Nice cozy game, The controls are intuitive and responsive and the atmosphere was relaxing. Thanks for putting the "this object needs another object under it" for idiots like me who would have been stuck trying to make it float in the air for 10min otherwise.
Axe Burningfire
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I like that the difficulty is tuned up. Many games in jams only presents us with easy "introductory" levels, but i'm happy to see a proper rather than a "demo". That said, the concept itself is pretty flawed as taking too many +size upgrades can be a death wish, but the advantages they give seem to be balanced to be equal to the -size's. I played all the way to the boss, and survived a good 5 minutes against him, but then i realized his health was written and that he hadn't been taking any damage all this time, so i had to give up.
I like the idea, but the execution is quite clumsy. After 15min of playing i could not figure out what determined the chop score. There's only a little Light going from yellow to red, it doesn't tell you if you've chopped too much or not enough or what so i never got to bring it up to green. There's also a few bugs and the controls are uncomfortable. You never need to use the two hands at once in the game, so having both instead of just a single one with both control schemes is pointless.
On discord you said you wanted "strict and rough" comments, well, here it is.
First of all, Presentation. The game looks terrible. Henry looks terrible, the ground looks terrible, the house and the dogs too. This would have been excusable if the environment wasn't also completely empty. This is what really kills the game, just sprinkling some more trees and houses around the map, maybe some of Henry's model here and there as villager, would've done a lot to raise the score.
One thing doesn't look terrible, the heart. It's well designed, modeled and animated and also very cute. Henry's animations are also very exaggerated, which is very good because we often only ever see them from the corner of the eye while looking at the oxygen bar. So points for that there.
I like the idea of the gameplay, i like the idea of playing as a guy's heart. But with this amount of content it ends up mostly as "how long will it take before you get bored and lose focus". Probably ill-suited for a game jam, specifically. Also reading as you try to keep the rhythm is kind of a pain. probably should either pause the game while there's text popups or put them all at the beginning
Sorry if this is all somewhat mean. The animations are good and the heart puns show a distinct charm.
I like the idea! But it's somewhat wasted since the narrator mostly only ever narrates the MC's feelings, thoughts and actions, so as it stands it's not all that different from a normal VN where you play them. Options should have been "The MC's phone starts ringing"/"[Something else happens]" instead of "MC picks up the call"/"MC doesn't pick up the call" (in my opinion, of course).
Other than that, the visual style is distinct (good use of colors) and the writing is very solid. I like how we don't only trace the character's actions from now on, but also what lead them to their initial situation.
I really like the idea! i could see a full 1-2h long point and click with that concept be really fun!
But as it stands it's little more than an idea, about 30s once you've figured out how to use the hard drive with no environments.
Having to code every game in the game probably makes it an ill-suited concept for a game jam.
This was pretty fun, i got to 1200 gold. Many of these game jam games like to introduce many mechanics and not do a lot with them, but this one really keeps a strong focus on its core mechanic. The gameplay is really good, quite a few times i ended up putting myself in a bind because i moved a tile somewhere i shouldn't have. But after a bit the feel of being a malevolent dungeon pitting the adventurers against each other really comes through. Made me say "This is machiavellian".
There are a few things that could be improved. The delimitations between tiles isn't super clear out of selection mode, so sometimes a guy crosses to the center tile unnoticed. Also, at some point adventurers reach a statistical cap when they start killing each other about as fast as they respawn, so i think having the spawn rate slightly increase throughout the game time would've been pretty good.
I played 3 and a half runs of this game, got 4/6 of the achievements.
The first time, i enjoyed a it lot. The bizarre characters and animations and the mystical music gave me vibes reminiscent of LSD Dream Emulator. Picking dialogue options for both characters is an interesting concept.
On subsequent runs, the flaws made themselves clearer. The long time it takes for characters to approach makes it ill suited to be played multiple times, and the short-looped music quickly gets droning.
It's also a bit of a shame to have such a detailed interior and the ability to move implemented, but no use for them in the gameplay.
I love the theme of undersea depths. there's a crab that puts on sunglasses and has the world in a bucket; the game is quirkily charming. The mechanic of deviating bullets is also pretty cool and well utilized by the levels.
That said, there's quite a few negatives. The game is short, even by game jam standards. The axolotl having such a long tail makes for a weird hitbox both in wall collisions and dodging bullets. having an audio or visual cue when the player runs out of stamina would've made the moment-to-moment gameplay more readable.
Yes, sorry. That was excessively brief of me.
I ran the game two times. The first time, the possession button either didn't do anything, or only teleported the player to the target enemy without possessing them. Both times the player was immortal and enemies would not attack each more than once (other than the archer). for ~3s after starting the second time blue hearts appeared above the red ones. I assume that was supposed to be the possessed creature's health bar, but they never appeared at any other point, even when possessing a target.
Best of luck.
The art style and the music are nice and i quite like the bit of writing (relatable). The mechanic makes for fun puzzles.
The big negative aspect is the weird bug/feature (?) that the character isn't able to jump when anywhere near a movable block. which is weird. if you have a 2 high immovable ledge he can jump that up no problem but if one of those 2 tiles is a movable block he'll instead just hit himself against the wall as if he was detecting a collision that isn't there. That also happens if the 2 tiles are both immovable and there's a movable block 2 tiles back and 2 tiles up from him, ie: nowhere near him. this made the solution to level 3 quite arcane.
Also it's pretty short game, but that's to be expected for a game jam game.
Fun! I love the wide range of little critters you can get and of moves the knight can use! Minimalist art styles always strike a cord with me and arranging monsters in the best sequence possiblereally feeds my stereotypically autistic brain.
As for critique... the knight gains moves throughout the game, but since they're kept for the rest of the levels it's not really worth strategizing around. By the end he has so many of them that any individual one doesn't really matter.
The game also kinda hits a gameplay plateau when you get your fifth and last monster slot since you can't really improve your team beyond maybe swapping in a few marginally better characters.
Fun mechanic! Tho a bit of an incoherent experience.
It's cool how each enemy has its own move and mechanic, but since the goal is to find stuff spread out throughout the map, you end up swapping through different characters super fast to move rather than lingering on any given one for their abilities.
The wizard is cool, but he also takes away the core mechanic of the game.
Fun! The wild physics really make the game when they launch you across the room and you start chain slicing guys all over the space. Tho it's a shame the player can't kill multiple guys at once, really kills the momentum sometimes.
Each of my run has ended spontaneously. I think it's that sometimes when i slice a guy he drops a bomb at the same time hitting me instantly. That or there's a secret timer per run? idk really.
Between this and my own game, i get the feeling management games aren't quite well suited for game jams. Like, i click stuff trying to match numbers and symbol, but there's not a lot of gameplay, and there's not a lot of stuff happening or feedback for what's good or bad. I dig the concept tho, and the whole thing was pretty relaxing.
Also, vos noms sonnent francophones. Donc, salut les mecs, quoi.
Great stuff, the gameplay is fun and challenging, the controls feel nice even on pc and the presentation is original. The whole thing is very creative.
For the downer side, FPS were pretty low from my laptop. Twice i fell in the crack between 2x2 platform and the next at the end of the last level, which was pretty frustrating. I think that's a bug?