The game would benefit a lot from more feedback, be it audio or visual. The minimap was almost the same range as the vision of the camera and the shots from the enemies blended in with the background at times.
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Winter Is Coming's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Adherence to the Theme | #1686 | 2.684 | 2.684 |
| Design | #1695 | 2.211 | 2.211 |
| Overall | #1738 | 2.439 | 2.439 |
| Originality | #1784 | 2.421 | 2.421 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
It was a bit slow, and dying took you back to the start. I wanted to experiment with the new enemy in the third level, but when I died, I had to start over =(
The game was very polished tho, with all of the particles, the map and the shading. Good job with all of that! If you were to maybe add checkpoints at the start of each level, this game would be so much more fun!
EDIT: Oh, that breaks your connection with the theme... Well tbh, I don't think a single life suits this sort of game, so consider stripping this in any post jam updates.
Submitted
Tunnel ViewGreat game, I found myself shouting KYAH everytime I killed someone because I pictured myself as some kind of kung fu master against a bunch of gun wielding agents or something.
Not sure why I did that, was in the moment :D
Still, I think you can strengthen this game with power ups, varied characters and some kind of indicator to when the enemies will fire. I found myself running around people waiting on them so I didn't die when I went for the strike.
Submitted
Head Ache (GMTK 2019)Good job on finishing the game! I would like to see more different enemy type, or maybe even powerup for your own fire "ball". The idea of one life is can be executed better in my opinion, the player need to be given more tools to defend themselves if there is only one life. The enemy does not give a clear indication when they are firing a shot and this can cause some frustration for the player. Once again, goob job! Would love to see how you improve after this.
Submitted
Empty DungeonHey there! Its an interesting idea you go there, but there could have been a few improvement... Some sound effects would have been nice, and some more player movement abilitites; dash, etc. Apart from this details, its a fun little game! Great job!
Would love if you could check mine out too! Or not, no pressure ;)
Submitted
Lightless - Only One LightThe correlation to the theme was a bit weak.
Controls could definitely be tighter, drifting was definitely weird. Combat could be more fun if the enemies gave feedback that they were about to attack. And also give the player a dash they can use once in awhile, would have been a bit more engaging.
Don't underestimate sound as a feedback loop for your players!
Some general design tips;
- Scale the camera larger and increase your players field of view. Nothing is more frustrating than dying to a bullet you didn't have enough time to prepare for because you didn't see the enemy that shot the projectile
- Games are satisfying to play based off of feedback given to the player, you definitely have visual feedback down (which is impressive to say since the game is so simple in terms of graphic fidelity, you pulled this off really well) but you should focus on motion feedback (things like manipulating time during certain actions, camera shake, motion trails etc. ) and audio feedback. Humans have quite a few sensory sensitivities, see how many you can trigger (in a good way of course) while doing something you want to feel satisfying to the player
- One life is a cool concept to think about. It's really poor put into practice though. Lives in general are a poor way to add difficulty to a game. To make a game satisfyingly challenging avoid uses of artificially hiking the difficulty up i.e. lives. Lives can be used in a good way, but be very careful when designing around them.
- Add a quit button! First thing you need to do when making a main menu under a time crunch when players are going to be playing your game soon is make the start game button. Wrong! Always make a quit game button. While this isn't a terrible thing when making a game that's being played by tech savy people like devs, players will always be irritated by needing to hit alt+F4 or any other hacky way to close the game. It's so easy to forget to do so it's always a good thing to get done first.
I really hope to see some of your coming projects and see you grow in your programming skills! If you have any other projects you want feedback on or tips to help with, feel free to hit me up! I think you have lots of potential as a sprouting dev! Thanks for the submission!
Submitted
OneShotThis is a fun game, I enjoyed it! Good job!
As a personal feedback, I would like to know when the enemy is about to shoot so I can plan my attack or defence manouver.
Submitted
Germs Against HumanityOne life is an idea that comes to mind fast, but its not that fun. And I cant know how many levels are there, so I cant decide if i am good at this game. Grapichs are cool and the particle effects are good but without sound it does not feels rewarding to destroy those blue circles. And finding the optimal strategy is pretty easy, so after finding it, game does not feel that engaging. But my little brother had fun while playing it, and raged a little bit :D.
Submitted
I HAVE NOTHING BUT 1'SI love the way you use particle effects, the ice one looks especially cool! (...pun not intended, I swear)
Without the enemies telegraphing that they're going to attack, the only strategy I could come up with was to circle them, wait for them to fire, and then go in for the kill. Also the camera being so far zoomed in meant that I was sometimes getting killed by enemies off screen.
As for the theme, having only one player in a wave based game like this isn't particularly novel, pretty much all of them are like that. The design challenge for this GameJam is less about picking a style of game where you only have one of something, but picking something that normally has lots of something and making it only one.
Great job on getting something submitted in 48 hours, be sure to do it again sometime and make something even better! : )
- Joe
(if you get the time to check out our game, we'd really appreciate it!)
Submitted
Only One RecruitSurely a nice try, maybe a bit of polish around graphics (comic sans much?) and music (i just killed a blue circle, why do i still feel the void inside me? oh yeah, it's the sound of silence) would have made it feel better, although it's true that it's the mechanics that matter. The theme it's... okay; i mean it's one dot with one life. I didn't feel the winter though, sounds to me just an excuse to make a cultural reference, it's nice, but I think it's accessory to the game. After all I had fun, but you could've submitted it as a browser game and it would have been better for both you and your players.
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