I'm not convinced it's interesting to find that out, but I certainly would have preferred it if it was something that the game told me about at the start.
The shadows can be improved in the Project Settings->Quality section. Set the Shadow Resolution to 'Very High' and reduce the shadow distance to whatever looks best for the game (smaller the distance, the more detailed the shadows will be). Set 'No cascades' too... Hopefully that'll make the shadows look better in the game. Also, on the shadow casting light itself, just reduce the strength a bit so they aren't as dark.
Alternatively, considering you're on a flat plane and the asteroids are mostly spherical, you could just cheat and render blob shadows for things, which will be a lot cheaper and also kind of look nicer in the end...
As for the screens, yeah, it was all of them - they always appeared behind me, not sure why? I tried resetting the view, but still had the same outcome. It kind of looks like it's displaying the menu in the opposite direction to what I'm facing for some reason...
Nice idea, the concept is really clever and I like the unique steering method by targeting the right altitude - that's a really cool idea.
In practice though, it was quite a hard game to play and I felt it might have helped having a more of a game friendly HUD to help with the navigation as the text weather report was quite a dry way of putting it. Also, given the balloon ride itself made me feel quite queasy (and I was sitting down), I also felt I had to remember all the altitudes and directions they'd take me relative to the compass and it was a bit too much to take on. It was on the edge of being too difficult than fun for me...
I do think the idea is really cool though and I think presenting it in a different, more player friendly way would work wonders on this game... Maybe particles nearby showing the wind direction, or some faint arrows in the sky that become more obvious the closer to get (just thinking out loud here) - but I feel it needs a little more help to the player to cross the bar of it being more fun than difficult would be great on this.
Also, I feel there should be a limit to how fast the balloon moves - currently, it can reach speeds that make me feel quite sick. I think the game will still be really playable if there was a much slower limit to the balloon and perhaps sub-targets to reach before landing on the land target directly.
Overall a really great idea with just a few practical issues getting in the way - a great job though!
That was fun - I enjoyed it! Simple concept and well executed... it's really playable!
It does feel like you could expand on this quite a lot, but it's great as a starting concept and shows just how playable a more enhanced version would be.
Here's a few things that spring to mind that can be improved on:
- Have the bullets slower so it's more like you have to predict where the asteroid is going rather than a straight on direct hit
- Have asteroids split (like @ToreadorGames suggested). I mean, you could probably get away with just spawning two smaller asteroids half the size without accurately splitting the mesh.
- I didn't really feel much of a threat when playing the game, so adding some other objects at ground level might help to give extra threat in the game.
- I think this game would reach awesome status if you had two massive guns, one in each hand... imagine that, two massive cannons and you can double up the intensity of the asteroids & other threats!
Plus a few minor things. I feel you need to increase your shadow resolution in the quality settings, it's very low resolution and noticeable (don't worry, the quest hardware can take it!). The muzzle flash is quite distracting and it feel like it needs reducing. Also when pressing the settings & achievements menu buttons, they appeared behind me - I didn't see them at first.
Overall, a really fun and enjoyable game - a simple, clean idea done really well. Great job!
Nice balls! Quite a simple project, but quite relaxing and well presented. I think it would've been really nice to have some ambient music and a bit of audio in the experience too.
Looks great! The graphics, the character animation and sounds are top notch. Great boxing ring simulation and
Unfortunately I had the glove issue like the others, they were the wrong way around too. If in doubt, and the player's height isn't at a certain level, then I'd suggest literally asking the player to stand up in the game at that point to avoid any confusion.
I did find that I could easily 'game it' though and win every time, simply by holding up one arm, while repeatedly tapping quickly at the opponents face in between his gloves. Perhaps decreasing the amount of damage applied for the same repeated moves in quick succession may solve that.
Overall, a fun experience. The character is great and you've captured the boxing genre really well :)
Really nice looking, great shaders and graphical style - hands are really well done and the subtle push back when interacting and pushing against things is really nice. I'd say the reflections were a bit too sharp, personally I'd add some smoothness in there to make them look more realistic.
I felt the audio was lacking some ambience sounds, so a constant low-level engine noise, or some incidental background noises. It seemed odd when sound fx and voice would suddenly come on, then silence for the rest of it.
