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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Antti Haavikko's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 7 16:13:22 | γγ―γ©γ¦Bloodless | ♥ 9 | Start with nothing and end with nothing, with the exception of maybe some skill... Very nice! Art was quite top notch and music fit very well. I really liked the difficulty (expect you could have hinted the read weapon thing in the game too). I already gave up once before noticing the text about it in the description. After that it was quite smooth sailing. Either the dash timing was a bit strict or the hitboxes were quite unfair, not sure which. Well at least the final boss swing hitbox was ridiculous. But he was the final boos so I'll let it pass. Just could have given him a bigger sword... π The enemies really liked to be passive and hang around off screen. Especially so on the second level where I spent most of my time not understanding the red weapon mechanic and not paying enough attention to the second swing of the enemy. The enemy passivity (them running away if you're too close and getting closer if you're too far), they just need to be baited too much and it felt a bit slow and tedious to play the waiting game with them. And the terrain hitboxes were kinda big and weird (at least too vertical) on some places at least. The randomness of health drops made some runs way easier than others. Like on my second and final attempt at the boss, like every enemy before that (and those waves were super easy because the enemies get stuck in the terrain) dropped a heart so I could have even face tanked the boss. Nice touch btw that you refill the health between levels. Very minor details that could have easily been disregarded but not having the player be at an disadvantage after successful level clear is the way to go especially since there is no real punishment for dying. Of course it would be different if there was a maximum death count or something like a scoring system which punishes one for dying. There were some very minor graphical glitches. Like at least once the between levels doors slid on top of each other so that the handles were on the screen edges instead of meeting in the middle. And quite ofter there were some z-ordering issues with the sprites, but that's not anything to bark at really. Anyways, good job! Finished wanting more so that's a good sign I guess. But just making it longer wouldn't cut it, would need more enemy variance etc. | |
| Oct 7 16:25:24 | 12m 02s | No Allies | ♥ 1 | Well, I can't really play it since it wasn't a HTML5 game after all. But now that you've baited me to look at the source, I have some questions! π 1) Is that really all the code you had? Well at least a big bulk of it is in the scene files etc so I wouldn't really call those full sources. I always add the whole project folder (excluding builds, unity temp, lib and obj folders) so one could just pop it open and build it themselves. 2) Why on earth do those files not have an extension. They seem to be C# files though... But good job on finishing your first game jam game (and compo too)! It's an accomplishment in itself that not everyone can say about themselves. Too bad about the over scoping but it often happens to first timers (and even to many nth timers π). It's a thing that comes with time and experience. Gimme a ping if you actually do have an HMTL5 (or mac) build and I'll give it a go! |
| Oct 7 16:32:03 | 6m 39s | Writers Block | ♥ 2 | That is just a Windows version inside the zip. There is another dropdown on Unity build window for the selected build platform too (even though the left menu says them all) and you need to build each one independantly. unitybuilds.png |
| Oct 7 16:53:18 | 21m 15s | Aphantasia | ♥ 2 | So, on the first level I tried to read and play at the same time... big mistake. That's why it looks like I missed the table and night is inside the house. aphantasia.png Very clever idea and nicely executed. Obviously more content in the form of more elaborate stories and bigger (or even any) variance in the objects that could be used. Btw, does it penalize you if you add in objects that aren't supposed to be there? So could you just do a big mess and still get it right? Well, not like the score really mattered anyway I think. I had to try it out... perfect.png Perfect indeed! Anyways, good job and big thanks for the mac version. β₯οΈβ₯οΈ Been browsing games, rating and commenting for almost two hours now and this was just the second game I actually got to play... |
| Oct 8 15:16:55 | 22h 23m | Fearless Islands | ♥ 0 | Met my doom on the hands of the treant. Luck just wasn't on my side, I kept missing and they just kept pummeling me with criticals. The look was great. Especially the cards and UI components, the map view was a bit bland in comparison. The combat log messages not fitting the boxes was quite off-putting. And in my opinion, the messages scrolled the wrong way and could have been cleared each round to lessen the confusion about what happened and when. And they were too fast to follow anyway, I just watched the numbers on the cards. And I still have no clue what the right side number on the cards means. Or what is the difference between normal attack and magic attack. Loads of typos that made the game more seem less professional and more confusing than it needed to be. For example, it