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Dragonsblood's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #10 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Metroidvania | #10 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Overall | #11 | 3.464 | 3.464 |
| Design | #17 | 3.286 | 3.286 |
| Enjoyment | #19 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
GameMaker Studio 2
Team/Developer
Team Sunforge
External assets
N/A
Comments on the jam
Very fun! It was great trying a month long jam while we had the time for it, and we learned a lot about project scope and how to plan ahead.
Reference info
GyDGeza | The Sun#3310
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Comments
A fairly big game with a huge world to explore, wow. Sometimes the rooms feel a bit empty to me. I think you could add some enemies to make it more interesting for the player. Very nice animations!
pretty cool game, but the skeleton dragon enemy is op, i can't hit him, he always stab me back instantly.
nice walking animation tho. very smooth, i also liked how all the player sprites change when they are on the facing the other direction.
Thanks for the feedback! The final boss is easier to fight with fireballs, haha
I finally got to dragon blood. The visual style of the project attracts attention.
The interface takes up too much screen space. I can hardly see what is above.
I spent a very long time finding the first ability to double jump. And where are all the enemies? Ah, here they are.
I am glad that there is a checkpoint after each room, because the controls in battle are a little difficult.
Yes, there are really not enough sounds, but you get used to it. I liked the background ambient.
This is a fairly lengthy game. Apparently, the developers worked for a whole month.
This is a very stylish project. I really enjoyed playing.
Wow, this game is very ambitious for the time frame! A large world, multiple bosses, detailed artwork... It seemed a bit obtuse at first with the size of the world and lack of direction, but it grew on me as I played and I really enjoyed it in the end.
Navigation is a lot easier with the item that shows the locations of certain points of interest on the map. I think the map could do with some of this by default (have it keep track of things you've already seen).
The sound design is a weak area. The music is nice but the lack of obvious sound effects for most actions makes the game feel a bit empty.
But overall, great job!
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! Let me start by saying that the lack of sound effects are precisely because how ambitious the rest of the game was for the time frame, haha. We barely had time to put the music in, but ran out of time for sounds.
Marking objects the player already found on the map is a good idea, I will note this down for the next version, thank you for the suggestion!
The lack of direction is intended (with the caveat that there should have been an intro cutscene that at least tells you to get the four orbs but I didn't have time to make it). The design principle was: start out with four directions to go in, and once you pick one, you pretty much get locked into a linear path until you find the ability relevant to that path. Then the world starts opening up. I can appreciate how without a starting motivation/hint of what to do, it can be a bit obtuse.
All in all, thank you again for your feedback, and we're glad you enjoyed our game! :)
This game looks amazing! So many visually distinct biomes to explore - I particularly enjoyed the palace interiors, but the trees looked really good as well. I liked that you put the effort in to give each biome its own background music. It also controlled quite well, very responsive and snappy. I also thought the slime monsters were a creative implementation with their hitbox being tied to the spiky protrusion.
Here's some constructive feedback:
- The world design is huge, but I felt fairly unguided and uncertain of where I was supposed to go most of the time. There was a lot of guessing and backtracking (as well as one instance where I got stuck by going right from the palace before getting the fireball and had to reset the game).
- The HUD, while gorgeous, covered several of the gems I needed to do the vertical shot on.
- I struggled with this one a lot too, but in a game with so much vertical movement and such large spaces to navigate, the camera felt a bit off - there were several times when I'd have to make a blind jump/fall or when the camera's swift movements would distract me.
And a minor nitpick:
- The background parallax moving at the same speed as the character felt weird.
Overall a very solid entry and definitely one of the most visually stunning ones I've seen so far. Great job!
Hi and thank you for your feedback!
The issue with being unguided is that I did not have the time to put in a starting cutscene to explain your goal, haha. I could definitely put that in the next patch, after the voting period. As for the HUD covering essential switches, hmm. Maybe I should make the vertical camera movement go further?
Can you tell me exactly where and how you got stuck? I am trying to get rid of all the gamebreaking issues, haha
And the minor nitpick: completely valid, we did not have time to implement a proper parallax system so the skybox is just set to always have the player's positions lol.
Thank you again for your comment and I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
Oh, this wasn't so much about an opening cutscene, it's that the map felt too open, especially in the beginning. I didn't really have a sense of where the game wanted me to go, it felt like there were too many decision points and branching paths. It probably took me a good five minutes of wandering through every nook and cranny available before I found the fireball ability.
This was specifically after getting the fireball ability and trying to get back into the palace, you have to shoot a gem that's very high above you to open a large door. This gem is very easily obscured by the HUD. It might be as simple as moving the gem down a bit.
Right from the start of the game, if you go right and exit the palace which requires leaping off of a ledge, you'll end up in an outside area I couldn't find an exit from. All of the platforms back into the palace were too high up, and all of the pathways that I found (including one built into a cave - which had a nice transition hint btw - which was ultimately a dead end at that point in the game).
I hope this helps. Let me know if you need any screenshots and I'll see what I can grab for you.
Ah, the open endedness is the intended experience, haha. You can progress in one of four directions from the start and then you are pretty much locked into a linear path until you find the ability of that path. As you've noted with going right, there's a cave entrance that you can continue into and find they way forward. Or do you mean somewhere else?
Ah okay, that's cool. I found my way into the cave but didn't find the intended path so assumed I was going the wrong way. =/
It is very much possible, that the graphics are a bit murky in the area. You were two rooms away from the easiest to get upgrade though lol
Ah interesting. I'm gonna give it another go later and check it out, sounds like an interesting concept. So a question, do you just spawn additional monsters as the player finds more upgrades (to keep the difficulty curve ramping up)? I think I noticed that the vampire things (I didn't look very closely, but they had a cape :P) didn't spawn until after my second upgrade, but maybe that was just coincidence.
It had just a quick look. Looks like an epic game I have to give it some more time. I will come back for more and rate then.