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I'm just going to come out and say that this game is a marked improvement over Partial Vania, so great job there! The game had a lot of personality (even if the voice was text-to-speech, the script still oozed personality). The progression through the game felt quite well thought out with subsequent rooms being more difficult than previous rooms, and the jet pack power-up was a joy to use. I also appreciated that the janitor could just move freely about the building without any problems.

For some feedback,

1. It's a bit weird that my head / upper body goes through the floors above me. It's not super annoying or anything, but it does make things feel a bit unpolished.

2. The gas does too much damage and its hit box lingers for far too long. I eventually just started jumping over it (using the aforementioned body-through-floor shenanigans), but I felt like I would have gotten annoyed with the wait times had I not been able to do that. In terms of hazards, the spikes which rose out of the floor were also a bit on the small side., so I wasn't really sure if there were times when they were supposed to be safe to stand on or not.

3. I was a bit unclear if I was dealing damage to the final boss or not. Previously I had gotten feedback on every water gun hit because they were one hit kills, so when I didn't hear any sounds on hitting the boss I wasn't sure if my lasers were getting through or not. In an ideal world, there would probably be an impact sound for the boss and a ricochet or metallic sound for shooting one of the orbs. As for the orbs, they were probably too random for a proper boss fight, as is I just kind of hovered on the left side of the screen where they didn't seem to be able to hit me. I think fewer orbs or a slower movement pattern would have helped a lot with making feel like I could use skill to defeat this boss.

Overall though, I'd say this is one of the more coherent games I've played so far this jam, there was a narrative thru-line throughout the game, the character had personality, and all of the power-ups were well messaged and telegraphed. Good job!

thanks glad you saw the improvement, the movent code is largely the same set of libraries I put together for PV, and suffers many of the same issues (I got too carried away world building to find time for fundemental movement code). If I do a third entry, creating a fun movement mechanic is the first thing I plan to address (then again I said that this time too).

The gas was meant to act  as a locked door with the mask being the key  (as well as an obstacle to be timed) hence I ended up making it too deadly... but even accounting for that I know I can have done it in a fashion that was less annoying!

The boss fight is very rushed... I had an idea where the boss would have different states and the orbs would have responded in kind, eg a defensive state where they circled him, an attacking one where they flew out in all directions, but I never found the time, and I know a few sound effects would have helped a lot in the fight too!

Thanks again for playing, especially through to the end. All the criticisms are all valid, and I'll take them onboard as I to want to spend a bit of time polishing this game! Though I am already eyeing up a new jam so we'll see ;)

No problem, it's cool to see that you're serious about this stuff! Which jam are you looking at next? I'm considering Black & White jam but am undecided. I might just spend time building up some of the skills I want to use in the next MVM. :D

https://itch.io/jam/dcjam2022 the dungeon crawler game jam - a while back I put together a voxel engine, and think it might make for a cool aesthetic for a dungeon crawler