itch.io

Amazing concept, but unfortunately it keeps breaking

Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the first gameplay section, as the screen went to black. Starting on a long, drawn out intro might not be the best idea. After the first few sentences, I could guess everything else that was going to be said, and then it was a long wait. It was a bold choice to chose as a theme a deadly pandemic.

Despite some shortcomings that you probably already know, it is still good work to have finished a project enough that it is playable (there are other projects who surely aren't ). Hopefully you can use this experience to understand what is within the limits of a game jam, and what is beyond. My first few projects had the same issues, but that is something you learn with experience!

Oh, and congratulations on having a quit button for you desktop app! Way too many people forget them, and you are left with Alt+F4.

I think it is very creative, and a unique idea. I am not sure how much puzzle you can get out of it. By the third, I did use the hints, and felt like I needed them all, and felt frustrated with the cluster of balls. Like an "How am I supposed to know that?" feeling.

There is a bug with the buttons. You can press the x0.0 button, see the answer, then press the x5.0 button, to get a multiplier of x2.0.

I do think adding a simple loping song would add a lot, and that is worth looking into for the next game jam. I know choosing a song is difficult (it was for me), but incompetech that Mark suggested really did work.

Very pretty. I am a sucker for crunchy, pixelated 3D graphics. Takes me back to playing games on the DS. Is there a trick to render a 3D world like that?

Amazing! Extremely intuitive, and good difficulty levels. Amazing art work, and well chosen what required details, and what could be abstract. Good choice of music. Understandable that there are no sound effects (just as guilty), but I think that would add a lot!

Yeah, I also would have liked sound effects, but I knew I didn't have the time to get it right, and I previously got sound pretty wrong, ruing a project

Unfortunate that you encountered that bug, it was supposed to infinitely repeat the last wave. But happy you enjoyed it!

Neat little game and nice message. You probably have your own things in mind that could use some improvement. I would focus on the movement, as being able to strive, walk backwards, not turn so fast, would greatly improve the jumping, which was quite fun.

Also, don't forget a button to quit the game, instead of having to rely on Alt + F4 .

I do like the concept, but I think the character moves quite slow. This makes it that you see very little at a time, and you just scan at a constant pace while you walk right, to then walk left again. The art is nicely stylized

Good work on the atmosphere. But the lack of ending confused me. If there is a secret way to not get reset at the end, then I did not find it. And the purposefully unengaging tasks did not want me to try and find it. Not sure if it is intended, but I got passed jumping 200 times because it only checks for space being pressed, and not actually slow jumping.

If the story was that you had to decide to disobey the commands, then I really liked it. But when I walked away, the world just reset, and at that time I quit.

Sorry, I was mistaken! But restarting to check again, I did really like the intro you made

Good job on your first (seemingly?) game jam. The art was very cute, but the mechanics of the game are not so straightforward. How scoring works is confusing, and seemingly way too difficult to predict. There is no randomness in what you score, so that could be computed before hand to show to the player. Why Balatro can do without, is that a single hand played does not loose you the game. But here, making a mistake with placing the items can be an instant game over. Also, it might be worth looking into format strings for preventing endless decimals to show up in the UI.

Very well done for a (seemingly) first project. The interfaces were clear, and everything was well explained. Unfortunately, the puzzle of solving how the green ball moved was not too engaging, so I didn't play as long. And getting to the blue ball did not work for me, since putting in left left left, I moved up down up.

But well done making a quit button. You can't imagine how often I had to Alt + F4 out of a desktop app

Excellent work! Insanely creative concept. Excellent puzzle design. Even the  puzzles introducing things had one additional step afterwards! Graphics were spot on, the juice was maximal, and the INFINITE ENERGY sting, cheff's kiss!

Strong music, strong platforming. It seems you've chosen for an instant speed change with the horizontal controls, as opposed to accelerating up to the speed. I find both just fine, but there are people who really dislike this way of platforming. The levels did have good variation, but I didn't feel the level design as stuck in a loop, since beyond the first, they were very straightforward to jump towards the end. I do think the opening text goes too slow. The pacing did get a feeling of being trapped, but too much. That frustration can easily turn people off.

