Play opus
Stalewater's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall Bad | #1 | 4.208 | 4.208 |
| Sound | #1 | 4.083 | 4.083 |
| Graphics | #3 | 4.083 | 4.083 |
| Overall Good | #5 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| Gameplay | #5 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Overall | #5 | 3.674 | 3.674 |
| Modifier | #34 | 2.292 | 2.292 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
If you have implemented the modifier, how have you done so?
There's one button used at the end of the game as part of the main antagonists powers
Any additional information for voters?
A sequence after the final boss could potentially cause issues for people who are photosensitive.
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Comments
I of course saved this game for last, (partially so I could play the non-broken version, and partially because I was very excited from what I saw) and luckily, it didn't disappoint! This game has the feel of one of them low-budget western films, combined with the janky dialogue systems of the early elder scrolls games. There is honestly so much I could say about this, but really people should just play it and enjoy!
Some elements feel like they were specifically there to make me laugh out loud, like the cameo of everyone's favourite sentient AI, and the references back to the long-forgotten 2019 jam winner (which everyone should check out!) The ending was a really good climax and rounded off the story very well.
I guess in terms of improvements, some kinda checkpoint system would be good. I was trying to defeat a certain boss with only dynamite, and ended up killing myself (oops!), but being able to start at a checkpoint would have been useful. However the game is not too long so I see why that wouldn't be a priority. Other than that there are very few criticisms I can even think of, which isn't very helpful! the voice acting is superb, the animations and sound effects are hilarious, even shooting someone is just extremely satisfying, and there is a really satisfying narrative with sound story beats.
Well done! And I can't wait to see what's next!
I'm happy to hear I matched expectations and I ended your jam rating on a high note! Good call on waiting to play, since the early versions had some issues.
Yeah I knew the ending would get the regulars on the discord, I tried to swing it such that even people who had no idea what any of the references were would find it funny because of the sheer tone shift and absurdity of the scenario.
Yeah I tried to make the game short so that it wouldn't be drawn out as much as Ja Wizardman, but with more narrative and gags than Out Of Order. That being said a save system has really been needed in my games for quite some time, and since it will definitely be needed in future projects I intend to make it a priority after the jam. Its nice to hear someone liked the shooting lmao, but I do intend to improve that in future projects as well.
Thanks for playing and the kind feedback, I hope I'll actually be able to make a follow up in less than 2 years!
Great game, the ending had me hoping for more :D
Glad to hear it, I wanted to add more but time restrictions forced me to either end it where I did or make more mediocre sections of the game. But we’ll see about adding more in the future...
Thanks for playing!
>:D Western settings are so ripe for goodbadness, great choice! The facial expressions and voice acting had me laughing, and the endless void had me vaguely panicked and dread filled, heh.
Oh and the wide stance walking animations! Hilarious!
Yeah I always associate westerns with either being amazing or incredibly cheesy, and once I had the idea for a western setting I couldn't not use it. Haha, I was hoping the ending would have that effect on people! I'm happy to hear my efforts on the voice acting and animation have been appreciated.
Thanks for playing!
Since I am pressed for time, I didn't get to make it to the final boss battle but what I played was a real treat! I'll definitely be trying for the ending as soon as I can. The way the models walked in cutscenes looked like they had bad rashes and the voice acting was wonderfully atrocious! It oddly worked for the setting. Fighting mechanics were a bit janky, but I feel enemies deal a bit too much damage, it is hard to find cover, but perhaps I'm just not fast enough. Overall, the game was an enjoyable experience with a good level of badness and fun cutscenes. I just wish after you die you could respawn at a checkpoint 'cause restarting the game over is a bit tedious, which was why I didn't have the time to restart it to get further.
I was hoping the animation and voice acting would get a decent reaction out of you so its nice to know I didn't disappoint there!
Dammit, the combat seems to be more and more of an issue as feedback rolls in. I had previously halved the damage of the rifle enemies and increased the number of health pickups but the combat at its core has issues. I play tested it a lot from beginning to end and thought it gave just the right level of difficulty, but of course I also know how enemies work and their placement and stats. Plus I play a lot of Bethesda shooters where most of the game seems to be shooting at people out in open spaces while rapidly using health items, so I guess I'm just too used to it. Combat was never really the strong suit of any of my games, I think it was too easy in the first two games I made, so to compensate I made the game difficult enough that I could occasionally be killed. Turns out when its slightly challenging for the dev, it means its pretty brutal for everyone else. I plan to focus on improving the combat mechanics in future updates and projects.
