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Chain Reaction Maker's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #17 | 4.045 | 4.136 |
| Gameplay | #30 | 3.690 | 3.773 |
| Overall | #61 | 3.307 | 3.382 |
| Creativity | #72 | 3.512 | 3.591 |
| Ambience | #124 | 2.756 | 2.818 |
| References / Humor | #125 | 2.534 | 2.591 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit into the theme?
You construct a series of chain reactions similar to videos on Youtube where people make wild contraptions where one thing triggers another to activate and so on until some end task is completed.
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Comments
Umazing!
rube goldberg machine mentioned!!
This feels like something I could've played a bunch on coolmathgames, very fun and super impressive scope!
I think my biggest critique isn't even about the game- I think it would be nice if a more standard/readable font was used for important information on the game page.
About the game itself (I have a lot to say because it was very enjoyable and I hope you'll do more game stuff in the future!):
- Would be super beneficial to have a "clear all pieces in level" button
- Depth perception skill issue on my part, but having more visual aids in the tilemaps to distinguish the grid so I know what spots are lining up where I want them to easier would be helpful (e.g. if each diagonal row had slight variation from the next in a stripe-pattern, almost? so you could know "oh this is part of the slightly darker row, so it will line up with the slightly darker row over there")
- Not sure if it was intentional that pieces did not have to be part of the reaction to count towards the gold medal. I liked that it made it easy for me to get gold every time but felt like I was cheesing it (maybe I just lack integrity in games)
- The little bits of humour that allowed the dev's personality to shine through were a delight- I liked the 'lore' and the breakdancing dragoon a lot.
- When I got to the last level I got a little terrified at first glance of the 4million buttons but I think it was absolutely perfect as a final level- not so easy that it feels anticlimactic but not so difficult or frustrating that I didn't feel well rewarded for my time. In general for a first dev project it felt like your grasp on gameplay loop and how to reward the player was brilliant!
The pieces not having to be part of the chain reaction was definitely an oversight by me when putting the scoring system together last minute. Nice catch.
Funny you mentioned the scope. I went with the idea of building a rube goldberg machine for the game jam because I wanted to make a game featuring a ton of imitated physics of objects in an isometric perspective. Coding the various physics movement of object shouldn't be a problem. However, after a couple of days working on this idea, realized the only way to make a game with this idea is to let the player create the rube goldberg machine, which would require an editor to place/remove pieces. What I had thought was going to be a short and simple game to make turned into something way out of scope.
I had zero experience with game development (although I've played around with godot enough to know how to use it without much issue), let alone game editor development. So, with only 1 week to make the game (yes, I only joined the game jam 1 week before the end lmao), I decided to scrap the imitated physics side and focus on creating pieces that do different things without needing physics to make it work so that I could put more time into creating the editor. Which was a good call because I just barely put together and submitted a cohesive game with less than 20 minutes remaining.
There is one thing that remains of the original imitated physics idea in the game, and that's the cannon. The cannon fires an egg dragoon in an arc towards the target position. The arc which the egg dragoon travels uses a math function that changes the arc depending on the distance it needs to travel. This means no matter the distance, the egg dragoon will travel in a perfect arc from the cannon to the target location. It's unfortunate that I couldn't show it off more since I had to turn down the scope.
Playing this is already quite satisfying, I can feel it scratching a fun domino itch of mine. Its refreshing to be encouraged to use everything also, instead of "use as little as possible" like many resource games.
Biggest feedback gameplay wise is tearing up a large chunk of your dominos to rearrange stuff is a tad clunky, but I imagine that would be mostly smoothed over by being able to click and drag while placing / removing, or rotating tools in place.
Good stuff, good job!
Being able to click and drag to place/remove is a great idea! Thanks for the feedback.
A really fun "Flash-style" puzzle game! Even the "programmer art" of the NPC dragoon is really endearing.
A couple notes: I found the music kind of bland and a couple color choices seemed pretty harsh on my screen. I also found the green arrows a little confusing at first in terms of appreciating what they were actually directing, but I think if I'd played it earlier today that part might not have been an issue, hahaha.
I was considering adding actual arrows to indicate which tile(s) the tools would trigger. Unfortunately, by the time I considered it I only had a couple hours left to submit the game. Same goes for the music. Nice feedback. I'll take this into consideration for future games. :)
Nice concept. reminds me of a flash game I played 10 years ago.
Fantastic puzzles, graphics and lore!
This is an awesome project! I absolutely loved it, from the attention to detail to the gameplay and the variety of levels. The game is really engaging (though, due to my inexperience, I still had to spend a couple of minutes figuring out what I was doing), so much so that I had to check the clock every now and then :)
Great execution on a seemly simple mechanic. I like all the little details that can be seen in the levels. Each tool is well designed to have their own use cases. I did not use the roller skates that often, but I like that you are rewarding the players with medals to encourage experimentation with the tools. Explosions are cool, and the tutorials are well designed. One thing I want to point out from the level design is that the levels can be a bit too big. Some buttons are a bit too far on the edge of the screen and have inaccessible tiles on the edge. Having a clearly defined boundaries like the yard stage will make the final levels look neater. Overall, it is a fun game and made me play it all the way. Good job on the submission!
The art reminds me of games of the past (in a good way)
the first level having pre-placed dominoes kinda threw me off a bit, but I realized I could just delete that and build a straight line of dominoes
heya, I love the pixel art, the explosions and the game concept! It's really cute and has gr8 vibes
Unfortunately I can't get pass this (really cute) level because for some reason i can't place anything on this specific square here:(
I still had a blast in the earlier levels though. Thank you for making this game!
It's a placement bug in the game. Occasionally it'll place a "phantom" tool. It can be fixed by removing another tool first before removing on the tile with the "phantom tool". But I think I may have resolved the issue with the recent bugfix. So please have a go again :)
Love this a ton! Took a quick second to understand what the bricks were but everything else was really intuitive, well done :D
Thanks! First time doing game dev and only had a week to put this all together. The limitations of pixel art and limited visual references definitely makes it challenging to teach a player how to play the game in a cohesive way. Glad you enjoyed it <3
One week holy cow!! No yeah this is awesome!!
Game is definitely way out of scope for 1 week. I even make a rant about deciding to code (what is essentially) a level editor from scratch with no knowledge as part of the story. The tool placement/removal took up most of the game dev time.