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Subcontracting Death's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #47 | 3.733 | 3.733 |
| Music | #74 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Theme | #90 | 3.900 | 3.900 |
| Fun | #155 | 3.633 | 3.633 |
| Mechanics | #174 | 3.467 | 3.467 |
| Aesthetics | #296 | 3.433 | 3.433 |
| Sound | #545 | 1.900 | 1.900 |
Ranked from 30 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?
4
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Level music "Crystal Cave + Mysterious Ambience (seamless loop)" by pixelsphere.org / The Cynic Project. http://opengameart.org/users/cynicmusic http://pixelsphere.org/ Level Background art by Szadi Art. www.artstation.com/szadiart Crystal World Platformer Intro music by Alexandr Zhelanov, https://soundcloud.com/alexandr-zhelanov Mystical Theme ModernDOS9x16 Jayvee Enaguas (HarvettFox96). https://www.dafont.com/modern-dos.font Tuppus tupwanders@tupwanders.nl https://www.dafont.com/evil-empire.font?l[]=10&l[]=1
Link to your source?
https://github.com/Caesura0/SubcontractingDeath
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Comments
It was a really fun game I had such a nice time playing it !! I loved music, visuals, mechanics and level design. Everything was really good. I also loved the sense of humor at the dialogues. "Fears don't have to be logical, you know..." line made my day :) Stoner reaper dude was really cool too. I found just one bug that you can jump off from the wall which is at the end of the pink flowers. I double jumped from the peak of the Steve's platform and then used dash and boom I was in a free fall :))
The story is very interesting. I really liked the pixel graphics, too. I hope you can include gamepad support in a future version. Good work! 😀
I made it back to heaven! This was really fun. The writing was really good and I liked the dialogue system you all had too. Haha I half expected the Scythe to start talking your ear off too XD
The talking too much character was a love letter to my son Kai.
Who is a teenager and loves to share random facts with lots of tangent....
I really should have made a sign in the beginning showing "exit" pointing up aha.
It wasnt very clear in the dialogue.
Well done team, congrats on finishing your game.
This game controls super well. The jumping feels really good. I feel most jam games feel "pretty good" but this one felt great. Well done. The core loop looks pretty interesting, but I found the dialogue to be just way too much. And resetting a conversation if you "fail" it made that experience even more frustrating. I ended up giving up after getting the wall jump power because I couldn't figure out how to actually use it. I got all the way to the top of the wall but couldn't get myself to go over it.
Still a pretty cool jam game and has some really solid jumping otherwise. Great job everyone. Keep making games!
Love the music and the dialogue..was pretty fun...died a lot, got frustrated but enjoyed it. Good work.
I made it back into heaven
Nice writing and dialogue. The jumping was just too difficult for me. Too much slip on the platforms and too much bumping my head. By the time I managed to get up to the first soul I was pretty frustrated and then the next one relying so heavily on timing the double jump, after 4 failed attempts, I did give up.
I liked that you ease the player into the different abilities but I think you could have eased them into the difficulty too. You can even see the first soul when you get the quest. I liked the little bit of forth wall breaking but I think you could have gone further and had it be literally a series of evenly spaced platforms leading up in a spaced-out stair formation.
Thanks for the feedback, looks like I fell pretty hard into the "you are better at your game then anyone else" .
Definitely something to keep in mind next time!
Thank you very much.
A lot of us did. I'm terrible at platform games so I figured if I could play mine, anyone could but turned out that wasn't the case and people have struggled more than I intended
Congratulations, great game! :) Although, movement feels slippery and I manage to jump out of the map after collecting the scythe. You could either block the way or make a collider there to kill the player, because after jumping out you cannot finish the level.
What area did you slip out of? the caves? or did you go to the stop and get over the wall.
Thanks for reporting the bug!
Comparing it to some of the other brilliant platformer controller setups people have posted, definitely feeling the slipperiness, too floaty.
Really appreciate the feedback :)
I went left after retrieving the scythe and getting the wall jump. You can jump on some platforms and reach a wall, which you can hop over. Sure thing, keep up the good work! :)
Perfect. I'll add a death collider around it.
Nice one :) Got to the end although the last upgrade wasn't 100% obvious what it did (had to consult my memory of metroidvania upgrades).
The dialogue was entertaining - definitely the kind of style I use when I get rare chances to indulge in some creative writing :) There's a couple of typos and missing punctuation, but that's nitpicking - I liked the dialogue. What else, happily got the final item without any deaths, although that final jump back to the reaper is a tricky one ;)
Really good entry, congrats - you should all be proud of this one.
I think you might be the first non developer to make it to the end aha.
Definitely needed like an exit sign pointing up or something at the beginning, and maybe a little more explanation on the wall jumps.
But we had WAY too much fun writing the dialogue.
Plan to fill it out to a more complete RPG type platformer, going between levels to get stuff/learn things, add some animated/scrolling text.
