itch.io

Results are in and I came exactly where I thought, 59th overall, art and innovation were strong, fun and theme lower.  If anyone was interested.

I would have liked to rank a bit better in the overall ranking but I had a look at how other games did and I have to say the way the results turned out seem pretty fair to me.

Thank you to everyone that had a look at my game.

I know there is still a few hours of voting left, but as I'll be occupied for the rest of the day, I just wanted to say thank you to the host and everyone that has participated in the jam.

The feedback I've had on my game has been really positive and I have enjoyed playing other people's games.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results and participating in future Coco Code game jams.

Thanks for making it a great jam.

I'm seriously thinking about it with this one.  There are a few directions I could take it, and I feel like a lot of the sprites and tilesets are of reasonable quality to be able to expand the game.

The game I made for my first jam didn't have a lot of flexibility so it got left behind, the game I made for my second jam could have been a possibility but I would have needed to reorganise everything, and the quality really needed improving, so it also got left behind.

This is the first game I've tried to make that I feel has the potential to be reasonably expanded into a more full game.  I think this is in part because I already had to include variety in in the art and game design to align the mechanics I wanted to experimemt with.

I'm aiming to get through at least half of the games by the end of voting, at least 35 more to go.  At least 1 of the guys on here has played everyone's game, and commemted on most of them.  I don't have the time for that but will try to get through as many as I can.

Based on the feedback I've had so far, I think I'll do pretty well for Art and Innovation, but not as well in Fun and Theme.  Overall I'd like to be in the top half of games, but there are quite a few really nice submissions in this jam, and you don't know how people have really voted until the end.

This was pretty fun, a bit on the slow side, but fun.

I like how the various boosts that you can use have ways of working together and that some of them are open to chance, like the game overall, I was able to survive on my first playthrough so I must have been pretty lucky.

Thanks for the game.

This was really fun to play.

The art style and the whole set up fits the theme of the game perfectly and I like the variation between the levels with how you've got a bullet hell style level, a breakout style level and a 2D runner style game, and they all integrate with the game perfectly.

Thanks for the game.

*Gives Physics Option*

What does this button do?

*Physics: Enabled (You now have the power to move in 2 dimensions with as much speed and force as you can muster*

Balls now fly into space at the speed of sound.

At first I was trying to beat myself and see how many bounces I could get, but after a few tries I enabled physics and it made the game more fun, flinging the balls around at speed and seeing if I could break something.

Thanks for the game.

I like the art for the game, the snake is pretty cool.

The field of view is rather small in my opinion, so it feels like you are just aimlessly exploring until you figure out where the different biomes are.  It might help to have a way to either navigate home or teleport home because after aimlessly exploring it can be difficult to find your way home again.

Thanks for the game.

Game is pretty clean overall, if you discount the horrors of industrial food production.

You really need to be decisive on what you eat, but I'm still not going to diet! Never!

Thanks for the game.

I like the idea of turn based combat in a classic style.  You don't often see turn based games in game jams, I guess because there is normally a lot of background logic to consider.

Thanks for the game.

I found a bug in the gameplay.  If you start loading in the ingredients to make a potion and then try to go to the shop to buy more ingredients, you don't get the ingredients back, and the visuals disappear.  The ingredients are still being used for the potion pot, but you can't see them.  I think they either need to be displayed when returning to the brewing screen, or if you leave the brewing screen while ingredients are in the cauldron, they get removed and returned to you.

Otherwise, not a bad game.  The art style is a bit simple, and the gameplay is a bit repetitive but the process works, buy ingredients, brew potions, sell potions, and repeat.

This was fun and frustrating at the same time, you have to be able to keep up with thinking about where you want to target, where you need to move to and when to hit the ball, all at the same time, using a combination of the keyboard and the mouse.  I think it might play better with a controller.

That being said, the graphics were pretty good, and made the game look fun.  The mechanics of the rat and the bat add to the complexity, but with everything else to focus on I pretty much ignored them.

Thanks for the game.

I'd have to say see @Morphann's response for feedback.  After I figured out how to kill the enemies I also got to a point where no more were spawning and while there were still enemies on the map, they were outside of the play area.

