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FracTale's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Style | #862 | 3.941 | 3.941 |
| Creativity | #1401 | 3.627 | 3.627 |
| Overall | #2807 | 3.085 | 3.085 |
| Enjoyment | #6534 | 1.686 | 1.686 |
Ranked from 51 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?
it's a friggin' fractal.
Development Time
96 hours
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Comments
Really creative use of the theme! I loved everything about this game, the tone, colors, art, everything!
Ooh, I love the idea of a game playing on a fractal, the ultimate infinite zoom! Unfortunately, even with the page description, I couldn't really figure how the game works. Managed to fight a couple of guys, but no idea what exactly I captured and how those colored resources work. I think there's potential for a cool game in here, you probably just need a bit more player guidance.
Takes a while to get used to but it makes up for it with sheer originality.
It's a neat idea using fractals as the basis for the game but none of the cool looking battles I see in the gifs happened for me. It just sorta showed that I had conquered everything the whole time, couldn't make sense of why the different colors were gaining points or not.
Unfortunately this control scheme makes the game difficult to play, it's an interesting mechanic
Stylistically awesome though, both graphics and audio
The controls are really strange and feel like a throwback to the past. Why not make the wasd keys move the player and let us shoot using the mouse? I can't think of any reason not to.
The game is needlessly tricky. It's a shame because it looks and sounds great and very creatively fits the theme so well. Please just fix the controls and you could have a really interesting and fun game. It pains me to see something amazing falter on such a minor problem that's just a bizarre design choice.
i agree actually. the controls will be fixed in the upcoming FracTale II.
the bizarre design choices come from being under pressure with the 4-day deadline. most of my efforts went into programming the fractal engine, with little time left for QA.
Hey! Congrats on finishing your game!
This game is just oozing character. In the good way. Its look is super striking and reminds me a lot of games from a much older generation.
I had no idea what I was really doing. I tried playing, then read the instructions, then tried again, then re-read the instructions. I'm still not sure what I was doing.
I know I needed to "capture" zones. And then I would get some amount of a color, but that number was constantly changing? I saw other commenters struggling with the Fight or Trade, so I knew to press one of those buttons, but I don't know what I did or if I did it. How do I interact with a trade?
And the movement/shooting controls were really counter-intuitive. Most folks are used to using WASD for moving, so trying to retrain my brain for a jam game to move with my right hand and shoot with my left just didn't work. I kept trying, but it was even more difficult because the enemies seemed to spam bullets on a diagonal and I could only shoot orthogonally. Needing to click and then move my hand to the arrows was really unintuitive, too.
I really want to dig more into this system because it look super cool. The aesthetic, the idea of capturing colors and diving deeper into the fractal sounds really promising. With more time and some external playtesters to help you identify these hurdles, this could be something really cool. But also - this is a game jam. It's for testing ideas and I imagine you've learned a ton, both from creating and getting feedback on this game. Don't feel obligated to fix this or remake it. You made something super cool, even if it's a bit too big brain for me :)
Also - watch out for those flashing lights. The large, rapidly flashing sections of the screen can be aggressive on the eyes!
Keep making games!
> Don't feel obligated to fix this or remake it.
too late, i've already started working on FracTale II. :p
i think the issues you've addressed can be easily dealt with (from a technical standpoint), it just takes some keen eye for design.
> How do I interact with a trade?
up/down to change amount (if you can afford to do so), Z to initiate trade. the character will start F)ighting you if you trade for 0 amount.
> And then I would get some amount of a color, but that number was constantly changing?
capturing doesn't actually give you any color, the number is just your previously owned color plus the values of pixels you're standing on. you lock in to the animated resource's current value when zooming.
uhh. it's weird.
this seems like a game with very cool and deep mechanics that I unfortunately do not understand at all. the art is very pretty though! also I can't believe this is the only game that used fractals for the theme I've seen. it's so obvious in hindsight!
haha, fractals were like my second idea after hearing the theme. i thought there's bound to be someone else with a fractal theme, but i haven't seen one in the wild yet.
I always like seeing your games because you always come up with ideas I would never see coming. This one is pretty and it has some cool math stuff, but it sure is opaque, which... in a sense is kind of cool, maybe, because it evokes a sense like when I was a kid trying to figure out how to play on the computer, but it's probably a hard sell in a jam.
The things to me that I found confusing:
- I don't know what it means to "capture" something, or how my choice of place to click at the start affects what I'm capturing.
- I don't really know what a trade is. Is it just a way to avoid playing the shooting part of the game? I don't know the controls to finalize a trade, or negotiate, or whatever it is you can do.
- Switching from a mode where you use a mouse to a two-hand keyboard control scheme is super unusual. I saw in the instructions that you shoot with WASD, but they don't say that you move with the arrows, so I was trying to move with the mouse and confused that nothing was happening. It's also hard to tell which one of the circles is me during a fight like that.
