Surprisingly hard to get the bug cards out but very worth it for UltraMechaNovaRex. The voicelines got me good!
puppetsquid
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A member registered Feb 17, 2023 · View creator page →
Creator of
Shadding Based Deck Builder Proptotype (GGJ 2024|)
Card Game
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a small captain toad-esqe exploration game with golf controls for Kenney Jam
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You're an acrobat, but the Mob have decided your score for you!
Rhythm
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Recent community posts
Thankyou! Yeah the mouse isnt the best control for this and it lags a bit on mobile so neith is ideal... the post jam release will be a little less laggy and currently supports arrow keys (which im not a fan of), controller (which works very well), and rightclick panning (which ideally needs leftclick shoot but i've struggled to have that not interact with the touch controls) - in a full release obvs it would need toggles for all the options
I enjoyed this, it could use some rts conventions like a minimap for quick navigation and warnings if your bots are under attack. Maybe a few different upgrade paths to give the bots different uses; I really like the idea of an rts where the buildings are your units (and even the stationary things like drills could uproot themselves to move around like trebuchets)
Ok, so, you asked for feedback. I'll do my best to be honest but just remember that these are my opinions and any suggestions I make are done so knowing that you probably have other, better ideas in mind.
The tutorial wasn't great. Blocks of text are never ideal since they abstract information and you can't rely on people to have the ability / patience to read them. Probably 75% of my time playing the game was just me trying to parse the text (my dyslexic brain couldn't parse the phrase as meaning to click the target).
Once I figured out where to click, the rest was pretty simple and I feel like I cleared it in no time. The door puzzle felt artificially hard since it was relying solely on colour (with the assumption that near-colours like pink and red don't match), and a cooldown on the swapping that added nothing but frustration. If you're going to limit not only my ability to use the core mechanic but also my ability to interact with the world then you better have a good reason for it, and it had better make the game more fun. If it's just there to stop me cycling colours quickly then honestly either drop it or find a better way of cycling colours (I will come back to this).
That said, this is only a single introductory level, and there is promise in the core mechanic - I imagine that with time you'll find some fantastic puzzles in it. Honestly, though, this game will live or die by its graphics more than anything.
My favourite thing in the game was actually the barrels. Cycling between different styles of barrels felt like I was flicking between different universes like Evelyn of Everything Everywhere All At Once or a glitching Spiderverse denizen. I really wanted different pickups to drop out when I broke them depending on their style. Colours are difficult in puzzle games because of colourblindness, but if that target cycled between a high tech computer panel, a cartoony giant red button, a Robinson Crusoe winch, a black-and-white steampunk gearbox, and a big ol' frankenstein power lever then you best believe i'd know exactly which doors it would connect to.
Drawing from a bunch of different stylistic choices would also help inform extra mechanics; Steampunk could involve gear-slotting puzzles and a cartoon-verse could have big bombs with short fuses, but you could also link up the lightning-rod from a monstersquad universe and hook it up to a scifi generator to over-power it. The fences and harmful floors were really cool but they'd be so much better if swapping a wall to a treehouse had the risk of bringing a giant insect along for the ride and you could swap to floor-lava to burn it away.
Anyway; I know this was a game jam and you had limited time (and obviously a limited asset pool), but if you polish this up you need to look at Portal and dissect the learning curve. It's a classic for a reason. My first experience here was painting a wall red, then gluing a fence on it, then reverting it. I thought I was in some kind of base-builder. I'm definitely guilty of failing at tutorials too but, from my experience, in your first level the player should absolutely only be able to interact with one thing. Portal's metal walls are genius for defining the confines of a level not just physically but visually and you desperately need something similar.
As for limiting the use of the core mechanic, I would suggest looking at the game Hue as a temporary thing for your colour-swapper; perhaps your tool can latch on to spatial tears like Elizibeth from Bioshock Infinite and then drag them sideways through realities; the colour wheel would show you 'directions' you can move to so that you don't have to just sit and cycle through them. You can then give different colours different ammos meaning you need to think about how and when you use them but, importantly, seeing your options doesn't cost ammo. Replenishing the ammo could also be part of the puzzle (see; the cube spawners in portal which are basically just that).
Oof. What an essay. Also definitely too feature-creepy.
Listen, good work on releasing both a jam game an a prototype. This has got potential, but there's work needed to get it there. Best of luck!
