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pkenney

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Apr 29 13:37:24 Tunnel Bug ♥ 1 Very cool! After I got the hang of it I had a run that got 579 points, and said it lasted 19 minutes, although it didn't feel like that long. Maybe I just was having fun and lost sense of time? My favorite part is the excellent graphics effects, and the sound and music also really add to the atmosphere. There is a really a cohesive polished look and feel that's great. But the feel of curving around a tunnel just barely not touching is also pretty great. In the beginning I thought of myself more like a car drifting on a track, and that did not go well. I died pretty quickly when I was jetting forward. I later started to think more like a spaceship that wants to make occasional quick puffs of the jets to adjust momentum, and that's when I started doing a lot better. I thought I could cheap the game out by reverse-puffing myself down to a crazy slow crawl, and that does sort of work but you have a nice feature in the slow drain of my health that prevents too much stalling, nice touch. If I could change one thing it would be to make sure the player isn't already crashing into the wall right at the start of the level. The better I got at the game, the more this became my main way of losing health. Testing a bit more, I think the main issue is that the player is always facing and moving straight to the right, whereas the tunnel doesn't necessarily start that way. Just aligning the player with the tunnel would probably solve it, or always starting the tunnel with a short run of straight-right. I only need a safe moment to get my bearings. Really interesting entry, nice work!
Apr 29 14:36:34 59m 10s Victor Spumante And The Raindrops of Burgundy ♥ 1 Wow that's a lot of a lot! I'm glad I pushed through, I almost thought stage 1 was going to be all of it all and didn't press on with my business. Good fortune that I did. Well done variety show!
Apr 29 16:05:03 1h 28m Taco King ♥ 2 NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! This is so, so good. And I ran into the same freeze-up bug twice. It was so excellent that I went back a second time to get through the whole story, but I lost track of time in the mines again and got stuck in the loop. I didn't restart the entire game a third time, so I didn't get to the end of the story. :( The bug happens when the timer goes below zero in the mines. The score mode counts the timer down to zero, but it seems to check == and not <= so it goes deeper and deeper into negative territory, racking up a top score but also locking the game forever: https://imgur.com/a/mVylK6K That one flaw aside, this is AWESOME. It's got a great look and feel, I'm interested in the story, and in a great way I care more about the arcade games because of my very limited coins. And wow the games are just great. This is a very strong all-around compo entry that hits graphics, sound, gameplay, and narrative... and the fact that it's so well polished makes the breadth of scope that much more impressive. A few random notes on the individual arcade games: - Asteroids is made a lot more fun with your touch of friction, great feel - Mines was a really interesting puzzle-ish game, and I spent the most time here. I had to explore a bit to learn the rules. Specifically I got confused by the behavior of stacks of boulders: for a while my mental model was "sometimes rocks fall off sideways but mostly they don't" - took me a little while to learn the reason. I never dared to unleash the monsters Maybe I'll come back to try the story a third time and just not play the mines. Excellent.
Apr 29 16:41:48 36m 45s Paynplayne ♥ 2 Wow, nice! The music is great, I loved the bendy synth stuff, reminded me of some old Road Rash music I loved on Genesis. The art was cute, and the story was fun. Length was just right, and I think I understood what the ending hinted at. A nice all-around package, well done! Thank goodness for friendly cactii, huh? So supportive!
Apr 29 17:56:07 1h 14m Dungeon of the Blood God ♥ 2 Escaped with 922 - figured if I pressed on, it was a big risk! I love the mix of different styles, with some risk-taking dialog choices mashed up with the real-time fighting sword/shield. Combat was tense - the choice to not have enemies really telegraph the attack perfectly created a guessing game that was nerve-wracking in an interesting way, but reduced the skill factor. The music is a solid throwback feel, and the art style is really great! Well done.
Apr 29 18:02:02 5m 55s Slot of Life ♥ 1 Nice art style, I did manage to win on my first attempt, but my luck turned and after a replay I lost on the very first pull of the level to the triple-cross!
