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Just a Dagger's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Fantastic lighting effects, especially at the beginning—I would have loved to see more of them throughout the game. Challenging and engaging platformer with tight, responsive controls. The music complemented the gameplay experience nicely. Your GDD is well-structured and covers all necessary details, but adding more images—especially to showcase core mechanics—would enhance it further. Overall, this was a strong submission with great potential, and I genuinely enjoyed it! Keep up the excellent work!
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rhkN6RlozFSwP7-h1tRuahkmHhIh1A7Qs0j2BAyp0DM/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 2D speedrunning platformer where "what could a living dagger do" got taken to an extreme. Roll around with A and D, attack (left click) any surface to throw yourself in the other direction, nearly melt your metal in order to light more fires, and more!
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
This was our first game jam as a team, and for most of us our first game jam period. We just hope we made something fun :)
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
We did our best to truly think "what could a dagger given the ability to move on its own ACTUALLY do," and we hope you see that!
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Comments
Nice job overall! I found it really difficult, and that's partially because I couldn't always get the dagger to do want I wanted. But I started to get the hang of it. The controls felt like you wanted the game to be in the rage game genre. I thought the 5th screen was very difficult and that the game had not taught me how to handle that type of drop yet.
But I thought overall the level design was pretty good! The addition of heating up the sword with the lava is a good idea and gave a another good objective to achieve. Was fun to finally beat the levels. Nice music too! Great job! Congrats on your first game jam! Keep making games!
I got stuck here after dying in the lava pit below. The dagger is just spinning and I can't move.
Got a time of 25:57.5. This is a fun game. The game is quite hard, plays like a rage game too. I do like the challenge a bit and had a nice 26 minutes!
For some criticism I'd say I really don't like you are using the same button for the jump and spin, which when during some intensive wall climbing, it was too easy for a single misclick/early click to get the whole momentum down, or worse yet fallen into a pit and need to restart the room. I strongly suggest binding that to a different button, either mouse 2, space or S (down) or whatever, any of these would make the gameplay much more enjoyable. Another one is that the physics felt inconsistent from time to time. Sometimes the jump is just not as powerful as the other jump. My guess will probably be either the dagger's rotation, the pressing position, or both. Not sure how to fix that one though but I think fixing that will certainly reduce some un-needed rage.
Anyway, this is a nice little game! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the feedback! The air slash being right click is a good idea and should have been implemented, and only wasn't right click because of a scrapped mechanic. As for the physics, you are right that its relative to its distance from the dagger, which could have been more clear.
This is my time. I know it's not exactly 'speedrun worthy', but I think it's not bad for my first playthrough. I think the level design is great and the controls are very very nice. I like that it actually listens to the directional input of the mouse in order to determine de direction of the dagger's jump. At first I was a bit skeptical about the movement speed of the regular AD controls, but after mastering the ability to stop midair with a swing I found it ultra fun! The level design is top notch as well, although some of the levels have cheese potential since you're able to bounce off a single wall and pogo jump to the top. other than that, I loved every minute I played. Art is simple, yet it appeals to the eyes and the music is fun. 10/10 would speedrun again.
This was fun and frustrating at the same time, also great atmosphere. Thanks for all three.
Happy you enjoyed it!
Some levels were a bit difficult but overall the game felt very fun. Dagger is cute and I really liked the music.
Great speedrunning capability, harder difficulty for those that enjoy games they can't just breeze past. Music feels like it fits the game perfectly, the heating mechanic for the dagger adds an interesting "race against time" mindset and is a fun gameplay addition.
The game was great but ruthless with its difficulty. The movement never felt fully consistent and sometimes felt like a gamble but was satisfyingly fast and easy to use. the fire mechanic introducing both timed and multi-segmented areas were interesting. the rope mechanic felt underutilized to me as they were just a way to move a barrier for theatrics but could have been a dash prevention method or something like that. I also somehow managed to softlock it.
I'm glad you enjoyed some of it, but I'm sorry about the softlock :(
Fun game with a nice mechanic, the possibility to fire up the dagger and fly across a level in order to light the lamps was surprisingly entertaining.
Only comment I would add is having the dagger move a bit slower when the player moves.
Other than that, a very good job from the team!