itch.io

Sadly I couldn't finish your game, but I spent a good hour on it.

I really liked how satisfying and addictive breaking walls feels,  just like in Minecraft. In fact, that's mainly what motivated me to "try one more time" the dozens and dozens of times I died. I'm not such a fan of the bombs insta-killing you, especially when it happens in your back and you're somewhere that looks interesting but you're not sure how to get back where you are. I think it might have been fair if the bombs only removed 3 of your life points or so, especially because the dungeon is a bit too big. 

I tried to methodically break as many walls as I could, but I couldn't find even one of the four shards that appear at the top right of the screen. Are you supposed to craft them from the different types of soil you collect? I had 7 life points when I had to quit and was surprised I didn't stumble on one.

I also liked how polished and clean everything feels, and how fluid movement is. That room in the beginning with references to your previous games is super cool, too! I had a good time but sadly had to give up since I didn't understand how to make much progress despite exploring what I think is a vast portion of the map ☹️

I was able to conquer my traumas, even though there was a lot of repeated wall-headbutting involved at the end, when my trauma level was 3 or less and it took a lot of combat to bring it down to zero.  I had fun figuring things out by myself and managing the resources by writing down where the sanity pills were. Also, bonus points for the theme implementation, the categories were really relevant and that combat system with partial information is very original.

Great game, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for such an in-depth review on what didn’t work for you. It’s a shame you couldn’t record anything, but it’s nice that you wrote your thoughts in such detail.

I agree that the font is quite hard to read. You can actually take as much time as you need to read the story text, you have to click to advance to the next scene. But I will probably be replacing that font.

The potions heal the character with the least health/energy when you click on them or use the shortcut key. When you levelled up, the button that appeared was for a new battle skill, so you didn’t miss anything.

As for what the crystals do, it’s explained when you collect the first and second ones, you normally can’t miss it, it’s an explanatory text that stays on screen for a minimum of 2 seconds and until you move again.

Besides that, I agree that battle is a bit messy, I made the first fight almost impossible to lose to give players time to get used to the controls but that might not be enough. I was too far along development to change anything but I considered making it turn based instead, and I think I will do that after reading your comment and some others 🙂 I will take your precise feedback into account because you make lots of valid points.

About the loop, there is actually some foreshadowing. Every 10 crystals you collect, you will unlock an “exploration power”, such has being able being able to walk on water or being able the traverse specific wall portions. You may see a crystal or path just out of reach and then unlock the corresponding power. The dungeon is built like a mini Metroidvania, so there is some natural backtracking. The loop grows longer the more crystals you collect, that’s the gist of it 🙂 

Thanks a lot for playing and trying a few times!

I played it through and enjoyed the whole experience quite a lot. I love the auto battle system and the constant improvement of your party through the generous loot and XP, that made the game quite addictive to me! 🙂  I agree that the levels are a bit too big and repetitive, I had some trouble finding the portal that lead to the next level and lost some time backtracking.

It would have been nice of each level could have had its own wall and floor textures, or at least a different color scheme, to give the impression that your are progressing, and also I wish there was subtitles because English not being my first language, I'm sure I missed some of the lore/hints.

Loved the sound design too, especially the sound of an enemy approaching. This kind of minimalistic experience is right up my alley. Very solid entry!

A lot of good ideas here, I love your concept! I like the low resolution pixel art a lot, and how you can explore space from your ship, head towards a planet and then explore it. The atmosphere was oppressive, I enjoyed that a lot too. You might want to pull back the camera a bit, because when you are directly facing a wall, it takes the whole screen and it can make orientation harder. I lost some time on the mining planet trying to orient myself in the dark/blinking section, but besides that, it was a very enjoyable playthrough. Great work!

I played it through and had a blast! I found myself immersed in your game, it gave me an old "Alone in the dark" vibe that I loved. The corrupted version of the house is a very nice touch when you are back from the mirror world. This amount of settings and polish is commendable.

I found movement very smooth and enjoyable, I had occasional cursor bugs (it would stay "?" for a while), the mini map didn't get updated right after teleporting to a new location, or the gun would sometimes clip through the decor, but nothing major. 

