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Dolls VS Jiangshis's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio / Music | #8 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
| Visuals | #9 | 4.412 | 4.412 |
| Overall | #12 | 3.912 | 3.912 |
| Balance (Challenge & Fairness) | #14 | 3.471 | 3.471 |
| Gameplay | #16 | 3.706 | 3.706 |
| Story / Writing | #22 | 2.971 | 2.971 |
| Use of Theme | #27 | 3.235 | 3.235 |
| Concept | #28 | 3.588 | 3.588 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team Members
Gannio, LeafyChiko, Cyk0mi, Pachy, BunnoBot, & Callmesmug
Streaming Permission
Yes
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Comments
Note: It took some time for me to get back around to finishing comments on the jam games. Pardon the late comment!
The colorful visuals, playful animation, and fun dynamic music made this a very enjoyable experience when I played during the jam period! The gameplay that's there executes the PvZ formula quite well.
I was pleasantly surprised by the links in the credits. Once I discovered them, I found it to be a fun bit of innovation to link the resources that way. Otherwise, I can tell that your team had good fun putting this together. Well done on this one! ^.^
The animation on the dolls are super fun
(review based on 1.03 jam release)
THE JIANGSHIS ATE YOUR DONATIONS!
still think it’s really funny that multiple people made pvz style games for this jam in particular, but it’s fine because they’re super good. art was PHENOMENAL on this one, felt like it captured a bit of the original pvz charm while still being unique. gameplay was mostly smooth, although the final stage is quite a difficulty spike. music was ALMOST perfect, but those off-key high notes in the main stage theme kinda murdered me ngl. thankfully, the entire soundtrack is nothing but bangers aside from that one specific part.
the story wasn’t a big focus, but it was neat and added some fun context to the setting. that being said, the dialogue kinda makes me feel like i was supposed to unlock each doll sequentially rather than having them all available on stage 1. this also would’ve made the difficulty a lot more consistent, so it’d make sense if it was meant to work that way.
but regardless of if it worked 100% correctly or not, i had a good time with this one! managed to be fun to strategize even with just a few factors to consider. and good thing i like pvz to begin with cuz theres more where this came from lmao
Given we had the same general idea, I've been excited to play this game since I heard of it, and oh my god it didn't dissapoint, the presentation is amazing, and the doll sprites are just, perfect! Also the music is definitely a highlight, the doll select theme has no right to sound as good as it does. The only 2 things I can really point toward as criticism are that
A. The projectiles go way too slow, which makes them feel a lot weaker than they actually are.
and B. The hand icon doesn't exactly feel like it conveys what it does well (It looked more like something used to move around dolls than a shovel equivelent) (Maybe a red X somewhere could help)
Either way, this game was amazing, and definitely worth the wait to play it!
Glad you liked it!! Yeah we're looking to adjust a lot of the UI at some point including the hand. Adjusting the speed makes sense actually that way they feel much stronger, will do!
Thanks for playing it ^^
Plants vs Zombies! We love to see it. Getting past the last level required me to remember the strategy of sacrificing a lawn mower (or I suppose yin-yang orb) to plant more sunflowers (Yuukas). I’m very impressed you managed this much in 3 days! Would love to play a post-jam version if you have one in mind.
Definitely! We have lots planned for this game for post jam! Glad you liked it.
The game is super pretty! But a bit too easy. I literally didn't understand that I was picking towers before round 1 and only picked the Reimu tower, and I was still able to win.
Despite being easy, the game is also weirdly punishing in the early parts of the stages, where I found myself unable to do anything except watch Yoshikas mow down like 3 towers in a row due to tower building cooldowns preventing me from building anything to stop this. The talisman comes through and saves the day in this scenario, which is how I never failed a level despite not know what I'm doing.
The presentation is really good, the art is super cute, and the music fits the tone. The writing was good too, the dialogue was quite fun.
Gameplay wise though, I think it’s way too close to Plants vs. Zombies. All four units have nearly identical functions as in PVZ, and the enemy types also directly correspond. Because of that, it ends up feeling more like a clone than its own idea.
Now the base mechanics are implemented well and clearly work fine, it just feels like you could do more to differentiate it from PVZ. Maybe some unique unit interactions, Touhou inspired twists, or special enemy gimmicks, or anything really.
Now difficulty wise, I beat it easily on my first try without taking any damage, so adding some challenge or pacing adjustments could make it more engaging.
I agree with the closeness to PVZ and can understand how that can be a negative. I think it was easier to stick to the basics within the time constraints of the jam, but I already want to diverge from pvz as early as world 1 using more touhou characters with unique abilities. Thanks for the feedback!
Oh this is a great tower-based defense game entry, I love its style!
Regarding the balance, the enemy variation is limited to their max health, just I think it's fine for a jam entry.
There's dynamic music for when the stakes get high, I like this signal that says "it's time to lock in."
Game might not feel fully fleshed out, but the stage looks good, and the sprites are absolutely adorable!
Look at the Yuuka doll! She has a tinier Medicine doll! Look at them just chilling!Look look aaaaaThe animations on the sprites are insanely good and charming. My favorite is the Aunn who shows she's going to break, there's so much charm and personality in it!
The presentation on the title screen is solid too. It looks fabulous and reflects well the vibe of the game!
The bit that impressed me the most was the character animations. Those sprite animations are insanely good, especially considering the small amount of time you had to make them. I couldn't puffshroom spam to cheese to victory, but still had a decent time. I wish the earlier levels were a bit snappier since you have all the plants at once. Going through the same zombies for ten waves gets a bit repetitive. The levels felt twice as long as a world one level from the original PVZ.
The game is overall good, the balancing and structure is essentially Plant vs Zombies, but that game also have good structure in general so it also propagates here as well. The main carrier would be the art with animation specifically, considering jam type it helps a lot. There's also details such as higher energy version of the music playing when there are more enemies (though the fade in should be a bit slower).
As for the compression issue, you might want to check type of interpolation/aliasing and make it something like average pixel or bilinear, it seems to be using Nearest neighbor. Some sprite such as bullet could also be on the top Z layer instead. Itch Io has an option to make the game open to new screen on HTML version below the upload, might want to look it up.
Thanks for playing! While we're still looking at options regarding additional uses of interpolation (the game actually does use some of it currently, but mainly for down-scaling elements from 4K) we took some of your feedback on other aspects and applied it to latest postjam update, alongside a fullscreen fix for the web version that helps mitigate some interpolation issues. Hopefully it helps!
Fun game! The web version’s fullscreen button doesn’t work, so the sprites look bad. They look far better in the downloadable version and match the sprites shown in the screenshots. I only wish the game was longer.
Glad you enjoyed it! We just put out a postjam update to address the issues of fullscreen. Hopefully it helps!