Nice game! The main criticism I have is that the player's movement felt extremely floaty and was kind of frustrating even. I did really like the overall atmosphere, especially the music, and the procedural generation seemed to work really well. Overall, really good job!
Definitely some technical issues in the HTML version, but the concept is great. It's kind of hard to judge at the moment purely because of how broken it is, so unfortunately, there isn't much more that I can say.
Very cool game! I mean enough praise has already been said; adding more to the wall of well deserved praise would be kind of useless at this point, so the aside from the lack of tutorial, my big complaint is definitely that the game goes on for so long. Maybe I just got an overpowered item or a good set of cards, but there were times when the target score was like 300 and I got 28000 (that's when I finally decided to put the game down). Either making the game harder (or nerfing items that are op) would make it a lot more fun. Other than that, I genuinely had a lot of fun playing. Good stuff!
Yeah I mention the item cap in the tutorial. There are two main reason I added the cap, one to avoid infinite scaling (so the player couldn’t go on forever and get bored) and two because it broke the game a little lol.
Interesting concept, but I wish you were able to ride blocks going down on inverted gravity. I also didn't really love the color scheme either, I thought it was kind of confusing and on inverted gravity it hurt my eyes a little. Other than that though, good job.
First off, I thought the game was genuinely well made, but there are some things that I would like to bring up, especially since you're aiming for a commercial release:
1) The gameplay itself feels a little repetitive, and honestly kind of pointless. I get that it's an endless game, and you're supposed to keep trying, but for me, I didn't think the gameplay was fun enough to make me want to play again without some sort of incentive. If you want to keep the gameplay loop exactly the same, something as simple as an upgrade shop that you can visit after making a burger would make me want to keep playing a lot more.
2) In my opinion, the use of the theme is kind of redundant. The way I see it, the button having two states doesn't really count if they're used more like a trigger rather than a toggle. You press the button once, and then it's replaced. I'm sure you probably expected this criticism, but I didn't see it anywhere else so I thought I'd throw it out there.
3) I wish there were sound effects. Having satisfying sound effect could've also made the gameplay more fun, just by adding a little bit of player feedback. In my experience, it only takes like 30 minutes max to find sound effects on freesound or opengameart and then implement them.
Now that being said, I really don't want this feedback to come off too harsh because honestly, there's a lot that this game has going for it. First off, the amount of features this game had was honestly impressive. Although it seems very simple, things like the leaderboard, the music selector, and the background selector really do enhance the playing experience (maybe this is where shops could've been implemented, like you had to buy different music/backgrounds?). Also, even though you did use other assets, the game's art and music really did mesh well and create a good atmosphere. I hope you improve the game in the future, especially regarding my first and third points, and good luck!
I’m glad you liked it! Your complaints seem to be relatively minor, so I’ll take that as a success! I’ll make sure to play your game as well when I get a chance.
I'm glad you had fun. As far as the originality, I'd argue that the item system makes for a neat twist on the format. Anyway, thanks for playing! I'll make sure to check out your game as well when I have time.
Why would you want to go that slow lmao... Anyway I hoped you liked the game other than that. I'll make sure to check out your game as well when I get a chance.
I thought this was a really good game! The puzzles were all interesting and the mechanics were cool as well. I wish the circuits were explained a little more obviously though, since I didn't really focus on the bottom text and missed the explanation the first time around and was left very confused for a while. I also wish that the game mentioned that you could activate a circuit after a bot died and bring them back, instead of having to have a powered circuit when one died. Other than that, though, I really enjoyed the game. I thought the difficulty of the puzzles was about right, the sound and music were both well made, and the graphics were also really good. Great stuff!
Thanks for the feedback! Initially the default light was even smaller. If I had time to play test it I’m sure I would’ve been able to balance it better, but the first couple items aren’t too hard to find and after a few upgrades you should be able to see alright.
