itch.io

Hey, you asked me to through your game, so here I am.

The puzzles are really cool. I liked the octopus puzzle, for instance. I had to stop at the eyeball puzzle, though, since I couldn't figure that one out for the life of me.

I think for stuff like that it would be really awesome to have people playtest more to tell you which puzzles are perhaps too hard. You mentioned that nobody has gotten all 5 endings yet. That's pretty cool, however that also tells me that some of the puzzles are difficult enough so that nobody has solved them in the time they have, which isn't quite ideal for most puzzle games.

The puzzles I was able to solve were pretty fun, though. I liked that part of the game. 

One other thing- the music was pretty basic, but it worked with the lonely dark environment you seemed to be going for. That was pretty cool.

Overall, nice job! I think that the game was good overall except for one or two puzzles which were pretty tough.

Hey, you asked me to review your game, but I have some bad news.

For some reason, when I run the game, it seems to not work with my screen. It seems to think my screen is much bigger than it is, or something. It's probably a bug. 

Did you make sure that the unity canvas scales with screen size correctly? That's the only reason I can think of that I could be having an issue like this.

Sorry for not being able to play your game. It feels kind of sad :(

Hey, you asked me to look at your game so here I am.

First of all, the polish on the graphics and visuals is kind of crazy. I love it. It made the game feel professionally done, which I really love. Nice job, there.

The gameplay was alright! The amount of gravity on the character felt a bit weird, but I got used to it and I think it worked well for a completely vertical game. I enjoyed each room, although a few things felt janky. One big thing was the soliders - I got hit by one of them once because he fired a shot just as I jumped on his head and it hit me as he died. This was because soliders don't appear to stop shooting when they can't hit you and instead the bullet just goes into them and disappears. That seems slightly weird.

Also, the grabbing mechanics seemed a bit slippery and weird at times. Sometimes it felt like I should be able to pick something up (like a solider's helmet) but was unable to. It also felt like when I threw my stuff at an enemy they wouldn't die.

Finally, there were also one or two times where I nearly softlocked myself because the jumps were almost pixel-perfect after you removed a box or something. 

I say all these nitpicks to the gameplay, but in reality, it was quite good. The mechanics were simple enough for the purposes of a jam, but complicated enough that things were fun.

I liked the fact that you were clear about how your game fits the theme and its inspirations. It was a nice read. Also, the presentation of your game and the itch.io page for it were absolutely phenomenal. Nice job there. 

Overall, the gameplay could use some polish in a few areas, but the overall mechanics are solid and the graphics/music make up for most of the deficiencies in gameplay.

Nice job!

You asked, so I played your game. 

First of all, I love the cover art at the start of the game. It adds a bit of flair to it that is nice.

The music choice / sound choice was also quite reasonable. I will say, though, that in the future it may be a good idea to play around with the volume that each sound is played at, since there were a few sounds that felt quite loud.

The gameplay could use a bit of work. One thing is that you were unable to move diagonally, so the controls felt a bit restrictive at times. Another thing is that with the mix of 2D and 3D that you went for, it became quite tough to figure out where the hitboxes of enemies were so I died a few times thinking I could go behind something that I couldn't. Finally, I would have loved it if the character were slightly faster, since he felt a bit slow for a game where you are constantly dodging things.

For these sorts of things I would highly recommend finding a playtester or two among the people you know. They can help catch things like this that you perhaps did not think of, which can seriously improve the quality of your submissions overall.

The story was entertaining. I would have not have thought of going for "neverending lift with coronavirus" when I started the jam. Kudos for thinking of that and sticking with it!

Overall, I really respect the idea, but the gameplay needs a bit more polish to flow well. The music and sound design are quite decent, though, and I love the cover art quite a bit.

One small thing to finish this review - look into exporting to HTML5 with gamemaker studio. It will seriously increase the amount of reviews you get for games like this. When you submit an exe file, a lot of people think that it could be a virus and don't want to make the chance. I got two warnings that I had to override to play your game. Exporting to HTML5 allows people to play the game in their browser, which is quicker and less dangerous. That lets you get more reviews.

Alright - I finally got around to playing the game. Here are my thoughts.

First of all, the way you did the theme was really cool. I had a lot of ideas when starting the jam, but never would I have dreamed of the idea that you are the room. Nice job there.

I'm not here to just say what is good, though. The gameplay could use a bit of work. The core gameplay idea seems quite good, but each room felt quite long, with very little margin for errors. a lot of the time it felt to me like I would be doing a level for a good couple minutes, and then I would make a single mistake and one of the prisoners would escape and I would just be back where I started. That feeling wasn't fun. Perhaps instead you could have done a score system, where as long as, say, half the prisoners did not escape, you would win the level, but each time a prisoner escaped, you were given a score penalty. That way, it would feel a bit less strict. Even so I was able to beat every level except for the challenge level so maybe the difficulty level is alright and I am just being nitpicky

I kind of wish there were more things you could do other than destroy walls, like interact with things inside the room. It could diversify the strategy a bit, which could be nice. For the first half of each level, things always felt a bit slow, so you were just kind of sitting around and occasionally reacting. Having a bit more to do there would be nice. I understand that this was made within 2-3 days though so that is asking for a lot. I am quite impressed with what you have done.

