If feels really polished and complete for a Jam game, I actually feel like it could already be a full fledged game buyable on Steam or on mobile.
But even though it is a very high quality game, I just can't have fun with the jump mechanic. Rage games are clearly not my forte, but I feel like other rage games didn't frustrate me nearly as much as this one.
At first it was because I couldn't undertand the correlation between the angle and length of my line and the direction and speed the character got propelled at. At times it really felt like a shorter line actually gave more strength which confused me even more, but I think that was because of the angle.
After I understood that the direction was perpendicular to the line drawn I could actually start playing, but even then the game being really hard made me quit pretty fast after reaching The Cranes.
Anyway, excellent work! Since it's clearly a me issue I didn't apply my negative feelings to the rating because I don't want the game to have a lower rank than it deserves.
Ah, yeah. A friend of mine that tested the game also found himself stuck and didn't know how to remove a gear. The tutorial really does a bad job of teaching this since it doesn't explicitly tell how to remove a gear and instead teaches how to open the options of a gear which contain the remove button.
For reference, to remove a gear you currently have to right click it which will open its toolbar which only has the remove button for now.
The mechanic in itself is very simple, but the challenge the game brings has its way to completely absorb you and makes you want to try beating your best score and reaching the ladder.
The suggestions are on point haha, both were planned to be integrated during the jam, but my focus on polishing the game left me with too little time to work on these sadly. I'll continue the development for sure though seeing how many people think the game has potential!
Yeah, the game definitely needed more levels, I know Game Jam games shouldn't be too long, but they sure as hell shouldn't be too short either like mine is haha
I completely agree that the tutorial could have brought the player to understand by playing how gear deletion works. I won't lie the tutorial was kind of a last minute addition some it's very crude and doesn't do a good job to teach especially the gear deletion.
Would you mind telling me which controls you couldn't figure out? Was it every control and you couldn't play at all, or was it maybe how to remove a gear which got you stuck ?
I saw a lot of commenters say that they couldn't bring themselves to finish the game, and I understand that to each their own, but I really didn't find it difficult so I'm not sure I get how they're falling.
Anyway, I had a great time! For these types of game, a character control is primordial, and I think yours was very good and responsive, which made the experience really enjoyable. The only time when it didn't work out so much was, as someone else said, on the trampoline, as you can't gather speed while airborne, if you bounce straight on a trampoline or if you hit something in your jump that stops you, you enter a loop where you can't do anything but bounce forever. You should let the player move just a tiny bit when airborne, it would fix this issue and in my opinion feel better for the section with crates you have to climb with only a small place to speed up.
I tried to listen for the easter egg, but couldn't hear it sadly. I'm not sure if it's something that's only audible if you're close to it, or if it's always there, but I didn't hear it nonetheless. I even went out of map by jumping on the building edge after the first elevator in the upper part, but there was nothing to be found there either haha
I've played other games this jam that used this gameplay loop à la Buckshot Roulette, but I think yours is the one that does it best. I don't know the game Orange Roulette so I'm not sure what in your game is inspired by it, but here's what I liked about it:
The different personalities of each player that add a level of strategy (fck you Vengeful!)
The SFX that are really satisfying
The visual aspect, even though not complex to do, always works well, especially in this type of game
There were just two elements that were lacking in my opinion. As other commenters have said, the Spin Cylinder option shouldn't be usable indefinitely, maybe more once per player, or once in a round, I don't know what'd be best.
The second one is something I'm confused about since it could just be a quirk of randomness, but I played a dozen games to test it, and it really doesn't feel like the odds for a real bullet displayed on screen are accurate. I have no idea why it wouldn't match since the math behind it is very straightforward, but in the hundreds of rounds I played across all games, not even once did a bullet come out at 17% and 33% chance, and only one came out at 25%. As I said, this could be a streak of very "good" luck, but it welt really weird nonetheless.
As other commenters have said, it takes a bit of time to understand how to go faster, but once you do the game becomes a pleasant experience that can be really challenging to grab the Gold Star on each level.
Another thing that wasn't clear at first is that hitting walls / grass doesn't make you lose, it just resets your speed to 200, so it cam even become a strategic choice to accept colliding at times.
The music was really good and matched the gameplay, which was nice, and the art direction works well for what it wants to be. My only gripe on this aspect is that it's difficult to understand what it is you're controlling (I mean it's in the game's name so I might just be stupid on this one, but it didn't strike me as a wheel)
I can clearly see what you wanted to do with this game, and you seem to have put a lot of work into it, but I'm just not sure that you prioritized the right elements for a Game Jam game.
You seem to have implemented many elements to the game, which give it a complex gameplay that has potential for a full release, but as far as Game Jams go, I don't think this was the way to do it. As I saw other comments say, you really should have focused on a single or maybe two mechanics for this jam that you polish well instead of adding more mechanics that are lacking as they are right now.
