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A jam submission

Eldwyn's Dungeon AcademyView game page

A short action-adventure where you play through dungeons filled with puzzles & combat.
Submitted by Dragon's Isle Software, DIS Kids, A Wandering Songbird — 9 hours, 12 minutes before the deadline
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Eldwyn's Dungeon Academy's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#8063.2893.289
Visuals#9763.5003.500
Seriousness#11173.4213.421
Enjoyment#11883.1323.132
Overall#12973.1953.195
Creativity & Theme#23602.6322.632

Ranked from 38 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Game Engine

Godot

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Comments

Submitted(+2)

very cool project, I did not get to finish all the dungeons but it seems like there's a lot of content here! the puzzles were fun and you really nailed the classic Zelda vibe.... well done !!!!!

Developer

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Submitted(+2)

I feel like I must be thick or something's wrong on my machine, but I couldn't damage the enemies in the first room. I pushed all the buttons on the pause screen but swinging my sword didn't seem to have an effect.

Developer (1 edit)

This game involves some puzzle elements. Certain enemies can only be defeated by the appropriate tool. If you look at the bottom of the room you will see an open door. Go through there and get the tool you need.

* Based on what you said I am assuming you were in the water dungeon, through the left side door.

Submitted(+2)

Such a fun and complete game. Music is on point. The graphics are neat, easy to read while playing. The only thing I would say is that there was I think a few elements that didn't quite fit the pixel art style like the golden key.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing and the feedback.

Yes, some of the UI art was from a different art pack and we ran out of time to create our own replacements. They were the best visual representation we had ready, so we went with them anyway, but if we do further work they would certainly be replaced.

Submitted(+2)

Loved the visuals, really takes me back to old zelda games! Very impressive work, I think the movement feels a bit floaty so if the player could move a bit more tightly I would say that would make the combat more enjoyable. I still had lots of fun really awesome work, congrats on the release!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

If we do another release, we will work on refining the movement.

Submitted(+2)

This game is great. It reminds me of the older legend of zelda games. The player movement feels nice, accelerating if needing to go across the rooms, or slow if doing small movements. Each of the enemies having their own gimmick makes the game not feel repetitive. I like how every room is structured differently, allowing for unlocking of abilities (bomb, dash). I love the concept behind this game and I am totally going to keep playing more of it when I get the chance. The like the art and music - the atmosphere of the game feels great. Great game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

We were going for an SNES Zelda style game, and the art pack fit that really well. The kids designed the levels and enemies, with each of them doing 2. We wanted them to feel different so the spin at the start had an impact on your experience. This really just grew out of the kids practicing making this style of game in prep for a future project we want to do, and when we saw this jam had started and all our work was in the submission period, it felt like a great chance to get some feedback on where we were at.

Submitted(+2)

I love a good dungeon crawler, and this looks and feels great! It's really nice, especially considering the short time limit and the fact that it's just a development preview. Great job!

Developer

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Developer (2 edits)

Now that the game has been up for a bit, we feel it is a good time to mention this. For those who would like to pick a certain dungeon, we included an unlock. If you click once on each of the windmill doors on the title screen, a plus will show up in the center of the menu. Then when you start, all 4 paths will be open.

Submitted(+2)

There was a lot to explore in this game which is really incredible for such a short time to build it all. I found the character momentum to be a bit frustrating when navigating some of the traps but I suppose thats where some of the challenge lies. I really liked that my sword felt 'heavy' and just enjoyed swinging it around constantly between battles :)

Btw the game initially crashed when I got killed by the large ogre in the top dungeon - had to refresh my browser to try again.

Good job on this!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Yeah, getting the movement to feel good, but also the right level of challenge, was something we were working on up to the end.

We appreciate the bug report and will look into it.

Submitted(+2)

The game visuals and audio is really nice. My only gripe is with the movement, it feels really sluggish with the acceleration and deceleration, especially when you move while attacking, which doesn't really feel good with action combat in my opinion. The rest of the game is really well polished though, great job.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback. We will work on refining the movement further.

Submitted(+2)

It was fun playing, combat feels a bit difficult, but still very good for a week

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

I really like the thematic differences between the dungeons going on here, you're never really sure what you're going to face.

The enemies and environmental traps / puzzles were also varied and had some interesting mechanics / AI. I don't have much to say or critique here as I thought they all worked well, aside from perhaps the path finding, the enemies would just flock towards the player regardless of if a wall was in the way.

