Overall a decent entry for Metroidvania month jam. Nice use of mechanics for power ups. Pleasant graphics and audio.
Only major gripe is the background and foreground are hard to tell apart, I kept walking into walls which I could barely see. The damaging goop also barely stood out and kept hurting me before I realised what I was walking into.
I will admit I am on a laptop with a low brightness screen, but the foregrounds and background elements could do with a little more contrast to better tell them apart. And the damaging goop really needs to stand out, maybe a brighter purple/pink, something that screams 'danger'.
Otherwise the background environments are nicely put together, relatively simple but good enough for a jam game, and is certainly an improvement from Meteora your previous submission. It could do with more landmarks and unique environmental details to make key rooms pop, but I respect what was done in a month.
As for level layout it feels fairly fluid, most of the upgrades and room pathing seemed to flow leading you along a natural path. And even when that path broke it wasn't hard to find a way to the next powerup thanks to how everything seems to connect in multiple ways. Overall I never felt lost which is certainly a sign of good level design. A few rooms were on the tricky side in regards to platforming but the rest was smooth.
It is nice to read you again. Thank you for your time and feedback whiwh we will atke into serious consideration as always.
Kindly I have a couple of questions for you. What sequence did you do? The usual sequence is: Fertilize and Vine Crook in any order, then Pollinate, then Tether, then Climb, then Sprout.
I included two sequence breaks. One allows you to skip Pollinate and acquire Tether directly. The other allows you to skip Climb and directly get Sprout. Did you find any of those sequence breaks?
Also, what did you find the small wodden boxes puzzle moments to be like? Did they break the flow? Where they too easy of cumbersome? Do you have any opinions on the last puzzle in the last room placing the boxes to float?
Yep, that seems like the order I found the upgrades. I went down, then to the left, up and round to the right, down then back up for the last upgrade.
Moving the boxes was alright, though a little clunk at times due to needing enough space to pull the 'rope' but in most cases they weren't much of an issue. Overall I felt the cases where you needed to drag the boxes to use as platforms felt more interesting than when you only have to pull them out of the way.
As for skips I noticed a room with 3 boxes up on the left ledges, it seems like if you could stack all 3 then drag them to the ledge you could get up without wall climb. Tried a few times but couldn't find a way to drag the top most crate off and have it land on the other 2 crates.
I think I got everything but the end screen sure doesnt count it all (got all 7 abilities but only 6 tracked). Also , even though I had it, the right most red thing I had gotten, died afterwards. and now it is done but still is not marked as done on the map. likely only visual map thing but still.
also very disappojnted that getting all the seeds and going to the tree got me nothing except sopme "thanks for all you have done" "nah, no need to thank me".
doesn’t work at all for me. After speaking to tree, I started climbing down but the camera didn’t follow and then I was off screen and totally stuck. The map also showed nothing but said a long string of 16 numbers as I guess my percentage completion? And then I quit and reloaded, it showed me a new area and my character wasn’t visible at all
Sorry about that. Were you playing the Windows version? I noticed I forgot to setup the proper export filters for Windows. It should be properly working now.
Glad to read you again. Please give it a serious try once it works for you. I remember you liking our previous game Meteora from the last Jam three months ago. I would love to hear your thoughts,
yep tons of fun. The skeleton and gameplay are here and I loved it.
There’s some issues I didn’t have in the previous game though.
1. Is pixel art resolution mixing. It is a huge pet peeve of mine, when some pixels are very large and others small and they are not all aligned to the grid. A good example of this is Jrago if you’ve seen that game. I know this is a game jam game but yes it’s just an eye sore for me
2. Level readability. It is a little confusing to differentiate background from foreground, what platforms are available to step on vs not. It’s also a little unclear what is a hazard and what’s not ( a good example is in the first biome that’s green on the map at the beginning, where you have to hit the heart to make all the purple-ish toxic areas disappear. I kept dying and had no clue what was hurting me haha).
But luckily, all my nitpicks are things easily fixed with polish. The underlying game is great fun. I really hope you some day make a giant Metroidvania, put it out in steam, work on it for a couple years, etc.
You have so much fundamental understanding of making a fun game in the genre, and I would just love to see you make a game with tons of polish.
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Overall a decent entry for Metroidvania month jam. Nice use of mechanics for power ups. Pleasant graphics and audio.
Only major gripe is the background and foreground are hard to tell apart, I kept walking into walls which I could barely see. The damaging goop also barely stood out and kept hurting me before I realised what I was walking into.
