We just did a post jam update. While we did not make the magic missiles do more damage, I think we did everything else. The game now includes a tutorial (optional and skippable), the minions can do a melee attack when they can’t cast magic missiles, and characters auto-fire magic missiles till the target is dead. Oh, and the characters auto-generate health too. Plus there are messages added to the hud when an action is denied so the player knows why.
There are still existing bugs for sure. We could spend a very long time polishing this and other games, but there comes a time when it’s time to move on to the next adventure!
If you try it out again, thanks for your time and we hope you like the update!
Thank you for the kind words and feedback!
The action is purposefully turned up a bit at the beginning to set the player on edge. I think for many players it’s a bit too much and we could scale it back a bit. We’ve talked about adding difficulty levels and let the player choose where to start or change too next game session. As for the tutorial, we’ve gone with feedback messages for now. Maybe a few more messages to nudge the player in the right direction would be enough to serve as tutorial for this little game jam game. We’re working on a post jam update now and will consider all of this and more.
I’ll be sure to tell our artists that yet another player loves their stuff! Thanks!
Thank you for making the video! What an eye opener!
I hate to hear a player say they’re bad at a game. It’s actually the games fault. Well, at least this time. We neglected to give player any feedback and made the mistake thinking that instructions at the beginning were sufficient. Since there’s no tutorial either, it’s completely understandable why a player would be confused by it.
We will have a post jam update that should help with that somewhat by introducing messages during the game. When you try something and it doesn’t work, the game will tell you why and even what you might want to do instead.
The story around the spellbook is that it imbues the minions with powers they don’t have otherwise. That is they can now shoot magic missiles. They also get a speed boost fixing things and stirring the cauldron. But this is in effect only so long as the witch reads from the spellbook.
Any character can stir the pot and multiple can at the time time. However, the rate the potion finishes is independent of the number of characters stirring it. I sometimes have the minions both stirring and trade off depending on the mana they have to defend and repair.
The ward cast from the crystal ball only lasts for so long. (5 warded enemies to be exact) Another fact we still do not mention anywhere in the game. Shame on us!
Thanks once again for trying our game and the excellent feedback!
This is nice start to a cool little RPG! I liked sucking the life out of plants for mana and health! And then raising the dead! Those goblins didn’t know what hit them! The sound and choice of music is good too. you even have a fancy credits scene at the end. Bravo!
I half expected to be able to raise dead people in the graveyard. That could have been cool!
So, if my character is a necromancer, doesn’t that mean they’re the baddy? Just thinking out loud.
Anyway, I would have liked to have been able to shoot in any direction. I had to use the mouse buttons to cast spells and interact with npcs. Why not use the mouse position to shoot to? But if you don’t do that, then you could support a gamepad and ditch the pesky mouse all together.
Oh, and supporting arrows keys would have been cool seeing that some people are left handed. Not that I gave you all 1 stars for that or anything. (Joking! I would never do that!)
Anyway, hopefully you’ll continue on your quest of making all of those things you didn’t have time to put into the game.
We’re still working on our game too. Got a few fixes for after the jam. Would you be so kind to play our current version and let us know what you think? Thanks!
The game looks great and I like the idea I think we’re going for. However there are some flaws that prevent the game from being great in general.
Mostly it comes down to the monsters. It seemed that if I knifed them without them being aware of me they went down easy. But if they were aware of me, they didn’t seem to be kill-able. It was weird. Maybe it was just me and I missed something.
I think the beginning is well designed. You can see the monsters in the other room adjacent to where you start. And then you can see one patrolling the area below you if you go up the stairs and over a walkway. However, the monster sees you on the walkway and then comes straight to you. I think the player detect area should not extend to the second level. Once in the court yard the monsters can see you from quite a ways of it seems. Again, shrinking that detection area would be good. Or perhaps have the monster visibly do a “what’s that?” sort of action - maybe make a sound too - and give the player time to find cover.
The monsters make a breathing sound, but it’s very low and easy to miss. I would make them even more noisy. Add a walking sound. Make their breathing even more obvious or find another creepy noise for them to make as they patrol. This would help players know they’re there behind walls and corners.
