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The Freedom Machine's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of the Limitation | #16 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Overall | #22 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Presentation | #24 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
| Enjoyment | #25 | 3.222 | 3.222 |
| Concept | #38 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team members
Only me
Software used
Engine: Godot; Music: FL Studio; Sounds: FL Studio, Bfxr; Graphics: Paint.NET
Use of the limitation
You have a FINITE amount of energy that gives you a FINITE amount of freedom
Cookies eaten
Honestly, don't remember but ate some
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Comments
Pretty fun. Could see it becoming a roguelite with some additional mechanics to expand the gameplay. Music, art, and gameplay work well together.
Game gets pretty easy quickly if you know which upgrades to prioritize and can get boring after you get the walking and standing upgrades.
Good entry. Good length of gameplay.
The plan was that once walking gets easy, the player would unlock an attack ability that also consumed energy, and further regions would have enemies, but I didn't have time to add that that
For your second pixel art project with this game, it’s spectacular. A little confusing at first, but once you start to understand it, it begins to take shape. Great job! 👏
Thanks!
I liked this one a lot! The artstyle definitely fits the somewhat somber theme the game has and the same can be said about the music.
However, I did notice that the player character's sprite stands above the roof of the cabin below the starting point when walking over it, but stands below the roof of the one above the starting point. And I also kept wondering if I was somehow able to interact with the machines scattered around the map, as some of them glow while others don't, but wasn't able to. It might be just that I missed something that allows that.
Thanks! I'm aware of the roof bug, I just put it on the wrong layer in the rush to finish the game. Same goes for those machines/statues. I felt the grass area was a bit empty, so about an hour before the deadline I made two sprites. One that glows and one that doesn't and just made the game pick a random one at the start for some visual variety. I can totally see how it might come across as something you should be able to interact with though.
I really enjoyed this. One thing that I'm not sure about is the music. It's good, but I feel like something more somber or mysterious would fit better.
Thanks, gald you enjoyed it! Yeah I get it, that makes sense. I made the music pretty early on when I was still planning to include combat, but I didn't have time to implement that, nor did I have time to compose new music, so I just left it there as I decided it would be better than dead silence
I like the atmosphere, very mysterious,
I was a bit confused at the start, but after figuring out the gameplay, it feels fitting. You wouldn't get a tutorial if you woke up as the guy, eh?
As far as the visuals go, I enjoyed the spritework, the "runes" on the player character fading with decreasing power. I would recommend adding a drop shadow for the player and z-sorting for things like the plants.
Thanks! Yeah, that feeling of being lost at the start was kinda intended. I'm glad you liked the spritework because that was the second time ever I made pixel art, so I was afraid it wouldn't look good. It took me like almost the first 3 days of the jam to design and animate the player character so I didn't have much time to do the rest of the game (and skipped a lot of the ideas I had for it). As for the drop shadow and z-sorting, I just didn't have time. I added drop shadows to a few objects as a last minute change, but forgot to do it for the player and z-sorting in Godot sometimes works how it wants (especially when you're rushing to finish the project 🤣), so instead of fighting it I just left it on objects that worked and disabled it on others and just focused on more important things
I enjoyed playing it, but I think that the game needs to have a bit more explanation as to how the mechanics work, other than that, was fun!
Thanks! i could've probably explained stuff a bit more, but the feeling of being lost at the start was kinda intended, so that the player feels confused and helpless just as the main character in the game would be in such situation. For example one thing I actually wanted to add was a popup that would show up after picking up the wrench and would tell you that you can use it to upgrade the machine, but I thought that the player will have to quickly return to the machine and will notice the upgrade button anyway, so I scrapped that. I had some other ideas for a kind of "tutorial", but I didn't add them because I either didn't have time to implement them, or thought that they would break the immersion and atmosphere, or both
I had fun playing it and I like the approach to the jam's limitation, the music is great but when playing I really was hoping to get some lore in the houses or something.
Thanks! I did consider adding some lore and even some NPCs you could talk to, but there were some problems with that. The first was that I planned the game to be a kind of roguelike with permadeath, so adding NPCs wouldn't make much sense, they'd forget you after each death (unless death was something connected with the story like in Hades). Another issue is that I don't think the gameplay fits telling lore that way, as you have very little time you can spend detached from the machine. I could've put some lore without dialogue, using environmental storytelling, however there was another, probably the most important problem: I really wanted to, but just didn't have time for it lol
So probably the only things that could be considered to have any "lore" are the endings