Play game
Space Tag's itch.io pageRate this game
In order to rate this submission you must be logged into itch.io and have submitted your own entry. Anyone with an account can leave a comment.
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)
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I 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!
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!
I'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!
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
Thank 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!
Thanks 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!
Thank you! We are thinking of making it into a full game, and for sure we will have to do a multiplayer. I think we should have gone with it for the jam, but we were already too deep into ship-making and level progression :)
Despite 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
Thank you! One of us was also a fan of a cat for similar reasons :D My favourite is a raccoon with how much you can alter around :)
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!
Thank you! A decent tutorial would be great, but I'm glad that quite a few pages in the beginning weren't a complete turn-off :)
Wow, 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!
Thank you! I'm really glad you liked it :) We probably shouldn't have tried to put that much stuff in the jam game, but it was our first jam (and first game), so we got a bit too all over the place and barely managed to connect it all together by the deadline.
Fun Game :D The tutorial really helped me understand the mechanics.
Thank you! It would be cool to have a decent onboarding with increased complexity, but not in a game jam time limits :)