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A jam submission

Cosmic ReclaimerView game page

A game about resizing and pushing/pulling boxes to solve puzzles! Oh, and petting a dog!
Submitted by BeardedCynic, aurora-a-k-a-lightning — 15 hours, 56 minutes before the deadline
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Cosmic Reclaimer's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Style#26043.2133.213
Overall#31852.9782.978
Enjoyment#34302.7382.738
Creativity#35062.9842.984

Ranked from 61 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?
3D Puzzle Game (Sokoban/Lolo inspired) You can scale boxes, and walls to solve puzzles! Bug in the WebGL version, check description!

Development Time

96 hours

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Comments

Viewing comments 47 to 28 of 47 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

Wow this is really cool! Such a cool idea. Scaling the cube is fun and the animations and art are amazing!!!

(+2)

this music is everything!!

Submitted(+2)

Art and music were very nice, the chill background music was great while dragging blocks around. 

The controls felt a little weird, almost like the player was ice skating a little bit and having to use F for the block and WASD at the same time made it feel a little clunky at times. 

Overall was fun to play for a bit!

Submitted(+1)

I kept tripping over my fingers navigating these puzzles. 

Submitted(+2)

Gave it my best shot, but I got locked too when trying to vault somewhere, and it died :(

Submitted(+2)

I wasn't able to complete this, sadly! I got soft-locked in the middle section because the vault/climb mechanic just stopped working. I'd restarted it twice and kept encountering the same bug at the same point :(

I really enjoyed the presentation though! I know others may disagree, but my favorite thing about this game was the isometric player controller. Something about the way the camera rotates pleased lizard brain. Let me know if that bug ever gets resolved, I would love to be able to give this game a proper run!

Submitted(+2)

Thanks for participating in the stream, here's the VOD clip:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2234050169

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

Submitted(+2)

The controls for this game felt... strange. I would frequently have to hold both F and WASD at the same time, which felt weird sense the same finger is usually used for both of those. It would've been nicer if that was bound to something like Shift instead. Vault and Climb felt like you wanted to include interesting movement, but didn't think about anything beyond 'we should include this'. The level design frequently includes parts that look like you should be able to vault/climb, but you can't (for example, any two-block-high wall with a box pushed against it). Not to mention that anything a vault/climb can do, a basic jump would've been able to do too, while feeling much more intuitive and a lot less janky.

The camera also felt strange. All of the puzzle-solving elements take place on a 2D grid, but the camera (and therefore the directional controls) are offset 45 degrees away from that grid. Also I frequently rotated the camera in the opposite direction that I wanted to. I think making Q+E rotate the direction that the camera is looking would've been more intuitive than rotation the direction of the position of the camera. Also why no mouse-based camera controls? That would've been by far the most intuitive.

The puzzles were also not ideal. For the most part, the difficult part of the puzzle was 'find where the goal is', and the easy part was 'get this box to the goal' when it should've been the other way around. Every single puzzle in this game more complicated than a tutorial seemed to have one of two solutions: either use a box to make a bridge, or use a box to block lasers. I would've liked to see a bit more depth/complexity there.

One thing that took me a while to learn about gamedev is that you should playtest early and playtest often. The sooner you playtest things, so sooner you find out what is and isn't working, and you can focus your attention on those issues.

Submitted(+2)

Art is great, music is groovy, and gameplay is fun! I personally was okay with the camera, but I think being able to rotate it more freely with Q and E instead of set angles would make navigation a bit more smooth :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+2)

Very nice concept. I love the visuals and the music. I'm not so sure about the camera and unfortunately I encountered a bug where "x" wasn't responding when I tried to go up the stairs in the first big room. Then I restarted the game and tried again, got up there, although I'm not sur if my method was the intended way. Managed to get a bit further, then died. On my third try it wasn't responding to "x" in the same place.

Developer(+1)

Yep, that is the bug we mentioned in the description! Sorry about that, but thanks for playing!

Submitted(+2)

I wasn't sure about the whole 3D thing at first, but you used it for the puzzles quite nicely. Impressive game!

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Great puzzle game! There were already a bunch of comments that have said what I was going to say in a much more eloquent fashion (level size, camera lock,  controls, etc), so I'll just settle with saying that despite that, I honestly still enjoyed it! Good job! Aside from that, we'd appreciate if you guys also took a looksy at our game < 3

Developer(+1)

Will do, thanks for playing!

(+2)

Seriously! in the name of visuals it is a masterpiece that describes the beauty of open-world 3D games. The controls could've been made more better but i think the good artwork has taken all over it and covered its vulnerabilities.

Best of luck.

I will have pleasure if you play and rate my game as well.

Developer(+2)

Thank you! Will check your game out as well!

Submitted(+2)

Love the art style! The control keys are a bit weird, I think.

When I got off the first climb in the tutorial, I couldn’t climb back.

