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A jam submission

Adventures of MuricepsView game page

Plague is ravaging central Europe. You are Muriceps, and only you can stop it.
Submitted by Morgoth — 6 hours, 7 minutes before the deadline
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Adventures of Muriceps's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Artistic Style#4693.0003.000
Cleverness#8762.0002.000
Theme#9352.0002.000
Playability#11771.0001.000

Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Did you include your Game Design Document in your downloadable files?
Yes

Tell us about your game!
Adventures of Muriceps ( or just Muriceps) is a quirky action-adventure roguelike / dungeon crawler about eradicating the spread of the plague, with the pun that the player is a cat, and the whole style is similar to medieval manuscripts with weird animals.
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Story: Plague is ravaging central Europe. You are Muriceps, and only you can stop it.
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Theme is represented twice in our game - once in overall topic of the game, which is medieval plague, but also gameplay mechanic when rats reproduce when they are alive.

Player has to go through various levels and kill all rats - and survive!

There are 3 different difficulties to allow both casual and hardcore players, and end screen statistics, which in future can support speed runs, leaderboards, steam achievements.

To motivate players to move faster, rats are spreading - with audible hints and always just on the player screen, so it’s not confusing what is happening. Player is also introduced to this via text narration.

Overall game graphics feature medieval times with plague-ridden society, including villagers who do not believe rats are really the cause of the plague, even as they are dying to it.

This is all introduced and reminded through narration, and the borders of the map are looking like edges of the book - hinting that the player is indeed in a storybook.

Game also has realistic cat sounds :D
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Controls:
Movement - LMB / Arrow keys / WASD / Gamepad left stick
Attack - RMB / Space / bottom action button on gamepad
Battle cry - MMB / M / top action button on gamepad

Did you remember to include your Game Design Document?
Yes

Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes

Extra Notes
This was lot of fun! First experience with Godot, and now, 9 days later we have functional game! Thanks for everything, and we look forward to some feedback! :)

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Comments

Submitted

The use of medieval art for your assets is such a genuinely good idea I'm sad I didn't think of it hahaha. I really liked everything in this, it all worked together really well, and I don't think I could give any feedback that hasn't already been given on improvements. I'm also shocked I haven't come across another game referencing the black death.

Didn't expect to be motivated to work on my own project by Medieval Long Boi the game, but here we are! Great job making this especially for a first time in an entirely new engine!

Developer

Thanks for review, I watched the stream from VOD 😀

I'm glad it inspired you, I look forward to your project!

Submitted (1 edit)

I'm no big brain dev, but thought I'd leave a bit of feedback. Hopefully it'll be of some use to you! 

Like many others have said in the comments below, the artstyle for the characters is really interesting and the music choices are fitting! The font fits as well, though it can be a bit hard to read from time to time.

I do appreciate how you can basically use mouse only if you wish to (not saying you need to stick with that though, just thought it was interesting!).

A suggestion would be to have an indicator of how large Muriceps' attack is! I was pleasantly surprised with how generous the hitbox was as I thought the attack range would be quite small, considering it's like a punch. Maybe something similar for the rats too? Another thing to point out is that the punch noise might be a liiiiittle too loud.

Another suggestion would be perhaps for a run button! Chasing rats can take quite some time, and especially in that last really big dungeon, when you have 1 to 2 rats left, it can take quite a bit to traverse through the rooms.

Whilst I understand you'll tune the references down if you continue to work in this game, in an overall the humor was nice!

I also played the nefarious mode, and the rats chase you when you get too close, which was a nice surprise! One thing I'll point is that the distance they can damage you from seems to be quite far. There were times I'd kill a rat and receive damage. I do appreciate that you gave +2 lives after the first wave of rats in the last dungeon room, though. Also, extra modes with differences between them? That's hard stuff to do! Good job!

This is really good work, especially considering it was your first experience with Godot! Can't imagine how scary it'd feel to go into a gamejam using an engine I don't have any experience with. 

Also, yes. I'm a fan of the battlecry button. I like it. Quite a bit.

Well done! It'll be interesting to see what you do with the experience that you've gained making this game! Good work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the review, you made some good points! 


Some of them I was thinking about, but didn't yet implement, for example running; but with showing of hitbox I need to think how to show it nicely, ideally without breaking immersion of medieval feel.




And multiple modes actually weren't that hard - after I parameterized spawning of rats and I was often making it easier to speed run testing of the game, I ended up having more modes - in larger ones rats were faster, more aggressive, and there were more of them. So, quite fun to implement, but we need more playtesting to tune various difficulties to be fun for various types of players.

Submitted

This game has a cute aesthetic and character, with simple gameplay. It is engaging enough to make you want to keep playing to figure out what happens next. Good job!

I played the whole story mode but i ended up loving Nefarious Mode because the rats actually chase you in that one. I wished the levels starts out with more rats and they make more babies but i think that it could potentially be stressful if there is that one rat that you couldn't find.

But the rat idea is super interesting--an ever growing rat swarm that you had to hunt slowly or they'll grow out of control.
the story is....hmm...I couldn't really get into it--someone said that there are alot of quote and reference from Thor so I guess its too deep for me to understand. like the...person inside that square...bathtub? idk what that is supposed to be.

the art style have good potential. im imagining a cuphead level visual fidelity but in the old medieval art style. :>

Developer(+1)

Thanks for review! :)

I am glad that someone played even the nefarious mode as well, and liked it!
Tuning game play in such short time was challenge, for next time it would be great to have some testers, because we didn't want it too hard not too easy.

Rat spread was limited in total amount, but I guess we could make that even harder so they spawn exponentially and player really can have problem if they won't kill them fast enough - but I was afraid this might make the game frustrating :D

Submitted

Loved the art style and the quote from Thor. Super awesome game since it's your first experience with Godot.

Developer

Thanks! :D

I hoped our Piirate community will enjoy it, in case we will continue I will need to tune down a bit those references, because no one else will understand them :D

Submitted

Love the art and music.  Does the game have a win state?  I think I killed all the rats, but nothing happened.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Yes. Number of rats should be in top right corner. In first 2 levels it automatically transfers you to the next one - but in third, you need to go east (as text message suggest) and find... I won't spoil it :)
There's also text + invisible wall for few seconds, on hindsight, not best idea how to slow down player :D

I was also thinking to add something like "6th sense"/cat senses to point you in direction of next objective, but I didn't have the time to implement that. But I have it in backlog, maybe for real release.

Try again in story mode, you might like the end of game :D

Submitted(+1)

I really Love the art and animation in this game. The way you've given life to medieval art is wonderful. Though, the gameplay itself is quite bare and the sound effects seem to gave come from Space invaders. The Writing is appropriate, but with the fancy typographyit's very hard to read. I would love to see a polished version of this though.

Developer

Thanks!

Sound effects were just first test, and regarding typography, I will probably change it, or give accessibility option in menu to swap it for something less historical but more legible :D 

Submitted

Simple, enjoyable game. Really liked the artstyle. Great job!

Developer

Thank you, really appreciated! :)