Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

The 14th Axe WoundView game page

Mason is coming for you!
Submitted by A. V. Dossow (@AVDossow) — 7 days, 14 hours before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

The 14th Axe Wound's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#14.4384.438
Gameplay#14.5004.500
Sound Design#34.5004.500
Horror#44.3754.375
Story/Writing#84.3754.375
Creativity#104.4384.438
Judge's Score#11n/an/a

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Which Theme(s)/Horror Genre(s) did you use for your game?
Slasher

What challenge(s) did you decide to add, if any?
Hawk cameo; the characters represent horror tropes

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

COL

A. V. Dossow is one of the few people with a rare talent: They can make you enjoy laughing in terror. Brilliant game, the partially luck-based fighting really fed into my gambling addiction. This is also some of the most brilliant creative writing I've seen! Although the characters were simple in design and dialogue, each character had a distinct and unique personality, and their stories and thoughts shone throughout the game. Yet despite the simplicity of the game, it feels like there's still more to discover. IN FACT, I think I'm going to play the game for a few more hours and try to piece together all the lore and endings, because it's just that awesome.  These are the kind of games we've come to expect from Dossow, and I'd like to see more!

Developer(+1)

I'm humbled! Thank you so much for your words! : D

(+1)

honestly one of the best games i've played in a while

Developer

Thank you! I really appreciate it!

Submitted(+1)

That was fun actually) You are good writer. It's bit hard to finish, but I did it. 

Developer

Thank you so much!

Submitted(+3)

Didn't have much time to play but I can tell the quality is top notch and it's really polished!

Feels like a proper retro game I would find on steam.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much Atanii!

Submitted(+2)

I don't know how you do it, but every game of yours I've played has been gold, and this one's no different. This was amazing and hilarious. The writing was spot-on, and the sound/music was enough to keep me on edge when it really counted. Overall, this is a top contender as my favorite game in the jam. 

With that being said, I do wish there was more we could do to get rid of Mason. It felt like all of my attacks kept missing, so my only real option was to throw items with a 100% chance to distract him and run. Even items with a 75% chance kept missing. This made it really difficult in the elevator where it felt like I HAD to defeat him. I'd already used my torches by then, so it was a battle of attrition. Where everyone died, except the main character (oops). I'd say the only tweak is in the chance rate for attacks/running, because it can be frustrating to miss ten times in a row. It reminds me slightly of Morrowind's combat system, which handled it via dice rolls but still came out similarly to constantly missing because of low accuracy/bad rng.

Still, I loved it. Keep up the fantastic work.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much Sith_Winchster, I really appreciate your feedback! :I'm glad you enjoyed it and appreciated the humor!
I agree that there should have been more ways to get rid of Mason and certain odds should have been higher. Difficulty and balance is always one of the most complex aspects to implement in a game (the odds were even lower in the early beta before playtesting!)

Thanks again! : D

Submitted(+1)

3 things I liked about this entry:

  1. Simple but effective gameplay
  2. Good use of retro art style (the battle scene is reminiscent of the original Final Fantasy)
  3. Puzzles are generally challenging, but not too hard or obscure
  4. Bonus: HawkZombie cameo! He says some things that sound exactly like what he says on stream.

3 things I did not like:

  1. Chases mostly boil down to "just run" and the game occasionally forces an encounter; doesn't feel like there's any skill involved in escaping
  2. The elevator. I didn't realize I was supposed to attack Mason until I had burned all my best items, and someone still got killed.
  3. The maps are unnecessarily large. There is a lot of empty space that takes a long time to traverse even when running.

Overall, I enjoyed this entry. It is a fun entry that's a love letter to the horror movies of the 80s and 90s.

Developer

Thank you so much KV_Kingdom!
I definitely agree with the size of the maps being too large (specially considering this is a jam game) and the game doesn't feel rewarding in terms of gameplay, since it's all about rng and no skill is really involved (maybe deciding what items to preserve, although since some of the might fail, I guess sometimes it's not possible to do that).
Regarding the elevator, there was a message saying "Defeat Mason", but I reckon that's still a bit too vague and there should have been an additional indicator that you must deplete Mason's life.

Submitted

This is honestly a really well done and funny romp into the slasher trope. I like how, even though you can't necessarily fight in the slasher, you can distract him as a means of escape and keeping your characters alive. The graphics and audio remind me a lot of the old NES game Sweet Home, and I greatly appreciate that. 

The parody story is written very well, however there are some lines of repeated dialogue that pop up in conversation that it genuinely becomes hard to tell what was an intentional funny choice, and what was an accident that then becomes a distracting non sequitur. An example that comes to mind is one character going on about a recent family tragedy that pops up mid-chase.  I know they're supposed to be flanderizations of their respective archetypes, but that repeated dialogue creates a bit of tonal whiplash for the scenes that are meant to be more intense. However, it doesn't take away from the full story all that much, and even when it broke the immersion, it was still very easy to dive back into it.

Developer(+1)

Hello FlamingTeddy, thank you so much for the feedback! 
The explanation for the weird dialogs is that each characater has 30 different dialogs that get chosen at random during certain scenes, based on random variables. Some dialogs definitely feel very weird and don't make much sense (like the jock mentioning the trees while they're in the laboratory, or the jock claiming that the nerd is dead when  he's right in front of them); in hindsight, I should have added more non-randomized dialogs so things could make more sense, but at the same time, I had a lot of laughs regarding the outcomes of certain dialogs (depending on the rng) hahaha
Thanks for playing! : D

Submitted

Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers I see a lot of versions of them. Funny thing I never notice Where all the copy child play games. Chucky needs a spotlight! And no Jeepers creepers Either? I see no copy versions of them.  

Nice RPG Jason though. And it's kind of fun that you can name your own characters. Craziest thing I can think of is changing their personalities to what the player wants Through the gameplay. 

hmmmmmmm, that's an interesting idea, I haven't seen that done before.

Developer

Thank you for playing and for the feedback! Allowing players to name their characters is always fun, and changing their personalities would be even better, although that would definitely require a lot of time and a lot of outcomes. I don't think I've seen that implemented in a game either (being able to change their personalities)

la verdad fue una experiencia aterradora, pero no por el juego en sí, me pareció novedoso y a la vez excelente, pero el don mason, papaaaaa, ademas tenia que andar ahi renegando y encima el loco hawk medio como que se hacia el lodobu viste, pero bueno, juegazo, ahora me cagué hasta las patas. Un saludo a todos los que me conocen y no coman picantes, bueno chau