I loved the music. If you were the one who composed this, I applaud you for that. The same goes for the artstyle - I was really impressed with the presentation of the game. Even if you weren't the one who made the assets, I am impressed with how well they have been used - that takes some skill, especially for a slightly unusual game like this.

Overall, I think the concept of the game is really cool, and the core gameplay loop is pretty interesting. The gameplay feels a bit too unforgiving for my taste, but at the same time the polish that comes from the art and music makes this game feel really good.

Nice job!

Hey,

While the rating system is down, it doesn't feel like there is much incentive for anyone to give criticism on people's games. This kind of sucks since it feels like we have worked on these games for a bit too long for barely anybody to look at them. So, if you want, leave a reply to this and I'll try to get around to playing your game and will give you some feedback. I am not a game design guru, but this is my fifth jam so I don't think I would give bad advice, at least.

Thank you for writing such an in-depth review of my game! I have also played a lot of card games, so I certainly understand where many of these points are coming from.

If I was going for a normal, scalable, card game, I probably wouldn't use 'strictly better' cards, like you said. In this case, though, I had to use them both to simplify the design process to meet time constraints, as well as to ensure that enemy decks are better than the player deck. If the enemies did not have better decks than the player, then the player would never die and see the deck editing screen, which I didn't really want. So, I had to make some cards that were, frankly, overpowered to ensure the player died at least once.

I also wish I could have had more diverse cards and strategies. Once again, this came down to time. It is much easier to balance the strategies in a short period of time when the strategies are fairly simple. If I had more time, though, I would probably add card draw, and less powerful cards that don't end the turn. I think your recommendations are all really solid. I might make a post game jam version that adds this stuff, honestly.

I should have added starter decks. I considered it, but decided against it at the time. Once again, I think this is something that I should add in a post jam version of the game. The wrath/bell/assault deck honestly sounds really neat! 

Once again, thanks for the review. It's given me a lot to think about.

I thought this was pretty fun! I really appreciated how all the characters were fully animated. It's a touch of detail that is quite nice.

I was a bit confused while playing about why health pickups seemed to be harming me, though. I would hug an enemy and I would sometimes get healed, but picking up health seemed to hurt me. Looking back on it, that may have been what you were going for. Still, making that a bit more clear would have been nice.

Overall, though, nice job! 

This was a lot of fun! I definitely enjoyed the dialogue - the rivalry was quite entertaining. I would like to say, however, that sometimes the siblings talk at the same time and it becomes a bit tough to keep track of the dialogue. Apart from that, though, the game was really good. I am quite impressed with how much logic must have gone into each level for you to pull this game off!

This was actually quite fun! The third level took me a second to decode.

The idea seems pretty expandable, too, which is fun. For instance, you could make buttons do other things, like move platforms, or move checkpoints, etc. Or, you could make a checkpoint that only worked for one reset.

Nice Job!

I liked the game! I think that with a few more levels it could be quite interesting.

I did notice that I could clone my character, though. If I killed myself with a grenade and pressed "R" before respawning, it would spawn two of me.

Overall, though, nice job!

I liked the paper aesthetic - It looked really good!

I really enjoyed this! I really like the music. Nice job!

I just beat it. I really enjoyed playing this. You had a really cool idea for a game!

I love the aesthetic!

This is pretty good. The concept is pretty neat, and you created some cool levels and mechanics from that. Nice job!

This is pretty good! I don't see much of a connection to the theme, but I quite like it anyway. I find it amazing how you were able to get all of those weapons and enemies implemented within 2 days. That's awesome!

This made me chuckle. It definitely wasn't what I expected would be made when I came to this jam.

This is a really neat idea for a game! It feels a bit like surgeon simulator. Also, the audio and graphics are awesome!

The controls feel awkward, but I think that is kind of the point. It feels a bit like surgeon simulator.

One big thing I noticed is that I couldn't figure out how to close the game. If there is a close button, you may want to advertise it more. Otherwise, try adding one! The other thing was that it felt like the controls didn't always work insanely well. I would press W or S sometimes but nothing would happen. Also , when I tried to pick up toilet paper this one time, I couldn't pick it up at all.

Overall, your game is a pretty great game, and with some changes to the controls so they are more consistent, it could be improved greatly.

This is kind of awesome. I couldn't win, but at the very least I tried. The concept is INSANELY creative. I love the idea so much. When playing, I found it difficult because I couldn't really figure out where I was so I eventually ran into another train. Even when looking out the window, things didn't help much. It was really fun, though.