Penance: A story of Resistance

maybe i do something wrong, but my character jumping to low, i have problems to jump on the paltforms.

There is a wall jump feature @ladislavodstrcil
I'll push a new build with a better jump height. Sorry for the delay
Thanks for the feedback!

I have uploaded the second version now @ladislavodstrcil

sweet!

I like the graphics and the sound works pretty well.

The game play feels a bit slow for this type of game.

Great work!

@kitjenson Thanks for the feedback!
Yea I should work on that in the post jam version.
Slow meaning less action or in terms of movement? :thinking:

The graphics look really nice, but the movement is a little wonky and quite hard to use, the was some minor bugs to. But it really fits the theme. The game is nice in general :D!

@marcelo-zoletti Thanks for the feedback!
Yea, the movement isn't great. I didn't get much time for it since we were just a story writer and a programmer trying to make a game :p
I'll fix it up in the post jam version :muscle:

Jumping is much much better now

I've increased the jump height @ladislavodstrcil :smiley: Also I've added screenshots above for Mission 2 since it's bit difficult because of wall jump and ledge jump
Thanks for trying out the game :smiley_cat:

@blobross thanks! :)

Even if i didn't like the art the gameplay was fun,im imagining this game in a multiplayer co-op scenario can be great fun,overall good game.

@saadsirius Thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed the gameplay. Art is from opengameart :p
Maybe I can try adding a multiplayer coop for later post jam versions :beers:

controls didnt feel so responsing, but overall very cool artstyle and gameplay :D

Nice art style!

nice game and nice art, good job!

Cool game man!
The only thing is the movement. If you are using C# and Unity's Monobehaviour, I would suggest using transform.Translate() to get a nice sharp left and right (Make sure the value is low. I'm talking 0.5f or something but it also depends on the size of your characters). And for the jump, try rigidbody2D.velocity = new Vector2(rigidbody2D.velocity.x, jumpPower).
I hope you don't mind me commenting like this but I wanted to help with the responsiveness and I like the game. :)

@z4v0 Thanks!! I was working on the controls currently, gonna upload a post jam version soon. Hopefully its better.
@daimilodev Thanks! :)
Art is from open game art mostly.

@ducky Thanks for the feedback! No I don't mind, its actually a good discussion! I was currently working on the controls.
Since I used a rigidbody, I was thinking that tranform.Translate() wouldn't be apt, so I used rogodbody.AddForce() instead, and I've just added a better turning feature too.
For jumping as well I used add force but with a constant value and no Time.deltaTime. I will definitely check out the method you told

I have uploaded the first post jam version (v0.1a)

Interesting game! I finished the post jam version. I know that the music wasn't original but it was well chosen to add to the mood. The character felt a bit floaty and hard to control. A lot of platform games like yours take a lot of testing and tuning to make movement feel just right and I think doing that would go a long way in your project! There were some really cool ideas like pushing the box into the acid to jump on. A lot of the time there didn't seem to be much point in killing enemies so I ran past a lot of them. Maybe there needs to be some sort of incentive? Just a thought! Also think about how you might like to spend some time thinking about the UI. The text is quite big and felt like it took up a lot of space. I'd like to see this project continue post-jam. Good job!

@mhykah Thanks a lot for the feedback! Yea the character is a bit floaty, I had increased the jump height from the jam version since it was hard to pass mission 1 itself. And yeahh, it needs a lot of feedback and playing around to tweak the movement right. I'll make sure I do that

Yeaa, pushing the box into the acid was inspired from Limbo :heart_eyes:

An incentive to kill the enemies, ah I didnt think of that, maybe coins or a door opening etc, lets see

The UI is totally my bad :sweat_smile: I tend to oversize fonts and the game view in unity is small in my layout, Ill fix it up right away :see_no_evil:

Again, thanks a ton for the feedback and the recorded video :heart_eyes: :muscle:

The movement in the game was a little bit too 'physics-y', and dialogue boxes went too fast to read. Apart from that, the graphics and music fit together pretty well. I liked the walk cycle of the player.

@nanolotl Thanks for the feedback. Yea I was looking for a more physics type movement but it has to be adjusted a lot! I chose the music appropriately and edited the player walk cycle a bit, but the sounds and art aren't ours :p
I'll try the non physics type movement too soon

More fixes incoming soon!

