Play For the Swarm
For the Swarm - Game Off 2023 Edition's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme interpretation | #46 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Gameplay | #79 | 3.526 | 3.526 |
| Overall | #86 | 3.579 | 3.579 |
| Innovation | #91 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
| Audio | #119 | 3.316 | 3.316 |
| Graphics | #157 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/RoamingMaelstrom/GameOff2023-pub
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Comments
I got this error message on Firefox & Mac:
abort("both async and sync fetching of the wasm failed") at jsStackTrace@https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/9216128/Build/Release%20Build%205.framework....
stackTrace@https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/9216128/Build/Release%20Build%205.framework....
abort@https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/9216128/Build/Release%20Build%205.framework....
getBinary@https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/9216128/Build/Release%20Build%205.framework....
unityFramework/getBinaryPromise/<@https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/9216128/Build/Release%20Build%205.framework....
Thank you for reporting the error.
Some questions for clarification,
I built and tested the game on a Windows 10 computer using Google Chrome.
Edit: After doing some digging through the Developer console, I've narrowed it down to a problem on itch.io's end or a problem with Unity (the game engine I'm using) that occurs when playing web builds for Firefox. Switching browsers should fix the issue. Sorry for the inconvenience :(
I tried the game again and this time it worked fine. Perhaps I only had a bad connection. Anyway, the game is fun, but I missed a saving option. Besides it was a little bit hard to understand so perhaps you could add some intructions?
Glad to hear it started working for you.
Nice to hear you enjoyed it. I will look into improving the How to Play screen before releasing an updated version tomorrow.
Nice job! The game feels very nice and it is an enjoyable experience :) I just think that the upgrade UI is a bit too overwhelming, there is just too much information displayed, but besides that nice work!
Thank you for the feedback, glad you enjoyed my submission.
I see what you mean with the Upgrade Screen UI, I'll look into simplfying it a bit.
The start of the game is very slow and it was unclear to me why I was losing parts of my swarm. I don't see a shooting animation from the things that are supposed to be enemies.
Having a large swarm eat through the asteroids was very fulfilling and fun. Made me think of large swarms of insects eating their way through whatever is in fron tof them ;P
Great job !
Thank you for the feedback. Happy to hear you liked the core concept.
I agree the game starts out too slow. As to the losing parts of your swarm, was it because they were in range of the glowing orange Irradiator? That damages passively over time (kind of like radiation damage) anything within its radius.
Don't think I've ever played as a black hole before.
The moment when I hit Scale 3 and the forces of the Galactic Empire finally identified me as a cosmic threat and sent their armada in made laugh in a frantic panic.
This was a cool vibe, oddly relaxing and addicting. I enjoyed it. Thanks for making it.
Happy that you enjoyed my submission!
The Galactic Empires armada can be a little much at times. I'll tell them to calm down in the future ;)
The progression rate is just right! Good going!
Good to hear this positive feedback!
Very fun to play! Addicting to see my former obsticles getting destroyed when I scale up. Also seeing my drones grow larger and kill enemies more efficiently is fun. Good Job!
My final score was 19,999,320 and time was 11:21
Nice score!
Glad you enjoyed the scaling aspects of my game.
Fun scaling and level up game. Little slow at first but has nice progression. Good job!
Thanks, glad you liked it. I will be releasing an update where I adjust the difficulty/pacing once the Jam voting ends
Nice game. Spore plus upgrades. It was interesting deciding whether to power up or scale up or buy drones. At first it felt way too slow and boring. I almost quit. But once I scaled up, it became a bit more interesting. The spaceships came at me fast.
Thank you for the feedback.
I did take lots of inspiration from Spore, glad you noticed ;)
Pacing and difficulty is way off I agree. Will be releasing patch once Jam period is over
What a fun and polished game! I haven't really played anything like this before. It's a really creative concept. The visuals are nice and easy to understand and the ambient audio track isn't distracting and fits the game well. I love sci-fi, my own entry is set in space too. Great job on the game!
