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BOMBRA's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Cleverness | #755 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Artistic Style | #970 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
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.
- Game ran great, well done. You followed the theme, though a bit literal. I'm personally not a fan of standard RPGMaker due to its clunky nature but you implemented it pretty well here. Clever combination of 'prep' for fighting a boss, feels a bit like The Witcher in that regard. Art was simple but clear. Recipe listing was less than ideal, probably due to the choice of RPGMaker, but I would have preferred a mechanic that didn't require me to take separate notes to be efficient with ingredient selection. Would've enjoyed more focus on the puzzle aspect of the selection process (finding an order of the ingredients and selecting the ones you needed most within your number of turns, etc.). Again, good job overall.
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
BOMBRA is a mini JRPG roguelite made in RPGMaker MV about crafting potions and bombs to take down a giant shadow monster!
You play as Tobias an alchemist working on his latest project, while his research partner Julian is out collecting new specimens.
But something dark is approaching...
Your alchemy tower is under attack and you must collect ingredients as you evacuate. Harvesting ingredients and components takes time so you have to choose wisely. Use your ingredients to make stat boosting potions, boss weakening poisons and health potions of course. Use your components to craft cluster bombs, elemental bombs and bombs that just really hurt a lot.
The Shadow you face is no joke and you will find yourself losing a seemingly unwinnable battle, but death is not the end! Multiple runs will see you building your stats and arsenal until you can craft the perfect run and slay the beast!
The game includes:
- 30 different ingredients to be collected
- 24 potions to be brewed
- 17 poisons to be concocted
- 23 bombs to be assembled
- 1 giant shadow monster to be overcome
- A normal and true ending
I hope you enjoy your time with BOMBRA as much as I enjoyed making it!
Thank you so much for hosting this game jam and any feedback would be so welcome :)
Extra Notes
This is my first ever game jam and it has been a lot of fun!
Thanks again for putting this together.
Any advice on what I can do better in the future would be very much appreciated.
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Comments
Great submission! Everything looks very clean and polished. The gameplayloop with the bomb was a smart design choice! Personally I felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of ingredients and recipes. Just to give you something to think about: I think it would be nice if you unlock more ingredients and recipes every loop in roguelite fashion.
Cool boss fight concept with good execution. It's challenging, but it gives you that itch to keep trying one more time. You did a great job with the UI as well. It would be cool if the game loop could be made a bit faster maybe, so farming and crafting take less time. I was just really eager to reach the combat phase and fight the boss again. Cheers!
This was a really creative concept. It reminded me a bit of '60 seconds', but I was glad you got the ability to think more about your choices here. What I didn't like was that the boss could attack before I could. Every strat I had was ruined because I took 90% of my HP in the first turn. I think cutting down in the bomb/potion options/ streamlining that part would make it so I would try it more than twice to kill him :)
You went crazy hard with the animations though, like some of these boss attacks felt over the top in a good way.
Nice job on this one :)
Thanks so much for playing and for the great feedback!
Yeah I didn't get to play around with the turn order very much. Speed potions will make you faster but it is brutal in the beginning.
I might simplify the amount of crafting or at least have it only show what you have ingredients for, but I did want you to see what was possible and plan future runs from there.
I will admit the battle animations come as default with RPGMaker but I did tweak them a bit to suit my needs.
So I need to preface this by saying I really don't like RPG maker games they are all cookie cutter copy and paste jobs in my opinion. I'm glad I was wrong about that with this one.
I honestly did not want to play this game as reasoned above but I gave it a fair shot anyways and I'm really glad I did. I was immediately hit by FOMO upon knowing I had to pick a bunch of ingredients and reach a ton of text and recipes and then somehow succeed.
Suffice to say I was pleasantly surprised by the gameplay loop. The fact that I could take my time and collect a bunch of ingredients every round and focus on increasing stats for speed and harvesting was such a good idea and I'm super glad it was there so I could build up a proper arsenal of bombs.
The problem is by the time I actually felt ready to fight the boss it died after 1 bomb throw hahahaha. I didn't even think I had risen my stats that much it was maybe.. 5-6 loops or so before I properly went for it?
Still it was a really good gameplay loop I just wish there was more ways to figure out what worked/didn't work without feeling like I was wasting all my resources by testing stuff on the boss. In the end I basically dumb brained my way through it by just getting as much as I could and making myself insanely strong by accident.
Oh well, still had a lot of fun with it!
Nice gameloop, I didn't think I could take a biggest L in my life after beeing slapped big big shadow, but I was wrong , becouse big shadow slapped me again and again LUL.
It is fun to try and have the best stats and bombs to figth the boss, keep it up ! GG
Glad you kept coming back for more haha
Thanks very much for playing and leaving a comment!
