Game Maker's Toolkit Jam 2018

Thank you very much !

Haha You're not the first one talking about VR, we also think it could be a good idea to test :)

Thanks!

" It was enjoyable just watching the cart go down lol"

That's exactly what we wanted to achieve! :D

Thanks for your feedback :)

itsMoSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Goegeous graphics. And high speed rollercoaster fun. I did feel that the ending of the game was odd. I was expecting something like "Well done, you earned 500 gold. Play Again?".

Another thing to note is the feedback upon braking. When I pressed the mouse to brake, I was not sure whether I was breaking or not. Perhaps some audio feedback as indication would help?

Great game!

Submitted

PinChicks

Maxime PiquotDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

Thanks for the feedback and the kind words !

Yea, unfortunately we didn't have the time to put the end screen due to... well 48h is short ^^ But we have it now :p

And the braking feedback is also something we are thinking on, amongst other things ;)

We are pleased to see so many nice comments and we want to improve and polish the game. We will submit new versions after the jam :) I hope you'll play it again :)

Hey, thanks for your feedback.

To be sure I got it right : did you understand that you break when your magnet grapling hook is kept (holdin the left click) on a sign ? We don't have direct brake (part of the jam concept ^^)

I'm asking that because I think that it's not clear how we explained that in the game :o

itsMoSubmitted5 years ago

I think i misunderstood. So the only way to brake is to grab hold of a sign using the magnet. Gotcha.

TaldiusSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Concept super drôle avec des graphismes propres et de bonnes sensations.
Vivement une version VR haha :P

Submitted

The Four Eyed Creature

Merci!

J'en ai parlé hier de la version VR xD

Merci ! C'est vrai qu'en VR ça rendrait super bien, et ça rendrait même le grappin plus simple probablement :p

Aqueries5 years ago(+2)

Clever concept and cool art style.

Thanks for your kind words :)

Thanks :)

JunuhSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Absolutely stellar!! So fun to play! I do think it's worth noting that the minecart movement seemed a bit "stuttery" to me, but getting smooth movement can be tricky to nail. Still a blast to play!

Submitted

Bunbun Saves The World

Maxime PiquotDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

Thanks, it's nice to hear that !!! Yeah the movement of the cart isn't smooth at all we need to work on that... amongst other things :p

But we will improve the game because we are really proud of what we did and all your comments make us really motivated !

JunuhSubmitted5 years ago(+1)

You should be proud! Best of luck!

Herve GenglerDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

Thanks!

People having fun on the game si the best reward as you can imagine! And you're absolutely right about the minecrat movement, it's a high priority on our list :)

HoraceRIBOUTSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Pretty cool, but (maybe because my game is too slow) I didn't stick to some sign even if I had click , and that make me rage multiple time... but the feeling of speed and to see the entire decor going even the place you alredy pass, it was really fun ! Like a super mega cool rollercoaster ! I really like that part ! And too bad for the leaderboard panel who didn't show at the end...

Submitted

Cafe No Date

Thanks!
I'm happy that you mentioned the rollercoaster because it was of course one of the example I used a lot when speaking about the game's design!

If you're playing in fullscreen, try perhaps to run the game in windowed mode. I don't know hy but there's a issue with the Unity launcher playing the game in the highest possible resolution, and of course, it may slows it down. Especially because we didn't have enough time to optimise it.

We'll provide a new version were the major bugs are fixed, we're really motivated thanks to all your kind words :)

Thank you very much! Sorry to hear about the game being slow, but as my teammate said it's probably because you are running in fullscreen ><

We hope to fix all those nasty bugs in a future version and I hope you'll be able to enjoy it !

HoraceRIBOUTSubmitted5 years ago

Don't worry : it's mostly because my computer are garbage if it was slow !

kingbladeSubmitted5 years ago(+3)

Listen. I LOVE the artstyle. I love the feeling that the visuals and the music creates. It is beyond me how you accomplished this feat in 48 hours.

However, if I have to look at it from a theme and design point of view... it needs a lot of work.

I was not sure how this ties to the theme of the jam, but after reading the comments I've seen you started it from a driving game point of view. But I can't look at it like this because I don't need to steer anything, I am basically just trying to hit the brakes, which can be a REALLY fun mechanic to base a game on, but it seems so far from a driving game (no steering, no options, no obstacles in my way).

