itch.io

I thought the enemy animations were well done. The music fits well and I enjoyed the ethereal music in the menu. Graphics-wise, I like the colors and models. Some things, like the font for the player's name, looks rough. The yellow cube I assume is a placeholder for an actual switch. The art style of the title screen image doesn't seem to fit with the style of the in-game graphics.

Swinging your sword stops your movement for a tad too long and its slow to hit. This makes the combat feels stiff and frustrating. This also made it hard to find a good window for attack without being hit right back as it feels you are left vulnerable for a tad too long. I found myself just skipping most enemies. I would suggest being able to move while attacking (even if said movement is slow) or have the player swing faster. It seems like most characters share this issue

Speaking of enemies, there doesn't seem to be much reason to engage with them at all. I found myself walking past enemies and only focusing on hitting switches. Maybe you could tweak it to make these mechanics compliment each other. Like maybe skip the switches altogether and have bridges only open if you kill enough nearby enemies, as an example.

I noticed the devlog and itch page mention a way to dodge and dash, but I didn't figure out how to do this. I tried holding L to block and press a direction, but that didn't work.

Not sure if this was intentional, but its really easy to kick items and powers away from you when you are trying to grab them. I kicked a few of the spells out of reach because of this.

I played the guard the most. I tried a few others but most of them felt pretty similar to one another. It seems their differences are mostly in the strength of certain spells?

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get past the first boss or try multiplayer. I died at the first boss and I didn't feel compelled to navigate the area again and find the switches. Something like a checkpoint system would help.

Instead of having a "how to play" page, I would suggest having in-game prompts, like the E key could show up near a switch or item. This would help because I didn't realize I needed to use E near the yellow cubes to activate the bridges.

Having both apples and healing spells seems redundant.

Good luck with your project! I hope my feedback will be helpful to you.

I'm happy to hear you liked the game enough to play it multiple times!

The RNG and balance of the upgrades, I'm hoping to have improved in the next version. I'm thinking of implementing some sort of tier system for each of the combos where weak and strong effects are grouped together.

Thank you for your feedback!

I'm glad you like it. I would like to eventually update the visuals (especially the enemies) after I balance out the upgrades/downgrades better. Thank you for your feedback.

Based on your response and others', I need to better balance the gifts and curses, especially the bullet conversion one. This will give me a good direction to take the next update. Thank you for your feedback. 

An isometric game is interesting! I don't see those often in jams. Though, I do wonder if the game would be better if the movement wasn't isometric. It makes the controls feel stiff for what is seemingly meant to be an action game.  

It seems the main strategy is to keep running while shooting at the enemies as they chase you, which did lose my interest quickly. Maybe the later waves would be more interesting, but I would get caught on a rock or tree and lose my health almost immediately when an enemy touched me, so some invincibility frames would have helped me.

Overall, nice job! I really like the pixel art and music. Were the assets made for this game?

My initial reaction to this game was "man, this is hard" noting the amount of enemies swarming the player and plus I kept overshooting the platforms. However, as I played it more, I started to enjoy it more and realized there was more depth and thought to the game than I initially thought.

I like the decision-making required of the player. Should I aim for more birds? Should I risk jumping for the next carrot? Should I preserve some of the ammo. And some rounds I would get in a flow state and it would be satisfying seeing my score go up and then the carrots doubling that score several times over. Really fun. I didn't bother with the difficulty settings at first until I realized you get more score out of it. Another decision for the player to make. Too easy and you don't get much points, but if you select too high, you will quickly get decimated by the birds.

Like I mentioned before, the amount of birds swarming me so quickly had put me off at first, but I eventually realized that's encourage you to keep moving. I had to risk jumping across platforms to outrun the swarms of birds. I think I eventually realized all the mechanics had their place and they each complimented one another.

I also like how polished the UI/presentation is. The graphics themselves are great with the vibrant colors and then the UI has these little animations and transitions that make the game feel really professional.

I do wish you the little jump indicator looped back and forth. So many times I held space a little too long and realized that I was doomed before I even jumped. I also wish there was an option for an instant retry, especially for moments I died immediately after messing up.

As of writing this, my best score is 8800. I'm going to play some more rounds and try to buy more weapons. Maybe I'll update this comment if I think of anything else to add. Anyway, really nice job on this one! Would make for a great mobile game.