Yeah the checkpoint issue as I mentioned before would have been incredibly difficult to finish during the jam, just due to how many values and variables would have to be recorded and set. I've been meaning to make a save system for a while now but I was anticipating it wouldn't be required until later in my horror games development. Turns out that was a bad assumption lol. Likely I'll end up creating a save system after the jam as a top priority. But I'm sorry you couldn't finish the game, I did add the ability to skip the opening cutscene and dialogue lines but yeah a save system would be way better.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Oh yeah, when you are the dev a game seems easier since you know it like the back of your hand! I play a lot of shooters like DOOM and Unreal, and so me failing so badly at such a janky game made me feel ashamed lol, or it could be the jank itself that made it hard to navigate. Either way I did enjoy what I did get through and hope to play it through to the end next time!
Big West Of Loathing Vibes. Loved it - probably going to fool around with this after the jam, actually. No clue how you managed to do this during the jam - it's super impressive!
You know I've seen pictures of West Of Loathing and it looks really fun, but I've never actually tried it, I should sometime.
Well some of the features I had in this game I've created before for other projects, so I knew how to do them and more importantly I knew what wasn't needed. So when I drew up the systems for this game I was able to do more with less. Frankly I think a lot of the content and features in the game are simply able to be reused several times and in more than one way. For example the animations for the characters are shared across every human NPC in the game, the player actually has the same weapon animations as the enemies, he's just missing the rest of his body. Oh and it helped that all the scripted sequences were basically just copy-pasted from each other, was a massive productivity booster lmao.
But it wasn't all easy, I basically worked from the very start of the jam all the way to the submission time.
I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it and that the hard work paid off, thanks for playing!
Oh and I should also say that I well be adding updates to this game after the jam ends, in fact I have a couple of the new features basically working now. And I'm planning on making a sequel following up to the conclusion.
Oh heck yeah - really pumped!
When playing games made for this jam I come with zero expectations, as should be from a jam called “So Bad It’s Good”, but I did not expect a fully voice acted parody of Bethesda RPGs on my doorstep.
Morrowind/Fallout NV as seen through the filter of old GMOD nonsense machinimas is a great combination, as it turns out. Also mildly reminded me of West of Loathing if it somehow made less sense. With this sort of premise it’s easy to milk the joke for as long as possible, but thankfully Stalewater ends when it needs to.
While the voice acting and intonation was a tad too slow in my taste, the game makes up for it with excellent visual gags and smashing high-quality PBR textures on absolutely terrible modeling.
As others have mentioned, the gameplay itself is underwhelming. I don’t know if the lack of feedback when firing guns was an intentional SBIG joke, a reference to Bethesda’s lackluster combat, or just because it fits with the theme. But really I found the combat more monotonous and frustrating than funny. Hitscan weapons require sufficient cover and design to not feel cheap, and “death screams” being akin to children losing a backyard game gets old very quality for example.
But hey, off with mechanics, we’re not GMTK. Content is king here. Bottom line, it’s probably the most ambitious game I’ve seen here, both in terms of content, the subject matter it’s parodying, and actual file size (seriously, I believe it’s possible to compress the game further in Unity). And just for that it’s worth preserving.
Hey thanks for playing and the quality feedback!
Yeah Bethesda games are always a big influence on my ideas, and that was certainly no exception here. I think some of the voice acting dragged because I did it while very tired, others because I didn't have time to edit out some pauses, and some just because I'm not the greatest voice actor.
Yeah the combat was only partially supposed to be intentionally bland. The revolver was meant to feel like a peashooter and the enemies weren't meant to be that smart to begin with. But the lack of feedback other than the blood sprites was simply due to lack of time. The combat kinda had to be just functional in order to get everything else in. I think the last combat arena was likely designed in about 15 minutes, and you can feel it in the game. If I were to do it over again I'd give the player more cover right out of the gate. Though admittedly there might be some unconscious influence from New Vegas since I was playing it quite a bit recently. Sorry to hear you found it frustrating though.
I was actually unaware of their being further compression for unity games, I'll have to look into that.
Thanks again for the honest feedback!
Game feel is important, arguably the important aspect of when it comes to engaging your players. Even on a jam about intentionally bad games :)
The two best videos I always send people who want to quickly shrink Unity builds are this and this. They are short and very generalized but they are a good way to start.
Other than that make sure your textures are a power of 2 and use Unity’s built-in model compression. Also make sure you’re using the most recent build method. Unity still has legacy support for older algorithms that have poor compression in today’s standards.
Excellent point!
Thanks, I'll make sure to take a look at those next time I decide to build.
Show post...
GOOD GAME DEV
Oh wow thanks for playing, and for the video! Sucks that you didn't make it to the end though.
FYI there's an updated version of the game out now, and you need to hit F1 to heal yourself with the whiskey. You can find the controls in the pause menu.
Legit one of the best games here.
