Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → bjornstenlund
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Space Pawn Space Shop | jam | 595 | 3.33 | 3.25 | 2.98 | 3.16 | 3.83 | 3.59 | 3.87 | 3.63 |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | Reapurr | jam | 199 | 3.77 | 3.97 | 3.30 | 3.84 | 4.08 | 3.56 | 3.72 | 3.89 |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Deep Truth | jam | 534 | 3.41 | 3.29 | 3.10 | 3.55 | 3.27 | 3.44 | 3.97 | 3.63 |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Unlucky fried chicken | jam | 493 | 3.60 | 3.43 | 3.67 | 3.63 | 3.67 | 3.52 | 3.95 | 3.43 |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Rise of the CatMancer | jam | 340 | 3.79 | 3.93 | 3.19 | 4.12 | 3.30 | 3.62 | 4.06 | 3.75 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | The Backseat Gamer | jam | 3.50 | 3.31 | 3.18 | 2.45 | 3.40 | 3.68 | 4.34 | 3.66 |
@klemen thank you so much, glad you liked it! Yeah it's a bit buggy when switching to another window :P hah yeah the voices came out great, bananplyte made them and just kept adding more
Edit: I didn't even see the 100,000 damn that's really impressive! :O
Wow I thought this was really good, probably the best idea I've seen so far! I've never played a story based deck builder before, I feel I now need to check out if there are any released game in the genre :)
I didn't like the overload of rules when starting the game. Maybe it could have been eased in a little bit more? I felt, fuck it, I'll just learn as I go after the first or second prompt. I think that the help button is great though! It's really nice to be able to skim through the rules when you feel you understand 90% of it but are wondering over some detail.
I think it was unfortunate to put the player max health at 80 - I kept thinking the healing card was broken or that it was supposed to go in my deck, maybe a health bar like in the old pokemon games (where you have both the number and a bar) could be a good idea. Or just 69hp -> 69hp/80hp.
If I understood it correctly the wound card was added upon defeating an enemy, and that felt a wrong to me - maybe the attack could do both dmg and add the card? Or maybe it could be called it "cursed" (or whatever) instead and some enemies could add "curse" cards as their attack while some could do damage (if both would be to hard/annoying for the player).
Also if you spam play the card that has "draw one card" on it, I'm pretty sure you can bug it and draw multiple card. I think that's minor though, I noticed it an chose not to abuse it, but I really don't feel that matter in a game jam game.
All that said, well done! I really enjoyed the game! And Arkham is safe once more, I disrupted the summoning!
I loved it, great entry! The silly setting works prefect for a jam. The intro was great, the introduction screen was concise, and you taught the summoning mechanic but allowed the player to skip!
The graphics looks really neat, and killing enemies breaks the board apart was a nice touch! Killing hordes of sheep (and squirrels for that matter) were really satisfying! I also think that the summoning game mechanic works great in the overall game since it made me have to multitask with that and play a bit more greedy/dangerous.
I'm really impressed that you manage to also enter a minute to minute gameplay loop with upgrading the character :)
I think some things could be a bit clearer with some extra info on the UI. I didn't understand what the runes did initially. I think a rocket ammo in the HUD would be great! Then I think I would have figured the shotgun summons out a bit quicker. I also think that the max number of pentagram chickens scaled with pentagram level (right?), I think that that number (current out of max chickens) would be great in the HUD as well!
It was a bit hard to see where the summoning red line where sometimes, so if I walked to far from it it was little hard walking back to the correct position. Maybe a small indicator when in the correct position could be the solution - so maybe a brighter colour on the summon when it was being worked on, or a glow on the player when in correct position, or maybe a small circle around the part where the edge of the drawing is - I think you get the point.
It was a bit annoying that my chicken summons and some trees where in the way when I tried to summon - honestly I think the simplest solution would be to just allow the player walking through trees and chickens. The Enemies and chicken and rockets could keep colliding as before. Otherwise maybe the trees could be breakable as well? But since I think the map stays the same, maybe it would feel a bit barren towards the end.
In the last level I had some lag, I think it was because of the rocket particles. Maybe if there is a certain rockets active you could switch to a simpler particle emitter, or just turn it off? I played in browser though and I guess that could affect things.
All that said, great game! Probably my favourite, or at least really close, in the whole jam! Well done!
Wow this entry is great! 5/5! Very polished, it felt complete! Just needs pvp now ;)
I assume the ai plays random cards out of their deck, but the deck creation is versatile enough to give them "playstyles"? If not I can't imagine how you manage to make that work in so little time!? and obviously no shame if that is what it does - the ai feels great. Great variation of cards and the game is easy enough to just pick up with out reading a block of text. I played until I won all battles and needed need to update the deck when it didn't work against one of the decks, and that just felt perfect. You also manage to have a cohesive look of every thing.
The feedback I have is that maybe there could have been some sort of indicator that the target is picked at random (maybe a sound effect of a dice roll, or that it turns to a couple of targets before it locks in on the correct one). I played the game once without checking the tutorial, and that was really the only thing I went to the tutorial after to clarify. I think also allowing the player to decide what position a card is played in would be quite a small feature that would allow for a lot more strategy. But then again I'm amazed how polished it is so it wouldn't surprise me if you used all time you had. Great job!
Cool game! I understand from other comments that it is made in godot? If so, that's great! Gotta love open source!
It's really good that you didn't sleep on the sound effects, it really feels better when you get feedback when interacting in the game.
A pretty small change that I think would be nice is if you could keep tracking the mouse with the gun even when the player is not shooting. You sort of miss doing something when all the enemies are dead and you're picking up the bones. People tend to jump in games when going from A to B even if its not faster. It's just engaging to see stuff happen.
I think the gameplay could be more fast-paced, all the components are there just tweak some values. So maybe play around with faster player movement, more enemies, less life on the enemies, faster enemies, smaller level etc.
It would also be nice if it could be a slight delay after dropping the fifth bone and the boss spawns.
Anyways, you made a game, that's great!
Cool little game! I liked the animation and quick game loop!
I think the score is broken, or a least it was empty for me. I think its cool that the top bar fills up forcing the player to keep placing obstacle and changing the grid, not just building one initially and rebuilding it when it breaks. I think it would be nice if you could place the obstacles on frogs and squishing them, after a while it became quite hard to place them. I also think it would be nice with a slighty bigger grid, waybe be 20x10 instead of 10x6 (or what it is at the moment). I think that would make it feel more of a traditional tower defence game instead of a chaotic flash game kind of game. But maybe that's what it supposed to be though
Anyways, I liked it! Well done!
Great pixel art! I really liked the look of the game. It felt great moving the demons and killing peasants. I think the camera was a bit slow, and I was missing an option to play in fullscreen. I think it would be really nice to be able to jump between the demons, maybe on the mouse scroll. So scrolling the wheel would move the camera on top of one demon. It was also a bit hard to understand the objective of the game. I think that maybe it would be nice to have a health bar below to city to really hammer in that your suppose to destroy the houses. image_2024-04-20_155721123.png
Anyways, cool game! Well done.
Well done! The art assets felt cohesive and the game loop where there. It's not easy to have a game jam game without something obviously unfinished or not fitting together. I would have preferred the attack on another button, maybe mouse click or enter. It felt a bit weird only using my left hand. Also I think it would have been nice to save the buffs between days (and maybe scale the ducks as well if you want to keep the balance). But then again, maybe you were going for groundhog day, hamster wheel of working life - and then the reset every morning make sense. Anyways, cool game, and good on you for joining the jam!
Cool game! Now seeing this I think this might be the perfect jam game. Easy concept if you ever played a flash games/ wc3 custom scenarios - straight into action.
