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Empty Set

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		Empty Set's comment
Oct 6 03:02:10		Derps 'n' Dergs - One shot to save the world!	♥ 2	I dig the cute art and quirky characters. I'm not sure I understand the game, though, and it feels a bit shallow. As far as I can tell, battles with the monsters at the end of a round are simply determined by whether you managed to recruit all 4 characters, rather than the damage stats of your party or anything else... or at least I thought as much, until I fought a monster with a full party and lost. It feels kinda anticlimactic and frustrating to get a cool party together and encounter a spooky monster, only for the entire fight to be resolved in an instant, and not knowing how or why you won or lost. Even a really rudimentary battle system would really elevate this game a lot, I think, especially if it showcased the abilities and individual characteristics of all the characters in the parties you assemble. Encountering the same characters again and again within a single play is fine and fits the "loop" theme, but it becomes somewhat annoying to have the same conversation with the same character for the 10th time after you lost your previous two runs without understanding why. Overall, a fun entry. Good work.
Oct 6 03:52:14	50m 04s	Strange Planet	♥ 1	Neat game - the graphics are polished and everything works. I only made it to Day 16 before blundering. Definitely on the simple side - you see everything the game has to offer pretty quick. Another type of enemy or maybe different weapons might've been cool. Overall, nice work.
Oct 6 22:35:30	18h 43m	Schrodinger and the Quantic Forest	♥ 2	The mechanic of different versions of the same level is interesting. However, I wish there was some sort of indication of which 'version' of the level you were in, maybe like some sort of color palette change or something to correspond with the colors of the portals. I often felt like I was progressing via guessing until I happened to succeed rather than puzzle-solving. Maybe color-coding the enemies in some way to correspond with their effects on portals would be nice too to make it less about guesswork. The enemies are a bit frustrating to fight - they're small and hard to hit, move quite fast, change directions on a dime, and they shoot without warning. I often tried to kill them while they were offscreen so I didn't have to worry about entering their range. It wouldn't be a big deal if you just fought a few throughout the game, but since a lot of the levels revolve around killing them over and over to change dimensions, it becomes somewhat frustrating to fight them repeatedly. As a pixel artist it's a bit of a pet peeve for me that you used different pixel sizes for different assets, and some were scaled in uneven multiples so they looked distorted. I'd suggest picking a scale from the start and scaling every sprite the same way. The spritework itself is quite nice, though. Overall, nice entry. Good work.
Oct 6 22:45:43	10m 13s	Hamster Dash	♥ 1	Nice, simple game. It's fun that you can learn stuff about the levels on the first loop around and then grab the stuff you missed the next time based on what you learned. Level 4 was somewhat hard, but I had the most trouble with Level 5. The first carrot was just in the middle of the fire and it was really unclear what the timing to grab it was supposed to be. I also kept dying when my speed boost would run out mid-jump and mess up my timing. Some of the levels had awkwardly long sections at the start before the level actually began which was a little frustrating.
Oct 6 23:13:02	27m 19s	Stuck on Loop	♥ 1	Had to rename the data folder on Windows to get it working, but figured it out. Might want to upload a fix. Cute little game. There were a few times when I was unsure what to do but I ended up figuring it out and getting off the planet. The music was nice but did get a little repetitive.
Oct 6 23:50:53	37m 51s	Hamster Simulator	♥ 1	Fun and simple game. Got to over 1200m total distance. Would be kind of nice if there was some sort of goals to work towards to give you a sense of accomplishment, e.g. some sort of achievements so you can have goals but the game is still open-ended. It's fun just to watch the pixel hamster get faster and faster. I found it funny how intense the music was for a game about a hamster wheel.
Oct 6 23:59:33	8m 40s	Vitruvian Escape!	♥ 1	Nice, I've always wanted to play as the Vitruvian Man. The walljumps felt awkward and kinda inconsistent. Pressing away from the wall to wall jump feels a little strange in my opinion, though luckily I could rely on my muscle memory from Super Metroid to deal with those parts, because wall jumps work similarly there, lol. I think some of the levels got a little too long considering one mistake sends you back to the start. I enjoyed the music, though the art was a little sloppy. Good work for your first Game Jam.
Oct 7 00:19:15	19m 42s	Dungeon Loop	♥ 0	I also ran into the problem where I would randomly take damage for seemingly no reason. Maybe there were spikes that weren't showing up for some reason? I think the WASD shooting and the projectiles were a little bit awkward. Nice work for a game where you made all the assets yourself.
