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A jam submission

Staying AliveView game page

This is my entry for the SA Game Jam 2020: Returning From The Brink
Submitted by Zayd Carelse (@zaydcarelse) — 1 day, 4 hours before the deadline
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Staying Alive's itch.io page

Names and Email Addresses of Team Members
Zayd Carelse - zayd.carelse@gmail.com

Categories Your Team is Eligible for
Hobbyist, Diversity

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Comments

Submitted

Cool project! As others have mentioned, this is really well scoped and polished for a first jam! The fact that you even had a tutorial in there was very impressive! Changing music to suit the mood and everything. Your level design could potentially be a bit more open to take advantage of the momentum mechanic. Also, for some reason both my Occulus app and SteamVR opened up when I launched the game. Not sure if that's something to do with Unreal's build settings? Something configured for VR?

Anyway, really well done!

Developer

Thanks so much for playing a giving feedback. 😊

Host

Hi! Just a reminder of this rule: " To be eligible to win any of the prizes, your team has to play and give feedback to five other entries by Monday, 5th October 2020". 

So if you haven't done it yet, you still have the rest of this weekend and Monday to give your feedback!

Developer

Thanks for the reminder. I think I've played and given feedback to about 12 of the other entries so far.

Submitted

As your first game, well done and welcome! So happy to have people entering the game development space. 

Your game proves that keeping things simple is a strength. On the last two levels I made it to the door on the last second and it was genuinely exciting.

Some minor notes: 
There was a moment on level 3 where I had some lag, not sure why but it wasn't too bad.

When you die you restart the whole game. Usually I'd say this is pretty brutal but after seeing that there weren't too many levels I'd say it is fine. If you were to add more I'd advise a retry button or a lives system.

Great job! I hope you will continue to make games and good luck.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for playing and offering your encouragement. It means a lot.

As for the restarting upon death: I really didn't want to punish the player that way but I hadn't figured out how to do that by the time I finished the game. I've since switched over to Unity and have found it a lot easier to create saved variables that will fix that problem. Live and learn, right?

I'm hoping to create a new one this weekend which will address all of the problems that it's predecessor had.

Well done on saving Zombie Brian!

Submitted

Amazing for your first project! I think you did a superb job at keeping the scope minimal for a first jam entry which is something a lot of first-timers don't get right (myself included!).

Platformers are tricky because they require solid controls to feel fun, but luckily you didn't fall into this trap either.

Not much for me to critique on here, other than I think the levels could benefit with having more visible on the screen at one point.

You definitely have a skill for this, keep making more!

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you for the feedback and encouragement. I'm still figuring out a lot of this but it's cool to be able to put something on paper and then create it.

I definitely enjoyed the process more than I think I should have. 😂

Submitted

Awesome platformer. The music and art fits the mood well. 

Some feedback:

The background music cuts off in the tutorial, it does not loop and I died in the tutorial, because the time ran out before I could finish reading the text. Maybe only activate the timer when the player starts to move

Well done, it was fun! I want more levels :)

Developer

Thanks so much for playing and giving your feedback.

I didn't actually know how to do all of that (or know how lol) but I'll try and figure it out for an updated build.

I enjoyed saving the dinosaurs from their impending asteroid doom, as well. ;)

Submitted

Fun visuals and music! Was quite  a nice and tight platformer. Good job!


I would of pulled the screen back a bit more and added in a more realistic jump. i.e. Gravity x2 when dropping. Holding in jump gives you longer jumps :)

But great project! :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and giving feedback.

I absolutely loved your game. To be completely honest, this is my first game so I didn't actually know how to do those things. 😂 I also felt like I had wasted too much time on other things so I didn't get quite around to figuring out how to do all those things.

It was a great learning experience though.

Submitted

I found this quite charming.

Nice pick with the music for the timed levels, really ramped the intensity.

Agree with a lot of what @ReadyGo already said: I felt like the tutorial could have been part of the main levels. It would have been really satisfying to see my form change into human after entering that last door :)

Developer

Thanks for playing and giving feedback.

I actually meant to have the music continue but didn't want to waste too much time on figuring that out.  I kinda ran out of time at the end.

I also (wrongly) assumed that the player had a chance to die in the tutorial and didn't want them having to replay all of that just to get to the game. I will keep that in mind for my next project though.

Submitted

Really cool stuff! I finished it after 2 tries. Really good maps, made only walking and only running both impossible, you had to figure out when to walk and when to run, nice!

Didn't enjoy that my life timer got reset between levels, would've enjoyed it more with a persistent clock. Made my super-awsm map finishes feel nullified.

Tutorial was really impressive but perhaps a little unnecesary, why not build the tutorial into the first few levels and then just teach the player by default as they get started with the game :]

Overall awsm stuff, sad that I didn't get to see the human form nicely at the end though!

Developer

Thanks for playing and giving such detailed feedback. I appreciate it.

This was actually my first game so I couldn't really figure out how to keep the timer as a consistent variable and took the short cut to finish it.

I also didn't have time to learn how to create cinematic sequences but having the Zombie transform was part of my initial design.

Glad you enjoyed it. Hope to be able to improve on those things for my next project.