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Backpack Blaster!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #44 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #194 | 3.618 | 3.618 |
| Originality | #205 | 3.735 | 3.735 |
| Presentation | #458 | 3.118 | 3.118 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What do you like about your game?
I'm proud of how the shop mechanics and item effects all work properly, and that the game feels like a proper roguelike! I've not been able to achieve something like that before.
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Comments
I like the idea of the bag pack that empowers your abilities. It is quite amazing how many things you managed to implement. I especially like the line-of-site effect; it instantly makes the scene feel more alive. I didn’t get how to heal your HP, though. The gameplay for the jam is good, but it could feel more engaging if it gave some understanding of progress or purpose.
Thank you for playing! There are some items that heal your HP, but because it's random, perhaps you didn't come across any. Also, in terms of purpose and goal, post jam I do want to try and flesh out the roguelike-ness of it a bit, with proper floors and bosses and that kind of thing, which might help :)
We definitely pulled from the same sources haha! I really like the shop system. I can see a full game with this concept!
Unfortunately the core gameplay as is falls a bit short. Enemies are pretty stale and you see all there is to offer in the first couple of minutes. Aside from maybe increased numbers they didn't seem to get much harder and their behaviour to begin with wasn't different enough from each other. The spinning enemies are a cool idea, but since the other enemies can't path or shoot past them, they don't end up mattering unless they spawn in a corner hallway and get a free hit on you
I was really hoping for a boss fight, but then the game ended before I could get a screen grab of my items. I had a combo of money and life generation that meant I was functionally invincible as long as I was at my keyboard. I ended the game with well over 2k money, and all the inventory spots unlocked.
I think your core loop could use a little bit of "punching up". Some screen shake, some flashes stuff to make it feel more visceral. I kinda felt like I was peeing out the bullets, especially because they come out of the center of the sprite haha.
Even another weapon type would make the game feel a lot better. You could probably work it into the shop. Have your pistol start in your inventory (and be weaker), and you can buy new weapons and swap out to more powerful ones.
I hope you keep working on this after the jam! This has a ton of potential!
Thank you for playing and I appreciate the critique! You hit on a lot of points that I did consider during development, and some that are interesting to think about for post-jam development. A lot of time during the jam was just getting the backpack and items to work, and I did have a boss fight planned and some more enemies, but with little time left I didn't want to have any larger new things to have to bug test. That said, I think I will continue development, and some of your ideas will help inform that :)
Interesting combination of a top-down shooter and inventory management with a twist. Great work! :)
Glad you liked it, thank you for playing :)
Really interesting game, i really like the gameplay loop, it makes you try to think hard about what items you buy and sell because in the future you may not be able to do those things. The sound effects are satisfying and are clear about what happened. Great Game :D
Thank you for playing :)
cool game. Very satisfying puzzle and shooter
Thank you for playing :)
Pretty good. I liked the music too.
Thanks for playing :)
Interesting build system, its really the core of the game. Great to see more roguelikes on here.
Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed the build system :)
Very neat build system!
Thanks for playing :)
The game is realy cool, it make me want to try again and again to get the best build :) The inventory management part is really well thought out, I would love to see this idea implemented with more feedback on the action level and more precise controls !
Thanks for playing! I do plan to work on this a a bit post-jam so I will take your feedback into consideration :)
Having procedurally generated levels is perfect for a game like this so good solid design choice there
Thank you, I agree! It adds a lot of variety :)
Wow! This game is so good I have played it multiple times already this could potentially become an actual good rogue-like game if you keep working on it, maybe after this jam you could make it so that you can pay to remove the aberration things to make it feel better
Thank you so much! Yes, I do have plans to continue development after the jam, I will see how it goes. I would like to add more stages, more enemies, more items, and a mechanic to remove aberration. I was thinking perhaps you can get special items that force you to destroy your aberrated items, or something like that.
Very cool gameplay! Procedurally generating the levels was perfect so it doesn't get repetitive to restart. That was nice because I died a lot lol! Great work! Congrats on the submission!
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed :)
Now this is some addicting stuff
Glad to hear it, hehehe :D
sweatband + sweatband + the gold healing flask thing = supremacy!!
jokes aside, you executed this really well in such a small time period; two of my runs ended because enemies spawned in walls though, which is a classic pain of procedurally generated levels lol. excellent job overall
Thank you for playing! That is a weird bug, I never experienced that one during playtesting. When I make further post-jam adjustments I will make sure that doesn't happen!
I know tracking those kinds of things down is a herculean task, good luck haha
Its fun. You can kinda cheese enemies by putting them behind corners so that their bullets hit the wall
Yeah I did notice that a bit when playtesting, it's unfortunate. At least the spinning bar enemies are a lot harder to cheese!
The building mechanic is not unheardof, but it's nice to see a roguelike with it. I found that it feels like the +3 damage thing is kinda overpowered, effectively quadrupling the damage, and I didn't even want to take on any more items... but killing enemies faster turned out to be more fun honestly.
I'm wondering how are the maps built? They seem rather chaotic and there are new ones each run, did you use procedural generation?
Thanks for playing! Yes, the +3 damage is quite good in the early game, but I tried to balance it out because there are more enemies with more health as you get further into the game!
The maps are indeed procedurally generated, I used this tutorial but I adapted it for godot 4 and tweaked some parameters around to get nicely sized levels.
An action roguelike with a complex build system? You've got me hooked already! I really enjoyed the backpack/shop mechanic and had so much fun playing it. Good job!
Thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed :)
Love that the light radiates from the player. The music and shop are great. I really enjoyed this. I did feel like aiming was a bit tricky for some reason. Replacing the cursor with crosshairs would've been nice. I also didn't see the exit button in the corner of the shop tutorial so I missed out on the shop after the first level. You game is better than what I made so I don't want to seem like I know more or something. Tips to you are tips for myself to remember too.
Thank you for playing! I appreciate the feedback :)
Oh and the AI for the enemies are great. I love that they wait and then once they spot you they become relentless. That's some realistic robot apocalypse behavior right there.
haha true! Post-jam I do think I need to work on the AI a bit though, it's sometimes too easy to have them stuck on an edge or corner spamming all their bullets into it, which takes away all the challenge!
I'm personally more of a tactical shooter and less fast twitch. So I liked those few seconds before they came around the corner to line up some shots on their bulkier metal frames. That's just me though (Splinter Cell>COD) (Rainbow Six Vegas> Rainbow Six Siege)
Pretty fun! I like the backpack mechanic, and the tilting of objects in the shop was a nice touch!
Thank you! The tilting was inspired by Balatro!
I like
Thank you :)