Oct 7 00:34:23	15m 08s	Amusement Shark	♥ 1	Nice little Kuru Kuru Kururin clone. Pretty good amount of levels for a game jam game, too. The characters are cute, I get big 2000's Visual Novel vibes from them. The difficulty level is good - it gets tough but doesn't feel unfair. I feel like the difficulty curve was a little off with some later levels being easier than earlier ones but it's not that big a deal. My only complaint is that some of the visuals clash a little bit with each other; otherwise, great job.
Oct 7 00:52:09	17m 46s	Loopbot	♥ 2	I like the idea here of actions being tied to percussion. The controls feel really awkward - I think you should've put all the buttons next to each other rather than scattered around the keyboard - there's not much point in having the keys match the first letters of the instrument in my opinion and it just makes it awkward to press them. I also thought it was kind of frustrating that the controls listed on the screen tell you which instrument each key is, but not what they actually do - kinda the exact opposite of what would actually be useful, haha. Since just making a recording already require a lot of coordination, it's tough to also have to keep straight which buttons actually do which actions on top of that. If for instance the controls were ZXCV and the screen listed what actions were which the game would immediately be three times as easy to play. Good work for your first game jam!
Oct 8 00:08:48	23h 16m	Crows of Wraeth	♥ 1	I dig the graphical style and especially the abstract monster designs. Especially impressive since you did the programming too. Really nice atmosphere in general. The element-switching is a cool concept, but it felt a little undercooked here since the only thing you use the elements for is killing monsters. 5 elements also felt a little overwhelming to have right from the start, and not all the icons were clear, so it was difficult to get used to. The movement was a little jarring at first - I think it seemed weird because stuff is drawn based on where the base of the object is, so tall object like the tallest pillars kinda seem like they're poofing out of existence. There was some flickering, too. Fighting the enemies was difficult because you can't change directions without moving. I died to them a few times by accidentally charging straight into them. I think the grid-based movement hurts more than it helps, to be honest. Overall nice work, especially for a solo dev on your first Ludum Dare.
Oct 8 02:43:56	2h 35m	Loop Frogs	♥ 3	I like the cute graphics. Really clean looking. I also like the sounds the frogs make, especially when they die. A few times I ran into a bug where the green frog's actions didn't follow what I did exactly - I wasn't able to tell why. Must be a discrepancy somewhere between how the frog responds to your inputs versus the saved inputs. Only happened now and then, though, so not that big a deal. Nice take on the "looping actions" mechanic, and great work overall.
Oct 8 04:42:50	1h 58m	The Lost Forest	♥ 1	It was a little confusing to figure out what to do to start the game, but I chose "Package" and then "Test Package" in th_dnh.exe and that seemed to be right. The difficulty curve felt a little uneven, some spell cards were very easy while others were very tricky. I think the difficulty level will be beyond most of the game jam participants, but I don't think there's really anything you can do about that with a danmaku game. Also... are many of the textures/sprites supposed to be the same Batman meme image? I wasn't sure if that was intended or if my game was glitched. In general, the art was very odd, it seems like you just used random images for assets. I think the game is overall a little too similar to Touhou, but I get the feeling that's a limitation of that "Danmakufu" engine you used. It's a little difficult to rate your game, because it's hard to tell how much you made yourself and how much was built into Danmakufu.
Oct 8 23:42:19	18h 59m	Loop Overflow	♥ 0	Cool idea, in theory this is a cool way to handle lightsaber combat. The way that you change stances was really awkward - since you use the mouse to aim, just trying to aim will change your stance when you don't want it to. I don't see why the stances couldn't just be on the keyboard, or at the very least you could make it so you hold the right mouse button then move the mouse in a direction to pick a stance. I also think the combat got repetitive pretty quickly. It would have been more fun if the enemies got stronger and had better AI as you went along, rather than there just being bigger and bigger numbers of them.
Oct 8 23:53:37	11m 18s	Yes!	♥ 0	The camera was pretty wonky, especially near walls and corners, which forces the camera close to your character which causes really severe performance issues for some reason. This made a lot of the platforming frustrating since a lot of it involved tough jumps around corners. The time limit felt way too tight - I don't think it really contributed anything other than ostensibly satisfying the theme. I grabbed the double jump powerup at the last possible second and I don't think I could've done it much faster, especially with the camera issues. The main character looks pretty cool and has some nice animations. Did you make those assets yourselves, or are they from an asset pack or something?
