itch.io

it will be on itch soon! i was kind of waiting until the next map gets finished but im realizing that was kind of arbitrary and should just throw the current version on steam up here in a moment.

pls read the description! it will be fixed properly this week, however.

That's a straight 5 from me, dawg. Was it perfect?  Depends on how you wanna frame it! I think you  had a thing you wanted to do and pulled it off about as well as you could've, any gripes i had are mostly minor.

Player character looks neat, it's interesting that he doesn't have any arms to start. However, as some others noted, he doesn't animate super well. I figured he might move funky in like an alien sort of way, but he's mostly just kind of stiff looking. Which is somewhat faithful to the source material i suppose lol, but even then it could still be pulled off better- i'd also like to see some recoil on the arm when you fire. Since it's a seperate sprite entirely, i think that wouldn't have been very hard to add.

Powerups didn't wow me, and there were only 3, 2 if we're being honest. We're not in full metroid clone territory with them, but a dash and a remote bomb didn't exactly have me intrigued. I'm glad the bomb could knock you around though, at least. (no time)

On that note, keycards aren't exactly my favorite way to handle progression in these types of games, but i understand why it was done, and you pulled em off pretty damn well, so I can't really hold it against you!

Music was good, served its purpose, was evocative but it's not gonna stick with me. Sounds effects were in a similar state, they did what they needed to but were a little lacking. Well mixed, however.

The stretch to, i think it was keycard level 3? was a bit daunting. It was mostly the setup with the deep acid pit near the end, i died like 3 times there or something.  Maybe tone down the rate of damage on it a smidge? Or maybe it was just a skill issue. The rest of the game balance wise was fine though.

But yeah, that's all minor shit, the actual content of the game here is phenomenal. TONS of well made assets and visual variety, with a fleshed out feeling setting. Huge entourage of enemies, good pathing, an actual map(though i would've liked the different areas to be different colors?), optional upgrades to find, some really fun environmental gimmicks with stuff like the live wires. Loved it!

edit: Oh yeah, i also how the no download problem, but i was able to get around it by using the itch client. 

Another solid one! Presentation definitely took a big hit but i'm sure you guys are aware so i'm not gonna comment on it much- except i was a little baffled at the different ways all the areas were unfinished. But i suppose it did help make them easier to distinguish!

Also the players walk cycle was pretty wonky looking?

Anyway, a very metroidy metroidvania, for sure. From the escape sequence to the powerups! I'm not sure if maybe the final powerup or two change the pattern, but I would've like at least one of them to throw a new idea at me. The charge attack boosting you backwards was cool, though.

The actual map design was pretty solid! Some things are a little odd- i'm not sure why you can go as far into the low res area as you can on the west entrance only to get stopped by needing the high jump, and then again by a gate. Those probably could've been put further up the path...
But on the whole the map design is pretty solid with a good variety of layouts and room types. Really appreciated the hidden blocks and secrets, good stuff. 

The only enemy type i had a problem with were the flying worm dudes, they probably did me in the most. Maybe a slightly slower projectile/rate of fire would've been enough? Also, all the enemies using the same, very loudly mixed gunshot sound was more than a little grating.

The charge attack is maybe a little too good, i found the basic peashooter almost worthless after getting it.

Controls are tight- they lack the polish to feel great, but certainly not bad. Responsive, for sure. It was a little annoying how quickly the camera would pan up and down when most of the time i'm just trying to aim. I'd like if that took a bit longer, or maybe had a different input like using the right stick or had it's own modifier.

I scrubbed the map to the best of my abilities but could not find what was presumably the second statue to get to the final area and beat the game. Might try to find it later, we'll see.

But yeah, good stuff on the game part of the game!

Really liked this one! Unique theme and atmosphere, solid art, decent enemy variety, frequent upgrades. Loved the initial big drop onto the big sea creature in the bg, good stuff.

Would've liked to see some background art to breakup the plain color of most of the rest of the screens though, even some very basic silhouettes would've been nice. Could use some more vfx to juice things in places, even just reusing the bubbles from the dash in some other spots could've been good. The actual attack was a very good and comfortable size though, which was appreciated lol.

Getting the characters appearance upgraded was pretty cool, although understandably they were looking a bit cluttered as things went on

I felt like i saw "snail on a very tiny platform" a lot. I get you only have so many tricks, but that's all the more reason you need to be careful about how often you use the ones you do have, imo. I'd have preferred a few of them just get taken out.

The squid feels very tanky for the kind of enemy they are, and how they're used. I can't effectively hit them in the air more than a couple of times since they get pushed away, and waiting to parry several more attacks is not great.

The slowdown on walking thru bubbles seemed a bit egregious.

