itch.io

Review of the Steam Demo:

Pros:

Love seeing Xargon getting attention, it's one of my favorite old games :)

Looks like several new features have been added, which is great.

Cons:

Some of the movement feels unresponsive and stiff. Example: transitioning from crouch to moving left or right sometimes gets the player stuck until a key is released and pressed again.

Uses AI art. While I'm personally against it, it should at least be disclosed. (It is disclosed on the steam page for episode 1). The application of AI here has made a kinda muddy, mismatching art style which I personally don't like.

Charging 5.00 is reasonable for a game of this scope, but seeing as this is a fan game of someone else' work, I feel weird about paying for it. (I would also feel weird about paying for AI art.)

I would prefer seeing a paid game that has original, "Xargon-inspired" characters over seeing a paid fan game, even if that raises the price.

As a developer, I'd assume that would be safer for you as well. Even free fan games are of questionable legality, a paid fan game is asking for legal issues.

Regardless, good luck with your project!

Thank you so much! It's neat seeing it in a game! Love the mechs :)

Indeed, vaporwave was kinda the goal with this one. It's also very "Spyro the Dragon" inspired as well, which is also a PS1 game. Does Ace Combat 2 have some good skyboxes? I feel like PS1 was a good system for skyboxes.

lol

Just finished V1.0.4! It was really enjoyable, especially the art and sound design. The end credit song is very special :)

I look forward to playing the update.

Found a workaround: 

I downloaded the RPGM2003 RTP from the official website, here: https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/run-time-package

Then I opened the downloaded Installer.exe with 7z.zip as an archive.

Navigated to rpg2003_rtp_installer.exe\CharSet

Copied the file "Vehicles.png" to [Professor Frippel's game  directory]\CharSet

And the game works now. There's a "vehicle.png" in the game's CharSet folder, but capitalizing it doesn't seem to fix anything. I had to add the new one to get it to work.

RE: Version Alpha 1.0.3:

It looks like the game won't launch. I'm on a windows 10 machine. When I open the exe, I get an error that reads: "Cannot open vehicles file". Is there a workaround? Thanks for your help!

Agreed, the difficulty is indeed an issue. That's kinda what prompted me to add the level skip. I knew I wouldn't fix the physics in time, so I added that real quick for those who want to see the end lol.
I think I would need to completely redo each level, polishing up the mesh for each slide. Blender was fighting me a bit. Time to take some more Blender classes :D

Sound design was really well done, graphics too. Very nice entry :)

I couldn't figure out how to submit my blue slime extract for the quest. I got a full inventory of the blue flasks, but the quest board kept saying I had none.

Also the control menu seemed to break after I viewed it for the first time. Afterwards, The 'Controls' button didn't work in the pause screen.

I like the chill music and the skybox :) I had trouble with determining depth, making it hard to avoid/get hit by obstacles. Maybe if you had a 3d skybox and some more scenery? That might help it look less flat.

Awesome game! This is really polished for the time constraints.

Feedback: 1) A mouse aim speed option would be nice. It seemed low on the desktop version and high on the web version. I could probably mess with my laptop settings to fix that though. 2) Having some subtle music would really add to the atmosphere, even if the music only played in certain areas. Or, if no music, maybe more variety with the ambient sounds. 3) The enemies could use some sort of 'damage' animation. Right now, you can't tell if you're hurting them until they're dead.

Very solid entry :) Thanks for sharing.

Nice! I love the artwork. I love all the nice details on the title screen. Nice original concept too :)

Very good :) I liked the dog pictures.

Nice chill game. Thanks for posting!

Feedback: Maybe the text could be a bit larger. It's definitely readable, but larger text would make it a bit easier to follow.

Nice work! Perfect concept for the theme.

Only feedback I could think of is: music, and maybe have the projectiles fire automatically while the mouse is clicked, rather than click to fire every projectile. My fingers get tired :)

Nice entry! Thanks for posting. Very enjoyable puzzle/platformer. It has a lot of polish :)

The detail on the environment is wonderful. It's a very large download, but it's worth it :) I wish the character moved just a smidge faster. Solid entry though. Thanks for posting!

Love the visuals.  On the last puzzle, it kept saying Invalid element on my screen. Not sure if that was meant to happen. Figured it out though, and beat the game :) It was nice! Thanks for posting.

I like the theming and graphics! I kinda wish the maze was a bit more zoomed out so I could avoid the bone bois more effectively. Solid entry. Thanks for posting!

