Replayed through it all and I gotta say, movement feels much, much better now! The only thing that could be improved further is wall jumping: since it now requires you to “move” away from the wall to be able to jump, depending on the camera angle it can be very tricky to perform and I often found myself dropping from the wall instead of jumping.
Apart from that, it’s great that you took all feedback to heart and I’m looking forward to the content update!
Glad you liked the game despite the high difficulty! Watching your gameplay has made me realize the very first tutorial that teaches you how to kill enemies with the kick can be unintentionally skipped, so it’s no wonder you had a bit of a hard time at the very beginning using just the ion rifle. But I’m glad the kick still resonated with you!
I agree it can be easy to get lost, especially after acquiring the thrust kick. We tried giving each room some unique geometry, but we were running short on time and couldn’t do much more. I’ll make sure my next game features a simple map system, at the very least!
It’s almost criminal how few ratings your game has been receiving. This is such a unique experience and I’ve had great fun playing it!
Don’t know if you’ve played Lethal Company, but was this inspired by the ship computer from that game, at least in part? At first it seemed this would be a similar experience, since in LC you can watch your team explore the level from the ship’s computer and issue text commands to open locked doors and disable hostile turrets.
Graphics and sound were both excellent and made for a kind of eerie vibe, which I loved. One thing that could be improved is the choice of colors for some obstacles: I often could not distinguish between actual obstacles and simple terrain height differences, as they’re both highlighted in yellow by the ship’s radar. Also, it was a bit hard to figure out if creatures were still hostile after I hit them with enough torpedoes. Maybe a change in color or a special sound effect to signal that they’re backing off could help with that. As for sounds, the dash sounded too cartoony, but the rest was great.
I couldn’t figure out how to use the pressure room. Its description said that it can repel enemies, but it seemed to do nothing. Sometimes I would get stuck in a corner while running from an enemy, resulting in me bouncing between enemy and wall and taking tons of damage. Also, I’ve tried collecting that one room guarded by a creature (AN I think?), but whatever I did just made that creature run away with said room, so I either needed a specific room to get it or I was supposed to do something I just couldn’t figure out. Last room I acquired was the dash, then stopped playing as I couldn’t find a way to proceed.
When I first played this, I experienced a very weird bug. I started a new game, didn’t save, quit the game to tweak some stuff to make it run better on Linux, relaunched the game, hit Continue and found that the DO room was still there, even though the ship had already powered on and I could move in the level. When I went to pick up the map and save rooms, the ship’s layout would not change, so when those rooms got damaged by creatures, the only thing I could do was drop them to prevent the ship from getting destroyed. I then started a proper new game and didn’t encounter any other issues.
Having said that, this is definitely one of my favorite entries. Great job!
Thanks for playing! Yeah, I’ve had some complaints about the overall darkness, so that’s definitely something to be fixed in a later update. That one dark corridor was meant as kind of a set piece to introduce the third enemy, but I think I could’ve added even one more light.
I actually started playing your game some minutes ago, so expect a review soon!
Thank you for your detailed feedback!
I think I may have gotten a bit too used to the movement during development and failed to notice the slipperiness on ledges. Sorry about that. I could definitely add an action to prevent falling from them!
The ion sphere alone does more damage to a single enemy, but if you try and hit the sphere with your primary fire, it explodes inflicting even more damage and is also AoE (kind of a hidden mechanic, dunno how many people actually found out about this).
Regarding kicks, they actually do reset double jumps, even if you hit nothing. If they don’t, then that’s very weird and could be a game-breaking bug, as some sections require you to jump after a wall kick. Instead, if you meant having both jumps be reset (as in, kick then jump then double jump) then yeah, that’s not possible (but could be an idea for a time trial reward!). Also, I agree they can be hard to perform properly. As another person said in their review, they’re more akin to Quake’s rocket jumps, minus the self-inflicted damage.
This was fantastic! Movement and attacks require some getting used to, but it all flows so well once you get the hang of it. Good thing you provided a map, as it made backtracking and locating my next objectives much faster. Nice art and music, too.
Time trials were fun and challenging, but I was a bit bummed to find out that the reward for at least one of them was a cosmetic item, instead of something actually useful. Also, a couple of sections that required teleporting (I think in the very same area where you acquire said ability) could have used a zoom-out to make it easier to see where I would be teleporting to. Lastly, the whole screen continuously flashing red when at low health was a bit jarring. Something more discreet, like making only the health bar (or the character sprite) flash red, would’ve been better imho.
Anyway, this was definitely one of my favorites. Nice job!
Thank you, I’m glad you had fun despite the thrust kick! I knew it was a bit too technical of an ability the moment I added it in, but I was curious to see if it would still click with people.
