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Surviving Gears and Time's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme Implementation | #6 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Special Feature Implementation | #18 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Fun Factor | #23 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
| Overall | #24 | 2.694 | 2.694 |
| Graphics | #27 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
| Audio | #30 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
| Gameplay | #32 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How is your game related to the Theme and Special Object?
You age to death if you let the hourglass run out.
Gears are attacking you.
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Comments
The idea of the character getting older the lower the time is is really smart, so you dont have to watch the time all the time. There is not a lot of depth to it, but for a GameJam game thats fine. The sand hour mechanic flipping was also more interisting than a simple timer. However, there are often situations with no enemies, so maybe you could have slowed the movement of the enemies down and marked the range of the character better, but in tradeoff increase the damage of the enemies a bit to compensate.
Thank you for taking the time to play my game and to leave a comment.
Yes, I agree that it lacks depth. There were going to be secondary abilities based on age and would have cost time or flip charges: healing for the young man for time; damage reduction for the middle-aged man for time cost; screen wipe for the old man for a flip charge (though flip charge drops would not drop from enemies defeated in this manner).
Thanks about the comment about the hourglass and the man getting older on screen. I wanted the timer to have some additional impact on gameplay beyond a game over, so the idea of the character getting older with age came about. The man was originally intended to be a wizard, hence why he becomes stronger with age!
I agree that the lulls between waves is a bit noticable - the gear spawns are on a set timer. I wasn't able to test the balance between the gears and the player, and as there wasn't a method to replenish health, I lowered the damage of the gears and had a longer wave timer to give the player more breathing room. In hindsight, I should have programmed in something that shortens the time between waves when there are zero enemies on the field.
I wasn't able to wrap my head around how the boxcast method was working, so I didn't implement something that depicts the attacks' range for fear that it would be inaccurate (and the deadline was looming and I needed other mechanics).
Would have been nice to get a little decor, at least a background
But the idea of the character becoming older and being able to invert time was great, adds a bit to simply implementing a fixed timer that kills you
Thanks for taking the time to play my game and to leave a comment.
I didn't have enough time for designing and creating background elements, so it's a little lacking in that department (it's the same thing with the music).
I'm glad you think that the time mechanic was good. I wanted a mechanic that was more involved than the player simply trying to keep their remaining time high - I figured that everyone would use it in some way, shape or form.
Eventually, I thought of the "stronger with age" angle so that the player would have incentives and tradeoffs to consider when being at different ages. I didn't have time to implement it, but there were going to be additional secondary abilities that would have had different costs (young man had healing by expending time; middle-aged man had a shield for time cost; old man had a screen wipe at the cost of flip charges).
There were a TON of enemies all spawned in on frame 1. Is that intended?
Thank you for taking the time to play my game and to leave a comment.
No - it's supposed to spawn a smaller amount of enemies at the start. However, the function that spawns enemies was being called in a loop during setup, which was causing the massive group that appears at the start. I've uploaded a hotfix for this: now the game setup at the beginning will spawn an amount that is consistent with the rest of the game.