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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | PeachTreeOath's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 4 04:01:28 | OutPost | ♥ 1 | Fun, classic game loop. There are few games like this on mobile, but here you have the advantage of being a jam game where you can go a bit crazier with the upgrades. So instead of giving a few millimeters of range to the player for the range upgrade, you give some nice, chunky range that matters. The lightning fence is a neat twist I don't see very often, and I like that you have some variety in the waves, so it's meaningful to blast down a group of small enemies just with the laser. | |
| Oct 4 04:18:43 | 17m 15s | Ten-Second Murder | ♥ 2 | So many nice, little touches you had in here. Like someone already mentioned, the tutorial is stellar, and mislead me in an enjoyable way that made me really start to pay attention to everything in the game. The visual effects are SUPER well done, you have a really good eye for small details to make things pop. You used some simple squishing and squashing on the characters, but somehow the end effect is that they look like they're bobbing up and down like an old school cartoon. Very neat! The gameplay and theme itself was very engaging. I brainstormed something similar but it wasn't nearly as clever as this. The whole locked room mystery - but you have to figure out clues while the clock is ticking... now that's smart. The 10 sec did put a lot of pressure on me so I had to wing a few calls, usually incorrectly. I think that's what separates this game from other detective-ish games. In a detective game you play logically and go over clues and connections. Here, you're judging based on intuition which is VERY unique. Superb job on the concept! |
| Oct 4 04:25:51 | 7m 08s | Headcount | ♥ 3 | Much more enjoyable than I expected. I know there's a bit of a similar game in one of the Mario Party's, and I was expecting something like that. But since this is just PVE, you had to make up for that hole somehow. The combination of disappearing signals + the smaller threshold for accuracy led to some surprisingly intense moments! I like that in the starting rounds, you can see how far off you are at first. I generally was -100ms or so, which made me second guess a lot of my later clicks. There's a surprisingly psychological effect from the previous runs on the later ones. Best I could do was 9 though, all my rhythm game experience is in shambles. |
| Oct 4 04:49:57 | 24m 06s | Get The Last Spot! | ♥ 1 | When I first started this up, I thought it was just going to be Crazy Taxi-esque and you had to run over the hotspot to win. Once I saw that you were trying to get into the spot before the poor yellow car, everything clicked and I just started laughing. Then I got the replay where I got to see the orcs falling over and such which made it even better. Actually, there were a LOT of great small touches. I think the absolute best thing I saw were the multiple colored palm trees lol. I thought: why don't ALL games have things like this!? Screw realism, the random doodads honestly was one of the main drivers of me moving forward and playing more level. I don't necessarily think a skip replay button is needed. I think the main issue is watching your replays of you failing. Watching replays of your success is totally necessary. Lastly, I wish I recorded it, but my best moment was pulling an Ace Ventura 2, flipping over every car in stage 3 and landing on my back. I felt like an absolute king. |
| Oct 4 04:57:36 | 7m 39s | Purfect Thyming | ♥ 3 | "It’s about the motion of the potion." Not bad, not bad... I jumped right in without reading the description: 1. First I played around with the different gathering methods 2. Then the cat started jumping in and I realized I shouldn't do the hardest thing while it's around, which is swipe. Instead I did the clicking one to offset it. 3. Then I found the cauldron screen, and decided I should just go in there and stir things while the cat is around. Lo and behold, it didn't attack in there. Came back after I was finished and it turns out you had that as the main tip description lol, so I'm glad I figured out the "meta". Art is super clean. And clearly you have someone on the team that enjoys random wordplay. Also is an accurate depiction of a cat. Just goes to town with its face and mucks up all your ingredients. Not to mention the song that plays once it goes nuts. Fun concept. |
| Oct 4 05:56:29 | 58m 53s | Tenjutsu | ♥ 3 | Super super fun. It's still the beginning of jam rating time and I feel like I've already seen how the theme can cause some normally standard genres to feel fresh again. This is no different. Instead of just walking up to people, isolating them, and beating them up, this mechanic turns it into a much more strategic fare. On top of that, you took advantage of the theme and really brought it into the player fantasy. Who wouldn't want to do the Five Point Exploding Palm on people? It made you feel REALLY good to nail 3+ enemies with it and kill them all at once. Super badass feeling, this is so good. |
| Oct 4 06:01:24 | 4m 55s | Pumpkinz | ♥ 2 | The game gave me an existential crisis as I contemplated the meaning of smashing pumpkins, playing games, and staring at my computer screen in general. 10/10. |
| Oct 4 18:06:28 | 12h 05m | Assault on Hartblood Hotel | ♥ 1 | First impression - I got hit with a wave nostalgia at the movement+camera+setting. It reminded me of Battletech for...DOS? Crazy how I haven't seen that style in decades. Quick note though, I got a bug a couple times. One where the enemies were dead and I seemed to keep getting hit. Luckily I was able to cast heal and finish the battle. I got it again a few fights later, but this time I only had the option to punch so I got locked up when I pressed it and had to restart. 2nd playthrough, killed the katana boss but in the next fight, as soon as I did my 1st suplex it froze up as soon as the clock finished rotating. I'll give this one another shot later this week for a full review in case you find time to knock those bugs out. Or I can pray I don't step on a bug lol. It's super interesting so far and I'm looking forward to it though! |
| Oct 4 18:20:57 | 14m 29s | Dolores To Donuts | ♥ 2 | You won't believe this ....but during our brainstorm session we came up with "a game where you need to multitask work vs a game. The game will be Vampire Survivors". I opted out of that because I didn't want to make 2 separate games in a weekend. AND YET YOU DID IT. Crazy! The first thing I did was zoom in on Itch so that I could cheat a little and see the screen better :P But it didn't take too long before I realized kiting monsters were quite easy in the game. Not unlike VS itself lol. This was a very fun concept though, combining a lot of different elements together to create a unique setting. As someone who worked in a donut shop before, I will confirm all of this is totally accurate. I'm impressed you squeezed so many aspects together in time. Is the victory screen pose a reference to anything? I know you guys like to do that sort of thing. |
