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A jam submission

Project AwareView game page

Submitted by JohnOlson
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Project Aware's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sensory#302.4562.800
Metroidvania#302.0172.300
Relevance to the theme picked#322.7193.100
Enjoyment#331.7542.000
Overall#332.0872.380
Execution#361.4911.700

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme Chosen
The year is 20XX, Infiltration, Grow and Shrink, Powering Down, Out of Time.

Engine
Unity

Team/Developer
John Olson, Paul Olson, Marc Hampson

Reference info
john.olson#0669

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Comments

Submitted

This has a really cool aesthetic! The organic, textured feel of the world makes the inside of a computer feel more like the inside of a body. But the level design just does not feel structured enough to encourage exploration. Way too many directions to go, with no clear affordances communicating to the player which directions are inaccessible and which require more power ups. And as others have mentioned, I encountered quite a few bugs, including an egregious one in which the character sprite just disappeared. If you work on polishing up the bugs and focus on making the level design more intentional, I'm sure this could turn out really cool!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! I agree I was trying to make the world feel open, but just made it confusing and directionless in the end. I'm working on cleaning that up. We have managed to clean up a lot of the bugs now and will update once the voting is finished and the games are unlocked. Thanks again for playing!

Submitted (1 edit)

First of all, I really like the artstyle, and also the character designs, both the player and enemies. The music is also nice, altought I really wish it had a nicer loop, since after ending it kinda just stops for a while before actually restarting. (It also resets every time you enter a portal, wich feels pretty awkward)

Level design is also kind of just a mess of platforms, I have to admit, it's very easy to get lost and there's no real challenge anywhere (aside from the infamous bugs but hold on, I'll get there), altought I really love how the enemies are also used as platforms sometimes, that's really a nice touch.

Now about the bugs tho, as you guys are probably already tired of hearing, yeah they exist xD
I legit got the game crashing every time I dared to etither interact or just pass throught that first sign near the red portal, so I kinda got blocked off from that entire part of the map, and there were also some camera bugs that made it simply not follow my character back to where it respawned so I was forced to reset the game, otherwise It would be impossible to play.
Fortunatelly tho, I read throught some comments so I ended up doing the glitch to get all the upgrades, and I'm glad I did, because I could actually enjoy a bit of the game this way, even if only the side of the map that was on the right of the red portal lol.
The game may be full of glitches, but I actually kinda like some of them, honestly. Not only the one of getting all the power ups, but some of them actually felt like good inspiration for actual mechanics imo. The fact I could grow and shrink rapidly to phase throught walls was actually pretty fun, and came in handy to explore a little more of the map when I didn't knew where to go. And I also got a very weird bug where whenever I entered a portal, my character sprite was completely offset from it's hitbox, but before I realized that, it felt like the entire world was the one to be offset actually, and that was actually so trippy, that it was fun to try to traverse the rooms like that (altought the magic wore off when I used the freeze attack and saw that only my own hitbox was wrong sadly x3), legit think that would be an awesome idea for an actual unique level/area for a game.

I """"finished"""" the game, by cheating of course, but honestly I think the glitchy nature of the game is exactly what gave it a huge lot of charm, and it fits the virus-ish theme of it as well, so that was kinda magical.

Don't get me wrong tho, I still had to reload a lot of times, wich was a still a real bummer. And I still have no clue where the upgrades were actually supposed to be lol

Developer

To hack//clear that text box block by the red portal, it seems if you spam esc (open the upgrade window), it will clear that issue.

I really wish we could release a new version because several of those bugs were all caused from the same one line of code. FindGameObjectWithTag apparently operates different in Editor vs WebGL, and we had two tags (parent and child) with Player tag and so that causes the offset when starting a zone.

