itch.io

More like Holy Balor lets you pass, for now. 

Ah ha ha thanks man, someone posted 11million on the ratings, you can't let them beat you xD

IT was fun to make, thank you for playing xD

Thank you, last minute idea implemented very roughly xD

Thanks for playing xD 

Interesting level design, some of the jumps felt a little tight but I managed to get to the end,  I was playing without sound so the rooms where you stand on the switch for some time to open the next room through me off for a while thought it was a bug til i realised I could just stand still, but none the less a geat attempt :)

Fun little game, something thereapeutic about just clearing out the blocks as you play, like an inverse of Ink. Took me a while to realise about the dash but aside from that, a fun cool game. 

Game wouldn't play on the browser, just got stuck on the play button screen :(

Thanks for playing, somehow this makes algebra fun 😁 

We affectionately call him Jim SepticEye, no relation to Jack apparently.

Thanks for playing and the feedback, yeah we need to work out that scaling but seeing the big numbers during playtesting just tickled something right in our brains xD

All praise to someonesly and waifugames_ black magic shader code, they really knocked it out of the park, thanks for playing 😄

Thanks so much xD someonesly is seriously talented all the praise goes to them xD

Haha glad you enjoyed it and thanks for playing was definitely a sprinted marathon with something nice to come out at the end for once xD

Thanks for playing, finally gotten enough rest to go through the comments. Game loop was a last second adjustment based on blind feedback and someonesly really knocked it out of the park with this one and the art 😅

Thanks for playing, was a blast to make and even loved writing out how our journey went as well. @someonesly did an amazing job on the art 🥰

Ah ha we were nearly going to go full on the nose but decided would only go as far as made sense for the game 😂

yeah,  thought to share while its fresh and before I forget the details, always loved reading these early in my career so thought it as good a time as any to share my own 😊

thanks for reading, yeah definitely a few lessons learned (especially about importance of genre and player on-boarding)

Definitely stuff we can address post jam but for now we are enjoying our rest 😀 

Hey guys,

Well it's been at least one very good nights sleep since the jam (I missed my alarm for work the first morning so I don't count that).

So I thought may as well go over what went right, what went wrong, and how I think we can improve the next one in regards to https://itch.io/jam/jamsepticeye/rate/3933330

The GOATS

First of all, major shout out to someonesly for their art, absolutely nailed the imagery beyond anything we've managed to do in any jams previously. And double that shout out to Waifu Games for complimenting the art with some shader gpu black magic, I honestly was afraid to touch any of their code it was beyond anything I could have ever come up with myself xD

And lastly a shout out to my boy James Mc adding in all that juice and tonal settings really upping the feel and tone of the game. These guys nailed their roles exceptionally, never had a Jam go so smooth then crumbling only to be saved again.

So how was our journey?

What went right?

First of all, I truly believe the first evening where we got everyone discussing the theme helped slow us down enough to not run in guns blazing. 

We broke down every idea we had, thought hard about the genre (more on this later), and went with what at the time seemed like a simple 1 screen game about min maxing your resources against the needs of the deity.
This gave us room to experiment and come up with ideas but more importantly, get something made quickly that we could test and check if the feel was right.

By the end of day 2, we implemented everything we thought we wanted from the original idea to find some of it just didn't feel right, we bounced between ideas before just implementing the god hand mechanic and checking how that felt and it really changed our view on the game but we were left with a crushing dilemma, how do we balance a resource management game with so little time?

The solution didn't come right away, we countered each others points checked values, ran spreadsheets, then it hit us (sort of). We use the deity as a discard bin. We began to look at the game more of as a game of black jack where your hand moves and you can only see 1 card face at a time, with a time limit to dispose of the rest. It worked.

We had our game loop, we had our systems, we had a game, all we needed to do was balance the cards coming out xD 

So... what went wrong?

To paraphrase someonesly, "I guess when working on a game jam game, you have to give time to also figuring out how to teach the player how to play huh?". 

We had failed to get our rules across early to the player without having to explain it. Luckily we had two playtesters play it blind. 

Watching them struggle to understand the rules made us panic. We had 4 hours to submit, we were sleep deprived, but we didn't wanna throw in the towel just yet. 

