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Slylist: Blackbeard's Barber's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Quirkiness | #78 | 3.850 | 3.850 |
| Soundtrack/SFX | #81 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Graphics | #181 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Overall | #197 | 3.350 | 3.350 |
| Secondary Theme Interpretation | #224 | 3.150 | 3.150 |
| Gameplay | #269 | 2.950 | 2.950 |
| Gameboy Soul | #454 | 2.600 | 2.600 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game meet GBJam's theme
The player is unearthing old forgotten gold from the entanglement of Blackbeard's matted mane.
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Comments
(Sorry for taking so long)
Positives first: Great and quirky premise, fantastic animation and close-ups work 💚💚 and competent mechanics. The music (while not particularly "Game Boy") does a great job on conveying the mischief and greed during the gameplay, while selling the dread and terror while being killed. The stacks of coins and hair in either bar is a very good touch!
In the future, specifically for resolution-restricted jams like GBJAM or low res jam, be mindful that the game resolution isn't higher than the art resolution. The movement of objects isn't restricted to the grid.
The page says this is made in Godot. Assuming you and I are using relatively similar versions of Godot 4: while there is a lot of nuance and a lot of edge cases, the simplest "starting point" to having the correct design resolution is going to Project Settings under [Display > Window] and setting the viewport width / height to 160 x 144 (or desired resolution) and setting the Stretch > Mode to "viewport" instead of "canvas_items" (so the entire view is stretched as-is from the desired resolution, instead of being "enhanced" to a higher one).
The main problem is a lack of polish. Some things I will specifically note are a lack of audio feedback (especially for successful / erroneous snips) and the somewhat "default-looking" UI. The individual parts are really, really good, but they're not quite in sync just yet, and the whole experience is a bit less than the sum of the parts.
Luckily, polish is the one thing that improves most with experience and practice 💚 For a first time effort, this is pretty darn good!
Great work! Congratulations on the submission!
[ EDIT: Also, "Slylist" is a fantastic pun! ]
Gameplaywise, this is quite interesting take on the Old Gold theme that's clear to understand and feels closer to a rhythm game than a barber simulation. I like the unique parrot mechanic that serves as a solid risk reward system. On top of that, the pixel art and animations are incredibly detailed and quite charming, and of course, the music track is great!
Maybe it would be great if the game was actually full screened at the centre, but that's my only major issue. I also think it would be cute and make rhythm more satisfying if there were more sound effects (eg. the parrot squawking, different snipping sounds depending on the button you press, coin grab, etc), but those are kind of nit-picks.
Excellent job on making your first game! It's good that you're trying something outside of audio design.
I love the music track
Thanks so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it 😁
The animation is very smooth, and the music is excellent. When I first played the game, I didn't understand how to play. But on the second try, I figured it out and managed to pass. Very good game design. Congratulations on completing your first game!
Thank you so much for your kind words ☺️ And thank you for taking the time to play!
the beard animation is so good
Ah well thank you Sir! Thanks for taking the time to play :D
As the other posters have said, the UI isn't really ideal. The gameplay loop is pretty satisfying, and it's a fairly fresh take on the old gold theme. The music is quite nice.
Congrats on your first solodev game!
Thanks so much for your comment, much appreciated! Totally agree about the UI - definitely something to improve on next time :)
I think you did a very good work for the animation ! All the art was very good, except the UI.
It would be nice if you added something to solid color UI containers. The UI is also too small, especially the font (it wasn't rendered at GameBoy's resolution). And finally, using mouse for the menu is weird on a GameBoy as there is litterally no mouse on the original hardware.
Beside of that, the game was simple to understand
The take of the theme was a good idea, I think yours is unique.
Good soundtrack ! However, I think it was lacking a few SFX.
Good job
Very fair assessment - thank you! The UI and SFX were definitely neglected. I spent a lot longer than I’d hoped learning how to code and animate :’) Thanks again for playing!
