Holy shikeys, Vinny streamed our game tonight!
... And there were audio issues in the version he played that no one on the team noticed before tonight.
That's exciting, and also a little embarrassing, but I think the team is just way more excited than anything at the moment! =D
I'll see if I can review the VOD on Youtube tomorrow and figure out what the bug might be, but this is amazing!
Thanks again to everyone who gave us feedback. It was incredibly encouraging to hear what people had to say about the game, and I feel like we all learned a lot.
I was already jumping into learning some more game dev tools because I didn't think our game would end up on stream, but this was a huge boost to morale!
Thanks again to the mods and Vinny for running this whole jam, so exciting!
FleshHuman (A.K.A. D99)
Creator of
Recent community posts
Hey! No worries, I don't think most of us are professionals here lol.
I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful response and I think I completely agree with all your points!
After sleeping on the feedback I got yesterday, I really think our whole game would have done better if we carved out a little extra time for improving the visual quality/audio loop, ditching the upgrade system, and doing a little more work on conveyance to the user about their scores and how they're calculated. With a little more time and a little less initial ambition, we probably could have really nailed down some of these points better.
Others have mentioned the visual style / menu stuff being a little off, and I think that's just a quark of how teambuilding played out for this game jam specifically, but it's a fair point nonetheless and something I can try to improve on while becoming more gui-talented during solo dev projects.
I really appreciate your thoughts on the entertainment category specifically though! I think we took the tiredness/popularity system for granted and that's probably where we lost a bunch of people. (Maybe, we should have added a tip-master! :) )
I'll chalk that up to lack of conveyance overall, but fixing it would have required some time that we just didn't have ¯_(ツ)_/¯
We had landed on explaining the duck scores for the same reasons as you did, namely that it wasn't guaranteed to show up in the run and even if it did, the effect it had was only situationally advantageous. People who saw the duck buppet, probably liked the design, but we probably should have done something else to make it more prominent in the game, I think.
Thanks for your well-rounded and thoughtful feedback - I was definitely able to get some good perspective out of it!
Also, congrats again on your game! I think I mentioned it before, but out of the games I played during the jam, yours was one of my favorites :)
Hey thanks for trying out our game after the jam ended and for the constructive feedback, I appreciate it!
You raise some excellent points on the game design side of things!
(I apologize in advance for the wall of text though!)
I do agree that menu based games frequently look boring and are hard to get right. I was pretty up front with my team about the flexibility of my goals before the jam started, and I made it clear that I didn't mind working really hard on whatever we decided, even if it was a "bad" idea. "Doomed" is a strong word here, I think, but what we aimed for was definitely going to be difficult and we didn't totally achieve it. My personal goal (aside from maybe getting my team's game streamed by my favorite Pizza Pasta man) as a game dev in this particular game jam was to force myself to grow by working as part of a team and I was pretty confident from the outset that we'd run into some of the issues that we did. We had different ideas about what to make, and how to make it "fun," but I do think we came to a fairly solid core gameplay loop for our game-jam-game™ submission by the end.
Someone already named Balatro, and that was indeed an inspiration for what we landed on in terms of game design. Some other inspirations for our game were, believe it or not, Darkest Dungeon and FNAF (FNAF stuff got dropped very early because of scope). Obviously we can't capture a lot of the magic that you'd find in any of these games in only a week with our currently amatuer skill levels (I'm speaking of myself here, using the royal 'our'... I think my team was great!) But I agree with your assessment about the frustration of discarding characters. My biggest complaint with Darkest Dungeon is that you frequently end up losing or discarding characters that you worked hard to upgrade. I think it "works" much better for that game because the whole game relies on the fact that it is "Doomed." We probably could have benefited from leaning either further or less far into the doom/gloom vibe than we did... But I will concede that the upgrades don't add much here, especially when other factors have a much greater affect on the end-of-day score. Perhaps that was in fact a huge point of frustration for people?
About continuing work: I think you're referring to this comment where I was talking about a full fledged version?
