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The Nexus Grave's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #19 | 3.628 | 3.628 |
Ranked from 43 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
The game takes place in an ancient ruined city, which holds the key to stop a cosmic being from destroying the world.
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Comments
Very pretty and polished so great job on that! The combat was a little bit confusing to me at first although I'll admit I haven't played many (any) dungeon crawlers, but once I understood it it was quite fun! Hope you continue work on this, thanks for sharing it!
Thank you for playing the game :)
Really nice looking game, loved the pixel art and the amount of effort you put into the characters and level design. The verticality and being able to climb stairs to access different levels added a lot of variety.
The party system has a lot of depth to it too which is impressive, being able to swap inventory items, weapons and armour between characters is very cool.
I didn't like pressing buttons and not knowing what they did, it made navigation a litte bit confusing at times, but maybe that's just me.
A really solid game with a lot of polish - great job!
Thanks for playing and commenting on my game.
You are absolutely right, with the buttons, where you do not know, what they do. I have one button, where a little text comes up. I should have added more of those, with more expressive text, that would have helped.
I played it longer than I had originally intended. Which is a good thing. Everything felt... well, pretty good. There isn't much I can really say against it except maybe that I felt I was going in circles or not accomplishing much other than clearing the lair of its inhabitants. But even if that's what I was mostly doing, I had a blast doing so. Very polished submission. Good work!
Thank you!
Yeah, I just ran out of time. I really wanted to make something cool, but my ambitions were crushed by the time frame. I battled with to many bugs at the end, because I had to have verticality, which made the movement of the monsters harder as it had to be.
great verticality and character upgrade system, also liked the enter the gungeon-type entrance
combat and the dungeon shape could use some polishing, maybe guide the player a bit more using the environment (ngl was getting confused at times but could be just me) but otherwise had nice visuals and was nice overall, good job participating
oh and theres a couple of points on the map visually empty but you cant step there, but thatd be nitpicking
I tried to guide the players a bit with the glowing mushrooms, but I realize that this is not enough.
Thank you for the nice words :)
I managed to get through 90% of the content before getting stuck. I had the heartbrain, but couldn't figure out how to continue because I wasn't able to find the button for the stomping device (which I did find, but didn't know how to activate). So I peeked at Somdudewillson's video to see what to do next, but that was pretty much the end :D
I love the verticality, it really is a great addition to the game. It also looks quite nice, but same-y. I got lost many times, and there wasn't much guidance on what to do or where to go next, as it felt like one giant area with everything scattered about and accessible through multiple pathways.
Combat could use some polishing, I think. Auto-cycling characters was a bit confusing at first, especially when the mage is out of mana, as nothing happens then and you have to manually select a new char. And I preferred to pick enemies off from a distance with ranged weapons, so I had to keep reselecting that character continuously. So it felt a bit clunky. And while I realize it's quite common in crawlers, I don't like the step-forward-then-instant-hit-then-back-up gameplay that much, as it feels cheap.
Character building feels way overtuned, as levelups are so common and adding a stat point restores all resources, which also makes combat a breeze and the potions only useful as pressure plate weights :D But I know, better have the game be too easy than too difficult, but because of this the combat didn't really do it for me.
Wish I could've swapped AD with QE though :D
Overall a pretty solid game! I think some guidance could help, or perhaps restructuring the map to make it feel less chaotic would help. Things like adding a note or a sign at the giant stomping device with a hint on how to activate it. Some more flavor would also add a lot to the world, I think.
Good stuff!
You are absolutely right with most of your points. But most issues, were because of time contraints. I think I only really started making the map in the lst 3 days and had still so many bugs left. Balancing was totally out of the window.
The press has to be activated in a yellow building in the south east of the map. Well, anyways...thanks for the extensive review, cheers.
Your game is visually gorgeous! I think your screenshots undersell your visuals, which is a shame considering how great the game looks. They are a bit dark, you could have turned on the crystal "flashlight" on before taking the snapshots.
