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A jam submission

Timeporter - RoBug Invasion (Jam Edition)View game page

An incremental 3D Platforming Tower defence game
Submitted by DysfuncGames — 11 minutes, 38 seconds before the deadline
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Timeporter - RoBug Invasion (Jam Edition)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#364.0334.033
Aesthetics#384.3674.367
Mechanics#853.6673.667
Theme#1003.9673.967
Sound#1223.4333.433
Fun#1453.6333.633
Story#1893.1003.100
Music#4392.8332.833

Ranked from 30 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 in total?
1

Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Sounds and Music

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Comments

Viewing comments 26 to 7 of 26 · Next page · Last page
Submitted

Interesting concept, do you plan on continuing working on it after the jam? Have you heard of Into the Breach? Has a story about traveling back in time to prevent giant bugs from overruning the world. Feedback wise I think when it comes to 3D platformers it's smart to have an artificial shadow directly under the player character so we know where we are located for precision jumps.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing, I had heard of it but not it's story - will check it out more.


Yes I had hoped the smoke would help but a shadow is on the list.


Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Looks amazing! I think theres lots of room for you to expand from here, and you really should! It would be great if when you are in the defense stage that you as the player can do more than just build, maybe use your laser to fight or use the attractor to bring enemies closer to the turrets. Also, it would be great if you get points a bit more easily, as it felt like it took too long to get enough for upgrades. Really solid first game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the amazing words! You totally can fight with your laser! That attractor idea was where I was going but I ran out of time :D

Thanks for playing!

Submitted

Must be a bug, I can't use the laser consistently in the defense stage, but it does activate for a split second every now and then.

Developer(+1)

Ah might be a range thing, I will take a look though! thanks for reporting

Submitted(+1)

This might be the longest time I've spent on a submission so far. Completely lost track of time. I love the gameplay loop, the upgrades take awhile to get but they feel so rewarding. The idea of randomized upgrades is cool but It took a really long time before I saw the first carry capacity upgrade which is something I kept hoping was a thing so I could make less trips, and then it took even longer before I saw carry capacity 2. 

In the beginning it didn't feel worth it to participate in the defense phase of the game because I felt like I wasn't getting much more back after buying turrets, especially without having any upgrades. So I started just time jumping immediately and just using my gather phase resources on upgrades for a couple loops. This wasn't an issue but I wonder if it was the intended experience.

Anyway I had a ton of fun with it! It's really impressive what you achieved in 10 days. There's a lot of complexity going on here, it feels like 2 or 3 games-in-one. Amazing job!

Developer

Thank you for such nice words, made my morning!

I think the randomised upgrades will disappear and you will get a tech tree instead.

yea I originally had a timer on the button to jump (like you had to survive 60 seconds, but it felt odd. So having the ability to jump if you didn't feel really ready was the best I could come up with - though I plan on revisiting that later.

Thank you for taking the time to play!

Submitted(+1)

This game looks like a lot of fun and I really like the concept. I was so eager to keep playing, because the little robot is really cute and the whole building and resource gathering mechanic while fencing off enemies looks so promising. Unfortunately I wasn't able to build. Maybe I just didn't know how to place the buildings or it isn't implemented. I could see the blueprint of the building when pressing "b", but I wasn't able to really place it. Also collecting the resources, whether it was from enemies or in the other world. I couldn't spent it somewhere, when I jumped in time it was just gone. Also couldn't use it on upgrade screen when jumping back to the resource world. It was constantly "0" in the upgrade screen.

But I can imagine where this is going and I am a big fan of this idea. Hope you will keep working on that. Good job so far!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for.playing. there is a poorly explained mechanic....

You need to extract the resources that you collect you can throw canisters with 'Q' which essentially saves the resources for use in making towers and upgrades, enemies also drop resources than you can collect in the same way.


Thanks for playing and sorry for the confusion!

Submitted(+1)

Great job on finishing your game and man your game looks like it is pretty full of good content. It is quite an involved game with a very good game loop. I played as much as I could, but I'm too used to playing with invert y-axis controls.

Developer

Ah yes sorry I meant to add a settings to invert that for you - its on the list near the top now!

Hope you enjoyed your time with it and thanks for playing!

Submitted

For me the camera was rotating continuously even without input, so it made aiming a little weird, but great game!

