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Dreamborne's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #25 | 3.296 | 3.900 |
| Enjoyment | #29 | 2.958 | 3.500 |
| Overall | #38 | 2.789 | 3.300 |
| Relevance to the chosen theme(s) | #41 | 2.874 | 3.400 |
| Gameplay Polish | #41 | 2.282 | 2.700 |
| Genre Interpretation | #48 | 2.958 | 3.500 |
| Sensory | #52 | 2.366 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit either (or both) genres?
The game is a metroidvania, as there are roadblocks that require collecting certain upgrades to get past.
Chosen theme(s) and relevant explanations
Unreal - The true form of the world is bleak and desolate, but reality is being altered in some parts to make it seem bright and dream-like. Construct - Throughout the game you fight various robots, which are a type of construct. Rust - Rust coats the terrain of the "real world".
Team/Developer
Edmanbosch
Premade content
Font by Pixel Sagas. Terrain textures by ambientCG (with some modifications). I also reused a few music tracks and motifs + some sound effects I had made for previous projects.
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Comments
I love the atmosphere and the vibe. No crosshair is crazy tho.
Quite an ambitious project! It took me a while to get used to the game's idea of progression, as I was initially pretty disappointed that I kept losing my upgrades. However, I have to admit that getting my first "permanent" upgrade was a big game changer and made the initial frustration worth it!
The environments were definitely barebones, but I think in a way they nailed the early 90s 3D look, and the desolate atmosphere grew on me over time. The music was a big help there, especially the "epic" theme playing in the later part of the game! I quite enjoyed the dark visuals of the "peak" area, but the green of the "poison" areas made it a bit difficult to see where you were supposed to go, because everything kinda blended together into one green mass. It also wasn't really clear to me which areas were meant to represent the past, uncorrupted world, aside from the bright golden temple(?).
The enemies were annoying at first, but I eventually found them manageable, especially after I got into the habit of sucking them with the grapple. I actually found the buzzsaw enemies to be the easier of the bunch, as it was easy to outrun them or get them stuck on ledges. The flying insects were much more annoying to shoot down, and the golden variant seemed particularly persistent in chasing me down to the end of the earth if left alone. In general, I didn't get much use out of any of the alternate weapon modes beyond their special abilities. The electric shot would have been nice for the flying enemies, if it didn't run out of ammo so quickly.
Some of the platforming was pretty challenging, though I think it was less so due to the platforming itself and more due to the scarcity of checkpoints, limited breath duration in toxic pools, and the long runbacks from death/falling down.
It took me a good couple hours and a lot of frustration, but I finally managed to climb the peak and get the last permanent upgrade. I was so caught up in the moment, with the epic music suddenly turning into silence and the glorious overview of the level, that I thought the game was finished and almost quit right there!
Fortunately, I remembered the red keycard from hours ago and didn't miss out on the real ending of the game, according to which I had found 4/4 cores, 3/7 expansions, and it took me 2h 31min to get there. (It definitely felt like longer to me, maybe it didn't count the time lost due to deaths?)
As for criticism... I guess if the goal was to make a challenging FPS platformer, then most of the grievances I had throughout the game could probably be considered features. (And I'd definitely be a hypocrite for criticizing a game for its difficulty.) That said, 3D platformers (and especially FPS ones) have been and probably always will be controversial to some extent, and for that reason alone, I think the game could have benefited from a few more checkpoints, as well as more generous timing for underwater breath and the various electric pillar challenges.
Overall, a very substantial game that took some time to get into, but it was absolutely worth it for the atmosphere and the satisfaction of reaching the end!
Having a First Person shooter without a crosshair is a factual evil thing to do, you should be ashamed of forcing people to play this videogame this way, shame on you!
I really dislike the buzzsaw enemies, they are way too fast and because there is a certain lack of something it’s really hard to see where to aim on the screen, they also have way too much HP, so it’s just an annoyance to fight them, i ended up trying to run away from them every time i saw them.
Reticle, also known as Crosshair, is is a pattern of fine lines or markings built into the eyepiece of an optical device such as a telescopic sight, spotting scope, theodolite, optical microscope or the screen of an oscilloscope, to provide measurement references during visual inspections. Today, engraved lines or embedded fibers may be replaced by a digital image superimposed on a screen or eyepiece. Both terms may be used to describe any set of patterns used for aiding visual measurements and calibrations, but in modern use reticle is most commonly used for weapon sights, while graticule is more widely used for non-weapon measuring instruments such as oscilloscope display, astronomic telescopes, microscopes and slides, surveying instruments and other similar devices.