I agree that some of the weirdness has a fun quirkiness to it that works for the theme of the game and would be fun to explore more when intentional. lol

Submitted

The aesthetic of this is incredible, I love the idea of a more organic interpretation of the inside of a computer instead of the usual neon sort of aesthetic that gets used. Unfortunately the game is so utterly bug ridden and nonfunctional that I just wasn't able to see much of this world. Just a few of the bugs I encountered were:

- The first time I opened the map screen the game froze there and wouldnt close the screen
- After reloading the map closed properly but I then inexplicably gained all upgrades immediately
- The first time I used the shrink ability I clipped through the ground, and was able to clip again after just a few tries
- The first time I died I respawned at a random teleporter that I hadn't been to yet
- One time I entered a teleporter and my character was invisible in the room after, forcing me to navigate by using the attack particles to see where I was

All these gamebreaking bugs make it really difficult to leave any feedback on the actual intended mechanics since I just wasn't able to actually enjoy those for any extended amount of time. However I will say that the controls need to be explicitly stated either in the description or in the game itself - saying the "interact button" or "freeze button" is meaningless and I had to figure out the controls by testing every key on my keyboard instead of actually following the tutorials.

For your next project I would really suggest leaving much more time for testing, and making sure to test the fully built version and not just in the editor. Web versions in particular tend to be extra buggy and it's important to make extra sure they function properly.

Developer

Thank you so much for at least trying to play! I really appreciate the feedback and 100% agree. We didn't realize the crazy amount of bugs that would incur from publishing it out. The bugs don't exist in the Unity editor, where we can play through the whole game, but then become game breaking. While very disheartening, now we know that publishing to a platform is much, much more than hitting a button and waiting. Thanks again!

Submitted

Great job submitting your first game! I really enjoyed your art direction and how you chose to personify the world as digital objects like firewalls and stuff.

I sadly hit some bugs so I didn't get to experience the game fully, but the variety of abilities is really impressive! I love how teeny-tiny the "morph ball" is, good squeeshy little character animation

Great work!!!

Developer

Thank you! I appreciate it and we certainly learned from this. The bugs are terrible in it and I apologize that people have to deal with them. We needed a lot more time than 24 hours to debug the build. Now we know though. I'm glad you enjoyed the art and some aspects of the game, thanks again!

Submitted

I really like the aesthetics, great job on your first game!

Developer

Thank you! We were happy to make a game from beginning to end. Bugs aside, I'm proud that we finished.

Submitted

Hmm, I feel like I got a softlock when I entered a teleporter, hit an orange blob spike thing, and then was transported back to the teleporter, except my collision was completely removed and I was able to phase through walls but not enter teleporters or jump on platforms...?

There seems to be a lot of cool stuff going on, but I'm afraid the number of bugs present makes it quite difficult to traverse the world and enjoy it fully. Regardless I appreciate the effort!

Developer

Kevin, thank you so much for playing and for the feedback. My apologies for all the bugs as it ruins your experience playing the game. Its something that once the jam lock is over, we will be going through to fix. Yes, some of the bugs like the one you experienced are... interesting. The idea is that there are 4 teleports and 8 different levels that you use the tile map to move around to activate different rooms until you collect all the data files and enter the final port. That takes you to the final level, where you need all your abilities to beat it. Originally, we thought we can use the final 24 hours to add in all the instructions of how to do this, but we didn't realize how many bugs packaging it would introduce. While not ideal, we at least learned. Thanks again for playing and feedback!

Submitted

Nice, congrats on submitting your first game. I also created my first ever game for this jam. I couldn't get the WebGL to work properly either. I think the art is pretty nice and the soundtrack works well. 

Some thoughts:

- The jump sound occurs after the jump. Should be an easy fix to have it play when the character jumps. 

- I couldn't figure out how to attack. Once that's in the game, it should be more interesting to play. 

- Maybe there's something you could do to make the item collecting more interesting? I'm sure this will come with time. 

Overall, good job!

Developer

Thank for for playing and leaving feedback for us! I definitely should have included a lot more instructions on how to actually play the game. I know the game is riddled with game breaking bugs, which I apologize for. The idea behind the collections was that you ned to collect all 32 Data Files to enter the final level portal, to get all 32, you needed to collect Passwords (Keys) to open Firewalls and Glitches (Lightning bolts) to gain new abilities like double jump. I needed more instructions for players as it wasn't clear. To your point about making it more interesting, perhaps layering  a mechanic into the collection system that is more instant micro reward for collecting thing. I'm always interested in hearing feedback, so thank you!

Developer

This is our first complete game and first ever game jam. The WebGL version has bugs we didn't get in the editor (learning process), but I hope you enjoy it. We would love to hear any and all feedback.