Yes, but it's probably better to wait until we have a game idea, so we know which style we are looking for. But if you can wow us with your talent, you're welcome.
Mandelbrot Studios
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itch.io Community » Game Development » Help Wanted or Offered · Created a new topic [2D] [Art & Animation] Looking for an Artist for a Hobbyist Project [Revshare]
Hi,
we are a team of four looking forward to making our first commercial game. We're mostly hobbyists and are looking for people with some experience, such as jam games, who want a challenge to take their skills to the next level!
A little about us: Our team consists of a programmer, a musician, a sound engineer, and me, who does game design and takes care of business stuff(basic management & marketing). We're all in Germany, except for our British sound engineer. So if you're from Europe, that's a big plus because time zones can be a real nightmare.
We did two jam games before, with one of them ranking 23rd out of 1,838 games on game design. (https://mandelbrot-studios.itch.io/) Additionally, we have various individual experiences.
Our Plan: The plan is to make a few prototypes (probably as jam games) to test out different ideas and see how we all work together. We'll decide on an idea by Q1 2021. I expect the development time to be about one and a half years(maybe shorter if the idea is small). We all work on the game during our free time, and each of us will be compensated through rev-share once the project is done.
Who we are looking for
- You'll have to make 2D art and sprites for a video game.
- You should be mature enough. No hard age limit, but if you're under 15 you're likely too young. Don't worry if you are a teenager either. Most of us still are.
- Your English should be good enough to communicate effectively in a team.
- You should be able to attend meetings regularly and work consistently on the game.
- If you are European or you're flexible enough to make time for us, that's a big plus.
Contact: You can reply to this thread, add me on Discord (Dr Pixel Plays#9463), or send us an email (contact@mandelbrotstudios.com).
If this seems a bit overwhelming to you, don't worry. It's for us too. We can always talk and see how things go. We have nothing against having some company these days.
Have a good day!
Mandelbrot Studios
~Claas
Brackeys Jam 2020.2 community · Replied to Sageoftheridge in Late rate for late rate (Windows/browser only) [CLOSED]
From what you say, I think you are doing it right. Something that you could also try is this. Otherwhise, I am unsure as to what the cause for this is, but it could also be to do with hardware or drivers. Either way, we are very sorry for the inconvenience, but thanks regardless.
~Gefüllte Taubenbrust
I've left you some feedback on your submission page.
If you want to play our game, you can do it here: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
My expectations were very low at first because the cover art and menu didn't look great. I do have to say that the graphics remind me of old DOS games. It's fine, but if you want to do more with the game you should consider looking for an artist.
Gameplaywise you can probably do a lot of polishing, but the core gameplay was surprisingly fun. Especially, when you run out of time and the game suddenly shifts from strolling around to running away as fast as you can. It almost became a horror game. As others pointed out, this could really make for a fun multiplayer game. Maybe even a horror game? I'm sure you can do much more with the idea.
I gave you honest feedback on your submission page.
If you want to check out our game, you can do here: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
First, I would recommend not uploading your game as a .rar file. I had to look up how to extract it first.
But the game itself is visually appealing and the music adds to the atmosphere. I also liked the screen shake and particle effects.
The game itself felt a bit weird though. The collision is sometimes buggy. If you go up all the way to the roof, you bounce around. It took me also a while to realize that pressing S didn't make my little bird thing go down. You also get slowed down quite a bit if you fly into a block, which breaks the game flow.
You could also improve on the level design. For example, I kept spamming my bullets, because there is no real downside to not doing it. What if shooting costs you time? Then you have to shoot precisely. I also didn't have any use for the rewind mechanic. It helps you to get back, but there is no real reason to use it, except to maybe save some time. But then I didn't run out of time at all. In the end, I almost had 5 minutes. Since you are going for an arcade game, you might want the difficulty to go up exponentially? And why not make the little cubes give you extra time if you collect them? I had no real incentive to get them.
