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Pie or Die's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- It's a really fun concept! Not having to worry about movement is a helpful, but a little jarring. Especially when the player doesn't expect it. The music is fitting and the sounds aren't overwhelming, even when spammed. The music could be tuned down just a little, as it's quite loud in comparison to everything else, it drowns out the other sounds. An explanation on the stamina system would also be useful, as I was fine attacking and then, suddenly, I was not and I was confused. Same with the health pickups, it told me to click, but didn't say what weapon to use for this, so it was slightly confusing there. All in all, a well made game! Keep making cool things!
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10_Fkko09OZIYcAZK3UdXao8e_6K024-a1KCHxeSciFQ/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes, it says "general access, anyone with link"
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
In this game, you play as the weapons of the protagonist, who is a sentient pie (read backstory in game or gdd). You play as a sword, shield, and bow, and the protagonist blindly walks towards their next goal. Hungry, pie loving goblins want a piece of your protagonist, so protect him! The protagonist will occasionally need you to activate a trigger to proceed, and their speed may change (they may just try to run away from the goblins). There are power ups to heal, increase max health, and increase damage, but you better get them when you see them because your protagonist might not wait around for you to line up the shot!
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
Theme is "you are the weapon," and in this game you exclusively control the weapons, thus, you are the weapons.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
I tried to encourage the player to use all abilities at their disposal, and introduce them to the mechanics gradually. The sword slash and stab gets rid of basic goblins quite easily. The shield blocks all damage besides the bash attack of another shield, so you either need to knock shield goblins away, or parry their attack. Bow goblins won't intentionally get close, so you may need to use your bow to eliminate them. Based on my play time, these mechanics work together pretty fluidly if you spend the time to learn them, so I hope you will notice how all the mechanics are important, and work together to achieve your goal.
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Comments
The pie and the goblins were super cute. I didn't understand the fatigue/rhythm mechanic. Sometimes clicking would trigger an attack and sometimes it wouldn't. I assume it had something to do with the display with the green bars in the upper left but it wasn't clear to me what the mechanism was.
Yes, that mechanic wasn't ever explained, and didn't really get tested well before the jam ended, so I am sorry about that. To explain it retroactively though, the top 5 green bars by your health represent your attack charges. Every attack uses one charge, and takes a certain amount of time to recharge per attack. A slash is 1.5 seconds, a shield bash I think is 3, an arrow is 10, etc. A failed parry will lose you all your attack charges for 2 seconds (Which I suppose could be used to exploit longer charges, recharging an arrow attack faster). A successful parry will recharge all of your attack charges. So a personal strategy of mine was to rapidly use the secondary sword attack 4 times, then switch to shield and parry once to recharge, then repeat.
Based on what other players have said, this mechanic was particularly unintuitive for the bow. It felt like the bow was just not working, when in fact they often used all of their attack charges, not knowing that they even existed. It should have been explained, it should have been balanced better, and there should have been more visual/audio cues to communicate the mechanic to the player.
Anyways, thank you so much for playing our game, and thank you for the feedback! While I am not working on this game anymore, I am applying feedback from this game to other projects!
I was a bit confused at first why we couldn't control the pie character but then I realized you hit the theme with this one 🤣 It was a lot of fun following the pie going on an adventure to slay goblins, even though you were all the different weapons. I liked that you could use ranged weapons too but they were a bit difficult to use in battle, so I kept using the sword. I enjoyed the aesthetic of this game very much, really feels like something I would have played as a kid - thank you for making this 😁
Thank you for your kind words! I am the artist here and i felt that simply the peasant as a human wouldnt be special enough, so i proposed the pie and my team agreed :D Most importantly i had fun drawing the sprites. I am glad people like my Pie.
Really fun concept and game! I liked the weapon and enemy variety, and that you had to adapt to your playstyle based on the situation. The game presented a good challenge without feeling impossible, and was a lot of fun. Some of the controls took a while for me to adjust to, like shooting the bow with two buttons, and I never quite figured out how to parry. But overall great job by everyone involved!
Yeah I wanted to avoid a wall of text to tell the player how to play, but consequently some mechanics weren't easy to understand lol. For parrying specifically, there is a yellow sparkle animation that plays before an enemy attacks, and you want to parry at the end of the sparkle animation. The parry is a 0.25 second timing window, if you fail you are disarmed temporarily, but if you succeed, all of your attack cooldowns are reset. My strat when playing was to spam the sword stab 4 times, then use my 5th attack charge to parry an attack, then spam 4 more stabs and parry again. Unless enemies were further away and required the bow. Thank you for your feedback, and thank you for playing
I had fun with this! Sometimes the pie moves fast and the goblins are off screen
Thank you for playing our game! The pie moving quicker was to give the player some more space, but i do agree it would be better to limit the speed so the goblins stay in view.
Cute graphics and nice sounds! Gameplay is interesting, yet needs more tuning to feel really great. Can't really pinpoint what, the game just feels slow at times. Maybe something to do when there is no enemies/upgrades around or separate stamina for each weapon would better it? Also, the pie was moving on diagonals really fast collecting a horde of goblins and leaving upgrades behind, don't think this is intentional.
Nice job!
I agree with your criticism about the gameplay needing tuning, for some people it was too hard, and some mechanics like weapon charges weren't explained to the player. However, the moving faster through those sections was intentional. My thought was I can have sections with excessive power ups where it almost becomes a shooting gallery, you need to try and collect as many power ups as you can before the hoard catches up, so you are prepared to fight them. This was intentional, but that doesn't mean it was fun for everyone lol. I think there is a more fun game to be made with these mechanics, if given more time for development, but I also don't think our team will continue developing this project. It worked for the jam, and time to move on to a new project. But feedback is appreciated for future games at least!
Very charming graphics and cool gameplay!
Thank you so much!
I like the idea of not being able to control the player at all, really cool idea! Also love the pie :3
Thank you!
I very like that I am forced to switch weapons based on situation. Bow for upgrades and archers and sword for everything else. Just shield I didnt find as useful, but most likely I just dont know how to use it properly.
I also like that feeling of being some bodyguard for a Pie who just wanted to go for a nice walk.
Awesome game!
Thank you for playing our game! I just couldnt help but add something dumb to it and a pie was exactly what it needed.
Good Idea! Maybe a more physics based system? I loved the spinning around with the sword part.
Nice work! I think the combat could be tuned a little more! I mostly used the sword because it seemed the strongest. Good job!
I agree on the combat needing some tuning. Unfortunately, I was the only person who had a chance to play test it, and as the person who made the game I am not a good sample for a new player. I tried to do what I thought would be best for a new player, but ultimately I need new player to tell me what's best for them lol. Thank you for playing