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Stabotage's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- This was a very good twist on the theme “You are a weapon.” You are a weapon rebelling against your owner to stop them from doing something evil, very nice! The implementation was nice as well, with an exploration/ preparation phase and a turn-based battle phase to compare your results to. The controls tripped over themselves in certain areas (talking to the NPC at the beginning uses space instead of E… which causes you to jump, jumping from ledges can be frustrating, might also want to ad ledge detection lag so that a few frames after the player is off the ledge, you can still jump, making it feel smoother). The GDD was a work of art, especially the section of what we learned and where to go from here, well done.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pEF_fB6PumAl7Z7_B5Kv6hfK5Ux6e8WuaY7KMfdvCrE/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
Stabotage: From Sword to Plowshare takes place in the caravan of a traveling hero, who seeks to gain reputation and fame across the land. His plan? Engage in harrowing battles, build a legendary name, and carve his story into history. However, not everyone—or everything—is on board with this vision. The hero’s sword (the player) has grown weary of battle and bloodshed, longing for a more peaceful and productive life… like farming.
During the day, the sword does its best to sabotage the hero’s efforts, subtly limiting his kill streak without arousing suspicion. This phase plays out as an RPG-inspired turn-based battle where the player must manipulate combat in ways that increase the hero’s chances of failure—without getting caught. This awareness adds an extra layer of risk, tracking how close the hero is to realizing his weapon is working against him.
At night, the sword embarks on its own grand adventure. In a fast-paced, Metroidvania-lite platforming phase, the player races to the edge of the map to acquire new abilities, unlocking even more creative sabotage options for the following day. But there’s a catch—fail to make it back before dawn, and the hero may realize something is amiss, leading to the sword’s reforging and an untimely end.
This game was created for Pirate Software’s 16th Game Jam, blending strategy, stealth, and platforming into a unique tale of rebellion, risk, and reluctant heroism.
Controls
The Day phase is a mouse-controlled, turn-based battle situation. The night phase operates as a standard platformer.
W/A/S/D to move
Spacebar to jump
E to interact with objects
I to open the ability inventory, which uses the arrow keys to navigate.
ESC or P to open the pause menu
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
The jam is and was a fun time to do a project with friends. We managed to con one friend to join us this year and between you and me - he's hooked. Jams for life. (It's 3 am.)
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Just have fun. Like we did. (It's 3 am, still.)
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Comments
Great idea, the sword that’s had enough violence and wants to "Stabotage" its master is really cool. On the other hand, the execution is a bit odd. A card game combined with a platformer at night is, for me, a strange genre mix, and I’m curious if there were other gameplay concepts considered during development. The gameplay itself is fun, yes, but I can't shake the feeling that there might be a better gameplay combination. From a gameplay perspective, however, I can't really fault it; everything works as it should, and I didn’t run into any major issues. The visuals and music are well done.
A few minor issues: The dialogue box during the first fight in the day was off-screen, and I thought I was stuck; sound settings should persist when changing scenes.
All in all, great job!
Thanks so much for playing and the feedback! We did ideate on a several concepts, but landed on this one for a few reasons.
We liked the idea of flipping the prompt on its head. We anticipated a lot of titles would focus on being a weapon, doing weapon things. In our case, we're a sword who'd rather be a farming implement. This idea supported that concept better than the rest.
The idea behind two game phases came from giving the sword agency. To do so, we needed some way of giving the sword more than just a personality, hence the platformer. It's up to the sword to change its fate by collecting runes that impart disastrous effects on its wielder. We could have made these strictly additive—and the original idea for the day phase was an auto-battler that would have done so—but we found very early on in testing that this wasn't exactly any fun. Night phase you platform and day phase you watch a battle cutscene while the game just does math? We decided to continue giving the sword (and thereby the player) agency in how the battle (and warrior awareness) plays out. Win or lose!
So the two phases became distinct with different skills being necessary in both, with the connective tissue being the abilities (runes) you manage to collect and equip during the night phase.