I could not finish it right now, though. The last powerup (the dash) that i picked up left me at 10 hp, and i definitely needed more than that to take on the snail-squid staircase. I was willing to grind for health a couple of  times, but it was too grating to keep doing. Some proper save points that healed you would've gone a long way, there. 

Still, one of my favorites that i've played so far! Good job on the whole.

I wanted to play this, but even after turning all the settings down it still ran pretty poorly on my machine. It seemed a little rough but had some neat setups- getting the floor crumble trap to work was cool, but i just could not play for more than a few minutes. I'm on windows 10 and have a gtx 1660 super, hardly top of the line but i can play other ue5 games fine. So unfortunately i won't be leaving a rating since I don't think i can accurately guage much.

If you're using Unreal 5 specifically, maybe try turning off virtual shadow map if you haven't already. I've seen that really kill performance sometimes in the past.

Really enjoyed the idea of the core mechanic, i have a particular fondness for this kind of picking up your limited resource kind of thing. That said, there is a major problem with inconsistency and feedback on it. It's been noted by many others, but the arrows are extremely finnicky on whether or not they decide to hit things, and it can be unclear even when they do work. 

When trying to link the blue bulbs it was a 50/50 on if it was *actually* in there or not since there was NO confirmation it had actually successfully hit a bulb until i hit 2. A specific particle and sound when that happened would have gone a long way, same with the torches. Very odd that they seemed to have a bit of a delay between being lit and actually providing light, as well. 

I had gotten stuck after the dark bulb area. I got the bow half but could not figure out how to get out and progress. Some weirdly tight jumps at places too- there were a couple times where i'd be below a very low platform/ceiling with spikes on the bottom, and have to try my best to both not jump too  high but also jump for long enough to eek out enough distance to just barely make it to a platform. I can see this sort of thing to get a collectable or something, but it's a very annoying setup to put in a room you might traverse through a lot.

Playing on the controller is at a detriment, since you cannot very effectively jump, shoot, and aim at the same time. I'd prefer having a secondary button for jump on one of the back buttons so i can keep my thumb on the stick to aim.

Also yeah, the cursor in the dark sucks. It should be high contrast and have a white outline or something.

The art is cute, and I appreciate the story setup and dialogue! Overall a solid entry, but it's just a little too inconsistent for me to love.

aware of the issue and has already been fixed, but i cannot push the fix yet! 

check the description for a temporary fix on your end!

some staggering praise here haha, thank you so much!

yeah it takes a bit of time to ramp up the movement but its real nice once you get a few moves. i'm really glad to hear wall kick clicked for you! i think most people agree that once it clicks its nice, but some people never get there and we could definitely do more to smooth that process over, haha

i am very sorry to hear about your crashes!! looking into the D3D device error, it doesn't actually seem like there's much i can do on my end! There's a few fixes i'm reading but the most common one just says to try upgrading your graphics drivers. So lemme know if that or anything else you might find works, and i'll see if there's anything else on my end

no i was just being a little silly putting the texture there :(

yeah there will be an options menu with camera inversion in the future, promise!

😳

Well, that's fair! It helps if you don't think of it as a wall jump, it's its own thing! 

It's really an attack with a lingering hitbox, that just only activates on geometry. It also reflects your characters forward facing direction like a laser off a mirror - trying to hold in the direction you want to jump before it happens is def gonna give you funky results.

Once you get familiar with it it's pretty consistent & expressive, but it can have a bit of a learning curve and we did not do enough to ease you into it i absolutely admit!

Alas, of all the things that could've been in the game the map is something i have 0 experience in making lol, so it was hard to justify the time to figure it out.

That said, i'd like to put one into future versions. Thanks for the feedback!

Hey man, really sorry you had a hard time there! For what its worth, nothing in the game is anything close to frame perfect. But i definitely agree with you that we could've done a WAY better job of teaching the air kick, it's one of my biggest design gripes atm.

I hope you can revisit at least some version of the game! We do plan to update it when able.

i have already addressed this in the description with a temporary self fix

i am sorry, i'd patch it but my hands are tied until the jam is over

Thanks! 

The state of the game is up in the air right now, but my first priority is finishing Electrokinetic. After that we'll see, i may put alittle more sauce on this and throw it up, or i might not, but the concepts here will definitely eventually go on to get used in other stuff, haha

For now though, this will stay as is.

Ayyy thanks johnny!! Yeah i'm really happy with how the movesets flow into eachother with managing the spear, i have really good fun with it!

Oh, i'm glad you caught that! 

Thank you, i put it in but wasnt able to figure out a good way to have the player organically look at it, but it's nice when they do!!

