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HiImBarney

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A member registered May 01, 2020

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Thanks for the kind words about the music! I'm always trying to improve!

Hello, runs fine for me, might take a while to load though. Game is quite sizable, I suggest downloading it for the smoothest experience.

Hehe, thanks a lot, once again Kayonji

Thank you for playing! This was exactly thought to be experienced like that. A  little break from the tough as nails difficulty most games on Jam's have and also to relax exploring the environment. Glad you enjoyed it!

The game has been updated to a Post Jam version. We put your Name in the Credits as well, you should check it out, it's worth it!

I was not expecting what I got myself into when I started the game. I'd say I was positively surprised. Let's go over some things about this Game together:

Summary

Adherence To Theme

You play as a Warehouse-worker who accidentally got trapped at the end of closure and has to figure out a way to escape! the Theme was both incorporated in Gameplay and Story, Excellent!

Game Design

  • When playing the Game I noted a couple of things that would bother me. For starters, the highly important Boxes can be stuck indefinitely in every corner and it is very easy to get stuck in every Level. The most probable solution to this would be a pull mechanic, possibly by press of a Button. That is how the old school "Tomb Raider" games did it. The other way one could go about this is to adjust for it in Level Design, which could lead to either weird looking levels or too obvious solutions for the "puzzles".
  • The Jumping was neat, the Physics where outstanding, collision detection worked as intended for the most part. 
  • You already know, but I need to point out that the "trampoline" jump is coded perfectly and is working fully as intended. Kappa ;P
  • The intro cutscene was a pleasant surprise in terms of Storytelling. If I am entirely honest though, the ominous harsh closing sound of the gate had me expecting something more grim, like (again with the PSX classics...) "Oddworld" haha. Possible ideas for some alternative level design to be had, in case you want to make a grim level.(Since it also gave me some "Limbo" vibes.

Originality

A neat idea for a puzzle platformer. Nothing offensive or daring about it, that's why I couldn't give full points here. I can't quite put my finger on it, something is missing. Maybe if the game went more into a wacky, comedic side, it would've given me more Portal feels. Like some gameplay objects inside the boxes had the potential to be even more outlandish than a trampoline.

Oooor the game went the aforementioned "dark" route and made the factory at night a place with horror or creepy influences. At any rate, for your game, since you are indie Devs, you have the power to create something super unique without worrying too much. There is a reason why corporations did not create "Hollow" or "Shovel-Knight", "Limbo", "Undertale", "Hyper Light Drifter" etc. All those games, among other indie games do something very different to big corpo. Titles.

Think about what could it be that makes your game special. Because just the package theming might not be enough.

Style

  • What can I say, the animations and UI elements where quite beautiful, I loved the sprite work a lot and the Theme was fitting and nice.
  • There is a point to be made about visibility of the play area. Similar how I managed to cluster up certain parts, this game can be harsh on the eyes at times. Darken your background elements. Take real life examples, the further something is away, the less information gets carried by light rays into your eyes. (Doesn't quite work like that, it actually get's distorted by sourrings, mostly the sky) Which is why far away objects appear blueish in tint.

far away mountains - Bild von Veracruz - Tripadvisor

  • What I'm trying to say is, make an informed decision for colors. Backgrounds tend to be either lighter or darker than the playable area. Also use highlights to really show what is ground and what not, at least in cases where it's not 100% obvious. (I had trouble making out parts of the rails sometimes, at first.) This is not a huuuuge glaring flaw that destroys the game... But it's something to consider and I'll not it down for you here :)
  • I loved the little Parallax effect btw.

Overall

This game, I feel, has quite a bit of potential still asleep! I critiqued it quite harshly in this review because you said you where planning on a Steam version. My overall Rating is obviously adjusted to this being a game for a Jam, you did very well in my Rating, actually. Only things I had to subtract was the easily getting stuck in every Level (which only just pushed the rating from "almost not 5" to "almost 5", because overall the levels where quite varied and there was a lot of different content, that got me thinking sometimes. Not much but enough for a Jam title.

Jeah, that felt soooo much better now! This time, when I died, I felt like I was playing stupid. And now I have more of this, learn the Level, race against the clock feeling, where as before I had to play kinda perfectly because of the difficulty, so that the clock was a non issue. Adjusted my rating and gave it the score I wanted it to have from the start! :)

Nice! I will try again! I was really tired and kinda "hangry" at that point haha. That's why some of my words revolving around the Cannons might have been overly and unnecessarily harsh.

Hehe, so THAT'S what it feels like! :D Awesome!

Thank you so much for giving this detailed Feedback.

I can give you a few squints at where I am at with fixing them. 

