LifeBox

I can't manage to run this game on Windows, you should put some instructions on your itch.io page

I see the issue, apparently I have to use wine and pyinstaller for cross-platform compilation. I can try to fix this, but it might take a bit.

Neat little entry! I had to download the source code and run it myself to get it to work.

The graphics and audio are a bit simple but work well. I think there's room for improvement for extra "game feel" bits to make the shooting and platforming a bit smoother (I'd highly recommend watching The Art of Screenshake.)

It's cool that there are chests and different weapon types to incentivize leaving the cube and exploring, but I felt like the payoff wasn't great after you already had a weapon.

If you'd like, I could help make a Windows build if Python 3.8.3 and Pygame 1.9.6 would work with your source. When I ran it locally there were no glaring problems and I have plenty of experience meddling with pyinstaller.

Oh, I have an old computer with Windows on it, so I downloaded the code and ran pyinstaller on it. The windows exe is being uploaded, but thanks for asking, and for the feedback. I'll be sure to look into The Art of Screenshake.

I can't seem to run this on my Linux. Running from the command line gives:

Hello from the pygame community. https://www.pygame.org/contribute.html
LifeBox.py:7: RuntimeWarning: use mixer: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by /tmp/_MEIiohUxa/./libglib-2.0.so.0)
(ImportError: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by /tmp/_MEIiohUxa/./libglib-2.0.so.0))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "LifeBox.pyw", line 7, in <module>
  File "site-packages/pygame/__init__.py", line 100, in __getattr__
NotImplementedError: mixer module not available (ImportError: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by /tmp/_MEIiohUxa/./libglib-2.0.so.0))
[16683] Failed to execute script LifeBox

I tried updating, but my version still seems to be 2.23.

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Feb 5 2019 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 -> libc-2.23.so*

I then tried running it via python (which required installing some dependencies), but that didn't work out either.

(At work we use AppImage to get around this kind of dependency hell on Linux.)

The game is nice, but needs a little bit of polishing to add a bit to the "game feel".
However, you did an amazing job on the sprites and the music! Besides, they complete each other very well!
I managed to get 641 as high score

I think the gameplay could use a little work, I didn't know how to damage enemies with the starting weapon and even when I got a gun it seemed like there were points where I was forced to take damage once the enemies started coming quickly. However I liked the graphics and music, and the fact you put a tutorial stage in a jam game was pretty neat!

Your game sure looks good ! Congrats on your pixel art :)
The concept is really nice and it's a fun experience.

It's a neat concept for the player character not to be directly harmed by touching enemies; that really changes up the combat strategy. The art is super cute, too. It did feel at some points like there simply wasn't enough time to take out all of the enemies at once, but Yaro's score is certainly evidence that it's possible to last much longer than I did.

It would be nice to have a sound to indicate when the LifeBox takes damage. I know a heart disappears, but there were a few times when an enemy got really close and I wasn't sure if I took it out in time. Since I didn't see how many hearts I had before the enemy disappeared, I'm not sure whether I defeated it or lost a heart.

Overall, though, I enjoyed it. Nice work, especially for a first game jam!

Great work for a first entry! Thanks for offering the source; I have Python and PyGame so it saved me 270 MB of slow download.

I love the cute graphics and animations. Controls are simple but responsive. The, ahem, connection to the theme is a bit far-fetched imo. Sound effects fit in with the style of the game, but the music is rather annoying. It could use some more juice, like particle effects, death animations and more sound effects (especially when your lifebox takes damage). It could also do with some deeper gameplay, but for a jam, that's not so bad.

Cute litte game, I enjoyed it and managed to do something like 350 points.

What I liked :

• The gameplay is like "Super Crate Box, but it's a Tower Defense", lot of potential!
• The gameplay is pretty dynamic, it feels nice moving aroung and shooting things
• Art is ok, the color palette is nice and fonts are too

What I think could be better :

• The gameplay is dynamic, but the game don't feel so! The Vlambeer video @plasmastarfish suggested sure is a way to enhance that =D
• The music felt nice the first 5seconds, and then it looped… I… just… can't…. oh, god, the music! I don't know what software you used, but I'm almost sure I used the same in my first gamejam, this melodic instrument is engraved deep in my memory!
• Could use some animation, walk cycle, idle and jumping are a good start!
• The idea to change weapons is good, but everytime I got the knife/fist, it felt sooooo bad! I think you should make melee hitbox at least as big as the characters. Don't hesitate to exaggerate the animation, don't stay realistic!

Anyway, much congratulation for your first jam, you made a real game!

So I switched to Windows and there it works!

The graphics have their own distinct personality, I like that.

There are some games that work without sound-effects. You don't lose that much when playing tetris without sound for example (a lot better with but still). Your game however, would benefit a lot from having sound effects, mostly because it makes you notice when things are happening. Did my knife do anything? Did that slime die just before it reached the box or did I get it? Sound effects generators like BFXR are very easy to use and you can have your sfx be done within 10 mins!

The idea of having your health be separated from the actual player avatar is good. If you decide to expand on this, it might be a good idea to make the lifebox moveable somehow, to give it an extra dimension.

This also goes for the chests. Since there is 0 predicatbility or control, it's best to just shop around until you've got a good weapon. Once you got that, there is no incentive to change, and thus you just stand in the middle and shoot slimes endlessly.

Well done on your first!

The artwork looks nice and the idea has potential. This is probably just a personal preference, but the jumps and combat felt a bit slow. The chest mechanic confused me a bit because it was unequiping my weapon. Since there didn't seem to be breaks between enemies, I found it best to just get the shotgun and sit by my box instead of using the chest mechanic. Also, I feel like adding 1 more tile to the raised ground on the left of the box would have helped a lot. The shape of the terrain made it difficult to defend. This isn't really a major issue, but the text in the tutorial was wrapping in a weird way. You could've set up a line break character instead of trying to wrap it automatically.

Good work.