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Karma's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| How well did the game follow the constraint | #1 | 4.833 | 4.833 |
| How well did the game visuals follow the SNES theme | #1 | 4.833 | 4.833 |
| Overall | #1 | 4.389 | 4.389 |
| Unexpected or surprising elements in the game | #1 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Quality and fit of sounds and sound effects to the game | #2 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Overall uniqueness of the game concept | #3 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Cohesiveness of game elements | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Assumed constraint was followed because Karma was the main character and Freya was played.
- This game had me hooked from the beginning! What a unique story-line and approach to the constraint. The controls were super intuitive, the gameplay was unique and well executed. This is a game I would have definitely picked up and enjoyed in my younger years when I played the SNES. You should be incredibly proud of what you accomplished in such a short time! :)
- This was one of my top two favorite games in this game jam. Super well done, great graphic design and music, sound effects lent themselves well to the game's atmosphere. I enjoyed the storyline, and felt that the constraint of 'you are not the main character' was really well adhered to, and that this was an interesting take on that creative constraint. I liked the play through mechanics, turn based battle setup, and I thought the level ups didn't take too long to build for this shorter game. I would be interested in a longer play through, and seeing what more levels, map areas might end up like. I usually don't go for side scrollers or western themes for games, and I found this to be really fun. I also appreciated the strong female characters. :) One small thing was that I felt like the running/galloping mechanic was a bit finicky--and I couldn't figure out if this was a click timing on my end, an in game mechanic related to Karma's energy levels, or something like map/terrain preventing a gallop. Apologies if I missed clear notes about this in the instructions--speaking of which, I really appreciated the in-game instructions and helpful explanations. Awesome job, thanks to the creators/developers for this great entry!
- The game itself is really well made with great visuals and music. Overall the atmosphere is top notch. The dialogue is a bit stale and would probably benefit with maybe a cutscene or something (if possible). Gameplay was fine (so long as you are a fan of turn-based combat). The combo system was a bit frustrating at times as many of the combinations seem to just fail. Also the enemy scaling is a bit rough and I finished at the tumbleweed as I just repeatedly was getting one-shot and did not want to grind long enough to beat it.
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Comments
Fantastic art, music, and story. I thought some of the combat was a little slow and confusing to figure out at first. But, I got the hang of it eventually. Nice take on the jam constraint as well!
Thank you :D! Yeah, I think it takes a bit too long to build up combos which makes it harder to experiment with the different abilities. Also would have been better to just restore health automatically after each battle to save on the backtracking :)
Wonderful pixel art and interesting use of the bear as a roadblock early on! I could absolutely see this being a great Steam game.
Thank you! I want to give yours a proper try this afternoon :D
I haven't had a great chance to sit down and play a lot of the jam stuff, but I pecked at this today and I like it quite a bit. Western RPGS are awesome and few and far between, so it's really cool to see one! There's some stuff I'm pretty impressed by already: The horse animation is really solid, I appreciate how the camera shifts to accommodate Karma at a gallop (a lot games kind of forget to do this), and I enjoy the experimentation with the progression system. A lot of RPGs don't go beyond like and exp-level system (not even the ones I've done so far :V), but it's something I've been thinking of messing with a lot in smaller RPGs. The system here probably most reminds of like, some of the SAGA games' spontaneous skill development and skill combos. Very cool to see ^^
Thanks for taking the time to play the game :D! Yeah I've been wanting to play around with different takes on an RPG for a while, so glad to have given it a go. I was quite inspired by Live a Live for the setting as well so it's a bit of a game mash-up!
The horse animations are from this amazing asset pack 😊: https://onfe.itch.io/horse-sprite-with-rider-asset-pack
Live a Live is so gorgeous! Even the SNES original is super pretty. I feel a little bad that the Wild West chapter is kind of a small one compared to some of the others, but it's still cool. The only other western RPGs I can think of are Boot Hill Heroes, UFO 50's Grimstone, and err, maybe Wild Arms? I don't know enough about wild arms to say so, but I know some of its music feels western-inspired, so I dunno. I'm excited to try the Live A Live remake sometime soon, it's uhh on the list XD
That horse sprite is an excellent selection too, I'm pretty sure if you had to animate a horse like that it could easily take a month all on its own! I've done like one quadruped walk cycle before and it takes forever even with plenty of reference, so definitely a better use of the time to do like the coding and implementation and stuff ^^
Yeah, I’m not aware of many western style ones either – I think people mostly think of games like Read Dead rather than turn based rpgs 😆
The horse sprites definitely made it! I had originally wanted to add proper animations for all of the different abilities, then realised how much time that would take (not to mention, probably wouldn’t have turned out that great), but maybe one day I’ll give it a go!
I will say I fairly enjoyed this game. Nice concept that should be continued. The music is probably my favorite aspect. I will say the battle theme felt a little of to me personally.
Running with the horse is quite cool and makes me feel like Im in that world. The battles I didnt understand, to be fair I didnt read the instructions since i never do with turn based combat (I like to learn on my own throughout the game). They felt quite slow as well but that might account for me not reading Lol.
Either way good game, hope you continue with this.
Thanks for giving it a try and for the feedback 😊! The pacing relies quite heavily on unlocking moves quickly, but I am thinking of cutting down on how many turns it takes to build up combos so that it's easier to unlock those moves without having to play through at least 5 turns each time :). I do also want to add a way of seeing the actual stats for each ability in the game so it's easier to work out what the difference in speed/strength/crit. hit rate etc is but ran out of time before the jam deadline 😅
I really enjoyed playing your game, the combat system is solid as the exploration in a screen scrolling experience.
I lost my time playing this and trying to complete all the ability-dex of Karma, it’s a job done very well.
Music and environment works really good with this pixelated graphic.
I only complain that sometimes throught a location to another the screen just freeze and I need to reload.
Besides that, I think this is a good game.
Thanks so much for playing, and for the feedback - I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for spotting the location freeze issue! It looks like I deleted one of the scenes in a moment of madness 🙈... I've now reuploaded with a fix :)