gjarble

Year	LD	Theme	Game	Division	Rank	Ov	Fu	In	Th	Gr	Au	Hu	Mo	Cm	Co
2016	35	Shapeshift	Temple Shuffle	compo	416	3.27	3.13	3.87	3.13	2.80	2.73				22
2015	34	Two Button Controls / Growing	Space Beards	jam	584	3.25	3.25	3.65	4.05	2.60		3.90			36
2014	31	Entire Game on One Screen	Cuestick Gladiator	compo
2013	28	You Only Get One	Fly On The Wall	jam											10
2012	25	You are the Villain	Interns From Mars!	compo	181	3.33	3.25	3.67	3.83	3.17	2.92				22
2012	24	Evolution	Coming Into Focus	jam	220	2.56	2.38	3.31	2.25	2.69			1.54
2012	23	Tiny World	Friends and Foes	compo	410	3.00	3.05	3.11	2.58	2.37	2.18	2.23	2.53		32
2011	21	Escape	Beyond the Fourth Wall	compo	213	2.96	2.92	3.64	3.80	1.88	1.00	3.25		1.80	6

Stormcrow by someone 2011-09-12T22:44:00

A solid concept, but it needs a lot more polishing. I think the camera should be somewhere in between the default position and the fully-zoomed-out position... you should be able to see the enemies and have a chance to avoid them before they start attacking you. Also, you may want to change the controls, or allow the user to change them. Many laptops, for instance, lack both a scroll wheel and PgUp/PgDn keys, so they would not be able to zoom in or out. Finally, the instructions could use a bit of clarification- it took me a while to realize that the green line on the edge of the screen pointed toward the goal. Also, you should probably mention that releasing the mouse makes your ship fly to the last point you had clicked- knowing that made braking on the goal a LOT easier.

The Wave by Milo 2011-09-12T23:50:00

I like the concept, and it's certainly fun to play. There is one thing that bugs me: the fact that the buildings in the left half of the city exit to the right. This makes it so, during the first half of the game, a building's residents drown once the wave has covered the entire building, but residents in the second half drown once the wave so much as touches their building (because then the exit is blocked). This makes it so, once the wave approaches half-way mark, a lot of people drown in a very short timespan, as for that brief period, the wave essentially drowns people twice as fast.

Room Escape by bmfs 2011-09-13T00:17:00

Nice work and fun to play. I get what the beeping represents (and it's brilliant) but I don't understand why leaving a plain ol' room causes the events of the ending (does it represent waking up from a dream?). Also, as far as the beeping is concerned, I'm not sure it's the best idea to have it go on for 2 whole levels, given their length and the challenge level of the game. I would suggest starting the beeping near the end of the last level, but here's a cool idea if you want it: Work the beep into some music, but as the game goes on, gradually strip the music of the other instruments, leaving only the beeping by the end of the last level.

Astar by intmain 2011-08-27T06:41:00

I love the design, and the graphics and music are cute. The pathfinding seems a bit buggy, though. There were a few spots that are 3 squares away (and thus, the player should be able to reach), but when they are moused over, the pathfinding shows a more roundabout 3-square route that stops one square away from the destination, as if it were 4 squares away and impossible to reach.

Escape Velocity by Murphy 2011-09-13T02:01:00

I love the concept. I do want to let you know, though, that the controls don't work at all in Safari 5.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.8. I tried it again in Firefox 5.0, and it worked most of the time, but going through the exit occasionally led me to an empty room where I couldn't move, and I had to restart the game. I think it happened whenever I went through a door with black holes on it.

Urth by Andrew 2011-08-24T22:37:00

You said in your journal that you were getting addicted to your own game- after playing it, I can see why! The design is absolutely brilliant. My only complaint is how the leaderboard pops up after every level in story mode if you have entered a name, but that's a minor quibble. I've only played a few games so far, but this is easily my favorite of those.
(p.s.: I'm gunning for the top of that leaderboard).

Beyond the Fourth Wall by Gjarble 2011-08-30T18:08:00

Thanks to everyone for the kind words (and to JohanAR for the shoutout)! The response to my game so far has been far better than I expected- it's definitely given me enough confidence to expand on this game for a later time.

LD23 — Tiny World

AquaWars by ElzingaT 2012-05-09T08:16:00

Seeing as it's a Unity game, it wouldn't be too difficult (a few clicks, IIRC) to release a Mac version.

As for the game itself, I really like the concept, and it's a lot of fun to play. I can't play the post-jam version because I don't have an Android, but here's how I think the game could be improved:
- A counter to show how many enemies are onscreen. When I lost, I thought about 6 enemies, though some may have been obscured by the upgrade menu. I'm pretty sure some worms were blocking the view of other worms, too.
- Speaking of the upgrade menu, I had the upgrade menu open for the majority of the game, as I often quickly alternated between attacking and buying. Perhaps it should be moved to a spot where it does not partially block the player's view (such as the top or bottom of the screen) and not need to be "opened".

Crater by MidgeS 2012-04-24T04:16:00

Since you say "game ends when you die by hunger", I assume it's impossible to take the meat from the oven? Too bad you didn't have time to implement most of the story- seems like it could be intriguing. Nice job on the animation.

Yeah, LD's always hardest the first time around. Don't worry, it gets better with experience. It's especially tough when you're doing an adventure-type game like this, and each object's behavior has to be coded individually. I'd recommend looking for an engine built for games that does some of the dirty work for you - there's a lot out there for free. For action games, FlashPunk and Flixel are immensely helpful- all the stuff that would normally take hours, (like tilemaps, animation, camera scrolling, and collision detection) can be done with a single line of code. If you want to do another story-based game next time, I've never used it, but Adventure Game Studio might be worth a look. Just, whatever you do, make sure to keep the idea small- even with a good engine, everything takes longer than you think it does (I'm using the general "you" here, not just you personally).

