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Crawl Back To Me's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #53 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
| Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #64 | 3.412 | 3.412 |
| Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #66 | 3.294 | 3.294 |
| Overall | #90 | 3.188 | 3.188 |
| Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game? | #115 | 2.941 | 2.941 |
| Theme - How well does it incorporate the theme? | #119 | 2.471 | 2.471 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
This is quite nice, combat feels a little bit slow but overall it is a good game :)
This is enjoyable although combat takes a while before you can do another swing.
The first dialog message had a typo "ttutorial". The text on the messages sometimes overflowed the box so you couldn't read it clearly. The on screen controls overlapped the message window which looked a bit bad.
It's nice to see the weapon you're carrying being swung as you walk, although it perhaps needed to be more in view, or not at all, since it was so brief you couldn't tell what it was at first.
The animations on the enemies were very nice (Synty assets? - just checked your page, they are!). They seemed very small on screen though. It was good to see their health bar. You had a good variety of them in there, which was good.
The map is really, really nicely done. Having it clipped to the circle and rotate smoothly as you moved was great. Tab to see the full map was great too, although the scaling seemed off there, so it was a bit blurry.
We couldn't see how to bring up the options menu in game. We tried Escape and a few other keys but didn't see it. What was it?
The teleporter visual and effects are good.
Music was good, although a bit loud. A volume control would have been nice.
The camera angle is spot on and the movement was lovely and smooth. The controls just worked - well done.
Our main criticism was that the game only seemed to be about walking around a maze and killing enemies. We didn't encounter any puzzles or items to pick up. Maybe put more content closer to the start as an incentive to keep playing through to the good stuff. In a game jam review time is limited so you need to grab people early on.
Well done making such a polished and seemingly complete game.
Thank you, very detailed review. A bit harsh though, for a jam at least...
The options screen is O. I forgot to put it in the tutorial, but it is listed on the game page, both in the text and one of the images. It has a volume slider and lists all the controls.
In my defence, I did almost everything by myself, designing and building the levels, all of the scripting. The only thing I had help with was writing the dialogue. This was my first rpg, so practically no experience for this type of game. One week was simply not enough to learn all the new stuff and get everything working flawlessly.
I plan on working on this game after the jam. I already have a long todo list, adding puzzles is already on it.
We really didn’t mean to sound harsh, sorry about that. We were just trying to give you some constructive feedback that you could use going forward. You’ve really done a great job with your game and we enjoyed playing it. Don’t let our review put you off. 😀
Killed boss, but couldn't find trigger for ending the game if it exists.
It was a nice looking game with really good potential I think. Heal CD would be fine if it healed for a bit more between combats - otherwise it makes you stop for a while to outheal damage you've taken. Though, I guess, I could be a bit more stealthy instead of hacking at everything around!
Thank you.
Healing and combat needs some tweaking. Not sure yet which option I will use, either heal more out of combat or shorter cooldown. Maybe even both.
After healing change - you maybe will need to take a look at the final boss! You can basically run away from him and stay out of combat for long preriods of time. To do so you need to kite him to one wall and then run to another. That will make him lose all attention and continue patrol route. Not sure intended or not, but fight may need second look at after tweaks!
Thank you for your advice, it's highly appreciated. And already on the todo list.
Enemies losing interest and returning to their patrol was intended. It's fine for normal enemies, giving the player the option to stealth their way through the dungeon. The guards in the Soul stone rooms however should be more difficult and obviously need some adjustments to their settings. Field of view should be larger, follow distance longer, follow speed higher... Maybe even a door that locks behind you after you enter the room. It should be harder to escape them, if not impossible.
This game has potential to be a sweet crawler, I liked the slow and calm pace which gave it a relaxing sensation
It's a pity it suffered from the lack of time
My greatest issues were the way the gameplay has been set, having the movement command queueing would be a necessary thing to implement in further update so we could hold the movement keys to go from a tile to another.
The only trouble I really had were the enemies having a little too much HP while our attack has a quite long cooldown which makes the game having its dynamic going down.
I also reached the final room with the boss and last Soulstone which could not be interacted with. I hope I could have reached a form of end screen with it, but I guess it's all due to the lack of time.
Well played anyway with this entry and its complete tutorial ;)
Thank you.
Movement actually does queue in a way. All key presses are recorded and executed in order. But I guess you mean continuous movement when holding the key down. As stated in another reply, I tried to implement it, but ended up breaking all movement. It's on the todo list for a future update.
"Unfortunately I ran out of time, finishing the story". The was a wild story twist for the story of Cassandra and Alistair. :P
This game has a great foundation for a crawler. Its very unfortunate you couldn't finish it. I like games which tell me a story and and explain why I am actually here and murder tons of cute orcs and skeletons. Especially when its directly tied directly into the game with dialogues and characters. UI is nice too and generally the game mechanics work pretty well. The music soothing and nice. :) I went to the end and killed the boss (? I think), though the last soulstone doesnt do anything. Well, I will just declare myself as having freed Cassandra, haha.
