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GALAXY CRAWL's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #43 | 2.607 | 2.688 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
Genre Fusion
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Comments
I think I can see what this game was going for, but quite frankly I was very confused for most of it.
First of all, the game experience wasn't helped by the fact there's no full screen option. So the game and UI were very squished in my playthrough.
I didn't understand how to use cards, or if there was some difference between some of them. I assume it's a bug, but I was confsued why after using a card once I would then have to manually reassign it to the deck if there was more than 1 of the same type left.
The overlaying UI windows are also very confusing because sometimes they don't hide when they're supposed to. Like the player health and current attack screen doesn't always go away even when press the button to hide it.
I think reusing the minimap overlay for the combat isn't a horrible idea for a turn-based game, but
I honestly wish there was a less intrusive health UI that was visible when not in combat. As my runs always ended by me not knowing how low on health I am, and then getting one-shot by a surprise enemy.
I'm not crazy about the font choice either, it's already a bit weird to discern some letters. Combined with the small viewport it made reading harder than it ought to be imo. And eventually I just stopped bothering trying to read them.
Back to positives though, I love the graphics of the dungeon, and the minimap looks pretty and itself isn't confusing. I thought the movement felt nice and snappy. Though I do miss the ability to strafe, and the ability to hold the move key down when moving backwards.
You managed to add an impressive number of cards with unique art and effects, and the number of terminals scattered around is neat.
I think there's definitely something solid in here, but it's buried under a layer of confusing combat UI, and a lack of feedback.
Good work!
Interesting environment! I included it in my compilation video series of all of the games from the Dungeon Crawler Jam.
Unfortunately I can't seem to get the game to run on any browser with Hardware Acceleration on or off. After the opening text scrawl it just freezes on the starry background. No rating for now as I can't realistically judge it fairly.
It looks nice and the movement is smooth yet snappy. but to be honest, even after reading the game page I found the combat really confusing. There just doesn't seem to be any feedback letting me know if I'm doing anything, and then I die.
Good game, the style of combat was very good once I got used to how it worked. The art style is nice too and I like the robot theme of the game. I think it would be better not having minimap on top of the game as it is distracting for the combat and explains the combat more so it is not as confusing but otherwise a good game.
Really cool game! Combat was really interesting once I was able to figure out how to work it. Great work!
Thank you for playing!
Very interesting game! There are of course flaws (I don't understand where my “repair” is spent when I try to use it, although I don't repair myself).
But I like this sci-fi about robots!
The text is a little hard to read because of the stylized “T” that looks like a “+”.
I liked it!
Thanks for playing! I added the font last minute, the default Arial text looked weird against the rest of the game. Guess I should've left it alone, or had picked a better Font. I'll have to make a list of good fonts to use for future projects. The combat is buggy, I struggled with that the most. I tried to add 3 genres of game and probably should've stuck with 2.
Either way, thanks for the feedback and kind words! I'm glad you liked it!
I understand about the font problem. I too try to collect fonts that will fit my future games. I didn't pay much attention to it before, but then I realized that fonts have a big impact on the game's presentation. But there's always a choice -- either a nice stylized one or a more “normal” but readable one.
It's okay that the game is buggy. It happens! Of course, everyone wishes there were no bugs at all, but reality is different ahahaha
Was confused at first that I couldn't get combat to work but, upon reading the comments, I realized that it was a Firefox issue. Playing in Chrome fixed the problem. A very interesting combat idea, although a bit confusing at first. Definitely needs a bit more polish on the UI/Feedback parts of things, but a very good base you have going here.
This has potential. The combat probably needs some more explaining. Maybe add some cards at start as I did not picked up the cards in the starting zone but went right into exploring and got busted early on because I did not have anything and did not know how the combat worked too.
After I corrected my mistakes it was a lot easier. Like others I also think that the minimap is a bit to intrusive and I ended up playing by the minimap which is a bit of a shame as I like the graphics. I think the tile size you are using is a bit small and maybe this is causing the clipping issues.