  • The left side of the map is almost completely overdrawn, added Detail where there wasn't fixed colors and pixel messes. Starting on the right side now.
  • Made the bough platform that the player has to go on much more noticeable, with a shadow on the ground, more highlights for platforms in general and some leaves, to draw attention. 
  •  Spirits (The other Developer) has already fixed the wall jump being too difficult for first time players. Because It's a Game jam game and a one time mechanic, we will require only one button press from now. Simply Jumping on the wall will align you perfectly for the next Jump. 
  • I believe he also added the Text box for this problem with the Jump.
  • I will mention to him the possibility of a Dialogue Button. We were so stressed during the Jam, that we didn't have time to implement. As you can see we are one of the last submissions to jam, not out of laziness, we submitted 1 minute before Deadline, I literally had my art and sound programs still open at that point. Everything about the game was kinda rushed by me, except the Character Sprites. And you will see that, hopefully, if we release the post Jam version. Not adding any features for now, sadly, as the Next Jam is around the corner, but Fixing what's there!

Oh boy, you deserve one big review for that comment made by Kayonji alone... Where do I start?

Summary

Adherence To Theme
  • You collect your stuff before your psycho girlfriend comes in to murder you. While we (sadly) never get to see said psycho Girlfriend this is an excellent twist on the theme of packing! I loved the premise from the start!
Game Design
  • Let me start with the worst possible offender. The one mark this game has that tarnishes it from perfection... It is not the tough time limit in the first level, nono It is the off screen firing projectiles that give exactly 0.2 s to react when they are on screen... I can think of no reason why these are here other than to make the player rage. Actually I know why they are here but the implementation is "I Wanna Be The Guy" level of frustration. I was not expecting this at all. The reason they are so cruel is that they firstly come from off screen almost all of the time and move rapidly fast. I'm not quite sure if this is intentional but I'm like a pretty tough nut to crack when it comes to platformers. Played Kaizo Mario without save states, if that says anything and I was quite angry. There needs to be a sound to signify the canons firing offscreen at the very least. If you feel like lowering the speed makes the game to easy. I was thinking of Super Mario Bros. 3 Cannonballs from the Ship levels.  There needs to be some player anticipation. 
  • Now that I was super harsh with this one problem the game has, let's all calm down a bit. Wind down for a sec and continue. As I mentioned earlier the quiet strict time limit on the first level makes for a nice bit of challenge, being frantic but rewarding to pull off. I like this concept a lot!
  • The controls where snappy  and some jumps in the third level (not regarding those cannon crimes against humanity, oh no.) where quite tricky. But once the controls are mastered you find yourself zipping through the level easily. 
  • The cloth pieces where hidden quite well and I liked exploring the map. The only thing I didn't like is that sometimes it was not quite obvious where the exit will be, perhaps an arrow at the side point to it would help here.
Originality
  • What can I say? The setting is adorable, the humor is extremely on point and the time attack concept is a nice twist on platformers. Perfect!
Style
  • The game is an absolute treat, both visually and auditory.
  • The graphics are super clean, clear and visible at any point in the game up until the third level. Where visibility takes quite a steep nose dive for noisy textures. Perhaps one could find some improvement here. The thing I'm talking about... There are portals, a new concept for this level, then there are little one tile graphics that look... Also like portals. The Solid ground is not standing out significantly more than the jump through platforms, unlike levels previously. This I didn't take into consideration as the art is extremely well done overall and it's not that big of a deal. One can grow accustomed to it quite fast.
  • The music, I'm a big fan of, fits the comedic vibe but urgent nature of the game very well. Evolving soundtracks on top. So good.
  • Sfx where a bit iffy. The jump sound got annoying on the third level, being played a lot back to back, but it was overall serviceable. The missing sound from the cannon is still quite bothering me. 

Overall

Please don't take this review too personal. I loved this game a lot! Which meant I got quite heated when I felt like "Ooohhh nooooeee.... Why oh why did you do that!?" when the cannons kicked in haha. But... Perhaps... In a way this is metaphorical... The game reels you in with a love letter to all things platforming... But then tries to STAB YOU IN THE BACK...Like... LIKE A PSYCHOPATHIC EX GIRLFRIEND! How could I not see this all along!??!?! 

Jokes aside though. I would highly welcome a bit of player feedback (Visual or Auditoral) on those cannons. They are the only things preventing me from giving this game full score and it is the most unsatisfyingly, wrong feeling thing I have had all month, not giving this game full score, that is. 

