Thank you so much Josep! I loved your game as well. It was super faithful. All your characters felt different and the real-time character switching was awesome. My only criticism would be on the difficulty, but in all honesty that was true to source as well.
Thank you much for the positive words. I loved your game as well- It was a masterclass in atmosphere and the character switching mechanic was really horror inducing. I hope you continue to work on it and add monsters, etc.
Thank you so much for playing. Sorry I didn't get around to answering all my comments right away.
I really loved your game and you're probably getting tired of hearing this, but it was the most faithful recreation by far in this jam (but overall a massive improvement on the source material). Really amazing work. I hope you get through because it would be criminal for someone who was so faithful to source to get eliminated.
I hope we don't get paired but if we do I hope you win or one of us gets a wildcard because I'd love to continue to compete against you in the next round.
Thank you so much p4. I couldn't agree more about that deadline being too short. But on the flip side if it wasn't for the time crunch and the competitive nature of the jam I don't think I would have gotten even remotely close to as much work done.
I figured out the score counting down bug. The score you posted is the correct one. The score counting down is caused by the time bonus value being able to be negative but my scrolly number counting visual effect does not support negative numbers, it just keeps counting down ad infinitum. But it's just a visual bug. It doesn't actually affect the calculations.
I agree with the crosshair! I have been trying to maintain as minimal as possible of a UI but I think a dynamic crosshair that appears when you hold the casting button would be a good compromise
Thank you so much Evengy. Your game has been one of my favorites overall in this jam so far. I really hope I don't get paired against you because whoever wins I will be sad :(
I love these ideas. I actually thought about the first 2 ideas like rogue being able to pick locks and wizard being able to burn things, but I didn't think about that last one. It's funny because getting an upgrade to pick up and move larger objects is a huge staple in some of my influences (I am a big Deus Ex and Prey 2017 fan)
I love how you added this game mode non-destructively to the game while preserving the existing game. That certainly must have added a level of challenge to your work this round. But it's good that your existing game made such a solid foundation- I can tell why this game is a community favorite and I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that you bring it home for a complete release on steam.
Now, for the criteria:
Was it fun? YES!
Did it include the core elements from the original? Absolutely! The only thing that was possibly missing was the ability to rescue my guys after they die but I might have missed that.
Was it polished? Damn straight!
Audio & Sound? The music was awesome and the audio was super responsive. I loved the SFX for the grubs, it sounds like the noises my youngest cat makes when she's hungry for kibble!
How well implemented was the UI? Honestly, there is a ton of UI here and it's all super deliberate and well-made, complete with animated transitions and everything. The only way I could see it improving is with a bit more sound and some hover effects on some of the elements (but that's super nit-picky)
Minor Criticism: I would have loved to see an option to switch between ortho and perspective camera while in the Gain Grub gamemode!
Damn the music slaps, and the art and the animation are beautiful as ever. The Gain Ground elements are also about as faithful as they could get, even the crazy level of difficulty is on-brand. I really enjoyed how many different characters there were and how their specials were all somehow unique. Honestly, if this game doesn't get into the top 3, I will riot. And if I get paired against you, I will be saying my prayers.
Awesome work. Sad there wasn't any audio to speak of, but the game was very fun. I enjoyed the unique interpretation of the Gain Ground. The art was really cute, but then again, I'm a sucker for simplicity in art. The game could have benefitted from a bit more polish but I'll give you pass because 15 hours is really not a long time to make a game like this.
Kudos, great work, I hope to see you again in round 4!
I love the music and the art and SFX. Some of the powers didn't completely make sense or work the way I thought they would and I do lament the lack of a way to deal direct damage to the enemies, but I loved the different characters and the level design was very peak- Lots of risk vs reward and opportunities for player choice.
Overall I think it could have benefitted from a bit more time, but- Deadlines gonna deadline, trust me, I get it. I hope to see you again in Round 4, great work!
I would love to add more swiss cheese / hitman / dishonored style level design. I was unfortunately too constrained by the deadline but if I'd had another week I think the game would be perfect hahaha
I really liked the idea of having to find your party and banding them together before you try and find the exit. TBH I didn't read description so I had no idea about the whistling mechanic, I just had all my characters run to the top left of the map before I grouped them up. I liked how you used sound here as a gameplay element both with the whistle and with the cabin. Lovely atmosphere, if there was a bit more to this game I could see it doing very well in the indie horror crowd.
Woah... Amazing work. How does this game not have more ratings?
