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Verdant Fang's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound | #3 | 4.030 | 4.030 |
| Stealth | #7 | 3.970 | 3.970 |
| Play | #7 | 4.182 | 4.182 |
| Overall | #8 | 3.521 | 3.521 |
| Ambition | #9 | 3.788 | 3.788 |
| Aesthetic | #12 | 4.182 | 4.182 |
| Kink | #24 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Novelty | #24 | 3.455 | 3.455 |
| Narrative | #27 | 2.818 | 2.818 |
| Harmony | #31 | 3.212 | 3.212 |
| Horny | #53 | 2.242 | 2.242 |
Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
i started early
I used some libraries I've been writing for a year or so, but all game content (art, music, sounds, game logic, game-specific rendering) was produced in the month of February.
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Comments
Really fun platformer, and outstanding music and foley!
I was expecting it to get hornier when the witch caught the player, overall the game doesn't feel as sexy as some of the other entries. However, it still stands on its on legs as a game, which is great!
UNMATCHED foley skills.
Absolutely loved the sounds. The music was a delight as well!
The gameplay was smooth and challenging, but not so much that I felt I needed to put it down for a while. I agree with a couple of the other comments that an upwards or multi-directional attack would have been useful for the boss battle - but it was still manageable!
This was a really cool game. Difficult, but not overly so. Loved the ending too. The sound effects made me chuckle, but they do the job surprisingly well.
There were some inconsistencies with the hit boxes, or perhaps I was just timing my attacks badly, but otherwise I didn't find anything to really complain about.
It's a great little game.
The inconsistencies you were sensing are probably due to one of A: you can't stab enemies in the feet (and they can't stab you in the feet), or B: the spear hitbox is only active for one frame (for enemies; it's active longer for switches and the boss's projectiles). Both of these are due to the difficulty of animating what would happen if you hit an enemy. I could probably fudge the animations a little bit without it looking too weird though. Thanks for the feedback!
Really enjoyed the combat. Felt responsive and was surprisingly punishing, and the all or nothing nature of the combat made the relatively straight-forward encounters feel tense and impactful. Loved the various ambushes and traps sprinkled in as well, felt almost reminescent of 1001 Spikes in a way.
Also, big fan of the sound effects.
Wow I loved this way more than I thought and I usually don't have patience for the more difficult style precision games. But it got me hooked enough to get good to figure out how to beat it. And those sound effects made me laugh and look forward to every one. Even though I sucked at the boss I was eventually able to get past her love what you did with her in the bedroom and her trophy lol. Not the horniest game I've played in the jam but it was a great time. I'm sure it's intentional to not have one but I would have killed for some ability to attack above me or maybe a slash. And as a primarily SDL based developer myself well done really loved the transitions.
Yay someone mentioned the transitions! I'm especially proud of them, they're custom shader code. I'm gonna be honest 90% of the reason for not being able to attack upward was because it'd require drawing more animation frames, and I'm not an artist and anatomy is hard. :3 I don't think it'd break the game balance much, I already make the bugs dislike being directly above you. Maybe some day...
I know the feeling about animations and anatomy. It was mostly the bubbles that made me want the upwards attack. Oh speaking of the bubbles I forgot to mention but I love how they weren't totally predictable. Shader code is something I haven't dabbled in myself yet.
Really fun to play! The super slidey action platforming felt fast-paced and visceral. Loved all the level design. The sound effects were super cute. Just a great experience overall! It's a bit hard to rate because it's so stealth I can't quite tell what the exact kinks are, haha. But I could at least tell you really liked making it.
I don't really think in terms of discrete kinks, but I find caves, snakes, danger, and strong women to all be pretty sexy. I think I'd consider danger to be the main kink of this game. Thanks for playing!
Oh and also, I didn't really advertise it but there is a way to play the game without clothes if you look for it.
For note, beat it on normal. Good art and animations, controls felt good, noticed a small funny thing where if you held jump and spammed attack while a snake, you could kinda fly.
Gameplay felt fun and tense, felt like I had to actually outplay the enemies. The boss though, that was kinda rough. With how precise the spear hurtbox was and how some of those orbs curved, quickly got a bit frustrated. Can absolutely see a good system with this game if you decide to go further with it
Thanks for playing! Yeah the boss fight was implemented at kinda the last moment, so its difficulty might not be calibrated that well. And setting enemies to easy just skips the second phase, it doesn't make the first phase easier. That's definitely something to tweak after the jam.