Happy to be of help, I am of course a learning dev myself so take stuff I say with a huge grain of salt, maybe second guess it. But I tried to make most points at least to be founded on some sort of solid baseline... That goes for the positive stuff as well btw. I'm not saying I like things just to make the review sound better but I actually enjoyed these aspects a lot.

Naw, thank you, oh so much for the kind words, really made the weekend with 3 hours sleep worth it! :)

Thanks a lot for the kind works! If I manage to create all the art in time (before the metroid vania month jam) there will be a post jam version, with much better artwork and some updates systems, like that walljump being not as hard.

nice, glad to hear i could be of help!

Nice, thanks for the in depth conclusion about my points. I was right feeling a bit iffy about suggesting the items glowing in the dark then. It might disrupt the atmosphere. Still a little bit of a middleground would be quite nice to me personally, sort of just to "work as expected" a little bit more. When it comes to a Jam game sometimes you have to think about the access a player has to periphery. What might be pretty visible on your screen might be extremely dark on mine and that's a tough thing to figure out. 

On top of that comes that every person is different and you have to think about which kind of persons you want to exclude from experiencing your game. (Not applicable to this game but for example a colorblind option.) 

I re checked and you are right about the Items glowing. But they only do so when you are extremely close (possibly pickup range) and precicle on top of them. So I thought this was not intentional when I wrote this review, Also some Items spawned in mid air (most notably on the couch) so I thought they where supposed to be more arcady in nature.

It's not a big deal to me at all... After the third round I kinda knew where Items could spawn anyways. 

A nice little minigame/score attack game you got there!

Here's my Review:

Summary

Adherence To Theme

  • You work in, what I can only describe as a beverage shopping mall, (either that or you sell color tubes to aspiring painters and graffiti artists alike) and are tasked with packing up the right bottles for the customers needs. Theme is incorporated greatly into the Gameplay!

Game Design

  • The premise is simple but engaging. Buying bottles to fit into a the right carts and deliver them to the Customer in time.
  • As far as I can see, you have 2 fail states... Either you buy too many goods without delivering them, running out of Money in the process or the customer leaves the area without received goods and possibly writes a Yelp review that is more extensive than my entire compendium of Jam Game reviews combined. Good ideas!
  • The random Nature of the Bottle Spawns get a bit frustrating at the higher speeds. this is okay for a little score Attack game, however adding a little shelf, where you can Store Bottles before they despawn would add an extra layer of depth to the gameplay!
  • I managed to abuse a bug like this, there are certain areas on the conveyor belt where the Bottles don't move, nor get destroyed, when you place them there. (I found these areas to be in between the belts)
  • Another bug that helped me out quite a bit at times but was disrupting in others was that the collision of the packed bags are big enough to hit customers who are close to it in line. Sometimes this would result in me packing a bag for a customer that is about to exit the line with empty hands and review bomb the crap out of me, while another one just grabbed the stuff out of my hands, so to speak. Funny, but a little bit frustrating.
  • The click detection on the bottles feels a bit sluggish and I don't know what it is exactly. The bottles feel a bit too precise to click and dragging them was slow. There is room for improvement here, as it gets quite impossible to be quick enough to deal with the scores in the thousands.
  • Perhaps not warranted as a Feedback for this Jam but if you plan on developing this further, I'd suggest adding a colorblind option for the less than fortunate among us. That would make me smile :)

Originality

  • Nice concept, haven't played anything like this before. I can see a game like this in a Mario Party setting, which speaks to it's qualities! Well done!

Style

  • Graphics were very charming and clear.
  • The music is really nice but we all know the Menu Theme is where it's at. What an excellent track that fits very well! Nice!
  • Could do with some more SFX, perhaps a light ambience sound.

Suggestions

  • Add an area where you can store Bottles you bought, since they are random.
  • Add a color Blind mode.
  • Maybe a special button that slows/stops the customers at a cost and cooldown. Would increase the longevity and add yet another layer of depth to the gameplay.

Overall

Awesome little Minigame, I enjoyed my time with it. Aesthetically pleasant and charming although a tad frustrating at times. My personal high score was 1100 btw. :)

I've now figured out the problem I had with my mouse input not working (as was the case with many Jam games needing Administrative input for some reason...) I have adjusted my Rating accordingly ofc.

I have played the game thoroughly again, got all endings (I think... I got 3 different ones.) 

Here is my review:

Summary

Adherence To Theme

  • You need to pack your stuff and go to the bunker before the Raiders come and kill you. Good job on designing the game around the concept. Very well done!