should be "magic", "reduce x by y" and I still have no what the sandals even do. I'm guessing they give more evasion. And speaking of which, do the defence and evasion boosts stack Γ la Pokemon or are they completely useless and per round? fearlessislands.png The combat wasn't deep enough to be fun really. At least in the beginning (dunno how long the game is though). Might be that I just scratched the surface looking at the empty feats window but every new card was the same but (maybe) just a bit more powerful. The combat felt like rock paper scissors where rock beats everything but it doesn't work half of the time. And sometimes the rock of your opponent is just bigger than yours. And requiring two button clicks (and buttons that weren't even close to each other) wasn't necessary. Why would one need to change their mind after clicking a card once? Think if you're playing solitaire and after every move, a dialog appeared and made sure you intended to do the move. Anyways, might seem like I'm only criticizing but that's not the case, you sure weren't lying about the pleasant graphics and the game in itself seemed quite bugless. It's just the actual combat gameplay mechanic that needs more depth and polish. Good job! |
| Oct 8 18:36:00 | 3h 19m | Monks Can Into Space | ♥ 4 | Pretty cool! Ended up wanting more so I guess that's a good sign. Went for another try and managed to raise my score but still didn't quite figure out the flower watering mini game. All others were very clear and easily enough explained by a single image glance. monks.png Well I had to kinda squint my eyes to fully understand the explanation screens because of the crispy super blocky pixel graphics on a big screen. This game is one where having non fullscreen option would have really benefited the outcome. Both, making the graphics look better and also making the gameplay, well maybe not easier really, but more pleasant since the mouse cursor wouldn't need to travel such long distances (especially in the meditating mini game). It would kinda be like a user setting, which do you prefer, speed or precision? Maybe just my mouse work isn't what it used to be, I don't really play games on computer anymore. Also could have extended the gameplay some more quite easily by repeating the mini game sequence with increasing difficulty until failure. Right now it seems that the perfect score would not be too hard to achieve. Anyways, good job! edit: Definitely agree with @pashashef, I lost my cursor several times as well... |
| Oct 8 19:05:50 | 29m 50s | Collect Recyclables | ♥ 1 | I used to think of myself as a THPS2 grind/manual master but I can barely manage to get to around $9 mark. π€· There is some missed potential here. Since the tower never stays upright for even a split second, it really becomes a single button game. Well switching them at first is all fine and dandy to manage the speed but doing a lean switch when the tower is high enough (something like 8+) seems to be nigh impossible. The super slow start really dicourages replayability. After a few tries, the slog to the interesting bits (8+) feels monotonous and like an eternity and then the actual action is over in seconds. I don't really have a solution to this problem though. Somehow would need to make beginning part more interesting and the actual interesting and exciting part more lengthy. Never mind, I figured it out. And the answer is, HATS! You already earn money in the game so just keep total of the earnings and hats and other cool swag players can decorate their stick figure with. I bet that would encourage people to give few more tries. Would work on me at least. I'm a simple man, I see a cool hat, I gotta go for it. Problem solved! πππ And yes, mspaint graphics are always π π Good job! |
| Oct 9 15:42:30 | 20h 36m | Blind | ♥ 0 | Yup, same issue as other have on mac: blind.png Kinda weird, never encountered this on a Unity game before. |
| Oct 9 15:53:43 | 11m 13s | Dr & Dr | ♥ 0 | What a brilliant start! Really caught me off guard. Is this really where it ends though? Nothing does anything and it's stuck here at 0. drdr.png Well at least it didn't crash my computer here like it seems to have done to some others. |
| Oct 9 17:13:28 | 1h 19m | Drake Hits Rock Bottom | ♥ 3 | Well, I died on my first attempt right near the end because I tried to fight everything and you're a huge dick in your spike placement. There is no way to fight the enemies without taking damage. Can't do it from behind because the attack is so damn so they're already miles away then your swing finishes. I mean what is this crap? Yet another unavoidable damage unless you know the level beforehand. drake.png Obviously my second attempt was pretty smooth sailing because I knew to avoid fights. And I'm glad I stuck around for a second try because that ending was great. Easily my rating would have been worse if I didn't go for the second run. There was this weird delay before the final boss appeared though. I got to run back and forth the whole floor couple of times thinking I must have missed the "key". But then finally he decided to drag his butt to the face me and I instantly knew that would be my key to victory. The overall platforming didn't feel very great either. Jumps felt very floaty and not being able to control the jump height coupled with spikes on the ceiling is basically the same thing as blind