EDIT: Oh yeah, first of all I finished playing all jam entries now, updated reviews and votes are available in the voting topic!
@Yal Thanks for the fair feedback for Paranormal. Believe it or not, that's the easy mode ^^'
Last minute I made the player attack hitboxes twice as thick and reduced the damage all the enemies do(and the amount of them, and the damage you do to the boss) by a lot.
I was worried it was too easy!
I tried having the dash multi-directional but it didn't feel right to me, made everything way too easy. But maybe I'll try putting it back in a post-jam version if anyone is interested?
Yeah, so the boss has two attacks, one is a ground pound which is short range, and the other attack is a long range sweep, like a force push. I was hoping it would be obvious enough from his animation gesturing because I was unable to make an effect in time to make it more obvious! Sorry!
I'm not sure what you meant about not being locked into the area, you *can* dash offscreen but you get push back.
And you're totally right with the end, when you beat the boss, all you get is a crappy "you win" message.
Maybe I need to team up with someone just so they can playtest haha.
Frustratingly, my circle of people have all become to busy and unreliable to playtest my stuff, which is a real bummer.
I know the feeling, basically all my friends either actively avoid me or are so busy I don't want to bother them unless it's important.
For multi-directional dash, you could make up/down dashes cover a lower distance (since you move up/down slower). Many old scrolling beat-em-ups had a jump as an evasive manoeuver, maybe you could do something more with the whole ghosts being in the air thing.
I didn't try pushing offstage too much, I just assumed that running too far out there would trigger some marker for the endgame (or worse, more enemies) and headed back into the screen, not realizing I was pushed back as well.
Boss tells were different enough, it just wasn't clear HOW MUCH I needed to get away to avoid being hit (or even the shape of the attacks) when there is no visual feedback at all. Even a 10 second MS paint job (or displaying the hitbox sprite directly) would've done a better job than giving the player no information at all.
@ yal, for demon santa you can double jump, that is probably why you never made any successful jumps. I assumed people would try it out, but I guess this wasn't the kind of game people would try more than once xD I was actually considering borrowing the infinite jump bug from cheetahmen but decided against it.
Regarding the music, I didn't think anyone would recognize any of the bad Action 52 themes >.>
The Cheetahmen game is a bit of a cult classic (not necessarily for the right reasons), it even had its own cartoon ad that supposedly almost was made into an
actual cartoon. And more importantly, it didn't fit the game's mood at all... taking a MIDI version of a random christmas song and adding a heavy metal drum beat to it (without making any effort to match the drum beat to the christmas song) would've sounded much better.
@Yal Ah, the cheese conundrum strikes again. Looks like it was trickier than I thought. I'll refer to
this post if you want to know how to quickly get to and solve that part. It's really the final puzzle before the climax and (dare I say brilliant?) end so give it a shot if you feel you have the time.
Thanks, managed to beat it now! I actually went around using the cheese on EVERYTHING for quite a while, but I'd gotten so used to doors only being used to move between rooms that I didn't even consider that door part of "everything" (especially since it being open already made me consider it "done"). Coloring the door yellow or something to help associations and also make it stand out as more important would've helped.
@Yal thanks for the review! You make some good points. I screwed up timing things and didn't start until hours before the end to make all the levels, so they weren't great quality and there were not enough of them. I think managing time and being more realistic are definitely things I'll have to do better next time
. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it!
@dadio thanks for the review! I agree that the gameplay is a bit too simple, I must confess I'm not very good with making fun gameplay it seems, but I'm glad you liked it otherwise!
I guess focusing on advanced physics AND detailed storytelling was too much... pick one or the other next jam, I suppose. It's hard to tell a good story and also have good gameplay (ideally you need the gameplay to be able to tell a story for this) and there's still just a handful of games pulling it off
in total - Undertale and Spec Ops: The Line being the two main examples, The Stanley Parable being a third example if you're okay with walking around and pushing the interact button as "gameplay".
With you on 100% of the other feedback. The Kevin McLeod music, the game would be better with drawn characters and proper dice animations. That all comes down to time constraints really - did this entry in 6 hours but if I'd had the same ~24hrs free I usually do to put into jam time I would totally have added those things. BUT - the line in green - this is
exactly how the game works now... The player who goes first on the first dice roll does second on the next roll, then first again. Who goes first alternates between players even within the same match!
The whole game isn't supposed to hinge on you trying to get that - it's an incidental thing that happens once in a blue moon. I hope the rest of your opinion of the game isn't based on trying to get the spooky flush (6x ghosts) cos you can absolutely play and win the whole game without trying to do that
Silhouettes made in MS paint would've been serviceable, but ah well... there's always the post-jam version!
As for the going first thing, I meant that on a per-round basis. If you go last, you
know when it's safe to stop and all tension is gone if you can reach an OK score with rerolls to spare. If you alternate each dice toss, tension keeps building until the very end.