Now, the first area is well designed as you can see the monsters before they see you. But after you leave that area, the rest of the level isn’t that way at all. Along with the increased and varied sounds, and the “what was that” sort of pause, I would change the level to allow players more chances to spot the monsters before really encountering them. Maybe even just reduce the number of monsters too.
If you achieved all of that, this game would be really cool! It still is in a lot of ways. But it’s very hard for we mere mortals to play.
We thrive on constructive criticism and really listen feedback! We would love for you to try our game and let us know what you think! Thanks!
Thanks for all of the awesome feedback! You brought some new issues to light and reiterated some, which is fine. More votes to things that we really need to fix.
Sounds like the rng gods really frowned at your! But that just points out a balance issue that we thought wouldn’t be that big of a deal. There really aught to be a limit to the number of zombies allowed in the cabin at any one time. And we could base that off a chosen difficulty level.
When you said that you wished for a way to be alerted to a new wave starting, I instantly thought of Left 4 Dead. I’m not sure we’ll do that, but it’s something we’ll definitely consider.
The attack mode is a good idea too. Or maybe just make it a “one shot” deal. And I knew about the simultaneous wood gathering issue but ran out of time/energy before the deadline. When we started the game, we started with stations where either only one at a time was allowed to interact with it or multiple could and it didn’t matter. But for resource giving stations such as the wood pile, I should have made the progress bar character specific (in that each character had their own progress bar). This is something I’m thinking of doing as well. Especially when I think about using the interaction system in future games.
I’ve never experienced an issue with characters ending up on the ceiling! I’ll try to reproduce this as it seems a game breaking bug when it happens. Thanks for reporting it!
Thanks again for the feedback! This is what I consider “gold” in game jams!
All very valid feedback! Thanks!
The new one here is the hit box for the zombies. I’ll need to look into doing it different. I think the minions suffer from the same issue when trying to select them.
I should be able to get the characters (friendlies) to path around each other by adding obstacle avoidance. If I allow them to occupy the same space, I’m afraid at times it’ll be hard to pick one out or become confusing when they overlap. I could use a steering approach and add separation so they don’t do that, but that’s more work. I’ve done it before and it can be hard to get working in an appealing way. I’ll figure it out one way or another though.
Thanks!
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
Yep. Working on minions getting stuck right now. And I’ve noticed that at times selecting them doesn’t seem to work, but that’s because their collision shape doesn’t move while their mesh does during animations. So players click on what they can see, but that isn’t detected because it’s the collision shape that counts for that. I’m thinking up ways to fix that too, but as no one had said anything about it (that I remember anyway) I wasn’t sure if I should spend a lot of time on that. Now I know. So, thanks!
Yeah, COD Zombies was an inspiration of the game. That and Five Nights as Freddy’s.
This is a good start to a horror game. It’s actually spooky and scary. Having to choose between having the light out or the gun is a good design decision. Being able to put the light down to be able to have them both out is good too. The player needs to stay close to the light source to see the enemies. It’s a nice constraint. And the enemies are creepy.
As someone else said, it’s rough around the edges. You probably know this. Some easy things to make it less so is to add invisible ramps for the stairs and entry into the house. At first I didn’t think I was supposed to go in the cabin till I got to the part of the tutorial which mentions that I need to go to the attic. Also give players the option to turn down the mouse sensitivity. I turned it down in the desktop settings but that didn’t matter for some reason. I still couldn’t control the mouse look. (This could be something to do with running it in Linux under Wine. Mouse sensitivity is still something should support.) I’d also like to say that setting the movement keys to also be the arrow keys would be easy in Godot and would help a left-hander like me enjoy the game better.
Lastly the enemies need more behaviors rather than run straight at the character. Give the player more of a chance to set down the light and handle them.
But this really was a creepy game. If only I could have controlled things better.
We also used the Godot engine. We started out with the intent to making a scary game, but didn’t end there. So we now hope we at least made a good game. God for game jam anyway. Please have a go at our game and let us know what you think! Thanks!
I honestly got into this one. I mean, that McGee is FAST! I didn’t get him. I got taken out by the surprise (I think). Note to self: don’t scorn this particular witch. Ha ha.
The art is charming and the variety of the gameplay is actually surprising. It shows a lot of creativity with what I think is a fairly limited game engine.
