This has been the single best way to get feedback on the way I do game development, and I cannot thank the community enough for making me learn so many things from just one game.
Reach the Output
A smol asteroids-like top-down shooter with a computer-y theme.
You are a small function, part of a data recovery tool. Your job is to get to the output to deliver your important files, and on the way, you may optionally recover more files for more points.
Use WASD to move, and MOUSE to aim and shoot.
Collect power-ups that have both large buffs, AND game-changing side effects. There are a total of 4 power-ups like that.
Collecting the extra data bits is OPTIONAL.
This was my very first GameJam I actually finished, please be critical, I want to know where I went wrong and how I can improve, but please avoid being rude. Thank you! ❤️
All the sound effects in the game were generated DURING THE JAM by sfxr.me
I used GMLive to assist me during the Jam
Both the intro and gameplay music was composed by Jasper / Sephra
Banner made by Jasper / Sephra
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Patron
I really like what you tried to do here, but I can't really get very far :( I know people have complained about the difficulty already, but yeah the game is really brutal. Overall you should always aim for something that feels easy for you, because people won't know the game like you do. Also for a jam, where people try to play many games, you should really be careful with frustrating mechanics. Here, the fact that touching any wall kills you is a good example of that. On it's own it's already pretty brutal, but then you also need to take into account what it means to die, and for this game it means starting over! And there are a lot of really tight corridors where a slight move of the mouse will make you rotate in a wall. And finally, I really think you shouldn't care too much if your game is too easy in a jam. You're already trying to make something in a short amount of time, it's already good to finish anything! But the worst part is that if you actually make something too hard, people might not be able to experience it :/ Balancing is one of the most common problem in jam games, but that's expected: it takes time and a lot of playtesting. Knowing that, it's safer to just make something relatively easy :)
I might come back to it later, but yeah I wish the game let me see more of it, because there were already a few good ideas!
SubmittedWould You Rather
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Lv. 5
Thank you so much for playing and for writing a feedback! This has easily been the most helpful thing I ever did when it comes to getting myself better at game development. The turning was actually something that I thought about reworking a lot, but I kept pushing it back and after a while I just ended up running out of time. And I do feel really bad for making the game so hard, since a LOT of people won't even got to the first powerup, essentially never discovering the core aspect of the game. But once again, thank you for pointing things out!
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Patron
Alright, here's my constructive criticism. I like the game. For a first game jam game, it's respectable, but there's something that's really hard to nail down when you're working on a game frantically for 48 hours. I like to call that the fun factor. It's really difficult to see how fun your game is on your own without practice. I've literally been making games for 12 years, and I've almost never nailed it in my commercial release nor in my game jam games. This is a subjective opinion from the outside, so take it with a grain of salt.
- Oddities Sure, it makes sense to have one life with no checkpoints since file transfers either succeed or fail from beginning to end, and it makes sense for the firewalls to kill you. BUT, I would say those features aren't the most fun. They don't add any interesting gameplay elements. I will admit, I made a game back in 2011 that had spikes for walls that killed the player instantly. If you walked into a wall while holding a weapon, the weapon would keep moving and the player would stop. So I just made all the walls kill the player to keep that from happening. haha
- Player Sprite Not sure on the reasoning for the shape of the player sprite, but I constantly died moving in narrow areas next to the bits because of a small rotation that would put me right into the wall. Less of an interesting learning curve and more of a frustration. I would recommend making the player sprite's hitbox at least, if not sprite, more like a circle to prevent this if the walls have to kill you. Give the player a little leeway in this regard to increase how much of a "close call" an interaction can be. The more intense a close call is, the more memorable the gameplay is for the player.
- Movement There's a little slide that happens when you stop pressing a movement key, and this is fine to have, but I think this mechanic and the killer walls clash as well. It's hard for the player to make small adjustments to get through an area if they're sliding around before they stop. This is something players could get used to, but you want to put your best foot forward in a game jam and also the payoff for getting good at the movement isn't very much. It's not like it takes a few seconds to accelerate up to a super fast speed that could be fun and risky to try. Risk/Reward. There's a lot of risk and no reward in the movement.
- The Powerups The powerups were the best part. I thought they were unique, and they changed up the game a bit. If the game was a little less easy to immediately die, and leaned more into the powerups and how they could affect the game, that would make this game really fun.
- The Premise This is really good too. I like the idea because there are so many ways to experience this from a gameplay perspective. I'm not a particularly creative person, so I love to see cool game ideas like this.
All in all, this was a good entry with a lot of good ideas. Just a few things held it back from greatness.
P.S. I can't say anything about the animation since I suck at that. haha
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Lv. 5
Thank you for playing and for providing such a lengthy feedback! I really appreciate it! Difficulty is one of the biggest lessons I had to take away from this entire Jam, I really need to be careful with it next time.
