Just finished playing this obviously rainworld-inspired game! Overall I will say you managed the game was quite a decently great submission! Though it does kinda feel like more of a tech demo with a sprinkle of gameplay that lacks in certain small aspects which could weigh it down in some categories :>
THE GOOD
- VISUALS:
Overall the general artstyle of the game was really captivating! I especially loved the procedural animations that the little furLoop creatures had, it definitely brings a sense of personality and feel of your game being unique :3 I loved seeing it interact in all the various ways with the environment, especially being able to curve around all the shapes in the map! Even when climbing the tails flowing and swaying around really just brought together the sense of the character actually being alive! Another thing i noticed was the hand animations - which while simple - still managed to bring the entire player up solidly with how they were procedurally animated while running and holding onto the climbing poles! Another special effect that i really felt gave character to the characters was when they would hold up their hands to mark that they were nearby enough to initiate the tail looping! Made the furLoops have a sense of good friendship :P Overall in this category the game just visually felt so animated and alive in the characters, even for the static ones like the robot which has only a looping animation around the computer, but the way it still hover over to a certain furLoop every now and then just made it so interesting to look at! Really felt like it was coming over to check us out while i was in my playthrough :D Not to even mention the way the lighting just felt so pleasing in the game, with select characters having their own lights and all and how they could even mix together! All in all, just absolutely impeccable 3D world but 2D pixel art style which tied everything in together consistently well!
- POLISH
Another thing that i could definitely feel while playing through my playthrough was the overall polish of the game, from the animations to the movement to the way the game was presented, it was very clean in everything and rarely ever felt like something had been out-of-place! The artstyles had never truly clashed and the effects especially the call and response (which was my personal favourite effect in the game) was just handled really well, even with how the call and response accounts for calling time and it doesn't just instantly appear on the other furLoops' s splitscreen! That was a very small piece of polish that just was so small but it seems to have been added anyway! Really impressive stuff here and I'm sure a lot of work had went into the polish of the game :>
- MOVEMENT
The player's movements with the splitscreen handling was honestly handled pretty well. Sure it was quite tough at first to get used to the controls WASD and IJKL since I've never really played with IJKL before, but over time it actually became pretty natural to use! I think i would've liked the option to include arrow keys too but that could be asking for too much now it seems with how great the controls were already handled anyway :> Overall the inclusion of the jump buffering and coyote time definitely made the game slightly less infuriating and more forgiving! Could've been a bit longer of a coyote time i think but that's all good! I feel like though i didn't fully get to use the full power of both furLoops since i only barely moved one while moving another, maybe I'll get better at dual controls someday!
THE BAD
- LEVEL DESIGN
One thing i definitely felt mildly infuriating about the game was the level design, it was actually quite a good map when i first tried playing this game out! But overtime the cracks definitely showed through: Some of the biggest issues with the map design is the incorporation of pitfalls that cost you a long trek back! I do notice that you tried fixing this by adding multiple paths that interconnect each room together, but overall it just didn't feel helpful enough and I always just ended having to trek for like half a minute or so before being able to make it back to a room again. However its not all bad! I honestly loved the inclusion of fake walls that lead to hidden rooms, it definitely gave me a sense of reward for trying to explore around! Anyways the overall design of the robot room was also pretty spectacular, with having the massive being just hover on the top as you have to stand in its presence, definitely felt powerful and made me feel smol :< Another thing that was kinda annoying was the horizontal poles on the walls, I don't really know if it was just me but they felt kind of RNG on whether they fully worked! Definitely had some weird physics going on there cause i presume you just used the same vertical pole object as their stand-ins? I mean they do work like half the time though luckily so it doesnt fully make the map untraversable, but they definitely could use some more work. Anyways i do like the inclusion of the little "Outside room" at the very top! Did seem kinda useless though as I don't think it really served any meaningful purpose - was it supposed to be where the game ended, but perhaps you faced time crunch so it was scrapped? - But anyways it was still a definitely cool room to check out! Very peaceful spot overall where you can just enjoy the beauty of this game :D
- GAMEPLAY LOOP
Or rather, the lack thereof. Overall after the opening cutscene the game didn't feel like there was truly much meaningful gameplay, I will say the platforming and map exploration was definitely fun! But the main gameplay of finding BREAK points definitely did get stale after about 4 cycles as they just didn't really have any new mechanics added to them. I felt like you could totally try add some two-player interactions to some breakpoints seeing as how you already have a splitscreen going on! Either that or you could even make some puzzles or effects for collecting the BREAK points, or else they just kinda got stale overtime and didn't feel the worth of getting them! But I do suppose this looks like a time crunch issue, seeing as how your game is definitely absolutely massive which must've been an insane amount of work for just a solo dev! But anyways this was just my little nitpick, would love to just have seen more gameplay mechanics yknow! Cause this was definitely one of the weakest parts of the game for me, albeit not too week but still pretty average overall.
