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things I liked

• graphics

things I would do different

• didn’t see how the light mechanic fit, and dealing with it was annoying with how much was going on at the same time.

• game get stuck on selecting single player

• there appears to be invisible walls or bad collider math happening, keep dying from stuff that isn’t visible on screen

things I like

• graphics
• readable gameplay

things I would change

• a VS AI mode - not everyone has someone to local co-op for play testing jam games (likely more don’t then do)
• the “beams” hit boxes stay around longer then I would have expected from them… I was expecting anticipation, then hit, then clear, with the hit only lasting a second at most.

unclear reason why game ends - ends when HP > 0 and goes back to main menu making it unclear what happened.

things I like

• nice graphics
• momentum based movement
• progressive introduction of mechanics

things I would change

• move shoot to keyboard (mouse really isn’t used for anything)
• allow holding down shoot to keep firing

Thank you for the feedback.

We definitely had a few more enemies on the planning table, but life hit and we didn’t manage to get all of the stuff we wanted in.

we actually had less time then we expected and didn’t get as much done as we had hopped. My co-jammer focused on menus and UI as he didn’t have a whole lot of time and that was something he is really good at.

thank you for the feedback.

thank you for the feedback.

thanks for the feedback.

on the crosshair vs weapon, I played with the camera/weapon placement to get them as close as possible, but you are correct the weapon is very slightly down/right from the crosshair. I tried a few things to make it visually come from the weapon, but move to the crosshair “path” but everything I tried looked really bad. Something for me to do some research on.

the red fire walls vs the red fire barriers… that is a good observation and something to look into making more similar if I do something like this again (and why it is really good to get play testers that aren’t part of the dev team… I had my kids play it, but they did see me working on it and running my own play test runs… so they might have picked it up from my plays)

on the weapon cycling, I didn’t want to rely on a scroll wheel (we had originally planned on controller support also, but that got dropped - which wouldn’t have had a scroll wheel) - I think scroll wheels are basically ubiquitous now, so that probably shouldn’t have been a concern. but I do agree putting it on the scroll wheel would have been nice. you probably wouldn’t be surprised how many rockets I shot when trying to switch from the ice spray to the blaster after I picked up the rocket in play testing for that very reason.

thanks for the feedback.

yah, the controls display/etc stuff wasn’t quite as good as we wanted it. unfortunately we were hoping to get in rebinding and needed to have stuff react to that, but didn’t get that far, so some text in the menu was what we got in… adding it to the pause menu in this case would have been a good idea, thanks for the idea. I will try to remember it for the next game I make - to have the controls documented there, so they can be referenced as needed.

thanks for the feedback.

music - neither of us had time to dig though stuff we had access to, to find something that fit well, nor are musicians, so I left it with no music vs something that didn’t fit well. Myself, I think I would have leaned towards some sort of environmental sound set over music, but I can see how the lack of music feels ‘lacking’

respawning - yah, I had some improvements in mind, but that would have taken a fair amount of updating. It would have made it so they didn’t spawn/depawn quite the same as they are now, which I think would have helped with most of what you experienced. (basically zoning the whole map, and adjacent zones wouldn’t despawn them and you would need to go beyond an adjacent zone before a room would respawn)

Both of us do programming, but my teammate only had time to doe menus and UI and yes he is a wizard at it.

they shouldn’t have been glitching through any walls or anything, bu there was one or two spots were they would spawn in a room you were not in, because the spawn triggers were slightly larger then their rooms, so they would trigger before you walked through the doorway.

As I got playing testing, I wanted to go back and make a bunch of spawn zones, then have them track adjacent zones and only respawn if you went beyond the adjacent zone… so you had to go two rooms away before a room would respawn. I think that would have killed most of the ‘wrong turn - have to refight’ issue while still having respawning happening as you moved around.

Our goal was to move the charge meter fully to the weapons - and instead of a bar, some sort of animation showing how much was left, but that fell on the cutting room floor fairly early when we both had life happen and significantly reduce the amount of time we had.

Thank you for the feedback, the points that felt of are definitely places were this could be improved.

What I mean is that it doesn’t ask you if your ready to go, since it wasn’t clear that was the “I am done” exit, I jumped at it to see what it was and the game ended, vs me finding out that I didn’t have all of the bits.

