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Timestamp	Since previous	Game		almost's comment
Apr 6 01:57:55		Cards of the Cosmos	♥ 3	I found the combo! Nice way to beat an infinite opponent 🙂 I think I made the connection on my third visit to the card shop, after I had already bought a few mind's floods and I was like - oh that will trigger mind's flood. Wait a minute ... 😮 It would be really nice if you could show me the entire card for each of my passive cards instead of just the name of the card. Even better would be if the passive cards highlight briefly whenever they trigger, which would also make the eventual combo more satisfying. I forget which is which based on name, but I knew that I wanted a 3 card combo so I just made sure to have 3 different names in front of me. There were a few times that I clicked end turn and waited a few seconds to realize it had not worked. I think it might be something like ignoring the end-turn button while animations are in progress, but it's pretty common for me to want to play a card and then end turn immediately after. The regular matches were a bit simple and grindy, since there isn't too much depth to just choosing which mill card to play, but the game is short enough that I think this is fine.
Apr 6 15:41:48	13h 43m	Shoal	♥ 3	Nice game! The flowing water sounds are really relaxing, and the art is lovely. It feels nice to join another cluster of fish and keep running up the river. My highest scores: 19 fish, 999 distance, 7800 score 25 fish, 693 distance, 10100 score 36 fish, 1013 distance, 15099 score Some points of confusion for me: There's a screen where the autoscrolling stops and I wasnt sure if it was a game over but it resumed a bit later. At around 900 distance I still had healthy fish but the autoscroller went a bit faster than me and it counted as game over. I guess in that case I need to press Up more. Some of the round rocks were stickier than I expected, where I thought fish would slide around them but they got totally stuck.
Apr 6 22:20:42	6h 38m	Helly Belly	♥ 2	Neat game. The gameplay is simple but the shrinking area looks cool and it gets pretty tense each time just before you get the smiley face. I felt pretty strong right after getting the smiley face, suddenly I get plenty of space and I can shoot down all those annoying enemies. I died on nightmare difficulty because I went for the smiley face just as an enemy crossed in front of it and I hit the enemy first - pretty close. I kind of wanted to shoot in the direction that I move in order to have more control over what part of the wall I am hitting, but I realize that might actually make the game harder overall.
Apr 7 00:27:50	2h 07m	T Knight againts the Hydra	♥ 2	My best score was 21 heads chopped, at which point there were so many new heads that I got pummeled. Defeating a hydra by chopping off its heads is a nice interpretation of the theme 🙂. I liked the hand-drawn art style too. I only realized that I could double jump because one of the comments above mentions it, but airborne combos felt pretty satisfying especially because successful hits could bounce me for an even longer combo. It's kind of minor, but I like to use two different hands on the keyboard and spacebar is a bit awkward for both hands. I ended up using W to jump and L to attack, but it would have been nice if there was an option like ZX or KL for attack and jump.
Apr 7 01:58:46	1h 30m	Make your time	♥ 3	I was very confused at first because the Start button didn't seem to work, but clicking on the edge of the button eventually worked. I pressed escape to show the mouse since it's really really hard to click on bombs, screws and wires without a mouse but for some reason the game keeps hiding the mouse on me, which is really annoying, so I either have to fumble around without a mouse or keep pressing escape. Aside from difficulty aiming an invisible mouse, the first bombs are quite easy to defuse, then there is a very rapid spike in difficulty with colors of interest and the inequations. I really don't understand what I am supposed to do with the inequation bomb but I died before I could figure it out. It would be nice if there was no time pressure when reading the instructions for each type of bomb. I like the idea of multitasking with a handful of different bombs and rules, but it's very overwhelming at first.
Apr 8 00:40:16	22h 41m	DOWN the DUNGEON	♥ 4	Nice theme interpretation. On my first run I was too greedy and died on an early floor, but on my next run I found a nice balance and got a bunch of powerups and was able to defeat the boss (though it took a while to kill the boss). My powerups went off the bottom of the screen (18 or more) 😛 The game felt a bit short. I think I was just getting the hang of some of the normal enemies and wasn't expecting a final boss room so soon. A couple more screens of different combinations of normal enemies would've been fun. Some normal enemies (and even pots) felt annoyingly tanky. I had to shoot them many times before they would die, so I felt a bit weak. It would have been nice to have enemy health bars so that I can see which enemies are almost-dead and which are still full health. As-is I tried to focus down enemies one by one and keep track in my head of which enemy I have already hurt. The visual style and visual polish are great. I liked the shaking tiles, impact particles, and flashing text or health effects.
