itch.io

I thought this was fun!  The art style was really good and consistent.  The sword swing felt good and seemed to actually hit what I was swinging at, though could have been improved with some sort of an impact effect such as sound or particles just to indicate again that it worked.  That being said, the cutting of the puppet strings and the flashing of the boss upon hit were good to convey to me that I was doing something--so this is only talking about "more" rather than "at all" on the responsiveness.  I would really enjoy getting to do more with my adventuring party before/after this, but as with all game jams I realize it might have been too much to get all that.  You have a good working prototype which even includes an easy/medium/hard mode, some storyline, box for reading the controls, it's a cohesive game and looks good.

The fire spell was unique to aim, I enjoyed it.  Enjoyed being able to fly as a wizard, but maybe it was taking away too much of the challenge given the design of the level.  I think either needed to have some limit on flight, or otherwise design the level to be larger?  The platforming was sort of not used because of the flight ability.  One other issue, I don't think that I was able to be damaged by the enemies?  But I really liked the art style and the environment looked cool, and the controls were sufficiently responsive I felt.

The mechanics are really neat and it seems to work well.  I read in your description what you were planning in terms of gameplay/challenges and that kind of makes sense, though it would have been good to see a prototype of some smaller version of that for a "complete game loop" as you said, even if a simple one just to get the idea across more.  But the UI works well and makes sense, would be very cool to see more!

I got up that hill!!  I actually really liked the hill at the end.  SPOILER:  Needing to jump to clear it was fun like you were rocketing off to the moon etc.  I do think that I would have liked some more gameplay like enemies / obstacles beyond *just* running up that hill, but that core aspect of the game felt good and you designed the level well to showcase it and the powerup. 

For future comments, ratings, please rate and comment over here instead:

https://itch.io/jam/um-flint-game-jam-12/rate/1798269

This game got re-submitted without deleting the original so there's a duplicate copy over there.  Just trying to consolidate the comments / votes to the other entry since it is the most recent.

If you already commented/rated here, if you don't mind to go rate the other one as well that will help for determining standings at the end.

Hmm this game appears to have been posted twice, going to try to consolidate the two so that the votes / comments can all go to the one.

I thought you did a really nice job with the level design here.  I don't want to spoil things for how to solve it, so will have some spoilers below:

SPOILERS:




I thought that the platforming section at the end was well-earned, as up until that point jumping wasn't a requirement.  I had an axe, I could see a tree across the lake, and I could see that the next objective was to chop that down to most likely create a passage across the spiders.  But I couldn't swim, and I couldn't find any way around the stone formations.  It finally occurred to me that you had taken the time to program in "jumping" and that I hadn't really needed to use it yet, so I checked around for a place I might jump.  And then sure enough found it there.  So this was really nicely designed, because it felt good to figure it out and it felt fair.  I also liked how you updated the world with each item, especially the quick exit from the maze which you presumably created yourself with the axe.  Things made sense.

One main place for improvement to me was the tightness of the controls when it came to jumping and rotating the camera.   I will start that off to say that getting the camera to rotate with the mouse view isn't trivial, so that you have this working pretty well is great.  But sometimes the mouse seemed to get stuck rotated too far one way or another, and it would take some doing to re-center it.  Jumping itself felt okay, but sticking the landing frequently caused me to get stuck on the wrong pixel and unable to recover--would have to let go and drop again, which felt bad.

This was a really ambitious game!  You created a really nice user interface.  I wasn't able to do attacks because movement was limited by the height of the terrain--it would move me up to the edge, but I couldn't get up the hill (no pun intended) to attack things.  I would really like to see more of what you had planned, but I was very impressed with what you did accomplish.

The shooting mechanics worked well, and I liked the use of the particle system and the different angle for the lighting to give it a "doom" sort of darker feel.  The challenge was maybe not super high as I had to intentionally get hit to test whether I could take damage or not, but that just means you have room to scale up the challenge with future levels etc.  It's a good idea for the initial experience to not be overwhelming.  I liked that you had some variety to the enemy designs.

I think possibly it would improve things for the jump force to be increased, as currently the jump does not really propel the character very much.  Then secondly would need to expand upon the game world itself, maybe with the camera moving with the player character through a platforming section.  With a higher jump force you could add additional platforms to jump on etc.  But it was good that you got the tilemaps working properly.  I think that with some more time this could have been expanded on to have a nice platformer.

