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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | JoeShanahan's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 6 18:17:42 | No More Stables! | ♥ 1 | The puns alone deserve 5 stars on humour, but there's a bunch of other great jokes too, I laughed a lot 😆 Aside from that, I loved the upgrade system for the final part of the game - that each time you made a choice between upgrades - it was a brand new set of upgrades. So you couldn't just get the one you didn't pick next time. It meant that my choice of upgrades felt personalised to me, making it much more satisfying to win. Amazing job! 😁 | |
| Oct 6 18:54:49 | 37m 07s | Unstable Skyscraper Builder | ♥ 1 | It was all going so well! (...until it wasn't 😅) tower.png |
| Oct 7 11:36:45 | 16h 41m | Snmuloc | ♥ 1 | When I was super young, Columns was the one game that my mum would actually play, I think the music for it is burned into my brain somewhere at this point 😅 Inverting the match-3 to be DON'T-match-3 is an interesting innovation I haven't seen before, requires different strategies for sure. |
| Oct 7 11:52:32 | 15m 47s | Crystal Town | ♥ 1 | I've played enough Stardew Valley to recognise the inspiration here! Great job on your first jam, hope there's many more to come! 🎉 |
| Oct 7 18:18:18 | 6h 25m | Volatile | ♥ 1 | I really love the aesthetic of this! The graphics are technically quite minimal, but in practice they look really good because of the special effects. Great job! 😄 |
| Oct 7 18:58:07 | 39m 49s | Wobbly Penguins | ♥ 6 | Amazing game! The puzzle mechanics are pretty unique, and the penguins are really adorable. I think I know a game that might have inspired you, but I'll let the other jammers discover that for themselves 😉 |
| Oct 10 18:12:18 | 71h 14m | Experiment #56 | ♥ 1 | I love any game that manages to replicate the feeling of swinging on the ninja-ropes in Worms Armageddon, the momentum in this felt really great! The postjam stuff was too hard for me, but overall I really liked this game! |
| Oct 10 19:34:02 | 1h 21m | Snek Left | ♥ 2 | Woah, incredibly polished game here! Really nice and consistent art style, with great UI too, and it feels like an example of "one button" gameplay done right. Restarting is nice and quick so it doesn't get too frustrating dying. My one complaint is that when the difficulty comes from not being able to see? Those levels feel like the least fun, and least satisfying to complete. It felt like pure luck if I came out the other side or not, rather than something I could master. But there were an impressive number of levels here, with good introductions for each new thing like the stairs - some good level design there! Overall, really great entry, I liked this a lot! |
| Oct 11 18:05:59 | 22h 31m | Stompin' Grounds | ♥ 1 | I loved Marble Madness as a kid, so seeing a version with a more physics take was cool! My only real complaint is I wish there was more of it! 😄 |
| Oct 11 18:14:22 | 8m 23s | SkyTris | ♥ 1 | I felt like I was getting off to a really good start, and then just like with Tetris, one mistake snowballed into another, and another... and then everything fell apart 😅 I've seen a couple of block stacking games so far this ldjam, but this one was really well executed, I didn't feel rushed so it was pretty calming to play |
| Oct 11 18:30:21 | 15m 59s | Drop vs Planties | ♥ 1 | I liked that each form had its own strengths/weaknesses, at one point I felt like water was strongest, but ultimately it felt like gas was best because of the faster fire rate. I think this game could benefit from better introductions to the mechanics, even after reading the game page and playing through to the end, I wasn't quite clear on why/when I would transition back. Something I often rely on is this idea from Binding of Isaac, putting the controls on the floor of the first level. It's simple and quick to implement, but is a great way to get people introduced to the basics! isaac.png |
| Oct 11 18:47:28 | 17m 07s | Remote Work | ♥ 1 | Super unique idea here! I have to confess I felt a sudden injection of stress as soon as the Slack window appeared 😅 I also spent far too long trying to find where the key codes were, I didn't realize it was being added to the filesystem. That kind of breaking the boundary between the game and the game files was really interesting (once I got the hang of it) |
| Oct 11 18:56:37 | 9m 09s | the cards we're dealt | ♥ 3 | Immediately fell in love with the soundtrack and the artwork before I'd even started playing. Super relaxing, really gets you in a nice chill mood. I really like the card game aspect of it, very simple to understand - although I couldn't really anticipate how my choices would affect my mood. I did not end up emotionally stable 😅 Really interesting entry! |
