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Orange Cup's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Art | #6 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
| Overall | #11 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Magical Girl Use | #12 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Gameplay | #12 | 3.083 | 3.083 |
| Creativity | #17 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme(s)
Miracles and Magic Are Real
Feedback
I enjoyed this jam a lot!
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Comments
I really enjoyed it!
I played the latest available version at the time, V1.1.0. The controls are pretty solid, it felt pretty good to control the character. Maybe it's because I used the updated version, but I never had trouble performing double jumps or any type of controls. I also really dig the artstyle.
But the thing I enjoyed the most was the unlockable powers! It gave the levels an exploration element, serving as a reward for taking a different path. Almost metroidvania-ish. I actually was a bit disappointed that I only found 3 powers total (+ 2 MP increases), are there more? I was really looking forward to finding more movement abilities, but there don't seem to be any. Maybe an extra 3rd jump, or a special type of jump, or running or whatever. Also, the 2 attacking powers I had (fireball and the basic attack you start with) end up feeling a bit similar. Which is fine! They still had noticeable differences. But I was looking forward to another offensive power that had a different trajectory or behavior, instead of just "single projectile moving forwards".
I found a small bug where if you land just as your projectile animation is done you shoot a second projectile without having to wait for the end of the animation (and I'm pretty sure it doesn't consume MP!). But it's minor.
Really happy to hear that you liked the game! Haha, don't worry about the previous versions - 1.1.0 (and maybe higher later) is the one that you want to play!
It's great that you found 3 power-ups! There's currently a total of 4 in the game, so keep trying! I actually planned 6 more on top of the 4; 2 of them are actually in the game, but I disabled it for balancing reasons. D: The remaining 4 included a wall-destroying ability and the ability to fly, but I didn't have enough time, and the current levels didn't really necessitate the abilities. :( The attacks were weird things to change during the jam. In the previous versions, the fireball actually had a lower firing rate but did more damage. I realized that people were having trouble using it, so I sped up both the normal and fireball attacks, but reduced the latter's damage. I guess that kinda led to it feeling like a redundant attack. DX
Yeah, the double attack's a weird bug! In fact, if you hold down the attack button while you're falling, you can also do a double shot. XDD
I see you have updated your game. The control is definitely much much more comfortable than when I first played it. Also found two power ups in my final playthrough.
I have recorded my footage playing it. Good work! :)
Awesome! Thanks for trying it out again! :D
Here goes. The footage I recorded is in this let's play video. Thanks for participating ;)
Just watched it. Nice!
It's very polished and looks nice.
I wasn't able to finish the game though, because I'm not good at playing it (the enemies got stronger so it got a bit too hard for me after a while, so I gave up). The double jump is a bit hard to do, as well... Maybe in a future update, it can be made to be easier to do.
Thank you! Yeah, sorry about the difficulty and the double jump bug. I'm actually about to upload a fixed version of the game. I'd love for you to try it out again - hopefully, you're able to find all of the power-ups and that the boss isn't a complete monster. D:
Polish! Holy cow! The art style reminds me of lazy summers playing Alex Kidd. The gameplay is solid, you have spells to collect (you know I found heal and fireball!), it's easy to index jumps even when you're offscreen. I only had a few issues with the double jump, but that may be due to my keyboard and inability to play on one, haha! I also caught a typo at the end where you said "game jame" instead of "game jam." No biggies at all.
You did the music too? If you're ever looking to join forces in the future (only if you don't have time to make your own) give me a call! I'm impressed with the absurd amount of work you put into this. Congrats!
Thank you for the feedback! I'm really glad that you liked it!
I found someone who was willing to make the music, but he wass so busy that he was only able to make a few. D: But hey--I'd love to collabrate with you on future projects of mine! I always need someone with musical talent!
