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A jam submission

[B] ArenaView game page

Skillful gravity-switching arena fighting against waves of enemies
Submitted by MaaShouganaiNe — 7 hours, 54 minutes before the deadline
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[B] Arena's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Aesthetics#744.2574.257
Feel#1543.3713.371
Overall#1753.5143.514
Theme#2143.4003.400
Innovation#2353.2293.229

Ranked from 35 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your submission match the theme?
One stat to control all, a buffer from death as well as a resources for abilities.
The movement given by the arrow keys is necessary both for attacking enemies and for navigating around the arena. The upgrades given at score milestones work to improve the player as well as increase the threat of enemies by increasing their damage and their spawn rate.

Third-party resources
Engine - Unity2D

SFX - various drum samples from my sample library both raw and edited by me

Music - Ableton Live

Image editing - Piskel

Contributors
N/A? All work done by me

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Comments

Submitted

I think you did a great job in pretty much every aspect, the game was fun, the graphics were great and the music was groovy to say the least.

I played both the jam version and the post jam version, you have definitely improved the tutorial and game mechanics between them, and it makes the whole thing easier to understand. However I still find it a bit difficult at times to activate a dash/flip, and sometimes I get damage that feels kind of cheap as a result.

It's an excellent game in any regard, and was improved even more post jam. Fantastic work! Perhaps we might even see this game go beyond the jam?

(To be clear, I did rate the game before playing the post jam, just to be fair)

Developer

ty for the feedback! It would be nice to update it some more post-jam, but just trying to think of ways to improve it without moving too far away from the core concept.

Submitted

Wow, how the hell had I not played this game before, it's FANTASTIC!

Honestly, its extremelly well-polished and it's clear you went H A M into game feel and player experience. It oozes from every single second playing it that it wants to impress me, and it does so pretty well.

One... issue, though. I don't feel the theme is explored quite as well as it could with a survival mode, and it felt... shallow. I basically just went "Oh...." in a bit of disappointment when I got thrown into a survival mode that doesn't change, with enemies that I have to short-hop dash (A bit harder than might be needed, even considering it should be an advanced technique).

I still ADORED this game, it has a stupidly high ammoutn of potential

Developer(+1)

ty for the feedback! Glad you liked it so much!

Submitted

Love the aesthetic! The game feel felt a bit stiff and enemies moved a bit too quick for me to catch up to them sometimes. If the level had more space(thinner platforms) to accommodate the abilities while also still having platforms, it would be more fun to use. I don't know if I like only using the abilities while in mid air but once I got the hang of it, trying to flip the stage to get ones that landed at the bottom was fun. 

Unfortunately I didn't really get to experience the game. It just felt really punishing, and I didn't understand why. I didn't understand how much health I had. The controls just felt unresponsive to me. Jumping felt like  a waste of time since it was barely high enough to go anywhere. Also, I fell in the pit a lot, and would just die. It would make more since, and would add a little more strategy if falling in the pit looped me back up to the top of the screen. It's probably just cause I suck at video games, but I think with some fine tuning, this game would feel a lot better to me. 

Developer

Did you read the controls on the main game page?

Submitted

one bit of critism i would have for this game is that the game took a while to understand.

but when i did it was pretty enjoyable, even though the level design feels a bit cramped. the art has a nice minimalist feel to it and smashing the enemy felt extremely satisfying and juicy.

best of luck with any more games you wish to make. 

Submitted

It took me time to understand it (the commands screen is, well, perfectible), but once I got the mechanics it was really fun! Love all the feedbacks and general dynamic aesthetic. The core mechanic is really great, and gives a lot of satisfying moments!

The one thing that seemed unnecessary was the need to have energy to dash. While it sure fits the theme, dashing is so essential that it becomes a bit frustrating to not be able to do it. And it is also easy to lose while dashing too much.

Submitted
It's sooooo hard.


But the fact that ennemies must be killed from a specific direction is really interesting, even though the arena is really small.

The feel when killing ennemies is nice too.


Cool game !

Developer (1 edit)

thanks! working on a tutorial/practice level for the next update!

Submitted

I could not get the hang of the jump smash mainly the fact that the smash is disabled when you run low on energy so I'd try to smash something and end up just crashing into it and dying. That's more just getting used to the controls though.

The aesthetics are one of my favorite parts though. I love the colors, and the stains. The enemies are simple but take some time to understand what they are but once you get it, it all makes sense. Fun game overall.

