Play Slam Punk
SLAM PUNK's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| BOSS DESIGN | #33 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| ART / VISUALS | #36 | 4.074 | 4.074 |
| FUN | #38 | 3.593 | 3.593 |
| Overall | #39 | 3.639 | 3.639 |
| CONTROLS | #41 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
| SOUNDS / MUSIC | #57 | 3.537 | 3.537 |
| USE OF THEME | #63 | 3.407 | 3.407 |
Ranked from 54 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game's take on the theme
Our game's interpretation of the theme "exchange" is present in the ability to swap your own abilities with the ones offered by the bosses you've beaten.
Did your team create the vast majority of art and music during the game jam?
Yes
Did your game use PlusMusic?
No
Did your game use Playroom?
No
Did your game use generative AI art?
No
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Comments
Good fun, though the i-frame on the dash is ridiculously long. And like others I also didn’t know there was a double jump : maybe that needs to get mentioned in the tutorial if you’re planning on an update.
Glad you enjoyed it!
We couldn't find a good balance for the i-frames, and ended up deciding to make it better for the player rather than leaving it too useless, so yeah, it is really strong. We'll try to balance it better.
The double jump is actually mentioned in the tutorial, but it's easy to miss. I think the coach goes "Remember you can double jump" or something like that, but there is not a panel like with the other controls, we'll work more in the tutorial, thanks for the feedback!
I had a ton of fun! It’s better played with a controller
Glad you liked it! Thanks for playing!
Really liked it :) Tried downloading it but chrome flagged a warning with the exe but browser version worked fine!
Was really well put together and my only critique would be for normal mode maybe drop the lives system! Good worl!
Gals you enjoyed it! The idea behind the lives was for people to try different modules if they got a Game Over, but we understand how it could lead to some frustration. Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing!
I had a great deal of fun playing this game. 2D pixel art kinda gave me Mega Man vibes. 1st and 2nd boss wasn't so hard but 3rd one was hard af even in normal mode. You need to change the right loadout for every boss. It's a great use of the theme btw. But i find some of the modules a bit redundant in the current state of the game. Like dash and shield. I don't know maybe some players devise tactics for those modules or you'll add some bosses to the game in the future which will require them.
Controls are tight. I noticed that the harder you press space, the higher your character jumps. Like the controls too.
Boss design is artistically very good. In terms of combat, they all have different attack patterns which are unique to them. You figure out their patterns like in every video game boss fight but some games in this game jam have boss phases which adds more depth and variety to the combat. I broke one star on the boss design criteria for that. To all other criteria i gave 5/5.
I think it's a very solid game, i really liked it. Nicely done!
First of all, thanks for playing our game.
Yep, the modules could use some work, sword modules are pretty much only damage increase and a change in the shape/area of the attack. The dash is actually pretty broken once you get used to it, but the shield is underwhelming. We hope to improve the modules and add more bosses and modules in the future.
The boss paterns are pretty simple, yes. We didn't have much experience with boss rush games, so we drew a lot of inspiration from Hollow Knight/Mega Man. While Hollow Knight does have deeper bosses with múltiple phases, Mega Man bosses are simpler (at least the ones I'd played). I checked some Mega Man games I'd played a long time ago to check how the bosses were made, and to my surprise, they were actually really simple design wise. I remembered them being really fun, yet watching them now on video, they just had a set pattern they repeated over and over. So I drew from that, and while all the boss patterns are ours, the simple desgin was based on Mega Man's. You could say our game took inspiration from Hollow Knight to design the character movement, and from Mega Man to design the bosses. We could definitely add more depth, like phase changes on certain health thresholds, enrage timers, etc. There are a lot of options.
Thanks a lot for your feedback we're glad you enjoyed it!
Heh heh i knew you were inspired by Mega Man
I played the game not realizing that I can double jump and I have beaten normal mode without double jumping. It was difficult lol.
I find myself using melee only after 30 seconds at every boss first encounter because of the uncertainty.
The bosses are a little unpredictable at first but it's not too confusing since they will repeat in order every time.
Overall I think this is a fun and challenging game. Very solid game.
Beating the game without the double jump is actually kind of impressive, nice!
Yeah, the bosses have a bit of a learning curve, but once you learn them, they keep doing the same over and over. We hoped people would leanr and beat them. And if they happened to game over, that they'd try again with different modules.
Glad you liked the game, thanks for playing!
Visuals and sounds are brilliant!
Unfortunately I don't have a controller at the moment so it would be really unfair of me to criticize the controls lol
Overall, I think it's a fantastic entry
Thanks! You can go ahead an criticize them, we know the keyboard controls are not the best. We should've added an option to customize the controls so everyone could enjoy the game their preferred way ^^"
Really glad you liked it!
