EndlessPlumber

Escape The World by Ajayajayaj 2017-04-30T01:50:40Z

This is a pretty good puzzle game.

I beat it 8:30 with 461 moves. I'm certain I could beat it with a lot less, as I restarted a few levels and fiddled around in the beginning until I understood the mechanics well.

I liked the simple design - by level 5 or 6 I was able to look ahead at the structure of the level and come up with a game plan, so the mechanics were communicated well enough through the gameplay that they taught mastery. I do think if it had been a bit longer it would've needed another twist in how the mechanics were used or the gameplay would have suffered. As it was, I thought the mechanical difficulty was well-matched to the number of levels and each level ramped up the difficulty at a good pace.

The one thing I would definitely recommend you add is some way of seeing at a glance which color is currently active. I screwed up a few patterns just by thinking the wrong color was selected.

Thanks for a fun puzzle game!

Alchemist's Prison by Max Amaden 2017-05-01T15:01:47Z

Fun experience. You did a good job of capturing what I imagine an alchemist's job would be like. I'd like to see more aspects of the job incorporated, if you decide to take it further (more complicated recipes, research, ingredient procurement, etc). That said, this game is a wonderful jam game. The procedural customers are a nice touch, and keep it from getting to stagnant. The wah-wahs could be toned back a little, as they got grating over time. I enjoyed mixing the potions and tuning the cauldron, although it took me a minute to realize you had to stir it to make the potion.

Your tutorial sequence was very nice, you don't see those very often in game jams. Perhaps the master should have had you brew him a potion in the tutorial, just to make sure the player has mastery of the controls? Just thinking...

Did run into what was perhaps a bug. I screwed up the recipe for a mana potion, and the game informed me I had to make a large one, instead of the regular one the customer asked for. I did confirm they wanted a regular one by brewing it and them paying me for it.

Speaking of payment, this game's theme is a little dark. Poor, lonely alchemist, trapped forever in a small shack, slowly being crushed by the tons of gold that pile up, nothing to eat but basilisk eyes and poisonberry dew... :grin:

Higher Ground by LandoSystems 2017-05-17T02:00:28Z

Fun little game, a little slow though. I'll get my criticisms out of the way first.

On web, I thought the window size was way too small. I use a 1440p monitor, and the play area was postcard size at best, with way too much fine detail for that size. A larger play area would make it more comfortable to play and maybe could have allowed you to zoom the view out a bit, reducing the scrolling needed.

Menus animated too slow, which was annoying and made action selection feel buggy. I would often click an action and click a location before the animations finished, which had the effect of selecting the tile I clicked instead applying the action to that tile.

The tile heights and sea level rise per turn were not clear. I lost one villager because he was harvesting in the first plateau area, and he had moved into an area that was marginally lower than the surrounding tiles. I had no way of gauging that tiles' height relative to the water level. Also, it wasn't easy to tell how many turns you had until the water would rise above a given tile. That information is really important if you're trying to optimize villager moves. Perhaps some different tile sprites for high water and cresting water (foam and light flooding?) would have made it very apparent if 1 or a few turns were left.

All right, with that out of the way, now to the fun stuff. The action economy was well balanced, if simple, and the distribution of goods on the map encouraged you to split your workers to be effective. I feel like multiple playstyles are viable, and I was able to plan ahead for things like when to build tools and how much food/wood to bring to the mountains.

The forage mechanic was a nice way to prevent players from bricking themselves, although I think its powerful enough that it may be viable to straight up forage your way up the mountain. Also, distributing the iron higher up made me want to rush a scout up ahead to upgrade tools so I could harvest wood more effectively. All-in-all, a fun little strategic experience. Thanks for making it!

Pod2000 by nidup 2017-05-01T16:49:55Z

Oh man, what a great atmosphere!

I really enjoyed exploring the tiny planet - having to interface remotely through the terminal really enhances the sense of the unknown. It kind of gives me a Duskers vibe, but with less stress. The pixel art planet shots were really cool - it took me a little bit of time to realize I could explore an area multiple times to learn more. Doing that really starts dropping other hints for a deeper story. I think there are multiple endings, although I only got one of them. I may play again later to see if I'm right.