All those little tweaks that fall to the wayside in a less then 10 day timeframe.
Thank you for the very kind review(and for making it to the end!)
I like it - at least to point where I got. Then it was little bit frustrating because I was not able to find what to do :(
I was little bit fighting with jumping with movement - it also felt somehow delayed. But it was manageable.
And unfortunately I was not able to get Chris scythe. After many tries I got over part on his right - but then at the bottom of the cave ... What should I do there?
And music really fits.
You can you the left shift (dash) to get past the plants in the front.
At the bottom of the cave you'll need to jump, jump dash to get past.
The movement we tried for a bit more 'floaty' but its looking like a flop aha.
Hoping to build something more complete out of the game, as we had alot of fun writing it.
If i had more time i'd have added combat as well
Thank you for the kind review!
Fun
Not bad. The platforming was challenging but not unfair. Had a slight metroidvania skill unlock system which was nice.
Aesthetics
There was a clear mishmash of art assets here. The crystal ground tiles look professional, the background looks great, and the red plants look nice, but everything else was done by someone new to art. I would rather have one artstyle than have a mix of clashing art assets.
The cloud trail when landing and jumping is a nice touch.
The dialogue system could uses some contrast and color adjustments. Hard to read sometimes.
Music
Not bad. I recognize it from opengameart. Fits the game
Sound
None as far as I could tell
Mechanics
The movement wasn't great. It isn't the worst, but it could be fine tuned for sure. Your ground speed is slow, your midair acceleration is low, but you jumping acceleration is super high. This makes the game feel slippery.
You get upgrades by talking to spirits and bringing them back to reapers.
The dialogue system was surprising. The dialogue itself wasn't particularly gripping, but it is cool to see it working.
Story
You fall down a pit and meet some lazy reapers. They get you to do their job for abilities. I wasn't emotionally invested, but at least there is a story.
Theme
There really aren't any mechanics that are related to the game jam theme.
It fits , but on a technicality: You are in the afterlife. I would have liked a unique game mechanic rather than a run of the mill platformer.
That is fantastic feedback! It was my sons first attempt at pixel art, so it definitely progressed throughout the jam a bit aha.
We were going for a floaty feel for the "angel" idea, but it ended up not working out nicely. Definitely excited to rebuild it with a different MC and better controls.
Much appreciate the time it took to write this!
Cheer and happy gamejaming
cool game! I loved movement system, it was so good, bravo.
Thank you for the kind words!
cool idea, maybe a little bit more dialog working like the game art and it would be super cool.
I'm definitely planning to flesh it out a bit! We loved writing it too much.
Really great submission. I like the tasks/puzzle aspect! I’ve rated your game. I hope that you’ll check out and rate my submission as well. :-)
Loved playing the game, especially the questing and dialogue system. The theme was well developed and background music suites the situation. Also loved the art style of the background.
I only have a couple of suggestions: make sure the art style stays coherent, the background (which I love) is very pixelated while platforms seems much higher in resolution.
Thank you! I'm a huge fan of branching dialogues, it was alot of fun to make.
Going back.... the background definitely felt a bit off, It was actually a unity store asset for both the background and the platforms(one pack) . But I think I may have stretched it a bit much. The feedback is always appreciated, sometimes you stare at it too long you know?
I feel like I'm doing something wrong sorry, when I approach someone and an "E" pops up I hit E and nothing happens. I won't rate yet, please let me know if I'm an idiot.
You are not, but I might be!
Tried to fix a bug, made another.
I've uploaded the new version, dialogue is working now -_-.
Thanks for letting me know
Awesome :)
Dialog works now, thanks.
I feel like the sideways movement with the jump needs to be a little less, but maybe thats just me.
Nice job.
The most simple game. I appreciate the dialogue expectations a lot. The sound quality is excellent. you did a great job
Thanks so much for your kind words!
Great submission! Lots of fun playing through. I really liked how you did the dialogue, with multiple choices. One thing I found myself doing was accidentally resetting the current dialogue tree by pressing "E" attempting to get to the next page of text, rather than clicking the button which re-activated the dialogue instead.
Oh wow! Thanks so much for reporting that, I missed adding the !inDialogue for the E interact. At least it was an easy fix!
We are planning to expand it, had too much fun making it so far to drop it.
Fun game so far. Is there more content after you get the wall jumping? I ended up jumping off the map on the left.
You just head up the wall jumping where you fell down, then get to the end of the level. We're hoping to add more levels into it through.
Thanks for playing!
I might have to look into your source code to see how you did the dialog and quests. It seemed to work well. I didn't try telling a death that I hadn't completed something that I had done though, even though the option was there.
It definitely meant an easier time creating all the branches, mostly based on the GameDev.TV dialogue courses dialogue, though not the quest system. I had to get it to connect in a different way. Let me know if you have any questions, happy to help.