I will admit I am on a laptop with a low brightness screen, but the foregrounds and background elements could do with a little more contrast to better tell them apart. And the damaging goop really needs to stand out, maybe a brighter purple/pink, something that screams 'danger'.
Otherwise the background environments are nicely put together, relatively simple but good enough for a jam game, and is certainly an improvement from Meteora your previous submission. It could do with more landmarks and unique environmental details to make key rooms pop, but I respect what was done in a month.
As for level layout it feels fairly fluid, most of the upgrades and room pathing seemed to flow leading you along a natural path. And even when that path broke it wasn't hard to find a way to the next powerup thanks to how everything seems to connect in multiple ways. Overall I never felt lost which is certainly a sign of good level design. A few rooms were on the tricky side in regards to platforming but the rest was smooth.
Hello,
It is nice to read you again. Thank you for your time and feedback whiwh we will atke into serious consideration as always.
Kindly I have a couple of questions for you. What sequence did you do? The usual sequence is: Fertilize and Vine Crook in any order, then Pollinate, then Tether, then Climb, then Sprout.
I included two sequence breaks. One allows you to skip Pollinate and acquire Tether directly. The other allows you to skip Climb and directly get Sprout. Did you find any of those sequence breaks?
Also, what did you find the small wodden boxes puzzle moments to be like? Did they break the flow? Where they too easy of cumbersome? Do you have any opinions on the last puzzle in the last room placing the boxes to float?
Thank you.Take care,
Cheers
Yep, that seems like the order I found the upgrades. I went down, then to the left, up and round to the right, down then back up for the last upgrade.
Moving the boxes was alright, though a little clunk at times due to needing enough space to pull the 'rope' but in most cases they weren't much of an issue. Overall I felt the cases where you needed to drag the boxes to use as platforms felt more interesting than when you only have to pull them out of the way.
As for skips I noticed a room with 3 boxes up on the left ledges, it seems like if you could stack all 3 then drag them to the ledge you could get up without wall climb. Tried a few times but couldn't find a way to drag the top most crate off and have it land on the other 2 crates.
I think I got everything but the end screen sure doesnt count it all (got all 7 abilities but only 6 tracked).
Also , even though I had it, the right most red thing I had gotten, died afterwards. and now it is done but still is not marked as done on the map.
likely only visual map thing but still.
also very disappojnted that getting all the seeds and going to the tree got me nothing except sopme "thanks for all you have done" "nah, no need to thank me".
Interesting about the collectible updates. I think we ended up fixing that already for the post-jam version. Not sure about the map updates.
The original plan for the seeds was getting all of them would unlock a secret final level, but it was too far out of our scope for the time frame.
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
Finished the game. Missed a few collectibles but the game was a blast!
doesn’t work at all for me. After speaking to tree, I started climbing down but the camera didn’t follow and then I was off screen and totally stuck. The map also showed nothing but said a long string of 16 numbers as I guess my percentage completion? And then I quit and reloaded, it showed me a new area and my character wasn’t visible at all
Sorry about that. Were you playing the Windows version? I noticed I forgot to setup the proper export filters for Windows. It should be properly working now.
windows 10 yea
Hello, all good?
Glad to read you again. Please give it a serious try once it works for you. I remember you liking our previous game Meteora from the last Jam three months ago. I would love to hear your thoughts,
Maybe give this version a try:
https://eelshep.itch.io/kami-the-great-guardian-post-jam
Cheers
Didn't realize you were the same dev! I will try and let you know
yep tons of fun. The skeleton and gameplay are here and I loved it.
There’s some issues I didn’t have in the previous game though.
1. Is pixel art resolution mixing. It is a huge pet peeve of mine, when some pixels are very large and others small and they are not all aligned to the grid. A good example of this is Jrago if you’ve seen that game. I know this is a game jam game but yes it’s just an eye sore for me
2. Level readability. It is a little confusing to differentiate background from foreground, what platforms are available to step on vs not. It’s also a little unclear what is a hazard and what’s not ( a good example is in the first biome that’s green on the map at the beginning, where you have to hit the heart to make all the purple-ish toxic areas disappear. I kept dying and had no clue what was hurting me haha).
But luckily, all my nitpicks are things easily fixed with polish. The underlying game is great fun. I really hope you some day make a giant Metroidvania, put it out in steam, work on it for a couple years, etc.
You have so much fundamental understanding of making a fun game in the genre, and I would just love to see you make a game with tons of polish.