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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | pkenney's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 20 02:43:13 | White noise | ♥ 2 | Very cool and moody - loved the total lack of tutorializing. I went from having no idea, messing around, having a thought as I experimented, and then managing to figure it out and reach the end of the story. Nice job! | |
| Apr 20 13:06:59 | 10h 23m | Signaler Signal | ♥ 1 | Dude that lush, textured synth soundscape! Very nice as always. I'm glad there was no tutorial. The sense of mystery and period of experimentation adding, and fit with the vibe imo. The character art is nice, and the choppy animation has some nice details, for example how the idle doesn't over-use the most jittery frames. Wait... is it randomized? Interesting idea. My favorite frame is the ballooning-chest as he goes into a jump from idle, and if I could tweak one thing about the game it would be to play that even when you going into a jump from walking. The varied uses of the stars is core to the puzzle-thinking but also creates a lot of execution failures (at least for me) and the need to restart. I thought I was doing pretty good but then I got stuck here: signal-steal-stuck.png How much did I miss? Nice entry! |
| Apr 22 02:30:15 | 37h 23m | While You Were Here | ♥ 2 | Wow first entry? Nice work! Charming space, the layers to the art really worked well to flesh out the visual vibe. I appreciated that you did not tutorialize or explain anything. I did not even have to read the controls list and I figured all keys out including R before you even offered the in-game hint about that (but that one hint was a good inclusion so folks didn't get stuck). That choice let me explore and learn on my own, and for small jam games I really feel like you want to extract that extra value of the mystery. I solved all the puzzles and got to the end. The first level with spikes was very nice. I tried some wrong solutions and then there was a nice progression from realizing "wait there's another direction I could be taking this... I wonder if..." and then experimenting and finding out yes it does work! Very cool. Game was short but with the languid pace I felt like the runtime was just right. You fully explored the mechanics offered, and then you wrapped with a nice visual flourish. Just the right amount. Well done! |
| Apr 22 03:13:49 | 43m 34s | Misplaced | ♥ 1 | Some pretty cool platforming here! My favorite part was jamming out to the tunes, hitting the rotating crosses, ok no problem, but then you threw the twist at me and had them going reverse!! It was pretty interesting how much that one difference changed the experience of platforming on them. I got past it no sweat but I enjoyed the challenge spike, particularly since it came as a progression of a previous idea. I read all of the text the game showed me. When I got the wall that was too high to jump and the game showed text saying this wall is too high to jump, I made a note "will leave feedback that's a bit too much text for my taste." Wowzers so naive lol, by the end of the game's outro it was well established that this is a very self-aware design choice. I know you have a few people saying the platforming was a bit too difficult, and of course in a jam there is a range of players coming from all sorts of tastes, which is great. But for my own personal taste I would have enjoyed even more of you riffing up and down the difficulty curve with some of your core - I liked the taste you did give and wanted more. Nice entry with a lot of style! |
| Apr 22 04:05:29 | 51m 40s | Ziggy Zapper and the Robot Factory | ♥ 1 | Wow I'm really impressed! This is just so well done! The core idea is really nice, derived straight from the theme, and then its consequences were explored in all these different directions and permutations. You put so many interesting ideas into play here, really well done. Then you packaged it up with strong graphics that included a variety, a jamming tune, nice sfx, and a smooth learning curve that completely avoided the need for tutorialization. I completed the game and got 16 of the triangles. Here are a couple of the rooms I didn't figure out: zig-secrets.png Another huge nice touch was the speed of the character. With backtracking and exploring, and the physical execution of the puzzles required, it would have been easy for this game to be subtly a lot less fun by making a grindy-feeling slow movement speed, but the snappy controls were a pleasure. Game also prevents you from getting stuck, for example I was worried about the mine in the door in the East Yard, but nope, I needn't have worried. Lots of attention to detail evident throughout. I saw LD14 on your list and was curious what to expect, and wow - you just nailed it. Well done! |