Overall the level of polish is awesome, I love the dialogue system, the consistency of all the visuals and the verticality of the dungeon layout, which is rare enough to be pointed out 🙂
I too spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to pick up the pixel art flowers, but then I found a potion and understood then that the flower can't be picked up 😅
About the controls, I found movement very fluid and pleasant. My only minor complaint is that there was no keyboard shortcut on attack or interact with things in front of you. I prefer to use the arrow keys, but since using the mouse is mandatory for battle, I had to use WASD to keep my mouse in hand. Nothing major, though.
I didn't reach the end because I got lost at some point, near a room that has two weight switches (loved that by the way, dropping items on them both was intuitive but made me feel smart), but I played for a while and had a great time. Overall a very solid entry, congratulations!
Wow, I am blushing, that is such a nice comment. Thanks for checking out my game. I liked you entry very much, too :)
Had a great game session! Wasn't really smooth cause of the lengthy but unchecked navigation, at the start those golden bells things on the ground looked liked items so I like spent 10 min just trying to pick them up just to realize that you can't :'), and also items did not work properly, I just couldn't equip some armor and weapons and also couldn't use the armor and the sword together, but even so, the game visuals were polished and the setting very curated! Maybe the scope of the map did not give you the posibility to polish the game as a whole but all in all it's a fun game! And yeah I also finished the game ahah, I don't know why but I had two hearts in my inventory, also, the magic proficency ap cost is 0 right now! Almost forgot to mention haha
Crazy the amount of bugs that are still in the game. Thanks for finding this stuff.
Equipting items should just work by right clicking them. I will check this stuff after the jam.
And the golden bells are supposed to be mushrooms which give off some light ;)
They are my way of guiding the player, but it sure as hell has not worked, as I wanted. My wife also asked me, why she could not pick them up.
Thanks for playing and the comment :)
This entry felt very visually polished and I enjoyed the implementation of the combat system and the basic movement controls. Surprised and impressed by the size of the game world, but it really needs either a minimap or a waypoint system at this level of complexity. Overall this is a very technically impressive entry.
I tried to use the lighting mushrooms on the floor as a guiding tool, as a minimap was kinda hard to do with the verticality I wanted to have in the game. But I know, that the shrooms were not enough. Thanks for checking the game out and the nice comment.
This is a much bigger game than what I would have expected - although the signposting in the level is a bit lacking for its scale. The combat is reasonably tactically deep, and I like the leveling system. The overall aesthetic is pretty good, although a lot of the alleyways sort of blend into each other after awhile.
I did encounter a couple of bugs - a sword/bow textually labeled as a sword but with the graphic of a bow, and one pressure-plate-activated door whose collision didn't actually move out of the way (and generally behaved rather weirdly). Also, the ending scene bugged out and just displayed the intro text at a weird offset.
I recorded my entire (78-minute) playthrough, and you can watch it if you like:
Wow, thanks for the feedback, there seem to be mor bugs than I thought ;)
I absolutely will watch your video, thanks for doing that!
Very impressive amount of work and polish. The visuals are brilliant. The combat system was decent. The characters were well thought out. Played this game the longest of any entry, although I didn't finish it as I couldn't find the brain. A minimap would have made navigation a lot easier.
You are absolutely right, I need a minimap. The problem here is, that I always want to implement verticality (and then don´t really use it) and that makes a normal 2D minimap quite hard. So nothing I could to in the timeframe. Oh, and it isn´t a brain, its a heart. I just wrote the wrong text there :)
But anyways, thanks for playing and the nice comment, cheers.
This was a really great game. Loved the combat, loved the RPG elements with upgrading your character points and gaining ability points, itemization was nice, I ended up feeling very OP.
But, I didn't know how to finish it. I got the still beating heart and that was about it. I don't know what "big thing" I need to find to destroy it. And I don't know what brain the skeleton wants me to find either, unless he means the heart, but if he does, he doesn't want it when I deliver it to him.
