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Thanks for playing!

We had our retro a couple of days ago, and we actually brought up everything that you mentioned here, solid feedback!
Unfortunately, we are going to shelf this for now and move on to something else. All of the feedback and action items for improvement are recorded though, so hopefully we come back to it one day and at least polish up this vertical slice!
I am looking forward to the rating and results of the jam; good luck! Loved your game, I think you are definitely in the running to win!

Haha, nice, that ending though.

Sorry, it took me so long to play; I like it, though! I thought it was interesting how many similarities our game shared as well, especially the narrative!

I did find myself missing some kind of navigation assistance (map, arrows, compass). There were also a few bugs that I am sure you are aware of; occasional invincible zombies in the bridge, the boss sticking around after you die, and keeping items after death, even though that may have been a design choice. After I realized that was a thing though, I did use "return by die" instead of fighting my way back through the enemies after I collected a crystal.

Also, I think after you defeat the boss, it should automatically trigger a transition back into the ship! That was sort of awkward the first time I ran into it.

Really well executed in the jam time frame, though, and fun! I like all of your incorporations of the themes. :)

Love it! You made it really interesting and fun to play with the combat. I wanted to keep playing and even lost myself in it at one point! I think you did a great job crafting the experience!

I do have some feedback, though!

My biggest complaint is QOL! Please, let me walk by holding down the key; that is psychological warfare! lol
It's an easy thing to overlook, but oh man, some of the levels were big, and I was so annoyed being forced to tap the keys every time I moved :D

The lack of a map or clear visual indicators/breadcrumbs to tell where I was and where I needed to go was another big QOL improvement I would have liked to have seen. It didn't help that from a distance, the wall textures obscured the doors.

Also, it would be really nice to have some kind of mouse-over indicator or something for the area of effect on the spells. It seems dumb, but it is really easy to misjudge if an enemy is inside them or not, especially when you are changing them often.

There are some obvious things that I think were just the result of time constraints as well things that most jam games suffer from. More audio variety, environment dressing, some more systems, and a bit more depth on existing systems would have been nice, etc. I think this game would work great with an exp/stat system, so you have the ability to invest in HP or mana and maybe allow enhancements to the spell tree in the long term just to provide more build variety and complexity. Also, damage types, enemy resistances, and effects are always a safe bet; I think they would all work well if you planned to continue working on the game.

Outstanding submission though, really enjoyed it!

I got stuck at the same part as Captain Coder, couldn't find anything else for the Mage. I really liked the game though, cute art, cool music, and simple but entertaining puzzles! Great job!

Thank you for the kind words and feedback!

I 100% agree with you! It is definitely too short and also lacks depth in a lot of the systems we worked in there. I will probably go back and clean some things up after the rating period ends for the jam, but I am not sure we will continue to work on it as a team or not. It's great to know that someone is interested in playing more though! Also, glad you liked the gag items, we wanted to have some fun with it too and that seemed like a reasonable way to do it. :)

Thanks for the feedback!

We definitely wanted to include more story and some cutscenes! I think I have mentioned it earlier, but we wanted something like books or "datapads" scattered around that could add some narrative into it, and an opening and ending cuscene at least. Of course, we just didn't have time for that, or to make a second pass on the lighting either, definitely have to organize and prioritize differently the next time around!

Thank you for the extremely kind feedback!

Also, thanks for the tip with texturing!

I am sure Syvice will be excited to hear that you appreciated the environments, he is educated and experienced as a professional 3D/Environment artist, so that was all his doing. :)

I am not sure about the firewall because I could have sworn that I turned all the analytics stuff off. You never know with corpo engines these days, though. There is probably still something that runs in spite of my toggling everything off.

We had originally thought about turning everything in the project into a billboard to save on file size. Ultimately, we got too scared of that approach, because none of us had ever built a game that way and we didn't want to deal with too many unknown-unknowns.

