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Ghostel's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics/Animation | #9 | 4.469 | 4.469 |
| Technical Implementation | #13 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Fun/Design | #15 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Overall | #16 | 3.994 | 3.994 |
| Theme/Limitation | #57 | 3.906 | 3.906 |
| Music/Sound | #94 | 3.344 | 3.344 |
Ranked from 32 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?
'Score' based on collection of orbs. A key mechanic is transfering between spirit and living. 'There and Back' being interpreted as traveling to the 'other-side' and back
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:
Feature secret items rooms or features in the game
If you did any of the optional challenges, explain how they were used:
There are a couple of hidden rooms in the map containing a number of orb pickups to increase score, as well as a few messages for the player. Access to these rooms is either visible but not simple to reach, or subtly indicated.
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Comments
Great game! I really dig the overall design and pixel art, it's super clean and pleasant to look at. One thing I felt tho, since the movement is a little bit fast and the camera is super sharp, it was kinda hard to see especially when double jumping. But overall, I really enjoyed the game, especially the art style!
I'd be happy if you can give a rate and a feedback on my game too :)
Thanks for the feedback, the camera has definitely come up in some other feedback too so there’s certainly something to be done to improve that. Thanks for the feedback on the game though,m I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ll be playing a few games this evening so will pop yours on the list.
Hey, love how we both had similar ghost ideas for our games :D I really enjoyed this short game, definitely had to do some puzzle solving to get to the end as ghost/normal mode had to be taken into account when going through doors. Really great world design though I did get quite lost so a map would have been nice so I can plan my approach but you would have to figure out if that would fit into your game or if you would like it to be more memory based. Good job on this one!
I had considered some form of map, but wouldn’t say I’ve considered if I have a preference of it over a more memory based approach. To be honest though in this case there just simply wasn’t the time once all was said and done. I’ll be sure to check out your project at some point, be interesting to see other peoples takes on a similar concept.
Thanks for the feedback, glad you enjoyed the game :)
Fair enough, definitely can work this concept into a grander experience! :) Enjoy the rest of the jam!
Really great game! One piece of feedback is that the camera is a bit sharp. When double jumping especially it feels very snappy. Might be nice to have a dynamic one or something that predicts where the player is going based on input? Other than that I loved the art style & music choice. Keep up the great work! :)
Would be great if you could check my game also <3
A fair comment, the current settings were made so that when falling the camera would show more of the area below the player so you weren’t falling blind. However it does result in the behaviour you described. The camera has separate ‘look head’ scales based ont he characters velocity on the horizontal and vertical axis, so perhaps I just need more time to balance those and dial in on better values.
Thanks for the feedback Glad you enjoyed the game, I’ll be sure to give yours a look.
Really fun game. One thing is that I never noticed that I had a double jump until I did some of the precision platforming and pressed jump twice by accident, but that was probably just me being dumb. The level design was great and made the exploring lots of fun. Again really nice game good job.
Yeah the lack of communicating the double jump has been mentioned in other feedback too so you’re not alone on that one. It’s definitely something that slipped my mind having just gotten too used to it being there, once updates are unlocked I’ll do a patch at some point to fix minor bugs and improve the communication of the double jump.
Thanks for the feedback though, I’m glad you enjoyed playing the game.
I really love the design of the world and atmosphere of this game, and all the art is amazing. This game was a joy to play. It's really evident a lot of work went into the making of this game. Great job!
Well thanks very much, I’m glad the effort shows and that you enjoyed playing it.
Fantastic job! I loved every minute of this. Beautiful artwork, great level design, and a few clever tricks made this a joy to complete.
“Ah they tried to trick me to swapping back into a human….. Oh I needed to be a human didn’t I” Wonderful moment to watch that :D Thanks so much for recording the play through, It’s really a great thing to be able to watch people as they play, see how they follow or don’t follow direction and get their train of thought as they play.
Glad you enjoyed the game, thanks for the kind words. It’s my first time trying a proper project in pixel art style and my largest amount of pixel art done for a project, so It’s really appreciated to hear people like it. There definitely are a couple small bugs but fortunately you don’t seem to have come across them.
I’ll be sure to check out you game this evening after work!
I beat the game! I love the pixel art and the level design is really good. You interpreted "There and Back" as going from living to ghost, but I thought the game fit the theme because you had to revisit some rooms again. I also love how you did the credits for your game. Great job!