Apr 8 00:52:13	11m 57s	Kiwis Can't Fly	♥ 3	Very cute, especially the silly cats when I bop them on the head. Pretty fun to try to bounce off of everything, though I'm guessing it doesn't actually matter if I miss some things. I missed a single cloud because I misclicked when trying to click on the cloud, but I bounced off of everything else. It would have been nice if the hitbox for starting to drag an object was a bit more forgiving. I also would have liked if the intro was a bit quicker since I wanted to get into the gameplay, but I guess the idea is to give more time for the music to sink in.
Apr 9 18:06:53	41h 14m	The Hunger	♥ 2	The idea is interesting. The game and card art look good. The UI is a bit awkward, requiring several clicks to play a single card and not much visual feedback to distinguish between picking a card and picking a target. The biggest example of this is the "Drain Blood" button which requires a target but it doesn't ask for one, so at first glance the Drain Blood button seems to do nothing. It would be good to highlight possible targets and just click on a card to play it instead of having a "use card" button. It would also be nice to automatically end turn if there are no enemies left. Some other things that would be nice would be a visual effect for blocking, and a number for the enemies health. Being able to one-shot enemies at will makes defensive cards seem a lot less valuable, but there is still a nice strategic tradeoff between draining healthy enemies to avoid taking damage vs leaving them alive in the hope of draining more blood on a later turn. Given that you get more blood from low health enemies, it would have been nice if there was some visual feedback to show how much blood an enemy will give.
Apr 9 21:47:29	3h 40m	Lethal Dice 50	♥ 2	250 points for me. I didn't fail any objectives, but I went bust on round 6, where I rolled 11 dice totaling 52 (6 of the dice were 6s). Tabletop Simulator's feature of showing the sum for a selected group of dice is really convenient here. The push your luck aspect is nice. The rules are fairly simple which is good for learning the game. I was a bit confused about the scoring area, but the image and example on the right side of the rules made it clear what it should look like. I assume that reserved dice stay in the reserved area until they are used. The 1 1 1 card seems much harder than the other cards, but I think it's fine for there to be some variance in card difficulty so that you have to think about how many dice to roll each time. It's not really necessary, but it would be cool if there was art or background on the cards, sort of like the cards in Splendor or Century Spice Road.
Apr 12 05:07:06	55h 19m	Listening to Rama	♥ 2	The visuals and the breaking sound are good. The text to speech voice for one of the messages was a bit awkward, but some of the others had nicer voices. There were a lot of pieces where after they fall I was not sure where exactly to put them, but I found that if I dragged them straight up super far they will lock back into place. Given that loss is meant to be inevitable, it felt a bit like watching a cinematic rather than playing a game. I assume that it is not possible to survive any longer than the point where it says something like "its falling faster than I can keep up." Also, the itch io fullscreen button blocks the unity fullscreen button and it doesn't actually make the game fullscreen for me. You probably want to edit the itch io settings to remove the itch io fullscreen button and make the frame a little bit taller.
Apr 12 05:38:30	31m 24s	Card O''Clock	♥ 2	16' 27'' 831 for me Very cool game. Pretty original mechanics. I was impressed by the amount of polish, with solid audio cues and a tutorial to explain the mechanics. At the end I was overwhelmed by getting a bunch of Time Bleeds. I liked that a few different synergies are possible, like stacking bank vs accumulating passive effects or trying to delay or mitigate malus cards. "Clean" was probably my favorite card as it got rid of all of the annoying Dead Weights. Some points of confusion for me: - It took me a long time to figure out that the spinning circle icon means that an ability is passive. - During the tutorial my first card shop had two cards with the word "Malus" before the tutorial had gotten to the part about explaining what Malus are. - Bank having a max of 60 seconds surprised me the first time it happened - One time I had no cards in deck or discard and I think it did not let me play cards from hand until there was something to draw. This was weird but I guess it's just an early-game edge case. - A couple of times I was wondering how close I was to discard pile being shuffled. An indicator for number of cards in deck and discard would be nice. Also the shuffle animation was a bit long.
Apr 13 01:07:09	19h 28m	Unfamiliar	♥ 2	Pretty unique mechanic. The invisible birds that move towards me were very spooky. There is a lot of tension about whether or not I should risk using the echolocation ability or whether or not I remember the safe path. The visual effect to indicate that echolocation found a bird house was really subtle. I often missed it and found the birdhouses on accident while avoiding the birds. Also on my first attempt I reached the exit before finding the birdhouses above it, which I assume is unintended. I'm not sure if this is because I had missed some previous birdhouse or if this is just meant to be possible.
Apr 13 01:19:22	12m 13s	No Match	♥ 3	Visuals are very clean and the game is pretty polished. It's a neat twist on the classic memory game. I really wish it gave letters for the face cards, as I have a hard time distinguishing between card art for kings and jacks. Restarting on round 1 instead of the round that I failed also makes me not want to give up rather than replaying all of the rounds that I already beat.
Apr 13 03:39:06	2h 19m	Down to the Wire	♥ 4	Neat game. I enjoyed figuring out the mechanics as I went. The triangle and double triangle cells confused me for a while but I eventually realized that they restricted options for entering a square but the square can be exited in any direction. I felt clever solving most of the puzzles. Starting with level 22 there were a number of huge levels that I enjoyed much less. At that size, the power symbols and arrows are harder to see, and its hard for my brain to think about that many tiles at once so I ended up basically just brute forcing paths until finding a path that worked. I made it to level 25 where I timed out after I could only find a path that left one square uncolored. level 25.png I think I would have enjoyed these puzzles more without the time pressure, but I also get that the timer exists because of the theme, so I can't fault you there. The visual and audio feedback for moving was solid, and I really liked the effect where the puzzles fell and bounced away after you solved them.
Apr 13 04:18:45	39m 39s	Wicked flame!	♥ 3	Cute game. I managed to beat it :) You did a really good job of introducing mechanics and interactions with simple levels that demonstrated how things work. I thought the burning tail was really innovative and I thought it was a nice touch that if the tail crossed itself it would burn along both paths at once. Inconsistent door-opening speed felt a bit unfair on some levels the first time around, but you get used to it I guess. I found that I have a really long tail the first time I try a level and if I die I have a short tail for all retries of that level. I would also sometimes randomly die a couple seconds after restarting a level. (I think this happens if I die to an indirect fire as opposed to dying to my own tail) Torches burning out and needing to be lit simultaneously is really annoying, especially for the level where I need to light 4 torches simultaneously using falling blocks. My control over the timing of my tail burning is not very precise. I was unable to beat that level with the short tail so I restarted the game and then beat it with the super-long tail by making this monstrosity: really long tail.png (Also, web build never finished loading for me but desktop version was fine)
Apr 13 05:15:33	56m 48s	Magma Climb	♥ 2	Fairly simple but fun anyways. After a few tries I got into a pretty good groove and thought I might be able to go endlessly but I got a tricky section that slowed me down and the lava caught up to me before I could find another circle powerup. My main complaint would be that it always does a full-height jump, but this often results in me bumping my head on the ceiling and falling early. It would be nice if there was a way to do a short hop by releasing the jump button sooner for finer control of jumping over small pits or small obstacles. high score.png
Apr 14 02:53:47	21h 38m	Extremely Exteme Sports	♥ 3	Cool to see multiplayer in a jam game. I did some solo skiing and watched one of the above videos to see how the multiplayer compares. I quite liked how the movement handles, where you slow down and kick up snow as you dig in for a turn. I felt like I had the ability to do both slight adjustments and sharp turns. 39181 was my highest score, though it felt a bit like getting a high score is dependent on how long before the avalanche shows up, which felt somewhat random. Outrunning the avalanche did feel fairly inevitable, though on straight sections you can last a little while. Music was good but it felt a little bit repetitive, maybe it could be a longer loop. The sound of snow as you turn was pretty good.
