Play game
Koku: A Void Ant's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #50 | 3.650 | 3.650 |
| Accessibility | #57 | 3.050 | 3.050 |
| Overall | #61 | 3.293 | 3.293 |
| Fun | #61 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Controls | #62 | 3.150 | 3.150 |
| Audio | #72 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Originality | #73 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
| Graphics | #82 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.2.2
Wildcards Used
Give Me a Minute, Memory Lane
Game Description
A 'microvania' about a Void Ant exploring and gathering rainbow pieces for the Void. He's nimble, but helpless.
How does your game tie into the theme?
The main character is an ant born of the void, feeding rainbow pieces to the void. He also cannot fight, so he has to aVOID danger.
Source(s)
https://github.com/jake-abed/a-void-ant
Discord Username(s)
badhandbanana
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
1
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I really like metroidvanias and the metroid ball reference is very cool but it took me an embarassing amount of time to understand that I can fly with the void ball ability (probably because of metroid)
Game was pretty fun to go through. The powerups were both movement based but felt unique enough from each other and the graphics were nice
If you continue this more post jam heres some ideas on ways you could improve the game:
- When giving people to option to consume (or when they get a new powerup) show the button that will activate that on screen. Ended up forgetting which button I had to click which then required referencing the game page again or button mashing to find the key that worked
- With keyboard controls it was a bit awkward to press q when the hand was already focused on movement. This is compounded with needing to then use the movement to fully utilize the q ability. The right hand wasnt doing anything so some controls could be moved over to there with a wasd jkl control scheme or something else
- In the dark areas of the game it can get hard to see things at points especially on less bright screens since most objects become shades of purple or black. Having some way to add more contrast there would go a long way for readability
- Having smoother room transitions (felt a bit awkward to suddenly be teleported into light or dark)
- Adding some more weight to actions (such as jumping, dying, etc.). A bit of tweens doing some squash and stretch goes a really long way into making things feel polished and theyre pretty easy to do in godot
- Adding in input buffering for the jumps. This goes along with coyote time in helping people feel like their inputs are being read by the game. Its essentially letting people hit the jump button a bit before they touch the ground and still counting that as a jump when they hit the ground (to jump instantly upon landing)
Thank you for playing! I will be updating this post-jam (not an insane amount I think, but definitely with QoL improvements).
Amazing game, loads of conent
I love sprites and animations and all the VFX
Powerups were pretty fun to play with and there's even some lore and dialogs
Super impressive to have all of this done in a week, great job!
Thank you, I’m glad you liked it!
cool pixel style! the player sprite seemed to jitter alot, definitely worth fixing in the future
Were you playing Windows? The Windows version had extreme jitter on the player.
As for the web version, I have a patch ready for post-jam that should improve the camera smoothing making movement smoother.
Thank you for playing.
I liked exploring the caves! There seems to be a massive map, so kudos on that! In my first run i was lost about what to do to activate the skills, then i doubled-back to the itch page and scrolled down! Might help to have a visual indicator in-game about the hotkeys for each skill!
Thank you so much for playing! There is controls screen in the pause menu and start menu!
I wanted to expand the ui for the abilities, but ran out of time. Like more visual cues and an explanation of the ability upon acquiring it. I will at bare minimum at some extra UI help post-jam, it is a good idea for sure.
Cool game, especially for first time! Your world is way bigger than mine, a lot to explore. It would be great to extend this with more custom art and more enemies/characters.
Thank you! I will definitely either expand it or use the ideas to sauce up a future project.
Hey, nice one! The Void Ball ability was a lot of fun to use, and chaining it with the dash to get tons of air was pretty cool. The artwork has a very hand-painted feel, I like it a lot!
Exploring was fun—there's a ton of thought put into the level design—and I feel like it just a little extra something could help incentivize it even more. Maybe some NPC's scattered around different places would spice things up?
Anyway, nice job!! Congrats on the submission :D
Thank you! The void ball was the first ability I designed and am pretty proud of it. Part Metroid ball, part SotN mist form.
There was, unfortunately a lot of cut content. The petting zoo was supposed to be in the game, there was supposed to be at least one more NPC and some messages/notes to find and add to lore.
Thank you for playing :)
I liked the cave atmosphere a lot, If I were to give feedback and telling what was lacking, i would say the platformer juice and platformer movements improvements, for the movements : when we go out from the floor, having a bit of time to react and jump, we we jump just before being into the ground, having a litle timer that allow to jump immediatly as we then touch the ground, also adding juice to jumping, like more stretch and squash maybe ? i like the game.
I would also say, it's hard to use the 2 abilityes, with the same hand, because to ball, i have to stop moving left, so i lose distance ! Anyway was a great experience !
I hope you'll play my game and give me feedback too, have a nice day !
Nice art and mechanics, knytt stories vibes
Wow! I wasn't expecting a metroidvania with this large of a map in the timeframe of a week, this is just really impressive! I even stumbled upon a hidden entry once. I finished it with 30 points, would totally have explored the rest if I'd had more time. The game was quite fun and the upgrades felt good to use. Congrats!
Very nice submission and excellent for this being your first GWJ, welcome!
Really liked the art and music. The shifting from dark to light was nice, although perhaps the dark was a little too dark, but guess that lead to the secrets which I really liked (especially the massive treasure room!). I did I was stuck until I realized I could use the ball upwards. The story was fun and fit the theme nicely. Control felt a little off at time but overall pretty good and I noticed the shuttering of the art on Windows browser.
Overall great submission and thank you for making it and us enjoy it.
I'm really happy you found that secret! You really got to exploring then :) I definitely think I could have tuned the lighting a little better, but I had to move on in the level design process faster than I would have liked.
Thank you for playing!
i actually love this, the controls feel good and the abilities complemented each others and the movment in general nicely
Really enjoyed the little game! Nice job.
That intro was too cute, oh my gosh!! This was a super charming game, and I felt so happy for my clever little void ant every time it found a new passageway into a new level in that wide-open world. The underground levels in particular looked awesome. A couple of the jumps were really tricky but I get that that might have been the point. Fabulous job!
Nothing feels good. I liked the writing, also sudden mood transitions were refreshing! Abilities with level design gave the game sort of metroidvania vibe.
Hahaha, I was scared for a second! Nothing is scary.
Sorry lmao, the void spoke in one liners but Nothing is satisfiied.
Cool game! Nice first entry.
I can recommend you some trick for the game feel:
- add basic acceleration, by adding acceleration each frame or using lerp
if moving:
velocity = velocity.lerp(direction * max_speed, acceleration * delta)
else:
velocity = player.velocity.lerp(Vector3.ZERO, deceleration * delta)
- add some particules to the dash to make it and a "startup lag" (like 0.08 second or 5 frame)
- you can make the jump and gravity a bit stronger
- your void ball is already cool!
- use physics in "process callback" in the camera when using position smoothing
- add some feedback when you collect something! like a sound or even a bit of vfx like particles!
there is more but it's already good, well done any ways !
Ahh! Thank you so much for the feedback.
Thank you so much for playing and giving feedback :)
After the first lot of dialogue the game hangs on a black screen in the web build and never comes back.
Hi! I think this bug is triggered by hitting clicking the “continue” button too many times (unless it’s just a weird web export issue). Try clicking where the continue button was again and it should start the game.
super charming, i really like the big world it has. i have no negative notes for this game