And about the gameplay, I think you could do with a few things:

having a few tracks that you can go to by grappling the magnet to change course, so that the player can have a few options to traverse the course with
having a few obstacles (such as traps and what not) that can throw the player off and the player has to interact with them in a variety of ways to avoid them.
maybe the opposite of obstacles that can increase the amount of gold you carry?
better range / telegraph for attaching the magnet to the signs.

As it is right now, in my first run I had the best score and I didn't hook even once (because I didn't understand how at first). On the second and third runs I used the magnet as much as I could, but still got less gold the more I used it.

Just to be clear, I really love what you achieved here, and with more work it could become an amazing game, so I hope I did not angered you or anything <3

Submitted

Match'N Shoot

Maxime PiquotDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

Thank you so much for your feedback and the time you took to write to us :) And you didn't angered us at all... at least not me ^^

"but it seems so far from a driving game (no steering, no options, no obstacles in my way)" -> Isn't it the theme of the jam ? Remove base mecanics from a genre ? Or maybe I didn't understand your point ><

You know the funny thing ? Everything you want to add to the game was designed and we wanted to do it from the first few hours of the jam ^^ But as you can imagine, 48h isn't that much :) And the gold system is a little broken at the moment we know :(

We are already working on improving the game to polish it and make it even better. We will add new versions after the jam is over and hopefully you will enjoy it even more !

Again, thank you for the time you put in your feedback, it's greatly appreciated :)

kingbladeSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

I am very glad you take me in the right way (:

And my meaning was that while removing something from the genre is the point of the jam, you removed so much out of it that I can't recognize the genre anymore. I what I've said made more sense now.

Also, I'm glad you plan to keep working on that one (:

Maxime PiquotDeveloper5 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

I see and understand your point thanks :)

Ah ah you're completely right and we already designed the things you proposed to add and quite a few other things.

But as you said, it was already hard to managed to get music an art working around the first game loops. the price to pay for that was a limited set of mechanic at first.

But yeah our goal was to iterate from there and add other cart, other track you can go with gold sources that would add a risk and reward choice (because simply adding "shortcut is not a valid option for me). Now we'll surely add these things on our spare time ^^

As I said in a previous comment, I also wanted to add a rogue-like gameplay ^^

But thanks a lot for your feedback, it confirms us that our other idea are aligned with your expectations :)

Oh yeah I forgot to mention the broken gold system, first thing we'll fix with Maxi now that I fixed the scoring display last night and fixed many signs position issues.

jojoharry165 years ago

Although it is truly a pretty game, it is very much incomplete feeling. Not sure if it's just my copmuter glitching, but I didn't get an end screen.

There is no end screen, at the end of the track the camera just let the cart go on its way. You can restart with escape.

Why do you feel it's incomplete ?

jojoharry165 years ago

Aside from the lack of an ending screen, which leaves me feeling unsatisfied as a player, most features seem half baked. The acceleration goes up exponentially at times, the signs don't pop enough, the score is almost invisible... A lot of testing and improving was clearly not done. This isn't an attack of course, it was a very tight schedule, but I am saying the drawbacks from the time limit are apparent

Maxime PiquotDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

As you said, not much time for testing.

But we are already working on improving all of that and adding new features. I hope the future versions will be more enjoyable for you !

RonnieStark5 years ago(+2)

Pretty polished game and really fun desigh, I recommend :)

Thanks !

gamecmdr5 years ago(+2)

On theme and pretty polished looking, but didn't run very well for me and the gameplay loop didnt really work for me.

Thanks, for the feedback !

Why didn't the loop work for you ?

gamecmdr5 years ago

it felt like it was just "try to click on signs as soon as they pop up" but I felt like alot of the time it just wouldnt happen. I also didnt really see any reason not to do it. Maybe I just didnt really understand it.

Yeah the goal wasn't properly feedbacked. Our scoring system take into account time and remaining gold. So you need to chose carefully when to slow and when it's ok not to slow.

But in this build the gold system is broken and some signposts are either missing or misplaced. And it's not really forgiving about the hook...

