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A jam submission

Fake Coin CaveView game page

Made for Brackeys's Game Jam; theme: It is not real
Submitted by Ran d'Reille (@d_reille) — 19 hours, 33 minutes before the deadline
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Fake Coin Cave's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#5473.0773.077
Graphics#5993.2313.231
Game Design#7452.8462.846
Overall#7622.7822.782
Innovation#8332.5382.538
Fun#8482.6152.615
Audio#9032.3852.385

Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does you game fit the theme?
I interpreted "not real" as "fake". In my game I put "fake coins" that need to be avoided as opposed to the real coins

Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Mostly yes. The code, player character, the coins, the SFX, are all from scratch.

The only exception are the tiles for the solid blocks and the background; which are reused from my previous project.

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Comments

Submitted

Very well done! How do i start? I gave you a fairly high rating in most of the categories, since i think your game is really well done. It seems quite polished, has nice pixel graphics (which i like most!) and the coin collecting sound is soooo satisfying. And this is good, since i like to have a good feeling when i play. This is where i think most that a game is worth to play. When i resonate with a good feel.
I want to emphasize the sprites of the protagonist and the coins. There very detailed and i judge this to very well chosen, since both are the main sprites for the game; while it's perfectly functional, that the background and ground is quite simple in comparison.

Off to your core idea: I like your concept regarding the theme a lot. Fake coins are quite innovative i think, in a game, where you are supposed to collect everything shiny ... and fast! :)

But, and here comes my personal criticism: Your great idea kills the gamefeel and fun for me. There is a timer and i should be fast, there is this nice and simple level, where i can imagine how i am going to fly through and have fun jumping and reacting. And then: I go a bit, then stop, then look hard: left spin? right spin? err ... get ....next....stop, look, think....avoid! ..jump ... then stop again...and look. This feels tensed. Playing it "right" is no fun at all. It's literally a platform crawl ...

So the next time i just ignored your fake coin idea. I rushed through, collected everything, had a nice mixture of good and bad coin collecting sounds, jumped like crazy, moved fast, back and forth and when i got ALL the coins, i smiled and felt well: THIS was so much fun. And i appreciate you for the same end screen with "next time avoid the fake coins", which i can easily disregard and add to myself: "yeah. or i don't and just have fun with your game". :-)

So what i want to say: Your game IS well made AND fun. Your fake coin idea is still promising and a very good one, i judge. I just ask myself, how could you implement it, without necessarily slowing the game down so much. I see, that you could memorize the fake coins and then make a speed run through your level. But then it would be a memory plattformer, not a "distinguish between fake and real" one. 

I have one suggestion, a kind of compromise: Maybe DO make the fake coins easily recognizable. But only for a short time. Like every coin is the same, but the fake ones have a glitching animation for some seconds. So if you get near one and the coin glitches, you don't have to look hard, but you instantly know this one is fake and you can frantically try to avoid it. Maybe this would help to still be fast in playing and being in a fun flow, without stopping everytime. You could even stand still for some seconds in the beginning and trying to memorize the glitching ones. This would be easier, but since the glitching occurs from time to time and for some seconds a fake coin looks like a real one there would still be some kind of difficulty involved, challenging your memory: "Wait. this one was real, wasn't it? oh, glitch! (frantically hitting JUMP)" Maybe this idea doesn't really address the platform crawl problem in the end, but maybe it can be another impulse of making the game fun AND staying true to your concept.

This said, i want to be honest, and state, that i don't play speed running platformer games at all and i see, that speed running such games is often very much about memorizing, so ... well. :)

Developer(+1)

Hey thanks for the well thought out feedbacks! I appreciate the amount of effort being put to make this feedback; from my experience this kind of feedback takes at least 15 minutes (after typing the whole message I realized your feedback probably took at least 20 minutes) to type.

Thank you very much for giving high rating in most categories. I have said this in other comments too but at first I actually doubted the concept; but I guess I was surprised when I actually tried to execute it.

