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A jam submission

HaMPView game page

Hangman meets Platformer. Collide to change char. Die to check. Collect 8 bits to get 1 correct. Random word or Speedrun
Submitted by Grotius23 — 13 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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HaMP's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creativity#624.0304.030
Sound#1703.4553.455
Topic#2543.5763.576
WOWIE!#2743.2423.242
Fun#3633.1823.182
Visuals#4952.9702.970
Simplicity#5833.1823.182

Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Music Source
I used freesound, background track: https://freesound.org/people/wi-photos/sounds/521061/

Credits
Ruben Guis

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Comments

Viewing comments 25 to 6 of 25 · Next page · Last page
Submitted

Very fun! the UI is annoying on the right since you can't see bits, also sometimes when you die you die again automatically to cursers when you spawn, if when you spawn you'll be immune for some seconds or when you spawn you push nearby curses away from spawn. but very fun(:

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
I got this immunity at respawn idea from a few others as well, and I think it is a really good one!
I will definitely implement this in the next update!

I'm quite terrible with UI, this is the first game in which I actually used it (and the first almost finished one).
I have to look into this a bit more. Then I can hopefully spawn the bits clearly in front of the UI.

Submitted(+1)

I want to start off by saying I very much enjoyed this game :)
But it could be better:

  1. Sound - decent (not engaging but not intrusive either)
  2. UI - not very pleasing but gets the work done
  3. Esc for menu - not good when playing fullscreen in browser. Maybe use [M]enu or [H]ome
  4. Confusing controls...
    1. Moving on a char felt slippery
    2. Changing one char at a time was frustrating
    3. Accidently changing a char by more than one was even worse
    4. The direction the char changes depends on what key you pressed last: left/right
      1. You could keep jumping on a char to move it in that direction
      2. This is a cool mechanic but since it wasn't explained, I'll count it as one of my exploits :D
  5. Random was not fun to play
    1. There was no hint for the word so the player has to keep guessing
    2. But guessing takes a lot of effort
    3. Ended up just dodging cursors, collecting bits and dashing down to reveal char

Speedrun, on the other hand, was awesome!
My tactic was to get all the letters close to "WOWIE" without getting any correct or getting hurt.
This made sure that there were only 2 cursors at that time.
I would have "XPXHD".
Then I would a char once to it's correct letter, die, change another char once, die and so forth to end up with "WOWIE".
I didn't collect any bits for revealing chars.

I could have done better but I'd spent enough time already :)
I had a lot of fun beating your personal best :D

Submitted(+1)

After posting my comment, I thought I'd try it one last time and got less than 1 minute!


Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot for your detailed feedback!
I fully agree there are lots of things that still can be improved!
In the next update, I will add M as a menu button.
I started developing for Windows and did not take into account that ESC would close the full screen in webGL.
Even when I changed to webGL, I did not think about it. So many thanks for pointing this out!

I should have made a tutorial for the movement. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to do this. I will add this in a future update.
Keeping jumping on a character to change it in a certain direction is perfectly fine!

The random mode is for the more casual players. The idea is to get the first few characters using the bits and then guess the rest of the word.

I personally also like the speedrun better.
You found a good tactic that I did not think of myself!
Impressive scores! As far as I know of you hold the fastest time!
A friend of mine managed to do 1:03, now I should tell him his record is broken ;)
Really impressive you could do it within 1 minute!

Submitted(+1)

It was a little confusing what I needed to do, interesting idea of cracking the password. I liked the sound when you landed on a letter and that you could collect bits to brute force it as well as the stats on how many combinations are left. The mouse buttons were hard to dodge and it was tough to stay on the letters so I died a lot but that seemed to be how you checked if a password worked?

Developer(+1)

Exactly! When you died the last touched letter is checked and turns red if it's wrong and green if it's correct. It's actually quite hard to survive and needs a bit of practicing with the controls. However dying is not a bad thing in this game.

I'm sorry, I should have made a tutorial thad explained the controls. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to do this. By combining jumping and dashing, where you get a new jump after each dash, you should be able to survive a lot longer. However the correct letters won't be checked if you don't die, so unless you want to collect 40 bits without dying, which is really hard if possible, you have to die anyways.