I thought the atari aesthetic of the game was really neat and fairly consistent.  There was one bug I noticed where if I jumped and touched my own projectile I would disappear and the camera would fly off forever--mostly just had to avoid shooting while jumping horizontally.  I wasn't sure if I won or not--I think I defeated all of the enemies?  Improvement would have been for the enemies to be a bit more interactive as a challenge as they appeared to be stationary--I had several hearts but never seemed threatened to take damage.  So, mechanics work pretty good, and next step was largely around designing and staging the challenges.

This is really interesting.  I think maybe the camera is zoomed in too close?  It felt like there was maybe more information off-camera that I wasn't able to see.  When I got to the section where I could control the player character, it seemed I could only move left/right and wound up falling off, so I wasn't sure what to do there.  Is there another input that needs to be used in that portion?

The running up of the hill worked smoothly, but needed to reposition your obstacle spawner a bit.  Most of the obstacles were falling off to the side of the hill instead of in your path.  I think if this were a little more precise it would have enhanced things quite a bit.  One barrel nearly got into my path, and it was bouncing around a lot moreso that the big rocks.  They'd definitely have presented a challenge had they been more frequent, especially towards the top.

On second playthrough I finally realized what "WASD to scroll >>>>" was literally telling me to do.  The intro/outro story is really cool!  I thought your game was very well put together and was impressed with the different environment look/feels that you gave (outdoor platforming, indoor cave lighting, final section)

I loved the intro movie you made, that was extremely cute.  I was able to make my way to the end of the dungeon, I think it would have been more satisfying to have either a final battle or a puzzle to solve to unlock your friend maybe?  The attack and damage all appears to be functional IE I could damage enemies and they could damage me, but maybe the projectiles were going too quickly as I couldn't see them most of the time.  If you have time to look into the particle system for unity, the main character's attack would have been a really good place to use them for added visual impact.

It looks like you had the attack mechanics working which is cool.  I didn't see anything glitchy about the sword swing itself not doing damage etc., like I didn't seem to damage the enemy simply via proximity but actually had to hit them with the sword.

I got up to about lvl 20 or something haha.  The shooting mechanic was good, you had less accuracy while moving which added to the challenge a lot.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how it kept scaling up, curious if it has an upper limit?

I felt like all of the art assets you chose fit well together, the game looked cohesive even though you had three different art sources.  This game was all about the mechanics of the driving and how well executed you did that, and I have to say it felt really good.  The fact that you could flip in the air without dying *but* it would identify when you were stuck upside-down was really great--it made it a lot more fun because you had a fair chance to recover, and that felt *really* good for the lower-gravity environment we were in.  The challenge really displays itself with the final hill, which is very thematically appropriate.  You have to risk more speed, but at the moment that you're approaching this terminus you have to simultaneously avoid flipping and crashing on a short valley.  Executing that is a real challenge, and it feels earned because you've given us some nicely varied terrain leading up to that point to learn the controls.  Game feels really good to play with a well-thought-out and crafted mechanic.

Wow!  This was really good level design and obstacle design, first of all.  But in terms of the Theme, I loved how in each level you introduced another element of the lyrics from Running Up That Hill.  First we're running, then we're fighting to survive, then we're climbing up that building, etc.  The attack and movement mechanics could have been a bit tighter.  Sometimes it seemed like I froze up and couldn't move but there wasn't seemingly a cause, and sometimes I felt my attacks were not as responsive as I would have liked.  But, I felt like the enemies I needed to  attack represented a fair challenge given what I had to fight them with.  I think my favorite section was lvl 3 in terms of how the controls felt, and the final level was a nice challenge with the timing and placement of the arrows relative to the hill.

Since this is a mystery escape room game, all of this is SPOILERS:


Man I was very convinced this game was gonna try to jumpscare me.  I think my one actual criticism is that when clicking on certain objects there isn't a clear visual /auditory indication that the click was registered.  So when solving one of the puzzles I didn't know if I was doing the wrong inputs, or if I was just not clicking exactly where I needed to in order for the inputs to register.  Possibly highlighting the object, or a tapping noise, or both of those things would have helped here.  (Trying to avoid spoilers but you should probably know if which part I'm talking about by reading this!)  

