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[2025/Jam] Diminutive Saves the World's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #155 | 2.885 | 2.885 |
| Mechanics | #221 | 3.231 | 3.231 |
| Sound | #296 | 2.962 | 2.962 |
| Music | #353 | 3.038 | 3.038 |
| Fun | #360 | 3.038 | 3.038 |
| Overall | #369 | 3.115 | 3.115 |
| Theme | #417 | 2.962 | 2.962 |
| Aesthetics | #570 | 2.654 | 2.654 |
Ranked from 26 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 in total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Listed in the Credits screen (in the final build)
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Comments
That was fun :)
The game was somewhat scary XD I think it was the music that made it so.
Solid entry. There is still a lot that could be done. But you learned from this game, and now on to the next one :) Excited to see you in the upcoming game jams!
Oh this was very much a test of a game design, thanks mate.
This was a fun game! I love how you made it very atmospheric!! The monsters appearing out of nowhere were a nice mechanic! felt tense all the way!
Fun game, Marcus! ✨✨
Thanks :)
One thing I didn't tell you, is that as someone who recently moved out of their home of 30 years to "downsize", the start of your game nearly had me in tears, I will be fully playing it post-jam.
Aww.. Moving out has a lot of emotional charge in the process, for sure... I definitely know it too...
Hope you are doing fine nowadays in your new space! And keep making cool games!
Did not know I was signing up for a scary game! The first statue got me! This was a neat concept! I will say, starting at a higher level and "deleveling" did not really make sense... it felt more like I was leveling up and did not notice losing stats when I died. I still had fun and it was a cool concept! Here are some notes that I wrote down as I played meant to help you:
1) I noticed you could rotate your character in the main menu - you could disable it if that is not intended
2) pulling up the story and then the inspiration, the story did not close itself, so they overlapped - good idea to close down those menus when opening new ones
3) I could get a chest more than once if I ran out and back into the hitbox again. I was able to pickup a chest 3 times once. When the chest disappears, the audio is cut off, too
4) It was hard seeing / finding mushrooms - which is probably intentional, but not sure if there is a way to help with finding them? Just something to think about /consider. (Maybe the light should be extended a little bit? Or wider arc?
5) Not sure what the green glowing particles were at the edge of the world. Not sure if they were supposed to heal as was my intuition as a gamer, but they did not, so just adding this in as it did confuse me
6) Definitely need something at the edge of the world
Great job on this game!
A lot of really interesting comments here, thanks for making the effort to publish them, they are VERY useful.
- Build 1.1 should have fixed points 3 and 4, I assume you were on Build 1.0
- Point 1 - its a jam, and I figured people would have fun with it
- Point 2 - thats a very good idea and I will fix that in the future (and for future games)
- Point 5/6 - the green was just to show where the edge is, I didn't think about green is heal (and I should have). Hmm interesting.
If this goes commercial I will come up with a better solution (and the theme won't be restricting the levels).
Thanks again !!
I love how you start out strong and then have to balance losing stats by grabbing gear.. that works well and is something really different. The lighting was a cool touch and made things tense when moving towards the markers, never quite sure if you were safe. I could see this being expanded with more polish - obviously hard to fit in a game jam. Good jam entry
Thanks, yeh I'm thinking of making a full game of it, starting at Level 50.
I've seen no objections about the game design, so I'm really happy about that.
cheers
great! sounds good. Lovely when we can come away from a Jam with something we are keen to develop further!
Interesting concept
I liked this one! A bit of polish and this one has a lot of potential. For me the roughest area was the sound but considering you got all of this done on your own you should be proud. Congrats on a great submission!
Thanks, yeh the sounds would get super polished in a commercial version.
And models, and animations etc etc :)
The main thing I cared about for the jam is if the "gear levelling/ player delevelling" design works.
Well done, scary but I had fun. Great submision
cheers, I was going for scary but not gory.
You nailed it
Nice fun little game but a scary one too. good job
Thanks :)
Cool game. The statue is kind of scary, not going to lie. But good job on making this game!
nice game! The lighting works well in the sense you really can't see the enemies before you are in range except for on occasion when you can just see the outline. Great submission.
Thanks :)
I really enjoyed this one. I like the idea, it actually worked quite well. Great submission. Well done.
Thanks, I watched you playing it, it looked like you enjoyed the farty mushrooms and the more you played the clearer the mechanics were.
