itch.io

This is the judge comment on my game, which I find a bit weird considering there is a “How to Play” in both the game’s page as well as within the game. I don’t want to sound arrogant but it really sounds like whichever judge wrote this comment didn’t really try.

I understand it’s not easy to play and rate all these games, I know, I rated 62 of them myself (every game that I could run). But when I’m left with a comment like this it really feels like I was judged unfairly.

I don’t know/follow any of the people hosting this jam; the jam was going on at a time where I would have time to make a game so I joined it for that reason. But considering how much effort so many participants put in their own games as well as rating, I wish the hosts/ judges also put more effort.

Very solid tower defense game. The Expand idea is implemented in a very creative way. Just very fun in general. Very well paced and not too hard.

My main gripe is that the screen effects are way too much. It makes things harder to see, especially in a tower defense game where there is a lot on the screen most of the time.

The UI for adding buildings on planets is too small to read or even click. I tried on multiple browsers but the result was the same.

To add to what Iggyminious said, you actually don’t have to build any buildings, since there is no win condition as far as I can tell, you can spam click green connections between planets and make a lot of money.

I like the base idea of a first person movement game but there are quite a few issues.

It is not clear which enemies are optional and which ones are required to be killed if I want to open the next door.

The movement isn’t explained clearly. The description says shift to dash and ctrl to slide but it doesn’t say you can’t dash on the ground or what exactly slide really entails. It requires a bit of trial and error on the player’s part to understand how they function. Sliding can give a lot of momentum if used correctly which can be fun but it’s properties are not properly explained to the player.

The rapid shot guys are really hard to deal with, I only managed to kill them by pure luck. All the shots going through walls doesn’t help. Some sort of visual/audio queue for when an enemy is about start/stop attacking would be great.

Since killing enemies restores health, you can generally tank a hit from the rapid fire guys when you have 2 health. In my opinion, the game should have either started with 2 health OR there really shouldn’t be a rapid fire guy in the stage where you only have 1 health

When I kill an enemy, their bodies stay solid for a second longer. Meaning I can’t kill groups of closely packed enemies in quick succession without jumping. And when I do jump it’s harder to aim my attacks.

I do think the movement options provided in the game can be really fun. It might have been even better to focus on the movement and make the game about dodging and weaving instead of trying to get into melee range of a Gatling gun to hit it. Simply having no locked doors that require you kill certain enemies would be more fun in my opinion.

I also experienced bugs where, when I die and respawn at the first checkpoint, the guy I killed before reaching this area respawns and shoots me through the wall. Another bug in stage 2 sent me back a checkpoint when I die really close to the locked door.

This really doesn’t feel like a game made in 10 days, it’s so complete. A very well executed typing tycoon game with a great theme and visual style. Great job!

Really fun and satisfying game loop.

The freedom in upgrades is a really smart design. Sure, it is way too easy if you really get the good upgrades in the right order but that combined with the randomness incentivizes challenges from players. “I wonder if I could do it without getting this upgrade ever”.

If this state of the game was stage 1 of 4 or 5, each with their own bosses and some more unique events, this game could actually become a hit in my opinion.

So for example, if you look at the “117” next to the coin on the HUD, two number “1”s next to each other look completely different even though they use the same font. I believe this is because the width and height of each pixel is being multiplied by a number that isn’t a whole number.

For example, if they were being multiplied by 1, obviously nothing would change. If they were being multiplied by 2, every pixel would correspond to 4 pixels (2 by 2). But if they are being multiplied by 1.5 or something, this causes some pixels’ width/height to be multiplied by 1 while others are multiplied by 2. Or at least, that’s what I assume is happening.

I hope I did not make you depressed. I really like the visuals and I would love to see what you end up doing with this game. And I can tell based on the things you did implement that you are capable of overcoming the problems the current version of the game has.

Very creative way of turning the theme into a game mechanic. I really enjoyed some of these stages. Unfortunately I keep getting stuck on the floor on the same stage.

On other stages, resetting the stage gets me out but it doesn’t work on this stage.

So I ran into a bug where the boss stage would get stuck on the splash screen and the stage wasn’t visible. I had to restart the stage many times to get unstuck from it. And even then it only worked like 20% of the time. If the boss lands on you it can instantly take all 3 of your lives since there are no invulnerability frames. Even after I managed to beat the boss the burger got stuck in a wall and I was unable to proceed.

I tested it on a different browser. It seems this bug only happens when playing on Firefox. I guess that’s not really fair to judge you for that as I have also noticed unintended behavior when playing my Godot games on Firefox. I will edit my initial message to reflect that. Sorry for the confusion.

Took me a long time to realize what exactly I was supposed to do with the red spikes. It is not immediately obvious to a player that they only disappear if their centers are off screen. On my first attempt I kept dragging them to the edge but nothing happened. I only noticed that dragging them to the edge has any effect when I looked at one of the gifs on the game’s page.

I got softlocked on my first playthrough but on the second time I cleared the game. Really fun game. The only thing I could ask for is more tile types and for a run to last longer.

I got softlocked in this situation. The next day button does nothing. Do you have any idea what the cause might be?

Got 119.2 s on my second run. Cool game. Love to see a bullet hell here.

One thing I wish this game had is something like the focus button in Touhou. It would be useful for navigating the patterns in the last stage.

I experienced a bug that made a pellet spawn within a wall. I did 5 runs but it only happened once.

Another bug I noticed is when you repeatedly hit 2 directions in succession (e.g. up and right), sometimes you will move two spaces at once and crash immediately.

Really fun game! The only complaint I have is that I think the screen effects are a bit too much. I wish there was an option to turn them off so that I could appreciate the nice crispy low poly models and animation.

Are the soldiers on both sides immortal? Or is it just a bug on my side? I currently can’t finish the first wave.

I forgot to mention. In Godot, try going to Project Settings>General>Display>Window>Stretch>Mode and then setting the stretch mode to canvas_items or viewport. See if that alone is enough to fix the screen scaling related issues. 👍

The sprite art is very cute.

The game is a bit too easy in my opinion. I don’t know if it’s even possible to lose even if your decisions are completely random.

I had fun. I wish there was a way to speed up time or something because the waves become very infrequent later on.

No, I mean, My area expands when my bar hits the ball, but no matter who gets a “goal”, the green area expands.

Edit: I just tested again and the right side’s area expands every time a point is scored.

Man…🐴 That really got me feeling a certain way. Very cute game.

I found 6153$ worth of stuff but I don’t know if there is a way to end the stage or anything like that. I assume the game wasn’t really finished? Some menus don’t open, there is a bit that says “shoreline” on the HUD but there is nothing there etc. Controls aren’t explained anywhere also which kept me wondering if I was missing something.

I understand the idea. The sub gets heavier and harder to control as it gets more stuff. I don’t see how the theme of “Expand” is applied exactly.

The visuals for the background are nice but they kinda clash with the submarine’s sprite’s art style in my opinion.

In Godot, If you go to Project Settings>General>Display>Window>Stretch>Mode and then set the stretch mode to canvas_items or viewport, you will not have the problem where resizing the window changes what you see.

I think the orders come way too infrequently. They should be way more common in my opinion. A lot of the time I’m just waiting for an order to come in so I have something to do.

I “lost” the game 2 times, and in both, it was because I bought something that I had enough money to buy, but doing so set my money to 0. I don’t think this is a good way of implementing a losing condition. Don’t let the player buy something they don’t have the money for but don’t just close the game when they have no money. Even if I have zero money, I might have the correct plants planted and I might be about to earn money as soon as they grow.

For time management on your part as a dev, if you don’t do it already, consider making a game design document before starting development. That will let you know at any point how much more work needs to be done.

Really fun once you get the hang of it.

It’s hard to tell at any point if the character’s attacks will hit an object in front of him. A shadow right under the character or something like that would be really useful.

Moving and attacking cancel each other’s animations. Which creates a bit of an unpleasant feeling in my opinion. The optimal way to play is just hold down space the entire time and move around like that.

Scaling the screen, going fullscreen etc. has some unintended effects on the UI. Some elements don’t scale while others do. This can cause some text to be illegible and put things like the Name input field to go off screen.

If the stage layout was randomized each time, and the controls felt a little better, this could be a really addicting game in my opinion.

Nice music and visuals.

Most of the functionality is missing. Visually, the game looks wrong when it’s stretched to full screen and there is no way to play windowed. I know that this is a thing that happens in game maker when you scale the visuals by a non-whole number so I’m assuming it looks correct on your screen at least.

The correct strategy ends up being:

1. Get a spawn where you aren’t too close to an enemy city. If you are close, they will usually attack and destroy you before you can create enough units.
2. Put all your materials in material production first, you can keep doing this for as long as enemies don’t bother you. Since everything needs materials, you can easily create an army of thousands and destroy the whole map in a single sweep.

If I hadn’t played similar games before I wouldn’t have known I needed to click left click to select my units and right click to move them. Also hitting Space sends you back to the menu which is very weird.

I don’t know anything about you and what kind of developer you are so I don’t want to criticize too harshly based on a game that is clearly not finished. I would recommend preparing a game design document before starting a project so you can better see how much time you would need for each part. Personally it really helps me not lose sight of what I’m trying to achieve and prevents me from running out of motivation or getting burned out.

Really fun. The instructions are not the clearest but once you get it it’s nice. Love the visuals.

I wish there was more to it. Sure more maps and more buildings sound good but what I would really like is a “win condition” of sorts. Reaching a certain amount of money/second for example. Or something that uses every type of resource (both barrels+ money) that needs to be maintained for a certain amount of time. etc. I also wish there were some sound effects.

One gamefeel related issue I had is that having to click at a building then a plot over and over doesn’t feel great and sometimes it doesn’t register my clicks when I click the building type.

Nice visuals and music. To be honest, I would not expect such a good game for a game jam made in Scratch.

Not being able to respawn if you fall off is possibly it’s biggest weakness. Also it’s possible to get stuck on some of the platforms if you jump at them with the wrong angle.

Also, it’s possible to jump over the green guy and completely ignore him.

The play area is only the top right side of the screen, so when you go out of the screen you wrap to the center instead of the other edge. The other screen you go to when you collect the item that transports you ignores this and has things outside of the area you can reach.

Does not really work. The green area expands regardless of which player is scoring.

EDIT: My apologies. This is a bug that only happens when playing on Firefox it seems.

The game is very frustrating in a way I don’t know if it was intended or not. I beat all the levels though.

The final jump on stage 3 is too high and doesn’t work most of the time. The cannons just change their speed every shot? So they will shoot a slow shot and follow it up with a fast one and you will get hit by both because the player has no invulnerability frames where they get to move. The sound effects are too loud compared to the music and there is no way to adjust them.

I feel like the difficulty never actually comes from the main growth mechanic, just the curve of the jump, the ceilings spiking you downwards on impact and the cannons calculating the perfect shot speeds to combo you for all your lives.

There is a fix that works for me. If you click somewhere in the lower middle portion of the window, you can end up triggering the fullscreen button. Then when you go back to windowed, the screen size is fixed.

Solid idea for a puzzle game and I REALLY dig the music.

The visuals however, are… a bit jarring. The spikes are really cool and detailed but every other stage piece is a gray block. If the spikes, the balloon and the skybox also used simple models, flat textures and similar shading the game would look a lot more visually consistent. The spikes unfortunately end up being a case of more is less.

Also maybe it’s only an issue for me but when the game loads initially, only a quarter of the screen is visible and the mouse is displaced. When I locate the fullscreen button by clicking around and then going back, the screen size gets fixed. This didn’t actually prevent me from playing the game when I figured out the fix so I am not really judging based on that.

The concept is good and fun. Nothing wrong with the visuals or the sound but I feel like the game could have used some more time in the oven, unfortunately. Play testing for another hour would make certain bugs obvious in my opinion. Unlucky pin spawns can lock the ball in at least 3 separate ways.

1. The ball can expand into one or more red pins and immediately go out of bounds.
2. The ball can just become stuck between multiple pins
3. Because the pins and the walls are too bouncy, the ball can get stuck bouncing between a pin and the wall even though there is enough of a space between them.

Things like despawning pins that are in contact with the ball for too long or teleporting the ball back in bounds if it goes out of bounds would improve the game by leaps and bounds.

I still like it a lot overall.

Really simple and fun idea. Simple but consistent visual style, not a lot of sound but it works great. Reminds me of the Newgrounds days.

I randomly came across this and it’s very interesting. I don’t know if you still have any intent on working on this but I thought I might as well leave my feedback. I wish combat had a bit more to it. Maybe having a “focus” shot that deals more damage but makes you move slowly or something to change it up. Or maybe if your bullets’ damage scaled with how close you are to the enemy, incentivizing getting closer to the danger. My PS3 Controller had issues. When I was holding exactly diagonal on the left stick, it didn’t register either cardinal direction adjacent to it. I also wish I was able to reverse camera controls/ remap controls in general. It was interesting. If the core combat was a little more fleshed out, I would love to see a longer game.