The criticism about the timer is definitely something new. The reason why I added the timer is because well... try to imagine for a second if this game had no timer... you play it once and it is done. I thought that during the game development so I added the timer for extra challenge; emphasis on being extra. Clearly since you felt like you had to go fast first try I failed to convey that intent though; so this is definitely a room for improvement. One thing I may consider doing next time is giving an option for time attack mode, hiding the timer first time (or until you do the level properly), hiding the timer the moment you get a fake coin, or showing the timer only at the end of the level if no fake coins were collected.

Regarding the time attack/speedrun mode becoming a memorization challenge.... Haha yeah I just realized that. I suppose because I am the dev I cannot properly understand the experience of players who first come to play the game since I already know the placement of each coin since the first time I placed it. One thing for sure this feedback was rather new and surprising since my testers in my jam's discord server all loved the timer. One thing I notice about speedrunning though it does often become a memorization challenge separate from the more immersive intended experience. I mean try the genre of metroidvania; the genre is supposed to be about exploration -- but obviously after it is completed that thrill is gone forever and so people speedrun it with of course some form of memorization of the map. Though I suppose I also need to recognize that usually metroidvania speedrun are players creating their own challenges.

The glitchy coin idea definitely seem interesting... but I think for easier sprites maybe instead in addition to the fake coins spinning in opposite direction, they are also less shiny -- assuming I will one day update it.

In any case thank you so much for playing and giving all those helpful feedbacks.

Submitted

Timer are your thing, aren't they? Since you start timers also, when writing posts? ;-) I'm kidding. :)

I appreciate you much for the amount of words of your reply, Ran. I haven't thought at all about your ideas about the timer's attack mode or any kinds of implementation for that. These are very interesting things to consider in a game. Cool. Thank you for bringing this ideas up.

The spinning was tricky! Had me going "Left? Right? I don't even know anymore!"

This is a pretty small and simple little platformer, but it accomplishes what it's going for, which is the  main thing.

I love the concept of the coins having different spin, it made me look hard at the screen. Would love to see more!

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted

cool game i like the graphics rated it please rate my game too

Developer

I would love to play your game, it seems so tidy... but it seems I couldn't run the executable in my PC for some reasons. Sorry :(

Submitted

good game¨

please rate my game too

Developer

Thanks! I will do it in 7 or so hours

Submitted

Cool game idea! I enjoyed playing the game! When I played it first, it seemed like I have collected all the coins but the game didn't end until I collected the fake ones as well... (Maybe I just thought it was rotating left but it was rotating right...) It is an interesting game!

Developer

Thanks for playing!

I need to confirm... did you mean the counter already said 40/40 on the top left and the game did not show the big text at the center of the screen, and the timer did not stop!?!? That has never happened before and definitely shouldn't happen, and if it did happen it is a major bug.

Submitted

Amazing

Submitted

This was fantastic! I enjoyed the subtlety what is and is not real and I really had to focus to try and discern what I should and should not collect. The artwork looked fantastic and the sfx really gave it that feel of a coin collector! The game runs super well and feels very polished! Great work!

Developer

Thanks for the kind words haha! I didn't know what to expect when I made this since tbh the concept felt so lame and boring at the time; but turns out in general players like it XP

Submitted

Nice game! It could be a little tricky telling the difference, so maybe some variety in visual clues could spice things up. Good stuff overall!

Submitted

Fun idea. I thought it was annoying that you immediately jumped again if you accidentally held the up key down just a little too long, but otherwise pretty fun!

Developer(+1)

Haha one of my testers from discord that tested this game before the start of the rating period mentioned the same thing, although it was aimed for my future projects. Probably should've fixed it before the end of the jam XP

Fun game, I like the style, I only wish the spacebar could be used for jumping as I am not very good with the current control scheme. 

Submitted

Nice, unique take on the theme and I liked the art too.  Focusing on those coins to figure out which way they were spinning reminded me of figuring out enantiomers in organic chemistry. :) Great work!

Developer

Oof! Idk if your comparison to organic chemistry is supposed to be a good thing lol because I am traumatized with organic chemistry in my uni life (altho I think I know what that means; left and right hand molecules? Some molecules of the same configuration can be poisonous if they are of the wrong "hand")

In any case, thanks for playing!!

