I definitely agree lol. Balancing was atrocious in the later stages because I had to manually set up every value depending on the size of the object, relative size of the player etc. So we chose to have the game be too easy rather than too hard; If we ever remake the game from the ground up I would use normalized values scaled up at runtime instead. Thanks for the kind comment!
The presentation is absolutely immaculate, and I love this interpretation of the theme (our game is actually quite similar concept-wise!), I would have liked a bit more variety in the gameplay though.
I'm honestly astonished you managed to make all that in 4 days. The puzzles are right up my alley and even if it's clearly based on The Witnes, it incorporates the theme well and has very unique puzzles. Possibly my favorite game of the jam so far!
I got to 64% cleaning. I love the idea, and the music fits perfectly! The controls feel appropriately soapy, my only issue is that I didn't find a way to reliably get out of the bathtub so I just kept trying until it worked somehow. But otherwise it's exactly as I expected!
Ah, that might be an issue with the limits of the map. The game zooms out so much that at the end it becomes really easy to reach a position limit set by godot, and if you do everything just breaks, so you should avoid going in the same direction for too long. Thanks for playing the game, I hope that moment wasn't too much of a bummer!
I love the early 3D vibe this game commits to both with the visuals, gameplay and music. It also feels good to play, but holy moly the difficulty ramps up quickly! I have a hard time mapping my path by taking into account the upper lanes.
The idea is simple, but the game is very polished considering the short timeframe!
I love the soomth aniamtions, the screenshake, the hits feel impactful, the controls feel responsive. The menu looks nice with the animated title and button sounds.
The artstyle is cute and consistent, the enemies are pretty unique too, I got surprised quite a few times!
I do think the boss could have been made a bit more interesting because once you've killed the smaller butterflies in one go the big one just has a lot of HP and one heavily telegraphed attack. Maybe give it a more complicated attack once all butterflies have been killed. Then again, with only one hit point, the game can be quite difficult as is already.
Nice little "speedrun" platformer! It is minimal, but it's also fully functional.
You could improve it by giving the player more control over their jumps (for instance, having the jump be smaller with a shorter button press) and also giving some leeway with the jumps (there are several times where I couldn't jump because I just fell for a 1-pixel height gap).
I love the idea of scaling up over time and seeing things around you get smaller! (In part because we had the same idea).
As other people have said, turning feels way too slow and laborious, deciding to go somewhere and then getting there takes way too much time. I did not get very far but frow hat I have seen, getting 1000 food may be way too much and the game will become very repetitive quickly.
It is unfortunate that you couldn't get the building mechanic to work, it seemed really interesting! Maybe something to look forward to in an update after the jam has ended, or as a submission to the post-jam jam?
To get that look we render the game at 640x360 and then upscale the image with nearest neighbor. You can do that simply by setting the window size in the project settings and setting the resize behavior to "viewport". After that, it's mostly a matter of artstyle, we chose a simple artstyle because Arkatein is new to blender and it lens itself well to the pixelated look.
As you have noted, sound effects and ambience have been a bit of an afterthought compared to the rest, we did spend some time on it but it was late in the jam.
Regarding difficulty, it is very heartening to hear that you want to stick with it despite being stuck! We have struggled a lot with tuning the hints and explanations on how to progress, there was one playtesting session where I had almost given up hope that this would work at all.
I like the idea of using different folk tales around a single creature. Implementing so many different minigames must not have been easy.
The game is pretty fun, though having sa single health point feels a bit unforgiving.
The running wolf minigame is pretty basic but it works well.
The grandma clothing minigame isn't well suited to increasing difficulty, I feel, ans once you understand the concept it becomes very easy even if you have a very short time to see the image.
The wolf in sheep clothing minigame needs more feedback for when exactly it starts checking your position and at what speed the sheep go. You could for example start with the sheep already moving and sho a small timer indicating that once it hits zero you have to be in the correct area.
The pig minigame needs more feedback too. I understand that clicking and dragging is supposed to simulate the idea of blowing air, but it feels weird an an input method. Maybe dragging though the house would feel more intuitive than starting on the house.
All in all still a pretty impressive game considering the time limit and one that feels coherent despite the various minigames.
The game is hard, but it still feels pretty fair. The controls are complicated but not absurd, it doesn't feel like I completely lose control of the sub at any point.
I have to admit I didn't get very far on account of me not being very good, still I think it might deserve to dedicate some time to it to see the end.
Each minigame feels fun in its own right for the twenty-or-so seconds before going to the next one. And each one is well polished!
I like the maze section too and the little messages popping up as we walk. Ne narration is well made in general, I like that the game starts with a question.
The first teleportation point was pretty obvious visually though. The only other small issue I have is that losing conditions aren't well signaled. Only way to know if you're going to lose is to try.