Oct 9 05:47:01	5h 53m	Charlie's Routine	♥ 2	The aesthetic is quite nice. The graphics are simple yet effective and quite charming. I like how the colors change when you get the email. The music you chose fits the mood. It was a little frustrating trying to find where to do all the tasks in the monotonous office - maybe an arrow indicating where to go would help? I also had some issues getting the scanner to work, but somehow it worked in the end. Maybe I was just doing something wrong? The part where you have to kill everyone feels a bit unfair. The security guards kill you in one shot, it's impossible to dodge their bullets, and they shoot the instant they're on screen, if not before they're on screen. It's pretty much impossible to shoot them on reaction. I had to use a combination of shooting them while they were offscreen which felt cheap, and then taking cover near the middle and waiting for them to come to me. It probably wouldn't be that bad if you could quickly retry, but having to go back to your computer, watch the cutscene, and then walk over and get the gun made it more frustrating. Overall a short and sweet game, good work.
Oct 9 06:14:06	27m 05s	Tokamak: Fusion	♥ 0	Neat little game. Took a little bit to get used to because the curved track made it a little unintuitive where the incoming orbs were. The orbs seemed totally random rather than being generated in a way to make it possible for you to get all of them, which was sometimes a little frustrating since it felt like I had no choice but to miss a bunch. I think this could've used a little more depth - just orbs of two sizes and no goals to work towards made me lose interest pretty quickly. Maybe stages that ramp up in difficulty or some sort of upgrades or something along those lines would make it more engaging.
Oct 9 06:24:14	10m 08s	The Dusty Work	♥ 1	Really nice game! Short and sweet, but not too short. Starts out deceptively easy, but the last level takes some real thought. The graphics are clean, coherent, and cozy. The only critique I have is that it took me a bit to figure out how the fans worked. Maybe a visual indication of what they were doing, like a wind effect, would help. Overall, really nice. Great work.
Oct 9 06:47:22	23m 08s	Edge of Victory	♥ 1	Really tough game - I was able to clear out most of the bottom half of the map after a few tries but I came nowhere close to winning. It kinda felt like it was missing some basic RTS mechanics - only being able to control the drones by setting a single rally point felt a bit primitive and awkward. I really wanted to be able to click and drag a box around them to select them and send them to do specific things. I think the simple, Asteroids-esque graphics worked well, despite being basic. I could see this being pretty cool if it got fleshed out.
Oct 9 07:02:30	15m 08s	The Dumb Robot	♥ 1	Watching the robot flail around was cute. I feel bad for him, he has no legs. I would probably also flail around wildly if I had no legs. The levels were a bit too long in my opinion, and a bit too similar to each other.
Oct 9 07:15:38	13m 08s	The Magic Steak	♥ 2	The art is cute, especially the main ferret character. The ferret's acceleration felt a little fast to me, he hits top speed right away and turns around on a dime which took some getting used to. The levels repeating and getting harder fit the theme, but made the stages a little bit monotonous, especially by the second set of stages.
Oct 9 07:24:43	9m 05s	Loopyman	♥ 1	Neat little game with a main mechanic I haven't seen before. Graphics are simple but effective. I don't really understand the spikes - it seems impossible to anticipate what the timing is going to be on them. I either avoided them completely or only got through based on luck. Overall, nice work.
Oct 9 07:27:46	3m 03s	Sushi VS Burrito	♥ 0	Fun and simple game. The third enemy completely stomped me. Not much too it, but overall an enjoyable experience.
Oct 9 07:35:15	7m 29s	Neo	♥ 1	The art is cute and surreal, and pretty polished - I enjoyed it a lot. The movement was way too slow and floaty in my opinion, especially compared to the speed of the hazards, which made the game feel rather frustrating at times. I'd often note the position of a platform and try to time my jump to take advantage of it, but have trouble building up speed and be way late. I only got to play single-player, but I bet with polished-up movement and maybe a few more levels this could be a lot of fun as a multiplayer game.
Oct 9 07:40:35	5m 20s	Yandere Emulator	♥ 1	Do you guys have a discord server? I wanna speedrun getting banned on it.
