Play game
Count Down's Countdown Counts Down's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #372 | 3.894 | 3.894 |
| Creativity | #1197 | 3.979 | 3.979 |
| Artwork | #1596 | 3.830 | 3.830 |
| Enjoyment | #2498 | 3.383 | 3.383 |
| Audio | #2602 | 3.170 | 3.170 |
Ranked from 47 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?
Threefold: Main character is called Count Down, thematically, his nearing death feels like a countdown and the game literally counts your down inputs
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
see description for full details
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Gute LuThe
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Clever puzzles and a clever narrative. Well done!
Very fun game to figure out, took me a sec to realize that going down was what was causing me to age, and that I couldn't go under 0 years left, though that makes perfect sense. Really enjoyed the puzzle design and pushing stuff around with my limited amount of inputs, though.
man Count Down is so greedy
Nice game! I was able to complete all of the puzzles. I would say the puzzles do involve a good bit of thinking and planning. However, the puzzles did require some trial and error. I don’t really think that was a big deal though because I enjoyed every puzzle. I had a lot of “aha!” moments throughout.
I like the art style, it reminded me of those games they’d have installed on our elementary school computers (educational games) and also Pizza Tower.
I would find a way to make the mechanic more obvious in the first level, but I was able to figure it out after a bit of experimenting.
Good work!
Nicely done! I really like the artwork—the way that every single year lost makes you visibly older is really well done. It makes a big difference—the whole thing is much more visceral when you see yourself hunching toward death and then suddenly spring back with all the color back in your beard again. The puzzles are fun (though I skipped the two where you have to push your way through solid walls of boxes, I just didn’t wanna math it out), and I like the “victory lap” level at the end and the final cutscene. Really great work.
I had to skip some parts, but it's a solid puzzle game with a good narrative.
Clever name, clever(and very enjoyable) puzzles, clever story, clever interpretation of the theme. This is probably the most clever game on the Jam lol. My life needs more of these puzzles. The sounds effects need a bit of work tho. But, the screams are perfect.
I thought the narrative was thought provoking: the intro hook was very compelling and made me want to play and see how the player's story unfolds.
- SPOILERS -
It was interesting how in the intro, despite the player questioning if he lived a fulfilling life, you chose to have him go through and eat people's souls to live even longer - like he had no redeeming qualities despite his end-of-life revelation. I thought his character arc would have been stronger if the gameplay was his history of misdeeds leading up to the retrospective intro. The fact that I'm even thinking about all this shows you created something magical in the storytelling. For that I give it top marks!
Aw, thank you so much! To be perfectly honest, you might have put more thought into the narrative than I have :D We kind of intended a more silly tone, but then I ended up writing a slightly more sincere intro cutscene than intended and liked it too much to replace it. I quite like your idea, though, might be worth to revisit the narrative after the jam.
Sometimes we stumble upon brilliance by accident... and that's a valid part of the process! Whether or not the story you crafted was planned, the fact that most of the comments praise you on it shows you created something really special. And this is coming from someone who usually fast forwards through the drudging story to get to the gameplay hahaha.
Gameplay-wise this is a game right up my alley, so I was bound to enjoy it. I did really enjoy it, it was clever it was challenging and it was rewarding. Beautiful puzzle design, nice twists, great setups with some big "aha" moments. Level F8 however, I'm not sure how it was for other players, but for me it was a little exhausting as I got stuck on it for a long while, but I pushed through. I personally think that <SPOILERS> 2 ways around being both baits was a little bit of an overkill</SPOILERS> it was a difficulty spike for me, it didn't hinder my general experience but it made me less patient for next couple of puzzles. Luckily the next puzzles went down a little bit in difficulty for a while, so I had some space to breathe.
The art isn't very much my style, but I do think it is nice looking. The cutscenes are very well made, the gameplay sections could use a little bit more love, especially knowing how much love was involved in creating the game (which shows :))
I very much enjoyed the attention to detail, like the counts art aging down.
I didn't really care about the movement issues, the game was fine for me, wouldn't notice it without the other comments much to be honest.
Personally, I did enjoy the game a lot, but I might be biased as at least twice during jams I tried to make a similar game (limited moves concept) but never got it to work. I think you made it work. Even "spamming" the theme interpretation to be present in many parts of the game is something that I like to do.
