Doctor_Zeus

Collectore - Ludum Dare 58 by Truedat 2025-10-12T21:23:09Z ♥ 1

I had fun! Enough fun to play multiple times, and enough fun to reach a sort of no-win state (the first key picture is fully off-screen so I just have to guess the first input every time):

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Gameplay Talk

The shop was what really had me hooked. After playing it a little, I wondering if there was some strategy I could use to buy the "reset to 1 letter" shop option. (I even paused in the middle of writing this to try one time, which got me to that level 18 attempt). I did eventually succeed, but it was thanks to exploiting a (fun) bug - more on that later.

I realized letting the letters expire naturally makes them explode into a much larger number of coins than if you "collect" them into your bottom bar. There's a tradeoff there, since collecting a full set of letters gives a pretty hefty boost of cash (25/50/much larger number, I believe). My not-rigorous evaluation after a handful of attempts is that it's basically correct to ignore everything but the common letters, and spend coins to finish the common word if you're down to 1-2 missing letter types.

What broke the game wide open was the realization that clicking a letter in the middle of a "set completion award" duplicates the payout. Though this is definitely unintentional, it sparked a whole new kind of exploration: how could I most-effectively exploit this to reach the long-awaited "reduce arrows to 1" purchase?

I ended up adopting a strategy where I'd fill up my normal "collector" word until it was fairly close to full, then purchase some letters to leave it with 1 left. Then I'd rush as many combos as I could to stack a bunch of normal letters on the screen (usually 3 was my limit, I could get 4 on screen if the sequences were very short) purchase the last common letter, then quickly click to collect all of the on-screen letters before they expired. This would duplicate the 25 coin reward for each letter I had on-screen, netting 75 - 100 bonus coins.

It was pretty interesting, because even though I could get ridiculous amounts of money, I still had to think about how to sequence my purchases. Especially important was the timing of the "reset to 1 arrow" purchase - you wanted to get a combination to nearly complete & have as many common letters banked as possible. Basically as soon as you reset to short sequences again, you needed to try to score a 3-4 duplicate (or higher) right away to refill money reserves. Short arrow sequences make the duplicate bug much easier to exploit, but you're still at the mercy of RNG to try to get common letters (ironically the rarer letters are worse, since they don't duplicate the reward).

There's probably extra nuance about how you could optimally exploit this bug, but with my strategy I was able to effectively go infinite (I looped back to 1 arrow sequences a couple of times & passed level 30)

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So, all of that is to say, I had a lot of fun playing this game!

Feedback Notes

The rewards from the shop were very simple, but the incentives they ended up creating (with the help of a little bit of bug-exploiting 😉) was very fun to strategize around.

It is a bit unfortunate that the rare letters didn't seem to be worth collecting for me - my strategy was so centralized on the common letters that they were mostly a downside. Maybe a mechanic where rare & legendary letters cycle through a couple different letters before disappearing would be interesting - you can leave them waiting, but you'll want to pay attention to whether they swap to a value you can actually use.

Also, bug stuff aside, I did really like how tracking which letters you already picked up was important, and how splitting your attention between collecting letters & typing sequences was key to maintaining a steady income.

The presentation of the game was nice. The music kept me in the groove & the background matched the feeling of the music well. Little bits of polish (the screenshake & visual effects of letters being entered) were great.

Thanks for making this!

Office routine by urvethen 2025-10-12T16:43:17Z ♥ 2

I did it, I earned a non-negative amount of favor!

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I agree with other folks' feedback about the game's difficulty (especially right at the start, when the layout of the space is unclear). The strict timers means it's not always practical to do the tasks you're given, even if you do have a good idea of where they are.

An extra wrinkle that makes things challenging is the fact there are repeated elements in the office - there are stacks of documents, printers, computers, plants, etc. in the top & bottom halves of the office. I got the impression that the "flavor" message attached to the assignment could reliably indicate which location you should interact with (I think "pet the plant" was always the one near the coffee machine) but having instructions that help identify the specific location would help ("fix the printer in the finance department" or something like that).

On a related note, making the different "regions" of the office have distinctly different visuals can be a good way to direct the player. If the top half had red-colored cubicles & the bottom half had blue-colored ones, hints could be something like "fix the red printer". Maybe a more thematic option would be to have finance department has charts on the wall showing profits, engineering department has blueprints or schematics, etc. Extra assets like that take extra time, though, so it's not necessarily practical within the jam.

That said, I do think that this kind of gameplay can be pretty fun. Trying to solve routing puzzles on a static map gives you a cool feeling of mastery when you get good at knowing exactly where to go. Letting multiple tasks stack up at once is good in that way, I think, because it means you're trying to figure out the best way to hit a cluster of tasks all at once.

In this genre, I especially like having fun movement options or special shortcuts for the player to find, since they'll open up new kinds of strategies once they're discovered.

Couple of suggestions if you're planning on going further with this idea: * Consider making the impact of success or failure more significant (maybe make the "boss happiness" bar have a few chunky segments) so you get strong visual feedback for success or failure. Also introduces more tension when you're in obvious danger - the boss bar value mostly stayed near the middle for me, + and - changes were very slight. * It could be nice to give the player a limited-use action to extend the deadline of individual tasks. It could create a nice strategic layer: I'm going to extend this South-side task now because I have to work on the North side - then afterward I'll run down & get a bunch of South-side things done all at once.

Nice work putting the game together, I had fun playing!

Random Walk by nuzcraft 2025-10-12T15:50:11Z ♥ 2

Before I get into a design ramble, I want to say I think the presentation of the game is great. The interface is clean, the Baba Is You-style graphics are appealing, and the little question mark particles are fun. I also like the little text effects on the right side, it brings a lot of visual appeal.

Quick note, the option of hjkl navigation made me smile, but it seems like the 'J' key doesn't move the character? Might be a little bug.

Nicely selected scope, and good implementation of your vision. I'm glad I had the chance to play it! 😄

Design Ramble

Quick disclaimer: I don't want to come across as too pushy, because I know this is your game - this is just me doing a lot of thinking out loud. I'll have opinions about design, but I know that it's just my perspective, definitely not intended to be presented as a authoritative. Anyway, on with the ramble.

The concept of Unfair Flips is very interesting to me, mostly as an introspective experience. A meditation on randomness, and the kind of unreasonable expectations that folks generally have about randomness.

What's especially appealing to me is that the core concept "flip heads 10 times in a row with this coin" intuitively sounds very hard to accomplish - the odds must be very very low, especially if you have a "bad" coin at the start. What's neat, though, is that even though I think the odds are bad, the reality of how bad the odds are is many, many times worse than what I imagine. Like, I don't have a good mental framework to imagine how bad it is - by default my brain has some baked-in assumption that it'll happen sooner or later, it just might take a little bit.

That gap - the fact that I think it's unlikely to happen, but I'm still overestimating how likely it is to occur - is super neat to me, and thinking about how I evaluate odds & probability is a fun result of interacting with that game.

In terms of mechanics, the function of this game is essentially the same - you have to win a series of "confusion flips" to get your character to move in the direction you want to win the game. If you win enough flips in a row (and don't accidentally press the wrong direction like I did a couple times 😆) the game is cleared.