Hopefully you'll test our next build and we'll have sorted out what is wrong and fixed it.

Thank you for your feedback anyway :)

Deleted post5 years ago

Deleted 1 year ago

Thanks ! ^^

We wanted it to be between 1:30 and 2:30 a run, and tried to achieved that during the production.

It was a bit overscoped but we learned a lot and our two artists did an amazing job :)

Thank you!

Throw Away Game GOTY Edition

Morgan K.Submitted5 years ago(+2)

Very impressed you got it so polished so quickly! It feels the most like a finished game out of any I've played so far, excellent job. I'm not sure what the subversion is supposed to be, on rails shooter with no shooting?

Submitted

Thanks!

As I explained in a previous comment, we started from the idea of a racing game in space without steering or direct gas/brake. Then we feel that using a minecart would help to understand the gampleay and make it more accessible but without the other opponent and the leaderboard it makes less sense and I we lost the "racing feeling" T_T

The build we didn't manage to push in the last minutes, even if it was ready had this leaderboard at the end :

We even had a server to gather the score of every player, but we didn't finish it in time ...

Did I say that we overscoped ? :D

Thanks for playing and for your comment! :)

Thanks! We had many other idea to push the idea of a "racing" game as my teammate said, and we will try to add them in future versions :)

Virtual Turtle GamesSubmitted5 years ago(+3)

First of all, and it has to be said, this is one of those game-jam games where I really start to wonder how you pulled off these graphics in 48 hours: it's gorgeous! The gameplay concept is also really interesting, and challenging. I've tried quite a few times, but my best score is only 600 gold left.. I think the first part of the track (before the cave) is pretty easy to master, but after that all seems lost every time. I feel like there might not be enough signs after that, or that they might not slow me down enough, because after that point I just keep going at insane speeds, while also grabbing a lot of signs! However, even with this, I think it's an amazing game and you should be really proud of making it. I had a ton of fun, the music is great and overall it has quite a bit of replayability! Good job :)

Submitted

Komorebi

Maxime PiquotDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

Man, thank you very much for your feedback, it's so good to read comments like yours!

Even for us this game is hard ^^ But we are working on improving it and we will upload new versions after the jam is over. We are really proud of what we did and we want to polish it!

Virtual Turtle GamesSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Great to hear! No worries. Best of luck with that guys :)

Herve GenglerDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

Thanks a lot for your feedback and kind words! :)

I think taht the fact we had our concept in the first 2 hours of the jam and that it never really changed even if we add some things (like the gold idea) + the organisation helped us to produce all these things from scratch during the Jam :)

To be honest, we made some mistake and it impact the balancing of the game, we work on the art until the end and we didn't get enough time to test and balance the game because we were constantly adding things like sounds and FX that required code and each time we were merging the work of everyone, we were "losing" a lot of time. So this was a big learning for us all ^^

And yeah I said that in a previous comment, but this build has real issues with our signs, many of them moved in the terrain and some 3D assets, most of them in the second part of the track, hence the WAY TOO HIG difficulty.

That's sad because we tried to make a really accessible game impossible to lose but we wanted it to be hard to master. It'll need some fix ans baance to really get to that point but I'm already working on these, because I'm really proud of what we did (and I enjoy playing it so I want it to be fixed to enjoy it even more :D)

Thanks :)

Virtual Turtle GamesSubmitted5 years ago(+1)

Good to hear! But that's what a jam is all about. Polish comes later, that's okey! Without this jam you wouldn't have made this game at all :)

Daio15 years ago(+2)

Unforgiving game at first run - i didn't even noticed first two signs with tips and rushed down with panic :D Also sometimes, when cart gain some speed it's almost impossible to click on signs - sometimes even cursor didn't turn green when i was near signs.

Anyway, what was your goal? It's isn't obvious for me, and you didn't write it in description.

Thanks for the feedback !

Because of the lack of time it was hard to fine tune some things, like good positionning of signs and an easier way to launch the hook at high speed.