Submitted(+2)

Thanks for submitting this to the stream! I enjoyed finding all of your 'easter eggs' >:)

Developer(+2)

lol, thanks for playing.

Submitted (1 edit)

Hey, wanted to give this a proper review since I know you've been contributing to lots of other games today.

Firstly, love the theme and the music. If those assets weren't premade they're really well executed.

Lots of people have mentioned the controls and level size so I won't hammer those home - I would think about what keys games usually use for vault & climb and try stick to those.

I have a few things to say about the level design that might be worth considering in the future.

  • Try guide the player visually between goals - I didn't know what to do after climbing this tower for example - turns out it was nothing.



    Colours would have helped, matching the colour of the box / gate / switch to each other means the player knows what to expect when flicking a switch/moving a box.

    Alternatively a wire or track that goes from the switch to a gate is often used and would have helped here.
  • If there is a choice of direction/branch (like in the middle part), I would suggest you make sure you show the player all 3 routes on one screen so they know only 1 is open. I spent time trying to get through the gate on the right for example. I climbed on the small box, tried to climb on the big box (it was at waste height) and couldn't. This would all come out through play testing I'm sure.
  • I found a few places on the map that didn't serve a purpose. After the second gate in the middle I turned immediately left to see a completely blank area - you can be ruthless with how much of your level is walkable. Make sure every part serves a purpose. Especially in the second area - I rushed through that part without having to use multiple boxes. If you want your players to solve a puzzle with a particular solution you have to make sure they can't just rush through/cheese it.
  • Finally, a small one, but I didn't think the terminals stood out enough visually - I had to look hard to see them.

All in all I think this is a great entry and fits the theme well. If you ever need a play tester to guide feedback feel free to reach out.

Aegis 🛡


p.s I was promised that I could pet a dog... I did not find a dog :(

Developer

The most important thing first, the dog: One of the glitches we left in the game lets you pull a box backwards into a wall and appear on the other side of it when you let go. If you do that at the very start, and walk directly away from where you pop out at, you'll run into the pup. He does have a bark animation but his controller breaks after that and he will freeze forever, lol.

Thank you for the rest of your feedback! I definitely agree with everything you had to say, and I wish I had left myself time to execute on that level and playtest more to find the things that may not have been quite as obvious. Unfortunately, we were really ambitious and ended up scrapping half of our plans about 12 hours before submission, so that level was haphazardly cobbled together in a few hours just to showcase what mechanics we managed to get into the game. I will probably try to do a post-jam update myself, even if my partner isn't up to it, to fix the glaring issues, many of which you mentioned.

We had originally planned everything with four folks, brainstormed, picked potential genres, themes, experimented with toolkits, assets, universal mechanics, etc. Then we lost two of our team members right before the jam and didn't bother to adjust our ideas to accommodate, so we ended up way over-scoped. I swear I say this every jam, but next time, I am going to set scope requirements and MVP much more reasonably to make sure this doesn't happen again, lol.

Submitted(+1)

Ah sorry to hear you lost 2 team members, that must have made things much trickier. All things considered, it's a great game and has loads of potential. Hope you get round to doing the update.

Aegis 🛡

Submitted(+1)

LMAO i kinda brike the game by pooling multiple boxes on my character !! Also the idea of rotating the camera is cool but might have been more free (like not clamping the rotation) this way you could always watch with right angle. Apart from that, it's a nice puzzle game and it's quite polished, good job !

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing! Considering changes to the camera post-jam, have had a lot of mixed feedback about it!
Also, yes, there are way too many ways to break it right now, lol.

Submitted

ahah i'm quite curious of all the others bugs, i might try again post jam to find them!

Submitted(+1)

Really cool idea! Controls were really hard to get used to tho... I read in a previous comment that vault and climb had to be separate keys so that's understandable but it's still tricky to use... I also personally didn't like the way the camera moves. Pressing Q/E to rotate it doesn't come natural to me... It did help that they have a default position and rotate automatically so that was great! Other than controls, the games was really fun!

Submitted(+1)

Design is definitely the best part of the game ! camera is also really cool and smooth, so is the music, As mentionned by others rooms look too big and empty, however that's fine that doesn't make the game less amusing ! Keep up the good work :)

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Cool puzzle game but definitely needs some more polish.

Rooms feel empty but I know that level design is hard and for 4 days the only thing you are thinking about is to make them functional, not pretty ;P
Character model and texturing is amazing! (Itch cover render <3) As a 3D modeler I admire people who can do such an amazing job for a jam. Tho run animation felt a little stiff. But man! Vaulting animation!? Really well made.

A good base for a game that can be easily expanded.
Also I really enjoyed vaulting over small boxes :P

Note from my gf:
"When you gonna rate them tell them that the music is awesome!"
So here you are :P

Developer

lol, thank you.

Viewing comments 47 to 28 of 47 · Next page · Last page