My mental response to it, though, felt quite different. There are probably a lot of factors at play here; for example, when I control a character with directional inputs it doesn't feel like the kind of action that should be random. My experience with coins is that flips are 50/50 odds, but my experience with walking around in games is that (generally speaking) I move in the direction I want 100% of the time. Relatedly, usually when I'm walking around in the game, I don't need to take an arbitrary path to reach my goal - if I happen to reach it in one way or another, the movement has achieved its purpose.

I think these pieces of dissonance (walking direction normally doesn't feel random, pathing normally isn't strict in top-down walk-around-ey games) make the game feel more unfair & arbitrary than the coin flip game. When a coin flips tails, I can say "well, that's the way coins go". When I walk closer to my objective but not on the path the game prescribed & get reset, my instinctive response is "that doesn't seem quite right".

This doesn't *really* matter in a mathematical way (it's all just coin flips behind the scenes) but I think this kind of game / experiment is probably most interesting when it plays into & exposes fallacies in the player's flawed expectations. Though I have played plenty of games that involve a character walking around in a top-down view, the idea that the character moves randomly & that the character must follow a particular path are both unique to this game.

I can still have some fun poking the buttons & seeing if the character reaches the end, but I don't think it has the same kind of impact for me. Becomes a more general meditation on the Skinner box-type behavior, I guess.

Tiles Collector by dhim 2025-10-12T14:56:13Z ♥ 0

I really like the concept here. I especially like how there are emergent "rules" I started to build in my head as I played: in the 3-color mode, for example, there should be 1 pair of each color & exactly 3 instances of each color tile. I got faster at scanning rows for issues as I played, and it was fun to mentally rearrange the rows to figure what might be possible.

After recognizing these derived rules, it also became clear to me that the generated puzzles were not "perfectly" solvable - any row that generates 3 matching tiles in a row will be missing points, as will one that (in 3-color mode) has 4 instances of a single color.

On an instinctual level, the puzzle not having a "correct" solution feels kinda wrong, but after thinking about it some more, I think it's probably okay. Especially in a compo game, I don't know how practical it'd be to generate a system for guaranteeing perfect solvability, and even if you could it wouldn't necessarily make it a more-fun game. If it made the puzzle too repetitive, it might actually make it less fun!

With all of that in mind, the inclusion of the scoreboard is a very good idea. You can see what the puzzle's current best score is to have an idea of what the upper bound will probably be. It's probably possible to determine what they highest possible score could be, but I don't think it's a bad thing for it to be left open-ended; proving that your solution can't get any better could be a part of the fun.

I do think the satisfaction of finding the "perfect" arrangement of numbers in sudoku puzzles & similar logic games is an important element of that whole genre. So even with the upsides I outlined above, the not-perfect-ness of this game's puzzles may still be a detriment to folks' enjoyment (or at least a barrier to entry). That said, sudoku sets a very high bar - to create a puzzle concept that draws comparison to it in 48 hours is a great result!

Nice work on this one, I'm glad I got the chance to play it!

Bonus feedback lightning round: * The color-picker selection method was intuitive, I liked click + drag interface (and would work well with mobile) * Having an option to clear a color would be very useful, as would "clear row", "clear column", and (maybe most importantly) "undo" * In the tutorial, being able to hide the pop-up to review the game state hidden behind it would be very useful. Sometimes I finished a tutorial, but would've liked to review the solution after reading the message at the end - a way to confirm my understanding of the concept is complete. * Experimental idea: letting player specify a "best score possible" for a certain row / column could be useful - kinda like marking a square with a flag in minesweeper, it helps the player remember logical deductions they've previously worked through. * Having more-clear distinction between player-filled & pre-filled tiles would be very helpful. When doing sudoku, my terrible handwriting is very clearly distinguishable from the nicely printed pre-filled numbers; this helps me understand what can be rolled back & undone vs. what must stay. Maybe having a textured crayon / colored-pencil look for player tiles to contrast flat pre-filled boxes? * Dots on the problematic edges is good for readability when I got used to puzzling. * Reading the score display on the right side was a bit tricky. Some grouping of the tile-pairs may be helpful: separate rows / columns for each leading color would make it easier to review which type of tile is underutilized. * I bumped the escape key while submitting my score and lost my progress 😢. No biggie given the time constraints, but having some confirm pop-up before losing the puzzle stuff (or just removing the hotkey) would be a-okay by me.

Hoarder's Remorse by cartmouse 2025-10-07T04:20:04Z ♥ 2

I had a similar experience - at some point your bombs will damage every enemy as they spawn & then you're riding the gravy train.

I like the assets you put together here. The look & sound of the game is clean & consistent, and the soundtrack matches the action well. The one-screen structure keeps the scope small, and you've got the boss encounter for a change-up. I like the arrow aiming indicator too, it's a nice touch that I've liked in other games too.

Gameplay-wise, the mechanics are pretty familiar. Moving to group enemies is normal twin-stick shooter kind of feeling. The active items you trigger are neat, but I didn't end up finding much need to use them. (some are quite strong, though. The spike item makes you immune to contact damage?) The game's scaling took me out of control pretty quickly, so I didn't end up needing to use something outside of normal bombs after a little while.

Maybe throwing in one more type of enemy with different behavior would have given me use cases for the items. Since the ones we've got always chase straight at the player, maybe having some that launch projectiles in a static pattern (not directly targeted at the player) would create some extra interest & tension when the player's trying to kite the swarming bad guys. There's probably a lot of ways to tackle this, though, and battling time constraints is always a challenge.

A minor additional note: For my personal taste, I think making the game have a definitive end (rather than scaling to infinity) feels good for a jam game. Even better, throwing in a little timer or something like that gives players a feeling of completion, and maybe sparks a bit of competitive spirit in folks.

If you've got the time, throwing an exclamation point at the end of a short-and-sweet experience is my preference.

But that's a matter of personal preference. Again, good work with the spread of assets you made, the scope you selected, and the way you pulled it together into a complete package!

Trash Game by ursagames 2025-10-06T23:22:49Z ♥ 3

Pick up the trash!!! Are we going to get a single released for this jammin' background song? Gotta get it on album with some of your other game-jam hits (I'm specifically remembering the crab game one).

I like the inclusion of turbo and handbrake. The level design is fun to drive around in - I know I kinda abandoned my trash delivery mission after a bit just to see where I could drive. I'm going to have to give some shots at the downhill course, Initial D-style 😆

The models for the environment, cars, etc. are clean and very readable. This kind of lower-polycount style always makes me think of the Katamari games, which I have a very soft spot for. No picking up cars in this game, unfortunately... maybe next time.

Some feedback, probably not anything too unexpected: There are some things that don't run so smooth for me in the browser - any time particles load for the first time (boosting, handbrake, barrel).

I like the "swoosh" sound from picking up trash cans, explosion sound and "get that cash" was fun. In general, visuals & sounds were good gameplay feedback, made the game feel more responsive. Having some kind of squeal to accompany the burned rubber from the handbreak would've been nice too (though maybe you walk a fine line of trying to not be too annoying).

I would've liked lower-pitched, bassier sounds for impacts & boosts if possible - the ones in the game do a good job of communicating what's going on, but it'd be nice for the audio to help sell the heavy, unwieldy nature of the majestic trash truck more.

Controls felt fine to me - a little hard to steer, but that makes it feel good to navigate the roads just right. I have the impression that boosting actually helps your traction when you're just going in a straight line, which is an interesting dynamic. Some combination of small turns & feathering boost probably mitigates a lot of the steering trickiness.

