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Thermal Runaway's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #38 | 3.133 | 3.133 |
| Sound | #43 | 3.267 | 3.267 |
| Art | #52 | 3.533 | 3.533 |
| Overall | #56 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
| Polish | #62 | 2.867 | 2.867 |
| Atmosphere | #70 | 3.133 | 3.133 |
| Theme | #76 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Cool game! The movement felt super smooth. The little monster is super cute
And seems I’m one of the few people who found it hard to play. Maybe I just didn’t have the patience to wait for the guards to go by.
the pattern that seems to be emerging is that those who just speedrun it and just dart past the guards find it too easy, and those that play it stealthily find it way too hard hahaha
thank you so much for the review c:
Running around with the little guy was fun. Collecting all the power sources within the time limit turned into a bit of a speedrun. Trying to complete the objective before the time runs out. And that is always very fun. Using the hiding spots to hide away from the guards meanwhile felt like you had to stop all your speed, to wait the guards out. It'd be cool if there was some way to avoid the guards, without feeling like the action has to stop temporarily; some way for it to synergise with the speedrun feeling
But very solid entry overall
And the creature design is adobrale
thanks! our intention was to build a stealth game, but i also found the movement fun on its own, thanks so much for your feedback!!! c:
The movement of the little creature felt insanely good - animation, speed, sound and controls all fit together really well and felt super polished. I liked how well the environment was designed as well, on my first run it was very confusing and kinda hard to remember the layout, and I aalso couldnt find the last node because I didnt notice there is a room in the centre of the spaceship (I was doing left-wall strats lol). But after a couple of runs I was more confident moving around and finding what I needed. Overall it was really fun just running and jumping around with the little fella, I really can't stress that enough. I was almost sad that the game is so short.
My only concern are the enemies, most of the time I didn't really pay attention to them and sprinted past, so I also didn't really use the hiding places (also because there isn't really time for that). I also had a lot of situations where the guards SHOULD have caught me, but just ran past me (e.g. when I was standing still to eat a node and they ran at me). Not sure if only a specific part needs to touch the creature to trigger, or if the colliders weren't working properly for some reason? It would have made it a lot more difficult if the enemy hitbox was bigger. But honestly I think for a week-long jam this game feels insanely polished and shows the main aspects and mechanics pretty well, and it was fun to play!
enemy ai just came down to polish time, they should stop when catching you, we just didn't manage to put it in, thank you so much for the feedback!!! c:
Was really impressed with the game overall!
I especially liked how the eyes moved around of the player character and was quite impressed with your credits and hand drawn intro and ending splash art!
I did find the enemy ai a little confusing. It was still after me when I tried to use the shadows or boxes so ended up just trying to dodge them. I also found they would often stand in doorways to rooms so I couldn't really avoid them when that was the case. Would've preferred more set routes that they then track onto you from.
Also would've loved to have the footsteps be a better indication of where the enemy is. I think I could hear them through walls which was fun but I'd have loved that audio cue.
I found the bounding boxes hard to use for the energy sources. I often found I could only click onto one side of the energy source and if that was intentional it was unclear which.
But that would only be feedback for making this a full fledged game! Everything I said was very nitpick feedback! Super impressive result!
thank you c: we agree there's some areas to clean up, your feedback is super helpful for that!!! c:
nice game! i liked the art style. it does not look super expensive or anything, but it feels clean and carefully made
my favorite part visually was probably the intro scene art. it has a nice hand-drawn atmosphere and reminded me a bit of vintage animation, maybe even some old Soviet animated films in terms of mood. also the characters in helmets look really cool
gameplay-wise, the game introduces the basic loop pretty smoothly. the mechanics are simple: hide from enemies and disable energy sources, but it works pretty well
one thing i missed a bit was clearer goal communication. as far as i noticed, the final objective is shown only once for a short time, and then it is easy to forget what exactly you are trying to do. maybe the goal could stay somewhere on screen, or be shown as a small objective list or quest text
i also wasn’t fully sure at first that disabling the big energy nodes gives you more time. you can figure it out while playing, because the loop is simple enough, but i think this could be communicated a bit more clearly
i really liked the spider movement. it feels smooth, responsive and pleasant to control. the game also ran pretty smoothly for me in general
the main thing that could use more tuning is probably enemy balance and AI. the enemies feel a bit simple and it is not too hard to run away from them, but they still caught me in some places, so it is not completely broken or anything. i think with a bit more balance work they could create better pressure and make the run more tense
overall, i had fun with it. the core loop of moving around, hiding, disabling things and escaping works nicely. i almost finished the game, but missed something like 10 seconds, so i hope there wasn’t some huge secret ending i missed haha
nice work!
only a short cutscene, thanks so much for the review and the play, this was definitely a learning experience for all of us! c:
Thank you for your feedback that's a lot of good points you made! hopefully we'll make it better next time
Good job in general, I liked the visuals and the controls. These 2 factors carry the game.
Things to improve?:
- It is too easy, maybe changing the velocity of the enemies and their algorithm would help.
- You provide a big map, but it feels incomplete, because the reason I already mentioned.
- If you provide a big map, then I don't see a timer as a good strategy to catch the player feeling.