Disagreements ensued about how to solve all the problems. Then, we came to the simplest conclusion. What if instead of getting rid of excess, we shifted the UI to be what the deity wants. Inverse the rules. 3 hours to go, that's exactly what we done. Working through the sleep deprivation, ignoring the invisible shadows in our peripheral vision we scrambled to get the code changed to meet this new design goal. 

We hit it, the game felt smoother and more arcade like though there was a snag. We hadn't tested on WebGL since day two's first loop. 

We made the build, it played for 5 seconds annnnd crash.... 43 minutes to go, we were running out of hope, time and energy, then a lifeline. An hour has been added to the Submission timeline. We got our second wind. 

We raced as fast as possible to fix up the game and submit. We were done, battered and bruised with a little bit of tweaking and hallucinations to boot, but we done it, we submitted: https://itch.io/jam/jamsepticeye/rate/3933330

What can we do differently?

So,  if we had to do it differently, what would I suggest we do?

1. Consider our genre a little more for better and quicker feedback loops (we went from RTS to puzzle math by day 2/3)
2. Get more play testers earlier (to make sure the loop is easily understood)
3. Don't start with an RTS for a game jam (see point 1)
4. Make those builds earler (we almost didn't get to submit in time)
5. Improve communication (we ended up doing some double work at times)
6. Focus more on juice (we left it to the end and before playtesting the 2nd to last version)

So yeah it's been a wild ride, and I've after making 2 more friends out of this experience and if you've enjoyed my little rant checkout our game https://itch.io/jam/jamsepticeye/rate/3933330

So... how was your game jam experience? Similar? Smooth sailing? A complete disaster? Let us know in the comments :) 

Neat little gaem jam game, voice acting is a nice touch and the idea of looping over and over again with weird stuff defintely has some legs to it. Would love to see it fleshed out.

Fun little idea, and the art pops!!! Combat was a little simplistic but its a game jam so can't be faulted , I'm excited to see where you take it.

Had fun with this one, not too much my cup of tea as it reminds me too much of work but it was fun to yeet all the sould into hell cause god knows I can't do that in my real job. xD

Awesome game especially for your first game jam, was fun to just move and shoot, those eyeballs and weird looking enemies amalgamated into a surreal horror monster twisting and rolling. Only nit pick i had was having to click the right mouse to reset my turn but aside from a good fun enjoyable experience :)

Not bad for a couple hours. 100% of people chose to leave when I played, so I wanted to shoot the guy but the persistent saving is a nice touch.

Defintiely different, but in a good way. I liked the idea of using mental crunch to ward of the demons, very out there. I got a weird bug though at some point when I went to crunch but also died on the same frame, was no biggie could still play the game but the music was then inversed for the rest of the game.

PRetty fun twist on the theme, it' s kind of similar to a I'm actually working on, glad to see the positive negative space mechanincs alive and well xD 

I wasn't able to run the game on web, just getting a black screen also

This game really flips the theme on its head and in a beautiful way to cultivate a garden and you're tree. Very nicely done. I felt the spawn rates were a little too much but other than that, very nice

Would love to get feedback too if at all possible: https://itch.io/jam/jamsepticeye/rate/3933330 best of luck xD

Sounds cool, I love playing others games too see what they done xD

Sacrifyes (Jamseptic Game): https://octopuspunch.itch.io/sacrifeyes  

Hey Sleepy.exee

We'd love you to review our games. Hit us up anytime :)

Sacrifyes (Jamseptic Game): https://octopuspunch.itch.io/sacrifeyes  

Coco's Revenge (Full time game): https://octopuspunch.itch.io/cocos-revenge 

Regards,

Paul

Hey Jambuckett,

I'm definitely open to the networking side, feel free to DM us and connect on LinkedIn at any stage, we'll be at BCN Games Fest too if you're around demoing Coco's Revenge.

In the meantime we've also made Sacrifeyes for the jam, would love to hear your thoughts.

Sacrifyes: https://octopuspunch.itch.io/sacrifeyes  
Coco's Revenge: https://octopuspunch.itch.io/cocos-revenge 

Regards,

Paul

Wow thanks, sounds cool.

We made a game for this Jam here: https://octopuspunch.itch.io/sacrifeyes

But we're also heading to Barcelona Games Fest with our pet project in the next few days to get some feedback would love to hear your thoughts on it: https://octopuspunch.itch.io/cocos-revenge

Paul