drops which you had plenty of too. But surprisingly I don't think any of those blind drops resulted in (at least harsh) punishment. Some platform colliders also didn't quite fit what they looked like they should and quite often some background elements looked more like platforms than the actual platforms. There also was this classing unity wall hugging thing. Unless it was intentional. And if it was intentional, you should probably indicate it in the sprite and still include some slipping. People aren't glue! And if you wanna not do that, the easiest way is to drop the player physics material friction to zero. classicunity.gif Btw, music didn't loop. Did you not think anyone would take that long to finish. Well, maybe I wouldn't have either if I didn't stop to take screenshots and record gifs. π Anyways, good job! |
| Oct 10 16:42:14 | 23h 28m | World Not Found | ♥ 0 | Well, I'm taking a bit of a break to come write this while I'm stuck with a completely fucked up font. It started up being quite simple but for some unknown reason it keeps getting changed and getting more and more screwed up. Now there are only like 5 different letters and some many duplicates of them that it is kinda impossible to decipher anything. I managed to make sense of the command list (except for their descriptions I guess?) but no clue what to use them on... nicefont.png And now that I came here and saw a glance of your screenshots (and obviously couldn't resist about looking at the non fucked up manual, it was all smooth sailing. Still have a feeling I did something wrong and was supposed to fix the alphabet somehow. But that hint message reset right back to "reboot world one" that I didn't quite know what to do. So I hacked my way with a completely broken alphabet. I also did the image puzzle before the reboot sequence. worldvictory.png There were some huge performance issues and I dunno why. At start it kinda ran fine except for a minor hiccup every five seconds or so but it got much worse the longer I played. Especially when the console was rendering text. That timer must leak or increase or something cause it kept getting slower and slower to render a single letter (or hieroglyph in my case at least). So near the end when I output the manual, it took way more than a minute to fully show up. And while it was doing so I tabbed out to start writing this and it even lagged my writing to Chrome. And I'm on mac btw. Really liked it, was right up my alley. Well the font thing was annoying (and the text slowdown didn't help either) but that also wouldn't have been so bad if the alphabet stayed 1:1 and not 5 different letters are square. The rest of the game paled in comparison difficulty wise to that's why I think I did something completely wrong. The wire puzzle hint about shot circuiting wasn't really helpful but that puzzle was quite easily solvable by just fiddling around for a bit. Other than that, I found the "hints" way too hand holdy. Anyways, good job, you've made an interesting a fun game! π |
| Oct 10 18:22:22 | 1h 40m | Spare Change | ♥ 0 | Managed to beat it! And in some weird sadistic way in the end I also kinda started enjoying it... rehab.png There was quite a lot of wrong with it. Or at least things that could be majorly improved. Lets start with the biggest fun killer in the game, the boring and useless cooldowns. I mean, let the people play how they want without adding too many restrictions. The cooldown should be per bin basis and not global. So if someone wanted to triangle run their way between three bins all the way to rehab, why not allow that? Or if someone just likes sink too much into the protagonist and gamble all their earnings, why not? Now you're just limiting the playability options to just gathering trash bags and loose coins while every now and then rummaging through bins (begging took way too much time). The remainder texts about the cooldown were also super annoying. I mean the "I should wait a while before..." texts. Yeah I get it after the first one! It just added another dumb delay so you couldn't do those sweet search & beg in quick succession combo tactics. Next next issue was the map itself. It was flat and boring and since everything looked the same, it was easy to get lost. The minimap was so zoomed in that its only functionality was spotting otherwise ridiculously hard to notice coins. The buildings weren't obvious enough to distinguish from each other at least before you learned what and where they were. The biggest offender being the rehab since it didn't even have a unique color. I mean, for example the restaurant could have had some golden arcs like some restaurant that shall remain nameless. Casino could have had a flashing neon sign. And dunno for the rehab, maybe like a hospital association would be enough and you could have a red cross on it. The dump was actually pretty ok but even that couldn't easily be spotted from far enough because of its height and color that kinda made it blend with tree trunks. If there was some terrain shaping, it would be way more interesting to look at, navigate and even that would be places more recognizible because you wouldn't be only pinpointing yourself on those few mark buildings. Extra landmarks with no functionalities would do wonders too. Like some different looking buildings, big rocks, whatever really. And last easy fix to help with the navigation