itch.io

Keep up the good work! Feel free to dm me when any new builds go up and I'll give my perspective on any changes you put in

I ran into a gamebreaking bug where if I left the round early (for example, the first round) during the card reward selection stage, it would get stuck and show again when I try entering the stage again. And upon re-entering and trying to leave the again, the exit button no longer takes me out. It goes away if I restart the game in the browser instead.

Overall a fun game and a sense of challenge when trying to defeat the boss for the goblin island, which I think could maybe be scaled down a little bit in difficulty.

positives:

- The unit and building sprites and animations are pretty nice.

- most stuff is self-explanatory

- unit separation and preventing unit overlapping feels pretty good

- one-round attack/def buff cards feel worth it & balanced

things that could be improved upon:

- the transition between different scenes seems a little bit long

- unit death sounds would go a long way in making combat feel more immersive

- tooltips over stuff when you hover over them. The fast-forward icons could be simplified here for example, show the numbers when you hover over them in a tooltip.

- clicking on a live unit in the battlefield to see their hp makes the tooltip stuck -> would like to be able to close the tooltip by clicking empty space in the background

- iirc being able to "level up" your buildings wasn't explained in the tutorial but i ended up figuring it out later by accident

- the enemy healers seem a little bit unfair. sort of an unfair situation where "if my units were smart enough to target the healers they would have cleared this level.

- catapults & arrow towers are fairly underwhelming. regular humanoid units are better to pick in pretty much every situation. runs tend to be lost due to rng of not getting enough options to summon more units, so the enemy numbers end up outscaling you. catapults could be used to target the enemy's backrow perhaps, or units could change targets to the healers if they can't break through the healing dps for a certain timeframe.

- eyeball to hide the shop was a little bit unclear, an arrow button below the UI will probably work better

Interesting game, had a decent amount of fun it and I like that there's a lot of room for skill expression. I believe the one-hit kill on the player is a bit frustrating, and the orb energy depositing mechanic could work better with a proximity trigger rather than a raycast (I kept aiming at the wrong part and with the pressure of the enemies that made it a tad frustrating). Some player feedback in terms of winning/losing the game would have been nice since I thought maybe if I got to the next level 2-3 times in a row something would happen (nothing happened :P).

I really appreciate this sort of linear, narrative game for a gamejam. The pixel art and music feels very passionate. Like some have said, the gray outline for items were a little hard to see and I didn't discover them right away. Fishing didn't immediately appear to give what I needed, but I eventually went back to it because the trees clearly weren't giving me what I needed to finish the raft (and I discovered I was right). Something like driftwood floating in the water might indicate the ability to get wood from fishing more clearly.

Really interesting concept and overall very fun & cute. It felt very good to control the characters and was very intuitive for me, and the difficulty progression ramp up felt just right. "Restarting" back from the bottom didn't feel like a big burden or that troublesome because the game feel and aesthetics of the game let you ease into it almost like a trance and relax a bit. Nicely done!

Fun little game. Movement feels pretty good I would say. I think the game works for what it is but it's still a little bit frustrating when you're trying to find where the items are on the map and that it's generally pretty hard to avoid the cop cars when they've found you. An indicator on the screen showing you which direction to head to find an item is a potential option to make it feel less like wandering and hoping for good RNG.

That was freaking sick man. I had a vendetta against that AI man. Admittedly these hands aren't so great at this kind of game anymore (who am I kidding, I never was). But that was real treat and I enjoyed the 4 attempts I think I took until I finally won. Really satisfying game-feel and overall just a very fun experience!

Thank you so much! I really appreciate that!

Thank you so much! A boomerang mechanic for the orb sounds awesome! Could work well as an augmented ability in a game with more length as a way to expand and flesh out the mechanics.

Thank you! Glad you had a smooth experience, I've heard that this game is pretty difficult.

I'm glad you liked it! I agree about the game difficulty and a lot more needed to be done in that department. Wish I had some play testers to help me balance the level design while I was working through it.

Totally agreed about the orb throwing. I regret not doing something for that aspect.

I'm glad you like the idea! I may have messed up the level layout by adding branching pathways. You're not intended to make certain jumps. I should have taken into consideration the reduced level of knowledge a player has of the level due to the reduced vision. The player will more likely assume they're mistiming their jumps rather than assuming they're trying to jump to the wrong spot. It takes a lot longer to switch off and consider a different path than I'd known.

Glad you enjoyed it! I had such an awesome time watching you play. I'm glad you think it loaded well, I have no idea what's fast or not but I may have over-engineered the level loading system. I totally goofed up with the ultra-wide resolution! I'll have to keep that in mind in the future.

I can totally see that about the mouse aiming. I think a reticle would work actually pretty well just like you said, or some sort vfx pulse around where you click could work rather well too.
 

I should have added a reticle for the mouse to prevent players from bouncing off. I was a little too assuming that players have a natural disposition to click on the screen to discover stuff haha.

Ahh...you found the dead end that I put into the level. I really am regretting adding that in without any sort of communication for the player to know what's happened.

Thank you! I did end up scaling the difficulty way too much. In a longer release with more levels I would tutorialize it better and ramp the difficulty up more slowly (I should have done the same here). Joe recommended a really awesome suggestion where you can control the distance the orb flies away from you with the amount of time you hold onto the mouse button. A really intuitive solution that I wish I implemented!
 

Thank you so much!

Thank you! Honestly, I have a grudge against the bats too. I can't tell you how many times I've blown up the bat traps while play testing my own game haha. We wanted the soundtrack to be mellow with plenty of gaps so that you could still focus on the sounds of the monsters. I'm glad that you appreciated that detail.
 

