Who is Tim? Why is he living in my house? Why do I need to pay Tim to unshackle me from the bindings of his store? I suppose 1 gold is a small price to pay for freedom...
The animations for the character sprites are smooth. Good job on that!
When completing the game there's a promise of a lot more dialogue, levels, enemies, upgrades, items, collectibles, and etc. I would heavily suggest focusing on your core gameplay (character movement, interaction, and combat) before moving on to adding more things into the game. You have a vision for what you want, but it's important to limit the size of your project to what your current game development abilities are. There are quite a few bugs and elements of gameplay that are unclear. There's nothing wrong with this; it happens to us all. However, you should focus on correcting these error before expanding your game. I think it would benefit you and improve your abilities a lot to work on what you have here until the bugs are gone and the gameplay is much more clear to the player.
On that last note, try to have someone unfamiliar with your game play through it in the future to see what parts of the gameplay they have trouble immediately understanding. This will be a good way to gauge which portions of your game need to give more guidance to the player so they know what to do.
I know this comment is quite critical, but it's not meant to be harsh. Creating things is tough so good on you for putting this out here!
Thank you for playing and your feedback: I am not offended. You are right, I need to see how to make things more clear, the deadline made it tough, the white text over the head was a last minute thing, and I haven't heard anyone have a hard time knowing what to interact with. I will work on what you have said. Thanks again
I love the idea of this game. The animations are so good! I really like the concept overall. It started pretty hard, but once you get the hang of it, it's kind of addicting.
I got a softlock when I was trying to leave the stage. I got stuck between leaving and hiding next to the building and couldn't move anymore and couldn't leave either.
Thank you for playing. I thought I had resolved the 'colliding with multiple action points and softlocking' but I guess I missed one, I'll be fixing this post judging. Thanks again!
Cool game, the concept is different from what I have played in most but it's challenging and fun. I really like the artwork done, especially the animation of searching the dumpsters. Softlock got me as well.
cool graphics and sound, the softlock got me a few times and made me nervous, i also found the animation after collecting from a dumpster was unclear when it finished and i could move again, but that also made everything feel a bit more panicky so flavor win! the gameplay was clear and working out the level felt like good progression.
I was confused at first cause I couldn't figure out where I had to jump to get to a second dumpster! But after that it was smooth sailing :) The animations are really good! Finally getting the weapon was very satisfying
Had a ton of fun playing through this! I love all the visuals, animation, and music--it was all really good!
I will echo what other people were saying, which is that the controls felt a little weird, but still fine once you get used to it. Only other criticism is that some things did lack a bit of clarity. For example, like you mentioned below, that the flying enemies have the same sightline cone that the ground enemies have, but they kill you when the others don't. The obstacles also didn't really look like obstacles, so that was a little tricky at first too (it almost looks like you could jump on it from one side), but once you learn that it's fine.
Minor bug: when you die, it seems like you can sometimes jump sometimes during the animation.
Potential spoiler for people who haven't played: I couldn't tell if this was intentional, but you can herd the bots together a decent amount if you keep getting their attention. Figuring that out felt super fun for me! So if it is unintentional, it could be something to think about expanding on--it's a fun tactic! Was even more satisfying when I finally got the weapon and got three of them at once. Let me know if you want me to edit this out of the message so people can figure it out themselves too :)
Thank you for pointing out the jumping death bug, I will fix that. The alerting enemies to bunch them together was not intentional but when I started playing I used that as a strategy myself, so I'll figure out how to make that a mechanic as well, thanks for pointing it out. I will balance a lot of things and add a lot after judging, thank you for your feedback!
Really like the animations of the characters. The game loop reminds me of those retro simulation adventures like “beat cop”.
What I lacked a bit was feedback and juice. E.g. it took me a couple of deaths to realize what was killing me.
As for controls I generally think the less buttons you need to still achieve everything the better. When designing controls try to limit yourself e.g. arrow keys and a single button and only introduce a new one if you’re stuck design wise.
Thanks for playing! Yea, I guess I never did explain that the air drones kill you even though the sight cone for both is the same... thanks for pointing that out, I'll explain it in the notes, and change it somehow in the build after the judging. Ran out of time for juice, will be added later, gotta add a lot of stuff. Thank you so much for the comment!
So your keybindings are a bit weird, why 'k' to jump when spacebar exists? 'j' to attack when your 'e' key is used for nothing?
I also found a bug (it's minor): if you climb on the third floor of the first building, you can reach the container with a jump and search it. Doing so will stuck your character in search mode and softlock the game.
Other than that, I like your art style and music, it's a nice entry :)
I've never done key binding before, I'll have to figure it out as a package to implement it in the next game, the way I have it is the way I'm comfortable playing stuff, but I understand other people use different controls. I was told about this search bug and have fixed it, thank you so much for playing!
Nice one! Loved the art style and the animations. Controls were tight too. It was a bit hard at first but once you get the groove of things you can get pretty efficient at it. It’s a nice concept, would love to see how it turns out!
Fastest escape I could manage was day three!
This may be the first stealth game I played at this game jam. Nice animations, sounds, music is simply gorgeous. The game is a little difficult due to the number of enemies, but it is passable and I am always happy to have a challenge in games
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Who is Tim? Why is he living in my house? Why do I need to pay Tim to unshackle me from the bindings of his store? I suppose 1 gold is a small price to pay for freedom...
The animations for the character sprites are smooth. Good job on that!
