H.amazon E.mployee L.earning L.ab by Rhoka
Welcome to H.E.L.L.!
Secure your exciting new position by completing our training exercises using our patent pending and state of the art Hamazon Employee Learning Lab (H.E.L.L.)*.
During this intense training course you will learn how to sort boxes (patent pending), act quickly under pressure, remove the occasional spirit, and categorize other important items ensuring our dominance in the shipping and fulfillment industry.
Just remember - it is imperative that each item is sorted into the correct category for the highest levels of customer satisfaction possible. Mess this up enough, and your time in the family will come to a close. Get it right enough, and you might just find yourself with a pizza party** on your hands ;)
"A fantastic way to earn just enough money to not starve to death."
Track your performance against other applicants in our Official® Online® Leaderboard®™ (also patent pending) to finally prove that you are the lest bad employee in the entire universe!
Apply to join the Mr. Boarzos’s Family™ (patent approved) today and help us continue our status as the market disrupting innovator lead juggernaut supreme!
Just... try not to fall in the incinerator. Please. Our lawyers hate that.
Controls:
Features full gamepad support
Move: WASD/Left Stick
Jump: Space/Gamepad A
Pickup/Drop: Left Click or E/Gamepad B, X, or Y
Throw: Hold Down Pickup/Drop Button While Carrying Box
*H.E.L.L. is still in Beta, so working around any bugs will be considered as a portion of your aptitude evaluation.
*Pizza party must be paid for by applicant.*
| Link | https://vaguelydamp.itch.io/hell |
| Link | https://vaguelydamp.itch.io/hell |
| Link | https://vaguelydamp.itch.io/hell |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/h-amazon-e-mployee-l-earning-l-ab |
Ratings
| Overall | 311th | 3.83⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 421th | 3.61⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 577th | 3.34⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 653th | 3.51⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 353th | 3.98⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 199th | 3.806⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 37th | 4.31⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 385th | 3.74⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 54🗳️ | 86🗨️ |
Unfortunately I ran into a few bugs (as is typical for these kinds of things) including one which ended two of my games. I think I fell into a pit while holding a box and after that I couldn't pick anything up (I could still hold the button to do the throw animation but couldn't hold anything to throw). Also, when I tried to play again without restarting the game, the second run was rude and probably bugged—I was stuck on nothing but blue packages forever and the floor tiles disappearing immediately.
I'm honestly blown away by how much you managed to get done—3D gameplay with physics, music and sound effects, social commentary, all consistent with each other... really good stuff.
Here's the VOD with Timestamps so you can click to your game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NVsG7UOyfw
To provide some more critical feedback, this type of game has been done many times before, with little changes to the gameplay. The "Hamazon" environment with the crumbling floor is a nice touch, but I've played dozens of sorting games over the past Ludum Dares, and they all feel about the same to me.
With the negatives behind me, let's talk about everything I loved. I enjoyed the humor that could be found in tossing the packages over an incinerator, surely damaging the contents of the package beyond repair *every time*. The 3D models for the pigs and the environment are fantastic! I love that you added a leaderboard! The "I have read the tutorial" checkboxes are a pretty clever way to make sure the player actually has read them.
I recorded myself playing to provide even more feedback! Cheers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_w0CzLiZTI
Gameplay-wise, I found the controls to be really floaty, stiff, and not always responsive. The package throwing mechanic feels a bit unfair in the sense that you always throw it too close or two far, without much in-between. Maybe some timing-based system where I can move a cursor around and point where I want to throw it, something with more visual indication. Or even make the player move faster and snappier, get rid of throwing entirely, and increase the overall pace of the game for a more hectic feel? something like that
A small thing: as a gamepad lover, I'd also have appreciated if the "I have read the terms" checkbox was also gamepad-friendly
I feel like I barely managed to scratch the surface of mastery in this game, lol. Once I figure out how to properly throw boxes, I will be unstoppable!
I loved how much I hated working at Hamazon. The feedback you worked into the systems, all the sounds and other indicators, was really appreciated. That's something that's hard to spend a lot of time on. And as the room filled with boxes and the floor disappeared, I really felt the application of the theme.
I played for a good bit until I hit the bug where you can't pick up more boxes after you die holding one. I did play version 1.01.
i tried a bunch of strats to get the top box on the leaderboard, my favorite was
pushing extra boxes into the lava since you don't get penalty for it and also picking up boxes and dropping them outside of the room lmao
it wasnt effective because they kept coming faster than i could get rid of them and i wasnt getting points while doing it, but still fun theory crafting. what my score came down to was just getting good at throwing for the early part and then going only for ghosties/peeg middle to late, and also ignoring mystery boxes completely
