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A jam submission

Gem DasherView game page

Submitted by Psychpsyo — 11 hours, 7 minutes before the deadline
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Gem Dasher's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Design#2133.6003.600

Ranked from 35 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

nice game. loves the graphics. great fun

Submitted

Nice little game. The gameplay is simple but well executed. Good job!

Submitted

Interesting game! Here are my comments:

The Good:

> I'd say you nailed the arcade feeling of the game. It's something you wanna keep on trying again and again to increase the score. I managed to score 3,482 in my best run.

> The mechanic is pretty unique (though its adherence to the theme is a bit of a stretch... but nevertheless clever! wouldn't have thought of that)

> Because of the simplicity of the mechanic (only one button), I think it could work very well as a mobile game!

> Graphics are pretty awesome. I especially liked the "GAME OVER" animation.

Possible points of improvement:

> I think some sense of progression would be nice. 

> The enemies that appear on the side should be telegraphed. Especially when there are gems that appear near the edge of the screen that are too risky to get because an enemy could suddenly spawn.

> Some sound would be nice as well, if you decide to continue working on it.

Overall good game! Thanks for this.

P.S. Please consider giving feedback to our game as well. We are in need of more ratings. https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2018/rate/300343

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback!

Improvements Replies:

> Didn't have any ideas for progression during the jam. (It does get more difficult though the further you get)

> Totally agree. For some reason I never implemented that. I was thinking about not spawning them on the side the player is currently on though.

> Yea. I need sound.

Submitted

Fun concept! My favorite enemy was the one that grabbed the gems ahah. The drill one was super fast and hard to avoid. The idea is really cool, but I think you shouldn't have used "Boulder Dash without the Boulders" as it looks something different altogether (except for the theme).

Developer

Removed the "Boulder Dash without the Boulders" now. Didn't think about non-jam participants finding the game when I made it... 

Interesting how you say the drill was super hard to avoid... I always had way more problems with the UFO and the bird one...

Submitted

I'm also participating in the jam, it just doesn't fit because when I think about Boulder Dash I think about digging dirt and a player without gravity moving in tiles. You shouldn't remove if you don't think anything else that could fit! 

The thing with the drill is that it hits me whenever I try to move long distances and it catches me off guard as its so fast. Anyway, congratulations for the fun game, its really amazing :)

Submitted

Its pretty funny, and very polished! I've played several times in order to overcome my score, and I enjoyed the game a lot. But it differs a lot from the Boulder Dash I used to play.

Overall, great job!

Developer

Yea. The description also says that it stretches the theme of the jam a lot.

Submitted

A short and sweet game! I really like the large amount of varied enemies that were in the game as well as the general aesthetic. Once I worked out the best way to play with the mechanics I ended up playing for a good 10 minutes! I think if the game was more polished then it would be even better to play! But with a time limit of 48 hours I would say this is a very solid entry!

Developer

Thanks! I heard yours is pretty solid as well.

Submitted

Intriguing is what mark probably would say about this, and I agree! :D 

It reminds me a lot of the mechanic in celeste. Where you can do an air dash once, and if you hit a gem you can do it again. There is something about this that is really satisfying. Sometimes the game is to random, leaving me optionless. So an option could be "jumping on (some) enemies". Which could be really hard to do, but really usefull (high risk, high reward). Also giving me a bigger dash bar would be really cool, idk when but at some point in the game :D Making me start with 3 out of 5 health feels bad. It feels like your punishing me right of the bat. Maybe dont show how many lives I can have hmmm not sure

Apart from that it was really fun to play it, gave me cool ideas for future games, so thank you a lot for making this game :) Cheers

Submitted (1 edit)

You marked the file as windows, mac and linux. But I think your file cant do that (Im just assuming so I might be totally wrong here. If I am please tell me how you made a file for all 3 platforms). I guess its just a windows file, since its a .exe If you're using Unity, you have to change what your building for. One of these options is for windows linux and mac, but in that option you can still pick which one of these 3 your building for. 

Developer

It's written in java, then packed into an .exe with launch4j. No idea if that breaks it on other OSes...

Submitted

Nice, then you just have to upload 1 thing. Thats the dream ^^

Developer

I should just upload the jar. But I've also seen people that have no idea how a jar works and don't know what to do with it... And a .jar always has the standard java icon.

Submitted

It may be lacking sound, but ya know what? The mechanics are solid and the game is pretty dang fun. Giving this one a high rating.

Submitted

it's a good time! i had fun with it for a bit, although i'm not very good. i think with some sound and more lasting horizontal momentum, this would be a really nice little game

Submitted

Great game! The art is really good. Just missing a bit of sound.

Submitted

Nice game. Pretty fun once you get used to the movement.

Submitted (1 edit)

This game is really addicting. It's definetely not Boulder Dash, but as its own thing, with an added high score counter, I could really see this as a short web minigame or mobile game.

Submitted

Good game! Chompy boi is best boi

Developer

He is!

Submitted

Great fun, once I worked out the input :D

Submitted

Nice job! I love all the little animations that went into making it really great tbh. Once I got a hang of the movement I started really getting into it. I think you made something really interesting

Submitted

Cute and I love that chompy boy. Cheers from discord! :)

Submitted

Oooh, this came forth from Boulderdash? I would've never guessed that, I really love how you boiled it down to a gem collector like this with such a playful mechanic, and cutesy panda character :P

This is a really fun game. It's easy to play and understand. I think, unfortunately, my scoreboard is broken as I never get any points, but it is fun nonetheless. Also the panda suit character is the most adorable thing ever.

Developer

How is it broken. Cause the game does not save your score. You need to read it on the game over screen. Is the text white?

It does not show me a score at all.

Developer

If you downloaded it before the end of the jam then you still got the version with that bug. You just need to redownload it then.

Will do! :) 

Submitted

I love the little sprites, the colour combination and the smoothness of everything. This is quite fun.