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A member registered Jul 04, 2017 · View creator page →

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I've got a decade of jam experience (over 100 entered) - I'm making a 2D precision platforming metroidvania and I've got the character controller done, I'm working on the various movement tech now (glide, some sort of grapple, and a slam attack).

Ideally it won't be pixel art, I prefer nice curvy landscapes with lots of different angles - it's difficult to make that look good with pixel art, but if you can convince me it will work I'd be happy to change my mind.

If you're an artist I would really love some help making this look as awesome as it feels to play :) the best way to contact me is on Discord _thechief - or you can email me: dom@wayfarer-games.com

Thanks :D

This isn't a rhythm game, it has nothing to do with the theme, and has been submitted to a ton of game jams - and has been disqualified.

No, uploads are locked when the jam finishes!

There are lots of different systems here, it's quite ambitious for a jam game! Unfortuantely I ran into a few issues that really prevented me from playing. The first time I ran it, I got told to go to the shop and buy something - but I couldn't exit the shop menu! Then, after reloading, I wasn't told to buy anything and didn't seem to have any money. I found the teleporter, but then couldn't attack at all. Sorry! I tried a few times and couldn't get it to work. If there's something specific I need to do, let me know and I'll give the game another go.

Once those bugs are fixed, I think the first thing to work on is the UI - it's very cluttered, and feels like almost no effort was put in with it. I'd at least grab a font from https://fonts.google.com if I were you, and spend a little time thinking through layouts so the UI doesn't overlap. You also need to pay attention to things like text colour, because it sometimes blends in with the background and is difficult to see.

I like the isometric art style, but I felt like the player sprite should at least get mirrored so you don't spend half the time walking backwards. The music works well, too, and the "quest" system that told me where to go with a big line worked really well the first time! I like that sort of thing.

I loved the sprite work, the run animation in particular is excellent! I think there were a few issues that stopped me from really enjoying the game though. Movement feels a little too fast and slippery - it's better than slow and frustrating, but I think the speed needs to be reduced quite a lot. Jump being on Z really hurt my hands, same with having to spam click x - the layout of the controls really gave me some trouble. Jump being on the space bar would help I think, but the biggest win would be making it so you can hold the button to shoot.

You also need some feedback - I need to know when I get hit (look at hollow knight - the whole screen freezes, there's a big particle effect, and sound effects, plus the sprite flashes - I know you can do that last one at least, because you do it for the boss!)

The boss itself was generally fine, but it felt really unfair that it can shoot through walls but I can't. Coupled with the lack of feedback when the player gets hit, I sometimes felt like I just died out of nowhere!

There are a few bugs I'm sure you're aware of. I can just sit in the lava indefinitely, I can double jump sometimes, that sort of thing, but I'm sure you'd clean those up if you had more time :)

The music fits well, and the sound effects are nice :)

The sound effects and music are a joy to be honest. An absolute joy. I didn't really mind getting stuck because I could just stand there and jump and listen to that squish 😂 It sounds like there's another build you'll be uploading after the jam ends, so I'll check it out again then!

The jump feels good, but I think you should make it variable jump height, so I can do little hops. It'll also enhance the gameplay, because it gives the player more options. I think increasing the gravity while you're falling will also help a lot, this gives the player a bit more of a sense of weight. Mario, for example, has 3x the gravity while falling! You can use GMTK's Platformer Toolkit to help you get a good feel for different values and what makes this sort of thing feel good :)

It's a neat concept, pretty polished - everything seemed to work as expected 😁 I think I'd agree with everyone else, the conveyor belt needs to be quicker and it feels a bit clunky to move around. I get that you're on roller skates, but ice levels are generally my least favourite part of any game 😉 the dash attack is pretty OP and you can cheese the game really easily with it, I found! 

The music and sounds fit the game well, though they felt a little loud and jarring - it's a jam so I'm not going to judge the mix too harshly, but it's definitely something worth looking at if you expand the game :) the aesthetic is strong, honestly my favourite part of the game by quite a long way - plus everything is super clear, which is a big bonus!

