Brutally challenging but great fun! The diversity of challenges was neat! :D
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Slime Castle's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Design | #251 | 3.964 | 3.964 |
| Overall | #278 | 4.020 | 4.020 |
| Adherence to the Theme | #402 | 4.214 | 4.214 |
| Originality | #512 | 3.881 | 3.881 |
Ranked from 84 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Definitely not an easy game, but that makes clearing a level all the more rewarding. There isn't a lot of leeway though, which can make getting the precise timings an exercise in frustration and repetition.
I also found that activating your ability too soon after releasing X caused it to trigger the next one along, but when you knew, you could effectively exploit it a bit~
Nicely done, I had a lot of fun playing~!
Submitted
Palette FighterInteresting concept! I had to get used to switching mechanic, but after a while I cruised throught the levels! ( I'm joking, I died, a lot!)
Good Game!
Submitted
Naughty Knight - JAM editionSmooth, Satisfying, and Frustrating. Overall a super well designed game with very punishing, yet rewarding levels. The game looks amazing and feels just as great, I could tell a lot of attention to detail went into the nuances here. The controls were so tight, I knew each death was my fault which added to my frustration and determination to get through each and every level until I beat the game leaving me with supreme satisfaction. I would love to have more levels, and maybe a bit more of a learning curve ^_^. I want to know how frustrated this game can make me with only one power at a time so I can taste that sweet success in a full game with multiple levels!
Looks like most of what I'd suggest has already been said...and answered, but I'll repeat anyway:
- Visual and audio feedback as to when enemies are about to move (some people don't see as well, some don't hear as well, or play with sound off).
- Separate keys (or buttons) for each action and for pause would make it (I think) a lot easier to learn. Most platformers require you to learn a bunch of buttons: not so many that require you to use a menu in the midst of gameplay. And you have several levels that require you to jump twice in a row, but if you want to do that immediately from a pause it seems like you have to cycle all the way around?
- I didn't notice anyone else saying this, but I'd like 'R' to restart the level directly, rather than kill you and then you have to press it again to restart.
- It's a little weird that you can kind of use the jump ability multiple times, but I don't see that there's anything you can do about it: it enables a lot of good level design.
- Checkpoints might be nice, especially in that last level. Different people have different tolerances for how long they're willing to go without a checkpoint and some games demand that you go a ridiculously long time between checkpoints (especially boss fights: Hollow Knight and Cuphead, I'm looking at you). But this one pushes the limits of what I'm comfortable with and you could make it more fun for more people by allowing them to take it one piece at a time. And you can always turn some off in a higher difficulty mode or something.
But yeah, those are polish things: for a 48hr game this is excellent. Jam games are almost always too hard and a little unpolished.
I think this game is good, but needs a bit of work to make it slightly more fair on the player.
I felt a lot of frustration during some levels being unable to get past them unless I did EXACTLY what you designed the level for meaning no room for error or exploration with the controls.
I like a puzzle platformer with more freedom to the level design that gives the player the ability to do whatever they wish to complete the level.
That all said because this is a game jam version take all that criticism with a larger grain of salt because for the time you have you done an excellent job making this game. I just hope you take the feedback from everyone on board if you wish to continue development of this.
Submitted
Head Ache (GMTK 2019)This is a good challenge, is starts off with the controls being a bit hard to grasp, but once I got to the Coin Reflexes level the game pretty much hammered into my head how the controls work. I think Coin Reflexes is my favorite level. Some feedback is that I'd make the "Oh Shiney" level where the coin is introduced actually have 4 gaps with the coin at the end of the first two, because currently you can cross the gaps with a jump and a dash and thus aren't required to engage with the mechanic. Similarly I got stuck on the Coin Reflexes level for a little because I didn't know I could jump in the air via the selection menu, a level earlier with a fall where you must jump at the bottom of a pit to get to the platform, prior to getting the dash, a variation on the one at the end of Coin Reflexes for example without the spikes, just to tech the mechanic. This game fits very well with the theme, I'd just clean up the selection of abilities a bit somehow, it's very easy to lose track of how many times to hit, and requires you slowly moving through each option to find the right one. I've found myself tapping it to cycle, and then land on the right one and accidentally let go and thus if I want to activate it I have to cycle through again, or I choose the wrong one, and it slows down what could be a frantic, high-speed game. Still I think you should pursue this game farther, it's a great concept.
