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Power Poachers's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #14 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Design | #23 | 3.313 | 3.313 |
| Overall | #35 | 3.156 | 3.156 |
| Presentation | #37 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Metroidvania | #82 | 2.188 | 2.188 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
gamemaker studio 1.4
Team/Developer
lerg bwo
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Comments
the music and art is really cool, the instant death when hitting a spike is a bit harsh I think but I like the quick restart. really interesting game design.
I love the enemy AI and the overall design. It got a bit repetitive, but the music was pretty fire too. The parts with the spikes that insta-kill are kind of annoying, and I think the later half of the game is a lot more exciting. Overall a fun game!
simple fun, quite addictive gameplay.
The level design is nice too.
thanks for playing!
energy being fuel, life and ammo is an interesting concept, but probably needs a bit more tweaks and balancing
flying around shooting things *is* neat, i kinda wanna see more of this,
but i didnt find myself dashing very often, possibly something that needs to be addressed?
thanks for the feedback!
yeah i doubt ill get away with not doing any more balancing
i think the dashing thing is fine. maybe some more tutorialising needed. the other areas you go to after this first one have enemies and bosses that had attacks that made you dash(they were removed for the jam since i didn't have time polish)
Feels good to control, spritework is very nice and the game has nice feel with all visual and audio feedback! I kinda have an issue with the design of how limited you are in terms of energy (and that you're losing it when taking damage), makes the game more of like a puzzle platformer with very limited ways of traversing further. On the other hand, getting energy back on hitting multiple targets with one shot feels amazing with current system. I just wish that it wasn't so strict I guess. I had fun with the game despite that issue, great work!
thanks for playing!
it does seem a bit strict/puzzle-like since you mention it. my hope for the energy system is that it can synergise with other mechanisms later so that you have to make choices while playing. id like it to be more risk/reward based where you have to quickly figure what you wanna do (like do more damage but risk losing a heart)
Short and sweet! It isn't much of a metroidvania (at least not yet) sadly, but what it is already has lots of potential. the graphics and music are also pretty nice imo, altought I think some sound effects are louder than they need to (or maybe I am the one that should start lowering my volume sometimes (Edit: yeah, it was my volume xD)).
I really like this more unique movement you made here, it feels really fun to play, altought I myself am not a big fan of the spacebar so I struggled a bit to get used to it lol. I also have a nitpick with the dash controls, since I can't really do any diagonal dash witouth moving left or right first, and that can kinda screw me up sometimes tbh. I think this moveset would work waayy better with an actual controller, so that's something I'd recommend you checking out.
The energy mechanic is also a really fun twist too, specially because of the combo thing you added to refill it, feels really rewarding to pull it off, specially on the boss.
Honestly this is actually quite the exact kind of game that I like the most so I got a bit of bias in favor to it lol, sad thing I can't actually give any ratings
thanks for checking it out!
im suprised that you touched on so many of the things i was considering
the sound effects actually arent normalised perfectly. higher pitch sounds are going to seem louder even when its the same volume as a low pitch sound. so thats something that i needed to adjust but didnt have time for.
actually it used to be more of metroidvania. there were more powerups and bosses during development but i cut like three quarters of the content i had made in favour of making this first area presentable. the next area actually had obsticles to get players used to diagonal dashing controls. its something i thought about for the reason you said. theres a chance id go with 4 directions instead of 8 because i wanna make it that you have to dash into orbs (will adjust hitboxes accordingly). so it would depend on whats funner when testing basically... probably 8 still. i also thought about how much better the dashing would be on a controller but aiming is going to really important for this game (already is because of combos) so would have to try it out and see how well that works.
This game is HARD! But I was really pleased with myself when I beat it. Getting to that last checkpoint was brutal, much harder than the boss, lol.
I'm guessing you're planning on adding more metroidvania elements eventually.
The double energy bars confused me a bit at first, and I agree with FallingWallGames that the energy limit is really punishing. Overall though I had fun!
thanks for the feedback!
yeah the section before the boss is probably where i needed to balance the difficulty the most
there were more metroidvania powerups originally but the other sections of game were removed in order to focus on making this first area presentable
i didnt put much consideration into how to teach the health system. i suppose you just die when running out of energy since you only have one heart for this first area. so didnt think enough about that
This looks really cool. Vibrant environment, and great use of the limited color palette. Pretty cool music.
Unfortunately, the game is really, really, really difficult. After a dozen tries, I was unable to get past the first row of obstacles.
Calibrating difficulty is always a real challenge when working solo or in a small team. When in doubt, try to err on the side of easiness. (This is advice I also have difficulty taking, but I believe in it nonetheless.)
thanks for checking it out!
if the first row was that difficult then i think something went horribly wrong with the tutorialization. i agree that i should've made the game easier but did you mean the second row? as the first row can be cleared by accident. see gif where i intentionally have imprecise inputs:
Thanks for the response!
On my machine, the character moves so fast that it is impossible to have the level of control I see in your GIF.
I simply cannot react that quickly. :)
wow sorry about that! that was a bug with the html5 version but it should be fixed now (hopefully).... ill have to go fix it with my other in browser games aswell now
Thank you--that's much better! :)
Now that I've been able to try it out, I see that it is a very clever and rather original game. There are two uncommon elements here: the use of fuel as a dual energy and health meter, and the flying mechanic (as opposed to walking and jumping, which is more common for a Metroidvania). Together, they form a very interesting synergy.
In the balance, I still think the game is somewhat too hard. Fuel is plentiful, and you can even score more through combos, which is awesome. However, I think the excessive difficulty stems from the maximum amount of fuel you are allowed to carry. Were this increased by 50% (three bars instead of two), the player would have a bit more breathing room. Of course, some players relish a really hard challenge, but that's usually not the optimal route in a game jam (where you want players to experience your content without spending too much time retrying the same challenges).
hey thanks a bunch for that! definetly needed to get that issue taken care of
yeah i wouldve liked there to be more lead up to this level of difficulty. i remember thinking about increasing the bar like you said just as a quick fix before submitting to the jam.(or just providing another heart) didnt do that probably out concern for unintentionally breaking the level design right at the end of development
anyway i kinda wanted it balanced like that so that maybe there could be risk vs reward mechanics that the energy metre could play off of later (example: doing more damage but risk losing a heart)
thanks again
This game really has a lot of potential, great job. Maybe make the starting area not quit has hard lol. Great Job!
thanks for the feedback!
Very nice artwork and really cool enemies. The music fits the game's atmosphere.
However, the game is badly optimised and it got very laggy most of the times.
Also you would have made more sense if the character automatically respawned at the last checkpoint after death (no need to add an extra input just for that).
thanks for the feedback!
the game has been optimised now. if it slows down when shooting enemies then that's an intentional effect so you know that you got a hit in
Also you would have made more sense if the character automatically respawned at the last checkpoint after death
i didnt actually think of that, i suppose i wanted to make absolutely sure the player knows what killed them
Cool graphic! Bit too hard for me :D Hope you will fix this restart issue in the future and I will able to master this game :D Also very like this music!
thanks for playing!
the restart issue has been fix
I'm very happy you did this! Fighting those robots feels so nice :D I think you could work with more backtracking a little to make playing less linear. Overall I enjoyed playing it!