| Apr 22 12:48:41 | 8h 43m | Chomp Radio | ♥ 2 | Oh my god that first moment when I was cruising around wrecking everybody with my sophisticated build and suddenly for no reason half my body and turrets got disconnected and went flying off into nowhere my brain said AHH WTF JUST HAPPENED?!@# And then I was like... oh... right.... this is snake! I finished this game by the skin of my teeth. I think I upgraded a few health stations and then enemies were a non-concern the entire game, but in the last minute after killing the final transmission tower I bumped something unexpectedly, panicked at the turn in direction, severed almost my entire arsenal and then suddenly had like a pixel of health left. I thought I was all done, but with mad dash for the exit I just barely made it. Phew! Was glad I got to finish! There's a lot of cool stuff here. The art is great, the voice acting is really fun, and probably the most impressive feature is the upgrade menu system with the dual selection of body-part / turret-type. That menu experience is rich with slick details that really made it feel great to use. So well done. If I look for critique I guess it'd be the minor enemies -- they weren't quite dangerous enough to be interesting, and I wished the had a little more juice to signal when they were hit or hit me. Their low danger let me turn my brain off a bit too much. BUT it would have been a disaster if they were tuned too far the other way and made the game too dangerous. I did appreciate being able to cruise through and experience the whole experience. The "leave me alone" use of the signal theme was a great starting point, and the fact that this landed you on snake, love it. Lol at bathroom wall. Nice entry! Oh -- and thanks to Alex for the keynote vid. Fired me up at the kick-off, hell yeah. |
| Apr 23 02:06:43 | 13h 18m | Haberdashery Rhythm Assault | ♥ 1 | Loved the art, and the way the color scheme all really works together. Parrying the needles was super satisfying -- especially when I nailed a triple. I never quite clicked with the scissors, sometimes I could feel their vibe and get it, but I was often early, and then I'd second-guess myself on the next one and be late, and then when they started doing doubles and then stacking with needles I couldn't hang. But I could imagine that IF I could hang it would have felt great. Nice work! |
| Apr 23 03:09:48 | 1h 03m | Reclamation | ♥ 2 | Hey - great to see the Flag of Mullin flying again! mullin-flag.png Real chill vibe with the music and art, and the pacing. I spent quite a while with this, and was consulting the manual many, many times. I think the game was supposed to be much shorter than my experience, but I was so focused on reading the flags from the other towers and comparing them to my rules book that I overlooked two important details at first: that I had received a letter with instruction to SEND a flag message, and that once I did I should light a signal fire. So that first day was long, and a lot of spyglass-looking and book-checking. I didn't mind because the game had a good vibe. I will say I wished badly for fullscreen. I have a harder time immersing myself when I can't fullscreen. I ended up changing the display options on my computer so that at least I could get it to take MOST of the screen, instead of the about 30% it initially was taking. Once I got over the hump of that first day, things went smoothly for the resistance. It was pretty cool that first time when I did spot a pattern. I had gotten familiar enough that I was like WAIT THAT'S NOT NORMAL, OH BOY. Loved the smoke in the distance. It looks visually nice, adds to the vibe and feeling of progress/change, but most of all it makes you stop and think, hrm, are those signal fires or are they war casualties from the violence I am facilitating so indirectly? At first I thought that maybe I'd made a mistake and gotten the other towers outed and burned down. Nice entry! |
| Apr 23 04:00:23 | 50m 35s | Tiny Signal Lost | ♥ 2 | This was really charming and had a ton of cool ideas going on! A nice mix of puzzles and platforming, nice art and music, nice design. There is SO MUCH good about this game, but I did experience some friction with the controls. I wish the jump had a variable power depending on how long I held the button down. And the air control's incredibly high acceleration made tiny adjustments quite difficult. The camera was also aggressive enough to create blind jumps or even take my character right off the screen: off-the-screen.png So I really liked the challenge of some of the platforming, like going on the moving platforms past the saw blades and having to jump. But I felt a bit too much of the challenge came from the controls. Anyway, I wouldn't even mention that stuff if this wasn't such an all-around excellent game! Loved the progression of ideas through the puzzles, with the different colors, and like I said a nice mix of thinky puzzles and demanding platforming challenges that kept it feeling fresh throughout. Nice work! |
| Apr 23 04:27:13 | 26m 50s | Operation Alien Translation | ♥ 4 | I enjoyed this a lot! Was kicking myself for using plural words early and then forgetting which were plural, that was most of my mistakes. Bee helmets! They're definitely talking about bee helmet birthday wine. Whole experience worked really well. I was pushed a bit and wasn't sure how far I could be pushed. I thought the runtime was just right, but I also know my brain could have held more of this stuff. Interesting. The opening scene was great, wonderful art and audio too. Nice work! |
| Apr 23 04:55:30 | 28m 17s | Wi-Fix It | ♥ 3 | Wow! This game is so polished and slick! I just love the art and the sound, and the overall feel and juice of it. Every interaction just has so much detail. Really good! I loved the platformer challenges, lots of tricky moments and reward of satisfaction. The controls felt very nice, especially the nuanced jump control, and for such a complex set of interactions I felt like you made it manageable. One nit is the rounded foot, which of course you must have going up onto the platform (toe-stub no thank you) but then wrecks you on the other side when you're sliding off. Classic dilemma! wefix-trouble.png Here was a spot I ran into some trouble. Totally doable, and I did get by it a few times, but a bunch of deaths stacked up here. Anyway - really had fun with this one! Such a nice well-rounded entry. Well done. |
