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Gridlam's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #11 | 3.467 | 3.467 |
| Polish | #25 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
| Progress | #25 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
| Overall | #27 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Audio | #32 | 2.933 | 2.933 |
| Fun | #34 | 2.933 | 2.933 |
| Graphics | #42 | 2.933 | 2.933 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
pre-jam devlog (optional)
https://miffrandir.itch.io/gridlam/devlog/1360674/gridlam-is-back
Post-Jam Devlog | Post-Mortem (optional)
Still needs polish on UI. Need to more SFX. There were a lot of bugs which were uncovered in the home stretch and I had to cut a lot of new weapons, glitches, etc. I am hoping to get some feedback on the gameplay. Not completely satisfied with how it has turned out for the jam, but feedback would be helpful.
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Comments
Quite good. The music and theme are cool. FYI, I couldn't get the web build to work on Firefox, it hung on "baking particles".
I liked the fact that were the player and enemies were facing mattered. I couldn't tell when I was going to fire shots though.
Thanks for the feedback. I am working on improving visual clarity, but the shots and all weapons auto-fire when the cooldown expires. You should see the weapon cards starting vibrating in the bottom HUD bar when the weapon is ready to fire (with a tick mark inside). Thanks for playing!
Fun game! Some rules were not clear to me, i.e sometimes I was killing bugs when I did not expect it, maybe it's me, maybe UI hints what is happening would be helpful to catch up on a rules! Good job!
As for feedback, since you using Godot it's very simple to create OSX build. I can play in browser, but on mac it gets really laggy even with simple games like that, so I oftem just download builds through itch.io app.
Hey, thank you for playing! Yes, I will be revamping a lot of things, reducing cognitive load and including a tutorial so it is more clear as to what to do.
Fantastic little puzzler game! Thanks for sharing it :D You can watch my playthrough here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2694872276?t=00h10m18s
Thanks for playing Captain Coder! Your feedback about there needing to be something that makes you want to come back and pick the game up again is very valid and it is very good to hear at this stage.
i didn't encounter any bugs (unless you include the enemy bugs!), but I only played for a short time before i died. i love the old arcade look and feel of the game. and the 'vibe' system is so much cooler than the usual health meter. :-)
Thank you so much for playing. I based the Vibe system off of Into The Breach's power grid system. Glad you liked it!
Cool concept, I would suggest to use a more limited color pattern and highlight imported stuff with color coding, otherwise for me the screen feels a little full with stuff.
Also use the same resolution for the pixel art. It looks like the pixel size differs between objects.
But this are only minor things, keep working on it. Good work :)
Thanks for playing and the feedback. Yeah I think there might too much going on for the player to keep track of. I will work on minimizing the cognitive overload and just let the game flow better. Thanks for the feedback on the visuals too, it's very valid and I am constantly working on improving it, all of this is programmer placeholder art still for me.
It's quite innovative, although it took me a while to get how it works at first xD. Very good job, I did like the UI quite a lot, and the music fits. I feel like you could expand this and polish it further to publish it on Steam! Good job!!
Thanks for the feedback! A tutorial level has gone right up my priority list.
Excellent game! It feels extremely polished in every aspect. It carries a nostalgic arcade vibe, yet goes further with richer details and refinement. Really impressive work.
I found the gameplay quite challenging (in a good way), at least for me. Even a small mistake can quickly lead to an unavoidable game over, despite the bugs' movement being somewhat predictable. I managed to score around 25, which is probably not very impressive, but I genuinely enjoyed the experience!
Thank you so much for the feedback!
Great concept! Gameplay-wise, you're on solid ground,
What frustrated me a bit was the sudden end of a phase when I was getting strong, I would like to be able to continue fighting, with the option of manually advancing after the minimum required turns were survived.
Thanks for the feedback! That's a great idea!
Every time I tried starting the game it froze my entire browser when the loading screen got to baking the particles.
oof I apologize. it is not an issue I have seen before. Could you try the windows/linux build maybe? what browser are you using?
I'm on Windows and I use Chrome. Sadly the Windows build doesn't work either, this was the error message I got when trying to run it:
"Error: Couldn't load project data at path "C:/Users/[my computer name]/OneDrive/Desktop". Is the .pck file missing? If you've renamed the executable, the associated .pck file should also be renamed to match the executable's name (without the extension)."
I will do a reupload with a pck this evening. Apologies for the issues
Sounds good! I'm excited to try out your game :D
I've uploaded the Windows build with the pck file. Let me know if this works
Yep game works! Thanks :D
Cool game, core loop is solid. Move-then-attack rhythm feels good, and there's a lot of variety on offer with the shop/upgrade system so you really feel the build is developing after waves.
I had two sessions. First session I bounced because I couldn't parse exactly what was happening. Second time it all clicked. The main thing I was missing was the "schedule" style system of moving and planning with the attack cooldowns. Glitch system is a cool addition to the auto-attack base and adds a nice layer of active decision making.
Grid/attack art is nice, and especially the pictures drawn for the artifacts were super nice and fit with the retro/arcade game style! Wireframe UI style is clean. CRT-like shader and "synthwave" background set a good vibe.
Thanks for the feedback. The lack of a good introduction/tutorial is a key takeaway I am getting and will be working on to improve. The schedule style system you mention is really interesting, Shogun Showdown does it really well. I tried to emulate the upgrade system from Shogun Showdown, but the scheduling style was not something I incorporated. This is good to know. Ultimately I think I need to decide if I want to keep this a survival game or a tactical turn-based and which direction to lean more heavily in.
Sorry but I don't have idea what to do apart from running out form the monster. Could you explain little bit? Can I destroy somehow enemies?
Yes, sorry if that wasn't clear. You choose a tile to move to. The bottom bar in the hud displays the weapons you've unlocked. There are damage and cooldown numbers on each weapon. When the cooldown is done, the weapon will fire. Each bug/enemy has an HP. You have to move around the grid and survive the specified number of turns for each level. When the weapons kill enemies they usually drop shards (RAM sticks on the grid) which you can collect to increase the accrued RAM (it's shown on the top left of the screen). Once you clear a level you can spend the RAM on artifacts to aid your run. Sometimes enemies will drop a glitchy pyramid. If you get to the pyramid, a glitch menu opens and you can select a glitch. This will show on the left hud bar and you can click each glitch to activate and do certain things like expand the tilemap, shuffle the enemies, freeze them etc. When you clear a level you are also given a random free upgrade to your weapon. If you click on a weapon card on the bottom bar you can choose to activate the upgrade on the weapon. This could be something like damage +1, cooldown -1 etc. Additionally you can unlock some new weapons (these are shown as firmware options) in the shop. I did not finish my tutorial so had to cut it, but this will all be explained in future versions. Hope this makes sense and I am sorry about the confusion.
Now it makes sense :) thanks for explation.
Really nice game! I survived 64 turns. It would be nice to see a short description of what the enemy can do when it first appears or when it kills you.
Yes, thank you that was part of the plan but I couldn't get to adding enemy tooltips/descriptions to the UI.
Really cool idea. Sometimes a little tough to see if a cell is going to be moved towards. I also managed to get an infinite loop on a move and it locked up the whole game. I sadly dont recall the exact scenario. Had fun tho!
Thanks for the review Jcup! Yeah visual clarity is something I am struggling with. Thanks for the feedback, and apologies for the lock-up. There are still some bugs I need to iron out. Cheers.