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Patron
This has some interesting ideas in here, the idea of making a choice when you reach a power-up is clever and some of the coding behind the sound emitters is a nice touch, there are some areas that could do with some polish, like having the introductions gradually shown to you rather than just a wall of text at the beginning and maybe more than one life each run would be a nice addition, but these are just small quality of life improvements. Overall this is a great entry and I enjoyed playing :)
SubmittedMoon Stealers
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Lv. 5
Thank you so much for the feedback and for playing the game! Yep, I definitely wanted to make a tutorial of some sort that would show the player how the game works, but I completely ran out of time and I didn't want the whole game to be just a tutorial and nothing else. Besides that, I was constantly afraid the difficulty would be way too easy and the game boring, and keeping this in mind through the entire game made it really difficult. I'll definitely be careful with that next time, thank you again!
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Lv. 2
Not bad for a first try. The keyboard movement and mouse aiming was actually surprisingly good. I like how you can shoot backwards while moving, and just the feel of the movement overall.
I think the timed-gates were a bit difficult--or at least, the one-hit death was pretty punishing.
SubmittedXanitol
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Lv. 5
Thank you for the feedback! I definitely hit it bad with the difficulty, outside the Jam I've been improving the game based on a lot of feedback from everyone here, this is such a special experience for me!
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Lv. 2
The interger enemies are creative. The music was interesting and fit the style. I think the most frustraiting thing is how narrow some of the corridors are with the walls killing you. It makes things pretty tedious.
SubmittedThe Buttered Eel
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Lv. 5
Thank you so much for the feedback! I definitely have to tone down the difficulty next time, I didn't want the game to be boring but went way too far!
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Lv. 2
The intro explaining controls and gameplay- honestly a beautiful feature I wasn't expecting, very to the point and helped a lot!!! I enjoyed the artstyle and music, I did find the difficulty a bit offputting though, I would love either a HP system, a less brutal collision system when the ship is rotating or for the walls to not instantly kill, couldn't really get very far without accidentally rotating in some of the smaller corridors and winding up at the start again!
SubmittedHallucia
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Lv. 5
Thank you so much for playing! Yep, the difficulty was definitely way, way off, I was afraid the game would be too easy but ended up making it unfair in the process. Thanks for the feedback!
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Lv. 13
Very challenging game! I included it in my GM48 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/2x0hqeP3RWA
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Lv. 5
I'm glad you liked it, and thank you so much for including the game! I'll check the video out when I'm back home!
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Lv. 16
This game is brutally difficult, particularly if you try to collect all the things, and not in a good way. Particularly, it's very frustrating for the bits to be full random. Need some measure of predictability in enemy attacks or its pure luck rather than skill. Also they took about 3 too many hits to kill. Other things that make it too hard are the one-hit-kill and really short gate interval. As for the other stuff, graphical style and audio is simplistic but clean, music is catchy. Side effect theme present in the pickups.
SubmittedYukon
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Lv. 5
Thank you so much for playing! I definitely struggled to find the right balance of challenging and difficulty, and I went way overboard with it, because I was afraid it would end up being too easy and too boring. I'll look out for this in the future, thank you again!
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Lv. 1
Wow this game was really well made. I enjoyed the look of the art, the music and the overall feel of the game made me want to keep playing! I loved that you had the option of accepting powerups and the first one I got allowed me to move twice as fast and slip less while the physical window was move on my computer haha, very clever. I will say the overall difficulty was a bit hard. I ended up dying due to the rotation of the character. I think some HP would help this game a lot! But overall this game is the best so far, Great job!
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Lv. 5
Thank you for your feedback! Unfortunately the difficulty was definitely not right, starting out I was afraid it would be too easy, so I made things hard until I felt like it was challenging enough for ME, but that doesn't mean it's right for everyone! Thank you for playing!
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Lv. 2
Great game! the sound effects were a little too loud for me but i can change that on my pc so no problem, this type of spaceship controls are not exactly my beach but i enjoyed playing it! Only thing i would say was to let us resize the window but keep the aspect ratio
SubmittedThe Attack of the DVDs
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Lv. 5
Thank you for playing the game! The only reason I didn't want the window to change at all is because of the special side effects of the powerups, such as the Window moving around with the player or the multiple lives with the window shrinking with every hit. These wouldn't be possible if I let the player resize or even go fullscreen unfortunately. But thank you for your feedback! I really appreciate it!
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Lv. 30
I was actually having fun trying to go as fast as possible and skipping past all the enemies and figuring out the timing of the blinking walls so I didn't have to slow down but there are a few things that bothered me about this game. Like how hard it was to see the red numbers shots and the enemies being able to shoot you while on the upgrade pickup screen. Neat game but could use a little polish.
SubmittedTank Effect
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Lv. 5
I definitely had trouble with time management, I feel like I spent too much time on small details while leaving more important bits to the very end of the deadline. Thank you for sharing your experience!
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Lv. 6
Game seems fun, was a bit frusterated by the turning, as well as the random shooting of the rogue bits
SubmittedBody Invaders
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Lv. 5
Starting out I was afraid the game would be too easy, but then I ended up making it way too hard towards the end, thanks for the feedback!
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