| Apr 23 12:38:11 | 7h 42m | Xsignals | ♥ 1 | Wow, multiplayer! That's a cool technical accomplishment but I tried logging in last night and then again this morning to see if I caught anybody, but found myself alone. I wonder how that could be solved, where you could have multiplayer yet allow solo experience, I guess bots is the simplest idea? Or some kind of durable state that players can come in and manipulate so that you don't have to cross-over in time with another player? I've done a ton of LDs and only seen multiplayer a couple of times, so definitely an under-explored space. Glad to see you poking at it, and sorry I didn't get to really check how the game works when there are players crossing over. Interesting.... the player seems to be on a discrete chunky grid when I tap-move or go around corners, but then it appears smooth when I hold the key down. Are you on a discrete grid but with interpolation smoothing it? The projectiles seem to go in a smooth straight line and not be locked to a grid in the same way. Would have been curious to see this in real action, but even though I didn't really get to dig in here I'm glad somebody is experimenting in this space. |
| Apr 24 15:28:50 | 26h 50m | Extremely Loud Frog Toy | ♥ 1 | Fuck yes. Part of what's great about jamming is coming across this kind of experimental entry way outside the range. Loved it. How many are you running at once? I only went to three at the same time... frog-harmony.png You made me want the full version of this game where it's a band of four friends with different-voiced animals and a way to define keyframes so they can have raw approximations of loops and I can create a dynamic tower stack of insanity. The art touches are great, the range circles, the frequency analyzer, the shaking text. What first caught my eye and made me play was your anim speedrun gif that you posted. Love the style. Very nice work. |
| Apr 24 17:17:03 | 1h 48m | Last Writes | ♥ 2 | Such a unique and complicated entry - really nicely done. A lot of the really experimental stuff I see in jams is often half-realized, really cool but left a little incomplete. This one feels like the whole concept was fleshed out and brought to a satisfying conclusion. On one hand, I really appreciated the spoilers so I didn't get stopped halfway through from my failures, and the cheat key so I could see the final scene. If I were five or six levels deep and ate a game over, I would not replay, so the cheating helped me experience. On the other hand, I am a person who is a bit defective in the ear and it was an accomplishment for me to solve Ode One Out without looking it up. So I did try each puzzle before using the guide. Struck a good balance w the out-of-game hidden-spoiler. Hitting Alt-Tab was a confession. Really well done, with a core idea deeply rooted in the theme, and taken in an interesting novel direction and backed up with art that both looked compelling and was very well suited to the experience. Great job! edit: love the discussion above -- cocreator had a strong vision, I disagreed but tried it their way, worked better than I expected. That's cool teamwork. I've always compoed so I can be unilateral, and thought of team operations as hardmode. Cool to see some of the curtain pulled back, thanks. |
| Apr 24 18:31:03 | 1h 14m | Signal surfer | ♥ 1 | OMG when I saw the opening instructions I thought OH YEAH IT'S TRIBES and lemme tell ya I got real fired up. Here's how Tribes goes: ski.png But nope! It's like upside-down tribes, where you have a gravity pack instead of a jetpack! So I was playing against thousands of hours of brain-wired instinct on this one. But I was really intrigued to see how it went. And the problem was, this movement system was really fun to experim-GAME OVER Hold on, I mean, I was trying to dig in and learn-GAME OVER wait something is wrong and I'm not sure wh-GAME OVER gaddammit!! I just want to pl-GAME OVER So the first feedback I would give is let me play. You as the developer probably have NO CLUE how bad I am at your game. I got my first game over before I even moved! So believe me, you wouldn't believe it. I suggest finding random friends and strangers and forcing them to play WITHOUT SAYING ONE SINGLE WORD. Do not tell them in advance what to do, and for pete's sake do NOT say anything or answer any questions while they play. I did that early in my jamming days and I learned a TON that I've never forgotten. You just cannot believe what and how much your players misunderstand until you see it with your own eyes, and for me I had to see it repeatedly across several projects and really get a clue. For example even now I still don't know what causes game over in your game. Is it something to do with that spreading meter at the top of the screen? What causes that to fill? Is it simply a timer? Sometimes it seems to move at different speeds but I never understood quite how. The second thing is that I kept feeling bad about this moment: hillsmash.png That's not even the perfect capture, but moments like that kept slamming me out of the flow state. Totally a skill issue I am sure but it was my experience regardless. Can you alter your design so that this is still a fail/bad state, but yet is somehow more fun to