| Oct 11 19:09:33 | 12m 56s | Plundering Boy | ♥ 2 | Well it definitely fit the theme of Unstable - so much so that I think I started to feel a bit seasick 😅 I struggled a bit at first to know how to get started, I'd gone through the tutorial screens but then totally forgotten as soon as I started - I think some in-game prompts (maybe on screen controls) would be really helpful instead of putting it all before you start. Other than that, I thought this was a pretty funny game, especially the audio (which I can see why you've opted out of) but I think that's still worth points overall and for humour too. Great job! (now excuse me while I go stare at the horizon for a bit) |
| Oct 11 19:49:17 | 39m 44s | Steady Grounds | ♥ 1 | Woah, I really loved this one! I would've played through to the end, but I got stuck on level 33. There were a lot of clever ideas right from the start here, and more introduced as the game went on. But I think what impressed me the most was how many levels you had, most of them trying out a unique idea that isn't replicated anywhere else. There's a couple of levels that could benefit from some kind of background, letting you know you're moving. There's one level where no background means you DISCOVER you're falling (but it's not clear at first) and that's amazing, but there's other levels where it's hard to tell if you're moving or not, and that's not a benefit. I played for 25 minutes straight, and only quit because I couldn't beat that level, really solid entry! |
| Oct 11 19:53:41 | 4m 24s | ŮNSTÅBLĒ | ♥ 3 | I was really very bad at this game. But after practicing for a bit... I was still bad. But at least I got a non-negative score 😄 A lot of polish here, and the humor is great too! A great entry all around! also also, the music vaguely reminded me of this one Catherine track: https://youtu.be/-QEZ-zQXOAo |
| Oct 11 20:18:30 | 24m 49s | A bad day to harvest | ♥ 1 | This is a pretty elaborate game, took me a while to get the hang of it! I really like the turn based aspect, that there isn't a time pressure and I can take my time deciding what the best next move is. I'm not sure I managed to successfully stop a climate event using a net, but I think that was just me misunderstanding how you're supposed to use nets. Overall, very unique game idea with pretty good execution too. The art style does a lot with very little, creating a consistent aesthetic that really fits the climate-apocalypse theme you were going for. Great job! 😄 |
| Oct 11 20:22:46 | 4m 16s | Undeliverable | ♥ 1 | Unfortunately my PC isn't powerful enough to run this at more than 1fps 😞 (I have an Nvidia GTX 550Ti, it's about a decade old at this point) |
| Oct 11 20:32:27 | 9m 41s | DepressPnker! | ♥ 1 | I really liked the feeling of momentum in this game, and had some fun once I figured out how to target and shoot stuff! I'm not convinced by the score constantly going down, I feel like once you get points you should keep them, and perhaps there's another way to punish players for not being active enough. I managed to get 14,760 as a high score! |
| Oct 12 19:09:38 | 22h 37m | Mint | ♥ 2 | This game is really pretty and atmospheric! It took me a while to understand how to push off of walls, I didn't realize at first that my mouse position mattered - but once I did it felt pretty good to push myself around in zero-g. Full marks for **mood** here, you've created something really special! |
| Oct 12 19:25:14 | 15m 36s | Don Muchacho: Vigilante | ♥ 2 | The concept alone is hilarious, but then seeing grandma be launched across the screen to get to the DMV - incredible! A couple of levels I felt like I won by pure chance, but for the most part I could make a plan and then try my best to execute it, and that would get me to the goal. A solid entry all around! |
| Oct 12 19:43:14 | 18m 00s | The Niland Incident | ♥ 1 | As soon as I opened the game and heard the music, I already liked it. Gave me real retro vibes, like sega megadrive - something like Ecco the Dolphin. Really contributed to the atmosphere and mood of the game! My first playthrough I was pretty cautious, and I *almost* made it to the end, but died. I was going to give up but then I was told about becoming stronger, so went through again and won. I think that's a really smart design decision for a jam game, people are only going to have so much time to dedicate to each game, so giving them a hand if they struggle the first time makes it more likely people will complete it. I also really love games where everything happens when the player moves, it means you can put the player in really difficult situations, but let them work out the best actions in their own time rather than being rushed by approaching enemies. I enjoyed my time playing this game, great job! 😄 |