Thanks a lot for playing and for your feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I see, pretty cool :). Looked again and saw the 'how to play' part, neat way to implement that, but I probably should have read that the first time lol.

Developer(+1)

No worries, I should have made a tutorial level that explained the controls :p

Submitted(+1)

The theme was nicely implemented, and I absolutely loved the clicking sounds. Well done.

A few points of critique though: If you die, the trail effect leads from the point where you died to the respawn point, giving more a sense of teleporting. And while mapping out a possibility space is a nice example of "failure is progress", this possibility space is a bit big for my taste. After a while it becomes tedious. Doing it with numbers or fewer letters would probably have been more fun (but I understand that you wanted "wowie" to fit in there). Also the placement of the cursors and bits was a bit annoying. The cursors would sometimes float right in the respaw area, immobilizing you for a while. And most of the bits spawn at relatively inaccessible places (even with a double dash). And one final nitpick: usually windows uses the white cursor per default ; )

Still those are just points that would improve an already interesting game (in my opinion at least).

Developer

Thanks a lot for your detailed feedback!
I noticed this effect with the trail when you die. I tried to disable the trail when you die and then re-enable it when you spawn, but somehow this didn't work. Then I decided not to spend more time on it since time was already running out. I will have a look at this after the rating period again.
For the cursors in the respawn area, someone else came up with a really nice solution that I want to implement. After you die you will be invincible for a short amount of time to get away from all the cursors.

I cheated a bit for the possibility space. There are more than 11 million words you can make with 5 letters. But since you can check each character individually, the maximum number of checks that is really needed is just 5*26 = 130 possibilities.  However, 11 million sounds much more interesting than 130. Therefore, the number I put on the UI is the number of words that can be made by the still unchecked characters.

After each dash, you get a new jump. This will help you to reach all places on the screen. For maximal distance:
Jump-jump-dash-jump-dash-jump
But I get this mechanic is not entirely clear, since I did not have time to implement a nice tutorial level.

After a bit of practising with the mechanics, any word can be made within a few minutes.  There is a speedrun mode, in which you have to make the word "WOWIE".  I was able to do this in 1 minute in just 1 attempt.
This a bit unfair, since I know exactly what I can do. I can imagine that it will already take more time than this to get the hang of the mechanics, without a tutorial. So after the rating period is over I will try to add a tutorial level.

For the cursor color, I had them white first, but I wanted to emphasise more that the cursors are the enemy.
When I made them red is was really ugly, I ended up doing something that was in between ;)

Submitted(+1)

Great original concept and use of the theme :D The controls are perfect and its fun to dodge cursors :d The only negative thing i can say is the dash sound effect doesnt fit perfectly its distracting :/ Other than that i had fun with this one great idea great execution well done :D

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for the feedback and for playing!
I will have another look at the dash sound effect after the rating period, I didn't noticed this myself before.
So thanks for pointing this out to me!

Submitted(+1)

Nice Game solid submission :D

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

Took me some time to understand the rules, but after that I've had a lot of fun with this! Great concept, nice controls, WOWIE game!

Developer

Thanks a lot for playing and for the feedback!
Due to time I was not able to get a real tutorial level in, unfortunately.
I will definitely add this after the rating period is over!

Submitted(+1)

This was a really well done game. I like the concept and the mechanics! Great job!

Developer

Thanks a lot for playing and for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Great concept! I like the console style and dashing.
Congrat for your first jam game!

Developer

Thanks a lot for playing and for your feedback!
I really enjoyed the process, and it really helped me to finally finish a game project!

Submitted(+1)

its defenetily unique comparing to other games i played, i liked it tbh :D

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it!

Submitted

Np :D

Submitted

its defenetily unique comparing to other games i played, i liked it tbh :D

Submitted(+1)

This is really creative! There were some moments where I dashed to collect a bit, then quickly dashed away out of a sea of cursors, which felt pretty awesome. Although there should be some sort of invincible time when you spawn, since I kept spawning on top of cursors and dying repeatedly.

The guessing of the letters doesn't really work either. The game is really about collecting the bits to find the word, then finishing the letters - which is fine too, of course, I just was under the impression that I'd be able to guess the word similarly like in a normal hangman game. I enjoyed it a lot, good job! :d

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot for the feedback!
The invincible time after respawn is a really great idea! I will definitely add this in after the rating period is over.

