Doctor_Zeus

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

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

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

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)

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

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!

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

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!

Like a Boss by NBumgardner 2022-04-05T05:42:42Z

Thanks for the comments, folks! The controls are definitely wonky, and the way stuff is just thrown at you from the start is definitely a little frantic (maybe the most generous way of saying it :P). I'm glad you all gave it a shot and took the time to comment!

Like a Boss by NBumgardner 2022-04-05T13:16:20Z

@craig-l Thanks for the feedback, and nice score! I definitely agree about the cheesiness of camping. I think that a partial fix might be to make score tied to dropped coins instead of just defeating heroes, or periodically spawn some kind of power-up that would be important the the player - then you've got a reason to strike out from your safe spot.

Another big thing would be making heroes more distinct - some kind of projectile attack could require movement to get out of the way, maybe. It'd also give some needed variety and give us something to build a difficulty curve around that's a bit more interesting than just the rate that the folks spawn in at.

Like a Boss by NBumgardner 2022-04-05T16:26:11Z

@failuer Yeah, it's a tricky thing. The decision to use grid movement started from a technical concern.

Scratch wasn't running terribly smoothly during early testing, which feels pretty bad when you're trying to weave around things in a game with free movement. It's kinda compounded by how we already knew we wanted the boss to be a bit big and bulky; if we start with something a bit unwieldily and throw on choppy control on top of it seemed like a surefire way for play to feel really bad.

There are definitely a lot of ways that we could've navigated around it, but I knew Scratch handles direct (teleport-ey) movement without much issue. It was a way to make your control reasonably snappy and mitigating some of the issue of the boss's bulkiness was a nice bonus, since damage / attacks are doled out according to this grid-bound logical positioning instead of the literal size of our boss. In theory, I think it's the sort of mechanic that could become a neat cornerstone of how the game behaves but in practice it's not terribly fleshed out.

In the end controls definitely ended up being messy (I also agree with you, mouse for aim + attack would've been a lot better) and the grid-style movement is definitely pretty odd.

Thanks for taking the time to play and comment! :D

Like a Boss by NBumgardner 2022-04-05T22:52:07Z

@welliton yeah, sometimes the "heroes" get scared and decide to run away - err, tactically retreat. Turns out it's not always the best strategy :D

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

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.

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

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

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!

Dungeon Crawl by jzucc12 2022-04-06T00:27:22Z

Hey, I was mulling things over and realized what I was missing. It was very satisfying to figure out and execute it - hard mode was defeated! Thanks a bunch for the game!

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

@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!

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

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.

Power Up! [Local 2-Player] by Doctor_Zeus 2022-10-09T05:05:00Z

@alchemic Thanks for the comment and review!

Yeah, I was definitely thinking of Maiden & Spell planning the design. I liked how the "lich of flowers" character played in that game - the win condition where you build up incremental advantage by placing the opponent-targeting butterflies while restricting the opponent's movement made for a cool dynamic. I especially like how it naturally pushes the game toward an end-state, because eventually you present enough variations of angles and timings to make dodging difficult-to-impossible.

My hope was that the gameplay could match up well with the theme, since getting more powerups in regular intervals gives you a back-and-forth sort of play between surviving and repositioning to get the most advantageous turret placement. I think the game might just get a little too hectic too fast with the sorts of power-ups we implemented, but I think it could definitely improve with some iteration.

The big feature that didn't make the cut was the idea that you could cash out a power-up for a 1-time "super move" - something with a brief, wide impact that doesn't persist. I think it could've added a really interesting element to the game (especially if the turret patterns were toned down just a little bit). You want to create a state that's complicated enough that your "super" can close it out, but if your opponent manages to survive then they get to pull ahead in persistent value.

It might capture that bullet-hell feeling even better as the late-game turns into players trading game-ending haymakers until someone cracks under the pressure.

Power Up! [Local 2-Player] by Doctor_Zeus 2022-10-09T05:24:39Z

@ursagames thanks for the feedback and ideas!

I also thought about maybe making one (or all) of the power-ups spawn on the map, with the same sort of logic in mind. There were some problems I thought of that made me lean away from it though:

If powerup spawn locations are random, I think it would be a feels-bad sort of situation if a powerup happens to spawn right in the middle of enemy turrets and/or a high bullet-density area. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but I think it would be the sort of randomness that stings more because it's so clearly outside of your control.