Oct 9 07:58:53	18m 18s	Crystal Curse	♥ 1	I love the art style, really charming. I wish picking up and putting down traps was a little more responsive, it sometimes didn't register when I pressed the button while I was running past them. I really like the concept of a tower-defense-ish game where you have to try and remember which enemies come at which time. But the number of phases was a bit long - I got the hang of the first 3 phases but after that it was too much to remember and they overwhelmed me, and going back to phase 1 was frustrating. Maybe some sort of checkpoints would help? Also, this could be really great as a multiplayer game, I think. Overall this is a really solid entry. Great work.
Oct 9 11:31:14	3h 32m	FORNAX-11	♥ 1	The mechanic is unique, though it took me a bit to figure it out. The graphics are neat, and I dig your use of color. I'm not sure I like that your energy carries over between every stage. Figuring out how to use your energy efficiently is challenging enough over the course of 2 or 3 levels - coming up against a difficult puzzle when you've expended most of your energy trying to figure out the best solutions to previous rooms is frustrating. Revisiting old levels to try to complete them more efficiently is fun to a point, but when you die on a later level and have to redo the whole game, it's stressful.
Oct 9 11:40:51	9m 37s	Shiny	♥ 3	Cute little entry. More of an "experience" than a game. The theme of "you have to find the beauty in the world yourself" came through quite purely and non-pretentiously. Could've maybe used a little more interactivity? Overall, a sweet experience, good work.
Oct 9 11:53:37	12m 46s	RING LANCER	♥ 2	Fun and simple game. I felt like the enemy HP was a little too high and it took a long time to kill them, especially when there was a lot of enemies and it was hard to tell which ones you had already weakened. The dash and the ability to slow down didn't feel particularly useful - I think it would be fine if you just went full speed all the time, without having to hold forward, unless other hazards like spikes or other obstacles in the stage were added. It might've been nice to have some sort of feeling of "progress" like having the game be divided up into "stages" or something - I only replayed the game once to try and get a better score and then I mostly lost interest. The music and graphics were cool, though, so I think this has potential to have more depth. Good work.
Oct 9 12:06:15	12m 38s	RUFF TIME	♥ 1	I love the design of the main character. The main mechanic is pretty mind-bending since only one of your previous iterations is actually repeated. Though, I was kind of confused at times, since it seemed inconsistent whether my 'ghost' was able to pass through closed doors or not - sometimes it seemed like he could pass through them if he could on his own loop, but other times it seemed like I had to press the button for him in order for him to pass through. A way to completely restart a level might have been nice, since I often found myself thinking I'd like a fresh start rather than trying to salvage my poor, poor attempt at solving the level, lol. Overall this was a great experience, though I might not have enough IQ points for it, haha. Great work.
Oct 9 12:12:04	5m 49s	The Nightmare	♥ 1	Really creepy game and atmosphere. I never really understood the enemy monster or its movements - it kinda seemed like it just appeared at random. You did a good job of engineering a scary mood.
Oct 9 23:36:48	11h 24m	Hold "A" To Win!	♥ 1	Well... the idea of "breaking free of a boring gameplay loop" did feel sort of undermined by the fact that there was nothing to do outside of the loop other than jump in a hole. It would be funny to see this sort of satire on pay to win games be expanded, though.
Oct 9 23:46:28	9m 40s	Octoloop	♥ 1	Fun game. At first I didn't realize you could jump so I had a really hard time, lol. Being able to jump but only being able to move via the rotation physics made me rewire my brain that's used to conventional platformers which was a fun and fresh experience. I agree that gyro controls would be great here. The stages get a little bit monotonous by the end, but props for making a good amount of them.
Oct 11 03:48:57	28h 02m	Sea Shawty	♥ 2	The clam was obnoxious but kinda funny. The skeletons being the only enemy and being mostly non-threatening made the overworld a little bit on the boring side. I also couldn't find any use for the gold you collect, but maybe I'm missing something. It took me a while to figure out how to kill the Flying Dutchman - I was about to give up then I damaged him by accident. Some sort of indication that the arms are vulnerable after punching, like changing color or something, would be nice. Overall short and sweet game, and everything works, though it can be a bit tricky to figure out what do do at times. Good work.
