Awful Winter Jam 2018: Let's make some video games.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Awful Winter Jam 2018: Let's make some video games.

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Awesome! I've been super busy and sick to do much lately, but hopefully I'll get through everything I need to in January to enter game jam nirvana.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2017 03:48

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:50

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

I don't remember that one, but it sounds like its own reward.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 05:21

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

I've been totally blowing it on keeping up with SA threads since like November but you can be sure I've hashed out enough time to play your funky submissions :thumbsup:

# ¿ Jan 20, 2018 08:41

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Only one thing left to do!

# ¿ Jan 21, 2018 09:17

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Going to do the same thing as last jam, time permitting. That's playing the games in order by "finished" posts in the thread (apologies if I miss some), then judge's top picks if I take too long, and then throwing other submissions from the website into random.org until I finish or burn out. Apologies in advance for my gross, unabashed subjectivity. Time to get to it!

Hammer Bro. posted:

The Oregon Trailblazer by Teamsomnia

Cozy little auto-scrolling shooter! I have a big soft spot for these "rambling" games you do for the jams. Bonus points for the multiple character types and achievements which helped that "just one more time" thing. Tips were actually useful, too, although I'm glad I got the "hey, idiot, this is clickable" one early on. A little messy with the generation (that wall at the end if you get stuck with a six-shooter!) and I got instakilled a few times by what I assume was something like a frame- or tick-based damage bug, but this jam started out strong!

Sedgr posted:

UFO Cattle Battle by Team Sedgr

Cute setting and idea, tower defence against the bovine squad. It's a shame the game didn't ever seem to click with me, partly because of issues like ramming and boost just causing me to skid out of control. I also would've probably liked some downtime or turret strategy as it seemed like all I did was hope to get rockets and then hope they didn't fly over the enemies. It's a cute idea, though, and I liked it enough actually that I probably would've given it another half dozen tries if it didn't cause so much slowdown (that's a lot of mooers to mow down!) right when it got difficult.

TomR posted:

Night of the Surfing Dead by Tom and Larissa

Like a weird wave/enemy-based Arkanoid on acid! Loved the art style and good choice on the soundtrack, seemed to meld really well! The gameplay was mostly turn-off-your-mind hectic action but it worked for me and was pretty fun. Maybe some more waves (slower, more deliberate waves?) or some items would've made it more appealing to me. But it feels good which is all that really matters! Is it alright to say it's likely my favorite TomR game (that I can remember with my terrible memory anyway), and also pretty neat to consider it the evolution of Wonky Pong and Grave Digger? Oh, I got to the second Dick-Dracula.

Jo posted:

Debate Simulator 2016 by Team Adorable Animals

A debate simulator with some sort of language parser and Trump generator. I seemed to have a hard time getting it to pick up on buzzwords, I think there needs to be more feedback here not just on what it picks out but what's the amount needed to clear the bar (does it stack, are there negatives, should I just spam "Guns. Beards." or whatever?). It's pretty obtuse! That said, I chuckled at a few of the question and those portraits are good. It's also a neat idea even if it kind of required playing a few times with individual phrases to see if it picked any up. Oh, I also got a crash partway in the first time where it wouldn't continue from a Trump response, and one time the results screen seemed to mostly ignore inputs or do something where it took a long time to get through.

Wow, what'd I say to Vermont?

netcat posted:

USX-1944 by Skellyware

Kind of like a Mega Man 1 romhack where you kind of play as the Zero from the GBA games! Overall I ended up liking it a fair bit! There's a lot that I feel could use tweaking in both mechanics (sliding/air falling and bouncing off enemies, some hitboxes and placement) that I felt made it more difficult than it should have been along with some graphics stuff (not the best mix, although it did remind me Stinkoman), but it's good for its shortened development time! I mean, it's not runnable in the NES but you just can't do that every jam (or any jam, for anyone else).

NeekBerm posted:

New World Monster Mash by Team Badteam

No link on the jam page?

I laughed when I lost, I laughed when I won. What more could I ask for?

