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A jam submission

Bubble Gum ArcheologistView game page

Press X to make bubble and bounce your way through ancient ruins!
Submitted by aXu, Mubsi — 4 minutes, 3 seconds before the deadline
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Bubble Gum Archeologist's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#243.3003.889
Theme#343.2063.778
Graphics#432.7343.222
Fun#472.1682.556
Overall#482.4652.905
Audio#492.1682.556
Controls#562.0742.444
Accessibility#591.6031.889

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
4.0 Alpha 2

Wildcards Used
Speedrun timer

Game Description
Use Bubble gum to bounce around ancient ruins! Made with Godot 4 Alpha! Sound doesn't work properly on binaries, you can download source and run from editor.

How does your game tie into the theme?
The ruins. Are. Ancient.

Source
https://github.com/aXu-AP/Bubble-Gum-Archeologist

Discord Username
-

Participation Level (GWJ Only)
This is 2nd

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Comments

Submitted

Enjoyed it! The bubbles are a fun mechanic and the camera movement was clever! A little tricky to control sometimes though!

Developer(+1)

Thanks, nice to hear! I kind of wanted duality to the gameplay, go easy and steady pace, or high risk and chaotic movement. It ended up maybe a bit too wonky :D

Submitted

Very fun! :) I thought the dynamic camera positioning was a very cool addition. Bouncing around with the bubblegum was also very fun. I wonder if there could be more opportunities to make effective use of the bubblegum mechanic, since a lot of the time it resulted in me running into spikes! I thought the level with the spikes coming from the ceiling was a very fun usage of it since I got to go fast and bounce around, going in/out of bubblegum mode.

The last level was also very difficult, and I felt a bit like the difficulty was punishing me for exploring, i.e the death pit and the platform leading down into the spikes. It was only a couple of obstacles and respawning doesn't have any penalty so I can't really complain that much tho. 

Thanks for submitting! :D

Developer

Good points! There's a few places where bubble gum helps you to save time, but it really comes with a risk. But we wanted to keep levels quite short, so one can quicker repeat and learn routes. I agree that some spikes were placed quite cheaply though, especially that bit in the last level. I wanted to add camera zooming to these portions too, but time constraints got the better of me.

Submitted

This is the start of a pretty solid game. I really appreciated your camera work. The way the camera zooms out to show the whole puzzle and vice versa.

Developer(+1)

Thanks! I got drawn to little details like this so much that more important things, like proper tutorial is MIA. I'm not much of a content creator, I just enjoy tinkering systems. Glad I got help with levels this time.

But I agree, the potential is there, needs just work.

Submitted

Eh, we all get drawn to details, trust me! Looks like the start of a great game. Good luck!

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

PRESS X TO MAKE BUBBLEGUM!


This is a fun idea, but in practice it doesn't work that well - so hard to control the bounce and I couldn't get very far

Developer

Yeah I agree that the idea sounded better on paper than in practice. It gets better when you get used to it, but the game is too short for that.

Submitted

546s was my time!

It's a really charming game, I think the bubble gum mechanic is cool but very difficult to control. I actually only needed it in like 3 places? 

Apart from the Godot 4 issues you mentioned it seems to run fine for me.. impressive for your 2nd jam, well done.

Developer (2 edits)

Thanks and congrats on finishing it! Yes, bubble gum is needed only a few times not to overwhelm the players. It's like running in more recent Mario games. Very rarely required, but if you use it you'll get more from the game. I like it as a risky speedrun mechanic as you have much more momentum with it.

Oh and while this is my 2nd GWJ, I have participated other jams more or less every second month last year.

Submitted (1 edit)

I tried the game out (Windows version), but I wasn't sure how to use the bubble gum, so I didn't get past the first part of the game.  I couldn't find any explanation of the controls.  The character also looks different from the one in the screenshot, so maybe it's an older version?

Edit: I looked at the game page and found the controls.  My bad for not looking there earlier!  I really appreciate the unique character and creative game idea, which sets this one apart.  Unfortunately, the bubble gum controls were a bit unwieldy for me.  I couldn't consistently build momentum to bounce high when I wanted to.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

whoa. WHOA. Thanks for noticing. I uploaded an old version, which is very much work in progress. There's even no objectives! I'll try to contact admins and get permission to reupload...

Meanwhile, I understand the problem with the controls - the bubble mechanic is quite wonky. However we did take this into account when designing levels, and the few bits (3 to be precise) where bubble is required we tried to make it easy, with room for error. It's more for fun and speedrunning :)

Developer

I got sorted it out and now the correct version up for download. I'd be happy if you retry it :)

Submitted

add the controls to the Description here on Itch!!!

Developer(+2)

I had them on the project page, but everybody downloads from this submission page, skipping them. I now added it to the short description, I hope that's better.

Developer (1 edit)

Please note before rating: There's much more sounds, but unfortunately due to a bug with Godot 4 alpha, most of the sounds won't load properly. If you want, you can download the source from github and run from the editor, or refer to video walkthrough on the game page.