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GWJ73 - Towering Tales's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #5 | 4.636 | 4.636 |
| Fun | #6 | 4.045 | 4.045 |
| Controls | #6 | 4.091 | 4.091 |
| Graphics | #7 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Overall | #7 | 4.110 | 4.110 |
| Audio | #11 | 4.136 | 4.136 |
| Accessibility | #13 | 3.545 | 3.545 |
| Originality | #34 | 3.818 | 3.818 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3
Wildcards Used
Warp Speed, Wildcard, Trick or Treat, Wing it, Flurries, Jingle Bells, 80's Baby, For All, Pacifist, Move it!, Make it Up!, Better Faster Stronger, No Place Like Home, Behold!, Been here before..., Take it Easy, Do it For Me, Disassemble, Collect 'em All, Mobius Loop, Give Me a Minute
Game Description
Explore the tower of Round Cube Manor, collect all the books, and find the right fairytale to lull the Count to sleep.
How does your game tie into the theme?
You collect books in a TOWER
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
flyingstupid
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
3
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Comments
A suprinsingly good submission ! I didn't expect that level of polish from a game jam game.
- Really good controls for a 3d platformer. The character really feels snappy and responsive. I had some bugs with the stairs and the black connection of the wood pieces that others people mentionned, but I was able to learn to skip those parts.
- The level design was great even if a bit repetitive and I feel like you could have made more experimental level design. But it's a game jam and being able to make levels variation is already an accomplishment in itself. Also the fear of losing all your progress by making a wrong step truly keeps you focused on the gameplay.
- The books pilling up and moving while the character move was really cool. I also really liked how the books would complete the bookshelf one by one. It felt satisfying.
- I really like those pixel art textures with PS1 graphics, they look nice and crisp.
- The music getting different really add to the charm of the game.
- You even had time to make a story with cutscenes, a truly complete game experience.
Good job on your entry !
Thanks for playing. We fixed a lot of the collision issues post submission but it wasn't really a game breaking bug so we just rolled with it. I'm glad you felt the tension of being high up there with a big stack. We wanted to communicate more that you could cash in books by going back to the bookshelves but again ran out of time for an in game message.
I'm really glad you like the book stack. I spent probably too long on it but it really felt like its own character in the game and so we wanted it to feel good. I'm proud of how it turned out with the animations from our artist combined with the dynamic book stack movement.
The art style is really neat. I wasn't really part of the "look dev" for the game but its pretty neat how it all works.
Thanks for playing!
I really like the charming presentation of this game, especially the music. The visuals are also great, except for the flickering caused by the pixel art rendering. I love the upgrades, they felt really meaningful and satisfying to use. My biggest criticism is the extremely repetitive level design. I would have preferred a shorter, more focused experience with more novelty. Overall though, great job!
Yeah the twinkling comes with the territory of this style. We wanted to try it with more of a free camera this time around and it defiantly has its pros and cons. We really wanted to get more level sections done but ran short on time and didn't want to just slam out sub par levels. Thanks for playing!
Excellent work, everything was tied together so nicely! My only complaints are stairs were weird but you just jump , the cape sometimes would flicker due to how it caught the light and the camera would clip into the wall on the edge. So yeah, functionally meaningless complaints for a game made in a week. It was funny feeling the rise in tension as my books stacked up into a tower of their own. Great job, keep it up!
Amazing work! Very impressive for having only about a week to finish! I've said this with some other submissions in this jam, but I never knew a jam game could be so polished! The PS1 era graphics were nice, the music was fitting, the models were good, and it even had a story! Very great job!
Wow! incredible submission.
Loved the pixelated 3D graphics, the double take on the theme - climbing a tower with a tower of books. The controls were fantastically simple and responsive. I wished I had played though on spicy instead of medium as I would have liked the challenge. The level design was a little repetitive, but the different music scores for each level made it seem fresh.
Very impressive for a week jam can not say it enough thanks for submitting.
If there was ever a game that required having a nearby washing machine and multiple pairs of underwear on standby, this one is it.
Really enjoyed this entry. Congratulations team—I think you guys are going to do very well!
If we ever put this game into a box I think we should have your opening line on the back of it! :p
Thank you for all the kind words. I think we all really feel like this one came together well in the end. I'm sorry you missed the bit about turning in books. We really needed an in game message (it was even on the task board) but just didn't get to it in time. Collision issues have more or less been sorted out in our current build but didn't make submission.
Again thanks for playing!
very cute! my deepest condolences to whichever one of you was pulling your hair out trying to get stairs to work 😔
It was working on the test levels but not in the actual game! I did find the error (after the submissions closed). The CharacterBody3D had a property overwritten in the game scene. I unchecked a box and it's no longer getting stuck at all. Oh well, lesson learned.
it's always right after submissions close, isn't it
The artstyle is delightful! The music was charming. The character animations were really well done too. The platforms were a little sticky: I had to quit one time because I got hard-stuck on some beams. There was some clipping and strange turning behavior when looking straight down that Theonixie mentioned. Other than that the controls were precise and intuitive. I ended up heading straight to the top to collect all the abilities before doing it again to get the books.
The count Jeffula sure does a lot of reading, dang.
Sorry you ran into collision issues. It sucks that you had to lose progress due to it. We wanted to add save/load but it got cut due to time (as so many things do). I think its important and so we'll probably get it in post jam. We'll take a look at the camera. Its probably just a matter of limiting the pitch a little more but maybe we can clean it up a little so you can still use the high camera to nail jumps.