| Oct 4 18:40:03 | 19m 06s | Techtonic Towers | ♥ 1 | I'm really surprised with what the temporary tower mechanic did to the game! In a normal TD you just quickly place down towers at path bends. But here I had to think about timing so that I could maximize money. On top of that, there were enemies that didn't follow the path either, so I had to quickly calculate where and WHEN the best place to put a tower would be. This is a really interested concept that I think could be used in other variations. Arknights has a similar concept in assassin units that are stronger as soon as they're deployed. I think your idea has a lot of legs if you keep exploring it. Very cool idea! |
| Oct 4 23:43:11 | 5h 03m | Balloon Time | ♥ 4 | Honestly this is a great concept. Not just gameplay-wise, but when you load into the game and grok the idea and what you need to do, a lot of things immediate click into place as you what you're going to do. You know you'll be playing around with jump heights as the clock rotates. You know you'll have to make sure you float back, etc. Idk, like my Balloon Time life flashed before my eyes after the first few pops lol. I think that revelation-effect was pretty interesting and got me hooked. The first run was simple enough. I actually thought "interesting, this is probably the easiest pkenney game yet." But then I saw the score screen and realized the horror. HAVING TO HIT EVERY BALLOON CHANGES EVERYTHING! Failed the 2nd attempt but got it on the 3rd: asdfasdf.png The game seemed tuned juuust good enough because you had to learn a few execution tricks as well as better strategy. What stands out about the game is that as the balloons come up, you're doing a lot of calculations actually (this feeds into the grokkability of the game). You're predicting the positions of the balloons based on their color, predicting where you'll be when the heights are right, and then quickly coming up with a basic flight plan to handle that. This was VERY cool. Simple and effective mechanics that have depth when combined together. Very fun game. I wonder what it would be like with harder levels when the clock spins even faster. I think those calculations would get very intense, even without changes to the balloons. Not to mention just being able to stay on the platform naturally. Spinning too fast of course, would force people to just jump in the air a lot and land when the platforms come around again, so it'd be a balance of speed. |
| Oct 5 00:04:30 | 21m 19s | Lights Out, Fright's Out! | ♥ 3 | Very much got stuck on the "this one is tricky" stage. I spent a good 20 mins on that stage and still couldn't get it! Got any hints? I thought the time factor for the game changed a lot at first. I was right, but in a different way. I thought that because it was 10s, every level would simply be short, which I liked. What I didn't realize however, was that I was simply clearing the levels too fast, or hitting R when I thought I wouldn't make it in time lol. So I never actually saw the ghost mechanic until the first stage that had 3 colors on it. Now that I was playing the REAL game I had a different experience. I liked the interplay of Sokoban + pushing blocks in such a way to protect yourself from the ghost LOS/pathing. It really shook up the normal way to play these sorts of games. Cool idea! |
| Oct 5 00:54:52 | 50m 22s | Shutter Chaos | ♥ 6 | "For that 10 seconds or less, I'm free." YO you're not gonna believe this, but for my HS senior picture, my quote was actually "I'm not running!". I could practically quote that whole movie back in the day lol. I ended up afking a few more runs just to see what quotes you guys threw in there. Game was super fun to play around with. I think the janky controls (which honestly seems like a nightmare to code) + the constant wiggling bodies were totally necessary to make it interesting. A perfect doll with joints would've been trivial and a totally different game. Presentation is so good. Nostalgic backgrounds (the laser BG cost extra at our school!). I was praying there would be a yearbook section at the end and you delivered on that. Best custom pose I could pull off. The face of someone crossing the street at the wrong time: asdf1.png Very cool game. I'm curious how difficult the implementation was! The 3D art looks surprising cool for a jam game. |
| Oct 5 02:51:42 | 1h 56m | Blink | ♥ 3 | Bravo! One of the best LD games I've ever played. I feel like I'm the first to finish it here because that was insanely difficult. asdf.png I really don't want to spoil anything but I'll give 1 hint because this game is worth discovering on your own. Draw a map. Some of the things I picked up on my own were great, and I felt VERY accomplished when finishing this. It honestly seemed like you had this idea for a while now, but it fit the theme so well it seems freshly designed. Another great entry, thanks for taking up a full hour of my LD review time lol. |
| Oct 5 04:37:31 | 1h 45m | Game Name | ♥ 6 | Ranking #9! Man, when I got to the rating part and recognized every game I thought: oh nice! These guys put in all the top games from previous years. Only looking back here did I realize you made them all lol....... What a plot twist, and a testament so how good your team is. The game was very fun. I thought it might get repetitive, but I ended up looking forward to what kind of variations you would do for each minigame. I was especially impressed at how fast I could type all the code out since I think we all type similar things (although I apparently rely on the IDE to shortcut things a lot). The game is so clean, I'm always envious of your polish. I feel called out by the ending where you're fixing bugs post jam lol. Truly an accurate depiction. |
| Oct 5 05:15:56 | 38m 25s | Cursing Recursion | ♥ 4 | Typing emojis while under the stress of a time loop reminds me of this scene lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tim29CDbo Got out in 26 loops. I'll have to echo was others said. This is probably the most interesting text adventure I've ever played. I mean that literally because generally you have an idea of what to expect out of these sorts of games. But the concept and especially the interface you explore the world with are especially new and immersive. I'm impressed at how few elements you needed to make the player feel like and escape a time loop. I've certainly played time loop games before, but you always had a lot more graphics to sell the gameplay. Here, with the secret word use and experimenting with different machine states, you put the player in the shoes of the character instead of just playing an avatar. The game surpassed all the expectations I had from just that screenshot, which is honestly really unassuming! |
| Oct 5 05:42:54 | 26m 58s | 📺 You Call The Shots! | ♥ 3 | Please let this game make top 5. It's so funny yet so clever. I loved how you threw in tons of tricky scenes to throw the player off. I totally thought Indy was going to stroke his chin when he first lifts his hand up. The game is a test of movie memory, and also general anticipation of patterns if you don't know the film. I've never seen anything close to this. And it wasn't just a test either, you had so many funny clips in general. I never thought I'd see a Whiplash reference in LD haha. A fantastic game and one that I've been sending to a lot of friends because it's so easy to grok. Very good job! |
| Oct 5 05:58:22 | 15m 28s | Secret Sorter | ♥ 3 | What a charming game! One of the first things that stood out was the sound design. Having things make sounds that still harmonized with the current theme was excellent and totally immersive. I loved the concept in general of a kind and humble entity just running around fixing things. I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be, but some of the icons led me to imagine it as a mitochondria just running around fixing cells. Game was fun and it ended just as I felt like I was truly mastering the game. You did well with how few mechanical elements you put into the levels, more relying on the core mechanic and how the environmental objects interacted with the player. A very solid design! aaa.PNG |
