Nice! It was a bit hard to aim though. Cursor aiming would have felt better.

The tower defense to protect an egg for it to hatch is a good idea ! The enemies navigation system is well done !

I would have put more GUI informations such as a hatching loading bar for the egg or a life gauge for the character. The difficulty is high as aiming is quite hard, I agree with ion-programming when they say that cursor aiming would be easier to play with.
I also got stuck in walls a few times, maybe a collider issue.

Overall I think your game is good work but maybe not playable enough to be fully enjoyable.

And don't forget : if you want your game to be rated you have to go and rate others' games so that yours becomes visible ^^

Pretty good, aiming took a bit of time but once you get it it is pretty easy. I really like the music and the different types of ennemies with regular, slow and fast ones. I don't know if there is an ending screen as I couldn't get past the second hatch but I still had a good time !

@gnocchi Hey, thanks a lot for stopping by. We are fully aware that we should play and rate other games, and in fact I can't decide which part of the jam I like more, but unfortunately the dev team is catching on all the work we left behind for the jam weekend, so we're looking forward to weekend, when we hopefully will have some time to spare and play all the gems that surely are out there, definitely starting with you and the other guys that actually found, played and commented on our game :)

We're aware of lacking gui and other visual cues, that should have told the player much needed info about how to play the game, sadly we didn't make it in time. However we stand by the "where you look is where you shoot" mechanic, though maybe we should have put in more info for player so they could grasp it better. Basically the aim can be very precise when using all the mechanics right. We'll probably do some "about aiming" stuff when we get to it during the weekend for those people, who don't feel like going in blind.

Still thank you for stopping by and I'm looking forward to playing your game as soon as possible! :)

@ion-programming Hey, thanks for playing and rating our game. We purposefully decided to make aiming kinda hard as it is basicly sole mechanic of our game, besides movement, that player can learn and master. If it wasn't for that, the game would be just top-down shooter, and as such would require much more content, especially enemy-wise, for player to have something engaging. We went that way in one of the previous jams and it didn't go very well, unfortunatelly. And as I wrote before, the aiming mechanics is harder to grasp because we didn't manage to make enough cues to guide the player to learn the rules, but still you can control the aim very precisely once you get it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have done better job teaching the player, just that there's more to it than it seems in the beginning :) Thanks for stopping by, see you in comment section under your game soon :)

@skeletor Hey, awesome to read that, we wanted to make the experience pretty short and intensive, so you were actually just one hatch from ending screen. It's not very good one though, so it's worth trying once again more for the feeling of accomplishment :) We're very glad that you got the shooting mechanics despite our obviously not perfectly managed showing the player. And we're mostly pleased that you had a good time! See you soon when we play your game! :)

I got stuck one some of the rocks once, but pretty cool otherwise!

Nice and simple, took me a while to figure out what was going on but I did enjoy it.

Nice little entry and dragons are always a bonus :)

Very cool archery mechanics, after a while I had a "rythm" going for, which I really enjoyed. The only thing is that when the fast guys touched me I got stuck and had to restart a few times. Good job!

I liked the music style and gameplay-wise I think it’s nice and easy to get into it. The bow physics was really fun to explore but perhaps very unsteady. Detail: Sometimes the character stopped after he dies and the scene does not change to the menu. Congratulations. :)

@brachistosauro @joseph-andrew Sorry to hear that, thanks for reporting, I'll look into it and try to fix it. And also we're very glad that you took the time to explore the bow shooting mechanics!

@shredmer @whatnamegames Thanks, glad you liked it! :)

@nsadie Hey, sorry to hear that, do you know which rock was it? That should not happen, so it would help with bugfixing if you post a screen or something :) Thanks for playing, rating and leaving a comment! :)


I beat it! I felt a little frustrated at some of my deaths, but since the enemy paths were the same every time, I was able to plan ahead and improve my strategy. I found myself prioritizing the axe guys because I learned that they had the potential to one-shot an egg if they got to it. To some extent I had to know what was coming to succeed, as I wasn't fast enough to react the first few times I died to a particular hazard. The third egg especially required some planning ahead. I learned that if you don't anticipate it, an axe guy will one-shot the third egg right after the second egg hatches. I was really stuck on the third egg for a long time, but my desire to see what would come after the third egg hatched was enough to motivate me to find a way forward.

There's nothing wrong per se with a game that requires persistence and some rote memorization, but it can certainly test a player's resolve. On the other hand, the challenge of the third egg felt insurmountable at first, which made it all the more satisfying when I eventually managed to succeed.

I found the core shooting mechanic to be quite intricately designed. The fact that damage and accuracy vary with time makes timing and positioning critical, but it's nice that they can be fudged a little if you get a little closer or take a few more shots. The fact that you walk slower while drawing your bow makes for an interesting trade-off between preparing your next shot and moving to your next position. There were a few moments when I really needed to move quickly to a new position, and those were the moments when I had to consciously stop drawing my bow.

On that topic, The fact that you can move at all while drawing your bow was not something I fully considered on my first few attempts. I would decide where to shoot, move into position, then start drawing my bow. But after settling in to the game a bit more, I started drawing my bow before I even knew where I was going to shoot next. This happened somewhat subconsciously.

