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The Banisher's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #8 | 4.143 | 4.143 |
| Overall | #16 | 3.612 | 3.612 |
| Concept | #19 | 3.735 | 3.735 |
| Enjoyment | #25 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Use of the Limitation | #44 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
Ranked from 49 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Software used
Game maker: Studio
Use of the limitation
You must make 1 sacrifice every 60 seconds, and you get 1 life every 60 seconds.
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Comments
Really nice game!The art makes everything
Thanks! Do you have any suggestions?
nope.The game is good as it is.Do you want to try my game too?
I'm currently playing through the in-browser games atm but if I get a free moment I'll take a look at yours!
ok thanks
i liked the minimalist art, thought it looked great. not sure if you hit the mark on the limitation was it in there? i had the game freeze on me twice
sound and art was great
Hey thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked the art! The freeze unfortunately occurs when you don't put a demon through the portal for 60 seconds (that is the limitation)! Instead of freezing it should go to the game over screen but it's bugged.
Make sure to keep an eye on that timer (it's in the portal's shadow!).
Other than that, do you have any suggestions?
i would start the player by the gate, during the 4 time playing i had started down a different direction and got lost. it will also establish that there is a timer since the gate itself has the time on it.
i am not sure what is happening in the beginning with the heart UI but you are gaining a new heart when you start.
The enemies have an indicator to the gate location but there might need to be a world indicator as well,
It's very true that to a new player it's not obvious at all what you're supposed to be doing. The reason I chose not to have the player spawn at the portal is because I wanted the player to "stumble across it" but that didn't work well with the 60 second limitation and also the freeze. It should have been 1 or the other.
The hearts were added very last minute, but yes, every 60 seconds you gain a new heart and to make it clear that it wasn't from an action ingame and confuse the player if a heart randomly appeared, I made the transition slow. I agree this is not well conveyed!
When you say a world indicator, what do you mean?
on your enemy you have an arrow that points to the gate, my suggestion would be to add an element like that to the camera ui incase the player gets lost
So just basically a compass? (That points to spawn, not north)
I had a lot of fun with this one, and it was aestaticle fantastic the sound effects were all spot on.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad to hear you had a lot of fun! Do you have any suggestions?
Insane game! It's impressive you made it in 3days!
Thank you for playing and thanks for your kind words! Do you have any suggestions
Great look and feel. Mechanics had a good sense of push and pull as well.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed the look and feel! I'm not sure what you mean by push and pull? Could you elaborate?
You need to destroy trees, the push, but by doing so you spawn enemies that act as an obstacle, the pull. Hopefully that makes sense.
Kind of like yin and yang then? It's all about balance
Great aesthetic and smooth controls and gamefeel. Kinda difficult to get an enemy to spawn sometimes tho.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed the aesthetic! What do you mean by it was difficult to get an enemy to spawn?
Sometimes I had to bash a tree for 45 seconds before an enemy came out.
I see, that sounds like a frustrating experience! Just so you know, if you bash a tree and nothing comes out, the best thing to do is to move onto the next one! If there's a demon in a tree, it will come out on the first hit. If you're unable to hit the tree, make sure you're right underneath it. Perhaps I should add that to the instructions so it's clearer, I'll have a think on the best way to put it.
Also, the trees that have demons in look different from the others, they're a little spikier in appearance.
I hope this helps!
Thanks. I really enjoyed the game, so this definitely helps. A big part of the fun was figuring out how to handle the demons, so if you're thinking of expanding on this you might want to consider different types of demons from different objects with different rules. 👍
Well I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed the game!
I'd love to add different types of demons that come from different objects, but am short of inspiration, did you have any ideas on what sort of things could happen?
Love the theme! Controls feels really good and the visual style is amazing.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Do you have any suggestions?
you captured the mood very well. very detailed art and very fun
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you had fun! Do you have any suggestions?
not really, I love the game!
Well thanks! Would you be interested in testing future versions / projects?
Really loving the artistic side of this game. Especially the flying leaves in the wind. Beautiful. Handling is pretty fluid, which is very nice too.
Thanks for playing, I'm really glad you liked the art, I put a lot of love into making it as fluid as I could!
Do you have any suggestions?
Since you're asking I'll nitpick a little bit :D You can very easily get stuck on the trees. Which kinda breaks the fluidity of gameplay. Maybe if they had circular hitbox so that you kinda slide around their edges... I feel like that would make it nicer.
Oh very true, I agree. The hitboxes were too wide but the reason is to prevent you from being able to clip the tree and walk through it so it had to be that wide, but then because it was a rectangle, it didn't make sense to have it that wide across the y axis too so I made it short.