experience? Now the things I loved: I love new innovative movement systems and this one was a very cool iteration. I think your surrounding design choices could make it shine even more, but that core is really cool. You also have VERY nice polish all around it in terms of the graphics effects. Having fullscreen was huge, and the way you put the tutorial there but non-obtrusively was a nice touch. So many little animations from your team-name intro to the buttons and screen transitions, a ton of care that really feels nice. I also thought the camera was really well done -- and that is a way you could have easily failed. It's tricky to get the compromises right and I thought you did well there. The projection of your landing is also a really nicely-done smart touch. So overall really good! I just think you didn't anticipate how much I sucked and needed some space to test, learn, and explore your movement system. Nice entry! |
| Apr 24 19:20:22 | 49m 19s | GIMME TV | ♥ 1 | Nice!! Someone has studied their Art of Screenshake, love all the tiny touches. This pic doesn't do it justice but it's what was there when I hit printscr screenshake.png You can see a taste of the attention to detail here, but it was EVERYWHERE. At first I thought this game would just be a nice super-juiced blast-fest but then there were all these different scene changes, wave, rain, upgrade, and then later chill. That outer-level loop was a really nice delivery vehicle for the moment-to-moment gameplay, and breaking it up that way went prevented it from wearing out too quickly. The nice progression of different enemy types also really helped, and then the slick boss fight adding some bullethell was a nice cherry on top to really complete the experience. All around super nice with great gameplay, art, and sound. Really well done! |
| Apr 24 19:41:11 | 20m 49s | CRASHDAR | ♥ 1 | Very cool! The minefield was a good amount of difficulty. I wasn't sure what to do at first, had to do some experimenting, my initial ideas didn't pan out, and then I figured it out. Just right. rotkiv.png Nice work drawing right from the theme and running with it. The retro vibe is really well executed. Cool entry! |
| Apr 24 21:34:22 | 1h 53m | Effigy of the Sky Lords | ♥ 1 | This experience is a nice little package with a lot of character in the art and story. Length just about perfect. Love the variety of neighbors and their quirks. But while we're speaking the language of violence.... can I put the jellies on that hook? BZZZZT!! Never heard of wareware before, interesting. Your English seemed flawless. Very cool entry! |
| Apr 25 02:07:59 | 4h 33m | rescue signal | ♥ 1 | Well if you ever get trapped under ground, give me a call because I sure got really good at mining in this game! I am a mining MONSTER! At least until I run into those new rocks, anyway. This was a lot of fun and I played a long time. The core action is super repetitive but it's crunchy and really satisfying so that's okay. The art, the sound, the juice, all working together to make that simple act feel good. And as you add laser and other abilities there's also some variety. And of course the bigger layer of tech tree upgrades and earning to save to increase your ability to earn and ratcheting up and up... it's a really compelling wrapper for the underlying core action. And it was paced out really nicely. I liked that the jump from level 1 to 2 was a lot bigger than the subsequent jumps. That gave me time to enjoy learning the game and seeing what was what. Since it was all new I didn't need it to move faster. But then as I got later into the game I was very glad the pace picked up. You clearly know what you're doing with this style of game! What a great way to take a nice tight core and make the player want to really dig into it. I played to the second-to-last level before I had to call it, but I spent a while with this one. Nice entry. |
| Apr 25 14:08:47 | 12h 00m | Alpine | ♥ 1 | Wow that was really nice! The zip ride down at the conclusion was a great finale, wonderful idea. I struggled a bit with the second-to-last house, I didn't see anything to indicate what controlled the bottom-left door, and sort of concluded it couldn't be that box far away from it. Eventually tried out of desperation before quitting, and then was able to proceed to the conclusion, and I was really glad I got to get to the end. I think there might be an odd issue with the audio: I experienced the music as having this odd crackling distortion, which I thought was a stylistic choice. But then when I exited fullscreen at the end of playing I noticed it went away. And sure enough -- I hit fullscreen and it crackles, non-fullscreen it stops. So odd! Anyway, really nice music, audio, graphics, solid platforming controls, a concept taken straight from the theme, and all packed up into a narrative with a satisfying conclusion. Nice well-rounded entry! |
| Apr 25 14:26:12 | 17m 25s | Midnight Transmission | ♥ 1 | Cool story about kids on bikes trying to make contact while avoiding authority! The vibe of the music and art fits with the theme, and I liked the walkie-talkie sound. I didn't quite understand at first that I needed to lock in the lines, and I manually triangulated the first one. Standing on the spot, I then realized about locking in, but the game told me that I needed to move further away to scan, so I had to leave the target area in order to re-discover it from further the way the game wanted me to. Otherwise a really smooth experience! The bike was much nicer than walking. Nice entry! |
