itch.io

Used Micron by Micron and The Sprawl in my 3D arcade platformer, Spikescape, I made for a game jam. I tried out a bunch of different synthwave songs, and yours felt right.

Good job implementing the game systems for this being your first game jam! I think you did great with the pentagon tiling system and detecting valid spots to place things.

I don't usually play games like this, but it did feel like things moved slower than I wanted, especially since I can't come back to this later without leaving the application open.

One of the other biggest pain points I feel is the audio. I think it's great you can toggle it on or off, but when it's on it's very repetitive. The music loop is super short, so it gets old really quick. Also, not sure I'm fan of the sound effect when you place things, it's a little bit jarring. Something that can be done to help create more sound variety is to add some slight variation to the volume and pitch of the sound effect. It goes a long way to keep things from getting stale as quickly.

That said, you did do a good job. I think your game has a pretty unique interpretation of the theme. Overall, I like it.

It looks like my feedback is pretty similar to what others have already talked about. The game idea is solid, but it's just too easy to play. The game would benefit a lot from some kind of increasing difficulty system. Something like causing more enemies to spawn as time goes on, starting to spawn strong enemies after a certain amount of time (these stronger enemies should look visually different), or causing the enemies to move and spawn faster as time goes on.

Something else that would help make the game more satisfying is adding feedback when you hit and defeat enemies. Things like sounds and animations are a great way to do this.

Good work though!

This game fits the theme well. Pretty solid gameplay loop. My biggest issue was understanding all the game mechanics. I like what you did with the health bar, but it's not super intuitive. I think something like a line of circles would have helped make it easier to track the health instead of the indicator traveling through open space. Maybe even make the circles disappear as the indicator passes them.

Also, I didn't understand the ability to move the player's pentagon at first. I realized later that your player circle needs to be in the center and not moving.

Good job with your game overall, it was fun to play!

I don't usually go for rhythm games, but I had a good time playing this. There were times when the game felt really good to play, and other times things felt a little random. I would have loved to see the beats you have to hit do stuff like rise and fall with the music instead of just moving around so you have to move. Also, things felt weird to me during the slow sections of the songs. It felt weird clicking at mostly the same speed things were going in the fast sections. Maybe a circle beat you had to hold in these sections would have made it feel better? I'm not sure because I'm not too experienced with this genre of games, but thought I'd call out that it did feel weird.

Again, I had a good time playing it. Good job to you and your team!

Really creative idea for gameplay that fits the theme. It does feel like I'm just being thrown into the deep end of the gameplay though without much of a ramp up to explain the game mechanics. It would have been nice to at least have a how to play screen, or a how to play section in the description. For instance, how do you collect the collectibles like the 1-ups. I know there are explanations for a lot of things on the screen when the gameplay starts, but things are small and not where the actual gameplay is happening, also, things are not fully explained. I figured it things out eventually, but definitely felt pretty overwhelmed at first.

As some others have mentioned, while the visuals are great, it's hard to agree that this game sticks to the limited shape requirements. Which is a shame that will mean your jam rating won't be as high as they could've been had this jam not used the shape requirements.

Good job to you and your team!

Good job! This is a simple game that is easy to jump into and is pretty fun. Good use of shapes for gameplay and UI and it does well sticking to the theme. I was able to make it through all 15 levels and have some feedback.

The replay button after loosing is great, but it is a little weird to go back 1 level as a result. It breaks the flow of the game a little bit having to retry a prior level to redo where you messed up.

Overall the UI experience is pretty smooth, but you can click the replay button multiple times while the animation to go back to the level is playing. Ultimately this doesn't ruin the gameplay experience, but is one of those bits of polish that can make games feel better.

Now for some feedback on the gameplay. It was a little disappointing how much I felt like I could cheese thing by spamming left click. Some levels could be completed by this alone. Most of the other levels would get me down to two or three circles left by the time the pentagon made a full revolution. I think a simple solution that could help with this would be to include circles that are already on the pentagon for some levels and reduce the number of circles you need to shoot. This way you can't just start levels by spamming left click until the pentagon finishes a full revolution. Even just adding one or two circles can force the player to think a bit more before firing off their first circle.

Again, great job. I had fun playing!

Menus were just not something I ended up getting to for this game jam. One of these days I'll actually get around to implementing a settings menu that at least lets you change audio levels. 😅

Thanks for the feedback!