I did have a few situations in my first couple plays where the camera got locked at a weird angle on my truck. It didn't happen every time, so I'll fault my poor driving & wall-running-into skills for doing some kind of irreparable harm to the cameraman. I'm not well-versed in 3D design considerations, but maybe having a "reset viewing angle" button would help mitigate it?

I like the scope of the level design, and like I said earlier, I had a good bit of fun just driving around. I'm not sure how I feel about the placement of the garbage drop-off spots. My first couple plays I didn't really run into any besides the initial one, but maybe I was just driving very poorly. Later attempts let me confirm there were other spots to drop off at, just needed to find them.

Having a floating arrow in the sky or a classic trash truck radar pointing toward nearby points would be a nice enhancement to make the learning process easier - I figure if you really go hard-core into playing a game like this you eventually just have the whole map worked out in your head, more or less.

Closing Notes

Overall, I think it would be fun to actually try competing for score, even if it's just a little bit. I'll have to do some more attempts and post my results later.

Sound, art & gameplay landed solidly for me, and if we get some high score competition going on here I'll get even more fun out of it 😄

Nice work on this one, I'm glad I had the chance to play it!

Bog Bailiff by Raylond 2025-10-06T22:57:46Z ♥ 2

⚠️ Quick heads up, for me the tooltip info for equipment is always cut off the left half of the screen ⚠️

I do like a good strategic battling game! The idea that you can only change the items equipped to your inactive loadout is neat. It adds a bit of fun planning and mouse dexterity to gameplay, since you can think about your ideal organization as much as you'd like before clicking.

The collecting loot idea fits the theme well, and I like the silhouette interface used to show off what kinds of items you brought back from your last play. Related, the artwork on the whole is really fun. our main frog's design is pretty whimsical (feather sword? no wonder the pen is mightier!) and the insectoid enemies are fitting antagonists.

In the small chunk I played, I was very interested to see if the equipment swapping would become an important "active" part of play, but it didn't end up working out that way for me. Could be that there are incentives to do it that weren't clear to me yet - with more info or improved understanding I might have tried pursuing it more.

There could be some pretty blunt ways to incentivize swapping during combat (items that only recharge while inactive, items that are stronger the first time they hit) but it might be a bit of a balancing act - fiddling around with pools of inventory constantly might distract from the higher-level decisions you want to focus on. Not sure.

I know that games with abstract interactions (not-action-ey ones) can involve a lot of code work behind the scenes. Deciding how to communicate info is hard too, and I think you invested good effort to make this stuff understandable & interesting to play with.

I don't exactly remember the jam's policy on post-submission bug-fixes, but if you're able to get that tooltip info somewhere more central on the screen I'll definitely come back in and try diving more deeply into the bog... to see what strategic terrors wait within.

Colormancer by ildfuglen 2024-04-28T18:46:53Z ♥ 1

Nice work!

I'll echo what other folks have been saying - running in the terminal is very cool, the music complements it excellently, and the process of mentally mapping out a solution to each puzzle was fun! I especially liked levels 7 & 8. The "order of operations" kind of puzzling really shone in those puzzles, with the right kind of "gotcha!" feeling when I realized I overlooked something.

I do wish there was a way to identify which key interacted with which gate. I don't think it's a trivial problem to solve, but a level whose challenge hinges on me intuiting invisible connections (attempting a little level-designer mind-reading) is not as satisfying to me as one that depends on me "decoding" the information that's clearly presented in front of me. I could guess what switches corresponded to which doors in level 9, but that's not me interacting with a game system, that's me making assumptions.

I do think there could also be a way to keep the information hidden while still being satisfying, though: maybe it's right for the player to consider the "gathering information and testing behavior" phase of a level part of normal play. If that were the idea, it'd be super-duper cool to have some kind of note-taking feature built into the game. Like maybe I can select characters in the level and replace them with my own text (which is still given its matching underlying color).

That's all hypotheticals, though, and definitely very subjective. The game you made is a fun concept packed up in a sweet terminal-based package. Thanks for making it, I enjoyed playing!

Nerdfence by okk 2024-04-24T00:13:17Z ♥ 2

It took some tries, but I became a winner!

I enjoy this kind of control style a lot - Magicka is probably my favorite version of it, but there's also some similar (in spirit) mechanics in games like Helldivers. There's something cool about slamming a combination of keys that's perfect for the situation. I guess the appeal is that it's how I imagine it'd feel to really cast a spell.

When playing this game, I enjoyed splitting my attention between running away from enemies & typing out the summons. Executing both halves at the same time was satisfying, and it gave me a good feeling of control.

About the game's presentation: The fact that you have a variety of options to summon (and the fact they all look so different in entertaining ways) is really nice. The book at the bottom of the screen was difficult for me to understand at first, but I eventually figured out what each part represented.

I know it can take a lot of effort to make the UI communicate game information in an intuitive way, so I appreciate the work you put into the summoning book at the bottom of the screen. Playing a sound effect and making the pictures of your available summoning options glow when ready were both really helpful.

By the way, the art style was cool! The music was too, I was rocking out as my 6 dads put the smackdown on those bullies.

Gameplay-wise, I've already mentioned that I like the core mechanical concept. The gameplay that sits on top of it ended up being pretty bare-bones, though, and the way fighting works (everything stacks on each other and attacks immediately) meant that either my summons or the enemies would eventually turn into an unstoppable ball of death.

The times I won mostly came down to getting Dad down early and snowballing into additional summons until the enemies were always completely overwhelmed. Having more obvious tradeoffs between different summoning options would be cool to have, or having enemies with varied strengths & weaknesses. It's definitely possible that those kinds of plans were in your original designs - the jam's time limit always leads to things getting cut, in my experience.

I can imagine lots of ways to add variation (enemies spawn in different assortments, or allies / enemies move in unique ways that prevent them from stacking up as easily, hand-designed scenarios with objectives like 'go get this special thing') which is pretty exciting! If you decide to expand the game I'd be interested to see what you do with it next.

To summarize, I thought the look and sound of the game was very cool. I appreciated some very handy (though initially tricky to understand) UI elements as I played, and I thought the core mechanic was fun and has a lot of potential for expansion. The gameplay itself didn't have a lot of longevity to for me, though, and the outcome (whether the forces of good or evil became an unstoppable blob) usually got decided pretty early.

You did an excellent job getting the "complete package" of gameplay together with really nice presentation, and the gameplay offers lots of ways to expand in the future! Nice work, and thanks for making the game.

From Dust by Redoxeide 2024-04-18T04:49:06Z ♥ 2

The method of player control is very flavorful and unique. I really like the kind of spatial logic that I was using to try to understand how optimize my summoning strategy!

It was a challenge I really enjoyed solving. I quickly picked up on patterns that felt like they'd be pretty common, but later on (after getting level 2 or 3 marks on the board) I found myself hunting for more unusual combinations to get the most out of the board.

I did find the difficulty of fighting later opponents (after getting to the teens) to feel impossible pretty often. From a practical game-making perspective I can imagine totally legitimate reasons it works this way - the arcadey randomized nature of the opponents is an efficient way to give variety, and it's okay for some enemies to be too strong - the game's gotta end sometime. From a player's perspective, though, it wasn't so fun to get stacked up against an opponent that I could easily tell I'd have no way to beat.