| Apr 25 20:40:56 | 6h 14m | Signal Keeper | ♥ 1 | I was initially very confused by the first machine, but I had some fun tinkering and then it was satisfying to figure it out. Once I had that foundation in place the remaining two machines were very straightforward to figure out. You have really charming art and create a nice mood that is reflected in the gameplay and the message together, so it feels like a cohesive package. The background music was really nice - what a shame it didn't loop! Honestly I think you could consider it fair to fix that under the post-submission bugfix rule, wouldn't seem unfair, just my opinion. Just disclose the fix and I wouldn't imagine folks objecting. Once I was in the third and fourth day I did start to feel like it was a lot of machine-operating for just a small payoff each time, and I could have been more engaged if you threw a surprise or twist in. Nice entry! |
| Apr 25 20:59:34 | 18m 38s | Laser Beat | ♥ 2 | Very cool vibe - the lasers, the colors, the nice chunky art, and the music/sfx all work together really well and feel like a consistent purposeful style. I had fun bouncing the lasers around, experimenting, and solving. The game was short and left me wanting more -- much better than dragging things out until it gets boring, but I could easily have enjoyed another 2 or 3 levels. Well done! |
| Apr 28 02:59:50 | 54h 00m | SIGMOLE | ♥ 1 | WHOA! I loved the music that got sometimes really crazy, and the art with the dithered distances views, and the quick-blink scan-ahead. The whole experience was kind of frenetic and the different aspects of the style of the game really fit so well together. And the experience itself is kind of crazy. Early on I understood some deaths: for example by digging under a boulder and having it drop on me. But it took me a bit to realize how the turn counter works, and that it's restored by worms, so after that I got a lot better. Then I started to get copies of myself, and the game got REALLY nuts. Was I even supposed to get copies of myself at all? I wasn't totally sure but either way it was fun! multi-mole2.jpg (EDIT: it's showing the image as broken not sure why! here's an imgur link https://imgur.com/DIg1Q03) Eventually I managed to get four copies of myself to level 119 where it rains fruit all day and there's a boom box playing music and the whole path down is blocked off by boulders. Is that party scene considered victory? But some of my past selves were still stuck on earlier levels, so we didn't all win. Really enjoyed exploring this one. It was just the right amount of nuts. Cool and unique entry! |
| May 2 17:40:41 | 110h 40m | Error: no signal | ♥ 1 | Twist at the start was fantastic. I probably got to the last part in a unique way: I was confused about getting past the first part (EDIT: same as graebor), and I still think maybe something is off-screen for me. I was trying to zoom, and ctrl-mousewheel didn't work. So then I hit ctrl-shift-+ but that didn't work, so then I tried ctrl-shift-0 to set default zoom just in case, and poof to my great surprise I was teleported into the battle scene. Later I found that 9 takes me to the second scene. After that, I figured out how to progress through the game normally (just wiggle the mouse and hold the key at the end of the first part, something seems to be happening but I don't know what). So a wild ride. Love the crazy unique/experimental entries you come across in LD. Again, that first page is a masterpiece in misdirecting my expectations and then subverting them. Well done! |
| May 3 02:18:45 | 8h 38m | RoboNET | ♥ 1 | Enslavement achieved! This was a nice short but complete experience. Loved that you had the second type of zone with different art and more wide-open spaces. The horizonal-only shooting did a nice job of making enemies vary in threat level. If they came from the side it was easy, but up/down approaches could have made them a lot trickier. If I could tweak one thing, I think it would be the enemy logic. The way they work now, I always just either shot them offscreen before even knowing they existed (or were those corpses I saw already dead?) or else I would trigger their attack mode and then backtrack to a totally safe spot where I could just spam "fire" and then would walk in and die. If the enemies had just a bit more to them, the combat could have been very interesting in this game, I think. Nice well-rounded entry, good use of the theme, cool pixel art, music, and sound effects all rolled into a nice package with a real ending. Good job! |
| May 3 02:36:05 | 17m 20s | It's Cold Outside | ♥ 0 | We have some buildings like this in my home town! Never climbed to the top of them before, though... brual-top.png Very cool look, and nice job on the procgen. The shading was maybe contributing to the difficulty, at least in my first generation which was pretty tall and had a bunch of shadow areas that were tricky. But I was enjoying the space enough to push through the difficulties, find other approaches, and eventually get all the way up to the top. Enjoyed the time I did spend in this space, largely on the strength of the look and feel of the buildings, so making me climb them was a great way to bring me into close interaction with the strength of the entry. |
