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Spriggans Curse's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #8 | 3.905 | 3.905 |
| Soundtrack/SFX | #8 | 3.905 | 3.905 |
| Overall | #8 | 3.952 | 3.952 |
| Graphics | #10 | 4.238 | 4.238 |
| Gameboy Soul | #13 | 4.143 | 4.143 |
| Interpretation of the secondary theme | #36 | 3.571 | 3.571 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Great polished game, good all around :) I liked the squad aspect of it and the cutscenes. (I had the occasional issue of walking off the screen and killing off my characters)
Thank you for playing!
And yes it seems several have issues with walking off screen. I have been working on the game though and should have a solution to this post-jam! :)
This is a really polished entry, the music and graphics are amazing! My only criticism is that its far too easy to accidentally kill your team by slightly walking off the screen.
I really like how the bosses incorporate the main theme of a level into their attacks, even though it takes a long time to get back to a boss its worth the challenge of beating them.
Thank you very much! Yes both issues you mention are things that I would have changed had I forseen certain overall problems. Like the killed going off screen thing was just better than the bugs I was having with collisions when keeping them on (they essentially didn't die, but couldn't catch up). And the length of levels 2 and 3 is far too long. I think given this insight on completion of the game I may have done smaller levels, where you have a normal level or two, then a boss level. If I update the game these will definitely be changes included!
very nice game. I like your story, scenario.
I liked the idea of the game, it felt a bit short, meaning I wanted to play more, customize the team, more enemies, etc., which is good and bad at the same time :)
Well I had to draw the line somewhere. My main goal was to keep things simple and focus on polish and execution rather than a multitude of features. I don't think I'll do any changes to this particular game. But I would certainly like to make a similar game in the future, so maybe next time they'll be more variety and customisation. Thank you for playing!
I love this! It looks great and was easy to just pick up and play. It felt right at home on the Gameboy, and was a lot of fun! Great work!
Thank you! I think in practice, on a GameBoy, this would almost certainly have issues with sprite count, especially on later levels. But I tried to be as careful as possible everywhere else, even if it's not built for hardware.
A fun side-scroller, definitely has that gameboy feel! The SFX do get a bit sore on the ears when you need to use them a lot (e.g. against that first boss spinning in a circle), but otherwise great job.
Thanks. Yeah, it was actually worse initially, for that reason this is the first time I have used Web Audio API, which has things that automatically balance the sound, though I didn't mess with the defaults or anything, not even sure things are piped in the right order, but eh it helped and I'll know more in the future when dealing with sound balancing.
I can only imagine what manner of evil creature follows the band of companions around. As soon as they catch up, they instantly die! A minute of silence for all the fallen archers getting caught by the left side of the screen.
Great game though, keep it up!
Really cool color choices and gamedesign!
Really nice. I love how the red pops!
Thank you. And yes, when I started I was thinking Sin City vibes, haha.
Very cool. The ominous music and the sprite work really give the game its own unique atmosphere. I found it a bit frustrating that as soon as you fallback and one of your dude gets off screen on the left for a split second it dies. But apart from that I had a great time playing. Well done!
Thank you. Originally it did keep your units in the screen, unfortunately this was causing more issues with collisions, as they would sometimes get pushed through obstacles and sometimes not. It's less distracting them just dying, but yes it is a little bit unexpected at first. Thanks for playing!
Very fun game, it looks really polished
Thanks!
Might be my fav game, this is something Id wanna play on a GB!
Thank you very much!
This reminds me a lot of Mercenary Forces for the Gameboy, but with a medieval setting, and a lot more streamlined. It feels very authentic.
Very solid game! The pacing gets a bit slow when there are no enemies on screen, but the bosses were fun and challenging.
Nice work!
Ha, funny you should say that! Cause I had this idea for creating a squad-based shmup. And pre-jam when I was doing research, I found out about that game Mercenary Force/Tenjin Kaisen. And after that it did influence me a bit. But just because it align so well with what I already had in mind. Especially in terms of art styling; the bridges, buildings and the simple 2-frame animations. I have no issues with your comparison, because it's exactly true! :)
Thank you. And yeah I was told it was a little slow, and I tried to improve as much as I would dare. In my mind was also that it's ultimately a jam game; I'd rather people play an easy version they can see the whole of, than a more challenging version they might give up on.
Thank you for the feedback!
Very gameboy-ey, loved it!
Thanks! It'd be bad is it wasn't! :P
Wow, I am completely blown away by this! I have always loved the idea of a medieval shmup on foot. The music is great, the gameplay is fun and balanced, the intro storyboards looks awesome, and it's so sad when you lose a party member. What could be better? Probably nothing. Congrats!
(Does a double take) You did this game all by yourself?!
I did the programming and art. I worked with a musician for the music. I'm glad you like it. Honestly I'm so used to making bad/half-arsed games that I actually really wanted to make something decent, so before the jam started I planed out what I wanted to complete on each day. I already knew I wanted to make this kind of shmup, the theme changed a lot of the ideas but otherwise I was able to stick to the plan pretty well. Thanks again for playing! :)
Wow this is great info. I aspire to do better in jams myself - would you be willing to share what your plan looked like? I should do this!
It wasn't that in depth. It just helps keep your mind on track and in scope.
Basically it was a list of days, 1 > 10. Each day had 1 or more tasks. Day 1 for example, was fully dedicated to art and getting a full mockup of what the game would look like, and a story summary. Art first is particularly helpful as you might hit little issues you didn't forsee, and it's far less work to correct little art issues than code/implementation issues (which can often involve art changes too). I also listed a bunch of art assets here, just to help remember and it's like a little reward every time you tick one off. Day 2 was the game "shell"; the splash, menu, options, cutscene system and the most basic game world, all connected. This can often be a rush job at the end, so I figured doing it up front would mean it'd get as much polish during dev as the game itself. Day 3 was about the importing of levels from the Tiled level editor, collisions and avoidance for the squad. So this included world collisions, projectile collisions, etc. And the game was playable at this point. Each 4 days after that was dedicated to a single level per day; new enemies, the boss fight, etc. The last 3 days were for general play testing, fixes and polish.
I know it's not a great guide. But having a small, simple, concise plan really helped me. Compared to what I usually do which is "I'll do this... Maybe tomorrow, it's fine... OK, the day AFTER that... It's all good... Ah crap 1 day left!" :P