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Off-Brand Hero's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun/Design | #6 | 4.352 | 4.352 |
| Music/Sound | #8 | 4.197 | 4.197 |
| Overall | #9 | 4.172 | 4.172 |
| Technical Implementation | #17 | 3.972 | 3.972 |
| Theme/Limitation | #17 | 4.225 | 4.225 |
| Graphics/Animation | #29 | 4.113 | 4.113 |
Ranked from 71 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game utilize the limitation and theme?
Character completes the hero's journey having grown in strength and power to ultimately return and defeat the starting boss. Character collects money and a substance called collectoplasm in order to collect costumes which unlock abilities.
What was your team size?
You worked alone
Affirm you have followed ALL jam rules. (Select all below or your entry will be disqualified.)
If your game includes any of the optional challenges, select them below:
Use a theme and/or limitation from one of the past 8 Bits to Infinity jams in addition to the main theme
Feature secret items rooms or features in the game
If you did any of the optional challenges, explain how they were used:
*Theme Party*
I used the additional theme of "Exploration" from the retro platformer jam. The game has a focus on exploring hidden areas to find the coins necessary in order to progress.
*Hidden Secrets*
There is a hidden room in my game with an easter egg sound file from when the music was being composed. There is a hint on how to get to it in my description.
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Comments
This was a lot of fun to play! I really liked the different powers.
Thanks so much for playing!
There are too many good things in your game! A really fun-packed experience. I love metroidvanias and I loved your game. The final costume punch animation caught me totally off guard, I didn't expect that much power... it was a good laugh. The music was also great, a bit loud, but really really catchy and fitting! 5/5 for me :D
Thanks so much! Yeah I had a blast putting together that final battle. I honestly think I could make an entire game out of that final ability and not have it get old. She’s quite the fighter! And you’re totally right about the music. I had a feature in my windows build where it would fade between a major and minor key in the boss areas of the level that had to be scrapped since it broke the HTML version and I didn’t have the time or know how to debug. In my effort to get a final build up before deadline, I just took a guess at the final music volume and got it totally wrong hahaha
this was Awesome! i have nothing to say just keep it up!
thanks! Glad you liked it!
Oh my gosh so cute. I loved the ending. I kept beating him up cause I thought that's what I was supposed to do then I felt really bad when we became friends. The costume abilities kept making me come back for more. This was a really sweet platformer great job. The one thing I would say is the music is absolutely way too loud It drowns out all your other great sound effects. Although it is a banger.
So glad you enjoyed it! Yeah you totally did fine on the final boss. I really just wanted it to be a catharsis moment of wailing on the dude after running away the whole game. And no need to feel bad, he totally deserved it. It wasn’t until after your mega punches that he realized he should be nice, so we’ll done!
Super fun game! I love the premise. I really enjoyed the costume changes. The music was great too, the kind of cheerful upbeat video game music I could listen to over and over while playing! Very nice work!
Thanks for playing and I’m so glad you enjoyed the music! Honestly the soundtracks are my favorite part of making a game and why I got into gam dev in the first place. It means a lot that you liked it!
This is definitely one of the more creative games I've come across in this jam. I think the idea is executed very well, and makes for an interesting platformer. Personally I wasn't a fan of the controls, but it did not impede on my ability to play the game.
Thanks for letting me know! For a future build, what kind of control scheme would work best for you? I always play platformers on a controller so my controls were basically a shot in the dark.
Hi, little bit of a delayed response on my part, but basically the main issue I had with the controls was the method of switching between the different costumes. It didn’t feel natural to rest my left hand so close to the bottom of the keyboard at all times. If you wanted to use the arrow keys for movement mainly, my suggestion would be to allow the player to rest their hand higher up on the keyboard so bind switching costumes to the A,D keys. Instead of jumping with the up arrow just bind that to spacebar that way the player doesn’t need to take their right two most dominant fingers off of the left and right arrow keys. Now for the costume abilities this would essentially become bound somewhere close to A and D. In this instance the F key would make sense but its an arbitrary decision. Ideally you could forget about any of this and simply make the controls fully rebind-able, that way your game is more accessible to people with different keyboard layouts or different types of common hand placement. All of this also assumes you choose not to incorporate mouse control at all. If you cycle between costumes it makes all the sense in the world for that to be a scroll wheel action. Then the costume abilities could rest on the left mouse button. To summarize all of the above, when taking into account how you want the player to control the game consider how people most often tend to utilize a mouse and keyboard. Where people most commonly rest their hands is either in the center of the keyboard (i.e. how people most commonly type) or for gamers: WASD keys + mouse. Anyways, long winded response aside, its a jam game so the controls weren’t really a deal breaker by any means, however I do hope this has been helpful for your game ventures in the future.
