Thought the piano monster was hard, but then I got to the music note and was obliterated in five hits. I enjoyed playing the game. It gave me the vibes of the old Pokémon games, where you roam around in the grass and suddenly get into a fight. Whish there was a way to heal like if you hit a big combo or something, but overall its a enjoyable game!
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Just Hit It's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Mechanics | #8 | 2.956 | 3.100 |
| Fun | #10 | 3.051 | 3.200 |
| Theme | #12 | 2.574 | 2.700 |
| Overall | #13 | 2.784 | 2.920 |
| Sound | #13 | 2.670 | 2.800 |
| Art | #19 | 2.670 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
when a monster's hit is calculated, it also calculates a random number for how many times it Combos in that hit, between 0 and the "max combo" stat for the monster. Monsters also have levels, and, some monsters have their "max combo" stat increase according to its level. What that means is that there is a lot of randomness in how much damage each hit by a monster will be. It could be 1 damage or 20 damage.
Anyway I only wanted to explain that because, the note monster is actually a lower-level monster than the piano monster typically, although they both appear in some zones. In later zones you only get piano monsters. You have a defense stat, but it doesn't do much against combo hits because it just subtracts from the damage you take. So if you have 7 defense, and the monster has 6 attack and does a 0 combo hit, it will do 1 damage (any hit always does at least 1 damage). But if it does a 3 combo attack, it'll hit for 18, minus 7, will be 11 damage.
And as for healing, you do passively heal while walking around.
Thanks for trying it out!
The theme was loosely integrated into the main mechanic.
The game was definetely fun. The choice of main mechanic was good and skill based with good audiovisual feedback.
The art was all over the place but in a consistent way. It kind of reminded me of Nubby’s Number Factory. Could still use some polish to be more uniformly weird. Just some general pixel art do’s and don’t would benefit. Like a consistent (or smaller) colour palette to give it that cohesion.
I did not really feel like there was currently a good reason for the overworld/map existing. I think it would have been a tighter experience if you could simply choose a difficulty to fight.
The cheering sound did not do it for me. But the sound design for the combo gameplay was solid. Perhaps an accelerating tune that follows the acceleration of the ball would make it even better.
Check for typos. You had one in the tutorial. I also think there was no need for a tutorial beyond maybe a flashing space-bar in the first fight since it’s quite self-explanatory.
Overall I think you did a good job!
Submitted
A new Cosmologygreat and thoughtful reply! I will give you my context and let you in on what I knew needed polish but didn't get any
there being a map is part of the vision I had of the mini-rpg I was creating. In the end, however, my available time was spent tweaking the main game logic and audio/visuals, leaving story and context out to dry.
For example, the pixel art was slapped together and was trying to both feel good and off-putting. One thing that I did not like was the player having to hike through 7-8 screens where the enemies are no longer relevant to get back to the hard fight, and the most obvious solution is to have a teleport or shortcut once you've reached there, or to have the respawn be close to there.
The applause/cheer bothers me now too. At first it was funny and I was ready to attend to the rest of the game. It's kinda grating though, being a bit loud and frankly rude lol. As well as incongruent with the atmosphere.
Something you didn't mention but which bothered me was the background in battles. It's fine, it isn't too distracting, but I also intended to have a few different backgrounds for battles for variety. In fact, my Original idea was to have a background that resembles the world around you but "first person", and which would also rotate when swapping from your perspective to the enemy's perspective. But I never attempted to draw that with the other things needing doing.
I loved this fun challenge. 5 days felt much better for getting this done than 3 would have, when a lot of time was spent remembering or looking up how to do things such as blit a sprite with an alpha(transparency) value, set up a sin table, save map data to a json, and several other code things that will go much quicker when I have done them more.