| May 3 02:56:32 | 20m 27s | Avalanche | ♥ 1 | I finished the game. Enjoyed the free-ranging controls, the lack of punishment for huge falls, the jump, the insane ability to climb sheer walls like it's nothing. The rabbit was a nice touch, I diverted myself a bit by chasing him right when I hit a lull. The graphics and the space and the free-flowing movement left me feeling fine about the simplicity of the challenge. The trails I left behind started as a nice visual element but became a very useful search aid toward the end. How did you create such true-to-life sound effects? They are very nice. The wind blowing, the sheep, the howl of the wolf. I've tinkered with lots of ways of creating sfx but I wouldn't know where to begin with making sounds like that. Did you synthesize them somehow? Anyway, very nice entry! I enjoyed. Oh - don't really care and won't change my rating, but I do think a compo entry should have code included. |
| May 3 03:29:43 | 33m 11s | Through the Dark Forest | ♥ 1 | Great idea for the theme. Nice gameplay loop, and I enjoyed exploring the different star types. At first I was a bit nervous, then got used to normal stars, and saw something like OH BOY DON'T SIGNAL THAT THING. And got the 0/3 victory ending. Graphics were solid, but especially good for the space objects. So of course then I had to reply and rat us all out to the Eye of Space Sauron. Nice thoughtful entry! |
| May 3 03:43:23 | 13m 40s | On My Signal! | ♥ 1 | Wow this game is such a cool core idea! The mostly-autobattler with the addition of the archer is a nice design space to explore, and the classic "one of three" end-of-round roguelite thing is a great choice, too. Leaves me some room to explore army builds but constrained to make do with the cards I see so that I would get to see a variety of runs if I played over and over. But I think it needed bit more iteration and some polish to really capture the potential of the design. The systems are all here and the game is fun, but the lack of audio was particularly noticeable when it's an auto-battler that leaves me mostly just watching -- some sounds would really liven it up and give me a chance to better understand the action by conveying information. But I think the #1 thing is that, for my personal taste, every single element of the game needs to be sped up by about 10x. Everything from the round length to the archer reload-and-fire speeds, to the time-to-kill on units, to the animation revealing the three choices and the time to cycle through phases. Each element of the game is slow enough that eventually my desire to further explore the interesting strategic space was worn down by all the waiting. That said, I think there's something really cool here. Intriguing entry! |
| May 3 04:00:45 | 17m 22s | Monolith | ♥ 1 | wow nice work!! So polished for a compo entry, with really nice looking 3D graphics, tight controls, great audio, and a gameplay frame pulling it all together nicely. Well done! The dome dropping for combat was a nice touch. If I try to critique I'd say that a bit too much of the combat was backwards fleeing while a stack of rocks followed me. I felt like the controls were tight enough to create more interesting combat situations than the enemy AI provided. I wanted to finish but it was pretty disheartening to lose in like the 4th fight and have to go back to the start, so I eventually wimped out. Sorry :*( I felt like the game deserved more from me. But such an impressive entry all around! Well done. |
| May 3 17:59:46 | 13h 59m | Outpost | ♥ 1 | Took me a lot of play-throughs but I finally got the good ending! The sleep threw me off - several times I slept immediately before leaving and still lost to lack of sleep. Bolstered that a bit and then was able to win. First run was nice, with a lot of tension. I kept putting off the extreme choice until it stopped being on offer, and then watched as my own O2 dwindled. I thought I was end up in the EPS-5 shoes: running out of resources and getting a "5w" estimate and nobody would come. But the game was even meaner in punishing my inaction by going into what I assume was an infinite loop of sleep/excercise - science - o2/bat never changing, never progressing the state at all. Eventually I got into the pod for no reason just to end it all. Poetic justice! Nice entry! Very cool take on the theme. |
| May 3 18:17:03 | 17m 17s | SignalM | ♥ 0 | I got up to 32 food but then my hand was tired from a lot of moving and clicking, which felt weird because I could play an FPS for longer without that feeling? I had fun exploring the system. When I started, I did not understand anything and lost my first game with zero food. But then I figured it out by experimenting, and on my second run I started gaining food faster than I used it. I was able to run usually two "teams" at once, and maybe send out some extra monitors to scan more of the map. It was an interesting design with some ways to interact between the types. I wonder what this game would be like with really polished controls like hotkeys and clear selection state that would allow for much more action-per-minute, and then threw more at me. Cool entry! The art was nice, and a very interesting idea well-grounded in the theme. Good job! |
