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Alpha Roach's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| MOOD | Did this game have atmosphere, or did it make you feel something? | #12 | 4.350 | 4.350 |
| AUDIO | Did this game have great music or sound design? | #13 | 4.200 | 4.200 |
| Overall | #21 | 4.100 | 4.100 |
| FUN | Was this game satisfying to play or did it bring you joy? | #22 | 4.200 | 4.200 |
| VISUAL | Did this game have nice graphics, art or design? | #56 | 4.050 | 4.050 |
| IDEA | Was this game innovative, or did it use interesting mechanics? | #64 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Let people know how long this project has been going, or share a bit of its history.
We first made a playable but incomplete version Alpha Roach as our first ever jam together! It's also the first jam for 2/3 of our team!
The weeklong jam was focused on story games with the theme "Unbreakable." We unfortunately never ended up getting any feedback on it (likely because the jam was fairly small and wasn't ranked.) Now we've finally finished it, added all the polish we could, squashed many bugs (aside from our characters of course!) and are going to call it good to go!
We're now working on our third jam game together!
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Comments
NOOOOO Don't make me feel bad for roaches ;_;
Art was pretty good, the animations were fine. The overall platforming is solid. I really liked the part with the lighting and hiding under shadows. The slopes were pretty tricky. Also that plot twist near the end :o
Good short game overall.
This was super funny man! I did find a bug though :-P find my video review below:
1:19:15 AlphaRoach
This was very nice and fun. Story, art, sounds were good.
As others have already pointed out, slopes were kinda tricky, but I was able to finish the game though. Also, once "Hold R to reset" text was blocked by some object in the game.
Great job overall!! :)
Thank you!! So happy you had fun with this! :D :D
-Sasha
This was a charming little platformer. It really made me root for Aidan (and I'm glad it was ultimately light hearted :D) There was a nice variety of challenges too, you are continuously dealing with new obstacles, and even the return trip incorporates a whole new layout. The shadow segment in particular looked really good, and I like some of the little touches like Nolan's portrait changing to the box. A few parts it was a little unclear what to do, and some of the steeper slopes prevented me from moving or jumping until I just fell to my death though. Overall it looks like your team had fun with it, like the very last stomp being self-aware-ingly silly. Well done!
Creative game! I especially like the creative level design and the playful music.
Aw, thank you so much! I'm so glad you feel the music fit the mood!
So glad you enjoyed!
-Sasha
I really like the way this game is, I like the audio, the characters, the dialogue, the visuals, and the idea, I think the part I found really cool was when the two roaches were talking together and one had to go in a box while we went on top, it was just a cool idea to me.
The only thing I would say is that when you are going up inclined slopes, it can be kind of awkward to go up them considering you're keeping the same collision you have going onto a slope and that can sometimes make it hard to jump, I personally didn't have a big problem with it so it might just be fine.
Regardless, I really liked the game! Great job!
Thanks for playin! I originally wanted to have some kind of puzzle mechanics of having Nolan push boxes around to create paths when following Aidan, but it got too tricky when using Unity physics (plus jam time limits). But I’m happy we still got to keep a little part of it in. Thanks for the feedback!
- Josh
This is such a cute and funny game! I love the characters, the art, the music, and general mood of the game. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what is background and what you can jump on, and the UI can get covered up. The controls feel like they could be a bit smoother. Overall, great job !
Please play my game here: Escape Path Beta
I found the narrative and the dialogues were cute and funny :) The animations were smooth, art, sounds, effects very well made! There were some glitches here and there (some players behind me experienced the same thing like my foot getting stuck), but nonetheless very great game! I'm scared I'm gonna be seeing a cockroach double wall jumping IRL now
Thank you so much for playing!! So glad you liked the art and the story! :) Also, making this game totally made me freaked out about seeing roaches in my house too, haha. I had to look up pictures of them for the sprite designs... never again xD
-Kati
love the dialogue in the game give a good charm to the bugs. I got some pretty funny glitches like getting stuck with the box upside down and getting pushed forward at an alarming rate by Nolan who had gotten stuck behind the box and for some reason could only go right at top speed. But I finished the game. I love the cutscene with Nolan's "list". Pretty funny.
Thanks for playin! Sasha told me the same thing has happened to her! I'm glad the outcome was funny and not frustrating! I'm happy you liked the cutscene! It was my introduction to sprite masking and I think having the "list" was a decision we made pretty early on.
- Josh
This is a really cute game, I love the dialog between Aidan and Nolan!
Similar to a couple other comments, I also got a bug where the foot got stuck after killing me, and I kept getting squished. It happened at the part where you have to climb back over the cans.
And I didn't realise I could wall-jump, a way to introduce that would help.
Otherwise it was entertaining, and quite challenging!
Keep it up! :D
Thanks for playing and for the feedback! - Josh
I made it till the end, very funny and very cool game :D Kinda hard for me but Im proud I made it :)
Hey thanks for playing, and congrats and making it to the end! Glad you enjoyed it! - Josh
I loved the narrative and the weight the music brought to it. Never before have I cared so much for a couple of cockroaches. Nice work!
Squeeee! that makes me so happy to hear! I deffs am terrified of Cockroaches in real life, but I'll make an exception for Aidan and Nolan. Well... maybe just Aidan xD
Thank you so much for playing! So happy you enjoyed.
