itch.io

First, I acknowledge that unlike some other projects in Post Jam Jam, DuskMiner has not been worked on as long and so it is quite impressive how much you were able to implement in such a short period of time. So good job finishing the jam and good job getting in as many features as you did. That said, in the spirit of giving constructive feedback to help each other improve, I am going to be very honest here.

* How does combat feel?

Combat was more frustrating than fun. Having LMB be both "walk to" and "attack" was frustrating because the game often walked somewhere when I wanted to attack and attack when I wanted to walk to somewhere. It's nice that you implemented ranged, melee, and tech combat, but there wasn't anything particularly interesting about the combat that would make me want to continue engaging in it. Also, I only encountered 2-3 enemies each playthrough so there wasn't much to base my combat impressions on.

* What is your impresson of online play?

I wasn't aware that it is an online game. I just tried it right now by launching the game in 2 separate browsers and it worked.  I can definitely see how online play makes the game more fun and interesting. Combat is more dynamic when you can attack as a team and use different weapons.

* Would the game represent well as mech-based combat?

The game does not currently represent as a mech-based combat game (at least visually). If you're asking if it could be a mech-based combat game I don't see why not.

* What would it take to make it 2v2 or 4v4 or any other small team deathmatch?

I was under the impression this is more of a co-op, PvE action RPG game. If you wanted it to be a team deathmatch game I guess you would need a scoring system, good arena level design, perhaps power-ups?

* Do any of these new features sound interesting?

Heat management and salvaging defeated enemies sounds like it would add depth to the gameplay.

Concluding thoughts: It seems like the game doesn't know what it wants to be and from your questions, it seems like you don't know what you want the game to be either. My advice would be stop development and start designing. Write a Game Design Document, figure out what you want the game to be on paper before you put in countless hours developing it. Right now it seems like you're going about it backwards and trying to design the game as you develop it which is going to lead to a lot of wasted time and the lack of clear direction showing up in the game itself. I hope this feedback helps and good luck to you!

• Really cool puzzle concept that is well-executed
• Tutorial does an excellent job teaching the mechanics
• New mechanics are introduced at a good pace, but I think each newly introduced mechanic needs more time to breathe so the player can better grasp the concepts better. By Level 10 I felt like I was able to pass levels partly through understanding the concepts, but also through luck of just dragging everything until I got close to the solution.
• It might be nice to add Ctrl+Z to undo last action as a QoL feature
• The puzzles are fun; good brain teasers, good variety
• The jump from 2D to 3D puzzles was really cool and trippy; I felt like my brain was going to melt since it was already challenging in 2D
• Free Look and 3D mode are helpful in understanding the puzzle, but the controls weren't super intuitive. 3D mode was more intuitive than Free Look mode. Honestly, I think it may be better have one or the other since having both makes navigating the puzzles more confusing (remembering three different control sets) and slightly more dius; whereas switching back and forth between 3D and 2D mode seems more seamless. Plus you can't move in Free Look, which makes 3D mode the winner for me.
• I feel like puzzle 16 should come before puzzle 15 as it is easier to understand
• The music is generally calming and inoffensive, but I found it to be repetitive after a while

In my humble opinion, puzzle games feel the most fun when they make you feel smart and not so fun when they make you feel dumb. I think if you hand-hold the player a little more and smooth out the difficulty curve the game will become even more fun than it already is :)

WOW. This game is incredible. I played it for about 40 minutes and got to the second zone.

• Feels very polished; feels much more like a Steam game than a game jam game :)
  • Beautiful, crisp, graphics with well-thought out color palette
  • Super cute robot, I love him!
  • Ambient sounds are nice
  • Weather effects add lots to the mood
  • I accidentally hit the poor pigeon with my hoe and it went flying LOL! Nice touch.
  • Nice bite-sized tutorials
  • Quest log is very helpful
  • Intriguing premise; I like how the bits of story-telling are paced which allows for me to enjoy playing the game without getting interrupted by walls of text
• I don't normally enjoy 2D side scrollers or farming games, but Rombo surprisingly held my interest due to the cute art style and bite-sized progression
• Lots of friction for me in the beginning
  • I was unsure how to clear debris from the field
  • I feel stupid, but it took me a minute to realize I needed to speak with the terminal again after the tutorial in order to get instructions on how to clear debris from the field
  • Control screen doesn't currently show keyboard controls (all keys are *); I was playing the WebGL version
    
  • Eventually figured out that "HOLD DOWN" meant hold down the mouse button
  • Would be a nice QOL feature for the inventory to have tooltips or labels for each item/slot
  • Some UI broken; too large and cut off or too small

I'm so happy you tried the multiplayer mode, thank you for your comments 😊 I just uploaded a new build fixing the power-ups not working correctly after reset.

Duly noted that the Supermarket is confusing. I'll add a tutorial in the future.

More power-ups will be coming soon!

