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Blastingbot Blowback's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun Factor | #1 | 4.600 | 4.600 |
| Overall | #2 | 4.480 | 4.480 |
| Originality | #2 | 4.520 | 4.520 |
| Audio | #8 | 3.920 | 3.920 |
| Visuals | #10 | 4.280 | 4.280 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Is your game a video game or a physical game?
Video game
Was your game made solo or in a team?
Solo
Did you use any third party assets, if yes what assets did you use?
No third party assets
Did you choose from one (or more) of the optional secondary themes?
'Low battery' for the gamplay & 'Frosty' for the setting
Does your game contain 18+ content (Nudity, Gore, Language)?
No
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Comments
Congrats. Truly fun game. I did win some levels through mindless shooting though.
Congratulations for winning the Fun Factor category!
Thank you! And thanks again for organizing the jam!
A simple mechanic pushed to amazing heights. Had a lot of fun solving these amazing puzzles.
Even when I got stuck, it was fun to blast and bump around the map, accidentally learning mechanics! And the levels introducing new mechanics pulled my attention without being too hand-hold-y (much more "oh I can do that!")
Wish there were more puzzles!
Thank you for playing! I was hoping that the quick resetting and short levels would allow people to experiment their way towards the solution, so I'm happy that it seems to work!
This was super addictive! Seemingly simple and yet I'm sat here trying to work out how to do each level and loving it. Great job!
Glad you like it! Hopefully the difficulty curve is reasonable, it's a bit hard to judge how tricky puzzles are when you're the one making them.
I tried to make resetting the level super quick and simple (with [X] ) so that it would be as easy as possible to experiment towards solutions.
Thanks for playing!
No, I think the curve is fine! And even if it was steeper I think that would be fine too- There's a reason people keep coming back to Celeste classic or even Souls games haha
Clever mechanic! Game seems nicely polished.
Thanks! I aimed for a small but 'complete' game, so I'm glad you found it polished.
Fantastic solo effort, a different kind of game and it felt polished, good sound and effects! One question though, you made your last entry for Mechjam 3 in TIC-80, but this time you made everything yourself? What did you code it in?
Thank you for playing it!
It's made in PICO-8, which imposes similar limitations to TIC-80. So this game was limited to a display resolution of 128 by 128 px, 16 colors, 8192 "tokens" and a maximum of 32kb of total data. To make it a bit friendlier to work with I use VisualStudio as an external code editor and Aseprite for sprite editing, but it all gets imported into PICO-8 which effectively works as a game engine with additional restrictions on top. Music and sounds were composed using the tools inside PICO-8, which are actually really great!
Thanks for letting me know, I'd just suggest you update your assets used as I says no 3rd party assets and I would have thought something being used as a game engine is classed as an asset. Certainly if you can't do the programming yourself feels like it should be mentioned. It's not going to change my vote, and I loved your game! I just feel like it's the right thing to do, especially for all those people out there with much lower quality entries because they took the hard road of coding everything themselves (we used Corgi Engine ourselves).
I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by "if you can't do the programming yourself feels like it should be mentioned". PICO-8 provides a code editor where you write everything relating to the game from almost nothing in a subset of LUA, so it's all programming.
As a 'game engine' it only provides the ability to draw basic shapes like rectangles and circles (using code) as well as referencing locations in a sprite sheet and playing sound effects you compose yourself. Compared to some of the big game engines like Godot or Unity, Pico-8 (intentionally) provides way less in terms of out-of-the-box functionality. You can see the API here if you are curious: https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/APIReference . If you want something as basic as a start screen that transitions nicely to the game, you'll have to program the state machine that handles that yourself.
I checked out some of the other entries in the jam, and none of them seems to list the game engine as an 'asset'. The game page also already clearly states that it was made with Pico-8 under the 'Made with' label.
Ok no worries look like I misunderstood what PICO-8 is thanks for clarifying. Yeah agreed that doesn't need to be mentioned, I thought it was an engine on top of an application like Unity or Godot, you learn something new every day :P Sorry I haven't exactly had much time to check on things like this last few days as I've been trying to get as many games tested as possible outside of work.