Cool to hear you enjoyed my submission! I try to submit creative and unusual games.
I like the style! Reminds me of a game I used to play when I was younger, darkorbit.
Thanks, thats high praise!
i played the most with this game so far in this jam, almost 30 mins, so great job guys, it's definitely fun. nice, understandable tutorial screen, amazing sfx and audio. it starts as a great spore-like cozy scaling up game, however gets soooooo intense once you reach lvl3 it's a bit off putting. I tanked on lvl2 (which felt a bit tedious tbf) to have reasonable upgrades and tons of drones around me for help, yet died in almost 1 min on level 3 with a score around 150k. should you fix this, it'd be one of the best games of the jam. keep on going, you created a very nice game what just needs a little balance. very well done!
Thanks for the positive feedback. Great to hear you had lots of fun with my submission ;)
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the difficulty curve between Scales 2 and 3 is way too large. I will most likely completely redesign how enemies spawn to make the difficulty rise less dramatic, and release an update once the Jam voting period is over.
Rate no. 4
The good stuff:
- Music and sound design is great
- Graphics look nice, UI is fitting and consistent
The stuff to improve in:
- The difficulty curve. The game goes from a chill "mining" game to an OH GOD WHY ARE THEY SHOOTING ME at scale 3. This is actually why I died right there, as I wasn't prepared for a sudden appearance of enemies.
- Just as SwitchyAC pointed out, the scale up button is unclear. It took me 6 minutes of just doing stuff to figure out that it costs 6000 matter to go to the next scale, and not eating a number of rocks for example. This could be easily fixed by adding a pointing arrow above the button when you can scale up or something similar.
Overall, it's not the type of game I play often but I enjoyed my time with it, and the music is definetly the strongest part of the game.
Thank you for the detailed feedback.
Yeah, the difficulty curve is more of a Vertical wall than a curve.
I think you're right that adding a SFX/glowing effect when you can scale would be a good idea. I'll see if I can add something else to tell the player that matter is what is needed to Scale too.
Game was fun. the way i saw the swarm just eating things was cool but i did not know how to scale up from 6000/
Thanks for the feedback.
When you say "i did not know how to scale up from 6000", do you mean you could not work out how to Scale, the Scale button did not work, or that you could not work out how to get enough Matter to scale? Or was there another problem?
Very cool! The first segments were really enjoyable, the mix of passive gameplay with movement was excellent. After scaling twice, the introduction of the combat mechanic felt way too sudden, and without any explanation of what to do resulted in death quickly. Even a small period of time with a few enemies attacking and an explanation of how to fight back would be perfect, but as was it was pretty discouraging to replay since it taught no lesson in regards to how to progress. I only delve in because I actually really liked it! Very well done, and cool concept.
Thank you for the feedback. Happy to hear you enjoyed the first two levels of scale and that you enjoyed the game enough to give it a few goes.
I agree that enemies spawn too quickly when you enter the third level of Scale. I think I will release a patch after the voting is over that addresses this problem.
Maybe if the first scale up had just a few enemies so the player could adjust to it? It's really fun gameplay, definitely worth some tweaks to get it perfect!
I'm leaning to an idea like that. I was thinking on Scale 2 (the one with the mines) I could add some turrets that fire slowly/randomly (kind of like they are debris from a destroyed ship that aremalfunctioning). Then, on Scale 3 (when enemies are introduced) I think I'll just redo the Enemy spawning and have it so that the rate increases the longer you stay on that scale. That way the player only faces 1-3 enemies when they scale up.
Thank you for your input and encouragement!
Nice game i really like the drone mechanics and after a while i just wants to have a large group of drones and the game becomes addictive.
Thanks! I like roaming around with lots of drones too ;)
This is very cool. I love the drone mechanics and scaling up felt awesome. The amount of upgrades options is super impressive.
Thank you for the feedback, happy to hear you liked the Drones and Scaling!
Really fun game i love the take on scale and i find it very addictive and satisfying to play !
Glad you enjoyed the game and my take on the theme!