If the powerup locations were fixed, then I think you'd have a different variation of the problem, where you'd sorta be obliged to put down turrets to threaten that specific area. Both players could do it, but I think it would make the sort of strategies you pursue more narrow (you'd need some significant upside to *not* want to threaten the opponent's power-up).

If the powerup locations were random-but-telgraphed (maybe you see a silhouette of where it will appear, or maybe a circle gradually shrinks to narrow down the final location of each power-up) you mitigate some of the totally-random feel-bads (if one is locked down, you can probably go for the other) but I also think would more often swing the game in a player's favor much more decisively. The round where one player gets 3 power-ups to the opponent's 1 is probably the round that decides the game. Subsequent rounds should snowball further, since 3-powerup player controls even more space that the 1-powerup player can't safely contest.

All of that said, I could be totally off-base with my evaluations. I ended up abandoning the pick-up-power-up idea during the design stage partially because of those concerns and partially because it'd make the game simpler to not worry about it.

I also had the idea that the whole "turret" mechanic would naturally give players an incentive to move around the screen to varied locations. My design intent was that turrets firing from different angles should be a lot stronger than turrets piled in one place. I don't know if the patterns we made totally bear it out in practice, though - having a bigger emphasis on static pattern turrets like the "plus" type would do more to encourage movement, I think, because those are more obviously limited when stacked in one spot.

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

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.

Monkey Oolong Harvest Bop by PeachTreeOath 2023-01-16T21:06:08Z

Also, a couple of things I saw in the comments that I would like to echo: - A way to visualize the reach of the monkeys would be great. There were some times I thought they were within reach of each other but was wrong, and the difference between pulling off a great team throw and locking a monkey into a redundant position on the tree is definitely a painful. Alternatively, making their reach a little more forgiving might just "fix" the feel of it - Some kind of reset button would be nice to have. Restarting after a finished run is super duper smooth (which really helps with that "just one more try" feeling!) so having to refresh the page to retry mid-run feels clunky by comparison.

All in all, a very cool game! The game's scope is well-selected for a jam, and the intuitiveness of play makes it easy to discover and engage with the emergent strategy that springs from these straightforward mechanics. And like I said before, the presentation is awesome - what an inviting way to pull folks into some strategic monkey-slinging action.

Thanks for putting together a great submission for the jam.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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!

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

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.

Farming Combos by Doctor_Zeus 2023-01-11T08:22:42Z

@ursagames Thanks for playing and for writing up feedback!

Having a high-scoring plot could be really cool - maybe it could be the sort of thing where the bonus it gives decreases with each successive harvest? You could figure out if it's more optimal to use it early as combo-building space or reserve it for a big payoff later.

I 100% agree about the score text - From the outset, I thought some kind of particle effects / special sound effect on the ripe crop harvests would feel nice + be a good way to give feedback to the player. Right now it's not terribly intuitive to tell how many points your harvests are getting you - you could mow over rows of young plants and get relatively low value for it, but it feels the same as setting up a well-timed chain of high-point crops. You can look at the score and see the difference, but that doesn't do much for game-feel.

I'm glad you liked Fast Food, it was pretty much the first thing that came to mind when I thought of the fast/slow tiles. Nice and satisfying, just gotta race around that track :laughing:

Farming Combos by Doctor_Zeus 2023-01-11T08:26:32Z

@cactusdan Thanks for giving the game a play! I'm really happy that you participated in the jam, I'll be dropping some feedback your way too sooner rather than later. I'd tell you what grade I'd give you in a spring semester game design class, but I think you already know, eh?

Farming Combos by Doctor_Zeus 2023-01-16T21:45:16Z

@peachtreeoath Wow, you sure do know how to make a designer smile, don't you? Thank you very much for the kind words!

My goal when I made the levels was to make each one demonstrate some new idea or test the player's application of previous concepts in a new way. The way you describe interacting with the game (and the ideas you pulled from some of the levels) makes me really happy.

Like with Fast Food, I wanted to introduce the idea of fast-growing tiles in a way that would make their function very clear without making the level strategically difficult (I worried that complexity in other areas would interfere with the basics of seeing the accelerated timing of the tiles) so I went all in on the Osu-style mouse-accuracy side of the game. It could be a change of pace (figuratively and literally) from the planting puzzles that came before, and maybe reset folks' expectations for what could come later.

So yeah, the fact that you read my design intent so well from a players perspective makes me happy - there's nothing I like more than sharing these kinds of ideas with someone, all through play!

Farming Combos by Doctor_Zeus 2023-01-17T19:04:31Z

@Rocktavious

Thanks for the feedback! I think you hit the nail on the head - the issues you're calling out are definitely the rough points of the game.

