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A jam submission

Crazy KitchenView game page

Wacky Tower Defense/Twin Stick Shooter Hybrid!
Submitted by SlyBalto (@SlyBalto) — 6 days, 5 hours before the deadline
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Crazy Kitchen's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Controls / UI#124.2864.286
Overall Fun#164.2864.286
Sound/Music#194.1434.143
Art / Graphics#264.1434.143

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

I played your game on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1832466938?t=00h02m02s (there's no audio at the beginning because I had muted myself without realizing)

Overall, I had fun! The core gameplay is fun and the short levels and unending nature made me want to keep going and going.

Here are some suggestions for improvements. The game is good as is, but making some/all of these changes would make the game even better!

  • I didn't know what the red monster was until someone on stream told me they blew up. Watching the red monsters more carefully after that made me realize the fireworks were from the red monsters. I'd thought they were from completing a level.
  • More variety in monster types: having different kinds of monsters would be great, like one that can freeze/slow down some towers, or some with resistances to different types of attack
  • UI: selecting the towers to upgrade was a bit hit-and-miss. I eventually realized that my mouse had something to do with it, but I'd be moving my character close to towers and it wasn't selecting the right one, or not selecting any tower at all. Maybe you can have something where it selects the closest tower once you're close enough, and if there's a bunch, maybe tab-select them? The mouse could override it potentially, but it doesn't have to be the primary way of selecting towers
  • UI: I lost track of my character quite a few times, especially when it was hidden behind enemies. Maybe have the player character always on top, or have some other effect to show where the player is
  • UI: I lost track of the mouse cursor quite a bit as well
  • Towers: The dishwasher's towers drop knives I believe (someone on stream told me that). I thought they were caltrops that would slow enemies down. Overall, it felt like the knife towers were lackluster compared to the other types.
  • Towers: I built the wrong tower type at some point, because I was controlling the dishwasher. I wonder if there's a way to show the tower being built, or something in the UI, to indicate what I would build to minimize spending resources on building something I didn't want
  • Towers: Upgrading towers is great. Maybe have some way to have options in towers, e.g., at level 3, choose between increased firing rate, or increased damage, etc
Developer

Thanks for streaming my game!! Got a lot of great notes here! I can add an outline effect on the currently selected tower that shows at all times so even if you go behind a wall or other towers you'll still see the tower your controlling. Already got some work done to help the dishwasher's towers be more powerful. I have it tuned so the upgraded versions move the knife piles much faster, I remember another streamer mentioned they just didn't feel like they were being put onto the track fast enough. 

I had the idea before to try adding some enemies that are weak/strong against different elements (Fridge is ice, Oven is fire, and Dishwasher is maybe Sharp or Metal?) So I think I'm gonna finally give a go! Do you think it's better if for example an enemy is totally resistant to everything except one element or is it better for it to be just weak against one element but takes a normal amount of damage to everything else? I wasn't sure what was the best way to handle this haha. New enemies besides elemental ones are being designed and tested as we speak too! I will also be adding in a custom cursor so players can see what they're aiming at better!

(+1)

I am going through all submissions to make all developers aware of an important Google form I've made.

I'm joining the IQ folks to help organize smaller events in between the main FQ event in order to help prevent us from getting too many games in main events. Right now, I have a planned structure for these events but I would like to hear from everyone who was in this event in order to tune things better. The survey is a bit long, but it covers as much as I could think of. If you can take the time to do the survey by June 1st, I would immensely appreciate it!

You can find the form here: https://forms.gle/P9LPYwERhJtpZzteA

Developer(+1)

just filled out the form 👍

Submitted (5 edits) (+1)

It's a really solid core with a really fun and unique twist for the TD genre, but that still needs meat to its bones with more content and tweaks

- The fridge is really OP, no contest, the other 2 appliances feel really weak in comparison and aren't really as satisfying to use, so after a while you just treat them as 2 free towers.

- The towers prices eventually become ridiculous, I think it should cap at around 350 or 500, and also adding more tower types (at least 3 or 4).

- Early rounds are really boring after you realise enemies are so low on health and you can just save money, I would say delete the first 10-15 rounds to make the game's pace quicker.

- More enemies with more distinct visual and gameplay changes would be apreciated, cause they end up repeating too much too soon.

- Unlockable appliances you could change between maps would be cool, and also the addition of more maps unique quirks (like a flooded kitchen were you could have a special rubber duck tower when placing a tower on the water, or a super charged microwave in an electrically charged area.

- The hitting enemies sound needs to have more punch (to make it extra satisfactory :p)

- Another thing is that increasing the metal cap per round would help with the towers cost problem, but it depends on how you prefer to solve it

Really fun, got till round 37.

Submitted(+1)

Overall, really fun spin on a tower defense game. Pretty unique with all the kitchen appliances as your main line of defense. The difficulty, however, was a bit too easy for my liking. I know many people don't want something too challenging, so have you considered a difficulty setting?