- I *think* that I'm supposed to try to explore the deeper levels of the fractal, but I'm not 100% sure. Maybe I can go down forever? I wonder if this is something I could better appreciate if I know more about fractal math.
This is definitely one of the most unique games I've seen in this jam and I can see the work that went into it, so I hope you aren't too disappointed with the response. I bet with the right framing and some tutorialization folks would get into this more.
thank you for the thorough feedback, FracTale II is in the works and your comment will be a basis for improvements. i can credit you as a special thanks, is somnule the name you want displayed?
somnule works just fine, sure!
then it shall be! you'll hear about the development of FracTale II in the GMTK Discord.
I love thee look fo the game, the fractal stuff is awesome. I did not at any point understand what I was tryiing to do and I ended up just clicking the screen around myself until the game said thngs.
I really gave it a go but could not grasp it. Aesthetic great though.
The good points: love the look and the music and the sounds, always dig a retro vibe. The difficult points: even with the directions, I wasn't able to progress. It feels like it needs some more time in a tutorial zone to really iron out what's going on and give the player a good idea of what to expect. As it is I'm kinda dropped in and dying pretty quickly. The idea though, of warring fractals, and the potential of infinite zoom, is super cool and is absolutely worth exploration :)
Feedback:
The game is lacking feedback and communication. Please don't require people to read documentation to play your game. It's an immediate bad impression that can be easily avoided. Well designed games teach you how to have fun playing them.
I have no clue what my goal is. I don't know if it's good to be smaller or bigger. I see numbers when moussing over sections of the fractal but I have no idea how to use that information? My resources are bouncing all over the place and I have no idea why other than that it has something to do with where I'm standing and my size. As a consequence, I don't really understand how to gain resources and actually interact with the trade system. Enemies often get caught in small corners where the player can't shoot them since the player's shots are bound to 4 directions. Enemies are overly hard. There's a lot of visual noise on screen and it can be hard to figure out what exactly is being interacted with and why; I get that's kind of the nature of a fractal but it's true nonetheless. The T)rade/F)ight text did not read as key bindings to me, it just looks like you made a typo. Shooting on all sides does not share a cd so the best strategy is to just spam all 4 keys at all times, removing any kind of thought in your aim.
It feels to me that this is trying to be a mix between a territory control game and a twin stick shooter. Typically in twin stick shooters, the WASD keys are used for movement and arrow keys are used for shooting. Remember your affordances, people who are used to this kind of game can have an easier time interacting with your game if you stick to genre conventions.
It's stylish. It just really struggles to communicate itself. I hope you can use this info and make your future games even better.
Bugs:
Got pretty small in my last life by just spamming the shrink button and got 5/6 enemies to spawn at the same time and crashed the game. Several instances of the fractal layers being highlighted over UI elements. If you get small enough inside of a single color, eventually the flashing effect for hovering over that color will completely cover everything on screen except for the player/enemies and make combat impossible.
This is intense! Even after knowing the rules, I'm still having a hard time understanding what's on the screen. x) Being colorblind maybe doesn't help. I also struggled with the fights, where often opponents would stay in a corner where I can't hit them. Zooming into a fractal is satisfying though. And the abstract aesthetic makes it a trippy journey!
Cool concept! I love the idea of using the infinite fractal zoom as the environment for a game! And I love the way the music changes as you zoom further and further in!
Love the way this looks, very polished and cool.
No idea what i'm doing, but the fractal looks cool
i've recently updated the description on the game page, does it help?
Really interesting game! Took me a bunch of tries to fully start to understand the rules but once I did I started to really like it. I think the capturing of territory and how that related to zooming in and out was a really unique take and I do not think I have ever seen anything like it. Also, and I cannot say this enough, fractals are just so cool.
I think trading with enemies is also really smart although I only had stuff for trading just a few times. I do think combat is on the clunkier side. I think the bizarre nature and shape of the arenas (which is really cools) knocks heads with the wasd directional shooting. Perhaps, if you update the game post jam, you could try making the combat mouse cursor based, outside of combat I feel like the zoom in and out could be attached to the mouse buttons instead of z/x and then have the aiming of projectiles handled by the cursor and mouse buttons during combat.
Regardless , exploring the fractal was hella cool, It was as trippy and wild as one would have hoped! You did a lot with the visuals and feel in this one and it really showed. I especially enjoyed the music, it merged well with the trippy nature of the game.
I really like how you made capturing territory in the fractal such an in depth and trippy affair, where positional thinking and resource evaluation play such a big role in whether or not to zoom in/out at any given point.
I always love seeing what you come up with and this was no exception.
Awesome work as always.
thank you for the thorough feedback! i'll keep all these points in mind for a post-jam version.
Very cool, very confusing. A lot of flashing. I did enjoy exploring the fractal however.
interesting visuals. The game seems pretty fun, but I actually can't understand the rules
This is soo cool! Love the artstyle, but could for the world not figure out how to play it.