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A jam submission

Silent ParadiseView game page

Explore the depths of an abandoned submerged city
Submitted by Dreamnoid (@dreamnoid) — 4 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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Silent Paradise's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Metroidvania#14.3754.375
Execution#33.8753.875
Overall#33.8753.875
Enjoyment#73.6253.625
Sensory#93.6253.625

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Engine
Dream.Vania (custom engine)

Team/Developer
Dri (solo)

External assets
A handful of CC0 sound effects and a few generic tiles and icons reused from past projects

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Comments

Submitted

I like it a lot, first of all thank you for the map, exceution and gameplay is great, visuals are pretty good, overall a good experience!! nice game

Jumping and platform grabbing was too heavy yes, you need more reasonable platform contact for such heavy gravity..... other than that I am not sure 100% believe that all of this was created in a month  The option menu, inventory, and features within the game scope just seemed way too polished for being done in a month....but ill give it benefit of the doubt for its overall execution 4/5

Seems like a good game only played for about 10 minutes, to get the general feel

Developer

I dedicated the last week of the jam to polish. Other than that, I used my usual game engine which provides most generic menus. It's also not my first Metroidvania by any stretch. I plan to publish a detailed postmortem in January, if you're interested in the 'how'.

sounds good! Check out chick-magnet if you gave a chance. The WebGL is much more upto date thanks!

Submitted

Overall a really fun experience.

The map which marked the coloured doors really helped with exploration and the game is surprisingly large.  


I had a few little gripes with the controls, but these are more personal nit-picks than anything major.

-Jumping is a little too quick/heavy for my tastes. 

-Crouching felt a bit clunky and often led to me getting hit. For example: moving then shooting whilst trying to crouch at the same time would leave you standing even when still holding the crouch button after. Personally I'd rather it if you only stayed crouched whilst holding the button and not on a toggle but that's me.


But otherwise a very solid entry. Whilst not doing anything particularly new it really nailed the raw 'metroidvania' formula we all know and love.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

The jump will change, no question. For the crouch, I will see to add some input buffering, but I don't think I will change the toggle, as it would make activating the morphball harder.

Submitted (1 edit)

Pretty good all around. Honestly this one ended up at 5's except enjoyment which was a 4 mostly for smaller discretionary things, in combination with the arguably less pressing issue of difficulty hitting things that sometimes felt a bit artificial.

i agree with what others have said that crouch/jump is probably preferred for fall-through platforms.

But basically anything else is either a straight-up nitpick or goes to taste.

But honestly the graphics and atmosphere and world-building were pretty solid overall, and so was the game play, even though the jump was a bit fast for me. I liked that the revealed story had a twist or two beyond what one might have initially expected.

* Edit: There is a fall-through platform in one room I can't fall through and it seemed like this was probably to prevent a problematic sequence break. That's a bit of a nitpick but please don't do that :)

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! The jump and crouch are going to change for the post-jam version, you're not alone feeling it's too abrupt.

I see what platform you're talking about, and while it's technically different from those you can fall from, you're right it's certainly too subtle a difference for players to notice. I will probably change it or make the difference more obvious.

Submitted

You clearly understood the assignment.  Great Metroidvania with a lot of polish and a lot of content!  I particularly liked the cello in the music and in a jam I'm surprised to see a map screen, forget one that lets you place custom markers!  

If I had to give criticism, I think I wish the jump had more control.  Its really fast and it was hard to jump and shoot things in the air.  

One of the best I've played in the jam so far! 

Developer

Map markers were a really late addition, like a few hours before the submission, haha. And it's nice to hear you liked the music as it's the first time I'm using exclusively my own and I was a bit worried it wouldn't be good enough.

The jump will be less abrupt in the post-jam build ;)

Thank you for playing and I'm glad you liked it!

Submitted

Hello!

It was great. I 100%ed it in a bit les tan 2 hours. A nice demonstration of a clear understanding of what the imperatives in the Metroid formula are, no doubt. Wonderful game all around with great amount of content. I played The Lightkeeper and The Trespasser some time ago, and I believe you have improved upon them with this one. Well done!

The game is polished and presented in a way that seems profesional work, you can be proud. Playing your games, I would bet that you have some profesional experience in the videogame development industry, which would be great indeed. And if it is not the case, it is impressive all the same and I would not be surprised if you start working in the industry.

It reminded me Metroid Fusion quite a lot, with more freedom to get some items in whatever order.

