GMC Jam Discussion GMC Jam 31 / XXXI / Discussion

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Relic

Member
Im really upset about this community. I may spend 10 days actually working on an entry and yet I still dont do a good job on getting anyones appeal. I even notice one person excluded my entry for the voting. Its been the same thing every jam for the past 7 years. This is nothing but a wasteful experience.

Im gonna play hardball next time and Im gonna make sure I make something you guys cant resist. And im serious about this.
Can’t tell if there was sarcasm in there or not (for someone to rank high, someone else has to rank low?), but good on you for deciding to come back harder next time-great growth mindset.

Being the first time reviewing and first time with a (real) entry I am finding people’s tastes vary greatly. Samsam’s game sticks out as it appears top 3 and bottom 3. Other game’s get ranked real high for graphical reasons whereas I’m mechanics driven and can’t give top spots to games where the novel mechanic is meaningless or, even worse, should be actively ignored to do well. If there isn’t a novel mechanic and it’s just some pretty wrapping around some game that has beeen around since the 80s, that won’t do well either. That’s the subjective nature of a review.
 

HayManMarc

Member
Yeah, I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out how people vote. I just do these jams for the time challenge, anymore. (Also, once in a while, the jam sparks a good game idea.) Maybe someone takes a shine to something I make, but I've learned not to count on it at all. Still, good times. :)
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
Yeah I think as you guys say, reviewing/voting/what people judge to be "good"... it's all subjective. Try not to get hung up on the results/positions. This Jam is and always has been about getting people to make and share new games, experiment with new things, form teams, and get together to give each other feedback and encouragement.
Glad to hear that the results are just pushing you to try harder next time tho Misu!
Your games are often pretty cool!
Best of luck!

(Broken record-tastic as this stage, but I'm *really* gonna try to scrape together a few hours to enter something myself next time...
anytime any of you guys are sad about positions, just look back at my track record! Lol!)
 

Toque

Member
Can’t tell if there was sarcasm in there or not (for someone to rank high, someone else has to rank low?), but good on you for deciding to come back harder next time-great growth mindset.

Being the first time reviewing and first time with a (real) entry I am finding people’s tastes vary greatly. Samsam’s game sticks out as it appears top 3 and bottom 3. Other game’s get ranked real high for graphical reasons whereas I’m mechanics driven and can’t give top spots to games where the novel mechanic is meaningless or, even worse, should be actively ignored to do well. If there isn’t a novel mechanic and it’s just some pretty wrapping around some game that has beeen around since the 80s, that won’t do well either. That’s the subjective nature of a review.

I think your right. Everyone has different tastes. So I would expect votes to be all over the place. You can try and be subjective but there is always going to be personal bias. Same with food, art, music. Its actually interesting to see different opinions tastes. If all the games were the same and reviews identical it would be rather boring.
 

samspade

Member
@samspade
I read your review post - if you don’t mind, could you let us know why you didn’t feel strongly enough about Liquid Bacon to rank it?
Sure. First, it was pretty well done in many senses. There was content, followed the theme, definitely took work programming. But it's really not my style of game, it was a little slow pacing and mechanics wise (couldn't quickly skip through dialogue, walking npcs all the same but you had to talk to them to find out and again you couldn't skip dialogue so that was many minutes of nothing, combat not terrible but also not particularly interesting and in the forest I got spawns every few seconds, hard to find the things you want etc), and I experienced a bug where the battle music played nonstop forever so I had to play without sound. Since it seemed slow and not my style I didn't really want to restart and get it without the bug. Taking all that together it just didn't grab me.
 

Ralucipe

Member
Thanks for the feedback!

couldn't quickly skip through dialogue
and again you couldn't skip dialogue so that was many minutes of nothing
Since the game is almost entirely based in dialogue - and in the information that you receive from it - I don't think it would've been appropriate to allow the user to completely skip dialogue and suddenly find themselves in some different, unexpected situation. Not trying to argue with you here, but we felt that allowing the user to skip through dialogue as fast as they could press the spacebar struck a good balance.

walking npcs all the same but you had to talk to them to find out
Noted! That's definitely a weakness.

I experienced a bug where the battle music played nonstop forever so I had to play without sound.
Yup, that's the one we uploaded a patch for. We're kicking ourselves for allowing it into the final submission.

Again, thanks for filling us in.
 

Micah_DS

Member
Funny, I guess there weren't as many people as I thought who had major screw ups in their games? I just downloaded the 'fixed' versions and this is what I have:
  • Black and shìte by Ghandpivot
    ( Reason for fixed ver: Player start position was in the middle of the game )
  • Overcoming All Aliens by Micnasr
    ( Actually a valid jam submission; simply had a bad link )
  • PHAGE by FrostyCat
    ( Reason for fixed ver: Had a very slight possibility of crashing ? )
    ( Note that you'll have to follow the "Please see the remastered version" link in the linked post. I did this purposefully, since the actual download post doesn't mention the issue with the jam version )
    EDIT: I updated the link here to go where FrostyCat explains / links all 3 versions of his game.
  • Rise by The M
    ( Reason for fixed ver: 2/3 of the game unreachable in jam version )
  • Wizzy Gizzard: Speed Date by HayManMarc
    ( Reason for fixed ver: Jam version had the leveling system truncated for testing purposes, making the game too easy )
Did I miss any?

