Practice Circle Jam # 3

A jam submission

The Strange LaboratoryView game page

The Strange Laboratory is a 2D-Plateformer made with Unreal Engine. Travel through trap-filled levels and fight zombies.

Submitted by Bad Weather Studios (@BWeatherStudios) — 3 hours, 6 minutes before the deadline

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The Strange Laboratory's itch.io page

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no_login_found3 years ago(+1)

My impressions: visuals are good, but gameplay is ridicuously unfair and punishing, especially for a jam game. Haven't complete the game because of that, rage quit.

Main problems: hitboxes are just wrong, there's no damage indication like blood or sound or particles or whatever, there are no checkpoints. So what it essentially means is that you are dead in the middle of the level for no visible reason, and have to deal with all these issues again and again.

The tutorial is really annoying. These messages don't remember if you saw them, block your way, don't act as a checkpoint, and they also make you release and press the movement button again.

I've spend all the ammo long before it was needed for the tutorials, and melee just didn't work (because zombies have surprising attach range which is bigger than yours and bigger than their animation, and their being hit animation is almost unnoticeable and not really different from their attack animation, so it's not possible to see if you are hitting them)

Sawblades also attack you from a range which is not believable, you are just standing on the platform nearby and you are just suddenly dead for no reason.

Jumping is hard since character has too big inertia. While you jump slowly, the platform just goes away from you, and you aren't able to compensate because air control is also very weak.

Minor things:

Somehow I've managed to crash the game while alt-tabbing and clicking, don't know exact steps to reproduce.

Some tile edges are rendered with glitchy borders

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Bad Weather StudiosDeveloper3 years ago

Hi ! First of all thank you for your comment 😊 I intend to use your feedback to improve it in a future version (I invite you to follow my game so that you can see the progress), I hope that I’ll be able to make you change your mind about my first game!

Thanks for my visual! Regarding the gameplay, I’m surprised because I give it to several people who were able to finish it without difficulty. So yeah, he’s a little difficult but I didn’t want to be unfair and punitive. Precisely, since it is short (about 10 minutes) having a little challenge is for me, more appealing.

For the hitboxes. Sure, the zombie attack might be a little bigger than expected. I had a little trouble judging it by my animation. On the other hand, for the traps, they’re calculated according to my assets (the saw with a spherical collision box which takes the full asset and nothing else). So, yes, there is an indicator if the player is taking damage (it’s a little sound).

Yes, no checkpoints but due to lack of time and (and given the very short nature of the levels) I did not try to add any. I will work on this for the future.

The tutorial shows all the mechanics, I didn’t want the player to end up with surprises and therefore not know how to react. I will see how I can improve this part taking into account your feedback.

I was planning to remove the melee mechanics that are not really useful and raise the ammo limit. In the end, there is already the stamina bar. On the other hand, yes, the enemies react to the attacks… They play a sound and have a slight animation of “hit”. In addition, they don’t attack and don’t move.

The jump, I have no problem controlling the character, neither do the people who have tested. To be honest, I am using the way the first platformers (like Mario Bros) worked. Basically, the more you press the button, the higher you jump and vice versa. And what do you mean by air control? A boost? If so, I don’t think about it in my game design.

Regarding the crash, I couldn’t reproduce it and the game is very stable at home and on the different test machines. Apart from the crash with the loading on level 4 and 5 (already fixed on a new version not yet available). For platforms, I will investigate this.

Sorry, English is not my mother language 😊

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no_login_found3 years ago

Ok, from your description it sounds like you were testing a completely different game, not sure why. Have you uploaded the latest version?

As for the sounds, there are no sound settings, so I can't really make the interaction sounds louder or music quieter. I've checked again, and indeed, there are very quiet and short sounds, and it seems that only one sound is playing at a time, so if you repeatedly press attack, attack sound just prevents any damage sounds from being played (I'm not sure it works like that, but that's what I see)

As for the hitboxes, I've recorded a gif for you:

No real need to remove melee, I actually used it in my play attempts.

My problems with controlling the character were with horizontal acceleration (including in the air). Probably I'm used to being able to gain full speed/stop faster.

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Practice Circle Jam # 3

The Strange LaboratoryView game page

Play 2D plateformer game

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