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A Dream of Valhalla's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality/Creativity | #6 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Engagement/Fun | #8 | 3.933 | 3.933 |
| Theme Interpretation | #14 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Overall | #18 | 3.653 | 3.653 |
| Graphics, Audio, and Polish | #27 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
| Magical Girl Concept | #29 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the Magical Girl Genre?
You play as Elisa, a girl with magical powers on a team with other girls with magical powers
Which theme(s) do you pick?
Nuclear Energy (primary, there are allusions to others)
How does your game fit the theme(s)?
Elisa and her team are investigating an alien weapon capable of nullifying fusion reactions. Also, there is another implementation of the theme but that one is spoilers ;)
Are all your graphics assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?
some of them were purchased; but most are stuffs made during the jam
Are all your audio assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?
a good chunk of them were purchased
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Comments
There is a lot I wanted to write about but I'm out of time so all I can say is...
Good job!
This seems to be part of a much bigger universe storywise, so a couple of references went over my head. Overall though I think I got the gist of the in-game story. The 3 magic abilities were pretty fun to use, and I used them a lot. I didn't use the sword much because I couldn't tell where and when I was being hit. I think if there was a way to read an attack and dodge/block the sword would be really useful.
I always dig it when a game combines different genres and I think I count 3 here. The map reminds me a lot of halo and the sprites doom.
Thanks for playing!
It's a bit of a crisis crossover, tying together Shattered (my MGGJ1 game) and In The Middle Of The Night (my MGGJ2 game) with some other things thrown in for good measure. For now I'm leaving it ambiguously canon because I'm not 100% sure if I want to go that route.
Sword is definitely underpowered and lame. I'm not planning on adding blocking for various reasons, but I'm going to speed up the sword, tweak the reach/hitbox, and possibly increase the damage. Shattered 2 will also add progression so early on you won't have the super powerful magic.
Halo was definitely a huge influence, not surprising as it's one of the few games I still regularly play. The sprites are actually from Freedoom, which was created as a direct replacement for Doom. To be honest I didn't like going this route but it was a necessary evil to save time.
That was really enjoyable, still got the halo feels and its not a bad thing at all. the only thing is that, i find it hard to hit enemies without getting hit using the sword, but its ok.
beside this the gameplay is great.
I really liked the dialog with Sakura and Gina in the ship, it was funny to see them again!
Good Job, I will look forward for Shattered 2 !
Thanks for playing!
Yup, it wears its Halo influence on its sleeve... or in the title.
The sword being too weak is something that's been brought up a lot and it'll be tweaked in the future for sure.
I'd really like to do another game with those two but I don't think I'll be able to fit it in this year unfortunately.
a decent game, I like how the opening animation starts, The sound design is really nice, The story? Idk wtf going on, but what do I know, I never play Shattered or any of your other games.
I didn't really bother to read every dialogue though sorry,
Now I'll say something about dialogue and menu UI, listen here no offense But it alone just makes the whole game looks impolish and not fit with the rest, I don't know if this is an intended style because I have seen you used them in other game too, It just feels out of place. Idk It felt like a default Unity panel, You should at least make some panel graphic or something that fits your ms paint art style.
Now to the gameplay, it's pretty fun, I really like the text to speech voice in the game, And the music.
The tutorial is a bit of an info dump but at least I can open them in battle.
The three ability is neat, although I usually used Wave ability because It would just end the battle almost instantly(except final boss).
I fail to see much use of Drain through since just leaving the battle for a short amount of time would heal you to full health anyway.
If you gonna add a healing ability that drains health from the enemy maybe makes the health system more punishing, something like how you couldn't regenerate at all, that would make the ability really rewarding. and maybe create a high-risk high reward situation.
the ending/story? no comment, idk the context.
Conclusion : Well it's a fun short game,
P.S : the amount of time you mentioned "Shattered 2" in comment, discord is starting to ticks me off, but well, whatever can spread your game name I guess.
Thanks for playing!
I should preface this by saying I've had a rough week and I'm pretty burned out tonight so some of this will probably come across as saltier than intended.