Otherwise it was fun up to that point.

Thanks for the game.

The art style for the game is really nice.

The mushrooms are well implemented, giving buffs and debuffs.

I think the normal visuals could be a bit brighter though, the "darkness" debuff didn't really make much difference and it might have had a bit more impact if you could see a bit more before, I don't mean remove the normal darkness entirely, just a bit brighter.

There may only be 1 level, but the design of it was pretty good and the only thing I thought when I got to the end was that I wanted more levels.

Thanks for the game.

The concept of this game is interesting.

I think the only way this game can be improved beyond the addition of some music, would be to refine the process between the orders and production.  I like that you have to select the right antidote, but the primary puzzle in the game seems to be reorganising the chemicals to make the antidote.

Thanks for the game.

I like the arcade style game.

Everything about it is pretty well polished and tidy.  I would have preferred for some more frequent or permanent upgrades to the shooting because I think it might have made it a bit more satisfying.  As you progress and get more numerous enemies, you also get stronger to be able to take them out quicker.

Otherwise, a really good submission.

1. I like the fox.

2. I like the fox.

3. Nice game, it felt like the collection of the ghosts could use a bit of work to improve, you have to catch them just right to get them within the time limit.  Maybe spawn a few more than is needed, but the everything else stays the same, or a lightly larger collection area for the player?  It would make it a little more forgiving.  And I liked the second part of the game, simple but fun trying to catch and sort the components.

4. I like the fox.

The art for the first stage and the end looked really good.

The maze was an interesting change of pace, and I liked the comical ending.

It's a shame your original game got corrupted, but if you did this in 12 hours, then well done, most people would have probably given up after realising their work had been corrupted and then tried a different jam later, but you stuck with it and made a game.  It's a bit smaller than some of the ones on here, there is however a game to be played, with mechanics to make it interesting, and an ending.

If you did this in 12 hours, I would have liked to have seen the originally planned game.

I was lucky to have the week off of work, even still I spent more than 80 hours on this jam.

It was the biggest scope game I've tried to do for a jam, and I still had things I didn't have time to get into the game or tidy up the way I would have liked.

It's also my third jam, so I've gotten a bit better in planning out my time on the jam and the breakdown of the work.  I tend to split it up into art, coding, sound and finishing up.  But for this one I spent 27 hours just on the art.  I know it's pixel art and simple, but you have a pixel in the wrong spot or wrong shade and it can make a good sprite look bad.  I then spent about 40 hours on the coding (I reckon about 1,500 lines of code), and the rest for everything else, due to the time constraints I wasn't able to make brand new music specifically for the game, so I reorganised a couple of songs I made a month or so ago when I was playing about with the DAW (instruments, length, and trying to make them loops).

I would like to do it full time, but at the moment I haven't earned a penny, not spent one either.

Don't worry about not fitting it into the jam.  The suggestions are just if you want to carry on with the game, and are only suggestions, you could take it in a completely different direction.

The reason why I mentioned about removing trails is because as the number of objects to be processed and rendered increases, performance will start to drop off.  This performance drop will then start to impact the way the game plays.  I'm only assuming the next bit, but I take it that the poison spots have a script or timer attached to them and some kind of detection area for physics?  Each instance will take it's own chunk of system resources, if this doesn't get cleaned up or recycled, this is when it starts to hit performance.  If you don't want to remove the objects, there might be another way of streamlining the objects to reduce the performance overhead.

Thanks again for the game.

It's a question everyone has in their first jam and I've never really found anything official on how it works, but based on the jams O've been in, this seems to be about the way it works.

We never normally make great games for jams.

But they do give us the opportunity to test ideas, practice our skills and experiment.

Just making and submitting a game for a jam is a challenge in itself, and when you've never done it before I find you end up thinking "will it be enough?" Or "what if no one plays or likes it?"

In the jams I've been in, I've always found the community welcoming and understanding, we all put the effort in and want to improve, and it's all part of the fun.

The gameplay is pretty fast paced, and I like the idea of poisoning enemies, but something about it didn't feel great (fun for a minute or two, but not great), I'm not sure if it is the number of enemies swarming you, or the limited variety of attacks available to control the swarm.

