itch.io

I am afraid its peak

No breaking was part of the design and also social commentary as delivery drivers basically dont have time to stop as they are already late for their next delivery due to tightly packed delivery schedule. Ghost drivers sometimes collide with each other or hit obstacles due to inaccuracies that are beyond our control. Also once you finish your tour, all vehicles get blown up. So you might have had one of those 2 things happen to you.

Thanks!

As promised, ill had a look at your game.

When I opened the game these things came to my mind. I would have liked if the game did start with a very very low volume instead of the full blown volume music. Chiptune music is quite hard on your ears at that volume, so I would have liked to change that. The volume slider could have also been in the main menu instead to directly tweak it, it could be in all menus if you still want it in the level select. It was weird that the music didnt loop, so while writing this, I could not know what the correct volume for me is. The choice for soundeffects is good, they fit the rest of the game and aesthetic of the game. The sprites also work out pretty well.

For the tutorial, sequencing the individual steps would work better. I was overwhelmed with the amount of information that I was presented with. Also the white text blends in with the Health text underneath it.

The first time I played it was not clear where the game starts so I placed the towers at the wrong spot (the end instead of the beginning). The programming aspects of towers also was not explained at all to me so the first time I had just towers shooting at nothing.

Quite frankly, I had not fun playing the game. It was very tedious arranging turrets, it felt more confusing and frustrating than it felt fun. I am also a programmer, so I have background knowledge. Anyone without basic coding knowledges will not understand the looping mechanic. I could not even beat the first level after 3 attempts, I gave up and ragequitted initially.

I feel like the gameplay loop needs refinement. If you want to stick to the programming loop, it needs to be much clearer what the individual actions do. I also think a more generalized programming for your round could be more interesting. For me the game felt like an unnecessarily complicated tower defense game, where the twist or spin didnt feel rewarding at all. It did not feel like I got something from being smart with my programming or tower placement. I had no agency. Tower positions were predefined by you, so I couldnt try out more creative solutions. When retrying this became very apparent as there was most certainly a dominant strategy, I couldnt find it yet tho. The tesla coil felt incredibly overpowered. I soloed stage 2 and stage 3 with it as you had enough HP to just ignore the fire spirits. Generally I could mostly ignore special enemies as the HP pool is so high. The auto turret felt very buggy, the aiming made no sense and it often perma missed unfortunately.

I feel like the player should be able to place turrets anywhere to give them more agency, to make it more interesting. Yes I am aware this is a gamejam game and its a very decent entry considering time, but that is what I think youre missing. Give the player more control over the game. Give them the possibility to influence the outcome more. I want to place turrets in dumb spots because i want to code this really stupid loop for my turrets. I appreciate handholding initially but afterwards I want to just do my mistakes.

Hope this feedback can help you.

Edit: I hope you can understand that the way I wrote is mostly because I am German. I still think its great that you pulled off such a game is such a short timespan. Its just the way we Germans are with feedback haha. Gl on your gamedev journey.

Thank you!

A couple of things came to my mind when I played the game. I like the artstyle and presentation you had going on in your title card. The art itself during the level was nice but a few things bothered me there. I read later that its supposed to be lava (which I am questioning in a lab environment like that) but it really looks out of place and does not blend well with the rest of your games style. Also the water droplet sometimes doesnt stand out that much, I think it would have been great if it had more visual clarity or an outline or a shader effect that helps the player identify its position. Against the test tubes in I think level 4 it entirely blends in and is barely noticable. 

Overall I think the player controller should have been a bit more fluid (get it, fluid as the player is a droplet) that would have been the icing on the cake. Also, a lot of foreground decorations are hindering the sight of the player, making levels such as level 2 or others way harder than they should be. 

The level design was also very mixed. Some levels were great, others were more of a miss. You have a very hard to control player controller and I dont think precision platforming was the right choice, it was really frustarting from time to time. I still managed to beat it but I didnt like all the levels. Especially the ones where you had to dodge the falling droplets, those were quite frustrating.

The music fitted very well, I just wished there was a volume slider and it would not restart the loop on death. That way you hear much more of the song and it does not break your immersion. Also, perhaps a few more soundeffects for juice could be great.

Thats a lot of ifs and whens but I hope this feedback can help you with your game and game making journey. Solid entry!

