Narrative Driven Jam #14

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A jam submission

A Witch's JourneyView game page

Sumbission for the Narrative Driven Jam #14

Submitted by MelancholicLynx — 4 hours, 26 minutes before the deadline

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A Witch's Journey's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Overall	#1	4.083	4.083
Concept	#1	4.500	4.500
Graphics	#1	5.000	5.000
Enjoyment	#3	4.250	4.250
Theme	#4	4.500	4.500
Audio	#4	2.500	2.500
Story	#7	3.750	3.750

Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Did you use any optional theme? If so which one?

Didn't use an optional theme

What game engine did you use?
Godot 4.1

Something you wanna say? ٩(＾▽＾)۶
First game jam and project in Godot

Comments

IDOLL_DevSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

The assets you've decided to use look wonderful together and had an overarching aesthetic. I really enjoyed the story and how you incorporated the theme. The main character slowly uncovering Tarot cards while the realization that something might have happened to their friend is starting to set in made for a good hand-in-hand combination of gameplay and narrative.

There's a "leap of faith" section shortly before the first portal, was that intentional? I find them to be a bit discouraging in action platformers and metroidvania style games, but it also kinda tied in well with the theme of the "Fool" Tarot card - if those two sections had been closer together in the level, my interpretation would have gone from "oh, huh, I didn't see that this is where I was supposed to go" to "that's genius omg".

The buildup to the realization and confrontation of the main character's loss also served well when it came to hyping up the boss fight. Although I ran into a few weird collision bugs that had me stuck in the middle of an animation and flying off the map.

Sadly, when I was finally facing the boss, I was unable to beat him. It was hard for me to tell if I was even weakening him, and now the bug I previously mentioned had gone from kinda entertaining to game breaking, because if it happened during the fight I had to start the entire game over from the beginning again, I couldn't just let the boss kill me and retry from the respawn point since I was still stuck.

Overall, while that final part was a bit of a letdown, everything leading up to it had me excited and I can't wait for a more polished version where I can finally beat that Death guy and see how the story ends, because so far I'm hooked! ❤

Submitted

Gretel's Escape

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MelancholicLynxDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

While I appreciate your lengthy feedback I have to admit I'm quite confused by some of what you are saying. so I'll just go paragraph by paragraph so I can try to get a better understanding of what you are trying to communicate to me because I genuinely do want to try and properly absorb your feedback.

1. Thank you, I'm glad I was able to meld the action-platformer style with the story well. Truth be told because I am new to godot In DMs with my writer I had them just go crazy with it after a short call to give some direction based on the assets I was quickly finding and left them to their own devices until I had 80% of the game done and then we started to build on the story at the end so I was worried it would be too disjointed.
2. I'm just generally confused by what you mean. what do you exactly mean by "leap of faith", as in a logical one or something else. also what do you mean by portal. theres no portals, theres the runes you pass by that act as checkpoints and dialogue if thats what you mean but the first one is where you get the fool card and the dash ability and so I just want to better understand what exactly your issue is with this part.
3. Could you describe how these collision bugs happened. what actions caused them and how to replicate in as much detail as you can. I thought I had quashed that particular bug but apparently not.
4. Do you think sound effects would have helped the indication on that. at the end when I was trying to clean everything up I admittedly was still recovering from a covid vaccine and got very tired of trying to find the right sound effects VERY quickly so I just decided that this was not the time to try and learn how to search that particular area. What I did to try and signal that he took damage was give a red flash and disable his red lights until he reappeared. Again, if you can a detailed bug report would be great
5. again really sorry that bug kept popping up I genuinely have no idea what was causing it at this moment I had thought I fixed it before shipping the game I heard one person reference it before but it sounded like it was more rare than you clearly experienced. if you'd like I can cheat a bit in my editor to show you the end sequence so you don't have to go through it again if I can fix it quickly

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IDOLL_DevSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

I'm so sorry for any confusion I caused. It was not my intention. I genuinely like the game and what it's going for, and wanted to be helpful.

Yes, you're correct - I should have been more specific and clearer in my feedback. Let me try again:

1. It worked really well together and didn't feel disjointed at all! You and your writer did a good job.

2a. Calling it a "portal" was a total brainfart on my part, sorry.

The word I was looking for was genuinely something else, something like "downward slope", I think. I was trying to explain where the "leap of faith" section I was talking about could be found, and I called the big slope that leads downwards to where the boss room is (when the Witch says "but if so many witches died, then...") a portal. I guess I must still be somewhat sleep deprived from the jam 🙈

2b. In any game that has platforming, a literal (not logical) leap of faith is when I can't tell where to go next and have to jump ("leap") off of a platform to find out. The faith part refers to "I think this is the right direction".

This first screenshot shows me standing on a plattform: link

And this next screenshot shows me on the one I'm supposed to land on: link

Even though the second platform isn't that much further down than the first one, it's just ever so slightly off screen. Sometimes I can see the top parts of the heads from enemies, which gives me an idea that there's a platform there, but then seeing the enemies also gives me incentive to look for another way.

A lot of older platforming games (like the Lion King) had something like this but it's not as common in modern games anymore (it's sometimes used for getting from the end of one level to the beginning of the next).

If it's in the middle of the level like that, it is usually something that a designer might not notice (after all, they know where to go) but a playtester might - however, it's not a design mistake or anything, it just comes down to personal preference for players.

The reason I even brought it up and asked whether it was intentional or not, was that I thought something like this aligns really well with the Fool Tarot card. Because the meaning of going headfirst into a new beginning, which is a figurative leap of faith, and also because most of the artwork for that card shows the Fool literally about to walk off a cliff. If there had been a hint that such a section was about to come up by the character picking up the Fool Tarot card immediately before, it would have been almost like a mini-puzzle to tie into the narrative.

3. I'd love to help but I'm struggling to find out what exactly causes the bug myself. I don't have any experience working with Godot. think it's a combination of dashing and jumping at the same time, and then colliding with something? I did get the bug a lot, usually when I was trying to perform maneuvers and especially during the boss fight. Maybe my play style is what caused me to get that bug a lot more than the other players :/

I just played it again for about an hour and here's some screenshots of every time I got stuck, arranged in an imgur album: link

4. Maybe it was just a skill issue on my part. I did notice the blinking, but I was still not able to hit him enough times to kill him, I think. I'm sorry you had to work on the game while recovering from the vaccine and I hope you feel better now. I think for a game jam, especially when there's only 10 days, it's way more important to have a good proof of concept / prototype of what you're going for, than to have a bug-free experience. I still brought up the bug because I wanted to be honest about what kept me from finishing the game. Your health is more important than any of that, though, so please take care.

5. Good news!!!

As I was trying a couple more times, I was finally able to beat the boss and get to the end! So don't worry, you don't have to do that!

I love the little message at the end. It was a really good ending :D

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omnixoSubmitted1 year ago(+2)

Well done on the very first project in Godot! I really enjoyed the short, but fun experience with your game! Good luck with the future projects!

Submitted

Fateweaver

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stiggzz22Submitted1 year ago(+2)

Incredible job, amazing especially for your first Godot game!

Submitted