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A jam submission

Sins of the SquirrelsView game page

Fight off the dogs in your local park!
Submitted by EmmaTurner, catpowered, JJ Rhind-Tutt, ZZZACKO — 21 hours, 58 minutes before the deadline
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Sins of the Squirrels's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
How entertaining is the game?#14.2004.200
How original is the game?#24.0004.000

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Team Astral Pirates

A very simple and fun game, the art style is funny and the animations are very smooth so it is clear that a lot of work and time has been put into the sprite sheets. In fact it's clear that the art has had a lot of work put into it, from the background/environment to the title, it's very crisp.

The transform function is a nice tough, which leads to slightly varied game play, however it would be nice to see more abilities, between the two forms.

My only suggestion would be to reassign the transform and attack buttons to something a little more intuitive like the 'Q', 'E' or 'R' keys.

Submitted

Pros;

  • very fun.
  • very easy to play.
  • beat em up style is portrayed well.
  • The art is nice, animations are smooth.
  •  I also liked the addition of the how-to-play button.
  • a warm atmosphere due to the autumn leaves.
  • very good concept to build on.

Cons;

  •  The collisions don't feel too good so maybe rework the hitbox.
  • No visual effects to the hit animation 
  • When blocking, you become immortal 
  • you could add shading to the characters to add depth
  • Wish there was music

Main improvements

Adding more visual effects to the hit animation would make a lot of difference.

Make the Transform and action buttons in a better location. (E and Q would make sense?)

Re-work the collisions

Add music 

Submitted

Haha Jojo squirrel!
It was good, loved the animations, loved the enemies, loved the sprites, could use some sound effects and music, unless that's already in the game and i couldn't hear it for some reason. 
It was funny to push around the other dead player while still being alive
Win condition would of also been great

but good job! I had fun!

(+1)

Animation and Combat function really well. To improve add a win condition/ score and maybe some combat variation. Also the art is beautiful 20/10, Van Gogh's been quiet since this dropped 

Developer(+1)

I had a good chuckle to this comment haha, score will be added and combat variation is definitely on my radar but I haven't thought of any other things to add yet, any suggestions would make my brain happy! Thanks for the review and yes I agree the art is amazing thank you Emma :))

Developer

aha this made me laugh too! Thank you and I'm glad you like the art! :D

(+1)

Very fun game. Art style is incredible, and the game felt very good. Slight bug where if you hold S you basically become immortal

Developer

oops that is my bad, I will fix that soon... we all send our thanks for the compliment on the game :))

(+1)

Very cool game that is gonna make me need therapy. Wish there was some kind of win condition/score/timer to make the endless gameplay feel rewarding. The ability to punch while moving feels too easy as well as the low health of the enemies, which get annihilated pretty much immediately after coming onto the screen in a couple of punches/acorns. The camera also seemed to only follow player 1 so if they died it was stuck.

Developer

I'm not sure how after player one died that the camera didn't switch to player one flew over my head haha. Thanks so much that implementation should make the game feel even more smooth :)) 

A score will be added definitely especially after the bosses have been added so I'm exited to see what you think after we have implemented all this :)) 

Thanks for the feedback makes my work feel validated hehe :))

(+1)

This was a very enjoyable game, appreciate the "how to play" section, not many entries included one, The art style and shading was really well done. Hits felt very responsive although the hitboxes on the enemies could have been smaller. Sound effects and music would have been a nice inclusion!

Developer

Sound effects are in progress, and the hitbox suggestion should be an easy fix. Hopefully when you next play the game they should be implemented, thanks for taking time to review :))

Submitted(+1)

The Art Style in this game was by far the most interesting and most unique aspect of this game. It has good contrast and gives the player a feeling of power with their attacks as the enemies pause and react to your hits.

Despite this, the gameplay loop is very basic and gets repetitive fast. The idea of having 2 different forms to switch between is interesting in concept, but in terms of gameplay it adds very little. The trade off in attack speed for a ranged attack in the small form is often not worth it with the massive hordes of enemies, making the gameplay element relatively useless. I would love to see this idea expanded upon, maybe having ranged attacks deal more damage to counteract the offset of lowered attack speed, or maybe even a more unique twist on the genre.

As the game is right now, it is fun for around a minute before the enemies rapidly out scale the enemy, making it harder in an unengaging way as the player finds themselves getting overwhelmed with no way of fighting back. Some ways I would suggest you could improve this aspect of the game is by potentially giving the player weapons or power-ups (Look at Streets of Rage 4) to give the player a temporary boost to help fight off against the massive hordes.

Another issue I found with the game was a lack of player feedback, especially when giving or receiving hits. This issue has a simple solution, either adding some kind of flash on the player/screen along with a particle effect. This would both help make the game look nicer and give gameplay a much smoother transition to getting hit rather than constantly having to look at the corner of the screen.

Overall, this game was very fun and I hope to see more of it in the future!

How do you plan on developing it further since this jam has finished?

Developer

Thank you for the lovely reply, the idea was to have the enemies roll barrels to force the player to turn into small mode to be able to jump over them as we made it so when you are buff you are unable to jump (because of how hench you are) this would force the player to switch between forms as big mode offers more power.

we are also thinking of adding bosses which the artwork has already been completed we just need to figure out more code. which will hopefully make the game less boring to play. I think the idea of power up is good and I will definitely add it to the game given i complete my other tasks :)

the player feedback is a lovely idea and I will definitely add it, thank you very much for the suggestion, hope to hear from you again after we improve upon what we already have!

Thanks once again :))

(+1)

Good fun! The endless brawler style works great, though I do wish there were some sort of point score or similar way of keeping track of progress. The art style is creative and well executed, and the simple gameplay makes it very intuitive (though the controls listing on the main menu was appreciated).

I did find a slight problem - holding the 'block' button prevents all damage, but while blocking you can still attack, making the game incredibly easy if you just hold it down, becoming immune to all damage.

Developer

a score system will be added definitely haha, the op blocking will be fixed and a cooldown added, if you have any other mechanics you would like to see feel free to reply to this. Thank you for taking time to review, me and the others are very appreciative.  :))

Submitted(+2)

The art style, animation and theme of the game fit really well together. Also, the idea of the game, as well as gameplay mechanics are very creative and original. It feels amazing to switch back and forth between the two different versions of the squirrel. The only problems I have with the game is that blocking is too overpowered. Also, the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game, it just puts the UI on screen and nothing else.

Developer

Yes it didn't cross my mind that you would be able to block forever haha I shall add a time limit and a cool down. The pause menu originally worked but something must of gone wrong. Thank you for reviewing hopefully we can make these changes :))

Submitted(+1)

I love the art and animations, and the transform ability is really unique and fun to use as it makes the game more dynamic. Maybe a 1 player option would be a good additions for those with no friends lol.

(+1)

If you just don't use the 2nd player controls then it's singleplayer though