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Char The Gelava's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sensory | #18 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Enjoyment | #19 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Execution | #36 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Overall | #44 | 3.178 | 3.178 |
| Metroidvania | #56 | 3.222 | 3.222 |
| Relevance to the theme | #98 | 2.222 | 2.222 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme interpretation and application
Im using 3D LowPoly and a pixel art aesthetic for the game visuals, It´s a very simple interpretation I had for the Jam theme, but honestly I just love low-poly so much.
Team/Developer
Julián Carrillo Vargas (Tcrakman). I commisioned music from Kyle Misko & Blas David Castañeda a while back for another project which takes place in the same universe the Jam game takes place in.
Reference info
julian.c.v@hotmail.com BLUESKY:https://bsky.app/profile/scylorg.bsky.social
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Comments
Tight 3D platformer with trippy visuals and fun movement. I loved zooming around, sniping enemies with jump-shoot, and juggling spider bots. Flying eyes weren’t too much of a problem for me thanks to the one-shot projectile, but those spongy heads were a bit of a nuisance. On the other hand, you can avoid them. Great game.
I loved the artsyle so much! To be honest I thought it was too detailed to fit the theme but definitely keep it haha. Really enjoyed this though, just wish there was more. Cool abilities for sure. The projectile felt a little jank at first since it wasn't always going where I was aimed, but then I realized that you just have to jump. Personally, I would change it so it always goes where you're aimed! The slam ability feels a little stiff, I'm not sure how to explain it. The eyeball enemies felt a little unfair, I understand its intention but It's practically an instakill if you can't kill it or move away in time (and those areas they were in are very wide open) Overall, good work!
Good work! The controls feel solid, and the audiovisual feedback is nice. I especially enjoyed the progression mechanic of shooting objects to unlock new areas and bouncing around with the bounce attack. Projectile enemies like the eye enemy and the final boss that shoots fireballs felt very punishing. A lot of times, I died without being able to dodge out of the way. More telegraphing or slower projectiles would make the difficulty feel fairer. With a bit more animation polish and adjusting the combat difficulty, this could be even more engaging!
First, I will say i stopped after the 20th time getting blasted by a laser until I'm dead cause I got hit once and knocked back, but I'm getting a sense I'm not as good as other players or maybe I rushed sorry. But I can tell there is something cool here. I like the designs for the enemies and scene elements, tho the BRIGHT red kinda hurts to look at, but I really like this MC. This little lizard gremlin thing. LOOK AT UM GO THEY ARE FEROCIOUS GET OUT OF THE WAY, lol. Its a fun design. the air slice is cool but also fills your screen with that blue effect, maybe could be toned down. visibility is an issue as others have said, especially with the cyclone shot thing. BUT the platforming via the slice, that felt cool to complete. If I had more time I'd like to play it more, but I'll wait to see if you make any improvements!
Pretty neat game! I don’t really know what a Gelava is, but Char is a very cute one. The movement feels fun, I like the kind of flow you get into, although as others have pointed out, it is a bit exploitably powerful.
The models look really nice, although I think the style doesn’t always match. The character models look polished, but the environmental textures are really low res, it stood out how stretched they were.
I didn’t really love the ranged attack. It was hard to aim because there’s no reticle, plus your target is directly behind your character. I wish the camera was a bit higher so I could see where I was aiming. What’s more, the ranged attack is really powerful. It’s extremely safe, and extremely boring, to just snipe all the enemies from a distance, which is way easier than actually engaging with them. Generally you should try to avoid giving the player the option to “optimize the fun out of the game”.
The platforming sections were fun though, I enjoyed getting to the health pickup at the start of the game, and generally zooming around doing constant flips was a fun way to backtrack. I enjoyed the bounce as well, particularly the little height puzzle at the end. I’m not sure if it needed an energy system though, since every area for the rest of the game where you will use it has energy pads everywhere, so it seems a bit pointless.
The final boss was a bit janky, he oneshot me several times, but once I got on his head I could just mash the hell out of my attack and he went down very easily, so it’s a bit too swingy of a fight for my tastes.
Overall, despite my gripes, I had a good time with this game, you definitely got the movement sauce down, which is important for a game like this. Nice work!
Great demo. I enjoyed it a lot. I love the visuals. Great character and generally effective animation.
I do think the ranged enemies are a bit tough. The movement supports bullet helly gameplay well. It might just be that the game is too short to build up that skill enough in players.
There are a few minor issues that you already know about probably. The spammable air attack trivializes the combat. Spamming roll and attack on the ground breaks the character controller sometimes. You can respawn inside the moving pillars in the central column area. Not really a problem since you have save load. The boss is a bit rough and very exploitable.
