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A jam submission

Carrot ExpanseView game page

This is a side scrolling game I made for the 34th Godot Wild Jam
Submitted by TolbiNox (@NoxTolbi) — 21 hours, 44 minutes before the deadline
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Carrot Expanse's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#194.0564.056
Controls#302.9442.944
Accessibility#312.7222.722
Fun#412.8892.889
Overall#502.6592.659
Graphics#612.2782.278
Originality#632.5002.500
Audio#651.2221.222

Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot version
3.3.2

Wildcards used
What's Up Doc

Game description
A side scroller where your goal is to avoid asteroids and collect carrots

Source
Not as of right now

Discord username
TolbiNox#6267

Participation level (GWJ only)
This is my first time participating

Participation level across all jams
This is my first jam

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Fun game and well made for 2 to 3 days of work. I like that the carrots are both your ammo and your score, giving a risk-reward element!

Couple things…

  • Game lags when moving. Not exactly sure what’s causing it. Doesn’t harm the game play too much, but it is quite noticeable.
  • A minor thing, but I’m thinking the asteroids should have a little explosion animation when it. Just adds a little “juiciness” to the game!

Over all, an enjoyable game! Well made!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game :) The graphics are nice, something about the steering (going up/down) felt a bit weird, like it would slow down, not a big deal. Congrats on the first jam entry!

Developer

Yeah, the way I handled the scrolling/movement didn't work well with my up/down code, but I didn't have time to fix it. Thank you so much :

Submitted(+1)

Solid first Jam entry! I think from a design point of view, it's a fairly complete little experience. It would have been nice to have some sort of scaling difficulty but oh well. Still a fun couple minutes. Hope to see you in next months Jam also! ^^

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing :)

I was going to add some variety to the obstacles, but time constraints got in the way. I definitely plan on joining the next jam :D

Submitted(+1)

Simple and fun, just like the old days! There are a couple small gripes I have: 1) The scrolling speed is not constant. It seems to periodically slow down. 2) It would be nice if UI could be navigated by keyboard/controller, so we don't have to reach out for the mouse to click on a button.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the response :)

The scroll speed slows when you move, it's due to how I handled the scrolling. I didn't notice it until it was too late for me to fix it. I'll keep the UI navigation in mind in future games, my UI was kind of rushed as it was the very last thing I worked on before submitting, so my focus was just on getting it working

Submitted(+1)

Simple but fun arcade game.

It was a bit irritating that the scrolling slowed down when the spaceship moved vertically, and the UI could also use some work (buttons should react to hovering and clicking).

Congratulations on submitting your first jam game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks you! :)

Yeah, I understand the movement slowdown issue, but I noticed it a bit late  (at first I thought it only happened when the ship was hitting the top and bottom of the screen) and to fix it would have required me to re-write large portions of the game and I was running out of time. 

Also, pretty much all of the UI was made right before I submitted the game, I probably could have animated the buttons, but I didn't really think about it at the time

Submitted (3 edits) (+1)

Hey, congrats on your first jam ever and hopefully the beginning of a long list!

The controls are well implemented except the vertical movement slows down the scrolling. The scrolling should happen independently of the player’s movement.

Good idea to have a choice to use your score as ammunition, it creates an interesting choice of risk vs reward.

If you want some tips to improve:

For audio I recommend checking out these free packs: https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc

they’re quite heavy, I recommend downloading via torrent where you can choose which subfolders to ignore (there’s tons of different car sounds for example that are not so useful for instance). I really like https://freesound.org but don’t forget to credit the creator(s) in your description/inside the game. SFXR is a great simple tool to create your own (https://sfxr.me/), I recommend this improved version: https://www.bfxr.net/

For graphics you could look into parallax for the background so it scrolls at a different speed, it will give it a nicer look. (See http://kidscancode.org/blog/2017/04/godot_101_12/)

Also the style for your ship looks nicer and different than the rest. It has an outline while the asteroids/carrots don’t, it’s best to either outline everything or nothing.

If you want rebindable controls you can check out my scripts there: https://github.com/GodotWildJam/gwj-accessibility-scripts

If you ever need help I recommend posting in the dedicated channels in the Discord server :)

Developer(+1)

Thank! :)

I noticed the movement slowing down too late for me to fix it, as for the audio I'm trying not to rely on pre-made assets. For jams, I personally want the experience of making it all, I feel like becoming a more well rounded dev is my reason for joining jams. I just didn't have time during this jam to make sounds/music I like

Actually, the background is on a parallax layer scrolling at different speeds. There are 4 stacked images, I just forgot to adjust the scroll speeds before I uploaded to make it feel a bit more natural, so they are moving at different speeds, just not in a way that's the most visually pleasing. As for the ship, it was the very last asset I made, and I made it in a hurry and didn't even think about updating the other sprites :D

I'll definitely keep the link to those scripts in mind, and I really appreciate the help :)

Submitted

Hmmm, only after I've read the comments I've realized that you can shoot with the carrots. Idk, this mechanic seems a bit counterintuitive, so maybe giving the player some ammo at the beginning would solve these issues. Also, the text tutorial is very hard to follow without a proper visual, so maybe try to add at least an image to all the text and the player will understand faster all the basic rules. The controls are ok, and the game does feel easy to play. Considering that this is your first jam, you did a really good job! Keep going on and follow your craft with patience 😉.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing :)

Yeah, I threw the tutorial in last minute because I realized that I didn't have anything explaining the controls, and I didn't want to just put the controls in the description.  If I ever update the game, I'll definitely have a small tutorial level 

Submitted(+1)

The horizontal movement slowed down when moving up/down which felt a little funny. I’m not sure whether it gets harder as you play for longer, but it was pretty easy and felt like I could go for quite a while. I would expect speed or asteroid density to increase the longer you play. I didn’t feel like I had to shoot very often, so the cost of using a carrot was pretty negligible. Perhaps you could introduce more reasons to shoot in order to utilize that tradeoff a little more.

Overall, nice entry and welcome :)

Developer

Thanks for the response :)

Yeah, I noticed that a bit late. At first I thought it only happened when it hit the top or bottom of the screen, as there are invisible walls there. And I did plan on adding asteroids with more health, but ran out of time to work on the game

Submitted(+1)

Congrats on your first jam, it’s a great entry!

Developer

Thank you so much :)

Submitted(+1)

I like your dilemma with the score and the bullets! It shows the fun of the game. I think the next one will be even better with sound!

Developer

Thanks for the response :)

I'm participating in another game jam this week, but after that I definitely plan on either updating this game or releasing an entirely new version with sound and the other aspects I planned but didn't get too 

Submitted(+1)

Nice game! As people already said, the idea of using your score as ammo is really nice. My high score was 43, but I'm bad haha. Great work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the response :) 

I'm glad you liked the score mechanic

Submitted(+1)

This is a pretty good game. Using the score as ammo is a nice idea. Good work!

Developer

Thanks for playing :)

Honestly, it seemed like the easiest way to add a just a little bit of depth to the game

Submitted(+1)

Neat game. I liked the concept of using the score as ammo, making the player careful on when to shoot. Since it was a side-scroller, it bothered me a bit when the ship slowed down during movement, though that might just be preference. Overall, nice little game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the response, I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

It bothered me a bit too, it's due to how I handled the movement, but to fix it would have meant re-writing a large portion of the code

Submitted(+1)

Took me a while to realize you spend carrots (score) to shoot, so it gives a choice of trying to maximize score or get out of a tight spot. Very neat, congratulations.

Developer

Thanks for the response :) I talked about that in the tutorial,  but I think I definitely could have worded it better