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Aereven Advance's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #4 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Graphics | #6 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Audio | #10 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Polish | #10 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Technical | #15 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Originality | #32 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- A fun and engaging adventure from start to finish! Good music and visuals, though feels like there's still some room for improvement (e.g. water animations). Some of the writing felt a little on-the-nose but I guess that's to be expected when such an epic tale is condensed into a jam-sized package. Having secondary items accessible via the shoulder button was a neat quality of life feature. All in all the game feels polished and complete.
- The save menu is a bit weird. Otherwise, it’s a very complete game with cute graphics!
- Great zelda clone! One of my favorites of the jam :) Some notes: - It's great that you've managed to pack so much content on a jam game. - I like the graphics: even if they're small, they're very detailed and colorful. The game plays great on a GBA Micro. - Although the music is nice, it's me or there's some sound hitches every few seconds? - Breakable objects give too much hearts, making the game a bit too easy I think.
- Very entertaining! At first it felt a little rough around the edges, but when I kept playing it, I got sucked in! It's quite fun and there's tons of stuff to explore! I sat down thinking I'd just test it out for a bit and ended up playing the whole thing!
- The inspiration from the classic Zelda games is clear and you managed to create an interesting experience with your own ideas too.
Jam ROM submission
Ok - understood! I attached the GBA ROM file as "MYGAMENAME_jam.gba".
Type of submission
Game
Existing assets
Some sprites, tiles and sound effects are re-used from a previous game of mine.
Tags
Adventure
Action
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Comments
Player movement feels somewhat stiff, but the content is good. I'm impressed of how much content you managed to squeeze into this for a jam like this!
I didn't quite understand what was expected of my hero (maybe that was the point?), so I went exploring with my head held high, the old-fashioned way! The 8-way movement and combat are cool (even if the mummies are a bit too fast for my taste). Just a little weird about the sonor ambience, with the sounds of waves and foam in the middle of the forest ^^.
The first bit of direction you get is in the temple just east of the starting town. I should probably have put some dialog right at the start to lead you toward it. Audio was a bit of a last minute thing so yeah, I'm probably missing a track or two and reuse some where it doesn't make much sense :p
just finished completing it. it's cool how you've got a bit of that Zelda-2-ish miniaturized overworld going on, and lots of variety in the action environments! and having a modifier key was a great way to deal with the limited face buttons on the GBA without it turning into a Link's-Awakening-style pause-fest, heheh. also, i dunno if it was luck or well tuned intuition, but i immediately guessed the correct place to use the song :) great job!
Thanks! The initial plan was actually to make a Zelda 2-like! (But it kinda meant making 2 games in 1, so I decided to reduce the scope and go full top-down, haha).
This was my personal fav from the jam. I might be biased though because I'm a huge zelda fan. I 100% it as well. Well done!
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! ;)
This feels like an NES game that had the maps scaled up by adding empty space. I think it's admirable that you managed to finish a zelda-like for a jam, though.
I am part way through this game, and I gotta say I love the vibes, and its super awesome so far!
I just finished the boss in the pyramid and I know the jam is quickly coming to a close, so I wanted to give you some feedback before that.
I was super worried the first time I died and it said "game over" but it turns out I was just teleported to the start of the dungeon with no real loss in any items gained. So that was a big relief. Maybe it would be better to say something different? or nothing at all? really not sure on that one.
I love the design of showing a boss move in a safer location with the mini-boss before having the player fight the boss.
When you jump across holes, you really need a lot of precision to land on a single block. I like to stand all the way in the floor square, and one pixel down means instant death. it makes it difficult to fight the final boss jumping from one platform to another, and a slight misjudge means falling to your doom.
Another thing that would be a big quality of life improvement is de-spawning the boss's projectiles if I fall in a hole, or making me immune to taking damage for a short time after taking damage. example: I didn't realize I could get the boomerang and make the boss fight super easy at first, so I wound up trying to jump around and corner it with my sword. The following thing happened a lot: I would try to dodge the bone (I think it has a fairly big (too big?) hit-box, so it's scary) and wind up falling into the floor. I would get picked up and set right in front of the bone, and the bone would hit me, and push me right back into the floor. Essentially taking 3 damage in a time span that I could do nothing about after the chain started, and feeling like I got one-shot by the boss.
A small thing is that whenever I fall into a hole while at one health, I would be put back on the floor again before blacking out. It would be nice to skip that step and loose my health first, do the check for health, and blackout to my last entrance instead of watching me get placed back on the floor only to die.
Maybe you're exhausted and tired, maybe these aren't easy things to fix, and all that is just fine These are some quality of life/ higher polish type changes. You already have a nice little gem here, so I am just hoping it gets as polished as possible. Also I may just not be that skilled at gaming, and I prefer an easier journey. I realize I wrote a wall here, but it's not because your game is rough, it's because its already great, and I am excited to see where it goes from here!
I can't wait to play the rest of it later!
I'm really glad you liked it!
Those are all very good feedback! I had to finish the jam early due to scheduling but I will have a couple of hours before the deadline. I'm hopeful I can address some of those issue. If not, it will definitely be for the improved and extended PC version I'm planning later down the road.
If you have more feedback after playing the rest of the game, I would love to hear about it! That's really useful, so thanks! ;)