Really unique idea and I like the art style. I think this project is a little big for the jam. The game was taking too long for me to kill the opponent. Would love to see a fully balanced version with accessibility.
There were no accessibility options, I felt the default settings were fine for me others may disagree tho
Overall really Good work for a first time jammer :3
Play game
Space Tag's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #7 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Originality | #8 | 4.139 | 4.139 |
| Graphics | #13 | 3.972 | 3.972 |
| Theme | #15 | 4.278 | 4.278 |
| Overall | #15 | 3.679 | 3.679 |
| Fun | #32 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Controls | #33 | 3.306 | 3.306 |
| Accessibilty | #34 | 2.944 | 2.944 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3
Wildcards Used
N/A
Game Description
Space Tag is a grid turn-based mirror-laser-tag game in space! The tutorial is a bit heavy, but it was a last-minute addition. This is our first game ever for most of the team, so we went a bit too broad :) You can skip the tutorial if it's overwhelming - the game is not that hard, and you can always look back for more details in the PDF in description.
How does your game tie into the theme?
Lasers shoot - mirrors reflect! :)
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
rakudajin, xantur6, carlosedge, soinkl
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
0 (first one)
Comments
Really well done for a first game! Only thing I would personally change is the pace of taking a turn but as it is now is highly tactical which is not at all a bad thing :) I also love the upgrade system and ability to configure the ships as you like.
Here are some random ideas that I had while playing that have absolutely no consideration for game balance:
- Mirror-breaking flak cannons
- fog-of-war
- disco-ball asteroid
- destructible "hull armor" blocks
Cheers, and great job on the game jam!
Submitted
DVDThank you! Yep, great ideas - I totally love the disco ball asteroid :D The armour and other cannons are also great ideas!
We thought about the Fog of war, but didn't have time to implement it - the idea was to show the position of the enemy ship before the movement, not after, but we didn't have time to implement it. But I think we will try it out later! :)
This is a really cool game! Once you get over the tutorial and start understanding what is happening on the screen its really entertaining. My favorite character is the little racacoonie, that mirror movement is pretty strong and when you add a nice battery you get tons of options. And my favorite enemy is the cat, those kittens love blowing themselves up 😁😁
One thing that I think would greatly improve the game specially in accessibility is being able to click or hover over the objects to know what they are and not having to reference the tutorial so frecuently.
Congratulations to the team i had lots of fun playing!
Submitted
DanceDanceStudioI love how elaborate this is. There were plenty of warnings about the long tutorial, which I went through all of, and while it does need some work, each page just got me more excited to play. Having _each_ phase choose who goes first, dang I feel dumb never having thought of that! As some others have noted, I'm not certain it's the best choice but it's definitely novel, you just need to tweak and experiment to find what fits the flow best. I still haven't pieced out how everything works but I've lost several times and look forward to trying again.
Given the constraints, I think you made the right choice having a long tutorial that you can skip. I think, over time, a lot of this could be moved to smaller, in-context help for each phase but it will take a while as you refine the game itself, and the feedback systems. Awesome work!
Submitted
PiercerThis looks already like a finalized product. Well done. Can’t add anything graphics, audio, controls all went smooth for me.
Maybe one improvement regarding your intro and tutorial. Since it is very long and take multiple pages, you could also pop them in 1by1 if player sees the phases for the first time. So would allow Read & Do.
Submitted
CyberPong - Mecha BrawlI saw rakudajin commenting on pretty much any game I’ve seen so far, so I thought “they deserve a visit of their own”.
Boy, am I glad I did! What an involved game! I know you’re 4, but you should be proud of how much you got done in 9 days! That’s crazy! The idea is so well executed, and you’ve got so many mechanics. A shame my little brain can’t handle the load of information you get bombarded with at the beginning, I couldn’t get myself to read it all. Which meant my time playing it was without knowing what upgrades did outside of having seen an enemy already use it. Having completely missed that the upgrades were explained anywhere, I thought to myself “I guess that’s what it’s like being new to space laser tag shrug” haha. I also can’t quite figure out if mirrors stacking is a bug or a feature, it confused me a little, and I’m pretty sure both I and my enemy got hurt by ourselves by mirrors not reflecting the same direction as they were visually facing on the map (probably another bug).
