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Ezcort Mission's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #8 | 4.212 | 4.212 |
| Overall | #28 | 3.970 | 3.970 |
| Gameplay | #36 | 3.758 | 3.758 |
| Theme interpretation | #74 | 3.758 | 3.758 |
| Innovation | #86 | 3.364 | 3.364 |
| Graphics | #107 | 3.606 | 3.606 |
Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository
https://github.com/sinisterstuf/escort-mission
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Comments
This was awesome! Loved the death animation of the zombies, voice acting was really well done, I'm a fan of the controls, love the up going forward with ability to strafe. Backing up is very slow, might as well not even use it. At one point the dog died, and there was nothing around, and I was close by. I'm not sure what happened. By no means game breaking, just an odd occurrence. Overall this is really well done! I almost felt like I was in Fallout, but old school retro style. I would love to see a whole game from this!
Hallo,
Thank you for sharing your game. I’ve already saved its RATING;
1. verified: GAME due to observed you also wrote a review for “Save The World”; adds: noticeable pixel drawing technique in screenshot of title screen
2. observed: noticeable background music, voice-over, and sound effects that appear to be from PROFESSIONAL, i.e. INCOME > expenses; adds: remembers: from gun reload, Resident Evil#1 (PS1), and select First-Person Shooters, e.g. Half-Life Counter-Strike (PC)
3. verified: GAMEPLAY to be of shooting zombies as the protagonist and his companion dog search for another survivor; observed: self to NOT immediately identify correct CONTROL INPUTS to execute DIRECTIONAL MOVEMENT;
4. observed: self continued to PLAY GAME until the skeleton checkpoint; observed: zombies noticeably appear to cause DEAD STATE after checkpoint#3 (?) onwards; observed: self to have difficulty pressing SHIFT to speed-up directional movement on MacBookPro;
5. adds: weapon/armor/upgrade system that increases defense/attack damage to assist protagonist to NOT noticeably die may cause PLAYERS such as self to continue to PLAY; remembers: select Arcade games, e.g. MetalSlug#1 (NeoGeoMini, Arcade), where: there exists JUMPING point that appeared to be added to cause NEW PLAYERS to die, so as to insert another TOKEN/COIN to PLAY
Thank you. Health!
Really nice game! I enjoyed the music!
I loved the narrrator/character! It would be nice to be able to adjust the sounds but other than that awesome job!
The game was really fun!
Thanks for playing, glad you liked it. A volume menu didn’t fit in before the deadline, but thanks for the feedback, what would you adjust in the sound if it was possible?
For example it would be nice to lower the background music or the general sounds (like shots and zombie's screams), that way it would be easier to hear the narrator/character, because sometimes I didn't get what he was saying. That's just a minor detail that would be nice to have in the future, other than that the game is really good.
Thanks!
My favourite game so far. And you actually made me laugh with, “I’m so good at this I could only die in a cut scene”.
Brilliant entry.
Thanks so much for playing! Really glad you enjoyed it :)
Well crafted entry, and with no engine game engine behind, quite impressive!
The sprites and animations are very well made, I find specially good the death animation for zombies, it's both smooth and satisfying! 🤤
The game's a little buggy at parts. I guess that you had to write down many of the stuff that an engine already gives, and I value that, but you can easily get stuck inside Robert, or worse, between Robert and a tree (it happened more than once to me in my playthrough, damn my luck!). Also, there seems to be some kind of bug at the end, I entered the final zone but I didn't get the screen showing my time 🙁.
I have to admit that the playability did not click with me. It's a 100% design choice and totally subjective, but I totally prefer a Hotline Miami style playability in top-down-shooter games. I found myself fighting more times against the controls than the zombies hahaha! But as I say, it's just my POV, the game's fine as it is, and I understand why would you choose this control scheme for the game.
I don't fully understand why some zombies die in one hit. My guess is that it's just random, but sometimes it felt like it was because I was aiming directly on the zombie. If it's just by chance, I would like to suggest adding a mechanic where you instantly kill a zombie if your cursor is in the zombie, this way you reward players for their aiming skills, and it makes some parts more manageable!😛
Other than that, the game's quite well crafter, it shows quality and skill! Good job! 😁
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions! We will look into the collision/sticking issue as well as the endgame screen. Sorry to hear you struggled with the controls. It went through a few variations during development and we settled on what felt most intuitive to us. But standardizing with other top-down games is a good idea
Honestly, I wouldn't change the controls, it was more of a "me" problem than a real problem. Your control scheme works for your game, same as Hotline Miami works with its control scheme. Games with different objectives mechanically, so games that control different!
nice little game. Am I detecting fellow Saffa accents there? I loved the audio in the game - very well executed, great voice overs, great music, fitting sFX. Encountered a minor glitch where if the dog and I are in the same space then I couldnt move, but somehow managed to get out of that predicament and continue on. I liked that the aiming was essentially point-and-click. Super fun, great job guys.