EDIT - yep, missed one:
 
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FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
I'm about halfway through with the reviews. Since the questions and review comments are starting to pile up, it looks like time for me to reply on several common categories.

( Reason for fixed ver: Had a very slight possibility of crashing ? )
( Note that you'll have to follow the "Please see the remastered version" link in the linked post. I did this purposefully, since the actual download post doesn't mention the issue with the jam version )
There were 3 released versions of PHAGE:
  • Initial Jam version: Found in the Jam zip
  • Patched version: Found on this post in the now crossed out section
  • Remastered version: Found on this post
There are at least a dozen issues I now know of in the initial Jam version, but the biggest is an approximately 4% chance of a map shuffle crashing. I had a stray irandom(22) (incorrect) instead of irandom(21) (correct) for choosing a random map out of 22 available. The patched version fixes this and the following:
  • Removes unshown mockup backgrounds for faster loading (they were there to help place elements during early development)
  • Fixes doubled -40 penalty when a side is "knocked out" (i.e. cannot carry over any units)
  • Fixes missing round score at the beginning of a round (notice that it always starts - and - in the initial Jam version, even if the board position clearly indicates otherwise)
The remastered version contains further fixes (e.g. graphical fixes, player unit animations, memory leak on AI), better multi-platform support, plus the built-in illustrated help documentation and player select screens originally left inaccessible due to running out of development time.

Hey, @FrostyCat, I played your game and it's pretty good, for the kind of game it is. Just a few suggestions (which I wrote in my review but havent posted yet): make it so the player can "unselect" a selection s/he made by clicking that selection again. I found myself confused with the boxes on the screen when I decided against the selection and wanted to see the layout of the game board without a selection made. (Hope that makes sense.) Also, the wait time between the end of the computer's turn and the beginning of the player's turn seemed too long. I found myself slightly annoyed having to wait to click when it was clearly my turn.

Just thought you might want to give that a look since you're still messing around with it.
The unselect is one of the additions in the remastered edition. The wait time is likely because I haven't optimized the drawing pipeline and architecture in general, and if I were to start on that I'd likely be doing it on a rebooted version of the project.

Awesome game that reminded me of a Dos game I used to play a lot back in the day called Hexxagon (from 1993). Not sure if your game was inspired by that or not, but I love how your game is similar but also has deeper gameplay due to expanded elements of tiles having meaning in terms of score and even having safe zones. Very cool.
You got it. The original inspiration for PHAGE is Hexxagon, except I became acquainted with it via a Flash clone in the 2000's (link) instead of the original DOS version in the 1990's. Around the same time, I was also playing a square-grid variant of it called Blob Wars (link).


For Reviewers

Thank you everyone for taking time to review and critique my entry. Aside from the crash in the Jam version (which is addressed by both the patched and remastered versions), there were several common themes among the reviews. Now looks like a good time to address them.

Relationship to Reversi

It's interesting how so many reviewers of my game were reminded of Reversi, and indeed my entry can be played on a Reversi board plus maps drawn on index cards. What you may be surprised is that the last experimentation I made on the AI engine is EXACTLY Reversi. The MCTS-based AI that I shipped with had the exact same playout count (1000) and depth settings (6) as my Reversi experiment, at the lowest level where I personally found it to be an interesting opponent. With little time left at the end of the Jam, I left the setting as-is hoping that it could play at more or less the same skill level. With MCTS, this is pretty much a crap shoot depending on how the game's tree looks like (i.e. how fat and how tall). For example, the same settings would be well past the point needed to play Tic-Tac-Toe perfectly, but well beneath the point needed to play Chess even sensibly.

AI too difficult?

Initially I did foresee the need for varying AI levels, and it was the reason why I ultimately chose MCTS over Minimax. MCTS makes it an absolute cinch to vary the strength of the AI, just tune the number of playouts and plies per playout. The more playouts I set, the smarter it becomes. The more plies per playout I set, the more insight there is. Unfortunately I made the mistake of focusing on supporting resources (e.g. sound and music) over the entry's backbone around Wednesday, and the player select screen was NOT at a usable state by the end of the Jam. But I was not about to let it all go to waste, and the remastered version sees this functionality returned to its planned debut.

The initial Jam version's AI is slightly easier than the remastered version's AI Epidemiologist. If you found it too difficult, there are 4 easier settings on the remastered version that you can try. For example, AI Lab Rat uses only 200 playouts at a depth of 2 plies, and it gives no added weight to having survivors for the next round. But don't let the name fool you --- leave obvious flaws in your formation and it will still bite at the opportunity.

AI programmed to play perfectly?

Absolutely not. The MC in MCTS (Monte Carlo Tree Search) guarantees that its play is not exactly "well" but "probably well". The number of playouts (samples) increases the probability of it finding the cream of the crop, but convergence is far from guaranteed and it might take a long time to get there even if it is.

