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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | PeachTreeOath's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 27 05:19:05 | Jupiter II | ♥ 1 | The choice of music was fantastic, and I was even more surprised to see that you composed it yourself. In the initial section of the game I couldn't help but smile because of the Pokemon-snap-likeness + music + atmosphere. You made it feel like it was going to be a pretty fun guided tour of strangeness. The pacing changes are a good twist. Especially at 1k because the section right before that is a bit slower on normal mode. I really enjoyed the scanning mechanic in general. It gave it enough of a skill requirement that kept you engaged with what was going on. How did you create the cave? I figured you were just choosing random points and connecting them but there were some parts that looked really good, like when rocks jut out and such (like in your 2nd screenshot). Very cool experience overall. Again, the first couple minutes especially are an amazing combination of sights, sounds, and gameplay! | |
| Apr 27 05:31:58 | 12m 53s | Stabalot | ♥ 0 | asdf.PNG Took me 7 tries or so, this game is brutal! I absolutely loved your game. I am actually glad you depicted the lock with negative space. It's less obvious than moving actual squares into place for example, so for me I really liked that it racked my brain a bit trying to move pieces so fast. Great job on choosing the difficulty for the game, it was right up my alley. One interesting side note about your concept: with normal fighting games after you land a hit, you then play an execution "minigame" of comboing your opponent for a reward like max damage. I found it really interesting you managed to achieve a very similar effect by using an actual minigame, rather than using combat mechanics. That's something I really haven't seen before, and it's an interesting design to think about. I love innovative ideas and this one is one of the better ones I've seen in a while. Hope you keep doing future LDs! |
| Apr 27 21:50:49 | 16h 18m | SUPER RED | ♥ 1 | I've seen digging games and worm games so far, but not a compost heap one lol. I actually really enjoyed that it was a much more chill environment with bug friends rather than enemies. I could focus on exploring and just enjoying the environment. I saw you said you had a lot more details planned. Did you mean exploring within the compost box or once you move beyond that? Like some kind of cycle where you move to the real world or something. Either way, I thought the level was all composed really well and was interesting enough to explore. I didn't realize you could zoom out until I re-read the instructions and that helped me finish it. Fun concept! |
| Apr 27 22:14:31 | 23m 42s | The Fistula Cleaning Crew | ♥ 1 | Did the same, the first thing I did was google the term lol. I had the same experience as @jakob-willforss, I sorta speedran it and missed a few fistulas. When I got to the bottom, I saw nothing was there, so I flew back up and grabbed everything I missed and went all the way above "ground". Went all the way back to the bottom and nothing there so not sure if something went weird with the triggers. I like wonky controls like this - I prefer the challenge of trying to move quickly through levels set up this way (which is why I decided to just go full speed). I'm glad you opted for bounciness and not ship-damage because I would've been destroyed haha. Will we be seeing a Fistula trilogy the next time a descending-theme comes up? |
| Apr 27 22:36:15 | 21m 44s | Cave Girl - SUPER AQUA GOTH | ♥ 2 | Wow, there's quite a bit here for a jam timeframe, but after glancing at your older games it looks like you already had experience with this kind of stuff so I'm sure it helped. The power up system was pretty interesting, and I don't think I've seen too many games where the enemies could use them too (outside of the really classic/hardcore roguelikes). Like some others said, the 4-way attack was a bit tricky to handle, especially with the bow, but it is what it is and you just adapt your firing pattern to it. |
| Apr 27 23:27:05 | 50m 50s | Deepest Sword | ♥ 0 | This game is just insane, nearly perfect execution across the board. Some of the golden sections were very challenging which made it even better, and stabbing the dragon was an unusually satisfying experience. |
| Apr 27 23:34:03 | 6m 58s | Holey Hell | ♥ 2 | What I really like about this game is that it really challenges you in novel-ish ways. We're so used to playing platformers at this point that the challenge can be pretty rote. But you throw in a number of obstacles here that I haven't seen, even in a circular platformer. Stuff like the shifting sands that uncover dangerous things. Having to time your jump and angle is really interesting here, and it's stuff like that that really solidifies the core gameplay on top of all the other cool things. |
| Apr 28 03:41:50 | 4h 07m | Bundt Man | ♥ 2 | There are so many nice little touches here, it's awesome. The music got my head nodding almost immediately. The little wink at the end. Getting knocked into the camera. All those little things just elevate this above the others. I really enjoyed the core gameplay. You kicked the difficulty in pretty much right away, so it kept me on my toes and paying attention. And also using a lot of old, dormant NES skills... So yea, extra shoutouts to the level designer(s). You took a small amount of mechanics but kept remixing them in ways that made me think differently. Really well done game! |
| Apr 28 04:52:32 | 1h 10m | Debt Collector | ♥ 4 | Not only do I really like clickers, but I really like ones with timed challenges too. This is fun and I love how condensed the experience is. It's a fun little math/optimization problem, and I ended up playing it ~7 times because you added in that high score board. The presentation of menu-based incrementals are almost always dry and bland. I am SUPER impressed you managed to make this genre something fairly exciting to watch in motion. If anything, you deserve a lot of innovation points just for that. A great game that certainly kept me busy :) debt.PNG |
| Apr 28 05:12:02 | 19m 30s | Vast Trivia Of The Void | ♥ 2 | FYI, the game can't be played on an ultrawide resolution. I just changed my rez though to get it to work (bottom 2 answers don't show). Boy those are some tough questions, it was a miracle I was able to do a natural 4-combo (no buffs added to that)! I remember seeing you guys poll for questions so you must've farmed some good ones. I really wonder how many people will be good at the book questions, I basically knew none of them lol. Like others have mentioned, it wasn't the best use of the theme, but honestly I really like the change of pace from this vs all the various digging games out there. It's hard not to be drawn into the world you created. Everything is so cohesive in the presentation, right down to even the writing. As a side note, I REALLY liked the different avatars you provided. It's an awesome bonus for the players who have followed your work for a while now as I have. Overall this is yet another entry that serves as an example of what LDers should strive for :) |
