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The Best Defense's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- This is a really nice entry!! Starting with the visuals, the small color pallet is a really good choice. It makes the game feel cohesive and is way faster to make the artwork and is very aesthetically pleasing. The screenshake and extra flair when enemies hit your tower is really well done, it felt satisfying to kill them and the feedback was just right when they did damage, both visually and with sound effects. The mechanics were fun and simple, they felt pretty intuitive to use and I feel like I got the hang of them fairly quickly! I think it hit a good balance between intuitive and learning something new. One issue with the mechanics that I had was that when I fired the sword, it would often not face the right direction. If I fired to the right, the sword would be facing perpendicular to that direction, north -south. This became an issue because when I wanted to change my trajectory, my aiming indicator wasn't in the position I thought it would be and I would be more likely to miss my shot. In addition, one visual thing I would change is the indicator itself. Right now I think it is too balanced visually between the direction you are aiming and the butt-end of the sword. There's an arrow showing you the proper direction, but in a game where you have to think and move very quickly it should be extremely obvious which direction you are pointing. I would either remove the back end of that indicator, or really make the front end visually heavy so that there's no confusion for the player. I also enjoyed the music, it was chill and laid back while I was defending my castle! I also wanted to point out that the unique dithering on the bottom bricks of the castle is a really nice pattern/technique. Great entry, I had a lot of fun playing it!
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v98IL-dMtrhB3eXpCRwGl4XjBE5gmXw5Z1_zocYcmFE/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!
A casual game where you slice ghosts and mosnters before the reach the tower and attack. You play as a magical flying knife, aiming and accelerating to hit all the enemies, and keep the tower alive as long as possible!
Controls:
Left click/ space : enter “aim mode”
Arrows and WASD - aim while in “aim mode”
Right click/ F : accelerate
Left SHIFT (when vial in top left is full) : special attack
Have fun!
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
The game takes a direct approach in interpretation - the player is literally a weapon, a knife hurling through the skies and slicing through enemies.
Through the gameloop, however, another question is raised - can a weapon truly protect? and for how long?
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Atmosphere (and how it is amplified by art + music) and fluidity of controls.
Honestly, our main request is you enjoy your time with our game!
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Comments
The concept is simple but it was executed very well! I like the color scheme and the music, and the "game feel" when you hit the ghosts. Good job!
Thank you so much! This comment really warms my heart. I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
Art style and gameplay vibes are immaculate. When I found out that I'm controlling a constantly moving sword it kinda took a minute to get used too but very satisfying once I got a hang of it. The sfx feedback when you hit a ghost or a ghost hits your tower is really nice. Would be a really great game anywhere but especially on mobile. Great job on this game. I feel the satisfying parts of the gameplay loop and with a little music, different enemies, and other little things you could change to make it harder and more challenging as you go you have a super great game happening here.
It took me a second to get used to the controls, but then it was really fun! I really like the graphics as well. Nice job!
I'm glad you stuck with it!! Thank you for playing our game and thank you for your comment!
This game is really fun, I like the idea of controlling a projectile with screen wrapping. Almost like a better version of asteroids. I did find a bug that as the game went on the sword changed angles relative to its motion. This had the effect of making it more difficult to control as time went on. If you can fix that up post jam it would help a lot. But overall I really loved the art style and sound/music design of the game. Great job!
Oh yeah, it is kinda like asteroids.
Thank you for playing, I'm glad you liked it, and thank you for reporting that bug. I might give this game a good debugging sesh post jam.
Again, thank you!!!
Now this is my type of game. Flesh this idea out and it's a banger. Would love to see rogue-like elements thrown in where you can get upgrades and additional projectiles and stuff. There's just a lot of cool stuff you could do with this.
As for feedback, after a while the rotation of the blade breaks. I got to 105 enemies defeated and at some point a bit before then it desynced and I couldn't tell where the front of the blade was based on the sprite. Also the UI is busted. Adjusting the master volume kept set it to 0 and did nothing. The pause menu also just doesn't work except for the quit button. I had no issues with the end-screen menu. UI is annoying and aside from all that, you got a great idea here, please keep working on it after the jam!
Your comment really made my day! The amount of thought you put into it did not go unnoticed. Thank you!
Thank you also for the bug find.I doubt I'll expand on the features of this game, but I might do a post jam debug session to clear them all out.
a bit of shameless promo- if you want a rougelite, please check out Diminishing Returns [Everything Edition] on my page, it is a rougelike and I'm really pround of it (though after playing some card rougelite I have ideas for even more improvements, lol)
again, thank you!
I liked the idea for the game a lot, and the art was very asthetically pleasing! Definitely was challening as well.
Thank you so much for your kind words!
Great asthetics, response, sound design and overall polish and feel. However (maybe due to a lack of skill) I find the aiming a bit finicky. Perhaps slowing lowering the sensitivity of the turning, or using a mouse controlled movement system would work better? Good stuff!
Thank you very much!
Hmm, It might be a good idea to add as an option - control sensitivity of aim and time to aim.
Something to think about. Thank you!
Ooh what nice aesthetics! Casual & jolly indeed~
Thank you for playing our game. I'm glad you had fun! :))))