Submitted

Haha, yes, left- and right-hand molecules.  I felt the urge to point my thumb upward and rotate my hand to figure out if your coins were right- or left-handed haha.  I like the puzzle aspects of organic chemistry so it's a good thing!

Submitted

Neat concept, although trying to tell the difference between the coins feels hard with the only difference being how they rotate. But something like this could be a cool concept for a speedrunning game to show where the player should go.

Developer

Thanks!

I definitely had a hard time determining the sweet spot between "too obvious" and "too difficult" with regards to the coin differentiation. On one hand I did not want it to be TOO obvious as in like if I were to color every fake coin red; since they are supposed to be a fake of the real thing so I did want some challenge for the player to differentiate the two at least at first. On the other hand at one point during the development the real coins and the fake coins actually made optical illusions lol

Submitted

Fun game. The thing I was missing most was music I think (which I can understand is very hard to add - especially if your doing everything by yourself).

The level design was nice because there were clear points where you had to make a choice. (e.g. at the beginning, where you choose between the top or bottom coins in the four columns)

Would you mind reviewing my game?

Developer

Oh thanks for playing!

I WISH I could make a music - sometimes I do even in a 7-day game jam; but this time because I had to relearn a lot by the time I finished the bare minimum I only had 24 hours left and I couldn't make a music in just 24 hours lol

I will review your game ASAP

Submitted

Nice idea! Try to implement the autorestart after game jame rating end! It feets the theme really well! Well done m8!

Submitted

Really cool concept ! That's a nice twist on how to distinguish what is real and what is not ^^ ! You should have explained it in-game instead of in the description, it would have been more clear =p ! But otherwise, that's a really good entry, congratulations ^^ !

Developer

Thanks!

The decision to not put the explanation in game was my personal preference towards explaining as little as possible -- I wanted players to figure it out by themselves through the hints I provided esp. via the top left UI where the coins spin next to the counters too; and some of my test players did so without reading the desc. But looks like I need to keep in mind that it is not that easy to figure out XP

If I ever update this game I may explain it better; perhaps without words XP

Submitted

Yeah, explaining without words would be the best options, if you find a wait to make it clear ^^. I must admit that I didn't catch your hints ^^'

Submitted

The game is good, it looks like it could be a nice game to speed run, the animations and graphics are really great. I think you should have a way to identify fake coins, otherwise it's luck based or memory not finding them. But for the time we had everything looks clean.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing!

Ah  for the fake coins I guess it is not obvious enough huh... the way to identify fake coins are by looking at their spin direction. If you look at the UI to the top left you may notice that the coins next to the true coin counter and the fake coin counter spin in different directions; they correspond directly to the actual coins in the game. I thought the UI shows it well and my other test players figured it out without reading the instructions too so I thought I had conveyed the message well -- but I will keep this in mind!

Submitted

Aaaaah that makes sence jajaja sorry, i'm bad at noticing details.

Submitted

Fun game. Watching these coins spinning can make you a bit dizzy tho XD. 

Maybe the character can acquire a tool that makes them able to tell the difference between fake and real coins (with the fake ones having a different color or texture for example).

I like the character design, good work!

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Striking a good balance between "too obvious and handholdy" and "optical illusion tier" was definitely one of the main challenges of making this game. On one hand because they are supposed to be fake if say I just make them different colors such that one can easily like see which one is which without even looking at the screen what's the point? Might as well make two completely different items. On the other hand at one point during the development it was way worse; it was literally like an optical illusion lol where if you look at a real coin all the other coins would look like they spin right and vise versa. After pondering for a little I decided to go against the optical illusion route thankfully XP

The character is... well... from a tiny ongoing game jam that I now host XD

Submitted

Fun short little game. Good job getting your feet wet with making games again! I managed to collect all the real coins, but I did collect 3 fakes aswell. It can be tricky to tell which are fake from the spinning animations, but I liked how some of the way the level is designed helps you disambiguate which coins are fake!

Developer

Haha thanks XD

It is unfortunate that I both had to relearn a lot and also that I decided to use a different architecture that makes my code much tidier and easily expandable than my previous other games but a the expense of raw speed for a 7 day game jam so I only had one level to offer.

Thanks for playing!