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A jam submission

NovaView game page

Shoot, grab and throw in this physics based first-person metroidvania
Submitted by Sl1ngShot
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Nova's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Enjoyment#423.0953.095
Relevance to the theme#443.3813.381
Execution#642.7142.714
Overall#672.8292.829
Metroidvania#842.5712.571
Sensory#862.3812.381

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme interpretation and application
The game uses simple box models as building blocks for everything. Additionally it has very minimalist UI, with all information being conveyed within the game world (energy, health, what can be interacted with)

Team/Developer
Sl1ngShot

Reference info
sl1ngshot

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Cool little game. I like the visual minimalism and the ragdolling enemies add a lot of dynamism. The telekinesis power is very fun to use and being able to pick up weapons with it is a nice touch. Spamming LMB is tiring and I wish the trigger for enemy respawns wasn't sometimes just at the entrance of a room as I was sometimes accidentally tripping them when moving into cover. The weapon sounds need to be mixed lower and moving on ramps seems to be very slow.

Submitted(+1)

Great entry! I enjoyed it about 85%, there were some really frustrating parts due to entering a room, all the enemies spawning in, then backing up a little to take cover but they’d despawn, then they all spawn in again. Initially I didn’t realize that what was happening, and when I did, I just had to charge through. Echoing other comments, I had to turn the audio way down since the gunfire was so loud.

It was cool picking up other weapons but it would be nice if, when out of ammo, they went away so I didn’t keep picking up a dud.

I think a little bit of texture would have been nice, with flat colored blocks and very little lighting, it was sometimes hard to parse the scene.

Definitely curious what this would look like with more time.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback, happy you enjoyed it despite some of the flaws.

I didn't realize the way respawning works would cause big issues because I always pushed forward in combat. My son also played in a similar fashion. The importance of playtesting with other people :)

I didn't want to have the weapons simply despawn (ironic since I did it for enemies without batting an eye lash). The plan was for weapons to have a green/red light indicator similar to the triggers to show if the weapon has ammo, but never managed to implement it.

Good call on the texture. I'm terrible at art. I experimented with some noise textures generated inside Godot but because I had scaled meshes all over the place while building the level it looked worse than just a flat color.

I'm pretty happy with how the game turned out despite all the issues but I don't plan doing any more 3D games in the near future :)

Submitted(+1)

scaled meshes all over the place

Glossing over a lot of details, under the UV1 section is the Triplanar checkbox, which automaps the uv. If you’re using CSG or scale the basic mesh objects themselves, aka not using the scale property, it’ll all match scale-wise. With some shader code it can be made to be worldspace.

always pushed forward Since the respawns were quick, and health regen’ed quickly, it set things up for me to try being super aggressive, so definitely a success.

HostSubmitted(+1)

Had to play this game for username reasons!

Brutal and packed with action, loved the experience. Being able to pick up basically anything with telekinesis was super immersive and thoughtful. My biggest gripe is the mixing of all the audio all together, and no automatic shooting (having to spam left mouse button is something in a shooting game). Apart from that, it's an awesome game and I fully enjoyed it.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing it and I'm really glad you enjoyed it! I wasn't sure how to implement the shooting for non-auto weapons. For the pistol I wanted to shoot almost as fast as the player can pull the trigger but not be too OP by shooting full auto.

Submitted(+1)

I like the presentation choice of making everything into texture-less blocks, and keeping the UI other than subtitles diegetic, it reads cleanly. Telekinesis felt like a decent natural extension of the base controls, though its naturalistic function overlaps a bit with the gunplay, fun with the rag dolls! The audio is welcome, if mixed rather loud, particularly for the gun. 

That's unfortunately as far as I could get with it, I just cannot play shooters well enough to get by the combat rooms. Metroidvanias can have the advantage of allowing for multiple ways to tackle a challenge, and leaning into that could've helped me out personally, though it's harder to pull off in a jam. I do understand that shooter literacy for the average gamer is decently high though, so it might not be too bad to lean on. 

Developer

Now that is an excellent point I didn't really think about. Initially this was supposed to be a slower paced shooter taking place in a network of metros (literally inspired by the Metro series). It was supposed to feature more puzzles and the ability to use stealth. However I didn't manage to get the AI to feel right and was running out of time, so decided to lean into the telekinesys as a combat tool.

I have a gif on the Discord server where I first showcased the TK ability and you can see both the player and enemies move much slower, there's weapon ADS, crouching and a much smaller jump height.

