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Cecilia's rescue mission's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #32 | 3.245 | 3.318 |
| Ambience | #33 | 3.556 | 3.636 |
| Overall | #47 | 2.970 | 3.036 |
| References / Humor | #50 | 2.979 | 3.045 |
| Innovation | #53 | 2.756 | 2.818 |
| Theme | #86 | 2.312 | 2.364 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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The cutscenes in a game jam were really nice, that was super cool to see. I’m not a Soulslike player so my experience was probably hindered by that but the game seemed quite faithful and was cool to play.
In the second part, I got pretty lost while also struggling with the platforming a bit, everything being dark made it hard to tell where I was supposed to go. It didn’t help that the roll seemed bugged and half the time it would launch me in a different direction than the one I was holding, flinging me off the building and making me redo all the platforming if I considered using it. I was using controller if keyboard doesn’t have that issue.
The boss fight I knew would be hard, but I had no idea how the mechanics of the big otomo attacks functioned and it wasn’t super obvious when the boss was taking damage, so I didn’t know how to handle the fight during the several attempts I tried before I gave up and had to move on.
Great work overall though, would love to see it improved more!
Thanks for playing. Dodge is bugged on controller. I forgot to implement it properly. Sorry for that.
No worries I understand, explains a lot but that’s just how bugs are. Congrats on the finished jam!
A little rough and unoptimized but the framework is excellent. The cutscenes really make the atmosphere.
I think my only major complaint would be the battle feedback, or lack thereof, from certain attacks. For example, during the boss fight, I found it really weird that I would just get randomly damaged if I attacked while the boss was doing the 'retreat' animation; she doesn't counter, but I would get knocked down if I struck during this state. Also, there's some of the Otomo attacks that deal damage but there's no Ceci "stun" state, so I couldn't tell WHEN the damage is active. It took me a good while to figure out what part of their attacks do damage.
With that said, I am loving the idea of a Cecilia souls-like. A full blown game of this would be fantastic.
Thank you for playing. Most optimization issues should be caused by mist. What graphic settings you used?
In the boss fight there is wave attack. When Immerred says "For Justice" she activates red wave from Big Otomo. I failed to sync VFX and collision so mby you were hit by it. About stun animation there is one but you can cancel it if you spam block. It's a bug that I didn't fix.
That was a bug? I remember overusing that during the rooftop mobs lol.
I was playing with Low settings at 1080p the whole time (High was unplayable). It was actually running pretty good up until the last stretch before the boss. I think it was so many otomos and big crystals visible in a straight line. It affected the boss fight quite a bit too. It was still pretty playable, but definitely slower than the rest of the game up to that point. So I think just general instancing optimizations or LOD issue. No big deal really, my 'work' computer really isn't very strong for gaming.
Unfortunately had a rougher experience from low fps in the more open areas, and took a while to figure out patters from the VFX, but really really enjoyed the pacing of final fight having to consider my positioning and camera to also account for the assist attacks as an added dimension to just mechanically getting good at parrying.
Thank you for playing. Sorry for performance issues. Glad you liked the boss. I certainly messed up with VFX sync. But lesson learned.
I LOVED the graphics. The art direction is great and overall is a pretty good experience.
For me, without any experience playing this type of game with keyboard/mouse and with no controller available, it was a little too difficult and got stuck on the second level.
I liked how in that level you got to the enemies when you failed the platforming, that's some good level design ^_^
I can't stress enough how much I liked the art direction of the game, keep it up!
Thank you for playing. In development I tested the game only with keyboard and mouse, so this is a viable option. I added controller support only in last minute. Tip for completion you can run throw all maps to level end trigger ignoring all enemies, except level 3 because there is boss in the end. But you still can run to the boss to trigger checkpoint. Then die to reset enemies and fight with a boss normally.
Thanks for the tips!!
That's actually how I cleared the first level :D
Thing is.... I'm pretty bad with keyboard/mouse (REALLY BAD) so I couldn't clear the second level, sorry for the skill issue....