And was the cursor grey when you tried to launch the hook ? Because if so, it means your hook was broken by an earlier launch ;)

The goal is to reach the finish line as fast as possible while keeping most of your gold. Although we displayed the gold, we didn't have time to display the time. A new version of the game has it with leaderboards, and we intend to polish it after the jam and upload new versions

Hopefully you'll be able to play it and enjoy it even more :)

Daio15 years ago

imho - main problem of your game is that signs blends with surrounding - highlight it with color (or make it reflect sunlight like modern road signs) - hopefully Mark already explained that.

Also, as Mark said, theme was "GENRE without MECHANIC", and as i said you haven't mentioned what is your genre and what mechanic you had thrown away. Maybe it's just me, but i didn't understand what you have said with your game.

Maxime PiquotDeveloper5 years ago (1 edit)

This is a racing game without the steering and the speed control, this is explained on the game page. Unfortunately we can't change the description of the submission page ><

Thank you for your feedback :) We really appreciate it!

Thanks!

In fact, I was checking this evening and many of our signs finished in some of the last 3D Assets so, yeah it's too hard!

I'm balancing it right now. We also have apparently an issue in the function that compute the minecart speed: the gold weight is influencing in a strange way. We'll surely fix that ^^

Here's a screenshot of the start we have right now :

Thanks for testing and for your comment! :)

MuffynSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Visually and conceptually a super cool game! A bit of a stretch to fit the theme of the jam.

Submitted

Arrhythmia

Thanks :)

Why do you find it doesn't fit that much the theme ?

MuffynSubmitted5 years ago

If your genre is "minecart" and your missing mechanic is "turning," that isn't really inspired, considering lots of minecart games turn for you and it turns into just a roller coaster.

No our original idea was to take turning out from a driving game. But I see your point and it makes sense 😀

Well I suppose that it depends how you look at it:

When we learned about the team, with brainstorm for more than an hour with the team and get some idea as "A stealth game where you can't hide", etc.

One of my proposition was: "A driving game whithout steering and without direct gas/break mechanic". At this point, I was thinking about a spaceship with a tractor beam.

But as some point, MaxiPoki made a joke about the fact that I wanted, before the jam, to make a game based around trains (because "I like trains") and our two artist also liked this idea. We thought it would also be a good way to explain the reason why you can't steer and we would still be using this original mechanics of the "tractor beam" turned into a grappling hook, then a magnetic grappling hook.

Sadly, due to time lack, we didn't add other competitor or the feature that would allow you to change tracks to overtake them and/or replenish gold. So it feel less like a racing game in this state. But still, I think it respect the theme and the genre is "Driving/racing game", I do'nt think you can say that there's a "minecart" genre. Well I never play to this kind of game and for me game genres are not as much accurate but more like that : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_genres

But I can see your point ^^

Thanks a lot for playing it and for your feedback :)

indeepSubmitted5 years ago(+2)

Great game. I needed two plays to fully understand what should I do but I managed to. Great visuals and audio, they fit very well to each other.

Submitted

Koshmar

Thanks!

And you're right, I'm sad about it, but due to lack of time we didn't finish the "tutorial". But I'm glad that you still liked it! :)

Yeah we wanted to use the panels on the side to explain that... but 48h XD Happy to know you liked the game :)

Aldaryn5 years ago(+2)

Nice game! Fun and simple gameplay, with suitable visual universe and sound. The prod is almost finished, although the short time to do it. Well done!

Thanks, it's really kind of you ^^

Thanks, we are really proud of what we accomplished !!!

Yamiyor5 years ago(+2)

really fun and addictive !!

Thanks! :)

Thanks!! That was the intention, happy to see it worked!

Herve GenglerDeveloper5 years ago (2 edits)

By the way, sadly, we didn't have enough time to finish to create and put signposts explaining controls. So here's how you play:
You need to target the signposts and hook them (by holding left click) with the magnetic grappling hook to brake your minecart and avoid losing the gold in it. But if you keep a signpost hook for too long, the rope will break, so you need to release the right click soon enough ^^

(The escape key let you restart, and yeah you can't close the game without alt-F4, but why would you close it ? :p )

Herve GenglerDeveloper5 years ago (2 edits) (+1)

It was great to work on this project!

We're proud of the game we did, even if of course we had many other ideas and not enough time to make them (we designed it as a racing rogue-like game where you could buy upgrades after each run with the gold saved).

We hope you'll enjoy it :)