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The Shadow Curse's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cleverness | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Playability | #205 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Theme | #226 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Artistic Style | #386 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Very good GDD, I loved seeing the whole design timeline with such complex details. Very cool! The ideas and foundations link very nicely to the game jam, and the underlying themes are mysterious & magical with an awesome soundtrack!. Thoroughly enjoyed my little play through, one of my favorites so far. Feedback: Add the death screen that you didn't have time to Add more leeway to the combat mechanics hitboxes Add a training course for the first wave that shows the player how the controls work. The rest of the game is nicely laid out and thought out, please keep going with this. I would be very interested to see how you implement new items and upgrades to the movement and the combat :)
- GDD The pace of the GDD seems good. Good with the images of the game mechanics Good with the development timeline. This show transparency. Game No menu. Just directly into the game. I think ya should included it, but I can guess ya didnt have enough time. The roguelike arenas combat feels good, but I think the second boss's health regain phase need to nerf, so it is not overdone. It took me 7 times to down him to that phase until he actually died and I can moved on to the 3rd arena. I died to the 3rd boss because the boss teleported into a rock and just spamming attacks from there where I cant hit him. I think the powerups need to buff a little or probably go crazy, so ya can actually feel a different. Also during the session, it felt that shadow buddy did nothing, which I know is not true, but all he did was follow me than attack the enemies (I used hit and run strategy) I dont feel much of alchemy part, but I can see the where the shadows comes in.
- Only thing I can knit pick is these models are either from an asset pack or only slight modifications of a base asset, beyond that here are my compliments. the element combos to cause elemental reactions is fun, and using your right mouse button to have your shadow cast a element you assign to it by hitting it with that spell is cool, and you took the shadow element of the game in a new direction I like, each level having themed enemies is fun, and I like how you cant just blast shielded enemies away, as they take too long to kill and you will be surrounded, the idea of you having your shadow behind them hit them with a spell and then your spell hits their shield but still triggers the effect is very fun and creative, only thing I wish was the arenas were bigger otherwise add more movement options, double jump upgrade, dash, or teleport would be nice, and using scroll wheel to change your element, the shadow is great, no complaint on that part.
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes, in the description of the game
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
The game is a 1st person action roguelike. The player goes through waves of enemies and bosses, and gets increasingly powerful by collecting relics.
The main mechanics is combining elements (fire, ice, thunder) to create unique spells.
During combats, the player controls the Shadow by giving him orders ("follow me", "go there","attack this enemy". In order to create an elemental reaction, both the player and the Shadow must apply an elemental effect.
There is also a story! The Shadow is affected by a curse, the player is trying to break it.
Extra Notes
This is the most ambitious game I've made so far. As I worked alone on this game, I decided to rely on external assets for this game, to focus on programming and game designing. It was still a huge challenge for me, as I'm a hobbyist and I work in a field that has nothing in common with Game Dev!
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Comments
The first few rounds I wasnt sure what the shadow was supposed to be doing until I right clicked by accident and was like OHHHH! then we got the chain effect going, 100% fire damage, sadly the big golem looking boss took us down but it was a fun play through. great work!~
Thank you for the kind words!
Really fun game! You can definitely continue this project and aim for a full release. I couldn't find much usage for the shadow commands other than just telling it to attack though, it might be worth emphasizing the relevance of its positioning. Nice work!
Thank you, that's the plan!
Great combat mechanics, I enjoyed the fight after reading how the elemental reaction works. Congratulations on your game!
Thank you! :)
-Can I change my shadows element? Mine always shoot fire.
-Flanking shield enemies with shadow is fun.
-Hoping for more varied arenas, always kitin enemies around in a circle gets a bit boring. The enemies with poison mist break this pattern nicely, got to evolve your strategy when theres big poison clouds suddenly blocking and obscuring half the map. Keeps it fresh.
-Lightning link between me and the shadow that I got from the upgrades is cool and gives more meaning to the "move-shadow-here" mechanic. Adding more similar, but different, mechanics that makes you think of the shadow placement would make sense to me. I mostly kept putting him in the middle of arena and then running around. Didn't ever really find a use for him to be following me. I would rather call him some 5 meters behind me if I needed help with shieldy-bois.
I like the direction your little arena survival roguelite took!
You can change the shadows element by firing an elemental missile at him (I agree it's not that clear in game)
Thank you for the feedback! I wanted to implement more interesting ways to play around the shadow but sadly ran out of time.