Wow, very cool 3d animated cut-scenes and combat! It does take me a bit to get the hang of it but its enjoyable, reminded me V.A. Proxy with high mobility and parry-gameplay! Nice that you add red crystal to help with the navigation but feel like the final level could use some extra props to block out the player path.
The boss is a bit tricky at time, mainly its me not being sure which is her attack and which is just her wind-up/flair. Another nit-pick is the enemy placements are a bit means at time, in group of 3 to 5.
Still, great game, awesome work!
Thank you for playing. I am glad you liked it. Enemy placements should be also indicator not go that way and try to find better way or try to perform sneak kills. For last level I cut a LOT of assets to reduce game size. It looks very much not as intended, lol.
Really cool animated cutscenes!
The combat is also nice! My favorite movement is the dash/roll.
It was a bit hard to measure the landing spot after a jump. Some paths required kinda precise platforming which was a problem when I kept falling a narrow path and pummeled by projectiles. XD
Spent a good chunk of time lost in level 2 because I kept thinking the goal was to climb the tall tower.
I've never played Sekiro, but I watched IRyS play it so the battle UI looked familiar.
Gave the boss fight about 5 tries before giving up.
I managed to knock her down once but as the fight progressed it was hard to also avoid the energy blasts coming from behind.
The sound cue and animation for the wave was a good sign for me to jump to avoid the incoming wave, but I couldn't figure out the telegraph for the laser. Maybe I was too focused spamming attacks on the boss.
Some improvement suggestions:
- Enemy projectiles should hit the level geometry but they pass through. And apparently they don't fade away or they have extremely long range.
- Enemies should lose aggro when you're far.
- Got lost in the second level. There should be a goal marker, so that the player knows which way to go.
- Needs at least a small text tutorial in game to explain the combat mechanics for the boss fight.
Cool game, team!
Thank for playing.
In all levels I tried to make the goal just to go forward and a little bit of red crystals to help navigate.
Since you are not supposed to skip enemies being bombarded with projectiles is sort of punishment. And I thought it's kinda funny)
For the boss 5 tries is not many. You did great. Trying to dodge wave and beam is a mistake but it is possible. Everything parryable and blockable so when you hear the sound cue when Immerred says something just block and you will be safe.
Fun fact you can't jump over the wave... So maybe it was a little misleading.
Thank for feedback. I agree with it. But not enemies losing aggro and projectiles became sort of punishment for aggro the enemies and not killing them. so it became intended, lol.
Really fun Sekiro like! That being said Sekiro is mostly hard because of the jank and this is like a 10x jankier version of it so yeah for the people who haven't played Sekiro before and gotten used to it this game is probably unplayable lol. But I beat it and had fun, it really gives me the classic Fromsoft vibes, from having 0 clue as to WTF is going on in the plot to serial running-past-enemies syndrome. But to me that's just the charm of these games, and I had fun.
Thanks for playing. Correlation between jank and difficulty in Sekiro is a unique take, I would say) But it certainly not helps. I think nobody understood story with my approach, lol. But everything make total sense, I swear.
Holy crap did you mocap the cutscenes? Extremely impressive for 2 weeks work. I know its meant to be a homage to Sekiro, but I'm getting alot more of Nier Automata vibes from this. (the map, enemies attack pattern, Jane Automata with bobhair etc etc).
Animation, effects, cutscenes, all the work done in this entry feels more like a promising early access commercial game than a gamejam submission.
I wish I could understand more on how the combat actually works. I kinda just button-mashed through the game, and was punished during the boss fight (kept getting plummeted by the laser)
Would really love to see more of this getting fleshed out. Thank you for making this!
Thank you for playing. We did mocap for almost all cutscenes that involved Ceci (except last one). For mocap thx to Dhavatar. I have an idea on sort of continue this game. But first I want finish my project about Biboo. Then BIG maybe I'll have enough strength to do Justice vs Advent.
