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(+1)

A solid entry. Very smooth gamemplay and nice implementation of the assets. The idea of incorporating battle into an infinite runner is pretty good, and you have implemented it flawlessly.

Enemies could always ready their weapons. That way it would be easier to differentiate between archers and close combat enemies. Also, my first instinct was to duck against arrows, not trying to jump over them. Learned the correct reaction the hard way.

I had a strong start, but then the game became pretty repetitive surprisingly quickly. I wonder what other obstacles could be added to keep the gameplay fresh over time.  Maybe one that requires jumping and attacking at the same time, or jumping and sliding mid-air. Also, I really missed a health power up. Would have been nice a few were scattered between the obstacles. Maybe some of the villagers like a priest could heal you for not killing them.

The controls' layout was also not the best for me. I was wondering if there would be a way to control the whole game via mouse. Or even better, to control it only via drag movements, like the infinite runners on mobile. Up, left and down gestures would cover everything. And maybe you could come up with something for the right gesture too, like a parry, or a backward dash to avoid a falling rock or a huge demon's axe.

The genre itself, even with the battle mechanics added to it is still pretty limiting if we look at it from the perspective of improvisation. So, I can't even come up with an advice related to that.

But in the end, it's a cool game, so well done.

Thank you so much for such a great and comprehensive review!

For distinguishing archers from melee enemies, I think it's actually fairly easy to do by the distance to them; archers have a large "dodge space" in front of them.

I did have health power-ups planned to be scattered around, but I could never find the right visual and sound effects to make them look and feel good, so I ended up scrapping them.

To add more variety, I thought about making the level multi-tiered, giving the player some route choices during the run, but that would require a significantly more complex level generation system and a way to evaluate the future route.

I also sketched out moving rocks that you would need to jump over or slide under, depending on when you approached them, but I looked at them and decided they were too complicated for such a short and simple game. There was also an archer high up on a rock, shooting from there with no way to kill him, but he ended up in the trash as well because he didn't seem very interesting.

In the end, it seems like I didn't really want to complicate this game too much, haha. I don't know how common that is in game jams.

Regarding the controls, I can't really say much. I'm an avid PC gamer, so I just went with the spacebar + mouse controls that I'm used to. Leaving only mouse controls (making it more mobile-like) never even crossed my mind, because, well, I'm a PC gamer! Plus, precise timing and confident control are so important in this game, and I feel like drag movements would make that nearly impossible and often frustrating.

I'm very glad to read your review and thank you!