The graphics and music are cool though
I don't want this review to come out as too negative since I know a lot of work went into the game and a lot more will after the jam, but I still have to rate the game as it is right now, which I couldn't have too much fun with.
Keep up the good work though, I hope to hear from it again since you're aiming for a release on Steam in the future!
Bouncing around hitting other battle tops and ejecting them was reaaaally satisfying. I can become very uncontrolable in these situations but I found the lack of control to be quite fun in itself.
The only gripe I have is that I found the game to be really hard after the first 4-5 waves, I guess you need to use the time between waves to increase your RPM so that when the next battle tops come you start moving fast to not take too much damage, but at some point I just couldn't keep up anyway, and if I tried increasing my RPM during a wave it most often than not resulting in getting hit and losing more RPM than what I gained.
Ok, I'm gonna be honest, I can't realisticaly give the game good ratings, but I'd lie if I said I didn't have a hell of a good time playing it for a couple minutes.
Not because the gameplay is solid, not because the graphics are fire and definitely not because the music / SFX are enticing, but because I was so taken aback by what the hell was going on and trying to figure out if what made me laugh was intended or not
The super loud non stop goblin cries, the camera that starts moving without a reason from time to time, the singular giant goblin that spawned once and never again, the life bar that went down without any enemy around, and the mechanic of pressing space to spin that actually wants you to always be spinning and doing nothing else, all of those combined genuinely cracked me up.
If your game is a serious attempt / you're a beginner, or anything, I don't want you to think I'm making fun of you or your work. I respect the fact that you made a game in the first place, but I want you to know that everything this game is and does was such a complete uno reverse card on what I expected that it resulted in one of the funniest games I played.
Nothing could have prepared me for the experience this game is. I think it's my personnal top 1 in seriousness of the jam, and clearly in my top games overall.
This is by far the game that made me laugh most of all I tested during the Jam, and even beyond I'd say. Your creativity is through the roof with this one.
When I read the description, I was thinking that I would resonate with it because of the heat theme, but not even a minute into the game I didn't even remember this was what it's about so I almost gasped when I got the fan in the end
Your art is also insanely expressive, I loved the gag with the ninja girl popping her eyes out after you break her sword haha
Visually I found its style to be very charming, mechanically even though it was sometimes frustrating not rolling a bullet after a lot of spins, it was very enjoyable, and the general game feel is really good. Then bunny hopping is my cherry on top, even though considering the later days difficulty, it would be impossible without it haha
Speaking of difficulty, from day 7 onwards it seems to really go crazy with the explosive drones, but it was nonetheless very fun.
I'm genuinely amazed by the creativity of this game. Top marks on this aspect for sure!
The art is fire, the mechanic of betting on what our character's personnality wants to say is something I could absolutely never have thought of myself, the music and SFX really matched the vibe of the game, and I loved the story, even though I was a bit disappointed that the different personalities don't trigger different dialogues from Jessica, but I can't ask for too much from a 6 days game.
The money aspect felt a bit bland after buying the upgrades, but that really is a minor issue in the end.
I could swear I played it earlier, I don't remember if it was during the development phase of the jam or if it was at the beginning of the testing phase, but anyway, it's a really cool game!
The art is fire, the music is coold, and the concept is very original. The only issue I had with it is that I find it to be really hard when you have 3 machines running at the same time. I don't know if I'm just too slow or not, but it seemed to be impossible to mange to fully exorcise all 3.
I thought the game was cool and had a great concept, but between the very heavy load times and freezes that I imagine can be attributed to shaders loading, and some combinations of car parts that are really frustrating to play with, I jumped from having fun to not having fun to having fun again, but then not.
THe game has great qualities, I think the art is cool and cozy, the concept is great, the car parts are original, but there are too many elements that are problematic for me to enjoy this game as much as I could have.
I wan't expecting anything when I first saw the game, but it's so much better than I thought! And there seems to be a lot of content.
The musics was fire, the monsters sprites were cool, and the wheel mechanic to determine your action, even though it's sometimes really frustrating, was great!
The gun spin and anticipation before it shoots either a blank or a bullet are great, but everything else is pretty lacking sadly..
The fact that you can't know if another player tried to shoot himself or someone else and don't have any idea who is targeted felt really unpleasant, and I also couldn't really understand the logic behind blanks and real bullets. I thought that the more blanks are shot, the higher chance there is of shooting a real bullet, but in this game I don't think that's the case, there seemed to be a fixed chance for both cases to be selected, which made the whole foundation of the game pretty weak since having a way to evaluate the odds imperative.
There are good elements to the game, but sadly there are also too many weird one that hinder the fun.
I still respect the work you put in it though, obviously
Great game! Didn't you post a video or a screenshot of it in the #progress-pics Discord channel? I could swear I saw the name of the game during the jam
