I was just working from memory and throwing out suggestions that popped into my head.
Like if you manually light one torch, it starts a chain reaction of small torches like a foot apart, leaving a trail along the wall to follow.
Just one of many ways you can visually bingo to the player where you want them to do (or lead them away from secrets)
I also dev on an ultra wide. I suggest doing nearly all your play testing in window mode with various 16:9 and 16:10 resolutions. Besides that being the way most of your players will experience it, it's also a good habit to make sure UI elements are properly position and scaled.
Other player-guiding things that come to mind are just visual cues. Simpliest would just be different colored parts of the floor that act as a path.
Here's an idea that just popped into my head, since your level is a castle in disrepair, if you player is on a large platform, have a short wall surrounding the entire platform. On the place where you want the player to jump off, have the wall broken up. Players will naturally be drawn there. You can zoom out as they approach to subtly hint to them that they're on the right track.
Another idea, you have large torches that act as checkpoints. When the player lights one of these torches, have a line of smaller torches on a wall light up in the direction you want them to walk. The player doesn't have to see the whole path ignite, just enough to get them walking the right direction, then they can follow the torches.
Or maybe have a room with rats or cockroaches that run away when they see your light, leading you to the exit.
I'd suggest looking up some videos on metroidvania design and how to guide players.
Coming back to play v010. I'm going back and forth from the game window to her, so you'll see my thoughts as I'm playing.
First of all, glad to see you're still updating after the jam. True dedication.
Title screen looks great. Settings menu is helpful, the moment I set to "low" I saw the framerate fix itself. In-game, the player and some other objects sometimes randomly disappear.
The dissolve effect to hide obsructive level elements looks like, I believe that's new?
I think the narrator voice is new, I heard a voice say something along the lines of "the burden must be passed on" I think. That's a nice touch, but you should add subtitles as well.
It was at that point that I got stuck, a long gap that I couldn't jump. The narrator voice clued me in that I was suppose to pass on to another player, but I couldn't see one anywhere. It was when I saw the TINY text that said "Press-E" that I started tying that, and it only worked when I was right by that text. I think there's an invisible NPC there? Maybe a glitch caused by me having to play on low settings? Anyway he just wished me good luck but nothig else appears to have happened.
Another glitch had me fly off that platform and shoot into space. I thought I'd found a hidden jump pad but couldn't recreated it, I think it had something to do with me jumping while bumping into the debris there.
Okay, I jumped off one platform and spammed G to throw flames to the next and managed to move on. It seems more like luck than skill that I got that. I was playing with one hand on keyboard and one on mouse, but had to switch to both on keyboard for that moment. That has me thinking about how the controls could be a little more intuitive. Here's some thoughts I had:
WASD to move.
Context-sensitive left-click. If you left-click in front of something that can be interacted with, then left-click interacts. (previously E)
If not, you throw a flame (previously G)
Hold left mouse button to aim, release to throw (previously F)
Right-click to jump (previously Space)
With controls like this, players never need to move their hands mid-game.
The dragon dude startled me. I spent a bit of time trying to defeat him before realizing I should just avoid him entirely.
Moving platforms were WAY easier than they were on my last playthrough, so maybe that was a framerate issue.
I got to the part where the narrator says to "tread carefully", and the wood ramp collapses, and encountered another glitch. The whole game goes into SUPER slow motion. Even after I die and return to the checkpoint by the dragon. still super slow. I had to restart the game.
On restarting, I tried the auto-settings. It put me at settings were I was still getting dropped frames. I manually chose "Medium" and that runs much better. Playing again with the higher settings, game looks a lot better but I think is a little harder to play.
Got past the ramp were I got stuck in slow-mo last time. Immediately got stuck in the scaffolding in the next area. I think this might be an issue with the collision mesh matching the visual mesh when it should probably just be a big cube (which would also help performance).
It's at this point that I'm thinking a "return to main menu" option would be good.
I had some issues with the visibility on the next platforming section so I decided to turn back to "low" settings. This caused the first wooden structure I had to jump on to be invisible entirely.
Guess I need to quit for now. Very nice progress on this. I hope this feedback is helpful.
I love the art. There's a lot of variety and attention to detail I'm not used to seeing in a jam game.
The narrative is good from what I see so far, and I'm one who prefers as little invasive dialogue as possible. I really chuckled when the first dude says "ugh" as he died because I just read it as him being frustrated.
Single-button control is simple, in a good way. Most jam games really overcomplicate things like this.
