itch.io

Really interesting top down shooter!

The enemy animations in particular are very good (along with the rest of the art of course)!

10 / 10 writing.

One slight plot hole though, how did they get the key up there and then lock the knight in?

In all seriousness, despite being short, the game's actually pretty impressive. I thought the models were particularly well made, and would love to play a longer game in this style with this kind of humour.

Thanks for playing!

There's actually a button to turn off the crt filter in the options menu.

Really great game.

The story is wonderful (and moderately dystopian), more than enough to keep me hooked until I got the good ending. The art style is incredible, and there's so many details that it's insane to think this was made by one person.

The only criticism I have is that the jump felt a little floaty, but I got used to it faster than I expected.

Incredible work.

That makes sense. It wasn't really a big issue though since the cpu is so perfectly balanced between being genuinely competent and being fair to the player. I have no idea how you pulled that off.

Looking forward to future updates (if you decide to continue, no pressure of course)!

I might actually be a little mad if this doesn't win the jam lol.

Neat idea, great work completing this!

The visuals are pretty nice (I'm not a huge fan of mixed pixel sizes, but that's more of a personal preference than a criticism), the colour palette works great, and the lighting & environment are nice details.

The core concept is an interesting idea, but I kinda wish it didn't take me out of the game entirely. From my perspective as a player, I'm here to play the game first and get a highscore second, so I'm always going to choose the option that lets me play the game longer. Maybe the player could scale abilities with their points, so they move faster, have higher health, or do more damage, but every so often they get a chance to bank some points but have to risk playing in a weaker state. You could even add roguelike elements and have players gamble points for unique power ups and items. This combines both the desire to play the game and desire to get a highscore, and gives the player meaningful choices without a clear answer. Of course you don't have to do it this way, but some system to keep the player engaged for longer and give points more meaning would go a long way.

This is incredible just as a game, removed from the context of a jam.

The fact that it was made in a week is mindblowing.

My only criticism is that the egg spawning seemed like it could occasionally be a bit unfair, to the point where an entire game can be decided by where the second round of eggs spawn in a worst case scenario (which unfortunately happened to me).

Also a two player mode would be really nice, though it's understandable that would be out of the scope of a game jam.

Fun mechanic for a platformer!

The explosion took a while to get used to, but for a physics based jump it's surprisingly consistent and feels great to use.

I feel like the level design got a bit too hard too fast though. I wasn't able to make it that far into the game since I couldn't figure out the jump at the pizzas and failing there was really punishing.

Otherwise, great entry!

I had to do a double take when I saw the number of people who worked on this.

That must have been a nightmare to coordinate, the largest team I've ever been in was 4 people and that was hard enough, 12 times that is unreal. So good job on getting a finished game submitted to the jam.

Gameplay wise, the environment was fun to explore and looked really nice, but a better camera and character controller would have made for a much smoother experience.

Also, and this may conflict with your vision for the game, but I'm not sure how I feel about using a time limit in a game about exploration. It would have been nice to get a proper chance to see the entire game, and maybe have some kind of threat introduced another way. The simplest thing I can think of is to have the dog's owner(s) try to catch them, then the game essentially becomes like a 3D Pac-man which is already a proven formula which can be built off of in any direction you want.

That's not really a criticism though, just a difference in preference/opinion.

Overall, great work!

Really nice art style and great game!

The combat mechanics are very fun, and I could see myself playing a longer game like this.

It would have been nice to see more background changes to align with the descriptions of each area, but it's understandable that it wasn't done due to the time constraint.

It seems like you have an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how the game works.

Very well made game!

It's a bit on the challenging side, but mechanically this is very solid. I really liked the trade-off system for upgrades, it's a great way to incorporate the theme!

Neat incremental game. The pixel art is really nice.

I think my only (very minor) issue with this is that it felt like it took a bit too long to complete, especially for a jam game. If I had to guess, the intention was to get players to use all the perks, but imo it might have been slightly better to balance the game with the idea that most players may only want to pick a few of the perks before completing the game.

