the ambience, atmosphere, art,the narrative, real intresting game. bosses need to be tad bit little more aggressive in my opinion.
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Geared Fate's itch.io pageGame's Take on the Theme
Break free from a Steampunk Factory in this top-down adventure. Our game uses spinning gears, enemies, attacks, clock hands, and even radial cooldown indicators!
Did your team make the majority of the art and music during the jam?
Yes
Comments
love the art and it controls pretty well. my only small issues would be that some of the solid objects in the first boss room aren't very clear and I ended up running into them a bunch and the music could have some fade ins/outs (but it sounds very cool, the organ is so well made can't tell if it's a synth or not but very cool
the art style caught my attention ( i alsoo have realised that that is always the case for every game i play lol ) but this games great! the zelda inspired combat thing is a pretty creative idea that ive not seen many people do, usually top doqwn games use the mouse
I love the music and the style of the game.
I found hard to aim to the bosses, but I really feel like I was playing an Action RPG !
Cool game!
The steampunk aesthetic is CLEEAAANNNN, the music and art really brought the atmosphere to life, and the bits of narrative between each fight left enough to the imagination for me to build my own view of this world and the events that have happened up to this point. I did find the combat exceedingly easy though, to the point where I beat every boss by just sticking to them and spamming the melee spin attack. Which isn't the end of the world because truth be told I prefer game jam games on the easier side since it's pretty exhausting to play a lot of tough games back to back while going through these submissions, but I did still think the easy difficulty was something to note
Very solid art and music. Sound effects didn't do a whole lot for me, and the narrative wasn't super clear as to why I was suddenly turning evil. What power was I given? How does my character relate to the bosses? "Show don't tell" is a popular phrase, so maybe consider baking the story into your atmosphere and background and level design?
Encountered a bug where I beat the Creator but the battle didn't "stop." Then I ran into a stationary explosive and died LMAO
Bosses don't really "interact" much with the player. When I bum rushed them with my claws the battle was over in 10 seconds, except for the scorpion. Had to be a lot more careful with him, he's very slippery. I could use more feedback when I hit a boss, and more telegraphing of what's an attack and what's moving.
Overall it just needs these little polish things - I see great potential in this. Well done!
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
We'll be doing a lot of balancing work in the near future to make the fights more fair and enjoyable.
As for the story, (SPOILER AHEAD):
TLDR: Player was born and accidentally given free will, which gives you this desire to escape the workshop, but The Great Creator who made you, doesn't want to allow this because you hold something important. As for the bosses that attack you, they all see you as defective and need to be taken care of. (SPOILER OVER)
We ran out of time to implement all of the dialogue into the game. There were supposed to be dialogue during and after combat, not just before. There was also a misplaced dialogue at the beginning which is an easy fix. And then there's much more secret lore that's been written out, but has yet to be added. And thank you for reminding me about environmental story telling!!! That's something I need to spend more time thinking about so I can add more story through objects in the environment, rather than just telling the player straight up. Very important stuff.
Also I'm noticing a couple bugs for the final boss as well. Did you try stepping onto the clock in the center of the room? That's supposed to act as a teleporter to bring you to the next part (The Title screen for that one lol)
I think that story is super compelling and you could go about that many different ways! Definitely work on what you want the player to notice in your environment. The way I approach it for these types of projects is that I only use lines of dialogue that are absolutely necessary. I wouldn't mind helping out here! I'll try what you mentioned if I get to it - I did not stand in the center of the clock.
Attacks are satisfying to land but don't do enough damage for their windup i feel, especially with flame attack and how quick they like to move. Very cool and consistent art throughout though. Feels pretty polished
Bosses felt like they walk around too much without engaging with you, which is especially odd when the narrative is telling you they're out for your blood. When I tried using all the skills battles took forever, when I stayed only on claws and zerg rushed i cleared it in 5 minutes and didn't even get close to death in any battle. Flamethrower is kinda cool, but DPS doesn't compare to claw, and the other two are too slow to consider using against bosses that go for walks so much. Great concept, but it didn't stick together in the game due to the AI mostly.
Loved the centipede's track, would love to have it available to listen in streaming or as a file, your musician is great.
Thanks for playing!
And thank you for the nice comment on the music. I plan on uploading all of the music from this game to all the main music platforms very soon, (Spotify, Apple Music etc.). I wanted to spend a little more time mixing them first, however. Once I'm done with all that, they'll be up. ^_^
this is a really fun game, dont really see how it relates to spinning at all, but its still nice
To match that theme, we added mechanics that had to do with spinning, such as player attacks and boss attacks. We also went with the steampunk vibe because the whole place would be filled with gears which are heavily associated with spinning.
There was still more that would've been nice to add, such as rotating boss stages or attacks where the player has to hit a "spin" button to escape, but we were running low on time. Thank you for the feedback though!
fun game! the bosses varied a lot in difficulty. Like some of the bosses I could just tank every hit while hitting them back without dodging and I'd win while others were a good challenge. Looks great though!
Oh yeah it happens haha. The programmers would know better than me, but It's hard to balance, especially when you've become so good at something and you know all of the moves. Kind of like making a puzzle, but since you know all the solutions, it's hard to determine if the puzzle is too hard without someone playtesting it first.
Such a great game! The artwork here is incredible. It is soooo beautiful! I liked the uniqueness in each boss, and the variety of attacks available to us. I think that the ballerina one was a bit tough, it was a bit hard to avoid those circular attacks xD Great game!
Wonderful work, game clearly shows how much effort was put into it.
Love the art style, love the music, love the bosses!
The marionette made the browser version lag so could not get past her but I really like the game, amazing job!
Very cool theming, with great characters designs and a cool world, I was surprised to see how many little details you managed to cram in. I also liked having four different weapons with very different uses, I tried to adapt to each of the bosses.
I think the boss battles themselves need a little bit more balancing, as you can face-tank the majority of their attacks, which also sucks out some of the fun of alternating between weapons (as you can stand in front of the boss and go swinging your melee until it dies).
Overall though, very nice entry!
Now I must say, the melee attack does absolutely insane damage lmao. I had a lot of fun with this one and really loved the artistic style with the colour palette and pixel art. I think having some extra SFX on hit, hit stops and slight screen shake can really improve the intensity of the game!
Haha yeah, before submission the bosses were to hard and we had little time to balance the game so we wanted people to finish the game. We totally had camera shake but i guess we forgot to put it in! haha! We do plan to continue production after jam voting!
Thank you so much for providing feedback and the play/rate! I will be returning the favor!
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