Thanks for letting me know, anything else?
So I really liked the art and sound design, impressive work on that. Even if you were using assets they were placed really well within the game. The gameplay is well-executed as well. Reminded me a lot of Don't Starve, which is a pretty great achievement for being a one-person crew in 72 hours. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a full screen function because I kept finding myself clicking on the search bar/windows explorer when trying to aim the scythe where I wanted it to go. I got 14 coins but unfortunately that little frustration got in the way of me wanting to keep going.
Hey thanks for playing! I'm really glad you liked the art and sound, yes, all made within the jam period (actually was only the last day, I decided last minute to enter).
I love the vibe of don't starve so I'm flattered that I was able to capture the same cold outdoors energy that don't starve has so well.
I'm really disappointed to hear about the full screen issue! The game actually functions perfectly in full screen (I used it during testing), I just expected there to be a button but I guess there isn't. I assume I'd have to do that myself.
You can use "ctrl" and "plus" (or command and plus if you're on mac) to zoom the webpage in, but unfortunately it's not telling the game so it gets a little blurry. But it does mean you have a bigger canvas to click on.
Other than adding fullscreen, do you have any suggestions?
It has a great art style (besides the smoothly rotated pixel, but thats really minor), from the pallete to the sprites themselves. The gameplay is also interesting, but kinda janky because sometimes my hits wouldn't hit.
Besides needing a little bit of polish, great game
Hey thanks for playing!
Funnily enough, the smoothly rotated pixel is actually design choice that I put in on purpose. By default it would have been pixelated but I personally cannot stand the mess of out of place pixels that a rotation at 1x resolution creates.
When you say your hits wouldn't hit, that's concerning. What do you mean? With the trees or with the demons. To hit a tree, you must be right underneath it.
And also what polish would you suggest?
Thanks again
The main polish i had in mind was about hit detection, because it strongly hampered hte experience. I mostly didn't hit the trees, propably because i wasn't like you said right underneath it, which in my opinion isn't clear enough.
But hey might just be a me problem, still great job :>
Ah ok thank you for clarifying!
The reason for the poor collision detection with trees is because I wanted the swipe to only hit one tree (not a whole bunch that the swoosh would hit), and the fastest way to achieve that was to check against the nearest tree, and then see if the direction lines up.
But what that also means is if you're an equal distance between two trees, and you happen to be facing the wrong one, you can't hit it. But that will seem inconsistent because if you're really far away from another tree but that is the closest tree in that moment, you'll still be able to hit it from that distance.
You are right, it needs fixing for sure! If it's a you problem, it can be an anyone problem.
Do you have any other suggestions?
Thanks for asking but no, besides the hit detection, the game is sincerely great and i can't wait to see what comes next :>
Ok well I'm glad you liked it! Would you be interested in testing future versions/projects?
Yeah sure! Why not
The style of this game is excellent! The feedback from hitting trees is immensely satisfying. I agree that some invincibility frames would be a nice addition
Thanks for playing! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the art and especially the feedback from the trees! I agree that the crunchy leafy sound came out much better than I could have ever hoped.
If you don't mind me asking, what was your approach to clearing demons? Did you do it one by one or all at once?
one by one
Hmmmm and invincibility frames still felt necessary?
Mainly in the context of learning what to do. There is a more than generous amount of health, but on my first few attempts I was caught off guard by how quickly the demons could recover and attack again after I'd hit them back.
Ah ok, I understand. So it became easier once you figured out how it worked?
yes
Ok well thanks for letting me know!
One of the best games on this Jam, good job! As a big fan of DOOM franchise I love slaying demons! I like everything this game, visuals, animations, sound effects, gameplay, everything is soo satisfying! Only thing that bothered me was that the game was too easy, didn't feel any pressure from the timer.
Thanks for playing and thank you your kind words, they mean a lot to me!
I agree that there's definitely a lack of difficulty, but I just couldn't think of a creative way to implement the 60 second limitation creatively. There was originally no time limit, it was just 1 new heart every minute but I was worried people wouldn't notice it and rate the theme implementation badly. What would you have suggested?
The visuals are extremely cool. I like the mood of the game. I struggled a bit with the control but maybe because I'm not so good at this kind of game. I like the concept of pushing the ennemies toward a portal, it's a cool interpretation of the theme. A nice game overall, well done!
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked the visuals. The easiest way to get the enemies to the portal is to go to it and let them follow you there!
Do you have any suggestions?
Oh, okay ! I had the wrong strategy. I tried to go to the periphery to push them towards the portal. Do you think you will keep working on it ?
