Fun concept! I feel the game could be improved if you could swing after launching a hook. Also, I feel adding checkpoints could be quite useful.
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Grook's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Engagement | #300 | 3.093 | 3.093 |
Overall polish | #319 | 2.889 | 2.889 |
Overall | #330 | 2.975 | 2.975 |
Creative use of art assets | #340 | 2.944 | 2.944 |
Ranked from 54 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
I really like this idea. A game where swinging affects gravity and allows you to rotate the world is absolutely great.
However, I struggled quite a lot with this game and didn't get very far because I died a lot. My main problems were that I couldn't work out how to swing on the rope, and I struggled to understand how gravity got changed. I guess down became the angle of the rope with what you stick it to? I also managed to get stuck at the beginning by swinging back and rotating the level 90 degrees and falling to the left from the start position. I then couldn't go anywhere or rope anything.
Control gripes aside, I did enjoy what there was and would really like to play an updated version with tweaked controls to make it easier.
I like the hook changing the gravity concept and the levels, but as others said the game is really hard even from the very start, I'd try to make the hook mechanics a little easier to control
I appreciate the uniqueness of the mechanics, but there are a few fundamental things I think could be tweaked (this is just my opinion, and honestly I think this mechanic has a lot of potential):
Perhaps this is just because a lot of people have played grappling hook games in the past, but there are expectations for how to handle movement, in particular swinging. I feel like there is no control over the ability to swing in this. There is no way to rock back and forth and create momentum, at least from what I can tell. My brain kept telling me that what I'm "supposed" to do in this game is: swing to move the level, timing the world rotation until i can make the correct jump to either land safely or grapple again. Somewhere there is a disconnect however.
What I end up doing, is firing the hook waiting for the swinging to stop, then seeing if i can jump from my grapple position so i can fire and pray that the rotation doesn't land me into the spikes. I almost feel like this game would be better without spikes.
You have done a really great job in subverting the expectations for character movement (which in and of itself is hard to do successfully so major kudos for attempting this within the constraints of a game jam), and that should be the challenge more than the level itself (if that makes sense).
Heavily hazard driven levels tend to benefit more from having a precise character controller that gives the player as many tools, especially familiar tools that are easy to pick up, as needed with the challenge being the level and mastery of the simple controls. This is probably why some people enjoy Kaizo Mario games. Everybody understands the rules, and the level is subverting the expectations. Even though it is "frustrating" you understand that it is a process of mastery over the simple character controller (and in the most diabolical ones, brute trial and error over things like..troll invisible blocks).
Bennet Foddy style games (Pogostuck, Sexy Hiking, etc) , you subvert the expectations of the control of the character, making it complex or foreign, but keep the levels fairly simple. Nothing kills the player and forces a reset typically in those games, though your progress may be impeded by a simple challenge proven exceedingly difficult by the mechanics of your characters movement.
Perhaps I'm sounding overly critical of a game jam game, but I really like the concept, the polish, and even the overall game feel. I would say, remove the spikes from the tutorial level. Throw that out again to players and see what there reactions are. I feel you are onto something great, it just needs some tweaking that game jam time limits wont allow. I'd definitely keep experimenting with this idea, I'd love to see more done with this!
Again, I hope this didn't come off as too critical, my goal is to encourage you to keep iterating on this and have it live up to the potential I feel many here see in it! :)
Cool concept but it was hard as hell to get a grip on it. Perhaps I’m not a hardcore gamer, but for me was a though experience without any initial knowledge.
Personally I would have loved to have some very easy levels at the beginning to learn the dynamics. That would have increased the engagement.
But overall I think you are on the right direction with your creativity.
Congrats!
Awesome idea and sounds very promising. I would say an intro/tutorial scene just to get comfortable with the hook would improve the experience a lot ! Overall great job :)
The idea is really nice and I don’t mind the extreme difficulty, great game! I did have a hard time fully understanding what determined the tilt direction, and it felt difficult to get a consistent result. I made it to level 4 or 5 and had to stop, but will try to go all the way later.
I love the idea behind this game and think the puzzles are very good. I think a nice add would be to be able to increase your momentum by swinging back and forth. I really like whats been made so far though, great work. :)
Really nice game, the grappling mechanic feels really well done and seriously polished especially the camera rotation part.
It was hard at first, but when I got used to it, it was really fun, loved the addition of gravity angle change!
I got stuck right away, with no apparent way to restart (I didn't know about pressing R, maybe it should always be displayed somewhere in a corner). I feel like a first room that allows for the player to experiment with the concept without dying all the time would have been a good idea. The difficulty ramps up way too fast.
I really like the idea though, and I'm sure with some more polish it can make a really fun game!
I found this super difficult but kept at it because the concept is cool, though hard to understand at first (I couldn't tell what was determining the gravity direction)
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