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Counts Must Die's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #1641 | 3.190 | 3.190 |
| Enjoyment | #1873 | 3.524 | 3.524 |
| Creativity | #3687 | 3.440 | 3.440 |
| Audio | #4487 | 2.786 | 2.786 |
| Artwork | #4880 | 2.988 | 2.988 |
Ranked from 84 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?
You are Taking Counts Down, there is also a count down timer the entire game.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
see description for full credits
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Goud, AlphieDev
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Comments
Only after failing the last(?) level of the game and coming here to comment did I realize that the countdown carried over to the next level... im dumb
The game end screen is so creative! we love reality flashbanging us during casual vampire-staking time. I also loved all the different ways you could kill the counts. Maybe make it so that you're also reliant of things other than the dash since it's basically free? It gets refreshed so fast that you don't realize there's a cooldown until you do. Like adding a longer cooldown for the dash so it's mainly used to go through doors, and then the swords would be used for chain kills in a room, for example. And some music would've tied the whole experience together. Overall, neat game!
I liked how the countdown carried between rooms, that it pretty ingenious :)
I would have loved to see how many bullets I had left / dash indicator, as I would sometimes die due to not having either available (you could blame that also on a skill issue on my part)
I missed the bus :<
There is a bullet indicator around the watch, but it is a common complaint to have missed it so I don't think it was an issue on your part, we should have mentioned it in the tutorial, thanks for playing!
Perhaps I had no more bullets when I was looking for the indicator
Gives me katana zero vibes. The fact that spacing matters when you use dash is cool, makes your plan your movement. However, the sound design was kinda lacking and it didn't feel like the tutorial explained all the mechanics well enough. Fun little project though!
Really cool, I liked the gamefeel a lot! It kinda reminded me of katana zero, which is definitely a good thing. I do think that left click should have been used for shooting the daggers and right for the bullets, since you can only use the latter action 8 times, but aside from that, very nice!
Killing/dashing through enemies was a super satisfying mechanic! Sometimes the game can be a little frustrating when your dash fails to bring you to another floor. It would also be cool if there was some sort of time mechanic with the enemies, maybe killing an enemy adds time to your overall countdown, as of now the countdown mechanic seems a little distant from the main focus. Still, great work!
The game is really fun to play and the whole premise is hilarious! it's kinda like a 2d Hotline Miami. I had a few issues though (playing with KBM):
- aiming upwards to jump and dash was pretty frustrating. sometimes i wasn't even able to jump through the opening hole especially if there was a vampire killed on that opening.
- when a level ends you can still fire the cross bow and waste an arrow for no reason
- enemies are usually close together, so there wasn't really an incentive to use the crossbow or sword instead of just dashing through all of them.
- enemy pathfinding is kinda strange. for example if i break through an upper cellar door, and an enemy sees me but i fall down to the lower level, the enemy above me just keeps mirroring my movements instead of chasing me and going down to the lower level by itself.
- countdown timer isn't easily readable. the black countdown text melts with the busy stopwatch art, so its hard to know exactly how much time is left.
Besides all of that, it's a really cool and engaging game. Awesome work!
Thanks for the detailed review, it's good to know our mistakes so we can learn from them. I do think we focused a little too much on the dash compared to our two other attack types that's true, I wish I made some levels where your best course of action was to go for swords more
I must give you props for the funny narrative! The game was pretty fun, even though the crossbow felt kinda pointless to me - it's a nice addition tho. Dashing through everything was very satisfying!
Nice game :)
Fun gameplay, it was at its best when you could chain dashes but I struggled a bit with my mouse to get the right angle, it might be easier with controllers
I did not find the arrows and swords very useful since you could just dash again after killing someone and most levels had vampires close to each other
(Also I kept wasting arrows by left clicking by reflex after ending a level)
I would also add a prompt to let the user redo a level to let them get a better time since the timer is shared between levels
Also love the main art
Thanks for the indepth review!A reset button is something I have no idea how we missed adding, I've seen other people mention it too.
The main art was done by an artist friend who we randomly pulled into voicechat and
forcednicely requested to draw, we are also really happy with it.Out of all the games I've played, this has the most potential to be full fledged title. The dash is just so satisfying to land! The limited bullet system made me really cautious about when I wanted to use those items. Though I personally never used the sword system, as it took me out of the flow of combat, with only some minor tweaks I can definitely see it becoming really satisfying. The only tweaks it really needs are perhaps to balance out the speed and air time and bind the dash to a more accessible button like left or right click. overall id happy to help you expand this project in the future. Just contact me : )
i missed the bus back home. i had a lot of fun with this! i'm honestly pretty confused by the decision to make you only have 8 shots? the game has a really nice superhot-esque rhythm to it where you feel like john wick in an action scene, having more crossbow bolts woulda added to that without reeeally making it much easier, maybe you start with less or none and there's ammo pick ups from corpses? i think with more enemy types and more modes of interaction this could be really awesome, great work for 4 days
It was kind of a left over design from earlier in dev, where we only had 8 levels (we have 9 now) the idea was you had 1 stake per level, and since dash became much more of an important mechanic it kind of just slipped past. I do also think we should have either made a reload mechanic or made the cross way stronger to push players to save them or use them in specific situations.
Thank you for the feedback :D!
Great game, and thank you for reminding me that the oven was left on!
Lmfao no problem, I am glad you had fun!
whoaaa I'm loving this, really reminds me of Katana Zero <3 super cool concept
Yep! Katana zero was a huge inspiration, thanks for checking it out
A lot of potential with the combat puzzle here - I really like the idea. Took me a minute to realise the dash was going the same direction as the mouser cursor. Sort of Hotline Miami and Sifu.
Being compared to game likes Sifu and Hotline Miami is unironically a honor, thanks for playing!
I liked the combat a lot! I wasted all my ammo on the start so i just had to beat the game without my crossbow but still, very good gameplay ^V^
Honestly in my own speedruns I barely use the crossbow anyways, Dash is the real GOAT.
Thanks for playing :D
I like that you have to strategize. You have to decide which attack to use, should you spend your crossbow bolt or try to dash or maybe there is an angle for a sword throw. Having a time limit on top of that gives the gameplay that jolt of adrenaline rush. Cool action game!
Yeah we really wanted to give the player a few ways to handle each task, I've seen people dash spam or use swords for double kills so I think we succeeded. Thanks for playing!
Obviously inspired by Katana Zero :P.
Turn out I miss some mechanics and did not use the sword at all (?), so I guessed I did pass through the levels with just the dash since the crossbow does not shoot for me? Didn’t manage to pass through the whole game but I enjoyed it.
The crossbow only has 8 bullets across the entire game so you might have ran out of bullets and didn't notice, Thanks for playing regardless!
I missed my bus, but really enjoyed the game. having three ways to kill the enemy allowed me to play in a zen state which I really enjoyed, though I wish it was a little more clearly communicated in the tutorial as I thought my shooting was broken at first. however, this could just be me being terrible at engaging with tutorials.
fun and enjoyable with a cool art style too.
The tutorial is a common complaint, it's definietly something we will have to focus on next year to make better
reminds me of games in the vein of katana zero (which someone also mentioned!) very very fun. reccomending to a friend, but i love it :D my only criticism is that having the blood/other particles visible on the screen between levels is a bit odd. very satisfying game tho
Definitely reminds me of katana zero, I like the dash
liked the art and sfx