"I can't speak for the rest of my team, but I personally try to avoid doing significant post-jam work on stuff because I want the game to stay representative of what I was able to do in the timeframe of the jam at that point in time. This is my first game-jam with a team though, and if they want to improve it further, I would probably oblige since they may want to showcase their development differently."
I haven't directly asked the rest of the team, but I don't think there's a desire to do a full fledged version. I don't "want to keep working on this game to get it right", but I'm not shutting down the idea of doing more with it either.
More to the point on your last subject: I do want to keep improving my skills and, at this point, it does look likely that I will just move on to the next project. So, no worries there, I'm asking for feedback to try and get a better feel for what I might have missed in terms of things people could have really hated about our game. In the future, I'd like to avoid falling prey to easy mistakes which would cause someone to hate a game I make.
I guess to continue your summarizing thought a little bit, I don't think I would give someone a 1-star rating on a game just because of a poor genre choice from the team. During this jam, there were games that I played but chose not to rate just because I felt that they "weren't for me." I somewhat suspect that if people felt strongly about leaving 1-star, it was probably because they felt we really messed up the execution rather than the idea. I'm sure everyone has their own opinions on what sort of qualities (or lack thereof) deserve lowest marks, but I hadn't truly considered the possibility that the premise matters much more than the execution for some players.
I digress... your feedback is thought provoking to be sure, and I appreciate it a lot! I actually consider your summarizing thought to be quite a compliment, in a roundabout sort of way. So thank you for that as well!
Side note: I just realized that you made the Mecha-Hazard game last year! That game was hilarious and I remember enjoying watching the upload of it being played! Good job and congratulations! I have not checked out your game for this jam yet, but at this point I will probably just wait until Vinny streams it :)
Hey thanks for the response, this is all very useful! :)
I definitely agree on a lot of your points regarding gameplay balance (ads didn't really get finished in time tbh, and more was planned but as it stands it is kind of easy-to-win once the gameplay loop makes sense), needing more buppet type/variety, audio loops being a little too short (Agreed that the intro song was more of a banger than the actual gameplay audio loop).
There was a credits screen but it didn't end up in the game until the QoL updates because of some last minute mishaps on my part.
There was a music person and an art person on the team, but the music person ended up doing basically all the art for the game as well as the music due to schedule/skill crunch. Some of the GUI style was handled by the original art person, and so even though I hadn't considered the illustrations clashing with the character art/CRT effect, that makes a lot of sense!
The channel management style games definitely showed up a few times in the games I played, and I hadn't considered that people could have been getting burnt out either, but that probably contributed to some of the more negative ratings as well!
If you played the version with the credits missing, then you may have also been hit by an audio bug that caused weird looping behavior on the main game audio loop... Honestly, I stopped getting feedback on issue reproduction from the only person on the team who was able to reproduce the issue, so it may or may not have been fixed in the last QoL update, but I will keep that in mind as well for the future!
I also agree that with more polish and extra oomph this game could be more than just a game-jam-game™ (although I don't believe there's currently any interest in continuing the project from the rest of the team)
Some of these problems seem probably just boil down to not enough time and not enough experience with Godot and Game Dev, so I'll keep improving there, but the items I hadn't considered do shed some light on what people may have hated most about our game. This is great feedback and I appreciate it a lot!
As a follow up question, if you don't mind me digging a little deeper, which item would you say was the worst offender in terms of quality? I.E. if you only got to choose one item to fix, which would it be? To put it another way - Is it a pretty even spread of badness, or was there a low-hanging fruit that, if tweaked, would have really improved the quality for you? Main audio loop seems like the biggest offender from what I've gathered so far, but gameplay balancing and end of the day score calculations could be significant spots for improvement as well, maybe?
Also, I didn't get a chance to play your game during the jam, but if you want I could probably play it now and try to spot anything that I feel might be blind spots in terms of quality? I can try to offer critical feedback (or just positive compliments if there's nothing major) as a form of thanks for the thought you put into helping me get some extra perspective on my team's game!
Hello, I'm looking for some feedback on the game we made!
