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ShockBoy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #17 | 3.767 | 3.767 |
| Theme interpretation | #22 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Overall | #23 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Innovation | #32 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Audio | #81 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Graphics | #110 | 3.433 | 3.433 |
Ranked from 30 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/vczoni/game-off-2025
Game description
A platformer where you generate shockwaves to break and push blocks to solve puzzles and advance levels.
Theme interpretation
The player generates ShockWAVES to solve problems and interact with the levels.
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Comments
Super cool entry! The movement and mechanics feel absolutely spot on, and the puzzles are super fun and creative too! Job really well done!
Thanks a lot! Movement was actually inspired on Celeste's (only the very basic movements, ofc). I think I should've spared a little more time for the level designing because it was much harder than I anticipated, but Im glad you liked it =).
Great entry! I loved the jump arc. It feels perfect. The involuntary ground pound mechanic is pretty unique as a main mechanic, it was very well done!
The puzzles are really cool. You're incentivized to break glass boxes just for the fact that you don't know if there are any stars in there. I found myself trying to clear all boxes just to be sure I didn't miss something.
Loved it!
I hope you didnt get too frustrated trying to get a specific star over and over again. Balancing this kind of thing properly when designing the levels was a tough task 😅. Thank you so much for the kind words!
I really loved your interpretation of the theme here. The gameplay loop feels solid, and the mechanics were taught excellently in the intro sections so it was very easy to understand what I needed to do right away.
I did get more than a little frustrated by the fourth level, but mostly in a good way that kept me trying. The only real friction point for me was the delay after the character lands. On levels starting with a fall, waiting for the drop and the landing animation to finish before I could move felt a bit slow on restarts. The jumps also seemed to require a touch too much precision, though I admit I can probably chalk that up to my own lack of skill. Overall, this is a really solid entry with a great core loop. Nice work!
I'm so glad you liked it! Really means a lot. I actually meant to make a hard game but this is like my first game ever (I did already participate in other 2 jams but I was basically carried by more experienced devs and didnt do much so this is why I wanted to go solo and with more time for this one) and I discovered a lot of things in the process, and one of them is that level designing is VERY HARD. I started actually creating the levels on the last week of the jam and it definitely wasnt enough time, specially for this kind of game, with sort of elaborate puzzles and mechanics. So this is why some levels are a mess and the difficulty curve is not very well balanced. Also I got complaints about the poor implementation of coyote time, which, if improved, clearly would make the game maybe a little less difficult but certainly less annoying to navigate through levels. Thanks for the feedback!
so many things to love here, but ngl got a bit frustrated in the 4th room on how to pick up the star under the right set of boxes and not get locked out of the other part of the level. i went on to play more but this kinda hurt my narcissistic player side which doesn't understand what did wrong yet failed. otherwise this game legit has some potential to get developed further it's engaging, very nice physics based puzzle mechanics and animation
Thank you so much!! I have to admit I got overly cruel with the collectibles because they ended up becoming totally optional (in the sense that they dont unlock anything) and I wanted to instigate players to explore as much as they could if they wanted all stars... The problem was that I didnt realize it might be too annoying and maybe not worth it but this is a hard thing to measure. Anyway, I hope that didnt hurt so much of the experience 😅.
It was pretty fun, you handled the theme well. It looks like a simple game, but you made it into something entertaining. The fact that the guy has no arms is very original.
It was pretty fun, you handled the theme well. It looks like a simple game, but you made it into something entertaining. The fact that the guy has no arms is very original.
Thank you!! I made it with no arms because the concept sketch I made to figure out the mechanic was like this, with just the bare minimum, and it looked kinda funny and oddly captivating to me so I went with it (and it was easier to animate too XD)
Yes, I loved it — it added a goofy vibe to the style.
The game is super easy to get into and play and the puzzles are really neat! Great game :)
Thank you for playing!!
It's a charming puzzle platformer. It's a solid game and I had fun playing it. My only complaint is that the controls are a little bit unforgiving. The timing of some jumps feels too tight. I did notice the coyote time, but it didn't feel long enough. I also couldn't make some jumps without having it use the coyote time.
