Play game
MENERVA-324's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Metroidvania | #2 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Overall | #4 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Presentation | #9 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Design | #12 | 3.688 | 3.688 |
| Enjoyment | #14 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Godot 4.0
Team/Developer
Julian Reid
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
That's a straight 5 from me, dawg. Was it perfect? Depends on how you wanna frame it! I think you had a thing you wanted to do and pulled it off about as well as you could've, any gripes i had are mostly minor.
Player character looks neat, it's interesting that he doesn't have any arms to start. However, as some others noted, he doesn't animate super well. I figured he might move funky in like an alien sort of way, but he's mostly just kind of stiff looking. Which is somewhat faithful to the source material i suppose lol, but even then it could still be pulled off better- i'd also like to see some recoil on the arm when you fire. Since it's a seperate sprite entirely, i think that wouldn't have been very hard to add.
Powerups didn't wow me, and there were only 3, 2 if we're being honest. We're not in full metroid clone territory with them, but a dash and a remote bomb didn't exactly have me intrigued. I'm glad the bomb could knock you around though, at least. (no time)
On that note, keycards aren't exactly my favorite way to handle progression in these types of games, but i understand why it was done, and you pulled em off pretty damn well, so I can't really hold it against you!
Music was good, served its purpose, was evocative but it's not gonna stick with me. Sounds effects were in a similar state, they did what they needed to but were a little lacking. Well mixed, however.
The stretch to, i think it was keycard level 3? was a bit daunting. It was mostly the setup with the deep acid pit near the end, i died like 3 times there or something. Maybe tone down the rate of damage on it a smidge? Or maybe it was just a skill issue. The rest of the game balance wise was fine though.
But yeah, that's all minor shit, the actual content of the game here is phenomenal. TONS of well made assets and visual variety, with a fleshed out feeling setting. Huge entourage of enemies, good pathing, an actual map(though i would've liked the different areas to be different colors?), optional upgrades to find, some really fun environmental gimmicks with stuff like the live wires. Loved it!
edit: Oh yeah, i also how the no download problem, but i was able to get around it by using the itch client.
Feels really polished and well put together! Not much else to say, just solid overall. I had some issues with invisible damage dealers in one area, not sure what that was about, but that's the one single negative thing i can complain about, the rest is just that good
That's a really high quality one for 30 days, very well done here.
Presentation is definitelly top notch here, and I played it on browser (since I wasn't able to download it for whatever reason) where you said it was missing some particle effects, so I really wonder how better it could still have looked.
The gameplay itself is also really good for the most part, and I specially love how you managed to make the entire map actually feel alive and interconnected, that was pretty neat.
I also think the 2 first bosses were pretty well made, but the final one felt really weird imo. It was noticeably rushed sadly, specially because of how simple and underwhelming it was, not to mention that you put a save station on the middle of it's arena wich made him super cheesable.
The level design was also really good for the big majority of it, but I need to admit, the right-most section of the map was a nightmare. not only it had pits of acid that were waaay too punishing to fall into, it's also the buggiest area on the game, so much so that it literally makes me take damage out of thin air and I have no idea why (I even recorded it to show it here)
I also suffered quite a lot fps drops on the bigger rooms and also on the final boss. This also happened with another Godot game I played, so for now I'll be blaming the engine for that, but still you should probably look this up.
Overall it's still a pretty impressive entry tho.
The save in the final boss room was actually a mistake haha. I put it in for development, and did actually remove it from the level files, but the Godot importer didn't pick up the change. As you say, I completely ran out of time so that boss is pretty terrible. The accidental save might be a blessing in disguise!
The invisible damage is due to the missing particles issue. You should be seeing steam jets but unfortunately they don't render on the web build. Thanks for pointing it out, and I appreciate you making a video. I can't fix it at the moment because of the jam voting period, but I'll try to patch it after.
It's a bummer that the download doesn't seem to be working for a lot of people right now. Seems to be an itch.io issue.
Thanks for the feedback!
This is a really impressive game for one person. Great job, look forward to your future games.
Very much enjoyed this entry. The atmosphere reminds of System Shock 2. I love the way the main character looks, but it feels somewhat at odds with the more generic enemies that can be found throughout the levels (ex: robots). Great job!
Things I liked:
-It's overall fun to play.
-The metroid artstyle, and art in general, is great
-The variety of music fits really nice with the art and environment
-The metroidvania genre is well applied (reminds me a lot of super metroid)
-It's really polished to be a Jam game
-The bosses are simple, but managed to surprise me
Things I didn't like:
-Some areas are overcrowded with enemies wich makes it annoying instead of difficult
-Once you die you lose a lot of progress, (not sure if it was intended or the savestates weren't working)
-You said there was a more stable downloadable version, but nothing happens when I try to download it
Very cool game!
Beautiful game with nice audio, really good presentaion.
It was a little frustrating though. I felt like I had to walk passed 20 enemies to find a weapon. When I did, i died almost right away and the game restarted with introduction dialog and all. It could be a good thing to first make the first minute of the game and try and make it as smooth as possible.
Many cool enemies and stuff. Very impressive to make all this solo in a month!
Great game with reminds to super metroid. Good variety of enemies and the attack feels solid. I frustrated sometimes because of the farness of saving points, but overall is a great game and also made by a solo developer (I suppose)
Good job!
As far as metroidvanias are concerned, this is fantastic. while some of the art (notably the player) looks a bit strange, it looks very polished. Great job!
Just an awesome game, as far as I played it really polished aswell. Pulling something like that of in a month is lit. Keep going!
This is pretty gigantic for a *jam*!
The controller was very responsive.
This guy is going places for sure.
Honestly the only bad part about this game is that it makes me feel comparatively very bad at making games. :) Top marks from me.
Things I liked:
Things I would change:
Lovely graphics, nice sound. Very impressive control set--crouching fire, diagonal fire, etc. Everything seems to work smoothly. Effective (standard Metroid-style) minimap.
The variety of enemies, each with its own behavior, is also impressive. "Game juice" is well implemented, with flashing, knockback effects, etc.
The choice to omit auto save seems a bit unfortunate. Having to schlep back and forth to perform a manual save is a bit of a chore, without much added gameplay value.
Also, the setting suggests a story... I would love to know more about what is going on here.
Sorry, I'm horrible with arrow keys, and don't have a controller on me at the moment, so I wasn't able to beat the first green boss thingy. Which is a shame, because this game seems amazing. Super metroid vibes, and the character really interested me. Good game, contender for first place in my opinion!