I think we will plan to participate next year, it will be my first ever repeat game jam! Normally I look for different jams with varying constraints so that I can learn more from each experience. If the three of us on this team continue to work together though, I think doing DCJam again next year would be a good benchmark for our progress!

Thanks again for the thoughtful and kind feedback, looking forward to playing the refined version of your game!

I like the way you handled the camera and visuals here, It seems like you may have ran out of time to polish the combat system though, as others have noticed. I think this is a good effort for the jam though, and I like the direction you were headed!

I did notice that, but I wanted to mess around with the custom options. I believe if you were to get more of it on one screen (per character) like you see character creation in so many other games, that would make things a lot easier. Either that or create a flow UI with review pages like Larian handles for the Divinity series or BG3. Granted it doesn't need to be that high quality, of course, just the most common example I can think of.

Really solid!

I agree with everyone else; the randomness is tough to deal with sometimes but addictive, lol.

Good work!

A fellow Unreal Engine submission! Great job!

I concur with everyone else. I really enjoyed the way the narrative was presented and the visuals used; it was also a little difficult for me to figure out what to do next after the fire suppressant. I think that was a viewport shader used to give the 16-bit effect? Either way, looked really nice.

In terms of novel constructive feedback, I would probably say that I just wanted more things to do between bits of narrative. Without some combat, or more elaborate setups that needed to be solved, or even some cinematic stuff to mix it up, it started to very quickly feel like a walking sim to me, and I personally want more out of a dungeon crawler.

Good work! I really respect the amount of effort here.

I agree with most of the feedback you have gotten already.

One thing in particular that got me, though, was the character creation. I felt like this was a big barrier to entry for the average player. If I were playing this outside of a jam, I probably wouldn't have made it through to even see the game. So this is definitely something that I would create a more user-friendly UI for in the future. :)

Good submission!

My primary critique is the sanity system, which, like many others have said, is too fast and a bit annoying. Furthermore, as I have said with other similar systems, I really don't like the fact that the result of this hitting 0 is just a game over. I would rather see it impact gameplay in some way instead of being just another route to a dead end, I think it detracts from the experience the way it is.

You had  lot more things here that were great though, good job!

Great job with the camera work!

I would just echo things that everyone else was saying in terms of feedback, the movement is definitely where I would start!

Great job, top marks!

I really appreciate the time you put into the production value here. The camera work, effects, voiceover, and audio were all given a lot of attention! You were able to do a lot of things that I had hoped to do with our game, did it well, and in the same amount of time! I am impressed that you managed to get so much worked in there.

I am sure you are already aware where there is room for improvement here, most of the tradeoffs seem to be very intentional. Visual fidelity, including animations, a fleshed out combat system, enemies, and more backstory/narrative elements are the obvious ones I will mention though. But this seems like it has a lot of potential to be a great vertical slice, good work!

This is definitely one of the most unique takes I have seen on the theme. I have the same complaints as everyone else on the combat, but definitely different, good job!

Nicely done! This was solid all-around!

One thing that I did notice right away, it felt very fast-paced, the effects were good, and the controls were good enough. However, having the projectile held in the center of the screen and obstructing the point of view where the eyes naturally want to come to rest in this kind of game was awkward. I would definitely recommend dropping the hands to the corners or the bottom third of the screen to make them and then particle effect less intrusive, I believe the whole thing would feel better.

Other than that, there really isn't much to offer constructive criticism on within a game jam timeframe. You did an excellent job of reusing code, assets, and mechanics to make a boss that felt different enough. I am also sure you know that everything could have used more polish and a little more depth, which is sort of expected within this kind of time constraint. Great submission, keep up the good work!

Nice job getting this all together!

I am going to be a broken record here! Pacing is definitely the best feedback you will get for this one. For the first few minutes of gameplay, it felt like nothing was happening at all, and the time between different events was far too long. I felt myself getting bored almost immediately, and if I was playing outside of a jam, I probably would have just quit within a couple of minutes. Players have very limited attention spans, one of the first things we have to consider as designers is how do we get that juicy dopamine hit of anticipation built up ASAP. So I would definitely look for more ways to sell that early on, especially when you are going for such an atmospheric game like this.

Also, I could do with a few less mostly naked guys on their knees in chains with tentacles; that was giving me even more dark thoughts than the rest of the atmosphere. :D

Really cool idea!

I think some of the quaternion math for the knobs kicked your butt (I understand, I have been there before). I will also say, that providing visual indicators of the knob's affordances and current value would enhance the experience as well (but this is another quaternion math problem, lol). A good example would be gain knobs found on a lot of audio equipment (picture below).

I think this was a really novel idea for a jam, though, and a solid attempt; good work!

Really  nice!

The environment, and the fact you put in the work to voice everything is great, so +1 with everyone else on that!

I did immediately get blown away by the sound and not being able to adjust the audio, but you already know that since it is listed as such. :)

I will say that I could have used a little more guidance on the contextual interactions and combat system. It took me a minute to notice that something was even changing down there at first, and I could see others struggling with it. I also didn't really get the combat system entirely for a while. Long-term it would be nice to have some visual signifiers (A flashing highlight or something) and some gated interactions with explanations the first time we go through using these things.

Great effort for a jam game though, and it could be really nice with some more polish and refinement!

Good effort!

Same complaints as many other folks here, so I won't rehash those.

The towers in the distance are well-used as visual signifiers to compensate for the lack of navigation options, though! That's showing some good understanding of some game design fundamentals there, keep up the good work!

I really liked the visual style, effects, setting, and music!

I did feel like there was a lot of balance needed to make the combat interesting, that first enemy, like others are saying, is way too hard, and the subsequent ones end up being too easy.

I also didn't like the way the sanity mechanic is implemented at all. The visual effect that was associated with it was really cool, but it essentially served as a timer that never stopped (even when opening my inventory or map). That made things especially annoying considering the result of the time sanity timer running out was just a game over. Maybe next time, consider implementing this in some way that it doesn't result directly in a game over, maybe a temporary difficulty spike or damage penalty, something like that. Not sure if you are familiar with Darkest Dungeon, but the first one does a good job of handling this kind of mechanic without making it necessarily fatal.

Good jam submission though, also, extra points for the CRT shader option! :)

Nice!

I got lost in the combat a little bit the first time around, which was probably a me issue, but I could have used a little more guidance at the start. Once I got things working, though, it was decent. I couldn't make it all the way through, but I appreciated the humor and thought put into the narrative as well. :)

Beautiful and unique submission!

It did take me a minute to get oriented without a compass for some reason. Also, the mechanics could have done with some more depth, but that is probably just the result of being part of a jam, ours definitely suffered from this as well. Overall though, really cool, keep up the good work!

I really enjoyed it!

I could critique some of the obvious stuff, feedback, polish, guidance, speed, etc., but I think everyone else has already managed to do that very constructively, so I am not sure I have much to add for this one.

Great take, and good implementation of some novel themes and interactions for the jam!

Thanks for all this great feedback!

We are definitely starting to see a trend in recommendations and pain points here.
Also, you assume correctly that we were going to have abilities. Those got scrapped, and we forgot to disable some of the associated stuff.
You did find a new bug or pain point; the credits screen is supposed to appear 10 seconds after the boss HP hits 0, and that is meant to be the end. This, along with the level transitions and boss hitbox, are all just weird compromises we made for the sake of time, as I have mentioned in earlier comments. We had originally planned to put a starting and ending cutscene in the game, but we fell way short of that; our scope was blown up too far just getting all the systems in there and working together, even having planned it all out thoroughly in advance.

The tile issue and overcommitting to a plethora of systems instead of focusing on a handful and just making those and the overall experience more fun are both great improvements for us to focus on next time around. You are correct, since this was our first time making a crawler, we had no idea how to get the tile sizing and layout right, we just got the grid working and did the best we could with the assets to make them not feel weird. Do you think starting with a different FOV would have made this feel better?

Thanks again for taking the time to play, though; very much appreciated!

That's reasonable, and I appreciate it, but I don't expect us to be able to compete here anyway; there are way better games in the jam, lol.

I just wanted to bring that to your awareness is all, but thanks for reconsidering all the same! Now, we can go down in a full-fledged blaze of glory! haha

We are hoovering up all of the excellent feedback, though. Everyone is learning a lot, and we are already planning the next jam we want to participate in! Thanks again for hosting and allowing us to sharpen our skills here!

So, I still think they would be okay, not hidden, if you emphasized them a bit more. As I said before, make them bigger while doing a roll animation and let the player understand the significance of that and anticipate the outcome. I think that would be better; right now, they just felt like an afterthought to me.

In terms of things you could do to ease them into the background, my first thought would be some system tied to the theme on the surface. You could call it something like the "Bravery" system and explain it away as something like "Only 2-3 characters per turn will be able to summon the willpower to take action against the cosmic horrors they face per turn; make your choices wisely." You could probably come up with a more creative name and reasoning, but it would be easy to put it in as a hidden system at that point if you wanted to go that route. But of course, you would need a new name then, just spitballing design ideas. :)

Hahaha, yeah, it got sort of dicey there at the end, all that polishing and working on systems caused me to cut a lot of corners on some of the last things to go in. :D

Not bad! My favorite thing was all the goofy names for the enemies, haha.

In terms of complaints, I am just going to repeat things that everyone else said: it was a little slow, there was not much variety and depth in the combat system, and there should probably be scaling costs on the upgrades. The way it is now, if the game were longer, I am just going to max stat it to death since I can pump one stat for the same price and deactivate my brain. :D

Tasty. Nuff said.

-Could have used more variety in damage types or something to spice up the combat a bit
-Effects would have been a nice addition to make things more interesting
-An inventory/loot system and the ability to equip your party members seemed like an easy and fun win here
-A cleaner dialog system for party members that wasn't set up with trigger volumes

I must say, though, that you prioritized way better than I did for my team. We ended up leaning in the other direction; we got many of those systems working and focused on features and polish that we failed to utilize fully to create a great experience. Excellent work. This is a master course on what to prioritize for game jams!

Awesome feedback! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this much detail with us, it means a lot

This is the first time we have ever made a dungeon crawler, and you are the second person to mention the tile size issue! Definitely a big takeaway for us if we ever decide to participate in a DC jam in the future. I think this went wrong in two ways, first, we sort of lined up our assets by sight instead of sizing them appropriately, we were too deep in by the time we realized that was a problem. Second, we wanted the enemies to be bigger, so we just took the lazy way out and scaled them up without modifying animations, guaranteed to make everything feel a bit funny, lol.

The transitions were my fault! Unreal is a bit greedy for resources, and in order to keep each "level" manageable, we had to split everything into a bunch of sections. My original plan for us to deal with this was to just copy over the entire next room so you could see it before you walked into the transition. However, that was more complicated than anticipated and also ate up a ton of resources, which is what we were trying to avoid in the first place. So, we ended up with the weird situation where you walk through "airlocks" or hallways to transition, definitely not ideal!

Haha, so far as the gym and showers, this was supposed to be the crew section of a military-style ship that was invaded and slightly damaged, so we had imagined that those types of facilities would fit in well. It almost ended up feeling like we were taking a tour through the bathhouse/gym in a Yakuza game instead, though. But I think a little more backstory in the game would have fleshed that out; cutscenes and "datapads" or in-game lore are two things we did not make it to on your proposed feature list.

It wasn't so much an oversight for the icons, but it was a sacrifice for time! We had been polishing everything too much and ended up in a mad crunch on the last weekend, so we just snapped pictures of the items in the engine and turned them into textures for the icons, lol.