The single-hit kills seemed to be too much at first but I got the hang of it really quickly. I think jam games should only be difficult enough to be fun but otherwise so easy that the players get to experience it all in a short time. This game does that very well.
I also just noticed the archer giving gameplay hints after dying, nice touch.
The importance of the letter was hyped so much that I was expecting a joke ending.
Overall I say this is my favorite game of this jam
Playing now, immediately I'm having issues with the text in the GUI being too small and blending in too much with the background. Black text on a dark background doesn't really work. Generally I think all important text should be white, with a black border so it pops from backgrounds, and large enough to read.
Control layouts are a bit non-coventional, most people would expect to use WASD to move. Also, since 100% of the in-game controls are keyboard, the GUI controls should be as well. Having to switch to mouse just to click an on-screen button is tedious.
I really can't see any visual cues when an enemy is about to attack, and no feedback to show I'm taking damage. The blow that just killed me before typing this clearly missed, so I think the hitboxes are too large. For good player bias, you should have the hurtboxes actually be a tad smaller than what's visual.
Also, I think I died on one level but restarted on a completely different one.
One the plus side, the graphics and character design are great. A bit dark, but still very well-drawn and animated.
Playing it right now. Music is very catchy, and I love what you've done with such simple graphics.
I LOVE that there's an in-game tutorial, with many jam games you have to jump back-and-forth from game to page to learn the controls.
That said, here's some advice to make those in-game control tutorials even better:
1- Only teach one mechanic at a time. Make the first room teach them WASD to move and right-click to take off, and NOTHING else. Second room can add left-click to attack with some easy targets. Third room does both together.
2- Use screen space for instructions instead of world space. When the player moves, the tutorial text should move with them. Maybe even have it re-appear when they pause.
I also love that you slow down time when holding right-click in the air. It's a nice level of polish.
But as I'm playing the game I wasn't sure what I was suppose to be doing, I vaugely remembered instructions to blow someone up at the beginning of the level, but the only other characters around couldn't be attacked.
Thinking that either the game was glitched or I misread something, I went back to the beginning (again, if these instructions were on the GUI and could be referenced later, it would be better) and happened to noticed the "blow them up" instructions were higher up and to the side. It was just a guess for me to try launching myself up there to find the actual enemies. So finding the main gameplay area seemed more like a secret than natural progression.
Final thing I'd say is that having both the player attacks and enemies being red made everything blend together. Following color theory, red/green would contrast better, or red/yellow/blue.
I'm playing on a Steam Deck, launching through ProtonTricks Launcher. Generally the only time I see performance issues like this is with indie Unreal games.
Regarding the controls, as I mentioned the camera controls didn't work at first and just randomly started working after encountering the first enemy. Camera sensitivity was a bit too high for me as well. Whenever possible, you should have things like that be adjustable.
I recall the combat controls used some of the same buttons as non-combat, W and E. So imagine I wanted to map those to a gamepad, those same redundancies would be present there.
Played for a bit, v1.2, I had about a half-second input delay. I've noticed this one all but one submission made with Unreal, so I think it might be an optimization issue. All these games are using dynamic lighting.
The on-screen text always disappears before I can read it. I wandered around, fought one shadow dude at the top of the stairs, interacted with the pylon, saw the door open slightly, but not enough to open... and that's it. I couldn't find out what to do next or where to go. I wandered around. Thinking maybe I hit a glitch, I restarted and did it all again, same outcome.
So based on what I played, it looks great. Controls could've been thought out better. I couldn't use mouse look until after spotting the enemy for some reason. Player guidance needs improvement, Just a bit of optimization and polish and this would be pretty good.
I mentioned some of this during the first stream, just thought I'd reiterate. The game could use a lot more player bias. Coyote time is something that should be implemented in every platformer.
In the tutorial it says "Try 'Z' or 'O' Small Dash"... I thin that "Float" (or more specifically, "Horizontal Float" would be a better way to word it. "Try P or X" (I think that's what it said, I've already passed that level as of writing this) doesn't mention that you need to be jumping while doing so.
I'm glad you put any tutorial at all, but it could just be a little more intuitive.
On the second screen, I'd just say the game continues to need more player bias. Things are incredibly precise, and there's no opportunity to recover from any errors. My second time playing I got across maybe four of the gaps, but I'm sure I would have had much more problems if I hadn't already watched Prozack play. No checkpoints means I was really let down when it sent me back to the beginning of the room.