- GAME DIRECTION
Another issue with the main gameplay was rather the feeling of lostness that I'd enveloped. I think you definitely were going for that unknown sense of feel but this may have been a bit too unguided for a jam game! This totally could've been easily solved by having a minimap option or even making the robot give you hints as to what to do! Since I do recall the robot saying you can return for guidance, but when I returned nothing has happened, I assume that was a time sensitive cut? Anyways it would've been great to just have a sort of way to mildly locate any of the BREAK points to make the game feel smoother in moving around! Along with that also maybe making the map slightly more readable, such as the inclusion of any sort of telling landmarks for each room so players could at least visualize a map in their heads! Would've definitely made the game more easy to navigate with any sort of hero assets in the rooms!
- NARRATIVE
While I will say the narrative for your game was definitely there and significant more existent than many other games in the jam, it definitely wasn't the strongest and only managed to decently captivate me enough. For my first playthrough I had almost gotten lost on what the correlation to the theme "LOOP" even was! I feel as though the infinity symbol being formed wasn't truly explained well enough, perhaps you could've added more contextual time to it or maybe shown a picture of the furLoops making an infinity symbol on the screen? Along with that the robot's cutscene was also kinda a slog to get through after having already seen it several times, the inclusion of a skip or speed up button would've definitely helped out a ton!
THE UGLY
- BUGS
Bugs, many of them! The game in of itself definitely felt polished and smooth, however the prevalence of bugs was definitely still lurking! I had encountered several entirely game-breaking bugs over the course of my playthrough that forced me to have to restart the entirety of the game, which was not fun in the slightest! Though i suppose i shouldn't except too much from a 4-day jam game (what you've already made is still absolutely impressive!), it still feels like perhaps a bit more time could've been put towards making sure the game was relatively bug free before submitting the game? Some issues that had happened to me and presumably many other players was how the cycles would sometimes just entirely glitch out when spawning in, either that or how the furLoops would get smacked through the floor into the void or how they would sometimes just not even be able to loop entirely if i started the loop sequence on top of eachother instead of facing eachother! Along with that there was the prevalence of the lighting issue in the yellow furLoops light, however I do know this may be mostly out of your control due to Godot's compatibility mode making lights behave a bit strangely. There is also the funny visual bug where the furLoops' tails start to spasm and just completely fly around the whole map, it was definitely really funny and i assume due to the physics animating of your tails? Luckily it didn't affect gameplay or whatever but it would've definitely felt nicer if it didn't happen!
- TUTORIAL
While the tutorial itself was definitely an amazing tutorial that taught you all the necessary controls perfectly, i do feel that the player was given a bit too much freedom! I had actually ended up wandering off the tutorial at the start of the game and got kinda lost thinking that this was the whole game without any gameplay, I didn't realize the calls were telling me to return to the corridor to the robot room that'd give me access to the yellow furLoop! I feel like this could've been easily solved by making the calls more obvious by playing multiple of them or just by simple blocking off areas of the map until after you've finished the tutorial! Definitely would've saved a bunch of early confusion that could've given me a bad first impression for the game!
OVERALL POSTMORTEM THOUGHTS
What you've made here is undeniably an amazing product! Regardless of what my review may seem to you, don't be put down too hard! I still thoroughly enjoyed the game despite my few nitpicks! It has definitely been one of my favorite submissions for the jam and I look forward to seeing more of your progress! Remember, this is only your first time joining GMTK! Eventually you'll get even better as you learn more, game dev isn't a race, it's a marathon! You'll see that in the next jam you join you'll have significantly more experience and be able to make even better games than this wonderful submission you've made now! Just keep on going and don't give up! Take this as more of a constructive criticism rather than outright backlash! Just know that I'm proud of what you and other joiners of this jam have created! Keep on going and game developing! I believe in all of you! :3
BY : Someone who stumbled upon "furLoops".
- 2058 Words, 11495 Characters