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Orb & Sorcery's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #13 | 3.471 | 3.471 |
| Overall | #14 | 3.559 | 3.559 |
| Graphics | #15 | 3.941 | 3.941 |
| Theme | #15 | 3.588 | 3.588 |
| Overall | #16 | 3.588 | 3.588 |
| Fun | #25 | 3.176 | 3.176 |
| Originality | #25 | 3.588 | 3.588 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Great effort! I thought the focus on the use of the orb was interesting. However, it was a bit slow in movement for such a large space.
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Comments
Nice work on the orb control! I loved just tossing it around and snapping it back into my hand. Was really cool to see all of the things it could do as well!!! Impressive amount of progress.
Awesome game! My favorite part was spending way too long trying to throw the orb onto the balcony... and I did it!
I'd say the only points of improvement would be adding sounds and more game to play!
Nice level layout and the throwing works really well.
You made great use of the orb's mechanics! Between the effects, lighting, & models, the visuals are stellar.
The lack of sound did drag the experience down a bit, but overall exploring the castle was pretty engaging, I only wish I could have hung out in the loot room longer! :P
Let me know what you think of my game when you get a chance to check it out!
Hey really dig the visuals here! Your game is featured in this video:
Oh thanks for the heads-up and for recording our game! You're not the first to mention that the teleportation system can get a little tiring after a while. A full game would probably contain an accessibility option to just shoot the ball along an arc to mimic standard teleportation more closely (but the levels could also be designed to avoid long stretches of travelling without anything to do along the way).
The level design and graphics in this game are SPOT ON. Really amazing work on this in the short time frame. And of course there's so muych potential, I could play this for days on end, I love these kinds of VR games. Will you make more of it?
Check out my submission as well when you can and let me know what you think :D
Thank you so much for the kind words. In theory we have a ton of ideas to expand this into a more complete game, but we're also not sure we can could actually do them justice without an actual budget (plus, I'm already working on a different longer-term project). It's definitely going on my backlog of potential game projects though, because we think there's a lot of potential here.
Will give your game a spin in a bit!
Great game! The graphics look awesome and the levels are detailed. I love the orb teleportation system - that is an amazingly useful tool that makes the game easily playable, but reduces motion sickness.
While you're here, please rate my game, Stick It Together, using the link below.
Interesting movement system, and nice world building!
A wonderful game, the level design is really good.
At the first scroll there was no indication of what skill you got.
Really nice work!
Thank you! Sorry about the bug, I don't think we encountered that during development. The first scroll gives you an ability that lets you see the world from the perspective of the orb (press centre of trackpad on Vive or X/A on Oculus). It's pretty useful for spying around corners when you want to avoid enemies.
Great concept and really gorgeous level design / assets. A few pieces of feedback:
Really nice work, given the limited time for the jam!
Please check out my team's submission, if you have time. Thanks!
Thank you for the kind words! Sorry about the Oculus controls. We mainly developed the game using Vive controllers, so the Oculus bindings could definitely use some work. Though you shouldn't have to hold the joystick down while throwing the orb. Clicking it while pressing up should just put the orb into "teleport mode", and then you can take your time to throw it. That probably could've been communicated a little more clearly.
The game seemed way too big for the mode of transportation, there was one scroll I picked up that I couldn't tell what the ability it was that unlocked and the bindings were not set by default so I wasn't sure what I was supposed to set them to and didn't want to futz with it too much. Overall the game looked fairly decent but I think I recognize these assets. The orb definitely seemed out of place compared to the level. What caused me to stop was I threw the orb out of a window and apparently into the abyss, so it never came back to me. I really liked the concept though, just like your description, a VR metroidvania where your orb powers up, cool concept.
