itch.io

Have the blind judges decided on a winner?

The UI is really good and I can see a lot has gone into making all of this. It's great that you also included a tutorial section in your game as well as a video which I watched beforehand and it's good to experience things myself. The escalators on the sides are cool, the attacks felt great and I like the artwork throughout

Really great game and very faithful to the original with a lot of enhancements. I like the abilities each character has with the ability to aim for each being a really nice addition. Progress wise, I got 7 of the characters and I very nearly defeated the rock boss, but I got hit by one of his rocks right at the end and it took all my life away and I only had the spearman left at that point. I feel like the rock could have destroyed on impact and my characters should have hurt the enemies a little bit more but other than that it's really great and I'm amazed at how many diverse characters there is

The polish, artwork and UI is insanely good. I like the creative take on gain ground and it's pretty fun, although I think adding some walls around some of the edges could be beneficial for the initial learning curve. Once I became more familiar with the controls, the gameplay significantly improved and the challenge of dodging enemy projectiles while navigating the environment became quite enjoyable

It's amazing to see the elements of gain ground in the puzzle designs and it's all done exceptionally well. I preferred the simpler puzzles but was glad to have a skip button to see more of the levels that I struggled with and I'm impressed with the number of levels there is. The ending is also a nice touch

This is truly an excellent game and easily among one of my favourites this round. Got 13th place on the leaderboard and enjoyed the whole game. I'm impressed by how much content there is and by the awesome upgrade system. The UI is also exceptionally polished. My only suggestion would be to consider slightly reducing the frequency of upgrades particularly the fireball ones due to their size because towards the end of the game, it can become a bit hectic, though this also contributes to the game's chaotic fun :)

It's really awesome to play gain ground reimagined as a platformer. The movement, shooting and special abilities are all well-made, especially the sliding and wall-jumping mechanics. The art, effects, and level design including enemy placement are all top-notch. I encountered a minor issue where my character became stuck on level 2 near the portal, but otherwise this is a fantastic adaptation of the original

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. Credit goes to Elthen for the art and animation assets, I just arranged it to look nice

The challenge of getting past invincible enemies was really good and I liked the knockback with the attacks and how they follow.  It's also good that you can tell where they are looking but they got a fast turn if you get too close to them but once I learned this I adapted my strategy. The difficulty curve was well-balanced and I made good progress with each attempt. Dashing around the level and luring the enemies was fun and I found the attacks being more useful on enemies with there backs turned which gave variety to how I played. I think it is worth mentioning that I encountered two bugs: 1) characters were invisible in the selection screen after continuing and 2) the bird character became invisible during gameplay

Your game looks and plays incredibly well and it's great to see the continuation of your game and all of the extras added in. I like that you have an option to skip the level if all of the enemies are cleared and you made it to the exit with one of the characters already. The character abilities are cool, still love the bow but the mage is my favourite and love his secondary fire attack. Collecting the characters as cards was really well implemented and it's really cool seeing the skeleton warriors chasing after you and even going across ladders and up stairs. I didn't hear any background music but the sound effects were really good and there was the odd time when the sound was a bit glitchy. I enjoyed making it to the end but I'm not sure if my score is right as I saw a number keep counting down on the page earlier but here it is for anyone wanting to beat it: 

Thanks for the feedback. It was really good to watch the youtube video of your playthrough and you were very close to the end and you got to see most things I think. You’ve hit the nail on the head there, character selection is definitely a key part of the strategy. Fletcher is strong on level 1 due to the long range and enemies mostly lining up with his shots. Ash is good for level 2 due to the area damage to kill two at once, curve of bomb and ability to go over the rocks. Brutus was going to be best in level 3 but I didn’t get around to making it unfortunately so he’s only good if you like games on extreme difficulty

Nice, I ought to have actually played the original to know these things. Great job on implementing everything so well

Many thanks for the positive and valuable feedback. It’s great that you got some Castle Crashers vibes. I loved playing Castle Crashing the Beard on newgrounds.com when I was younger. I can see what you mean about the character facing during attacks and I’ve got an idea of how to fix it and I’ll definitely be thinking about how the level design can be better for Brutus if I get to continue it. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts

Ah Golden Axe, I’ve got fond memories of that game too on my master system and it totally would have been awesome to ride the warthog. I thought about making it so that when the animal gets killed the goblin continues on foot to attack but it was getting complex to make so went with the easier option. Thanks for the feedback!