I am not sure if I get the theme implementation.
Are you going to update it post jam?
I learned that I need to add more player feedback, and do more testing from this jam. I didn't provide exact directions for how combat worked, and I saw people trying all sorts of things. It's coded to move first, then attack. I should have made something that gave you the option to choose, and it would have made more sense. (at least I think so.) The clipping thing was initially addressed, but I forgot to add the additional wall types as I added more, so I didn't notice until I saw a few videos. For the theme, it was combining multiple genre's. Crawler, Turn based RTS, and deckbuilding. The restriction is part of the gameplay, if you are able to make it to the end.
I'd like to update it, but I feel like I'd have to completely rewrite the entire combat section. I've never really done something with states or turn based, it's all usually in real time. I struggled getting things to slow down in a way to make the combat playable. Most of this was done tweening animations to prevent the combat from happening instantly. I need to spend some time figuring out how all of that works before I try something like this again. The cards were fun to do, but my implementation was more functional than it was fun. I didn't explain it enough.
Still, thanks for playing! I appreciate the feedback and kind words!
Nice retro sci-fi game!
I liked the Wolfenstein era aesthetics, nice music and crawling looked pretty solid.
For combat I mostly used cards which instantly killed enemies, which was not that hard to come by.
The thing I think needs improvement and is detrimental to the game process right now is the minimap. It’s too intrusive and I end up crawling minimap and not seeing the world in the process.
Conveyance. That's what I'm missing. Feedback to the player on what to do. That and I need to prioritize more playtesting, I may have gotten that if I did. I didn't do a good job explaining the combat, and that's the most consistent feedback I've gotten on a jam in a while. I had planned to have different strengths of enemies so that the cards wouldn't be insta-killing everything, but I ran out of time. It took me too long to implement the combat in a way that wasn't interfering with the dungeon crawling. Trying to mash both was challenging for me. I've seen a lot of people just play from the mini-map too. I should have done combat on a different layout or screen to add some separation, but I wanted movement to be reflected on the map and the mini-map in real time, which I hadn't done before. Bit off waaay more than I could chew this time, especially solo.
Thanks for playing the game, and providing feedback!
I nearly got to the end! I had fun with it, the combat was fun after I understood how it was working. The spaceship art is great and overall the crawling mechanics are solid.
I initially hit a snag in chrome where the story scrolled and I couldn't continue. A refresh fixed that. I got nearly to the end (I think, I explored most of the map) right around getting the red card and combat seemed to soft lock or freeze up and I didn't have enough time to start new, but I think there was an enemy off screen and I seemingly couldn't end my turn or proceed. But, I enjoyed it enough I would like to go back through and finish off stream. There was also an issue with clipping through the tiles when you turn, but that's overall minor.
Check out my gameplay here at the 24m mark
I watched the video this afternoon! Thanks for playing the game! Last time I did the jam the camera position in reference to the floor was one of the things that was called out, (you called this out exactly) so I tried to fix that this run. I have a function that makes the walls invisible when they are in contact with the camera, but I didn't add all of the wall types, so I'll have to be careful about that next time. One thing I'm learning is that I need to add more notification to the player on what should be done next, like you identified in your video. In combat you were expected to move first, then attack. I never really explained this, so it lead to missed turns in a lot of the runs I've seen people play. Nearly everyone eventually gets it, but I'm not conveying that well enough for it to be obvious. I also didn't make it clear that the combat actions take place on the 2d mini map and I've seen a lot of players clicking on the animations instead. This was my first attempt making something with turn based combat, and my combat loop needs work it seems. I need to look into how to use states better.
Either way, thanks again for playing and all of your feedback! (you were very close to the end in your video!) Sorry for all of the soft locks!
