Jamlytics Jam #2

Hosted by Quinten, Jamlytics · #jamlytics-jam

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A jam submission

Alice's JobView game page

Help Alice to complete her magical and mysterious office job!

Submitted by Rieux (@exi_dandelion) — 3 hours, 28 minutes before the deadline

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Alice's Job's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Gameplay	#1	4.273	4.273
Overall	#3	3.955	3.955
Itch page & Marketing	#3	4.182	4.182
Audio	#3	4.091	4.091
Visuals	#3	4.273	4.273
Theme	#4	3.909	3.909
Accessibility	#7	3.000	3.000

Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme interpretation
Since fusion is putting 2 things together, I put card pieces that can be together and form a new card that buffs and debuffs the player stats. Also could count the mix of genres?
I thought about putting all the characters of past games into one but the scope was too big.

Players Notice
Don't skip ultra fast the dialogue on the tutorial part or the game can act a little strange.

I guess the strong point of the game are the visuals, I'm trying to get more closer to the style I want , stuff like in the song of "Ado - Aiaia" or that kind of paper and kind of strange things haha.

Any feedback is welcome, I prefer the direct ones because are helpful

Development Software
Code - Godot 4.6
Art - Clip Studio Paint
Audio / Song - FLStudio and freesound.org
Notes: Google drive (Though, I should use Obsidian xD)

Accessibility
Interactive tutorial, kind of colorblind pallet on the card colors, I tried to have a ratio on contrast but at the end I got tired and forgot to keep that

I would like to add control support on the future

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Comments

QuintenHost98 days ago

I want to formally apologize for failing to see the tied #1 place in the gameplay category on the Discord announcement.

Kira notified me of this in VC- I see this as an absolute failure of both Itch's UI for hosts, the result UI and honestly I can't blame anyone more than myself. And I'm thankful Kira pointed it out to me.

I corrected the announcement post with the highlighted changes in the main server.

And I added all winner links to the jam page itself (something that hadn't been done yet anyway.)

And I also posted a shout-out in the recommendations channel, along with a paragraph explaining.

I'm terribly sorry for missing this on the main Discord...

Had an incredible time playing as seen in my comment posted during the rating period, but this was an absolute unacceptable mistake on my end.

So if there's any way I can make it right please let me know. <3

RieuxDeveloper96 days ago

It’s ok, if this is because I left the server, I had already decided to leave once the jam ended. I do that each jam if I don’t have more stuff to do there

I won’t hide I got kind of annoyed when the results went out but the lack of my game on the post wasn’t the reason I left or that didn’t made me feel bad, so all good or I don’t think you did bad

I didn’t reply until today because I was playing stuff on Steam and being busy writing stuff for Itch posts like postmortem and updates

TheMimicMouthSubmitted102 days ago(+1)

Overall a really impressive and cool game - great visuals, great gameplay, really impressive and sets the bar high. Please don't take my notes below as criticism on the game - I frankly aspire to get my future games to be as well made as this one. You provided me a lot of really valuable insight on my review so I'm just hoping to return the favor.

- Starting off with the biggest issue: The game froze and crashed right as I beat the final boss which was a big bummer. HP hit zero, he did his little death wiggle, andddddd the game froze (music continued but projectiles froze and I couldn't move - gave it a few minutes and it never cleared).

- Thumbnail and narrative intro made me expect a very different game than it turned out to be. Fine for a jam but if you intend to go commercial at some point, something to watch out for.

- Took me a second to realize that the player hitbox was the little node in the center; definitely helped the sprite/hurtbox disconnect but it did feel awkward that the main sprite could get hit pretty directly without issue. Maybe make the hurtbox visual even more distinct.

- Boss battles had me absolutely blown away. Projectiles felt good the whole game but that first boss battle had me blown away with how good it felt. They were simultaneously massively overwhelming while entirely manageable and felt fair.

- Card fusion page seemed a bit buggy (that or I was misunderstanding what was intended) - if I tried to select break on a top row card then the mouse input would go to open the card slot below. Also visual preview in the top left sticking around and not clearly properly.