Apr 29 18:13:21 11m 19s Fools Fortune ♥ 1 Wonderful, evocative graphics. I like the way the tarot-size cards, the candles burning, and the voodoo doll all evoke the same kind of feeling of mystery. If I could change one thing it would be the pace. The text rolls out a bit slowly, and the card flips are a little slow as well. I drew the peasant revolt three times in a row, and by the third time waiting for the paragraph to unfold, I was kind of spam-clicking. I did enjoy the descriptive text, so I didn't generally want to speed through it, just upon repetition. I think with a little sound and a larger variety of events this could have a really nice atmopshere you could get lost in for a while. Nice work!
Apr 29 19:09:07 55m 46s Entity Manipulation ♥ 1 What a brain-bender! I nearly gave up a few times, but in the end I completed all nine puzzles. This did a great job of unfolding the complexity naturally. I didn't really need to dwell much on the rules or use the tab screen, I was able to figure out how things worked just by observing. The blue cave feel, space-age music, and abstract techno-puzzle feel all came together into a pretty nice cohesive package. If I could make one small tweak, I'd let the numeric keys select the entity type rather than clicking. But maybe that's just me -- I was making pretty heavy use of 'R' so I was already multi-inputting. Solid all-around compo, nice work.
Apr 29 20:19:33 1h 10m Ziggy's Life ♥ 1 Definitely hit M for some jams! Fun project, of course it could use a bit more feedback in the combat system, but with the clear sound effect and the nice visible health bars I was able to figure out what was what. I got beat to death in the corner by those yellow guys on my first visit, but next time I figured out I have a super-power of punching through walls and I showed them who's the boss!!!
Apr 30 12:43:49 16h 24m HAMMO ♥ 1 7.859 on the first and a bit over 22s on the second map was my best. I loved the idea of this. In fact, the rar file wouldn't unzip on my computer and I even did some self-administered TECH SUPPORT just to play! (Tuned out 7zip was an old version) Thank god for the R button. It wasn't mentioned by Nikachu, I mean Pikafu, so I went a few times without it and that hurt realbad. Things got much better after I found R: I may have hit "R"it to "RELOAD" a few times out of muscle memory and wrecked a few good runs, but insta-restart on demand was a HUGE quality of life feature that I'm glad you included. If I could add one thing to the game it would be a sound effect when I kill an enemy. I found myself often taking a quick shot and wanting to turn away and move on, but since I'm required to kill all enemies getting a confirm sound would be a help. I'm a sucker for rocket-jumping so I enjoyed this one a lot!
May 1 15:54:15 27h 10m Nuclear Arms 7: Railway to Heaven ♥ 3 In the attic, under a floorboard, lies a lockbox. Inside is my collection: Amulets of Yendor and other ancient artifacts, wrested at great careful pains from deep in the most brutally difficult dungeons that exist: those of the modern-yet-traditional roguelikes Brogue and The Ground Gives Way. So I let myself think I know a thing or two about roguelikes. And when the formula is pulled into continuous-time/continuous-space action games, not all of the elements I like can make the leap. But Nuclear Arms 7 captured a meaningful taste of one of my favorite elements: Build Variety. And boy did this game need it. Because I had to play this game an unreasonable number of times. See, right next to those Amulets is my collection of Meltdowns. And I damn sure wasn't going to miss out on adding one more for LD44. I definitely would have thrown in the towel if it weren't for the build variety: a 5x speed build feels so different from a triple-spread damage+, or double-rate cooldown/accuracy. Exploring those possibilities kept me going through the grind. I spent around 6 hours across three sessions beating this one. I had to exploit the little edges: tediously shoot each box in the room before entering; draw the midboss into a pillar so he projectiles don't spawn, clear the spawn list of minor enemies in the boss fight by not shooting her while she's in her easier mode. It took those plus a nice present and a risky lategame bullet-time to finally, after all that, get me through to that sweet, sweet MELTD--- WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN "WINNER"!>!??? Having played 6 hours, I have a few notes: - Overall a super-tight action package that, with a few exceptions, made me feel like losing was my fault - As usual, many small nice touches of design - First store being before the first heal and not after it like all the others was a huge deal: early in my experience I needed the health, but this allowed me to still learn the upgrade system. Later it gave me a boost in motivation to get rolling with the new build, right at the post-death down moment - Off-center gun was a nice touch that created a strong/weak side and made encounters sometimes feel different rather than symmetrical mirrors - Ninjas. Oh boy. Important, but also responsible for the ultimate feelbad moments of the game. #1 is "my gun overheated and this ninja is leghumping me while I wait". #2 was the way that the ninja pushes other enemies forward at his speed, so, like, here comes that gunner PLUS a ninja at crazy