Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

Death's ChallengeView game page

HURT, MOVE, and TALK through Deaths wacky roommates in this Puzzle RPG.
Submitted by Classic Review (@Classic_Review) — 19 hours, 1 minute before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Death's Challenge's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
People's Choice#583.3083.308

Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

(1 edit)

nice art, but the way this game shifts between tones looks like this and i mean that in a bad way considering the subject matter:


Death's Challange 

by Classic Review 

Hey there Classic Review, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I was asked to judge your game in round three of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.

I'm not sure why you chose to make the resolution of your game half the size of a poker card, what is this like 300x200?

This is going to make most everything blurry when you stretch it out to HD/FHD/UHD etc. I'm playing it on a 2560x1440 monitor for reference. Most people are probably going to be stretching it out over a 1920x1080 resolution.

Default sound effects are very noticed. The slowed down BGM that plays on the the title screen sounds like a terrible dirge. 

You shouldn't ask people if they want to see a suicide content warning. You have to decide to put it on there or not to based on the content of your game. When you present it the way you did you basically gave the story away. Not a good approach in my opinion. 

The font is blurry and hard to read in most cases, it hurts my head to read. The dialog is crass and not really that interesting. 

The artwork is about as minimalistic as you can get without making an ASCII game. While this doesn't actually bother me that much, it does make it hard to understand what I'm looking at.

The combat system is customized and unique, but not really all that fun.

The puzzle aspect of this game boils down to walking around an escape room trying to find the correct event that switches the next door open, over and over. There are quite a few doors, all of which are locked except the first one. It's not the type of gameplay that I personally enjoy, but I've seen many games like this with the same concept.

You should allow people to save anywhere in my opinion. 

While this game has it's own style, it does feel very rushed and 'defaulty'. I like the attempt at a customized battle system, but this one didn't quite do it for me.

Good job on putting a project together and congratulations on making it to round three of the IGMC.

-Drifty

Submitted (1 edit)

This game has a gorgeous consistent art style that really serves the game well, but the gameplay / pacing are VERY slow. Which meant about 75% of the way through, I was just ready to be finished because things just felt a little same-same for me. I think you did excellent getting a lot of content completed within the time frame and things feel very polished. There are a few translation / grammar things, but nothing too distracting. Overall, nice job tackling a heavy topic (thanks for including a warning at the start!)

Overall -- outside of the pacing, I think this game is very high quality and a fantastic addition to IGMC. :)

(edited to fix some bad syntax on my part!)

Developer

I'm really happy that you enjoyed my game.  Also, thank you for the feedback. It really helps.

Submitted(+1)

I streamed this with the dev present, so just leaving my notes for posterity:

  • +Cute art and concept! 
  • +The enemy portraits during combat are very appealing
  • +The humor was cute (tho a couple of off-color jokes could go).
  • +I became more interested in the backstory than the hijinks of the current cast, which quickly turned into very shallow "hee haw joky jokes". It stung that I could not finish the game due to the last boss to see what happened.
  • -WHY is the resolution so tiny???? I don't think I've ever seen a game try to make such a  tiny resolution. Worse, ballooning it to any proper viewable proportion without me losing my eyes made the text rather fuzzy and hard on the eyes. If the problem was the pixel-perfect nature of it, just zoom your assets to a fixed x2/x3/x4 or the like and adjust the resolution to that.
  • -Text needs a second go to fix a few minor issues and sentence oddities. There's some places where the textbox is also partially used, or the line breaks weirdly between textboxes.
  • -The combat did not do well with me, it felt very unsatisfying. If it's trying to imitate the Undertale style it falls very flat, since none of the interactions are charming, and they are all capped to a single use before you are reduced to just slap the enemy around. 
  • -More on combat: it eventually made me rage quit at the final boss (i believe it was, the yellow granny). The game seems to expect near-perfect input. There is not much variation I can see, and the need to plan two turns ahead for every action (including the basic "oh shit" heal) was very annoying. I had to restart multiple times. I TRIED! But it was still antagonistic and with no margin for error. This feels like a mistake. I do not get the feeling this game is trying to be a perfect execution sort of thing, and in that case the difficulty and demands of no bad moves the game expects are entirely unreasonable. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most tactical thinker, but there were MANY ways this could have been alleviated. The easiest among them would be to just make your defensive actions (Protect and Deny) always go first, no matter what. That alone would have probably allowed me to beat it after a couple tries. 

Overall the game left a bitter taste in my mouth due to the final boss making me ragequit. 

Developer

Thank you for playing my game, streaming it, and giving me detailed feedback on it. I do generally want to improve as a creator, so your suggestions and critiques are greatly appreciated. I explained it to SeaPhoenix’s comment below why the resolution is so tiny, but rest assured I do plan on fixing that if I ever update the game in the future. Sorry about making you rage quit.

Submitted

Wow! I really like the story and the characters, each one has someone to say and I think it's important to the meaning of the game. This art style reflects my taste so I enjoyed playing! Well done!

Developer

Thank you! The story and the art were the things I took the most pride in with this game. So, I'm happy that you enjoyed that aspect of it.

Submitted (1 edit)

The game's concept sparked my interest, and the art matched the mood of the game very well. I thought the puzzles and battles were both interesting (it took me at least two and sometimes three tries to win them, and I liked how you unlock new skills and have different abilities when facing different people). The story was engaging as well, though the dark content may indeed be upsetting to some people. In particular, the flashback sequences were well-done.

Some minor nitpicks: there were some typos throughout the game so I would recommend proofreading if you update the game, and for some reason, the game screen was really small (like 200 pixels or something - was that intentional?), so I had to stretch the window out to play comfortably.

Edit: Fixed typo

Developer

Thank you for playing my game. I'm also grateful for your feedback. For the screen resolution, I wanted to go for that old-school GBA vibe, so I went with a 180x240 resolution. In reality, it probably wasn't a great idea since it just ended up being more work for me in the end lol. I might fix that along with spelling errors when this contest is over.

Submitted

I like a lot minimalistic and unique games and this one checked both points! The combat system is engaging even if minimal, liked the humor too. The only things I dislike is some RTP sounds and the near lack of overworld music. Also not everything respects the palette, like the Granny’s sheet. I can say anyway I really liked this game again.

Developer

Thank you for your input. I'm really glad that you liked my game.

Submitted

I liked the presentation and the designs were super cute but the combat just feels like you're given a ridiculously low amount of leeway. The puzzles were intuitive albeit its mostly just go from A to B and then create all the different foods for the residents and all that. The story is definitely interesting, the crass nature isn't my jam but I'm okay with it.

There is a twinge of emotional resonance in this but the battle discourages me from continuing further.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback.

Submitted

Oh! Really interesting!  *_*