GMC Jam Discussion The Festive GMC Jam 35 - Discussion Topic

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Misu

Guest
Today I got started playing them with a live stream. Did 10 so far (including mine) and you can watch them here

The stream ended unexpectly around the last entry I played but there is a second video somewhere in my twitch account that continues it for a couple of more minutes.

Anyway Im gonna continue to do more later and will post it on my status eventually. :3

Note that they didnt enable my read me file in the jam player. Im not sure if I wrote it incorrectly but that read me contained imoortant information. :/
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@Misu Just saw your gameplays, and generally enjoyed them. A few things:

About Paranormal by Siolfor the Jackal:
Actually, there's this superstition that ghosts are vulnerable to sacred salt. Don't know the details, but ghosts damaged by salt is a thing.
Also, after enough walking through the map you eventually reach the boss. To increase your chances of success, you can sometimes wait in one spot and regenerate health while taking down enemies spawning from the left (enemies appear from the right only when you're advancing).

About Im a hunt ghosts!:
I'm afraid your Readme file fell victim to Jam Player not recognizing "Read Me.txt" (it includes readme files automatically). The new Jam Player was meant to fix it, but recently I've been way too busy to even think about finishing the new Player... If it's any consolation, I've found the in-game instructions more than clear enough.
Also, once the entries ZIP is posted, it's final, so that's why your post-Jam version didn't make it into the ZIP. Admittedly, I should have replied to you, sorry for that. >.<

About Boo! Dice:
Not much to say except that I related so hard to your luckless struggles against Wailing Bob. I mean, he's got to be the opponent I lost the most times against, despite him not being all that smart

About Gravity Switcher:
I can totally relate to putting music over entries that don't have it. Personally, I played VLAD III's music over Dodge'em Dracula when I knew the latter doesn't have any soundtrack.
...that contrast between the children-friendly chosen music and your phrasing, though! >.<

By the way, when are you going to do the next livestream? Maybe I'll be able to watch it, too (got late to the first one).
 
M

Misu

Guest
By the way, when are you going to do the next livestream? Maybe I'll be able to watch it, too (got late to the first one).
Thanks for replying. Im glad you enjoyed the stream and clarified those point of views.

Ill be doing another stream after my lunch. perhaps in the next 45 minutes from now Ill be doing the next stream. Ill be sure to mention it on my status and if you follow me on twitter, youll receive the notifications too. My twitter user is @JoelValentinAvi :)
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Alright, seen the second stream, it was a blast (for the most part - a mind blast *whistling*). Glad you took your time to cheat your way through our entry, and that party level you made was awesome. :D

By the way, to people who would like to see their games specifically I prepared some list of timestamps for Misu's videos:
Video 1
0:02:35 - Paranormal by @Siolfor the Jackal
0:11:25 - Im a hunt ghosts! by @Misu
0:19:50 - Spectre 2023 by @Bearman_18
0:30:15 - submerge. by @Josh Chen
0:39:15 - Boo! Dice by @GameDevDan
0:47:30 - Gravity Switcher by @TheMiningBoyAlpha
0:58:25 - Necro-more-cy by @Relic
1:10:55 - Super Adrenaline Boy by @lazertrax
1:17:00 - Ghost Run by @Cat, @var
1:24:40 - Gluttony, My Master by @Cantaloupe (also continued in Video 2)

Video 2
0:00:00 - rest of Gluttony, My Master

Video 3
0:00:35 - Chiaroscuro by @FrostyCat
0:19:40 - Supernatural Science by @MikeeyBikeey and others
0:32:10 - Telepath's Escape by @Alice, mp (oh dear, our entry took about the half of video's length, didn't it...? Gotta commend you on sticking with this game for so long!)
1:17:40 - Grave Mistake by @trg601 and others
1:27:30 - Lab23 by @HayManMarc, @Micah_DS
 
M

Misu

Guest
Wow @Alice Thanks a whole bunch. I really did enjoy playing every entry and that was only half I played so far. The best I could do atm would be providing my favorite top 5. I cant promise any good voting phase at all, I got other things to matter but that would be the least I could do.

