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1mpulse's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Design | #526 | 3.606 | 3.606 |
| Overall | #577 | 3.739 | 3.739 |
| Originality | #679 | 3.702 | 3.702 |
| Adherence to the Theme | #716 | 3.910 | 3.910 |
Ranked from 188 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Amazing graphics, very good job for this jam! you have to continue working in this project.
Thanks for playing ! Tested your game and had fun, that literal 'one jump' is theme fitting, well done.
Thanks for your feedback! We'll try and make our game even better ;)
Hardcore
Thanks ;)
I love the diversity of colours, it's trippy. Great job :D
I also made a little video compilation of games from the game jam and you're in it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLyp4qxT7Uc
Thanks for sharing our game ;)
Thanks Asue!
The graphics are very weird, but in a good way. the gameplay is also decently fun, but it gets boring very quickly. this is mainly because there isn't a lot to do. the ship feels more uncontrollable in some cases than in others, making controlling the direction a bit to hard. the game controls very well however, but takes a while to really understand.
overal, it's pretty good and very creative.
Hey Picelluca,
Thanks for your feedback. I totally agree with the negative points you've mentioned, we'll try to fix them.
Cheers.
Thanks for the feedback ! We have some tweaking to do to make it more interesting and challenling instead or boring. We'll get there ;)
Good looking game that feels nice and responsive. Tutorial is a bit of a slog to get through and hard to retain all the information. You also end up a bit screwed if you happen to be aimed at the centre of something. Sometimes ran into a problem where my ship would randomly not charge the battery.
Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated !
We hate those kind of tutorials and wanted something in game to make it more easy to learn, but 48h is not a lot of time ^^ So better that than nothing !
You need to aim carefully because planet attract your ship so if you aim for the center, as you said, you're screwed ^^ But we need to make it more easy to avoid, I agree ;)
And yeah I know about the battery problem, it's on my ToFix list ^^
This game is so juicy, very satisfying to play! Nice job.
Thanks !
p.s.: I don't know if you plan to develop a complete version of Soulward after the jam ; please do, I look dumb throwing money at my screen :p
Thanks for the feedback ! I loved you game as well, very nice to play ;)
Really impressed by the quality of it in such a short amount of time !
Thanks Gumboot,
I'm also impressed by Soulward, it's awesome! It's probably my favourite game from this Jam, congrats!
A very cool game.
I really liked it! The only thing: I think it’s a little difficult to concentrate on the screen because of such a bright background and UI.
I will be glad if you can take a look at our game. We actually have same name: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/460954
Thanks for the feedback. The UI is indeed not scaled depending on the resolution so it might look bad if your resolution is low :(
But we will fix it ;)
I need to try out your game ;) ( Nice name by the way :o )
It was impressive to make this game just in two days even with 7 men.
Thanks, very much appreciated.
Thanks ! Managing 7 people was indeed a challenge ^^
Thank you!
Love the concept of the one button puts you through many different states and the one you get depends on when you let go, but don't hold it too long. Hold briefly for a utility mode. The visuals and sound are fantastic as well, really pulls you in. That tutorial though! It just went on forever and I was already forgetting what the previous screens told me! Might find a way to split it up and mix it in with the gameplay.
Hi Aesth,
Thanks for your feedback!
We also hate these kinds of tutorials. We put it quickly on the build because of the lack of time, but we'll change it, yes.
Thanks for the kind words!
As @Aegard said, we hate those tutorials as well >< We wanted to make one in game to be more immersive and easy to remember, but impossible in 48h... So better what we have than nothing ^^' Well change that though ;)
I really liked the game mechanics, even the limitations are well thought, although the game sounds like hundreds of mobile games (that's why I gave 4 stars on originality), and i found the battery recharge mechanic very unclear, therefore a detriment for the design, as it was the monotony of the game. My advice to fix these two problems (if you intend to) it's 1- to color things that recharge the battery the same as the battery icon, also some kind of "recharging" effect around those element would help 2- to generate casually the enviroment, after a couple of games you can already forsee many things, and to me it would be much more important to master the mechanic than to master the "map" 3- its a one button game, why did you put in the tutorial?
Thanks for the feedback !
The recharge is probably unclear for multiple reasons, there is a bug preventing you from recharging and the feedback when you're in orbit isn't clear at the moment. So still some things to tweak.
About your advices :
1 - Feedback for the recharge is something we thought about, but with timing/production constraint we couldn't put it in, or as good as we wanted. Hopefulle we'll have some time to fix that.