Again, it's very small issue, especially since this is an incremental game so I was able to leave it in the background for a bit.

Overall very nice game, great work!

Here's a few fun ones. They're all under 20 ratings at the time of writing this.

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851694

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3846237

https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851320

Really well made game! You absolutely nailed the vibe.

I had no idea that scrolling websites could leave me on the edge of my seat.

The only thing I want to point out is that there has to be a better application of the risk mechanic. What you have right now is way outside the box (which is great), but it didn't seem to influence the gameplay enough. I really like the idea, I'm just convinced there's a better way to use it. Game's still great though.

Also where on Earth did you find that conspiracy 'article'?

There's a lot of games here that seem to be struggling to hit the 20 ratings requirement. Here's some of the ones I've found. Feel free to post games you've found with less than 20 ratings (or your own if it counts). Though I probably won't be super active on this thread.

Platformer with pretty good pixel art: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3848692

Unique take on racing / car-based games (arguably a 1D game, somehow): https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851552

Really fun platformer with very unique controls: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3846237

A nice hide-and-seek game: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3848931

I don't know how to describe this one, other than that it's really good: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851694

Detective game with insane art quality: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3849585

Chaotic first person shooter: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3852070

I also don't know how to describe this one, but again it's quite good. Visually it reminds me of Pizza Tower: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851320

Fun game set in a factory, uses some interesting perspective tricks: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851246

Time-trail based driving/racing game - has a lot of levels: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851253

Dev's first game, a platformer with pretty solid movement: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3851336

Untitled Goose Game + stealth: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3850042

I don't know what this is. You should play it though: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3837144

Fun heist game with a solid amount of content: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-14/rate/3847215

Really well made game, there's an astonishing amount here given the time constraint.

The visuals are very solid, the only thing I'm not sure about is the skybox. I know it was an external asset, but imo it doesn't fit very well with the game's style.

The base driving controls felt great, I kinda wish there were a few more good opportunities to drift, but that may also just be me being bad at the game.

Overall, great work and very impressive game!

Saw in the description that you only started working on this past the half-way point, and this is an insane amount of work for the time you had. Great job!

People put gravy on biscuits!?

Really well made game, the resource management aspect with health/ammo was nice.

A few aspects feel a little difficult, specifically getting hit by the salt shaker does an alarming amount of damage, but then again I also beat the game in one attempt so overall the balance isn't that far off.

Great work!

Fun fps (honestly kinda crazy you made a full fps in a week)!

The cookie attack animation is great.

I kinda wish there was a reticle so I knew exactly where I was aiming. Even just a dot at the centre of the screen.

Really interesting risk reward mechanic, great work!

Healing felt a little op at times though, I feel like maybe it should heal a fixed amount or percentage of your total health.

Fair enough.

A more animated health bar for the player was on the to do list, I just never got the chance to make it. And the current health bar's background is the same grey as the rest of the HUD, so the first few hits can be hard to see. I need to add better hit-feedback anyways if I keep working on this, so that could be part of those changes.

I'm not actually sure how I feel about displaying enemy health. I feel like it can clutter the screen a little too much, especially in fast-paced games where there's already a lot going on. Maybe I can have enemy stats/health appear somewhere around the reticle when you're aiming at them, since the player's probably looking at it anyway. I'm not sure if that would fully solve the problem though, especially since you're now the second person to mention that the reticles can be confusing.

Edit: I could also only display health on damaged enemies. I'm sure there's something that'll work.

Thanks so much for the feedback!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

You do take damage from hitting cars, though not a lot. If I remember the game's stats right, getting hit takes about 3% of your base health. It's not much but you can easily get hit by a ton of cars, especially in the last level, so it adds up pretty fast. I also have a bad habit of making jam games too hard, so this time I made a deliberate effort to keep things relatively easy (I may have over corrected though).

I'm not sure what you're asking about in your second point. Do you mean that police car health should be increased, or displayed? Thanks.

