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Rick O'Shea's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Music | #137 | 3.435 | 3.435 |
| Sound | #162 | 3.261 | 3.261 |
| Story | #198 | 2.696 | 2.696 |
| Fun | #214 | 3.261 | 3.261 |
| Mechanics | #215 | 3.261 | 3.261 |
| Overall | #301 | 3.130 | 3.130 |
| Aesthetics | #361 | 3.130 | 3.130 |
| Theme | #385 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 23 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.
Kenney 3D Models and UI, SVG Repo Icons, Ovani Sound SFX and Music, Penzilla UI, Kenchoo cat model, detailed list in game credits
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Comments
This is a solid shooting-range type of game. The ricochet is neat, kind of like an extra layer of the puzzle to save cats from the tree. At first, I thought I had to shoot at the cats because I tried shooting at the trees and it didn't work.
Up until I realized that I had to shoot at something solid that's going to bounce to hit the tree. I managed to save all the cats at the end. There is a gameplay bug where I have to aim to shoot, and I should be shooting without needing to aim first.
Glad you enjoyed it.
That aim before shooting is not a bug, but a design choice that was forced upon me by time. Basically, without it, your gun is pointing at the ground, and the bullets are spawned from the gun, so they go directly into the ground. I would have liked to do hip hots, but I was overly ambitious making a 3rd person shooter instead of a first person shooter. I'd never made one before, and, well...I talk about those struggles in my devlogs at the bottom of the game page.
Thanks for playing. :)
This game was surprizingly fun. Its something that I was not expecting at the start of the game. Had a lot of fun.
Thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
Cool idea, I expected a fast paced shooter but was pleasantly surprised to find something closer to a puzzle game. Nice work!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Super fun! I couldn't beat the second level because my cursor somehow was disconnected and didn't snap back into the screen, but I had a lot of fun. Great work.
This is a bug with itch web that someone else discovered. If you press the Escape key on the new level, and click the New Game button, it will resume the game and re-grab the cursor.
Glad you had fun though!
I love the ricochet mechanic, great job!
Thanks, I appreciate it!
Yet another smart interpretation of the theme!
However, the game loop felt a bit incomplete to me. There wasn't much indication of whether I was doing well or poorly, or even whether I was winning or losing. Some additional feedback on the player's progress would help make the experience feel more rewarding and easier to understand.
I also felt that the story didn't quite connect with the gameplay. I didn't really understand how hitting the targets with a certain number of ricochets was helping save the cats, so the narrative and gameplay felt somewhat disconnected to me.
All in all, nice work!
Thanks.
Do you have suggestions on how to indicate good/bad beyond score?
The story was unfinished. But the idea was that it was ridiculous for him to be shooting cats out of trees to save them. The idea was for him to be a noir detective in his head, but basically just helping people out in his suburban neighborhood, and the cats was supposed to be one of a few problems he solved with ricocheting bullets.
My thought on why was he had to ricochet enough to shake the trees the right amount, but I didn't have time to make a shader to shake the tree. So.
The first thing that came to my mind was full-screen effects, such as vignette effects. For example, green for good moves and red for bad ones. Big combo text or multiplier text would also help keep the player in the loop, and you could add audio feedback to make it even clearer.
From your comment, I gather that you have experience with shaders, so maybe you could make the bullet leave a mark when it hits something. That way, the player could trace its path and plan for a better shot next time.
As for shaking the trees, maybe there is a way that doesn't require actually making shaders. You could use the tree's transform component, or even add a little cutscene where the camera moves to the tree view, shakes the camera/screen, then fades out and back in with the cat on the ground.
Those are just the things that crossed my mind.
I appreciate the ideas. Yeah I could transform the tree, but I'm thinking a vertex shader might be easier. Run a sine wave through it and spawn some leaves through a VFX node. The vignette effect is a good idea.
I considered bullet marks, probably with decals, but it just was low priority. I got a lot less time to spend on this jam than the last few I've done, and I had to lower my bar because my lack of progress against past entries I made was depressing me. I talked about that in my devlogs.
Thanks for the thoughts!
I LOVE SINE WAVES! I have a notebook full of ideas for games where sine waves are actually the core mechanic!
As for feeling depressed when comparing your progress to past entries, I totally understand you. I find myself there a lot too. But hey, you made it, and we got to see your creation, and that's already a reason to celebrate.
Also, I know you probably already know this, but here's a friendly reminder: growth and success aren't linear. They're more like a series of ups and downs. What really counts is consistency and showing up when it matters, and here you are. So congratulations, really!