Maybe if there are different types of poison attack that are provided pick up items or something like this, like an attack that does area of effect poison in an explosion, or an attack that leaves a poison pool on the ground?  I feel like you just need a way to control the swarm better, to make the melee and close encounters a bit more manageable.

Thanks for the game.

I like the art style for this game.

I couldn't get used to the controls though, and the level design doesn't really give you the chance to get comfortable with the controls before needing to use the jumping and attacking mechanics.  When you jump into the game, the first pit seemed like you could just walk past it, with the enemy on the other side indicating a direction of travel.  So my first death was to walk towards the enemy and then fall to my death, instantly.  I'm also unsure if you are supposed to be able to attack while jumping but I was unable to, while the level design appeared to need this.  I'm playing through my browser on a laptop.

Thanks for the game.

Initially I thought this would be simple platformer, but the mechanic of leaving a trail of poison that becomes lethal means you can't just bounce around aimlessly, you have to think about your path through each level to ensure that you can complete it without bumping into the lethal poison.

Beyond the need for sound, I think that the way the poison trail (or the controls) works needs to be looked at.  If you start moving and then stay still for too long, you end up being killed as the poison is still spawning where you're standing, and with the controls as they're set up now, it is very easy for a jump to fail or for you to fall off a ledge and into the poison trail.  On one level I also got a stutter towards the end of the level which I assume is because of the number of poison spots that were spawned in and because I played through the browser.  It might be possible to have a maximum number of these sprites that can spawn, and when that limit is reached you remove the oldest sprite.  This would still leave a trail that could stop you from doubling back on yourself, but would help performance by limiting the number of poison sprites spawned at any given time.

Thanks for the game.

Any chance you could have a look at mine as well?

Types of ratings on Itch

So far as I have been able to tell from other jams, there are 2 rating systems on itch.io, a global, generic rating system that is rated through the game page of any game you can play or download on the platform, and a Game Jam Rating System that is specific to a game jam and can be configured by the hosts to use categories for voting.  This information is voted/submitted on a game's submission page in a game jam.

To see how many people have rated your game in the jam

To identify how many people have rated your game in a game jam, you need to look for the information on your game's jam submission page.  These ratings do not show up in your dashboard because they are specific to the game jam you have entered and appear to use a completely different system to the global ratings, that do show on your dashboard.

During the voting period in any jam, you can only see how many people have rated your game, not the full results.  These are aggregated at the end of the game jam and will show on your game's game jam submission page.

When the Results are In

This is the point where there can be some difference between game jams.

For some game jams, you will get an "Overall" rating, and ranking for your game in the jam, and this can be the only overall ranking provided or considered.  In other game jams, you can get an Overall ranking, and a ranking for each category that is voted for in the jam.  For example, if your game had brilliant and terrible gameplay, and categories are voted for separately, you could get a good ranking in Art, but a terrible rating for Gameplay.  Your Overall rating would be balanced between the 2, but your rankings in each category would be different base on how people voted.

The rating system also does some maths in the background to try to balance the disparity between games that had a very low number of ratings and games that had a very number of ratings.  Normally for games with the highest number of ratings, the vote results tend to be considered as what was voted for, because with the greater number of votes, the average results for each category are considered to be providing a truer representation of the community's view of the game.  For games with a low number of ratings, the background algorithm appears to look at how the game has been rated, and tries to provide an overall result as if the game had received more ratings.  It might do this by looking at we have rated other games, and how others have rated those games, and then as you may have rated a game with a low number of ratings, it might try to apply a final rating based on how your voting pattern compared to other members of the community.  It's a bit of a black box for this part, but I could see it working this way or something similar to this.

This is interesting, The algorithm always wins in the end.

On the surface, it's like you have some control, but if you want to build that "shock factor" in real life, you have to use a limited set of language to get people to view or click your posts, and it is normally based on incorrect or twisted information.  The same thing happens in the game where you can only choose from limited options from a subset of viral language, normally with negative alignment, to "get" views and followers.  However, this subset is presented to you by the "algorithm" removing any real choice you might have had.

