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The Forgotten Tome's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #3 | 4.077 | 4.077 |
| Fun | #3 | 3.885 | 3.885 |
| Overall | #5 | 3.681 | 3.681 |
| Theme | #7 | 3.731 | 3.731 |
| Accessibility | #8 | 3.269 | 3.269 |
| Controls | #12 | 3.615 | 3.615 |
| Originality | #16 | 3.731 | 3.731 |
| Graphics | #17 | 3.462 | 3.462 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
Godot 3.5 Mono
Wildcards Used
Checkpoint
Game Description
Play as the forgotten tome in this 3D platformer! Make you way through each stage, collecting pages, avoiding cultists, and finding the portal.
How does your game tie into the theme?
You play as a book containing forgotten knowledge. For this reason the dark cultists are chasing you to learn this knowledge. You have lost some pages that you should collect as you play through the game.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
Cadoink (Chris)#9597
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
11
My game has an export for Linux, Windows, & Mac and/or is playable through HTML5
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Comments
Nice game! It reminds me of Banjo-Kazooie and certain Mario 64 levels. I had lots of fun flying around and I loved the book gliding animation. The music and sound effects really fit the game well, I especially liked the noises the cultist made.
The controls were pretty good, but it took me a while to figure out that the best time to start gliding was immediately after jumping - usually I would expect I should try to glide starting from the peak of my arc, rather than at the start of the arc. Also, it seemed like there was no good way to “resume” gliding once you cancel it, which threw me off.
The platforming was a fun challenge, but I would have liked a little more difficulty dealing with enemies too - I think a cultist only captured me once, so maybe giving them a little more aggro or some additional enemy types would have been more challenging.
I did have to download the Linux build as the web version was stuttering quite a bit, but it ran with no apparent issues on my Steam Deck.
Congrats on the entry! This was a fun playthrough.
Wow! I'm so happy to hear it ran on a Steam Deck. That's quite exciting!! I wasn't able to test the Linux build.
I'm glad you enjoyed the game! Banjo-Kazooie is one of my favorite games. :) I agree the cultists were not that interesting of a challenge, and the controls could have been a bit better. Once I started making levels, I left the mechanics alone so that I wouldn't have to readjust the levels afterwards.
That was a fun little game. The graphics and the music were nice fitting this mystic ambience. The idea of collecting lost pages is nice. My favourite part was the fly animation of the book! I also liked that you show times on the finish of every level. Because of the timers and your game was not stretched, I played it twice and tried to speed run it on the second time. At least got faster. ^^ The controls were pretty smooth, I often become very frustrated in plattformers but this was not the case here.
Great Job!
I also collected some points along my playthrough, hope they help!
Thank you!! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Really happy to hear that you played through it twice. :)
Thank you for the feedback. I should have reset the position of the cultists on respawn, that could have resolved the issue. The cultists weren't a threat because I wanted the game to be easy enough for most people to complete it, and outside of running away, I didn't get time to implement any way to address them (I wanted to add a fireball ability in level 3). In the end they were just kind of a bit of world building.
The menu was bound to Tab rather than Esc because in the web browser hitting escape cancels fullscreen and takes focus away. I've gotten complaints about that in the past. I should have done something to rebind it to Esc for desktop builds. Similarly a quit button won't work in an HTML export, but should have been included in the desktop builds of the game.
100% agree on the mouse sensitivity setting. It didn't cross my mind.
The coins and pages were more for tutorialization and to help show the player where to go. It would have been nice if they played a bigger role had time allowed.
Thanks again for playing and for the excellent feedback!
Ah true, the browser stuff is always getting in the way. But that makes sense! Thanks for the explanations!
This was fun! The music and controls are great. Gathering your lost pages is a clever use of the theme, I just wish it was used a little bit more! If not to grant new upgrades (which is fair given it's a jam game), then maybe having more pages across the level that are just fluff text or informational ones like for the cultists in the beginning. You could even probably just have a small number of pages be the primary collectable in each level, rather than the larger number of quills.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed the music and the controls! I think your suggestion is excellent. The pages maybe should have been more like stars in Mario or the jig saw puzzle pieces in Banjo Kazooie. I had considered adding some additional ones, but with the time I had, I just left them as unlocks and tutorialization. Originally level 3 was going to have a fireball ability to combat the cultists and that would have been an additional page.
Reminds me of one of my favorite games: Banjo Kazooie.
Really like this.
Thank you!! I love Banjo Kazooie! Big inspiration.
That was a fun experience, played to the end! The controls felt nice, which is very crucial for a platformer. The visual style is really nice and the music choice fits it well. As a whole it reminded of the old mascot 3D platformers I enjoy so much, your game has a similar charm to it.
I’ve played Windows version and found a little bug:
In the start of the level, if you die while gliding (without saving at a checkpint), you respawn running and gliding at the same time.
Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Many of the old 3D platformers were big inspirations for this.
That's a pretty funny bug! I think it probably is possible in all builds of the game. My character controller ended up becoming a giant mess, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are some other quirks you can get out of the character. Somehow there is a way to get the book to only half close when you land, though I am not sure how to reproduce it.
Cute game! And was pleasantly surprised it ran so well in the browser. Gliding was a very fun mechanic. Didn't feel like there was much point in collecting the quills since it wasn't counted, but understand you can't fit everything in under jam constraints. Overall, well done!
Thank you! I displayed the collected count in the end screen, but didn't have time to show the total number. I just called them coins in the UI. They basically just acted as an additional way to guide the player and provide maybe a little bit of satisfaction when collected!