Myron posted:

A History of Videogames by Team Team

Cute ROM mash-up! I liked how the different styles didn't just change the character, but the level as well. Some were better than others (blast you Pac-Man Spaceship!) but there were a couple particularly neat ones. I liked the SCUMM-esque characters in the narrative segments, though I think the game would've benefited from some tunes. Good job!

ShredsYouSay posted:

1937 by Stummy Beige

Neat 1943 clone! Good, fun story with nice voicework and and interesting (if somewhat distracting) style. I liked the gameplay although it did seem needlessly hard at some points. I kept getting to the last guy without getting hit and then tanking due to a missile getting through a shooting gap or a weird cycle with bullets (it's no fun with a peashooter) which made me wonder if that part needed more time. You could see a lot of care in the shader work and the audio modification, and some crazy juicy screenshake near the end. Maybe not exactly my thing, but I could see this one being on top of the heap!

# ¿ Jan 23, 2018 16:13

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

I hope nobody minds me destroying this threads with replies about replies. I usually tend to just not check it until I'm done playing games, and I kind of hate that. And thanks for the nice replies so far, it's actually kind of odd leaving impressions!

Oh, if anyone is taking requests for public builds, 1937 needs a dialogue skip to it. Just make it a NG+ or something because that part's great, but maybe not after the first couple times through!

Sedgr posted:

Thanks for playing it! The controls are a bit finnicky and heavily rely on the brakes. And yep that ends up being a whole lot of cows. I had more plans in store, but of course its a jam and just didnt have the time to implement more stuff without breaking everything. Thanks again.

Thank you! Do you have a video of a good run? I always like seeing what I failed to pick up in these games.

ALFbrot posted:

I kind of wish Debate Simulator secretly sent your responses to Jo, so he could post all the weirdest and best ones. I wrote some that I thought were pretty amusing, but they were just fed into a parser and lost like a fart in the wind.

I actually stopped myself from going too far for this very reason, just in case!

netcat posted:

I've updated my game for anyone who's interested.

I think these changes makes it quite a bit more pleasant and easier to play.

https://skellyware.itch.io/usx-1944

Definitely will go back to this one, and those are some very good changes! I kind of liked the bounce but at least I couldn't figure a good way for it (though it is neat using it on the last boss to get back on that platform!). And I didn't mention the slash projectile because I do think doing it that way with a delay can be a choice to make positioning more deliberate. The dash cancel is probably wholly a good idea, though! Most of the Mega Man games that use dash or sliding have a way out of it.

Myron posted:

Protip: It doesn't matter if you win or lose and there's only one ending Originally I wanted to create different endings based on your choices and how well you do in the games, but I ran out of time (also the reason why there's no music).

I made sure!

Doom Goon fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Jan 24, 2018

# ¿ Jan 24, 2018 15:52

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

That's what it was, you couldn't jump (or attack?) out of it unless it was at the end of it until that change. Not that everything has to be Mega Man, of course! I actually had some fun trying to jump out of a quickly reversed one, and also luring enemies to bounce off of so I could try to get 1ups if I couldn't figure out the right way to do it.

And here's the second batch of impressions!

Dieting Hippo posted:

Try Something New by Team Not Sure

Tear down this wall, and build up this Lemonade Stand! I was heartbroken to hear about Snail Knight having to be scrapped so late in the game

I did have some issues with this one (UI, mostly in having to type things every time. Also, I think you understated how bad rain was even during events!) but I don't want to focus on that because there's just no point in it. Honestly there's little point in it regularly, anyway. So the positives: weirdly satisfying low-res graphics. Funky "99 Red Balloons" chiptune cover that I'm positive will come back into my head as soon as I try to go to bed. I got to name a shop "IchBinEinPfannkuchen," which made me giggle. You also had a very nice Post Mortem, just like last time!

Giggs posted:

The Purging of Darkstorm Cave by _____ by Giggs

A really neat little "top-down" action-adventure/roguelite game! I loved a lot about this one, the atmospheric, odd start, the kickin' soundtrack (maybe it's no Alien Alchemy but it's adventurious high energy main track and tense boss track works. If I didn't have 99 Red Balloons in my head now you could count on that instead), the pretty fun action with multiple character classes. The battle animations might not be team quailty (though many of the other ones are great!) or feel a little unimpactful and a couple things like the ending screen make me wonder what was dropped (maybe the score included how many dungeons you optionally took?) but those are small potatoes. Also, after you play you get to read another Giggs post-mortem which is super indepth! I, um, also totally rushed to the boss after I beat the game once.

KRILLIN IN THE NAME posted:

Hyperturbo Great Emu War 1932 by bonerman's boner jam

Wave-based Great Emu War simulator! Loved the decals/blood effects! Also really neat to implement a detection system on the enemies. Another nice touch is the zooming in on brake which both acts like a penalty (lower vision) and helps fine control (bigger turning object). Oh, and of course the radar when you have stragglers, which is more important than you'd think! It is pretty simple and repetitive, as it could use some more enemies or power-ups, but it's undeniably attractive for a quick one (and it does get hectic around 100, although that takes awhile!). It also makes me wonder if you could hotwire Hotline Miami into a wave-based or other type of shooter!

Atoramos posted:

Peasants! Build Me A Castle! by Flatbox Studios

Populous meets a clicker game! I got past building Workshops before a crash happened (couldn't seem to get them to do much, even reading the Tips about removing items first), but it seems like there's quite a bit more afterwards. Not the prettiest game but you can see a lot works, and besides the crash it seemed to handle well on my computer even with a lot of peasants. The menus were a bit hard to navigate, and I think since it was a clicker game it needed to be showier (numbers more personal and upfront instead of having to deal with the inventory). It didn't quite itch that clicker part of my brain, but it's impressive that everything works and it seems like there's a bit there!

SystemLogoff posted:

Y2Kthulhu by Team Retro Leaf

A short, strange RPG about Y2K made in Love! It's very simple, but pretty neat. And weirdly cozy! A lot of the graphics look oddly appealing and I kind of dig the weird cyberspace thing going on. There's a ton of attacks you can find and the occassional joke object to click on. It's not Persona level but it kind of seems like it maybe was going to go in that direction? I really want to read a postmortem about this one because I think I missed a lot! Oh, there's also an Easter egg involving Xibanya, and I totally didn't find it by looking through the nicely written source code, nope!

# ¿ Jan 24, 2018 17:14

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Awesome, thanks for that!

And here's the next batch! I've only got a couple here that I've played and haven't written anything up yet, so if there are any stragglers please post about your game so I can prioritize it!

Thermal Anomaly posted:

Clock Jammers by Team Chryssalid

Mini-XCOM with some time warp attacks! I'll have to make a note here that strategy games aren't my thing, but this one seemed really feature complete! There's even a couple slight variation maps (I'm pretty sure the Interceptor gets an additional action point and I think the default guns are type-based so you might have splash and stuff). Even though I was awful at it (I couldn't seem to turtle or draw that well, though I did get smarter about wallhugging) and had to take a rank to beat the starting level it seemed pretty easy to pick up and play. Nice sprite graphics and some cool songs per map, too. Not too many irritations on this one! I hated when I'd misclick a move but that's understandable considering how sight works. Oh, maybe I'd recommend shortening the maps a bit (at least the starting one) as the ones I tried seemed to take quite awhile (I hope that doesn't hurt its streamability)? Also, some extra way to highlight the unit being controlled (I know, I know, but I still ended up moving the wrong one) and outright stating their class type (right, the bird isn't the scout) could've helped me prevent a few fumbles. And maybe some narrative or stronger progression (with the caveat that I didn't beat all the maps)? Another really nice job!

Shoehead posted:

Super Gaelic Dodgeball by Team Park World

What is says on the tin! Another gorgeous game from Shoehead, if you aren't envious of it then you're delusional. In motion it's downright grabbing! Tons of nice little touches like the screen flickering, the shaking, the dash effect, all really nice! It definitely all works, but I do think there are some issues with the gameplay side of things. It's feels like a crapshoot how catching will work out, for instance, and mashing throw leads to an awkward moment where you catch your own ball. If there's a sweet spot it's just not apparent when to catch, even after a few games. Dashing is great but it's pretty instant (even against the border) and I kind of miss the contention zone (jumping the middle) that the Kunio-kun games had. I miss it, but that's got to be a pain to program. It's also hard to tell if jumping, passing, and switching are honestly worth anything. Oh, and music, but the patter and explosions are pretty entertaining by themselves. And really I feel like I'm being hard here because so much works and was probably a super pain to implement (AI, for instance). But there is another nice addition I wanted to mention, and that's the bumpers which is a really cool idea and leads to some pretty hilarious moments! All dodgeball games going forward should have at least one bumper level. Finally, I can't end without mentioning that Shoehead had one of the first and best dev logs as development was going on through the Twitter account. I don't know if there's anything for that this year but that's my two cents on it!

