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A jam submission

Shorties Maze!View game page

Submitted by GearWorkz Studio — 23 hours, 56 minutes before the deadline
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Shorties Maze!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Visuals#144.0004.000
Creativity / Innovation#163.6503.650
Audio#362.7502.750
Overall (Fun and Playability)#442.6502.650

Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How was the theme(s) implemented?
Dragons, Elemental Rock Paper Scissors

Where did the assets come from?

Homemade graphics

Most Graphics were created by the team during the jam

External audio

Some audio assets were downloaded or made prior to the jam

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Comments

Submitted

I really loved the graphics, I feel they’re quite unique and artistic.

I encountered a bug in the play-through, when I was off the center of the tile it seems. But it didn’t completely break the game.

I didn’t get the idea when and what was effective, but I was still was able to randomly mash buttons and defeat everything.

Here’s my play-through:

Developer

Thx for playing! yeah, the weapons have cooldown but i didn't have the time to make an animation for it, and the missalignement bug is annoying and i will try to fix it!(and i will make a tutorial on what beats what)

Submitted (1 edit)

Wow this is artistically one of the most interesting looking games of the jam! It reminds of those stop motion graphics of the past like Neverhood. The artistic vision and the idea behind it is absolutely brilliant. I imagine that you put an incredible amount of effort especially to create those monsters with animation and everything.

The dagger wielding arm which moves up and down as you walk looks hillarious, love that! Game has a comical charm to it and something like children's coloring book vibe. I love  how potions are huge too :) Level design is pretty good, there are traps and stuff which adds flavor to the dungeon.

Camera perspective feels weird at first and i think resolution is low.  Like 800x600 or something. The narrow corridors combines with the perspective disoriented me for a while when first started the game. UI overflows to outside of  the screen a little. You probably didn't choose scale with screen size option in the Canvas menu, btw i'm a Unity user too. I think the slots on right are inventory slots but we don't use them. I remember picking one item i think it was a weapon and i equipped it in the inventory. Other than that we don't use it. I think it would be better if we could add health potions to inventory to use them later when we need instead of running back to where we saw them. The elemantal attack stuff is good but i didn't get what is what i just pressed all 3 buttons on the left, there's not much depth to it. Also i think there's a cooldown for attacks but it's not shown on the HUD so it might confuse players.

I think it's a  very cool entry, definitely enriching the collection of games in the jam with excellent art direction. Thx for submitting!

Developer(+1)

Thx so much for the feedback! Yeah, i didn't scale with screen size. And btw those color buttons are your weapons, some enemies take more damage from certain types like green enemies are weak to red weapons! Potion storing is a good idea, i will implement it in the full release! And btw the inventory slots that we are not using are there cuz i wanted an equipement system but it was broken for every item i tried to pick up exept the weapon at the beginning and i didn't have much time to fix it(i fixed it already btw(and added cooldown anims))

Submitted

3D print your entry next year, lol
That little arm is comedy also! Great entry!

Developer (1 edit)

thx a lot! Your game is also really great. But i don have moneh on 3Dee printer(

Submitted

Finally, I can afford a trip to the Wizards of the Woods! I hope they’ll find me worthy of studying there :)
Somehow I walked off the grid for a while, but that’s okay,  it didn’t cause any bugs or issues.
I liked the bouncing liquid on the floor and your choice of art style
Thanks for the game!

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thx so much for playing! I will play your game now(oops i already played it)

Jam HostSubmitted

I very much like the art direction of the game. Cardboard and hand-drawn is a sure way to stand out.

The movement was fine, the camera perhaps a bit high up. The grid alignment felt a bit off at times, but it didn’t much hurt the experience.

I also think the game was more or less perfect in length for its content.

Play-through:

Developer

Thank you so much for playing! I am gonna fix all the issues you spotted

Submitted

The cardboard :) Defs one of the most innovative I've played, well done :)

Developer

Thx a lot ! I really liked ur game too, i didn't think anyone would get the automatic dungeon generation done in a WEEK! Impressive!

Submitted

Brooo the cardboard artstyle is awesome! The potions are too big lol, I thought they were people. Also the idea of different weapons having different attack speed (and I assume can be swapped between color slots?) is awesome. Clicking on the colors is a chore though, maybe put it on the 1/2/3 button?

Developer(+1)

Thx a lot! I will be taking it into account about the shortcut buttons

Submitted

I've seen this comment a lot, but love the cardboard art-style! Was generally a fun game, but did have some bugs (same ones as already mentioned by others), which is to be expected with nine days. Really impressive considering the time constraints, and I'd love to see more from you :)!

Developer

Thx a lot man! I am rn making the full version of this, hope it will turn out great! But anyway i am gonna check out ur game now

Submitted

As does everyone, I really liked the cardboard artstyle! While I do think the game could use a bit more time in the game dev oven, overall it's a creative entry, and congrats on submitting! :)

Developer(+1)

Thx! I am gonna check out ur game too!

Submitted

Really fun game, I think the screen was maybe scaled up when I played it? The damage numbers were too close to the screen for me to see.