I've not given it much thought! I definitely think it has potential but if I do something in the future I may just build something new based on the feedback given here and from what I learned making this.
Would you be interested in testing future versions or other projects?
The pixel art style is very appealing as well as the animations - could imagine bigger hack and slash game with upgrades to the weapons an char etc..
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked the pixel art! Hack and slash! I'll add that to the tags.
What kind of upgrades did you imagine?
Range of the weapon, power, different enmies with health. Like I imagened a lot snce the core was so apealing.
Well I'm really glad you liked it that much! I can see those being good upgrades.
Thanks again for the feedback!
I like the visual effects when you hit the tree, that's genius! But I notice that the player has no invincibility frames after getting hit by the monster, I'm not sure if this is intended or not but yeah it can be annoying at some times. I know this can be countered because we can spam the attack button.
If I were to further improve your game, I'll surely make different attack types, like heavy / light attack, adding invincibility frames when the player got hit, and make more monster variations!
Overall the game is very enjoyable. Cool entry! And again, I like the effects on the tree!
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked the tree art. Indeed there are no invincibility frames, I never even considered that something like this may be necessary but I never really spawned more than 1 demon at a time. I assume you were going around collecting them? I can see how it may become a problem then as 1 hit could be game over.
Different attack types sounds great! I was actually considering adding a shop for the gold where you could purchase different scythes, which would have different properties (e.g. slower attack but more pushback and with stun). But I ran out of time.
What other kind of monster variations are you thinking?
Yeahh it could be like that sometimes, me and my friends have that exact same issue too, we're afraid that we couldn't finish it in time. It's just the nature of gamejams haha
I was thinking that some monsters have the ability to summon more monster, or maybe if the player has the ability to dash, you can add monsters that can dash too! Have you played Hyper Light Drifter? If you need more ideas for monster variations, that game will surely give you tons of monster variation ideas!
Ooh dash ability would have been cool, I really like that! And having demons spawn other demons sounds interesting too, I was actually thinking that sometimes the demons could run off and hide instead of attacking you, and then they could use that time to spawn more!
Thank you for the good ideas!
Cool game, i give it two thumbs up. Would've given it more if i had more thumbs
Thanks! Glad to hear about all of your thumbs being up. I will look for more.
Do you have any suggestions?
Liked the game, but it had no end.
Good mechanics and art. I like all the polish in the game. The only thing that bugs me about the game is that it has no end or raising difficulty. I got bored after getting 265 point & left, because I did not see any changes. For me it would had been good, if the game had stopped after killing all the enemies in the forest.
Notes:
1: I would have liked a closet in area for gameplay, so you don't go into a empty void.
2: I have no reason to not attack, so i just spam it. Maybe a charge attack or something to change that. And if you want the attack as it is, I would have liked not to need to click for every attack.
Thank you for playing! So you banished 38 demons, the world is now a much better place. Unfortunately yes there were no incremental changes. What kind of incremental changes would you have added?
As for having a physical end, that's how the game was designed right up until the last minute, and then I wondered what would happen if people wanted to keep playing? I could add a replay button but what if people wanted to keep their coins? I ended up just making it endless.
In response to your notes:
1. I agree, it doesn't make sense to just be an empty void. I tried getting to loop but it wasn't working and I was running out of time so I just left it. I also thought about making a "dense" forest around the edge that you couldn't pass through but there's no chunking or vertex batching whatsoever so I didn't have the spare fps to implement it.
2. That's very true, I never even thought about that. Do you mean a separate type of attack that you have to charge? Or that the main attack uses charge and therefore cannot be spammed? I can sympathise that clicking constantly is going to get tiring quickly. Perhaps I just built an immunity to it during testing and now my finger is really strong so I didn't notice. I agree it's not optimal.
Thank you for taking the time to write the feedback! It's really helpful to me
For you question about the attack, 2 commen design I see the the stamina meter and/or the light & heavy attack. Maybe the light stuns, and the heavy uses to bush he demons away. It could give the player some options for strategy.
I like the idea of different attacks for different purposes, e.g. a type of motion that gets them out the trees and then an attack to sweep them into the portal. I can see how that would give the player some more strategic options.
A stamina bar also is a good idea, I didn't think of that. Maybe it could go above the hearts! But then we'd need some other meter above the coins to balance it out.
Very fun gameplay and clean artstyle. Great game!!
Thank you! Do you have any suggestions?
I don't really know. There isn't room for improvements without changing the scope of the project.
I see. What sort of scope are we talking?
I see it as an open word story-driven game.
Ah yes very large scope. What's the prompt?
I don't know. It's your game, you should know better than me.
Very well, thanks again for playing!