| Apr 28 05:32:13 | 20m 11s | Fade | ♥ 1 | The difficulty was right up my alley. I used to play doubles on DWI/Stepmania with a hand on each side, so this ended up being simple to finish. You must have quite a bit of rhythm game background yourself to tune it to this level. In general I've played a lot of rhythm games and this is the first time I've seen a cohesive story tying it all together. This was absolutely brilliant and deserves way more recognition. The idea of tying the left and right portions with how the mother and daughter would be play together was meaningful and it immediately put me in the right mindset for the game. Then as the the characters grew up, the difficulty of the notes reflected that as well. How did you come up with the idea? I want to take notes from you. This is going to be a game I recommend a lot in the future - one of the most innovative ones I've seen, and certainly for its genre. |
| Apr 28 06:00:25 | 28m 12s | The Falling Knight V.S the Endless Pit of Dark Despair | ♥ 1 | I really liked this game. Have you played Fights in Tight Spaces? It's very similar in concept but in a few ways I actually prefer your game. The main difference is that your game is very fast paced. You can quickly decide your action and then execute on it. So it still feels "real-time" even though it's turnbased, because once you get in your groove, you're pushing and swapping things all over. I loved that you emphasized the obstacles so much in this game. I started out using just normal attacks more, but once I got the hang of the obstacles, I was very much just weaving in and out of them and annihilating enemies. I played all the way through and beat the game. By the time you get to the boss, you are good enough at the game's concept that he's a pushover. Overall an excellent game and one that makes you feel GOOD playing it as you do hotter and hotter combos and decisions. |
| Apr 28 06:20:36 | 20m 11s | Bunny Bunny Dig Dig | ♥ 1 | What a well done variation on the mining concept. You did everything right when it comes to expanding on the core gameplay. The economy forces you to actually get further rather than just grind out the easy sections up top. The fact that exit shafts become more spread out as you get further adds a lot to the tension as you push your luck and try not to die. I know people are raving about the art (deservedly so), but there is a lot to say about your understanding of how to keep the player interested. Awesome job! |
| Apr 28 06:44:21 | 23m 45s | Aquanomicon | ♥ 1 | I love how bold the concept is. I can count on 1 hand how many games throw you into a tutorial with time limit, and you had to scramble to read and process what to do. I wouldn't say it's a best practice, but it definitely fit the theme of this game - trying to quickly pop out all these potions under pressure juxtaposed against the whimsical text. I didn't catch that recipes were order sensitive until I read the comments, that does explain a lot of the difficulty. I did enjoy collecting ingredients and trying different things, but I really only ended up with 3 recipes found by the end of it. I will say that when you DO finish a recipe, it is *very* satisfying since you felt like you discovered it yourself, rather than just follow a list that's given to you. There is a lot to take in in a short amount of time. You're scrambling to get recipes to work, but at the same time there's interesting text to read, and cool things in the background like the goblin shark. Even though it feels like a lot, it mostly ended up immersing me more into the game. Great job on the concept and making something cool out of it! Side note: I'm always interested in game design blogs, what kind of topics do you plan to talk about in yours? |
| Apr 28 06:56:04 | 11m 43s | BulletWell | ♥ 2 | Fun stuff, one of the more satisfying things about this is how the enemies can die to obstacles as well. It's really satisfying to have 3 of them lined up against a wall only to have spikes plow through them all. The game is quite scary to be caught in the middle of multiple enemies. While you CAN carefully pick up bullets from multiple angles, it's not worth the risk as it's easy to mess up such a thing and lose a precious HP. I usually just flocked to the furthest bottom area (that couldn't get hit by spikes) and turtled it out. I wouldn't say the game is terribly hard, but you do need to make sure you don't get caught in bad situations. Regardless of that, I do like some of the hecticness the situations generated. It wasn't always easy figuring out the best way to prepare to absorb hits so I was always kept on my toes. An impressive game, especially for a solo effort. |
| Apr 28 09:11:24 | 2h 15m | AeroCat | ♥ 2 | 16881 was my highest score, I really liked what you all did here. By raising the skill ceiling on the falling mechanic, you separated yourselves from all the other falling deeper games this LD. The mechanics felt a bit like Mario's cape in SMW, where you sorta pulled back and forward and the cape could go into a dive state. When you get really good with the dive, it feels reaaaal good to go fast and dodge obstacles. After a while you just pray you don't smack into something big like the doghouse :) Excellent execution, both on an artistic front and technical front! |
| Apr 28 21:54:00 | 12h 42m | Spring Tale | ♥ 1 | I'll have to echo some of the other people's statements. I initially thought is was the same sort of puzzle games I've seen in the past but you flipped it on its head pretty quick. The spring jump adds a nice dimension to the game style immediately and you start to look at the levels in different ways. Early on I initially thought the jump was more of a hindrance and I could easily mess myself up if I wasn't careful. By the end of the game I realized that you can actually get yourself out of many situations with it and it was much more flexible than I expected. I believe it was the figure-8 level that taught me that because I was really racking my brain on that one. From there, everything went much smoother after I made that connection. The enemies were another dimension that caught me off guard. The timing elements weren't too tricky, but it got me to think about my route just a bit more carefully. Overall I liked how you took a familiar concept, and threw in just a few extra elements to really expand on the concept and make you think about it in new ways. Great job! |
| Apr 28 22:35:16 | 41m 16s | Check Port for Moisture | ♥ 2 | LOL that intro. I like how the phone fell out even though he was just standing there. I really liked the turnbased twist. When it comes to turnbased vs realtime, a lot of people often opt for realtime for a more actiony feel. What they forget is that you can create a lot more complexity and depth of situations in a turnbased setting because the player has time to think about the situation (like AOE vs Civ). Because of that, it was interesting to see your game where you could plot out when you wanted to use your bubbles and how you wanted to kill the enemies in front of you. The piranha required a bit of oldschool Rogue know-how to beat effectively. So the game has a lot of potential to go further. I really liked how tense it got in the final puzzle when you're running out of oxygen and need to squeeze by the squids. There's a lot of room for more of that stuff if you wanted to tighten up the oxygen nodes and force players to be real careful about their moves. Really cool idea overall. I only caught one bug. I was able to move the rock more than 1 square by hitting arrows multiple times during interaction. I was looking forward to abusing this but couldn't reproduce :P |