Would've loved to finish it, but it's not a bad thing that I didn't figure it out. Loved everything else about the game!
Haha, that is so funny...I wanted the skeleton to talk about the heart, but typed brain :)
You have to use the press, which is in the west of the map, which needs to be activated first, by a switch in the south east.
Thanks for playing and the nice comment.
Maaaan, I found that press, and a feeling that's the item that needed to be used (if you mean the big pillar that's initially lowered), but had no clue how to trigger it. Should go back and do that.
The multiple characters had alot of variety with the skills available. The combat was simple and intuitive. The size of the map was great and had lots of verticality and biomes, which I loved the graphics. I ran around for a while and accidentally destroy a key by picking up another item while it was on my cursor (whoops) and I think that prevented me from finishing. I will replay to finish, but this I think has potential to be a solid commercial crawler - I would buy it! Great job!
Nice find there with the bug, I think I never tested picking something up, when already holding an item. But the door for the key is optional. Only the remains of the snake god has to be destroyed by the "designed" means ;)
Thanks for the comment, these are very kind words :)
This was a fun one! I just finished the game in around 40 minutes. I was concerned I wouldn't complete it based upon some others' thoughts, however I was able to more or less find my way. Navigation is a little tricky for sure, however heading in the required directions and reading what the NPCs / items said was helpful. I do however believe that the map size is actually quite good, and instead it just needs some more landmarking and some visual clues to help guide the player a little more.
The combat and associated systems are lovely, the presentation is stunning and the skill-points, abilities and items were all very clear in what they did, and what I needed to do to scale them. I had a couple of tooltip bugs showing a bow as a sword, but it unequipped the correct corresponding slot, so no drama's there. I was also able to infinitely allocate the mage's skill points into weapon proficiency. But for the depth of the systems you have produced in such a short time, I think that's completely normal and doesn't affect my views or rating.
Visually it's beautifully presented through and through. I thoroughly enjoyed playing and I think others will too who can get to grips with navigation, because you have a really solid base for a more extensive, interesting game.
Thank you.
Well, that is quite a nice comment you gave there. Very much appreciated :)
The skillpoints are universal, you just get points and you can distribute them to you liking. The "mind" attribute for example give you extra mana and the strength points give you a better chance at hitting with sword or daggers.
But yeah...time is always an issue in jams and balancing is always an afterthought in my games, as I hang up to much on the "engine". I always want to integrate verticality, but I always backfires and gives me quite some headaches.
Thanks for seeing this one through...very cool of you :)
Apologies I think I meant ability points, with the weapon proficiencies. Anyways I promise you I wasn't seeing it through, I enjoyed it and was happy to finish it, you should be really chuffed as the verticality worked great, I think you're being too hard on yourself, and I think this is a cracking entry for the time taken. (edit spelling x2)
Looks like a great potential, sadly, I wasn't able to progress very far, as I got soft locked without knowing what to do next. I love the character sprites and the battle, UI is a bit fiddlig, would need bigger interaction areas in my opinion. But I would love to play a full flegded game in this direction. Liked the experience!
Thank you for playing. I should have made a smaller map. I tried to guide the player with the lighting mushrooms on the floor. Well, now I see, that this was not enough.
Player guidance rarely works as intended.
I wasn't able to find that brain, tried to go in the direction but couldn't find it. There were trapdoors in the ground that animated, but I were not able to go down them, maybe I was missing something. Inventory system worked great and upgrading characters. However I ended up setting all characters to melee and upping that stats to be able to just mass click the mobs.
Anyway nice feeling of the game, good job!
The trap doors are actually preassure plates to open some doors.
I think I made the map to large.
Thanks for the comment :)
Nice graphics and atmosphere was really fun to play. The goblins looked great.
Thank you.
Thanks for the Intel fix. Very well rounded game!
Thank you for the nice comment :)
I never found what I was looking for, but I leveled up a bunch along the way, so that was nice.
Thanl you for playing.