Hey! Soooo we can proudly announce our 23rd place in overall, we are so happy! Here are the details:

Thank you so much for playing and taking the time to rate and comment, it's been really appreciated. If you'd like to try the game, here it is: https://guilloteam.itch.io/count-down-dracula

About the theme

I'm not going to lie, we weren't really excited about the theme when it was announced. So we chose a slightly different approach, which I think is reflected in the results. Instead of having an event that happens every 10 seconds, we opted to have the player spend 10 seconds to get stronger (in a classic rogue-like structure, with time running out).

After seeing the game played by several streamers, and seeing the few comments, it appears that many people did not find the theme in our game's approach, which I understand. However, I think the theme was a bit too restrictive, resulting in many similar games in their structure. I much preferred the "Delay the inevitable" theme from a previous LD, for example.

About the game, what went fine and what went wrong

Overall, we are very happy with the progress of the jam. We were able to start the production quickly by having found an idea that we liked (and satisfied to have been able to realize all that we had in mind without having to make big concession because of the time).

What went well: - we were able, for the first time in jam, to put in a boss fight. - The balancing was far from perfect (especially in terms of the different possible builds, the ranged build was much stronger than the melee build), but it made the game experience neither too hard nor too easy for a majority of players, which is nice enough for a jam. - We are very happy with the visual rendering: the mix between 2D and 3D works quite well (except for some small readability problems), and the graphic atmosphere suits well the game and what we had in mind at the beginning. - The upgrade system works well and is coherent.

What did not go so well: - Some game design issues: we should have put a directional hint after beating the first room, most players didn't realize they had to change rooms by the right after the tutorial fight. And in a game where time is running out and you lose when the counter reaches 0, this is a problem. - On the camera level, there are problems with tracking the character, and that caused readability problems, some enemies that attacked were sometimes out of sight, etc... Again, since you can't progress until you beat all the enemies in the room, not seeing them all is a problem! - The game system rewards good players but tends to break those who do not do so well: since the player can choose when to spend his time getting stronger, those who clear a room the fastest have the opportunity to get stronger faster, and thus clear rooms even faster, etc... "Win more" system is probably bad for both types of players: not challenging for "good" players, and too hard for those who struggle in the early stages, who don't get to experiment the strong side of their build.

What's next?

After talking about it internally, we decided to continue working on Count Down Dracula to make it a short but complete game. Stay tuned if you want to see more, here:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeamGuillo

Itchio: https://guilloteam.itch.io

See you soon for a post-jam update with bug fixes and some additionnal content!