2 - This is something we want, but hard to do in a 48h period. We went on a fixed map because we could focus on other things. But we are going to work on it.
3 - Because even if it's a one button game, the design of it is much deeper (impulse meter, recharge system, orbit around planets, ...). And also we wanted to make an in-game tutorial because it's better than text, but again 48h ^^ So maybe it'll come later :)
Thanks for trying our game.
I totally agree with you about the exposition of the battery recharge mechanic. We'll definitely work on it for a post-jam build.
Nice graphics, challenging game. I included it in my GMTK Game Jam 2019 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
Thanks for the review, sorry for the bad performance, our artists got a little too carried away XD
Yes, thanks you! ^^
I really liked the effects you have created for this game. But unfortunately due to the game's controls and balance I didn't enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed it's graphics. It would have been more playable if the number of pulses were unlimited.
Hi, thanks for playing. If I agree with that our game could use some balance tweaks, I'd disagree on unlimited impulses as it would remove some strategy, some depth.
With limited charges, you have to orbit a planet to charge, slowing you down, loosing some time for the nova to catch up. It serves the gameplay, the art and the narrative. For me it's a core mechanic we shouldn't touch too much.
More planning, less spamming.
Thanks for your feedback !
The goal is to escape as far as you can, with unlimited pulses it would get pretty easy ;) We still need to tweak some stuf to make it more enjoyable to play though.
Oh I though only way to get battery back was to catch those small satellites and I avoided the planets since they slowed me down and murdered me! Now the game makes more sense! Yaaay! Its pretty much fun actually!
Happy you like it then ! There is some bugs with the recharge though ><
But good to know it wasn't clear, we will try to fix that ;)
It's ok to have some bugs!
Now that I know how the game actually works! I would have liked to be able to see a longer distance, it's very hard to react to fast moving meteorites even when I was spamming space to slow down time. There isn't enough time to charge impulse between the meteor entering the camera and reaching me.
Also I noticed that the ship spins a little too slow. The nova start before the game gives me any chance to start towards left.
That are also some stuff we know about and we need to fix XD
Yeah, Nova and comet tweaking are first on my todo list, you're absolutely right! ^^
Hey,
Yeah the game really need a "real" in-game tutorial I think. We tried to add depth with the way you can get back charges, still using only our one button for our only one ship-system (the 1mpulse drive). But it's not obvious to understand how it work, we need to improve that.
Thanks a lot for your feedback and for taking the time to try it again, very much appreciated.
Cheers.
Have to agree with lethandralis. Looks very cool, plays very nice, but the theme is not explored really in depth. At this point I feel like Mark Brown already gave to many options about what "only one" could mean.
Thanks for the feedback ! I don't think Mark "gave" options, he just gave examples on the theme. And it is a really hard theme because it has a lot of stuff possible.
I really want to know how we didn't explore the theme in depth ? I'm sincerely at a loss here...
I mean technically you did, absolutely.
To me personally, there were a few possible ideas (and most of them Mark mentioned) that are too bland in my opinion. For example you would go for a game that has only 1 level. Now you could make any game you want, no matter what, and just include one level and you fulfilled the topic 100%. Is it innovative? Probably not. Is the design good? No idea, depends on your game, but the 1 level aspect does not play into the design.
And I feel similar about the the 1 button control. Yes, you fulfill the topic 100%. But you can make all sorts of games with one button controls, and they all share that same requirement, and none of them would really tell me anything about it's design, originality. etc. If it helps, I feel the same about all the one button games in this jam.
Don't take it personally please, your game is still awesome. In the end, it's about how you interpret things. Not me, not others, not even Mark.
Thanks for the clarification !
I agree with you 100%, it's really easy to fit the theme this year. And our game isn't an exception. That is why even fitting the theme isn't enough this year
And what I think makes our game good is the other points to mentionned. We tried to make a game with a deeper design that most one button game you can find.
- You have a recharge system
- You can use comets (even if that's hard right now, needs tweaking) to charge your ship and give you an extra pulse
- You can orbit around planet (and recharge around them)
- You have to manage the rotation of your ship to go where you want
- The impulse has to charge, enough or it won't work but not too much so it doesn't explode
- The rotation means you need to explore the map to know what is the better strategy to go far away
And that's just on the top of my head, our designer would do a better job than me for that. And everything listed above... Is with one button ^^
Thank you for the feedback anyway it's great to see how other people see our game, because it's quite clear to us, but it seems it's not obvious :)
Hey @Hermicrab,
I think I understand what you mean, but do you think that having this single system (our 1mpulse reactor) activated by a single button and let the player go 360°, use orbit, recharge the reactor, slow time and cancel the 1mpulse was a lazy exploration and that we only wanted to "tick the box" of the theme?