Empire City: 1931 from the year 1986 was the first videogame to ever use crosshairs on it’s infant form, but it wasn’t until Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, from 2003 that they got popularized and became the default experience to use on a First Person Shooter, because old videogame guns on FPS like DOOM, the guns were on the center of the screen and you didn’t really need help to know where the gun was going to be, but modern videogames opted for a more realistic position of the weapons, requiring an additional assist to help the player know where the center is, since unlike old videogames, the bullets didn’t go through the middle of the screen, but on the straight center, creating a bigger sense of aim for the player.
Like the other person I also got stuck after the spike room - I was able to figure out that having the orange element gave me an air dash of sorts (which felt odd - none of the other elements had extra abilities associated with them, and none of the tutorial text indicated this was possible), but using it would cause me to plummet to the ground pretty quickly so i wasn't able to use it to actually get past any of the roadblocks in my way, which both seemed to require some actual aerial movement. Because of this I was not able to get very far and only experienced minimal metroidvania elements.
The grapple/draining hook is really neat idea, but it felt clunky in it's current state - it was very prone to hitting the ground instead of an enemy right in front of my face, which for some reason would completely nullify its hitbox and cause it to phase straight through the thing. I think keeping its hitbox active when it "bounces" and only removing it when it returns to the player or hits a valid target would feel much more intuitive. I also disliked hitting F to grapple - I think binding either the grapple or drain to just right clicking a second time would work better, so only one extra key is needed for the other action.
Visuals are certainly unpolished but serviceable enough. Music was pretty solid and atmospheric, but the sound design was a bit odd in places - the sound for the base weapon was pretty awkward and there being a different player hurt sound for seemingly every damage source felt really inconsistent and made me confused about what was actually happening at first when a few of those sounds triggered.
Thank you for playing my game.
I didn't expect the air dash to be a consistent problem. It's hard for me to tell what the difficulty here is exactly, but I would assume it was either one or a combination of:
- It being unclear that you dash in the direction you're aiming, meaning looking straight up in the air and then dashing will give you the most amount of height. I don’t think the ability description says anything about this though, I kinda expected people to just figure it out 😅
- The force provided by the air dash does not replace your prior velocity, but instead combines with a fraction of that velocity. So if you're already falling at an extremely speed for instance, you're not going to be able to gain any height at all even if you aim straight up. The reasoning behind this was that I found it felt more natural if you already had a lot of momentum when you sprint and then jump or when you launch yourself with the grapple, but I suppose it might not be immediately obvious that it works that way.
Originally, the “orange element” was going to have a double jump instead of air dash, which also would’ve been easier to use, but I found the air dash to be more fun so that’s what I went with.
I did struggle a bit with the grapple’s collision during testing, but I never thought much of it in part because there was so much else that I needed to get done. I’ll be looking into making it easier to use.
With the hit sounds, my thinking with that was based on the Metroid Prime games; or, rather, what I remember from those games. As it turns out, those games had more indicators that you were taking damage than I remember, and even the indicators I did recall didn’t work exactly the way I remembered either. I’ll definitely be taking that into account.
I didn't see any description for the ability at all. Where was that supposed to be?
The description appears when you press tab. It should've said so in one of those tutorial popups I believe? It's easy to skim over that though.
Played some more now that I actually know how the air dash works:
- The air dash feels great, I wouldn't change how it works. It just needs to be better explained to the player.
- Enemies tended to be really annoying and not a lot of fun to fight. They were prone to getting right up in your face where you don't have time to respond to their attacks, and then kind of just... staying there, because they move as fast as the player even at full sprint.
- Game could really use an aiming crosshair. I felt like I was missing a lot of shots just due to struggling to tell where my gun was actually pointing.
Game was a lot more fun once I was able to experience more of the metroidvania elements, and I think the general idea of tying abilities to temporary pickups that later become permanent is really cool, it just lead to some frustration where I didn't see the ability prompts until long after they were useful. I did just completely miss the bit of tutorial text that said I could press tab to see that info though which would've really helped, though given someone else had the same issue I'm hesitant to say that's all on me.
Idk looked interesting found underwater upgrade and + 20 hp. but then you hit 2 blocked ways. Spikes only helped to get +20 hp. Water kills, didn't realize cos it's just humming damage sound. Then I grabbed spikes came back , grabbed some orange balloons. tried to jump on them nothing happened. though mb it will help do jump at the end. went half way fell into water. respawned next to orange balloon room, wall closed spikes across the map. Relization that i have to run across again just to try made me close the game. Controls are not intuitive for me felt like quake but clunky. I did enjoy variations of weapons, but was confused a lot, and too many buttons to pres. left click e to absorb f to launch and etc. I played Enchain demo on steam recently and your game reminded me that thing a lot, I also disliked controls there, but that just subjective thing. Overall decent game that need some polish. Good job.