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A jam submission

Must Dwarves TogetherView game page

Get your dwarven band to the tavern
Submitted by SpicyFrog (@GamesSpicyFrog), MetalFoxDioxymore, Vylozeny, Klaimen — 23 minutes, 13 seconds before the deadline
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Must Dwarves Together's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#624.1154.115
Overall#1014.0824.082
Originality#2284.0494.049
Presentation#3184.0824.082

Ranked from 122 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 dwarves are chained together

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam

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Comments

Viewing comments 37 to 18 of 77 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

I absolutely love the music for this game. Definitely my favorite music so far in this jam. The way that the song comes together as you collect more dwarves is just great, and the fade in as you get close makes it so that the new instruments aren't so jarring AND they tell the player that a dwarf is close by! (Didn't play all levels, so idk if you played with this, but how can you play with that fact in a dark environment???)

Really nice game, and the puzzles are great. I didn't even mind having to redo a level multiple times because the music was just bopping! Great game y'all!

Developer

Thank you very much for your comment!

I’m sure our musician will be very pleased to read your comment about his work!

There is no level where the instrument fade in serves a purpose but it’s an interesting idea, albeit a bit hard to implement in a level without it being overly difficult, but who knows?!

Submitted(+1)

Pretty good I have fun with these little guys. The music is also pretty catchy. I hope you work after the jam with more levels :D

Developer

Thank you for your comment!

With so many people wanting more level, we might try and do so, stay tuned!

Submitted(+1)

Such an amazing game. Everything looked good, everything sounded phenomenal, the gameplay was intuitive, and the puzzles were good too. I didn't have any issues with the difficulty curve, but it wasn't too easy either. I genuinely can't think of anything you could do to improve the game aside from the obvious add more levels after the jam. Adding more themed areas (possibly deeper into the mines, where more valuable resources are being mined) and musical themes to accompany those areas would be pretty cool too, but that's well outside the scope of a 48 hour jam.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your nice review! It means a lot to us!

Glad you had no issue with the difficulty curve, it was quite tricky to get as right as possible in the short 48h time.

You’re not the only one asking for new levels after the jam so... Who knows ;)

Submitted(+1)

Very original idea, and beautiful music as well -- I felt like I was on a ride at DisneyLand!  I love the idea of combining music.  Great job on this, I hope you continue development on this even after the jam.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your feedback, we really appreciate it!

Some other people asked for more levels, so who knows what happens? Stay tuned!

Submitted(+1)

Very good game! Great atmosphere! Well polished! The idea is clever! IT was so much fun jumping around with those cute dwarves! Congrats!^^

Developer

Thank you very much for your comment, glad you liked our little game!

Submitted(+1)

Really polished game in every aspect!!

I especially LOVE the music design! it is really cool how the instruments are added! WONDERFUL! Stroke of genius!

Who doesn't love dwarfs?!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your review!

We’re so glad you liked our little music mechanic, we had a lot of fun doing it!

Can’t disagree on the dwarf love part!

Submitted(+1)

Oh my goodness, this is a WONDERFUL game!!!!!!
I had so much fun, managed to make it to the end ^_^  The art hangs together beautifully.  I love the building of the theme, though I thought a couple times that an instrument joined before I officially added them to the stack, so I don't know whether perhaps that was my imagination playing tricks on me.
Am I right in surmising that when you die, you swap from hearing the band members who were alive to hearing those who remain in the level whom you didn't pick up?  I actually thought that was fantastic hahaha :D  (Again might've gotten confused and just imagined that happening.)
I was all set to be like meh it should've been in "ab / Abm" instead of "d / Dbm" to perpetuate the joke, I quickly got completely over that, this game just blew me away.  Thank you so much for making it!!! ^_^

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for your nice review, glad you liked our game and congrats on making it to the end, it can be a bit of a challenge at times!

For the instruments, you’re not totally wrong, the closer you get to a dwarf, the louder you start yo hear his instrument, until you pick him up and he joins the band at full loudness :)

I’m afraid to tell you that’s it’s your mind playing tricks on you for the death part, haha! We had something planned for the death but couldn’t build it in time for the web version but a little birdie told me it might be available in the Windows build... :P

Submitted

Hehe, I got stuck on the spikes jump level for a while because I tend to be over-cautious.  I actually really liked the puzzle that teaches you how the jump is affected by the group size.  It did take me a while but I didn't feel stuck.  I just really, really really like this whole game.  And I'm a little sorry it was my imagination but now I'll have to try the windows version when I get the chance :D

(1 edit) (+1)

This is easily one of the finest games I've played so far this jam, not only from a proof-of-concept standpoint but also as a properly fleshed out design. It's not uncommon to see puzzlers around here and the usual advice is simple: take one of two core ideas and execute on them well. You did exactly that here. I'm impressed, there's really no wasted space. Each mechanic is clear and intuitive and serves the others well in a really satisfying and cohesive experience.

Art: Fantastic all around! The simple, cutesy art style serves your free and breezy mechanics well, I'm definitely a fan of these lil dwarves. Not to mention that one song is an absolute banger, somewhere between a pirate jam band and tavern soundtrack that I really vibed with. One very minor change might be to keep the music playing on the death screen, just to keep the flow going, but on the whole I adored the soundtrack.

Movement: This is a crucial part to get right, and I'd say you all stuck the landing. The movement was floaty, but precise enough to be maneuverable, and the stacking mechanic was an enjoyable take on the event theme with some room for innovation and expansion. I have to give a particular shout out to your bounce mechanics and especially their integration into the level design. The first time I realized that stack height affected bounce height was a treat, a genuine moment of surprise and epiphany in a cute little game. 