One thing you should consider adding: If the player holds down the move key, continue to move in the direction. So the player doesnt have to button press all the time. Its better for a tired hand. :)
Nice game into which a lot effort went! Great job. :)
Thank you.
The first thing on my todo list is to finish the dialogue of the third and fourth stone. I still feel bad about leaving the player with an unfinished story.
Another thing is continuous movement, as you suggested. I tried to add that briefly during the jam, but ended up breaking movement altogether, so took it out again. Didn't want to spend time "perfecting" a working movement system with so much else still to do and so little time to do it.
initially in the tutorial i thought the movement was a bit slow for my liking but once the actual level started, it was at a good speed! I appreciate the stealth mechanics quite a bit, they are pretty fun! in my second run through this game, i managed to beat it without defeating a single enemy! which was actually a bit easier than the intended route so there are some balancing issues i feel, i was pretty invested in the story and THANK YOU for letting me read the dialogues at my own pace instead of auto scrolling it! it made the game much much more enjoyable on my second playthrough! both times i got stuck in an infinite loop at the end though and i tried for a good 5 minutes and it kept going, im not sure if there is anything past that but up till then, the foundations for a really solid fun game have bee layed out. i love the music and art! good game!
Btw i feel your pain, using animated doors is ridiculously weird at times!
Thank you.
I hate auto-scrolling text myself, so that was never an option to me.
The enemies do have adjustable field of view, I just didn't have time to tweak them. The mini bosses guarding the stones should always notice the player entering their room, I guess.
The movement speed is indeed slower in the tutorial level. I adjusted it for the other levels, guess I forgot to check it on the tutorial.
The doors... so weird... I had them working perfectly on my sandbox level. You could open them and even close them again. I tested placing them, it all worked fine. But by the time I started building the actual levels they stopped working. Luckily I used source control, just didn't get round to checking if I changed anything to break the script. Might even be something simple as not putting the doors on the correct layer or something...
I killed the boss, I was not sure about the teleporters and almost quit since that could have been the end after the last message but it seemed they actually went somwhere so I insisted and found him.
Combat is a bit slow for my taste but the game is cozy and movement feels right especially.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you.
I built the levels first, then added the dialogue for the stones. So the stairs to the last level and the last boss were already done. While adding the dialogue I noticed I didn't have enough time to finish...
I think I will put in some sort of forcefield blocking the stairs, linked to the stones, so you can only go further down after using the stone.
All the stars.
Assuming that the duality is life and death?
I liked the backflip that the enemies did when they died.
Although i sorta feel like I intruded on some sort of romantic interlude between a goblin and his girlfriend, and then I slayed the both.
But screw them. I got a dead wife to talk to.
Indeed, the duality is life and death. It will be more clear in the parts you didn't get to. It was a joy to watch you play my game on your stream, glad you enjoyed it.
The game actually does have a quit button on the options screen (O), I forgot to add that in the tutorial. It's on the game page though...
Really clean ! Smooth movement in all direction, strafing, good camera, minimap. This is extremely nice to explore, nice job. Strangely I felt like the character was a lot slower during the tutorial.
The combat system is simple but functionnal, I felt that the healing cooldown was a bit long but overall this is also neatly done.
Nice entry
The cooldown is long on purpose. Otherwise you can just spam heal and that would make it too easy. I had it even longer, but brought it down from 60 seconds to 20.
It's possible I used a different speed setting on the player in the tutorial, will have to check that. Didn't notice it myself.
Oh course, It's just that I sometimes had to wait between encounter for 2-3 recharges so that I could reliably take on the next ennemy. It's nothing too major, especially with the time frame you had
I appreciate you mentioning it. It's something to think about after the jam. Maybe I'll increase the amount that it heals. Or perhaps heal more when not in combat.
What a gorgeous visual style and nice clean UI. I loved the controls!
Do you plan to expand on this after the jam? I would love to see more.
Thank you. Yes, I plan to continue with this one. Finish the story with at least the fourth soul stone. Fix the bugs, put in some puzzles with switches, put in working doors, weapon upgrades... And a lot more scene dressing. I love the Synty Studios models, there's a ton more of them I didn't get to use yet.
I really love the visual style, and the UI is really clean! I like the inclusion of mouse controls. Your game has a lot of potential, I had fun playing it! At one point versus a wizard, my character wouldn't attack anymore and I died. Besides that, I love the simple and effective combat system, it reminds me of Grimrock.
Very cool! I really like the unified art style. I think you nailed the game feel of real-time blobber combat.
Thank you. I love Synty's work and the Poneti stuff fits it very well.
Fun to play ! But on death i don't know what to do x)
One of the things I didn't have time for to implement... It should give you a "you died" screen with the option to reload the last save, start a new game or quit. It's still on the to do list, with so many other things.
Yeah, i know what you mean x) we have a lot of things like that too