As I explained in my response to the earlier comment I received, making movement feel good in the prototyping phase was difficult. I wish I had more time to tune properties when a more complete test level was done.

This lack of time to playtest also played into having a level that was probably too big. Also, my own concept of the level design is skewed because of how much I played while testing things.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for your feedback.

I definitely didn't get the opportunity to playtest the game and tune properties like I wanted to. The movement was tricky. I had to try to find the right way to always give the player forward movement while making collisions with the platforms feel good. I ended up using a force based movement approach so the player can better slide when colliding with platforms. This made turning too fast feel slippery with a weak forward force. If the forward force was too great, collisions became sticky again. Early in prototyping, I found a balance that felt right and just stuck with it due to time constraints.\

Also,  there is a variable jump height, but the effect wasn't too strong because I didn't want the jumps to be too short with just a quick tap. I think the solution here would probably be to just increase the jump impulse so the variable height effect can be stronger and offer a better range in jump height variation.

The visuals definitely could be polished a lot more. I'm not much of an artist or graphic design, and like I said, this was my first 3D project. I learned a lot about visuals, but there is still so much more for me to learn here. I'm happy the limited shapes helped make simple visuals fit.

The rule is you only need one button for gameplay, so I'm pretty sure this is fine. I'm doing a game that does something when you press the button, then something else when you release the button.

First game jam game I've played that has rebindable controls. Very nice!

I really liked this game. Quite a unique idea that's simple. I love how you turned a game that you can slow down (nothing is actually pressuring you to jump), but has a lot of tension (the longer you use your flashlight, the shorter overall potential distance you can go). And everything I felt was packaged up nicely. Nice UI, a cohesive art style, the music fit. Nice job.

This feels and looks fantastic! Great interpretation of the theme, and the gameplay is very fun! Really my only complaint is that you made the interact key F, instead of E. I'm also not much of a keyboard and mouse kind of person, so I would have loved a gamepad option, especially because I went ahead and downloaded it instead of played on the web.

Would have loved more feedback given to the player on this. At first I thought the knight would follow my mouse while I had the left mouse button held down The way you did it was fine where they just go to where you had clicked, but I would have liked if there was a reticule or circle in the spot they were headed.

Also, the targeting felt a little weird. I would click to target and I would just walk towards that spot. It kinda felt like I needed to be attacked first before I would attack back. Something here to show that we did target the enemy would be great. 

Good job on your first game! This is a great step forward and awesome to have something to share with others.

Some suggestions I have would be to try to adjust how random you make the mice's movement. The way the moved kept them at the edges, it would be nice if they scurried across the screen. Also, I think it would be nice if the sound played when you click depends on whether you clicked on a mouse or not. A bit of audio feedback on whether you were successful or not.

The control bug really got in the way. Having a directional input get stuck kills all momentum. It was an interesting platformer outside of that. I think the game would really benefit from a tutorial. I didn't figure out why there was a slide option and had no idea for a bit there were multiple jumps. Also, the way the multiple jumps worked was a bit hard to grasp.

I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this game. The sound did a great job to improve it. There were really only two issues I had. If I was walking against a wall, I would get stuck instead of slide if I was trying to walk diagonally. The other was when I would have to drop the candle to pick up a grate, I couldn't interact with anything after dropping a candle until I replenished a candle. Seems like a bug to me.

Overall pretty solid for a short, simple game. My biggest feedback is on the enemies. The one time I did die was because an enemy spawned right where I was. Also, it seemed to me that the enemies spawned on a timer, which meant that they continued to spawn no matter how many were still spawned. So my 2 suggestions are, have the spawner detect if the player is near and to avoid spawning more enemies while the player is in the area, and chose some way to limit the amount of enemies spawned by a spawner. That could be keeping track of how many spawned enemies are still alive, or maybe waiting to spawn another enemy until the currently spawned one has moved far enough away. That way you don't get these areas where enemies are just bunched up and you don't spawn tons of them.

For the jumping, are you talking about just the last jump challenge, or jumping throughout. I definitely made the last jump hard to execute as a final challenge for the game, but I'd love to know if the whole level was balanced poorly

Are you just talking about the jump at the end, or throughout the level? I definitely made the last jump hard on purpose as the final challenge in the game.

We definitely brainstormed more interactive objects, but didn't have enough time to implement. Movable boxes almost made it in, but they were still too buggy to be included yet.