If I were you, I'd pick either the conveyor belts or the donut physics and stick to your guns. If you're going with conveyor belts, maybe the boss attacks could interfere with the conveyor belts in some way, knocking things off, pausing/reversing the conveyor belts, poisoning donuts, etc - I think that would be a good extension of the game. Maybe you do that in later levels, but I will confess that I only got past the second one. The movement is just a bit too clunky and having to pick up and drop things was a little bit too frustrating (I'd suggest increasing the radius so you can pick things up from further away, or automatically pick them up when you hit them & automatically dropping them onto the conveyor belt when you walk over it. That would streamline the experience for me! Also make the player move faster, if you're gonna lean into the roller skates I want to be able to move fast at the very least. That would have the additional benefit of making the game a bit more chaotic :D

Thank you for the kind words! I spent the vast majority of my available time on the character controller and camera movement, it seems to have paid off 😁

The laser should make the eye point in the direction it's going to fire, but different overlapping animations cancelled it out I think. I know how to fix that, and it should help avoiding that instant hit 😅

The bug with the boss stopping is possibly something to do with the rocket animation, I think a bone gets removed when you destroy an arm or something like that 🤔

And the rest is polish! I didn't have a lot of time for that, because I had some family stuff to deal with in the end. I'll definitely be updating it after the jam though 😁

Cheers! I spent basically the whole jam on the character controller lmao, so I'm glad it works well. There are a couple of small annoyances with it, yeah, but they aren't common and it's not game breaking :) 

So I found with cheesing the boss, that you don't actually beat it very quickly when you do that - the turret is too far out of the way to be doing damage ;) I intended to add a timer leaderboard to it to incentivise getting a quick kill, just didn't have time :(

Thank you! 😁

Yeah the issue is with destroying an arm - not entirely sure what causes it, but in the last week of the jam I had basically no time but had planned to spend about 50 hours working on the game 🫠 lots of unfinished stuff, and no time for polish unfortunately! 

thank you! Platformer controllers are incredibly difficult to get right, I spent about 75% of my time in the jam on this one 😅 if you can beat the boss, it just disappears and nothing else happens. You'll be able to play with it as you like then 😉

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I completely agree with all of the above 😂 I basically spent all of my time on he character controller, and the second half of the jam was spent dealing with a bunch of stuff in the real world. I do like the concept though, I think I'll probably ditch the exchange mechanic in favour of something a little better like a grappling hook or similar.

Though I will say you're probably not doing very much damage if you're swapping at distance - so it'll take longer to kill the boss. Not that there's an incentive for doing it quickly 🙃

thanks! Yeah, that's a big issue that I need to figure out how to solve. I don't want to add more input, so it will probably be more along the lines of making a fixed play area that bounces you back 😁

yeah that's an unintended consequence of the way you move, I noticed it too 🙃 I'm going to make it so all the enemies move towards you much faster so you'll never have to do that!

Thanks for playing 😁

Thank you! 🤩 yeah I completely agree about the recoil, I think you're right about making them move more quickly towards you. I might also give them a teleport ability if they get too far away for too long. There are a few little things I think I can do to improve that.

Thanks, if you're planning on joining I'll keep an eye out for your entry!

I killed it once, didn't really see much of a reason to keep going if I'm honest! It was such a slow start, once I died I didn't really have a desire to do that beginning section again.

Hmm, maybe it's just macOS/Godot then? I assume it was made with Godot - all the other Godot games in this jam had the same issue. It gets about halfway through loading and just stops :P

It's quite difficult to play, really. I sometimes die randomly to my own bullets, there's no coyote time so jumping has to be incredibly precise, and I didn't make it very far before getting frustrated and giving up, so I didn't really see any implementation of the theme 😅

I think the character controller needs to be improved - coyote time plus some tweaking to the jump would make this feel a lot better!

There's a lot of content here for a jam game, well done 😁 I love the player movement speed, it's nice and fast, and the trail works well.

I think the bullets are far too small and far too weak to be honest, it doesn't feel great to play. You want nice big chunky bullets, and lots of enemies that die quickly to give a bit more of a feeling of power :)

Like others have said, there's a big "E" on the screen constantly, and the UI is really cluttered. I think my health bar didn't work, too - I seemed to just die out of nowhere with full health. It can also be quite easy to just sprint through the enemies 🙃

That crunch sound is so satisfying, and the background music fits perfectly 😁

It can be a little bit difficult to see ants that are behind the cake, which can be a little bit annoying, and I didn't really feel like I had much decision making to do - just smash the things with a hammer. It could've benefitted from some ant variety I think? Something to make me have to choose where to smash. That, along with more obvious "groups" of ants rather than just a constant stream - I think that would really improve this little game :)

This is HARD 😂 those big rows of red triangles kill me almost every time! 

I like the audio synced elements, but I feel like you could've gone way harder on that aspect. The enemies didn't really move, pulse, explode, or spawn in time with the music which is a bit of a shame. 