This was adorable! Once I got into the rhythm I was unstoppable! Having to use the mouse then switch to keyboard did cause a delay in my mind so it was initially hard to get on rhythm. I loved the spritework, esp the parrot in the beard! Incredible first time entry :)
Thanks so much! Really glad you enjoyed it :) And thank you for pointing out the mouse to keyboard switch, I hadn’t really considered that this might be confusing for the player (or that using a mouse to start a game that uses only GameBoy controls isn’t really appropriate :’) ) I will definitely rectify that if I come back to the game in the future!
The animation was very well done, nice and simple gameplay.
Actually super cute and super simple gameplay but still fun! I would've never thought of this concept in a million years so awesome to see the unique take on it!
Polly surprised me greatly! That was a fun playthrough, definitely could see this being expanded! Now that I read you're an audio guy, I'm so sorry for doing that bird-bard minigame of mine so poorly haha.
Also this may be the closest to deadline submission I've seen haha, congrats on making it on time!
Hahaha yeah, there's no subtlety with Polly! Thank you so much, I appreciate that. I'm definitely planning to polish up some things and maybe expand on the idea in the future :) Don't be silly, your game is incredible! It was just me wayyyy overthinking the bird-bard and trying to create specific melodies... :')
There should be prizes for 'closest to the submission deadline'. I was researching 'how to export a project from Godot' with 10 minutes to go!
Thanks again for playing and for your kind words - means a lot.
love the art and music. the animations are super slick. for some reason the game renders super tiny for me (about 1/4 of the game container).
Thank you very much! Hmmm, interesting... something similar happens to me if I try to make it full screen. I think I probably just didn't scale up my viewport enough. In an ideal world I should have uploaded an early version of the project to itch and updated it as I went to spot these kinds of problems... Bur never mind, lessons have been learned :')
I apprecieate you taking the time to play and comment!
are you on MacOS ? I have the same problem. Some OSes (including MacOS) actually render the games 2 time bigger, and then downscale it. Mabye the project's settings of Godot lead to a miscalculation because of this system.
yep I'm on a Mac. that makes sense to me.
Great little game--the gameplay is satisfying and the art is amazing. Polly in particular is excellent. I love how she peeks out of his beard before popping out sometimes. Great job!
Thank you so much! So glad you enjoyed it :D
This game is not 160x144 - all the background art is, but the UI & other text is rendering at 4x(?) that.
Despite that, this is a fun little game, great job for your first time solo. Took me a while to fully get in the swing of things (I was wondering how to figure out if Polly is watching and then... well, I couldn't miss it), but this is absolutely solid.
Ahhh yes you do have a point there… I made sure my backgrounds and assets were at the correct resolution but then I have scaled up my text and button elements incorrectly. Complete oversight on my behalf - apologies!
Hahaha yeah, Polly knows how to make an entrance 😂
Thank you so much for playing! I’m glad you enjoyed the game 😁
That game over music seems familiar somehow >.> I love the style. I'd agree with Miguel. You've got this point in the gameplay music where the music speeds up. It'd be a great time to speed up the game if you're still able to make tweaks. I like the gameplay music. Very classic arcade. The art style is cool.
Took me a minute to figure out which button I was supposed to use for which but the game was fun. Very crisp. Great job!
- The publisher formerly known as Rotational Justice
Whatever could you mean? It must just be one of those instantly recognisable ear worms 😉 Ironically, I set out to improve my programming understanding for audio implementation purposes and spent so much time doing everything else that audio became a rushed, slap dash job at the end… 😅
You’re absolutely right! I almost made it happen but just ran out of time unfortunately. I think I’ll finish everything up properly and repost another version in my own time.
Thank you so much for checking it out though and for your encouragement - great to hear from you!
Quite the earworm. Definitely a big fan ^_^
Great first shot. It's got great aesthetics. Very cohesive. Fun style and action. Awesome work Hertzlike.
The visuals and sound are really good! Congratulations! Gameplay feels good, but I would add some speeding up to make it more interesting - I know it's hard to code it, though... I've been there :P Good job!
Thanks so much for playing and for your kind words! I agree completely - I managed to get the system in place to make that happen but I was very short on time and didn’t get round to mapping the song out properly… I accidentally made a version that was physically impossible and had to revert to this much simpler version with about a minute to spare 😂