I loved how the game started right away, no sort of tutorial for the store and stuff, when it's relevant it is introduced. I really think all jam games should aim to start like this. Let the player start by playing the game, and then point them in the right direction. How the player firing the first spell triggers the first wave is classy AF.
The visual circle on the ground for the spells are great! You could have left it at left click to magic and gotten away with it. I really like the WC3 aesthetic as well!
I think that the player should earn a lot more crystals per wave. After the second wave I could upgrade a spell - and that feels appropriate to me. One wave - one upgrade ish. Maybe something was bugged but I only got about a crystal per wave. I feel since it's a game jam, let the the player be a spell slinger and then overload them with enemies instead. I wanted to try all the spells but I didn't want to replay more than a couple of times.
I couldn't get past the 4th wave. I read in the comments some people manage to get to the 10th wave. Maybe they picked a better skill initially or I just can't figure out how to get crystals?
I think this is something you might be able to just fix on the itch page, but right now, the fullscreen button is cropped and also the web fullscreen thingy is on top of it. I first ran the game in that fullscreen, meaning I got big black borders around the game. And also it seems like pressing escape locks the game.
Keep in mind most my criticism is just some technical issue, and maybe the balancing of crystals. The core concept is really solid! Well done, you made a nice little game in 2 or 3 days!
Really cool game! Well done getting the main gameplay to work, for a short game jam it's quite a ambitions game!
I really think the joke landed well! First couple of second I started picking items of the kitchen counter and looking around for a trashcan. Then I saw the "quest" picking cookies out of the oven, accidentally flung them everywhere and then realised poltergeist is in the title and this is what I'm meant to be doing :D As noted above it makes a quite short experience. It would have been nice to wreak havoc over to whole kitchen and then get some sort of before and after view before being sent to the credits.
That said, well done getting it to they state it is in. Not the easiest game to make in three days, you did well just getting it to work! The game is polished enough that the player understands the idea of the game!
Cool game! Perfect second to second gameloop! Running around and cutting feels great! More swedes I suppose from the names? Glad to see it!
The animations, models and over all audio are really great! The whole game feels polished. I love the hemisphere around the summoner and the gibbs flying when killing enemies! If it was possible to expand the scope slightly I think that some kind of stats system (speed, dmg etc.) would be great. Or maybe some tower defence fluff? I feel the minute to minute gameplay is some what lacking (a lot to ask for a jam game though).
I think the summoning voice volume could be slightly lower (but I mean I could change that in the settings menu so maybe I cannot really complain about that). Just running around and slicing feels perfect. The video setting drop down look strange (but so do ours). If you tab out from the game the audio starts to repeat(I played the html5 version). Other than that I mainly feel like it would be nice if it was a bit clerarer if you're in the correct position so that the attack will land - maybe a highlight effect of the enemy if your in reach and turned toward them.
That said, great game! It has sound when hitting, gibbs flying, feedback when stuff is destroyed etc. Well done!
Cool game, I liked it! First time I used the bear trap and the time ran out while trying to figure out how to change the pictures. Second time I used the hidden spell. So it's intriguing enough to making me want to play it again :)
I think this is something you meant to have, but I really think the pictures on the sides of the summoning square would have benefited from have the arrows (like in the drawers). I searched for a pen and some way to erase them. I also would have liked a collision on the corners of the summoning circle, allow the player to stand next to them and turn towards them. I thought it was a bit confusion that some stuff didn't have any interaction (the sofa, and the flower pots) since you convinced me that everything has a meaning :P But then again, maybe I missed it? Or maybe the time limit didn't allowed you to?
Anyways, well done! You manage to finish a playable game, and good on you for joining the jam!
Cool game! Simple controls are nice!
It took me a little too long to figure out that you need to hold down to summon, I think maybe a small bar next to mouse or something would be great. It also took me some time to realise how to see the player health and the wall health, but once I notice I thought it was quite elegant (especially the walls). So I'm a bit divided, once I found the feedback I thought it was great, but maybe it could have tried to catch my eye a little bit more. Maybe the bar on the wall could have blinked when it took damage, and maybe the plyer health bar could have started green and gone toward yellow then red when I took more damaged.
I think the over all game play could have been a bit faster, so quicker summon casting and faster player movement. I understand that that takes some balancing to get right if your happy with the overall difficulty, but to me it felt a bit slow.
Otherwise all in all I thought it was a great scoped, solid game. Nice cohesive graphics, and lot of feedback as circles on the ground for the cannonballs, audio when spawning projectiles and taking damage etc. Well done!
Really cool game! The pixel art and animation are great! And the genre is quite unexpected, nice change of pace! I really don't have to much feedback, maybe there could have been a little more ease in to Devin. But at the same time you really tried to teach the player to block with the CEO so I guess the my final words are F Devin.
Okay this is a bit tricky to review short so bear with me.
The start is quite confusing and need quite a bit more polishing, it took me about 20 min to even realise how fun it is and how much potential there really is!
I think this game is about a third ready to be released on steam for 10$ which is unbelievable good for a jam game! I see that the html build was broken initially, but if this game doesn't get 5/5 it's only because people didn't stay long enough! I might sound hyperbole, but this is by far the closest to a be a "real" game I've played this jam, and I've played some games I thought were great entries. It really scratches the same itch as "Gnorp Apologue" or "Rouge Tower".
The simple graphics are great! The particle effect when enemies dies feel solid and the tower shooting feels really satisfying. Levelling up attack speed felt super nice. I like the concept of the summoning, it feels just enough to make it to sort of a "rouge idle game" rather than a pure idle game.
I think it would have been a good idea to let the player start with one card in the deck so you have something to interact with from the start - so far after playing it about an hour I think its more of a idle game, and a great one at that, with some interactions once in a while. But when starting it just felt a bit slow, and I was wondering when I get to play my cards.
It also took me a couple of rounds to realise that the money you spend during the game isn't spend when going out to the shop. I think that could be a lot clearer. I think the most simple way would be to split it up into two currencies, so for example "mana" to play cards and $ for the shop. Then you could also have a passive mana reg stat.
The wave meter is a bit confusing that it takes two laps, one red and one green. I haven't figured out if that means something, but if it doesn't, it probably should just be one slower lap. I still haven't been able to click to the next tier, and I've survived around maybe 30 waves. Don't know what's up with that, but if it is just because I havn't reached it yet, it would be nice to have some indicator for how many waves I need to survive. Or if it just that I cannot figure out how to change tier I guess I find it confusing how to do that :P
I've upgraded my base tower quite a lot, but since I still need to start from the beginning it feels a bit slow in the beginning of each round. It would be nice to pick what wave to start or that higher tiers were reached quicker (maybe they could be bought with upgrade money). Also I would like to be able to abandon current round. I accidentally started a game without upgrading the "tower" which is what sent me out here to write this review instead of continue playing.
One thing I could be iterated upon is how you get money, since the enemies are scaled but not the money you get it feels a bit pointless to play card if you see your gonna die soon and you will get the same money after restarting against easier enemies. So maybe you could be 23 * X $ for clearing wave 23, or more money per enemy the longer the game goes.
I still haven't dwelled into the deck building component of the game (I have only bought two poison clouds), so I can't really give much feedback on that yet. But the visual is nice, but since the game is so minimalistic in general I think it could be nice with a circle outline of the exact area it hits. Also some indicator of how long it lasts, maybe on the card itself to not clutter the game screen. I don't know if it's random what card you get, so maybe I was unlucky, but I got two poison cards and that doesn't seem to give me anything since there is no cooldown. I think maybe it got upgraded(?) but if so I feel the second card is still unnecessary.
Sorry for the wall of text, I just really like the game and think it has great potential! I'm gonna get back playing now. Well done!
