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The Sweet Escape's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Interpretation of the Secondary Theme | #52 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Gameboy Soul | #98 | 3.906 | 3.906 |
| Overall | #118 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Graphics | #143 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Soundtrack/SFX | #152 | 3.219 | 3.219 |
| Gameplay | #230 | 2.688 | 2.688 |
Ranked from 32 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game meet GBJam's theme?
You are a kid, looking for candy on Halloween. When you have entered a house where the doors have slammed shut behind you and you have to look for a way to escape. Scary Ghosts and Spiders are trying to scare you and take your candy!
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Comments
Pretty cool!! I’ll try to finish it whenever I got more time, it’s straightforward and seems like it could run on a gameboy!
Appreciating the extra of choosing a costume - and the fact it saves it whenever you relaunch the game!
(I think the coin counter isn’t respecting the resolution properly but I’m too lazy to properly check)
Good work!
if the text is not respecting the resolution its possible I am rendering text on the scaled up version instead of the true size. but I am trying to render everything to a 160px x 144px image then rendering the image to the upscaled camera so unless I set the UI target to the wrong camera render it should be respecting it. The default camera should be the low res so unless I accidently manually set it it should be rendering to the true resolution and then just upscaling to the higher res
yeah that’s the only weird thing I noticed to be honest and it doesn’t really affect the gameplay much (unlike sub-pixel moving of sprites I saw on some entries) - I consider it an innocent bug
The ability to choose your costume is a nice bonus. The music is great and the scared animation is perfect. Great job!
thanks for playing and for the kind words!
Fantastic art and music, really solid game! Getting to choose a costume was my favorite part. The only thing I struggled with was knowing which keys went to which door. After trying every door I’d seen up to that point, I was a little worried I broke the game.
thanks so much! we need to find a better way to communicate the key situation. i think there are 2 doors on each level and generally a key will open one of those. i think you have to go down a level for one key. i’m not even sure lol.
yes, we need to have a better way to say what key goes to what, we couldn't land on a way that we all liked before the deadline. The first key opens the door at the top of the level, leading to the basement. Then you will find a key down there that opens the bottom door on the first floor that allows you to go up stairs to grab a key that opens a door in the basement. there is a shortcut stair way to bring you down to the basement. when taking those stairs the door out is locked but the key is right in front of it. when you unlock the door into the basement it gives leads to the way out and you win the game
Real Neat concept, love the graphics, and i see how you sneaked the Lavender Town leitmotif into the soundtrack. it does make me think back to Pokemon either way, anyways love this game. :)
Thank you! Our audio guy is a big pokemon fan, he also did the level design and some of the art
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed the game, and great ear on catching that ode to the most classic spooky gameboy line ever written :)
I like how charming the sprites are <3. Congrats!
Thank you so much! They were a joy to create :)
Very pleasing aesthetic ! Great mood create by visual , gameplay and audio !! Strong Gameboy soul !!
Not sure but I think I've seen at least once the number of candies not increase even though I had just picked one.
hmm. haven’t noticed candy not incrementing. we’ll have to look into that; thanks for the heads-up! and thanks for playing!
That was alright! The art is proficient and charming. The mechanics are basic, but competent. The soundtrack has a strong beat to it, although at times it sounds more like Casio than Game Boy. A bit laggy sometimes, but nothing I couldn't handle.
All-in-all, good work!
thanks for playing!
I love your art style; the palette is amazing, and the concept is great—especially the custom selector, haha.
I also feel like I'm really inside a Game Boy, so you did a great job with that!
However, I think you should explore your gameplay mechanics more. Just walking around can be interesting, but you need to add something extra. For example, you could introduce new elements like running from a ghost, but none of the characters reacted to my presence.
That’s my feedback—great interpretation overall!
i agree. if you run into ghosts or spiders you will be scared and lose some candy and be taken back to where you started. the hit boxes were made a little too small after some feedback, which made the game a bit too easy. thanks for playing and for the feedback!
That was very cute and felt exactly like the gameboy spirit ^^
The music was well made and the visual feedbacks/controls felt really good and natural.
I think the house could have been smaller or more maze-like, once I understood how to avoid the monsters, I was just walking for a long time and it got a little boring.
The visuals were good and readable and the different costumes was a nice touch!!!
But truly it feels like something I could only get on a cartridge.
Thank you for sharing.
thank you for playing!
I appreciate the love put into the sprites and level design. I struggled with the gameplay, unfortunately. I was able to find and pick up candy, but I picked up a key, and then couldn't open a door that told me it required a key. The enemies were easy to dodge so most of my time was spent walking between rooms looking for the stuff I needed to progress, and the walking was very slow. Definitely hit the Game Boy feeling though :)
Thank you for the feedback!
The first key you find does not open the first door, but there is another door on the first level that it does open. We did talk about ways to make it more clear what door they open but in the time limit we didn't come up with a way we liked. We tuned the ghost and spiders down from what we originally had due to some feedback but I think we made them a bit to easy.
This was fun, definitely felt very game boy-like and I think the spookiness is solid. art and audio is nice and the gameplay isn't anything crazy but it's not bad. you move a bit slow but not that big of an issue and besides for that there isn't much else I can say is bad. Overall a very solid entry, well done.
Thank you! we had fun making it
Vey cool, and very spooky! The art is really pretty too!
thank you!
The palette is soooo good! Loved the music as well!
It plays and feels like a GB/GBC game.