Game Design

  • The controls where serviceable for a first person game made in a jam. I tend to give 3d games with a lot of mechanics a bit more leeway for jams, since it's harder to get right. That being said, a sensitivity slider, even in the most basic form is a neat addition and will help feel the game a lot more polished while literally being just a variable that you control via slider UI.
  • The hit detection needs a lot of work, at times my crosshair was right on the dude and my hit didn't connect, sometimes I was looking at another dude and hit someone behind me??? Same goes for the enemies but that is in the players favor and felt actually like it made the game fairer with them missing sometimes.
  • The looting works fine for this Jam but the Items were hidden in plain sight due to the game being extremely dark. Atmosphere should not prohibit gameplay accessibility. I suggest looking at how other horror games do it. (In my brief research I found Amnesia, the crosshair switches to a hand to show interactable objects, Outlast has them flashing on the screen when the player looks in their direction and show a Text on screen and in Resident Evil 7 there is an Icon of the controller button that shows up above Items you can pick up. My personal first thought was making them glow and move in mid air, like old school pickups found, check at the very bottom, where I included image references, which link to gameplay videos without commentary.)
  • The enemies behavior and AI was rather excellent. They where quite easy to predict when you know where they are. 
  • The Level design was very flawed. There are several places that you need to look for in terms of Equipment spawns but it is extremely easy to get stuck and die. This does not feel like it was the players fault, rather than the designers.
  • The jump does not help this at all and I found it to be rather useless. You can't jump on beds and chairs in a last ditch effort to get out of a room where Raiders swarm you and the whole system would need some more work. Perhaps designing rooms with either no Jump (making every room escapable in terms of Raiders) or with Jump (making the ceiling high enough so you can jump on stuff) in mind would help the game feel a lot better overall!
  • I found the Key spawn in the Kitchen very quickly. There are other Key Spawns though, which I couldn't find after what are a total of 10 minutes searching. Perhaps it was a bug, maybe not, but making the key spawn in a fixed location like the Radio would make sense for a Jam game!
  • From what I found, there where 2 types of Damage items. The knife, which deals 2 Damage and everything else. They were clearly identifiable as objects you stick to your enemies, which is good but the implementation along with the buggy hit detection felt a bit off. For one, I feel like they were designed as a crutch around the Level Design, rather than thinking of Player limitation when designing the Rooms. You may or may not have thought the player would hoard them in case he gets stuck and has to fight but the natural method of play was reducing the number of Raiders in an area to have a bit more time to look for spawned Items and that elusive Key.
  • The Room layout was rather irritating at first. It took me 3 tries to even find the Room where the Radio was located at, this goes hand in hand with the Level Design I was hinting at earlier.

Originality

  • The game's premise is highly original, nothing to add here. It is inspired in just the right ways and different in others.

Style

  • As this is a 3D Jam game I tend to judge it with more leeway. All in all the graphics where nice, the models where nicely done, the animations where clear as to what the Player and Enemies are doing at any given time and there were some neat lighting effects on showcase!
  • But overall the game was extremely dark. This ofc. was done on purpose but it inhibits the overall gameplay quite a bit. There is no flashlight mechanic, as you planned this sort of "hiding from Raiders" feeling but it was highly difficult making out Items in front of certain areas. Look towards the "References" section for some ways to improve this.
  • The music was good. It fit the atmosphere quite right and was well toned, not Obnoxious, or overly Loud.
  • The Sound effects on the other hand where a bit Loud to my liking , at least the Spawn sounds. This particular sound, was quite familiar as well, hmm I wonder where I heard such a noise before :)
  • What would have been another excellent addition for this game would be footstep noises that get louder the closer an Enemy is to the player, as a way of Feedback. Really good Trick that one, helps with the atmosphere as well but I understand that there was not much time to implement such a feature, as this game is quite extensive already.

Suggestions

  • Implement a way of seeing the Items more clearly.
  • A better hit detection.
  • Designing the Level with the Player/Enemy movement and size in mind.
  • A bit more feedback on the Hits and Footstep sounds or other ways of showing the player danger is lurking around a corner would polish this up quite a bit!

Overall

This was a fun little experience, the Graphics were really well done, the music was fitting and you really nailed that "Oh crap, Raiders coming, quick grab everything I can and head to the panic Room" feeling!

With some of my extensive suggestions, I'm sure you will find some useful thoughts to implement for a future version of this or other games you'll do and I hope I was of help!

References:

All images open to a Gameplay Video on Youtube in a new tab. It was tough to find examples that are not exactly at a point of Jumpscare or gruesome imagery, I hope you appreciate it :) 

Amnesia Interactibles

Amnesia: Interactables Hand Icon.

Outlast Interactibles

Outlast Glow Effect

Resident Evil 7 Pickup

Resident Evil 7 Style

I love how the bandit is dabbing in front of your work of art.

