I died, died, died... I can see that the game is well-made, but a bit of explaining things at the start would help a lot. I had no clue what to do, still don't know how to heal, e.g. I figured the double jump (guessing from other games), but also had no idea where to go to. A tutorial level or at least some brief text explaining the keys at the start would help a lot to keep players.
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Love Story Shorts's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #2 | 4.467 | 4.467 |
| Overall | #12 | 3.717 | 3.717 |
| Audio | #14 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Fun | #19 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Gameplay/Design | #24 | 3.267 | 3.267 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What would you like feedback on?
I would like to get feedback on difficulty of the game and feel on combat and enemy design
What did you update?
I updated the combat and enemies to be more fun to fight against.
I added gamepad support
Comments
Great visuals, music and movement. Overall you did an amazing job on the polish of the game!
Not sure if that’s on purpose, but I see inspiration from Hollow Knight regarding the combat (which is a good critique).
There are just some elements that, in my opinion, made the game a little irritating at times:
- The healing seems way too weak an ability. It takes super long, then it only gives you back 1 HP and on top of that, every time you get hit the bar that needs to be recharged to heal is reduced. Especially the last one, healing is suppose to help when you do get hit, but it just makes it so you can’t heal after taking damage. I don’t know that made it pretty irritating when losing one HP from a porcupine and having to fill that bar up again just to get hit by a bat or other porcupine lol
- When you die to the boss, having to go through all the waves of porcupines and bats is pretty annoying. Would not be that much of an issue if they were faster and you could kill them faster, or if the boss had less health. This almost made me quit, having to redo the long rounds of normal enemies to get to the boss fight
- A tutorial! That did not irritate, but would just be really helpful! Had no clue you could double-jump and heal for the first 2-5 minutes of gameplay
Btw I did manage to finish the game, just wished some elements in the combat and buildup to the bossfight changed to make it more enjoyable!
Otherwise, great game!
Submitted
Candy MAYHEMAmazing polish and animations! Extremely hard to grasp on. I'd suggest adding a tutorial level at the start before immediately jumping into the actual thing which would teach how to fight. Like it took me a moment to learn how to heal which was extremely necessary. Great game otherwise, i really love the art of this.
Submitted
Les ToilettesGreat job! It’s clear that a lot of love went into this, and it makes for a really cohesive experience.
A few thoughts:
- It’s a small thing, but the “Press Any Key” text at the beginning is too low contrast. I didn’t even see it at first. Accessibility standard contrast ratio is 4.5:1 for small text and 3:1 for large text. (More info)
- Steep learning curve. Admittedly, this is not my usual genre so I may just be too much of a normie for this kind of game 🙃 . But - for example - it would be nice to have porcupine enemies telegraph their attacks a bit. I figured it out (fairly) quickly, but for the first few rounds I wasn’t sure why I was dying, because I was right up on top of the porcupines trying to attack, and couldn’t see their projectile. I just took damage and then died.
- A tutorial would be great. The controls are simple, but it’s always nice to have it explained in the context of the game itself
Nicely done! Excited to see what you do with this. :)
Submitted
Acid ReignYESS I finally beat him. It was definitely on the challenging side, but it felt great to beat his last phase, I felt like I was really in the zone skipping around his jumping waves . Since I kept starting over, I noticed myself getting better at taking on the beginning enemies. I think with checkpoints and some combat tweaks you could easy the difficulty spike in the beginning of this game, because it does feel fun when you get good at the enemy patterns.
The art is incredible: the game page is pretty, the crt scanlines fit perfectly, and the character designs are awesome. You gotta keep adding enemies and characters to this world. The torch looks great and the slight shading under the platforms is a nice touch.
When fighting the shooty guys, after I got used to their pattern, I felt myself wanting to do some risky stuff to beat them. I tried jumping on them and hitting a down attack, but that doesn't exist yet. I think that would be really satisfying on the mole guys and if you jump over the bats, to be able to down attack on them. Maybe some way to perfectly time an absorb to steal their projectile for focus.
There were a lot of times I had full focus and health and I wanted to do something with it. Maybe a ki blast or parry could be cool? I also think the focus drain speed when you heal feels too slow. Maybe make it slow to start but it accelerates so it finishes a little quicker. Right now, it feels like you have to completely disengage from combat to heal, and even that's risky.
Submitted
PapoGatoAmazing art.
My feedback:
1.) It's pretty hard. I might have skill issue but from what I can observe, the first enemies all have ranged attacks and there are multiple of them while you can only do a plain melee attack. I did reach the stage where there are both porcupines and bats already but I only had one HP and I have no idea how to heal (I keep pressing J and K but to no avail).
2.) The audio gets static when I full screen for some reason.
3.) For some reason, I could access the development console by clicking a button. I don't know if this is dangerous for your game and if so, you should not allow us to access the development console.
Looking forward for the future of this game!
Submitted
Corrupted ArcadeI liked how the porcupines had their projectile attacks you had to avoid, but when a bunch of them are grouped up, it can be REALLY hard to beat them when they're all shooting on a cycle, you have no opportunity to get in closer.
I was able to make it a few waves (or at least what seemed like a few waves) but I don't think the heal button ever did anything? I was holding down K and nothing seemed to happen, I don't know if I'm supposed to only heal when the bar is full or what.
The graphics are cool, I'm normally not a huge fan of scanline filters but I think it worked here. When you load the game, what assets are you actually loading? I ask because the first time I did something that required a new sound effect (e.g. the first time I jumped, the first time I attacked an enemy) the game noticeably froze, which to me seems like you're not loading sound effects at the start of the game.
