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Stormbridge's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #1 | 4.447 | 4.447 |
| Game Design | #9 | 4.224 | 4.224 |
| Overall | #20 | 3.982 | 3.982 |
| Innovation | #25 | 3.921 | 3.921 |
| Fun | #48 | 3.934 | 3.934 |
| Graphics | #137 | 4.013 | 4.013 |
| Audio | #260 | 3.355 | 3.355 |
Ranked from 76 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The theme is about the "CALM" as much as the "STORM". The storm cannot exist without the calm to contrast it. Thus the game has two phases:
1) Sunny! You build and gather resources to build your settlement with no danger.
2) Stormy! At the end, your decisions are tested. Watch and see if your civilization can withstand the storm!
The calm phase is drawn out but hints of the approaching storm are given to create anticipation and dread. When the storm finally hits, you bear witness to its destructive powers.
Thus, literally "CALM" before the "STORM".
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
No, I did not create the art assets. VFX and music are from the asset store but I did the lighting and post processing to push graphical fidelity to the max. I wrote the gameplay code but used frameworks such as Inventory System/Unity's Third Person Controller/Settings so I could focus on gameplay logic to make the game fun rather than system design. I did not make the music & sounds but did my best to add them in a way that accentuates the atmosphere.
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Comments
Nice game! Fun to play and fits the theme perfectly
Thank you for playing the game and glad to hear all that brainstorming paid off...word play intended! XD
Wow!
Well done for the jam, I can see where all the time was spent. Great little submission!
this game was super polished for the amount of features it had! very well done for only having one week to make it. it reminded me a little bit of theme park tycoon 2 from roblox. nice game!
Thank you for the kind comment Justin! Also good job on your game too :)
thank you! :D
Wow, I was surprised by how complex this game is and polished. It seemed impossible that you made this in 4 days and half, then I saw that this is very similar to your Steam game and most likely you started out from that, or how did you pull it off?
Had fun playing, the feedback I can give would be that wood seemed like the most limiting resource, which is understandable, but a better production option would be great, also the storm seems rather harsh, should it really destroy all buildings in it's way (I know you can block a few being destroyed)?
Great stuff as always, congrats!
Hey, thanks for the kind comment and for the feedback! Did you manage to unlock and build the wood farms? Those will give you constant generation of wood, although I heard that since it is a random card-unlockable, I wonder if it's too punishing if you don't get it. I thought I had been quite generous with the amount of wood given by cards but I wonder if I am mistaken?
Haha the storm is meant to be brutal but I am getting mixed comments. Some find it way too easy and build so far ahead of the storm, while others think it's too difficult! I'm going to have a hell of a time balancing this game XD. For now my solution is sorta to provide roguelike permanent upgrades to help each subsequent run. But I do wonder if there are better ways to improve it, like dynamic difficulty, or even the ability to summon the storm at your own pacing.
As for my development process, I'll do a more detailed writeup sometime but you can look at my ideation process here and devlogs if you want to which mention some shortcuts and tricks I used to optimize my effort and re-direct time on areas I wanted to improve on. For this jam, my goal is to focus more on polish and game design, so I had help from external assets. It's also the reason why my iteration style is to upload a playable v0.1 as early as possible. I used that to get initial feedback and then proceeded to iterate on the remaining days to really polish it till v0.5. So while I uploaded the first version after 4 days, I continued to update and iterate on the game every day until the last day. I was also surprisingly invested in the idea so I worked extremely hard on it. It helped that this jam is longer than others. I think I seriously maximized the full week lol. Probably the hardest jam I worked on and I think the results surprised even myself.
Also wanted to add that I'm perhaps on the slightly more experienced side so it's perhaps not fair to compare. I've worked in gamedev but also have animation and extensive 3D background so not only can I put together stuff really quickly, I'm very comfortable working with 3D, lighting, post processing and FX to make a scene pop, making cinematics with Cinemachine and Timeline rapidly, etc, so I have an advantage there. I've also been told that I excel in rapid prototyping, a skillset which seems to come in really handy in scenarios like game jams.
Lastly, I was lucky to have a very clear vision of my direction which I think helped me plan my time a lot better. Thus, my bottleneck is less of programming and art, but more of game design. I focused on what I felt were high impact features. There were a lot more stuff I wanted but I had to cut them, but I will be gradually adding them into the game after the jam rating period is over, with the first update to put out later today!
Oops sorry I typed so much. I think I get super passionate discussing games and processes and I just went a little ham there X_X
Very Cool!
Really fleshed out gameplay! I was impressed by the amount of options for building and resource management. Replay value is off the charts
-MediumNewtz
What the heck! This could be a full-blown commercial game sold on Steam (or free to play on mobile if that's more your thing. I played it for more than an hour, there was plenty of replay value particularly when I noticed the upgrade window in the menu. You have a great gameloop and lots to play. There was some lag everytime a storm showed up.
Oh my god. This is the most encouraging thing I've read all week. I think my heart just melted reading your comment HAHA. Thank you so much for playing it and this is super encouraging to read because a few days ago, I sat down and had a long think about the vision for this game and with everyone's feedback, made me decide I want to try to push this game as far as possible!
I would really like to put this on Steam although I'm not sure how much content is needed to get there. Stormbridge feels like such a short game and I definitely need to gather a lot more ideas on how to expand it further beyond just a jam game. Nonetheless, the encouraging words by everyone makes me want to try and I hope you'll get to play it once I roll out the updates sequentially!
Noted on the lag! I have applied some optimizations and gave the storm a health bar and combat variety which I'll release tomorrow after the rating period concludes!