The finicky sort of mouse control was built into the game from the start for a couple reasons: - From an implementation side, I had a real clear idea of how to make it work - Lots of repeated clicking would be bad from a repetitive stress injury perspective - Input can be very smooth (and hopefully satisfying!) when it goes well

But it comes with a pretty major downside - it's finicky, especially if folks have a sensitive mouse, a sketchy trackpad, or aren't too into that sort of input style.

Somewhat selfishly, I got the idea from my enjoyment of other games that involve finely-tuned mouse control. I'm not a big FPS player, but I enjoy the technical aspects of aiming. I think it's interesting sort of skill to build consistency with, but I gotta confess I find mouse control pretty boring to practice in isolation and I'm bad at improving in live competition.

So for me, I look at something like this as a sort of sneaky mouse-accuracy training exercise. I can work out a theoretical solution to the puzzle, then work on actually executing my idea. Maybe in the process I find something that works differently than I expected (or is straight up too hard for me to do), then I can go back to the drawing board and plan a new strategy.

The puzzle-ey aspect of the game could be totally separated from the mouse control execution part, though, and maybe that's the way to actually make this the best game it could be for the most people.

I definitely agree about the readability issue on fully grown plants - particles or other markers for visual clarity (give that good "harvest me now!" sort of signalling) were on the wishlist but didn't quite make the cut before time ran out. It definitely makes the game less approachable, which isn't helped by how fast the game is paced. I also think there's room to make the harvestable window more forgiving - I took my best guess at what would be forgiving enough, but it could definitely use iteration and feedback from lots of folks to find the sweet spot.

The idea of the separate "planting" and "harvesting" phase is interesting to me. I think the game's current core is built around the idea of flip-flopping between the two - figuring out the right time to keep planting (vs. waiting for a harvest to free up more space) is where a lot of the more interesting puzzles come from. If you had some ideas about how it'd work out, I'd be interested to hear it (no pressure of course, I appreciate the feedback you've already given).

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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

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 :smile:

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!

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

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!

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

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???

Packrat by NBumgardner 2023-10-20T20:06:40Z

@pipima Thank you for your feedback! I also have the same feeling about the game's lukewarm incentives. There were some elements of the design that I intended to implement that might have helped: - Customers could have "bonus" objectives for scaling rewards (e.g. extra money for having mostly fire in a bag, worth more for larger amounts) - the ability to make specific customers stick around as you prepare to sell something to them - the ability to switch where you gather items from, and more meaningful differences between gathering locations

In combination, I think these could give the player more to anticipate and look forward to & more agency over what's going on. They wouldn't do much to increase tension in the game (none of them would have a penalty attached under the original plan) but I hope a lighter sort of tone would work well for this sort of game.

It's a skeleton of a concept, that's for sure. Thanks again for giving it a play and taking the time to share your thoughts!

Packrat by NBumgardner 2023-10-20T20:19:06Z

@gossioss Thanks for the feedback!

I agree that the game's design doesn't do much to introduce itself, and there aren't a whole lot of neat incentives at play to grip folks. I think there are paths forward to build depth, but it didn't really get there in the space of the jam.

I'll happily pass along your kind words to our artist, I also thought he did a great job! I'm responsible for almost all of the flat / placeholder UI stuff, their jarring out-of-place-ness lies at my feet. A fully cohesive style would be best, but we had to work within our limitations. My big hope is that the readability of information was okay - I worried a lot about keeping things understandable & functional without sacrificing too much of the real art's style and appeal.

Thanks again for playing and taking the time to give feedback, we really appreciate it!

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

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.

Summoners Incorporeal by NotExplosive 2024-04-17T04:26:47Z

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

Dachi did it, he finally escaped:

Untitled.png

Now he can be free of from his eternal torment

Dachi in the Game World by yellow 2024-04-17T06:16:49Z

Also, a strange discovery: it seems that the arrow keys can move tetris blocks independently from Dachi after they flash and "lock" right before falling. I figure this is unintentional, since WASD + Arrow keys + JKL isn't a very hand-friendly layout of controls.

I found (relatively) good success by hunkering down in a little box I built in the bottom, then playing tetris normally (more or less) with the remaining space. No piece hold, randomized pieces, and no (or almost no) wiggle room to tuck pieces under overhangs is still pretty tricky for me, though :laughing:

It's a fun concept to see put into a game. Playing it was very difficult for me until I figured out my "advanced" strategy, but I figure that difficulty's the point. Nice work!