The art and music is nice, and while of course they are from asset packs, that doesn't detract from anything. It all worked together nicely aside from perhaps a couple of the UI icons which didn't quite match. 

I enjoyed the Bomberman style gameplay the most, and therefore by extension the Water Dungeon. The theme implementation is definitely there, but I do wonder if maybe it could have been more tightly integrated into the levels, maybe further randomised routes through each dungeon? I'm grasping a little at ideas.

All in all this was a fun little game. Thank you.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Yes, we did originally think about having the spinning to pick your path show up more often in the dungeons, but did not have time to implement and design the levels around it, so it only ended up at the start.

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

For a game jam game there is a huge amount of content in the game and its extremely fun. My only criticism concerns the combat, which is very inconsistent. Great game anyway!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

We tried to design each dungeon to be distinct to play on the randomness of the spin, so the enemies or each were also designed to be distinct, and the challenge of each path to be different. It could have used with more time to play balance, but part of the inconsistency feeling probably comes from that design decision.

Submitted(+2)

Nice little turn out for 7 days. The beginning rotation was a bit hard for my eyes, and the movement had too much floatiness in the slow-to-stop, but over was really cute!

Developer

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Submitted(+2)

I'll open with: I'm a bit bad at dungeon crawlers. I started at the water dungeon and died rather quickly as I was swinging my sword and thought maybe the game was broken! After a few minutes though, I managed to find the bomb belt and from there was able to figure it out. That's always a hard aspect in my opinion, trying not to spoon feed every mechanic or detail to the player, but sometimes things just aren't easy to grasp without a tutorial. I also tried the undead room and immediately fell to my demise. I tried the dungeon on the right but my lack of skill was prevalent.

Overall, I really want to call out the art style, animations, and visuals. It's a very visually pleasing game, and I felt like everything read clearly and stood out to me, even when certain aspects were simpler in nature. The only critique that comes to mind is that while the game opens with "spinning" for which dungeon, and there is the spinning attack, I feel the Game Jam theme could have been more emphasized or involved in the game play. As its own stand-alone title though, I think there's a great premise here.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback, especially if this is not your style of game.

We did try to make each dungeon distinct with different challenges to solve. Adding that bit of needing to figure things out was one of the ways we did that, though can agree that it may not be overly obvious if you are focused on finding the solution in the room. The undead was the hardest combat room. The goblin dungeon had some tough enemies, but there were some tricks to get past the tougher ones, such as where you attack from or what tool to use. The top dungeon had a lot more focus on traps.

For the theme, we were thinking about adding more spinning rooms, so that as you traveled through your path forward would be decided by rooms like the start, but we did not have time to implement them well, so had to skip it.

Submitted(+2)

played all four dungeons and really liked the variety!! (: the undead one was probably my favorite. really like the core concept for this, i can definitely imagine it expanded into a whole roguelike format too, with many many infinite paths.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback. We are not sure if this will be expanded, as some design choices were based on the jam theme, but we do plan to make a new game in this general style. Maybe we will do both, with this allowing practice of different aspects.

Submitted(+2)

cool dungeon crawler! good mechanic, great potential keep up the good work!

Developer

Thanks for playing.

Submitted(+2)


this game is quite fun, i played for around 35 minutes total and i enjoyed it for the most part. i played all four dungeons.  the visuals are quite nice, i like the sprites and animations. the enemies are nice. the music is good, it fits the vibe. 

the goblin dungeon i liked for the most part. i only think the issue, as with many of them is that the ai was a little inconsistent at times. sometimes when i was to the side of one of the spear goblins the goblin wouldn't charge but other times it would.  the level design was quite good, i like that it slowly scaled in difficulty.  the core mechanic of bombs was also fun , it just was annoying that i kept blowing myself up sometimes. maybe a little bit of a longer fuse could fix that? sand was also quite a cool thing, i liked that when i was in the sand i was slower and when i was on the platform i was faster. it lead to some fun fights. i didn't finish it but i think this was my favorite of the dungeons.


the water dungeon's first level felt very confusing from a level design standpoint and from a progression standpoint. as a player it felt that progression ramped up very fast, that it was a lot more difficult. i get the idea of the first room not immediately introducing the mechanic though., i just think it could be done better. maybe adding more sand could help? or a more concrete indicator saying "hey you cant kill this".  dont mean to bash you for that though, just criticizing.

the arrow dungeon was also another one i enjoyed, i only got to the third room though. the initial puzzle was fun and i liked that.  the second room was a good idea and i think it introduces the mechanic in the third room quite well. the third room though was really hard for me and i didnt get past that. i think that the arrow timing can be a bit unforgiving at times since the corridor is so small.  especially since you have to time it 3 times in a row. maybe making it a little slower would help with this. this could also be a skill issue on my part though. overall it was quite fun. 

the undead dungeon was really hard for me, i had fun though. i dont have much criticism there. the dash was also a fun mechanic.

