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A jam submission

Tiny SurvivorsView game page

My submission for the GameDev.tv Jam 2024
Submitted by Bl4ckM4ch1n3
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Tiny Survivors's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Music#2103.4173.417
Aesthetics#2283.7083.708
Mechanics#2833.1673.167
Overall#3433.2503.250
Fun#3563.1673.167
Theme#3823.3333.333
Story#5822.0422.042
Sound#6332.0422.042

Ranked from 24 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.
https://kenney.nl/assets/tiny-dungeon, https://kenney.nl/assets/tiny-town, https://kenney.nl/assets/board-game-icons, https://freemusicarchive.org/music/holiznacc0/gamer-soundtrack-game-boi (whole album), https://freemusicarchive.org/music/holiznacc0/tiny-plastic-video-games-for-long-anxious-space-travel (tracks: Astroids, Pixel Party, Space Castle, 2nd Dimension)

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I like the dice setup at the beginning but for some reason my dual axe just flow to the right side :(

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! :D

The dual axe is supposed to go to the right side at level 1. With level ups to level 2, 3 and 4 there will spawn an additional axe in other directions (left, up and down)

Submitted(+1)

Great job with this game! It's super cute and a good idea with good execution. Also love to see more Godot representation, awesome work for your first time using it!!

Submitted(+1)

Really cute game :) Dice system is an interesting addition to add replayability. I found it pretty hard to play because of weapon only firing one direction. I also think you’ve added music into 2d space instead of global? You could also add sounds when player gets damaged or some visual feedback on damage overall. Very fun project!!!!!! Great work

Submitted(+1)

Cool idea with the dices, I wish the game was a bit faster maybe dropping more chest or having upgrades, the number on the weapons increased so maybe there are upgrades but its hard to notice. Very solid for being your first time using a new engine!

Submitted(+1)

Great choice of asset pack and game engine ;)! I liked the difficulty through dice mechanic. The semi-randomness of it is a great way to spice up replays.

Submitted(+1)

Really enjoyed your survivor style game! The dice mechanic of setting the difficulty was really creative. You mentioned you had planned to expand this with an upgrade system, and I would be curious to see how that would look. Movement speed and gameplay felt satisfying and well-tuned. Would love to see you develop this further and an amazing project done in the time constraints of the jam.

Submitted(+1)

It's a cute game and a good foundation , but at some point, it became boring and monotonous. Adding more variety would make it more fun. But still a great work , keep it up ! 

Submitted(+1)

Good game, what it had was very well done. Art was very cute. I liked the randomness but also decision making

Definitely needed some enemies to be different or shoot projectiles but thats always the issue with game jams isnt it?

BUT most importantly those axes definitely should have been at least slightly piercing aha. 
Felt so bad on my first run through that they SEEMED to hit for the same amount of damage as everything else. 

Great job overall, i'd definitely play 2.0 of this.

Submitted(+1)

Good game! if only the different enemies have diffrent abillities as well :)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

+1 to what skykone mentioned about the dice screen, that's something that will need some testing and probably bugfixing, specially the part where the values don't revert back to the defaults.

It's fine that so many enemies spawn, but you can just outrun them. I'd make it so you run at the same speed or a bit more but not much of a difference, so it made dodging a bit harder, and not so easy to outpace them. The health they have, for a starting area it can be too much specially with that many enemies.

The game aims automatically, so basically all you do is to move around and let it shoot, but this causes a issue when enemies stack, you don't know what you are hitting, and you might have too many enemies sitting at just 1hp (or one hit from dying) but you have no way to aim at (or priorize) them. The enemy variety and the game mechanics are fine overall, though.

It's a cool idea and it's fun, but it needs some polishing, keep it up! 
Cheers :D

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for playing my game! :-)

I found the bug that is responsible for letting the dice stack and I would change the way the dice are handled so that the values can revert back to default. But I'm pretty sure that I'm not allowed to implement that during the rating period. So I'll keep it in mind for the time after the jam has ended :D

I just can agree that it's easy to outrun the enemies and the game isn't properly balanced at all. I just didn't had the time nor the experience to balance a game of this genre :D

But I'm glad that you enjoyed playing! :-)

Submitted

No worries, i understand. You can update it after the jam and take your time experimenting with it.
Personally, i prefer having control of where i aim vs the game doing it automatically, but nonetheless it was cool.