If this game had a slightly more sophisticated AI, tooltips on hover of upgrades, some polish on the bugs mentioned, and dare I suggest multiplayer too??, I would definitely buy this game!
Submitted
The Last GuardianThank you so much! Yep, we are definitely going for AI and multiplayer if we are to make this game happen, and I hope we will :)
Yep, there is one remaining bug with mirrors, which I was too fried to track down, but now I see it... But making it in 9 days made our code a real mess, so it was very hard to track things when they get wrong :D Thankfully it happens very rarely, but definitely will be fixed soon :) But probably most of the code should be rewritten when we are bak to the project :)
I can't believe how much you guys got done in the time! Seriously impressive, and there's loads of potential in this idea.
As you've pointed out in your description, it's a little text-heavy at the beginning, especially because you've made it all fairly intuitive in-game. But I really don't have any other complaints. The mechanics all make sense and there's plenty to think about tactically. It's got a great aesthetic and the characters' little victory speeches are great.
A really impressive entry, well done!
Submitted
ReflexionI'm baffled by how much stuff you were able to cram during the jam and having it all working without any issues (for what I could see at least :D ).
The feeling of a board game, like others said, is there, and the mechanics works well together and while it is difficult to take in account everything, it is also really rewarding. I can see it being developed both in a single and multiplayer competitive game with a little bit more polishing.
Only note, like other commenters said, I think is the coinflip that gets annoying after a while, maybe it could make sense to have some sort of Initiative stat that defines the turn order or just a single flip coin at the beginning of the round? Mostly to have the ability to plan ahead better.
Anyway really solid game for such a short time, well done!
Submitted
LAZEROIDThank you! Yep, the turn order is a big question now. I am currently thinking between two options:
1) Make it full-turn-based, where each player executes the full turn, and it will be a bit like an old good "Worms" game (I think we are already accidentally close to it in terms of vibe). The issue would be an extreme advantage for the first player, especially when you can win in 2-3 hits. So it would probably require longer battles to compensate for that advantage.
2) Make it phase-based but with a bit more flexibility in each phase, and remove turn-order for all but mirrors. In the move phase, you both set move simultaneously (not seeing the other player's move) and then you both move, not in turn order. And then you both adjust the angle of the lasers and hit fire and fire simultaneously. This was the initial plan, but we didn't have time to make a simultaneous move execution and laser rotations :) So we had to add a coin flip just not to make it a too-easy-win :)
If I can put down my opinion about the two options, just an input:
1) doesn't necessarily have an extreme advantage for the first player, you have to take in account that the second one has the final saying in the movement of mirrors and of the players (but I think you already know that), even though the first has the advantage in the shooting phase. I also think that in this case an Initiative stat make sense because you can say that the advantage of the first player is offset by the disadvantage in having lower stats in other places, so...yeah...it is something that needs to be thought about properly, but I think it can be managed without longer battles.
2) I don't know if simultaneous play would improve the game, maybe more balanced in terms of turn order but would also move the game more in a "read your opponent" territory and less on the "solve a puzzle turn by turn" territory, which is absolutely fine but personally, as a fan of more euro-style board games, I would prefer the second "territory".
The characters are so cute! Anyway...
The amount of rules and mechanics you made in 9 days is incredible! I can think in only two little things to suggest: The first is to flip the coin only once per turn. The second is to decrease the number of obstacles in a match. I found it hard to move sometimes, because some asteroid came near me and I hadn't enought actions to move all the mirrors away.
With some more adjustments you'll all have a full game. I can even see this as a board game!