Oh no worries haha, I'm glad I made a few points you found valid. 

For the arrows, maybe it's enough pulling them down and give an outline.

I thought it was super fun jumping off of birds with boost, which shoots you extremely far, I had the feeling they had this risk reward, where you would  be quicker but sometimes overshoot your target a bit.

The difficulty is fine for the jam as it is. 

That's a bummer about the sounds haha. But you know what they say. Game Devs always learn.

I hear your call for an overly complex review for Jam games? No? Yes? Maybe?

Here it comes anyways!

Quite a little fun experience!

Summary

Adherence To Theme

  • Another twist on the packet delivery subgenre, this Jam has spawned. Nothing too daring but it gets the theme across very well. Nicely Done!

Game Design

  • The controls are nice for this game. They weren't too hard to grasp, although I had some time to figure out I could move with the arrow keys, since you didn't point that out in your description. I'm so accustomed to WASD movement so at first I thought the game was only me Boosting to move.(Which would've been entirely plausible.)
  • The momentum is frantic, makes this game really unique! As an huge of the original Sonic The Hedgehog trilogy, this made me very happy.
  • The inclusion of the Birds being sort of flying springs that propel you forward a lot made for an extra layer of depth and skill, welcomed in this game! But there are quite many of them. I would personally like to see them toned down quite a bit in spawn rate to make for a more rewarding experience hitting them, something special... But I also understand doing this would make the rooftop route always the best option. 
  • The Arrow pointing towards your goal was a bit far away from the focus of attention. It was sometimes hard immediately knowing where to go which is not what you want from a game like this.
  • The extremely over the top streak system was ingenious. And I want more states! MOAAAR. Oh also I didn't notice it change much, do you get more time for higher score streaks? It wasn't very clear. 
  • Perhaps there should be a score system, rather than judging on time alive and packets delivered. In my first run after I had understood the controls and objective a bit better, I had a lot of time left. I waited for almost 2 minutes to get my result, which was 50 packets.  Perhaps it is a bit too easy to continue streaks but I mean for the Jam it is serviceable. 

Originality

  • The game is highly original, what can I say, haven't played anything like this before. (Although my retro gaming experience doesn't go back quite as far. 90ies kid and all that.

Style

  • The form of pixel art is amazing, it reminded me a bit of the Atari games of old times. Commodore style. Neat idea and fits the game well.
  • What doesn't fit the game well is the sheer amount of same colors used for everything. You tried to indicate platforms as being pinkish color. Great! You already did a better job at communicating walkable surfaces than I did in my game jam entry. But then there are Birds in the same color... Ok. I guess you signify the player this is an object you can touch for positive effect. But then the delivery arrow and signal are the same color. It becomes very noisy, very quick. Same goes for the blue color for the the pedestrians and signal. 
  • Now I don't know the target system you where trying to emulate. My first guess was old school Amiga Consoles. The C64 mentioned above could show 16 colors as a palette. If I counted correctly you are already above that with the rainbow effect, player and background colors. So why did you make the signals and arrows the same color as everything else? A little bit of variation could make things more clear in my opinion.
  • I did a bit of research and found out about the Pico 8 Game environment. It turns out to have very similar architectural bounds as the C64. 16 Colors. So you did not go above the 16 color limit with the rainbow effect. Still you had much to choose from for the signals and arrows. I think you should still overlook their design once. That being said, knowing with what limitations you created the game made me appreciate it even more!
  • The sound effects where neat but the game was a bit quiet. I was ready to get blasted with Chiptune sounds haha.  A welcomed addition for the future!

Suggestions

  • Pull down the arrows a bit so it's clear where you have to go at a glance. Focusing on the tiny character sprite and going to the top (where the pink arrow might or might not be obstructed by platform and bird colors) is a bit jarring.
  • The Combo System was neat but overall felt a bit inconsequential. It was also very simple to get the combo going, which is nice for the jam but could be a tad bit more engaging in the future. Just a tiny bit.
  • Some more sounds (for example for boosting.) or a musical track could help make the game feel even better. (Bear in mind, that I don't know the exact limitations of the Pico-8 system regarding music and sounds, I did adjust my rating and took it not into consideration after I found out about the System.)

Overall

This game is a frantic and fun experience, I liked it quite a bit. Overall it didn't really strike the balance of being challenging enough to keep me playing and easy enough to get me started. It felt a bit too easy after I knew what was going on with any object and my limitations and goals. However for a game Jam this gets the Theme across and is pretty addictive! Great work!

A cutesy little mixture of  horror and delivering Packets. 