on not getting lost is to add a north marker to the minimap. The controls could use some love too. The mouse somehow jittered weirdly. Dunno how to explain it really. And don't even get me started with the sprint mechanic. It was completely pointless and just there to make the player miserable. I mean, it was just "press and hold a button every now and then not to die of boredom" really. Each (held) button in a game should have some kind of draw back or flip side, or just made automatically be on 100% of the time. For example in a shooting button... it could have ammo management, knock back or slower movement while shooting. Otherwise it could just autofire all the time. Stamina management works in games with combat or where you need to run away from things but not really in a explorative walking/gathering game. Well at least you didn't put a green donut on the middle of the screen like BotW. Anyways, good job! π |
| Oct 11 17:11:06 | 22h 48m | Pile of Corpses | ♥ 2 | Pretty cool! pileofcorpses.png Clever idea, very original. Nice overall execution too. Didn't overstay its welcome either, the game ended just before the mechanic got boring. Of course it could be built upon to get more content. Some kind of shopping system and different enemies are the first thing that come to mind. I have some minor gripes with the controls. The biggest issue was losing the cursor and clicking outside the screen. Should probably lock the cursor and use custom "virtual cursor" that could also be more visible too. Maybe drawing a line from gun barrel to cursor would help too. Well, a laser sight could be a viable purchase in the shop. π Also machine guns so you wouldn't need to keep clicking. The grounded detection for jumping was very finnicky when on top of enemies. I had few times when I was standing on an enemy, went for a jump and just nothing happened and I fell to my doom. Also pressing down on a roof was a feature I wasn't ready for. I tried it in hopes of panning the camera down and of course again, I fell straight to en enemy. And now that I'm on the topic of camera, it could use some love too. The follow target should probably be the cursor and not the character. Or to be more exact, the mid point between cursor and character clamped to some nice maximum value. It makes no sense that when I'm moving right and shooting left that the camera is panned 2/3 way to look to the movement direction and I can't really see what I'm shooting. Would really help with those clearing sections where you're on the roof and have no idea what is under you. Those situations felt quite awkward also because you can't shoot straight down. The art was clean and nice. Could have used some more effects and variations though. Maybe some color/face variations on enemies. Definitely some particle effects like for jumping/landing (enemy too), bullet hit when not killing. And those same actions could use a sound effect too. The shooting sound wasn't bad. If I'm not fully mistaken, there even was some variation in it so it didn't get monotonous very fast. But it still kinda did because it pretty much was the only sound effect. I think the only other one was the killing sound but that was kinda bland and quiet in comparison that it didn't matter that much. It would have needed more oomp, that *"yess you just killed something"* badassery. And next to nice and bassy sound effects, one easy way to add that oomp to actions is the pinnacle of game design, screen shake! Of course it's easy to go overboard with it and some people don't like it (or get nauseous) but god damn it makes games feel more dynamic and less boring. And I'm pretty damn sure you used Cinemachine and it's super easy to do with that. Well, not like making camera move randomly for a small amount of time is rocket science anyway. Anyways, good job, really liked it! πππ |
| Oct 12 13:58:01 | 20h 46m | My Hope | ♥ 2 | Pretty cool art style. Obviously the actual level graphics were quite bland (especially compared to the tutorial). But the character and monsters looked nice. So just some more level decorations and particle effects and it would look and feel top notch. Music was well done and very fitting. Somehow it managed to applease both sides of gameplay, combat and more lulling exploratory searching for more mobs to kill. Obviously it would have needed more sound effects and some variation in them as well. And then to the controls. Jumping felt a bit weird. It was nice that you tried to implement a variable height jump but it didn't quite work perfectly. It felt a bit too immediate, so to say, that he upwards motion stopped right when you release the jump button. And I'm not a big fan jumping mechanic that keeps jumping as long as you hold the jump button. Especially when trying to jump to a high platform, you needed to hold the button to reach the highest apex but then immediately jumped again from the corner of the platform you were trying to land to. And speaking of jumping, this was a ridiculously hard jump to make... myhope-hijump.png Shooting had its issues too. It was kinda awkward that it didn't really aim where the mouse cursor was. Mouse just moved the crystal/light up and down and shooting was the vector between it and the character. It resulted in pretty much having to stare at the light when trying to shoot at mobs. The shooting range felt a bit short too. You had to get very