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A jam submission

Partial VanyaView game page

Vanya is incomplete, complete her by gaining abilities and killing her demons
Submitted by TeePeeDee — 9 hours, 8 minutes before the deadline
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Partial Vanya's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Metroidvania#123.6833.833
Presentation#143.5233.667
Overall#163.3633.500
Design#193.2033.333
Enjoyment#203.0423.167

Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Engine
PixelGameEngine

Team/Developer
TeePeeDee (solo effort)

External assets
additional sounds from Sound effect Starter pack by simon13666

Comments on the jam
incomplete (partial) entry for MVM14

Reference info
teepeedee#4300

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Cool game. I like the design of the world. It's good at leading you in the right direction and is laid out so you end up where you need to be without too much backtracking. The amount of different abilities is great and I like being able to find secrets like the health boosts (and a second dash ability for some reason?)

As others have mentioned the controls feel stiff. I think this come down to two main issues:

1. Most moves have a (relatively) long windup. This isn't too bad with attacks, but it's very frustrating for jumping which is typically instant.

2. The need to hold down the button for the duration of an attack feels awkward. Normally you would expect a full attack animation to play out just by tapping the button.

Other than that, the presentation is pretty good. The sprites are well drawn and the music is nice.

Developer

thanks, and yes I made the cardinal sin of really not getting fun/responsive movement mechanics in from the start, and I never really found the time to tweak them. Having 2 dashes allows you to dash for longer, but the 2nd is really not needed.

Submitted(+1)

There are some good design ideas here! The weapon switching was cool, and the ability unlocks all made sense. It was a fairly big adventure, but thanks to the minimap I never got lost, and there were even some puzzles I had to think about to get what I wanted (usually health pick-ups, but I'm also just now realizing I didn't pick up the Lightning Bolt =/). The death sound effect on enemies was immensely enjoyable.


Here's some feedback/suggestions:

- The controls felt a bit sluggish and unresponsive, part of it may have been the character's base move speed being so slow combined with a fairly large hit box, so I never felt like I could truly dodge enemies (the spiders were hit-or-miss, but the flying skulls were night impossible to dodge). 

- The character doesn't get iFrames when hit, so staying in an enemy constantly drains health (which alongside the slow move speed really hurts). This was pretty rough on the final boss.

- The general dungeon layout and flow was cool and made sense, but many of the rooms were either empty or overly large (or both). I'm definitely guilty of this as well though so I can't really complain.

- Final thing, I killed the boss twice, but then got murdered by the flying skulls so I couldn't see if anything happened or not.


All-in-all a good showing, I think if you tightened up the controls and polished up the the room layouts your design ideas would really shine. Good job!

Developer

nothing happens on killing the boss, I ran out of time to implement my planned ending scene, same with the castle the plan was that most of the larger rooms would have areas accessible after the super jump.

The core movement and hit mechanics are definitely lacking I know for the next jam to work on that first ;) (as everything else flows from that). It is a bit better when you have at least one dash (the lightning) but still not great, and unless you really know the map (ie wrote the game) you'd never find the first lightning on first attempt.

Thanks really appreciate the feedback, this was definitely a learning jam for me!

Submitted(+1)

One of the larger games in the jam so far, done by just one person? Amzing! Like the post below I found the keyboard controlling a bit tricky. Very nice graphics though.

Developer

Yeah I should have spent a bit more time finessing the keyboard controls.... especially the super jump, once voting ends I will upload a version that binds super-jump to it's own key! Really there is not much to the game even if it feels big, it's easy to make lots of empty rooms ;)

Glad you liked the graphics... I really struggle with animation so while it's not perfect at all I was quite happy with the sprite work.

Submitted(+1)

I liked the big loop of the map! I did encounter some issues playing:

  • The player has no invincibility frames when hurt. Even the most basic enemy can decimate your health bar by walking over you
  • the game crashed twice in the area you get the super jump in
  • I wasn't able to figure out how to use the super jump

I also felt like the controls were a bit sluggish, especially with the jump windup and settling after landing. Nice world map layout, though!

Developer

thanks, yes, better hit (and movement) mechanics are desperately needed. But they got put on the todo pile and never made it off... ;)  Super Jump is hideously hard with the keyboard, and that is really a stupid oversight, I just tried here and one adjusted variable to allow more frames between the down press and the up press would have fixed that :) oh well live and learn, after the voting ends I will patch it! 

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

this game is really amazing. A little tricky to do the Big Jump in keyboard at least.  And the final boss was overpowered, I can't defeat him at all hehehe, but I wonder if this was my fault to don't get that secret to defeat him. All said, it's a very good game.

Developer(+1)

yeah I did most of my play testing with a controller I should have tweaked the super jump so it was more doable with keyboard.. hint he is a lot easier if you found the bow powerup (shooting red arrows). Also there is no end screen so you aren't missing much