Simple gameplay, excellent atmosphere/mood, and terrific audio track. Great job!

A small world lost in a big universe by siryakko 2017-04-28T02:51:12Z

I like your game. The art style and UI is very crisp and well put together. The gameplay is simple, but I liked swapping between the alien and the world. Managing fuel and hunger was kind of easy, but it was a nice idea to have a shared resource like that. It took me a bit of random walking to beat the second level - maybe if you'd had more time a bit more level structure would have improved that bit. All in all, a nice, short game. Thanks!

Nocturne by Awpteamoose 2017-05-02T02:42:10Z

Fun atmospheric game. (or not...what do you call an atmospheric game with no atmosphere?)

I decided I had to enact some metaphor for modern life, so I spent most of it in the chair, staring blankly at a screen with the lights off.(I'm not sure what you call it, but I definitely breezed through it!)

I super hope the music was a recording of you being awesome on the piano ('cause if not, it sucked! Ha, get it. Sucked? Like a thing with no atmosphere. 'Cause it's in space?)

Finally, I died. Finally finally, I read my life's achievements, kind of like the world's loneliest eulogy. Alone, corpsified, in my sweet space bed, dulcimer piano notes sounding out my existence (only they weren't, on account of no atmosphere, you see.)

Thanks for a fun, thoughtful game that really showcases ~~the necessity of air~~

~~the dangers of space radiation~~

~~why lunar penthouse suites are a bad idea~~

something.

No One's Planet by Kate Kligman 2017-05-02T04:06:06Z

**Dimension 1:** 1/5, not enough bloody dismemberment.

**Dimension 2:** 4/5, wizard make blocky men move on magic screen, using only letters in tubes.

**Dimension 3:** pi/5, needs more system bell.

**Dimension 4:** N/A, occupants devoured by scorpions.

**Dimension 5:** 3/5, Fun game, needed a bit of conflict or lose condition. Endless mode bugged out pretty quickly, obviously trying, but failing to insert character into our dimension. noonesplanetstuck.png

Fun game with lots of character, telnet throwback was great!

DUCKTRON by neontropics 2017-04-28T03:48:06Z

WHY IS THIS GAME SO FUN!?

This game is wonderful. The irreverent theme, the mass digital duck murder, the glorious glow of green on black. The mechanics are instantly learned, the non-sentient duck AI is pitiful but still manages to be a threat. I just find myself immediately replaying and exerting my superiority over my lesser duck brethren. Thank you.

Tip: your game is short and beautiful.

Pluto is a Planet by TolMera 2017-04-27T03:07:26Z

I downloaded and played your game. I think it's a pretty cool concept for a jam game. I really like the text style you used for your menus, and the user interface was pretty easy to understand, too. The gameplay is a bit slow - the ships move slowly and I actually won without ever having to attack :)

I did run across a couple bugs. The first time I ran the game, it crashed when I tried to move the third ship I built to my home planet,giving me this error screen: plutocrash.png

The second game, my planet slowly drifted off-screen as I played :D It was pretty funny, and maybe contributed to me winning without a fight.

Thanks for the game, it was fun!

The Perfect Sandwich by tomer_cool 2017-04-27T03:32:30Z

I played your game, it's pretty cool. Platforming's only so-so, but I don't think that's the point. I was hopping around, harvested the wheat, and then found myself playing finger-DDR to grow some lettuce :D

A fun, short game with good ideas. Good job!

Badass Hobo by freyby 2017-05-02T02:23:10Z

Pretty fun game. I definitely _did_ feel bad ass, and my long years of dumpster diving helped keep me full up on ~~drugs~~ useful power-ups. Short, and sweet, with lots of shooting. I do wish it was a big longer, and I do wish the boss wasn't bugged, because it seemed like it could have been a fun fight.

Art and music were nice, though. Recommend to anyone wanting a fun few minutes of shooty time.