close to your target and quite ofter that staffs just spawn enemies right at your location when you're trying to destroy them. Some kind of warning effect at a spot where mob is about to spawn would be nice. Well, the enemies were very unthreatening anyway. The only times I took damage were either when they spawned at me or when I had to do a blind drop and a mob was under me waiting. The final level felt a bit maze-like and the searching for last staff aspect didn't feel very engaging either. If the levels were any bigger, it would definitely need some kind of arrow pointing to the remaining staff when there is only one left. Then the level could be bigger and more mazey. This red herring on the last level wasted so much of my time... myhope-longjump.png But finally I did manage to find the last one! myhope-done.png The upgrading mechanic felt kinda pointless. As I already mentioned, the life was no problem since the enemies didn't pose a threat at all. I poured all my points to damage and it didn't fell much stronger. Dunno about the attack speed then (if that's what it even was). Seems kinda counter productive in such a simple combat. Both just mean more damage. It would need stuff like crits to separate them more and even that would need lots of balancing. Anyways, I think I've rambled enough. Congrats and good job! π |
| Oct 13 14:51:45 | 24h 53m | Hedgehog - Winter is Coming | ♥ 1 | Pretty cool and clever idea. Took me until second level to actually understand what the hell was going on with the level "building". In the first one the platforms seemed to just appear where I clicked. π As the game had almost exact same jumping mechanic as the previous game I played, I can save my writing fingers and almost fully copy a paragraph from the feedback I wrote there. Jumping felt a bit weird. It was nice that you tried to implement a variable height jump but it didnβt quite work perfectly. It felt a bit too immediate, so to say, that he upwards motion stopped right when you release the jump button. And Iβm not a big fan jumping mechanic that keeps jumping as long as you hold the jump button. Especially when trying to jump to a high platform, you needed to hold the button to reach the highest apex but then immediately jumped again from the corner of the platform you were trying to land to. Wasn't a huge issue here since there wasn't much precision required but felt a bit off anyway. The hang time felt too long also and was contrasted even more by the very quick downward acceleration (when releasing the button at the apex). I think those jumping numbers need to tweaking to get them just right. The look was ok, of course it could have used some more flare. I know animations can be too daunting of a task for jam games but even adding something as simple as little bit of squish and stretch does wonders for making the sprite less static. So something like this, when the character has vertical velocity strech it a bit (something like X 0.9 and Y 1.1) and at the apex and landing squish (X 1.1 and Y 0.9). Here is an example from my own game. Even though it has full jumping animation, it didn't feel quite right before I added in the stretch and squish. And the wee bit of screen shake also adds to the feel of impact on the landing. among-jump.gif Obviously the game would need more audio work. Of course music can be hard if you're not musically talented (like me for example, but I try to do it anyway). But even something simple masks away the monotonousness of sound effects quite nicely. Even though you've opted out from audio category. It (and the lack of it) can still be a factor in mood at least. And you had way too little sounds effects too. Was it just the "eating" sound? Why no jump, land and most importantly, a victory fanfare! And I say eating in quotes because, umm, what were those yellow dots even? I've only actually seen a hedgehog twice in my 36 years of existence but I know for a fact that hedgehogs aren't that small compared to apples and their diet does not only consist of tiny yellow M&Mβs. π€ I had this weird feeling of familiarity with that font. Then I tabbed back to this site and noticed where I know it from. π π And then to my final and favourite part, the actual gameplay! My biggest issue was the need to keep jumping and flicking the level state forward and back to "preview" the next stage. Some kind of onion skin system where you would see like dimmer ghost versions of the next stage might work here. The display text for showing food count was completely unnecessary since it was a one screen game. Even the level stage might be better represented visually instead of text along the lines of: 0/5 β‘οΈ β¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈ 1/5 β‘οΈ β¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈβ¬οΈ And so on... Anyways, good job! Wished there was more, it ended right when it started to get interesting. π |