Thanks for trying out the game! To address your various comments:
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
Yeah I'm using index. I think it might just be a personal thing with the index. Grabbing and throwing things is a little finicky with them. I find very few games nail that grabbing and throwing. The very first scroll you come across near the fireplace I think. That's where I recognize the assets, I think I have that pack too. If I keep doing more jams I'll likely use them, they're pretty neat. I guess I didnt hold down long enough. I had a similar problem in my game but I was just using Lerp to summon the wand and torch, the velocity we retained and originally the hit boxes were so small they could fall through the floor so they'd come back to the hand but not fast enough to counter the velocity they were gaining, I just reset velocity to zero whenever I started to summon them. Another thing I found myself doing was accidentally gripping on my other hand while throwing the orb. Another cool ability would be to put out spinning blades or something so you could deal more damage to enemies. The movement system was definitely unique and interesting but I got a little tired of it. Really great job though.
Interesting, I would have thought that the Index controllers would be particularly good at grabbing and throwing, but I guess the dev needs to account for them in a more elaborate way than just binding a button. I'm thinking about getting some Index controllers soon, so I might be able to test it out then and see what can be improved (but definitely after the rating period).
Regarding the scroll, there seems to be a bug when you pick up the scrolls with your hands instead of throwing the orb at them. The first scroll should give you an ability where you can view the world from the orb's perspective to spy around corners.
Regarding the spinning blades, you can already kill the enemies in one hit by setting the orb on fire (by throwing it into a torch or a fireplace), though not all enemies have sources of fire nearby. We would definitely like more combat options though, e.g. being able to use the orb like a grenade by triggering an explosion after throwing it (which would also make the sticky upgrade more useful).
Again, thanks for the detailed feedback, I'll check out your game in a bit!
Cool ideas. Yeah I mean I went from the Vive to the Index and one big noticeable difference is how often I dislike the control schemes in most games for grabbing. The issue is if you have your grip point to grab too high you might accidentally grab things, but you also have to think about releasing them to throw them, if you have it set too high when releasing you will find that you often don't release objects when it "feels" like you should have. Likewise, sometimes games have too much grip necessary to just hold them. That's why it's nice with the Vive wands, you just have a toggle or whatever. I played SuperHot with vive wands when it first came out and it had what I felt like was an excellent control scheme, hold the grip to grab, release to throw. It felt very natural but after about 30 minutes of playing my tendons were aching lol. They soon fixed it by changing the bindings to grab and throw which I didn't feel were as good but grew to love since they didn't cause pain. Even our game has the issue I felt, where you have to grip pretty hard to keep holding the wand. I feel it in games like AZ sunshine, I don't know if I've found a game that's nailed it. When the "grab" isn't just a button but a fluid value that changes it becomes hard to figure out exactly when something is held, or thrown. I'm sure someone is getting it right, maybe Super Hot, I can't remember right now.
Can you check out my team's game as well? We only have 4 ratings right now: https://symbioticparker.itch.io/a-wizards-wand
Awesome! I really liked the the orbs mechanic, I've never seen this type of teleportation.
Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you liked it! :) I don't have an Oculus headset here, but I'll ask my team mate if he can give your entry a spin.
Awesome job. I'll note as an Index user I did have to go in and bind a few buttons.
A good friend and awesome game designer once told me "Sound is free polygons." Adding an activation sound to the teleport spell and a ricochet sound to the orb would have added more to the immersion of the game than the guard AI did.
Thanks for the feedback! You're definitely right, sound would be highest priority if we continue working on this game. For the jam though, we felt like half the orb mechanics wouldn't have made sense without a working enemy. But maybe we should have prioritised sound over particle effects. Definitely a lesson learned for the next game jam. :)
HTC Vive User here: How did you do this "ball com back" functionality its great! Is there audio?
5 star rating sent, the graphics is soooooo nice! Thanks for your submission!
While you are here I've played yours, so please check my game out in the button below.
Thanks! I'll check out your game in a bit. No audio unfortunately, we were too busy with gameplay. :D
Summoning the ball is actually fairly straightforward, we just turn off physics for the ball and move it towards the summoning hand manually.
lots of fun. I really like the movement. did it have no audio? I got no sound at all.
Thank you! Yeah, we ended up scrapping audio to get a bit more gameplay in.
i get ya. It's still done very well.
Nice work guys! I got a little sidetracked in the store room Kobe-ing the orb into the bucket :D