As for your game, I find it really challenging (since you are always into puzzling games) and it got me hanging for too long actually. But its alright, because it means it works as a good game. Congrats on the great job.

Also I might do a fixed version of my game. I have been meddling with other things too but I should really show off what the game really meant to be.
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
Great playthroughs @Misu! It's always so informative seeing someone play your game like that!
If I ever have the time, I'd love to do something similar for one of these Jams.
Nice work!

On a (semi) unrelated topic (cos it's active here)...
is anyone html scraping/ backing up the original forums GMC Jam forum?
I'm not sure I'm going to have the time before the 17th (old forum deletion date) to hunt down some decent software and do that.
And I'm worried that we (myself ,Alice, Nocturne, HayManMarc, NAL) still haven't found all the games for and complied zips of all those earlier Jams (especially Jams 1-6)
Soooo...
if anyone would do that Jam forum backup, it would be much appreciated.
PM to let me know.

(Wayback Machine is random/spotty at best - lots missing.)
 
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@Misu Great videos, dude.
I'm glad that as far as I can tell my only major crashing bug is the options menu XD
Of all the places to have a crash... I fixed it afterwards, but it's just some window options and sound levels.
First of, I'm glad you enjoyed my game. At one point you were literally one screen away from the boss!
The enemies in front of you are predetermined, but the enemies spawned behind are random and are given a bit of a hspeed push to catch up to you, it's janky but it works. It also leads to some amusing moments, like how one of your deaths you just see a vampire run fast across the screen.

Thanks to @Alice for already mentioning this, but yeah, salt has been historically used in folklore a bunch, sometimes to ward off or cleanse evil etc.
As sort of referred to in my readme file, my game is actually heavily based on the popular TV series "Supernatural"(I couldn't resist) which is currently airing it's 15th and final season...
Anyway, they establish pretty early in the show that ghosts don't like salt. They create barriers with salt to prevent ghosts from entering an area(Like making a thick circle of salt around a person to prevent the ghost from attacking them), but more famously, they load up shotgun shells with rock salt to shoot them. The only difference here is in the show, the salt just dissipates them temporarily, but in my game it kills them.
Iron also has the same effect, so for in-game logic, the machete is also made of iron and that's why it can also affect them, heh.
 
@Relic I originally wanted the boss to be yellow eyes, but I couldn't think of how he would play at the time so I just made a big hulking demon guy. His eyes were bright yellow at first but I thought it didn't look good, so I changed it to red and grey to be more like a cross between a generic demon and a crossroads demon.
His ranged attack is a reference to how all demons have that lame ability to just wave their arms and whip people across the room.
 

Relic

Member
@Misu Thanks for the video review of Necro-more-cy. 100% more useful to see a player not understanding parts game, and questioning the intention as they play it compared to a written review. I didn't even dawn on me the game continues after the time limit is reached which obviously leads to confusion, especially as the score keeps on increasing! Your chat person was right, the score is uploaded when the time limit is reached. I would just smash R to restart, clear in my own head, so this was by far the biggest mistake I made.

I think both you and @Alice did not work out that battle is essential to do well score wise. Focussing on avoidance and picking up single graves won't get you far at all. You summon from graves and battle creates graves. The enemy groups always scale with you, regardless of whether you are going up or down in army size. Try to pick the better battles (slightly smaller enemy groups rather than slightly bigger) while you work your way up in minion count and minion level to maximise the points. By the end of the 90s, if you have done well, you probably have a couple of lvl 5 minions and then smaller minions to make up the rest of the numbers.

Having a lot of smaller minions is better than one big one. But when you have 32/32 minions, it is better to start spawning some higher level minions rather than plateuing at 32 lvl 1 skeletons with no room for growth.

