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Staff It Out's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Staff It Out was an absolute joy to review. The music fits nicely, both in tempo and in feeling. Having a different track for each of the 6 stages would definitely elevate the current game just that little bit more. I found the art style to be cute, although I found myself wondering if it might not be interesting for the staff to be procedurally generated anew for each save file. The enemy design was esoteric enough to leave me craving the next 'solve', even with the simple elements-as-colors correlation. Level progression and skill acquisition seemed nice-- although I found myself craving an element of randomness or experimentation. Perhaps instead of misfiring entirely, spells that haven't been taught yet could be populated by typing them ahead of schedule? There could be a trade off between player hp and time allowed to experiment with random inputs. Maybe discovering a spell successfully could be used to get rid of mistakes that the wizard remembers. Thank you very much for your submission to Pirate Software Game Jam 16.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rWc2PKdPxsHsNLoMggUaRJlefwAeKjzapmHw0-eX3uU/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
Staff it out is a turn-based dungeon crawler game about escaping a dungeon by fighting through waves of slimes using an advanced magic system.
The mage chooses who to attack, but you, as his staff, decide how to attack.
Any spell consists of only two parts. Don't be afraid to experiment with spells, and don't be afraid to try something new!
Controls:
Up / Left / Right / Down Arrows for Spells
Space to finish Spell input
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
In our game, the main character is the Staff that battle mages use to escape the dungeon—while also helping you escape. You're the tool of war, but you’re in control of how effective you are. The mage only selects targets and requires your cooperation to invoke the correct spell. However, be warned that the mage isn't your friend and may throw you out if you perform poorly.
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Comments
Really pretty game. I think the concept is good, but the gameplay becomes samey pretty quickly. The biggest jolt of energy I got was accidentally discovering a spell on my own, but the player isn't exactly incentives to do this too often when attacks are coming their way.
There's a lot of potential here. The mechanics are there and they're solid, but I think there needs to be something else to break up the monotony in some way.
Great work, all around!
Thanks! Yes, we somewhat underestimated the development time for this and ended up cutting some in-between combat scenes and advanced combat mechanics that were supposed to vary the current gameplay in favor of polishing it. Next time, we'll try to plan our development time better to make the gameplay more fun and diverse)
Easy to understand and play!
Very good interpretation of the theme and execution of it, congrats!
That’s a relief, thanks) We couldn't add the narrative and tutorial dialogues in time, so we're really happy to hear that it's easy to understand in current state.
This was a lot of fun, very cool concept! I could definitely see this become its own standalone game. Very fun, well done!
Happy to hear that! Actually, we cut a lot from the final game to finish on time and keep it somewhat polished, so I'm glad we both see its potential)
This was lots of fun! Great work on the different types of attacks, and the wizard choosing your target made for an interesting combat dynamic when picking your attack.
Thanks! Yeah, creating spells and making them work was the most fun part of development as well.
I loved trying to cast the spells as fast as possible
Glad you enjoyed the core gameplay! Though we probably should've added some bonus damage or something for faster typing)
Love the music and art style. Cool use of combos.
That's very pleasant to hear! Thank you) We're not artists or musicians, but we tried our best with the game's style and feel)
fire 🔥
easy to play, some cool references included 💣
And water/air/earth too!) Thank you for playing! It all started from references)