itch.io

One of the few games that have captivated me enough to finish! Excellent work. I love optimization games

Now this was something new! I liked "slaying" at this fashion show!

This was super fun to play! I've never seen anything like it before and so it was definitely refreshing. I do wish there was some sort of variance to the collision acceptance as I thought I had lined up the shape perfectly only to have the wall break. Other than that though it was fun!

I read through this entire thing, and it seems like you've learned quite a lot. I'd like to give you some of my thoughts in terms of a purely game design standpoint, if you'd like. If not, feel free to stop reading here.

Anyways:

I first want to commend you for custom building a game without much reliance on the Godot engine. I am still fairly new to game dev and I don't think I would have wanted to undergo something like this to be honest. I also empathize with you about the job search. I got laid off last November and I still haven't been able to find a software engineering job, so try not to beat yourself up over that. The market sucks, and to be honest, if you put your game dev stuff on your resume it will absolutely attract companies.

Here's where I'd like to give you feedback (and yes I know you went through all of the other stuff. Don't take this as me saying you should have done all of this for the game jam, just take this as if you hypothetically made a game to release in full):

• The color scheme is pretty cool, but I was frankly quite blinded with what I assume was the lighthouse beam. I was unable to see where I was going for the most part and spent a good amount of time trying to climb the house you spawn in to just try to see where to go in the first place.
• I also noted the lack of a pause menu. While accessibility is not as important in my personal opinion for a game jam, the ability to pause with a rudimentary menu is still pretty important. I have no idea how you'd do it if you used custom and experimental plugins / unstable features since from my understanding you wanted to avoid using the Godot engine for development altogether, but it usually isn't difficult at all.
• In a similar vein, the text to read the controls were too small. Consider increasing size and potentially introducing a small tutorial, whether it's a couple signs (like the UI is real wildcard comes to mind) or a dedicated level showing the player how to take advantage of the mechanics. 
• In a couple Valve dev commentaries I've seen, they talk about 90% of the time, players get extremely confused as to where to move towards in a game unless there's a giant yellow arrow pointing to the location / map. I don't think you need to use something so obtrusive, but having indicators as to where to go will help players get past the initial hurdle of your game.
• The sound design could be better - I was frankly annoyed with the drone and quite confused as to what it was supposed to represent. Again, take this with a grain of salt because I just read through your post mortem and I understand what you went through, but this is just a general critique. 
• Regarding collisions, I believe you need to set the collision shapes to ConcavePolygons both to reduce weird collision behavior and also to have it conform to the shape you are creating. It might be less performant due to more calculations but I think it's a good tradeoff for saving on player frustration.
• What was the reason for you wanting to make this in C#? If it is generally easier for you to make stuff in C# (i.e. Unity refugee) I get it, but seriously, give GDScript a try. It's Pythonic and you can still strongly type to avoid dynamic interpretation. If it's a performance standpoint I can't really argue with you there, but I would still say to try and use GDScript. 
• For scoping, I have a design document that I'll share 3M Design Document Explanation. I'll also link the blank document at the end of this comment. Read through this and consider using it for your next jam!
• Personally, in my experience with jams, people don't have the 10 minutes or so to fully immerse themselves in your game. And I'm not saying just your game specifically. Everybody wants others to look at THEIR game and play THEIR game, they don't want to look at others'. People who do take the time to give ratings and comments likely look at your game for maybe 1 minute if they're being generous, and if there's ANY friction between their gaming experience and the experience you are trying to deliver, they're not gonna bother to explore the hidden intricacies. I have generally tried to stick to simple but (hopefully) more captivating games with simple mechanics that can be explained easily. If you want to make a complex game like Intuition, that's great! But for the purpose of being seen in a game jam, I personally would not recommend going all-out on something like this unless you're working with a more substantial team. 
• To get more people to rate higher, it's plain and simple: get a hook, keep mechanics simple, and sfx & art are way more impactful than you think. Remember: assume that everybody is going to try your game for 30 seconds tops. If they aren't interested by then, they're not gonna keep playing.

Overall, the game's bones are there. I can see it being very stylized and intuitive. Pun intended! It's definitely a Herculean task to try and bring a grand concept to life when things will inevitably get in the way. It's also great that you are introspective of your abilities as a developer and are able to see some of the flaws that you encountered. I love that you are actively working to improve, and with that it will propel you to colossal heights.

Here's the 3M Design Document Template. I hope you find it useful! Cheers and good luck on the Pirate Software Jam.

yeah I’ve been looking into behavior trees lately as well as I’ve felt state machines are messy. It’s a little out of my wheelhouse at the moment so if you’re interested in looking into BTs together let me know!

This is probably the highest rating I've given in this jam. This is far and away my favorite game and I would not be surprised if this won. Not only is it unique, but the humor and charm comes across so well and doesn't overstay its welcome. The mechanics are a little clunky but I think it works given this type of game - I had a smile on my face the whole time I was playing. I especially really liked the overbearing boss somehow putting the entire company on the line from this one meeting you are "required" to attend and the grandma accidentally adding insult to injury by asking if things are going okay on the job right after getting fired LOL. Great submission!