- Card fusion was a really cool and fun concept, I feel like card fragments were almost too generous and not varied enough though. After the first boss I had enough to fill out all 6, and after finishing the second boss, the time to sort the cards to minmax felt like it would be more of a hassle than anything. I think there's potential there but in the current state it just felt like friction.

- "Rate shoot" was confusing me for longer than I'd like to admit; I was expecting 'high number = better' and was wondering why it was going down as I added cards (to the point that I thought it was a bug at first). Instead of reporting it as the cooldown between attacks (I assume that's what the number represents), I personally find it more intuitive to have attack speed numbers coincide with attacks per second. Maybe just a personal preference things and I could just be biased since that's how games like League of Legends report it but I have to imagine they do it for the intuition factor.

- Soundtrack fit the drum theme really well and was welcome without getting distracting.

- Not sure why but the animations on those little sun guys in particular felt super fun - was always a joy to see them.

Submitted

RieuxDeveloper102 days ago(+1)

I’m fine if anyone gives a critique of my game, I’m always looking for honest and direct feedback on jams haha

I’m sorry to hear that the game crashed when you beat it, you are the 1st one to report this. I’ll try to see why it could happen but it’s a little strange since the last boss room it’s the same for all the bosses, I only change the enemy haha. I quickly uploaded the full gameplay I recorded last week for my trailer, you can see the ending but the quality is kind of bad https://youtu.be/0wgQqbGhyU4?t=1207

- I agree that the card menu is buggy. The selection buttons can overlap and there are more problems with the buttons and visibility of pieces. Also the lack of filters and basic operations makes the card system a tedious thing to do
From what people have said, I’m glad it isn't too broken to the point of being unusable, it’s annoying to use but at least it didn’t break as I was expecting. I’ll fix that menu when I back to develop the game haha

- I’ll change the name of “rate shoot”, I was thinking it wasn’t a good name all the time but because I was too tired all the time I was doing this, I just left it like that, there are better names for sure

- You are the second person to say that the thumbnail isn’t aligned with the game, I’ll check this later on. I made this cover because the game it’s just an introduction of Alice, probably the more I progress with the game, I could make another cover haha, and the narrative will be changed, from the feedback of people, this needs a correction in grammar and stuff

- Thanks for your suggestion on the visibility of the hurtbox

And Thanks for your long feedback and nice comment, I hope one day you can make a game you feel good with!

For me until recently I could do something I started to feel comfortable with and it’s my 8th game, also only could made this because I could give all the day to the game, the jam is longer than the usual, the feedback I got in my last game was useful for this game and I have some time doing drawing and programming, I’m surprised people liked the songs but before this and last game, the results were kind of ok or bad and barely got views and plays. Maybe my next game is bad and will be ignored but I can only say, keep learning and practicing, the results won’t be visible the next day or soon but one day it will show up, and you only will realize that when you look back haha, otherwise usually it feels like a bag of mixed results and failures due constantly going out of the comfort zone xD, but as long you are happy with what you did, I think that's enough for the day :)

Thanks for playing! ^^

lolkira24Submitted103 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Not the kind of game I was expecting from the thumbnail lol. I had a lot of fun though! My favorite parts of the game were definitely the art and the gameplay. The enemies and bosses all had unique designs and fun attacks, and so fighting them never felt stale.

As for things I think could be improved:
- The card inventory felt annoying to go through sometimes. It would be great to be able to sort for attack, shoot, rate, etc. I think it'd also be nice to have the top, middle, and bottom card separated by columns.
- A small bar filling up to indicate when you're able to dash would be a bit more intuitive, though I don't really mind the way it is right now.
- It would also be nice to have a 'resume' button on the menu to have that as an option instead of repressing 'm'
- The dialogue sometimes felt a bit repetitive and had quite a few grammatical errors. If possible, I would highly recommend having a few people proofread it, as the game does focus heavily on it.
- Boss 3 is able to spawn on you during its teleportation attack. Either giving a safe distance around you where it can't teleport, or have an indicator for where it's about to teleport would be nice to not have this happen.

