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contagion-traffic-controller's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cleverness | #423 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Theme | #935 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
| Playability | #943 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
| Artistic Style | #1189 | 1.000 | 1.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Clever enough concept that doesn't quite get where it needs to for this jam. Hope to see it developed into the next one - I'm sure the theme could be adapted quite easily.
Did you include your Game Design Document in your downloadable files?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
# contagion-traffic-controller
# description:
use physics objects and strategy to guide your herd of survivors through a series of puzzle mazes, avoiding the contagion along the way.
sacrifices may have to be made for the good of the group.
beware the pickles
!!! IMPORTANT !!!
Please play the whole tutorial
There are mechanics and controls that are unique that I explain step by step there interactively, so it is really a part of the experience.
There are four full tutorial levels. I have had some people think the tutorial had just restarted at the end of the first one. The instructions screen just starts from the same slide for each level. They are all important.
# resolution
This game's UI is designed to be played at 1080p. Forcing a higher resolution through a launcher like Steam may cause scaling issues. Plan to support multiple resolutions on release.
Did you remember to include your Game Design Document?
Yes, in .pdf and .docx formats for your convenience.
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Extra Notes
I am a solo developer and this is my submission for the Pirate Software gamejam 14. this is my first game jam. I tried as hard as I realistically could in a 2-week period.
All music in the game was made and recorded by Evan Loughman.
everything was done from scratch within the time of the game jam, with the exception of the water shader, and sky shader, which I made for my other project, The Faceless.
I am proud of what I accomplished, and I hope you enjoy playing it.
I did not have as much time to spend making levels as I would have liked for the demo, but I wanted to make sure that all of the mechanics were polished and clearly explained. However, level development from here is very straightforward, fast, and easy. Expect more releases with more levels and a level selection screen soon.
I also plan to do experiments using controller gyro/accel input for physics grabbing, and VR on the Quest.
I want to thank you and your team for facilitating this event, and creating an environment that justifies pushing myself like this. I met a lot of awesome and helpful people in the discord during the jam. Thanks for inspiring me.
# known issues:
since this submission is fixed, I will update the list below with known issues in v0.1.2:
- you can fail tutorial level 3 if all the example enemies infect your example humans. there is a human under the map to prevent this, but the out of bounds checking deletes him on frame 1. (fixed for v0.2.0)
- some physics objects have inaccurate collision shapes. this causes a few specific objects to clip the ground, and not respond to object grabbing properly (specifically level 3 and tutorial 3). this is caused by incorrect scene setup on my part, duplicating the object instead of creating a new one. export variable issues. (fixed for v0.2.0)
- in the tutorial, it is easy to run out of action points and stamina while you are learning the mechanic. action points and stamina should refill on empty while in the tutorial. (fixed for v0.2.0)
- pressing ESC to unpause while in settings/controls menu does not hide settings/controls menu. this is caused by expecting unpause to only happen from the pause menu, expecting back button to be pressed to return to pause from settings or controls menu. (fixed for v.0.02)
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Comments
I'm definitely no big brain game dev, but I'll give some feedback and throw some ideas. Maybe some of it will be of use to you!
I like title screen! Also, it's nice that you've got different sliders to control the volume of the different audio cues, it's a nice touch! The pathfinding also works reaaaally nice.
As others have said, it'd be interesting for the tutorial to be done through a low-to-no-risk set of levels, going away from the slide format. Other than that, the tutorial shows how the different aspects of the game work in a very clear manner!
I also appreciate how the elements of the HUD show up on screen as they are introduced in each level. It lets the player not be overwhelmed and gives them time to understand each element before being introduced to another.
It could be interesting to have a hotkey for restarting the level!
I did encounter a bug in the 3rd level. The 2 humans that were together got to the Level Clear zone. However, the human that's isolated actually fell in the water. The level didn't finish on its own and since all the other humans were already in the Level Clear zone, there was nothing else to do in the level, so I had to restart from the pause menu.
Another idea is to maybe implement a counter of how many humans there are in the level, and how many have made it to the Level Clear zone.
