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A jam submission

Wpm: Compass In BriefView game page

Short narrative focused enclosed space magic duel RPG
Submitted by sodaJar — 2 days, 6 hours before the deadline

Play game

Wpm: Compass In Brief's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Devlog#4n/an/a
Graphics/Art#83.1823.182
Audio#142.7272.727
Theme#212.4552.455
Overall#212.5452.545
Gameplay/Fun#301.8181.818

Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Game Engine / Tools
Godot, Aseprite, LMMS

How does your game fit the theme?
Takes place in an alternate reality where magic powers are present; the antagonist can draw alternate world creatures through a portal; the protagonist's magic ability involves time manipulation.

Other things you want to share with the players of your game.
-Important Controls-
X - sprint | C - attack | V - ability
Z - jump | Left/Right - move

Try to experiment with your ability and what you can do inside it, some creative thinking is needed to beat the game.

SPOILER ON HOW TO BEAT THE GAME(characters in reverse order): pots emit gnirud smroftalp sa selitcejorp esU

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Comments

HostSubmitted

Nice pixel art style game😊!

GAMEPLAY   
Art was good. I only finished the game because i read the comments😊. I knew the time stop probably had something to do with it, but maybe give more hints to the player. I died around 10 times before I got to read the other comments. Bit frustrating. The story was cool. Maybe a bit long dialogue before you start. The time stop idea was also good. Still had a bit of fun and that is ok.

GRAPHICS/ART 
Nice pixel art style. Turnover in some kind of fighter style with the bars was cool. Maybe some more effects to polish it.

AUDIO   
Fitted the art style. Some more variation in the track and effects would be a nice bonus.

THEME
Time stop as power was a good check. The alternate reality a bit less but ok.

Nice little game. Good job💪

Developer(+1)

Thank you, some last minute decisions that weren't thought through made beating the game a lot harder.

The game as it is, hints you at 1 minute mark(small hint) and 6 minutes mark(big hint) into the fight, but I don't think anyone actually survived 6 minutes so I should have probably made it appear sooner.

Again, thank you very much for playing.

HostSubmitted(+1)

The pleasure was all mine and hope you will join us next time also 😊!

Submitted

cool graphic but the gameplay wasn't fun, try to work first on the gameplay then the art. decent game overall.

Developer

Thanks for playing first of all; I planned the game to be more narrative rather than gameplay focused, so most work was actually done on the story.

Submitted

Great little game! I feel like you could tell us directly at the start we can jump on our projectiles and then use this mechanic to fight 2-3 characters, because it's kind of frustrating not knowing how to use our abilities and trying to find it oursleves

Developer(+1)

Sorry, there was no time to make more content. The point of it was supposed to be figuring out the jump and the game is supposed to be almost puzzle-like and last around 10 minutes.

Submitted

The story was interesting but too much. Couldn't skip it to get to the gameplay. Also couldn't figure out how to get past the first scene.

Developer

Thanks, there's actually only one fight and the game ends when you figure out how to beat it. The fight itself was supposed to be only a small portion of the game, but the solution was too difficult to think of so it had a negative impact. The 'X' button skips the dialogue animation.

Submitted

Really cool concept! Loved the art and the use of "however what actually happened" when you die to fit the theme was genius... Unfortunately I wasn't particuarly good at the gameplay, but the fact you had whole cutscenes and an awesome story was great already!

I like to give some general feedback in each comment, so here we go:

  • The keys didn't always activate for me, I had to spam "Z" quite often to get the text to move on even after the arrow had appear for dialogue, and "C" didn't always attack which could be a little inconvenient... I'm not too familiar with Godot yet (and I think you're using that from your file structure), but from my Unity knowledge I'd guess you're checking button pressed in _physics_process instead of _process? That can cause some issues from my experience in other engines, apart from that, no idea!
  • I thought the energy bar was actually a health bar for the other player, I've only realised that just now. It's common for fighting games to have their health bars displayed like that, so just a little UX thing.
  • A pause menu / proper main menu can go a long way for a jam game just to improve overall user experience, just something to keep in mind :)
  • And I wasn't too sure on the gameplay unfortunately, the main thing for me was the massive player... Big players make for great cutscenes but often more "sluggish" gameplay, so it may be worth in the future working with smaller player models...
  • As for the controls, I've never been a big fan of the Z / X / C / V + Arrows style of gameplay. I can see why you chose it but personally I'm a W / S / A / D kinda guy with using the buttons around it. Supporting multiple control schemes (especially in an engine like Godot where it's relatively simple) can go a long way to making the player understand your game better!

Really great job though. The way you used the theme was genius and the game itself was stunning.

I've recorded a quick video while playing, I find it helpful to see how others play my games so have been recording myself too. Hope you can find some use for it :)

Developer(+1)

Thank you, I think I implemented a feature that you have to press and release buttons quickly enough for it to register so people can change their mind when they accidently press on something. Also pressing 'X' fills the text and there's a second delay after the text is filled before continuing.

The energy bar is indeed confusing and I only drew symbols next to the HP/PO(power) texts as a quick fix. The C attack also has a cooldown so maybe it's because of that?

I actually planned for the game to be more narrative-focused and the fight was supposed to be just a complement but I think I made it too hard and it killed the effect.

And thank you very much for the video.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

I watched the footage, I admit the tutorial wasn't done well enough because I didn't see you sprint which made dodging mutiple times harder. Also, the reason you couldn't fire the compasses was because you were out of energy I think.

A hint should also popup a minute into the fight but you never got that far :(

Regardless, thank you very much.

Submitted

Haha no worries! 

Sounds like half of it was just me being bad at games, which isn't uncommon :) 

Submitted

game was really good! the art and music were wonderful, tho I do admit I didnt enjoy the gameplay too much. the tim stopping ability was used in a very clever way (I do admit I had no idea how to beat the level until I read the comments :P )

Developer(+1)

Thank you. My friend beat it in 3 minutes so I mistakenly removed the side hitbox of the compass which helped discovering the solution, thinking the game was too easy...

Submitted
Deleted 76 days ago
Developer(+1)

That's really good to hear. The solution is actually really simple(SPOILERS ahead): you can step on your compasses during time stop to jump over.

Submitted
Deleted 76 days ago
Developer(+1)

By compasses I mean the things you throw.

Submitted(+1)

Control scheme is hella confusing. The rest was pretty good

Developer(+1)

Just out of curiosity, how long did it take for you to beat the game?

Submitted (1 edit)

Longer than id like to admit. Around 10 to 15 minutes. I just could not get around using Z to jump it felt incredibly unnatural to me personally. 

It took a lot of button bashing to stumble upon the solution

Developer(+1)

I see, thanks for not quitting midway, I think you're the only person who has beaten the game so far...