Snowday by Jon Tiburzi 2017-05-04T03:39:07Z

Thanks for a fun experience! Love the use of noise in your pixel art - it really helps the whole scene blend.

I think you really captured the pleasant solitude of a silent walk in the winter. I think it is a fun experience - not every entry has to be an active game. I do kind of wish I could make snowballs or knock snow off of trees, through. :grin:

Three of you. by BitOfGold 2017-05-01T14:36:08Z

Fun little game. You did a good job on the art, the style is unique and looks sharp (well, smooth actually, but I hope you get my point :grin:)

Gameplay is a bit simple, in my opinion. I didn't feel like I had a lot of control over the game - a good random walk algorithm probably would have outperformed me in this game, so the skill cap is fairly low. Perhaps adding a controllable camera to see/plan where to go would help. I also think if I had to manage 3 hunger bars by feeding them the appropriate food, it would add a layer of strategy, providing I could see the food ahead of time and plan my route. That said, I beat the game and had a reasonably fun time doing, so thanks for that!

You mentioned using you own library, so kudos to you, that's a lot of work! The lighting was prettygood,but a bit buggy. At the game start the lighting was all over the place. I don't know whether it was the day/night lighting getting hung, or loading quirks, or the nearby presence of multiple crystals, but it was a bit wonky.

I'll leave you with two screenshots I nabbed. The first shows certain messianic tendencies from the three amigos. The second is a place on the map I got caught on and couldn't break free (had to restart). If I had to guess I'd say the tree collision is a bit off.

threemessiahs.png

threeofusstuck.png

Ninja-Vu by doomshmuck 2017-05-02T03:49:11Z

Decent stealth chall-inja.

Guards ninjastandably have X-ray vision and can also detect sneaky shinobi right behind them, even if they're not touching. Lesser reviewers might chalk it up to bad game nin-chanics, but I know they will stop at nothing to keep you from your Ninjestiny!

Dung Beetle by Louspirit 2017-04-30T03:32:15Z

I like your concept a lot. The added challenges of each level were interesting, and I think you could take the ideas a lot further.

I think the controls need to be more tailored to your theme, though. I didn't feel like a dung beetle rolling a ball - controlling him was more akin to pushing a ball around with a pole. The dung balls slipped around more than it really should if it was gripped at multiple points. I think being able to have a solid grip on the ball, but having to manage it's momentum might give it a better feel. Players would still lose control and have to fight to steer it, but there would be more room to develop skill.

I also think your textures could have used a bit of tweaking. Your grass was cool, but seemingly only a single-sided texture. It seemed OK when viewed from the top, but from a dung beetle POV sometimes blades of grass would 'pop' into view as you walked by them. I also would have loved a fun dung texture for the ball,instead of what looks to be a rock. You could take a base brown color, run it through some noise, and use the noise values in your material to tesselate the sphere for a clumpy look that doesn't affect your physics, too.

Overall, a good entry that I think could be a fun frame for some polish.

not on my pizza by wareification 2017-04-28T03:21:08Z

It's local multiplayer bomberman, with a twist! It took me a second to catch on that your salt 'bomb' persists for a few seconds after exploding, and the residue can hurt you. I think that's really cool, and adds a new layer of strategy to a fun older game style. The art and theme is awesome. I didn't have anyone to play against, though. Perhaps I'll coax my wife into a game, later...

Newbie God by nuria-fl 2017-05-17T00:42:59Z

Short, fun game. Got all 3 endings, the puzzle aspect of the game took me a second to figure out. My initial thought was to somehow fill the pool with the tears of the sad woman above :grin: I also tried to shoot the tree trunk to knock it over (cats always land on their feet!), but killed the woman instead. Whoops.

Graphics were nice, the choice of colors was very good. Mechanics were simple and easily executed, though I would personally have preferred WASD + some action keys for controls. Sound effects were nice, but a little loud and out of place with no music. Some simple beat or soft tune from BeatBox, etc. would have really tied it together.