The fridge is ridiculously OP LOL Like... I didn't even switch to my other appliances... except to move them to a better location. I continued to control my fridge because it was LEAGUES above everything else. I feel that attack needs toned down quite a bit.

I'd love to see more variety of enemies, as well. I played to about round 40 and was fighting the same creatures (small, few colors and the large) but that was it. Are there more monsters eventually?

Love that you can upgrade your towers.

OVERALL... music. Great and intense. Really fitting for the game. Controls/UI was well done. No issues here. Art & Graphics were good. Overall fun... it was. I had a great time in the early stages. However, I will say it got a bit repetitive for me around Round 30'ish. I stopped playing at round 42. Mostly because I didn't find it all that challenging. Maybe it would had I played longer... but after about 42 rounds I was still annihilating enemies with my fridge LOL OP Fridge taking out all those hungry lil monsters. GG EZ monsters :-P

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for giving my game a go!! I can totally make the difficulty adjustable! I'll keep it simple for now with a single slider that tunes stuff like how much higher enemy health gets as the rounds go on and the speed multiplier increasing much faster. The Fridge is getting nerfed as we speak!! I also heard from others it's OP so that blue guy is gonna get toned down so things feel more balanced.

I got new enemies planned so you won't always be fending off hoards of pink and blue Hungrys, I'm thinking about focusing more on introducing bigger, tougher, slow moving enemies vs. just throwing a bazillion little guys and calling it a day for every round. The game auto-generates rounds after 10 so I'm gonna handcraft more of them that introduce new enemies, offers more unique combos of enemies, etc.

I've still been a bit stuck on how I can make the late game after round 30-35 more exciting, but I think I'll figure out something after talking with more fellow devs and other players, thanks for the great feedback!!

Glad you enjoyed the game!!

Submitted(+1)

I did enjoy it. I'll give you a follow and keep my eye on this one 😊

Developer

Thank you!!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Hey, that's some great progress you made! Name change is nice, too - first time around my first impression was "It's some kind of horror game" :D 

  • The balance feels much better overall - Almost never it felt like the situation on the playfield is "solved for good". I haven't moved some of my appliances until the very late game, though
  • Turret variety is nice, base appliance progression feels good too
  • Fridge feels pleasantly OP in both modes. 
  • When they finally got me, was around wave ~40-50. The swarm of little pink guys got me. Weren't able to max out any turrets, I had a number of them and spread metal between them evenly
  • In the endgame, there is a small period where keeping appliances static is not an option any more - you have to constantly move them during a monster wave. Feels quite difficult but also fun. If that's the skill you would like your players to develop - this time frame feels really small, most of the time just keeping appliances in the same spot works, and after that stops working and you have to reposition during the wave - in about 5-10 waves repositioning the appliances would not save you any more. That's the feeling, at least - I haven't played many times to confirm this. The fact is, the game pushes you to constantly utilize relocation tactic at some point.
  • The core gameplay feels quite solid. Might want to start thinking of making it more replayable, adding more variety between different runs

Once again, the game feels smooth and understandable, as it was the first time around. Good luck upgrading it further!

Developer(+2)

Thanks for the feedback!! Glad you've enjoyed it again! I did my best to make things feel more balanced.

Something I've been a bit stuck on is the balance and gameplay of the mid to late game, so I'll have to take a look at what everyone's suggested so far and spend some time really thinking on what are the best choices. I do know I like the idea that the game should be designed to keep the player on their feet, contrasting to other TD games where the player can potentially build defenses and just kinda let it go on it's own for a while, but at the same time I didn't wanna make the game feel like the player has to constantly move around every second either. It's a balancing act and I'll have to work on it!

I'll look into balancing the Fridge so the other two are a bit more viable! I got plans to release the per-round metal payout cap and adjust the payout as the rounds go on as well. Will do my best to upgrade this game the best way I can, thanks for playing!!

(+1)

You ever say something to someone, not really sure if they'll listen to any of it only to later find out they listened to ALL of it? That's me right now. :D

I won't lie. Seeing this back and how every nearly every single thing was tackled is amazing. The aesthetic was improved, the mobile turrets got levels, and we got multiple turrets! It's pretty hype, to say the least. The game has made some huge leaps since last time!

As such, please allow me to give feedback on the current state and where I think improvements can be made next.

First and most important, we need some optimization going on now. When I first played this on stream, there were some major framerate issues. The amount of graphical power being taken by the game was causing encoding problems for OBS. Obviously, this isn't good. As such, looking into optimization of the graphics, as well as providing settings for changing them in game, would be good at this.

Second, we should throw in balance regarding metal earned per wave and the difficulty of the wave. Eventually, the metal you earn per round caps at 200. However, by round 80, this cap of 200 per round causes issues; you can't earn enough metal to keep up with building and upgrading enough towers to make it through. I know with more enemies you get more metal, but it's no where near enough. I'd say the metal earned for finishing a wave needs to keep going past 200, though maybe at a lower rate than prior to hitting 200.

