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A jam submission

Pac-man-ALView game page

Pacman's Afterlife
Submitted by heckert — 1 day, 1 hour before the deadline
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Pac-man-AL's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound#2153.1003.100
Theme#2983.1833.183
Story#3692.3672.367
Fun#3842.9832.983
Mechanics#3942.8502.850
Aesthetics#4672.9172.917
Music#4832.2172.217

Ranked from 60 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How many people worked on this game total?
1

Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Chomp Man - 3D Game Kit & Tutorial -- https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/tutorials/chomp-man-3d-game-kit-tutorial-174982

Link to your source?
https://heckert.itch.io/pac-man-al

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Comments

Viewing comments 29 to 10 of 49 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

Heh great job. Nice retryo feel and twist.
Main thing I couldnt work out was how to activate a power pill, so that my score counted to that one...
I got there in the end,.. finaly worked out i was charing up the pellets, then depositing them at a pill,. but I couldnt work out which one was activated, nor how to activate it...
But great concept and a fun game jam game.
Great job!

Developer

The trick is that each power pill belongs to one of the ghosts. The fireworks effect when activated should reflect this in its colour but the effect ended up being rather subtle and the asset package's colours of pink/red/orange too close to each other to really make it out, so it's mainly the blue one where you can see it.

To some extent the "puzzle part" that the player should find this out on his own was intended, but given that there isn't enough of feedback for registering it made this bit of the game fail. In an update I'm planning I will add some markings to the counters to make it more clearly.

Also, when there are leftovers you couldn't deposit anymore you should at least stop collecting more of the pills...

Another thing that didn't make it into the submitted version is adding colour to the aggravated pills so there would be some indication that there is some connection to which ghost ghosted you and that you're collecting points fit this one's power pill.

Submitted(+1)

I got  long way but I don't understand how to complete the top right corner and I don't know how the scoring system works, I tried to wing it and failed. Feels like you did a lot of work but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

cheers

Developer

It's all just a matter of which ghost ghosted you...

Submitted

aah

Submitted(+1)

Good job on your spin on Pac-Man! The sound effects felt fitting and satisfying, and I liked the art! I think the movement could benefit from a grid system, though maybe that's not what you're aiming for. I also ran into a bug where the enemies would get stuck together in a corner. I know bugs are hard to deal with in a short time span like this. Overall, great submission!

Submitted(+1)

It was fun, I have 2 minor comments: The AI felt very unpredictable: sometimes all of them were stuck together, and sometimes they were zooming around at Mach 3. Also it took me a while to figure out which ghost corresponded to which "lamp". But gj applying the theme to a classic.

Developer

I have already some ideas on how to fix the situation of them getting stuck together. It seems at some times they're aiming for the same position and fail to get close enough so the would choose another one...

Submitted(+1)

cool game.  but it took me a while to figure things out.

Submitted(+1)

Cool twist on Pac-Man! Good job, I liked it :)

Submitted(+1)

Nice spin on Pac-Man!

Sometimes I would get stuck on walls and also sometimes I would pass next to the balls instead of through them, thus not collecting them which was a bit frustrating.

Nice job, I liked it.

Developer(+1)

Yeah, that I should increase the hit area for the pills had been mentioned a few times already... :)

Submitted(+1)

Remix on a classic.  I dig it.  I had a bit of issues with the controls (getting stuck a bit on walls or just not smoothly moving around corners) but I found that to be part of the fun.   Nice submission.

Submitted(+1)

Nice spin on the old classic, I liked it

Submitted(+1)

Congrats on completing the jam! An interesting take on an old classic. If you make adjustments to this game, I think you should consider increasing the pickup radius of the pellets - it was a bit frustrating to miss them while traveling down a corridor.

(+1)

Nice concept, good work and good luck!

Submitted(+1)

Was challenging, I thought at first I could just get everything in one pull, but was wrong. (still got all pill in one sit, but could not cash them up XD)

Submitted(+1)

i wasn't expect that. impressive perspective. thanks for game :)

Submitted(+1)

A very creative spin on an old classic I really enjoy that! I found the movement of the ghosts/pacmans super interesting how did you manage that? They did tend to clump up sometimes and get stuck on each other but overall it felt erratic and unpredictable in a very good way! I would have loved it if you managed to implement the interconnecting "portals" when you move left to right :D

Developer

Behold the mighty power of the NavMesh... :)

Sometimes they seem to block each other off from finding a new destination, so maybe I would have to give them some watchdog for that.