Incredible! What a good atmosphere, gripping use of sound effects and shaders. I am a sucker for the 3D pixelated games. Brings me back to a child playing on the DS. Excellent!

I do appreciate the warnings and disclaimer at the start. Good choice!

Incredible! Never seen anyone do something like this for a game jam! The combat was actually well made. The directional dodging was good. The tells were clear, with not too easy but not too tight windows.

Some things I did find odd. The upgrade menu being inaccessible in gameplay is odd. I defeated the first enemy, went to upgrades, and had to defeat him themselves. The stagger mechanic was functional, but didn't add much with the combat as it is. It was a bar that also went down like health. Being able to spam attack during it was fun though.

A very nice game! The rewind effect worked excellently (maybe a bit fast). Unbelievable that you had a personal and a team project. Can't imagine being able to do that. The small spatial distortions that happened near the end was charming. I had hoped for some more, and the last level seemed to be a bit of a repeat of an earlier level.

The hitbox for grabbing the  key was a bit weird. I kept falling through the key, and was only able to pick it up when falling alongside it. And it seems like you needed to press the button as you were in the hitbox, which is very tight. Maybe making it only require the button being held to pick it up, and then press it again to drop it.

Also, with Unity WebGL, it's better to turn off itch's implementation of full screen, since they don't work well together.

I completely agree about the sound effects, but I realized I did not have time to get it right, and in a previous project I got it very wrong because I added sound at the last minute.

It is probably just that I want to play many jam games, but this slow burning narrative start just isn't for me. Too little happened at the start. There were no story promises made too keep me hooked. Just one thing after another. I did laugh at the boy thinking the wale was a witch's familiar did make me laugh.

I do think the projectile controls were difficult, like it was designed for mobile and ported to the pc. Why one pebble missed the apple and the other hit, I don't know.

Nice mechanics. Good use of the theme. With so little time during a game jam, puzzle difficulty is always hit or miss. Getting that balance of difficulty just right takes time. So it's a really great that you implemented a level select.

Some of the puzzles with low difficulty were frustrating, since the completion takes so long, Level 4 for example, requires quite some loops of the character slowly moving. That can get frustrating really fast.

Small tip, when using Unity WebGL, you should turn off Itch.io's version off full screen, as they don't play nice with Unity's implementation for full screen.

What nice puzzle mechanics! As with so little time, the puzzle difficulty seems to be a bit all over the place. This time, the first level was on the though side.  There were also a few I solved without using all the dudes available, which might be intended. Puzzle 2-4 was a highlight for spot on difficulty! But then level 3 was way too easy. I think I got an unintended solution for the last puzzle (3-4), since I didn't have to use anything as complex as the comment describes. (Orb guys on row 3 column 3 and 6, wand guys on column 7, row 3 and 4)

There are also some graphical issues. Sprite ordering you probably already know, but in 2-2, some of the coin enemy sprites got turned around. The physics was still as original, but the sprites did not reset correctly after the enemies were hit from a left to right facing tile.

Also, their is one guy not described. The other wizard, that zaps a column.

Thank you!

Thank you for responding. I'm not sure what you mean with automatic vs manual export. Sharing export settings might help, although it is a weird issue that seams to be browser dependent. But hopefully that will just work.

Really cool atmosphere. I liked the dramatic irony of slowly crawling towards what we know is a bad place to go. But then, halfway through exploring the bunker, leaving the city for last, I found a Mech Suit, and suddenly the game was over. I couldn't even explore the game. And then I learned the game is randomised, not allowing me to go quickly back to where I was kicked out. But beside that, a good experience, and well made for only two days. There are some issues. The full screen mode does not work well, so I suggest turning off the button for full screen mode. Although I did need to use it when I accidentally dragged the top of a window outside the viewport.  And I did that, because it is possible to miss the dialogue being obscured by the dragged windows. But those should be easy enough to fix. But for the rest, it was an excellent experience, with good balance for difficulty of the puzzles to good feeling controls for both the letter input and the motion in the adventure screen.