Oct 11 04:04:44	15m 47s	A Hamster's Journey to Nowhere	♥ 1	The graphics are cute, and it's fun to see all the crazy upgrades. Despite being a clicker game you can get through it fairly quick, meaning it doesn't overstay its welcome, which is nice for a Jam game. Though, I think some of the upgrade curves might have been a bit too steep, since I would sometimes go from "my clicks do almost nothing at all" to "clicking for a bit gets me to top speed right away" in relatively few upgrades. I ended up maxing out every single powerup until it was too expensive to buy more, just in case something happened. Nothing happened. Oh well. Good work, really cute game and a solid entry.
Oct 11 04:15:51	11m 07s	Infinity - 1	♥ 2	Simple idea but very clean execution and nice puzzle design. The looping of the levels was clever and somehow made the puzzles feel harder and more brain-bending than they might have been if you simply had the player wrap around the edges of a single map, which is interesting. I managed to clear all the levels, and I agree with other comments that the difficulty curve was a little off, with level 7 being really easy. Not really a big deal though. Nice entry, good job.
Oct 11 04:28:14	12m 23s	A Bad Sign	♥ 0	Nice game. The main mechanic works quite well. Some of the art is a little rough around the edges, but that's too be expected especially for a Compo game, and the style is quite nice in my opinion. The main character looks good. I don't have much else to say other than that some more stages and mechanics would be cool, but that's true of just about any game jam game, my own included. Good work overall.
Oct 11 08:58:22	4h 30m	Snek	♥ 0	Really unique mechanic that I've never seen before. The graphics were good and the music fit the mood of the game. The atmosphere was really solid overall. My only criticism is some of the puzzles felt a little bit repetitive. Great work.
Oct 11 09:10:00	11m 38s	Soccer Loop	♥ 1	Neat game. It was cool how if you got multiple goals per round you could build up a buffer so that you could afford to lose later rounds. Though, it wasn't really explained in-game, so you had to figure it out yourself. It was also a little bit tough to tell when exactly the round was starting. Some sort of "Round X Start" message center-screen could be really helpful for differentiating between new rounds starting and new attempts of the same round. Once I figured out what was going on, though, it was pretty fun. The little robot sprites were cute and looked great. I agree that the game would've benefit from a few sound effects here and there. This was a fun one, good work.
Oct 11 09:31:56	21m 56s	ouroBOOros	♥ 2	Really unique concept here - never seen anything like it. Of course, the influence from classic Snake games is apparent, but the gameplay and main mechanic here is completely different. I liked that the ghost was intangible to just about everything - it meant that you didn't have to worry about getting rocks 'stuck' in corners or whatnot, and could just focus on how to manipulate the snake. Some of the graphics are a little unpolished but the overall aesthetic is solid. Sometimes, the snake would stop moving and I wouldn't know why, or the snake would behave in strange ways that I didn't expect, which sometimes made puzzles tricky since the snake's decision-making algorithm wasn't obvious. However, I'm not sure how to fix that, since "always trying to reach its tail" is kind of just inherently a vague goal, but the game depends on it. Overall, great work.
Oct 12 23:23:16	37h 51m	Labyrinth Looper	♥ 0	Cute game. The lighting mechanic looked cool and was fun. The graphics are simple but polished and do their job well. I liked the risk-reward of only being able to hold one item at a time, so you have to drop your shield to unlock doors, etc. Could've used a few sound effects. Good work overall.
Oct 13 07:12:14	7h 48m	Fear Of Gears	♥ 2	I'm trying to play the Windows version and can't seem to get it to work right - the controls don't work. I can't move the character at all (though he'll sometimes sort of 'twitch' when I press WASD) and attacking and dashing barely work either (it was strange, when I spammed the mouse buttons, an attack/dash would occasionally happen, but only maybe 1 in 10 times). I thought it might be some freak problem on my end since nobody else has seemed to have any issues playing, but the problem persisted after I tried re-downloading the game and rebooting my computer. Then I tried on a another machine and got the same problem there... so now I'm not sure what to think. Any idea what might be wrong? This looks fun and I'd like to give it a try.
Oct 13 09:22:25	2h 10m	Portal Madness	♥ 1	Took a bit to understand what was going on. I still don't really understand why you can see other rooms adjacent to your room; since each room is identical, and the portals seem to be completely random, it isn't informative to be able to see the other rooms. Ultimately the game just comes down to guess-and-check and memory. There aren't any hints as to what the right path is, and there aren't any distinctive features of the rooms, so you can't even use things like mnemonics to try and remember the right path - you just have to do it by brute force, or by using Notepad or similar to record the right path. To be honest, I think more thought would have to be put into this for it to stand as it's own game. As it stands, it's just thoughtless guess-and-check gameplay.
