This was gorgeous! Took a bit to get the upgrades, but was rewarding to do so! I made it to the cat and the inputs stopped so I assumed I completed the game? Wasn't quite sure since there was no message to indicate if it was a glitch. I like the gameplay concepts here, but not a big fan of the invisible platforms that you have to memorize by trial and error - having some kind of indicator of where they will show up would go a long way- or at least not making us do blind jumps into ghost zones to then find out our jump was off for where the platforms appear. Overall great entry though! Absolutely love the art.
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Bone journey's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #883 | 3.650 | 3.650 |
| Overall | #2557 | 2.783 | 2.783 |
| Originality | #3268 | 2.600 | 2.600 |
| Fun | #3763 | 2.100 | 2.100 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
You can replace your bones to gain power using items left behind by other souls
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
No
We used pre-existing audio
Comments
The art is gorgeous and the concept is great! There are some issues that would be easy to fix and would help the game enormously.
I have to say that the standard bindings did not work for me at all. Space and WD to move felt like the control scheme of an FPS and wasn't natural or comfortable at all in such a tight and fast platformer. WASD worked a bit better, but it wasn't until I changed the controls to arrow keys that things really clicked, since it freed one hand to only focus on banjo and spring and the other to focus on movement.
The idea of using the banjo to summon platforms is solid, but it ended up being a guessing game, not only to where the notes would end up appearing, to if using the banjo would activate them at all. Missing one or the other meant I had to wait until both my banjo playing animation and the actual notes reset, since there was never time to try more than once per activation, and the banjo only added platforms at the moment of use. I think, instead of having the little creatures that you activate with music, the game would be far cleaner if the notes always appeared where they would be, but were only solid if the banjo playing was active.
I also felt an immense urge to use the spring while jumping. I realize that this would be a really brutal change to the game design and would probably create issues with the physics, but it's something to consider if you ever expand on this project.
All in all, great work and I hope you keep at it.
Submitted
Join Now!The art is beautiful, but I think there are a couple methods that can immediately improve the gameplay. I don't intend to sound harsh, just want to help :)
- The jump-up is too tight for how small the platforms are. I think if the jumping-up was a little more loose then players can control their positioning a lot better. The jump-down is good though, a real snappy feel
- It is not clear what the platforms are, maybe if something fell on the musical notes to show that they can be stood on it would help new players
- The camera is pretty snappy -- that can be good, but in this case it is really harsh. Consider lowering the speed of the smooth follow, or just don't translate the camera at all when the character changes directions.
In any case, the art work is really nice, I hope you find my suggestions helpful. Good luck!
Submitted
Line Bender
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