A few other minor things would be to show green, red, and white on stats when creating cards to show which stats are increasing/decreasing or staying the same upon new card creation. It would also be nice to have the ability to create a new card without unequipping a card you currently have when your slots are all being used. I felt like the first enemy room encounter was a bit longer than it needed to be, but that problem got resolved quickly once I started getting card upgrades, so I don't think this is something I'd put too much focus on.

Aside from all that, the game was really enjoyable, and it's great that the cards you get are considerably stronger as you progress. It gives a lot more incentive to farm cards to max out your stats. The various facial expressions drawn for the dialogue were all really nice and fitting. The music and SFX were well done. The difficulty balance also felt fair, and did get progressively harder as the game went on, so I think you did a great job on that. Congrats on your submission!

Submitted

RieuxDeveloper102 days ago

Haha, now I’m curious what kind of game you thought it was going to be? I know it isn’t very descriptive of what to expect, but since introducing Alice is my objective with this game, I put her in front :)

- I agree about the card menu, it’s annoying to navigate and it’s missing stuff like filters and other basic operations, so when I work again on this I’ll try to make sure it will be easy to use. For this reason I made the game beatable without any cards and that was my way to balance the game in a quick way
- About the Dash indicator, I wanted to make the word to be filled with time but the lack of time and energy didn’t let me do that, but maybe a bar would be nice, I’ll think about that
- About the 3rd boss, it’s something I experienced when I was testing, it can be unfair that it can spawn on the same location as you are, but I just made a quick “balance” by making its movement slower and less chaotic because I was close to the deadline I had, next time it will have proper warning where it will spawn
- And about the dialogue, I made it simple and didn’t make the usual checks because I gave it very little time, also my mind was dry after writing 16 pages of dialogue and more pages in other stuff for my first idea that ended up dumping because the scope was too big xD. Next time will be better written :)

Thanks for your suggestion on the “Resume” button and the small observations on minor things, I’ll take that into consideration!

Happy to read you had fun, thanks for your long feedback and thanks for playing! ^^

lolkira24Submitted101 days ago(+1)

I was expecting something more cheery going off the cover alone, instead of fighting monsters in the dark lmao. As for your other notes, I think the way you wanted to indicate the dash sounds good. It would also be nice for it to have a pop or flash animation when it's available for use. It also totally makes sense that time was a big issue for the balancing and the dialogue. I definitely would not have managed writing that much myself haha.

RieuxDeveloper101 days ago(+1)

Oooh, I see haha, thanks for letting me know, I'll have that in mind if I change the cover and the pop/flash suggestion :)

QuintenHost104 days ago(+1)

I became the bullethell! I out-shootrated the enemies, they feared me, the warning was ALICE. ALICE WANTED TO HUNT! SHE SMELLED FEAR! ( got it to like 0.09 something shootrate? )

Really enjoyed the game! Controller support would have been amazing though, as I'm not used to ZQSD'ing on azerty.

RieuxDeveloper103 days ago

Wow, you almost reached the soft cap I put of 0.05, that’s amazing xD

When I was testing I was happy enough with 0.3, I can’t really imagine how it’s to shoot that fast haha, good thing you didn’t build attack since it isn’t applied correctly, right now the shoot rate build it’s the way to break the game

About controller support, I really wanted but I didn’t wanted to deal with the little fight I would have to do to implement that, only due how mentally exhausted I was, I think it’s just add a function to get the vector where the right sticker is facing and that’s it, but I was getting lost on my own code and feared that I could break the game close to the deadline, so I prefer to do that once I work again in the game haha

Happy to see you enjoyed the game, this isn't the last time Alice will appear in a game, but before I need to finish the Caroline intro story I was making before this. Thanks for playing! :)

meooooooooowSubmitted108 days ago(+1)

MACHINE GUN

Submitted

RieuxDeveloper105 days ago(+1)

Wow, that's a lot of rate shoot and attack, sadly the attack buff isn't applied correctly so maybe you didn't see the actual power of that build :(

But shooting fast is fun haha

Thanks for playing! ^^

TorchicSubmitted109 days ago(+1)

Great game! Had so much fun beating all the bosses, which all felt very unique! I loved all the patterns you had for the enemies and the bosses. I really liked your UI, it had a very great feeling to it. The itch page was also amazing! Great job on that!

