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A jam submission

Solar FlareView game page

A magnetic experience!
Submitted by WPG1 — 8 hours, 12 minutes before the deadline
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Solar Flare's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound#772.0002.000
Theme#792.4382.438
Aesthetics#812.3132.313
Gameplay#832.1882.188
Overall#832.2342.234

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Nice gameplay dude. I voted. Maybe you could also play and rate my game?

Submitted(+1)

Of course it is a bit unpolished, but I think that the gameplay and the mechanic have potential! With a little change here and there this could be really good! Good Job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you, there's a lot of polishes and changes I want to do later, should be less rushed as well at that time as well lol.

Submitted(+1)

very good game, nice job!

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

pretty fun and i can see how this would become something bigger. the crash effect was really loud and i think need to be changed as well as more user feed back and i think it would feel even better to play

Developer

Thank You, definitely want and will take in the user feedback. 

Submitted(+1)

Okay! Now that I have played your game again while actually understanding here is some thoughts about the main mechanic of the game:

The main mechanic of the game is an interesting experiment! I don't remember seeing similar game in which moving has this kind of disadvantages/added challenge so it definitely has a unique element which is a good thing. There might be something really interesting to be found when exploring this type of mechanic!

However, in the current form I'm worried that in the end this mechanic might actually play a little bit against the game. In a dodging game like this the challenge of the game is avoiding being hit which requires movement to accomplish. And moving around dodging things is usually what makes those games fun. If I understood you correctly when I asked about the mechanics earlier you have meant the player to have always a choice between moving and not moving. What could be a problem here is that in this game staying still looks like to be the best option most of the time and the player should move only as a last effort. There is actually not much of a choice to be made. At the same time, not moving is not really very fun. So I feel there's a contradiction between what the player want to do (the fun) and what the players should do to win the game.

When I played the game, most of the time the obstacles did not fly in front of the beam so I just ended up looking the beam go up and waiting when I needed to react, which felt that I was not really playing a game. To solve this you might need to think about how to create more threats to the player also while they are not moving. I listed here a few ideas that came to my mind. If you are going to still work on the game later you can use these as inspiration if you find them feel useful.

One solution could be that you put more obstacles in their way to make it more likely that the player would need to change direction more often.  However having too many obstacles in the scene when player has to move might also force them to die because all the obstacles will be attracted towards the player.

Second solution could be that you somehow place the obstacles more cleverly instead of randomly. For example there could be obstacles that appear in certain interval that will always fall from directly above the player so the player would need to move regularly to avoid those.  And they would need to be careful about where the move because all the other obstacles will follow them.

Third possible solution would be to change the mechanic a bit so that some objects would always follow player. But the main point would be that when the player is moving the group of attracted objects  would be switched around. So for example, blue objects would follow player when they are still and red objects would the player when they move. Then player would always have to be careful and dodge elements that are getting too close and then that might get new objects following them. With something like this the player would have to be really careful about the move patterns like when and where to move which I believe was something that you intended.

This all is not to say that your game could not be fun now. It is really an interesting mechanic that you have invented! And I believe that with some tweaking the game could be really good!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for the review. All the points you made are really valid and the solutions are some good ideas. I really appreciate  the time and thought of this review. I do want to work on the game at a later date, so going in and using this advice will be really beneficial. Thank you for your review :)! 

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Hi! I tested your game just now but I was a bit confused about how the mechanic works? Could you please explain the basic idea. Is it that always the player is moving the beam, the beam becomes magnetic and attracts the obstacles towards it?

Developer(+1)

Hi, the idea was that the player swaps between moving and not moving. So, they have to decide and plan when it’s best to move and when not. The magnetism is only active when moving, while not the objects are set to move randomly.

Submitted

Okay! Thanks for explaining. I will try the game again with this info.

Developer

No problem. It is a strange mechanic I should probably go in and add a better explanation at the start for players.

Submitted(+1)

Nice little game! I like the concept a lot, and the leaderboard works great!

I can definitely tell you felt the time crunch with this game, there are a lot of things that seem unfinished (text too slow, credits button not working, death noise repeats), but ignoring those, great game!

Developer

Thank you! I definitely felt the time limit haha, I wanted to focus more on the main mechanics, so there is a lot of the other aspects I want to go back in and polish up.

Submitted(+1)

Nice idea but it would also be nice if the player could speed up the text or skip it all in general so the player could get straight to the gameplay! :)

Developer(+1)

Thank you, I only kept basic for now with being able to press space before text finishes. Definitely needs more polishing.

Submitted(+1)

beware of death sound which is unsustainable

Developer

Yeah I really wish I noticed it before I hit my time limit, especially since it can be annoying to player.

(+1)

Nice little game! 

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Peculiar idea, nice concept for a little game ^_^

Developer

thanks, I wanted to try and do something that incorporated few basic ideas into one main.