Great game! Really loved the art, music, and sound effects. Overall, awesome presentation. The level design was quite clever. It does get hard fast, though. I wish that enemies had a little animation before they did their thing (like having the jumpy slimes squish their face before they jump) so I could anticipate their movements better. Joe from Team Horsehead has elaborated on this in the comments below.
I very much enjoyed the concept of freezing time and switching between your abilities. It's a bit clunky at first, but that's to be expected with a game jam game!
With a bit more refinement, I think you've got something really special on your hands. A cute puzzle-platformer where both the puzzling and platforming are tricky. Well done and good work!
Submitted
MONOCHEMThank you so much for the nice words! Visual and sound queues have been brought to my attention and I couldn't agree more. I fully plan on implementing a squish or charge animation with maybe a little audio queue in there too somewhere. It would absolutely give the player more control especially when coming out of frozen time.
Thanks for the play and glad you enjoyed!
I'm conflicted about this game, because I want to like it a lot, but I also kind of hate it. It's really smart, and there's a lot of good design. But at the same time it's SO frustrating to play, with the challenges giving you absolutely zero room for error, and requiring that you often beat several in one room, where any one of them you could slip up because of a button press being a frame or two early/late.
You're so close to having an absolutely incredible game, but I got so angry I couldn't finish it (I died almost 100 times on the Coin Reflexes one, and just gave up on Shooty Bois). If you split some of those harder challenges into multiple rooms so you didn't need to do them all in a row, and made some of the jumps/gaps a bit more lenient it would be a lot less annoying I think.
It's one thing losing a level because of pressing the wrong thing, but so much more annoying doing the exact same thing ten times in a row and it only working once because there's only one or two frames that the right input will get you through. The player has already learned what you've been trying to teach them, but they have to keep doing it over and over to get that lucky run where everything lines up.
The other thing is that a LOT of these levels require timing perfectly with the other slimes jumping, and because they don't telegraph that, I found myself just running into them 5-10 times in a row until I just happened to get the right timing. It didn't feel like a skill thing, it felt like a luck thing.
I'm really sorry for focusing on the negative, because I really love so much about this game, but playing it I just mostly felt frustrated and angry. It's so close to being amazing, just needs a bit of balancing. I've given you a good rating, because everything apart from the frustration is great.
The characters, the art style, the smart use of abilities, the fact that you can pause time to think about what to do next - it's all really great. Also it's a great use of the theme. If it could just be a bit less punishing I think this would've got a full 15 from me.
- Joe
Submitted
Only One RecruitThank you so much for the well thought out comment! I Take NO offense what so ever as I agree 100%! Rushing the level design a bit resulted in some of the frustrating challenges, but a few tweaks that I have already implemented in a new version makes the game feel SOOO much better. (I'mma talk about some not as excuses, just because I want to share my own gripes with my game haha!)
First of all, I found that by clamping the max vertical downward speed really helps make those falling sections more reasonable. It was something I wanted to do in the first place, but never got around to doing so (mainly because I forgot whoops!) It makes the player feel like they have more control when pausing instead of pausing and feeling like the game moves them down way farther than it should.
I also agree that the levels have too many challenges and dying hurts when you were so close to the end and have to go through the gauntlet all over again. I have been toying around with checkpoints and the game already feels so much less traumatizing.
On the point of the slime jump timing could you elaborate? Their jumps are not random but are fixed on a singular timer. If they feel weird or out of sync I would love to know so I can tweak their design! It's something I wanted to tweak more anyways, I just didn't have time.
I seriously appreciate the good rating and I also seriously appreciate you bringing up the negatives! It helps me become a better dev and improve this game! I would love to expand on it and make it something that is tight, smooth and fun! This helps tremendously! Again, thank you!
"On the point of the slime jump timing could you elaborate? "
Sure thing! They're on a timer, but because they pause it's hard to tell when they're going to start jumping again. So I can count a second in my head, but if I count 0.9 seconds or 1.1 seconds then I just run straight into the slime, or jump right over it. If it maybe squished a bit half a second before jumping to telegraph the upcoming jump.