I know it might not have fit well within the jam's constraints, but having some kind of planned "end point" (win the summoner of the year trophy after 10 victories, show a little splash screen / pop-up with congratulations) with the option to keep going afterward is something I would've liked. Like hands of poker, I think it's not too hard to accept that you won't win them all - having the push to win just enough make reaching for a tough victory even sweeter.

One other chunkier bit of feedback on gameplay: I appreciated that the stats were kept in ranges that made mental math easy. The numbers and modifiers were were small enough to make comparing lines of play pretty easy, and scribbling out part of a plan to spot-check the idea was quick (and good call on having an intuitive way to cancel out). All of those were big positives for me, but a significant drawback (for my tastes, anyway) is that it was very hard to evaluate what the stats I got would actually do.

I get that communicating detailed information like that inside the game interface isn't free (and I think the single-screen UI design of this game is really well-done, by the way!) but having tooltips, a collapsible "help" panel or something for the stats would've been awesome. Being able to know "power 8 = 8-12 damage per attack", or "defense 5 = reduce incoming damage by 30%" would've given me a path to get really engaged with evaluating the tradeoffs of different summonings.

I was able to make up some of my own heuristics (speed is incredibly good, I want to try to be close to my opponent's numbers in other categories) but I have a lot of gaps in my understanding. Do health and defense complement each other in a multiplicative way, so doubling down on both is better? Are there diminishing returns at higher levels of a stat? What were the odds that the opponent dodged three times in a row?! (just kidding about that last one)

I can see downside to communicating too much information (players might sink into analysis paralysis trying to make sense of the math behind the scenes) but maybe it's possible to find a sweet spot where folks like me can get what they need to fuel deeper engagement without any big downsides.

Okey dokey, sorry for rambling on for so long. Again, I think the concept and implementation of the core mechanic was super cool, and the presentation of the game was very clean. You did a lot of great stuff on this project, and I can see lots of ways you could expand a concept like this if you'd like to take it further. Thanks for making the game!

SAKURA by ZekySky 2024-04-17T17:40:46Z ♥ 2

This game's sound and visual appeal (all of the UI, art, and layout stuff) was well done. I really appreciate the tutorial info that plays when it starts too, it made it pretty easy to figure out how to get things started.

I agree with what other folks mentioned about gameplay feedback: it's hard to know where to look while playing, and the steps of combat resolve very quickly. Even though it has nothing to do with the actual mechanics of gameplay, the easy-to-miss information makes it harder to interact with the strategy of the game.

I think it's extra challenging for games of this type - games that are turn-based or have more "indirect" control have to do extra work to show the player how their actions impact the state of the game. If we play as a ninja in a 2D platformer game, pressing right moves the character right (we did it, the result of our action is clear!). In a card game, clicking a button to end our turn triggers a lot of gameplay actions (our characters attack each other, get hurt, die or retreat back to the hand) and none of that gets communicated automatically.

All that is just me trying to say that it's a hard problem. Having the "dodged" text was nice one you did that was definitely valuable - without that it would've been really, really hard to figure out what was going on.

Gameplay-wise, I think the idea of a rock-paper-scissors kind of strengths-and-weaknesses system is cool in theory, but in practice I didn't have a whole lot strategy to my play. I could make guesses at what's best on average based on what the opponent has left, but I didn't really have any extra considerations (mostly came down to "play my strongest card").

Having some kind of effect that carries over between turns (cards get tired for a bit after they're played, that might be a relatively simple one) could be a good way to get new strategies without having to make the game way more complex, but there are definitely lots of ways you can expand.

You've done a lot of the hard work already, you made a game that executes all of the logic of a card game, a CPU opponent to play the other side, and a bunch of cool art and music to pull the whole thing together. It'll be exciting to see how you could expand it if you want to take it further. Nice job!

Dachi in the Game World by yellow 2024-04-17T05:51:40Z ♥ 1

Dachi did it, he finally escaped:

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Now he can be free of from his eternal torment

Summoners Incorporeal by Chinchilla 2024-04-17T04:26:47Z ♥ 2

First off, the writing, art, and choice of music all did a great job of selling the feeling of a lighthearted world where this apparently affordable-and-socially-acceptable summoning service is the norm. I tend to let the flavor my games get the axe while staying fixated on mechanics or technical issues, so I extra appreciate when it's done well.

The puzzles were fun, and the environments for them were designed in interesting ways. I liked a room I encountered where the starting circle was completely covered with carpet, for example. It was fun discovering what new items existed too. I really liked the kinds of emergent strategies that came with the glass chess pieces, and I liked the different "variations on a core mechanic" thing you had going on with all of the different item re-skins. I didn't end up interacting with the items that involved destroying other items, but that whole idea seems cool too.

Oh, maybe having different classifications of items being popular / morally acceptable in different regions could be a fun way to push more variety in an expanded version of the game. Like, this place is cool with animal sacrifice, this place doesn't like fire (no candles!) etc. And the summoner might have to dress the regionally-appropriate part for the role. It's fun to imagine stuff like this, which really speaks to the strength of the concept.

Big point of feedback - for the sake of the jam, I think the mode of interaction (tile-based movement, lifting and dropping items) was a really good idea. I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of SokoMaker, but I imagine that it helped set up those fundamental pieces more quickly so you could focus on your specialized gameplay logic, creating different environments, writing witty dialogue, etc. etc. (the scope of stuff you put together in the limited time frame of the jam is definitely impressive!)

In practice, though, I think the character's movement was a little clunky, and the time spent shuffling items around rooms didn't engage me too much. The initial exploration was fun, and the surprise of what I could find in each room was nice, but I spent the whole time walking items back-and-forth wishing I could get to the puzzle - which was reliably a lot fun! - sooner.

Maybe there's something to be said for "distance makes the heart grow fonder" as I wandered around people's basement halls wishing for the summoning to start, but I'd be interested to see what this game would look like with mouse control for direct pick-up-and-drop gameplay. Or maybe an inventory of items that we can store / retrieve many items from would be cool, if you prefer direct character control. I know these things aren't really feasible in the space of the jam, but if you plan on giving the game more time (and the concept and execution convinces me it'd be a good idea) I'd love to see how those alternate modes of play would work.

Secondary thought - the semi-randomized nature of the levels makes the sting of defeat a bit painful, especially if you end up just short of your goal due to a miscalculation (or an incorrect description - looking at you, cupcake candle!). Maybe a sort of gradient of success: failure/mixed success/great success could be a nice way to give a player extra-high goals to shoot for while still rewarding a near miss. It's not really necessary (and maybe the feeling of a close loss is what drives the excitement of the summoning ritual) but it might be worth playtesting if you've got extra time.

Alrighty, I've almost certainly rambled for far too long about everything. Again, awesome work on the game! It was fun from start to finish and I'm glad I got a chance to play it.

A Grave Mistake by JUSTCAMH 2024-04-17T02:56:22Z ♥ 2

I gotta say it, ya got me.

I saw this get played during a friend of mine's stream, and I had fun unraveling the concept with him. He was finished when he got across the finish line but I could see a tantalizing bonus objective just out of reach - that, and the mysterious presentation of the game kindled a hope in my heart that there'd be even more secrets to unravel.

Watching secondhand wasn't exactly the same as playing it myself! The way that I was able to build upon understanding through experimentation did feel very good (just like you said in the description!) and I ended with a very clear understanding of the rules. It gave me renewed appreciation for the 'history' that the game tracks for me (I figure you know what I mean) as I experimented to see what I could do.

I'm not sure the best way to ask (since I don't want to spoil things for other folks) but is there a way to validate if I found all of the hidden stuff? I got to a point where I couldn't find a way to proceed but I wasn't out of things to interact with, if that makes sense.

The fact that I'm asking about it here definitely confirms that your design had the right hooks to pull me in (and it still hasn't let go!)

After thinking about it in post, my one wish is if it was a bit faster to dig. There are other parts of the gameplay that were memory testing in a way that isn't my most favorite, but I now understand and appreciate that it's all pretty much necessary to make the process of unearthing the mystery more interesting.

The time to dig seems like it's not absolutely critical to me, though - maybe a compromise would be to make digging take one shovel swing (rather than the usual three) after dealing with one of the main objectives? Maybe you've got different perspective on this, I'm curious if it was something you considered.

Regardless, that's a minor piece in a rich gameplay experience. Thanks for making the game, and I hope to see other cool things you might make in the future!

Make New Friends by Benjamin Halko 2024-04-17T02:01:06Z ♥ 2

I thought the style of input was very innovative while still achieving that "flow" kind of feeling I always want from the genre. The presentation and music were both awesome too, and the way things go well until they wildly spin out of control made think - okay, just one more play.

Good stuff all around, a very enjoyable play experience.

Stay Away From The Summoner by manicthenobody 2024-04-16T18:24:29Z ♥ 1

I like the plate-spinning play of optimizing mining uptime, placing imps, and avoiding that pesky summoner!

I think I'd really enjoy a version of this with reduced cooldowns (and maybe more summoners chasing me), something that gives me extra room to optimize my movements and decision-making. Oh, or maybe having some risk/reward where mining more times in a row yields extra crystals - something to make me want to stick to a crystal as long as possible even as the summoner approaches. As it is, I spent most of my time in the late game looking for crystals. The spawn rate deficiency issue you mentioned is certainly the culprit there.

That aside, I appreciate that the graphics were easy to parse, and the audio did a good job of communicating gameplay information. There was some good humor in Big Mike's writing too. It's a lot of variety to implement in the scope of a couple days, I can appreciate the challenge of juggling a variety of priorities.

Loot Chachos by Kiddy 2023-01-17T00:26:04Z ♥ 3

Unwrapping the game's mechanics was pretty interesting! Though I don't think I completely understand them, here's my best attempt to explain what's going on: - The seeds you can place with 'E' go in the thin rectangular plot to the right of the main garden. They can't be harvested for points, but they will sometimes attract the attention of (and get eaten by) the animals instead of your main crop. - The shovel you use with 'W' is actually pretty cool - clicking on a plant picks it up, then clicking in an empty patch of dirt re-plants it there. Harvesting a plant has a chance to start growing plants in neighboring spaces, so spreading out your plants before harvest is a good way to maximize your growth at the start of the game. - I couldn't quite tell what 'R' did, other than make the whole screen progressively more yellow. It seems to be tied to the 'game over' condition - use too much of the fertilizer or shoot too many things (done by just left clicking on animals when nothing's in hand) and the screen eventually gets too yellow and some sort of blight or disease befalls your crops (game over).

There might be a risk-reward thing going on where the more yellow the screen is the faster plants grow? But at a certain point, there's no need to shoot animals or use fertilizer - you can just keep watering and harvesting your crops forever.

I did enjoy the progression of growing my crops out to fill the whole field, but there wasn't too much for me to do after that. Time to chill on the farm and eat some fresh crops, eh?

There's definitely some humor in the sketchy fertilizer actually leading to your farm's undoing, and how being too protective of your work can backfire if you aren't careful.

Nice work on the game, it's a good one!

Bedlam at the Harvest Festival by VictorRypl 2023-01-16T23:42:27Z ♥ 2

Nice work!

I enjoyed working out the puzzles, some of which were definitely tricky. Keeping my notepad window at the ready certainly helped! I particularly enjoyed the twist of logic that helped me solve the "mother" sacrifices, that one was very clever.

In this kind of game, I expect that the presentation of the game is intentionally a bit hard to interpret (like with some folks' sketchy signatures, or the sometimes tricky-to-read fonts). Trying to present the information as flavorfully as possible is the goal, any obfuscation we pick up along the way is just upside 😄

I think that the only major hiccup in the logic of the game was related to the line: > All citizens of this village who erred, either through intent, disattention, weakness or the guidance of others must die.

Some of the goddesses (thinking of Slainte in particular) didn't seem to quite be as strict as that rule would indicate - not that it's a problem, but I imagined that more people were involved in the chain of failures that made the problems occur. The blame game certainly is a tricky one, but when I did land on the accepted answers I was reasonably satisfied with the logic that got me there.

Related to that, I appreciate how lenient the results-checking was. My minor concerns with the little fiddly details of my answers were almost completely mitigated by the ability to just check my theory directly without downside.

Stepping outside of the direct experience of playing the game, I also appreciate what you were able to put together while keeping the game's technical implementation straightforward. It's hard to balance that sort of complexity against story, flavor, and writing, and usually the non-"gameplay" elements are first on the chopping block. The fact that you picked a design that let you flip those typical priorities upside-down makes for a refreshing entry.

Great job, thanks for putting together such a cool game submission!

Soulful Harvest by cactusdan 2023-01-16T22:37:08Z ♥ 1

Nice work! I've played a number of action-ey games this LD, but they didn't really lean into the "harvest" side of things (other than the sort of macabre take of "harvesting" the baddies). In this one, my attention was split between replanting crops, repairing farmland and fighting off ghosts - the harvest was plenty on my mind, in a really good way.

The game's pace is kinda unrelenting (those ghosts just don't give up!) which I think is to the game's benefit. When it first started, I had the feeling that keeping all of the ghosts out would be impossible. There was too much ground to cover, too many ghosts, and too many crops in hard-to-reach spaces.

The way the player ramps up in power and speed after harvests was great, though. It created a turning point about halfway through: I started moving fast enough (and I knew the map layout well enough) that I could bounce from one end of the farm to the other while staying ahead of the ghosts. I was even able to reclaim most of the farmland (though the most exterior spots still tended to get gobbled up). It was really fun, running back and forth and mentally juggling the different priorities I had to balance.

Like a lot of folks mentioned in the comments, I didn't end up using the dash mechanic too much. I did notice a difference in speed when it activated but it was pretty subtle. I didn't actually realize that it could knock back ghosts until I saw you mention it in the comments, but in the end the sword was more than sufficient to get the job done.

Stepping outside of the gameplay for a moment, I have to say that I think you scoped this project really well, especially as a solo project (which is always tough to do).

The environmental art serves its gameplay function perfectly - everything's readable at a glance. The main character's couple of animations bring a lot of personality to the table. I especially like how their mouth opens up as they swing and how they get angry eyebrows when you trigger the airdash. The ghosts are simple, but they fit the sort of style you established with the main character - it's all looking good. Oh, and the menu graphics are great too!

Building in a playable tutorial to demonstrate the mechanics was great too. That piece of polish made the game way more accessible to pick up in a way that paragraphs of description could not.

Your selection of music was also solid, it really helped get me in the zone. Even when you're not making the music yourself, it takes time to select the music and implement it - time well spent, in my opinion.

So nice work - not just on building a fun game, but on balancing the different aspects of game-making along the way!

Monkey Oolong Harvest Bop by PeachTreeOath 2023-01-16T21:05:12Z ♥ 4

What awesome presentation!

