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Treasure Hunter's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Interface feedback helped players understand game outcomes. | #1 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| The art style and visuals fit the game’s intended tone or theme. | #1 | 4.917 | 4.917 |
| Music and sound effects supported the mood and gameplay. | #1 | 4.625 | 4.625 |
| Gameplay pacing kept the experience engaging throughout. | #1 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Outcomes were uncertain enough to support strategy and choice. | #1 | 4.458 | 4.458 |
| The game showed clear, thoughtful design and iteration. | #2 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| The game’s difficulty felt appropriate for its intended players. | #2 | 4.375 | 4.375 |
| The game had no bugs, glitches, broken systems, or unclear results. | #2 | 4.083 | 4.083 |
| The game balanced challenge and reward effectively. | #3 | 4.042 | 4.042 |
| I would choose to play this game again. | #3 | 3.875 | 3.875 |
| The core gameplay loop ran smoothly and consistently. | #4 | 4.375 | 4.375 |
| Player interactions worked as intended in play. | #4 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- This was an amazing game. The horror theming was so good I was too scared to finish. The audio, first person perspective, claustrophobic hallways, and old graphics was amazing. I did make it to the last room, too! The UI was decent: I was able to tell what everything was. The font was great, too. As for things I did not like: the lockpicking mechanic was too vague. For UI in the walls about everything, there were no instructions about how the lockpicking functioned. I only got it because someone I knew played a game with a similar mechanic. The slowdown mechanic is great in theory, but in practice I was blindly running across hallways. I'm sure the mechanic worked, but with the mana constantly draining I was unable to get a good grasp on it.
- Appropriate difficulty, the inclusion of a short interactive tutorial made the controls clear and easy to master. As a Fallout fan, the lockpicking felt familiar, but it might be more confusing to someone unfamiliar with that particular minigame. I didn't encounter any noticable bugs, and the art/style and core gameplay loop were on par with what I was expecting from your description. I enjoyed the level music and textures as well. Really well done!
Game Description
As a Treasure Hunter, you've found a dark, trap-filled, crumbling castle that you're sure to strike it rich in. Beware, however, as you may be the one that someone else is hunting! Use your wits and magic to escape with your riches unscathed.
Gameplay Dynamics
The player must navigate a dangerous castle environment with a focus on exploration and discovery. The player will need to remember and recognize paths through the interconnected hallways, and must choose where and how to explore while managing resources like health, mana, and lockpicks. While navigating, they must perform simple challenges such as platforming or a lockpicking minigame. The player must also avoid a stalking NPC that will chase them in certain areas.
Game Atmosphere
The game is classic high fantasy, with the game environment being an abandoned castle filled with classic fantasy traps and items. The overall mood and modeling fits this serious fantasy tone.
Technical Details
The Stalker NPC is a special and challenging feature that guided our development throughout the entire process. The NPC AI script and mesh we were able to implement had some restrictions on the types of terrain and walls it could handle. These restrictions had notable effects on everything from level design to modeling.
The player's time-slowing magic is another unique feature that ended up being implemented very differently than our team originally intended. We learned very quickly that changing Timescale has many unintended effects on Unity physics, and had to redesign our implementation.
Names of team members
Evelyn Munoz - Game Designer
Garrison Hair - Game Designer
Mikhail Pisarev - Game Designer
Riley Sizemore – Game Designer
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Comments
This is a very polished action-adventure game.
Pros:
- Great atmosphere, due in large part to the music and level design.
- Awesome level design.
- Excellent feedback on all actions and happenings.
- Artstyle was compelling.
- Interesting mechanical depth (especially lockpicking).
Cons:
- Lockpicking minigame was slightly too difficult.
- Enemy AI was esoteric and nonthreatening
- Repeated use of the same horse whinny sound effects became grating.
Extremely well done, this game fits every single criteria in the rating system and handled extremely well. There were some slight issues I had with lack of feedback when lockpicking, but beyond that I would say this game is a very serviceable alpha build for a serious project. Awesome work!
Wow. WOW! This is probably, in my opinion, the best of all the games submitted. Every mechanic worked as intended, and the graphics and sound work together to make a wonderfully impressive tone (even if it was a bit much for me, being the wimp I am XD). The gameplay worked pretty well too, although I do have a few minor complaints. For one, the sheer amount of gold scattered about was somewhat frustrating as you naturally have a desire to pick it all up, but doing so is tedious. More importantly, the lockpicking minigame does not seem well designed for keyboard. The limited precision and lack of tactile feedback make it feel more like luck than skill. For another thing, the stalker NPC could still use some work. The fact that its sound effects aren't actually tied to the model quickly results in them going from tense to frustrating, as they serve essentially no function other than letting you know that you're in an area that it could reach you. In addition, on at least one occasion while not tracking the player, the NPC ran itself straight into the wall and proceeded to get itself stuck. Finally, the fact that a section that required time slowing magic was located in an area that didn't seem to have a mana recharge orb was frustrating.
This game was very well made. I loved the graphics and atmosphere of the game and how the visuals and audio worked together to make a very nice atmosphere to play in. The time slow mechanic was a very clever edition. The one thing I didn't like that much in the game was the lock picking. I found the lock picking to be somewhat difficult with not many indicators to help you succeed opening the door.
Outstanding work! The lockpicking system you used is copyrighted though. Also unlocking the doors on the chessboard feels unfairly hard.
I really loved this game! The visuals and audio all fit together really nicely and I enjoyed almost all of the mechanics! I mostly had fun finding glitches, the pause menu kinda breaks a lot of interactions, but made for some fun tech. I liked that the game invited you to explore and solve puzzles, my only complaint is the lockpicking system. Even after I understood the mechanics, it still felt kind of annoying to do in my opinion. Otherwise, great game would love to see an expanded version!
This was a really really good little game!!
Stylistically I think it worked very well. The level was intuitive and I could feel myself memorizing where certain areas were and what was behind specific doors. Also very cool that there were multiple floors. I liked that all of the tutorial and control text was in the game and easy to see. The slides after entering the gold room and the ending menu were really well done, and I liked that you could donate the coins to charity!
I think all the items in the game were put to good use, potions for health hand orbs for mana. The lockpick pickups came in clutch. And it was nice that the player had to go search for a key to end the game. On the topic of lockpicks it was fun that the system was similar to Bethesda's system for lockpicking in their Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, it felt very intuitive once you realize how it worked. The horse was a fair challenge I feel. There were some good spots to tuck in to avoid it and it never felt too punishing, and I'm happy there were checkpoints.
The overall level of polish was very good. It was nice that ever action and item had sounds, even footsteps! The particle effects, resource gathering, traps, etc. were all implemented without any major bugs. Aside from the occasional glitch with the mouse and player camera.
Overall it's a very well made game with simple but effective gameplay and mechanics, easy to understand direction, and a very good atmosphere. I loved it a lot, this game could even very easily be expanded upon to add even more areas, items, and enemies I think! Would be a very fun time! (bonus points if the knight moved in an L shape like in chess)
Great work all around! The art style, movement controls, and diverse gameplay made this a really impressive and fun experience. The time-slowing mechanic was really creative and fun. I loved the idea of the lock picking; however, I struggled to get it to work. Some guidance on that could be useful for future players. Regardless, super polished and well-done.
This game was very well designed. The art style, background noise, and sound effects all worked together to make the perfect atmosphere. I really enjoyed the player controls; the slowing down time was especially clever. I really liked the instructions as presented as one goes through the game. It didn't feel obtrusive, and it didn't break the atmosphere. However, I could not get a hang of the lock picking mechanic. There were no instructions, and I could not get it to work at all. I think some instructions for the first time could be helpful; I'm sure the mechanic is useable with more knowledge. Overall, this game was great!
I really liked the visuals on this game. The textures work well together, and it creates an atmosphere perfect for this type of game. It gives a really good not quite horror, but definitely nerve-wracking vibe. The sound design definitely contributed to this, with the horse noises happening periodically especially. I never fully understood the keypicking mechanic, despite successfully doing it multiple times, but besides that the gameplay was mostly very smooth and engaging. Great game!
i like the overall aesthetic and feel you gave to this game, for some reason i was quite nervous playing despite it not really being a horror game! i thought the magic dynamic was really interesting and the sound effects for everything fit nicely! however i did not get to any ending as i couldn't figure out the lock picks for the life of me, a lot of that was just me i think LOL but a little guide on how to do them might have helped a bit! all in all nice work!
fun game! The hourse scared the dickens out of me. the lock picking mechanic while fun did feel tedious.
Really well done, great atmosphere sound design and visuals. You can tell that there was care put into making this game. I applaud you! The lockpicking mechanic was some what tedious, just required a lot of trial and error and back tracking to get more lock picks. Other than that I would say I would totally revisit this in the future with some updates. Great job!
This game was fun! It explained all the mechanics well so I had a good idea of what was going on and how to move forward in the dungeon. The only part I was confused on was the lockpicking but otherwise it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the game a lot.
I love how complete this game feels overall. The sound design is especially well done and provided clear audio feedback for everything going on. I did have some trouble with the lockpicking mechanic, but I still appreciate its inclusion. Great work!
I really enjoyed the game and thought it was much more polished compared to other games, the tutorial section at the beginning was very helpful. The lock picking mechanic felt unintuitive, but not bad at all. The atmosphere was really cool.
Great game with a great environment. I got jump scared by the roaming knight a couple of times, and the atmosphere of the game felt great. I am a big fan of the lockpicking mechanic once I got used to it, but it was definitely hard to understand at first. Even after figuring it out, it was frustrating sometimes to not be able to get the exact angle while losing lockpicks doing it. I also felt like the time-slowing and mana mechanics were a little out of place as it wasn't necessary to the majority of gameplay and wasn't part of the main gameplay loop.
Honestly, this game was real unique compared to the other games I have played so far which is why I like it a good amount. I thought the instructions on the game were cool and allowed you to firsthand experience how each control worked. Additionally, the graphics were unique, and fit the look of graphics in a treasure hunter game. The music also made the game mysterious which I thought was cool. I have two things I personally would attempt to fix with this game... 1) I would try and make the lock-picking less "picky". At times, it took me SO MANY attempts to pick the lock, and when I would finally pick it, I could've sworn I had already tried that before. 2) I didn't think it was a glitch until I looked in the comments and saw someone else had the same issue, but there would be times where I would turn too far without even trying to turn that far. It's not the biggest deal, it just made gameplay a bit wacky at times. Overall, the game was real well put together! Good job!
Although the game's atmosphere and overall gameplay was unique, the reward does not really feel accomplishing. It felt more like an adventure mixed with puzzle and not much action. But overall, great job making everything work cohesively, I am very impressed.
The game was really well polished and fun to play. I didn't spot any bugs while playing, although there was some wierdness where when I would turn, I would often find that I had over-turned by about 180 degrees (skill issue?). I didn't end up using the time slowdown at all, but that's just because I'm the GOAT gamer lol. Honestly, the game kind of reminded me of It Follows with the horse always on your tail. Great job!