Play game
Data Vulture (Jam Version)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #34 | 2.941 | 2.941 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
Sinking ship: You must escape before the Spaceship warps into Hell.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Interesting game! I included it in my compilation video series of all of the games from the Dungeon Crawler Jam.
The atmosphere is great! But 3 times I got lost in darkness and couldn't figure out how to move back into a visible section and had to restart.
A well crafted entry with one of the best atmospheres in the jam. The idea of powering only certain sections was very good and added to the tension. Combat was pretty straightforward and you understand it after a few tries, so that went pretty well. I agree with the rest of the people in that a map would've helped immensely. Perhaps even a sectional map that you download from terminals and that shows you only parts, filling in as you collect more of them.
Finally after the third try I was able to escape the ship!
I liked the atmosphere, it did felt like I was on a ship with some experimental stuff running out of control. Graphics, music felt nice. Retro-sci-fi-punk-ish feeling :D
I didn’t understand the combat, it was triggered too often and at some point I figured out that I can just skip all the combat alltogether and just crawl the ship. Which I did :)
Here’s my play-through:
The Atmosphere was great and combat was fun to play. The environment was very good as it was creepy and eerie. It was fast to get hang of the combat and was fun to play.
I think a map or some sort of light would help mainly at the start as it was so very dark and confusing to find where was going but beside that there were little problems, the game was smooth to play.
Great work on this game. It was very good to play.
I love the concept, and the atmosphere was my favorite part of the game. I think you nailed that the most of any of the entries I've played. It felt very creepy walking around the ship. Well done! I really wanted a fullscreen option to immerse myself more in it.
I was enjoying this one quite a bit. The writing both got across the vibe of being trapped on a sinking ship with monsters. But then I got snagged in a corner when I think I was about to get the last data log.
I beat it! Fun entry. Atmosphere was great, combat was cool and kinda reminded me of Phantasy Star and the art was fantastic. The mechanic for switching the power around was fun and added to the challenge. I really liked the concept of being a Data Vulture - I would like to see more of that story. The length of the entry was just the right size for a jam as wel.
The entry could benefit from a map or flashlight. The lighting only showing up in sections and forcing you to face a certain way was a little bit jarring, but I assume there was a technical reason for this. There wasn't much of an incentive to fight, as once you get below health you just run without consequence. There wasn't enough health items to survive more than a few fights. Turning could be a bit quicker
Gameplay here at 26m mark
There is in fact a time mechanic running on the background that triggers a game over after wandering around too much, though we couldn't get around to implement the UI timer in time for submission.
Running away does tick that timer down a bit more than a step does and it should have been higher per enemy avoided. Jam cruch y'know? Thanks for the feedback!
Totally get it and I suspected a hidden time mechanic might be a thing after some text mentioning something about 15 minutes. Thanks for confirming that and again good job!
"You run to your fighter ship and close the door behind you."
Even after I mapped the game (cool spaceship map by the way) it took me an indecent amount of retries to win, and it was not very glorious as I won only when I realised that Running always? works (but I only did it when they were 3 or 4 enemies, still killed groups of 1 & 2).
I had a lot of fun playing the game, I thought the structure of powering up each sections, then activating light only there, and collecting the data was cool. The visuals are interesting. The length of the game feels right. I'm not exactly sure about the difficulty but maybe Running away can fail and I didn't see it because this time it always worked so I won.
Walking feels good but turning doesn't, you're stuck for too long after you did, it's specially noticeable when you press the button twice, it's super long with a big pause between the two rotations.
I dislike that transitions between screens turns you around, in my opinion it's confusing for no purpose. Also I think you can trigger a combat in a middle of a transition and then the game bugs, or something like that.
Very cool game!
Yeah we didn't have time to add a failing chance to running away, it surely will be one of the first improvements we'll add. The game also has some balancing issues that we need to iron out and that we're aware of lol, I know I have struggle with the same and also found the running away exploit xD.
