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Cecilia Immergreen and the Clockwork Nexus's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1 | 4.400 | 4.400 |
| Gameplay | #1 | 4.852 | 4.852 |
| Theme | #2 | 4.444 | 4.444 |
| Ambience | #2 | 4.593 | 4.593 |
| Innovation | #8 | 4.185 | 4.185 |
| References / Humor | #14 | 3.926 | 3.926 |
Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
The game is incredibly polished and well done. My build is unkillable and I can keep picking up items without a worry. A point of improvement would be to add an interact key when close to the items. I was touching items and not picking them up at the beginning.
How does this game run on my Casual Linux laptop by not my dedicated gaming PC? Oh well, i'll get bck you you when i've plated the game
EDT: OKay, played the game. Got too cokey and lost a 20+Min run due to not paying attention to time. Ironicly the winnign run right after that Showered me in revival items, its like the game knew
honsetly i don't know what to say about this one. In my experience throughout these jams, every once in a while you find a game that's a real Gem thoughout the Jam entries. Like, one that makes you think "This was made in two weeks?!" I belive this is one of those this gems. That being said i do earnestly love the flavor of game jams bring, Its fun seeing peoples learning process and what they come up with and make in time alloted, and honestly if they make something nice that's just a nice bonus! (Least that's what i tell myself). Yet this is so polished it makes me look forward to what the team comes up with next.
Wait, am i going to have to say this for every game i find like that? Oh hell with it i'll think of a short version. Either way, good job, honestly one of the best games i played this jam!
If your dedicated gaming PC is a Windows PC, there was an issue with the version of GameMaker Studio I used IIRC that would just make certain versions of Windows run any GameMaker game really slowly ^^;; otherwise I'm not certain, I included the low VFX option to hopefully help with any potential lag.
My Gaming PC is also Linux (got scared of the dangerous updates lol) And i built it for games. yet for some reason it couldn't run it. Like, not run slow, just not at all. but my Laptop (also Linux) Ran it just fine. Oh well. Either way, updated my review and played it. Oh crud i played it for an hour.. welp. What do? It was fun what can say?
This is fantastic! I had a skill issue, so only got to stage 2 after half an hour, but I'm definitely going back to play more.
The gameplay is very polished, the art, sound effects and BGM are amazing, I would have a hard time to believe it took 2 weeks to make if I didn't see the process.
Love it!
This is an extremely polished game for a game jam. It took a little bit to understand what I was supposed to be doing and that I can hold down left click instead of constantly clicking. Outside of a game jam, if you're going to work on this more, there's some feedback that I have for improving this to be even more solid:
- The spin move is probably too strong as it is right now due to the low cooldown. I think increasing the time it takes before you can do it would make it more strategic on when to use it.
- Enemy projectiles are pretty hard to dodge up close. I think the speed of the projectile is fine, but maybe have a slight delay before it fires where it tracks where the player was when it's about to fire. In this way, if you're circle strafing and hitting them, you won't get hit, but if you don't move, you will.
- Speaking of enemies, more enemy types would definitely help.
- The input is a bit inconsistent for the menu. I was pressing Esc to try to back out, but that didn't work. Pressing Enter didn't select the menu choice, but I think it worked somewhere else.
- For balance, the first 2 levels felt about right with just enough tension with how much time you should spend on items vs the time remaining to get out. The problem is after getting enough items and with the enemies spawning, there's no longer any risk of losing time later on. Since this is following the Risk of Rain approach, you can copy what they did with every level you advance also increases the cost for the items. In this way, you can still get a ton of extra time to work with, but items will also begin taking a larger chunk of that time and will still retain some of the tension in the first levels on whether to buy items or leave.
- Definitely include a gallery for found items. I wanted to read the descriptions outside of the hectic gameplay.
Really good job with this!
Amazing. That was extremely well polished, a lot of fun, and looked great! I loved all the references with all the items, and I had a lot of fun. And using time as your currency is such a cool idea, it works out so well here.
