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A jam submission

Ivory KeepView game page

Choose your gear, seek out relics and descend into ruins of a fallen kingdom where every step could be your last.
Submitted by Scewps — 4 days, 8 hours before the deadline
Rated by 3 people so far
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Ivory Keep's itch.io page

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Ai Usage

Human made

If you have competed before, how has your game changed?
The prototype I submitted before was a series of hardcoded challenge rooms, the current version has much more item variety, procedural dungeons and 3-4 areas.

Genre

Action

Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing

Rating

Family Friendly

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Comments

(1 edit)
  • Youtube Link [First Attempt , Mostly with 2.5] | Youtube Link [2.6a] / Twitch Link [2.6a]
  • Graphics : Quite nice pixel graphics. 
  • GUI : Fine
  • Performance : Fine
  • Music / Sfx : 
    • Music : Fine, although I think there's currently only one BGM (Excluding bossfight)? 
    • SFX : Fine
  • Gameplay : Noita + Splunkey sidescrolling action platformer
  • Misc Issues : 
    • I found a heal spell book that I couldn't use, unknown why. (Mana cost?)
    • You can survive with 0 hp
    • Game still crashes but after dying , trying to return to hub or quick restart
  • Notes : 
    • NPCs appear semi-infrequently but none seem to have any real purpose , I imagine the blacksmith will help craft or upgrade things going forward? [Anvil?]
    • Skill points feel rather lackluster , more per level or just more value per point would be nice.
    • Walljumping feels rather confusingly difficult to do , which is a problem if you get stuck in a hole. 
    • It can be rather confusing on how to use your weapons , I was using controller but sometimes you could swing one or your two weapons or not.
      • It's also a little fiddly to use items
      • I think there might've been some input delay as well?
    • You can stash items but there isn't a stash in the 'hub' area?
    • It's unclear how far you can fall without taking damage
  • Final Thoughts : I really want to like this game more than I do, I think that it has a decent ground work but something feels 'missing' , some je ne sais quio. I'd be interested in checking it out again in the future when it's got a bit more meat on it's bones.
  • Youtube Link [First Attempt , Mostly with 2.5] | Youtube Link [2.6a] / Twitch Link [2.6a]
  • Graphics : Quite nice pixel graphics. 
  • GUI : Fine
  • Performance : Fine
  • Music / Sfx : 
    • Music : Fine, although I think there's currently only one BGM (Excluding bossfight)? 
    • SFX : Fine
  • Gameplay : Noita + Splunkey sidescrolling action platformer
  • Misc Issues : 
    • I found a heal spell book that I couldn't use, unknown why. (Mana cost?)
    • You can survive with 0 hp
    • Game still crashes but after dying , trying to return to hub or quick restart
  • Notes : 
    • NPCs appear semi-infrequently but none seem to have any real purpose , I imagine the blacksmith will help craft or upgrade things going forward? [Anvil?]
    • Skill points feel rather lackluster , more per level or just more value per point would be nice.
    • Walljumping feels rather confusingly difficult to do , which is a problem if you get stuck in a hole. 
    • It can be rather confusing on how to use your weapons , I was using controller but sometimes you could swing one or your two weapons or not.
      • It's also a little fiddly to use items
      • I think there might've been some input delay as well?
    • You can stash items but there isn't a stash in the 'hub' area?
    • It's unclear how far you can fall without taking damage
  • Final Thoughts : I really want to like this game more than I do, I think that it has a decent ground work but something feels 'missing' , some je ne sais quio. I'd be interested in checking it out again in the future when it's got a bit more meat on it's bones.
Developer

Thank you for the honest and helpful feedback.

I'm glad you somewhat enjoyed the game and you're right that it is rough around the edges in certain parts. It's always helpful to watch playtests like this since some bugs/crashes don't happen on all machines. I was able to fix some of those issues now.

Regarding controller support, it's actually not done yet but it does show up in the settings already, which is probably a mistake. I might disable it until it is complete.

I do agree that there is something missing, but I'm not yet sure what that is. Maybe the content should also be distributed more to the beginning of the game, since most players will spend a lot of time in the first few levels.

Appreciate you for giving it a second try, and have fun with the rest of the jam entries.