Hi Im having issues running your game. At the intro text scrolling I can press space and I get to a grey area with musc but I dont seem to be able to do anything. If I let the text run I get stuck at a blank page with some faint stars in the background. Not sure whats wrong, running in web on firefox windows.
I can't be sure why Firefox has those issues, but I've been told that clicking "use hardware accelerated graphics" in Firefox settings fixes some of these issues. I'm guessing the 3D wont work otherwise.
Ok I finally got it to run on Chrome. And I also completed the game.
It was hard to understand the combat system. And sometimes the enemies walks outside the view, and the attack seems unresponsive. Had to right click the map to cancel my action, at least that is my guess for whats happening.
Once I figured out how to attack the enemies they were fairly easy to destroy and not much tactics needed. If the enemies walks on tiles with items they hide from view in the map (they could still be attacked by targeting that map square). I only used missiles and lasers for the entire playthrough since they generated insta kills.
The map took over the entire screen so after a while I stopped looking at the normal screen and just navigated the map.
Strafing would be nice. The music was a bit monotone. The Font was a bit hard to read.
I Liked the graphics all in all!
Nice entry!
Cool game. I like the aesthetic and the card combat mechanic works well. The terminals are also a cool addition. As others have mentioned it's unfortunate when turning that the camera seems to clip into the wall behind it. I missed there being a sound when picking up a card. I also seemed to encounter an issue where I couldn't move - WASD seemed unresponsive but everything else still worked fine so the game hadn't crashed.
I think I missed a few wall types for the clipping thing. One of the things I got from feedback last time I did the jam was that the camera was too close to the walls, and you couldn't see the floor. I fixed this by offsetting the camera about half of the player distance behind, but this caused the clipping issue you mentioned. I tried to correct this by making the walls invisible if they were in contact with the camera, but I probably didn't all all of the wall types when I did so. I'll have to do a better job looking at that next time! There were some situations during the limited testing where combat would complete and not clear the array where all of the combatants were stored, so that's probably what caused WASD to become unresponsive. I added an option to right click to skip your move/attack turns if that happened, but I don't think that I added that note into the HOW TO section.
Either way, thank you for taking time to play the game! Sorry about the sound, I had about 2 hours to add audio before submission.
I retrieved the lifesign and reached the escape pod.
The game is fun. It looks good and controls well, I feel like I would have preferred instant turning because there's a weird animation when turning near a wall but that's a detail. The combat system is fun and the set of cards good enough, I think after I understood how it worked I still got defeated one last time because I didn't use my repair cards while you get more than enough and there's really no need to be conservative. After I restarted I never hesitated again before using one.
I think I got stuck in-combat-but-not-in-combat after I defeated 2 robots using an EMP targetting myself and had to restart, and then as I wasn't sure I never used any weapon targetting a zone anymore because I didn't need to anyway. As you're picking enough targetting cards which defeat an enemy in one hit I never tried any trap card either.
Cool game.
Awesome! You're the first person who's played it all the way through that I know of. Thanks for playing!
The turn-based combat was absolutely the hardest part to work in, and there were some occasions where combat completed too quickly and not all combatants are cleared from the turn order array. I didn't have time to perform a fail-safe check, but if I try to do something like this again, I'll have to have more testing done to catch bugs like that. The trap card gets placed on the map directly, and if an enemy is unlucky enough to step on one they explode. Those persist after combat, and initially my plan was to be able to set up a room with them and lure unsuspecting bad guys in there. Didn't have time to implement that (and many other things) sadly.
Hey! Awesome project, really felt the star wars and classic sci fi inspiration here. The art on the walls was especially cool. There were a couple of visual bugs, mainly turning makes you clip into the walls, and the inclusion of a mute button would be fantastic. I also was unable to find any cards, but I still had a good time killing enemies once I found out how the combat system works. Cool game!
Thanks for taking time to play! Strange that you couldn't find any of the cards though... what browser are you using? Maybe there was a visual bug? The cards are giant 3D spinning cards that you pick up on the map, they're hard to miss.