itch.io

There's an expression "Great minds think alike", maybe we should collaborate next jam! I have no hesitation in saying that the idea of a vampires survivor like game for a magic game is simply pure genius. :) Nice implementation. The music was a pleasant surprise too.

Last year whilst I was out walking on the beach, a spider dropped on my head. I wondered how that could happen, until now! It was probably this one! Despite my previous experiences with flying spiders, I loved this game. I think with Flappy Birds type games the controls are really important. They have to be difficult but still responsive enough to the player that they feel it is their fault they died. The controls are spot on. Also, love the cover art.

Game jams are always difficult with time, I hope you get time to work on it some more. A few more hitboxes and sprites and I think you're there. It's great that you managed to work in a menu system, mini-tutorial, and the story pages. In terms of the game if you get more time to work on it, my tip would be to add a slightly random amount to the angle when the enemies shoot at you - that will make them seem more accurate when the player is closer and less accurate when the player is far away. Then you could position the enemies so the challenge is for the player to find somewhere good to shoot from.

Thanks. Yes, it has a midi player. It doesn't yet do some of the rarer midi commands because it was unnecessary for a game jam with the time available. I also want to create VST files so that you can make music in a DAW with good approximations of RIVES waveforms. When I have those things done I'll open source the code. The player is a c and include file - then people can either drop it in their own things or modify as they wish. I guess if I google a bit I might be able to work out how to compile it into a library that lua can call too.

Nice, seems like a pretty faithful reproduction

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Greetings from a ninja with a love of round numbers who is, therefore, very happy with my score. A nice game. Fruit drawings are good. Love the attention to detail in the naming in the outcard. "bananas unbunched".

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This seems like a great start to a game. I had some issues with it crashing and my idiot brain didn't realise you need to build roads first :)

Good job. I wish I was better at trivia! I echo the comment about momentum for the ship, it's really clever to implement it but does make it hard to line up because I often find myself correcting for overshooting where I want to be. A suggestion might be that it could be quicker slowdown in the horizontal axis and the slow down slower on the vertical axis (in line with the thrusters). 

I remember playing the original! Nice game. It definitely reminded me of the atari version. Possibly there's a bit more flying through tight gaps than the original. I won't post my score because AleisterCodely has already posted a much better one and I'd be embarrassed :)

Genuinely interesting concept. I really like what you said in the reply to the other comment about wanting to generate an interesting "video" to watch. To my mind that seems to fit really well with the rives concept. Good job.

I forget what my highest score in testing was, but I'm pretty sure you beat it! Good tip about the ship size, thanks.

Thanks. I ended up spending way too much time on music but it was a fun distraction. I wrote code that could read a midi file (though in reality time meant it doesn't do every midi command possible yet, just the ones I needed). This meant I could use Mixcraft (a DAW) to compose a song (with my limited musical talent) and export it. The idea originally was that I would make a VST that could generate the waveforms that RIVES has so that it would sound the same when I make the music in Mixcraft. But in the end time meant I just used a chiptune VST that was close enough to the sound. In the track names for the midi I then put the parameters for the waveforms I want to use in RIVES. On starting my music code for the game will read the midi file that gives it all the notes and the data to work out the time to play it and the length. Then every frame it simply calculates the time and determines if it should play a note. If it should then it loads up the right parameters from the track name to create the waveform, adjusts it to be the right length, and then plays it.

It works with the midi commands for a Mixcraft export. To release it I'd really want it to be complete and have all the midi commands and preferably the VST so the music sounds the same in a DAW and imported into a game. If I get the time to finish those bits then I will, I really enjoyed working the sound stuff.

To answer the question and address some points others have made - from my perspective the comments are great to tell someone they've done something impressive for the time. The star ratings I try to keep more objective to facilitate comparisons. I don't find that very easy though as whilst we all have the same constraint of time, it's often comparing apples with oranges. Games developed with different amounts of pre-made elements and teams all dramatically alter the ability for someone to scope and adapt to circumstances, and in the case of teams can dramatically alter the man hours available. To ignore these things entirely would be for game jams to tend away from having individual developers - so I take the approach that where I am unsure if I should give a game, say, a 4 or 5 in a category then I will tend to give individual developers the benefit of the doubt.

Thanks and well spotted. Yes. 

I've seen a couple of the 'switch to the other dimension to avoid dieing' type runner games in this jam, but what I really like about yours is you can see a bit of what you're going to get when you do switch first. Still hard, but I thought that aspect was better done in yours than others.

