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Bubble Buddy's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- GDD: The document seems good. Nice with the logo and inspirations. I noticed you have included two theme interpretations which one of them are for the jam and other one is just "bubble". Perhaps renamed the second one for "word interpretation" to make it more clear of what it is suppose to be. The game mechanics section is very good with the images and the description. Well done. Very good to included development timeline. It gives a clear overview of the game's state and what is not completed. Game: Good with main menu. I bet it would look amazing if it was animated. Good with the learn page. But I think it would be better if it was also included a tutorial ingame to teach the player. The game feels very laggy. Perhaps something is running heavily in background of the game? The game itself feels good. I am perhaps a little bit spoiled by vampire survivors-like games that I am used to power ups after a wave, so perhaps that is already planned for future? I wish that some of the enemies had like a small health bar tho. The gameplay feels a mix bag of passive and aggressive. There were few moments where I could take a break during the waves, but I think that is okay. Perhaps that could be adjusted with an enemies difficulty setting? Also I would love to see more of settings that could be useful for accessibilties reasons like remapping, colorblindness, volume sliders and etc.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15s_6ey-M6I0_Mf-z4Eqe9rNJyDR5T0g3pv7au6WbnyQ/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c7MtHiqEUi-oVLGZxsGq3uoQqwmivHqgDX2RaculUik/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
Bubble Buddy is a funny take on an 2D action game where the player darts through enemies as a bubble buddy killing the rioters of Coconut Top to get bubbles to keep himself alive! If you fail to keep your bubble meter full you die! The bigger you are the slower you get and the smaller you are the more vulnerable you are. Bubbles here replenish health as you are a weapon that kills enemies by shooting parts of yourself at them!
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
Our take was based on a spongebob episode, where you play as a Bubble who uses himself as a weapon by sacrificing little bubbles to defeat all the annoyed sea-earthlings!
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Comments
Hey! I managed to get until level 21 till I decided I've had had enough, but once I realized there was a registered scoreboard I've decided maybe I'll give it another shot and claim a higher place than 13th!
I wanted to give some feedback so here it goes:
I really liked the art. I think everything (except for the fish head) was made with vectors? It looks really clean and stylized, so no arguments for it other than being top tier! I love how floaty the controls are and how it makes me FEEL like I'm a bubble. The enemy design is nice and I love the bubble buddy.
I do have some things to say about the gameplay, though. Even though the controlls respond nicely and the movement is great, I think the design of it needs a little bit more work. My major issue with it is that there is really no downside to bubble spamming towards all directions (I think the only downside of this is that enemies won't dissapear if you keep hitting them with bubbles and they still take damage, so it blocks me from hitting the enemies behind them.). After I realized that the bubbles I shoot out don't consume my health bar, I started clicking like craz each time I saw an enemy, which worked especially well against the angler fish, since my projectiles also deleted theirs. Another thing I think needs a but more work is the size mechanic: I understand that bigger == slower and tiny == faster, but there really isn't a motive for me to have any other size than the biggest one since I have more health that way and my speed isn't slow enough to avoid all of the enemies. I really didn't struggle with dodging the spear fish, I could easily counter the angler fish and the puffer fish didn't blow up fast enough so I could just walk away at my slowest speed out of its radius; also, added to that, the bubble regen spawns are crazy high! So never did I really feel like I was in any danger of losing at all. I think the best way to raise the skill floor would be to make the bubble bullets consume your health bar; that way you can avoid encouraging click spamming and be more precise with your shots, while giving the player the feeling that they actually have to be careful with their resource management. I would like to see some upgrades for our bubble buddy in the future as well, and hope we can get some different enemies with more challenging mechanics.
That's all I had to say. Sorry for the bible lmao.
7/10 would fishead again.
Tysm for taking the time to play the game and give feedback. The design problems you mentioned are something we also noticed as we reached closer to the deadline, will be addressing those however once we can! Super valuable and ty for helping us improve this <3
Great game, but i did run into some bugs. If you restart after you die, the enemies are immortal, and for some reason if you make the pufferfish exploded the explosion and sounds keeps replaying. Doing this makes you get a really highscore, it got me to the top of the leaderboard. Only going to main menu and then pressing play, it gets fixed. Other then that I loved the movement, the art was amazing. Over all really great job guys. :D
Tysm for playing and the feedback, we noticed the bug but it was really cutting it close to the deadline so we couldn't fix it in time but will be fixing once we are allowed to upload builds again! I hadn't noticed the score thing, great catch!