I fixed the gain ground machine and got a spot on the leaderboard :) The gamepad controls were excellent and the intro story and journal entries added a lot of depth. I particularly enjoyed the character and enemy design, especially the exploding duck. Minor issues: an enemy was hidden by the journal on one level, and there was a beep when entering the letter 'S' when typing my name. Overall, a fantastic experience

This is a really fun game and very faithful to the original but with an awesome modern look. It's cool that you added multiplayer and although I found the first person perspective mode difficult, it's still a really good change of experience. Betty was my favourite character and the explosions looked great. I noticed that on stage 5 the archers at the back didn't shoot at me and I think throwing a spear while running to make it go further would be an improvement. Very solid game and enjoyed it a lot! Here's my final score: 

I can definitely see the elements from the original with the strong emphasis on the enjoyable shooting mechanics. I liked the variety of bullet directions and I think implementing a tiered scoring system would work well (e.g. straight blue = 100, diagonal pink = 200, wave green = 300). There’s a lot of potential to take the game further with even more enemies (e.g. even bigger, grow/shrink, one with a shield etc) and Splatoon like splats. Tower building is great and the visual health indicator is really excellent. Pausing during tower construction would be welcomed but after I read the text and built my first tower it didn't trouble me at all. Here is my final score:

The level design and boss fights are fantastic, especially considering the sheer number of them. I made it to the end with six characters and can't wait to try the other two another day. The music and sound are upbeat and sound great together. You've modernized the original while staying true to its spirit and even kept the left/right hand aiming thing which definitely added a strategic layer particularly when next to walls. Awesome job!

I really appreciate the feedback. I’m wondering if speeding up the throw animation might help me solve that issue, I’ll definitely look into it. Thanks again!

Thanks, really glad you liked the level designs. I can confirm it is possible to complete the whole game with Brutus but it’s going to be a lot tougher that way and I only recommend it if you are a glutton for punishment. With the minecart it’s solid on all the sides and will only run you over if you are underneath it so it requires getting up really close and watching out for the guy in the cart shooting. Thanks for the feedback :)

I'm glad you felt an arcade vibe and liked the cutscene. I agree that Brutus is the weakest one too. Originally, I planned each character to be best on specific levels – Fletcher for the first, Ash for the second, and Brutus for a desert level filled with skeleton warriors. While I haven’t done everything I wanted to make, I’m happy with what is there and I’m glad you still had fun. Thanks again for playing!

Thank you and I’m glad you liked the visuals. The choice to go side-scrolling came down to the character animations working better in that perspective and then I just went with it. I completely understand your point about Brutus. His design was intended to shine in a third level with hordes of enemies, where his strength would be a real asset. Unfortunately, I’m unfamiliar with this genre so I ran into many challenges like with enemy clumping and shifted my focus to other aspects of the game that needed work and wanted to do so many more things like having the shields block arrows and the octopus shooting bubbles but time constraints prevented me from implementing everything. The dash idea is brilliant! It definitely opens up possibilities, especially for a potential new character. Thanks again for playing and for the thoughtful suggestions

Many thanks! Lost Vikings is an awesome game so that’s awesome to hear. Thanks for the suggestion about adding checkpoints and it’s good to know it met the judging criteria

Thanks for the explanation. Changing the visuals with the upgrades is a really good implementation and it's interesting to hear that you scrapped 3 other ideas and went with the more fun and creative option

I saved 2 out of 3 mushrooms on my first attempt. Some background music would have gone a long way but the sound you got for the sword was good. Definitely see the elements of gain ground and all the characters looked good. I like that the enemies have different attacks and I think giving the rescued characters different attack abilities would add an extra layer of strategy

I like the play on words with the gain ground title and the audio is definitely a highlight for me. Driving around listening to music was fun and harvesting what I planted was quite relaxing and I've never played a game like it so that's always a plus from me. Having good views and slopes certainly made the game more appealing and I like how you can change the settings in the pause menu. I didn't know what the upgrades did and didn't see much gain ground in it, perhaps expanding into more territories could be an option. All in all, it's amazing what you put together in such a short amount of time and it's a great game!