Apr 15 02:00:39	23h 06m	H U N T E D	♥ 2	There's some solid potential here, but there are a lot of unexplained mechanics, so it took me a long time to figure out what is going on. I like the idea of balancing a number of resources while also having a limited amount of time and also trying to outrun an enemy force, and I think it can be exciting to feel like the enemy is catching up but you can outrun them for just a little longer and try to get to the goal. I'll share some of my experience below: The game starts by asking me to pick 5 items but it doesn't tell me what the items do. A short description of each would have been really helpful. On each day I am given a bunch of choices of things to do, but it took me a while to realize that I have a limited number of hours per day and to figure out why I would want to do each action. I kind of ended turn and performed actions at random initially to figure out what they do. On my first playthrough I did not move at all and so the enemies quickly caught up to me. After I got hungry I tried to forage for food but the act of foraging kept getting interrupted by ambushes. As a result I died due to starvation because I had no food and could not forage. On my second playthrough I started with canned food since I did not want to starve. I also tried moving and realized that this made me move right and so I can try to outrun the enemies and I can make progress toward the goal. I found that I could not open my canned food because I did not have a knife, and I don't think there is any way to craft a knife. I alternated moving and foraging and I was doing pretty well but when I was close to the goal I died of thirst because I did not realize that was a mechanic. On my third playthrough I started with canned food and knife. I spammed move, ate my food, and I scavenged a little for more food and drink. I made it to the objective pretty easily, but I noticed that my rest value was negative 200. So I guess that moving causes rest to go down but I am allowed to move even if my rest value is already below 0. But I won so I'm happy enough with that :) In my first playthrough I got to do the shooting minigame several times and it was kind of cool, but it felt unfair that I cannot shoot diagonally and it felt unfair how fast the enemies can move compared to me. One time an enemy came from straight above me and he just ran at me until he was on top of me. I couldn't shoot upwards and I couldn't outrun him and this was enough for me to become wounded. I never found cookable food. Forage usually gave me berries and mushrooms which I ate directly. I thought plantains were sort of like bananas but it seems like they are bandages and not food. I also had Map and Pocket watch, but they didn't seem to do anything. A lot of the random events seemed to be dangerous, so it seemed safest for me to choose the "do nothing" option for most of them Also, on the progress screen where the player moves to the right, the player and enemy are implemented as UI sliders, and these can be dragged around with the mouse. I dragged these around at first because I didnt know what was going on and I was trying to figure out the controls. There is probably some way to make a slider not clickable.
Apr 15 02:36:56	36m 17s	Untitled Arcade Game	♥ 2	It took me 5 minutes to figure out how to shoot. It turns out the answer is that I have to hold the left mouse button down, clicking doesn't do anything. That's pretty strange, but after I figured it out I am able to play. It's a simple but fun game. Nice visual and audio feedback for hitting enemies. Well paced, with enemies constantly coming and the difficulty ramping up over time by spawning more enemies. The weapon powerups were fun, but it was hard to guess what they would do and I was sad to find that some powerups on the ground would time out before I could pick them up.
Apr 18 17:42:01	87h 05m	Push, Rethink, Undo, Repeat	♥ 3	I ended with a score of 10. Block pushing with rectangular blocks is a nice twist. On my first attempt I did not realize there was a time limit, and on the second attempt I realized that it is repeating level sections in a random order. I don't feel like the time limit adds very much here, I would prefer to be able to take my time to solve the levels than to feel like I have to rush. I also found that the coins added very little time, so it was almost always better to ignore the coin and rush to the exit.
Apr 19 04:10:52	10h 28m	overRUN	♥ 2	Very cool. I saved 12 civilians, had 2 casualties, brought my soldiers back to the mainland, and killed 762 zombies. I was initially very confused about what the objective was until I realized that blue circles don't shoot and that I am allowed to give orders to blue circles. Even though it's just unit vs unit combat, it was really engaging. I especially liked the way that I can send a group to clear an area and then put a guy on the roof to act as a lookout or to defend my flank while I move on to another building. The shooting sounds were satisfying, and I liked the music. My biggest complaint would be the lack of a drag select or multiselect. I really want to give orders to groups of units, to move 4 or so units at a time instead of moving one by one. Also, the clickable area for buildings was a bit large, so I often misclicked to enter a building when I was trying to walk above it. (Which was the cause of one of my casualties).
Apr 19 19:45:13	15h 34m	Super Mowser Bros	♥ 2	(Jam version) I got a game over before I could figure out how to garrison units or build units. I tried clicking on the node circles and garrison circles and clicking on the icons of buildings but nothing seemed to work. It turns out that to build a thing I have to select the node, select build, and then drag a goomba from the top-left of the screen to the 4 hammer icons. I think there should be some UI that doesn't require so much dragging. Building could just always automatically consume 1 goomba and have a "speed up" button which will consume an additional goomba. It could also be that clicking on a hammer icon or clicking on a goomba will automatically assign a goomba. It would also be nice if the units that can be assigned are visually much closer to the place that they can be assigned, such as middle of top of screen, or creating new contextual "assign goomba" buttons. UI aside, the concept is really original and creative. I like the idea of collecting resources and building defenses to stall bario. Choosing how many of each type of unit to produce and whether to assign them as builders or as defenders is a nice tradeoff, though I think right now you just always have a ton of goombas so you can assign them as reusable builders and make a ton of castles. The art style is also really well done.