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[JAM] Untitled Guinea Pig Game's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Accessibility | #50 | 2.938 | 2.938 |
| Originality | #59 | 3.562 | 3.562 |
| Graphics | #69 | 3.375 | 3.375 |
| Audio | #71 | 2.812 | 2.812 |
| Overall | #76 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Fun | #79 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Controls | #89 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Theme | #105 | 2.812 | 2.812 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
Godot 4.7
Theme Interpretation
The hero is a guinea pig who wants to eat all the veggies and has to escape constantly the terrible doom of being caught again by humans !
Source
I don't have a repo yet but I'll add it ! (I know it's bad practice)
Discord Username(s)
SystemK (only me and itch assets)
GWJ Participation Level
First time !
Team Size
1
Generative AI Disclosure
I confirm that this jam entry does not contain any AI-generated content
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Comments
Congrats on first GWJ participation, cute game
It was fun and the mini game concept was very original, cool game!
Oh thanks ! I'm glad you liked it. Feel free to criticize, I think I'll spend some more time on this game to polish it a bit more after the jam ends.
Hi Kim,
Really loved how you approached the design on this, and managed to make the different assets work together!
It’s got a really nice retro vibe that gave me lots of nostalgia, and the doom hand chasing the guinea pig was a nice mini game.
For a solo dev in the time frame, it’s a great effort!
Tim
Hi Tim !
Thanks a lot for the nice feedback. I write shorter messages because I'm lacking time.
As I am planning to improve this game, if there are advice you'd like to share or things you would have changed as a player, helpful criticism is welcome ;)
Have a great day !
Kim
Yeah absolutely,
Obviously all feedback is subjective by individual player, but I felt if the following were fixed it may have helped my playthrough.
Think the movement or collision needs some adjustment. Sometimes felt a little clunky or like I was snagging against invisible walls, so getting caught felt unfair.
When I got caught 3 times, the game just froze rather than gave me a game end screen. May just be a bug, but would be nice to be able to restart when that happens and try again.
I think the sound effect for the guinea pig movement didn’t quite fit tonally. It jarred me a little but couldn’t say why exactly. May be worth trying out some other sounds?
Had one food just off the top right bridge, that sat in the water. One that spawns in after interacting with a vase, that I couldn’t access. Not sure if just me being dumb on that one though. But the guinea could only move on the lower portion of the bridge for me, and couldn’t interact with the food from shore.
= Guinea can move off the top screen in the doom minigame. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a design choice, but it felt odd it could only go off screen in one direction.
Hope some of that is useful!
Tim
It is, thank you !
I had noted the thing about the guinea pig and I thought I'd fixed the jar problem, so this is my bad.
I've worked on the movement this morning but I'll play the game a bit more to see if there are still problems.
For the movement SFX I agree, I think I have to find/do something more smooth and cute.
About the screen frozen when you got caught three times, this shouldn't happen. It's a bug I was unaware of so I'll investigate.
Thanks again for the detailed list, these help me a lot to improve my games after jams and learn my mistakes to avoid repeating them !
I like the minigame to avoid the instant game over. It makes the experience much more fun, as it is quite easy to get caught. Good job.
Thank you :)
so THIS is how my cats feel like when I have to chase them around lol
fun concept ! It was cool to have the minigame giving you a chance to escape and not an instant game over, One small addition I would suggest would be to have a way to "pass turn", ie making the humans move without you needing to move, it would make the humans with red detection cones a little bit more manageable. Other than that, quite fun and well made game ! Congratulations fellow critter enjoyer hehe
Hahahah poor cats ! But I'm sure they're comforted with hugs afterwards.
Thank you for the nice feedback ! I absolutely didn't think of a "pass turn" command. That's a great idea, I'm adding it to my future improvements list :D
Cute + funny game and concept :) That doom hand got me invested in the little guinea pig, especially as I got closer to the end!
I like that some of the veggies were hidden behind buildings too, was fun exploring the town and scavenging to get that super sweet ending.
All in all, great job and welcome to Godot Wild Jam :D
Hello ! Thank you for the very kind comment :D I'm very happy you had fun with the game.
Are you a regular of this jam ?
If you want to share helpful criticism that's welcome too, I'm here to make progress (and I'm pondering the idea of turning this game into my first very small commercial project - with improvements of course). My plan for the next few months being jams, a small commercial project here and there, and tutorials on the way to learn what I need when I need it ^^
(I'm replying to comments then I'll play your game too !)
Of all the jams I’ve done, GWJ is the one I keep coming back to. The community is really supportive, and the jam duration is perfect for maintaining momentum while not being too stressful.
In terms of possible improvements, I found myself sometimes wanting to tap to move quicker towards the end to find the rest of the veggies, instead of waiting for the move animation to finish. I do like that the world moves with you, so it could be a kind of risk vs reward thing (i.e. you’re able to traverse faster, but risk running into people).
The cow is cute too, maybe if you’re developing further there could be an easter egg / mechanic where animals work with you to temporarily distract the humans while you get food?
Great game, and best of luck :)
Yeah I was thinking of maybe trying to come back to GWJ every two months or something like that. I also like the Discord server and I think this is probably the best place to help each other as we're all making our games with the same engine. Thanks for your reply, it encourages me towards this option :)
Thanks a lot for the feedback !
I think at least three people (including IRL) told me slow movements were becoming frustrating at some point so I'll think about something. I managed movement with a tween so far (to move exactly 16px each move) but I think I'll look for a way to make a cleaner version of that with a grid system and/or astar. I think I'll spend a few days to research on that and maybe recreate the game from scratch with cleaner code, or replace the player code with a completely new script. What would you advise ?
As for the cow, I also thought I'd add more animals - some friendly, some not so much (like, other grass-eaters are nice, meat-eaters should be avoided). I haven't reflected on their mechanics yet but I have the visual assets and I may take one or two months to make a complete version of this game. I thought I could add several other minigames / hidden mini-levels too.
I think among the jam games/prototypes I made (I started programming last January and jams this Summer) this one is my favorite and... I need to prove to the administration here that game creation is a serious professional project T_T I don't expect to get a super ranking at that point, but people's feedback and advice is precious.
I’ve done tween based grid movement too, and ran into the same problem. There may be a way to keep it (e.g. speeding up the animation could be the simplest and would fit the theme/sense of urgency). Tweens are great and I rely on them a lot, especially for adding flavor with ease modes.
Research is a smart decision, though! Looking into how other well known games tackle it gameplay-wise could give you more ideas (Baba is You is a nice example, they also have a cool trail effect on the player to help simulate “speed”)
You’re doing great for such a short amount of time programming :) It took me years to get where you’re at haha.
Loved the mini-game to avoid getting caught! It made accidentally colliding with the humans feel much more fair! (also not sure if it was left in from debugging, but I noticed sometimes if you pressed space when in front of certain items like lampposts, a new vegetable/fruit would appear and the item would turn black)
Hi ! Thanks for the very nice feedback :D
As for the items, that was on purpose: those are non-mandatory, hidden veggies that you can find if you want to try to get the biggest poop-score you can. Maybe I should find a way to guide people to it a bit more. The lamp-posts, lanterns and candles turn black because you turn them out of their veggie-magic by stealing the veggie that powered them (because in guinea-pigs world, veggies and fruits are magic :p)
Well done you've found them !
(I have opened your game in a tab, I'll play it today too)