EntranceJew posted:

Oligocene Snapshot by Beeconomic Advisors

Pokemon Snap meets time travel! I think the timestream has already been, uh, A Sound of Thunder-ed because things are pretty weird. It's a good classic SA one! Really impressive, the game seems capable of detecting framing and multiple objects. You can throw apples to trigger events, though maybe that was a little thin (I don't think I ever got a Special score?). It went by fast, but I liked it. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's wanted a Pokemon Snap-like game for years, so give it a shot!

ALFbrot posted:

Crazy Motorcade by FloTeam

I can't wait to see this one pop up on the stream and hope you get someone good! And a really nice down-to-earth postmortem, too!

Unbelievably White posted:

I might edit some gifs into this post later, after I get some sleep.

Do it!

Doom Goon fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jan 25, 2018

# ¿ Jan 25, 2018 16:59

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Next batch!

Ultigonio posted:

Unearth by Will B.

A deceptively cute, deceptively difficult mining puzzle-platformer! :swoon:

Absolutely love this one! Puzzle design that made me feel both smart and stupid at the same time. A very cute story with very cozy graphics. Music tracks that really build off each other well. Difficulty levels that try to incorporate different playing styles (and an absolutely brutal unlockable one). There's even an alternate ending you can get in any mode (though I'm a little mad it took a perfect gold run away. It was a normal mode run anyway)! Also, some minor criticisms, too much but that's a good thing because I certainly put my time into it: Certain movements seemed slippery, in particular sliding on walls and the nudging assistance (like when you fall holding a button to try and enter a tile). Speed seemed a bit fast at times, particularly when having to time enemies on higher difficulties, so much so occasionally I wondered if the game originally was in half speed. Even though it shows the buttons it's not obvious you have to hold down for that long for the charge jump to work (nope, not hearing it. Also weirdly it's a mechanic and you only show the tutorial guy for the other one, the walljump), and the charge jump is pretty useless (in fact, you don't want to use it if you can walljump instead. I guess it could be an easy/costly mechanic to bypass having to do that but I'm still struggling to think of where it would be used). There was a funny point where I was like, "I need to only move a pixel or two, but what am I supposed to do? Crouch and press forward?" But overall: Really great job, a must-play in my opinion! I mean, in my opinion a lot of these are, but we'll just ignore that.

megane posted:

A Machine to End War by Wardenclyffe Laboratory Technicians

Twin-stick shooter staring everyone's favorite Anti-Edison! Since these are like the only local co-op games people make any more for some reason I've played enough I can appreciate what's going on here. I can honestly say this has a lot of good ideas to it, despite feeling a little janky at times. There's multiple weapon types, a couple special obstacles, destroyable terrain, all good ideas. People may have their own opinions on enemy spawning but I kind of hate the teleport style so I'm okay with that. Some of the graphics seem a bit out of place, but there are a couple special effects if you look out for them. The guns for the most part feel different, the shot-type gun has enemy kickback which is nice, and although I'd like to see the lightning gun have some enemy branching or something (though acting in water is a good idea), the first time you use the ray-type gun is outright bonkers. At least play it for the ray-type gun. I could definately see this one blossom in a longer jam or under a different revision. I'd also like to hear a bit about development because, wow, that credits list!
(No image, but I did get to the end here thanks to the new version!)

Giggs posted:

I�ve been playing this game for over an hour. A jam game. Christ. I have to move on or I�ll never finish giving feedback to all the teams.

I feel like this is me for most of these and it gets worse (better?) every jam.

