itch.io

I didn't get very far into the game but I played the first 2 levels:

Did the game look and feel smooth on your machine?

Yes, but I have quite a good PC. A little bit of a weird visual tear roughly in the centre of the scren when I jumped around half the time, this was on a 144hz monitor.

Could you navigate the levels without confusion?

Kind of, I don't see the point of the very zoomed in state and could have done with a level of zoomed out more or even 2 more levels of zoomed out, but the level map UI made it easy to cross reference.

Was the game too easy/challenging?

I didn't play for very long because I don't really play platformers, but it was good so far. 

Did you have fun playing?

Yes, I liked the music and the sound of the crab/ the fact crabs move sideways and the theme feels nice and original.

All other feedback is greatly appreciated as well!

I was a bit confused why there were mushrooms in a beach theme. 

Wasn't sure if the fish/platforms were damaging me as they seemed to be but I couldn't see any indication of current HP. I think enemies need more obvious animations and player needs screen tint for damage or a heart UI system, since it seems you don't die in 1 hit.

The controls UI screen is really good. (And also nice to see controller support too, I played with keyboard  only and the controls felt good, although W + S controlling zoom was a bit weird initially.)

Thanks a lot for the review!

Not operator error thats my bad - research cards you unlock from the shop are still in shop mode and therefore bugged when in the hand, whoops. 

Cheers I need to play and review games still and will start with yours :) 

Thanks for the review!

Yes a tutorial is definitely in the works. Tooltips and general popups also for sure will be included at some point.

Thats a lot of useful and thoughtful feedback, thanks a lot.

I can call the countries a mix of existing countries like New America but I wasn't sure which countries to include, feel bad for any I miss out aha. The lore reasons are the the end of the world has happened and nothing of the old countries before the climate apocalpyse remain, perhaps I can include this somewhere.

Whoops, will fix that +2 research card bug, it doesn't get reset to a normal card before being added to the deck, scale and click listener are set for the "add card to deck" screen still.

Thanks for the review. 

Yes I guess starting with a bunch of objectives that you can fail can be demotivating.

 I will add the ability to see your deck and that will show that the players starting deck has cards specific to water generation, if you dilute your deck with cards from other sources early it will probably be possible to lose the whole game (too) early.

I have a guided tutorial being developed which will help in some aspects, but I think also from this feedback I will ensure the first hand you can draw will always have at least one non research card and one research card. 

I am bad at these kind of games so capped out at 2min playtime phase 3 as my best attempt.. but it was a lot of fun and only had minor issues with the controls (rotating with QE while using WASD basically made me rotate a lot less than I should have, I guess this might be a non-issue on controller). 

Ending UI screen was really cool! As was the SFX in general, especially on dashing near enemies.

Some CC is you could make the outer skybox be something nicer to match the polish of the rest of the game, and maybe have some sort of Pulse thing go across the arena/ change the texture of the arena on progressing stages.

But nice work! Maybe make the capsule something more cinematic from your game as it doesn't look very good IMHO, the quality of your game is far superior than what I would expect from the capsule :) 

Awesome yep combat looks fixed in that build, just had a quick go :D
I just meant I did not rush into combat ASAP because I was on the look out for crafting a weapon, but in the jetty area I decided to combat despite that so I could loot some things. Now I see I actually started with the knife anyway and combat is a lot less scary than I thought, hehe ^^' 

Was pretty good! Gameplay was very short because I die very quickly.
1. No Comment

2. If 7 isn't allowed I'll say 6 for fun but it was also equally fustrating because I sucked :P

3. Mobile game given current scope but controls will need changing

4. Yes decent UI, no complaints.

Here's my CC

• Theres something about the controls/ size of the arena along with collision of the player which makes it feel a bit clunky imo.
• There is a bug with the menu where clicking on the button doesn't change anything in the menu screen, only after navigating away.
• Sound is quite jarring (partly a volume thing, needs a slider to make it less because it hurts my ears when I kill things.
• Needs a "noob" mode where Red Johnny doesn't instakill you, and where spawns of non red johnnys are a bit less intense.

Great game, great level of complexity and polish, and it was a lot of fun until I encountered a gamebreaking bug in my first combat. ^^;

I was attacking with a knife and was allowed to keep clicking and attacking past my mana emptying, and after killing the zombies in a single turn because of this, the combat failed to exit and thus I was stuck inthe combat with 3 dead enemies who didn't take any actions each turn. 

As a side note, I put off combat for a while because I hadn't crafted a weapon, but there seems no way of guaging the enemy zombie card strength relative to your own on a fresh playthrough, I think when you pick up a rock/knife etc or something that can be used in battle the game needs to tell you, OR the game needs to start with a scripted trivial combat like in Pokemon.

