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Local Minimum

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		Local Minimum's comment
Aug 3 19:30:54		Extraction	♥ 1	As always, really well made game. I played the web-version with touch screen and it was quite nice interaction even though I shadowed some of the lower regions with my hands. Still it was much easier than using alternative inputs. The twist on tower defense, that you kind of have automatic turrets but the problem is keeping power up was really interesting, and that could have taken further to incorporate humor into the game. That your job was more of maintenance, shutting down system that kept insisting that they needed to be up. Still very well made entry, even though not as addictive as many of your other games. The way the game ended was a bit weird. I'm not even completely sure what the fail-condition was, but I got the feeling that the game entered pause-mode and the next key press would send it to the "menu" again. Two things were odd with it. I didn't quite understand what caused the death, and for the starting of the game and the play, I could do with touch/mouse, but it seemed like I needed to press a button to reset the game. In all though, a really well made game, with the disturbingly slick graphics and nictunes. So don't take the comment wrong, it was a really well made game!
Aug 3 19:45:21	14m 27s	Fuse Cell	♥ 2	Nice game, and extra fun that I managed to complete it on the second try and manage to win against the large entity. First time, I didn't really understand how the recharge worked because I got to your itch-page from twitter and just started playing. So perhaps first time running low on power, it would have been nice with a hint about how to claim it back. Otherwise I really appreciated the conflict between shooting down enemies to make the world less hostile, conserving power, and saving harvest for upping the fuel. Really well made in the design and the transitions from level to boss area. In all, very skilled/well made game.
Aug 3 20:00:28	15m 07s	Repair-5054	♥ 2	I like the protagonist and the narration and if I were you I would focus more on those and make it less puzzle dense and jumping not being so much a skill check as something for the player to have fun with. So while it is always fun to jump around and the controls were nice, I think you would benefit of making the character overpowered compared to the obstacles and focus more on exploration than figuring out which order would unlock the path to the end. I did really like that you could power up systems and completely drain yourself, but the interaction/trigger zones could be a bit larger. Very nice game, and I'd love to see how something like this would turn out going more for mood/story/exploration!
Aug 3 20:21:00	20m 32s	Ardis Mobile Mission	♥ 1	It's always nice to try out your games for your very unique style. In this one the power of the battery ran out a little too quick, but it was very nice that I got to play around at zero battery and find all the things the game requested me to find. It would have been nice if something happened as I completed the tasks (maybe there were if I had managed before battery ran out). The fact that I could play with zero battery was a bit strange, even if I really liked that I got to explore the game without the stress. The whole restart of the game and that there was no exit was a bit wonky. In the calendar, it kind of looked like the calendar shone through the text about the events for some reason (not that it really mattered). I was a bit surprised that I couldn't click on the Saturday for the party in the chat and I clicked to about 40 in the game and I would have liked getting some Easter egg about there. In total, as always, an interesting experience.
Aug 3 20:45:47	24m 47s	LOW BATT	♥ 2	Really nice audio atmosphere! As others have commented it was a bit unclear what made and didn't make the rightmost bar increase, but i did figure out how to increase it and upgrade all the way to where it disappeared. I get that it wasn't to focus, but some visual feedback on that mechanics to not distract from the mood with feelings of confusion. Why the rightmost bar disappeared wasn't clear either.
Aug 3 21:15:43	29m 56s	Robo Power	♥ 0	I got a few levels in, then it got hard or I got too tired. The register programming to get where you need go was a nice puzzle mechanics. It was a bit odd when I dragged around instructions, I would have wanted the thing dragged over and occupied register to remove the existing, rather than the one I dragged being removed.
Aug 4 15:52:24	18h 36m	Berzerk Hunt	♥ 1	I got 423, don't know if that qualifies as good or bad... Having a highscore on the game would be an obvious suggestion. The game ran smoothly and was quite fun. The graphics was nice and in general a really well made game. The music could perhaps been more reflective of the rage or even better of the rage level of the character. That the higher tiers of attacks were on keyboard was a bit annoying, but OK. It would have been nice to keep it consistent in that way (perhaps easier if all attacks were the 1-4 numbers). I would also have had a more visible notification when any of the 2-4 attacks were ready. It was easy to miss. The second attack, I wasn't either fully sure what determined where I went. Which is maybe OK in the sense that it was just a blur rage, but it would have been nice if it were usable as a dash. All those things aside, it was a really fun game to play. Well done!