I'm counting these ones:

Alligator posted:

Molasses! by alligator

Rampart-inspired game made in TIC-80! Wow, I am awful at this one, couldn't even make it past the ducks! All the logic and generation seemed to work, but I'll have to take somebody else's word on how well the balance works. Cute writing and the graphics have a neat throwback look to them (I mean, look at that intro!). There's no Russian folk song, but nothing's perfect. A real solid job!

whatPanache posted:

Unidentified Falling Objects! by Some Brothers Studio

Physic-based structure-building timing game! Hey, wait a second, was this originally gong to be for the Big Awful Jam 2016, Games for Grandpa? A real neat little casual game that kind of gives you the same feeling as those UFO catchers. Whether that means a nice relaxing tension-releasing pastime or screaming your head off AT THAT drat THING :ssj:

really depends on the player. It's simple but I liked it, very calming graphics and music. Bonus points for a leaderboard although nobody's beating Masti and Giggs! There did seem to be a sound/track switching bug that pops up occasionally but I only know that because, um, someone was resetting a lot. Oh, I would like to hear why the score goes up before it's complete instead of after it settles? Is it because it's more instantly pleasing (in a Skinner box way, numbers and ranks)? Did you experiment with any ways with kind of "reading" the final shape (wherever it is) or was it always the zone idea?

I think that's it for thread posters! I still haven't decided if I'll go through by submission date or randomly, but hopefully I can keep it up!

# ¿ Jan 26, 2018 16:58

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

ALFbrot posted:

For those who aren't in the Discord (join the Discord), here's the link to the Gong Show Schedule!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O3fbAGIJwvbp9I6SnJ2Qcbrm8Spx8p_s-gjX-xFToGU/edit?usp=drivesdk

Thanks for this! I don't know how much I can catch (not the beginning?) but hopefully I won't have to just download the whole thing again like last time! I'll have to ignore the games I haven't got to yet though.

SystemLogoff posted:

I'm glad you found it cozy. The mother/earthbound series is partly where my heart lives and what my writing shows. I like writing happy stories. I wanted the attacks to feel fun, and I wanted to have some laughs at the weird world. Sort of cosmic humor instead of horror.

🎵Life is but a moment, a single grain of sand...🎵

netcat posted:

"final" version

Just a note that I haven't forgotten about this myself, but it will probably have to wait a little!

# ¿ Jan 27, 2018 14:03

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Sounds like a good partnership! And crazy good from someone that hadn't even touched Unity before!

First batch of unposted games! Instead of doing them by submission date, I did them so I could watch more of the second part of the Gong Show stream without skipping it. However, that means I did pass over any games that were covered on the first day of streaming that I hadn't already covered, which I'll have to get to afterwards.

Harry Houdini and the Mummified Meanies by Team Just Neil
Miner 2049er-esque platformer starring Harry Houdini by way of Lovecraft (apparently influenced by an indie game called Panic Variants). Funny enough I didn't get the bug the readme mentioned where you don't jump 3-4 squares, but a different one where I seemed to have infinite jump height (even killing me when I'd break the boundary)! Luckily it worked fine on another computer. First off, what a neat looking tileset! Pretty striking! Overall, this is a simple, very predictable platformer for the most part. There's not a lot involved in learning (or much to learn, I suppose) and it seemed a lot of the difficult was centered around overrushing into obstacles. There also seemed to be a lot of waiting for enemies. But overall I didn't think there was enough play with its mechanics, or situations where I thought the game expected precise yet simple controls (because it could've been a hard-core platformer with simple controls, plenty of those exist but the successful ones are usually elevated in design or through strong iteration in some way). And honestly sometimes I thought I'd hit a jump and it didn't go (or fudge the numbers so it let me get away with it) which made it feel a bit slippery. That said, maybe the game's just not targeted at me (that's okay!). For that consideration I'd maybe suggest focusing less on an endurance run and more on simple but interesting segments. A part of that might be changing the gold into some other mechanic that has more of an impact where now it's just collect whatever out of oops I missed one to continue.

:aaaaa:

I just took a break and happened to read Giggs's post. Eerie how close they are!

