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A jam submission

The Down and OutView game page

​Have you found your way around The Down and Out?
Submitted by Aggressive Combustion (@ac_gamestudios) — 5 hours, 19 minutes before the deadline
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The Down and Out's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Metroidvania#94.1004.100
Overall#123.8753.875
Sensory#163.9003.900
Enjoyment#163.7003.700
Execution#193.8003.800

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Engine
Unity

Team/Developer
Aggressive Combustion

External assets
"Cape" (https://skfb.ly/6SIWt) by hate is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). "Worn Old Gauntlet" (https://skfb.ly/oJSFJ) by ithesus is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). "Claw" (https://skfb.ly/oLypx) by shoresmeet11 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). "Scratches" (<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/black-scratches-texture-white-background-realistic-set-isolated-vector-illustration_37917073.htm#fromView=search&page=1&position=19&uuid=bef2ac10-f0d1-4cf4-bcd0-260eb74a278d">Image by macrovector on Freepik</a>), various Mixamo animations, Lumberjacks | Lowpoly Characters by Akishaqs

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit)

Fixed-angle 3D Metroidvania is something I've wanted to see for ages (my game is also a version of the idea), and I think this does a good job! I love the sounds and spiky vfx, they made even small actions like jumping and landing feel punchy. And it does such a good job with the atmosphere that I didn't mind the greybox at all. The way you use light shafts to lift you while gliding is really cool, as opposed to the obvious choice of wind. I liked how the scale and spacing of the platforms made the layout clear and kept perspective issues to a minimum.
I did have some minor issues with the controls and level design:

  • The way the glider combines with the variable-height jump is a bit finicky: intuitively at first I wanted to double tap the button straight away, and even after I learned to aim for the peak the timing felt pretty tight to make it across some gaps. Maybe it could be fudged in some way so that within a certain input window your travel distance ends up about the same? The glider coming out feels a bit limp too. Could possibly be improved by the glider giving a slight vertical boost at the start?
  • Use of the wall climb/wallrun seems to be limited to marked walls, which kinda dampens my excitement about it. (There's not that much game afterwards to judge by, so maybe it would be fine. I just think I would be more excited to start looking for places I can use it myself.)
  • The section where you run back and forth hitting switches to activate offscreen platforms was very unsatisfying.
  • Minor issue, but I found it a little annoying that a chunk of the world is only traversable in one direction because of ledges you drop down. After getting the sword and returning to the starting area, I retraced my steps to check this fork in the path that I remembered and found that I had to run around the whole loop again to get back to the start.

Overall, a strong entry. And thanks for playing my game too!

Submitted

A very enjoyable game!

I like the minimalistic style. MC animation are super fun. The light sword is just crazy satisfying to use. I love the music. I was surprised by the very first track to have some country drops in it. Like it didn't really fit the surroundings. But then I realized that this game is supposed to be hardcore and those intense drums help to create the vibe.

I guess you mostly use gamepad for gaming. Putting (almost) all the control buttons on my left hand is a strong move! I was intentionally skipping all enemies bc it wasn't convenient to fight with F. But then I found out that you can hit on LMB and things became easier.

Imo this game would greatly benefit from a mouse controlled camera. Don't get me wrong, I like the static camera, it adds to the atmosphere and style. But sometimes it's really inconvinient to move "backwards".

Another point of criticism would be about those green switches which you hit with the sword. It's super unobvious what does what. I hit a switch, I don't know what it did. Ok, I'll just run another lap around the area and see what had changed.

Another issue for me is that you can easily softlock yourself. E.g. if you lift up a platform with a switch on it and then jump down from the platform, there is no way to get back up on it. And you have to kill yourself to restart the area.

And finally (and unoftunately) the last ability seems to be buggy. I didn't figure out how to properly use it. The successfull usage is pretty random. Didn't beat the game =(

Other than that this is a very solid entry!

Submitted

Once I figured out I had to back track, before I could move foward I really enjoyed this. Very minimal and aesthetically pleasing!

Submitted

Hello,

Very special and well finished game. I liked everything about it, from physics to music and sound. I liked the level design and those well thought details. For instance, placing an enemy under a green pillar, so that the player smashes it and understands that green buttons may be reversible and have versatile uses, not only as gates.

My only concern is that the perspective make some important parts or corridors to be hidden behind higer grounds. To solve it while keeping this perspective, maybe things can become transparent temporarily, or the camera could rotate slightly to follow MC in those instances.

Congratulations!

Cheers

PS: don't hesitate to try and finish our game :)

Submitted

Cool experience, the level design is a bit weird I would have never tried to go back from the starting spawn if it wasnt for the comment below, one thing that bothered me a bit was wings not triggering and making me fall, I guess is because I pressed space and activated the coyote time and then they didnt open, maybe making so just holding space in the air activates the glide would be more comfortable, I like the art style and played with pixels turned off, great main menu/intro aswell.

Submitted

The game is very polished. Movement is smooth, animation is great, and power-ups are very balanced. Wall running is super cool. The bosses have some challenge but are not too hard. The 3D pixel art feel is amazing; the word on the death screen fits the game so well. The only problem I have is that it's a little counter-intuitive to go back so far to get the sword first. And some switches are very far from the platforms they trigger, and finding them is kind of annoying. Maybe moving the camera to show the platform it triggers would help. Like another comment mentioned, I don't think I heard the SFX either. But overall, it is still the best game I've played in this jam so far.

Submitted

Super nice game mate!

The graphics and animations are buttery smooth, really loved that asthetic. Obviously it could've looked a lot better if the environment wasn't white boxes, but oh well, we only had so much time.

Gameplay felt great, all of it, I don't have a single annoyance to point out, it just felt awesome to play.

Music was rad, though I felt you could've added a lot more sound effects for various things(swinging the sword, hitting an enemy, gliding, etc), though I'm sure you're aware and just didn't have the time.

That's about it, cool game, super neat asthetic!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for checking it out, and so glad you had a good time with it! Weird that the sound effects didn't work for you, I did an update with some new options for it right before submissions closed so maybe I missed something, I'll check it out!