| Apr 29 02:42:48 | 4h 07m | Susane the Sub | ♥ 2 | I can't resist a good upgrade game... There's a few cool things you did compared to other diving/digging games. I liked that the shop could be brought up anywhere in the world and it wasn't really a giant panel that took you out of the "immersion". Cat Goes Fishing does this as well - even though it's a subtle effect, it keeps you grounded in the world. Each upgrade feels GOOD. They are strong and you can clearly see its effects immediately. No +10% power here. I thought the ability to fly above the water was weird at first, but actually you can use this to your (slight) advantage. Once you get a strong engine you can pop out of the water and refill your fuel right as you dive back in. The momentum will give you an early speed boost. This barely has any real effect on gameplay but it was just plain fun to do. A solid game, I played until I owned every upgrade. I'm not totally sure if there was anything beyond that but I'm sure I was close enough. |
| Apr 29 02:50:58 | 8m 10s | Aquanaut | ♥ 2 | So tbh, I wouldn't have actually tried this game out unless I read the comments. The graphics were so good I just assumed it was a narrative game which I tend to avoid. When I found out it was a boss rush, that was what got my attention :) Very fun experience. Afaict, you're meant to take hits and rely on getting bubbles. For example, I couldn't find a way to dodge the eel at ALL. If that is was indeed an intentional design decision, then I actually think it was a really good decision. It upped the ante on everything and made you feel helpless... as you should against giant leviathans. Like others have said, this is also the first boss rush game I've ever played in an LD. It must've been difficult to make enough time to craft the quality boss fights. Nice work! |
| Apr 29 03:36:12 | 45m 14s | HyperJack | ♥ 2 | Just amazing core gameplay, you still manage to uncover new kinds of game designs I've never seen before. After playing your game, I REALLY like the idea of controlling a separate, physics based object. It's sorta like a game where you manually kick around a ball, except in this case it's so much more because you have to ride it, and the bounciness gives it a life of its own. I went in blind and it looks like I figured out your tips anyways, in that exact order. Like your other games, I start off awkward and clunky, but then ride a smooth curve of improvement and I always see better and better progress by the minute. That stuff is addicting. The big key for me was indeed jumping off as soon as the drill started. From there I eventually learned to control my jump height so I could continue my combo across columns. By the end of my playthrough, I could dance around each column with a full combo unless the height difference was too much. I ended up getting to the red blocks which I think are doable, but require no more than a couple mistakes or you're done. The game is great as is but I wondered if different kinds of tiles would help or ruin the experience. On one hand it seems good, to add to the decision-making and shake things up. On the other hand it feels REALLY good to time the tile rising and continue your combo. That wouldn't really be possible if you had to be careful about bombs coming up or something. Perhaps just a stun object that spawns so that you would have to do something fancy like jump off your friend to get over it. Probably the most innovative game from you and one of my faves. Looking forward to the next! high.PNG |
| Apr 29 04:07:03 | 30m 51s | Sunken Seas | ♥ 3 | Those depth charges scared the bejeezus out of me ๐ The water sounds rushing in were very realistic too which actually added to some of that terror. I actually expected the game to be more of a chill, exploration game at first, even after the hint of tentacles were shown in the beginning. I most DEFINITELY didn't expected what would happen in the 3rd room and beyond. Well done with the level design. There were some good, solid principles in play here like giving a window for the player to look through for a bit of anticipation, and the way you revealed things was paced pretty well. When you first go through a long tunnel it was disorienting and I forgot which way was up, but that was remedied once you land in the hub area. So it was good to take the player on a bit of a journey there as well. The most memorable moment for me was toss a flare at the vertical tentacles. The way they reacted to it was just really well done, from the speed of its movement to its sound. Great job on paying attention to the experience and focusing on unfolding all the action in good, tense ways! |
| Apr 29 04:26:09 | 19m 06s | Deep Learning Simulator 2021 | ♥ 1 | Man this game is super addicting! It's got a "just one more play factor" to it because there's a lot of randomness, yet you feel like you're under control of the randomness. My best was 990 and it took me a while to figure out how to get there. One of the sections I would gun for every time was the "V" with a bunch of purple pills on it. If you get that, you're somewhat guaranteed to go far as long as you manage your cells well. One thing I like about this game is the naturally increasing difficulty as you fall down faster. It gets very hard to correctly weave your box right in front of a red one, or to choose the correct angle in order to bounce your ball in the right direction to nab 5 pills in a row. Stuff like this is what really hooked me, because again, even if you miss, you feel like you were just close enough and could make it next time around. I'm impressed with the theming, this was a really unique take on the theme. Even if there are other deep learning games, I doubt they'll have this kind of presentation. I think this game is an unsung hero this jam. If people can get past the learning curve, they're in for a treat. |
| Apr 29 04:37:02 | 10m 53s | Slimes and Sandwiches | ♥ 2 | This game was quite the hippocampus test :) I imagine taxi drivers would be good at remember all these room layouts but I definitely had trouble. The slimes were definitely threatening at all times and it made it difficult to figure out the best way to weave through them all. I suppose that's why you leave food everywhere, as you can run into no-win situations - which is fine. It was very deflating to search 90% of the rooms and realize the key was way in the other direction! Not much you can do about that really. I suppose if you reached a dead end, you could give them 2 or 3 sandwiches to have made it worth their while lol. I really liked your gif and explanation. I wouldn't have thought to use a bit of physics to provide the randomness. That's a super cool idea, and technically is quite fast to implement from scratch compared to a standard one (at least the first step). Thanks for sharing! |