Awesome! That means a lot! Thanks for trying it out!

Neat idea for an arcade style game! I like that the bubbles come out faster depending on how fast you're moving. It's fun to catch multiple rabbits at once doing this.

Only issue is I feel like its really easy to be blind sighted by how fast the rabbits fall if you happen to be standing under them when they spawn from the top of the screen. 

My best score was 181. 

Nice job on your game!

EDIT: I noticed after retrying a few times, sometimes the game crashes when you lose. This made me have to refresh the page to play again.

Also, I think I discovered a way to cheese the game. Just stand in this spot and repeatedly press the shoot button.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you!

Yes, that mechanic was added to help with that issue. 

The original plan was to just have the platforms generating when defeating enemies, but due to the randomized nature of the levels, it was hard to factor in every possible scenario that could cause the player to get stuck. The bouncing off dead enemies mechanic was to help alleviate the situations you mentioned, and it seems to have worked! Thanks for trying it out!

Also, Skalt711 did the pixel art, so I definitely recommend checking out his other projects to see more of his pixel art in action!

Yeah, I kept changing the scrolling speeds until the last day of development because I didn't want it to be too easy or too hard. I'm glad the amount of health helped balance out some of the friction. Thanks for playing!

I guess another the skill I should learn is time/cost management because I spend an unhealthy amount of effort just to fix Godot physics behaviors and rigging 😂

Oh, yeah. Godot's physics system can be a bit wonky. Especially with Rigidbody nodes. Did you happen to use Rigidbody2D? I tend to have better luck with trying to do things with CharacterBody2D.

Just for fun, I made a quick prototype of this mechanic with a CharacterBody2D just to see if I could. Might come in handy one day...

I did the tutorials. I also tried a little bit of the campaign mode. I didn't spend too much time on that since it was mostly levels I played in the tutorial already. I didn't have anyone to test out the multiplayer features.

Spirits

It took me a moment to realize I needed to keep the cursor at the red circle. The tutorial text mentioned the red circle, but you might rephrase the text to make this more clear. Once I figured that out, flying around felt fun. 

I didn't understand how to get past the purple laser on the "Deadly Beam" level.

I didn't understand what the point of the "ghost" rocket was. I feel like it had something to do with bypassing the beam, but I didn't figure it out.

Neon Swarm

Brings me back to playing the old-school Lemmings games.

I didn't care for doing the Mosh Pit level. Having to get just the right spot for the swarmers to build the stairs wasn't fun. I think requiring that kind of precision can be frustrating for a more puzzle-focused game like this. The level, Mine Barrier, had a similar issue. Having to redo the level because I didn't start building the stairs in the right place wasn't very engaging.

I was a little confused about the game asking you to place "triggers" at first, but I soon realized a pop-up appears when you click on one of the abilities. Though, maybe you could draw attention to it more so people don't easily miss it.

Serpents + Pilots

I can't really comment on these too much because they seem to be intended for multiplayer and I didn't have anyone to play with. Do you plan on adding single player variants of these? I skimmed through your dev long but didn't notice it mentioned anywhere. 

Overall

I think the game, for the most part, does a good job of tutorializing the first two mini-games. Besides the few points I noted above, I found myself learning the games quite easily for the most part.

There seems to be a bug with the name change tab. I wasn't able to type anything in at first. I refreshed the game and was able to get it working. But it might be worth looking into.

The individual games seem to be competently made, though they seem to be mostly clones of older games without much to make them stand out on their own. It would help to add some sort of variation or twist on the games to set them apart from their inspirations.

Overall, nice job on the game and building the online features and such. If there's any content I missed, let me know and I can give the game another try.

I saw the WIP version on Discord and knew I had to try this one when it got submitted. The shooting to move yourself around is a lot of fun. I still like the little carrot people. I think you had mentioned before that Hop II (the previous UGJ winner) was inspiration? Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, I think the shooting to propel yourself was my favorite part of that game, so the fact you made a whole game around a mechanic like that is really cool to me.

I didn't like the more open-ended levels where you had to find the door switches. I preferred the more linear levels where you had to blast your way while avoiding spikes. I think the more open ones had the issue where you could easily fall into spikes you couldn't see before as they were offscreen, which makes them not as fun to navigate for that reason. I know you could shoot to propel yourself and avoid them, but sometimes its hard to react fast enough depending on how fast you're falling.  