Jeffula does in fact read a lot. I mean he is like super old.
Thanks for playing!
This game was amazing! I spent the most time playing this game of all the games in the jam. My favorite thing about the game was the aesthetics. I’ve been a big fan of platformers, but something about the aesthetic, music, and fluid controls kept me engaged.
Looking forward to seeing more from Roundcube!
can't stress enough how much i enjoyed this game. the soundtrack was insane, the art style was really charming, the gameplay was fun and challenging. i wish there were more than 3 abilities but i get due to time restrictions it most likely wasn't possible. i did notice some minor collision issues when walking up the wooden beams and stairs. thank you guys for making one of my favorite games of this jam so far.
I love this! I'm hoping to return and expound on some of my thoughts after I finish the game but right now I'm about halfway (I think) through Floor 2 and this is my favorite game of the jam so far. Even keeping in mind my bias towards nostalgic collect-a-thons, this is just an overall really fun and polished platformer. It's wild to me that this was made in only 9 days!
The way that you handled the reusing of assets was especially smart and effective. Whenever I get to a section of jumps that I've seen before it hasn't felt repetitive but actually comforting because I was familiar with the jumps and knew I could make it. Then seeing a book stashed in a corner that didn't have it last time I saw this platform pattern was a really fun aspect of the object hunt.
Great work!!!
[Update: finished all 120 books on medium difficulty, had a blast the whole time]
Woah. First games I'm giving a five outta five on the aesthetics. And a cutscene at the beginning with Count
ChoculaDracula? Now you're just showing off lol.Controls are pretty good. Between how fast he falls, that nice "thud" when he lands on the floor, and his grunt, Fernando feels like he's a bit of chonky boy, which is good because heavier feeling characters usually feel better to control in 3D platformers imo. I wasn't sure if he was losing health at first when I dropped down like a troglodyte from the top of the tower, or if the only punishment for that is dropping your books.
Eventually I realized that I wasn't gonna die from it, so my strategy became "collect as many books as possible and then dive bomb to the ground" because the dropped books are really easy to just re-gather after falling, even a huge stack of them. Not sure if that's how you wanted it to be balanced but my strat of obliterating Fernado's kneecaps and shins was kinda funny.
Clipping on the stairs is a little awkward. Some of the stairs work just fine, but the stairs on the first level just completely block my character from moving at all. Usually it's better to just have an invisible ramp as the actual collider for stairs, and the steps themselves are collision-less meshes.
Good stuff, guys.
- I love the game aesthetically, the cel-shading + pixel filter has a lot of charm to it. The subtle bloom shader also makes things feel a lot more vibrant.
- Applying the theme of Tower to both the tower itself and the tower of books that Fernando carries is really cute and clever!
- Fernando audibly grunting when falling a long distance is a nice indicator for measuring how big a fall really was.
- The fact that falling a long distance can spill the books you're holding puts an interesting strategy on navigation. Going all the way to the top is technically the fastest approach, but going back downwards to the portal means you have to strategically platform back rather than drop all the way to the bottom.
- I tried collecting all books on each floor before going to the attic which lead to some interesting and fun gameplay moments. It gets pretty tough when you're holding 20 books at once!
- The fact that the book stack will shrink downwards when under low-hanging ceilings is an incredible touch and adds a lot of polish!
- Being able to revisit past levels (and not being required to collect all books before going to the next one) makes routing the book collection really interesting. The earlier floors could technically be partially skipped if you feel that returning with some powers will make it easier.
- I really like the arrangement of level parts. The more I played, the more places I discovered I could shortcut using my unlocked abilities.
- I love that the movement abilities are given in a random order, it makes each playthrough different!
- The different difficulty levels are very appreciated.
- I appreciate that OpenDyslexic is used as the game's UI font.
# Comments
- Regarding the different movement abilities:
- Feather fall
- The horizontal movement reduction, although first feeling weird to me, made me realize it's great as an option to make last-second adjustments to jumps.
- Mashing the jump button makes feather fall extremely powerful: it slows down your fall speed regardless of how fast you were falling, it greatly increases horizontal movement, makes almost any fall safe regardless of books held, and drains the meter a lot more slowly compared to holding the button. If this was intended, great! I do think it makes movement a lot more interesting, though it's a bit uncomfortable to repeatedly press a button to perform it.
- Double jump
- When on the ground, jumping and holding the jump button until feather fall activates will prevent Fernando from double jumping. This makes it a bit hard to double jump at the apex of the first jump.
- Walking off ledges prevents you from double jumping.
- Camera:
- The camera doesn't collide with the trim on some parts of the tower's walls, causing clipping issues.
- Default sensitivity for camera rotation on controllers feels a bit low. An option to quickly recenter the camera would also be nice.
- Looking all the way downwards makes Fernando move in an awkward fashion, like moving only left or right when I'm holding forwards. Reducing the camera's vertical rotation range might help avoid that.
- Collision:
- Fernando occasionally gets stuck on slopes.
- On my second playthrough, I managed to get stuck inside of a wooden beam and couldn't move at all.
- Other stuff:
- A lot of platforming segments are on narrow beams, which I know can be frustrating for some players. I don't mind it too much though. - The drop shadow beneath the player disappears quickly. While this is more realistic, it makes it hard to use for gauging where the floor is below you while jumping. I think the fade is a nice touch though, so making it visible for at least the entirety of Fernando's jump height would keep the flair while making it practical.
All in all this was a lot of fun and I had a great time playing!