Lots of cool stuff here! The obvious standout part of this game is the sword. It both looks and feels really good to use. If there's one critique I have about the sword it's that I'd like it to be an even more central mechanic. By that I mean, right now the sword only really interacts with the combat half of the game, and not the platforming half (or if it does, I completely missed it). If you could find some way to make it meaningfully interact with platforming as well, that'd really elevate this game, as the sword is absolutely the best part of this game and what makes it stand apart from other, similar games.
Minor Art Critique:
sometimes the background is hard to distinguish from the foreground. It's not always clear what I can go through and what I'll collide with.
Platforming Critiques:
The platforming controls feel pretty bare-bones right now. They don't necessarily feel bad, but there's lots of room for improvement. Jumping in particular feels very much like it's just a simple "if on ground and button currently down, jump", which doesn't give very fine control.
The easiest 3 ways to make platforming controls feel better are probably adding coyote time, variable jump height, and input buffering (that last one would also require changing jump from being "if key currently down" to "if jump key transitioned from up to down").
Combat Critiques:
Sometimes the smaller enemies get really close to/overlap you, and it's near-impossible to see them when that happens. One way to fix this could be to make the AI try to stay to the left/right of you instead of getting all the way in close.
I feel like either dying needs a bigger punishment, or healing needs to be cheaper. Right now, it feels like dying and respawning at full health is less punishing than spending 10 gems to restore just 1 health. Maybe dying/respawning could use a true savestate mechanic, where EVERYTHING resets back to when you collected the last checkpoint, instead of just your position? But that that might make some things more frustrating.
Using the same currency to heal and buy health upgrades means that the players who need those health upgrades more are simultaneously the least likely to be able to afford them (because they spent all their gems on healing).
Narrative Critiques:
I'm not generally the biggest fan of games (or any medium of story) opening with lore. I need to meet the character(s) and world first before caring about the gods/ancient history/anything like that. Even if it's just playing around with the characters for 5 minutes, I'll have had a chance to wonder why things are the way they are, and then the first nuggets of lore can be fed to me. But not too much at once, because too much all at once will mess with the pacing.
Instead of pressing a button instantly skipping to the next line of dialogue, it should probably instantly finish writing the current dialogue (only skipping the animation of the dialogue appearing), and then the next time the button is pressed the dialogue is cleared and the next line begins appearing.
Bugs I Noticed:
- sometimes the light glow effect disappears briefly
- When I found the final room, I couldn't seem to leave it the same way I came in. I hadn't explored the whole level and wanted to go back before finishing, but the game didn't seem to let me.
Some other cool stuff I noticed:
Lots of really cool tech art vfx here. A bunch of work went into all that, and it shows. I like it a lot.
Despite trying my hardest, I was unable to find any softlocks, so well done there.
Once again, the sword is incredibly cool. That's what makes this game special. You should lean into that.
UwertaDev
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I really liked this game. The theming and visuals were both great. The janky platformer was the fun kind of janky, and served as a pretty damn effective segue into the core of the game.
The auto-battler RTS-ish mechanics weren't immediately intuitive, but I did get them pretty quickly. Mechanically, 'healer' and 'builder' make sense as names, but flavor-wise the builder is also healing, so those names were a bit confusing.
I will mention that the file you uploaded was Window-only, even though you marked it as Windows, Mac, and Linux. Just make sure you're more careful with that stuff in the future.
I didn't really understand this game. I liked all the flavor text on the cards and the descriptions of the situations, but I couldn't figure out the mechanics. I think I was supposed to somehow make a combo that would deal with the described situation? I never had any idea what all of the symbols on the cards or below the situations meant. I'm sure they meant something, but I never figured out what. Whenever I put the 4th card in, the situation would just end without me getting any feedback for if I did well or not. After I made my way from the top left to the bottom right of the map (after about 3-4 situations, I forget the exact count), I apparently lost? I don't know what I did to warrant losing, but I did.
After I lost, and restarted, I didn't seem to be able to click on anything. I wasn't able to start any more situations, so I stopped playing.
The controls for this game felt... strange. I would frequently have to hold both F and WASD at the same time, which felt weird sense the same finger is usually used for both of those. It would've been nicer if that was bound to something like Shift instead. Vault and Climb felt like you wanted to include interesting movement, but didn't think about anything beyond 'we should include this'. The level design frequently includes parts that look like you should be able to vault/climb, but you can't (for example, any two-block-high wall with a box pushed against it). Not to mention that anything a vault/climb can do, a basic jump would've been able to do too, while feeling much more intuitive and a lot less janky.
