itch.io

I would recommend reading books and watching videos on general art and design fundamentals, especially light, colour, and proportions, and then make tons and tons of small practice artwork. Nothing too big or time consuming that you'd get attached to your mistakes, similar to doing a game jam.

Hey everyone! I just saw the rankings come out and, since this was my first jam, I wanted to take this opportunity to collect and share some thoughts on my experience.

First of all, I was beyond impressed with the quality of the other submissions. My cousin and I took turns playing all of your games for hours while I was voting, and we had a blast doing it. I was especially impressed by the variety of enemies and mechanics many games had.

Secondly, I was beyond honoured to have my submission be voted 4th overall and 1st in Art & Visuals. The feedback I received was so positive and constructive that I feel I couldn't have chosen a better jam for my first venture into the space. Coming from a programming background, to see the work I've put into the visual arts pan out in a tangible way has been a major motivator for me to get into game development more seriously.

While I will continue to make many of my own assets in the future - as growing a well rounded workflow and skillset for myself is important to me - I recognize that I neglected the gameplay and player enjoyment a lot during this jam by focusing too heavily on asset development. In next month's jam, I hope to spend more time on completing development for the gameplay loop, and I'll be spending the time between then and now hammering out a more efficient workflow for the visuals and basic gameplay elements.

I look forward to competing and cooperating with you all in future jams,

Ethan

Yeah, the sensitivity and and the text in the book were a bit much, but I ran out of time making it for the game jam. Thanks for playing!

I might, but I typically work on weekends, so I probably won't have time to do anything really cool.

I started using Godot for a similar reason (I loved python and GDScript is similar in syntax and architecture). I've played around with it for about a year, mostly proof-of-concept stuff. For example, my last project before this was a procedural world generation system that segmented land into continents and then into faction territories. This was my first asset-centric project. Most of my other stuff is just toying around with computational problems.

Wow! I still can't get past the 7th level, but I am super impressed by the mechanics. The warping and bit spawning abilities are so much fun.

Thanks, dude! I used Godot mostly because I'm most familiar with it and because I tend to prefer open-source software. The biggest con of Godot as a 3D engine - in my opinion - is that asset placement isn't very straightforward. For a game jam project like this, I think the prototyping benefits of GDScript outweighed the clunky 3D asset placement. I did see someone here on itch make a plugin that solves that, and I might consider buying that later. Otherwise, I was really happy with their 3D support and - especially with an open source project like Godot - the more people use it for a use-case, the better supported that use-case will be.

Neat! This would be a really cool way to do a Point and Click game

I love these kinds of games. This just unlocked an old memory of a CD-ROM we had on Windows Vista when I was a kid. It was a bunch of Star Wars games, and one of them was this same kind of pattern remembering games. I like how you did the visuals and the sounds.

Really neat interpretation of the theme! Trying to plan ahead for future rounds is an interesting challenge.

Doing this without an engine is really impressive! I'd love to see what you could do this way with more time.

The art is wicked! I really liked the headless zombie's pathfinding, it made it really difficult not to get surrounded.

The mechanics are really well done. I'll probably never trust anyone again, though. You better believe I wanted to collect those coins at the end more than anything.

I'm having the same issue as Flavore with the downloadable export (i.e. all levels appear unlocked, but none are playable). I did enjoy the first level and the fast paced challenges on the browser. I'll check back before rating ends to see if you've reuploaded.

Really fun to run around dodging projectiles and gathering attribute gems. I also liked the sneaky use of the Godot robot texture. I didn't even notice it until half way through my run.

The atmosphere is really cool. Without spoiling it for anyone, I enjoyed the foreshadowing of the statues ruminating about the senses. It would be cool to capture the mouse so it's easier to look backwards as you move on the track, but the loop at both ends of the tracks compensates well for that. 

Thanks! I contrained the sword's damage to a 0.3 sec period during the slash animation, because beforehand the player was doing damage during the backswing.

I hadn't thought about making a blocking mechanic, but that might work well. In my original design, completing the first level would have unlocked a sword throwing mechanic, which the player would use to hit a trigger and get through the first door, but I didn't have time to implement that.

I'll definitely need to add more complex enemies to keep up with the samurai on itch lol.

Thank you so much! The assets really ate up time, so I didn't have as much time to do level design and program more mechanics. Next time, I'll probably do the assets first, and not waste time on placeholder assets that I'll have to rework later.

I am having so much fun playing this right now. The wall jump mechanic is so satisfying, and the sound for it really brings it together.