There is a lot here! I think that's the problem, though; the game doesn't have the polish needed to make its ideas shine properly. The underlying mechanics are suited to a much larger game.
JohnGabrielUK
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Hello there! I've just published Back Into the Cave, a short game with a blend of 3D and 2D gameplay, tied together by a conversation between two philosophers.
This is my entry to the latest Godot Wild Jam, and in hindsight, making two minigames, tied together with voice-acted dialogue, might have been pushing it a bit. It's been a busy week. :P
Anyway, if that concept intrigues you, the game can be found here! https://johngabrieluk.itch.io/back-into-the-cave
I don't think I've played anything like this before. Listening to those haunting, sometimes discordant piano chords as I tried to figure out each combination was actually really special. That, combined with the strange patterns, makes for a game that feels almost ethereal. In the right setting, it could be very effective indeed. Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem with the audio; it mostly comes out of the left ear and there's a noticeable buzzing sound.
Thanks, Danny! Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy Silent Wolf is to get up and running. And it hardly need be said at this point that D4yz's pixel art is excellent (but I'll keep saying it anyway). It was really fun to work with Josh, too; his music and sound design do wonders for bringing the whole thing to life. Makes you wonder what they need me for. :P
One thing I might do is change the leaderboard so that each person can only have one score on there; if you beat your old highscore, it gets replaced. That would free things up a bit.
My original plan was to give you a sneak peak of what was outside the sewers just before you came up. I gave up on the idea when I discovered that viewports are hard. :P
Thanks for playing!
People seem to like the reflections! They're actually pretty simple; a second sprite is placed underneath the first, with a much lower Z-index, and a shader to make it wibbley-wobbley. And yes, the game is a bit brutal. As much as I think we scoped better this time than we usually do, rebalancing the game wasn't quite on the cards.
Thanks for playing!
Delighted you think so! But I'm not taking anything for granted; there have been some excellent entries this month - as there always are - and it's usually the game with the best take on the theme that wins. Win or not, I think all three of us are pretty happy with how this one's gone.
Thanks for playing!
This one took me pleasantly by surprise. I haven't ever played Typing of the Dead, but I'm guessing it was a fairly big inspiration. This was a really polished experience; those movements felt so fluid and satisfying to watch.
A bit irrelevant, but: I think I've used the exact same palette you did here in a previous project. It's a good'un, isn't it?
As I've said, your games are always a treat because of how original they are. This one is no exception; no other game this jam has had me identifying gems and then cutting them to fit a setting. Perhaps it could involve having something more to do (or perhaps being part of something larger), but that's beyond what you can reasonably do within a jam.
This one was an absolute stand-out entry. After a few tries, I finally got this score.
So many cool touches. The silhouettes in the cutscenes looked great, and I got a real sense of trepidation each time I mined a spot I wasn't quite sure of. The explosions gave me a jump a couple of times, too!
All in all, a really cool entry. Great job!
Finished in 3:09!
Okay, now this one reminded me of a game I played ages ago. I think someone sold me a game at school which was a bit like Mario Party, but where the minigames were maths challenges. I think the board was an island and the premise was that you had to escape it before a volcano erupted.
...I know, pretty much irrelevant, but the point is that it reminded me of a game I haven't thought about in ages and for that reason I give it 5/5.
Well, that was morbid. The sound design, the art, the poetic manner in which Satan decrees the sins of the wicked, the fact that you yourself are torturing them... it's all a bit grim. Nicely grim, though! There's an impressive runtime on this one, but I feel like it could do with a bit more variety as far as the gameplay mechanics go. I'm glad I was able to skip to the ending.
Final thought: coal? Come on, Satan. When are you going to invest in renewable energy?
Another entry with really great ambience. There's a fun dissonance between the presentation and the quirky, charming writing of the NPCs. Unfortunately, the procgen level design worked against me here; the exits on levels 3 and 4 were almost immediately next to the start of the level, so I went straight from level 2 to level 5, where a ghoul told me "there's no more game here!".
Very strong atmosphere - the music in particular is very brooding. I've got a soft spot for pixel art textures in 3D games, so I quite liked the aesthetic. Is the recurring use of gold intentional? On the enemies, the ceiling, the player's hands, and the tears on the walls; it makes the art feel very cohesive. The moment-to-moment gameplay could have used a bit of livening up, though; you move and shoot quite slowly, so it isn't all that satisfying to dodge and weave around enemies.
Puzzle-platformers are such a perfect fit for game jams, and this is a good'un. The presentation is excellent, from the pixel art itself, to the transitions, to those tweens when you jump. In a few cases, I could step off of a switch and go past a door before it closed, which I'm pretty sure wasn't the intended route. Apart from that, nicely done!
I struggled a bit to figure this one out (in particular, I couldn't figure out why my gun would occasionally jam - I think using the item on the right fixed it?), but learning by trial-and-error was quite fun. The graphics were definitely the highlight, especially the opening/closing animation on the dome when transitioning between night and day.
I was very confused at first when I tried playing the web version, and nothing but a black screen, some rays of light, and the UI. The Linux build worked just fine, though.