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Probably Not A Bomb (Jam Version)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #664 | 3.895 | 3.895 |
| Narrative | #1447 | 3.263 | 3.263 |
| Audio | #1983 | 3.316 | 3.316 |
| Creativity | #2894 | 3.605 | 3.605 |
| Artwork | #2912 | 3.447 | 3.447 |
Ranked from 38 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 have to complete each floor quickly as you're always under pressure from a package that definitely isn't a bomb you must deliver before it counts down to zero and... ruins the birthday suprise!
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
Everything - I, me, myself.
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
ITheServer
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Comments
Fun & fast-paced! It could do with a bit more challenge though. Maybe larger mazes at some point? I also ran into a bug when I got to floor 31 where everything disappeared and I couldn't move.
Fun game with a good design, I'm impressed how much you've managed to squeeze out of a fundamentally simple concept (solving mazes).
Soooo much fun! Got to floor 11 and then got a bit greedy hahaahah. Great job! Very polished and had a blast!
The greed is always tempting lol! Thanks for playing!
The presentation was really polished, and I had a good time trying to rush back to the door. Even the levels I couldn't complete felt like I could've made it if I played a little cleaner, which imo is exactly the kind of feeling you want to evoke with games like this, so good work!
Thanks for the compliments! I really appreciate the feedback.
I really liked the music and it was stressful but fun to play. I thought the art and writing were cute and cohesive too.
I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for playing!
A cute little Rogue-lite(?) game that was pretty fun, if i had one criticism it would the movement could been a bit more smooth, I got stuck on walls a bit too much for a game with corridors to tight, outside of that though. Pretty good, good job!
Thanks for the comment! The janky movement is a valid criticism, I should have made the collider smaller than the actual player. Thanks again for playing!
Sometimes the simplest games are the ones that make you realize how late it is because you spent too much time playing a completely unbalanced game!!! Well done! Have to go!
Can agree with you on the balance lol! Thanks for taking the time to play my game!
As soon as you choose to invest in making money for how many seconds you have left the entire game loop is trivialized and you can buy all upgrades every round by just hightailing to the exit and ignoring the pickups. There was no possibility of failure when I closed the game with over $1000 on floor 46. There's some math behind making a game like this work and having scaling difficulty match well with your scaling power that I'm sure you can find some good tutorials on for next time you make a game like this one, but it's also important to make sure your mechanics and modifiers work together and complement one another rather than against each other. A modifier that gave me more cash if I managed to collect everything or gave me a lumped sum that subtracted a dollar for each upgrade left on the board would have pushed me to engage more with the core game and think about my build rather than checking out as soon as the amount of money I made outpaced the cost of new upgrades.
That said, you got me to play a game with a fundamentally broken economy for over 30 minutes because it just felt so damn juicy and satisfying to play, so big props on game feel. Keep making games!
Thanks for the honest feedback. I think I really got my priorities wrong this jam, and neglected playtesting for polish. Because of this, I completely overestimated my scaling and how it would perform keeping the player in check and eventually ending their run, leading to most runs scaling into crazy numbers until breaking via bugs I never thought the player would encounter. I’m glad you pointed this out because it was a pretty big mistake that did significantly hurt the game.
I also didn’t think synergies through enough. For example, “Clock speed” ($ for time remaining at the end of a level) actively incentives reaching the exit as fast as possible instead of rewarding exploration and pushing your luck. This trivialises the game significantly, especially since it’s so impactful of an upgrade.
Because of this, I am considering making a post jam build addressing these issues so I appreciate your suggestion, as it does help me think through why I added an upgrade. At its core, an upgrade should help encourage the player to interact with the gameplay loop with rewards rather than pushing them away. Many of the upgrades actually remove from the game so they will certainly be getting changed to complement each other.
I’m glad to see sacrificing the balance wasn’t all for nothing as I was quite proud of the polish at the end so I’m happy that other people found it satisfying!
Thanks for leaving such an in-depth comment. Although critical, it is definitely valid and I would rather critical comments than positive ones. Mistakes are how you improve, right? I will definitely be taking what you said into account. Thanks again!
