I can see that Wuzzy put some love into making this game and did their best to catch lightning in a bottle and win the Game Jam twice in a row, but I personally didn't really enjoy playing it. As some players have stated, it's pretty difficult and full on, which I suppose is fine if you're into that kind of gameplay. To me however, some mechanics felt ridiculously unfair, most particularly the way enemies spawn. I liked when the shadows seemed to appear out of crevices in the walls and such, but not when they literally appeared out of thin air a mere three or so blocks in front of me. It felt like a cheap way to crank up the difficulty.
Looks wise, I think this game feels rougher and less aesthetically pleasing than Glitch. It felt more clear that to me this time around that I'm playing an ambitious game, but one very clearly built in the Minetest engine. The sound design also was a tiny bit underwhelming.
On the plus side, Wuzzy has undoubtedly delivered a pretty complete game experience, with a proper narrative, distinct characters and atmosphere to the world. I can see some influence from franchises like Zelda and maybe a bit of Lord of the Rings and perhaps Studio Gibli films.
It could have a promising future post Game Jam with a fair bit of polishing.
My excuse is that I just had poor time management and planning. I think it wasn't that great of a game idea in the first place, plus I was struggling with ideas for a long time. Also, building the map. I also had other difficulties, and you can read more about that in the making-of that I'm going to post in the forums eventually.
Basically I decided to take a risk and try something with mobs. Risky because I still don't have much experience with them.
I wanted to polish everything. But mobs are clearly the least polished thing and it's basically the only big item left on the TODO list before I ran out of time. And I completely agree mob spawning is pretty broken. Fun fact: It was even more broken on the last day, with so many mobs spawning in the old mine that you just can't fight your way through even when maxed-out. I fixed at least that but obviously that's far from enough.
Long story short, the way how mobs work now is not intended and this game was not meant to be ridiculously unfair. Basically all your criticisms about mobs I agree with and are just the result of poor time management. Mobs are the least-polished aspect by far. Of course that's all planned for the post-jam version.
Rating Scale:
1-10 for each of the 6 categories, 1 being a thumbs down, 10 being a thumbs up. Max total being 60.
Gameplay: 6 | Innovation: 7 | Graphics (Content) 6 | Music & Sound (Content): 6 | Theme: 9 | Stability: 10 |
Total: 44
I can see that Wuzzy put some love into making this game and did their best to catch lightning in a bottle and win the Game Jam twice in a row, but I personally didn't really enjoy playing it. As some players have stated, it's pretty difficult and full on, which I suppose is fine if you're into that kind of gameplay. To me however, some mechanics felt ridiculously unfair, most particularly the way enemies spawn. I liked when the shadows seemed to appear out of crevices in the walls and such, but not when they literally appeared out of thin air a mere three or so blocks in front of me. It felt like a cheap way to crank up the difficulty.
Looks wise, I think this game feels rougher and less aesthetically pleasing than Glitch. It felt more clear that to me this time around that I'm playing an ambitious game, but one very clearly built in the Minetest engine. The sound design also was a tiny bit underwhelming.
On the plus side, Wuzzy has undoubtedly delivered a pretty complete game experience, with a proper narrative, distinct characters and atmosphere to the world. I can see some influence from franchises like Zelda and maybe a bit of Lord of the Rings and perhaps Studio Gibli films.
It could have a promising future post Game Jam with a fair bit of polishing.
My excuse is that I just had poor time management and planning. I think it wasn't that great of a game idea in the first place, plus I was struggling with ideas for a long time. Also, building the map. I also had other difficulties, and you can read more about that in the making-of that I'm going to post in the forums eventually.
Basically I decided to take a risk and try something with mobs. Risky because I still don't have much experience with them.
I wanted to polish everything. But mobs are clearly the least polished thing and it's basically the only big item left on the TODO list before I ran out of time. And I completely agree mob spawning is pretty broken. Fun fact: It was even more broken on the last day, with so many mobs spawning in the old mine that you just can't fight your way through even when maxed-out. I fixed at least that but obviously that's far from enough.
Long story short, the way how mobs work now is not intended and this game was not meant to be ridiculously unfair. Basically all your criticisms about mobs I agree with and are just the result of poor time management. Mobs are the least-polished aspect by far. Of course that's all planned for the post-jam version.