It's always so much fun watching someone else. :)
Finally tried out your game! I have been putting it off since it has no web build. At first glance I thought it’s a horror game, glad it isn’t. I am not a big fan of those. Some suggestions: 1) I can’t see the mushrooms in the dark, so I am not sure how many I collected (or if I am collecting them at all). Maybe make them glow in the dark? Or maybe just have their eyes glow in the dark? 2) Perhaps add another sound for the enemy attack sfx or do a pitch variation on it.
Yeh some good points there.
1. I really like the idea of making the mushroom eyes glow in the dark, and it's so easy to do.
I'm 100% gonna do that one.
The mushrooms add to your score, but the score doesn't really matter, so they have just been comic relief when you accidently run over one and they make their sound, which is totally not a fart sound....
2. The player and enemy have different sound effects, but because they often happen so close together it's hard to tell. Its only really noticeable when the player evades (and so you hear the monster one by itself).
What I think I'll do is add a half second delay between the combat turns so you hear clonk, clunk instead of cloouunk.
But yeh good call, that needs doing.
Thanks :)
Nice game! It Is lots of fun!
Thats a word I love to hear, thanks :)
Like StealthC commented, I also found out I could collect the same chest twice before it despawns. In fact, when I was quick enough I could trigger the same chest three times. :D
The very dark visuals make for an interesting situation; the player has to be careful when approaching a yellow marker, since it could turn out to be a chest or an enemy.
My first try included falling off the edge of the map because I like to explored. The second time, using the multi-chest exploit, I managed to win in just two deaths. I think that if I'd been more cautious I could have managed with only one.
Same chest three times, lol that ain't gonna happen in the post jam version - enjoy it while you can :)
What you say about not knowing if the yellow marker is a chest or an enemy is exactly what I was trying to do, so you had to get real close and risk getting hit before you knew.
The falling off the edge of the map was my way of showing it's a tiny world (200 x 200), my subtle but lethal way of staying on theme :)
Thanks for giving it a good playtest, awesome.
Level 8 is very impressive, even with the chest hack.
At first I was quite confused: Huh? It’s very dark, what am I supposed to do?
Then I saw the yellow cubes, which turned into monsters when I approached them and killed me. Then I understood the mechanics of gearing up before facing the monsters.
In fact, I noticed that if you’re very quick, you can get the same chest several times! Very good! Keep going!
Heh, in a more polished version of the game (with proper models etc) I would respawn the chests and monsters in different locations and would prevent those double claims of the chests, but I figured for a jam that was just a nice bonus for the player.
Your comments about initial confusion are something I'll need to keep in mind also, I was walking the line of how much do I explain or how much do I let the player discover, perhaps I need to provide more of an initial nudge.
Thanks for the excellent feedback.
It was perfectly understandable, and very good considering the limited time of the jam. Just to be clear, when I said you could pick up the same chest twice, I meant that if you go back and forth very quickly, you can activate the same chest before it disappears. 😉
really happy to see you here again as well - your games always have a unique flavor and this time was not different - I smiled the entire time while playing, because the combination of the goofy yet unsettling artstyle and the unconventional control scheme felt humorous and engaging right from the start. I must admit that the stat changes / level up system got a bit lost on me, but that was because I was laser focused on visually analysing the glowing yellow boxes to determine wether they were chest or foe and that was real cool and original gameplay mechanic on its own.
goofy yet unsettling - I think you just described my life lol
glad it had you engaged mate, cheers
Wow with those cute models I wasn't expecting this to be so creepy :) I got a game-over then played it more stealthily and got the hang of it. Don't think I died more than three times on the second go.
Really got the atmosphere right on this one. I enjoyed it, well done. Left click and right click to turn made me think of those earliest 90s MSDOS FPS games!! Love it.
Thanks mate, glad you enjoyed it :)
Nice job. Thank you for sharing your work.
Great fun searching in the dark, well done
Good work MarcusFromOz! This is the first time I found the edge of the world :P. I think it would be cool to have a (very limited) flashlight just to see if it's an enemy before getting in attack range. But maybe it has a limited resource or uses? Really cool and interesting idea with the deleveling and offsetting with gear.
Thanks, I was trying to balance it so the enemy would get in one hit before your reversed away but maybe I should make it a little bit easier.
Limited uses or a recharge timer is a good idea, adds that 4th dimension (time) to its use.
Overall it's good work and pretty tight so far. I like it.