speed one step out the door gameover. Important, but the only thing that in certain cases felt unfair. - Overheat was a great mechanic, usually hate it but in this game was awesome. But full-cooldown lock-out felt like too severe a punishment, I think the ultraslow RoF of 99% is already enough. - Oh gawd that two-triangles room after the midboss. That room was a huge hurdle for me. - Gunners have really excellent design in terms of range, rate of fire, speed of walking, etc. Nice work, they were really good at being easy when you were in control and playing carefully, but spiking quickly in danger level if you were careless or caught off guard. Great routine enemy that created a variety of experiences. - Big robots were low impact. They can punch through walls (so can Ninjas) - Sound was overall strong, great voice work yet again (Jurass-kicked lol). SFX were communicating important things to me that I didn't notice until quite a lot of play: 30 mins before I noticed "room clear" hiss, 3 hours before I noticed "enemy killed" gentle puff. Was looking for both well before I found them. - I know you didn't make the music but damn it was excellent! - Story was pretty good although not going to displace my previous favs of yours - Just loved the variety of upgrades, really made the game. Almost all were compelling. Risky presents were a nice touch. Exploding enemies felt a little underwhelming except in the triangle room. You really delivered an excellent package again, this time with more complexity, congrats! Now where's my Meltdown?
May 1 16:40:06 45m 51s The Current Sea ♥ 1 This was very cool. I loved the mood it created. The decision to have almost no instruction at the start was a nice touch, it put me into a mental space of looking for signs about what was happening. The one bit of text about not being able to move more in that direction was essential - at first I thought I was stuck on some bits of ground, but later its true meaning became clear. But without it I think I would have gotten stuck, so I feel you struck just the right balance. The mood was enhanced nicely by the gentle ambient music, which meshed well with the art style, but there was this cool dissonance between that mood and the tension of trying to back up just so without falling off... that duality peaked for me at the last of the moving platforms that go over open space (ie stepping onto the second-to-last moving bit). Really unique and well-realized idea, well done!
May 1 17:28:48 48m 42s Blood Chest ♥ 7 Oh wow, cool idea! I really liked the music, especially that little bridge section with the flurry of notes just before it loops. The illustrations are excellent. It shines the best on the title screen which is a serious eye-grabber. The detailed sprites don't do quite as well ingame, partly because the movement animation is accomplished by rotation, and rotation doesn't always play super-well with detailed pixel art. I loved the idea of the tongue, and the very unusual interaction of picking things up and flinging them around. It was a cool novel experience! I see you mentioned it as being similar to the driving game where your bendy arms move the cars, but somehow it didn't come to mind as familiar - this experience felt fundamentally different. I think it was all about the flinging, whereas that one was about adjusting or placing. I did have that initial struggle getting the hang of smashing the intruders, and even after some play I would still sometimes only get a stun when I expected a kill. But on the other hand, it was super satisfying to get a multi-kill by slamming one enemy into another! If I could tweak something, it would probably be about treasure that lands at the edge of the door. It can end up in a situation where it gets insta-evacuated on pickup, or at least close enough to feel that way. Maybe a minimum window of time between pickup and escape? Or maybe that's just what I deserve for letting it get that far. Because I did like the way that little lapses build up into harder-to-defend treasure, so my mistakes kind of snowball. Theme-wise the classic "mimic" was a nice idea, and you gave it a lot of character! The wet doey eyes when it's not attacking is a hilarious little touch to the art. This is a really unique experience - nice work!
May 1 18:18:59 50m 11s Super I-Egg ♥ 1 I got this far: https://imgur.com/DivXUU3 Not sure if that's anywhere near the end! This was a cool concept. Choosing what to buy at the start was an interesting idea to add, and you had a nice wide variety of choices. There was a little dilemma in the design, because what's interesting is the choices, but you make them and then play a really long time, and then when you finally run out of hearts it's hard to restart. So the game doesn't really emphasize its most interesting part as much as it could. Maybe there is some way to have several moments where you have a choice like that to make, instead of all at the start. I also really liked the bouncing projectile, that was another fun element I don't see in a lot of games! It makes for some fun moments. As others have pointed out, core control has a few splinters like sticking to walls which interrupt me from getting into flow state. Overall a nice entry - cool variety of upgrades, cool variety of enemies and obstacles, cool basic controls but just a bit rough around the edges.