I haven't played this kind of rpg in more than a decade, that was nostalgic not gonna lie XD
Really like the idea, but i felt it expected to much of me as a player before i even decided if a cared (keep in mind i don't have too much patience with ANYTHING, so this may be more a ME problem, than a common problem)
The time-travel gimmick was really cool tho. In my personal opinion I would try a version of the game that starts with the classic "in medias res", at the end of a loosing fight, the player "loses" then flashback/time-travel. But that is just my dumb opinion, nevertheless, amazing idea, and cool game. Really good job :)
PS: If this was really your first game jam that is amazing!, easily my first 5 game jams entries were ass compared to this XD keep it up
Yeah info overload was the main thing I couldn't figure out in time.
I really like that idea of starting at the boss fight! I think I'll incorporate that and pop you in the credits once the jam is over 😁
While this is my first jam and second ever game release, I've been working on projects in RPGMaker for years so I was able to put that knowledge to use.
Thanks for playing and for your awesome feedback 😊
Wow, super polished and fun. A lot of ingredients to keep track of but I actually really loved the gathering mechanics and limitations. Classic rpg music was perfect for this, and the art was extremely nice. Just an all around great project.
Thanks so much for playing! The high praise means a lot, especially coming from you. Your submission is amazing!
Cool game, I was a bit lost at first with all the ingredients and potions, but once I got used to it it was an enjoyable experience
Yes it is overwhelming but I'm glad you stuck with it! Thanks for playing :D
I think the concept of this game is quite cool, retrying the same fight over and over again and learning which potions work and which potions don't, but I think there's definitely way too many ingredients to keep track of, it would be very hard to learn and remember what each of them do and I mostly just ended up picking them at random and hoping that I had enough ingredients to make good potions. It would be good to be able to see the recipes for the potions and bombs while I'm picking the plants, otherwise I would probably have to write down all the recipes to remember them. The game definitely has good potential, I genuinely really like the idea of it!
Thank you for playing and for the great feedback. Yeah the problem of all the ingredients and recipes was not one I was able to overcome in the time limit. I added a notebook that you can access in your items that has all the recipes and ingredients but that also is very text heavy and not the most intuitive thing to navigate.
I would love to make a way to mark the potions you want to make and have it track what you need, but my programming knowledge is very limited and I rely heavily on plugins people make for the engine to get things done.
I really appreciate your time and look forward to trying your game!
Good job!
I couldnt beat the boss (tried 3 times!) but that was a fun game with a creative idea! I loved being able to build/craft my full loadout before each boss attempt! Great game!!
PS: I really needed the Fein bomb! haha
Thanks for the feedback and for playing!
Sorry you couldn't beat the boss, once you know what stats to focus on and which bombs are best you really start to see the damage numbers escalate. I hoped at least that a few different builds would be viable though (I only ever had time to test out a couple). Glad you enjoyed building your loadout, that's what I wanted people to get fun out of.
PS: I'm glad the Fein Bomb helped haha
In contrast to the previous, I actually like the use of all the original rpg maker assets for the items. I did feel overwhelmed at first and then got into it with each playthrough. I think this is good as a short game but if it were to move on to something bigger I would recommend more interactive type crafting menus than just text and learning new recipes as you progress. While I did like that all the assets were put to use 1) There is a script called Fixpixel which allows you to zoom in. Sometimes I had issues figuring out which plant was which and I think either bigger assets or the game being more zoomed in would help this. 2) If you gave this polish, have unique assets that don't look too similar. Good game! Had fun!
Thank you for playing and for your feedback!
If I had more time, I definitely would like to have learned to make more custom menus as it is a big part of the gameplay.
Thanks for the tip on Fixpixel, I'll have to try that out afterwards.
I had originally intended to do fully customized sprites for each ingredient but the time it would take would have put other aspects of the game behind. Definitely something I want to change afterwards!
I'm glad you had fun with it :)
This feels like a bunch of assets thrown in on an existing project. It does not really feel like its really put together well as a result. I would like to see if the start screen of starting a new game can be fixed to be just press start - new game then starts the new game.
It gives me all these ingredients but does not tell me what to do or what I need and just gives me nothing at the start and I am not enjoying the game very much because of all this.
Thanks for playing and thanks for your feedback!
Sorry you didn't have a good experience with the game... I'm a little confused by your criticism of the start screen. Is the menu of start, continue, options and credits too much? I probably won't change that.
You are meant to figure things out over several runs. You are not expected to know everything at once. But I will be adding an item and dialogue to help guide the player a little more.
I hope you give it another go and try to engage with the mechanics and progression. But otherwise thanks again and hope you have a wonderful day 😁