Absolutely amazing game, with one of the best (not exclusive to this jam) feeling control, and an adorable ending (though you could have not had the game jam logo when that text was showing up). Looked and sounded equally great and charming.
The secret was a fun Easter egg.
-Favorite part was the progression of the stages and 'power ups'. It was real nice to navigate, and the pacing of the boss occasionally returning was real nice. Also really liked the way the final boss battle had segmented health that popped in addition to their health bar, felt like a nice small extra punch to it. In addition to how fun the final costume (a great final costume) was to control.
Don't know how it made me think of it, but ended up making me feel like ages ago when I played the original jazz jackrabbit, that I either shouldn't be old enough or should be too old to remember.
-Honestly the most critical feedback I could give is fixing the awkward scaling of the UI hitboxes you've already mentioned, and making Y on the controller take you to your previous costume so you don't have to cycle through them all when using that. Aiming for a condensed polished game really paid off for you, you executed that goal with a great game and easily a favorite of mine :D.
Thank you so much for the kind words! And I’m so glad you were able to enjoy the final costume...I spent about a quarter of the entire project time working on the final level, so it means a lot to hear that it’s working well! I’ve never played Jazz Jackrabbit but I’ll have to check it out.
And funny enough, setting Y on the controller to be a reverse costume change was the very last thing I *thought* I implemented and I figured it was so simple I didn’t need to play test before upload. Of course, for whatever reason I messed it up and it does not work. It’ll be a 2 second fix once the project is released and I can update it. But I totally agree with all of your criticisms and I appreciate you getting through the whole game!
:).
Was from 1994 I just found out haha, surprisingly it's on gog but at a price I wouldn't really pay for its age unless you had nostalgia for it. I think it's just the kind of tactile navigation of your environment that somehow had me thinking of that, I'm honestly too surprised I thought of it, but felt right to mention. It was a game I did really love playing when I had it, back when you might have had that one game you just kept playing and playing.
Ouch, I know that feeling of last minute addition crossing your fingers it'll just work as intended. Happy to hear it was already considered there so will be available for the games future :).
Know worries, thanks for making a game I had too much fun with that I needed to finish it :)!
Amazing game, everything from the design to the implementation comes together extremely well. Unfortunately my game blacks out when I change costume sometimes so I haven't gotten very far, but what I've seen is very impressive!
Thanks so much for trying it out! Darn I’m sorry, I got that bug once with the costumes and I assumed it was a compiler issue when converting to HTML. If you are still interested in playing, try out the windows port! Otherwise I really appreciate the time you took to play and review :)
I've downloaded the Windows build and the error still occurs, only I get this log:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object oPlayer:
Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,6] out of range [1,6] - -1.cycle(100040,6)
at gml_Script_CycleCostumes
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_CycleCostumes (line -1)
gml_Script_PlayerMove
gml_Object_oPlayer_Step_0
The classic index out of range error, I'm not sure why this appears to be on just my PC, and because of that it's probably not your fault!
I hope no one else gets this, I can see your game placing highly!
Dang! I wish I knew why that happened...I haven't been able to recreate it sadly but hopefully I can get it better by the next build.
I’m going to be assuming a lot here about how you programed the array and data located within it, but a possible fix would simply be to Clamp the index value between min and max size of the array before accessing an element of the array. That way you can avoid any runtime errors and simply have to deal with logical errors surrounding that chunk of data in your code.