| Oct 5 06:15:00 | 16m 38s | Factory Reset | ♥ 4 | Unlike others, I actually didn't think of Mechs first. The round shape of the top actually made me think of ED-209 first, and finally I got to play as that terrifying enemy... The controls threw me off at first, but I realized what was going on after a few restarts. Even more so was around the 4th stage or so when I realized I didn't have to kill everyone and could just beeline it to the goal if needed. For such small levels, I was actually pretty impressed by the amount of variety in the levels. Like the tank one where they move back and forth. It took me a few tries but I started using the cover available to me eventually. Even better was that you would repeat stages but manipulate the ammo given to the player so you'd have to tackle it differently. Neat! Tbh, I never did get to see what happens after the 10s mark. I either just died or finished haha. I'd love to see what the game would be like with the waypoint/time dilation aspect fully fleshed out! |
| Oct 5 06:34:47 | 19m 47s | DecaDare | ♥ 5 | What a fun ride, I thought all the concepts were pretty darn funny. Even though you all (probably) divided and conquered on a lot of the minigames, it still shared a cohesion of sorts. I guess that's the benefit of going a pretty silly route, non-cohesiveness can feel intended. The only game I couldn't figure out was the grandma one. And skimming @100th-coin 's video, perhaps he didn't either, so I could use some pointers :) My favorite game was getting the pastry back. It wasn't terribly hard, but I enjoyed the camera movement and well, the satisfaction of getting my food back! As I've said before, fielding such a large team is seriously impressive. And the fact that lots of the same people are sticking around is another testament to that. Well done on such an ambitious game. |
| Oct 5 07:29:14 | 54m 27s | 10-Second Magic Artist | ♥ 4 | This is so fun to play with. The best toy-game I've played in a long time. I've probably done a couple dozen pictures already.. The AI seems to struggle with outlines vs blocks of colors, so I started getting better results when I switched to doing that. It's kinda funny that even though you're being assisted so much by the AI, you slowly learn to give better inputs to it over time, not unlike a game! But I have to give credit to everything else. This is by far the most interesting presentation for AI art I've seen. Much more than a simple prompt/upload system, you get to feel like you're really contributing to making it. The peaceful music and solid UI streamlines everything. I think the 10s limitations actually adds 2 things: 1. Replayability because it's too hard to send in your perfect painting 2. Because it's so chaotic, you actually end up with some unexpected and delightful outputs Incredibly fun one that I can send to non-gaming friends. I definitely plan to play this a lot more throughout the week. unknown (1).png |
| Oct 5 15:19:54 | 7h 50m | Lava Crossing | ♥ 1 | I really liked the choice of having more slidey controls. Having lower control of the vehicle made things much more intense and unpredictable. That, combined with the semi-randomness of the lava generation made sure I replayed a few times due to how hard it was. I've played a similar LD game to this before, but that was square/tile based and the stage would fall out under you. In comparison, the noise generation added SO much to the feel of the game. It looked really good and sold the idea of well, driving in a volcano. I liked the journey of learning the game over time. At first you realize that lava is VERY dangerous. Even a small pixel will kill you. But you start to understand how it expands when the 10s are up. Then you start to get better at pathing once you can predict how the lava grows. It's super fun! I could only get to 54% though, at which point the lava pools are too unforgiving to bypass (unless there's a luck factor involved). Are you able to clear the game? |
| Oct 5 16:25:24 | 1h 05m | It Comes At Midnight | ♥ 2 | Very neat twist! For the first several cycles, I figured this was just a time loop escape room, where touching a clue meant a dead end for the run. I thought "ah alright, that's neat I suppose". After unlocking the first door I started thinking this would be a tight speedrun game with only a few rooms, since in 10 seconds you can only do so much. But then something clicked for me. !> I had JUST played Blink the night before, which has a blind navigation mechanic as well. Lo and behold, walking around in the darkness was possible, AND the timer didn't move! I think I ended up beating the game a bit faster than normal, just because that idea was already primed in my brain so it didn't take long to consider it. So I thought the idea was super clever, and certainly not something you'd see in a real life escape room. Great plot twist that immediately shot this game up several ranks. Great job! |
| Oct 5 16:58:25 | 33m 01s | Poppy Birds | ♥ 3 | Moving targets + multiple targets + arcing projectile have a surprising amount of consequences to them. Take away any one of those elements and it falls apart and turns into a simple Angry Birds game that doesn't take any thought. For this, I felt immediate calculations going through my head on each level. I had to figure out when and where to shoot based on the path that you designed. There's definitely some lizard brain fun in calculating these sorts of things, and I could feel that sensation happen. So I'm quite impressed with how a few tweaks could change a gameplay up so much. It makes me think a few variations of this could be interesting too, such as lining up headshots in a sniper game. Very fun for such a short ride! |
| Oct 5 17:48:20 | 49m 55s | Poda Wants a Statue | ♥ 2 | Pretty interesting how the scores cluster a little. I got 185 years myself and there are scores that are very close, or the same as that! As an incremental game this was very well done, and a new style of active play I haven't seen before. Usually you have a clicking mechanic that gets boring extremely fast. Then you have full automation games where you purpose is just to buy upgrades. That's a better option but can still make you feel a bit too far from the core gameplay. But basically you combine the 2 elements together. Your active play is to repair your constantly failing automation, which is much more engaging than simply clicking mindlessly. All the little juice that goes into watching your workers flop all over + picking them up and deploying it thus becomes extremely important since that is your main action in the game, and you executed super well on it. The meta upgrades are very satisfying to use, especially buying the upgraded roads where you can now micro the resource flow less and just focus on finishing out the pyramid. Great presentation overall which got me interested in it in the first place. It's nice to see something fresh in an otherwise stale genre. |