I don't want to say that the game is bad, because you have to consider the circumstances. I think you did the game solo, and you made it in 3 days, not 7. There's still a lot about the game design that you can improve on, though. But hey, that's why we are doing game jams, to learn.
I wish you good luck with your future game dev endeavours!
Glad to hear you liked the video! And my voice.
Nice of you to comment on our game even though you can't play it. Maybe you want to play it with a friend who has a Windows Laptop? The other comments really like it and once we win the jam:) I'm sure it's worth it.
There wasn't much gameplay in my video. I didn't want to spoiler too much of it. I can assure you there are other things you can rewind as well, like yourself, enemies, and other objects.
Thanks for your feedback and for watching the video, nonetheless!
-Claas
I too want to thank you for your detailed feedback.
Most people don't notice these small polishing issues. We had to cut down our initial polishing time from 3 days to 1-2 days. So we didn't have the time to fix these small issues.
Very interesting that you feel the game ends too early. My approach for making levels was to introduce one new interesting idea to each level, so there is always something new. I probably should have made more levels with smaller ideas that reuse many of the old ideas. And I probably should have done a decent ending.
It's still a game jam game, after all, but your feedback is really helpful.
Thanks for playing!
-Claas
Oh, thanks so much! We really appreciate your constructive criticism, though we probably wont have the chance to change all that much. We will release one update when the Jam ends to improve stability and fix minor bugs and quirks, but will then most likely discontinue development to focus on new projects. But again, thank you very much for the great review and the rate!
Good day! So I just played and rated the game, quite an interesting one i must say. You can find ours here and i kindly welcome everyone to stop by:
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
Brackeys Jam 2020.2 community · Posted in Let's go back to the VHS era. I check and rate your game too!
I've commented on your submission page and left you some feedback.
If you want to check out our game, you go here: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
Cool intro and cool game!
I like the art style of it, and I could see it developing into one of these tycoon games. It fits the style of a tycoon game very well. But there's still a lot of work to be done, but you are working on it.
Because it's still so undone, I can't give too much feedback. The movement was surprisingly good, though. Just navigating between all the shelves was a bit difficult. Maybe space them out more? Well, and a simple touch I would have loved would be parodies of the movie names. That can be really funny.
Anyway, the game looks promising. Good luck with updating it!
I've left you honest feedback on your submission page.
If you want to play our game as well, head here: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
So first of all, I really liked your menu! It looks great and you've included your controls and audio options, AUDIO OPTIONS! I love audio options. I don't like a game blasting my ears away.
But speaking of the music, it's awesome and very atmospheric! Really good!
The graphics look a bit inconsistent, especially the walls, which have no texture, and the void, which looks very static. But the particles look great. Overall the graphics are very solid.
With the gameplay, I had a few issues. First, I would really have loved a feature to instantly retry the level. The puzzles are timing-based, and it is really annoying having to wait a few seconds every time you screw up a puzzle.
And then I don't really like the idea of resource management in a puzzle game. It puts you under pressure and makes things more difficult to do. Maybe the resource management itself isn't the issue, but how difficult it is. Maybe I didn't fully get how to minimize my oxygen consumption, but I kept dying on the third level and didn't know what else I could have done better. Just walking to the health pick-up takes too much time.
I like the puzzles with rewinding and pushing crates around. It was fun trying to figure out the solution, but not really to execute it. It felt like it was more timing or skill-based than actually a puzzle. The crates also behaved a bit weird, which makes manoeuvring them under time pressure even more frustrating. I also at first didn't get that you can interact with them by pressing E since it was much more intuitive to just push them around, which worked, so I thought it was the only way to move them. Maybe making crates not pushable could help? A tutorial that explained that could have helped as well. It was in the description, though, which is probably the only reason I didn't get stuck.
Overall, I think the game has an amazing atmosphere and good puzzles that are too reliant on execution for my taste.
I've left you some honest feedback on your submission page for SoulSucker.
If you want to give us detailed feedback, go here: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
Great atmosphere and visuals!
I wanted to play the game in windowed mode, but it didn't work.