So I played it again but I still thought that it felt really slow. I think that was probably because of how long it takes for another titan to spawn. I'm not sure how the spawning works, but maybe you could have a new one spawn 5 seconds after one dies or something like that. Another feature that I think would be really nice is a progress bar, so you don't just have to guess how far you are in the level. As of now, it kind of gets boring, especially because you don't know how much longer you have to go for. So I think a progress bar would help a lot in that regard. So overall, I think I still share the same opinion as I did originally, that it's a really interesting concept, but it gets repetitive quickly.
As far as balancing goes, I think it would be better to add a cooldown to the healing and make the actual attacking easier by making it more responsive. And as for the story thing I just kind of felt like there should have been one, maybe because of the exploration part of the game, I’m not sure.
1) Level 8 felt really hard (I completed everything except levels 8 and 12).
2) Couldn't figure out how to playtest/upload my levels.
3) The clicking sound effect got a little annoying to me (I know it's nitpicky, but I did notice it).
Compliments:
1) Overall great level design. Really engaging puzzles, and aside from level 8, the difficulty curve felt good.
2) Usually, I'm not a fan of these hour of code-esque puzzle games, but the level of polish and the jump tile actually set it apart from most other games like this (they are really common in jams). Of course, more mechanics would have made the game better, but for something this short, just what was there was sufficient to keep me engaged.
3) The graphics were really pleasing to look at. Aside from the robots themselves, everything was really simple, but it all fit together to look really nice. (With the exception of the UI, it looked like you used the unity default sprites lol. I'm not gonna get too mad at it though, it is a jam game).
4) There is usually a couple games per jam that you can tell are going to be good before you even touch it. This is one of those. The polishing on the web page, the cover art, and then you get into the game, and it's just as polished. Really great stuff.
It's hard to give any sort of feedback on this game when I didn't really know what was going on... I don't really know what else to say, there NEEDED to be a tutorial on this one. Even a text wall would've helped a ton. That being said, it seemed like a really ambitious project, and the main mechanics seemed to be working, so there's that.
1) There's no way to speed up Bob. Having an option to speed up the level would've been much appreciated, and taken a lot of the waiting out of it.
2)The game took a while to register that I had completed a level.
3) I know you already talked about this, but yeah, the missing level manager definitely impacted the game significantly.
Compliments:
1) Cool and interesting puzzles. I like that you were able to add quite a few different mechanics, really kept the game interesting.
Ok I know there's only one compliment that I can think of, but in a puzzle game, level design and variety in mechanics are by far the most important things, and you nailed that, so good job!
(Also, did you by chance take inspiration from the Snail Bob game from forever ago?)
Yeah I mean there isn't exactly much to say about this game, since it is a snake game cross over with hour of code, but you will be happy to know that I didn't find any bugs, and that the game worked as intended. I will also say that making this without a game engine is pretty impressive.
1) The gameplay didn't feel all the great if I'm going to be completely honest. First off, the bird's movement speed was really slow (I'm mainly talking about the blue one). So slow, that often times I couldn't get it to my cursor in time to hit an enemy, and especially since it's the only bird that attacks for a while, it didn't feel great to play. Another thing is that when I order the birds to attack, heal, or slash, it was really delayed. Especially in a game like this, where timing is important, delaying attacks just doesn't feel fun at all. If you are going to continue working on this like you said, I would highly recommend making the general gameplay much more responsive and quick.
2) I didn't really understand what I was doing. I knew I was exploring some area that was infested with enemies, and I knew that controls, but that was about it. Especially since this game really feels like there's supposed to be a story behind it, there should be some sort of explanation, or some other way to set the scene a little bit. Even games like Hollow Knight, which basically throw the player in completely blind, have the intro cutscene and Elderbug to provide a little exposition. Granted, it is a jam game, but even one screen with a little bit of text explaining some sort of situation would've made it a little more engaging in my opinion. (I think RockyMullet also touched on this a little bit).
