| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #3 | 4.622 | 4.622 |
| Controls | #5 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Overall | #10 | 3.904 | 3.904 |
| Originality | #13 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Fun | #23 | 3.511 | 3.511 |
| Audio | #31 | 3.378 | 3.378 |
| Graphics | #34 | 3.578 | 3.578 |
Ranked from 45 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
3.2.3
Wildcards Used
Arcade
Game Description
Pump it! Go out on a limb and survive the longest.
Source
https://github.com/bitwise-aiden/gwj30
Discord Username
velopman
Cute little game :D
It became very easy though after I lost a single limb and I probably could've continued forever. Mayhaps make it a tad bit harder as times goes on?
Presentation is nice, but there was an unfortunate lack of gnomes. Maybe for the DLC?
Nice presentation! I like the way that the hazards keep coming in faster and faster - it's a nice way of keeping it interesting. After a while, I had to let one limb fail so I'd have enough time to keep the others going, and then another, and then another. But don't worry, Mr. Patient! I can keep your right hand going indefinitely!
...Wait, that came out wrong.
- I did it doctor! We got 99%!
- What did it cost?
-... an arm and a leg...
(loved the two minigames and how the blood was coursing through! Especially enjoyed the "fill in" the artery game, that was unique from the games I've seen so far in this jam!)
Well done!
When I first started playing this I exclaimed "this is cool," because, well, this is cool. The idea is very easy to grasp and is a solid concept, and as soon as I saw a second minigame I was pretty excited.
Sadly I was less excited when I never ended up seeing a third minigame. But when it did feel like I was going to be discovering a bunch of cool minigames, that was a very nice feeling. This game does a great job of being easy to learn, and if it had those extra minigames it would be a great game that people could pick up and play.
One nitpick: the music is only twelve seconds long, which is much too short when you play the game for a long time. By the way, I ended up with a score of 4222.
I do have one substantial criticism, which is that I'm not sure if this game can function as an arcade game. In particular, arcade games are, in my understanding, meant to be playable forever if the player is good enough. However, this game would be impossible for a player, no matter how skilled, if the game sent minigames at a rate so fast that the player would be unable to beat the heart.
As a result, there is a difficulty ceiling in the game--it is never allowed to get more difficult than a certain point. And this is a problem, because arcade games should optimally have constantly increasing stakes--at least for the players below the very high skill bracket.
I think I definitely am in the skill bracket that could conceivably play the game forever given its current difficulty ceiling. I'm guessing the game could be made a bit more difficult while still being humanly possible, but I'm worried that it might not get hard enough to really be much of a skill gate.
That said, I'm sure there are ways to make it work. This is just my broad sense of a failing of the game as it stands now.
One thought that comes to mind is that having a larger variety of minigames could very easily fix this problem. When I only have to deal with two different minigames, it is quite easy to not slip up for a very long time. If the mouse movements required vary even more, then having to quickly determine what to do could be enough additional difficulty to allow the game to escalate more intensely.
Or, of course, the game could be allowed to be rather easy to play indefinitely. That's not necessarily a problem. Or it could escalate the difficulty to mathematical impossibility. That's not necessarily a problem either. Both of those possibilities would just make the game a little less of a traditional arcade game.
Anyways, if you figure out which way you want to take the game in that respect, and add in those extra minigames--this game would be a very solid game. The graphics are already absolutely fantastic. I think saying this game feels like a good game that is simply unfinished is not a particularly shocking take.
I hope this feedback is useful somehow! 😄
Good morning! Thank you so much for such a well thought out reply.
First off, what an amazing score! Great job :D
I'm definitely a fan of more mini games! I had the exact same thought as you on the last day of the jam. I really wanted to get at least one or two more in, with a few others being planned, but sadly it wasn't top priority for submission. I couldn't agree more that having more games would have lead to a higher skill bar, meaning that it wasn't as likely to go infinite with the game. One of the planned ones was actually a whole system issue, impacting the heart rather than the limbs, adding that extra layer of difficulty.
There is a theoretical maxima to the game in that after a certain point, the time between issues reaches a zero cooldown time, but given scores like yours and another of 12k, I think that it may have been better to have shortened that time.
In terms of arcade, I definitely wouldn't call this an arcade game. The mini games were taking inspiration from the wildcard to have a sub game within the game. Although this is an incredibly loose definition and I don't want to take away from those who worked to create awesome games within their games, it was my interpretation of the wildcard that I felt I could personally work with in the timeframe that I had for the jam. But I really love your points on this and will take it into consideration when I extend the game further.
Also sorry for the music being only twelve seconds and that you played long enough to be able to time it, haha. This was my first time trying to make the music myself, so as you can tell, I didn't focus a lot of time on it.
Seriously, thank you so much for all of the really useful feedback! This is going to really help when considering where I want to take the game post jam. I'd already known that I wanted to add more minigames, but I hadn't thought critically about what long game means, so this has given me something to chew on! Thanks so much!
Oh right! My bad. After this I actually worked out my theoretical end game math to see if there was a point that it would actually be impossible. Sadly it isn't as bad for the player as I'd anticipated.
After 8.5 minutes the event code will be triggered every frame. At that point it selects any of the limbs, 1 in 4, then a further 1 in 20 chance to trigger the event. I thought that with that and the ~1.5 seconds to finish a current event that it would be near constant that there would be a hazard. Alas this is not the case. Good to know for balancing.
Well sorry it was to the point that you thought to check. I'll definitely spend more time composing something longer for the update.
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