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A jam submission

Who is Moloch?View game page

A short metroidvania with robots!
Submitted by rustyroboz (@RustyRoboz) — 9 minutes, 1 second before the deadline
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Who is Moloch?'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Metroidvania#652.5002.500
Enjoyment#782.2862.286
Design#822.2142.214
Overall#832.3042.304
Presentation#992.2142.214

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
RustyRoboz

External assets
https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/ https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/characters/metroidvania-controller-166731 art made with Midjourney, Dalle2 and Stable Diffusion

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

A very short, but more or less complete example of the genre! The controls are pretty responsive, although I would have liked an alternative to Z and X (I myself prefer Space and Left Shift).

While the idea of using AI art troubles me on an ethical level, I think the game looks very good.  The lighting is dramatic and the color palettes are highly coherent. As other reviewers have pointed out, there are some issues with marking the boundaries of spaces, but these issues are minor. The music is pleasant.

The attack (or "cleaning") animation needs a bit of work. The broom is held too close to the robot's body. Ideally, it should describe a wide arc that strikes enemies in its wake.

Note that I got to the end, but for some reason the game wouldn't register my choice of ending. I just had to quit the game. (I was playing the Windows build.)

Developer(+1)

How strange that it doesn't let you choose the option at the end. You have to hit Enter to select an option, it may be that you will try to click with the mouse and that will not work. I am going to add it to the instructions because it is true that it is not indicated anywhere which button to press to choose. Thank you very much for the feedback! highly appreciated!

Submitted(+1)

Nice entry!  I like the premise and I wish there was more to learn.  One issue I had was determining where the floor was, Its a cool idea to use the background as the floor but since the bg art didnt always line up it hindered readability.  Also, I dont think you need the red arrows, and the jump sound fx were out of sync.  Overall, nice concept though!

Developer

Yes, you are right that the background - floor duality is a bit confusing. something to improve for the next time! Thanks for playing and commenting!

Submitted(+1)

The ai backgrounds were cool but didn't mesh together all too well. I also think that you should be a little bit more confident in your level design so as to not rely on the big red arrows.  I also think that there is something janky with the player animations. Other than that cool, the game controls well and it is a Metroidvania!

Nice work!:D

Developer

Totally agree with the observations, I added the arrows precisely because the backgrounds were a bit confusing, and it seemed to me that with the arrows most of the people would finish the game, but it is true that it loses a bit of the fun. Thanks for trying it and commenting!

(+1)

Pretty short, but still pretty enjoyable.
I'm always really into those games with unusual artstyles, and that's certainly one of them. I do really like all the jank that comes with those AI assets, it really gives the game a unique charm that I always appreciate, altought I do need to admit it looks a little too janky even for someone like me tho. I think you could've at least tried getting images that coumplemented each other on color schemes, because the way it is now, it do looks a little too jarring on some parts of level.
The player animations are also really funny and charming, and I love them x)
Altought I feel like they don't properly transition well to one another, like, whenever I landed the char always waited for the landing animation to finish before starting the actual running animation.

I also really like that you decided to add a story here, I always appreciate that on jam games.
The music is also really ear-candy, idk if you made it yourself, if it's an asset or if it was AI generated too, but if it's the first case then really well done with it.

I don't really have anything to say about the gameplay itself tho, the moveset is pretty basic, and even thought I did 2 runs to get both endings, the game was still too short for me to really make any meaningfull observation.

Developer

I totally agree about the jankynes of the images made with AI, I would like to have integrated them a little more. Music is an asset that I got in a humble bundle, And the animations were going to be provisional, but in the end I ran out of time and they stayed in the final version :)

Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Short and sweet. I liked it. I chose the virus option.

The art is interesting (AI generated?), but it doesn't quite fit together. Maybe some manual tweaking to blend the room edges a bit more cleanly would be good.

Your level design is clear and simple enough that I'm not convinced the big red arrows were necessary. It might feel more like a Metroidvania without such obvious signposting.

Developer

Yep! we have created the backgrounds and characters using various AIs, mainly midjourney, Dalle2 and stable diffusion, but the integration of the different backgrounds could definitely be improved.  We added the arrows because some friends who played the game seemed to get a bit lost sometimes, maybe because the backgrounds are a bit confusing, also with the idea that most people will finish the game in a smoother way, but I definitely agree with you that part of the fun of a metroidvsnia is exploration.  Thank you very much for playing it and for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I like the narrative you're trying to tell, but that's about it. The graphics are mashed together assets and many mechanics don't feel like they need to exist. I assume this is one of your first games, so I won't judge too harshly.

Developer(+1)

Yeah, its a bit rushed, we didint have much time, and we aproach the Jam with the goal of completing something, and try things, mostly the ink pluging for dialogs and IA generated images for the backgrounds and characters, thats why they look mashed together. The idea of the different mechanics is that each  let the player reach a specific zone of the map ( shots for open a door, double jump for reach some plataform, etc). Thanks a lot for playing It!