No worries! For what it's worth I think it would be a great idea to also ask people about the game engine when games are submitted in upcoming mechjams. It's a great way to find out about things - I had not heard about Corgi Engine before you mentioned it for example :)
Incredibly clever gameplay! The difficulty curve was perfect! The visuals looked nice and were cohesive with the mechanics. Definitely my favorite game in the jam so far!
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it and found the difficulty curve appropriate, it was one of my biggest worries since I did not have the time for proper playtesting.
Very clever! Game is fun to play and looks and sounds great. Well done!
Thanks for playing it! I'm a fan of your youtube gamedev videos by the way, ever since the last mechjam, great stuff!
Thank you! :)
This is a great game! Very well thought out levels which slowly introduce players to the various puzzles. I also loved the visuals. Awesome work!
Glad you liked it, and that the whole gradual introduction of mechanics seems to work! Thanks!
I loved this game so much. It's straight forward and you were able to do so much with it!
Thanks! I'm glad you like it!
Absolutely Awesom Puzzle game !
I am terrible at puzzles, and yet the concept grabbed me so much that i was able to finnish the whole 20 levels, it is that good :D (took me a while thoug :p)
The gun x recoil mechanics are really clever and i like how some puzzles make it clear that you don’t have enough ammo to go 1 bullet per bot so you have to figure out on your own how to make multi hits.
And i also really enjoyed the new gimmicks here and there introduced here and there every few maps in, plus i found it really clever how some level titles lowkey guide you towards a solution, this was particularly useful once you reach the levels with the ice XD
Overall very polished and solid entry, and gotta mention how impressive it is that you managed to cram 20 puzzle levels within jam time. Great job :)
Thank you for playing it all the way through! It sounds like you got the hang of it level-by-level as I had hoped players would.
As a side-note, the 20 levels were designed in the last 3 days before submitting, all of the rest of the time was spent on getting the systems, mechanics, etc. to where I liked them. I was very worried about the difficulty curve and the introduction of mechanics, since there were really no time for proper playtesting. So thank you for your detailed comment! It felt great to read!
:O dang and i thought it was rough making 3 levels in time, you made 20 in 3 days even more impressive then :p
but yeah progression was fine, and there’s a good hook with the mechanics ^^
Brilliantly made. Tight gameplay, good puzzles, excellent audio, and great experience overall. Great job!
Thanks! I was aiming for a small-ish but complete gamplay experience. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Wow this was hard! I have no idea how you were able to make the mecanics, art, level design all on your own that's VERY VERY Impressive, especially in just 2 weeks, this is by far the most time I've spent playing a jam game, Great job!
I'm glad you liked it and I hope it was not too hard!
It was two busy weeks, but time-wise it was very helpful to work in PICO-8, as it forces you to work with limitations that keeps scope down and very low-res, which in turn makes the development quicker.
Thanks for playing!
I loved it. Only issue is that level 6 is a big difficulty spike and IMO was the most difficult level. Not a deal breaker at all though.
Thanks!
I think you are right about level six, I checked my notes and had written to myself that perhaps that one should be moved to later because of the difficulty. It's likely the hardest of the basic level without any multi-kills or ice mechanics, hence why it's still early in the game.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback, I might come back and adjust the difficulty some time after the jam.
Great puzzle game. Very fun.
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
This made me play it to the end! Very solid, great style!
Thanks for playing, I'm extra happy that you played all the way to the end!
Great little puzzle game! The central mechanic is really fun, and the sound design of it really adds a lot of Oomph to every shot; makes the whole thing really satisfying. Would love to see more experimentations with what you can do with the concept; the whole ice gimmick in the last half is a good idea, I just would love to see more.
Good job!
Thanks a bunch! I agree that there are many things that could be added to expand the game and make interesting puzzles. I toyed with having the enemies move, shoot, more complex island shapes, weapon types, etc.
In the end I decided on limiting the scope to be able to submit a smaller but more 'complete' gamplay experience. Perhaps I'll make a sequel in the future. Thanks for playing!
Great little puzzle game! The art direction is phenomenal and the sounds and music are very effective in it's delivery of the experience!
Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!
I may come back and play this when I have more mental energy. Great work!
Please do! And thanks for playing it!
I couldn't finish it because I suck at puzzles. But this is a really fantastic game, with great visuals, sound and concept!
Thanks! And thanks for playing it on stream and for organizing everything, it's one of the best jams around!
Thank you!