Thank you! Yes, I went a little overboard with the jumps... Its interesting that I didnt see how annoyingly hard some of them were, and I think that's because while developing it I knew exactly how everything works and what is possible, and on top of that I was constantly replaying everything and becoming like an "expert jumper" so I was clearing those gaps easily and thought therefore they must've been easy... but obviously players would have a different perspective and those jumps would seem impossible, so that was sort of a beginners mistake on my part.
This is a really fun puzzle game! I love the minimalist art style, and you have great animations and visual effects for pretty much every action the player can take. Your in game tutorial is awesome, and I had a blast trying to get the optional stars!
A few pieces of feedback: I think the tutorial room teaching you the shockwave could be worded a little differently. I thought the message about shockwaves being created when you fall 2x your jump height meant that when you land, you can then jump 2x as high. I spent a while in that room trying to get the high jump to work before realizing that's not what it meant.
You've got great juice when it comes to art and sound, but this game is BEGGING for a pinch of screen shake when you cause a shockwave to really sell the effect.
I think this jump in particular is really tough, especially if you miss it you probably need to restart the level. You do seem to have some coyote time and jump input buffering, but they act either inconsistently or don't behave how I would expect. An adjustment to the coyote time should solve this jump issue.
Excellent job!
Thank you for the through analysis and kind words! First of all, I have to say YES camera shake WAS in the to-do-list since the beginning and it got postponed over and over again until it was too late 😅. I probably still had time to implement it at the very end of the jam but the game ended up not having any sort of camera control and I didnt want to touch anything that close to the deadline.
The tutorial room felt "good enough" but I actually didn't like it... It has too much information written without being absolutely clear about how things work, and it can even create confusion such as that one that happened to you (and now that I think of it, it really is confusing because the image of the player jumping at 2x jump high is of him going back, like why?). Maybe I should have made it go slower, making the first levels with just the falling mechanic and then having players figure out that jumping would help too (because its kinda obvious and now I kinda hate that I didnt do it that way lol). Also I could've used the blocks to communicate those heights (basically 2 blocks = 1 jump and 4 blocks = shockwave high)... the point is it needed more care.
About coyote, yes it has some sloppy "coyote mechanics" but only for jumping and yes this is the biggest complaint players justifiably had. For such an important feature for a platformer, it kinda sucks that I overlooked it, but that's ok, I'm pretty inexperienced after all. Its amazing how much I'm learning in this whole jam experience and this is why those comments mean so much to me. So thanks again!
Really amazing entry, the mechanic was super easy to learn thanks to the visuals at the start. The puzzles were fun and never too hard, though I do have to go back and get all the stars since I only find 15/20. Really loved how you gave the player the ability to destroy the grey blocks at the end, I especially liked how the final level connected back to the level from earlier (I was stumped for a bit lol). All I would say is that the cyote time needs to be adjusted to be more lenient (if there is any cyote time implemented). Good job!
Thank you so much! Yeah I think the lack of coyote is making things not necessarily harder, just more annoying. This game isnt supposed to be about precision, only puzzle solving (and a bit of block physics chaos) so I should've been more careful with that. The game does have some sort of coyote "time" but only for jumping... I think I was shortsighted by a specific play style during development and I didnt even realize I overlooked this issue. Anyway thank you again for playing and for the insightful comments =)
The art reminds me of line rider hahah I liked it.
The level design is really good, these puzzles seriously made me think. I stopped with the blue gravity/warp level due more to time constraints than anything. But yeah, have to congratulate you on the level design because I think it's very well done. I agree with what others had said a few jumps were annoying / too hard. The puzzle itself was enough in some levels, I think the game wouldn't have lost anything if a few jumps were easier hahah.
Overall great job
Thank you very much! Yes the main takeaway of the feedback Im getting is how the jump strictness is hurting the fun. After the jam is over I'll adjust that and see how much it would improve the overall experience just by making it less annoyingly punitive 😅.
The animation is very cool, reminds me of newgrounds stick games from back in the day.
The platform physics needs some work, some very tight jumps feel borderline unfair and punishing because the game is lacking coyote time and ledge grabbing mechanics.
I love the interpretation of the theme, very unique idea and well executed as a puzzle mechanic.
Well done.
