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Little Lizard Scale Repair's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Style | #544 | 4.133 | 4.133 |
| Overall | #877 | 3.711 | 3.711 |
| Enjoyment | #1183 | 3.467 | 3.467 |
| Creativity | #1679 | 3.533 | 3.533 |
Ranked from 15 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?
Build scales (get it?) of the right size for your lizard customers
Development Time
96 hours
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
All art and code was created during the jam.
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Comments
This was a very cute little game! Loved the lizards that came for scale repair. It was a bit on the easy side, but that did make it very cozy. It took me a while to realize that I could appraise the values of the minerals, though, and once I found that out there was no reason not to do it. Overall though, loved how cute and comfy this game was, I wished there were more lizards at the end!
Thanks for playing and for the kind words!
P.S. I love your avatar.
Thank you! Our wonderful artist klaro made the sprite for one of our previous jam entries :)
You created my favourite game of the last years game jam so I came back to have a look if you also participated this year and you didn't disappoint me.
We cute sort of strategy game, ingenious graphics once more. I found it bit too easy too play but it was fun to dig for the minerals and craft lizard repair with it. I am still a big fan of your work.
It means a ton to us that you remembered our little game from last year and came back to play this one. Thanks so much for following us. I'm off to play your game right now!
Visually it looks stunning! One of the best looking games I've seen this jam.
It felt like there wasn't any reason not to deduce everything to make the exact amount? I know there is a high score incentive but there wasn't any real reason to just chuck stuff into the forge blindly. Maybe if the starting money was far lower so you were forced to risk it at times.
Good work!
A very good point, and one we considered! Like many jam entries, we felt the siren call of making the game as difficult as the systems would reasonably allow, but we ultimately opted to give a bunch of extra padding for accessibility and to allow a non-stressful experience for the player.
Originally, instead of money, we had a turn limit that was fine tuned with each recipe. However, balancing was difficult, as a series of unlucky draws could make success trivial on one test, and nearly impossible on another test of the same round with the same turn limit. Blackjack has the same problem, but makes up for it by being composed of numerous very quick rounds that deal with smaller numbers. By switching to a money system, we made it more thematically intuitive to do stuff like give refunds, and have the savings from a lucky round carry over as a parachute for an unlucky round. And for a jam game, we made do with that.
Personally, I think the final form of this as a released game would look like an endless roguelike where the demands of a round gradually overtake the rewards, kind of like Balatro. We actually had it set up to procedurally generate rounds, but we opted for a more defined experience for the jam. If someone's going to only play our game for a few minutes, we want them to get the idea, get rewarded for using the systems we created, and leave with a positive impression.
But you're right that things like appraisal cost need to be fine tuned. We went back and forth on it. If it's cheap, there's no real reason not to do it every time. But if it's expensive, at a certain point it becomes more worth it to spend that money mining more for smaller ores, and then there's no point to there even being an appraisal tool! Interesting problems that we didn't get to solve because we were adding particles. That's jams!
Very cute game! I enjoyed trying to optimize how little money I wasted by using deductive reasoning to avoid using the appraising table whenever I could. The artstyle is really cute, too!
Yes! That's the experience we were hoping to create! Thanks for your feedback!
Wait... you can make your cover image an animated gif?! I gotta keep that in mind!
Maybe I should've figured, given that my profile pic animates too... truly, only itch.io allows for such decadence nowadays.
L E W D
The art was fantastic, and the game idea was very unique, well done and good luck with the jam!
OMG this is such a good game if this was randomized like a roguelike I would not think for a second it was made in 4 days, that art is amazing and the gameplay is fun and interactive. The idea is also really creative and unique. Fantastic job you should be proud!
Thank you so much! This is such a nice compliment to receive and helps make the 96 hours feel worth it!
cool project !
Great sound effects + gambling = I love it. Nice work! I'm also glad you put in some extra money for the idiots like me who overshoot the targets over and over.
HAH -- you would not believe the amount of times our team would be playtesting and someone would randomly go, "...Oh, crap, I busted." So you weren't the only one accidentally overshooting a lot. (Look, I'm an art person, not a math person!!!)
Thank you so much for playing! :)
-Emma
Emma is NOT a math person
- Reed
I really enjoyed it and found it funny how literally the theme was taken. The art is what brought me, but the gameplay is what kept me here! Great job!
Absolutely loved the silly little lizard guys (or gals) in this game!!! It's a smith simulator for your fellow lizards, where you need to repair their SCALEs. I love the Idea, but the lack of tutorial was a burden at first. I think you can expand on the idea, maybe so that you need not only to count the right amount, but also shape a scale with a hammer.
great job!
Thanks for the thorough feedback! This is a game that went through a LOT of conceptual revisions during development. At one point we did have plans for a stage like what you're describing where you shape the scale. In the end, though, I think the gameplay element that we felt delivered the most value was the "blackjack with extra steps" concept.
Was that the right choice? We'll have to check the history books in 40 years for the answer!
-Reed
(P.S. You're absolutely right, these are some precious little lizzos)
It was absolutely the right choice for the jam! It's always better to focus on one idea and polish it, rather than make a whole lot of crappy stuff. But I like that me and your team thought about a similar idea. Good luck on getting to the final 100!
Give me a tutorial on how to play this, i failed the IQ test lol.
Not at all, the problem is definitely not on your end! We made it a goal to make a game with absolutely no text in it whatsoever, and while we're proud of our efforts, there's no denying that the game needs better conveyance. We had ideas for how to visually guide the player through their first round, there just wasn't enough time to implement them.
Thanks for giving our game a try and writing feedback! Genuine critiques like this are as good as gold!
- Reed