| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #1 | 4.323 | 4.323 |
| Overall | #2 | 4.032 | 4.032 |
| Graphics | #4 | 4.452 | 4.452 |
| Fun | #6 | 3.871 | 3.871 |
| Controls | #7 | 3.710 | 3.710 |
| Theme | #14 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Originality | #15 | 3.839 | 3.839 |
Ranked from 31 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
3.2.2
Source
Yes. https://github.com/2shady4u/gwj24
Game Description
A tactics game where you control a family of robot children.
Discord Username
2shady4u, D4yz, JohnGabrielUK, Willowblade
Participation Level (GWJ only)
Varies from first to nineteenth.
Participation Level across all Jams
Varies.
Very polished game. Improves teamwork. I played the game when it first submit during the Jam, and it seems it gets a lot of improvement since then. The aesthetics are astonishing, the game play was good. But while I am playing, I feelt that the game play was repetitive, maybe you could for each mission do just one room and make it bit harder and the player needs to think really carful about each move.
Overall the game was good. Nice job guys!
Very impressive for a game jam, the team must be working really hard on this. I didn't knew that you need to go to the edit orphan layout to upgrade the robots because I thought it automatic upgrade the robots so I had to beat the game without update any robot DX (I still beat it though)
Blew my mind O_o honestly for a jam game made in a week, it's impressive it already has a lot of polish, you have a full upgrade system, save/load, mission select screen, multiple characters that all have a different feel. The game feels like a full complete one already so congrats for that alone !
Gameplay wise, i like how you made this simple to play where, even if it's turn based, you don't spend yout time navigating through menus all the time, you just bump into enemies, also it's a nice feature to have separated attacks from movement turns so that you can chain kills provided you have enough energy when next to an enemy, and last but not least the "tetris like" minigame of placing chips on the grid, super clever ! If i had to point one tiny issue it's just that when you upgrade its definitive unless you start a new save, having the option to replace chips could be a nice addition, but frankly it's already quite good as it is.
Artwork and music are super good, i like the story and the silly L337 SP34K names which seem fitting for robots XD
Can't say anything more really, good job to the whole team :)
Hey PixelMetalWolf,
Thanks for playing the game! You can actually unequip upgrades by clicking on the equipped on in the list when you're on the character that has it equipped, this should remove the upgrade from the UPGRID. We should have made this more clear... Again, thank you so much for your kind praise and for playing through our game 🤩
Greatly polished game. The graphics and the audio are good. The characters name are funny F1ST0N, B3B3... ^^
Just, I didn't really like having to recharge every time at the beginning when it didn't seem needed, I understand that it is to introduce the mechanic though.
Good job!
Having multiple steps on charters before swapping is a smart way to expand the "rouglike" arrow-controls beyond a single avatar. Graphics and audio are both top notch. Actually having a save function in jam game is an appreciated rarity.
I struggled a bit to guess who I was control moment; this lead to a number of unintentional sidesteps back and forth. A bar on the left depicting turn order would therefore be highly appreciated.
Incredible game! All aspects are super polished for a game jam, especially the art and sound. The title screen gives an especially strong "wow" effect. The upgrade minigame is also a nice touch. I also love tactics game.
Even though it's awesome, I still think some details that could be improved. I'll try to mention new things I haven't already seen in the comments :
- (Already mentioned by VikFro but its my major issue) the game is a too easy. So much that the upgrade system can be ignored all together without feeling you're missing on something. There is also a power imbalance between characters: S0R3114 can just slash through waves of enemies, while F1STON is stuck walking slowly, and the "specializations" of weaker character don't counterbalance this enough (eg I don't feel there is a strong use for pushing things).
- Starting out with all characters felt a little overwhelming. I feel like starting with a small mission with 2~3 characters would have been a good preliminary step.
- Give visual feedback why you can't do an action (e.g. shake the depleted movement / action / healing bars in the top UI corresponding to the action). It's would be especially useful in the first levels when you start to get the hang of the game, and can't exactly understand why you are stopped. I was confused by the healing charges bar for example.
- The upgrade mini-game is a little hidden. The "edit orphan layout" button could be (way) bigger, a different color / style, or something to make it stand out more.
- Small bugs: It seems the "damage boost" actually increase the healing charges, and M0TH3R has errors on her info panel can't be healed.
I'm being very picky because I believe its more useful feedback then just praise, but its truly very good, and I gave it a very high rating. ^^ I look forward to seeing your next games.
Hey Swynfel, thank you for the high praise, and even more so for the amazing feedback. These are great points we indeed haven't heard before.
- Seeing F1ST0N struggle behind and never push anyone has been pretty sad. I feel the movement skills would be more impactful if the game was harder, and if F1ST0N had less movement speed. S0R3114's skill was initially designed to only trigger once, but I think making the game harder by giving the enemies more health should allow for a more rewarding massacre by S0R3114. We're definitely balancing the game for post jam.
