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Not Without You's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #442 | 3.649 | 3.649 |
| Overall | #660 | 3.608 | 3.608 |
| Presentation | #731 | 3.754 | 3.754 |
| Originality | #1366 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
Ranked from 57 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The player has broken their bonds with paradise to find their soulmate, so they can be together again. But just as light and dark are always joined together, the player needs to remain in the shadows to avoid the holy light that seeks to make them join paradise again!
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
No
We used pre-existing art
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
No
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
All in all a solid platformer. The stealth adds a nice tension to the game.
But the theme is used only in the setting/story , what I find to be a waste. You could have made the light source attached to the player character for example. Just any mechanic that does something interesting with the theme.
The game was also very short and easy for my taste. I wasn't caught once in my playthrough.
Thank you! Happy to hear you liked the stealth mechanic!
Yeah it's a common critique, our original idea was around light and dark, how the two are always 'joined together' because one can only exist with the other. We have a few ideas post jam however, like additional static or flickering lights, the enemy that copies player movement, having both characters (the player and their love) move together, etc. We'll see what we end up adding to the game!
We put as much effort as we felt we could during the jam to favour quality of level design over quantity to really show off what we had in mind, but we agree the amount of levels is quite limited at the moment, something we're aiming to correct post-jam.
As I said a bit below in another comment, it's very interesting and informative to hear different player experiences, quite a few people found the levels challenging, a few less (like you) found them quite easy, and a lot of people do not mention difficulty much at all, which I'm taking to mean it wasn't too much of an issue for them because they found it was well balanced.
It'll be interesting moving forward how we balance that better, because we will definitely add more levels, and more challenging ones at that. So I guess we'll need to make sure we help those less comfortable with platformers to ease in the difficulty more progressively.
Thank you for playing our game, and for your helpful feedback!
Yep difficulty is a difficult thing to get right.
I tend to enjoy it when game jam games are a bit harder but that is subjective of course.
The ideas you had sound interesting and I wish you all good luck with the post jam version :)
I liked the take on the theme. It adds a lot of unexpected difficulty though a simple mechanic. Overall it is really polished and fun!
Thank you! Glad you liked the take on the theme, it seems a few people found the game a bit off-theme - which is a fair criticism.
Happy you like the mechanic too, we very much like that we can achieve so much with so little!
Wow, very unique and brilliant ideas! Using "light" to restrict players' movement is really clever and players have to exploit the terrain to keep finding shelter for themselves. Really fun! The artwork is simple but looks pretty good and fits very well into the theme. I can tell the level designs are well made but just a little short. And as a skilled platformer player, the levels are a little easy for me :) Wish you guys could add more challenging levels in the future. Overall, this is really a fantastic work for 48 hours. Nice work!
Thank you so much for your lovely comments!
We're happy you liked the level designs, we put as much effort as we felt we could during the jam to favour quality over quantity - hence the limited amount of levels.
It's very interesting and informative to hear different player experiences, quite a few people found the levels challenging, a few less (like you) found them quite easy, and a lot of people do not mention difficulty much at all, which I'm taking to mean it wasn't too much of an issue for them because they found it was well balanced.
It'll be interesting moving forward how we balance that better, because yes we definitely want to add more levels, but also more challenging ones, so I guess we'll need to make sure we help those less comfortable with platformers to ease in the difficulty more progressively.
Glad you found the game (or at least the artwork) fits the theme, we've mostly heard the opposite so far! :D
Guys very fun game felt very polished loved the art style it was fun to hide from it. Loved it guys :D
Thank you that's very kind! :)
Very nice game, I love the art style and the mechanic is really nice. Also the movement feels great to me, all in all a nice game!
Thank you for the kind feedback! Glad to hear the movement worked well for you!
Nice setting for the game and good fit for the theme. The controls feel great and the chase is really well done. A few more levels and maybe some mechanics would have been a great addition, but you can only do so much in 48 hours, really enjoyed this one. Good job!
Thank you for your kind comments!
Yes we definitely wanted to add more levels (which we'll do in a future update) but for the jam we wanted to focus on polish and the cut-scenes a bit more so decided to leave it at 3.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it, be sure to stay tuned if you want to check what we come up with next ;)
I enjoyed this concept a lot! It became really exciting when the light began to chase me, though I found it difficult to predict where the rays would land, so I ended up rushing through each level after getting far away enough from the light (to my surprise, I was successful). The only things I didn't like were the lives system and how brief the experience was. This is definitely a game you should continue working on.
Thank you! Ideally we'd like the make it so that most of the game you are being chased by the light, but for that first level we wanted to let the player understand they need to avoid the light without putting too much pressure on them.
I think the levels could definitely do with some further fine tuning, I'm aware that you can get past the light at some points that mean you basically can rush through the level. I'm half-tempted to make sure this can't happen so the player needs to be mindful of the timing, but at the same time if you're fast enough maybe you should be rewarded by being able to rush through (but is that fun though?). Something to think about, so thanks for raising it.
The lives system is a recurrent criticism and we agree, we will do away with it in a future update. We may count the number of level retries (so the player can try to best it), but if we're aiming for the same sort of difficulty I think we should not punish players to much by having them restart the whole lot.
Thanks for playing and for your feedback!