Glad it ran well in the browser and that you enjoyed gliding! :)
This was a lot of fun. Reminded me a lot of Spyro with the gliding. The music is fantastic and really fit the theme of the game. And very good use of theme overall. A book gathering pages to remember how to do abilities is perfect! I hope to see more.
I played this in the browser and it ran fine with no problems.
Thank you so much for the kind words! I thought collecting pages as a book was pretty cute! Jeremy did a great job with the music. I'm glad people are enjoying it. :) Also glad the game worked fine in the browser for you. It runs very well for me, but I have a pretty high end PC, so I always try to optimize as best I can just in case. 😅
I'm really amazed that you made a 3D game playable on browser in such a tiny amount of time... O.O
Also, the fact that you are the forgotten knowledge and that lost pages are tutorial elements is clever!
Congrats!
The two issues I experienced:
- I'm french, so not being able to change the WASD to ZQSD for AZERTY keyboard was a bit fustrating... That's why I didn't play through the entire game.
- In the browser version at least, I experienced some weird audio glitches like music freezing while I was pressing a key... Not sure if it is my network or something...
Ahh! I'm so sorry about the key binds. I must have picked wrong between Key and Physical key. That probably would have solved the issue. Additionally I've always meant to include key remapping's in my jam entries, but haven't taken the time to implement it yet.
The browser version can experience audio glitches on some lower powered machines. I attached a Windows and Linux build for people who were experiencing audio issues in the browser.
Thank you for the kind words and the feedback. I appreciate it. :)
This was very neat!
Thank you!! :)
Love the idea of being able to glide by opening up. The main character was a bit creepy lol but I think that was intentional. I like the music too. The mouse sensitivity felt a bit low but that might just have been me.
Yes the eyes are too creepy! I wanted the book to look like something cultists would want to get their hands on, and that's what came out. 😅
I should have included a mouse sensitivity setting in the settings, but didn't think about it.
Thanks for playing. :)
The gliding gave me Zelda vibes 😋
I hadn't thought about Zelda when making this game. Then it dawned on me that TOTK released over the week, and my mechanic was pretty similar to the paraglider. Should have spent some time studying it. 😄 Thanks for playing the game!
Hi Delpire, jjwinter,
What an amazing entry, enjoyed playing through all 3 levels. It is a PS1-esque vibe platformer which I really really like.
If you want some constructive feedback:
Congrats, it was super fun! :)
Thank you so much! I am so glad you enjoyed the game!
I completely agree with both pieces of feedback. I originally planned to put the total coin count in the end game screen so you could see if you got them all or not, and ended up forgetting to get it done. I also wanted some in game UI so you could see how many coins you had collected so far.
The threat level of the cultist was difficult to tune. Finding a good difficulty curve is something I struggle with. I tend to try to lean towards making the jam games easier rather than more difficult to ensure as many people can enjoy it as possible. Even so, some people still end up finding my games a little too difficult. I also didn't want to make the cultists more threatening without having a way for the player to address them. The original plan was for level three to have a page that unlocked a fireball attack, but that got cut for time.
Thanks again for the kind words and feedback. 😊
I absolutely get that, my jam games always turn out way too difficult :(
I should probably try to lean towards making them easier too! :D
Was cool to read all the plans you had, thanks for coming back to me and congrats again! ^_^
This game is fun! Movement feels nice, especially the gliding. Atmosphere is top-notch. I got Spyro and Santa Claus in Trouble vibes. And book animations are cute. :D
Thank you! I was really pleased with how the atmosphere turned out. I didn't think of Spyro when I was making it, but I should have studied it a bit!
Super great job! I actually found the hardest part was the first glide jump, not very forgiving if you hit glide too late :)
So much fun!
Well done!
Thank you!! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I didn't mean to make the first glide the most difficult, but I guess it does teach you that you fly the furthest when you start gliding at your jump's apex. 😅
Very fun game :)
Hard to imagine it was done with only 2 devs
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
That was really fun! Very solid mechanics, although the way gliding works by reducing your gravity while jumping led to some weird feeling situation, like falling _very_ quickly after gliding for too long, or flying upward by taking advantage of the big initial upward velocity from jumping.
The graphics and music were charming and fit the overall aesthetic really well. No complaints about SFX either, they were subtle and on point.
I don't know if it was intentional, but there's a huge skip on level 3 where you're shown the goal right away and on the second wind tunnel you can circle back and boost all the way up to the top off the mountains only to glide right down to the finish. :D
Overall awesome work! I had a lot of fun exploring and playing through.
Thank you for the kind words! I wanted to spend more time tweaking the gliding mechanics, but at some point I had to just stick with what I had so that I could design the levels around them.
I tried to prevent skips in general, but for the sake of getting things done on time, I didn't spend a ton of time on level 3 trying to prevent them. You can actually skip even sooner than the second wind tunnel. If you fly into the first and turn around, you can make it onto that cliff and then to the portal island from there. 😂After discovering the skip, I wished I had had time to create a leader board for the speed runners out there.
Glad you enjoyed the game. 😄
Oh, that's interesting. Now I kind of want to go back and try to beat it as quickly as possible. Last time I looked around a lot and tried to collect all the golden inkwells just because it was satisfying :D
Glad you found collecting them satisfying. I hid a group of them on the third level. Would have been cool to hide some easter eggs around in some of the areas off the main path. Most of my focus there at the end was trying to make sure the HTML5 build played decently on lower end PCs.
Let me know if you do go back and get some good times. 😁