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A jam submission

Screw Up!View game page

Make your way to the top and fix Big Bony Tower before it's too late!
Submitted by Cerrad las sopas — 52 seconds before the deadline
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Screw Up!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Special Feature Implementation#14.6004.600
Overall#73.5673.567
Graphics#83.8003.800
Theme Implementation#84.0004.000
Audio#103.4003.400
Gameplay#152.8002.800
Fun Factor#182.8002.800

Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How is your game related to the Theme and Special Object?
You control your limited time by jumping on the gears of the clock tower in order to repair it! Try slowing down time to hit a hard jump or speeding it up to get over an obstacle! But watch out, if time runs out... game over!

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

The intro cutscene is spectacular.

The time control mechanic is interesting, as you need to land on the upcoming side of the cog to slow down time, and land on the lowering half of the cog to speed it up. This makes logical sense but feels clunky and can lead to frustration: 

  • if you wanted to speed up time, you will need to land on the gear half that's rotating downward. This becomes a problem when you jump onto a gear that is the last in the chain, as you end up causing the gears to speed up and being rotated off of the gear and fall downwards. This can cause you to land on another gear half that's rotating downward, which speeds things up even further and sends you plummeting downward further. There was also an instance where a fast moving gear was pushing me into a wall - the gear was rotating so fast that the game was not registering me on solid ground most of the time, so I was not allowed to jump. I had to resort to frantically mashing the jump button and hope that the game was registering me on solid ground at that instance in order to escape.
  • if you wanted to slow down time, you do the opposite and land on the gear half that's rotating upwards.  This compounds with the earlier problem as you tend to jump up to higher elevated or larger gears, so you're more likely to trigger a slowdown. This is fine unless you needed time to be moving faster to make certain jumps, in which case you need to jump on the downward rotating half to speed things up. However, now you need to go back on the other gear half to gain some space for a runup, which then triggers a slowdown, leading to a tedious cycle of jumping between halves to get the desired speed. There is a deadzone where neither is triggered, but depending on the gears size and whether you're sped up or slowed down, landing in the deadzone and getting the needed runup becomes difficult. 

A possible way to alleviate this would be to allow only certain gear types to have time manipulation properties instead of all of them. This would give the player a finer degree of control with the mechanic and allow for more consistency when platforming. I do like that the rate of time flow factors into the platforming aspects, such as making larger jumps for sped up time, and using slowed down time for easier platforming segments. It makes the game more challenging as you need to think about the time flow.

All of the moving cogs and mechanisms makes it look nice as you navigate through the tower. It's a little dark, so it was difficult to see and time jumps on some of the darker mechanisms, like the pistons that come out of the walls, and the loose gears. The instructions that are scrawled on the gears were helpful and well placed.

Overall, the game has an interesting way of including a time manipulation mechanic through its platforming. It just requires more refinement in where the mechanic should be placed.

Developer (3 edits) (+1)

Hi! Thanks for your feedback, seeing that you took the time to write this much about the game is really heart warming!

We are glad that you liked the game, especially the cutscene and level design as we put a lot of effort into that!

For the feedback about how time is handled, like how maybe we should put the time inflicting mechanic on only some of the gears and stuff, we will take that in consideration for future updates for sure! We are willing to improve the game and make a more complete version of it so, we definetely will look at everyone's feedbacks.

For the fact that it is a little dark in some places, we are aware of the issue, it was previously fixed but caused a big performance issue so we had to remove some lights just before uploading the game, but it will also be fixed in a future update to make the game easier to play and prettier.

Thanks again for the time you took to write us this game review!

(1 edit) (+1)

I love it so much fun.

Submitted(+1)

The intro cutscene is fabulous, the game looks great in general. Unfortunately I just couldn't beat the game, maybe because I didn't really understand the time mechanics.

Developer

Thanks for your feedback! We are happy you liked the game!

For the time mechanic, the weight you apply on the gears changes their speed and so the speed of everything (but the player) in the game.

For some parts you'll want to have a high time speed and for others to slow it a lot, it is trial and errors that make you understand the game.

Submitted(+1)

That intro cutscene was awesome. I love camera manips that show the world scale like that!

Developer

Thanks!

It was a lot of work, we are glad you liked it!

Developer (1 edit)

BUG: Plese note! If you notice a gear "moving out" of its normal rotation into the 3d space, making you unable to progress... Restart the Game! It should fix it.

Sorry for the inconvenience... We'll update the game with a fix asap!

-The devs