Haha good catch :) The dev team is comprised of 75% Namibians! Glad you enjoyed the game and managed to escape Rover's gravitational pull ;)
Nice! Always good to see some more Game Dev's from subsaharan Africa!
Easily the best I've played so far. Graphics, animations, voice acting, the feeling was top notch. Only bad thing is the movement, right and left direction are a bit confusing being tied to the mc and being top-down, I ended up only going forward and using the mouse for left and right. Other than that, good job!
Thanks so much for the feedback! I mostly play it with just w and the mouse as well. We opted to keep the strafing so that the player had some means of moving at the same speed as Rover. But it was intentionally kept a bit awkward to better fit the cliché of escort missions (i.e. player has to move awkwardly because the NPC always moves slowly, erratically, gets stuck on things etc.). This year's theme is tricky that way: Intentionally add clichéd game mechanics but in such a way that it isn't too annoying ;) Glad you liked the rest though!!
This game surprised me. Initially I felt like it was a simple boring zombie shooter, but the fluid feeling, the strange emotion to actually save Rover, and the audio made it feel like a proper game! The voice acting is top-notch, tho a bit cliche (intended I expect?).
It was very fun to play! GG! <3
Great to hear! The theme this year definitely presented a tricky challenge: how to make a game full of overused and unoriginal gaming clichés that is still enjoyable to play? Glad we managed to achieve a bit of a balance
This game was so much fun. I really loved the style and especially the narration. I wanted to keep playing it really had me hooked. It was a little buggy in parts, either the dog would get stuck near a wall, or at the blood drops and would not move from there. I'll be playing this again for sure, thanks for making it!
Hi there, happy to hear you had.
There are definitely a few bugs :p
I've not gotten stuck near the blood before, but incase you didn't: the blood is a checkpoint so the dog will wait there until you and the dog are near it (and there no zombies to distract it) and then a voice line plays? Dog should move on from there.
Let us know if you've had another go!
Otherwise that's kinda weird, are you playing in browser or downloading?
Thank you for making the game!
I found out about it when you were posting the in-progress tweets. I think Hajime retwitted them and they ended up in my feed. :) But I digress.
I recorded my playthrough: https://youtu.be/awF7LN5cFIM
Let my copy some of the feedback here as well.
What I like:
I enjoy this control scheme. I can even do some sidewalking (not to be confused with widewalking) with my dog!
The shooting mechanics felt nice.
It feels good to defeat zombies in this game. The sound and graphic effects contribute to that feeling.
The graphics are simple, but fitting. Same with the music.
Voice acting is great! It does make this game feel more complete.
I would say that you nailed this cliche theme perfectly well. Although the companion could be more annoying. :D
The game has checkpoints. Although there are some issues around them, it’s still better than going through everything again from the very beginning.
This game is written in Go, with Ebitengine! I highly approve that. :)
Even though the game level is relatively big, the wasm performance was quite good.
Thank you for not throwing too many ghosts (?) at the player. xD
Some random thoughts:
Walking backwards looks too slow to be useful. Perhaps the same speed as with strafing (or 10% slower) would make it more useful in some situations.
I’m not a fan of crosshair (a cursor) disappearing from time to time (like when you reload). :( I don’t think that this mechanic serves any good. I doesn’t make the game harder or more realistic, it just makes you lose your cursor. Since this game disables the system cursor (?), I get really disoriented because of that.
If you respawn, it could be really rough to survive. Enemies attack you way too aggressively. The spawning point should be relatively safe in my opinion.
A few technical issues I had with the game:
The game hang after 100% progression while running in the browser. I don’t know if that’s a stable behavior or no. I only played it until that moment once using the wasm build. I managed to complete the game with a native Linux build.
I had to recompile the game from the sources though. The version uploaded to the itch io page requires a newer version of glibc. So this is the message I get:
My glibc version is 2.31
Hey, thanks for playing.
I'm going to ask the programmer people to have a look at what you're saying. I was just the voice guy and a play tester...so I don't know anything about crashes. I did once have it crash while playing in browser but since then it was fine, I wonder now if maybe I didn't wait for the voice line first or something...yolo
You're right about walking backwards... Hidden game cliché is: this an unrefined alpha released for the public to test :p But yeah, as a tester, I could potentially have been more bothered about it, we talked about it briefly, but then got maintracked (I made that phrase up right now) by other things that we felt we really needed. Originally walking backwards was fast enough to outpace zombies, it was nerfed and then, not re-balanced. Soz.