| Apr 29 04:56:50 | 19m 48s | Safe Cave | ♥ 3 | Absolutely brilliant! There are a bunch of VVVVVVV-likes, but not only did you tie it to "lore" really well, but you took it in your own direction as well. The biggest difference is that you don't control when gravity changes directly, your positioning and timing does. This created really unique scenarios when it came to stuff like speedrunning, where you would purposely do some weird routing to make sure the beam was in the right spot at the right time to do some optimal jumps. I liked that there were multiple paths as well, so you could be -relatively- creative in your approach to things, depending on your skillset. The constant up and down switches were very cool since the level design was spot on. I found myself quickly and constantly scanning both the floor and ceiling for opportunities to progress. Also, the distance from you to the UFO also affects the beam, and thus the platforming and level design. Very interesting stuff! The music using the beam AS part of it was so good. Everything about this design is so tight. My last comment is on the game concept itself. Your concept was straight to the point and I got the twist immediately. The idea of using ceilings to avoid getting sucked up was very smart and a great way to pull in the player. Fantastic job~ |
| Apr 29 05:08:12 | 11m 22s | MechaRock | ♥ 1 | Couldn't figure out what to do until I scrolled down, REALLY glad you put that hint in there. After that it was pretty easy - just wait for a handful of mats and then build a tower in the corner with down+block and eventually get to the top. I will say it is VERY fun and challenging to try to build a tower in the middle of the stage. It was fun to watch they physics wreck havoc while you tried your best to salvage it. Perhaps it could be tune so that that was the primary playstyle (or building a pyramid to have stability). Overall I thought this was a pretty fun concept. Though rather than going Deeper and Deeper you're going higher and higher :P Spamming blocks for the sake of doing it and watching the physics go haywire is definitely worth playing around with. |
| Apr 29 05:22:32 | 14m 20s | LuckySwimmer | ♥ 3 | I liked the variety of environments, it definitely compelled me to keep going just to see what all the systems were going to be and their mechanics. I will say that it was a bit too frustrating to die near the end with no checkpoints, so although I tried a dozen times or so, I never could complete it. A couple of really good touches I noticed. First off the tail looks AMAZING. How'd you pull that off? Secondly, see where your previous runs died was very cool as well. It was hilarious to see 6 of them whipping around just on one tooth. A lot of it reminded me a bit of Ren and Stimpy, which was a show that had no qualms about weird closeups on bodily subjects. Pretty unique game - not sure how many other devs will attempt this kind of idea lol. |
| Apr 29 05:56:08 | 33m 36s | Deep Dig Pizza | ♥ 3 | $1,390 final score. What a great mashup of genres! The closest thing I've seen to this is Battle Chef Brigade, in terms of having an ingredient collection portion and a cooking portion being different minigames. I haven't seen a game utilize mining the way you have though, as mining games usually just have a straight up upgrade mechanic once you reach town. With your system though, it creates some actual thought in the mining since you have to gun for recipes. This creates decisions like "am I ahead on time for recipes? Maybe I can start carving out a route towards these mushrooms in case I get a swarm of those recipes". As simple as it was, I actually really enjoyed the cooking portion. Several times I found myself teetering on the edge of failure, whether it was an order about to go away, or the round time itself was going to run out. So clicking on those relatively small ingredient icons was nerve-wracking, in a good way. This seemed like a random mashup at first but the more I played it, the more I understood just how well the mechanics worked together. Kudos for making a mining game that's more than just a mining game! |
| Apr 29 08:04:34 | 2h 08m | One Shot in the Dark, Now I'm Dead. | ♥ 3 | First off, your website URL and content is on another level. I got Power Dunkers on repeat as I type this. You absolutely nailed the theme in such a novel angle - going deeper and deeper into conspiracies. It helped that I was playing this way past midnight, so you putting my real time in to game just heightened the experience even more. When I first started playing, I thought it was going to be a bit like Orwell and I would have to pay a lot of attention to all the details. I'm pretty glad it was more of a VN and I could just enjoy the pacing and story. I'm not too much of a VN person but I did like the way the game was presented in terms of using various mediums. I ended up really liking the story although I was a bit confused at first because I couldn't quite tell what the setting was. Since the game was so eerie I thought maybe it was an unreliable narrator and I was being taken for a ride of paranoia, or perhaps it was a simulation. I'm VERY glad you put a summary of the story at the very end. I've never seen that personally, and that helped me fill out the missing 15% of the story I didn't fully connect. Again, that was a bit of me questioning if the content I was seeing was reliable, rather than necessarily the writing. This was a cool game overall that really surpassed my expectations. The conspiracies and mysteries were presented in a way that really perked my interest and kept me moving along. Very bold idea and execution! |
| Apr 29 08:34:12 | 29m 38s | Deep molatoes | ♥ 3 | I initially thought this would be a Lemmings-esque game but I quickly realized it was its own beast. After I saw how difficult it was going to be, I put on my thinking cap. One of my first strategies was to corral all the molatoes off to 1 side with signs. Can't have a ceiling fall on you if there's no ceiling! It didn't take too long before I realized the folly of this decision - you'll run out of money eventually. A few strats later, I figured I could ignore the signs and just focus on keeping the miners alive with reinforcements. It'd be a bit like an aim trainer at that point, just quickly recognizing when parts would collapse and stop it. That ran into the same issue of running on of money too, as it was pretty dependent on RNG without signs. Finally I came to the strat that others seemed to find most effective: just keeping 1 alive. I got very far with this tactic, a bit into the total darkness area before I was pelted with a stray rock. This game was fun to try to figure out! I suspect the "proper" way to play is to properly use signs to point miners at the ore, and using that ore to keep reinforcements up. I'd LOVE to see a video of people playing this game w/o resorting to using a solo molatoe, I feel like I could learn a lot from that. |
| Apr 29 18:38:32 | 10h 04m | Deep Way To Basement | ♥ 1 | I don't play D&D, but now I can tell people I have a level 10 wizard. It's hard not to put this game down, you most definitely want to see how the game plays at max level. I'm glad you made the upgrades linear and not exponential. Mostly because in a jam, you don't really have time to grind out expensive upgrades so I really enjoyed just experiencing the game and how nutty it got over time. The game is a blast though. Really fun to watch with just enough interaction to keep me busy, but also enough leeway that I can just watch the physics happen :) |
| Apr 29 21:08:28 | 2h 29m | Aftermath | ♥ 2 | I couldn't help but laugh when I got ending 1 in a matter of seconds. Not because of the writing or mood, but because I barely got to see the game yet ๐ I was interested to see where the writing was going to go. Because you woke up in such a confused and sudden state, I thought the player was going to be the murderer all along but couldn't see people in the correct reality. I think it's because the setup and pacing was similar to the Tales of the Black Freighter sequence in the Watchmen Director's Cut. I looked into it too much. In some ways, the way you ended the story was more of a twist than that since it wasn't what I was expecting. Nice work exploring new kinds of games and genres, I like to do the same myself. That's what LD is really all about imo. |