I ended up losing interest in the one level where I had to find the four switches that are guarded by the carrot people. I would get grazed by a bullet and have to redo all the switches again. 

Still, I really liked this one. The movement mechanics are quite fun. It's a fun simple idea with potential and would love to see this concept expanded on. Nice job!

EDIT: Turns out the level I got stuck on was the last one, haha. I ended up beating it.

when I standing by the edge of the playing area my bullets hit the edge and get removed straight away (biggest problem, I would say)

I hadn't noticed that before. It seems smaller bullets aren't affected. I guess it must be an issue once your bullets get bigger? I'll definitely have to fix that.

heart placement is not very random, as we can see

Oh, wow! I didn't realize that about the hearts. I collect them right away so I never realized the spawning was messed up like that.

there is nothing to show how many rounds I have actually played here (which is a shame, as I want to show off that I survived for a ridiculous number of rounds.

I should have made it more clear, but in the bottom-right corner, you can see "Current" and "Best." Current is the current round  you are on and Best keeps track of the furthest round you've reached (it updates after you die or replay). Based on your screenshot, you got at least to round 10.

at this point, I can't actually choose the 'present' between rounds, since my bullets are still moving (slowly), and will kill one before I can make any choice

Ahh, okay. I'll need to despawn all bullets when the presents appear, not just the enemies' bullets.

- the 'your bullets convert enemy bullets' powerup is kind of broken, I think (but some brokenness is ok, as it is fun to break builds in these kinds of games) 

Yeah, this one is definitely OP. I'm kind of torn on it because, on one hand, it's broken, but it's also fun to use because of how broken it is. I think a good compromise would make it a temporary power-up you can get.

Thanks for the detailed feedback! And for the screenshot. I'll try your game soon.

(Comment on the WIP version)

The game is coming along well so far. Here are my initial thoughts.

I like being able to position the player to hit multiple enemies with one shot.

I would like to see more visual feedback when damaging enemies. Maybe the screen should only shake when you actually hit an enemy? Maybe the enemy could flash or have particle effects when they get hit.

I'd prefer to be able to hold the button to shoot rather than having to repeatedly press it.

With the rate of enemy spawns, it can be difficult to keep the enemies from reaching the center. I would like to see more options for dealing with enemies if you are able to add something like that before the deadline. As an example, being able to buy and place a turret or placing mines to help deal with the larger waves. Or maybe simply adjusting the spawn rate of those waves.

I look forward to see how the game develops after submission.

A nice, simple stealth game. There's a good variety of hazards you made for the game. Rotating cameras, fast moving enemies, lights, door switches, etc. I could see this being expanded with more levels and even more mechanics. The stick figure doodle for the main character is cute. Only issue is that it seems that there is no wall collision so you can cheese the game pretty easily.

Overall, nice job! I also liked how the settings menu just straight up tells you that there isn't any actual settings, lol. It's so silly, but it got a smile out of me.

I like the idea of each item having a secret debuff you don't know until later.

It did seem like I was better off not collecting items though and skipping enemies when I can. When I started doing that, it made it where I had enough health and defense to finally defeat the boss. There might need some stat rebalancing done so its actually worth engaging with those game mechanics and still survive.

Also, it was tricky to keep track of which collected item was doing what curse/debuff.

Overall, nice job! I like the classic first-person dungeon crawler style and the look of the eye-monster boss. Nicely done.

Thanks for your feedback! Yeah, the throwing mechanic can be tricky. I might need to have it where the player can charge the strength of the throw.

I like that there was a bit of narrative and that you could interact with different objects in the house to learn a little more about our protagonist. 

I tried playing the game a few times. The first couple times, I found the basement almost immediately and had won before I even realized what happened. Last couple times I played, I kept getting lost.

There were a few issues I encountered. One was how disorientating it was to go from room to room. Typically, in top down adventure games, when you go through a door on the left of the screen, you arrive at another room from the right side of the screen. In this game, you can pop up on any part of the screen during a warp, which makes it hard to keep track of where you're going and where you've been. A lot of the rooms also looked pretty similar to one another which made it even easier to get lost. 

