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Cold's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #9 | 4.517 | 4.517 |
| Audio | #18 | 3.966 | 3.966 |
| Overall | #18 | 3.823 | 3.823 |
| Theme | #20 | 4.276 | 4.276 |
| Fun | #20 | 3.828 | 3.828 |
| Accessibility | #33 | 3.345 | 3.345 |
| Controls | #51 | 3.379 | 3.379 |
| Originality | #68 | 3.448 | 3.448 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.4
Wildcards Used
N/A
Game Description
A 5 minutes adventure!
How does your game tie into the theme?
Explore a hostile planet with equipment designed for the environment.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
bobbiburrs
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
7
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Comments
Great art and soundtrack! I also had some difficulty with the wall slide but figured it out eventually. Neat game!
Loved this one. Very much my kind of game, and you've executed it extremely well. Not a whole lot to improve at all to be honest, managed to get to the end so thanks for the great experience :)
The art is super viby, as is the music. Huge props dev, this is a very notable entry!
I really love the vibes on this one with the art style and music, great job there. Your sprite animations (especially the death animation and blood) are super well done. Everything is visually cohesive. I did not get to the end cause I suck at platformers but I like the way you laid everything out and had the level act as a tutorial for the wallslide ability. Very intuitive and natural way to show the player new things. I only wish there was a checkpoint at that wallslide spot so you could try again from that ledge.
Well done! Very cool!
Hello! Many thanks for the very encouraging words. It makes me happy when some design intentions get through, the idea behind the early rooms was to provide blocking obstacles that could only be overcome with the new tools (room 1 - learn about fall damage, room 2 - breaking platforms, room 3 wall sliding, room 5 - combine wall sliding with breaking platforms to prevent fall damage --- so on and so forth). This probably didn't mesh too well with wanting to create e bite-sized metroidvania. Although there is a little bit of backtracking, the small size of the world makes it feel pretty much linear.
Totally agree with the need for an extra checkpoint in the wall slide room, splitting the challenge in half. It was a bit rushed.
Cheers
This was fun and challenging. It would have helped to have a bit more info on the wall slide controls, or a safe wall next to where you get it, to practice using it. I kept wanting to jump off the wall by pressing jump, and took several tries before I found I had to press away from the wall while still holding jump.
Hi, thanks for taking a chance with the game. The wall slide room definitely warrants a slight redesign to improve the onbaording, it's a bit too rough. I also improved the controls a little bit and I will patch the game once the jam is done. Sliding on the wall will only require to hold jump without the direction, so jumping off walls will require less confusing inputs. I am glad you still had a good time with it.
Cheers
Nice celeste vibe, I almost can't pass the first screen, died many times on it before landing correctly on the safe platform. A bit to hard with no gameplay introduction. But I see what direction you were taking. Good Job!
I was pleasantly surprised by the abundance of mechanics! The character controller was generally good—from what I noticed, it even has coyote time and jump buffering, great job. The sound was decent, especially the ice-crunching effect. Sound/graphics/gameplay—everything complemented each other well.
Many have already pointed out the difficulty, so I won’t repeat that. I’d tweak the spike hitboxes a bit, since right now, even grazing them means instant death
Overall, awesome work!
I also couldn't get much further than the wall slide part - couldn't figure out how to jump off the walls unfortunately.
But the visual style, music, and overall direction is great! And especially nice usage of small size pixel-art.
Hello and thank you for trying the game! Yeah, that part is rough. There isn't actual proper wall jumping, you can only drop from the wall horizontally while sliding by pressing the opposite direction at the right time. It will give a few frames of being unaffected by gravity, but the window to pull of many of those drops is probably too tight. I definitely need to improve the controls and the way players can get to learn them! Perhaps a short optional tutorial level where everything is quickly unlocked and tested before diving into the real expedition.
Cheers
Very cool! This is exactly the type of game I'm interested in making. I'm normally very harsh on platformers, because, although I love them, I don't think they are very original. However, here with the metroidvania elements and the grab mechanic to slow your decent, you managed to make a platformer that feels very unique. Props on that.
Overall the style and the music are very well done. The level design was also very good to teach the different mechanics and offer an optional challenge when I wanted more. I don't think the game is too hard, but I'm an experienced platformer player, so take that with a grain of salt.
I love this, and wish to see more from you in the future!
Hi! Warning, incoming wall of text, no offense taken should you skip all of this:
The irony! I wanted to make a data driven event based game not too different from the amazing one you created for this jam, but I chickened out because it felt overly ambitious for the time frame! I resorted to a bite sized metroidvania, which is something I wanted to attempt for a long time. The initial design was inspired by Cinematronics' Freeze from 1984 (a pretty mediocre game I had fond memories of), but I wanted to give it a slight touch of Another World/Heart of Darkness/Oddworld kind of games. The game ended up being heavier on the platforming side compared to combat because the production cost of combat enemies was way higher (sprites+animations, AI code, sounds) compared to creating more platforming based challenges. If you're interested in this kind of games, let's make one some day :D or if you have any questions concerning the making of this one, feel free to hit me up, although from your work I can tell you are very competent already!