By the way, I'm about to upload a fixed version of the game, so hopefully you'll check it out! :D
Will do!👍
I liked the concept and little exploration of this game! It was nice to see the slime getting harder as you progressed. I was so excited when i saw that i could climb up the tree and wondered what would be my reward, when i got to the top i thought it wasn't anything and accidentally fell to the screen on the left and saw it continued! I loved that. It is a shame about the double jump though i never made it to the end of the tree quest, although i saw it's been said a lot in the comments, however it may be a quick fix in which case i still really enjoyed the game :) The animations were good! Something i struggle with a lot
I'm glad that you liked the game! It's awesome that you were able to figure out that part of the tree. If you had been successful jumping across the clouds, you would have found the Fireball magic, but the double-jump mechanic isn't working well so this was probably too difficult. I think most people missed the tree part because it was too obscure. I'll fix this problem (among others) soon. XS
This definitely is one of the high effort submissions in this jam. Very, very very excellent art -- love it very much. Excellent worldbuilding. Good lore too. Cute game overall.
My little bit of complaint is the slightly clunky control. It's quite uncomfortable that the double jump can only be activated during the descent phase -- this leads to the double jump not activating when wanting to double jump in a hurry.
Also... the boss... I think it's way too brutal. Finally beat it after three tries though but still... it's way... WAY too hard (and people say my game's boss is hard lol). Firstly I think the boss should have half its current health -- after figuring out the necessary tactic to beat the boss, the fight is very monotonous, although extremely mentally taxing. Having that much health makes the fight a little bit boring. Secondly, keeping track of the giant nut is hard enough; also keeping track of some debris is... kinda impossible for me. Sometimes getting hit by debris when double jumping to hit the boss after making sure no nut is above me is just... cruel. I think you should at least contrast the debris a bit so that they're visible without needing to focus too much on them :(
Anyway... I'm going to make a let's play out of some submissions to this jam. Expect your game to be there ;)
Thank you! Yeah, it's very clear at this point that the jumping and (boss) difficulty are the biggest offenders. Those will be fixed soon.
Also, can you let me know when you start your Let's Play of mine? I want to see if I can apply these fixes before then. Thanks! :D
Correct me if I'm wrong, but unfortunately since this is a ranked jam, you won't be able to implement those fixes until the rating period ends? You can make a new page for it, but you cannot edit the files of the page that are already submitted to this jam.
There's no technical barrier to doing so. I uploaded new files to my project page and they also appeared on the submission page. This isn't just because it's my own game; there are a few other submissions with post-jam updates and alternate versions that show up in the submission pages for me as well. If you need my to, I'll take mine down, and I'm sure the other jammers will as well if they're not passed out exhausted, but it's an entirely voluntary/manual thing.
Oh wow I didn't know that. Because in other ranked jams sometimes that option is locked -- I see; so the jam host has the ability to decide whether or not to lock it
I do not want to lock it so I'm glad it's unlocked by default :)
Ah, okay. It makes sense that it would be an option; I don't recall how it worked with the last jam I was in.
I mean, I was able to update my game post jam to fix some of the bugs, but if it's not allowed, I can just revert the updated version back to the original 1.0.0 version, if you want.
No, it's allowed. I just thought that option is usually locked by the system itself -- didn't know that it's unlocked by default. Because in some ranked jams I participated in, it was impossible to upload new versions during the rating period.
In that case then feel free to update it. Try updating it before Wednesday (or Tuesday evening if you live in Europe or the American continent)
Maybe itch gave people the option to enable or disable it, depending on that person's jam conditions. I dunno, I've never made a jam, so I'm not sure what is controllable. Anyways, cool! I'll get another updated version up soon.
I got it to run on one of my other old PCs! I forgot that I had installed Direct X specifically to run an old DarkBasicPro game I made years ago. (It still failed. RIP Darkbasic games)
I really liked the art and design in your game. The bright saturated colors give it a unique feel. Made me think of Commander Keen 4 and other platformers I haven't played in a long time. The main character has a cute design. The overall gameplay was decent but...
...unfortunately, to echo some of the other comments in here, the controls did not work well for me. I immediately gave up on trees, and the lilypads were nearly the end of me. The double jump just didn't work consistently enough. I got to the boss, and gave up after two tries. Between his high health pool, small hit zone, and the jump problem, it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to win.
Still, it's good work and with some bug fixing and maybe a little balance update this could be really great!
Awesome! Glad you were able to play the game!
Thanks for the input. The rebalancing and control calibrations shouldn't be a problem for more immediate updates. I want to add more content, but I think CC might set my computer on fire if I did. I'll try to make a plan to remake the game on C2 or whatev engine later on.