I know that game jams can be a little jarring because no one wants to say what they didn't like about a game, but I'm making this post to see if I can collect some of the critical feedback that I think might be floating around out there.
No worries if you don't want to respond because being critical is not fun or comfortable for most people!
If you have some advice and don't mind letting us know about it though, please help us out :)
Obviously, no game is perfect and we know of some things we weren't able to get done in time, but where did our game fail and what needed the most work overall?
We're also kind of scratching our heads about all the 1-star ratings. All we really know for sure at the moment is that people didn't like our duck/audio very much, but even then, the spread of ratings/comments doesn't seem too concentrated on any one thing. So, any feedback is appreciated!
Regardless, thanks to everyone who played our game and had something nice to say about it!
This was a really fun game jam and we really appreciated all the positive feedback we received over the last two weeks and we really enjoyed getting to play everyone's game!
Very cool and polished 2.5D platforming shooter!
Audio cues are on point and the music is great.
Love the art and the story leading into the gameplay too.
I kept hoping there'd be some kind of homing missile upgrade because I was so bad at running and gunning lol, but I did beat Leno on my first playthrough without running out of lives, so it wasn't too difficult for me in spite of my skill issues.
The minimap helped me a lot. It's not a big map, but I kept getting turned around anyway so including it was definitely a wise choice.
Overall, great game and congratulations on making a cool shooter!
Thank you so much!
I have not played your jam submission yet, but I am a fan of some of your other work! I really liked Late Homework and The Moth Inside Me.
Also, I was low-key taking notes on your itch profile and googling how to make my own profile page look less... default.
Needless to say, it's very flattering to be complimented by a seasoned Vinesauce-adjacent indie game dev!
Regarding the game we made though:
Yeah, the learning curve is something we were kind of worried about as a team, but I think the tutorial really helps with some of that. 🤞
It seems like people are able to get into it with a little bit of trial and effort, so I think we're feeling better about it overall though.
I will pass along the compliments to Teddie and Edo regarding the Buppet art/music/effect balancing!
Thank you again for the compliments and also for playing our game.
I'm glad you had fun!
I liked this game a lot! I think the puzzles are good and the secretive story was told really effectively through the minigames/characters. The coconut mini game had a real bopper of a song too! I think something that really helped make the game work was having a creepy guy give you hints when you get stuck, which I did like 3 times. Awesome work in general, and especially for solo dev project!
Thank you so much, I'm glad it landed with you!
The difficulty balance is a little up in the air atm, but we did put a good amount of thought into how to make it challenging but not too hard.
There are some obvious synergies and some less obvious synergies, but Edo really took the lead on balancing them out and I'm glad their ideas mostly came to fruition right at the end of the week!
The advertisements are actually one of the last few things we added and although they're definitely required for balancing purposes, we did originally plan on a much more robust advertisement system with like 5 different types that had different effects besides just swapping popularity for money. I was pretty sleep deprived and didn't have the energy to really do that system justice, but that's just how the jam sticks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The version of advertisements we ended up with is one of the things we had to scale down in the last day or so of development time, but I'm glad we could still make it work in the version of the game we eventually arrived at.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked our game!
Day 8 seems to be where most people have trouble, so that might mean we'll want to rebalance it a little to make that day 11 goal a little easier. (After the game jam voting is over)
Regardless, thanks for playing our game! I'm sure that Teddie and Edo will be thrilled to hear that their hard work is appreciated :)
Thank you so much, I'm glad you like it!
Teddie, the art person on the team, had a bunch of fun designing all the Buppets, so I'll pass along the compliment :)
FWIW, The win condition is getting past day 10, and there's a little "you win" screen if you make it.
It's a little tricky to win, but it can be done and has been won by at least 1 confirmed person (so far) outside of the game jam team.
I could also see this being a full game with some work and expansion, but that would have to wait
Oh very cool! I'll have to give these a look.
I was using a couple of tutorials as well, but I sort of ended on the idea that I just needed more practice with lots of different small models before trying to build a full level out blender objects.
