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A jam submission

Mental PhysicsView game page

Follow the story of the protagonist stuck in his own mental world
Submitted by GBRO Games (@gbrogames) — 14 days, 11 hours before the deadline
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Mental Physics's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#883.0003.000
Overall#1182.8252.825
Presentation#1203.2003.200
Gameplay#1212.5002.500
Engagement#1292.6002.600

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Hello! I streamed your game, and I'm really REALLY surprised you managed to pull this off in RPG maker. I already saw some platformers plugin, but the PHYSICS were what got me. By that alone, this game was beyond expectations.

Story-wise, it's a concept I liked, even if it's not the focus of the game.

Gameplay-wise though, despite the programming is very impressive, this game doesn't work well for me. The combat has no real depth, since it's mostly spamming an attack or moving away. Enemy projectiles are too fast that are very impossible to dodge. The boss had a pattern - and I liked that - but again his scythe was too fast and unfair. Luckily there was the removal of game over for the jam, but that felt more like a necessity instead of a reduction of difficulty. And as a note, the air movement was pretty fluid, but it was VERY awkward to not be able to control the jump in a way to fall vertically: after the jump you can only move either left or right, not stand still.

I personally enjoyed the troll section, even if it felt a little out of nowhere since the previous parts of the game were very different. Though in the second part all the collisions were way off and it was a mess. I thought it was a very big bug/oversight, but reading the comments I realized it was not. Though it was definitely not clear, and I played the entire section without any reference point. I suggest to have another player test your game to see if some mechanics are understandable or not, since developers often have the "curse of knowledge" for their game.

A pretty impressive game, really. The technical aspect is really beyond expectations. Though the lack of a lot of polish aspects unfortunately negatively impact the experience.
If you're interested, here's the VOD from the stream: 

Submitted

This was pretty cool. I got stuck once, but other than that, it is a pretty cool game. 

Submitted

It's really not for me. I'm not a fan of trolly plataformers, and it's really not helped by the somewhat clunky controls.

  • No music: why?
  • Enemies have WAY too much hp for no good reason.
  • Probably tied to the plugins used, but controls are very wonky and its very weird how you jitter around walls.
  • Story: first go through the house is fie to et up mood, second go with the confessions feels forced and not earned.
  • Enemies with bullets will hit you before they're visible.
  • Visuals were ok! The presentation (music aside) was all ok. 
  • No game over for the contest is a neat touch, but it was still jank enough to cause me to quit (with the caveat I'm not really into these kinds of games). 

Obviously this game was not made for people like me, so take my input with a grain of salt. 

Submitted

Seems impressive for RPG Maker, but still the gameplay itself felt a bit "janky" and it was too confusing for me at least in the beginning. Like suddenly all the floors vanish, it seemed hard to dodge the projectiles, sometimes hitting a wall seemed to kill me(?) and sometimes the sprite "glitched" when being very close to the walls. At the start you could also multi-jump endlessly and use your arrow to go up. The presentation is nice, kind of Limbo-like.

Submitted

Very interesting game to make with RPG maker! The plugin you created for physics seems great. I was looking for something similar for ages. The game itself is quite interesting too. The themes are very relatable, especially to game devs i think, and the graphics are simple but quite effective. I also really enjoyed the responsiveness of the sword and arrows in game, the controls were tight in that respect.  But the platforming was a little more difficult to control. The game became excessively hard for me soon as I left the house entered that gian room with buzz saws and hidden pitfalls. All in all great job and definitely went beyond my expectations for this jam :)

Developer

Thanks for trying the game. 

I just wanted to clarify that the excessiveness of the traps in the second map was an intentional design choice. I was trying to create something similar to the effect of Unfair Mario, but it seems that either people weren't familiar with the reference, or simply weren't expecting rage-inducing troll traps given the serious tone of the story. As a result, the design came across as annoyingly imbalance (based on the three comments so far), which was not my original intent. 

Maybe I should have added more traps to make it obvious that they were there to troll the player..?

Submitted(+1)

Yea I think it would help to either go over the top by adding more to make your trolling intensions obvious, or continue the more gradual increase of difficulty that has already been happening from the start of the game by giving us a couple more screens that are harder but not so difficult all of a sudden in between. I would personally encourage the second option because, as you said, it doesn't fit the serious tone of the game that you have built so far, and that works very well. (I don't know Unfair Mario, but will check that out. sounds interesting)

Submitted

honestly this game did convince me to get your plugin so as a tech demo it was definitely impressive. but onto the actual review.


the story of the game is definitely on the relatable end, lots of points that hit hard so i was pretty engaged to see how the game would go, i like the aesthetic of the game too being very limbo-esque. and the gameplay for an rpgmaker game is extremely impressive! controls were tight and responsive so i enjoyed moving around in game.

i reckon the biggest flaw of the game is the level design especially the dungeon area. i get that the game is about overcoming an uphill battle of mental struggle but it was a struggle i found more frustrating than challenging to the point i was trying doing exploits to skip platforming segments instead of engaging with the game itself.

regardless, with the right direction of balance and level design, i think this can go places if polished properly! i really want to try the plugin for myself and see what i can do with it.

Developer

Thanks for the review. 

By exploits, were you shooting the arrow downwards to propel the player up? I was actually wary of this, and initially had cooldowns for every action (melee/ranged attacks), but later on removed them along with game over to make it easier for play testing.

Submitted

there was one point in the dungeon where you had to hit the skull where i just shot the skull through the wall cause i was too frustrated going through the invisible maze.

Submitted

Very interesting game, I like the art and story a lot and making this type of game in rpg maker is commendable.

Things start to get very confusing and difficult very quickly, it started to feel quite buggy and random once the invisible platforms entered, I guess this is the point, but not all that great to actually play. really cool concepts though, i think with playtesting and reworking some things this game could be great.

I had fun with it.

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you for playing.


A hint for the other players (SPOILER ALERT!):

- After getting the fake fragment, the collision of the entire map changes such that: previously walkable platforms are no longer walkable, and the objects in the background (bench, bed, bate, words, trees, etc.) become the new walkable platforms