Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(1 edit) (+1)

Brilliant idea, really well executed. You had a good amount of polish too, considering it was a game jam. You could definitely take this further with more enemy and level variety.

I have two minor gripes with the design that I think you could tackle to improve:

  • I found the optimal strategy was to stay in the middle of the level the entire time. I think this is a HUGE missed opportunity. I loved that you had to avoid the big bars / lasers that show up across the screen and so you have to avoid going to those areas in all your selves in order to be sure, but this makes it so that staying in the middle is optimal. I don't know what the solution is here, unfortunately. I would have liked more level variety.
  • I found it really punishing to have to replay parts of the game specifically because of how long each round is (or feels). You can reasonably expect new players to have to retry the game a couple of times, either from the start or from a specific round. 30 seconds doesn't seem like a long time at first glance, but those retries stackup. I think retries should be a shorter duration, but maybe amp up the action a bit to make it still challenging. I ended up retrying 5-6 times, then I got to round 10 and the original got hit (already happened to me before as well) so I decided to stop. The game is very fun but if you keep retrying, it can get tedious, and you want to stop because you get the gist of the game at that point. 

I did really enjoy the game and the concept, despite the criticisms, I hope you can keep improving it!

(+1)

I appreciate the in depth feedback! Yeah it was difficult to get a strategy other than camping in the middle to be viable with such a limited scope. Fun fact, orginally there was no limited ammo so the player had no reason to ever even move. The restarting isn't the most fun I admit, perhaps I should have only set the player back one round even if it made a little less narrative sense (who am i kidding my narrative is a paradox I could have done whatever) As for the round length, i tried a lot and 30 seconds was honestly the sweat spot, but that's just my opinion. You are right tho, i probably could have pumped up the action in some stages to make it feel less long, but i didn't want to overwhelm jam players just looking for a casual game so I saved the insanity and wild enemies for endless mode. Thanks again for the detailed feedback and sorry you missed out on the ending cutscene ;P but I'm glad you got to have some fun playing minus your frustrations

(+1)

Totally, I enjoyed it, no worries. Just to clarify, I mean that on retries you shrink down the time for a single round but you amp up the action a bit. I get that you still want it to be approachable and so it would still have to be balanced, but I feel like its possible. Thanks though.

(+1)

that makes sense! Unfortunately i can't really change the round length since im recording the player and they need to play for the same amount of time every round, but there are definitely ways to handle second attempts better like you said.