The level design and puzzles are pretty solid. The sound design works really well to create the eerie vibe along the visuals. Story was cryptic enough to feel engaging.
You managed to startle me during that particular section (though it was a jump-scare so i call that cheating --"). Though i found the use of silhouette, certain camera angles and sudden sounds to be more productive to induce fear in my opinion.
It's a bit sad there are no settings available at all. The game could have used some sound volume slider and/or an option to "Toggle Sprint". It was a bit of hassle to press non-stop the key at times. (Though i can understand that it would reduce tension in certain sections)
Camera switches were sometimes really good and sometimes quite janky (due to bad placement or too many overlapping cameras in a same area) which hindered progression a bit due to poor vision. To be fair it must not have been easy to tweak all those camera angles in such short time.
I'm a bit sad there are no special way to score points. like multiplier for long words or maybe a timed bonus for using specific letters in the next word.
I'm a bit sad because this game is so well done that with a little bit more polish (and probably more time) it could have been excellent.
First it is gorgeous to look at. The designs may be simple but they are following a given aesthetic which really nails it in my opinion.
Then let's give credit to the voice actors which are, i assume, amateurs. It's not an easy thing to do and the simple fact of trying deserves praises. It's not perfect but it adds to the universe immersion.
Now the gameplay. I'm a huge fan of Tactical-RPG games so how could i not love this game system ? It's simple and works well. The AP management is a real good idea which open a lot of possibility for both offense and defense. However it takes a moment to clearly get this due to the lack of tutorial. Especially for how (i assume) types works,there are no clear indication that Envy Attacks deal more damage on Greed enemies (i think ?).
Despite the lack of clarity and i greatly enjoyed my experience with the game.
Btw, did you really made everything yourself ? Even the music ? Because i really liked it and wished i could listen to it more.
On a side note, i suspect you left a demo level in the level pool since when you pick a Tharsis level you may encounter a zone with no enemy.
This game feels like a rough diamond. A lot of good ideas, well defined aesthetic and style but that overall lack just a tiny bit of polish to become excellent.
Had an enjoyable time on it even though an enemy literally spawned on me right from the start on my first run killing me right on the spot. Annoying but hey it happens.
I found the gameplay a bit confusing at first, i thought the mail post turret was meant to be on the enemies path until i realized that it was throwing projectile and thus could be put on floating platforms. After a few waves you get the gist of it though. Maybe this is in part due to the game's speed, since enemies move quite fast i didn't notice the projectile travelling toward them and thought the damage was done in melee.
I was amazed by the number of levels and the amount of gameplay mechanics introduced despite the very simple and limited controls.
Art and music are great too.
Loved the game aesthetic and gameplay however i do find the auto-scrolling + perspective chosen to be a bit hard to handle at times especially considering the bullet-hell nature of the game.
The visuals and sound design are really good. Gameplay has a real well-thought concept.
There are a few stuff that could have been changed for better clarity, like making repurposed resumes fade out after a while or how new resumes would pop-up in front of previous one (which was a bit annoying for me at first).
Though the cut/paste mechanic can be a bit janky when dealing with small parts (like when the letters you want to cut from the newspaper are too small) which makes it impossible to drag the cut part.
Nonetheless it's fitting the theme quite well imo.
An interesting game that suffers a bit from it's rough edges.
The background being not synced with the cabinets kinda confused me for a moment (I thought you could jump on them like a platform).
Having multiple characters kinda seems pointless due to the fact you can just spam your energy shot to destroy all obstacles.
QTE are a pretty good idea considering that a run rely more and more on reflex as the scroll speed increases. Maybe succeeding a QTE could have destroyed all obstacles in sight as a more rewarding action ?
It remains quite promising for a first submission.
For the camera controls i completely agree with you however i realized that a little too late during development. This game went through multiple direction, and the current version is the result from a rush in the last 3 days of the jam. Sorry about that.
I'm a little sad that i couldn't showcase all of HiddenGhillieDhu work done for the Jam. Initially this was meant to be a Kirby-like platformer where the slime would absorb power-ups to gain certain abilities.
A really impressive game from the level design to the care put into little details (the larvae character was a fun touch).
Incredible work on the aesthetic and the enemy AI especially, especially those Flies (It was a nightmare to deal with *sweat*)
Here's a few observations and/or questions i had :
I deduced that the game would invisible wall you until you clear the current zone, which is perfectly fine but maybe adding a pointing arrow to the last remaining enemy who's not within the camera range can help feeling lost in certain situations
While the Fly AI impressed me, It may be a little too fast on those dodges
Performance-wise, the game really struggled (multiple micro-freezes) in the very beginning when it began spawning the first batch of enemies, once the number of enemies decreased the game run smoothly. Dunno if it was maybe an isolated thing. (My PC is pretty decent)
In the end, it was a really enjoyable and beautiful experience.
Sorry about this, it is indeed a big issue right now. I will update the game description asap to try to mitigate the problem.
The game uses 3 terminals with specific functions :
The Receiver is used to communicate with the Rescue team and request information on their current position
The Computer holds informations about the planet and what the map icons refer to
The Map Terminal is where you can see the destination and guess where the team should move towards based on the information their provide you. The gear stick is there to confirm the destination to provided before giving them to the receiver (NORTH, NORTH WEST, EAST, etc)
The idea was to make a guessing game where you must guess the team position and guide it to the destination based on the interaction with the Recue Team. Which required tou to navigate back and forth between the terminals.
A really good vibe and art direction. However I feel like the whole button mashing resolution for expedition does not really help the gameplay. You seem to have designed an interesting system with the item mechanics but from a new player perspective, it feels like only the button mashing matters.
The initial idea was to make a something similar to guessing tabletop games like "Guess Who ?" where you must use deduction to find where the team is and guide it to where it should go. So this was done by design.
Sorry about the lack of explanation of game mechanics, we kinda rushed to be able to ship the game for the jam so it is missing a lot of quality of life features.
Hey there, thx for the feedback. This is mostly a mistake on my part where i kept a scrapped mechanic with the whole inspect mode of items. this was meant to be used later to implement a discount tag or an expiration tag on product that you could search for. which would have affected the end results or make you lose time.
Sadly we lacked time and experience to make a proper game out of it. Will strive to do better next time
