Draki's Journey

This was an amazing game made by the bestest of peoples

Cute art style with an interesting idea(use shadow and light to limit the space player can go). But I am sometimes confused with tips asking me to press button E.

great art and idea. Cool story elements. gameplay is not that fun but you can improve it. Solid entry. congrats.

oh this is such a fun game! The look is very polished, I love all the little objects. The movement is *really* smooth, this is super nice to play! I did think for the first two levels that this was a bit easy, especially as your health bar is so lage I would just let little Draki take the hit (poor them). However once the final level comes around the difficulty does rise by quite a lot and it's even a little bit stressful!

I really liked it, great job!!

BUG-FIXING

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your feedback already! We have now bug-fixed our game, and the confusing things mentioned in these comments that were due gameplay bugs have been fixed :) We will also be rating back now that we have the time.

Spooky regards,

Coffin Club

This was really cute! I wasn't a fan of how I couldn't move while there were speech bubbles, and the text was a little small, but I liked the idea of the backwards themed stealth elements and I found some of the dialogue fairly charming.

I can't imagine how you guys and put such a complete work in sucn a limited time (which is space in some way lol), the music, audio and gameplay are working great for this entry, the pixel-and-handpaint art style (the bookshelf and the character) is a little off but overall it feels great to play. (I mean, the animation is fantastic its just a result of mixed art style). All in all good job !

Very cute little game! Love the art, the audio and the mood! Great job !

Interesting implementation! I loved hiding from the light! Only a very small font in the dialogues and clouds.

Really cute game. Also enjoyed the sound design ^^
It would be cool to be able to skip the speech bubbles, or at least increase their speed.
But overall a nice entry

this was fun!!! I had trouble with space bar not always working like it should to turn into bat. Fantastic game :D

This was so good, I love Draki so much now and I hope I can see them in other games! The art was adorable, the music was excellent, and I loved the little bits of backstory.

My only complaints are that a _couple_ times, Draki's dialogue was the same as the item description, and the game was a _little_ bit easy. Tanking through damage was quite easy to do with the dash. Still, really excellent work!

Cute game, nice art style, sounds and music fit the style very well. It's also a relatively big game for three days work, and still feels polished on many aspects.

There are some minor edges that hurt the fun a bit:
- I'm a bit of a slow reader, so the monologs were too fast for me to read. Not auto-forward would have helped me, especially since dialog skipping is already implemented.
- Dialog skipping is not implemented for pick-up dialogs, which was a bit annoying in the last level, as I had to retry it quite a few times (and standing still mid-action for so long also felt awkward).
- The hitbox of the vampire is a bit odd? The top edge is too high for the perspective. It also made squeezing through these barriers harder then it should be.
- I was often taking damaging without realizing why. Maybe it was because of the hitbox.

Most can be fixed easily. Other than that, I might have preferred more complex mazes and less moving objects. So the gameplay gets more relaxed, to better fit the atmosphere (music also sounds stealthy and not pushed). But this may be totally subjective.

Very cute art style and characters! I could not complete the second level, it would not allow me to return the pillow to the coffin even though I navigated back to it successfully (barely alive despite trying to place the bookshelf strategically).

It's a big game for a short jam, so great job! I would be more inclined to continue playing after multiple deaths if I could quickly respawn without the long exposition each time.

🦇ANSWERS & BUG-BOARD🦇

Hi everyone! Thanks for the praise and all the super valid comments.
We pulled some very long hours to get this in, across multiple time-zones, so it means a lot to us all!

ANSWERS
- Space to Skip text (will add that to the itch page)
- Collect *all* Novelty Items per Level to unlock 'Press E' by your coffin (number of Items increase per Level)
- Not moving during speech bubbles was our workaround to avoid dialogue overlapping with Novelty Item text
- Mixed art style for free assets was not intentional but due to lack of time, indeed!

UPDATED BUGS-BOARD
- Fixing dialogue, text, size, typos, auto-skip, speed for accessibility
- Balance pass needed for playability
- Fixing player character hitbox for playability
- Minor bug fixes

Thanks for playing Draki's Journey and helping us improve our game! We will bug-fix what we are allowed to fix, as soon as we have time.

