itch.io

Now that was a feast of a metroidvania, so intelligently designed! Had a blast playing the game, from story, to platforming, to progression, it was all either good or great. The platforming and movement upgrades were very neatly/smartly designed, and while I didn't realize the sequence break that you mentioned (I saw the video in your reply to someone else), I could definitely see how the movement tech could lend itself to really interesting sequence breaks.

Don't want to nitpick too much about anything in the game since this is a jam with relatively small dev teams and all, but I would like to make just three minor criticisms. While the visual style was striking and pretty polished to look at, I feel like some of the textures' contrast could be softened, particularly the base cave tileset that you used. The stones' black outlines don't mesh very well with the relatively lighter tones of the tiles. If you ever get back to debugging this game, I feel like you could take a play out of Mojang's book and soften the stone tiles out a bit, kind of like they did with Minecraft's legacy textures for stuff like cobblestone, netherrack etc.

Another personal criticism I'd like to make is that the metroidvania aspect could maybe be a bit more pronounced? I don't know, maybe I've just played too many metroidvanias and thus know how their design directs players to the next upgrade, but the road ahead always felt very linear and obvious. I don't think I ever even saw the other upgrades' before finding the previous one in order. The existence of the aforementioned sequence break is fine and all, but I feel like there should be just a bit more baked-in backtracking just so the player's spatial awareness is tested a bit.

Also - this is easily the smallest problem and didn't really hinder my experience but I'd still like to make notice of it - the map wasn't that useful for 100%'ing the game since it doesn't actually mark where you saw an item, just where you have collected one. While I do understand it's supposed to be just for  knowing where you don't have to look, it feels a bit counterintuitive to have a map that doesn't really have much of a use until after you've already gotten said item.

But again, I really did have a phenomenal experience. This was easily one of the better metroidvanias I've played on here, and I absolutely loved the Steamworld Dig-like setup of the game's world! I only focused more on the negatives because all the countless positives are so obvious to anyone who has the honor of playing this great game.

Hey, do you happen to use any free planning/organizing sites like Trello or Miro? Our dev team found a lot of use in just having a digital "board" with all of our ideas collected together so we could - for example - decide on keeping the most integral parts of our game and throwing away any of the other things that seemed too far-fetched or unneeded for our time, skill and manpower limitations.

You can use Trello to make lists like "to do", "in progress", "done" etc. that you can then fill with cards for stuff like textures, code and sound effects with all kinds of options for checklists and jobs for different members. Miro is a whiteboard-like service which lets you draw, paste images and generally visualize any of your ideas on a community whiteboard that everyone can view in real time, so you can easily share your vision with the entire team at once. Both were absolutely integral to our process, Trello especially, and I very much doubt we would've ever managed to submit a game in playable form - if at all - if we didn't have at least some kind of organization and way to track how much of our objectives were in the "done" pile by the end of a certain week of work.

But to be fair, it is absolutely important to note that you guys had a much bigger dev team and scope in general, while we only had two developers and a composer, so I absolutely do not want to make any false comparisons here. On the other hand, that might be even more reason to invest in sites like the ones pictured above, so you can be more certain of everyone being on the same page as well as having their priorities in check as well as ready on time.

I absolutely don't want to seem like I'm talking down, though. Our project was  still quite rushed at the end and definitely wasn't the perfect final result we were hoping for, but I feel like the one thing that we did do really well as a team was this synergy in planning, although again, it's much easier said and done when you basically only have 2-3 people planning the game. But whatever the case, even if unfinished, visually your game looks absolutely amazing in many aspects and has immense potential in others. I would very much be interested in seeing the final result, if you ever come around to make it! Hope this helped! :)

Hi, thank you for the constructive feedback! With "funnelling" level design I assume you're referring to the metroidvania progression? The only few dead ends the entire world map has should lead to rooms with items. Otherwise I've tried to use the design philosophy of games like Metroid Prime 2 for progression, meaning you almost never have to backtrack outside of the immediate area to progress through to the next upgrade, so there should be as little confusion as possible.

But maybe the optional item expansion rooms could be more obviously optional? That's certainly possible, and I thank you for bringing this to my attention so I could take another look at some of the level design and reconsider if the invisible holding hand is gripping tight enough ;)

Also, I will definitely check your game out soon! :)

We have been looking into adding these features to the final release of the game after the jam on December 30th, thank you for your suggestion and for playing our game! :)

I think this is an interesting question to ponder, considering I've seen many different ways to do it here. With my question, I'm not trying to imply there's a right or wrong way to implement lore, considering every game has different stories and systems that are complimented by different ways to deliver it, but I would simply like to know what does everyone here prefer.