First off; the concept is fantastic and you both should be proud at finishing a jam game
As others have said, the controls leave a lot to be desired. I was able to finish it incredibly easily, though, by just standing under red boxes, swapping view, then swapping back. I also managed to get stuck outside the map by waking out of a door while in swapped view (and was unable to get back in)
So, my advice would be, depending on how easy you find it; either ditch swapped view, have it as a map only, or save the player's height when switching between the views.
Also another cool QOL feature (that would actually work really well with the current art style) would be to show the layer ahead and behind you as faded outlines so you have a better idea where you're going. For example the layer 'E' takes you to could be orange-tinted, with diagonals going top left to bottom right, and 'Q' could be cyan-tinted with diagonals going the opposite way. You could also change the Q/E controls to W/S to make them more intuitive while allowing them to map onto the arrow keys easier. It might feel less like swapping layers, but you could maybe have to hold the key for a short time while time slows and an effect plays (which would also make the jump-swap more skillful)
Best of luck with your post-jam version if you do one!
As others have said, the game doesn't really fit the theme in its current state but I would be interested to see the version you set out to make.
Other than that, this is a decently made skeefree-like. The tutorial is perfect and this is only the second game from the jam who's music I've been happy to just let loop as I type the review.
As a gut reaction I would definitely have preferred fewer objects generating and the pickups to not stop you but then I guess that would just be skeefree - maybe it wants to be more like a cross-country ski game and the obstacles help keep the player slow; you could spend time moving left/right, taking cable cars back up, and using an overview map to find nice clearings to get the most velocity down...
Anyway, before I start designing a whole different game, great job and nice work submitting something!
Where The Bleep Are My Keys? jam comments · Replied to TheSoulSelector in Where The Bleep Are My Keys? jam comments
First, good work submitting a game to the jam - that's always the hardest part. From your post on the discord it sounds like you want real feedback so I'm gonna go ahead and be honest. Please note that this is all my own personal opinion and you can disregard any of it that doesn't fit your vision.
There's not much of a game loop other than collect every single item - generally i'd be looking for more of a skill test (either interesting controls or puzzlers) but you could do also lean this more into an idle/clicker game direction by just giving incremental rewards; having the planets give you some bonuses like speed/pull radius when unlocked or activating a nearby warpstar to take you into the middle of a new zone (that felt pretty cool when I first stumbled into one but it'd be nice to earn it). After I unlocked the first planet and saw no real change in the game I was pretty ready to clock out, but I played XKCD's space explorer game for hours despite the main loop being exactly the same (partly because I love XKCD info-dumps, but also partly because every single thing you picked up made the game easier to play and felt like I was making actual progress ).
Another direction you could explore is the basebuilder approach where you have to spend resources to make resources. For example having to drop resources off at a planet; upgrading your ship to hold more; colonising new planets to have more drop off points, etcetc. You would need to have more resources that way, maybe slowly respawning natural ones and generators you could buy for planets, but that does start to become just a different game at a point
Presentation; You have multiple input options set up and the ability to skip dialogue, both of which are hurdles i've seen countless devs fall at. The little help/info menu is also something more jam games desperately need. That said, the in-game menu buttons could do with a way to control them without the mouse (since everything else in the game is playable through just keys)
The sprites are well chosen and the fog of war is actually gorgeous. I like that the border of the world isn't a hard stop but it would be good to not have it be less rapidly bouncy and to avoid spawning items outside of it. The story was also cute and well presented.
In terms of theme, it does fit pretty well. I like that you can't play while having the map open, and the fog of war prevents you going places you've already been which is very gratifying in a collectathon. Hell, the XKCD game I mentioned didn't have that and if it had I might've fully completed it! If you wanted to lean more into it you could definitely look at 4X games like Age of Empires, which you already have the fog of war from, and look at different things that make the exploration in them rewarding (fog of war usually hides information, which is why clearing it and keeping it open is a core part of gameplay)
Again, overall, you've done well here. I'll try and check out some of your other stuff in the future if you don't already hate me for this small essay :)
This game is unsettling in a way I once thought reserved for early 90s CGI music videos. The game loop is half 'Leave No Stone Unturned Simulator' and half 'close your eyes and pretend you cant hear the noises'. It controls like the unholy lovechild of Sonic The Hedgehog and Bennet Foddy's Getting Over It, still slick from the womb. I hate that this was ever installed on my computer. Five stars.
