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Mass's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Theme | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
Cleverness | #423 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Artistic Style | #469 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Playability | #487 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Hey excellent theme here. pretty enjoyable too. ways you could expand this concept: add some terrain, or collectables to add nuance to my decisions per turn, currently the best strategy is to just count how many little white guns ill destroy every time I move, and move in the direction with the most kills. If there was powerups, like a double turn, or walls to put my back against, id be more inclined to make more nuanced decisions. would be cool to see a portal esk level system, where i have a mass and I have to reach the end of the room with obstacles and such.
Did you include your Game Design Document in your downloadable files?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
The player controls a black mass of cells on a grid as a single unit, directing them up, left, right or down. The mass is surrounded by enemies, placed randomly every turn. Mass tries to expand in this direction – either successfully if the cell in the direction is empty, or kills an enemy. Every decision and situation only lasts one turn, but overall strategy affects if the mass grows or shrinks. Then enemies take their shots, reshuffle, and the turn repeats. The mass quickly forms a very complex shape, maybe even breaks into multiple pieces – but this only provides more opportunities to grow.
Did you remember to include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
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Comments
Solid main mechanic, but I feel like around 70-80 mass it is very hard to progress, and it does not matter which direction I use, I lose mass either way. Probably if there were some consumables, or tiles that you can freeze to be yours, or any other goal to consume I would play it a lot more. I think this is a strong foundation, and the minimal style works well. Hope you continue developing it, it could be a great game!
Thanks for the kind feedback! The difficulty curve is definitely the thing that I fiddled the most with, but I wanted the mass of 100 to be very hard to obtain, "equilibrium" at 70-80 is actually where I aimed at initially (actually at 80-90, so maybe it's slightly harder than I wanted it to be). The reason is that this point in the game it becomes hard to push the amount gradually, but it's still possible to make a "pendulum" of sorts: give up some mass strategically to get more complex shape, and then use this shape's big perimeter to overpower enemies and push past this 80 mark towards 90, I didn't want to give up this emerging change of strategy.
But it's true that in the end it also created a frustration point of just getting to 80 pretty fast and endlessly hovering there, too much of a shift. I do plan to keep updating the game and address the difficulty by introducing a couple of different "levels", just 3 to 5 total, each available after getting to a 100 in the previous one, and then back to square 1 (literally) on the new level that slightly adjusts the difficulty curve and changes enemies to a different kind just to spice things up. For example I really want to have a level with enemies that shoot lasers that cut through the whole mass in a line, I feel like this would make the emergent shape even wilder. And I hope as a result I can make the feel of each level more consistent, and the difficulty curve into something varied rather that the current "easy for 5 minutes, then always hard".
I can't promise anything, but I really want to make this game into something more complete, so hopefully you can check it out later!
Maybe it would be a fun challenge to ask the user to maintain a certain minimum amount of mass less risk losing a life or hp, or something like that? That value could increase with time in game, and interact with the current mechanics? idk. I'm not sure how to make choices that produce more mass rather than less.