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UMBILIC's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #8 | 3.923 | 3.923 |
| Overall | #29 | 3.038 | 3.038 |
| Art | #34 | 3.154 | 3.154 |
| Music | #36 | 2.615 | 2.615 |
| Gameplay | #43 | 2.462 | 2.462 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How have you integrated the theme "Freedom but at what cost" in your game?
you are tethered to a mass on one end of the room and trying to reach the other. to make progress, you need to cut away one of the cords. each one costs something you very much needed.
Where and which 3 colors have you used?
bone white, player char. blood red, the mass & cords. void black, the deep & dark. texture and definition added by dithering & forced nearest neighbor rendering.
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Comments
I must be too silly to beat it but it is amazing, I love the vibe and how it expresses the theme
This is the fondation of something great! Probably the most on theme game I played!
Same comment of other people on what we're trying to achieve and how to understand that order in which cords are cut has an importance
I'm a bit confused by this game, since even if you cut everything you are not able to get the 48 blocks needed. But yeah, cool concept
thanks for playing. you def aren’t the only one who was confused it seems lol so it’s not you, it’s on me. there are a handful of ways that the cutting order affects different elements, and from other comments it seems like it’s not clear that cutting all cords asap isn’t necessarily the best solution. to be clear it definitely can be completed, i ran play tests with every order combination, & there isn’t necessarily an order that would 100% result in failure. but it def seems like some are monumentally harder than others.
the confines of the jam slice maybe didn’t present the most intuitive played-through tutorial. the best path forward is usually to cut things at the last second you can before getting hit, but the order of cuts probably wasn’t balanced well enough imo.
but thank you again, i will def take all these comments into consideration and try to balance a few things, and tho i don’t see much more gameplay coming from this as it’s kinda a micro game by its nature i can say for sure i’ll be applying the same design principles going forward
Super spooky! I love how the UI and the game changes as you "cut the chords"
Great job!
thanks! the limitations of the jam helped drive a lot of inspiration for the aesthetic (obviously the color limit especially inherently brought out the need for alternative shading and dithering techniques). i was trying to made each one you lose really felt through the play but some worked better than others.
At first, it was unclear. Then I more or less figured it out. I like the fact that when you cut the cord, you really lose something, but, to be honest, as a player, I didn’t feel it with all my senses. For me, only the breathing was important.
ty for playing! there are a handful of ways that the order of cuts you make can affect the difficulty, it seems some def scale more obviously and logically than others. interesting that breathing affected your playthrough the most because i actually thought that might have been the weakest. i don’t have much to add to this beyond the jam slice but will be working on some balancing when i get a chance.
It was a little bit confusing, managed to beat it but did not realy understood why. The game has an unique atmosphere you can build upon. I would recomend changeing the itch page text color to something that contrasts better with the comment input field
thanks! i’m glad you could get through it, it seems like a few people weren’t so i def need to work on the balancing logic.
and ty for pointing out the color issue with the text, i do wish there were better native functions for page themes cause it seems like something small always slips through.
just noticed the linux requirement update and realized i skipped it, will do tomorrow!