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Isadora's Edge's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics/Animation | #10 | 4.464 | 4.464 |
| Overall | #13 | 3.986 | 3.986 |
| Music/Sound | #13 | 4.071 | 4.071 |
| Technical Implementation | #16 | 3.821 | 3.821 |
| Theme/Limitation | #30 | 3.786 | 3.786 |
| Fun/Design | #37 | 3.786 | 3.786 |
Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game apply the limitation (and optionally, the theme)?
There is a major boss fight at the end of the level. Additionally, your attacks only successfully deal damage "on the edge". (In this case, meaning the tip of the sword's hitbox - like Marth from Smash Bros.)
Team Size
Solo (1)
What main engine/tool/language did you use to construct the game?
Godot
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Comments
Gorgeous graphics. Excellent level of juice and polish. Whoever did the voice lines for the boss character — that was really well done. I thought this game excelled in so many areas, control, movement, everything I pointed out in my opening line, but I thought the level design could use some tinkering.
I fought the first few enemies, but after that, I realized it was easiest to just evade and keep moving right. There was never a reason to stop and fight. Enemies didn't grant me any pickups or bonuses, and the checkpoints instantly refilled my health (I think that's smart for a jam entry so people can get further into the game), but after the first few encounters I just booked it to the boss fight. It sort of screwed me in that I had to kill like 8 bats in addition to fight the boss, but it seemed like the optimal choice.
The boss fight itself was great. The attack patterns and variation in attacks were well thought out and implemented except for two areas. I think the dropping boulders attack (gorgeous visual when he went into the background on that!) didn't leave enough telegraph time for proper reactions. And the pacing seemed a little off. There were only short windows when I was able to attack. The rest of the time I was just evading and waiting for my opening. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I think it would have worked great if the boss took more damage each time, but after a few rounds of evade and wait I was ready to take him out.
Overall, a condensed and fun adventure and a super impressive solo dev effort. Great work.
Wow, thank you for taking the time to play my game, and for taking the time to leave such detailed feedback! I really, really appreciate it! :D
I actually also did the voice acting for all the enemies and the boss, so I really appreciate that nod! :)
Yeah, I totally agree with the point about the early level. I wanted everyone to make it to the boss no matter what, so I tried to make it really easy to get through, which I think is good for a jam as well, but it definitely makes the early level feel pretty inconsequential! Also, yeah, I was going to make the bats de-aggro at a certain range, but just completely forgot to implement that feature, haha! With everything to implement, it just totally slipped my mind, lol!
And I totally agree on the dropping boulders attack! I think my game definitely suffered from the "dev got way too good at fighting his own boss during playtesting" syndrome! I think I got a little /too good/ at dodging it during playtesting, which caused me to tune it on the "more difficult" side! I actually reduced the speed of that attack right at the last second just because I had a sudden doubt that maybe it was unfair - and really glad I did at least a little tweaking, haha! With a follow up, I'd definitely make that attack a bit more fair to play against LOL
And yeah, I think some small changes to the decision timing and the openings to hit him are in order! I don't hate the evasion playstyle, and I definitely intended for his "Burn" lantern attack to be the primary opening for getting damage in, but (especially in the third phase) there should be a couple more openings for the player!
Thanks again for the feedback, it means a lot to me! :D
Nice graphic and ambience.
The boss fight had cool attacks, but I feel they were very often in a state where they could not be attacked, involving a lot of waiting.
The "only on the edge" wasn't very clear, I noticed a slight color change with a red tip, but with the smear of the sword and the rest of sword being orange it was very hard to see the part that was "the edge", it kind of felt like an excuse to plug the theme.
The bats were VERY hard to hit and would also take a lot of hits, they were too frustrating to fight so I ended up rushing the level and ignoring enemies.
The graphics are very nice, that parallax background specially in the main menu was pretty impressive. It was a good game.
Thank you for taking the time to play my game and for leaving detailed feedback! I really appreciate it!
Thanks for saying the boss fight attacks were cool! I knew what to expect when playtesting, so I guess I never ended up needing to wait around too much, I should definitely play with tweaking the timing on his decision making to give more opportunities to attack and less wait time!
It wasn't an excuse to plug the theme, I designed this game from the ground up when the theme was announced based on that idea - this entire game was inspired by the theme and only exists because of it. You are absolutely correct that I probably should have made the swords colors a little more obvious to make the tip a little more clear for sure, and I definitely agree that the mechanic ended up not making nearly as much of an impact on gameplay as I wanted it to! If I had had the time, I definitely would have redrawn the animations and extended the hitboxes to make the edge fighting way more obvious, but only so much time in a jam, lol!
Yeah, I wanted to make it easy enough to get through the opening level without too much difficulty, and the result of that ended up being more or less that you can just rush through it. I prefer going for that because although I can fight the bats without too much difficulty, I didn't want any players to end up stuck and not making it to the boss because they couldn't, like, fight the bats or something, haha! I think if I were releasing this as a full game, I would have left the early level much less forgiving, but balancing a game for a jam is an entirely different beast, haha!
