The team definitely didn't underachieve with that game!!! Super enjoyable, love how you learn what achievements you need to avoid in the earlier levels and that stays constant in later ones too. And the final level! I don't want to give spoilers but I have no idea how you made and tested so much good content in. Great work, truly enjoyed this one.
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UnderAchiever's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #284 | 4.125 | 4.125 |
| Overall | #595 | 3.815 | 3.815 |
| Enjoyment | #758 | 3.571 | 3.571 |
| Presentation | #1084 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
Ranked from 56 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 role of achievements, usually positive, has been reversed so that they are something to be avoided at all costs.
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
Comments
Thanks so much! Glad you liked it! The achievements actually don’t totally stay constant, but that’s something we will fix after the jam is over, since it was what we were going for.
We’re really proud of the final level. It was an idea we had relatively early that we thought would be really funny, but we didn’t expect to have time to implement it. As for how we made and tested so much content: sleep was pretty low on the list of priorities last weekend XD
Thank you!
We weren’t totally sure whether we should make there be some levels that you could pass even with an achievement. It wasn’t a bug, but it’s something we might change in a hypothetical future of the game. We tried to make it reasonably clear that was okay on the levels where it was with the level’s opening dialogue (“something tells me I can get at most one achievement” and “maybe if I only accomplish one of these feats it’ll be okay”), but I understand the confusion since that made the “rules” a bit inconsistent between levels.
Also, so pleased to hear you liked the platforming physics! It’s not how we wanted it to feel exactly, but it’s nice to hear it isn’t universally disliked :) It definitely plays better with a gamepad because you have more granular control, but we tried to make both control schemes reasonably acceptable.
Thanks so much!
Yeah, sorry about the platforming physics, we didn’t end up having time to refine them as much as we would have liked.
As for the last level, yes, it was probably a bit too hard, but here are some hints in case you want to try again:
Click here for the specific scoring details
You will win the level if you get 4 or fewer achievements, so less than 25 coins. So you can tank it a bit on the harder parts, as long as you dodge the easier phases more thoroughly.Click here for a small hint
If you go all the way to the left side after it starts, you have a bit more time to react, since the view will no longer center on you completely. However, the hardest phase is nearly impossible to dodge from the far left, see hint below.Click here for a larger hint
The super hard phase (the connected lines of bullets with a single gap) can be dodged by going back and forth between the second-from-the-top middle platform, and the small platform down two and over one from it.
You’ll need to do a little hop on the circled top platform as the coins pass by, but we found that to be easier than going up higher to a safer platform.
Yeah, unfortunately we weren’t able to put more time into tightening up the platforming physics, but it was on our to-do list, haha. It was a lot worse about 4 hours before submission, but we are still not thrilled with how the movement feels.
Fair point about it feeling cheap, both with not knowing what to do and with introducing new achievements. We tried to give slight hints about what you might have to do with the initial dialogue, but the game is definitely designed around needing to lose a few times to gain information. For the game jam we prioritized letting people see more dialogue, so we didn’t want to make it too easy to know what to do ahead of time.
Definitely a lot to think about if we decide to keep working on it after the jam, thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the kind words! Palette swapping dad to make the uncle was originally a time-saving measure, but we’d probably keep it even if we had infinite time because we found it kind of hilarious when it was implemented.
Agreed on the feel of the controls. Tightening them up was definitely something we would have liked to do, but ran out of time for additional iterations. Believe it or not, the jumping was a lot more floaty and awkward about 4 hours before we submitted, haha.
Glad you liked it!
Here’s a hint for the third level in case you want to try again:
Third level specific hint
The achievements you can get are “Collect 5 coins”, “Finish the level without taking any damage”, and “Finish the level without killing any enemies”, so the requirement to win is to both take damage and kill the noomba, and of course collect fewer than 5 coins.
You can satisfy the first two requirements by letting the noomba hit you before you kill it.
1 year ago(+1)
Haha, no worries. We might have been wise to put some specific inner monologue text after certain types of failure, at least in the earlier levels, to make it a bit clearer. Something to think about if we expand on the game after the jam. Thanks for playing!
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