| Oct 13 16:06:49 | 1h 15m | void window | ♥ 1 | Neat idea but it was very confusing, seemed quite buggy and the writing umm, wasn't great. Well it was kinda cool that it had this weird broken kinda kinds book style of narrative but the hints were just almost Castlevania II level of cryptic. And the fact that you had to keep randomly clicking everywhere made it quite frequent that you just skip the next important bit of dialogue and need to start randomly clicking through the whole screen again. They should probably stay on screen or at least repeat after a delay of not making any progress. There was no need for the dialogue to be positioned on the corner either. Would have more sense to have them where well, where subtitles usually are, centered and near the bottom. Also might have been nice to differentiate who is speaking my changing the color of the text. This was a big cause of confusion at the start. cursor.png Now I've started several times over and it's just more and more confusing the further I get. My first try I got to garden, then there was the leaves and something about dropping paint. Scoured the whole screen without finding it (didn't occur to me that if the character drops it, it would be like 10 meters in front of her). Went through the first door and when I came back, the leaves were gone so I though it bugged out and I was soft locked. So that was reset number one. Second try I actually found the green paint, added the doors and went through one of em. Not quite sure what there even was because at this point I reset again as I started writing this feedback and wanted to try the leaves disappearing bug again. Surely enough, the leaves did disappear but the paint bucket was still there. Time to paint the flowers and add in the doors.. Went through a different door this time. I add in barbecue, the cook and even manage to find the red paint. Then the dude tells me something about painting the door. But none of the colors do anything on the door. And I can't find anything else either and can't go back through the door. Why are the doors context sensitive? Sometimes they work even without color and sometimes they don't. And now that the amount available colors increases, so does the amount of random clicking everywhere. Now I need to examine every pixel on the screen and try painting everything all the colors. And I can see this only getting more and more tedious. But now I think I'm stuck again. Can't find anything new to add, nothing accepts any of the colors I have and the door doesn't work. Here goes reset number... lost count. Hope I remember which door I picked the last time. Well, now I see the messages warning about the doors that I need them to be right color to come back. Well that's a bit of a dick move unless the color I need is always in that room too. Looking at your screenshots, the barbecue room door seems to be red but when I got the red paint in that room, it still didn't let me paint the door red so dunno. Lemme try another door this time... marie.png Another quite paint in the butt room to get through. Not hints even given at all before I had already pretty much solved it. It also said there is a blue liquid in the bottles, yet I got purple paint. That looks like some kind of chemistry stuff, is this a reference to Marie Curie? Next room! Swimming pool room, easy, next! Girl and unicorn, can't find anything else and no hints, great. Not even stuck here, next! Okay, now to find some stars. Another huge pain in the butt room. Wanna play battleship with 4 times the size of normal grid? And btw, I only have three one cell size ships and I'm not gonna tell you if you hit right next to one. When I finally find the moon and all the stars, I get the paint and the yellow door doesn't even work. I'm ready to give up. I really liked the idea but the execution would have required some major changes. The biggest issue was that the text change near cursor just wasn't enough to notice the interactive spots. Anyways, I'm getting near the character limit of posts, good job! π |
| Oct 13 19:16:44 | 3h 09m | From Nothing | ♥ 1 | Well that was fun! Like the purest for of roguelikes, stripped down to its core. Learning by failing and failing a lot. This ended up being my best run. I knew I had like 50/50 chance of meeting my fate on the jaws of that wolf. And yeah, that happened... fromnothing.png The wolves were something I didn't fully understand. I managed to figure out snakes pretty well and could quite consistently juke them out and the same method kinda worked for wolves too but like half of the time they still got me. Same kinda goes for the snakes too but they managed to bite me much less frequently. And then there were those shops (or what even those dudes with signs were). It seems like the character was always carrying one item and couldn't get from the store if already carrying something. Didn't feel like I could actually pick from the two options either. I'm quite intrigued to know if those were even implemented or did I just completely miss something. And now I wanna go for few more tries... π€ So yeah, I did that but also went for a bit of a cheat: ``` var items = { stick: new Item('stick', 1, 1, ['fight']), paper: new Item('paper', 1, 1, ['hole']), stone: new Item('stone', 2, 1, ['fight', 'fight2']), coin: new Item('coin', 1, 1, []), flower: new Item('flower', 1, 1, ['girl']) } ``` Just a mere sight of this made it abundantly clear what to do. Seems like I was completely wrong about enemies. Guess I just pretty much always had one of the fighting items. But now I think the game glitched out on me. Next phase doesn't begin and the shopkeep oviously won't let me trade. Sigh, time for another reset (which would be a lovely addition in the actual game even though yeah, just refreshing the site works). fromnothingflower.png Btw, not a big fan of these unfair