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Infinite Tale 5 - Story's End's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Community Choice | #30 | 3.154 | 3.154 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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As a kid, there was a period of time where I was really into the Never Ending Story. I remember being blown away by just how bad the sequels and offshoot cartoons were, and for this reason Infinite Tale 5 - Story's End by FlatboxStudios holds a special place in my heart! Bringing many of the iconic characters from the first film into Glorious All 3 D's, ya gotta shoot 'em down to save the day.
All the key players from the first film are here, batallions of G'morks fly around the screen, racing snails shoot out racing-snail-goo, the rockbiter's big, good, strong hands do their best to grab you, it's kinda absurd how many different enemy types were designed for this! The music does a nice job of hitting that fantasy feel, helping the player get in the zone for shooting down G'morks and Giant Head Dudes. While there's a tremendous amount of enemy variations, I do wish backgrounds for stages had some variance beyond coloration changes for a bit of visual variety.
While ya did an okay job working in the theme (anything after the first Neverending Story was intensely unnecessary to be sure), a little more integration would have been nice. Having some dialogue from bosses or between stages could have helped it come through a bit more.
The gameplay is solidly Space Harrier, stages fill the screen with enemies and projectiles to avoid. I liked the combo + point system, which gives an opportunity for some strategy in how players take out incoming threats. The biggest issue I had with gameplay was attaining an intuitive notion of when projectiles / enemies would hit my ship. Ground shadows would help tremendously, as would more information display such as having objects that about to enter / actively in your hurt zone flashing or somehow being visually modified. Being able to parse you're about to be in danger without focusing too hard on one spot is so important in this genre, Infinite Tale could really benefit from a little more polish in this regard. Also, while I enjoyed the avoidance gameplay, some form of active ability or powerups (ie bombs that damages + clears incoming projectiles, increasing projectile strength, invulnerability periods) would help liven up the stages and reduce feelings of repetition.
Being able to change up difficulty and also do a pure boss rush are great features, which lets the player tune the experience to their liking and vastly increases the odds of them experiencing most of the content. That's good, thoughtful design and, like the randomized stage elements, helps increase the already impressive amount of time ya can spend playing through levels.
Given the surprising amount of content in levels and bosses, and the enjoyment I got from the game in this state, I'd love to see a version that's polished up with tighter hitboxes and better feedback for incoming dangers. But great work on this, especially the intense amount of enemy variety!
Elevator pitch
What if someone had to end the story that never ends? A game like Space Harrier, including 9 bosses with dynamic scaling difficulty.
Describe how your game adheres to the theme
Our game asks the question what would have happened if a bully played by Jack Black in a certain 80's childhood movie got his hands on a certain book of great power. And so the tale of infinite length must be brought to an end.
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The neverending story was nightmare fuel for me when I was a kid, to the point where I've never bothered to give it a second chance because it creeped me the hell out so thoroughly. This game brought back some familiar if forgotten memories and feelings which was cool and I believe a testament to the accuracy of the 3D work. Some of the enemies feel too strong for how annoying they are, namely the bats which are relatively difficult to hit, fire projectiles at the player, spawn in bunches of 3-5, and take two shots to kill. I've never played space harrier and so it took me a while to get used to the aiming, but the crosshair isn't terribly useful because it doesn't convey the line of fire very well. The projectiles to dodge also don't have any shadows or anything that displays how close they are to the player and it results in a chaotic and blind-feeling experience where I'm just trying to stay as far away from most things as possible on the chance that I'll take a hit. When fighting the turtle-rock-boss-thing the PC moves up and down so much that it's rarely possible to dodge the shots from the side. My only real gripe is the continue countdown. I wish it wasn't there. I got a call which distracted me long enough to die, I picked up the phone and all of a sudden I'm on the title screen, having lost all my progress. As a kicker I believe I thought I was on the final boss when this happened, so at least it was as effective an accidental annoyance as possible. Some little tweaks that even out the challenge would be cool for a game like this, especially considering I only played on Normal. Like with other games in this jam, the idea of resetting the score on death is a bit too extreme in my books because it effectively nullifies everything prior to the death, and if you die near the end of the game then your score will be so low that it might not be worth finishing. Maybe a penalty of 50% each death would be better, I'm not sure.
I think this game really hits the spirit of the sequel nature of the jam. Your concept is solid, and the models you made are fantastic. but it kinda falls short of the satisfying, rushing feel of a Space Harrier clone. It felt like most of the action happened in a small slice some distance away from the player, after things had approached but before they'd made their exit. I can understand how you'd be able to use this to make more interesting enemy AI, but it ends up feeling a bit like all your enemies are grouped up on the other side of a chasm, or something. Mind you, it's still enjoyable to play, it's just missing that certain something...
Also, you totally missed the opportunity to start each stage with a weird level name!
Nice graphics and music, but the game was a little hard to play. I had a tough time judging where my bullets were hitting, and where the enemy projectiles were on the screen. I would fire a shot that looked lined up, more or less, and then it would sail past the enemy.
Great work on the assets, they all look wonderful. It was a ton of fun watching this game being made.
I did however have a lot of trouble telling what things would hit me. Maybe if the player was moved more into the foreground and the projectiles were allowed to get closer to the screen and bigger. It's difficult since the player character is effectively quite long being a luck dragon and all.
Definitely a solid entry but could use some work to make things clearer.
When I was looking at the previews of this game through the twitter hashtag and in the channel I was convinced this'd be some wierd attempt at Panzer Dragoon. I was not expected Space Harrier D:
Game played really nice I thought! I was expecting depth perception to be an issue but it was mostly fine. The rock-breath of the 2nd boss wasn't great in this regard.
Shots feel kinda weightless though, as does hitting enemies. Could use more visual/audio feedback of that. The player bullets might also need some speeding up. Not sure what you'd need to do to firing player bullets to give them more oomph as they fire, but I feel it could use whatever it is!
I felt like movement was a bit snappy, which tended to lead into situations where attempting to dodge one shot would sent me straight into another.
Nice assets, good sound and music. This type of game is not my style so I won't comment much on the game play much. I found it very hard to line up shots or know what was going to hit me.