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Christmas Commandeer's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #2 | 3.958 | 3.958 |
| Presentation | #2 | 4.750 | 4.750 |
| Creativity | #6 | 3.875 | 3.875 |
| Enjoyment | #8 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Describe your game jam experience in a haiku.
Fight wave of Christmas enemies.
Unlock areas of the map and new weapons.
Find all the pieces of a sleigh to win.
List anyone you'd like to thank!
I thank my PC for only crashing once during development.
Was your game made entirely during the jam period?
Some Christmas assets like presents and enemy models are from a pack and music is royalty free but the rest is made by me during jam.
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Comments
First off, the visuals look extremely polished, and if I could easily mistake this for a full release rather than a jam entry. Other comments have covered some issues I had, like the slightly awkward aiming and the slow recharge, but overall I think a faster pace could help the game a lot. I got used to the controls (although you could try WASD for movement, arrow keys for aiming), but more noticeable were the long waits without any enemies. I think the more waves you beat, the more rapidly enemies could spawn, or more than one spawns at a time. I came to enjoy combat, but the long periods of downtime were more of an issue in my opinion, especially after double damage meant I started one shotting enemies as they spawned. But I was still invested for quite a while, so great job!
Thanks for taking the time to give it a go and I appreciate the feedback. I should increase the speed of spawning since it seems slow, but I wanted to give the player time to explore, reposition and get the cold meter recharged too full. A better idea would be a break period offered every five waves or maybe when a part is pick up a 30 sec break before it continues waves. The controls need a rework overall. Thanks.
Great job making this in just a week! The lighting and low-poly style works great. The controls are a bit annoying (and there's a kinda high delay sometimes, plus the need to face where you're shooting), and the slow recharge makes the grinding feel more grindy, but regardless this game is fun! Amazing work.
Thanks for trying it. I agree the controls are difficult, it was an experiment with angled top-down gameplay which I have not done before that did not work out to well but that is ok. the slow recharge was intentional since you can upgrade the recharge speed later, but it is too slow. I am glad you liked the lighting and low poly style since the low poly environment was made by me in blender,
wow, this is very well done, 10/10
First off the game looks really well polished and beautiful! I did struggle with the gameplay though unfortunately, especially in the very first area because it was so small. Between snowballs having a long reload time, enemies taking at least three hits to kill and you having to face your enemies to aim, it's very difficult. If you could have them go down in one hit, or make it so you can spam snowballs, I think it would fix the problem. Overall great game though, incredibly polished for the length of the jam. Keep it up!
I definitely should have spent more time thinking about the aiming, I found it difficult with it being angled so the mouse was not usable for aiming and I thought the snowball was weak to start but with upgrades I thought it would balance it out (clearly not lol) and since you unlock crazy strong Items later like turkey charge / turrets / pudding bombs and campfire kits I didn't worry about the snowballs. I agree the penguins should have been one hit and just spawn them less as the game goes on. I did spend more time making the game look nice with lighting and models made in blender for the environment setting (I never get time for in game jams which worked out). As long as you had fun, I'm happy and thanks for giving it a try.
That's the fun thing about jams right? Getting to work on all the cool stuff you want to do and learning lots in the process :D And the art is super amazing - you did a fantastic job and should be very proud!
Agree with the dev below, this looks so refreshing! All the lighting is really well implemented.
I think a small tweak to make to the game is the control scheme - I know it's because of 3D movement being a bit harder to implement, but the fact that your aim is tied to your model rotation makes it difficult to aim well without getting motion sick, and you need a large distance to turn fully, which means that in the first arena, for example, it's hard to kite the enemies around effectively without taking damage. Either that, or reducing snowball cooldown to get more hits in before having to turn again, would be nice.
Other than that, love the dungeon crawler-esque gameplay!
I completely agree the aiming is pretty difficult, I haven't done a shooter with an angled top down style so I wanted to try it which meant I couldn't use the mouse to aim, if it was not angled and just a top down I could have used the mouse as a way of aiming the shot. At least now I know. Another thing you mentioned is motion sickness which I have never had in games so that was something I never considered so thanks. You can upgrade the snowball shoot speed at the trader however this means it terribly slow early on however what I should have done had either one enemy spawn at a time or weaken the enemies in the start so that they are easier to kill. After hours of testing for bugs I got good at not taking damaged in the start, so it is no wonder I thought the start was ok Lol. Thanks for the feedback :D
I am a huge fan of low poly games, this simply looks beautiful
Me too, I did spend more time on lighting this game jam and it looks like it was worth it.