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A jam submission

Em's rootsView game page

Adventure game about two souls, their names are ...
Submitted by sebba — 23 minutes, 56 seconds before the deadline
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Em's roots's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#15193.2603.260
Overall#26422.7492.749
Fun#28882.4682.468
Originality#34432.5192.519

Ranked from 77 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?
Em is joined together with Warrior soul in one body, both have unique abilities and are needet to beat the game

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

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Comments

Viewing comments 32 to 13 of 32 · Next page · Last page
Submitted

Beautiful art and really cool idea for the prompt! I'd love to see where you take this game with more time. You should be proud! 

Submitted

I like the idea, but some bisual feedback is quite necessary for some of the actions, especially for transitioning back and forth. I found it very hard to know what was happening when.

However, the movement and combat really felt amazingly polished for a 48-hour game!

Submitted

A nice looking platformer with an interesting mode switch.

Sound effects would have really helped (maybe look at sound effects generators like bfxr).

Interesting concept and art.  I liked the idea of having to switch characters, but like others have commented, being Em needs a bit more incentive other than just charging up Warrior.   Also, thank you for the instructions below the game, as I did not catch that I had to hold the x button for 3 seconds at first (three seconds is a long time).   Also, the way the text came up in the tree, it was a bit hard to read.

Overall I liked the concept very much and can see a game where the interplay between characters is more vital to how you move through the world.   

Submitted (2 edits)

Really like the visual style of it :-)
And has a bit of Celeste soul.

It was just a bit weird to wait for a long time when the warrior was gone... maybe it could be nice to add some features to the "non warrior" girl. Because now if I could choose I would be warrior from start to finish.

Nice mate !


Submitted

Nice art ^^ maybe if you don't spend a lot of time in warrior mode it don't reset your bar ? ^^ good job ^^

Submitted

Nice concept and I like the art. There should be some indication that you are switching between characters, because there just is no way to tell. The cooldown between switching leaves me in a position where I just have to sit there until I can switch characters to the warrior. Overall there is just a lot of waiting in this game rather than playing.

Submitted

Nice concept.
The art is very nice. But I feel like the game could benefit from a block/parry mechanic because now you just smash the attack button until you die

Submitted

Nice visuals! There's some suggestions I have for this game.

1. add music and sfx

2. move the camera a little away from the player

3. add some other abilities ema can do

good game overall!

Submitted

I like the idea of switching between two characters, since that forces the player to switch up their playstyle, though I think there should be more incentive to switch between the two characters. Right now there's like two meters, one being a timer for how long you can stay as Warrior and one for how long until you can switch back to Warrior. I think this could be just one meter that's treated as a resource meter, so you can switch back to Warrior at any time even if the meter isn't full, you just wouldn't be able to stay as Warrior for as long if the meter isn't full, so the player would be incentivized to switch back to Em so the meter can keep charging. Cool concept though, there's definitely room to flesh this idea out!

Submitted

The art was really good, but the lack of audio was a bit jaring. Not sure if this is a HTML problem, but I have found that some quick things from BFXR is one of the best bang for your buck investments in any jam possible.

Submitted

Nice art, I found the cooldown to switch back to the combat a little long. 

Submitted

Any game using pixel art is an instant win for me. I also enjoy the mechanics, but feel they could have been fleshed out along with level design. As others have already said, it definitely gives an impression of Celeste, and would love to see where you can take this concept in the future. Even so, the art is where the game truly shines, and brings atmosphere and personality to the game in ways I think even full releases fail to capitalize on.

Submitted

Cool game! It was simple, and was pretty fun to use the combat. I found that the increased jump height was a little underwhelming, especially because it's on the warrior, causing me to wait patiently for the meter to go down to progress. The art was nice as well, really detailed animations. Overall nice game!

Submitted

The characters remind me a lot of Celeste - the art is incredible. Really good job on this game, it's a lot of fun playing it, amazing what you did in the 48 hours!

Submitted(+1)

I'm going to join the chorus of people praising the art - did you really make all the trees and ground tiles and enemy animations within the jam? That's ridiculously impressive!

