Machinerra

cptdrusha 2026-10-19 12:39 ♥ 1

Cool idea! I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do in the end, though, because a huge swarm of spiders and bees attacked me, and I kept getting wiped out the moment I spawned.

- The controls feel responsive and satisfying. Just beating everything up is a blast, and that’s all I need :) - Killing the spiders feels really amazing - The sounds are easy on the ears and fit the visuals nicely.

P.S. The bees definitely need some balancing. They’re really tanky, they fly way too far away, and by the end of the day there are thousands of them

vokietislt 2026-10-19 12:47 ♥ 0

Yee, you kinda need to go back the elevator where you started, not super intuitive.

nonumbersgames 2026-10-19 12:49 ♥ 0

Thank you, I'm working on making first area more intuitive so this helps a lot! The bees will get their due for the pain they inflicted...

prunus-padis 2026-10-19 13:19 ♥ 2

Pretty impressive amount of stuff crammed into a jam game.

The introduction to the game is kinda overwhelming, like wtf am i suposed to do and then i get flanged by enemies and the bot jabs something at corner which i have no time to even glance since i try to get sense of all the busy information on the screen.

The basic combat was nice though quite a simple one. I did not understand at all what is the helper guy doing or what is the command window suposed to use for. The sound is quite a nice and fits, though the visual clutter makes reading the game hard, the screen is just so busy.

givit-game-studios 2026-10-19 13:27 ♥ 1

I agree with @cptdrusha great entry but for me the UI was a bit much, could not really understand what I needed to do. Also your dialog text might be a bit fast, I was trying to read and all of sudden I also got attacked.

artemeda 2026-10-19 14:15 ♥ 0

good game

fassenberg 2026-10-19 15:49 ♥ 1

Wow, I’m surprised how much stuff you managed to put in! Looks really interesting.

playrea 2026-10-19 16:20 ♥ 2

Interesting idea about steampunk world :) But there are a lot of text, I can't read so fast and some of them are overlapping

nonumbersgames 2026-10-19 16:40 ♥ 0

@prunus-padis @givit-game-studios @playrea Oh yeah the first level is very badly designed, I have made big mistakes there. Complete redesign in progress, by the time im done with it it will be as tight as a pickle jar and as clear as my dating schedule...

@artemeda @fassenberg thank you!

thejackimonster 2026-10-19 17:47 ♥ 2

Feels overwhelming. I still don't really understand what the game wants from me as a player while I found the guide and the quest log. If I would try to describe it, I would say it's a 2D version of Nier: Automata but how is it about old tech then?

vokietislt 2026-10-19 17:51 ♥ 0

@thejackimonster it's old tech for robot society :D

vokietislt 2026-10-19 19:18 ♥ 0

uploading tutorial sequence now

fraanns 2026-10-19 20:03 ♥ 2

This is really impressive on the amount of content in this entry. Really cool and also kindof overwhelming :D

fnelix 2026-10-19 20:37 ♥ 1

Wow you managed to put a lot in there. I was at first a bit confused about the control hints etc. But looks, plays and feels good!

serendibity-efreet 2026-10-19 21:13 ♥ 2

Hmmm, ok, I'm a little torn bc part of me is really intrigued but also I'm fairly confused. I got up to where there were two walls and some room at the bottom with a bunch of enemies and like .... a charging station or something. I pressed all the buttons but nothing seemed to happen. Was I supposed to smash another spider into a wall? I'll try again if I get a hint. But there are some definitely good vibes/atmo here. It kind of reminds me of 90s Mac shareware games for some reason. I'm not sure why. But way better looking. Those have kind of a special place in my heart. I'd definitely like to see where this goes. I also appreciate the attention to adding configurable controls and a good menu/UI system. I completely forgot to let players change control. The menu just looks really nice and is good attention to detail. Nice job! I'd say keep going if you can! I'm intrigued where this leads!

sanechekz 2026-10-19 21:39 ♥ 1

This game is hard, I just get swarmed by bees. BEEEEEES AHAHA! Cool concept and the whole game. Good job!

nonumbersgames 2026-10-19 22:16 ♥ 0

@fraanns @fnelix Thank you! The amount of content was a mistake. @vokietislt tried his best to reign it in, but it has been too long since I had opportunity to do gamedev so all the ideas that were in the back of the head just took over... Too easy to get lost in content...

@serendibity-efreet Oh thats very good feedback, thank you! Did another pass, maybe better now? 3 rooms each have their interest point - interacting with all unlocks boss room. Maaan, first level is so important, needs so much care and attention to be smooth...

@sanechekz Those have been buzzing me for too long! Had to bring out my trusty old flamethrower for them...

dywanix 2026-10-19 22:59 ♥ 1

Very impressive work in a such limited time!

tenthousandfireants 2026-10-19 23:04 ♥ 2

I like how it looks kinda feels like an old school version of ace combat, but I wasn't able to climb or turn.

debugman18 2026-10-20 00:38 ♥ 2

It can be a little opaque at times, but the writing is interesting. Movement feels good and the action is satisfying. The art is the only thing that I'd improve. There's a lot more to it than I thought there would be, given the limited time!

avi 2026-10-20 01:43 ♥ 2

A zeppelin full of scavenging robots is such a cool setting. I like that our technology is the ancient stuff to them!

designernap 2026-10-20 10:52 ♥ 1

Great tone and mood here. The world design and feel of the visuals are lovely. I laughed when I kicked a spider into another one :D Felt great!

perrarancino 2026-10-20 12:03 ♥ 1

the steampunk scavenger world is really evocative, a robot flying out from a zeppelin city to strip ruins for parts is a great premise and the helper bot building sounds like a lot of fun. i also appreciate that the game saves your progress, that's a small thing that makes a jam game much easier to come back to. was the robot princess always part of the plan, or did the story grow during the jam? cool concept.

empeurman 2026-10-20 14:56 ♥ 1

Combat is fun, good sound, pleasant to play. I can see myself play level after level with more time.

