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A jam submission

BLOOD in the SKY: DEAD OR ALIVEView game page

A story-driven mech battler inspired by Battleship.
Submitted by SweetHeart Squad (@sweetheartsquad), Sean (@seansleblanc), Michael (@HetmanMichael), IAN MARTIN (@IANMART1N) — 1 hour, 30 minutes before the deadline
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BLOOD in the SKY: DEAD OR ALIVE's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#54.1674.167
Originality#74.3334.333
Fun Factor#93.9173.917
Visuals#144.0834.083
Audio#163.5833.583

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Is your game a video game or a physical game?
video game

Was your game made solo or in a team?
team - Sean: Programming, Michael: Artwork, IAN: Writing & character portraits

Did you use any third party assets, if yes what assets did you use?
"Rising Tide (faster)" - Kevin MacLeod

Did you choose from one (or more) of the optional secondary themes?
all of them!

Does your game contain 18+ content (Nudity, Gore, Language)?
no 18+ content

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

This is a super cool game, i love turn based combat games and i think the build your own mech theme, is one of the most fun things about mechs.

The biggest problem is, that for a game with this complexity you need to have a tutorial. You need to ease the player into all the things that are possible, because it’s way to overwhelming otherwise. At the start i get presented with every single piece that i can choose, and at that point i’m completely lost what to do. Then i’m getting even more confused because certain parts don’t even fit my mech. So i ended up loosing the first 4 rounds just because i had no idea how to build, or even how combat works.

And combat is just another thing where the complexity gets a hold of you. Once you get it, it’s very simple, but until that point i have no clue what’s happening, what all the icons mean, etc etc.

And then i can even modify the shape of my mech, which is very cool, but i also didn’t get in the beginning at all. And the big problem is, to do this effectively, i need to know what parts exist and how they would fit on it. There needs to be a better way of teaching the player how each of these systems work.

So i only fully got it, before the last fight, which was fun, and then the game was already over, so that’s kind of sad, when you miss out of most of the fun.

The combat can also feel quite a bit tidious. For one, there is the overview dialogue, which i didn’t have any use for, which just is completely in the way and a annoying dialogue to click away. I feel like this could have been easily just put in the background window, without forcing me to see it. Especially, because when i scan something and discover something, then i want to look what it is via mouse hover, but the dialogue prevents this, which is obstructing gameplay quite a bit.

Then there are the options, where you need to constantly click and move the mouse, which is also quite annoying. I wish there was just a key i could press for each category, so lets say 1 for shoot, 2 for scan, 3 for shield, enter for confirm, so that i don’t need to do so much tidious mouse actions.

Then there is the shield, which can only be enabled fully or not at all, where each other action is a 1 energy consuming thing in comparison, i dunno why this was done for it as well?

So i absolutely love this concept, there is so much depths in it, but there is alot of friction in the core gameplay loop (fighting) that make it way less enjoyable.