Absolutely. Keep at it! Interested to see how the post-jam build plays out! Give me a holler when it's out and I'll definitely give it a play :)
I finished the post jam build! I tried to keep a similar time constraint to the jam so it still has one or two bugs as I focused most of my efforts on balance, but the game scales much faster and the upgrades focus more on incentivising gameplay rather than skipping it. I changed over half the upgrades and even added two more, so hopefully the economy should be more balanced. If you want to give it a go, here is the link: https://itheserver.itch.io/probably-not-a-bomb
its pretty fun. difficulty increase kept me on edge.
Thanks for playing! I’m glad you found it fun.
This was creative and fun. It would have been cool to see your modifiers actually visually stack somehow though, unless I missed it?
It kept me engaged for a while :)
Thanks for the feedback! If you hover over the modifiers you can see their description, count and name. Thanks again for playing!
I like.
Thanks for streaming my game!
An interesting game concept. You can buy the same item multiple times.
Yes, the items were meant to stack. The ability compounds, so 1 coffee = 10% speed, 2 coffees = 20% speed. Thanks for playing!
I didn't expect to see some sort of roguelike for this theme, its really cool how you designed this.
I guess this is just a bad habit but I always tried to get every microchip and that ended some good runs for me lmao, maybe it would be cool to have like a little headstart for like 10-ish seconds or more to see the map have a tiny plan then run through it? idk just brainstorming here
but overall really interesting concept great job on this game!
Thanks for the compliments! Microchip is my favourite strategy as well. I love getting as much Lag (+0.5s when you collect a chip) and Iteration (+1 chip spawns per floor) as possible so I get a bunch of time and can get loads of money. I should have thought of a buffer to see the map, as I felt it was a bit overwhelming to be just thrown in. Maybe a "3,2,1, GO!" timer could have worked. Nevertheless, I'm really happy you enjoyed it!
Sunk a bit of time into this one and it was a lot of fun! Really nice feel to the movement and it only felt better as it got faster. Would have liked to see the difficulty increase a little faster. It would be nice to see you turn this into a full game. Nicely done!
If you can check out our game we would appreciate it <3
I'm glad you found it fun! Coffee was one of my favourite upgrades so I'm glad to see other people enjoy going as fast as possible as well. Thanks for playing!
Fun game, the upgrades are well thought, was fun getting "stronger" and moving around felt good. Great job!
Thanks for the compliments!
Fun little game while it was working, I really enjoyed getting upgrades and going faster and seeing the entire maze fill with stuff to collect. Having a few more upgrades would be nice, and being able to see how many you have of each would especially be nice, but the game is really enjoyable as is!
Thanks for playing! This is a known bug caused by forgetting to account for edge cases when spawning the Microchips and Bonus Clocks. I wrote code for them to only spawn in empty spaces, so when space ran out, it just crashes :(, which I'm bit annoyed I didn't catch. For your second point, I did add tooltips for the upgrades, but perhaps I should have made it more obvious. If you hovered your mouse over each upgrade, a window popped up and told you its name, ability and current count. Thanks again for leaving a nice comment!
great idea! loved the music. the game is quick it gets you to just keep going!
Thanks for the nice comment! I'm glad you liked the music.
Fun! I love the little story thta you wrote in the description hehe. And the level construction is quite interesting, simple mazes in which the content varies with upgrades, very effective! Congrats on your entry!
Thanks for playing! The story was originally going into the game, but then gamejam happened, and as always, I ran out of time. I'm glad you found the maze generation interesting. I wanted to focus on it since it was such a core part of the game, so it's nice to see it doesn't go unnoticed!
I enjoyed seeing how broken my character could get — the upgrades don't have a lot of diversity as far as "builds" go, but not every game needs that kind of thing! For something with a simple premise, it felt good to grow ridiculously powerful while making a mad dash through the hallways.
I would've loved an ending, but given the fantastic intro, maybe it's funnier that this hapless guy is always destined to explode no matter what. As is, I had a fun time! Great work.
Thanks for playing! I did try to make some synergies but they were pretty simplistic and small. This coupled with the game being really easy kind of made the synergies I put in useless. I planned on an ending, but ran out of time, so I made the "You're Fired" screen as a compromise. Thanks again for leaving a comment!
Getting "fired" is one way of putting it lmao, very fun idea! The upgrades are very fun, I greatly enjoyed going all in on the coffee!
For the "You're fired" screen, I was originally going to make a more tame animation but I was running out of time so I defaulted to what I was good at: explosions! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for playing!