Sometimes I had the impression that the grid wasn't always square, for instance when moving from a room to another, it felt like the character took more than one step. That made interacting with some elements a bit more complex, like the spheres you have to stab from just the right angle in the mirror world. It didn't prevent me from enjoying your game a lot, though. 

Great work!

Thanks for the tip! I managed to beat the game 🙂 I enjoyed the story, your game is very cohesive as a whole.

Your game is visually gorgeous! I think your screenshots undersell your visuals, which is a shame considering how great the game looks. They are a bit dark, you could have turned on the crystal "flashlight" on before taking the snapshots.

Overall the level of polish is awesome, I love the dialogue system, the consistency of all the visuals and the verticality of the dungeon layout, which is rare enough to be pointed out 🙂

I too spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to pick up the pixel art flowers, but then I found a potion and understood then that the flower can't be picked up 😅

About the controls, I found movement very fluid and pleasant. My only minor complaint is that there was no keyboard shortcut on attack or interact with things in front of you. I prefer to use the arrow keys, but since using the mouse is mandatory for battle, I had to use WASD to keep my mouse in hand. Nothing major, though.

I didn't reach the end because I got lost at some point, near a room that has two weight switches (loved that by the way, dropping items on them both was intuitive but made me feel smart), but I played for a while and had a great time. Overall a very solid entry, congratulations!

Thanks for your kind words! You're right about ESC, I wanted to provide a quick way to exit the game but didn't take the time to implement a confirm popup.  I'll include that in my template for the next time 🙂

The visuals are really neat, and I love the color scheme! It's clearly unfinished but the idea of a dungeon crawler on a boat has a lot of potential. You could make the boat slightly bigger to allow grid movement on it, and add more stuff the player has to do on the boat. I hope you continue working on it, I think it's worth it!

Your game has potential and could really shine with some more love, the concept, I love that you added cutscenes and a proper intro, but I agree that the text is too fast to read, especially if you you to look at the pictures. Also, the protagonist looks different in every single picture, which tends to be the case when using AI. The first time I launched the game, it froze at the end of the intro and I had to alt-F4, relaunch and skip the intro to be able to play.  Allowing to skip the intro is a nice touch though 🙂

I agree with others that moving is a bit tedious, it feels like you're moving half a square, and being able to hold the W key to advance would have being nice. I often got stuck in the middle of a corner and had to strafe to advance, so it didn't feel like a square grid. It also made it a bit hard to gauge if you're close enough to hit an enemy.

I was able to go completely out of bounds right after rescuing the girl, at the a corner where a shield and mace are stuck in the ground. It's also a bit too dark, which can make orientation more difficult if the dungeon where bigger.

There is clearly a lot of potential, and a lot of things you spent too much time on like the story, cutscenes and inventory can be re-used if you want to continue working on it.

The mage does in fact start with a magic ability, he’s the only character whose base attack consumes energy points (it’s also stronger than a basic sword attack, for instance). 

For the cleric I think I will do that, but I will have to carefully rework the game’s difficulty progression (it will take way more than the few hours I took just for that Saturday night). The basic idea for not giving her a heal spell immediately was to make the beginning of the game a little bit harder but make her more useful as the game progresses.

Also she needed a base attack in case anyone wanted to play with 3 clerics. One of the earliest ways to play Final Fantasy 1 in “hard mode” was to pick 4 white mages for your party. That was my reasoning 😁

Thanks a lot for detailing your thoughts, I’ll use this game mostly to improve my new dungeon crawler engine, so your feedback is very valuable!

Thanks for taking the time to give your in-depth opinion, there's a lot of useful feedback here!

I agree that the controls need more fine tuning and the graphics could use a good dose of unifying paint, I had to stop somewhere to make progress on the actual game mechanics and progression, but I wasn't fully satisfied either. For the time loop, I also agree with you there, it was an afterthought to fit one of the themes, but I won't keep it if I create a new and improved version. 

About making the battles random, I could have done that but I think it would have made the game more tedious, honestly. I placed the encounters so that some are mandatory but you don't have to fight all the time to get from point A to point B, I think the pacing of the game is better for it.

Yes, there is a levelling up mechanic, that's how you unlocked that healing skill for the cleric. The level of each character is displayed at the bottom right of their portrait in both battle and exploration, when you level up there is a popup that appears on the portrait, and there are lots of tooltips. You probably never saw them if you played only using the keyboard, but you can hover most UI elements with the cursor and a brief explanation of what it is will be displayed. To be fair, I'd say there are lots of signs on the UI that the characters can gain levels.

About escape quitting the game, you don't actually lose any progression if you accidentally hit. The game is saved automatically after each battle and each time you collect a shard. I take player  time very seriously and wouldn't dare taking their entire progress away 😉

I beat the Azure Ring! I love how madness is used both as a resource for magic and sort of a secondary life bar.  Starting over from the beginning was a bit frustrating at first, but it's not a very long game so it's fine. I loved how the game is split between the first half where you have to flee the enemies and the second half where you actually chase them to make them taste your lightning  😁The fact that both your health and sanity is replenished makes you basically immortal, I would have maybe disabled that for health and added healing spots or items.

Great job, with a lot of polish!

Is there an end? I opened the second door that required two button but it was a dead end. Your game looks good and it will be a good base if you want to continue improving it. Being able to step back with the S key would have been nice. Even though the battle system is simple, I enjoyed planning ahead and saving my resources. Nice work!

I really enjoy these Japanese-style dungeon crawler, I had a lot of fun playing this one to the end! I loved the events that provided some nice choices and helped flesh out the world, the green/yellow/red encounter probability indicator 'a la Shin Megami Tensei, and the quality of the minimap. The loot combined to the nice minimap really encouraged me to fully explore. Overall a very solid entry! The enemy strength progression felt natural, too. The only thing I would have added is an auto attack button for normal encounters, since there a lot of them and you want ton conserve energy.

I had a great time, thanks for the great game!

What a great level of polish! I had a blast playing through your game. I loved the art style, the very clean UI, especially the poor guy in the center. It was a bit easy, I never had to buy ice, but that's good for a jam game. Love the Dungeon Crawler jam decal on the wall near the end. Would have enjoyed a little more variety of enemies, especially the last boss, but I enjoyed this one a lot. Great game!

Are there shortcut keys to launch the different attacks? It would be nice to play the whole game with the keyboard only.

The constant darkness made it hard to discern the pitfalls and orient myself, but the atmosphere is really nice!

Thanks for your kind words and for playing my game 100% through! Yes, I struggled a bit with input management, this was my first time using a framework instead of a game engine. Now I have a year to refine the controls 😁 I was going for a full hand drawn style at the beginning, but after drawing just the enemies I realized it would eat up most of my time, so I had to stop halfway. 

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I couldn't finish the handcrafted mode, it got pretty brutal on the 4th or 5th floor after the big open room full of wasps and the invisible walls. I lost all my party members one by one except for one, no one died in combat except for the last one (the mapper) shot in their back, so I suspect I was close to the end!

I love the throbbing art style with blank walls, it complements the theme of madness really well. The atmosphere is oppressive and I liked the sound effects very much. I jumped more than one time when I stepped into traps. Having to part with party members one by one is suitably stressful, too 😁 The movement is really snappy, and I love the control scheme that I found very intuitive and allows for some tactical planning.

 I would have liked to have an indicator of the direction I'm facing to facilitate orientation, because exploring was already made harder by the fact that are the walls are blank and the rooms are bare, but it's not a bad thing that you are never too comfortable in this dungeon.

All in all I had a great time, and I happily retried several times, congrats for a great game!

Me too!

Hi, thanks for your in-depth review! This was made in two weeks for a mini-game game jam, I voluntarily did not try to balance it too much to keep it relatively easy once you understand how the management part works.

I've been working on a big update since the game came out which I think will improve the boring parts 🙂 My plan is to improve the game over time to make it wider and bigger. I'll post it on itch as a different game to keep my jam submission untouched.

Thanks for playing and for your comment, it means a lot!

I’m in too! Last year was a lot of fun 😁

Almost every jam rules forbid to update your game before the rating period ends (usually you can only change your game page on itch), but now that you mention it, this one doesn't so it's totally fine 😁 

Thank you for playing & your kind words! I'll add a big picture explanation of the goals and means of the game when you select "New game", that should help some since it's indeed not obvious. I want to replace all Kenney sprites with my own animated sprites when the game is feature complete, it'll make the dungeon phase feel less rough.

Thanks for giving it another go, I'm glad it went smoother with the explanations! I only use WASD when there are no alternate controls, so I often forget to fully add those controls to my games. "WASD doesn't work on some screens" is a feedback I receive quite frequently😝

I fixed WASD and started adding some quality of live improvements to my game here : Rogue Tournament | Play on gd.games, I'm waiting for the end of the rating period to update the game on itch.  I'm still trying to balance the rhythm of the game, so the latest version has only 3 days between matches instead of 5.

Thanks for playing & for useful feedback!

Thanks for adding Arrows+Space, I was able to play way more deftly! I still had fun the first time, but I played the new version and I think all the new features add a lot to the game 🙂 

I was afraid the life powerups were too frequent and the level would play infinitely until I lost my lives on purpose, but the length of the level turned out to be just right and I still lost some lives. That boss fight at the end was great and well thought, I love how  the small origami cranes power up over time if you ignore them and only go for the boss. That fight kept me on my toes! 

The only change I would make is I'd replace the pixel art paper cranes with hand drawn ones, to make the whole look more cohesive with the  background (the boss especially is very pixelated since he's way bigger).

If you intend to keep working on it, with a title screen, a few more levels each uniquely themed with their own boss, and maybe an offline leaderboard, this would make an awesome complete game 😁 

In any case, I had a great time going back to it and seeing how it improved! 

Thanks for your kind words! Explaining the game without hitting the player with a wall of text was a challenge for me in the short time I had left, but I will include a multi page explanation to better communicate the flow of things : 

• assign your employees to generate money every day, 
• upgrade your HQ to be able to assign more employees to generate more money, 
• explore the dungeon to collect more money and advance to the next day, 
• recruit employees to fill the new empty positions, 
• upgrade your troops to stand a better chance in the tournament matches,
• how to fight the tournament matches.

Thanks for pointing out the lack of WASD controls in the dungeon! It'll be fixed in the next update right after the jam ends, along with some additions 🙂

I found it simple and effective 🙂 The animations and graphics are really nice! It could be great as a single screen platformer where you try to reach the two colors you need while evading attacks. 

One last thing, I didn't notice a difference between the different difficulty modes.

Neat concept! I love the visuals and intuitive controls, it would work very well on mobile. I wasn't able to do much damage, it might need some balancing, but I agree there is A LOT of potential here.

Reverse bullet hell is a neat concept, I had a good time trying to catch as many tears as I could, my high score was 150. Nice minigame!

Visually, I think it's gorgeous, a real pleasure for the eyes. The audio adds a lot to the game, too. This is a simple idea that's really well executed, great job! 

The fact that the enemies are able to shoot behind them makes thing very difficult fast, because you have to evade while moving forward, potentially running into an enemy that just spawned, and the bullets accumulate from all directions. But it may be just me, I'm not too good with WASD keys 😅I would have enjoyed being able to play using the arrow keys and space to shoot.

That's mighty impressive for a first game!

A lot of copyrighted stuff in here 😁The level of polish is very nice though, it's pretty and works well for a flappy bird clone. It kind of fits with the jam theme, but you published this game 6 months ago...

At last Pogs have their minigame! Such a cool idea :D I love the UI and colors, especially the PAUSE image. I was confused by the controls and I'm not sure I fully understand them still (a lot of misses), but nothing that a short explanation text in game couldn't fix. With some cute images on the pogs and a collection aspect, it would be an awesome minigame for a bigger project.

Cute minigame! It's very nice for a first jam & first Godot project :D It has a very good potential for extension if you want to continue practicing Godot, like more levels or hazards, moving enemies. 

It would be convenient to be able to jump through platforms from below. I missed a lot of jumps because of that and often landed on spikes. Besides that, I liked the idea and had a good time!

It's a nice little adventure! That RPG-style fight against the robot was really cool, but I don't know if there's a way to win 🤔I gave in and the game kept saying Good night. One thing I would add for clarity is some kind of "doormats" to indicate where you can exit rooms, like in Pokemon.

Wow thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

This blend works surprisingly well! The particles effects and fleshy sounds when you clear a line are especially satisfying :D You could change the background after a certain number of cleared lines, a basement with a darker lighting and flickering light would work very well. 

It made me laugh & I enjoyed playing, great work!