By far the most common way I've seen developers implementing lore in this game jam is just NPCs or other static entities telling about past events in the game world when you walk up to them, something you see in games like Hollow Knight. Another way it's been done is by just dumping the lore on those "Item obtained!" screens that explain the use that said item had before you collected it, something games like Steamworld Dig 2 also do. Furthermore - while I haven't seen this in any jam games as of yet - there are games like Axiom Verge and AM2R that practically treat lore as a collectible, Axiom Verge having its notes and ancient slabs and AM2R having its scannable Trooper logs. Then there's also the far ends of the spectrum with the Metroid Prime games allowing you to scan almost anything and everything, while others like  the original Metroid games go by the more hands-off approach of not explaining almost anything to you at all, unless you bother to speculate. And of course there's always the straightforward way of simply making the player sit through cutscenes that you can't avoid (other than by skipping), like in Metroid Dread, where the story is thus integral to your progression.

That's also a relevant question: how central do you want to make the lore be to progressing in the game, meaning if you actually need to know the lore/story to get through the game or understand what you're doing in general. Dread, for example, doesn't really allow you to play the game without at least activating its story cutscenes, and the final boss won't really make sense to you if you skip everything. There might also be NPCs that forcibly spout exposition at you if you want to proceed, like in Prime 2 and 3. Again, not saying any of these kinds of ways of teaching the player about the world's history are good or bad, I'm simply recollecting all of the different examples I can think of.

Just so you know, I'm mostly somewhere in the AM2R/Prime camp on this. You should be able to understand the game's basic premise and your goal as the protagonist without any separate lore at all, but at the same time there should be optional lore that the player has to put some effort into finding out, much like an item. I think it makes the game feel much richer, and the stories much more meaningful if you do decide to seek it out. While NPCs might make sense in some cases, they're usually placed in front of you while playing and you can't always know if they're going to tell you some actually crucial information or just recount their old days. 

While making our game - The Last Revenant - I probably took the most inspiration out of Axiom Verge's note system, although we didn't have time to make the notes go into your inventory upon touching them, so in practice they're actually closer to static NPCs that you have to stand beside to get the information out of them, like in Hollow Knight. However, a crucial difference is that - aside from a few exceptions - all of the optional lore in our game has to specifically be seeked out. Very little of it can be found on the beaten path the average player will take to the end, so you have to get off on adventures of different sizes and scales to reach it. This also benefits the positive feedback loop of the game, because it basically adds a whole different type of item to collect that can help to put the world in just as much new context as your average core upgrade would do.

Anyway, what do you guys think? When making a metroidvania with a decently sizeable story or background lore, should the approach be more hands-on or hands-off?

Definitely one of the better-looking games I've seen here, or in any game jam in general. The lore is also really interesting and fleshed out! As someone already mentioned, the performance is a bit of an issue, and a simple patchwork solution you could try implementing in the future is just adding the option to download the game, as that can often fix any lag caused by the player's browser. You definitely have something special here though, do carry on whenever you have the time!

Oh, my bad, there is a map indeed, and an excellent one at that! I'm very sorry for having missed it, I could swear I tried pressing M but maybe I misinputted and didn't bother double-checking, really odd. But thank you for pointing that out, it fortunately didn't affect the high rating I gave you regardless :)

This was pretty fun to try out! The style is amazing, it almost feels like a very high-end Atari game got transported from '80s, which is absolutely a compliment :) The colors and music are great but I feel like you could've added some simple sound effects. The level collision really doesn't have to be pixel-perfect, either, I would've preferred if you had made it a bit simple as some of the rougher geometry is a bit annoying to navigate through. Though this issue does resolve a bit by the time you get the Shift upgrade.

I got really far but eventually got seemingly locked out of progression, I lost to the tiny boss in top center corner of the map and the purple door locked behind it so I couldn't try and replay it, since I'd already used the key. I don't want to make too many negative criticisms though, because I fully understand that making a game as big as this - especially for a jam - can be quite difficult. However, probably the biggest issue for me is just the simple fact that you don't always know where to use the keys, and probably would've locked myself out even earlier if I hadn't noticed your game page's comment about the yellow boss' green door.

I still had tons of fun, though! Would love to see this get polished up for a more final release version, and I do think it was worth playing regardless.

By the way, funnily enough, the game I worked on also features a character escaping a prison-like  scifi-themed complex owned by an acronymically named "Authority" (though I named mine the "Sirius Law Enforcement Corporation" [SLEC]), and we even have our own kind of climbing mechanic! Lots of funny coincidences. Feel free to check it out if you're interested :)

Absolutely amazing game, might even be my favorite out of the ones I've played and also my pick for winner! Had an absolute blast, the game was very polished, and gets a full score in pretty much every category for me, even if it does end pre-emptively. I see you've already gotten tons of (very deserved!) positive feedback, so I won't try and repeat what others have already correctly stated, and you can assume I agree with practically everything that has already been said about this game.

That said, I only have two real critical notes to make of the game: I was very happy realizing that you could also do vertical staff pokes/slashes, including a downwards one which works very similarly to something like Shovel Knight's. However, I feel like that pogo effect could've had a slightly bigger hitbox, and maybe even work by just inputting the down input instead of requiring the attack button as well, since the hitbox made it feel like I missed attacks that should've landed. The second point I'd like to make is that I'd have loved if there was any kind of map, even one that doesn't show the locations of items would be enough, just one that reminds you of which rooms you haven't properly explored yet.