This was indeed inspired by boomer-shooter classics and even has some references to them: the orange enemy was inspired by Quake’s ogre, the room where you acquire the thrust kick is a replica of the first room in Doom 2’s Entryway, and the second weapon is an almost exact replica of Unreal Tournament’s flak cannon!
You’ve got some pretty cool stuff here! Character feels good to control, movement’s snappy and I’ve had no trouble gauging how far and high I could jump, so good work on this. I like that “spin-to-jump” ability and got used to it very quickly to reach the highest platform.
Nice work on the camera too. It seems to update its Y coordinate (or whichever axis Godot uses for height) at predefined height levels, which works fine now, but could feel weird when walking up/down long slopes. What I would recommend is letting the camera update its height constantly when the character is grounded (lerp it of course so it feels smooth), and when not grounded let it update only when performing certain actions, such as grabbing ledges, activating that spinning ability, falling from great heights or when the character gets very close to the top and bottom edges of the screen. This is roughly what I did for my MVM22 entry some months ago and it worked pretty well, but I’m sure there could be better ways of doing it.
Looking forward to a complete version of this!
For being your first project, this is quite decent and much more polished than many other entries I’ve played during this jam! Nice job!
Player grunts were a bit annoying, especially since they play at every jump and sign. It took me quite a while to figure out that wall jumps grant you double jumps (either there was no tutorial for it or I must have missed it). Also, gravity was waaay too high and made some sections impossible for me (didn’t get very far unfortunately, got past the sign that said something about a blast zone and then had to give up). On the other hand, movement felt responsive enough, so props for that.
I look forward to what you can do next! Keep it up and I’m sure you’ll be able to churn out some real gems!
This has to be one of my favorites for sure! Snappy movement, unique abilities and amazingly polished graphics (don’t know why, but I adored the rubber ducky!).
Other people have already commented profusely on all the good aspects, so I’ll simply limit myself to listing what I thought needed improving:
Apart from these issues, I had a blast playing this! Absolutely fantastic job!
Character controller is snappy and it feels great to move and jump around! Even though the environment is clearly unfinished, I like how whimsical it all looks. Feels like I’m surfing in a dream. Also, the player model looks fantastic and I think its author was doing a great job.
Apart from all that, there’s not much else to comment on. I got to the gold-colored platform and I believe that was the end of the game. I understand your team experienced lots of difficulties during development and it’s good that you at least managed to submit an early prototype. It’s a very decent base to build upon, so I’m looking forward to how you can expand on this!
Finally got around to reviewing your game after playing it over the course of a few days.
I loved the art! Sprites are simple but pretty, and the enemy designs are creative. Speaking of enemies, I really appreciated the huge variety and how you programmed their attack patterns (I experienced some light bullet-hell moments in a few rooms, which is fun!). Music was enjoyable, but IMHO it wasn’t a very good fit for the vibe I got from the game. Maybe a more chill and melancholic track would’ve been better, something that would convey how deep the player has gone down the depths of the ocean, but that’s a minor nitpick.
What I feel this game sorely needs is a minimap. I got lost multiple times and had to take a few breaks after long backtracking sessions. Even some recognizable landmarks would have helped, as all rooms look mostly the same. I managed to get to the third area, then stopped once I got to that grey robot that would shoot down my rockets.
Lastly, I think you could’ve added more platforming challenges and puzzles, as almost all rooms were filled with lots of enemies and thought that movement abilities were slightly underutilized.
Overall, I’ve had quite some fun and it’s amazing how much content you managed to pack into this! Nice job!
I did not expect to have so much fun playing this! Usually, movement with lots of inertia doesn’t feel good to me in a platformer, but here I felt it perfectly complimented all the movement abilities and I got used to it rather quickly. Also, it’s amazing how you managed to design so many different and very interesting puzzles with so few “enemy” types. The last few puzzles were so incredibly hard though, and sometimes I got stuck bouncing between lasers and projectiles, but in the end I didn’t feel the game was unfair (most of the time) and attributed my failings to mere skill issue.
I know you wrote that this was meant as a test run for learning Godot and not as a long-term project (yep, I read your post-portem), but this was quite a unique experience among all the other same-y entries and I would honestly play an expanded version of this! Great job!
Thank you for your valuable feedback! I hope you didn’t get to the end using only the first weapon, ‘cause that must have been painful. It’s intended to be weak to push you towards using both its alt fire and the second weapon, so I totally get how the orange dudes may have felt like bullet sponges.
