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A jam submission

CyclopesView game page

Submitted by VagueReferences — 21 hours, 40 minutes before the deadline
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Cyclopes's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#1461.8802.071

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
I've encompassed a little bit of the Solitude and Ancient Ruins themes. See in-game for more detail!

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Comments

Submitted (2 edits)

For a scramble trying to learn a new software it's not bad.
I didn't experience any bugs personally, and the movement felt nice to me.
I didn't know how to attack when I started, so I ended up doing a pacifist run.
Playthrough: 

Submitted

Interesting experience, but I got out. I think I lost an eye in the process though.

The game is very plain and basic as it is now. Sound and music is great. The cyclops, boat and sky looks nice but there would have to be some more variation in the level. I started by trying to fight the cyclops with a torch, with some bad results. Then I found a sword, which made it alot easier. The cyclops seems to take up more than one tile, so you can hit them diagonally. Would be nice if played don't have to reequip items when entering a new area. The second time I tried to escape after restart, the timer did not start counting so a bug there.

Submitted

I enjoyed sneak kills.

The fact that it was there made me feel that the game design was to not fight from the front. However, even if you are found, there are not many disadvantages and you can escape, so I think there is room for improvement there.

Nevertheless, I was surprised by the hordes of cyclops. I am glad we were able to escape.

Submitted

Slaying cyclops was harder than to run from them, unless they are siting and you can kind of aproach from the side and one-hit them. But drinking from that jar was a funny experience :))) 

One thing to keep an eye out is perspective. Its generally best if you can see tile under you a bit, especially if game features items that you are able to pick up from the floor.

You did well on making splashes from when you do hit the enemy. That and sound gives basic feedback for player to know he did right hit, but collisions are a bit iffy - cyclops can go through you, from looks of it. Maybe its standart issue of player moving forward at the same time as enemy and they getting into the same cell.

Movement was good enough! I would always try and make turn same speed as walk though, so it wouldn't feel that you have to strafe instead of turning for fast movements. Its not an issue in your entry, but if you will be doing some nice labyrinths or alike - it will be good thing to keep in mind!

Nice touch with cyclops agro sounds. Was kind of funny to hear it all when they appear to block your escape and just roar, while rushing for you.

UI always has that anoying issue of being dependant on the resolution. I could barelly see text and icons on my screen, so it was a bit too tiny. Keep in mind, that you have to scale UI with screen resolution for your future projects.

All in all - its a good first attempt especially since you are brand new to game development! Keep on going :)

Submitted

I escaped, slained no cyclop because fighting seemed worse than running. However now I briefly read the comments below and then I had to try sneak attacks, these are in fact fun and cool, and justify that fighting face to face is not worth it as it's in fact not meant to be.

I think the tiles are too small or the environments too big. I also thought it was weird that you propose teleport-like movement as an option but it's actually not instant which breaks the purpose. To be fair it would not have been super compatible with the timer so the solution was probably simply slightly faster movement and smaller environments and it would have been fine.

Overall the game works, the plot premise is cool, the art style is fine and coherent, movement and perspective are alright and even for such a short game I like that there's a complete scenario with a beginning to end.

Thanks for sharing!

Submitted

Lots of good things happening here, and some suggestions (if you want them or not)...

  • Once I realized you could equip items, the combat was fun!
  • Great music!
  • The cyclops enemies were enjoyable to sneak around and sneak attack. 
  • I don't see many games based on having the cyclops as an enemy so that was neat!


Issues:

  • I think the ratio of width to height on the grid could be improved.  I expect the grid width to be equal to the height, so it made it feel like I was taking little baby steps. 
  • I thought the graphics were quite good, but the way things interacted and feedback did not reach the same level of quality.  While there were a number of attack animations for the cyclops, I did not notice that they reacted to getting hit.  Obviously in a jam, time is a big factor so it's forgivable.  But if you plan to develop it further that would be a suggestion. 
  • Another thing was the model quality of the items and monsters was much more strongly developed than the environment.
Submitted(+1)

You got a start, you got a more than one map, you got an ending, combat works (even if it is a bit wonky with enemy collisions), there is sound, nice textures and models (I really liked the sword). So everything is a bit basic at the moment, but your setting is unique and I think you can go on to something greater now. Just make the traversable spaces smaller and movement a bit snappier, as movement is absolutely key in this type of games.

Submitted(+1)

You might say it barely qualifies as a game-but it does qualify! There's definitely some work to be done on the combat, but I enjoyed the actual-collision-shape system you have. It's not much, but its fun enough for what it is.

Full playthrough:

Submitted(+1)

Good starter. Enjoyed dancing around the cyclops and escaping with spear in hand. Also, the minute with 99 seconds on it was quite generous, haha. The other comments touched on the valid feedback for this and I echo what they said. Keep it up!

Submitted(+1)

A fun game, especially when the cyclops are all gathered in the corridor. to be honest the enemies were easy enough that it was easy to run away from them. I wish you success in learning game development!

Submitted(+1)

It feels rough. The areas are open and take too many steps to traverse. It's hard to gauge whether the enemy can damage you since stepping away to the side still makes it possible to get hit (or hit enemies). Maybe that's intentional, but it felt weird.

That said, I liked the little moments where I could instakill a cyclops by sneaking up on them.

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you so much for your review/feedback! I totally agree everything turned out way too large/empty/lonely. I had big ambition to fill it up with all sort of things, but sadly none of it materialized in time.
I don't think I intended for enemies to still be able to hit even when you step away - I'm probably missing some vital checks in my code. In hindsight, I spent way too much time overall on the wonky, semi real time combat with actual collision detection shapes for each part of the model bodies. I should have gone with a completely different system. Maybe a more turn based style just fits the dungeon crawler format better.

Host(+2)

It's definitely rough around the edges and missing some things here and there but it's a good start :)

Tip: Have smaller areas that doesn't take so much time to traverse. Or a combination of smaller areas and larger grid cells.

Developer

Thank you, I really appreciate your review. You're absolutely correct it's super rough and the grid/area sizing was way off!

Submitted(+1)

Good start for a newcomer in game development!