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The Fallen Thorn's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Artistic Style | #328 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Cleverness | #678 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Playability | #1432 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- The game's art, animations and music are very fitting and overall really good. The game design document is well made and offers a clear view into the intentions of your game. The missing mechanics meant the game didn't have too much to offer and the combat could have used more playtesting. The game could benefit greatly from a tutorial or some indication of what your goal is and your means to get there. I ran into quite a few bugs. I believe you could have benefitted greatly from som QA, getting someone new to playtest and telling you what they could and could not figure out from the game alone.
- Love the art style and the music. The idea is well put together, too, I can see the inspiration in the art style. Unfortunately, the restart button doesn't work, forcing me to relaunch the game every time. I'd like to see a better polished fighting system, since it's quite a challenge to dodge the goblin attacks, especially if there are multiple of them and with there not being a way to properly heal, and with the issue of having to reload the game a couple of times just to try again, having the dodges cancel out the attack animation, for example, would be a welcome addition. The music and theme is quite fitting to the scene and the idea of being able to rebuild the town is something I would love to see! Merchants moving in and allowing you to upgrade and sell items, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing where you take this project in the future! Thank you for your hard work, keep it up!
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
yes
Tell us about your game!
The Fallen Thorn is a pixel art open world RPG about exploration, dungeon delving, resource gathering, collecting randomly generated loot using a prefix/suffix system and building a town for yourself.
The main focus would be to find dungeons and clear them, collecting powerful artefacts called a Thorn from the boss. These Thorns give the player different powers and bonuses and will be the main driving factor behind story progression.
For the Game jam, we’ve had to cut out a lot of features including functionality to the Thorn due to time restrictions, but hopefully you can see the general direction this project is pointing towards.
Extra Notes
Have fun with this buggy mess, we sure did!
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Comments
I like the game. But I think the restart button doesn't work? Great art though :D
Thank you and yeah it some how broke when we uploaded the game.
I like the game. But I think the restart button doesn't work? Great art though :D
Very nice atmosphere, like more chill and down to earth Hyper Light Drifter. The tree swaying animations are soothing.
Combat needs some juice, stat! Some hitstops, knockbacks, hit-flashes, particle effects etc would go a really long way. As it is, it's pretty "impactless". As combat seems to be an integral part of the gameplay, it needs to feel great! When done right, just killing one goblindude over and over in an empty room can be made so engaging you could do it thousands of times in a row and not get bored.
That said, I understand you ran out of time and maybe you would have wanted to add all the things I listed and more. As it is, it's still a pretty convincing draft of a prototype for a very promising action-rpg!
For the next jam, I'd seriously cut down on the feature-list; "open world RPG about exploration, dungeon delving, resource gathering, collecting randomly generated loot using a prefix/suffix system and building a town for yourself." is waaaaaaaaaay ambitious list of game-mechanics for a 2 week jam project! :D
Each feature there is a lot of work in its own and making them work together nicely is hard and even more work.
Theres nothing inherently wrong in overscoping though, trying to do all that. It's good to try and fail, "fail faster" is a great advice! Pretty much everyone overscopes their first few jam (and non jam) -games. But if you start with maybe one or two of those mechanics, make those mechanics feel fucking awesome, and make a handful of levels where you maybe explore what those mechanics can do in different ways. Thats always more convincing than a a list of unfinished features. Plus if you keep the scope small, you might just finish everything early and THEN you can start adding more of the features that you had in mind. I always keep a wishlists for projects where I put all them crazy ideas I WANT to add to the game, plus a tasks-list where I put all features I absolutely NEED for the game to work as it's intended.
I also keep having to remind myself: "K.I.S.S, keep it simply, stupid!" so much that it's become a sort of a mantra for me lol. I always want to add more but oftentimes removing or simplifying features/ideas is the right answer.
Enough rambling, it's a really good first jam-game in my opinion. Visuals and audio are already in a great shape! Movement and fighting mechanics are on a good foundation too but need a bit more polish.
Me likey!
Hey, thank you so much for your kind words and advice, we'll definitely try to make combat feel more satisfying and fun. You've given us a lot to think about. Just to mention as well, we are planning to take this game further than just the jam and really flesh it out.
Love to hear it! I adored Hyper Light Drifter and this gave such a similar vibe I'd love see a finished version one day!