The thing about wall running that can feel off is that it instantly zeroes your vertical velocity, so it requires lots discipline not to unconsciously press the movement keys while wall jumping, as that will immediately stick you to the wall. In Titanfall 2 (the game I took inspiration from for the movement), wall running does indeed retain vertical velocity, so it both feels better to use and you don’t lose the velocity you gain after jumping. I couldn’t manage to add this behaviour in time because, after spending 6 whole days fine-tuning my wall run implementation as it is, I felt the need to move on to other stuff, but this is such a sore point for me that I wish I could’ve done better.
Still, if you managed to have fun despite these issues, then I’m glad!
Thank you for your kind words! It’s good to see a fellow enjoyer of old-school shooters here!
Learning how to wall jump with thrust kicks can indeed be tricky. How I always do it is by jumping while facing the wall I want to wall jump from, then look downwards so that the camera direction is at a steep angle relative to the wall, then kick. This usually maximizes jump height, but I get that it takes some getting used to.
(In case you need visual reference, on the game’s page there’s a full walkthrough in which I perform that particular jump to get to the red door)
I managed to play through it all, but boy was this game hard.
Adding fall damage to a metroidvania was a brave decision! It was waaay too punishing though, like even falling from the shortest height would damage you. The character was a bit too slow and made jumping even more cumbersome. Fortunately, the gravity boots eased much of the early game frustration, so I kept pushing through.
I liked the enemies, but those flying monkeys gave me some real PTSD (and my dumb ass thought they were crazed pidgeons before the dialogue clarified it for me). The boss fight was very interesting, but the fact his projectiles could block my own made me die a LOT to my fireballs. Finally, as others have said, the control scheme could use some serious work.
On the upside, I loved the aestethics! Your art style paired with that background music (did you compose it?) made it somewhat unsettling, which I absolutely liked.
With more work on the character controller and nerfed fall damage, this could be pretty great! Despite all the issues, I love challenging games and had my fair share of fun.
Ahh, you were actually near the end! Sorry you had trouble with wall running, I should have made its tutorial easier. One thing the tutorial does not make clear is that you must keep the movement keys pressed down in order to keep wall running, otherwise you’ll simply slow down and fall.
Glad you still liked the game, and thanks for the feedback!
I dig this art style! It’s pretty unique. Sometimes it was hard too see where I was going, which may be due to the very low contrast and brightness, but I liked it overall and it fit your story and writing pretty well.
I actually don’t mind these kind of 2.5D graphics. However, like the other commenter said, placing the character at the center of the camera would’ve felt much better. It also seemed like all interaction prompts appeared depending on whether the actual character sprite was facing the items, instead of them appearing based on the direction of the camera.
Jumping was a bit floaty, but in this particular instance I didn’t mind too much, as platforming wasn’t the main focus of your game. Combat, however, was indeed its focus and it could see much improvement. The only strategy I ever used was getting close to the enemies, slashing, dodging backwards, repeat. More enemy variety, attacks and abilities would have helped a ton.
I liked the sniper boss fight, but it felt like you were forced to make him not shoot the player when he got close (or maybe it was a bug on my end?). Also, the gun could have used a dedicated aiming mode instead of having a “laser” appearing when looking at enemies, but I think you did what you could given the time constraints.
With more polish and combat variety, I could see myself playing a longer version of this!
This was pretty fun! Movement felt snappy and made platforming the best part about this game. Gunplay was also pretty good, but hitting stuff up close was quite hard as shots were not perfectly aligned with the center of the screen, and reloading was a bit too slow. Really liked the combat-focused rooms and that little Roomba spawning mines all around the place!
Graphics were very uncanny, but they give the game a unique look and I kinda appreciate that. Music was a very good fit, too!
I wasn’t sure about the purpose of those dark blobs you pick up across the level, as no explanation was given in-game until the very end.
Overall, despite its simplicity, I had a very fun experience!
Nice! Parrying and healing are obviously inspired by Ultrakill (which is a plus in my book) and make the game super fun to play. People have already commented on all the good parts, so I don’t have much else to add in that regard. I’m just going to list what I think could be improved:
Other than that, this was a very fun experience and I’d love to see more!
Thank you for playing! The kick prompt should have appeared right before the first enemy. My guess is that you may have “stepped in and out” of the tutorial’s trigger volume very quickly, so it appeared and disappeared without you having a chance to read it. That’s entirely my fault for coding it that way!
The art style is what convinced me to try this game out. Your artist(s) clearly had a vision and I think they executed it amazingly well (also love me some PSX-style games, even though all textures in your game have bilinear filtering).
I didn’t really get the story behind the pictograms. Maybe something to do with the tyrant rule of a God-Emperor? But it could be just me being very dumb. I also must have missed the voice acting somehow, so I can’t comment on that (I was looking forward to hearing it, tho!)