Positives:

• Nice sound design; the situational background music and sound effects really added to the mood and feeling on the story
• Very competent writing. Good motivation for the main character at the start, sufficient backstory, and the story flowed well and didn't overstay its welcome.
• Hand-drawn pictures also do well in immersing the player in the story

Potential improvements if you choose to continue working on it:

• Text formatting could lend to polish (i.e. different font sizes for headers, different styles when characters are speaking, perhaps even animating some text effects for emphasis)
• There were a few places in the text that sounded anachronistic like talking about "dumbass coworkers", "peanut butter jar", "chocolate cake", "friendly neighborhood cowboy", "first-degree homicide" (some of these visuals are hard to imagine in a wild west setting). Although these things are perfectly fine if you're aiming for more tongue-in-cheek humor

This is really helpful feedback Sword Fan, thank you so much for taking the time to play and write back. Agreed on the need for telegraphing and more power-up feedback.

• May I ask what you think would make the game more skill-based? Is it just about telegraphing attacks like how the knife rotates before chopping?
• And by "coyote time", do you mean slowing down time at the edges of the board?

This game is Neat ;)

• It feels very fleshed out with lots of content; your 2 years of work definitely shows in the game
• Beautiful graphics with soothing color schemes
• Fun bosses with interesting mechanics
• Interesting world that makes me want to keep exploring
• The difficulty feels good (coming from someone who doesn't play metroidvania's mind you)

A couple humble suggestions:

• Remappable buttons (I used an Xbox controller and it felt unconventional to press Y for interact and B for melee)
• Ability to re-initiate dialog (in case you forgot what the NPC said)
• The beetle is a cool enemy; it would add a little interest if it could only be damaged from the rear since its face looks pretty tough and armored
• The graphics are beautiful; I understand the aesthetic you're going for, but perhaps adding more contrast to a small number of elements may help it pop out in the screenshots (this is assuming you're going for a commercial release)
• A quality of life feature would be to have the interaction button hints match your current control scheme (when I play with gamepad the hints are for the keyboard keys). I saw a tutorial on this the other day: 

Here's an extreme example of what I meant by the camera rotation: https://imgur.com/a/20s4uNx

I don't know exactly what's causing it, but I can usually reproduce it in the first level by hitting the first guy then aiming at the ceiling.

Really cool game! It's so pretty—the visuals remind me of Tron and the music helps you get into the zone. The roguelike progression system with choice of upgrades is pretty fun too.

Some suggestions if you're open to them: I know the upgrade screen is integral to the gameplay, but it really stops the flow of the game. I feel like your game wants to be a game where you get into the zone and can go for an hour if you get really good at it, but the upgrade screen works against that goal. I'm not sure what the solution would be, perhaps having realtime upgrade screen that doesn't stop the action?

This goes into my second piece of feedback which is that I think the upgrades are perhaps too complicated. There's usually three stats being modified per card. Honestly, I would try cutting this down to one stat per card. Maybe have two rounds of card picks. One for the positive stats and one for the negative stats. That way the player can quickly read the cards, react and choose, without breaking the flow of combat.

Just some humble ideas. Cheers Darko!

Pretty decent game. Nice use of the Synty assets and I was impressed by the systems you incorporated in the short time period. Even though there was no sound, you did a good job telling the story through the dialog!

It looks like you got a lot of work done this month, UI is no joke and designing dynamic UI sounds like a pretty big handful. Congrats on getting this far! 

Lovely art style. Saving this one to play it later tonight.

LOL. I won't write much here, but jus say I was entertained.

One suggestion: For the 2nd round of questions, it would be nice to have better feedback on which questions were answered right or wrong. According to the UI it felt like I answered every question wrong, but Linda told me I got some right. Also, maybe make the left and right buttons positioned on the left and right instead of up and down to avoid confusion. Cheers!

Came back to play again and I gotta say it's quite amusing. Definitely best played with a mouse; playing with keyboard or gamepad is quite frustrating.

Great job making progress on this game, it looks like you managed your time really well and hit all the major things you wanted to accomplish in your GDD.

The ricochet mechanic is pretty interesting. Is it intentional that the camera rotation changes when you ricochet? Also, it feels like there should be a counter-balancing mechanic. Right now the ability to ricochet makes it very hard to lose. Perhaps you get a limited number of ricochets? Lastly, I think its hilarious you can shoot yourself on accident. I thought the guy in the biker helmet was a boss and didn't realize it was me! hahah

Wow, I can't believe you made this in a month. This game is so cool!! I love the cute cardboard aesthetic and the music is very soothing (great for a puzzle game). The game's systems are very intriguing and you do a good job slowly introducing the systems to the player. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's fun! I think it's because the game is greater than the sum of its parts and it just has a great vibe.

