Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

This was neat take on a very simple idea, with lots of little details that give the game some charm. I think the combination of goofy art with the simple music and cartoon sound effects all come together to give the game a unique but fun atmosphere.

First I want to talk about the art. Making a 3D environment for a jam can be quite a challenge and very time consuming. This game did a good job of limiting the environment to only what was necessary for the gameplay, but still filling the world with little details that give the game its charm.

The combination of 2d sprites and a 3d world works ok in this case, although I didn't feel that the sprite work blended particularly well with the textures/style of the world. They just have a lot of details, while the other textures used have very minimalistic patterns. Additionally with the sprites being so detailed, and deciphering them being the focus of the game, I feel that they could have been made larger. This would allow the player see the details on these complex sprites a bit better and make their decisions easier.

The main art issue that stood out to me was the UI. Even if all you have time for is quickly doodling something simple, it can really help give your game some extra style to make your own buttons. The default Unity buttons stand out compared to all the custom more fun looking art all throughout the game, and take away from everything else you built just a bit. This is especially important when its the first thing the players will see when launching the game.

Another UI change I would suggest is to take a moment to pick out a more fitting font. With everything else having a more silly appearance, it felt strange not having a font to go along with it. For jam games I would suggest picking something from dafont (https://www.dafont.com/) that fits your games style. It only takes a moment to implement into your game and can really help with creating an aesthetic.

As for the audio, I think most of the sound effects fit the "cartoon" style your game falls into. They also give good player feedback and made sure I always knew when I did something right or wrong. However I think the volume is a bit all over the place, making some effects very jarring while others are barely audible. 

I felt that the music was fitting enough and wasn't annoying as it looped. Although, one thing I would suggest is to have songs fade in/out, as having music hard cut in/out is often jarring to the player.

Next I want to talk about the gameplay. This simplistic endless style of game can be quite addicting, although this one was a bit hard to understand at first. There's a large variety of bugs to sort out, and the cans on the right don't do a great job of explaining what I am sorting by. This leads to the gameplay feeling more like I am guessing and remembering where everything goes, rather than sorting them out. This wouldn't be an issue on its own, but the 3 strike rule makes the "Guess and check" approach not very effective. Also the speed the bugs came at was so slow that I never felt overwhelmed by them. I would always lose by eventually misclicking one of them into the wrong bin, or not knowing where one went at all.

One solution to this may have been to provide the player with a map for which bugs went where. Then you could have sped up the spawn rate of the bugs to make things more frantic.

Additionally I had some issues with the bins not aligning with where I had to place the bugs. The cans opening was usually enough feedback, but it still made the game quite a bit harder. I assume this has to do with the aspect ratio. I suggest always testing your games on a variety of ratios before building. Just putting the game window in free aspect and trying a bunch of random scales usually is enough (Although I'm on a standard 16:9 ratio, which I believe is the most common so maybe the issue is unrelated?)

Overall, this was a fun little experience with great detail. I apologize if this review was a bit much, but I'm doing this to all the games from this jam as I think critiques help us grow.