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The Last Guardian's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #10 | 4.091 | 4.091 |
| Fun | #18 | 3.727 | 3.727 |
| Accessibilty | #27 | 3.045 | 3.045 |
| Overall | #32 | 3.377 | 3.377 |
| Audio | #42 | 3.045 | 3.045 |
| Graphics | #44 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
| Controls | #50 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Theme | #59 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.3
Wildcards Used
Memento Mori, Undo, Why limit yourself?
Game Description
A guardian of an old temple has awoken from a thousand year slumber. Guide this last guardian through a series of puzzles and seek the answers to their most burning questions; Why am I awake now, and why are none of my friends?
How does your game tie into the theme?
The player character must reflect upon his place in the world, as things around them changed
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
codecrow0576_93729, edvid
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
codecrow24=2, edvid=1
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Comments
It's an amazing puzzle game with a very interesting concept I just feel the theme wasn't incorporated enough. Regardless, it is very fun, maybe adding an options menu to be able to lower the volume!
The story was what was inspired by the theme of this jam. No physical reflections for us! There’s certainly entries in this jam that have implemented the theme a lot more directly, and some really great games at that! Our game went in a bit of a different direction.
In regards to audio accessibility. You can help! On the GWJ discord server, I have mentioned I’m seeking help in regards to audio buses in web exports, as I was having trouble with that. Maybe you know something I don’t?
Some of these puzzles felt a bit too simple, almost filler-y, but disregarding those there were plenty of good ones, and I appreciate that you didn't use the undo wildcard as an excuse to make a bunch of levels where one wrong move means you have to reset :] The plot was simple but well told and tied into the mechanics (and there was one in the first place) so well done there.
One complaint I have to make though - there's nothing wrong with tile based movement, but requiring a keypress per step isn't great even if the last few levels in your game aren't just a long, straight, hallway. Other than the contribution to the erasure of the label of my keyboard's D key though, I've enjoyed my time with this game.
Thank you for the constructive feedback.
We are quite proud of how the story and game mechanics turned out, and I wish we had more time to create some real mind bending puzzlers. We could definitely use some harder puzzlers and fewer filler levels, especially given the Press to Move movement system right now. The filler levels would be less boring had we had a Hold to Move movement system. We might still have a few filler-y levels if/when we touch up on this game, but only when the story progresses.
No refunds on your ‘D’ key cap though!
I would have like to see more complex puzzles, especially with the undo mechanic, but what's there is well-presented and I had a good time. I appreciated the story especially. One thing I'll note that the other comments didn't mention: in the "most important room in the temple", it's hard to tell what the object at the center is, and the player can walk under it obscuring the player from view
The Object is supposed to be an Altar with a book on it, I made it right before the end of the jam so I didnt have time to make the texture look good. The Player can walk under it as I also forgot to make it act like a wall. Thanks for playing and We'll definitely fix that post-jam!
I like the narration. The puzzle was a bit too intuitive and simple but was fun nonetheless.
The mind twisters and red herrings in many puzzles of baba is you is a huge inspiration, and is definitely the direction we’d go in if we were to take this game all the way
Great game you made with a loooooot of levels :) Good job! I enjoyed playing it.
Thanks, glad to hear you liked it!
Congratulations on creating a great little game! The puzzles in each level are well-designed, and it’s impressive how many levels there are. The game really takes shape with its story. Well done
So glad you enjoyed it! I’m very happy we could get all of that done in time, we might have been guilty of a little self-imposed crunch :D
Nice concept, you got quite some mechanics in there. The levels feel pretty polished as well.
Other than improvements to the movement, I think having a preview of which characters are available for controlling would be helpful, because the range varies and you sometimes have to try a few positions before switching works. Apart from that, the game works pretty good.
In a few levels, I wondered if it mattered which body I chose for finishing the levels. Were there different endings?
We could definitely go for a visual indicator of which dead golem the spirit will travel to. Gauging proximity to other golems is actually quite hard. It’s certainly on the list of things we would have wanted to have time to implement. Perhaps a small glow in the direction of the dead golem that will be targeted, to indicate the spirit feeling a pull?
No secret endings for going all the way through the temple with the original spirit. Perhaps, in a fuller version of the game, a small easter egg or achievement could be unlocked for such efforts?
You’ve given us some interesting ideas to work with, haha.
Nice little puzzle game with narration. As others have said, I wish the control was a hold down and move.
