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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Jaco van Hemert's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 3 22:18:13 | The Curse of the Four Towers | ♥ 2 | I liked the different enemy types that came with every different iteration of the world (they each felt very distinct, so good job on those), and having the four towers as sort of bigger goals made the pacing a bit more interesting than regular wave-based twin-stick shooters. I would have liked to see some variation in my weapons, perhaps as upgrades after destroying towers, or just pick-ups? I also had some trouble with aiming, as if the bullet didn't always go exactly to where I was pointing, but that could just be me being bad at aiming. Nice job! | |
| Oct 4 10:56:34 | 12h 38m | KAIROS, Battle for Seconds | ♥ 4 | I loved this. Having the different seconds activate different effects is interesting on its own, but combining that with the buff/debuff choice is really, really clever. I loved the music, the clock ticking sound, the GUI around the character to show the second you're on, the narrative elements, and the artistic feel of the graphics. Controls were also really nice and natural-feeling. Some minor points: - While there were different enemies, I'm not sure I noticed any distinctness to them. It might have been that I was too busy concentrating on staying out of their way, but if not, some variety there in behaviour might be a good idea. - The dash felt a bit off. I'm not entirely sure why I think that. But there was a sense of not really knowing where I'm going to end up, I guess? Which is potentially an illusion given by the disappear/reappear nature of it. And I think there was a delay on it which made it a bit unwieldy? That's essentially it. A great game; you guys did an incredible job. |
| Oct 4 11:16:19 | 19m 45s | Oroboros | ♥ 1 | The narrative elements of the game was quite cool, and the idea of a flare of heat in a cycle is an interesting conceptual idea. I would have liked to see the story introduced a bit more slowly, rather than in the (unskippable) cutscene at the start. Though the images helped a bit. Some things I would have liked to see: - A dedicated attack button. It was a bit cumbersome to have to switch away from my attack in order to eat an apple; having one button for attacking and another for items might have been a way to solve that? - As others have noted, a more lenient pick-up radius. - Some indication of how to survive the heatwaves. I thought I could hide in the shadows of the little buildings, since some NPCs were doing that, but that didn't seem to work. (The flare in the sky was very cool though.) - Some indication of what I'm trying to achieve. I sort of just aimlessly wandered around. Having a goal, however vague, might have been helpful in orienting myself. (E.g. go to the town) |
| Oct 4 11:59:40 | 43m 21s | Making Connections | ♥ 7 | A surprisingly fun game. I eventually got stuck wandering around trying to find the chameleon, and then when I talked to the lion again and got a bit further, the game crashed. I liked the social aspect of trying to figure things out by talking. Though to that point, the walking around seems like an unnecessary component that essentially just delays getting to the interesting parts (assuming there's no larger element to it later on). I.e. maybe a UI where you can just choose who you want to talk to, or choose your journal might have been better? A few bugs and controls niggles, but overall a nice game. I enjoyed it. |
| Oct 4 17:36:43 | 5h 37m | Fred & Pete | ♥ 2 | The idea of constantly switching between combat and puzzles is quite an interesting concept, kind of like chess boxing. Having some kind of indication of how much time has passed would have been useful, I think. That would help with sort of preparing for the switch back to combat particularly. With more time and some polish, I think you could have done some really interesting things by having multiple things in the puzzle room affect the combat in the other room and vice versa. |
| Oct 4 18:14:17 | 37m 34s | Iridesert | ♥ 3 | A very impressive game. The core gameplay loop is solid; all this needs is more content to keep it interesting for longer. The time limit per hand of cards really pushes up the tension, creating an urgency that's interestingly juxtaposed against the city builder element. I would have liked to see some more obvious feedback for tiles being upgraded different kinds of synergy situations. Most of those look pretty similar, so it's not necessarily obvious that something has happened, or if it is, it's not necessarily obvious what did. Ergo, having some kind of icon indicating what the building is, even if just for a moment after its upgraded, might have been helpful? Anyway, good job with this. I liked it a lot. |
