• Hey Guest! Ever feel like entering a Game Jam, but the time limit is always too much pressure? We get it... You lead a hectic life and dedicating 3 whole days to make a game just doesn't work for you! So, why not enter the GMC SLOW JAM? Take your time! Kick back and make your game over 4 months! Interested? Then just click here!

GMC Jam Discussion The Frozen GMC Jam 43

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Mightyjor

Member
Seriously though, I had some major breakthroughs in things I've been wanting to learn for a few years now. I call that a huge win.
Same for me! I think this is the one big advantage of a longer jam timeframe. Even if they’re less popular when all is said and done, I think it gives a lot of Devs the opportunity to try something new and scary since there’s time to watch tutorials and read documentation. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to get even a part of my card game done in the 72 hour window with all the new things I had to learn
 
Same for me! I think this is the one big advantage of a longer jam timeframe. Even if they’re less popular when all is said and done, I think it gives a lot of Devs the opportunity to try something new and scary since there’s time to watch tutorials and read documentation. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to get even a part of my card game done in the 72 hour window with all the new things I had to learn
Agreed. The whole premise of my game was a 360 degree disc that the player and everything else moved around. No way I'm taking that chance with a 48-72 hour game jam. It took me nearly 48 hours just to get things to move correctly.
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
And with that
THE GAMES TOPIC IS NOW CLOSED!

if you still wish to get your game in, you have from now until the voting topic is created to DM me, thanks everyone
 

Pixel-Team

Master of Pixel-Fu
Same for me! I think this is the one big advantage of a longer jam timeframe. Even if they’re less popular when all is said and done, I think it gives a lot of Devs the opportunity to try something new and scary since there’s time to watch tutorials and read documentation. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to get even a part of my card game done in the 72 hour window with all the new things I had to learn
Same here. I took a big risk messing with Spine to do skeleton animation for our game, but I'm so glad I did, because now that I learned the basics, I can use it in future jams with confidence!
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
Sorry! Lol. I even made all of the audio .ogg files too! I just have a lot of assets in it. I can try and make it smaller. I probably have a bunch of un used assets that I should have deleted. :/
its all good,
did you make sure your audio is set to compressed?
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
I'd just like to apologise in advance to all entrants.
It's always sad to see so many great games eclipsed by a singular, shining, special entry such as mine.
I will reluctantly accept 1st Place when it is announced on behalf of my hard working team-mate Dan whose precious art elevated our entry to new heights.
Better luck next time everyone!

PS: I also feel the week long format gave me the opportunity to finally, truly *shine* - bright like a diamond.
7x24 hours gave me 168 hours total - and I utilized the time to the fullest - giving my very SOUL to each and every hour* apart from 167.5
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
I'd just like to apologise in advance to all entrants.
It's always sad to see so many great games eclipsed by a singular, shining, special entry such as mine.
I will reluctantly accept 1st Place when it is announced on behalf of my hard working team-mate Dan whose precious art elevated our entry to new heights.
Better luck next time everyone!

PS: I also feel the week long format gave me the opportunity to finally, truly *shine* - bright like a diamond.
7x24 hours gave me 168 hours total - and I utilized the time to the fullest - giving my very SOUL to each and every hour* apart from 167.5
BUT DADIO! WE AGREED TO KEEP IT A SECRET!
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Here is the basic version of the Jam ZIP, with the old Jam Player so far; couldn't get some things to work in the new one yet and I'm definitely not in the mood and ability to quickly figure out how to solve it.
I might post the new ZIP with the new Jam Player sometime later, but I don't want to keep you all waiting while I work through some technical challenges of finishing up the new Jam Player.

Click here to download
 

Gizmo199

Member
Sorry to anyone in advance who encounters the bird bug! It takes a very specific set of circumstances to encounter it but if you run into it you can always restart the game and your progress (before said boss fight) will be saved! Sorry guys! It ain't a jam game if it doesn't have some bugs!! Lol.
 
Sorry to anyone in advance who encounters the bird bug! It takes a very specific set of circumstances to encounter it but if you run into it you can always restart the game and your progress (before said boss fight) will be saved! Sorry guys! It ain't a jam game if it doesn't have some bugs!! Lol.
I'm just happy to make it to said boss fight. Those cubes were tough!
 