The camera also felt strange. All of the puzzle-solving elements take place on a 2D grid, but the camera (and therefore the directional controls) are offset 45 degrees away from that grid. Also I frequently rotated the camera in the opposite direction that I wanted to. I think making Q+E rotate the direction that the camera is looking would've been more intuitive than rotation the direction of the position of the camera. Also why no mouse-based camera controls? That would've been by far the most intuitive.
The puzzles were also not ideal. For the most part, the difficult part of the puzzle was 'find where the goal is', and the easy part was 'get this box to the goal' when it should've been the other way around. Every single puzzle in this game more complicated than a tutorial seemed to have one of two solutions: either use a box to make a bridge, or use a box to block lasers. I would've liked to see a bit more depth/complexity there.
One thing that took me a while to learn about gamedev is that you should playtest early and playtest often. The sooner you playtest things, so sooner you find out what is and isn't working, and you can focus your attention on those issues.
Yeah, I don't think I got the difficulty balancing quite right. I tried to offset some of the difficulty by adding a 'tips' section into the Itch description, but I don't think that did very much. I don't think that there exist one 'correct' difficulty for this game. If I were to continue working on this after the jam, as unlikely as that would be, I'd definitely add some sort of difficulty settings.
I love the small filesize. Can't get that with a commercial engine. The game itself works well as a 3D platformer. The various characters feel diverse, and the controls for the most part are nice. The air controls feel a bit too floaty, but that's really my only critique with the controls.
The map felt more like a test map/playground, meant more to show off what the characters could do and how they feel to control, rather than to be an actual game. Teleporters and 'size changers' having the same model felt a bit strange, but that's probably attributed to the game jam time limit more than anything.
I liked the visuals. The chunky low-framerate animations were my jam, though I do kind of wish that the rotation wasn't tied to the same framerate. It would be nice to have more instant feedback while turning.
The enemies eating the walls was nice, but no enemies ever spawned for me after the first ~16 seconds.
This game definitely could have used some cooldowns in the code. Instead of moving or shooting every frame that a key is held down, a timer could've been implemented so that it moves/shoots once, then won't move or shoot again until the timer runs out.
Also the download you provided is for Windows only, even though you marked it as for Windows, Max, and Linux.
I really like this. The controls are pretty intuitive, the puzzles all feel unique, and the visuals and audio is very pretty. The difficulty curve felt mostly right. I liked how there were a few later puzzles that were pretty easy, as they served as a nice break from the more challenging puzzles.
Starting the levels in the behind-asteroid camera instead of the top-down camera gave the levels a more cinematic feel, which I think is important, but it also made the first few second of each level feel a lot harder and more stressful than I think they needed to be. Maybe if you started the asteroid further back, and didn't let the player control anything until the asteroid got to its original starting point, you could keep the best of both worlds.
Similarly switching to the behind-asteroid camera when the asteroid started going out of bounds felt kind of annoying, as often the asteroid wasn't beyond saving yet at that point. Taking the camera out of the player's control makes sense if the player has already lost, but I'd rather the camera remain under my control right up until that point.
Other than a few gripes with the camera, this game was pretty damn good. Well done.
This is such a phenomenal platformer. Easily the best one I've seen so far this jam. Everything works incredibly well. The level design is great, the moveset is fun and unique with quite a bit of depth to it, the music fit in excellently (I think it was even dynamic! Dynamic music in a game jam, I love it!) and even the story was good. The jumping felt maybe a little bit floaty, but I quickly got used to it. The art could definitely be improved for a full release of this game, but the super-simple style you have right now actually works oddly well.
The control scheme was a bit hard to get used to, and while intuitive to understand the basics, it was not intuitive to use. It took me a long time to understand what the brother character was actually telling me to do. I was eventually able to learn the ultimate power (lol, love the menger sponge and sierpinski triangle), so it wasn't bad enough to prevent me from doing anything, but it was bad enough that when I failed it often felt like it was because I was fighting the controls more than anything else. I'd be curious to see how the game would play if you used the mouse scroll wheel to change sizes rather than W and S.
The snakes felt kind of jank. I wasn't sure how they were supposed to work, but sometimes they'd track me, sometimes they wouldn't, and when they weren't tracking me they didn't seem to have a set home point. I couldn't figure them out, and when I got past rooms they were in it often felt more like luck than anything else.
Also when I first started playing I encountered the strangest bug, which I suspect might be a Godot thing rather than your own code: when I was playing the game on my second monitor, everything worked fine, but when it was on my main monitor, my jump was so small that I couldn't even jump up two tiles to get out of the starting area with Pentagon Dad. This was an issue with both the Linux version and the Windows version run through WINE. No idea what was up with that.
Criticisms aside, I loved this game so much. Absolutely wonderful shit. Definitely one of my favorite games so far this jam. It is such a massive shame that I encountered this game on the 'Submissions with the least ratings' page. It deserves so much more.
This game has easily the best puzzle design and puzzle pacing I've seen so far this jam. Mechanics were introduced naturally, the difficulty curve felt right, and everything made sense. It's also pretty, sounds nice, and has some quality VFX juice. Some more QOL conveyor belt placement would've been nice (I wish I could click+drag), but was by no means necessary. I do wish that there were some later puzzles that utilized the more complex recipes, as it felt like those were introduced and then never used again, but jam time limits are jam time limits. I liked this game a lot.
The Linux download didn't work for me (I got an error about a 'missing .pck file'). Fortunately I was able to play the Windows version through WINE.
Thank you! I didn't actually make any of the assets myself (technically I put together some of the ships using pieces from a spaceship construction kit asset, but I didn't make any of the source textures), but I'm glad that I was able to make a game which utilized the assets well.
Balancing this game was a challenge, and I don't think I got it quite right. I tried to offset some small portion of the difficulty by adding a 'tips' section to the Itch description, but I'm not sure how much a difference that made. If I were to continue working on this after the jam, as unlikely as that is, I think I would definitely add some difficulty options. Because one difficulty that is right for everyone definitely doesn't exist for this game.
I love this so much. Everything was just about as close to perfect as it's possible to get in only 96 hours. The art, the story, the music, the gameplay... it all fit together so well, and felt remarkably polished. I really like how there isn't a way to lose, but the game still rewards skillful playing. This is absolutely one of the best games I've seen so far this jam.
I liked the difficulty level of this game. I will mirror what some other commenters have said that maybe mixing action platforming and puzzle platforming didn't work the best, but I didn't find it too bad. I do wish that the wizards fireballs were maybe 50% smaller so they were easier to dodge. As is, it felt like a lot of times I died because there was nothing that I could do, rather than me doing something wrong.
The general vibes of the game were pretty great. I liked the spell-casting mailman, and the music was absolutely a bop.
Thank you! I'm glad that the effects I was going for payed off. I tried to make the combat feel as polished as I could (the parallax, the background particles, the animated thrusters, the bullets exploding on hit, the different sounds for hitting the hull and the subsystems, the muzzle flashes, the slightly animated health bars, etc.) rather than adding more fights, and I definitely think that was the right decision.
Destroying your previous ships was exactly what I wanted people to do when playing. It plays into the lore of an AI unhappy with their tiny spaceship body. I like to image the Toy Story "I don't want to play with you anymore meme" for it.
This is definitely the most literal growth that I've experienced in a tower defense game, so it definitely fits the prompt.
It wasn't very intuitive, though. Without reading the description, I had no idea what was going on or what to do. it would've been nice to see something guiding me in the game itself, rather than just the Itch description. I also never figured out what towers 1 and 5 did. 1 I guessed was just a basic block, which could be used to expand your machine or be a wall, but I wasn't sure, and 5 I only managed to place down one of, and wasn't able to see what it did amidst all the other chaos.
small thing grow big fun
Thank you! most of the art I downloaded and didn't make myself, but I did put together the final ship in GIMP using pieces from a spaceship construction kit asset. I needed something with an encompassing shape, while also having gaps that you could shoot through to hit the thrusters in the back, and there was no way I was going to find a ready-made asset that fit that description while also at least somewhat matching the styles of the first two ships.
Love the presentation on this game. The visuals are excellent, the sound and music are excellent, and almost everything feels very polished. There are quite a few game-breaking bugs (I was pushing a box into a portal, and I was going through but the box wasn't, trapping the box behind the portal), and I was stuck on one level for like 10 minutes because of said bugs.
I also forgot/didn't realize that I could pull boxes as well as push, and almost gave up on a level completely before I saw that 'pull' was listed in the controls on the itch description. I would've liked to see pulling be tutorialized, probably with a level that has just a box and a button, where the box can only be accessed by pulling.
But besides those two things, this game is absolutely phenomenal. It feels great to play (bugs aside), and there are some pretty clever puzzles in there. Well done!
Thank you! I definitely wanted all of the ships to feel unique, both to play as and to fight, and I feel like I did a good job accomplishing that. I don't think I did quite as good a job at getting the difficulty right. I decided not to add a checkpoint after the first fight because I wanted the player to have an opportunity to appreciate how much better at the game they've become, which they don't get if they never have to face the 1st enemy again after they win once. Also I just didn't want to put in the effort of making a checkpoint system.
Yeah, balancing was a struggle. I wanted the second fight to be scarier than the first and play completely different than the first, but I also wanted it to be a bit easier than the first, because every time you die to it you also have to redo the first fight. I didn't want that to happen more than a few times. 1st try might've be a bit too easy, though. Ideally it would take everyone 3-5 tries to beat the second fight after maybe 10 tries to beat the first fight, but that is really hard to balance with how varying everyone's skill at this kind of game is.