The story is only vaguely related to Shattered at this point- Shattered 2 proper will tie in a lot more. I can see why it comes across as disjointed here- it is, deliberately so, but I think it ended up a lot more confusing than it was intended. By the time I realized this it was too late to do anything about it. It's too bad, too, because I really liked the concept and a lot of it just doesn't come across.
Yeah, the UI theme is straight-up recycled from another project. To be honest I pretty much take my UI to where I think it's good enough and leave it- I don't have a lot of time to dev, I have to pick my battles carefully and I deemed it low priority for this project in particular. Future games will be better, but not dramatically better.
Tutorial is another thing where I just went with the fastest option possible. It's ungainly but it works.
The magic isn't balanced all that well, yeah. Wave is pretty OP, melee is pretty useless, drain was a lot more useful before regenerating health was added late in the process. I'm planning to tweak this in the future. Shattered 2 (yes, I'm bringing it up again, I'll get to that) will have progression and everything will probably be reweighted against that.
So... Shattered 2 comes up a lot because this is Shattered 2, from a certain point of view. They even share the same Git repository! This game was originally conceived as a pure mechanics demo for Shattered 2. It grew into more than that- I'd call it a full game and not a demo, albeit a short one. I was on the fence about participating in MGGJ3 because of time constraints, but by creating something that was going to lead into a project I already had planned (Shattered 2 was planned to be my big game of 2021, knock on wood) I was able to justify spending that time. Is it a cheese strategy? Yeah, probably, but honestly I'm too busy to not look for opportunities where I can.
it turns out this game does work on my mac, cool style, it is like doom with the 3d and sprites but it plays and looks like halo on the OG xbox, the only minor issue is the sword looks like to can reach longer but find myself always needing to hug the enemies to make a hit, and sometimes trading blows.
but with the excellent life recovery mechanic it is not really a issue and maybe more that I am a sucky player, hah hah.
Thanks for playing!
The map definitely has some Halo CE vibes; I think the textures I use have a lot to do with it. The sword being too weak is a known issue; I'm planning to tweak it, although other factors will make it more desirable in Shattered 2. I might increase the reach as well; I am hesitating because it's already longer than the sword should physically be (although there might be a bug in the code).
I generally err on the side of forgiving when it comes to difficulty in jam games; I know people are coming from all kinds of skill levels and genres.
the sword's strength is fine, it is the reach, but if that is where you are going with the design, the other features cover it pretty well for me, I can see challenge in having to skillfully engage the enemy, though I am better a console shooters, so it could still be me.
Short but sweet! I enjoyed myself. It was nice seeing Gina and Sakura again, but Katt is new best girl!
I'll admit I was confused by the return to the ship. I feel dumb, but I played the whole thing without understand why that was happening. Reading the other comments cleared that up. One thing that might have been neat would be updated dialogue on each return. (Ok, maybe there was? I only check Katt once, and assumed the dialogue would not change for the others either. My bad if I missed that!)
The combat and movement was good... I found I mostly relied on magic. Melee usually just meant getting damaged. Thankfully, magic was fun to use, so no problems there!
I saw you mentioned the free-Doom assets... I knew I saw Lost Souls being shot at me!
I enjoyed the ending, that was a nice touch. (The "simulation"... is how I will describe it without spoilers). Looking forward to Shattered 2!
Thanks for playing!
I'd really like to do another game with Gina and Sakura, but I don't know if that will happen until Takagi (Holiday 2021). Katt might show up again somewhere, she was basically a nod to a side theme but I like her design a lot.
Trying to get across what was going on was a challenge and yeah, it's not really clear. I actually thought about having other characters react to it more, but by the time I thought of it I didn't have time to do it. I also didn't want to add any more forced dialogue given how tedious some people found my last game.
The magic is definitely stronger. I might buff melee later, but there will be other reasons to use melee over magic in Shattered 2 so it might not be necessary.
Yup, it's a Freedoom Cyberdemon shooting Freedoom Lost Souls. It was a pretty silly idea, but I decided to roll with it given the rest of the project. On a side note, I found Lost Souls terrifying and will waste BFG ammo to kill them as fast as possible.
The ending was actually one of the first parts completed... I'm pretty happy with how it ties in.