Nice! Looking forward to what you do next :)
I'll check out Orange Cup again when you get the controls ironed out!
Awesome! As a matter of fact, I'm about to upload a fixed version. XD
I played the update! Much better now that it's functioning as intended. Getting the other magic spells was a huge help too, made the tougher enemies and the boss much more fun to fight. Great work!
Thanks! Glad that you like the updated version!
Commander Keen! Yes, that was the other game I was thinking of!
Truth be told, I've never tried Commander Keen. DX
Double jump was hard, because control can be unresponsive sometime (though I have the same problem with my game):(
But it seems it work fine on wine.
Hmm... I'll actually look into the double-jump problem later today. I might be able to fix that quickly, if my hunch about something is correct.
I think this game is going to remind a lot of people of the 16-bit era but to me it really feels like a PC game from the 90s. The limited, bright colors scream retro and the music reminds me of my old Sound Blaster. I'm a big fan of that era so I liked the style and presentation a lot.
There are two things that kind of turned me off from the game a bit, though. I feel it overstayed its welcome a bit; it was really fun and fresh at the beginning but by the end it was starting to feel repetitive and tedious. I think it would be better with one or two fewer levels. But that's a relatively minor complaint.
The biggest issue is the controls, or rather how inconsistent and unresponsive they can be. Double-jump only works about half the time and usually I get one shot when I fire, but sometimes none or two. It's incredibly frustrating to play because of this- a game like this needs tight controls. I died a lot because of missed shots or missed jumps. If this was fixed then the gameplay would be really solid but that soured things a lot.
I made it to the boss, gave it two tries and stopped. There was no way I was going to beat it; I have to hit it in the head, dodge acorns that drop with no discernible pattern, and hit it a ridiculous number of times to kill it. I'm not great at this sort of game; I think I would have given it a few more tries had the controls been better but I don't think I would have beat it. I think a more skilled player could have pulled it off.
Also, tab to switch magic didn't seem to do anything. Was this simply not implemented?
Thanks for the feedback!
I completely understand what you mean by the controls. This was a frustrating ordeal for me too, since the engine I used to make the game is really wonky. D:
I'll have to tweak the difficulty in the future, it is a bit hard. As for the spells, I'll have to rework how you gain them too, but have you tried climbing that tree in the second part of the first level? ;)
Which engine/technology are you using, out of curiosity?
No, I didn't realize you had to pick things up to unlock magic. I did try climbing trees early on, but I stopped because there didn't seem to be anything up there and I found it very difficult to do.
I used Constuct Classic to make it. I have Construct 2, among others, but it produces files much smaller than the rest. I don't recommend it for most people though, especially with better alternatives.
Interesting... does Construct Classic require a direct X download? My laptop that I play game jam games on (out of paranoia of downloading random exes to my computer, lol) won't run this one. It wants me to download an old Direct X package. This laptop is already at it's wits end, so I'm hesitant to download more.
Interesting that you've stuck with classic! I'm still on Construct 2, but seriously thinking of giving into 3. C2 has some weird crashes, usually annoying... but occasional so bad that it destroys the whole project file! (I backup A LOT while I'm working)
Anyway, the game looks really cool! I wish it would run on my laptop.
Yeah, it needs DirectX 9.0c, the June 2010 version. It's totally fine to use DirectX 9, so no worries, haha.
I don't know why I've been using Classic all this time, to be honest. It's really buggy, and it has some serious memory leak problems. It's like using an old laptop that's running Windows 2000 - its last update was 10+ years ago, and most modern software break or just downright don't work - but man, it just keeps on chugging along. XD
C2 does have some quirky bugs, but I think it's much more reliable than CC. Make anything larger than a jam game with the latter, and you'll find yourself closing and reopening it every 15 minutes. As for C3, I don't think I can ever afford that SAS model they're using. Sad for me. ):
Thanks! DirectX 9.0c is totally safe, so you should try the game out! :D
I do hate subscriptions, I'm with you there, ;-;. That's why I've been holding out. But they've been adding tons of great new features, so if I even get "serious" about making a game, I may need to bite the bullet. I'll see what I can do about getting Directx going so I can give it a play!