I liked the doggie :) I dunno if he has anything to do with gameplay, but I'm glad doggie is there regardless. Also, I liked the "wee" sfx when the dudes fall over the edge. Very good, thanks for posting!

Nice work! I feel like I could get the hang of it with enough practice, but the van felt a little hard to control for a new player. Maybe if the van could de-accelerate a little slower/smoother when you let up the gas? It feels like it has two speeds, full stop and top speed lol. Nailing some of the curves is kinda tough. Good entry, thanks for posting.

I like the story you came up with to tie it into the theme. I'd be cool if that story was conveyed in-game some how. Maybe it is, and I just didn't get far enough in. Also, sfx would be a good addition. Good entry, thanks for posting.

Nice entry! The theming is very creative.

The main feedback I'd give is maybe more detail in the environment, or maybe some drop shadows on the characters. The platform is so basic, I sometimes had a hard time telling if I was moving or not. Thanks for posting!

I like the physics and the aesthetics. The snow particles are fun :)
You might think about writing down the instructions and controls on the game's page somewhere. I had a hard time figuring out if I was progressing or not.

Good entry though, thanks for posting!

Hello :)
I don't often team up for jams, but if you're still available, we could team up. My main thing is programming and art. I don't do much with sound design aside from integration. I'm familiar with several engines, but I prefer working in Unity.

My stuff:

• Pixel Art: https://zanzindorf.com/zemmings.html
• Jam Games: https://zanzindorf.itch.io/
• Non-Game Art: https://zanzindorf.com/art.html

I sent you a friend request on Discord. Feel free to accept if you're interested!

I think what you are describing is Unity's output when you build a game. That should look something like the attached photo. These files are just what's necessary to run the game on a desktop, and they are not the source code, so posting only these probably would disqualify you. Unity encrypts your assets when you build a game, so the judges can't view your work if you post this alone.

The source code is what Unity looks at BEFORE you build the game. Source code is the un-encrypted project files. The source code is wherever your project folder is, the same folder you open in the Unity Hub when you launch the Unity Editor. If you don't know where that is, do this:

• Open the Unity Hub,
• Right click on your project in the list,
• Select Open In Explorer,
• This will open a folder in Windows Explorer, (or whatever apple/penguin uses to browse files),
• Go in that highlighted folder,
• And there you go, that your source code.

To upload your source code for the judges, do this:

• Create a new folder somewhere
• Copy the following folders in you source code folder to this new folder:
  • "Assets", "Packages", and "ProjectSettings"
• Zip this new folder, and upload it somewhere, like GoogleDrive or something. You can even upload it to Itch.io, if it'll fit.
• Alternatively, you could zip your entire source code with all it's folders, but zipping just these few is sufficient and saves on space. Unity projects get kinda big.

Be careful about uploading copyrighted assets in your source code upload though. If you used any free assets made by other people under a creative commons license or something, just delete them from your source code copy before uploading (Just don't delete them from your original source code lol). Then leave a text file in the place of the deleted assets and maybe a note of what was deleted and where to downloads it. This seems to be fine by the judges, as far as I can tell. I've not seen explicit instructions from a judge yet on sourcing free assets in this way, but no one has complained so far.

Thanks, I just uploaded the updated version. The download on the game page should also include both those folders now.

I too was wondering about that. For me, Using Unity, do I upload my entire project folder, which is like half a gig? Or, can I just upload my Assets folder, which is much less?

Unfortunately, I downloaded and installed that and I'm still getting the same error. 

Thanks for the feedback! You have to give the items instead of dropping. The text over the inventory bar will say "give" when your close enough to the teammates. Sorry. Not the most user friendly system.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. I think I could definitely rework the giving feature to be more user friendly. Thanks for the feedback!

Sweet! That did the trick, it works now.

I'm still getting the same error message. I'm running Java version 8 Update 231 (Build 1.8.0_231-b11) if that helps. It says that's the latest version. These are the messages I'm getting: 

Yeah, unintentionally, the game's pretty much over if you loose the warrior. I want to balance the characters and AI a little to change that. Maybe I'll do an update after the jam. Thanks for playing!

Nice work! I enjoyed that. Nice simple graphics and an excellent premise.

Nice! The controls and movement for dragging letters around is a little wonky, but apart from that, nice idea, and nice execution!

Lol I probably should have accounted for that :) Glad you had fun still, thanks for playing!

None to three sad onions :) Thanks for sharing, this made me giggle.