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Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback.

The organic zone is definitely the worst designed zone imo. It's the first zone I made and I don't have a ton of experience making metroidvanias so I was learning a lot about area design during this jam (the only other metroidvania I've made was for MVM 26 and it was a complete dumpster fire). I wanted to do a full redesign, but only had time for some minor adjustments at the end of the jam. But since most of the tracks in the game are loops you should be able to focus on defeating all the enemies in a room first, then find somewhere safe to look around (eg, the first room in the organic zone has a track with a save point and no enemy bubbles, which is also a pretty decent look-out spot). Aiming with a controller also sucks, which is why there were so many warnings. In hindsight I probably should have made some kind of aim assist system for people using controllers.

If you don't mind me asking, what elements specifically confused you? There aren't a lot of objects in the game, and the only one that's meant to be somewhat mysterious are the beacons. But I'm also not very good at world design since most of the game's I've made are smaller arcade style games that don't have much to figure out. Thanks.

(+1)

It took me a while to understand why some spheres would warp me and others would damage me and whether or not I could change that and how. I also wasted quite some time firing on the bubbles containing red and white spheres in the middle of the loops, and they did light up, but I don't think it ever did anything...? There was a golden sphere at some point that dissolved when I went through it and later reformed but it wasn't one of the gold warps or the gold targets you can fire on (which all look somewhat similar but serve vastly different purposes). Speaking of the gold warps, I initially assumed they would warp me to different places according to which side I came from (because all other warps point to their unique destination but those have two trails coming out of the center). The enemies I quickly understood haha (same with those with shields).

I suspect all those symbols would benefit from having a clear visual language (both shapes and colors) you could learn to quickly get an idea of what they do (eg: spiky red-ish symbols are always dangerous, bright/golden lozenges could be stuff to collect or interact with, blue-ish spheres for warps, stuff like that).

I did activate one of the beacons but I don't really know what it did. I assumed I would find another one in the second level and would understand more about their purpose then. So in that case the mystery worked as intended.

And aim assist would be a great addition, yes!

(+1)

That all makes sense.

Balancing the visual language and theming was a massive struggle while working on this, since everything is supposed to be on a subatomic scale. Just to clarify a few things, the gold sphere is an energy recharge and the blue bubbles with red and white spheres are supposed to be decorative atomic nuclei.

I have been thinking of ways to improve the visual language since I'm considering revising this for the super mvm jam, so this feedback is incredibly useful. Thanks!