I do need to ask if you did anything to allow your game to actually play embedded within the page. My godot game opens up on a second screen, which gets automatically maximised, breaking my UI. This is despite having "Embed in page" set. Are there any project setting or export settings you used other then default?

I quite like how elegant the concept is, as it is immediately clear what is going on. Unfortunately it seems like the time ran out when it comes to level design, but you probably already knew that. Time management comes with experience, so don't worry to much about it. I do suggest it is a mistake to have levels seemingly infinitely loop, as that leaves a worse impression then sending to a static, white text on black, thank you for playing screen. When it comes to the level design that there is, I expect you already had ideas that you weren't able to implement. The simple mechanic of growing alone can make some good straight forward puzzle platform levels. That makes the time spend on the different area effects seem misplaced. I could not figure out what the teal coloured area's effect was, as my body seemed to grow just the same. Also, since most people come from the press-longer-equals-higher-jump tradition, you can expect a player to keep space pressed, which in this game is a detriment. That is something to keep in mind. But take pride in that you did not fall in the trap of most first time developers, and actually have a way to quit your full screen game. You can't imagine how many times I had to use alt+f4. For the next time I suggest already looking before hand in how to export to HTML5. It is not that difficult, although Unity's WebGL has some unique pitfalls, but it helps immensely in the discoverability of your game. With Unity, you need to increase the viewport on itch.io such that the WebGL border is not cut off, and you need to turn off itch's own full-screen button, since it does not work with WebGL.

Very well done on your first game jam, and good luck with any future endeavours.

Very well made game. Good controls, good puzzle design, clear graphics, and good music. It could have done with some more difficult puzzles at the end. Also, I think it would fit better for the boxes to have simpler physics, rather then using some RigidBody physics, with unpredictable pushing and rotating physics. They felt very slippery, and the odd tumbling made level 12 more annoying then needed. I personally am not a fan of auto jump when holding space. With the platformer tradition of longer presses equals higher jump, I keep space pressed when jumping for all games, meaning I constantly jumped off corners just when reaching them. There were two levels I found confusing. I feel like I cheesed level 9. I only used one grow pellet, to jump around the level on the right. I could not figure out how to get up in the middle, but the jump I did was by far the most difficult one in comparison with the rest of the game. Also, in level 15, it was unclear where the end coin actually was. But overall amazing work, and good luck on any further endeavours.

PS. Two small things. If you have unity WebGL, you should disable the full screen button itch.io provides, since now there are two full-screen buttons, one of which is useless. Also, it seems currently impossible to get from the win screen back to the menu.

Fun concept, but there are some implementation details that hold it back. Quite often I was just roaming around, not encountering anything, to only see an enemy 10 times my size. Most of the time those were the only circles I found, requiring me to shoot a dozen times to gain a little bit of size. Never was I bigger then a spawning circle, so I could actually compete with the larger shapes. There is good variety in enemies, but before you have substantial mass, I cannot deal with stars, and rectangles and triangles don't help me gain size. So I never reached a position where I could actually compete with enemies. It could also be clearer when you are bigger or smaller then an enemy. Comparing circle to square sizes is not so intuitive, and it is an instant death if you are wrong. The background also behaved weirdly when hitting an enemy (circles and rectangles). With each hit the background got smaller, persisting between resets, until randomly getting larger in equal steps. 

I hope you learned a lot from you first game (like I had all those years ago), and I wish you good luck on any further endeavours.

Good work for your first project. It was hilariously mean to say "press shift to dash" right before a spike trap, killing me instantly! Good luck for any future projects

Why do you assume I took the boss on straight away? I got health and dash options, but no damage. And you can say, it had 70 health, but I attacked it 4 times per cycle for at least 15 cycles (I had a lot of health) with a dagger, a few of which I was big for, as said before. The reason I criticise the lack of enemy variety, is not to say you should have created more enemies, but that the floor is too big for the number of enemies you made. That is also the reason I wanted to see the boss, instead off face the 20 th room of samey enemies.