Yeah this one works well!
The use of controls in the world was very strong, and the single item slot was handled well. Choice and implementation of sprites was great too (I love the wobbles!)
Control wise I don't like left click to shoot since it makes me think I'm using the mouse to aim;
I'd rather have it on space and have a little arrow showing my current aim direction.
I like that the respawns times were cumulative, since it dissuaded staying in one plays and spamming without making the game a 'find every last object and hope you don't miss your bombs' type thing. I think the respawns got faster when they were left alone too? If so that was a nice touch, if it was a bug make it not a bug.
It might be cool to expand on that by having different tools have different respawn multipliers; a bomb gets a lot of resource quickly but an axe lets felled trees respawn faster, that sorta thing. Maybe another wand that turns rocks into trees if you wanna keep on the chaotic magic mindset.
Overall, though, still a fantastic jam game. Great work!
Good start, I got excited when you gave me text popups cuz I thought it was gonna be an FTL like but not so much. I do like that you can only refuel once at each planet in terms of giving players a tough choice but that needs to be communicated more clearly (locking the button only works as an indicator after you've used it; a pop-up wouldn't go amiss).
The map feature is really well done, I love that it's not just zoomed out from the game, but you could lean even more into the difference (change the planets to just circles, make the background a solid colour, etc) and it needs something to dissuade you from just playing completely in that mode (lock the controls at the very least)
There's not much of a game loop at the moment - more choices on the planet exploration would be neat (FTL like morality choices) or maybe reworking the movement to be more involved; it's space, you don't need to use fuel to move in zero G (check out 'Its Lonely out in Space'), and it would be cool to have gravity wells around planets that can help or hinder you. You could add a dash-like warpdrive that does use fuel (since you're going faster than physically possible) that doesn't get affected by gravity but also doesn't update your map or affect your momentum.
Right off the bat, I love how you handled the subject matter. It would be very easy to just make a game like this without recognising or addressing the difficult subject, so I really appreciate that you took time to add the announcement on boot up.
Controls are terrible, which is to say great. I ran into the bug where it's impossible to win the game since no-one serves you but honestly I think they were right not to.
Edit: also in the future if you can do web builds deffo do - I prefer to not download games to test them
Very cute game, good use of assets, perfect pun-name. Gameplay wise it could've used some snapping on the paper to help with placement (reduce the risk you'll narrowly miss the correct location) or for proper cartography vibes something like a sextant would be ace (point it at the top of a tree to get how far you are from the tree, then have a grid with distances drawn on the paper)
For spice the map pieces could be given out by the bird rather than directly at the location (so you have to go back, tell the bird what to draw, maybe some questions about how many spires etc). This with the sextant would really make you feel like a duo going out into the world and making maps.
Obviously ignore me if that's not the game you wanna make, but let me know if you work on this further. I could see this easily becoming a Firewatch-type game and wish you luck either way!
Also, for any devs reading this just know that the first thing I will do when I see a door is try to walk through it ;)
Instant 5☆ for the button sound. The dust was great too.
I love that the controls are partially customisable, I would've liked dash on shift though and closing the map could be the same button as opening it. Dash and wall jump work very well together but it's a little jank when you have to move from your rest position to use it.
Ah no worries, the deadlines are always touch ^^ Yeah the big pillars made seeing difficult but the grid is limited enough that I didn't mind it haha.
Idunno if you'd keep working on it, but if you made a randomised version it'd be cool to work in some minesweeper-like context where you can tell the number of adjacent traps, or maybe a ping type system where you can tell if you're cold-warm-hot distance to the mimic from its reply.
Thanks for the honest review!
yeah the lack of tutorial really hurts the game, since the mechanics are a bit complex, but I did my best to write up the rules. I actually went back and added some tutorial gifs, hopefully new players will see them!
Yeah, trying to find the niche is difficult... Another comment called it an assault course game which is weirdly accurate. I did plan on adding a deck building aspect (hence the deck button) but I ran out of time to even implement more card types. People seem to like the game, though, so I guess thats the next step if I keep going.
Thanks for the great feedback! Tutorial is definitely the first thing im working on when I have time:- the double input thing is happening because I wanted to add a 'on release' mechanic to the 'hold' card, but I definitely need to do more to convey that to the player (currently the only indicator is a small upward arrow)