Oct 13 09:37:48	15m 23s	Leave the yard	♥ 0	The controls were really awkward. Tank controls in a game with a top-down/isometric perspective like this doesn't make much sense. Also, even if I just tapped forward for a fraction of a second, the character would run forward a significant distance. Precise movements were pretty much impossible. To be honest, it just didn't feel good to control the character at all. I don't really understand the concept of the game. Unless I'm missing something, the goal is to run around the outside of the road until you find a hidden road tile that lets you leave? And that's all there is? I won the first time without even understanding what I was doing, and it took me a matter of seconds. Also, the exits seem to always be in the same place, and they can be difficult to access since your character gets stuck on the edge of the road and is hard to control, and sometimes the exits seem to appear and disappear without much rhyme or reason. The art style is interesting, but... there really just isn't much of a game here, frankly, and what is here doesn't really work. I'm not even sure what advice to give.
Oct 13 09:50:55	13m 07s	Stuck in an inner tube!	♥ 1	I really like the mechanic of bouncing off walls. At one point, I got to a section I thought was impossible, but then I realized that bouncing off walls could get you extra height, and everything clicked. It's really fun to bounce around and see what you can do. I think the movement could use a little more polish, especially since the movement is the core of the game. I only spent a short time with the game, but I felt like acceleration was a bit to high given your top speed, and deceleration was even sharper. I'm not sure if the "endless climber" type gameplay is the best fit for this mechanic. It's a pretty chaotic mechanic, it's fun to experiment with, and it's a tad unpredictable - as a result, I often ambitiously tried a fancy maneuver only to pathetically plummet to my death and get set back a fair deal. More of a sandbox-type world where you're free to explore and practice your bouncing abilities might have been more fun in my opinion - or even just removing the rising death floor and punishing you with having to climb back up instead of dying. Just my two cents. At any rate, fun game with a cool mechanic. Good work.
Oct 14 01:46:33	15h 55m	Lily The Bee	♥ 1	The art is very cute. I especially like the pastel color palettes. The bullets Lily shoots are a bit small and difficult to see. It's a small detail, but it's a little bit frustrating that you start at the side of the screen and have to try and chase the enemies - I wish you started in the middle. The time slowdown feature is cool and fun to use. The game could definitely use some more variety - it gets repetitive pretty quickly. Overall a charming game.
Oct 14 02:01:36	15m 03s	Looping	♥ 1	To be honest, I got tired of the main mechanic fairly quickly. It kinda just boiled down to guess-and-check. I got particularly frustrated on the level where you simply have to wait - in the next level, I guessed the wrong thing to do, so I got sent back... and had to wait again. It was frustrating to sit around doing nothing because of a wrong guess. I liked the design of the main robot. Pretty impressive that you made this totally from scratch without an engine or anything. Good work.
Oct 14 04:33:27	2h 31m	Frozen Potency	♥ 0	It kinda felt like there was no reason not to just hold W and Shift at all times, and you'd dodge just about everything - so trying to actively dodge or maneuver wasn't really a thing. I really liked that it kept you updated on your ranking as you took guys out - that felt rewarding. The game had a pretty good aesthetic.
Oct 14 04:49:48	16m 21s	Time to Run	♥ 1	Cool game. I liked the monochromatic color scheme in general, but the enemies and player were hard to see against the background since most everything was the same shade of grey. Teaming up with (and sometimes accidentally killing) clones from the past was fun. The shooting controls felt a little awkward, it seemed like in order to aim I had to wait for my arm to line up with where I was aiming and it would sometimes wobble a bit before getting steady.
Oct 14 05:05:44	15m 56s	Stuck in a (Time) Loop	♥ 2	Simple-looking mechanic but some cool puzzles. Definitely more too it than meets the eye. I managed to get through to the end, and I even completed the last level on my first try (by some fluke, lol) The movement was a little bit sluggish, though in a way that helped with the timing. It would probably be just fine with slightly higher acceleration and maybe slightly less open levels. Could've definitely used more visual flair and some audio to spice the game up, but the mechanic was interesting enough that the simple graphics were fine.