unwinnable situations where you just aren't given the necessary tools and the enemies just keep piling up. Also once met a level with three pits and I had only one means for getting paper on that level and I even carried paper from previous level too. And I was hoping that pit plus paper would be away to get rid of some enemies but alas, wasn't meant so. fromnothingwat.png And after all my troubles, I'm served a softball like this on I think level three. And I get to even choose from two mates π fromnothingsoftball.png All you really had to do was to make the game 100% solvable just with pure stubborness and tiny twist of perception was to add a sound que and animation hinting on the stick and rock usage. Everything should click right after that, no need to get too hand holdy. Too bad I never managed to use paper on a pit before I spoilt it for myself. A big reason for that is probably because I didn't figure out it was trading, not choosing from two options. And then for the extra obvious section of the feedback. The art was super cute and audio work was nice too. Nothing bad to say about those really. Except for the missing animation/sound on item usage I mentioned earlier. Of course there were some very minor issues like sprite z-ordering and some flickering but nothing too bad. Anyways, awesome job! I loved it... β€οΈπ |
| Oct 14 16:11:28 | 20h 54m | ReWorld | ♥ 3 | I got the top time where it matters! That squeeze through the rainbow slimes was ridiculously tight. reworld.png First of all, the Mac version worked but needed some work. For anyone else who might try it, the following makes the app work and not throw a worthless information dialog of "can't open the app": ``` cd ReWorld.app/Contents/MacOS chmod +x Re-World ``` Neat idea but it was painfully slow to slog the cards back and forth. And quite weird idea to have a bunch of useless lore or quality of life cards (light, enemy showing, dragon, music) on a game with timed leaderboards. Nice to see a tutorial but it was missing a bunch of stuff. Why not add the controls there too? And the biggest mishap, telling you need to play all cards on first part and then suddenly changing the rules in the second part to have a key (hidden) which you don't mention at all. Had to do the whole sequence several times before realizing that and the walking speed (and the amount of back and forth you had to do) made my brain rot trip by trip. I even tried to block the laser with the box but obviously that didn't work. You also tell that the box can't be pushed and don't introduce the strength card at all. The (only) level with the second platter was also a bit tricky because the sudden introduction of it. As there hadn't been one before, I wasn't really ready and looking for it. It didn't really stand out that much either and looked like a wall or something to me. Maybe some embroidery on the lining or some shining animation or something would fix that. Other than the app issue, the Mac version worked just fine. Didn't encounter any big bugs either. I think the only one was when you barely missed dropping a card to the plate, it was on the floor but if you tried to pick it up, the was instantly played and shrinked but still was on the floor. Happened to me several times but luckily it didn't really affect gameplay at all. >Also if you encounter some in the linux or macos version, try the windows build. This isn't really an option if you're not on a Windows machine... Anyways, good job! π |
| Oct 15 16:14:30 | 24h 03m | Spooky Japes | ♥ 1 | I would have wanted some more actual "gamey" elements. Right now it was just pretty much run around mashing click until you get x amount of money. No tactic, no skill, no nothing. Okay, lets spitball some mechanics that could make it more interesting... - **Time limit:** Halloween night is over sooner or later and people go home. Would add an actual end and enable top scoring. People are only gonna play endless game once. But an end, fail state and a way to do better encourage repeated (and with that, prolonged) plays. - **Comboing:** The more people you scare at once, the more money you get. Should scale up exponentially so that scaring five people at once would be way way more than scaring five people individually. - **Voice meter:** You only have limited amount of scares. When you run out of voice, you can buy hot chocolate or something at your house to refill it. - **"Enemies":** The costumes that are scarier than yours could scare you and you'd lose money. Couldn't just be brain dead and zone out mashing click if not paying attention was punished. Sprinting was pointless. There was no penalty for it, no need for it and it didn't really even increase speed that much. The run speed should have been the default movement speed. Right now you're only forcing people to hold down one button 100% of the time or wasting their time. The look was fine. Nice amount of variety in the people, costumes and houses. Other than those, the environment looked quite bland. Concrete on concrete. Could be spiced up with some more environmental variety. Maybe some green patches, flowers and trees. Maybe some sandy smaller paths leading to houses or where ever. Some kind of water feature could work too. The look was quite static though. Even adding a a wee bit of animation in the form of scaling makes it feel way more alive... japes.gif Some weird choppiness