When completing the game there's a promise of a lot more dialogue, levels, enemies, upgrades, items, collectibles, and etc. I would heavily suggest focusing on your core gameplay (character movement, interaction, and combat) before moving on to adding more things into the game. You have a vision for what you want, but it's important to limit the size of your project to what your current game development abilities are. There are quite a few bugs and elements of gameplay that are unclear. There's nothing wrong with this; it happens to us all. However, you should focus on correcting these error before expanding your game. I think it would benefit you and improve your abilities a lot to work on what you have here until the bugs are gone and the gameplay is much more clear to the player.
On that last note, try to have someone unfamiliar with your game play through it in the future to see what parts of the gameplay they have trouble immediately understanding. This will be a good way to gauge which portions of your game need to give more guidance to the player so they know what to do.
I know this comment is quite critical, but it's not meant to be harsh. Creating things is tough so good on you for putting this out here!
Thank you for playing and your feedback: I am not offended. You are right, I need to see how to make things more clear, the deadline made it tough, the white text over the head was a last minute thing, and I haven't heard anyone have a hard time knowing what to interact with. I will work on what you have said. Thanks again
I love the idea of this game. The animations are so good! I really like the concept overall. It started pretty hard, but once you get the hang of it, it's kind of addicting.
I got a softlock when I was trying to leave the stage. I got stuck between leaving and hiding next to the building and couldn't move anymore and couldn't leave either.
I can't wait to see where this one goes!
Thank you for playing. I thought I had resolved the 'colliding with multiple action points and softlocking' but I guess I missed one, I'll be fixing this post judging. Thanks again!
I should have the softlocks fixed, searching is a separate button now. Try it again if you'd like!
Cool game, the concept is different from what I have played in most but it's challenging and fun. I really like the artwork done, especially the animation of searching the dumpsters. Softlock got me as well.
Thanks for playing, sorry about the bug, I'll fix it as soon as judging is over
I should have the softlocks fixed, searching is a separate button now. Try it again if you'd like!
cool graphics and sound, the softlock got me a few times and made me nervous, i also found the animation after collecting from a dumpster was unclear when it finished and i could move again, but that also made everything feel a bit more panicky so flavor win! the gameplay was clear and working out the level felt like good progression.
Thanks for playing! I'm definitely going to keep working on this after, so I'll put more levels in and more equipment, upgrades, story, dialogue, etc
I should have the softlocks fixed, searching is a separate button now. Try it again if you'd like!
I was confused at first cause I couldn't figure out where I had to jump to get to a second dumpster! But after that it was smooth sailing :)
The animations are really good! Finally getting the weapon was very satisfying
Thank you for playing! I will make obstacles be more clear when i can update the game again.
Had a ton of fun playing through this! I love all the visuals, animation, and music--it was all really good!
I will echo what other people were saying, which is that the controls felt a little weird, but still fine once you get used to it. Only other criticism is that some things did lack a bit of clarity. For example, like you mentioned below, that the flying enemies have the same sightline cone that the ground enemies have, but they kill you when the others don't. The obstacles also didn't really look like obstacles, so that was a little tricky at first too (it almost looks like you could jump on it from one side), but once you learn that it's fine.
Minor bug: when you die, it seems like you can sometimes jump sometimes during the animation.
Potential spoiler for people who haven't played:
I couldn't tell if this was intentional, but you can herd the bots together a decent amount if you keep getting their attention. Figuring that out felt super fun for me! So if it is unintentional, it could be something to think about expanding on--it's a fun tactic! Was even more satisfying when I finally got the weapon and got three of them at once. Let me know if you want me to edit this out of the message so people can figure it out themselves too :)
Overall, awesome job! Would love to see more!
Thank you for pointing out the jumping death bug, I will fix that. The alerting enemies to bunch them together was not intentional but when I started playing I used that as a strategy myself, so I'll figure out how to make that a mechanic as well, thanks for pointing it out. I will balance a lot of things and add a lot after judging, thank you for your feedback!
Really like the animations of the characters. The game loop reminds me of those retro simulation adventures like “beat cop”.
What I lacked a bit was feedback and juice. E.g. it took me a couple of deaths to realize what was killing me.
As for controls I generally think the less buttons you need to still achieve everything the better. When designing controls try to limit yourself e.g. arrow keys and a single button and only introduce a new one if you’re stuck design wise.
Keep at it! Add that story, would live to see it
Thanks for playing! Yea, I guess I never did explain that the air drones kill you even though the sight cone for both is the same... thanks for pointing that out, I'll explain it in the notes, and change it somehow in the build after the judging. Ran out of time for juice, will be added later, gotta add a lot of stuff. Thank you so much for the comment!
So your keybindings are a bit weird, why 'k' to jump when spacebar exists? 'j' to attack when your 'e' key is used for nothing?
I also found a bug (it's minor): if you climb on the third floor of the first building, you can reach the container with a jump and search it. Doing so will stuck your character in search mode and softlock the game.
Other than that, I like your art style and music, it's a nice entry :)
I've never done key binding before, I'll have to figure it out as a package to implement it in the next game, the way I have it is the way I'm comfortable playing stuff, but I understand other people use different controls. I was told about this search bug and have fixed it, thank you so much for playing!
Nice one! Loved the art style and the animations. Controls were tight too. It was a bit hard at first but once you get the groove of things you can get pretty efficient at it. It’s a nice concept, would love to see how it turns out! Fastest escape I could manage was day three!
Thanks buddy, I thought about putting what day it was like Pikmin, I plan on adding that after the judging. Thanks for playing!
This may be the first stealth game I played at this game jam. Nice animations, sounds, music is simply gorgeous. The game is a little difficult due to the number of enemies, but it is passable and I am always happy to have a challenge in games
Thank you so much! Once you get the weapon it's way easier to play, I planned on an escalating difficulty but ran out of time. Thanks for playing!