The art is great and clearly someone with some talent worked on it but as a game development project, there is nothing here. You move and shoot, just barely. It's such a minimum effort it's disrespectful to the clear effort of the artwork.
Really cool concept, I liked it quite a great deal. I would keep working on it and get it fleshed out. Right now what is missing is a set of instructions and some more visibility of the goals. Like, I spent 20 minutes playing the game, 19 of those minutes I used to figure out what the hell anything did. The absence of instruction here really hurts a game with great potential.
This was a strange one, mainly because I'm not sure it can be quantified as a "game", it was more like an "experience". It is oddly satisfying, I think the closes relation in terms of game experience I can think of is Zork (old school text-based adventures). In fact, I think you should try Zork and see if you can turn this "experience" into more of a text-based game. Like I think the concept of walking and interacting with dialogue is awesome, but I felt like maybe there needs to be something more going on then just walking and occasionally "experiencing" something. Like Zork, I think there should be a mystery and plot here, locations with secrets to unveil and unanswered questions that drive you to explore the game for answers.
I really think you are on to something really great here.
Nice gameplay loop, simple-to-understand mechanics, and the increasing difficulty over time give's it a "I want to see what is next" addictive nature. I mean, it's got all the makings of a great mobile phone game.
Nice retro vibe, a nice clever take on side scroller with the bubble mechanic, it holds up quite well, lots of little mini-puzzles to resolve. I love the pallet, you tried to capture game boy with it and you most certainly did. Sadly the same thing that annoys me about the Gameboy annoyed me here... Sound and repetitive music. It was really off, it went from cute to irritating in about 2 minutes.
But other than that, great entry, really impressive how much you got done here in 5 days.
And the winner of Interstellar Game Jam 5 is!? Yeah, it's Evaluated. Congratulations on totally sweeping it! This game I would pay for as is. You should know, that I plan to steal your idea and make money on it, because it's absolutely brilliant. You have captured the very essence of great gameplay as a concept with Evaluated, everything here has weight and is oh-so-satisfying when you figure things out and I just want to play this all the time now.
Hands down the best game I have played in this Jam and at this point I've played almost all of them. Great job!
It's a really very pretty game, there are some nice art assets that remind of me Prince of Persia, but I think I would best describe the 2d-3d transition experiences transitioning from a cool 2d platformer to a different completely unrelated 3d game. It seemed to serve no practical purpose and the angle of the 3d camera was really poor so the transition felt like someone just stole a nice side scroller from me I was enjoying and made me play a 3d Playstation game with awkward controls.
Don't feel bad about it though, this sort of 2d to 3d transition have been tried for years even by triple AAA dev companies and it rarely works out for them. It's tough to pull off. If I were you I would scrap the 3d portion and work on making the 2d side scroller more balanced and faster. Maybe with some way to block or repel enemy fire. I would like to be able to jump a little higher to reach some of the platforms. Above all else though.. speed, Prince of Persia style. Like I think this is a really cool game that just needs to be so much faster and you should be mowing through enemies by the dozens.
What a great entry into this game Jam. I mean it's simple, but you have taken one of the most overused genres (side scrollers) and given it a new game dimension that refreshes the whole thing. I loved the "don't trust the shadows" premise. So good, so much you can do with that as a design/mechanic. I loved the music, super classic Nintendo-like.
Just so good, so much space here to work with to create a great game. Right now from where I'm standing you won this thing, this is my current favorite.
Good base code for the start of something, it's not tough to imagine the possibilities here. I agree, some sound (feedback) from the game when doing things like crafting would have gone a long way. I know most people skip on music/sound in game jams because it's time-consuming to create, but its better to throw in some free licensed sounds/music than not have any at all. The atmosphere in this game in particular was really important and would have done a great deal for the game.
As a programmer myself however, I know what you did here took effort, things like inventory systems and crafting can be far more complex than the results suggest, so from one developer to another, I tip my hat.
I honestly think you have something here that if evolved a bit could be turned into a professional release you would have no trouble selling as a phone app. You could make a pretty penny with it. Nice pallette, great mellow music, based on a classic game every person on the planet has heard of with fun addictive gameplay. I have played a lot of games during this Game Jam but only a few I could see winning the Jam, this is definitely one of them.
I like the premise, side-scrolling shooters with missions and level variety with a cool art style make for a great game loop. I would suggest playing the crap out of different side-scrolling shooters for inspiration. I think the thing missing in this game is a sense of urgency and speed. What makes side scrollers like this exciting is the stress they create and the satisfaction you get after struggling to get through a level and finally figuring it out.
Despite technical issues getting the final version out, even this earlier version is actually quite brilliant. A small mechanical change to pong and suddenly its a completely different game. I think its a really cool concept. I would actually like to play your full version, is it posted somewhere?
Really like this one a great deal, tight controls, creates a lot of stress and actually reminds me of something classic and old school, I just for the life of me can't place it but it had a nostalgic feel to it. Great entry and definitely a contender.
The toughest thing with game jams is how little time you have to bring a game together and here you can almost feel the time crunch as you play with each element clearly just needing a bit more love and attention. Good foundation.
Good first effort. I liked the art style, but I agree with some of the comments below. The controls could use some fine-tuning. It sort of felt to me like the timing was off somehow.
I concur with much of what has already been said. The little robot had a distinct personality and this was granted him simply through the imaginative atmosphere, theme and curiously attractive art style.
I agree that there is this kind of feeling like the things you do find, are subtle instructions and it was also my assumption that there was a trail to follow, that somehow there were connections between what I was seeing and where I was supposed to go.
I would really encourage you to keep working on this one. I really think you have a great premise that begs to evolve.
Considering a 10 hour development time, its of course not surprising that it plays more like a demo of something that could be something much more. I would smooth out the controls rather than the jittery pixel based movement.
Great art style, I love this kind of control scheme for a simple action scroller. Its a frantic knife fight in a phone booth feel. Great work and congrats on doing your first game jam!
Lots of room to grow, great track. Shooters be shooters be shooters but I like the premise of doing a graphics based era switch, that actually is pretty original, can't say I have ever seen that done anywhere before.
I mean this as a complement and not an insult, but this game was a stupid kind of fun. Great use of physics, I love the premise. Really original idea. If you won the game Jam, I would be totally cool with that.
Really loved the use of the color pallete as a means to give the game a unique art style and atmosphere. I agree with Ugly Duckling, I really liked the progressive element. Asteroids is a classic because it has a great game loop, I think it was smart to leave that aspect of Asteroid untouched and just adding cool elements to it. Great job!
I can see what you were going for here, there is always room in the world for a clever FPS with a twist, but it was really tough to digest this one for one reason, it was just too dark. Darkness is a great premise in a game but there needs to be some way to navigate the game through the darkness beyond simply wandering around hoping to find something. Good effort, I know that doing a 5 day Game Jam using the Unreal Engine is a real challenge.
My first game JAM ever :) I will be using Gamemaker Studio 2, its the tool I have learned on. Excited and nervous to see how my limited skill set holds up but retro-games is right up my alley so I'm in!
