Overview
I enjoyed playing this game more than not. The game had strong points that encouraged me to explore deeper than my initial impression, and I didn't come across anything that completely broke my immersion or made me want to quit. I feel that this project generally succeeds when taking into consideration the time frame and objective, although the majority of the game's content is somewhat lackluster in a vacuum. However, there isn't much to dislike about what you added or the choices you made. In fact, I think you nailed most of the components down fairly well--it's just that there's too much missing from the game as a whole, and it sometimes came across as perfunctory. It seems to me that your idea was very ambitious and that you were ultimately forced to make a lot of concessions in a "race to the finish line." Having a grand idea and coming up short can be a reflection of a great attitude towards game development, however, as it's indicative of enthusiasm, goals, and a willingness to improve! Overall, I think you accomplished a lot here as a developer and I think you're moving swiftly in the right direction. Whether you decide to move on or continue working on this, it's a substantial accomplishment and something to be proud of, and I look forward to seeing what you make in the future!
Gameplay
The introduction was sufficient to get me started, albeit with a little extra effort on my part to learn how the enemies and ui elements behaved. The baseline for this game is a turn based battler, which I was very surprised to see from a solo dev in a 3 day game jam, lol. These games have a ton of moving parts and thus rely very heavily on a strong UI, which is imo the hardest game component to design and perfect. I encountered bugs and other seemingly unintended game interactions rather frequently, especially ones concerning the mutation tree and enemy behavior (if you decide to continue working on this project, I'd be happy to list the exact bugs I found and possible fixes for them.) The game is, as you noted, wildly unbalanced. I never once felt threatened, or even more than mildly affected, by any of the enemies I encountered. I only recall being hit once by a spit enemy for less than a tenth of my healthbar, and after I learned that enemies could do their spit attack, it was also trivial to avoid. The options and information provided to the player are overwhelmingly powerful. Being able to freely skip turns to utilize zugzwang* makes the player almost invincible (*if you aren't familiar with this, do yourself a favor and look it up, it's a major concern in turn based games like this.) The enemies aren't threatening, aggressive, or unpredictable enough, and they'll even clear themselves out if you just stand there and do nothing. This is something I'd definitely recommend focusing on if you continue with this game. Enemies should be scary! Give them global range attacks. Let them run around the map and deal massive damage out of nowhere. As long as you give the player enough control to make meaningful gameplay decisions, less deterministic interactions would really breathe a lot of life into this.
Theme
I'm running out of room so I'll keep the next sections somewhat brief. I liked your interpretation and I think it fits well into the rest of the game. Besides bugfixes and simple balancing, I don't think you need to make any major changes to the tree itself--I would, however, change the way pickups work, or at least make them despawn so the player can't just run away and come back when it's safe.
Aesthetics
Not much to comment on here. I think you did a well enough job with the little time you had for this, but I think you'd benefit immensely from working with a dedicated artist (and maybe another programmer responsible for things like UI) in the future.
Sound
My comments about art also apply here. If you haven't dabbled in music and sound design already, and if it isn't something you really look forwards to, you're better off working with a musician and putting your full focus towards development. It really sucks that sound, aesthetics, and theme are all their own categories, as it unfairly punishes solo devs imo. It also isn't as rewarding for people who take risks and try to make their games special, which is what game jams should be about. To balance this out, I've been giving no less than three stars for sound and two stars for aesthetics for people who clearly were not able to spend any time on them, so I gave you three for each.
Hi, thanks for giving it a go!
We unfortunately didn't get around to implementing a proper tutorial in game, so we were forced to include it on the itch.io page instead. If you decide to try it again, I'd recommend reading the hints there. The game was balanced around the character's strong movement options, and it's impossible to utilize them efficiently when the objective is unclear.
Regardless, we're glad you enjoyed it in its current state!
Thanks for the feedback!
We actually pivoted our theme from momentum to mutation by ditching more complicated movement in favor of a procedurally generated world. It was difficult to get it working in such a short time frame, so we didn't get the chance to add as much content to the game as we'd have liked to. The booster pads were a last minute addition, and we were able to add them in quickly using a hacky quirk with the proc gen engine. The boosters are actually spawned by the same object generator as the coin and fuel pickups--when you step on one, you're "collecting" an item!
