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SMoC: Self-Modifying Claymore's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Your GDD was missing development timeline, which is a shame because otherwise it was fantastic. As for the game, amazing pixel art, it's clean and very appealing visually. I liked the sound volume control as it's very old style (in a good way). the background music and the SFX throughout the game were both great! The tutorial is clearly well thought-out, but I'd prefer if it was a playable tutorial rather then slides. There were small grammar mistakes throughout. You did a great job with the game's complexity and depth given the time limit, so many pieces to work with! The puzzle solving was laid out nicely and simply, the difficulty increased linearly which is felt nice and the almost limitless complexity of the game shows real potential. This has been my favourite so far.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GkQelDZsNIFig7TyJthtP6zc2ah8VgcDBwmYqjEmzn8/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!
As a magic/tech weapon you upgrade your own circuits to fix what the weapon user want. This is a endless circuit builder puzzle game that draws heavy inspiration from Zatronic games.
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
I tried to refrain from doing any game that fights, as this feels like a weapon user's doing rather than being a weapon, so here we are.
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Comments
i liked the the gameplay, it was a little confusing, and i think if/when you update maybe this will benefit from a tutorial to show/allow the player what needs to be done. will come back to this cuz i got it in the end and i wanna see how far i can go :D
Thanks! Glad you like it! Yeh I really need a tutorial for the game, it's so annoying not having one
Really polished. The music is great and the little battle animations are so cute. I'd like to see how challenging it gets as it progresses, so I think I'll come back to this one in the future for some more tries.
Thank you! Glad you enjoy it! The balancing is currently not too good right now but it should still give players a challenge with the ever increasing attack and healing requirements. Probably will fine tune it after the jam was done
this is so good! its so polished! the sfx is on point , and the gameplay is a lot of fun! the fact that you busted this out in 2 weeks is amazing! great job!
Survived 7 days. It is a pretty unique puzzle game for sure! I didn't really understand how some of the things worked but still made it 7 days. Not sure if that's good or bad. Graphics are perfect and great, music fits and is also good. Well done.
7 days is not bad at all! Glad you like it!
I liked it! I think that maybe it didnt require as many of the different pieces as I was hoping, since I could mostly get by with just amplifiers, minuses (i forgot the name lol) and combine/subtract. Im not sure how you could force people to use the different parts though. But yea! Cool game, suits the brief, pretty innovative too. Maybe the timer was a bit unnecessary (and can be cheated by opening a menu also haha)
Glad you enjoy the game! I am thinking maybe making the requirement curves a bit steeper but I am not too sure, probably need more testing before committing to anything, but I would really want the more powerful parts to be used.
Nice concept, although I must admit, a tad complicated so I got as far as brute force with amplifiers allowed me to xD
Ha ha, brute force is a valid strategy for now. I should have the curve a little bit steeper just to prevent this though.
Anyway, glad you're having a good time!
Crazy to see a zachtronics style game in a jam. It's really impressive and fun to play once you figure out how everything works. I made it pretty far on my 3rd run once I had it mostly figured out. I never was able to understand how the duplicator works. I think it'd be nice if there was a tutorial level that let you undo stuff and mess around a bit to understand how to place things and the mechanics a bit, I had to refresh the game a few times when starting cuz I wasted a ton of energy trying stuff out. But this also seems like it was a crazy amount of work so I get not having time to make an interactive tutorial. Great work on this!
Good to have a fellow zachtronic player here! I am glad you enjoy the game!
Yeh it took me quite a while to nail down the core mechanics and that really drains a lot of time. I guess it's around 10 days or so. Would really want to get the tutorial in too but sadly ran out of time. Ah, btw the duplicator currently is a bit bugged, that somehow it only works when input from the right (and the equivalent direction when rotated) came last. Some how this got missed during the final check :(
Really cool game! I love the art and sound design! My favorite was Buttercup! They didnt make it very far as I am not very good at understanding the game, but I think I am starting to! I think theres a lot of depth here and I will defo come back to play this again!
Glad you like it! Thank you!
This is cool but it needs a tutorial level really badly.
So true, so true. But anyway, thank you for playing my game and hope you are having a great time!
Very nice idea! It reminds me of some other game (I can't remember), but it feels more interesting to explore and develop.
The only issue - the "claymore" part feels completely irrelevant and detached.. Although aesthetically I totally loved it, very "Transistor" game vibes :D
Do you mean games made by Zatronic Games? This game drew huge inspiration to those!
Originally wanted to do more with the weapon part, but just ran out of time. But I guess when you are not going to be involved in the actual battle it is bound to feel detected in some way. (I probably need to think about this more)
Anyway, thank you for playing!