I thought about having the light damage you, but I felt like it would be too hard to balance in a way that made it interesting. So I went with the simpler idea of light just being an obstacle. If you have suggestions about that, I'm open to hear them.

I was able to play on browser (Chrome). I liked how the concept was simple but fun. I wasn't a big fan on the flash startup, and how I would still use up a battery if I got hit before the flash went off. But overall, I thought it came together pretty well.

I really like the concept of this, I totally get running out of time to implement more levels. Something that I think this game would greatly benefit from would be coyote time. Look it up if you don't know what it is, it's a great way to help platformers to feel better.

Overall, I think the chaos is just fine, but I found the obscene camera shake to be annoying. Having the reorient myself to changes to controls, or changes to the camera/visuals was just fine. The screen shake just made it so I couldn't even see what was going on. It felt more like I was being cheated than challenged.

Solid game, I liked it! There was a weird quirk with the controls which made them behave in a way I don't think is expected. If I was holding right, then pressed up, I would change directions from right to up. If I was holding up, then pressed right, I would continue holding right. I would personally prefer changing direction to the newly pressed direction, but more importantly this should be consistent. Also, the way the sword sprite was positioned, and by extension its hitbox, felt awkward to me. It only covered a portion of the area in front of the ninja, so sometimes it would miss the things I was aiming for when I turned.

I really liked the concept of this game, but the execution was really lacking. I had trouble triggering whatever the condition was to progress to the next level, and on the second level it kept restarting without any feedback on why.

Not bad, but I have some feedback to improve the game feel. The game needs a better way to start. It's jarring to boot up the executable and immediately be in the action and loosing health and some kind of pausing during the upgrade select. Also, more feedback on damaging the snakes and knowing when they are defeated, for as far as I could tell, I wasn't doing anything. Another thing that was a mystery was progress to the next level, something to indicate that progress like an experience bar or a counter for how much experience was left.

I think at it's core, this game is great! But the execution is lacking. The seasons mechanic is a fun way to make the platformer interesting. However there are the thorny hazards that are hard to notice, and running into one makes you start all over. Also it took me quite awhile to realize I was dying instead of the game bugging out, something to indicate death other than a respawn would be nice. Also, actually changing the seasons is clunky with having to press the sleeping button again, I would have liked just clicking the season to wake up.

I think the game shined when it wasn't tricking you, like the floor the drops you into space. But I liked the idea of the levers doing different things and having to figure out how to use the effects in order to get out. Overall, I liked it though.

It was fun. Controls were too slippery for my liking. I had problems with enemy hitboxes being immediately active when they spawn or you enter a room. It was too easy to just suddenly died when entering a room, then in the dungeon a random spawn could suddenly kill you, then when you get back from the dungeon, you are placed on top of an enemy and die again. Also, it takes a second after shooting an enemy before they are gone. If you were planning on a death animation, you probably should have had them disappear faster until that was added or had some placeholder animation.

Great take on the theme! I thought the controls were too loose. Also, it would be nice if there was some sort of tracker letting us know our progress or how much further we have to go because I have no idea if I was almost there in my tries, or still a good ways away.

It was a fun little puzzle game. Maybe it was because I was tired, but I thought it would be nicer if there was a better way to track which traces connected with each other when they went to the other side of the board. 

The twist for the game jam theme was unfortunately hard to see in the tutorial level alone. I had a huge bug preventing me from exporting a build with a complete level in it (with working level transitions too). With it fixed, the mods let me reupload and now a better version is available!

Thanks! I got the export problem fixed and the mods let me reupload the more complete version of the game. Give it a try if you'd like.

Hello! I'm a developer looking to join a team that plans on using C#. Please let me know if your team is looking for another developer, or if you are also trying to find a team using C#.

Great! Has some really nice polish with things like the impact of hitting enemies and getting hit and the visual feedback of hitting things. Great inspiration for me as a beginner who did something similar!

Thanks! I was definitely wanting to do something like that, but didn't have enough time. Something that would increase difficulty as time went on, and make the enemies more visually diverse, would definitely make things better!

Thanks! I was hoping to have more cat focused art like a pilot cat for the main menu screen, but alas I'm not much of an artist. If I had more time, I might have included something like a quick scene of a simple cat sprite getting into the plane and taking off.