I am in general agreeance from a fiew reviewers now that the time limit was not the best approach. I like the idea of building the forces almost indefinately to one climactic battle with a boss group, perhaps hanging around the middle of the map.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@Relic Just for the record, I knew battles were useful for gathering forces, I just didn't know that zerg rush was so much more effective than going for the stronger units, and I instinctively wanted to go for stronger units because they look awesome. I also, expressed this in my review:
However, the game lacks clarity on each unit's capabilities and how the battles work, so I can't math my way into deciding whether 1 dragon can defeat 1 knight + 3 mages, or if 1 giant can take down 4 swordsmen. It applies to allied units as well - should I spend all these graves on a dragon or on level 2 fighters?
So I guess the game heavily promoting spawning weaker units (until the army is large enough), along with the time limit that doesn't allow player to eventually build some varied army kinda goes against Rule of Cool and also leads to underuse of strong units in general.
 

Relic

Member
That’s all true! I also played aiming for high units at first- but I’m the sort of player that fantasises about send out all the little fighters from a spaceship carrier like stinging wasps and less about having the destroyer that fires one nuke. I changed the stats and costs so having a horde on minions was more desirable. My rule of cool!
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
Thanks @Alice and @Bart for your reviews! And @Misu for your attempt! XD (My Jam entries keep pissing him off. Sorry, Misu!)

Nice to see the sheer power of my presentation keeps carrying my retarded mechanics through. And I'm glad you liked the voice acted tutorial, Alice. I'm no voice actor, but I had fun with it.

Also, in light of the lashback that the jumping has received from about ten people now (here and otherwise), I took a look at my physics/collision code and realized the problem: I wrote it a year ago, and it's the freaking worst. Lol. So, I went and rewrote the entire thing, and I'm proud to say that my new physics engine is much nicer. The jumping feels good, and is much easier to use, and I even added support for 45 degree slopes! Maybe one day, I'll make a post-jam version with the new physics. (They still need some work, though.)

Edit- Oh, yeah! The rocket flipping thing. That message was in the second level, because I had finished the first one, and realized "Oh crap, I forgot to tell the player about rocket flipping!" So yeah, I guess it's a troll now.
 
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Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
And thanks @The M as well! I was worried about removing a cooldown for the flip, because I thought the player would be too overpowered, but given how tight the game is in general, I think you are probably right. Heck, if I had done that, I probably could have done away with that "Spectre" thing, but I needed to match the theme somehow. Originally, the Spectre was going to be a coat that you could leave behind when flipping that would linger in midair to momentarily distract enemies. Also, your right about the rockets. I think now I would've made them easier to deflect, and made them only dangerous for one frame.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@The M Thanks a lot for your feedback, glad you enjoyed our entry. ^^

Out of curiosity, you mentioned you didn't beat the game, at least not without cheating on the second last level. Does it mean you legitimately completed all the levels except the second last one and got the ending? Just wondering.

I was considering displaying an effective attack range on the top of the movement range, but I decided it would be too complex for the Jam being and I wasn't sure how to present the information in a useful and readable way, especially taking into account more irregular attack patterns (especially grenadiers, with their splash damage). Simply put, I found it too time-consuming compared to other priorities. One of such priorities was the undo mechanic and I'm glad you took note of it - from my own playtesting, I can say with certainty that the game would have been way more frustrating without the undo ability.
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
happy to see more reviews and lots of useful creative criticism coming in!
Great job everyone!

Now... gonna repeat what I said earlier...

-----
is anyone html scraping/ backing up the original forums GMC Jam forum?
I'm not sure I'm going to have the time before the 17th (old forum deletion date) to hunt down some decent software and do that.
And I'm worried that we (myself ,Alice, Nocturne, HayManMarc, NAL) still haven't found all the games for and complied zips of all those earlier Jams (especially Jams 1-4)
Soooo...
if anyone would do that Jam forum backup, it would be much appreciated.
PM to let me know.

(Wayback Machine is random/spotty at best - lots missing.)
-----

I'm worried we're gonna find ourselves (this day next week) in a situation where collecting and compiling all the Jam games (and any interesting images) is no longer possible.
And we'll have lost a chunk of the early GMC Jam history.
Come on people - surely someone has some solution there for just backing up those GMC Jam topics off the old forums... there isn't even really all that many posts?

