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A jam submission

We As SlavesView game page

Submitted by AzuNeko Productions (@AzunekoProd), StembergerMusic, Raymarcus, EinelTheFox — 3 days, 7 hours before the deadline
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We As Slaves's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#1073.2664.000
Theme#1082.8583.500
Engagement#1342.4493.000
Overall#1392.4493.000
Gameplay#1801.2251.500

Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

In all honesty I found this one very frustrating and I'm not sure how much is on purpose. Items like logs weigh 50 (more than half of your starter weight) and are worthless while others items weigh like 0.5 and cost more. I'm not sure what the idea is behind making these items' weight so ridiculously far apart. Weight was almost never an issue because I knew exactly what to throw out first every time. I feel like there shouldn't be a limit on weight but rather a debuff. Similar to Lethal where you move slower. I know this is easier said than done but I feel like it'd help. Especially with items like the Chunks of Uranium Crystal. I'm not sure why but even with all 4 party members I wasn't able to pick up this item. The max carry weight with every party member is 180 and the crystals weigh 215. I might've missed a max carry weight upgrade of some sort. Which I probably wouldn't have gotten anyways because I never had enough money. They're strict as hell with your allowance. You'll usually end up with a little over 1000 dollars by the end of your first day plus a small bonus if you exceed quota by however much the game wants you to.  Which is never enough to buy a lot. The most important thing to get feels like party members, which cost about 1000 each.  Which is a common number in the shop. I often felt like everything in the shop eats through all of your allowance.  Even one use items that you feel would give you a little bit of an edge in combat like throwables and consumables cost the same amount as a person. Which makes sense for the world but locks you into what you can and cannot buy. Which doesn't help with a constantly rotating pool of new items each day. Combat feels intense and not in a good way. The enemies are either numerous, strong, or just really annoying. I never felt like I was prepared for any fight. I found myself escaping from almost every single encounter I came across because of how deadly every encounter can end. This also in turn despawns the enemy until you leave and come back. Which is something that always seemed to work. At its worst you'd run into a troop of 5 bats who all get an attack in before you can escape. At its best you run into a slow enemy and are able to escape without a scratch. Speaking of that I wasn't the biggest fan of the QTE for almost every skill. While it does keep the player engaged in the combat it also gets old after doing it against a troop of 5 bats. At some point I got lost and bored of the looting gameplay and just kept fighting everything til I died.

I know I had a lot of negatives here but I think you have a really really really good base for a game here. A grimy setting, a weight system, quota mechanics,  great presentation and randomization. It has a good core, it just needs some balancing. Which makes sense considering the small amount of time you had to make this. Every added mechanic takes a lot of play testing to get perfect and there are a lot you have to account for. There are a lot of moving parts here and it's okay if they aren't all oiled. For what it is I find this very impressive. I just think you need to reevaluate the focus of the game. Like it'd be really cool to take inspiration from something like darkest dungeon, where it's more battle focused and the treasure is a side objective. Because as it stands right now  it's not very fun to run away from every enemy and collect random things you find. But for now I really like what you made and look forward to seeing this updated. Don't get discouraged.  Every moment is one for improvement. Keep up the good work. 

Developer(+1)

I did sorta rush this game towards the end, not really having a lot of time for play testing.

I may not return to this game specifically, as even I wasn't too pleased with how it turned out, but I may use its base for a future game, incorporating the things you suggested.

Submitted

I look forward to your future projects. I'd really love to see what you can make with no time constraints or deadlines. 

Submitted (1 edit)

I'll give the Overseer credit. They definitely made me suffer playing through this game. If the design is intentional, you certainly convinced me to stop after patiently playing for 3 runs for 2 hours. Because by that point, the game became unfun and I started questioning why am I wasting my time when the story hasn't gotten good yet. Mind you I played this on Easy because at first trying on Insane difficulty was what I tried to do until the first encounter.

At first the game itself had potential. Then you get to day 3 and you need to scavenge a lot of stuff, requiring a minimum of 15000+. You're basically restricted by weight and power, some stuff you earn doesn't net you much value, the maps are dark, one encounter can 2-3 shot you without much trouble unless you buckle down and upgrade. And they ain't cheap. You earn 2400 - 3000 at most and those 2000 are mostly used to pay for the other 2 party members. Everything is RNG in the worst sense, its difficult to navigate the terrain and find even the exit because the map itself is waaaaaayyyyyy too big for me to net around. There's no mini-map option which doesn't help one bit. It gradually becomes unfun the longer I played.

Saves are only on campsites.

The encounters with the enemies range from nightmare to absolute hell. The rats can stomp you with numbers. The bats can blind you, reducing accuracy. The robots can deal 50%+ of your HP, the blob can attack you with 90+ HP. The only saving grace are the coins who are super tanky but they do nothing until they run.

Also, enemies level up while you don't which is vastly unfair on your end. Which makes me question what the point of a level is in this game.

Now I'm unsure if its because I played on Insane then turned down to Easy yet the numbers don't change (which is a bug) or I actually am playing on easy and its still a nightmare regardless. Mind you, this doesn't include the thirst/drink mechanic that could kill your survivors if you don't give them rations.

I personally thought this game's presentation and atmosphere is well done but the gameplay is just... tedious. Even with the brutal encounters and stuff.

Developer

I don't know if this makes it better, but this was intended to be a Lethal Company-like game.

There is no story, and no ending.

Submitted

Ah. If that's the case, then I would have to view this differently.

That being said, my point still stands. I guess if you're keeping to the integrity of your game design then I won't chastise you further on the matter. This confirms that its not my type of game. I wasn't aware of Lethal Company and the little research I got I wasn't exactly a huge fan of it. So that pretty much reflects to this one as well.

I won't let biases get to me though. Presentation wise, this is well made. I won't knock points off for that.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback.

I've updated the game page to make it more clear what type of game this is.