Hints on how to play PHAGE?

After about 20 rounds against the MCTS AI at higher settings, I finally have enough insight into the game to put down some general hints. For full disclosure, I currently play at AI Bioterrorist level on the remastered edition (1600 playouts at 6 plies). Play along and see how many of these hints you can derive:
  • If the board allows it, AVOID creating FOOD square formations that allow double-captures (e.g. two in a diagonal, two squares spaced by one in between). Even if the spot that allows a double-capture is a TOXIC square, making the double-capture still comes out ahead in terms of points.
  • A square that is completely blocked in from the 4 capture directions (north, east, south, west) CANNOT change hands. This is the strongest defence possible in the game. A block-in establishes fastest in the 4 corner squares, second fastest in the edge squares, and slowest in the middle of the board (any Go player would find this familiar).
  • When fighting for control of a FOOD square, AVOID being the second-last player to block it in if your opponent has any potential to follow-up and be the absolute last. The winner is the one who completes the block-in, not necessarily the one who starts it.
  • Be especially alert when the AI opens up a block-in on a FOOD square you control by jumping away to a seemingly unrelated spot (sometimes even a TOXIC square). The follow-up is to jump back in, retake its erstwhile neighbour on the FOOD square and re-establishing the block-in.
  • Don't be afraid to take one or two TOXIC squares in order to establish a block-in for a FOOD square. Not having needless exchanges will allow you to time to create threats elsewhere, and when it's safe you can use your last or second-last turn to vacate them.
  • The last move is more powerful than any other of the 30 allotted, and you only have it when you play second (i.e. your turn number is odd). It can be used to make last-minute captures or get bonus points from clearing a TOXIC square used to keep a block-in, all without chance of retaliation. This is the deciding factor on many close games. If instead your opponent has this last move (i.e. your turn number is even), your goal is to set up defences and make it as useless as you can.
I'd love to hear from other players whether you have additional strategies and hints for winning.
 
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Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
From my experiences, the jam games that feels the best and are the most memorable are the ones that were haphazardly thrown together in a spark of inspiration, based around a single idea. The ones that are traditional games just feel forgettable (even if they're polished) most of the time.

Some examples that comes to mind...
  • A game made in GM6 to enable capturing your desktop, you fell off the end of the world and then ran around on the desktop for a bit
  • That scrolling game where you controlled a bunch of birds avoiding hazards and eating seeds which had that super emotional music and online highscores
  • A game where all the graphics were cut-out photos and a dad took his kids for a ride and then random stuff happened (e..g giant bees or aliens attacked) and you had to avoid them with this photoshop car with a giant googly-eyed dad driving it
I don't remember the names of either of those games, but they've still stuck in the back of my head years later.
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
I agree with you Yal.
I remember those games too.
Especially the cut-out photo one!
And I have a strong tendency to enjoy, appreciate (and upvote) unique hook, memorable, experimental, crazy or emotive games myself in these Jams.
(Often that's led to my votes looking odd/skewed compared to most lol.)
I think many people try to use a some kind of points/category/breakdown (graphics/gameplay/sound) etc. system when voting (or at least they used to) but I've always thought such systems tend to "flatten" votes and let the safer/medicore/"good enough" type games rise higher... to the detriment of more unique/risky ones
Some of the vote tallying systems used for some GMC Jams strongly push up those "middleground"/"most averagely scored by everyone" games too. Never liked those systems.
Different strokes for different folks tho.
Three cheers for haphazard unique hook games!
 

Toque

Member
@dadio "And I have a strong tendency to enjoy, appreciate (and upvote) unique hook, memorable, experimental, crazy or emotive games myself in these Jams.
(Often that's led to my votes looking odd/skewed compared to most lol.)"

I agree. Crazy, funny, experimental, risk takers or just fun. Even if it totally doesn't work I kind of lean to them as well.
 

Ralucipe

Member
I think many people try to use a some kind of points/category/breakdown (graphics/gameplay/sound) etc. system when voting (or at least they used to) but I've always thought such systems tend to "flatten" votes and let the safer/medicore/"good enough" type games rise higher... to the detriment of more unique/risky ones
I guess I can see the thought behind this.

I use a scoring system to force myself to look at individual components of a game as objectively as possible, and therefore give proper credit to games that had great graphics but poor mechanics (or vice versa). I feel that this also helps highlight to developers where they could look to improve next. But I see where that may raise concern about the judging of the more unique factors of games. I have a "player experience" subscore, which is essentially my attempt to counteract this potential problem. If I find a game to be unique and fun, this is the score that shows it.

Of course, one might say that this still just amounts to assigning a quantitative value to something that is ultimately very subjective... but aren't all voters essentially doing that by ranking games against each other?
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
I used to divide my scores into categories of graphics, gameplay, story etc. because like Ralucipe says, it can be useful for letting developers know where to improve next. It also allows you to give quick visual confirmation that you liked X, Y, Z about someone's game even if you ranked it lower.

The key thing I did is not actually use the total of those scores to reflect my final vote. Often if I liked a game that I'd somehow given a low score (because it had crap graphics or whatever) I just bumped it up the list.