The intro cutscene was amazing of course. But I noticed a few things about the text, also in the game. If you use blue text on a blue background, it's very hard to read. And in the game, it was yellow text on mostly yellow background. The font you've used is also very condensed, which is not great for readability. And then I couldn't read some text because it wasn't long enough on screen. As a general rule make sure to have text at least on screen for twice the amount it takes you to read it, better three.
The first level wasn't a great tutorial. Everything was very fast-paced, especially with the cutscene. And the controls are really not that great. I wasn't able to kill the last enemy. I think I needed my sword. There was just so much stuff on that level with only one checkpoint. So I always had to redo everything. That got so frustrating, I eventually quit the game. That's a bummer because it really looks cool and has atmosphere.
I'd really recommend doing some playtesting, even on a game jam game. It is tremendously helpful in getting the tutorial right and making the game accessible.
Nonetheless, the visuals and cutscene alone made taking a look worth it.
Brackeys Jam 2020.2 community · Posted in Please give feedback for our first game jam- I will play your game too! ^_^
Hi, I've left a comment on your submission page. I hope my feedback was useful.
If you want to check out our game, you go here: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
First, the music is way too much of a clichè feel-good music. Combine that with a platformer, which can be frustrating at times, and you are angry and then there is this passive-aggressive music telling you to be happy, but you aren't, but you want to be happy, which makes you less happy... and it goes on and on.
Also, the animations of the main character aren't smooth. Maybe you use an incorrect canvas size for the sprite sheet?
The movement is also not that great. It's okay, and from a programmer standpoint fine. But if you look at platformer design there's a lot that you can do just with the movement. I recommend watching this excellent video from Game Maker's Toolkit. It helped me a lot to get the movement right for our game.
And the level design itself lacks focus. There is no clear pattern for how the levels are laid out. You had some cool ideas with the rewind mechanic, but you can explore them in a much more focused way, which makes for smoother playing experience.
The HUD for the time that you have during the 'run it back' mechanic is also way too small. Maybe it didn't scale on my UHD monitor, though.
The game is also really short.
I hope my feedback isn't too harsh. I always look at games from an objective design standpoint. I assume it was more of a programming challenge for you. Well, and for your first jam game, it's alright. But there's much more to learn. Keep at it, and one day you might get somewhere!
That's the second time I heard that the tutorial was too long.
Wait, where are my manners? First of all, thanks for your feedback!
It's actually a very interesting thing with why there are so many tutorial levels. The way I designed the levels, I tried to always introduce one new idea or mechanic per level. Something interesting about the game itself. Some levels are better at doing this than others. I mean, there are 3 shooting ranges, but they all got their unique twists. Maybe I should have done an exception for the tutorial.
But those are the small issues that require lots of playtesting to figure out, also 'accidental' playtesters like you. If I sit next to somebody, they won't stop playing the game because the tutorial is too long. You can only figure this out by listening to players like you or collecting a lot of data from the players.
What do you mean with not a lot of audio? We've got excellent sound effects from timbre audio, and of course the beautiful soundtrack.
Anyway, thanks for playing! All this feedback is really motivating our team!
-Claas
Brackeys Jam 2020.2 community · Replied to Lotyss in Rate◄◄ Reverse Engineer◄◄ and we will rate your game! [Windows]
First, the menu is amazing! You've got audio options and controls! We didn't have the time to include our controls into the game. But the audio options don't seem to work, though.
The graphics are cool and the music is alright. It makes for a nice little puzzle game.
So the controls are very fast, which makes it hard to control your character in these tiny levels. Maybe bigger levels could help as well?
You definitely need to work on a tutorial. When I got to the first level where I had to rewind, it was quite overwhelming. I also only realized later, that you can hold to throw faster. Well, and I never figured out how to jump higher, as some levels look like I need a double jump. I also quit the game on the level with the things that hold your ball, because I didn't figure out how to make the jump. And then I couldn't try again because you don't have a save system.