| May 3 18:54:35 | 37m 32s | Decoder | ♥ 0 | Hahah oh mannnnn In retrospect, it should have been clear what YAVIKERL was, but my brain is just not wired for that kind of processing, somehow. My wife loves that kind of game but for my I just sit there blankly staring. So doing it under time pressure was really really difficult for me! I did get lucky with a run that was not so hard, and I encountered easier words that were not scrambled or were only minor scrambled on the first instance of seeing them, and that run I did really well. Then I graduated over my head into the morse code, and lost the signal in the middle of transcribing a ten-digit code, and I needed to exit the typing mode to go back to adjust the frequency so I hit ESC but this just exited fullscreen and I lost my sh1t and ... Ok, phew. Game is supposed to be hard! This was a cool collection of mechanics that came together into an interesting experience. The overall look was slick, and the sound was well done. I know this kind of descramble is like popcorn for some people's brains, and I bet they're having a ton of fun with it. Cool entry, even if it was a little against the grain of my brain. |
| May 3 19:07:18 | 12m 43s | Diamond Synth | ♥ 1 | Hey cool, a fun little synth! Just enough param-tweaking to get me playing around with it a bit. My favorite was setting the voice to mono and planting a finger on lower C and dancing the rest around Cm. Would have enjoyed it even more if --- NEVER MIND some further tweaking got it to sound really really nasty and discordant, so just a skill issue. Nice job! Interface clean clear and with personality. Sound is just flexible enough to sustain a fun session of messing around. |
| May 5 03:09:12 | 32h 01m | NEON BREACH: Get the Signal Back | ♥ 1 | Very cool! The puzzles were interesting. The enemies "patrolling" the network was a nice idea that gave a sense of both space and timing to the network. I did get kind of stuck on one where the timing window seemed just a bit too tight, but maybe I was just trying to execute the wrong solution. I wish I had captured a screenshot to say which one. After I got stuck a bit I went back to my desktop, and tried to see if the restorations I had done unlocked any cat videos. No. Then I went back into the game app to try my level again, but it reset me to level 1 so I stopped playing rather than repeat everything. But I spent some time with this and enjoyed it! Nice entry, really clear graphics and a good ramp-up in difficulty. |
| May 5 03:24:03 | 14m 51s | F(R)OG | ♥ 1 | frog.png Nice entry! The art and music were beautiful, and I had fun working through how the abilities worked to let me solve the puzzles. I think I had some technical issues with the audio - it sounded really crackly on my system (Chrome on Windows) but I just chalked it up to the rain. That rain may also have made the "jump" tile only sometimes fire, which caused me some confusion about some of the puzzles, but in the end with experimentation I was able to make everything work, and I didn't mind the excuse to spend a little extra time with the world! It was a nice choice to have the game pretty zoomed in, the way you did. It played to the strengths of the art. Nice job! |
| May 7 01:54:44 | 46h 30m | Moon Moth | ♥ 1 | Nice job creating a really unique entry rich with creative art, audio, and even poetry. I enjoyed trying to go through and remember what sequences I had already seen so that I could see more dreams. My favorite dream was the... how do I even describe it? The Lovecraftian starfish rapper? Great work on the variety of musical/audio elements, too. Really helped the game feel alive. Very nice job! |
| May 7 02:16:13 | 21m 29s | Trailwork | ♥ 1 | Trippy! I played with this for a surprisingly long time. My first run I was stuck and didn't understand, but pretty much figured out some of what's in your spoilers. I manually restarted and got into a better groove the second time. I did end up finding two additional stable configurations: tw1.png tw2.png But I also enjoyed just watching the space move when I was just drifting around, too: tw3.png I definitely felt the lack of control that you were going for! Cool unique entry. |
| May 7 02:49:30 | 33m 17s | Drowned by the Light | ♥ 2 | Wow! Very cool moody art, atmospheric sounds, and an interesting and challenging gameplay. There were a few splinters on the control experience - bunch of times I pressed jump and didn't get a jump, and a bunch of times I felt unsure from the art about whether a space was something I could fit into, and the restart screen started to feel way too slow after the twentieth time. This kept me from entering a total flow state, but even despite that I really enjoyed this and spent some time digging in. At first I believed the game was a bit too easy, but then I met (and eventually overcame!) the Big Fish, and then met (and overcame!) the Red Spikes. Man that fish really got me so many times and it felt great to finally beat him. Then the spikes... it takes a while for the ghostline to sweep around again and I got impatient and greedy and tried to take more than I should have a few times, and got spiked. I was less of a fan of the statue-heads because being blocked and finding out I needed to backtrack wasn't so enjoyable. Satisfying to win. And when I did have to wait for the ghostline sweep, wow that whole waves graphical effect was really nice. I got past the fish IRKAR screenshot above, and then maybe another level or two beyond, I think. Lot of cool elements coming together here into a nice entry, good work! edit: wait, there's torches?? didn't realize. |
