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Bowfishing Blitz's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #117 | 3.867 | 3.867 |
| Presentation | #132 | 4.150 | 4.150 |
| Gameplay | #141 | 3.550 | 3.550 |
| Originality | #157 | 3.900 | 3.900 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What do you like about your game?
This is my first original game. It is possibly also the first game to feature physically-accurate planar refraction (which, contrary to popular belief, does not require raytracing).
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really cool idea, and well executed in a nostalgic mini-game format. I was surprised by how extreme the effect of refraction was at some angles, but I got the hang of it eventually. I feel like this game gave me some real world knowledge, though I’m not sure if it’ll ever be useful. anyway, great little game with a novel core mechanic!
pretty cool, nice job
Thanks. If you’re curious how I made the refraction effect efficient, I added an article explaining it to the game’s Github repo.
https://github.com/george-steel/bowfishing-blitz/blob/main/README.md
It looks pretty nice, the sound of the braking ceramic is pretty satisfying and I enjoyed just throwing a lot of dards all the time to try to him something xD
The lock mouse thing didn't work for me, idk if could be my fault somehow since is the second game I had this kind of issue, while moving the camera sometimes my cursor went to my second screen, pausing the game when I clicked, also I move the game window accidentally some times by having the cursor outside of the game, I'm not sure why that may be. Anyway, it was fun to play and satisfying to break the objects :)
What kind of system are you using, and were you running anything else simultaneously? A few other people have had mouse lock issues, but I haven’t been able to reproduce the problem on my end.
I'm using Windows 11, I'm just running simultaneously the Vivaldi browser, Discord, and WhatsApp.
I gave the game another try to catch a little bit more of "when that happens". This second time the cursor didn't go to my second screen as before for some reason, but I saw that the cursor still going out of the game when my cursor was around the bottom of the screen over the taskbar.
I had the taskbar option enable "Automatically hide the taskbar" on Settings > Personalization> Taskbar > Taskbar Behaviors on Windows 11, which makes the taskbar appear when the mouse is hovering at the bottom of the screen. I disabled this option and the mouse lock worked perfectly this time. I think the mouse was behaving more weirdly on my first play-through though, I hope this can help you figure out what's happening
btw, would you mind playing my game too? I would appreciate it :)
This is like THE premiere modern arcade game, right? stick a quarter - shoot 109 things; try again, improve. Do it for the high score table. It is kind of brilliant honestly that the concept is so simple but you use the refraction to add this tricky twist to it.
The pot choice is really a great design choice, makes your objectives clear and if you aren't hitting them its explicitly a skill issue, Breaking them feels so great; amazing feedback sonically and visually.
I am pretty sure the physics implementation has some fun and interesting math that I'd rather not look at lol, but it seems extremely accurate to life - so great job with that too.
Hard to find fault with this one, even though its a conceptually simple arcade game. Congrats on the release!
Thanks for reviewing. As this is my first game, I decided to stick with a simple minigame concept and improve it as much as I could within the time of the jam. Making a pot model that could shatter properly was quite an interesting exercise. Between the modeling and working out the math for the water and the destruction effects, I went through quite a bit of graph paper during the development process.
I also intended this game to be a tech demo for the refraction effect. If you’re curious, I posted an article about how it works both here (as a devlog post) and in the Github repo. There is indeed some fun and interesting math involved.
simple but fun ! to make it more spicy it would’ve been great to have some moving targets (like fished or smaller pots moved by currents)
I do want to add fish in a post-jam version, but didn’t have time before the deadline.
wow, this is so cool!!! loved how you approached this jam, you nailed the refraction concept so well, this was super engaging both visually and interactively! the water refraction plays into the game loop so well and adds this really unique challenge with aiming for the underwater pots! could see the zelda minigame inspiration here, feels like this could be in something from OoT, Majora's Mask, or Twilight Princess specifically, really nails the essence of the fun side-antics you get to in those games! even without the planar refraction, the environment also just looks really good visually, love the design of the pots!
this was amazing to play through, what a cool submission! great work!
I was definitely inspired by the rail-shooting minigames in Twilight Princess when making this. I’m glad you appreciate the pot design, it was my first time making a model with custom textures.
The Github page for my game now has an explanation on how the refraction effect works.
https://github.com/george-steel/bowfishing-blitz
Awesome game! I really liked how the cool visuals of the water planar refraction played into the theme and the gameplay, giving a very fun twist on the shooter on rails genre!
The gameplay felt pretty satisfying, but I would have definitely added more depth to the scoring system. Maybe different sizes of pots with a combo system when you don’t miss?
Anyway, goes to show that the only improvement you can make is adding more mechanics! Well done on submitting!
Got 114 👌
That was pretty fun)
Great idea and well nice presentation - Good job!
Enjoyed playing that - the objective was simple, the graphics were beautiful and a very fitting sound track. The idea of having to deal with the water refraction is fantastic...
Felt like it could've done with a few more gameplay elements, such as moving targets, obstacles in the way etc.. but other than that, I really enjoyed it, nice job!
I’m glad you liked it. I originally wanted to add fish as moving targets (as well as the static pots) and a boat model for the camera would ride on (that you can’t shoot through), but didn’t up implementing them due to time constraints. Perhaps I’ll add them in a post-jam version.
Couldn't rate it lower than 5/5. Translating kinetic movement into light physics results in a very original mechanic. Besides, not cluttering it with thousands of shaders gives it a 2000s vibe that I personally love (nostalgia wins).
Regarding gameplay, the game goes straight to the point, with automated move, so the player just has to care about aiming; pure darts game with a twits. It's arcade feel is amusing enough to empty your mind for a while. This is the kind of game I would like Windows or GNU/Linux distros to have preinstalled, so every now in a while you can get away from tasks han have some little, uncompromised fun.
The cowboy music makes it even funnier.
I like how it looks, very pretty!
This is great! Love the Zelda-inspired theming, it's visually impressive, and the gameplay works super well. It's real satisfying figuring out how to hit pots reliably
There are no fish. But I really like the planar abberation and the fun vase designs. Also chasing the light spot in the water was fun
I originally planned to add fish as well as static targets, but didn’t have time to add them. I decided it was better to stick with the classic pot-smashing action and make sure it was polished. Maybe I’ll add fish in a post-jam version.
I love how unique this idea is, and the zelda reference, it was fun! Btw on Windows11 my mouse wasn't locked to the game window so it caused issues when I aimed down because the mouse would come out of the game and I'd accidentally click on my taskbar.
I’ll have to look into that. Mouse lock worked on Win10 and I don’t have a Win11 machine to test it. I wonder what could be causing the different behaviour.
Yeah that's totally fair, it's a game jam after all so it's completely unrealistic to be able to test it on a bunch of machines and os versions. Just thought you'd want to be aware in case you continue to work on the game. Anyway, great job again!
Thanks for playing. I mentioned your problem in the rust gamedev discord so hopefully some more familiar with winit can shed some light on the situation.
hey, i remember you from the discord voice chat.
nice game, i like the music
Really cool to see this come together over the jam! Fun little game!
Thanks, it was fun having our discussions while coding. I just uploaded my final update before the deadline, adding lots of different colours of pots and a custom texture.