Another thing: it's very impressive how you managed to write detailed devlogs throughout the jam. That takes a lot of discipline and dedication, so shout out to that too.
Thanks. They are actually much less detailed than the previous game jam I did. All my devlogs are linked on my main page.
Fun game, love me a Pun or Word play title! Solo this is a great achievement. Actually found it fun to try and figure out where to bounce. If you had more time to develop, would have loved a predictive line to show where your bullets were going to bounce after leaving your gun. That way you could have a little more ownership over shots, and limit the players bullet amount. It would up the challenge and make it feel more rewarding to land a ricochet. Less fun than just spamming bullets and seeing what lands where tho, i get it. haha
Yeah I had originally planned to do that. I talk in my DevLog about how that ended up not making it in. I honestly was afraid a RayCast would not describe the same path as the bullets, and it would've highlighted the fact that shooting bullets gets really wonky if you're aiming up or down.
So, as you surmised, I decided unlimited ammo as tracer bullets was better. I also made it simpler by allowing you to hit the tree trunks instead of the leaves under the cats to free them from the trees.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it!
I think you've got something with the ricochet mechanic. I did feel like I mostly just shot a bunch at random and eventually got the required ricochets but it would be cool to see a more curated arrangement of terrain and object that I could use to bounce bullets off of, ones that really indicate (hey you should try shooting me and see what happens). It feels like bullet pool kind of.
Also, I love the menu but I didn't feel like it indicated I should use the keys to change options and I tried using the mouse for a while which made me think it was broken. Either way, good entry! Lots of good stuff here!
Yeah random shooting does seem like it would eventually work. I actually considered subtracting a single point for every bullet fired, but for a game jam I wanted it to feel easy to rack up points. I was also using the unlimited bullets feature as a way for you to raytrace and line up your shots.
I actually had planned dialog for him to say it was like pool, but with bullets. But I didn't get to dialogue. I also had planned for a level in which you entered a mobster's pool hall and could play pool with the gun.
I would love feedback on how I could make the carousel menu operation clearer. With a mouse, you can rotate it with the mouse wheel.
Thanks for playing and the kind words!
Really liked the ricochet mechanic. I could honestly see this being expanded into something bigger, maybe even a multiplayer game.
The bouncing projectiles idea has a lot of potential - like paint balls with durability that keep ricocheting between walls and players until they finally break and splash paint everywhere. Then at the end of the round, the dirtiest player loses. I’d genuinely play something like that.
I also liked how you handled the hints and UI. I got through two levels and saved 5 cats in total - pretty cute.
The soundtrack fits the game really well too, and I noticed the different collision sounds depending on the surface the bullet hits. That’s a really nice detail :)
I'm glad you liked it. The paintball idea is a neat one.
It's gratifying to hear that the tutorial , as it were, was helpful. I've never done something like that, but I wanted it to be possible to play without referring to the game page. What's really neat about the UI is if you had a controller, using it would flip all the buttons to display buttons for the controller you're using.
I spent a fair amount of time on sound design. I'm glad you liked it.
Oh, that’s really nice. I always like it when a game detects which gamepad is connected and updates the UI for it automatically. Great job with that :))
Interesting idea. Found myself shooting at the cats more often then I should have lol. Don't worry, I am a cat owner myself, lol. Nice work!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I tried to make the cat shooting possible but have a penalty and specific sound.
The ricochet mechanic is pretty fun to work with
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I had no idea how hard it was going to be to implement.
Pretty neat concept. I would have played more, but I ran into a bug as it loaded the second level and I couldn't rotate Rick around. I'd probably play a more fleshed out version of this, though. Keep it up!
That's a bummer about the bug. I have no idea how that happened. The level loading feature is one I've used in multiple games. Were you using keyboard and mouse or a controller?
KB+M. Yeah, it was a bummer. I'll probably play the game again after voting is over. I'm no sure what happened. I think, perhaps, I was holding the aim button down as I entered the purple area and it maintained the state in some way. I could still press the button to aim, after the glitch, but it wouldn't let the camera view change. It was just locked in one direction. Unfortunately, even with the masterful power of Rick O'Shea, you can only get so far if you can't adjust the angle. (😅 though, I did try for about 5 minutes to complete any objectives I could with the locked camera)
I realize you might not have time to come back until after voting is over, but I would be interested if it happens again.
