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A jam submission

TravelerView game page

Game made for Game JAM Untilted Game Jam #62 Theme: Multiverse
Submitted by robinaksen, Amanion — 5 minutes, 2 seconds before the deadline
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Traveler's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Visuals#14.6674.667
Use of Theme#14.3334.333
Gameplay Enjoyment#23.6673.667
Overall Enjoyment#33.3333.333
Overall#33.7223.722
Creativity#33.6673.667
Audio#52.6672.667

Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted (5 edits)

I wanna start out by saying the the pixel art, animations, and background look amazing! The movement also feels very responsive as well. Good work!

Below are some notes on the game as I played through.

  • At the start of the game, dialogue appears explaining the controls. You should probably include somewhere that you have to click your mouse to continue. I was stuck on that "Move using A or D" sign for longer than i would like to admit lol.
  • I think it is cool that the game requires the the player to shift dimensions right after jumping or in midair. It forces the player to think on their feet and I feel it makes the game more exciting. 
  • I think you should map your jump button to the "W" key or Up arrow. This would allow someone to more easily control all the movement keys with one hand while using the other to press shift to jump dimensions. Either that or offer a menu to allow the player to set their own keys to suit their preferences.
  • You cannot shift dimensions if you are standing in an area that would have spikes in the other dimension. I think you should allow the player to shift and then die in this manner. I think it would add to the challenge and increase the importance of memorizing what the other dimension looks like. 
    • Addendum: at one point I did switch dimensions and it instantly killed me so the mechanic is a little inconsistent. However when it killed me i didn't have time to see what actually killed me because the game teleports you back to the start on death. If you were to include death by switching dimensions you should probably have the death screen linger a bit so the character can see what killed them.)
    • Addendum: I realize this mechanic is also a double edged sword. I like to switch dimensions right after I jump and I suspect the game delays the switch until I am clear of the spikes which is nice. However a couple times I tried switching while jumping from a platform that had spikes in another dimension and the game never switched over causing me to land and die in a pit of spikes.  I suspect it might have been because i tried switching too early and the delay between switching and clearing the spikes was long
  • At one point, I had the character 1 level next to a ledge that had spikes on it. While the spikes were on a different level if my character pushed up against the ledge they would die when I expected them to just run up against the  ledge safely since they were not in direct contact with the spikes. Maybe you could reduce the size of the player's hitbox or the size of the spikes hitbox at the sides of the spikes. 
  • At one point i jumped above the top of the screen and switched dimensions causing me to remain up above there. I think you may have some leftover platforms in the ceiling lol. 
  • When the buttons are introduced, I don't think it is made clear to the player that they have to push a button before they stand on the exit pad. Maybe include some dialogue to point the players in the correct direction.
  • I think its pretty cool that some of the buttons exist in one dimension but not the other. Makes me paranoid tho to think I  could be accidentally walking past one lol.
  • I ran into a bug where if you teleported while jumping into the side of a platform your character's feet got stuck inside the platform. I thought it was funny at first but it actually caused the game to get softlocked since I couldn't escape no matter what I tried (And that was on the last level too :((( ). Maybe you can add a pause screen or a reset button so that the player can restart the level if they want to.
  • The sound effects are good but I think the game could really benefit from some music! There are many websites that offer royalty free music. I have a spreadsheet that can help you find them https://gamedevelopmentwiki.readthedocs.io/en/latest/community/assets.html

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game! 

Btw I had a question. In order to switch between dimensions did you have 2 tile maps or did you do it using some other mechanism? I am wondering what method would be the most efficient for that kind of effect. In my game I had a 2 isometric tile maps (one for walls and one for the floor) and to switch between dimensions I swapped out the tiles based on a dictionary map. 

P.S: I noticed that on the game page under the "More Information" section Robinaksen is the only listed author. If you want to add additional authors to the game, Robinaksen can do the following:

  1. Go to the dashboard and locate the game
  2. Under the "more" dropdown click "contributors"
  3. Paste other itch.io accounts to add them as admins to the game page
  4. Once added click the box next to their name that says "display as contributor"

P.S.S: In the future you should think about releasing WebGL builds for your projects. I think it makes the game more accessible since it is available to others regardless of the platform. Also some like myself are a little unnerved about downloading an unsecure program onto our computers.

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks a lot for your helpful feedback!

- regarding you being stuck in the dialouge: it is actually written in the first page of the dialouge that you have to click the left mouse button, but of course it can happen that you accidentally skip that by clicking with the mouse :D

- about the hitbox of the spikes: thanks, this was pointed out from multiple people that played the game and we will make the hitbox smaller from now on

- the info regarding the custom control, music and itch.io usage, etc. was very helpful!

- the bugs/inconsistent mechanics probably happened because we forgot to place some tiles, we will try to fix that. Maybe it helps to add a small effect when you failed to port because of the mechanic? those are good suggestions tho


overall its cool that you enjoyed playing the game!


since you wanted to know how we implemented the switching mechanic: we just built the same level a second time a few units below the first one and just added or removed from the y position of the player to teleport him up in one or down in the other level


Submitted (1 edit)

OMG the Y position switching is so simple yet so genius! I had so much trouble activating and deactivating objects since I was working within the confines of a single tile map at the same position for all dimensions but now I won't need to Thanks! Btw are u using cinemachine to follow the player? In another game jam I had a space ship that would teleport when crossing the boundaries of the play area. The cinemachine camera would be jumpy when that happened so I had to set the damping to zero as it got to the boundary. Did you guys do something similar?

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for the huge feedback, very helpful to get a detailed review like that. Helps to improve yourself as a developer/designer!
To be honest about the y position teleporting. The main problem with it is, is that it's super susceptible to human error like you already noticed with wrong warping and stuff like that. So you gotta watch out there, except that, good luck with it!!

Yes! We used cinemachine to setup the camera . There is a handy command you can use: OnTargetObjectWarped() (https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.cinemachine@2.3/api/Cinemachine.Cine...), basically you just have to give the camera the vector3 where the target warped and you should be fine! Also we only used one confiner object with it and just teleported it with the player. 

Glad you enjoyed our game! c:

Submitted

Oh cool! Didn't know about that. Thanks again for the developer insights!

Submitted

The Art was absolutely stunning, amazing how you pulled it off in such a short time. The use of theme definitely made me think of "Multiverse". 

However one thing that really took away from the game and stopped me from enjoying it as much as I could have were the hitboxes for the spikes. They felt really sensitive, especially from the sides, because of how sensitive they were it meant that sometimes even though the spike was on the block diagonally up to me, If I walked too close it would kill me, which stopped me from getting a good enough run up for a jump.

Despite the hitboxes, the game felt really polished and I loved the art work, Good Job !!

Developer

Most people feel the same about these spikes haha, we will definitely consider this issue when creating future games. Thanks so much for the feedback! :)  We're happy you enjoyed it!

Submitted

No worries, good job on it !

Submitted

Cool game. It was hard to time things right and sometimes the universe shifting wasn't responding, but otherwise a solid platforming take on multiverse.

This is the kind of game that came to mind when the theme of "Multiverse" was announced.


Great Job!

Developer

Thanks for playing! Hope you enjoyed it! The universe shifting is explained in the first level, it tells you that you cant shift, if you would die in the other world. It still seems to be a bit non-intuitive to have it like that, we will try and figure out a way to enhance this concept. Thank you for the feedback!