really well polished, it took me a while to notice the main mechanic, but i immediately noticed the change in music when paused. It is really amazing,challenging and original game
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Double-Edged Link's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #293 | 4.105 | 4.105 |
| Overall | #429 | 3.754 | 3.754 |
| Fun | #695 | 3.474 | 3.474 |
| Originality | #754 | 3.684 | 3.684 |
Ranked from 19 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 link (join) yourself to weakened enemies to get a copy of their weapon, and use it against them - as long as they're alive and you don't die
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?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam
Comments
The core mechanic of linking with the enemy and having to keep it alive is a very cool spin on the theme! It is very creative, especially because it comes with a interesting tradeoff rather than being purely or mostly beneficial towards the player unlike other GMTK game jam games I played with similar mechanics. However, the player's jump feels a bit sluggish and weird, and its cooldown inconsistent, even when spamming the space key. Speaking of spamming the space key, I find that to get very far into a run without being very lucky I need to exploit the AI. One way you can do this by propping up yourself against the corner of the map and spam jump while shooting at the enemies. You really can't go far by playing the game "normally" because how the AI acts is very RNG based and if you get hit or not is really dependent more on the AI than your dodging. (Unless you exploit the AI, but even exploiting won't work 100% of the time because the AI is very random). And as far as I can tell the game doesn't really get harder as time goes on. The visuals and sound do what they need to do and communicates information effectively to the player, although the bullets could be a little bit louder, have hitting the enemy make a sound, and make the music longer or more varied because it gets tiring after a few minutes. Overall, this game is a very unique take on the theme and stands out for the core mechanic both that helps and hinders the players rather than just being a straight benefit and gives the player an interesting choice to make every time an enemy reaches critical health, forcing them to think and access the situation on the fly.
hey! thank you for the thorough feedback! yeah I fully understand what you mean - this was literally my first time making an AI for a 2d platformer and it's by no means perfect. I had to rush/hack a lot of behavior and sprinkle in a fair amount of randomness because of the time constraint.
To be fair though, It's not completely random - it has some basic set behaviors that it cycles through on a periodic basis, only that it does so in some ways that (aim to) don't make it feel too "scripted", for lack of a better term. Though I'd definitely make it very different under normal circumstances - and yeah, we also missed a lot of details like telegraphing, giving some sort of hit feedback and such, but we chose to skip that and go for more general polish instead, we were mostly concerned with the idea and the presentation than pure balance.
And yes you're correct, we didn't add scaling difficulty because we really didn't think it was worth it for the time constraint - the game is hard enough as it is (unless you exploit the AI, which is a thing, but it's a boring way to play anyways, so we didn't bother too much about fixing it), but that's something we're currently looking into adding in the final game.
Though I don't get what you mean by jump cooldown? It doesn't have a cooldown, maybe it's the fact that I didn't add a buffer to it so you can buffer the jump right before landing, or maybe you're just getting stunned by enemy bullets? because that's a thing too (at least for this version)
Anyways, we really appreciate detailed feedback like this - we're gathering as much of it as possible for the next steps. Thank you!
Pretty cool idea. I also really like the simple pretty visuals.
Submitted
Jeff's and Joe's adventureCool mechanic, but it's not necessary enough: every time I tried to use it, I died / almost died, sometimes before even establishing the link, and when I decided to give up and just shoot everything I made it to wave 23 at full health before getting bored and dying ^^
It would be nice to add something that makes linking required, maybe an ammo counter that makes your pew-pew gun useless after some rounds, idk. Also, do the bullets go through walls or not? Visually it seems they do, but they don't appear to hit enemies
Submitted
RE_CONNECTHaha absolutely, to be honest our team is probably not any better at it than you would think.
I think I (the coder) own the current internal high score of 30 (it was 12 during the jam, hence the pro-tip at the end), but that's probably me being slightly more familiar with the AI and also being slightly addicted to it, but IIRC the rest of the team couldn't get past 8 or 10 lol.
I'm glad you liked your time playing!
