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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | PatateNouille's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 16 13:34:44 | Leprechaun's Gold | ♥ 5 | Haha, I'm reminded of Patapon, awesome usage of the theme ! Initially thought I had to move by exclusively using the summons and chaining/combining them, but then I tried WASD and realized it wasn't as complex as I was making it out to be 😂 | |
| Apr 16 15:17:56 | 1h 43m | Idea Catcher——Summoning Tools | ♥ 6 | Very nice ! The levels get quite hard though, I had to place stuff at just the right timing to bypass certain restrictions, like placing a search engine platform on the line the character is about to jump to so that he can go "through" the platform. I'm pretty sure that's not the intended way but I couldn't figure out any other solution. Eventually reached the third quarter puzzle piece but got stuck on the second level I believe (the one with 2 folders, 1 search engine and 1 return, 1 cat and 1 roasted chicken). It felt like I needed 2 platforms/bridges or a couple more folders to do anything. I'm not sure if the puzzle got some mishap and isn't possible or if it's just a matter of the difficulty rising way too fast, expecting the player to know special tricks when they didn't get introduced in a tutorial level. Given how many puzzles there are it's still very impressive. I wish I could've seen it through to the end, I wonder what happens once the four quarters are completed. |
| Apr 17 12:40:44 | 21h 22m | Burger Ritual | ♥ 4 | Really cool ! Great looking and sounding ! > You don't need to know what will happen if you don't [serve the customers properly] Well, you were wrong, I had to try again after winning to see what'd happen hehehe :P In terms of gameplay it's quite simple and trivial. I was surprised you couldn't send the order if all the required ingredients weren't present, or that there doesn't seem to be a time limit, so you really have to try to lose in order not to win which is a little odd. Usually this kind of game gets some challenge from either a time limit, relying on player skills to improve to use the interface/controls faster, or using some random/uncontrollable elements, things like physics making the stacked order fall or some other disturbance that has to be dealt with, or by using confusion with the interface mixing up some information, playing tricks or requiring the player to remember things properly. Although I'm guessing with this game you went for the chill and casual vibe (which you nailed btw), I still think a little bit of challenge would make for an even better experience. It doesn't have to be hard but I think it's when your efforts allow you to avoid failure that they become meaningful. Overall this is a very solid entry, casual but effective, my highest rated yet ! Congrats ! |
| Apr 18 20:56:46 | 32h 16m | Fausto | ♥ 5 | Man, the ambience here is real ! Getting strong Jumanji vibes but with a satanic twist which is great. The cinematics, music, audio and visuals go super well together and really contribute to making a strong mood. TLDR: I enjoyed the experience, the audio and visuals alone are worth it, though I think the strategic aspect doesn't come out too well because all the stuff mentioned below. I liked the game's state happening both on the board and in the room, that and the unsettling tone reminds me of Inscryption, also very fitting. Though while it looks really cool, I felt quite confused. I had to return to the game's page multiple times to try and make sense of what I was supposed to be doing. After several turns I got that the left gauge is the "winning meter" and the sanity one is the "losing-meter", but how each are affected remains a bit unclear. It also took me a minute to understand the mystic dies aren't just "auxilium" dies but feature all 3 symbols, maybe they could rotate in place to show that. The board's layout with high values being in smaller regions surrounded by smaller values hints you're supposed to aim for bigger numbers, but even after beating the game 2 times I feel like almost no matter what roll you get it deals more "damage" than you need to win in a handful of turns. Then the winning state, it says I win, but drinking or pouring seems to just restart the game. I got super confused at first and thought I picked the wrong option or that I actually had lost haha. I played a third time to try to lose, and I really had to only pick one die or specifically combinations that didn't figure in the top right list, and even aim for the fire zones to destroy them. Most turns I wouldn't lose sanity, sometimes I'd lose a huge amount. By the end I was roughly 3/4 of the way to winning despite trying hard not to make progress. Only during this 3rd try did I understand that you had to roll the symbol face up for it to count in the combination list. I was wondering why it seemed to randomly trigger the combinations. But well even without triggering them a single time it'd be easy to win just by always throwing 3 dies into fairly high value areas. The losing cinematic was worth it though, really nice 👌. Overall I'm getting the feeling that the unclearness is intentional and part of the mysticism for the ambience, but I'm wondering if it's maybe a bit too unclear what's happening or why. This said I quite like obfuscated puzzle games which often do that, so I guess it's a matter of what genre you want to be in haha. The balancing of how often the sanity debuff happens and how easy it is to get points don't help the confusion, it being easier to win that to lose despite all the rules felt like I didn't understand it correctly and that I was playing wrong. I played on version Bug_Fix_2, I only encountered two bugs : - sometimes when picking multiple dies to throw again, one disappears when starting to aim. - sometimes the UI isn't super responsive, when clicking on a dialog choice or on the face entity button, it occasionally doesn't do anything and I have to click a few times, 2-3 times max. |