Thank you! The directional audio was a key component of our game design. I wanted the player to utilize sound to navigate the level as much as they do their memory of it.

That's one of the best compliments that I could hope to receive. Thank you for playing all the way to the end!

Thank you! I think you're right about the difficulty and if I could do it again I would have spent more time on making sure the player feedback for why the player character dies is stronger. I ended up condensing far too much difficulty progression within a single level. I think unconsciously I was afraid of the game being too easy and people clearing the level too quickly.

Is recorded gibberish audio okay? Like a recorded "blarglargbralbarbra" that might play when opening a NPC store? Or the sounds of dying enemies letting out grunts or war cries? "RAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Hyaaaaah!!!!!" kind of stuff.

I got sucked into it quite a bit. The voice acting and live-streaming component provided an extra source of things to pay attention to it and it made the game feel more alive in games like this which can end up feeling very lonely. I also liked the writing a lot, the whole mood and small little jokes thrown at the concept of a luxury space cruise. I read that the puzzles weren't solvable fully and I'm glad that there was a save system in place in order to not lose progress. I did get stuck I believe at the final moment of the game where I jump into the escape pod and my partner tells me to get out, and tells me that if I go back home then I'll bring back whatever has infected me. I continued to walk around and chase the spores around but didn't figure out what to do from that point forward. All in all very compelling and very gripping especially considering this isn't my usual genre to play.

I'm glad you enjoyed playing :) I took a look at the game you mentioned and I can see the resemblance. That's a good point about the directional attacks and it's actually the main thing I was afraid of in this genre in the context of a gamejam. The directional attacks take a fair bit longer to work on/animate/polish so I wanted to avoid them at least for now. But it's valuable feedback to know that you consider this is a difference worth investing into. 

The knife is definitely one of the weaker weapons. I'm still not sure about needing to time your attack with the idle animation, it definitely means you can't just fire an attack off whenever.
My favorite to use for melee is the spear although the slingshot is also pretty fun to use. We should have clarified that block and dash are abilities you get from items, so you can't just use them whenever. Blocking/parrying is not completely finished being implemented so it's not too bad that you didn't get to use it. I'm glad you had fun playing!

I totally understand that too. Game balance is one of the hardest aspects to get right in a gamejam. Finding that balance where it's challenging but still winnable as long as you pay attention is hard. Would love to see more of what your team makes, where can I follow what your studio is up to?

A little bit unsure of how to do much. Visuals were quite nice and I was able to realize I was supposed to bring back the spirits to the teleport position. But it was hard for some reason to get them to follow and it was hard to remember and get back to the teleport position when I did finally find the souls. Gameplay loop needs some more consideration.

The game aesthetic and control scheme is on-point with what you were aiming for. I was a little bit frustrated when I attacked myself with my soul and killed myself. But, overall fun, definitely wish there were sfx. Bfxr is a great sound tool and I feel some sounds generated from there would have been awesome.

Very cute game. The characters and animations felt very solid and well-done. My gf really liked it and thought it was cute. I did get stuck underneath an arch in the middle of the map so a position reset button is always a nice idea for gamejams where you can't guarantee that you've fixed every bug. Aside from that I loved the storytelling paintings and the ending scene was very heartfelt and well-done!

The art aesthetic and  polish is phenomenal. I love the anime artstyle tbh. The way the background moves in response to the cursor location feels very nice. The only thing I wish for the game was a bit of a feeling of risk/challenge.  It seemed basically that no matter what you did you'd overpower the enemies. Despite that I think the  game mechanic is very cute and creative!

Alas, I have no idea why it's doing that. If I change the embedded iframe dimensions, the positioning of the UI elements is just completely off. Any idea what's up with it?

Good core of a game, I really like the UI and think it's well-designed. I wish there was a display of how many individual stocks you owned for a stock, and also like SELLx50 and BUYx50 buttons because my hands are very very lazy haha

I somehow beat the game and not sure exactly how I did :P I think it was fun and I don't have much more to add upon what the other comments have already said besides really liking the music and I think the platforming level design was overall well-done with the moving platforms and spikes. I do remember there was a small section in one of the stages where you'd get stuck hanging on the side of a 1-tile width hole where you're supposed to fall down and avoid obstacles.

Thank you for playing my game. I agree completely with your reaction and it's nice to know that what I perceived to be weaknesses in the game are echoed by the feedback I've received.

Thank you for playing my game. I definitely needed more time :( but in my next gamejam I'm sure I can get more done. I think in my next game I make I will prioritize the game tempo expanding, or the difficulty. I've noticed how much of a strong impact that has on a game being interesting from playing some of the game jam entries.

Thank you! It is very incomplete yes ;)

(Я использовал Google Translate) Думаю, это была не ваша вина. Мне следовало добавить больше тактильной обратной связи для действий пользователей.

Thank you. Space bar was for parrying when the enemy's sword is above the character. I think if I had implemented a parry animation, as well as turning the Attack button into an Attack/Parry button, it would have been clearer when the parry window was active. The theme was storytelling based but I never got around to justifying it unfortunately.

I completely understand your feedback. I learned a lot while working on this project, and I hope that in my next project I can create a more finished experience. Looking at other games from the gamejam, I noticed a ramping up of difficulty or tempo used to great effect. I think in my next game I'll be able to create something more satisfying to play by making use of that.

I'm glad you like the hand-drawn art style. You're right about the lack of feedback for hitting and I noticed that a lot when testing the game. I changed the HP bar animations to Ease Out instead of Ease In/Ease Out. And I think a quick animation to shake the characters horizontally when they're damaged would help a lot.

You're right :( I didn't really get around to justifying the theme due to dealing with other issues, and I think I should have built a game mechanic that expressed the theme instead