| Apr 29 21:22:39 | 14m 11s | Watcher Patrol 4 | ♥ 3 | Is that............Donald Duck I'm fighting? lol, interesting sound effect. Great job figuring out how to make a single player Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime without........making a single player LiaDS. I've tried to think of a way in the past and couldn't come up with anything, so the wheel mechanic is quite elegant. After an approach where I just have everything on full blast and hurtling downwards (which failed), I wound up with the same strategy as @local-minimum so I sorta bypassed a lot of the intended strategy. I did play around with the controls for a while though and I appreciated how the mechanics worked together. Somehow bringing in FTL mechanics where you can upgrade your battery systems to wield stronger tools would be a good path for a future version. |
| Apr 29 21:49:03 | 26m 24s | Debts and Pandamonium | ♥ 4 | I really liked the concept of the game but had quite the hard time getting far in it. I must've played at least 10 rounds but could only beat the mailbox mission lol. I went in blind and figured I just needed to rough people up with my fists. Only after I scrolled down and read the instructions did I realize you needed to go into debt. From there I just kept buying laser swords and smacking people with them. Probably overkill and not cost efficient, but I was more focused on beating the missions before optimizing. I eventually got used to hunting down the PI and the layout of the map, that took me several tries to learn along with the combat system. It is quite scary to accidentally run into a cop. I know that's intentional so I have no beef with it, but I was terrified of running into the same cop multiple times since it drains your time so much. In my best run I beat the mailbox mission but then got hit with a debt gameover. I'm not sure how to make more money than what I did, even if I did buy cheaper weapons. I still enjoyed the game in the end. The intro got me into the right mindset of a hired gun. The game reminded me of classic GTAs, including the little alleys you can run through. Although there wasn't too much to the city, little things like that made exploration enjoyable. Good job! |
| Apr 29 22:10:49 | 21m 46s | Lure of the Yamabiko | ♥ 1 | I generally don't find much innovation in bullet hell games so I was surprised to see your game. It had a couple things I hadn't seen before. 1. A roguelite meta with upgrades. It seems like something obvious in retrospect, but afaik I have never seen a true bullet hell with this style of metasystem, maybe a normal shmup at best. It was enjoyable to grind it out. I did maybe 6 or 7 loops, usually beating a couple bosses each time. 2. Specifically colored balls. When the fox shot out 2 orange balls and 1 white one, I thought that was a magnificent touch and it really stood out. I liked the game but I also like bullet hells in general. I would've liked the slow button to be a bit slower, or you might want 2 levels of slow like in some Touhou games, but I managed anyways because the bullet patterns were relatively forgiving. I did find it VERY enjoyable to move point blank to the fox and bomb it for half it's health. Super fun. |
| Apr 29 22:18:17 | 7m 28s | Street Spark Racing | ♥ 2 | This game exceeded my expectations around every corner lol, amazing job. The first twist of how to play was awesome, you had really good pacing there because I most definitely thought the controls were messed up. Even kicking around the car was well done because it still (mildly) adhere to car physics so there was a bit of skill involved in it. If you COULD align the car correctly with the road, it felt very satisfying to blast it. Going deeper each time, yet another clever and hilarious twist. And like others said, the jokes didn't get repetitive nor did you overstay your welcome. This game was an excellent package overall and probably will be one of the main ones I remember from this jam. |
| Apr 29 22:44:20 | 26m 03s | Scython | ♥ 4 | This is the first attempt at a game like Creeper World that I've seen - I always thought the concept had other places the design go move towards. Your game is a bit more on the traditional TD side and less on creating sprawling networks, which I liked. I also like the idea of the corruption coming out in waves, such that you could throw in the early-descent mechanic. It's always fun to have push-your-luck mechanics in TDs. I had a relatively simple playstyle. I just placed pulsar towers along the boundaries around the portals, generators around them, and then solar towers behind those. Upgrade high traffic areas a bit after that. Descending early on the last map is quite dangerous and I stopped doing it beyond layer 4. Overall an excellent game, I was able to clear the last stage fairly easily but the game feels pretty intense at all times because you don't know just how much damage the next layer will do. And of course, things get pretty hairy as your network gets compromised and you have to turtle up in the corner. stage.PNG |
| Apr 29 23:37:37 | 53m 17s | Freg, Fregg, and Freggy: The Last Band | ♥ 1 | Really fun concept. I wanted to go further but fatal crashes seem to still be in version. Nonetheless I saw a lot of things I liked. Using light as a dodge/crit mechanic was really interesting, along with using lantern fire as a resource. I think this could be explored even further as I haven't quite seen a game like this regarding light management. I also liked the concept of saving your card hand between battles, so there was a sense of hand management there, such as saving your heals for out of combat or saving the big hit card for the boss. That's pretty novel to me as I normally see games like Slay the Spire where your hand/deck resets every match. This added an interesting layer to playing my cards. I enjoyed the experience, I could tell you had quite a lot to do as the game is very ambitious. I'm always impressed with what you accomplish in these jams and this game is no different! P.S. we actually ended up with mildly similar games in concept. Auto movement to the upper right and auto-ish party-based combat. I TOO wanted environment generation to be a thing but that didn't happen :P |
| Apr 30 00:20:26 | 42m 49s | Fish'n'Ship | ♥ 3 | Fun game that definitely lures you to play further with its upgrades. Some of the modules here are pretty unique, and I didn't expect the core gameplay to be about countering weaknesses which is pretty novel. Gives me shades of Octopath Traveler in that regard. I didn't look at any guides when I went into it so I mistook the airblast as some kind of oxygen generator so I avoided it in my final runs. I could make it 90% of the way there playing without it. I eventually checked back here and saw my folly though. I did like how gold becomes obsolete over time. It's like a worker placement game and you free up workers as certain things are no longer relevant to your goals (in this case, the miner and the radio). So I thought that was really neat and you could play into that even more in a full version. Good stuff, the game looks great and I'm always a fan of fishing/mining stuff. |
