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A jam submission

HACKEDView game page

a fast-paced action platformer/twin stick shooter hybrid
Submitted by VeryEpicc โ€” 14 hours, 49 minutes before the deadline
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HACKED's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fusion#13.8333.833
Visuals#33.8333.833
Overall#43.3333.333
Theme#43.1673.167
Audio#43.1673.167

Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

I want this to be a review/comment with the intention to help you polish this game up. Let me start with the things I like. I enjoy the premise and the work you put in to building the atmosphere. It helps sell the immersion and build an identity for the game. The amount of work you were able to put in is something to be proud of. I think the wall running is a neat idea, with the only issue there being the adhesion to the wall feels a bit weak with the player slipping only a second or two after sticking. It doesn't feel like there's much time to use the wall for distance and pushed me to wall hop and gave me a frenetic pace. The amount of bots in Lvl 2 was challenging, but if I didn't have my complaints, I think they would've been a welcome challenge. The game play loop of collecting data and delivering them is simple and paves the way to have unique platforming challenges.

The one real complaint I have is born from my inability to really understand how to use the Wall Gun. It feels like it's supposed to be a way to make player borne walls to facilitate more fluid wall running, but I never could understand how. The wall spawning in front of my face feels more like an obstacle. If I wanted to position the wall in a more advantageous position, I'd have to be angling my view down or flick my camera to the right to platform jump or extend my wall run respectively. That didn't come naturally and felt like I was more likely to kill my momentum or put a wall above my head. So I tried to pivot my usage and started to attempt to wall plant/bounce between my player created walls, but that only ever resulted in minimal height or incorrect placement and plummeting into the void.  All that said, I want to offer some brain storm ideas for how you might take this wall gun idea and mold it (if you, of course, want to keep working on this project).

I think the best and easiest improvement would be to beef up the Wall Gun training room in the tutorial. Offer a small animation of a character using the wall gun properly, or change up the layout of that specific room in the tutorial. Something like a small gap, a bigger gap, and the biggest gap to the exit door. That style of room does offer immediate reinforcement with the player's mind with the trade off that it may be a sieve between players who understand the Wall Gun and a breaking point for those who don't. The animation may be the simplest and best fix. I'm not going to try and armchair dev you with ideas for how to replace the Wall Gun, but that can always be a last resort.

All my critique and feedback out of the way, I think you really should take away a feeling of pride from doing the game jam. I am amazed that you were able to do so much for this game in a game jam time frame, and even if I had my moments that spawned feedback notes, I was still excited to check this out. If you update this project in the future, I'll put it down on my list to have fun with down the line. Have fun and good luck!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the awesome feedback!!

Lack of wall-stickiness - noted! Actually how you adjusted to more of a wall-hop makes sense, that's kinda how I've been playing it in testing. I was trying to strike a balance between feeling TOO sticky like Spiderman (basically locking the player to forward and backward movement with zero gravity when wall-running) and too heavy/slippery. I chose to halve gravity and shorten the time, but I agree I could definitely polish it up!

Haha yes the wall-gun, herein lies the problem of not having time for playtesters! ๐Ÿ˜…
Exactly how you've suggested, an animation, or maybe a video/ghost, is probably the route I'll take. I'm not surprised it doesn't automatically make sense, it's a complicated maneuver that I came up with accidentally. With the current setup, like you discovered you kinda have to flick the camera around to make it work. If you check out my trailer I show a clip of the way I ended up doing it https://youtu.be/JHCqTNSD1w4

I've tried to think of a way to not just spawn the wall perpendicularly in front of the player, maybe angle it away so it encourages forward movement, but the problem I have with that is which angle do I choose? If I alternate between spawned ahead, slightly to the left, and angled away - and the next wall is the opposite - how do I not run into the problem of the player getting the wrong wall in the moment because they were just hopping from a wall that's part of the level?
I could also increase the size of the spawned wall quite a bit and make it last longer, giving the player an easier chance to jump to it.
Honestly I could just assign a left-angled wall to Left Mouse Button and a right wall to RMB... I just thought of this now, maybe I'll try that!
I'm still working on ideas! ๐Ÿ˜

Again thank you for the detailed feedback!! Thanks for taking the time to play! 

Submitted

I tried several times and never could get the hang of it. There were so many bots in the start I never could upload. I did the tutorial before trying the game as well. Maybe a less steep learning curve? Looks great and runs very smooth. Is it supposed to kick you to desktop when you lose?

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I love hearing your experience, and I didn't have time to get anyone to test the game before the deadline so it's only been me, which is a pretty small sample size ๐Ÿ˜‚

Funny enough I arbitrarily bumped those starting bots from 5 to I think 13. Way too many for a first level I agree. The only reason I did that is because I thought I would only be able to release one level in time and I didn't want it to be a breeze! If I update the game I'll totally increase difficulty a bit slower, or give you more tools to defend yourself 

(I did implement a "restart level" option in the pause menu that fully resets the level, but yeah you still get all 13 bots over time) 

And yes! The game intentionally kicks you off if you lose, to further drive home the idea that you (the player) are the hacker, hacking into a server that you then play as an avatar inside of. So if you lose, you get "disconnected from the server" which boots you from the game. And if the game works properly, when you start the game again it skips the main menu and just automatically reloads the level you were in, and it keeps the locations of all the bots and you keep a percentage of the data you've already collected. An idea I didn't have time to implement is a "bloodstain" or "soul" of some sort that sits where you died that you can go and defeat a possessed version of yourself to stay on theme. In short it's  a fourth-wall break idea I had that I wanted to try out. 

Thanks again for the feedback, and thanks for playing! 

Submitted (1 edit)

I was thinking the kick to desktop was for that reason. It's a good one! You have a great base to work from and expand on.

Developer

thanks! 

Submitted

I completed the game. The difficulty was just right and great use of dimensions!

Developer

awesome! Glad you enjoyed and thanks for playing! Good to know about the difficulty too

Submitted

Love this, VeryEpicc indeed! Wish there were more levels though, the tutorial took me longer than the actual game :D Excellent use of sound and cutscenes, and when the walls went all blue in the tutorial, I was impressed. Also, I was able to get out of the game, and I love doing that. 

Developer

Thank you!! 

I wish there were more levels too haha! I almost didn't have time to create the second level! 

Ah yes, nice work! I'm also glad to know you were able to make use of the wall-run and wall-gun mechanic, I wasn't sure if that would only make sense to me ๐Ÿ˜‚ I created that by accident, I was planning on just spawning walls to temporarily block enemies but then I realized I could platform off them. My goal was to give the player sandbox style tools to make their own fun, since i love when games allow that, all I had time to polish was the wall-gun, but I may expand after the jam!

Submitted

Honestly, I never used the wall run... :/

Developer

Haha wait what?? How'd you get out of the game?

Submitted

Pure wall spawn/jumping under me :)

Developer

epic ๐Ÿค™