Anyways, I'm glad that some of my design intentions were perceived through the levels. The game is definitely more catered toward a niche audience (of more experienced videogame players), but I think it would have been a better design decision to redistribute the challenge between main path and optional paths with the goal of making it more widely enjoyable while staying true to the original vision and intended audience.
Thank you so much for your time. Your words are really encouraging and kind. I hope you will also keep making interesting and well crafted things!
Cheers
The games you mentioned look dope, oozing with style. If you're up for it I'd be down to make something someday. On my end, I've been obsessed with UFO 50 since it was announced and really want to make small focused games with a strong tie between theme and mechanics and retro graphics just like they did with the collection. This is in big part what made like your game.
UFO 50 has to be the best thing coming out last year and is a game design & development masterclass. Absolutely, let's keep in touch!
I beat it in 23 minutes on my second try. I got 9/10, and missed the last gem because I accidentally flew too high and ended the game. I agree with most people, it is way too difficult, especially with the wall jumps. Even the jump in the first room requires a bit of precision. I love the art style, and the fire/ice color-schemes look really good. The controls seem fine for the most part, with the same layout as PICO-8 games, but I wish I could have had an easier spot to practice the wall slide before I had to do the really tricky move. Once I got it though, it felt really nice.
Hello! Great job, thank you for playing the game to completion (I deeply appreciate the dedication and patience) and the feedback. That beginning/ending screen is badly designed, it's a 10/10 samples in my heart! Completely agree, the early areas need a redesign as the difficulty curve is all over the place. The wall slides/jumps ended up being the most difficult thing in the game, but also in my head it made sense for that to be the first upgrade as the jetpack would render it obsolete in many situations (although not all of them, as it's a lot harder to control). Originally the jetpack/flamer were designed to have a fuel resource which I had to cut (more for level design concerns than feasibility). The game even had a functional wall jump unlock which got cut to streamline level design. Looking back, perhaps a better order could have been flamethrower -> slide -> jetpack. Sorry for the rant, I enjoy discussing design quite a bit.
Cheers
I love discussing design as well, no need to be sorry.
Like some others i did struggle with the difficulty and must admit i didn't get much further than accquiring the wall grab.
I really wish i could have made it further, because the game is oozing with charm. I loved everything about the way it looked, moved and sounded! Such fantastic artwork and a great moody background track.
Some issues with the difficulty and some personal preferences about the control scheme aside, this is a really fantastic game. Well done!
Awww, those are some very kind words! Thank you so much! I also wish I had made the main path of the game less challenging and leaving the "hairy" jumps (as @h00g3 defined them, I loved that wording) for the optional collectibles only, but I came to that realization only after the game was out, as no one else but me playtested it. I hope to adjust it based on all the precious feedback I received and perhaps you might enjoy the post-jam version. I am glad you liked what you got to see!
Cheers
This was hard but I ended but finishing it with 8/10 samples. However that 5 minutes adventure lasted 30 minutes...
I agree with the other people that controls feels a bit weird. I feel like it's mostly the wall slide required two keys cumulated with the fact that you have to usually switch to the opposite direction with a short timing that feels frustrating. I feel like having the wall grab on a separate key like Celeste with R1 would have made this a bit smoother.
Also I did the game with keyboard instead of controller because the menu wasn't supporting controller so I thought that for some reason it wasn't supported and didn't try it again in game. But that just me being dumb, the controller was working fine and it's easier with it (at least for me).
Last thing that was a bit weird was death being a bit long. It's a bit of a die and retry given the difficulty, so the longest it takes between death and respawning the more frustrating it is.
Despite those fine tuning, I really enjoyed the game. It's visually impacting and helps to have a good readability, music is repetitive but not tiring and helps to get "in the zone" to focus. Level design is harsh but well made and going back though previous level with new equipment felt good.
Hello and congratulations! Many many thanks for taking the time to finish the game and also for the very thorough and insightful feedback. It is extremely valuable. I agree with your take on the wall slide. I need to give the possibility of assigning it its own key (and implementing input remapping as suggested by other kind jammers). It should also suffice to just hold the key without the direction, I added the direction requirement because it was misbehaving but it was probably my fault (using is_on_wall BEFORE move_and_slide). I need to make it more robust and relying on a single key hold.
To think that I spent about 1 hour to have the physics keep simulating after dying before triggering the respawn because I thought it was a little bit hilarious!! But I can understand it being annoying after a couple times. It's easy to add a button press to force the respawn or have a toggle option to fast forward it.
Again, thank you very much for the kind words and I am glad you had a good time with the game despite its rough edges.
