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Bring The Count Down's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artwork | #753 | 4.143 | 4.143 |
| Audio | #867 | 3.619 | 3.619 |
| Narrative | #2049 | 3.048 | 3.048 |
| Enjoyment | #2289 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Creativity | #2823 | 3.619 | 3.619 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Double entendre. You must literally bring The Count down. To do so you must defeat his familiars down one by one, only then can you bring him down. I'm hoping the double entendre and the countdown-theme-reinforcing juice makes up for the fact that really we're just counting down how many enemies we've killed lol..
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/
https://binbun3d.itch.io/
mixamo
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
clem
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Comments
Love the visuals of this one! Super impressive
Wow, I really love the art direction of the game! Especially when the player dies or after you kill the big guy, the sequence is pretty cool! But the parry timing was a bit hard to get used to at first. I think it would be cool if there were a visual cue for when to parry; other than that, this is a solid game!
Great game. I was unable to even beat the first guy, since I couldn't figure out the timing to parry his attacks, but it was still pretty fun.
Thanks for playing. I will definitely tune it after the jam as it's been very hard for some people (I did the classic zero playtesting and am good at my own game thing). For what its worth if you ever feel like trying it again you can cheese it by just spamming the parry since I don't actually lock it out
Damn the first guy is really though! Loved the artstyle, well done!
Fun concept! didn't have much time to play atm but i'll be back for sure! i just wish there was a little less down time between tries and the albeit very stylish slowmo kill screens could use a skip button for for retries start adding up! also i wish there was a download option my browser was struggling though i'm guessing you ran out of time
Thanks for trying it! Actually you should be able to skip it but i could've made that clearer. If you hit spacebar or left click any time after the death screen starts it should pop the menu button early and you can just go back and restart should be pretty quick. Same if you kill the count you can skip through the title drops into the next level.
And yeah sorry I didn't have much time to try to optimize the web build, and I actually didn't realize until too late that you can have both a web build and a download 😭. This was my first jam and upload to itch
understandable! and impressive for a first game jam!
For a first jam game, this is AMAZING! Such visual goodness with the silhouettes! Even if you don't continue this game, I can't wait to see what you make in the future. So polished too!
Great job on this! Maybe I suck, but I gotta admit this was hella hard lol. Getting the parry down was the strat for me but even that first guy kicked my butt so many times.
The game is done very well visually, though. I appreciate some good care and skill put into the presentation and menus and whatnot. As others said, it stuttered a bit on the web build but it was still playable.
Keep it up!
your game is so cool and eye candy but I am super duper bad at fps games I tried like ten times to kill the first guy before giving up. Really cool game.
the death is actually just a stylized camera right? It is so awesome and cinematic
Thanks for playing! Yeah I wish I had had time to add an easier mode for more power fantasy, or more cues to help the player.
Yeah pretty much, for the death I basically duplicate the two actors to their own render layer, then there's a special camera that only sees that layer that has its own custom environment and lighting. Glad you liked it!
the camera thing is super awesome. I absolutely adore it.
You nailed the aesthetic of the game. The death/victory scene transitions and the Count walking towards you are 👌. I'll admit I'm not the best at parry based games so I struggled a lot with the timings, especially on some of the chain attacks where it felt like the parry windows were a bit inconsistent with the timing of the sword swings. But when I did get them it was really satisfying to quickly pop the latches and headshot in quick succession. With some tuning and clearer audiovisual cues I think this could be a really fun game.
It would have also been nice to respawn at the start of the level instead of from level 1 since I eventually had to give up by level 3.
GREAT game. It was so fun and rewarding when you get to perry several attacks.
Struggled to play this on web but appreciate the web build. The kill effects are definitely the best part of this game! The controls could do with some work though. Good work! I played this on stream, there will be a vod here - https://www.twitch.tv/nebsterlive
Yeah I crunched at the last minute to try to get a web build up hoping it would get more plays than a download, but clearly it just melts some computers rip, wish I had had time to optimize the web build. I think you'd also like some of the other effects if it didn't lag so much for you that you couldn't progress, just in case you ever come back to it. Thank you for playing and streaming it!
I plan on giving it another go today with the windows build, will comment again if I do!
Edit: realised there isn't a windows build. Will just let the shaders compile and try off stream
Thanks man, appreciate it. Yeah i realized too late that you could do both a web build and a native build on itch, was my first game jam rip.
I noticed with some people, it should stabilize quite a bit after playing a minute or so once the particle and other shader effects have all loaded in the first time and are cached. Regardless, appreciate you giving it a shot.
love the little animation that plays when you die! it's a big laggy for some reason but its a cool game overall! good job!
Very challenging and a really cool aesthetic!
Great aesthetics and aura, but the parrying feels frustrating. I spent too much time on just the first level, and left the game when I immediately died in the second level.
Yeah I totally hear you. If I had more time I would've playtested more and realized I should've made it more forgiving, or given more obvious cues rather than just rely on player reading their animation. Fwiw if you do ever try it again, try parrying earlier than you think since you'll get more grace that way. Thanks for playing
Losing never felt so good. The movement and general gameplay felt jittery or clunky at times, and the music doesn't take long to get old. But the visuals pop so well, especially on the "defeat" and "victory" screens. The colours changing to hide "THE" and "IS", revealing "COUNT DOWN", is so neat. Focusing feels super satisfying and I cannot express in words my dopamine spike when I realized you could headshot. Love it!
I really like the concept, and as a big sekiro fan, it's pretty intuitive mechanics-wise. It might be because I'm playing in the browser, but I definitely felt the stutters, and specifically coming out of bullet-time while enemies are attacking makes timing the parry window _very_ difficult. I have a bunch of small game-feel criticisms that I think mean that this game is something I really want to get some proper fleshing out after the jam, I can see something genuinely sick if you can nail how the game feels. I'd love the camera to be centered, and a little higher up, as its hard to see enemies some times. I'm a little unsure about the red balloons only being visible during bullet time, and I'd like to have health be a little clearer. Some logic in multiple enemies to keep them from timing their attacks to frame-trap you, enemy variety, I could go on, but the core idea is delicious, great job!
Thank you for the feedback. Honestly means so much to me that you want to critique it that thoughtfully, lets me know you can really see it. Yeah I wish I had more time to properly stress test the browser version, and across different machines, unfortunately just started getting too close to the wire, running natively it is a lot better and I imagine would be on more machines, plus there's probably some low hanging optimization fruit. I totally agree with all your critiques, from the tuning to the features to the experimentation, its all stuff I would've explored much more if I had more time, hopefully still will. Thanks again
Holy! Really impressive work, the parry mechanic and the visuals are really next level! Good job!
I love it. Although I didn't quite know when to parry at first but I figured it out. The gameplay is very smooth and fun
Yeah I realized I really should've added some kind of cue like even a simple flash of their mesh or something to help indicate. I got too used to being able to read the animations myself, and unfortunately didn't have any play testers
dooope as hell!! i love the art direction and the combat is pretty nice :)))))