So... I have never given a 5 star rating... but WTF is this. This game is AMAZING, this is literally a game I would play day in, day out! Loved the music, art and concept. Very well done!!
Thank you so much! I’m so glad you enjoyed it! And I really appreciate the 5 stars!
Your game is awesome
thank you!
Soild game. Pogrresion was the best part of theme and the music was enjoyable. However, the chase sence was quite anoyying as it restarts every time you go thorugh a portal. Still was fairly enjoyable.
p:s: Please consider checking our game!
Thanks so much for playing through the game! Yeah that chase scene gave my wife some trouble too. I’ll probably add a health system to make things a bit more forgiving where you’re not instantly transported in the future.
I love the Metroidvania style. have been a fan of this genre for ages. I have tried many a times but failed to emulate it. You have succeeded. The music and cute art style adds to the appeal. I havent finished it yet. Got to the knight costume after playing for around 10 minutes, when I had to stop to write this comment. Definitely one of the best games in this jam. Would love to see more from you.
That's high praise! Thanks so much for saying that. I'm a huge metroidvania fan myself...can't get enough of them. It seems like every game I make turns into a metroidvania at some point or another. This theme I just happened to get away with something I've been wanting to make for awhile :)
This time around I was able to get past the lasers :D nice game :)
Thanks for giving it another shot!
I thought this was fantastic. I love your art and your music. The collection mechanic was really fun also to get the new abilities. I did have it crash a couple times however I kept trying and beat it because it was a lot of fun. Nice job with the level design also, I liked how you spread out the powers.
Thanks so much! Darn I'm sorry about the crashes. I wish I knew what caused it. I'm sure I'll have most of the kinks worked out in a later build. I really appreciate you going through and caring enough to finish!
This is great, I'm a big fan of Metroidvanias and that's what this feels like. Go around the level with blocked paths until you lock special abilities to get through, very well done. Other details that I liked were the compass to the shop (to keep you oriented), the squash and stretch animations and the unique abilities to unlock. You also followed the theme really well. Only minor bit of feedback is that the HUD sometimes covers the view of the player when they are at the top left of screen. Great job overall.
Thanks! Yeah in my next build I'm going to make the HUD fade away if the player or coin touches it. I agree it can be super annoying. I just barely squeaked out the HTML version in time which is where I didn't have enough time to adjust the scaling as well for the HUD. The problem still exists in the windows build, just not quite as bad I think.
Honestly I'm blown away by how good that was! Short indeed but incredibly fun. It's so easy for platformers to just not feel good, but your control scheme is perfect and it feels incredible.
Costume swap powers were all super unique and fun to play with. Kind of reminded me of Micky's Magical Quest back on SNES. Editing to say I did run into a black screen issue on my first playthrough. I think it was from my pressing escape assuming it was a pause function. Couldn't find a way to recover that without refreshing the page.
Thanks so much for playing! Oh yeah I used the escape key as a game end function on the windows version and I keep forgetting it doesn't translate well to HTML. I'll be sure to take that out on a future build. So glad you enjoyed it!
Really like the costume idea and the art is really cute. I was able to change costumes before i bought them and after i went through all of them, and i assume the game crashed cause all i saw was a black screen, so i wasn't able to finish the game :/ Really fun idea tho!
Hmmm I'll have to look into that...thanks for playing my game!
The costume idea is a very clever form of collectible. The audio design is also very nice. The game is very fun and cute! the only issues i had was with some screen taring and the camera was a bit stiff. Overall, great game!
It would mean a lot if you could check out my Jam submission if you get the chance. Thanks!
Thanks so much! I appreciate your feedback. And your game was so cool :)
I love this game I couldn't stop playing! :D I got a lot of costumes and having to go back to get the new costumes from the shop fits the theme really well! The UI was bothering me in some areas because the character would be behind it sometimes.. Great job! 😁
Thanks so much for playing! And yeah, I totally agree the UI is a bit cumbersome. In a future update this will be one of the first things I address.
Such a well-rounded experience. It had me wanting to complete (and I did). The switching mechanic was a bit difficult at times, but manageable. Great design, good use of the theme, very cute little game.
Thanks so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it.