Well getting past the first screen took me an embarrassingly long time because I didn't realize that your attack doesn't happen until you release the button, which made the jump-hit on the switch impossible because I was holding the button too long lol. After that it was super fun! The enemies and difficulty managed to be frustrating in a fun way, which is a pretty tough trick to pull off. The first time someone popped out from hiding behind a screen and stuck me in the back I was laughing as much as I was swearing. Really clever all around and great comic timing, especially on the ending. Also, the sound design was genius. Big whose line is it anyway vibes and I loved it. Nice choice going the extra mile with difficulty options, too, really smart for a jam game. Great work!
I wish I could rate your game fairly, but unfortunately it was way too hard for me. So I will leave it to people with more frustration tolerance than me.
Sorry for being such a scrub. I bet it gets hot somewhere after the 5th screen.
That's all right, thanks for trying. Did you try playing with the Checkpoints option set to "lots" and Enemies set to "easy"? The game may still be challenging, but it does make it easier. There are also cheat codes in the configuration files that let you use savestates if that would help.
Such great challenge. I hope to try to beat this sometime after the voting period ends. I enjoy the sound effects you used here. Visually the game looks wonderful too.
Perhaps you should be revived automatically, because pressing R gets tedious after a while. Or just let any key to revive you.
Oh I managed to beat it. And interesting ending there.
Thanks for playing! If it helps, you can actually press R from the moment you get hit. You don't have to wait for the "press R to restart" message to appear.
Holy smokes, was not expecting to find a Dark Souls in this jam! Really loved this one, every encounter felt like a tense make-one-mistake-and-you're-done affair, and the thing that happens at the end was such a surprise I think I literally had my jaw open the whole time.
I found it pretty hard… which made actually beating the boss very rewarding! The aesthetics are amazing, I loved both the soundtrack and makeshift sound effects. The AI for the orbs can sometimes make them stay away for too long, which is a bit frustrating, but I really like how the other enemies have so much personality from it and their unique attacks. A very fun experience with a lot of love in it! And snakes are great!
Thank you for playing! I was a little concerned about the orbs staying too high up for too long, but I didn't notice it happen very much during my own testing. I'll give it another look though, and add it to my list of planned improvements for after the jam.
Very interesting. Some rather unexpected twists and turns in this one! The difficulty is pretty punishing, but that seems appropriate for this style of game, and it was never unfair. Yeah, there were traps and surprises, but if you really thought that empty corridor had nothing else going on, that's on you.
Thanks for including a Linux build! That's always nice to see.
Very well done game, the pixel art is very good and the sound design is pretty nice. The combat is a bit difficult but pretty sure that is intentional.
Masterfully put together! It's a fully complete short game with fun challenges, and lots of attention to detail, polish and presentation. I like how the game weaves a narrative through visuals alone. The game treats all of its gory fatalities with love and care and really lets the player feel like they have died or killed a foe in a new and innovative way! It's also incredibly accessible for those who are not into that with lots of options to turn off any gameplay or visual elements.
I really like the art direction with a clear separation of environments and obstacles. The music is also an excellent fit for the action. I wasn't too sure about the sound effects at first thinking that they're a bit tonally different from the game's atmosphere, but I grew to like them over the course of the game.
This was lots of fun to play through. I love how intelligent the enemies feel, there were plenty of times when I got shocked at how they act, especially when the last lizard on deathless mode suddenly does the opposite of what you expect!
Couldn't even really figure out level one. Are there instructions anywhere?
There's an explanation of the default controls in README.md. Other than that, I don't know what to say. It's a simple action game where you jump and stab things. You can hit the blue switch to open the door.
I guess I must have missed the switch.
Okay, I actually figured it out this time and wow! I enjoyed this so much. The extra mile of having all those different animations for where the opponent hits you made it really powerful, and the enemy AI was insanely good. Also the boss fight was absolutely sadistic and did NOT end the way I expected at all, but I honestly loved the twist.
Favorite game of strawberry jam 2024 so far, honestly. Well done!
Literally the only thing I would change is probably adding a level before the first one for dummies like me where the switch is on the ground so the player gets confirmation that it is indeed a switch. The jump challenge made me hit at it like 20 times and not understand that I was missing it.
Devilishly difficult, wonderfully deviant. Loved this.
Wow thank you so much! I'll consider if there's something I can do about that issue. Probably won't change it before the jam rating period ends though.
The default keybinds are, quite frankly, atrocious. But once I figured out how to rebind them, I had a good time! Combat was fun, and the death effects were good. High quality stuff. I also loved the ending!
Thanks for playing! Sorry but arrow keys with z+x is pretty standard for indie platformers on PC, so if I had different defaults other people would complain. Glad you had fun though!
I love the sound effects!