I can think of some details in terms of proposal for improvement. The jump could be easier to control, mostly the double jump. I had some difficulty understanding which metal beams were interactive or just background art. I don’t see in the game any benefit from making character missiles and bombs self injuring. Being able to shoot in several directions would be great even if mitigated by wide beam, and also being able to use grapple and missiles without needing a pop up to select them.

Congratulations again! Rating it 5/5.

Ps: what did you hide behind that grey wall in the south west part of the Expedition Wing sector?

Developer

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

The abrupt jump is the #1 feedback I'm getting, so I already improved it in the post-jam build. I'm also considering adding a way to aim up. I'm still on the fence about exempting the player from their own explosions, but I will continue to think about it ;)

The grey wall is supposed to represent the hatch used by the submarines and divers to leave the station. It's not hiding anything, I just didn't have time to create unique tiles for it :p

Submitted

Very excellent entry! Great job.

Man, I wish I could make a fully polished game like this in 1 month and it has a lot of content.

I've not finished the game yet but I having fun playing and will play more.

Developer(+1)

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! The scope and polish come from what I've learned from my previous games, and I still wasn't sure it could pull it off haha

Well polished experience, I'm always a fan of custom tech, closed source though it may be. 

Developer

Thanks! My engine is really only made for me, so no real sense making it open source, but I talk about it a lot, which can be useful for people building their own: https://dreamnoid.itch.io/aereven-lunar-wake/devlog/274028/postmortem-part-1-the-engine

Submitted

Hey, absolute no idea how you made this in 1 month. Great work but not much innovation in your project. But for one Month is very impressive and i also liked the controls and feedback's. Cheers

Developer(+1)

Yeah, jams are often focused on trying out new ideas, but for me it was more about challenging myself to create a new game in a short time-frame. I plan to write an extensive postmortem about all this ;)

Submitted

thats nice !

Submitted

really great work on this, crazy how much you were able to get in there. certainly has more crammed in here than any other game in the jam that i've seen. it seems you had a custom engine, is it specifically for metroidvanias? i also imagine this isn't your first rodeo in making a game either, how and what sort of planning did you do (i know that's a big question, feel free to skip it)? the game itself feels pretty good. one thing i'll mention is that there is a reason games like this usually force you to press jump while crouching to escape a 2 way platform and there are a lot of encounters here that it would've benefited being able to choose whether i wanted to crouch or go through a platform. i liked the story! it was fun getting bits of it as i explored. the whole thing reminded me a lot of environmental station alpha, although the movement in esa is much tighter and more fun (because it was made over like a year and not 30 days lol). the art very much gets the job done but something i noticed in this and a lot of jam entries (including my own in some places) was an issue with visual hierarchy. the doors were the main thing, even with an animation they still sort of didn't really read as doorways. i think something more solid and with a very high contrast would work better for those. these are nit picks though, really great job all around! i'd be surprised if you didn't win.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback, and glad you enjoyed it!

Using the jump button in addition to crouching to go down one-way platform is an interesting idea, I will consider it. ;)

My engine is modular, so while I do have a module dedicated to metroidvanias, I've also built a Zelda-like, a JRPG and even some 3D games with it. I plan to write up a detailed post-mortem at a later date, explaining my process and describing my tools, but in the meantime I do talk a bit about the engine here if you're interested.

Submitted

How the hell is this game only 9.5 MB and how did you pull that game off in just a month? Especially using a custom engine (I assume you made it yourself). Just wow. 

I have to say, the jump is a bit janky, which makes the platforming tiresome at times. But overall this is very impressive. Definitely one of the best games I have played so far during this jam.

Played it for 30 minutes now and will continue at a later point. Right now I am kinda lost. Therefore I will take a break and rate some other games.

But keep up the good work.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and for the feedback, I do plan to tweak the jump post-jam.

And the answer to both your questions is because I use a custom engine ;)

Submitted

very impressive 

Submitted

Graphics are cool! Map is huge. Controls are pretty difficult - the jumps are really hard to make - but great job on everything!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I plan to tweak the jump after the jam to get more time in the air. Hope it will help :)

Submitted

Okay how on earth did you make this in month, there are so many rooms and upgrades, 2 hours in and still heaven't find all the codex. The enemies are very cool too, i like how all the enimies changed after the boss. 

Overall really fun and complete game! 

Developer

Thanks! The short answer to your question is 'good tools and a good process' but I plan to write an in-depth postmortem later ;)