The monkeys were cute, and they stood out very clearly against the lovely painted look of the tree and misty-mountain background. The music and sound effects complemented each other well too, the instrumentation and way different parts layer on top of one another wouldn't feel out of place in a DKC game, which adds to that sort of nostalgic kick when you hear those distinctive monkey noises.

The design of the game felt solid to me too. Making it (more or less) a one-button game is awesome for playability in all sorts of contexts (maybe a build for mobile devices isn't far off?). Keeping the goal simple makes it easy to jump in and start exploring the mechanics directly, and a smooth restart after the game ended got me jumping back in again and again.

As I played, a certain elements of the design stood out to me:

1. **Speeding up the monkey's team throw with each successive catch was a really cool decision.** On top of positioning mattering in a straightforward "I want to be able to catch folks around here", I engaged with the extra layer of sequencing throws to make long leaps across the tree possible. It really opened up the styles of workable positions while also adding some natural increase in difficulty for players pursuing trickier strategies.

To illustrate, in my early attempts I tried distributing monkeys evenly around the tree to middling effectiveness. By the end I was comfortable keeping just one monkey high up and spreading a net of others down below - and there are almost certainly better ways to play it, my poor accuracy was generally my worst enemy.

2. **Slinging monkeys off of the tree didn't really have a downside, which was interesting.** It's definitely off-flavor (the sad monkey noises signal it's a bad move to send them flying down the mountain, who'd have thunk), but in gameplay terms missing the tree just sends the monkey back to its original position. In some cases, I think this is a more desirable - if I start with a monkey that's occupying a key position I can throw them around the tree to gather as much as I can then send them off-screen as they gather their last few leaves. I got some tricky leaves and they end up back in their key position - it's a win-win for everyone (aside from the monkey, presumably).

I don't know if making a miss more punishing in a straightforward way would be a good idea - controlling the monkeys is already pretty tough. It would probably hurt most for the people who aren't abusing the mechanic strategically while cutting out an odd bit of strategy. Maybe missing the tree keeps the monkey out of the game until they come back into the rotation? If they climb back to their old spot as their next turn begins it could be a potentially useful maneuver, but not one without consequence?

3. **When I picked up the game, I'd often lose track of which monkey's up next.** In retrospect, I can see it's following rainbow logic, red-orange-yellow-green-blue, but it wasn't something that I picked up on right away. If it doesn't clutter things up too much, having some kind of reminder might be nice to have (a rotating queue on the periphery of the screen when you zoom out, maybe?).

4. **Monkeys always swing one another clockwise - I'd be curious to see the difference in play if they could swing in either direction.** I do think it's a fine limitation (especially so we can keep simple controls) but it made some kinds of moves feel especially tricky to me.

Under clockwise-only rules, you can't do an overhand pitch to the left, for example, and a lob to the right has to be launched from around the 9 o'clock position. To keep the simplicity of one-button gameplay, maybe it could be based on the position and velocity of the monkey when the catch occurs? Get caught by a monkey on your left while moving upward and you naturally get swung counter-clockwise. I don't think it's the biggest deal, but I think it might the way we route throws across the tree more intuitive (and add an extra level of precision to aim for if folks are really into it.

Harrr-vest by jaj 2023-01-12T06:58:57Z ♥ 1

Nice job! The writing was definitely the highlight, it made this little family episode believable. Humor and emotion came through well for me, and I especially like how the secret ending brought all of the different pieces of the story together.

Actually traversing the game's dialogue tree was a bit of a pain, though - I also accidentally ran through some new dialogue once when I didn't realize I'd triggered an extra question in the second half, and I had to do plenty of page refreshing to try to scour the game for that secret ending.

I enjoyed playing through it, but quality-of-life upgrades for saving / loading states and restarting the game after it's over would be very nice. I can appreciate that those technical bits can be a lot of work on the backend, though, so I understand that the time constraints of the jam make balancing priorities tricky.

I think that the time put toward the story, music, branching paths, and general presentation was all very well spent, thanks for putting together a fun (and definitely outside-of-the-box!) submission for the jam!

Island Survivor by ursagames 2023-01-11T18:38:22Z ♥ 1

Very nice work on this game! I enjoyed playing it a lot, it was fun to experiment with different tactics for dealing with the different enemies (especially those mega-aggressive boars!).

In particular, I liked the design of the gemstones and terrain-based enemy spawns. There was this tension I got to play around with - I always had the ability to ramp up the risk and reward of a playthrough massively by going after a bunch of gemstones. That had me constantly trying to evaluate if I was in a situation where I could attempt it, and there were lots of cool factors to consider.

- Rolling and dashing movement skills meant I could move around boars more safely even while in difficult terrain. - Having high damage weapons, or ones I had good control over could keep enemies from getting out of hand - Probably most interesting - depending on what enemies had already spawned, I could potentially bank on using them to body-block the inevitable wave of boars as I dove in for the gemstones

I did think that some of the weapons were too narrow for my liking - basically any of the mono-directional attacks seemed highly questionable to me, even with their damage and rate of fire. Part of that feeling comes from the apparent incentive to stack levels of attacks I've already gotten - not only is right-direction fire only good in very specific situations, taking it would throw away any old investments I'd made.

I think those weapons have a lot of potential for fun, though. Finding just the right spot to use an ordinarily 'weak' option can feel really rewarding in a game that's all about evaluations. I think we'd just need more of a reason to be happy switching weapons back and forth. Like, if instead of weapons levelling up if you keep stacking the same one, what if every weapon came with a minor, permanent stat buff? The narrower the weapon's use case, the more tempting you make that permanent buff.

The current levelling up system cuts down on the player's incentive to experiment and switch weapons on the fly - if it were advantageous to do so instead, I think you could see some really interesting variety within a single playthrough when you end up in a situation where you really do want that mono-directional attack. It would mean that your "build" for a run would be less distinct (which could definitely be a downside) but in return I think your play within a run could get even more varied.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. Like I said, the game was a bunch of fun, and the fact that it got me thinking about the design in these interesting ways was really fun too. Thanks for putting it together, I really enjoyed it!

Scythe by beats 2023-01-11T09:34:00Z ♥ 2

I played for longer than I probably should have, but I'm proud of my 16 second run 🏅

Straightforward concept, solid execution. I like how the art is clean and consistent - doesn't need a lot of frills to capture the feeling of the theme well.

The fact that it takes two passes to completely harvest a plant and the rotating projectiles aren't 100% consistent are nice design choices that keep attempts from feeling too same-ey. The fact that the scarecrow's movement was completely determined by my own positioning was also nice - it magically occupied the exact spot I wanted to throw a scythe, but I knew it only got there because of how I decided to move.

It definitely got me in that loop of trying to bring down my time, thanks for the fun game!

THE REVERSE CARD: Harvest the ladybug! by Acehunter 2023-01-11T08:45:46Z ♥ 0

As a fellow maker of scratch games, nice work! It ran super smooth, and made me smile. I jumped in without reading about the special events and the player-bullet swap thing was pretty hilarious. I thought I'd done something wrong at first, but then I knew - it was that dang reverse card!

First it swaps the buttons in the menus, then it swapped me, what'll it swap next???

Harvest match by ChicoMCastro 2023-01-11T08:10:02Z ♥ 0

I think there's definitely fun to be had in a laid-back, bright and colorful game about delivering plants to folks! Seeing customers show up, ask for stuff, and receive it successfully is a pretty straightforward loop for me to play through, but I appreciate that it's not necessarily an easy thing to put together behind the scenes.