I did manage to create a medium-high poly model and rig it and give it a custom animation, but I have very limited artistic skill so it looks ugly even after fixing all the animation hiccups I had done. I do think the Lazy Tutorial series is probably the kind of stuff I would aim to practice making just so I can build a real fleshed out 3d environment in a future jam though.
The other issue I had was just the file sizes and download time for a web browser 3d game in itch, because big godot games pack all their stuff into 1 pck file by default, which is a problem because itch has a hidden individual-file size limit besides the normal 1GB limit per project.
I digress though, I appreciate the tutorials!
Oh yeah, I guess I never died while playing (Skilled gamer guy over here!) , so that's probably how I missed the death noise jump scare lol
Aw shite, I just learned about the RedVox show in Baltimore.
Now if only I had money and time to go see them live :(...
About the game though, good stuff!
I got the duck ending? Who would've thought?
It made me chuckle, but yeah, those weather encabulators were the only thing keeping us safe, now we've lost the last one and we're doomed, again.
I digress, this game is a vibe and a half. I liked it!
I can safely say this game is pretty good for a first game jam submission because 3d stuff and animations are hard especially for doing a solo dev project.
I played it in my browser and I managed to get the game turned on and even got a little jump-scared by the TV static.
I noticed the little Easter-egg where "Press E" sometimes pops up as "pressy" and while I'm not sure if it's completely random or only happens around the power-strip, I still like the attention to detail there and on the customized Vine-remote/duck game catridge.
I can definitely relate to having issues with a web build that doesn't work the same as the desktop version (I was heavily considering switching from Godot to unity after this game jam, but it sounds like the grass might not be greener on the other side after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
I digress, good work on your first game!
P.S. I originally wanted to name our submission something like "This TV Network Needs Work" before our team landed on BupTV.
Thank you so much!
I'm glad you were able to eventually get into the flow of it, but I can completely understand having some trouble with it at the start.
Our game is mostly played inside of UIs which can be a little overwhelming, but we were definitely hoping it would be fun after getting past the tutorial and first few days.
Regardless, I'm glad you found it satisfying, and thanks for playing! :)
A really unsettling game for not having any jump scares!
A unique take on the retro tv theme, and a surprising amount of visual variation given the limited time for the jam.
I also appreciate that the puzzles weren't too complicated because I tend to get stuck on puzzle games whenever they get too in-depth.
Overall, I liked this because it managed to creep me out a bit, good work!
Alright, I'm done with my QoL stuff and finally got a chance to try this out!
Wow!
I wasn't expecting a run-n-gun top down shooter, but it's pretty great and it definitely fits the theme.
The in-jokes are solid and also make sense in how they affect the gameplay. I.E. Slimechamp bursting into little slimes, etc.
I really liked being able to stack all the upgrades, and as others have mentioned the risk/reward system really makes this fun. I squeaked out a win against gray leno on my first try, and played a second time just to try risking more commercials and stacking more upgrades. Had fun both times!
Thanks for making this, I feel like a lot of fun was had while developing the game!
Good game with very entertaining cutscenes!
I was also trying to get more of a 3d modeling workflow figured out in time for the ScreamJam, but I was lacking basic Blender skills even if the Blender->Godot workflow isn't that rough. Regardless, the animations and cutscenes here are pretty great even if the gameplay wasn't what you were hoping it would be.
I could see Vinny playing this just because its fun to hype up the Vinny/Ster bromance that we all know is coming. 🤞
Even if he doesn't, congrats on getting a good workflow down for 3d stuff!
P.S. Someone said there were jump scares? I got all 3 scoots, but I saw no jump scares?
Thank you for playing, I'm glad it turned out as creative as it did!
(Sorry in advance for the wall of text)
Everyone on the team had a different dream game, and we kind of mashed them all together (also cut the scope a bit) and made a small version of all of our ideas combined!
Totally agree on the Mubbin limit though! Having played the game a lot while implementing it, I also felt like I really wanted to keep more Mubbins around than I was allowed to, but for difficulty/balance purposes I think it has to be three.
We're adding a few post-submission QoL improvements for now (Some last night, some more in a day here) but I don't know if we'll do a more full-fledged version. I can't speak for the rest of my team, but I personally try to avoid doing significant post-jam work on stuff because I want the game to stay representative of what I was able to do in the timeframe of the jam at that point in time. This is my first game-jam with a team though, and if they want to improve it further, I would probably oblige since they may want to showcase their development differently.
In terms of what could be in a "full-fledged" version: There are a few systems that we didn't have time to implement, and in terms of core-gameplay, the end-day score screen is the most in need of polish. If it showed more details to the player about the score, and built up the score reveal with more SFX and dramatic effects, than this game would almost certainly shine a lot more. Also, just more SFX in general when the player is doing things, and better ways of showing information to the player (instead of abusing tooltips) would be on the docket for a more-complete version of it.
P.S. I haven't played your game yet, but it looks super polished!
I commented with my team about how your game looks like it might be similar to what we were making and so we'll have to play it here as soon as we're done with our QoL stuff!
Bumping because we never heard back from one of our prospective team members.
We have 2 members at the moment, but we're hoping to maybe find a third person who can help with 2d/3d art and environment/level design.
Let me know if this sounds like some skills you might have.
Hoping to hear from one more person soon :)
Hello there!
Intro - Who am I?
I'm a software engineer with 10+ years experience in desktop application and backend web development, but I'm looking to challenge myself to grow in game development. I've done 2 solo game jams so far, one where I completed a small 3D platformer, and a 2nd one where I completely over-scoped my project and didn't finish on time... Whoops! (I learned a lot though, so it's still kind of a success)
What am I doing here?
This will be my 3rd game jam, but I'm hoping to build something fun and reasonably small with a team this time. I can build small games on my own, and I can continue to develop my skills on my own, but I'm hoping to force myself outside of my comfort zone by working with a team on this game jam. I'll be very available during the week of the jam (except on Saturday) and I don't mind if we undershoot or overshoot the size of whatever game we try to develop so long as everyone on the team is on board with whatever kind of project we decide to undertake.
What am I looking for?
I think my strengths are programming and game design, so in terms of what I'm looking for, I'm really hoping to find one person or two people with some of the following skills:
- 2D or 3D Artwork
- I can do a little work in Blender myself and I've made a few sprite sheets, but I have extremely limited artistic skill and this game jam attempt would definitely benefit from anyone who can do sprite-work or Blender-work on the team.
- Music and SFX
- I have pretty limited ability to compose decent music, but I've made a song before and managed to transcribe some existing game-music into my DAW of choice. I can improvise SFX when needed as well. However, I think a game submission would probably benefit from someone with more experience here or else I'll likely use creative commons music/SFX to fill in the gaps.
- Level design (and writing, maybe?)
- You'll notice this is lacking in the previous game jam submission of mine. Making engaging levels for a player in a short period of time is hard. I can sort of work through it, but this is an area I feel like I need to get better at, and for this game jam, I'd be happy to find people who can help fill in this skill-gap for now.
Outro
If this sounds good and you feel like trying to build something cool with me, let me know that you're interested and then we can talk more on Discord!
Thanks for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon!
Thank you!
Believe it or not, momentum and movement that "felt more fun" were on the list of things I had hoped to add before the end of the jam.
But they were negotiable so long as it "mostly worked" and "was technically a game" 😅
I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out in spite of how low I set the bar, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement on my next jam. Thanks for playing and leaving a comment :)
You're welcome! I mean, it was too painful at the time, but not so much anymore. 😅🤷♂️
I'll go one step further though and say that I think this game counts as art because of its ability to convey a personal experience while causing the player to have their own emotional response to it. Very subjective and hard to pull off, but very cool!
I don't think I've done enough in life in order for me to comprehend this game, but I appreciate the bold antagonistic artform which permeates this piece of digital circustry.
Death was an opportunity for the devil(?) to find love.
Poetic!
A 10/10 game and you can feel the intensity in the voice acting.