The art and soundtrack are amazing! You managed to create a great Castlevania-like atmosphere.
I thought the enemies were well designed. As for the difficulty, I definitely found it to be on the hard side, haha. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I also have skill issues, so there's that. It felt like the mobs were designed around the player's weaknesses. The ground mobs shoot projectiles while you have a short-ranged melee attack. Sometimes 4 or 5 mobs would pile up in a small space and shoot projectiles in series so it's hard to close in on them. You have to jump towards the flying mobs and get close to them, but they deal contact damage, so you need to be quite precise with your moves to get in close enough to attack, but not close enough to get hit in turn. This makes the the game feel difficult to me personally, but I liked the difficulty. The double jump felt very useful too!
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to save my fox friend in the background, but I had fun trying. Cheers!
Submitted
One Shell at a TimeVery cool that you added gamepad support! The game graphics are awesome and you set the story well and get into the action! I like the setting on the main menu thats good. I too got stuck for a moment in the controls menu since I'm playing on web, maybe add a back button? I played in zoomed out mode since my computer was struggling hard to run this game and the audio was messed up. I'm on Macbook Pro if that helps regarding performance. I like the pixel art a lot well done on that!
Submitted
Run Down the CountNice game with stunning art! Really made me think of Animal Well for some reasons.
At first the game is really rough, you are thrown on the fight with no explanation, I would have like a little gameplay features introduction.
There's a screen for learning the controls but I was stuck in it because I couldn't figured out how to exit it so I didn't come back to it ^^'
Submitted
OvenWatchGreat game! I really like the gameplay and the retro style!
The mechanics are simple, but the game is still fun and challenging. Though a short tutorial or even just a few hints for the controls would be really helpful—it took me several attempts before I realized there was a double jump.
The combat and enemy design are great too. I especially liked the animations and feedback; everything feels very responsive.
The cover image is also really good— simple, but attempting.
And wait, that goofy frog-like creature was BULLER? I was expecting something much nastier, lol.
Submitted
Please, My Lord!Pretty neat! The story hook was surprisingly emotionally investing, the aesthetic was pretty striking to me, and the gameplay is simple yet fairly challenging; I appreciate that there are signifiers to let you know when an enemy is about to attack.. Unfortunately, I didn't get that far; what keeps throwing me off is the fact the jump is exclusively on the space bar, which feels weird when the other actions are comfortably on J and K. Put something on L and it would feel way more natural and easier to alternate between, at least for me.
Submitted
Scavenger MouseThe updated version is so good! I can see the improvement in lots of areas but the animation and artstyle have caught my attention the most :D The game is very satisfying to play and kind of addiciting. I like how you added the healing bar . My advice is to add a tutorial so that new players could get to know the controls for this game and not learn it the hard way like i did haha. I also find it hard to beat Buller in his second and third phase due to many enemies spawning in the same place at once, but i guess it could be a skill issue. Also the background noises and melody creates a spooky ambience that fits this game theme. Congrats and keep up the good job!
This was a fun game. My first suggestion is to add a tutorial, there are a lot of buttons to learn and what is where and what it means. It would be much easier to start playing, it it was present.
Regarding difficulty balance and enemy design. Overall I feel that you difficulty isn't too hard, but there were some frustration moments. I especially found the bat to be the most annoying enemy, it moves quite unpredictably, and also it is much harder to gauge if I will hit a bat or not, so I had many situations where I either accidentally hit the bat with my body, or didn't reach enough height to hit it.
Final boss feels too easy. I almost never took damage from it, and main danger is adds it spawns during the encounter.
Last thing I didn't like is how my "heal bar" is reduced on hit. I feel like its too punishing. Like if its full, and my health is full, that means I've been pretty careful recently, so when I make a mistake, instead of being able to use that saved up healing to get my health back up, the game almost punishes me for saving that heal bar, instead of rewarding
Submitted
Chrono SwapperReally cool are style! the scale up in difficulty feels natural and not too exponential. the gameplay is smooth, my only complain is having the player attack in the last direction he moved in, it can set you off a bit maybe adding a cursor that determines which side to attack would make it better. Great Job tho!
Submitted
COUNTDOWNIt's a really fun game! I really enjoyed it! just a few things I personally would recommend is to let the player use w to jump and s to attack if they would like to, and maybe arrow key support too? (I know lots of people who don't play games with wasd and refuse to)
Submitted
basement economyThis already is a great game.
I especially love the art style of the game. The dithering of the level elements made the solid player and enemies stand out as well.
The gameplay was simple but challenging, a good combination. The self-knockback when you attack forces you to play more cautiously, and the heal charged by attacking forces you to keep attacking to survive.
As for the difficulty, I think it is in a pretty good spot. The start is pretty easy to get you used to it, and even though the hedgehogs are easy to beat, once there's a large pack of them they can still become a problem
Hitting the bats mid-air felt like a nice challenge as well.
As for the boss, he himself feels a bit too simple and easy, but the add phases make it a lot more challenging.
Still I think the boss could pose more of a threat, especially his melee attack felt like it has a very short range. Also I kind of expect a bull to charge at me at some point :P Because of that the first phase without any adds felt too easy and too long.
Finally one small UI nitpick, there is no way to quit the game on desktop ( I played the linux build). There is no option for that in the pause button and the victory screen does not respond to any button at all.
Submitted
Like Clockwork
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