May 1 18:25:55 6m 56s Coin Platformer ♥ 1 Real basic but not bad! I like that you realized the time was running out and you pulled it together into something that you can ship, because this is a complete experience with an end, and not something half-finished. I think that's a jam skill of its own!
May 1 18:42:14 16m 19s Humanmarketing ♥ 1 Nice graphics and a groovin' bassline! The span of possibilities and short game time had me try five or six lives. Could be cool if your early choices limit what options you might have later. Once I got married twice, and no apparent divorce in between... One thing I wasn't in love with was the popup after each choice that had to be clicked away, I feel like maybe that could be just part of the UI backdrop that I can look at if I want, but am not forced. Then I can fly through a little quicker to test out different lives. I never broke a million - my top value was a bit over 800k. Cool little entry!
May 1 18:59:02 16m 48s GREED ♥ 1 I should have seen that coming, but I didn't! I did go back and play it the other way though, very clever. I really liked the gritty lo-fi aesthetic, and I felt like the art, the music, and even the physics came together into a cohesive experience. I don't think the controls here are trying to compete with super mario bros and that sort of thing. It feels more like the guy from Pitfall went to the underworld. In that regard, I felt like the preposterous horizontal air movement was fine, where in a more "normal" platformer game it would be a problem. The section where you have to run without jumping over that wide spike pit showed me you were self-aware about this, and then I was totally OK with it. I agree with @repine that the font broke some of that cohesive thing, I don't think you needed anything fancy there, just a more old-school font. Maybe this one for example: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Press+Start+2P The plants were a cool mystery that left me wondering and experimenting, but not quite figuring it out (until the game pretty much told me directly at least). Another element I found intriguing was the treatment of blind jumps. Usually these are a huge no-no in platformers, but here they were used in a more deliberate-feeling and interesting way. The game initially signaled the safety of blind jumps by the chains of lamps or the presence of coins. Later, it started to remove these little indicators that things were safe, and it left me feeling uneasy in a good way that fit with the overall vibe. I don't know if I'm over-reading what you were up to there, but it doesn't really matter - I think I was pulled into the general vibe you were laying down here, and I dug it. Nice work.
May 1 19:40:00 40m 58s The Woods Without Life ♥ 0 Very charming art, story, and music! The way each character had their own thing was cool. I found it was a little tedious to walk around lost. There weren't a ton of landmarks, and sometimes whole screens of nothing where I couldn't even see I was moving. Maybe I experienced an extreme amount of this because I just couldn't find the last temple thing to get the leaf. I walked the edges all the way around twice, and then exploited a glitch to get outside the map completely and tried to find a second glitch to get into the final area after I gave up finding the third temple. Finally I found another way back into the game area, and I was just about to give up, but I thought NO, I'll try one more wander, but this time diagonal, and I happened to stumble into it! That meant I was able to complete the game! This is an indication of how charming the characters were, because I was invested enough to wander quite a lot to find out what happened. I was a bit sad that whatever happened at the end, I didn't really get to see it, I was clickspamming my fatkid magic wand at the boss and then he died but I click a few more times. So if there was any story or whatever, I didn't get to see it. I found a few issues while playing: - When your character uses his soul to open a door, he remains the active character even though control passes to another party member the camera does not follow you, here is an example of the party moving into the temple but the camera remaining behind: https://imgur.com/a/Ru43uK6 I almost gave up on the game here until I figured out you need to click to change active member to resolve this - You can escape out of the game area through these cracks in the edges: https://imgur.com/a/KYg34xX - You can strand party members who fall behind and go into a corner: https://imgur.com/a/GrLYyPG Arg I didn't mean to focus on the downsides. This was charming, interesting, and a REALLY impressive amount of scope for a compo entry! You had a lot of characters, abilities, and enemies! You created a large world that I was invested in seeing through to the end. Nice work!