Sorry if this feedback is a little chaotic, but to summarize
- switch around or tweak some levels, especially F8 could be benefitial
- expanding the art of gameplay sections would be great
- A little bit more explanation or tutorialization at the beginning would be great
- The puzzle design is excellent
- The idea is very well executed
- Cutscene art looks great
- Amount of levels and mechanics is impressive and they are shown to the player at a great pace
Overall great game and once again, excellent puzzles.
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it :)
F8 was definitely not meant to be that much of a difficulty spike, but I can see the double red herring being a bit mean in a level that introduces a new mechanic. Might have to add another introduction level to boxes after the jam.
Artistically, this is definitely also quite a departure from what we usually do. I agree that the gameplay section could use a little more love, maybe after the jam is over and we have a little less time pressure :)
Really did like the premise and the narrative of it, the art looked really nice as well.
The main gameplay mechanic was a bit of a trying things and see what worked, I think that could have been designed better but it's still not too bad. I think an indication of which tiles the count can move on could be something as I did not know at which age I could not move downwards or left. Some of the puzzle levels were a bit too difficult so I did have to skip them(Thank you for the skippable button).
The ending was really well done I think, it had decent narrative end and the art style at the end was fantastic. Though the ending is bugged as it is repeats again and again.
Thanks for the feedback! The count can always move left, and he can only not move down (or up if you've collected an hourglass) if he has zero years left. Everything else should be fair game. But yeah, I agree, we probably should've communicated that a bit better.
Overall, I liked it; and, yes, your girlfriend's pixel art is good.
I've seen better; but I don't think I've seen better *for a first try*.
So, take that as a compliment.
:)
I liked the mechanic (although, I had to figure it out by trial and error, passing the first few levels by pure luck, it seems).
I must also admit that the puzzles were mostly too hard for my sleep-deprived brain at 11pm, so I just skipped most of them.
:P
Thanks for including that option, though.
I was keen to see how the story ended; and I've been frustrated in story being locked behind a skill barrier in this jam already (a lot more narrative in games this year compared to last year).
It seems like you already know by now; but there's a glitch with the ending cutscene where it flickers/repeats/jumps.
Thank you! Yeah, I have a tendency of making puzzles too hard and we were aware the difficulty was at the upper end of what was "tolerable", so a skip button was pretty high on our to do list.
And yeah, we caught the ending bug less than an hour before the deadline, so we decided it was a feature, not a bug :D still haven't looked into what causes it.
Hey! Counts buddies! I really like the art in it and the concept for counting down.
Very clever concept, and the puzzles were very smooth. The constraint probably could have been communicated a little better at the very start, but everything after that was understandable.
Thanks! Yeah, considering it is the main gimmick of the game, we realized a bit late that it's not introduced super clearly :D
Very nice gameplay concept, and the art is wonderful, especially with the Count literally aging up or down. It got me scratching my head in a couple of sections, and I even almost got tempted to skip trying to figure it out, and what doesn't help is the uh glitchy? character movement—it definitely made me restart more than a few times. Still, I powered through, and it was pretty enjoyable overall.
The ending was definitely a twist, and while it might be unintentional, I like how you could just keep repeating it. lmao
Thanks! Yeah, I like to think of the ending as a happy little accident :)
The artwork for this was really stunning, I loved the attention to detail and the de-ageing visual was really superb. This wouldn't usually be my kind of game, but I really enjoyed playing it and the concept is a really great take on the theme. Had me screaming all the way through, and then the Count screaming at the end! Great work!
Aw, thanks! I wish we'd had a little more time in the end to do some final polishing, but I'm happy with what we ended up with.
Loved the concept, music and artwork but I had some troubles understanding the mechanic at first (could be only me though, I'm not the best at these games lol), still had a lot of fun!
I'm bad at these sorts of puzzles, but I had a great time! The artwork is awesome and I love the attention to detail where he de-ages. Had an issue where he was glitching about a little between moves, especially if moving quickly, and the music didn't loop properly, but those are things that could easily be looked at in a post-jam build!
Thanks! Yeah, I just noticed the non-looping today, we had to speedrun testing in the end and never took more than one loop length :D I was so sure I checked the "loop" box, but apparently not, oops.
A clever take on counting down that works on multiple level. I notice an artifact for a frame every time you move to a new tile. The artwork is nice and the music is very catchy.
Great submission!! Art is awesome, the puzzles are a bit hard for me but definitely satisfying when you figure it out!
The art is great. I really liked following the story, at the end I kept making the count scream lol
Hah, definitely a feature and not a bug!