Thanks a lot for trying the game and I really appreciate the criticism! I think the art of the game communicates a more casual vibe and the difficulty curve ended up being too steep too abruptly, so all of a sudden players have insanely hard jumps to make and puzzles to solve and it may feel out-of-tune with the aesthetics. So maybe the bigger problem was handling that progression better... Its interesting to see how players are reacting to this issue and it really shows how important playtesting is (because I had no playtesting and it shows 😅.. I feared the game would be too easy).
I wasn't sure what to expect coming into this game, but I was really impressed with what I got :) The art scratches the Fancy Pants itch, and I had a great time throwing myself at all the levels trying to work out how to get every star (which I can proudly say I did succeed at- 20/20 stars)
The level design was fantastic, I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. Solutions that felt incorrect ended up being paths to stars, and the whole ending sequence was a really cool shift and level callback- I wish it went for longer! I'll admit that I spent way too long on that star in the middle of lv6 before eventually working out how to get it- that bit was cool, albeit a little frustrating lol. I was considering saying that the inherent chance-ness of the physics was a negative- but the more I read about the game, the more I can see that it was probably intended, and to that end I don't consider it a bad thing. Lv4 seems like the only time that's a valid criticism, really, but given it's only one level that was probably thought of too.
You've already had people mention the music not looping, so I'll try to come up with other points! I think there could be a bit more guidance on where the missing stars are, maybe a little icon in the level select to indicate all the stars for a particular level have been found. I think that should be the extent of hints for the stars, though >:) The blue pulsating effect in the anti-gravity areas also looks really out-of-place, and broke the visual theme in the levels it was used in. Was it meant to be a watercolour-type effect? If it was, potentially lightening it and filling the whole anti-gravity area could make it feel more like a texture than a strange effect. Otherwise, I'm not really sure how to interpret what it was supposed to be, but that could very well be a me problem!
The whole game felt like a cool comic you'd see drawn by a kid (aside from the level design, I don't think kids are well-versed enough in puzzles)- and I really loved it! Again, terrific level design, love the art, overall really awesome game :)))
Thank you so much for the kind words and through analysis, you made a lot of great points and it really helps a lot since I'm actually trying to start pursuing a career in game designing. Also its amazing that you could get all 20 stars! I meant to be kind of cruel with the stars but at the same time not penalizing those who didn't get all of them with some kind of reward other than the satisfaction of seen that 20/20 on screen.
I have to tell, I struggled a lot with the behavior of the blocks, trying to figure out how to make them more predictable but I ended up testing them with physics and it felt right, I thought it was cooler that way... but the downside was that designing the levels was waay harder because of that (of course the core mechanic of the game was already making level designing challenging), and, as I already mentioned, I have basically no experience with this, and this is why we have LVL4 for instance... its a failed level idea that I turned into something more "sandboxy" that will reward (with stars) players who wanted to play with that stack of blocks, but essentially you can just go through the level. I also had problems with "ghost collisions" for blocks sliding in some levels (specially LVL6, which I just wasn't able to fix the problem and its so annoying because it happens like 10% of the time and it kills me), so handling those blocks was an ordeal an took more time than I anticipated.
About the art for the anti-gravity area, its same with most problems the game has: I don't know what I'm doing 😅. I wanted to somehow communicate that it was a "magnetic" area with shaders and I couldn't spend a lot of time on that so I ended up asking AI to help me with this and the result was that thing and I didn't like it but I had to keep working on a lot of other stuff so... there's that... but I agree its out of sync with the rest of the art and theme and its good to point this out.
I wasn't sure about the stars either, but the difficulty has honestly grown on me :) I'm a massive fan of difficult games outside of jams, and the lack of workarounds for finding the stars feels very Getting Over It! It's refreshing to have no shortcuts for a jam game like this.
I don't blame you for struggling with the block behaviour, it's a big dilemma to have 😔 I think they turned out really nicely though, I forgot to mention in my original comment but the little physics interaction at the start of LV7 really hammered that home for me. For someone with little design experience you managed the physics extremely well!
I found exactly what you were talking about in LV6 too while I was trying to get down that bottom area early- trying to push the grey boxes across the gap to push the ones on the other side, etc etc, I did notice the physics being a bit inconsistent there. It didn't really matter in the end since I didn't need to be doing what I was doing, but I did see what you're mentioning!