I wanted to make a game end screen, but I never got around to it. It probably wouldn't have been that hard or taken too long, my attention was just diverted elsewhere. I do like the peacefulness of the current ending though. If only it were clear that it was an ending.
Thank you! Yeah, difficulty was the hardest part of this game to get right. If I make it too easy, people who are already good at this kind of game will get bored, but if I make it too hard, other people will find it more frustrating than fun. I tried to balance it somewhat and hoped that the satisfaction of finally winning would offset any frustration, and even added a 'tips' section into the Itch description, but I'm not sure how well that worked.
Thank you! Yeah, I don't think I ever got the difficulty quite right, despite my spending pretty much the entirety of the 4th day playtesting and tweaking it. I wanted it to be hard enough that beating it for the first time felt like an accomplishment, but I may have gone too far and made it more frustrating for a lot of players instead.
Such a cute game! All of the mechanics were intuitive, and the level design was great as well. I could always tell where I needed to go, and finding the little 'hidden' flowers rewarded paying attention and felt good. This is very solid 3D platformer, especially for having been made in only 96 hours.
The only critique I really have is that the camera controls felt a bit floaty, and my mouse wasn't hidden.
Well done.
Thank you! Yeah, difficulty was the hardest part of this game to get right. If I make it too easy, people who are already good at this kind of game will get bored, but if I make it too hard, other people will find it more frustrating than fun. I tried to balance it somewhat and hoped that the satisfaction of finally winning would offset any frustration, and even added a 'tips' section into the Itch description, but I'm not sure how well I did with all that.
This is such a cute game. The concept is great, the art is great, the exotic fish are great. I made a lot of use abusing the fact that I could jump and place fish beneath me, which didn't feel entirely intended but was fun. I think the mechanic did get repetitive after and awhile and slightly overstayed its welcome, and you could've made the game about 30% shorter (increasing the speed at which you encounter new fish to compensate, of course).
It felt like there should've been some sort of visual effect when you were fishing (Maybe a portal opens up and you cast the line into the portal? or maybe you cast a gravity-less lure off the edge of the screen?), but I'm sure if you'd had more time you would've added something for that.
Thank you! Yeah, difficulty was the hardest part of this game to get right. If I make it too easy, people who are already good at this kind of game will get bored, but if I make it too hard, other people will find it more frustrating than fun. I tried to balance it somewhat and hoped that the satisfaction of finally winning would offset any frustration, and even added a 'tips' section into the Itch description, but I'm not sure how well I did with all that.
I would've loved to see some part of the background that remained stationary relative to world (instead of relative to the camera) so that I could have a frame of reference for how fast I'm moving. As is, there is no visible difference between moving up and moving down. When an asteroid is in frame, you can use to see your current acceleration, but velocity is completely invisible, with the only way to tell being when you hit your max speed and stop accelerating.
The controls need you to have your hand in three places, though. You left hand is on WASD, but your right hand needs to use both the arrow keys and the mouse. If you need someone to frequently use both WASD and arrow keys, it's usually best to have everything be controllable without the mouse so that the player doesn't need to constantly move their hand back and forth. Alternatively, do everything with the mouse instead of needing the arrow keys.
Yeah, I struggled trying to get the difficulty right. If I make it too easy, then people who are already good at this kind of game would be able to win without much effort and get bored, but if I make it too hard more people won't be able to win at all. I wanted people to have to try a few times before they figured out the right patterns for how to win, but I didn't want it to be so hard that people got frustrated. I don't know if I got that balance right, or if it's even possible to get that balance right for everyone.
Pretty good auto-battler for a game jam. I like the touch of having a permanent upgrade available each round. Having a greater variety of upgrades, and maybe being able to choose from a random selection of them each round would've been cool (bring a bit of roguelike into the game), but that would've taken a lot of design time, so it's understandable it's not there.
Thank you! That’s exactly the reaction I was going for with that ship. I knew that I wanted something that felt all-encompassing, and I wasn’t going to be able to find a ready-made asset for that. I needed it to wrap around the player, but also have a way to shoot through it to hit the engines at the back. It took me probably three or four hours in GIMP trying different combinations and putting together pieces from the spaceship construction kit asset I was using to make something I was happy with.
I spent a decent amount of time on the parallax effect, especially getting it to took good while the camera expands when you hack a bigger ship. Another sneaky thing I did with the parallax is, since the parallax doesn’t loop and if you fly far enough away you won’t see it anymore, I made the big red ship always spawn in the direction towards the center of the arena from you to try to guide you back to where the parallax looks the best.