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A jam submission

EYESView game page

Escape the EYES lab, while They are watching (short/varied metroidvania)
Submitted by yumaikas (@yumaikas), GDeavid, Winfield Carson — 3 days, 3 hours before the deadline
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EYES's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Design#24.1054.105
Enjoyment#33.7373.737
Overall#34.1054.105
Metroidvania#44.4744.474
Presentation#54.1054.105

Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Engine
Godot

Team/Developer
yumaikas, Composer https://winfieldbcarsonv.com/, GDeavid

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed the game, especially the backstory and the environment, but I had trouble with the boss.

Submitted

This is an excellent entry, as you're well aware. Good work. A full, playable game with original art and music. Quality stuff. You've already got a lot of great feedback so I'll try to focus on things others haven't mentioned: 

1. There's no autosave after you beat the final boss; During the escape sequence I missed a jump, ended up in an entirely different area, and had no way of getting to where I needed to be except backtracking all the way around. Before I got there I died and found myself having to face the final boss again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Maybe I'll try again later, but I don't know... 

2. I *really* wish saving would refill health, at least before the final boss. I found myself going in with 50 health and no vials in sight. The final boss was pretty good--challenging and intense--once I realized how it worked. But it was way harder than I anticipated bc of the save issue and because I foolishly did not get enough bomb upgrades. 

3. I quit this game and picked it up again several times because I kept getting stuck. For me, the environmental instructions were a little too subtle. It began with the first boss after getting bombs. The bomb targets didn't really look like targets, and even though I blew up one, nothing happened. It didn't occur to me that I needed to find and blow up all of the targets in the area to get out of the room. I thought it was soft-locked. This happened again after getting the whip. There was so much going on in that chaotic miniboss room I had no idea that I just had to keep whipping the thing over and over again and causing the miniboss to keep getting zapped. And again I was confused with the final boss, though by now I had kind of figured out how the world worked and figured it out without too much trouble. I think one thing that would help would be showing the player a more immediate connection between cause and effect in simple rooms, and be a little more obvious with player feedback.

4. I think at times the level design did not live up to the potential of the mechanics. Large sections of the game felt like "homework" jobs, like 1. collect bombs, 2. bomb targets, repeat. Some of that is not bad, but at times it felt a little tedious. 

5. I like the aesthetics a lot but it could use some variety.

Overall I think it's a quality game, definitely one of the best entries, and I hope that some of the issues people have raised get addressed, because it's nearly there. 

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks for the feedback!

I definitely agree that save stations should fill up your health.

The environmental cues are an appreciated callout. I spent so much time building out stuff that was cool in my head, but I didn’t put nearly enough time into communicating it, heh. Obviously it came through enough in the end, but definitely could use another pass.

I think building wires that show connect power cells to the things they activate would be a solid start, and, as far the bomb targets go…. Those honestly could use another full pass, with something less abstract (though causal lines would also be a good start for them as well).

The miniboss room definitely needs a lot more lead-up to it, mixing in more mechanics, that sort of thing.

I definitely plan on a) Polishing up the game after the jam is over, and b) building out a fuller version of this game, provided my teammates are on board for that. Though, if I do build a fuller version, this one will stay up as it ends up after the polish.

There are other boss ideas I had, and ways to expand the plot, and more time obviously gives more space to increase the visual variety.

Submitted(+1)

Pretty smooth and pixelicious game. Atmosphere was generally good. The aesthetics were minimal but pretty good. This one is a contender for me for sure.

Submitted(+1)

Enjoyed playing it

Submitted(+2)

Solid game! Nice clean art, fun story. I especially liked the inclusion of an escape sequence, made me very happy lol.

There were a few of points in the game that I was confused by...
* The eye boss in its entirety is very unclear, I think I might have spoiled myself a bit on it by glancing at the comments, otherwise I might not even have tried to hit the main eye or realized I was in a boss room at all. Hitting sewers until they were deslimed in order to wake up smaller eyes that shot at me so I could hit a bigger eye that would teleport me back up to where I started where I had to whip one of the battery obstacles... everything felt very arbitrary and it wasn't until 4 or 5 deaths in I felt like I had a grasp of everything that was going on there mechanically. Not sure if I just didn't pay enough attention to the lore or what...
I think one of the smallest ways to remedy it might be decreasing the size of the arena (at first?) so that the player sees the main eye waking up, since when you enter the arena it does nothing and you can't interact with it. I also somehow didn't realize the small eyes straight away, they felt like they come on randomly, especially I think because they come on after one hit while the sewer takes multiple hits to set off.

I will say though, once I grasped everything it was a very fun challenge to dodge everything while running everywhere, although by the sixth battery you do start to feel exhausted lol, and there doesn't seem to be a way to heal once you run out of vials since they don't respawn.

* Spikes were incredibly confusing. At first, I got jerked around by purple spikes, and just assumed I had stepped on an unrelated teleporter. Later my conclusion warped into "oh, I must have died, and it started me back at a checkpoint", but sometimes that checkpoint was further ahead of where I was when I had stepped on the spike. I didn't even realize that I hadn't truly experienced death until the boss fight.
Maybe some kind of particle animation that moves you back to start would make things less disorienting?

* Red spikes as well, they drain your health over time, but there's not really any feedback saying 'ouch ouch ouch I need to get out', so it could be red grass for all you know until suddenly you're dead.

The music in the escape sequence seemed a bit... chill? Not sure if that was intentional since it did cut off in the beginning

I'm also really curious on to the decision of making bombs limited, there were quite a few times especially early on where I ran out of bombs trying to hit switches and awkwardly had to run back to somewhere I knew refills were. Even in the case of combat, none of the enemies are threatening enough that I'm in danger of overextending by using them, since I can just lob a few, run back a bit to refill, and then return. The one exception might be the boss, which certainly is painful if you waste bombs on anything but the main eye, but I'm not sure it needs a difficulty spike on top of the many constant lasers lol.

Bombs are also probably the most fun thing in the game to use, the first thing you want to do when you get them is go nuts and throw them everywhere!

I also thought having the doors set up the way they were was interesting, it's pretty uncommon to be able to close doors. You might be able to create instances where the player is desperately running away from an enemy, and has to close it to keep it out? Just a random thought.

Overall it was a fun experience! I don't think I ever got too lost despite the map feeling quite large, and I really liked a lot of the smaller challenges like the moving platform on-rail challenges and the escape sequence. I'd say things like that gave it a really nice variety in the gameplay that I haven't seen in this jam.

Developer

The unclarity of the eye boss is more an artifact of it being a late addition to the game than you missing anything. It could use more feedback in general, and another pass to tune the difficulty.

The escape sequence not having it’s own music was more an artifact of not having enough time between the conception and implementation for the musician to have time to pull something together.

Spikes having more feedback, better checkpointing, and/or switching out red spikes for lava or acid would definitely help.

As far as bomb ammo goes, I think I’d make it something that spawns from enemies in the future (as well as health that is separate from vials) and/or make the damage output from bombs closer to the pipe (and make most enemies less tanky to match).

The thing I wanted to avoid was players only using bombs, though, as you pointed out, there’s enough ammo about that they can almost get there.

I like keeping melee at least a bit relevant, though how the pipe interacts with enemies needs work (especially having knockback).

Thanks for giving the game a close look!

Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

Great metroidvania! Simple yet appealing graphics and good animations. The controls worked and the puzzles along with other level design were done well. Love the death screen lol.

Things I think should be fixed or improved:

-The enemies can damage you while dying.

-Attacking interrupts your jump and resets the gravity.

-There wasn't any music playing at the upper section.

-You don't start with full health after death.

-While the final boss fight was very interesting, it was too obscure and difficult for its own good. The attacks weren't telegraphed, there were a lot of projectiles and the character had no invincibility time so dying was very easy. I kinda have a love-hate relationship with it.

While I have some complaints I still enjoyed my time!

Developer (1 edit)

The attacking jump interrupt was an on-purpose/intentional thing, though I think I’d cut interrupt time in half going forward.

I didn’t get many opportunities for feedback on the final boss, thanks for writing up some feedback on it!

The music not playing in the upper section is definitely a bug. I think I might need to switch out the music manager I used, I’ve had a lot of reports of music problems with this one, and enemies being able to hurt you while dying was definitely something I should have addressed.

Submitted(+1)

I ABSOLUTELY love this game.... it's really nicely designed got great atmosphere/graphics that perfectly fit the mood, a lot of backtracking  with great opening up of the areas once you have new abilities. Not finished yet, but fully intend to come back to this one, and get past those silly blue eyebally things firing all their rays at me!


The negatives are all very minor, but minor annoyances were that - the jumping initially felt like it could be a little more responsive/use some coyote time, but I noticed it less, and less... the floaty enemies got stuck and their hit boxes to do you damage felt a bit bigger than was intuitive (but again I noticed this less and less playing the game).. Also I found myself in the bulkhead area teleported to the low exit area on getting injured (think this is a bug rather than I accidentally hit some form of intentional teleport I didn't notice?). A little more feed back (say an unlocking whirl or other indication when you unlock the doors, might help a tiny bit, to know when you are done with an area... However none of this detracted from my overall enjoyment (as I mentioned, I really REALLY loved this game) 

Great Job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for giving the game a play!

A teleport from the Bulkhead area to the low exit area would definitely have been unintentional, and a lot of game’s puzzles would benefit from a second feedback pass, IMO. I am glad that I was able to get as much done as I did with holidays and life events happening during this MVM though.

Submitted(+1)

it's a game that is definitely on the bigger side, so with holidays etc, it's very impressive what you managed to achieve!

Developer(+1)

Would you believe that I had 2 more bosses and at least one more biome and 2-3 other mechanics that I wanted to do at one point? In a way, I got lucky that I landed on a good subset of ideas out of it all.

I’m heavily considering taking this game and expanding it out at some point next year, but I am taking a gamedev break first, I’ve been doing a lot of it since GMTK 2022. (Over half my Itch page is from the past 6 months). We’ll also have to see what the rest of the team thinks about the possibility.

Submitted(+2)

Love the atmosphere. Well done on this one!

Submitted(+2)

Really nice game. The aesthetic is consistent and the music matches the mood. I thought the level design was decent. The movement feels crisp and fluid, and I think you got the jump juuuust right.

I could see spending a substantial amount of time on this game, great work!
 

Developer

Thanks for trying it out!

Developer

Thank you for playing the game!

(1 edit) (+1)

Very enjoyable experience! The atmosphere feels very lonely and desolate.  Simple and effective.  The controls felt a little unintuitive to me on KB+M, but can't comment on how it feels for controller.  Nice work!

Developer

It should have some controller support, though I didn’t have time to integrated it into the tutorials, and I didn’t have time to test it, so I can’t assert that it’s not wired up backwards or something goofy like that.

Neither scheme (Arrows or WASD) worked well?

Developer

Thank you Jake!

Submitted(+1)

Level design became better, but I got softlocked anyway. Controls feel solid, graphics are good. The game was a bit boring at times though, but it is by no means bad.

Developer

So, you may not care for to put the effort in, but if you select “new game > Overwrite Save File” at the start menu, you can reset the bit of the game that gets soft-locked around the bombs/Low Exit fight. The game does get more interesting after that, IMO, and I understand if you can’t be bothered.

I will be investigating a save file hack to fix it, but that will involve mucking in indexedDB, and running JS, which might also be too much effort, heh.

If you got softlocked somewhere else, I’d love to know

Submitted(+2)

Loved it, felt smooth and satisfying overall and definitely fits the genre. The minimalistic soundtrack compliments the environment really well, and the whole game feels well thought-out. The animation for the pipe swing in particular felt really nice for me :)

Developer(+2)

Thanks you! I had a great time writing the music!

Submitted(+1)

Excellent job! Consistent style, nice movement control. Bugs I've noticed look minor.

Submitted(+1)

Really good job! Resembles like Metroid and the graphics are really cool! Loved it!

Submitted(+1)

Very intriguing! I got stuck in the room with the six cells in the low exit, above the weird eye boss. I activated all six cells, went to fight the eye thing, it zapped me, and sent me back to the six cell room, with one destroyed. All doors were sealed and I couldn't do anything else.

Developer (1 edit)

You can hit a cell with a pipe to drain it of one power, and then power it back up to keep things going.

(I’ll see what I can do in terms of making that part of the fight less likely to look like a softlock, heh)

Developer

Okay, I’ve pushed up an update that should make that fight look like less of a softlock!

Submitted(+1)

I've finished it! That fight gets pretty hectic towards the end, I've got to say.

One minor nitpick is that health and bomb upgrades respawn when loading the game, which makes it a bit chees-able.

I quite enjoyed the ending escape sequence!

I am wondering if there is a different "good" ending due to my missing something, or if the current ending is the only one.

Developer

Health and bomb upgrades shouldn’t be respawning, that’s definitely a bug. Though, tbh, given how hectic the final boss gets, maybe not the worst thing to have, heh.

I don’t have separate endings yet, that might be worth trying out, maybe by collecting all of the vials, or by having one of the scientists leave behind scattered notes on how to remove the lenses.

I tagged it “horror” for a reason, though.

Submitted(+1)

Fair! Yeah I haven't checked all the pickups, but the ones at the bottom of the bullet hell pit right before the boss, I was able to farm those two by picking them up and then dying, respawning at the save room right above them, and they would be there again.

One more nitpick I would want to add, the font is a bit hard on the eyes in large paragraphs, the intro text scrawl was not the most pleasant to read.

Developer

Yeah, I’ve had that in the back of my head as well, but only just wrote the intro/outro scrawls last night.

If you have a recommended font for low-resolution long text, I’m more than happy to update it.

Developer

So, yeah, I forgot to add the node to persist them being collected, that should be fixed now.

I changed out the font for the intro/outro to one that should be a lot easier to read, for future folks

Submitted(+1)

I got stuck in a place with a "low exit" sign... but that's probably just me.

Other than that, nice crisp pixel art and a quite elaborate level design. I enjoyed playing this one!

Developer

So, I’ve pushed an update to hopefully make it easier to figure out how to get out of the place next to the Low Exit sign (though, with save points being where they are, you’ll probably need to redo the boss. It has been made a little easier to finish things)

Developer

Also, if you are softlocked after the roller fight, I’ve got a workaround in the game’s description.

In the next day or two, I plan on building some tools to un-softlock the save for folks, since I can’t fix the bug itself.

Submitted

Actually -funny story- we both died simultaneously, and when I respawned the door was open, so I never experienced that softlock...

But thanks. And _respect_ for trying to improve your game. I wish I had the time to do the same for mine... :/

Submitted(+2)

I looks and plays very nicely! I kind of got stuck after finding the thingy after you jump over a bunch of spikes. I liked the relaxed tone and athmosphere (and the music)! My constructive feedback would be that the relatively empty rooms and slow movement speed make it a bit hard to stay motivated to search for the next place to go.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for giving it a play!

I’m currently working on giving the game a twice-over as far as mapping goes, to hopefully make the rooms a little less empty (while adding some other needed features as well).

Developer(+1)

I tried to space things out a bit better, and sped up the player a tiny bit, since the map is rather large.

Submitted

I played the newest version and saw you improved it quite a bit. I played it all the way through, and it's definitely one of the highlights of this jam! 

Developer(+1)

Thanks for taking a second look! I’ve got a tiny bit more of improvements to come, especially to the very end of the game, and I think I’ll be writing a devlog on it, heh.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! I'm happy you liked the music.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

i like the level design in this a lot! reminiscent of metroid 1. the art style is also very nice :)

i didn't get very far, because my progress wasn't saved (idk if this game has saving, but i was in private-mode by mistake, oops), but the combat seemed a little bit samey.

regardless,  very nice for having only a month to make a game! ^^

Developer (1 edit)

Saving is something I’m working on right now, actually! This game definitely doesn’t have all of the pieces just yet.

I could see combat being a bit samey, though it does open up a bit the further you go.

(I don’t know how far you got, heh).

I have more particle effects on the list of things to add, which should hopefully help with combat a little bit?

I might also tune down the difficulty on the minibosses a bit