Thanks for featuring our game in a video, we didn't expect it to get any traction outside the jam community!
I'm happy to hear that the map generation was a strong point. Our developer TrulyChoo sunk a lot of hours into it, and the tricks he used to make it work are pretty ingenious given the timeframe. We're new to game development and this was our first jam, so it was definitely a stretch goal for us.
Remapping the controls and adding some more direction including a proper tutorial are definitely top priorities if we continue development further. Besides that, I'm glad you enjoyed it in its current state!
Thanks for trying it out!
This was our first game jam together (for most of us, our first game ever) and we were really pressed for time, haha. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to add as much content to the game environment as we wanted. We planned on adding map obstacles and enemies at the very least.
As for the proc gen, it isn't based on a noise density function--it doesn't control individual tiles at all, actually. We have a collection of preestablished map sectors that are pieced together on a grid, and we use a pathfinding algorithm to verify that it's possible for the player to traverse the map. The bottleneck here, and the reason maps often look similar, is just that we didn't have time to create lots of unique sectors. There are around 20-30 as it stands. From a game design perspective, it was difficult to create additional sectors without ruining the flow of the game. Sectors are balanced around how likely they are to be included in a successful pathfinding traversal; for instance, sectors that typically result in a dead end generally have more coins, fuel, and booster pads, so the player is rewarded for exploring and isn't punished for taking a wrong turn. Booster placement is also a consideration, as we want to encourage smooth movement between sectors by raising the height of ceilings above them.
Not bad, I just wish there was more! Sound, menus, etc... make up a big part of the player experience and can really take a game to the next level. It's hard to polish a game in only 3 days, but it's something to think about for your next jam.
Also... that game thumbnail... not saying it is or isn't, but keep in mind that many people have strong feelings about presenting AI generated art as original assets. AI amalgamates real artists' work to match the prompts it's provided, so there are concerns about fair use and stealing art. You don't want to discredit the real work you put in to creating the rest of the game...
Overall a really well rounded submission! The art and the sound are nice, and the amount of features surprised me given the timeframe. The menus are particularly neat, really ties the game together. I didn't have time to delve too far into the gameplay unfortunately, but I liked what I saw so no complaints there. Good job!
I like your interpretation of the gamejam theme! The game world is easy on the eyes, and the different gun types are neat. The hue variation effect on the enemies and the walking animations are nice touches.
I can't rate the gameplay because I don't think the game ran as intended on my end... bullets from both the player and the enemies would either disappear immediately or decelerate and freeze after a short distance. If you want to keep working on this project, let me know and I'll give you my specs to help fix the bug. I didn't hear any sound from the game either, in case there was supposed to be.
Gameplay and sound aside, nice work!
Thanks, I'll pass your comment on to our musician!
Totally agree with the movement and the lack of a proper tutorial, these were the two main features we ran out of time to work on.
If you decide to try it again, the map is a 3x3 grid of sectors with exits on the left and right. Going from one side to the other gives you 7,500 points and generates a new map (which contains a new set of coins and batteries). The map generator script verifies that at least one possible path exists.
Generally, you'll get the most points by primarily doing deliveries and only straying from the path if you see a lot of coins. Dead ends aren't that bad; because these are typically sectors with few possible connections to other nodes, we balanced them out by adding lots of coins and boosters so your score won't be affected too much.
Thanks!
We actually had a different game idea for momentum, we just went for a more liberal interpretation of the mutation theme. We wanted to avoid the word mutation's typical connotations as we figured most teams' games would have something to do with biology, anatomy, or evolution, and doing that wouldn't make for a very unique game idea. Instead, we wanted to incorporate the theme as a gameplay mechanic, and we decided to use proc gen to "mutate" the world environment throughout gameplay. Given more time, we could've fleshed this mechanic out much more, but we're happy with how it turned out considering the scope of the project :)