I think my biggest criticism is the card creating menu. I think with something like a sorting menu, it would have felt much better to use as I was constantly looking for the attack and bullet rate buffs

Overall amazing game! Loved it!

Submitted

RieuxDeveloper105 days ago

Yeah, filters to view card and pieces are really needed but didn't have time to implement it haha, thanks for playing! ^^

Happy to see you had fun :)

RadintSubmitted109 days ago(+1)

Stream Absolute Cinema by Emulated Humanoid | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Submitted

RieuxDeveloper105 days ago

Haha, thanks for playing! :D

LestavolSubmitted110 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I defeated the King of Yunalco with ease muhahaha.

I enjoyed the bullet hell gameplay, but I didn't like the card combining cards mechanics that much. I thought it was somewhat boring and unimaginative. There's also a few UI bugs with the cards, like I got stuck on the crafting menu when the confirm dialog box didn't appear. I was able to exit the menu but when I turn it back on the dialog box is there and never disappears again. The card stats can also have duplicates like having both addition and subtraction of the same stats on the same card fragment.

The visuals are nice. I like many of the effects in the game. I would liked to have seen clearer and more direct visual indicators for the exits.

The music is good and I enjoyed the drum sound effects, although it could use some pitch shifting or variations. I also think that many other parts of the game should have better sound effects, like hitting the enemies etc.

One thing that I usually see with these kinds of games is the fact that they almost always require the players to hold down a button to shoot. I kinda really don't get it because I just find myself never want to stop shooting, so it's just an extra thing you have to do without much thought. Maybe because I'm not a big player of the genre and it's the standard or something but I really would have liked to see devs just start making automatic shooting.

This may also be just a matter of taste but the writing wasn't a strong point for me. She mentioned the word "job" about 20 times😭

Itch page has a nice background but the transparency makes the text a little bit hard to read.

It's a solid entry and I enjoyed it.

Submitted

RieuxDeveloper105 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I see I see, 1st of all, I really appreciate your long feedback!

About the card menu, I couldn’t find all the bugs that can pop up, while doing the confirm part and stuff, sometimes I saw it’s enabled when it shouldn’t be and bugs like that, since I needed to make the gameplay and the content, I stopped fixing it despite it can be very messy at times haha… About the duplicated buff and debuff on the same card piece, I saw that but I couldn’t have time to make it a different type or it doesn’t repeat, it's a simple to fix but I preferred to just make sure that the positive overcomes the negative

And the concept of merging cards needs more thought, I did it because it was the only thing I could think of after seeing that my original idea was very out of scope and writing 16 pages of dialogue for that idea, so maybe that’s a reason why this one I mindlessly write like that xD, I even didn’t realize that and since it’s just a prototype for an introduction of a character that will appear in another game, I didn’t revise the dialogue that much. Nice catch about my usage of words, I’ll revise this when I work on this game again haha :)

About the not automatic shooting, in some games you need to not kill the boss that quickly in order to get more score or kill the enemies in a certain order or some gimmick that the game can have to prevent mindless shooting or get better score, in my case I just didn’t want player to spam click to shoot faster than intended and because originally the drum was meant to get better the more enemies you kill, I had to scrap that and left the anti spam system on only to avoid click spamming, show the visuals properly and not shot faster than you should or make the card buff “relevant”

About the sound, pitch shift, visibility of stuff and transparency of the page, thanks for letting me know, I’ll take notes about it
Thanks for playing and sharing this kind of feedback! ^^

KelvinHMSubmitted110 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Oh I love a good Touhou bullet hell! Have a lot of fun playing this! Still a bit on the easy side for me (just shy of a single hit being hitless) but I guess it's starting to get difficult for a lot of players so I am not complaining. I do see some familiar patterns though, ah memories. Alice (and the second boss) is really cute, love the character design. I especially love the paper cutouts as the UI design, it matches perfectly with the card mechanics. I guess you've put in a lot of effort making both the speech system and all the mechanics in just two weeks, very well done!