Good job!
thank you!
thanks! here’s the palette we used if you’re curious. https://lospec.com/palette-list/bittersweet
Cool game, I had the lag issue too unfortunately. Regardless, can see a lot of work went into it and really enjoyed it
Glad you Enjoyed it! I am looking into the lag issue so next time we wont have it.
Seems to be plaguing it atm, I'm sure it's just an itch.io thing though
my only lead at this point is I can reproduce by simulating slower internet leads. atm that doesn't make sense to me since it should have everything loaded at the start but maybe its streaming in stuff instead. idk, im using a engine named Bevy and building for wasm for the first time using it.
I used pygame and compiled to wasm too. I noticed a few issues only pop up after build was created. The bane of not using the norm I guess
A real shame about the lag, but a really cute art style and a nice palette and soundtrack (is that Trap?) The gameplay seems like it could have been fun, but I was fighting a serious amount of lag and the loss of frames and broken music was getting quite irritating haha
Try uploading it with a smaller resolution, it currently takes up more of the screen than most entries I've played, perhaps that's causing the lag?
GB Studio suggests uploading at 480 (width) x 432 (height) for Web browser games
I am sorry to hear that all the issues you are running into.
I picked the resolution because its still less than half the height of my resolution and didn't think about looking at the avg of other games. For the lag we have found that the audio lag can be caused by lower internet speeds, we should have used a more compressed format than wav. for the loss of frames we have a issue on the movement that makes it non-pixel perfect that causes bg jitter, do you think that is what you are seeing? if not would you mind sending me a recording so I can look into it more.
How would you like me to send you a video?
you can send it to shredder.ct@gmail.com thanks!
i’m pretty sure it’s not a graphical issue causing the lag. it runs at the 160x144 pixel resolution and just scaled up to 800x720, which isn’t very big. my guess is that it may be loading the audio that is causing it but we’re not sure. did the lag continue for you for a while? for me, it only last a about 10 seconds before the music stops stuttering.
It takes up more screen space than my browser will allow, so it cuts off the top and bottom on the game, so that seems quite big (to big) to me, I've only had that issue with 1 or 2 other games.
interesting. are you on a smaller screen? and are you sure you don’t have the page zoomed in at all?
I’m definitely not zoomed in at all on the browser and I’m on a MacBook Pro which has 3456 x 2234 resolution. I’ve played around 50 other games in this Jam and a lot more before outside of the Jam, most fit absolutely fine inside the browser, some have full screen option to combat the issue, but ocassionally a game is just too big and either the top or bottom have to be sacrificed to play.
I’m not sure what causes this, but it does crop up fairly often, 1/20 games.
hmmm. doesn’t make any sense to me as my screen is lower resolution (about half the size) and the game easily fits in my browser window. i appreciate all the info though! hopefully we’ll figure this issue out at some point so it can be prevented in the future. your game looks great btw, i’ll check it out soon!
Thank you, hope my info helps, certainly seems odd
Mac's are weird, there are system settings that seem to effect it like text size and stuff but I have not found a actual setting combo that fixes the issue on mac. Mac's will need to wait till after the voting for the full fix
They are weird and often annoying, I need to get a PC, thanks
I liked it! It was slightly confusing what I was supposed to do once I got the key, I couldn't find the correct door. Maybe it's a bug with my browser, but it was running at a very low framerate.
In any case great work :)
each key opens a specific door. if it doesn’t open one, look for another. i think we could have made this clearer, but unfortunately we didn’t come up with a good method for that in the time we had. sorry for the confusion!
i’ve experienced some choppiness with the framerate too, so you’re not alone. for me, it’s usually just on the main menu and it goes away after a few seconds of playing. it might depend on your computer specs? thanks for the feedback and for playing!
Really like the palette and it's used very well. A suitably spooky house and fun to find all the candy. Well done!
Thank you !
it doesnt wanna start
We have had some people report that their browsers are not framing the game correctly. in rare cases it makes the game 100% not viewable in others it is just smaller. Most people see it just right so we are still looking into the issue. It doesn't seem like a browser or OS issue since the issue has been reported in all and also reported as working in all. I can send you a standalone build if you tell me your OS
I wish we saw the issue before the end of the Jam but it worked on every computer it was played on by the team and the people we sent it to for feedback throughout the week
I think we have found the main issue. Please make sure you don't have any zoom set besides 100%
Really unique concept for a game! The art in this game is great as well. I loved being able to pick a costume for the player character.
Thank you for you lovely feedback
The music is amazing! Also love how the characters steps go almost perfectly in sync with the beat. There was some weird stuttering/lag in the basement & second floor that caused framerate and audio to become choppy, bearable but unfortunate because that track was sick! Loved the ghost animation and the idea for the spider enemies with the shadow that appears first, though they could use an extra half second before dropping as it seemed like you were out of luck if their shadow appeared directly over you (maybe intended?)
Edit: Adding that your cover art is ridiculously good. Keep it up!
Thank you so much!
The feedback on the spider was discussed by the team and we ended up leaving it how it is for the final release but it only actually effects the player in a small window of the animation.
Interesting that there was some stuttering/lag in the basement & second floor. everything is loaded at the start. When you are in the first floor the basement and second floor are loaded and running.
The character sync with the music was not done on purpose but we noticed it too and loved it!
I'm betting it's something to do with itch.io's web play. I only played the web version (not sure if a download was present) but I noticed the same kind of things starting to happen on my game both on my laptop and PC. Internet is in great shape so I'm definitely willing to say it's itch. Regardless, it didn't take away from gameplay! It was just a few stutters here and there and if I stopped moving for a second it seemed to catch up.