itch.io

Wow, this is impressive! I'm always impressed to see GGC-submissions tackling making something fully 3D, but this team managed to drive it home. 

First impression of the game was great. Beautiful, engaging main menu with good support in settings, and you also did a great job with the easy-to-understand tutorial in the first few steps of the game. I very much enjoyed the look and feel of most everything, the world feels desolate, vast and bittersweet. You guys have studied your Ghibli for sure.

I also liked the aesthetic choice of letting the organic piano music take center stage. The way the single notes closely accompanied and waited for my progress in the first puzzle, only for the music to take of on its own whimsical journey as the puzzle completed and the game opened up was beautiful. Great, simple, way of letting the world tell the story itself. 

Once I got into the bigger area with multiple paths and several closed drawbridges I felt a bit overwhelming and lost. While this might be somewhat intentional and even fitting for this type of game, consider studying your world and its topography to better decide on how you want to lead players around it. Right now it feels just a tad bit to open for me to make comfortable progress. 

All in all it looks, sounds and feels great. For the few weeks of this project, it's impressive to see what you were able to get together, and with this amount of polish that you had time to get in there as well. I'm sure there is a bigger story to this world to be told if you had the time, but even so you managed to give the core of it all a chance to plant its seed. 

Very well done. Congratulations!

Hoooo boy, I am a fan! I'll try to be brief, because playing this through to the end has already made me late for a meeting...

The fact that you took it upon yourselves to create a 3D-action-oriented game in the time frame of these projects is impressive in it's own right, but what drives it home is how you managed to execute it. For starters, I can't even imagine where the idea for this world, this story comes from. I assume that everyone in this team sleeps with the original Bioshock under their pillow. The world is eerie and dark, and the enemies are quirky and equally cool. The player character is interesting and moves in a cool way.

I do appreciate the combat and I found myself rushing towards every enemy I found rather than trying to stay away from them, simply because I felt that I as a player had all the tools I needed to fight them. The dodge roll works, the parrying works (even though I wish It was a tad bit faster, and at the same time I feel like the window of active frames is a tad to forgiving) and the discharge ability is absolutely wicked. Here it shows that half of the team are sound designers. Good job on tying animations and audio together as well. The visual aid of enemies preparing their attack á la Batman-games was a nice touch, as well as the enemies "faces" changing color to reflect their current health. Small touches like this really helps making the combat feel smooth and manageable. I really appreciate the on-screen combat control prompts that were introduced exactly at the points where I needed that information, nice touch.

Oh, and don't think that I didn't notice the mirror. Good job on that.

I do wish that we've could have seen bigger variations in the environments and the obstacles we find. I understand that time must have been tight, but I think this is where you should spend more time, should you decide to continue development. You might not have the chance before Arkane tries to hire all of you. I've been a juror at GGC for many previous years, and this is up there. 

Congratulations, and fantastic work!

Wow! This game has a lot of qualities and i'm very impressed with how much you've been able to do with it in the allotted time, both with regards to gameplay, design and aesthetics. The artstyle hits just right and is reinforced by tasteful audio (other than music being a tad to loud). I'm also a huge fan of the camera perspective and the the way it pans around the ship, it allows me to really take in the scene and at the same time manages to feel pretty cinematic and grand. And you even did voice-over! Not bad at all.

You're really doing a lot with very little, which again is very cool. The amount of polish and detail that you've had the luxury of being able to add is fantastic. The best part is of course the co-op aspect, and it's a shame that I had to play the game alone as I, understandingly, got swarmed with tasks and wasn't really able to keep up. Maybe you could balance the frequency of events around how many participating players there are? I wish that I could have done a better job on my own so that I could manage it better. 

I never knew that we needed a pirate edition of Overcooked, but now we have it!

Amazing stuff. I hope you're proud!

Cool! I see lots of character here, and I really appreciate that you've alotted time to creating the cool visual setting to this game. Where your short production time might make it hard to write a fleshed out story you're instead telling it through the striking artworks and small details placed around the map. This world feels interesting for sure, and I'm intrigued to learn more about it. 

A tutorial that is short, simple and to the point would do you good. I read that there's supposed to be a dash, and I sure didn't find it! I also found a pentagram that I thought that I could interact with, but I wasn't able to. Try to make sure that a player don't miss out on the features you've put your time and care in!

The game was fun whenever I had lots of enemies to shoot at,  I honestly wish there was more of them! 

Good job!

This is a cool little game! I appreciate the artstyle, it makes the game feel like an illustrated book come to life.  I think you did a good job with your tutorial, it clearly explains the movement by letting me experience it rather than just read about it - it did not, however, introduce me to the mechanic of enemies spawning in waves, so I initially just went around to hide in a strategic location thinking enemies didn't spawn in until the first wave had ticked down which both resulted in unnecessary downtime for me, and an extremely difficult time when all enemies swarmed me. It's easy to feel a little lost and far away from the action since the map is quite big, could something more be done here to make sure that the player is always engaged?