The animations and cinematics are fantastic for a game jam, and the combat was really satisfying. I really enjoyed it! I ended up skipping past most of the otomos, which made my first crack at the final boss quite a challenge having a dozen otomos firing at me from afar mid-fight.
I do wish the hits had a bit more impact and range, I was always colliding with what I was hitting to make sure I hit, and especially with the boss I was never quite sure if I was doing damage unless I was paying attention to the health bar.
Thank you for playing. It's ok that you pass Otomos (most people do, me included). I do have a problem to make hits more satisfying.
Nice action game—the animations really pulled me into the story and were truly impressive.
It was really fun to play, and it took me a while to take down the final boss. I could see many elements inspired by Sekiro, though I felt a bit disappointed when I realized that the enemy minions mainly added toughness without providing much benefit.
Thank you for creating such a great game! :D
Thank you for playing! Unfortunately, I had no time to create any reward structure for defeating enemies.
I really want to like this submission more than I do, but I think this is an example of seeing a mechanic that works, and trying to replicate it without understanding why it works at the minute level
This clearly takes inspiration from Sekiro, and I think that's great. I love Sekiro. But the combat system in Sekiro works because it's built as a back and forth. I think this clearly shows in the ImmerRed fight. She doesn't function like the mechanics of the game would intend her to - she does what she wants, when she wants, with no hit feedback, and its not a duel, like Sekiro's boss fights. She has strings that feel nearly un-counterable, and no startup on some combos, so the combat boils down to you standing still and waiting for a string to parry, then intermittently pressing r1 so she doesn't catch you in the middle of a combo and melt your health, then rinse and repeat until she's dead. And she can still deal damage to you even when you parry since her moves have so many active frames. But you can't stick to that anyways because she'll just randomly start backing off or running around you, maybe the AI could be adjusted so she stands her ground a little more often and attacks the player. The active frames on the attacks and her passivity are probably my two biggest gripes.
I think managing the Otomo in the back is an interesting concept, but can quickly fall apart. The laser isn't bad mostly since you can parry it, but the shockwave can be atrocious since you can't always see it coming, and the effect will desync. And it can proc after respawning, hitting you while restarting the fight and putting you at an immediate disadvantage.
Apologies if I sound a little harsh, but since the combat supposed to be the main draw of this submission, and it really only works well on the regular enemies, and not the boss fight, I wanted to go in depth on where it felt like it could be improved to work better in that regard.
The levels themselves were alright - I wasn't expecting such a big map, but I felt there were too many enemies that it slows the pace down to crawl if you try to fight them one by one. I stealth killed some of them, but I ended up running past most of them in the second area, but they track you forever and their projectiles pass through structures, so running through that second part of the level, I was quite literally playing a bullet hell. Part of that is my fault, for not fighting them and killing them, but putting nearly 10 enemies on a single section rooftop is a bit excessive, when combat is supposed to focus around 1 or 2 enemies at most.
Atmosphere and ambience wise, I think its perfect. I really like the cutscenes, they're a nice touch of flair to a game jam submission and they're very well animated. having Cece's entire stream room modeled caught me by surprise, and the settings for the levels all make sense and fit with her too.
Couple bugs that I think I was running into: I think you can animation cancel with blocking? I would get knocked down and block and it would immediately get me back up as a result. Honestly a pretty useful tech, but I doubt it's intended. And swapping the target you were locked onto with the D-Pad was not working, maybe that was just for me, but I wasn't able to juggle between two enemies standing next to each out, I had to manually unlock and lock back on again to get it to adjust.
I think this has some solid foundation, and I love to see a souls inspired game, and it makes sense that you would pick Cece and one of the games she's well known for playing, but I definitely think it would have benefitted more to take the time to research the combat system that you were trying to emulate, and expanding on it specifically first, then making the boss fight tailored to it, then moving to the sections of the gameplay with just Otomos. Overall though, good work from the team, would be awesome to see some post jam support on this one!
Thank you for playing and for so detailed review.