Aug 4 16:02:10	9m 46s	No Sorcerer's Sky	♥ 1	I really tried to figure out how to play the game, and I managed to construct a crafting pod, but then I was out of resources. And there seemed like no way to obtain more. I don't think I could afford to build anything else in the beginning. So unless that was the point of the game (which could be really cool if you ran with it a bit more), then as others have said: instructions please. I also found it really easy to click the main menu button when I was viewing a pod (there were no button for going back to the space station view), and so I think I accidentally restarted the game more than 10 times. If the main menu is actually intended to restart the game, the button should really say 'Quit'. I did like the sound and the concept of space station management, but unfortunately I didn't get very far with the game.
Aug 4 16:17:48	15m 38s	Deep Raider	♥ 2	I liked the mood and the feeling of being in that little compartment and how I could/needed to look around before choosing a direction to go. The harpoons were a nice touch and in general very well made game. I would suggest easing up on the story, especially that early on when there's a want to just look around and see what's out there. Or trying to record it and have it play out. Or break it up into smaller parts. I didn't really figure out the sonar, and perhaps the treasure should have been giving off a beep or something (maybe only per distance). So you had a sense of where to go. In general it felt like the world was a bit too vast for the content and so maybe setting it inside some trench or cave system to limit the mobility. Or increase the distance traveled by each click. In general very well made game though, and the way it is constructed, I am surprised you did not have a VR version for it.
Aug 4 16:30:26	12m 38s	Power Dronomics	♥ 0	I also think speed is a bit of an issue here and just making you and move about quicker and the enemies not take so many hits while moving quicker too would definitely help. If you rather keep the current pacing then I'm not sure but something needs to be tweaked. Still quite enjoyable experience. I would also suggest making sure all loading-colors are clearly visible. I totally missed that the towers were loading for a long while.
Aug 4 16:42:12	11m 46s	Li'l Icarus	♥ 2	At 22m, Icarus flew again! Wow, that was really quite hard game. Those birds just kept not wanting to donate their feathers. Well executed and really fun game. I would really have liked the fall height numbers to be larger though. Also to indicate more clearly if I was going faster or slower downwards. On that topic, some up-winds and other similar effects that help or hurt you depending on how far you've gotten with the feathers would be nice (those probably needs to be visually represented). Maybe different types of birds (an eagle that you have to avoid). But I get those requests would make it more than a LD-game. Very well executed, and as I said really fun game.
Aug 4 16:52:22	10m 10s	The Leech	♥ 2	Graphics were really great. First it felt a bit weird that the dialogue didn't fit in the bubbles but after a while I kind of wanted it even more chaotic than it was. Unfortunately there was so little to do (but die) in the game and so long build-up to the total experience got a bit wasted. So I would suggest letting the player in earlier, figuring out the difficulty and just keep at that style you've got going!
Aug 4 16:55:16	2m 54s	Save The Day !	♥ 1	When I try to install the game on windows through the itch-app it doesn't install at all for some reason.
Aug 4 16:59:40	4m 24s	BRAINZ ARE POWER	♥ 0	I really liked the opposing interests of gaining power to keep alive and adding zombies to have more health, but as others have commented, once power got below a certain number of brains you were dead, because there was no way to regain brains. Or maybe there were...?
Aug 4 17:19:01	19m 21s	Studentron	♥ 0	I like the basic idea. It might have been in the dialogs, but that the direction mapped to WASD, didn't fully dawn on me until starting to write this comment! My initial though was "Why is WEST upwards!" I did fail at poetry, that girl that pretended to sleep but didn't sleep... in general there were a bit too many different things to do right from the start. So it would have been nicer with a simpler first class where you just had to answer yes/no and had an easy plug to get to. I tried to do some homework, but never got to complete it and there it would have been nice to have a feedback about that you were doing it right (especially since it was so long). In general though, a cool concept and a really nice idea for interaction design.
