The pixelart is so nice, good job on the audio as well, all of it makes up a really good atmosphere
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Temple of Unstable God's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #1 | 4.767 | 4.767 |
| Audio | #4 | 4.100 | 4.100 |
| Controls | #4 | 3.900 | 3.900 |
| Overall | #8 | 3.719 | 3.719 |
| Fun | #10 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
| Originality | #18 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Accessibility | #26 | 2.867 | 2.867 |
| Theme | #39 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
Ranked from 30 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Thanks a lot!
We spent unreasonable amounts of time on the game, I basically coded all my waking time for two weeks straight even though I’m not a workaholic. Our artist is a workaholic :) So we’re all glad the game stands out after that maddening effort.
It’s awesome the minimal UI & intentional lack of tutorial worked for you, I guess you’re the intended audience - explorer :) Comments here show that many users prefer a more controlled introduction, I’m still not decided on how much of that to include in future games - generally I like as little as possible.
There is no winning condition (like in real life, heh), but you can make history by beating 5:20 which is the highest recorded time (by me and our sound engineer). I think one or two more sacrifices could be done if you try hard and get a good RNG :) Be sure to drop a screenshot of the score screen here if you do that.
And I completely agree, obliteration during sacrifice is brutal, unfair, inhumane. I’m sorry for that, the timer should probably stop during the sacrifice 🙈
2 years ago(+1)
Thanks for your kind words!
I’m happy you enjoyed the game and even found the secret shrooms as they have a cool effect :) I know your game is filled with secrets, so this comes as no surprise :D But I wonder what percentage of players found the shrooms and noticed they make you shoot faster AND shoot weird projectiles 🤔
The core game loop sure is monotonous, I’m glad our plethora of distractions from that fact seems to work.
Finally, here is a OC meme as a reward for your WH40k reference (intentional or not):
Thanks!
I actually managed to change the mouse cursor to targeting reticule on windows, but it didn’t work in browsers so I reverted to this original aimer which was designed to work for controller too, but I didn’t have enough time to implement controller properly in the end or make the aimer follow the cursor as you suggest - it would certainly be better.
Thanks for a detailed review!
I’m really glad you noticed and enjoyed the details, including but not limited to crowd’s favorite coconut bonk 🥥 :D If you enjoyed throwing fruits, try collecting a secret shroom and then throw fruits real fast including secret new projectiles. I assure you it’s worth the effort ;)
I fully agree the wall-jump is way too non-standard, people are expecting it to work differently. You can actually mash jump between vertical walls to quickly ascend, you just must not input left/right away from the wall. The angle is chosen automatically when sliding wall.
The rationale behind this was to eliminate the annoying left/right alternation when wall-jumping up, and it works fairly well when you get used to it, but I think people don’t really play the game long enough for that, and honestly it’s not a good design for things to work differently than people expect.
4:43 is a decent time, well played 👌🏽
2 years ago(+1)
Thanks!
My favorite Steam Curator Shitlisting Service is harshly calling these failed attempts you mentioned “redundant pixelsh1t kusoge” - I’m proud we ascended beyond that point in your eyes :)
While the hopefully smooth controls/gameplay/logic are a result of my furious coding, I would never be able to create such a good game as a whole on my own without my dear jam crew members, who are each excellent in their realm (art, music, sound) while also being fun and good at cooperating.
Human cooperation is generally hard to establish and hard to maintain, but I managed to get a full crew I really enjoy working within a year’s time of active searching. If you wanna give it a try, I suggest looking at #team-up channels before jam start and picking frens you like :)
Finally, while I’m stubborn with my unorthodox/cryptic designs, I must relent in the topic of missing tutorial. This is a #1 complaint about the game, so I’ll try to include more directions in future games.
2 years ago(+1)
Thanks!
The art as well as most of level design is the work of our new artist we found on this jam, and as you can see he’s ridiculously good. Honestly, I didn’t expect this high quality myself, and I’m spoiled by Steam :)
We worked ultra hard to get this done, but in the end the result was worth it - I’m glad you enjoyed the Temple as well!
2 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the high praise! It's a rare treat for me to make a majority of the art assets in a project so I went all out this time ;D
2 years ago(+1)
Thanks!
The wall jump is a bit controversial, as you must not input left/right when sliding wall, just jump and the direction away from the wall is automatic.
So once you wall slide, you can get up parallel vertical walls just by pressing jump repeatedly without alternating left/right.
Thanks for your kind words!
We definitely wouldn’t be able to finish our overly ambitious game in the original jam timeframe, this was only possible due to the random week extension :)
I’m glad you didn’t mind the cryptic nature of the game and the lack of tutorial!
There is a binary doom 🍎 timer in the lower right, but so far not a single person noticed it, so it’s obviously not visible enough.
I think 4m 38s is the average time to make without try-harding :)
2 years ago(+1)
Thank you for the high praise!
Yeah we definitely ended up straying from the theme as we designed the game, our team has pretty much universally agreed to tighten up our scope for next time, and hopefully that will help us stick to our theme a bit better ;)
Thanks for feedback!
The tutorial is probably the most requested feature, and yet… The game is cryptic by design including its objective and controls. Those are expected to be explored by the player providing a sense of achievement when figuring things out as opposed to tutorial spoiling half the fun :) You did figure out the double jump in the end. You figured out where to find which fruits and where to put them as well… well done, you figured out something without explicit instructions :)
The “game over” is expected to be unexpected as well. If you look carefully, you can see a binary doom 🍎 timer in the lower right. That one is probably too easy to miss, I should have made it bigger, I guess.
2 years ago(+1)
Hey, thanks for your kind words!
I think we can all agree the coconut bonk is the best feature of this game 🥥
You’re right with the collectibles being fairly hard to identify, sorry about that :)
BTW I personally also loved your entry, it’s probably the most original one in this jam, a true display of working minimalism and yet charming as well! I think you made more with less by using wits as opposed to our over-ambitious zeal - a valuable lesson.
Cheers!
Hey, thanks a lot for your constructive review!
I hear your call for tutorial and you’re not the only one, but you did figure it out after one annihilation after seeing 0 sacrifices - that’s actually intended design and deliberate decision. I’m not saying this is Dark Souls of foraging platformers (:D) but Dark Sould/Elden Ring provide no tutorial, and yet millions of players did figure things out. I for one enjoy figuring things out on my own and I wanted to provide the same experience to players. Do you think it’s too harsh of an approach? 🤔
The green coconuts received a lot of hate, I should have removed those, sorry :)
And finally, there is a doom timer! Check out the apples in the lower right 🍎 It’s cryptic binary doom timer. Probably too hard to notice and fairly hard to decrypt as well… But it’s there ;)
Thank you very much for your kind words, I’m really glad you like it because we seriously overdid this, it would be impossible to finish within the original jam timeframe 🙈
The game sure is kinda cryptic, but I hope it’s more charm than harm - you did figure out it’s pears in the end, so yay! :) Wasn’t it kinda fun to discover the fruits by experiment? Maybe not, I can’t really imagine not knowing the fruits now :D
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