This is a really clever idea and as others have mentioned that music is super catchy, it's both relaxing and engaging at the same time, the whole presentation of the game is really great. I'd say definitely being able to drop down through platforms would make a huge difference in how the game feels, as well as perhaps a double jump or dash ability, giving the player a little bit more of an edge in movement and ability to avoid damage as they are often outnumbered and outgunned. Another idea is perhaps you swap weapons with the enemy instead of just copying it, it would still leave them a threat, but, give you the advantage and potentially add a bit of a strategic option of which enemy to single out first. Anyway, a fantastic entry to the jam! Great job!
Submitted
Your Strength Is Mine - GMTKJam 2021Hey there! This is amazing feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed your time playing
I must applaud you for your observations - we actually planned on adding dashes and other abilities like double-jump when coming up with the idea, but we had to cut a lot of those corners because of time. Our initial idea was that enemies could come equipped with both a weapon and some sort of powerup or ability, and you would get a copy of both (so you can imagine you would be really scouting for enemies that have cool loadouts, and that way you could be looking at a lot of sick combinations - picture having flight and a shotgun xD).
Though having those skills innate to the player does also sound like a cool concept - while discussing the future of the game, we though it could be a cool idea to add some sort of powerup system that lets you start each run with different abilities, so your suggestion highly resonates with that, and having the ability to swap weapons instead of just copying could be one of those bonus effects. Cool idea!
Again, thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback! If we do end up releasing a more developed version of the game, we hope you get to enjoy it again!
Man this music is really catchy even though it's such a short and simple loop. Great execution on the game though, it felt very polished and like a perfect bite-sized exploration for the jam! The concept was really cool and definitely feels unique compared to what I've played so far!
Two things I could suggest is adding a down jump that lets you pass through platforms and adding some kind of blink before an enemy fires in order to let you know how to better position yourself instead of letting it just be up to random chance. Helps build a more strategic feel to things
Awesome job all in all!
Submitted
C.O.M.P.R.E.S.S.I.O.N.Hey thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I'm really happy that you enjoyed it, we had a blast making it. Fun fact: we even let our health drop really low just to jam to the beat <3
I really appreciate the suggestions, we're currently planning out the future for the game, so that sort of feedback helps a lot.
We're looking forward to releasing a fully fledged version of the game, and hopefully you get to experience it, too!
I loved the artstyle, and the music is a banger! Also, the tutorial was really concise while still very clear.
One thing that I thought could be improved was giving the enemies a visual indicator for when they're about to shoot. It was hard to keep track of so many enemies' timers so I'm ready to dodge them.
Submitted
OctopuzzlerOhh telegraphing enemy attacks is a really nice idea, now I'm sad I didn't realize it while coding it! Yes absolutely agree, an indicator before an attack would be a great addition.
I'm glad you liked it! Our sound guy blew our minds with the music and sound effects, we weren't even expecting it, so I feel you lol
Thank you for the feedback!
Nice game! I did not really understand how the yellow shot helped me. Most of the time the yellow shot didn't work tho i hit it. and when it did it just connected me and the enemy with a line.
great polish and music nice work! :)
Submitted
Jewelry StoreOhh I'm sorry to hear that. We tried our best to make it obvious, but I see how it can be confusing.
The idea with the yellow projectile is that you can shoot it at an enemy that's low enough (highlighted red and with a "!" sign on top) to link yourself to that enemy, and by doing that you get a copy of the weapon it's holding. The line is there to let you know which enemy you're attached to! You can check the screenshots for a reference (there's one where the player is connected to an enemy with a shotgun, and you can see the player has the same shotgun). If you give it another try with this knowledge, let us know how it goes!
Thank you so much! Yesss our team member in charge of sound went out of his mind and came up with that banger of a soundtrack, and we weren't even expecting it xD
I totally agree, I would have loved to make a small tutorial area or something, but we decided to push for polish instead. Thanks for the feedback!
The movement is great and it's well executed it is a little hard though
Submitted
Family GatheringI love the idea behind this game, and the controls are snappy. I feel like it's a little too much too fast though. Would have been nice to have a tutorial area to have time to realize that you need to weaken the enemies before you can take their weapons. Or just giving the player some more health. Overall, great job! Very fun game!
This is awesome, I really like the concept. The visual style is nice and clean too. Well done!
Submitted
Utterly Threadful
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