| Apr 30 00:37:14 | 16m 48s | Tooth Toss | ♥ 3 | Really fun game, you should get more eyeballs on this! The mechanic is quite awkward at first, but by the time you beat the game, you get good at catch the sword midair and utilizing your jump double cancels to basically continuously move. It feels great when you reach that point. Yes bouncing the sword REALLY high gets it stuck, but I can't help but be entertained when I throw a sword from downtown and it actually lands on something. Or multiple things... Again, this game really shines once you get good enough to bounce the sword and constantly catch it to continue your momentum. I wish there was more content and levels so that's a good thing. The game started to really spice it up in its boss battles. Awesome job. |
| Apr 30 04:04:59 | 3h 27m | Magic Frontier | ♥ 2 | Simple yet novel concept. Even though it's a puzzle game at heart, it still FEELS like a city builder of sorts and conveys that same sense of progress which makes it really impressive. All villages did was give you more resources, yet it felt good to nab a huge block of them as if you really were playing a strategy game. Nice sleight of hand there :) I'm curious how you even came up with the idea. It's really easy to pick a theme like that and get drawn into common tropes. I always love how devs come up with the innovative ones. Awesome game, I played it to the end, was very hard to stop. Sometimes puzzle games can overstay their welcome but you kept throwing in interesting challenges using the same core mechanics. |
| Apr 30 05:29:00 | 1h 24m | Grapple Tongue | ♥ 0 | A fun game that really keeps you on your toes and wakes you up. I liked that each section offered something new. I was flying through the stages pretty quickly until I hit the lightning section. That was was pretty tricky but was smooth sailing from there. The addition of the penguins was definitely a good idea since the stronger players could shoot for the if they wanted and they were my favorite parts of the game, especially the one in the lightning section. |
| Apr 30 06:05:12 | 36m 12s | Tension | ♥ 2 | I definitely disagree with comments that say you should speed things up and be able to swing around willy nilly. This game is actually a very nice change of pace from the other grappling hook games I've seen so far. At first I was surprised and frustrated that there was a lot of impact damage. But after playing more, I understood this game had a different vision in mind. The game is more about careful exploration with a dash of fear, rather than empowerment and letting the character fly through the levels unharmed. This really heightened the experience for me and made it interesting trying to navigate the dangerous levels, especially once the lava kicked in and added a whole nother dimension to be afraid of. I really liked how long the grapple was, something straight out of Made in Abyss. It was fun just rappelling down long areas and seeing what was to come. Overall, an interesting angle on the theme and very tense. Not sure why people were saying relaxing atmosphere when you could die around basically every corner lol. |
| Apr 30 06:54:06 | 48m 54s | Ore Lord | ♥ 1 | I always like necromancer-ish games and it's fun to just see how big and chaotic things can get. The presentation is amazing and the UI well done. I actually liked the dragging feature, it felt more intuitive to me. With that said, I'm not sure if there was a strategy to this game or was it mostly just a game about building and upgrading guys as fast as I could. If there was more strategy that I missed, please let me know. I know you can drag characters around a bit but that didn't seem useful beyond the beginning areas. Overall I really liked the feel of the game. It somewhat reminded me of elevator stages in beat em ups when enemies drop down and it's go time. All the chaos in the final areas was definitely a sight to behold. |
| Apr 30 06:54:45 | 39s | Doctor Shrink | ♥ 2 | The time limit mechanic was a great twist. I've played a number of shapeshift games in LD, but I think this is the only one I've played with that sort of mechanic. I was surprised with how much it added, because now I had to be careful about when and where I switched. This added a good variety to what would normally be a rote exercise in going small and then going big when you reached the exit. Here, you had to quickly "big-cancel" when you reached a tall section and then move forward. The execution actually felt very nice when performing this quickly. Like others said, some of the level mechanics/ideas do overstay its welcome a bit. Although as I mentioned earlier, even though the levels weren't particularly challenging me after a while, I was getting faster at managing my size changes and figuring out sections on the fly which felt good - mastery of the mechanic. The end section was a nice cherry on top of everything and a great cap to an insane concept. Not many games can pull of the inception idea well but yours felt good. |
| Apr 30 07:39:57 | 45m 12s | Corla | ♥ 2 | I can not believe you pulled off a game design like this. When it comes to "a roguelike without combat", you lose so many levers to pull on for upgrades and you assume the game will be too simple. You managed to find ways to keep it very interesting though, mostly due to the hole and obstacle mechanics. You figured out so many clever angles on the upgrades and they're a joy to get. In all honesty, gaining access to new types of movement in this sort of design is WAY more interesting than just getting a sword that does more damage. You've really shifted my mindset from this game. Collecting all the upgrades becomes an intrinsic goal quickly, and you start to feel like a god as you gain more and more powers and can tackle trickier situations. I may have been 4 or so upgrades from having them all but my game did freeze up :O I actually really, REALLY liked the music choice. It was a very pleasant loop and took the edge off of bad situations and dying. Bold and good choice. Just a brilliant design all around and one of the best I've played this jam! |
| Apr 30 08:19:22 | 39m 25s | Vertigo | ♥ 2 | That is one manly main character, down to his Conan-ish death scream lol. I would've liked to have a partner to play this with. Judging from the gif you put up, it might feel like a cross between Nidhogg and Smash. As for the solo play, the game is a bit intimidating at first as you're jumping down into the unknown, but you start to get the hang of it, especially utilizing the double jump to save yourself, even after falling on an enemy. I think the parts that really shined were the Quickman sections where you had to outrun the maze. The art is great and cohesive. I loved the animations and it reminded me of stuff like Blackthorne where you have pixel art with just tons of frames that make it stand out. How much time did you guys spend on the multiplayer vs the singleplayer? It's not often you see a game with both. Actually........I can't think of another LD game that's ever done that so I'm not sure how tough that would be on your dev resources. Anywho, you got the most important part of the gameplay right, which was smacking an enemy. Even though the game could get repetitive, that part NEVER got old. So I had a bit of "Just one more smack" syndrome going on until I eventually slipped one too many times. Good job on this game, I'd love to hear what the lore is for this person just heading down nonstop and beating up demons. Maybe it's just a Sisyphus thing... |
