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Shadowtail's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Cleverness | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Artistic Style | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
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.
- I really adore this game. The art, music choice, puzzles, and overall gameplay. It's cute, fun, engaging, and enjoyable. You really have something here and would love to see more.
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!
You are Shadowtail, a mouse born from the shadow of Whitefoot who drank a mysterious potion and is now imprisoned by an alchemist. Find your way around the alchemist's house and rescue your friend. Carry stuff around, mix potions, navigate the wall maze and sneak around the cat.
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Comments
You made a whole cinematic for the opening scene, wow, and it's so cute! The environments and music are great. I dunno if you made the art yourself but the mice and cat are adorable. I liked the limitations put on the mouse, felt almost like a very unique twist on a metroidvania or something. Great game.
Thank you for playing and for the feedback! I did make all of the art and animations during the jam, and the music is from Tallbeard Studio's Free Music Loop Pack. I'm really glad you liked the intro animation! It was my first attempt and although it needs some work I'm still super happy with how it turned out. :3 If the game gets an update (which I hope it does), there will definitely be some improvements in the gameplay and art departments with more emphasis on puzzles and exploration.
<3
The intro was so professional, I dunno how you could improve it, lol. If you have even more vision for the game then I definitely hope you get around to updating, I'm sure you could do some really cool things with it in a full release game.
I am not a fan of the game forcing a Fullscreen mode onto the player so I am curious why you chose to do so?. I like the visuals but it looks nicely polished.
Thank you for the review! I am not sure what you mean about forcing fullscreen. The game should open in a new window which is a standard mode provided by Itch that several games use. Pressing F11 is an option to toggle fullscreen if you want to play it like that, but it is not required.
A new tab isn't standard ? I have 12 + itch.io Webgl games on my profile and none of them needed to be opened in a new tab. Making me open a new tab to play your game and my whole screen is just your view box is still basically Fullscreen.
It is because our game is made in Godot. Itch opens Godot games in new window regardless of what we choose in "Embed options" :-( And it is relatively recent change. My other game used to work in embed mode but now it also launches in new window.
https://alexc1991.itch.io/pothole-dodge-returns
This is an unfinished project I did for a game a week for school.
It runs in Godot and developed to be used for the browser for mobile phones and for desktop usage.
Nice little game. I adore the pixel art :). As others mentioned the game is quite challenging to play, because of the small vision and you had to pick one item at a time. I even tried to pick everything and move it next to the kettle but I was missing some sources from the recipe and was already quite frustrated from the tunnels.
That being said I don't like straightforward solutions with navigating indicators. I even turn those off in many games like Skyrim or The Witcher 3 because then the game is more immersive. I would maybe add two difficulties, one with a map and one without it.
Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you liked the art and we will be sure to change up the mechanics if the game gets an update, especially the lighting, maze, and the alchemy portions. I checked out Ominous Darkness and I really liked the lighting that your team used. This is what I had in mind for Shadowtail, but I ran out of time to figure it out. The next game will definitely have improved mechanics and lighting though! :3
WOW this game was awesome. I went, "alright, last game for the night" and ended up playing it for 30 minutes straight running around and getting lost. TBH by the cover & name I expected to end up playing as the cat, and was sorta disappointed it was a mouse...and I was confused why the mouse was moving too slow. Each upgrade the mouse got felt impactful and started feeling like a Metroidvania of me revisiting old rooms to unlock new things.
This was super impressive, especially just for two people! I initially got stuck thinking I had soft-locked myself by putting in only some ingredients for the strength potion while having all the ones needed to make the sleep potion, but tried it and thankfully the cauldron doesn't mind the mixture of ingredients.
There were lots of red herrings, the key that was a different color, dead ends, random objects that are just fun to bring around and made me want to gather them all in one place. Makes it feel like a lived-in world and not just a game since not all the objects actually pertain to the main quest. I was so excited to finally get enough strength to jump on the food table that I forgot that the same upgrade also let me jump to get the silver key and end the game.
I wish there was a more convenient way to get around, though the visuals of low sight and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel was super cool. I kept getting lost, and the game forced me to actually learn the map.
The art was gorgeous, extremely stylish, and I love the cinematics at the beginning and end. Gameplay was super easy to understand. I can definitely see this as a larger game that I would love to play!
Thank you for the review Drakonkinst! I'm so glad to hear that you liked the art. I poured everything I've learned over the past year into making the sprites. As a fellow cat lover, the most I could do was add a cat as a puzzle piece and to the wall art.
We tried to make the world feel alive, like an alchemist actually lives in the house. I'm happy that you noticed those extra details! If there is an update to Shadowtail, the maze, visibility, and navigation in general will get an overhaul. I would love to see this game turned into a full exploration puzzle game with a quest system and many more levels to explore and things to do. <3
Okay so the game looks and sounds fantastic. The characters are very cute and the world looks great. I love the silly "popping" music that sounds like real people just making a noise, was that you guys doing that?
I need to say though this game is super tedious. Having to constantly run back and forth and only picking up 1 ingredient at a time is really not my bag. Getting lost in the dark tunnels constantly while looking for the right exit was such a chore. I really wish there was a map or an indicator or just more vision inside those tunnels cos they really put me off finishing the game despite all the awesome charm and design on offer.
I would have loved some more visible indicators for things you could interact with instead of only appearing when you were right on-top of them.
I wish it wasn't so tedious because there's a fun little story and world packed into this game and I would have liked to have kept playing but it just frustrated me too much.
Really enjoyed the game! The visuals were cute and I liked solving the puzzles. The narrative helped keep me engaged and exploring the house was fun too - really reminiscent of old adventure-type games. Great work guys!
Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you liked the older style of the game. We were heavily inspired by the GBA Zelda titles and similar games to that era. :)
I love this concept so much! Very creative and fun idea, I'd love to see it optimised gameplay-wise more :)
Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you liked the idea :3