A World In Her Eye by OrbitalBlueprint 2017-05-01T16:33:40Z

I like this game - A little melancholy, a little pleasant. The idea of traveling alone in such a vast dark space, of finding someone, and then watching them leave, perhaps forever, is a bit sad. But at the same time, the kindness of helping someone out and the small pleasures of the tiny planet bring a bit of levity.

Out of a bit orneriness, I first overslept, then went back to sleep, effectively skipping the whole game. I really enjoyed that as first experience, it cememted how important the player's actions are in your story. The multiple endings were cool (although I got stranded on the robot's planet once without cutting to an end scene), and the art was fitting, although the animations could have used more love.

The music was the star of this game, though. Well done on evoking just the right mood, and keeping that through the different areas.

I do wish I was able to explore the tiny lasso'ed moon, though. So evocative :grin:

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-04-28T13:46:51Z

@huvaakoodia, @lacemattley, @siryakko, @jk5000, thanks so much for the feedback!

I knew the camera and motion controls were going to be pretty rough, and it's good to see I wasn't wrong. On Sunday I had my young daughter play the game, and had to coach her through how to jet from one planet to another. I knew then I had to improve the controls, but I didn't have enough time to work up something good enough to replace what I had.

I'm planning on growing this idea a bit post-jam, and camera and controls are definitely first on the list. Thank you all for taking the time to look at my entry!

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-04-29T19:34:20Z

@holgk, @jushiip, @firewill, thanks for the great feedback! Because of everyone's feedback, I've put an 'After LD' build out on itch.io that I think greatly improves the camera controls and space navigation. I'll also put together a short finder's guide for those pesky parts I hid a bit too well. I'm leaving the original submission download on my itch.io page, so make sure to use it if your judging to keep things fair to others.

I'm really enjoying working on this entry, so I'll probably keep building on it post-jam. If you care to follow along, I'll probably blog and tweet my progress starting next week (details in my user page).

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-05-01T03:53:03Z

@aviland, great feedback, thanks! Which build did you play, the original or my AfterLD build? I made some pretty significant improvements to the controls in the AfterLD version. If you played that build and the controls were still bad, I'd love to hear your thoughts so I can further improve them. Thanks!

I'm currently 50 seconds into an end-game cutscene, so you get more than a merry little tune when you complete the game. It won't help those Blocknauts already abandoned, alone with a completed spaceship in far reaches of space, but perhaps it will bring some hope for all the others out there. For people who have already played the game, I'll post it at the end of the game page or in a comment so you can see it without having to replay it all.

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-05-01T15:15:41Z

@neontropics I wish, but sadly, no. I work in a Linux/Windows environment, and Unreal Engine 4 can't cross-compile from those OS to OSX because of Apple's restrictive API policies. I would need to shell out for a Mac to package games for OSX :cry:

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-05-03T02:41:36Z

@fiery-squirrel, I haven't been able to reproduce your issue :cry:.

I can successfully run Blocknauts on my development machine, w/ a Geforce 970 with 4GB VRAM, our older gaming computer, w/ a Geforce 660 with 2GB VRAM, and a bargain bin laptop with a 2.2GHz Dual-Core AMD A8-7050 with integrated R5 graphics and 4GB shared memory for the whole system. That last one runs with a very low FPS, but it does successfully load and I can fly around between planets and such. Looking at some profiling information, it looks like I use less than 2GB of VRAM total: videomemoryusage.png

What graphics card are you running in your setup? How much VRAM does it have?

@samusoidal, I am able to reproduce your issue on multiple machines when I try to run the executable file located at /BlocknautsDemo/Binaries//*.exe directly without extracting the zip file first. If this is how you tried to run it, I was able to fix the issue by extracting the zip file contents into their own folder and running BlocknautsDemo.exe from the extracted folder.

Hope this helps you guys get up and running!

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-05-03T13:44:52Z

@themonsterfromthedeep, thanks for the excellent feedback!