Aug 4 17:26:04	7m 03s	Sunseeker	♥ 1	The graphics and audio in this game is really impressive! It took me a while to get a hang of the game-play and part of it, I think was simply because there was no clear visual feedback on when the game recognized that you had selected an enemy to attack. Then I just kept attacking some horde and using the power as it recharged. But still loss, so I'm not really sure what I did wrong or how the strategy part was intended. Still, as I said first. Impressive amount of assets and art. The cracks in the barrier was a really nice touch. Good work!
Aug 4 17:28:19	2m 15s	Every Light Goes Out	♥ 1	Cool concept. I don't have a flashlight at hand and more importantly, the computer doesn't have a webcam. So my suggestion is to allow for alternative game mode where you can trigger light by other means.
Aug 4 17:41:26	13m 07s	The Wiz	♥ 1	The thing I absolutely liked the most in this game was the power beam/lightening and how it interacted with the music! That was just great. The character design was really great too. I didn't really understand what I was supposed to do with the other character when I met them. The first time the interact help showed it did so by a bird, but I never figured out if I could interact with them. I did find the recharge tree things though. So the game needed to be a bit clearer with what it wanted me to do. The high jumps were that came before the pillars region were a bit awkward too. But in general a nice experience!
Aug 4 18:02:01	20m 35s	Disaster On Nebula One	♥ 4	I liked the idea, and the style of the game. I had a really hard time playing it because of key-binding. Pressing Ctrl+Space felt really awkward. I tried it with the 360 controller and it sort of worked there but the jumping was on 'Y' and the boost on 'A' which kind of makes no sense either except making the player's cerebellum and fingers hurt. So I would have wanted to enjoy running and jumping around, but now it was mostly a struggle and then impossible as the game ramped up its difficulty. The way the camera flipped that quickly back and forth made me kind of dizzy at times too. It should probably have a delay before it transitions to the new direction to ensure it doesn't flip back and forth like crazy because the player just wants to quickly look left-right-left. So in total, I think it has the potential of being a neat game, and should you decide on a post-jam version. Do something about the keys and the camera ;)
Aug 4 18:38:59	36m 58s	Lightning Rod	♥ 0	I would have liked to try the game, but running the game required making changes to my system according to windows, which is a no-go for me (Windows 10).
Aug 4 18:48:38	9m 39s	Horrible Politics	♥ 1	I really how selection of options worked and the text was well written. The bonus press coverage between briefings also really nice. One thing that was a bit weird were the words that looked like the words I could select in the text but were already filled in when I started and weren't interactable. Otherwise really well done political game!
Aug 4 19:06:43	18m 05s	Ultimate Fusion	♥ 3	For a big chuck of me playing I thought the stuff on 1 and 2 were actually deactivated and needed some condition to be used due to the color on these. It was also a bit wonky that there were no click-drag indicator. Otherwise I found the idea really cool and the while I didn't really get what my interactions were doing or not doing, the game does stand out quite a lot from the other games I've played. And sciency games are always a plus. So good work!
Aug 4 19:18:59	12m 16s	Manual Mech	♥ 2	Great work with the voice audio of the movement assist thingy/mech armor. When I saw the instructions it all looked very daunting and confusing but in game it was really neatly explained. So I would almost suggest you'd trim those from the description of the game because I could see myself thinking "this looks like a way to complex game for me to play right now". I would really have wanted to get to play the levels you had created too, because I did really like the style/tone of your game but I could not figure out how to jump over the first hurdle. Jumps only went up wards and they didn't use any of the forward momentum set. So I'd strongly suggest you think about re-balancing how hard/easy it is to perform forward jumps. And perhaps the feedback for what you are doing wrong when the jump is not going forward. The narrator/mech suit could well have said "It looks like you are trying to jump forward..."
Aug 5 14:06:28	18h 47m	Möbius Trap	♥ 1	Well balanced classic arcade game! I managed to clear the final boss with just a little bit of power left. I'm not sure, but it kind of didn't feel like shooting & flying cost any energy and that was a bit of a surprise. Not saying the game should have been more difficult in total though. For a while too, I was also slightly confused about if I was supposed to stay and protect my piece of space (if there were anything worth protecting) or if I was intended to go somewhere. It might have said something in the instructions, but that was a bit too much text right away there. But that was just a minor distraction, and the tight warp made my confusion not matter so much. So again, well made game!
