I like your take on the theme. And the game was very fun to play and it was well executed. Nice job, great game!
Play game
Pan!c at the Penitentiary's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #225 | 3.810 | 3.810 |
| Originality | #439 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
| Overall | #447 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Presentation | #1303 | 3.381 | 3.381 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The game is set in a prison where the prisoners have escaped. They are "Out of Control".
Did your team create the art for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
Yes
We created all art during the game jam
Did your team create the audio for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
No
We used pre-existing audio
Comments
This was a lot of fun. I like that it was "out of control," but as the player, I still had control. I also really liked the lockpicking mechanic, but I wish the prisoners were even more aggressively trying to get other prisoners out. I also realized towards the end that I could move the guards as well, and I wished I'd known that earlier, cause that made things a little bit more strategic towards the end. Good game!
Submitted
Spin OutYeah it was a little too tight to make the AI do smart things in 48 hours, though I still get a kick out of 1 prisoner releasing 2 releasing 4 when it works right. We only saw someone suggest it once the Jam was over, but next time I think making a small tutorial letting you know what does what and how it interacts would go a long way to helping our players.
Thanks for the feedback!
Great concept! Your art style is good and cohesive, like it!
They pick-locking mechanic made trying to manage all the prisoners already in cells and prisoners running around fun! It made me wish you had more mechanics like that. I'm not sure what else they could do, but something to really make me have to manage them carefully and keep track of a bunch of different things. Maybe there could even be different types of prisoners, or obstacles to the dragging?
No real problems with the game, just think it has a lot of potential and could use more! Good job!
Submitted
KeylessI didn't spend as much time on the art as usual, but I tried my best to make sure it's as cohesive as possible. Good to know it worked out!
We were definitely limited by time crunch and some difficulty trying to get pathfinding off the ground, which held back what could've been a lot more in depth gameplay.
Thanks for the feedback!
Really good concept and a very frantic game which fitted the theme really well. There was quite a big issue in the game in the fact that you can drag prisoners into walls by mistake and they they will get stuck there, making you unable to complete the level. Also I think a bit more strategy could be added to the game, possibly with roles calls, different guard types, different prisoner types etc. However, I think the game is really fun considering that you only had 48 hours to make it and I definitely enjoyed my time playing it, great job!
Submitted
ApocalypseWe had some difficulty implementing a few mechanics quickly, like pathfinding and teleporting dudes to very specific spots. That would've helped us implement more mechanics and guard/prisoner types, and stop people from looking like they were stuck in the wall even though the game thought they were in a cell.
Glad to hear you enjoyed what we could make though. Thanks for the feedback!
Really good concept and a very frantic game which fitted the theme really well. There was quite a big issue in the game in the fact that you can drag prisoners into walls by mistake and they they will get stuck there, making you unable to complete the level. Also I think a bit more strategy could be added to the game, possibly with roles calls, different guard types, different prisoner types etc. However, I think the game is really fun considering that you only had 48 hours to make it and I definitely enjoyed my time playing it, great job!
Submitted
ApocalypseThis was the greatest game about being a God of Incarceration I have ever played!
So far as my thoughts go, I do wish that I had a full-screen option, since it was hard to see and precisely grab the inmates at times (though I did notice you had a bit of a larger collider for grabbing than the actual size of the inmate, so kudos to you!) -- still, you could get away with a larger resolution in a game like this since the art is so simple (a compliment!) and iconic.
If you want to run with and iterate on this idea, consider:
- making the guards draggable and droppable too (maybe they are and I missed this, but it would make for some interesting strategy to be able to "deploy" guards to trouble spots
- introduce a losing state to each level by having the prisoners literally break the locks on the cells they spring their friends from -- I noticed there are more cells in some levels than you would actually need, so you could make an interesting challenge there, perhaps.
- You could make some truly sprawling levels if you have a fullscreen option and the ability to zoom in with the mouse wheel (or a button or something).
Considering the time constraints, this is an outstanding game. Great job!
Heyho! Thanks for playing. I agree about the full screen point - was kind of a case of leaving it at the default screen size for too long until it might have broken something to change and I just wanted to sleeeep. But I agree, should have changed screen size from the get go. Thanks for noticing, we did indeed increase the hitbox size of the prisoners as well as allowed a few frames of wiggle room if the player clicked to the side of a prisoner and then dragged their mouse onto the prisoner to correct. But yeah, bigger screen size would have been a good thing.
On the points of improoooovement,
- In terms of draggable guards, they are :) though I wish that they guards felt punchier. Making the decision to avoid messing with pathing in 48 hours limited the design space a little - one of the things that an iterated on version would have to implement.
- We agreed that it should have some manner of additional failstate, but were running low on oomph to do something complex. We debated adding a simple time limit, but felt that that might have frustrated more than helped and decided to leave it sans fail state.
- True! That'd be super sweet. Though, I feel that bigger levels would require more mechanics to make the gameplay a little more diverse. I'm not sure bigger would have been better without some more diversity in the content that we *super* didn't have the oomph to put in. Still, I agree that it's where we'd go if we iterated on the idea.
I really enjoyed this one! It felt very frantic and I needed to constantly switch between the room to make sure the prisoners were in check. I just wished there were more levels!
Submitted
SLAVE TO THE RHYTHMWhat a great game, really feels out of control trying to put all of those prisoners in to the cells. Really fun, great work!
Submitted
The Astronaut
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.