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A jam submission

MagnamusView game page

A short prototype of a metroidvania. Explore the world and regain your powers
Submitted by Tystnex — 11 minutes, 38 seconds before the deadline
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Magnamus's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Metroidvania#143.7783.778
Enjoyment#213.3333.333
Overall#303.2223.222
Design#402.8892.889
Presentation#672.8892.889

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Engine
Godot

Team/Developer
Tystnex

External assets
All of the sounds are external assets, as well as the main protagonist sprite.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Awesome! The upgrades and level design work well. 

From the sound perspective (I'm a composer), it could be cool to implement some more music tracks depending on the environment, caves, overworld, etc. Eventually it would also be cool to get some unique sounds into the game beyond the ones already there. 

Developer

Thank you for your feedback!

I agree with you, the sound design could be better. There is a total of 5 tracks, and they do change when the player enters a new area, but first of all they are a bit samey, and second of all I failed with technical implementation. I played through the game again just to be sure and at some point you will just hear 1s of a new song and then it goes silent. Big issue and I am quite sad I failed to notice and fix it during the jam. 

Submitted(+1)

Big impressive level with some cool Metroidvania moments where the open level tells you exactly where to go which is great. The map is just a little samey in each big area, making it a little hard to get lost. I also think some music would go a really long way. The art is really nice too. 

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks for playing and leaving a comment!

Ye the map really is a must, or at least varying the enviroment to help players find themselves. I am curious about the music, because there are a couple songs implemented, but the system for playing them is really barebones and I felt it might break easily, which is a shame to hear that it happened. Will definitely need to fix it in the future. 

Submitted(+1)

Very solid game! I liked the different powers and the way you used it for the different platforming challenges, and the art was simple but very appealing.
Some things that I think would make it better is, like most said, some kind of map, because the map was kind of big and easy to get lost in, while being very similar, and also the spikes being to similar to the rest of the environment.
And also there was a bit of a disconnect in some of the movement and animations speeds, your character movement and jump felt very fast, while your attacks and climbing the waterfalls were very slow in comparison. I think adjusting the speed of both cases would go a long way of making it feel a lot better to handle the character.

Developer

Thanks a lot for playing and commenting!

In regards to traversal speed, that is a good point. Now that I think about it, there is definitely some disconnect, mostly when you go for the waterfalls that should be an upgraded movement and they are slower than jumping. I think I should generally level the speeds, for movement, waterfalls and as someone else also commented for the projectiles. Thanks again for your comment.

(+1)

That's a very nice little one. It's overall pretty fun to play, even thought I wish there were some more movement upgrades, but no problem, the upgrades we have here are actually pretty creative.
Also something a little unusual to say, but I really appreciate the fact you simply added coyote time at all. That's one of those things most jam entries usually never actually bother on doing (or I just never notice, idk), and that's usually fine, but on this one in specific it was a very huge plus specially because of how much breakable platforms there were on it.
There's also the little snippets of lore you added throught those stone drawings you put near the upgrades, that I also always appreciate, even tought that's just a small thing.

Altought as other people already said, the map is a little too big for it's own good, so getting lost is pretty easy, and the spikes really just look like decoration and also are almost always blending in with the BG so it was kinda hard to even see them on some occasions.
Some other nitpicks I had myself tho, are the fact that the breakable platforms will break by me just touching them on any direction rather than only doing so when I stand on them, so that made them feel a little janky sometimes, more specifically when they were on top of waterfalls I had to climb.
The laser cristal enemies are also literally impossible to avoid, since their lazers comes out immdiatelly, aims at you with deadeye precision and has no telegraphing whatsoever, wich is just plain cheating from their part. That made the earth spell needlesly frustrating to get because since I respawn with 1 hp, I was forced to backtrack and farm some slimes to be able to tank the lasers.
The boss at the end is also a little underwhelming, since his attacks takes a little too long to cycle, and since you need for him to be vulnerable in order to hit him it kinda just became a waiting game, wich for a bossfight is almost never good. His attacks are also not telegraphed at all, but since it has a fixed pattern that didn't bother as much as it would, but still, I took some cheap damage at first. I also discovered the waterfall next to him was supposed to be used as a barrier by complete accident, so having tutorialized me that the frozen water could block the lasers beforehand with the little laser dudes from before would have been nice.

Also, I really hate to be that guy, but some of the tilemap on some parts of the game doesn't fit togheter properly lol, not only on a lot of room edges, but also on some very random parts of the world. (This really doesn't impact the game at all, it's just me being annoying)

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for the comment! 

I kind of agree about the movement thing. During the jam I was thinking about giving the player double jump and dash as basic movement or somewhere near the start and then building upon this with current upgrades. But sadly I felt I would be completely defeated by level design if I did that. Also I am so happy you liked the lore snippets, as you say it is just a small thing, but I felt adding them could be nice for some background lore, without too much dialogue.

