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The Struggles Within's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #34 | 3.961 | 3.961 |
| Music | #83 | 3.705 | 3.705 |
| Fun | #93 | 3.775 | 3.775 |
| Mechanics | #118 | 3.636 | 3.636 |
| Theme | #203 | 3.713 | 3.713 |
| Aesthetics | #262 | 3.496 | 3.496 |
| Sound | #428 | 2.473 | 2.473 |
Ranked from 129 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?
2
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Audio: Main Menu: Visions of Innocence. Credit me as "Tungerman". https://tungerman.itch.io/tearjerker-music-pack Cutscene 1: Heart Initial - https://sonatina.itch.io/infinity-crystal Cutscene 2: Trust Initial - https://sonatina.itch.io/infinity-crystal Custcene 3: Airship Initial - https://sonatina.itch.io/infinity-crystal Level 1: The Horde - https://ivanduch.itch.io/dragon-tales-1 Level 2: The Last Stand - https://ivanduch.itch.io/dragon-tales-1 Menu Select - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/audio/sound-fx/fantasy-sfx-32833 Scroll Opening: https://freesound.org/people/ukjoncollins/sounds/441549/ Characters & Animations: Emoji Icons: https://sysl.itch.io/mit-licensed-icons Character (cutscenes): https://cypor.itch.io/12x12-rpg-tileset Character & enemies (gameplay): https://rgsdev.itch.io/free-cc0-modular-animated-vector-characters-2d UI: Buttons: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/fantasy-wooden-gui-free-103811 PowerUp Images: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/free-rpg-fantasy-spell-icons-200511 VFX: Particle Effects: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/particles/spells/48-particle-effect-pack-13998 Environment: Gameplay scene: https://rgsdev.itch.io/free-cc0-modular-animated-vector-characters-2d Cutscene: https://cypor.itch.io/12x12-rpg-tileset
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Comments
First time playing this you replicated that feeling of being overwhelmed quite well with the amount of demons that spawn and the boss was a pretty fun fight, gave me binding of Issac vibes with all that stuff flying around. Its also a nice short story, I am glad Jacob got things back on track by the end :)
Thanks for the comment, love to hear that! :)
Love Binding of Isaac and other games like it, so that's a massive compliment :)
It's a start for Jacob, but to the right path, I'm sure he'll be fine when he keeps the path of finding help! :D
Fun game. Am not sure but does it have dynamic music?
My team mate was in charge of handling the music, he did do some small adjustments and fading,etc. :)
Thanks for the review and comment! Glad you liked it! :)
Pretty nice concept! and the story carried. I like the vampire-hunter type gameplay; it needs some polishing here and there, but overall, it’s pretty fun. Good job!
Thanks! Yeah for sure some polishing needed to make it better, but good to hear that you enjoyed it! :)
Very fun and unique! With SFX it's gonna look crazy!
Thank you so much for the comment and review! :)
Yeah we had some SFX for shooting and enemies dying, but it got a bit overwhelming so we decided to go with just music for now, but finetuning the SFX to suit the game and not be overwhelming would for sure make it 10x better immersion.
Quite challenging, I liked it!
Thanks! :)
this is good and really easy to play. I love the art of the game too. Sfx will make it even better, especially when we shoot / hit the monster. I need the excitement of killing lot of monster xD. In my opinion, area type gun will be funner to play. overall nice job finishing the game!
Thank you so much! Good points as well and some of those we tested (like sfx for shooting and hitting the demons, but it just sounded out of place and overwhelmed the game since there's so much of killing and shooting) 😅
Area type was something I started to develop, but ran out of time.
I haven't played this genre of game before, so it took me a second to figure out what was going on and how to progress other than just running away from everything. But once I got it figured out, I found it to be really fun. I thought the boss fight was well done, it was interesting and difficult, but I was able to win on my first try, so I feel it was pretty well balanced. Good game!
Thank you so much for the comment and great to hear that first timer enjoyed and was able to catch the drift quickly (should have maybe though about short tutorial/help menu)! You might just be a natural at games like this 🤔😁
I like how the drops from enemies in the first level persist, and you can come around and pick up tons of them at a time. It's also cool that you were able to get a boss fight into the game. That one was tricky. I barely survived a couple times. I kinda wished there was a passive heal, though. (even a very minor one.)
Thank you for your comment and time on the game! 😊
Haha yeah, destroying them early would have been too punishing for the players. Boss fight is our gemstone, we love that the powerups you choose makes the boss fight different, that's a mechanic I'm reusing in some of my future games for sure, makes your choices matter also in a game like this.
Passive heal ain't a bad idea actually, since we were on the verge of maybe adding health packs from random enemies, but that wouldn't have worked on boss fight so we scrapped it. But then also it could entice you to just run away until you're full health 😅🤔 Hard to balance these things.
Great game, good story, nice mechanics. The boss fight was especially epic. Making the vision darker with every hit reminded me of don't starve and the boss music kinda reminded me of one winged angel. This has potential, I hope you keep working on it!
Thank you so much for the comment. Yeah I have to say that I love to almost by purpose to hurt myself on the level 1 to get a harder feeling and for the game. Just realised it could have had music going a bit intenser the more hurt you are.
Yeah boss fight we felt that was the right amount of challenge but still doable. But that is hard to perfect, since so many different levels of players and when playing your own game over and over again, it kind of makes you too good at it 😅 Especially since you know all the shooting/etc.