The ingame polish and artwork looks really great, and I don't think your capsule art does it justice.. The purple background doesn't match the color pallete in-game and makes it look like some cheap halloween flash game IMHO. I'd definitely also try and get some sort of card/paper aesthetic into the capsule.

Movement was a little bit confusing until I realised W wasn't true north, at which point it made sense. I read your DevLog, and only being able to move one square at a time probably seems to be a good thing to enforce, and the movement control system works very well as is at the moment, so I don't think it really needs redoing as a system as it is exactly what I would expect of the game at the moment.

I like the game a lot, its a great twist on boggle! (Have not played the other game it is based on) the campaign felt very easy compared to endless mode, which i did 2 times and my PB was 10.
I completed the campaign with over 400/500 health remaining, but I guess for players who are new to the concept the campaign needs to be fairly easy.

I do agree with the vowel thing, I think it should be weighted to give more vowels if you get unlucky with RNG because then you are just waiting for them to spawn in. (Or maybe just have a way to speed up the deteriation so instantly get a new hex on pressing spacebar to skip for example).

Congrats on getting the dragging so nice and the total level of polish is great too!

Thanks for playing and commenting!

Right, I should probably add pollution generation per - region on the regions UI too! 

You basically completed all the gameplay there is right now and then died to hitting the pollution cap.. I need to do some more work around making that more obviously the lose condition.

Thanks for the feedback on the initial objectives feeling too rough, will definitely be changing that too.

Thanks for writeup! 

Yes I agree about the playing cards issue.. it's partly a balance of the cards themselves issue but I will experiment with limiting actions per turn and increasing card draw, part of my reasoning for low draw initially was max hand size needs to be fairly low because my cards have a lot of text and aren't easily parsable at a glance, which may also require solving!

The dialogue is hillarious, good job. I like the graphics and music & am keen to play more :) 

The combat system seems like an interesting idea, it seems a bit stressful if you aren't just spamming [enter] - [enter] - [key combo] to always hit the first enemy, but its definitely a nice change from the standard JRPG turn based thing.

I got stuck because I couldn't figure out the code for the door past the first enemy ngl.. could I have a hint? I had thought I had talked to everyone in the inn + town square prior and didn't pick a possible code. Also its a bit weird that delete on the password input box is Ins key rather than delete or backspace for me, possibly a bug?

I really like the lore and all the artwork + transitions! Little details like turning the TV on and then off when you decide to leave at the start really feel polished.
I know you have italicised the stream of conciousness / exposition parts of the MC but perhaps they could be even more obvious, like different background and/or different color text just to make it even clearer? 

Also I know its a VN so I guess the MC will be appearing in various shots, but I am casting my vote to make the gender customisable :) I can make an exception for other games that are 3rd person RPGs but it feels weird playing text driven narrative as the opposite gender. Also love interest gender being customisable probably also should be a consideration for you?

I guess you can ignore the above if you are not intending on commercialising this or there really are loads of scenes where swapping out the graphics would be an issue.. Personally I think its a barrier for me to purchase a VN/IF without that customisation though and I know its the case with others. 

Oh wow thanks a lot for the kind words!
Yes I do need to try and tackle how to expand and add new content and mechanics, I have a few ideas which once implemented hopefully can extend the gameplay - I will be adding a shop similar to Slay the Spire/ Monster train and will be creating a lot more objectives.

Great point about the pacing / research, now you mention it I totally agree, I will try and address that by tweaking a few things and adding an easier to achieve research node before the +1 region. Thanks for letting me know about the bug regarding that too, I'll try and repro.

thanks for the review! 

Sorry, that's an annoying issue, I think this is a unity webgl /itch problem for 1920/1080 screens.. there should be a full screen button for you that itch provides at the very bottom right of the game which should fix it?

Did it get more laggy? I played a bit of it at the very start of the jam and now when I went back to play it again before rating it but unfortunately it is unplayable :(

Music needs to be set lower by default and have options for adjusting manually, e.g mute (unity default audio always blasts your eardrums for some reason)

It reminded me of temple run and feels like it would be good as a phone game with swipe controls.

Feels like the core gameplay and functionality is complete, so congrats! Agreed with other comments that it needs some more polish.

Cool game! 

Requests: 

• Please can we shoot on holding down a button? Ideally spacebar as an option instead of mouse too.
• Also some kind of choice in our attacks and perhaps an active ability with a cooldown would make the gameplay even better :D 

Possible Bug: moving diagonally e.g 2 key press at the same time looks faster (and not just because of Pythagorus)  than just moving left or up for example..  Or maybe I'm crazy and it is just because of distance idk.

Boss feedback:
SpinnerBoss:
I think he was a tiny bit repetitive but if hes a first boss then its perfect, it was fun! killed him on my 2nd try :D

ShieldBoss:
I thought boss was too good at tracking and recovering so I RQ it, it would have been cool to bait him into pillars or something a bit like Darksouls..?

