Thank you for the kind words :) Swimming fast seemed important for tadpoles and frogs, I'm glad the way I applied the mechanics was enjoyable . Thank you so much for playing!
Thank you, I appreciate the great feedback! I really wanted to focus on player movement in this jams entry, glad to hear it! I'm aware of the glitch you encountered and had come across it myself while doing some test plays after the jam deadline. It's a rare glitch but certainly something that can be addressed in potential updates. Thanks for playing! And Congrats on unlocking secret "Swim Anywhere Mode"!
Thank you so much! The music is original, I'm glad you found it peaceful. I agree, once the big frog is out of water its way easier to move around the level, perhaps too easy given its move speed. I would have loved to add more froglet exclusive areas to help pad that out as well. Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated! Great going on collecting all the hearts <3 and Thank you for playing!
Thank you so much! Yeah since of battles are quite a challenge. Most of the enemies follow a regular pattern, so a lot of it comes down to finding the pattern of "sweet spots" and dropping mines accordingly. Since the mines have a blast radius of one tile in all directions, id recommend timing them while remaining at a safe distance. Those diagonals are tricky :)
I work by myself because I want to learn as much as I can about all aspects of game dev. I will be doing a lot of jams this year and each one will be a lesson in project management. By the end of this year I should have a cohesive grasp and what it takes to get a full project out within a limited timeframe. That being said, it also shows me the elements of design that are not my strongest and should thus be left to other contributors. I've been an artist most of my life, musician for many years, and a game dev hobbyist since I was able to get my hands on a computer. In a team I could contribute to any of these, however my focus has been on becoming a stronger generalist and have better time/project management skills. I feel like being more well rounded will contributed greatly when working with a team in the future. That being said, I know that communication is something I'll need to work on, so I will be looking to joining teams at some point this year on future jams/random projects.
The community comments are filled with Rate-for-Rate offers, which seemingly creates a sort of quid-pro-quo environment.
Is this a constructive process that enhances the game dev community?
Understandably, it is difficult to have your game viewed, let alone played(especially for .exe games, many of us are wary of malware). There are many, many submissions.
However I feel this practice leads to a sort of negative player behavior, essentially gamifying the jam itself (Don't get me wrong, we all love a good game :P). However, to suggest that if someone really wants to win, playing "Community Message Board, The Game!" seems flawed.
Not trying to call anyone out for Rate-for Rate, gotta do what you gotta do and marketing is very important. Games gotta get rates!
I also understand the difficulty in running an event like this. A method to parse through every entry may not be available to those in charge and it's up to the community to see through the judging process, within the limits of the platform.
We have a lot of young developers in this community, and it would be a disservice to deny them some useful knowledge or a chance to learn after putting in such hard work . Not everyone has the social capacity to keep up with message boards or be consistently socially interactive, for whatever personal reasons they may have. It's a very stressful process uploading your first game, or any game, as we all know. It is a concern that those unable to engage directly will be missing out on very useful feedback.
For those who are doing Rate-for-Rate, please keep doing what your doing. You are driving this process forward and we very much appreciate it.
I feel it is worth questioning if this is best practice, or if alternative methods can be explored to enhance community feedback.
Regardless, I urge everyone who has the ability, to play a random game, comment, give constructive feedback, and rate without incentive.
The game Dev community will certainly be better for it :)
Thoughts, ideas? please share.
(Don't worry about rating my game, the feedback I've already received has been plenty of value and you are all so amazing <3)
Couldn't beat it but gave it a good go. Wish I had a touch screen to play it on but rather enjoyed it anyways. One heck of an opening lol. Lot's of fun, and great music! Would feel right at home on a device like the DS. Great work!
I'm so glad it worked for you and you got to play :D The blue levels are a matter of timing. Place them in an alternating 1-2-1-2 pattern, perhaps with a little bit of an offset, but fairly equal. It helps to focus on the longer row of traps to get the timing right. Be sure to watch them open and shut from left to right. That one is more of a trial rhythm than anything :) And yeah, I took the controls out of the description because I thought it might be too cluttered lol, my mistake. I put them back in as well as a description of the error. Thank you again for pointing that out! And thank you so much for playing and such kind words <3
Once I got the code up and running relatively bug free I was looking for ways to make the limited elements work together. With them It was so much fun trying new puzzle ideas and I wish I had more time to make even more. I learned how to do a lot with just a few pieces and I'm so glad player feedback has been so positive. And thank you for noticing the audio, simple does the trick and I'm glad it landed :) Thank you so much for the feedback, much appreciated <3
In hindsight creating a bit of a stronger visual indicator for the blocks may have helped eleiviate some confusion. Thanks for the feedback, and thank you for playing!
I think this may be due to a browser or mobile incompatibility. I've only been able to test it out on Chrome via desktop. When uploading the project file there was an option that was checked to resolve the issue, but it stated that the feature was 'experimental'. Unfortunately I don't know how to resolve the problem outside of that. Sorry it's giving errors and your are unable to play the game :/ Thank you for letting me know about the error, I really appreciate it!
Cool concept and way of trying to figure out where the ghost king was going to go to next. I liked it giving its position away by having the doors move around, changing up the level as it progresses. And that little wizard is just so adorable. Nice job!
So charming! I loved the banter and the unique character traits of all the customers. What a fun way of implementing so much personality into the the theme, Nice work
Thank you! Yeah, I have to keep in mind that as the dev my easy-mode may be very-hard-mode to other players. Glad you're liking it so far, Thank you for playing!
Controls and balance are a bit loose, I agree. I'm glad you kept coming back and found charm in the game :) Thank you for playing and the encouragement!
Thank you so much! Yeah striking a balance visually for the active objects and the background elements is something I was worried about, when things catch fire it gets very hectic. There are some values that I'll be adjusting and I'll play around with some different level designs to try and smooth that out.
