Really liked the handdrawn arts! Great interpretation of the Theme!!! I also enjoyed the big Boss!!
Nice Timelapse!
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Slime Guide's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #1 | 3.900 | 3.900 |
| How much do you enjoy the game overall? | #1 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Overall | #2 | 3.920 | 3.920 |
| Audio | #3 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
| How well does the game fit the theme | #3 | 4.400 | 4.400 |
| Visuals | #5 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Well execution of a simple mechanic, the music and sound are very fitting. The visuals are okay, I'm just a bit confused by the mix of top down and side view - your character is top down, the shooting clearly is from a top down perspective, but the slimes and the gate are drawn from a side perspective. To be fair, rendering the slimes sideways adds a lot of flair, and not rendering the character from top down seems to be odd in this setting, too, so I'm out of suggestions in this matter.
The first times I played the game, it happened quite quickly that it ended so suddenly without me being able to tell why. I was sure I hadn't missed any evil slimes or killed too many friendlies. It was quite frustrating and took me some time to figure out that touching any slime makes you lose health. I must have missed that when reading the description, but a simple feedback in-game could easily prevent this confusion. Say a hurt sound and/or a brief red overlay.
I had the feeling that the waves where varying heavily in length or slime count, and I mean not just increasing. Could it be that moving around causes more slimes to spawn? Didn't really investigate this.
Submitted
Culprit AttireThanks for the feedback and detailed review. I can't say I gave that much thought to the side-on/topdown viewing angles, but I suppose it is a bit unusual now you mention it xD I'm very new to drawing my own sprites
I should definitely have mentioned on the menu that slimes hitting you causes life loss, I got stuck for time and put a hint of that kind in the description but yeah it wasn't clear. With more time, a small knockback and colour effect would be something I'd definitely go for.
The spawn rate of the slimes was fixed and increased slightly each wave - however *where* the slimes were spawning was random and I wonder if what happened there was that I gave too wide a range for them to spawn in and so if too many spawn far away by chance one round, it appears as if the spawn rate is lower. I probably just need to keep track of roughly where they're spawning and make sure not too many get bunched up or too far out.
Well done! Solid gameplay, sounds, and visuals. Nice music.
One big thing I'd note however is that (at least as far as I played), there's never a reason to just not hold on your flashlight all the time. As you can shoot independently of your flashlight being on or not, I just held it down all the time which was uncomfortable just causing additional tension and strain on my mouse hand (I do have mild carpal tunnel). It's unnecessary. It's a very common game design mistake; often seen with top-down 2D shooters like this, actually, where you have infinite ammo and infinitely spawning enemies, where it's better just to shoot all the time, but the game requires you to hold the button down or worse to repeatedly click to fire continuously. As this game has friendlies you don't want to shoot, you don't have that problem with the mouse, but I just held down the right mouse button in addition at all times (I like I see you doing in your gameplay GIFs) which begs the question why it's not just enabled by default.
You could do a lot with this: certain enemies/friendlies are sped up or slowed down by the light, maybe it kills some friendlies (or even enemies), the flashlight is on a resource meter that ticks down as it's used but refills when unused, etc.
You could also make nice changes that similarly give the player more interesting decisions. Maybe you slow down your movement while firing, but the player doesn't really have a reason to move right now... So maybe there could be a weapon degradation system, and you move around to pick up new weapons. I don't love how the game is an insta-kill right now, so there could be basic numeric health and health pickups around the field. Maybe some slimes are invisible in the overworld unless you shine the flashlight on them (or vice versa!) or get really close to them. There are lots of simple changes you can make to shake up the game design.
Nice work!
Submitted
Simulchess PrototypeHey, thanks for the feedback and ideas. You're absolutely right about the flashlight, I realised it was totally pointless to turn it off at any point, I hadn't had enough testing time during making the game to see it properly. I'd initially intended to have the player only able to shoot while the flashlight is off, or instead opt for some sort of score multiplier that incentivises the player to use as little torch light as possible to boost their score, but I just completely ran out of time to make changes to it xD
Do you mean the insta-kill of the slimes? or the player? (although the player does get 3 lives). It would definitely be good to have health pick-ups though, mistakes early on are currently too punishing. I love the idea of invisible slimes in later waves that would only show up upon shining the torch on them, that would be a really cool way to ramp it up and change things around - thanks for the numerous tips, ideas, and the kind comment, appreciate you trying it out and making the time to review! :)
This is a great game, a lot of fun - feel you nailed the theme and on top of that the gameplay difficulty and its ramp up is really fun to play. From calm to more difficult in a nice amount of time.
Great job in doing a time lapse as well was fantastic - love the art that was created.
Fun game indeed :D
Do you stream your game / art creations on Twitch or YouTube at all ?
Submitted
Bu - Trijam 51Thanks so much for the feedback! Really appreciate the kind words about it :) I had a lot of fun doing the time-lapse, kept me super focused in my two stints. Having just started learning and experimenting with digital art in the last month or so, making 14 sprites in 45 minutes ended up being quite the challenge xD... think this is probably the hardest I've raced the clock in any jam so far, but it just about worked out in time and it was really fun to do. Thanks for the comments on the art! I'm hoping to keep going and learning with that simple style and try to refine it
Haven't done any streaming so far but might be something I try out at some point, just have a couple of timelapses at the moment
Same here, started learning drawing fundamentals and digital art in the last month or so. Probably already seen this but the art style for this game really reminded of these videos I was watching from Blackthornprod:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Z1XWw1kmnvOOFsj6Bzy2g/videos
Just thought I would share as might be an inspiration for upcoming work :D
Very strong entry! Fit the theme well but also featured fun gameplay and strong graphics. Nice work :)
Submitted
LAUNCH CODESI absolutely adore the slimes, they are super cute! Great job, this is really fun!
Submitted
True Colors
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