Congrats on your entry, it was super fun to play! :D
Submitted
Slime HellThank you! Yep, we need to do something with the coinflip, and maybe rearrange the turn order... A lot to think about... As for the obstacles - it broke a bit after we changed the level dimensions - going from 20x20 level to a progression from 12 to 20, but broke the asteroids and mirrors count ;( But we found it out only after the submission deadline, so it was too late to change :(
And yep, it would be cool to make a boardgame of it :D
Great aesthetics, with pleasant art and a chill soundtrack. Interesting mechanics that are only hampered by the lack of a real opponent.
During the info-dump tutorial at the start of the game, I was expecting this to be difficult to get into… but it was surprisingly easy to grasp once I started playing, and I only needed to reference the tutorial again to remind myself what the different characters specialized in. It’d be nice to see character and ship part descriptions in the game, but I understand things like that are not a priority when working with a jam deadline. I think you made a good choice in making the tutorial images available on the itch page for easy reference.
There’s a lot going on mechanically, which I really liked. Coming up with a plan, aligning everything just right, and then accidentally lasering myself because of a mirror I didn’t account for — it was all great fun. The variety of starting characters incentivized replaying, and the ship customization made it rewarding to win.
To nitpick, the pacing felt hampered by the constant coin flip animation. I liked the randomness of the turn order, as it makes things unpredictable, but I felt like I spent half of my playtime looking at that coin flipping. Also, I think the overall gameplay pacing is a bit off, as the map layout can sometimes lead to many uneventful turns with some of the characters (especially the first match, before getting any custom ship parts).
I only encountered one major bug: With the manipulation-focused ship, I went for a strategy I can only describe as trapping the enemy in mirrors and waiting for them to laser themselves. It worked well, until I unfortunately got softlocked after removing the laser from my ship (to avoid lasering myself), which prevented me from pressing the “Fire!!!” button.
In the end, I had a good time exploring the mechanics, but the unintelligent enemies ultimately hurt the replayability. That said, there are lot of great ideas here, and this would be really awesome as a 2-player game!
Submitted
Reflecting YouThanks for the detailed and encouraging feedback, we really appreciate it :) Awesome to hear that you had fun strategizing and customizing your ship. We are currently discussing taking this game forward post-jam, so all of the suggestions/feedback are super helpful! A 2-player mode and making the battle process a bit more "smooth" are definitely something we will look into.
Also, thanks for pointing out the softlock - I think during the (time-sensitive) development, none of us thought about the scenario of not having a single laser in the ship! That's a super interesting strategic decision and we should definitely fix this bug to allow for creative strategies like this :)
Found your game after you comment on ours and yeah, looks like we did go a pretty similar direction on a basic level. But wow, you really fit a lot of mechanics in! Things get pretty complex quickly, and I wish I'd noticed the tutorial pdf, but I still had a good time. I went with the raccoon for my run and for the fights I did I either one-shot the enemy (upgraded laser is best laser) or both players had trouble navigating around the asteroids. Good job making a highly replayable single-player version of this concept; and if you ever add two-player I'd love to try it!
Submitted
ReflectixDespite the tutorial at the beginning, I greatly appreciate the tutorial pdf considering how complex the game can quickly get. Had it open while I was playing. The lasers moved a bit too fast for me to understand what was going on at some times but the more I played, the more I understood how the mirrors would reflect he lasers.
I kept stubbornly choosing the cat each run since watching a lot of lasers bounce around all at once was fun xD
Submitted
Reflections (Unfinished Submission)Good job on making a game with nice complexity, especially for a jam with limited time. The game has a lot of potential and could improve with small additions. An interactive tutorial might help players understand the mechanics better, but it’s great that you explained how it works at the start. Well done!
Submitted
ReflectedWow, that's a lot of game mechanics you managed to put into this game. Great work! And yes, I agree - a decent onboarding or maybe tutorial levels which let you learn the game by yourseld would be cool. But it is totally understandable, that in this short amount of time this is impossible to create. But - you managed to explain everything well and detailed at the beginning, so that's very helpful - I like it!
Submitted
reflections
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