| Oct 12 19:56:13 | 12m 59s | Unstable Ground | ♥ 1 | I really love the aesthetic of this game, it's authentically 1 bit - the artwork here has a lot of charm to it! ...I was really really bad at it 😅 I managed to get more than 10 people at one point, but every attempt after that was worse and worse. Couldn't work out a good strategy to stop the wobbling. I think this game is going to rank pretty highly in the end results, it's one of the most distinctive looking games I've seen so far! Amazing work! |
| Oct 12 20:11:31 | 15m 18s | WobblyWords | ♥ 1 | I found myself quite confused by this game. One time I played and there were no vowels, so I couldn't do anything. And the next time it was *only* vowels so I also couldn't do anything. Also sometimes just a bunch of letters would spawn in faster than I could possibly use them and I lost. I think this idea has a bunch of potential, but it needs to be made much clearer what the rules are, why the letters are/aren't appearing. Occasionally something would appear on screen like "black hole" but I wasn't sure if that was something I did, or was random, or if it was a button I was supposed to press? I didn't seem to see a black hole appear on screen so it confused me a great deal. I tried to follow the tutorial and it just got stuck on the second step. I tried CAB, ABC, BAC, and none of them changed anything. I had to force close the game to get out. Maybe the tutorial will have explained more if I could've got it to work? So overall, interesting concept, needs a bit more work though! |
| Oct 16 22:29:08 | 98h 17m | Ark | ♥ 2 | This game is simply incredible! Huge amount of respect for what seems to be a very original puzzle mechanic, and one that has a whole bunch of depth to it in terms of things you can learn. Things like trying to avoid corners because that makes the tile impassable, or that you can go past the same basket twice to pick up the same thing you put down. Or that moment when you finally get the timing right and everything works like clockwork. Such an amazing feeling. I've designed a few puzzle games vaguely like this before, and it's a lot of hard work, but also fun to discover all the different ways a few simple rules can lead to different patterns of thinking. I thought that experience would help me solve these puzzles quickly, but it ended up taking quite a long time to beat them all 😅 The presentation is great too, it feels pretty polished all around, but just from an abstract design standpoint alone, this game rates very highly for me. |
| Oct 17 15:12:49 | 16h 43m | AFTER SUN | ♥ 1 | This game has a super pretty aesthetic, from the pixel art and FX all the way through to effective use of parallax - it looks really really good! It's got a pretty dark sense of humor too, when you make a mistake and accidentally murderise a bunch of people. I didn't find the gameplay super engaging unfortunately, it was mostly just tedious walking back and forth collecting people with a seemingly arbitrary limit on how many can follow you, only to need to then unload them 21 at at a time too. The only challenge for me was remembering not to jump off the platform and kill everyone in the capsule (I did this more than once 😅) On my second ship full I accidentally hit a satellite and everyone died. That was kinda crushing so didn't really feel any incentive to go back and pick up the last remaining hundred people. If I could have got 100 at a time to follow me I think I would've done, but the number of trips I needed to take just put me off. I think this game still deserves a pretty good score overall, it's such an impressive piece of work - I just wish there was a bit more to the gameplay so it didn't feel like such a chore to play. |
| Oct 17 15:31:09 | 18m 20s | ClownPunk | ♥ 2 | I love the old TV thing you've got going on, really well implemented! The game is really polished too, I have to say the blinking though - it freaks me out 😅 I also love the sense of humor, not only does the clown fall off the rope but ALSO gets eaten by a shark! That level of detail isn't super common in GameJam games, but really adds a lot of charm. Every single time I died was due to bombs, I just wasn't able to determine in time which items I should pick up and which I should avoid. Not sure if that's a me-problem or if it could be made a bit more clear. I had to constantly swap my eyes between the numbers on the boxes and the top of the screen, so it was too much for me to also mentally parse what the item was while it was falling. |
| Oct 17 16:02:18 | 31m 09s | The DEATH DOOM | ♥ 0 | Wow, one of the most unique art styles of the whole jam, really cute stuff! When I was a kid I used to love this game called "Orly Draw a Story" where you would be told a story, and every 30 seconds or so you'd be asked to draw one of the characters, so you'd have your own artwork in the story (a bit like a mad-lib but with drawings instead of words) and this reminded me a lot of the joy I got from that. I hope your kids felt a similar joy, and this inspires them to keep on creating! 😄 |
