Very Asset pack in your game. I am pretty like this art style. Its hard for me to focus on 4 monitors but your design avoid that problem. And the UI settings also make your game complete. So I really looking forward to play more in your game~
Play game
4-Shadowed's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #339 | 4.083 | 4.083 |
| Overall | #426 | 3.889 | 3.889 |
| Design | #521 | 3.611 | 3.611 |
| Adherence to the Theme | #659 | 3.972 | 3.972 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Liked the idea and art, it was fun, maybe a little bit confusing but definitely entertaining.
If you have some spare time we would appreciate if you play ours, its playable on browser,
Submitted
LIMITED ENERGYThe biggest issue I have with this game is that the enemy spawn patterns seem to be actually random. One time that I played I had two/three enemies spawn in the same room, before any had spawned in any other room. It might be better to do a shuffle system, where you have preset patterns for how the enemies will spawn, and then shuffle it so that there's randomness, but constrained to a more curated spawn pattern.
The presentation is really good, a few minor issues with text (like 0:1 seconds instead of 0:01 seconds, and enemies being able to have negative health) but overall it looks great.
Also, you made this game solo? Great job with that!
- Joe
(if you have the time to check out our game, we'd really appreciate that)
Submitted
Only One RecruitHow I have spawning working right now is that there is a spawn rate which goes up throughout the game and every time an enemy spawns it picks one room at random to spawn in, then it picks one spot from the predetermined spawn points in that room to spawn at. So yes it is very random with spawning which can lead to it not being as interesting at the start if you get very unlucky and have a bunch all spawning in the same room, however, at the end it's kinda a non-issue as there are so many spawning that there is almost always at least one in a room. I could try implementing a pattern to see how well it works out though.
Yes, the time showing up like that is a bit annoying, it has to do with how I was making the timer. With a bit more time this can be solved, I just needed that time during the jam to work on more important things. As for the negative hp, I originally had it just go to 0 and not bellow but I really like being able to go to negative numbers; it makes you feel a lot more powerful when you get a critical hit on an enemy and see their hp go to -15.
Also, I just checked out your game and left a comment on it! :)
Fun concept, but I wish the game did more with having multiple characters across multiple screens.
Maybe some enemies could only be damage by being attacked on two screen at once? A boss that appears on all screens at once, rewarding the player for properly position their four shadows? Level hazards that can only be activated from one screen? I not really a big fan of any of those ideas, but I hope they communicate what I was thinking.
I really only used one screen at a time or ignored them all together. In the beginning, I just found myself focusing on only one screen at a time (as enemies appeared). By the end, I was just jumping around and slashing frantically because that seemed to work well.
I liked the armor mechanic being tied to the weapons because it forced me to pick up weapons I would normally avoid (due to lower stats). The two things that would break me out of my state of jumping and slashing wildly were the coins and weapon drops because I would have to navigate over to them on one screen.
Submitted
Only YouThat's a really good idea of having some enemies that require a bit more coordination to kill with like what you said about having to hit them at the same time on two different screens. That is for sure something I will experiment with!
I've tried making a fair amount of changes to prevent people from feeling the best way of playing is just spamming and running around, this is something I certainly need to tweak a bunch till I can get it to feel right. I thought having the 1.5x damage multiplier you get for not attacking for 2 seconds would be enough but it was not. Originally there were going to be much more advanced weapons stats with ranged weapons, slow but high damage weapons, and fast but low damage weapons, however, I didn't have time to implement this. Perhaps once I do implement it then this issue will be resolved.
I'm glad to hear that the armor being tied to the weapon worked so well. I wanted to make players make tough choices like you said you did where they would need to chose some higher armor or higher damage which risks dying. The coins were actually added for the express purpose of forcing the player to have to actually move around the level rather than standing in once place so really good to hear that was working.
Interesting concept!
It needs more tweaks but making the player make multiple decisions at the same time is a good idea I think.
The version now we are playing basically force the player keep slashing in the end. Maybe 4 players at the same time were too much. Or maybe it only needs more tweaks.
Besides, like the art of it.
Nice work!
This is my game, please give it a try if you will:
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461812
Submitted
Only One Way [GMTK JAM 2019]Actually, I know it's not very clear but if you wait 2 seconds after a hit your next hit will do 1.5 times damage so if you line up all 4 to have the enemies chasing you then you can kill all of them in a single hit with that strategy. From my testing it's way more efficient to do it this way but it's not intuitive nor the easiest way and as such yes, you're right more tweaking is needed.