A really good game, I liked everything about it. The 4 characters had great attacks, movement felt good and the visuals were really nice. The only thing I can think of to enhance it further would be to have a blast that pushes the enemies away when the new character comes in

Brilliant game and really well presented and I especially like the animations of the enemy deaths. I liked playing it on my gamepad controller and it's great fun seeing what the different character abilities were. Progress wise, I was doing really well until right near the end where I lost all of my strong characters and had to defeat the last boss with violet which was tricky as her range was not so good and the boss attacks were hard to dodge but I succeeded in the end with a big smile on my face. I'm sure my stats would be much better on a second playthrough but this is what I got on my first try

Very fun game. I liked how you introduced the game mechanics and the different levels were well thought out. The arrow also made it clear where to go and the game felt very intuitive. The cannon worm ability was great fun and even the slow one was kinda funny to have in and added to the strategy. It's good how the enemies can be lured into positions. Music and sound FX was missing but you know that already, a full screen button could be a nice addition and some text to say left click to shoot (but it is explained in the description page so its not a big issue)

Thanks for the clarification, that makes a lot of sense. The follow system definitely paid off, it's amazing and it's good to hear what you had planned and what you've got already is still good

Really fun game, definitely one of the best this round. I like the different strategies that can be made on the journey and its good how the elephant can't always fit in places and it's a lot of fun trying out all of the different abilities. The level design, the art style and all of the UI in the game is simply amazing. Some minor things that I think are worth mentioning though: I did get trapped on the second level where the cage blocked the bridge if you save someone else beforehand and I had to refresh to start again, I wished there was a full screen button (it was still okay to play when zoomed out though) and just a personal preference is to have the bullets follow the mouse cursor (at first I thought my aim was off) but I still like the challenge of 8 direction shooting so maybe having space to shoot for that could work. I'm impressed with what you have and can see this doing really well!

The audio is excellent. I particularly like how when you are near the house it changes volume in each earphone to give spatial awareness. I'm curious, how does the whistling mechanic work to help find the other people? I didn't end up using it too much but it sounded great and I was still able to gather them together by getting them all to move towards a corner. Perhaps a system where a single whistle elicits a different whistle response from the nearest character could be a way of doing it. Being able to switch between 4 characters was great. I think if they had something a little different from each other it could be better, like a different colour or wearing different types of hats or different body builds. The way up to 4 people follow each other is really impressive and definitely an improvement on the original, it worked flawlessly and looked cool

This is fantastic. The menu is really sleek and the character abilities are awesome. I've tried them all out and I honestly can't pick a favourite, I like them all equally. Having the ancestor ghosts fighting alongside you is really cool and that little 'thank you' when you rescue someone is really good. The enemies are good too, although maybe the jumper could avoid jumping inside the blocks but is only a minor thing. This is definitely one of my top picks!

Thanks for letting me know. I didn't realise I already had Microsoft Narrator built in on my windows laptop until now. I have replayed your game with it on and it works perfectly fine. It's ctrl + windows logo + enter to open it.

All of the many sounds in your game are amazing 5/5 for sure the best. The voice acting and with what is said and how is fantastic and that laugh is a highlight for me. I managed to get the key and open a door but I got the wrong door. Controls are great and the idea of holding buttons down to prevent accident presses is great. I can't remember if I used space to open the door or not but I think automating interacting with stuff is the way to go. So glad I got to experience this one!

The flying mechanics are fantastic and I'm really drawn to the unique art style and the beautiful curvature of the world. I imagine the vibrant colours would be great for anyone with limited vision. My main concern is accessibility for blind players, particularly with menu navigation for buying and selling. It would be great to see some solutions for auditory or haptic feedback in these areas

The rules were explained well and the game overall is great fun and I like that you can change the length. I agree with others about the controls, having arrow keys to navigate would be more intuitive. Nevertheless I still managed to complete many lines and enjoyed the game

It's a common problem with the itch website unfortunately. Try refreshing the page and clicking inside the game window, that should help

Nice game! Sounds are all good and the gameplay is easy to get into and lots of fun. Also, incorporating the logo into your thumbnail timer is a nice touch