-Sasha
Good work! I enyoyed it!
Thanks so much!!
-Sasha
The plot is excellent and the idea with cooperation is also great, I had to read some points in the comments(A bit confused with new mechanics xD), but overall I liked the game!
Thank you so much for taking the time to play the game and checking the comments in order to enjoy to full potential! Really glad you enjoyed the game and the story! :D :D :D We'll deffs be looking into the issues addressed by the comments in the future!
-Sasha
Pretty much everything is already in the other comments below, so I'll just say that I had the same two issues: the wall jumping mechanic (I actually had to read the other comments to realize that I could move from that area) and the foot got stuck so I was constantly getting squished (had to restart the game).
I really enjoyed the game, the story and basically all aspects of it! Great job! :)
Thank you so much for playing!
We will definitely follow the consensus and address the wall jump issue in the future. As for the foot getting stuck... that is so, so strange! I played the game and had myself squished in several places, but I never had the foot get stuck (though I did come across a hilarious never before seen bug where the foot just went through the ground, never to be seen again xD ) Do you remember roughly how far into the level the foot got stuck? No worries if not!
Thanks again for taking the time to play and leave feedback! I'm so happy you enjoyed the game!
-Sasha
Okay, so I tried it again (and tried getting squished around the place I remember the foot to get stuck). It happened again when you start going over those cans, The first two cans, one is horizontal, while the other diagonal with something on it (that makes you unable to jump and you slowly go down). I got squished while stuck on that diagonal can, and the foot got stuck.
Hope it helps! :)
If you're still not sure where that is, I can go again and take a screenshot of the place.
Whoa thanks for playing it twice to get to the glitch! I do know the spot you're talking about. It's too bad we weren't able to do some more testing before submitting it to the "Finally Finish Something Jam". We totally appreciate the feedback and the error replication + description!
- Josh
Overall, it's a fun game and it has an epic tale of greed, betrayal and revenge. The lack of my actual death really made me feel like a cockroach. The gameplay had a good blend of difficulty. There's a lot that's been done in only a week which is to be congratulated in itself.
I did encounter one bug (not the actual bugs), I think the 'squisher' got stuck on me and lead to perpetual death. I got to read all the dialogue though. Had to reset the game to finish it.
The final stretch seems to introduce new mechanics that the player needs but hasn't been taught yet, which leads to feeling that the section isn't meant to be completed especially when they have to learn them quickly and under threat. Adding a few wall-jumping /pushing item elements earlier should fix it.
Good research too by the way, I didn't know Cockroaches had 13 heart chambers. It'd be cool if the cockroach could climb stuff as opposed to wall-jumping.
From the bottom of Aidan and Nolan's 13 chambered hearts, thanks so much for playing! xD I'm so happy you enjoyed the story and the gameplay!
I can't stop laughing at the image of Aidan stuck beneath the squisher. What a strange bug! Sorry you had to encounter that! Thank you so much for willing to reset to see how it ended.
Yeah, definitely a good point about wall jumping in the final. Perhaps being chased by a foot isn't the best circumstance for learning new mechanics. We'll defintly have to see if we can put something like that sooner in the future! Also, having the roaches climb instead of wall jump is BRILLIANT!!! I'd love to see what that would add to the game!
Thank you so much for all your feedback and suggestions!
-Sasha
After the end( nice twist, though ) I expected that Adian would replace Noland in the sin circle, but nothing has changed. Btw, awesome sound design and art style, really enjoyed playing the game.
Sin circle? I'm a little confused as to what you mean by that xD
But thanks so much for playing! Really glad you enjoyed! The sound design was a blast to do on this. Fun fact, the sound the "squisher" makes was the combination of a boot stomp and a tomato being squished xD
-Sasha
Really cute game thats telling an interessting story with a nice kind of humor :-)!
The leveldesign is really nice with well placed checkpoints. I also like that the game is slowly getting more difficult.
May I missed it but I really would have loved to know how the "double jump" was working. For a long time I thought I just have to die enough and have to see all dialogoues until the game ends - because I couldn't jump above that one box. Then I wondered why the jump sometimes works and sometimes not. After a lot of tries I noticed: it is more like climbing and I need to be close to an edge. You really should give there also kind of a tutorial because you was close to loose me at that point.
But I have to point out again that you did really good on the story. I wanted to know how it goes on and thought "That can't be the end of the game! IT CAN'T!". Onlyl cause of that I tried many times to beat the level and in the end I made it.
Very nice game!
First of all, I just want to say how much your comment made my night last night. As a writer... to hear that wanting to know how the story ends made you willing to keep pushing through the hard part is about the best thing I can hear. Thank you, thank you so much both for your kind words and your determination. I hope you found the ending worth your effort :)
As for that part specifically, I agree with you 100% . It was one of our areas of concern while play testing just because it's so much harder than everything else, but in the end we left it in just for the extra challenge. But you bring up an excellent point that the fact that wall jump wasn't really introduced before makes it nearly impossible for new players. We will definitely have to see if we can add some sort of tutorial, or an easier version of that jump in an earlier part of the game to prepare the player for it.
Thanks so much for bringing that to our attention! And, again, for playing the game to completion! I'm so happy you enjoyed!
-Sasha