Mightyjor

Member
Quick heads up on Merge Awaremon, there’s a “?” Button in game that if you click will bring up the tutorial screen. It teaches you how to play (though the jam version requires 2 people)
CFEC2DE4-3893-48DD-875E-B3AFBF88821B.jpeg
 

Alexx

Member
It's a three minute long bullet-hell. It's not much of a game, but it still asks you to avoid glowing orbs for three minutes and gives you a score at the end. I'd say that qualifies as a game.
I'm giving all the games another play through, it would appear I missed a few things on the first play through.

Edit: Watching a live stream by @EvanSki for the last couple of hours - now that's how to play test and rate games :)
 
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Mercerenies

Member
A small note on my entry, Squaredude and Circlegirl. If you play through some part of the game and then want to come back later, the main menu is a bit nonintuitive. Use the right arrow key to scroll over to "Continue" and then use the up/down arrow keys to select a level. The default option is Level 1, which really just restarts the game, but you can scroll through and pick any level you've already seen using the arrow keys.

Thanks to @Mightyjor for pointing this out. I should've had it default to the highest level you've unlocked, but I was rushed on time by that point.
 

Gizmo199

Member
I'm gonna leave this here for anyone who gets stuck on a boss and can't figure out what to do. I hope you won't need it, but just in case here are how you deal with the bosses:

With this boss the only way to get them to a 'vulnerable' state is to put some spikes underneath them as each part goes to slam on the ground. Then you can hit them with fireballs/spikes
This one is simple, just put out the pad they are hovering over and once they fall use the spikes to hurt them. Fire will just bring it back to life
This one is pretty simple as well. When the cloud is about to strike lightning you can use the spikes to reflect the lightning back at the cloud to do damage. Also when the cloud forms tornados you can shoot fireballs at them which will spin up and hurt the cloud.

Can't wait to dig into these games. I won't be able to play any for a couple of days due to Christmas stuff but hopefully Monday I will get some time to play through every entry! :D
Congrats again to everyone! There are some REALLY awesome-looking games in this one! :D

also, I figured out why the file is so big! pretty much all of the music files (including one that isn't even used in the game that I forgot to take out. lol) are non-compressed. I was tweaking them a lot towards the end and forgot to change the files I added. Sorry again!
 
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The M

Member
I just found a bug in my AI that incidentally targets all of its most aggressive cards and makes it not want to play those. I'm not sure that's bad since it gives you a better chance to learn the game without getting punished for setting up situations where it could nuke your board. It will be fixed in a post-jam version that includes the remaining decks I didn't have time to implement (so far the wind deck is the best! ;) ).
 

Mercerenies

Member
(except Mercerenies game because I think I'm mentally incapable of beating level 35).
I am proud to have that honor!

For you, and for everyone else who struggles with that level, I did write a walkthrough for it, which I'll post below.

Spoilers for Squaredude and Circlegirl; strongly recommended that you try the game before reading below!
1. Use Water Circlegirl to send Fire Squaredude to the lower-right. Burn one wooden crate and push the others into holes.
2. Use Air Squaredude to send Water Circlegirl toward the torch.
3. Still as air, stand on the lower-right blue platform. Extinguish the torch.
4. Launch the metal crate using air. Move the crate to the lower-left pressure plate.
5. Water Circlegirl can now safely jump down to the upper-left wooden crate. Push it to the left.
6. Using Air Squaredude, launch the metal crate so that it’s below the (!) mechanism at the top.
7. Have Water Circlegirl ride the blue platform (using Air Squaredude to push the button) and return to the main area at the bottom of the map.
8. Use Air Squaredude to send Thunder Circlegirl to the torch platform. Thunder Circlegirl should activate the (!) mechanism and return to the hub once again.
9. Use Air Squaredude to send Air Circlegirl to the middle-right platform with the wooden crate.
10. Have Air Circlegirl launch the wooden crate into the one-block gap to the left.
11. With slow falling, Air Circlegirl can safely jump down to the main hub area.
12. Use Air Squaredude to send Fire Circlegirl to ignite the torch and return to the main area.
13. Turn Squaredude to Thunder and Circlegirl to anything except Fire. Stand them both south of the wooden crate on the middle-right of the screen.
14. Use Thunder Squaredude to electrocute Circlegirl. With shocks in place, she can now walk to the rightmost checkmark panel.
15. Have Thunder Squaredude walk to the remaining checkmark panel, completing the level.

I've kind of started to like the pattern of making the final level insanely hard. Time permitting, I was planning to throw the last couple of levels (the harder ones) in a bonus ending and give you the standard ending after the fire-brick-breaking level. But you know how Jam time is: there's never enough of it. Thanks for playing through as far as you could get!
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
Votes are live
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
@EvanSki I enjoyed the hell out of your stream of Breacher Bob. I'm super relieved you were able to figure out all of the gimmicks and strategies without using the guide I wrote; I was slightly worried the enemies would be unintuitive. Honestly, your stream and all of your reactions to the BS I put in that game was more fun then the game itself. XD

Also, to explain the Death Squad behavior, when one of them sees you, the other three will move to an adjacent room and wait for you to come out. If you don't, they will rush you and won't wait to see you before they start blasting. I really should have added sounds and visual effects to make it apparent that they're supposed to be coordinated and unhinged.

Fun fact: There was originally going to be a breacher enemy who would break through walls to get to you, and the Death Squad were going to be a recurring enemy, rather than a boss. Luckily for everyone playing, I ran out of time. XD

By the way, how can I improve it? I like my formula so far, but as it stands, Breacher Bob falls firmly into the "kinda fun" category. I want to improve it.
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
By the way, how can I improve it?
First off the machine gun guys need to F*n chill, maybe make one as a boss, but all of them shooting rapid fire is insane

Other then that all i can think of is throwing more polish at it, tweak things to a T

oh also, humans react slower then computers, give us some extra reaction time maybe 😅
 
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Gizmo199

Member
Votes are live
Thanks so much @EvanSki and @Mightyjor for y'alls reviews! I hate that bug so much rn. Lol. I hope it didn't ruin the experience too much! I litterally never encountered it the entire time making the game! Lol. Ugh. Anyway, thank you guys so much for the kind words!

And nice @EvanSki you found the secret ending!! :) was hoping someone would! :D

Also @Mightyjor i actually didn't use my engine for this game! It was just some regular old traditional sprite stacking! :)
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
oh also, humans react slower then computers, give us some extra reaction time maybe 😅
So, the reason it's like this is because I wanted the player to learn to take the long way around and catch the badguys by surprise. But it does feel unfair that they can react so fast (5 frames to react, if I remember correctly.) It's a tricky problem to fix, but I agree that it's annoying.
I'm tempted to make it so that trying to fight the enemy on an even playing field is such a bad idea that you immediately realize it isn't an option. I think the way it is now, it feels like it should be possible. Which makes it annoying when you die.
Actually, here's a strange idea: What if I A: made it possible to blow up a charge by shooting it, and B: let the player place charges on doors? Then you aren't completely screwed if one enemy is about to come through the door and see you; you'll a have a tricky, but viable solution.

I dunno, I'm open to suggestions from anyone.
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
@Mightyjor
Oh, and I definitely don't want to neglext the wonderful soundtrack by The Hammer, great job Ken! Was that 3 separate tracks? Each are perfectly suited for this type of game
Thanks for the kind words. I've been trying to get good at making music since a time after the last jam in preparation for this team-up with @EvanSki and @Pixel-Team and they both helped with consistent feedback on the music as we were working on the thing. Consistent feedback during development certainly helps :) And yes, it was basically 3 actual tracks, the intro/menus, the level, and the victory/credits.
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Thanks for streaming Plunder Dungeons @EvanSki ! Much appreciated as ever :)

Was interesting to see someone play it completely from scratch with very little instruction especially as I didn't have a lot of time to put hints or tutorials in the game. I was hoping the mechanics would be fairly self-explanatory and it looks like you did really pick it up (e.g. the moment of realisation where you said "I need to hit them with things that are the opposite of them"). Cheers much!
 

Gizmo199

Member
Thanks for the review and kind words @GameDevDan ! There is a boss you are missing! Lol. I posted a guide earlier for folks in case they got stuck on any of the bosses! :) I hope you get to see the ending!! :D thanks again so much! It means a ton! :)
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
Just wanted to say, doing this jam was a blast, Maybe not as great as expected, ahem least amount of entries ever But it all worked out!
Some people said they got the chance to make a game they had no motivation to otherwise!, Some games seem to have gotten a lot of work and polish put into them as well!
I'd like to thank everyone who entered, even if their game didn't get finished.