Finally, balance between the different turrets is needed. When trying single-turret use strategies, I found the vents from the fridge were by far the best due to having no cap on how many enemies they can hit at a time while the knife blocks suffered for not being able to hit enough enemies.

Oh, almost forgot! Maybe a function to not control any of the three turrets. Their firing  when not controlled is way better, and I think there could be a fun risk/reward combination of temporarily dropping control of all three turrets to let them operate at max power. Maybe add in a time delay after changing which one you control before you can change again, and dropping all control is a slightly longer delay?

Oh wait! Also add a custom cursor, something that stands out. And keep the mouse locked into the game.

Developer(+1)

I learned throughout the years that the more you embrace change and keep yourself flexible, the more fun you'll have building fun stuff and the better you'll get, so hopefully I'm doing an okay job at that LOL. A lot of the great points you wrote about were already in the back of my mind, but it's great to actually hear it from others. I've already begun writing down all of the ideas and feedback I've been given by you and others that have checked out this revamped version! I already wasn't like loving the old aesthetic and the other issues with gameplay balance and stuff weren't helping, but now it's way more fun to work on, glad I made changes!

Optimization is something I'm gonna try to get work on after I reach out to some peeps that know Unreal Engine really well cuz I dunno why this little game runs so poorly on a lot of hardware, so hopefully I can get that fixed up down the line! There may be something unused but active that's CPU/GPU intensive so I'll have to do my research on that, can't beat up baddies at 10FPS LOL.

Options menu is comin', just been bit busy doing tons of work on the gameplay, I can make a quick menu that at least lets you adjust the graphics and I'll add a restart button too.

The metal is capped at 200 but I can easily release that cap, when I get to work on this project again I can send you some test builds to try and see what's the best way to increase the metal after 200! Same with the buildable turrets I'll be overhauling their balance. I think what I could do is increase the speed the knife blocks put out knife piles and raise the amount of piles that can be out at once per block.

I'll keep in mind the idea that you can "let go" the controls and let all 3 Appliances use their passive attacks, I dig the idea of the risk/reward possibilities with that. Maybe there's like a slight firing rate increase buff or something? I can also add in a switch delay so players can't switch between the Appliances as quickly!

Custom mouse cursor and keeping it locked in the game are comin'!

I'll keep in touch when I get the chance to put out some test builds, your feedback has been crazy helpful, thanks for playing!!

Off hand, I would say just giving an extra 1% metal per wave completion would be enough. So you'd get 200, then 202, then 204, and so on until 220, then it jumps to 223. If you follow this out, by the time you're past 50 rounds at 1% a round, you're earning 328 metal upon completion. It's not much, but it can make a difference and it's very simple to change. It could even start at a higher percentage but decreases every so many rounds until it's only giving 1%.

As a means of balancing, there are a lot of ways this could be done. However, one particular idea hit me... why not make it each turret has multiple effects you can upgrade for lower metal prices? So you can upgrade damage, attack range, attack speed, etc.? That way, you can then add more things for each turret, some of which could be unique. There are a few ideas I can name off, but I'm gonna hold onto them for now so you have more room to flex your thinking. :D

Submitted

The game was really enjoyable, and fun. Since i used to play a lot of this type of games before, it brings back good memories. The art is lovely, and the colors chosen was a good one too. Would be nice to see different settings like theme kitchens and such. Really nice. (Dalkien from Haunting Humans Studio)

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for the kind words!! Before and while I worked on this game I did actually revisit a bunch of older flash games through Flashpoint for inspiration, both stuff I've played and things I haven't check out before, so I guess I had some nostalgia on the mind haha. Been trying to combine that old PC game charm with a modern package so I hope I'm on the right path LOL. I heard from others too that they'd love to see various kitchen themes so I can try giving that a go whenever I get to create new maps!

Good framework on this project. All the core elements are there, so now it's just building blocks. Good fun but after 5 minutes there is no super game changer to keep player invested. Consider adding an upgrade or skill tree to the appliances to add fire damage, ice damage, etc. Add a better setting around the kitchen instead of a plain blue skybox. Add backgrounds and backdrops to fully immerse the player in this world. MUSIC was incredible though! Huge props there and the enemy art style is cute. Keep it up!

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for giving it a go!! Yeah I def. want to add some much needed spice after like round 20ish, I know for sure I'd like to add more enemy types, I considered some ideas where there's different types of damage that the appliances can do so the Oven could do burn damage, fridge can cause Freeze damage which slows down the enemies, etc.

There's an idea I wanted to try where the appliances are given an extra active attack when you hit level 10. This instead could be a special ability or big attack you could activate, but I'll have to think about all this cuz I'm in a weird spot where it's hard to tell what's the best thing for this game haha. 

I thought about dabbling with a 'city in the sky' kinda direction for the backdrop, I'm glad to hear you like the art style!! I wanted to really double down on something stylized, so I'll keep on tuning it as I go, thx again for the feedback!!