You're welcome :D

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

There's something really bizarre about that very beginning part. Can drag dice into other dice and it changes the number, then dragging it to a slot splits the dice again, possibly to another number than what was even originally rolled. Also dragging it into the slot, changes the text to show how the dice affects it, but then taking it out of the slot keeps the same text as if the dice was still there. Also, dragging enough times like this in different combinations possibly causes the whole thing to no longer make any more sense at all. I didn't test in detail if this might even be a way to mess with the starting stats themselves in a way that wasn't intended.

However other than that I felt like it looked great, the mechanics felt pretty clean for the most part, and the different enemies were pretty cool so overall, nice job on it!

Developer

Thanks for checking out my game! :-)

I just double checked but splitting the dice again should resolve in the two same numbers. For example if you put a die with a 4 on a die with a 6 and you split the stack you'll get a die with 4 and a die with 6. The value shouldn't change after the initial roll since the function is only called once.

The text stays the same even after removing the die and will only change again if you assign another die to that slot. That's total unintentional of course but I didn't had the time to fix that. Fortunately you can't mess up the starting stats if there is a die in every slot since the last die value in a slot counts :-)

But I'm happy you we're able to enjoy my game nevertheless! :-)

Submitted(+1)

I almost went with a Vampire Survivor style game too! But I ended up deciding against it and went something else. But you nailed it! I like that the map wasn't just an open field, but more of a cave that limited where you could move. I only stopped playing because I gotta go play others as well, otherwise I'd be here all night!

Great game, especially for it being the first time using a new game engine. Awesome job!

Developer

Thank you very much for spending your time on playing my game!
The survivors style approach kinda developed naturally as I was testing different ways of fighting enemies. But yeah, in the end I got strongly influenced by vampire survivors :D

Submitted(+1)

Solo dev and 5 days! Color me impressed!
The music choice was excellent and fit the game look really well, nice job taking some time to find the right combination.
As others have pointed out, the hook for me was definitely the dice mechanic! And I actually do agree with mathywathy that even though the dice stacking may have started out as a bug, I actually really enjoyed the extra layer it gave as it did seem to affect my stats correctly.

Excellent Work!

Developer

Thank you very much for playing and your kind words! :-)
Actually you can't stack the dice values, the second die just replaces the value from the first one ^^'

And since the text is prefilled with a placeholder it looks like there are values already.
If I had had the time I would have changed a couple of things and added some clarifications.

I've found the origin of the stacking bug but I don't know if I'm allowed to fix that during the rating period.

Submitted (1 edit)

Ahhh I see okay that makes sense now! I do believe that fixing bugs like that is totally fine! I remember reading that somewhere in the contest rules let me see if I can find it.

Edit: Yes! I’ve found it now.I think you should feel totally free to handle that bug if you want ☺️

Submitted(+1)

Error
The following features required to run Godot projects on the Web are missing:
Cross Origin Isolation - Check web server configuration (send correct headers)
SharedArrayBuffer - Check web server configuration (send correct headers)

When i try and play the web version.

Developer

Thanks for trying!

I just tested it and the game was starting, so it's hard to reproduce the error. Also double checked the SharedArrayBuffer setting on the page and it is okay. 

Maybe you're willing to give it another try and just clear cache and reload the page? :-)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

The dice rolls and stacking dice to change game values is a good idea to mix with the genre, maybe with more time this could have been used more. I made it to 500+ coins and about 15 points to each of sword, staff and axe before testing if i could die by standing still.

