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A jam submission

Arrow TreasureView game page

2D metroidvania with focus on archery
Submitted by Quivscor
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Arrow Treasure's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Metroidvania#64.0714.071
Overall#183.5713.571
Design#253.2863.286
Enjoyment#283.2143.214
Presentation#303.7143.714

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Engine
Unity

Team/Developer
Quivscor & GhatsbarBeet

External assets
Music from Alexandr Zhelanov, Fantasy sound effects library

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I liked the central focus on archery--interesting to see how many different mobility-abilities and soft-gates you can get out of variations on just that one weapon.

Enjoyment and presentation took some hits for me for how dark things were and the grappler (and archery in general) feeling a bit finnicky, but this is a pretty solid entry overall.

Submitted

I liked the art and the atmosphere of the game . I like that the player shots being limited to how many  arrows the player character was carrying and that holding the shot button would recall the arrows.

Submitted(+1)

I liked the art and the atmosphere of the game . I like that the player shots being limited to how many  arrows the player character was carrying and that holding the shot button would recall the arrows.

Developer

Thanks for checking out the game :D

Submitted(+1)

Really enjoyed the idea of the core mechanic, i have a particular fondness for this kind of picking up your limited resource kind of thing. That said, there is a major problem with inconsistency and feedback on it. It's been noted by many others, but the arrows are extremely finnicky on whether or not they decide to hit things, and it can be unclear even when they do work. 

When trying to link the blue bulbs it was a 50/50 on if it was *actually* in there or not since there was NO confirmation it had actually successfully hit a bulb until i hit 2. A specific particle and sound when that happened would have gone a long way, same with the torches. Very odd that they seemed to have a bit of a delay between being lit and actually providing light, as well. 

I had gotten stuck after the dark bulb area. I got the bow half but could not figure out how to get out and progress. Some weirdly tight jumps at places too- there were a couple times where i'd be below a very low platform/ceiling with spikes on the bottom, and have to try my best to both not jump too  high but also jump for long enough to eek out enough distance to just barely make it to a platform. I can see this sort of thing to get a collectable or something, but it's a very annoying setup to put in a room you might traverse through a lot.

Playing on the controller is at a detriment, since you cannot very effectively jump, shoot, and aim at the same time. I'd prefer having a secondary button for jump on one of the back buttons so i can keep my thumb on the stick to aim.

Also yeah, the cursor in the dark sucks. It should be high contrast and have a white outline or something.

The art is cute, and I appreciate the story setup and dialogue! Overall a solid entry, but it's just a little too inconsistent for me to love.

Developer

Thanks for checking out the game, really appreciate it! Bugs aside, I remember having long conversation about being able to jump while aiming on controler, while i'm not a fan of controller myself, I added up arrow/up tilt on analog for that purpose and it kinda worked, but i realised this kind of thing falls down to preference a lot, i guess just adding remapping would've been better

Submitted(+1)

I like the atmosphere and the art a lot. I really like the falling animation for some reason I just think it's really satisfying I guess. I think the arrow recall mechanic is really cool, I just wish it was more consistent. I never really knew how long to press to get them back. I also stopped playing after receiving the crystal arrows because I couldn't get them to work on any other devices. Seemed like a cool power though.


Nice job :D

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! :D

Submitted(+1)

I love the atmosphere. The empty opening areas, plus that music, followed by the ghosts, really gives a feeling of a land fallen into ruin. After talking to the king, I was intrigued.

I got stuck after getting the rope arrows. The way they worked felt too frustrating to me, and I eventually gave up. It's a shame, because overall I think the game is really interesting. I feel like I wanted rope arrows to be this dynamic, jump-shoot-and-swing thing, but instead it was more like hop-shoot-dangle-swing-swing-swing-plop. My advice would be 1) maintain the rope until fire is released. Holding down a button feels more intuitively like gripping a rope, and 2) let me jump out of the swinging state with the swing velocity: it felt like I was falling like a lead balloon as soon as I got off the rope.

Rapid-firing arrows into ghosts felt really fun. The energy arrows are a really interesting idea. There were a lot of really nice animations. Basically, I really liked this game, but I wish it were a bit more polished.

Developer

Thanks for playing the game, I know exactly what you're talking about with the rope arrows, I promise to make them better next time I do something like that haha

Submitted(+1)

You have my respect for trying though. Rope physics is always hard.

Submitted(+1)

game was buggy, yes, but design was on the spot! The music, the arrow mechanics, the simple but catching graphics (i especially loved the character moving while you aimed). The other thing except bugs that hurt my playthrough was some level design, especially the long dark room with hitting the power units, it could be shorter and still really enjoyable.

overall, loved it

Submitted(+1)

I really enjoy this game. It doesn't always work, as was already mentioned by other commenters, but when it does it usually feels quite good to interact with. The ideas for arrows are great, and feel more unique than some powerups in other entries I tried. Also the graphics and sound are very nice and fit together. Plus I was intrigued by the story, at first glance it was quite straightforward but it seemed to be getting more deep later on. 

One bigger issue I encountered was that when you get hit, the frames drop and physics also seem to be working a bit wonkier? Sometimes the player character gets launched really high, which let me bypass a jumping puzzle or two. I also once got into a room which was pitch black. There didn't seem to be anything in there. Though as it was just after the lorem ipsum character, I feel it was simply unfinished.

Apart from that I also felt, that enemies could be less omniscient. They instantly know where the player is and just fly towards you. Because of it rooms feel really hard at the beginnig cause they all gang up on you, but then it seems easier cause they are all dead. Also, I feel like arrows could have more uses. Obviously they have a lot of use in puzzles and those are designed in a really nice way. However, because the game includes combat, it could be nice to give them more combat capabilities as well. Like for example fire arrows burning the enemies over time, energy arrows making a link between the enemies so their damage is shared. I think it could enrich the game this way and also make combat encounters almost their own puzzles.

