Post by Cheeseness in Juan's Saga jam comments

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Note that this feedback is based on the build(s) available at the end of the jam.

Juan's Saga is an absolutely adorable tribute to one of the Godot engine's core developers (who as an affinity for alpacas). The art style is simple but bold, and the music is super happy.

The game loop is straightforward, but feels like a good start to a larger game (and based on the additional mechanics and enemies I've seen screenshots of, it seems like it was!).

The combination of mouse and keyboard controls feels like it's leading somewhere interesting, but I found myself strugging to perform any meaningful mouse actions when moving. I'd be keen to see how different the game would feel if movement was world-relative whenever the camera was moving instead of screen-relative.

Part of me would be excited to see more variation in the kinds of interactions players can have with bugs that had tactical value that varied depending on context (for example, maybe clicking and dragging a bug attached to the player could throw it a short distance, freeing Juan up for a jump when he's been attacked by a single bug, but being less useful when there are many bugs around).

It's been great to see you continue work on the game, and it seems like you're taking the game in fun directions. I'm looking forward to playing the new version!

Thanks for your submission and best of luck with the project :D

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Pigdev6 years ago(+1)

Hey Cheeseness! Thank you so much for such a rich feedback <3

What a coincidence, I just released a feature freeze version yesterday with a whole month of improvements. We took especially your feedback on the live you guys made reviewing the games, and I decided to take rid of mouse inputs. This will allow so many new features later on further development cycles, that it wouldn't make sense to keep this approach from the first prototype. For example:

You can play the game using only game controllers now
Reconfig controls giving more freedom to players to set their own actions layout
By keeping mouse inputs, a local multiplayer would be hard to design (nearly to impossible if we'd like to keep single player mechanics)
So now we can add split screen multiplayer which accepts any combinations of controllers and keyboards
Also, it allows both co-op and versus multiplayer modes

Due to this design decision we implemented another mechanic which, besides not inovative or revolutionary, fitted the game's gameplay, and allowed for, imo, a better experience.

I mean... what am I giving my unilateral opinion xD

What about you play it when you have some time available? If you installed through itch.io's app it should be up to date already. Anyway, thank you guys for this amazing jam! It was a good opportunity to try some new approaches to gamedev and design! <3

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Cheeseness6 years ago(+1)

Hi! I understand - I was aware that you'd moved away from mouse input (which has clear advantages) before I posted, but I wanted to give this judging feedback that was based on my experiences of the end of jam build and what it evoked in me since that is what I'm offering to all participants.

I plan to play the new version, but unfortunately it's going to be a while before I have time.

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