| Apr 30 08:33:06 | 13m 44s | Hook, Line, Key | ♥ 1 | Nice work, for a compo game you squeezed more work than I would have expected. Several different parts to the fishing system, a good handful of collectables, and a cohesive package or audio to go with it. Fishing games are a dime a dozen, but you managed to toss in some new things I hadn't seen before. I've never seen that depth selection mechanic. I've also never seen one that gave you experience per new species you found. That made collecting that much more compelling and drew me in to keep playing. The first item I got was the bow and I thought that was hilarious. It definitely set the mood that I was going to be fishing up some pretty interesting items. I'm a big fan of fishing games and have made one myself. I think this was a solid package and you have a really good grasp on what makes these games enjoyable. |
| Apr 30 08:47:03 | 13m 57s | Nuclear Arms 8: Navigate the Hate | ♥ 3 | The orb system is actually quite innovative. Not just mechanically, but thematically speaking it made perfect sense. It was a bit of a challenge/reward system like gold/silver/bronze, but integrated in a much more interesting way than just 3 levels of timed goals. The gunplay was solid. I liked that there was quite a delay between shots. That plus the audio and effects made snapping around and pelting heads feel very good. The enemies WERE a bit scary in the sense that they could nail you if they were only mildly close, but at least you healed us between rounds. I too, enjoyed jumping around on the trashbags (or black balloons? they sure acted a lot more like that!). I managed to stick myself in a corner and farm those bears for a while. Even without the corner, damn it was fun to bounce on those things and just shoot around and explode everything. Super visceral. Really good stuff overall. Your team always manages to squeeze in mechanical surprises I don't expect and that's what I come here for! Unrelated but have you guys always had the Silver Surfer game over screen? I thought that was great but not sure if you use it in every game. |
| Apr 30 09:04:13 | 17m 10s | Masseuse you Loose | ♥ 6 | Haven't seen a variation like this before. It's like Diner Dash or Cook Serve Delicious where you have to figure out the best approach to taking orders, except for this one it's a different execution minigame. I loved that idea. Because you're mostly choosing which ones to tackle, I always tried to chunk the actions together to make it quicker. I always brought my left hand to my mouse for the acupuncture to hypertap for example, so it was costly if I didn't chunk that action. You guys always seem to make games that are easy to play and hard to high score. I don't even want to attempt a high score because you get a whole lotta crazy people that are willing to speed run the hell out of your games :) Very fun game with a jarring intro to get you in the right mindset. Kudos to coming up with different and interesting inputs to mimic real life techniques. Capture.PNG |
| Apr 30 09:10:50 | 6m 37s | Monster journal: a short story | ♥ 0 | This game was actually pretty unique. Not that I've played it but maybe the only game that is similar is that one mobile game where you slash weakpoints and block attacks - forgot the name. But I like what you have hear regardless. It's like a simplified FPS boss rush type game. Short but shows off the concept really well. The graphics effects you have are really good. It adds so much to the game and makes it stand out for some normal, faux-3d type game. I was also fine with the simplified combat. It was challenging enough because of it's pacing so it fulfilled that need. Very cohesive package overall. I thought it was going to be a normal dungeon crawler going into it but you definitely surprised me. Nice job! |
| May 1 02:13:02 | 17h 02m | Red Archer | ♥ 2 | I reallly wanted to be good at this game without resorting to slomo but I played so much better with it on ๐ The game has a real good feel to it. The bow is basically a gun and a grappling hook in one, so flying around bouncing on top of dudes is awesome. The graphics were really cool too. I've NEVER seen a pixel vignette before so I love that you went all in on that style. At this point I can just tell from a gif that it's your game, which is a good sign. You're getting better and better at the presentation, the motion lines when dashing were a nice touch ...even though I didn't actually need to dash that much. Well done. |
| May 1 02:47:26 | 34m 24s | Ski Trip | ♥ 2 | Definitely a game that makes you want to keep going just to see how it evolves :) I really enjoyed the difficulty, it made a lot of sense too since it is skiing after all. Both these points created a pacing where you see a cool sight and what's ahead, and then the tense moment where you actually have to navigate the section. Just nonstop rising and falling tension which makes for a great experience. I'm curious how your team is divided since it had a lot of work done on the art side and the level design side. Is the majority of your team artists? Very memorable experience and a great way to weave "ski" and "trip" together. |
| May 1 03:11:39 | 24m 13s | Selkรถ | ♥ 4 | It was interesting playing the game and changing your mental model of the game over time. You have no idea what to expect going into it. After the first fish interaction, I pretty much just clicked on everything and hoped it did something. Then I got to the ordering puzzle and then I was like oh OK.....this is a real puzzle game. And so on. Basically every puzzle sort of surprised me because it was a different thing from before. The ending TOTALLY caught me off guard and had no idea what was going on. I did read the comments later and now understand. Definitely not something I've seen in a game, much less even heard of. Nice little educational game :) |
| May 1 03:29:59 | 18m 20s | Deep Sea Trip | ♥ 1 | This game was a blast! Like you saw on stream, I actually didn't know you could turn your turret for a while, although I did manage 830m with just that technique. I initially thought I could just turtle in the corner since it would mean I only needed to turn 90 degrees. Outside of having to dodge occasionally, this worked out well. The problem is that hitting enemies far away is quite difficult doing that, and missing shots vs a squid will definitely ruin your day. It's fun when it gets super hectic and your goal is just to run around in circles collecting as much score as possible before you die. I really enjoyed this game and the leaderboard was a great addition! |
| May 1 07:03:39 | 3h 33m | Gettn' Diggy Wit It | ♥ 3 | The thing that stood out most to me in this game was the menu. Or rather.........the lack of it! The way you integrated all the upgrades and map parts into a diegetic was super cool and it really grounds you into the museum, that you're really building it up and that it's your HQ. A simple zoom-in to bring up the menu and bam, there it is. The mechanics are fairly classic miner stuff with a dash of Terraria in terms of having tools that could help you get around. I did think the digging was a tad unusual where sometimes you could dig further away but I suppose that mostly helped me speed things up anyways. Having the fossils be hidden is a little more unusual for the genre and makes exploration somewhat more random, but in return you do get a little bit more reward when you do discover something. And wow, you fit in a save system while you were at it! |