Understandable. I think the way itch.io works didn't help here as it hid the instructions when I clicked run game. So I opened a new tab to have them available and then had another go. Really enjoyed it. Nice puzzle game.

So, thought I'd leave a comment myself. A general theme is that you can just spam the space bar to fire and concentrate on jumping. You can, but it makes it harder for you. Each axe thrown/shot causes a hole in the sky/ground above. So you have much more jumping to do and you're more likely to come across difficult jumps (although it prevents all impossible ones). I left it in as a play style the player could choose but coded it out as effective by that relationship between the axes and the holes. It's just not visually clear that's what's happening (there are some technical reasons for that) and maybe the dialogue can point it out. Basically it needs communicating better. And that's a great point for me to learn and make improvements in it. I think I missed also that in the learning curve for the game spamming axes probably is easy for a while and then the player can get locked down in that idea - a kind of false local optima of their gameplay. If I progress it further I'll see what I can do about that and there have been some great suggestions. Anyway...my main reason for a comment of my own here is that as I've played it too much I wanted to drop a video of the two different styles of play in back to back sessions as I think it clarifies it:

Thanks. You made the map - the more you hit space, the more gaps appear in the upper level :) I love the idea of ammo or something so the upper one affects the lower one too. I'm not sure I'll take it further than the concept it is now, but if I do then I'll include something like that.

Good job for your first game jam. I also had the bug where you could move into yourself that somebody else mentioned but also couldn't repeat it - there's something odd when you press keys quickly one after another (I think when it happened to me I pressed up and left quickly. Ignoring backing into yourself, sometimes if you press two keys quickly it ignores one). For more general things if you want to continue working on it - sounds and music would add a lot and perhaps make it faster or ramp up the speed quicker. 

Oh it's like every game that's 3D that gives me motion sickness if the camera moves. Nothing to do with your game, just me and my stupid brain being overly sensitive.

You can put a script on a light in Unity and use it to adjust the intensity (or other settings). I've not tried it but something like this https://gist.github.com/SorraTheOrc/496e2abacbe2d2bde661b55af71add92 , if it's a path you want to go down. 

This is very slick. What's there feels like a completed game. Would love to play this when you've had time to do everything you envisioned.

Very clever idea. Maybe a bit too clever for me :) I struggled with getting used to how much I need to keep track of. But I can see others mastering it. 

Endless runners for the win! :) It's was good and didn't take me long to work out what I'm meant to do. I found the background scrolling when it went faster made my eyes go squiffy but that's probably just me.

This is the perfect employee. You can get him to work 24/7 just by pressing 'e' every so often. 

I'm worried that this might prove that working could be fun. It most certainly proves that I need more coffee. Good game that you can add more tasks to in the future.

Great idea. Like others I thought the countdown window was the virus until I read the comments here. Also I jumped off the top of the screen and disappeared - I guess it's a Mac thing :D Also disappointed about the lack of essay - as punishment please hand in your essay assignment of 5000 words on why essays are essential in game jam games by monday please. Good job.

I think this is a fun concept. Good work in a game jam timeframe. If you want to take it further afterwards then it would be fun to focus on more on that concept. So as somebody already mentioned - maybe you can jump up through clouds but they stop you from falling down. That'll make it feel like clouds are more fluffy and not like ground. If you had time you could also add indicators of height. So maybe you can see a bit of a mountain in the background to start with. Then higher up the occassional bird flies past, higher still an airplane, and higher still a space rocket. So many possibilities. Good job.

I only scanned the first page of comments - but maybe I'm the first one to say it - does this mean I'm pregnant now? :)

I think it's a great concept and I like the simple design. I think improvement suggestions have already been covered by others - it seems it should be the kind of game where you get the satisfaction of having rotated just in time to match that color up to catch the....erm...particle thingies and just got there in time. Then the speed and smoothness of the enemies and rotation influence that feeling quite a bit and at what point you force the player to take a hit from the wrong color (if you want that at all).  For a game jam game it's great, and the core is there, I hope you go on to tweak and enhance it later.