I understand what you mean about the breakable platforms, it may look slightly janky, but I also tried to build some jumping puzzles around that. It also applies to them on waterfalls as I wanted the player to not really have stable ground there, for added difficulty. But honestly I can see how it could also become problematic. About the laser crystals, it was a last minute change, because before I felt they wouldn't shoot at you at all when you ran past them, so admittedly I probably tuned it too much to the other side. Lastly the boss, those are all fair points. I was quite unsure how to tune the difficulty for him and in the end I did notice on the last day that he is probably a fair bit too easy, but didn't manage to do a lot about it. Also I really appreciate you telling me about the telegraphed attacks. I felt I did a bit of it in the animations(both boss and small crystals go up, and slime below them rises before their attack) but I can see how it is not enough, I will definitely try to improve upon it in the future. And there is nothing wrong with being that guy, I believe I know what you mean with the tilemaps and it may be because of how I separated them for optimization. I was hoping it wouldn't be too noticable, but I will try to hide it better :D

All in all, thank you for playing and giving a feedback, I appreciate it!

Submitted(+1)

Hey there, what a fun game! I really had fun with the mechanics you got there, destroying platforms that regrew that I had to make use of was nice, the ice pillar was cool, although a little mana hungry before getting some upgrades, the "spikes" were a bit underwhelming, but i see the use of it. While the level didn't have much of visual landmarks to find myself in it, the abundance of pickups made it not as tiring as one would expect, idk how many I missed, I ended up with 6hp and 6mana after the boss. The only real issue I have is that "spike" sprite doesn't read as such and on top of that the same kind of sprite used as most front parallax was jarring at times, probably because of how saturated it was there. Great entry, had fun!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for leaving a comment. I am glad you had fun with the game!

I can see what you mean about spikes. The main idea was having an ability to create a platform largely wherever you wanted, but in the end I also wanted another attack that would be an aoe and it turned into this. Definitely could be improved in the future. With the landmarks and spike sprite and parallax, I agree. There should be some more variety and one that lets you find yourself in the level better, but I just didn't have time or ability to make it, as it was really the first time I was making pixel art.  Also with health and mana, you should be able to get a max of 8 hp and 7 mana, so you were quite close :d Thanks again for checking it out!

Submitted(+1)

An innovative and interesting exploration game. The play area is very large, with many branching and reconverging paths. The world is chock-full of small, clever puzzles to solve.

The ice beam has some neat and original uses.

The graphics are mostly bare-bones, but there are some nice touches: I really like the parallax scrolling backgrounds.

Suggestions for improvement: 

1. Such a large play area really needs a map.

2. The character speed seems a bit excessive. The environment appears to fly by. The character moves faster than its own fireball! :) 

3. The green obelisks do not immediately read as a hazard (although we find out soon enough).

4. The player should not respawn with just 1 health. If you're reluctant to respawn the player with full health, maybe 3 (the original max) would be a good number.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing!

I am very glad you enjoyed the existing level design, and puzzles in the world.

In regards to suggestions.
I was really debating implementation of the map, but in the end the priority went elsewhere, and I didn't manage to implement it on time.

I think I can see what you mean about the speed, but it kind of felt just right for me. I guess it may come down to personal preference, but then it is actually quite silly how slow the fireball is. I will give it some more thought for sure :D  

With the obelisks I hoped that the player will recognize them, as they are present in the design of one of the slime enemies. However, I also agree, with their colours and general design they definitely appear to be very similar to the enviro sprites.

Lastly the health, thank you very much for the feedback about that. I was thinking about couple possible solutions to that issue, because I did notice that you can sometimes respawn with small amounts of health and no way to restore it. But then nobody really complained about it until now, and I wasn't sure if it was really an issue.

Again thank you very much for playing and giving all the suggestions! I will definitely consider them in the future.

Submitted(+1)

Nice game! Haven't made it through yet, hope I'll find some time to continue it.

I was impressed with the jumping puzzles where you need to destroy the blocks and then wait for them to reappear to continue, simple but great idea :)

There were a lot of rooms with no enemies and no obstacles in them, those should be made more interesting or not be there at all as they don't bring much value to the game IMHO.

Anyways had fun playing it, and nice job on the saving system, did not expect to be right where I left when restarting the game 👌🏼

Congrats on this entry!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the comment!

In regards to the rooms, I will admit that I kind of fell short on the level design at times. I overscoped a bit and in the end felt with what I had it would be hard to populate rooms with enough content, so some of them are a bit too big and too empty for their own good. Definitely something I should improve. Anyway, I am glad you enjoyed it! :D