Oh, and I also found the music quite nice. It made me nostalgic for a track I made years ago.
Oktayey
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I think the concept is solid, but the execution flopped. I'd recommend removing or significantly shortening the turn delay, since trekking through empty areas feels so tedious when limited to moving one space per second. I also felt that the combat lacked substance; it felt like the best way to defeat enemies, if there even is a reason to do so, is to just stand still and wait for them to enter attacking range before pressing space.
I think this can be something good, but it needs work.
This made me nostalgic for Flash games of old. I found the visuals of particular interest; the character art is crude, but has a certain quality that I find oddly charming. Also, were the corrupted visuals generated with the RTC? That's a good use of the tools at your disposal! Though I'm not sure how well this game fits the jam's theme, I'm glad I gave it a go!
The gimmick initially interested me, but I found it just too frustrating. First off, the game's playability depends on your mouse sensitivity; playing the game with my preferred sensitivity seemed impossible since I could not move my character the required distance in the time the player is given to do so, so I needed to raise my sensitivity. My main problem, though, is that it seems some corrupted tiles must be passed through to progress, but others just kill you on contact. How do I tell which tiles kill me and which ones I must pass through? When I got to a barrier of corrupted tiles that seemed impassible, after a dozen attempts of trial and error, my patience ran out and I gave up. It didn't help that upon death, the checkpoint occasionally just didn't work, discarding my progress.
I must say, though, the death counter's presentation is clever.
I don't have much rhythm game experience, but I found this game a bit frustrating; I felt like I was getting dinged for prompts I correctly responded to. Maybe it's an issue with telegraphing, and giving the player a clearer indication of exactly how they messed up a prompt would help? I have a hunch that my problem relates to timing, and I think giving the player some extra feedback could help.
When my prompt feels like it's graded correctly, though, I find it quite fun and satisfying. The art is pretty nice, too!
Interesting game!
The first stage was pretty fun for a while, but the second stage never seemed to give me any opportunity to steal a faster car, so it was just a slog of creeping along with the slow starter car while nothing else really happened. The second stage is also where I also noticed that the HUD doesn't seem to scale correctly when not in fullscreen, so it wasn't even visible for all of my gameplay up to that point. I also occasionally had an issue where my car and character would just vanish, requiring me to restart the level. Finally, most minor, the seams between road segments often send the car airborne, which I find a little jarring.
Overall, though, the game is admirable. I like the atmosphere, and the concept reminds me of Freeway Fury. I must say, however, the corruption aspect never really came into play for me.
I have only a limited sample size of four as I write this, but of the other submissions I've played, this is feels remarkably complete! A story, cohesive visuals, music, a scoring system, multiple endings... Wow! In my opinion, though, I didn't find the gameplay very engaging. I only played through it once, though, so I might give it another try! Maybe I'm just too tired right now.
This game does pretty well at building an uneasy atmosphere, but the gameplay could use some extra complexity. Also, I found myself needing to restart the game multiple times; first I had an issue with being unable to open any cabinets, then I learned that dying seems to softlock the game. The art is pretty good, though!
it's been demonstrated time and time again that many AI generators actually just straight up will spit out somebody's copyrighted work almost identically if given the right inputCould I have a source for this? All the instances I've seen of such a claim actually turn out to be the result of a thief feeding the model someone's work as an input, a deliberate action that is distinct from allowing the model to generate an image from scratch; it's akin to a thief taking someone else's art and putting it through a Photoshop filter in order to pass it off as their own.
Listen, I really do understand how you feel about AI. Seeing cynical AI slop makes this certain flavor of disgust well up deep within me, and I'm sure you feel the same.
If I may be honest, it kind of hurts that you seem to doubt my sincerity. I'm an artist myself, and I do also fear machines taking over jobs otherwise filled by passionate people. As much as I can, though, I try to set aside my feelings and rationalize. The reason I'm nitpicking the rule is because it doesn't seem like its purpose is truly to serve as a quality standard, nor do I think it would be a good one. I think red tape stifles creativity, and it should be used very sparingly. Garbage will seep in regardless, so I think it's best to be as lenient as possible to at least avoid limiting the well-intentioned. After all, are the people themselves not the best to decide what is worth of praise and what is worthy of denouncement?
Just my two cents.
I wasn't planning to use AI at all—I just thought the rule was a bit draconian. I overlooked Rule 8, though, limiting participants to only self-made assets, which definitely makes the argument that the jam is for showing off personal skills make more sense. The AI rule must've drawn my attention away from it since it would make the AI rule superfluous.
The new rule is definitely better, but it looks like it would still ban new Adobe Enhance stuff, and probably some other innocent things that don't immediately come to mind.
Personally, I feel it's best to just require participants to be transparent and clearly disclose any AI content they include.
Low-effort garbage can and will exist without AI—we've seen it on-stream for a decade. AI slop is just one way cynical trash can manifest, and so banning the tasteful use of AI, like the examples I gave, seems like gross overreach.
Rule 9 says: "No AI-Generated content is allowed in any way, shape or form". This would ban many things we all know and love, like Cave Johnson's "dream droid cum dumpster" spiel, the cursed Mr. Dink from Pic2Pic, the wonderful gibberish of Adobe Enhance, and even the original version of the Realign cover.
What's the purpose of this rule?
I recently downloaded a game from Itch that uses half of my CPU and maxes out my GPU on the title screen, despite only showing very simplistic graphics. It is because of this that I suspect it of using my machine to mine cryptocurrency, or use the hardware for another nefarious purpose. I assume this kind of software may not be offered over Itch, so where should I go to have this looked into?
It's an okay concept, but it's quite rough around the edges. The first thing I noticed was that the 'options' menu seems completely nonfunctional; selecting it didn't do anything. Secondly, the movement is a bit clumsy-feeling, and the UI seems to have mixed up the prompts for the trigger buttons and shoulder buttons, saying to press the former when it's actually the latter. Finally, I got stuck at the place with the steam jets that a previous commenter mentioned, and gave up.
In conclusion, it needs quite a bit of polish.
A tad bit frustrating, but it's an interesting concept. I'd also like to add that I like the abstract, geometry notebook-esque look.
One thing I might suggest would be to add a small delay (maybe half a second) between dying and respawning, so that the player has an opportunity to regain their bearings instead of just immediately dying again due to already having a key held down.
I gave up at the first boss, so all of this only applies to the very beginning. Here are my complaints:
- The music is so much louder than the one other sound I could hear.
- The ground texture has poor tiling; at some places, you can see seams, and others, the tiles overlap each other.
- Every time you die, you're shown a message in Twitch lingo that's frankly irritating.
And, most importantly, the gameplay is simply bland; seemingly all you do is dodge and shoot. Furthermore, the boss seemed incredibly tanky, and the player incredibly fragile. I estimate it would take 100 hits to defeat it, meaning you'd need to survive something like 50 seconds, even assuming you hit every single shot. It certainly doesn't help that you die in only 3 hits and you have to spend around 10 seconds walking to the boss every time you want to retry.
I admit that I can't be certain the rest of the game isn't any better, but it's not a good sign if your player wants to leave after 10 minutes. If you're truly confident you've made a fun game, at least polish it so the player wants to stick around. Otherwise, it makes the player feel like it was cranked out in a couple days without any regard for quality, and isn't worth their time.