Thanks for playing, and for the kind words!
The animation and voice acting are totally on point. I wasn't able to beat it due to difficulty and my short attention span, but I was very impressed nonetheless!
Damn, I'm sorry to hear you couldn't finish it, I added a couple balance patches and have the ability to skip cutscenes and dialogue but I guess I should have added another pass. Out of curiosity how far in did you get before you quit?
Same as the guy below, to the fortress then killed by the grey guys XD I'm sure I could beat it if I played again and was more careful, though I'm trying to get through a lot of these today since there's only a while left for voting
Ah fair enough, yeah next shooter I do I hope to avoid hitscan enemies. They seem to take people out too quickly even with reduced damage and firing speed. But thanks for trying it out, I'm happy you enjoyed what you played!
This was a pretty fun game.
Firstly, I will admit that the gunslinging action in the game was a bit on the boring side (It was perfectly functional, which is good, but it did feel kinda meh overall). I guess it probably could have benefitted from some stupidly overexaggerated viewmodel animations too. But hey it was still functional and that's a good thing.
The rest of the game, however, was great. The utter absurdity of the whole situation, VoteBot, the pretty darn wild modelling and animations, the writing, and all that stuff was genuinely 'so bad it's good'.
Anywho, there was one missed opportunity in this game: giving the player a drunk effect when they drink too much whiskey.
But yeah it was good!
Hey thanks for playing!
Yeah the gun combat is bland, mostly because if I wanted to juice it up more then I would've had to sacrifice in every other area. I have ideas for how to improve it in the future but to get everything else done on time it had to be left at "good enough".
Yeah I wanted to lean into the absurd again for this year, just because I needed a good dose of stupid. I'm happy to hear the sacrifice in the combat let the other areas come to fruition!
Drunk effect on drinking whiskey was definitely on the list of ideas early on, once again it just became out of scope. I plan to include it in a later update though, I loved playing around with visual effects in my uni project and I wanna do more.
Much like the last two years I've done SBIG there's a bunch of stuff that was left on the cutting room floor, I'll probably address them in my postmortem.
Thanks for the honest feedback!
I'll be honest, I went in with pretty high expectations. Out Of Order was really good, and Ja Wizardman, though very late, was amazing when it finally came out. I'm happy to say that this game met or exceeded them!
The modeling, animation, voice work and storyline are all weird and janky as hell, but they're hilarious and work perfectly for a game in this jam. In particular those fancy mouth animations had me laughing out loud. In terms of length and pacing it's about perfect; it's long enough to be a satisfying play but moves quickly enough that it never gets boring.
The combat works well enough for a so bad it's good game, but it could be better. In particular the guns lack impact and aren't all that satisfying to use. I think if the game were longer or more serious it would become a greater point of contention, but as it stands, it's fine. It's an improvement over Out Of Order, and I'm sure the next game will improve again.
The ending was amazing, and I'm looking forward to the crossover (please tell me that'll be a real thing, it needs to be a real thing).
EDIT: I accidentally a sentence.
Hey man thanks for playing! I'm happy to hear I managed to reach the highbar I've set for myself previously.
Yeah if I learned anything from Ja Wizardman and Out Of Order its that less good content is better than more bland content. I think this time I managed to squeeze in more gags than Out Of Order while managing to add in a bit more of the ambitious aspect of Ja Wizardman. So I'm glad you agree I hit the sweet spot.
Yeah the combat is something I wish I had more time to improve on, but much like Out Of Order its kinda something that had to be left at "good enough". I know I definitely didn't wanna get super complex like Ja Wizardman, and I wanted to avoid having a buggy weapon system like Out Of Order did before patches. The lack of impact on the guns was intentional for the revolver, hence why it has a literal toy cap gun sound effect, but I agree that the rifle should have had more oomph. Shooting does actually add force to enemy bodies, but only really after they're dead. I was unfortunately unable to figure out how to implement it properly such that the force would be applied on the shot that kills an NPC. I would also liked to have added hit reaction animations to enemies but that just got cut off due to time restrictions. I definitely have some ideas for improvements, and I plan to go over some of them when I do a post-mortem for this game after voting ends.
A crossover is definitely intended, its really just a matter of me having free time. I've left Mallone inactive for far too long. I figured you would like it lmao.
Fun game, the voice acting is fantastic and the character model movements are comically artificial. Great Job!
Thanks for the kind feedback, and for playing!
Its like New Vegas but 10000 times less broken and 100000000000 times less budget!
I love it!
Haha, I like that description, thanks for playing I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I know SBIG when I see it, and this definitely smells like pure SBIG!
I love the smell of SBIG in the morning, thanks for playing!