The on-screen HUD is a little hard to read, personally I think I would've preferred that as something to read in the world, or as a wrist attachment instead of being fixed to the head. It serves it's purpose, but it seemed a bit too intrusive being there all the time.
Also, I would have liked to have the option for snap-turn, the low-gravity and smooth turn was a little sickly. Unfortunately, I didn't finish it as the low-grav and the navigation was a bit too sickly for me.
However, the map is a cool addition and I especially like it when it appears/disappears when in proximity. The game itself has a great atmosphere and great VR scale of the world. I enjoyed playing it, and it was a shame about feeling queasy after a while...
It had a few issue though. When I started the game, I was very low and the start button was always behind me, even when re-centering the view.
When I started the game, it took a while to work out that the egg plant reduced the number (it would have been good for the sign or something to mention that first). Initially I was just chopping fruit and didn't know how to reduce the number to fit the answer. Seemed a bit random too, sometimes the count would go up by 2 even though I only chopped one fruit.
I eventually got the idea and got the win game screen, which was nice...
Also, I'm left handed, so it would've been nice to have a swap hands option.
Other than that, a nice solid entry to the Jam and it had a good feel to it.
Very nice looking game, great job on the aesthetics and overall feel of the game.
I enjoyed the experience and travelling through the story, however I did feel it was lacking a bit on the interaction side of things. I know it's probably more an experience than a game as such, but I feel it would be cool if it has some more playable elements in there to progress the story, perhaps some bespoke puzzles, or something like 'puzzling places' where you can piece together the key object to progress the story along. In any case, very well presented and a polished experience.
I also had the zero-gravity issue with the ticket, but I wasn't sure if that was intentional or not...
Passthrough worked fine for me - didn't have any issues here... (Quest 3, used SideQuest to upload to the hardware)
I love the concept of this and having virtual pets in MR would be great! There's a few things I'd say would need improvement here (I know it's not finished, but they're are worth mentioning anyway). Obviously there's physics and movement issues that happen quite frequently in this - and I'd suggest, if you aren't doing so already, that you have separate target objects in the scene and use velocity on the physics objects to move towards them, rather trying to place the physics objects directly. Doing it this way can eliminate quite a lot of physics issues, especially when objects are trying to occupy the same space.
The cat movement is great, nice job on that! However I found that the ball toy was also rotating and aiming in the direction I was pointing the thumbstick in too. I'd suggest making the shadows more transparent, they are a little too obvious and most rooms have subtle soft shadows when artificially lit, so there's a disconnect between the MR shadows and the real-world.
All in all, it's great - feels like there needs to be more interactions and things to do, but so far it's looking great!
Nice playground! The gravity gun is cool, although took a while to work out that the 2nd button to fire was initially.
The auto-vaulting is great - I managed to vault with ease (unlike many other games out there!) it's a great idea and literally a good step forward for climbing in VR...
I liked that - some really nice ideas in there... such as the falling through the scene after you've completed a dream section, and that 'getting smaller' corridor bit - that was really cool.
The jumpy bits were a bit frustrating at the end, but I found I could just jump on the door handle and jump straight to the fridge, so that was ok :)
The WASD and Cursor & Space combo was quite hard to get used to for me... I think it would've been better (speaking personally here...) that when pressing down on the cursor keys it would attack, instead of it being on space and having the direction separate...
Still enjoyable game once you get used to it, quite hard though, I think it could've had a few extra rooms at the start with perhaps just one enemy to ease you in.
Nice puzzle idea and well presented. I enjoyed playing it...
It did seem a little too much down to luck though - if you happen to randomly pick a good couple of interrogations to start with, then it was quite easy, but start off unlucky then it seems near impossible to work out given the limited interrogations.
Perhaps a few more factors could have been introduced and the chance to gain more interrogations show how would have been nice for when you get stuck.
I've just put together a 'making of... ' video for the Unexpected Panic game I made for the Jam - I think some of you might find it interesting/useful - it's the biggest, most detailed dev video I've ever made! Enjoy...
I did find it quite easy for the first 20 or so levels, it seemed that as long as you make the tiles black that have shapes in, you can always just mop up the other tiles individually afterwards, so it wasn't a big challenge. Up until the levels where most (if not all) the tiles are special. then it started becoming more of a challenge :)
I enjoyed playing it and it's a really nice puzzle game idea - great job!