- That's a great idea! I spent a lot of time building out the tutorial to cover all systems of the game, but having a first combat mission with a small team and more like the tutorial is an awesome idea! That'll definitely make it into the post jam version. We didn't get a chance to explain the healing, which I think people only discovered by accident.
- Again a supernice idea, flashing the bar red would work as well perhaps? This would need some iterations to really work well, of course. There's currently no sound effect that's playing.
- We're thinking of replacing the "start mission" button with a "go to loadout" button and adding the start mission button in the upgrid screen. We'd have to add a small tutorial there as well.
- These are both true and fixed but an essential part of the jam build :D
Thanks again, your feedback means a whole lot.
Seriously amazing job guys! I had such a blast playing! Phenomenal work! I really enjoyed how different each character played and felt. S0R3114 when UPGRIDed up was a force to be reckoned with... Really isn't much else to say other than just wow... Blown away.
Hey Minic,
Thanks for playing and enjoying the game! I can't wait to play your game when I get off of work.
S0R3114's pretty busted in the current build, but I feel like it gives character to all these different bots. I hope you'd like to play the post-jam version where the difficulty will hopefully be a bit more balanced towards a challenge!
Hey hey people! Congrats on the game, overall it’s one of the best I’ve tested (with no surprise given the team composition).
Theme is well respected, I like the humanization of the robots with their different family role and personality.
Quite original to see a tactical combat game, which is a genre I enjoy. FINALLY NOT A PLATFORMER! And also, it’s EASY to do the actions, you do not have to go through 52 menus every turn like in some very famous J-RPG series.
Like Zicman (the French guy who hanged around in Twitch chat) I was pretty amazed at the level of polish and length of the game, a quite original upgrade system on top of multiple levels. Cool that you managed to have 2 programmers collaborating well, it can be a challenge!
The biggest reproach I have is… Well the game wasn’t that fun for me. Like Willowblade repeated a few times, it was much too easy and I would prefer if I felt compelled to optimize the upgrades into builds. Also the few UX issues I pinpointed during the testing would really help with that.
I’ll end with a note that John is getting good at making music. Also the art style reminds me of F&F2, in slightly better? Bonus to the whole team for the effort of making all the assets and the cool shaders.
Congrats! Average rating should be like ~ 4.5
Speaking of Zicman, he makes really great Pixel Art and has been using Godot for some time now. You can find his stuff at https://zicman.itch.io/
Sorry for the spam, but I forgot to send the link to the playthrough: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/721365316
Hey VikFro, thanks so much for playing the game, it's been great to watch you play. I thought you'd quit after the 3rd of 4th mission because of the difficulty, but kudos for playing through and going for the full story.
I can attest to the difficulty of having two programmers collaborate well, this hasn't always worked for me in the past, so I'm glad me and Duke (2shady4u) are pretty in sync when it comes to this stuff.
John has from my experience always been good at making music! He really outdid himself here and I think it's his longest soundtrack yet. I think each piece suits the setting perfectly.
I'll be sure to stream your game tonight, if you're around!
Nice game, I enjoyed it! I liked the idea of a little family of robots.
I wish there was some kind of indication of which character you have selected. I could never remember which was which. Also, I don't know how the actions / heals filled up... I think the one with the wrench always had a full bar at the beginning of its turn, but the others never seemed to replenish after using them in a level.
Thanks for playing :D
Yes, the indicator for the active character is something that didn't make it in unfortunately.
The little guy (B3B3) has a special perk that gives him full amount of healing charges at each turn. But the rest of the children don't have this ability (they do have other perks!) The descriptions for the perks are written in the upgrid screen though :D
#TrollsAreBestRace
Wow ! The polish on this game is amazing ! And this title screen... Gosh !
The chip set screen was a bit confusing at first but I eventually figured it out.
Hello! Thanks for playing our game :D
I do agree that the upgrid UX can benefit from a few more iterations. Problem was that we wanted both mouse and keyboard support, but the system that made it in ended up being a combo of both, which has some counter-intuitive elements/decisions.
Glad you found the upgrid screen though :D
I spent some time just staring at that beautiful title screen! Just, staring deep into it's deep green circuits. The level of polish is amazing! Lot of talent in the creation of this game and I really enjoyed playing it. Oh and the sounds when hovering the buttons and settings options! It's a teaching moment to the importance of the little touches! Awesome! :-)
Everyone else has said it, so you certainly know it -- so polished, very impressive, well done.
I've never really played this style of game, so it took quite a while to understand the dynamics. But that's on me. Once I "got it" it became a bit easier, but the tab issue which was mentioned combined with just trying to get out of the level once you're done is a bit frustrating.
Have you guys worked much together before? I'm going for a browse through your previous work to find out..
High rating from me, good luck!
Hello! :D Thanks for playing and for your high praise!