Things I Like:

• really good art direction
• music works great

Things I Would Change:

• communicate better the kickback jump effect - I had no reason to think that was how to get out of this room, I had already broken blocks to get through a “wall” I got stuck as below, then retried to see if maybe it was just a bad soft lock

Broken Stuff:

• got a few times were the music just stopped playing for a while

Things I Like:

• individually, the art assets look good
• nice background music
• nice gun shot FX

Things I Would Change:

• make what to do at the start of the game more clear, it seems like you can only walk a bit each way until you hit invisible walls.
• consistent art style, the different assets clash with each other

Broken Stuff:

• pressing E to interact will lock up character at times with no interaction appearing
• lots of character controller movement bugs like getting stuck in/on walls

how it happened, definitely made it look like something that was broken as there was no reason to expect touching a battery looking object to turn off all the lights.

Thank you

Things I Like:

• art models
• music choices

Things I Would Change:

• center player more on the screen, lots of jump/etc are below where you can see & have the camera lead the player in the direction it is going

Broken Stuff:

• can “double jump” to get extra height & can probably sequence break from this

Things I Like:

• models look nice
• lighting looks good

Things I Would Change:

• zoom out & have camera lead character vs follow so the game can actually be seen.
• communicate some sort of goal

Broken Stuff:

• touched red battery and screen just went black.

Things I Like:

• art style
• squash/stretch/juiciness of game
• music/sfx fit the game well
• the movement was spot on

Things I Would Change:

• make it so if you clip a “death” ground surface going up, it doesn’t kill you
• lower the difficulty - at least for a jam game (to high of a skill requirement prevents people from fully experiencing the game)

Broken Stuff:

• controller didn’t work on web for me

I suspect this is going to be one of the most well done games I have played, you did really good on getting all of the polish/juice/etc done right, the game felt amazing, even as it kept killing me over and over. The only real downer for me is that the skill floor needed to get through the game ramped up to fast for me.

thank you

thank you.

The “plot” was on the game page… which roughly translated to “go get the macguffin”

Things I Like:

• the level is beautiful
• good 3D model designs

Things I Would Change:

• level layout needs some “you can go this way” envronmental design
• add SFX and music or environmental sounds

Broken Stuff:

• input - lots of “ghost” inputs on the analog inputs - if I was to guess - using onPerform and not onCancel for them (or just reading them each frame)

thank you.

We had hopped to have at least one more enemy type and to have them in mixed groups/etc. to make it varied, but life happened to both of us, so we made do with what we had.

we had planned an actual boss fight, but that didn’t happen, so I used the wave code to put something there instead of nothing.

no, I don’t recall, it acted like a physics glitch, not a missing collider.

Things I Like:

• funky graphics
• game plays like its name

Things I Would Change:

• intro area more clear to make it so learning the gameplay is doable
• unclear if the long list of actions on the game page are available and not working or unavailable at the start of the game

Broken Stuff:

• stuck in walls
• ? random wall glitches/pathing

Things I Like:

• short intro
• music

Things I Would Change:

• jumping into the ‘exit’ just triggered end scene, vs verifying when I didn’t have all the bits
• consistent pixel size

Broken Stuff:

• game was the project file, not a build, was able to get to play
• background glitched at times leaving black lines - this is normally some sort of asset positioning/scale/setup issue or a non-pixel perfect camera

I couldn’t figure out what the game-play is/what, just seems like a bunch of rooms that you may or may not be able to go down the stairs

Things I Like:

• graphics look nice

Things I Would Change:

• reduce intro length
• readable font

Broken Stuff:

• character is [almost] always trying to walk up, even with no inputs press

Things I Like:

• consitent art style
• DarkSouls bonfire reference
• music choice

Things I Would Change:

• add minimap given level size
• add controller support, or just use arrows for which way the weapon slashes

Broken Stuff:

• clipped into walls a few times

Things I Like:

• graphics
• in game tutoral
• good music for a jam

Things I Would Change:

• remove long cool-down off weapon
• some sort of indicator when ground pound is available
• health drops

Broken Stuff:

• clipped into walls a few times

Things I Like:

• background graphics

Things I Would Change:

• more backtracking/looping in level flow, less “just climbing”

Broken Stuff:

• can glitch into walls

Things I Like:

• creative use of a limited pallet
• background/sky looked good

Things I Would Change:

• collapse down the level and/or speed up the player, it feels more like a test of endurance to get through the level then anything else
• have varied power ups vs just leveling up one

Thank you

• we turned down the dodging during play testing as they were almost impossible to hit except when they were locked in on an attack or stuck on a surface (from missing an attack)
• respawning on entering rooms is fairly normal for a metroidvania, the limited setup did make for some less then idea situations with the spawn ins.
• our UI guy has less time then expected and we knew that was bad UX going back to the main menu for that, but with the short game and being out of time, we were where we were on that one.

yah, 1/2 speed would have been a viable trade off

ah, that was not clear as I played. kept getting killed from stuff apparently before it went non-linear. didn’t realize I lost stuff when the goblins came (if that is when you lose stuff).