I always love seeing how many people made how much money so thank you for that! :D I'm glad you found the pacing good too - it was probably one of the most difficult things to figure out, just having to play around with numbers so the tolerances weren't too tight. Messed up popsicles aren't a complete loss either! You'll still get a decent amount from them, even if they don't have liquid in them. Thank you for playing!

I was really impressed with the bulletin board! I also really liked the enemy AI - how did you implement it? Overall really fun game and the models were super cohesive too

yeah I definitely could’ve made the snowflake particles more pronounced for sure! 

Interesting use of freezing to push penguins into the water! I thought it put a fresh spin on the whole "throwing projectiles at enemy" thing, I found myself enjoying it a lot! I played longer than I'd like to admit haha

Thanks! I plan to expand it if it "places" higher :D

Nice game! This is really good for your first ever jam! I had no problems with the gameplay too, it seems very well thought out. The only thing I'd say is maybe for the bars display which bar does what, I kept forgetting which bar was which haha

Great job!

This was really cool to play! I think I'm bad at the game though so I kept freezing. I resorted to hoarding as many logs as I could! That seemed to work for me, I at least never died to Krampus :D

This was so cool! I thoroughly enjoyed this and loved the style of it. I really like how well the UI was done. I think the main menu was my favorite part to be honest!

I think, honestly, the shader is fine, the visual effects were enough for me too. All I'd really say is to increase text size for the translations! Additionally maybe make the bullets a little bigger? 

I managed to complete the game completely unaware that I could stop time hahaha. Goes to show you that it's possible! I also would like to thank playing Enter The Gungeon for that, though. Once I figured out I could stop time things became much easier! Great implementation and art.

Great use of the theme! It's an idea I definitely couldn't have thought of and props to you for making a 3D game by yourself. I really liked the snowball mechanic and there was definitely a feeling of stress to not melt from the thaw for sure. I did wish there was something more that came out of the present mechanic though! Looking forward to see how this develops if you continue on

This was such a charming game! I think the addition of slippery platforms added to break up the gameplay in a very good way. I played through all of hard mode too!

Thank you!

Thanks!!

I’m not sure why that was the case, I’m thinking it was probably something lost in the Godot web export as I’ve always encountered issues like that. It also might’ve just been as simple as forgetting to change a value on my end, but it’s intended to increase spawn rate when there’s around half time remaining. Thanks for the comment!

Great idea for a game! I love typing games and it was pretty stressful trying to manage heat for sure. I do agree with the others about getting some command history going and I found the text a little hard to read, but the fun is there! Great submission

This is one of the best games I've played on here yet! I really liked the engaging storytelling and the mechanics. I was highly immersed and would love to see a full game out of this.

Very fun concept! I thought the controls were simple - and that's a great thing for a jam game. The tutorial got the point across and the mechanics were easy to pick up! Great submission

I really liked the atmosphere of the game! It was really cool to just kind of explore the area and stumble upon the key and shotgun. I think adding landmarks in the future would be a good touch though just so players don't get disoriented. I unfortunately could not find the key at all during the shotgun level, but I really enjoyed playing it! You nailed the atmosphere and props to you for making a 3D horror game in a week, it's a difficult thing to do!

Great game! I struggled a lot but there was something to be said about how I kept coming back to keep playing!

I also ended up figuring out an exploit where I was sliding around in midair and basically had flight for a while, unless you meant for that to happen haha

Thanks! I definitely considered adding more levels but was pretty burnt out at the end so I didn't

I gave a 5 on originality! This was definitely one of the more unique games I've seen here. I thought the bells execution was pretty clever! I enjoyed.

Thank you for the kind words! I’m glad you had fun and it seemed like the balance was just good enough so as to not be extremely frustrating! We may work on it further in the future :)

Glad you enjoyed!

The papa games were definitely a big inspiration! Glad you also had a CoolMathGames era 

I may or may not have spoken gibberish into the mic ;)

Props go to the artist Okuba! He is very skilled 

The rat was definitely a central core to the game’s design! Glad you liked it 

Glad you enjoyed! It was definitely a trip to balance everything to make sure players are being pushed but without being extremely frustrated 

Super big credits to the artist Okuba for sure! He definitely had a great vision for how we wanted to game to look humorous 

I’m glad you liked the popsicle molds! I’m very very happy you appreciated that, it tells me I’m headed in the right direction for better game design!

This was really fun to play! I remember watching the stream after he played mine and I was like this has got to be a game I need to play and rate. It was fun playing through the levels! Controls were challenging but in a good way.

This was a cool idea! Once I figured out the mechanics it was pretty stressful trying to keep the fire alive while also burning the crazy lady haha. I died many times but it was fun! I played through a lot.

Very fun game! It reminds me of older NES games. I played it multiple times, Bill was challenging but a fun challenge for sure.

Glad you liked it! Thank you for playing

My favorite guy was Emperor Stink Glubbly. Enough said.

This game was charming AF! Solid job on the audio as well, really sick groove. I wish I had you name the health inspector for my game haha