Either way I don't bother scoring like that any more, as long as each game has a short review with some sort of "you did this well but this needs improving" I think people are happy.
 

Micah_DS

Member
Only 7 more games left to play, so I should finish them up tomorrow. Unlike last time, recording playthroughs has gone well - no technical issues like the mic dropping out or capture problems :) ... so far. :p
Each game will get its own video, so that'll be nicer than jumping to the desired game within a big long video, I guess?

I'll put the focus on the videos being my main feedback for everyone, but I'll have a few comments for each game in text as well. Not at all like the massive in-depth document I did last time, unfortunately. Last time I really overextended myself and had some minor health issues crop up from it (all fine now), so that's probably best to avoid this time around, ey. I'll just leave the truly great feedback and reviews to those who are more naturally gifted with it. Misu ;)
 

Toque

Member
Only 7 more games left to play, so I should finish them up tomorrow. Unlike last time, recording playthroughs has gone well - no technical issues like the mic dropping out or capture problems :) ... so far. :p
Each game will get its own video, so that'll be nicer than jumping to the desired game within a big long video, I guess?

I'll put the focus on the videos being my main feedback for everyone, but I'll have a few comments for each game in text as well. Not at all like the massive in-depth document I did last time, unfortunately. Last time I really overextended myself and had some minor health issues crop up from it (all fine now), so that's probably best to avoid this time around, ey. I'll just leave the truly great feedback and reviews to those who are more naturally gifted with it. Misu ;)
Looking forward to watching these!
 

ghandpivot

Member
I put so much effort into making the screenshot dll work for "The world is flat and so are you" that I didn't really have time to make much of a game out of it. Had it been properly long before the "reveal" it would have been way more powerful. I'm glad you liked it though, I think it came out quite neat!

(can be downloaded here)
 
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Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Made a new version for my Jam game! Now it includes actual gameplay! https://www.dropbox.com/s/k17dwk4ctzh639g/juegOS HD Early Access 0.2.zip?dl=1
(also, I was too busy with particle effects to make enough content to show off all these modules I've implemented; but at least I have particle effects)



This version is drastically different from the Jam version, so please don't even think of rating it instead of the original Jam version. However, if it's not a problem, I'd rather get feedback based on this version rather than the original (as some issues with the original - such as glaring lack of content - should be dealt with in the new version).
 
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Smiechu

Member
Little summary regarding my entry - Stream of Adaptation

This is a good concept... Cycling between shapes and colors on two different axes, with no contextual connection to the keyboard and no way to know what I'm cycling...
...when the tunnel took a curve... my ship's move speed was far too slow...
The graphics were pretty brilliant. The gameplay was pretty lacking though...
Although I really enjoyed the feel of this game, at about level 10 I started to fall asleep...
There was no way I could change shape and color fast enough to play this game...
A decent idea, I like the effect of travelling through the tunnel. The controls aren't the best...
Good use of theme and presentation. It's kind of hard choosing shape and size since you have to circle through the four options. This game would be pretty cool on mobile devices, you'd play in landscape mode and have four onscreen buttons on each side. That way you could just tap the shape or color you want and you would control the spaceship by tilting the device.
Beautiful! But we should have less forms and colors at the start. It's very difficult and we die quickly!
...like one button for one specific shape...

This was the first Jam for me and in the end I'm vary happy I've managed to prepare a solid entry in time. It certainly won't win any prize, but in the mean time it's also not one of the worst :D

Thank you all reviewers for the feedback. I agree 100% with all of them!
Who have followed my DevLog knows, that for 9 days I worked on a completely other concept - a strategic/economy game where the player designs tramway cars... Unfortunately I was buried under the weight of my own ignorance. Instead of good planing I wrote tons of messy code which was harder and harder to overwhelm every day. The decision of changing the concept came to late...

Stream of Adaptation was created in approx 15h. I've reused code form my "Lotus" racing game prototype. This prototype was unfinished and buggy, but it worked and was a firm base for "something". It took me most of the day to get everything nice and stable (I'm proud that the game can be freely scaled to fit any resolution and window size, including vertical layout. Graphics ware kept as easy as possible, some simple shapes and couple of colors. But it worked and the game looked vary nice.
Unfortunately it was getting vary late and I needed at least 2-3h of sleep before the work on Monday. So for tweaking the gameplay and controls itself I've spent maybe 30min. I've also decided to get rid of a possible bug. From today's perspective I could use this time on tweaking the game play, the bug itself was very unprobable. Separating the controls and adding shapes and colors constantly along the gameplay was somewhere in my head, but I was tired and there ware other things to do, like menu and some sounds and details i.e. saving the properties into ini file...
If I only made the decision to drop my base concept on Saturday, it would turn out much better in the end. I would spend 1 day for the engine and 1 day for tweaking and gameplay.

Never the less I'm proud of my entry, it was fun. I've learned something for the future Jams.

I don't plan to develop this game, I have a ton of other construction yards already. But I would like to launch the core code/engine with a little tutorial into the GM Community later.