Very good puzzle platformer game. I got pretty stumped and a little frustrated, but I finally managed to find my way out! Great work!
I'm not a big fan of platformers, but I loved this. I enjoyed the Halloween-ish atmosphere and the state change was fun to play with.
I didn't get to the end because I couldn't find the third lever, it may be on the other side of the small platforms, but I'm the worst a platforming so I can't get there. -_- I did play for nearly forty minutes because it was fun just running around and changing into a ghost. Also I found the secret room entirely by accident.
I do wonder about our character. He reads a sign that says he needs to turn into a ghost to continue and he's just like; 'Yeah, makes sense.' pfft, dude what?
So yeah, I adored this not too many games pull me in enough to continue even when I'm not making progress. 10/10 or rather 5/5. \^0^/
Haha fun review to read :D sorry to hear you didn’t get to the last lever. It does require some platforming though for sure. A sneaky tip, when you’re in the big tower room, if you go to to the floor where you turn into a ghost, drop off the side and hold left to get back into the halway, you can then take the stairs all the way to the top where it’s a little easier to jump across to the lever.
I’m glad you enjoyed the game. And yes, our heroic spirit walking character is willing to suspend all disbelief and take the realization of a machine that turns him back and forth from ghost to human all a days stride. We could all learn a lot from his reckless abandon :D
This game was great! The platforming was good. I found one hidden room. I couldn't hear the music really if there was any, but the game looked and felt really good!
There isn’t much in the way of music to be perfectly honest, It’s a very short loop of only a few bars and it’s quite low in tone, so very possible it was not super audible for some.
Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed the project.
Very solid secret room, 910 coins in the end. Beyond giving a clear path to the next thing I needed to do I'm unsure what the coins did as a collectable.
Super cute, simple, and surprisingly large amount of level space.
This game has a lot of polish and love.
Haha thanks for the kind words. Beyond functioning as a sort of ‘score’ they really didn’t have a purpose to be honest. I had ideas for how I wanted them to serve more mechanical purpose, like a kind of fuel allowing you to become a ghost instead of the machines, but by the time I developed that Idea, I didn’t have the time to implement it in a way I was happy with and that felt balanced. It’s definitely my biggest regret in terms of self assessment of the project.
As for the large space, it’s all just a benefit of a tilemap and large brushes, made creating rooms a lot quicker than having to place each tile individually.
Glad you enjoyed the game :)
I liked it a lot! The pixel art's nice and clean, music fits the mood well and overall just looks and feels good. I couldn't finish the game cause i didn't know where to go, but at least i found a couple secret rooms!
Sorry to hear you didn’t finish it, I’ll admit there’s definitely room for improvement as far as guiding the player through parts of the game, not being a designer I just had to kind of wing that part and do the best I could. But it’s something I’ve noticed from seeing people play it, and so definitely something for me to try and work on in future projects.
Glad you enjoyed the game though, thanks for the feedback :)
Really good, I was very impressed with the Main Menu. Visually appealing and enjoyable. The level design I appreciate it a lot, I vaguely got lost. I had a problem in the secret room, I interacted with the plank to read it and then I had no other choice but to return to the Menu, because i couldn't get that text panel away, though I was pressing E the panel didn't hide. Congratulations!
Sorry to hear about the signpost error in the secret room. I think I’ve seen the issue, if you hit the signpost without being on the platform you fall too far away from it, so it doesn’t register the attempt to dismiss. This is an oversight on my part which I’ll have fix up for once the rating stage is over and updates are unlocked.
But thanks for the kind words, I’m glad you enjoyed playing.
I really solid game there! I cant believe you made everything solo! The movement was just perfect for a platformer. I really love the art style and i really love the take on the theme! Great job! This is the best game i have played so far! Gave you a high rating 😉
Thanks a lot for the very kind words. The programming under the hood really isn’t anything super groundbreaking I don’t think, but I do that for a living. With these Jams I try to spend a good bit of time on the art which is not something I get to do in my day job, so it means a lot to hear people appreciating the style of it, makes those late nights staring at Aseprite worth it :D
I really should try and focus more on art. Im my pass few jams, i spend too long on coding the mechanics, and the art is usually rushed or in this jam, made by my partner. Maybe i should try doing a simple platformer or top down game. Anyways, great job and congrats!