I should stress, this is not a bad game! It's actually fairly cute, and I've sure put time into simple old-school platformers for less. It seems more that it's competent but really needs some iteration and experimentation to pin down what its good at.

Dueling fathers by SoggyBread
One-button reaction game with skills! This isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea but there's a lot done right here, that's inarguable. It has cute graphics, it definitely covers periods of weird history, and there's no skill that outright trumps (true, there's a lot of "use first!" type skills, but a lot of it depends on who you're facing and luck of aim). I don't know if the gameplay is interesting enough to really have much of a draw or payoff (all things equal it'd be down to character choice. I just don't see a lot of reading during the match which even a lot of these simple skill-based party games have!) and I think a lot of the little things like dialogue and animation need some more oomph into it, but it does work. I'm actually pretty interested in seeing SoggyBread apply their strengths (which right now I'd consider rules making, graphics, a keen but not-too-on-the-nose sense of humor) to future jams and hope I remember this one when that time comes!

Football Wars by Ghost Dad
Weird soccer/football-based obstacle course game. Congrats on finishing your first jam game! It really is a good idea, although a bit frustrating to actually play. I think its main problems were a lack of predictability and defined space. I felt like I kept doing the same things and hope they worked rather than learning the odd peculiarities of the physics system. A fair amount of an underwater or ice feel to it! If there was stuff to learn it didn't feel like the game had a handle on what it was and how to approach that. But the creativity is there, there's a bit of dark humor there!

Oh Darn The Time Machine We Stole Has Gone Haywire by Chikin Wings
No public build! That's a shame but I'm excited to see it played tomorrow. For reference/bribery for future jams, I called the previous jam game, Headphone Hero, "an easy recommendation."

The Incredible Story of Pizza by ThatSnillet's soloteam
Lego Island-inspired pizza making/delivery simulator! Here's one where I was more interested in the technology then the game. By that I mean the game, while everything works, lacks a lot of depth and progression. But the technical side of it has things like a 3D randomly generated world, a couple things build on top of it to encourage free-roaming, and really neat low-polygon graphics. And it all has a very quaint feel to it! It almost feels like a tech demo to something larger (and I have more than a hunch that that's true, or at least something close but kind of the reverse to that). And, besides all of that, the pizza making works even if it outright lacks a lot of the things that make other management sims successful. I'd definitely like to see more of this developer in other jams with bigger scope!

Glacier Hero by RustyJim
Frets on Ice! Really interesting looking style! And the game is fairly fun to play on top of that! I do think it suffers quite a bit from being randomly generated and not in sync with the music though (that said, I can see someone complaining, if it was the other way, that it's the same every time. Probably should've pregenerated one and developed the other if there was time!). Sometimes the generation seemed too crowded and I'd have trouble telling if something was in a line or slightly off. Oh, and the bar/glacier part is a bit too noisy and you can't really tell when it's optimal to hit (on the line, before the line where it pops up, in the middle part of where it pops up, in the zone part at the bottom?). To your credit it also shouldn't be understated how awful it is to build a rhythm game due to all the technical issues. But overall this was a neat short one!

Dieting Hippo posted:

Jamflix and Chill is going to return next week!

Awesome, that was a ton of fun last time! I'll try to catch it live when I can!

# ¿ Jan 28, 2018 17:09

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

I saw this on Neil's Twitter, but looks like Unearth and Harry Houdini and the Mummified Meanies were featured in PC Gamer's "Free games of the week" article!

# ¿ Jan 29, 2018 05:37

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Ultigonio posted:

Thank you for putting in enough time to get all the way through S-Hard, though. I'm really glad someone got to give that one a full go.

My pleasure!

Last batch here from me, covering the jams I didn't cover from Gong Show day one! I don't know if I've said it yet, but thanks to all the participants! I wouldn't change a thing expect for, um, all of my writing. I also definitely missed some spellchecks there, wow!

