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A jam submission

Hidden Stars (Jam Entry)View game page

A girl who will do whatever it takes to save her family.
Submitted by Caelum — 3 hours, 15 minutes before the deadline
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Hidden Stars (Jam Entry)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fan Favorite#832.2452.750

Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Jam Host

Please see Teal's play-through video, as well as her review of the game in the video description:

Submitted

Lots of problems and progression blocks. 

After the first fight, you can progression block by returning to the previous screen. If you leave the area and return to the first fight map, it freezes the game.

You start off the game with a load error.

Lots of passability/layering issues, like the shadows.

The elder is apparently a statue?

If you enter the lava area then return, it keeps the tint and it resets the door so you have to fight the boss again.

If you talk to the starting crystal multiple times in the thunder area, it can permanently progression block you depending on if you saved.

Developer

Thank you for going through and taking the time to point all of this out! I didn't have a bug tester (as much is obvious) so it is really helpful to have people point stuff like this out! Also yes the elder is a statue, I was going to make a face set that would make it more clear and add in more story for them, but time got away from me, sorry if there was any confusion. I went back through and played the game again and noticed everything you pointed out, and went and fixed it (don't know if updating during jam is allowed so I'll update everything once jam is over). Thank you again!

Right off the bat - it's a really pretty game. It has cute facesets and drawings. The maps are well made and a pleasure to traverse. I absolutely love the puzzles and how many interactable objects there are. You did amazing work with turning boring old "elemental caves" into something fun to explore. The dialogues are good. The story is interesting. The fights are not a nuisance but a pleasure. I especially like how elemental attacks seem to matter. I'm charmed by this game. It almost feels like I'm playing a young kleptomaniac in search of her sibling, and it's endearing somehow. There are some flaws but they're not a big deal. Spellchecking could use some work. There's a bug that allows you to "farm" the first boss in the water elemental room if you go back. One issue that definitely needs fixing, is that unfortunately, after one cutscene after the fire dungeon, I was teleported outside of the bounds of the map. That's where my adventure ended, but I had tons of fun. I hope you make more games this good in the future.

P.S. I love that there's an actual treasure trove with a lot of treasure, not just 5 coins. I wish more games did that.

Developer(+1)

Your comment actually made my day- thank you so much! I also have the pet peeve about treasure troves (there is literal gold lying on the ground why can't I pick it up lol).  I went through and found the cause of the bug you had and (hopefully) fixed it. I'll update everything once the jam has finished! I plan to continue this game and I actually already started to work on it. Thank you again for your wonderful comment. 

Submitted

I got up to the Thunder Boss before I stopped playing because I was tired of losing and I didn't feel like throwing myself at the battle over and over until RNG worked in my favor. The fight shouldn't have been hard at all, but the boss and 2 mooks kept using Storm and other magic dealing ~260-320 damage (yes the mooks were dealing the same damage as the boss) and I just died before I even had a chance to retaliate. Basically for every 1 turn of mine I got hit 3-4 times for a few hundred each hit. 

From what I played though, the game was fine. There's nothing truly bad about it, it's just a pretty decent and average game. For what it's worth, I enjoyed what I played and that is what we're really after. The character portraits are pretty charming and I like the whole tower climbing thing to find Jason. The puzzles were simple but enjoyable.  The combat was pretty simple, but I had fun nonetheless with it. The storyline was fine. I didn't get much of it (nor did I see the end so I can't say for certain) but it's got potential with what happens next. It's enough to get you interested in learning more, so that's good. 

While the combat was simple, it was also very easy. I mean that as, the first two areas of the game are a water place, and fire place, and Lucy has a thunder spell and water spell. So pretty early on you realize all you need to do in area 1 is just use Thunder. It's fine, it's not terrible, but it's not the most engaging combat. All you need to do is use Thunder (and freeze/downpour for area 2) for each battle and you win. No thought required. Lucy has a bunch of spells of different elements, it would have been nice to see her use them more freely. Maybe that happens later but in the start it just one thing.

Overall it's a fine game, and we all know how much work goes into making a game jam game something fun and enjoyable in that time. I think with some more work (and time lol) it has potential to be better! Good job on the game! :)

Developer

This was an amazing comment to receive, so thank you for this.  I have always struggled with balancing, but when you're the only one available to play your game you learn tricks to win and forget that players new to the game won't know them. I have big plans for the fighting system in the future and I have already started to lay the groundwork for it.  Thank you so much for the constructive criticism and I will do better in the future!