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

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!

A Grave Mistake by JUSTCAMH 2024-04-17T05:16:37Z

@justcamh Thanks for the thoughts on the digging duration. Your logic makes sense to me, I can easily imagine the unfulfilling scenario that comes from digging without purpose, so a nudge to slow down and act more deliberately is useful.

Also, it's good to confirm that I didn't miss something - I was hoping to go even further beyond the more-hidden of the two, but I couldn't find a spot to get to any further.

And yeah, I'd really enjoy doing testing-type stuff! It's exciting to hear that you've got a project in the works. My social media presence is basically zero, but I've got an email address linked from my Github page (https://github.com/SamBumgardner) if you ever want to send a message my way :thumbsup:

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

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.

Heroes of Keys & Kingdoms by NBumgardner 2024-04-17T02:58:29Z

@klose Sorry for the lack of clarity - letters that aren't assigned to heroes can still be used, it'll just conscript some not-so-strong peasants instead.

If you try typing out the letters that aren't in the bottom tray they'll pop up and contribute (in their own small way) to the cause.

Heroes of Keys & Kingdoms by NBumgardner 2024-04-17T06:26:03Z

@secretjuice Thanks for playing and for the great feedback! I was throwing together the initial "tutorial hints" at the last minute and I totally missed mentioning that any letters were valid (and also that peasants can't trigger the "leading letter" bonus, but that's a secondary concern). I would definitely be a good improvement to give that extra clarification at the start.

On the topic of difficult-to-use letters, a concept I had at the start during the design phase was related to it: I was thinking that heroes that go unused for several rounds will eventually "level up" (either by a certain round count, incrementing random chance, something like that). That way letters that are harder to use naturally get more valuable, and leaving a bank of characters alone for a while could be a good strategy to make them even stronger (though common letters are still likely to get used).

It didn't make it into this version of the game because I wasn't confident that we could: 1. communicate the concept clearly - I was already struggling to get any kind of tutorial done for the basics 2. display "levelled up" letters in a readable way (maybe silver / gold tiles or letters would help show it?) 3. make it easy to tell how much better upgraded heroes are. Simple rules like 2x or 3x power might be okay, but it makes mental math harder and balance trickier too.

But I think there are versions of that idea that could work - maybe letters can gain elements that will power-up the word they're used in, or enemies can apply ailments that make some letters poisonous. Lots of potential for ways to give interesting incentives that push players toward rarer letters, in addition to tweaking the randomness of the whole thing.

Heroes of Keys & Kingdoms by NBumgardner 2024-04-22T17:11:26Z

@st00nsa @deborah-messaoudene Thank you for your feedback, and sorry for the issue with the screen ending up too small. I think I've identified the underlying issue - the options we set for resizing didn't play nice with high-dpi displays and would make the gameplay window much smaller space allotted by itch.io

I've figured out a basic fix (I think) and done a bit of local testing. If all goes well I'll get a resizable version published later today!

@deborah-messaoudene About the "reusing words" problem: I did have some worries that folks might get stuck on a couple of words and keep reusing them, but I didn't prevent it (in this version of the design / game) for a couple of reasons: 1. Making the player remember the words they've already used could become more annoying than fun. The simplest version of the rule (you can't use the same word you used last turn) isn't too much to keep track of, but we'd still need to find some screen space in the UI to remind the player of their last-used word. It's some extra complexity, which I thought we might not need because... 2. When you use a word, all of that word's letters are gone from the list of "heroes" at the bottom of the screen. Reusing the same word probably won't have the same effect; we get some heroes back each turn (and the number increases in the later battles) but the type of hero each letter is assigned to changes. This turn "apple" would give you 10 attack and 8 block, but next turn it might give 4 healing and 2 block. Add in the way enemies change their action each turn, and there are lots of reasons to try to find a new "best" word.

All of that said, I know it can be tricky to make my brain move on from some word that I've used before, so maybe it is a good idea to have some more-direct reason to discourage word reuse. It's more fun to keep coming up with new words, I think, so maybe a more direct restriction is the right way to help it happen.

Heroes of Keys & Kingdoms by NBumgardner 2024-04-27T00:20:56Z

@justcamh Thanks for playing, it's really fun to hear about your experience!

The castle's behavior there can definitely be a little odd. If you'd like a peek behind the design curtain, I'm happy to oblige!

