itch.io

Okay I have some feedback.

Here's what I like:

- it's all very "juicy" and alive: lots of particles, screen shake, everything is animated (tweened).

- in principle, there's a clear tutorial that takes you through everything.

- the game play is fast.

Here's what I don't like:

- The downside of all that juice is that it's visually very "noisy": it's hard to understand what's going on.

- There's no time to learn what everything is or does: if you take it slow and look at the pickups or enemy behaviors, you're dead. The first wave is immediately all out. That's good for experienced players (with full skill trees), but probably there should be a slow training mode where enemies and abilities are introduced one by one. Possibly without gaining XP.

- For such a fast and short game, replaying is frustratingly slow: it's possible that you die after 2 seconds, but then you need to wait more than 5 seconds for the UI animation, to go back to the menu, and to restart (at least that's what it feels like - I didn't time it). There needs to be an immediate restart button - I don't care about my newly gained XP, unless I got very far.

- Some of the tutorial text is absolutely tiny! (When viewed on an average laptop screen.) The smallest fonts need to be at least twice as big, if not more.

REVIEW:

I just finished this game, playing together with my brother, and we had a blast. (Surprise twist: we're both in our forties.)

I think all the levels can be finished when playing alone, but with two players it's easier. Or is it? If you're not communicating and following a plan, you're sabotaging each other just as much as helping, and that's hilarious.

Anyway, there are eight worlds with ten levels each, and a lot of different puzzle mechanics that are introduced and explored nicely throughout these worlds. It's an entertaining puzzle action game, with a lot of variation.

Some small constructive criticisms: there are some difficulty spikes: levels that might have you stuck for a long time, without a way to continue to the next world, so some perseverance is needed. The colors are extremely bright, saturated and mostly primary (like bright red, green, yellow, blue). In some levels this actually hurts the eyes, especially when playing on a good screen like a TV. I don't mind the cartoony, child-like look, but slightly more modest color schemes would have been nice. Finally, starting the game with two controllers is somehow a bit finicky, but we did manage every time.

I recently updated one of my browser games, Ostark & Didi, a puzzle platformer for one or two players:

https://paulsgames.itch.io/ostarkdidi

One of the recent additions was adding online leaderboards. According to those, only few people manage to get past the early levels, so now I'm wondering:

- is the difficulty curve too steep and are people bouncing off?

- or is the difficulty curve to gentle, and does it take too long before the game gets interesting? (Is "the hook" presented too late?)

- is there something else that's holding players back from enjoying the game? (controls? I don't know...)

So I would love to get some more feedback on this. If you play it, was something holding you back? Was some level too difficult? Or was it boring because new abilities were introduced too slowly? What were your (least) favorite levels?

Also, if you give useful feedback, and you have a browser game that you want feedback on (not NSFW, not horror), let me know - I'd be happy to return the favor.

https://paulsgames.itch.io/ostarkdidi

Here are more than 50 levels of puzzle / action fun. Give your brain a workout, and explore the deep game play created by the interaction between these original player ability and path finding systems.

This game is best with two players (and controllers), but can be played single player as well.

In this new major update, online leaderboards are added, and the graphics have been vastly improved! Can you reach the top of the leaderboard?

All comments and feedback are welcome!

Thanks for the detailed feedback, awesome! I recognize the things you point out. Indeed, the game is mainly designed for two players, only later I added single player mode. I also agree on the tile look. The game has come a long way from its game jam roots, but the tiles are still as they were made in the first weekend. That should be a priority.

Alright, here's one: https://paulsgames.itch.io/ostarkdidi

Questions:

1) Are there are levels that were too hard or frustrating?

2) How far did you get until you were bored?

3) What is the main thing you would you add to make it more attractive?

In 99% of the cases, yes. Just be happy and proud if your game is put into collections.

However you can use collections for anything, and I have seen people use it for instance to keep track of malware: https://itch.io/t/3512426/itch-is-not-a-safe-place-do-not-download-things

Then you can find that game page more easily next time, if you want to play it again (or if you want to check for updates, or give feedback).

You can also create public collections, to show your followers and possibly others what the good games here are (I have three such collections, you can find them on my creator page).

itch.io (most likely) also uses collections to determine the games that should be at the top of their recommendation lists, or on the front page, but the details behind their recommendation system are a secret (for a good reason).

https://paulsgames.itch.io/showtime

This is a short dexterity game, where you need to do tricks and create  combos to get the high score. 

Are you skilled enough to get your name on the online leader boards?

For me too (Firefox), but not in the download version. Both versions still have the "shop close" bug though.

Yay, I finally did it!