| Oct 5 18:19:32 | 31m 12s | Yes, Comrade. | ♥ 7 | The immediate atmosphere was pretty immersive. The UI, the tactile interfaces like the notepad and computer commands, and of course the constant rumbles from explosions, all helped to drive the player into the story and world. You could've just have a mouse based interface, but the addition of the typing mechanic helped sell the idea much better. NGL, I didn't use the notepad provided. Instead I kept a Windows notepad off to the side and jotted down every new nation that came about. On top of that, by the 7th connection or so I finally realized I didn't even need to browse the NAT directory, I could just type the first few letters of the nation and get something. This, combined with my growing list of quick lookups allowed me to start to burn past the levels. At least, until the next section where there were more things thrown at me. I found the voice lines pretty entertaining and well acted. It was one of the things that carried me forward. I think some of the sections overstayed their welcome a bit. I think maybe just doing 7-8 connections would've been more to my taste, though unfortunately that would've meant less lines 🤷 The connection interface is surprisingly fun to use. It feels satisfying to hit a perfect connection after doing all the detective work. Not that perfect connections are terribly hard, they just take a while to figure out. So I think that was one of the more enjoyable parts of the game to me. How do you take a simpler concept like Papers Please while keeping its ideas fresh and entertaining? Well, you figured it out! Cool game. |
| Oct 5 18:42:23 | 22m 51s | Jupiter & Arcana Travel Through the Nevermore | ♥ 3 | I gave the game a couple playthroughs so I could see how the different paths were done. On my first playthrough, I was especially wondering how the heck you could have 7 different endings with that many choice points! I understood a bit of the design better after the 2nd ending though. This entire jam, I've noticed that people are applying the 10s mechanic to all sorts of genres and it's really interesting to see the different effects it has on that genre. For example, a TD where you towers only last 10 sec means that you don't just decide 'where' to place a tower, but 'when' as well. This is the first VN I've played so far so I was thinking, what does the theme offer and how does it change the impact of the game? I think your creative direction in making a slower paced game with more contemplative thoughts was a good choice. I think when you can read at your own pace, you are tempted to blast through the words and just make it to the next section. So in this case, the game is more like a movie where you have to experience the media at the pace the director picks. When it came to making a choice, oddly enough I think the timer made me think about the choice MORE! In a normal VN I might quickly choose my gut option and go with it. Here, I would still do that, but then I was given 7 more secs to reconsider and think a bit harder about what I wanted. So kudos to you for exploring this idea. I didn't expect it to feel so different but the theme helps add some new flavors to the normal VN. Excellent execution! BTW...was the Void Song a reference to Invader Zim? |
| Oct 5 20:19:00 | 1h 36m | J-Menuing | ♥ 2 | Very interesting game! There was a lot to my discovery journey and how it evolved: 1. After the 1st few battles and realizing speed was important, I crossed my arms to play. Nothing bad about this, I do this quite often when I need fast movement since my left hand is better at movement. 2. Took me a few rounds to realize which ones were susceptible to attack vs magic. I thought the shape might've mattered too, and the animations threw me off. 3. A few rounds later I finally realized the kill order mechanic. Now everything was clicking into place. 4. Died for 1st time at some point here 5. I had been using magic to kill the purple ones because I didn't know how many colors there'd be. I finally went duh, and realized it could be killed by either. 6. I pushed through until level 18 and finally stopped there since I wasn't sure when I'd finally die. None of those are complaints. I thought it was a very fun journey of figuring out the rules under pressure and then coming up with a strategy. I felt very awesome starting with no real clue what was going on, to making decisions well ahead of time and dropping fast attacks. This was super fun, and I think even if a player knows what to do, there's still plenty of challenge to be had. Great concept, and ESPECIALLY a good one in a stale genre that normally just relies on narrative to carry it. |
| Oct 5 21:47:40 | 1h 28m | Watch Out | ♥ 4 | Can't believe I haven't discovered your games before. I'll definitely be following from now on. I think this game is the perfect example of what a game jam game should be in terms of pacing. Good games show their hook early on and then explore it for a while, basically juggling the player's interest levels like balls and trying their best to keep it up. The issue is that with a lot of jam games, they start to run out of steam after a while once the allure of the hook slowly goes away. There was none of that here, I couldn't believe it. The hook is immediately recognizable and grokkable, and my brain started to light up thinking about what the game would offer. The thing is......every time I thought something like "I wonder if the dev will make me do more complex clock turns" or "I wonder if the dev will make me use the hand as a platform", you delivered on that the VERY NEXT SECTION. Like you were reading my mind as to what I wanted to play. Nothing overstayed its welcome. Let's talk about the ending. My god was the ending so good. The idea of moving the clock + our innate knowledge of how numbers are created digitally culminate into an eureka moment where you get to feel super smart for solving the last puzzle. Utterly brilliant and an amazing place to end the game. So basically, you start high, and then end even higher. You even tossed in some good humor just to collect even more LD points. I am incredibly impressed. This was a nice, tightly managed package and possibly the best paced game I've ever played in a jam. |
| Oct 5 22:19:57 | 32m 17s | Come Shell or High Water | ♥ 4 | Such a solid game. After the tutorial I expected it to be more arcadey and that I would be done with the game in a few minutes. Then I saw you had an expansive world. I STILL thought it was going to be a quick experience. But after more exploring, I saw that there was a LOT more thought and intention put into this that I expected. First off, the water wasn't simply to float the fish up and down. Your jumps changed, as well as some other environmental objects. Then I started noticing and playing with the puzzles more, namely the pillars. I had to resource manage my hats to make sure I could survive while enacting my plans. I think that intensity and sense of danger helped the game a LOT from just being a simple collectathon. Basically the whole vibe I got from this game was the same one I felt when I played Supraland. I loved opening the secret areas. I loved seeing how the water mechanic played into everything. I won't even go into the hilarity of the seagulls and hats, everyone else has already covered that. So a great job creating a Metroidy game set under the sea, something I don't get to explore much! |