I was going to just make one or two quick attempts, and then write this because I knew I could spend a long time playing to find the God Run where I make all the stupid choices but get away with it... But then I got the God Run and spent almost half an hour on that run.
I would 100% play a full version of this, it was a lot of fun, and I could get lost for hours.
Also, just a funny interaction, it was hilarious to activate a blood altar to get more time, only for Gigi's tail to go defend me and sic a Grem on it for me. lol
Wow lol. Extremely well polished, gameplay is spot on and addictive, BGM is banger, concept of using time as a currency is really clever and fits the theme to a tee, great looking artwork and pixel art, juicy visual effects, I'd be surprised if this gets anything lower than top 3 in this jam honestly.
This is such an incredible achievement! Thank you for making this!
This game was peak. That's all I feel the need to say.
I can't believe this was made in 2 weeks, it's so polished! The unique items were all super cool and I loved seeing all the little references, I think my fav item was the Travel Pouch or Sheet Music.
Struggling through and finally beating Immerred was so satisfying, it was a tough fight! I just made it with 3 phoenix feathers and less than 10 secs on the clock... I finished on Stage 5, Difficulty 21 and 48 items.
Some small improvements could be made but most of the comments have mentioned them already.
Maybe you could add an Item index in the menu that shows items as you collect them? Idk how programming works so if that's really hard don't worry, it's not a game issue at all! I just want to read the item descriptions and look at the cool art closer without fighting a hundred Otomos at the same time.
This is such an awesome game, I will definitely be playing it again! Plus I still think there are some items I didn't get (^-^).
Banger music from the get go to get the player excited! I like it!
Clean art and fun gameplay!
I ended up playing a lot longer than I planned because I didn't notice there was a "fight the boss here" teleport option until I accidentally stepped on it due to the extremely fast move speed I had obtained at that point.
Unfortunately, due to this, my experience with the "final boss" was quite underwhelming since I cleared the fight in around 5 seconds.
I plan to play the game again and go into the fight much earlier. XD
Some improvement suggestions:
- The default window scale being 6 was a bit too large. At 4 it fit comfortably in my monitor. It's possible the game calculated the scale based on the screen width but since I use an ultrawide monitor (3440x1440) it probably missed that the aspect ratio is not 16:9 and went a bit too high.
- I was going to say the game needs difficulty balancing based on my experience, buuuuut I just read the other comments and turns out my experience is FAR from the intended game experience.
- The "fight immerred here" gear needs some kind of hint that shows up if the player hasn't interacted with it after a number of stages. I swear I just thought it was some background prop and never would've approached it if it wasn't for CC overshooting the "next level" interactable due to the absurdly high move speed.
- Actually, I still think the game needs balancing if you're going to let the player go beyond stage 10. The player becomes an unkillable god by stage 16 or so. I was starting to get bored at that point and thinking the game would end by stage 20 so I just kept going. By stage 22 I noticed I only needed to keep the attack button pressed and everything in the room would die in 1 or 2 seconds. My goal changed from survival to finding the exit as soon as possible and then collecting all the powerups I could find before the countdown finished.
Great game!
Thank you for playing! The game does automatically scale to your monitor upon opening and sets its max off your width, so that was an oversight on my part.
I do have some loop-based balancing ideas since I do enjoy offering it still for the post jam, and I'll definitely try to make the Immerred gear a lot more apparent ;;
My favorite gameplay this game so far, full stop. I think this is already worth a play, but I would love to see it worked on post-jam. There's a lot of potential here. Few things I'd mention
The main menu probably needs support for Enter as OK, or a visual showing *what* interact is. I spent a minute fumbling about trying to figure out what button OK was.
Balance was pretty whack, but most other comments have already mentioned it. Time is insanely powerful as a resource and so is the Tougher Times equivalent.
All in all though, call me.