At first I was also overwhelmed by the number of enemies, but as I improved my rate of fire and game knowledge, the volume of enemies got to be more manageable. Realizing that some enemies were more important than others was a fun and interesting moment for me, because I started to prioritize certain enemies over others. I realized that enemies would deal a certain finite amount of damage and then leave. While from a narrative perspective it doesn't quite make sense to me (why would the enemies hit the egg, not finish the job, and then run away? If they wanted the egg destroyed wouldn't they stay there and keep hitting it?), it actually made the game more interesting because it opened the option to take a calculated loss by letting an enemy live. This is a problem that I remember having in tower defense games I've played ages ago, where letting any enemy live basically means you die (eventually), which turns into a kill-everything-no-matter-what mindset, which I feel is a little less interesting.

Yes! =]

I hope this helps. @nsadie https://youtu.be/z-LNmD3u9Qk

@joseph-andrew thanks a lot for that extra effort made to help us, much appreciated!

@turncoda Really helpful, informative and comprehensive feedback, thank you for that! Really helps us to see better where we went right and what needed further explanation.

Was the death frustration caused simply by being so close, or were there any cheesy or unfair deaths in your opinion?

We also think that the drawing slow down also helps with aim, as the basic speed is quite high and precise movement gets bit tricky.

Thank you very much once again for taking this much time playing our game, going so deep and leaving so comprehensive description of your experience! Hope you enjoyed it as well!

@turncoda By the way, enemy dealing damage and then leaving is basically a workaround so the enemies wouldn't stack on top of each other around the egg without the need of some sophisticated pathfinding and crowd behaviour.

@honey
> Was the death frustration caused simply by being so close, or were there any cheesy or unfair deaths in your opinion?

I did experience a few deaths that I felt were unfair. Walking by the enemies, sometimes I could skate by without taking damage, and sometimes they'd one-shot me. Part of that is not being able to tell when or whether I was hit, and another part is not knowing how much health I had left. Another issue is that the collision boxes were not forgiving. Sometimes I would think I hit the guy, but turns out I missed. If I recall correctly, the enemies don't have collision in their arms, so if you shoot them in the arms you'll miss. Also, the egg getting one-shot by the axe guy was really irritating the first time, because I couldn't reasonably have known it would have happened the first time around. A lot of it boils down to the game not being transparent or consistent enough, I suppose. That being said, I eventually learned to accommodate the system, inconsistencies and all; it just took longer than I think most people have patience for.

@turncoda thanks for clarification, it's quite interesting, definitely worth addressing those issues, as soon as we found out how :)

@joseph-andrew Looks like I found the bug - you actually died there but something weird happened in animator that prevented the death animation to complete, thus prevented the game to change the state. It's fixed now along with another few bugs that occured.

I really liked the game, I liked the effect of carrying the bow.
I don't know if it was on purpose, but sometimes it hit someone and didn't die, and the bow hung on it, I believe it was.
I just thought that the collider could be a little smaller, giving the impression that the shot does not reach the enemy.
Congratulations, I liked the game.

@dennerbougo Hey, thanks for playing and leaving your comment! The arrows are doing raycast, when they hit something, they actually despawn and spawn another, inactive arrow that should just stick out of enemy. There's probably a bug, that sticks the new arrow on the position of despawned arrow instead of position of the raycast hit, so that's why it floats outside the enemy body. I'll try to fix it when I have some time.

We also didn't manage to make enemy healthbar in time, so it's poorly communicated, but you cannot always one-shot the enemy, sometimes the enemy needs two or more hits, depending on your draw timing.

Thanks again, glad you like it! :)

Cool game, hard to control though. I liked the sounds! Go check my submission if you like "dragons" :wink:

@thibaud-ligneul Hey, thanks for playing! Could you be so kind and elaborate a bit on how the hard controls had manifested in your playthrough? We'd very much appreciate that!

I already had time to play and rate your game, cool stuff! :)

Hmm... It felt a bit "stiff" I guess, I had trouble aiming mostly!

Fun game!

I actually like the aiming, i feel like it adds a bit of extra challenge and it put me out of my comfort zone. (but hey, most complaints about my own game have also been about aiming so i guess are quite similar in that manner)

I found the game quite difficult, I don't know, was there a goal?
Otherwise, i would put a counter up somewhere that tracks how many dragons you've rescued. That would indicate to the player that the game is infinite.

The animation and the sounds of the player both felt amazing, way beyond what i could ever do in such a short time.


I liked the game, good job!

@invixel We fell bit on the easy side with previous entries, so this time we went a bit souls I guess :) We actually tried to accomplish a bit uncommon control scheme, more our own (but still managable), so that the player actually needs to learn that (unlike twin stick shooter, where most people know the drill).

The game is not infinite, the goal is to allow three dragons to hatch (should've been comunicated better though as I can clearly see now :). We wanted to keep the mechanics simple so we can make it feel good both animation and sfx wise, so I'm glad that resonated with you! :)

Thanks for playing, gonna check out your game too!

I enjoyed playing the game, and your controls were fun to play with. It was a bit difficult to aim at times because you couldn't rotate the character, but besides that this is a great game!

@lovetocode999 Hey, thanks for playing! We intentionaly went for this kind of aim where you basically can both walk and shoot in four direction only. We tried to compensate that with really fast movement and also pretty wide draw window where the arrow goes in straight line. Glad you liked it!

it's a little unclear about the shooting. but overall not bad

A little tricky at first, but I like the bow mechanics! Interesting how you can sometimes use the arrow wobble to your advantage.