itch.io

Sure, add me on discord so I can add you to the chat.

Discord: cobouti

Hi Yun!
What's your timezone and what do you think your time availability would look like?
Is there something you would want to do? What are the tools you usually work with?

Hello, this is Gaba [he/him].

I have a degree in Game Design, so technically I have formal training in every aspect of development (outside of music). But most of my experience is as a coder [been using Godot for 4+ years, but I also have some experience with Unreal and Ren'Py, and I know a bit of C# and Python], and as a tech/system designer. If needed, I can try some 3D modelling and sound; I have no experience with narrative and writing, but it is something I want to start practising soon. My 2D is shit, but I how to use Aseprite in an emergency.  I don't know how to make music (but I do have a shit-ton of music libs we can use)

My timezone is UTC -3, and I plan to work for about 4 hours during the morning each workday (from about 7:30 to 11:30) and some extra hours during weekend afternoons. However, I can work additional hours if needed.

We can talk here, or send me a message in discord: cobouti

Thanks for playing the game! 

Yeah there is a lot of info missing in the game, I had a feeling that would happen, but I did not test enough of the late game to know, so I did not know how much it needed to be toned down (or in this case probably boosting the tavern somehow, maybe making the barrel give multiple drinks)

To answer your important question: they... hmmm... they... are.... hm.... Ghosts! Yeah we definitvely intended for then to be Ghosts from the start, not that we got lazy and thougth it would be too much work and that I would rather be going to the pool in my vacation, it sure was ghosts from the start.

Glad it worked as a background game, that was what I was hopping for!

Thanks for playing our game!

Thanks for playing. 

Thats the goal you have to "repurposed" then to other buildings, it's not an assign and forget, it's more of a micromanegement deal.

Thanks for playing. There is not much to do, just gather resources and upgrade buildings, I forgot to add an end game check because we were planning to add achievments for doing challenge runs.

I think Doom doesn't fire from the tip of the weapon, I think they shoot from the center of the screen, so you don't need ADS because you are "always ADS"

Your guns are not aiming at the same spot the cursor is. You need to dinamicaly find the intersection of the center of screen line and the enviroment is to point the gun that way.

theoretically (given that your guns are not parallel to the camera direction) the bullet and the cursor should be pretty similar in very long distances, but as you added spread to the guns shooting from far away makes it impossible to hit. And them shooting from close up there is this noticible inaccuracy to the guns

Yeah making 3D games is a beast in itself, we worked for some months in a multiplayer FPS, but ended scrapping the project as it was too much

• I think both the enemies and the hit detection would fell better if you reduced the random spread pattern of the guns, and made the gun shoot at the crosshair (a quick way is to have a raycast coming straight out of the center of the camera, that colides with the enviroment and the enemies, and make the bullets shoot in the direction of the raycast collision when there is one
• for the particles I honestly didn't notice then, the enemies die when you headshot them right? I felt I was just either missing or headshoting. I don't know if you intended to make the weapons block the projectiles, but you could make them be in different collision layers (okay I'm glad I decompiled your project, I was going to tell you something you already did) you could make the mask of your projectile raycast not hit objects, if you want to keep the cube behaviour just give guns another layer
• after seeing the insides of your project, it's very tidy, very expandable and easy to read, but may I suggest writing more gloobligook for your next jam so that you have more time to work on the game feel
• about the movent, have you tried adding acceleration to the start of the movement but making the stop insta? One other thing you can add is making your gravity stronger when the character is going down, it adds weight to the jump
• I died before the engine cleaned up all the bodies, so I did not see that

My thoughts while playing the game:

• multiple input options, nice
• jump feels floaty
• I went left first like a uncivilized swine
• attacks feel good
• death animation/transition is nice and quick
• dash is also good
• seems like there are a lot of rooms
• some enemies die to 1 hit, some die to a lot (the first skeleton dies to 1 but the others not?)
• can hit and be attacked over walls
• you can get to rooms where you have to use the down jump to return before it's introduced to the player
• i like the little guys with spear
• becoming the goop input is not introduced, it can be deduced, but the Input is not told in game like the others
• activating the save in the air

• oh, the goops gets introduced here, but you can't even get there without the jump pad and returning to the jump pad reveals the left passage that has no tutorialization:

• some hearts are too high or the character collection box is too low, sometimes it's possible to walk under them
• dying to the hazards is frustrating, maybe be more generous with the checkpoints or a system like hollowknight where you respawn at the entrance of the room and loose some health
• I'm tired, and I need to start keeping track of how long I've been playing the jam games, 
• I got about half-way through the forest, 
• I got a bit lost sometimes, a map would be nice, even a more abstract one that shows where each biome is located in relation to eachother would be a great help
• the first boss fight was a bit boring, he killed me in the first attack, then I came back, dodge the first attack and just killed him by attacking in the back before he could walk across the room 
• despite having sound in the menu buttons the game lacks sound feedback for gathering an upgrade
• how many heart pickups to get a life point?

My thoughts while playing the game:

• kinda loud, the shots are much louder than the other sounds making it hard to find a good volume and no options in game to balance volume, had to use the volume mixer
• movement is very linear, maybe adding some quick acceleration and decceleration to the player would make it feel better? Or it maybe is based in something else
• enemies shoot from farther than they can reach? and just keep there shooting? or they have bad aim? seems like they have bad accuracy at range
• you are not zeroing the vertical velocity when on ground, so the ramps bug when you fall and try to climb then, you need to if is_on_floor(): velocity.y = 0.0
• the enemies reseting when you change zones is kinda abrupt, the disapear when you change zones, and their position in the second area is in your face so the reaction is to find cover and then you leave their zone and they disapear, you need to eat some bullets and run somewhere with cover or you can just sit there and shoot back
• the stakes are very low on combat, a single enemy barely deals damage to counter the regen, and the precision on all weapons is low so sometimes they deal no damage, sometimes they deal a lot of damage, same for the player weapon sometimes I have to shoot 3 times just to hit when the cursor is center of mass
• the ragdoll is nice
• enemies sometimes just die? they can shoot each other? seems so. I feel they sometimes just die, maybe they are pushing the blocks and taking damage from that?
• the other weapons don't feel worth using? shotgun has short range and slow velocity and the smg has terrible accuracy, headshoting with the pistol feels like the best option?
• the telecnisis push is not aiming at the cursor, neither are the shots, but the cube not overlaping the aim reticule any time is more noticible, feels like the best strategy with the cube is to hold it then dash over then it seems to block bullets and still does damage while being held, it seems to have a short throw range
• they seem to die on the corpse of their friends, and this seems to be the best strategy
• the third room (the one with 3 servers) is a infinite spawn room? I was just killing them and letting them die on the pile of corpses when there as an explosion a ton appeared and the game lagged hard

Thanks for the review!

Thanks for the reply and happy that you liked the game! The idea was that the game would be easier the more upgrades the player got, most of then are optional, you just need the wall jump, either the double jump or the stronger jump, and the ceiling run. Trying to keep the difficulty the same would be rather hard (at least in the time frame, maybe with some weeks of research for other types of challenge it could be easier) but I fear it would end up beign similar to the final boss:

(I had to hold myself to not name the second boss Dracula Hatake)

Thanks for the reply, we will be keeping notes if we update the game!

My thoughts while playing the game:

• Web version is too laggy to play;
• It's downloading at 20kb/s tops, so I'm coming back later
• Okay downloaded
• UI animations are a bit slow
• The dash animation is too abrupt
• I discovered the walk jump at random, by just jumping around
• it's easier to just ignore the enemies than fight them
• having to click to respawn every death gets tiring
• the only feedback for hitting the first boss is watching the lifebar, and the hit area felt unforgiving (it felt like I had to hit the max height of the double jump and shoot exactly at the peak to hit)
• I am kinda stuck in the beggining of floor 5 because I went foward after the boss with only 1 HP and there was no checkpoint to heal and changing floors saves your checkpoint but does no heal, found a checkpoint
• You can kill enemies before they appear on your screen by just spam shooting while walking
• the maps are very long and kinda empty
• you can kill the boss from out of your screen
• the wall climb does not fell good enough for how much we have to use it
• everything takes too long
• the wall climb boss is pain

My thoughts while playing the game:

• WASD!!!!!!
• I like the looks of the game
• How much health do I have? Oh I died...
• I like the ledge grab
• The beetle introduction was cool
• I'm lost after killing it
• Downloaded the windows version to try it with the gamepad
• when respawning the slime is in the doorway
• ohh I have to interact with the thingy
• the final boss looks cool
• it took some getting used to the gravity change mechanic to finally being able to fight him

Thanks for the review! It's cool that you detailed the scores. Having just the three buttons was what got me hyped for the jam, I was felling a bit discouraged before and the idea of trying a "Jump King but metroidvania" and the challenge of how much metroidvania can we make with just 3 buttons. We thought about adding more buttons, but in the end it felt off from what we set off to try.

The expand and sell will relly a bit on the reception from the jam, probably getting to the top 5 and getting a bit of traction. 'Cus it will need a lot of rework, like you said more buttons, a better room/screen system to have more variety in the rooms.

Could you, if possible, tell a bit of why the final boss felt like nonsense? We didn't manage to test him with other people and to us he was kinda easy to snipe, so maybe I went a bit overboard trying to avoid that.

It's easy to say if you missed secrets as there is mainly just one and some optional upgrades rooms: "Did you became the One Winged Ninja?"

Thanks for the comment! Some good music would also been great for my ears while developing and testing XD

My thoughts while playing the game:

• No WASD?!?!?!
• Looks good
• music is repetitve but not tiring, the sound effects are good
• a bit of height control in the jump would be nice to help shoot thing in ledges
• no feedback on the boss life, it's kinda long and very repetitive
• the boss gives only a key

I got to the second boss and had to leave, it was taking too long and I have somethings to do around the house, I got to the second fase but it feels way to slow to kill as I can only get one or two shots each cicle

oh it was space, I just started mashing buttons and eventualy I noticed some where off then I jus kept going with each one and the click felt like it was working, maybe it's one of the default interact from RPG in a Box

My thoughts while playing the game:

• there are no controls in game, I keep having to go back to the page to see how to use the things
• the ball upgrade looks cool
• got hit through a wall
• okay the rocket bounces, oh there are puzzles with this, nice
• okay... it's big
• particles hinting a hidden room, nice
• boss fight nice, nothing happens after you kill the boss

My thoughts while playing the game:

• The graphics are interesting, they have a vibe upclose, but the shadder has a weird effect on far away objects it's not strong but it is there
• the animation for the new area is cool, but it locks the input and the character keeps walking until it hits an obstacle and they keep retriggering and throwing errors with the "NPC"
• when you die it asks if you want to try again but as I did not know there was a save system I did not save and it throws an error and gets stuck, maybe create a autosave when the game starts and when the player enters a new region
• the upgrades (at least as far as I got) fell like keys, the lantern serves as a combat tool, but the jump is just a check to pass a certain type of tile
• the chat right in front of the boss makes you walk straight into him killing you as soon as you close it
• the boss fight is weird, you need to click the lights with the mouse??? Instead of shooting then or something that was already introduced
• the lantern shot feels weird, it is slower (or the same speed) than the player, and the cooldown is not intuitive (it's at least twice as long as the duration)

Your file has been flagged by itch as suspicious

For a first game that's a really good start

My first one was this thing:

A autorunner where the "UI" (the teddy bear) is anchored to the character and I sent the whole project as a submission

My thoughts while playing the game:

• WASD!!!!!
• the audio is nice, but lacks a jump sfx
• using the scenario to comunicate to the player is nice
• the idea of the box protecting the key is nice, but it felt a bit finicky, sometimes I went back to protect it but then the minimum I could walk as a bit too much and left it unprotected unprotected
• the block ground pound is cool, the block breaking propagation is nice
• the block teleport is cool, also the choose effect is very nice
• using the respawn points to reset the rooms feels nice, it is a weird interaction, but I feel smart while solving it

I did not finish the game, I got stuck somewhere after the 5 or 6 square and have to go back to work

My thoughts while playing the game:

• You need to rename the download file
• ARROW KEYS?!?!?!?!
• the stick figure is nice (he blinks!)
• the jump feels floaty, maybe add a gravity multiplier when going down (it keeps the jump the same height, but decreases the horizontal reach and makes it snapier) (also the character floats a bit when hitting the ceiling)
• the green light is a bit too much
• the crawler enemy is hard to see, almost the same size of the foreground objects, sometimes it's hidden behind then (okay it's not exactly an enemy, he does no damage, so just a pogo jump object)
• the knockback the character recieves from hitting an enemy is too much (thows you off from the plataforns as you try to fight the fliers)
• the flier enemies have a nice attack pattern, but lack a tell for when they are going to release
• there is a section of ground missing where the character walks on nothing
• no coyote time?
• i got some stairs??? they seem to give me health
• the character has some weird interaction with some of the edges where he enters in a fall state or gets stuck as if there is a step there
• the dash being in the left shift makes the controls kinda weird, and it also cancels the hold jump to increase height
• the background paralax has some weird seams where the next area can bleed through (there is a place with a weird small rectangle of green in the middle of a black background
• the respawn from hazard put my spawn in the air by the side of the platform, happen again with the second spawning me on top of the hazard, killing me twice
• the dash has no recharge, even on air
• i dashed trhough a room that spawned some doors(?) I then dashed through the door on the right side and got a blackscreen, the music still plays but I can't leave

Thanks for the comment! I'm happy that you enjoyed the game and please send us the link to the video when it's up. 

The game is indeed A Very :P

Thanks for the review! Happy that you liked the game, if you defeated two bosses you got almost there. 

There are somethings that are a bit rough, we forgot to add the charge indication, and sound is not our strong suit so having to make everything from scratch was a bit of a challenge, I tried to use midi versions of japanese instruments for the effects but maybe I went to low with the taiko drums.

(If you recieve a weird notification, your post was duplicated so I deleted one of then)

Thanks for the post!

• The art is nice
• a sokoban vania is an interesting ideia, so far I dig it
• I got a chest that gave me nothing? Another one? Oh! Re-reading the description, the chests are the flowers I have to collect
• Having some of the tools being shift then direction and some being direction the shift is kinda confusing
• there are 29 chests?!? That's a lot. I only got 13
• the ghost section was a nice break of pace
• yeah I like the sokobania, but the music puzzles where not my jam
• Maybe the rooms could be a bit smaller, it gets a bit tiring after a while (maybe it's because this is the 4th game in a row that I'm playing), and I feel like most (if not all) the puzzles could fit in a room that is like 1 or 2 tiles smaller in both directions without trouble

• The game looks nice, 
• and the audio is good too (I becomes a bit too much when in combat sometimes)
• ARROW KEY CONTROL???!?!??
• I took me a bit to get what I was supposed to do in the first room
• the car feels nice to control
• but the timing in the wind tunnel feels a bit tight for my slow reaction time ass (okay I got through)
• The Ice level is pain
• The boss fight is nice, hard but nice

• The art is nice, but the character interacting with elements in the background felt weird, initially I felt like the character was double jump randomly
• The surface music is pleasant, the castle/undergroud one fells a bit repetitive
• The opening animation is nice, but having to watch it every time you die is repetitive
• Couldn't get past the room with the first spikes
• Your download does not work, it's just the html files, so we can play only the browser version.

Let's go in the order of things I noticed:

• HTML for a 3D was a bold choice, it was too laggy in my browser I had to go with the download (even my 2D games is starting to get to a point of performing poorly in the browser, I am not deducting points for this, but sometimes it's better to not offer the option as some players will just try the browser, see it's not running well and quit)
• The music is rough, I had to turn it way down. (I had trouble with that too, I usually use external CC0 music in my projects, and it was a pain to try and make something)
• It's a bit aimless at the start, it took some wandering around and trying to interact with things to get the gist, the upgrades looking like a virus did not help
• The shield was the first upgrade I got and it was not helpfull? I think I did not use it to actually make progress, it's possible to skip the places you need the shield by going up the ramp and jumping early. The shield stoping the character also felt weird to use, it sometimes felt faster to just hug the wall and jank my way through the turrets.
• The attack upgrades felt more like keys than like utility upgrades, as the only place you can use them are in the puzzles to get the upgrades, they don't make traversal easier or more convenient or help you deal with the turrets
• I liked using the turrets to get vertical velocity, and liked that you used that in a challenge
• I got all the 4 "ship" pieces and went to the next map, I think you got the size of that section of game right, and the puzzles were diverse enough to keep interest even with the game feeling a bit rough
• The dash felt good enough that I think with some real level design and goals it could have been a better game, or sticking with what you already had and polishing it and scrapping the dash, as you said somewhere (citation needed?) you "made too games into one" and they did not meet anywhere and end up subtracting from each other by consuming the limited time

Thanks for the reply!

Hey, thanks for the reply, music is planned and being worked on (I just hope I can make something better then nothing 😬)

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I'm going to look at the bug, and see what we can do about those checkpoints.

Pie

Thanks for the review! He's not going crazy, he's trying to not go crazy from a crazy world (like ours), jokes aside I think having lore explaining would improve the game, it's more allegorical than it's a simulation/representation of something real.

Thanks for comming back and giving it a second chance! S2

Thanks for playing the game! Never played Riddle School, but if it's giving old flash point and click vibes I'm happy :)