Other than that, absolutely loved my experience, and would definitely play it again if you ever manage to finish it. Hope your finals went well!

Hi, second dev from The Last Revenant's team here, you've done an incredible job with this demo! I got swept away by some other funny-looking games that I ended up rating first, but I always intended to prioritize yours as this looked really interesting even just judging by the cover art, and I wasn't disappointed. Easily one of the best sensory experiences I've had on here, with the player's animations specifically being a highlight of my experience.

The gameplay concept as well - despite being unfinished - was really intriguing and unique. Not only the bubble shooting, but switching between the water types as well. It almost feels like Metroid Prime 2: Echoes' system of juggling between Light and Dark areas to progress through the game's world, and it gives a weird amount of structure to a game world that could otherwise feel really empty and directionless.

If I could give some constructive advice, I feel like you could still tweak the freshwater physics a little. The extremely high jump isn't necessarily bad, but I feel like you don't get enough horizontal air momentum and it feels a bit janky. Also, while I fully recognize that it's a demo, and this point didn't really affect my rating, in the future you might also want to make sure to prioritize adding some kind of health/death system to the game before releasing it, because restarting the game after every death crash got pretty frustrating while I was still learning the ropes. Otherwise, I think there's some absolutely amazing stuff on display here, and would love to see it getting a finished release!

Thank you very much, we're glad you enjoyed it! Hope you have fun whenever you have the chance to resume :)

I had really fun with this one, even got addicted on my lunch break and managed to get a high score of 127! Can you beat my score?

Play super uncle bros on https://jewelselective.itch.io/super-uncle-bros now!

I think the concept was great! I'm not quite sure if this is a metroidvania, but it was a really fun platforming challenge nonetheless :) Especially considering how you can challenge yourself by choosing not to use the arrow keys to move. (By the way, since this game is controlled mostly with the mouse, it might make sense to update it to allow the use of the WASD keys as well, which feel more natural combined with the mouse.)

What an excellent art style! I hope this gets worked on more because I'd love to see the full game one day. My favorite part were the red doors :)

What an awesome little game! I really liked the simple art direction and color palette, it reminded me of something like a Downwell metroidvania, which is great, even if it did come slightly at the expense of making rooms a bit more samey. The short story was intriguing and the animations were excellent. I especially loved the player character's attack, its animation and how much polish went to really perfecting it. Beating up enemies and the fun boss at the end was a breeze in only the positive sense of the word.

The little music you've got here was also really good; I don't really like how sometimes these metroidvania just try and emulate that snappy/catchy Metroid Prime vibe by prioritizing their melody and techno sound instead of actually capturing the atmosphere, which you/your team definitely did better than most. Really enjoyed my brief time with this one. However, I'd like to make a few politely critical notes:

I personally wasn't a huge fan of how incredibly quickly you gained speed in the air, and I overshot my precise jumps a few times in places where it didn't really feel like I held it for too long. While I think the surprisingly high jump height relative to the player's size is fine, I'm not quite sure if it works alongside the very fast air speed.

I also would've hoped for a bit more interesting selection of items. Seeing as this game is quite short it could've benefited from two upgrades that were more distinct, so they'd break up the game's pace in some different ways. Maybe you could've rolled up the two current upgrades into one unlock, or given one of them to the player from the start, so you could then have another that did something completely different. It's nothing bad, not at all, but I could've seen something more making this world even more fun to backtrack. Really liked the game nonetheless!

Hi! The first boss is supposed to be defeated unarmed, and you receive the Hookshot as a reward for doing so. If you're still interested in checking the game out later, I recommend checking out where those platforms on the first boss' both sides lead, they hint at the way you're supposed to defeat it. 

But whatever is the case, it's possible that the boss is still too vague an encounter, especially so early on. We could try and mitigate it by marking the first core upgrade (the Hookshot) on the player's map, so that the player can clearly see it's just a few rooms away right after the boss room. Thank you very much for bringing this issue to our attention!

Thank you so much for all the feedback, we'll definitely keep these notes in mind while finishing the game after the jam, as we ran out of time a bit, as you can see :D

About the logbooks and lore though - which I was in charge of planning and writing - I'd like to note that I had actually written them with the assumption that they would be collectible items you could hover over on your inventory to read them at your leisure at any other point in the game, which I feel like would've made their length less of an issue, but again, there were some time constraints which forced me to only display them in the game world itself. Dividing a single note into multiple parts (across one area, for example) isn't a bad idea at all, though, and I'll definitely consider changing it to work like that! I already basically did that especially by telling Gizzal's and Enkara's very connected story in three different logs, so it wouldn't really change much.

Again, thank you for the feedback and ideas, hope you had fun!

Hi, thank you for checking our game out!

As per your request, the game is also downloadable now and runs great. If you requested the executable due to performance reasons, I'll be happy to let you know that many bug fixes were implemented in the game's latest version, which are also present in the web version now :) You can find a full list of the fixes in the game's devlog!

Goes hard as hell, should've won