Thanks again for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :D
Great game, nice graphics, good sound and music. Checkpoints were placed really well and the bossfight felt great. I would only say that I personally didn't feel the effect of the damage being just on the edge of the sword. Other than that very polished game, very fun to play. Well done!
Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it! :)
Yeah, I definitely agree that the edge mechanic did not end up being nearly as impactful as I imagined it would be during the initial design!
LOVED IT! I also made something similar about the edge hitting part, but yours is really polished imo.
hope you check out mine: https://itch.io/jam/vimjam2/rate/1202589
Thank you so much! I'll definitely check yours out!
Such a nice little adventure. I loved the atmoshpere, the visuals, sounds and the all the cool little effects like the parallax or the foreground smoke. The combat also felt really good. If the boss had just a tiny tweaks, this game would be a perfect jam game: the attack where it throws the balls from left to right or right to left is almost impossible to dodge without losing hp (at least for me), and making just 1 checkpoint in the middle of his hp would've been nice. Also I'm not sure if the "sword only damages on the edge" works... I'm almost certain it worked even if I hit the enemy point blank.
A really nice entry, you'll get in the top 10 for sure :)
Thank you for playing my game and for the feedback! I really appreciate it! :D
Yeah, I think the plague attack ended up being a little on the unfair side. I think I got a little /too good/ at dodging it during playtesting, which caused me to tune it on the "more difficult" side! I actually reduced the speed of that attack right at the last second just because I had a sudden doubt that maybe it was unfair - and really glad I did at least a little tweaking, haha!
The hitbox on the edge definitely works as programmed - it for sure hits only on the very edge, but I agree that you can't really feel the /impact/ of it nearly as much as I wanted for this game!
Good work! This is the kind of game i was hoping to see out of the jam, but quickly crossed it off my list as i thought it would be too much work for the jam. Good effort! lots of work went into this one and it shows!
Thank you so much for the feedback and for taking the time to play my game! I appreciate it!
A solid entry indeed, congratulations! It was very satisfying to play and I love the brown dark aesthetics.
Thank you so much! :D
Great art, for both the characters and the environment. Boss fight was really well polished too. The enemy variety is impressive considering how much work was clearly also put into the boss.
I didn't really feel the effect of the sword only dealing damage on the edge. It felt like whenever I hit something with the sword in general, it would take damage. A longer sword might make that aspect of the game more clear.
The boss's attack where it sends things flying at you from the side feels really unavoidable. The top-down version is much more manageable because you can quickly move left or right.
Overall, really good job! Especially for a 1-person game.
Thank you so much for your feedback, and for taking the time to check out my game! It means a lot to me!
Yeah, when I originally had the idea for only dealing damage "on the edge" - I thought it'd be cool, but it ended up not feeling nearly as significant as I wanted it to! Definitely something I would have tweaked more heavily if I had the time, haha!
And yeah, I think I definitely under-estimated the difficulty of the sideways plague attack - it's really, really hard to judge that kind of thing for a game jam, but I'm definitely going to be tuning it down afterwards!
Thanks again! :)
Great game!! Beautiful bg and character designs. Also big fan of the bat's sound effects. The boss fight was satisfying - difficulty-wise it took me 3 tries which felt appropriate! I loved how different each of the boss's 3 (if i'm remembering right) moves felt - each one was distinct, polished, and got me excited when I heard the boss say his little "move announcement" sound. One suggestion is the "plague" move with the objects you have to dodge felt a little unfair when coming from the left or right. When coming from above, it was difficult but I still felt in control! From the side I wish they were a little slower. Also didn't find myself using the dash during the boss fight
Thank you for the feedback and for taking the time to play my game! I appreciate it a lot!
I especially am happy to hear the nod to my bat's sound effects (that was me screeching into a mic and then editing the audio myself, haha! I actually did the voices for all 3 enemies and the boss LOL)
I'm glad you appreciated the boss callouts - I really wanted them to feel impactful and spooky, but also be a guide for the player to know what was coming next!
And yeah, I think the plague attack ended up being a little on the unfair side. I think I got a little /too good/ at dodging it during playtesting, which caused me to tune it on the "more difficult" side! I actually reduced the speed of that attack right at the last second just because I had a sudden doubt that maybe it was unfair - and really glad I did at least a little tweaking, haha!
Amazing dude! Movement feels good and the boss is the best I've played from the jam so far. The only thing I can say is the dash feels a little bit useless and the last section before the boss is a bit enemy spammy, but overall absolutely incredible game!
Thank you so much for playing my game, and for the feedback - I genuinely appreciate it!!
Yeah, I think phase 3 needs a little increase on the timer he uses to make decisions, it's a little too fast at the moment. And maybe shave a couple cycles off of his "Mask Dash Attack"!
I'm surprised that the dash felt useless, how would you suggest improving it to make it feel more useful? I know I dashed around like crazy during playtesting, so I'd love to hear ways that I could make that feel better for the player!
Hmm maybe the dash is more useful than I thought, on my second playthrough I used it a lot more, but the game never taught you what the dash did in combat so I just never used it I guess. Also I should note I preferred using z and x for attack and dash because that’s what I’m used to in other games.