I’m curious why it isn’t wide screen. This would have made it a little easier and I don’t think that would have been a bad thing.
I also think the controls could be a bit better. Maybe support game pad?
And a health bar would have been nice. I tried the game a couple times and died and that was it. Just done. A health bar would have made the game a little more forgiving.
We have a witch in our game. She’s not as pretty, and that was on purpose. We also have goblin helpers as familiars. But we stopped short of the third bonus challenge due to time constraints. Anyway, we would love for you to try our game if you can and let us know what you think! Thanks!
I’m used to one of the mouse buttons being for jump. Either the right mouse button or middle. But that’s probably what I set it to whenever I play an FPS.
Not sure how hard it is to do, but allowing key rebinding would be great! Surely someone has some free pile of code on github that could be used. Or maybe free on the asset store.
So far this is one the the best games I’ve played. The idea is well executed and the game is actually pretty fair when I turned the volume up enough to really hear the monsters at a distance. That really helped. At first I thought it was too tough and was going to say that batteries should be more available for the megaphone, but then that would take the edge off which would be bad.
I did have issues with the megaphone seeming to not work. If the creature was close enough, it seemed it was already in the attack state and that was that. I say that whatever the state the monster is in, it should flee no matter what.
More sound on the monsters would be good too. Being able to hear them from farther away would make the game scarier I think.
Also, when the player is getting hurt, some sort of indication on screen would be good. Maybe a red vignette on the HUD or something.
At this point I’m the first to review this game. WTF! From the screenshots it looks great, and it is. (for a game jam game, haha)
Anyway, good job!
Our game is very different from yours. I wish it were scarier, tbh. But, we’re still pretty proud of it as it is. And we’d love for you to try it out and let us know what you think of it! What did we get right? What could we do to improve it? We want to hear it all! Thanks!
A very good game! I especially liked how creepy the level was! The lighting and monsters. It also felt pretty fair since you could get away most of the time when you got noticed. And the idea is generally very good.
I would have liked some more info on how to use the skull thing. I knew I had a limited number of shots. But I didn’t realize that I could recharge it until I watched the video by Bullhead Studios. I also felt that that the mouse sensitivity was a bit high.
I appreciate that I could use the arrow keys too, and not just the wasd keys. Being left handed, using the arrow keys is much less awkward. Unfortunately the sprint key was the left shift key. Perhaps you had intended both shift keys to work, but right shift did not engage sprint for me. Not a huge deal. But I thought I’d point that out.
So, all in all a very good game! I think this one should rank pretty high in the final ratings.
My team and I are hungry for feedback for our game and would love for you to try it, and let us know what you think! Especially any constructive criticism! That would help us learn the most and get the most out of our effort. Thanks!
I liked the art. The textures are nice and evokative of something horrific. The music is too, but could use some variation.
It’s clear this is a start of something. So, I won’t tell you things I think you already know. I guess I would like to see some sort of patrolling behavior to the killer, so it doesnt’ just immediately travel to the player. Only when it detects the player should it start tracking them. And I think an end point to the game would be good. Like, make it out of the maze and you get a “you won” screen or something.
Thanks for playing!
Yeah, avoidance between characters is something I didn’t get get working. Maybe on a post-jam update.
The witch can’t repair anything. If it was one of the minions not being able to repair a door this might be because they didn’t have any wood from the wood pile. Or maybe it’s a bug. I’ll need to do some more testing to see.
The idea of adding rounds and ratcheting up the difficulty is a cool idea! Thanks for that! We’ll keep it in mind if we decide to do updates to the gameplay after the jam.
Well, I’ll be! I never tried the keyboard with hollow knight before. And you DID actually use their default control scheme. So, I have to take that back. My appologies. What I was expecting was the up arrow (or W) to be jump, and space to be attack. But then what would be guard and the other actions? So, please direguard my comment on the keys. But I still would have liked using a gamepad. Thanks!
You know, I actually got goose bumps when the pumpkin head killer went after me! There’s just something about that sound it makes and the impending doom! And the character itself is pretty creepy too. I also liked the art used to make up the level. I don’t suppose there was a way out, was there?
The mouse look was a bit too sensitive. So it made it hard to look around and not get all turned around easily and to keep an eye out for the killer. I also managed to pick up an item but do not know what the use of doing that was. Maybe it was a mechanic that wasn’t fully baked due to time constraints. Oh well.
