Very fun and fast-paced gameplay ! I liked the Art Direction with the PSX visuals and the retro music that fits very well. The camera sometimes “clips” into the wall. I wish the game was a bit longer, which I know is a big ask for a GameJam, as I really enjoyed it ! Good job :)
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Plug Out!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #76 | 3.377 | 3.377 |
| Sound | #89 | 3.493 | 3.493 |
| Music | #104 | 3.565 | 3.565 |
| Fun | #129 | 3.580 | 3.580 |
| Overall | #154 | 3.580 | 3.580 |
| Aesthetics | #164 | 3.681 | 3.681 |
| Mechanics | #181 | 3.391 | 3.391 |
| Theme | #298 | 3.348 | 3.348 |
Ranked from 69 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Music (The New Order) by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
Comments
This game is very satisfying to play. The movement is fluid and the weapons feel strong. I like when games lean into the retro vibe. Great job!
Submitted
The Merchant GameI love the mechanics of this game. However for me, there were some places where the player was like beyond the walls. Rest had fun playing this. Good job.
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Slime SiphonI love how impactful the Chain gun feels. It kinda reminds me of the chain gun in Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam!
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Muckery: Contract 01I like the style and I found the combination of the music and the fast movement very enjoyable. I also tried to plug myself to the plug after shooting it. I had the expectation I would charge like that :D It is a nice 3rd person shooter. Particularly I loved the camera change perspective after switching weapons. Great job. Congrats for your entry!
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Mirrors of the AncientsI found the camera controls difficult to adjust, so I always died in lvl2. I cheated in the end and got to your final screen.
It is a good game and well related to the given theme. The bot is nicely designed, producing the empathy needed for the player wanting him to win. You could improve the overall design, e.g., floors more to contrast with the bot. I didn't like the human face in the end screen as it looked more like a humanoid than a human to me.
Congrats on the game!
Submitted
RelayThank you so much for playing. By camera controls, do you mean the mouse sensitivity ? I have added option in settings to adjust it.
I will see how I can improve textures, due to time limit, I had to reuse lot of textures and make use of whatever I could find quickly. If you mean the face of the last boss (with red glowing eyes), the face is actually humanoid, not human, but puts on the face of one and is certainly not supposed to be liked by the player. I tried to implement some post apocalyptic cyberpunk themes with this but the narrative design has not been implemented up to the mark as game merely has only 3 lines of dialogue which give only certain clues about the player character and not the world around it.
Yes, the mouse sensitivity.
As for the narrative design, which does not only exist in written lines, I found it a bit confusing. I played your game again and jumped to the end screen quickly. I still find the humanoid face confusing, because while playing the game the first time the msg for me was that the "bot" (maybe trapped human inside one) wants to connect with humans, so I was expecting a human face. This time I read it more like the humanoid as the "superior, or the one in charge" was talking to the bot, wanting to know the reason why they did or didn't do something. This doesn't make much sense to me.
I think that the player character bot's behaviour by killing other bots (or in my case dying while trying...) tells much about his character. I would try and make the intention of the character, to connect with humans, which you gave the hint to in the beginning and then by killing the other bots clearer with less words in the end.
I hope that makes sense to you.
Ok, so here's some (spoiler) lore which I had planned before starting the work on this game.
The machine as referred to the black and white 'human like' face, is an entity that is guarding 'the wall' (The gate with 'danger, do not enter' sign in the last level). The reason the word 'wall' is used in the intro dialogue is because instead of just force fields, there were also supposed to be destructible walls that were going to be added to the game.
The player / the plug (or the bot, as you refer to it) is actually a few surviving human organs inside a completely mechanical body, and the body is a battery that powers the force fields when connected to its sockets (as you see the other 'plugs' at the force fields). The player has travelled far distance to reach this wall as he has heard there are humans beyond the wall. Now wherever the player has originated from, severely lacks any human elements (likely possible that the player has escaped some industrial facility).
In the final level, the player powers down the force fields and the defense systems that prevent it from 'crossing the wall' to meet other humans (hopefully, if any exist, as he has heard). Upon that, the machine (not knowing that the player is actually a cyborg(part human, part machine) asks why did he not connect to the force fields as he is a prototype of advanced generation of plug and is programmed to power its defenses only. (the previous generations of plugs being fully mechanical unable to move and easily destroyed as seen in the game) ... The player's reply implies that he is not a robot that will merely carry out a task he is programmed to do, and is a human that seeks connection with other humans.
The confusion might stem from the fact that the only human character (player) in the game looks completely mechanical and fully identical to other machines in the game whereas the only 'human resembling' element (the machine's face, and its voices) are mere illusions of human behavior and has no relations to humans at all. The reason it was designed that way was for some world building about how much of human elements have been taken over by the machines in the universe of this game.
For this reason, all the text in the game uses 'press start 2p' font signifying everything is being run by the machine, except the dialogue in the intro and second line of the ending where the camera zooms at the player character, those two lines use 'comic relief' font (a font that does not look like it is from a machine, but rather human like) .. which I thought would show a differentiation between the player and overall game world.
I was going to add comic strips style intro and exit where the player / the plug is seen with half destroyed head with some flesh popping out, but this would have required more time, plus I found scripting the cutscenes easier. One other reason I avoided it was because it was recommended in the stream to not include elements like adult themes or gore at extremes, so completely avoided that.
Now this lore certainly creates more questions like how did the player originate, escape, acquire weapons, etc. But that is a matter of lore expansion or world building. For the game, the core theme was how to focus on connection. Which incorporates both, electric connections (the plug powering the force fields and powering down the machine entity when destroyed) and the player seeking human connections.
