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FireSlash

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		FireSlash's comment
Oct 8 03:03:27		Nothing to Everything	♥ 1	A fairly solid card game, but I feel the pacing really hurts it. Most turns are pretty straightforward, but card animations and effects are slow and I became impatient fairly quickly. The level advancement also doesn't feel very rewarding; in games like these you really want to show off the things you gain each level (be it new cards in the deck, the "something" ability, etc). lastly, the enemy having the same cards as yourself makes gameplay fairly direct. Compare with Slay the Spire, where unique decks force you to think specific ways about how you approach an enemy. In this game it's mostly just picking the optimal cards and hoping the AI does the wrong thing. A quick improvement might be to hide the opponent's cards. but giving them some unique abilities would spice it up a lot. Overall a pretty solid job for a compo entry. Minor gameplay gripes aside, I didn't hit any bugs and everything seems to work as one would expect. Nice work!
Oct 8 03:05:19	1m 52s	The Adventures of Hugh Mahn Through Time	♥ 1	I'm getting a 404 on both of your download links.
Oct 8 03:25:38	20m 19s	Erasure	♥ 1	There seem to be couple of conflicting mechanics here. On one hand, I need to reveal the platforms, but I appear to have a limited amount of reveal power. Since each level repeats, there's little incentive to be careful with this power since once I know where the platforms are, it's easy. It's a bit of a shame too since there's a pretty neat mechanic with the particles sliding off the platforms. I'm honestly not sure how to fix this off the top of my head, other than randomizing the platform positions. The other oddity is that the reveal particles seem to kill me. This was surprising to me and I'm not sure what purpose it serves. And lastly the platforming exercise seems to be mostly a formality once you've revealed the platforms. Honestly you've got a couple really neat mechanics here but they're not being used well yet. I'd spend some time playing with it a bit more and I suspect you'll have a pretty unique game on your hands!
Oct 8 03:35:14	9m 36s	Space Beggar	♥ 2	Oh no, these controls. Honestly I was pretty turned off by them at first, but the game loop is tight enough that I kept trying new things, and eventually found a method that works for me. The high score is always a good way to help keep people engaged for more, a good evolution of this would be to go full "zachtronics" on it and track more stats (longest life, most kills per shots fired, etc) The graphics are nice, and everything seems to be pretty coherent visually. Collisions feel super loose (AABBs maybe?), the usual lazy fix here is to just shrink the boxes by some percentage. Overall a pretty solid entry.
Oct 8 04:35:16	1h 00m	Cast Away	♥ 2	PICO-8 games are my jam There seems to be a bug in which changing screens may clip you into a tree, at which point you're stuck. In retrospect I probably could have cut the tree down, but it was night so it didn't cross my mind. There doesn't seem to be a ton of obvious value in building walls, perhaps they're more useful in later waves? For the most part it seems like they just waste resources. General interactions felt fine, though the build cursor being so far from the character can be frustrating. Overall great job! The art is lovely and the game is fun!
Oct 8 04:42:14	6m 58s	Minno	♥ 1	It took me a while to figure out exactly what I was supposed to do, but once that was sorted the puzzles were surprisingly deep. Graphics and sound are fairly cohesive, though I found the music loop a bit droning after a while. Overall solid entry. Could use some better controls perhaps, but otherwise great!
Oct 8 04:52:24	10m 10s	Would You Like To Exist? (HTML5)	♥ 2	After I sorted the controls for moving things around, I quickly realized I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. As others have stated, better controls would help, but I quickly found myself bored even after I sorted the controls out. Building to the DNA strand didn't seem to reflect in any interesting changes, and it wasn't clear if I was actually doing the right things. As high level direction, games like this can be incredibly fun tools that indirectly teach players about deep fields they don't know about, but it's a fairly tricky thing to pull off well. Zachtronics games are great examples here, with the game slowly ramping you up with simple concepts and strong player guidance. I realize this is an LD entry so such things are rather difficult to pull off in the time scale, but they're fairly important to making sure the game actually feels like a game.
Oct 8 05:03:20	10m 56s	Addicted	♥ 0	There's a big red "LIGHTING NEEDS REBUILT" warning in the corner.
Oct 8 05:10:14	6m 54s	Higher Desire	♥ 5	Interesting mix of mechanics. I did find it annoying that the beat detection refuses to allow an early press though, so you're rewarded to being slightly behind the beat and being directly on it is risky. The shooter part wasn't clear the first time, and I only noticed it was a thing on my second attempt. The failure screen also isn't super clear, though that might just be me missing the theme you were going for.
