Leap, climb, and dodge traps as you scramble to reach the big red button before time runs out. Choose your pharmaceutical enhancement, but mind the side-effects.

Press enter to start the game and choose your drugs. Learn about the drugs with spacebar. Control with WASD or arrow keys, jump with Spacebar. Gamepad supported!

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  • Tero Hannula
    Patron

    I liked theere was voice acting :D The main complaint would be floaty control of character as other has said. Now otherwise it could have been pretty enjoyable but still frustrating to play :D

  • kris24
    Patron

    The voice acting was a great way to sell the atmosphere quickly, so that was a great decision to include. Unfortunately the floaty controls, dodgy physics, and one-life-only mechanic make this deeply frustrating to actually play.

    Another much more minor point is it would have been nice to be able to switch into full screen - it was quite small on my monitor which added to the frustration a bit.

  • havik
    Patron

    The voice acting is really cool, the art is a fit for the style of game, and the concept of the game is good. Sadly those things are let down by the controls - just way too floaty and imprecise for a timed platformer (with a one death mechanic). This could be improved massively by adding checkpoints throughout the levels (Sorry if there were some, I didn't find them), or making the controls more precise. I tried the first level ~20 times (trying out the different items etc) before giving up, as the controls were just too frustrating, the furthest I got was the drop with the blades either side.

    The items themselves were cool, a nice positive and negative combination of effects on each one. (the wings were my favourite)

    It's a good first entry, with potential. I'd focus mostly on fixing the controls. I think if you fixed them, it would alleviate most of the other frustrations as they're really smaller things that just get amplified by the controls.

    Found a few bugs - if you're on a ladder and a moving platformer hits you into a block, you teleport through the block to the other side. I also fell from a large height onto a ladder, climbed back up it, then as soon as I touched a floor block I died (from fall damage I assume). Kinda funny bugs though, made me laugh!

    The player animations were fairly good, but I wish you could ledge-grab. The jump animation looks like the player is grabbing forwards so you think you can grab the edge - but then you fall to your death and die (sad face).

    Again, the voice acting was great! Good first effort :)

  • Tydecon Games
    Patron

    I think the voice acting in this is hilarious, the guy sounds like he's enjoying himself rather too much when he's jumping 😂 it's an interesting idea and I love the showmanship of it. I did find I couldn't get out of the pool when I landed in there (on the far-right bottom of the first level), but overall this is a funny concept and I had fun with it!

  • Mimpy
    Lv. 26

    The voice acting is easily the best part, haha! I like the presentation at the start of levels as the spotlight swoops from the end to the start, and I like the large scale death-trap-game-show vibe that's going on. Wasn't really sure why the screen would be completely tinged yellow for a while at the beginning of level 1, though.

    Wings of Icarus seems like pretty much the only viable option you can pick. Strength opens up some alternate routes but doesn't make navigating the standard platforms any easier, and CUL8R seems to not provide any tangible benefit at all due to the extremely low acceleration rate and lack of response on pressing B or shift.

    • Matt Waters
      Lv. 2

      Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! We had a lot of fun with the VOX 😅

      You're right that we have some balancing issues across the three drugs and really appreciate your thoughts on how to improve CUL8R.

      We're continuing to revise and polish Death bowl. Please let me know if you'd be interested in trying an improved build 🙏

  • Jupiter Hadley
    Lv. 13

    Interesting game! I included it in my GM48 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/mhNq7rNpmB8

  • Jaspo
    Lv. 16

    Ugh, so frustratingly hard at certain parts, particularly the basically unpassable moving platforms (they seem to require the double jump buff or EXTREME luck) after the flame trap that can only be passed with the invulnerability buff. Particularly with the ultra-floaty controls. Aside from that, graphics are pretty good, voice acting is good, character animation is good, the side effect theme is used, there's definitely a bit of glitching when getting trapped between moving platforms and things, there's some audio glitches as well.

    Yukon
    Submitted

    Yukon

    • Matt Waters
      Lv. 2

      Thanks so much for the feedback, Jaspo! It really means a lot that you took the time to play our game and share these detailed thoughts 🙏

      We know Death Bowl needs a lot more work. But please let me know if you'd be interested in giving it another whirl in a couple weeks (after we've fixed some of these issues)!

  • Henry Haak
    Lv. 41

    I enjoyed the idea of this game, but I felt like there were a lot of flaws that made it not for me.

    The art of the game, once you get to the platformer, was actually quite good, but I felt like the menu art, such as when you're picking pills, didn't fit that aesthetic. I did really like the voice acting, it definitely made me feel like I was in some sort of death game. I also thought the upgrades and their downsides were quite interesting. I wish there were more of them, but I'm guessing more were planned and there just wasn't time, which I can forgive.

    One thing I'm really not a fan of was the controls and level design. The player's movement is incredibly slippery, and the level isn't designed in a way that would make that fun. The moving platforms felt especially frustrating, particularly the two at the start.

    Overall though, I think the game had some good ideas.

    • Matt Waters
      Lv. 2

      Thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback, Henry! It is extremely helpful. This was not just our first jam but the first game we've ever released into the world 😬

      Good eye on the menu. Our artist was so busy with the actual level assets that it was left to an engineer (me) to draw the menus. The results speak for themselves 🤦

      We've got a lot to fix and polish here but your input is incredibly helpful. Please let me know if you'd be interested in giving Death Bowl another whirl in a couple weeks after we've tuned the level designs and controls (and squashed some bugs)?

      Thanks so much!

  • Ross Boman
    Lv. 30

    The character is very hard to control. I couldn't get very far before I wasn't having fun anymore.

    • Matt Waters
      Lv. 2

      Thanks for the feedback, Ross! Our contestant definitely needs to find his footing 😝

      We're working on tightening up the controls and other improvements.

      Really appreciate you taking the time play Death Bowl and share this feedback 🙏

We are a bunch of nerds with a lot of experience playing games, but very little actually making them. This was our first attempt at a game jam, and we made a conscious decision to attempt this using no pre-made assets or libraries. In short, the experience was both highly educational and humbling, and also a lot of fun. Holy smokes, 48 hours goes by so much faster than you would expect…

Glad we were able to pull together something that is mostly playable, though there are lots of rough edges.

In particular, the posted version has some serious unintended issues with the level design, we had a major git conflict Sunday afternoon that reset the timing on all of the moving platforms and fireballs back to defaults vallues. As a result, it seems like the level might not be beatable with anything except the yellow double jump (I suspect a true platforming wizard with lots of time on their hands might be able beat it with the blue shield, but as far as I know, no-one has managed it).

Also, the crash when you beat the level was 100% definitelly meant as a metaphor about there being no victory in the crappy dystopian future that is Death Bowl… honest! It was certainly not a case of running out of time and not actually play testing the updated victory animations. Nope, that definitely is not what happened at all. :)

Thank you so much for taking the time to play our game. Any and all feedback is very much appreciated, and if you do manage to beat the level, we’d love it if you shared a screenshot with the time remaining! (Leader boards were originally planned, but were cut for lack of time).

We hope to do some cleanup and release a “Definitive Edition” in the next few weeks, and look forward to doing more jams in the future! Cheers, Eddie

Result 24th
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