@planetary Thank you for the answer! yeah exactly, every jam game has flaws, and I mean that's sort of the point! My entry definitely have :)
I think the more money with better enemies thing is a valid point, now that I've played it a bit more you can for sure tell you get more money the longer the game goes.
Just wanted to update a little bit with the deck mechanic now that I've tested it a bit more. I now realise that your hand is always filled with random cards you've unlocked, and since I only hade one card in the deck (upgraded once) it always occupied both my unlocked slots in my hand. That means that what I said earlier with summoning timer on the card doesn't really work either since the card is gone after it is played. Maybe the hand could just show the unlocked slots, and maybe a text could be displayed initially ("no cards unlocked") to make it a bit clearer. That wouldn't exactly work in my case where I only have one card in the deck, bit it's sort of an edge case.
Thanks for a great game!
Cool little game! I really liked the summoning animations and the pixel art! Nice music also! And nice variety of spawns and enemies!
I think it was a bit unfortunate the projectiles sprites only spawn so far from the archer and mage, I understood they were dealing damage, but it was a bit hard to see. I think it would be great with health bars on the enemies as well, since it was hard to evaluate what the different summons where worth, if I could see how much 3 archers dealt vs one mage that would have been nice! I don't think you need the actual stats (and all the ui to go with it) but a health bar on the enemy would be nice.
There are some spelling mistakes (it's a jam game so I mean, that's fine), but it said "iddle" in the start screen instead of "idle" and "vague" instead of wave. As I said, that's a minor thing, but I was a bit confused until I decided it was a spelling error.
I think the pixel art looks really good, but I felt the warriors didn't really fit in. Don't get me wrong, they also looked really nice, but they were missing the outline of the other animation. I guess you were multiple artist or the style was iterated upon, which is understandable. But if you ever want to update the game, maybe it could be updated to fit in a little better :)
I played all 7 waves and I wished there more because the last waves felt great when I started to get a lot of summons! All in all, well done!
Cool game! Very moody!
For my personal taste it's a bit hard to really engage in a story in a jam game, it's just not my thing. So I'll just skip giving feedback on that.
I felt like the controls were a bit strange. The hammer UI should probably have been furthest to the right (since 5 equipped it). In my first play through I never realised I could unequip all "summons" with right click (not just the hammer) so maybe that could be updated on the itch page. I think it would be really nice if you could swap equipped by pressing a new one, that is if you had the wall equipped and pressed 3 in would just equip the barb wire. And, obviously this is a bit nit-picky but I think enter/space/left click to continue would be better.
The collision where a bit hard to understand, maybe it would be a good idea to actually draw them out (that is an actual square around the animations). I placed the '4' in front of the fugitive, but I guess it caught to foot of someone above and that failed me.
I liked that you had the sounds that you had, but I feel it could me nice to add a "plop" when placing a obstacle and "tick" "clack" when equipping/ unequipping.
I think it was good that you allowed me to just quickly try again. It didn't feel too punishing failing, so that's good! I really liked the music, it matched the gray, doomy atmosphere.
Well done, nice that you joined the jam!
Really cool music! I like the menus and blood animation in the game over screen :P
I think the what was going on in the level was pretty hard to read. I think a simple square collision around the "pillars" that blocks movement would have made it easier to understand what they were doing. The arrows where a bit fast and hard to read. I think fletching on the arrows, or maybe even just round bullets, might have made it easier to understand what they where. My brain just sort of ignored them as noise initially (subconsciously maybe thinking they were maybe wind? or forces?). I think that slower moving projectiles also would trigger the player to try to avoid them instead of just seeing noise, and then maybe add more if you're happy with current difficulty.
Good job and cool that you joined the jam!
Really impressive entry! The viewport into the game on the table was super neat! I also really liked the transition into and out of battles!
Firstly, this game is a very ambitions game jam game so I do realise the answer to most/all my feedback will probably be that there just wasn't enough time. That said, I think it was a bit confusing that the friendly skeleton unit worked the same as the tree unit, I was expecting some other ability or even no ability but different stats. I understand wanting to use the asset, but maybe it could just have been a third tree (or maybe I missed something?). I also think it was a bit unclear the number of actions a unit had. I figured out that you could either use ability, walk and attack or just walk. Maybe that could be indicated in the bottom of the screen somehow if an action would end their turn. I tried to count if the units could walk diagonal or not, and I don't think either fit - if it can walk diagonal you should have a square movement reach, but if it can't it shouldn't be able to reach one of the squares it does reach. Also since all units at the moment has two life, two attack you probably could have hidden those values to tell the player that this is a game about movement more than killing blows.
Lastly I would have loved to be able to pick what order I moved the units in. I think that would have made it more into a strategy game than a puzzle game if that make sense? So rather than trying to find the solution I would have been making plans :P
I just want to emphasize, this game is super impressive! It's obvious you know what you're doing and it makes me really wanna give feedback! Well done!
@ember44 @serenewind @budaniel Thanks for the feedback!
The status of the chickens we talked about updating but never got around to do :( We manage to add the indicators above their heads before they died, which made it a lot better! But it could definitely use some love just in general telling the player what's going on
If we'd had more test before it was done (classic gam jam problems I guess) I really think I would have updated the collisions for the coop, feeding pen and farmer house. It doesn't make it easier to understand what to do when the collisions screws you up a bit :P
One thing I thought of in hindsight, which we probably could have manage to squeeze in, would be to ask the player to start the game by flinging some food into the feeding pen and some into the farmers house, and disable everything else until that has happen :D
Relaxing and nice!
I really liked the end screen where you could see what you found and how many you missed! The stone -> deer was a nice surprise.
Some feedback would be to tell the player what to expect a little better. Initially I though I was playing a point and click (which, technically I was I suppose. But I though I was suppose to click the background to transition to next screen etc.). I would like to see a text like "Something is hidden", " "Find the small dudes", "There are secrets to reveal" or similar.
I also think a small counter would be nice ("11/20") to indicate how many secrets I've found. Maybe a HUD wouldn't match the vibes you were going for, but then it could be put on a in world sign maybe? Lastly I would have liked to know that there was a timer in the background. It was a little sudden getting thrown out, but mostly I just felt that I didn't know what to expect. So either once again a countdown in the HUD, or maybe a just text when starting saying "5 min to dinner" or whatever.
Anyways, cool game. Nice change of pace! Well done.
Good job! I played the html version even though you warned me, so it was a lil bit hard with some bugs, but I'll skip those part since you're probably aware :)
Great with a metroidvania, its easy to understand and I knew somewhat what to expect and how to play right a away. Quite ambition scope though :P I think you explained the controls well once they came, instead of a info dump in the beginning which is really nice. I think it is unappreciated in game jam games to say "press enter to continue" (when you playing multiple games in a row, some with quite wacky controls, it gets annoying trying to figure out what to press). I'm really glad I didn't need to search for shift to attack.
I think the map was to big for the camera perspective. Not the map of the world, but of the channels. When I see the rooms sprawl into multiple directed I unconsciously try to create a mind map, but here I felt like there always was more direction, which gave me overload. And after a while I stopped caring and just kept jumping upwards.
I think the mushrooms were pretty distracting, I tried to figure out what they did. Obviously it's nice with some environment art, but they looked like pickups. Maybe if you made them a lot bigger (like x5) I wouldn't have thought that. The DNA was cool, but it took some time for me to figure out that they added to the values in the top bar and different enemies DNA went into different abilities. I think the DNA pickups could have indicated that as well. I think also current life blended together with abilities.
Life pickups would have been a nice enemy drop, but if the checkpoint system works maybe it isn't as much of an issue. But I actually think that it almost makes a better game jam game when you try to balance the game that you play it through the whole game without dying and saving time to having to hassle with a checkpoint system.
All that said, cool game! antgame.png
Really nice game! Great player feedback with good sound effects and particle systems! Also perfect with the quick reset button and easy controls. In general a nice game jam game!
I thought it was a little bit hard to steer. Mostly I wasn't sure where my input would take me. Maybe it if the particle effect behind the player lived a little bit longer and there was some kind of indicator or the direction of gravity could help. Gravitational objects could also have a circle around them showing their gravitational pull (but maybe that would be too cluttered). It could also be nice to reuse the green of the bullets in the wormholes - telling the player green is bad, blue is goodimage_2024-10-13_162451164.png.
Anyways nice game!
Great concept! I love the idea and the graphics is super consistent. Really clean pixel art and nice animations on the bugs! The over all look feels super polished :D
When cutting the organs I basically went ham, since I didn't understand if the bugs in the organs actually had collision or if they just popped out of a timer. I think just for atmospheric reasons it would be nice if there was a buldging animation where to cut, and that would then spawn the bug.
This is sort of hard to word properly, but I think you need a "story balance" of when the different kinds of bugs can exist on a corpse. Identifying bugs felt really great, but I didn't like to try to figure out the result. I think the issue is the intervals they can spawn. It would probably be more fun if there were more overlap of the intervals. To me eyeing through the document it felt like most bugs invalidated it downward to about a day or two, and upward to about 5 - 10 days. But it felt like there were little overlap. I havn't solved it but it looked like the solution is to cap it from both direction and then find the one outlier that actually can affect the mid range. And that felt a bit tedious to me :P I think it would be better if there was bigger spread "This spider only exist between 36 - 45 hours", "this moth is here for six hours, then gone for six". To me, that would probably make it a bit more about thinking, rather than remembering.
All that said, I'm super impressed and I really liked the game!
Nice pixel art and very good animations! It's good that you took time creating feedback when stuff happening. So like feedback on the character when I get hit and on the enemies when they attack, sound effect etc. I also really like the small animation when opening pause menu!
As I see has been discussed already I think that the collisions of especially the small trees are a little bit in the way. If you could have had small boxes at the start of the trunk I think it would have been really nice (and then sort draw order with y value). I think the keys for summoning was a bit unfortunate, typically I think its best to use WASD + mouse when possible - so maybe left click, right click instead of 1 and 2. I also couldn't figure out how to summon without getting hit (to kite them), I think it would be better to have a faster character and then have the monsters coming from every direction to balance it.
Anyways, good job!
Cool game! I loved the start menu, very clear description of what to do. Not to wordy story (or whatever), and the fact that the whole thing was in front of me the same time (no pressing next) made me actually read through it. It hard to write stuff concise, but because it was, I read through the whole menu and actually knew what stuff did before I started the game.
I love the good feedback with sounds, cracks on damage stuff, animation of the hand. I never felt confused throughout the game. I also think showing the controls on the hand was really smart (but maybe they could have been removed after that action was performed a couple of times - but then again, scope).
I think that killing bugs with your finger worked well as a base game mechanic, but the marble was great! I actually think you could have leaned in into that a little bit more. Initially I tried to create traps with path blockers, apples and poison - but after a while I just used the marbles and pure finger power. I think the area around the marble were it picks up input could have been bigger. It was hard to orient properly because of the small space. I also think a small arrow it the direction it would head would have been nice.
One last suggestion I have would be to leave the bug corpses behind. Maybe also leave something like stone dust where stone used to be. I would be quite satisfying to see the result of the mayhem in the end and having the arena itself telling a story.
Great entry! Well done!
Good job! Obviously it's a bit buggy and what not, but great effort and awesome that you manage to finish a small game! I really liked the animation of the boss and the shooting felt nice!
First of all, it's quite a big scope. I understand that you probably wanted to make the side view part bigger than what it is, but it's probably better to pick one camera angle and try use it through out the game. And if that angle can't do what ever you wanna do justice, maybe it's better to do it with pictures or text. I also think it might have been better to try to limit abilities to just one (or maybe even non and focus on shooting) and make that one feel great, instead of multiple but have no time to polish them.
I think that you shouldn't sleep on sound effects. As a rule of thumb you basically want a sound every time the player does any thing that affects anything. I think a shooting sound would add a lot to the game. Also a sound every time player/enemy takes damage. Even the most generic non matching sound would help to understand what's going on. And make sure to loop the game music :)
This is more of subjective opinion. I don't like game jam games to be very wordy. Usually the game itself won't be engaging enough for me to care about the story, and I think it's more bang for the buck focusing on gameplay. If you write something great and but the game doesn't match I feel like the writing doesn't really matter, and if it's not something great then it's just a delay to get to the game. I'm sure many people disagree with me on this though, so do with that whatever you want.
Anyways, you finished a game! Well done, and I hope you'll join the next one :D
Really cool idea! I think the quick restart is just perfect. Nice populated with sound as well and a lot of moving heads to jump on. I love how all the possessable character tells small stories on their own. It feels a bit like a flash hitman game.
I found it very hard! I think that the controls were too left hand heavy. It was really hard for me to bite, stop biting and then aiming to were I wanted and then jump, especially since a lot of jump were so tight. I think I would have liked if the timer stopped after you let go, but then if you don't jump in say two second, you die. So no matter how long you've moved you still get an honest chance to turn and jump. I also in general think its good to have wasd + mouse when possible. So maybe right click to possess and left click to jump (arguably space to jump is better though).
Anyways I really liked the idea and I really wanted to get the hang of it :)
Nice game loop and good length - you kept me interested and longing for more when it was done and I played it three times before leaving it! It felt quite polished, I didn't encounter any bugs and I was never confused :smile:
Even though I think the length is good, I think a run could have been a little bit longer. I think maybe 10 more doors before reaching the end would be cool. I feel like the game is so close to almost have a fantasy board game kind of feel, where you stack items and get stronger, I just would have wanted a little more items, a little more fighting and some healing.
I also think it would be nice if a specific door could lead to like a category of room instead of a specific room. So I could sort of learn that the ice door leads to a "cold" room, but couldn't know exactly what would come (which obviously would need bigger scope and time that didn't we didn't have :sweat_smile:).
Finally, I thought the text jumping around was a bit annoying at times. I see what you were going for, and it felt lively and nice, but it was especially two instant I didn't like it. First was during the start when I wanted to read what to do. I think maybe you could have used a different font (not jumping) for sort of non flavour text (which maybe only was the paragraph in the game). The other time was during the wolf encounter, where to text wrapped differently between jumps. Maybe it could be avoided to changing the wrapping settings of the text.
Anyways great job!
Very impressive core mechanic! Maybe a little complex for a game jam game, but you pulled it off!
I thought the platforming was a bit janky and too hard, but as I say that I do respect that the camera flipping is quite a feat to get right at all. Since it's low poly (and also playtesting is really hard during a jam) I think it would make sense to try to avoid precise platforming. For example the first boulder you need to run around, I think it could be bigger so its easier to maneuver on top of it. I kept falling down both running around the blocking pipe on top, and also because i misjudged the collisions.
Cool game!
Huh, so simple and yet strangely captivating. I really appreciate the storytelling without walls of text! Obviously it's not the most enjoyable game I've tested so far, but still (besides missing sounds) I think it's pretty much perfect as it is.
I'm honestly super impressed :heart:
edit: haha I keep leaving this page, and then going back and upping the grades
This was great! I've played this for about 40 min now :D The graphics felt really cohesive and I really loved the feedback placing buildings and hovering over the square. I sort of lost track of time popping out building and expanding the base
I was sort of missing a +4 house tile, but maybe I just never found one. I think it could be nice if the o2 buildings would discover tiles over time but without limit (like culture in civ 5) instead of a fix size where you can build them in a grid.
