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Spirit Hands's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #1 | 4.818 | 4.818 |
| Graphics | #53 | 3.545 | 3.545 |
| Theme | #63 | 3.727 | 3.727 |
| Overall | #76 | 3.078 | 3.078 |
| Audio | #82 | 2.818 | 2.818 |
| Fun | #99 | 2.636 | 2.636 |
| Controls | #135 | 2.364 | 2.364 |
| Accessibilty | #150 | 1.636 | 1.636 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3 stable
Wildcards Used
N/A
Game Description
2.5D (actually 3d with fixed camera) puzzler hat brings your real-world movements into a mystical forest realm. Using your webcam, the game tracks your actual hand movements, transforming them into in-game actions and where your hand gestures directly influence the game world. As a forest guardian, you'll manipulate shadows, elements, and energy to solve increasingly complex puzzles. Your mission: help the Owl of Wisdom restore cosmic harmony. Move the camera with Arrow Left Right or AD and the hands that do the magic with your own hands pointed at your webcam.
How does your game tie into the theme?
Dark cave with some shadows and light cracks where your hand shadows have the power to influence the world
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
xorgh_
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
2
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Comments
Love the concept, however I found it pretty challenging to actually play. The hand would fly around and flit about, and when I moved to the right and a prompt would trigger it would disappear before I could finish reading. I liked the look of the font, but it didn't help my speed of reading. Would love to see this more polished and its pretty amazing what you did get working in the short time.
All good points, will need to make sure the hands are always visible in the viewport just like your mouse cursor will always stay at the edge of your screen. And plan to polish it up and add another level making this first level also more a tutorial level with some more steering and teaching the mechanics.
I am excited to see the updates
Somehow my webcam seems to think that my face is a hand so I couldn't really play the game, but I love the idea! It's incredible that you managed to achieve this in such a short amount of time. Great job!
hahaha, did you try playing it with your head? =D
I absolutely loved the concept of this game! I haven't seen a game utilize webcam tracking in ages! The tracking itself seemed a bit clunky? I am not sure on the limitation of this, as I didn't even know this was possible! The only real critique I have is with the tracking itself. With how the hands would jump around, it would be difficult for someone with mobility issues to play (Like my younger brother). Other than that though, this game is definitely "Wishlist" material if it can be a desktop game.
Thanks really appreciate the praise!
Yeh the tracking itself is actually quite good: I disabled the 2d visualization last minute as it was just too many hands on the screen :) Main challenge was in translating the 2d points of fingers into a rigged 3d hand bone positions. But outside of a jam time-constraint should be doable to make this feel way better.
Planning on doing some bugfixes and improvements post jam, as well as add another level.
Another potential thing as well: Before watching the video it was instinct for me to try to Swipe to move on. Kinda like a eBook. Do you think there is a way to incorporate that to the tracking?
I actually had point finger left and right gesture recognition, as well as just have a hand at the edge of the screen left or right to move, but caused unexpected movement to people so removed it last minute. But swiping is a good idea. Doable :)
The hand tracking system is really impressive! Great job on implementing that! From a gameplay perspective however, I felt very confused throughout the entire demo and the only times I managed to progress is when something accidentally triggered.
I'd be interested in seeing this evolve in the future though. Are you planning on working on it after the jam?
Thanks! Yes you're right, I wanted to keep things a bit "hand wavy" for you to explore and find out. I planned out an entire second forest level, as well as ways to make the pacing easier and more guard rails around the first cave level teaching you the different hand and shadow mechanics. So I might still do that and improve the first level, as well as the second level.
Theres a bug in the newest chrome for mac, which made me lose one day during the jam, and also means the shadow detection isnt as good (I'm using a bunch of raycasts shooting from the spotlight instead of some viewports and shaders to calculate areas in shadow).
Did you check the youtube walkthrough video? Would be curious to hear more what you would improve to make this more clear?
I think watching your walk-through helped me understand the game mechanics much more so maybe seeing another pair of hands in game guide through the tasks would've helped prompt me the first time
Yes thats a good idea: some ghost hands teaching you the mechanics. Thanks!
I am ranking based on your youtube video, thank you for providing it! The use of cam tracking is a fantastic idea and something that I never would have thought of using in a jam. I liked the environment design as well as the 2D perspective of a 3D world, was really neat to see!
Thanks fatalsparrow. Yeh it was a bit hectic to get it all to work in such a short amount of time, but very glad it worked out and even managed to get this first level in!
I'm planning some fixes and will also add a second level (eg playing some drums with your hands :) )
Any ideas on how you'd improve the current game?
I'm impressed you got hand tracking working with Godot on web in such a short amount of time! I had to adjust my angles and lighting a bit to get it tracking well, moving back from my camera and making sure my hands were clearly visible to the camera, but it's not my first rodeo.
I wasn't sure how my hands were influencing the environment. Literal handwaving worked well enough though, and I was able to get through the game. I can see from the video playthrough that I missed a bit of intended gameplay. I also found it unintuitive to have them mirrored, when there was a 3d environment with depth to navigate.
For the text, the story/hints mid-game about what to do go by too quickly to read and benefit from. I'd also suggest saving the fancy font for short bits of flavor, and using an easier to read font for any full-length sentences.
Now that you've got the system working, I bet you'll be able to do some real cool stuff with it, given a less absurd time constraint :)
Yeh I actually had depth in there as well initially as the data is there, but it just didnt translate well into the 3d space. And yeh the game itself in the end is pretty small as most of my time was spend on getting the hand (and gesture) tracking to work well and then to translate that into 3d OMG, rigging hands and all the math needed to translate 2d landmarks in relative space into proper coordinates for two hand armatures... pfff... That were some crazy late nights :)
But yes exactly, now its there I can make the hand movement more smooth (I disabled the 2d visualizations but form there you could see that the hand tracking itself works ver well, its just hard to translate it well into 3d bones).
And yes was all very last minute, so dialogue text goes by too quick, and also doesnt align well, etc, but hey its there! :D
The game looks really nice from what I can see, but I don't have a webcam unfortunately :(
Will do a short youtube walk through as well, but thanks! webcam + javascript2godot + machine learning part took the majority of the time, but also quite pleased with the 3d environment, like the fake god rays I managed to get to work in godot's compatiblity/webgl renderer.
Heres the video: