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A jam submission

KritterView game page

Team up with your squad to defend your base against hordes of enemies from 1 to 4 players.
Submitted by LJF Games (@ljf_games) — 3 hours, 54 minutes before the deadline
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Play Démo

Kritter's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall Fun#134.4294.429
Art / Graphics#144.7144.714
Controls / UI#194.1434.143
Sound/Music#194.1434.143

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

If you have competed before, how has your game changed?
Complete graphical rework + main game loop.

Genre

Action

Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing

Rating

Family Friendly

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Comments

  • Youtube Timestamped Link
  • Graphics : Fine but some things definitely need a touch up, like animations.
  • Music / Sfx :
    • Music : Fine, more variety would be nice.
    • SFX : Bit lacking in some spots (Engineer's flammenwerfer sounds weak.)
  • GUI : Fine
  • Gameplay :
    • Fine
    • Feels like some things need tweaks / balancing , maybe increasing players damage or lowering some HPs on enemies.
  • Notes :
    • I exclusively used the engineer so all feedback is with that in mind.
    • I played this entirely solo.
    • I like that there's some meta-progression stuffs , namely the skill tree.
    • Encountered a glitch where my kritter's head was bobbing around as if he was attacking / being attacked. 
    • Some different abilities you can unlock and swap in unique per class would be nice, (E.G. let the engineer repair stuffs.)
      • The circular "Y" ability the engineer gets feels weak.
      • The Turrets feel like they need upgrades.
    • Are some of the values based on you having 2+ people, or are they scaling with people? 
    • Do we get more defense spots, aside from just a wall and a single trap in front of said wall? 
      • The unlock tree?
    • Mark is very...talkative

Overall I did somewhat enjoy this but I do think it needs some tweaks.

My group ran into a number of issues with the game, even in the solo tutorial area & had to reboot the game several times to get it to work. The most problematic of the bugs we ran into (and we ran into this one a number of times in various ways) was that either:

- Enemy Health Bars would disappear, making them invulnerable.
- Player Health Bar would disappear, making us unable to do anything.

There's definitely a lot of things that need to be ironed out:

  • Getting Multiplayer to work was extremely unclear. Even when we did unlock it, it was difficult to navigate: It isn't explicitly stated that a Room Code is necessary to join; Cannot invite others from within the game; Steam invites only allow for Remote Play Invitation.
  • As a Streamer, hiding the room code is 100% necessary & it wasn't obvious that we could interact w/ the console in order to Copy the Room Code.
  • Having Game Features (like Multiplayer) locked behind a long, drawn out SOLO tutorial felt ... meh. Especially when the mechanics were fairly simple to understand.
  • Visual Display Bug where it says Secondary Attack is activated w/ A when it is Q on the keyboard.
  • Better Visual Difference between Friendlies & Enemies. With the amount of visuals that can appear on the screen, it becomes extremely difficult to discern who's who & where.
  • Tooltips to explain (or visually show) what a skill does would be helpful.
  • We also weren't sure how Cards/Skills stacked. With the F.A.I.L. Device & Passives, it was oftentimes a random roulette between 0-3 revives. We were unsure how it worked or why.
  • Please allow for an adjustable UI. Elements were extremely small.
  • Considering we aren't allowed free camera control, there were WAY too many environmental elements blocking line-of-sight. Non-destructible elements need to hide/become opaque.
  • While I loved the Voice Acting, the Story/Narrative was completely lost on all of us. It seemed botched. Why were there golems attacking our ship? What was our objective? Everything moved too quickly for us to process anything that was happening.
  • When Defensive Battles finished, the game would pull us toward the center of the Arena, sometimes causing us to bug & not be able to move for a round.
  • Enemies didn't immediately reset when pulled too far. Instead they'd become "invincible": healing faster than we could kill & continuing to hunt us down.

What we loved:

  • Friendly fire, but without the damage! Loved being able to just hit each other lol
  • Fighting was easy & satisfying. I loved the exploration & movement.
  • Cooperative function. We LOVED how we had upgrades that not only affected ourselves, but the camp & party, as well.

Improvements:

  • Dedicated Biomes & Map Variety.
  • Monster Variety.
  • Increase Round Duration: Levels were extremely short & it felt like we BREEZED our way to the Bosses. However, this meant the game also felt EXTREMELY imbalanced. Enemy Difficulty scaling definitely needs to be looked into, else increasing the number of rounds before a boss.
  • Base expansions.
  • Ability to invite while in-game/inbetween rounds.

Kritter definitely has the potential to be a really addictive co-op family-friendly game because of how quick it plays & how easy the grind is, but the sheer number of bugs makes it impossible to love in its current state. So, I'm looking forward to how it improves!