May 1 19:51:19 11m 19s PANDEMONIUM: A Card Game ♥ 1 Wow, really strong on the graphics and music! They together nicely with the demon/hell theme, and really sell the overall vision. I managed to win, and it was really close - I think I won with my last card standing! Cool, simple game. I didn't even do the tutorial until after I played, and I managed to figure it out as I went along, although the numbers on the right confused me a bit and I had to watch them carefully to get it. The tutorial is nice and to the point - I should have used it right away. Solid scope for an LD compo. If expanded I'd want to see a few more unique elements on the card to give me a bit more to think about as I'm facing various scenarios. Nice entry!
May 2 14:12:38 18h 21m Glory of the Gods ♥ 3 Very cool idea! Dash attack is always a fun mechanic, nice to see a whole combat system based around it! I had a blast, played through a few times, got myself up to Champion. I liked that I felt like I could have done better, and every time I got hit it was my own fault. If I were fiddling with this, I might test out a couple of small tweaks to see how they played: the cooldown on my dash is super-important info and can change, so I'd like a really clear indicator; I find the enemies a bit tanky, leading to a situation where I have to grind them down with a repeated loop of actions, especially the shooty guy, I wonder how it would play if they just had less HP; I got hit most often by the bigger green melee enemy, I felt like his attack range was a little bigger than the graphics indicate and I thought I was out of range but got hit. This is a cool entry, I've played arena-fighter games before, but the dash thing creates a cool combat system that uses the space in an interesting way. The art, sound, and music were nice, and the crowd comments were a really nice touch. Well done!
May 2 14:41:22 28m 44s Greendy ♥ 1 Very nice presentation. I know you generated the colors and music, but the use of the generator tool is still to your credit, because the result felt harmonious. The only feedback I have here is that maybe fire could be red, I did not understand it was fire until the end when the text told me so. I struggled a little bit with the first moments of the experience. There was a lot of instruction on the screen for me to memorize before playing. Once I understood, I swiftly got wrecked. It's quite a tough game. The balance felt like this: tower prices go up while tree count goes down, so I cannot build much; meanwhile enemy count increases. The good part about this is that it drives the game away from stasis and moves toward conclusion. But it was difficult to feel agency. Since enemies fly about and don't follow paths, the usual strategic importance of where to place towers was not something I felt. The most interesting part of the strategy was the ability to sacrifice the long-term income for a short-term resource boost by chopping down your own trees. I played a game where I chopped down a lot of my own trees right at the start to build many towers, and I had a firm control through the early game, maybe up to 60-70 seconds, where almost nothing was on fire. But eventually my towers got so expensive and the enemy so numerous that I was still overrun and I got to maybe 130 seconds before losing. So great presentation, and enough strategic elements at play that I felt intrigued to tinker and try a few different things, which is a great start. With a bit more time to adjust the balance you might have found a really nice sweet spot!
May 2 14:59:02 17m 40s The Reapers Delight ♥ 1 Pretty simple core game, but decorated with a lot of charm and humor. I had some issues with the UI anchoring, and the reaper's dialog during the gameplay was offscreen: https://imgur.com/a/UuRyFmt I played on a computer hooked up to a TV, so it has an odd resolution. If you need a really simple core, I think the "goalie" thing is a nice way to go. I experimented with a few different approaches about where to stand, etc, and there was enough there to engage my brain while the flavor played out. Nice work!
May 2 15:24:00 24m 58s Bloody Penny ♥ 1 Very cool game! The coin-throwing is a nice core action that's pretty novel, and the way you have to retrieve it and have no offense for a while is a great feeling. The variety of traps is a real highlight here, and gives each room its own feeling and strategy. The physics might be a *little* too slide-y, but not in any way the degraded the experience. I had fun trying to get close enough to a zombie to combo-kill them with a triple-shot. It was risky to get that close but rewarding when I pulled it off. If I could add one thing to this, it would be some satisfying feedback on a successful hit against a zombie. One other thing - I initially thought the candles were a hazard I needed to avoid. Maybe force me to walk over some in the intro room so I learn they aren't? Great entry!