Summary

Adherence To Theme

  • You are delivering packets. The game is called packager, nothing offensive and get's the job done. Excellent!

Game Design

  • The overall concept was very neat. I liked searching for packets not knowing what to expect.
  • The attack felt highly inconsequential also why is it that I only get the attack after delivering a box? 
  • I get the idea of not killing the enemies but slowing them down, however in game it didn't do much at all to help that and simply running around them was always the best idea.
  • Sometimes the enemies spawning from the box where a bit cheap and it came down to level memorization. You did a great job with varying up the boxes that can be picked up (Unlike some other games, where simply the furthest objects from the goal are the right ones, or even worse, when it doesn't matter which one you pick up it will always be the last one... Shudders...) but you could do a better job for player anticipation in the future, maybe make boxes with Enemies rattle periodically so an observant player get's rewarded with less Enemies on screen.

Originality

  • Very original Idea, the Art style was distinguished and I liked the unique gameplay! Good work!

Style

  • The Sound effects where good. Not offensive and hurting my ears and mixed quite enough.
  • A nice little Music track could be a welcome addition. 
  • The Animations where great, I like the personality in the little motions the characters do.
  • The Backgrounds where super noisy. This became very apparent in the cave Levels, where it was unnecessarily hard to distinguish between what is blocking me and what not, this needs some tweaking. I found the Cave exit as a delivery point rather unintuitive, had it not be for the exact same place you have to go to in every level (Top middle) I would have more troubles finding it.  Go wacky with it, If you do a packet level in the most unlikely environments, a delivery truck in the most unusual places would be quite funny. imo.

Suggestions

  • If you intend to go this route of slowing down the enemies, rather than killing, my suggestion would be to upgrade the players weapon with each box, so the tape get's "stickier" or the bones get bigger and stun the enemies for a bit. That would really spice up the gameplay and the levels could be quite a bit longer without feeling too punishing. 
  • Another idea would be to include more boxes than have to be delivered, possibly respawning them after a while, but give the player the ability to open them instead to find something random, like an upgrade to your "weapon" or a health drop. 
  • Give the player a subtle hint as to which boxes contain enemies AND/OR make a spawn animation, where the Player has a certain amount of time to react to the box being fake before they can get hit.

Overall

This game was quite likable, I liked it uniqueness and found the frustrations it brought didn't outweigh the fun. However with a few small tweaks this could be so much better, in my opinion. (Which is ofc. an opinion and thus cannot be accounted for as an ultimate train of thought, take this review as my personal way of trying to help you better your game, rather than overly judgemental or harsh.

You asked for it... I will follow suit. 

The overly damn detailed submission feedback and propositions!

Or in short!...

O.D.D.S.F.A.P.... Erm. Excuse me for a second...

Who came up with this Idea? Marketing? Was probably Marketing, those absoluuutteeee...

Ahemm.. So... Jeah... Here is my 

Summary

Adherence To Theme

  • You play as a group of Dogs, trying to rescue another dog in this  Tether-Mechanic Puzzle-Platformer.
  • Did you know? Not all Dogs are considered pack Animals and only a few breeds are considered a "pack".  The right name for a group of Dogs is usually a "kennel" of dogs.  That's just some extra trivia for you, let's pretend those aren't Labrador Retrievers but Hound dogs and not let semantics get into the way...
  • The "pack"Theme was excellently incorporated into the Gameplay as well, you have to stay close to your pack, find the rest of your pack and in later levels you have to play with packets to solve problems. Nice!

Game Design

  • The element of controlling 2 characters at once was ingenious. Making the dogs both control differently gave them a bit of personality, which I liked.
  • The control scheme was good and fit a platformer very well in my opinion.
  • The Level design was kinda off. You had many Platforms just lingering there with no real purpose or need and it felt like you where just playing around with the Tileset at some points but left it in the game.
  • Some of the "Puzzles" where pretty easy to cheese, I feel. It's hard coming up with what is a good Puzzle but I think you got very close on the third level, where you had to think... Dare I say... Outside of the box for a bit. (Pun intended).
  • The third Level cannot be completed in the Browser version.
  • The jumping controls are super tight, I guess you made it so you have to play with the level Elements to block one of your dogs and separate them a bit to make certain gaps possible. The inclusion of the camera swap suggest this as well. A first time player might not understand this and think this is a test of skill rather than wits, which can be found frustrating.
  • My suggestion would be to control only one Dog at a time and/or create Puzzles around their different capabilities, like you did in Level 3.  Look to the game "Brothers: A tale of two Sons" for inspiration, they did this concept very well.

