Love Bytes VR Jam

Hosted by Fist Full of Shrimp, Muddy Wolf

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A jam submission

Love Panic! VRView game page

Join Hearty McHeartFace through the stages of love with the 'Love Machine'

Submitted by IanLindsey — 23 hours, 39 seconds before the deadline

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Love Panic! VR's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Overall	#1	4.028	4.028
Aesthetics - Does the game look great?	#1	4.444	4.444
Use of Theme - Was the theme incorporated well?	#1	4.333	4.333
Sound Design - Was that bump in the night the perfect SFX?	#2	3.556	3.556
Enjoyment - How fun is the game overall?	#2	3.778	3.778

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Fist Full of ShrimpHost294 days ago

Here you are again Ian! Coming out with the big guns! You slap me right in the face with a wonderful title screen and then take me on a journey from there. Your lighting and environment continue to be top notch!

What I Loved:

McHeartface is just a great character. The voice acting and the lines he says are hilarious. His animations as a whole are also clean!
The entire experience is soundly complete. Every mechanic works as intended from what I could tell. The polish of the Love Machine was super impressive. It felt snappy! I never struggled moving any of the nobs when I interacted with them.
It was incredibly cohesive. Every part that was in this game was meant to be in this game. The sound design, lighting, voice acting and art work together to for a complete game that was perfect for this jam!

Some Suggestions

Real nitpicking stuff, but I found the text on the piece of paper during date 2 to be difficult to read. A different font would have helped here.
I didn't understand the point of pumping for every item. It was fun at first, but it did start to feel tedious on the third stage.
The color red looked a bit brown to me when trying to match a few items.

You always bring such a strong showing to game jams and you've done it again with this one! Your unique style shines through in this. It also impresses me how polished you're able to make these things in a week. Thank you so much for joining this jam and giving us such a great entry! You're a gem to the VR Dev community mi amigo!

Beard or DieSubmitted294 days ago

This was a fantastic entry, as I fully expected it would be. Great job on all fronts. I'm excited to see these mechanics perfected and polished in your other projects.

Submitted

Tunnel of Love VR

IanLindseyDeveloper297 days ago

I've uploaded an update to this game responding to all the feedback so far... Enjoy & thanks for the comments!

The original Jam entry is still there and marked as 'Jam Entry' on the builds for voting.

After-ThoughtSubmitted297 days ago

Very fun game. I had to change the setting to easy but it was a lot of fun. Looked very clean as well. Great job.

Submitted

ToreadorGamesSubmitted299 days ago (1 edit)

Undeniably the best lit and looking environment and working mechanics of the Jam... Hearty McHeartface was a good intro mascot, and the polish is undeniable. This will definitely be a great addition to your hotel project!

The Love Machine was a cute gadget, but I will admit that of the 4 or 5 objects I built to give to the ladies, only 1 of them was accurate despite my best efforts... And once you choose one of the three ladies, wouldn't you just give gifts to that one person? What kind of restaurant Lothario are we? Joking aside, I gave up after losing more 'heart' than I was gaining. By your screenshots, I'm guessing there were more levels beyond the first?

Once told it was a seated experience, I sat down, and subsequently loaded eye-level to the floor. Raising my height to the max only just brought me to 'proper' height, so I'd caution about players like me that are default standing players, and the calibration issues that might arise from that?

I'd also suggest adding a Lerp to your hand poses, so you don't snap from open-closed. They're really great/unique hands, and the remote grab you've developed is very user-friendly.

Thanks for being such a stalwart proponent of both Game Jams and VR in general, sir. Solid work as always!

Submitted

IanLindseyDeveloper298 days ago (1 edit)

Thanks for the feedback, shame you didn't get to the other stages... but glad you enjoyed. I have a mixed relationship with Hearty McHeartFace, on one hand he's a fun character to have around, but on the other I felt really weird doing his voice over and putting on a fake accent - the things we do for game dev! lol

The idea of having three woman at the start is so you can pick the one you like the most (kinda like in real life) and try it on with her, but if it's not working out, you have other options (... also, like in real life). The woman you have success with, you then go on a date with and later have kids etc... so that's kind of why it was setup like that. I was going to have different woman come and go, but ran out of time for all that unfortunately.

I think the losing heart would've been that some of the items are too similar at the moment, like the cake sponges and cherry & icing items, so you think you've made the right thing, but it's subtly different and you lose heart for it. Since playing it afterwards, I can see some of those things are too similar, so I'll change those - but you know how it is, I'm the dev so I knew the differences easily because I made the objects...

You know, I've had 'put lerp on the hands animation' as a task for literarily months now and it keeps getting prioritised out - lol. Right, this time I'm going to do it for real!

