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A jam submission

Upgrade MyselfView game page

Submission for Xanderjam #6
Submitted by Slydoch — 5 days, 1 hour before the deadline

Play game

Upgrade Myself's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound FX and Music#53.1823.375
Theme Relevance#83.5363.750
Art and Graphics#93.1823.375
Overall#102.9463.125
Fun / Gameplay#112.8283.000

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Pretty alright for a gamejam thing. There were some problems, however. Sorry if I go a little in depth, I'm doing this to gain more experience in game testing.

Firstly, some of the voice lines were a little hard to understand. Perhaps if the amount of distortion was lowered they'd be better to hear. Other than that, the music and sound was good.

The main area of problems comes from the enemies and various issues around them, which makes sense because fighting them is the biggest part of the game. 

Sometimes the enemies would persist after the player dies, and they would be in the hub area. When this happens the hub area can disappear immediately and leave the player back in the main level. 

When a wave ends, sometimes the enemies would despawn and sometimes they would not. Which is the intended action? When the enemies despawned after a wave ends there would also be no effect as if they had "died" like when you shoot them.

The way the obstacles work makes it almost too easy to have the enemies be blocked sometimes. Perhaps if there was more of a way to "slide" around obstacles rather than coming to a complete stand-still this would be prevented.

Next, the health packs. I felt as if they dropped too frequently. They also persisted after the player died, while I expected it to all be reset. This made it very difficult to die, sometimes even when intentionally trying to die.

And finally, the starting weapon. I have no issue with a melee weapon. However, I feel like it was unnecessary, for as soon as the player gets a gun the fist no longer has any appearance in the game. If there was a choice to go down a more melee based route instead of ranged weaponry that would be neat.

Submitted

Very cool game! I love the 1 bit art style and the general gameplay loop. The one thing I noticed though was that the game was so easy I really didn't die until about 15 minutes had passed and I wanted to know what would happen, so there was really no incentive to upgrade anything. A general tip with the art as well is to consider pixel density as well, so something that's 1 pixel will always be 1 pixel. I noticed the enemies look to be just scaled up versions of the prior ones when you get further in. I think I got to around wave 15...not sure if the game is endless or not. Great job though!

Submitted

I think the concept of this one is good, and I like the way the art looks, (Although, I think I  would cut down the chromatic aberration just a tad, it's a little aggressive ) but there's definitely some balancing issues the game didn't really get hard for me until wave 9 on my first run, and the previous 8 waves were extremely easy,  which wasn't super fun. Then unfortunately, when  I died on wave 10, I was walking down as I was hit so when I was instantly moved to the upgrade room and then accidentally walked out without buying anything because I had no time to react. 

I also think some feedback for hitting enemies and being hit yourself is really needed. Right now, hitting enemies feels very weak, and I had a couple waves where I looked up and saw I  had one or two hearts left when I didn't remember being hit at all.

Overall,  I think this is a really cool concept, and with a bit of polish it'd be  a really great game.

Submitted

Cool game idea, but I think the game difficulty is a problem, it is VERY easy. Which is usually ok for a gamejam, but since the goal of the game is to die, get upgrades to start again stronger, the fact I spent 10 waves fighting enemies that can barely touch me, that I already one shot them and the map is covered in health pack, I kind of don't feel the need for upgrades since I'm already strong enough. I think having it easy at the beginning is ok, but I feel wave 10 could've been like wave 3 instead, so I can die, buy some upgrades, start over and feel stronger. I ended up purposely dying so I can try the upgrades, spent my money and couldn't really tell the difference.

The concept is cool and the art is great, it only needs some balancing.

Submitted

Cool theme and I like the retro aesthetic, it goes well with the feeling of facing off against an 'evil ai' upgrading itself.

I feel like there's a lot of potential in this concept but I definitely think the difficulty needs to ramp a lot harder and a lot faster.

Submitted

A neat idea.  The difficulty spike probably could have occurred a few waves earlier (the early waves felt pretty tedious).  The enemies seemed to follow you into the hub area, which probably wasn't intended but I was able to feel the difference when you've bought upgrades

Submitted(+1)

Fun game. I never got to upgrade myself unfortunately, because I always went back into the game when I tried fighting off the last wave that came to the hub with me. Even still, I loved the game, mostly because of that awesome music. Really, that music was great. The page says it's a work in progress, so I'll leave it at that. Great game!

Submitted

Pretty good game. I feel the gameplay is a little easy with how many health packs you get, and the only way to die is if enemies trap you. I like the game, and it's pretty fun. Good job!