in the character movement. And the camera had a difficult time keeping up too. I can wholeheartedly recommend checking out Cinemachine. It's (free and official nowadays) super easy to setup and you can do stuff like variable damping based on dead zones and camera leading by the target movement direction. Music was pretty nice. Fit the mood and theme of the game well. Definitely would have needed some sound effect though. Some screaming people and maybe some nonsensical jibber jabber kinda like Animal Crossing could work for the different sayings. The hitboxes were off. If you're going for an isometric view, the hitbox should not be the size of the whole sprite and only should be the "base" of the object. It makes no real world sense that when approaching a house vertically, there is some kind of magical barrier gap of few meters before the walls. They should be something like this for a more natural feeling experience. spookyjapeshitboxes.png Anyways, good job! |
| Oct 16 15:35:16 | 23h 20m | ...and to Nothingness Return | ♥ 1 | Taking a bit of a break while I'm stuck on 16th level. Damn that was some steep difficulty ramp up. Can't seem to figure out how to eat the bottom right castle without making a dead end since I need to do last move on top left. The mac version didn't start when trying to launch normally. No error message, no nothing. Gave it a go from the terminal and it actually started. So this is for fellow macists who might face the same issue: ``` cd And to Nothingness Return.app/Contents/MacOS ./And\ to\ Nothingness\ Return ``` The first 15 levels were maybe even too easy. Well of course it needs to start easy and introduce mechanics but it didn't really ramp up the difficulty at all before the 16th. It was always just figuring out the first move and everything after that just fell right into place. The mechanic was introduced perfectly, even showing the keys and all which is a rarity in jam games. And you had proper options too, nice! The look is nice. Love the trippy level intro but it gets kinda old when you need to constantly keep restarting and watching it over and over again. The sprite work is crisp and clean, wished there was more animation though. The music was great. Definitely would have needed more sound effects. Some munchy and crunchy omnom sounds for eating the world and obviously a nice fanfare for finishing a level. Okay, I'll go back to bashing my head against that 16th level again... π€ ntnrclose.png Slowly getting there, thank god for the undo mechanic cause I can't remember how I did the castle part. π https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omoNXtnVt1g Psh, easy! π ntnrez.png And I even did it again and was ready for a screenshot on the second time. And now I notice too that you didn't do the art or the music so I guess commenting about those is moot. But they fit together well anyway. Anyways, dunno what else to say. Nice puzzler and brain melding last level. Good job! π |
| Oct 16 17:42:33 | 2h 07m | When Nothing Came | ♥ 2 | Getting stuck right at the start. Nothing does anything except for right arrow which makes music pitch scale to zero and breaks the trees... https://youtu.be/X-kqFvdE4Qs Oh and first time I run the game, before refresh, the lower half of the screen is black too. If I refresh or change tabs, the blackness disappears. Mac Chrome if that helps... **edit:** Tried Firefox, can see the flower idle/walking animation at least. Some progress... **edit 2:** Oh, even the left arrow works here. It actually might be working... π€ --- Ohh right! Thank god I got to play it, that was brilliant. I don't think I really got everything or even the most of it (the story that is) but the ending gave me shivers. First I thought it would be some kind of Undertale homage. With the personified sunflower there and the cover pic room kinda looks similar to Toriel's living room and the Deltarune living room blended together. The music was nice, really reminded me of Professor Layton (which is a super good thing). The art was pretty much perfect. Nice hand drawn feel with awesome simple animations like bringing in/out the stage pieces and the squiggliness of the texts. Really made the game feel alive and not be static. Sure, it was kind of a non-game but it was interactive enough to keep me entertained at least. It's the small things that count. All the extra lore nuggets that you could find and the small interactivities that didn't even (to my knowledge) serve any purpose at all. It game the player (or me at least) something to do while, well, figuring out what to do. π It was even fun to fiddle around arranging words and letters. At first I thought that might be some puzzle. And dunno, maybe it even was and I just couldn't figure it out. You did say there are loads of secrets there. My biggest goal was to get the car started, but alas, I couldn't manage to do it. If there is a way to do it, you get a big π from me. The clickable words that the flower just repeated started of nice but got kinda repetitive and predictable. Could have given a bit more insight on those the further along it got or something. But then there was the dinner = π¦ thing that still haunts me.. π± That's pretty much all I can say about it. There wasn't much gameplay elements, my usual main focus on critique, to feedback on. And what was there was working very much π Awesome job! β€οΈβ€οΈ |
