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A jam submission

PictomageView game page

Top-down puzzle shooter where you defeat enemies with their own bullets.
Submitted by Blatnik — 2 hours, 17 minutes before the deadline
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Pictomage's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
ENJOYMENT: Is the game enjoyable to play?#34.1724.172
INNOVATION: Does the game innovate in some way?#44.1384.138
THEME: How well the theme is used?#143.5863.586

Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

GitHub repository
https://github.com/blat-blatnik/Pictomage

Team members
Blat Blatnik
Olga Wazny

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

By far one of the best games in this jam. Really hoping you turn this into a full game somewhere in the future. My death count was 32 with a time of 8:23

Developer(+1)

Thanks for giving it a shot! And that’s a very impressive first score, congrats :) We are definitely considering fleshing the game out into a full release :)

Submitted(+1)

Great game! The idea of capturing other game elements as you have and throwing them around is one that I think has not been played with much. The puzzles were fun and difficult.

Submitted(+1)

Great concept, great levels and great game overall! :)

Submitted(+1)

Great idea and game! Impressed at how polished it is for a week game jam. :)

And surprisingly difficult to think new spells while something is shooting or jumping at you hahaha

Submitted(+1)

I really appreciate the polish and the depth of content. I finished at 221 deaths (on a trackpad, I guess this makes the game harder) and had a lot of difficult but fun practice! I don't have much experience with shooters, but some levels clearly remind me of those grinding moments in platformers and rhythm games. I find such grinding very enjoyable in moderate amounts, which this game succeeded well in providing.

Sometimes I feel that I'm clearing a level by luck rather than practice or strategy, probably due to the fast pace and the tight timing window, which to me was a bit discouraging. I'm particularly curious about the intended solution of the level in the third screenshot (the one with three layers of glass).

Developer (2 edits)

Thank you very much for your detailed feedback! I’m glad to hear that you still enjoyed most of the game despite the genre not being your usual choice. Congratulations for beating it with a trackpad as well! I playtested the game with a trackpad a couple of times myself, to make sure it is still beatable in that manner - I glad that payed off :)

The levels are short enough that they can be beaten by luck. But having longer levels would have been quite frustrating due to dying in one mistake and having to replay the whole level.. I’m not sure what we could have done about that. But I would love to have a suggestion :)

And as for the intended level solution:

SPOILERS

None of the playtesters found the solution. It’s one of my least favorite levels. Usually we try to make the intended solution significantly easier and safer than a straight up fight with the turrets, but fighting the turrets here isn’t much harder..

Submitted(+1)

I surely enjoy exploring different genres, it's fun and refreshing! I also greatly appreciate your testing effort. (That level is hard but very interesting to know!)

For the luck aspect, I'm really nitpicking here as there is so much to like about the game. I guess a difficulty/accessibility setting as other participants have mentioned could ease it, because some levels are more of an action puzzle than a fast-paced shooter, and the core mechanic (efficiently defeating enemies within constraints of the terrain and the layout of objects) always stays fun no matter the timing windows or the game speed. Maybe an option to slow down the pace will encourage players to better revise and execute strategies instead of blindly wishing for luck. It's only my own idea and it may or may not be useful, but I write it out for reference. I find the game very enjoyable already!

Submitted(+1)

45 deaths. Very fun and juicy, collision detection is great and very emergent game design. The only problem I had was that I captured a bullet but it wasn't registered (?), not sure why

Developer

Thanks for playing it and for your feedback :) And that’s an impressive first score! most people that playtested got 60-100 deaths :D

May I ask how the capture wasn’t registered if you remember? Did you hear the sound and visual effect for a successful capture but still got hit by a bullet? Or were you unable release a bullet after a capture?

Submitted

I'm not really sure, either the bullet wasn't captured, or it went through the capture area and hit myself

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed this game a lot... and died a lot. Ha! Not sure if it was just my slow hand-eye-click coordination or something in the game but several times I felt like I had definitely captured the bullet that I ate. If it is not just me then perhaps a small amount of fine-tuning there or maybe an "old person mode". It is hard to believe how much can be achieved in what seems like a short window of time. Nice job overall. Congrats on your game.

Developer

I’m glad you still found it fun despite the difficulty. The timing window for capturing bullets is definitely quite tight - it’s actually almost frame perfect if you stand still and let the bullet fly straight towards you! That was definitely a tough parameter to tune and I wish we had time to add difficulty options and balance around them.

Thanks for your feedback! If we decide to flesh out the game, we will definitely consider adding difficulty and accessibility options.

Submitted(+1)

I was immediately impressed just from how the capturing with the camera and then re-deploying works. It is so smooth and feels great!  I found the whole thing incredibly polished and I actually had a ton of fun playing it!

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot! I actually spent a ton of time tweaking that to make it feel as good as possible - it’s very encouraging to see it noticed :)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Really cool game and clever mechanics and some fun levels and puzzles.

Submitted(+1)

Really nice game! I like the mechanic a lot and there are some clever level designs in here. Good work and also good sounds.

Submitted(+1)

Just got around to playing this, I think that as far as interesting mechanics and satisfying gameplay this is one of my top favorites in the jam so far! really satisfying

Submitted(+1)

I finished the game in ~10min and it is really  cool.
Mechanics graphics and audio are really nice !
There is easy level that teaches you how to play, so it's user friendly !
Globally the game is really nice !

Adding a max range & collision for throwing bombs could make the game less easy.
Also my screen height is < to the game canvas height and there is no fullscreen button (Do I missed it?) so I needed to scroll during some levels.

Well done !

Developer(+1)

I’m glad you liked it and had fun :D

We didn’t have time to add a fullscreen mode. If the game’s size (900 x 900) is too big for your screen you can zoom out of the web page in the browser until the game fits. I know it’s not an ideal solution..

(+1)

Really well done, the game feels fluid and fast-paced and the level design adds a layer of action to every battle.