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A jam submission

MagecraftView game page

A short survival game submitted for FarmJam 2024.
Submitted by Top-Hat Squid — 9 minutes, 35 seconds before the deadline
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Magecraft's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Bug Amount (5 Star is no bugs)#54.3004.300
Enjoyability#83.5003.500
Uniqueness#113.6003.600
UI#123.2003.200
Theme / Secret Requirement#163.6003.600
Farming#192.7002.700

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

  • I would highly suggest working on this and making it a full game asap.
  • The game is enjoyable and intuitive. However, some elements are hard to differentiate because of the resolution (like the cauldrons), and I didn't detect much farming at all, except the replanting of trees. The game would benefit from having multiple levels. If there was a goal/exit, I wasn't able to find it.

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Comments

Submitted

I was really impressed by how much you managed to do with PICO-8. I didn't even know you could build an inventory system like this! The controls work smoothly and it's fun dodging the enemies, exploring, and shooting the ghost bunnies (?) to bits.

Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to plant anything, and I wasn't sure what my overall goals were.

Also, it would have been cool to have more music and sound effects.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! The farming was locked behind the shopkeeper which I badly programmed in. Yeah there wasn't really any goals since I originally though that just having a sandbox would be good enough, however it's not. Thanks for bringing that up! Also I hoping to develop the game more so that there are more sound and music as well as general clarifications. Thanks again for the feedback :3 

HostSubmitted

I had a blast for what it was. I would have liked to have seen a little more done with 30 days of work, but I completely understand how hard game dev can be as well. The farming cycle worked, and the only bug I was able to see was sometimes a slime would get stuck, but maybe just chalk that up to lore. I would love to see this have some updates with a price tag. it would make a great mobile game, or even switch.

HostSubmitted(+1)

I had a blast for what it was. I would have liked to have seen a little more done with 30 days of work, but I completely understand how hard game dev can be as well. The farming cycle worked, and the only bug I was able to see was sometimes a slime would get stuck, but maybe just chalk that up to lore. I would love to see this have some updates with a price tag. it would make a great mobile game, or even switch.

Developer

Thanks for playing! I definitely did not use the 30 limit to it's best and I just rushed it at the end of the month deadline. There was code in there to prevent slimes from spawning in walls, but It didn't work. I am going to release a more full-fledged version of Magecraft, but I am restricted by the pico-8 token limit. Thanks again!

Submitted(+1)

Always love to see a PICO8 submission in a jam. Very cool concept and really does feel like a competent foundation to grow upon. The chomping, planting and combat feel good and I really enjoy the minimalist art. Really, I just wanted more  stuff to do generally and a little more breathing room between nights to do some gardening and build a cabin. Well done!  

Developer

Happy you liked it! The lack of breathing room between times of day was definitely a big oopsie. There was a lot that I wanted to add in, but just didn't use my time properly. I'm actually working on a better version of the game right now so that it's more clear and have more content.

(+1)

This is a really fun game! You should look into enemy pathing algorithms, at the moment you can easily line up the enemies and kill them all, it would be more challenging if they were a little less predictable. I think most of the issues with farming and crafting could be fixed by making the days longer so that there is more time to complete tasks instead of having to fend off the enemies. You could even kill the enemies when day breaks a la Minecraft. This is looking good, keep it up!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! This is the first time I've ever made enemy pathfinding so It is definitely really predictable. I slapped in the day/night cycle last minute so I didn't really have time to realize how fast it was. Also, I was planning on doing a death by day break mechanic for the slimes, but I ran out of time. Thanks for playing though!

Submitted(+1)

Very nice entry!!!! This reminds me of those old ASCII games in image.

Died once but got the hang of it a little. I like the little houses. I couldn't figure out how to farm, but that's probably my fault because I was more focused on exploring, cutting down trees to place logs, and running away from enemies. I like the seemingly random generation of the world! (Not sure if it is, but I did load in in different places upon page reload, so wanted to mention this)

I was trying to figure out how to farm, but running away from enemies made it hard to sit and experiment with the controls. At first, I thought maybe the slime was a seed I could place (slime pet warrior might be an idea that could help stave off the high spawn rates), but after that didn't work, I couldn't figure out where to get seeds because the sales people were trying to sell me stuff in my own inventory I think? Or maybe I was selling to them?

I reached an error that stopped my game (code below) when I ate or used all the slime in my inventory.

Runtime Error Line 906 Tab D
EJ.name
Attempt to index field '?' (A nil value)
In D_Inventory Line 906 (Tab D)
In _Draw Line 175 (Tab D)
At Line 0 (Tab D

Developer(+1)

Happy you enjoyed it! Sorry about the high spawn rates, I implemented the spawning mechanics last minute and didn't realize how bad it really was.  The slime was meant to act as a currency for the shopkeeper, but I didn't make it clear in game. And worse, the main farming mechanics were only accessible through the trader. I really like that slime pet idea and might be added it to a more finished version of the game I'm making outside the jam. Also thanks for the bug catch!

Submitted(+1)

I like how game looks and feels, everything is very organic and in place. Wish if farming mechanics were a little bit deeper. 

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot for playing! I mismanaged my time during the jam and I really had to slap everything in last minute so the farming was just place then grow.

Submitted(+1)

Cool submission, first time I played any PICO-8 game. With this limitation it looks great. Farming mechanics was kinda lacking and I couldn't really farm because slimes seem to spawn pretty frequently. Also day night cycle seemed too fast. There were a few bugs, I couldn't talk with trading guy, walking diagonally was faster than in a straight line (classic normalized vector problem :D) Summary screen after dying was shown to me for like a second, also seems like a bug.

Developer

Hey thanks for playing my game and giving me feedback!  A lot of the farming mechanics where there however they were lock behind the badly programmed shopkeeper and even then, it was pretty rudimentary. I didn't test spawning mechanics enough so that's  why the slimes were spawning in some much and the fast day/night cycle. The summary screen wasn't link to a timer so when you press X it brought you instantly back into the game. Thanks again for the feedback and I hope you still had fun playing! :D