Thank you!! A friend of mine really likes the lil angler moles guys too, they're a good time haha

Suprised myself a bit, tbh! Was really happy with how it came out, just the right blend of stuff i'm experienced with and and stuff i'm less so to keep me engaged i guess, lol. Thank you though!!

Thank you!! I'm not sure how exactly i would've done it here, but i definitely intend to play with more defensive mechanics in future action games i make. 

Well, if you both didn't like the music and the colors, it just kinda sounds like you have a different idea of how the tone of the game shoulda been altogether! Which is fine, but I am fond the style of music for this at least, i think it goes well with the mood i wanted to make, thuogh i'm sure a custom made track would've fit a bit better.

 The enviroment definitely still coulda used a lot more love, but it's a sore spot for me and i definitely just put more time into the core gameplay, haha.

I think, in the context of the game, the fighting is it's own reward. I dont think i'd want a scoring or style system, but i was tossing around some other ideas to to try to egg players into having a bit more variety, like making hits with the spear make the throw do more damage, or having the gun a limited ammo system that you need to refill while making it a bit more powerful, i guess potentially by also attacking enemies, but other things would be on the table too.

The only one of these that made it in of course was disloding the spear to make enemies spew health orbs. That one i could justify since I needed to do -something- to let the player heal, and i didn't just wanna do like, estus.

I would probably lock you in the room for enncounters, at least for somet of them were this a more fleshed out game though.

Informing the player of when enemies are dead is also fair, i'd probably also just want health bars to go with something like a color change or effect, lol.

Thanks for the feedback and critique though, i'm really glad you liked it! I'm not sure if i'll continue this game in particular, but i'm sure many ideas here wil carry forward into other stuff i do!

Thanks so much!! I'm glad you liked the level design, it's not my strongest point but i had fun with it!

Here's hoping i get a full game out soon for ya, haha

Yeee that's what i like to hear! Glad you had fun with it!

Yesss thanks so much! I understand that 3d animators are hard to come by, especially in the indie scene, but i wish more people would try!

But yeah, had a good time making combat animations here.

Having a bit of a background in 3d movement at this point definitely informed a lot here! It let me to get the movement refined to a nice level without too much trouble. Ledge grabs definitely help add sort of premium feeling to things, and are just nice to have in when 3d platforming is involved in general.

And yeah, i really have been itching to make some combat so i went all out on the idea here! I'm pretty happy with how it ended up and the amount of depth i was able to squeeze out of things.

A lot of the game is just kind of operating under the assumption that the player wil actually want to play the game and engage with the systems in the short playtime of it- being able to run from every enemy encounter, moves cancelling a little too freely into themselves, and it being extremely easy to get an enemy infinitely stunlocked. Its definitely stuff i'd have to address in a full release, but im not sure if i'll get to that with this. 

Although, part of not doing that was just led by not having checkpoints either, being able to run thru the encounters allieviates that a bit i think!

 But yeah, i'd probably lock you into encounters with the enemies were i to make an expanded version.

yeah, i actually tried unity a bit for a couple days at the begining of the jam but swapped back to unreal! too comfortable in there lol

thank you!

Thanks so much Onion!

Yeah the melee stuff can be good fun! The gun is a litle slapped on and mostly intended as a combo extension tool, but can be used to deal with enemies if you've having a hard time, yeah.

Glad you like the art!! Yeah I spend a very good portion of the jam on the anims, lol

Yes, yoppi's stuff is just great!! I hop to be able to get an some original tunes for them at some point.

The pit bug was one i decided to just leave in for the time crunch of the jam at the end, its just kind of funny. Had a time getting things sorted out, lots with the spear, there was one that was really bad plaguing me for like half the jam!

Really appreciate the feedback tho onion, honestly i don't think i'll be expanding this game ( i might clean some things up and throw it on steam for a couple bucks) but i definitely intend to make some other action games eventually building off of similar systems!

I hope you managed to free the ship too! 

Thanks so much!!  Very happy to hear that!

Thanks so much! I spent most of the jam just refining it, glad it payed off!

Thanks so much!

And yeah, all the programming was done via blueprints for this, and all my games so far lol

Was extremely excited to finally get my hands on this! With at least the analogue stick working by default, I was actually able to get the rest of my controller working with an input wrapper, so that was neat.

You've done a fantastic thing with the combination of 3d platformer and smash design influence, along with your own sauce, and it pans out into something very fun!

The character controller feels pretty spot on, the level of control feels like it services both combat and platforming well. And the actual feel of hitting things and jumping around is just great, the animations playing a huge part in that of course. Everything is very snappy and responsive, sounds are punch and satisfying, etc. I really, really love how almost every single move has a hitbox. The long jump(jump kick?) being one of my favorites.