How? Mostly by learning when exactly The Bug occurs, and managing to avoid it until getting around 5000 points. This allowed me to build a "double spiral" fort, with an essential door in the middle, that you can use to fool all troops except wizards, to let them run endlessly back and forth. Also, placing some doors at key positions allows for "harvest runs", since colon collectors don't go fast enough to achieve crazy high scores.

In the end, when it dipped below 1 FPS, I decided to end it during a wizard wave, but I think I could have played forever with this strategy... This game is awesome, but the end game still needs to be fixed!

Thanks for the update! I noticed some changes, like the sound effects stopping in the later levels. That is probably a good idea indeed. Maybe keep the most important sounds, like wizards shooting and crowns dropping?

Unfortunately I still had some trouble: in the WebGL version, both times when I reached about Wave 25, it completely crashed now... I didn't see anything special in the browser console log (maybe I didn't look well enough? Also maybe it's my old laptop & browser - I use Firefox btw).

In the download version, the "shop close" bug happened again, each time when I got above Wave 50. The last time was in Wave 55, while quickly placing a whole battery of colons.

About the path finding: GPU path finding and the GIF are really cool, but is that really the bottleneck? If you have 1 player and 1000 enemies, you still need to run the path finding (or "flow map generation") algorithm only once, right?

Anyway, it's great to hear that you're still working on this! I'll be following for further updates.

I liked the challenge of hitting the fast moving bats. Sometimes it takes a long time before the next wave starts. What do the mutation options mean?

This is cool; well done on all aspects! I only played it twice, but it does seem that this game play system really allows for some depth and strategy...

This is a nice polished game. Great art style! The game play works well, but is a bit slow for my taste (unless you grab a speed powerup), and it's too easy - it almost seems like you can play forever, though after a few minutes some real enemies appear. I would also add that enemies drop powerups (or mutation / XP points), maybe even powerups that disappear after a while, which makes the movement and positioning more interesting. Anyway, that's nitpicking - it's still among the top games of this jam!

Wow, I love this! Simple but interesting game play, a funny interactive tutorial, and polished graphics and sound design. I can't believe it took me so long to play it, but better late than never. My only minor criticism is that sometimes there's nothing to hide in your color, so you cannot help getting hit. But overall this is a very fun game with an original take on the theme, well done!

Hm interesting concept, but it has some accessibility issues... The instruction text at the start flies by at an insane speed which makes it hard to understand (even though I'm definitely not dyslexic!). Once I figured out the mechanics (match the color), and figured out the keys, I still kept dying quickly and seemingly randomly, without clear feedback why... Did I miss something? Also, where's the score aspect?

This is cool! I like the way it looks and sounds, and the level layout. It would be cool if there were more enemies with different movement behaviors.

I got a high score of 564 (somehow?), and then it broke the game... :confused:

Wow this is a juicy, polished game. With a complete tutorial even! Fun, fast game play and interesting combo systems.

That's the spirit!

That's right, there's very little Mutation going on (though I jokingly point to the king's face...). It does however implement the Momentum theme, which was announced as the theme for a short time at the start of the jam. (See also the announcements on the ScoreSpace Discord.)

Yeah that's how it goes. The life of a jester... (There are other endings however!)

Showtime!

This is fun! The skeleton model looks great, and I love the soundtrack too. The gameplay is fun. Two small things: on my old laptop, the framerate is pretty low (somehow). And since I'm clicking my mouse all the time, sometimes I accidentally select a mutation as soon as it pops up. Anyway, this deserves more ratings now!

Looks great, and I love the idea! The controls take some getting used to though, even with gamepad... But nice work!

Wow, this is well made! There are even cut scenes, and an interesting story. The controls and level layout work well for this genre, but I'm personally not a huge fan of Jump King / Getting Over It - like rage games, so I gave up before reaching the top. But this is nevertheless the best game I played so far!

It says that the .pck file is missing, so unfortunately it cannot be played... That's too bad because it looks great from the screenshots!

Thanks! Unfortunately in the last update (before the jam upload freeze) I added a bug that messes up the sounds sometime... Oh well - I also fixed other bugs.

Hm this is still kinda confusing, but I started to get it... I made it to urban legend! Nice audio, and bloom is always nice. :-)

Awesome, that's great to hear! I managed to get into the leaderboards, but it's hard when you cannot build anymore, and when the framerate dips below 1 FPS... (I think one of the reasons the framerate tanks might be because you'll have 2000+ souls flying around you that you cannot spend anymore.) I'll be awaiting the update!

(By the way, are you rewriting it for DOTS / ECS? This seems the type of game for it.)

