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A jam submission

Sphere SeekerView game page

Can you reach the end?!
Submitted by bramvanelderen — 10 hours, 48 minutes before the deadline
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Sphere Seeker's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Aesthetics#2073.5793.579
Innovation#2603.0003.000
Overall#2793.1053.105
Feel#3232.5262.526
Theme#3802.6322.632

Ranked from 19 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?
The AI cubes act as both normal AI but can be turned into blocks which is used to progress. The ai cubes also produce resources

Third-party resources
SSAO pro, Textmesh Pro, Unity

Contributors
Kirk Markarian - http://www.kirkmarkarian.net/
Bram van Elderen - http://bramvanelderen.net/

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Comments

Submitted

I really wanted to like this more. Your aesthetic is really good. The robot is adorable, and the music makes me feel like I'm playing an old N64 platformer. (So we're clear, that's 100% a compliment). I was having issues with my mouse controls. Sometimes it wouldn't let me move the camera to the right at all. Getting warped back to the start over and over again was unclear and frustrating, though from what I've read in the comments, the mechanical reasons behind that actually do sound really fun. Still, you clearly put a lot of work into this. 

Developer

Ah that's weird that the mouse doesn't work for you. If you played the Webgl version make sure your mouse is locked in the screen, if the issue then still occurs then maybe try out a build version like the windows or the mac version.

As for the warping back, it happens when your battery runs out (The big blue bar on the back of the robot). This makes sure you have to get to the next checkpoint in a certain time. This mechanic shines in the last area (third area) where the puzzles make better use of this.

Anyway sorry for the  bad experience, sadly i can't help more with the mouse issue other then this info since it works for everyone else weirdly enough.

Submitted

Okay, thanks. I'll give it a shot. I really did want to see more.

Submitted (1 edit)

The camera movement was really fast, kind of gave me a headache. Also you should have made the text in black, because it wasn't visible against the white background. I like the robot character and environment aesthetics.

Submitted(+1)

Nice twist on crate stacking puzzling. The energy bar seems arbitrary and got a little annoying being forced to go back for seemingly no reason. Graphically very cool and I liked the music. A little more feedback on your inputs and some extra guidance would be useful!

Submitted

The game looks good! And I appreciate the lack of cumbersome UI. Some points where I felt there's space for improvement - 

  • Start with  less cubes or a bigger area. So that I can figure out what's happening. The change in their behaviour is hard to notice in the crowded start area.
  • A blue glow  (similar to timer) on the cubes' grooves to reflect its state would be nice.
  •  When you regain time by stepping on the blue platform, it isn't very obvious as the blue bar expands. Perhaps it could flash white for a second?
  • What's the point of being able to regain time if demagnetized cubes retain their configuration upon reset? Doing a full reset would encourage me to move painstakingly commanding my cubes .
  •  The text asked me to aim, but I saw no cursor. I then thought perhaps the red dot on the antennae doubled as a reticule. Finally, I just went and "hugged" the cubes to magnetise them. (Which , tbh , is more cute/fun)
  •  Too much movement in the idle animation. I wondered if the looping jerk-up-look-left animation meant something. I looked to the left, to realize - "Oh. that's just idle"
  •  Some of the walls in the start area have collision. 
  • And please upload a Win/Mac/Linux version. The mouse lags in fullscreen. Unity's WebGL isn't very nice.

I really like this game's concept ^_^.

Developer

Thanks for this amazing feedback, i agree with everything you said.

Submitted

super rad aesthetic! The mechanics didn't really show through, I didn't know what the magnetic tool was and never got out of the starting room. Also, aiming at the cubes accurately was difficult in the third person without a marker or something to show what cube is corrected. I think with 24 more hours for a tutorial, a game of this scope would have turned out really awesome!

Submitted

Sadly I was not able to understand what I had to do...

Developer

I'm sorry for the bad experience, since this seemed to be a major problem i added a small update with tutorial texts in the beginning area. 

Submitted

Cool. I'll give it another go soon.

Submitted

Took me a moment to understand that the bar on your back is the time you have left :D

Cool concept :)

Thanks, democore!  We were looking for a way to present the information in a manner that didn't require the player to search the edge of the screen - keeping their eye on the game and all.