The levels are also too difficult, but maybe you just need to balance out the difficulty curve. But on the first level where you need to rewind, you've got so little time. It took me 5 minutes to finish it with 0.01 time remaining. Playtesting is quintessential for getting the difficulty of puzzles right.
A good puzzle is all about figuring out the solution. That's when it's interesting. Of course only if you eventually figure out the solution. But when you have the solution, it should be effortlessly to execute it, or at least as effortless as possible. But too often it took me more time trying to execute the solution instead of figuring it out.
And here's something that I REALLY appreciate. A quick retry feature. If you have to repeat the same 10 steps every time to try again a game can get very frustrating, but with the quick reload it's effortlessly to try again. I probably would have finished your game wasn't it for the puzzle that I got stuck on and the non-existent save system.
But once I got past the steep learning curve, it was really fun! Your mechanic is great. It's really fun to play around with it, and that is really good for a game. I can see a lot of potential here.
Overall, I think you have a pretty cool idea and game. It definitely has potential!
Thank you very much!
From a design point of view, my goal was to have the time to polish the game. I really wanted to get all those little things right. In the end, we had to cut down our polishing time from 3 days to 1-2 days. As a perfectionist, I still see a lot of little things that we could do, but the core gameplay should be alright.
We haven't decided on the future of the game yet. We'll wait until the jam is over. So far the game has been received well, so we might actually do more with it. But it's far from being polished enough for any commercial release. Making a bigger commercial game is a very different calibre. Anyway, I appreciate your feedback!
Did you know that you can actually make your own levels? If we update the game, we'll sure include great community levels and credit whoever made them. The 'editor' is not the most user-friendly, but you'll get into it, at least I had to. For more info on how to make your own levels, head here: https://itch.io/t/918182/community-levels
Thanks for playing!
-Claas
Thanks for the praise!
As the designer, I tried exploring every new mechanic to its fullest, and it wasn't that easy. It's not so much about what you can rewind, but what would allow for interesting new mechanics. The platforms are a great example. Not only can you get them back up, but you can also use them to jump higher. Finding these ideas is difficult, but once you have them, they open a new realm of possibilities.
Thanks for your help with the rate. We sure are working hard on that. Who knows? Maybe we do get into the video.
Thanks for playing!
- Claas
Good day! I have now played and rated your game, you did a really great job on the visuals! Feel free to check out and rate our game here:
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
Hello! I just played and rated your game, good work! Please feel free to stop by and rate ours:
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
Brackeys Jam 2020.2 community · Posted in Would you like to try my game (few ratings). I'll play yours too
Hey, i just played and rated your game, you did good work! I would appreciate any ratings for our game:
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
Hey! I just played (and rated) your game. I have to say that while the concept definetely has potential, it was fairly annoying to play. The movement was very slow, which really didnt help, as the gameplay is trial and error based in nature. Because of this, it is very frustrating to run accross the level for a long amount of time just to make a mistake and have to restart all over. As for the graphics, while I do like this simplistic style, the "noise" on the player changing during the animations is a bit awkward. I would also definetely add audio in the future.
On the positive side though, the level design as well as the concept i think is fairly solid and could certainly be expanded upon. The movement being faster on its own would help a great deal, i think.
I hope this review helps.
We would really appreciate any and all ratings that any of you decide to give, so please consider stopping by:
https://mandelbrot-studios.itch.io/reverse-engineer
~Gefüllte Taubenbrust
This one is a lot better than most the games I have seen, truly great work! This one i will definetely come back to! The characters make the game feel much more like part of an actual world and i love the visuals. There are some slight issues i see, like the scaling in fullscreen looking a bit awkward and slightly janky controls. But the concept, gameplay and graphics are all very solid, i will definetely play this one again!
Hey there! I'm gonna play and rate shortly, we would really appreciate anyone who rates our game, you can give us rate4rate requests as well if you wish. Anyway, check it out here:
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904
Brackeys Jam 2020.2 community · Posted in My game needs only 4 more ratings. Comment on my game and I will rate your game too.
Only just played and rated it! You can find ours here, ratings are much appreciated:
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-4/rate/722904