And anyone with complete original GMC Jam zips of Jams 1-6 (especially 1-4) please PM me with links!
 

The M

Member
@Alice Yeah, I managed to clear all of them except for the grenadier level. It's interesting how much easier it got once you started with a little energy. I think just starting with 2 energy might be a fair tradeoff if you want to make an easy (or easier) difficulty level.
 
M

Misu

Guest
Actually, it's Misu who has been doing the gameplay.
Who? What? Where? oh yeah I was the one who did those playthroughs. Did I almost found the secret? Is it by anywhere leaping down that long drop where I have to go through a tunnel on the wall?
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
Updated my votes/ranking after re-playing a few games a bit longer.
Some stuff shifted around! Mostly minor single position movements...
most noticeable shift is The House getting bumped up to 4th...
and I thought I might as well rank *all* the games.
Best of luck to all!
Great work all!
 

Micah_DS

Member
I wasn't able to do the video playthroughs this time, due to some weird throat/head infection thing I had. I've played all the games though, and I've written 3 reviews so far. I thought I'd be posting my votes and comments last weekend, but it looks like it'll be this weekend instead. I've also changed up my feedback format a bit. Hopefully it'll lead to higher quality feedback.

I haven't taken much time to go over feedback from you guys on HayManMarc and I's game (Lab 23), but I'll definitely read everything after I finish my votes! :)
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@Relic Thanks for the review, too bad you apparently didn't like the gameplay as much...?

To elaborate on the AI: it's a sort of an optimistic concurrency model. Basically, each unit tries to determine the nearest spot to attack from and tries to go towards it. The order of units' decision is based on how far away they are from the target in turns, rather than in tiles. This allows faster/ranged units take precedence when they're ready to attack (with no mook getting in their way), but also leads to this flawed teamwork when a faster unit is first blocked by the slower unit (because it's fewer turns away from the target), and only then the slower unit makes its move that leaves some room for advancing to the faster unit. Admittedly, level 4 might abuse these AI intricacies a bit too much.
(at other times, two enemies might end up in a deadlock when a gunner has a nearest attack spot to the top while the unit above the gunner wants to move down instead)

I definitely would like to refine the AI at some point so that it generally makes better decisions - for the most part still "greedy" in the sense of chasing the player to the nearest attack spot (if AI was this game's grandmaster, player would have 0 chance of winning in most levels) but with some teamwork improvements (e.g. if an enemy is one turn away from attacking spot but other enemies are in the way of movement/attack, these enemies will try to step aside instead) and a little more behaviour variety (e.g. espers could prioritize covering as many other units with their PSI interference field).

Obviously, this would result in some existing level becoming potentially unwinnable, and in general was too great for the scope of the Jam (especially without all these highly anticipated GML improvements).
 

Relic

Member
If into these games yourself @Alice and not aware of it, Twinfold on mobile is a perfect example (imo) of a tile based puzzle game. Every rule is perfectly clear, and like your game, order of AI matters and the dev shows order of operations through the GUI (at player request). You were on your way with the clear set of rules but there was just enough ambiguity to make me give up lvl 5.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Personally, I'd rather tweak the AI so that it's not so sensitive to the turn order in the first place, especially since I have no easy way of knowing in advance what will be the turn order (that is, without running a part of AI algorithm). That, and the units order would shift depending on the board state. Besides, most of the time the order shouldn't be relevant - the fact that it is in some cases I consider more of an accident at work.

What I see as a flaw here - compared to the intended vision of the game - is that a shadow is a doofus and decides it cannot move before the guard makes way. In other words, an AI oddity that some levels hinge on.
If units coordination was improved - for example, a unit would revise its plan after other units planned their move - then the internal order of enemies processing wouldn't matter as much. That's because either:
a) the guard is processed first, the shadow follows the guard and plans their move
b) the shadow is processed first - not finding any opportunity to advance, then the guard is processed leaving some room for the shadow, then the shadow revises the move and decides to advance after the guard
Both situations would result in both guard and shadow advancing.