Anyway, I'm glad you did find it fun even if you're not into shooters. And thank you for the geniune feedback.

Submitted(+1)

I liked this the gun animations was good as well as the selection of sounds were also good they just need to be lower the difficulty was fun for me but it sometimes got hectic overall good job

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback, glad you liked it. And sorry for the high sound volume. Really should have added a setting for that :)

Submitted(+1)

I liked the mechanic of being able to pick up enemy weapons, and I think it worked well diegetically :)

I think my two main points about the game are:

- Because it uses primitive blocks, it ends up being difficult to understand the depth of the scenery when some blocks overlap in the view and there isn't a nearby light source.

- The number of enemies, as they respawn in large quantities, makes some rooms difficult to navigate.

I really liked how simple and visually appealing the shooting mechanic is.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad you liked it.

I am terrible at art of any kind, 2D or 3D. I did not know how to make it look good so it ended up like that :(. I tried playing with light a bit, but could not get much better and was running out of time.

Enemies spawning in large quantities is actually trying to cover up the fact that they...erm...suck :). Also, it gives player the opportunity to really flex TK. Combined with the fact that enemies die at the slightest touch of a body or box, you can really mop the floor with them by grabbing bodies and tossing them into groups.

But I do agree, better balancing and fixing some of the bugs would have made it a much better experience and wouldn't need to abuse the spawn rates.

Submitted(+1)

My thoughts while playing the game:

  • kinda loud, the shots are much louder than the other sounds making it hard to find a good volume and no options in game to balance volume, had to use the volume mixer
  • movement is very linear, maybe adding some quick acceleration and decceleration to the player would make it feel better? Or it maybe is based in something else
  • enemies shoot from farther than they can reach? and just keep there shooting? or they have bad aim? seems like they have bad accuracy at range
  • you are not zeroing the vertical velocity when on ground, so the ramps bug when you fall and try to climb then, you need to if is_on_floor(): velocity.y = 0.0
  • the enemies reseting when you change zones is kinda abrupt, the disapear when you change zones, and their position in the second area is in your face so the reaction is to find cover and then you leave their zone and they disapear, you need to eat some bullets and run somewhere with cover or you can just sit there and shoot back
  • the stakes are very low on combat, a single enemy barely deals damage to counter the regen, and the precision on all weapons is low so sometimes they deal no damage, sometimes they deal a lot of damage, same for the player weapon sometimes I have to shoot 3 times just to hit when the cursor is center of mass
  • the ragdoll is nice
  • enemies sometimes just die? they can shoot each other? seems so. I feel they sometimes just die, maybe they are pushing the blocks and taking damage from that?
  • the other weapons don't feel worth using? shotgun has short range and slow velocity and the smg has terrible accuracy, headshoting with the pistol feels like the best option?
  • the telecnisis push is not aiming at the cursor, neither are the shots, but the cube not overlaping the aim reticule any time is more noticible, feels like the best strategy with the cube is to hold it then dash over then it seems to block bullets and still does damage while being held, it seems to have a short throw range
  • they seem to die on the corpse of their friends, and this seems to be the best strategy
  • the third room (the one with 3 servers) is a infinite spawn room? I was just killing them and letting them die on the pile of corpses when there as an explosion a ton appeared and the game lagged hard
Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for all the feedback!

- you are correct about the movement, it is instantaneous. I was concerned about floaty movement so didn't add any acceleration or deceleration, but in retrospect I agree with you, it would have made it feel better. As for the ramp bug, I honestly didn't know how to fix it, so I just left it in and hoped players will just jump. Thank you for telling me how to fix it, much appreciated!

- enemies will try to get within a minimum range that helps with the effectiveness of their weapon. they also try to back away if you get too close to them, and they chase you if they can't see you.  However, because of a bug enemies will fire at you if they see you even if they are way outside the effective range of their weapon.

- enemies will trip and fall sometimes when hitting their dead buddies or boxes. The velocity threshold is very low because the velocity calculations on impact seem to be buggy, with velocity being much smaller than expected. Plus my son found it hilarious when enemies would trip and fall on their face, so I left it in :)

- the hit detection is...funky, and this leads to a handful of issues you mentioned. When you shoot at enemies or they shoot at you, if the weapon is hit no damage is passed to the holder. I probably could have addressed that but ran out of time and I was already in physics layers hell so it ended up like this. You can see that when damage is dealt (either to you or enemies), red particles are spawned, otherwise they're white.

