Play game
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
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
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.
Very confusing and not very creative. Though the art style is very good.
Very confused playing this - the pixelated fractal looks cool, but the actual gameplay is not well explained unfortunately.
unfortunate that you had that experience. in the upcoming FracTale II, there will be more in-game hints as to what to do.
I saw this being discussed whilst being developed. Neat stuff!
very creative idea, but half the fun was figuring out how the game works. nevertheless, really cool concept.
sounds like you had some fun, that's good to hear!
I love the idea and the fact that it works! But I wish it was explained better because took me a few times to understand.
The idea is very creative, I think the gameplay is a little bit unclear though? The combat is a bit clunky (mostly I think because I couldn't figure out if/how I could shoot diagonally), and I die a lot because I get stuck on stuff, but I love the implementation of the fractal layers, the general concept/tech and the music!!
thanks for playing and giving helpful feedback. i can announce that FracTale II is in the works, which will completely revamp the combat.
Fun! Love the idea and execution
thanks for playing
It's a cool idea and well-executed!