Another issue is that some rooms didn't seem to let you leave? There was one room (the one that has what looks like a bathroom and sink in the top right corner) and I tried going to the big black box on top and going to the arrows on the side of the room (like I did with previous rooms) and I couldn't seem to get out of the room. I ended up resetting the game. Not sure if I was missing something or was a bug.

I ended up having to mute the music, sorry to say. The high notes got grating really fast. 

I had never heard of MakeCode Arcade before this game. I might have to check it out. It seems interesting. Nice job on your game! I think tweaking how the player navigates around and making areas more visually distinct would really help this project. Congrats on doing your second game jam! 

Cool idea that fits the theme well. I did a few rounds and the best score I got was 55. I like the concept of having to find and shoot enemies that are obscured by darkness.

I feel like the game might benefit by having ways for the player to locate enemies more easily. I found myself losing track of enemies and spending more time trying to clear out the multiple enemies right next to me instead of trying to find them in the dark. Maybe you could make your light bigger by holding a button, but it drains the charge or something so you can't overly rely on it. Something like that could give the player more decisions to tackle situations like that without trivializing the challenge in the process.

Besides that, I think this is a cool concept. With some more mechanics to help balance out the difficulty, I think this could be a really solid arcade-style game. Nice job!

EDIT: Even though I read the description, I somehow glossed over the fact you can press Tab to bring up the menu to buy turrets. After that, I was able to get a much higher score of 289. I still think the game could benefit from giving the player more decisions to make like I mentioned earlier. The turrets helped for sure, but I found myself still spending more time dealing with nearby enemies rather than engaging with the game's main mechanic (searching the darkness). With that said, I enjoyed the game enough to give it a few tries and would like to see this concept expanded on.

Cool concept. I like the variety of hidden items which made it fun to dig around to see what I could find. I like that there were different animations for the different ways to die whether it's being eaten by the mimic or having TNT blow you up and destroying the surrounding terrain.

I wonder if it would be better if you could dig while the lantern is being used. Your vision is already limited, so I feel like the game wouldn't lose too much challenge. Having to switch between the lantern and pickaxe so frequently does become tedious after a bit. I think just having the lantern always on and reducing the amount of inputs required of the player could streamline things a bit. I think part of the friction comes from having to reach for the 1/2 buttons from WASD keys when switching items which is physically inconvenient. If you wanted to keep the switching, maybe having Right Click be a toggle would be a better fit?

I would also encourage having the timer during the first few rounds to be a bit more lenient since I kept dying and retrying as I was trying to figure out what was going on.

I would like more feedback on things like collecting the yellow circles. I wasn't sure what it was doing at first. Was I collecting more light? Maybe the UI could explain things a bit better and give more feedback to the player when they interact with things like this.

Overall, nice job! I like the sense of discovery the game offers.

Cute art. Very simple, top down adventure game. I think I completed it in just a few minutes. Would be cool to see this expanded with more characters and more tricky objects to find.

Interestingly (and probably unintentionally), this game evokes a somewhat specific form of nostalgia for me. It kinda feels like something that came out in the early 2000s / late 90s and was made in Clickteam Fusion or something. I think the best way to explain it is that it has a simplicity that makes it feel like somebody messing with an older game engine and not in a modern engine like Godot or Unity like we are used to today. Even though it seems you made it in (I assume) GameMaker Studio. I started out trying (and failing) to make games in GameMaker 8 back then, so it kinda reminds me of those old projects and other games made in that engine.

I don't know if any of that last paragraph made any sense, 

As for the game itself, I tried giving the Pokemon  Creatureman card back to the NPC who lost it, but I guess you aren't able to do that? It feels like that's what I was supposed to do.

Anyway, cute game! Wish there was more to do because the vibe of the game makes me feel nostalgic in a way I can only attempt to explain. Nice job!

Very creative use of the theme. I liked how there was puzzles for figuring out which door is the correct one. Though you can technically cheese the puzzles through trial and error, I did find myself still trying to solve each one. The only one I couldn't figure out for sure was the one with the footprints.

I also appreciated the use of voice acting since that's so rare for jam games and it really adds to the mood of the game. I also like how the narrator tied things together at the end, saying how sometimes choosing the wrong choices (doors) is okay as we learn from them. Nice way to tie in narrative and gameplay mechanics with that.

