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A jam submission

Omega Protocol XView game page

Short and sweet Metroidvania for the MVM 24 gamejam.
Submitted by jeff@redopticgames — 1 minute, 1 second before the deadline
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Omega Protocol X's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Enjoyment#93.8003.800
Overall#113.5403.540
Sensory#123.6003.600
Execution#123.4003.400
Metroidvania#143.6003.600
Relevance to the theme picked#173.3003.300

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

Theme chosen
Time - race against a self-destruct timer (comes in two difficulties)

Team/Developer
Jeff Temple (design) & Gregory Carames (music)

Engine
Unity

External assets
ChatGPT

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Comments

Jam Judge

Disclaimer: I may end up mentally comparing this to your awesome Omega Protocol in MVM 20.

Enjoyment 3.5/5: Bumping this to 4. Movement felt pretty good! But the hitboxes really hurt this, see in particular one below.

Execution: 3/5: Three notes here: One, there are a lot of stretches where there's really not much of anything happening in a given room.

Two, please rethink your camera angles. Sometimes the camera got moving too slowly for the good of the player.

Three, please make sure the spike and other hitboxes are more generous to the player.

The epitome of the latter two things was: Underwater + spikes + camera angles issues was not a fun combination.

Bosses were pretty serviceable for a game jam though.

Sensory 3/5: The 3d art is neat, but a bit minimal. The music is probably the sensory highlight here. 

Metroidvania: 3/5: Not really much in the way of ability progression that I could see. I liked the 'turn off the lights' puzzle in one area though. Felt a bit more like nonlinear Megaman, which might sound picky, my apologies.

Relevance to Theme: 5/5: High relevance. You're literally constantly running out of time.

Submitted

Ok, after finishing the game, i can confidently say that it's great. The mix between Megaman and Metroidvania ended up being better than expected. It liked the map design in general, it felt varied and well paced. Visuals were great, hope to see that expanded and with more tricks in the future. Also, shoutout to the music, that was one of the best aspects of the game. Also the bosses were on the right spot of difficult, but fair, so they were good.

What i appreciated is that the game gives you enough freedom to tackle any area and boss you wanted to focus on without needing a power up, outside of some areas for collectables or to make exploring easier, which is something hard to balance in general, but you managed to make it work in your case. It helped that the movement was well adjusted and smooth.

I only have a a couple of observations in general, nothing big thankfully, but still worth noting:

  • For some reason, performance tended to tank in a few areas, specifically during the heated areas, probably because of post processing. Outside of those, performance was pretty normal, outside of a few hickups here and there.
  • First boss felt way too easy.
  • The camera was a bit unhelpful during the platforms area, due to how difficult is to tell where i'm going to land. Maybe you could zoom out to make the area more manageable and/or do some tweaks to the camera's behavior.
  • For some reason, there are not sound effects during the boss fights, whereas with any other area, said sound effects were played as normal, or maybe it was just me.
  • Some shortcuts were reseted once i left an area and then returned.

I can't say much about the anticlimatic ending, because i understand you ran out of time, and also because i laughed at how unexpected that was. So there is that.

It was great in general, congrats. Hope to see more of you and of this game.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it! This feedback is all super useful, there are some things in here I knew about before shipping and some things that definitely slipped my mind. In particular,

- I suspected performance might become a problem, but I only have my own computer to test on, so hearing from other people is very useful. The fire area in particular has a heat shimmer effect that's probably a bit too much. I'll have to set up some graphical setting presets at some point.

- For the cameras, I was experimenting with a new way of handling cameras this time around, it ended up being a lot of individual camera fine tuning and never quite got to where I was happy with it, but having the camera zoom out for certain sections is a good idea, I'll add that to my list. 

For SMVM I'll probably be scrapping the current level design and just focus on polishing up one area, but I'm glad to hear that you liked the general flow and the way you weren't really restricted in how you could approach it, those were all intentional decisions which I'll carry forward into upcoming levels. I'll also be reevaluating boss difficulty at that point, which is always tricky. Originally the first boss was so easy just because the player has really only learned to jump and shoot at that point and I didn't want it to be a bottleneck, but with a more polished area before the boss I can teach the player more mechanics and potential attack patterns before they even get to the boss.

Again, thanks for playing and for the feedback!

Submitted

I like the variety of areas, and the water terrain with the affected physics is cool. The dash-jump gives for interesting moves, and the wall jump is very intuitive. The music is good, it fits the action and it's cool that each area has its own identifiable tune. The change in tiles is enough to portray the idea of a different area and keeps the sense of exploration awake. The movement is very fluid.

The animations and lighting look really cool and the 3d is well worked in this game. The theme fits well, though it would have been interesting to see it affect the gameplay in some other way.

Submitted (1 edit)

I'm a big fan of classic Mega Man and X, so this was nice to see. The movement felt instantly familiar, which was nice, the graphical style is cute too. Overall level design seems solid, with only the Quick Man laser area sticking out as a point of frustration. I'd say the main thing overall that's missing is polish. I think it would've been better to have a smaller map, but polish up the things you have more. Stuff like how non-ceremonious the bosses and enemies are when they die, but also just core physics stuff like getting stuck on walls, levels spawning you in the wrong location when you travel backwards, etc. I also think the timer didn't add much to the experience. Overall, the idea of having a Mega Man styled Metroidvania is really solid, and you're well on your way there, but I think you would've benefited from a smaller scope with more polish. Still, I enjoyed my time with it despite the imperfections and the lack of a final boss (hey, that's gamejams for you!)