Submitted

Hey, I gave your game a play.  It's really fun!  I played for about 30 minutes, and I got better at the runs as I went, and discovered new things.  You don't really onboard the player much, which isn't bad, I could figure things out mostly for myself.  Though, not knowing there's a wall jump at first was confusing.  But I figured it out.  I like the different speed and behaviors of different weapons (poke vs slash).  I also like the throwing your secondary weapon, and the bow is great.  The 3 different enemies I encountered are good too, with 3 different behaviors so you need to strategize for them.  It's a pretty hard game in terms of not getting a lot of health, though you get a lot of money, so buying food helps with this.   I'm not a big roguelike player, but I really like dead cells, and this gives me similar vibes.  Though you don't seem to have any meta progression?  I always like that, but I understand if that's not what you want to do.  I got to the caves 4.  Are there any different biomes yet?  Also, it looks like there's a magic system, but I didn't seem to have enough mana to even use a scroll.  I had a magic staff, but it just swung and hit guys.  I guess that's something I'm supposed to try to figure out as I go.  Anway, cool game.

Developer

Thank you for the extensive feedback :) Glad you enjoyed it. No I don't have meta progression at the moment and I plan to keep it to a minimum tbh. I do want the player to discover lore fragments or unlock new item drops for the dungeon eventually though, so that might count as a bit of meta progression. There are 4 biomes in total, though the last one is not complete. Cave 4 is quite good for 30 minutes of playing. What do you think, should the first biome be a bit easier (maybe reducing it to 3 levels) so players progress faster? Or is it good like this? Also good call on the mana system, I should probably communicate this a bit more.

Submitted

Hm, this title wasn't quite for me, but it's certainly well made and polished. The artwork is fantastic, although quite simple, and the atmosphere works for the most part.

 The gameplay itself struggled a lot to get my attention. This title actually reminds me a great deal of Super Pitfall for the NES, which isn't strictly a compliment, but fortunately this game is substantially more competent and stable than that one. I found combat to be a bit flavourless, nothing about it was especially bad but the basic jumping around and smacking enemies with axes and swords just feels very played. This definitely seems to be trying to evoke the classic NES era not just visually but with its gameplay, but the awkward randomly generated platforming and milquetoast weapon and enemy design causes it to have more in common with many of the forgotten C listers of that era than their contemporaries that pushed game design forward and are remembered so fondly today.

There is some contemporary flare in the NPCs, who have some quirky one liners and goofy personalities (as well as a few serious folk who spout strange cryptic stuff), but while that does lend to making the game feel more modern, it almost clashes with the rest of the design choices by reminding me that we've had 50 years with the medium to innovate past running around in generic procgen caves swinging swords at snakes and bats. I'm sure there is a lot of this that is simply a matter of taste and can be discarded, but I'm left wondering why I would want to play this game over others.

I did have one decently long run, I made it to around floor 5 or 6, but unfortunately going through one of the doors seemed to have spawned me out of bounds (or perhaps the camera didn't follow me). After about thirty seconds of scrambling to figure out where I am, I quit the game there.

I definitely didn't hate this by any stretch, and on a binary of "good" and "bad" I think it's good! However, it just feels lacking in its own personality, I'd love if it had at least one thing that I could point at and say "You can't get this anywhere else!"

The game is quite fun, I enjoyed it. Reminds me a lot of Noita and Spelunky. I had some issues at the start. When fullscreen it tends to try and force itself out and I believe that's due to the CMD prompt running but seems ok when putting it into windows via F11. I enjoyed some of the Terraria-esc traps like the pressure plate dart.

I'm not sure if it's intended or not, but consumption of a potion, the green one at least, closes the game. Given the Fullscreen issue I'm inclined to believe it's a error. But if it is intended it's quite funny.

Overall, despite the limited time I gave it, it's a fun game and am interested to see how it expands.


Vod section from 45:00-1:14:30 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2866219017

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing :) It was fun to watch you figure out the mechanics. Funny how many parallels to Terraria there seem to be, I never played it haha (maybe I should). Will try fixing the issues you mentioned (Command line grabbing focus, scaling being displayed incorrectly in the tooltip, the game not communicating when you cant swap an item due to the carried one being cursed). The green potion was indeed a bug, not that it was too green :D Thanks for testing and good luck with the rest of the entries

0.2.6a is practically unplayable atm, I'm not sure where the bug lies but trying to start a new game always ends in a crash. (Not boot, it gets to main menu fine.)

Developer

Hey, thanks for testing and letting me know. I was able to reproduce it on my end and it should be fixed now (was related to an outdated dll). Would you mind trying again to see if it works?