I love the cutscene at the beginning. The Castle Crashers style gameplay. Everything is super polished. My only point of feedback is that the character shouldn't switch the direction that he's facing during the middle of an attack, it's too easy to accidentally shoot the wrong way. Also on the topic of combat, Brutus is really week in comparison to the other heroes and the even the most of the enemies have a bigger hitbox for attacks. On the flip-side- The enemy designs and their attacks were all really well implemented and the level design really complimented them as well (looking at the rat wizards)
Music is fire. SFX are perfect. UI & UX are both super smooth and polished. Art and animations are beautiful. All around, excellent work.
1. I totally agree. Honestly I'm really sad that I didn't get the chance to add even skeletal archers to the game, it was close but I had to cut them the last second.
2. I appreciate the comparison to the OG game. For the level skip on killing all the enemies I kind of made the conscious decision to forgo the automatic skipping of the levels, but I added a skip button in the character selection screen if you've already passed every character through and the timer also pauses if there are no enemies. I wish I'd though to also add the skip button to the pause menu if you've already killed all the enemies.
3. AI pathfinding is hard :( Nothing more to say here
4. Sadly the ambient noise is really quiet, and yea the SFX were great when you had 1 or 2 enemies but with more it kind of gets out of hand. I only have stereo headphones so I wasn't able to test if positional audio was really working but that's something I'd love to explore in the future if I can afford to get some good headphones with 3D audio.
5. Thank you so much, yea the AI was something I committed to going hard on super early on. Honestly the score calculation was one of the first things I did. I kind of wish I'd compromised a bit more on UI so the rest of the game could have been a bit more polished but hey, you live and you learn.
Thanks so much for the super detailed feedback. I really enjoyed your game as well, honestly all your entries thus far have been absolute bangers.
Such a cute game. I loved all the polish and game feel when hitting enemies. The game could have been a bit longer and I do wish the different shrooms had their own different playstyles but overall it was a really fun game.
Really cool how you took the core concept of Gain Ground and applied it to a sidescroller. The game feels very polished and the platforming feels super clean.
I'm impressed with your character customization system, honestly I'd be curious to learn more about how it was created- Is each character made up of parts which are animated separately? Anyway, it looks really cool and I like how all the characters ha a distinct look to them while sharing the same animations- Even the enemies had several different variations that were purely visual.
Honestly, amazing work. I'm scared to be paired against you.
Cute little shmup tower defense game! Super simple but it all comes together to make a pretty cool game!
The core of the game is solid, as well as the SFX and Music and it's a lot of fun to play- It just needs a bit more polish and juice, and 1-2 more characters.
I also second what Evengy said about firing by default- Generally I feel that if there is a button that the player has to hold down 100% of the time while they are playing it's generally better to just leave it on by default.
Great work. Super faithful recreation of the original game with some awesome cameos from the other games (Igor!!! Indra!!! Beeto!!!) The game did inherit a little bit of the jank from the original game, but is does improve upon the original in a couple places.
The game is actually way harder than the original game, but I beat it eventually. Also at the time of writing I've got 3rd place on the leaderboard!
My favorite characters wer definitely Igor, and Indra. Igor for his ranged and melee combo and Indra for her mobility & ranged attack, which can make her untouchable if you are fast enough.
Holy f*** I'm speechless. When I saw the ghost record of my previous run my jaw dropped. You did some really awesome stuff here. By the way, was one of your influences Nuclear Throne?
Anyways, great work. I really hope I don't get paired against you, but if I do, I won't be salty about losing haha
Honestly nobody should have to play the original version of Gain Ground ever again when this exists.
Also, amazing work with the first person mode. I had my doubts about whether it would even be possible to have a first person mode that is so faithful to the original game but honestly my doubts were crushed.
I would say I hope I don't get paired against you but honestly losing to this game wouldn't be so bad.
I love how all the characters have their own personalities and playstyles. Beautiful use of Kenny assets, and your own personal art blends perfectly in there.
My only criticism would be that the timer is still counting down during the character selection screen. I would have appreciated the time to breath between rounds while picking my character (it's not going to lose you any points tho)
I love how you carried over the destructible terrain from your earlier submissions. It's still as satisfying as ever.
Woah, this was an amazing entry. Crazy how many levels & characters you managed to pack into it. And all the characters play so differently from each other. I absolutely loved the sound design and how juicy the combat felt. I don't envy the dev that gets paired against you- You didn't compromise on scope OR polish.