This game was really fun. The animations and voice acting were hilarious. To me, it's truly a SBIG game!
I'm happy the animations and voice acting have been just as fun for other people to watch as it was for me to make, thanks for playing!
Damn, this is good! This is my favourite of the jam so far. The voice acting and animation are top notch bad/good. AND THAT HORSE!!! Great work all round.
Hey thanks for the kinds words! I'm happy to hear you enjoyed it, and yeah the animation and voice acting was really fun to do so I'm glad other people like it.
Thanks for playing!
DAMM thats a really cool game! It has so much content and even though it has the SBIG style it doesnt feel like a game jam game! I can see you worked hard! The voice acting is great, the fallout style is great, the animations are out of this world. BUT I do have some problems with it
Its so hard lmao. Im clearly not good at it but because the ennemies are hitscan, they're really hard to fight. Those grey dudes do WAY to much damage. The amount of whiskey you have is not enough lmao.
PLEASE PUT CHECKPOINTS. I had to re start the game way too much because I kept dying and that made some of the funniest jokes (the slow walking at the start and the horse coming in from very far) SO TEDIOUS. after like 5 times I sadly decieded to give up (in mustachio's lair) because of all that. I am very sad I didint get the ending but ill probably come back to it later
last point is that you start with a whiskey but then when you go to the gun counter and take the other wiskhey it keeps you at 1. Totally useless thing to point out but hey. its a thing!
With some balancing this could be my favorite game of the jam yet! Its hilarious and very fun. Great job! You deserve more ratings!
Hey thanks for playing!
Wow thanks for the kind words, yeah I basically worked on this from the start time to about 10 minutes before the deadline, and then made two updates since then so it was a lot of work lol. I figured the voice acting and cutscene could either go really well or really badly so I'm happy you enjoyed it!
I'm sorry about the difficulty, I did playtest it myself a fair bit, but of course I usually play FPS games and of course I've spent hours playing the game. I'll push out a balance update today and lower enemy damage and add a few more whiskey bottles. I am also very sad you didn't get to the ending :( I think its pretty cool. I would like to add checkpoints, but the inventory system combined with the quest and scripted sequences systems is unfortunately no easy thing to make a save system for. That's one of my major goals for the future though!
Ah, I did see the whiskey counter issue before. I think I know how to fix it so I'll patch that as well.
If you can remember how far did you get into Moustachios lair? Like were you dying after running out of whiskey or did you get killed before you could even get that far? Just trying to think of where to add more whiskey pickups.
For the mustachio lair, I had killed all the red people and grey guys were coming out. I had taken all my whiskeys and was very close to being able to take another and save myself (On the second table on the left) but sadly got sniped right as I was taking it. And for the ending, ill be looking out for the balance update and replaying as soon as its out! Sorry if I made typos I'm on my phone rn
Ah ok, I'll add more whiskey to before the lair. Also just an FYI it is possible to skip through NPC dialogue lines by left-clicking, though it doesn't say that anywhere so I'll add some hint text for it. I specifically added that in because I needed to speedrun to test the game lol.
Version 1.3 is live! Should be a much smoother experience this time.
Alright great! Ill replay it first thing tomorrow!
so im re playing it right now and I gotta say the fixes are great but I got softlocked by the game. Moustachio wont come up the stairs to start the dialogue. I assume that its becuase I finished the shootout while crouched? Ill just restart but I wanted to let you know! EDIT : OH NO I DID IT AGAIN LMAO. ANOTHER EDIT : Tf it did it a third time and im not crouched. WELP LOOKS LIKE IM TRYING THIS AGAIN. Last edit : alright sorry for all of those but I dont wanna make 5 comments lul. I got the ending! Very cool lmao! And unexpected! Loved it!
Uh oh that sounds like an issue, I'll start looking into that. Sorry you seem to be the one running into so many issues lol
I finished the game by the way, I edited it in my comments, but I think you saw it before I wrote it in lol. But yeah im getting so many issues cuz I played the game like 14 times at this point XD. also I think the soft lock happens when (and this is speculation) The trigger for the moustachio cutscene spawns into the player, instead of the player walking over it. thats my guess because when it didint soft lock, I killed the last guy outside of the saloon
Awesome, thanks for your dedication to finishing! Yeah I was hoping the ending would be a bit of whiplash. And yeah it looks like the bug happens when the player is standing right on the trigger spawn point, good guess. Thanks for pointing it out, your suffering will help others in the future lol!
The voice acting is amazing xD
Thanks for playing!
Doing the voice acting this year was fun, I always wanted to do more of it in my previous projects for this jam. I'm happy to hear the effort wasn't wasted!
FYI I put out an update for this game tonight that should improve it a fair bit, feel free to check it out if you're interested.