Edit: I just saw that its your first game. Congrats on the release of it! Hope this feedback does not deter you from gamedev, I just hope it can help you :>

The character controller felt very very stiff. I also did not understand the grappling mechanic properly. I thought I could swing it out at any point and if I hit a crystal, grapple myself up or swing. I think the character controller absolutely needs to be less heavy and stiff, the grapple would feel more natural if you have a limited range and only could grapple to the specific objects. If you have played Teeworlds, that is a really good example of a game that uses a grappling hook very well, perhaps you could use this as an inspiration, as well for the character controller. I think this is what holds it back the most. I struggled so much to get up the vertical section, it was really difficult to the point I died there multiple times.
I appreciated the handdrawn animation and the spritework, it was really cute but you gotta improve the gameplay feel. I assume you have not done many games yet, which is totally fine, but especially in gamejams, people mostly look at the gameplay first and foremost (sadly). If it doesnt click, its hard to reel them in and keep em playing the game. I hope this feedback can maybe help you out with improving things. Those are just my 2 cents and what came into my head when playing this game.

Also besides that you have a scam comment on your itch page, be careful about that.

We should have really fixed that sprite. Its actually not slippery at all but because we just have 8 directional sprites, the 360° turning looks like its slippery. We learned that lesson now for the next time.

That is interesting. We had in playtesting a lot of people who actually struggled, especially at later stages with the timer. We did not want to make it too difficult considering there are so many people with different skillsets out there. I tried to balance it in a way that its as accessible as possible. Funnily enough, some in person playtesters that I had managed to run down the timer entirely, so I was even worried that the timer might not be enough.

But overall, the ramp up is too slow. In hindsight, it should have been only 2 parcels initially, maybe 3 at later stages etc.

Well there is only so much we can do in the limited timeframe we had. I think it could have ramped up quicker in a way, probably 2 packages a round to be delivered or just one and then slowly scale it up. Tbh, we did not even think about anything more because making the game even work was stressful in the first place with so many little cogs in the machinery. But happy to hear that you had fun :D

Its an interesting small game. Reminds me a lot on Mech vs Minions (board game). It took me a while to understand that each loop buffs stack, so I barely scraped by. I know its just a jam game but I found it to be quite shallow as I could just stack armor up as it persisted. I personally am not too much of a fan of that, I think it should have been reset after each encounter.
I found the UI design to be a bit weird and confusing, but thats probably just me. I think instead of the circle arrow in the menu, an X would have been sufficiant, and for starting a round, the good old play button or something similar would have worked better.
I hope this feedback can help you make improvements to your games in the future.

I think i sounded perhaps a tad too negative in here, despite the points I mentioned, it was a fun experience. It felt monotonous at times because it was just encounter after encounter but thats a jam, hard to make the biggest games in that time. Congrats on finishing tho! And good luck with your future gamedev journey :>

Ah no worries. There are so many ifs and whens, its still a great game, especially for a jam. I looked at it with that in mind. The feedback is just overall my thoughts, hope it might help you improve your future games or to work out some kinks of this game if you wanna update it a bit after the jam.

Very cozy and nice game. The difficulty curve is way too high tho, I died unfortunately and restarting a run is a bit frustrating if you already invested a lot of time. I appreciate that the game has instantly a volume slider and that it does not blast my ears. Very good sfx design and overall the gameplay loop is quite simple but fun. What was not that intuitive is how I could deselect a crop again, I accidentially selected it and planted one crop at the very bottom of my tile in the early years which was quite annoying.

I wish there was some music next to the ambience. And with the tutorial I feel like time should not progress while you are reading. The first time i took my time and it well, literally cost me a lot of ingame time already. So I would freeze time there for sure.

Good game.

Makes me happy to hear it. I cant even get super high rounds, I just die to myself all the time haha. Thanks for playing it and im glad you had fun :D

Ah probably thats the case then. I mean im also just sharing my opinion. Those ideas absolutely would need to be playtested. To be fair, for a jam experience this is a certified banger. And I think the thematic tombstones are absolutely great but as you said, a HUD icon probably would make it a tad easier. I looked a bit through comments and I think a few missed how to "upgrade". Which is sad, it was a very funny and morbid system I loved. Im actually also unsure how to do player handholding there without being too much on the nose.

I mean we all start somewhere, you are on a good track! Making a game is hard, making it with 2 people is even harder, having such a short time limit is making it again much harder. With time you will have more experience, I am sure you will be able to pull off some amazing games :>

I dont even know that game, but that is cool to hear. Ill look into that. Curious, how far did you get with your deliveries?

I feel like the speed upgrade feels a tad weird. Speedup also means the incoming coconuts are also falling quicker, making it much harder to react to them. Might be also just placebo but just in case, I would not speed them up or rather just very minor. It made it a tad more frustrating. At the same time seagulls however became entirely irrelevant to the gameplay as I could just outclimb them. Last but not least, I was not sure how many souls I had and also the end goal was a bit unclear. I initially through it was an endless game until i well, reached the end of the game. Regardless of that I enjoyed it a lot. Very thematic, I appreciate the post processing and the sound design is on point. Very well put together jam game, congrats on it!

