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LOCK TIME's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #622 | 3.538 | 3.538 |
| Enjoyment | #678 | 3.846 | 3.846 |
| Creativity | #986 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Audio | #2836 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Artwork | #3950 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Lock Time uses a time loop of sorts as a puzzle mechanic
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
See description
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Zachary Kowalczyk (pronounced "Ko-val-chick")
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Comments
Cool game! Though I will admit I've seen the premise of clones that mimic your behavior a lot in this jam. Overall I'd say the main thing hindering my enjoyment of this game is the fact that I can't see what my clones are doing off screen; there was one level where I kept dying due to an off screen clone, but I could never tell what was actually causing the clone to die. Unfortunately I'm not sure what the best way to solve this problem would be. Perhaps levels could be built at a slightly smaller scale, so that more of the level is visible at once? Or maybe just zoom out the camera?
Thank you for playing!
The current solution I'm leaning towards that was suggested by someone else is not letting clones touching each other lead to a failure. Since you're avoid them anyway when you record, it shouldn't prevent things from getting hectic too much, but I'll need to test different ideas!
The time-loop-clone-game has been done a good few times, but this one spices it up with not respawning you after a loop and killing you on touching your clones.
which the risk of dying and/or missing the moving platforms timings forces more foresight and planning than the usual time loop games.
unfortunately it is a bit buggy as the clones will sometimes randomly break and force you to redo everything, which can be annoying in the later levels when you're working with several clones.
the art is admitedly pretty basic but it comunicates most of the elements you need.
only jumping and dying has SFX, and the music does keep interest but as a puzzle game the synths could've been toned down for better thinking music.
narrative elements are VERY rare but appreciated in a jam submission, and the game even even if basic manages to have 2 endings, which highilights the secret rooms you missed the whole time and gives it a whole layer of replaybility.
overall, the parts might not be so special, but the sum of everything forms a pretty solid result.
Thanks for trying it out! It is very much imperfect, but I'm proud of how complete it feels to me, as a jam game. Only my second time actually doing art for a game and I've learned a lot from this jam alone!
Thanks for the detailed feedback! It's going on the list of improvements to work on!
Oh wow, there are many games with this similar concept, however, this one is different in that you don't respawn when the timer runs out, ie, the clones come after you and you keep going, that simple change made my brain tickle in a really good way. I really liked this well done!
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it! I took some inspiration from on "old" PS3 platformer.
seems like a great puzzle game! (can't play it as I am not on windows :/)
Ahh that's a shame... thanks all the same! In future jams I think I'll prioritise a web build!
This is a great game! I had lots of fun playing it. I love the character and the animations.
Thank you for playing, I'm glad you liked it!
Very unique game idea and it was very interesting to play and test, one of the most creative games on this jam, however the audio was repetitive and annoying but other than that the game was great!
Thank you so much for playing! Volume controls (and obviously mute functions) are near the top of the list for things to add, I just didn't have time before the deadline! Might also take the time to compose some more tracks for more variety...
Satisfying death effect, added to the fun of restarting by crashing into your previous loop when you figure out the solution, and seeing all your loops carefully jump around each other.
Thanks for playing!
I was so happy with the death effect that I decided to add it to the victory sequence at the end of a level as well! And added a few extra explosions just off-screen for the final level 👀
Very cool concept. Pretty much using the "touch your doppleganger you die" idea, but it makes for a neat puzzle. Only gripe is that I sometimes die out of nowhere, which doesn't make sense if my clones are copying my exact movements with the same amount of time delay.
It's definitely something for me to work on! The clones copy the player's inputs, but if the level has changed since then, such as with moving platforms, then they might end up somewhere else as well. That's intentional.
That isn't to say the game doesn't have bugs though, and dying because of something off-screen was probably a poor design decision too.
Thank you so much for playing!
This was very good!
I like the fresh take on the more general "time clone" idea; and it was very well done.
:)
It has a couple of bugs, but not really a problem because of how small each level is - just die and respawn in 1 second.