Interesting choice, too, not to allow for jumping. That was a big risk but I think it paid off well, keeping the puzzles focused on the core mechanics rather than on direct platforming skill.

Environment: Nothing but praise for your level design here. For the time allotted, there were some genuinely creative and exciting puzzles in this one. I appreciated the gradual scaling of difficulty and introduction of new mechanics in an approachable way. The bounce pads were certainly some of my favorites, both from a movement and puzzling angle. That early level with a set of jumps over a spike pit was probably my favorite to run.

Some of the later levels, too, made great use of the fact that dwarves higher on the stack could activate bounce pads. Early on, I wasn't sure how I felt about this, but I ended up pausing and taking a note about how much I enjoyed it and some of that more inventive level design.

Overall, genuinely great work, I'm glad you got it in before the deadline!

Developer(+1)

Wow! What can I say except you’re welcome thank you so much for the valuable feedback and the time you took to  write this review! We’re so glad that you liked our game, it means a lot to us!

Upon death there was supposed to be a specific "music" where you can hear all instruments kind of crash into each other into a chaotic musical mess but it was a very late implementation and could’nt be added to the web build in time (These builds take FOREVER). I think that it is included is the Windows build, if you really want to try it out!

We tried to teach that the number of dwarves in your group affect the height you gain from jump pad through level design alone but I thinkl we didn’t do it quite well enough, a lot of people seem to not get it, there’s still room for improvement!

The level design and difficulty curve was one of the hardest things to do right, judging from other comments, it seems like the difficulty ramps up a little bit too fast, I think of one particular level that seem to get people stuck, but it’s hard to play test during such a short amount of time so we’re glad some people still find it enjoyable!

As I said, thank you very much for the comprehensive review and genuine comments about our game, we really appreciate it!

Submitted(+1)

Super polished game with amazing graphics and music! The level design was really well done and ramps up nicely! The tutorialization throughout the game is really effective and overall just a really great and nice experience! Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for your comment and review! Glad you liked the difficiculty ramp up, it seems like some people can struggle a bit with it, but it’s nice to hear that it worked for you!

Submitted(+1)

I liked this a lot. Started off simple, but then revealed the potential of the mechanics. Seeing amount of dwarves affect launch height was an "aha" moment. Also lovely art style and music.

Developer

Thak you for your review! We’re glad you liked our game!

Submitted(+1)

I had a lot of fun playing this game. Puzzle were cool, the levels where you are switching mid air especially. Overall, really well polished game. That was a blast to play, great work.

Developer

Thank you very much for your nice feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game, I loved that the instruments start when you touch specific dwarves.

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much!

Submitted(+1)

Cool! Not only the order of the dwarves is important in the levels but also the music fusion is implemented amazingly.

Developer

Thank you, glad you liked it!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

What a wonderful little game! The sound design really surprised me, in a good way. I think I knew immediately just how you did it, but that doesn't make it any less clever.

I think this is my favorite game of the jam so far.

Developer

Wow, thank you very much for such a praise, glad you enjoyed our little game!

Submitted(+1)

Super cool! Not only it’s my favorite fantasy creatures, it’s also presented in a cute and funny way! The mechanics of them “joining” together and climbing on each other is great (and very much in dwarven spirit)! And I love the music!

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for your kind words, means a lot to us!

And congratulations on beating the game!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game! the only prolom for me is that th UI button sound effect is annoying, else to that this is a great submission!)

Developer

Thank you for you feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Really nice game. The gameplay mechanic is pretty cool

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

(+1)

Nice and easy to lern!

Developer

Thank you!

(+1)

Really nice game. The gameplay mechanic is pretty cool and you guys found a lot of interesting ways to use it, I’m impressed you made so many levels for a game jam. And of course I loved the little touch with the evolving soundtrack. Kudos to the team!

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you for your review!

Glad you enjoyed our game and the adaptive music!

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

Loved this game more than I can put into words, but I'll try! I thought I was playing a basic platformer, decided to keep playing because I'm a music theory nerd and your idea to build the score up by LITTERALY building a band was making me smile. Then I got to the first level where you have to utilize the different-height jump mechanic and HOLY SMOKES, the "jump" in complexity threw me for a loop and made me realize this thing is so much more than a basic platformer with a neat music mechanic! Every level after that was so well thought out and utilized the mechanics to their fullest extent, I can totally see myself playing a full version of this if you add some story and more levels, hell, I'll even pitch in and voice the dwarfs for you!

The intro to that jump size difference is my one critique, I had no idea what I was doing wrong and a tooltip explaining the mechanic would've been appreciated. 

Developer

Wow, I’m speechless reading your comment, thank you so much, it really means a lot to us!

We have a numch of music enthusiasts in the team so we always try to include some level of "adaptiveness" to our games and really thought this would fit well with our choice of game and design.

We really wanted to add some level but we fell short on time unfortunately. The difficulty curve is known to be a bit steep but it should be beatable.

Believe it or not, we actually had a tooltip to teach the jump height mechanic but we tried to teach ir through level design, to follow the "Show, don’t tell" design principle, well, I guess the show part wasn’t obvious enough! We need to think a bit more on this.

If we ever continue this game and are in need of voice acting for our dwarves, we’ll be sure to send a message your way! :)

Viewing comments 37 to 18 of 77 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page