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The Island's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #2 | 3.786 | 3.786 |
| Overall | #4 | 3.743 | 3.743 |
| Audio | #5 | 3.571 | 3.571 |
| Gameplay | #6 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
| Enjoyment | #6 | 3.786 | 3.786 |
| Graphics | #8 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Godot
Team/Developer
Just me TheShaggyDev
External assets
None
Comments on the jam
Fun jam!
Reference info
Discord - sumguy67, Twitter - @theshaggydev
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Comments
Another highlight of the jam for me. This is one of the most well put together games here, and as a theme with games of this caliber, so lacking any dramatically unfinished parts, I can only really critique the design.
Fall damage is a little aggressive, since I (like some others) fell prey to fall damage in the blood rune puzzle. The smallest enemies didn't need to both be invisible and leaping, since either one of those things is threatening in the context of your game. Both together makes them seem more tedious than challenging.
Either way! This was one of the most Metroidvania games on the metroidvania game jam. Well scoped and with just enough graphical flourish for it to be exciting to see what else the world had in store!
if only I wouldnt have permanently lost my powers when going past the blood red ceiling ward.
not even respawning gave me my powers back :-(
aside from that fun game, even though how easily you can take ( a lot of) fall damage is a tiny bit annoying at times :-)
Oops! Sorry about that! Thanks for letting me know about that bug. I'll patch that once the voting period is over.
Loved it, it's funny to see some lovecraftian stuff that doesn't spam tentacles, the background music was pretty nice although in the puzzle were you get the banish spell it overlaps weirdly with the sounds of the enemies in my opinion.
Liked the different enemies except the teleporting jellyfish things. They also threw me once out of the map when i ran into two of them.
Phasing is pretty fun but I sometimes shoot and you can get it before getting the banish spell which I feel wasn't intended to happen.
Liked the writing and losing sanity making your characters hand shaky is pretty cool(It took me some time notice though).
Really nice game! :) The controls feel very satisfying! I did get a bit distracted by the night sky background a bit because it felt cluttery but that's a minor thing! Amazing game!! :)
Ok, I will be honest with you. I have not expected that. It's far my favourite entry at this point. It's the only that kept me so engaged that I almost completed it twice. The character control is probably the most solid of all. I hate when in game there is too much dialogue but yours ones kept me interested to the point that I haven't skip any.
In my opinion this is a title you should continue on developing.
Here are few bugs I found:
1. Using the teleportation spell you can move through the symbol that takes away your magic abilities. This means you do not have to solve the issue but teleport thorugh it. Actually teleportation saved me from solving both of the puzzles (the one with magic symbol and the other one that unlocks bashish spell).
2. Sometimes shooting the shadows I wasn't hitting them
3. This is probably the most critical - during my first attempt to finish the game the crystals stopped breaking. I thought I am doing something wrong but just couldn't destroy it. When I started the game over everything worked well.
4. The jellyfish enemy was extremely hard. It was IMPOSSIBLE to predict where it will come from.
Besides that one "not a bug" - I felt the level design in some places could be slightly better - it's not bad but I felt the areas are a little bit unutilized - like all of them are kind of the same.
Also for a game with such a dark story I would probably (and this is very subjective) go with much less saturated colors, a bit of darkness, fog and so on. This would help build the atmosphere a bit :).
Wow! Thanks for the kind words :) And for the bug reports. I ended up being a little bit shorter on time than I had originally planned out for this jam, so some bugs eeked their way in along with the issues with the level design being underutilized and samey (additional environmental art and designs were the first things I cut).
I like your suggestions regarding the color palette as well, along with some much needed atmospheric effects. With more time to iterate and consider the artwork, I think I would do a hybrid, making the world less vibrant but keeping the enemies strongly colored and lit to provide an otherworldly contrast.
Anyways, thanks for playing and for the great feedback!
Agreed on the jellyfish (and basically all the other stuff)
the invisible jelly fish are really annoying.
it fells like there are attacks just spwaning into existence from about all directions.
took my ages to even realize that there are a ton of small enemies scattered around that are only visible when they fly directly at you.
which is when it is already to late to dodge or fight back.
made the one long corridor very annoying, had to banish the hell out of it :-)
aside from that, the red glyphs permastealing all powers was a bit.. gamebreaking for me, even though the 2-tile-jump from me :-(
liked everything here. was fun right away, controls great, sounds and visuals are good to.
liked the extra speed down slopes
also some possible bugs:
have trouble hitting the ghosts right next to you for some reason(both with torch and gun)
when shooting, it does look like it shouldve hit sometimes and didnt(like it goes through the ghosts looking guys)
also seem to shoot occationally when i teleport even though i click once?
there were furstrating blind jumps when teleporting onto platforms to destroy the crystals
crystals also seemed indistructable sometimes? maybe i wasnt hitting them? there wasnt really feedback that told me what i was doing was working
also i take damage from nothing sometimes if i jump right next to the crystals
overall really nice work!
Appreciate the detailed bug reports! I was aware of some, but not all of these, issues upon release and have my suspicions as to the cause of them. Just ran a few days short on time to get everything sorted out. Glad you enjoyed it anyways!
Solid entry; one of my favorites actually! Very nice mood with the graphics, audio, controls, etc. Everything is smooth and generally works how it is supposed to. I love the flashlight effect and the stippling (I think it's called also) also! The general mood of the island is amazing, very slow and creepy if that makes sense. I love the soundtrack in all its ambience!
Everything just clicks with this game, besides directing the player a bit more with what to do at times. I got confused near the end by not going to the puzzle (I think) and getting some dialog that tells you what to do over around the crystals. Oh well.
Solid experience nonetheless! Would love to play a full game like this. To me it feels like a grown up Pitfall game mixed with some of the story and lore of the TV show Lost.
I don't want to rate this one yet; it seems as if you have some kind of memory leak, at least in the Windows build. This was after playing it for about 10 or 20 minutes
I tried the Windows build because the web build kept freezing on me after a few minutes.
Thanks for the telling me about this! After some testing, I was able to figure it out and patch the game.
Awesome, I will download the new build and continue playing!
What was the issue for the memory leak if you don't mind me asking? I develop a lot with Godot as well. If you don't want to clutter the comments up you can message me on Discord if you like @raptor0999
Sure thing! The cause was the projectiles in the mini-boss fight. In order to make their destruction more visually appealing, I use a coroutine to trigger the death animation and then wait for a timer to complete before calling `queue_free()`. The problem is that, in true game jam fashion, I coded it up so quickly that I accidentally left it so that each frame the death timer resets and calls ANOTHER coroutine, thereby leading to a slow memory leak as the coroutines stack up and the projectiles never actually die :D
Thanks for the bug fix! I think that I am still stuck.... I got the high jump, pistol, upgraded call or whatever, and the phase. I went down and to the right where all the crystals are and took all of those enemies out... I think, but nothing happens. Maybe there is somewhere else I am missing?
Ahh yes. The enemies are not the final target. To win you have to destroy all the crystals in the chamber. If you go left instead of right in the tunnel leading to the boss, it's explained in a dialog and you'll get another power up. But that is the very end of the game so no worries if you don't want to play through it all again!
Great work on this one. Controls are smooth and solid, good variety of enemies with great looking effects.
Spooky atmosphere, I was not prepared for those freaky jumpy warp bugs. Great use of particles and sound. Liked the writing too.
A nice AD and clean lighting effects, the feeling is good, you get lost easily and the enemies are a real danger. Bravo for the publication!