Have a look at our game! It’s not a cool first person perspective, but we worked hard and think it’s at least an interesting, challenging game. Be sure to play and rate it and leave us a comment on what you thought! Are there ways we could improve our game! Please, let us know! Thanks!
The story is very good in this one! It’s well thought out and well written! The “puzzles” make sense in the story as well. And the art is good too.
The platforming could use some work. It’s pretty difficult. And the music could be backed off a bit on volume and change from the organ-grinding track to something else for some relief. And lastly, the dialog could be slowed down or better have the player hit a button to advance to allow for those slower at reading to get a chance to enjoy it.
All in all, this is a well put together game, despite some of the minor flaws.
We would love to hear what you have to say about our game! So please, play and rate our creation and let us know what you think! Thanks!
Let’s start with the good parts. The story is great! The slow burn and atmosphere is really well done! The sound and art are all great too! It reminds me of the first Penumbra game at times. And I like the spooky elements I did encounter.
Unfortunately there are a few bugs and the game is entirely too long. I played for more than an hour before having to give up because of a game breaking bug.
The first issue is that you can place wires in the puzzle more than once per spot. So, if you like me, and you are clicking around, you can run out of wire even though you actually had enough to fill the entire board. But, that’s remedied by restarting or going to the cabin and waiting to refill.
Worse is that I had to give up when the puzzle didn’t show the “wires” being placed at all. I could hear the placement sound and rotate sound, but couldn’t see them. Even going into the cabin and returning to the puzzle didn’t fix it. When this happened at an hour in, I was done trying even though I really like this game.
The map is too big and it takes too long to get around it. At first this seemed OK, but as the game dragged on and on, this became an issue. If there had been a ramping up of the spooky elements of the game to bring the game to a head a lot sooner, then maybe the map size is OK. But I think making it smaller and therefore quicker to traverse would be a good idea.
One other thing I think would be good is if the red lights that indicate there’s an issue with the satellite dish would turn off after the fuse/wire puzzle is solved. Or maybe turn it green. But something to visually “check it off”.
The interaction areas for some things is odd or doesn’t always respond. Like the computer in the cabin. I had to pass over the spot a few times to get the interact prompt to come up.
Lastly, the intro is really good, but needs to be skip-able and maybe shorter. If you have to choose, just allow skipping it. That way on re-plays or re-tries you don’t have to sit through it again.
I know it seems I just dumped on your game. But I think you’re hearing my frustration that I just couldn’t complete it after so much time invested (for game jam game) and that with a few fixes and additions you could charge for this. So, I hope you take all this as the constructive criticism it’s meant to be.
And we’d love to hear your constructive criticism for our game! I’m sure there’s lots we could do to improve it and we want to hear your ideas on how best to do that! So please check our game out and leave us a comment on your thoughts! Thanks!
I could not play the game on Chrome version 106.0.5249.119 on Ubuntu 22.04.1. I could hear sound but not display. I then tried Firefox 106.0.1 (same OS) and I could see the game, but no audio! So strange!
But here’s my feedback from what I did experience. The sound is very nice! And I like the beginning. It’s a bit like hollow knight. It sets the mood well. And the art is really neat! The enemies are grotesque, even though it’s pixel art. The attack animations are smooth and have that nice trailing effect. I wish I could experienced everything together.
Going with an unusual control scheme was a big, big mistake. It made the game much harder than it had to be and was frustrating. Next time, or maybe on a post-jam update, use the standard controls. And supporting gamepad would be good too.
The attacks and jump are sluggish or floaty. So, the animations are nice, but need to be sped up or altered so that they’re crisper and allow for better response times.
Seams like this could be a great game! Just remember, if you find the game challenging or hard, and you are the maker, then other’s will find it very difficult or impossible.
We would love it if you played our game, rated it and gave us some feedback! It would help us learn and grow as developers! Thanks!
Wow! This game is sooo well put together! The writing is awesome! The pacing is great! The enemies are well designed! You guys really did something cool here!
