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Ayakashi: The Mystery of the Sea by igorfelga 2022-04-11T17:50:17Z

It’s great that you guys pushed your boundaries and tried to make your own art assets this time. The mood boards are great, and I think after playing the game you guys did a good job of conveying the general aesthetic you wanted to have. Having the patterned sea waves and menu items really helped pull that vibe together.

The longest I survived was 37 seconds. I have no clue if that’s good or bad, but the most effective strategy for me seemed to be shooting harpoons in an arc even when no tentacles have been deployed since the throw is slow so the harpoons hit the tentacles while they’re reaching out to the boat. As others have mentioned the lack of feedback on damage makes it hard to play the game and come up with a strategy since it’s not clear to the player what hurts them specifically and how much they’re hurt.

I can definitely see what you guys were going for though, and since it sounds like there were a lot of things that came up for you guys I'm sure it could have been a lot more fleshed out if luck was on your side. Hope all the pets & computers are doing well now!

My Girlfriend Wants a PUPPY!! by James_7777 2022-04-11T12:32:50Z

Cute & funny premise and story! First off I think it was great of you to add the color blind assist option – especially in a color matching game that would definitely be super key for some people. In a game jam it's pretty common to overlook or push off features like that so it was a nice touch.

As others have mentioned it took me awhile to get used to switching between the response colors and I agree that having hot keys tied to the colors would help reduce that friction while still sticking to the color matching premise. Especially since at the end the difficulty ramped up to where it felt like you only had a few seconds to switch color & shoot the bullet I think just slightly easier color switching (or a faster shot) would lead to a more enjoyable experience while still allowing room for challenging end levels.

Drawing full art pieces & backgrounds are definitely time consuming in a game jam so I think you did a great job with that! The screentone shading is a nice touch that gives it a manga feel, and I also found the paw cursor so cute. Overall the art, music, & general vibe was very nostalgic for me and took me back to times when I used to play flash games in high school so I loved that! :)

Unknowable by Briibot 2022-04-11T18:34:17Z

Very cute game! The art and animations were very well done and had a lot of personality. Even though the play space isn’t that big you definitely get a great sense of the world and all the characters made me curious to learn more about them (which I guess is the opposite of what the unknowable wants!) I also think you guys picked good colors and indicators to let the player quickly know what they’re supposed to do, where they want to go, and what’s dangerous.

I agree with previous commentators that I was wishing for keyboard controls halfway through the gameplay and found the click movement to be fatiguing. Though if there were ways to make the click movement more enjoyable, I think that’d also be a nice improvement. Like if interacting with certain objects let you move more spaces or move in different ways (e.g. after interacting with object 1 maybe you are now forced to jump to some tile y spaces away from you). I think stuff like that could also keep the gameplay fresh as you’d have to find new ways to travel which is the bulk of the strategy right now.

Overall I think this game was a great short & sweet entry that did a good job presenting a spooky yet cozy vibe. Nice job!

NAP GUARDIAN by nethead 2022-04-11T11:56:00Z

This was such a nice little game! As others have mentioned it took me awhile to get used to vertical dash for jumping – I kept on trying to use up for jump and do midair dashes but got the hang of it after a while and really enjoyed dashing through enemies as I powered up. I appreciated having options for the game controls. That’s one of those small details that is nice & unexpected in a game jam game. I was doing ZXC for most of the game, but my finger got fatigued using Z so eventually switched over to space for attack :P

I thought the pacing of the game was pretty good. There was plenty of time in the beginning to get used to jumping around the map and finding a good position. The waves came steadily too with just enough ramping difficulty that when I felt comfortable a new challenge appeared. In hard mode I was so certain I was in the clear and then the boars came in! With the larger enemies I appreciated having the bombs since as I mentioned was getting some finger fatigue at the end there & would have loved to be able to upgrade those as well.

I thought it was smart having the shop be just slightly difficult enough to get to that I had to make plans around when would be a good shop time. If it was in an easy to reach area I would have probably just ran over constantly and spammed buy, but since it was out of way of the target, enemies, and was high enough that I had to charge dash I only went when I felt like I had enough money to buy something I needed or had good breathing time between waves.

The tutorial was also a nice touch – it’s rare to get a tutorial in a game jam game so one with that much polish was unexpected! The game in general had a lot of polish and it wasn’t until I got the “thanks for playing” that I even remembered I was playing a game jam game! The art & music really contributed to a bodyguard at night vibe. Actually, it reminded me of heist & thief movies. The simple character designs completely worked. All the characters had a lot of personality and the colors you picked helped draw my eyes to what I needed to pay attention to.

The Gallows by Burn Tree 2022-04-11T17:26:21Z

Short & sweet entry! The art & music are beautiful and really add to the overall mood of the game. The hangman drawing was such a simple & effective tool throughout the game. I also really liked the color palettes that were chosen. The first scene was so light and bright and hopeful in the park which I think helps pull the player into the relationship. The next two scenes in the city and house with the more grounded setting and low saturation palettes helped build dread. Especially the house scene with the lo-fi vinyl crackling effect immediately put me in a melancholy mood. The final scene with the sunset I think did a good job walking the line between building anticipation & calmness so it was a great way to end this game.

