Survived all the nights. Nicely done.
Huge fan
The whole account seems pretty sketchy.
A bunch of seemingly AI-generated, super-basic, low-effort games, put behind paywalls, with pics that seem to be taken on a separate screen with no web versions or videos and each submitted to multiple game jams to try and gain visibility.
This person seems to have a very low expectation of a space occupied with devs or the expectations that others will pay for something with literally 0 appeal to it
I agree with you that the priority should be on mechanics. And most indie jam participants aren't impressed by lights and effects as they are developers themselves and can tell if you didn't put much effort into it.
But I use game jams as like a mini test for what I'd like to do as I establish and improve my workflow, using the simulated limits that the jams provide. (Timeline, theme etc.)
That's why all my games, no matter how small have full menus, volume sliders, pause functions etc. I know most game jammers don't care and won't use them. But I personally cannot release a game without those aspects, even if its just for a game jam.
I used Godot for my first 2 game jams. I only moved to Unreal because it's workflow covers for many of my weaknesses and areas I dont want to put a lot of energy into (lighting and effects). I like to code but I'm not into the making things pretty parts of game dev, which unreal allows you to sort of cheat alot in
But it's clear that if I want to keep doing active participation in jams, i need to adopt either godot or unity on the side, at least for this. Im also starting to really hate the unreal file sizes
What surprised and disappointed me is not getting even 10 out of the almost 70k ratings for the jam.
I'm aware that download-only games, especially UE titles, get downloaded the least in these spaces as I've done Game jams before. But, even by that metric, I was genuinely surprised given the sheer number of participants. It kinda killed my interest in the other upcoming big jams unless I use one of the other engines
I also saw the long list of games that had 8 ratings towards the end as I was trying to rate those ones exclusively. They were more than some entire game jams get in participants, while some had close to 100.
I guess you keep learning and keep it moving.
TLDR: I kinda wish I'd used one of the web export engines in order to get more feedback
The art, music and 2d intro are really good. The gameplay could use some work. considering this just a game jam, there was probably no time, but just for the sake of leaving feedback, these are some that come quickly off the top:
A clear indicator of where enemies will come from, damage feedback(camera shake, red flash, sound effect, particles), audio when striking enemies, more health? (its easy to get swarmed and completely surrounded by mobs), sound indicators for when enemies spawn since this is first person and some come from off camera where the player cannot see them. directional damage indicator for damage coming from enemies not in front of the camera
in a nutshell, the presentation is top tier stuff. the gameplay less so
Here's mine. Should not take more than a few to get through
Rate Vertigo (Jam Submission) by TNdevour for The Very Serious Juniper Dev Game Jam - itch.io
The general idea is interesting and it's very impressive to see how much is going on under the hood here.
I have to say it seems like it might have been perhaps too much for the few days, given how many things seem incomplete, from debug and collision objects being visible in the hub (this could be intentional to show the player where to go), to stuff like there being a weird light when the player approaches a wall in the hub. Nothing that cant be fixed, but would have needed more time probably.
Still, good stuff taking on such an ambitious project
Man, I love your aesthetic and the implementation of the theme so much (Plus your thumbnail art is very nice). The upgrade mechanic is also quite cool. The music, also very fitting.
But I'm not sure about that reloading mechanic.
There were times when I went for a while without being able to shoot at all due to getting only blanks for a while.
I think you could consider tweaking whatever formula is being used to calculate the reload result. Maybe after a number of reloads, if none is a bullet, you force the next one to be a bullet. Kind of like a player pity system to ensure the gun fights continue at a decent pace