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Poly Dash (GMTK 2023)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #108 | 4.127 | 4.127 |
| Overall | #557 | 3.835 | 3.835 |
| Creativity | #563 | 3.949 | 3.949 |
| Presentation | #1797 | 3.430 | 3.430 |
Ranked from 79 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?
Instead of controlling the player and jumping when you need to, like in a regular runner game, you instead have to place/remove blocks to create a path for the player.
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?
No
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
A really cool concept beautifully implemented! Upgrades and achievements are adding a lot indeed, although the upgrade screen was a little confusing to me. Also removing the blocks is a really cool mechanic, but it becomes a bit boring after a while to clean after yourself, maybe add an upgrade to automatically remove the blocks that you have passed? It could be a little cleaning robot kind of guy that could clean some of the blocks and could be upgraded to remove more? Just a suggestion, a great submission overall!
Thanks a lot man! 😁
Indeed upgrades screen was done on the last day so, not really the nicest screen in the world 😅 but we really wanted to get it in because upgrades and achievements were here to answer the question "Why would anyone want to play again?". Achievements show you that, you haven't discovered everything the game has to offer and upgrades make it easier for you on your next playthroughs.
About the removing block mechanism, we saw it as a reward for playing right: you can stack up a lot of blocks at the start of the game when it's easy and use them when the game takes the difficulty up a notch with the shooters and the wind zones. If a robot takes back your blocks for you, it would be like having infinite blocks, making the game way easier so, some balancing is required there. Should the robot be super hard to get? Should we make the game harder when the robot is here? Should we make special levels where we can have the robot and take the infinite blocks into account when balancing? We need to think it through but, your feelings about this have been heard. 👏
Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing our game! 😁
Well this cleaning robot could be a temporary upgrade after Blocku gets a special item on the map (just like upgrades in runner games like subway serfer, etc.)
Also, my latest thoughts says you could make an experiment with time delay between click and placing a block. Right now you can hold mouse click in front of Blocku and make him never fall at any speed, as well as slowly moving mouse up and down in the process. Forcing player to actually draw a path in advance may be an interesting thing (but it needs testing)
Hey, about the cleaning robot being a temp upgrade, the idea can also be tested to see what it implies inside the game, but I think indeed that having this being temporary would be more sweated to our game 🤔
About the delay between clicking and placing a block tho, we've tried it during development and it wasn't as fun as just drawing a continuous line. Basically, to avoid the player being overpowered we had 2 main ideas:
1. Player has a limited amount of blocks and must use them wisely
2. Block placement has a cooldown so the player makes sure he doesn't overdo this.
Solution 2 nerfed a lot the player and took away a little bit of the fun of the game so we decided to stick with 1. According to your comment tho, this still needs some balancing. A lot of comments suggested having fewer blocks to make the player use them more wisely. I think we're going to try this one and see how well it holds up! 👏
This is just the sort of game that scratches an itch for me, it's similar to many games with incremental upgrades (e.g. Learn To Fly), but in this one I felt in complete control of how far the character could travel in one sitting. I think with more upgrades and game mechanics, this game could be as fun as the classic Flash games in this genre I like so much. Nice job
Thanks a lot mate! 😁
Indeed with a larger timeframe, adding more upgrades/mechanics to the core concept of this game could take it to the next level and make it more enjoyable! We'll do our best to try to put the game in this direction. Thanks for playing our game! 🤝