I found the range enemy quite tough. I usually lost a good number of hit points dealing with them, so I skipped them if I could. (But the other enemies made up for it in total!) And the cavern jumping seemed off. Rather than being able to be right at the edge, you had to be a good deal back from it, relatively speaking. I would change this. Yes, it adds to challenge, but not in a good way.
It was odd that the party scene didn’t have any music after rocking to that funky beat during the previous level. I’d keep that funky vibe going with a different tune during this scene.
I didn’t get a chance to play it all the way through, but will later when I have more time. This is a really good game! Well done!
My team would love to get some constructive feedback from your team! I’m sure there’s lots you could point out that we may not have realized as we labored these past three weeks, entirely too close to the game to see what others can! So, please play and rate our and let us know what you think! Thanks!
There’s a lot to like about this one! I love that you actually had a tutorial at the beginning and a bit of a story too! And the flashlight mechanic was great! Having the shake it, and as the battery ran down the range of the light reduced! Nice! And the ghosts reminded me somewhat of the old mario game. You know the one! Oh, and the use of musical notes for sounds. That was cool too! And the “survival waves” mechanic was also nice!
I think if the game could have been visually darker, with a darker background for starters, that would have sold the “killer in the dark” a bit more. And the game was a bit difficult, imo. Remember, you’re the worlds best player at your own game! So, reducing the difficulty is best, especially for a jam game where people aren’t going to spend a lot of time mastering it.
Another addition that would have been welcome is save points. When I died, I had to start from the very beginning. That made me give up without seeing the whole game as I want to move onto the next game to play and rate.
Speaking of difficult games, would you give ours a try and tell us what you think! We’d love to hear your feedback! Thanks!
I liked the different levels. They were clever and interesting. And the music was cute. If it had turned off key or something as it played, to signify that “something isn’t right here”, that would have been cool.
Other than the controls being a little floaty, there does not seem to be an attempt to make a “horror” game. Adding some of those elements would have been nice. Maybe giving the player a “jump scare” by suddenly introducing a monster like character to chase them or using art that had a more ominous quality. Something like that would have been nice.
This is a well done game! I really like the graphics and music! The concept is simple and in keeping with the chosen theme. And there are a lot of upgrades to win along the way.
I suppose the controls need a bit of work. For one thing, being left handed, I prefer to use the arrow keys. I’m assuming it wouldn’t have been hard to support both WASD and arrows at the same time. And sometimes the character got stuck on something but I couldn’t tell what it was. And the star above Marigold obscures the view. It’s a nice art idea, but blocking the view like this isn’t the best. Maybe fade the image out whenever something is behind it.
Our game isn’t as hopeful as yours. It’s about a zombie apocalypse. I know. I know. Cliche. But if you would give it a try and let us know what you liked and what you didn’t, that would help us become better game developers! Thanks!
I really like the idea behind this game! It seems to have so much potential story-wise and mechanic-wise. The art is charming and the animations are pretty nice! The background music is fitting and at a good volume as to not be distracting. And the sound effects are also nice. I even noticed that the footstep sound is different depending on the ground, which is a very nice touch.
I got stuck a few times in the game. Once when I traveled right and up to a fairly large empty room. When I turned around at the candle I could interact with (but don’t know what interacting did there) I couldn’t leave the large room. So, I restarted and explored some more Only to fall down for a long time till the character finally hit ground. But the camera didn’t go down that far and I could no longer see the player character. So, that was sort of odd.
The game appears to be very large and there’s much to explore. I think a map system would help this a lot.
There are a lot of blind falls in the game. I attacked a block enemy only to get knocked back off the platform I was on and then down into spikes that I didn’t know where there. So, I’d reduce the knock back (unless that’s an upgrade at some point - maybe even then), and try to eliminate blind falls.
The menu buttons or transitions have a ding sound that is very loud to my ears. I would turn the volume on that sound down.
So, even though I’ve given a good bit of negative feedback, this game really does have a lot of potential! Are there other mechanics around the flame that could be added? Like what if there’s an enemy that can blow out the flame? And then could an upgrade be some sort of lantern hat to keep that from happening? Or perhaps there can be puzzles with it - like lighting a lantern and moving them into place to form the light rays into some sort of pattern? And is the player character made of wax? So they are a candle person? Does that mean they could melt if they get too hot? But if they cool themselves down a lot somehow they can get through an area of intense heat?