I think most importantly I should have made it more clear that's how you do a critical hit. Right now I just have a visual indicator of when it happens by having some particles swing out of the sword to make it look like you're swinging it through the air much faster. It also says it in the description on the games page but I doubt most people read that. Other than that the only way to tell is by looking at how much the enemy hp goes down.
Maybe this just isn't enough of an incentive to not just spam your sword. I want spamming to be able to still happen because when I made it so you were forced to take time between your hits it felt sluggish. Maybe I could do some sort of ramping damage so first time you wait 2 seconds it's 1.5x damage then next consecutive one it's 2x damage and keeps scaling till you do an attack too fast. There's a lot of different ways I could attack this issue. Thanks for bringing it up!
Yeah, I think what you are thinking is right.
I read the description before I played, And used the wait-and-slash strategy at the first. But there is just too many enemies to me in the end. And I can't dodge all of them in 4 screens at the same time and do that strategy.
I'd love to see how you will tweak it into a better game^_^
An interesting concept! The execution could be better, maybe with more variety between weapons and a bit more polish, but for a jam game it's all really good. One of my favorites here.
Submitted
One Shot BUGalooOriginally I planed much more variety in weapons but that is not something that got into the game before time ran out for the jam. If I do take this game farther then that will 100% be in the game.
I'm really glad that you enjoyed it enough to call it one of your favorites here! I was worried that 4 screens would make the game too noisy but it's been well received so thank you!
Very cool! This is a great idea that you can take to another bigger game or continue work on this~ (like characters in different dimensions try to complete the same mission or something lol). Great jam game/design, awesome job!! Please check out https://neatgames.itch.io/only-one-arrow if you have time~
Submitted
Only One ArrowGreat game, had fun controlling the knights before it got a bit hard to keep track of them all. More polish can surely help you roll it out as a standalone game. Good luck.
Submitted
Only One - Puzzle PlatformerGlad you had fun!
I did actually tweak the hit detection a few times during this jam. I kept trying to make it more and more generous to you since you're having to control 4 players at a time and can't be super accurate the whole time. I guess I tweaked it a bit too much. As it is right now when you attack the sword hit box and your hit box will do damage to enemies (originally it was just the sword). You also can't get hit by an enemy for 0.5 seconds after you hit them and they can also not hit you for 0.5 seconds after they spawn. I did a lot of stuff like that and tweaking those numbers till I got something that was not super brutal since you won't be able to pay enough attention to a single character to be able to withstand brutal.
I'll have to do some more tweaking of it of course if I want to make it a full game so thanks for telling me it doesn't seem right to you. I'll try to keep on tweaking it.
If you're going to make it a full game, why not do something like this....
If a knight dies (I'm referring to a single knight....) then let that knight die alone and allow the others to continue playing. In this way, the player would be controlling 3 knights, then 2 and so on. Just an idea anyway....
Cool game, very hard for my brain to keep track of all 4 knights haha
I would say having bigger levels would help a bit surviving and predicting what the enemies will do?
Submitted
The only NeOneGlad you enjoyed it! I'll keep the bigger levels in mind, however, when I was experimenting with different sizes I found that having things a bit larger like how you see now made it easier to keep track of all 4 characters. I'll have to find the correct balance between the two since you're right, it could be made a bit bigger to give you more time to predict enemies.
A single player coop! Nice approach on the theme. Although, as soon I've managed to controll the character (running, jumping & collecting stuff) without stop triggering LMB constantly, I feel I could play forever. But! Nevertheless I had fun playing this game. Well done!
Submitted
One Action HeroesThanks for the feedback and I am glad you enjoyed it! I tried slowing down how fast you could attack but it made the game feel sluggish so what I did instead was I added critical hits, if you wait 2 seconds then your next hit will do 1.5x damage. This made spamming not the best approach in the early and late game but mid game spamming still makes a lot of sense to do. If I take this game farther that is something I'll have to figure out.
This is really cool, I feel like more genres could impliment 1 player co - op, there's so much potential. Awesome work
Submitted
Untitled Crushing Ball ProjectThanks! Yeah, I don't know of any games off hand that do a similar thing of having one player co-op kind of game play. There certainly is potential here. Two of the friends I showed it to thought that doing a puzzle game with the same idea of 1 player co-op would be really cool so that would be something cool to experiment with that I would not have thought of if it wasn't for this jam making me do this game.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Absolutely! One of my favourite games of all time is Brothers: A tale of two son where you control two characters with one stick each. Its so great on a gameplay level and a narritive one, it's a surprise that there are so few games like it out there. And yes, a puzzle version could be amazing if done well but very difficult to make probably.
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