About the boss. I understand what you are talking about, mostly. I would say that Sekiro bosses also ignore your attacks, and do whatever they want most of the time. It feels better in Sekiro cuz there is "fixed" distance between you and the boss, that when you got hit you get pushed on length for next boss hit and when you hit boss get pushed. This aspect I completely forgot and, to be honest, had no time to focus. Another mistake that I made enemy parry drop your stamina bar very fast. You can't really adapt to it. And attack animations that I have very fast, almost without a build up. Unfortunately, I don't have skill and tech to make unique animations that will be more suitable for this kinda game.
Immerred can't deal damage to you when you parry her tho. When she hit you, doesn't matter if you block/dodge/parry/received it this attack sequence goes into timeout until animation reaches a frame where this resets. You can argue that resets happened very often but you are 100% can parry all the attacks.
I 100% failed with Otomo wave attack. I didn't manage to sync VFX and collision. It can be parried tho. I thought that sound cue when Immerred says "For Justice" would be enough to parry. It seems music little loud and people just don't notice it.
About level design. In second level particularly I put most work. There several paths to complete this level. Some path include ridiculous amount of enemies but it was done with purpose to show the player don't go that way. It's a bad way. About bullet hell, I decided it's funny if you ignore everybody, so i just left it be :D
Bugs that you mentioned, I tracked them but I was a little bit burned out to fix them in the grace period. My bad. I don't know if I will support game post Jam. I have other long term project that I want to focus more.
And I should have mentioned in my first comment, props for trying to recreate Sekiro's combat from the ground up. To be honest 3D action combat is something I haven't tried myself, mostly due to the issues you clarified above.
It's always been a little daunting for me to try to worry about syncing animations, hitboxes, damage/motion values all in one, so I've never attempted to build any 3D games with combat like that, so I can only be so upset about the issues that I raised in the boss fight, when clearly they're already things you tried to consider.
(And I will admit I definitely did brute force that second level, and barely looked around for other paths, I was actually laughing at all the projectiles myself, when they were flying past me into the skybox)
But thanks for the detailed response, sorry if I came off as a little rude, and good luck on the long term project!
After many restarts I managed to defeat the boss, tho I mostly "cheesed" it with dodging instead of parry as I am really bad with soulslikes :pain:
But overall really impressive game for a jam. I liked fighting otomos. Most I stealth killed from the back, so a little cheezing, but it allowed my skill issue to proceed further. The long range attack was a little pain as I could never predict when that would happen and when they would choose to chase me instead. But that's on my reaction time as well.
Boss was of course hard and that's good. I had a Willem Dafoe Lookup meme on my face when I defeated her first time and she gone to second bar :D
I liked level design a lot, there were multiple paths to try, each had enemies so it felt like a "as designed" route. And it enabled stealth killing otomos. They could have Hearing Signal and Damage Signal plugged in, but that would make it crazy hard for me, so I don't complain.
From a little bit confusing things, at first I misunderstood the green particle effect on parry as form of healing. But I guess it's CCs fault for being green o7
From what I would add is some form of "strong attack", like holding the LMB to charge it but being stunned for the duration (so need to cancel the channel and only after that enable doding etc.)
Thanks for playing. I mean dodge bosses attacks not intended but dodge is there so you used the tool that I gave you, good job. And parry would be less soulslike and dodging is more :)
You probably the first who actually used stealth kills. People usually just run past all enemies, lol. I tried design levels for player to able to sneak through most part. I will tell you secret. Some Otomos have broken AI for some reason so they will never chase you.
I want to add more skills. But there was no time. So no charged attack or some other special skills :(
Tough but fun. Souls games are near to my heart and making a souls-like holo game is definitely on my bucket list so seeing you make one DURING A JAM is very inspiring. Onto the game:
Combat: I think combat as a whole was just missing that feedback of hits. You getting staggered and moved by being struck (I notice you could get knocked over but I'm more referring to normal hits which only had an audio component of feedback). Your hits being able to make an enemy like, wince in pain or get staggered (Edit: Rewatching my recording I actually do somewhat see the otomo wobble a bit when I smack them. Poor things can't bleed or scream ;_;). Looking at sekiro gameplay again, it seems successful parries also push you back a bit so that momentum of strikes is still felt. Once that piece is added to the puzzle I think it'll feel a lot better.
