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Growth Circles's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #39 | 4.074 | 4.074 |
| Mechanics | #72 | 3.790 | 3.790 |
| Story | #77 | 3.506 | 3.506 |
| Music | #83 | 3.765 | 3.765 |
| Aesthetics | #136 | 3.926 | 3.926 |
| Theme | #156 | 3.654 | 3.654 |
| Sound | #208 | 3.123 | 3.123 |
Ranked from 81 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.
Yes! Music: https://opengameart.org/content/long-away-home-8bit https://opengameart.org/content/boss-battle-3-8-bit-re-upload https://opengameart.org/content/8-bit-battle-theme-famitracker https://opengameart.org/content/victory https://opengameart.org/content/game-over-bad-chest-sfx Sounds: https://freesound.org/people/qubodup/sounds/59992/ EnvironmentArt: https://szadiart.itch.io/rogue-fantasy-catacombs
Link to your source?
https://github.com/LammerD/DeathIsOnlyTheBeginning/tree/main
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Comments
Nice little game, congrats and good luck!
Thank you for giving it a shot :)
and THAT is what you call a BOSS BATTLE!
Eyoooo thank you! I'm super glad you enjoyed it! I really enjoyed working on this boss! It is a game mechanic I really want to work more on in general as bosses are just so cool :D
It's fun but I haven't gotten very far... So larger circles give you upgrades rather than just a bit of health? Does any of this carry over to the next round?
Yeah it can be quite tricky at times! Yes exactly the more enemies you kill on top of each other, i.e. in one of the circles left behind by an enemy the better reward you get. Just the one enemy that created the circle = health. +1 enemy = minor upgrade. +2 enemies = medium upgrade and so forth! If you manage to get to the room where there are three options where to go next go to the right, there might be some help there :D Thank you very much for trying and I hope it was not too frustrating!
Very unique mechanic! And that is one big circle :D The plottwist at the end! :P Very nice!
If you have time, can you rate mine too?
Haha I'm glad you liked it! :D
Will do!
I love the mechanic with the circles. I felt like such a badass when I got a ton of them to die in one spot and then came through to pick up weapon upgrades and things. That was really well done. Also, it's a small detail but it was so cool how my player blocked the light when I walked near the candles. The boss fight was well done too and the balance was good. I had a lot of fun with this. Great work!
Aww thank you very much for giving my game a go! I'm super glad it felt satisfying grabbing them all and getting all the goodies! The 2d lighting effect was something I thought about in the beginning of the project but I was sure I would not be able to implement... And then by accident I come across a youtube video that was just like yeah unity has that built in now... literally just pop it on any light source and it works even on the pixel art I myself drew I was blown away!
I'm also super happy you found the boss to be balanced that was a thing I was super unsure about and tweaked until the last second :D
Again thank you for playing and your kind feedback!
Wowee, that was really good! The upgrade mechanic was great and I really liked how the best sword is entirely miss-able (and satisfying to use) so it feels like a true reward for optimal play, plus that twist ending/beginning made me laugh out loud. Well done! I'd love to see a full length version of this with more enemies, upgrades, and differing ways to maximise player rewards!
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Awesome that you got it I was so unsure of how hard I wanted to be to get the best sword! In the end I opted for the hard coded sword upgrade in the first room as I thought that would give the most visual feedback of how the growth circles are supposed to work (even though it breaks the rules a little bit as sword upgrades are only rewarded after getting 3 or more enemies to die in a circle).
I'm super happy you got to see the ending twist I was afraid that people would just be like a cool boss I'm gonna close it now and miss it :D
I will for sure work on it at least for one major update with some tuning more rooms and at least one more enemy type along with things like more sound effects and a font(that one hurts my soul that I did not get it in time)!
Nice Work there! - its fitting for a Gamejam, and is Very nice! I like it a lot!
Thank you very much for giving it a try! I'm glad you liked it!
This is a GREAT game! Simple, but perfectly done! And there is also a boss battle! And the boss is super well made, with different attacks, attack provisions, etc... Wow, nice job!
I finished at first try, so did not suffer the back-to-start issue other had. However, I agree it can be a problem. Also, I think the turrets should at least move a bit to give more sense to the green circle mechanic, that is super interesting.
Well done!
Frankly... I appreciate it very much that you took the time to try my game! :D Thank you the boss was great fun to create and a pain to balance!
Yeah the stationary turrents are a choice I do not know I would do again. In my mind the idea was that you would have to lure the small ones to the stationary ones if you wanted the best rewards but I think it would have worked best with 3 types of enemies. Small fast, large slow and medium stationary.
Again thank you!
This was super cute! The boss was suitably intimidating, but the fact that he doesn't do damage on contact made it a bit easier than I was expecting. I think the player moved a bit too quickly for me, I was struggling to pick up the hearts. I love a good revenge story, and integrating "Death is only the beginning" as a power up system was super cool!