| Oct 5 23:51:52 | 1h 31m | Gastronauts | ♥ 1 | Alright I know this game had a lot of silliness to it, but wtf there was actually a lot of innovation here. As an old Kongregate user, I've played every launch game under the sun. This is one of the biggest deviations I've ever seen, while still being super fun! Instead of the usual earn $1000 then buy the next upgrade (which is fun, but pretty samey once you've seen it a million times), you have the concept of trading up. Using weaker resources to grab stronger resources on the outer rims. This is done via the organic method of simply having the better resources on the outside. This plays more to the risk reward elements of the game. Due to the fact that you have scarce resources, it pushes you to optimize your 10 bursts to make sure you set yourself up for success. I'm shocked at how well all these elements worked together. Having more tiers of resources would highlight this mechanic even further, but I could already see how the flow of the game worked and was something I haven't quite seen before. I won after collecting a couple moldy cheeses which seems to be one of the stronger items out there. This game was a serious surprise and I was tricked by it's unassuming nature lol. |
| Oct 6 02:51:56 | 3h 00m | Nuclear Waste Disposal | ♥ 3 | What an interesting combination of mechanics. At first glance it reminded me a littttle of Wilmot's Warehouse, but ultimately it's a different beast of a game altogether. I noticed there are a lot of optimization opportunities all over. 1. While you wait for more blocks to fall, you can start packing things together. 2. Even MORE so you can pack things such that the next set of blocks fall right on top of them. 3. Before using a nuke canister, you can more smartly pack things up and clear them in a more efficient manner. So it was fun messing around with all that. Though....tbf none of that mattered all that much. I had a score of several hundred before I ended up just quitting. The game is satisfying at a core level though. It DEFINITELY feels great to bring a big block to the detonation chamber and watching it all go poof. Who knows, perhaps this game will go big and we can all curb the dangers of nuclear waste disposal. |
| Oct 6 03:05:53 | 13m 57s | 10S ARENA | ♥ 1 | This is truly the Smash Bros of FPS. I actually really liked the knockout mechanic. In another FPS, I would've been scared about bullets in general, so I'd either be hiding behind raised blocks or circle strafing like crazy. But in this game, I encountered a feeling that I only get in melee games, which is the ability to walk in front of your enemy and face them head on (if you wanted to). I could take hits and not fear dying as long as my positioning was good and I had territory behind me. The falling blocks makes this knockout idea work. Without it, you're tediously shooting people off the entire stage. But here, you can quickly gauge the floor layout, move to an optimal location, then knock off the enemy. I really liked the change in the formula and could see how you could lean into that mechanic even further. This is a well executed game that surprised me on several fronts! |
| Oct 6 03:34:09 | 28m 16s | Intomb | ♥ 4 | Curse you random evil narrator!!!!! That's what I shouted at my monitor when I finished the game. In all honesty, those ghosts were terrifying. I think if this was a 2d or topdown game, the effect wouldn't be here at all. But with the lack of peripheral vision plus fairly fast ghosts and instant kills, it was kinda scary holding down those buttons. Luckily it wasn't TOO hard and I got away in time for most of the buttons, so it all turned out well in the end. The puzzles were nice and clean. You could understand almost immediately what you needed to do. The main X-factor was how to handle the ghosts that were going to swarm you after turning mortal. Actually now that I think of it, there was a puzzle where a ghost was hiding behind 2 companion cubes. I put the cube down on a button and I didn't see anything nearby that opened up. I assume it opened up something down the hallway then. My favorite puzzle was the last one. Partially because it was different than the others, and partially because it happens after an intense section of dodging ghosts and I finally didn't have to worry about them anymore! Neat game and it must've taken a fair bit of balance work to make a lot of those puzzles so tight. Well done. |
| Oct 6 03:52:59 | 18m 50s | Light and Dark | ♥ 1 | Came here after your post about new genres. I'm definitely a big fan of new ideas and your screenshots implied it was going to have some. They were right. The clock mechanic is definitely something I haven't seen before, and ESPECIALLY the idea that different things happen whether it's in the light or darkness. My absolute favorite section was the gravity one. Absolutely brilliant and it was extra fun to play in to boot! Darkness spawning enemies was a nice idea, but in practice I didn't really notice it too much. I think it's because the enemies are on the easy side so I didn't worry too much about them even if they popped up. Regardless, I understood the design and could see it shine with some tweaks. I'm curious what other modes/stages you could have with this mechanic given more time. I was surprised to see the gravity stage for instance, so I'm sure there were some other great concepts left on the cutting room floor. Very neat idea and I'm happy to see someone pushing innovation fronts :) |
| Oct 6 04:16:00 | 23m 01s | Speed Dating Fantasy | ♥ 1 | I had a similar idea to some people in the comments section. I basically tried playing 2 games here. The first one was the serious one where I read the bios and did my best guess. But later on I tried the variant where I just winged it and judged people based on the portrait. I actually thought that version was a bit more fun. The reason is because the portraits are technically the more interesting thing to judge, and when you only have 10 sec, you're so focused on the (more accurate) bio than the picture that you don't really get a chance to look at that. Of course, by just looking at the pictures, you get things wrong OFTEN. None of this is to say the game is bad. In fact it was very unique and it was really fun to see the portraits and make judgments on them. On top of that, it was also fun to observe how the AI interpreted certain traits about us measly humans. What a teacher would look like. What a "builder". Very interesting stuff. This was a bold entry given the state of AI being on the cusp of becoming huge. One day we're look back at the first batch of AI API games and remember this one fondly lol. |
| Oct 6 04:29:39 | 13m 39s | ULTRA INSTINCT NINJA MASTER of the Dark Forest | ♥ 1 | What a great concept. You get to play out the fantasy of being a badass ninja without any crazy execution requirements. My first impression was that it was like For Honor, and it was simply a test of directional blocking and reactions. But I'm super happy you kept exploring the idea, far beyond what I thought was possible! Some points that jumped out at me: 1. There are some with so many shields that you have to basically figure out routing on the fly, generally with only 1 second to spare. 2. The red zones placed into the middle of the diamond were brilliant. They are like ITG mines that you have to avoid, and they change things up SO much. 3. There was 1 thing that wasn't fully explored but I played around with it anyways. There's the idea that you only need to minimally touch a shield before returning to neutral in order to save time. This wasn't NEEDED though, but I thought it was fun to play with that idea anyways. Overall, I found the game to be on the easy side but that didn't cut out any of my enjoyment of it. I think the concept has quite a lot of room to grow and that is not something I expected on first play. Great job breathing so much life into the idea! |