Nice job! Very interesting little game!

Pretty fun concept. I like how each item added some variation to the rounds, such as the glasses making it hard to see, the cube being heavy, the slime ball being bouncy, and the hot potato being a competition to see who can hold it the longest. A lot of variety and there's a lot of potential for expansion with even more objects. I also enjoyed the goofy bean people and the start menu has humor and personality with details such as the disclaimer you have to agree to, as an example. I also like that the game is framed like a game show. I also appreciate that this is a 3D game with a reasonable amount of content. Not super common for jams!

Main issue I ran into is that it's hard to get the object when there is large swarms of people gathered around it. Might be helpful if there were other ways to clear out mobs of bean people since the slide move only helps so much.

Also, it seems you can jump on people and stand on the top of certain shelves, letting you cheese some of the rounds if you carry objects with you. Not sure if this was intentional or not, but it does seem like the CPU can't really counter this at all.

Overall, nice job! With some more polish and balancing, I could see this being a fun party game, especially if you added multiplayer!

Also, I managed to get second place (P.S. I am Butt)

I can see how some of the bugs can be helpful. There was a few times I landed on a wall like a floor and was able to make a jump that way. I can appreciate intentional jank when it's in my favor, haha.

With the opposite direction thing, there was a moment I was on the floor and the arrow was pointing left, but when I launched, I went right instead. What I think might have happened was the game misread the floor collision as wall collision and bounced me the opposite direction I was aiming. I tried doing another quick run of the game to see if I could recreate it but I wasn't able to. Either I misread or misremembered the situation or it was just some obscure collision fluke I encountered.

And yeah, I would love to play a version with more trash! The more trash, the better :)

If you have one, the game does support controller inputs as well!

Moving the camera around, I mainly put in so you could avoid blind jumps that might put you in the guard's line of sight. However, if it's trivializing things, I might make it where you can only look directly around the player's current position. 

Yeah, the timer might be too high, but I had concerns about people losing time trying to figure things out. I did want adequate time for people to mess around and experiment with different ways of completing the levels. Though, you're probably right I made the timer too lenient.

Some areas can be avoided entirely and that's by design. To fit the "Free Choice" theme, I made it where levels (especially the later ones) are open-ended so you can find your own route through it, so some level elements you might not use for one run. Some methods will be harder than others and some even let you cheese the level completely! I wanted it to feel like a "Choose Your Difficulty" option but its baked in the level design rather than something you pick in a menu.

Thank you for playing the game and for your feedback! I'm happy to hear you liked it.

Yeah, some of the later levels were meant to be harder. I decided to have them all unlocked in case any of them were too hard.  Most levels do have multiple ways to solve them, though! Something to keep in mind if you decide to try again :)

Besides the object throwing, was there anything else that gave you trouble? Was it figuring out what to do or trying to get past the guards?

Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I liked was how the bushes rustled and wiggled as you moved through them. This detail makes the game feel a bit more immersive but it also has gameplay implications as your sounds can obscure the sounds of the goblins. I also like how the music lowers in pitch as your torch loses light.

An issue I ran into was I struggled to find the last goblin in the first level. I would hear his sounds but kept losing him. I don't know if it was bad luck or I'm missing some sort of strategy. I eventually just gave up on finding the last one after wandering around and losing interest. Maybe it would help if there was more visual clues to where the goblins are at.

I enjoyed the brief moments where I was running after the goblins that tried to flee. Maybe if you revisit this project, you could emphasize the chasing element more? I enjoyed that aspect more than searching for them. Maybe the later levels have more of this, but I didn't get far enough to know for sure.

Overall, great work and nice job on tackling both themes! You have to find the goblins (Hidden) and you get a choice of upgrades for each goblin (Free Choice).

I like the upgrade system and how each upgrade has a cost in time or ability. The mechanic of having trees cover you and your power meter, basically making you "feel" how long you should charge the jump, offers a neat challenge when you encounter those situations.

One thing I appreciated was the inclusion of secret rooms. I also like that the detail of the music changing and the player sleeping if you are idle too long. Though, sometimes the idle music was pretty loud, so I got jump scared by it a couple times, lol. Maybe that's my punishment for idling too much.