Duplicate comments come from pressing "Post Comment" before the rating is saved, the page doesnt save the rating but posts the comment every time if you stay on the page

Developer

Thank you very much for playing/rating my game!
I'm looking forward to give A Small Place a go, once I got home from work :-)

Stacking the dice is unintentional though, I need to fix this bug :'D
It should be like one die per slot but I had to fix a game breaking bug in the dice system which made it entirely useless. So now I've got to address the stacking issue :'D

500 is a pretty good amount though! :D

Submitted(+1)

it doesn't seem to be a bug you need to fix though, stats are seemingly affected as you would expect (or design them to be) with an extra dice and you can remove the dice from stacked slots and reslot too so there isn't any broken feeling there

Submitted(+1)

The dice roll at the start was a pretty interesting idea! I think with a ton more polish, this has potential to be a pretty unique game (Imagine a dice rolling upgrade system where maybe you can also upgrade the enemies too to make the game more difficult)

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for playing/rating!
I'll play your game once i got home from work! :-)
The dice upgrade system was planned but I didn't manage to get it done in time :D

Submitted(+1)

Solid work for one person in 5 days. I appreciate the thought behind the dice mechanic, I think it could work well with a bit more time put into it, and it's not something I've seen in games like this before. Nice work!

Developer

Thank you very much for playing/rating!

I'll play your game once i got home from work! :-)
I really appreciate your kind words :-)

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed the game, and was especially interested by the dice mechanic - kind of wish you used it more throughout the game! It also wasn't totally clear where the bosses were, or maybe I just never ran into one as I was wandering.

Developer

Thank you very much for playing/rating my game!
I'll give Witherwood a go once I got home from work :-)

It was planned to use the dice more often but I didn't manage to get that done in time.
Bosses are basically just like regular enemies only twice the size and their stats are a bit more buffed.

Submitted(+1)

I feel like this game could really shine with a few tweaks. I do love the theme and aesthetics. I enjoyed the music. Overall I enjoyed playing it.

I do have some questions/thoughts: The weapon only goes in one direction no matter which way you face it. I could not get it to hit anything but whatever was on my right. Is this the way it is supposed to be or am I a huge newb (Which is entirely possible!)?

The story of the game itself could be fleshed out as to why this is a last stand, but it really does feel like it fit the theme of the Jam well.

I honestly was struggling with whether or not to rate this higher because I did like it overall quite a bit, but the silly axe only going one way frustrated me a bit.

Oh! I noticed I could drop the dice on each other at the beginning after rolling them and it would change things. Were we supposed to be able to do that? I was trying to switch the dice around, not stack them on top of one another. However, I could separate them again, with no problem. This might be another interesting way to affect starting choices if unintentional after the Jam.

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for playing and rating my game!
I'm happy to give Global Patriots a go once I got home from work :-)

Thank you very much for your questions, as they made me realize that it is important to add a little clarification to the game page! :D

So you got the Dual Axe as starting weapon. The Dual Axe fires only to the right at first (level 1) but with every level gained (up to level 4) it will fire an additional Axe in the other directions (left, up, down). And every 4 levels gained the axes will pierce through 1 additional enemy. So basically you want to try to kite the enemies on your right in the beginning. You can try the Sword or the Staff instead, they work differently.

I focused on getting the game done in time, so I just dropped the story entirely :'D
Since English isn't my native language I just got the definition of "last stand" which is "a position against overwhelming odds" and I thought that a Vampire Survivors like game would fit nicely :D

Stacking the dice is indeed unintentional. The values are changing once a die is put into a slot. I really need to make it clear which slot modifies which values and I really need to fix that stacking bug! :'D

Submitted

That information really helps!

I was attempting to kite them around and get in hits, but I am not very good at these things :P Still, I had fun!

Submitted(+1)

Very nice survivors-like! One criticism I have is that the enemies can move through walls and it looks kinds weird. Other than that tho it's a really nice game!

Developer

Thank you very much for playing/rating!

I'll check out Shopping Cart Chaos once i got home from work! :-)
Since enemies are spawned outside the players view I had to make them move through walls, otherwise I'd have to overhaul the spawning system and I didn't had the time to do that :'D