Cheers
This looks awesome but I genuinely could not figure out the first level haha
Hi! It is rough indeed. Do you mean the very first screen? If that's the case, try to avoid jumping and drop down the shortest paths in order to avoid building too much vertical velocity thus incurring into a deadly fall, should you give it another go.
But anyways, thank you very much for playing it and for your comment!
Cheers
Thank you -- I didn't realize I was dying from fall damage haha.
I was able to beat the game. The amount of times I got through an area and then proceeded to accidently fall to my death was a lot lol.
My main critique would be I seem to still be dead after respawning at the flag until I hit Z to revive myself. That got annoying after a while.
But overall the art style is amazing and very well put together. Very solid platforming game
Wow that's great! Well done and thank you for giving it a second shot. That's an annoying bug I thought I had fixed, but it appears I have in fact did not. I will look into it, thanks for reporting it.
Yeah this game is really fun once you learn how to play. Came back to try again--got 7/10 gems. We'll see if I can find the other 3 :D
This game is very fun but oh boy is it hard! The visuals and atmosphere created by the audio are on point. I totally see this becoming a full release. Congratulations.
I got 9 gems, and dang this game was hard. But I'm a master platformer so no biggie :3
You are indeed a master platformer and definitely made my day! Amazing performance, thanks for sticking with it! Do you remember your timing?
Cheers
Very cool idea and I love the contrast between the background and the level, between the items and the player. Like others I found it a little too difficult but I think everything ran really great.
I regret to say that this is simply too difficult. The controls seem unorthodox, at least to me. The precise movements required to get into and out of the leftmost area took many attempts, and the distance to a checkpoint from there set me back several times. I wasn’t able to progress at all after unlocking wall sliding and reaching the next two checkpoints.
Still, the art is is great. The sounds and animations help bring it all to life. I hope you’re able to balance the difficulty once the jam is over. Good work!
Hello and thank you very much for trying the game and precious feedback. I definitely agree with you, sorry for the frustrating experience. May I ask you what you didn't like about the controls? Was the screen you got stuck at the one in the screenshots?
Cheers
Yes, the scene in the screenshot is where I got stuck. After coming back to it again, I did figure out how to get past it. Still, it’s very unclear and requires more precise movements.
After progressing a little further, I managed to soft lock myself. While sliding down a wall, ice cubes regenerated on top of me and trapped me. I could melt one, but not both. A reset key could be another thing you add for this reason.
As for the controls, I may just be used to control schemes closer to WSAD. Arrow keys to move and Z to jump felt weird, but I did get used to it.
Thank you for the reply! Yes that is an annoying bug :( that was supposed to trigger a dedicated freezing death animation, but I was so rushed that it remained on the to-do list! Anyway your suggestion is still very valid and good: it's very easy to add a pause menu button to go to the most recent checkpoint, especially since I didn't manage to implement game saves. I will do so after the jam is done!
Okay first the good:
The art is amazing. It is very thematically consistent and feels super professional. The animation is nice to look at.
The sound design is also pretty good. Gives the game life.
Now the not so good:
The difficulty is too hard from a frustration/direction/controls standpoint. I mean that the direction you are meant to go in is not usually made clear. Eventually you figure it out through trial and error. The controls are confusing at first. I would have appreciated the ability to edit your control scheme.
I got stuck on a portion of the game for a long time and couldn't figure out how to use the ability.
Hi! Thank you so much for the very insightful comment, I appreciate these the most. I agree that the game is too difficult, I was afraid it would have been too bland, but I ended up making it too challenging, especially in the early areas. I'm sorry it was frustrating. The time is always so tight and I didn't manage to have people playtest the game before releasing it. I guess this is the playtest.
I failed at introducing the player to the game and creating a nice difficulty curve, preventing most to see all the other content in there. I should have probably cut content in favor of better (any?) user onboarding. Perhaps even a micro metroidvania game is out of grasp for my current level (within the jam's time window).
Input remapping is defiinitely something I need to work on. What controls did you struggle with, if I may ask?
Cheers
This could be my favorite jump-n-run game of any godot wild jam so far. Remarkable how well the character is brought to life with little to no pixel space. Cool artwork and nicely polished movement. However, many jumps are a bit too hairy for my taste (thank you for checkpoints!), and some of the controls and key bindings didn't work and/or confused me.
Hello! Many thanks for the kind words and most importantly for giving the game a shot. I also regret how challenging I made it, especially in some early areas. It will probably prevent people from seeing all the content. I also failed hard at communicating that not all the controls are available since the start: they need to be unlocked by finding equipment crates around the place. But that's why these are great learning experiences!
Cheers
fun game! Love the art
I like the premise and the art/sound design. Sadly my fire and jetpack didn't work and couldn't proceed much. Those darn spikes XD
Hi! Thank you for trying my game. That's a communication problem on my part: the equipment needs to be retrieved before being able to use it. You will find the flamethrower and jetpack by exploring.
Cheers