- the room you mentioned and the room you get TK from are infinite respawn rooms, with enemies coming out until you do the objective for that room. The pile thing you mentioned can happen if you kill enemies inside the tiny rooms where they respawn. Whenever an enemy dies, a new enemy spawns. Now, if an enemy is dead exactly where another one spawns, what happens is for one frame you'll have: enemy spawns -> touches another body -> dies -> new enemy spawns -> touches body -> dies. This happens until the physics engine gives up and kills all rigidbodies. I assume you saw eventually all bodies dissapear and the game is back to normal framerate.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)
  • I think both the enemies and the hit detection would fell better if you reduced the random spread pattern of the guns, and made the gun shoot at the crosshair (a quick way is to have a raycast coming straight out of the center of the camera, that colides with the enviroment and the enemies, and make the bullets shoot in the direction of the raycast collision when there is one
  • for the particles I honestly didn't notice then, the enemies die when you headshot them right? I felt I was just either missing or headshoting. I don't know if you intended to make the weapons block the projectiles, but you could make them be in different collision layers (okay I'm glad I decompiled your project, I was going to tell you something you already did) you could make the mask of your projectile raycast not hit objects, if you want to keep the cube behaviour just give guns another layer
  • after seeing the insides of your project, it's very tidy, very expandable and easy to read, but may I suggest writing more gloobligook for your next jam so that you have more time to work on the game feel
  • about the movent, have you tried adding acceleration to the start of the movement but making the stop insta? One other thing you can add is making your gravity stronger when the character is going down, it adds weight to the jump
  • I died before the engine cleaned up all the bodies, so I did not see that
Developer

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to look at my project, and even decompiling it.

- there's a reason why guns shoot from the firepoint at their tip. Initially I had ADS implemented, so if you wanted to hit more or less where you aimed (minus the weapon spread) you had to aim down sight. After playtesting I didn't feel that would fit with the fast paced gameplay. There's a reason Doom doesn't have ADS, right? :).

- headshots kill the enemy, but also if you aim down low in the legs area. You saw the code, there's no damage difference on where you shoot them. The reason body shots take more is purely because you're hitting their weapon. Getting the layers right is what I failed. You'll notice that for example the weapon layer collides with the player, but the player doesn't collide with the weapon. This also applies to boxes and ragdolls. This is to prevent those from becoming effectively walls for the player. Using a rigidbody and forces to move the player would have circumvented these problems, and would have made the character movement feel more natural.

I don't usually make 3D games. This was my second time doing it with Godot (technically third, but one of them was a 2.5D game). I did not enjoy the process. Nothing wrong with Godot, I just realized I don't like making 3D games :).

Submitted(+1)

I think Doom doesn't fire from the tip of the weapon, I think they shoot from the center of the screen, so you don't need ADS because you are "always ADS"


Your guns are not aiming at the same spot the cursor is. You need to dinamicaly find the intersection of the center of screen line and the enviroment is to point the gun that way.

theoretically (given that your guns are not parallel to the camera direction) the bullet and the cursor should be pretty similar in very long distances, but as you added spread to the guns shooting from far away makes it impossible to hit. And them shooting from close up there is this noticible inaccuracy to the guns


Yeah making 3D games is a beast in itself, we worked for some months in a multiplayer FPS, but ended scrapping the project as it was too much

Developer(+1)

Oh sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant Doom doesn't have ADS because it would slow down the pace of the game. You are correct, the raycast goes from screen center.

I tried doing a multiplayer FPS many years ago in Unity. Shooting was actually better in that one but never quite managed to get the netcode right and eventually dropped it. A video relic of it exists on youtube

Submitted(+1)

The telekinesis was hand-down the best part of this game. Grabbing a box and hurling it at enemies that transitioned into ragdolls felt really good. It reminded me of Control, which is a great reference.

However, I encountered what looked like quite a few bugs. One of the more visible issue was enemies spawning and despawning right in front of me, apparently based on my position. I guess they're tied to the current room or a trigger, but that led to an impermanence that was very disorienting. But the more frustrating bug was that hits didn't seem to always register. Sometimes I would kill bad guys in a few shots and other times it took forever and I couldn't tell why. The reverse was also true, where I could stay immobile in the middle of a room and not lose health when shot. It all felt very inconsistent, which was very frustrating because there's a *lot* of enemies, with a lot of reinforcements, and they start shooting the second you're in the same room. It also happened that at one point I hid in a closet where enemies respawned right in my back. A few more checkpoints would have helped!

