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Metal Mode's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #30 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Presentation (graphics, audio) | #37 | 4.370 | 4.370 |
| Fun | #67 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Theme | #101 | 3.741 | 3.741 |
Ranked from 54 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game represent Mode?
You can change the mode of the Dice to change your chances, and the main point being that you send out "Metals" (Tank-like things) with 2 modes that you can switch between; each having their own special abilities and stats.
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Comments
It looks like you overdid your features a bit here hehehe. The game is pretty straight forward once you get past the tutorial and somewhat fun, although I found myself only using one unit and one mode...
I think you were a bit overambitious with the variety of the modes, that you didn't play test them enough. Maybe more specialized units and levels to showcase the different stats/abilities would've been the way in hindsight.
On the flip side I did enjoy the Presentation quite a bit. The sound effects and music fit your vibe perfectly and feels like a polished launch ready game! You were trying out something cool and original, but unfortunately your game design was a bit lacking.
All in all still a very enjoyable experience!
Jams be jams.
Not enough time to make whole levels, but I do plan on adding them in the future- not to mention smaller levels to start out in, as well as more environment hazards and such.
The strongest Metals were SHOT and KING, which funny enough, SHOT was the first one I made and KING because it was bugged. Although I did test some of them, I didn't have enough time to test all of them in every way, (Like FROG's ability that doesn't work), but I was aware of the potential that SHOT would be the best. Truthfully, I tried to balance things in the time I had left, but couldn't, but the variety each had stayed.
Since it's a jam, exploring the ideas and seeing the ideas is more the goal than a full complete game, as a full complete game isn't really possible. But now I can definitely tackle and apply everything I've learned from watching people play it and from the comments.
It's been a blast! Thanks for playing!
This is a super interesting design. I played all the way to the end, but there were a few balance issues that kept me from engaging much with the more interesting mechanics like swapping modes on tanks or even using other tanks besides the basic gunner. Having every action cost persistent resources rather than per-turn movement/attack/specials is very unique but I think ultimately encourages a very conservative playstyle. I just stuck with the basic tank because it was the most cost efficient to use. Also, having to save up on the upgrade resource to produce more of it makes progression feel slow. I think if upgrades to upgrading costed every other resource it might work a bit smoother.
Rolling the dice is super satisfying as others have said and the core premise is very solid.
Yeah. I didn't get to fully take a look at the balancing and it caused some issue with pacing.
Some people had the intended pace, some took too long, and others zipped through it.
Most eventually zipped through once they realized the best strats.
aka, the SHOT or the KING.
The SHOT was the first one I made and became OP with the upgrades. 1 cost for a 2 ATK was crazy good, + it's range.
It basically became the clear strat.
The KING was just bugged and let you attack infinitely.
As for a conservative playstyle, the waves got stronger and change over time to mitigate that, so it was another thing with balance. Truth be told, the waves didn't get strong enough fast enough, were too slow in their movement, and not enough variety.
Originally, I was going to go with the dice cost their own resource. I might test that again with some newer changes I learned from seeing people play it.
So much I need to add and change. :V
But thanks for playing!
Fantastic presentation! Loved rolling the dice, very satisfying. Took a bit to get into but once I did it turned out to be good fun!
Thanks for playing! I'll be sure to make a better onboarding system when I get back to it!
Terrific job! You nailed the aesthetic and feel you were going for and the game has a lot of depth and great strategy to it. Great work!
Thanks a ton! I'm glad people have been enjoying the game- even sticking to it for a good while.
Definitely going to be going further with the project!
Very complex and polished game! Took a while to get the hang of but enjoyed playing this! Some more descriptions or a guidebook to reference would be very helpful to learn the game. Also the king unit lowered my energy to the negatives, is that supposed to happen?
Nah. That's a bug. lol
A bug that has inspired me to make a mode that works with it. Sort of.
Like an achievement.
This is exactly my type of game! Interesting use of "mode" and I'd love to see that idea explored more. plus combining tanks is cool. I think more tooltips would help, kept forgetting what was power/range/cost, and which grit did what. ...and I didn't catch you could add new dice until way too late in my first attempt.
There is a huge amount of potential in this concept, I wish I had more time to learn each of the mechanics and strategies.
Yeah. Onboarding for this game was a challenge.
I'm definitely going to change it up and add a little manual you can open for post-tutorial review.
Great package all together in this game. Very complex, but certainly the type of person you would target with this title would like that. The difficulty could be tweaked a bit.
Yeah. I didn't have a lot of time to balance it, but it jumps with people.
Typically, people beat it on the third or forth go.
But that first playthrough's a killer. lol
Hey, really great game. I love the the universe you've created here, I wanted to keep exploring and go deeper into this moody world. Everything about the presentation was selling the dark sci-fi mech vibe. I loved the neon colors on black background, loved the music and sound effects. It was very fun trying to upgrade my units and dice over time. Overall very impressive work!
Thanks a ton! I think I'm going to move forward and make a full version of it.
I played the html version and worked fine minus the tutorial in wich I got stuck and the view camera cut a bit of the top screen everything else worked flawless.