Love it, the enemy design is great and i wish there was more to play longer. Found a bug when the catfish was in collision with the pickUp he could not die until i stopped shooting him. Thanks
Cute little game. I really like the art. One suggestion - I think there needs to be a reason not to spam click. Maybe shooting a bubble increases your bubble bar slightly? This way you're incentivized to aim carefully and not spam click.
Yes, this problem was created by a design decision we made near the end and looking back at it we would do things differently. Will be addressing once the jam is over and we can upload a build again. Tysm for playing and the feedback.
Hi fellow GGJ bubbler! :) We also weren't satisfied with the feedback fro GGJ and came here :))
I really liked the art in your game! It's quite beautiful!
What was missing for me was the upgrades - the game feels like Vamprite Survovirs and other similar bullet-hell games. I noticed that I am waiting for my next upgrade, and I'm not getting one, and it felt a bit weird. Also, it was a bit confusing that fish don't die until you stop shooting at them - it didn't occur to me that I one-shor kill, so I kept shooting, surprised that even the first enemy was not dying after like 20 shots :D
Also nice intro to the game :)
Hey!!!! Yes, we noticed the enemy death bug after the submission closed so we will be fixing that once we are allowed to upload a new build. Also, upgrades are next on our list, our goal with this jam was to have a better proof of concept and playable version of our game loop which now is mostly there. After this jam, we plan to add more enemy types and add an actual upgrade system that ties to waves for player progression. Currently, you get max bullets, max health, and set move speed. We plan to break it up and add it behind upgrades along with powerups to complete the experience!
Thank you so much for taking the time to play the game and hope you had fun this jam!
Not sure what was wrong when I played it earlier in the jam, as I don't think I was able to shoot properly, but playing it now feels great! Not sure what changed, but your improvements are noticeable. Also, I love the addition of the breaking news and such at the beginning. Great work!
Hey Jammers! We took all the suggestions and updated our game to address some of the concerns. Thank you to everyone who helps us improve this game and all the amazing feedback. Hope you all had an amazing time with this jam and wish you all the best of luck!
Love the idea of pointy things trying to pop you. I'm sure what my objective is tho. survive? kill things? Really good job tho!
Hi! Thank you for trying our game, we did make an update to make the objective clearer. If you would like, you can give it a try and let us know how we did!
Works a lot better now!!!
Very good work. I like the art style and mechanics feel smooth and polished. Sometimes the bubble bar did not work correctly and sometimes shooting bubbles did not show them. Still: Very, very good work!
Hi! Thank you for trying our game, we did make an update to fix some bugs and rework the bubble meter! If you would like, you can give it a try and let us know how we did!
very cute and the design of everything was so polished and clean, i wish there was more enemies and parts of the game but otherwise amazing stuff!
Hi! Thank you for trying our game, its not a lot but we did manage to rework all the enemy art and added a new special guy in there! If you would like, you can give it a try and let us know how we did!
Dude I suck at games like these but this was so much fun. Shooting a bunch just to speed up and gtfo feels amazing. I also love the overall aesthetic especially the colors. And you've got to point me at the font, it's such a good fit.
loved it id buy a slime buddie plushie
Thank you soo much for trying our game! Buddy plushies ftw!!!!
Super polished game! Was really fun!
Thank you so much for playing!
Absolutely love this.
Thank you for taking the time to play our game! We learned a lot this jam and it has been an incredible experience.
Love the visuals (and just general polish of the game and itch.io page) especially the way your guy floats nicely when moving! I was mostly dodging the fishes and not shooting at them, and so the gameplay was pretty laid back. I think I would enjoy if the game promoted some more aggression from the player but overall a really cool game. Nice work!
Thanks for playing and the valuable feedback! Will be addressing this with our next patch <3
Really well made and fun game! I love the inspiration behind it and how you linked it to the theme. Also a big fan of the art style, it all comes together so well. Great job!
Thanks a ton! This jam has been an awesome experience, and we’ve poured a lot into it. Really appreciate the kind words!
Hey! Jammers, please give us feedback here or on the itch page on how we can improve the experience for you! Thank you so much for playing and hopefully we could entertain you!
Nice prototype, and the GDD presentation is very well done, but I think the review process will reject your GDD if it's not explicitly a Google doc.
Got it! thanks for the heads up, will attach the google doc as well <3