It's peak... I kneel. It's very polished, the visuals are very pretty, the juice is there and the game feels good to play! I had a lot of fun!
So, I think my biggest complaint against this game is that the way to face off against the final boss wasn't clear enough. I was at stage 9 and difficulty 40 when I realized it was there, so I finished the game at a time of 29minutes, 37 seconds, with 138 items. This wasn't even that much of a problem since I'd only somewhat gotten bored, but it meant that when I did face the boss my hp never got a dent even when I just stood there doing nothing.
That said, I think this is the game entry I'd most like to see go somewhere after the jam so far (for context, I've got 19 entries left to try). However, I think the balance needs a lot of work. The game was hardest right at the start, mainly because of needing to find ways to gain more time before the enemies started spawning enough. After 2 stages I didn't need to care anymore and after 3 stages I stopped caring much about hp either.
Still, most of the elements are beyond what is typical of a jam. The only other thing that bugged me was the ranged attacks being a little too hard to dodge at the beginning of the game. I would've preferred they speed up later.
Thank you for playing! I definitely struggled balancing Stage 1 the most throughout development. It's hard to find a sweet spot of letting the player gain enough time to loot things quickly versus overwhelming with enemies-- and of course, having later stages increase the amount of enemies spawn to add to the difficulty, and such like that. Things like the Smokey shrines and AO-Chan are there to help mitigate that and make Stage 1 go a little faster, and a typical run should end on Stage 3 (Immerred being Stage 4), so the balance is designed around that. Looping is mainly for fun or if you feel your build isn't quite where you want it at to fight Immerred.
I do plan on a small content update post-jam just to add in the remaining enemies I wanted to during the Jam but didn't have time for, as well as some touchups to Immerred's stage and some more room prefabs.
This is outstanding Ikana, everything looks so polished and well made for a jam submission!
It really feels like a great blend of what makes breaking roguelikes fun, while still weaving in the theme perfectly, between the core gameplay loop and the majority of the items.
You've got a looping-eqsue system to get more powerful before taking on Immerred, and she's got a varied and deep move set and multiple phases? you did a fantastic job of taking all the mechanics that work from other roguelikes and blending them in here.
Its so crazy that you managed to get all this together, working, cohesive, and feeling good to play in two weeks' time. I know for a fact that Cece would have a blast playing this (here's hoping she does)!
You deserve top marks for this one, excellent work!
Dude this is insane! I still haven't figured out how to clear the level but EVERYTHING's so clean! My biggest claps of applause for ya!👏🏼👏🏼
Thank you for playing! I'm not sure if you mean just leaving a stage or simply winning a run, but if it's about leaving a stage, the exit always spawns along the edge of a map! Look for a big gear in the center of a room, you can tell if an adjacent room is gonna be that one if it's got glowing panels on both sides of it and along the floor.
This left me astounded! The gameplay, the polish, and I love both the pixel art and title illustrations! This is amazing!
I am shocked at the quality in this one, had a ton of fun playing through it a few times, the balancing is definitely in the player's favour but in a fun way, especially with the time increasing items, very satisfying popping the spinning attack and just seeing the time rise super high! Very polished and very good looking too!
Amazing game, really shows how much love was put into this! Beautiful art, juicy animations, awesome music and sound effects! The fast-paced gameplay loop is really fun, especially when you get those first items that get you through the bottleneck in the first stage. A very satisfying progression system of risk vs reward as you sacrifice time to search for items. Incredible amount of polish! A total miracle of a project.
I'm in shock this was made in two weeks, outstanding work!
That was really fun! Tried to speedrun it but it's very hard lol
I'm glad you had fun!!! My advice for speedrunning would be to locate the Distortion Gear first and foremost, then try to do some quick looting in the adjacent rooms before starting it up. Items are luck based, of course, but if you manage to get both an Immerbook and then either a Captured Kronie or Gilded Glasses, you might actually be able to just loot *during* the Time Crunch and immediately leave.
Very fun game. Good job