Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
A jam submission

PolterheistView game page

Survive a horde of ghoulish Entities by stealing their power!
Submitted by Gingeh — 17 hours, 7 minutes before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Polterheist's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#173.5263.526
Overall#203.5443.544
Theme interpretation#233.5263.526
Presentation#253.5793.579

Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted (2 edits)

Cute little game with a clever name.

Are the graphics original?

The hitboxes seem a bit unforgiving. Depending on the rotation of the player or the enemy, they may collide despite not visibly touching.

It took me a while to figure out how the sparks worked. I think the spark UI is a little subtle. Zero and one sparks look very similar. And when you get a spark, but kill an enemy with it in melee range, it can be hard to tell that you've just used (and possibly regained) a spark.

Another commenter mentioned not seeing their score increase when killing enemies at range with sparks. I also experienced this, but not on every page load. Sometimes it worked fine. On one run I killed probably 20 entities before realizing my score was still 1. So maybe some sort of system ordering bug there?

Developer (2 edits)

Are the graphics original?

These sprites were created by my friend near the end of the jam :)

The hitboxes seem a bit unforgiving. Depending on the rotation of the player or the enemy, they may collide despite not visibly touching.

That’s surprising given all collision detection is based solely entity positions and radii.

On one run I killed probably 20 entities before realizing my score was still 1. So maybe some sort of system ordering bug there?

Ouch, that’s a really nasty bug :(

I don’t recall encountering it during testing, maybe the relevant systems are ordered like projectile::check_collisions -> enemy::handle_health -> spark::handle_punch -> score::update_score so that enemies killed with projectiles (but not punches) may be despawned before the scoreboard can be updated?

Submitted (1 edit)

They are not quite as unreasonable as I imagined, but when any of the enemies hit your left or right side it's fairly obvious. Not saying you need pixel perfect collisions or anything, but maybe some adjustments that favor the player.

Submitted

I like the concept, cute graphics and smooth movements. I don't understand the some mechanics though. Score only increases when I kill something with a punch, so I have to get rid of my powers first? And the way to extend the spark queue is to punch-kill things while previous shots are still flying?

Developer

The score increases whenever you do any damage, so using projectiles does count towards your score.

The best way to get multiple sparks is by using the triple-shot that you get from killing the ranged enemies, the three projectiles can kill an enemy each and give you three sparks.

Submitted

I like the concept, cute graphics and smooth movements. I don't understand the some mechanics though. Score only increases when I kill something with a punch, so I have to get rid of my powers first? And the way to extend the spark queue is to punch-kill things while previous shots are still flying?

Submitted(+1)

A nice little game indeed! Good concept, good controls, looked good. 

(+1)

Great movement one of the better feeling games this Jam. Was a lot of fun to play. Good Job.

Submitted(+1)

Very fun game, it gets challenging quickly and has a really nice main mechanic that encourages you to take risks. That was indeed a LOT of entities!

Love the name :)

Submitted

Certainly the most entities (noticeable within a few seconds) I’ve seen all morning !

Submitted(+1)

Fun and cute little game!