Wait, now I'm not sure if you're talking about the second smaller reticle between the main reticle and the player, or the texture that appears around the main reticle when you're aiming at something. If it's the latter, then yes. There's not much feedback when you shoot something (until it explodes at least), so I added the crosshair texture so the player would know if they're actually hitting something. Sounds and particles would have been better, but also would have taken much longer to make.

I forgot about the dash when I first played this, but you're right that completely solved the issue. Thanks for pointing that out!

This is pretty fun!

The inclusion of the melee attack and how it's connected to your health does a great job at incentivizing risky behaviour.

The visuals are very clean, and the audio complements the game nicely.

Overall this is very well put together.

The only thing I'm not sure about are the enemies with the ring/wave attack that entirely surrounds them. I couldn't figure out how to defeat them without losing health (that might just be a skill issue on my part though).

The art is incredible!

I really like the idea behind this game, though imo each family member starts off a bit too defensive. I feel like there needs to be a reason for that, like maybe this isn't your first time making baseless accusations and you're already on everyone's nerves.

Still, it's very well done, great work!

Really interesting mechanic. Definitely got the cogs in my head turning.

Unfortunately there's not that many cogs up there so I only got to stage 10 (had to brute force a few of them too; I may not be able to think good, but I can definitely click things).

The visuals and atmosphere are pretty great.

I made it to the golden cookie! Along with a very Ship of Theseus'd General McCookie.

This has a really cool ability system, the flight ability you get early into the game perfectly demonstrates how much potential it has. I have to wonder what kind of game you could make with this system if there wasn't a 7 day time constraint.

A few minor issues I have are that the movement feels a little slow, and I would have preferred if the aiming was completely free of the direction the player was facing. In general though, this is pretty good.

This feels like a Monty Python recreation of the moon landing, but in a fever dream. It's amazing.

Really nice pixel art here.

The platforming mechanics are pretty good, but the game is also rather unforgiving. Hard games are fine, but having a checkpoint system would be really nice.

This is pretty good! Having a fully voice acted intro cutscene is awesome!

The gameplay and visual style were pretty good too.

The game's visual style is great, I really like the colour palette.

The platforming was solid, although at first the gravity felt a bit too strong. I got used to it, and it wasn't really much of an issue, but it still felt kinda off for those first few minutes.

The only thing I'm not certain about are the number locks. I didn't have an issue with them, but they don't seem particularly fair.

This is great work for your first game! The controls actually felt pretty solid, which can be a challenge when making platformers, so nice work there.

It's like golf, except the balls keep needing to be replaced because they're always returned with suspiciously mouth shaped dents in them.

This is very well polished and a really great take on the theme!

The visuals look incredible and the sound design complements the game really well.

The only criticism I have is that some aspects felt a bit slow to get through (like the level results screen), and that having to restart completely when one biscuit doesn't make it felt a tad too punishing (which was made worse by the aforementioned slow aspects of the game). A way to skip through some of the repeated animations would mostly, if not entirely, solve this issue.

Quite possibly the most painstakingly elaborate Rick Roll I have ever seen.

Well played.

Unbelievable that you made all of the assets (or at least everything but the racoon). It really paid off too, since the game looks great (*with one caveat). The gameplay is pretty fun, I like how the racoon moves, the jump felt snappy and responsive.

There are just two things that are bugging me a little. The first is that I'm not a fan of the fish-eye lens, the effect felt way too strong in some areas. The other issue was the low mouse sensitivity. Both of these things are very much personal preferences, but they could also both be addressed with a couple of sliders in an options menu (though I understand why you didn't have time for that).

Otherwise this is great, and its insane that you made this in under a week! Great work!

I tried doing screenshake for an older rail shooter of mine. The results were... nauseating lol. I might just do a spark effect or something to complement the red border, especially since I already have the camera moving with the gun. But you're right that more hit-feedback is definitely needed.

