I love tower defense. I thought I was pretty good at them too. However, I did very poorly with your TD game. Thanks to your comment below this one, I know why.
Thanks. The swimming mechanic is something that I'm not satisfied with either. I had just started learning GODOT a couple days before the jam, so my understanding of the engines' movement controls is very rudimentary. After the jam, I think I will spend a little time, making the swimming feel better and add the features I intended to add but couldn't because of the time constraints. I have a feeling that after the jam, most games drop out of visibility and never get played again, so sadly, I don't think it is worth continuing to work on games unless it helps you build skills or give you that sense of completion.
The art for the "cooking" scene is top-notch. I understand the need for the fast pace, but I wish there was a "casual" mode, where I could take my time and make the potions - my brain is a little slow.
I was able to click some buttons multiple times - turning them off after the first click would solve this.
Thanks for playing! Regarding the theme - I got a little confused. This is my second jam and the first with a visual theme. I read the instructions and thought that the TV was optional, but the "trick or treat" twist was the main theme. When I planned out my game, I had a bunch of features I wanted to add, including "a helpful feature that turns against you". However, I didn't have time to implement these features. I learned the basics of GODOT for this jam so I could make a web version that easily accessible... but, I wasn't able to learn all the GODOT coding needed to implement the features. I've been using Unreal and blueprints up until now and hadn't ever written "code" until day one of the jam.
The features that I was going to implement were items that you could pick up as you swam that could help or hinder you.
I also planned to not have a visible path, but slowly reveal the path and other things that would make it easier to get to the goal by completing a memory test or mini game upon death. I need to get a little more coding experience before I can add these features though.
Thank you so much! I can't wait to try this out. Game Jams are perfect for working on a specific technique. Personally, I used this jam to learn the basics of GODOT. If you look carefully at my entry, it is basically a combo of the three projects from the GameDevTV Gotdot 2D Tutorial course, lol.
No worries. The advice I got in the last GameDevTV game jam was, feel free to upload other versions, just label them "bug fix" or "html version" or something like that. Especially, if you haven't made any feature changes, I don't see any problems with uploading the web version of the same game.
Very well done. The level design is fantastic. I felt "smart" every time I figured out a solution. I think that is key to making an addictive puzzle game. I got to the level labelled "final stretch", but it was a bit too much for me.
Thanks! I've been making games with this art style for a while now. I have a game on Steam that is mostly old anatomical drawings, but also has a few old sea dragons. Making the sea dragons for that game made me want to make a game with them as the main focus. If you want to see something cool, and my main inspiration, check out "Carta Marina" by Olaus Magnus (a drawing from the 1500s).
Very cool... and creepy! I see that you made it with GODOT. Do you know that you can export GODOT game as HTML? Doing so would allow people to play it in browser. You probably already know all this, but if you need help setting it up, maybe I can help.
I like the "frozen in time" vibe, and the color / lighting is great. The music fit the game very well. I don't play this genre very much, so don't put much weight into this, but I felt like the movement was too floaty and the camera was a little too fast. It gave me a feeling of being out of control.
I had a pretty smooth experience with your game. I liked the gradual increase in difficulty in the level design. I appreciate the little tilt you put on the character when moving forward and backward.
The TV background fits the theme of the jam, but I found it visually distracting, which could ultimately limit how long I play the game.
Thanks for the honest feedback. I know about the sloppy pngs - that is embarassing. Unfortunately, I noticed them after the submission deadline, so I wasn't able to rectify them.
Regarding the controls, I'm not happy with them either. I learned GODOT for this game jam. I usually use Ureal, but I wanted to submit a game that could be played in browser. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the controls to my liking despite many hours fiddling with them. (loved working with GODOT though!)
I found this game more fun than most because of the strategy involved. I felt a little pressured to read the the tutorial because I knew the clock was ticking. So, I didn't actually figure things out until my second time through.
Thanks for playing! and for the feedback. Yep. definitely need to make that cutscene skip-able - sorry about that. And, noted on the WASD. I ran out of time and had to slap something generic on there. I'll definitely redo that too.
BTW there are actually 3.5 endings to find. You found my favorite one already though.
It looks great and was fun to play. There are a few things that I am curious about. Did you intend for the ability to climb walls? It added an interesting new way to explore the levels. But, it also made jumping when close to an edge difficult.