I had a Coroutine in for randomly re-deciding on the path, that didn't work so I threw it out (it was also a remnant of my initial attempt for a movement system). Maybe if I gave it another attempt to make it work and set its interval much lower than it was, it might just do what would be needed here...

Submitted(+1)

I finished the game and I don't feel like I have a strong understanding of the mechanics even after finishing. I don't know if I somehow messed up the lamp thing. I think it was RNG? But maybe I missed something. If it was, it would be nice to remove the lamps that were already complete from the array or however you're doing it. I had to unghost and ghost myself to try to select the right one by the end. It's a cool idea I think but doing a couple of changes could make this game a lot strong. Also, I think someone mentioned it. But I think having the hit box for pellets be bigger would be nicer. And maybe keeping the same style of Pacman just being able to travel down certain routes would also help and not have 100% control of where you can move. Hope this helps :)

Developer(+1)

I had tuned the player's collision range in order to keep out of walking through walls. When I added the pills it actually didn't occur to me that I could just increase their collision ranges since them being practically static they don't have any issues with the walls...

As for the lamps (as you call them), there is a connection between each ghost and one of them. The particle effect when they're fully loaded actually shows this, but the effect is really very subtle and the colours of 3 of the ghosts are a bit too close to each other to really notice. I didn't have time to do more about it, but I totally intend to make it more clear (OTOH it was very deliberate to have the hints on the title page more vague and not directly giving away how all is connected internally ;) ).

There are several ideas I've got about making it more clear. One easier fix is to frame the counters in the different ghosts' colours (and I need to address some placement issues about them anyway). Another thing I was thinking about is adding colours to the collected pills to make it easier to remember which ghost you hit last (or add some colour to the player's "ghost form", or both).

One thing I've realized through the feedback is that I should probably limit the amount of pills one can carry at a time. Perhaps even depending on how many would still be needed for the currently active target. OTOH the fact that some of them still remain in their "activated" state shows that you've overshoot in collecting... When I was thinking about what kind of info I should give on the charging states of the targets I had 3 options in mind (none, which was what I already had, but difficult for the player to guess what's going on; exact numbers which I did because it was very simple to implement; or "rough estimate" like a horizontal bar filling up or a "battery charge" style of indicator (for example having 4 small lights and for 10 pills one of them lights up) which I totally ditched because I was running out of time). I'm considering to add that "estimate" type and give all 3 versions as some "difficulty setting" option to the player...

(Size of the pills' colliders might be another thing to tune with difficulty settings...)

Submitted(+1)

Nice Job, i really respect solo developer. Do i kill the Game if i press "Enter"?

Developer

What do you mean about killing the game? I had some issues with the state handling between game running and pause, but I thought most of that was also related to being able to start the game prematurely before the opening music finished (which is one reason the buttons only get active with a delay. But the keypress events are probably independent of that and will already work...)

Submitted(+1)

Congrats on making this game solo! That's quite an accomplishment. I was confused at first with the mechanics, but once I got it, it was fun avoiding the ghosts and trying to fill up those quadrants. 

Submitted(+1)

Great twist! I enjoyed playing this game

Submitted(+1)

Nice one. I hit a bit of an issue at one point where all your enemies would get stuck together, obviously doesn't impact the gameplay at all. I know from working with (Unity) navmeshes and agents that this can be a pain to tweak.

Took a while to figure out how to activate the power pills but figured it out in the end - and as an old fogey I like having to use my brain rather than being told what to do :) Liked the mechanism.

Also a tiny other thing: it would have been cool if the tunnel worked - from experience, nav agents do NOT like being teleported though so you'd need to disable it first. Can't remember if the ghosts in Pacman use the tunnels though...

Developer(+1)

IIRC that was the cool thing about it that they didn't follow the player so it was a good escape route.

Blocking the path was the quick fix to throw out a mechanic I had no time to implement (and not a real grip on how to do it in the first place). I might get to it at a later time in an update...

Submitted(+1)

Fun game and fits the theme nicely. I'm okay with non-pac-man-like controls, but as others have said the pellet collision being more generous would be nice.

Viewing comments 29 to 10 of 49 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page