You're totally right about the gravity - I integrate it as a velocity instead of an acceleration. I mainly did this for simplicity's sake early on. I had planned to implement acceleration with inertia, but I was afraid it would make made it even harder to navigate between planets with the state of the controls at the time, so I left it as-is in favor of improving other parts of the game. I'm actually about to revisit the physics so I can loosely model orbital trajectories, so there should be an AfterLD build with more realistic gravity soon.

I like your thought on a puzzle/horror game. I've already been sketching out some plans for turning this into a physics puzzler/exploration game already. The rocket collection bit was just a short-term stand-in to help my world creation masquerade as a game :grin:. I really like how the dead planet turned out, it's perhaps my favorite so far, and I've been considering what it would mean to emphasize the ancient civilization motif a bit more strongly. I don't think I'll go full horror with the game, but building up a slightly more atmospheric dread in parts of it may be appropriate.

Fun stuff to think about!

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-05-04T02:53:20Z

@Linus, I'm not surprised wine coughed on it, I'm using Unreal Engine 4 as a base and it's a bit particular with it binaries. However, just for you (and everyone else who likes Linux :grin:), I'm currently rebuilding Unreal Engine from source so I can cross-compile a Linux redistributable version of Blocknauts.

I'm running Arch linux here at home, and don't have any other flavors around with GPUs to test with, so I can't guarantee it will run on everything, but we'll see how it goes :wink:

Keep in mind you'll probably want a discrete graphics card with 2GB of VRAM or more for a good play experience. It will run on less (it performs, albiet very poorly, on an $85 laptop with AMD integrated graphics), but I'm not sure how low you can go and still run fine.

Assuming compilation goes well, I'll shoot have a Linux download on the itch.io site tomorrow. I'll add a note to the top of the Blocknauts game page either way to let everyone know.

Blocknauts! by EndlessPlumber 2017-05-15T14:43:38Z

@gurkenlabs, thanks for the video review :heart:! Love the feedback, watching someone else play is really helpful!

I've been working on the controls, and my After-LD builds have gotten better, but they're still not quite right. I've found it's difficult coming up with an intuitive, yet flexible scheme for navigating in 3D with a completely arbitrary 'up' direction. The planet to space transition is pretty harsh :grin:. I'm currently looking at Mario Galaxy as a study in good camera controls in a game like this.

Thanks once again for everyone's feedback, positive or negative - it's really helping me to improve as a developer!

Emojixy Wars by Dextreon 2017-04-28T02:39:35Z

Howdy, I tried to play your game, but I don't have a gamepad handy. It seems like I can't rebind the horizontal and vertical axes to wasd or the arrow keys. Any suggestions? This make the game pretty much unplayable for me :cry:

Escapist ! by Number6406 2017-05-01T14:19:04Z

This was a lot of fun. The art style and the menus both reminded me of simulation games from my childhood, so that was a fun aesthetic. Thankfully, your game controlled a bit more sanely, once I realized the red outlined box was a cursor.

The resource optimization mechanics were fun, but maybe a bit too simple. I was easily able to hit the Escapist's material requirements by almost haphazardly placing down buildings. I build 2 farms and had an extreme abundance of food. I almost feel like I could have built no farms and the starting food might have been sufficient, so I think that resource could have been tuned a bit tighter. If you revisit this, a shallow tech tree could add some interest and complexity to this part of the game.

The best part of the game for me, though wasn't the resource creation side, but the world. I found myself wanting to make a 'pretty' village, and keeping everything on one continent so I didn't strand any fictional workers. That's totally outside your mechanics, but I think it's a good sign that you're theme was good.

The rising water was pretty tense, and was what ended up making this a game for me, and not just a button clicker. I was almost done gathering resources, when a block a water appeared a couple times inland, right next to my village. I got really worried all of a sudden. Once I had my resources, I tore down all my supply buildings for the workers and began building the Escapist. I didn't think it would take as long as it did to build, so I was sweating a bit as the water rose up around me. I ended up scoring 827. Not sure if the score is good or bad, but the game sure was fun :grin:

Super Squareface by LaceMattley 2017-04-27T03:42:10Z

Wow, nice game! Love the voxel style, especially the water. Jumping mechanics could be tightened a bit,but I love that you had checkpoints, and added new challenges as you progressed through the world. Very nice game, fun to play!