The visual style is lovely, the colours you've used have a nice pop. I love the fire rate and bullet speed, so many jam games make me feel like I'm shooting peas at God. I think the enemy death explosions could be a little more impactful, but it feels much better to play than most of the other games I've played in this jam 😁

It's a simple concept, and movement/dashing feels really nice. Just running around and jumping was a lot of fun tbh.

I feel like this game needs quite a lot more juice to really shine. I didn't feel like I was doing any damage at all, the fire rate is really low with no indication that you can't shoot - so I found myself getting hit only because I couldn't shoot at the right time and didn't really have the information to know whether or not I could shoot.

Enemies have way too high health, I don't feel like I've got a shotgun I feel like I've got a water pistol.

You do manage to get a lot of work out of the simple 3D shapes, and the fog works well for a sense of atmosphere.

FYI this doesn't run on firefox!

I really like the visual style, you've used some good colours and the shadow is really cool - it works so well. The orange square explosions are also really cool, a great little effect.

I think you need to speed up the starting gameplay by about 2-3x, it takes a good 90 seconds for the gameplay to start being fun 😅 I also have no reason to stop shooting, so an autofire option would be a good addition (and accessibility consideration)

For the game feel, there's a good start there. But all of the bullets need to be 5x the size, it feels like I've got a peashooter and I'm doing absolutely no damage at all. I think you also need some sort of sprite flash to indicate that enemies are taking damage, and a bunch of "popcorn" enemies that die in one hit!

I think once you've juiced it to hell and back, this will be a really nice little game :)

FYI this doesn't work on firefox!

Ah yep, that makes sense - empty repository + very similar games makes a very suspicious jam entry 😬

This is nice and polished, and the visual effects are great tbh. You've done a really good job there!

I think similar to the other comment on here, it's pretty easy to cheese. I actually like recoil, it's one of my favourite mechanics in games like this - but I think it's a little bit too strong! It makes it a little bit frustrating to move. I'd also like to see stronger default move speed and fire rate, because it can be a little boring to start with unfortunately. The store adds replayability, and I like the unlock conditions for the skins - so there's the core of a really solid game here 😁

Thank you! :D

Yo this was published 21 days ago and your git repository has no code

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This is definitely my sort of game but... Is it not just an updated version of https://sahilcodes.itch.io/polyrogue?  There's a very similar skeleton, but they are separate games.

Your git project has no code... - hooray, it now has code! :)

Simple and fun - though I didn't really see any reason to stop firing - since that is the case, why would I ever stop? 😉 autofire would help this game I think.

I liked the variety of the shapes, and it definitely fits the theme! There's so much going on, it's chaotic and I love it for that 😁 I didn't do very well, but as one other comment mentioned it does get significantly easier if you do it on a smaller screen. It wasn't particularly clear to me which shapes I should prioritise - I guess that would come by playing it more, but I'm on a trackpad and my hand hurts a little from having to hold the button down! 

I've adjusted the level curves and added a bunch more enemies! In theory you should never be wondering whether you've killed them all now.

I've updated it with some enemies and an upgrade system :) if you want to give it another go, I'd appreciate your thoughts now it's got a bit more gameplay!

An interesting little game - good idea, I think it needs a little bit of juice. The level up system works well, it's nice to have a goal to work towards!

I can think of a few things you might want to improve:

  • player speed wants to start 4x or 5x what the starting value is, and I'd reduce the amount of inertia when you move!
  • I could stand still and the game would basically play itself. One fix for this would be making it so the player has a very small amount of health - 3 hits and you're dead, that sort of thing.
  • I think the visual style could use some love. Giving the player character a face, for example, goes against the spirit of the jam in my opinion! You can also use existing colour palettes from somewhere like https://lospec.com/palette-list to make it look really nice with very little effort :)
  • I got hit by what I assume was a very very transparent shape, and that felt a little bit unfair - I couldn't see it. Maybe make it fade to ~50% transparency over time, then quickly fade to 0 once the time is up? 

I liked the patterns and the way the shapes bounce around, though :)

Thanks! Yeah I'm considering dropping the level up screen, not sure I'll have the time before the end of the jam to do enough content to make it worth it, nor do I think I have enough time to balance it properly 😂

If there are any enemies off screen they'll actually move towards you, so you probably did beat them all. I'm currently working on some more varied enemies and spawning, this was just a little test level to make sure everything works together - thanks for the feedback 😁

thanks! It's unfinished, still working on it and updating it - there are a few days left of the jam 😊 just wanted some feedback on the movement from a few friends on discord!

https://github.com/DomHarris/shapejam

Great, I'll carry on like this then! I've only spent about an hour on it 😂 

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I assume I'm not running afoul of the rules with this?

