This is a really neat prototype, I think this could be refined into a really cool game.
I really liked the presentation in this game, the assets you've created are really nice and you use them in lot of creative ways. The music is nice and chill. The death scream contrasts with that quite harshly, it gave me a good chuckle quite a few times. Making dying its own fun in a game that you die a lot is always a plus.
I also liked how the game design tutorializes some mechanics (like that wall jump in level 6).
Unfortunately, I never managed to get past level 6, between dying being really easy in these game and dying 3 times on a level sending you back I replayed levels 1-5 a lot.
I think auroratide has the right idea about lives.
I also died a lot right after respawn, because I was still trying to save myself from death a moment before, I think locking the players controls for a split second after death would smooth that out a bit.
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A Shadow's Odyssey's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #1433 | 3.311 | 3.311 |
| Overall | #2120 | 2.970 | 2.970 |
| Fun | #2219 | 2.756 | 2.756 |
| Originality | #2727 | 2.844 | 2.844 |
Ranked from 45 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 and your shadow must re join together when trapped in a quantum state among an alien planet on the edge of a black hole
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
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?
We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam
Comments
I really appreciate the solid feedback. I came to the same conclusions after playing the game back a few times when the jam ended. I agree I should have locked the player controls for a short time after death. Also I liked the idea of only having lives in the shadow mode and it only sending you back to the physical mode. Or maybe I should have made it a little more forgiving and given 5 lives
Yeah, more lives would mitigate the issue somewhat. I think giving player more or less lives can even be done independent of other changes. For example, it could be tied to a difficulty setting (Normal: 3 lives, Easy: 5 Hard: 2, Expert: 1 etc.).
I like the idea of lives sending you back to the physical mode the most, but you could also handle it some other way.
For instance, if you want to keep lives sending you back to a previous level when you run out, you could group levels into chapters. Every couple of levels you go to the next "chapter" (or whatever you choose to call it), dying could still send you back a level within a chapter, but it wouldn't send you back into previous chapter. It'd give some sense of permanent forward progression to the player.
This is a neat little game with lots of potential! My favorite aspect is playing the level once in light and once in darkness, almost like a mini memory game; I like that it's a join across dimensions in a sense. The art is also beautifully well done.
My feedback is mostly the same as what others have pointed out below. On lives specifically, people have pointed out going backwards a level does not feel very great; as an alternative, maybe the Light character doesn't need lives at all, and the Dark character has three lives, which upon losing them means restarting the same level as the Light character.
Fun game! Hope the feedback is helpful.
I really appriciate that this game is at least a bit forgiving and I don’t have to start over the whole game even after all my lives are lost. Personally I wouldn’t even use lives, but it was okay this way too. The theme sounded intereseting but I felt it was underexplored. Sound and music was fitting.
I loved this game. It really felt like a hilarious game from the very beginning. And I raged at it but also laughed. Because this game feels like a good game with kind of frustrating mechanics. I think I reached somewhere near the end. There was a moving platforming and there was nothing but open sand and spikes above the end. Absolutely hilarious
The art is really nice and I found the mechanic to be a pretty interesting interpretation of the jam theme! I also liked the music, it was great! A couple things to point out: The flip for the astronauts when moving left and right was tooo long. Make it almost instant. The death sound was kind of irritating to listen to every time I died. The movement felt off ( I think there was too much gravity and not enough friction). This made the platforming pretty challenging, even for level 1.
It looks good, but I feel your core mechanic was a little underused. Also you've mentioned that going back one level after death was better than restarting the whole game, but this style of game doesn't necessarily need lives. A decent substitution could be a death counter instead of a player punishment. Lastly I'm gonna need some proof you didn't kill people to get those death screams.
the punishment for losing a live is not really good, it sucks that you have to replay the previous level just because you didn't know the player could wall jump.
I like the idea that you need to play the same level twice but under other circumstances. This mechanic is the strength of this game and i would have liked to see more ideas around this mechanic. Such as platforms that only one character can walk on, or you destroy the level with the white character and then you have to beat the level with the black character. With that you can keep the same level intersting with the black charakter.
It's ab bit difficult to get into the controls. But as soon as i understood everything, it was no longer a problem.
All in all, i enjoyed playing your game. Good work.
very hard the dark character.. i love the animation...
was nice how when you lose you go back to the level before and not from the beginning.
I disagree with everyone saying the controls are hard, I thought they were perfect (but my game's controls are pretty similar, so I may have just gotten used to them). The death scream is also amazing, definitely earns an extra presentation star just for that!
great art and music!
the character is a bit hard to control. shadow's realm could be a little more different IMHO
also, dying sounds are ridiculous :D it's fun but doesn't fit the overall setting
all that aside really great game for the jam!
I really enjoyed the universe and the second caracter, but not to go back to the previous level if I fail ^^
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