Developer

Do you have a gamepad plugged in - the game has full controller support, but not for menus so I did not advertise it

Submitted

No, I tried it with mouse

Submitted

I love your graphical style. The soft shading and palette choice, and laser beam vfx and boxy aesthetic, they all come together just right. You're a pro in this department.

I think your tutorial / the player's first 60 seconds is the weakest element here. I tried to read your tutorial a couple times but I have to admit my eyes kinda glazed over. Miles better would be a short, structured scene that introduces players to each core element of the game one by one before turfing them to the main scene. I would also start the player with the double jump or like, a little hover backpack for this guy would be cute, right? It would make the platforming way more forgiving and encourage freer exploration.

All in all, very well done! A fantastic entry and big undertaking for 1 man in ten days and certainly one of the most impressive projects I've seen in the jam so far. 👏

Developer

Thanks for your feedback - yea, as I have said I think the player onboarding is poor and the "tutorial" was a quick effort of trying to give players a hint on what to do, I proper tutorial in a safe, less time pressured space is planned.

Adding the double jump from the start is a good idea and one that I will try - I like the idea of the power curve that the player is on and the feeling of cooooool when they get some of them, but I may have taken away too many things :D.

I originally wanted each upgrade to add to the player model (like risk of rain) but had no time to model all of them....

Thanks for playing and thanks again for you kind words <3

Submitted(+1)

This game is great, it looks nice and runs so smoothly. I know most people have already said it but I really like the beam. I feel like I could just fire that aimlessly and have fun. Good job on doing so much in such little time! 

Developer(+1)

Thank you for you kind words! The laser beam was a fun project to build (probably should have focused on other things though :D:D)

Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Not a problem, the kind words are well deserved! Sometimes one really great, well polished feature is better than a handful of rushed ones.

Submitted(+1)

I'm amazed how much you made in a ten day period!

It took a while for me to really catch on to the mechanics, even though I read the instructions (a few times.) And it also took me a while to actually become efficient in collecting resources, once I really understood what I was doing.

I wish that I had more time to invest in the game, I didn't get very far at all in the grand scheme of things, or so it feels. I was only managing about 150 resources at my peak, and that wasn't nearly enough to make progress in defending the Time Portal.

I can't nitpick anything, I know this must have taken a monumental effort to put together in such a short time frame. Except! I wish that they upgrades weren't randomized, I wanted to take double jump the first time I saw it, but couldn't afford it. Then it didn't appear when I could, then it did appear but I didn't see it before choosing another upgrade because it was in a different position in the upgrade grid. (I did get it eventually!)

Aside from that, I think the music could be more prominent. But that's really all I can say. I'd love to see what comes of this, if you decide to develop it further!

Developer(+1)

Wow thanks for the great feedback!

YES 100% agree the player onboarding is poor/non existent.

I should have perhaps made a shorter experience, But once I started I couldn't stop. The upgrades for about half of the jam were a set path and I added randomisation as a test that just didn't get removed. I might look at set tech tree so you can decide what you want...?

I'm glad you got Double jump - triple jump is pretty fun too...... :D

I agree with you on the music, the audio pass was far too short as I misjudged some other tasks. But I do hope to continue this for a little while to get it to a standard I am happy with!

Thanks for playing <3

Submitted(+1)

So far in this jam this game has the best visuals I've seen. I love the beam cutter thing, very satisfying. One thing I noticed is i could only hear the sfx of it when the camera was close to the player controller, so I'd either change the beam to a non-3D emitter sound or switch the listener to the player controller so you can hear it more consistently. I like that it was essentially two games in one, also! great work

Developer(+1)

Thanks for your kind words! I will have a look at that sound issue, thanks for reporting!

Yea I wanted to link them better - might give it a go outside of jam pressures :D

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

At lot of effort to build it. Scope creep is everyone nightmare in a gamejam ;-). Good model usage and nice visuals.

I missed the memo that you need energy for building towers ;-). I stopped at 20 as that was mentioned in the HUD. Some more information would help enjoying the game from the start. 

Very good submission.

Developer

Thanks for playing, yea the game is a little hard to understand - working on an update for post jam to hopefully fix some of that!

Submitted(+1)

I can tell that you put a lot of effort into this one! There is so many gameplay features packed and details. Good job on the submission!