As I see it, improving the AI this way (and similar):
- would make it act in a more common-sense way, which is easier to predict than enemies getting blocked by decision order, and thus puzzles can't rely on this oddity
- would open up some attack opportunities that the current AI would miss (e.g. an esper stepping away, making path for gunner to the attack position); this would be tricky to predict, but I think it's preferable to situation when player sees such an attack opportunity and gives up on trying out some move, only to later find out that move was quite legitimate
- would render quite a few level unwinnable (right now more likely levels to be broken by new AI would be 4 and 8)

Overall, it would move focus away from careful planning (is it how Twinfold puzzles work?) towards trial and error and educated guesses. You could rely on AI to use an immediate attack opportunity and could expect it to advance towards the spots to attack the player from, but trying to predict which specific formations it would advance to would be quite futile and inefficient compared to simply trying out a some move.

I think for this specific game - with increasingly complex interactions between enemies - emphasizing heuristics works better over focusing on strict planning. With this kind of gameplay, undo feature is probably much more essential than drowning the player with detailed information, because it facilitates the trial and error. Of course, improvements to displaying basic and easy to process information are still desired (e.g. which enemies are at the attacking position or one move-turn away from it). Nonetheless, with AI having more flexible move order the information about units order becomes purely cosmetic if not misleading.

--------------------

About level 5:
I don't really think there's so much ambiguity at play here? The move order shouldn't be so relevant here, as long as you expect AI to move closer guard first, leaving room for the further guard. Same goes for level 2 - because closer guards advance earlier, they leave room for others and thus move in a mostly coordinated manner.

There is some ambiguity about specific fields enemies might choose (if multiple fields are at the same turn distance from the player) and it's pretty easy to get attacked by a gunner because of their broad attack range, but otherwise enemies consistently stick to the basic "move towards the nearest attack spot, if reached the attack spot attack the player" principle.

There is so much room to move around that collective AI behaviour is barely affected by exact units order, if at all. So even if I did provide the move order information, I don't think this information would be so much more useful compared to basic player intuition (in level 4 it's different because the room is narrow and there are slower and faster units).
 
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Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
@Relic thanks for the review! You made a good point about the spectre and flip being redundant. In fact, you can use the normal flip to get past laser sights as well, making it worse. Lol. The spectre is actually the same as the flip, it just turns you invisible and mostly invulnerable. I think, if I were to remake the game, I would make the player's bullets work the same as the enemy's, instead of being hitscan. My game doesn't know whether to be a puzzler or an action game, so it just fails at both. XD
 

Relic

Member
@Bearman_18 You are welcome.

@Alice Ambiguity might be the wrong word. I intended to mean I was staring at lvl 5 not seeing any solutions. Trying for dumb luck didn’t help me either so I couldn’t solve it. As I said in my review - that could be because I wasn’t smart enough to see the patterns of the game ruleset.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@ghandpivot Just watched the second video up to VLAD III review (first video is still unavailable), and I really appreciate making these playthroughs. But more importantly, I'm impressed with your mad platforming skills that made you complete Spectre 2023 in 12 minutes or so (that includes the first iteration when the game froze). For me, it took like an hour and then some, I think. >.<
 

ghandpivot

Member
Both videos are up. I'm sorry about the quality this time around, I should totally have made the PC audio even lower and the voice louder, while also mumbling less. You can watch them to see how I play your game and every now and then you could probably make out some feedback if there's not too much going on.