Needed a lot of reading before i was able to really engage with it but i really enjoyed it after that point
Hope I didn't put you through too many boring reads! Glad you enjoyed it!
No no it wasn't boring to read, just that my dumbass couldn't really get a grasp of the inner workings of the mechanics without refferencing the guide book before any desicion. Thank you for putting the guidebook in the levels instead of only on the main menu 🙏
I lost a few times but kept trying (with cool names each time by the way!🤣). I ended up figuring it out and got through to some levels! It does take a while to understand, but I tried to do it simply in the beginning which started to make the game make sense - perhaps you can slowly introduce parts instead of all at once - I think that can help the player learn step-by-step on how to progress. That aside, I think the art and ui were incredible!! I especially enjoyed the UI animations. The little bit of story, and how they were fighting in-between stages were cool too. Honestly, great game - you did amazing with this entry
For a fun fact, there is a total of 41192 possible combinations for the names and I am more than thrilled that you noticed that :) (BTW user1994 and user1995 count as two combinations so take that with a grain of salt). I've put a tone of effort into art this time so glad you like them too! Thank you for playing and hope you have a great time!
Really addicting concept and art style! A little complicated at first, and I think moving modules shouldn't cost energy, since it punishes experimenting and mistakes. But it also adds difficulty, and if that's what you were going for, I think it works!
My thought for moving cost is trying to force the player utilising what was already on board rather than completely removing it and starting again, still not sure if it's a good decision. But I think the energy gained at each level is generous enough to allow major changes I guess?
Anyway, thanks for playing and glad you like it!
I can tell you put a ton of work into this. It looks and sounds great!
I'm having a little hard time understanding the mechanics of this one. I think it probably needs some kind of tutorial level. Maybe start out with the most simple mechanics and introduce one component at a time per round.
Yeah, I totally agree, That's why there that 11 pages "how to play" exists, but that will never be enough. Should have added a tutorial level to ease the learning process. My bad :(
I felt like the game was well designed and planned out! I did actually managed to understand the way it works, but I think I'm not smart enough to get through the first levels without some guidance lmao. Still, what I love most about the game is your take on the theme. I never would've thought of a cybernetic sword that boosts the stats of the player via energy management! Again, I'm sorry for not fully diving into the gameplay, but I gave up pretty quickly. Great job, though! Very polished!
Not a problem, I do expect a bunch of players to skip out on this game due to this type of puzzle game being too niche, and I am very glad you tried it out! Hope you are having a good time playing the game!
The art all across the board was fantastic, and particularly I really like the background music. I found the game a bit hard to understand at first and don't know that I ever fully appreciated it. Maybe a tutorial would help or introduce game elements one to a few at a time just to let the user understand it more. Regardless I thought it was great and liked the knight hitting the slime animation!
Yeh a tutorial is definitely needed. I still hope you are having a good time playing this game!
This game is super cool! Good and clean art style and the actual controls are pretty simple. Nice synthy background music. As someone who enjoyed circuit design I really enjoyed it. But I could see it being a little overwhelming. Give it to the right audience and I think game could do well. I think a good tutorial kinda explaining certain things would be awesome to ease players into it.
Excellent game.
I totally fumbled with putting this very niche category of games that really requires the right audience, but I guess a proper tutorial would also ease more casual players into the game. Glad you enjoyed the game!
The game is very clean & polished, loved it. Not to take anything away from the game and the effort but its just not for me :) I loved that the timer is not super aggressive and I could sit down and think about it but still too complex for me (skill issue). What I understood is that this game would be perfect for learning circuit boards and how they work, how amplifier (etc...) work. Honestly, I would like to learn it in a game form (which this game actually does to some degree). Removing my personal preferences aside, I think you manage to great a very solid puzzle game with enjoyable art, UI, music & SFX. As I said, the game looks polished and maybe even on Demo level.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, I do recognised that the game is very complex, I myself am an enjoyer of such games but it really is a barrier for other players. Guess something too niche may not be an entirely good thing. Lesson learned!
It's not a bad thing either. Its a double edged sword. Some niche enjoyers would like casual game less, don't you think? It's important that you understand what direction your game is going. I think its awesome that you built something you would play and enjoy yourself.
Really cool game. I liked the art direction and music a lot. The gameplay was engaging once understood but the game could be helped with a bit more guidance to the player. Great work!
Thanks! Glad you liked the game and I hope you are having a good time playing!
Said this on the Discord as well, but awesome work! The graphics look incredibly polished and the mechanics are very unique within the context of the jam, great game overall :]
Thank you! Hope you liked it!