But, the atmosphere was excellent, the puzzles were challenging and varied.  My one not-a-criticism is just that I wish there were more; and that's not because it was 'too short,' I just legitimately would have enjoyed playing more of the puzzles!  It took about 40 minutes to solve for me though so, again, this isn't a criticism just a wish haha.

Oh, art was outstanding!

Controls are UP for forward and DOWN for backwards

Controls are UP for forward and DOWN for backwards

This is such a challenging mechanic to use!  I was able to make some progress, but I will have to really practice a lot if I want to get up the hill all the way.  Imagine feeling accomplished for moving the character approximately 20 meters haha.  I think that I might have enjoyed being able to control the direction of the camera with the mouse.  Though that would have taken away some challenge, so maybe I would have kept it locked like this for a hard mode.  

I thought the music was a nice surprise, I would have liked to have had that powerup and the music last longer + add some visual cues.  When it first started up I thought it was going to ramp up and I got excited, but then the music stopped haha.  Did you make all of these art assets / the running animation yourself?  Make sure to include any citations you missed when submitting the document on Canvas, but otherwise if you did make all of these let us know!

I thought that the speed of the "pace car" you are racing against was perfect.  I go *just* a *little* faster than them, so I can catch up and pass them if I am doing a good job.  But I'm not going so much faster that I pass them immediately.  I have to work for it.  That was good attention to detail.  The controls for the car would sometimes cause me to veer off if I wasn't careful; I had to take turns very gently or it would go nuts.  I just chalk this up to part of the challenge, but an actual crash or some other gentler handling of this would have been nice to keep the flow of the game going.  But it's at least worth noting that if you are racing well then you don't really encounter this so much.

For level 1 at first it was challenging, then I felt like I figured out a trick to make it easier.  And that worked on lvl 2, but then lvl 3 did a good job of "responding" and creating a new challenge which that trick didn't work for!  That was really nice design, as it let me get used to the basic mechanics before throwing me a challenge.  I think with some additional levels and further/different challenges along the way this could be really great, but you have a strong start.

The AI for the units is really nice, and I like how you have the hand bounded to a certain region for unit placement.  I think with more levels / unit types this would be really good, but you have the core well-designed here.  Picking up and moving your units around with the hand wasn't trivial to implement, that works really nicely.  And good work on the barricades, as I know getting those to work nicely with the navmesh for the rest of the terrain isn't trivial either.

I think that I may have preferred if the axis of the mouse movement went the other way; I was having trouble controlling the camera 'cause it felt backwards for me, but this might be taste as I know lots of games let you choose which axis to rotate on and such.

Really nicely balanced game mechanics!  It felt like you got a lot of options with just these cards.  I liked the randomized options for reward cards, and how you had to reconstruct your deck.  It's a lot more limited options than you might expect from a deck builder, since you have to trash something permanently in order to add something new.  Hard mode was a good challenge.

If anyone is stuck at the very beginning and it seems like you cannot progress,
SPOILERS:

you should go right, not left.  I was actually able to get up to the fire on the left side but that's not the right way to go (as far as I can tell).  There's more to the right, though, a lot more.

Seconded

First

Yeah it was a nice lighting choice, definitely felt like dusk.

It was still cool haha.  I did really like the "red light / green light" enemy, that was a cool challenge.  And the artwork came out great.

I definitely recommend playing on Unity Play if playing on the pc.  For some reason I wasn't able to move left/right on the itch.io page, but the unity page worked fine in full screen mode.  The artwork all works together extremely well.  Love the acrylic painted sky.  The battle is a reasonable challenge.  The spider itself and the webs coming at you "through" the screen looks gorgeous.

I really loved the "red light / green light" sort of enemies in the 3rd wave, where they would pause and then suddenly go fast?  That was an interesting new challenge to deal with.  When you click left mouse it changes the bear's color, did this do anything else?

I really liked the layout of the house.  I didn't come across like random objects strewn about, the house felt real.  The lighting was also very nice, looked like it was dusk.  Was it getting darker as the game progressed?

The music is a great fit.  The level design is really well-paced; it does a good job of teaching you how to use the mechanics to solve future problems without simply spelling it out.