itch.io

Thank you for playing, and for your insightful feedback!

Definetly well thought through! Loved the death animation and the music!

Saw a streamer play it. Loved the quirky humor! The music was great and fitting. Loved the details like the flag morse code.

The low-poly art is really nice, i love the colors you have chosen, and the fire animation!

I think you could have implemented some way for us to regain ammo slowly over time, cause once i ran out, there was nothing i could do except stand int eh way of the snowmen so they could kill me.

It would also have been wonderful if there was some way to chose your mouse sensitivty, since it was very hard for me to get any precision with the default settings.

Didn't hear any sounds, it would have greatly improved on the experience.

Very good effort though, working on your own. Keep up the good work!

The environment was really nioce, love the carefully balanced color scheme.

Unfortunately my eyes kept staring at the numbers about to come up, i didn't have much time to see the nice animations happening, or the monsters. Had to play again, a bit less intense to appreciate the details.

Perhaps you could have placed the number lower towards the ground?

Love the sound effects and the intense xylophone music!
The tempo of the game seemes fast at first, but then after a while it felt more natural.

It has a nice comondore64-vibe to it!

Only thing i wished for was some indication for when a pedestrian is on its way to becoming soaked, so you could anticipate it better.

Ty!

Thanks, AJ! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I had fun with this one! Thought the collisions were very well made.

I also loved that you could get the laser-beams to hit eachother, it felt so satisfying!

Only issue i had with the game was that as soon as i changed direction, the background music volume ducked (like a side-chain), it became annoying after a couple of minutes.

I expressed it in the wrong fashion, sorry.

What i meant was that i was annoyed that i often got stuck on 90 degree corners. I would have preffered their colliders to be rounded, instead of sharp. But that's just my personal prefference.

Thank you for the uplifting critique!

Thank you, that means a lot! 

You don't have to launch an investigation. ;) Just give this video 2 minutes of your time:
Vector normalization explained in 2 minutes.

I had no idea this was happening, how did you test this?
The player sprite moves visibly faster in the diagonal directions. You can tell by letting an army follow you first in the cardinal directions, and as soon as you start going diagonally, they fall behind (and de-spawn).

The red area to the south-east kills me when i try to walk into it, happened on seweral occasions.

I'm glad you appreciated the thoughts and tips. =)

The back story set the intention nicely for the player. It was a very nice addition to make the player choose how un-selfish they should be!

Movement was nice and smooth, but it anoyed me many times that i got stuck on walls.

This was one of my favorit games so far!

Loved the ability to revolt against the system, that sense of defiance is inherent in our psychology.

The hints left by Hackerman, through his internal dialogue was also well constructed, and led me on the track of exploration.

The minimalistic graphics worked perfectly for this game (the little flying bugs were especially nice).

I liked it! The art style in monochrome is very nicely done!

I think some simple background music would have added to the experience.

After reading your thoughts on GameJamming in the Discussion section, and then reading between the lines, i devised that you are dedicated to improving your game development skills. Here are some constructive points i observed while playing your game.

Mechanics:

Why do i move 50% faster while moving diagonally?

- There is a simple way to normalize movement-speed for all directions in Unity:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-do-i-used-normalized-my-diagonal-movement.30...

There should be some similar method for Java: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/144566/how-can-i-make-diagonal-movem...

Why is there no mini-map?

- This world is huge, and very similarly decorated, so it would have helped greatly.

Why do i die when i walk out into the red area in the south-east, but when i try walking into it in the north-west, it didn't kill me?

- A better alternative, according to me, would have been to add screen bounds there instead.

Graphics:

Why can i walk over the river?

- Colliders for water, and adding a bridge?

Why is there a tree in the river/on the houses?

- If you auto-place environment details, why not make the placing conditional?

What is the pitch black ground supposed to represent?

- Desert , rock or swamp would have been preffered.

Why can't i pass behind the crown of a tree, even though it should be on a higher elevation then the player?

- Making the tree-sprite from 2 different sprites, where the trunk is a collider, and the crown is on a sprite layer above the player might have helped.

Why are there anti-aliasing effects on some graphics, like they've been greatly up-scaled?

- You could have painted all the sprites to scale instead.