At first I was confused because I returned back to the ship just after defeating everyone, but I discovered that you have to go back and kill them all until the boss appears so I did that.
That's because the movement and "handling" of the character was π
Also, was funny to aim without a crosshair and hit the enemy straight on. It was short, but I could feel the satisfaction of killing it.
The opening cinematic and the models are cool! But with the environment and stuff, I was expecting 3D enemies. Tho I am a big fan of the first Doom games so I ain't complaining.
Sakura is best shield.
Thanks for playing!
That was a deliberate choice; it definitely flowed better without kicking you to the ship but I was trying to find ways to convey that **SPOILERS** it's all a dream, and dreams tend to flow weirdly and repeat and stuff. **END SPOILERS**
I'm glad you enjoyed the mechanics! Those are going straight into Shattered 2 and I consider them the most important part of this game.
I think I've mentioned this before but the game was entirely playtested with a crosshair, I just forgot to enable it by default before shipping the game and didn't test thoroughly enough to test it. Namely I never tested on anything but my dev machine, which of course had the config file with crosshair set to always show. I skipped what is normally part of my testing regime to save time and suffered the consequences. That said, the bolts do have a sort of magnetism/aim assist so it's still playable.
I pretty much do 2.5D exclusively these days, because while I'm not good at drawing I'm hopeless at modeling. The Freedoom enemies were chosen for no other reason than to save time; I'm not terribly happy with their inclusion as they don't really match the rest of the game.
I fixed this at some point, but originally you could actually drain Sakura for health and since she's immortal and always friendly it was basically a free action. Eventually I implemented regenerating health and dramatically slowed down the magic recharge, so it wouldn't be a cheese strategy now anyway.
The character are nice, they stare into souls.
Enemies look cute.
I'm pretty wedded to this style, so expect to see more slightly creepy mouse drawn characters in the future.
The enemies are from Freedoom, which is an open-source replacement for the original DOOM. To be honest I'm not really happy with this choice, but it saved me quite a bit of time which I desperately needed.
As a fan of 90s FPS games and The Elder Scrolls, I really enjoyed this game.
The katana weapon felt cool to use as well as the other spells, although I mostly used the ranged attack. The music was great for getting me pumped up and bouncing around the arena was really fun. You even managed to get some voice acting in there!
As for feedback, I felt like the enemy sprites you chose didn't really fit well with what you drew yourself, but it was understandable given the time limit. I also wonder whether the katana weapon should attack a little faster, as it felt like I was taking a lot of hits because of how slow the attacks were.
Both the story and the cutscenes were engaging, and I really like what you did with the ending. Great work!
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you had some fun with it.
Yeah, I knew the Freedoom sprites would be mismatched at best. It was 100% a necessary concession to get this done in the time I had available.
I did the voice work I thought was necessary for the story; I would have liked to have had more. Sakura was also supposed to be voiced at least for the overworld section but there wasn't enough time left to get that sorted. I'd really like to do a game with full voice acting but it's just such a leap I don't know if it'll happen any time soon.
The katana is definitely underpowered compared to the magic. I started out with it very fast, but it didn't have the weight to it I would expect from a big two-handed sword. I then slowed it down and it was totally useless, then sped it up to somewhere in between. I think there's definitely room for tweaking here.
The ending is going to lead straight into the beginning of Shattered 2, which I'm really hoping will be an actual thing and not vaporware.
Thoughts recorded during my playthrough
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it
- There was a voiceover at the beginning, but it's muffled, so I have no idea what it was saying. Was that deliberate?
+ The 3D model of the ship is gorgeous!
+ I pressed some random keys and eventually stumbled upon this menu. A tooltip a la CoD for interactable elements would be helpful for people who don't play these kinds of games much (like me). I know I checked the options menu before I started but I don't remember seeing the "interact" key. Maybe I missed it?
+ I like how each character has their own personality.
+ I love how you included characters from your previous game jam game. I think other characters in this game are references as well?
+ First mission was quick and snappy. Delivers me right to the action, and the enemies are not too tough.
- First mission ended so abruptly that I thought the game had restarted.