@ghandpivot Just watched the second video up to VLAD III review (first video is still unavailable), and I really appreciate making these playthroughs. But more importantly, I'm impressed with your mad platforming skills that made you complete Spectre 2023 in 12 minutes or so (that includes the first iteration when the game froze). For me, it took like an hour and then some, I think. >.<
I'm ashamed that I kept falling down like an idiot, but the jumping was just so off that it made the whole thing a whole new experience compared to the hundreds of platformers one has played before. I also spent ages trying to run through the whole last level, when clearly I could just have stayed put every here and there to recharge my shadow walk, and there were even check points I never took in my tunnel vision sprint to the end.
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
@ghandpivot Holy cow, you were really good at my game. You got past segments in ways I had never thought of. Even the crappy jump mechanics were no match for you! XD (I've never played My Friend Pedro, but I probably should one day.)
Edit- I was particularly impressed when you avoided the long stair well of rocket guys by falling between the platforms in the second level. that was crazy!
 

Sk8dududu

Member
So, regarding Ouija. I knew I should have included some sort of tutorial but I only had a handful of hours to throw the game together.
I understand it's a hard game, more than one person has asked me how to play or how to avoid dying. Stepping off the letters of the Ouija board starts a very short timer, where if you don't step back on the letter in time you'll be squished by the finger. The Planchette (triangle thing flying around) moves from letter to letter and plays an audio clip as well as an animation when it hits the next letter. You need to remember the letters in order and click on the right word in the book to complete the level, where the game gets harder by speeding up the planchette, having more complex move patterns, as well as giving you longer words.

For the few of you that were able to figure all of this out and beat the game, I'm actually pretty impressed. It seems to be much harder to figure out than I intended. Mouse arrows are the only buttons used.

I enjoyed participating in the jam, and just like my last jam i learned something very valuable. And hopefully I can bring that to the next jam.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Your timezone may vary, but the weekend has already begun! (at least in some places)

You know what it means?

Time for Christmas preparations! I mean Jam voting, totally Jam voting.

(I wonder who else plans on voting/reviewing; there are some reserved posts, and from general Jam experience a few people make last-minute votes, so hopefully there will be some more feedback...?)
 

Sk8dududu

Member
(I wonder who else plans on voting/reviewing; there are some reserved posts, and from general Jam experience a few people make last-minute votes, so hopefully there will be some more feedback...?)
I've played most of the games so far. I don't want to add my review/vote until I have everything done.
 

The M

Member
@Misu Watching your playthrough, I cringed when I realized the window would go outside your screen too. Sorry about that, it's really just those two rooms that go a little further than the rest but unfortunately, they are the ones where you really need to see what's inside them. I recommend trying this version:
Here is a version of The House that should work on any resolution if you're interested. This version prevents the game from going off screen but is otherwise identical to the jam version.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
I've gathered more timestamps of Misu's streams for your viewing pleasure. Please redirect your likes to the quoted post:

Im gonna start live streaming now. I only got 14 more games to play. I can definitely get every single one of them done today! :D

https://twitch.tv/misumeow
The video links and timestamps themselves:

Video 4
0:01:15 - Dodge 'em Dracula by @Firedingo
0:07:35 - Homebound by @Shadow_Lancer

Video 5
0:00:00 - rest of Homebound
0:05:15 - The Cabin by @Bart
0:15:30 - Bit Souls by @Roa
0:29:55 - Demon Santa by @Catastrophe
0:36:20 - Hazel by @FreddyShnitz

Video 6
0:01:25 - Ghostris by @Yal
0:08:15 - Night Of The Living Taters by @dadio
0:10:40 - The House by @The M, @ghandpivot
0:28:25 - Deadly Dungeon by @KPJ
0:38:05 - Ouija by @Sk8dududu, Riley
0:50:05 - Scary Ghost by @stenol
0:55:25 - VLAD III by @Fernando Gonzalez

Video 7
0:00:00 - The Mouse Curser by @Cloaked Games, aSingleCapella
 
M

Misu

Guest
@The M hey thanks! I knew there would be some sort of post version of your game. I would give it a go soon.

@Alice Thanks a bunch! Youve been very grateful lately and I really appreciate you took the time to sort all that out. :D

Anyway that is it for me on this jam. I reached my conclusion now that I finally updated my voting post and finished voting. Lately, I have no longer took the jam very seriously and I hope to keep it that way for the next upcoming jams. I rather just enjoy it and try to keep my best at making games.

