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Cognitive Abyss's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #508 | 3.283 | 3.283 |
| Audio | #587 | 2.891 | 2.891 |
| Fun | #607 | 2.913 | 2.913 |
| Overall | #674 | 2.848 | 2.848 |
| Game Design | #681 | 2.848 | 2.848 |
| Innovation | #689 | 2.674 | 2.674 |
| Theme | #873 | 2.478 | 2.478 |
Ranked from 46 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?
Swarm of Enemies
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Yes
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Comments
i love this art style. The
character design is amazing good work. keep it up.
Very Cool!
I love the art and design of the room! I would have liked more upgrade options because I saw them begin to repeat themselves. Other than that good work!
I really loved the art style, and each character feels incredibly impactful. The camera movements are also very well-crafted, making the whole experience visually immersive. You can tell a lot of effort went into this game—great job!
Pretty solid game I liked the visuals but I did wish the weapon had a bit more range but overall great work!
Glad you enjoyed! Will work on more impactful upgrades like area upgrades!
I think this is the first time I've ever played a game as a honey badger. I liked the upgrade choices and their names, but wished that either my default weapon had a longer range or the enemies had a shorter range. It was very difficult to hit them without getting damaged myself.
Took some time to make it feel better, but still didn't perfect the balancing of range and stuff. And yeah, I also think our game is the first game I played as a honey badger.
Nice Game! Keep It Up!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed!
Conceptually brilliant, well thought out and very fun, hard to stop playing!
Glad you enjoyed. Yeah, bullet heavens are addictive indeed.
It's pretty fun, crazy seeing unreal being used as a 2d engine.
great job!
Glad you enjoyed it! First time using it for 2d and it was a rough start, but it was surprisingly intuitive. Maybe it is better for hybrids though.
I really liked the concept. At first I thought the map was too small but after only a few seconds I realized that he was in a asylum cell and that's what the whole concept was about. I think it's very clever to make him on the run from his demons, plus effective upgrades and good details in the names! Well done ☺
Thank you! Upgrades are accidentally effective, because the "balancing" was done in about 5 minutes! And yeah, it is asylum, so it is small, though smaller then initially planned.
Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! If you wanted to look at it again in the future heres the vod timestamped to your game
Thanks for playing and giving feedback!
Pretty cool game!
The graphics are nice, not sure about the theme though.
Glad you liked the art. Theme is not very prominent indeed. We kinda wanted to convey the mental state of the main character getting worse as you level up and getting stormed by the illnesses, but at the end time did not allow to make it apparent. So the theme is more conveyed through the swarm of enemies getting bigger and bigger.
Alright! Thanks for the clarification.
A vampire survivors like where the upgrades negatively effect you is a very interesting concept worth expanding on. The asylum theme as well, maybe in a way different from most survivor games, you could start to break out of the asylum and the level would get bigger. There's a lot of ways you could take this.
Glad you liked it!
As a Vampire Survivor fanatic, I really enjoyed this game. Having abilities negatively affect your health/movement made for interesting decisions. It was also very cool to see that you all made everything from scratch, the asylum background was well-done. I'm sure you had more abilities and such planned, but that's the essence of game jam... you never get to put everything you want in it haha. Good job to the whole team!
Yeah, we cut a lot, but that in a way is good, because now we have ideas as to what to add post game jam on top of the feedback!
A nice twist on the bullet heaven genre with the mental health upgrades. At first I didn't realize my mouse is what aimed my weapon, but once I got that, I did pretty well - I think I got to the end, but it seems like it just changed to an odd camera, so I wasn't sure if I died or won. There was something I really liked about the colourful upgrade coins. Maybe it was the contract of colour vs the drab greyness of the asylum which is a pretty cool touch.
You died, the game has no win condition, time got the better of us unfortunately. The coins are actually suppose to be pills, but they indeed look more like coins!
I loved the concept of the Asylum and the enemies somewhat representing your fears, while power ups being your psychological problems. I did not see the relation with the theme, but the game was ok. An intro and outro screens would have been nice.
The relation is that the more power ups you get the more mentally ill you become and at some point you get overwhelmed by the psychological problems and you face yourself as a mirror boss representing you commiting suicide. At the beginning everything is relatively calm, but the more it goes on the more "stormy" it gets. Time did not allow for into and outro screens, but they will be added after the jam. You are the one of the first to comment on the Asylum map , glad you liked it!
Inside an asylum cell dealing with psychological demons is an approach to this theme that's out there but also fits so well in this catalogue of games. The idea of dreadful beasts spawning and surrounding the player definitely embodies the themes of growing anxiety and worsening inner demons, and it's pretty cool to gain, stack, and switch between upgrades throughout the game.
It's in this game loop, however, where I start to notice issues. The most blatant is the interruptive nature of the upgrade segments and enemy spawning mechanics. The upgrade template comes out of nowhere, disrupting the flow of the game, and the enemies can often spawn on top of you with no warning, making for unfair situations despite the demons themselves not doing much damage even in a horde. As for the horde itself, the damage they deal is well balanced for a horde to be threatening, but dealing with them quickly becomes one-dimensional and routine, with many conjuring into a thick line behind as the player automatically swings or blasts them with bombs and center explosives. The upgrade system feels like it should break the monotony, but the overlap on the areas they cover and the lack of enemy strategies extinguishes any chance of that happening.
Yeah, I get you. THere are more diverse power ups and upgrades planned. We just had no time to implement them. Also we had no time to balance things, but apparently the balancing is quite ok with the current power ups. As for the power up screen I will see what I can do to maki it less disruptive.
I got the sound working after stream! Added a lot 👍. Sorry again I couldn't get it working on stream.
Very faithful take on the survivors genre and I liked that upgrades had both positive and negative effects.
Thanks for sharing with my stream! Here's the VOD of your game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2253652240?t=02h10m06s
Awesome! Glad you liked the music and thank you for playing and giving feedback!
I just realized you are the guy with the game Balloons! Loved it when I watched it on stream! I don't think I can play it considering I already saw working solution for the game, but will try it none the less and rate you!
It's a very interesting take on the theme! I certainly did not expect this direction. Very interesting survivor-like style, with each upgrade also having some kind of drawback.
i think the game was pretty good but it might benefit from manual melee attacks. i think it'd be a bit more fun if i could just click to swing the sword, but other than that it was petty good. nice job!
Glad you liked the game! Will think about manual attacks, still I feel like they are not really in the spirit of the genre.