Great game! I found the light idea to be very interesting, though sometimes the time you have to respond is a litle bit short. The graphics were very pleasing and fitted the game perfectly. I really enjoyed playing the game.
Thank you!
Yeah the timing become difficult quite fast. We would have liked to add some more levels in between the existing ones to ramp up the difficulty more progressively, but chose to instead focus on fewer ones that showed what we had in mind! We'll definitely improve on that in future iterations!
Happy to hear you found the aesthetics fit, too!
Thank you for playing!
Very cool concept and graphics! Great aesthetic and execution. Could see this being pretty hard to implement.
Thank you!
We already did check out your game and left a comment there, just as you did with ours a few days ago! :D
My favorite part is the light thing. I love having to stay away from the light and how the glass panes create different rays that I need to dodge and keep track of. Cute ending as well! Great job and can’t wait to see what you make next!
Thank you for the kind review!
We're very glad to hear you liked the mechanics with the lighting! We're keen to keep working on this one for a bit; add some polish, some more levels, probably get rid of the lives altogether. Don't hesitate to follow us if you want to stay tuned!
Fun game! I like how simple the graphic is yet every object's role in the game is very clear like the glass block.
Thank you! We're glad to hear that, your feedback helps us understand what we might need to polish in future iterations, and it sounds like glass blocks really are a winner in terms of communicating the mechanics. so thank you for sharing that.
Nice game! i got caught a lot, haha
Love the music, btw!
Thank you! Yes the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly, hope you managed to get far enough!
The music is a bit hit and miss, glad to hear you liked it.
Thank you for playing!
What a wonderful little game! The aesthetic is striking and really foregrounds the gameplay; I knew straight away I needed to avoid those rays. That running-away-from-the-light mechanic is really interesting; it meshes platforming with a bit of puzzling (though the mechanic doesn't really have much to do with "joined together", imh)
I guess my main criticism is that I want more. I'd like to see levels where you have to make pathing choices, based on where the glass blocks are.
All in all though, I think I had more fun playing this than any game so far, so really well done!
Thank you so much, we're so happy to know you found the graphics conveyed the mechanics well for you, and that you liked them too!
Yeah it's a recurrent critique the mechanic is not on theme, which is fair enough. The initial idea was around light and dark, and how the two are "joined together", in the sense that one is necessary of the other. We've strayed a bit from that - there's no real 'shadow' or 'darkness' mechanic, only one about 'light'. So, instead we opted for the story to be a bit more on theme, where the two lovers are trying to be joined together again, and the pursuer is trying to make the player 'join' the light again.
We also want more levels! We're taking a break from coding to spend time reviewing games, but we're looking forward creating more levels and polishing up the game once the jam is truly done. So watch this space if you're keen. ;)
Your last comment is very very kind, it means a lot to us to know that; very happy to hear someone's enjoyed our game so much! Thank you for your useful and lovely feedback!
Great aesthetic, music was a little repetitive. Overall really enjoyable. I liked the idea and mechanic. I would have liked it a little more if it copied the player's movement exactly as that would add a little bit more strategy. However overall, once again, really good.
the copying player movement is a really good idea, please do that
Noted! We'll look at it post-gamejam and see if something interesting comes out of it.
Thank you for the kind feedback!
We'll keep the movement copying in mind, could create some really interesting situations!
Great aesthetic and execution. Could see this being pretty hard to implement.
At first I thought that enemy that was following you was your "love" which I thought could've been an interesting dynamic to explore.
Thank you!
It wasn't too hard in the end, we used some assets that leveraged a lot of the logic for us, which allowed us to focus more on the levels themselves and the rest of the core loop, plus menus, etc. The Unity Asset store is a huge plus!
Yeah good point, we wanted a more cutesy feel to the story, but if we were to pivot to something a bit darker we might go towards something like that. Thanks for the suggestion!
Short and sweet, I like the focus on quality over quantity; these are some really well designed levels with quite high intensity. The main mechanics are well developed and well communicated. Great work!
Thank you so much! We've focused a lot on getting the levels right, though the difficulty gets intense a bit too fast for out liking. But instead the trade-off we made was to showcase the idea and mechanics we had in mind, so hopefully that was more valuable and worthwhile!
Very cool concept and graphics!
Thank you!
Very cool! I liked how you played with the light angles for this, the level design was nicely done.
I was not expecting to be chased, that made it way better.
Great job, looks good too!
Yes the chase was a key component for us, glad you liked that! Glad you found the levels well designed, too!
Thank you for playing and for the lovely feedback!
Cool little game! The hiding in the dark thing was very well done, I liked the use of the glass blocks. The story is cute and well presented. I wish there were a few more levels, maybe just 1 extra mechanic/idea to explore, but I understand jam limits.
Good job!
We definitely want to add more levels! It's a common request and we're quite excited to explore that at some point, as well as additional mechanics around the core light/dark one.
Thank you for your lovely feedback!
The idea of going to different floors of the heaven or hell, and going to the limbo, is super nice, and the mechanic is super entertaining, I enjoyed it a lot, the only thing I will improve is taking away the life system, sometimes is frustrating to start again
Thank you for your feedback :) happy you liked the game.
Fair point regarding the lives. We bumped it up from 3 to 5. But we probably should remove the lives system all together.