I'm a fan of this interpretation of the theme (it's unique in the games I've come across so far). These sort of 3D games give me motion sickness so it was a bit of a battle between that and my desire to explore more :) I genuinely enjoyed exploring and looking for gaps. For movement I ended up using a combination of the game controller and mouse to look around. Originally it felt a bit like my squashed down princess should be able to get under the gates - it was the first thing I tried because her body is less width than the hole between the bars. Then I turned around and learnt what I should do. I got the thought that more dynamic/flickering lighting may help make some of the gaps a bit more noticeable as the light would change a bit differently. But you may or may not want to do that given the balance in the game is the finding of where to go - it might make it too easy. But good game. I don't think I got anywhere near the end of the game but I also wonder why she didn't ask the guard for an envelope and a stamp then flatten herself and post herself home :)

This is well done. It starts out confusing, but intentionally so. First I was like - hang on, I can't go backwards and I was a bit against it because that's not what you expect from a platform puzzle type game. But I think it makes for an interesting design and puzzles so I definitely came around to it. I think it would be good to have the character stop just a little bit quicker after I release the key though - a couple of times I just slightly overshot where I wanted to stop and if you can go back on a regular game that's not noticeable but when you can't it's a little frustrating - nothing major though. The same with the going from one side of the screen to the other mechanic - at first it confused me as it's like walking into the abyss sometimes. But I also think that's intentionally so and I picked it up and liked it quite quickly. I didn't find any bugs. I did find a cat the meows nicely but I didn't stroke it as I don't know if it's had its vaccinations :)

This is the kind of beautiful game I make....in my dreams :) The lit up character sprite is a bit of a trend, but one I happen to really like and the layers with the parallax work great with it being dark behind and then the moon being bright again at the back. It seemed to me that the rotation keys could do with being a bit more enthusiastic in what they do, but I did quite enjoy face planting the poor guy time and time again :)

There's a sea of general comments, some for the wrong reasons, some because maybe (as I have done on a couple of occasions) someone found something okay but don't really have any suggestions or the dev clearly already has future plans in mind, and some I'm sure because the comments being non-anonymous can have a bit of kickback if you accidentally upset someone (the format as a whole discourages honesty a little bit).

I've noticed what a few people do in feedback is to give a clear indication they've played the game. by mentioning something they would not know if they hadn't. Then list any bugs they came across (which is an easy win for a dev to fix later), any more general issues, and suggestions. These I find the best feedback and I've tried to take onboard this sort of style when I'm doing it. I wish a bit that itch.io didn't have comment fields for this but some kind of mini survey/standard questions like "What did you enjoy", "Were there bugs", "Were there other issues", "Do you have ideas to improve the game or ideas for paths for future development". It would discourage those not giving genuine feedback and give some direction for those giving genuine feedback.

Awesome. I could imagine actually playing this back then. My only two issues are I couldn't find the slot to insert a coin and also I came last because I kept trying to see if I could take a shortcut in case you missed any :)

Yes an No. I'm a perfectionist, as I suspect most of us are, and I wanted originally to do more. This is my third game jam and the first one where unexpected real world (life in 3D :) ) commitments stacked up. So I wanted the game to be more but I'm proud of my time management and ability to rescope so there's still a viable and playable game along the lines I wanted. From the previous jams I've tried to improve upon feedback and ratings in this one, so that remains to be seen. But I think also this is one of the beauties of game jams other than seeing what you can produce in a short time frame, you get to take the kernel of an idea and get feedback on if it is something viable you should keep working on after. There was also a side project in mine - in that I created my own tool to render 3D models out to 2D sprite sheets for animations. That makes things a lot easier for me in the future - so I'm probably more proud of the tool to be honest :)

Nice game. At one point one of the options seemed to hang, then suddenly it started working again. But I could no longer build anything. Then a bit later an option hung again. For a one person game jam game there's a lot to keep in mind and debug though. Only thing I would say on that is the second edit doesn't sound like a game breaking bug fix but more gameplay improvement. I wish I'd seen it before that to understand what you achieved in the jam (which is obviously a lot) better. But anyway, you set yourself a big challenge and I think you succeeded.

For art it's a style, and it's very well done for that style. It felt a lot like I was playing on a zx spectrum.

Yup, good idea...thanks - that connection between axes/holes could be clearer and that would definitely do it and be a more visually interesting game.

Thanks for the comments. 93.9 is a very good score. And yes - the holes are created when you throw the axes but it avoids situations that would make it impossible for the player to jump. So throwing axes makes jumping harder but never impossible - the player is always going to die but I wanted them to know it was timing that they could get better at than because this impossible situation came up.

Well, if that was the goal then it worked then as I did figure out what I needed to do. 

I really enjoyed this. Took me to the second game to realise how to use other things. It perhaps needs some post game jam bug fixing (it told me at one point I had -1 flowers and at the end I had 0 flowers when I could clearly see some and my bee did decide to hibernate behind a flower next to a rock for the last couple of minutes :) ) but a very enjoyable game. Could work well on mobile as a 5 minute time waster whilst waiting for the train.