Like the conversation with other players on this thread points out, the game was inspired by older games such as half life, doom, system shock, etc. that (partially and sometimes fully) explore the relations between humans and the unknown, hence not much backstory is provided about the world and the existing cutscenes only show the player and their motif in the game world.
I do think I can still improve on narrative design on my future games, as this is my first attempt at making scripted cutscenes in the game. Thank you for delving deeper into this.
Thank you for the extensive reply. You are already doing a great job. And I mean that. You might have guessed that already by my replies. The last scene is where, in my very humble opinion , you struggle a bit.
"In the final level, the player powers down the force fields and the defense systems that prevent it from 'crossing the wall' to meet other humans (hopefully, if any exist, as he has heard). Upon that, the machine (not knowing that the player is actually a cyborg(part human, part machine) asks why did he not connect to the force fields as he is a prototype of advanced generation of plug and is programmed to power its defenses only. (the previous generations of plugs being fully mechanical unable to move and easily destroyed as seen in the game) ... The player's reply implies that he is not a robot that will merely carry out a task he is programmed to do, and is a human that seeks connection with other humans. "
This and again, in my very humble opinion, needs work to get through to the player with less and/or a different text. I do not see the present design/exposure of the scene as fully transparent or with a more logical flow in order what you want to transmit to the player.
I hope that I could help you some with what I've said, when you develop your game further :)
I changed some wording in the dialogues of the game as well as in-game messages to provide clarity to the players upon playing game for the first time. I have added more content to the game and some bugfixes, you can give it one more try if you're interested. Although I do not plan to update the game, I am open to feedback on game or its specific elements so I could improve more upon any future projects I work on. Thanks again ...
I played it again and it feels smoother, I still died at lvl 2 and I tried 3 times. I am a lousy gamer I trust :(
Saying this because I couldn't see/read any new in-game msg. If I recall it correctly, during the jam the initial text said "...beyond these walls" instead of "room". I liked the previous wording better.
The design of the end scene/cheating scene feels more natural. I still think that your dialogue needs improvement. To be certain, though, I would need to come to that scene by playing through the levels and not "cheating" my way there.
Overall and even you not continuing with the game, I think you did good in caring enough to give it a polish!
Congrats on your work!
Yes, the text in previous version said 'wall' instead of 'room'. There are additional messages in place before the final room notifying the player that the next level / current level will be 'room' and the AI face is the 'machine' the description tells the players about. (Tip :- you can beat the game by equipping both weapons and strafing and jumping while fighting enemies, I have made the projectiles as well as hitscans from turrets easy to dodge, although the player has to be careful at the platforming sections). I appreciate your feedback, I will look more into writing tips to make the dialogues better for any of my future games. Thanks again for playing !
Ayy neat bot game!
I tried to insert myself into the plug hole but nothing happened :P
The machine gun is pretty satisfying to fire, but the controls for rotating was a bit hard to use in tandem with the mouse.
A pretty cool game with decent length for a game jam, nice job :D
Submitted
Hook & Delivery .coThank you so much for playing ! I was actually giving a thought of making an alternate ending where the player would be given the choice to connect to the machine, due to time limit, I did not add it (I don't think it would be necessary now though as it would be very contradictory to the narrative of the game). Also you can adjust mouse sensitivity in the control settings to best suit your pace. Thank you so much for the feedback as well !
Ayy very nice! It has some platforming bits which add some more combination especially when also getting fired at.
I ended up playing twice, because my first run got abruptly ended. It's quite devious to have "Ctrl" be a way to fire your gun if there's a chance you'll also be pressing "W" to move forward :P
On the plus side reloading the game seemed to make aiming and firing with the mouse work.
It was pretty neat holding both buttons and going "pewpewpewpewpew"
And I did indeed try to plug myself in, and get damaged, a few times :D
Very good game. Fits the theme and deliver a strong message. Great option screen by the way. Short though, would take more.
Submitted
Knight of LightTook me back old Doom days. Fun game. Crashed at some point, but that didnt stop me from trying it out and enjoying it. Solid work!
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Stop The LeakWhat's there is fine, aside from being able to see through some walls by switching which shoulder the camera is looking over. It does need a bit more content to be able to get invested into it.
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Animal ConnectionsThank you for playing ! The game did not have much game design besides the player character idea which I had in mind. Everything was done on the go from day 1. I will see how I can analyze and structure the levels and difficulty balance as per everyone's feedback and add more content to it in the future. Thank you for the feedback as well !
Despite not being able to rotate my camera in web build, it's a solid project with great art direction and game design!
Submitted
Randalf the Orb ManFun game, cool aethetics. Good potential with a little bit of polish and more structured levels.
Submitted
Bound to be FreeFun game, cool aethetics. Good potential with a little bit of polish and more structured levels.
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Bound to be FreeHey, thank you for trying my game and for the review. I played your game again. It's cool. I'd lower the number of batteries and make enemies stronger or make the cannons on the wall harder to destroy, like hide them better so you can't shoot them from safety or you can't shoot them at all and you have to dodge the bullets by jumping or something. The last encounter especially is trivial, you should prevent the player from standing behind the wall, like make the door flush with the wall. The jumps are the most dangerous thing right now. I died a bunch of times because of jumps :D Well done tho!
Game lags as it loads which is unfortunate because it truly has a fun feeling to it when it works. Love the character love the atmosphere loved everything except the freezing. Great game though and great job doing it solo!
Submitted
Singularity Panic
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