Maybe those are all bad ideas, but I think you can see that with some imagination this game could really be something! I hope you’ll continue working on it!
This is a very nice little game! I like the pixel art, and the environmental sounds in lieu of background music is a nice break.
I echo previous comments on the control scheme. After getting the wall climb ability I got stuck. Call me lazy but figuring out how to combine all the controls to backtrack around the spikes was going to take more patients than I have today. A better control scheme that feels more natural would have made a difference.
There are far too many blind falls in this game. Of course in map mode you can see them, but you have to return to the robot to control it and thus lose site of obstacles/hazards. I suggest centering the camera on the robot when in control mode and zoom out a bit to give players more visibility.
One last thing. When the player dies and is restarted in another position, keep the robot’s mode what it was when they died instead of changing it back to ball mode. At least for me I would just have to change it’s mode back to what I was doing when I died. Most of the time I think maintaining the mode would be the right thing to do.
This seems to be a pretty big game, which in itself is an accomplishment! And the metroidvania elements are there. I also appreciate that health can be regained by defeating some enemies (but not all for some reason). That I can play with a game pad is also appreciated!
The zoom out in the one room is cool. I wonder if something like a boss fight will occur here later. But the zoom for the rest of the game is a bit too close. Pull it back. Let the player see what’s around them.
The controls need a bit of refinement as well as going up and down ladders. And the bat enemies are really difficult. Plus they don’t seem to drop health. IMO if they’re that hard they should drop even more health.
Also, there’s some jitter or blurring or something when the player moves. Maybe play with some of Godot’s pixel snap settings to see if that helps.
A word of caution. That music when an upgrade is picked up is awfully familiar! Don’t get into trouble using copyrighted stuff! The company I think it’s from guard their intellectual property ferociously. Apologies if I’m off base here. But if I’m not, please replace it! I’d hate to see anyone get into trouble.
We’d love to know what you think of our game! Please play, rate and leave a comment letting us know on our submission page! Thanks!
This is an interesting game. It’s got some elements of metroidvania, but, as you say is more of a puzzle platformer. Some enemies might have changed that around. Even ones that don’t react to the player but are more like moving hazards could have flipped this into metroidvania territory. But, by the sound of the background music, we’re going for something more relaxed.
I’d say the one thing that would improve this game the most is the controls. They’re floaty and sluggish. Tighter controls would also allow for some timing challenges too perhaps.
I fell into a chasm and had to restart. This detracted from the enjoyment and I actually stopped playing at this point. I didn’t see any save spots in the game. I would either add some of those, or just return players to a previous position when they fall into a chasm. Otherwise players will think your game is unfair.
Our game is decidedly less relaxed. But we hope we didn’t make it too difficult. We would love to get as much feedback as possible about that and anything else players think about our game! So, please give our game a try and let us know what you think! Thanks!
This is a pretty solid entry! The metroidvania elements are there, and the player being a slug is interesting to say the least. The art isn’t too bad, and I appreciate that there are at least some sound effects. I also like the levels and the fact that, as far as I played, the player can’t really get stuck.
Perhaps the biggest issue with the game is the camera. Once you get the super jump, jumping up into the area above causes the camera to switch rapidly to that area and that hides the platforms the slug is jumping from and onto. This is frustrating. With Godot you can set the camera to follow the player but have a drag margin set so that it’s not following the player character’s position exactly. This should allow platforms to stay in site but the camera will move when the player moves from an area enough. There’s also the limit properties too you could use to bound the camera’s view to keep it within the level.
It would be nice to have the player stop it’s upward motion once the jump button is released. This would allow for smaller jumps and better control.
A very small issue is that the character returns to facing the right when not in motion, even though the last movement was to the left. This should be an easy fix.
A common issue in this jam has been the lack of support for left-handed players. My advice is to always support the use of arrow keys along with wasd. This is super simple with Godot. Just add arrow keys to the input map actions in your game. Also, use the physical key event type for wasd as other countries/locals use different keyboard layouts. (This is for wasd - I think arrow keys are pretty much universally located.) I also recommend the support of a controller too, which is also pretty simple with Godot: all you have to do is add joy button bindings to actions in the input map. If you always follow all of this advice, then everyone will be able to enjoy your game as much as possible!