Good job !

ao-85 2026-10-20 16:15 ♥ 1

I liked this graphics, nice work!

ivankapcov 2026-10-20 17:08 ♥ 1

Cool game. I got hooked for a little while killing spiders.

nonumbersgames 2026-10-20 19:40 ♥ 0

@perrarancino Thank you! Robot princess was indeed in the original plan, cooked up by @vokietislt :)

@empeurman Thank you, that means a lot!

kedikat 2026-10-20 19:45 ♥ 1

Excellent game, feels so complete!

anku 2026-10-21 12:39 ♥ 2

Great game! The combat system feels really solid, and there are even boss fights! The visuals and sound design are excellent too. Definitely a job well done!

viktoria 2026-10-21 12:46 ♥ 2

There’s a lot to the game, and it’s interesting to explore. One thing, though, really annoyed me: during combat, windows would pop up, and I couldn’t figure out how to close them. It’s a bit distracting, but otherwise, the game turned out to be very interesting.

vokietislt 2026-10-21 19:50 ♥ 0

@perrarancino The whole concept came roughly out of 2 hours discussion of what we want to make before jam started (so what kind of game we would like to make, we had like 5 different categories) and then when theme was uncovered we spent another hour or so discussing how can we do "old tech". Finally came to moving colony management hero game, an thus we had our sketch, after that we needed a hook and what better hook than "save the princess". Two things that made our game :)

nonumbersgames 2026-10-21 22:15 ♥ 0

@viktoria Thank you! There are quite a few annoying things about the game still, will add that one to the list:)

joeshanahan 2026-10-24 21:15 ♥ 0

I put my playthrough of your game on YouTube!

https://youtu.be/DueOig8db0E

...oh man, I'm somewhat conflicted about this one. I used to really love GameJams and getting as much work done as possible in just a few days, and now with genAI that doesn't feel meaningful any more. I bought one month of Claude to see how I felt using it for a jam, and the end result is totally fine, but I don't know what it really achieved. What do I judge it on? The quality of the idea? The programmer art I drew with my mouse?

So quite early on I clocked that your game has many more systems than a normal gamejam would, and is probably AI coded. The problem for me is that the central game mechanic of walking around and hitting things isn't particularly deep or fun. There's all this kind of...meta game, the progression, missions, upgrades, but it's all these extra things on what feels like a pretty thin actual core gameplay. Maybe it gets better after the first three missions? But when I'm judging a gamejam, I don't want to have to play that far before it starts getting interesting.

For me, gamejams are about experimenting, trying out new ideas, keeping it small and ideally executing well. Keeping in mind that people want to play your game for at most 5-10 minutes to rate it. I don't know what this entry proves. That Claude can make a broad game really quickly? Sure, but I'm not going to rate it for that.

It sounds like you already know the scope was too big, and that you're going to try smaller next time. I think that's a great idea, and if you don't find it depressing to work with Claude like I do, then I think you could achieve some really cool things by aiming small but refined, rather than broad and shallow. People will downvote you for using AI, but I feel like the battle to stop LLMs taking over coding is probably already lost, so that'll fade with time.

I really don't know how to rate this, and I'm not sure if any of my ramblings are useful to you in any way. But I guess all I promised is that I would play your game and record it, so here it is 😆

nonumbersgames 2026-10-25 14:49 ♥ 1

@joeshanahan you really nailed the issue - the parts agents were cramming in on my loose instructions felt bad, while the ones we painstakingly designed and iterated on with a clear vision in mind felt much better. That is the main lesson I learned - its much better to craft something with care and let AI execute implementation, rather then letting AI loose on vague ideas.

vokietislt 2026-10-26 18:10 ♥ 1

@joeshanahan As for game engine we used Phaser, it's a javascript game engine. First time we did game with AI in game jam and yes it grew way too big ;D The music is not AI FYI, sketched most of characters with pen and pepper until AI got the idea of what style we what in the game. So making a game with it was quite interesting, not needing to stress about game coding, that was empowering and I will probably do more AI games just for fun, making stories and art, mechanics is just side thing for me personally. We lost the idea of having robot squad with you from begging, that is probably biggest mistake, since that was supposed to be the main gameplay mechanic, StarCraft'ty way of moving your units, while you have a hero as well, but it really gets going after 1 hour of gameplay now so that is stupidly far to get to.

If you enjoyed even a bit, can check our older stuff that we made without AI, those were some stressful times :D

Thanks for trying our game, hope to see ya in the next jams ;]

joeshanahan 2026-10-27 09:14 ♥ 0

@vokietislt Ohhh, an RTS combined with an in-world player avatar is something I've found really interesting as an idea (like Pikmin) so it's a shame I missed that. I too want to be okay with being able to focus 100% on design by letting the AI be the programmer, but I think if it genuinely is the long term future, it's going to take a while for me to accept that.