A couple things that I would suggest:
1) don't make the anomalies crashing into each other a fail condition - I died a few times because of an explosion off screen, so I couldn't even see what caused it, or how to prevent it on the next run; and
2) fill in the visible world that cannot be accessed with the grey walls instead of black - I did a suicide dive down the first pit, because I thought I saw accessible rooms down there (unless, there WERE visible rooms, and that was one of the secrets that I missed?).
Are you planning to work on it more after the jam to iron out bugs and polish it up?
Thank you so much for playing!
I am indeed planning on working on it after the jam, I have a list of design and programming fixes to make!
For your first point, I hadn't really thought about that... there is a bug that causes copies to behave incorrectly under specific conditions, which gives you less control over what can kill you I suppose... but I guess it is kind of unfair anyway if something happens to make you die off-screen, isn't it?
For the second point, I actually planned to fill in the in-level sections instead with a nice non-distracting background. I'm not an artist though and didn't have time to do that before the deadline!
Yeah, exactly, it's the offscreen part.
If your levels were all single screen (like Mind over Magnet), then it would be less of an issue because you could see what went wrong.
Also, ha ha, yeah; believe me when I tell you that I know the pain of trying to make a game with zero art skills.
XD
I'll tell you what, I'm glad nobody's commented on how many similarities there are between this and Mind Over Magnet. I've done a few things to deliberately try to deviate from it.
Just make a text adventure game! :-P
It's a very nice game, I love the art!
Thanks so much for playing! It's the second game where I've had to do the art myself, and I've found that robots are much easier to draw than literally anything organic...
Oh yeah totally, for my game I chose a simplistic style just so I can draw stuff since I did it solo this time haha! Gotta work around our weaknesses, it's part of the process :D
Ha ha ha...
I made a text game...
<_<
Amazing game . Great concept and implementation of the theme🙌
Thank you so much! Again! I just wish I'd thought of Ouroboros when it came to naming stuff! You're definitely onto something there!
Cool concept, I also loved that this one has secrets, I only got one but I will try to get the others later. Also, the "stay in the ground to work correctly" is a excuse for a bug turn into a feature right? XD. Overall Good game :)
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Also, shhhhhhh nobody needs to know~
There are a couple bugs in the game, and so far I've figured out all but one. For whatever reason, if you're mid-jump or something at the beginning of the timer, your next copy seems to only ever be able to go left and when you inevitably die, it will start continuously hopping...? So... it might be a bit of a cover up. When I figure it out and fix it though, I can maybe replace that dialogue with something more interesting!
EDIT: Also I just saw you're the guy behind It's Just 45 Seconds. I just have to say, again, that was one of my absolute favourite games to come out of this jam so far!
Very well executed and interesting concept! It's impressive that everything was made from scratch, too. And even though the secrets seemed too hard for me, they are a welcome addition.
Thank you so much for playing, and I'm glad you liked it!
It was all made from scratch, but at the cost of many hours of sleep. My body hasn't yet recovered, and yet... I wanna do it all again!
Haha, I didn't break my sleep schedule but still feel rather tired.
And looking forward to participating in Ludum Dare now:)
P.S. Just checked, I spent 26 hours on making the game during the span of 4 days
I think mine said something upwards of 50 hours 😭😭
Really good puzzle game, one of the best I've seen on this jam, the level with 4 pressure plates was pretty hard tho but managed to get past it and enjoyed the levels all.
Thank you so much for playing! You're not the first to struggle with the four pressure plates... I might have to take a closer look at my difficulty curve 🤔
First of all applause for you making this game as a solo dev! For that it has a lot of content and feels complete. Can't say this for our game.. Also I love seeing games not overly using premade assets in this jam.
Then I can say that this is one of my favorite games in this gamejam so far. I love the cute narritive with the right amount of real references and the gameplay is very intriguing and innovative.
I only played one end but I already saw that there are more things to explore in the levels, might jump back into it to discover them.
Thanks for playing and I hope you do give it another go! I'm very proud of how the game turned out, but look out for the post-jam patches!
fun and challenging game!
