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A jam submission

Hawk to a FishView game page

Submitted by lilllevi, Bumblebean Games (@bumblebeangames), lillzed — 5 hours, 25 minutes before the deadline
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Hawk to a Fish's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Engagement#132.9172.917
Sound#143.0833.083
Overall#162.8332.833
Spectator Appeal#172.5832.583
Ease of Learning#182.1672.167
Visuals#182.9172.917
Overall#182.7502.750

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Jam HostSubmitted

I dig the sound and visuals for sure. I think you should just get rid of the browser version if it is significantly worse, although it sure is more convenient to just play on the web 🤷‍♀️.

Fun premise, I don't feel like I figured out the ideal strategy. I imagine good players can do pretty well (like the creators!)

Submitted

I realized I had to download the game, because the web version didn't really look like the screenshots. I think there's some kind of issue with rendering the water in the web version, because the surface of the water is invisible, which makes the game much harder to understand visually.

That helped the readability of the visuals a lot, but I think one of the remaining challenges was that there wasn't a separate animation for diving - it just looks like you're falling, which is pretty confusing at first. That combined with the fact that there's only one button for flapping/diving/gliding, it's pretty ambiguous what's happening in the beginning when you're still getting used to the controls. 

The controls themselves are also a bit awkward. The dive/glide/flap all on one button works well, really, but the mouse controls feel quite awkward. Making the camera's rotation speed relative to the mouse's horizontal position is a pretty unusual choice, and it feels slidey in a way that I think will be challenging for folks that have trouble with feeling motion sick while gaming.

This is made a lot worse for folks with multiple monitors! You aren't capturing the mouse, which means moving the mouse outside of the game window and putting it on the opposite end of a second monitor causes the camera to rotate blisteringly fast, especially when the hawk is at a standstill. I'd highly recommend using `Cursor.lockState = CursorLockMode.Confined` to prevent this and confine the user's mouse to the window at the very least.

Overall, though, the concept is really interesting! Flying mechanics are really challenging to get right, and this is a unique and engaging take on it that I think could just use a few tweaks here and there. It's good that you can't grab fish while just sitting on the bottom of the lake, but the height of the fish vs where the bottom of the lake is feels like a pretty small range, so it often feels punishing when you smack against the ground, and it can be maybe a bit too tough to maintain the correct height, especially when it can be hard to tell how high you are and how high you need to be to catch fish. Some kind of height meter or indicator could help with that, but I think deeper water could also help the feel of things!

Submitted

Very interesting game you got here! I'm a big fan of the low poly look, and the music got stuck in my head for the little bit after I played lol. The Controls took a bit of learning, but I got it eventually. To be honest, I think the controls themselves are great, but they might not be the best for a game like this. For a game where it feels so good to soar high and fly fast, you're sorta expected to take it slow and stick close to the ground, so the game almost feels at odds with itself. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy myself, though! I just had to sorta train myself to play a specific way. I think the mechanics of flapping, gliding and diving themselves are surprisingly intuitive, and its really smart to make it so you have to land on the fish's hitbox from above or below so you cant cheese anything. All in all, a really solid package you got here! Keep up the great work!