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A jam submission

HeadcaseView game page

Escape the lab by using your head full of wire
Submitted by Tcbapo — 5 hours, 15 minutes before the deadline
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Headcase's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#54.4444.444
Originality#54.2594.259
Overall#73.9203.920
Fun#94.0744.074
Audio#233.5563.556
Controls#263.5933.593
Graphics#393.5933.593

Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
3.2.1

Source
If anyone's interested

Game Description
Escape the lab by connecting wires

Discord Username
Tcbapo#0106

Participation Level
First time participating in any jam, and first published game

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Comments

Submitted

This is a pretty fun game! I love the puzzles, and the fact animation of the wires are pretty cool. Did you name this game after the 3D Godot game of the same name?

Can't wait for you to expand on this!

Developer

Thanks for playing! I didn't know there was another Godot game with the same name, what a coincidence! It was just the first name that I thought of the day I submitted it.

Submitted

Nice puzzle! The level progression could get some improvement, but for a jam that's some amazing design!

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you! I spent too much time imo working on my level editor to have time to really polish the level design. That's definitely something I'll have to manage better next time.

Submitted

A bit hard to start, but I got it. Detailed tutorials would help if you're going to expand it after the jam, it has good potential!

Submitted

I played this game on stream (on Discord) and really enjoyed it! It's a very clever concept and could be very well expanded by adding more mechanisms! Well done!

Developer

Thanks! I've already got several ideas for more components to add, and an idea for how to rework the wire bending around corners to make it more versatile. Thanks for playing!

Submitted

Very interesting idea! I had trouble getting it to register my click when unplugging (maybe that area could be larger?). Other than than, great job easing the player into the game with the hints and tutorial levels.

Developer

There's been some confusion about that, you don't actually need to put down the plug to activate the components. Once it sparks you can press space to activate them. In hindsight I would scrap that mechanic. Thanks for your feedback!

Submitted

The game felt a big hard but when I understood you didn't have to click everytime you want to activate something it felt like a big relevation and the game felt really good! Good work!

Developer(+1)

Yeah there's been some confusion with that control. That's definitely something I'd rework if I keep working on this project. Thanks so much for playing!

Submitted

I had a good time playing it ;)

Submitted(+1)

"In the secret lab'ratory an Experiment one day,
Hardly saw any folks around him, had computers in his braiiin,
He was all alone in darkness, he had no one around at all
The researchers there among them put a big cord on his head,
Big cord on his head
It was early in the morning when he started to flip a switch
He came sliding from the left side, slowly lookin' all arouuund
"He's a monster loose and runnin'", came a whisper from each lip
"And he's here to do som' escaping with a big cord on his head,
Big cord on his head"

(had to stop here, budget not big enough)

"Mom look! I almost had to use pen and paper for this! And I almost gave up 3 times, I thought I could get away without turning off the spikes"

(Man, this was such a blast! Loved the inspirational ending, here comes dat boi, gonna learn me some Godot.)

Question time! How did you make the timer around the green buttons so smooth and cool and how did you make the sparks please?

PS: Loved how one time it was red and another blue cords coming out.

Developer (2 edits)

Lmao that's amazing, your parody lyrics just made my day! I would've loved to add more levels as interesting as that one, but I think I'd need to add other things that you can activate and I didn't have time. Thanks so much for your feedback!!


Potentially long technical part:

In response to your questions, for the button timer I had a Texture Progress node with the texture attached below, set to counter-clockwise fill and a small step size of .01. I then also had a Timer node and in the button's process function I just set the TextureProgress value to the Timer's time_left. I also set the TextureProgress' max_value to the Timer's wait_time on ready.

The sparks are just a Particle2d that I fiddled with until I thought it looked good and set to one shot. Then when I needed sparks to appear, I'd just set the position of the Particle2D where I wanted it and set it's enabled to true. If you want to know the exact values I used in the particles2d let my know and I can send it to you.


Submitted

Pretty cool puzzle mechanic, the graphics and aesthetics really sell the game play. When you get hit by an obstacle and the level resets, it feels a bit long. I like the effect, but it can be a bit frustrating to wait while the whole death animation plays out.

Submitted

Iteresting concept. I think u can evolve this idea!

Very good submission :)

Developer

Thank you! I'm definitely thinking about continuing working on it after the jam, but I'm not sure if many would be interested in playing it again

Submitted

I'm nearly surrender on the second level - forgot about "space" key :) You have to do something with the control.

But great idea and really a lot made as for the first game.

Submitted

very cool concept !  and  good sounds and graphics, i realy enjoyed playing it , great job !

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted

This is pretty good! I really like how the mechanic works, it's so smooth. Great job!

Developer

Thanks for playing! I appreciate it!

Great job! The concept is really good, the sounds and art are great. The controls are the only point that could be better, because pressing left click was pretty much useless. All around, for a single person with a first jam, very good game

Developer

I agree that the left click to pick up and put down the wire isn't the best. I added that because I was having issues with the wire clipping through the walls after unpausing with your mouse in a different spot than where you paused. Making it put the pug down when you paused it was the simplest solution with the time I had left, and then I had to put in the text box about it since my playtester kept thinking it broke when they'd pause and then unpause and the plug wasn't following the mouse again. If I keep working on this project after the jam I plan to reqork how the wire bends around walls so that it wouldn't be an issue after pausing. Thanks for your feedback!

This concept has a lot of potential! But it needs a lot of time, skill and iteration cycles to make good levels so it's understandable it was short. So yeah, main primary complaints are the shortness and the complexity of the levels. All of them were pretty straight forward except the one with the many doors, where I had to pay attention to what doors did what to know in what order to press them. That level was on to something. One small QOL improvement I have is to increase the range from which the plug would latch to the button. I would need to make pretty precise mouse movements to do everything quickly. I didn't have trouble doing it myself but I feel a game of that type needs to have a little more lenient input difficulty in general. Cool game. :)
Developer

Thanks for playing! Making interesting levels that weren't too easy was definitely a challenge with the small amount of components there were (buttons, levers, doors, lasers, and spikes). I had ideas for a bunch of other things you could plug in to but I didn't have time to implement them. It originally had a larger radius for plugging in, but it led to some bugs with the wire not bending around walls correctly. I'm thinking of continuing to work on this after the jam ends and rework how the wire bends and add more components so that there can be much more interesting levels that are more puzzle focused as opposed to time focused.

Submitted

Tried playing the game in Linux and as soon as I click on a wire from the characters head, four wires appear stretched from the top left of the screen, and a couple of them seem to be spazzing out. After that, I can't do anything with the wires at all. I can get back to the main menu, though, but every time I try again, exact same issue. I cannot play the game.

Also... a small thing, but... I didn't notice a way to quit the game from the main menu.

Developer

Hmm... unfortunately I don't have access to a linux machine, so I wasn't able to test it on linux. I never ran into that issue on windows or mac, but I guess something's breaking on linux. Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted

I had the same problem in a tiling window manager (awesome wm), making it a free floating window not fullscreen made it work.

Submitted

Really interesting concept for a game! For some reason I found the physics for the rope to be especially satisfying. It may not have been the best choice to not make the player be able to control "Headcase", but it was still a great game overall! Great work!

Developer

Thanks for playing! I originally planned to have you be able to move him through the hallway, but as the game developed I realized that the real gameplay was in moving the wire and powering components, and that making you have to move Headcase would've just added unnecessary cruft