I also have some suggestions regarding game design (you can take it or leave it): around wave 50 (40-60), you'll be able to build an impenetrable end game fortress. Although wizards and queens are still a bit dangerous, the only real reason to lose at that point is if the game crashes (frame rate / no building possible). I think it would be great to introduce one or two more end game enemies at that point, to shake things up again. For instance one that can blow up your towers(!), or one that can fly over everything. Just to guarantee that the game will end at some point...

Also, with these very busy waves, it would be good to indicate what it was that killed you (which type of enemy).

Anyway, great to hear that you're still working on this game! I think it can become a real hit, especially if you add some ways to get more variety (different maps or waves?) or meta progression (ability unlocks?).

I love this, I can't stop playing! However many of my games end with suddenly not being able to place or upgrade anything anymore (only crowns can still be placed). That's an annoying game breaking bug... Is there any fix for that planned?

I noticed that for some board games, simple Monte Carlo Tree Search is surprisingly powerful. Very shortly (and badly) summarized: just simulate a lot of randomly played games starting from the current position, and pick the move that led to the highest percentage of wins.

Depending on how the game logic is implemented (with clear model/view separation), programming such an AI might be doable, though it works best for finite games, and your game definitely looks more complex than the simple games I tried it for.

Also, doing such a brute force approach might take a lot of CPU power, so doing it server side may become expensive. Anyway, it's just an idea that you might find useful...

Yes, it's absolutely true that it's hard to get any interest. I think I've made a few fun games, but they're all spectacular failures in terms of promotion and getting attention. If you're not constantly promoting, the plays dry up - I think that only a tiny fraction of all games on itch.io get natural, sustained attention (from word of mouth, being featured on the front page or being on top of the "most popular" search lists). Even if people play your game, there's only a small fraction of them that will leave a comment, rating or review...

If you have fancy graphics or a unique, catchy gimmick as main selling point, you might have a chance with your promotion efforts, but if your main selling point is deep and interesting gameplay... well good luck with that.

What's worse: you made a multiplayer-only game. That's just not feasible as an indie. Make sure your game can at least be tried in single player mode, for instance by adding AI (it doesn't matter whether it's truly smart).

All my games here except one are multiplayer (local or online), but I've been trying to make sure they're (nearly) all playable in single player mode, even if that's a lot less fun: either by adding AI opponents (competitive games), or by allowing players to control multiple characters (coop games). For the online multiplayer games, I have no illusions; I'm not even hosting a server. If you want to play them, you need to run your own server. I mainly made those games to play with my friends during lockdown. :-)

That said, your game looks quite interesting. I just haven't been able to play it yet (because of the multiplayer). Make sure to market this to board game fans, like the people who play on www.yucata.de or en.boardgamearena.com  - that's quite a different audience than typical video game players, especially here on itch.io (it seems horror, visual novel and simple arcade games dominate here).

Where to Root

REVIEW:

This is a fun little game! I love the rhymes and cute art style. A lot of different challenges are built around the different monster types.

The isometric controls are a bit unusual, but you get used to it quickly enough. Some of the later levels are hard to beat for me, but it's good that the game stays challenging.

Some criticism: the UI design still requires some attention (fonts, placement and layout - although it's good that everything is animated), and the music sounds a bit "General MIDI"-like. However neither of those things detract from the fun game play, so it's all good.

I got it in a bundle, but this is definitely worth the price if you like cute, wholesome, old-fashioned arcade-like challenges.

This one, for sure: https://devolverdigital.itch.io/pikuniku

It had me smiling and laughing all the way through - dialog, animations, story, sounds, ... everything about it is funny.

Here's a cute colorful puzzle game that seems suitable for children (it's not about numbers, but I guess it trains logical thinking): https://programancer.itch.io/dumpy

Here's another cool puzzle game, probably better for teaching math skills, but less aimed at children: https://danijmn.itch.io/cardinalchains

Interesting, I never noticed it, but it seems you're right. I looked at the local storage for the itch.io address (https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/), and there seem to be entries for a lot of different games (including three of my own). This might explain some storage-related bugs that people are reporting. I notice one key (not from my own game) is just "gameJSON" - that might easily cause some clashes!

I guess the conclusion for now for developers is to use better keys, like gamename.valuename instead of just valuename, and to keep the size of the data in mind.

By the way if you want to test: I have three WebGL games that use localStorage: Ostark & Didi, Robo Repair and Trading with Werewolves - just click on my profile to find them. (They only add very little data to the local storage, so don't worry about the 5MB limit.)

EDIT: this does open up some fascinating possibilities for cross-game progress: for instance, if you unlock the FIREBALL in Vampire Survivors, you get it in my game too... :-D

EDIT2: ...or if you're up for using some very questionable marketing strategies: "play my game - as a bonus you unlock all characters in Vampire Survivors!" Hm...