Sweet game. I only wished that like usual in stealth games, there was another way to progress levels than take down of enemies.
Supreme audio, as others have mentioned.
Play game
Mallard Gear Solid's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #3 | 4.147 | 4.147 |
| Overall | #7 | 3.920 | 3.920 |
| Theme | #15 | 4.441 | 4.441 |
| Graphics | #17 | 4.206 | 4.206 |
| Controls | #18 | 3.706 | 3.706 |
| Accessibilty | #20 | 3.382 | 3.382 |
| Fun | #23 | 3.794 | 3.794 |
| Originality | #41 | 3.765 | 3.765 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3
Wildcards Used
Curses, What The Duck
Game Description
You are Solid Drake, an elite special operative trapped behind enemy lines and surrounded by enemy hunters. Survive waves of enemies while waiting for extraction.
How does your game tie into the theme?
Avoid Light and use the dark to your advantage in taking out enemies
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
meredith.silver, scratchy_sd, noitcani
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
6
Comments
Thanks for playing therryaki!
You're absolutely right; having takedown upgrades would indeed be cool (e.g. more health regen from takedowns, or faster takedown ticks intervals).
You'll be happy to know that we've tweaked the roll mechanics to roll in the direction last moved (and only to the mouse location if player is stationery!). Will be patched post-rating! The animation problems you noticed should be fixed too!
Our artist @junkgolem and musician @Scratchy_sd would be very happy to hear your high praises for their craft! Thank you!
Ooo the sound and art aesthetic are very nice. I like that clicking next skips the text scroll nice touch. I love the design of the level, feels well done with places both to hide from the sunlight and from the enemies. The HUD feels well placed and fits the style of the game. I also like being able to pause.
Some stuff I didn’t quite like: The add health bonus didn’t appear to increase my health, only extend the bar? It was a bit frustrating when I got stuck either reloading or after taking damage (it wasn’t very clear to me) I think I just didn’t like the bits where I kinda had to wait with nothing much I could do lol. I tried playing a second time to try the takedown, but I think it created a copy of the enemy with the takedown animation while leaving the original there so it never died lmao
Some stuff that might help: I think increasing contrast on the reload animation would help, I didn’t realize what it was at first as I only saw the icon not the spin scroll thing. Changing animation speed based on character speed might help, some characters appear to be sliding.
Here’s my stats for my first run:
My strategy mostly involved hiding in corners to reload and trying to spam shoot enemies while I was out of their range. I love that the stats are shown at the end of the game.
Overall the game feels incredibly polished and is quite fun to play. Great work!
21 days ago(+1)
Thanks for playing Soda!
Day 8 in one try is really impressive! Looks like your strategy worked well!
1. Yea the health boost only applies to max_hp, but it might indeed be a good idea to bump up the current hp by that amount too.
2. Following popular feedback, we've changed the reloading mechanics such that you can move (albeit slower) while reloading!
3. The takedown animation might have been a glitch! Let me look into it.
4. We're fixed some of the characters sliding animation issues too!
Thanks for all your feedback!
Thanks for playing Sparrow! Yea I think some of the parody effect would be lost haha. We wanted to strike a balance between not swaming players with too many enemies, but also not letting there be too many pockets of lull time. Looks like there can be more tweaks to the spawn rates. In the post release patch, we made it such that you can move (albeit slower) while reloading! Hopefully that makes the game less punishing!
Top notch! Were it not for the "Legally Distinct Duct Protagonist" this would definitely be on my Steam Wishlist!
PROS:
- Magnificent Audio. The music and sound effects fit amazing for the game
- Great use of lighting and shadows.
- Great tie-in of abilities within the game
- Thank you for not using "ESC" for pause.
- Great diversity in the Ability/Curses area.
- The memes. DRRAAAAAKKKKEEEEEE!
Critiques:
- Something that notates about rolling in the direction of the mouse.
- Audio preview for SFX Slider would be greatly helpful, especially for streamers
- Maybe having the Pause key, re-bindable
Doesn't affect my score, but... Wishlist Items:
- Radio Comms portraits
- For the Memes: A cardboard box.
23 days ago(+1)
Thanks so much for playing, streaming AND providing such comprehensive and useful feedback both on-stream and here Quixjote!
Thank you for your kind words! Our talented musician @Scratch_sd who was not present on stream would be thrilled to hear your glowing review of his sound design!
We definitely agree with all the critiques provided; some of which I will immediately worked into my own reusable Code snippets (adding in a SFX previews on my `SettingsPopup` scene. It's also funny that we had the same ideas on the Wishlist items that could have been added to the game if we had expanded the scope of the game :D
Had a blast on your stream! Thank you for taking the time and effort!
Fun game! Would recommend to friends, 
Lot’s of space for puzzles in this design…
Would be nice to move a little faster. reminded me of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Tfo8j2nV4
24 days ago(+2)
Thanks for playing pxlpush!
And thanks for the recommendation on the similarly named game with a similar concept! This is a great coincidence!! Will check out this new game (please understand, we have to say this). Lol.
24 days ago(+2)
Thanks for playing Kissa! Wow 10 times is probably the hi-score for number of times played! We're thrilled you liked it so much!!!
24 days ago(+1)
Thanks for playing Rat Race Studio!
@junkgolem our artist would be super happy to hear that you got her easter egg on the Duck Hunt dog! There should indeed be more room for variations in the attacks (maybe different weapons?) and powerups. One feedback I got others playing the game was that the powerups didn't feel as strong as the debuffs sometimes cancelled them out, but I think this was a side-effect (or y'know, Curse!) of trying to fit the subtheme of the Curse wildcard :D
24 days ago(+1)
Thanks for playing Videonoise! We're glad you enjoyed it! Yea on hindsight we should have shortened the gameplay to 5 days!
