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Aegis 🛡72 days ago (1 edit)

Hey, wanted to give this a proper review since I know you've been contributing to lots of other games today.

Firstly, love the theme and the music. If those assets weren't premade they're really well executed.

Lots of people have mentioned the controls and level size so I won't hammer those home - I would think about what keys games usually use for vault & climb and try stick to those.

I have a few things to say about the level design that might be worth considering in the future.

  • Try guide the player visually between goals - I didn't know what to do after climbing this tower for example - turns out it was nothing.



    Colours would have helped, matching the colour of the box / gate / switch to each other means the player knows what to expect when flicking a switch/moving a box.

    Alternatively a wire or track that goes from the switch to a gate is often used and would have helped here.
  • If there is a choice of direction/branch (like in the middle part), I would suggest you make sure you show the player all 3 routes on one screen so they know only 1 is open. I spent time trying to get through the gate on the right for example. I climbed on the small box, tried to climb on the big box (it was at waste height) and couldn't. This would all come out through play testing I'm sure.
  • I found a few places on the map that didn't serve a purpose. After the second gate in the middle I turned immediately left to see a completely blank area - you can be ruthless with how much of your level is walkable. Make sure every part serves a purpose. Especially in the second area - I rushed through that part without having to use multiple boxes. If you want your players to solve a puzzle with a particular solution you have to make sure they can't just rush through/cheese it.
  • Finally, a small one, but I didn't think the terminals stood out enough visually - I had to look hard to see them.

All in all I think this is a great entry and fits the theme well. If you ever need a play tester to guide feedback feel free to reach out.

Aegis 🛡


p.s I was promised that I could pet a dog... I did not find a dog :(

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BeardedCynic72 days ago

The most important thing first, the dog: One of the glitches we left in the game lets you pull a box backwards into a wall and appear on the other side of it when you let go. If you do that at the very start, and walk directly away from where you pop out at, you'll run into the pup. He does have a bark animation but his controller breaks after that and he will freeze forever, lol.

Thank you for the rest of your feedback! I definitely agree with everything you had to say, and I wish I had left myself time to execute on that level and playtest more to find the things that may not have been quite as obvious. Unfortunately, we were really ambitious and ended up scrapping half of our plans about 12 hours before submission, so that level was haphazardly cobbled together in a few hours just to showcase what mechanics we managed to get into the game. I will probably try to do a post-jam update myself, even if my partner isn't up to it, to fix the glaring issues, many of which you mentioned.

We had originally planned everything with four folks, brainstormed, picked potential genres, themes, experimented with toolkits, assets, universal mechanics, etc. Then we lost two of our team members right before the jam and didn't bother to adjust our ideas to accommodate, so we ended up way over-scoped. I swear I say this every jam, but next time, I am going to set scope requirements and MVP much more reasonably to make sure this doesn't happen again, lol.

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Aegis 🛡72 days ago(+1)

Ah sorry to hear you lost 2 team members, that must have made things much trickier. All things considered, it's a great game and has loads of potential. Hope you get round to doing the update.

Aegis 🛡

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