Spooky regards,

Coffin Club⚰️

Really cute game :heart: The music and sound design are fantastic !

nice game. and cute graphics! well done =D

Awesome entry! Great mechanics and nice art and mood! Great job!

Very cute! Usually I have a huge pet peeve about mixing pixel art resolutions but in this case it was kind of fun to see everything come together. Ill say though a bit frustrating that you were frozen while picking up items but the garlic cannon still shoot at you hehe.

This game has a lot of cool individual pieces to it, the art, the music, the writing, etc. It sadly doesn't gel very well together. I mean even the art style is in conflict with itself with the random pixel art. the writing is great and all, but sadly it isn't incorporated into the game play. So it ends up being strictly flavor text.

I love how polished this feels. It just feels like the demo of something complete. The audio is spot on, the animations are just right, the light effects are exciting and I also felt a ton of sympathy for the vampire. Even with all the qualities, the text itself was for me a true stand out, something that many games forget, but in your case it just added some gravitas for your adorable Bloodsucker.

A very cool game, especially for a 72-hour development

The game is brilliant, so well made, polished to the smallest details.

Very cute art style, well written, intersting narrative and good sound.

Really enjoyed the game and story.

I guess the hitbox is a bit does not match.

Wow this was great! Loved the puzzles and feel like it was very polished.

🦇ANSWERS & BUG-BOARD🦇

Hi again everyone, thanks you for your continued feedback, praise, and honest commentary :D

[ANSWERS]

- ART: All the art is ours except most Level Design assets - some of that art is mismatched because we were very short on time! However, our Level Designer re-coloured them all to fit the mood, and the core assets are in-house, as well as the cover art, animations, gameplay trailer, etc!

- NARRATIVE: Have to agree to disagree on the writing being 'strictly flavour text' (but hey I'm biased):
1) the writing serves as a tutorial: about moving bookshelves, dashing, pressing buttons, warning about the cannon, light boards, etc. This I consider non-flavour text in its primary purpose, even if written in a flavourful way.
2) It also gives dialogue cues to better understand the gameplay, We even tried removing them, and it actually made gameplay confusing.
3) Part of the 'gameplay experience' is feeling like you are exploring Draki's life, so the flavourful feeling is an intended feature, and that's the experience we are aiming for (hence 'Journey'). :D

[BUG-BOARD]

- Garlic cannon shooting on paused dialogue is on our bug-board!
- Hit box specifications vs dash is on our bug-board!

Thank you so much for all the comments, and for helping us identify more bugs.

Spooky regards,

Coffin Club⚰️

Very solid entry and very polished overall. I liked how you had a lot of audio in the game, it brought so much to it.

The art is super cute, it's a shame we can't vote for it for the graphics category. The light/collision box is pretty funky, and I found the dialogue & item text quite difficult to read since it was too small (Button/Interaction text was fine). The tileset for the walls is a bit inconsistent/incomplete (some walls were just empty). Great job though, it's a very polished game!

Neat & polished game. It's rare to see pixel-art mixed with other styles and even more rare to see it fit together - excellent job with it! Aesthetics are rather good and the game was quite fun - humor it has~

Lovely work on it!

I like this idea! ^^ And definitely a unique use of the theme. I was able to permanently mess up a couple of times so more idiot proofing for idiots like me would be nice but it was fun all the same

I really liked the art and sounds in the game! Everything is simply BEAUTIFUL! I think the letters in the dialogue could be bigger, as at times I had trouble understanding them, but the game is very good! Congratulations!

Adoring your vampire character! The particles are masterfully executed. Adding some particles to the dash could take it to the next level of enjoyment.

interesting game and its concept

nice and cute game.. i fell in love with vampire

what I had a little problem with was the graphics where the main character looks different from the background and different from the objects and different from the furniture and everything was different and everything had different sizes
, you should unify it and draw pixelart at least all in one scale. (perhaps 32x32) - then there won't be huge chairs and tiny statues

drawn coffin and collectable objects drawn by hand then have a special effect. I don't know if it's a lack of experience with pixel art or an artistic intention. What's worse is that the graphics look great individually - once it's mixed together, it's a weird mash.