The pixel art looks great and the visuals are very polished. Controls feel good too, nice job :)
Thanks! All the art was made by my partner Frostyburguer! Glad to hear about the controls, we worried a ton about that.
Very good take on the theme. I had a lot of fun. The controls are a little bit janky but not too much. The tutorial could be shorter. Also, the difficulty ramped up quite a bit in the third boss haha. But yeah I enjoyed it and that's what matters.
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Sorry about the controls, we should've added an option to customize the controls, because the people who tested it had different preferences for the controls. And yeah, we tried to have the third boss feel like THE Final Boss, he had to be harder, but we may have overdone it, we had too much practice with the game ^^"
And the tutorial is long because there was a lot that needed explaining, stuff like how the shoot can be held but the melee has to be mashed, or that the jump height is actually variable. If we had time, we would've prefered to make a sort of gameplay tutorial, with a practice boss probably.
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for playing our game!
Nice game.
The controls are good, and precise.
auto-fire on the ranged attack is very welcome.
The modules are nice, and change gameplay significantly.
Some boss attacks could use a bit more telegraphing, or some tweaking on the hurt-boxes.
The 2nd boss, hiding behind his bubble with the explosion was weird to figure out how to avoid, since you have contact damage on mostly everything, but make an exception for that case.
The final boss was a nice challenge, but the ground fires hitbox lingers a bit much, and the crystal attacks after it have no telegraphing, so it's very hard to avoid without the dash (can only guess, didn't get the dash).
Hard mode complete :)
Thanks for the feedback! And congratulations on beating the hard mode, we tried to make it really challenging.
And you're absolutely right, the hurt-boxes are pretty rough for some stuff, the last boss should have the better ones, since he has the most complex animations, I tweaked his hurt-box a lot in the different animations, even then, sometimes it is a bit too punishing, like when he is standing in the middle summoning the crystals.
The 2nd boss bubble thing was actually something we weren't so sure of. We liked the idea, but had to really think about how to implement it. In the end we made the coach give you a hint about how the only safe place is inside the shield, and hoped people would figure it out, probably too optimistic on our part ^^"
And yeah, the ground hitbox does linger a bit too much, I did that with a Godot AnimationPlayer, but it didn't quite work as expected, for some reason the hurtbox took longer to disappear than the time I was putting in the animation. I wanted to change it and do it with my own code but never got around to doing it. And the crystals definitely could use some telegraphing, but in the end left them like that as a sort of a "This is the last boss, get good lol". And while the crystals are annoying to dodge, they "only" deal 1 damage, as opposed to most stuff dealing 2, and you can deal a lot of damage to the boss while he is summoning them, so it felt balanced in a way.
Again, thanks for the feedback, I'm really glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for playing!
Great game! The bosses are well designed and fun. I really like how you did the module system. The game has tight controls which allow you to vary your jump height. The visuals are really well done. That 3rd boss was really difficult for me. I didn't upgrade my special module at all, so I struggled to reliably dodge its final attack pattern.
Yep, that final attack pattern is the hardest thing to dodge, you really need to get the timing right to jump from the center of the room to one side. Really glad you liked it, thanks for playing our game!
YO I love the boss designs (both visuals and their behaviour), neat art ....took me 2 attempts to win normal mode lmao...But hard mode is def crazier lol. Beating the bosses felt really satisfying...sounds music, visual and audio feedback is really good.
I realized we have double jump only after reading the comment below me lol (I jumped at the very very last second for the final boss)
Overall this is a very solid game! Very polished!
Glad you liked it! Adding the sounds to pretty much everything we could think of so the game had feedback was one of the most time consuming things we did, because we don't have anyone for sound, so it was a lot of hours spent listening to free audio effects, we're really glad it's paying off.
Actually beating the game without double jump should be possible, although the first boss was designed around the double jump, since he goes pretty high on the wall. On our first demo of the game, the double jump was actually your special module, so we designed the 2nd and 3rd bosses around the possibilty of you not having double jump. However, our friends who tried it said losing the double jump felt really bad, so we made it baseline and added the repair module as a replacement.
Thanks for playing to the end, we're really happy you enjoyed the game!
I can't believe I only realized I can double jump in the middle of the second hardmode boss lmao
Anyways, the gamplay are nice, I like the abilities exchange mechanics. The bosses are cool, the third boss have quite a lots of attacks, the first two are simpler but still need time to learn how to dodge. The visual are nice, and the music and sound are nice too.