Oct 14 09:08:22	4h 02m	Regguman	♥ 2	I like the concept of using things as your head; Legman is a fun character. I really dig the surreal and slightly unsettling vibe that the whole game has. The pixel art is really clean too. I think there's a ton of potential here. However, I have to be a little bit hard on it from a game design perspective. I don't think I ever would have beaten the game without the walkthrough - it felt like one of those really old point and click adventure games in that sense. The very first line of the walkthrough had me thinking "how was I supposed to figure any of that out?" Some design decisions made parts harder to figure out than they maybe should've been. The confusing, non-linear, mazelike doors meant that just getting around was challenging, which somewhat discouraged experimenting with item combinations in other rooms since it was a hassle to navigate. Another example is that "using" the light plant doesn't seem to visibly do anything, and just having it seems like it should be enough to explore the dark room... but you still have to use it? I wasn't even sure what it did, exactly, but I got the key. Anyway, still a solid entry with a really great aesthetic. Good work.
Oct 14 23:51:21	14h 42m	Memorial	♥ 2	The movement is a bit sluggish which makes it take a bit longer to get through than it probably needs to - especially alongside the fact that dialogue is unskippable (as far as I could tell). So, I didn't feel compelled to go back and see the other ending. The jumping/gravity is on the floaty side, but it doesn't matter much since the platforming isn't really important to the game. I did encounter some collision issues but luckily I never had to reset or press M to get unstuck. The art direction was effective and I liked the monochromatic palette. The art assets themselves were a bit inconsistent with some being a little sketchy, and/or distorted/pixelated from being scaled up by a big factor. The game had a really nice atmosphere overall. The story was interesting but a little hard to understand on its own. I don't think I would have understood the significance of what I was doing without reading the description. I found myself more invested in the post-apocalyptic setting than the relationship drama storyline, so I was a little bit disappointed that only the latter got explored in the end.
Oct 15 11:53:04	12h 01m	CODE:WELL	♥ 1	The first thing I did when I played was explore to the edge of the first map and then I ended up falling off the map endlessly. I restarted and explored and I couldn't figure out what to do. Then I input a bunch of codes into the code thingy with the 9 buttons. After trying a bunch of random codes I got teleported to a polka dot world. In the polka dot world there was a monster so I whacked it with my stick until it made a noise and the number in the corner went up. Then I flew over to another platform with more monsters (apparently I can fly?) and I killed them and made the number go up more, except one was immortal so I left. Then I flew around some more, and there was a rock that maybe had a code on it (but it didn't look possible to input since your inputs had to be orthogonally adjacent I thought?) and then I fell of but this time when I fell off I got teleported back. But then I didn't know what to do so I quit. I don't really know what I just experienced.
Oct 15 12:14:27	21m 23s	AXIS LOOPER	♥ 0	I didn't understand what 'warp' meant at first so I was very confused in the first level. I'm not sure why the character can fall over and end up sideways - is that intended? WASD was a little bit awkward since you didn't need the mouse - I would've preferred arrow keys personally. The 2-measure 1-instrument music loop gets grating very quickly, to be honest.
Oct 16 02:15:56	14h 01m	Johnny Lootem's Going Loopy!	♥ 3	Excellent game. The movement was at just the right level where it wasn't too easy but didn't feel frustrating. I like how fast you can go if you want to. Maybe it takes sliiightly too long to slow down after you've been going really fast, but then again that being true dis-incentivizes zooming around all the time which might be a good thing. Being able to buy upgrades with score between plays was cool, though I didn't explore it much. I just bought the 'increased starting HP' one on my second try and managed to win. I think extra lives were maybe a little bit too cheap to buy; once I got the upgrades I wanted and could spend all my scrap on lives if I wanted, I felt like I wasn't really in any danger of losing. More weapon upgrades might've been cool too. The boss fights were pretty intense. It was fun to have to go from chasing the boss down to turning around and running for your life when it decided to change directions. The last phase was a lot of fun - I liked the surprise change in the boss's design - gave me Sinistar vibes. By that point, I had a good enough grip on the controls that dodging his big red attack was doable but still hard, which was rewarding. The graphics, music, and sound effects were all great and polished. I think you successfully distilled the fun and charm of old shmups without getting bogged down in some of their more dated mechanics which can make them frustrating today. Overall, really great work.