I'm glad you enjoyed it and that you notice the Nubby inspiration, though it was not inspired by Nubby directly, rather Nubby harkens to an earlier time in programming that I remember. One I played as a kid was "Ultizurk III: The GuildMaster's Quest," which was one of many Ultima-inspired PC RPGs that existed. But also this game was more directly inspired by Knuckle Sandwich, which itself is inspired by Earthbound. So anyway, I'm not extremely attached to that genre, but I do enjoy some amount of RPG mechanics.
So TL;DR I had a grander vision that I knew I wouldn't be likely to achieve, but I also had no idea how far I would get.
Fun game that has a fast pace game style but with enough challenges. Although it still needs a polishing, I really enjoyed it.
Submitted
Clockwork RevolutionsThanks! Yeah it can use an introduction to who you are and where you are. I intended to do storytelling to introduce the world but didn't get around to it.
The combat was also meant to show a stats screen showing your stats that went up as well as present a choice for how to spend a bonus point, and again I did not get around to it. But this has been a great exercise and getting back in the saddle.
considering you have to get combos to progress I think it's quite unnecessarily hard early on. the game needs a lot of polish but I kind of love it.
Clearly going for lisa vibes with a cool combat style reminiscent of undertale. Definitely not the best submission but definitely the one I see most potential in for a full game if you decided to apply these ideas again. Well done.
You know, I never played Lisa but I might now.
I did play Undertale. My actual inspirations are a game called Knuckle Sandwich and the game everybody knows about, Earthbound.
I felt nervous during the whole process, kinda like stage fright but for "developers" (It feels weird to call myself a dev), but I achieved my goals which were to make a fully functioning game. There were lots of things that need polish but I am proud of myself for getting all the important things finished for a working prototype of something I'd see myself come back to later.
As for the combat difficulty scaling, I didn't want to sacrifice the game's gimmick of making it all about landing those perfect hits on the sphere. I also remember when I was young playing random home-made games from the internet, and many of them being utterly terrible but in a kinda cute way. So I was kinda just happy to re-create that "game dev early years" vibe I remember.
You're definitely a dev and a good one. I would personally say the gimmick is still very relevant even if it's not necessary to win as it introduces a separation between the skill floor and skill ceiling. That will help get new players in as if they struggle from the get go they're less likely to stick around. But I totally understand if that's not what you want.
I would recommend Lisa, I think you'd like it!
I got destroyed by that angry piano! Fun game, loved having to combo to get more damage in. Do I have to grind to be able to take on that piano? I was doing little to no damage to him haha.
Submitted
Blugablorg: The Last Standyeah, the piano has naturally high defense and the way defense works in my game is that it's simple damage-reduction. so if you do 9 damage it will reduce 8 of that, but if you do 20 damage it'll still reduce 8, meaning you'd do 12. so it's about combo'ing, and if you level up more you'll do more base damage as well as have more HP
Gave it a try, I know you said in the description there isn't an end state for the game, not sure how far in it IS possible to get though haha. I got about 4 screens in. It's quite fast paced and the perfect scores seem to be a requirement to survive rather than a nice bonus for skillful play. I'd make it a bit more permissive personally.
Submitted
Space Forgcomboing is actually the only way to play.. the damage you do is your base damage multiplied by your combo. So comboing means doing like 20+ damage whereas not-comboing is doing like 5 damage. Enemies have defense which essentially negates the first X damage, so it's Heavily incentivized to combo. You might be right that it's too hard. I only had myself to test it out and I probably am very biased since by the time I finished the game I had been "practicing" hitting the sweet spot for quite a while lol.
That is really good feedback. Unfortunately I won't be able to upload an update till the voting is over so for now I'll just tell everyone it's "nostalgic" and "meant to be antagonistic" haha. I really hope people can beat it but I realize it might just throw them into a challenge without any rhyme or reason. I put a paragraph in the game description to ease the pain! Thank you for trying and rating my game =)
First the piano! Then the blue guy!
Where am I, who am I?
Give me the sprite of the blue guy, I wanna burn it
Submitted
Iran Revolution
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