Also, I found I could just walk or jump on enemies and kill them if my sword was pointed in their direction - I didn't have to swing (or at least that is what it seemed like). Did you chose to have the sword "armed" at all times?
Nice vibe. I'm not sure how likely this is, but at one point the ball was ricocheted perfectly horizontally and therefor bounced left and right, I image it would do so infinitely. I had to quit out and restart the game.
The rooms are quite big. I did a lot of walking and worrying that I was missing something that was just off screen. I would say that each room could be roughly half the size of the screen and still achieve your goals.
Also, I'm not sure, but I think that some of the "E" interactions where not registering properly. However, I may not have completed the prerequisites to allow the interactions.
I appreciate the difficulty of only moving with the recoil of the weapon. One thing that I didn't really like was being killed by enemies that appear suddenly without me having a chance to avoid them - sometimes without even seeing them at all. I'm not sure what the best way to avoid this would be though. Maybe ensuring that the enemies always spawn a certain distance from the player, or not adding the enemy collision box until the enemy has been on screen for a second or two.
Nicely done! The gameplay had a good feel for this genre of game. One thing that I thought was odd: when walking near the edge of the screen, the character's movement is reduced quite a bit, giving a gluey feeling. Maybe it was your method for not allowing the player to leave the screen, which makes sense. I would have like to be able to maintain my momentum even if rubbing up against the edge.
Great idea and super creepy. A little tricky to figure out. I thought there were too many possibilities and not enough feedback for correct / incorrect codes.
Nice, creepy world to explore. I ran into the same problem as RicoTV below, but then i zoomed in with the telescope. I think that allowed me to get down the stairs. One other thing I had trouble with was the doorways. I got stuck almost every time and had to shimmy right and left to make it through.
The flying felt good and physics matched what I expected.
I agree with the comments below - actually I did the same thing with my game - the restart cut scene takes too long. What I plan to do with my own game is play the full intro cut scene once at the beginning because it sets up the story, but then allow the player to skip it when restarting.
I like the concept - its a fun idea. I think it would be good flesh it out with more puzzle mechanics.
I ran into some game breaking bugs. For example, the third child would not appear after my first attempt. Also, the level on the far right wouldn't pull sometimes. It might be because of all the Itch.io labels - maybe they are diverting the mouse input (not sure).
This is just a small gameplay satisfaction thing, but regarding the levers, I recommend making the hit boxes bigger than just the knob at the top. I often clicked and dragged lazily and got nothing. Personally, I'd rather connect every time than have to be careful and click/drag the small knob each time.
I... did not escape. Loved the animations and the sound effects - you got them to work well together. The death scene when not opening a door fast enough looked cool too.
I appreciate the arm holding the lantern - and the physics you added to it. One little thing that would help is to have the item, like the key, disappear when picked up. I struggled a bit to confirm if I had in fact picked it up.
I tried my best, but I couldn't figure out what to do.
In an effort to leave no stone unturned, I ended up walking back to the beginning area and falling off the platform into infinity. I recommend blocking that area off. There was now way to quit the game, so I had to hit the windows key and exit from the taskbar. Adding an Esc menu with an option to quit would help here just in case a player runs into trouble.
Love the pixel art. The flashlight effect is good too. It was easy to play-through because of the level design - there was a logical flow to everything.
One point I noticed was the items were in a different pixel resolution that the level. Just a personal thing, but I like when all the pixel assets are in the same resolution (even if the item looks too big for the scene).
Wow, did you produce a full theme song... and and 8-bit version of the theme song for this jam?! I'm impressed!
I didn't see anyone else mention this in the comments, so maybe it is just happening on my setup. First, when I start the game, I'm not given an option to "start", just "resume". Second, the button press zones were way off for me. I have to hover over a random spot about 200px to the left and 50px up from the button in order to press the button. It was like the buttons were anchored to the top left, but the button sprites were anchored in the center. Hopefully that makes sense.
I also loved all the effort you put into the intro.
Thanks! I'm a big fan of old maps too. This game is heavily based on Olaus Magnus' Carta Marina, as you may know. Making the game was basically just an excuse for me to stare at these old maps and drawings all day.
Impressive! I love the style and the animations are super smooth. You are probably very busy, but if possible, could you point me in the direction for getting that outline look in UE?