I thought the story was also well done. Even though it was a short game I felt connected to the characters early on into the game. All the sentences scribbled around also really contributed to the growing anxiety and feeling of something coming around the corner. I would have liked a way to go back between scenes though, or at least be able to exit the hangman drawing once you’ve opened it. It didn’t seem like there were ways to do those things and sometimes I would miss unlocking a memory before accidently going to the next scene. Especially since the game is all about connecting you to the characters knowing you missed a memory can be a bummer. I did end up replaying to make sure to check them all out!

That being said I still appreciated that you guys let the player learn by themselves how to play your game. Letting players walk around in the beginning enjoying the atmosphere & soaking in the story I think is very effective so that they’re intrigued by the time they get to the far right where you guys introduce using F to pick up things and combine object & location to unlock.

Great job to the whole team!

J-Menuing by nyxkn 2022-10-05T07:14:20Z

You did a great job of invoking the JRPG vibe! I immediately was transported into that headspace based on the music, menu, and sound effects. I read in an earlier comment that you wanted to do more visually and of course I think we all know that feeling of wanting to add more polish to a game jam game, but I thought you did a good job of setting up all the basic elements necessary to convey your theme & idea.

One of my favorite genres is typing games and somehow I felt like this game really captured what I love about that genre which is frantically trying to speed up your keyboard input while simultaneously reading & processing something ahead of what you're inputting. Especially when I made a mistake/something changed in the middle of doing an attack and I had that familiar panicked (but somehow enjoyable) decision making of "should I go back and try to correct or just push through this to save on time and get to the next character?"

JRPG nested menus can definitely feel a bit tedious so the idea of building a game around it paired with the 10 second theme to give that exhilarating rushed puzzle solving experience was genius!

Cat.exe by Alpha Wolf Studios 2022-10-05T05:56:35Z

The aesthetics of this game were done so well. The old OS desktop was already clever, but the vaporwavey/old school Tron VR aesthetic of the computer hardware stages really took it to the next level both vibe & nostalgia wise. And clippy! I loved the clippy tutorial and thought it was really well timed with the stage design. Though in my first play through I did miss a couple of his tips just focused on the stage.

I'm not really good at these sort of games but enjoyed the flow with a lot of the sections after I got used to the floaty jumps. On my first play through I jump dashed over a lot of the red platforms you could land on so when I got to the section when they were moving back and forth it took me awhile to realize I could land on them as I had started thinking red=don't touch and instead thought I was just really messing up the jump-dash timing.

Overall I thought it was a really solid game especially done with such a huge team! I've been on several huge teams in the past and I know how hard it can be to coordinate across so many people especially in a game jam setting where communication can easily break down. So I was really impressed with how polished and cohesive of a game you guys were able to put out!

It's A Match! by cobrajs 2022-10-05T06:29:27Z

Short & sweet game! I thought the visuals were great. All the small little animations added a lot of personality to the matches, and I think the simple & clean approach really helps not overwhelm since the gameplay of trying to frantically match all the symbols in a short amount of time can easily feel overwhelming if there's too much going on. I immediately knew what I had to do based on the way the first stage was visually laid out.

I really like coordination games like this and had fun trying to match as many matches as I could each round. It did take me awhile to understand why there was only one symbol being shown while the matches were talking vs hover - in my frantic gameplay state I thought their interests were changing based on the matches they were talking to, but I eventually got it!

Also loved the play on the pun of matches as it's one I haven't seen before in a "romance" game and really clever (especially since the gameplay is also match based!) I definitely chuckled when I read the part about the matches lighting up from "friction in the relationship"!

Fairy Feeder by recursiveanomaly 2023-01-12T23:45:13Z

Ahhh! Such a cute little clicker game that turned... not so cute! The mood of the main game was super chill and hypnotic even. The music gave me foggy early morning feelings and the shading on the willow tree was so nice! When the music cut and I got the sudden dark ending screen background I was immediately like "uh oh!" That twist got a chuckle out of me!

I agree with the choice to leave in placement of the berries/fairies as for me it did allow more feeling of agency/attachment and made me at least try and form some strategies. I ended up putting all my berries in a cluster to try and keep the fairies somewhat grouped together during feeding time. As long as a vortex didn’t spawn there, I could be slightly slower in my time to get rid of it, and if a vortex did spawn there since I kept the berry cluster pretty high and in the middle I was able to quickly move my mouse there.

faeries.png Overall, I really enjoyed the game. The balance was good - pretty much the whole time I was trying to juggle between all the tasks and none of them got to that tedious point. I think the vortexes was a nice touch and forced me to be more mindful of the terrarium instead of just getting lost in button clicking. Also! Great tutorial! It can be hard to plan for a tutorial during a game jam and that one was such a nice one with slowly feeding the player info as they got to the relevant next step.