Elemental Island

This is a weird one to grade. The art is great, loved the cutscene in the beginning! It feels though like it's a promise of a game in the future, but now there is no game yet, just a skeleton which later can get some meat grown on it. You can walk around, when you get close to an element it starts something similar to a pokemon battle, but after pressing attack once - they die. So the fight scene is a placeholder. So after walking around I realized that's all there is. There is no gameplay.

So it's either the case of poor communication to the player what they are supposed to do and I just missed all the gameplay. Or it's the case of poor planning and gameplay got pushed back so the game can be grand and big, but it's hard to deliver anything really big in such tight schedule. Anyway I hope y'all learned from this game jam a lot!

I'm too fast for the camera to keep up

@vidim888, yep, this is not a game yet. This was our first time participating in a jam. It was a great achievement for me as an artist to make so much art in a couple of days. We messed up a lot, but next time we will do better

Loved the art, but could not figure out what I had to do. Hope you had fun in making it!

This is a fun idea! Great job for your first time in a jam especially :)

@gamesplusjames, thanks! ❤️‍🔥

The drawing is great.
I do not understand the battle system since only click attack seams to do something. But do not finish a game in a so short time is not bad thing.
See you next time.

@morisol I see. There is nothing wrong with unfinished game. What you did is already very impressive for the first participation, great job! I think what I would suggest is write in your description that it's unfinished. You have a description for a full game and a prototype which doesn't deliver any of that. It is misleading.

I launch your game expecting to see some riddles and puzzles so I'm searching for them and I find none. I try to go to another island and there is WIP message. So I'm incredibly confused and feel like I either missed everything or your description is not what your game really is. And I can see from other commenters that many of them are confused as well.

Write that the fight is unfinished and just clicking attack will finish it. Write that you were not able to add puzzles and riddles. Write that there is one island right now. People on game jams do read descriptions (mostly).

Be very clear about what your project is for the game jam and then people will come into your project with right expectations and will also give you feedback which is a lot more useful to you. People right now write that they don't understand battle system because they are looking for a battle system which is not there.

It's absolutely a good idea to write what was the plan (riddles, puzzles, etc.) and what you wish you would implement, just don't state it like it's actually implemented. Hope to see you again in future game jams!

@vidim888, corrected. Thanks for the advice!

There really isn't much to add other than the advice @vidim888 game already. I like the artstyle but sadly there isn't much substance other than the assets. Still great work on the art design of the game.

Not bad for a first jam, but it's still hard to call it a game. Walking and poking the attack button next to an item...
The art is very cool, considering that it was made by one artist. I was also amused by the bone animation of the main character. A lot of nice visual little things, but emphasizing on them, you did not have time to make the game itself, which is more important, imho

@thesecondleft, not really, I wasn't alone on the team. We also had the narrative writer and developer. We met immediately at an offline jam event and assembled a team of newcomers

Visually the game is great, though you should sort objects by Y coord, so they overlap each other correctly.

Speaking of level design, consider getting rid of those colliders on stones, it hampers the avatar movement. The collider on the avatar should cover only its legs.

The attack / defend buttons should be more accessible, not in some corner.

And you should really add more activities, the game lacks gameplay.

@morisol I know. I was there as well)
I was referring to the art part of the project. As far as I know it was done by you
The rest of the team also I can praise, but less than you, the art here is more exciting, imho
P.S. Happy Wednesday

@thesecondleft RIBBIT! RIBBIT!

Agree with TheSecondLeft, it is good considering the first jam, but the game is just like its name, a prototype. Still, the art is attracting tho.

I like the art and the idea but I would have liked it to have a web version. Anyway it's a good game. Good job!