...Unfortunately, I ended up rambling way too long (even for me!) If you have an interest in poking around a design retrospective of the different enemies, I've got you covered: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1pfCjqPfKfHuDi3OzNYUxJPhdcFaTMhtoeP0ad6-o0/edit?usp=sharing

But it *is* a bit much, definitely no pressure to read it.

Anyway, thanks for enjoying the game!

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

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

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!

TUSK by NBumgardner 2024-10-23T02:57:04Z

@jcourt Thank you for the review! I appreciate you digging into the game design with your feedback.

I also think that the strategic tension of the rerolling gameplay is somewhat lighter than I'd like. The Yahtzee comparison is apt (we talked about it & King of Tokyo when discussing early design ideas) but there's a really important part of Yahtzee that our game lacks. In Yahtzee, there's a lot of gameplay tension caused by strict category requirements. For example, it's important to score a Straight sequence at some point in the game, but it's rare to have an initial roll that has good chances to "build" toward it. Even better is how the prospect of scoring a straight changes your evaluation of the dice - a 2 isn't great for many categories, but it's essential to build a 5-length straight.

Basically, Yahtzee often puts you in positions where something that's ordinarily bad is good (and vice versa). It has "synergy" within certain dice combinations, sort of like how you'll find cool combinations of cards in Slay the Spire & end up pursuing an unexpected strategy.

So, in summary, I think I'm thinking along the same lines as you. If we were to add another strategic wrinkle to the gameplay, I'd want to create special conditions where getting an ordinarily "bad" result can be the key to getting some big payoff.

We had a few ideas during development along these lines: * special "quest" conditions that grant rewards when satisifed (have 3 chainsaw actions at the end of the round to get more rewards, or all odd numbers gives +X power, etc.) * unique "leader" abilities for your crew that could conditionally trigger. Leader abilities would change the way you evaluate dice, like "+X power for every pair of matching numbers"

I wasn't confident enough in these ideas to commit time to developing them, though. The game's core mechanics of scaling threats & upgrading characters made it difficult for me to estimate what kinds of numbers the player would actually have on their "dice," a problem that Yahtzee didn't have :laughing:

Related to your idea about having something "extra" for barriers, I also had the thought that it'd be nice to periodically have "boss" or "special" barriers arrive, to give some more spikes of strategic variety. Special abilities like a barrier's power increasing every time you reroll, having resistances, or even having a beneficial one that spews extra rewards for every point of overpower you deal.

There's lots of possibilities to explore, which is exciting!

I think there are some fundamental features of the design that I haven't fully thought through, though. Lots of "hm, I bet this will be fine for the jam" kinds of thoughts from me during development - there was just too much dang UI and information communication to worry about. Probably good to re-examine the fundamentals before really going wild with adding more.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. Thanks again for the review and feedback thoughts, I'm glad we were able to share this game with you!

TUSK by NBumgardner 2024-10-23T03:12:47Z

Thanks for the review, @knatt!

Also, "Mad Max meets Frog and Toad" is the perfect description :laughing:

The strategy you described was definitely a pattern I visualized during planning & early development - making choices about how to spend health to conserve fuel & coins for the situations that need them is a kind of tension I enjoy.

I really like your idea about temporary bonuses. Some way to temporarily exceed your crew's limits would let us more safely play around with difficulty spikes, and having the effect stick around could give you some fun variety to react to in subsequent, rather than requiring the player to always proactively decide if they need to trigger a bonus effect.

Side thing, I also had the thought that it'd be fun if you could spend fuel for other purposes too - maybe fuel (or a different alternative resource) could be exchanged for T.U.S.K. upgrades related to max crew size, health, fuel usage, etc. Exciting stuff!

Thanks for playing, I'm really glad you enjoyed it!

TUSK by NBumgardner 2024-10-23T03:34:49Z

@local-minimum Thanks for the feedback!

I've definitely implemented various flavors of "no tutorial, I hope you can figure it out" in past jams, so I decided ahead of time that I'd really like to do better this time. I'm quite happy that I managed to make time for it in this one!

That said, I totally get what you're saying about the intimidation factor. I think that having one interactive tutorial scenario that gradually introduces UI and gameplay elements would be better - something that gives you the feeling that you're playing as you go, rather than just receiving instruction passively.

For this particular game, I knew the UI was jam-packed with info so I was really worried about under-doing the explanations. I'm glad that you played through and got to have fun with the game too!

As far as balancing goes, I also have the feeling that the current difficulty curve isn't exactly right. The actual mechanics of beating any particular barrier is fairly light, so if you outscale the barriers the game won't have much to engage with.

I think presenting a bigger challenge at the end of easier difficulties could be a good solution, though (especially for a jam) it's hard to anticipate what difficulty will be appropriate for folks.

Maybe a "safe" alternative would be to have the T.U.S.K automatically smash through barriers if your initial roll is already sufficient to beat it - you'd do an exciting three-barrier-break combo & get more quickly pushed into a later region that can scale barriers to be a more appropriate challenge.

I rambled about some other design considerations in comments above too, but so I'll refrain from repeating them. I could talk about this kind of stuff aaaaall day :smile:

Thanks again for your review & feedback, I'm happy to have shared this game with you!

TUSK by NBumgardner 2024-10-23T03:36:16Z

@dhim it was a looooong three weeks - I've got a lotta sleep to catch up, that's for sure :smile:

TUSK by NBumgardner 2024-10-25T02:39:32Z

@metriko Thank you so much for the comprehensive review & recommendations!

Your notes on the tutorial make a ton of sense. It's easy for me to see ways to tighten it up now, and I can definitely apply this kind of thinking for future projects too!

It's nice and intuitive to me now, but I don't think I would've stumbled into this understanding by accident. Thank you so much for breaking it down in such an easy-to-understand way.

The suggestions you have for the HUD are very helpful as well. The main "actions" hud (the whole outdoors, really) was a big challenge for me, so I'm eager to experiment with the layout you described. All really great stuff!

There are lots of aspects of LD & game-jamming that I enjoy, but I especially love getting to discuss the games and learn from friendly folks like you! Thanks again for your time, and I hope our game-making paths cross again in the future :smile:

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

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 :laughing:

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 :smile:

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

Trash Game by ursagames 2025-10-07T00:52:32Z

Ah, future enhancement: get the panda trueno black-and-white paint style for the truck for reaching a high score (or doing consecutive drop-offs at a top-of-mountain and bottom-of-mountain point) :smile:

And yeah, the time crunch is always the great enemy. You all did a great job making the whole game feel like a complete package anyway, though!

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

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 :cry:. 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.

Tiles Collector by dhim 2025-10-18T15:55:32Z

@dhim Ah, I see. I had the impression that rows and columns were similarly generated, but the idea of the last tutorial is to explain otherwise; rows can always be solved, but columns are the "bonus points". I figure this is made quite clear in the text of the tutorial, I'll blame myself for not paying close enough attention.

Related to the spoiler:

!> I didn't actually do the proof for myself, but I had the impression that the number of options was limited like this. Mentally I was considering the rows in terms of "there must always be a pair of each color, and there will be a fixed number of 'loose' tiles that must fit around them in ways that create the missing combinations.

I like your idea of scoring 2x2 squares. The idea that they're aesthetically pleasing & but difficult to perfectly optimize is good. Making the maximum score uncertain (and always presenting it as a high scoring challenge) makes it easier to pick up & put down, and maybe can make it even more fun for a group of friends to talk about.

One idea I had while typing this: even though it's a optimization challenge (not a pure-puzzle solve) maybe it'd be nice to have some loose "grading" system for your solution to give folks an objective benchmark for their result. A bronze / silver / gold medal award, or a 3-star system. A solution that at least gets the points for all rows being "solved" gets bronze or silver, but getting gold depends on you achieving some level of high score in the columns, 2x2s, or other scoring categories.

That would help folks have a kind of "off-ramp" that's satisfying when they've pushed as far as they can in the puzzle. From one perspective that kind of thing's unnecessary - just seeing how high you can go might be satisfaction enough. For a lot of folks, though, it'll help to get a little encouragement from the game to push a liiittle further. At the point they can consistently reach "gold" they'll know if they have the personal drive to take the high score higher!

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

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

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.

30 Days in the Fog by NBumgardner 2025-10-12T13:32:12Z

Thanks for the detailed feedback @dhim!

Your consideration for gameplay & the code behind-the-scenes are both greatly appreciated. Diving into the code hunt down the names of the moods & weather patterns is a step beyond what I expect anyone to do for a jam review, so big thanks for going the extra mile.

I'll see about implementing your GitHub recommendations too. I typically don't expect folks to peruse our GitHub repos too much, but maybe my assumptions are flawed (or at least self-confirming) because I don't do much to make them more accessible. I appreciate the notes, thanks a bunch!