Aug 5 14:15:43	9m 15s	Flip The Switch	♥ 0	I really didn't quite understand what to do in this game. It took be quite a while to figure out that right-clicking existed. That might have been because of the initial text with that color-scheme really wasn't readable. I think the game desperately needs some showing and incremental complexity rather than telling the player what to do.
Aug 5 14:21:52	6m 09s	RUN! Before the power runs out!	♥ 1	I made it with 00:01 on the timer. I really liked the screen shake. The controls were good and well it was really quite fun game. It would have been nice with something more key-esque instead of green area and if the boxes flew around during shakes. Also if there were horrible sounds coming from the closed doors and such. But escape-games you don't see that often, and I think that is a really nice concept to build games around.
Aug 5 14:32:54	11m 02s	Powerless	♥ 1	First I tried to manage peoples opinion and that went rather poorly, so I spent fifty to a hundred years shooting everyone close to the center square and when the population had gotten more manageable I jailed people and killed them as soon as they got out. Really awful moral there! Interesting concept game and interesting in how hard it was to play it well and still remain human in any form. One minor detail. It would have been nice if the panning around was a bit more aggressive so that when mouse came close to edge the camera would move. Also the UI with stats seemed to capture the click events and block me from jailing people if I didn't re-pan the view first. In total: Really good and interesting game!
Aug 5 14:43:34	10m 40s	Engines & Earl Grey	♥ 2	Interesting concept that the game was really hard to fail at while really quite hard to get the full bar. I was about to give up, when I finally pushed the meter to the max. It would have been nice to get some rocket launch sequence as a reward. Other than that, the one thing that kind of disturbed me was that the sequence I needed to get changed when I failed to match even if I hadn't matched the first one in the sequence. I get the reason for and need to change when you are halfway through or have started on the sequence, but if you just completed one and see what's next and happen to run into the wrong icon it was a bit too easy to miss that it had changed again. So I would suggest leaving sequence if nothing in sequence has been matched (unless the game thinks the sequence should be made easier). But in that case it can just strip icons to match from the right.
Aug 5 14:52:01	8m 27s	Dienasty	♥ 0	Took me a play-through to figure out what to do exactly, but then at least I managed to stay alive for 15 days. It was a bit annoying to have to go all the way to the button to activate a type of action. It would have been nice with hotkeys for Archers and Repair and Food. Btw, since it is a webgl game you should probably change from windows to html on the game link.
Aug 5 15:24:06	32m 05s	S.C.I.A.C.E.	♥ 2	I really don't often play flight sims so I'm not really the one to know, but it felt like your game had a really nice flight controller. It felt real and smooth. I didn't manage to take down the base but got pretty far in the second wave of targets. It would have been nice to have a clear indicator about the distance to the target when it wasn't in view to get a better feel for the direction to it and distance. So that you know when you have enough distance that it is worth to go in again. Some feedback on the damage of the target and some. A bit of a shake and some warning sounds about hit or if enemy has me in target would also helped with the mood a bit. Great entry though!
Aug 5 15:29:26	5m 20s	Oppressiv Light	♥ 2	Cool concept! I didn't quite figure out what the end goal was, but I enjoyed roaming around the dark corridors. I would have wanted the light-cone to be a bit more cone-shaped and also gotten a bit better warning about proximity of enemy. Now it was mostly: "Oh you are dead". Alternatively, the enemy could drain your power rather than instant kill. So you would survive first attack by shining on the enemy, but then you'd have to be really careful not running out of power.
Aug 5 15:43:43	14m 17s	Power Struggle	♥ 1	That was really hard! Mainly my surprise was that the collect-area of the power-up was smaller than the character sprite. I would indeed expect the opposite. The collision area for enemy shots was nicely small though, so please keep that. I finally managed to survive the two initial enemies, but what came next was just like "nope, that's not happening." So what others have said, the difficulty ramp up needs some love.
Aug 5 16:17:07	33m 24s	Lantern	♥ 2	The art-style of this game. And the very bare sounds. That's 100% what makes it. I had fun playing. And it would be really cool to see what you would do if you worked with this style for a slightly larger game and not only standing put. The standing put could be part of being scare, and needing to feel powerful again before gaining courage to walk. As an example. Great execution though. Well done.