The bugs are there to serve as additional obstacles since the bird isn't directly hostile towards the player(could always change later), I agreed that their purpose is a bit too ambiguous. It really doesn't make that much sense that they're aggressive without context, thank you for pointing that out! Also, bug houses, I love it :D . I really like the idea of finding a way to have the bugs help out, I have some fun ideas on how to go about making that happen :)
For the sake of simplicity I'm unsure about adding rouge-like elements at this time, although, since it's a very early build that could change at any point. It's certainly worth considering and opens up many possibilities. The score system I had in place was meant to lead to other incentives, possibly in the form of rank/reward at at the end of the level (something like Sonic Adventure 2). Victory should mean more than just finishing a level, I have some ideas on how I can implement something like that. It'll be fun striking that perfect balance of simplicity/variety.
Thank you for playing, I appreciate your insights and valuable feedback!
I wish I had made visual cues a bit easier to read, as well as making more of a lead-in level before throwing the player into a "situation". Creating an invisible tutorial section would have been great, and the player may not have felt the game was too difficult since they would have familiarity with the controls ( I feel "How To Play" pages are terrible practice, unfortunately time crunch forced my hand). The "Boss" should have been a boss at the end of a level, kind of started from the end and worked backwards, mistake. I would have loved to give the player more space to mess around and have fun. I spent a lot of time getting the controls to feel unique, with subtle features to make the otherwise rigid movement more freeing once mastered. Playtesting is a must before a release, this I know, and I feel the lack of such really shows in the final product. I went in with a "this is only a prototype" mentality and I feel like that wound up biting me in the end. Food for thought for next next. That being said, these lessons will carry me through the next build.
I will note that the game can be cheesed in it's current state. The goal is to defeat the boss while keeping the structures remaining, at least one. Found it was easy to just let them burn with the exception of one, but saving more than that was a bit much for beginners. Victory can be achieved, but it doesn't feel good to only have one structure standing in the end, may as well be a failure. Not a great feeling for beginners and may drive them away after just one play though.
Lots to unpack but that's the core of the feedback I got back. And it's mostly me ripping on my own game, that's the artist in me lol. Aside from that, If anyone would like to leave feedback touching on other aspects it would be much appreciated. I'm always looking for more areas to improve on. Thank you so much, happy jamming :)
I had forgotten to mention controller support in my game as well. Later I'd added a mention about it in the game description from the dashboard. Probably should have made it known in game but was unsure about compatibility issues. I did most of the testing with a controller so that was my bad :/ Luckily a friend was able to figure out how to play it on mobile without me mentioning it, happy accident XD
Your feedback is in line with some of the concerns I had when wrapping up the project. Thank you for the confirmation! I had added the "How To Play" section much to my disliking, due to time constraints. It was very likely that it may be overlooked by the player or the information within would be overwhelming/easily forgotten. The map design itself could have gone with more playtesting, once those fires ignite it's easy to lose track/pace. Also making the fail state more clear is something that needs to be addressed. I will take these concerns into consideration and adjust accordingly. Thank you for the valuable feedback, and more so, Thank you for playing!
Thank you so much! I absolutely agree, level 1 is way too much for players just starting out. I realize that perhaps some more guidance would be necessary before throwing players into the fight, especially while they are still learning to fly. Was there anything in particular that sticks out to you that made it difficult? I can think of many flaws, but I can't just assume :D
I'm glad you found the controls charming :) I was afraid they may be too confusing seeing as the player is just thrown in like that. Giving the player a little time to warm up before the showdown is something I should certainly implement, being that the controls have a different feel than most players would be used to. I've been getting that the game is a bit more difficult to players than I had anticipated, especially starting at level 1. Easily something that can be resolved. Thank you so much for the feedback, much appreciated!
I learned about time management and the meaning of "Crunch". Going solo means I had a lot of work on my plate, and setting the appropriate scope for the project was paramount to wrapping things up in time. There wasn't a point within the jam timeline in which I wasn't at least poking at it. Cut it close, but proud of what was accomplished :)
It's for exactly that reason I made sure my submission was playable in the browser. That said, I know some folks also don't really want to load up a web page every time they want to play. Probably should should have included an executable as well. Oh well, next time :P
My game is an action , Balloon Fight/ Bubble Bobble, inspired boss battle. The player is a fire fighting wingsuit clad protagonist who takes to the sky to face a giant furious Firebird. The goal is to defeat the boss while preventing all of the structures and forest from being burned to the ground. Once the bird is defeated, the more trees and structures that remain the more points the player is awarded. Additional points for taking out bugs. I did everything myself and this is my first "complete" project/prototype. I've only been using Godot since November (I've poked around with Unity for a bit longer) and it was a learning experience the whole way through. I would have liked to give it a little more polish before submitting but I ran into a few programming edge cases which took time away from the visuals and audio I had planned. All in all I'm proud of what I learned and was able to accomplish. The difficulty scales from 1-10, give it a go and let me know what you think :)
The radial movement offers up quite a challenge, and those enemies are certainly not to be taken lightly. A great take on shooters with an amazing presentation. Keep it up, very cool!
Thank you so much! I was planning on expanding on what I've built so far. It was good practice for implementing some of the necessary elements for a larger project. I have a lot more Ideas I'd love to play around with :)
First time jam for me as well. First time actually "finishing" a project(prototype) too! It's hard to put something down and say it's done, this jam and deadline really helped me with that. I'm still Learning Godot(coming from a a few years of poking at Unity), only just started using it in November. The two weeks gave plenty of breathing room while still in the learning process and dealing with unforeseen edge cases. While my interpretation of the theme wasn't going to be super unique, I'm really excited to see what others have done with it. So glad to participate in this with everyone <3
