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A jam submission

AkuryōView game page

One last chance!
Submitted by vex_dev — 2 hours, 1 minute before the deadline
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Akuryō's itch.io page

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

  • GDD The GDD is great; it has lots of details and shows well the scope of the game and what it can be with further development. Gameplay Pinball, with some roguelike mechanics sprinkled on top. Very responsive; I grew up playing those quarter-sucker devil machines. The story is pretty fun too. I had some issues. The camera locked on the ball gave me severe and almost instant motion sickness; even using the little camera in the corner, I could not play much of the game. Because of that, I could not explore the game much. I would rather have the entire screen be the pinball machine, and the little camera locked on the ball would be less jarring. I also was unable to buy upgrades and figure out how it was supposed to work. Since the time is short, I suggest adding mechanics information on the game page to serve as a tutorial, even outside the game. A reset button would be appreciated. My last run ended because the ball went outside bounds and fell forever, hard locking me. Using F5 erased my progress. Art design Lovely art direction; the characters are full of life, and the pinball assets pop out. Amazing effects in the game too, really nail home the arcade vibe. Sound design I loved the voice acting; it gives such a personal touch. Sound levels could be tweaked a bit to be easier to follow. In-game, the BGM is pleasant, and the SFX unlocked memories that I thought were lost. Little thoughts I had a lot of fun with this short experience. This takes me back to my youth, the summer of 1542 in Vienna. In the corner of my eye, I see a bunch of rapscallions surrounding a brand new machine. I could not believe my eyes; it is a pinball machine based on the hit movie Creature from the Black Lagoon. I turn out my pockets and grab my last doubloon, slapping it on the glass to signal I am next in line. After a short while, it's my turn. Doubloon slotted, ball launched, a myriad of sounds and colors. A few minutes of fun, the ball is lost, the doubloon is gone, and the fun was maxed. I vowed to come back the next day and exact my revenge. The rest is history. Note to self, delete the last thought before publishing the review to avoid inquiries about the Fountain of Youth. Take memory loss medication.

Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ReWd6f_0B82KihprSRDRUIiqSJ366DOLrAMdPFuSm1k/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.m63evbiwid3g

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

Summarize your game!
Akuryo is a rouge-like pinball game that is centered around a gambling addict goblin girl who trades her soul for one last chance to win back all that she lost.

Take control of her soul and navigate the pinball machine you have been imprisoned in by using the many powers you can purchase in exchange for the souls you collect.

You can use z and / to tilt the machine left and right for a last minute attempt to save yourself from falling into a hole or into then pit, however you can only tilt so many times in a row before being penalized. x/c/,/. are used to activate your power ups that you can unlock in the shop. v and m are used to actuate the left and right flippers, with <space> being used to launch the pinball.

Defeat the deadly Odokuro and free yourself from the machine to save your soul!

Please explain how your game fits the theme.
The player gets only one pinball. This ball represents their soul and as such losing means death and having to start the run over in classic rouge-like style. This is a twist on the normal three ball formula. Power ups can be purchased with coins gained after completing a level's objectives.

Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
I love that we got to have an intro cut scene made entirely in engine in 3D! The style is exciting for me and perhaps I'll actually add everything to this game I planned on and finish this game.

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Comments

Submitted

The idea of a roguelike pinball machine is interesting and the setup is great, but the game could definitely use some polish. Like others have said, you'd be better off not locking the camera to the ball and having a view of the entire table. The minimap on the top right does help a little, but the main screen is to hectic for the player to properly focus. I saw in another comment that you originally wanted to have the player navigate a dungeon via pinball, and I have to say that while interesting, it might not be practical/fun. I'm reminded of how in the old space cadet pinball game you had to hit certain spots to trigger missions, and I always found it frustrating to accurately hit it. Navigating an entire dungeon via pinball might end up more frustrating than fun, though of course, that'd entirely depend on how it's implemented. 