We're also continuing our little prototype further since it turned out pretty fun IMO. It's pretty much a vampire survivors -clone with a couple of small twists. It definitely has some shortcomings and rushed things on the jam-deadline-version but give it a try if you feel like that sounds interesting! Any and every feedback is super appreciated, specially right now since it's still just a prototype and everything can still be changed easily. Cheers!
i'll be sure to check it out!
ok, like many said and I'm sure you know, this is not fully cooked, but I really dig the art style! and I think killing mobs would be really fun once you add feedback sfx, animations and health bars <3
keep working on this please!
i like the music and art, was really charming. im terrible at fighting and didnt get very far.
Beautiful art, amazing music and great animations, well done! I wish it was a bit easier cause I always die after three to four goblins and I want to see more of the world, I've died 5 times so far, also I can't seem to interact with the dungeon door or the big crystal thing.
Beautiful game, I'm jealous of your pixel art and music making, your entire team should be proud!
Thank you for your very kind words, we're glad you like it.
So the obelisk in the town as no function, but the dungeon door requires you to explore, find all the chests which contain healing potions, wood and stone, bring them to the knight on the right and he gives you a key. Apologies for zero explanation, we wanted to add dialogue but ran out of time. Also with the goblins you can pretty much ignore them and dash twice to escape their pursuit.
Hope this helps, and thank you so much for playing <3
Lets get the negatives out the way, but this doesn't reflect on your abilities just the time constraints as you've clearly stated and this is just my opinion being semi bad at games.
Potential Improvements:
- Restart button needs to work, this will keep people in your game, this should be priority number one at the moment.
- You need some form of controls listed at the start as you spawn so people are aware they're pressing the right buttons and it's not the game being buggy.
- Give players a small amount of hand holding and healing options at the start so they're aware of their potential objectives which will keep them wanting to explore further
Love:
- The art stlye is fantastic, love the vibe and the music compliments it well. The gameplay music combo is like Zelda meets Runescape for me.
- I like the fighting and stamina combo, it allows you to take fights or run away and save your energy.
- Love the sprites, especially the boss', they look menacing and scary, you definitely know they're badasses.
With a lot more time and a little polish it could be a little gem. Very impressive for your first game and the time constraints.
Hey, thanks for your kind words and constructive criticism. The plan was to basically include most of that but things broke and we encountered some issues towards the end.
Incredibly beautiful pixel art, character designs and animation on display here.
The combat is nice and looks like progression could be really good.
There are quite a few bugs and lack of player feedback that make the actual progression hard to achieve. The restart being bugged also really hinders getting back to where you were in any way.
HUGE potential for a really cool follow up here. I look forward to seeing what you get done with more time!
Thank you for your kind words.
You should have seen us on discord trying to get the boss fixed with only a hour to go! :) I'm not sure what happened with the restart button, it was fixed and then possibly broke again. Matt did a really good job throwing it in with such little time left. Thanks for your feedback, It will really help us push this project forwads :)
Is there any chance you added the main menu after that restart? It could be to do with how the game is being paused when the pop up happens which includes the button.
I believe the Menu was put in first actually, but I'd need to confirm that with Matt :)
Great visuals and sounds. Really well put together. The trees and the shadows are super awesome. Fighting is a bit challenging tho, probably my skill issue :D Good job on the game!
Beautiful trees, very peaceful and pleasant music. I was a bit confused as to what the Q button that made everything gray did. The goblins were a bit fast, once I was in range you couldn't get away really.
Great work for a jam submission, I think a bit of explanation would have helped a lot!
The Q sends you into the shadow plane/realm. If you do it near a dead enemy, you'll see souls from their bodies that can be picked up :D. We had a plan to have phantoms that will chase you when using the plane, so that theres risk to reward. This is something we'll be adding into a later version of the game ^^
Thank you, I had so much fun doing the music for the project. These guys have a great vision for this game, so stick around!
great job! Well made mechanics and good aesthetic vibe!
The art and mechanics for this game are wonderful! I just wish the peaky restart button worked haha!
The visuals look really good, especially the animations.
Having a hit effect on when the player hits something would have been nice.
Additionally, though mentioned by others, the restart button does not work, sadly.
Really like the graphics, they have a very polished feel to them.
I think in terms of presentation game lack a little bit of feedback to player’s actions, something to show that you really hit an enemy or that dash cooldown is over. In terms of balancing, when you hit an enemy I don’t think it’s possible to not get hit back because you are stuck in place.
Also restart button didn’t work for me, but I’m definitely gonna return to this later.
I really like the atmosphere that the game has(: