GMC Jam Discussion The Leapin' GMC Jam 36 Discussion Topic

[Xer0botXer0]

Jam theme Clue 1:

2xA 2xE 1xI 1xO 0xU

p.s. don't forget to add the GMC Jam to your calendar so you don't miss it! You can add it to Google Calendar via http://www.indiegamejams.com/

How do these clues even work ?

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

I think I'm done!
If anyone has any issues with my game, just DM me.
Side note: You and your NPC follower's sprites are randomly generated, so if for some reason you aren't happy with the combination, Backspace restarts the level.

 

[GameDevDan]

Three hours twenty-five minutes left!

 

[Rui Rosário]

Three hours twenty-five minutes left!

Hmm maybe I should actually do something to finish the game then <.<

 

[Xer0botXer0]

I finished last night wish I could've done more. My game feels like I could've added a lot more to make user actions matter. And the ending was really rushed I was literally going to pass out by the desk if I didn't make an ending.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

Oh also, I just want to say this too: I worked pretty hard on my game as simple as it, but I understand if it's not your thing. That said, it's really short and I worked pretty hard on the ending for once, so please try stick with it

 

[GameDevDan]

aaaaand with the obligatory wiggle room to reduce the number of panicked PMs I get - the GMC Jam 36 is now CLOSED!

The voting topic is now up and open here if you wanna reserve a spot: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/gmc-jam-36-voting-topic.72585/
Will cobble together the ZIP as soon as possible.

 

[Alice]

THE ZIP IS HERE!​

 

[Toque]

Games look interesting. I was wondering if there wasn't going to be much variety but the few I looked at looked good.

 

[Rui Rosário]

Games look interesting. I was wondering if there wasn't going to be much variety but the few I looked at looked good.

I've played (and reviewed) quite a few already and variety does not seem to be an issue!

 

[lolslayer]

Some people had problems running my game, if you stumble upon any problems, please try this more lightweight version of my game and tell me if that improved your experience:

Breach_lightweight

MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.

www.mediafire.com

 

[KPJ]

- Pay the price

Classic use of the theme, some good ideas!
Just one thing that bothered me: turning invisible makes it impossible to play cause player has no idea where the character is
Nice little game

Thanks for the review and feedback! Actually, I was thinking the same about the invisible mechanic, but I wanted it to be more of a challenge, since I thought it would be too easy if you could see the player while invisible.

 

[Bearman_18]

Just gonna leave some advice for cheesing my game:

Spoiler: Advice

1: The Crimsonite ship is the strongest. Focus your funds on upgrading and stocking up on those. The Azurite ship is great for the first level though.
2: Enemies won't hurt you when you touch them.
3: Bombs are almost never worthwhile. Except during the Baby Shark Brigade fight. Just use one when the big shark arrives.
4: When the panda tells you to use a bomb in the tutorial, don't. Save the money instead.
5: Don't use Verdite ships. I mean, if they go down to a really low price like 3 mil, then in might be worthwhile to buy some and sell them later.

I've played a few entries. I was impressed by all of them so far. We have some really good games this Jam around!

 

[Cammer_On]

Banana Quest: O r b i t.

 

[Lukan]

Don't play my game, it bad

 

[2Dspessman]

- Banana Quest

Did ate loads of bananas

Lacks content and didn't understand the use of the theme here though :/
Also, once you figure out that if you leave your mouse on the character he's not jiggling anymore it's really easy.
I liked the player sprite though, very cute!

haha thanks for playing my game

I am sorry you didn't get to see the ending, I've had a few of my friends also quit the game due to the final level's difficulty so they also didn't see the true ending or even get to the theme explanation part either
Anyway this was good learning experience for me, especially considering my personal time limitations for this jam

And yes the player sprite is cute, he takes after his very strict father, who knows one day he too might grow a glorious mustache

 

[Xer0botXer0]

Reviews​

Delivery Man by Xer0botXer0

- Unfortunately I couldn't really play much, the text is so small (other than the initial one that you can zoom in)
- It felt like delivering to the top floors was impossible due to how slow things move and how fast the timer goes
- Didn't really make it to the end

:: I think the game needs to be refined a bit more, but it could be an interesting concept.

The trick is to service the lower floors first, the more you service them the longer they take before requesting a delivery again. eventually you can make it to the top.

At the end of the game you you get a bunch of stats such as how often you play on certain floors.

There's a few tricks to the game but I didn't have enough time to really communicate them to the player.

 

[Toque]

I l

The trick is to service the lower floors first, the more you service them the longer they take before requesting a delivery again. eventually you can make it to the top.

At the end of the game you you get a bunch of stats such as how often you play on certain floors.

There's a few tricks to the game but I didn't have enough time to really communicate them to the player.

I like elevator games. But unfortunately the floors and elevator were out of sync and i could not get off the elevator.

 

[Toque]

@tsm

Is there any defense for the red wall of death???????? Fun Game

 

[Toque]

@SheepDragon Studios

This is embarrassing. Where do we find the locked storage room?

 

[ceaselessly]

@tsm

Is there any defense for the red wall of death???????? Fun Game

Just to keep moving.

And thanks! Glad you're enjoying it.

 

[Alice]

I wonder, what kind of criteria do you apply to decide best use of theme?
I think for me, it would be "the thing I wouldn't expect to have cost actually has a cost".

I mean, when I say "tanks have a cost", then others would be like "well, obviously tanks have a cost, they require resources and proper production technology, after all".
And when I say "breathing has a cost", then others would just be like *gasp*.

In other words, things that naturally have a cost don't spell out "EVERYTHING HAS A COST" as much as things taken for granted actually having a cost.
(kinda wish I came up with this line of thinking *before* the Jam...)

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

For me, the first thing I consider is how obvious is it? Or more accurately, how surprised I was by the idea.
Then I think about how well integrated it is into the gameplay. It can be tough to come up with an idea that is so married to the theme mechanically, so those are the ones I feel like deserve it the most.
A fun extra is a good story that includes the theme in a meaningful way, but I feel like that's much easier to do, so it doesn't factor in much for me.

 

[Alice]

I'm finally finished with my reviews/comments. Feel free to check them out!

Generally, while there were quite a few really cool games and concepts used, I think I preferred the SUPERNATURAL-themed games more. I dunno, maybe it was about having more freedom with the gameplay mechanics and thus the entries felt more varied and creative? Here, while the genres were somewhat varied, the games generally tried their best to include some kind of costs/tradeoffs aspect. I feel like it resulted in some gameplay mechanics being excluded altogether, and other mechanics having their costs aspect mostly redundant. In particular, I feel like Everybody Wants Your Pineapple would be so much more fun with the resource management aspect loosened (e.g. having bonuses actually acts as bonuses, rather than as tradeoffs).

By the way, I mentioned it in my Baserisk comment, but it needs to be pointed out in general: while Misu isn't credited in Baserisk game, he actually did collaborate on this project.
Sadly, I've found it out only after the Jam ZIP was already packed, but feel free to correct the authors list yourselves in your reviews post.

(most importantly, Misu will be credited alongside TheMiningBoyAlpha in the results post, so at least this is some hard-to-miss acknowledgement)

 

[Alice]

Also @The M, when it comes to this remark:

The game doesn't have an ending but it does end if you either survive for 30 days (very unlikely) or the capital falls.

Ye of little faith...

 

[ceaselessly]

In particular, I feel like Everybody Wants Your Pineapple would be so much more fun with the resource management aspect loosened (e.g. having bonuses actually acts as bonuses, rather than as tradeoffs).

I agree, actually! I went in that direction to adhere to the theme, but had I been making this game of my own volition, I likely would have made them more straightforward powerups. Definitely a cost (ha) of participating in a game jam: sometimes your ideas get muddied by the theme. However, I wouldn't have made the game at all had I not had the jam to incentivize me into doing so, so I feel like jams generally have pros and cons!

As for your question of how we judge best use of theme: for me, I tried to consider it subjectively rather than apply the same rubric to every game. My motivating question was, did the interpretation of the theme make sense and succeed within the internal logic of the game? Many games interpreted it as every action having a cost. For some games, this meant codifying it as a monetary value associated with actions like shooting your gun. Other games associated inputs with other values, like the "pain" and "heat" variables in My Eyes by Deadly Serious Media. I tended to favor games that invented their own values over ones that made me pay $x to shoot a gun. The obvious exception to that was Debtman, one of my top three, because Käsityökerho made everything having a literal monetary cost a part of the story.

Beyond that, I also enjoyed when games subverted my expectations of what would have costs. Subversions like

Spoiler

the ending of Banana Quest

or the non-literal values associated with objects in Worth of a Soul were definitely fun twists on the theme. However, I did not value clever twists on the theme higher than whether the game was fun.

Interesting to see that a theme that spun into different ideas was also interpreted pretty broadly in ratings!

 

[Bearman_18]

Some enemy bullets were behind the laser - player bullets should always be behind enemy's.

What? I'll have to look at it again. I could've sworn I set that up right. XD

 

[Toque]

Just to keep moving.

And thanks! Glad you're enjoying it.

but doesn’t the red walls hurt your pineapple too ?

 

[ceaselessly]

but doesn’t the red walls hurt your pineapple too ?

That's correct! The game is all about balancing protecting both the player and the pineapple, shooting enemies, and carrying the pineapple.

 

[Mercerenies]

All of my reviews are up now too.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

@Mercerenies Thanks for your review.

Spoiler

Yes! Before you beat the game, you can briefly see the demon during transitions in and out of the menu. Intentional as a slight sort of hint

Also, just curious about why you scored my audio 4/5?

 

[Lukan]

I'm starting to wonder if anyone even played my game with how well it's doing...
Like... It's ****? It's literally just the base concept of a game with no fluff or fanfare.

 

[Toque]

I'm starting to wonder if anyone even played my game with how well it's doing...
Like... It's ****? It's literally just the base concept of a game with no fluff or fanfare.

that was gmcity right?
My son played it today. I watched him. He placed the water plant and then the power plant. Tried placing some road. He had difficulty playing it and placing things. He found it frustrating. I’ve played it and had difficulty with it. Credit what you did with it. Ambitious.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

I'm starting to wonder if anyone even played my game with how well it's doing...
Like... It's ****? It's literally just the base concept of a game with no fluff or fanfare.

Sometimes the rankings absolutely baffle me XD
I guess some people appreciate your ambition...? I don't know.

 

[The M]

@Alice I spent 2 minutes balancing the game and didn't playtest at all. I figured you wouldn't have enough resources to defend multiple towns but creating one massive choke point was a clever way to maximize value. Also, enemy tanks were invincible until a minute before I uploaded the game

I'm making a post-jam version with all unit types implemented. Here, you can't spam soldiers or they'll be taken out by tanks, airstrikes and snipers and you can't overlap barricades to create super dense walls.

 

[Toque]

Sometimes the rankings absolutely baffle me XD
I guess some people appreciate your ambition...? I don't know.

usually there are lots of reviews and the cream rise to the top.

it’s kinda nice that reviews and rankings are varied. That at least one or two people might appreciate one aspect of your game.

Or a game gets high reviews that we couldn’t really figure out how to play. Haha

interstingly your game Date has given my son the impression that dates are like scavenger hunts. I have to boost your ranking for that alone.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

interstingly your game Date has given my son the impression that dates are like scavenger hunts. I have to boost your ranking for that alone.

Haha wonderful!
A sort of scavenger hunt is a cool date idea, at least in my experience!

 

[Toque]

Phase shifter.
The window allowed for phase shifting is kind of tight.

wondering if messing with players sanity was their cruel objective when they made this game????

have mercy on us elderly.

ten minutes later.......
thank you for autoreplay……...
We have turned it into a multiplayer game. My son does the shifting. I do the jumping. That is helping.......

Still hate you for making this..... OCD cant stop playing..........

is this cheating?

IMG_3188.JPG

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

 

[Bearman_18]

@The M

Spoiler: Huge Image

Nailed it.

@Mercerenies
I find it interesting that you found the green ship to be the strongest. It's personally my least favorite ship. XD I mean, it's great for the first couple levels, but still...
Well, I'll offer some disclosure on the stats of the different ships, cause stats are fun.

Spoiler: Stats

-The red ship fires 1 bullet every 3 frames with no upgrading. Each time you upgrade it, another bullet is added. At full upgrades, the red ship fires 3 bullets every 3 frames, dealing 60 dps.
-The blue ship fires 3 bullets in an 80 degree spread every 8 frames. Every upgrade adds 3 more bullets to the spread, capping out at 9 bullets per shot. So the blue ship technically has higher dps than the red ship, but it's distributed across the board, making it less effective against bosses.
-The green ship fires a continuous beam that deals 1 damage to each enemy it touches every 5 frames. This damage output doesn't change, but the beam does get wider as you upgrade it. So it's stuck at a mere 6 dps, but you can hit several enemies at once. So the green ship is good for clearing the screen, but it's also easily the slowest boss killer in the game.

Also, I'm glad you like the graphics. To be honest though, all of the backgrounds were just snips of I took Google Earth, scaled down and lowered to 8 colours. Lol. I'm proud of the player sprites though.

 

[Gizmo199]

Thanks to everyone that gave my game a review! Imma try and get my reviews finished up today (only have a couple left). I've heard alot of problems with the boss fight and after playing it since the jam i too have reservations with it. I only play tested the entire boss fight a couple of times before submitting it and just mainly tweaked each attack individually while developing it. ALWAYS PLAY TEST! Haha. And I realize how hard the soccer game is if you don't know how to basically 'speedrun' it. The easiest way is to kick toward your goal then when he runs to it you talk to him while it goes in and he stops. Go back and forth kicking it in his then yours until you win 3-2. That's always and issue I run into when developing quests and the like because I do it so much I learn the tricks and completely forget how the experience is for people who don't know them. Haha. Definitely probably going to tweak some things and release it as a little game on itch or something. I appreciate everyone who thought it looked polished...You should see the code...it's a f**ked mess. Haha. Most of it is just duplicated objects (like the ncps) with a bunch of if else's thrown in all over the place. Haha.

 

[2Dspessman]

@Mercerenies Thanks for playing and reviewing my game
The use of the theme was this (in case you missed the ending, which you probably didn't since you smashed it using the track pad )

Spoiler: theme explained at the end of the game spoiler

Basically most people would go and collect all bananas on the screen, but the jam theme is "everything has a cost" so turns out those bananas are not free and aren't giving you money, once you reach the ending the father yells at the son saying he sent him on a "BANANA QUEST" not bananaS quest so now you restart the game and trying to avoid all but one banana which makes the levels much harder

 

[Gizmo199]

My Reviews are up now. Sorry if they are kinda short or not that informative. My first time reviewing so I wanted to keep it short and sweet.

 

[sp202]

3d-ish

Ouch, that hurt

 

[Gizmo199]

@sp202 haha. Sorry. I know you mentioned it being 3D but I didn't know if you meant like actual vertex and material shader kind of stuff or just 3d graphics in a 2d environment. It looked more like an isometric game with pre-rendered animations than full on 3d. Sorry if it is actually 3D with model rendering and everything. Didn't meant to insult.

 

[curato]

Phase shifter.
The window allowed for phase shifting is kind of tight.

wondering if messing with players sanity was their cruel objective when they made this game????

have mercy on us elderly.

ten minutes later.......
thank you for autoreplay……...
We have turned it into a multiplayer game. My son does the shifting. I do the jumping. That is helping.......

Still hate you for making this..... OCD cant stop playing..........

is this cheating?

IMG_3188.JPG

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Thanks for playing. The theme kind of steered us that direction with the mechanics of the game. We had talked about doing a post jam version that would be slower paced that would allow the enemies to be more of a factor. I wanted to slow it down and make more a puzzle where you had to get the key or something before you left the level then you have to figure how to shift to get the key and get off the level before you run out of energy. Might even make energy more of a factor than it was in the jam... Also I had the difficultly of hitting an obstacle turned way down because it is a jam people are trying to play quickly and I am old too and I have some mercy lol.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

I'm reasonably happy with the response I've gotten from my game this jam, glad so many of you enjoyed it despite how simple the game itself was.
I was pretty happy with how the art turned out this time, especially considering how quickly I drew and animated it all(Though I still spent way more time on each character than I would have liked )

Anyway, here's some full-sized gifs(halved their size in-game).

Spoiler: Boy player

Spoiler: Girl player

Spoiler: Kid

Spoiler: Toast-lady

Spoiler: Smith

Spoiler: Explorer

Spoiler: Creepy potato man

Spoiler: Special guest appearance by Nocturne

Oh, and the two songs I wrote for it are uploaded on my Soundcloud too if anyone liked them(Ending music is a wee bit of a spoiler if you haven't played the game yet).
https://soundcloud.com/siolforthejackal%2Fsets%2Fdate

 

[ceaselessly]

Anyway, here's some full-sized gifs(halved their size in-game).

Tag yourself. I'm toast lady.

 

[AnotherHero]

Tag yourself. I'm toast lady.

I'm Creepy Potato Man

 

[curato]

Someone had asked if the music was orginal, I can't find the post at the moment, but it is original music by JacktheBlindRabbit.

 

[Bart]

I just finished my reviews

I enjoyed playing the games and I hope my feedback can be of some use.
In case of questions or any other remarks, feel free to ask!