Otomo Mobs: The otomos were a bit tough to take on since their moves had pretty short windups and beating them usually meant trading damage without a way to recover it. True to a souls game, trying to fight multiple at once was rough but in a 1v1 they are ok. I didn't really use the parry mechanics on them, or even spent time taking them all down since there wasn't really an incentive to. But I recognize that's just a limitation of the jam. I noticed in section 3 that if you try to run past them they have seemingly infinite aggro range and will all converge on you during the boss, forcing you to either git gud and once cycle them, or die to reset aggro
Boss: Overall I really enjoyed the final boss. I was a tad confused at first thinking I had to beat the big otomo before facing immerred but once I understood the mechanics and how to properly evade them it was just a matter of understanding immerred's moveset. To be honest, some of those combos were really hard to fully parry. But if I recall correctly thats the same for sekiro. Although I think better telegraphing in the animation could go a long way towards making the parry windows feel natural without having to just memorize it (Or spam parry since theres not really any punishment for it).
Platforming: I think with the exception of 1 awkward jump in section 2, the platforming and exploration was pretty in line with the souls experience. The red stones as a guide made it generally straightforward to figure out where I was going. If anything, I think you could even get rid of them if that awkward jump was smoothed out a bit since it almost felt like it wasn't what I was supposed to be doing despite the red stone saying the contrary. Despite that, section 2 was actually my favorite. The narrow walkways were fun to carefully walk on. Almost felt like playing chained together solo.
Other: I sorta noticed that there was no end lag on dodging so you could spam it super fast to zoom around everywhere till the stamina fills up. Not sure if thats intended but it is the reason my WR is sub 5 minutes ;)
Overall: Really impressive entry for being made in just 2 weeks. The boss was really fun to learn and I am super curious how their logic works under the hood. I could FEEL the sekiro in it. Also I love games featuring my oshi being a badass. Her animations were so cool!
Thank you for playing. Clear it in sub 5 minutes very impresive. It pobably faster then my record, lol.
Combat: Yeah my main problem in game design right now is feedback after you hit something. Parry pushing you back a bit in Sekiro good observation. I need to think about it.
Otomo: Understandable not to fight them. Unfortunately I didn't have time to make any character progression. It probably cuz I literally made all their moves it quite easy to parry. Little hint in pause menu there is "To last checkpoint" button. You can reset Otomo aggro fast with it.
Boss: Otomo at the end can be misleading. I didn't fix that you can lock on to him and other rudimental UI like you can finish hit him which does nothing to him, lol.
Platforming: This level actually have 2 different routes. After the broken clock at the beginning you can go left or go right. Left is longer with more platforming. Right more enemies less platforming. I tried make game a little bit similar to Dishonored in term of vibes.
Other: We love spam dodges. Initially dodge had delay before you could start running again and has smaller distance coverage. So I didn't bother about it. After some feedback I decided make it more useful. So dodge being so fast is half intended.
Overall: Thanks again for playing and for speedrunning too! Boss logic very simple, almost the same as Otomos. She have several attack to choose from. Some attacks she need specific distance to use. Every attacks have chance to be chosen. After that they small cooldown. If attacks was not chosen or they on cooldown then strafe walk a little bit. When player start attacking her, she have 20% chance to use parry.
Very cool game! I like the cutscenes. I think the boss might be a little bit too strong, although that is partially because I don't have much experience with this type of game. I think letting CC heal, either by using a healing move/item that you have to time well or just healing her after the first phase would help the fight feel a bit more fair. It was still fun though. Also, I think the second section maybe could've used another checkpoint, because the platforming is a bit clunky and its easy to lose progress.
Thank you for playing. I wanted to add revive mechanic like in Sekiro after you reach 3rd level, but no time :( Second section was experimental with different ways to clear. Glad you enjoyed the game.
I got stuck at the boss fight. The mechanics were unfair as its impossible to anticipate and dodge the ground wave attack. The animations are really good but if there was one at the end where Biboo got rescued, I didn't get to see it.
Thanks for playing. There is one after the boss. Immerred says "For justice" when she uses wave attack. This is sound cue to block this attack
Edit: Boss supposed to be challenging. I don't know about unfair. First version was way more punishing, lol. But I hope you enjoyed playing at least.
This is marked as quarantined for me as well. (v 1.01)
This game has the 3d graphics which is already really cool. Wow! It somehow runs alright on my laptop lol.
The combat is pretty tough, especially attacks that go through walls... I just ignored all the enemies lol, I kept getting hurt and dying whenever I attracted multiple Omotos.
The combat system is pretty nice after I learned/figured out everything. I really enjoyed the boss fight, having cool boss fights is awesome!
Nice work on the game!
Thank you for give it a try even with quarantine warning. I send email to itch support but they didn't answered yet.
From what I see on screenshot you played on lowest graphic settings. I tried optimize it good enough for everyone to play.
About the combat. Well... you are not supposed to ignore all the enemies but It is a viable strategy that I used a lot while testing. Don't know if you notice but you can perform sneak kill if you approach Otomo from behind and they didn't notice you.
So I managed to finish the game and would like to first say kudos to the team for making a 3D action game for a jam! It's super impressive to make one in around 2 weeks.
That being said, as a game itself, it's super jank in terms of the moments when the enemy attack hitboxes are active (I'm talking about the boss' attacks). There should be a good amount of anticipation before each attack with a recognizable pose. Even a little amount of hitstop and noticeable VFX would make the combat a lot more fun to play. I think that removing the big enemy at the back and just keeping the boss fight as a 1v1 would have made the game feel better to play as it was already hard enough to parry the enemy due to the lack of anticipation.
For the player controls, I would suggest making the dodge transition back into the run a lot more smoothly by making the run input cancel the last few frames of the dodge where there is still movement so you can keep up the movement speed. I would also consider further making the run input cancel attacks even more shortly after the swing portion of the attacks end since that typically feels better to play.
For the level design, it largely consisted of very open streets which made it difficult to know where to go. I would make the levels a lot more focused and linear. This would help make developing the game feel a lot more manageable and also help with keeping the scope low.
As for bugs, I would find that the enemy I wanted to target (usually the closest one) wouldn't be targetable at all. Not sure why this would occur.
I really hope this feedback helps and that I was able to explain it properly... I really enjoy making combat-heavy games so I love seeing how others make theirs. Nice work, overall!
Thank you for playing and for feedback.
For boss attacks I see what you are talking about. "Big enemy at the end" is just conduct for boss attacks. When boss saying specific phrases it triggers attacks from him. I made it for little bit diversity in attack patterns and give a moment player to breathe since it very easy to block.
About controls. I tried make a transition between run and dodge animation. It actually have interrupt on movement input but i couldn't save momentum for some reason. Since game not about dodging i decided that this is good enough and moved on.I found out why. There was one wrong checkbox...I had this feedback from some people who also played the game. Personally, I don't understand it cuz you literally just go forward. I wanted to make it way less linear. After first time people got lost I planted red crystal to help you navigate.
Your game got quarantined. Apparently Itch.io does that sometimes and never informs the creator (happened to me as well, as I just found out). I recommend emailing the support team about it. It's still possible to download the game (as I already did and tried it out), but the quarantine warning highly discourages anyone from doing so.
How do you see that? I tried download from laptop where i never loged in and didn't see any warnings. (I see warning on your game but not mine)Other people checked. Thank youItch support responded. It seems quarantine lifted. I hope your game also ok now. Thanks again for noticing.