Thank you for playing! I'm glad you liked it!
this game is insanely funny and extremely fun! the gimmick is very well done and very interesting. it's also objectively extremely funny, what with how violently you explode upon even so much as touching your past selves
i love it! do more with the concept!
if i had anything to pick on it'd be the audio; the lack of music volume options was killing me as i was playing. i found it hard to lock in and focus on the time travel mechanics among the super layered synths and such
Thank you so much for playing! Comments like these are why I do game dev!
I have volume sliders and an entire menu system from older projects that I've copied into other projects to save time. This was the first time I ignored that because I wanted to keep things as simple as possible in terms of UI and not-gameplay stuff. With how the music ended up being, this was probably the worst game to skip out on volume sliders for...
Rest assured they'll be one of the first things I add in the first patch!
heck yeah dude. also gamemaker represent!
Great entry to this theme. The levels are really well designed. I took so long to beat the level with 4 pedestals next to one another, but once I learnt the mechanic, I was able to solve the remaining ones. Still I felt the difficulty curve was quite exponential. But that's understandable since it's a jam entry.
Waiting for the next update and hopefully a web build.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Watching people work with the difficulty curve has been really interesting. Some people cottoned on really quickly, others took a while but still figured it out themselves in the end. I think there are ways I could communicate the mechanics better. That level with the four buttons, as you now know, is actually pretty simple. But the player only gets that once they understand exactly how the mechanic works, so that's what I think I need to work on.
I have no idea if I'll do a web build... that's new territory for me with GameMaker, but I know it would hugely increase my click-through rate...
Oh wow, gotta be honest: First I were like "well, seems like your average 2D platformer entry alright"
But the clone mechanic was pretty fun, especially when I realized that they were influenced by moving platforms and could touch each other. Had me rethink my approach in two levels. Really fun little puzzles. The little character is also very cute!
Also the introduction into the mechanic felt very natural and logical to me, tutorials are so hard to get right in gamejams imo.
My three minor complaints were just:
- Having a restart button would be nice (unless I missed it), so you don't have to seek out or wait for them when you want to restart.
- In the final level you could not really see what was happening up top, and I solved it by just jumping on all buttons hoping to figure it out via platforming. Made it feel like I was doing something I was not supposed to.
- Having a way to advance the dialog manually would've been appreciated, as it was a tad bit slow for me, but other probably appreciate having more time to read.
The overall execution is very nice though, lovely entry and especially complete with an ending and throughline :D
Thank you for playing and for leaving feedback! All three points are already on my list of fixes, though you're the first to say the text was too slow. Others find it too fast and I'm inclined to agree with them. Either way, manual text progression is on the todo list once the voting period for the jam is over!
Which ending did you get? Did you find all the secrets?
Yeah I can imagine with the text speed, it seems faster than average. I mean it is very freeing being able to move around while it is talking and not being statically locked, but that also made me restart a few of the dialogs accidentally. I might've been a little to high energy for the texts :^)
I've actually seen a few of the secret paths at the start and realised too late after finishing a few levels. I then figured I'll grab them later in another quick run through after reading one. I've read through one of them were you drop down on the right, but the end screen did not award it to me, so I got 0/7. Maybe I was not supposed to die there, but thought I couldn't get out.
Hmm it should've given it to you. Did you see a number 1/7 pop up just above the text? If you didn't stay until the very end to see that number, it wouldn't have counted.
Dying doesn't matter in this case though, tested on many accounts, you should be able to safely die. If the number did pop up and you still only got 0/7 at the end, then I have another bug on my hands.
I did not see a number pop up, but I might've left the dialog range in the last text box that did not have the _, since that indicated to me it finished. Maybe I canceled it before it wanted to "finish" the last textbox?
The trigger to set the flag for the secret is the same trigger that sends the number pop-up, so you might've just missed it by literally a frame or two!
Cool. I like the concept, the mechanic, and very smooth clean implementation!!!
Thank you so much here as well! ;-P I'm very proud of how it turned out. Also looking forward to trying your entry!