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A jam submission

ReflectionsView game page

A puzzle platformer in which you are a treasure hunter exploring the ocean.
Submitted by plackett — 2 days, 18 hours before the deadline
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Reflections's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Mechanics#933.7273.727
Music#1523.5453.545
Aesthetics#1663.8183.818
Theme#2233.4553.455
Fun#2243.3643.364
Sound#2792.9092.909
Story#5221.9091.909

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

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

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!

Developer(+1)

I think I might have said this before but the original idea was a different setting, and the dying made you move on to a new plane of existence where things were different, but then I went with an underwater theme and so I had to scrap that lore. Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

It's a cool game!

Submitted(+1)

Nice mechanics and feel! :D

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted

Great little puzzle game! I love the grungy underwater aesthetic. It took a minute for me to understand I needed to die to open the doors once the laser was set up, but after that I had no other issues. Congrats on the submission!

Submitted

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?

Developer

At first I thought of it as 4D, you die to travel on the 4th axis and see another slice of the level but it just turned into what it is now

Submitted

That sounds neat, like a different plane of existence when you're dead. And then there's another plane when you die in there. Or something.

Submitted(+1)

Liked the idea of a light puzzle, but I couldn't figure out what to do - some tutorials would have helped. Lovely aesthetics and music.

Developer

ah yeah sorry about that, I really should have added a text thing to tell the player that they can kill themselves with the light beams but I though the little skull near it would be enough and also some players have managed to do stuff I thought was impossible to try and beat the tutorial lol

Submitted(+1)

Nice 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.

Developer

thanks! Ill be sure to check out your game l8ter

Submitted(+1)

Hi! 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!

Developer(+1)

The 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.

Submitted (1 edit)

Good thing you mentioned ratings! I almost forgot rate your game after playing it. Or I forgot, I should say. But now I luckily remembered after reading this and my ratings should be in now.

Developer

One more thing I forgot to add, the music was AI generated but the sound effects I made in bfxr.

Developer

also I did most of the art in Photoshop with a GAOMON M10K 2018 but the backgrounds and stuff I did with a trackpad and some free grunge brushes with some layering to add that algea sorta green on it.

Submitted(+1)

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 

Developer

Well its quite unfinished but I can send you the cheat code to access it if you want, yeah do you think I should fix level 3? Thanks.

Submitted

Yes, 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!

Developer(+1)

well originally there was a wall with no collision in level 6 but it got scrapped for time reasons so yes the cheat coding is the only way to access it now. Check the level select screen for the cheat code thing, its not too hard to figure out what word I used for it.

Developer(+1)

just rolled out a hotfix that fixes level 3 and added a linux build.

Submitted(+1)

I like this! The puzzles, art, and music are really good. I'm having a problem on stage three after I hit the switches where I sink to the bottom right corner faster than I can swim left. Can you swim up at all? I can't get out of the hole haha

Developer

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?

Submitted(+1)

Thanks for adjusting it! I came back today and sucked in my gut and squeezed through the hole this time :)

I made it to the secret stage! That was a good one too. I figured out the password on the 2nd or 3rd try, I felt like Frodo outside of the mines of Moria :P