Really cool game!
Uuh, looks great but kind of gave me the creeps! Would be cool with a small "blog post" here explaining how it works!
Neat game! I think the idea was great!
I was sort of missing a reason to play a second time, I got ~3000 score and I had a good time, but I think it would be nice with a grade next to the score or something. I assume that it is infinite and therefore a grade feels a bit strange maybe, but now I'm left a little bit in dark if I saw everything.
Also the growshroom was bugged for me. I think the reason is that my first round while still having no idea what I was doing, I played a growshroom next to a 0 shroom. And for the rest of the game every growshroom I placed gave 0 points. I started a second game just to see if the growshroom would work this time, and it did. So the thing with the 0 shroom is really me just guessing what happen the first time.
Anyway, I enjoyed it! Well done
Really good game!
I feel like the game overall is at a high standard. It got gfx, sounds, lots of mechanics, progression - and feedback, soo much feedback :heart_eyes:
I think the start was a bit rough however. I understand that you probably just forgot - but leaving the dash in the first controls pop up made me die like 4 times before I decided that I probably couldn't dash. And I think the death felt too punishing. I really think it would have been nice with a retry/menu before leaving the scene when falling in the lava. Two clicks in menu, transition, and controls popup felt like to big of a hurdle to try again.
I think it's great that you introduce mechanics in succession, and have a stage specific to teach that mechanic, but the game felt so much better after you got the double jump and dash. Maybe you could have split the game into two phases. First one with shorter, mechanic specific floors, with no lava. And once enough mechanics are online for the platforming to feel slick - then add the lava. Basically make the first 7 or so floors a third of the length and add lava on the 8th. I died around floor 10 and I'd easily have given it another go if I had had the mechanics when restarting, or a short climb to get there.
This is a small thing, but longer invincibility after taken damage would also been great, I got a bit stun locked by a fireball :sweat_smile: maybe they could explode on impact and just be destroyed
Obviously time is always the issue, and playtesting is so damn hard to squeeze in at the end, so I totally understand why then start wasn't tuned perfect. And just in the first half that I saw, there already were so much content!
Anyways really good job :smile:
Cool game! Nice on the theme with no jumping.
I was missing some feedback on what square I would interact with. The white square is great, but it felt strange to me that I needed to stand in the middle of the square to pickaxe. I also think it was a bit non obvious that your only allowed to carry one piece at a time. I later realized the very nice graphics feedback when you have one, but I think you could probably double the size of the filled backpack to make it super obvious when you carrying a tile. Maybe the white square could change to blue when you carry a piece, and then indicate where the piece would be placed instead (typically one step up of the white one). I was also confused why the tile is placed on the first enemy you meet. Maybe it would make more sense what was going with the blue (or what ever) indicator :)
This is such a cool game jam idea, just phenomenal! I haven't played it yet though because of the playtime, but I've saved the link and hopefully I'll get around to play it before the jam ends! I guess, if I may be so bold to leave some feedback before even playing the game, I think my pain threshold is about 45 min (unless it's great, but that hard to know before playing) so I think it would be great if it could be a bit shorter. I just want to say that I was gonna start playing and read through the beginning, but when I started placing the cards my cats go too interested so I had to postpone.
I am super intrigued though, and I'll write a new comment when I get around to test it!
The music is 10/10, and the environments beautiful :relaxed: Super cosy atmosphere.
When talking to NPCs, I really wanted to be able to press space to get the text at once, so I could speed through it quickly. I also though it felt a bit clunky to WASD in for picking an answer instead of using mouse. This is subjective, but I'm really not dialogues guy so I didn't like when I had to go back and talk with NPCs a second time to see if I've missed some information, especially when I couldn't skip.
Also I missed to be able to see the controls somewhere in game, I typically just eyeball the text outside the game . I would suggest to put the controls in the inventory screen, just a an image next to the inventory, where its plenty of room. When starting the game you could have written down in the corner "Press I to open inventory", and keep it there until it is pressed for the first time. In there you also could have added an objective list. So for example after talking to the mask guy you could have added:
Make disguise
- find pen - find canvas - find bowl - Bring them back to Steve
I also feel like the NPCs were a little hard to spot. It would be nice with maybe an indicator on them. Maybe it could be visible only if you're in between 20-100m of them. Then it wouldn't be too in your face when just swimming around enjoying the scenery, and you'd still had to explore and be somewhat close to them before getting handheld. Same with pickupable items.
image_2025-04-10_211558509.png image_2025-04-10_211614748.png
Obviously you didn't have time this time, but I find it super valuable to try to scope down the game to be able to remove as much friction as possible last day
Unfortunately I got stuck after making the disguise. But cool game still
Really cool game! Great tutorial by gameplay! The idea is great, the controls are easy, and everything is well explained :)
To me the colours of floor and walls felt inverted. It's crazy how such a thing can matter but in the second level I got confused over what I was seeing at first. But since that level was just exceptional as tutorial, teaching me both the colours of floor and walls lol (and breaking mechanic) I can't complain too much. Just too dubblecheck if I was just trippin' I googled some random games I could think of with similar style, and 3 out of 3 had dark floor and light walls - maybe it's convention? :upside_down:
It looks nice with the point light to make the character pop, but since you need to see the whole level for some puzzles I think it would be better to have every thing lit and maybe add like a thick shadow or something instead.
Also I think the exit should have been clearer, I kept sort of thinking that the screen would pan into a new room instead of sending me to a level. Maybe swap that tile gfx of those specific stones too doors instead?
Anyways, well done! I played it twiceimage_2025-04-10_183951260.png
Very nice game! I never read the game page, usually I just eyeball it quickly if I see some controls I should know before starting. But I really liked that your wrote a short paragraph about you experience! It was very sweet, and relatable.
Over all I think the game was great. I didn't encounter any annoying bugs, the controls and objective was really obvious to figure out while playing - which is just great for game jam games. Mostly everything had nice sound feedback, the death animation was really nice and the screen shake felt good. It felt polished which is amazing :D
I think it would have been better to have the life pickups shaped as hearts, that is, in the same style as in the UI. It's nice that it feels grounded within the world, but at least for me I think it more important to make it super clear for the player what they are looking at. I also think it would be good if you couldn't pick them up if you had full health and just add some of feedback why it happened.
I missed the sweet screen shake when getting hit by projectiles, and a sound when actually damaging an enemy.
Lastly, to me it didn't feel nice to be out of ammo. Maybe it could have a slow recharge (say a bullet every second or so) so if you hade no ammo you could continue shoot, just slower? Or maybe add some ammo pick ups that are not you're own shots.
edit: reading some of the other comments now I see there was a punch! Maybe you could have added the control scheme to the left on the menu instead of inside help :P But maybe that's just my own fault
Anyway, well doneimage_2025-04-09_132619326.png!
@frank-gevaerts I wouldn't expect you to update it (unless you really want to of course)! Our team mostly take the feedback to discuss it in a retrospective in a week or so. I think it's a good exercise for myself trying to find small things that can make a game better or solve some friction, so I tend to leave lengthy comments just for my own practice I guess :P So no pressure to actually implement my suggestions :D I think @bizzybee deserves a rest
Yay, sheep brought home! Really nice looking environment art and parallaxes! Nice red glow in the underground!
Great with all feedback! Sounds, particles, ui showing held key etc.
I was really missing a checkpoint after falling down the hole, I think it would be nice to spawn above the hole and lose one life instead. I understand the dark souls reference, but the part where you couldn't see the landing was a bit tedious.
In Hollow Knight you can fly down the camera a bit with the down button to see what's beneath you, I think that that would be really nice to have. I also think you could have had a lot more enemies, and then just give player more hp if needed for balance. I feel it was quite well paced though with just the platforming!
