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What Goes Up's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- This is a fun game to play! Movement feels smooth and easy, but the increasing difficulty makes it feel reasonably challenging. The art style is simple, but reminiscent of old school arcade games, which definitely gives off a nostalgic vibe. I think the theme implementation is interesting and quite clever, but it took me awhile to really understand it. Since I wasn't able to beat the game on my attempts, I initially thought I was doing something wrong as the rocket began to turn. That was a little distracting because I was focused on what I must have been doing incorrectly with the controls and not on the actual game itself. I think the explanation you provided in the GDD made total sense in hindsight. It might be helpful to use text dialogue or other visuals as the player progresses to drop hints at what's really going on. This might make the turning of the rocket seem like an intentional part of the game, and it also might be an interesting way to add in narrative components. Overall, the game is enjoyable and the concept is really neat.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Avjwd58sZ04dRT4lJmoZGF3vHNsGFRjx8__T5dQrGrg
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!
What Goes Up is about getting a rocket to its destination by avoiding numerous obstacles on the way.
Controls:
Space - Launch
W, S (Arrow keys Up/Down) - Movement
Esc - Pause menu
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
The rocket (which the player controls) is actually a nuclear bomb (or something similar) which is sent to an unnamed city.
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Comments
Oh, I did it! This game really sweats me. Really cool ending and control mechanics that reminds me google dodge game. Can't believe this is first game. Keep going! 🔥
A cool concept, but frankly dodging the various obstacles soon becomes nearly impossible, and it doesn't feel fair at all. The rifle limiting your area of movement, and seemingly in random locations, further decreases the players dodging options in 1 dimension (I get that you made it do lower damage for this reason, but the issue is still there). The 45 degree missiles and 90 degree projectiles team up to make undodgeable situations quite often. Maybe I'm just bad tho idk
Yeah, I wanted to make the game more on the challanging site. Because I need the player to feel sense of accomplishment after finaly beating it. In order to make the ending work (the sudden realization that all you did was helped to kill countless people). Thats my main point in implementing the Jam's theme (not that you are a weapon, but that realization you are/were one). And if I made the game too easy, this would just not work.
But I fully agree current "style" how I made the game difficult is not ideal. It would be much better to have more type of enemies, or give player some more things to do, etc. Instead of just "spawn more enemies, quicker". But sadly I was limited by Jam time limit.
Also, I guarantee the game is absolutely possible to beat (with right strategy, and some luck I am able to beat it 80% of times). But I fully get the "randomness" is very irritating and unfair at times.
Thank you very much for playing, and leaving a nice comment.
Thank you for the response. I did enjoy the cutscene in the end, after just barely managing to beat it.
Hopefully you will manage to do more with your time after every Jam attempt. I would recommend next time focusing first and foremost on how the game feels to play, and if the difficulty is balanced. Art and story have their appeal, but they won't see the light of day if people find your game unfun and don't play it, though this may sound harsh. I am not a game designer, but I think this is important.
I went up, then I came down. Did not disappoint. The variety of attacks to dodge was cool, overwhelming initially, but cool.