Impressive game for a two week game jam! The shadow mechanic is a really cool idea. Took me a few tries to get the element attacks working. Overall I think you did a great job. Can't wait to see what you do next.
Thank you !
This game feels like its on its way for release, the low poly and mechanics are very well done. Everything from the UI to the way the game feels has been very well written and made. Great job!
Thank you for the feedback, you're awesome!
I really like the fact that the little antechamber let's the player learn all their controls in a non threatening environment that still offers engagement. I also was weirdly taken in by the one page of story that I saw-- it was super well written/plotted for such a short piece in my opinion. So much polish and functionality for a game jam game, let alone from a hobbyist. You've done a really great job. The only thing that threw me off was I wasn't really sure how to change my elements for the attacks. I kept choosing non elemental items though, so that could easily be the problem. I just wasn't really sure what attacks I had access to.
Thank you for actually reading the lore! I really wanted to expand it, and I had a cool twist for the end of the story, but sadly I lacked the time to implement it
I could put an asterisk on 60% of my GDD with “didn’t have time to implement” lol, if you decide to keep working on this game/add more story elements I’ll def check them out.
Love the idea and the spell combinations. Would have loved some more sound effects to help me parse all the different things going on, but otherwise I really enjoyed this. Nice work!
Very fun rougelike!
This amazing for being done in only two weeks. Once the gameplay settled in, I really enjoyed it! The items were interesting and led to engaging gameplay scenarios! For example, I got the item that made it so there is a thunder link between you and your shadow in the first level. Then, when I encountered the shield enemies, I could position my shadow behind them for an easy kill. I really enjoyed it overall, great job!
There is a lot of work in this entry, this is a prototype you can expand to make a fully-fledged game.
Nice submission !
Thank you, would love to expand it after the jam!
Took me a minute to figure out what was going on but once I did it was awesome. Trying out all the spell combos and having to adapt to what the shadow has ready is super engaging.
Really awesome! The element interaction system is incredibly impressive for the time frame. Massive props
I'm gonna confess, the element interaction system is a list of "else if"... I wanted to improve it and make it modular when implementing a 4th and 5th elements, but never got time for that
Thanks for the kind comment !
Really great job! It was quite challenging too which I really enjoyed. And props for doing this as a solo dev! I can tell a lot of work when into it - and you should be proud!
Great job dude. I understand how hard it is to do this as a hobby. The cool thing is that you turned in something you could be proud of. I get hexen vibes from it for some reason.
Thank you! 14 days ago, I never would have thought I would achieve this result
SUPER fun man, the entire game from the mechanics to the nice models is just super fun to play. The spell combos were a bit much to take in but man was it fun getting to learn the different combos and learning to command my shadow. My only complaint is that the controls for firing a combo attack were a bit finicky and both buttons needed to be pressed immediately at the same time. Overall though I really enjoyed it and would absolutely pay for a full version of this.
Thanks for the kind comment, you're awesome
I'll try to see if I can impprove the controls before the deadline
Wow the difficulty was up there in the goblin area. Nice use of theme, as well as memorable levels. I like the mechanic of combining the elements to do combos, I had a hard time figuring out which ones were best in the situations on my first playthrough
I somehow fell off the map at the start of the third area and that softlocked me. Other than that it was pretty fun, love how you interpreted the theme.
Curse you Unity, I don't know why this happens sometime
Its the phantom bug! It hunts all engines. BE WARE!
didnt really know what to do until i entered the portal and then it was kinda just spam left and right click to win although very cool game then the room 1 boss SHEEESH that was actually something then room 2 wave 2 i got swarmed and died not sure how until they actually got close to me and didnt walk into any gas clouds my HP just started dropping and the +1 hp a sec items didnt seem to actually work. Was actually fun tho maybe lower music volume by like a few DB otherwise good game tbh
Edit: oh also not sure why a random shadow capsule was following me it also got stuck on the chest hitbox which was nice so he got out of my way lol
Hey, thanks for the feedback ! There's still a lot of balance adjustments to do, not sure what happened with the hp regen I never had this issue before.
I'll fix the volume and try to make it clearer what to do with the capsule
Why do you have to make it full screen by default ? just make it play in a window. It's not a desktop game its supposed to be a fun mini game u play in the browser. Please fix as I can't play it right now.
Hey, I just fixed it :)
It's still too big for my monitor. Needs to be 1280x720 or below for a good resolution for online Webgl gaming.