The secondary reason is that in this game jam we wanted to expand our knowledge and tread new ground. What better way than to combine two play styles we'd never touched before! It allowed us to build a lot more game with developers dividing time across scenes / mechanics. 🙂
FWIW: Your game is one of my favorites of the jam so far!
The goal of the game jam is to have fun and learn something new, and I believe you’ve accomplished that! I’ve added your game to my collection and look forward to any future updates.
And I’m really happy that you like our game! 😄
Great idea here, I like the idea of trying to not get caught in your saboteur attempts. The actual battle felt strong in design, and my attacks and strong intent and action. Art is great, the town scene in particular is exceptionally well executed. Good work!
Thank you so much for taking time to try our game - we really appreciate the feedback.
I’m actually very relieved that the battles felt good on your side. We had to scrap our original battle concept in favor of the turn based style that made it to the final submission.
A lot of game for a short jam. The music had the adventure vibe, lots of upgrades, but crazy maze. in the end i got caught ;)
Kind of a weird mixture of genres ;)
Super cool name of the Game
Thanks so much for playing! We got a lot more done than we set out to and learned a lot in the process. The feedback has been great and we're already scheduling out another sprint's-worth of improvements and updates post-jam!
Great job! I really enjoyed this take on the theme. A nice combo between resource management and platforming. Having the different effects for night time and day time is a nice touch. Art and music are awesome as well. I had a lot of fun playing this, and I didn't encounter any issues. Awesome game!
Perfect! Glad everything worked for you and you had a good time! We’re looking at more ways to introduce variability based on the abilities available.
This is a really cool idea! Had fun playing it! :-)
After the first battle, the dialogue screen of the sword was not above its head but mostly outside of the upper edge of the screen. But appart from that I did not encounter any bugs. Great job!
Thanks so much for playing! And we’re glad you enjoyed it.
We’ve had a few folks report that the swords dialogue box just opts to go somewhere else. It’s marked for the post jam, for sure!
I love the idea! Its a really cool game, you made! I like the special abilities and the management part of trying to not be found. One idea I'll give is maybe turning this into a kind of deck builder rogue-like could be interesting.
Also, Zen Browser (Firefox based) freezes on the last into part. Had to use a Google based Browser
Thank you so much for taking the time to play and your kind words! We absolutely have some ideas to continue evolving what we’ve started.
Also, thank you for the bug report. We plan on going through and testing on other browsers to identify this issue.
He-he, very nice take on the theme. Although its straightforward with the theme but in your case it somehow works well. Really did enjoy the art work and style. Music also fit really nice. Another thing that I liked is there was a nice little mix between genres - management & platformer. I think you made a really nice game.
Thank you so much! We liked the idea of taking the theme literally but flipping who your actual target was intended to be.
The tutorial section didn't really make it very obvious what I should do next, maybe there should be an indicator over things which you can interact with?
Thanks so much for playing and sorry about that, the player should be locked in position while talking to the hooded figure. Alas, our final submission build allows you to walk away, making it unclear in some cases that there's more dialogue to receive before being allowed to exit to the next phase. We've identified the problem and will push that fix once the jam's review period is over!
Good luck!
I can't get past "this whole thing is horse shit"?
Am I missing something? :'(
There should be a scene transition after that line, which drops you into the tutorial. What browser are you using to play?
That should just have a text box click through then a short pause before changing into a new scene. Would love to know your browser and version to see if we can replicate. Thanks playing!
Fun game! I appreciate the humor and unique take on the theme.
Thanks for the feedback!
Had a fun time, got stuck when talking to the rune woman. The sprite assets are really nice, loved the tongue in cheek dialogue. What is the wiggle rune supposed to do? I couldn't seem to get it to work.
Hi! One of the developers here, thank you so much for playing our game!
The tutorial section was one of the last pieces we implemented so there are some (very) late-night considerations that eluded us. Once you've completed the full interaction with the hooded figure, you can return to and interact with the campfire to continue on to the game. The purpose of Wiggle (and the 12 other runes scattered across the map) will be clear!