Well done!
Cool game! Good music and really nice pixel art!
A lot of it feels really polished! the sound was great, both the alarm and the especially the clock ticking. The buttons (next, back, pause) feedback was slick.
I had a big issue though, that the ui doesnt scale properly with screen size. I have a 1920x1080 and I couldn't see half the menus in the shop. But I can imagine that on a wide screen it would feel very polished! Another thing is that the itch full screen blocks the game full screen button - if pretty sure that's just a setting on itch. Also it would be nice to a link back here from the itch page!
I think it would be nice if the descent upgrade was called "descent healing +5 " and "descent healing +3". Not anything major but I "huh"ed when I saw it, before I read the tooltip.
All in all, great entry!
edit: I just realize there is a link back here nvm :)
I like the idea, but I felt I wanted a little more agency. Maybe always draw two cards and pick one? or get a coin every time you draw a card and then buy card to get shuffled into the deck? But obviously that would be a bigger scope etc. etc.
I like clickers, but it didn't really register to me that I was playing a clicker, so I needed to tab out of the game to see the objective. I think just a text in bottom of the screen saying "Escape by emptying your deck" would have made my experience a lot smoother.
Once I understood the game, I just kept spamming click, which I think is totally fine! But it felt like the card designs was to complex to register at that speed so I ended up just looking at the deck size number. I think if you hade a really clear red up arrow somewhere on the bad cards and a green down arrow on the good ones it would be a lot more interesting looking at the cards. And maybe add a click cooldown of half a second or so (just so the eyes register the arrow) if needed.
All that say, the idea is really nice, and the game logo art really drew me in. Well done! :)
Wow really nice game!
The menu is insanely polished! Great pacing with short runs of just a couple minutes! Overall just great :)
But since the point of these comments is to give feedback . . . To me, speeding up the game on missed captchas sort of competes with the core concept of the screen getting more and more cluttered while speeding up on it's own accord. Maybe failing a captcha could instead just spawn 3 windows? or maybe have a row blocked that you need to have entered the captcha before you can pass? I think it could be balanced basically the same, but communicating the popup idea even clearer :)
I think that I'd prefer WASD movement -> so dig left right with A and D and dig down with S. I can see that forcing the player having to concentrate at multiple things at once fits the game. But once again, the core concept is strong enough, and I didn't like it when I accidentally tried to walk left instead of digging left.
Anyways, well done! It's a banger
Short and sweet! Super solid in that it was no sort of friction what so ever. I found the controls right away, I understood what I was suppose and I wasn't confused along the way. I other word well scoped! The animations were great and the whole look, color scheme etc. is super consistent. Well done!
I honestly think this is a great game jam game! I actually got really glad starting it and seeing it was a clicker! So good idea!
I think its not really connecting though. The biggest issue I have is that gold is not generated quicker and quicker, so it doesn't really scratch that clicker itch. I assume the gold is randomized once per click, but it probably should be once per meter. If you manage to squeeze in some more upgrades, like one passive digger at 1 m/s. And something else say 200m every 5s but it has a 20% chance to break I think that would do a lot for the game. I also think it would be great to have the upgrade (with cost) visible from the beginning. I dug to about 2500m. But I don't know if something else would happen eventually (for example another upgrade would appear) or if I've seen everything. But obviously time is always the issue
Anyways, super cool you joined the jam! And I really appreciate a clicker once in a while
Cool game! I love the genre and I think that spawning waves of the player is a great game jam game, we want small scope! :smile: I also think the environment art with just white blocks was good. Time is the most valuable resource in game jams and the environment you got communicates what you mean. Communication is key.
I really think you need more feedback. Especially when somethings happen that the player should react to. And usually (always?) sound is the way to go! Prio 1: taking damage, spawning coins, enemies firing arrow, new wave. Prio 2: Dead enemy, hitting enemy (which sort of the same as missing enemy), picking up coins, shooting, dying. Prio 3: ambience, grunts, hitting walls. The more games I make, especially game jam games, the more I think that feedback and non confusing controls is the most important things!
I also think that it's a good thing to sort of force the game to end eventually. A narrative game have a factual ending - here I think you should spawn more enemies every wave. That would make it harder the longer I was playing and I would die before I felt it was time to move on. And as a bonus, if everything comes together right, the player will want to play another game. And, at least for me, that is sort of an automatic extra star on the overall score.
One small thing is that I'd would have want the pickup radius to be bigger, maybe at least 3 times the size of the player character. It satisfying to see the battlefield getting more and more cluttered with loot, but having to actually go over the coin is also a bit annoying. If you're aiming for the battlefield filled with loot, I think you should just spawn the send the coins further away from the kill.
Please don't take this to critically, the time to make them is short and the game isn't a buggy mess :stuck_out_tongue: And it's nice to kill some heroes once in a while
Wow nice work! Super solid mechanics progression, and adding stuff with every level. I had no big confusion during the game, I always found the controls right away etc. etc. :slight_smile: It feels like a super solid start to a puzzler, I just wished I had a couple of more levels with all mechanics :angel:
I think the game felt a bit slow. Not the gameplay itself, but more like mechanics and transitions felt, well, I guess not snappy if that make sense? So the jumps, the cloning and the screen between levels I would have like to be faster. And a "pop!" when cloning and "doing!" when jumping could also have helped with that.
It's always a bit tricky with games that require a lot of level design. . When they don't introduce mechanics in steps and just give you a long wall of text I comment on that, but now I want more levels that don't showcase the mechanics but instead makes you problem solve. I feel that that is such a stupid feedback though - avoid level design heavy games - especially since I love puzzler. Just to be clear, the last two levels were really nice, it just that the build up feels a bit long for the reward.
I feel I sound a bit harsh though, all in all this might have been the best puzzler I've played this far :smile: and I think my first point of lack of friction is maybe the most important thing when review games like this for like 10, 15 min.
Great job!
Very moody! I liked it :D I typically don't like "story games" in a game jam, but this wasn't too wordy and I manage to reach the heart in the end!
My biggest issue is lack of feedback with what is interactable. I think the press E is super to have there, but I think more is needed. In the first level it took me a while to realize the button on the shelf wasn't some books. And I didn't understand that the ladder was a ladder (I thought it was just some background art showing how much you rotated the cogwheel). I think it would be good with maybe a thick outline on every thing that's not just environment art. So that would be the walkable ground (only really needed in third level, but for consistency), the cog wheel, ladder, the puzzle panel in the second level etc. Same goes with the sliding puzzle. I didn't understand I was looking at a sliding puzzle at first, but if I had some indicator when hovering over a movable piece I would have gotten it a lot quicker. Oh yeah and on the x-button in the puzzle screen ( @martta ). I think also a nice "click" would be great when solving the cogwheel.
I also had a hard time figuring out that you needed to keep boxes/balls in radius of the player. This goes together with my precious point, but in the first level I thought that the box was colliding with the pillars, and I tried to get in though the gap in the environment art above it. Maybe it would be better if you'd just drop what you holding if you drag it out of the radius, I think I would have realized what was going on quicker then.
Some smaller points here, but I really think the intro should swap pictures on click instead of a timer. I tried walking to the left in the first level before realizing that the button was a button, and got stuck outside the map. So I needed to start over, and the intro was quite annoying then. Also, I think a language puzzle is a lil bit dangerous in a global game jam. Anagrams if you don't speak English well can be hard, and it took me a little time to get the answer just because I couldn't write "Technician" instead of "Technic". I must say that having the T capitalized was really good design though.
Please don't take this feedback as criticism, over all I think it was a nice game and a nice change of pace from some of the other ones. You did a great job! :D
@karenchik Yes of course, and once again you did fine! Oh okay silly I missed that :P
Cool game! Quick pace and high urgency!
