!
You're not the first person to get hit with the interdimensional robot police bug crash, but rest assured it's first among the issue fixes for the post jam build.
PROS: Great game, map, music, and visuals! Really enjoyed playing this!
CONS: Some bugs/crashes, could use tutorial and maybe more clear help with pathfinding.
Thank you for your review and the helpful opinions on your stream! I haven't mentioned it there but it's really so helpful to see someone else play through your game, so we really appreciate the opportunity to see that!
Of course, hope my feedback was helpful!
this game is very good and content filled for a game jam. I really liked the music and the atmosphere of the game, it was pretty immersive. But the game was a bit confusing due to it not having much indicators/hud stuff but that maybe would have the immersion worse and I accidentally closed the game 2 times by pressing esc lol
Thank you for the review! I was worried that it would be too short so it makes me happy to hear you think it's content filled! The esc straight to exit is an issue that I will need to fix in the post jam update, and the tutorializing and lack of indicators was mostly an issue of cut content. Hopefully I will be able to reinstate those in the post jam update too. But as far as this version is concerned, thank you for playing it!
Finally made it. Not sure I visited all places though. I almost gave up after trying three times to get the first keycard and not being able to go back due to not having jump ability yet. Read the post here and figured I had the same issue and got past that section.
It was a fun experience and not that tedious. At a first glance the level looks a bit intimidating. It looks like it will take an hour to complete. But the gameplay is nice and the abilities work quite well.
I clipped through the walls on one or two occations. Having ESC quit the game directly is a bit harsh, I expected a pause screen.
Overall a very nice game. Good job!
Thank you for the review! There's a bunch of optional places to climb in the cave area that don't really lead anywhere (they would have went to other areas had I the time to put those in) so if you found all the abilities and got to the end, you've been everywhere the game strictly needs you to have been.
I should really learn not to leave tutorial messages to the last minute and then not being able to put them in because I am scrambling to hold the game together for a release build haha.
Honestly, I am proud with how few places there are with walls I forgot to give collisions, but I'd be very grateful if you could tell me where you found those and I will fix those, it's a pretty easy fix once i know where they are
One way to not needing to have tutorials is to make it more obvious what items do and how. The keycard in the office you need to click the mouse to use to open the door. The lock is not the same color or shape as you would expect a keycard to fit through. The colors of the text above the doors does not correspond to the color of the key you need to have to open them. These things confuses the player. Also the jump ability is a keycard and has same color as a door key card which mixes it up even further. The collider I remember where it was was on top of the broken ladder at the main area which you are not supposed to be able to climb I guess, but you pass into the structure. Hope this helps! And once again good job!
Yep I had one of my testers bring up that same point about the signs over the doors, But it was already too late. These are all good poitns, thank you for your very practical feedback! And thank you for playing, we're glad you enjoyed it!
I wasn't expecting platforming puzzles in a dungeon crawler, but I think you executed it pretty well. Very, very nice environmental atmosphere and pretty textures. I managed to miss the line in the description about needing to find the ledge grab/jump abilities, so I tried to use them a few times before I had them, but that's on me. I will say that having an indicator for when auto-ledge-grab was enabled would have been nice.
I noticed what I assume were remnants of cut content (like the buttons on the back of the robots & the handful of non-interactive buttons) - I like where your designs were going.
I also recorded my gameplay w/an onscreen keypress indicator:
Hey! Thank you for playing, that video was incredibly instructional! I rarely have the privilege of watching someone go through our games for the first time without me giving them hints over their shoulder lol. Navigation and platforming was my goal from the start since I figured no one was going to do a weird step-by-step parkour style movement game, and I liked the challenge of making that idea and making it feel good to play.
In your defense, I did not have time to tutorialize things, so I don't blame you for not figuring out the jump and grab abilities srtaight away. And as far as the ledge grab toggle is concerned, you are absolutely right! There was supposed to be a left hand that would indicate it, which I never had time to model, haha
And good eye for the cut content. The player was meant to have an attack to stun the robots with, and an entire third area that I had fully modeled but didn't have the time to texture and map out for collisions. If only I had one more day, haha.
Thank you again for your valuable feedback!
Good game, nice art style and mechanics.
Thank you! We're glad you enjoyed!
Hey,
I really like the art style and presentation of the game. Also I did not really get what was working and what not and weither I was stuck because of the game or because of me. :D
I also like the pure keyboard controls. Way nicer with laptop on the couch.
The police robots hitting you even after you died, are a nice touch. Or this was just a bug for me. :D
Hey thanks for the review! My suspicion is you didn't use the keycard found in the office past the robot, on the lock next to the other door in the office. We didn't have the time to put in tutorials unfortunately. the police bots have a variety of fun bugs, but that one's more related to the game over screen not working right either hahaha. Them's the breaks! But again, we appreciate the feedback and I'm glad you had a good time with it!
Nono I think I used it, I got 2 or three cards with the red one the latest, but then I got stuck and could not come out of where I was. I went there by jumping down a ledge and everything past that was circular or at least I did not find another way.
Oh I see! the third card is actually the jump ability, which you can use to get across the tops of the lights in the cafeteria from above :)