I've got some responses to your game-related notes below, but I definitely tend to ramble. Sorry for my long-winded-ness, consider the below some "optional fun" reading :smile:

UI Considerations

I'm fond of games with a lot of abstraction (I do love me a good menu, haha) but I'm definitely a UI / UX novice so my designs end up being a bit clunky - in the scope of the jam most things don't get a second pass. I agree with what you're saying about icons + names - just having images doesn't fully convey the flavor. Maybe tooltips, having name-text beneath the icon, or some other hover-effect would help make the intended picture -> concept connection clear.

In past jams, I've had some issues with over-communicating redundant information (like when I built a tutorial in our LD56 "extra" category game) & also had issues not communicating enough (most of my other entries, :laughing:) so I was aiming for a sweet-spot in the middle by focusing completely on the icons. Maybe not all bad in theory, but it could use more work to achieve the intended goal.

Related to communicating the "bonus effects" during a day (this action will be better because the weather is X or your mood is Y): this was also something I was interested in doing. I thought of some different ideas: maybe adding a glow / particle effect around some UI elements when you hover the box, having a "boosted" indicator on an action choice, a gold / silver / junk border that helps communicate how the action differs from its usual values, but nothing was concrete enough (and the scope I had left was large enough) so they ended up unimplemented.

30 Days in the Fog by NBumgardner 2025-10-12T13:33:40Z

Information Communication & Gameplay

One thing I'm unsure of: how much information is correct to communicate to the player before they make their choice?

I ended up deciding it would be best to give the player fully-accurate information on the cards, but I don't think it's most-correct.

On one hand, it's safe: if the game displayed less information (the card's "unaugmented" stat growths) then we'd have to invest effort into demonstrating (ideally through some visual sequence) how both mood & weather changed the card to its final value. Without something like that, the gap between your forecasted benefit & real benefit would be super confusing.

On the other hand, it takes away some of the possible "gameplay". The game's pretty light, but in theory the process of discovering exactly how weather & mood will impact your choices could be a big part of the fun - a kind of mechanical exploration. There's some of that still possible here (trying to construct the map of mood + weather = which choices is still an exercise left to the player, so someone with a lot of mechanical investment could chase after it) but communicating the full result up front doesn't do a good job of engaging the player further. In some ways, it does the opposite - they know what they're going to get stat-wise from picking the choice, so the fact that it has other impacts on game state (determining next mood) is de-emphasized & doesn't catch interest.

The diary was my band-aid solution intended to address the problem. More explicitly stating "because of X + Y, I got this result. Also, because of X + Y, my mood is now Z" was intended to redirect the player's attention to the question, "How can I influence which mood will I get next?" though I expect the text overload in that page didn't necessarily lead to the intended result.

With all of that in mind current thinking is that it's probably better to be more vague on the main action-choice screen. No numbers, focus on communicating "here are the things the character intendes to train". Then, after the choice is made, do a fancier transition that shows the effect of the day's factors on the action outcome - knocking off stat points for penalties & adding extra points for bonuses.

Maybe also-correct under that solution is having some minor element of randomness in the bonus / penalty calculation - something to add anticipation to the end-of-day reveal, even after you know the general behavior of each factor. I was quite taken with the idea that your stat growths have very little randomness (it's basically just the sequence of weather types) but some variance would be a good way to get invested in a screen that would otherwise become a rote confirmation.

Content Limits

Specifically related to your feedback: > but the lack of more story elements while playing makes it a bit less enticing to replay it again and again.

For sure - the scope escaped us a bit at the end. Part of the intent was to have different scenarios for each character, and have fully unique branches of scenarios based on your event choices & outcomes so each play would be much-more unique. We didn't have enough time to make scenario content for every character (among other issues) so there ended up being a lot of redundancy in the final game.

Being able to view a tree of story outcomes + restart from mid-points you've seen before would make exploring the possibilities more enticing, I think. Options for manual save + load functionality would be good for that sort of purpose as well, though I think having a visualization would still be most important.

Having smaller, isolated events that can happen in-between the major "deadline" events would be good for variety too. The code isn't too far off from being able to support something like that, but it's another one of those things that wasn't quite practical to implement within the constraints of the jam.

There are a lot of flaws and limitations of this design (along with the fact that the gameplay concept from the outset is quite niche) but it'd still be good to finish it!

30 Days in the Fog by NBumgardner 2025-10-12T13:34:10Z

Closing Thoughts

At some point in these rambles, I know I'm just using the comment-writing as an excuse to get my own thoughts in order.