I played the web version and jumping in/out of the big drill was a bit janky. Maybe it would be good to have the player drilling downward with input. So while in drill, press s do go down. I think that would fix some of mine issues. I wanted to refill the cooling and all of a sudden the drill just went. And when it stopped it got quite overwhelmed with the timer, so it was hard to keep track of life, cooling buying upgrades etc. I guess that might ruin the enemy balancing, but maybe they could spawn every once in a while when the big drill is still and a lot when it is moving. Obviously time is always the problem, so I can relate to having issues playtesting and balancing.
Anyways, good job!
Hard game! But I really liked the jumping. Great game jam game in that it has simple input/game mechanics, but it feels really nice to do that thing over and over :)
I think that the movement could have been snappier, so higher gravity and quicker jumps. I also missed feedback when a collision would kill me. I assume it depends on velocity. It would be nice then to have some kind of meter or just show an image when the threshold value for getting me killed was reached. I also missed sounds. Just some wind ambience or similar looping in the background, and a sound when releasing the jump I think would have given a lot. There are free sound libraries, for example freesound.org where you can find it really easy. Just make sure it's creative common so you are allowed to use them.
Anyways great first entry and good luck on the next! :D
edit: oh yeah! I think it would be really nice to have a link back here from itch, so people don't loose this site before leaving a score! I there is one that I just missed, just ignore this :P
@tokto oh okay I kept trying to jump in the middle of the air to land slower, but that explains why I couldn't get it to work. Maybe the feedback should be that jumping in that direction will kill you, color the beam green if OK, red if death maybe?
-- accidental duplicate of above --
@tokto I tested it again and I really think the checkpoints are a good idea and I got quite a bit further this time. It feels a lot better!
I cannot maximize the game, it might be a thing with my browser. But I noticed that I got a lot more speed if I press at the B position instead of A so my jump must have been a lot slower than intended. I assume that you use the mouse pixel coordinates to calculate jump speed then, for example mousepos = pixel {503, 1129}. The problem with that is that you will have different jump force depending what resolution your screen have. Typically you want to you use view space instead which would give you the mouse pos as a number between 0 and 1. So if x is 0 the mouse is at the left border of the game window and if 1 its at the right. I'm not saying you need to fix it now, but maybe keep in mind for your next game! This also means that if you using a 4k screen your jumping might be a lot quicker than mine. So me saying that I wanted the jumping to be snappier might because I'm playing windowed on a 1920x1080 screen.
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@profugo-barbatus wow thank you so much for that! Yes I totally agree with you point about the player position. We use a pretty big FOV on the camera, which sort of sells the depth better, but that makes the parallaxing when coming up close even worse. The reason we have those circle coming once in a while, that you cannot hit, is to sort of frame what you are seeing in front of you, but it still a bit lacking :)
edit: thinking about it a little bit longer, what we could have done is to have basically a long stick sticking out from the characters stomach to show where straight down from the character. Or even better a laser pointer beaming forward and drawing where the actor mid will hit upcoming objects.
lol
once again, lol. But, sure! @pppppppp
edit: Damn, you did the start menu right? It looked amazing :smile:
@on100ruykajop haha yep some debug input snuck in there
Really nice game! The atmosphere is great! I really liked the environment art with the parallax and the light around the character. Also really nice music.
I think that the stalactites (those hanging from the roof) should have been in the foreground layer. During the boss it felt like I would collide with them. I think the boss was great, but you probably should have used a different algorithm to spawn the mollusks in that level (I under stand that time probably was an issue). But if the first pickups spawn to far to the left, or if you get a pickup far up and another far down on the same x coordinate I think its unbeatable? Maybe the easiest would have been to make the map 10 times longer and spawn 150 mollusks instead so it doesn't matter if you cannot get some.
Anyways great work!
Nice little game!
I liked that the jump was quite snappy. I think the control scheme was good. The level gradually getting dark was cool and as someone pointing out before: it's cool that you need to light up with the dynamite.
While the speed of the jump was nice, I think the down acceleration was a bit to aggressive. It would be nice if speed up stayed as is, but speed down was slower, and maybe a small hang on top of the arc before falling.
While I liked it getting darker, it quickly got too dark. I think a small light on the character would help a lot. I get that that sort of ruins the thing with throwing dynamites for light - but you would still need to do that to see down chasms. Just like a 1 or 2 tiles radius would be really nice, so you'd understand if you're walking into a wall.
I also took a lot of damage with out realizing/knowing why. It might have been fall damage? Some more damage feeback would be great. Maybe a small "uuhf" sound and maybe coloring the character sprite red for half a second, or whatever.
I thought I played the whole game my first go, I got stuck in a pit where there was a light coming up from below. I was gonna say that it would be nice with a "You won" screen. But when I tried to get back there to get a screenshot I couldn't find it again but instead stumbled into the actual "you won" screen, so I'm not sure what happened there.
Don't take this feedback as criticism though. It a cool game and it's hard to get something together at all with so little time. Well done!
The controls was janky and weird and I LOVED them! It really gives the game some uniqueness. The atmosphere was nice and I'm glad you were generous with checkpoints :)
I think it would be nice to have the press f to checkpoint written on the screen at least until first time it is pressed. I also think the controls get a bit confusing when swimming upwards, but I don't really have a good suggestion how to solve that. Maybe when input is given you could check direction of character before deciding what direction to turn. But I think that also could leave to some confusion.
Anyways well done!
edit: I don't see anywhere to leave a score, is that intended? :)
@eddieyang Ah okay well done managing the switch! But I mean giving rating to the game, all I see is this image_2025-04-09_143341474.png
The game looks just stellar :open_mouth: Gorgeous! But as many have pointed out the backpack is super janky, and the game seems to lock in a black screen after giving the girl the ring. I though that the matches where really tricky to light and that I would have liked the chewing of shrooms to be maybe three or four chews instead of how many they are now.
That said it have clearly gone a lot of effort and love into the game, so it's really unfortunate. The visuals really are on another level
It looks phenomenal and the music is great! Really nice mood and I'm really impressed with the cohesiveness of everything.
It was too punishing for my taste, I gave it a good try but I couldn't get past the second level :( I would love some cayote time on the jumps (or just not so pixel prefect) and maybe a pixel smaller collision on the cannonballs. But if you really going for pixel perfect input I think it would be nice with some easing in of the mechanics, so a small level with just three long jumps in row for example. Anyways really solid compo!
hahaha what a silly premise!
The steering of the tram felt nice and the police really had that chaotic GTA2 behavior. The 2.5D buildings looked really nice. Great choice leaving the tram skid marks and pools of blood through out the game.
If you continue working on it I would like to see the map become even more in a state of mayhem. I think dead cars should leave wreck sprites, and if possible it would be great to have actually colliding with the tram choking pathways.
Just some spitballing you could have: * increasing chaos in ambience audio: screams, cars breaking, fires crackling, car alarms beeping * you could put decals of cracks in the walls you hit (or swap the texture) * smoke and fire * cobblestones flying around the trams
But you did great with the time we had. Loved it!
The game looks really nice and the character animations look great! The loop feels nice and runs smooth but feels it a little bit barebone. I think it would be really great with some urgency :) Maybe you should pay rent very day and if you fail you loose, or maybe if you had a classic health bar with 3 hearts or so, and every time you fail you'd loose one life. I also think a little bit sound would do wonders! Anyways good job!
Nice relaxing game, nice sound effects. I think it would be good with some kind of ending just to lead the player a little bit more through the game. just a "Score: 77, press to play again" would be nice. I also felt like I would have liked to have a little bit more choice. Maybe a inventory where you could hold on to one painting only. And if you draw a new painting you'd like to save you'd need to place your current held one on the field. Or you could get to destory one painting on the board every round. Just something to allow for a little bit more strategizing. Anyways, cool game!