The steering mechanic of drawing your route is quite cool, it offers a very tactical approach to moving your tank and it forces you to think about your positioning. While I agree with what's already been said about it being nice to quickly re-draw your path and adjust your movement I also feel that this would possibly rob the spline-based movement of some of its charm. See if you can find a sweet-spot in the middle ground!

For me the game is crazy hard. I wish that I could stay alive longer than i'm able to with my current skill, and if this is something you hear from a lot of your players then maybe consider looking into your balancing for the first waves.

Great work!

Very interesting! I'll be honest and say that initially I was ready to dismiss this game as something that was not for me. The lack of polish in the first impression lowered my expectations of what was to come, but at the same time I understand that this is something that is hard to get right under the time constraints of these projects. Nevertheless, don't underestimate the importance of striking the right notes as early as possible. Just something to think about!

I failed a few times at first not understanding the concept of the movement, I expected it to be an auto-scrolling only requiring me to steer, and so I didn't understand why I would eventually come to a stop and be caught by the net. Once I understood that I had to paddle my movement I was off to the races, and it did honestly feel intuitive. 

Aesthetically the game is cool. Audio and visuals feel like they come from the same place and they really play an important role in ushering the player along. There were points where the music swelled up to very intense levels which felt quite jarring, but overall it felt like it carried the message of the game well. As for the visuals, for me it was quite hard to discern positive pickups from negative, so maybe look into making them easier to separate? 

There was something that really made me want to go further and keep exploring, expecting new things to find, so If this game was to be taken further I feel like that's where to put your money - into gradually expanding on the world and introducing new places and interactions that all goes into carrying the story that this game wants to tell.

In essence - in isolation none of the features of this game would do much for me, but they don't have to as they together really are a lot more than the sum of their parts. Taking that into consideration you've done a great job.

Keep it up!

Cute! I appreciate that you went all-out on visual aspect of the game and really doubled-down on selling the theme of "cute". If you're gonna do it - don't half-ass it, right?

I had some trouble both navigating menues and picking characters. It wasn't really clear to me when, and what, input was expected from me to proceed, especially in the "character select"-screen. In races I really didn't fare any better, It was hard for me to keep track on what character was mine to control when playing with several bots, and when I failed I had no choice but to sit through an entire race just watching the bots play. Do you think that maybe this game could benefit from having knocked-out players respawn back in, but with some kind of disadvantage?

I think that this idea of a competetive flappy-birds like game has potential. The visuals are already there, and I appreciate the fact that you've already designed different themed stages. If you could pour the same kind of eye for detail into your gameplay and maneuverability in menus then this could definitively turn into a great party game. 

Great work, keep it up!

An absolute treat. There's some great things at play here, and the simplicity of the gameplay itself really allows the visual and aural features to shine. 

What I think really sticks with me is how I feel like you nailed the pacing. I feel like you landed in a really good spot regarding how and when the game ramps up in difficulty and you start ushering the player into thinking in new dimensions. From simply staying out of cones, to going around tables and behind objects to intentionally putting yourself at risk to kite enemies away from their patrol - it just feels right. 

Initially it took me a moment to understand what was going on with the cones visually appearing and moving around my character, but once I understood it was my own line of sight everything fell into it's place. Maybe I just missed this feature in an explanation somewhere, but consider making this feature even clearer, possibly in the first room you start in?

Furthermore, i'm so glad that you decided to not have a system in which the player would eventually run out of lives and be met with a game over. The fact that I could just keep playing and try again immediately when I got caught was a huge reason that I stuck with it for as long as I did and that I was always engaged and having fun. While it might feel tempting to go hardcore and really punish players In a game like this you went the other way - very smart move!

The ability to hide in the barrel I didn't really understand. I feel like I got caught even though I got in it if I was already in an enemies sights, but if I used it prematurely I really just lost my bearings due to not seeing what happened around me, so I never felt like I had a reason to opt for it over just playing smart with my movement. While the idea of an ability besides movement is cool, maybe re-iterate on what you want to accomplish with this?

A-grade pixel art. Audio and music is f*cking smashing, and that's coming from a technical sound designer. Just wish tunes would change as I got to new roomes, but that's just me being greedy.

Congratulations to a fantastic achievement!

What a crazy game! I think you guys did a great job of manufacturing a simple and doable idea and then executing it. The simple goal of the game leverages the crazy physics, and it wasn't hard to understand how to succeed. I wish that the game loop had more progression in what tasks was thrown at me, but I understand that it must have been hard to add to many ideas with the time constraints at hand. Some more nuanced layers and occasional curve balls that you could throw at the player and this could absolutely be a hit party game. 

I also liked the cardboard cutouts against the otherwise three-dimensional environments and props. It felt like a cool and noticeable quirk.

Fantastic work! Keep it up!