I am curious to see how it tests against actual combat and platforming challenges, that said. It wasn't anything too bad, but I occasionally found myself slipping off the very small blocks in the first target test. 

This was definitely partially just me getting used to the game, but if the game ends up requiring precision jumps with any sort of commonality i would like something to indicate exactly where you're going to land.

 Typically 3d platformers have a blob shadow underneath the character, but anything that gets the job done is fine. Just something to help gauge the character in 3D space. Honestly, putting one under enemies wouldn't hurt either, it'd probably be way easier to figure out where there gonna land from those really high launches.

One other thing is some way to actually stop dead in your tracks in the air- i always like to put in one of these. I know there's the Dash Dive which "technically" serves this purpose, but I couldn't get it to consistently launch me down instead of down-forward, and it putting you into a slide every time you land also doesn't help here.

I wouldn't change the move(other than making the directions more consistent?) but you have a free input in air crouch + jump, IMO you could just make this some sort of ground pound, divekick, etc move that just brings you straight down, and leaves you in a state that doesn't immediately push you forward like the dash dive.

All that said, if the platforming isn't planned to get too intense then it's not that big a deal- but also, another move..........

Aside from that, It'd be nice to see enemy health bars, but I'm just gonna assume that's a demo thing. I'd also be nice to see the actual context and input for moves on the moveset menu- after they've been discovered, of course.

There was also a couple of straight up bugs. A couple of times, I got kinda stuck in crouching state, though I'd always be able to find a way out. One time it happened near a wall specifically?

Sandbag also got caught in a wall? I was just able to kind of push him in.

The frames fucking DIED if i held a spin for more than a split second. Down from 60-> ~20 fps, i'm assuming it was the distortion effect? 

And finally, the detection for walls/ledges seems a little over eager. Getting the ledgedash to come out on the tiny lip around the grassy green rectangle was funny, but bumping into it with the sign's dash attack charge and getting it canceled is something that could definitely mess me up.

anyway WOW i wrote a lot, but i hope there was something useful to you in there? If not, then just keep doin your thing man, it'll probably be sick either way.

yeah i did not do a great job on the difficulty curve, very sorry! i hope you still had some fun with it, and thank you for the feedback!

i am very sorry about your -1 chain, haha. i'm glad you understand my position on needing a bad roll to exist, but that sort of thing definitely doesn't need to. 

and yeah, I tried to incorperate spots in the level design that i think would be good places to throw the dice without having to stop moving too much, but its definitely a little esoteric, and depending on how your run is going you'll probably need more spaces anyway lol

it's sick you got so much out of the game though! i'm really happy it clicked with you still so much! i could definitely ease the learning curve a bit but yes!! once you get it its pretty cool. and yeah, the fast respawn timers, while also much more convenient for me to make, were important i think haha

ideally the game loop should push you into getting very efficient at each level, with the short lengths, pressured timer, and fast iteration times. it's not ideal, since it can also have the reverse effect of pushing a player into being incredibly cautious, but i suppose thats something to work on lol

but still, thank you so much! and i'd be flattered if you drew gunjumper at any point, i'm glad you like her too lol

 i'm very sorry about the keyboard controls! i'll have it updated as soon as i'm allowed, but in the meantime i'd definitely highly recommend controller if you're able! i do think there's some good fun to be had if you can get to grips with the mechanics, and would also reccomend the slow fuse timer if you feel the need- there's no downside to it!

bless wave, very kind words!

this is some very interesting feedback, although i do think it does come down to a bit of a difference in philosophy. while i could've done an infinitely better job of teaching the player and giving them a better environment to come to grips with the mechanics, i dont think i'd change the core design too much.

i enjoy that the dice is something you have to be more considerate about, and not a basic ability you always have in the vein of something like cappy. you never have to worry about cappy, he's always conveniently ready for you, but the dice here is something you have to put more consideration into how you handle it. 
that said, there is still more of an intended way to play, and the low mobility when holding the dice feeds into that. holding the dice is the safest state you can be in, so if you had more mobility you'd just hold onto it all the time.

i hope i'm not sounding like i'm blowing you off or anything though, i do appreciate this feedback and who knows, i might feel differently next week or after seeing some more people play it, haha. I'm already thinking about other ways to take "platforming with an object" and most of them have it something youre much more free to use- but for this game in particular, i like being a bit more of a bother, i suppose lol.

lets fuckin goooooooo

thank you, to be fair i was definitely working in my comfort zone makin a 3d platformer here, but i did still even suprise myself i was able to get everything to where i did in just a couple days!

and yeah agreed, i've added E and left click as additional options for throws, as well as some more buttons on controller too. sorry about your pinkie!