| Oct 17 16:16:34 | 14m 16s | Stable Inc. | ♥ 1 | Really impressive amount of variety here, from the weapons and enemies through to the different modifiers (or I should I call them... instabilities? 😄 ) What I really liked about it (especially for a jam game) is that instead of losing health, you lose time when you get hit. It felt forgiving enough that I could afford to make mistakes, but not SO many that I don't need to put in any effort. Oh and Funky Trap Sax is funky 🎷 |
| Oct 17 17:23:58 | 1h 07m | Boat History | ♥ 1 | Really original idea here, and water physics in a jam game?! Amazing! Once I got the hang of moving upwards, I figured I was all set, but then it only got more difficult from there 😅 I enjoyed my time with this game, but by the time I got to the end I was glad there wasn't *another* stage afterwards because that one had pushed me enough already. Great level design, and great entry all around! |
| Oct 17 17:42:53 | 18m 55s | Unstabled Goat | ♥ 2 | The presentation values in this are amazing, the voxel art looks great, the lighting is fantastic, and the music works really well too. I clearly didn't read the instructions well enough because my first playthrough I thought I was racing the hamster 😅 Something I really appreciated was the fact that you were able to communicate various bits of information without any UI. The health was done with in-world objects, rather than an on screen bar. And even the few bits of UI you did have were world-space rather than screen overlay. I like games that can do minimal UI without losing anything, and this game does that excellently. |
| Oct 17 18:40:46 | 57m 53s | Egg Racer | ♥ 1 | It took me a while to get started, but once I realized the best strategy is to have the egg in the air as much as possible and headbutt it along, it became more fun. Unfortunately, I found myself frustrated most of the time, where it a lot of the failures felt unfair, or that I had to do too many things perfectly in a row without any checkpoints. I don't know how many levels there are, but I stopped on level 3. I could get all the way to the end, but just not make the final jump. It felt like the only way I'd be able to do it is just play over and over again until I got lucky with the physics, and by that point I had already got past the point of being fed up. I'd also echo some of the sentiments about turning around being a death sentence. I think it's fine to leave the turning in, and even leave it so the egg doesn't follow. That third level definitely uses that for an interesting challenge. But also, I think there needs to be a way to recover from that, because right now even if you can catch it facing the other way, you might as well drop it because you're stuck. Overall, I liked it more than I expected I would. It felt really good to beat the second level. But I went away frustrated, which generally isn't a good thing. |
| Oct 17 22:58:01 | 4h 17m | LD49 | ♥ 1 | I got to 100! I liked diving, but got carried away and ended up climbing off the top of the screen. You can check it out here if you'd like 😄 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czUwIfbRrFQ |
| Oct 18 18:35:27 | 19h 37m | Space-Fix-Attack | ♥ 1 | The artwork here is really nice, and the audio creates a really intense eerie mood! I found avoiding/shooting obstacles fairly easy, I didn't get hit at all until I intentionally rammed into something to try out the fixing system. I think perhaps the difficulty could ramp up over time, become a bit more clear that you're getting closer to the end. I was about to quit the game because I thought it was endless when I did reach the end, so a bit more signaling that there is an end would be great. Good job with this one 😄 |
| Oct 18 19:02:12 | 26m 45s | They need attention | ♥ 0 | It seems like you totally nailed the vibe you were going for, genuinely got freaked out on the final level when I died the first time! On the first level when I was opening boxes, the fact that I couldn't turn around while they opened made everything so much more tense, I thought that was really well done. Although struggling to get the item out of the box once I found it didn't add quite as much, it felt more just like a bit of a rough edge because of the jam time constraints. It wasn't clear to me whether looking away causes a timer to go up that resets when you look back, or whether it's a timer that constantly climbs up? Sometimes it seemed like I could reset it by looking back, and other times it felt like I'd used up the whole timer so the second I looked away I'd lose. Incredibly creepy game here, great job with that 😄 👻 |
| Oct 18 23:28:23 | 4h 26m | Game Invaders | ♥ 1 | I put my playthrough of this on YouTube if you wanted to check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01dcU5RDzZk |