I played it a lot and is so much fun give me into the breach vibes but on a larger scale. There's a lot of stuff going on already but I loved the exploration bits ( and the perils you can avoid having some scout around the map) and I was wondering if it would work like a turn based rts. The sound and the look is awesome too. Mad props!
This is a really cool game, from the visuals to the gameplay it's all there and I regret not trying it sooner. Top notch work!
Curious what made you hold off on playing it. Was it the thumbnail? Admittedly, it looked a little plain, but I ended up adding the dice, and it looks much better.
It was partially that, yeah. I didn't click onto the page before, just saw the couple screenshots pop up on hover. They were pretty small on my monitor in that view with a lot of dark space and didn't communicate the art style or gameplay to me at a glance so I moved on. Once I went back to the page and clicked on the screenshots for the full view and read the description did I see that this was actually a game I really wanted to play and now it's one of my favorites from the jam.
I know it's ironic coming from me considering how plain the thumbnail for Transmogrification is, but typing all this out made me realize I should stop pushing it off and spruce it up.
Probably the most stylistically original entry I've seen so far. Pretty difficult, in a good way. Not to mention the sound design is incredible! Super good work!
Took me a while to pick the kind of sounds I wanted, but glad you liked the choices!
Sound's super important to me in games, so I put a lot of thought into them.
No point in making something sound bad when the player does it constantly.
Wow, what a great game - definitely one of my favourites from this jam!
Super well polished, all of the art + sounds + music really fit well together. Did manage to beat it, although I had to abuse the bugged kings a little bit at the end with all of the stronger monsters (I assume you're not supposed to be able to go into negative energy when firing them?)..
Also nice to see another game that used non-standard dice! Liked the idea of the dice upgrades, but felt like they were too expensive to really explore fully.. Even when I had a bunch of dice set to generate wrenches, I feel like I wasn't getting all that much :( Might be better if some of the initial dice you buy/upgrade are cheaper/ramped up? That way you would also have less wasted turns at the beginning where you're just waiting to get a few more of a resource
Awesome work on this!!
Yeah. The wrenches were a challenge to balance. They cost the same as the other dice at first, but then I noticed from some of the playtesting that people ramped up REALLY fast when they matched the other dice costs. So I raised the prices. I'll probably lower their cost a little, but once you get them going, they snowball and let you max out all your dice fairly quickly.
More consideration and balance will be needed for them.
This is a really well polished game. I feel like I would find this on the front page of ArmorGames or Kongregate or Newgrounds or Miniclip or…you get the idea. I really like the aesthetic vibe and the audio fits in really well. The only thing I could say this game would benefit from is a much slower ramp up into introducing all the stats and all the tower/gun types and the resource types. The information hit me all at once right after the tutorial and I felt a bit of overload! Really nice work though, I loved it!
Thanks! Means a lot with that compliment!
Yeah. Slowly introducing the concepts would be ideal. I sadly didn't have time to fully implement something like that, though I wish I did.
Seeing a bunch of numbers and symbols can be overwhelming.
It's really complex at first but i enjoyed it so much. Congratulations!. Awesome sounds and feels.
PD: Could use some extra clarity when you can't do something. Would make the difficulty curve a little nicer.
Agreed. More blinking and indicators would have been great.
And now that I've seen more people play it, I have a better idea of where and how it's needed.
Took some time to get the hang of it, but I enjoyed it very much! Good job!
Thanks for playing!
Really cool. Could use some clarity on why I'm not able to do stuff, etc. Love the graphics and everything!
Yeah. I'll definitely need to add more indicators and stuff.
As with other feedback, I was a little bit overwhelmed with all of the UI and instructions, but I definitely enjoyed it and was interested in what was going on in the game !
I am amazed by the polish on the art (especially rolling the dice!) haha
The dice rolling is a really simple trick of animating the dice sprite to spin in one axis, then just rotating the sprite at a readable speed.
As for the UI, I'll definitely need to work on that with a full version!
Very polished and great atmosphere! I love the UI's sound effects, music, and weapon sounds. The mode switching is used to great effect and this just all around feels like a very unique mix of chess, tactics, and dice rolling.
I was going for all of those! It was also inspired by Dungeon Dice Monsters and the usual Tower Defense games.
I've also never seen a turn-based TD, so I wanted to try.
Nice! I felt a bit overloaded by the instructions and the UI information early, but it was not as complex at it seemed. Well polished, nice mood enhanced by the music, thought through gameplay. Great job!
Yeah. Onboarding was a challenge, but for every player that I've seen so far, once they got it down and understood, they zoomed through it!
And the music's by a musician named Rusterdax. They have a TON of amazing songs you can use for free and I use them for most of my games.
This game feels really polished considering the timeframe in which it was built. The concept is also really cool. My only issue is that the UI is a little overwhelming at the start but then its actually really fun. Good Job!
feel free to rate my game as well if you'd like https://itch.io/jam/bigmode-2023/rate/2424386
Pixel art makes focusing on polish and mechanics much quicker. Can't imagine having higher res art and doing it within the same time frame without an artist. Thanks a ton!
And yeah, if I revisit it I'll definitely need to come up with some way to make it less overwhelming. Maybe unlock bots over time or something.