Movement was, unfortunately, a bit lacking:
Combat was very janky: it lacked feedback, dogs attacked almost instantly with no way of predicting or even dodge them, and I found myself skipping some sections entirely. I was guilty of this too with my MVM22 entry, so I totally understand how hard it is to nail combat in such a short amount of time, while also striving to make a good character controller.
I liked the level design. Maybe a bit too punishing at times, like missing a wall jump near the starting area brought me all the way back to the boss arena, but I found it quite enjoyable all around.
I hope I don’t come off as too harsh. I have a tendency to focus on minor gameplay details, so don’t let that long list of issues bother you too much. You had some very good ideas, and with improved platforming this could be a pretty amazing game. I also would love to see more of this art style!
Thank you so much for the feedback! So glad you liked my entry.
Wall running not working could be due to some surfaces not having the proper collider settings for some reason (caught some of them right before submitting, but I may have missed a few). Also, one thing I failed to convey through the tutorial pop-ups is that you need to keep the movement keys pressed down to initiate wall running, as it’s not enough to jump towards surfaces at non-zero velocity.
Yeah, the second trial is meant to be very hard if you haven’t found both stamina power-ups (they’re all located in the prison ward), but maybe I could’ve added a couple more seconds to the time limit.
Can’t wait to try out your entry!
Very nice! I love physics-based gimmicks. Being able to stack boxes to avoid traps and reach new platforms sets your game apart from the rest. I also really liked the art and music.
Even though the gameplay is unique, it can also be very buggy. Sometimes spawning boxes would not work as intended: they would either be launched at great velocity towards some random direction, get stuck off-map or completely disappear. Launching projectiles was also very finicky.
There were some instances in which I was sure I could jump between some narrow platforms, but actually couldn’t (the player collider may be a bit too wide). But apart from that, I enjoyed the movement.
As somebody else already said, music was a bit glitchy, like it would stutter randomly during gameplay and even more so while viewing the map. Played on Chrome, by the way. Also, please tone down the bloom, it’s just too much.
It’s pretty clear that you ran out of time for the final boss, so this won’t affect my rating. I’ll just pretend the game ends once you open the door. Having said all that, I really appreciated how unique this was and I’m looking forward to play a bug-free version of this! Great job!
If this game is running in slow-motion on your PC, try setting a lower resolution scale: go to C:/Users/<your_username>/AppData/Local/MyProject2/Saved/Config/Windows and look for a file named GameUserSettings.ini, then set sg.ResolutionQuality to a value between 1 and 100. I recommend starting with 50, but don’t go lower than 30 or you’ll get one big pixelated mess. If on Linux, you’ll find the file in ~/.config/Epic/MyProject2/Saved/Config/Linux
Awwww I knew this would happen eventually. I think I forgot to disable Virtual Shadow Maps in the project settings, which can impact performance quite heavily.
If you wanna try squeezing some extra performance, there’s a way to set a lower resolution scale (you won’t lose too much graphical fidelity considering this game is meant to run at a low resolution). Go to C:/Users/YourName/AppData/Local/MyProject2/Saved/Config/Windows and look for a file named GameUserSettings.ini, then set sg.ResolutionQuality to a value between 1 and 100. I recommend starting with 50, but don’t go lower than 30 or you’ll get one big pixelated mess.
If you’re not up for it, that’s fine too. I guess choosing UE5 for such a retro-looking game wasn’t such a bright idea lol. Thank you so much for playing though!
(EDIT: Apparently, setting a fixed frame rate in the project settings makes the game run in slow-mo if you PC can’t keep up. Well, at least now I know lol)
Out of all the 2D games in this jam that I’ve tried (only a handful, but still), this may be the best one yet! All that juice made every movement and attack so satisfying and I loved your art!
I was a bit disappointed when I found the Lead Fixation ability: with such a fast-paced gameplay up to that point, I didn’t expect to find an ability that made me move much slower and also wait for it to recharge between uses.
The camera almost always tracking the player closely when jumping felt a bit disorienting, but it may be just me.
Lastly, I encountered a couple of bugs. When grabbing that specific ledge as shown in the screenshot below and then performing a melee attack to the right, I could damage myself.
When I tried to access this area, the game crashed with the following error:
In the end, I had a blast playing this and I cannot wait for you to release the full version!
PS: The Windows build worked fine on Linux. However, even though it would detect my controller, no inputs would register, so I used my keyboard.
Seeing an emergent studio tackling such a challenging first project is always inspiring!