I'll echo what other folks mentioned about the movement - it was pretty difficult to control how far I moved, which made gathering specific plants tough in a "I can't do the thing I'd like to do" sort of way. I also wasn't sure if there was a certain failure state I was supposed to look out for - would customers leave if I didn't give them what they wanted? Is there a reward for doing well?

Given the game's got the basic selling stuff down, I'm interested in what you'd look to add next. Buying / planting crops could be fun (and maybe bring a puzzle or money-management aspect to the game), or maybe adding some scoring or ways to tell that my little plant shop is doing well would be a way to bring some more fun flavor to the game.

LD52 by mstrp 2023-01-11T07:58:44Z ♥ 1

I can appreciate the effort that went into making the game - making systems to level up and buy upgrades can be tough, especially when juggling all of the other work that goes into the jam.

Gameplay-wise, the game had a real slow start for me, mostly because I didn't have many decisions to make. Keeping an enemy in range without accidentally getting too far away (which makes them passive again) could be tricky, but basically my whole focus was just left on that bit of movement.

I sampled all of the different upgrades, and I found the aura to be the strongest and the most fun - grouping enemies and dodging around them to deal damage efficiently and safely was fun! That sort of play was also encouraged by the weapon upgrades, since they just do more damage when you have more enemies nearby. The other upgrades didn't seem as strong to me when I tested them, though I eventually levelled them up when it appeared that the aura couldn't get any stronger. The spear didn't deal damage to crowds like the aura could, and the leech's health gain was small enough that just smashing enemies efficiently tended to be a more useful heal.

Ultimately the later weapons were way stronger than my level-up upgrades, so I think their differences didn't matter too much - after I got the strongest weapon the boss enemy couldn't beat me. Out of curiosity, I tried one playthrough where I attacked it at a lower level without the best weapon (but with max power aura, leech, and some spear) and it was effectively impossible. I couldn't outrun it, and I wasn't able to drag it to a group of enemies that I could defeat for a health refill. I considered trying to drag a group of enemies to the boss (or maybe string them along to create a chain of health refills) but I realized it was going to take longer than I'd like to set up.

By the way, I thought that the spritework for the main character and the skull were well done, and the wind sound effects did a nice job of making the place feel like some kind of desolate underworld

For my tastes, I think it's a-okay to have a game that is mostly about getting bigger damage numbers and growing stronger. In a game like that, getting to grow in surprising ways where I find a lot of the fun (y'know like Cookie Clicker-type stuff) - I think this one had a fine sense of progression, but finding some extra appeal beyond that (to make the process of harvesting souls more interesting, or to make the ways I changed more exciting) would bring a lot of fun to my playthroughs.

Good work putting it together, like I said, I can appreciate all of the effort that goes into something like this - not just the things I see on the surface, but all of the work behind the scenes to get the game off of the ground.

CORN BLOCKBASTER by stalkachevan 2023-01-09T18:53:46Z ♥ 0

I don't think I've ever jammed out to midnight corn-harvesting before, it was quite the experience. The song was really fun, and the clock ticking matched it well. I think that the game's presentation was nice too, I like how the camera swooped in at the start and the nighttime ambiance complemented the groovy audio.

Gameplay wise, I had some fun spinning around and harvesting as much corn as I could, though I didn't have any trouble staying ahead of the tax limits. I was pretty excited to try the dynamite, but it ended up being finicky to launch forward and dropping it where I'd been was usually unnecessary (since I'd already gathered all the nearby corn with the scythe). The humor of harvesting-by-explosions definitely made me smile, but I didn't get much gameplay mileage out of it.

Anyway, when I built up a sizeable fortune, I packed up my dynamite, paid respects at that row of enormous gravestones, and went on a journey to the ends of the earth. A fitting end for a moon-mad midnight corn farmer.

Nice entry, and thanks for sharing!

Come Shell or High Water by ursagames 2022-10-10T05:00:39Z ♥ 3

Nice work!

I'll echo the praises of the folks who've already commented, especially in terms of the sound, art, and how smooth the whole presentation was. The bubbly visuals were nice for transitions, menus were appealing (which isn't always the most exciting thing to work on) overall level of polish felt really high to me for a jam game.

I think the gameplay itself was pretty neat. The things I could do weren't too wild (walking around, jumping, pushing stuff around - feels conventional and familiar as far as 3D physics-ey platforming goes) but the theme was integrated with those fundamentals really effectively.

One of my favorite features was how my vision was restricted when the water disappeared. It got me into a nice rhythm of going into "scout mode" as soon as my vision cleared, whether to find another hat or pick out my next landmark to tackle. It's a nice contrast to the "do stuff mode" of water, the time when I can jump and scoot things around properly.

One thing I noticed is that my interest in exploring the different locations and landmarks I could see outweighed my interest in fish-gathering pretty quickly. I don't think it's necessarily a problem, per se (it's more of a testament to the visual appeal of the pillars, boxes, and lego-style monoliths in the distance) but I think as-is it's not really reeling me in (ha ha).

I can imagine some different ways the fish could be made more meaningful, but maybe it's right for the fish to gradually fade into the background. It shows how I've grown, no longer a crab with sights set on the fish flopping on the sandy seabed. No, I look to the pillars in the sky and dream of the day I can reach the sun. And maybe a nice pineapple hat too.

Simple Harmonic Motion Game by Escapade 2022-04-05T16:54:56Z ♥ 2

Nice work! Like other folks, I really like the movement. There's a sort of rhythm to coaxing the ball to slow down, and that tension of trying to keep a steady hand in a tricky situation was nice.

I also appreciate that the graphics had solid utility. The game communicates information super clearly with the mouse line + trail behind the ball, the blocks stand out from the blurred background without any issue. It's not super flashy, but I think it really helps hold the whole game together.

Oh, a thought I had - it might be really fun if the game had background music that warped its pitch according to the amplitude of the wave. When you're calm and moving smoothly, things are stable. If you lose your cool and the ball starts to swing out of control then things get frantic. Probably wouldn't work so well if there are obstacles that intend you to be "unstable" to get past them safely, but could add to the trancelike feeling that this sort of play can head toward.

Space Saw Defense by Hgaddy 2022-04-05T06:22:47Z ♥ 2

@mgmarlow I haven't thought about Hammerfight in years, but you're totally right!

It is very satisfying to get the saw lined up just right to sweep through a line of enemies - nice work, team!

Ultimate Tennis Championship 2K22 by hajpappan 2022-04-05T06:09:04Z ♥ 1

I really like how each click just modifies the balls vertical speed instead of replacing it. Leads to some very deceptive feeling "hops" when near neutral speed that turn into gigantic leaps with just one extra click. There was a kind of patience and planning ahead (figure out where your ball's going to have to be on the return trip, rather than just looking at the next one) that felt satisfying to execute for me.

I like those particles you put on the ball as it speeds up too, the sound effects are very satisfying and subtle stuff like the way the paddles shrink after the ball collides with it are all really nice touches. You mentioned your aim to keep scope small and how you got to put extra polish on as a result and I think the result was very nice.

The actual ability to get high scores feels a little arbitrary to me, though. With how the ball speeds up, I think all it takes is a low-high-low sort of pattern and you won't be able to make the return rally regardless of how quickly you try set up a plan be in the right spot at the right time - you just sail over the second low paddle because there's not enough time for gravity to do its work. If you get lucky and have paddle heights relatively close to one another then scoring higher is much easier/possible.