The visuals are okay, though I wish there was more feedback when you hit enemies. I liked that I could grab corpses and weapons to throw them at my foes. I had to lower the sound volume a lot because the first gunshot almost deafened me.  I appreciated the diegetic UI, that's a nice touch! Also the mission briefing as I progressed through the game.

With those quirks ironed out, this game could turn into a really nice Control-like! ;)

Developer

Thank you so much for playing the game and for the very detailed feedback!

The hit registration bug is caused by the fact that you're hitting the enemy weapon instead of their body. This also applies when they shoot at you and will hit your weapon or the object you're carrying if you have telekinesis. Whenever a damageable part is hit you'll see red particles on impact. Otherwise the particles are white.

The enemies spawn and despawn based on the area. For example, when you enter the building with telekinesis upgrade, enemies on the top floor spawn. When you get close to the floor below, where the upgrade is, the enemies on the top floor despawn and the ones below spawn. Unfortunately it's not a great system. If you push forward doom-style, you won't notice it most of the time. But if you play more defensively and fall back it becomes visible.

I'm glad you liked the telekinesis ability, it is the core of the gameplay. I wish I had gotten to do more with it, but it is what it is.

Submitted(+1)

It was a fun game to play but the light-effects when anyone was shooting as well as the sound felt was a bit too intense. 

Cool game though

Developer

Thank you for playing it and for the feedback. The effects being over the top was on purpose, but based on feedback it seems I went too far :).

Submitted(+1)

this game is very cool! if it was polish more like the other said about it this could be my favourite game to play haha

Developer

Thank you, glad you liked it. And yeah, it didn't help I procrastinated for most of the jam period, hence the lack of polish

Submitted

The sound mix was very off and it threw off a lot of the enjoyment,  also visually the bullets take up so much of the screen and hitboxes feel clunky. That being said, it is an interesting concept that could be expanded upon further in many interesting ways. I agree with LowQualityRobin's take on telekenesis. 

Developer

Thank you for playing the game and the constructive feedback. 

I agree, the mixing is very off. The hitboxes are indeed problematic. A lot of it comes from me layering the weapons incorrectly so when you shoot/throw at an enemy, if it hits their weapon no damage is passed to them.

The bullets taking a lot of screenspace visually was a design choice along with over-the-top shaking. I guess it didn't work as well as I hoped :)

Submitted(+1)

This is a really cool idea that I feel like you could get a lot out of.

I feel like the current implementation of telekinesis is a great start, but there's probably more you could do to make it flow really well with the rest of the game's mechanics. For example since the guns have limited ammo it could be cool if they were thrown like any other physics object instead of just dropped. They could also shatter on impact so the player doesn't mistake them for loaded guns. You could also pick up live enemies and have them shoot wildly as they try to break free.

The game has a few rough edges that I'm sure you're already aware of. But the most pressing I can think of are that the shooting sound is way too loud, enemies do too much damage, and there's no ammo display on guns.

However this is still a really solid foundation and an incredible mechanic to build a game off of.

(also the ragdoll physics are amazing)

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback. I was planning on adding a red/green light on weapons to show if they still have ammo but it slipped through the cracks of last-minute scramble to get everything wrapped up :(

I love your ideas of grabbing enemies while they're still alive as well as throwing weapons and have them shatter. 

The enemies doing too much damage is an interesting one. I spent quite a bit of time trying to balance damage, number of enemies and heal rate. I guess what I didn't account for was that as I was playtesting, I got better at the game. I was going to add a difficulty setting in the menu but that also ended up on the cutting floor.

Enemies are quite inaccurate at long range. In close quarters try to use dash and duck in and out of cover. Also once you unlock telekinesis boxes and other enemies can shield you from some damage

Submitted(+1)

pretty fun, it reminds me of the old Y8 games, maybe the SFX were too loud and the enemies shoot a lot at the start, that could be more progressive, but good game

Developer

Thank you for the feedback. You are right, the enemies can be really aggressive. Dashing and taking cover can mitigate some of that, as health slowly regenerates.

Submitted(+1)

im not referring to the damage from enemies, but to the visual aspect of suddenly starting to receive those bursts of gunfire, like is a lot of light in the screen

Developer(+1)

Oh, now I got it. Yeah, it can be a bit much when there are lots of them shooting at the same time.