what an awesome game. the level design, the riddles, the sound - everything pretty much perfect.
The only thing to criticize here is: while you basically made a game of all wildcards and massively succeeded not forcing them in but blend them together perfectly - the game is not really on theme, imho.
Thanks. We really care about a non-obvious but spot-on adherance to the theme, in all our jams. Seeing that so many people appreciated that feels awesome!
hmm, I would say you missed something. We totally prefer in-game tutorials, but as time was short we included the game rules, controls and the goal in the description, on the game site.
In general, you are correct and we wanted to display an arrow or something else pointing to the goal. We ran out of time.
But, tbh: Your critique holds up for a lot of games. Do I have an incentive to move in a pokemon game? Not really, unless I want to beat the game.
Curious: how long were you playing? When I watched our game being streamed, the streamer consulted the game page after a few seconds to resolve the issues you had and gave it another shot. I feel like we lost you very early on.
I did. Victory included. But tbh I didn't use any combos at all, and only saw the key bindings afterwards in the description. I thought the upgrades were the "you are being lied to" part...
5/5 originality. this submission just delivers in this respect.
Unfortunately the game broke for me. The residents info table would not close and I could not continue with the game because I was unable to take any actions (placing employees in slots)
So I will leave it at approx. 2k spooks and call it a day :)
Btw: I didn't understand "build". no idea what it actually does. and murder does not have any obvious effect. or did I miss it?
I regret to say this, but I had to give up at one point (after the toilet) because I again needed to search what to do next and the walking speed and not being able to run was too cumbersome. sorry. I am actually keen to know what the plot of the game is, so spoiler me if you will, but I had to quit there.
good point! lerping rotation would have been a great addition. we basically took the movement paths of navigation agent and follow them unquestioned :)
Awesome game! Good submission, didn't expect a racer at all! Shame you didn't manage to squeeze in audio, it would benefit that game greatly I think.
My only critique would be that the haunted aspect does not seem too relevant in the gameplay, imho. I played all tracks winning without ever having to kill a car, I did it kill at last just to see what happens.
Maybe collissions should cause damage or you can push the opponents off a cliff (even if not intended) so that they haunt you more easily... idk
Thanks a lot! your mention of the sound design means a lot because we sacrificed some QoL improvements in the end in favour of recording the audio and squeezing that in.
Sorry for the confusion in the beginning. we were hoping that players gravitate naturally to right in the beginning. should have made that clearer!
cool idea, but I gotta ask - does the time really stop? I mean, even when it slowed down, I found it too difficult to make use of the characters superpower. I died a lot and was frustrated when the, not too precise teleporting controls caused me to fall down.
Idk, I guess I would have needed even more slowdown. Btw: the project seems perfect for a web export - why didn't you? I think this and having a nice title image would increase the ratings you'd get a lot (as I learned sadly this time)
I think it might have to do with global/local coordinates.
If you design for e.g. full hd and your clicks always result in global coordinates they might cooincide with the local coords because you started from 0/0 with the full hd viewport. Your game does not stretch on resolution change but rather expand. so the click coords (global) cannot be used to get a tile from the tilemap, because it needs to be converted first.
tbh this is from the top of my head, as i fiddled with tilemaps myself some time ago. do not know if this is the actual problem at hand.
I was stuck some time in puzzle #2 because I did not reealize you could turn around pages
I was able to easily brute force a puzzle (the one with the 4 lamps I think)
I wish the key was auto use. I was on the verge of aborting my run before I realized that you have to select an item for it to be usable. In the case of keys I don't think thats necessary
There was a bug at the dragon which almost forced me to quit because I was in the room again but the graphics still showed the dragon. Fortunately the bug is solved by just moving to the right in the next room.
Audio and graphics are stellar, BUT I deducted a star because from what I saw on the game page you didn't do any asset yourself? I don't think thats a problem per se, but would say it's unfair to those who did all their assets for the jam from scratch. I hope you understand.
I have the same problem. Clicking and dragging a plane doesn't do anything. Did you use fixed screen coordinates that do not work on higher res monitors? I use 2560p.