| Oct 6 04:59:56 | 30m 17s | Clocks | ♥ 1 | Nooooooooo just as everything clicked the game ended. I was just about to show off my clockmaking skills. Tbh I didn't quite understand how gears and bands necessarily affected each other. I blew by the tutorial a bit quick, and even then I don't think I absorbed the concept. Not too bad a problem though. I did a lot of different combos in the last stage before having an ah-ha moment and finished it. I must say that the victory after bashing my head against the stage felt very good and much more memorable than if I had just been guided to victory. It's pretty clear the game is extensible and you put a lot of work into the various possible states of the clock. Although a little awkward when dragging things around, you protect against impossible locations due to the various positions. I feel like that probably took a long time to set up and debug. Very interesting game in the end. I genuinely learned something new playing it and hope to use it.......somewhere in the future. |
| Oct 6 05:19:08 | 19m 12s | Termination Imminent | ♥ 2 | First thing noticeably cool - the cover art. It was actually the main reason I clicked into this game in the first place. It definitely evoked some door breaching action which, while not totally accurate, still matched how the game felt. The game is really interesting and fun right off the bat. It's a bit like Monaco where you're sneaking around, except it covers one of the biggest issues with that game which is the ability to just hide forever. The red zones forces action from the player, and the level design is done such that they play hand in hand together. Would the game have been better without guns? I'm not terribly sure. I did miss some of the stealth once guns were introduced, but I can understand how there are only so many stealth designs that you can do with only 1 enemy. The last level in particular turned basically into Hotline Miami, or if you want to use a looser analogy, the last level of Max Payne 1 where it's go time, and all you're doing is blasting everyone away using what you learned. It's very fun, very intense. I sure died a lot, but won in the end. Overall the design is very tight. It didn't seem like anything was wasted and you guided the player from interesting level to interesting level. The intensity of the game is ramped up with all the nice effects you have in there, ESPECIALLY the exploding heads. I loved the feeling of power from the shotgun. Awesome job! |
| Oct 6 05:34:56 | 15m 48s | Flicker | ♥ 1 | 43 times. Honestly the game made me feel super cool for killing things in the dark. Especially around the end, I was able to just dodge and duel things with the lights off. Those were very memorable highlights. I thought there was a fair amount of variety for the amount of mechanics there. You mixed and matched well, even putting in neat sequences like the part where you just dash forward and pray. I liked that the combat was crisp and responsive, though it did have some trouble keeping attack direction against the walls (and maybe in neutral? not 100% sure). But otherwise, the fact that enemies are mostly 1 or 2 hits adds a ton to the experience. Encountering a small enemy in the dark for the first time and just 1-shotting it based on timing simply feels amazing. A well executed and well explored game! |
| Oct 6 06:04:59 | 30m 03s | Just Roll With It! | ♥ 3 | These levels are so incredibly fleshed out, expansive, and most importantly DIFFERENT from each other by miles. Each one has its own theming and skill to master. It really reminds me of Mario Kart in how different the stages can be. The game is very fun and invites a lot of replay. While I'm not much of a mastery player for platformers, I found myself replaying to check out different areas because there was so much to see and do. I said "NAH" when I went around the back of the cliff in stage 1 and saw that there were a bunch of gems over there for some poor fool to get. I could be wrong about this, but was higher speed always punishing? I'm not totally sure if there were spots where higher speed allowed you to reach things you couldn't get normally. I WAS puzzled by some of the bumpers and assumed they might synergize with higher speed but I couldn't get that to work. If not, then I think that would be a great addition to the levels. I would love to 100% some of these levels but I'll have to do it later as I've already spent a ton of time on it haha. There are too many nice little touches to mention, so I'll just mention the biggest one which is how each speed boost gives you a different animation. Although it's painful to go up in speed, at least I can do it in style! Really an incredible package overall. I'd love to play other games like this, what games inspired the idea? |
| Oct 6 20:11:00 | 14h 06m | Terminal Velocity | ♥ 3 | VERY fun game. In terms of pure fun this is probably the best I've played this jam. But even beyond the fun factor I noticed some very good things put in there. I personally haven't seen a racing game like this where you are locked into 6 segments. I've certainly seen games where you can loop around the track, but this was new to me. Roughly like a "3d" endless runner. I think that decision was GREAT. The reason is because those loop racing games tend to be pretty hard to orient yourself in and hit things with precision. As a result you would have to slow down the game a lot to help players. But since Terminal Velocity gives you 6 sections, the player can focus less on the controls and precision, and more on what track they need to be on. As a result, you can crank up the speed like crazy and test that instead. An excellent design decision! I love how you keep evolving the effectiveness of the leaderboards every game. In some ways I think this discrete (rather than continuous like Space Ninja) might've been more effective here because I really didn't have time to look at the leaderboards until a checkpoint was coming up. I loved staring at the left side of the screen as I passed a checkpoint, watching me climb up high, and then get back into the game. Very, very motivating as usual. I landed at #7 and am happy enough with that. I drastically improved my scores once I started using brakes more. Not something you often think to use in an arcade racer, but it definitely help me set myself up correctly. The brakes were tuned very well and don't slow you down needlessly. This is a very impressive entry and you have a good feel for making the gameplay exciting using just a few mechanical concepts. score.png |
| Oct 6 20:24:19 | 13m 19s | CONJR Rapid Text-to-Image | ♥ 1 | Hilarious take on the AI trend. It's just mechanical turks underneath it all! I had assumed this was going to be another AI art generation game, of which I've seen a few this jam now. But this was a great surprise. It's funny to be on the other side of things - a reverse turing test of sorts if evaluation was involved. Either way, nice entry to shake things up a bit in this art world. One day we'll find out you were right all along. |
