This game is awesome! I'm in love with the artstyle you put together. I could barely create a few sprites for my game in a month, let alone create an entire tileset and sprite sheet for my game like you did! It's remarkable, and looks really good! I'm also in love with the central mechanic. If there's a game with a grappling hook, I gotta play it. The platforming is also really nice. The player has a great deal of control over how they move on the ground or in the air without feeling floaty. Overall, I respect the effort that went into this. However, I do have a few criticisms:
1. The grappling hook physics and controls are not intuitive whatsoever. I playtested this game when it was still in its metroidvania phase, but it seems like the physics have been tuned somewhat since then. The grappling hook has this weird tug-and-pull affect even when it isn't hooked on to anything, and the recoil always shoots the player back which can lead to some very frustrating moments. It's hard to gauge when hooking on to an object how the grappling hook will react, and I still have no idea how to utilize the bungee mechanic. I've tried holding down the button, pressing then holding, releasing in a direction- all to no avail. However, the effect will trigger when I least expect it, such as when grappling towards something in front of me, launching me into lava. The grappling hook could have used more playtesting, and even a text box at the start explaining how the controls work could have gone a long way towards avoiding frustration, which leads me to my next point:
2. There is very little room for error during a playthrough, and any mistake will set you back to the beginning. I understand that this is typical for rage games, but it isn't my cup of tea personally. The strict timer coupled with the at-times frustrating grappling hook controls lead to an experience where I'm looking to put the game down instead of going for one more run.
That said, I still love this game and even if I think there are a lot of problems with the grappling hook, its still my favorite mechanic of this game jam. Well done!
Herodegon
Creator of
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This game is awesome! I'm in love with the artstyle you put together. I could barely create a few sprites for my game in a month, let alone create an entire tileset and sprite sheet for my game like you did! It's remarkable, and looks really good! I'm also in love with the central mechanic. If there's a game with a grappling hook, I gotta play it. The platforming is also really nice. The player has a great deal of control over how they move on the ground or in the air without feeling floaty. Overall, I respect the effort that went into this. However, I do have a few criticisms:
1. The grappling hook physics and controls are not intuitive whatsoever. I playtested this game when it was still in its metroidvania phase, but it seems like the physics have been tuned somewhat since then. The grappling hook has this weird tug-and-pull affect even when it isn't hooked on to anything, and the recoil always shoots the player back which can lead to some very frustrating moments. It's hard to gauge when hooking on to an object how the grappling hook will react, and I still have no idea how to utilize the bungee mechanic. I've tried holding down the button, pressing then holding, releasing in a direction- all to no avail. However, the effect will trigger when I least expect it, such as when grappling towards something in front of me, launching me into lava. The grappling hook could have used more playtesting, and even a text box at the start explaining how the controls work could have gone a long way towards avoiding frustration, which leads me to my next point:
2. There is very little room for error during a playthrough, and any mistake will set you back to the beginning. I understand that this is typical for rage games, but it isn't my cup of tea personally. The strict timer coupled with the at-times frustrating grappling hook controls lead to an experience where I'm looking to put the game down instead of going for one more run.
That said, I still love this game and even if I think there are a lot of problems with the grappling hook, its still my favorite mechanic of this game jam. Well done!
Thanks so much for your reply! I'm actually a huge fan of One Finger Death Punch and Crypt of the Necrodancer myself! Both were pivotal inspirations for several of the ideas used here (enemies spawning from two sides of the player, the spotlights alternating colors on beat, etc.).
I do really appreciate your feedback. The beat visualization was something I really struggled with because I wanted to step away from the standard metronome of rhythm games and try something more creative, but I wasn't really able to find what that was by the time the game jam ended. Instead, I left in a debug feature where the word "beat" appears on-beat, and it definitely feels like a debug feature lol. I did leave in a debug metronome that you can turn on by pressing the 'M' key during gameplay, but that is also just a debug feature.
The hit scoring system was also something I struggled to fine tune. The idea is that when the player does okay they do normal damage, but when they get a perfect they do extra damage, and when they do poorly they do less damage. This was to act as a reward mechanism for the player so that even if they weren't doing perfectly all the time they would want to get better at the game to do more damage consistently. Obviously this mechanic didn't translate well in gameplay, and I'll definitely take a step back to reevaluate how to better execute this idea or just scrap it altogether and attach it purely to your final score as per your suggestion.
P.S. Honestly, some of your gripes with my score/damage system could probably have been remedied if I gave more feedback to the player about how much health an enemy has, and how much damage you're actually doing to them on hit.
I thank you so much for your feedback, and thanks for trying my game! ^u^