Yeah it’s often a hard job to balance time on each aspect of a game project, especially during a jam with time constraints and what not. Your partner did a great job on your project, really love the art on it, and the gameplay and mechanics were super fun, you should be very proud of what you made!
That was SPOOKY fun! I love the haunted hotel theme and the flip between ghost and human form - nice use of the "power" flip for puzzle solving and level navigation. As a gamer who is notoriously horrendous at accurately jumping onto tiny platforms - I found these controls really smooth and manageable. So that's saying something. Very clean cute art style. I enjoyed the "interactive" menu - well done all around - I have no critics for you!
Thanks for the kind words, I too often struggle with platformers so I made sure to give this one a decent bit of input leniency, so there’s a little bit of coyote time and some allowance for pre-jumping.
The theme wasn’t really intended at first, I just started trying to make some backgrounds and it sort of just steered itself that way from the attempts I didn’t hate :D.
There is room for a lot more with the two modes mechanic, like items/pickups that require one state to show or perhaps be used. So definitely some more things for me to try and play around with.
I’m glad you enjoyed the interactive menu area. It’s something I did in one of my first semi-profesional games years ago so wanted to bring it back.
This game is a platformer done right! The controls were really fluid, responsive and it was really fun to jump!
The level design was really good and the pixelart was adorable!
Did you do the pixelart yourself?
Also, I found 2 secret rooms, 850 orbs and finished the game with a smile haha. (I LOVE secrets)
I wish I could give you a negative point but I can't really think of any right now.
Well thanks for the kind words, watched a lot of different tutorials and other games regarding platform controls to try and make it feel fun to move around.
I did yes, I’m not an artist by trade, but have always tried to have a crack every now and then as a hobby, and I actually stumbled on Vimlark a while back after looking for streamers doing pixel art as It was something I wanted to get into after watching some MortMort videos.
Two secret rooms were all that made it into this so well done on finding both. Definitely some things I want to improve and try out to build on top of the mechanics here but will see what the future holds.
Thanks again for playing, glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah I understand. I also like to make my game look good even if I'm not a graphist. And I think you nailed it!
Also I just saw your other Jam game with the cardboard game. I really love your style!
Maybe we should collaborate one day.
I'll be glad to help you with one of your future projects if you want? Like a game jam for example.
At least let me keep touch with you. Here is my discord ID : " Romain Bayer#1745 "
Feel free to add me. ;)
I prefer jamming solo just for the reduced responsibility. But I’ll be sure to add you on Discord, always good to connect with other creatives.
Thanks I enjoyed working on that cardboard style, It’s something that’s appealed to me for a while so was nice to have an excuse to try it out on a small project.
looks so good but I can't play as I use Mac :(
Ahh sorry about that, I can’t build for mac right now, but once the rating stuff is all done and the submissions are unlocked I’ll be more than happy to swap it to a web playable build.
Scratch that, decided to just upload it elsewhere for the time being, and will update the description of the game.
This build was created from the same version that has been uploaded to the jam, so you’re not missing out on anything, or getting anything extra.
http://fatwednesday.co.uk/Jams/Ghostel/index.html
This game looks super cool, and I dig the concept of going ghost. I managed to collect around 500 or so orbs, but when I entered the secret room, pressing 'E' didn't do anything and my game stopped there. Other than that, I like the game :) sad I wasn't able to finish it though. If you have the time I hope you can also play my game!
Thanks for the kind words and for playing. I’ve had another user mention a bug pressing E in the secret room as well. Was it a particular sign that you were pressing it on? Not sure why some users seem to get this bug but will be looking into it.
I’ll be trying to go through games this weekend so I’ll put yours on my list.
The game is really fun.
Feels good to explore the building and the mechanics!
This is one of the few games I have completed in this Jam
Nice job!
Bug: there was a bug when I entered on the secret room and pressed "E" to read the singpost, it halted there.
I hope you can play my game too! :D and give me some feedback!
Ooh interesting, I’ve not encountered that bug, but will take a look into it and see if I can work out what went wrong on your play through.
Glad you enjoyed the game, thanks for taking the time to play it. I’ll be going through a bunch of games this weekend (my god there are so many XD) so I’ll be sure to pop yours on my list to get through.
Very good design I liked it.
Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed the game.