All in all, a nice and fun entry, I liked it a lot. Good job!

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks for checking the game! I did have plans for combat capabilities for arrows, pretty much the same that you mentioned, but unfortunately had to drop it because of time constraints. And uh, I learned that my implementation of slow motion after getting hit makes everything look choppy, not what I intended haha

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Screenshots looks so promising! Unfortunately had some issue while trying to run your game on linux :<

after some googling i found that maybe the linux folder lacks some files generated by unity

Developer

Oh, sorry to hear that, it was my first time making builds for mac and linux and I have no way of testing them so went in blind, I'll look into it

Submitted(+1)

i like the arrow mechanics and everything seems really solid, good visuals/audio/controls

i would suggest adding  someway of teaching the arrow mechanics (through level design or text on arrow screen) as it took awhile understand what to do

also some bugs i noticed:

the energy arrows didn't always work and sometimes the arrows wouldn't stick

shooting buttons had the same problem

you let go of a grappling hook immediately after shoot if holding down spacebar (i also thought the grappling hook was a bit fiddly to get to work)

character has a hard time getting on top of a platform when a jump is barely makeable

enter/x to talk wouldn't always work either, would start spamming before it opened dialogue

also dialogue getting stuck and unable to progress for one of the characters (was in another language as well)

there were some minor visual glitched like the hearts going black until entering a new room, the screen going black when entering a room and being stuck like that until i start moving a bit, arrows that hit me continue to wonder slowly across the screen after

arrows getting stuck inside walls sometimes

its hard to aim in the dark because the crosshair is black...more of a nit pick

Developer(+1)

Thanks for trying the game! Teaching controls was definitely on my TODO list, but time constraints destroyed me.

(+1)

First of all, I really need to say I love the artstyle a huge lot lol, I think Vectorized animation is really underrated, and seing some of it on game jams among several pixel art games is always a breath of fresh air. I also really like the vibes of the songs you chose, they really make the game feel super chill.
I really think the overall controls feels vey sweet to move around too. When I saw how gravity defying floaty the jump was at first I got a little scared ngl, but it actually ended up fitting itself on the gameplay flow and level design really well!

The arrow mechanics are the things that really wants to be the stars of the show here, and honestly, they are very creative and have a huge lot of potential, but unfortunatelly in execution they were pretty iffy, and sometimes pretty broken too. Like, the energy arrows almost never hit the energy points properly for whatever reason, so I had to keep trying several times per switch until they decided to work.
The rope arrows were something that when I picked up I instantly got extremelly excited, but sadly they doesn't really feel that good to use at all. The biggest sin they commit is actually a very simple fix, it's the fact that when you jump out of them, you just keep your momentum and direction, so you just kinda... fall, when instead you should have made so the character jumped when getting out of the rope, because the way it is now feels needlesly hard to get across any gap using those.

Some minor nitpicks too: The magician ghosts can shoot me from off-screen, wich is never good; And you should really make it more clear wich rooms have elevators or not, since I found myself wandering around lost while skipping the rooms with elevators witouth noticing them way too often lol.

Unfortunatelly I couldn't push myself to finish the game, because I died in a way that made Unity completely drunk and respawned me with literal 2 fps, making the game umplayable and forcing me to start over, wich is a shame since I didn't even get to see how the seismic arrow looked like.
Another minor bug that I noticed is that most of the times I died I was respawning with 0 hp, so it was basically like a 1 hit death game when that happened lol

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks for trying the game! It means a lot to me because I was following the development of your little game until you couldn't submit :c I'm keeping note of all the issues you mention, there probably won't be any changes to this, but I'm realising a lot of things pointed out by people in the comments, so i'll definitely fix them for the next MVM entry 

Submitted(+1)

The bow aiming worked well with the mouse but was uncomfortable for me on the controller. 
(So, Keyboard and mouse it is.) I think it would have worked better with the controller if the aim went back to a rest position when the right joystick is released. Probably just a preference.  I like how most of the artwork is hand drawn. Great job, look forward to your future entries. 

Submitted(+1)

An excellent entry.

Very pleasant graphics. The main character is decently animated. The controls are quite smooth, and the central mechanic of aiming with arrows and later collecting them is well-implemented. Fitting music.

The main difficulty I had is that, although I managed to acquire the linking arrows, I could not figure out how to share energy between devices. This should be a little more intuitive.

 When falling on spikes, the player character gets a bit of a boost in height. I expect this is intentional (to allow the hero to escape from a pit), but for some reason it is also accompanied by a frame rate drop.

Also, the torches in the environment are very dim. The light given off by a torch should be brighter and have a slightly larger radius.

Lastly, a bit more variety in the enemy designs would have been welcome.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for checking the game!

Sorry for lack of explanation in game, I was hoping it would be more intuitive honestly, the mechanic of linking arrow is that you hit electrified machine with one arrow and use second arrow to hit unpowered machine, thus powering it up. I wish I had time to make more enemies as well, but overscoping is a sickness and i fell sick during the jam (figuratively and literally as well :c)

Submitted

Oh yes. Scoping correctly is always a challenge in these small, quick projects!

Anyway, congrats on a very good game.

Submitted(+1)

I really liked the arrow mechanics and how you use them around the world! The game did lack some polish, but the only thing that really hurted it was the camera some times suddenly clipping around and making it hard to platform around (specially when you get one of the around upgrades).
Very solid overall!

Developer

Thank you for trying it out!