Thanks!
 

Ralucipe

Member
I want to echo what @Smiechu and @Alice have pointed out about the "overcome all odds" theme.

When @Acr515 and I were brainstorming game concepts for the three themes, we immediately scratched "overcome all odds" from the list, because it was far too broad, and it didn't really inspire any particular type of game.

Now we have come to see that, not only was the predominant interpretation of this theme "literally any game", but a (rough) majority of jammers also chose it for their entry. To that end I am a bit disappointed that so many people looked for an easy out on theme connection; themes are supposed to inspire you to try new concepts or to push you out of your comfort zone, but most people simply made whatever game they felt like, while slapping "overcome all odds" in the title or in the dialogue somewhere.

I've never given so many people such low scores for "Theme Inclusion". Having the player overcome challenges within the game doesn't constitute a theme connection; that's literally what a game is by definition. There were too many games that felt like they could've been simply copy-pasted into the jam (I'm not saying that anybody actually did use an existing game, it's just a good indicator that a game's theme connection was weak). Gambrawl by @Siolfor the Jackal is a good example of a game that actually demonstrates an effort to incorporate the theme (specifically “overcome all odds”) within the game mechanics, which is precisely why I voted it for "best use of theme".

That all being said, I think we should make an effort to move away from such broad themes as "overcome all odds", rather than trying to find ways to incentivize players to incorporate them. I thought "chemical reactions" was a great theme, and although some may interpret it too narrowly, it still does a lot to inspire unique game mechanics.
 
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samspade

Member
Since most of the voting is done, I wanted to add two clarifications for Overcome (though I'd rather the game was rated on it's original entry).

Theme clarification: the theme was actually not Overcome all Odds. It was adaptation. But there was no way for anyone who didn't read the devlog to know this. Behind the scenes, there is an adaptation handler which slowly evolves the enemies. There's about 8 main enemy types which can be mixed and matched in a variety of different ways and the adaptation handler also can evolve things like hp, speed, and damage. It's not particularly apparent (or good) in such a short game but it does work. The enemies slowly get stronger, faster, and have more hp as the game goes on and occasionally the game does pick up on a certain attack that works and starts throwing it in more often.

Playing Clarification: That it is hard to understand what is happening or what to do is the most common negative feedback and its very fair. Most of it can be figured out with trial and error but the game isn't good enough, long enough, and doesn't tutorialize enough to be worth it. And I only provided a very basic of how to play while a number of the systems have no obvious visual indicators. So here is a much more detailed explanation of the controls and what is going on. It is hard and I've only beaten the jam version once (although I can reliable make it to the final waves).

Winning: Survive the music. If you die before the song is over (about 3:30) you lose and the game restarts. It'll be pretty obvious if you win as the song will end, you'll still be alive, the screen will fade out, and you'll go to the credits.

Movement: You move with the arrows/analog stick. You're limited to a circle in the center of the screen. You cannot leave it and if you try you will be pushed back. Moving does not cost stamina, but you don't gain stamina while moving. Moving is not a high priority and strictly speaking never necessary though sometimes useful.

Health: Health is shown through how dark the screen is. The darker it gets, the lower your health is. If you don't take damage, your health will start to regenerate.

Stamina: You have stamina. Do almost anything uses stamina. Standing still and NOT blocking is the only way to regain it. If you drop to zero, you'll be exhausted.

Exhaustion: If you are exhausted the screen will shake more and become more wavy. You'll move slower and have other negative penalties. To become unexhausted, regain stamina (about a second of doing nothing).

Stunned: If you get hit while low on stamina you'll be stunned and unable to move for a second. The screen shakes a lot more when you're stunned (and also you can't move, block, or attack).

Defending: Hold the action button. You'll know you're defending if you hear a sound and little lights start orbiting you. If you're defending no attack will hurt you. However, defending decreases stamina and getting hit decreases stamina, and if you run out of stamina you can't defend.

Melee attack: If you release the action button and an enemy is close enough, you will auto target and hit them. You will always hit them if you attack. If you release and no enemy is close enough to hit, you will not perform a melee attack. Attacking takes a fair amount of stamina, so you can't attack often in a row.

Ranged attack: If you block ANY attack, melee or ranged, you will start charging a ranged retaliation attack. This attack will auto target the enemy you blocked. If you blocked multiple enemies it will send some bullets back at them. The retaliation attack is proportional to the damage you blocked. While you have a retaliation attack ready, continuing to block charges the attack to make it even stronger. If the attack is strong enough you will send out a lot of bullets in all directions. Charging does take stamina. If you run out of stamina you will lose the charge. There is an indicator that you're charging, (you have additional things orbiting you) but it generally isn't visible.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Since I got some time this morning, I decided to give another game a go and made a review for Liquid Bacon by @Ralucipe and @Acr515
Feel free to check this out. 'tis a good game. ^^

On the discussion about the themes: it's also in part because of its broadness that I didn't want to use OVERCOME ALL ODDS as a primary theme - I couldn't easily find an interpretation that I'd be both comfortable with and didn't feel generic.
Our initial game concept was meant to use CHEMICAL REACTIONS, too - specifically, applying the Chinese system of Five Agents/Five Elements, making use of its generative and overcoming interactions and also having an action-reaction mechanic, where getting hit with some attack allowed player to absorb some mana from it. In the end, the idea turned out too ambitious for the initial codebase we had and then the effort we could put, though, so I ended up reusing some old idea of mine for ADAPTATION (I hope that use of theme is more apparent in the post-Jam version).
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Little Lost Hero by GameDevDan

This game made me look up some game from many, many Jams ago. And then I found out that game from many, many Jams ago had a dadio credits cameo. Huh.

