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Forced Directions's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #303 | 3.730 | 3.730 |
| Overall | #537 | 3.604 | 3.604 |
| Presentation | #1004 | 3.568 | 3.568 |
| Originality | #1880 | 3.153 | 3.153 |
Ranked from 111 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The player has no control over the direction where he will shoot and the frequency of the shooting. A lot other stuff are all randomized (like enemy speed / points you get for an enemy etc) - so it's also a bit out of my control. Also added a (last minute) idea where enemies have a chance of dropping powerups. And when the player picks that up, something is randomized (enemy speed, enemy points, player shooting rate etc). And it's all visible in the PAUSE screen (on purpose - so no debugging)
Did your team create the art for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
We created all art during the game jam
Did your team create the audio for this game during the 48 hour time slot?
We used pre-existing audio
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Comments
Neat idea! I included it in my GMTK Game Jam compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
Perfect music for this surprisingly intense survival shooter. Love the little timer over his head letting you know when the change is coming and the slow ramp up in enemy spawn rates. Really well designed and implemented for such a simple concept. Well done.
Very fun game and great choice in music. The only criticism I have is the random points. It made the score feel pointless. The number of enemies killed or the time survived felt like more of an achievement. But still you made a great game so well done.
Thanks for your honest feedback.
And I agree. The points are now kinda meaningless. At first I had just the points being calculated based on the (random-ish) enemy movement speed, so faster enemies will earn you more points. That still feels like a fair balance. But in the end I decided the game needed more 'out of control' elements and I introduced more randomness, for instance sometimes (when picking up a pickup item / yellow dot) some random enemy's points will be randomized. It felt fun in theory... but didn't had time to test it out ... and in hindsight I should have left it out ^^
I love the visuals! Really clean, looks great. Dying in one hit felt kinda harsh, I wanted to keep playing :)
Glad you loved the visuals. And yeah, the one hit kill is a bit of a bummer. I though about implementing some health system ... and will do that when I continue working on the game for sure.
Very nice game. I liked sound effects. Unfurtunnaly it was really laggy for me...
Thanks. The game being laggy is indeed unfortunate. Did you play it in the browser or did you download the game?
i played in the browser
Mmm. Not sure what caused the lag. Maybe loading the music or something?
a very nice game! i had lot of fun & it's really pretty. great work!
Thanks for your feedback. Glad you liked it ^^
This game is really fun, the music really compliments the gameplay specially when there's a lot of enemies in the arena. The main criticisms I have for this game are the art and variety. It would have been cool to see enemy variety either functionally or visually, and it also would have been cool to have a more detailed arena/level. Out of that, the game is fun and it embraces the theme creatively.
Thanks for your feedback.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the game and music.
Different enemies and/or weapons where on the roadmap, but didn't had enough time to implement. But I'm planning to continue to work on this in the future, so will add more enemies and weapon variety for sure.
About level design, I dabbled with the idea to have some (random-ish) level parts ... so the player could hide behind it or anything ... but same issue occured: had not enough time to implement / create / work it out. Is also something I will explore in the future.
Honestly I came here from random and didn't think random direction would work, but the game was very good! Felt really nice to play and the random direction was actually a very interesting game mechanic. I had a lot of fun with it, nice job! Music slaps, where is that from?
It's nice to see the game surprised you. Appreciate your honest opinion.
Glad to hear you had fun playing, that's the most important part of a game imho.
The music is a song called DTB created by my cousin, RQ. You can find more of his work here: https://soundcloud.com/arqueue
The song was not written specific for this game ... but we will collaborate in the future. He's probably gonna compose some similar songs especially for the game.
It's OK. I really like the music but I would have preferred more enemy variety.
Thanks for your feedback. Enemy variety is something which I will add in a future version
Simple and fun game. Fits the theme. Would be great with more enemy types unless they came later in the game. Overall a good entry!
If you want, please check out my submission.
Thanks for your feedback. More enemy types are something I want to add in a future version for sure. Was on the roadmap for during the jam, but had other priorities to fix first :)
Glad you enjoyed my game.
And yes, will definitly check out your game!
Simple yet very well executed idea. Love the overall game feel :)
PS: I trying the jam games and tweet about them. I will tweet about this one as well! Check it out: https://twitter.com/TheAntonSem/status/1283837283339309058
Thanks for your feedback and for sharing it in your tweet. Appreciate it a lot!
One of the most important things imho is game feel ... if that's not right, the whole game feels "off" - so glad you enjoyed that in my game.
Clever game, and very frantic! It would be nice to have some HP so you don't get punished too much when the controls change and you die. Nice work though!
Thanks for your feedback. The HP is something I will add in a future version. Thought about it during the jam, but decided I needed to work on other stuff - stuff nobody notices ... so yeah, at least learned that from the jam ^
Haha no worries. It's still a super fun game, and it looks very polished, so I think you made the right choice given the time constraint. We'd love your feedback on our game as well, if you haven't already given it. SpaceBus
Quite addictive with how easy it is to restart :P The music and sfx worked really well together too. Sometimes it even seemed like the bullets were being shot in time with the music! Was that intentional? :o
Thanks for your feedback. I tried to make it as addictive as possible, especially with the easy restart. Even considered to restart automatically after a few restarts, with a small countdown... just to keep up the pace. Might do that in the future.
Yeah, I also noticed the shots sometimes perfectly synced with the beats of the music. It was a happy accident, but something I want to explore more in the future for sure. Loved how that made me feel.
Got a highscore of 18384, ingenious way of interpreting the theme and n addictive concept that kept me playing for way too long given my not great score. Would have loved to see more enemies or environmental objects and I look forward to seeing whether you develop the game further.
Thanks for your enthusiastic feedback. I'm certainly planning to work on this game more. All the lovely comments make it even more thrilling
Awesome game!
Feels like your speed compared to your enemies' speed is just right for running away from them. I enjoyed it. Good job!
Thanks for your appreciation!
The fun fact is that the max speed of the enemies is a bit randomized, but the max turned out to be perfect compared with the player-speed ... just a happy accident ^^
26k, 56 enemies, couldn't do any better :'( I love the flat design, the sound, the general gamefeel, it feels and plays really smooth. I had some frustrating moments where direction would stick to somewhere I didn't want it to for a looong time, and then to a better direction for like 5 seconds x)
That's a nice achievement!
Not sure what my highest kill-count or score is tbh. Never really wrote it down while developing.
And yes, the totally random direction can be frustrating if the direction will stay the same for several 'rounds'. Wasn't sure if I wanted to enforce it being different on every 'round' - but decided to make it fully random, just to stay more into the 'out of control' theme. But should make it more forgiving or more clear what changed (or did not).
Glad you enjoyed my game!
Really fun and great idea!
I think it would be cool to add at least a local Highscore-list. Due to the randomness the actual score is maybe not that well suited for this, but maybe you could compare the number of killed enemies or time survived?
Thanks for the kind words!
The actual score is indeed influenced by the random points of the enemies... but not sure if I will keep that in, in a next iteration. It was fun for the jam - but not really enough for the core gameplay.
And yes, I also would love to include a highscore-list ... at least local, but would be awesome to just have it globally ... who got the most enemies killed, stayed alive the longest (timewise) or who just made the most points.
So yeah, in a future iteration I will (hopefully) add this ^^
This game is simpler yet brilliant. Had way too much fun playing it! It reminds me somehow of the Zombie mode in CallOfDuty. You just run in circles and once enough enemies are in one spot and the random shooting fits you take them down all at once.
I really hope you develop this little game a bit further after the jam rating phase. Would love to play it a bit more!
Glad you had fun playing my game. I can totally see what you refer to with COD Zombies - I had the same experience ... and yes, also here in my own game ... just running away until at some point the stars would align and the enemies would be all perfectly align with the shooting direction... and "splatter!"
And thanks for your encouragement. Based on all the comments I will feel the drive to continue working on this game after the jam has ended. Have enough ideas and lots of parts to improve on
Woah this is super nice!! Amazing job, feels super polished and it's incredibly fun. It's really adictive, Great job!
Thanks for your enthusiasm! Glad you enjoyed my game. And yes, the addictive nature of my own game was a bit tricky sometimes while working on it ^^
The level of polish is just great. And the concept is nice and well executed. Lots of fun to play :-)
Thank you for appreciating the polish ... I wanted the game to feel 'done' enough, couldn't live with something halfway-finished.
And yes, it's still a jam game - so there are still a lot of balancing issues or stuff that doesn't work well enough ^^
And glad to hear you had fun playing. That's the most important thing.