Yeah, as one of the designers I only had control over the assets and level design. Still, as a player, I would worry about excessive set backs in a game that's already pretty difficult, but I'm sure my friends would have better insights than I do, I would defer to their expertise if they have any additional comments on that.
I personally think that the NPCs should interact more with the world at large and have different predictable behaviors. As an end state to the game, I still think the King does what he was designed to do, but he could get more enraged with more damage. I think a Janitor that would become outraged at the chaos that could alert the king would be interesting, or maybe a Cleric that could prevent spells from being cast in a vicinity but is completely unbothered by the Blugger or the player, so as the player you'd have to figure out how to keep the NPCs in such a way that they are driven away from the chaos or the chaos is driven away from them. With the tools the player has right now, I don't think that would be any more engaging than just having the King, but if the world at large was something the player could controllably interact with with more thematic portions of the castle segmented by a variety of sizes of passage ways that could be opened or closed, I envision that could be a fun challenge of trying to manage the flow of the ball with the patterns of the people.
Were you charging the force push/grab or just clicking? We've gotten a couple of comments along the lines of that, so I just want to make sure we direct attention to the proper place to address that criticism if it was the instruction that was unclear or the controls themselves. Also, I think the jump increases speed, but I've also caught myself holding the shift key on occasion. Thanks for your feedback and for playing our game!
With how much chaos is created by the Blugger, making it so that other objects stun the player would likely be more frustrating that enjoyable since there really aren't any interesting consequences of that action and waiting to regain control can be an infuriating mechanic that wouldn't really be in service to the fast-paced feel we were going for with the game. I would agree that there needs to be more ways to interact with NPCs and more end-states with those NPCs to keep things engaging, but we only had time for the one during the jam. I like the drawbridge idea, having some physics objects that could interact with the world in more predictable (or even unpredictable) ways than just flying everywhere could be fun to play with. Thanks for your feedback and for playing our game!
These were neat mechanics, I liked growing the plants, and tossing items around the stage was pretty fun. The out of control mechanics were kind of annoying in the sense that I usually was able to plant 4 seeds before losing it, and then those plants would almost immediately turn to poo. It made the back 4 plots a little bit unnecessary. Once I started turning a profit, too, there didn't seem like a clear lose condition which could have been nice. Overall, the farming aspect was really satisfying and I really liked the presentation and idea. Good work!
Thanks for playing and for the feedback! That's actually really cool that you got a barricade to work, we wanted to implement something like that but couldn't do so reliably enough to balance for it. Do you remember what room you were able to trap him in? I'd love to experiment with that a bit. We're glad you had fun!
This was really fun! I really liked chaining the slingshot in midair, even if that wasn't intentional. The firespreading mechanic is really cool, too, good job!
This was a fun variant to mini-golf, and I like that the different balls were different natural disasters. Good work on the art and aesthetic of the game!
This was a fun game! I wish that I got to the challenge a little faster whenever I restarted, because actually avoiding the obstacles was really fun! It's really hard to control, and I really appreciated that as a part of the fun. Good work!
I loved this game! I was scared it was going to be just a standard, "Watch the cats race," sort of deal, but I love the controls that you put in to influence the race. Even though my cat lost, I feel like the real winners were the cat friends I made along the way. Thank you for this, it made me really happy.
Good work for a solo project! The platforming felt solid, and the attack animation was nice. Everything felt really good, my only critique would be to up the out-of-control feeling of the story a little more so it feels like it fits the theme better. Good game!
This was awesome! I love the squishiness, I would've liked if more sideways momentum off of the ground, but once you're in the air, the controls are really nice and it's a really satisfying game to play! Good work.
This was a cool art style, and I liked that the towers spawned randomly. I think changing the hitstun to a knockback or something might be a good idea, there were many times I just barely clipped one alien and then was stuck as multiple trampled my dead corpse. Overall, this was really fun, and I liked the interpretation of the theme! Good work.
This was really interesting! I was skeptical about how the boss fight would work, but I really enjoyed it. I wish the power-ups were a little better telegraphed, because running into one that stops you from moving forcing you to start over felt more unfair than like a real puzzle, and some of the levels I had to brute force my way through. I also really liked the mouse movement, it was just a little difficult to understand what was happening starting off. I think if you put an arrow or an indicator at the front of the character that rotated to point at the mouse, it would become a lot more intuitive. Overall, good work! This is a cool concept to explore, and I really liked the ever-changing rules -- flipping from a top-down game to a platformer to vvvvv must've been quite a bit of work to get feeling right.
I think the audio was mixed nicely, and the gameplay was pretty addictive! I think more varied sheep behavior would help the game feel more, "out-of-control," instead of just relying on a hard-set game-over after so many levels. By the time I got to level 10, the sheep were moving too fast away from me that by the time I caught 1, 2 more spawned, which felt less like something I could control with skill and more like just the game telling me it was time to be done. The sleeping mechanic was an interesting idea to implement, I think you could do something really cool with that if there was some additional consequence that wasn't just, "more sheep spawn." Overall, good work!
Thanks for playing! I'm happy you appreciated the chaos, it's always one of the highlights for me and it works pretty well with the low vertex count from the low-poly graphics. I'm glad you see potential in this game! That really means a lot. If we expanded it, hopefully we'd be able to dial back that frustration a little, at least starting off. :)
Thank you for your rating and for the time on your stream! One of my teammates recommended your game to me a couple of days ago, it was a really creative way to handle movement, and it was a lot of fun. Thanks again for stopping by!
Yeah, that happens a lot to me, too. It is definitely something that skill can improve, having played the game quite a bit the past few days, but it's really difficult out of the gate and I can understand not wanting to invest that sort of time for a jam game. Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Yeah, that whole catching and releasing of the Blugger got me a lot after we published, I'm usually so surprised that I actually got the darn thing that I immediately let it go again. It'd be good if there was a buffer once you caught it before you can intentionally release it, just to get rid of that accidental catch and release. If we keep working on it, I'm sure we could get that to feel a bit better, thanks for your feedback!
Yeah, I think there are ways I could've worked on an animation that was more clear. Instead we really just had two frames of the open hand and closed hand and quickly interpolated between that, I could totally envision a growing hand or something off to the side of the screen that swoops in to catch the Blugger or something so that the depth is a little more understandable without needing to play it a whole bunch to get to that point. Also, additional NPCs would be really neat, I already have a lot of ideas for that :) Thanks again!
Thanks! Yea, that would be awesome to have some more comedic moments like that, we'll keep that in mind if we work on it further! I liked the idea of him having increasing threat levels for how much things are damaged or something like that, but we didn't get around to it. Thanks for playing our game :)
My cats were all murdered, so that's probably a good place to call it a night. The mechanics feel solid, my only complaint was that an alien was able to push me into the trees on my first playthrough so I wasn't able to protect my poor children. I don't know what I was expecting, but the aliens scared the livin daylights out of me, the sound design and creature design there is terrifying. Good work! Loved the atmosphere, loved the game.