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, but the music was great too. And just for reference, the ceiling here seems to behave like a spike, it damages and respawns you.


Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! I definitely agree with your feedback - the scope was rather large and things ended up feeling way less polished than I would have liked, but on the other hand I don't really regret that decision for this project because it allowed me to throw a lot of ideas at the wall and sort of see what I liked very quickly, For the SMVM I'm going to (possibly counterintuitively) really narrow down the scope and focus on polishing up one zone as much as I can. I'm also going to focus on making the enemies and combat feel much better overall. I'll probably revisit the air/electricity level because I enjoyed those mechanics the most, and the boss fight's original, way too difficult for a gamejam implementation was very fun for me.

 In terms of physics, are you able to describe a bit where you were getting stuck on walls? Do you mean in some of the tighter spaces where you're trying to move through quickly? Getting the movement controller feeling better and better is always a core goal of mine, so any feedback here is super useful.

Again, thanks for playing and for the feedback.

Submitted

Yeah, definitely something to be said for just throwing a bunch ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks for a gamejam, I totally get that, so maybe it's for the best, especially if you plan to keep working on it through SMVM. Good luck!

For specific problems: I remember the part in the Quick Man laser area where you can either go over the top to get a health upgrade, or take a lower path to get to the top, it felt really unreliable to get into the top corridor to begin with, like my toe kept getting stuck on the edge. I think all the other times I got stuck in terrain had something to do with me going back a scene or doing something with moving platforms or the surf powerup. The room with the moving platforms that you have to hop between had me getting stuck a few times. Hope that helps!

Developer(+1)

Ah, okay. Makes sense. Yeah, the toe getting caught on things, I need to figure out how to get past that. Part of it is just adjusting height on the wall grab colliders, and part of it is pushing players up over a ledge if their momentum is just right. Will keep noodling at it!

Submitted

Very impressive work! Was able to beat it on the harder difficulty on my 2nd try, which I think says quite a bit about the balancing. I thought the bosses were fun and fair, and the design just generally feels exactly like your inspiration. I did find the implementation of the theme very superfluous though, the timer didn't really add or detract anything to the experience at all, it was kind of just there. But that aside, keep working on this this project really has legs! I also very very highly recommend you use WebGL to make the game even more accessible so you can get more people playing the game and providing feedback

Developer

Wow, I didn't know if anyone would actually play through on the harder difficulty or not. That's cool that you did. :D I agree with the timer comment - In retrospect I probably should have just removed the timer and said it was a Classic themed-game, but so it goes. Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

(2 edits)

Loved this game! It needs a little bit of smoothing out of little things here and there... but I enjoyed this a whole lot for what it is...had a lot of great things about it! This is the style and classic Metroidvania style I hoped my own entry would have in the end as a final boss stage.... with the timer and classic feel

Will come back and try to get further to the end of this! 4/5

Will be interested to try the different Difficulties settings

I like that the boss was easy enough to defeat, and how the game stages with ladders and such after that with structural changes happening after key checkpoints

The infinite wall jump is a little janky looking but understand its purpose ...unless you have time for a  more traditional wall jump -> like back and forth between walls

Developer

Hey, thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed it! I definitely want to go in and smooth out a lot of the harsher edges, especially around the character controller and the camera transitions. I'll be focusing on that for the ongoing SMVM.

The infinite wall jump is cribbed straight from Megaman X, although I never really got it working perfectly - there are a lot of little movement values that need to be set just right to make it feel really good, and right now if you jam on the jump button you'll just rocket up the wall which... isn't great.

Thanks for playing!

Submitted

Definitely loved the music. It was nice to finally play after seeing all the progress you posted. I will say that I was unsure of what the crystal powerup did. I thought it was for surfing safely across spikes. If so, it still needs a little work, because it was working for me. The bosses were easy enough fights and their moves sets and tells were executed well. I did have a lot of trouble in the fire section and getting to the boss in that area. A bug I did notice is that the second power up, the explosion shot takes out the save spots if you shoot them. Ran out of time because I shot one as i was running to refuel my time. Obviously from my score, I definitely missed a few optional rooms. There was also a camera bug in the water section. It only happened once, but i died and then the player was never in camera view so i just had to run the clock out and restart that area.

Overall, there's still some bugs to fix, but I always enjoy your entries. I say this is one that can be spruced up and submitted to the SMVM. If i remember anything else or you have questions, just hit me up on discord.

Submitted

Developer

Thanks for your feedback! The camera issues were never-ending. I'm glad I tried multiple cameras per scene this time around, but they definitely take a lot of finessing. There is an "unstick" button in the pause menu for situations like that, but it's not super obvious. And yeah, I'm gonna strip out almost everything for the SMVM and try to really nail the character controller and combat/abilities. They were fun to ipmlement but nothing is polished to where I want it to be.

Submitted

i couldn't figure out how to play no controls worked for me.

Developer

oops, In my exhaustion i uploaded a broken build. reuploading now =/

Submitted

All good! thought it may have been a user error, but loved the music and  Megaman style gameplay, great work!

Developer

Thanks! I'm glad you gave it another shot. :D