May 19 15:54:04 408h 30m About Ten Years ♥ 1 This is a really interesting game that evoked mixed feelings. I'm going to assume the artistic vision was to deliberately somewhat antagonize the player -- I know it's not an accident because the game is pretty up-front about it, with the character calling it a "trudge" and the stranger taunting me about my movement speed. It was really well done, because I thought the game was over at the first chunk and the title referred to something like "I just traded my life and I only had about ten years of it left" and I would have said that it was a nicely-done moody mysterious piece, and complimented you on the very nice graphics and sound, and said that the game length was just about right for the content. But then the game stretched on, and DELIBERATELY overstayed its welcome. It straight up rubbed my face in it! Very interesting. I had a variety of reactions popping up... I certainly got impatient, and was already pushing the shift key to check for a sprint feature even before I got to the part where I was slowed down and had to fetchquest 100 in a maze. The music really saved me here, I don't think I could have gone on without it. I even got straight-up slightly-angry and shouted two rooms away to my definitely-not-interested wife "WIFE THIS GAME IS OVERSTAYING ITS WELCOME AND TAUNTING ME ABOUT IT!" But I was also strangely stuck. I couldn't bring myself to just quit, as the story's attitude had been on point and I wanted to see what came next. By the end of the game when it was absolute torture to move, and horrifying to think about mis-remembering which way to go, I was walking through the "park" using diagonal inputs just to make the guy move faster on the screen even though he didn't get to the destination any quicker, and I was like "damn this game did something weird to me." I think it was all very deliberate, and you got me there like the "boiled frog," one tiny increment of discomfort at a time, when if I'd known where we'd end up I'd have opted out at the start. So very well done - this is a unique entry, I've played a ton of LD games in my time and there's lots of different crazy approaches people take, but is was a memorable one.
May 19 16:51:46 57m 42s Aging Toads ♥ 1 Wow, a very interesting action game with a unique movement system and a cool aesthetic, nice work. My top score was 255. 85 was my best after a few runs, before figuring out I actually should use the transform feature. It's a good game but here are a few thoughts anyway: ## Input Complexity: The tutorial was very nicely done, and important to include. But I feel it's a lot of buttons to throw at the user. What if you simply deleted the left, right, and crawl features? I never used them after I got the hang of the game, they seem redundant with the "long jump" move. Then you would have three movement buttons: high jump, long jump, tongue. That's a 50% reduction in movement input complexity but not much loss in player expressiveness. The design problem to solve then is that they player can't turn around and face left. But since this is a "move right quick because the timer is counting down" game, maybe you can turn that problem into a positive. ## Action Feel: You have chosen to go with the "committed jump" - when I press the button, I jump, and it is always exactly the same arc, and once launched I cannot do anything to alter the path. This is the unusual choice, but there are excellent games that operate this way. My reference for thinking about this is original Castlevania on NES. That game has committed jumps, and also a significant wind-up on the whip attack, which works together to create a tough-as-nails action game that requires always PLANNING one "chunk" ahead. I think Aging Toads runs into some tricky issues with this commit style of action, though. My problems were mostly around the high jump. The high jump has a very very long hang time. It feels like it's close to 1.5s. That's a frustratingly long time to be locked out of my controls. I hate to push this button because it feels bad and breaks flow. There is a second problem, which is about the shape of the jump. The jump is very vertical, but so are a number of the hazards. Consider this example: https://imgur.com/q0yQ1G0 What are my options? I must press high-jump to proceed. But I cannot press high-jump because I will leap into that slowly-rising quintuple-damage enemy. So I must wait. But I cannot wait, because my life is ticking down. Even if I do wait, the window of safety between when that enemy has left, and the next one comes out, seems to be shorter than the hang time of my jump. So if I'm careful, I am punished: I wait and lose life, then jump and feel helpless for 1.5s, watch as the next bug comes out, have no way to avoid it, and I hit it. Better to just jump now and take my lumps. The result of this is that I button mash. I play with this algorithm: "spam long-jump and tongue until I cannot move forward. Then hit high-jump once." If I hit enemies, well, so be it, because there was no way to avoid them anyway and stopping to wait just loses even more life. The blood-drop projectiles can also align poorly with my high-jump. I am not a big fan of double-jumping, but I would experiment with the possibility of pressing long-jump in the middle of high-jump, with the effect of instantly stopping the vertical movement of the high-jump and going straight into the forward-dash movement of the long-jump. This would mean I can jump up then dash forward to time gaps in the hazards, and I would never feel locked out of the action. ## Summary You have a really cool action core here but I think you need just a couple of key tweaks to keep me in the flow state. The art really works well, with the layers and semi-abstraction, plus the "red=danger", there's lot of nice touches. The tongue feels great to use, and the sound effects and music work really well together. I went on a ramble with the critique side, but that's because this is a good game with hot potential, not at all trying to smash it. Hope it's helpful. Thanks for the fun plays, nice entry!
May 19 17:15:00 23m 14s Monotheizmation ♥ 1 MONO ACHIEVED! I got to a 150-0 split vs the other god. He didn't even know what to do with his faith. I won by being proactive... I didn't find the villagers to have a very good handle on what needed doing, so my loop that I won with was like this: Be doing something all the time Go into rain mode, water all the things, just hold leftclick down and pass over all, filling meters Go into sun mode and do the same Go into baby mode and baby up the town (this was the key piece I missed for a few days) Repeat Totally ignore villager dialogs That was my winning strat, and got me all the way to Monotheizmation Achieved! Interesting take on the theme, with the double usage (my faith/life is my own currency, and the villagers are paying for my services with blood sacrifice). I enjoyed exploring the interlocking systems a while, and the graphics and UI were nice, with lively interactions so I could see what was going on. The system was a little bit too simple in the end, because I could just execute a set script to win, and if you flesh it out I think it needs a bit more in terms of variety of situations. Nice entry!
May 19 17:32:40 17m 40s Peak Myths ♥ 1 Haha, well done, definitely got a few laughs! I like how tight and responsive the interactions are -- you never make me wait for anything and lock me out, even if I'm spamclicking through something, you just interrupt the sound when required. That was a nice touch that was really important to get right in this game, and you did. It was a cool mix of clicker game and F2P parody. I saved up to get some beautiful legendary eyes to match my awesome hair, and when I finally got there the game did a hilarious trolling on me: https://imgur.com/Sd7i6Lt Nice entry!
May 19 17:44:52 12m 12s Goblin Castle ♥ 0 Fantastic animations, super-lively control feel, and great job with the sound and music. The gameplay was a bit too thin, and there were a few too many blind-jump situations or maybe just a mismatch between the camera view size and the jump size & move intertia. But those things can be tweaked (as I saw in the post-jam version) but dang that outter presentation layer you have is just excellent. Nice work!
May 19 18:08:35 23m 43s SURVIVE tonight ♥ 1 Pretty fun! It has nice graphics that give a feeling of being out in the woods, and the dark thick outlines on the enemies help because otherwise you would have a problem of green zombies on green trees, but with your art style this was not a problem. I did feel like there weren't that many decisions to make during the combat. I just held the fire button down forever. The movement speed difference between different weapons was a very interesting idea, but for a couple of reasons it didn't engage me. First, I didn't even realize I could switch weapons for like 3 waves. Second, it was pretty easy to just use the fast-move weapon and kite huge groups of them while shooting forever and not thinking about tactics. So why do anything else? Eventually I decided to make things spicy by trading myself down to 1% health, and then as soon as I used a slow weapon it got GAME OVER real quick. I think you have a nice core of the right features here, with movement, aiming, weapon switching, an upgrade system, several sorts of enemies, a menu interaction, waves. It's a lot of features to accomplish in a compo! So overall there was a lot, and all it felt pretty good. But there was something a little bit lacking in the core game interaction of move/shoot that left me on autopilot. Especially if this is your first entry, really nicely done! Look forward to seeing what else you come up with.
May 19 18:22:57 14m 22s Soulbound ♥ 1 Hey, I'm sorry, I tried to play your game but I ran into some technical difficulties. I play on a computer connected to a TV that only supports certain resolutions, and your game's UI elements seem to require a specific resolution or they go off screen and can't be activated. Here's a screenshot of what it was like in combat mode for me: https://imgur.com/OJ4wDkp I was trying to play with blind keystrokes but somehow that activated the guard conversation even during combat, and then I couldn't see the enemies I was fighting (more sinners off screen). I tried playing in windowed mode too but even more important UI was off the screen there (the yes/no to "do you want to hire me" which left me locked out of the game completely). Sorry, I know you need reviews to get to your 20, but since I played so little of the game (just the initial town) I felt like I couldn't rate you. If there's something different I need to do to get it to run with the controls on-screen, leave a reply mentioning my username, and if I have time before the deadline I'll give it a shot. I commented here but did not rate since I didn't really get to play. But the graphics look really nice and the theme seems interesting, so I wish I could.