Anyway Best of Luck for everyone! :)
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Best of Luck for everyone!
*gets flashbacks from repeated losses against Wailing Bob*

Also, thanks a lot for your gameplays and feedback, you did a terrific job there. I figured it wouldn't be too much trouble for me to put all these timestamps together so that people could access the specific games more easily. ;)
(on a side note, I've found it so much relatable when you saw the words-book in Ouija and then the goal of the game finally came together; for the record, there is no readme file included, whether with player-friendly spelling or not)

Come to think of it, didn't @Cloaked Games mention they're coming for Best Reviewer? I wonder how is their reviewing going... *whistling*
 
I had talked a big talk, but I gotta admit. I had completely forgotten that my own game was being published this weekend. So I thought I had a lot more time than I actually do.

Considering that, if I don't get to do reviews (which is now quite likely), I will give my community prize to the winner of Best Story, because I am unable to judge my personal favorite fantasy game.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@Cantaloupe Thanks for your feedback and vote, glad you enjoyed my entry. ^^
Judging by your remark last few levels feeling sloppy in comparison to the earlier ones I take that you managed to complete the whole thing?
(I know that level 10 that introduces the drone was a miss - with drone's speed and range *and* PSI resistance it'd be tricky to deal with it alone, but during my playtesting it didn't occur to me that gunner can take down the drone easily; if I left the drone alone the level would likely be more tricky, because then you'd need to deal with its increased PSI cost while fending off the immediate threat)

I admit that help could have been executed better, but as you said it's mostly because of time constraints. If I had more time, I'd probably combine a gradual tutorial-like introduction with help panels accessible from ingame for additional reference (instead of one large help dump), and each level would only show a set of panels relevant to itself (so e.g. a level without espers wouldn't have a panel about espers, even if espers were introduced earlier). I think that would make things easier to learn and review, but obviously it'd be too time-consuming for the Jam timeframe.

Another thing I considered was having some kind of tooltip indicating what the currently hovered cell does (e.g. if it's move or attack, what PSI cost the given action would have etc.). That should also make learning and decision-making smoother.
 

Cantaloupe

Member
I unfortunately had to cheat my way through level 9 as whatever approach I took always ended up with me being 1 PSI away from winning. At some point I decided it would be better to see the rest of what the game had to offer rather than just stopping there.

Also, my comment was inaccurate; thinking over it again, I really meant that my approach was much sloppier in the later levels. In the early levels, I found a high level solution (for example. for level 4, this was something like "create a bottleneck so I can move to a safer position, then pick off enemies one by one") which could be easily translated into ingame steps. Later on, this didn't feel as necessary and I pretty much took things turn by turn with some minor course corrections (with the exception of level 9, of course).
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
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There's less than 1 day of voting left! (maybe)

If you have some unfinished voting, it's time to wrap it up and make a post in the Voting Topic.

If you know you won't be able to do it within that day, but you could do it given an extra day or two, please let us know. While the deadline right now is set to Tuesday 17th 12:00 UTC, extending it is an option - but we'd like to make sure potential voters are interested in such an extension in the first place.
 
M

Misty

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There's less than 1 day of voting left! (maybe)

If you have some unfinished voting, it's time to wrap it up and make a post in the Voting Topic.

If you know you won't be able to do it within that day, but you could do it given an extra day or two, please let us know. While the deadline right now is set to Tuesday 17th 12:00 UTC, extending it is an option - but we'd like to make sure potential voters are interested in such an extension in the first place.
K I plan on posting my scathing and blackhearted votes today. No quarter will be given.
 
@FrostyCat Glad you enjoyed my entry! Thanks for the feedback.
The main reason I started learning to draw and animate higher res stuff is just for the reason you mention in your comments, so I'm glad the diversity is appreciated.
It didn't occur to me until after the jam how unresponsive the game could feel due to some animations so I did add some interrupts to the dash and melee, which makes it feel must better.
That and a few other changes I made and released in a post-jam version in the WIP forum if you have any interest in playing a third time.
 
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