The puzzle were fun and interesting. I did not really get the idea of why you have to die to unlock doors. It made for an interesting mechanic but I think some in game story telling would serve to really immerse a player into why they are killing themselves repeatedly to move forward. It is a great submission for the Game Jam. Good Job!
Play game
Reflections's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Mechanics | #93 | 3.727 | 3.727 |
| Music | #152 | 3.545 | 3.545 |
| Aesthetics | #166 | 3.818 | 3.818 |
| Theme | #223 | 3.455 | 3.455 |
| Fun | #224 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
| Sound | #279 | 2.909 | 2.909 |
| Story | #522 | 1.909 | 1.909 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Listed on itch.io page.
Link to your source?
https://github.com/Plackett/Reflections
Comments
Had a fun time solving the puzzles! It was clear enough to me that I'd have to die to remove the skull-signed elements, but realizing that "sunlight" was a deadly laser took me some time. I wonder if these interesting mechanics could be packaged into a story that makes the interaction more obvious? I mean, it fits the jam theme perfectly, but why would player death change the environment?
Submitted
AscentNice game. I like the use of mirrors and reflections.
Sprites and visual presentation were nice too.
As someone pointed out earlier, I also mixed up my buttons and pressed R instead of E sometimes. It's nice to have the buttons close to each other for rapid testing during development, but for the player's experience, it probably is a good idea to have the buttons a little more separated.
Good game.
Submitted
Death's DriverHi! Played trough your game. All except the bonus level. I was going to look for it but then the game bugged when I entered Credits screen and I had to restart which lead me to lose all progress... Anyway, below you can find some comments and feedback based on my experience playing your game:
- Tutorial level of the game was straightforward: very easy to understand what needed to be done and I felt like I had understood the main concept of the game by just playing that one level. Good tutorial design!
- Nice graphics! Slightly related to that, the game icon/image on the itch.io page looks really elegant.
- The music sounds really good! Was that really AI generated or did understand something wrong? How did you do this? Could you share some experience of the process of creating the music? Do you know about where to find resources if I would be interested in trying AI composition in some project later?
- The game concept clearly fits the theme. Although in most of the levels the main puzzle felt like to be reflecting the rays and dying in order to remove some walls felt more like an extra side task. That's why even though I liked the theme concept it was also bit disconnected from the main gameplay. In this regard the fourth level (if I remember correctly) was the best because there dying actually felt like part of the puzzle (the player needs to first go to certain area to thing A and then restart by dying to get back up to go to another are to do thing B). More puzzles like this where dying is really incorporated to the puzzle and is not just prerequisite for solving the puzzle, would really add more power to the theme.
- Because E (used for item interaction) and R (used for level restart) are so closed to each other I many times restarted the level by accident when I wanted to interact. You could think about whether player really needs to restart with keyboard or would the UI button be enough. I think I only wanted to restart one time during the game and that was because of the bug in third level mentioned by other commenters.
- I would like to somehow see whether I'm currently controlling the character or interacting with the mirrors. Even though I can see that if I just start pressing buttons to see which object moves it would have helped at least me if I would have been really able to tell in which mode I'm in currently. It was sometimes frustrating that I thought I had pressed E already to interact/stop interacting and then when I tried to move the wrong thing moved. This happened multiple times. Maybe you could add an effect to the wheel or the mirror sprite to have them look different while they can be controlled.
- Back button in Credits screen does not work
It was interesting to try it out! Even with only 4 levels, there was enough content to play for a while. Good work for a jam game!
Please consider trying my entry for this jam, if you have time later. It's also a puzzle game in which the player needs to die to be able to continue with their next attempt but otherwise the mechanics are quite different than in your game. I would be very happy to hear what you think about it, be it positive or some constructive criticism!
Submitted
SacrificeThe hotfix I just rolled out a few hours ago actually fixes the back button on the credits, thanks for the feedback on the keybinds! I generated all the music using AI, most of the game I used the piano and harp instruments since they gave that deep sound that a lot of indie titles use and the music for the ending I think I picked piano and guitar. The death part was a bit of an afterthought, all I really thought of going into this game jam was 2D puzzle games such as fireboy and watergirl as my inspiration, it definitely could have been implemented better especially with indicating when things were happening since it requires a bit of prior knowledge of games to understand. I will rate your game jam and leave a comment after this because I want more ratings and comments like this are the best way to spread word and information, the secret level is closer to the fourth level, but instead of having to die in a certain order you have to not die at all before completing the puzzle or the beams get turned off all together.
Nice puzzles! I thought level 3 was broken, but managed to squeez after fine adjusting the "mirror"!
I didn't find the extra level... xD
Submitted
RK Compost FactoryYes, I think adjusting the hit box a little bit to be more forgiving would be better. But beware not to decrease it too much and make it impossible to land on the other side!
Do I NEED the cheat code to find the level? I clicked a lot of places and tried to "walk" but to no avail... if I can access the level without "cheatcoding", I'll look for it later with more time!
Hi! Thanks for the nice words, so basically when I was doing the puzzle designs I was using a smaller hitbox for the player and so now with the bigger hitbox it has problems with level 3, I think it sorta adds to the challenge now though so I don’t think I need to fix it. Also did you find level 5 or was I too cryptic on the ending screen?
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