The crazy thing is that now we have AI generative chatbots, the sort of social media exploitation that was used by people to get quick reactions and views can now be used by businesses with these bots to basically say anything they want and influence public opinion.  A big example in the UK during Covid lockdowns was the suggestion that the new 5G phone masts were causing the virus, or that the vaccines were forcibly installing monitoring tech into our bodies that used 5G, while not done by businesses, it was done by organised groups that believed in the same principles whether they were correct or not, and they used social media to influence public opinion.  People literally started to burn down and destroy 5G phone masts when they had nothing to do with a viral outbreak, or the vaccines that helped to reduce the impact of the virus.

Thank you for the nice feedback.

I was lucky enough to have a week off so I was able to put more time into this one than I would normally be able to.

The scope was a bit too big to get everything I wanted into the game for a 1 week jam and it also meant that I had to submit with things that worked but may not be be complete.

I'm still trying to learn how to make games, and I try to do as much of it by myself as I can.  It's simpler to think about when I create all of my own assets, and I enjoy the variety of work this allows.

When I figured out what I was doing the game was pretty fun.  On starting the level I didn't realise to interact with the notice board to get the instructions.

I just wish there were more levels.  They make for fun little puzzles.

Thanks for the game.

This is an interesting concept for a game.

I know it might be because of the limited time in a game jam, but I would have liked to be able to merge different types of poison together to create unique combinations that you couldn't buy in the shop.  You wouldn't need to cover every permutation, but it would be fun to maybe mix the tornado with a "liquid" poison to make something like acid rain.

I also feel like there needs to be a purpose for making the poisons beyond a bank account because after unlocking all the poisons you can just spam the nuke button and get infinite money, making the idea of mixing poisons or buying them from the shop a bit pointless.

I liked the animals bouncing around the world though, it's fun watching them move around the map.

Thanks for the game

I tried to just run for it and keep running for it.  Is there an exit because I just kept running for a while before eventually being killed by spiders as they spawned in front of me while running?  I'd hate to think I was just running in circles, but wouldn't be surprised.

I liked the premise of the game, but feel that this is also a work in progress.  Even with the simpler looking assets you have managed to create an atmospheric experience, thanks for the game.

Thanks for the feedback.

I think that if I carry on with this one, which I would like to, that there are more than a few mechanics I would like to refine.  Due to the scope and the time a lot of the systems are rough around the edges at the moment.

Thank you, I spent more time than I'd like to admit on making the sprites.

Thanks for playing.

On the surface the main mechanic seems really simple, but I can imagine it took a couple of tries to get it working nicely, and it shows in the way it plays.

I've only played about a quarter of the games on here so far but it is definitely in my top 10 for the jam.

This is a really fun game with a nice art style.  The mechanic of "flopping" is a really fun mechanic and nicely animated.

Not sure if I just need to get better at timing the flops, but I got stuck on level 5.

Had a few moments before this level where I just seemed to get stuck on a spring, and on level 5 just ended up with the same cycle about 20 times where I would bounce around the corner and not be able to flop or bounce towards the spring between 2 poison pools at the start of the level.

I like the game though, thanks.

They're not really problems, but I think the game might play better with such changes.  For a first jam it's a really good submission.

Just had a look at your game.

I liked the idea of playing as a bottle of poison, and you have used the premade assets with your own nicely.

The level design is pretty good as well as the levels get more difficult, with new obstacles as you progress.

2 things I think could be improved are the controls, they a bit too responsive, there is no forgiveness in them, and the other is that there is no sense of urgency in the game.  For a platformer, this is normally done with a time limit, or something constantly chasing you that will cause you to lose the game if it catches up.

Thank you for the game.

I've not had the chance to try your game yet, but when test/play the games in a jam I to aim to play 1 decent run, for a game that has controls to adapt to, or where the challenge means I die quickly, I will keep trying until I figure out the mechanics.  The run after this point tends to be what I call the decent run.

I then play until I die or beat the game, but because I want to play as many as I can, around daily life, I don't keep playing to finish the game.

I will try to have a look at your game and if I do make it to the end I'll let you know.