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Does Counting Sheep Help Witches Sleep?'s itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Enjoyment | #3 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
Execution | #3 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
Sensory | #3 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
Overall | #3 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Metroidvania | #4 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Godot
Team/Developer
Jason "Aniraster", Travis "Stethri", Tyler "UnraveledCape24", Sam "~Aleister~"
External assets
WE USED A FONT https://www.dafont.com/alphakind.font
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Comments
This was hayvenly to play! I had one bug early on where I got stuck in the fall animation but stuck in midair, I think the dash probably put enough of the collision inside something I stopped falling but still needed to fall so I had to restart; and even though it was a frustrating experience, there was no choice but to immediately get back to where I was. I only got 5 sheep on completion. I think if there would have been a map that I could add markers, I can see going back for the others if I would have seen them along the way but I didn't want to wander kinda aimlessly; I already barely found the third key.
FYI: MILD SPOILERS
The combat was my least favorite part of the experience but it was still ok. I think (but am not certain) that I expected my dash to cancel the attack. More than once I just fell back to sheep spamming, generally if there were a few, the would generally bunch up which was annoying. OTOH, they had good tells (though unclear how much life) so it all was fine overall with the bunching up being my only real complaint.
The other maybe real complaint is the arrows guarding the one sheep with the jump pit, they're dark so I initially didn't understand what was happening because I couldn't see them at all, and they just keep pummeling! So maybe I missed how to stop them.
Vaulting was mostly great but the 3 part climb on the way to said arrows guarded sheep was sooooo hard. I eventually made it prior to the teleport and then using the next jump pad was also crazy hard, easily a dozen tries initially.
I'm mixed on the city jump puzzle one the floating/falling platforms then you need to shoot to trigger the momentum block, also a dozen tries because I initially though I needed to vault to make it far enough so would frequently not get enough air but jumped forward. Eventually I decided to just practice the timing and realized I could just fall where I needed. So I was getting frustrated but it was also well done and I did improve quite a bit, and appreciated the next momentum was very straightforward.
Aiming the sheep was also trickier than I would have liked, I felt like I rarely got it to fire exactly where I wanted. Ultimately not a huge problem but was annoying. Related, I recently watched a YT video on how the N64 had the perfect thumbstick, it used a hall effect sensor so didn't have drift so didn't need a deadzone at all, which is how triggers are done so it's not our fault. A few 3rd party controllers DO have these types of thumbsticks so maybe it's fine to just blame the controller on this one.
The other ultra minor issue was the controller not navigating the menus (though that could also be a weird input thing on my end).
I know I just dumped a bunch of issues, but I am so impressed by this entry. Music was great, IIRC I heard some variations on a theme but each was different and didn't get old. Art was great, animations read great. I love the classic metroidvania abilities but it's also awesome to see different ones. It's like Santa gave an awesome game for Christmas!
Thanks for the high praise and review! (and pun lol)
If we continue and make the game larger with more areas, a map+markers would be a good edition just didnt have time during jam
I hope that the triple dash pillar wasnt too difficult balancing rooms for newer players vs people that have mastered movement while creating the game was something I did not consider and instead tried to create a challenge as that is supposed to be the last room you go to before beating the game.
I play tested on mouse and keyboard and when showing my family this xmas I used a controller and I did struggle with the sharp turns in that room as well. Those kind of jumps need to be easier and have a larger area to hit
With the arrow room that one was a silly/super difficult room we added last minute to guard an item and the crossbow we didnt use anywhere else besides there
Def needs a crossbow rebalance and more lights (most likely just remove the room lol)
The all menus should have worked with controller we put alot of focus on the HUD+menus so it could be on your end.
Aww man, I was so excited to play this one, but sadly Godot 3D aparently just despises my 4gb RAM laptop.... Not even on a tiny window with everything else closed I managed to run it properly. I could wobble around the "barn-berg" fine enought, but as soon as I layed on one of the beds, the game just crashed. The one that sends you to the city did function, but the place was running at 10 fps and eventually just froze so I only caught a glimpse of it.
I love Pick tho! Very cute design and super natural combination of a witch farmer. Also love how she sleeps on the hay. This game in general has so much identity! From the moment I opened the menu I already could feel a strong sense of style, even the UIs are all a vibe!
Alas, a true misfortune I can't run this hay filled game on my hay fueled machine, but hay, perhaps some optmization options could be an idea if this ever become a bigger project by any chances
I'm so sorry to hear you had trouble running our game. We did our best to optimize it but there's only so much we can do in a few weeks (I hope you can understand!)
Glad to hear you liked like the style of the game however (and Pick too!), we're really proud with the how the presentation came out!
We're not decided if we're gonna expand the game or update it after the jam, but if we do we'll absolutely make sure to add graphic options and optimize the game a bit better!