Really nicely done! I like using the vignette effect and the greyscale to affect the atmosphere and how you also used it on the title screen, which I didn't notice until I started to write this. :) I wasn't expecting the power ups I chose to have that consequence for the boss, I really regretted the imaginary friend choice!! :D
I also liked the emoji expressing the Jacob's emotions in the cutscenes, it was a cute touch when dealing with a dark narrative. I've played quite a few games similar to the roguelike gameplay and I think this is the first one where the enemies move in more erratic patterns, it caught me off guard in a good way, normally those types of games are a bit more casual to play and I had to really work to succeed.
What can I say except thank you for a great and detailed review! 🥰
Haha, yeah we were thinking if people are going to catch that, since they might press play straight away.
Yeah I loved imaginary friend but it makes boss fight quite a bit harder 😅
Emojies were all my team members idea to express the feelings in a cute way, so I'll say your compliments to the chef 😂
Yeah the enemies came out a bit harder than I originally thought, maybe it was the NavMesh packet I used to get NavMesh baked for 2D 🤔 And the spawning system I wrote could be a bit of a cause for that.
nice game .. with a quite tabu topic .. for fighting our inner demons, a little childhood friend is a good companion :) liked that :) nice sounds, graphics, controls and topic .. overall: WELL DONE 👍
would be nice, if you could rate my game and give me feedback aswell.
Thank you so much for the detailed review! Yeah we want to break the tabu and make it so that anyone can talk about these things. (One little step at a time as this game is).
I will for sure give your game a go today 💪🏼
Great job, never thought about a vampire survivor like game can combine with story in a meaningful and engagaing way.
Aaw thanks, yeah VS and other games like it for sure was inspiration to gameplay, but we wanted to create a story and uniqueness with the boss fight, that changes a bit based on your powerup choices!
Aww, what a sweet little game where you kill a bunch of (inner) demons! It starts out slow, but it gets pretty fun once you pick up enough upgrades and hit your stride. Nice work!
Haha 😁 Thank you so much for the heartwarming review 🥰
Yeha that's the plan and once you get enough powerups you transfer to the boss level which is somewhat made harder/easier based on your choices of powerups.
Very good job! Good topic overall and good that you send him to the therapist. You don't suggest, that you can work trough there alone! I thought it was the end and got surprised by myself :D Still made it though!
If you have the time, pleas play and rate mine :D
Thank you so much for the review!
Yeah that's for sure needed in many situations, hopefully a lot more people would just do it as well ♥️
Great job on making it to the end 💪🏼
I've played it already and rated, but if you fixed the mouse thing, I will give it another go!
nah it's okay! Thank you for playing ;D
I just post it under every game. I didn't notice it was you ;D
haha, fair enough!
Good job! It worked well and felt pretty polished for a jam game!
Thank you so much!
We tried our best to make it feel like a complete short game. Gameplay itself could have been stretched out with gradual difficulty increase and more powerups, but people won't have hours to spend on one game, so we hope this was good amount of time to get to the boss and beat him.
Nice game! I liked the gameplay and how it switches between the cutsceens and the game. Great choice of music!
Thanks for the kind words and review! Chris can take all the credit for the transitions, he made them so well and he found the music for it as well, so I will let Chris know that he made a great job 💪🏼😁
Had a great time with this, found the combat really satisfying, especially with so many enemies on screen.
There's a slight disconnect between the two art styles but unless you're building absolutely everything from scratch there's only so much you can do to avoid it, and everything else more than made up for it.
Really great work!
Great to hear! It was a challenge to get it balanced so that it would be hard but still doable, hopefully most of the people playing it can atleast make it to the boss level 😅
Yeah I completely agree, it doesn't really work together, but neither one of us are that "artistic" so it was hard to find something that worked on both cutscenes and gameplay. Need an artist for the next one (got time? :D)
Thank you so much for the great and detailed review!
Nice game. To my personal preference, the transition between the top-down RPG style to vector art is a little awkward. I liked the boss much more than the "regular" level. I think the main issue there is that there is no way to go in the middle of the group of enemies, where most of the collectibles are. So, you just need to hang around until they move enough, and it's a little tedious
Overall, a nice done game!
Thanks! :)
Fair enough, the art wasn't our strong side, so we needed to find good assets, that worked for our game and idea.
Yeah the boss is fun little challenge, but nice that you made it there! Main level is hard for sure, since getting those collectibles means you have to move around and risk it every once in a while for the so called biscuit :D
mighty fine work, guys. the concept of having classic video game concepts taking place as inner battles of the psyche is just a great tool to tell a more serious story outside of it and you made a great showcase for that. the boss battle twist was awesome, too - I actually restartet the game to get rid of my childhood friend to stand a chance at all ;-)
Thanks! You live up to your name! :D
Again thank you for noticing, that was our main goal to tell a story but still get people to enjoy the gameplay as well!!
Hahah, yeah I originally loved the childhood friend, but we wanted the "boss" so yourself to have similar powers to you and then the childhood friend became a proper difficulty factor for the boss fight :D
Also (very positively) I noticed an allegory in the gameplay. You can not advance your powers if you only run away from the monsters (You have to collect power from ovwepowering them)– Mirroring the idea that you can not always run away from your problems and inner demons (you have to glean wisdom from overcoming them).
Holy shit... :D I might steal your take offs from this game and tell them onwards!! Like we wanted to portrait fighting the inner demons and overcoming yourself (the boss level) in the end, but I did not even think about that angle, but now that you say it, it's obvious and SO true!
Thank you for your review! You opened my eyes :D :)