The "Balloon Ability" text was much better than earlier ones. Overall the second room was easier than the first, beat it in three tries
The fourth room was relatively easy to me after a couple (what I felt were) cheap deaths. Fifth room is were I needed to stop. I was enjoying the challenge, but I still think some better balancing and polish would have gone far.
Overall, great job!
I'd mentioned this in the stream, but the main issues with this game are that the play area is too vast, too empty, and too dark.
Logically, both the individual small flames and the large flame from the pumpkin should be viewable for miles. You should probably be able to see them from anywhere in the map, but only being able to see them from a few meters means finding either is more luck than skill.
Having to click on fire to collect it but seemingly automatically collecting the smaller pumpkins was inconsistent. I'd prefer just touching the flames to collect them as well.
There's a lack of visual feedback. I never knew how much flame I was carrying on how the big pumpkin was affected, I actually don't even know if I was affecting the big pumpkin at all. At one point I head a bear trap go off that I never saw. If I didn't have sound on, I might not have even noticed that I lost a heart.
The concept of the game loop is good, but could use a bit more design polish.
So the basic of the game is just a coin toss, so there's not really strategy to that, just basic RNG.
The icons moving around meant I was just frantically clicking trying to hit either one of them, and sometimes I wasn't even sure which one I clicked (and didn't really care as it was still just RNG).
Any consequences for missing a click, or reward to successfully catching either icon (or bonus for hitting it in a certain amount of time) might've added something interesting to the gameplay.
The UI text blends in to the fire. At very least you should have text outlines so it's viewable on any background.
Adorable characters.
The title "Flame Keeper" is a bit basic and I noticed a lot of games in this jam are similarly named. A more unique name would have helped it stand out.
So far this is the only Unreal game I've played this jam that didn't have horrendous lag, so you've done something right as far as optimization is concerned.
There's a glitch I'm experiencing where the mouse view isn't working. After every restart, I have to switch to another window and then back to the game in order to look around. At first I thought there was not way to adjust the camera, and only figured this out on accident by trying to post this comment mid-game.
My last two plays had me fall into water with no way to escape and the slow but inevitable death was a bit much. A way to recover, especially after so much progress is made, would be appreciated.
Controlling primarily with keyboard and then having to manually click the "start" button after every life gets tedious, just being able to restart by pressing the "jump" button would make continuous play much easier.
In-game control tutorials would be helpful as well. WASD to move and space to jump is intuitive enough, but not knowing that mouse was suppose to move the camera (again, it wasn't work for me) meant I was searching for how to do that not knowing if a means existed, and I'm still wondering if there's other abilities I just haven't stumbled upon yet.
I'm in the middle of playing now and taking a bit of a break to start here.
I mentioned some of this while Prozacgod was streaming, and experiencing it myself I'd like to reiterate, there needs to be more player bias. The platforming requirements are TOO precise on this. I'm pretty sure even the minimal input lag from running on a virtual machine made it harder for him.
Coyote time is a must. The dash should probably be double what's needed for the first couple platforms so players know they're doing the right thing with plenty of room for error.
The first couple vertical dashes I failed because I was trying to do them diagonally instead of straight up, a mistake that I think a lot of players would make, and I only corrected because I'd already watched Prozac play further.
But while the in-game tutorial isn't perfect, it's WAY better than I'm used to seeing in a jam game, so good on you for that.
Music is very catchy, I'm getting Sonic vibes from it.
An actually nice complete experience for a jam game.
I think it was a bit odd to allow players to retry without fixing and refilling the balloon first, I just plummeted immediately. While I didn't encounter this myself, I assume it'd be possible to spend so much money on upgrades that you can't afford to fix/refill and get stuck. And there's no reason anyone WOULDN'T fix/refill before trying again, so why not make it automatic?
The birds blend in with clouds, not sure if that was intentional.
I think more thought could be put into how/where hazards/powerups are spawned. Create a difficulty curve, prevent overlap, etc.
You should get in the habit of not using a red cross as health as the American Red Cross has asked developers not to.
The music was nice but not very fitting. Seemed like boss music, for a game that felt pretty lighthearted.
Play a couple of times. There was quite a bit of input delay that made basic movement pretty difficult. Even lightning up with a crystal to pick it up was a bit difficult. I'm assuming this is because of optimization, are you using unnecessary lighting effects?
The interface could be better. Simply touching the cystals would be abetter way to pick them up since there isn't any other context for you to come into contact with them. At very least, the collider could be larger so I don't have to be looking directly at them before pressing E. Even if it's just taller than the visual mesh so I can walk up to it without looking down.