That was a fun little game, though the 18th floor was super-mean with all these bugs I couldn't read (is their gimmick "move to the random tile next"? Because it kinda seemed non-deterministic). In a puzzle game like that I'd rather have movements perfectly predictable. Also, the boss gimmick, once figured out, was pretty easy to replicate, and thus I felt anything past 5 lives was completely unnecessary; it's really more than enough to show the player figured out how to defeat the boss.

The audiovisuals were pretty neat. I liked the tracks, and the graphics worked pretty well, too.

The theme usage seems like a plain OVERCOME ALL ODDS. Maybe there's more to it, since Dan is the one who posted that "putting theme in game title vs subtle use of theme" meme; though I suppose a good use of theme isn't subtle. It's so obvious you can see it even without it being put in the title. ^^'

Also, I watched through the entirety of the last scene. Then again, with words "there's nothing to see here, go away" it's usually pretty clear there's still something.
Haha it's super neat that you actually went back and played HannaH after seeing my entry :D thanks for going the extra mile!

Yeah I toyed around with taking out the "Game Over = Go back to the last multiple of 5" and just making Game Over restart the level you were on. In the end I compromised by just leaving in the "cheat" button (F10) and advising people via the readme that they could use it to skip levels. If I were to carry on with this project (or far more likely, recreate it from scratch) I would definitely take that bit out though. Since you can lose all 3 lives so quickly it doesn't always seem fair to kick you back down a few floors.

RE: the blue bugs - yes they are completely random, and the direction they move in is determined after you move. Again if I remake this I'll change that. Probably I'd still make them move "randomly" but it would be determined before you move and they'd face in the direction they're going to move next or something. So it's sorta random but you still get a heads up? I didn't think about it until other people had a problem with it, but I can definitely see how it's annoying.

Yes! the theme was obviously overcome all odds. The reason I made that meme is because some people er... still didn't get it. And it's a thing that happens to me nearly every jam because I don't like putting the theme in the title or the in-game dialogue to spell out what I was going for, some reviewers seem to need that little nudge.

Also kudos for watching through the last bit... there still isn't much there but I just felt like doing something a little different for anyone who made it that far! Thanks for the review :)
 

Smiechu

Member
Alice said:
When I tried to leave the game with F12, it kinda broke and I had to use Ctrl + Alt + Delete to actually close it.
Can you please check if it's really stuck or just needs more time to close? The F12 triggers the button_pressed event where there is only one line - game_end().
I'm using GMS2 and I've noticed lately that the YYC builds need more time to close (ca. 1-3 sec.). VM builds are ok. I didn't know it can get stuck. I need to check this with the latest runner version. If it's still happening, it would be good to file a bug report.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@Smiechu I tried it again, and yes, it crashed. Not only that, I saw the error message ("A Game For GMC Jam XXXI stopped working" or such), so I'm pretty sure it's not a typical YYC build hold-up. Note that I tested that on a system with Windows 7, so maybe there's some incompatibility here? I dunno.

@SamSam (forgot to reply to that earlier) Ah, so it was meant to be ADAPTATION, after all. Sorry, I kinda assumed it's OVERCOME ALL ODDS because of how crazy difficult the game was ("surely the game must be hard so that people will feel like they're really overcoming it!") and because the translated title meant something like "At first it's easy" or something like that (if the machine translation doesn't deceive me, which it very well might).

--- EDIT ---
Also, @GameDevDan - for the record, I still had old HannaH save, so I needed to only play through the last battle to see the credits, but the dance-off was pretty irresistible in and of itself. ;)

When it comes to the bugs, I think having them face their next direction would be a massive help, and if you were to remake the game, it's probably the way to go (or just making them deterministic?).
 
Last edited:

Bart

WiseBart
Hi all. Just added my game reviews in the voting topic.
Feel free to ask for more info when a comment on your game is unclear or feels incomplete.
Many games went up and down a few times on the list before I decided on a final order.
Even now, it's still very relative since I felt that each entry had something in it that made it stand out in one way or the other.

Thank you all for the feedback on my entry as well (although it was very incomplete). It's been very educational and has given me some ideas on the direction in which to continue this game. If I ever find/invest the time, that is :).

I must say that I had a lot of fun playing all the games in this jam and entering a game myself.
 
Oh yeah, so my gane Gambrawl didn't end up having and "ending" because i couldn't decide what a good goal would be, so I just concentrated on other aspects of the game.
@Relic I think you may be the second or third person to find that bug with glitching outside the screen, I thought I had fixed that several times but I guess not!
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
So, I've read/watched through all the reviews so far, and here are several bits that I've found particularly fun/memorable.