The cross hair vanishing while reloading, I didn't even notice was a thing until you said so(and then watching your video). I think the cross hair was added on the last day of development¿ So not sure what the story with that is, it may not be on purpose.
And yeah, the hordes coming for you when you respawn is also something that could be better... I was probably (as a tester) not too bothered by it because checkpoints were also probably a week 4 thing so I was just grateful to not need to restart. I think we probably created the issue when for other reasons we increased the aggro range of the Zombies.
Thanks again for checking it out though and for taking the time to leave feedback.
Watched the video. Thanks for being so persistent! It's always fascinating to see how it plays when the player doesn't know what's coming next and hasn't had 4 weeks practice like Thesryn and I. Really appreciate you taking the time and giving us so much great feedback
That’s the reason why I record the video. :D I’m glad that it’s useful.
Simple but effective mechanics that were nicely executed. And anyway, I'm a sucker for a game with a dog. Nice song loop, good feedback from the sound effects. The graphics made me nostalgic for early '90s games.
The sound balance could use some tweaking. All of the sounds & music start off a little bit loud. Even with the volume turned down, the loudest tones in the music are as loud as the sound effects. Everything happening together is a little overwhelming. In the visuals, some color differentiation between the impassable rubble at the bottom of the hills and the passable rubble strewn around on the ground would also be good.
Playing in browser, I had a weird moment in which the MC suddenly shot forward into a zombie, his voice line glitched out like a skipping record, and I died. I'm assuming it was a glitch, but it gave me a good laugh. That *also* reminds me of old '90s game.
Overall a solid entry! Great job!
Cheers for playing
Yeah, I guess in an ideal scenario we'd allow the user to tweak volume themselves 💁
I think the issue with the rubble may have to do with summer weirdness regarding the shape of the collision boxes. I don't quite understand it, but ideally the rubble (I think) near cliffs, should have been passable. But, it ees what it ees.
Cool sounding glitch, extra cliché. I haven't found that one yet.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to leave feedback.
I loved the main character's quips, with the little call out to the game jam creators lol. Was fun to play.
Ha! Glad you found it fun.
And I appreciate you catching that jab...not sure if I'm allowed to say it, but something about this theme was killing my soul a bit lol.
"They probably think idioms and cliches are the same thing!"
This was amazing! The core gameplay was relatively simple but it was executed so well. Connecting shots was satisfying, reloading made me feel vulnerable, and I was very invested in the setting and the story. The voice acting and the dog barks were phenomenal, it really elevated the game and made it feel alive.
Two nitpicks to a game I already think is such high quality:
Loved this entry, I wish there was more variety and more of it! Great job!
Thank you for your feedback. Very happy you liked it.
Your nitpicks are very reasonable and things we would definitely look at given a different time frame.
Cheers dude!
This was so cool! loved the music and voice over to build the depth of the story. was fun running around and satisfying protecting your pup. after a while i got stuck and couldn't move, but just refreshed and started over - great work!
Awesome, thanks for playing
Top down controls feel nice and exploring around shooting zombies is fun. I enjoyed listening to all the dialogue as well. Nice work!
Thank you! It was fun creating it as well...well at least the voice lines :p
Can't speak from the programmers perspective, certainly a learning experience!
Pretty good :D I liked the gameplay quite a lot, but the soundtrack and voice acting are really the star of this game.
Thanks! What started as a humble zombie shooter a few weeks ago somehow turned into a voiced narrative adventure game. One of the many wonders of game development!
Lol when I respawned after I died, there were like a hundred zombies around me. No recovering from that! :P
Really fun game!
Haha I've been there. Sometimes a hasty retreat is your only option. Glad you had fun though!
Well if the dog wouldn't die, I would gladly and hastily retreat :P
Thanks!
True. Rover doesn't handle being surrounded too well
Really cool art! Also wow, the voice it's amazing. Love that you put the Wilhelm scream when you die hahah, no way!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. The Wilhelm scream is proof that not all tropes are clichés ;)
The feeling when we shot is very good! Kill zombies give a lot of satisfactions!
Good job for the voice!
I'm a bit frustating to be stopped with this bug, my player is lock with the dog, I can't move. I only can fire.
Yeah sorry about that. We couldn't get the collision detection to work perfectly before the submission deadline. Normally you can get out of that situation by sprinting away. Hope you still had fun though! Guess we can add one more cliché to the list: game released with bugs :P
The stuck in dog bug was caused by a typo in our collision logic. It is fixed now, please try playing it again now! 😊
Super cool! I liked the feeling of exploding zombies in 1 shot! The voice acting is very well done!
Thanks! Took a lot of playtesting until we were happy that the shooting felt responsive and satisfying
;) glad I packed the explosive ammo.