I said in an earlier post that I would nominate my favorite games for "overall, fun, art, sound and innovation". Since there was not a lot of submissions (4 entries including mine), I decided that I would review each game separately instead. I will not review my own submission, because I will later make a retrospective post about it.
You can learn more about SteemitJam here.
For this first #steemitjam, the theme was "Protect it"
Block Attack by @poet
Block Attack is a puzzle similar to 2048 where you must defend a bigger square from the invasive red squares.
The health of the central block functions quite similarly to an ordinary 2048 block. The invasive blocks will reduce any block's health by 1. This challenges the player to match cells that are not necessarily a power of 2, sometimes taking a hit by an invasive block can be an optimal move. If the central block has 4 health and you send it a 4 block, it will now have 8 health. If you send it a 3, it will not go in, but it differentiates from other blocks because if you send it a 5, the new health will be 5.
I like the approach that @poet took on the "Protect it" theme. I was not expecting to see a puzzle game and I'm glad I did see one. The game seems like a 2048 clone at first, but it plays very differently. Due to the enemies that can remove the powers of 2, you must think about ways to also get your 3s and 7s to match together. Most of my plays ended in the 60-ish turns. The art is very good, even though it is very simple. It sets the mood for thinking as the colors are relaxing and blend well together.
Other than the design decisions that @poet is already aware of, I think 2 things can be worked on for the next jam. To begin, it took me a few minutes to totally understand the game. At first, I could not move. I tried swiping, clicking and every mouse input I could think of, but you actually control the board with the arrow keys. I also did not immediately understand that the behavior of the middle block was actually similar to the other blocks (That you had to give him an equivalent block or higher for it to eat). Other than making instructions slightly more obvious, adding sounds is another possible improvement.
Some bugs I have found :
- If you have 3 blocks with the same number and create a bigger block, one will disappear (3 "2" blocks will result in a 4).
- If the central block only has 1 health left and you feed it with a 1 block but in the same turn a -1 hits your base, you lose.
If you want to play Block Attack, play it here in your browser.
Samoan Steve by @roundbeargames aka HitmanChoi
In @roundbeargame's submission, you are a rugby player that must defend a ball on a small planet and avoid the contact with other humans.
The game starts with a short animation of the player catching the ball like in a rugby kickoff. You then proceed to move forward on a small planet avoiding contact with other players. You steer the player with the arrow keys, while the game becomes progressively harder as more and more enemies spawn. The concept of being on a small planet is quite interesting, because when I think about it, the game would probably be less fun on a plane that allows you to see enemies from afar.
HitmanChoi took a twisted approach to the game jam by trying to create a modular system to have other game jams easier. This is a decent idea, but I do think that during the game jam was not a good time to create it. This caused his submission to lack basic features such as non-default art and a progress-checking mechanism such as score when I know HitmanChoi can do something much more impressive in 48 hours or less. I hope that this modular system will pay off and save him a lot of time in the next game jams! :)
Some bugs I have found :
- Not sure if that's a Unity bug or setting, but if you're playing in windowed mode and click out of the screen you can easily pause the game (At least on Linux). This makes the game a lot easier.
- The enemies can spawn on each other.
If you want to play Samoan Steve, play it here.
Protect Drahkahn by @brian-t-penguin
You are a survivor from a mysterious incident and you must find other survivors in the harsh conditions that this low gravity planet offers you. You are equipped with a very powerful firearm and a jetpack.
I don't think I actually understood how to play the game. Ignoring the fact that the game ran <15 FPS, because it was made with Unreal Engine and my computer cannot handle that, I mostly ran around having fun with the gun and low gravity. Blasting the "orbs?" away is quite satisfying. Also note that I played V2, which I have no idea what differentiates it from V1.
The jetpack that has limited, but refueling resources is also a nice touch. It's pretty fun to rocket up and try to aim the "orbs?" to push them around. I can only count 2 sounds, but I think they are very well done and add to the value of the game by a lot. The gunshot sound really gives the effect that the player possesses a very powerful firearm.
However, I don't really understand the rest of the game. There's a lot of stuff going in the HUD. Other than jetpack fuel, I did not understand any of them. There's a survivor count, so I assume you must "protect" the survivors (I think this is where the game fits with the "Protect it" theme), but from what? While playing, a resource count goes down and it even can go below 0, but I did not notice any changes in the game when the resources are negative. From @brian-t-penguin's post, I assume that the game was not finished which would explain my current confusion.
If you want to play Protect Drahkahn, play it here.
Conclusion
I want to thank every participant for having joined me in the first edition of SteemitJam, even @ahmadmanga that did not submit his game. This post was aimed to highlight where every submission shines and where it needs work, hopefully no criticism was perceived as harsh or harmful.
I enjoyed my experience in the first edition of SteemitJam which added another game to my name. I think I managed to motivate people to start something new which I really think is nice. I asked in the comments "what do you think if I would rehost SteemitJam monthly?" and I got some very positive feedback.