Mario 3D World deals with this by putting it into the music, with the beeps signalling that things are going to change and a colour pulse as well. Without that I think those levels would be next to impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDq1uoC36Z8
I actually found getting the timing right easier on Shooty Bois because of the laser pulse, I knew every second pulse the slime would jump so could prepare. Without that consistent timing for me to get in sync with, it just felt like random chance whether the timing would be right.
It sounds like you already knew a lot of these things already, and have improved it which is good to hear! I'll play it after the jam when you update it, because I'd love to complete it. You also solved the design challenge that we didn't in our game with the multiple abilities. We ended up going multiple characters but you found a way to make it work with "only one" character still.
- Joe
Oh wow a visual queue would work perfectly for that! I see what you mean! Maybe squish down a bit like they are ready to spring and get a little darker or something! Maybe even put a little charging up a jump sound effect for good measure.
My idea actually started out as being multiple characters as well! I forget the exact moment it evolved into abilities, but I was always using these colors in the placeholder sprites and I thought "Huh, maybe the character just changes colors with the ability instead" Then I came up with the slime idea because usually they are pretty colorful fellas haha. Don't sell yourself short because your characters had a lot of charm! I really liked your approach!
Thanks for detailing what you meant! I'm inspired so I'll probably work on that enemy mechanic tonight!
I felt it had great level design, and the mechanic opened itself up to a lot of interesting puzzles, however I think the controls needed some refining. Some issue I had were;
- - It took me a while to realize that I had to keep z held down in order to bounce off slimes, this should probably be mentioned somewhere because before I couldn't tell why sometimes I would bounce low and sometimes I would bounce high.
- - At times I would press x to choose an ability in the air and when I press z to do it I found that I was using a different ability than the one I selected. Maybe having a different button for the action and selection, or a check in code, to only change the selected ability if the window is still open after .5f of a second, to reduce the chance of this happening.
- - When getting a reset coin, if pressing Z would let you use the last ability without having to reselect it.
These could have just been me, but I feel if these inputs were polished up it would help reduce the difficulty curve and some frustration that can be caused by deaths that are due to unintended inputs rather than skill (though i'll be honest, I would still probably die a lot). I'll be uploading a video of my playthrough of some of this game soon, so that might make it clearer, hope this feedback is helpful.
Submitted
Zombie GaggleThanks for the comment and you are 100% on the money! I agree with it all.
I had to really rush the tutorial/easing the player into the game. That is why There was that really long letter from grandpappy in the beginning. The only indicator of the hold "Z" I had was in the first level with it but it wasn't as visible as I would have liked.
The feeling "like the game used a different ability" issue was a result of a sorta last minute change. It's just some poor menu design sadly. Not a glitch, but by using "Z" as both change ability and activate ability the player can easily press it before closing the menu when they were actually trying to press it after to activate the selected ability. I should have just mapped the menu out differently. Its one of my bigger regrets.
Agree on the coin front too. Having it default to your last ability would have made it a much smoother experience. Wish I had thought of that before :P
Thanks again for the suggestions! I appreciate these quite a lot because I want to tweak this into something really fun. This helps with that a tremendously! Looking forward to the video! Shoot me a link if you can! Would love to watch!
Great game
Very polished for a game jam
The Z/X wasn't clear at the beginning, because I didn't understand I can only use an ability once
I love how your mechanics give a great and novel platform experience
We did a similar "one ____ at a time only" but opted for senses rather then special abilities
Your idea is much easier to expand and I using the enemy art for ability clarification is a really intuitive way to convey the ability's ... ability
Keep expanding on it :)
Submitted
1% LeftThanks for the kind words! The game suffers from not having a proper tutorial/training the player phase for sure. I'm going to definitly have to check yours out if we had similar ideas then! Looking at the art I already like it! I actually do intend to expand the game some more so I appreciate the encouragement!