First of all, please add a volume slider. The music is freaking amazing but my ears hurt a tad because I could not control the volume haha. I think a different gameplay loop would have facilitated the idea much more. The concept of procedurally unlocking more layers of the music track is something amazing but I think the gameplay is just so flat as it is "just" a platformer. This seems to be your second entry in gamejams overall and I think you have incredible potential. If you find a way to highlight your strengths even more, you would make gem after gem after gem. I especially would have loved if the music directly affected the gameplay itself. In a platformer this is probably quite difficult, but perhaps if you use the same concept on a different game, you could do exactly that.
Also just in general, in case you have not, you should absolutely also release the soundtrack standalone. Its very outstanding.

Thanks for playing it regardless. I think the common agreement is that the way the sprites work currently for the player dont work out. We'll take that into consideration. Anything else you specifically liked or didnt like? Would love the most detailed feedback if you had the chance so we can improve in the future.

Haha, people are kinda torn on it, the general consensus is that people are confused by it. I kinda like it personally it kinda has this whacky feeling. Thanks for playing, hope you had fun.

Thank you very much.

The game is simple which I like. I would wish for a volume meter and probably a life system. I killed myself more than once by accident because I thought I would be out of the range. Either that or it just hurts you a lot (like 1/2 hp). Or another indicator showing where you are right now. Im unsure if I maybe died due to the windup of the animation tbh. Outside of that the gameloop is simple but very effective. I enjoyed it quite a lot. The text was a tad much to read at the very beginning, i know its a jam and time constraints are at play but a tutorial that explains everything step by step would have helped me not to feel super overwhelmed. Its not a lot to learn but all the text made me a bit anxious (this has nothing to do with your work, thats just how I react when I am overwhelmed due to a medical condition). Also perhaps turn the screenshake a bit down or have a slider to adjust it. That could accommodate it for more people. 

Also for the record: I beat it

Yeah, we were limited with our sprites a lot due to the perspective. I think the tank controls how they were are fine, however the visualization wasnt clear and readable, its feedback we heard often. But time constraints made it not possible to be fixed. We also got pretty used to it as devs. The delivery icons were also on our list, but again time was the limiting factor. Our main programmer also wanted to change the way they are displayed but time again....

Lots learned with this game. Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback.

I liked the aesthetic of the game quite a lot, reminds me a lot on older point and click adventure, great job. Please lower the base volume tho the next time, it was very loud and blasted my ears initially, its a good thing to lower the base volume and give the player directly the opportunity to change the volume. I think i honestly would have prefered more indept puzzles each room that last longer. I got softlocked in room 10, luckily you were able to reset, otherwise I would have stopped right there. Some puzzles also felt unintuitive and without help I would have not been able to solve those puzzles. I think going back in loops would have been neat, because I am honestly too exhausted currently after the jam to remember every detail in the room when going to the next loop😅. A few of the puzzles probably would have been easier to solve that way without requiring help from the phone but they would simply be solved through player attention (tho it would have been turned a lot into spot the difference). Im aware this is just a jam game but honestly, a few less rooms and "bigger" puzzles overall would have been nice. Also, the coin puzzle does not work well. Its a funny joke. But I think I would rather have it be a multistep point and click puzzle where you still get the punchline. For example you needing a stick or something like a vacuum cleaner and then when you empty the bag you get the 99999 coins. Perhaps getting it from another loop. Or a loop affecting another loop. Also if I am honest, I was hoping for a bigger payout at the end for the story(to be fair, this is unreasonable considering its a jam game). Overall very solid entry, nice what you guys made in such a short time. (I just realized checking who all worked on this, that you made it alone. Thats impressive. Well done!)

Haha now you made me wanna do a point and click adventure :D

Ahh gotcha. I mean its a jam game after all, you cant do everything especially in this short timeframe. Still very good what you guys cooked up.

Its funny because our artist also said this tileset was inspired by oldschool pokemon graphics. Out of curiousity, how many deliveries did you manage to do at the end? I personally cannot get over 43 deliveries, this is my personal record haha.

Unless I am blind, I could not find an option to adjust volume. The sound was a tad too loud for me. Good polish, i appreciate it a lot that you directly have a tutorial and a prompt to force the player to apply directly what they just read (hopefully at least). The sky racing was fun but the gravity felt so heavy. Whenever I went up, it was so difficult to accelerate. With upgrades it got better but if I am being honest, I am still not too sure how the collision boost or the arrow boost works exactly. The collision boost more often did not help me because the only collisions i had were with obstacles that pushed me back further (did not help that the momentum got also increased there haha). But the main gameloop felt not too bad. Reminded me a bit of Kirby Air Ride Top Ride mode. Which is a good thing. 