Nice to see a form of character creator in the game - not seen that in any other Jam game so far...
I played the browser version and there were a few issues, such as the text being hard to read and also the options & exit items were really small on screen, I didn't know what they were.
I managed to create a character and went into the fight scenes. This was quite cool, I like the change in pace and environment. I found the combat to be a little confusing the start with, but got the hang on it after a while.
Thanks for the comments and feedback :) Yeah, as you concluded it was short for the Jam specifically - there's certainly more I could add to the game idea, but obviously for the Jam I had 9-days, so I went for polish and completeness than length to get the game idea across... Saying that, if you leave the game's going without doing the interactions straight away, there is about 20 minutes of voice over in there - some of the best jokes are when you leave it! lol
The resources coming in from the sides in a kind of queue system is a really great idea. However, the instructions were a bit unclear. Clicking an empty tile didn't create a drill, but pressing Space did - little things like that... I think it would've been better given the instructions incrementally as the player is playing, instead of trying to explain everything at once as half the screen is taken up my instructional text.
Still, I enjoyed playing it and is a great twist on the whole defence style game - good job!
I loved the look and unique style of this game, really interesting concept and shader ideas (especially appreciate the details, such as the meta-ball style blending and unique way of doing the shadowing).
I did enjoy the story & gameplay too, however - up to a point. I felt you managed to get a lot of character out of the geometry shapes, but some of the level design especially in later levels was edging on the side of frustrating rather than fun. I think progress respawn points will help a lot there, instead of having to redo the whole thing if you fall.
I did find the gun sound a bit over the top and the instadeath is a bit too harsh. You probably want a bit of grace when you touch an enemy, instead of instantly killing you if a pixel touches...
I enjoyed playing this - it had it's own style and a particular feel unlike any other games I've played so far, and I appreciate the walkthrough too, I don't think I would've worked out some of solutions initially.
...and now for the feedback bit.
It was a little confusing where the exits were in the levels, sometimes there's paths and lighter areas, but I felt this wasn't clear enough so it was a case of randomly picking areas and seeing if the player would travel beyond the current screen. Perhaps a cursor change or something when hovering may help with this.
I did find the detection boxes on things too small, I think you mention this in the description, but in some cases it was make or break for progressing with the game. Like picking up the rod and the right most alter, I think it's natural for object like that to click on the object itself, rather than where you think the character should interact with it - and I think perhaps this is where the triggers were placed.
I felt the characters animations were a little too robotic and there was a lot of foot sliding, which broke the atmosphere a bit for me - it made the character not seem planted in the world.
Also, although the atmosphere of the game was great I did find it was lacking in the audio side - would've been great with a bit more ambience, sfx for interactions and cutscenes etc... (probably down to time, I know, it's a short space of time to make something complete...)
One last minor thing, but worth mentioning - the game was about 1Gb on disk... not sure why, as the resources in the game didn't seem be that big. You'd probably want to see where the size is being taken up, perhaps it's a massive texture or audio file somewhere, but the size definitely didn't match the game.
Saying all that, I really enjoyed it and with more time I see it being a really cool game :)
The health indicator was a nice touch - I know it's supposed to be an avoidance game, but I did feel like I really wanted to be able to shoot the enemies too, most likely a personal thing, but I felt like I was missing a shooting element.
Still, great game and varied enemies - great job :)
I think the difficulty progression was a little up and down as I was going through the levels - sometimes there would be really clever tricky levels, then really easy levels would be mixed in-between. It's like the game wasn't increasing in difficulty, it kind of seemed a bit random.
That's a minor point though, I enjoyed playing it and it had some great level design & puzzles :)
Really liked the sfx, the retro style look and animations on this... I felt like I was back in the 80s (in a good way!)
I think it would've helped if there was a bit of a tutorial, or extra instructions at the start, just to just an example of what you're meant to be doing in the game... I got it after a few goes, but it was a bit overwhelming to start with.
Clearly you know about the level up issue, so yeah, that happened to me too - the upgrade and game over screen both came up and the same time, but the game still ran in the background (ended up getting a really good score, but still, I'm sure that's not what's meant to happen :) )
Really solid game concept and style though! I like the timed star hits, it's a bit like space invaders at the end as they come closer. Bugs aside, really nice game - I enjoyed it :)