Originality

  • The concept is very unique and you tried a fresh take on Platforming, I like it a lot. 
  • Try to distinguish a bit more between the 2 characters, I feel that would make the game stand out even more.

Style

  • The asset pack was excellent, I loved it's visuals!
  • The music track is a bit on the nose but I didn't take it into consideration when rating, since that might be personal preference. But I'm a big fan of trying to get the music to fit with the gameplay, since I'm guessing you want the player to solve the path to the exit in this game, maybe a less upbeat party soundtrack would be more fitting. Also the music was quiiiiite a bit too loud and there is no option to turn it down.
  • Some sound effects would be nice, however I know this can be hard based on you controlling 2 characters at once.

Overall

I like this game and it's concept, it played very well with the Theme and the graphics where beautiful. No major bugs found apart from the Web version not being able to finish it. I liked the little easter egg at the end as well. 

If you plan on working more on this game, try to tweak the overall gameplay a bit and play around a bit more with unique Level Mechanics, like you did in Level 3.

we are currently working on a post jam release where the complaints will be tackled , including updated environment graphics (they already look soo much better than in the current verion) a way simplified walljump and a couple of sounds.

We are working on a post Jam release where already a lot of your suggestions where taken into consideration! Thanks for the nice words and useful feedback! :)

I'm more than happy to be of help to a fellow dev! :)

Jeah I thought about the rotation being like a one off upgrade. I indeed thought about it and it would make the game stupidly easy. But maybe if you keep it like the tree cutting and land mass mechanic... That would give another layer of depth and might not be hard to implement.

I hope you could find something of use here. It's just my personal way of telling you my thoughts about your great design! Ofc. if you do draw some inspiration from that, I'd feel more than honored, but it's not necessary, as I'm just a learning designer myself :)

Hehe, jeah in terms of sheer amount of places to explore and things to find, our game can't hold a candle to yours. It was kind of necessary for the environment to look like that because the wolves looked out of place in almost every tileset I put them in. That's why the game area is quite concise... The entire Level is just a 32 Layer 1920x1080 pixels picture. 

Nice review, thanks a lot! It was a hard time of Crunching, we plan on doing a release of this Jam Game that is more in line with what we envisioned. (Which we where 100% sure we couldn't finish haha)

Thank you for the Feedback! Jeah the Skybox was a little bit last minute. Initially we planned all elements to be part of different Parallax but had to scrap it entirely, which kinda sucked, because I had to redraw a lot of stuff, including this Sky Background.

I'm sorry you (and many others) had problems with the Wall Jump. It's a thing that you get the hang of once and don't notice it anymore, this makes it hard to play test for such a small game, where you only have to use it once the entire game. If the game was longer, there would not be much of a problem but for such a concise experience, it hurts the game overall, at least from my perspective.

Jeah I mean, every game behaves differently (regarding difficulty)

In normal games (the big ones) like Dark Souls, people overcome frustrating difficulties by the sense of progression etc. This is not a given in a Jam Project where one is happy the game gets played at all, this is why in general to keep the difficulty rather low, or ramp it up slowly, since the player spends not a  lot of time getting accustomed to the controls of the game. In my game there is a walljump that everybody thinks is too hard. If one would replay the game and try the walljump again, they'd find it a lot easier. (At least I did.) This is what I mean by "no time getting accustomed to the controls of the game". In a full title I might make the walljump harder even. In this jam, I could've made it a cutscene that auto plays, which sucks to me, taking control away from the player... But it would've been rated in the game's favor.


When you referred to the bones, I get that, sometimes there should be an enemy that is more difficult to hit.  It's just a problem when you only have 2 hits, before you are out (because usually small agile enemies do less damage), can't  aim freely, and 10 different things try to shoot you on a small screen. I think the problem is not the enemy itself in my mind, but the way he is implemented overall.


And please don't take it too negative, I'm just giving my thoughts on the game, I'm not the be all, end all of Game Design, and I'm very much learning myself.

- "and I'm sitting here trying to make bigger and more difficult XD"

Hehe, no worries. For a one off game scene I think it would be problematic to have them more difficult. Maybe in a full game / after Jam version there could be different "Realms" where you increase difficulty. 

- "because they are in a different scenes and when reloading the music start from the beginning that it. but need to thought of next time."

Jeah that's where you can use a singleton pattern. Quite useful for music.

I couldn't play it sadly so I cannot rate. My knight was moving at a crawl at 144 fps, maybe there is an issue with physics being bound to frame rate in some way or there's an issue with GSync? (I tried turning it off but didn't seem to help much)

I guess it's important to get the game feel good first :)

Thanks for the feedback and playing. Had a little bit of a time issue with the art.