Oct 16 08:54:44	6h 38m	Pip's Journey	♥ 1	Neat game. Maybe a bit on the easy side since the enemies will rarely ever move except to attack in a few cases. The idea of 'the world beyond the chessboard' was cool and definitely has a lot of room to be explored. I liked the graphics, but the chess pieces were iffy - it's pretty clear they've been downscaled (somewhat messily) from somewhere even without you mentioning it in the description. Would've preferred hand-crafted sprites in your style - but maybe you ran out of time? Overall a fun experience, good work.
Oct 17 08:16:24	23h 21m	M4LL0's Journey	♥ 1	The visuals and audio are good, but there's really not much to the gameplay. Guess-and-check pick-a-path isn't the most engaging idea, and here it's the main mechanic - it feels a bit undercooked when compared the the graphics and sound which are nice and polished.
Oct 17 08:31:41	15m 17s	Hara Kiri	♥ 0	The movement and the combat felt really awkward, to be honest - it takes a really long time after you press a direction before you actually start moving which makes it almost impossible to make precise movements during a fight. The main attack is also really slow, the animation looks glitched, and the hitbox seems really small and unclear. My strategy for every enemy was to just walk right up to them and hold down the left mouse button, because anything else seemed impractical. The aesthetics of the game were cool, though I might have appreciated them more if I knew who my character was supposed to be and what this cool looking world world was. I got to level 8, went back to the beginning of the level, and touched the glowing spot there, but after that I didn't know what to do. I thought I was supposed to click the right mouse button, but nothing happened.
Oct 17 08:44:35	12m 54s	Mocksha	♥ 1	Interesting premise. It's curious how the other members of the world seem to keep living out their lives (or stay dead), but they never remember you, and you always revive. It kinda seems like if you mess up and things get worse there's nothing you can do other than restart the entire game, which feels a little bit frustrating since the game already consists of restarting your day over and over. Kinda ends up making the game feel really dark when everything goes bad, which I'm not sure was intentional or not. The graphics had some charm but were a little iffy - the inconsistent sprite scaling was kinda jarring. I'd suggest deciding on a scale from the get-go and making all your sprites at that same scale, rather than just making sprites however you like and scaling them to whatever size you need.
Oct 17 09:23:00	38m 25s	Hamster Simulator	♥ 0	Incredibly adorable game. The art style and animation are clean and super charming. It is a bit on the shallow side, though - not much to do once you've watched your little hamster do all three activities. Even when switching between the three things, the little hammy-dude just teleports from place to place instead of moving there. The simplicity is understandable since you made it in just 1 day - but the game was so cute that I wanted to spend more time with it. Good work!
Oct 17 09:38:31	15m 31s	SPACELOOP	♥ 1	Neat game. I'm quite fond of the aesthetic. Somehow it felt strange that you could only shoot in front of you - then I realized it mostly felt that way because you could click to shoot. I guess my gamer instincts tell me that if I'm clicking to shoot, I must also be aiming the cursor to shoot - but I switched over to using the Space bar to shoot and suddenly it didn't feel weird any more. I couldn't quite get the hang of the perspective - I was often pretty sure I lined up a shot then moved out of the way, only to both miss and then crash into an asteroid. I'm not really sure what was wrong. Maybe it would help if the incoming objects and your bullets left more clear trails behind them to show the perspective? More than one reticle (like, three or so down the trail) would probably help a lot too. I think relying on the reticle to aim actually messed me up since it was further away than any of the objects were. The music and sound effects were solid. Good work overall.
Oct 20 11:59:15	74h 20m	Record Runner	♥ 1	The number of grooves, the mouse controls, and the curved approach of the notes made it pretty hard to line yourself up right - it ended up feeling like neither an action game nor a rhythm game, especially since your own movements weren't limited to the music or the beat at all. It's an interesting idea but I just didn't feel immersed in the music like a great rhythm game can make you feel.
Oct 24 06:13:07	90h 13m	Dungeon Escape	♥ 0	A bit on the simple side - there's only one hazard (fireballs) and you just have to either duck or jump. The speed doesn't seem to change much either, so once I got the hang of it I felt like I could go pretty much forever if I wanted. The slide and especially jump are a little slow. The graphics are kinda all over the place - the main character and the background are in totally different styles, with the character being very minimalist pixel art but most everything else being much more detailed. I liked the main character's animations, though - I would've preferred it if the whole game's aesthetic was in line with him. The game worked fine - though it could've used some more time in the oven and something to make it unique among the many endless runners out there. Looks like this is your first Jam - good work finishing something!