I enjoyed the game though, it's a shame there aren't more levels

Only problems were that the text froze the player and I think the dash ability was too OP when trying to dodge the lights. Otherwise nice game

i accidentally made this comment that im writing why cant i remove it???

Some quick replies to above:

- Thanks for the comments about Draki! The mixed art style was not intentional but there was, at least in our case, literally no time to make all of that by hand, let alone more levels, with everything else we did. The level design assets are not ours, hence the mixed style and not participating in the 'Graphics' category: what was hand-created is unified however:) Draki, his coffin, the collectibles, etc. If we had more than 72 hours and got funding, then unifying the art style would be at the top of the list

I really like how Dracula is drawn!

Nothing much to say, it's an awesome game. Loved pretty much everything about it. Graphics are cute, music is awesome and sets the mood, and the game is very well balanced and feels great.
Story is engaging and fun.
Very nice entry. GG

So cute and fun! The only thing I would say is that it would be nice to have the camera follow the character a little faster because dashing fast means you cant really see, and using a button to continue the text instead of a timer would be a lot nicer as I missed a few of the boxes as they went away too fast. I love the idea and the spooky but cute mood, just in time for spooky season, great job!

I have some usability issues: The texts are very excessive. A level takes about 20 seconds but the text takes at least as long without me being able to move. I think there would be no harm not stopping the game after item collection. Super cute art and sound design and the light changes the level enough that it is very fun to navigate back! Well done!

Such adorable little game! Now I want a Sir Battington plushie :smile:

I had a couple of bugs/issues here and there. Got stuck on certain walls for some reason, died a couple of times while I was trying to dash escaping the light. I was also hit by garlic while the game was in text mode. But I was stuck, couldn't move.

It is ok to read and wait for the text once but it sucks (!) to wait every time. Especially when you want a quick restart and eager to play as soon as possible. Making it skippable by click or escape would fix it easily. (or unlock the movement, so player can keep playing)

Unique idea, cute art, great music and SFX, well done!

P.S. just saw your posts about fixing/aswering to some of those issues. Good job!

🦇ANSWERS & BUG-BOARD🦇

[ANSWERS]

Heaps of thank yous to those who have played our game so far and enjoyed it, we are really touched! Thank you for the stream of compliments and honest opinions that have helped make our game better.
- Stopping gameplay on pop-ups was our workaround to not have different pop-ups override each other. Perhaps it can be improved in the future, but for now it was a necessary implementation.
-Amount of text in this game is a gameplay feature, but it should of course still be fun. It might be a personal preference, but we'll certainly keep it in mind!

[BUG-BOARD]
- Space to skip is functional.
- Dash movement improved.
- Garlic hits during pop-up pauses should not cause damage.

[OOS - OUT-OF-SCOPE]
- Improved Camera Movement was on the list, but lack of time made it out-of-scope.
- Space to continue for Novelty Item pop-ups is an idea that could be added in the future.
- IRL Sir Battington plushie sadly also out of scope :( heh :]

Thanks again!

Spooky Regards,

Coffin Club ⚰️

A pleasant short game with enjoyable controls. The visual style is beautiful, and the mechanic of avoiding sunlight is interesting.

Pretty cute game. I was wondering why you opted out of graphics ratings, however? They are super cute! Some issues I encountered are:

- Bit of lag when moving around - like, I kept sliding even though I wasn't pressing any buttons,
- No way to skip text, took a little long between reading and getting playing again (its okay, the text was funny!)

Thats about it. Nice!

Hi ArtofLuba, we opted out because the rules said the graphics needed to be 100% ours, and some of the level design assets were not ours. It's a shame because our artist / programmer is amazing and made all the core pieces, and the two of us who worked in UI also really applied ourselves! :)

Thanks a lot!