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The Blitz Spirit's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Thematic Relevance | #1 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Historical Accuracy | #5 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Audio | #6 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Gameplay | #8 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Graphics | #9 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #9 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Historical Accuracy
Examples include:
Names, Dates, and Propaganda:
The Blitz Spirit was active propaganda during this time. The dates for each of the waves are important days surrounding the Blitz event, spanning from the beginning to the end of the Blitz during WWII. The 6 voice-acted phrases of propaganda at the start of each wave were essential to keeping British morale high at the time. The Game Over dialogues are also based on political speeches.
Gameplay:
ARP Wardens were in charge of handling personnel like ARP and CDC units, as well as for sounding warning sirens to signal approaching air raids. The lose state for the game is also loosely based on the real events. The 6 waves aim to emulate the escalating difficulties during the Blitz.
Art:
Many videos from 1940s were used to build up the aesthetic for the game. This includes the rooftop designs and all the icons. The aircrafts are accurate "pixel-art" versions of the Junkers Ju 88, Heinkel He 111, and Dornier Do 17. The crown was part of the bunker icon signage of that time.
Music and Soundtrack:
Sound and vocals were processed in mono, with a white-noise aesthetic that was emblematic of that time. We attempted to reproduce the defense sirens that would also be sounded by ARP Wardens when alerting for air raids in the game.
Thematic Relevance
The game is based on real events during the Blitz in World War II.
Disclaimers
N/A
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Comments
I had some serious skill issues with this game. Took me three tries to understand it. On the first try, I jumped right in, on the second, I skimmed the tutorial and only on the third, I read it properly xD. The graphics were very nice, but I think it would help to make the vehicles different for firemen and repairmen.
If you keep working on this game, maybe it would be nice to have some sign on the selected unit showing how many charges it has left, not only on the image on the top right. Also, the game to me seems to be half way between strategy and a puzzle game. Perhaps it could use different levels, starting with fewer vehicles in a smaller map, etc. It would give a sense of achievement if you finish with three stars, not losing any houses, etc.
Nice game overall. It made me want to play it a few times =).
I like the idea of more stimuli as rewards - the wave voice-overs were kind of meant to be that for this version, but more can't hurt. The zoom-out resolution really did us in - we actually do have two different kinds of vehicles, but you can't tell too well at this res. Thanks for sharing your ideas and for trying it many times!
Neat disaster management game with a good consistent art style. Although the vehicles keep bugging out on me.
Thanks for trying it! Yeah, we've managed to fix up the most game-breaking aspects of the unit pathfinding, full-screen and such. How many waves did you manage to pass through? :)
I look forward to the post jam update then :)
I only made it a few waves in total.
I think this has potential. In my first game I accidentally killed off my 1 fireman in the first bombing raid so that was over pretty quick. In the second game I survived to wave 4. Two of my units got stuck together which didn't help (I think this is the 'fleeing' thing mentioned) and I thought I was doing okay but suddenly the game ended. I wasn't a fan of the monochrome visual style as it made it hard to distinguish between the different 'actors'.
There was also different squares for the building but I had no idea what each meant.
Maybe I lost because Buckingham Palace was destroyed or something?
Nice '1940 BBC voice' voice acting for the start of wave quotes!
Well done all round!
I realize that I should have added a screenshot showing that the black rooftops are just regular house tiles. I agree with you that without the full-screen/higher resolution that had been planned for this + some shader things, it's that much harder to pick out everything in the scene. Would have loved to have had the time to build out a proper tutorial, and the UI on the right is entirely unimplemented, which is more of a scope issue. Lessons learnt on exporting far sooner than we managed to this time.
Lose state of the game: It may be that you let too many houses get destroyed (there is a /4.0 gauge at the bottom of the state list with the people icon, you lose a full heart if you forget to activate bunkers before a raid, or 0.5 heart if you let a house burn) , OR had only one unit left on the map.
Thanks for trying it, and for the feedback!
This game is so neat, I love how so much strategy fits into the relatively straightforward mechanics. I seem to keep running into this bug though, where vehicles will slide off of the tilemap or even offscreen and become suddenly unavailable. At one point all my firefighters abandoned me within one turn.
I wonder if this was a browser issue but even losing one or two vehicles felt really consequential within such a concise set of rules.
I'd appreciate if the vehicles were diferentiated from the environment and from other vehicle types a little more. It was hard to tell what vehicle I was looking at until I clicked on it, which slowed the flow down from turn-to-turn. I also found myself wishing for an undo button... But maybe an important narative aspect is you can't undo an order you sent out to active personnel!
Other than that I really enjoyed this game, and the voice-overs were very charming.
So sorry for all the fleeing units! Yeah we essentially ran out of time to implement the right side of the UI, a more interactive tutorial, and messed up the resolution on export. I managed to bargain with my dev for an "undo button/reset current turn button", for an easier mode! The fact that you really have to think through your steps is part of the game's intention, but I agree that the board not being super visible, and at times, bugging out as it is, is not helping! Thankfully, most of these issues are already fixed for a post-jam update.
The voiceovers and making the music in a new software were both really fun to do! Appreciate you trying the game out!
The art was very evocative, if a bit unreadable at times. I didn't realise I had units until I went back and read the tutorial. The game was a bit zoomed out for me, I sometimes found it difficult to click on the units. I think there's a bug when I moved a repairman and a fireman on the same tile, I can't selected them anymore. I tried to move a fireman past the stacked units, and it budged them out the way, then just headed straight north and off the map. Presumably having quit his job. Saying that, I really like the music and audio clips you play for the air raids. The game overall is really cool, congrats.
Not setting up the resolution correctly was our bad. Your feedback is very helpful, we want to make those intricacies (that are not just bugs) far clearer for a future update. Thank you for your kind words on top of your feedback, appreciated!
A deceptively complex little game. I will need to revisit this as I feel I just learnt to play by the time I got to wave 3. Maybe including the help in-game as well as in the screenshots would help (it would have helped me for sure)
I love the minimalist style and the Into the Breach feat. Churchill vibe.
Thanks for already giving it a try! We didn't get to implement the in-game tutorial unfortunately, but if you look in the tutorial text of our jam page, and the screenshots, given that it's turned-based game with no full-screen, maybe you can pretend that's in-game? XD
I've actually never played Into the Breach, but now I'm interested! I did add in some speech quotes from Churchill, well spotted!