Game making & design is super fun for me, and a big part of that fun is all the design-thinking that comes out of the process. So far, the feedback we've gotten has been about aesthetic & mood, which is great - the art & sound folks did an awesome job, in my opinion, and it's great to hear their efforts receive appreciation!

For my own self-indulgence, though, I've been looking forward to discussing the design & mechanical aspects of the game - too much, maybe, based on how long I rambled :laughing:

For folks who read through to the end, thanks! I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on this stuff, if you have any things to share - feeling engaged, feeling disengaged, confused, etc.; all of it's valuable feedback. Thanks for playing, and thanks for reading, commenting, jamming, etc.

I'm glad we all get to share this fun event with one another!

30 Days in the Fog by NBumgardner 2025-10-12T13:39:12Z

Also, @cartmouse thank you for your feedback!

I definitely agree that the game's communication makes the game's mechanical workings pretty obtuse. I wrote a looooong ramble up above if that kinda thing interests you :smile:

Regardless, thank you very much for your feedback!

I've been thinking about the game's design (especially limitations & weaknesses) since the jam finished, so getting some notes about how play felt from an external perspective is super helpful.

30 Days in the Fog by NBumgardner 2025-10-25T23:14:47Z

@ursagames Thanks for the feedback! (and sorry for getting back a little late)

I'm glad you liked the sound stuff, I know the folks providing lines & making those systems had fun making it :smile:

There were definitely a lot of "good intentions" with the design that didn't get fully realized, but there were also a fair share of design problems that I didn't have good intuition for how to handle - I have that big ol' ramble above about that stuff.

I really like the idea of having more random events - little "choose your own adventure" strings that happen without prior warning would be great for variety, have a fun aspect of discovery (I wonder what possibilities lie behind option "C"?) and could create a unique gameplay "flavor" for that makes a particular run memorable ("that's the time I won the poker game & the mob came after me!").

Having some kind of preview of what's coming up will be good, but I think additional testing would help convince me what amount information is best. I've been thinking a lot about how sprinkling more variance into the game probably wouldn't be a bad idea, but maybe the way to do it is "roll the results ahead of time, show the player the results of the random rolls" so the player makes decisions with confidence? I think I really should just play a bunch of games in this genre to refine my sense for what works & why it's good.

I strongly feel you're correct that scoping smaller for the jam would've been a smart decision.

Our original concept was quite ambitious, and it was heavily aimed at multiple playthroughs; there would be items you could collect & share across playthroughs (or in the comment section!) and the types of items available to each character would be different. So the game would be focused on multiple playthroughs ("collecting" endings) but allowing people to share persisting progress across different plays would mean the community as a whole could eventually reach all of them... definitely very ambitious for a weekend project, and definitely aiming for a very high level of engagement from the jam folks! (like, how would we even explain and tutorialize it? You get more-complicated mechanics from another person's playthrough *and* you're supposed to pass the baton on to the next person? :laughing:)

I don't regret going for it, but I think it's too bad we didn't get to see the "community teamwork" features in action. Even if the idea isn't too compatible with audience expectations, I don't mind using the jam as an excuse to take the best shot I can. Of course, it's always good to make sure the whole team is on the same page - just because I'm wrapped up in my own world when tinkering with design ideas doesn't mean everyone else wants to be there too.

It's always nice swapping reviews & discussion with you. Looking forward to next time too!

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

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):

level_18.png

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)

level_31.png

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 :wink:) 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!

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

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! :smile:

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 :laughing:) 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.

Random Walk by nuzcraft 2025-10-12T15:51:39Z

I think that it could be possible for this game to get more out of the movement concept - maybe making the game not require a static path, but instead giving the player an "energy limit" that gradually gets increased (which triggers the reset mechanism when it runs out) would make the randomness feel less arbitrary & more "normal" to the top-down perspective. Scoring & awarding XP would have to change, I imagine it could be based on how close the player got to the coin before their energy ran out.

There might even be some extra fun tension, getting that feeling of "I can't actually reach the coin, maybe I should just stop & cash out my XP" feeling along the way.

Of course, that would make it more game-ey and less of a probability experiment - might not hit the notes you're wanting.

I had other thoughts (maybe you flavor it as "the floor has a chance to break w/ each step) but they might not be the right way to go - there is an endearing quality to a character who just fails to walk in the direction they're supposed to over and over :smile:

At the end of the day, though, what matters most is your satisfaction with it. Thanks for indulging me in this too-long rambly pair of comments, and good luck on your future game-making endeavors!

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

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

boss_favor.png

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!

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

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!