If you want a sneak-peak of the other stages, I put together a trailer now -

ToreadorGamesSubmitted297 days ago (2 edits)

Recognizing the need to suspend disbelief in pursuit of the whole experience, I returned to Love Panic! to attempt to beat it, and experience the following levels. This gave me a greater appreciation of the evolution of the theme that you had accomplished, as yes, the lady you choose in the first level becomes your date in the second, which felt appropriate and natural. I found Level 2 the most involving of the 3, with the additional reading and comprehension required to Respond. After a few iterations of gifts, I wondered if it'd add some some fun visually if you saw the object you were 'building' inflating like a little balloon? Even if it was just a scale up with a bit of squash/stretch? Since the 'shakeweight' motion of the Love Pump is a primary interaction, would increasing the haptics rumble as you approach completion add to the juice? Shrug. Little ideas in the face of great accomplishment. Undoubtedly the most complex, elegant, and complete offering of the Jam!

endenisSubmitted299 days ago

The game looks beautiful! I liked the fluffiness of characters. Also, great voice acting for Mr. Heart in the main menu! 👏🏻

I imagine that the pumping mechanic can get tiring but it works very well in a short game like this.

One time when I gave the character exactly what she wanted she seemed unhappy. Is this a bug or is it how real love works sometimes? 🤔

Submitted

IanLindseyDeveloper298 days ago(+1)

Thanks endenis - and thanks again for testing out the game for OpenXR on the discord too...

The pumping mechanic is definitely too much, I'll reduce that for sure - but like you say, it's not too bad for a short experience like this.

As for the unhappy woman, yeah that is how it works in real life lol - however, I think rather than it being a bug in the game I think some of the items are too similar, so it looks like you've made the right thing but there's a subtle difference that's hard to notice on some combinations. It's especially noticeable on the cake sponges and the icing & cherry - but I'll change those too.

Thanks again for the feedback, all very useful stuff.

olkoGPSubmitted299 days ago

First of all, Mr. Heart is the heart of this game ;) I really liked him at first, but unfortunately, the constant repetition of levels made me like him a little less now. I played this game for a while, probably the longest of all Lovebytes experiences, so there is a hook here. Unfortunately, it seems that despite correct answers I sometimes got negative points, especially with drinks and quizzes. And the constant pumping was a bit tiring. And as for her favorite color, I would argue ;) I know you think it's the color of her dress - (red in my case) - and maybe even she thinks so, but she kept ordering green cupcakes and green presents ;) Overall great experience, the plush materials looked great.

Submitted

Stages of Love and Breakout

IanLindseyDeveloper299 days ago

Thanks for the feedback - glad you enjoyed it. Great points, I feel adding a skip button on the heart intros would be great to add, especially for repeat play - so I'll get that in. I'll also make the pump less laborious too, you're right it is a bit much after playing it for a while.

As for the favourite colour, I think I'll just replace that question with something else - it kinda crosses over with the cupcakes and presents... so in some cases it sort of goes against what she's asking for.

Thanks again!

AmeriponSubmitted300 days ago

Bravo! All those interactions were really smooth and you can tell all the hardwork being put into Felton is coming out here! The drink interactions with the colors were quite hard to get. I couldn't for the life of me get the brown color drink, so I had to have several tries since she auto fails you on the second date if you get anything wrong. You also only need to satisfying one of the women in the first scenario, I spent a good while trying to satisfy all of them before just being like, OK let's see what happens if I satisfy just one girl first. The heart VO at the beginning though, lol... I sat through the whole thing. Good stuff! Super polished entry as always!

Submitted

IanLindseyDeveloper300 days ago (5 edits) (+1)

Thanks for that! Yeah, I used Felton as a base (I mean, why wouldn’t I?) especially for the animation & interaction stuff, but there was certainly a lot of bespoke stuff in this - I spent the first 3-4 days solid scripting the gameplay & logic in with just some temp boxes, I honestly thought at that point there was no way I’d get this finished!

As for the drink colour, you’re right - but it seems it’s only on some colours , I didn’t spot those! I put in a last minute change to the glass shader to make it more blue (it used to be white and you couldn’t see it in front of the thought bubble). So I added a hint of blue just so you could see it better. But as it’s transparent, it looks like it’s tinted the liquid a bit too - damn it! Easily sorted, but yeah, classic last minute change nonsense crept in there…

To be fair, Hearty McHeartFace (see what I did there? His face is a heart… yadda, yadda…) does say at the beginning that you only need to win the heart of one woman, but perhaps it’s not clear enough. However, it’s like that so you can play it two ways, either try and fill all the hearts and cover your bets in case you get stuff wrong - or focus on one woman and get the job done quicker. Either way, you kinda get to pick which one you fancy and progress on a date with 👍 It’s not that it’s the wrong way to try and fill all the hearts for the first stage, it’s just a different way you could play it.

As for the VO at the start, I thought at least someone would sit through it all - I was initially going to make it like 5-minutes long 😅 Don’t know if you noticed, there’s also a different VO set once you go back to the menu again from the game too - heavily influenced by Beard or Die for those.

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback - will definitely get that colour thing sorted and I look forward to some tongue physics on yours tomorrow.

AmeriponSubmitted300 days ago

Yeah I noticed the second set of voice lines when I died and when I beat it. That opening logo scene really is very charming, I would love to have been able to click on the heart and have him say, "Not me, the start button!" He felt very real with the mouth movements too!

IanLindseyDeveloper300 days ago

haha - great idea, that’s definitely going in 👍