Duckinator9000 by marek77 2017-05-17T02:48:53Z

Fun game, cool premise! I enjoyed playing this game, the powerups were a lot of fun and added good variety. The health drops were a little over abundant, but also made the game forgiving, which is good for a jam game. I enjoy a bit of challenge to my schmups, but still like this one.

The 3d models were very well done, but I thought the water texture could have used some improvement, especially since you spend so much time looking at it. A bit larger UV scaling would have made the waves more realistic, and the bottom of the tub seen through the translucent water would have really sold the setting.

The controls were decent, but a bit rough around the edges. Laser firing didn't consistently start on mouse down or stop on mouse up. Also, the movement speed was great, but a bit of inertia to the directional movement would have made handling the duck more fluid and perhaps felt more like floating on water.

I played this game through 30 waves, and had a really fun time evading and shooting all the ships. On the later levels, I found I could corral all the ships into a pile and annihilate them all with 1 bomb, which was optimal, but not as much fun. Post-level-30, I decided to die, but found that all the enemies tunneled beneath the water trying to get to me and I couldn't easily die. This may have started on an earlier wave, which would have contributed to the ease with which I could corral all the ships.

Finally, in the later levels, there are so many ships that bombing a good chunk of them frame-lags the game, and even my GTX970 was having a rough time with framerate. I'm not familiar with Unity (UE4 here), but I expect it wouldn't be too hard to batch ship removal over several frames if too many of them die at once. The visual impact to the player would likely be negligible, and it would remove the noticeable hang when a bomb kills large numbers of ships.

Great game, thanks for the fun! Keep on developing!

Here's a quick video I made of the OP bomb strategy I found, as well as the weird late-game ship diving behavior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZVyCbK5sE

Clementina by prettylucky 2017-04-29T02:50:17Z

It's cute, I really like the art style! The growing/harvesting mechanic is fun, I think it just needs a little bit more to be a complete game. Perhaps different plant types, or growing zones, or an objective would really help cement the gameplay. Thanks for a fun play through!

Taco Giant by Kichiguy 2017-05-17T03:14:41Z

Made $17 in tips. Thankfully gnome medical bills are small, so they don't cut into earnings too much.:grin:

The big guy's art style seemed a bit different than the little guys, which was a tad jarring. The only real gameplay issue I noticed was when transitioning screens you don't know who may be immediately crushed underfoot when you start the next screen.

I liked how when you hit a gnome, the were just relocated. That kind of let you plan a path to moved gnomes into 'better' positions that didn't impede you as much. I also liked having to do a quick cost-benefit analysis for crowds to determine if I would net a tip if I went barging in to deliver a taco.

Obviously a taco cannon would be a more lucrative venture...

Mouse Escape by Koen Bresters 2017-04-28T03:15:32Z

I think this is a great entry, especially for your first time. The concept was original and pretty cool, and I liked the idea of trading between different cursor types with their own abilities. I liked that you had to explore the world to progress, although I was a little confused why my cursor couldn't break other monitors like it did its own.

Some sound would've really improved the experience, but this is was already a fun, short little game.

The Littlest Kaiju by Lederhosen 2017-04-27T01:59:03Z

Pretty cute game! The music is fun and a little goofy. I played it on web,and the controls were a little unresponsive, but it didn't hurt the game experience much.

Creatator by Skyward 2017-04-30T03:14:11Z

Fun world-building game. You can unlock most stuff pretty early, so there'slittle to no challenge,but it's kind of a fun 'paint-within-these-constraints' kind of game. I really like the light simulation aspects, where tiles influence those around then and you can kind of combo terrain changes.

It might be fun to turn the timer around - each thing you place gives you build points and a additional time, and you see how big you can build before you mis-spend your points or time runs out. That would let you add more game elements by having different tiles cost differently, give different points or time as a reward, etc.