Okay, enough gushing about it. Here's my one suggestion (take it with a grain of salt): The "Action" "Target" card could be a little clearer. For example, with the hourglass and button drawing, does this mean "Wait for the button to be pressed" or "Pressing the button executes a wait"? It took me a little bit of time to figure it out, which could be part of the design, but perhaps it would make for a better user experience if the diagram or instructions were laid out more clearly.

First of all, the art is GORGEOUS. Great color palette, distinct hand-drawn style, fits the theme of the game really well. I also like the setting and the idea for the game so congrats on having an intriguing hook!

I think you also have a good mechanical hook, the gameplay sounds really fun, but it could use some additional iterations and polish. Primarily, I want to feel MOMENTUM, but often I fall flat on my face. Perhaps you're going for a more difficult type of game, which is totally fine too, but the difficulty should feel fair. For example, for any jump I'm about to take I should be able to see the next rope (partially is fine). If I'm unable to see the next rope, the game feels too random and unfair.

Take my next suggestion with a grain of salt, but perhaps the player needs to be able to exert force on the rope. Right now you're completely at the rope's mercy so if you don't time your jump and distance exactly you're easily stuck on the current rope. Perhaps adding forward and back buttons to influence the swinging of the rope would help. 

Lastly, the game can also feel unfair if you swing to another rope and land on the very top of the rope where there is little to no movement. Here again, your only option is to jump down and die. Perhaps making the top part of the rope non-interactable can help solve this problem. Overall, great work. Cheers!

Thank you for playing Darko! Good to know about the difficulty of the knife and I have uploaded a fix for the glove bug.

Super creepy. Love the striking black and white aesthetic. The minimalism serves the game well. Love the biblical/eschatological references.

I'm not 100% sure if I'm playing the game right though. I press the hand podium in the central corridor, Azrael appears and I run to the other room (I assumed this was the exit the instructions talked about but I'm not sure). In the other room there is another hand podium so I press that one and then another angel appears and I run to the other end to another similar room (am I safe?). There's another hand podium here to so I press that one as well and another angel appears. So I'm running back and forth between rooms, but I'm not sure whether I'm doing what you intended or not. It could be very well I'm stupid, but I thought I would let you know my experience.

Anyway, great job! It's a really creepy atmospheric game. 

I enjoyed the roguelike mechanic of obtaining the bosses special power after you defeat them. Nice job making the bosses varied with different attacks and visuals. It's also interesting that your health does not replenish after a defeating a boss. I'm assuming you'll flesh this out more so that there are ways to increase health in-between rounds perhaps.

I died to the Spinning Mauler. He had this cool laser attack, but I couldn't run after enough to avoid them. Maybe I was supposed to dash instead.

My one suggestion would be to tighten the hit boxes. When I fought Cyclonara, it seemed like I could step into edge of the cyclone's sprite without getting damaged. Of course this is more of a polish issue, but I believe it will help make the game more enjoyable. Cheers!

LOL. This was surprisingly fun. Great polish, the visuals, the voices, and the music really set the tone and mood for the game. The dialog was humorous and just the right length. Good job.

My criticism would be that the hit boxes aren't very accurate so I would get damaged even though my character wasn't touching the boss' sword. The gameplay is also fairly simple at the moment, but I assume you will be adding more mechanics in the future.

Hey there! Cool game, but just wanted to let you know the Invert Y setting does not seem to work on gamepad, which could be a source of frustration

Unbelievably good. Seriously, I can't believe this was all made in 3 days. It reminds me of "Stanley Parable" and "Please Don't Touch Anything" (I haven't played the latter, but it gives the same vibes from what I've seen). Overall, this game is creative, funny (which is hard to do in a game), well acted, and polished. I had to quit out of the game because my CPU was overheating (must be the ghost in the machine), but I'm looking forward to coming back later and finishing it. Great work!

Hahaha I was wondering whether I should have patched that exploit... but I didn't have time. Glad to hear it's a fun mechanic. Thank you so much for your feedback, it means a lot :D

Thank you kindly friend, I plan to continue working on it and adding more levels and features

Thanks! I'll give it another shot.

This is one of my favorites of this jam. Playing trivia while dodging trash is brilliant and the artwork really sells the whole idea. Super fun game, great polish too.

Dumb question, but how do you play the game? Or is the game figuring out how to play the game?

Super fun game that's nostalgic of Sid Meire's Pirates! I had a blast playing this one and I'm impressed by the content and polish that got packed into it in 3 days.

Very cool puzzle game. There was one level where I thought there was a bug because I couldn't progress, only to find out that the level was clever and I was stupid haha. Poor dude died so many times, but it was fun.

I also really like the blue and red visual joysticks to remind you which button is on the left and which is on the right. Nice design choice.

This one was really eye-catching. I love the colors, effects, and music. The gameplay was really interesting too! Also impressive that you have an online leaderboard. Props to you!

This one was really eye-catching. I love the colors, effects, and music. The gameplay was really interesting too! Also impressive that you have an online leaderboard. Props to you!

Got it. Two Butts On!