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Squirrel Saga's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| People's Choice | #1 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Judge's Score | #1 | n/a | n/a |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What genre did you decide to use for the jam?
Turn-based action RPG
Content Warnings?
none
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Comments
bahahaha, love some absurdist humor! This was goofy, irreverent, beautifully designed and a fun challenge! I was laughing out loud as I battled and died and won, SO fun. Really fantastic job <3
I'm mixed on this game.
First, some positives:
Now for some criticisms:
I normally advocate for shorter, more polished jam entries, but I think this is a case in which drawing out the content more would have made for a better presentation. I can see the potential in what was being conveyed here, but it just didn't have enough time to get fully developed from the player's perspective.
Criticisms aside, I respect you working to break the mold and enjoyed the experience overall. The game has long-term project potential, with the side benefit of the length probably addressing the biggest criticisms.
Try jumping or doing any attack (especially the upwards special move) in the defend phase, and you should see the difference instantly.
The story isn't meant to be taken seriously, it's comedically melodramatic on purpose haha
The small size of the game is due to the fact that almost half the stuff I made for it had to be cut last second. All the battles and cutscenes after the intro were made in one day at the end of the jam, since this is the only way I could have included a final boss Hawk death in time.
On the difficulty curve... different players had trouble with different parts; some people struggled on the birds battle and then two-rounded Hawk. That sorta stuff just happens with video game difficulty!
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
A cute game but the battling was a bit difficult. I eventually figured out how to time my defense, but I agree with Berry that the reaction times can be janky. I also am not sure if it's possible to win against the final boss, and I kind of felt like it didn't really matter if I won or lost. Presentation-wise, this game is amazing. I loved the pixel art and the music was really intense. I thought the dialogue was concise with what you were going for. But gameplay-wise, I didn't really enjoy battling. I often found my guards being broken and there's no way to heal yourself when you're up against three opponents. Power attacks also tended to lag, so I'd often be attacked trying to trigger them, which would waste my attack and drop my power. I think it just needs to be tweaked, and an option to rebind keys would be amazing.
I'm going to admit that I have no idea what you mean by "reaction times being janky." Telegraphs and guard timing are all consistent and working as intended, and that aspect of the game in particular is balanced exactly the way I want it to be after feedback from playtesters.
If it's just that the attacks are too fast for some players to react to, then yeah, I'm sorry about that... I always like to try to accommodate for players of differing skill levels when I'm making games that are meant to be harder, but I ran out of time to include the kind of difficulty options I usually do... Thanks for giving it an honest shot anyway, though!
As for the final boss and ending, there's just one ending that plays the first time you lose, and a different ending if you win
It's not about the attacks being too fast or too strong. What I meant is that the game sometimes stuttered with the boss's attacks and that threw off the guard timing for me. I have no idea what causes it, or if it's on my end. I hope I didn't offend you. I just wasn't sure since it was both for guarding and for using power attacks that the game seemed to slow down a second and throw me off. As for the endings, that's actually good to know. I'll see if I can get the ending for defeating him.
Oh, that! Well, he intentionally fakes you out with the countdown before his fist slam attack, but it's not random, he picks one type of fakeout and sticks with it until he's taken enough damage to move on to the next. Sorry, I didn't realize that could come off as unintended behavior.
As for the slowdown on attacks, all of your attacks are slower if you try to use them during the enemy's turn, and the special moves are just the ones that are most affected by that. One thing that I do think I should've done is make those attacks stronger the more slowed down they are, but I didn't consider that until too late
Ooooh, that makes sense, then. :) Thanks for letting me know. Not about the fake-out, but about the attacks slowing down on the enemy turn. That makes a lot of sense to do. I'm definitely intrigued on how you got this to work like that in RPG Maker.
I made it in GameMaker Studio actually; coding almost everything from scratch was a big part of the reason I ended up being so pressed for time to finish it in the end
Now, in terms of presentation, this game really is impressive. The dialogue is witty, the spritework exudes charm and overall game wise it looks like it could pass as a decent prototype entry. I really like the music choices as well, it gives off that JRPG 2000s vibe that it really brings a lot of glee when playing it.
Gameplay wise, its definitely an interesting one. An action style combat where you take turns in offense and defense mode (each having a 15 second timer) and you need to really finetune your balance on that because in offense mode you move a bit faster while in defense mode you move slower. It does take awhile to get used to the mechanics of the game but once you get into the groove of things, it really becomes enjoyable. I think the feedback mentioned with Lopson bears merit. Sometimes it could be beneficial to have more options for counters and offense/defenses. I lost way too many times during defensive/offensive actions because you need to really time yourself well enough and sometimes reaction periods can be a bit jank.
I still question how two animals gave birth to a human-animal hybrid but I'mma not question it any further.
This game is about as close to a 5 stars in presentation as it gets. It would have been a solid 5 stars if gameplay was intuitive enough for me to enjoy it without losing due to lack of timing options during battle. Having items and using them during battle could help with player survivability and allow for more chances for the player to like push through the game. Otherwise, polishing the gameplay will really make this game soar high.
The game is beatable without perfectly timing your guards if you don't spend too much Power during attack turns, but I definitely could've made un-timed guards a lot less expensive.
I really wanted to focus on the tension that comes from managing that meter, making the choice to either spend more for a more reliable defense or risk it all for the reward of perfect guards in the middle of a difficult fight, but balancing that while taking into account players of varying skill levels was a real challenge.
The original plan also included skills that you could use outside of action turns, spending Power for uncontested damage or support effects, and a second party member who specialized more in that sort of thing. I wish I'd had the time to include that!
That feels like overscoping for a jam of this caliber, especially with the time given. I understand the sentiment. The regrets of not adding everything you want. Its unfortunate but for a jam entry, this is considered high quality, so take stock in that at least.
Well, what killed that feature was more like, poor prioritization. The code for using skills is in the game, but not the skills themselves, because I instead spent that time making a bunch of other things... which all got cut last minute to make the version of the game that got released instead. Still in the game's code, just unused and inaccessible. Like the half-finished world map and half-finished towns with NPCs and stuff, now reduced to a fancy title screen decoration, ahaha
If I hadn't started 10 days late and knew the direction I wanted to take the game from the start I totally coulda done it, but hey, that's game jams baybee!! Aside from a few things like that, I'm mostly satisfied with the form it ended up taking anyway
MY FAVORITE I just played everyones game. It's SO hard though. But probably bc I suck at it. I couldn't get past the 2nd battle, idk how many there were...but even losing was hilarious with the writing.
This was literally sucha professionally made game...what engine did you use?
The title screen,, professional, the art and sprite work? Professional...the writing...professional...the game felt smooth and ran well and I love this kind of a battle system, I was just very bad at it and had a hard time being able to tell when the enemy was about to make an attack(the small birds mainly.) wish we had healing potions but I understand this game was probably intentionally difficult! Hope hawk can beat it so i can see it through!
There are only three battles, so you didn't miss too much.
I made it with GameMaker Studio!
I JUST SAW HAWKS IT ROCKED SO MUCH, my fav fav ahh
This is a really cute game! I am excited I got to play it. Defense was fairly tricky for me but I know more experienced players of an ARPG like this one will have a blast getting through the story.
Really liked the game, although I do feel like there could be stronger counter attack mechanics in the defense turns… Maybe it’s just me, but I found myself expecting to be given a chance to immediately counter after a perfect block or at least heal a bit of HP off of them during these. 🤔
The defense turns were intended to be just for defense with dealing damage as only a risky secondary option, but you make a very fair point, I coulda leaned more into the risk-reward side of things in that aspect as well