Smashing things is fun! The animations are well made and I found it funny how you used the simplicity of the Godot logo to your advantage.
However, currently it seems that the best strategy is to use the fire magic constantly as it is much more effective than spamming the smash button. With the health regeneration, I was able to stay alive indefinitely just by moving my cursor all over the screen while holding RMB.
I think it would be great to have various enemies, needing more decision-making from the player on who to smash first, as currently, you just have to kill everything on sight.
I really like that interpretation of the theme, and integrating the wildcards into it!
The platforming is quite clunky, especially with the moving platforms, but it was still enjoyable.
The forest is spooky, congratulations on that. Not being able to hear the goat and having to look back every once in a while to make sure it's following you is pretty unnerving.
I also like the music / background ambience a lot in general.
I think giving us more granular choices that can impact the journey differently would be great. But I understand that development time was limited.
One weird thing I noted is that the third run through of the forest was identical to the second, for me.
I managed to get to wave 11. The gameplay is simple but actually pretty fun and engaging! It's easy at the beginning but the difficulty ramps up surprisingly fast. One or two more enemies throwing off the usual player strategies could work really well with this.
A minor nitpick: It took a while for me to understand that the lighning bolt was a powerup! I thought it was just a bugged sprite leftover from one of my attacks at first. Making it look a bit different could help, especially since it's arguably the strongest powerup.
However, the game is seemingly very hard! There are a lot of enemies, and they move quite fast, and the attack animation is pretty long, so you get submerged instantly. The only way I managed to survive was by exploiting what seems to be a bug: moving cancels the attack animation so you can attack again instantly. If that is intended, it should be made more clear I think!
The visual effects are very well made, and combined with the sound effects and audio they sell the ambience really well!
I initially did not realize that I could interact with the car. A prompt appearing would be good in this kind of situation.
I also didn't manage to progress in the game. I feel like I'm in a completely boxed area and I can't go anywhere. I found the logs but I didn't know what to do there. If there is somewhere I can go or something I can do to continue, it would be great if the game could guide me more clearly towards that.
The platforming works really well, I managed to walk around the level without missing jumps and without getting stuck anywhere which is great considering the layout is quite vertical.
Fighting seems difficult though. It's not very obvious when our character loses hp. A small animation, or camera shake, or visual effect would be helpful, as well as seeing clearly where the damage comes from. Sound effects would be great for that too! Because the enemies seemingly attack instantly and without warning, taking damage seems to be unavoidable in order to get in range to hit them.
As others have said, the game needs a lot of polish. Playing as tank, it's very hard to get in range to attack the enemies because their attacks are instantaneous and without warning. It makes it feel like a lot of damage is unavoidable.
Another minor criticism I have is the intro should not pass automatically, I think. Let me read at my own pace and click or press a button when I'm ready to play!
Still, I like the fact that the rooms aren't too cluttered and the enemy spawns are well paced.
Wishing you the best with the rest of the development!
Cute game. I like the idea of having this simple economy around making dishes, while learning about them.
I think it would be great to be able to access the recipe book while in-game, because when I start the game I just want to play right away! I'd prefer to read about them while playing.
As others have said, a basic explanation of the controls and how the game works, either in game or in the itch description, would have been helpful. It also took a while for me to understand that many mechanics are time-based, which is why the game is a bit confusing at first.
I really wanted to have a web version, but it seems to just universally not work, so after reading your comment I have decided to remove it. Thanks for sticking with the game despite this issue.
We did not want to give too many hints, but it's hard to balance. I would have liked to implement a history for the monologue because it contains a lot of hints. But considering the very difficults playtests we had throughout the week, I'm very happy that now a complete stranger was able to finish it without any help!
I really like the aesthetic, and I love the concept of using the radar for a find and rescue mission.
However, I was initially surprised that the intro talks about an aberration on the radar, but then you can't actually witness such an aberration in gameplay. Then when replaying I realized that the fishes do show up on the radar when angered. However, at that point, I don't want to look at the radar because I want to run away fast!
I think it would be interesting to have the player witness that something is abnormal by themselves before being put in a dangerous situation.
Cool, I'll try it. However, did you know that you can upload the executable version in the same page as the web version? This is what I did for my game, as I also realized there were issues on some browsers.
It seems that I can't tilt my camera up or down. Shift also doesn't seem to work. I also have a hard time grasping the layout of my surroundings due to the low light and minimalistic design. I'm not sure how much of this is normal.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah tbh it aligns with my own observations, though in the case of finding good deposits it might be because the way the info is presented makes it seem like most of the deposits aren't very good even though they are. And I'm quite happy with that shader, I learned how to do it on the spot during the last few hours of the jam!