Thank you for playing! I am glad you enjoyed it! I actually tried giving him contact damage but then he quickly became to challenging for my taste, especially since if I wanted to use the same collider for contact damage and his actual hitbox! Yeah the player speed is something that still needs some fine tuning as I want the player to be able to traverse the dungeon quick enough but still feel in control! Depending on how many speed ups you get that can become quite hard. The hearts also simply need bigger colliders so that they become a little more forgiving. Thanks for the feedback!
That was a great boss fight!
Thank you! I'm super glad you liked it! There is still much I would like to improve about him especially some sfx are desperately needed but designing bosses turns out to be super fun!
Super cool game. I have only two points of criticism. First, I would like to have more levels. Please continue with it:D
I find it a bit strange that the sword does damage without me having to strike. That makes it hard to kill enemies at the exact spot where I would have liked to kill them. I think that works against the great game mechanic.
Thank you very much for giving my game a go! Haha I think I might end up doing one more level with a smaller boss that then leads to the kings level or something along those lines! :D I want to add at least one more slow moving enemy type and also expand on the growth circle mechanic to also interact with the enemies that stand in them to make it more of a trade off where you kill them.
Ehhhm the sword should not be doing damage if you are not striking O.o If you have the time could you try the game again and tell me if you can replicate it that you do not press the mouse button but still deal damage. That would be a bug I would love to squash :D
Somehow I can not reproduce it-.-. But I swear it was like that the last time I tried it.^^
I think it might have been a weird timing bug! When you press the mouse button I set a bool to true and when you release it it sets it to false. For the pause menu I disabled the script that controls the attack so I think if you pressed the mouse button and then paused or entered a "cutscene" the bool would be stuck on true for as long as you do not press the mouse again. Or something along those lines :D Definitely need to make that system a little more robust for sure!
Really fun and addicting gameplay loop. I do find the attack animation has a bit of input lag. Don't know if this is just me
Thanks for giving my game a shot! Interesting... the first I heard of it! It does not have to do with your attack rate right? I will dig into it, thanks for letting me know!
Holy frickin moly, the story just clicked when I finished it, and the boss uses the power ups I collect in the way DAAAAAAAAMN.
This game is amazing, I was wondering why everyone liked it so much, now I understand, and it's 100% true, this game is 10/10 must play.
(one bug I encountered was in my second playthrough, I killed the boss and the boss killed me at the same time, it showed the text of me dying, but then I respawned as the king child, so it's not that bad of a bug)
Hahaha I love that you found the small nods to them being a previous character I was really unsure if it was to subtle overall °^^
Yeah the safety I implemented at when to stop the player being able to be damaged was a little spotty and definitely need to sort through my spaghetti code to prevent that °^^
Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
This was a lot of fun! Really impressive set of functionality you got into the game. And the growth circle was a very interesting mechanic. Has anyone beat the boss without the shooty upgrade? :)
Also nice one on the melee - I've a similar melee system that I've added to my 2021 GDTV submission but it's tough to get right (I'm using Unity RigidBodies on it)
Cheers,
Chris
Hey Chris,
Thanks for playing I'm super glad you liked it!
To let you in on a secret the boss is actually a little easier without the shooty upgrade. The boss counts the number of hits he receives and gets faster at 5, 10 and 15 hits. And his health scales with your damage so, if you have 4 damage the boss has 80 health at 2 damage he has 40 so in theory you always need 20 hits to kill him. Now enter the shooting upgrade. That thing always deals 1 damage, becauseee... well I forgot to hook it up with the damage stat dbh :facepalm: Now you hit him 15 times with the projectile he is at max speed but you only took off 15 of the 40 health instead of the 30 I had intended :P
felt so good, i really love it when i kill the boss. the only think i didnt like was the sword sound, a bit anoying for me.
Thank you for playing! I'm super glad you enjoyed it! I definitely can see that happening! It was a last minute addition °^^
really fun game. I loved the expanding circles to get better loot on the room clear. well done
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Game is really fun to play. Big fun of music and visuals. Wanna check out mine?
Thank you for playing and your kind words! Will do!
The sword felt a bit strange to use. But the circles were a great idea, got a better sword pretty fast and then gained some speed. I would have loved to use some magic here!
The circle has tremendous amount of potential!
I love the top-down view!
Thank you for playing! Yeah the sword controls still need some love °^^ I wanted to ask some abilities and magic to make each run more unique but then the time ran away from me :D
loved the idea and those circles. though attacking was a bit hard I didn't know my attack range
Yeah the attacking is definitely something I still have to work out some kinks on! Thanks for playing!
Really neat game! I got so hyped at the end with the boss, I'm glad that I had an upgraded enough weapon to deal with him. I could tell you worked really hard on making that boss fight action packed and rewarding. Nicely done! Would love to see more encounters like the last one.
Thank you very much! The boss was the first boss I have ever made and I got to say I love it! It is so fun weaving together an interesting encounter! Although balancing can be so so hard °^^