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A jam submission

Alice in BoardlandView game page

Dreamlike roguelite with fast paced shooting where every death brings you closer to your home and levels up your skills.
Submitted by Aver — 32 minutes, 19 seconds before the deadline
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Alice in Boardland's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
How Fun#183.2804.400
Audio#232.8323.800
Quality#243.1304.200
Overall#243.1304.200
Theme + Limitation/s (if any)#263.1304.200
Gameplay#302.8323.800

Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Game Dev Experience? (in months or days)
Less than 5-6 months of total experience with gamedev. Participated in one gamejam few years ago. Had a break and started learning Godot few months ago.

Any Limitations Used?
Genre Mix - Tabletop Platformer!
Color Palette - used the color palette for everything. Colors might be slightly different due to post processing, lighting, and other effects.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Yoooo how stylish!! From animations to music, this has so much going for it!

Most of my major gripes have been touched by other comments, but one more thing I'd like to add is some sort of feedback for jumping and wall climbing because right now it's hard to tell the difference. But this could be something really good with more polish!

Exciting to see where it's going next!

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for you feedback. I'm glad you liked it.
Yes, feedback/sounds for jumping and wall climbing are planned :)

Submitted(+1)

Nice job hitting every part of the theme, I really like that you took some extra time on the details (slow-mo on level up, music changes between scenes, head rolling on death).

Developer

Thank you very much for playing my game and for your feedback. This means a lot to me! :)

(+1)

Small but fun game, really enjoyed leveling up mechanics 

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Pretty fun game.

The controls felt a bit sluggish at first but once I got used to them the gameplay flowed well. The controls got somewhat better as I upgraded the abilities.

The aesthetic design is pretty nice, although some of the geometry looks quite basic and I noticed lag in the area you select your abilities, though the performance is fine when running across the chess boards and shooting the pieces.

Animations are decent.

The attempt at following the colour and genre limitation is interesting, although I don't feel the game does much with the jam theme.

The music selection is good and the game has sound effects unlike some of the others I've rated (and they're decent too!)

There's a few grammar mistakes but that can be fixed easily.

Alice definitely shows potential to be a good platforming/parkour FPS with more development time, content and polish. Looking forward to seeing how this game progresses!

Developer(+1)

Hello,
Thank you for your opinion and contstructive criticism. This was a nice read!

"The aesthetic design is pretty nice, although some of the geometry looks quite basic and I noticed lag in the area you select your abilities, though the performance is fine when running across the chess boards and shooting the pieces.

I am aware of that. Due to lack of time and the fact that my 3d abilities are quite limited (submitted as a solo dev) I had to make sacrifices and I decided to focus on gameplay and esthetics of the game instead of torturing myself with Blender for few days with mediocre results :P
I did all I could to optimise the gameplay area, but the "level up area" can drop from 165 to around 100 fps on my PC, which is not good. It's mostly due to the Fire particles and multiple sources of light and shadows. I have plans to tweak this and implement settings with graphics options.

"There's a few grammar mistakes but that can be fixed easily."
I'm sorry, I'm not a native english speaker. From the top of my head I can think of one potential grammar mistake, not sure abut the others. Thank you for pointing that out.

"Alice definitely shows potential to be a good platforming/parkour FPS with more development time, content and polish. Looking forward to seeing how this game progresses!"

Thank you again, I will definitelly continue with the project!

Submitted(+1)

wow. just. wow. there are a lot of ways that people can feel satisfaction from playing a game, with one of those being simply having the ability to feel cool. your game totally nails it! presentation-wise, it's exceptional and it's very easy to be able to run, move, and hop around like you're some kind of expert ninja. very, VERY satisfying to traverse through and look at. i also love how much you committed to the wonderland theme, it gives the game its own unique tone.

unfortunately i could not get past level 2 as i'm not a particularly skilled gamer nor shot - perhaps it's just due to my own abilities, but i think i would've been able to continue the game further if the progress bar carried over or if checkpoints were possible!

all in all i'm super impressed. i was actually surprised to see this was made in Godot, since i figure a game like this could much easily be made in UE or unity, but i think this shows you've made great use of the program with just a few months of experience. i would love to see more of this game for sure, you did a fantastic job!

