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Bucket Brain [GMTK 2021]'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #1174 | 3.465 | 3.929 |
| Overall | #1463 | 3.234 | 3.667 |
| Fun | #1607 | 3.024 | 3.429 |
| Originality | #1862 | 3.213 | 3.643 |
Ranked from 14 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?
At its core, BucketBrain is a memory game like Match Two; Enemies share souls with one another, and the only way to defeat one is to kill its counterpart.
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
Mixing a dungeon crawler with the Memory game is a great idea and it works really well ! But the global flottiness of the game makes it a lot less enjoyable
Such a cool game! I really enjoyed my time up until the end of the game. I felt the challenge never got too hard, nor too easy. The graphics style is also so nice to look at. All in all, I feel this is generally a good game. A shame it isn't longer. The only problem I noticed is I think at some point the enemy AI would just stop, I saw many cubes just happily standing there, waiting to be slain. However, it wasn't much of an issue. Good job on the game!
Thanks, and that's a pretty good catch! While playing the game, I felt like enemies were pursuing the player too much, making it difficult to land hits since everything was clumped up and right in your face. A last minute change was to make enemies pick a random point in their vicinity after attacking, and move to it before hunting you again. I didn't have time to playtest the change in more complex levels, so as it turns out, enemies can also pick targets which they'll never reach, and get stuck hugging a wall until their demise.
Great job on the art and animations. Something that could improve the gameplay is a more precise attack system and perhaps slower enemies. I like how it gives you a good moment in the beginning to quickly try and remember where every enemy is, but if you miss your attack, by the time you get another chance, all the enemies are jumbled and it's guess and check for the rest of the fight.
That being said, it's an interesting concept, and trying to keep a mental note of the moving enemies is rewarding when you're correct. all in all, a pretty good game!
Thanks - As someone who's primarily an artist, this means a lot to me. :)
You're absolutely right on the attack part; I initially wanted the sword to follow mouse position, but was thrown off by a faulty line of code before the deadline. That's why I had to fall back to a simpler method for the jam version, which feels quite slow and imprecise.
The second part about enemies getting jumbled up feels more like a flaw with the core idea, which is likely why I haven't seen many games that try similar things. Fighting enemies while keeping track of each and every single one is just too taxing for short term memory. Doable for sure, but not very accessible for most people. In the end, it did turn out to be an interesting concept for sure, but perhaps not too brilliant when it comes to videogames.
This is a fun little game. Once you got in the flow and memorized the colors it felt really good. However, once you lost track of the enemy colors it was very tedious, as the gameplay switched to a grind.
I liked the music, it was upbeat nice to listen to.
Plenty of juice in this one - swinging the sword felt super satisfying! I also really enjoyed the art style and the design of the main character.
My top 3 points for critical feedback are:
1. I found the character controller difficult - attacking in a forward direction whilst controlling the character was difficult to manage all at once, so luckily the enemies are rather forgiving. My personal preference would be an attack from any direction design - maybe using the mouse and left click as the attack direction?
2. I almost immediately lost track of every coloured blob as soon as the round started - I would pretty much get one set of blobs, and then just try and brute force the rest - especially difficult when lots of blobs are on screen and moving between each other. It seemed impossible to track the pairs once they started moving around.
3. A small thing, but in round 3 (I think) when you introduce the powerup, the text says 'An imposter is among them!' (or something along those lines. I thought that the powerup WAS the imposter, so left it until the end of the round, expecting it to attack me or something. :D I would seperate the introduction of imposter characters (were there actually even any? I didn't realise if so!) and powerups to different levels to gradually introduce the player to new mechanics.
Overall, great job! Definitely something to be proud of :)
This one is actually pretty clever. I had a lot of fun playing it. Well done!
Great game! I played all the way to the end, and had fun the entire time! It has all the great aspects of a matching game, and makes them even more chaotic and fun by adding in combat elements. At first, I found it really hard to keep track of which enemies were which, but I noticed that as I played more, my brain just got better at subconsciously keeping track of them. I also really liked the main character design. Great job! I think you could definitely make this into a longer game. One suggestion is to maybe make the sword swing a little wider, or have you be able to swing in the direction of your mouse, because a lot of my swings missed.