Developer

Thanks for playing, yes I very much enjoyed making it - although it is very rough

Submitted(+1)

I could tell right away from the screenshots I was gonna love this one. You came up with a lot of gameplay features for a game jam, and the game feels really nice to play! I particularly love the platforming and how good the movement feels. I would love to see this project further fleshed out with sound design, particle effects, and more! I could definitely see myself getting super into this game and playing this as my comfort or relaxing game. Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your kind words, really lifted me! I am glad you liked the movement as that took a bunch of work and configuring!

Yes the final polish is lacking I hope to get a post jam update out to add some polish and teach more.

Thank you for playing <3

Submitted(+1)

Amazing visuals. I love the blur effect. The mining is really fun.

Developer

Thanks I am glad you liked them. Thank you for playing <3

Submitted(+1)

Loved the visuals and level design! The game was smooth and appealing

Developer

Thanks for your kind words - Thanks for playing <3

Submitted(+1)

Awesome work. I liked the level design and the atmosphere of environment very much. smooth controls and easy to adapt to the game. However, some work can be done to tell the player what to do in the game. 

Developer

Thank you for your feedback <3 Yes I realised on Monday afternoon that I had forgotten to teach the player anything..... and had very little time to do anything. Next time around I really want to focus on this as it is a bit of a trend :D

I hope to update the game next week to have better on boarding.

Thanks for playing

Submitted(+1)

This is a really cool game! I think there's so much you could do to expand on this too. The gameloop was very addicting. I think it was pretty difficult right at the start, but with some level scaling and what not it'd be smooth sailing! Awesome work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the awesome feedback. yea there was far too much I was trying to do and had to cut a ton of ideas and enemy designs. The difficulty was hard to balance - not just from a time perspective, but I wanted to feel like you had overcome the difficulty, I needs about 50 more passes :D.

Thanks for playing

Submitted

Ahh I see. With that in mind I might replay it then and keep going til I overcome that difficulty! 

Submitted(+1)

The graphics remind me of Astrobot. I had a hard time in the bug wave, but the environment was really nice

Developer

Yea, its designed to almost need you to loop to get the upgrades - thanks for playing

Submitted(+1)

The game visually looks really impressive, but there needs to be more instructions. I was able to figure out how to fill up my container to 20, but after being teleported it is back down to 0? So I can’t build? Also, the cost is $20, but I am unsure if ores are the currency since I can’t build anything anyway.

Developer(+2)

yea, totally agree - I realised about 30 mins before deadline that it was confusing and had no time to change.


You need to Press Q to throw containers into the green extractor - money earn in the resource gathering side is used to build towers and then money collected in the defence side can be used for towers or if you Time jump back using the time porter you can unlock upgrades.

There is a bunch of simplification that needs to be done and an actual tutorial - once the Jam is over I will release an update to fix those issues.

Sorry for your frustrations

Submitted(+1)

After playing many other jam games, I still find this one my favorite in terms of visuals. So, I decided to give it another go. Thanks for the tips! I see now that there is a “How to Play” section, and knowing how to play makes a big difference.

I love how serene the resource gathering side looks. I wish I could spend more time exploring there rather than racing against the clock to collect ores.

On the defense side, I just realized you can defend alongside your turrets by shooting at the enemies. However, I noticed my focus should really be on racing against the clock and picking up the drops.

With such beautiful visuals, it feels like a waste that on both the gathering and defense sides, the player is mostly mining ores or picking them up while looking down. I would prefer being able to explore the scenery more on the gathering side and see more explosions and action on the defense side. (The action is up in the sky, but my attention is on the ground.)

Of all the games I played in this jam, I really think this one might have the highest potential for commercial success. I think the player experience could be greatly improved if more of it involved exploring or engaging with the environment, rather than mining or staring at the ground.

Developer

Thanks for coming back and giving it another go! I really appreciate your time and your feedback.


Gathering - Yes, I am struggling with the timer, I might change it for stability so you can increase the overall time that you can explore/gather for, which may help guide your exploration. I am also working on making the gathering more streamlined and simple.

Defence - again you have great thoughts here I am trying to decide on both as currently to fight you need to look up which means that adding platforming or trying to forget about collecting to focus on fighting is hard and something I will have experiment with.

Thank you again for playing and such kind comments about the game and the visuals.

Submitted(+1)

Wow, that's really cool! I really liked the game design, it was very pleasant. The gameplay itself is also good. Honestly, at first I thought that the game was clearly developed by more than one person. I am glad that there are such games. Good luck! :)

Developer

Thanks, I appreciate that and Thank you for playing

Viewing comments 26 to 7 of 26 · Next page · Last page