Finally, I think in a game like this the more tile options you have or can unlock, the better. I found myself wishing I could combine enough boulder and grass tiles to make mountain tiles, things like that.

This was a fun experience. Thanks for the entry!

Hops and Fever Dreams by Antti Haavikko 2017-04-28T03:02:38Z

Really cool game. Art style is awesome. I like the simple design and the levels that breadcrumb new ideas. It looks like in a couple levels I didn't actually need to get keys to get the carrot out of the cage, which was a bit weird. The SFX are loud and get grating, I had to turn my volume down 90% to play - perhaps consider modulating the square or sawtooth waveform you used a bit to soften the sound?

I wasn't able to beat it, although I wanted to. I found that I really enjoyed the jump timing puzzles and playing with the gravity around corners. However, The red level with the giant gap above you frustrated me enough to make me stop, as I kept fighting the awkward conservation of momentum the game has in my fight to gain height. Even timing all my jumps well, going around corners would often rob me of all my gains in an unpredictable fashion.

World Garden by GaoGaoTaiga 2017-04-30T01:09:36Z

This game is pretty fun. I liked the balance between weapon effectiveness and enemy waves, I had to really micromanage my shots and character placement to feel like I was driving them back. The art is nice, although I'm not sure why a teenage Cyclops from X-Men is doing the splits and protecting this planet :grin:

The bombs were meh for me - when the challenge ramped up, it seemed I had unlimited bombs to clear the screen and get new powerups I think it would have been more fun and challenging to maybe make the powerups stronger or longer lasting, and then dramatically limit how many bombs you have and how quickly you gain them.

I eventually self-limited my bomb usage and finally lost a bit over 100,000 points. Thanks for a fun game!

The Deific's Guide to Creating, Exploiting, and Destroying Pocket Worlds by Smiling Cat Entertainment 2017-05-02T03:28:10Z

I really like the concept of this game. I think the execution is a bit slow.

I spent about 20 minutes playing, and unlocked ~10 elements. I think the problem I'm having is that early on the spawn rates for elements are really low, combined with the very large play space. Since elements are scattered far off when they spawn, it takes a good while to get a high enough density of anything you care about to reliably run it all down in 1 go. This leads to lots of waiting for progress bars to fill up, and there are no other mechanics to distract me from the wait.

I think I might enjoy it more if the play size was smaller and the spawn rate a bit higher. In that setup, there would be a lot more elements about, and the challenge would be to run the course to get the specific elements you wanted for your planet.

I like the element refining mechanic, but the current execution's a bit off, and the only end goal are ones I set for myself. I think if you tweaked those two things you'd have an excellent game. I also really liked the guide styling for the early tutorial. I couldn't find a way to reference it after the real game started, which was a bummer.

Overall, a decent game based on a good concept.

Quantum Catburetor by jushiip 2017-05-01T15:59:51Z

Excellent game guys! Your concept is very original and your execution is nearly spot-on.

You really nailed the cat controls. They're very responsive with just the right amount of momentum. The music is beautiful, worthy of a full game.

I'm a huge fan of the level-as-health mechanic! Don't compromise it! The death spiral is real, but its quick, and the few times you can claw your way back up give you a real sense of accomplishment. Once I started treating this as a 1-2 hit shmup with the possibility of tanking more hits my scores went way up. I do think, though, that the world should extend a bit further outside your view. The lack of object permanence is a great mechanic and adds a lot of unique strategy to the game, but I'd like to be able to juke and not have a wall spawn directly behind me on my way back, or constantly see powerups move a hair out of sight and disappear forever. Maybe increasing the persistence region like another 1/4 screen or so might fix a lot of that. I wouldn't increase it too much, though, as the strategy of purposefully manipulating the terrain through movement adds a lot of depth to gameplay.

A couple minor bugs: sometimes enemies spawn inside single tile blocks. Sometimes powerups appear to disappear in the middle of the screen. There's some slight mismatch occasionally between your actual score and the high score.

quantumcatum.png

Don't let the above critiques fool you though, I love this game. It's super fun, super original, and my favorite LD game to date. Thanks so much for making it!

