Heeey! As this is the first game you made in Godot it's pretty good. If I understood correctly enemies re-spawn after a certain amount of time (making you "short on time") to force the player to act quickly. This is a promising mechanic that could be improved by indicating the time left before a re-spawn wave, and putting some stress on the player with sound and visual effects. And one other thing that would hugely improve your game: Atmosphere. Any kind of decoration, ambient sound and music could really improve the overall feel of the game.
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Short On Time's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Controls | #5 | 3.730 | 4.000 |
| Fun | #13 | 2.984 | 3.200 |
| Graphics | #16 | 2.891 | 3.100 |
| Overall | #19 | 2.533 | 2.717 |
| Audio | #21 | 1.026 | 1.100 |
| Originality | #21 | 2.331 | 2.500 |
| Theme | #22 | 2.238 | 2.400 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
For your first Godot game ever, and especially having just learned it THIS WEEK, this is absolutely not bad at all. I'm actually impressed with the lighting effects, I've never actually tried that before and you managed to pull it off extremely well. I'm glad that despite not being able to fit everything in you wanted, you still went ahead and submitted your game. That's half of what game jams are all about, just having the guts to commit to the end! :D
I think, if I could suggest improvements going forward, here are the things I noticed:
- I don't know if it's a bug or unintentional, but the enemies respawn randomly after you kill them. It seems inconsitent, and in a way it doesn't feel fair. If your goal is to overwhelm the player, it might be best to have kind of a "hidden" spawn point where they crawl out of a wall or something, instead of just magically popping back in where the last guy you killed was. Then at least that way it seems like it's more zombies and not just the same zombie being a cheap enemy.
- You would probably be served well when making a shooting game, or any mouse heavy game, to learn how to lock the mouse inside the window. I had a lot of times where I was clicking frantically and accidentally grabbed the titlebar of the window or clicked outside of it, causing me to get killed. Usually you want the player to be able to remain focused on the gameplay and not get dragged out of it or have to focus on specifically not clicking too far in a certain direction. (Of course, then don't forget to give your player a way to get out of the window, even if it's just pressing ESC to quit)
- If you wanted to make the zombies more aggressive, a good way to do that would to make them start approaching the player when shot rather than just having a fixed range of sight. While the second level was hard for me because it was a tight space and they kept respawning, the third level was a cakewalk because I could snipe them from across the map with no response.
I hope you enjoyed your time with the jam and learning Godot, and I hope you stick with it and make more games soon!
Submitted
TimeshifterThanks for the detailed feedback.
I implemented the zombie respawn mechanic last minute to fit the theme “short on time”. Currently, if the player takes longer than a specific undisclosed amount of time in a level, zombies will start spawning at set points around the map every 5 seconds until the player is overwhelmed or the level is beaten. I wanted to take this further and make better spawn points like you suggested, I just ran out of time. This will be something I add after the voting period is over.
For the zombie aggression after taking damage, I had this planned but I must’ve overlooked it while I was scrambling to submit and get to bed. This will also be something I add after the voting period is over.
Thanks for the tip on locking the mouse to the window! I didn’t even think about that during my frantic jam session. I will definitely be looking into that and while I’m at it I will make a custom crosshair cursor.
Thanks so much for playing!
Edit: The shadow effect was actually much more simple than I initially thought it would be. Godot did all the heavy lifting for this. Here is Godot’s tutorial on it: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/tutorials/2d/2d_lights_and_shadows.html
Hey no problem, and no worries. Jams are always frantic, even when you have the full time to work, so it's always expected that your final product will not be what you envisioned in your head. I definitely hope the experience of this jam gets you making more games, in the end that's what's important.
And I'll definitely have to look into that. Maybe for whatever my next game is I can challenge myself to use a 2D lighting system just so I can learn how it works.
This game has some potential and is very good for your first Godot game! If you work on the game a bit more, to take it somewhere or just to learn some more, I would add sound effects next. There are many places online to find free sounds, or you can record your own easily enough and edit them to make them even better.
Hope to see more games from you, and thanks for the linux build!
Submitted
Shorty on TimeThe sound adds soooo much! Very nice! It also seems like you modified the levels a bit to make them easier, which I agree with. At least in the beginning levels you want people to learn and succeed before ramping up the dificulty. And did you add the part where the zombies can break down the walls? I really like that! It's avery nice tough, adding some urgency to get through the area. If this isn't a new add, then it's the sound that clued me in that it was happening. So, very nice update!
Thanks for checking out the update! It means a lot!
The barriers are new. I’m glad you liked them. Someone mentioned that the points where the zombies would spawn were too obvious and in the way of the player at times so I made extra hallways for the zombies to spawn in and barriers to hold them back until they are broken. This and the sound helped with the feel of the game tremendously. I also added the ability to take more than one hit before resetting the scene, and knock back which I feel has made the gameplay feel much better.
Happy to see you had such a good first experience with Godot! Did you know that two jams ago the theme was "shadows"? Would not have been a bad entry for that one either :-D Game atmosphere feels good, I think even better if there was a bit of a soundtrack/effects.
The game got easy once I realized I can shoot the zombies before they see me.
Submitted
Christmas in Paris
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