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Clamurai's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #19 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Overall | #26 | 3.222 | 3.222 |
| Visuals | #31 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Fun Factor | #32 | 2.889 | 2.889 |
| Audio | #34 | 2.833 | 2.833 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Is your game a video game or a physical game?
Video Game
Was your game made solo or in a team?
WOlfer122 Guy, sbumgardner, Tom Bumgardner, Vorce Shard
Did you use any third party assets, if yes what assets did you use?
No
Did you choose from one (or more) of the optional secondary themes?
Crustacean
Does your game contain 18+ content (Nudity, Gore, Language)?
No
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Comments
Really liked the retro style, that pinky fish reminded me the medusas from castlevania. The story screens, and the splash screen is looking amazing. I liked the armor design of the samurai, very original.
For those that are curious about the large art pieces in the game, I did them initially as pencil thumbnails to figure out a composition. Then I turned them into sketches and asked for feedback from the group. Before I did too much work, I wanted to make sure it matched the goal and would be used. I then made the pencil drawing on 14”x17” 100lb Vellum heavy paper. I tried to keep the compositions toward the center so it could be trimmed as needed. I did them in ink with brush and pen. They looked good at that point, but we decided color would be better rather than more ink drawings. We had to limit the scope of the game for time, and having the art we used looking good was important. I continued coloring them with colored pencil , because it is fast and easy to manipulate. I then took images with my phone, cleaned them up with filter editing, and forwarded them to be put into the project. I’ve also used high quality photos and cleaned them up with Lightroom and Photoshop, but that level of detail didn’t appear needed and would take more time, as they ended up looking good with our initial work.
https://www.twitch.tv/daddiesjizzies
Streamed this game tonight
This looks like a classic MSDOS game and sounds a lot like one too. Had fun doing long jumps over the crabs. The game was well balanced with increasing difficulty and new level designs.
The absolute stand outs are the intro splash screen and ending splash screen
How were these done, I have to know, is it colored pencil and uploaded?
Really interesting mechanic here with temporary neutralising the crabs instead of being able to kill them (at least I think that was happening). Was fun to play and I loved the pencil art at the beginning so much and appreciate the fact you used Crustration from secondary themes, made me laugh.
Yeah, you got it! It's not particularly well-communicated (no tutorial, no in-game text, etc.) but enemies that have been hit can't counter-attack - at least, not until they recover from their invulnerability.
It's a mechanic that I saw in an SNES game, ActRaiser 2, which I thought was a really cool concept. That game has a lot of other things going on (lots of different character actions and movement options) which makes for some interesting decision-making. It was tuned to be fairly difficult and character movement was very slow (from what I've seen, anyway) so I don't know how fondly it's remembered. I know I think it's pretty neat, though!
There's a lot to like about this one. First and foremost, that "box art" is metal. Kudos to the artist for that! I enjoyed the traversal and thought there were some cool sprites (that octopus god thing). I did find the amount of enemies on screen a bit overwhelming to the point where I wasn't able to survive many-a sticky situations. However I really liked the idea of the "stun" attack on the enemies. I could see with a lot of practice you could get into a good rhythm avoiding the swarms with good timing. Great job!
Very cool, I love platformer games and this one was very cool. Love the art visuals!
That was pretty fun, it really made me go back to the NES era, Ninja Gaiden came to mind, I really liked a lot of what was going on the game, but I sorta felt out of control at times, my attack seemed slow, and there were certain situations I dint feel like I could get out of it without getting damaged. I think tweaking a bit of the physics and the characters attacks and you would end up with a sharper game, but that's just opinions lol. Great entry!
Damn this is an absolutely wild interpretation of the theme.
I dig the floaty physics, but there was something about the movement that felt uncooperative. I can't exactly pinpoint the issue, but I kept feeling like I wanted more fluidity. Small things like the basic jump (tap space) isn't high enough to jump the game's standard height of 2 tiles, or the accel/decel on-ground creates a laggy feel (as opposed to fluid).