Great point! I should have made it clearer that the dash prevents damage by having you dash through some kind of damaging wall that you otherwise couldn't pass or something, rather than using it to get across a gap! Great call-out! :D
And hearing that you prefer the alternate control scheme makes me super happy I decided to add that in during the last couple hours of the jam, haha! Maybe that even would have been better as the default control scheme! :)
Really cool game and I really like the sound
Only complaint is the jump button...
Thank you!
How would you have preferred the jump button to be mapped? I'd like to keep that in mind for the next control scheme I make, since W or Up Arrow for jumping always feels the most intuitive to me, I didn't even think of doing a different mapping for it!
A very cool game that had AMAZING art. the game feels challenging yet fun which every game should.
Thank you for the kind words and for playing my game! :D
Great little action platformer. I could see this Turing into a metroidvania, that I would play. I have two suggestions, if you run past the bats they should loose aggro at some point. Second the purple balls the plants shoot, it would be cool if I could hit them and know them into enemies. Also, I think the attack animation is too stiff.
With my minor gripes in mind, this is better than anything I can do on Godot currently.! Great graphics, great tutorial, overall awesome job well done!
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback and for taking the time to play my game, I really appreciate it! :D
Total oversight on my part to not have the bats de-aggro, haha! Completely meant to do it, but just forgot lol!
Also, that idea with redirecting the balls using the sword is a really cool one! I like it a lot!
Loved this. The gameplay was fun, the graphics and sounds were great. I appreciated the extra details you put into this such as the death animation and respawn. I also enjoyed the various attack phases of the boss.
The only thing I would suggest is mapping the attack and dash to keyboard keys as the mouse wasn't needed in the game.
Overall amazing work!
Actually the default keys for attacking and dashing were Spacebar and Shift, I just added mouse support in case people wanted to use a different control scheme, haha!
Thank you so much for playing the game, and I really appreciate the kind words and feedback! :D
Oh, I totally didn’t realise. Please ignore that bit of feedback then :)
Everything in this game is great (other than the fact that I wished it could work with my gamepad), from sound design, to graphics, to game mechanics. On a purely technical standpoint, the game is impressive. It left me wanting a complete game, so way to go ! Other than that, well, there's an edge, and you fight a boss... I think a little storytelling could have help merge the game with the theme a bit more.
Thank you so much for the kind words, and for the feedback! I really appreciate it! :)
I really enjoyed making it, so I've been thinking about continuing the game into a fuller project even after the jam, so maybe a complete game will be coming soon, haha!
And yeah, I definitely wanted to add more storytelling behind what was going on with the plague boss and the actual story of her "edge", but I totally ran out of time getting everything else done LOL - I'll have to expand on that if I keep working on it! :D
The graphics and animation is so pretty and amazing! btw, the player could just run from the enemies and straight to the boss battle lol, which is still fun :)
Thank you for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :)
And yeah, I didn't want to make the level before the boss too difficult, so it ended up being literally a cakewalk LOL
Thanks again for playing! :)
pretty fun and the mechanic was cool but kinda hard to kill with and the art was AMAZING. but at one part in the game a kinda broke/cheesed it because i dashed above this part and then dashed twice
to this part and then walked to the edge and bats flew and killed me and i was in the boss room because i think i triggered ia checkpoint
btw the boss was EPIC the attacks were very cool and the voice was great! just wanted to let you know about this bug tho if you want to fix it later
Thank you for letting me know about that bug! I really appreciate it! I didn't think it was possible to get up on top of the level, but I should never underestimate the potential cheese, haha! I'll definitely fix that!
And thanks for the feedback on the boss fight, I'm really glad you liked it! :D
really liked the game the art was really good and i loved the idea and the mechaincs were really good
Thank you so much! :)
I have conquered Plague! Well-made art, sounds, and music. They work together to set a nice adventure-game tone, and make gameplay feel punchy and responsive. The mechanic of only the tip of your sword dealing damage is an interesting concept. Though I feel like it didn't come across as well as it could have - I ended up playing as if my sword had a full hitbox. Maybe if the sword had a much longer range! Enjoyed the boss, it had interesting attacks and great pacing. The plague attack felt a bit hard to react to, but not everything can be perfectly balanced in a game jam, hah. In the forest I ended up just running past enemies. The way attacking enemies recharges your dash is a nice mechanic though.
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it!
Yeah, I didn't have the opportunity to realize that the hitbox mechanic wasn't really changing gameplay much until late in playtesting where it was too late for me to make the necessary changes to really lean into that harder!
And yeah, the plague attack and the enemies in the beginning were definitely a symptom of the classic game jam balancing problem, ha! I playtested the game a lot, and I got pretty good at dodging the plague attack, so even though I tried to make it on the easier side, I still ended up with it being a little too tough overall! And I wanted the enemies at the beginning to be informative and interesting, but not a tough challenge, so they ended up being a little too easy overall! But I'm glad you had fun playing it, regardless, thanks again for checking it out! :D
It is a good game. It has very good animation.
Thank you for the compliments about the game and animation!