Developer

Thank you! That was the best thing I cou've have read before going to bed yesterday (and even nicer to reread Monday morning)! :)

"i also love how much you committed to the wonderland theme, it gives the game its own unique tone."

I was always mesmerised by the Wonderland and many possibilities that it can be interpreted.
I'm fresh after reading both of the Alice books and I really loved the old American McGee's Alice games. I'm happy that I could finally express myself with this theme!

"unfortunately i could not get past level 2 as i'm not a particularly skilled gamer nor shot - perhaps it's just due to my own abilities, but i think i would've been able to continue the game further if the progress bar carried over or if checkpoints were possible!"

I've tried to balance the game around my own abilities as a playtester but then decided to make it easier because I'm aware that after so many hours I can basically play it in my sleep :P
Thank you for letting me know that this might still not be enough difficulty/wise. I have initial plans to implement difficulty options and tweak the procedural level generation to make the first levels easier and the last ones harder. I will reconsider progress/exp bar carrying over whenever you fall - maybe a new, "chill" gamemode. :)


Developer (1 edit)

Hello!
I have just updated the game and ported it to the browser. Improved ".exe" is still available at the bottom of the page.
I have also added speciall easy/chill mode just for you. In that mode, you won't loose exp (as requested) when you fall. You can switch between the modes whenever you want without loosing progress. Enjoy!
https://averan.itch.io/alice-in-boardland

Submitted(+1)

Your game is amazing....well done! 

I really loved what you did with the card as a weapon, the animations, and the audio!

I would love to see some difference between levels...and I would like to know where the level ends 😂 (some ideas for your next game!)

Developer(+1)

Hi, thank you very much! You just made my day!

"I really loved what you did with the card as a weapon, the animations, and the audio!"
Thank you! I probably spend most of the time on the card and levels generation and I'm very happy with how the bullet system works (and looks).

"I would love to see some difference between levels"
Me too. I have plans to tweak the level generation so that every level have different proportions of the platforms (already planned on paper). There are however subtle differences between levels already:
1. When you touch a platform, there is a timer that triggers the platform to fall down. It starts with 3 second on level 1. Every few levels the time is shorter. At level 10 you have only 1 second to escape the platform before it falls.
2. Everytime you fall, the level layout is generated again and it can be quite different each time - there still a lot that can be added here though.

"and I would like to know where the level ends"
Level is generated indefinitely or until you gain enough experience to "Press E" and lvl up.
Each time you level up you advance to the next level. Each time you advance to next level the big island with a lighthouse (on the left) will get a little closer to the player. Once you get to level 11 you will be able to reach the island/lighhouse and finish the game.
It should take around 20 minuts to get to that point.

Thank you for playing my game and let me know if you have any other questions!

Submitted(+1)

Nice to hear you gonna keep working on this game! I think it has tons of potential in the game industry!

If you decide to keep the experiance to proceed the next level consider a experience bar ;) 

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

Now I understand what you meant with the level ending. There is a progress bar already. The whole card is a progress bar. It gets filled with orange bar the closer you get to 100%. It's probably my bad that I didn't choose more distinct color but I wanted to stick to the color palette. The alternative to orange was dark blue, which I've tested. It looked good but slightly too agressive. In the end it might have been a better choice because that one would be probably more noticable. I will definitelly change it in the future and will add that to current game's description. Thank you again!

Btw, if you want, you can quickly check how the progress bar works by looking at 0:30 of the below video (focus on the card).


Submitted

Ohh i totally missed the experience on the card....i was too obsessed with killing those knights haha.

Overall as i said before great job with the game ;) I have it on my pc probably would test it again now that i know how it works!

Developer(+1)

Glad to hear that :)
I wished for few additional days to include a better tutorial (the one there is was a last minute addition) and a menu with graphic options as the current one was also made (literally) a moment before uploading the game.
Thank you again, because of your feedback I was able to add a lot of useful information/explanation to the game's homepage.

Submitted

It's never too late ... this jam was just the "intro" to collect knowledge ;)

Developer

Hello,

Link to gameplay video: