the music and art is really cool, the instant death when hitting a spike is a bit harsh I think but I like the quick restart. really interesting game design.
Play game
Power Poachers's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #14 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Design | #23 | 3.313 | 3.313 |
| Overall | #35 | 3.156 | 3.156 |
| Presentation | #37 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Metroidvania | #82 | 2.188 | 2.188 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
gamemaker studio 1.4
Team/Developer
lerg bwo
Comments
thanks for the feedback!
yeah i doubt ill get away with not doing any more balancing
i think the dashing thing is fine. maybe some more tutorialising needed. the other areas you go to after this first one have enemies and bosses that had attacks that made you dash(they were removed for the jam since i didn't have time polish)
thanks for playing!
it does seem a bit strict/puzzle-like since you mention it. my hope for the energy system is that it can synergise with other mechanisms later so that you have to make choices while playing. id like it to be more risk/reward based where you have to quickly figure what you wanna do (like do more damage but risk losing a heart)
1 year ago(+1)
thanks for checking it out!
im suprised that you touched on so many of the things i was considering
the sound effects actually arent normalised perfectly. higher pitch sounds are going to seem louder even when its the same volume as a low pitch sound. so thats something that i needed to adjust but didnt have time for.
actually it used to be more of metroidvania. there were more powerups and bosses during development but i cut like three quarters of the content i had made in favour of making this first area presentable. the next area actually had obsticles to get players used to diagonal dashing controls. its something i thought about for the reason you said. theres a chance id go with 4 directions instead of 8 because i wanna make it that you have to dash into orbs (will adjust hitboxes accordingly). so it would depend on whats funner when testing basically... probably 8 still. i also thought about how much better the dashing would be on a controller but aiming is going to really important for this game (already is because of combos) so would have to try it out and see how well that works.
thanks for the feedback!
yeah the section before the boss is probably where i needed to balance the difficulty the most
there were more metroidvania powerups originally but the other sections of game were removed in order to focus on making this first area presentable
i didnt put much consideration into how to teach the health system. i suppose you just die when running out of energy since you only have one heart for this first area. so didnt think enough about that
1 year ago(+1)
thanks for checking it out!
if the first row was that difficult then i think something went horribly wrong with the tutorialization. i agree that i should've made the game easier but did you mean the second row? as the first row can be cleared by accident. see gif where i intentionally have imprecise inputs:
1 year ago(+1)
wow sorry about that! that was a bug with the html5 version but it should be fixed now (hopefully).... ill have to go fix it with my other in browser games aswell now
Thank you--that's much better! :)
Now that I've been able to try it out, I see that it is a very clever and rather original game. There are two uncommon elements here: the use of fuel as a dual energy and health meter, and the flying mechanic (as opposed to walking and jumping, which is more common for a Metroidvania). Together, they form a very interesting synergy.
In the balance, I still think the game is somewhat too hard. Fuel is plentiful, and you can even score more through combos, which is awesome. However, I think the excessive difficulty stems from the maximum amount of fuel you are allowed to carry. Were this increased by 50% (three bars instead of two), the player would have a bit more breathing room. Of course, some players relish a really hard challenge, but that's usually not the optimal route in a game jam (where you want players to experience your content without spending too much time retrying the same challenges).
1 year ago(+1)
hey thanks a bunch for that! definetly needed to get that issue taken care of
yeah i wouldve liked there to be more lead up to this level of difficulty. i remember thinking about increasing the bar like you said just as a quick fix before submitting to the jam.(or just providing another heart) didnt do that probably out concern for unintentionally breaking the level design right at the end of development
anyway i kinda wanted it balanced like that so that maybe there could be risk vs reward mechanics that the energy metre could play off of later (example: doing more damage but risk losing a heart)
thanks again
thanks for the feedback!
the game has been optimised now. if it slows down when shooting enemies then that's an intentional effect so you know that you got a hit in
Also you would have made more sense if the character automatically respawned at the last checkpoint after death
i didnt actually think of that, i suppose i wanted to make absolutely sure the player knows what killed them
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