24 days ago(+1)
Thanks for playing Anonymyst!
Agree with your feedback on the sluggishness! Looks like our game would have benefitted from some pre-release playtesting!
We're glad you liked the art and music! Our artist @junkgolem and musician @Scratchy_sd put a lot of effort into them!
The animation freezes was probably due to some error in the code not detecting if the enemies faced in the right direction! Will look into that!
24 days ago(+2)
Thanks for playing Jorel! The music and SFX was designed by our talented musician @scratchy_sd! Indeed, on hindsight we also felt that a 5 day win con would be more apt (going to take it up with the inefficient rescue team at Mallard Secret Services inc.). And we agree that tweaking the speed up of the gameplay would make it feel better :D
24 days ago(+1)
Thanks for playing Cia!
I had scaled the reload timer and move speed down initially to provide space for the relevant upgrades (e.g. "reload speed" ), but on hindsight it might have been too much! A shorter default timer would have felt better. 10 days was also an arbitrary amount set for a win con, but perhaps a 5 day limit would have made it a shorter and sweeter experience given the lack of variation in its current scope!
I lol-ed at your punny concluding statement :D
24 days ago(+1)
Thanks for playing nhutchins!! We're so happy to hear that you enjoyed it enough to play multiple runs!! If we had more time, we would have liked to implement a hi-score system to better help you track your performance across different runs!
Wonderful game!! Fits very nicely into the theme.
Things I would note if you’re looking for feedback:
- I really like avoiding the light as a mechanic, and that it’s something as mundane as light-sensitive eczema that can kill you.
- the takedown sprite sometimes stays after the takedown is over.
- the movement fells too slow. You could probably make the map bigger and the player faster.
- the menu options don’t work in the pause screen.
- enemies don’t a death animation.
- the game ends up a bit easy because the enemies don’t take into account where you’re moving toward when shooting, so as long as you’re moving, they’ll always be shooting where you were.
- enemies forget about you immediately on switching into night mode.
- enemies don’t look around after being shot.
- I super like that the enemies look like the dog from duck hunt. It’s distracting in a really good way.
- pretty good balancing on the power ups. I like the power ups a lot.
- it would super nice to know whether or not you could heal (I think it’s from takedowns, but it’s not super obvious).
- The gun sprite doesn’t show when the player looks to the right.
- it would be neat if the reload time was faster if your magazine was fuller.
- night vision doesn’t seem to do anything?
- night vision timer still counts down when in the power up screen.
- can takedown during the day if you’re behind an enemy in the night, which is kinda nice, actually.
- I like that the enemies also block the sunlight.
- Again I really like how it fits into the theme, and it’s not just tacked on. There were a couple times I almost died because I was reloading and the sun almost singed me - got my blood pumping.
- the kerning on the font in the pause menu needs some work.
- the camera feels a bit top-heavy. It feels like I can see more above me, than below, which means it’s dangerous to go downward.
- are they UV flashlights or why do they hurt your eczema?
Here’s another couple things I noticed after playing it a few more times and watching my friend play it:
- several of the sprites will freeze and it’s common for the enemy sprite to freeze while walking.
- the flashlight sprites will sometimes disappear but the hitbox won’t, so it can be hard to know where your safe when running.
- on the power up screen, the background should lighten instead of the text darkening - it feels backward.
24 days ago(+1)
Ok wow. Let's knock these off one by one.
1. Thank you so much glasstacojar for playing multiple times, recommending it others on the discord, and even getting your friend play it! This makes us more happy than you can imagine!
2. The various animation freezes and erroneous sequencing was probably due to some code errors in detecting when certain triggers have happened (e.g. when direction of enemies changed, when they switch between the different movement states). Great eye on catching the lack of a death animation. In fact there is one, but I think it fails to show as it's a static 1 frame animation, and I missed out on duplicating it several times to ensure it stays before the enemy queues free.
3. On the points about enemy AI, those are all great suggestions. There is a finite state machine coded for the enemies, and I think in theory these could all be implemented (e.g. looking to the player after being shot etc.) Given the inspiration sources for this game, there are probably many ideas we could implement! To compromise the scope to fit a jam duration, I think the consequence was also a point you mentioned about it being too easy if you knew what to look out for.
4. Your point on the perspective is an interesting one. We had set out to make a top-down game, so we didn't do perspective scaling on the game view. Without using the 3D engine I'm not sure if i can easily scale the camera perspective to make it orthogonal, but its something worth looking into!
5. Great suggestion on the UI improvements and bugs! Will check these out and fix them!
6. Finally, on your questions about the flashlight, its a funny story... But i'll let you in on it for the most detailed jam feedback we have ever gotten haha. At the start of the game discussions, Drake was supposed to be a VAMPIRE DUCK. So.. you know, all light would have hurt him (regardless of if they were UV). But somewhere down the time, we all forgot about this, and just got carried away with the Metal gea... *cough* i mean.. Secret Operative theme. That's when drake conveniently got a SUPER SEVERE case of Eczema, so much so that light of any kind hurt him. Perfectly logical *winks*
Thank you again on behalf of our team for this detailed feedback and effort put into playtesting our game!!
24 days ago(+2)
Thanks for playing CCador, twice even!! We're glad you enjoyed it and got the reference!
The art direction was the brainchild of our artist @junkgolem! And I think the effort she put in here really shows!
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