May 19 20:00:14 1h 37m Galactic Boarder ♥ 1 I loved the idea of this, and also the unusual look of the graphics, which were pretty cool. The gentle sliding sound effect was also a nice touch. But I had a hard time engaging with the gameplay. I wanted so hard to love this that I'm gonna go nuts here and offer a variety of pointers. I don't do this to suggest the game is bad -- I only put in the effort on specific pointers when I feel like there's awesome potential, so I hope this is helpful and not hurtful OK? Here goes: If I could change one thing about this game, I would change the boundary so that it was like a bowl the turns you back into the main play area, instead of an instant you-lose out of nowhere. Flying out of the map is super frustrating and extremely common. I don't think I ran out the timer even once, actually. The camera also needs some love. Right now it just points forward, but a lot of times I need to be looking down at the terrain. Here is an example of a moment where I feel the camera logic has failed me: https://imgur.com/FkK44Xv I also struggled a bit to understand the controls, as sometimes I would get stuck out of speed at the bottom of an area. Was that the effect of water? Then other times I would make a sharp turn and go flying off the map. Does holding W speed me up, and what is the point of jumping? Because the terrain is influencing my movement (which I love about the game concept!) it means that it's harder for me to grasp the impact my inputs are having on the game. When I tried to experiment it was hard because of the risk of flying off the map. There was no safe or clear way to learn this game. The R button, oh boy. Please make it instant restart. The way it spends five seconds to taunt me every single time is a huge downer. Lastly, the coins seem to have a really small collision trigger, and I think I managed to pick up a total of two or three, and only by boarding by them like 5 times. So in summary, cool unique look, great idea for what could be a super-fun trick-jamming flow-physics game that I would love, but too many splinters for me to really get into any flow state. With the right tune-up this could be a killer entry, interested to see what you come up with next time.
May 19 20:08:04 7m 50s Island Chain ♥ 0 Very cool take on the theme! I got 5800 as my top score, but I wasn't sure how to handle a budding hyperinflation. Graphics and gentle music created a nice atmosphere, and the overall package was unique and interesting. If I could tweak one thing, I would make it not use ESC to restart. I was playing the web version in fullscreen mode, and ESC gets intercepted by the browser, so restarting got weird. Nice job!
May 19 20:44:56 36m 52s Blood Pressure ♥ 1 This is a tight little action game here! Some old-school brutal arcade fun. The blood thing works great. It's on point for the theme, looks fabulous in the graphics, and does work as a design tradeoff where attacks and movement are a tradeoff against health, and you can buy it back if you can free up the space to hunker down for a bit. The difficulty level was over my head. I watched your playthrough and you make it lose easy, but I got my ASS kicked. I remember your game Mouse and Blade, which was similarly difficult. But that one I could take in little chunks, and advance to see what was next. In this one, you mercifully didn't send me all the way back to the start, but I felt a bit less like I was progressing to new things and so I didn't smash my face against the wall over and over for as long as I did with your earlier game. What seriously wrecked me were the blue dudes. I just never found an effective counter... although I watched your playthrough after and you're clearly not getting hit by them much at all! I think the biggest difference is you never miss a coin. I'd be in control, and recharging between each guy, and then I would lose control in one of two ways: either the coin would come and I'd wiff a jump at it and then spend to much time getting to it, letting dudes pile up which leaves me behind on my recharge time, or else I'd get like 3-4 blue guys in a row and lose it. The green guys were slow enough that there was more slack in the system for me. I never got past the second level (not counting the tuturoial/title, which was very nicely done btw). So high marks here, the concept and execution are on-point, the controls tight, the graphics and sound really strong. I just wasn't up to the skill level and despaired.
May 19 21:02:27 17m 31s Inflate Me to the Moon ♥ 1 Haha, that was a zany journey! Both of my hands are aching slightly, and it was good to have breaks in between rounds. This is super-charming, and I found a lot of little touches to enjoy, from the fish hammer to the way the flight music would shift and introduce new elements to mark the transition from one round's section to the next. I like the way the art takes on a very different feel by having the couple of, umm, dirty specks on it, rather than being a straight color. That's a really effective small touch I might just have to experiment with stealing for my own programmer art. This game was definitely weird, but it was a wild ride that I enjoyed, and it was just about the right length to feel substantial but not wear out its welcome. Well done!