Amazing game. I do think the levels get too difficult too quickly. Also, not being able to push blocks all the way up feels like a bug to me.

I like the concept of the game, but there is almost no development during gameplay. The animation and sluggishness of movement at first amazingly showed off the true size of stars. I especially like how impactful it felt to catch my first star. But after that it felt like I had already experienced all the game had to offer. I caught the most point worth start already third. Maybe I was unlucky, but I reached the end of the play area with 15,000 energy, so I don't see how I am meant to reach 500,000 energy. Some things to focus on in the future, and I wish you good fortune with any future endeavours.

Fun game with a amazing artwork. But there are a lot of balance issues. I did not get passed the first boss, because it had way to much health. I have hit it over a hundred times at least, and there was zero feedback for how far I got. The levels beforehand were quite dull. For the longest time there were only two enemies, which after a few encounters were trivial to defeat. Then came the skeleton archer, which does not shoot if you rush them. And just before the boss battle, I encountered a wisp, wish was impossible to kill, until suddenly it did take damage and die (at least, that was how it felt). The movement felt good, but it was often not clear which objects I could walk underneath. The scaling up and down felt quite useless. I only used small a handful of times, and ever found a moment that big was useful, until the boss where I could use it as a damage bonus. But despite all this, an amazing achievement for a game jam game.

I am a sucker for the pixelated graphics. Reminds me of DS games of my youth. The carpet making is unfortunately poorly explained within the game. Having the top of the description say that together with Pavius we will learn to make carpets made me expect to be able to learn from the grandpa in the game. So I spend more time trying to figure it out then usual. The further explanation in the description could also be more clear. It is generally advisable to start with what your goal is, so further explanations can be understood in how that allows the player to achieve the goal. Further to prevent confusion, the descriptions could be clearer. Right now I'm asked to press E to enter, where it only shakes, instead of communicating that I need to pick up a carpet. One small thing, after beating my first minigame, a performance panel appeared. I wish you good luck with any further endeavours!

The base game is quite fun, and I liked the theming, but there are still a lot of pain points getting in the way of the fun. The rotating and walking is very slow, making it really difficult to actually dodge the tongue attack. Whether you are hurt by the tongue attack feels inconsistent. You can only get one, maybe two hits off during half of the attacks, dealing a pitiful amount of damage.  The knock back makes thematic sense, but doesn't play that well. Since you rotate so slowly, you cannot use the large movement to get around interestingly.  When rotating, the gun snap flips to the other side, getting in the way of me hitting the boss multiple times.

I hope you don't take this to negatively. There is mostly a lot to get in the way of the fun game underneath, and I hope your next game will become even better.

"Your game plays in the webpage window for me! Looks great!" ???? Why? It doesn't for me. Kinda makes me more annoyed. But thank you for answering.

Very fun game. The speed felt incredible, the controls were easy to understand. Unfortunately you didn't have much level after the tutorial. We all have been there when it comes to pacing in a game jam.

I had a question. Your godot game actually plays within the webpage. For me, and seemingly for many others, it automatically opens a second window and forces it to be maximised. This broke my UI, which I didn't have the time to fix. Did you do anything specific, or follow a specific tutorial on how to to export a project to html5? (P.S. I have Embed in Page selected)

Very good sense of humour. Very nice escalation of insanity, as well as good switching between different sizes. I did often get stuck (very good idea to put the walkthrough in the description!) The main reason I got stuck is I often did not realise a background object was actually an item I could pick up. I'm not sure how that could have been made clearer, without ruining the surprise of what you use. But on the other hand right now I got spoiled by the walkthrough, so it couldn't hurt. Some specific animations were amazing, but the world layout did leave something to desire. The regular sized world seemed too large, making it feel empty. Those are some points you can focus on!