There are places where you can fall great distances if you aren't careful, which can feel quite punishing if you have to repeat a particularly tricky jump. However, that seems to be intentional design considering the game treats making time as part of the experience. With that said, I appreciated the calm ambience to counteract any potential frustration. The music, the wind sounds, and the rain effects really help sell that ambience. The environments also look really nice and I like how some parts of it have that "wobble" effect.

I do wish trash was less scarce. I like the added movement option of shooting, plus its just plain fun getting a lot of air/progress when you time a good jump + shoot combo, so I wish I could do that more often.

While the collision sometimes worked in my favor, sometimes the collision ruined the trajectory of my jumps. For example, a few times I expected for the player character to rebound off the wall but instead got sent back down. I think the game thought I hit a ceiling even though I was hitting a wall. Also, sometimes, it seemed like the character would move the opposite direction I had pressed? I think the game thought I was against a wall even though I wasn't. I think that's what's happening, anyway.

Overall, nice job! I gave this one a few runs even though I've yet to beat it. I'll need to check out the other Hop games you made as well to see how they compare.

The themes are "Free Choice" and "Hidden." You can choose to follow just one of the themes or both.

I like the goofy premise, though the gameplay seems to be too repetitive for me to want to keep playing and meet the 30 minute goal. Maybe something like more enemy variety, power-ups or upgrades could be added to spice things up. I also wish the player would snap to the rows of enemies rather than having to manually aligning myself because it made it really easy to barely miss hitting the enemies. It also seems impossible to lose as enemies never spawned on the top three rows and they stopped spawning altogether about three minutes in.

Overall, nice job on your submission! 

Haha, glad I could get that kind of reaction. One of those games where one little slip-up and its game over. Thanks for trying it out!

I can definitely see the comparison to Doodle Jump. I'm glad you had fun even if its hard. Seems I tend to make my jam games too hard, though it was intentional with this one since I wanted to encourage replayability. Thanks for the feedback!

I was kinda thinking the same thing. I think it could work as a mobile game! Though it might be a bit tricky to be precise with movements with touch controls. That'd be my main concern.

Really enjoyed this one. Great pixel art and the calm music and the digging sound effects made for a very relaxing experience. I also enjoyed the bad ending of my house getting repossessed by getting blasted into the sky, haha. I think the only complaint I have is I wish I could've dug more since digging and collecting treasure was satisfying. Would love to see an expanded version of this. Nice job!

Cool concept of having the boss approaching with each step. I like the retro art of the asset pack you used.  It was cool to explore the environment and seeing what kinds of enemies and items I could find. I never did find out what's in that staircase the spiders are guarding but I'm considering coming back later and trying the game again to find out.

I did encounter an issue where I fought the slime and we got into an endless battle of me blocking and him healing, so the battle never progressed or ended. I just had the sword, basic defense, and the food that heals with each step when it happened.

Would love to see a version of this with a bigger environment or even a randomly generated one. Nice job on this submission!

Wow, everything feels so polished, from the UI to the gameplay itself. I like the variety of objects you can hit and the amount of features you included like achievements and costumes. It's cool you even made both desktop and mobile support. The visuals feel like a more-polished flash game which is cool. Very well done.

Only issue I ran into was the character's rotation "resets" when trying to move the cursor around the character. For example, I would be spinning them clockwise, and once at a certain angle, the character would spin counter-clockwise to look at the cursor instead of continuing clockwise, which feels very awkward since they take a longer time to longer to point where I want them to, messing with my timing. Rotation in games can be finicky, so I definitely feel your pain in correcting that.

Overall, nice job! A very polished and feature-rich entry.

Fun mix of pool and golf. I appreciated you including a way to check out other levels if I got stuck in one, and there is a good number of courses. The physics of the balls were fun, especially with a really strong shot that made them bounce around wildly. I also like the addition of the shadows to give a sense of depth to the visuals.

One issue I kept running into is if the ball was near the edge of the screen and I tried to drag the cursor off screen, there wasn't a way to launch the ball once the cursor was offscreen. This made it hard to perform stronger shots at the angles I wanted. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

If the cursor is offscreen, I can't hit the ball at this angle, so I had to move the cursor back on screen and settle for a weaker shot than I wanted.

Overall, nice job!