The art style with the cardboard cut outs was really nice, serious Paper Mario vibes! I'm going to have to try something similar!


Nice chill music that suited the gameplay well.

Developer

Thx for playing! Yeah, i made the numbers a liiiitttleee too close to the screen, sorry

Developer(+1)

CONTROLS(since i forgot to include them in the base game):

WASD - Movement

E, Q - Rotation

LMB on weapons that are lying around - pick them up Equip a weapon - Click on it in the inventory

Attack with any of the weapons - LMB on them in the colored slots

Submitted(+1)

I was able to run it through proton on linux without any issues!

The game is very jank, I love the art style, but everything else is confusing and not intuitive sadly. I really looked forward to this game after seeing the videos in the discord. Please do a more polished version of this as i think it has lots of potential.

Developer

I can agree i made a janky game, but thx for the honest opinion! Im gonna check out ur game now, and btw, just for curiosity(and knowing what to improve later) what bugs and jank aspects of the game that you found?

Submitted

I was trying to open the first door somehow for minutes before accidentally walking through it for example, that was not obvious at all. I had no idea what the 3 different attack buttons were or what to choose when attacking. And it took some time to understand what the health potions were as well.

Those were my biggest pain points. I think if you had more feedback for the player for actions and what things are, it would be a lot more enjoyable!

Developer(+1)

Oh, ok! Will be! I am rn in developement(just starting) of the full version with multiple dungeons!

Developer

Guys i can't fix the issues with this game cuz it's not just a bugfix so im sorry

Submitted(+1)

Reading the comments here it looks like you've got a good game with really nice graphics! Alas, I couldn't get the game to run on my Linux system using WINE. This isn't your fault at all, it's usually a 50/50 chance whether a Windows Unity game will run on WINE, and in this jam I'm having a run of bad luck :-(

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

I can do a linux build i think, hold up(nvm i think i can;t do it)

Submitted(+1)

Interesting game that works well. I bit clunky here and there, but straight forward.

The cardboard style is very nice, would be nice to try something like that myself sometime. I thought of making a game using gingerbread cookies that I bake myself, but that will probably never happen...

Combat could do with some tuning and give more feedback (better SFX animations etc)

Nice addition with the spikes that you need to avoid.

Submitted(+1)

What stood out to me the most about this game was the cardboard artstyle, it was really charming. The only visuals that bothered me was the fact that the player's sword model doesn't follow the swing.

Gameplay-wise there were some things that bothered me. You had two attacks, one of which looked like a sickle/khopesh and another that was a mace. It seems like you can swing the sickle any amount of times but the mace seemed limited? I couldn't really figure out why that was and it didn't feel like there was any indication that I could use the mace.

Some other people mention hit detection, and I agree that that was also a problem, but I also think you could get hit diagonally? Which kinda seems unfair when you don't have a method to attack diagonally yourself.

Developer (1 edit)

Wait you can get hit diagonally? Im gonna fix the combat issues, and btw the mace has a long cooldown for which i didn't do an animation, i'll fix it and upload a new fixed build somewhen today i think

Developer

Oh and btw there is an axe you pick up at the firstl evel by clicking on it, i typed in controls that you need to click on it in the inventory so it's a good weapon for fighting green enemies

Submitted

I'm not 100% sure on the diagonal hit. Maybe I was getting hit by a different enemy that was behind me? The hit detection did feel off, but I can't quite put my finger on why.

Submitted(+1)

This game has impressive looking art style and modeling. However, the combat seems to be the main issue. I can kill enemies even when they're not near me. For instance, I've found that I can kill an enemy that was stuck to a wall to the left of me without being damaged myself.

Although, I will say I like the health pickups that I collect along the way especially when I run into an area with multiple enemies. Sometimes, I attack and I don't know when I could attack again other than just mashing the key.

The music was solid though.

Developer(+1)

Thx for the feedback, i will do combat better next time!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Who is the Wizard of the Woods? I demand to know more! This game for sure has the uniquest art style of the jam, but I think you bit of a bit more, than you could chew. I would love to see this getting more time in the oven. The cardboard creatures are so adorable. The music was whimsical and it played well (buffered movement!). But I did not really feel the implementation of the rock paper scissors, but that could be on me and I just did not get it.

Developer

Wizard of the Woods will return in Avengers Doomsday. ANd yeah, i get you, i wanted to make the player find all the weapons with different types so there would be upgrades idk. I just did the whole concept like in pokemon so for example blue enemy type are weak against green weapon and has protection against a red one.

Submitted(+1)

I won. 

It was fun. I really like the crafty feel and the animations of the opponents in particular are super cool. I thought that the enemies moving when you do in a game which otherwise uses real-time cooldowns on weapon was an interesting idea, at very least I didn't think it was worse than the usual way real time crawlers work. Either way I also like that combat does not waste your time.

Thanks for sharing!

Developer(+1)

I player ur game, it is awesome! The best thing about it is the multi-layered map, i enjoyed steppin on the roofs