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Pacemaker's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #1052 | 3.435 | 3.435 |
| Artwork | #2494 | 3.565 | 3.565 |
| Creativity | #3393 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Audio | #4400 | 2.804 | 2.804 |
| Enjoyment | #5285 | 2.783 | 2.783 |
Ranked from 46 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?
Input and Action is based on a countdown motion.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
BoldPixels Font by Yūki
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Comments
This is a pretty fun game and I like how you have to think about each move before you do it. Some things I would change is making the spikes less difficult to deal with and making the music line up with the beat. Other than that, this is a great game!
Very fun idea! I especially love the strong integration of the theme.
Thank you
Fun game!
Thanks!
Great concept and execution! Good job to the team!
Thank you so much
Loved the game Loved the idea Great work!
Thanks a lot!
its decent but sometimes the controls feel a bit buggy and unresponsive
I love the cover image!
Haha, love to find another game that has a whimsical story! Playing on the web, I did notice the dialogue cut itself off a bit at the beginning, but it didn't detract from me gleaning the overall premise. It took me a bit to get acclimated, and the spikes proved to be tricky (I didn't see them retracted at first, and then once I was aware of them, timing my movement was pretty gnarly). But I love the cute pixel art and the way movement timers align with the big beat in the soundtrack!
Thank you so much for the kind words!
Really creative!
Thank you!
The art is really cute and professional! The gameplay is really unique. I thought it was a rhythm game at first but was more of a puzzle game trying to keep track of the various timers and think steps ahead to know where you should be. I unfortunately sucked at it cause my brain no worky good, but it’s really something you can sink your teeth into. Well done and congrats on the entry!
Thank you for the kind words!
Cute art and funny story haha
Interesting idea.
I think that this game has a good idea, but it somewhat falls apart within its execution. Namely I think the spikes are just too difficult to time yourself with, given their count only gives you one correct permutation of timings that will work, so you are then left to just sit around and wait till it happens. Giving them a longer sequence would provide the same puzzle idea of 'Pass the spikes on the beat when they are down', but prevent having to do it perfectly.
The levels where you are also just pushing boxes, while more fun due to the lack of spikes, don't really use the mechanic in any interesting ways, since you are just simply waiting to move.
I think this game would maybe benefit from being a top down style, and giving a 4 direction movement. And making most of the enemies / obstacles move in a predetermined pattern. Since then it will be easier for players to predict where enemies will be and track their movements and timings.
There are also some other QOL things that could be added, that would improve the feel of the game for players. The first one that comes to mind is letting players read the opening text before you start any countdowns, otherwise they will likely die trying to read the text and understand how the game works. This method should also be applied to all levels, in that the timers don't start until you do a initial input, so players can scope out an idea of how they will traverse.
I like the idea of timing the game with the music, and it brings some of the 'feel' of the game. But I think you could've taken a different approach and map out the bpm of the song on a timer of some sort within the game, and then you wouldn't need to keep restarting the song to keep it in sync. Since being able to listen further into the song would make it feel less repetitive.
You could definitely also get fancy with the music, and have it have moments of multiple beats in quick succession. So the player would have to quickly plan out a route, especially if that section of the song has a memorable part right before it.
The art is very charming. And having a simple intro cutscene adds a lot to the character of the game.
There is good potential here, and I think it would just require some reworking on the mechanics :)
Hey there! First of all I wanna thank you for the really detailed comment. Appreciate it.
For the levels, we had much more ideas but we unfortunately came short of time to implement all of them. Spikes and boxes were the only two things we were able to add out of all the ideas. And in the short time, we came with the best permutation of spike pattern we could think of that was challenging. We tried longer countdown but noticed the player is able to just walk right through. Was there a better permutation? Probably, but we sucked the math to think that through in such short time :')
Keeping the level paused and not starting countdowns until the player moves is an interesting idea that we never thought of. I would definitely consider that for the future, thanks!
The music is a good point that we considered as well. We knew it would be better if somehow the music was persistent between levels and continued to match the countdown bpm even when the level changed but unfortunately, we had no idea how to do it. Even right now, when the music restarts each level, halfway through the song, the music desyncs with the countdowns and we honestly don't know why. We definitely need to look into that aspect of how to match the gameplay frames to a song.
Overall, I think we just really mismanaged our time but we came up with the best we could in the limited time. Thanks again for your detail analysis, we will definitely consider some of your points for the future.
By the way, as for your point about top down 4 directional movement, the other dev working on this game has already made a game like that. If you're interested, you can check out his game, Cellwalker :p
Love the puzzles, love the cute artwork, love everything about this game. Amazing work.
Thank you! We're glad you liked it!
I'm really bad at timing, but I really like the 'action" aspect and puzzle genre ! The robot is really cute too.
Cool puzzle concept and well made art, but my timing is terrible, couldn't get past level 5.
Please try to fix the desync between the music and gameplay, it would make the game sound and feel so much nicer
Thanks! You're right, the desync is one of our biggest bugs at the moment. We couldn't fix it due to the lack of time though
fun game
eehi! good game! i really liked the pixel art graphic! and the gameply is funny and strategical. nice work!
if you want you can rate my game, i rated your's ;)
A nice puzzle platformer with it's own take on the theme! At first I thought I need to sync my move with the music but only realized that you can pre-input your move lol! Overall, a solid game.
Thank you!
Cool idea! was a little jarring when the music de synced with the count down one some levels
This idea is so cool and it is very satisfying once you figure out the puzzle.
Thank you!