Tips:

I would definetly recommend you start to learn Unity, if you want to make better games. Can be a daunting learning curve in the beginning. But Unity brings a thousandfold of tools that solve many common game-dev problems such as: Tile-mapping, Prefabs, Animator, Terrain-editing and collider and physics, and countless others. Don't learn all the tools for the sake of learning. Do a project, and learn each tool in the course of development. Like building a map with Tilemap Editor. Animating your characters with the animator, etc.

When painting sprites, adding 1 more darker color to each region of color (tree, rock, sword, enemy body) really helps to bring depth to the sprite. Shading is not especially difficult. Imagine the light being an eye, looking at the model from one direction (in a 3D space). What the eye cannot see should be shaded (painted in a darker tone).

I'm glad you like the art-style! It was my first time trying to make a cohesive 3D environment, and i was so worried that some acpects would clash! ^^

The historial back story was awesome, and you really put in effort making the pixel art, it shows!

Loved the narrrative, and taking the alternate-timeline approach is such a strong card, executed beautifully here!

Great to hear there was that sense of satisfaction upon realizing the solution! ^^

Thanks for your kind words! It surely is hard-mode to try and figure it all out while being chased around, difficult to think clearly. Observing the environment without the fear of death looming over you is recommended. ^^

The visual style is very uniform and stylized in an impressive way!

Love the camera-effects and lense-distortions also.

The use of the lore was really neat and humourus! Keep up the great work!

Teh controls were great! But i really miss some background music! Felt so lonely in thet old forsaken temple complex. =)

Awesome game design! Loved the Easter egg! As well as the feeling of progressing and upgrading your gear and capabilities, true Zelda-fashion!
I managed to bypass one of the gates, before i had the key, however.

Upon play-testing the game for the first time, while we were making it, i got stuck there too! We might be soul-mates. ;)
Press either Esc-key, or J-key (J for Journal).

I really enjoyed the environment, and the untold mystery behind it all. It had a solitary and eerie vibe, especially when you turned to grey. But unfortunately i couln't collect 60 gold to see the end.

The steering was incredible! Well done!

DIfficulty level: Insane!

I enjoyed the excitement of it! And the news-headlines were very witty!

I noticed you can sell your house as many times as you like.

It would have been awesome if one could upgrade the starting screen, so it feels like you're living in luxury, if one does well.

Would love to see this concept expanded upon!

This was very well constructed! Tight and charming animations and beautiful sprites!

I missed hearing sea-shanty background music. ^^

The concept didn't excite me greatly, since you didn't incorporate any interesting twist. All the mechanics were quite expected. The upgrades were once of the nicest features!

Loved the mechanics! But the Cacti are cheating, passing through pillars! =/

I liked the artwork, even though the scale was way off many times. The main characters movement was nerve-wreckingly slow.

It got hard way to fast, for my taste. Would have been smoother to let them come in waves, so that the player feels a sens eof acomplishment of at least having defeated 1-2 waves before failing.

Liked the music and the SFX.

HAHA! Such a threatening tyrant! This was fun! =D

The graphics of the game-board was nice!

It annoyed me greatly that the acorn launched from seemingly random spots, and not where i aimed it upon launch.

User interface-feedback was a bit lacking.

Guldstjärna för den mulliga Gobin-princessan en får pussa när en vinner! =D

I loved the saturated colors of this art-style, and the reflections in the water was a nice touch, as well as the camera-movement and animations!

I realize you didn't have time to finish it, but in my mind, you should have us go back to the quest-giver to claim the gold reward, THAT is a complete quest-cycle. ^^ (Edit: And wouldn't have taken long at all to implement.)

Huge gold-star for the Commondore 64-like intro screen!

Killed every rabbit, every ent, every bush, spoke to every NPC, got nowhere, didn't understand how to use other items, or what their purpous was. Nice movement and inteface. Dialogue was lacking.

Thank you for taking the time to formulate this nice and balanced critique! We appreciate it greatly! ^^
UI-feedback, yes definetly on the todo-list!
Love your description of the two phases of gameplay, or tempos. We were aiming for that sense of acomplishment you feel after a period of struggles, and you formulated it perfectly!
I'm so glad you liked the art! I had fun creating that 1920s atmosphere, and Robin did an awesome job with animating my sprites. =D

For me, who aren't especially good at platformers, this was a hard game!
I enjoyed the creepy music and the teleportation mechanics was a very nice touch! Although it did disturb me that i could pass through the teleporter (that it was a blocking object).

I never managed to get further then 3 levels up, but i would have liked to see the ending!