Magnetic effect makes sense for the anti-gravity, I do see what you were going for :)) Jam time restrictions strike again 💔
I LOVE IT! This might be controversial, but I had way more fun than playing Portal. I cannot believe you made it in just 30 days. Gosh, thank you for teaching me that puzzle games can be this fun!
The only thing I'd point out is to let me see at which level I missed that one star🥺
That's a 30/30 and a follow! I want to play your future game
Ah, I forgot, at some point, the music behaved weirdly (changed or smth), and then it disappeared for good
Thank you so much for the kind words! I agree I was too cruel with the collectible's secretiveness, but it was more of a deadline problem.. ended up not having time to improve some of those "quality of life" issues. Still I'm so glad you could get almost all stars and reach to the end!
So.. the problem with the audio is that I don't know what I'm doing 😅. The main music was already poorly handled (and you can actually see the messy code that does that on github, but please dont 😂) and I wanted to create some kind of tension when you get the power-up so I faded-out the music and played the other when you get the power-up.
But I couldn't loop that second music properly so I just let it end and hoped players would finish the game by the time the music finished playing... I'm very new to game designing but I didn't realize handling the Audio would be that hard... I have a LOT to learn =)
I absolutely love the animation and the game mechanic is very creative!
The movement feels a bit too weighty imo. I spent more time struggling with some jumps more than figuring out the puzzle. A tad bit more height on the jump would be nice for some leniency.
Really appreciate the feedback! I'm getting complaints about the difficulty of moving around and I think what happened was that I played so much trying to get the feel that I wanted for the movement and then the sizes and distances that I ended up becoming "too good" at the game so I thought some jumps were too easy to make and I feared everything would become too easy to do, puzzle solutions too easy to spot, etc... So I ended up overshooting with the difficulty and actually made both moving around AND solving the puzzles way too hard XD. This might be the most important lesson I learned making and sharing this game! So again thanks for sharing your thoughts, it helps a lot!
Np! Glad you enjoy making games.
I actually liked that the puzzles were connected with the coordination challenge. I could only suggest a bit more control when in the air
Outstanding choice of art style, and great communication for the controls / objectives. Jumped around too much just to enjoy the smooth animations!
Thank you so much! I had a lot of fun toying with animations since the design of all objects were so simple.
This was a fun game
Cool game! The early level design taught the mechanics really well. I think it would have been nice if the controls were a little less strict. Great job!
Fantastic animations I love the way the little guy runs. The wave land and the kneel and waves all look really clean and really pleasant. I appreciate those little touches. It's a hard game, I made it legit to level 6 then checked through the rest. The blue jump is cool and I like the music change. The puzzles are pretty complicated and the mechanics punish missing really hard and the jumps are pretty precise. But I think people who are better at platformers could probably handle it. I liked the whoomph sound a lot and the music was pleasant and energizing. A couple times it was hard to tell where the ending was like the door didn't show up. The running mechanics feel nice and clean. Really nice polished little platformer.
Thanks a lot! I appreciate the compliments on the animations because I have almost no experience with it (hence the black & white stickman design choice) but I had a ton of fun playing with those in krita! I reckon the difficulty curve is way steeper than it should be and the problem with not knowing where to go is probably just bad design but I think is mainly because of how I failed exporting the project with the right fixed viewport (worked the way I wanted in Chrome but not in Firefox...) and there are a lot of areas on screen that should be hidden beyond the viewport's margins if you play on full screen and I think this alone hurt the game more that I thought it would and its kind of a bummer... idk if I can try fixing that now
Oooh I see yea sometimes I lost the square shape (level 7 especially) due to the view port on chrome now that I zoom it in and out I can see. I was able to guess on most levels so it's not exactly game breaking but it did mean on a couple levels I was like 'I assume it's the hole and not one of the corners'. Also forgot to mention the purple shadow with the fall is also really snazzy and idle animations rock, you almost never see idles in game jams so dig that.
I should also mention I'm pretty bad at platformers so some of my issues might have been there.
This was really a great game. Nice platformer puzzle with an interesting interpretation of the theme. The only think I have is that you should definetly add a coyote jump. Just to make it easier, because the game itself is hard. Bravo, great submission.