Really smooth controls and straight forward gameplay. Nice art style too. I found it hard to avoid being caught by some bad guys especially when I had trouble sucking up the energy from some of the cells, but maybe a few more tries will give me that win I'm looking for. That's a lot of good stuff in a week of work.
A really fun game to play, I like the movement, jumping around killing power was fun. I'm impressed by the enemy follow AI but they're easy to avoid. Visually the game looks polished. The sound is great and fits the game well. The feed interaction was bugged on some outlets tho, especially the big ones. And I hate to beat a dead horse but the timer, it would have been way better if it increased with every power switch toggled, but I think you already know about it. Overall nice work, good job!
i believe we tried ot implement that mechanic on the timer... not sure what came of it tho c: thanks so much for the opportunity seeone, we've all learned a lot from this one.
Yoooo! The mix of 3D with sprites looks dope. I was pretty impressed with the credits section - it was fun seeing the names coming with their respective camera swings - and holy moly, you've brought a lot of people together - kudos for getting everyone on the same boat.
The movement felt awesome - I liked running and jumping around. Visually everything is pretty coherent. Although I liked the line art more than the actual 3D rendering.
The tie in to the theme didn't quite convince me. Sabotaging a ship isn't really decay in my opinion. Especially as the small stowaway alien who's running around for 2 minutes.
There have been some moments that felt really clutch and awesome - but the energy cell sucking wasn't quite engaging enough for me to try again after failing two times.
we experienced developmental issues where some of our crew couldn't continue on the project half way through, so we were lucky to find passionate people to jump in and help us finish this thing. Thank you so much for your feedback these things are definitely on the docket as needing fixes c:
oh wow, that sounds stressful! Good on you for powering through!
as an added feedback - I was thinking about the player presentation. I think you could've leaned into the size a bit more.
Either you could've brought in the camera and widened the field of view to make the player feel like they are an insect in a big world or you could've pulled the camera waay out making the player character feel tiny and slow.
Just something to think about. :3
we kicked around with making the character slower, and found it mostly limiting, i was i think trying to aim for the 'little guy in a big world' feel but we didn't manage to get there in time, the main factors i believe (as art lead not design lead so take my feelings with a grain of salt) need to be changed/fixed is a) being caught needs to be a cutscene, the scientists and monster should stop in their tracks once they're in range. b) the timer should be removed all together since the energy system already puts you on a timer, c) i had wanted to put in shaders and alternate textures on items so the more you drain the ship the more everything distorts and turns strange, though we never ended up managing to get to that point of implementation.
I think you're right on the camera feedback, a more robust system would really make this pop, thanks so much for your input c:
Yeah, I think the player had a really great move speed - it was really fun just to jump and run.
I was really thinking about how the camera distance makes you seem more slow if it's far away. Games like BELOW are a good example.
Or Among The Sleep for the inverse approach - but both make you as the player feel small.
The idea of morphing the environment with progression of the game would've been dope!
There are many things to like about this, and previous comments already did a good job of describing it.
Here are a few things that need work:
Aww, look at the little guy. Can’t help but root for it!
Fun concept in relation to the theme, and the sounds really added to the overall experience! I think my main feedback would be to look into play-testing the timer a bit more, especially if you want to encourage stealthing. But overall a fun experience!
Great job, and congratulations on completing the jam!
Yeah you are absolutely right, we weren't having much time for playtesting or we would have tweaked the timer to make it feasible to hide and stealth. Thank you for your feedback!
I adore the creature so much, 11/10 would die for them.
Loved playing this! I loved the little backstory intro sequence, it really set the tone and made me root for the little guy. The music and sound effects were also top notch, I could listen to it skittering around all day. Game overall felt really polished and clean! The credits sequence in particular was a nice touch. I did have a little bit of difficulty with the timer mixed with the size of the ship--it took me a couple runs, and I only managed to find the last machine with a couple seconds to spare. I ended up largely ignoring stealthing most of the way in favor of just trying to get every machine. The hit boxes to drain the energy on a couple of them were a little funky for me? Had to try a couple of the sides to get it to drain--may be a skill issue though tbh.
Overall though, loved this, was super fun! Would love to see this expanded on, had a great time. Would love to see the world expanded and get some more lore about this creature, because the design is absolutely top notch. I desire a plushie immediately tbh.
Thanks for your comprehensive feedback! Haha all thanks to our talented artist and composer for producing those assets in such a limited time-period, I am glad you liked it. Yeah I completely agree with you with the timer design. Actually when you drain each object the a certain amount of time was to be awarded to the player, but I found out it's bugged. We were not having the time to playtest much or we would have considered it.
Again, thanks for your feedback!
I did a couple runs and I couldn't win (skill issue 😂). As a suggestion, it would be awesome if time stopped for 5s when you are in the "black areas". Love the character design, a really good not-too-long-not-too-short game, perfect for a gamejam!
We went back and forth on whether we should keep the timer at all, and in our rush to submit, hadn't the time to actually lengthen the timer to 5 minutes, thank you so much for playing and giving feedback c:
Hey guys for some reasons windows might give a warning popup before running the game. it's completely safe. You can click 'more info' and then 'Run Anyway'. We also uploaded a web version but it was not optimized so it broke.
Hope you like our game! <3