3) The healing ability especially NEEDS a cooldown. It was way to easy to spam heal, and that combined with the gameplay being very slow and frustrating just did not make me want to continue playing.
4) This one seems a little nitpicky compared to the others, but the dirt road thing could've used some detail in my opinion. Especially when it's surrounded by excellent pixel art, it sticks out like a sore thumb a little bit. Again, not a big complaint, but definitely something to do it you want to continue this project.
Compliments:
1) Other than the aforementioned dirt road, the pixel art was really impressive. Especially the birds and enemies, so really good job on that.
2) The music and sound design was also really good. Not much else to say here.
I know I might come off harsh with there being so many complaints compared to compliments, but I really did put a lot more effort into finding things I didn't like, because in my opinion, complaints are a lot more helpful than compliments for improving a game, and especially since I saw that you were planning to continue working on this, I wanted to give feedback on what I thought could be improved. This really is an excellent base to continue working with, since with just a couple tweaks to the gameplay here and there, you've already got yourself a fun and engaging experience. It's just up to you to add what you want. So please don't take this feedback negatively, I don't mean it that way :).
1) The big one is that the game is never really explained. Like, maybe I'm the only one having this issue, but I never figured out how to actually destroy sites. I ended up just letting my characters run in circles around them, and waiting until I finally got the level complete screen. Adding a second page to the help menu could've been a good idea I think.
Bugs:
1) Arrows would stay on screen and just spaz out for some reason. Don't have too much information on this other than that though.
2) The pause menu always said "Chapter 2-3".
Compliments:
1) Fantastic sound & music design.
2) Fantastic art/models/whatever its called.
3) Interesting gameplay and take on the theme, I just wish I knew what I was doing.
Not much else to say, it seemed like a cool game.
(I hope my feedback doesn't come across as harsh, I just think it's more useful to be critical than throw a singular compliment at you and leave)
Well the entire point of the game is that characters have to be operating machines for them to work. I make that quite clear I believe. Also, I mention specifically that it’s fine to leave the help book for a bit and come back later once things become relevant. This is to try and help ease the text wall a bit.
Um... There are three colors in the skill tree. Red for what's not available, yellow for what you can research if you have the sp, and green for completed researches. No? If there's a bug in that please let me know. Also I do mention replacing machines in the help book, although it's not emphasized as much as it probably should have been.
1) Bugs were everywhere, and at time, it made the game borderline unplayable. I think the other comments have already addressed the ones I found though, so I'm not gong to elaborate too much.
2) The sound effect when a ball hit the finish really bothered me. I would suggest either making it way quieter or just replacing it with a different sound.
Compliments:
1) The actual gameplay was quite good, and I liked the level design from the ones I saw. The puzzle were pretty fun.
2) The take on the theme was cool, with the different routes you could take.
1) The beginning is way too slow in my opinion. Especially as a player who doesn't already know the best way to play your game, it takes a long time to get to the point where I'm making any sort of progress. I would say just to double the speed the biomass generates at, or at least increase it significantly, since that it what I always have to wait on.
2) RockyMullet already said this, but yeah better explanation of how the game works would've been nice. Something he didn't point out though, is that we have no way of figuring out how much or something things produce. Like we don't know how many machines each rain condensor can fuel, or how much water certain machines take. Take Factorio for an example. If you go through its UI, it's full of input and output number, and you are able to figure out how much or something you need to power machines. That was something I thought was missing here.
3) Much smaller of a complaint, but the background looked off to me. Probably because it was a different resolution and it had no shading, which just didn't look right when comparing it to the machines.
Compliments:
1) The game itself is very well made, even if it isn't balanced what well (my opinion!). All of the system were really cool, and for a game this small in scope, it really does manage to achieve a lot. Even if the slowness at the start prevented me from getting very far, I still found myself trying to figure out the best way to generate power and food, and coming up with different strategies to do so.
2) The music was also really nice. It was subtle, but it provided some really cool atmosphere and also fit with the story of the whole game.
