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Operation Samsara's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Seriousness | #218 | 4.059 | 4.059 |
| Enjoyment | #1214 | 3.118 | 3.118 |
| Overall | #1437 | 3.106 | 3.106 |
| Creativity & Theme | #1838 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Visuals | #1897 | 2.824 | 2.824 |
| Audio | #1926 | 2.529 | 2.529 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Engine
GameMaker
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Comments
Is this a Steins Gate fan fiction? Even name of the game sounds like Okabe's operation haha
The game itself has a pretty good concept and some interesting time-rewind mechanics. It’s a shame that it’s more story-driven than gameplay-focused, but I still had a good time playing through it
Thank you for playing ! In a way, yes and no? Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish some cutscenes, so it ended up basically being a Steins;Gate fan fiction I guess haha. Yea unfortunately my mechanic did not pan out the way I thought it would. It sounded cool in my head and when I made it, it looked great as well and I was very happy. Until I starting doing the levels and realized it was an undo button lol. Oh well, I did want this game to be able to stand alone in the rewind mechanic alone as well as the story but I think I might have gotten too ambitious.SPOILERS BELOW It contains some parts of the ending. Unfortunately I don't see a way to spoiler my text so this will have to do. Below is my original vision for the story to clarify some stuff.
The original intention was for this to kind of be a possible origin story for one of the many John Titor that gets trapped in the 2000. This one just so happen to have a similar background to Steins;Gate and towards the end on mission 3, somehow ends up in the exact world line as the start of Steins;Gate, the day Okabe sends his first D mail (if you happen to know the divergence value, it is actually reflected in the divergence meter. I wanted to have a cut scene of a mail being sent and the divergence meter going crazy while the time machine was going back to the future, implying that the world line was changed and messed up the time machine's coordinates. This causes John to get stranded in 2000, where he will need to find a way to recalibrate his temporal coordinates. It is here he will find another John Titor that arrived earlier and devise a plan with him to return to their original world lines (This will be the same plan as outlined in the 2009 letter from John Titor, released by Kay Titor). And the ending will be the same as the current ending, though I had wanted the cutscene to be John Titor entering the forums before writing the 2 sentences in the ending. Something along those lines haha, its kind of convoluted but I had fun coming up with this.
In this way, even if the player is unaware of Steins;Gate or John Titor, it would basically just be a story of a soldier being sent to the past to sabotage the evil organization and save the future. He accomplishes his mission, though slowly realizes the severity of his actions as his version of the future's history had already changed drastically in 2010. Tries to go home and gets trapped in the past, with another version of himself and now they have to devise a way back home.
The game starts with a tutorial that has you turn to face someone knocked out and interact with them. Then your only option is to try kill them. No real explanation other than that they might be a "massive headache" later. This may just be a game, but I don't like playing as the bad guy. I restarted and explored a bit trying the computer first and getting the key. I played a bit more, but the story did not pull me in, and that starting kill left an unpleasantness that built as I played. Overall it felt very conspiracy theoryish. It really needs an intro that gives some story as to why you are doing this and builds up what is going on. It doesn't feel like a mystery that you are trying to solve where you need to learn as you go. The main character seems like they are supposed to know what is going on, but as the player I am lacking the story and just told to do things based on an alternate reality of things from the real world, without explaining how this reality is different and why I should want to do these things. The time-traveling mechanic is neat and could work well for a game, but with there being a lot of reading a story in it, the story needs to grab me for me to want to play.
Thank you for playing and giving feedback. The story of the game can be a little dark, so I understand that it isn't for everyone. For what its worth, you were never able to kill the person and it was supposed to serve as both to explain a mechanic in the game as well as set the tone of the game. The whole lacking story at the start was by design to encourage the players who like to explore more and find out more through the interactables in the game, while those that prefer the mechanics can just play the game as per normal. Of course, the story built unfortunately probably not able to stand alone very well because I ran out of time to make some cutscenes, though for players who understood the reference it should work out. Regardless, thank you again for play and giving feedback, I appreciate it.
What a brilliant take on theme, I'm also really impressed with this being a GameMaker game!? I feel like that's almost a slanderous statement against GM and I'm just ignorant to it as an engine (which I think is probably true in this case!)
On the theme, I do really think it's well applied; but it's abstract in that it relies really on someone knowing what Samsara is and making a connection with time. So I potentially might say that with the power of hindsight you could have tried to be a little bit more on the nose with the theme? Perhaps a clock face spinning back in time, just spitballing. Really this is only to allay any accusations that the theme has been applied spuriously.
The application of time travel is excellent, and the bootstrapping mechanic works excellently. I don't play a great deal of puzzle games so it doesn't come too naturally to me, however I was able to bumble my way through. I totally understand you were up against it a little bit with regards to fleshing out the lore and getting it to work with rewinding, but there is enough there for the player to cut their teeth on.
I also thought I'd share one observation that I've had before which you might find interesting. I play a bunch of old-school grid based dungeon crawlers; and I have encountered games in the past whereby there is some sort of mechanic, timer or stat drain associated with the number of steps taken. For some reason this always makes me stressed and uncomfortable because it feels like a punishment for exploration. In this game that is not the case at all, but I still couldn't shake that feeling. It's a strange one, because I know it's all in my head, but I thought it would be interesting to share! And had minimal impact on my experience of the game.
This is a really nice entry, and I love the theme application and not just another wheel to spin. I had fun, thank you.