To answer your question:
D4yz (Pixel wizard) and Willowblade (programmer) worked together a lot on previous game jams, with some JohnGabriel also having a part in most of their games:
https://willowblade.itch.io/ & https://d4yz.itch.io/
While this is my first GWJ, I did work together with Willowblade a lot on past jam games, which can be found here:
Just like everyone is saying, superb level of polish here! Art, sound, design, all of it. I love tactics games, so this was right up my alley. :) I like that all the characters have their own specialties, but still have the ability to customize them some in a different way that most games that are just trying to copy FFT. Is there a way to move/remove upgrades once installed? I was trying to move S0HNs around but couldn't figure it out.
I'd echo what a couple other comments are saying with the tab button being a little cumbersome. I'm not sure what a good alternative would be though. I think the issue is that in most tactics games I would just select the spot I want to go to instead of tap tap tapping to move. Obviously with the speed boosts that skip spots it makes that a little difficult...
Hey Mike! Solid feedback! Glad you enjoyed the game. If you want to remove a chip you just need to find it on the right in the list, S0HN's starting 2 should be at the top. Then click the chip to have it highlighted in the UPGRID again and move or remove it. ^^
There is a good few QoL improvements that we can implement after the Jam. If we do I hope you drop by to check it out again!
The audio is BANGING in this game (banging, in this case, meaning "really good"). I loved how it was like... a version of turn-based tactics type game but I didn't have to think too hard. There were no crazy, complex huds. I just ran into other characters and I figured out what each character did. Really cool game.
Have you considered letting the player just "exit" the level after they've cleared the enemies? Arguably, I might've not gotten far enough for that to matter :)
Hey Urodela! Glad to see you checked our game out!
We mostly implemented the door system to make sure that chips wouldn't get left behind. But it's 100% possible that a player clears the last enemy and already grabbed all the chips. I'll def talk to our programmers and see if we can figure out some other methods. ^^
Really appreciate the feedback!
Good job! The premise is amusing. On clicking new initially I waited a few seconds for the game to start. The UI design is otherwise really nice and polished.
I'm impressed by the gameplay. I really like the turn-based combat, especially with the different traits each character has, and well done on the AI! I did find that having to press tab each time out of combat was a little tedious, I'm not sure if there's a way around it.
That you actually implemented an interesting pickup and upgrade system on top of everything else was super impressive. Overall, very polished with actual depth to gameplay, and I can definitely see this game being expanded upon.
I was a little bit annoyed by the whole walking, press tab, walking... in the tutorial. But then I got to the first level and startet to understand what this is about...
The gameplay is crazy good. The healing and applying the processor upgrades, very impressive. Althoug the exact effects of the upgrades were a bit hard to understand for me.
The art and music are also amazing.
I couldn't get trough the door in the Operation UPGRID level, is this a bug or did I miss something? I played in the browser.
I think it's generally agreed on that is a game of remarkable polish, a lot of effort has clearly been put into the sound, the art, the UX and the AI. This doesnt play like a jam game at all, the team is clearly talented.
However, there are a few things. Firstly, as mentioned before having to keep pressing Tab and and waiting to go through the door after enemies were defeated was a struggle. I only played the first three levels but from what I played the gameplay was quite repetitive and although the characters had different abilities I never felt the need to switch them up as the game didn't force me to. But I'm sure if you guys had more time to design the levels it would be great,
Hey Tim, we greatly appreciate the praise!
Regarding the level balance, a game of this scale would certainly require much more intense balancing. I 100% agree. But just before we were about to submit we sort of had to make a tough decision: Do we make the game very hard to complete, or do we make it playable and beatable for everyone?
We ended up deciding to make it feel more accessible to everyone to be able to showcase all the content that we worked so hard to create. We might continue development after the Jam voting ends, and if so we certainly plan to do much more in depth balancing.
9 days is a tight window of time, but we are very proud of the results. (I play the game more then I want to admit lmao..)
Thanks for the feedback!
Crazy that this was made in 9 days. Very good, excellent art and music. Switching between the characters is cool, and I love the dialogue pop-ups. However, I would have really loved to have been able to move freely throughout levels once enemies were defeated. Having to press Tab and wait was kind of annoying. Also, I would have liked some larger areas in the first couple of levels - it felt really cramped with 5 characters to control. One more small thing is the enemies health color is the same as the players, which made it hard for me to distinguish between them when they overlap sometimes.
Overall I thought that it fit the theme well, my issues with the game are not huge and some people might not care about them. My only real problem was that I couldn't advance past level 3 - after beating the 3rd mission, it brought me back to the title and the 4th one was still locked.
Hey! Thanks for playing the game. I couldn't fall asleep and then I read your comment. Through the great jam organizers, I've pushed a hotfix that enables you to unlock the fourth mission, but you'll need to replay the third mission. Bright side is that you keep all of your chips from the previous time you beat it, so you can equip S0N1C with 3 speed boosts and just fly over that map once you beat it.
We're planning to keep polishing up the game (though hopefully no more hotfixes during the voting period) and the QoL issues you mentioned are very high priority, but I really didn't want anything breaking these past few hours... Actually, I'd already started working on different health bar colors.
Did you check out the upgrade screen? You can go there from the mission select, it's the bottom button. I would love to hear more of your thoughts on the gameplay!
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