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A jam submission

Retrograde BrigadeView game page

A top down shooter where the main character ages backwards.
Submitted by MikeyCee613 — 2 days, 2 hours before the deadline
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Retrograde Brigade's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#8122.9603.625
Innovation#11162.3472.875
Audio#12181.9392.375
Overall#12672.1092.583
Fun#13321.9392.375
Game Design#14391.8372.250
Graphics#15731.6332.000

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

In what way does your game fit the theme?
The main character ages backwards, so the game is set on a timer.

Did you write most of the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
I wrote all of the code myself, made all of the art and made both music tracks.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

This game is very silly, I like it :)

Would be nice if it were more challenging though. It was easy to age all the way back to zero

Developer

I kind of wanted the aging to be automatic, so that the player can focus on the gameplay, gameplay which I did not really focus on enough. And yes, it's very goofy :)

Submitted(+1)

It's a pretty cool concept playing as a character that starts to "rewind" in age.

I really  like how each of the characters has their own unique projectile, such as the cigarettes for the old man, the gun for the adult, the nerf gun for the kid, and the pacifier for the baby.


There are a few things that I feel can be improved though.

The enemies seem to back away whenever they reach my player, and touching them doesn't seem to do anything. I would have liked if there was some sort of dangerous enemy that felt threatening against the player.

The way each of the characters plays out feels kind of feels the same, other than their hitbox changing size and a slightly different shooting speed. I would have liked it if each of the aged characters had unique special abilites.

To think of a few:
The elderly could ride around in an electric  wheelchair that can run over enemies from the front. It controls differently than walking around since you rotate around like a vehicle instead of instantly turning the other direction.

The adult throws taxes at the enemies which causes the police to appear and arrest them for tax evasion.

The child can run around quickly while whacking enemies with a baseball bat. Any enemy that get knocked back by the bat become a projectile that damages other enemies

The baby uses a crying ability that gets enemies to back away from it, but the character movement is slow since it can only crawl.


That being said, I realize that we had a limited amount of time. I do like how you did every single asset yourself, the music, the graphics, the programming, that in itself is amazing for one person to do in a single week. While the game isn't perfect, that kind of effort to work that hard is the right kind of effort a game designer needs.
Developer(+1)

Thanks for the review/rating! The enemy thing was one of those dumb decisions that almost everyone makes at least once during a game jam.

I wanted to make sure that each character felt unique even though they are just reskins. Your ideas for the abilities made me laugh, especially the tax evasion. I can just imagine a police car rolling up.

Thank you for applauding my effort, I appreciate that a LOT.

Submitted(+1)

Hi there!
I really love it when people do all work from scratch and on their own! respect! I found the interpretation of the theme smart and unique and a creative take on the rewind theme! The controls are also pretty smooth and I know how painful managing rotational aim is code is :D The cover image is really cute and something I want to do better for my games - I always leave it at a boring screenshot - so well done.

The only improvement would be to make the game harder? It is fun to play and perfect for the theme, but there might be room to add a bit of difficulty? No minus points of course, just something I've noticed.  Keep on coding <3

Developer

Hey, thank you so much for playing my game, I really appreciate it. I made sure that the cover art was attractive because I figured that it is the first thing a potential player will see, and if they don't like it, they will move on. I'm very happy to see that my approach worked. 

P.S: I wanted to add difficulty but I lost a couple of days at the beginning of the jam, and because I've never done a jam before, I was feeling a little burnt out.

Submitted(+1)

Hi, i've played and rated your game. It's really fun to play. For the next time, the enemys could be more dangerous,  let them damage the player, for example. Nevertheless, you've made a good game!

Developer

Thank you so much!!

Submitted(+1)

The aging backwards mechanic was a fun and innovative take on the top-down shooter genre. I do wish there was a scoring system in place to track how well you did in a game.

Developer

I wanted to implement some kind of scoring system, but I ran out of time as I lost a couple of days during the jam. Thank you for the kind words!

Submitted(+1)

Nice music, would have loved if they were 1 minute long so I wouldn't change in the middle of the level. Also adulthood OP!

Developer

Thanks for the compliment on the music, worked so hard on it, so it feels nice to know that other people appreciated it too. Yeah, I probably should have put some effort into making the music loopable and I intentionally made the adult super OP just for funsies.

Submitted(+1)

Tried it out. Theme is well followed for sure. Maybe could use some danger from enemies to build up some tension

Developer

Thanks for the compliment! My intentions were to make it feel more like a story than a game, but in hindsight that may not have been the right decision.