The blue bar was a relic left over from another abandoned feature. We had planned abilities, but they didn't make it, so we forgot to take that out. In terms of the game being easy, that was very intentional, as I had said in another post below. Better than anyone can make it through the game and get the whole experience of what we made than make it challenging. You can take hits, the HP bar does work, and you can die, though; however, that is our major bug; if you die, the dungeon state machine doesn't reset, so you have to start the whole game over again. :(

There was no time to get into secret rooms, but there were several chests and the squeaky toys you could find. The only puzzle was figuring out what the keys were used for by matching the color with the doors. Too much time was spent on polish and not enough on fundamental gameplay; I think that is another good lesson for us to take, and we will block out our time differently on the next one!

Thanks again for all the feedback, and thanks for playing!

Thank you!
The "too easy" thing was definitely an expected trend. I designed all the interactions to be extremely easy and playtest with my wife (who is not a gamer) so I could tune it down enough to make it reasonable. I have had a lot of success with this in the past; if it's a little bit challenging for her, I can be confident that it is pretty easy for most people who play games. :D

I'm glad it felt feature-complete. Learning and putting all that backend stuff together and getting it to work correctly took up the bulk of our time on the project (this is only my 3rd small project in Unreal; I have always been a Unity dev). I'm happy to know it paid off!

Like Syvice was saying, we are just here to learn and get feedback anyway, we were never trying to compete. :)

The other two guys are first-timers though! So I want them to have a good experience and get some good feedback so we can continue to make games!

I will also mention, FYSA, Itch.io offers Dropbox as its alternative option specifically because you can still moderate changes through it. Every folder in the context menu has a "File Info" that anyone should be able to access, and any time something is changed (even if the folder is replaced), the last modified date changes. It is a little more work for you to make a couple more clicks when you go to download it, and I am not trying to argue our case here, but you shouldn't have to DQ folks for this in the future unless that is just what you prefer.

You did find most of the easter egg content! There was one really weird one that nobody has noticed yet.  That bug with the last boss is an unfortunate symptom of some hackery I had to do for the sake of time; he is a lot bigger than his actual hitbox is, so if he isn't directly in front of you, the attack whiffs. We also made everything really easy on purpose; we didn't want people to get stuck. Some other weird hackery on the last boss, to get him to feel a little better, without building additional functionality, he actually does an invisible ranged attack from 3 grid squares away, lol.

Thank you for the feedback, and thanks for playing our game!

If Mabis Beacon came from the abyss, with a very limited vocabulary, and became a Wizard, that would be this game. You revived a part of my childhood that I never wanted to remember, truly a cosmic horror! haha

Seriously though, I played it until the end, and the gimmick worked really well here! This is definitely one of my favorites so far in terms of execution and novelty.

Things I enjoyed:

-The spelling gimmick was good here!
-I think the prose was excellent, and the whole thing was clever well done!
-Controls were smooth and felt good to play
-The art was solid and felt at home
-The tree and spell acquisition mechanics also felt like a welcome addition!
-I love how you got the typing and voice system working; it was fun to play with randomly!

Room for improvement:
-Variety and variance! I know this is really hard to pull off in a jam, but the typing gimmick had outstayed its welcome after about 10 minutes when I realized all there was to the combat was combining the two easiest spells that would add up to kill the monster. Damage type, different effects, a way to modify the words, a mechanic that made you solve the fights in a limited number of turns, anything like this would have been a massive enhancement in my opinion.
Music and sound effects! If you had more time to incorporate some really good BGM tracks and more interesting sound effects, you could definitely elevate this significantly.
-More player choices! I wanted to have the ability to do something else that was deterministic; the whole experience did feel a little too "on rails."

Overall, though, I loved it; great submission!

Yeah, you all did a great job, all things considered! Just trying to show up with some good feedback to make it all worth it, growth is what game jams are all about!

Glad you enjoyed it, and the addition of the squeaky toys!
Thanks for playing!

Weird, I haven't run into that with any other titles yet; I am almost 30 deep and have been downloading everything.