I also agree some of the puzzle levels were better than others. Towards the end I was playing just to read the narration more so than solving the puzzles. Great Add!
The controls being hold down is definitely near the top of the list of things we wish we had time to change to. The current movement system is from when we had a different kind of puzzler in mind.
The decision to keep narration heavy levels simpler than the rest, was actually a concious one! We wanted to give players the time and mental space to focus on the narration when it happened rather than a puzzle requiring your attention instead, but I agree it could have been paced better to make them feel like breathers more than “30 times left arrow spammer” levels. I think changing the movement system would help that feeling in the right direction a lot.
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for playing!
I really like the art style, especially the tiles and how they fade into the pitch-black background — it’s a great look!
The controls could use some work, as I found myself spamming directions a lot while waiting for the guardian to finish moving. Two suggestions: allow holding a direction to keep moving, and accept new inputs while the guardian is moving between tiles (skip the transition if a new input is made).
The progression of puzzles was a bit weird. Most levels felt too easy/obvious, and I think it’d be more enjoyable with fewer but more polished levels. That said, I enjoyed all the different gimmicks and setups — especially controlling multiple guardians simultaneously while also swapping around.
I finished it, and I thought the final screen was pretty awesome. Overall nice game!
Thanks, the level progression feeling weird was probably because we both ran out of time and had split the levels in between ourselves . I might change the controls post jam, but for the jam time we only had two small levels for testing which didn’t really highlight the Issue.
Fantastic level design and a great take on Sokoban and character-control-switching! It was a really nice puzzle to play!
What an honour it is to have our level design described as “Fantastic”. I think that’s even the most rushed part of the game maybe! Very kind message, thank you
Maybe it was just part of mechanics, but when I was playing I was constantly thinking of how the level designer had to think about where to put golems and how to limit their area, so that you don't get stuck without access to the required golem :) Probably you had to hardcode some transitions or break the rules, but it felt like a very good work in calculating all that :)
No hardcoded transitions to specific golems or breaking of rules to avoid redesigning of levels! The closest we have to that is a known bug in level 10 that makes the top left golem not transition when it should be able to on 2 of the 4 tiles it can visit.
Otherwise all levels work as they should within the rules of this world/dungeon!
Yep, and that's why I thought it was a fantastic level-design! :) I can easily imagine a level becoming incompletable if some golems were placed just a cell or two away or closer, but I didn't face any of such issues
Enjoyed playing through all the levels and especially liked how there was lore for what happened to the golems and the narration of how the last living golem felt as they went through more and more rooms in the temple! Had a little bit of confusion about how far or how close I needed to be to another inactive golem to transfer to it but other than that I had fun. ^^
Super glad you enjoyed the narration and the Golems emotional journey. Quite happy with how that part turned out
Spoiler - How golem movement works:
Proximity of golems in line of sight is all that matters. But I agree it can be quite hard to gauge just how much closer/further away one Golem is over another.I really like this concept and this type of game. I'm gladly enjoying my playthrough.
Thats great to hear, have fun!
Fun combination of Sokoban and the theme! I had a great time and managed to beat all the levels. The ending screen message really got me thinking. Great work on the game!
Thanks!
Pretty neat game! I like the sound work - I always like hearing somebody learning something new instead of just using whatever online assets they can find.
Something kinda fun that I found was that your back button turns into a bac button on hover in the level select screen:
By the way, I have a level select screen in my game too and it was the first time I’d built something like that. How did you store whether or not a player has already played a certain level?
The movement ends up feeling a little tedious when you have to walk so far.
I stopped playing at level 10 because I want to be able to get to many of the other games in the jam. I really like the gameplay and it feels like a really good puzzle game. I enjoy the feeling of realizing what I’m supposed to do without being beaten over the head with it, yet it not being stupidly “subtle”. Some puzzle games will hide things in such a way that there would be no reason you would think of doing it that way. Transferring to another golem based on proximity was intuitive and a neat puzzle.
Because I’m stopping early, I didn’t get to see how reflection tied into your game, but I read in your description about it. Good luck!
I notcied the "Bac Button" too, but we had some other last minute bugs to fix that we prioritised. The save state is done by saving a file somewhere at user:// with the FileAccess class. You can read docs and follow a similar example here. I'm glad you could gauge our theme implementation from the description, even if we're much more proud of how we got the story and ending into the game.
Thanks and good luck to you too!