Yeah, it happens in the web build
https://streamable.com/vm3h0w
It seems to be related to losing focus of the web player, so it might not be anything you can solve on your own. Not sure how much Godot exposes in that way. As a side note, I tried the Linux build, too, but the game wouldn't load properly. The intro sequence is just grey with some of the noise and it seems to stall out before it loads the main menu screen/the song.
Oh wow, thanks for taking the time to test it out and take a video. If you have time, could you try it again, and hit the Esc key to bring up the Main menu, then hit Resume Game and see if it grabs the mouse again? I think this might be an itch.io-specific web bug and something I can maybe code around. Or at least create a key to allow you to regrab the mouse cursor focus.
I appreciate the info on the Linux build. That is a huge bummer, as I could not test that build. However my games in the past have worked on Linux as I usually have a friend test them. Your feedback gives me something to look into though. Thank you for taking the time to do that.
There isn't actually a "resume game" but your "new game" seems to be the resume function. Seems your label doesn't update properly when you are in a game haha. Anyway, yeah, clicking new game actually gives me mouse control back. It is confirmed that this involves the web player losing focus either via clicking off the frame, changing tabs, or even hitting escape to bring up the menu options. Once you click the new (resume) game button, it restores mouse focus, but not before hat point, even just hitting escape to close the menu back out after interacting with it causes the focus to slip away, it seems.
Right, I took the Resume Game code label switch out because I'm not actually saving the game. But glad to know it worked. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for helping me out.
Your game has a really fun mechanic! I think it has a lot of potential if you ever decided to expand upon it. I also loved the name, made me chuckle.
The sounds of the bullets ricocheting into the distance is really satisfying.
Thanks! I appreciate it. This whole game is based on that pun. And if you read my devlog, I think I let that pun get away from me. Mostly because making a 3rd person shooter with ricocheting bullets is MUCH harder than it seemed.
I spent a lot of time picking the right "ping" sound. It's actually a few with a little pitch and volume modulation to make each one sound unique, and then played through a sound player in 3D space attached to the bullet to give a sense of distance. The sounds are from Ovani Sound's Metal SFX Pack Vol 1. Once or twice a year they do humble bundles, and every a few months they do a $20 sale of a bunch of new stuff if you're on their mailing list.
For Rick O'Shea though, I don't plan on doing any expansion. I had lofty goals, but at this point, no desire to follow through. Right now I'm working on turning my Halloween Jam entry into a full-fledged game.
This is fun.
I see you found something to do with the ricochet idea.
It's really well implemented.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed playing it!
I added a Resolution, which wasn’t compatible with the Web launcher. Maybe implement the Fullscreen Function in itch.io so others wont suffer from this issue and I can give it another shot.
Fullscreen on web enabled. Thank you so much for pointing this out!
I always set this on my games, but I've found those settings changes don't work until you have uploaded your first web build, and I forgot to check the box after I did it.
nice.
what a cool, I would say Puzzle Game. My Brain is a little too dumb for thinking with angles, but nevertheless great game
I just read the blog post and just wanted to say: I'm sorry for the hardships you went through and your motivational loss. Still, you made something cool here. You learned a lot, and you thought a lot, which will come in handy for your eventual next project. I really want to emphasize: Design your base game first. You came in with so many Ideas on the first day, it was kinda frightening to read them. I know being excited about something is nice, but it hurts a lot more when you can't accomplish those features. Trust me, I have been there too. But I see that you are talented, and I really hope your next project can give you a little more joy :)
Thank you. That's very kind of you. I tried to be honest about that because people mention it on the Godot forum once in a while. I think it's good to admit it can be a problem. And I did power through so I had a playable game.
You're right about design. I have a game journal and design all my games in there before making anything. But I could have written more. I also bit off WAY more than I could chew with a 3rd person physics shooter. It was so much harder than I thought it would be, and at one point I considered even switching to a 2D game.
I appreciate the kind words.
I love this silly idea. In the last level getting that 3 ricochets on that tree was really hard but good! For more complex level Design this game could have totally profited with a trace line, like in angry birds for example.
Agreed about the trace line. And I had planned to do that. However I was having a lot of trajectory issues and I just didn't want to go down another rabbit hole due to time. One of the design decisions I made early on was to allow unlimited ammo and let you use that as a trace line so I didn't have to implement that feature if I didn't have time.
What was that main menu music lol! love it . :3
Thanks! I made that using Suno. You can see it in the credits and listen to another version of it there.