:star: Starshot Master Race :grin:

SORLD by Fiery Squirrel 2017-04-30T01:19:27Z

Man, I really like this game. The music is really good for a jam, and I really like the enforced coorperation/AI assistance core mechanics. The art is really clean, and the action is fast-paced and enjoyable.

Some general thoughts: * I don't know if there's a lose condition. Maybe it's intentional, but after a bit I didn't feel the pressure to perform I did earlier. * I really wanted different colored spaceships to be more vulnerable to shots that match their color. That would require more cooperation for optimal play. * This game needs 4-player coop. Like, _really_ needs it.

I think if you took this concept, added waves with some downtime/upgrade time in between them, maybe some bosses, and added local/online multiplayer, you'd have a fun game I'd pay money for.

s-mol by unless games 2017-05-17T03:06:00Z

Puzzles were a bit dense, but I (think) I figured it out. I beat the game, at least.

How I think it works: !> The goal seems to be to silence (or perhaps equalize) each puzzle. Each level had different mechanics that modified interactive elements (ex. the lights-out-esque level where clicking a colored block seemed to revolve the other blocks) or modified the audio tones (ex. the 4-square level where the yellow block is used to adjust the tone of each other block)

I kind of liked the lack of direction - it encouraged exploring the small game environment, and rewarded trying to tease out the patterns yourself. However, the relationships I noticed were a bit 'distant' from each other - I had to really look at some of them to determine if the effect I was noticing was actually related to the cause I thought.

I kind of got a Witness vibe from the obtuseness of some of the mechanics. I'm not sure that is a good thing - sometimes it means the player will just brute force a solution instead of understanding the mechanic you're introducing. If you revisit this game, consider holding onto a mechanic for longer than a level and tutorializing it a bit. That may make it more approachable.

Great music, puzzles were hard to decipher and may turn off gamers who don't really like puzzles. Overall a fun little experience. Would goof around with music again.

Skylets by Dink_Dunk 2017-05-01T14:02:31Z

Fun game, love the graphics and the music. I really enjoy the 3rd spherical platforming concept, and the entire game works together to make a tense-feeling push your luck kind of experience.

The jumping needs to be a little tighter controlling, I think. I felt a little 'floaty' which made it hard to estimate where I would land. I also kept getting hung on bits of terrain. This made the jumping experience a bit frustrating at times, as I would get hung, jump awkwardly, and fall to my doom. Since the game's main (only?) mechanic is jumping, that made the experience a little rough at times.

I hit a couple other minor nits, like getting stuck halfway down a crevice or inside a planet and not 'dying', so I had to hang around to respawn. Also, twice the escape chunk glitched in the planet or threw me off it, although it didn't affect level progression.

In spite of those small issues, this is one of the most engaging and 'complete' feeling games I've played for this jam. I had a fun time playing and recommend others give it a try, too. You guys did a great job!

Defcon Zero by cookie 2017-04-30T02:27:24Z

I ran into a crash on load :cry: Here's the data I have: defconzerocrashmessages.png

I'm running Windows 10 Pro with a Geforce 970, if that helps.

Rock Always Wins by Not the real Mark Zhang 2017-04-28T04:00:43Z

Fun idea, but very difficult. I scored 11. Rocket 'splosions would've made this A++.

Merchant Marine by jbgoodman 2017-04-27T03:17:18Z

Fun little entry. I love the minimal aesthetic, and I love the discovery of searching for high and low prices among the stars. I think this game would be amazing is you extended it into an Oregon-Trail-esque interplanetary mercantile experience. I'm imagining fuel being required to move between planets, random text events ("Meteor shower! You take 5 hull danage!"), and perhaps even fun beeps and boops for sound.

I played it on Firefox and didn't experience much performance slow-down. I do wish it had an end condition, though. I stopped after I made a hundred or so silver.

Thanks for the fun game!