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Gravity Grapple's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound | #70 | 2.108 | 3.333 |
| Aesthetics | #85 | 2.214 | 3.500 |
| Overall | #98 | 1.818 | 2.875 |
| Gameplay | #102 | 1.581 | 2.500 |
| Theme | #116 | 1.370 | 2.167 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Movement is a bit slow but overall interesting game with potentional future after the game jam!
I tried to play this before reading all the comments here, then again after I read them. My first thoughts was that the controls must not be working, because I wasn't moving even though I was holding down the WASD and arrow keys. When I came back to it after the comments, I can see what you were going for in terms of momentum.
I think it might've felt more fun if the astronaut was moving around the screen, grappling from asteroid to asteroid, rather than staying in one spot and dodging them as they come. I wanted to have more freedom to move around in this space you created, maybe using the jetpack on my back to help project me places (with a fuel limit?). I also was confused as to why the gun wasn't really helping me destroy the asteroids, or maybe it was and I wasn't getting enough feedback showing how much damage it was taking or remaining health it had.
This is a really solid game though, especially for 3 days worth of work. I loved the different obstacles, the particle effects, and how the soundtrack really amplified the gameplay experience. This can be something really great, if you continue to work on it! 😄
Ah, the down sides of only having 3 days to develop... as I told someone else, what we wouldn't give for just 3 more, right? 😆
Okay, that makes sense now! I think there's something about the asteroids that looked so darn destructible, maybe just from playing other space shooter games, that it didn't click in my head that it's possible they could be invincible. I bet something could be done to show that the player's gun isn't marking a mark against them.
But yeah, of course! Your game was fun, glad that I got the chance to play it and give you some suggestions 😊
Aesthetics and sound are really nice but the controls are just extremely awkward and bring down an otherwise great game. I get you're supposed to grapple onto the rocks to build up speed but it just doesn't feel like you have much control over it. The hitbox or raycast or whatever you're using for the grappling seems really off. Sometimes I'd grapple a rock on the other side of the screen easily despite my cursor not being that close to it and sometimes I couldn't grapple a rock that was pretty close to me no matter how much I clicked and where my cursor was in relation to it. Can certain rocks not be grappled? It also seriously sucks that rocks can't be destroyed with your blaster. It just results in situations where you slowly hurtle towards your impending doom and there's nothing you can do about it because there's no other rocks to manoeuvre and the lasers from your blaster do nothing to damage it. It ends up feeling frustrating to play and not in the "Damn, I should have done X instead" way but the "I was not in control of that situation" way.
Despite that, you did a great job with the graphics and this is a solid entry. Nice work!
Haha, no worries. I tend to go off on a tangent sometimes and this is one of those cases.
I don't mind games that have a high skill ceiling, but the controls need to be 110% rock solid for them to feel fair and fun rather than frustrating. Take Super Meat Boy for example. Pretty much every death in that game is due to my own mistakes because the controls are tight and responsive. Any 'impossible situations' I end up in are due to my own error and that's why the game got so popular in the first place. In Gravity Grapple, it's just too easy to end up in a situation where you're at the game's mercy regardless of whether you made a mistake or not. I've since played it a bit more and got a bit better but it feels like even if I became a master I'd still end up dying to stuff out of my control. The randomness of the rocks, the floaty space movement and the weird grappling hitboxes are just too unpredictable and unintuitive to ever gain full mastery over. Whenever I die in Super Meat Boy I know exactly what I did wrong, but in Gravity Grapple I just question whether there was anything else at all that I could have done to survive.
I get what you're saying about aiming the grapple being an extra skill factor but I'm almost certain there's some kind of issue with the hitbox of the rocks. It seems like you need to grapple a very specific point of the rock that differs with every one. Some are close to the centre and easy to get but others seem to be on the top or bottom or in some cases off the rock entirely. I know this because there have been a few occasions where the line(I assume it uses a LineRenderer) ends at a point behind the rock or slightly off one of the sides rather than on it. I should just be able to right click on any point on the rock and be able to grapple to it, but it doesn't seem to work like that for some reason or another.
I hope that explains my thoughts a bit better. I went off on another tangent again but hopefully it's helpful for you! :)
I loved this game! though I felt the controls were a bit off. I would have to move in a direction for a really long time just to move a little. I felt I couldn't dodge any rocks if there were any in my path. Otherwise I felt this was a really solid entry, well done!