| Oct 5 10:16:23 | 16h 02m | Area 51 | ♥ 3 | The time limit added some good pressure to the gameplay, though the limitation that you can only activate the consoles when there's three or fewer seconds left meant that I often just stood at a terminal waiting for time to go lower. I liked the ticking sound for the timer going out; it really added to the tension and provided a good reminder. I would have liked to see some kind of indication of how many terminals I've hacked, since I couldn't always remember; similarly, having some kind of indication on a given terminal to show whether or not it has been hacked. There were some niggles with colliders for some of the walls, but the level design was fairly interesting and varied. |
| Oct 5 10:28:44 | 12m 21s | Scramemory | ♥ 1 | Other than the initial confusion, given the lack of description or instruction, both in the game and on the game page, this was a surprisingly fun game. (Though I would have liked to have known what the goal of the game was before starting to play; just a simple "Memorise!" message at the start of the first ten seconds would have helped tremendously.) The time limit to both the memory and submit phases really adds a lot of pressure and difficulty, but I think that's fine. There's definitely a sense that this is possible, I'm just not doing it well enough, which I think is a good medium for a game like this one. |
| Oct 6 19:38:42 | 33h 09m | Escape from Minefields | ♥ 1 | A very stressful version of minesweeper. I'm unfortunately not good enough at minesweeper to beat the game, but the time limit really does add a whole other dimension to the base concept. I liked the pickups you could find along the way, though I'd have liked some way to heal the sapper. The inability to get further ahead of the enemy airstrikes were a bit disappointing, as no amount of good progress could buy me a whole lot of time; I was always stuck at a maximum. There were several instances where I just stood on the border of the screen and waited for the time to pass, which basically just delayed the core gameplay. |
| Oct 6 19:46:34 | 7m 52s | Swamp Dojo | ♥ 1 | A really nice-looking game. I also really liked the low/high attacking and defending system. I would have liked to see some more variance there to help keep things interesting for longer (even just a high/mid/low). But jam limitations etc., etc. I'll also note that the "frog-sense" was a bit confusing initially. Maybe having up and down arrows rather than sideways arrows that are high or low would have been more intuitive to parse quickly in your head? |
| Oct 7 22:24:38 | 26h 38m | Battle Forts | ♥ 0 | This was a bit confusing at the start (figuring out what the upgrades do exactly), but it becomes clearer as the game progresses. I ended up not really rerolling stuff a lot, or rerolling one thing a bunch of times in a row until I got to the thing I wanted, because I had so much money that it was essentially unlimited. It was also not clear initially that each slot contains different potential upgrades; e.g. that you can't find stuff that appears in Slot 1 in Slot 3, and vice versa. Even though this became clearer towards the end, I'm still not sure if there was a certain theme attached to each, e.g. offense, defense, accessory, because some of the items in the random pools seemed unrelated to the others. Anyway, it was interesting to try to counter what the enemy is throwing at you, and I won only barely. There was perhaps a bit too much waiting though. (Also, it felt narratively strange for your soldiers to die when they got to the enemy base to damage it). |
| Oct 10 09:30:11 | 59h 05m | Harvest Golem | ♥ 1 | Really, really good! I got completely sucked into this game. There's a lot of variety in the different plants that adds a sense of interest and almost tactical decisions to find the most efficient way of getting energy. Like others have mentioned, having some kind of lose condition might have been interesting, but this also feels like one of those games where it's kind of relying on a self-directed efficiency goal, and to great effect. I unfortunately locked myself out of the final cutscene because I wanted to rack up as much energy as possible before planting the pumpkin, and only when it was too late did I realise that it needs other plants to grow. The fact that it could theoretically grow without the other plants meant that the game thought I still had stuff to do, so I just had to Alt-F4 my way out of that. Something else that I would have liked to have seen is some kind of indicator to show that a plant is ready to be harvested. The carrots in particular look like they still have some growing to do when they're fully grown, and it's generally not always obvious when it's done growing. I know there is a tooltip that would tell me that, but apparently I'm too impatient, and then I accidentally harvest the spinach in the centre of the carrots and mess up my whole plan. Anyway, I had a lot of fun. Nice job with this! |