| Oct 6 20:55:21 | 31m 02s | Stellar Sauce | ♥ 1 | Tbh I didn't mind the controls being a bit loose. If it were tight like say, Megaman, it probably would've been trivial to complete. This added a bit of execution requirements to things, especially when you had to climb the tower. Speaking of Megaman, this mechanic reminded me a bit of some stages from Megaman X5 and 6. There are stages with global mechanics where something happens every few secs, and you might need to dodge or hide behind something or die. The way to make this work and not feel random is to have it properly themed such as this: https://youtu.be/HgMX3v3D4Z0?t=75 And I think you did that perfectly! Having a beam come down from the sky is immediately understandable and tied in with the world the player was in. I knew what to do next and execute on that plan. A very good choice. I didn't have any trouble with the ketchup cannon. There were only so many elements on screen and you gave it away in the text that you would have to beat it in an unconventional way. Still, more hints generally isn't a bad thing in jams where player investment is lower. Kudos for try new things and new genres. I know it's tough and I often feel like I get held back trying to do new stuff all the time. But hey, what better place to do it than LD? |
| Oct 6 22:15:47 | 1h 20m | Witch Upon A Star | ♥ 2 | The decision to use a close and locked camera angle was pretty interesting. It made me think about what it offered for this type of storytelling. The first thing is that the character/avatar is really up front and center, almost the size of a visual novel art. This put you in the character's shoes more, not to mention showing off the art which of course was excellent. It also affected some of the path choices and feelings when you took them. The lower path on the far forward/left area I remember feeling claustrophobic because I was walking into the camera. Because of that, I thought this would be the correct path and you as a designer purposely wanted to make it uncomfortable to travel on. ...the path ended up throwing me onto a normal path anyways haha, but I still thought that was an interesting consequence to the mechanic. So in the end, this game came off to me like a 3D VN of sorts, especially since the paths were almost literal branching paths. I think you are on the right track to something pretty interesting if you continuing honing it. Possibly the most aesthetic game I've played so far but that goes without saying :) |
| Oct 6 22:50:14 | 34m 27s | It's Snake, But Every 10 Seconds The Food Turns Into Walls | ♥ 3 | The theme of 10 seconds changes the experience of the game quite a bit. Normally in action games, time limits USUALLY don't change our play experience all that much unless the game revolves around it. But that's exactly what happens here. Basically, in normal Snake you are simply focused on not getting killed. But HERE, as soon as you hit a new level, a few calculations are made based on one question: "what is the best path for me to take in the next 10 seconds?". That calculation is a rapid judgment of path length vs walls (including your own body). I think it's a really interesting puzzle to quickly solve since the time limit means your path can only go so far. Even moreso because the world wraps which is extra hard to consider. So I think the overall thing I'm noting here is that you get the benefits of time limit (pressuring the player to play better and more optimal) without the consequences of it (game over -> restart). Any failures simply add to the attrition the player feels over time, and boy does the game get hairy later on. I had a ton of fun with this one. Great execution and strategy tester. Well done on executing the concept! asdfadsf.png |
| Oct 6 23:09:24 | 19m 10s | LocoMoon | ♥ 3 | That's an interesting take on building rail systems. Usually in something like Factorio, you simply make the most efficient system and evolve it over time. THIS was much trickier though, as you needed to set up a complex system that can reroute things, be easy for the player to switch around and understand the path, and most importantly have enough room for multiple trains to run on. Coming back to this page I see you have a screenshot with a layout much smarter than mine. Being able to just send a train on a looping journey for a while would've helped traffic a lot! I thought this was quite fun. Of course it would've been easier to have a bit more room to play around with, but the space constraints made it much more challenging and fun up front. I could see how you could easily tweak difficulty simply by having the depots spawn closer to each other, as mine did in one of my runs. Fun game with further potential in it! Come on now 😬 aaaaaa.PNG |
| Oct 7 00:00:06 | 50m 42s | Major Magics | ♥ 1 | Is this named after the Major Magic's arcade or is this just a coincidence? |
| Oct 7 17:20:31 | 17h 20m | 10 Doujins per Second | ♥ 3 | lol funny idea, now I get to attend a doujin event just like my favorite anime CGDCT. I got probably only half the references but there was still humor to be had even if you're not a total weeb. I loved that the anime bro is happy with the maid no matter what he says, just toss the doll at them! I also liked the masked up girl who gave off Watamote vibes, especially because of the things she asked for (I suppose both girls achieved that). As for the gameplay, certainly a bit simple but that also meant it was easy to pick up. My first attempt went to hell, but on my 2nd playthrough I got 13k Yen (LD upload doesn't appear to work rn): test1.jpg The cover art and title was a great hook and definitely got me interested in trying, but I suppose that's because I already like that theme and wanted to check it out. Doujins or not, this was the only 'match good to customer' game I've played this jam so it was cool to see how it would be explored, fun stuff! |
| Oct 7 18:07:12 | 46m 41s | Tower of the Dice God | ♥ 1 | Lol like others, I couldn't help but stick around until limit break, and then played a bunch more floors after that just to reap that reward and enjoy my hard-earned work! I'd say if there wasn't a chase item like that, I wouldn't have stuck around much more than after I maxed out my dice weapons, so great job on that. Coming into this jam I actually expected a lot more weapon switching games. It might be possible I somehow subconsciously avoided all of them, but this was the first one I saw that did it. It was interesting to change up shooting strategy and positioning as your dice changed, though once I maxed out jump height I could always just dodge things until I got a more effective weapon. That was a nice surprise btw, because most people wouldn't think jump height would be terribly valuable here but it definitely is once maxed. A pretty neat shooter with a classic, addictive upgrade loop. It's nice to see a pure random game after seeing so many roguelikes with 3 card choices pop up lately (including my submission :P ) |
| Oct 9 04:51:18 | 34h 44m | Pet the Damn Cat! | ♥ 4 | LOL the nod angles are great. I can only imagine an entire zoom call of people doing that but the boss not noticing. An unsuccessful attempt at breaking the meta: asdf.gif My first run was disastrous, mostly because I was moving the mouse a lot petting the cat, and still getting used to what the minigames wanted me to do. Wasn't too bad though, I was able to clear it on the 2nd run. The icon dragging one was by far the most terrifying one since it took the longest. The art is very nice and I'm really impressed with your vector art. Everything is animated well, there are lots of little details and shadows, but most importantly you conveyed emotion so well with it. I've also felt like that nuance is pretty difficult with vector but it seems like you've had a lot of practice in that arena. It's also not a common technique in LD, and when it is it's a bit more simple. Overall, definitely a funny and novel concept. You could've stopped at just the concept and had it be juggling the cat vs work but you went the extra mile by having both systems have their own forms of minigames. Having 2 scoreboards at the bottom was pretty clever and added to the feeling of juggling 2 different things with 2 different fail states, not something I've seen before! |
