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A jam submission

Escape from Desert HillsView game page

First-person 3D escape/puzzle game
Submitted by DoubleAx99x — 10 days, 17 hours before the deadline
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Escape from Desert Hills's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality: Your game presents very fully original concept.#14.3754.375
Gameplay: The game is fun to play and engaging.#44.3334.333
Determination: You clearly challenged yourself. Not an easy game to make.#44.2924.292
Environment: Art, level and enemy design, placement and pacing of challenges.#44.3754.375
Overall#53.9063.906
Personality/Narrative: Characters, dialogue, plot, and other story elements.#83.5833.583
Emotion / Mood: The game has an emotional impact.#83.0833.083
Game Feel: Feels good to perform actions. Controls responsive and satisfying.#103.5423.542
Theme: The game creatively uses the Jam’s Theme.#133.6673.667

Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Sources Cited
n/a

Your Name (Required for CSC 355 Students only)
Aaron D.

Theme Choice

Running Up That Hill

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Comments

Viewing comments 22 to 3 of 22 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

I liked this game, but there wasn't any clear direction. I originally thought you couldn't go over the sand dunes because of how steep they were. I like the clear progression system. I would've liked a run/sprint button and the mouse controlling the camera would stop if you went too far one way. All of the interactable items lit up when you could use them, but your mouse had to be directly on them instead of just looking at it. I also didn't notice either of the themes besides the sand hills you jump over.

Submitted

Only problem I ran into was focusing my mouse cursor while moving so I had to pause and readjust it a few times. One improvement I could see is an inventory screen showing what items you've picked up so far while playing.

Submitted(+1)

Only problem I ran into was focusing my mouse cursor while moving so I had to pause and readjust it a few times. One improvement I could see is an inventory screen showing what items you've picked up so far while playing.

Submitted(+1)

Its quite a fun puzzle/escape game. I got stuck in the parkour part and had to restart from the beginning but other than that it was a good game! 

Submitted(+1)

This was a really well put together game, I liked the concept and visuals. Controls and directions were pretty clear. Only problem I had was the camera being hard to stabilize. Enjoyed it alot, great job!

Submitted(+1)

Fun little game with a really good concept for an open world. The camera controls were a little hard to control but I enjoyed the game nonetheless.

Submitted(+1)

Nice work on the game. The environment is pretty impressive and huge. I had an issue with the mouse while rotating the screen. 

Submitted(+1)

Wow what an undertaking the game was very ambitious. You could pick up items and the environment was awesome, but I found it alittle hard to look around with my mouse and I also got myself stuck and couldnt find a way to get out.

Submitted(+1)

I had a lot of fun with this, but I will admit to having spent the first, oh, ten minutes or so spinning my wheels with no idea of what to do.  It's been some time since my first impression and rating, but I recall liking how well the character responds to inputs.  The jumping puzzle has good spacing to it, although I suppose a player less accustomed to first-person climbing without being able to see their feet (thanks for getting me used to that, Bethesda Softworks!) would find positioning oneself that way rather arcane.

Submitted(+1)

This game was quite fun, I liked how it was an open world. I thought the movement was well, had some issues controlling the camera but got use to it after it started. The object and planning were well thought out, nice job!

Submitted(+1)

I honestly had a lot of fun playing this game and it took a while to solve but I was able to complete it. I think it was a cool idea to have the camera follow the mouse, but it seemed to lag or get stuck a lot. You could possibly fix this by letting the player rotate the camera around with the arrow keys. The game looked really good and I liked the audio as well. Great job!

Submitted(+1)

Excellent game. I figured out the puzzle as wwell which was nice. I liked how it gave clues but it also let you figure as the player figure out the rest of it. I like how collecting each item allowed you to move  on to the next step in the puzzle and being able to escape the desert. Well thought out gameplay and good job Overall!

Submitted(+1)

I loved the music it was so nice. The entire game was really good and I had a lot of fun looking for clues. I felt so smart when I got something to work. I only have one critique which is I which the player moved a little faster, but that overall doesn't really have an impact on the mood of the game at all. Great job!

Submitted(+1)

Game looks really nice. The camera was a little wonky since every time my mouse went off screen I couldn't rotate but besides that really well done.

Submitted(+1)

Very cool game!! I actually had to return back to this game because I was lost on what to do lol, but thankfully I beat it. The game environment is great and the level of difficulty is just right. It would be great if we could look around continuously with the mouse instead of hitting a barrier and having to readjust the mouse. 

Submitted(+1)

I think it's great. 

Submitted(+1)

I am really enjoying this game, its nice to have a longer game. The camera wouldn't lock onto my mouse. I suppose the only thing that might need to be added is an inventory system since I couldn't remember what I had picked up.

Submitted(+1)

This game was really fun to play, I really enjoyed that the levels changed with each thing that you did. Great Job!

Host (1 edit) (+1)

I thought you did a really nice job with the level design here.  I don't want to spoil things for how to solve it, so will have some spoilers below:

SPOILERS:




I thought that the platforming section at the end was well-earned, as up until that point jumping wasn't a requirement.  I had an axe, I could see a tree across the lake, and I could see that the next objective was to chop that down to most likely create a passage across the spiders.  But I couldn't swim, and I couldn't find any way around the stone formations.  It finally occurred to me that you had taken the time to program in "jumping" and that I hadn't really needed to use it yet, so I checked around for a place I might jump.  And then sure enough found it there.  So this was really nicely designed, because it felt good to figure it out and it felt fair.  I also liked how you updated the world with each item, especially the quick exit from the maze which you presumably created yourself with the axe.  Things made sense.

One main place for improvement to me was the tightness of the controls when it came to jumping and rotating the camera.   I will start that off to say that getting the camera to rotate with the mouse view isn't trivial, so that you have this working pretty well is great.  But sometimes the mouse seemed to get stuck rotated too far one way or another, and it would take some doing to re-center it.  Jumping itself felt okay, but sticking the landing frequently caused me to get stuck on the wrong pixel and unable to recover--would have to let go and drop again, which felt bad.

Submitted(+1)

Really cool game, it took me a while to beat it. I would recommend adding a hint button that can be pressed if the user is very stuck so they can get a clue.

Developer

Thanks for playing it through all the way to the end.  I also think a hint button is a fantastic suggestion, so thank you for that as well!

Viewing comments 22 to 3 of 22 · Next page · Last page