Oct 8 05:22:01	11m 47s	Cascade	♥ 1	The graphics are lovely! The game itself though feels a bit too difficult. Making the roll a bit longer would go a long way toward making this more approachable. This is an easy trap to fall into during LD, getting friends to playtest at certain intervals is super helpful on that front. When in doubt, for LD make it too easy. I gave it four shots and only made it to the sawblades once.
Oct 8 05:34:02	12m 01s	Who cares if it's buggy, just ship it!	♥ 2	Story mode doesn't appear to go anywhere, just some dialogue based on who you pick and you win once you've spoken to everyone without any additional interaction. In arcade mode the ship just instantly sinks. The screen before that has buttons you can click but they don't appear to do anything. Pretty sure I'm missing something? It might be worth explaining the setup screen.
Oct 8 05:38:52	4m 50s	Blue Juice Dealer	♥ 1	There doesn't appear to be any hints toward what ingredients go together, and with limited funds experimentation is both expensive and risky. I gave it three shots and crafted nothing of value. Perhaps a guide of some sort would help?
Oct 8 07:16:54	1h 38m	Monkey Mountain Holiday!	♥ 4	Art and music were lovely! The combat felt lacking in depth and mechanically slow, but I didn't hit any unexpected bugs and was able to clear the game without incident.
Oct 9 04:30:28	21h 13m	Mister Nothing	♥ 1	Most of the commenters already mentioned the design and messaging issues, I'd just like to comment on a rather amusing bug I hit due to velocity not being reset when the player respawns. If you die going fast enough, you just keep falling through the world forever. Overall a solid attempt for a first try!
Oct 9 04:41:34	11m 06s	MerchantQuest	♥ 1	On my first attempted I picked muscle, walked up to the shopkeeper, and he sold me the stall for 0g. Then I won the game. On a second playthrough I picked thief and stole some stuff first, but the shop was still 0g and the game instantly ends once you purchase it. I suspect this isn't intentional, but I couldn't find any more specific instructions.
Oct 9 04:58:56	17m 22s	Spam Space To Exist	♥ 3	The laser turrets feel more like decorations than anything. As others have stated, ramming is orders of magnitude more useful and you just end up smashing into everything. That said, it's quite fun despite that. However, it seems once you absorb a few ships you're effectively unstoppable, and the game grows tiring as you end up spending all your time hunting for things to absorb. Super fun concept, absolutely worth fiddling around with post-compo.
Oct 9 05:52:25	53m 29s	We Are The N-O-T-H-I-N-G	♥ 1	There are some neat pieces here. I hope you revisit this at some point, there's a lot of potential that just needs a little more time to bake.
Oct 9 06:20:13	27m 48s	The Journey with Her	♥ 1	What an interesting take on sokoban. I'll freely admit I'm terrible at this genre, but found it quite fun regardless. The undo button is VERY appreciated here. Graphics are nice, and the overarching narrative plays well into developing the mood.
Oct 9 06:33:20	13m 07s	Hold X to Focus	♥ 1	Oh wow this is lovely. The mood is absolutely fantastic, and the art and sound come together perfectly. The platforming is tough but solid, though it seems to be more of a vehicle to convey the rest of the game.
Oct 10 04:15:02	21h 41m	The Firebrand	♥ 3	Wonderful art direction here! The only oddity is that the horizontal pans in the intro end up looking a bit weird in some cases due to the lack of depth cues, while still having perspective. Adding some kind of shading effect can supply those cues (Something along the lines of cell shading could work) or possibly just tweaking the camera fov. That said, I don't know how many people even pick up on this, so it might be a non-issue. Story wise the writing is solid. If I had to complain, as the player I don't have a good grasp on where things are going at first, and there aren't enough clues in the story to direct my choices in a meaningful way. Similarly, there doesn't appear to be any obvious cost to choosing poorly at first, so all of my first play-through decisions were made quite lightly. That said, I like the high level design, and if you're shooting for multiple attempts as the standard, this may actually be the correct choice (else players may fret over making poor choices and feel cheated when they run out of time) Overall a really nice narrative game executed in a super creative way.