I'm going to start with what I didn't like. The controls were a little clunky. Possibly just because I don't like keyboard platformers. I picked the wrong ability a lot -- If you could make the non-active abilities fade out a little, that I think would add a lot of good feel to the UI piece of it. I also found that if you freeze time the same frame a bullet hits the button.... your audio goes craaaazy XD. Last small piece of critique: The audio in this game is well-done except for the sound when you are switching through your abilities, it's pretty loud and shrill compared to the rest of the game noises.
That said, this game is great! One of the longer games I've played this jam, and it played good front to back, pretty much. One of the most fun entries I've played so far. I sort of got a Celeste feeling when I was dashing into enemies and flying off their heads. There's a lot of potential with this game. Grats on a great jam entry!
Submitted
Ka-BobThanks for the comment! Please do! I need all the gripes I can get so I can polish it up into something more fun! From the get go I thought this game would be more suited for controllers, however I just didn't have time to get both going and I wanted to make it as accessible as possible. I like the idea of the fade for sure! I think the farther back on the menu, the more faded and darkened they should get! Thanks for that idea!
I had NO idea about the button sound issue! I'm sorry if you were wearing headphones XD
I actually cant remember off the top of my head if I lowered the sound on that specific effect, might not have, but I'm not sold on its whole sound effect anyways. May look into changing or tweaking it.
Thank you so much for the kind words! It really means a lot! I have been told by a few people that it has a Celeste vibe so I'm not going to complain about that one bit! That's an honor!
This game is amazing! Its super challenging but super fun! Unfortunately, after passing "Shooting bois" (which I am extremely proud of) I didn't have time to do more but (if there is a level select menu) i'll try to beat the whole level! Very good game! But, the fact that you could pick up a coin to reset the abilities, even though its very fun, in my opinion, breaks a little bit the theme "Only One". Apart from that perfect game!
Submitted
Lightless - Only One LightThank you so much!! Yeah it's a bit of a longer game for sure. This is my first jam and I wanted to add more levels because I thought it was short, but hearing that and playing others makes me feel a lot better! The coin did break the theme a bit I agree, but I wanted to add new elements of challenge and that was before I came up with the button/door idea and the lava (which you didn't get to haha ;D), so I didn't want to just scrap the levels with them in it. Time crunch is a cruel mistress! Thank you so much for the play and comment!
Hah, this is very hard :D
Intresting approach! I certainly is a tight platformer, maybe the learning curve is a little bit to thigh - for me it is.
In the end, I think your "one mechanic per room" is stronger than "you can only select one mechanic", so maybe roll more with the first one? But overall, very well done!
Submitted
One Last TimeI played this game way too long, but I just had to finish it. There are so many levels. I got around 200 deaths :D lol
It fits the theme perfectly and I think its very original.
The only thing I'm not quite happy is with the controls. I think you tried to only use one button for your abilities, but maybe it would be nice to have each ability on a separate button because I mixed them up way to often, especially during the jump sequences. At some points I was sure to have selected the correct ability, but he was doing another one. Maybe a bug in the game.
You could then also add the spacebar for the stopping of the time. So this would be my suggestions:
- W for jump
- D for dash (yeah, same letter)
- A for shoot
- Spacebar for stopping time
Try it out and let me know how it feels ;) I would also test a version of the game using these theme. Maybe I'm completely wrong :D
I hope my comment helped you.
Submitted
One Shot GladiatorI'm so glad you had that much fun with it! That means a lot! Controls are absolutely one of its larger downfalls and it's something I'm actively tweaking. I've said it before, but I think this game really needs controller support to shine. I'm experimenting with a few different button combos and layouts to see which one fits better! That may be a really good one for keyboard support! Thank you for the suggestion! I may hit you up at some point for testing that very setup if you are serious ;)
This was very difficult but also very fun! You did a great job designing all those puzzles - gotta love a game that pushes its players to beat tough odds! Well done! :D
Submitted
you are the only OneCool idea but Very, very challenging.
I got stuck after a while, but I think I'll get back to it when I have more time, too many games to try in this jam.
Art and "story" are really good. Congratulations.
Here's mine if you can spare some time playing it. Many Thanks:
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463337
Submitted
Lazy DriverA lovely platformer with super cute characters, enjoyed it through :) Nice job!
Submitted
Backpackless
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