This game was such a treat! It feels very polished and cohesive!
I don't have much to say besides it felt a little short. In general I think it's good for ld games to aim to be a couple of minutes, but since the gradual increase of complexity it felt like I would have wanted maybe two more levels. I guess the grid size limits how much more you could do, but I think If you had 2 more levels, 1 with 5x5 grid and 1 with 6x6 grid it would be basically perfect!
Thank you for a great experience!
Amazing game! Loved the music, and the gameplay felt well balanced with great variety! Well done :smile:
Very cute pixel art! I think it would be nice with a little more urgency, I didn't really feel any reason to accidentally pick up the wrong mushroom. Maybe there could be a timer? or maybe the mushroom could spawn and then despawn so you were a bit more stressed picking them up.
Never heard of pico-8 before, that was really cool! Nice job!
Cool game! It felt like it was scoped quite well! I understood what I was supposed to do and good feedback on my actions (SFX and VFX ). Nice touch with the scoreboard.
It was quite hard to avoid enemies when you started to get surrounded, not sure why though. It might be that the acceleration is little bit strong or maybe to speed isn't normalized when going diagonal? Or I'm just bad :stuck_out_tongue: but it felt like hard to maneuver when I needed to quickly change direction. And maybe one life was a little too punishing, I would have loved 3 hearts and a hp pickup.
Otherwise it felt quite complete! Good job!
Aaah that ennio music!! :heart:
I thought the game was great! The world assembling looks really nice and the music was just 10/10.
It was a bit hard to find the skill tree and they didn't apply until next round. I think the screen could come up before leaving the map and forced the player to pick a skill before starting next level, that would solve all that. Some indicator on the unlocked skills would be good also, maybe just a thicker border around skills unlocked.
I think the range of the bandits and player would be nice to display on the grid, way just give tiles in sight a slight tint. It was a bit hard to keep track of player range since you upgraded it and also bandit range.
It felt a little bit I couldn't die unless I screwed up. Maybe you could up the urgency by have the bandit AI to always try to step one or two steps towards the player before wandering. That way the player would get encircled over time and would have to strategize a lot more.
Once again, great game!
Wow great concept and well executed! Just great. I like how it almost becomes a puzzle game as much as a reaction game when the snake grows long enough. I think maybe you could have colour-coded the different sides to make it a little bit more readable, but that's all I got really. Well done!
Good game! It came together nicely! I were just a couple souls short of making it to phase 12 :slight_smile:
I really liked that you didn't sleep on sound effects! The world also felt very populated with particles and lots of people running around!
I think the fire pits that killed souls had to big radius, and I think it would be nice to actually have it visualized. It took me a little while understanding what was going on, so maybe a circle around them would have made it clearer. I also thought the fighting souls was too hard, I think I raised the fighting ability twice but still had trouble mashing fast enough so I just avoided fighting after that. The music were really nice, but I think the loop could have been just a little bit longer. I also felt I could hear where the cut was which pulled my attention alot to it.
But I have no doubt you'd iron out the quirks if we just had a couple of hours more. The balancing is so hard to find time for in these game jams :/ Overall it felt quite complete and I'm very impressed!
Cool game! The core sling mechanic felt very nice!
I thought the steps were really hard to understand, I thought the game was bugged until I saw previous comment. I think they need a more visible distinction, like a clear line. Maybe if so I would have tried a little bit longer trying to figure out how they worked. I thought there was some scaling issue going on and some sprite + collision had been accidentally stretched. The tutorial could maybe mention them specifically (unless I missed something?).
Also I think it would be a good idea for the next jam to try to focus on the core a little bit more and try to have a smaller scope. I saw something about game modes that I guess didn't quite make it and there is a really functional saving system. But it got quite tedious to keep opening the menu to save. I think it would be better to maybe have a quick save button, and upon game over it brought you back to that state. Or just allow the player to start over the level. And then work on something closer to the core gameplay instead, maybe a moving fish? Or a moving obsticle? I should say that I only got to level 3 so maybe there was some stuff that I missed.
Don't get me wrong though, I'm impressed you got the save system in place working and it is hard to scope these project! And the movement felt really good! And maybe the other game mode would be great so it was a risk worth taking :slight_smile:
Anyways nice work!
Cool game!
I think it would be nice with some tracking on what you've done, so maybe that the desks could change color when done and some UI 8/10 desk clean. Also I thought it was a little bit hard to steer the character. I think it might have been good to have S for example always moving the character towards the camera even if you rotate the camera.
That said well done!
@tearei thank you! Yeah I can imagine it has a little bit of an information overload when starting. The game loop is to collect candy, go to shop and buy upgrades to collect candy quicker and repeat. And the goal is to have as much candy as possible in the inventory when the timer runs out! If you ever get around to try it again you should try to increase luck early :)
@koroleva-olya @wishes @anete-ainjarv Thank you! :heart:
@tryam did you play it with mouse? unfortunately we forgot space in for attack and missed the tutorial in the delivery. It's meant to be played with WASD and mouse, but that's not easy to know with no tutorial :slight_frown: if you play the day one patch we added the tutorial. And the player is suppose to look in the direction of the mouse. But ofc it could be some bug I havn't encountered if you used the mouse
@nesteriuc-denis Glad you liked the gfx and sound! Did you figure out the shop? I guess the hook is suppose to be finding the correct candy to afford next upgrade, but I'm a bit of a loot goblin myself so that resonates maybe unreasonably with me :slight_smile:
@adam-konig Thank you! Yeah we didn't do a great job explaining the score (and maybe didn't think it through fully)! Your score is based on how much candy you hold in the inventory when the game ends. And we didn't think about the implications on the score when upgrading/downgrading candy. So what probably happened is that you upgraded all you low tier candy to higher tiers and lost a lot of score in the conversion. We probably should have based the score on the upgrades you have or maybe total candy collected instead :slight_smile:
Nice little game! Great sound and I really liked the goblin shaped text box :D But I do wish it was a little bit longer, maybe three clients or so. Well done!
Beautiful music and style! It cozy and the orcs do look really silly :slight_smile: Some feedback is that it was some what unclear what was going on first times I got to the evaluation. My initial thought was that the target was to match the emotion of the girl. Then when the wheel kept spinning I thought it was bugging out.
Maybe just add some labels on what we are seeing and I think it would get across quicker!
feedback.png
(excuse my paint skills)
Well done, a nice change of pace!
Cool game! I liked the music and it got the clicker hook! It was a little hard to keep track of the different towers and it worked a little against the incremental type of that I sort of got done with one tower, then when to next and started from the beginning. Maybe If you only could upgrade in the main tower but it would keep scratching that clicker itch a little bit longer. That said I really enjoyed it!
Great music and sounds! I really liked that it just started right away! I was a bit confused initially, but I really liked how the intro/game/menu just blended together! I didn't really understand that the game ended, and usually I would say that's a bad thing, but here it just felt worked great with the atmosphere! I think it would be nice with a mute button in the end screen, because the music is stuck looping now when I'm writing this :P
Anyway nice game!
Really nice pixel art! The menu music was really nice and cozy! The rescue game was a bit confusing, I felt like I was stuck, but I just kept at it a couple of minutes and eventually I succeeded. I think some UI could be helpful. In the first game you had a timer, maybe you could have something simliar for what the goal was in the last minigame :)
cool game!
Sound design was great! The controls felt snappy and good variance of obstacles. I think it was great it had checkpoints, hard to balance stuff perfectly on a jam ^^ I wish there was more reason to fire the radar more often, it felt nice to press it (sound and visuals where really nice), but I stopped after a while. Nice game!