Became a drug overlord in medieval times, would play again haha.

Some of my suggestions to a couple of the mechanics can be found in my overall...

Summary:

Adherence to Theme 
  • You fully incorporated the Theme, to the Point that I kinda feel like I'd have to go through a bunch of Submissions and not rate them 5* on that aspect.
Game Design 
  • The core Gameplay loop was pretty in depth and thoroughly seen through!
  • The packing and unpacking of Goods felt a little unintuitive at first but was simple enough  to get the hang of it after a couple of tries.
  • The incorporation of guards patrolling made for an excellent design decision to keep the player on it's toes. However I felt like the aggro range was quite big and packing in took long.
  • I would recommend a  more line of sight based approach. This would mean a lot of work though to make certain places more risky to sell in but have more customers.
  • I liked the kinda risk/reward structure of setting up all your shop or only partially, however I never felt the incentive to fully lay out my shop, it didn't appear to get customers more quickly to buy but punished me for having to pack up fully before I can leave. Perhaps some tinkering would make for a more fluid experience.
Originality
  • Probably one of the uniquest Titles of the Jam, never quite played something like this before.
Style
  • The Art is amazing.
  • The Sound is amazing although the sudden switch to alert sound was a bit jumpscary at times haha. Made for great player Feedback.
  • The Menu-screen Music and In-Game Music appear to be the same? Why do they cut each other out, then?

Overall:

Really enjoyed this one, with a couple of the suggestions I mentioned, implemented like this or otherwise, this could become a great title!

A little top down arena shooter, where you chose your load-out before the round starts. Cool.

Summary:

Adherence to Theme 
  • You pack your bag before the round and are stuck with it for the match. Makes for interesting Gameplay but could've incorporated the theme just a tiny bit more.
Game Design 
  • The different items where quite fun to use / explore
  • Some item combinations where vastly superior to others, to the point that I could not lose. -> I think the potion cool down is a little too short.
  • 2 enemies who behaved quite similar, it was easy not to get hit. Didn't quite hit the sweet spot in terms of difficulty for me personally but I can see why it was designed this way.
  • For the future, some different enemy types, who are affected differently by the weapons would be a welcome addition!
Originality
  • It's an arena shooter. Yes it has magic weapons and on top of that bonus points for having the load-out mechanic, which gave it replayability.
Style
  • The sprites looked clean, enemies and player where easily distinguishable from the background.
  • The background looked a bit tiresome at some point, too much repeat in the pattern. A little less detail is often times more in pixel art.
  • The music and sound effects where fine but could use a little more time in the oven.

Overall:

Cool game, cool concept. Played it a bit safe but overall, quite fun.

A fun little game, this is! 

I really like the idea and style but the difficulty ramp up was oh so brutal.

Summary:

Adherence to Theme 
  • Not much to say, like most games here, it gets the theme just right. 
  • Played it very safe but managed to make it interesting.
Game Design 
  • Simple but challenging at the same time.
  • I found it to be quite hard, at least hard enough to not be able to test out the slowdown or spawn stopping mechanics.
  • The amount of different items is nothing short of excellent, one could wonder, if you used an asset pack which would be totally understandable, or made them yourself, which would be total insanity.
  • The amount of items made it a bit hard to distinguish between Armor and Jewelry sometimes. There where some pauldrons looking a lot like rings and vice versa. At least if the game picked up it's pace.
  • The score always showed up in the negatives for me. Now I may be so bad that it's the actual score but I highly doubt you did that to my poor heart </3.
Originality
  • Highly unique twist on those clicker / match 3 genre'd titles. I enjoyed it a lot and it was a breath of fresh air.
Style
  • UI Design was a little basic but very serviceable, everything was visible
  • The amount of items made this one a real treat!
  • The music track wasn't obnoxious or too loud, it fit the game well, looped well and was overall pleasant.

Overall:

I like it a lot, I can see this one being developed into a mobile or browser game at some point!

Courageous, unlike some other fake raters around here... The ones I'm talking about will def. know, or some of the most rated games around here must have a killer marketing budget for a game jam title... Or many online friends...

They'd probably cheat in an online game where you cannot win or lose anyways.

Ohhhh after replaying it, I can see that now. It makes sense and I feel stupid. 

Whacky little Game you got there. 

I thought I am missing some information though. 

I won on my 2nd round but had some pure guess work to do. 

I thought I can see whether someone is infected or not by judging the number going up when a group talks, while others being solo cannot infect more or get infected. I saw my number go up after a group of 3 was talking and all other citizens where solo, turns out only 1 of the 3 was infected. Weird.