| Oct 9 21:17:04 | 16h 25m | Missdemanor | ♥ 1 | I'm SO glad you provided the walkthrough. I was getting stuck around the 2nd and 3rd set of enemies because I couldn't reliably figure out the lightning mechanic. I had some semblance of when it worked, but I'd often run into scenarios where I'd die and be like "wait a minute...." The video showed me the way and I was able to piece it together though. I absolutely love the idea of a weapon that when wielded incorrectly, is a dangerous one. I don't often (ever?) see something like that. Usually it's in the form of a card that gives you [+10% crit / -5 move speed] or whatever. But having it be a tangible thing you deal with in the form of lightning is far more interesting. On top of that, it's LIGHTNING, meaning the player already has a general sense of how it should work. Great choice. Getting to safe zones was definitely very intense. I could see why you went with the timer mechanic and it's a good choice to do that. It allows you to have tight timers without putting an extreme execution requirement on it. A really cool concept and it'd be interesting to see how many more things you could interact with beyond candles and enemies. |
| Oct 9 21:28:32 | 11m 28s | Carton Carrier | ♥ 1 | Haha this is definitely a challenging game, and so far this jam I haven't seen anything like it! There have been no building games in 10 seconds, and the fact that there are so many ways for something to go wrong it makes it even worse (in a good way). I'd love to see someone master the game, it's definitely possible. On some Fortnite levels of rapid building. Not sure if I ever hit the enemy tank more than maybe 6 times. I started with simple 1 cannon tanks, but eventually started getting okay at stacking my tank better and assigning 2 cannons. But overall, I probably failed on 90% of my designs anyways. I really do love the overall concept. I know the theme is probably too limiting, but a version where you have variable amounts of time to construct something (maybe due to a resource you farm) would allow for some nice progression. Pretty ambitious entry overall, I'm not sure I'd know how to code something like this myself. |
| Oct 10 17:22:48 | 19h 54m | ☕️ OverBrewed ! | ♥ 5 | Rain on the windows, haven't seen that before. A very nice effect! Compared to the other contemporaries like Overcooked and PlateUp, this game had more of an emphasis on carrying the tray around. I thought that was a very nice twist to the formula, because now you were thinking about optimizing your routes and making sure you could remember who had what. I liked that the cooking portion (or cleaning up messes for that matter) took a backseat so that Overbrewed could have it's own feel for the genre. So to be efficient, this is a bit of a memorization game since AFAIK you couldn't easily tell which drink was which once it was placed somewhere. I would try to stack the counters a bit when I had breathing room, and try to remember which ones were which to add to my speed. The later difficulties are definitely made for 2 people. I didn't have a partner to play with but I imagine it would've been fun to do, although it's unlikely much coordination would happen like the other games. That's because there's just so much to remember, it's best just winging most of it and doing your thing I assume. A good take on a genre that still has a lot of room to explore. Every single one of them emphasizes hecticness and dashiness, so it's great to play one where I could just be happy serving customers :) |
| Oct 13 06:46:11 | 61h 23m | BUN-hop | ♥ 1 | Celeste and other similar, knowledge-unlock games tend to bore me a bit because they dole out the knowledge so slow. I can tell there are more fancy tricks available to the player, but they are hesitant to reveal that until they think the player is ready, dozens of hours later. What I really like about Bun Hop is that it is a TOTALLY condensed experience of that, which fits me much better. I quickly realized after stage 2 that I could go back to stage 1 and redo it. I opted out of that because I figured I could do it later. But once you showed the crouch dash I was like alllllllright, let's optimize some of these old ones. As a result, every stage felt exciting to start because I figured I was going to learn something new and useful, rather than being another practice chamber like Celeste would be. The levels are timed tightly! Some of them I was beating at just under the 10s mark. Looking at your screenshot, you definitely went way under though, so I guess it's only tight for the intermediate player :) Overall I felt like this game was a pretty unique experience due to its speed of progression. I had an unexpected amount of fun with this because quickly you learn things and get to apply them to past stages. And at some point, you realize that every stage can be completed in under 10 secs, which not only made me curious htf some people cleared a stage, but it would also motivate me to try it. There are stages in say, Super Meat Boy that can take a minute to clear, and it's super frustrating to die near the end. But with a 10s limit, you know you're not going to waste much time if you fail. You did a great job exploring this genre with the theme applied to it, well done! |
| Oct 16 16:24:33 | 81h 38m | The Ten Second Games | ♥ 2 | I had played some variants of this this jam but I REALLY liked the direction you chose for this. IMO better than the similar games. I think the biggest factor of all was the variety of things to do and the sense of progression through a tourney. Even though it's such a simple mechanic, you found ways to stretch it out. I probably would never have thought of the multiple opponent one. Even though you're mostly just facing the superior opponent, it still adds a lot of flavor to the battle. It's a lot like Wangan Midnight where you're suddenly battling 2 or 3 cars at once. Sure, there's only 1 to worry about, but it's cool to see opponents with relationships to each other, even if it's kinda simple in this game. My strategy evolution: 1. After a few matches and figuring that the sound didn't help, I turned off the sound altogether to help my timing 2. After failing too many times just counting in my head, I'd tap every second with my hand to be more accurate 3. At some point I realized I could do better tapping in between seconds as well. Dunno why I didn't think about this earlier. Ghost stepping is something people do in DDR all the time to help with timing. Once I did this it was easy to get consistently under 0.3 or so. I never could figure out how to beat the time master. I'd like spoilers at some point! This was a very cool take on a mechanic and how you can expand on top of it by providing a world. The dialogue made me feel like Ryu, who just travels the world looking to fight, which is much funnier in this context. This was an awesome concept and I enjoyed playing through it. |
