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A jam submission

SwapHeistView game page

Catch Yourself!
Submitted by Bart Moon — 1 hour, 49 minutes before the deadline
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SwapHeist's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creativity#7613.8573.857
Overall#10273.6193.619
Presentation#12643.6673.667
Enjoyment#12703.3333.333

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
You swap perspectives between a thief and a gurad that tries to catch the thief.

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

No

We used pre-existing art

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

No

We used pre-existing audio

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Comments

Submitted

I saw this game on the stream and was a confused about how to play it. It all felt too complex (maybe because I join health way though the stream). I then got to play it and it turned out to be very comprehensive. I really live the narrative and core mechanics. It feels so poetic in a way.
And the artstyle too. I can see clear parallels with the artstyles of the games you've maned as inspirations. Especially Antichamber, and Mirrors Edge.  Therese two titles are very dead to my eye.

If I was to suggest and improvement, that would be making the game a little snappier. Maybe it was my PC that could not run the game fast enough but it all felt like things could be moving much faster and still be playable.

Great stuff!  

Developer

Thank you Stepan

Submitted

This was a really clever puzzle! I’d always appreciate an “Undo” button, but I’m glad you can separately redo the guard and the thief.

Submitted(+1)

Really cool puzzle game!  I liked swapping between both perspectives and the tiles you step on to interact with doors.  If you continue working on it, the only real criticism I think I have is I wish you could move between tiles faster.  Great entry, I'm always impressed when I see people take on puzzle games in such a short time and yours gets a little tough!

Developer

Thank You!

I will learn how to do better movement systems for the future, don't worry :D

Submitted(+1)

Puzzles were well balanced, so I didn't finish them on my first try, but after just a few attempts. Also, I liked how the game shifted from controlling thief first, then guard first and finally two thieves at once.

I know you running in galleries is prohibited, but some queue to store move commands, so you can finish parts that you already have figured out faster could be nice quality of life improvement. But after all game jam was only 48 hours and I myself didn't have time to implement some nice to have things in my game.

So overall, nice puzzle game.

Developer

I tried with the movement but I couldn't make it work for both characters at once and it led to the thief skipping some movements and breaking the puzzles.

This is why no running rule had to be implemented :p

But one thing I can do is to promise you and all other players that I will learn and practice and I whenever I will make another similar game it will have great, fluid movement system. You have my word :D

Submitted

Glad to head that.

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed the puzzles. They are varied and quite challenging. 

My only gripes would be that the level title text covers the entire screen and sits there for a bit too long, and in the later levels I'd like to have some visual indication of swapping between the characters. Also, the doors when open were easy to confuse with buttons.

These notes aside, nice graphics and a great entry worth updating your drivers for!

Developer

Valid points. I was also thinking about how the gates look like buttons, but I was running out of time at that point and had to settle for something and decided to simply go with colors, which weren't the best solution, but felt good enough for the time that I had left.

About visual representation of a swap... yeah, I didn't think about that and it seems like it should be an obvious inclusion into the game. I will be smarter for next year.

I was tweaking the time the text spent on screen and decided to go for the longer one, as I felt that the text conveyed important info for the level at hand. That being said I was constantly on the fence about how long it should stay on screen. It covering the whole screen was a stylistic choice, but I overshoot a little bit and didn't fully implement what I had planned for it. 

Thanks for playing and commenting, glad You enjoyed it

Submitted(+1)

As for the text, maybe hiding it with Space could work (with a proper hint)

Developer

Yeah, that could work. I always read through comments of my previous entries before the jam, so thanks for detailed feedback and suggestions.

Submitted

enjoyed the art and the idea but first i don't really like puzzle games like these (just my taste) and even with the new mechanics i find it kinda repetitive don't know why but that's how i felt.

Developer

Sorry to hear that

Submitted

Well, I enjoyed a lot the art and the idea behind the game. Great interpretation of the theme. Haven't much to say but I liked playing the game. Well done

Submitted(+1)

Well designed game- good work! There was quite the complexity jump between Level 2 and Level 3, took be a couple tries to make sense of the space. I enjoy that you can only go in a space once, making it hard to cheat the level.

Submitted

The puzzles are very well designed! They actually made me have to sit and think them through, and once I solved it, it was very satisfying. I think the only thing is the difficulty curve. After just 2 levels, there was suddenly a bunch of new elements to figure out. This wasn't too much of problem for me but I can imagine it could be overwhelming to suddenly see so many switches. Anyway, the variety in the gameplay/objective was nice and it was overall a great game! The "teamwork" puzzle was especially enjoyable to figure out

Developer

Thank You! Glad You enjoyed it :)

Submitted(+1)

Game no work on rock computer! Me play game, want be thief, want be guard, want swap bodies. But game no come on Linux rock. Unreal Engine 4 not make game for Linux rock. Me sad, me no steal crystal, me no catch thief. Me wait long time for game, but no come for Linux rock. Game maker need make game for all rocks, not just shiny rocks. Me want steal crystal and catch thief on Linux rock. Me hope game maker fix soon. Me want play game like real caveman.

Submitted(+1)

No I will not update my graphics driver.

The level themselves are actually pretty straight forward, there is obviously a noticeable spike in difficulty between level 2 and 3, but like, it wasn't that high of a spike. If anything the fact that you can't retrace your step actually made the game way easier by narrowing the possibilities.

Definitely need more levels, and a bgm that contains more than 6 notes.

Developer

the "can't retrace" mechanic was implemented mainly as a thing to combat cheesing the game by spamming pointless moves with the thief so that it would be super easy to catch him as a guard. 

Thanks for the feedback.

(+1)

I beat all the levels for this game and had a lot of fun! The gameplay ties in with the theme of the jam very well. The puzzles are well designed and make you think several steps in advance the whole time you are playing. The assets you used also very much match the vibe of being a museum thief. The only piece of feedback I have is that I wish you could hold a direction to keep moving in that direction instead of having to wait for the animation to finish every time that you move. This is a nitpick in an otherwise fantastic game! Nice work and thank you for sharing this game!

Developer

I wanted to include holding to move as it was the thing that gets most feedback about any of my games when I go with this style, but it was bugging out making the thief sometimes skip "turns" when player held the movement control as the guard. I will for sure learn how to program a proper movement system for my next games. Thanks for the feedback. 

Oh and also, there aren't many assets, just the characters, apart from that, everything is made from basic shapes.

Submitted(+1)

Really neat idea! I'm not too good at puzzle games, but I felt a difficulty spike in level 3. Would love to see more!

Developer(+1)

Sorry for the difficulty spike! I was on the fence about it, but after giving the game to couple of people to test they were able to beat it without too much trouble so I decided it is better to not risk it with any changes as the deadline was approaching.

Thanks for feedback.

Submitted(+1)

Fun take on role reversal in a nice puzzle heist game ^^

Developer

Thanks