I made a very similar game a few years ago, and faced similar problems. I remember solving them (at least to my taste) by giving the player a fast initial velocity, long uptime near the peak, and then a slow descent. (I changed the gravity based on vertical velocity). This gave the player a lot of floatiness and control mid-air. I coupled this with two or three additional mini-jumps mid-air (tiny boosts to upward velocity). I also gave a lot of extra coyote time and whatever the opposite of that is (snapping the player onto a landing platform if they're close enough). Since the movement was important to the game, my philosophy was to give the player both a powerful feeling of flow state (with the floatiness and affordances) + airborne decision-making (mini-jumps).
I'm not saying I did it right or you should do what I said, but hopefully this may be of some use.
The intro art is pure fire and the player sprite is super cool as well. Played without audio so sorry can't give feedback there!
Wish the team all the best in upcoming jams. Keep making cool stuff everyone!
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
I think the game definitely would've benefitted from several more iterations on the whole feeling of movement. Little things like getting caught on ledges, or lacking that "snappiness" you described when getting back to a grounded state definitely stood out to me in my rounds of testing.
To be honest, I'm not totally sure what the game's movement identity should be (which is maaaybe a little questionable, given it's a platformer). Approaching it with some fresh eyes after some time away probably wouldn't be a bad idea, and it'd help pin down how the movement and combat elements of the game should align with each other. I like poking enemies and running through them, but there's a lot to refine (in both mechanics and design) if that's where it's going to go.
I appreciate you taking the time to share the design that worked out for you. If you have a link to that game, I'd love to check it out! It's always great to see more ideas and broaden my horizons.
Ah sorry man I tried searching for something on my drive but I never put it on the internet anywhere and I must've switched 3 laptops since I made that game.
Glad you liked the art. I wanted it to stand out and look very inviting. Something I would want to play in style of arcade games.
Retro game vibes and i like it :) I like the designs particurally the main character. For the gameplay, the movements was a bit frustrating, kind of slow and when we jump and fail. Maybe a "swim" notion (Mario underwater for exemple) and swiming ennemies reaching at you would be fun ? But game have a good lifetime and i appreciate it and found all the pearls (*sunglasses smiley*)
Beautiful art, the main character's design felt so unique. Really enjoyed this game!
Thanks for the art and game comments.
The artwork for the game was sick!
Managed to reach the end of the game! Never seen so many crabs in a game before. Was expecting to see more clams than crabs haha! Gives me retro Sega Master vibes. Good work on the game!
I really like the samurai's design and some of the enemy designs. Honestly, the gameplay is really rough and trying to emulate the water is fine and all but its just awkward jumping.
Slashing also feels like it needs more impact and lacks range. It also doesn't seem to do much other than slowing them down, which I'm not exactly a huge fan of. Also, there are too many enemies just spamming in later stages that it kinda ended up making me adverse to fighting them and just forced to platform away.
The green squid foe is also tough and fast too.
Aesthetically, this has a REALLY good character design but the gameplay feels a bit imperfect, even for a platformer. But this is good effort nonetheless.
Thank you for the feedback!
I also feel that the gameplay's not really locked into an effective groove. There are elements of the mechanics and design that I'm happy with, but it's not particularly cohesive. Platformers that really emphasize melee combat tend to have a pretty different feeling to them, I think - castlevania-style games (as an example) are much more grounded, attacks are (generally) longer reaching and more committal, etc.
I was interested in this game having a different focus - more emphasis on finding the right moment to strike so you could move through damaged enemies and get through safely, not so much focus on sustained combat. Under this idea, enemy health is most impactful in determining how many times you might have to interact with an enemy before leaving it in the dust (or bubbles, I guess) but rushing ahead presents dangers. Especially when *somebody* (it was me) made crabs explode out of every nook and cranny of the level.
So yeah, I don't think the ideas necessarily came across the best, but I think there's a workable idea here that's focused on making movement through and around enemies fluid and fun.
Thanks again, I appreciate you taking the time to give feedback. Thanks especially for noting the things that didn't work for you. New ideas and different perspectives will help us make stronger games.
I love the illustrations!
Fun game, lots of crabs haha. The difficulty progression was fair, and the game had a nice amount of levels. It kinda reminds me of my pc-engine days. Good job!
Liked the intro scenes they were really beautiful! The jumping was a bit floaty and the sword play could have been better but aside from that the music and the amount of content make it quite enjoyable!
The crustacean secondary theme was absolutely blown away with the idea of Clamurai! The artwork is incredible as well!
Glad you liked the artwork. Thank you.