Very nice twist on the game, I liked the undertale style minigames and the variety of enemies/attack behaviors to keep it engaging.
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Carwash Calamity's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #13 | 4.624 | 4.624 |
| Fun | #13 | 4.248 | 4.248 |
| Originality | #30 | 4.278 | 4.278 |
| Theme | #72 | 3.992 | 3.992 |
Ranked from 134 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game represent "Slick"?
Leave cars perfectly slick and shining after washing away the dirt, and defeating what hides beneath
Comments
So many illegal license plates . . .
Really like that you keep the mouse controls between the combat and the cleaning. The gameplay mode switch is seamless and very charming. The decision to link the player's "health" with the time is great. And just when I thought the enemies were getting a bit repetitive, you'd introduce some new ones that kept me on my toes. I despise the baby. I was a bit curious how the green works. It adds time, but sometimes it wouldn't, even when I hadn't taken damage yet? Wasn't sure if it was a bug or not. But overall, great stuff!
I made the projectile time accumulating more finicky than it needed to, but broadly every time you hit a good or bad projectile, your time isn't updated immediately, but accumulated into another variable. When the battle ends, then it adds up your time all at once.
That has issues with a couple of system interactions.
- Your time only updates at the end of the battle. Not during it, so if you hit an equal number of of good and bad projectiles, your time delta is 0. (+5s then -5s) I assume this is the main reason folks find them weird.
- The timer used to be more hidden during battles. Though I kept it a little visible to the player in conjunction with the above effect with the idea to increase drama. (Ack! I don't know exactly how much time I have left! Better overextend/play it safe!) Though as the past couple of days has revealed, this is more confusing than emotive.
- If you get hit by a bad projectile, you enter an invulnerable state. Unfortunately, this extends to being unable to interact with good projectiles too
Yo this game is The Game! Slickness to infinity! Love the combat and the satisfaction that comes from cleaning a car. Great combination of ideas here!
Submitted
Slicktopus 3DThis is super duper polished! It's very fun to spray the hose, and the combat is a clever spin on one of my favourite combat systems. Earthbound + Undertale influence shines through and I love it. The particles and visual effects are amazing, the music is great, and I love the slimy enemy designs :> Great work!!!
Submitted
SK8Absolute banger. Art, Game Design, Music, controls, all done flawlessly. No notes
Submitted
Rick Slick (Let 'Em Hit Ya!)Left a rating a couple of days ago but didn't get a chance to leave a comment till now... I love this concept so much! Funnily enough, I was originally working on a mouse-based battle system extremely similar to this one (minus all the cool visual effects) before the project grew out of scope and I moved to something else. I didn't get very far, but I got far enough to say that I really like your implementation, and I also love how the bullet patterns are designed in such a way that they encourage different types of movement for different enemies. Combine that with the art and music and the tightness of the gameplay loop... I think you have something really special here, and I'd love to see it expanded if you decide to work on this in the future. Amazing work to everyone involved!!
Submitted
OorigenneWe've got a powerwash simulator but with whacky Saturday morning cartoon aesthetics here!
Such a lovely and refreshing gameplay. Like literally. When I get a car cleaned up completely, I end up feeling clean and fresh somehow :p
You've got to expand upon the game and add more cars to clean and creatures to fight!
Do make sure to play and rate our game as well (it might take a minute for it to load)
P.S.: The Green creature in your 4th screenshot looks a lot like....I mean...something that Hulk wears during....you know...umm...nevermind. Good job with the game
Submitted
Shart CircuitAmazing polish! Very cool and fun undertale-like mechanics with your own unique spin. I like the transitions between the calm car-washing music to the intense combat music. It made me feel like the car washer is having an existential crisis haha
Submitted
Adventurer Supply CoGreat work on this one, super clever combination of mechanics and an impressive amount of content!!
Submitted
Rick Slick (Let 'Em Hit Ya!)oohh I absolutely love this!! It's such a silly idea and executed very well!
The visuals are absolute top notch, I love the Earthbound-style battle backgrounds and the designs of the various trash/dirt creatures that you encounter. Everything is extremely well drawn and pleasant to look at. I also love how every creature has its own Undertale-style attack pattern that you can learn how to respond to. The music and sound design is also excellent!!
I think my biggest nitpick is that the timer going offscreen during battles feels a bit weird, because makes it a little unclear what's happening when you take damage or touch green (I thought I had an invisible health meter at first). It feels like information that *should* be available during the battle. The way you can see the bottoms of the numbers changing looks more like a glitch than something intentional.
I also found the green pickups to be a little inconsistent, something I felt like I touched them but they just go through me, and it's not clear why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Also the arrow buttons for rotating the car seem to be going the opposite way to how my brain expects them to be.
Overall this game is extremely well made!! Excellent work!!
Submitted
Grumman RigThank you thank you. The Visual and Sound folks (lilchokedout and Virginia Leo, respectively) were on absolute demon time this jam. It was an immense pleasure to work with them. Pijinguy did fantastic design work writing up the attack patterns though the final implementation was me.
The timer going offscreen was a point of discussion within our team. It was an early decision I made to maximize the screen space during the player actions for future enemy movement patterns, but I decided to keep it offscreen for other secondary effects. The main inspiration was Balatro. I wanted to add some more noise with the decision to collect bonuses or play it safe. The reason it peeks out was intended to stress the player out some more. (Ack! My timer is still running down!) Hidden trackable information isn't everyone's taste, and I should probably have committed harder one direction or another rather than the middle ground with the timer shake there is now.
Yeah the projectile collision is janky. The primitive used there is just a rectangular sprite, so when they're rotated and not axis aligned, the collision can get noisy.
The arrow buttons spin from the perspective of the car moving and not the player (imagine the car on a microwave dish and the arrows spinning the dish) The code got messy enough that when I tried changing it to spin from the player pov, it didn't work, so alas it was another victim of the time crunch (along with more enemy movement patterns 😭😭😭
Point and click undertale who woulda thunk it! Now we just need an option to convince the microbes to jump off the car
Submitted
Surreal LifestyleYeah the lever of polish on this title was top-notch. Loved the Earthbound inspired background and the risk-reward mechanic of the different colored obstacles/projectiles. Awesome job. :)
Submitted
Gun Knife BombPlayed through the game twice. Amazing level of polish - controlling the powerwasher was really smooth, transition between car washing/battles was seamless. Only flaw is that the attack patterns, despite good enemy variety, felt repetitive since you have to fight the same enemies over and over - I would see if it were possible to either add multiple patterns per enemy, or maybe to modify existing patterns in some way so that they feel different each time
Submitted
Cycle ShifterThis game really made you FEEL like you're an UNDERpaid car washer, part-time TALE-teller and you were slick for doing this game
I was a lot of fun and I'll keep this in my list to see, what else you'll do with it
Great job!
Submitted
Slick Tricks
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