Tho as you can see, the third boss can be brute forced by this setup, which kinda makes it the easiest to beat. Also, not sure if its intended but you can go behind the second boss and attack him while he is spawning saws attack, but I don't think I can beat that without it so its fine.
Overall, cool game!
The tutorial tells you about the double jump, but it's easy to miss it, I expected most people to not read it at all haha.
Yeah, the third boss can be brute forced quite a bit with that setup, we realized it after the first one of our friends who finished the game beat it like that. We didn't have that much time to balance it towards the end, so we left it like that, we expected most people wouldn't realize, and if they did, kudos to them. We didn't want to make it too hard for those who didn't use that setup and saw how to cheese it. You can also kill it really fast with dash + triple shot!
And yes, you can jump (or dash if you took that) behind the second boss and attack him a lot. We could have solved it easely by putting the boss closer to the wall so his hitbox would hit you, but decided to leave it like that since that boss can be pretty hard. And it only works really well on every first set of saws, after that, there are usually a couple saws flying around that can hit you when you go behind him, specially in hard mode, where the saws are faster and last longer.
Thanks for playing it to the end, we appreciate the feedback a lot because we hope to improve and expand the game after the Jam.
Cool game with hollow knight inspired gameplay, really liked the setting and style. Exchanging mechanic are cool too, but some of the modules seems a little similar and nondistiguishible(like standard laser and the one you can get after the first boss).
The main problem for me was the jump, namely the regular, uncharged version. It feels too short and stiff do dodge anything, while the charged jump nearly always does the trick like on the first and last bosses. I'd sudgest to cut the charged version entirely and just keep the regular but with range between current charged and regular.
But overall great game with awesome bosses!
Yeah, we decided to keep the modules simple for the jam, we really wanted to do some more interesting stuff with them (We had a sword to return projectiles, but it was somewhat buggy, a bit hard to balance, and time was limited) but in the end we decided to focus on other things, like the bosses, all the UI, etc.
About the jump, yeah, the short jump is not that useful from the ground most of the time, however, we felt it was useful for when you needed a small redirection while in the air (Also, maybe our love for short jumps comes from a looot of hours playing Smash Bros haha). I personally felt like I used it a lot in the 2nd boss to dodge the blades coming for me while I was already in the air.
We'll experiment with it after the Jam, since we hope to further develop the modules and add more bosses with more interesting modules, thanks for the feedback! Glad you liked the game!
A very good game that is drawn coolly and has its own vibe, reminded me of megaman. I liked the music in principle, it fits the general atmosphere, but I couldn't get used to this control, it's very inconvenient to walk on the arrows and attack on the buttons, it would be better if your game had a standard WASD and mouse attacks
We drew a lot of inspiration from Mega Man and Hollow Knight, so we're glad it made you think of Mega Man. Sorry about the controls, we could've added mouse controls as well. But usually we only add mouse controls to our projects when you use the cursor for stuff like aiming. We had people test it, some found the controls fine, some didn't like them, so we probably should've added a "Controls" menu, so everyone could enjoy the game the way they wanted. We'll most likely implement that after the jam is over, thanks for playing!
Loved this game, is challeging and the combat and movement is tight, you did great here!!!
Thanks! Making the movement feel good was one of the first things we heavily focused on, we tested a lot until it felt right! We've always liked games where the movement feels nice because that's how you interact with the rest of the game and it can change your experience a lot.
No surprise if this wins this jam. Really well done. The controls with joystick were really snappy, no complaint there. The art and animations are charming and professional looking. I feel like this is a vertical slice of a commercial product, so I hope you continue developing this. My only critique is that the second boss is too spongy for how strong and fast he is.
Thanks a lot! We had a hard time balancing the difficulty because we had so much practice with the game. The 2nd boss is actually something we couldn't quite agree on, since I had an easier time with him, while my partner Frostyburguer found him harder than the last boss. Still, we tried to keep it balanced as much as we could, but with the shield phase it was a bit hard to balance since you could deal a ton of damage there. We really hope we can continue developing this, with more/better bosses, and making the abilities you can exchange more interesting, we kept the abilities rather simple to focus on the rest of the game for the jam. Thank you again, and we're really glad you enjoyed it!
Great game and very challenging.
Thanks, glad you liked it!
Fantastic game! The visuals were great and the game itself is quite challenging. Absolutely loved it!
Thank you so much! All the art was made by my partner Frostyburguer, it really is great. I'm glad you enjoyed the difficulty, we had a hard time balancing it and were afraid it could be too hard. Glad you enjoyed it!
Just a 5/5, I loved it.
Thank you! Really glad you enjoyed it!
Can I make some sort of trailer for your game ?
That'd be amazing! We'd be thrilled if you did that.