Again, thaynks for playing our game!!! Sorry it didn't work out.
(Also Jason wanted me to add that he likes the hay puns!)
I can't wait to play full game !
Please cotninue to work on this one it's really a gem.
How to install on linux?
make sure you download the linux version, and extract the “Does counting sheep help witches sleep.pck” and “Does counting sheep help witches sleep.x86_64” files into the same folder.
then for me, i right clicked the “.x86_64” file and was able to enable a checkbox that said “is executable”.
then double clicking the “.x86_64” file ran the game. (i was on Ubuntu so if you’re on a different one, it might not be the same)
if that doesn’t work, i believe you can run it by running the command “./Does counting sheep help witches sleep.x86_64” but i’m not sure on that one.
Wow, this feels like a huge game. I’m not super good at navigating games like this so I got pretty lost pretty quickly. I managed to get the wall kick, the super-wallkick (using it on green platforms) felt really good, but I was kinda lost after that. I explored a few more areas but it seemed like I was missing some other abilities that I couldn’t find. I came across a tall tower that required like 6-7 consecutive super-wallkicks and wasn’t able to get past that (perhaps it’s not on the critical path though? I couldn’t tell). That part in general was a little frustrating, I wonder if snapping the player to a nearby green surface during the wallkick would help. I got to a room with the moving platforms and the cube with the item inside, had trouble figuring out what to do from there.
I think the ‘resting in beds’ taking you to-and-from the two worlds is a really cool idea. I’m still pretty blown away by how big the game seems. I liked the animations and the enemy designs. It’s impressive that you had time to make different enemy types with different weapons. Fighting enemies felt pretty good too! Nice work!
You need the first ability in the castle to get the next 2 abilities one in castle one in city
If you want to give it another try use the following hints:
In the castles first room at the top there is a room where you must defeat enemies to make platforms move and that ability lets you complete the room with the platforms. Both are near the room you got frustrated with
(making rooms when you have mastered your own movement is very weird as I wasn't sure that was too hard or not)
looking directly at the wall pads and following the lanterns helps in that room
Then another ability in the city is at the top of the tallest tower
i’m glad you liked the animations! i realized during the jam that i actually love doing character animations, and had a lot of fun doing them!
This game is crazy huge for a jam game wow. I like the art style and all the different mechanics were fun to unlock as a went along. The level design was interesting and it was cool to see the different ways to use the unlocked mechanics to solve puzzles and progress. The city level felt a bit overwhelming with options when I first got there cuz it felt like there were beds all over the place and so many options of where to explore, but I managed to figure it out and find the key in there. I thought the room where you get the dash wall kick was crazy hard to get out of, I almost gave up there but managed to get out eventually.
I made it pretty far into the game, I had all the powers unlocked I think and 1 of the keys, but I couldn't figure out where to go I couldn't hit 2 of the crystals with my shot in a big room cuz they were outside the shooting range. Overall great job on this, it's very impressive for a jam game!
thank you! in the room where you unlock the kick, i tried to make the “vaultpad” that launches you be a bit more obvious, but admitedly an interactable “glowing green cube” in a level full of a lot of non-interactable glowing objects wasn’t the clearest. glad you enjoyed it though!
Oh lol, I didn't know those were vault pads! I ended up doing a roll wall kick from the ledge and that let me still have another roll wall kick in the air and I was able to make it work eventually. If my progress is still saved I'll probably go back at some point to try and finish it, I figured there was something I was missing.
lol! my bad, i changed some of the text and forgot to add that part to the item pickup screen…
we pushed an update to fix a few other things, so your save should carry over at the last save point- might see if we can still push another patch
Could you give me a hint where the 3rd key is? I found the one in the city and I figured out the big green squares gave you another dash kick in the key room of the castle place, but I can't find the 3rd one for the life of me.
It in the first area with the barn and has low visibility if you didn't update. We pushed an update that made it more visible right before deadline.
ah I thought it would be somewhere in that area, I found it! I ended up beating the game with 8 sheep found. Great job on this it was a lot of fun. Also I love your cowboy patrick avatar.
Thanks its been my avatar for like 4+ years its a good one
this is good! it feels really good to play on a controller. the enemies are pretty fun to fight which is always hard to do in the length of a jam. it's awesome ya'll went with 3d too, i'm not sure but i think it's mostly procedural textures which is a good way to make it for a jam game. the load at the beginning was really long which isn't a big deal, but there was hitching throughout. mostly it ran very smoothly but then it would hang for a while sometimes until finally it crashed randomly while nothing was happening. stuff like that is bound to happen in a jam, i still enjoyed my time with it. good job ya'll!
sorry about the crash!, and the stuttering was probably just shader compilation, which is hard to avoid…
glad you liked the movement! thats one of the main parts that i worked on personally :)
also, you are correct- a lot of the textures were procedurally made by Travis