The long cooldown to wait for the warrior to be available is kind of painful, especially since the default character is so slow and has no abilities. Maybe the main character could be fast and agile, so you run around dodging enemies until the slower but powerful warrior becomes available to wreck everything?

Aside from that, game feel could definitely use more work. The animations and visuals are great, but I would've loved some sound effects and visual feedback for getting hit or landing hits. Some music would also be nice to make it feel a touch less barren. It wouldn't take much to make this great-looking game feel great.

Great work on this entry! I had fun exploring it.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for this review, I really worked hard on the pixel art so I’m glad that a lot of people like it. But I’m a solo developer so while most of the pixel art is mine, not all is.

Ground tiles, grass, bushes, animations are all mine, trees were a pre-made assets (I will link all of them when I get home, big thanks to those artists for filling in the gaps). I hope that next time I can team up with someone and create all the assets in the game.

As for the long cool down, there is a under explained feature in game for this: Em can pickup skeleton remains and cut that time down, you do this by standing on a skeleton bones and pressing [c] key

There was a plan to have Em and Warrior do different tings, but I ran out of time in the end :/ Same goes for effects and music, it kills me that I didn’t have time to include them..

Submitted

The time crunch is tough, for my game I was basically exclusively working on assets while my teammate did the code, and we still nearly ran out of time. That might be because we have a habit of our ambition outstripping our skill, but that's besides the point...

In any case, it's honestly a pretty major accomplishment to ship anything in the first place, especially something that looks this good.

Submitted(+1)

Damn i cant cross the skeletons so i jumped over them. 😁 Didn't know i can do that. The art style is awesome and controls need some fine tuning. Great game ! 

Developer(+1)

That’s on purpose :p, skeleton hit box is just small enough so player can jump over them if they want to. I wrote my own player controller and it needs a bit more work so that controls will feel good.

Thanks for complimenting my art style :D

Submitted(+1)

Love the art, the character art gives me big Celeste vibes, and the parallax scrolling is a great touch that makes the game just look that much more interesting. 

The mechanic is interesting but I feel both the cool down and the transformation time could've been shortened a bit so I wasn't just waiting around before I can continue playing the game. An animation or an indicator to show that you are currently transforming as there were definitely a few times where I felt like I was for sure doing it correctly but must have pressed it just ever so slightly before I stopped moving.

Great looking game and concept overall though, good job!

-Scott

Developer(+1)

Thanks for taking the time to play my game, Celeste is one of the inspirations for this game and I’m proud to admit that I spend way too much time to fine tune parallax background scrolling :p

There is a mechanic in the game that I under explained, when you are waiting for the Warrior to charge back up, Em can press [c] key on the skeleton remains to cut down on the wait time. Every skeleton adds 3HP, -5s from charge up wait time and increases your attack power by 0.1HP

There is a bug in the game where if you are standing on a slope game starts treating you like you are falling, that blocks the transformation.

Submitted

Ah okay, that makes sense, like I said, fun game regardless. Think you done a lot in a short amount of time

Submitted(+1)

The art style is beautiful. The character reminds me of madeline from Celeste. The idea  of two souls joined together is a good integration with the theme. Some music would make the game better, but that's okay since this is a game jam. Overall, very good game.

Developer(+1)

Thanks, I worked hard on the pixel art so I’m glad that you like it, The character Warrior was inspired by Madeline from Celeste and Em by Madeline illustrations from Ludwig Bemelmans.

I know that that game is missing music and it really needs it, but as a solo developer my time was stretched so thin already that I forgot to reserve time for a soundtrack :/

Submitted(+1)

It took me a bit to understand how long I need to hold X to switch to the warrior. The character looks like Madeline!

Congrats on submitting!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! I wanted to include a better tutorial for the game but I finished this build of the game 30minutes before the deadline, that’s the problem with being a solo developer I guess.

And yes Warrior was inspired by Madeline from Celeste, Em was inspired from Madeline illustrations by Ludwig Bemelmans.

Viewing comments 32 to 13 of 32 · Next page · Last page