Some relatable bits:

(about Duality2)
Please just let me hit a button once to show the entire message, and once more to move on to the next message.
(about Eel Lady Cat Contest)
Also, splitting the controls between keyboard and mouse was unnecessary - why not just do everything with the keyboard?
(about Black and asteriskse)
This game devilishly tested my patience while also somehow holding my attention long enough for me to reach its disappointing conclusion.
(about Reel Fruit Slots)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH DEFAULT FONT
(about Rise)
I know the character is going through a great struggle but I feel like they should be able to drag faster for the purposes of speeding up jam reviews lol.
Comment on Duality2 (starring matharoo and Nocturne as the main characters)
This game is about a girl who has a dog as a friend but who hates every other kind of living things, so she kills them to steal their souls.
A throwback to Yal's previous Jam entries (in a review of Against All Odd)
She made a couple games which I enjoyed, such as a 3d lava game and a rocket game of bikinis. This game is a downgrade from her other games.
 

NazGhuL

NazTaiL
I don't feel like games quality was drastically higher compared to the usual 3-day Jams...
+1
I personally wasted more time on unimportant thing instead of focusing on a better game.

I released a game in October and this small game for the jam and I realize how much a developer has to play/test/develop a game for players, not for developers. That's sound simple but it's not. I will definitivly take part of the next jam. Creating a small and attractive (fun!) project is a very good challenge. Thx for all reviews and for your games! :)
 
@TinyGamesLab your videos are pretty good, I liked the way you cut down the footage in mine to talk about the various bits. Though may I suggest you capture the games in full screen or at least without capturing outside the window?
Btw, did you play enough to fight the ghost? Those guys are bastards.
Oh yeah, for anyone interested, the way the cards in my game work is there are 2 zombie cards and 2 blob cards, leaving 1 card each for the shadow men and ghosts. I figured the shadow and ghost are the most annoying to fight so I should decrease the odds of selecting them.
The cards themselves are a ds list that is shuffled each time.
 
T

TinyGamesLab

Guest
@TinyGamesLab your videos are pretty good, I liked the way you cut down the footage in mine to talk about the various bits. Though may I suggest you capture the games in full screen or at least without capturing outside the window?
Btw, did you play enough to fight the ghost? Those guys are bastards.
Oh yeah, for anyone interested, the way the cards in my game work is there are 2 zombie cards and 2 blob cards, leaving 1 card each for the shadow men and ghosts. I figured the shadow and ghost are the most annoying to fight so I should decrease the odds of selecting them.
The cards themselves are a ds list that is shuffled each time.
Thanks for the feedback!!!
It's my first time doing video review of any king of games so I'll take your feedback info consideration for the next times.
As per your game ghost, I haven't played them! I actually had to play your game 3 times to get the video software working and none of those times I got the ghost! I got a lot of the shadow guys, some zombies and a lot of the big blue guys. I guess I beat the odds then! Lol
 

Micah_DS

Member
I was waiting for all the videos to finish uploading before I posted my votes/playthroughs/reviews/comments, so I've finally just now got them up here.

Sorry if I mumble a bit in the playthrough videos. When I was talking with @matharoo about my video playthrough of his game, I realized the issue of not giving properly clear feedback at points. I can partially blame work for wearing me out a bit and having issues getting quality sleep, but truth is, I just struggle a bit here.

Regardless, I think it should give people valuable feedback on how a slightly out-of-it player will play their game, lol. ;)

-
Loved playing all the games, guys! Well done! Hopefully I can make a game for the next jam, instead of just playing and reviewing.
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
I've finally finished my vote. It took me a little longer than I expected, but it's in before the deadline.

I thought I was disappointed enough in my entry, but the real disappointment is the entries I found myself competing against. This is by far the smallest and generally least deliberate lineup I've ever seen. I can live with "small", but I don't want to see much more of "not deliberate".

Ever since I started doing GMC Jams last year, I've noticed a growing trend of doing straight tutorial or genre rips during Jam time. This particular Jam with the overuse of the "Against All Odds" theme was the last straw for me. Except for a few entries that made legitimate use of it, virtually all others in this category were a disaster zone in theme compliance. Little mechanical tie-in, not enough intentional design, just "enemy spam" plus sticking the theme in the title or one or two negligible spots in-game. That is NOT what Jam time is for, that is what everyday practice outside of Jam time is for. Diversifying your ability to work well with different ideas, themes, styles and genres isn't for everyone, but if you intend to take regular part in jams or contract work, you should bring that to the table or at least show effort in picking it up.

Right now I only have 20% weight in theme use, but for future Jams I'm thinking about raising the weight to 30% or even 40%, specifically to show my disapproval for this trend. I am more than willing to put a beginner-grade on-theme entry above an advanced-grade off-theme entry, because only the former showed specific regard for the Jam. Making so little effort in accommodating the theme is becoming so fashionable, I now feel it's necessary to express my dissatisfaction by voice AND ballot. If a client asks for a game about X, you CAN'T march on with a completely different design about Y just because you've only done Y or if Y is your specialty. Your only choices are to either make a game genuinely about X or turn down the deal.

