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A jam submission

Downgrade DungeonView game page

A challenging 2D action game, in which instead of leveling up you become weaker and weaker
Submitted by Apamate Studio (@apamatestudio) — 6 hours, 27 minutes before the deadline
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Downgrade Dungeon's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Enjoyment#10723.4213.421
Creativity#16613.5263.526
Overall#19193.2813.281
Presentation#30372.8952.895

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?
In this game, the upgrades you get after completing a level are not helpful, but harmful. They make you weaker and weaker, increasing the difficulty of the game as you go.

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

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Comments

Submitted

Fun game! The controls were quite snappy (maybe even a bit too snappy haha), and the art and sfx were well done. If you're developing this game further, I think some more enemy variety and some more attack options would make this game even better (perhaps add a boss or two that you have to fight once in a while). Well done!

Submitted

pretty fun! interesting premise behind making the character weaker and therefore the game harder as you go, only got a few runs in before the game froze as i'm on linux and have to run the game through a compatibility layer, didn't think it'd be as fun as it is! with some more polish and re-balancing this could be come something really special, great work!

Submitted

The chibi style is really cute! I think it would be nice if the background was a little different or maybe even just a change of colour each level? Nice mechanics too!

Submitted

it's a nice game with a nice idea, kinda hard to aim tho because you have to move in the direction you wanna attack, a bit more work could have been done on the polish i think but i do understand it's hard. It sounds rude but i really liked the game, keep up the good work !

Submitted(+1)

super adorable art style! I absolutely love the idea of being forced to become downgraded, its such a weird subversion of expectations, and somehow you made it work. Its very fun and very challenging, I like it plenty <3

Developer

Thanks for the comment, we're glad you like it! <3

Submitted(+1)

It's a simple twist and a good scope for 48 hours. I cleared 13 rooms before all my "damage received" increases caught up to me. Haha

This could really benefit from more UI, though. It'd be nice to see stats for each of the options, so it's clear what's been changed and by how much. And a visual indicator for cooldown would help a lot, too.

Developer

Thank you very much for the comment and feedback. You are very right in your suggestions, the truth is that some of them had not even crossed our minds :/

Submitted(+1)

Looks simple and great, but requires more variations of enemies and when finishing a wave the player should have more options to choose from than just 3. You can bump it up to 4.

Developer

Thanks for the comment. We believe that 3 is an adequate number of options, but what we would like is for the options to be much more varied than they currently are.

Submitted(+1)

Very nicely done! The attacks feel very satisfying to land and I found each choice became more and more tense as the downgrades stacked up. Would be interesting to see what this could become with some more time.

Developer

Thank you very much for your comment. We hope in the future to be able to return to this idea, and develop it with the love it deserves.

(+1)

Fascinating idea to start completely overpowered and scale back down! Made it to level 11, taking only reduced attack cooldown and receiving more damage where possible, thinking I cheated the system and got promptly one-shotted lol

Developer

Yes, that seems to be a strategy that several people have used to get far, and it seems to work, but it is quite punishing if you do not dodge everything perfectly

Submitted(+1)

while the game was quite hard for me ( maybe I suck) I enjoyed my playthrough alot!

the visuals while simple fit well together and give the game a nice theme, the concept was quite creative too, downgrading yourself, the first of this kind I saw in this jam! so well done on that too, the gameplay loop was quite fun and not as stale as I thought, this concept totally has potential for that!

my only simple complaint is that the game lacks a bit more polish, and perhaps more feedback and effects to really elevate the visual fidelity of the game, overall a very solid entry, and quite the fun one too, great work!

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for the comment. Yeah, we would have liked to be able to polish it up a bit more, we even went so far as to design some broken bones to use as particles, but we ran out of time to implement them :/

Submitted(+1)

Hey really cool idea! That's a great take on the theme. Never thought about trying to delevel yourself. The game is pretty tricky though even while you are fully leveled! And you seem to move super fast!! I actually thought the slow down perk was more of a buff lol.

Anyways very good job on this! Great work!!

Developer

Thanks for the comment! Yes, the idea was that you were much stronger at the beginning, with immunity and attack in the dash, damage/mirror the enemy projectiles, and more things like that. But the short time frame forced us to stick with only the most basic debuffs, which were the easiest to implement, and that's why the speed at the start can feel a bit excessive.

Submitted(+1)

The game's concept is unique and I think It is really fun to think in devolving yourself ranther than upgradeing. Challangeing experiance. Liked it <3

Developer

Thanks for the comment, we're really glad that you enjoy it!

Submitted(+1)

This is an interesting idea, always left me with a hard decision of what I was willing to sacrifice to make it to the next level. Well done!

Developer

Thanks for the comment, that was our goal, to have a touch of strategy in choosing what to lose, and given a little more time we could have developed an even broader list of choices.

Submitted(+1)

Simple and super fun idea! Maybe health should reset after each level up? 
Power creep is an outplayed idea, I love how this game emphasizes skill over power to reach a high score.

Developer

Yes, we never thought of any mechanic to recover life (that doesn't make the game's difficulty trivial), but maybe it would have been interesting if we had had more time to develop it. Thanks for playing and for your comment.

Submitted(+1)

What a game! Great concept AND execution. I got to level 10 before I took one hit and died (I always took increased damage recieved if I could).
It's wonderful (▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿)

Developer

Thanks for being the first one to play our game, it makes us really happy to know that you enjoy it. And you are better than us playing it, our record so far is level 8 T_T