Oct 11 06:25:12	26h 10m	Lucifer's Rise	♥ 1	I absolutely adore the art! Gameplay wise, I think the platforming itself is mostly fine for this type of game; but the enemies ended up being a bit of a sticking point for me. The rabbits like to blend in with the background, and the pathing results in forcing the player to wait a lot. Typically this would be solved by giving the player an attack of some kind (see: sonic, mario). The shop was a nice tough but I couldn't find any way to determine what items did without just using them. Overall a pretty fun entry!
Oct 12 20:09:42	37h 44m	Scope Creep	♥ 2	While the controls were responsive, I found the collision to be rather frustrating. For example, you cannot jump while falling, meaning if you miss the cliff edge you will simply plummet to your death. Similarly, the collision boxes between you and a thing you're jumping over often result in unexpected deaths. Level design could also use some work; as others have pointed out there are a lot of unintentional shortcuts you can take due to the meandering path and reliance on platform/pit design. Seems I can simply lose powerups if I fall in a bad spot while holding one. Respawning doesn't re-create them. Now, that all said, all of these issues are easy to change/tweak. Nothing here is fundamentally broken and the core seems sound. You even have a few enemy and trap types, making the game surprisingly competent for what was likely a very rushed product given you binned your first few attempts. Nice work!
Oct 12 20:26:43	17m 01s	Melted into Existence	♥ 1	Interesting set pieces here, such as the log falling and the webs, but without some kind of system to teach the player they end up requiring the "hints" section you added, which is unfortunate. The inventory screen was also fairly confusing. Controls also don't feel super great; the double jump actually felt like a bug initially. Combined with slow movement speed, traversing the map doesn't feel great. Ultimately this feels like an ambitious jam game that just didn't have enough time to bake. You've got a bunch of wonderful concepts that just need a bit more work to be fully realized, and this would be a prime candidate for something to spend a bit more time on now that LD is over.
Oct 12 20:36:16	9m 33s	Mage in Exile	♥ 2	Wow, there's a lot here for an LD entry! Honestly I can't find much to really give feedback on beyond movement speed, which is slow for my taste but probably appropriate for the type of combat you're going for. I also would have liked the fireball to either spawn instantly, or at least spawn in the direction I clicked (It seems to follow my movement, so I can't "look away" during the cast period). Again, this might be an intentional and potentially correct choice for this game though. The other piece of feedback would be to just get more playtesting data. Something I started doing in recent jams is to wrangle random friends to just play it at various states to get raw feedback on the mechanics and difficulty. It's been a positive force on our entries, and something that doesn't really burn much time. Overall really solid entry; great work!
Oct 13 21:22:27	24h 46m	HEARTSCAPE	♥ 1	Woa this is great. I did ultimately hit a bug, in which an arrow card was placed but didn't fire (It got stuck at the first animation frame, and no projectiles seemed to spawn; or perhaps they did spawn but simply didn't move?). There might be a reason for this mechanically but I couldn't figure out one. Luckily it didn't block the tile so I could just place a sword instead and still cleared it. Graphics are simple yet lovely. Mechanics are solid, though it might be worth revisiting some of them (Baby hearts seem useless, for example) but there's so much to love here I'm mostly just excited to see where you go with it.
Oct 20 20:51:21	167h 28m	Bonnie	♥ 1	This was lovely! I only wish there was more of it. I think it's pretty clear how this type of game can be expanded upon, it might be worth considering after the compo fatigue wears off.
Oct 27 00:25:26	147h 34m	Beyond the Horizon	♥ 0	I have the same UI issue as netmute; 4k monitor at 1.5x UI scaling. The character is also massive in relation to the tile sizes, this could probably be toned down a lot. Graphics are nice and cohesive overall. The tile appear is a nice touch and serves as a fantastic "fog of war". I do wish there was a better way to visually determine which tiles were passable; often I'd get trapped without realizing it. Gameplay wise it works as expected. I do wish there was a bit more variety in both events and mechanics, but this is already pushing the limits of what one can expect to reasonably polish in a Jam. Overall solid entry. Nice work!
Oct 27 00:42:52	17m 26s	Rescue Hamsters!	♥ 1	The lack of setup time and the large building grid made this more frustrating than anything for me. A better start/stop mechanic to give you setup time would be ideal (See: The Incredible Machine); or starting from a position where the hamsters don't instantly die (See: Lemmings). The fisrt level was also brutally difficult. Typically you want to ease players in with a simple mechanics demo that's hard to mess up, so they can quickly learn the mechanics. That said, the art is cute and the core mechanics all seem sound. These are minor gripes that can be easily sorted out in a post-jam version.