First off, I want to commend the visuals of this game. It looks fantastic ! I love the color palette, the pixelated textures and the low poly look of the world. Fantastic job on that front ! The vfx and feedback for combat also looks great !
Unfortunately, I feel like combat is very much dragging down the game. In particular, the flying enemies are quite frustrating for reasons already listed in other comments. They got me to drop the game.
Movement is mostly solid. Though, I feel like the character's jump is too high and the roll is broken (you can spam it in the air forever to essentially glide). I would investigate way to design more interesting platforming challenges. The one at the start for the health upgrade is interesting, but it feels like a late game challenge rather than one you would do at the start of the game. In general, the difficulty curve need another pass on the project.
There's potential here and I hope you keep working on it ! These visuals really sell the world and its vibe !
Pretty fun game! Loved the movement and the art style. The character movement and combat abilities are very cool. I felt that the melee enemies are too weak while the flying ranged enemies are too strong. O loved when the platform in the middle of the map goes up showing a new area. But i was not able to explore beyong that because there are a swarm of flying enemies that become a bullet hell. I triend multiple times to pass through them but my character always dies too fast and is almost impossible to dodge all the projectiles. I would reduce the amont of flying shooting enemies and make their bullets a little slower, so it is possible to dodge them. I also would tweak the firing hate of them.
I also would be very happy if you can rate my game too, i am looking for more ratings before the JAM ends.
Thanks a lot for the feedback! Overall yes I´ll be weaking the enemies difficulty and firing rate of the flying ones!
Of course, I´ll be rating your game today too!
Nice art style! The models and animations are great, the combat feels good and I always love this crunchy pixel-art-on-low-poly-3D style.
Gameplay-wise, my experience was a bit on the rough side. I've encountered a few bugs like the mouse not being captured in the window anymore when returning from the pause menu. It made the game basically unplayable (very limited control of the camera, super easy to lose focus, etc) but thankfully it fixed itself after dying. But it was a recurring issue because I had to tweak the mouse sensitivity multiple times to get it right. I wish the game had gamepad support! Another bug was the cyclone ability getting stuck if you take a hit during the charge. You can also spam the air attack + dash to basically fly and I'm not sure if I sequence breaked the game by doing exactly that to reach the cyclone powerup...? If it was the intended solution, I feel it wasn't telegraphed enough.
The fly enemies with their projectiles were rough and I kept dying to them on the second floor. Getting hit in the air felt excessively punishing. That's when I called it quit. It's a bit of a shame because I loved the environments and was interested to see more of them. Lot of potential once the rough parts are sanded-out! Good job ;)
Thanks a lot for playing and for your feedback!
About the mouse not being captured after pressing pause (or returning), I found the same issue a while back, but it only triggered when pressed ESC to return to the game from the pause menu, if you press ENTER instead, it should be normal again, weird bug indeed, I´ll be checking that along the cyclone & roll + air attack spam flying.
The flying enemies seem to be the least liked part in the demo, they attack too much indeed (need to tweak their firing speed) & they can stunlock you in the air! (a thing I ABSOLUTELY will fix). The player Character (Char), mostly being a melee-based character, I think I could explore more options for him for these ranged encounters. Perhaps a type of blaster or cannon that can aim freely & fire multiple shots, although I still want to encourage the player to get close and personal with enemies.
Giving my idea for this world is that it takes place in a sci-fi environment where advanced weaponry, such as lasers and explosions, has an advantage over the more robust tools the character tribe uses (swords, lances, or even bows), I think exploring with the gameplay & tools available for the player is the way to go from now on. (of course, I´ll not be updating the game now, only after the Jam voting ends)
Thanks again!
The game looks really good and the character feels great to move around and play with!
Some of the enemy encounters could have been a little bit better, especially as they can combo you really fast, so I ended up rushing past them mostly, but enemies themselves were pretty good too!
I think the only real issues is that it's pretty linear (I like the idea of having a big vertical room as a hub, but you end up going through it in one way), and it doesn't really fit the theme super well. You said you applicated the theme through the art style, but despite being low poly and pixel art, it is very busy looking (which is not a flaw! I like it!, just doesn't fit the theme in that way).
Thanks for playing!
Agree about the encounters, some of them could use better placement and a bit more polishing. Also yeah haha the progression is kind of linear,(with just one extra path you can take for an extra item).
I also think I went overboard with the designs so some of them have too much detail, could use polish there and subtlety as well in that area.
Overall thanks a lot for your feedback!