For our initial reactions to the game, you can find the VOD here. You'll have to forgive me, as I played the game during a 24hr Charity Stream. Timestamps are available, though:

Jam Host

Tried to play with kiddo on local co-op, we did run into issues with the second controller either take over first controller input, or not responsive at all. Co-oping as one person with key board, one person with controller was okay, though I haven't figured out how to get keyboard command going yet. Hope our play record will give meaningful insight to you. 

I apologize for such a late post.  I streamed this with PearDoll and BuriedCandy, and it was an absolute blast.  All the classes feel pretty unique, and the waves really ramp up in a nice way.  Exploration feels good, and the upgrades and choices that enhance it feel powerful and worth taking.

Some critiques and issues found:

  1. Offstream BuriedCandy (flame class) and I (melee class) had alot of issues with the first wave of enemies. Using the version deployed to Itch, one of the small slimes would consistently not take damage.  Doing the tutorial quest for skills before or after attempting to kill them didn't seem to make much difference. I eventually tried the steam demo instead and that allowed me to get through the tutorial (with the gun class) and switching back to the itch version worked.  Notably, in the exploration phase, this consistently happened to one of the slimes in an enemy camp (with the melee and flame classes).  It also happened to one of the brown flying camp enemies as well.
  2. During the initial tutorial the game softlocks if the player exits the game while the WASD keys are displayed on the screen.  Upon reload of the game, the tutorial is no longer displayed and the portal to leave the ship is not active.
  3. A few times without a noticeable reason, player control would stop responding.  It was still possible to open the menu.  At times it was just gamepad control, others it was both gamepad and keyboard control.
  4. Returning to the M.Ark after the first round, it wasn't possible for me to buy the first upgrade.  I had to restart the game in order for it to be buyable.
  5. As the Melee character it's hard to see when I'm about to be attacked by the majority of enemies.  It also didn't seem that the provoke from the scarecrow would work (enemy waves would sometimes simply walk by).  It felt like there was alot of risk as the melee without too much of a safety net.  I don't think a higher armor rating would help or be balanced at the ratings it would help.  Possibly turning 5 or 10 of the HP into Shield could possibly add the buffer needed for the class fantasy but still punish bad play.
  6. Teleporters don't seem to consistently be shown on the UI.  It would be nice to see the nearest teleporter at all times.  More mapping tools would be nice in general, especially for planning out the exploration phase.

The VOD is linked below, and will be available for 60 days from broadcast.  If needed for longer, please reach out and a highlight can be created.  I apologize for the screen being clipped off, I forgot to reset the resolution after relaunching the game.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2558346862?t=0h6m33s

Jam Host

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

IT'S BACK! IT'S BAAAAACK! Wait, wasn't Kritter supposed to be released by now? Oh well, can't help to give it more time.

So after playing this game so many times and seeing how it's changed... I don't think there's really a lot I can think of to improve it. So instead, my feedback is going to focus on little issues and general observations I had.

First issue... why won't the game show me keyboard controls throughout the title screen and while checking the settings before going into the game? Just strange, y'know?

Also... how do you input a kritter name when you're on controller?

Speaking of controllers, you have the proper button labels for X-Box controllers but not for Switch or Playstation controllers? This is weird, considering you put in Switch controller support (I CAN PLAY THIS WITH THE SWITCH PRO CONTROLLER YAY!)

I noticed a couple of times that there was text dialogue missing. I know it was missing because there was a spoken dialogue from Mark that didn't at all match the line, and instead the text dialogue would sit on a later line the whole time.

Repair is spelled wrong in English. The spelling is more in line with the French word, reparer.

I'm so glad that there's now a line where Mark points out the fact that he's a French robot and thus has an accent. XD

I noticed that sometimes enemies will get stuck on terrain if the player attacks them.

In the keyboard controls, you list using the special skill as A but it works on Q.

Lastly, I made an interesting observation... when I was fighting enemies, using the mouse and keyboard felt better because aiming was easier with it while movement didn't feel nice since it was a lot more rigid and having to spam shift to dash just wasn't fun. However, when I was just running around in exploration, controller felt better because the joystick made movement so much smoother but made aiming a nightmare as certain skills couldn't be aimed properly. The use of the right stick to have controlled aim was nice, but it then takes your hands off the buttons you need for everything else.

I'm going to try and get some friends to play this with me after the event, so I can see how well it works with others.

Submitted(+1)

Play this game with PearDoll and Odenhir during a collab stream and it was a lot of fun! Ran into a couple of bugs during the tutorial, but otherwise the rest of the game went really smoothly. The gameplay was fun, and took a little getting used to, but I overall really enjoyed the game.