+ You do a nice job of handwaving it, though. I suspect some sort of limitation (time, knowledge, etc.) prevented a smoother transition.
- It's kinda hard to aim the magical shots without a reticle.
+ Combat is simple and it doesn't take long to mow down the enemies. It's pretty easy to get damaged in close quarters, but health is generous enough that it isn't too much of an issue.
- Second mission was a little confusing since it wasn't clear where I needed to go.
+ Once I found where I needed to be it was a fun time. Sakura helped out, which was a nice touch.
- I'm finding a recurring problem with trying to determine where I'm supposed to go for each mission. There is a popup indicating where the enemies are at the start of each mission, but without some visual indicator (minimap, waypoint, etc.) it's pretty meaningless. Fortunately the map is small and is the same one every time so it's just a matter of process of elimination, but it could be a big problem if the missions were longer, more complicated, and/or on different maps.
- I don't know if this was just a limitation on your part (and I am dreadfully ignorant of Unity), but given that we're going back to the same place every time, I would have preferred the missions to be a string of encounters instead of going back to the ship each time.
+ BGM during the "Extremely Hostile Presence" part rocks!
+ Oh wow, voice acting!
+ The Discord-esque cutscene was cool
Summary
This is a definite improvement over your previous MGGJ entry. While it still has its flaws and room for improvement, the combat mechanics are interesting and fun. I hope you keep sharpening your skills and I look forward to your next project!
Thanks for playing!
The voiceover is deliberately muffled. I was kind of on the fence about how much I wanted to muffle it. It was supposed to be barely intelligible but I think it turned out completely gibberish unless you already know what they're saying.
I picked that little ship model up off the Asset Store, and it was chosen because it was free π
Once again I forgot my audience isn't an FPS-playing audience (E is the most common interact key in shooters, followed by F). Better tooltips definitely would have helped, though honestly I think even if I had thought of it I probably would have left that out of scope because of time. It is something that I will try to address in Shattered 2.
I decided to do a sort of "crisis crossover" that brings the worlds together, it's ambiguously canon for now but I could start welding the lore together in the future if I decide that's a thing I want to do.
The reason the mission ends abruptly is because **SPOILER** it's a dream, and dreams tend to loop and shift and flow erratically. **END SPOILER** I did test without it and the game flowed better, but I was desperately trying to find ways to get across that spoiler thing I just mentioned.
The lack of a reticle is actually something I screwed up on. I tested entirely with crosshair enabled... but left it disabled by default π . I'm not willing to do an entire release to fix that but I'll try to leave a note somewhere recommending people turn it on (Options/Gameplay Options/Crosshair->Always).
At one point I wanted a minimap that displayed dots where the enemies were, but this was pretty quickly cut for time. I thought about putting in objective markers that showed where the enemies spawned, too, but I didn't have time for that either. Shattered 2 will probably provide a world map to track quests.
The next project is Shattered 2 which derives directly from this one. I'll be posting some updates on that pretty soon.
pretty good game xcvg sempai... really enjoy playing it :D
somehow the melee attack feels underwhelming since you need to get close to hit it and don't do much damage... the payoff normally don't compensate.
what the light switch do? it do something?
i don't see a aim hud? perhaphs a aim hud for the firebolt will be nice... the mana mechanic is very good since don't allow you just spaw it, very clever;
was really entertaing, thanks for the hard work and hype for shattered 2 :D
Thanks for playing!
Balancing the magic with melee definitely still needs some work. It's actually been sped up and damage increased since the first test build, and can strike multiple enemies now, but it's still not there. I think one issue is that magic is too cheap- there's not a lot of incentive to save your mana. I thought about lowering the recharge rate but I was worried it would slow the gameplay down too much.
It'll be tweaked for Shattered 2 for sure.
Ever had a dream where you keep flipping light switches and they don't do anything? π
I kinda screwed up on the crosshair... I always tested with it, but it's actually disabled by default (Options/Gameplay Options/Crosshair->Always). The bolt does have a degree of bullet magnetism but the implementation isn't great and I wouldn't be surprised if it only worked about half the time.
So. I have updated the submission questionnaire. I think you can click "Edit this submission" to choose some more appropriate answers.