Thanks a lot for the feedback! We will try to smooth out the camera issues you mentioned as well.
The aesthetic in this game is one of the best I’ve seen! However, the darkness made the game unplayable at times. I wish the player had a small light that allowed them to see their own tile.
Unfortunately, I became stuck in a wall and restarted the game to get stuck in a wall again. I think it may be related to running in combat. Or perhaps receiving an encounter while switching maps?
I would love to see a post jam version of this.
If you would like to watch my playthrough, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/hHr9D2aedfs?si=H2es9xpWJnP9dc7w&t=15200
I'm glad you enjoyed our game! We didn't add a flashlight since we hid some hallways in the dark and the flashlight would basically shut down that part of the puzzle solving.
Like for example you'd have no way of knowing where to find the Laboratory data if you went to the Lab Deck with the lights off. We are going to tweak the lighting a bit to make it more forgiving though!
Yeah, there's a bug that misaligns you with the map grid, happens when your Dungeon Crawler movement code is homemade and needs tweaking lol. I need to go through the code and figure it out, we've seen it on our side too :s.
Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Nice vibes in the game. Cool mechanic with managing the energy for parts of the ship. My biggest issue was navigating. I got lost and the combat interruptions didnt make that easier either. The fight were hard and I lost all my life and died. Didn't seem to be able to heal.
We got to the deadline and couldn't place consumables properly :s, so there ARE heals in the game, just tucked away in a room you might easily miss.
The navigation part I must say was intended though. It was a small map so we made it very symmetrical so getting lost was part of the challenge. We wanted to add more decor to each room so they would be more recognizable between each other but in the end it couldn't be :c.
Glad you enjoyed it!
The 3D environment and atmosphere was well done. The flickering and color changing lights really sold the failing spaceship for me. The combat was fun with a lot of options. I didn't see any explanations/tooltips which would be nice to help know what everything does but I was able to figure it out through trial and error. Great work!
We're glad you enjoyed it!
Hey I started playing this game, but before I continue with it and try to rate it, are you able to enable full screen on the embed? The setting shouldn't be blocked by the jam restriction, or atleast it isn't on mine.
I have enabled Fullscreen but for some reason the web player won't center the game on the screen, so it looks off. I wasn't aware there was a fullscreen requirement on the Jam!
Lol no requirement, it's just that for me it's very hard to play a game in such a small window, especially when it's so dark and pixellated.
I did play through it though, had to zoom in via the browser zoom to reach a playable window size.
I think it was neat starting the game off with no enemies and just soaking in the atmosphere, though I think the lighting should be brought up a little. It's already dimly lit and pixellated, but having the area transitions be in complete darkness amplifies the navigation confusion imo. Though I will say it is neat having the player manually enable/disable the power for different sections so you see the difference in lighting. Perhaps just adding a small flashlight for the dark sections would help maintain the atmosphere without making navigation too difficult?
On the combat front I was surprised how many encounters and types of enemies and attacks there are. I was genuinely expecting there to be just a single realtime enemy like in Alien Isolation or something. But it was kinda neat seeing how the different attack types worked on different enemies. Though I think a few extra health pickups, and starting the player off with one, would help.
It took me a little bit to navigate back to my ship, but I did find it. Sadly I think something broke with the movement (maybe a combat sequence triggered too early?) because before I could get back to the ship my character became misaligned with the game world so I couldn't reach the door or any other level transition.
I liked what I was able to play though, and I liked how the sinking ship theme was integrated. I also like the concept of being a scavenger for hire in especially dangerous areas.
Good work!
Thanks for the feedback! The ship had certain hallways hidden in the shadows when the power's off and shown when power was on, so having a flashlight somewhat threw that out of the window, though we did discuss it.
Pickups were there but we couldn't place too many of them in time for submission lol. The misalignment bug also happened during development and couldn't be ironed out.
Glad you like it!