My main complaint for the game was that the graphic settings kept resetting throughout our playthrough. I usually keep the games I play in windowed mode while I'm streaming so I can monitor other things like chat, etc, but while playing Kritter, every time I swapped between in-game and back to the ship between rounds (and vice versa), the game would kick me back into full-screen mode (or at least max out the resolution to take up my whole screen again), which made it a bit of a pain while I was streaming. Not a major bug, but definitely might want to fix that.

I don't have any specific feedback on the overall gameplay yet, I might want to get more time in with the game, but in general it was a blast and I could see myself putting this on my list of games to play with friends!

Developer

Hello Buried Candy,

Thank you for testing Kritter and for this great feedback!

I'm happy to see that you liked it but could you tell me more about the tutorial bugs? That's terrible for a start :(

Oh and I didn't know about the windowed mode reseting, I'm so sorry and I'll check it out right away!

Thanks again and sorry for the bugs.

Submitted(+1)

Hey! Just played your game. I think the game is nice. The onboarding is done pretty well and the character looks cool. the game is basically a tower defence game and it's fun. I just have issue that the game does not feel balancedwell for single player experience. The hordes can get pretty overwhelming. I  understand with enough upgrades it's going to be a breeze but i'd like a little more power in the beginning to start with. All the best. Hope you improve and get tons of wishlists.

Developer(+1)

Hello there,

Thank your for this feedback, I'm happy you liked the game!

I aggre that the difficulty is a bit too much for now. It's really hard to balance as we see some players finishing the demo en their 3rd try while other need those three runs just to go past wave 3.
I'm currently working on difficulty settings to help people disciver the game more easily, I hope it will help!

Thanks again for the test and the kind comment <3

(+2)

Really fun game! I played the multi-player mode with Odenhir and BuriedCandy. They both ran into bugs during the tutorial that I didn't quite get the details of but it went smoothly for me ðŸ˜…

I did find that sometimes in the main lobby certain menus didn't respond well and I was having to use a mix of my controller and my keyboard/mouse. I played as the tracker class and overall enjoyed it. Some of my opinions about that class:

  • Would love if there were upgrades to have the bullets travel further (or maybe I just didn't run into those upgrades). Or make them piercing. 
  • Having the offensive skills/gadgets (mine/mortar) on the RT & LB felt weird to me. Would like the option to remap or have them be on the same button type (RT/LT or LB/RB)

Some other general comments:

  • Maybe include building a wall and turret in the tutorial
  • The style and graphics are great!
  • Really enjoyable gameplay loop
  • Dialogue felt really long at times 
  • Would like if the game sounds continued playing if you click out of the game
  • Upgrade tree was neat
Developer(+1)

Hey PearDoll,

Thank you so much for try Kritter and this great feedback!

Did you had menu issues in the multiplayer part? It's not the first time I hear that :/

For the upgrades about the Tracker, you'll be happy to know that I am currently working on skill modifiers exactly to that purpose. We will both add stats modifiers (range / damages / fire rate / piercing / more projectiles) and behavior modifiers (fire a cone of short range projectiles instead of a single mid range one / fire a slow long range with big damages to snipe / projectiles bouncing from target to target / etc).

Nice feedback about the inputs. I'll probably add a remap option in the future!

Thanks again fro playing Kritter and for the VOD, I'll watch it to see how you experienced the game and learn from it :)

Jam Host (1 edit) (+2)

Welcome back to FBQ! Your game really changed a lot!

A group stream going on now for Kritter: https://www.twitch.tv/peardoll

You can check VOD on youtube too: 

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks a lot, it's been a while since the first FBQ :D
Thanks for the links, I'll check the VOD :)

(+2)

Hey, I do not know if you remember me but I played your game wayyyyyyy back then when you first shared it on Feedback Quest.

I am happy to say, I feel like I'm playing a different game. It feels so much better, more refined and fun. I have no critiques and I hope you'll have an amazing release and have many players play your amazing game. I might try and play it with the boys in the future but as it is, its solid. I hope you'll either continue to add to the game or make your next project even better. 


LINK: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2557965853

Developer(+1)

Hey, I do remember!
Thank you so much for this nice comment, it really warms my heart.

Thank you also for the VOD, I'll study it to see our you play testing went :)
Feel free to give me your feedback after playing it with your friends!

I did try it again, and frankly, its pretty solid. Honestly, aside from general bug fixes, I can see this as being a game me and my friends would play in rotation. You've come a long way from when you first posted to now.