I don't know what sorts of restrictions are in place for paddle heights as the ball speeds up (if any) but maybe having some rule that increased horizontal speed limits the random range that the paddles can move to. Or maybe even more precisely, the bigger the different in heights after one paddle's random move, the smaller the difference has to be on the next random movement to try to make it unlikely players get an unwinnable pattern.

Could be that I wasn't really figuring out the best way to play, though. The highest I got was a 28980, but it really was just off of a very lucky series of middle-of-the-screen paddles.

Anyway, I had a fun time playing with the game and shooting for a high score. Nice work!

Dungeon Crawl by jzucc12 2022-04-05T05:39:18Z ♥ 2

I looove menu games, and this one was pretty cool.

I really like the interplay between damage, potions, and MP - it took me a quick playthrough to really get a handle on the whole idea that +1 potion was like +6 seconds if I was damaged enough to spend it, little things like passing turns in combat with the shield (something I initially thought was mostly useless) was a way to "turn on" potions that otherwise would just sit in my inventory. Having 0 potions when high-time path gives -1 potion is just full upside, so trying to set myself up to benefit from those situations was fun.

There were a couple other little things that came up too - at first I saw the "skip time" spell and thought it was clearly the best one, but then I saw the magic slap was 9 + 9 = 18 sec for equivalent mana. Then I came *back* around to realizing that for "skip time" to deal damage equivalent to magic slap I'd have to do at least 1 sword swing - we're back to skip time being 15 + 5 (or more), making it +2 over slap in the worst case. Slap was still good to clear out the worms that could add back to the timer, though.

So yeah, thanks for making this little sandbox of comparisons to play in, I had fun! Despite all of my strategizing, I couldn't beat the "hard" mode - I'm guessing there was some fundamental tactic for wasting time that I missed, or else I just had some rough runs of luck. Or maybe it was just the real inevitability of the theme showing itself. Regardless, I had a good time!

Extreme Plant Sitter by suvi 2022-04-05T05:13:32Z ♥ 2

Super nice presentation, and fun exercise in plant-slinging! The goofy physics that resulted from my panicked watering / pesticiding made me laugh, and it made for a fun organizational challenge.

I started strategizing around pre-moving my plants to the left countertop to share sunlight and make it easier to address any shared needs in one fell swoop. Making sure I had the pesticide / mist sprayer nearby and dropping the watering can in the sink while dealing with other stuff helped keep everything alive.

I had some trouble fixing the dry air thing - at first I thought the little water spritzer didn't work, but I think I was just missing the plant's actual effective hitbox? Grabbing the watering can out of the sink sometimes felt difficult too, I guess because I couldn't click on the can's water symbol through the sink, had to aim for the little part of the exposed handle instead. The game had me hooked enough that I took a few extra plays to try to figure out what I was doing wrong, which was a nice sort of feeling to have.

I think the number of mechanics was appropriately scoped for a game jam, and the game felt like it hit a good level of complexity to me. I especially like how the game introduces the new mechanics one-by-one, I always have the problem of just throwing out a difficulty cliff on stuff I make.

I think it's possible to become stable in the endgame if you don't make mistakes - I kinda like the idea some kind of nonsense "ending" at the tenth level, just having the countertops filled with 10 plants or something to really lean into the humor of the whole thing.

Nice work, I definitely enjoyed playing!

Ava-launch! by LandoSystems 2022-04-05T04:08:45Z ♥ 5

I think the idea is super neat, but I didn't have a great handle on how to limit damage other than putting ramps directly in front of buildings.

I figured that clearing the snow with the plow meant that the avalanche would lose some size / momentum as it passed over the cleared spot, but I couldn't tell why I'd want to pick one row of snow over another - maybe I benefit most from clearing the thickest row?

Sending the copter to pick up people was nice thematically too, but it was kinda another case of me not seeing much of a decision each round other than hoping that a couple of people randomly clustered together for the helicopter I sent.

Definitely captured that feeling of inevitability, the I enjoyed the music and the graphics all fit together really nicely. The way the opening title crawl gave basic tutorial info made me smile too. All in all, nice work!

Unstable Tables : Tales Of A Super Hero Waiter by paulhocker 2021-10-13T18:19:48Z ♥ 1

Nice match-3 implementation! I really appreciate all the work you put into the details surrounding the core gameplay. The little story / tutorial-ish walk-through at the start was really nice (it's something I'm basically always bad about doing in my stuff, so it's always cool to see it done well), the graphics are bright and match the up-beat music, and the smoke coming out of the stabilizer as it heated up was a nice touch.

Gameplay-wise, I would've liked to have some kind of pumped-up risk/reward with combos - maybe the points earned scale up with a multiplier or something, but the heat built by chilis grows in the same way? I always like trying to set up big combinations in these sorts of games, but it didn't feel like it had much of an impact on winning / losing.

There's a little quality-of life things I like in these sorts of games that would be cool to see if you're looking to do more dev on this one: being able to lock in your next move while the current combo is still finishing is super nice when I'm just clearing out a couple of small sets, really helps keep the pace of the game moving fast.

I did have an issue like some of the other folks mentioned - a crash pretty late in the game. We'll just say it's all part of the theme :D

Anyway, nice work on this one. I think you did a good job taking a classic sort of concept and putting it together from scratch in a fun, bright package!

Wild Run by LelulaGames 2021-10-07T18:22:57Z ♥ 1

Nice work!

I appreciate that the platforms are all distinctly colored from one another, there wasn't any kind of visual confusion for me on what I was aiming to do. Minimalism + functional graphics is a combo I like.

Agree with other folks, distance counter and score would be really cool, would be fun to post high scores and compare with one another :)

Definitely lives up to the unstable theme in a very direct way - those platforms are going to wiggle and groove in whatever direction they choose!

On the movement stuff others have mentioned - I dunno if I really want to have more control in the game's current state. Right now I feel like I'm sometimes working with the platforms (when they become a ramp for me) and working against them (when they make the hop to the next spot inconvenient). Having a decent jump would probably make the times when I'm working against the platforms more noticeable while reducing the need for platforms to help me out (meaning less "nice, good work, platform!" moments).

But it'd probably be easiest to tell during testing, I bet. Varied sorts of platforms and other obstacles might make more movement control feel really good, there's definitely a lot of directions it could go.

Unable to Be Unstable by MadR 2021-10-07T17:57:56Z ♥ 1

Nice work!

I like how the robots didn't follow my movements exactly - the wide sort of arc they took was fun to plan around when eyeballing my escape routes. I think it paired nicely with the tasks you set up - standing in place at the repair spots and delivering the items both made me strategize around the robots' movements in different ways.

Other folks have already mentioned similar things, but I wouldn't mind having the way you fight off robots be different some way. The slight delay on dropping acid is fine by me, I think it's the sort of restriction that makes me consider my own movements and the robots' pathing more carefully. I'd just like the idea of having more variety in my options - maybe the player can sabotage some parts of the lab to cause some one-time effects with different sizes / durations / power level / etc? Something that gives me even more unique situations to consider when trying to plan my movement.

I think the stuff you put together works well, though, and the ideas complement each other well while being reasonable to make on a strict schedule - perfect for the game jam! (Also the ending got me, good stuff :D)