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ShexEx - ShexEx Classic Edition

A plug-and-play with many different games to play, machine translated for your gaming pleasure.

A game by Team Last Second for the Awful Summer Jam 2017

Game: Chris (SystemLogoff)

Voices: Xibanya

Voices: Mihai Zetta

Music: Willfor

Jam Page (Download link on the page): http://www.awfuljams.com/awful-summer-jam-2017/games/shexex-shexex-classic-edition

First Impressions

The artwork in this is fantastic, but I wasn't really sold on any of the mini-games which is a bit of a shame. I'll hopefully explain my reasons well enough in the rest of the post.

The interface was fluid enough, controls and options felt good, music and sound-work was great.

Playthrough Experience

Firing the game up, I got a little bit lost in the controls; accidentally opening up options and cancelling when I didn't mean to. I think I might just be used to other control schemes, not sure! I think decided to work through each game from left to right.

TROUT I sorta mashed buttons and things happened, wasn't really sure if they were good things but an angry man kept yelling "garbage" at me.

I then went through the wonderfully narrated visual novel that was Bootleg Brothers Canada, which followed 3ario's adventure for booze. This game clearly rewarded my Mushroom Kingdom know-how as all the right answers felt like the decisions I'd make in Mario.

Then I faced an elf lady as she kept asking me silly questions and turning me into poo if I got the wrong answer. Maybe it was more like the answers she wanted to hear... A cute trial and error experience.

Trivia Trail I'm not even sure what happened, I pressed a button and won? I'm not even sure I got to press a button.

EarthMotherVII was a fishing game! Probably the most game-like of the games offered by the ShexEx system.

School Band Hero I sort of wandered around confused and somehow won, where I was awarded by having a Trombone shoved in my face. Too much like my real high-school experience...

NSE Sportsball was a clear reference to Undertale, with brutally unforgiving game-play. Through a little trial and error I got through it, though I'm still not really sure how I triggered attacks.

Professor Larry was a visual novel starring an angry drunk man to whom violence and murder was the solution to every puzzle.

Finally, I had unlocked the last game. A courtroom battle where to win you simply waited to hit he button at the right time on each bar.

Feedback

Somewhat appropriately for the title of the section, the first issue I feel this game has is a lack of feedback!

Like I kind of like the Wario-ware approach to a lot of these games, it just needs that feedback to sell that I did the right thing. Shake the screen, give me a fanfare, something! Without it you can kind of accidentally mash an input button and blast straight through most of the games without really any indication you did anything at all.

NSE Sportsball gives you so little chance to react and the punishment of sending you back to the menu is annoying. I’m also confused as to how you’re meant to initiate an attack, so it just kind of felt like it happened randomly. I feel like you need to give more breathing room to work out what you’re doing at the start of the avoid part. After that, I’d say ramp up the difficulty between each ball throw, with the ball throw prompt coming up at set intervals. 

The interface overall though was good, I had no trouble finding my way around it.

The art and sound were fantastic It made Bootleg Brothers Canada especially enjoyable for me.

Overall

Ultimately better feedback for player action, better indication of victory in most of the games and honestly maybe a little bit more depth; a couple of the games were just a little too simplistic (the last one in particular). I feel it just would have been more enjoyable had we had more games like EarthMother VII and NSE Sportsball. I loved the narration in Bootleg Brothers Canada. 

[chikinbucket]

Smash Boys Vs The Nerdy Boys

Smash Boys vs the Nerdy Boys. Nerds have taken over the beach, it's your job as one of the Smash Boys to smash and kill all the nerds!

A game by Harold Krell for the Awful Summer Jam 2017.

Jam Page: http://www.awfuljams.com/awful-summer-jam-2017/games/the-smash-boys-vs-the-nerdy-boys

Play it here: https://harold-krell.itch.io/the-smash-boys-vs-the-nerdy-boys

It's essentially a Battletoads-esque side-scrolling beat-em-up. While it takes a lot of inspiration from Battletoads, it's not nearly as difficult and is considerably less frustrating to play! 

First Impression

This game controls so well, like I was able to just work out what the controls were with no real instruction and once I got down the combat mechanics, simple as they may be, it felt so good to smash nerd heads clean off.

The art is a little crude, but it suits the humour of the game well I think and its not so crude you can't tell what's going on. Also gotta give props for that sick parralaxing, which makes the water section so satisfying.

PlayThrough Experience

I managed to work out the controls pretty quickly, it's set up like standard emulation controls (so arrows to move, Z to jump and X to attack). Once I'd smashed my way through a bunch of nerds and made it to the boss, I ended up somehow being able to nearly kill it in the intro cutscene so I was able to finish off that beefcake pretty quickly.  

Then came something reminiscent of the dreaded bike section from the game it's inspired by, but it's not remotely as grueling. It was pretty fun boppin on the swimming nerds too! It took me a little bit to work out where to stand to beat up the shark boss, but it wasn't too much of an issue. 

It was only by the final level that I worked out how the kick moved worked and suddenly I was cleaving piles of nerds all at once which felt amazing. Alas, I couldn't work out how to topple the final boss and my nerd smashin' journey came to a close. 

Feedback

Combat feels good and I think that's largely down to how tight the controls feel as well as how the game rules are set up (the i-frames on finishers for example). Enemy variety is sadly a little lacking, which can make some parts of levels kind of drag as you're employing the same tactics over and over again. Different enemy types that would encourage different kinds of approaches would help I think.

I sort of wish each Smash Boy had their own unique quirks, as otherwise they're just a skin. I'm not honestly sure if this would enhance the game or make things worse to be honest, something to maybe play with.

Other things... maybe some kind of recovery items? Weapons you could pick up like in Battletoads? These are honestly just things to maybe play with rather than things I definitely think would make it better

Overall / TL;DR

This is a well made game that controls like a dream, the only real shame is the lack of enemy variety.

[chikinbucket]

Soul Castle: Feedback

Foreword

So I figured the first feedback/review post would be on one of the games that had kind of a rough time on the jam show. As this is the first game, I’ll explain the intended approach I want to take with these posts going forward.

First point, I generally won’t read instructions at first. If I can complete the game without looking at instructions, that’s a plus because rarely do I look at instructions for commercial games and I suspect most players are like me. That said, if the game clearly does need instructions to get going then of course I’ll read them after banging my head against the inevitable wall I come across. 

I don’t intend to be harsh in my reviews and I’m certainly not here to be all “ha ha look at that crappy game” because that helps literally no one. I’m also not going to be able to give industry professional standard feedback because I’m just an amateur dev as well. We’re in this to learn together, if we can make better games then the industry as a whole is better. 

For the most part, I’ll be suggesting things I think would make the game better at the worst. It’s all opinions though. Hopefully you get something out of it.

I don’t intend to write too much for each game. Preferably I want to be able to complete the post in under an hour but I may end up with more to say than intended. I can get wordy, sometimes, but I’ll try to keep things brief.

About the Game

Right, so! Lets give this a go. Soul Castle; a Castlevania-souls-like where you play as an un-dead knight, fighting your way through hordes of former countrymen to strike down the evil Sorceress. 

The game is by Gunzil for the Awful Summer Jam 2017. 

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Check out the jam page here: http://www.awfuljams.com/awful-summer-jam-2017/games/soul-castle

Check out the Itch.io page and play the game for yourself here: https://gunzil.itch.io/soul-castle

First Impression

The art and atmosphere to me feels spot on. The title screen gives a great foreboding feeling for what’s about to come and the choice of sound really sells it for me. 

Play-through Experience

It took me a little bit to get used to the controls and the movement of the game as I daftly wandered into knives, bones and sometimes both at once! After a few failed attempts I managed to crawl my way through the first two stages where what felt like the real game was ready to welcome me.  While level 1 and 2 do get hit with the flaws of the game the hardest, 3 onward was a lot more fun. Maybe it's the goofiness of it or maybe it's just movement from then on feels so much better than in the early game. I'm not sure, either way it was more fun! The final boss was also really nicely done and the credits song was hilarious.  All in all, it didn't take me too long to clear the game and there weren't really any major roadblocks. Overall I'm glad I persisted to experience the 2nd half of this bizarre little adventure.

Feedback

So yeah, here I'm just gonna go into detail on my feelings on as many aspects of the game as I can, giving my own opinions on them and providing suggestions where I feel I can. Ultimately, it's just like, my opinion man but hopefully it gives you something to work with. 

Sprites

The sprite-work, backgrounds and enemy design are all fitting and I like the animations on their movement. Like art-wise, I have no real suggestions to make as I feel like it delivers its message appropriately. 

Movement and Enemies

Regarding player movement, I feel like the player moves just a tad too slowly and I don't really like the delay on his attack. I understand it's a heavy weapon, but I found it mildly frustrating as it'd feel like an enemy would telegraph then carry out an attack before my attack hitbox was activated. This might have been exacerbated by the fact the most common enemy; the hopping guy with a knife, was so much more nimble than the player was. Half the time I swing for him he'd hop way out of range. This would be neat enemy play if my character felt more responsive, but in his sluggish state it renders the enemy kind of annoying to me. If it helps, his movement speed in late game feels much better to me.

The bone-throwing enemies I have no issue with. Every time I got hit by those guys it felt like it was totally my fault, so those guys are fine. I like their hopping animations. The rest of the enemies also felt alright.

“Why Can’t Boneguy Turn?”

I was a little bit weirded out that I couldn't turn around in a game like this, but you clearly designed enemies with this in mind (they can't turn around either!), so what initially felt weird ended up feeling completely fair to me so props for that. 

Another thing that weirded me out was his lack of jump, which was replaced by his dashing motion. It took a little getting used to but again it seems like the game was designed with it in mind so it sorta meshed well overall. I am a fan of how you let us walk up steps, as this would have been really annoying if we had to spend stamina on a dodge just to climb a small ledge! I do think the dashing motion needs some animations to go with it to help sell it. I also feel you should try adding i-frames to it if you haven't already to see if it might help make combat feel better (if they're there already I apologise, I guess I just suck at timing dodges!)

Hitboxes

I feel like hit-boxes need a minor rework. This might just be solidly opinion, but I hate it when enemy attack boxes persist after their attack. This is particularly noteworthy on the knifeguy; I don't feel like his atack hitbox should persist beyond the initial stabbing motion. Again, this might just be opinion, but I reckon it's worth experimenting with to see how it feels. The hitbox on the player's melee attack seems about right on the horizontal but its vertical reach might be a little too generous! 

Overall / TL;DR

So yeah, it’s a game I feel needs a bit of experimentation to see if it could be made to feel more satisfying to play, but I kinda like it for just how wonderfully goofy it gets towards the end.