BuddyBoss:

Very cool, I got to his 2nd form and then died because I'm bad at this kind of game. But this level had great energy and comedy :)

Awesome game, very atmospheric and polished. Love everything about the art, music and the font used!

To echo the previous comments, the tutorial dialog definitely needs a complete next line rather than a total skip for the beginning dialog as its basically a muscle memory for me (and I assume others) to do that on dialog boxes so I missed a few things. 

Just few suggestions:
It was a bit hard to tell I was moving in the ship at the very beginning, confusion increased by accidently skipping relevant tutorial text (I actually think the speed of the ship is a good pace, it feels like you are travelling). A zoom out when you are piloting it might be cool, it possibly feels a bit too zoomed in.

Death 1:
On my first run, the first enemy I found was one of the "4 hp" cubes and it killed me, Not necessarily an issue as its fun to learn, but some notes on death 1:
1) I wasn't sure what my HP was 
2) It looked like I did no damage to it after a short channel, and then THOUGHT it required directional damage onto the squares to turn them off, which my 2nd run taught me it doesn't.
3) I tried to run past it into a long dead end corridor 

Death 2:
I got past a space combat, entered the derilict spaceship a different more scenic way, killed a small cube and a big cube and then got to a fancy floating quest objective, where the narrator started talking to me about how I'd reached the energy source. As I was drifting around reading the narrator, the mysterious energy source oneshot me XD

I was going to suggest checkpoints but I see its actually a roguelike from the description.

 Did you consider having this a roguelite instead with some kind of checkpoints? I think its a bit of a clash between it being pretty calm and exploratory with permadeath.. but it could just be a skill issue.

I think having to go from the very start again with the ship control / tutorial feels annoying, but I guess it depends how often the player dies.

Thanks! Annoying it has so many bugs lol, I had thought i fixed the card bug issue with the new version I posted.. Definitely looking to fix all the bugs mentioned.

Game is definitely not balanced at the moment yes, I will be adding a trading mechanic in a shop which will allow for converting one resource type to another.

Lol you reached 2205?!?! Yes I need to add a lot more intermediate objectives (and a win screen for 2205 ^^)

Thanks so much for the feedback! Yes I will be continuing to add stuff and fix bugs 🔥🔥

Wow awesome game! Really good example of minimalism & it feels really cohesive between the sound + the visuals + the colour gradients. 
Keyboard controls work well & feel smooth.

Some kind of ingame achievements would be great, both in-run and across runs. 

Minor suggestion, could there be a "dark mode" of the game, perhaps with the colors inverted? :')

Thanks a lot for the positivity!
Ahh so the fullscreen option fixes the issue for HD monitors, great! Added that as an option now, hopefully that fixes the issue you encountered.

I think I've fixed the bugs mentioned in the comments now with my most recent upload, however I have updated the disclaimer at the start of the game to be more clear, there is actually not any proper gameplay to speak of yet!

I need another month.. or 2.. of developing out a few more core systems, namely the shop and the council options where there will be some degree of randomly selected things to choose from, and of course the ability to unlock & control multiple regions.

Very funny and great idea/execution. :D 
It would be good if there was some notification on minimum score to get a carrot, and also a name for each level. For example I am stuck on a level but can't name it to talk about it.

Nice game! I had a lot of fun reading it.
The default dimensions are a little small to be comfortable as NeatGames pointed out below but fullscreen works great.

Probably not intended but it cracked me up when they started adding in "Verily".. I like how its kinda funny.

I like the music & the backgrounds, the tracks fit each chapters mood well. I don't know much about art, is it a mix of original artwork and existing art? I reverse searched the one that looked familiar and it looks like it is "Old Canal Port, New Jersey"?

I think maybe the start needs a little bit more breaking up with very short transition animations like some VNs do? Because the dialogue is long and pretty meta. I did get used to it quite quickly but transitions would help a lot imo.

(Reminds me a bit of Path of Exile's Maven & the Envoy lore but even more existential :D)
Does it branch? I picked the negative route which was cool, but it kind of suddenly ended.. I assume that is because you haven't finished yet?

Woops, posted this comment on the game page and not its jam submission, reposting here:

Awesome, found it hard to control but thats not suprising since I haven't played KSP or any game similar before, seems like it could be a good "chill out" game once you master the controls!

I'm not sure audio is working for me, some good soundtracks would increase playtime for sure :D 

Awesome, found it hard to control but thats not suprising since I haven't played KSP or any game similar before, seems like it could be a good "chill out" game once you master the controls!

I'm not sure audio is working for me, some good soundtracks would increase playtime for sure :D  

Yep balancing is going to be a bit of a challenge! Luckily I'm distracted by code for now XD

Thanks for the comment

Thanks for the review! 