I'd also like to send a huge shout out to @Pixel-Team & @kburkhart84 for being the best team mates I never knew I wanted!
We have very good chemistry and work well with each other, we butted heads about a few things but I think with more projects together we will make our workflow 200 fold!
I'm very excited about the future of Pixellated Raccoon Fire! Here's to future Jam games and future projects!

And here is to more GMC Jams in the future!
 
@Mightyjor
Did you really complete my game?! ALL the levels? if so, you are special in the head, my dude. Massive grats mate, I didn't think it was possible.. or rather I didn't think people would have the patience...
I didn't intend to make an impossible or overly frustrating game, but I think I nearly broke @EvanSki :D
 

Mightyjor

Member
@Mightyjor
Did you really complete my game?! ALL the levels? if so, you are special in the head, my dude. Massive grats mate, I didn't think it was possible.. or rather I didn't think people would have the patience...
I didn't intend to make an impossible or overly frustrating game, but I think I nearly broke @EvanSki :D
I beat it on easy, so I suppose I didn’t complete it 100% lol but I did get to what I thought was the end after (I think) 5 levels? I will go back and check it out if it’s much different
 
I beat it on easy, so I suppose I didn’t complete it 100% lol but I did get to what I thought was the end after (I think) 5 levels? I will go back and check it out if it’s much different
ah ok cool, completing easy is probably enough for most people lol! essentially medium and hard atom levels are more of the same, just more electrons. I don't think most people will try the molecules level, which personally is my favourite and I think a more fun game mode. Although I called it 'hard', it starts off easy but gets trickier.
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
I must watch that stream! Always cool to see people playing games - fair play to anyone who puts that extra effort into providing such useful feedback!
Hafta say, the comments/reviews so far are really nice!
Ya know, behind the scenes some folks were grumbling about the low entry count this time round...
but the positive of a low entry count is better more detailed reviews/feedback - because fewer entries mean everyone's games get played more/given more of a chance.
Imo.
Anyway, great Jam everyone!
 

Mr Magnus

Viking King
My reviews are up. Great job everyone on the games!!!
I can't state for certain a 100% is possible, but dashing gives you about 3 invulnerability frames that protect you as you fly over solid lines. However I'm less confident about the circling vortex at the end of the sequence because while it's probably *theoretically* possible to weave your way trough the pattern as it closes in on the center I never came close.
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Wow big thanks @Pixel-Team - I'm real happy you liked the game :)

To address some of the review comments so far (by @EvanSki @Mightyjor and @Pixel-Team) - all of which I totally agree with:

I wish I could always choose to punch instead of having to use the good cards I have I think the biggest thing this game is missing though is the ability to toss things that you don't want
Yes, me too, this annoyed me during my own runs of the game. I wanted to add actual "card management" so you could swap the less useful items instead of the item chests just saying "pockets full"... but ran out of time.

[I was] ultimately destroyed by the stinking temptress! My only gripe is that Temptress. This chick kept healing herself, making her near impossible to kill. How many healing cards does she have, Dan? What, did you give her a whole box of them?
The enemies all have three item slots, their main one and two that they will only use as they get lower and lower in HP. But they can use all of them an unlimited number of times... so since Temptress has "Light" cards in the bottom slot she can pretty much always heal. An oversight because I didn't get enough time to playtest & balance against that sort of thing! In future I probably would put a limit on enemy inventory (at least, in the lower/better item slots).

it also seems like the level order is random based on my two playthroughs
The game cycles through Forest, Cave, Swamp, Tundra and Volcano in that order - picking up at the last one you failed when you start a new run. (So if you reached Tundra then died, you'll start at Tundra on your next run). The difficulty is determined separately to the environment, so effectively you are starting back at "level 1" when you die, regardless of the background.

I think the other really bad card I couldn't figure out was float.
When the player or enemies are floating they take more damage from each attack - but if the attack is already low powered or weak against another element you might not notice because it will still get rounded down to 1 (or whatever).

We need to come up with a new rule that Dan has to start his games the day AFTER we start the jam
Muhaha! That won't stop me, as per my devlog I actually didn't do much at all for the first 4 days of this jam... :D I think I've just gotten quite good at making things in a mad rush at this point. Years of practice lol!
 
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