Visually it was incredibly pleasing, whoever made the art, well done. Fits well and especially the character animations are very cute. I already mentioned everything about audio that I wanted. Also its a clever trick to make people comment haha. I have to remember that for my own games that I publish on itch. Mine was 4:28

Der Jam war ein Vor Ort GameJam und die Teilnahme ist nur vor Ort möglich gewesen. Wir haben vor der Abgabe nocheinmal alle Teams überprüft vor Ort und du warst nicht dabei bzw. dein Spiel wurde nicht vor Ort bei den Organisatoren angekündigt. Wir haben sämtliche Eintrage entfernt für Spiele, die nicht vor Ort gemacht wurden.

Der 2. Absatz des GameJams sagt auch folgendes:

Wichtig: Dieser GameJam ist ein Vor-Ort GameJam. Eine Remote Teilnahme ist nicht möglich. Zusätzlich ist dieser GameJam nur anderen Studierenden aller Hochschulen zugänglich und eine Anmeldung ist zwingend notwendig. Für weitere organisatorische Informationen sprecht uns an oder schickt uns eine Nachricht auf dem Discord Server.

I think a major problem was the lack of a community platform. I assume that the in person jam had an entirely different feel. Online jams if they dont have an actual community place to really hang out makes you feel disconnected. I was lucky enough that I knew many people through attending local game dev meetups here in munich and other events, so I knew some names. I also am part of many game dev communities, so there was a sense of comradery. For the next jam I hope we actually get to make it an in person even with multiple locations instead or have an actual community hangout.

As promised, here is the feedback!

The hitboxes felt very big. I constantly got damaged and I am not sure where from. I attempted to beat the game 5 times but I have given up. I am unsure if there is a goal or if the game is endless.

If there is an end, I would suggest having a track completion meter (I hope that makes sense) to be included so the player can see how much more there is left. A better tutorial or explanation would be great, I am not sure when I lose my shockwave or my charge attack.

Also, to round up the UI changes, a healthbar, either visible or indirectly visible would be great (indirectly would be something like the player tank degrading over time but that adds a lot of extra work to create other models, I am not sure if a shader itself could be enough).

Last but not least, I think the pile of trash gaps need to be a bit bigger or the pile of trash needs to be smaller. I think if that would be the case, the overall speed of the game could also be increased. The projectiles from the drill never felt threatening (despite me getting hit multiple times without me knowing why. I assume my hitbox is way bigger than the model itself).

There is probably more but I cant think of anything right now. Hope this all can help you.

Feedback to the game aside, its still amazing that you put this all together in 48h. Its really tough and im impressed as you described in the other thread what your teams prior experience was like. You can all congratulate yourself. Making a game is hard. Making a game in 48h is a miracle to me.

Yeah, this was also the first time for me working in a short jam, my shortest jam prior to this was a 96 hour jam. How some people can do this more often is beyond me. It was so stressful and I am just so happy we finished our game. Congratulations as well on finish your game! Especially if that is your prior experience, this is impressive. Im currently on the move but once I do have a moment to breathe, ill check out you teams game and give you some feedback as well.

And YES! If you encountered a bug, I love to hear about it, especially if you can replicate it consistently. Helps all of us fixing it in the future.

I am sure they will be very grateful for that. Thanks for playing :>

Thank you very much for this post.

At least you gave it a shot. I would say its not the easiest or most intuitive game from the get go and getting used to the controls is a challenge in itself. Thank you a lot for trying it out. Im pretty sure our artist will be very happy to hear that you enjoyed the art a lot :>

So while I did a couple more games in the random queue this game popped up for me. A lot have already commented on this, ill add my 2 cents here I dont have a lot to add what hasn't been said already. Postjam I would suggest you to expand this a tad more, add some more variations and then perhaps a small tutorial. Also perhaps prompt the player with what to do, I blame me being a tad distracted but it took me longer than I'd like to admit to solve the clock puzzle. Ooops. I think with those small addition you have a very nice completed WarioWare experience that I think many more will have lots of fun to play with. Love what you put together in 48h. I love WarioWare a lot so this was a lot of fun to me.

Genuinely, thank you very much. It makes me happy knowing that you had a blast :D

We thought about different endgame goals and with the 48h time limit we decided a high score, arcade like experience would work the best. One though that came up was having stages more reminiscent of larger levels, but that wasn't feasible and realistic in that time frame. Appreciate the feedback, happy you gave it a shot :>

We tried to accommodate for everyone with the controls. And yeah, I love the sprites as well that our artist created for the waiter.

Im happy to hear that you had fun with it :>