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Happy Little Lake Of Fire's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Music/Sound | #12 | 2.582 | 3.333 |
| Technical Implementation | #15 | 2.840 | 3.667 |
| Graphics/Animation | #18 | 2.453 | 3.167 |
| Overall | #18 | 2.556 | 3.300 |
| Theme/Limitation | #19 | 2.711 | 3.500 |
| Fun/Design | #20 | 2.195 | 2.833 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game utilize the limitation and theme?
Interactable water physics + the player "switches" from one side of the water to the other
Team Size
Solo (1)
Engine
Unreal
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Comments
A clever idea. I needed a little more feedback about what was happening though, when I hit the bad guy we seemed to switch back to good? I thought I was causing that at first, but it was just timing. Then I worked out the guy had a health meter and I was able to keep on and beat him. I think the switching modes was maybe a little too often, but then again you would need perhaps a bit more to do in each mode to fill the time...
Thanks for trying it out. The flipping is on a timer, but some event reduce time on the timer to try keep the pacing interesting. Hitting the boss does decrease the timer by a lot. Since the good side is where you get regain energy and health, I though that returning the player faster to the good side was a kind of reward for successfully hitting the boss.
I like the music switch, only feedback is I am not sure what triggers the lake from happy to evil. Maybe a timer would help you know how much time you have on the happy side.
There's a bit of cheating actually. It's a timer than can get shorter based on some events. Like on the happy side getting collectibles reduces the time, allowing for it to be generally longer so that the player have time to get some, but lose some time picking em up, I also make the time shorter if the player has generally a lot of energy and health, so that I dont waste the players time, I also remove some time after the player damages the evil side. I was generally trying to keep the pacing interesting. I'm not sure if you noticed but there is a flashing icon on the top left that flashes quicker when its about to switch, maybe the icon is not clear enough. Thanks for trying it out !
Wow, super cool idea and really polished. I really liked the concept and how the music switches when you're fighting the evil version, super cool. I water physics are super well done and the post processing made it look really good.
Thank you ! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
Driving the boat feels so satisfying! The world, when switches over, the implementation of a different music, color scheme and the camera shake when you hit the red ball was very well done!
Few suggestions:
1. Driving the boat without any water splashing, moving left right because of currents, sometimes doesn't give the feel that we're on water.
2. Instead of a written "How to Play" it'd be amazing if the tutorial was built in, because I struggled for a good 30s as to how to hit even after reading.
I had a fun time.
Good Luck!
Thanks for the comments. I totally agree, both of those are on my TODO list of shame that was never done haha. Specially the water FX, I'm a programmer, so I can manage to do some art with basic shapes, but I couldn't find any free water visual FX or water SFX that would fit and it's pretty sad. As for the tutorial, totally agree, it's something else that I had to let go because of not enough time, so I felt having "how to play" screens was a good backup plan and easy to add in the pause menu in case the player is confused and don't know what to do.
Thanks a lot for the feedback !
Absolutely love this!! The implementation of the 'switch' theme is so creative and I adored the way it switched from each side of the water. The rotation of the boat and the sudden change of music and color works awesome and I love it! I also love the idea that the boat does an aerial attack and the spinning, projectile boat is so fun to watch.
I did have a little trouble with the camera though. Because I was able to rotate the camera freely, I would get confused with the controls sometimes because my camera would be facing towards the boat and it would feel like the controls were inverted (i.e. I press D thinking my boat will move right but it moves left). You could either have the controls adapt to the camera position or you could probably get away with just locking the camera to behind the boat, but I'm not 100% if that would mess with the gameplay. I also think it was a little hard to navigate the boat. I think the challenge of moving through the waves could make for some super awesome gameplay, but right now it feels a little hard to get the boat to go where I want it to. I can't really put my finger on why but I'll try and replay it and give you more concrete feedback!
Anyways, great job! Totally love the theme and concept!!! :)
Thanks a lot ! You are right about the camera, my initial idea was to collect "energy" so you would aim and shoot a projectile at the "Evil Sphere" but I though it didn't use the waves enough so I switched to an airborne dash attack, having the player uses the waves more. So the camera was ok for the original idea, but not really for the final idea. So I would probably change it to a fixed camera and probably change the charge attack input to drop the use of the mouse entirely. Also the dash attack goes toward the forward of the boat and not toward the camera which is probably confusing, having a fixed camera would probably help that.
For the boat not going where you want it to go, I think the problem is the gravity of my game is a bit too floaty, so with a lot of waves you are often airborne and cant change direction. I tried making the gravity stronger and it felt nicer, but it broke all the balancing and it was too hard to jump and attack the boss so I reverted it, but retweaking it would probably help, maybe have some air control would help too.
Thanks again for the feedback !
I had trouble damaging the enemy, but the water physics and atmosphere were really well done
Thank you !