Aug 5 16:36:03	18m 56s	Feel-o-clock	♥ 1	I like the idea for the game. I didn't really quite understand when and to what extent I had control, but that didn't matter too much. But it would have helped with some audio indicating the character doing something other than what was planned. The game felt like it required quite a lot of space when it could have been compacted to better fit the browser view on a reasonable screen resolution. You should probably also update your game-page to have an actual game link to the game and opt out of audio (at least I didn't hear any). In general a cool concept though.
Aug 6 09:13:55	16h 37m	Pixel Driver	♥ 1	The crashes were really nice, and I'd say the global stats/highscore is essential for the experience. Without it I would probably not have played more than once. The controls were nice and speed/difficulty too. It felt like my bad judgement rather than the game made me crash. So really quite fun game. I also liked how you get right back into driving so you can't give up and call it quits. __Just try one more time__. It would kind of have been nice to get a bit of a __GO!__ indicator when the race started, but not that important. The use of coins as power-ups is a well established trope, but I think it would have made more sense to have petrol or batteries or such. In general a really fun addictive game.
Aug 6 09:25:27	11m 32s	Power Station	♥ 2	I liked the camera effects when shooting a lot in this game. The game was a bit confusing in it's feedback though. Stats and meters seemed to show that I was doing good but then out of the blue the game told me _Game Over_. And after that, rather than allowing me a retry, it was _nope, you failed, you have to quit_. The last bit, was, while surprising, a quite interesting twist but maybe not optimal for your game. My main concern though is that the HUD really didn't communicate the aim of the game or how well I was doing with regards to that. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed playing.
Aug 6 10:06:29	41m 02s	They Attack At Night	♥ 1	Very stylish game, but I'm not quite sure I fully understood it. I managed to recharge the first building to 100%. Then I stood for a while at the center defending the position, and that seemed quite doable to just wait for that first building or whatever caused the main meter to increase. But after a while I figured, I rather chance going to the second building in the far distance. But there was a trench that was invisible to me before I fell down and the game had not really hinted that there'd be trenches running through the city. After walking around in the trench a while, I fell off the map and there the game froze. So it did have a very nice feeling and looked really well but the rather giant leap from the first to the second building. The way I wasn't warned about strange city-planning. And that I could walk off map, well the game needs some tweaking in easing the player into the experience and showing the player what to expect and do before they are fully exposed to the adversities of the game. A really well made entry though. So don't take my issues like I'm very negative, just hints about where I'd work on the game.
Aug 6 10:08:22	1m 53s	Unknown In The Dark	♥ 0	Can't play, gives error about `ucrtbased.dll`
Aug 15 18:05:32	223h 57m	Modular Destruction Labs	♥ 2	I'm very happy I discovered how the shrink ray acted on the people! Nice touch. I got to the 6th level but getting passed the wall of stuff that needed cutting got a bit annoying. It is a very nice game and really well made for being a LD entry. My main suggestion is to make it easier for the player to retry, abort and so on. It is a keyboard only game so one should not need switching to the mouse and several clicks to retry using the same design. Possibly holding down R and a filling up a RETRY and at the full do the retry, if one really wants to do it fancy. Maybe allow to store some layouts so you don't have to drag out two main rockets and two side thrusters each level. As someone else commented, to make the craft-designing as easy and fast as possible. Why not allow player to start playing directly from the test-mode or possibly even better allow refuel/redesign and level reset by landing on the design platform and skip the test-mode entirely (needs some timeout or something else to ensure it is not accidental). Then the main pedagogical problem for me as a player, since the objects attached rotated kind of freely around the craft, it didn't feel like it mattered where and how I placed them until it kind of did matter and then I hadn't really learnt anything from previous levels about how to be strategic in the design of the craft. I'm not sure how to resolve that though. In general, again, a really nice entry!
Aug 21 18:03:24	143h 57m	Fading Light	♥ 1	I liked the graphics, the 3D assets and how clear the minimal UI assisted. It was kind of dark though, perhaps my screen having low contrast on. That made it really hard to see anything in the dark places and eventually I felt a bit too lost. It would have been nice with a bit of assistance in orienting. Either from tweakable light settings; some mapping or pings to navigate after; or some trail that showed where I've been. I get that you had limited time this time around, and with that I think the feeling and the detail put into the minimal UI was really nice.