The sound effects and music make the game quite a comfortable experience. I really dig the choices and general sound work implemented.
I also noticed that you've got a day & night cycle. I can definitely see potential for hazards or dynamics that could occur during night stages.
Overall, I think there's a lot of potential in this game and I can see it being a very fun, comfortable strategy game that I could personally sink some time into. Really good work and submission!!
thank you for playing! you hit on many good ideas that I would like to implement.
I like the wording of "low-to-no-risk levels" at the beginning. Unfortunately, the tutorial barely got finished within time as it was, but the tutorial levels in the game are just like any other level, so it should be straightforward to reorder them.
thank you for the report on "if humans are already in the clear zone, and then the last remaining human dies, the level doesn't clear." this is because the level clear zone checks for level clear when a human enters the clear zone, an enemy exits the clear zone, or a human becomes infected. I need to add a check for when a human dies to out-of-bounds as well.
I think a total human counter is an excellent idea! this will only become more important as the levels get bigger and more complex.
finally, thank you for the kind words! I put a lot of effort into making the UI pleasant to use with sound fx, so I am glad you enjoyed it :)
I love the game you made And I enjoy the aesthetic of Portal game vibe you went with if I am not mistaking and overall fun game to play And the Tutorial Is pretty Clear too And i am pretty bad at writing comments <3
thank you for playing it! I really appreciate you were able to notice portal inspiration, because it was definitely there!
Pickles! I like it. The tutorial is really clear, the puzzles are also clear to me what the objective is and which abilities to use when. The only thing I would love to see is that the zombies are a bit easier to pickup, sometimes they move like a tiny bit sometimes a lot while my feeling is that i give the same input strength. :D Keep it up!
Thank you for playing! yes, the physics dragging on characters needs work. they are not rigid bodies in the engine, so I kind of have to cheat to move them as if they were. I am sure I can get it tuned to feel better though. thanks for the note :)
I like it! Like others, I struggled with the physics dragging, but I think there's the core of something quite interesting here. I thought the opening titles were slick, I found a few bugs in the menus here and there, but the movement and interaction mostly seem natural pathing was reasonably predictable.
I don't think you need the "traffic control" aspect, the ATC audio in the background seemed incongruous TBH.
Overall this is a ton of work and a lot of promise, great submission!
thank you so much! noted on the traffic control sounds, definitely an experiment :)
Pretty fun game to play, my notes seem like they're similar to what the others have said in terms of faults with the game but other than that everything came together very smoothly, from the music to the gameplay mechanics (which damn that's one good dynamic pathfinding algorithm and AI for moving the units) to the art style. I feel like with a bit of extra tweaking on the moving of objects, and potentially giving more uses to moving the objects other than just out of the way this could be a cool indie project. All in all, really good submission!
thank you! the pathfinding is all Godot's new avoidance system, it's really amazing to use.
Well damn. I don't consider myself an expert game dev but I know enough to know how much work must have gone into these systems. I love the take on zombies, not sure I've ever seen a zombie game like that, really cool.
There were two things that stood out in terms of notes:
Overall this was a really solid concept/execution. Oh and, random thing, the menus feel really satisfying to use lol.
I am very glad you liked it! once I started with the sound fx I didnt want to stop. so the fact that you liked the menu means a lot!
as far as the physics dragging, I had to tune it down and add some limits to it, otherwise it was super overpowered. because of this, I may have over-limited it. thank you for the feedback and kind words!
Hey good job on this game, it works really well.
I like the variety of scenarios you have created, and can see how you could expand on this fairly easily.
Some feedback points:
I wanna be 100% clear that these things are just my opinion.
The project is well made regarding playability and I had fun exploring what it had to offer.
thank you very much for playing! level design and zombies contagious-ness (?) definitely can use tuning. I am excited to make some more complex levels soon.
I was going to write a full review. But my points are echoed here. The game was well thought out however the time spent on the tutorial would have likely been better used created levels that slowly built into the full experience.
All in all you did a solid job.