Good job on submitting to your first jam, that's a great achievement!
The game ran buttery smooth for me, no framerate issues here!
The characters and animations are lovely, the bread looks so bouncy! By comparison, the environment felt a bit bland; the background/platforms were functional but adding some colour or texture to them would go a long way - if you wanted to go big you could think about where this game is set and theme the environment to that - are you in kitchen, a restaurant, a military complex? There was also a minor black line that appeared when the bread jumped, not very noticeable but did catch my eye!
The basic enemy behaviour was solid, the little pause before leaping was nice to communicate to the player that an attack was coming. It would be fun to see more enemy types with unique threats, or level structure designed to highlight different ways in which the slimes can be dangerous (narrow hallway that requires baiting, slime pit that you don't want to fall in or you get swarmed).
The levels could have been shorter and more populated, when a level is so large/has multiple routes that diverge, but no map or way to visualise the different routes, it can be quite hard to navigate, and often doesn't really feel cohesive unless the smaller parts of it are tied together by a local theme (ie. a cupboard in the kitchen)
The music was really good, I wish it was a lil' longer! There was a small stutter when it looped, which was quite noticeable the longer I played.
The menu and UIs were good, easy to navigate and understand.
I really liked the interpretation of the theme with the power-ups, turning your body into a weapon and discarding it for the enemies to get lured by was a great way for bread to become the weapon. Exploring more uses for the ones you introduced/larger differences in how they felt to use (ie. poison kills slimes, whereas honey only slows them, but slowed slimes will leave a trail when they move that applied the same slowing effect to any other slimes that walk onto it, etc.) could be a good way to expand on that, ideally making them feel unique and creating more opportunities to use your power-ups would be fun. Additionally, visual changes on power-ups would be nice, seeing a nice shiny honey coating or an oozy poison.
Good job building a great foundation, I imagine it'll be really useful to build even more on it, it sounds like you have lots of ideas and are excited to try them out, which is super cool! You got this, have fun, and well done again!
Viewing post in Bread is not a weapon jam comments
Weird, different browsers I have tried on gave different issues. Not sure if this is a thing to focus on.
I agree with the environment feeling a little bland. I was initially thinking of hand drawn platforms, before realising how much work went into that for other games. As my platforms were all made to be dynamically scaled, hand drawn made the textures stretch which looked really bad, thus the simple color. The initial plan was to build it in a kitchen, considering the home is a rice cooker and the player is a bread. I will look back into hand drawn platforms and see if I can make them work. I will also look into the black line appearing when the bread jump.
On top of the little pause, I was planning to add a indicator, maybe an exclamation mark with a sound effect when you get spotted so the player knows when they are in danger. Some level design for new enemies will also need to be explored.
By shorter, what do you think of zooming out the camera so the player can see more? But I definitely understand the diverging routes being hard to navigate without a map or something similar. So I will need to find a way to guide the player.
The music is already in the works of being updated as it was basically my first time touching anything music related, so I made a extremely short audio that looped.
The upgrades showing more differences is a great idea! I never thought of how to show the slimes being slowed, and only thought of maybe a damage animation/damage indicator for poisoned slimes, but I might work on something different, maybe showing the slime “drunk” in a sense for that instead.
Thank you for the feedback! I will definitely be trying out new ideas to see if they stick. I hope you’ll be able to try it out again when it gets more updates!
I've seen a lot of different entries have various web-built issues, so definitely not a unique problem!
Gosh, yeah, I totally see the scale of the challenge - it sounds like you have a really clear vision of what you want it to look like, and hopefully outside of jam-crunch that'll be fun and easier to implement. A kitchen level as a starting point sounds ace, and there's so many ambient kitchen noises to play around with to pair with that.
Yeah, that sounds helpful, there were times where I wanted to bait a slime slightly towards/away from an edge to make getting past it easier, and an indicator would have made that clearer.
Not specifically, I think the camera positioning was good - I think I was wondering if having fewer overall platforms would make it easier to navigate, and maybe also make the enemy/obstacle density feel higher. However, I think having heard that you're considering making the platforms more unique, that would probably help with the navigation too, so making the level smaller might not be a necessary suggestion, on reflection! It's much easier to remember that you took the drop at the rolling pin than it is the 'slightly wider platform'.
Ooh nice, I've never been very musically-capable, so I was still very impressed by it regardless.
A change in the enemies' animations sounds like a great idea, that would communicate that they've been affected very clearly and also hint at how they might behave as a result, very effective design!
Glad to hear they might have been helpful - I've only played a few platformers, generally more 'casual' ones, and never designed one, so please do take my feedback with a grain of salt. That sounds great, I look forward to it!