Sorry you found the crosshairs confusing. Was it just a matter of having the second smaller crosshair, or was there a more fundamental issue with aiming (something I've struggled with in past rail shooters)? I pretty much ripped it straight out of  took inspiration from starfox64 when making the crosshairs, and that game uses 2 without issue, so I (wrongfully I guess) didn't expect it to be an issue here.

Thanks for playing, and also for the feedback!

The visuals are amazing, they remind me so much of Pizza Tower!

The gameplay is pretty fun too, the only issue I had with it that the difficulty escalated a bit too quickly (but that's probably just a skill issue on my part).

Most of the audio seemed to have stopped working part way through the game, which is unfortunate since it was really good until that point.

Also Smear is the best. Love that he calls you out for ignoring him.

Thanks for playing! Awesome to hear it's one of your favourites!

I'm not entirely sure what's causing the vertical stripes/bands since I didn't make the shader. I did notice that they seem to go away if you full screen the game though.

I'm going to start by saying that overall this is fantastic and my reasons are more or less the same as everyone else's. But there's a few things that are really bugging me about this game that I feel are worth mentioning.

First, some nitpicky stuff: The dialogue was pretty fun, but there definitely needed to be a key connected to the skip button so you don't need to hover the mouse over the button on the screen (especially since clicking it also shoots your gun, which is very detrimental to builds with low ammo). The game also felt a bit too grindy, especially at the end. In my opinion this is at its best when you're rapidly picking up new effects and seeing their immediate and drastic impact on your build, but past room 30 or so that doesn't happen nearly as much and the game starts to feel way too repetitive. It took me 2 tries to get to room 50, the first time I died near the beginning so I was fine with starting over, but in my second attempt at around room 40 I was absolutely dreading the thought of dying and having to redo the whole thing. I don't think I would have stuck with the game if I died around there. Also a way to pause would have been massively appreciated, and some sort of indicator for the gun jamming would be nice.

My main gripe is actually with the art, which is honestly surprising to me. The game starts off really strong, the intro and main menu look incredible. Better than a lot of AAA block busters and indie classics, which is unhinged for a game jam entry. And in general, there's no single asset or sprite in the game that looks bad, you're all clearly very talented artists and it shows. But there's not really any consistency in the game's art, and that really bothered me (probably more than it should have). The opening and menu are incredible, almost bordering on overstimulating (without quite reaching it, again the menu is insane, no criticism there), but then the game drops you into a rather dull tutorial room with a minimally textured floor and completely untextured walls, and that's the theme (with some slight colour variation) for the entire rest of the game. That's probably the most striking example of what I'm talking about, but there's a few more irregularities I spotted. None of the obstacles seem to have matching styles, and there's even competing perspectives. And none of the styles of the obstacles match the style of the player and enemies (maybe that was deliberate?). I also found it kinda odd the projectiles were just circles, but that's getting unreasonably nitpicky. There's also some issues with layering, the obstacles don't seem to be y-sorted, and the same goes for some UI elements in the textbox. The game also has a few pretty great transition screens, but then there's only half a transition between rooms (it almost feels like you meant to have a fade-out transition when getting to a door but just forgot to include it).

I don't know what it was like developing this, but it looks like there might have been some misplaced priorities. If this was a 2-week jam then the voting period would just be a formality as this cruises to winning without any real competition, but as it stands all the polish feels very lopsided. Some parts of the game and especially the art are beyond incredible, but to me at least that made all the less polished stuff stick out more.

I still really liked the game of course, it kept me hooked until the end. The risk-reward mechanic is great, especially since sometimes you might want to risk taking a decent risky effect when you could take a positive one to avoid being locked into taking a potentially worse risk. So there was definitely a lot more thought required from the player than I expected at first which was great. I have exactly zero criticism of the audio and music, it's pretty incredible. And the dialogue and story was fun and more than I expected from any jam entry.

I really hope I haven't come off as too harsh, it's entirely possible that I don't know what I'm talking about and am in a tiny minority, but there's an incredible amount of potential here so I hope that my feedback can be useful in some way.

(Sorry about the wall of text)