| May 8 12:37:54 | 33h 48m | Roadkill junction | ♥ 1 | Multiple pleasant surprises that show you really understand how to design for the action pace: first, after the wall of text at the start I practiced the controls and found that I could move right there on the instruction screen as soon as I was ready, and that the action was going to wait for me to begin. Second, after losing several times in a row and getting impatient I hit 'R' even before the score screen loaded and my restart command was INSTANTLY accepted by the game. Appreciated that on the one hand you gave me the breather option at the start, but yet also didn't force any delay whatsoever into the restart loop when I didn't want one. Flow-wise, playing this game felt like playing an FPS with "invert Y axis" turned on. I just could not rewire my brain that "when I want the car to go down, I should press up." Or, I could when things were peaceful but when I moved into flow state I would bounce back out because my fingers decided to press down to instruct the car to move down. No sweat, that's my fault, git gud. Graphics were great, and clear, and a great actionstorm rose from intersection of fast-paced elements, trying to juggle influence/control of the players, the cars, the zombies, and the need to avoid each while also getting the lifepips. The impatience of the cars and the way they'd activate on their own without waiting really put the cherry on top and forced me into chaos. Though you didn't create audio, they're well-chosen and fit. Really nice work all around! |
| May 8 13:05:22 | 27m 28s | TellyBuddy | ♥ 3 | Wow you nailed it!! The tech at the room level, interacting with the physical television, plus the puzzles, the in-screen tech of chopping up headroom-style with the graphics background, and the actual on-screen shots with such a variety of charactahs, it was all super-well done, entertaining, and fit together into a really nice cohesive experience that was just the right length, and well-anchored into the theme. Loved it, great job. telly-buddy.png |
| May 8 14:27:41 | 1h 22m | Signal search | ♥ 1 | Short but sweet - got to the end! Nice job with the music and the distortion effect. Art was also good. Of course there could have been a little more scope to explore further, but I thought you did a good job tying up what scope you did hit into an appropriate bite-size experience that I enjoyed. Nice! |
| May 9 00:08:56 | 9h 41m | Cable Connector LLC | ♥ 1 | Loved it! Perfect length. The boss's extra superpower threw me a little though: sticky-power.png breaking that fourth wall to shift input focus out of the app felt a bit unfair at first, until I figured out the counter-strategy of choosing "Yes! I do want sticky keys!" and then never stopping shooting. Once I flipped that script on him I did much better. Very cool with great voice acting, a hilarious boss intro I didn't see coming, and some tight action with smooth controls. Really nice all around entry. |
| May 9 00:26:23 | 17m 27s | Signal-Tied | ♥ 1 | DANG!! There is some brutally fast action in spots in this game. Didn't expect it somehow from the pics, but nice work on bringing it. That room where I got dropped into a toe-to-toe with the first tank I'd ever seen. And that room where the safe-circle zooms around at a full-sprint ripped my face off. I had a few splinters here and there, like there was a wall that I didn't realize was a wall, cuz it kind of looked like some floor-markings looked, and that almost killed me because I was busy looking at enemies rather than myself failing to walk forward, etc. And I didn't realize for a couple of levels that I could/had-to switch to that weapon (was like boy this sniper rifle sure feels a lot like that shotty, so my fault). But that stuff didn't matter. There was some fast brutal action here and a really cool art style. Kinda want to try the version of this game that has a metal soundtrack... Very nice entry, well done. |
| May 9 00:44:24 | 18m 01s | Pawn Patron | ♥ 1 | Wow great polish, and what a cool idea! It took me a little while to understand (were these other pawns my allies since they are the same color? what is my objective? what causes the hadouking? etc) After sticking with it a bit and experimenting, suddenly it clicked and I understood what I was being asked to do and what the time pressure was for. After I turned that corner I started really enjoying it! Next thing I knew I was whipping around and stomping pawns confidently. For all the great polish, I did wish there was a celebration sound/fx for victory, because they were very satisfying just inherently from the puzzle, so I was ripe to have that amplified to super-satisfaction. Other really tiny things that I noticed were that I wished for a red danger mark on the squares where the pawns kill me.... and then later noticed that there IS ONE! So maybe more prominent? I also could have stood to shave a bit off the restart delay on loss (I lost a LOT while learning the rules, and restart felt fine once I understood the game and lost at a more reasonable pace). Really nice all-around entry! Polish was slick, art was really nice, loved the hadouking pun/voice, and the music/sfx worked well. You really got me slinging knight moves around with my brain riding the edge of panic because I knew the king was about to get me. Well done. |
| May 9 00:57:20 | 12m 56s | 💥Boom Rail🚂 | ♥ 0 | Love the art style, and there's definitely a core that could become a very very cool entry here. It just needed a little more polish, there was a grindy empty feel from a huge amount of clicking without the game showing me much feedback. I lost before I saw a town, though I felt like I ran a loop and also switched signals the second time, running full throttle the whole way. Maybe I missed it! Sweet graphics though, sorry I didn't get to experience more of it. |
