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Deus In Machina's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #18 | 3.933 | 4.071 |
| Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #20 | 4.278 | 4.429 |
| Overall | #99 | 3.147 | 3.257 |
| Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game? | #102 | 3.105 | 3.214 |
| Theme - How well does it incorporate the theme? | #145 | 2.001 | 2.071 |
| Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #150 | 2.415 | 2.500 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I love how your game looks and how it sounds. I am a big fan of vaporwave aesthetics so i wanted to play your title instantly when i noticed it. As soon as i run it I got some Paradise Killer vibes, which is sweet;) I really like the slight rotation effect when you move sideways - it adds surreal feeling which fits the style of the game. In last level the monkey sprite and the music feels extra psycho-scary. Beatuliful! From the downsides: combat lasts a little to long for me and i could not upgrade my HP and damage (I gueass its not implemented yet). Overall, very good project. Do you planning on updating it? I would be happy to play complete version.
Interesting concept, though at the current stage it is quite raw. Random generator would sometimes make passways that you cannot travel (placing couple of mannequins to the side that block the path completely), I also encountered big tv being rotated 90 degrees and also uninteractable/unpassable so had to quit the run also.
I've run bunch of level1 though, but it was quite difficult to understand which weapon is better. Max damage and raw damage. Cooldown field blank. Attack speed - not sure it even works. Passed both a dagger and an axe due to their cd being so long - palm tree just was beating it out straight down. Even though damage looked bigger on an axe from its tooltip - it did like 2 damage, while tree was doing 9..
Movement was dizzy due to that bending motion, but after several minutes I got used to it.
Didn't understand why hitting enemies against the wall would do less damage and knock me back instead (making weapon cd, both block and attack, longer).
Loved the menu and overal feel of the dungeon. Music and sounds were good as well. Adored that manneqin on the palm tree. A bit clarity with weapons (damage/cooldown), fixes for impassible dungeons (and maybe make them longer, but 100% have some loot in them - some runs had 0 for me..), and its a very interesting game indeed that I totally would enjoy play a lot more!
The artstyle is great, the atmosphere as well, the windows aesthetic rocks. But...I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do? I ran a few dungeons, just encountered a couple of enemies and nothing else but the game keeps saying I need to get my stats up to try the next level. But I never found anything to help me raise my stats unless I'm missing something...
I only played some level 1 (tried a level 2 once, but was indeed not handling the appropriate equipment, as warned). I don't know if I'm missing something or if all the weapons I found were absolutely terrible. The two-edged axe dealt some damage but with the cooldown even this one seems to be worse than the hands. Movement is chopped where you try to advance, I think it should be smooth in that case since you don't use instant movement.
Game is fine though', the shareware surreal Windows 95 aesthetics are well rendered and the combat system is fun.
I've been insisting but it seems that when you're supposed to be strong enough to access level 2 then you can't access it anymore, clicking on level 2 bring you to level 1 instead, that won't help ;) .
Very aesthetic game, relaxing.
Cool style. Who knew that cyberspace would be all about slap fights with statues? Seems legit.
My only beef was that combats felt a bit slow and progression felt a bit grind-y.
- Aesthetic and Art-style -
This game was on my radar, I was looking at the screenshots given by NekOz at discord semi-religiously. The art-style is just top notch. The synth-wave aesthetic felt so cool. 3D models and just the vibe of the game was hilarious personally. I found it very fun to look around and just see all of the madness.
The game had few instances of Z-fighting (specially floor) and some weapon(great axe for example) were just white squares in my inventory but, due to the aesthetic I'm really not sure if it was a bug or intentional.
- Game play -
I really liked the simple fighting mechanic of blocking and attacking. I do wish game was bit more clear about some weapons needing to recharge after attacking(maybe like a progress-bar?). I do have one complaint regarding the fighting mechanics. When you charge your attack it breaks enemies defense, that is fine but, I can't see a reason to not charge my attacks.
Charging attack both dealt considerably more damage and broke enemy's defense pushing them back. Normal attacks on the other hand, can be blocked and even if they are not blocked they deal less damage. Game having a trade -off between charge and normal attacks could make it even more interesting.
A way to heal would've been very nice(If there was I couldn't find it). I find myself on low health after a single encounter and usually just skipped rest of the enemies, since as far as I can tell killing them doesn't really benefit you.
- Audio -
I must admit every sound I've heard felt just in place. Music was also very nice(can I have it as a mp3? I would love to listen to it time to time).
- Overhaul -
I think you peeps did a really good job for a jam. Aside from few bugs(again I'm not sure if they are bugs or not, aesthetic really covers it well) the game was very fun and enjoyable. I would love to see this game expanded on further after the jam.
== ARTSTYLE ==
"I found it very fun to look around and just see all of the madness."
Madness caused by time crunch is fuel for more madness :D
The Moai, UI, 2nd level mix and void level was done in the last three days. This includes modelling, texturing, creating custom shaders (Amplify Shader Editor my beloved!) and experimenting with lighting. Kimu helped out with a couple of models, the most notable being the CRT monitor. Some third party models were altered and used to save time (and are credited in the description, they are all either Public Domain or CC BY 4.0)
The white squares is a bug and I know there is some Z fighting specifically because of the way we did prefabbed rooms for proc gen.
== GAMEPLAY ==
This was our first dungeon crawler ever and we wanted to keep it simple, though we unfortunately did not have much time to actually playtest this when everything finally came together. Combat feels... impotent for the lack of a better word. There is no punch to the attacks. There is no proper anticipation for incoming attacks. And yes, there is no reason to not charge attacks. Imo each action you can do against an enemy should have clear pros and cons. For instance, light attacks could be used to interrupt heavy attacks. In a way, the game feels setup for a rock, paper, scissor combat loop where you have a set of actions that are capable of interacting with each other.
Killing enemies do not give you anything, they act more as obstacles. Healing is something we should have added. But you know, sleep deprived hubris and all that.
One big issue I got with the current proc gen system is that the dungeons are very hit or miss. Sometimes you just walk through one without encountering any loot or enemies. Other times you are FLOODED by enemies. There should of course be some variation in the amount of rooms, loot and enemies, but this ain't it.
== AUDIO ==
I have sent your compliments as a screenshot to Kimusabe and Trish. They did an amazing job.
== OVERHAUL ==
The bugs are most likely bugs. Besides the level 2 mix and GOD, I have not intentionally introduced Z fighting. I personally want to keep working on this game, I think there is a lot of potential in this if it actually got some polish and actual content. But we are already working on polishing another Game Jam game (Ordinary Day in Brackeys Game Jam 2022.2 eyyoooooo) for Steam release. We might do an update doing some rebalancing and fixing the game up a bit, but actually expanding it into a full game has to wait even if the entire team is onboard.
Thanks for leaving a well written comment, we all appreciate it.
I really like the visuals and music. The computer part is a neat idea.
Nailed the vaporwave aesthetic. Combat is cute with the hand slaps, but once I got the axe, it felt very bad.