Dead End Job by fatPenguin
[UPDATE] HELLO! :D thanks for being here! Please play our newest Version (Alpha) with a bunch of added content, bugfixes and features, still nowhere near done, but a bunch has happened! :] Also, by playing you'll MASSIVELY help Chris with his Master thesis! (If you're after some extra good Karma, klick on the Feedback Button in the Menu <3)
First of all, yes, this is the obligatory Reaper thematic while initially naively thinking we were being clever, caused by this horrible, horrible jam's theme. Don't we all hate it. I literally spend the first jam hour flaming. ;)
Now that we got this out of the way - thanks for checking out our entry! :) We're very happy about the outcome and honoured you've decided to give it a try (or at least check out our game's page, there is a pretty picture and a GIF waiting for you below, trying to convince you! ;))
In our game you step into the shoes (? actually, he just floats?) of Greg, the little Grim Reaper.
Grim Reapers, as you must know, are just like us normal people, in our case you help Greg with his job troubles!
Actually everything is explained ingame, so I'm just gonna do a quick summary of our USPs:
Hack & Slash game where you must survive an incrising horde of enemies in 10 waves
3 enemy types give different buffs that give you strengths and weeknesses to the 2 other kids (pretty much pokemon/ rock paper Scissors logic here :D)
a powerful slash that makes for an extremely satisfying outcome if timed right (recharges after 3 seconds of not attacking)
unclaimed souls can be traded in the store for silly upgrades
you are a reaper but cute and with a gigantic scythe
you have an adoreable lantern bat as a sidekick
WHICH VERSION SHOULD I DOWNLOAD?
Depends.
1. Postjam (WIP) - is the most current version on which we continously work on! :)
Changelog (07/15/2023): -balanced stuff (still not ideal, but way better! need more features) added something to the credits, added help screen in pause menu, fixed typings and weird wordings, added idle & big hit animation, added shop buttons, added cooler shop scene, added new shop images, new shop items, reworked some UI, added new Death Inc. Logo, Tweaked Music, fixed rock/paper/scissors mechanic, added a bunch of cool particle effects, added damage overlay, added sounds, tweaked materials ...
Basically, download this if you're friends and family that we forced to play.
Known Bugs/Backlog/Planned features & tweaks: better shop balancing with prices and monster drops, Sometimes there are no big demons, make attack speed upgrade apply to big slash too, Make strong slash bar upload with normal strikes/damage dealt instead of no hits over time, classify shop items as "early/late" and only show the better/expensive items later on to balance soul orb balance, more enemies that can shoot, nicer damage overlay fade out, silly cosmetic purchasable items that do nothing, Little Dim damage changes with buff, little dim knockback
2. ALPHA - Untouched version of 01/09/ 9 p.m., For a fair rating, this is probably the best choice!
a little buggy, unbalanced as fudge, some lousy looking visual decisions due to time being too short - We would LOVE IT if you would try the other version afterwards too, but completely understand if that would take too much of your precious play & rate time :) though if you decide to leave constructive feedback there's a good chance that a lot of time-induced issues of the alpha version have already been adressed, but we still appreciate you taking the time :)
(Although you realize by (only) playing this version you're giving up a once in a lifetime opportunity of legally counting as one of our friends & family, right? :3)
Thank you so much for playing our game & cheers guys! <3
| Postjam (WIP) | https://www.dropbox.com/s/bytgfedg7fv416g/DeadEndJob_v2.1.2.zip?dl=0 |
| Jam Version | https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ymqz1nrfgn59pl/DeadEndJobWin.zip?dl=0 |
| ALPHA (please play! :)) | https://gamejolt.com/games/deadendjob/781348 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/dead-end-job |
Ratings
| Overall | 103th | 3.964⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 123th | 3.893⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 409th | 3.286⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 86th | 4.232⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 29th | 4.536⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 91th | 3.778⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 95th | 4.036⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 34🗨️ |
You guys even added a whole intro dialog and everything. Really good job with this! Give me an @ when you release the rebalanced version so I can try it out!
@dramonsa aw, thanks! we too thought we improved, although the game itself can be way more polished, especially the balancing, ahhh 🙈
@taikinaaa thanks! :)
@ale thank you so much! I kniw right, it's pretty horrible 🙈 admittedly not a lot of jam time was spent on balancing (and then something was changed so that was pretty gone too haha)
I already added a bunch of stuff and balancing in a newer version before but it's still not too great, I'll definitely let you know once it's gotten better! :)
@labete I know right? Balancing aaaaalways gets the short end of the stick in the jam version, at least that's the case with us, gaaaaah! Thank you so much for playing and the nice review ^.^
I played on a controller, and this could absolutely be an issue specific to my controller, but my character kept flicking opposite directions than I wanted. As if there was no deadzone. So if I was kiting away from enemies to the left, then pressed right to do the attack, but then let go of right, I would flip and end up attacking left.
It didn't detract from the experience as a whole, still had a nice difficulty that lets us experience all 10 shifts without demanding absurd skill, just maybe something to consider for next time you do controller support. Though again, that could be specific to just my controller.
The audio was also fantastic, from the sound effects to the perfectly fitting music that got me in the mood to harvest some souls. Thank you for making this, I truly did have a fun time with it. Well done.
Having said all these, the graphic and mood do stand out, set up pretty good, nice! having a fun time playing it, once die in the 10 waves accidentally stuck in a corner, damn!