Cool submission. Liked the style of it. Somewhat isometric, but not really... very nice.
I would have preferred movement via WASD and have the buttons 1-4 switch the current spell. I did not last long in my runs because evasion was so difficult to handle together with attacking.
Also sometimes the attack of E would not work?
The cooldown visual could be darker. Sometimes I was unsure if I could use that spell already in the heat of the battle.
Thank you. We deliberatly aimed for originality here, as we had other ideas related to tower which we assumed to be picked up by several jammers. So your appreciation of originality with respect to the theme means a lot! I am not exaggerating.
In the very beginning we limited the scope to one competitor with the option to add more when in polishing phase. As explained in other comments, this jam has been a tough for us time-wise, because of sickness, etc.
In the end we are happy about anyone who had a good time/experience with our submission
Thanks a lot. We feel like we do not deserve the praise, you gave us. As explained in other comments due to overscoping, team members getting sick and life issues, in the end we had to cut down a lot on complexity and playtesting, resulting in a game that runs basically on some default values, sadly.
Still I am very glad that you had a good experience exploring the game! This is all we care about and that means a lot to us! Cheers!
Thank you for your kind review. Due to overscoping, team members getting sick and well, life, in the end we had to cut down a lot on complexity and playtesting, resulting in a game that runs basically on some default values, sadly. I hope that you as a player hat a nice experience even if the game feels unbalanced/too easy.
A multiplayer submission. Really cool. I appreciate the effort of making a web playable multiplayer game! But I gotta add some remarks
the game loop was not clear to us. it should be somehow more visually apparent in which "mode" you are in. We had no idea why we were unable to move sometimes.
the round time is super short. we were just able to place a few tiles and then its over.
there is no way to restart the round with your buddy. is there?
Anti gravity tiles were hard to detect visually for us. Only in the second round we realized that they were built-into the others
I learned too late about walljumps and how to use them, so I could not finish a single tower (also, I suck at this). Tried a few and it's so cool to fiddle with seeds and difficulty levels.
I would be very surprised if this game does not hit top 5.
One more thing: when I lost like 50 boxes in that level I shot one up with full force to vent. The box hitting the lamp and destroying it made me chuckle, immediately putting me in a good mood to continue. Soooo amazing, your love for detail!
the gameplay was tough for me, things shooting from nowhere, no idea why I died this time, why I am getting/losing hearts and what do they mean? Furthermore the background does not allow to get a sense of the falling (upwards? lol) speed (due to parallax?)
but I gotta say - the title alone made me wanna play it!
WHAT THE HELL - HOW GOOD IS THIS GAME??? So glad you haven't been rated yet, so it was an easy pick for me.
Music fits perfectly, graphics are beautiful, fun 6/5, theme on the spot... If this is not the winner game, it has to be top 3.
This is what anyone can expect from a game jam at maximum, I guess. A single cool idea, limited in scope but explored and polished to a level I didn't think was possible in 9 days.
Gameplay Moments:
"How hard can it be to replace a box in a stack of 3?" - 60 lost boxes later - "YES, FINALLY, YES"
"Burn boxes? Why do I need this? Oh...."
"Thanks bubble of mercy, but I am a hopeless case"
"What? Another level? How many did they manage to build? ... WHAT?"
Grinded to level 8, will grind more tomorrow! I will recommend this in the discord!
Great, now I will be haunted by whispers when I go to sleep today...
Really cool game, but I got to admit: The game started SOOO strong, I was very thrilled about what's next and how the story setup will convert to the gameplay, but then, well... I am not good at platformers and the controls were reacting too fast for me, so I constantly fell off :-/ It's tough always having to start from the bottom. Had to quit eventually, sorry... Curious though if there was more of the story in the endgame, but I cannot get there.
I wish there were a separate rating for background story/setting/lore. You clearly deserve 5 stars there.
Thanks for your kind review! We don't feel very confident about this one because we had to cut short on a lot of aspects due to time issues. So your words mean a lot!
