Without being able to know what keys do what the game is impossible to really play. Just showing what keys go to what when randomized would really help the game a lot and still give the intended effect.
Thanks! There is certainly some things that we wish we could have polished more but we still got a lot done! We plan on making a post jam version at some point.
I'll be sure to check out your game when I'm off of work!
I know we were talking in discord when you wrote this but I still feel obligated to respond to all comments.
Thanks, part of the content we had to cut to release it before the jam ended was a time rewind. There were a few gameplay ideas with this but I also feel it would serve as giving you an undo option quite nicely. In a full release we will likely try to include this. As for the crashes I've found it has crashed a bit more than expected. There are a few reasons for this all of which will be taken care of in a full release should we put one out. Part of it was just trying to make the game look so good that optimization suffered and there were no options to make the game look worse to run better.
I'll lower the default volume next time. As for settings in game that was because we had two different programmers on main menu and in game pause menu. Totally something we should have fixed though. Sadly we didn't have the time for it.
There are a lot of things I want to do to bring that execution back up and get it more polished. I think my team managed really well and we were able to get a really cool product out but we may have been a bit too ambitious. The original goal was first 24 hours spent on the core game and the following 24 spent on just polish. It ended up not being that clean.
Anyway, thanks for the feed back and hopefully if we full release it then it'll be a lot better. I did quite like your feedback on needing an undo feature and how that works really well with one of the ideas we had but cut.
Definitely a good game but I would really like for the movement to make a bit more sense. It's kinda hard to determine which way I am going to go.
Having to use the mouse to see the songs is a bit much when you're using num pad and wasd too. I'd suggest q and e to rotate through the spells. Also, not everyone has a num pad so you should switch it to either arrow keys which are a lot more intuitive or uiojkl.
I'd like to see the difficulty ramp a bit better, first song is 3 notes and then the second one is 5.
Lot's of other feedback but we went over that in voice chat.
This is certainly one of the better games in this jam and I'd love to see more done with it!
Thanks, yeah the terrain texture we should have put a little more work into, the idea was to cover it all with grass but that KILLED the optimization (even on higher end computers) so the texture didn't get covered up as much.
(Spoiler paragraph) As for the house, you're actually supposed to continue up, past the well, then there is a hole in the ground. If you fill that hole with a rock your character can pass over it. From there you'll find a small cave with some trees and another rock blocking it off, break the trees and move the rock (or break the rock too but in this game having more rocks is generally better) Inside that is a key which goes to a gate nearby. Open the gate and you can continue to a new cave that leads you to the next level.
Unfortunately for the version that was submitted to the jam we forgot to include the json with all the dialogue which is why you see none on the first level and since the dialogue that plays at the end of level 1 is also missing it does not load level 2 correctly. Same thing for level 3. We plan on uploading a post jam version later with that bug fixed and a few others as well.
Also, I too am really impressed with what we managed to do in the time frame. My team really did a good job. I also got 4 hours of sleep during this whole thing because of how much work we had. lol
Thanks, we should have spent more time on the tutorial. Once you figure out how the game works it's a lot better but in a jam with over 5k games to rate no one is going to spend the time to learn how it works.
You're supposed to destroy the trees blocking your path. As the instructions said at the start, right click to break and left click/drag to move stuff around. The character at the start is trapped so you have to let him out.
Thanks on the presentation comment though! We put a lot of work into making it look good!
So one of the parts the game needed more attention put to was a tutorial. I presume one of the dead ends you were talking about was blocked off by a giant hole. You're supposed to fill the hole with a rock so the player can move over it. It's not the most intuitive to be honest.
There will be a post jam version with some updated levels, tutorial, and most importantly we will actually package the dialogue.json file that didn't get packaged into this build. There's actually a whole elaborate story with dialogue boxes and all but because that didn't get packaged that system broke which has been detrimental as it now causes crashes sometimes, you don't get to see the story, and other systems that relied on it are broken too such as going to level 2 and level 3.
Yeah, I think in the post jam version I'll disable being able to destroy rocks and just out destroying and moving on left click. It may be more intuitive then.
As for dragging not working what were you experiencing there? I hadn't found any issue with dragging rocks. I do know sometimes people will out the rock in what they think is blocking the area but actually miss a bit and there's no clear way to tell other than the guy is still going there. Is that what you're talking about or did you have another issue with the rocks that I never caught?
You need to package the game with the .exe, when you build it out don't just upload the exe, send the whole build folder into a .zip or .rar. Otherwise no one can play it. Sorry that you were not able to get it in correctly before the deadline.
The character is out of your control so he goes where ever he wants. You have to limit the options of places he can go. The best way to do that is blocking of entrances to different areas and opening up ones to new areas. I do wish we could have had time to make a tutorial but we didn't even have time to patch a game breaking bug that popped up with 30 minutes to spare. Right now in this version only the first level is playable even though there is more than 1 level.
Had we had time for a tutorial we could have made the controls a bit easier to understand.
Enemies can not hit you for the first 1 second after they spawn so that should not have been an issue. Though it would make sense to disable a spot if you're standing on it. I can add that as some polish. Glad you enjoyed it though!
edit: Had to go to dinner with family that I was unaware of. Will do any posted here when I get back!
I'll be playing some Game Jam games on twitch.tv over at https://www.twitch.tv/dragonheart000_ if you want me to play yours comment it here or head over to twitch and link it in chat!
If you'd like to return the favor I'd appreciate you rate and comment on my game https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462213 , however, that is not needed for me to play yours on stream!
Since there is a way to lose 10 seconds it would be nice if there was a way to gain time too. Maybe I just suck and never found out how to gain time. There could be something like if you hit 5 with one shot you gain 10 seconds. That would make trying to set up huge bounces more enticing and allow very skilled players to get really high scores by getting more time.
How 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! :)
Nice original game. I did like how every character's ability could only be used once. It felt like I didn't really need any character other than the key. Every level I was able to get though with only one ability using the key character the whole time. I think if you designed the levels so you'd actually need to use more than one character that would really help or even if you made it so ALL of your party has to get to the end so you gotta open up paths for the other ones, like the jumper can go over a wall and open a door with a switch there then the key could unlock something in there but now the bunny is stuck on the other side so you gotta find a way to get him out. I feel that stuff like that would really improve this game.
That'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.
Very original idea, I do like the idea of using past you to help yourself out. It was really difficult though and on levels where you had two of the same color it would be easy to lose track of yourself. Also, having to wait so long when you failed got kinda annoying. If you polished it up some more it would be a fun little game though.
Planned on finishing up rating games after playing some games with my friends but it's almost 3am so I am heading to bed and will do any that I have not done yet here and any more that show up whilst I am asleep when I wake up.
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!
If you could rate my game that would be great! I'll rate yours too. Also, if you have any feedback I'd love to hear it. It's not necessary but with the responses I have been getting so far to it I am thinking of polishing it up and making it into a full game so I'd love to get as much feedback as I can!