Submitted

Hard to understand at first but after a few minutes I realized what the lines on the enemies meant and it was pretty cool to play! Try making some kind of interactive tutorial to show this rule to players. Great visuals!

Developer(+1)

Glad to hear that the lines were of some use at least! Yes, I will probably add a tutorial in a later update, thank you for the feedback!

Submitted

The tutorial is really unclear and the game super hard. I can't do better than 600 :/

A / D + Space + Arrow key is a really difficult combination to play.

By the way, the art and the feedback are really cool and the render is awesome :D

Good game!

Submitted

Very juicy, lots of game feel and interesting concept. Well done on the aesthetics and sound effects too!

Felt that the collisions were somewhat unreliable though where you would fail some attacks for some reason although other times the attacks will connect (perhaps the enemy block was slightly higher than mine?). Also defaulted to a lazy strategy of camping in the centre and jumping up to whop blocks that spawn. 

Developer

Yes, there are some bugs with the hit detection that I unfortunately was unable to fix in time.

And yes, I tried to design the level to be optimal for these mechanics but couldn't get it perfect, thank you for the feedback!

Submitted

Very innovative concept and beautiful aesthetic, i did enjoy playing it. The only issue i had with the game was that if you jump against a wall or platform then you can't move until release and pressing the movement key again. That issue made the game feel clunky, it was great otherwise.

Developer

Yes, I've noticed that, but unfortunately I didn't get enough time to fix all of the quirks, thanks for the feedback!

Submitted

I really liked the art style and the game has juice out the wazoo. The controls were really confusing at first, though.  I also found it really difficult to dash into enemies that stay on the ground when you have to jump to dash. Maybe I just suck.

Developer

Thank you! Yes, it would've been nice to put some sort of tutorial level in to get used to the controls

Submitted

Really like the graphic of this game, but the controls were really difficult so I got frustrated after a while :-/

Developer

Yes, sorry, had no time for any sort of tutorial level, hope you had fun!

Submitted

Whoaaaa! Hitting stuff is so fun! I love the reverse gravity mechanic. It's so cool to see it flip and then slam into an enemy! Very fun. It took me a little bit to figure out that you could only use the abilities in the air.

Submitted

Cool art style, really ! Cool use of colors and post process !

One big problem for me are the controls, it doesn't respond well, I think it will be better to dash directly with the arrow keys and not combined with space bar. Like that the player will more focus on the game rather than trying to understand the controls I suppose.

But when you understand the controls, the game has a great feel when dashing on ennemies !

Developer

Yes, it's true the controls are a little hard to learn, thank you for the feedback!

Submitted

Your welcome ! Any chance to see an updated version of the game one day ?

Developer

I'm about to get to work on it now, hoping the new unity version won't break it. I'll put an update on this page when I have a new build!

Submitted

Yay ! The new Unity version is really cool, we made our Jam game with it !

Submitted

At the beginnig I didn't know what the arrows did. Maybe dashing also in the ground or a feedback knowing that this is not the correct way of doing it would be nice.

 However, I enjoyed dashing and killing it feels soooo good really nice visuals!! LOVE IT!

Submitted

This was quite hard to understand at first ! 

But it's interesting once you get understand it. I had a bit of trouble with the controls. I was often trying to dash but jumped earlier or too late for me to be at the correct height. I think your biggest problem right now is  showing how this game really works to new players since it's quite complex !

On a side note, I like the visuals. It's clean.

This game is a fun challenge once you get used to the controls, interesting balance of health to attack and dash attacking. I feel like the arena itself wasn't super well optimised for the style of gameplay but that did also add to the challenge in a way. 

A lovely aesthetic as well and some great visual effects.

Developer(+1)

Thank you! yes, I didn't have much of a clue how nor the time to make a great level for these mechanics, but I thought it worked fairly ok!

The controls would have been better if the dashing was combined with the movement keys. It felt very difficult to move was WASD as well as prepare dashes with arrow keys (largely because you had to be in the air to execute them with enough health). Probably just a double tap would accomplish this (so in update loop you always move left/right depending on A and D but if A is down twice within X time, and you have enough HP, you dash).

The game is also very difficult and could use a difficulty ramp with levels to introduce how the enemies are dealt with, and tips on inverting the map and dashing.

In general though great job. It looks really cool, and the dash sound effects feel very good.

Developer

thanks for the advice! Yeah it's hard to know how hard your game is to play when you get quite good at it, I thought it was too easy!