Many of the things I was going to mention are already fixed in the post-jam version, but there are a couple of things left:
A wave counter or something on the game over screen would have been useful as a target to beat next run.
Some UI elements are off the edge of the edge of the screen on my 1920x1200 monitor.
The controller needs a dead zone, the character would always face up whenever I stopped moving which made things tricky. I found the keyboard controls harder despite this though.
Also I suggest you change your links to end in `?dl=1` as that will make them direct download links rather than opening the zip file in dropbox.
Ohhh, the mouse direction hit advice is really awesome, need to give it some thoughts :O
and yes, shop is definitely on the to do list, but would have been too much work for the "weekend version" :D
- run away from the pack
- turn around when you have enough distance and hit attack so that by the time the attack happens, a big chunk of enemies are within attack range
- rinse and repeat
The only significant complaint I have is that the attack is a lot less effective than it looks. The swing of the scythe is a lot larger visually than the functional range of the attack. On top of that, the swing takes a good while to actually come out, which leaves me feeling a bit frustrated every time I attack, but once I found the rhythm, it was pretty easy to end up with way too much to spend (in the jam version at least).
Overall, a pretty fun experience, even if it's a bit unbalanced. Nice work!
The music and sound effects are great. Some audio feedback when I'm getting hit would be a great addition, as I sometimes didn't register the subtle visual effect. Overall, great job! :smile:
The concept was really fun. Hacking through enemies and buying upgrades is a solid loop! The jam submission lacks a bit of polish in some key areas. For example, there was a "There you are" dialogue box that would pop up at the start of every shift and was impossible to dismiss, blocking the view somewhat. When the souls died, I feel like having some more feedback (little explosion or sound or something) would have made it more satisfying. Also, because the enemies simply wanted to advance forward to hit me, but I had to turn and face them to swipe, trading blows felt inevitable. With some balance, I think combat could be even more strategic and satisfying!
All in all, I think you got a whole lot done for a jam! Congratulations!
UPDATE: I played the updated version, and I see some good improvement! That shop menu is now *chef's kiss*. I can see you up'ed the prices some, which probably does a good job of drawing the game out. The bat's fireball is a nice touch, as are the damage numbers. I still think the combat problem exists, even though they advance pretty slowly at first. Here's a shot of a horde following me -- I figure you are trying to balance the shop prices by giving me plenty of enemies to hit, but at this point it's hard to get my edge in!
Wow, a lot of work put in this entry: modelling, animations, sounds, various buyable modifiers and buffs, not to mention you have sequences and and witty dialogs.
Not much for me to add here. Well maybe except the gameplay flow:
* The intro is quite nice and progressive
* But enemies or rather number of them ramp up quite fast, and most of the time I found myself running away from them turn to turn back and land a hit (hoping, it will be enough to kill them and my range is good enough to hit them). Which I think is a rather common problem for horde (zombie) shooter gamers also - most of the time you run away from them, to get enough time to empty your clip (or all attack) into enemies, as they have tons of health. Maybe it's worth doing some kind of twist here? For example merge many of same monsters into one single one, but slower?
* Some kind of dash would be really helpful here - invulnerable-dash through the enemies and/or away from them. That would let player to keep better pace in combat.
* The shop upgrades seems to be fully random? That might be a problem, I could not buy anything in first two-three shopping sessions, which I think made me overall weaker than expected monster number scaling?
* The `rock paper scissor` logic and `power slash` were quite hard to wrap my head around first time. Maybe two extra levels with explanations for each mechanic would have been nice.
Overall really great game. Also, the lantern-bat is adorable :slight_smile:
Pros:
- The controls were very smooth, responsive.
- Even though the audio you used wasn't yours (I believe?), y'all picked proper audio to set up a nice mood fitting to the game!
- Adorable graphics, cute models, nice animations.
- Puns, there were puns!
- Overall, good/polished looking game!
Things that could use some improvement:
- Unfortunately, as others have mentioned, I ran into the issue where gameplay became somewhat stale; it became a matter of running away from hordes of enemies, to then turn around and quickly strike once, then rinse and repeat.
- I felt like there was a little bit of a wind-up time to the attack, which didn't quite feel in place with the rest of the gameplay being somewhat fast-paced. (Basically, after pressing the attack button there seemed to be a little delay before the damage actually came through, which is perfectly fine, but when the rest of the game keeps going at a pretty high pace/no breaks/rest, it can feel a little rough around the edges here).
Glitches(?) I ran into:
- Dialogue box (while scrolling through it), kept clipping to a different position.
- During dialogue I vaguely saw the x-box controller Y-button clip into the corner of my screen here and there, decided to press it - skipped all dialogue (I couldn't see what the button would do, it just showed itself a little bit in the bottom left corner of my screen every now and then haha).
- After the previous point happened, I got into the game, and the bat's dialogue box never disappeared. It was there throughout the rest of the game.
- Sometimes when I was walking into direction x, then got to a stop and attacked, I would randomly turn and attack in direction y.
All in all, a very cutesy and nice submission! Great work!
Hello friends! :)
Forgive me for tagging you in what feels like something that happened a million years ago, but we've been working on this in our free time and just uploaded and Alpha Build, if some of you are interested :)
Still nowhere near done, but a lot has happened since the jam I'd say :)
If you feel like it, we would love fr everyone to try our little game, also would tremedously help Chris with his Master Thesis! (Bonus Karma points if you click on "Feedback" in the Main Menu :))
Cheers guys <3