FENRIR by Vulture Party
(Public build removed but still available on itch.io?). Destroy villages as the great Fenrir in a third-person destruction game! Yes, okay, definitely some issues with this one. I might be a bit rough here, so apologies! There's camera issues (mouse moves camera but doesn't orient character) and control issues not just with design (what uses are howl, dash, and jump? When should I use them?) but in technical design (WASD to control but also X to dash? Seems much more controllable with arrow keys as well). There's big problems with the UI at the end (part of which seems to be inadequate scaling. I had teeny text and icons in a huge box). I also ran into a bug where I got stuck near a mountain even though I wasn't obviously pinned or anything. Finally, it kind of starts as this weird kind of destruction/simulation game, but with the black soot (why does stepping on that hurt again?) and everything it kind of turns a bit into a weird platformer/gauntlet thing. It seems like there should be more systems that push back and kind of grow so it feels alive. However, the ambition is great! It seems like there's a story that the dev desperately wants to tell here, which I love! Also, there's neat dev notes (look at that concept art on the jam page! Look at that model!) and a nice critical post mortem that's probably more valuable than what I could offer! I'd be more than satisfied if this was my first developed jam game.

Glory SImulator 480 BC by Team Phlargenarffen
Hold out against the wave of Xerxes by throwing your dorata! I think I did get to the end of this one though it just looped. I had a lot of trouble with the perspective or hitboxes here, and it was pretty frustrating to miss an enemy and have to correct by inches. Another spatial issue popped up with trying to get around the enemy projectile attack with such a wide rank, and it seemed like you really needed three Spartans and to have happened to have killed the right enemies near instantly to hold out on certain waves (4 or so). Maybe not making an enemy slipping through auto-count as damage could've helped this? I did laugh at the little apple that appears when you beat a wave, though. And the aesthetics did have a certain charm to them though perhaps not as apparent at that perspective. Overall, not too bad and it ran fairly well!

World War Kaiju by Frozen Sky
No public build. But I did go back and watch the Gong Show part and read the Wordpress post. Impressed with the amount of thought in the design document! Super ambitious!

Dahunt by TrainFacts
No public build. I also went and watched the Gong Show part for this one! I wanted to see the ending at least, but oh well. It seemed more complete than I expected, and it looked like there was some work put into the narrative and trying to make it more than just a "mini-game". I don't know if it all hit but I was a little surprised in that for a non-public one. It seemed colorful and easy to jump into at least, and with a little work I could see it as something that you could've really put out there for the jam!

Traalbanthlalgarr: Legend of the Sleeping Princess by Team Krell!!!!!
No problem.

60 Second History by SEXY LOCAL TEAM IN YOUR AREA
No public build (yet?). Surprised at that, seemed pretty fun when I went back to the Gong Show! I was rooting for a honeybee timeline personally. Did seem like it would've benefited greatly from some variant closure but what was there looked good!

Blown away by the quality of games this Winter jam! Seriously, I had to keep reminding myself this was the two week one. Get some rest, jeez!

# ¿ Jan 30, 2018 17:12

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Dieting Hippo posted:

Jamflix and Chill

I missed about the first half hour (Unearth's segment), but today's show is streaming now!

# ¿ Jan 31, 2018 02:35

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

I really love how nitty-gritty Jamflix and Chill can get, while also going completely off the rails into Sonic canon. If you ever were like, "Hey, that palette looks familiar, what influenced that?" or "Why does this phase work like that?" it's great, but also a ton of enlightening stuff just comes up in the informal setting (Sonic or not).

I'm going to be super busy at least for tomorrow, but I hope to get to some of these "loose threads" (that's weird to say considering the judging isn't even over) in the next few days!

# ¿ Feb 1, 2018 03:27

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Heads up, the judges stream (prerecorded) is streaming to Twitch right now! https://www.twitch.tv/awfuljams

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 02:13

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

Hitlersaurus Christ posted:

The public build of 60 Second History is officially up!

Very nice! I couldn't quite reach 13 endings (thought I figured it out on the Columbus stage but no go), but it was fun! Wish I didn't spoil it from the judge's stream but I figured I better check it out while I had the time.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2018 15:30

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:50

Doom Goon: Sep 18, 2008

drat that's slick :allears:

I was gonna make a post after the winners were posted but, uh, that didn't seem to happen in the thread and I totally forgot what I was going to say anyway. Good job everyone, I miss it already!

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 01:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Awful Winter Jam 2018: Let's make some video games.