| Apr 21 01:20:23 | 52h 23m | Summon Inc. | ♥ 1 | Nice game ! The music was really cool 😎 After reading the rules, I was expecting the gameplay to be more involved, but I really didn't understand the part about the offerings, first playthrough I practically ignored it and got a score of 2210, tried again but paying attention to them for each demon with valid credentials, and a handful had more items than they asked for but that was it, end score was 2400 something. There didn't seem to be anything interactive with it, and judging from the above comment I'm guessing there's a random chance the offerings aren't enough and it simply didn't proc. Maybe a better system than pure random to determine if the demon is a fraud could help to ensure a more consistent experience. Something like you pick a number of fraud in some range as the shift starts, and then you roll the odds but weighted so that it guarantees this number of fraud appears (something like ``isFraud = rand(0,1) > (1 - (nbFraudLeft / nbDemonLeft))`` for example, or if you want a more uniform distribution you can split the demons into N groups and make one fraud per group). Of course the number of frauds wouldn't be revealed to the player. As for the difficulty you can do something similar but for the number of discrepancies and how obvious they are, something like only 1 number got picked wrong in the ID would be a lot more difficult than if the ID, expiration date, name, and offerings are all wrong. Anyhow, even though the game is simple, it feels decently polished and is pleasant to play, you did a great job ! PS: I wouldn't mind an auto skip of the rest of the shift when you finish processing the demons in advance, had to wait a couple minutes the first time hehe) |
| Apr 22 18:45:48 | 41h 25m | No Tea Time for Slimes | ♥ 1 | That was a load of fun ! Cute music and very funny "goop" sound effect, I laughed every time I gooped stones around xD A fairly standard puzzle platformer as far as the scope goes, but very well executed. The puzzle design was on point, between the spikes coming out with steps and the timed one it offered a good variety of "I see how this goes" but then surprise there are hidden spikes and you need to adjust your solution or pay attention to where the gaps are. Confidently going to a resting platform only to pleasantly get stabbed by some spikes behind grass 👌 The difficulty was good too, with the timing requirements and hidden spikes adding some challenge, but not demanding extreme precision and not relying on random/uncontrollable elements makes for a good progression as you're closer to mastering the level with each failure until you complete it. I'm not sure if there are multiple endings, but I made sure to crush wizard before reaching the artefact, though he was still able to send me back to the broken tea set. Dabblin' in some necromancy ay ? Anyhow, I had a great time playing ! Great entry ! |
| Apr 23 00:34:20 | 5h 48m | Goku's Wish - Summon the Dragon. An hommage to Akira Toriyama | ♥ 3 | Well this is nice, the music is great and I'd like to beat it at least once to the end, but unfortunately my keyboard is ancient, kinda cheap, and only supports pressing 2 arrow keys at the same time, making the sections with rows of 3-4 notes super hard to hit, and they are frequent enough that it's nigh impossible to tank even if I arrive to these sections with full health. I can go up to 3 with WASD but it's still not great and I only realized that was an option after 30+ attempts with the arrows so wasn't too keen on switching hands/position. I tried mostly the normal difficulty mode and got these during my best attempts (reached about 3 dragon ball) : High1.PNG High2.PNG Went to easy mode but again lost when the section of rows of 4 arrives. I can hit one pair then the other two but yeah it's just adding a lot of difficulty when I'm already terrible at this kind of game lol. I also keep getting confused with the key layout, for some reason it's really not intuitive for me, just to make it a little extra harder hah. But, there are combinations of keys that allow 4 to be pressed simultaneously on my keyboard, and I bet most keyboards have some layout that could work. **So, my suggestion is to allow changing the keybinds.** I think the point of this kind of game is nailing the patterns and timing more than using a specific mapping on the keyboard anyway. If you end up making an updated version that allows that, mention me in a comment, I might give a second try. Otherwise you could add options to change the damage for missing or pressing with a bad timing, and/or the regen for playing well. Right now it doesn't forgive even a few mistakes and it takes a while to recover. Having an easier setting would help. Or maybe even consider checkpoints. I'd really like being able to just restart at the last dragon ball or maybe the last calm section. Maybe this could have a significant cost on the score-side so it still incentivizes getting better. I might be able to finish if I practice enough, but having to re do the first 1-2 minutes with minimal mistakes again and again only to lose in 5 seconds when the complicated section arrives is tough. I feel like especially for jam games, it's usually preferable to make a game too easy than too hard, although having a challenge is nice it's frustrating when there isn't a way around it. Well I'm saying this as if balancing was easy but well as the dev it's always very hard to gauge how difficult the game is, especially when handing it to players who don't have the same kind of gaming experience. |