Some things I wasn't entirely clear on:

  • The circle outline
  • The circle segments to use as an indicator of how many shots you've got left
  • The incredibly long rectangle used as a laser pointer
  • The slightly stretched circles used as bullets (they stretch based on speed)

These are the only sprites in the project:

Is the voting period really eight entire months long? 😅 Why? Usually it's a week or two!

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A fairly straightforward top down shooter. It was easy to see where the enemies were, even though they were incredibly small, which is good. The lighting effect looks good, and the bullets are nice and large. Awesome to see sfx in a 2 day jam! They help a lot 🙂

It always baffles me when developers use click-to-shoot in games like this, it causes actual physical pain when you get to later stages. I can't play this game for more than a minute or two, because my hand cramps. Hold to shoot (or at least an option for hold to shoot) is basically a requirement in games like this. If you're making games like this, nuclear throne and enter the gungeon should be required playing 😂 if they use semi-automatic weapons, that's usually a very intentional choice, it's limited to a few specific weapons, and you basically never continually fire them. In this game, there is no reason to stop shooting, so you click the mouse button as fast as possible. You want something like recoil or reticle bloom or something like that, or if you want the player to be continuously firing, HOLD TO SHOOT. Hold to shoot is better, it's more comfortable, it's less physically painful. Click to shoot semi auto weapons suck when they are the only option and there is no reason for them to not be full auto. It SUCKS. This might sound like harsh feedback and like I'm harping on one point, but games should not literally hurt to play.

There's no real feedback when anything gets hit, which makes it difficult to work out what's going on. It also makes shooting feel a bit "meh" - nothing happens. When you shoot, you want explosions and flashing sprites and things like that! You need more juice in this game.

There's a bug where if something collides with you, you spin - moving the mouse points you in the correct direction again, but if you stop moving the mouse for any period of time you continue spinning. Since this is a unity game, I'm pretty sure you just needed to check constraints -> freeze rotation z. That'll stop any physics from changing the rotation 🙂

I didn't understand what the point of the charged attack was. It didn't really seem to do anything.

You're probably aware of this, but there is no reason to move 😂 the player doesn't take damage, so you can literally just sit there and shoot - though there's a slight bug in that enemies don't get hit if they're too close to you?

If you play for too long, the game crashes. I got to 1,180 score by just sitting in the corner and shooting the timers, then the game froze. It happens pretty consistently.

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Well done! This is a massive step up from the other games you've made 😄 the overall game feel is much better, and the recoil is a genuinely fun little mechanic.

Feel free to ignore the rest of this if you want to leave it at that, but I do have some thoughts about improvements you could make.

  • Click to shoot on a rapid fire gun feels bad. Hold to shoot is much, much better on games like this. I don't know why people keep doing this, I must've commented the same thing a few dozen different games from different developers now 😂 click to shoot is great for precision weapons that you don't fire often, or have burst fire (think the DMR and BR in Halo), but it is painful (as in, causes actual physical pain) to rapid fire click. It's a small accessibilty tweak that can help a ton of people!
  • Speaking of weapons - there's very little feedback when you switch weapons, which does make it take that little bit more brain power to work out which weapon I'm using. That can cause frustration with not being able to move for the split second it takes me to realise that's intentional!
  • The big weapon doesn't really feel... powerful? It does more damage, clearly, yeah, but there's no spectacle...
  • It doesn't really feel like much thought has been put into the bullet patterns, and it doesn't really feel designed as "bullet hell" so I'd drop that from the description tbh. That isn't a criticism! 😊 Labels like that just give people certain expectations.
  • The enemies should be there to support your core mechanic, they are there to make it more fun and engaging to use. It does feel a bit like you've just thrown them in without much thought, I'd prefer less content that is more considered! Think about how you want the player to move, what purpose each enemy has, how you want the player to deal with them. Some examples from Polyfury:
    • The square boss has very simple patterns, that teach the core mechanics. One that makes you move quickly (the laser), one that makes you move slowly (the aimed pattern).
    • The pentagon boss has a lot of very graze-able patterns, which helps reinforce the laser charging and extra damage you get from that nice and early.
    • The heptagram boss, which I'm working on now, has a bunch of patterns that make you move TOWARDS the bullets in order to disable tracking, which is a much more aggressive play style, and makes grazing more challenging.

I hope that helps, I'll edit this comment with some more thoughts in the morning but I need to go to bed now ;)