| May 1 07:24:09 | 20m 30s | Polyomino Prospector | ♥ 2 | You innovated on 2 different fronts here - the mining and the upgrade progression. Pretty bold of you to toss in 2 completely new things but I guess it IS Tetris which is a game that really hasn't been iterated on much. Though I never QUITE figured out the digging rules, I had a general sense of when I would cut into the dirt and when I would not, and almost always got to where I want to be. I think that's a good result of the design if I can sort of fumble my way to the goal I had in mind so very nice job on that front. Ye old medieval remix of the Tetris theme was a perfect fit and the interface is solid even though you had to crap in a lot more than a normal Tetris game. I liked how you went all in on the theme, from the texture on the background to the nice serif font you chose. The upgrades certainly kept me going a few more rounds so I'm glad you threw that in. Some of the pieces were fun to play with and really changed my approach. Neat game! |
| May 1 07:46:37 | 22m 28s | Nuclear blaze | ♥ 2 | The game is an interesting romp where you're a platformer but need to keep your obstacles from spreading. My initial impression of the game was that the game was interesting but potentially the fire clearing could get a bit tedious. The saving grace was that it was actually rather fun to clean up a whole room. A bit like Visceral Cleanup. But the end of the game really showed off what it was made of. I saw you wanted to give off the feel of a tense situation where the room is getting flooded with fire. You sorta achieved that here, though of course clearing out the room was doable. It was a bit like a puzzle game at that point, where time matters. How do you clear the room when the fire keeps spreading? What route should I take? How fast do I need to clear it? These are not questions I often get to ask myself in a platformer. This ended up being a very unique experience in terms of gameplay and I was very surprised with what I saw. Great innovation here! |
| May 1 08:47:21 | 1h 00m | Space Mining | ♥ 1 | I know they don't play the same but this game gave me some Commander Keen vibes. I think it was due to the art style mixed with a simple collection core gameplay. The jetpack and drill led to a bit more personality in your game (2 layers of drills!) so that was a good touch. Like others said, I just sorta flew over most enemies so that took away the tension of the enemies. Probably a bit of a good thing since deaths were a bit painful. |
| May 3 09:54:14 | 49h 06m | Into Conflict | ♥ 2 | Very interesting game! The first playthrough I struggled with understanding the colors, as others have. I assumed I was some sort of god-like entity for some reason (not a nation) so I just plopped down units right into various enemy home bases, thinking I was successfully causing unrest in territories. After coming back to the comments section, I learned a bit more about how I should be playing. I then started to really understand what the game was all about. Big ol land grabs in the beginning while trying to keep a low profile. I really like how this game is divided into 3 phases: 1. "stealth phase" where you build your economy under wraps 2. A conquering phase where you take enemy territories while stomping out enemies in your own countries 3. All out war where you don't care about reputation anymore and go for the win. At some point you're left AND right clicking furiously on a zone to deploy everything you got. I really enjoyed the territory battles. It was especially fun when there were 6 nations all battling for the same chunk of land. That's something you don't really see in a strategy game and it has a great fantasy to it. I'm not sure if adding a tech system would add too much complexity or if the game's elegance is good enough. Really great base game concept here and I'm curious how you could expand it. Either way, very cool game. I had a bad first impression but I'm glad I stuck with it :) |
| May 3 10:39:29 | 45m 15s | Trail Of Pigs | ♥ 1 | Really, really great immersion. I love the early experience and how you get into the mood of the game right away. You and your friend are dying (ESPECIALLY your pal), you have no idea why, but you gotta suck it up and move forward. After the first few deaths you start to realize how careful you really need to be, either with your stealth or your resource management, this game is TOUGH. I could only make it to the 2nd tick of the bar-map through sneaking around and avoiding conflict. Is there a trick to using the gun that I'm not aware of? I can usually get a shot off if no one's moving, but it seems like there's a dead zone where I can't shoot if they get too close. |
| May 4 21:31:40 | 34h 52m | Swab the Deck! | ♥ 3 | Very interesting twist! Funnily enough, I wanted to have a StS overmap in my game as well but couldn't squeeze in the time, so I'm glad to see someone pulled it off. I actually found parts of this to be pretty engaging. The real-timeness of it offered a different twist on things since time is now the currency, so you take hits as you play bigger cards, not just spend up to an SP cap. Because of this, I found myself having a couple strats, one where I'm just dropping attacks as fast as I could, and the other for extreme healing (needed for bigger ships). I basically just use my fastest attacks to cycle through my deck and then use heals when I can. One thing I couldn't figure out through play: how long do buffs last? I grabbed various cards with buffs like +energy and -accuracy, but I couldn't see how long those buffs lasted, unless they were permanent? I think overall, what's missing are more combo cards. Like to play into the realtime nature of the game, a card that allowed double damage for 2 seconds so that the player might save up for a big salvo when that card comes up. Obviously you're limited by jam time so it's not a big deal in the end. The existing system does allow for some light combos. Glad to hear you plan to expand on the game, I think there are plenty of places for the game to go and I've never seen this kind of theming with a deckbuilder. Super excited to see what comes up! |
| May 9 05:36:06 | 104h 04m | Far Side of the Mirror | ♥ 1 | This is the first narrative-dialogue game I've played of yours and it's fun to see you guys flex your skillsets across many different genres. The game has a lot of variety in it that keeps pulling you forward (the mirror mechanic helps set this up). But there's always a new backdrop, or minigame, or just music to pull you along. In some ways it reminds me of the pacing of Journey where there's a lot of ups and downs in the storytelling to keep the pace interesting. The music is notable as always. A lot of the music reminded me of To the Moon, probably since both games are more about roaming around and exploring rather than fighting. The beach theme was easily my favorite. Overall I think you captured the idea of falling deeper into dreams and dark thoughts pretty well. There's a lot of character and creativity put into the world design and it really sells you on the idea of exploring worlds just are just bit off. |