Okay yes that bug will be next on my list to fix, whoops. It checks for success & failure on the same frame and shows both popups rather than just success.

Thanks, thats a good tip about the text & skipping, I think I will actually cut the big text intro at the start and leave it up to the smaller reporter dialogue as its way too much text dumped. But will follow that advice when I animate the reporter's text.

Thanks! :) 

Yes I will be working on fixing the discard / hand draw bug next, it's an annoying bug I have been putting off / ran out of time to fix before this submission. Thanks for letting me know about the events bar overflowing, thats fixed locally now.

Hopefully by the next Marathon Jam I will have got all the major systems done & bugs fixed and I can focus on balance + more objectives.

Awesome game and cool spear mechanic, I was stuck for about a minute before i realised you could jump on it lol! Very nice level of cohesion & polish.

I thought the learning curve was well done until I got stuck and didn't know how to progress. That said I found it fun to encounter the static spikes & then the rotating ones (although if the rotating spikes in the first zone near were the critical path I am too dumb to be able to get past them and imo thats too hard..?) 

I never found out how to crouch/slide which is where I think i got stuck and couldn't find where was new to get to, but I am a noob to this genre so perhaps I missed something obvious.

Hey thanks so much for playing and the helpful review.

Yes definitely will be making the tutorials more dynamic and not just a wall of text in the future! 

I ran out of time to finish everything I had planned, so not a lot of gameplay available in v0.1 ^^"

I'll play your game this evening, sounds cool!

Hey manonamora, thanks for asking ^^ 

I think the devlog will probably fall under the dashingdon (https://dashingdon.com/) forum post for my game, as this is a prerequiste to appear on their Hosted Games platform, assuming my project reaches completion! This isn't made yet but I'll be aiming to create it along with the update to the actual game next week, which I'll be posting the build of on both itch and dashingdon so people can play it.

I'll post the location of this as a topic here once it is setup!
I've settled sticking to a timetable again and aim to release a new version weekly on a Monday until a first draft of the whole project is complete.

I need to check out some dev blogs for inspiration.

Overall I had fun, I guessed the ending twist from the references the MC made about Clash's responses throughout, but I'm not sure the twist works in first person, as previous comments mention.

 It feels a bit like a plothole that the character's don't have more of a reaction to the MC being the robot's detectives assistant, especially the manager? 

Once the twist is revealed, I'm not sure why we still have 0 thoughts or explanation from the MC's view, especially when we didn't seem to have any choices after this - I thought the reaction was strange and the game would benefit from some branching at the very end based on the stats. (Sorry if I missed it and there is, I did 2 playthroughs with opposite characters and felt like there should have been a different ending?)

I don't mean for this review to sound negative, I enjoyed playing it, well done! 

Great game, congratulations :) 

I really enjoyed it, the aesthetics / concept both amazing. The text speed with holding down space was pretty well paced too on repeating menus, I think I went though all of the paths, so encountered some menus more than once, and didn't find it annoying (I can see how it would wear on you while playtesting though if you didn't disable the animations).

I liked the way the entries lead towards the conclusion of the two unknowns, the virus and the MC's motive for creating it. It felt very cathartic to reach that ending screen after feeling sad from the diary entries ^^'

Thanks and well done for creating this!

Thanks for the review and all the detailed feedback! 

It did end up being shorter than I was aiming to create for the jam, yes. This stopped about halfway into the first chapter of what I was thinking of in total (eventually) being a 3 chapter (or Act) story. I'm very happy you think it has potential!

The opinion of the characters was meant to give some more control over the MC's prexisting relationships to characters, but yes on a first playthrough this doesn't make much sense. I'll look at replacing this with some less explicit choices as reactions :D

Thanks for mentioning about the formatting - I hadn't really thought about it but its obvious now that it's got inconsistent spacing regarding paragraphs which I will be fixing. (I blame choicescript requiring the *new_line command to create a line break... heh.)

The italics were meant to be the character's internal dialogue and so appear in first person.. Possibly this isn't as clear as I'd thought as this is the second mention of it, I'll see if I can find some examples where an author does this so I can better use it.

I've edited the itch page to fullscreen mode now - thanks for the tip!

Thanks for playing and leaving a comment!

Yep the ending is a bit sooner than I had originally planned in order to meet the jam deadline haha.

Hey thanks for the review!

 Sorry about that glitch :( I set the game submission as a fixed resolution and didn't test the larger font setting! 

That's a fair point about it being long blocks of text, it's something which seems common with most choicescript games since the library doesn't let you much with styling, but perhaps I can break it up more into shorter pages.

I have a good idea in my head of the world and background, yes, that's great you have pointed out story arc is something I should work on so I have something concrete to improve, very helpful!