The connection of the 3D2D camera is quite good. Many details can be seen in the level design ideas and accumulation, come on!

Hi @pomelouncia I wasnt able to understand you correctly. There's an orthographic/2D camera only

And yeah we had level design, but mostly put together in a hurry due to lack of time

This was neat, It was nice to see a gamejam with some kind of story for once. The end of mission 1 was pretty fun as well!

Thanks! @comocosmos
The story is by the second guy. We didn't get time to implement the whole of it. Its just a bit of the story. More incoming in the post jam version 💪

Also, in the semi cutscene after mission were you able to notice and read the conversations easily?

for the future I advise to keep all the sprites pixelsize the same, it looks funny when the world tile pixels are almost triple the size of the main character. Solid entry, good job!

Thanks for the feedback @tulipekoni !

We didnt have an artist in our team hence the badly chosen art :sweat_smile: We'll keep that in mind next time :muscle:

The world tiles (except the white box in mission 3) are all 16x16 pixels and the character is 64x64 :thinking:

I just have to say that pixel art is AMAZING! The only nitpick is that pixel art is sometimes a bit weird when one sprite has smaller pixels than others, so just try to make all the pixels the same size next time! Otherwise a very nice game!

quite good,... needs some polishing and tuning here and there. but ive only played the jam version, so maybe thats already better there.

Thanks @linluk :) yea there were quite a few updates in the post jam versions. Its mentioned in the devlogs.

Thanks for the feedback @mantaraytv-games :) We'll make sure we pay attention to that. Ill see if it can be fixed. We don't have artists in the team 😅

woah, where to start. First of all, it was nice to have a run and gun game for a change. Seems almost like a forgotten genre :D The musical choices were good and the used tilemap looked it's part. It's nice that you found the time to implement a story and even dialogs, but the main issue with the game is it's controls and main game play focus.

I'll try to bring everything up, that hindered me from having fun with yoour game:
- The controls and platforming physics were the biggest ofenders. It felt very stiff and unresponsive to control the main character. Seemed like there were a lot of issues with friction. It's really hard (at least for me) to implement a good platforming engine with the standard Unity2D-Physics. And this felt just like that.
- Shooting also felt very uninspired and there was little to no hit feedback. The enemeies were just shooting away and the player didn't really have possibilities to dodge or aim. So I ended up just standing there and taking the shots until the enemies turned to red blobs. See 'contra' or other retro run and gun games how to get player satisfaction from shooting pixel people :)
- It was clear from the start, that you took free resources for your tilemaps and sprite assets, and it shows, I'm a afraid. The map and the characters don't mix and match well. That way, you will always get that "cobbled together" look. Maybe you can find an asset set from the same artist next time? (or at least assets that fit in terms of pixel resoltion)

Those were my main issues. No need to nitpick other little things, that bugged me, since those up there are major and critical. I hope you can use some of the feedback from the community to improve upon your games in the future!
Cheers

@duke Thanks a lot for taking time for this feedback!

1. Yea i have to try it without the physics, since it's very unresponsive now

2. I forgot about shooting feedback :sweat_smile: Thanks for the example games, will definitely check them out! And one way to dodge the bullet was to jump, maybe I can try a shield mechanic too :thinking:

3. Yeaa we have to take care of that, music and art was from online since we were only a programmer and a storywriter

Will use the feedbacks for more imporvement in games, Thanks a lot again! :muscle:

Also, which version did you play?

@joamd Sure, no problem! I played the jam version. Didn't try out the post jam versions yet.
Yeah, jumping over the enemy laser might be ok to get away from them and avoid some damage, but since you can't shoot down or in an angle, the only way to kill them is to stand in their line of fire. That's what I meant by that. If you want to limit your shooting like that (it is a valid approach!) then you need to give the player means to avoid incoming damage. Either by additional dodging mechanics, a shield or other means of deflecting the shots. Maybe even tweaking the frequency of enemy fire. I personally can't stand games that deal unavoidable damage to the player. It's usually a sign of bad game design.