There were also a couple of bugs that I noticed, such as the shop not working (clicking unlock doesn't do anything, and I didn't lose souls either), and one time the ball got launched off the table somehow and flew into infinity (it happened so fast that I didn't see where it exited). Speaking of the shop, there were items that hinted at a course editor system (that I assume didn't make it into the game due to time constraints). Maybe instead of a dungeon crawler you can expand on this instead. Something like: you start with a small pinball table with a few components, and you earn souls by playing on it, and use the souls to buy components in the shop. You then use the course editor to build your way up to a previously unreachable boss at the top of the table, and you fight the boss by hitting it with the ball/bouncing the ball off the components you placed. The skills/tilt mechanic can play well into this too. Just an idea! Whatever you decide to do, good work and keep it up!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your feedback. You know its interesting how playing a game can sort of be like archeology, revealing the changes and decisions that happen through out the development process. I say this because your suggestion about the game editor was exactly what we were going to do. The dungeon crawler developed into a level editor where you would be able to change elements of the playfield by purchasing them with souls and unlocking them from the shop. Part of this was the idea to add "boss rooms" where the player could add the boss battles as rooms in the playfield, sort of like a dungeon. Due to time constraints the editor never made it in in favor of overall pinball play which took longer than expected. This is why you see things like destructible elements and blueprints in the shop.

From my perspective I find it interesting that your unfiltered play through reveals decisions made at different steps of development that in a normal game development cycle would have hopefully been changed to match the new direction of the game, say moving the pinball camera to the normal high up perspective or foregoing the room idea in favor of just one pinball course.

Either way, the plan was going to be that you would start with a few elements, some would be locked until you progressed, then you would unlock them and add them to your playfield. In the end, there was no time to add the editor, so it was decided that it would be more fun to have a playfield built with all of the elements than an empty playfield with two or three elements and no way to unlock the more interesting stuff like the orbit.

Thank you again for your feedback. Where we go from here is determined by more play testing and trying out weird ideas until we find something thats fun, the editor? The dungeon crawl? Something entirely different? Either way, your comment shows you really cared to be observant of the game and while that means you caught all of the problems you also revealed so much about the intrinsic flaws in the game making decision process and how that process could be improved in future jams, which I think is infinitely valuable. 

Submitted(+1)

Glad to be of help! I totally get the issue of time constraints, especially in a game jam, and having to cut many features because of it. I've experienced it many times myself. Good luck with whatever you choose to do, and if you choose to continue Akuryo, I'm looking forward to see what you come up with! 

Submitted

Like the concept and the idea. Left comment on the game page before reading the comments here.

Keep up the good work! 🙂

Developer

Thank you for your feedback! I replied on the game submission page.

Submitted

Wow, this game is absolutely dripping with style. Love the intro.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much! The intro may have been a little unwise in terms of usage of time but I've always wanted a game with a cut scene and voice acting so I couldn't be happier. I'm glad you liked it.

Submitted

Love this game a lot! Pinball is always oddly satisfying! But I would’ve liked if the main camera was the top-down view instead of following the ball (it gets dizzying for me at least). Maybe having the ball camera in the corner instead would be good, since I think it is a cool thing.

The music was nice too!

Developer(+2)

Thank you for the kind words! I played pinball many times during the development of this prototype. The reason the camera followed the player was because the original plan was to make this more of a dungeon crawler with multiple rooms you would traverse through and the pinball was supposed to be like the player in a game like Diablo, but in the end we realized we over scoped for that plan but never reverted the change. There will be a postmortem to determine if this idea is viable and if further prototyping is in order, in which case we may revert the camera to the standard view. 
Thank you again!

Submitted(+1)

True to the character, this game feels like a gamble, but that doesn’t really make it that fun to play. The camera tends to be really nauseating, and the audio mixing is just horrible, with quiet noises punctured by chime jumpscares. The art is really pretty, I do love myself some bisexual lighting, but I feel the time spent on the intro cutscene could’ve been better spent making the game itself feel better.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback and thank you for playing! The game did not come together as we had hoped it would. Our musician and audio designer disappeared during the jam and left us to try our best at sound design on top of everything else we had going on. I agree the camera shake is too strong, I hadn't anticipated how much the small camera shake would compound and our implementation was not smooth enough. We did provide a screen shake option but it is true the default is usually left untouched. We had more aspirations for the game but it would seem that five games is not enough to narrow down how to scope a game perfectly. None the less, I appreciate the feedback as it is instrumental to my progress as a game designer and programmer. I will say, the intro scene took almost no time to add; our artist had extra time so it took us an afternoon, perhaps it would've been better time spent fixing stuff or tuning the games feel but I'm happy to have finally made a game with voice acting. 
Thank you for your feedback, Vex!

Submitted

I’m sorry to hear that happened, and I apologise for the assumption regarding the intro.

Developer

No need to apologize, all feedback is helpful it reveals how people feel about the game (which is the most important thing) regardless of what is happening under the hood.