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A jam submission

Data RecoveryView game page

A game about recovering data as fast you can.
Submitted by Mrmaladroit (@mrmaladroitjr) — 1 hour, 55 minutes before the deadline
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Data Recovery's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Use of Theme#93.5453.545
Gameplay#182.6362.636
Creativity#202.8182.818
Overall#222.5092.509
Art#242.5452.545
Sound#341.0001.000

Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Hey, congratulations on finishing your first game jam. That's a huge milestone - a lot of people never make it that far! Gamedev can be a very stressful hobby, especially when also have family life and a full-time job to manage.

I think you have a very decent prototype for a game here. Good use of theme, too! With more elaborate level design and perhaps a few more game elements (e. g. switches/barriers and the like), this could be very interesting.

Oh, and for music and SFX, I've found FreeSound and FreeMusicArchive to be very useful. It really tends to add a lot.

Submitted(+1)

Firstly, good job on finishing your first game - it took me years to finish my first complete small game so be proud. Secondly, thank you for explaining your troubles in the game description - it helps us aim our feedback appropriately. Also, game Jams are a learning experience and if you learnt that much about the process and yourself than you have succeeded in Jamming regardless of what any of us think.

Now some specific feedback if you are interested:

  • As a beginner, good use of the Theme to design a game. However, as you continue to improve I would suggest trying to push the Theme even more to drive creativity. I always ask: "what if?". What if the game is about data recovery - what mechanics flow from that? What if recovering data DID something to the level/player rather than just being a pickup? What if you had to do something to recover the data rather than just pick it up? (See the link below on Putting Play First by GMTK),
  • I initially thought the cracked "walls" were cracked tiles allowing me to walk over once before they fell; or that the capacitors did something; before I realised they didn't. I think this is because they break the fundamental design rule of "Form Follows Function" (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6HTG8LuXQ&ab_channel=GameMaker%27sToolkit, but particularly 06:20). These simple visuals conflict with the Player's understanding of games as a media and so lose clarity.
  • Sometimes I would get stuck on corners. Consider using circle colliders or another method to allow the player to be guided into their intended hallway rather than get stuck. This is known as Forgiveness Mechanics (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCnZhs-92j0&t=655s&ab_channel=GDC and is a useful game design trick in all games, but particularly platformers.
Submitted (1 edit) (+1)
  • Use of Theme - 3
    • I understand what you were going for with the file recovery but it kind of feels like a lazy implementation of the theme imo.
  • Gameplay - 2
    • The game is very simple. Move the player and collect the files while dodging the moving obstacles. I found a few issues though. In a top down game not being able to move the player diagonally feels very weird. If i press up and right key at the same time im expecting the character to move diagonally, or at least start moving in the direction of the key i pressed last. Another issue i found was sometimes when i died i couldnt click on the buttons to restart the game and ended up having to refresh the page to boot up the game again. The level design was also very flawed with some later stages being easier than previous ones. I think these are problems easy to fix and would make the game a much better experience.
  • Creativity - 3
    • The concept is interesting, and i appreciate the diversity of obstacles, at least visually. Also good job on diversifying the levels. It made the game more intersting.
  • Art - 3
    • The art is very simple which i think was the intention. I didn't understand what the little transistors/batteries? and broken walls were for.  They were all just different types of walls?
  • Sound - 1
    • No sound.

For your first game is not bad at all! You can keep going and improving with experience for sure!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the generous scores and thoughtful feedback. I didn't want to give the player the ability to move diagonally, but I also wanted to change the movement entirely. The battery looking things are capacitors and were intended to be flavorful walls. The broken tiles were also just walls to give character to the level. Originally it was supposed to be more apparent that you are inside computers and electronics. That's why everything looks like PCB's. I wanted to add more components to make the levels more interesting and change the capacitors to be the places the sparks move between. Thank you for reviewing my game so thoroughly 

Submitted(+1)

This was a great interpretation of the term recovery. Although simplistic in its design it has plenty of room to expand and build upon if you chose to do so in the future. I would definitely give it a go if you did. its a shame about the lack of background music and SFX, but as a former retail worker myself, I can totally relate to the limitations of trying to juggle game dev and work at the same time. Especially at this time of the year. You should be proud that you managed to complete it. Good job. 

Submitted(+1)

This was a fun game and I enjoyed the take on the theme. I felt the game could do with some sound effects, but had fun going through each of your levels. Great job!

Developer

Thank you for the kind words. I might update it with music and sound effects. I just didn't have time and frankly, the patience to add some.