Also just tried your game! Very quirky, humorous, glorious sound effects, and the escalating music and tension is just *chef kiss*.
Sounds awesome! I don't think you need to worry that much about the content amount on Steam. It's great that you're adding content to differentiate it from the jam version, but if you compare it to popular small games like Reigns, Clickyland, Florence or Stacklands, your game isn't lacking.
Oooh, my impression was Steam players like longer games.
Also omg thanks for sharing that list, that's actually super duper motivational to push for Steam! I'm checking those games out right now! Clickyland looks like a game I'd even wanna play as I love building and defense!
Glad I could help! :D Yeah, Steam players usually like longer games, but certain types of games do well even if they're shorter.
Right! I'm pretty pumped right now and I'm gonna go for Steam! I'll keep working on it for a couple months I think. I actually don't know how long I should give myself for this game haha, and probably the hard question will be when to stop and just launch it on Steam. Hopefully this post ages well :D
Awesome! Let me know when you have a store page up, I'll wishlist it. :)
Thank you for the support Jorava!
That's really impressive work for a game jam! Should built everything under the shield, lol, will do in next runs. Thank you for the game!
The shields are my favourite building and I'm so glad I got those raycasts working for it XD.
Thanks for trying it out too and for the kind words, Walrus!
HOLY
Moly?
Wow incredible game! I really enjoid this. 10/10!
This game has a lot of fun and I can not wait for a well polished one. Thanks, I had a lot of fun.
Some feedbacks
1. the storm feels a little bit slow when you have long enough bridge. Also the time counting is pretty show
2. when in the 3rd wave after building about 300-400 bridges the cards can not be loaded. That blocks me from reaching to an ending
3. in the first island I can jump to the ocean, but then respawn immediately
But overall this is a really fun jourey!
Thank you for the feedback and detailing your experience with the game! Had been working on a ton of stuff for the next update to release after the jam rating period is over so I took awhile to reply! (Sorry!)
1. Ah, I was struggling with whether to make the game harder or not. In the coming updates, the game will be more challenging. Storages and a revamp on how settlers work will add more gradual growth I hope, so it will not be as easy to build so far ahead of the storm!
If you mean the time counting down to the next storm is slow, I agree! I will be shortening the duration for the first storm in the very next update. And will also make it such that after every storm, the peace duration will get shorter and shorter!
2. Card generation slows down in time - they can be combatted with workshops, but in the next update, this "slow-down" will be reduced after every storm to make it more balanced!
3. In the next update, the character will say 'oops' when he falls into the sea, and once I add achievements, one will be granted :) Embrace the 'bug'! XD
HUGE for one week dev, gj man. awesome game. Think it was the game I most spent my time in this jam. Thanks for the game
Thanks for playing the game! Appreciate the kind comment and glad to hear you liked it! (Was on hibernation mode working on the next update so sorry for the late reply!)
Hugely impressive for a week. Good concept and mechanical interpretation of the theme. There were a couple of rough edges like NPCs wandering into places they couldn't get out of or some weird jank from sprinting, but overall was a fun and surprisingly polished game for a week. The main music track was driving me insane though. I would have liked to see how many tiles the storm was going to hit once it started though so i could properly plan out my escape. If you were to expand the game out, i think other citybuilder/management game staples like being able to assign your workers to different stations would go along way. It sounds cool to have my guys desperately grind out a resource i need during the storm, and to have to make those kinds of decisions on a tight deadline.
Woah thanks for this feedback!!!
I intend to continue working on the game after the jam so ideas and thoughts like these are definitely appreciated. I've been working to address several of the feedback so far, but I haven't yet gotten much feedback about the music so this is useful - I will add more tracks to vary the 'peaceful' music played haha!
Good point on seeing how many strikes the storm will make - I can add in the tooltip when hovering over the storm timer (Storm will strike 5 buildings every 10 seconds). The number of buildings hit will definitely vary as in a subsequent update, I'll be adding buildings that can stun the storm and even absorb multiple lightning strikes, along with giving the storm HP so it becomes a boss battle rather than just having it be wiped by a single turret as it is now.
I like the idea of assigning your workers to the stations! In the jam I had it as a general "productivity%" to test out the idea, but perhaps some kind of simple UI to send 20 workers to Fish, 10 workers to Smelt, or do it by percentage so new workers are added automatically, maybe. Good ideas here!
Nice Game..
Nice game! i like it a lot its really fun
i found the sprint mechanic kinda broken it makes you jump sometimes and it pushes you to places. nothing game breaking tho
also, theres some lag spikes when you build stuff. but other than that great game!
Agreed, I was debating if to remove the sprint or not but left it in case people wanted to go fast. I will be replacing it with a proper dash ability after the jam period ends! Will also be fixing the building lag along with adding a bunch of other stuff! Appreciate the thoughts :)
Really in depth and feature complete game! I think on the second loop of preparations (I survived the first encounter woohoo!) The card timer was still really long due to "storm proximity" like it didn't reset. Not sure if that's intentional, but other than that really excellent game. I'm very impressed by how many animations and 3D effects you were able to put together in such a short amount of time, hats off to the team!
Thanks for the kind comments and congrats on surviving the first storm! The card timer not resetting is intentional. I suppose I should word it as "it gets longer over time", rather than due to "storm proximity". Tip: You can build workshops to get the card timer down!
Appreciate you leaving your thoughts! :D
This is an extremely well made game. There are very interesting ideas in it. It's one of those "just one more card" games that won't let you stop playing.
Hee-ho. Cool game. Thanks for nice experience
Amazing game. I played it for such a long time because of how well made it was with the gameplay loop and strategy.