Thank you for your kind words. Honestly, I also have no idea the limits of GameMaker as well haha this is my second game jam where I submitted something but technically my first time submitting a somewhat complete game (my first game submission in a previous game jam only had movement and one cutscene). I really learnt a lot from this, aside from the sprite assets and audio, I basically made everything from scratch, from the movement, to the rewind mechanic, to the dialogue system, audio system, cutscenes, etc.
I actually had another name in mind, Ouroboros, cause in a way the game's ending is the beginning that will end up looping itself. Samsara also worked well as you surmised, though not just with the time aspect, but also the world line theory where every divergence results in a different world line similar to how in every reincarnation will be different depending on your karma (which is determined by your past actions). I ended up favoring Samsara more and went with it. Though, I was also referencing to Steins;Gate where the names the main character gives isn't supposed to mean anything (though it usually does connect in some way).
There was an idea to limit the number of turns actually, but I wanted the players to be able to be free to explore the map and learn a bit about the world, however cryptic it may be. So I decided against limiting it. Leaving the turn counter in, was initially supposed to tie to the mechanic of rewinding 5 turns, but I ended up unable to make a proper level, aside from the first one, leveraging it. Actually, I probably should have completely hidden that, given that the 5 turn rewind is already visually apparent when the watch is pulled up and I wasn't going to use it.
In any case, thank you for taking the time to play it and giving me feedback. I am glad you enjoyed it.
Really really enjoyed this! Sprite art and stealth puzzles are favorites of mine, and I thought both were done really well. I did miss the keycard & had to watch the walkthrough since it wasn't clear that the desk & computer were separate points of interest, but otherwise everything felt very smooth.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Ah I probably should have separated them or at least made it clear that it was 2 different interactables. My bad, but thank you for the feedback!
Cool stealth strategy game! I usually don't like stealth games all that much but I enjoyed this one quite a bit.
Enjoyment: 5/5
Very enjoyable gameplay imo, had a lot of fun figuring out how to get past the guards, and the time rewind mechanic makes it not too punishing if you mess up.
Creativity and Theme: 3/5
I like the idea, but I feel like it doesn't use spinning enough. Sure, the rewind mechanic is a wheel, but that's about it.
Visuals: 4/5
The visuals are nice, although some simple walking animations when you take a step would spice things up a little, as it feels a little weird to see the characters slide on the ground.
Audio: 3/5
The audio is alright, although the music gets a bit repetitive after a bit.
Seriousness: 5/5
Very very serious.
FINAL RATING: 4/5
Very solid entry! I enjoyed this :D
Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Honestly when I saw the spinning theme, the first thing that came to mind was clocks and then my mind jumped to time travel haha. I happened to be watching a video about John Titor so the idea was stuck in my head. But that's fair.
With regards to the walking animation, you're right I initially thought that because I was doing tile based movement, it would be weird to have animation (cause the object just snaps to the next tile). But after reading your comment, I went to look at some games that have tile based movement like Baba is you and realized that it would look a lot better with some change in the sprite when the character makes a movement.
For the music, hmmm yea maybe I should have used different audio tracks in the different timeline.
In any case, thank you for taking the time to play it as well as giving feedback. I appreciate it.
I'm a sucker for a time travel story, so I naturally enjoyed this a lot. I like the story (the references hit for me). It's a shame the rewind mechanic isn't used more.
Thank you! Yea, honestly I was quite sad about that too. The idea felt really cool in my head but after I spent a long time making it and the guard detection system, I made a level and realized it was basically a glorified undo button with limitations. I tried to make it work with something similar to the tutorial level but I ran out of time. I tried changing it so that the player can move forward in time while the guard freezes or something along those lines but I ended up with a lot of bugs and just decided that it was probably better to just focus on other stuff. I was still learning how to add in audio and cutscenes at the time.
Regardless, thank you for taking the time to play it. Knowing that someone played my game and understood the references made all the time and effort making this so worth it. I am really glad you enjoyed it.
Hey there! This is a pretty cool game and we had a very similar interpretation to the theme :D so thats cool
I thought the concept of the game was very nice however I did find it was a bit unclear from a game design perspective (I had to watch the videos to understand what I was doing). For example in Level 1, I did not know those blueish tiles are walkable and I could get to the otherside😅. So that's just something to keep in mind, making the game a bit more clear. Other than that, I enjoyed the game :D good job
Hey, thank you for playing. I'm guessing you mean the doors? Yea honestly on hindsight I should have just completely removed the doors, it just made sense to have them but I think it just made things more confusing without proper indicators. But yea you are right, I tried to put a tutorial at the start, but its all text and not very visual. I ended up making a video walkthrough just in case and I'm glad I did haha. Anyways I will take note of this in my future games, thank you for the feedback.
game is a bit convoluted and difficult to pick up
there was a bug that said instance already created - nice vibes tho seems very serious
Yea, I realized this when I made the tutorial. Its why I added a walkthrough video just in case. Do you think visual indicators would have helped? I wanted to add it in the tutorial but I ran out of time and prioritized other stuff. Thank you for playing though.
For the bug, do you remember roughly what it said and what you did when you encountered it?
Really interesting game. Idk if it was on purpose or maybe it bugged but the epilogue was kind of a sudden with just two sentences and with no further explanation to the story. But either way its really cool and it has a potential to be a full game. I would definitely play it again in the future if it was finished. Good job :)
Thank you for your kind words! It was on purpose, there was supposed to be more to the story so that it could stand alone (at least I hoped it could), but I ran out of time (I only realized halfway how troublesome the dialogue logic would be when it involved rewinding time). The way it is put together now only kind of makes sense if you got the references, which on hindsight was probably a bit silly of me but the idea came to my head and I really wanted to do it. Anyways thank you again for playing, I hope it was enjoyable.