@duke Ah yea i agree, we'll fix that up in upcoming versions :muscle: if all direction is locked like right now, deflecting shots can be nice. Or slowing enemy firerate :thinking:

I'll also try how aiming with mouse looks like.

Thanks for the feedback! :open_hands:

This review is based on the jam version, so I'm not going to comment on the movement and other floaty control issues that you seem to have fixed already in the post jam version.

Firstly, I like pixel art so a platform shooty based on pixel art is right up my alley! I liked the run and gun aspect but because the character/gun itself doesn't seem to point towards the mouse position when shooting gives it an odd feel IMO. Other than that the text dialogs run way too fast for me to be able to read them (Who is Elliot?). Right now, I also feel there isn't much to do except run and jump around. I didn't bother with the first few enemies at all, so maybe you need to create situations where you're forced to fight them in terms of level design.

All in all, I realise the problems with trying to do so many thing in 3 days, so I hope you continue to work on it and look forward to more features and cool things being added to the game. Good luck!

Nice looking fun game.

@reallyqbert Thanks for the whole feedback! Glad that you liked it

The character should look towards the mouse position when shooting (left or right). Now thinking about it I might have missed that when idling, but when running and shooting it looks correctly.

I have increased the delay in changing text dialogues but we need more tweaks on that so that the players can understand the story better, maybe by making it a full cutscene where the player input is disabled.

Also, Eliott is the protagonist which we control, Robin is his brother who is injured after Mission 1 and we are "keeping him alive". This should be explain at the start of the game. Thanks, I'll note this down :see_no_evil:

We'll be working more on the game! Thanks :muscle:

Thanks @seabird :)

Jumping felt kinda "floaty", not "jumpy" :). But I have no other complaints.

I just jumped over few first enemies and was totally surprised by the crowd that greeted me later! Audio is very well chosen, I liked how it played with the graphic choices you made and with general theme.

Thanks @fabula-rasa !! :)
will work on jumping in post jam version

Can't play it unfortunately as I don't have windows, but will gladly do so when a web version is available (would be cool if you mentioned me then so I get notified). Judging from the video though, I like where this is going. Platformer with physics object and wall jumping is certainly a promising direction! I agree with @duke though that some hit feedback would be extremely beneficial.

Good job, keep it up!

Music was cool, graphics looked good, audio was good, but I'm not sure how it follows the theme "Keep It ALive" and the controls were a bit slippery. Might just be input lag, but if you increased speed a bit, and made the time between switch directions lower, that would work. The story seemed cool, particularly for the time limit. Well done, you should be proud.

Edit: Also increase the gravity a bit, because I felt that I was in the air for way too long.

Thanks @very-dark-lord :) will work on those and ill tag you when I get a webgl version ready

Thanks for the feedback @acidmanrpgz :)

The story isn't properly portrayed in the game yet. Basically we have our hero Eliott and his gang, ie, the resistance which fights against the people in power, headed by Euralink. In mission 1, Robin, Eliott's brother gets badly injured in an explosion, the rest of the missions is meant to help him and get him back safely. The only way to escape is through a jet which is at the enemy headquarters. We had a lot more planned but wasn't able to put it into the story in time. The post jam version will be updated from time to time to gradually include all the story.

The controls are still being revisited in the latest version, same with input direction. Might try out a fully non physics movement too. And yea should try out increasing gravity. He is definitely floaty :p

@very-dark-lord I have uploaded a web version with a few fixes. Its not the jam version, its the latest post jam version. Haven't added shooting feedback yet, was working on a bit of jumping and turning and overall movement

pretty nice, but anims need to be polished, controlls - same

Good Graphics. :) need to polished the controls though.

I was fun... And... it needs a lot of polishing in movement and specially in jumping...
Still it was fun to play...

First of all good job for finishing your first jam game! The graphics and the Audio were really used good :)

As many have said the controls need a lot of improvement. I suggest this tutorial:


Also there is a follow up video for animations.

Pretty standard platformer otherwise

@ausstein Thanks!! I remember seeing this video for 2d animation long back but havent seen the movement one. Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely go through the video

Nice. I think for the next time if you wanted to you could pull some juice from vlambeer style stuff - bigger bullets, shake, little bit more feedback to sell it. Good breakdown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U