I understand that this is the first time the 10-day format was used, and many entrants including me miscalculated what they could afford to do. So for this review only, I've dialled up my fault tolerance. But from now on, it's "fool me twice, shame on me". We now know that in practice, the 10-day format is really a pick-your-own-72-hours-out-of-240 format. Notwithstanding unforeseen changes in the Jam format, I will be as honest as ever for future entries that are designed past 72 hours of commitment and renege on it, fall gracelessly on purpose, or demonstrate inadequate mechanical tie-in.
 

Relic

Member
@Micah_DS @TinyGamesLab Thanks for the effort you put in to making video reviews. Seeing someone stumble over some points of the game can be soooo much more informative than a written comment can be.

@FrostyCat Agree completely. I didn't have a rubric but well made games with no strong tie to a theme were ranked lower. More of a gut feel for me this first time.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
I've been ranking games based on a general feeling and fun for a while, factoring the theme into account, but I guess I might end up devising a simple numeric system with two categories (overall + theme) as well, to specifically ensure that games matching the theme better will make up for lower fun score.

By the way, @Micah_DS I greatly appreciate your review of the post-Jam version of my game. I particularly liked how you found these shortcuts in the spaghetti layout (I specifically made it somewhat annoying so that once the player would obtain the JUMP module would be rewarded for finding a quick way around), and I found it curious when you didn't see the way to enter the jumping maze (though I guess it's meant not to be obvious; glad you figured that out, eventually). Also, it seems that you found an alternative solution for memory in the Permanent Storage area that didn't require all 3 modules thus far installed (originally I intended it to be like that, but then you've shown that collecting the keys first and jumping to the modules second is also a valid solution); it's actually very cool.

As for the backtracking problem - one thing I considered was having a system that allows the player to go back to the terminal with all unlocks persisted, and to move freely between once reached terminals. I think it should limit the amount of backtracking; it'd still involve some bit of foretracking (i.e. coming back to a certain place with a different module), but it's still something that should cut down the walking by about a half.
(by the way, it's only mentioned in the help, but you need to collect all keys for a given area in a single go, or else they'll be restored; good thing it didn't happen to you, but I guess I should mention it more explicitly in the full version ^^')
 
During the actual jam I figured my entry was going to be one of the weaker ones in regards to theme, I was expecting some more creative ideas as well. So I'm quite pleased with how many people seemed to enjoy my game or at least my idea. Thank you all so much.

@Micah_DS Daaaamn, dude. You played my game for soooo long! Thanks for the great video, I watched the whole thing.
Haha, yes. I had just come home from an early morning exam after almost no sleep, that's when I wrote my readme and submitted. I had no idea I made so many mistakes XD
You were close with Giglatinous at first and go there eventually, I wanted a better name that just "blue blob guy" so I combined Gigantic and Gelatinous but I started pronouncing it "Gig" like glue, and "latinous" like gelatinous.
In case you didn't realise it by the end, the number of enemies you fight is based solely on how much you roll on the dice. 5 on the dice = 5 enemies.
Oh man, I messed up with the Arrow keys, forgot to add them to my controller object. I saw you have trouble with the betting and realised what I did(or forgot to do).
All the sound effects were added really last minute, but I really enjoyed the part where you made your own extra ones XD
After watching, I felt even worse that I didn't make an end goal for the game. Like I said earlier here, I just couldn't decide on a fair amount as a goal and then ran out of time before coming back to it. I did however briefly consider introducing the idea that Slade got addicted to the rush of combat and gambling and got greedy, forgetting his original intention and just continuing to fight until he dies or something.
 

Micah_DS

Member
As for the backtracking problem - one thing I considered was having a system that allows the player to go back to the terminal with all unlocks persisted, and to move freely between once reached terminals. I think it should limit the amount of backtracking; it'd still involve some bit of foretracking (i.e. coming back to a certain place with a different module), but it's still something that should cut down the walking by about a half.
That sounds really nice to me. I assume you're continuing development on it? I'd love to play future versions of the game.
After watching, I felt even worse that I didn't make an end goal for the game.
It's okay. Even though I did play a bit longer, trying to see if there was an ending, the gameplay was enjoyable enough that I really didn't mind.
 

matharoo

manualman
GameMaker Dev.
I knowingly didn't follow the theme, and I did expect low scores due to that. I just created what I wanted to create haha.

Though from the next time on I really would like to follow a theme, if I do join, because I won't be making Duality 3 in the next jam.
 

Toque

Member
I knowingly didn't follow the theme, and I did expect low scores due to that. I just created what I wanted to create haha.

Though from the next time on I really would like to follow a theme, if I do join, because I won't be making Duality 3 in the next jam.
I think I picked duality for best use of theme! Wow I look stupid. I will have to have you flogged. Wait I checked. I have it for best story. Cancel the flogging. If the flogging company doesn’t get the cancel text my sincere apology.
 
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