Other things I like:

The card collecting and combining mechanics add a lot to the game
Storyline is simple but it fits nicely
Stat preview helps a lot when creating cards
Music is good too
Itch page looks stunning btw

Suggestions:

The elephant in the room is that, card management is unnecessarily hard and frustrating at times. Probably UI's fault but it seems to take forever to find the perfect card fragment. Some kind of sorting would be great. Also maybe colour-coded plus icons on the stats?
I swear I've lost some cards when exchanging cards and fragments as well
Please let me create cards even with a fully loaded inventory
It would be great to have some bonuses when creating a card entirely with one colour only
Hit point display is great, though I would hope it contrasts a bit more with Alice's sprite. Maybe dimming her a little?
Some variations on the background would be great. It felt very repetitive after a while. Same for normal enemies as well
Maybe some variations on player bullet as well, homing, laser, etc (Maria is watching you at a distance)

Submitted

RieuxDeveloper106 days ago

I see, it’s nice to see you went almost hitless! I decided to make the game easier than what I did for bullet hell because only 1 or 2 from 60+ people finished my last game, and this time I wanted people to actually see the ending

The second boss (and basic enemies) are from my bullet hell game so when I get to work again on the game I’ll replace it among other enemies since the current ones are placeholders haha. But happy you liked the design of those 2, I had fun drawing them :)

About your suggestions, I agree, the card menu can be frustrating, I couldn’t implement all the actions I wanted due to the lack of time, I started on the 4th day but I think if I started on the 1st day I still wouldn't finish xD
The more I progressed on the actions, the more I saw it missed actions, I kept thinking about deleting pieces and filters since the current version drops a lot of pieces and it’s hard to see what to look at, but 3 days before the deadline, I preferred to work on the gameplay.
In some way for this reason I made sure that the game could be beaten without cards, in case the card side got too annoying/tedious for the player. I also cut the drum progression and other stuff, I went too big with the scope but I could put the very basics of the system or at some “functional” point. So next big update, whenever that day comes, I’ll make sure that menu doesn't feel annoying

About the bonus if the card has all the same color, it already is placed, just I couldn’t make it more visible and say it in the tutorial and I found out this week I didn’t have internet that, the attack buff isn’t applied correctly, so the only really useful buff right now is rate shoot with white cards, which are the ones that buff the rate shoot

The shoot patterns for the player were already kind of planned, that in boss fights the bullets go directly to the boss but couldn’t implement, also I thought in making the side bullets go like homing to the nearest enemy but also lack of time…

Thank you for the comment on the hit point, I’ll make it more clear when Alice gets hit, and I agree with the backgrounds.
Originally this was thought to be a kind of Binding of Issac where you go through a map with rooms and each floor is a different theme but I crammed everything in 1 room with just 3 paths xD

Thank you so much for your feedback and pointing out what you liked!
Maybe there will be more Alice in the future ^^

TheRulerMeasureSubmitted111 days ago(+1)

Really nice stats building features. It was fun to hunt for pieces of card and built high fire rate. Didn't want to farm too much, there were so many pieces. The game was also nice and challenging, wasn't very hard. The artwork is as good.

Submitted

Threats Of Mutant

RieuxDeveloper106 days ago

Good to see it wasn’t too difficult, I didn’t want to repeat what I did in bullet hell jam so I tested that everything could be finished without cards, the card buffs would make the game easier and not feel they are ultra needed to complete the game, haha

Thanks for playing :)