I would prefer ESC to get out of the menu rather than manually moving my pointer to the X.
The visuals are great. The narration is good though it could be used to more naturally act as a tutorial. The alarms on the turrets is a little annoying, but effective. There should be some alert on the ship damage so players know when to bug out.
Just played for a bit. I love how cute the characters are.
Controls are for the most part intuitive but I do appreciate on-screen prompts as well. Unfortunately, they're hard to read as yoiu're immediately attack and they fade away quickly. I suggest having mechanics come up one at a time, ie tell your player to use WASD to move without any enemies spawning, tell them to click to attack and give them time to read it (or require they hit the dummy a couple times) before enemies come in.
I saw "Press M for" something but didn't get a chance to see what that was.
What seemed like game overs were just end of days, so I wasn't sure what the objectives were (unless it was to just survive long). I started out close to the flame because I thought I was suppose to guard it, but then realized the enemies will follow me away from there.
On the enemy behavior, all I could see was them following and attacking, so there wasn't any strategy and trading hits seems inevitable. For enemies that require more strategy, I suggest visual feedback of attack windups and cooldowns, letting players know if they need to make distance, close distance, etc.
I've had a couple game-stopping errors so Unfortuantely I haven't played too far it, but here's my first impressions.
I guess you only tested this on desktop and in editor, moving the mouse outside the gameplay window to read the instructions on the webpage causes the whole view to move. Might want to make the view scrolling with more intent to avoid accidents like that.
I got the Mayflower to the second planer, and, that's it. I don't know where to go from there. The instructions mention different ship types and really had to guess about them. I have no idea how to get different ships.
If you decide to continue working on this game, my main suggestion is to teach the player in-game. Try to find a balance between intuitive interface and outright hand-holding tutorials.
I played v007.
First of all, the visuals are gorgeous.
Unfortunately I think that caused performance issues. I didn't have a counter but I'd estimate 8-10fps. I think you have a lot of unnecessary dynamic lighting. Also I kept missing a ledge and hitting another on the edge of the towers, so your collision meshes are probably way higher-poly than they need to be.
There was a lot of input lag, which cause me to overshoot almost every jump and landing. I think there was some player momentum issues too, but it's hard to tell when the input lag is already there.
It was hard to judge where moving platforms were in 3D space, making precision and snappy controls all the more important.
I got a little bit past the first candle swap, not far enough to notice if there was any difference between the two,
Definitely one of the more unique entries.
Controls were a bit difficult, I could never tell where I really was in 3D space. I'd find myself hitting geometry sometimes, and other times going right through it. I couldn't like the barricades, and every time I did hit something with fire, it felt like an accident.
I think if I were making flying game like this, I'd either have the player inside a scene that runs on rails (like Star Fox) or have the dragon persistently follow the cursor (like War Thunder). Not saying yours is wrong or mine is right, or even better, my ideas might be trash, just different ideas on how to accomplish things.
I loved that the objectives were always on-screen and for the most part you had guidance on where to go. Only improvement I'd put there is to maybe have the new objectives appear in the middle of the screen and then slide to the corner, rather than just starting out there.
Got a high score of 430, not sure I'll be able to do better.
The weapon switching was pretty unintiutive. I didn't realize I even had other weapons at first and just stuck with the basic.
One-hit kills make it WAY too difficult, especially when contacting an enemy hits you, and they can also shoot sideways as you try to dodge.
I get that you're running down the side of the building, I think there was a missed opportunity to have your character run around the edges instead of always on the same face of the building.
I like the character design and the theme interpretation was pretty good.
As I mentioned before, the UI could be a bit more intuitive. It was a bit too hard to do things with a purpose and a bit to easy to do thing on accident (like quit the game or close the app). A bit more focus on making things work in such a way that players don't even need instructions goes a long way.
Graphics are good, especially for a first 3D game. I like the theme interpretation.
I'm not sure why there was problems with loading on Windows. I installed in on my Steam Deck running Bazzite and it runs just fine.
Game was a bit basic. Lack of visual feedback made it difficult to know what was going on. Lost my first game and not sure why, won my second and still wasn't sure why.
Controls could have been a bit better. I think the same button should have been used to switch the two modes. More intuitive on-screen controls would've have been better than the wall of text.
Absolutely love the art style, and the story is both charming and really is a good interpretation of the theme.
