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A jam submission

Average Alien CommuteView game page

Get To Work On Time
Submitted by Rufflesworth (@rufflesworth) — 3 days, 17 hours before the deadline
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Play Chaos Initializer

Average Alien Commute's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Authenticity (or, Creativity in use of resolution)#564.0034.167
Graphics#703.1223.250
Gameplay#702.9623.083
Overall#743.1023.229
Audio#952.3222.417

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Themes
I'd say I was inspired by two:

(THEME 1)
You'ren't Allowed To Win!

(INTERPRETATION)
A game that has a difficulty to it that is borderline, if not actually, unfair.

(IMPLEMENTATION)
2D levels that are stuffed with obstacles, hazards, and traffic jams! And a player character that barely has the tools to handle it!

"Well. We never really liked them anyway."


...mashed up with...


(THEME 2)
Save. That. For. Later. Or... Die.

(INTERPRETATION)
The player has access to a one-time use ability that, when used, dramatically increases the deadliness of play.

(IMPLEMENTATION)
Our alien friend's vehicle can deploy a Chaos Bomb, once per level, that has major destructive power. But the release of such massive chaotic energy results in all manner of new deadly events!

"WE GET TO BLOW UP A CHUNK OF THE WORLD?!"
"and some -- whatever -- happens as a consequence..."
"I'M IN! Use it immediately every chance we get!"
"YESSIR!"

Tooling
Godot, Aseprite, and Famitracker.

These are definitely my gotos, but it has been a significant amount of time since I've done much game dev work, so there was plenty of re-learning.

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Comments

Submitted

I like the sound it made when it bumps into things. Also I thought the bomb was a lick. I thought to myself, I’m gonna lick this obstacle out of the way lol, gg!

Submitted(+1)

I liked it, the idea of having one shot per level to clear the screen added an interesting layer of strategy and choice to the rush through the level. I experimented with different places to use it to see what would save the most time. Also that intro cutscene showed what can be done with SUPER low rez lol. Nice work.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I think this is a really cute game, but I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, the animations, the pixel art and the sprite work was just gorgeous, especially the licking the space bar. Yes, that is in the game and it makes sense. The wobble effect on the spaceship when we bounce off of something, the bomb and its effect, the sun, all are done masterfully. The style and the color palette all had really good cohesion. However it may just be the shortcoming of my imagination, but I just had no idea what happened in the intro cutscene. It felt like a fever dream to me. An interesting fever dream with a well defined color palette, but nonetheless it just didn't convey what happened, which is a shame. Still, the art was this game's strong suite.

I really liked the gameplay, it was simple but it had a nice idea, the small levels fit really well with the limited pixels. At first I disliked how slow the acceleration is and how bouncing takes away all momentum, it felt clunky. After the first level though, I began appreciating its higher skill expression. I'm not sure how much thought was given to the level design and where we're intended to use the bomb, but it was really fun to just blow up one obstacle I did not like and just slip into the portal eye thingy in time.

This is something you addressed, but the addition of more sfx and music would've elevated the experience much more. That is the only thing though that I feel lacked polish, but other than that I found this game to be really well made and polished. Also I really liked the different death messages. They got slight chuckles out of me.

(One slight note, I may just didn't go far enough, but you should've definitely hid a secret in the ending room, why else would you let me get out of the map?)

Developer(+1)

Quite the high amount of praise! I personally don't think this hunk of junk is deserve'd of all that.

I was trying to find a way to keep the game challenging in an interesting way and not lean on finicky precise movement. I imagine having more unique enemies, hazards, threats, obstacles, etc. could allow better challenging level designs. These levels were kinda simple boring mazes of sorts with a couple other things sprinkled in.

I suppose I wanted the main gameplay to be around answering the question: what section do I obliterate? I only saw two levers to mess with to even force this question to be relevant, those being: having the default level path(s) be long enough or slowing enough that the player dies to the timer (forcing a shortcut to be made somewhere) OR having all default path(s) be dead ends of sorts (again forcing the player to choose some place to blow to smithereens!)

The intro cutscene was attempting to show our alien hero sleeping peacefully in a serene forest, to then be abruptly woken back into the reality of their dull home (sorta by the player's input). Curtains start to fly open to bright yellow sunli... nope, the window is bricked over. Our hero sits up in bed, weirdly rolls forward to stand in bed, pause, faceplants back onto the bed. Crawls out of bed and domino flips to the wall. Flips a switch, which apparently opens up the floor to uhh space and the whole room gets sucked down with a surprise cow from above. Then there is some sort of outfit cannon with terrible accuracy that shoots our suited up hero off the screen into the game! Something like that haha. Couldn't get that one to a focus group in time. Or do much iterating.

I apparently had enough energy to implement the player having endless bombs in the end screen, fun idea, and why not? Adding some kind of fun secret to discover popped into my mind but I didn't care enough (yikes to have gotten to that state of being) to think of something.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

hi! the learning curve was a little steep, but the gameplay loop was enjoyable and slightly addictive. i liked the intro cutscene. i wish the respawn was just a little bit faster so i could fail harder... faster. i got to the third level and it seemed like there was an invible block that killed me everytime. maybe i broke something?

Developer

Greetings! I appreciate the feedback. I couldn't get the gameplay to a design where I was satisfied enough to leave it alone. The level designs didn't get enough love for sure.

I feel that having a game like this force the player to take a moment to regain composure a bit might improve the overall experience rather than allowing them to mash retry immediately. Sorta bashing their head against the wall. And for this game in particular it allows a short time to look at the level itself, strategize a different route or what not.

I only tested this on my machine and on Firefox. Maybe there are some bugs I never noticed. There is a timer in the top-left corner that kills you when it runs out. Felt like a decent way to push the player forward, add some tension, and you're trying to get to work so being slow is not an option, right haha? But it might not be obvious it is there or that it even does that.

Submitted(+1)

Third level defeated me, but I did put up a kind of noble struggle against it :)

I like this. Straightforward rules, and ridiculous difficulty, just like PC games back in the day.

Submitted(+2)

The speed runners would go crazy with this game! I absolutely loved it. Great work!

Submitted(+1)

Quite challenging, but I couldn't stop trying. A good sign =)

I love the intro scene! Such a low resolution ... but you got so much personality out of it.

Just a random idea: What about adding a ghost trail of your previous try?

Had a lot of fun  with your game! Congrats on submitting.