The platforming aspect was nice for the most part. I personally liked the ability to chain both the regular dash and the dash attack during the same jump. Wall running was intuitive to perform, but it would have been nicer to execute it on every surface and not just a set of predefined ones, as I think it would have enabled more freedom of exploration. Wall jumping was okay-ish, but I could never get it to work consistently and got very frustrated each time I was required to use it. Lastly, as others have already said, you should definitely add some coyote time to the jumps.
Camera didn’t feel that good honestly. Aside from the constant stuttering, depending on the angle it would also make a subtle up and down motion when running, which I found very annoying. Another much needed improvement would be to have the camera move ahead of the player when moving laterally instead of lagging behind so as to provide more visibility in the direction of movement. Also, the ceiling in a few rooms was too low and I feel this worked against the camera, as it would quickly zoom in towards the player and confuse me.
The enemy models were very nice, just as the player character and much of the environment, but as far as combat goes, they were just too slow and tanky to be fun to fight. After killing the first couple of enemies in the starting area, I basically skipped all of them. The player attacks could benefit from better feedback, both from a visual and audio standpoint.
Despite how it may seem, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy playing this. I imagine you’ll want to kickstart your professional career with this game or maybe another future project, so I felt the need to provide as much feedback as I possibly could to help you improve. It’s a very decent start and I really hope you get to achieve much success in the gaming industry!
The aesthetics are probably the best thing about this game. They kinda remind me of Fear Effect for the PSX. Music and sound effects fit very well with the overall vibe.
I played this with a controller because of the absurdly high mouse sensitivity when aiming. Hip fire is a bit clunky, but it may just be the big crosshair that’s putting me off. Having to deal with the limited aiming time mechanic outside of combat just didn’t feel right and made exploration a bit cumbersome.
Out of all the weapons, the grenade launcher was the most fun to use. Too bad the sawed-off shotgun was useful only during the miniboss fight, ’cause it got obscured very quickly by the grenade launcher.
The final boss was fun too, though its model being invisible and the ever-increasing lag and stutter detracted from the experience. Speaking of performance, even though I have no way of looking at your code, I’d hazard a guess and say the main culprits might be the boss’s projectiles. If that’s the cause of the memory leaks, you may need to look into the Object Pool pattern, which would enable you to reuse the same fixed number of projectiles over and over without having to spawn new ones each time.
Even though this needs quite a lot of polish, the concept is interesting and has good potential!
This one takes the crown for me. Movement is so satisfying and the grabbing mechanic is very straightforward and easy to use! I also adore the whole PSX-esque look, especially the dithering shader you used (did you write it yourself?).
The only complaint I have is about combat. I think you made the right decision by focusing on polishing the movement system more instead of combat, however enemies were very easy to kite by just running around them in circles. I literally completed the whole game without ever taking any damage from enemies and just spent all my gems on speed powerups. Also, sometimes the skeletons’ AI would bug out, making them just stand there looking at me. That’s okay though, ‘cause movement and exploration made up for it and I know time just wasn’t enough to polish things more.
I think you could actually have a good chance to win, if only you could get more ratings. I don’t know what it is about retro-looking 3D games this time around, they all seem to be getting criminally ignored for some reason (I’m in the same boat). I hope you do actually get to win though!
PS: Your build worked flawlessly on Linux under Wine!
Did you code this from scratch or did you rely on a library like SDL? Either way, that’s awesome!
However, there’s something about the movement that feels off.
Starting from the jump, I found it weird how the character would start to fall very quickly when performing short jumps, but would slow down so much when reaching the apex of the full jump. The dash would execute with a slight delay that put me off at first, but I got used to it so I didn’t really mind that much. The grapple, however, was extremely unintuitive and it took me quite a while to learn how to use it. After acquiring the longer dash for it, it felt quite nice to use, so I think it should’ve actually been like that from the get-go. I also really liked how you managed to integrate it with the combat system!
Unfortunately, at some point the grapple completely bugged out. It would only play its sound when I used it, but the rope stopped appearing, so I just got stuck and could not progress any further. I may come back to your game to see if I can manage to reach the end.
Anyway, with a lot more polish this could be very fun! The style is unique and I liked the minimalistic approach to introduce the new abilities. I’m really looking forward to see this improved!
I loved every second of this! The only thing that needs improvement is the camera: seeing it closely tracking the character’s position as I fell down from great heights caused me a bit of motion sickness (I guess I’m just sensitive to it). Also, when I attempted to make that long jump with all those spikes after acquiring the double jump, I would sometimes respawn on top of the spikes. Fortunately, I didn’t take any damage when that happened, so I could safely jump back to a safe position.
All in all, excellent job! And thank you for providing a native Linux build!