Submitted(+1)

Very interesting game! Although I'll admit that I almost quit it in the first few minutes as I wasn't quite sure what I had to do, and was just randomly jumping around.  Took me a while how to do the dash to use the bits, and also to figure out that letter colors indicate to you if that character was attempted yet or not.

But really innovative mechanic here - if the onboarding was a bit clearer of what you need to do it would be more fun from the get go for me - but sometimes figuring things out is a bit of charm on its own I ugess.

Developer

Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Unfortunately, I did not have the time to get a tutorial level in.
This was my very first game jam and I did not think about this enough from the start. 
I will definitely add a good tutorial level next time!

Submitted(+1)

Cool concept but way too hard to change letters and there were just way too many cursors, it was pretty much impossible to get to the letter you wanted so I had to collect 8 clues for each letter.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing!

Submitted

Interesting, sometimes the bits spawned out side my jump range, and I couldnt get them. 

Developer

Thanks for playing!
You can dash using left shift or button east on a gamepad. You will dash in the direction you are steering at the moment you press dash.
After a dash, you will also get a new jump. By combining dashing and jumping you can reach any position on the screen!

Submitted

I never tried that. lol I just waited for a new one. lol

Developer(+1)

I should have added a tutorial level.
This was my first game jam, and in my initial planning, I did not take this into account.
Definitely will remember to do this the next time!

Submitted(+1)

A very unusual (in a nice way!) concept, although it took a little while for me to understand what was going on. :P Visuals and sound both suit the game very well.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!
I can imagine. Due to the time limit, I did not have enough time to make a proper tutorial level, unfortunately.
Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Great idea

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

A really cool concept.

I found it a bit difficult to get the letters to cycle in the right direction and I'd accidentally hit the side sometimes and send it a few letters in the too far. 

Great work, it fits the theme really well.

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot!

Submitted(+1)

Wow, I like the concept of the game!

Here's some feedback: The UI seems to be clustered in the game, i cant see the bits spawning sometimes while playing as they were spawned behind the UI, other than being repetitive with guessing the letters (It took me 6.24 minutes lol) Nice attempt anyways. fits the theme.

Developer

Thanks for playing!
I greatly appreciate your feedback.
I'm terrible with UI,  it's the first time I actually used it in a game.
(its also the first game I finished, most often I start something completely different after I get the core concept working, to be able to learn more things)
I also noticed that sometimes the bits spawned behind the UI. I did not have the time to find out how to fix this before the deadline, unfortunately.

Submitted

I think this game was more frustrating to play than it was fun. I understand that you were trying to go for a hacker theme where you brute force each letter in the game by jumping up and down on them, but I don't think it works here. While I do agree it is creative and imaginative, it came across as grindy and repetitive too. 

Take for example the letters at the ends of the word, all I did was hold the left or right arrow keys and fall to my death until I got the right letters.  I also didn't understand how changing the letters worked either, sometimes the letters go up, sometimes they go down. I didn't really make sense to me. The game also says you can dash down to reveal a letter after collecting 8 bits, bit it wasn't explained how it was done in the tutorial.

I do think that there is potential for a game here but I think the concept needs to be revisited. Maybe instead of platforming you could shoot the letters or hit them with a ball? Also maybe instead of dying to reveal one gray letter you could reveal all of them? That could fix the repetition a bit.

Developer

Thank you for your honest feedback!
Dashing down is performed by dashing while the down key is pressed.
I did not have enough time left to implement a good tutorial unfortunately. Its something I will keep in mind for the next gamejam!
Did you try the speedrun mode? There just dying every time won't work since death is penalized a bit in the end time.
You have to find the right balance between dying and staying alive.

Submitted

No I didn't try the speed run mode, I didn't see the point because I thought since it was going to be the same word every time (I think it was Wowie) there was no point to figuring it out and I assumed it was the same experience. I'm pretty sure I did try holding the down key  and dashing but I don't think t worked. I dunno... maybe I'm just dumb.

Viewing comments 25 to 6 of 25 · Next page · Last page