Developer

Thanks for playing and the feedback. We are glad you enjoyed enough to play all of them.

We tried to make each dungeon different, including making some more challenging and scale up quicker to play on the luck of the spin mechanic. Still, there are certainly some things that could have been made more clear or worked more smoothly. The water level was one we redesigned a few times to try to find the right balance, and will take another look at. The arrow dungeon was meant to be challenging, though maybe we did push a bit too far for a jam game.

The goblin spearmen were designed so they only charge in one axis, though we need to update them to give a better visual clue as to which way they will charge. I think a longer fuse on the bombs is reasonable and we will do some testing with it.

Submitted(+2)

thanks for responding!

y'all did a really good job for a game jam! i agree it could've been a lot for a game jam but in my opinion be ambitious, it leads to the most creative outcome. but at the same time watch your scope y'know? it's good to reach for the stars! just dont always expect to catch one. is a good saying i made up 5 seconds ago.

on hearing y'all's vision i actually want to reiterate that i think that the dungeons varying idea was a really good idea! but i do think that maybe some supporting mechanics could help that idea flourish? that's more a critique if y'all plan to continue developing this game. 

Developer(+1)

We love jam feedback and discussions.

We've done a number of jams at this point. Our early ones we way overscoped. We are a bit better now, but do still tend to plan out more than is reasonable for a jam, and then scale back as needed. This started with the kids messing around for practice and not with a jam in mind. When we decided to turn their couple days of practice into a jam game each had core mechanics and 1 testing dungeon. We only had just over 2 days to work with, so scope was a big concern. We gave ourselves a tiered approach so we could focus on getting something done, and then enhancing if there was time. The base goal was probably still a bit ambitious, but was 4 distinct dungeons with a boss in each, and the spinner to pick them. Next was adding in the final boss fight after the per dungeon boss. We only submitted that update an hour before the deadline, and just before Itch got overwhelmed. Finally, if we had the time, we wanted to have a full final dungeon before the final boss fight.

This base does lend itself to procedurally generated dungeons, or having more dungeons, possibly with each path splitting off after you beat the boss into additional dungeons only down that path. Yeah, we have lots of ideas for potential ways to grow this game, as well as starting fresh with the core action-adventure style. We haven't decided yet were we want to take things.

Submitted(+2)

it's good to hear that y'all have done so many jams and also have struggled with over scoping. this is personally my first jam and as a solo developer i actually also struggled with overscoping a bit and having to scale down.  at first my game idea was about just a bird collecting from a spinning bird feeder but i couldn't really figure out how to make the seeds fling out from the bird feeder so i ditched that and made it "survive the seeds falling on you". i think it's natural for every developer to overscope some, especially in a game jam. game development is an art, in art you have to refine your piece a lot. there's touches you add and others you have to remove, the vision always comes together in one way or another though.

it's nice to hear the evolution of your game! a tiered approach def makes sense, especially with more people.  even if it was an ambitious goal i think that y'all did a really good job in the end with scope. 

i think if y'all did want to y'all could really make this project shine if you wanted to! maybe you could add a skill tree or something, that would be cool if you continued this project.

Submitted(+2)

The visuals look so good, the movement is smooth and I like the gameplay. (I got stuck while fighting the water elementals tho, idk what happened like I couldn't move nor did I die)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback. We will do some testing and see if we can replicate and fix it.

Developer

We've done some testing and can't seem to replicate the issue. I hope that means it is rare. Would you be able to provide some additional information to help us debug this? Any of the below that you remember could be helpful. 

What platform were you playing on (Web, Windows, Linux)?

Was everything locked up, or you just couldn't control the character to move or attack? For example, could you pause or get to the tools menu? Could the enemies move?

I can see that your character was charged for the Whirlwind attack. Were you trying to activate it when this happened?

Did you just get hit when the issue started?

Thank you for reporting this bug, and any additional info you can provide.