Because for us, it drove every single one decision we made regarding the design and how to have art/sound support it. I don't say you're wrong, I just want to understand if you didn't see the design depth and that's why you think we didn't really explore the theme or if if we're missing something else here.
And don't worry, we don't take anything personally and are happy to have constructive feedback ^^
Thanks for taking the time to comment!
I'll try to keep it brief:
I asked myself about my game: Would it matter / change much if more than the 1 would be allowed to hit the goal tile. (Yes, in my opinion. It would be extremely boring).
So you could ask yourself how different would your game be if you would have more than one buttons.
Ok, so the answer would be yes. Because everything was designed around the "only one system" idea. Without this, I'd have left the player choose the ship's direction and remove the spinning mechanic or the orbit and slingshot mechanic, the player could recharge the reactor just by grabbing "floating collectible batteries" like in some many game, instead of forcing him to use the only one button.
Remove this idea, add other systems and buttons and of course It'd be a completely different game. To be honest, it wouldn't even be a game in space, the idea itself came from the restriction. And guess what, it'd be a boring game in my opinion, yes. I suppose it's not your opinion then, and I understand it, no worries ;)
Thanks for your feedback.
Then you did everything correctly.
I think correctly, yes (but what I think is not really important). Perfectly, clearly not :D
Btw your game is cool, I'm really not a "puzzle designer" so I'm always impressed by this kind of design, congrats.
I'm torn, I don't know what to rate this game. On one hand its extremely beautiful, and I can see the effort went into this. On the other hand unlike many people in the comment section I don't think the theme was explored very well. Having only one button / one objective can apply to a lot of games in the mobile market already. Also the objective wasn't very clear to me. My 2 cents. I bet you guys could accomplish great things given enough time.
Thanks for the feedback !
As @Aegard said in an earlier comment, and I'll let him answer in more details, the theme has been respected (as it is a one button game as you said ^^) but it shouldn't restrict other parts of the design just because there is a theme. Only One battery cell wouldn't be fun to play.
The theme should drive creativity, not constrain it ;)
Hey lethandralis, thanks for your comment :)
So you think we didn't explore the theme well enough because it's not original?
We know the game is, despite still being in the theme, not a brand new fresh concept but to be fair, the design has slightly drifted from the initial pitch ( but you know... time/production constraints ^^ ).
We did have another pitch that was a bit more original, but also much more ambitious and we heart-brokenly discarded it because we didn't feel it was doable in 48hours.
I'm now curious about what you would actually change in the concept? Did you have something in mind?
@KiruB and @MaxiPoki, and all developers,
I did not say that the game doesn't fit the theme, it does - but it seems to be a game that happens to fit the theme, rather than a game that is designed around the theme. Yes, the theme should not diminish the user experience, but I believe it *should* restrict the design. That is the beauty of it - working with constraints, so your creativity is boosted. Obviously I cannot come up with a design that will drastically improve and build upon your concept off the top of my head, I had to think for hours to find a game design that fits the theme for my game. And I'm definitely not claiming I could do a better job than you guys did. It's easy to like a polished game with beautiful graphics but harder to give useful criticism - and it is even harder to accept the critique as developers, as you worked really hard to build something you love.
The funny thing is we actually thought for hours as well and had other ideas that were probably more designed around the theme as you said but discarded them because they would have been way more risky in 40h.
I totally understand your point and to be honest I am probably the guy within the team who agrees with you the most.
I can assure you we do accept and value criticism. After all, it's just a jam and we all do our best to have a great time ^^.
Thanks for the comment ! Any constructed feedback is really appreciated ;)
That is a conversation we had yesterday. And I disagree with you ^^
I think the design shouldn't be constrained by the theme. It can if you want, don't get me wrong, but it shouldn't by default. I mean our game wouldn't be as interesting with only one charge available, that is bad design in my opinion to constrain that just because of the "only one" theme.
To me I find it as beautiful and interesting to fit the theme and think everything as carefully as possible around it. And I think that is something we did with our game. Sure our base idea isn't original, a lot of game are one button game after all, even in this jam.
But I think we crafted a design around that constraint to make a deep and interesting game. You have a lot to do, to think about, you can make a strategy to do the best as you can. And all that around that one button design.
Find the most original stuff and constraint a lot your design or use the least original stuff but build as many things as you can around it are two sides of the same coin. And the two are a way of exploring the theme.
Obligatory comment on the stunning audio, art, and graphics, I just want to stare at it all day long, it's so amazing! (coming from a guy who can only draw triangle shapes haha)
That aside, and if you'd accept some constructive criticism, I feel like the main mechanic here is out of focus. That central focus: timing your impulse to bounce from planet to planet on the way out from the center, I'm just not seeing that explored in a fun way with the gameplay here.
I know from the comments below that you are ready to do some tweaking, but before you just start changing those variables in the script I'd ask you to take a step back and look at the design holistically, and really try to refocus and nail down what you are going for here. It's very easy to lose sight of that, especially when working on a large project with a big team.
All that said, I'm still astounded you accomplished this much in the 48 hours, and I look forward to seeing the updated version!
Thank you so much for your constructive comment, and I'm glad you like the art! ^_^
Thank you cjgunnar ! :)
Let's say the design slightly drifted from what we first pitched, mainly due to time and production constraints ^^.
You may be right in saying that the central mechanic is out of focus, and we would have certainly tweak how it works if it wasn't for the deadline getting closer and closer.
I'm not the designer, so I won't elaborate too much but we all agree we probably spend too much time and focus on driving the team, and might have, as you said, not step back enough.
I think we are trying to acknowledge of that and, from those already there, it was already an improvement compared to last year edition. I'm sure will do better next year ^^.
Thanks for your constructive feedback though, we'll try to keep your advice in minds when we'll iterate on this entry again (probably after the shit-ton of bugs we need to fix first xD).
Constructive criticism is always appreciated ;) Thanks for the feedback !
We have a very clear idea in mind of where we want to go with our game, but timing and production constraint made us change things to make it in a releasable state for the jam.
The base is here and (as you know ^^) we need to tweak it :) And there are some improvement along the way too :)
Probably the most visually impactful game during the entire jam. The main mechanic of the game works really great and sticks to the theme perfectly. The only complain I have is that the game can feel little pointless considering my only goal is just a highscore ladder (maybe collecting some parts in order to escape would help...?). Great game nonetheless and really good job!
Thanks for your feedback !
I agree that for now the game might feel incomplete. First we need to do some tweaking to achieve the best experience possible with what we currently have.
And we have some ideas to make the game ever more interesting and juicy, hopefully we'll be able to put that later ;)
Hey thanks for your feedback.
We also wanted to keep "only one goal" as it fitted well the theme. But the make a longer game, collecting parts could be intersting!
Cheers
Beautiful game! I loved the visuals, and how everything was glowing. It looked epic. The music was amazing too.
Thanks ! I'll try your game as soon as I can access my PC — seen 'ninja' in the title, already into it :D.
Like many said, it looks stunning! Everything in it is solid enough, it has a coherent design that works well, but I can't say it's as impressive as the other aspects. It definitely ranks great in terms of adherence to the theme though!
Hey, thanks for your comment, very much appreciated :)
I agree with you and it's mostly my fault :o
I spend the last day doing production stuff instead of design (not helped by the fact that for some mystical reason, It wasn't possible anymore for me to submit things). So yeah I can't wait to be able to tweak everything to improve the design (but the basis are there I think) now that we'll have more time :)
Cheers.
I totally get what you mean, we had a similar problem with level designing and especially playtesting our game's levels. Great to hear you'll keep working on it!
Yeah, we're definitely still not used to make games in 48hrs.
Ah ah tell us about level design. The good thing is that we designed the game to support procedural generation and I'd really like to work on this, so yeah we should continue to give this game more love.
Cheers
Oh, same here, this was actually my first time on a gamejam and working with other people, so this surely has been an interesting experience.
Anyway, I suppose once you got the procedural generation done that sped up your workflow quite a bit?
We don't have any procedural generation yet ;) That would have been wayyyyy too long to do in 48h. But we plan to do it :)
THIS GAME LOOKS AMAZING!
I spent a looong amount of time playing this. The mechanic works really well and there's a lot to do.
And did I mention the art is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS?
I'm extremely impressed!
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Hey, we made a GMTK game too. Check it out!
Thanks for your feedback ! Your game concept is really nice and I totally dig your art.
Thanks very much ! It's great to see you played it a lot :)
I need to play your game, I love the art :o
Thank you so much! Really glad you like it so much. :)
Your game looks super pretty!
I've just played your game, it's my favourite one on this Jam so far!
So clever and beautiful, I love it, congratulations :)
Looks good , very appealing game
Thank you Abishek :)
Thanks :)