Bombs World by minimicro 2012-05-09T07:53:00

Interesting idea- it's kinda like Bomberman, but the blocks are your opponent.

tiny hostile world by Akunate 2012-05-09T07:47:00

I like how, unlike most dodging games, the player's surface isn't just a flat plane. Also, I notice that, unlike what some commenters have said, the difficulty DOES ramp up. If you've edited the game after the competition was over, for future reference, you're not supposed to do that- if you want to release an improved version of your game after the one that you submitted to the compo, you can add a link to a "post-compo version" (so people know to rate only what you did in 48 hours). That said, I doubt you did anything like that. I'm betting a more likely explanation is that it takes a minute or two for the difficulty to ramp up enough for the player to notice, and most people died or stopped playing by then.

Like everybody else has said, the best thing to do from here is add features to make it more interesting. The highest priority should be either a score or a win condition; something for the player to work towards. If you're having trouble getting stuff done within a short timeframe, I'd recommend looking for a free game engine- they can do a lot of the tedious dirty work for you.

By the way, I noticed the game can also be played by dragging the mouse. Is this intentional? If so, you should note it in the instructions.

Memento XII by deepnight 2012-05-14T00:46:00

The story was excellent. I disagree with some of the other commenters that said there wasn't enough closure- I like that you leave the backstory sort of open-ended, but give just enough information for the player to figure out the mystery he's trying to solve. Still, some of the puzzles were very unintuitive, and after being told what the solution was, I felt like I wouldn't have had enough information to figure it out on my own. There's an interesting contrast there: there's neither much story information nor much puzzle information, but one of those helps the game, while the other harms it.

Pond: The Strider by Ni 2012-05-14T01:04:00

Love the idea, and a water strider is a perfect choice for the movement system you came up with (or vice versa, I don't know which idea came first). My only complaint is with the green squares (are they the pond scum?)- it's a bit steep of a difficulty curve when they first appear, transitioning the player from being under a mild threat to being under constant threat (by a rather large homing enemy at that). Also, the fact that they are abstract enemies, and that the majority of the other enemies (the bugs and arguably the eggs/larvae) are representational, can lead to some confusion regarding what is and isn't an enemy. The first time I died by the green squares, I wasn't sure whether or not they were in the background. Also, it was very useful to figure out that the small, unmoving fadey circles were not just more background but actually denoting enemy spawn points- you may want to put it somewhere in the instructions.

Pond: The Strider by Ni 2012-05-14T01:06:00

Things I forgot:
- I'm playing this on a Mac under WINE, and I never got to view the F1 info screen (probably due to the way Macbook function keys work), so apologies if that information IS in the instructions.
- The music is awesome.

Particulate Planet by Jedi 2012-05-09T07:32:00

The shooting is very difficult without depth perception; the player has no way to tell exactly where (along the Z axis) a bullet will go (the cursor may change size with depth, but that only tells the player a given cursor depth's *relative* position to another cursor depth, without showing how close/far the cursor is to the pills). This might be better as a 3D game, if you can figure out a simple enough way to implement that- perhaps two side-by-side views where the player has to cross their eyes? Also, as far as the control scheme is concerned, make sure to have alternate controls for people playing on more limited systems (like laptops)- for instance, not everyone has a mouse wheel.

That said, I like the artsy/eerie aesthetic this game has. Some of the graphics (the people in the intro, the buildings you defend) are a bit too messy to tell what they are/what's going on, but I definitely wouldn't take out the "messy" aspect wholesale; that's one of the game's strengths. I applaud the decision in the post-compo version to keep that high-pitched drone confined to the opening cutscene, but the new gameplay sounds sound more whimsical than eerie. Even so, some audio feedback for the player's actions is better than no audio feedback, and I don't know if you plan on swapping those sounds.

Friends and Foes by Gjarble 2012-04-24T06:22:00

Thanks to everyone (both above and presumably below this post) for the feedback! I'm glad you like the game.

@youdonotexist: That is the intended behavior. I agree with you- it's tricky to time and more up to chance than skill. Originally, the white flies were gravitationally attracted to you like the black flies, and you had to fling it in the general direction of the enemy. This, as you may imagine, was even harder to do, and it was too easy to fling the flies out of orbit entirely. My objective was to use the white flies more as a weapon than as a powerup/shield, but I suppose if I can't find a good way to implement them as a weapon, I should probably just make them a plain ol' shield (right now, it's about halfway between the two).

Here's a thought: what if you could tap the up arrow in flight to make the white flies hovering around you do a little rapid-spin? This would effectively kill anything near/touching their circular path, but nothing inside or outside the circle. That would be much easier to deliberately time than the current system, while still being more skill-based than a passive shield.

Intertubes by Jack 2012-04-24T03:48:00

I had a lot of fun with this one. The action's nice and frantic without ever feeling hopeless. I got some false deaths in the compo version, but I also played the post-compo version and did not get any false deaths; I'm assuming that was one of the bugs you fixed for the latter. Some recommendations, if you want to keep building on this demo:
- Diagonal shooting. I know that's easier said than done, depending on how your current implementation of shooting works. I can also appreciate it if you think that'd take away from the strategy of the game.
- Perhaps you could randomize a new level after every death, instead of just on startup.

LD24 — Evolution

Coming Into Focus by Gjarble 2012-08-29T00:40:00

Thanks for the comment. By "SS" do you mean software specification? Unfortunately, I didn't really have much in the way of design docs this time around... I could tell you what I planned to include, though. The story was going to be my main hook. I might actually make this into a half-decent complete project if I get the chance, so I might as well mark this for <b>SPOILERS:</b>

The main character is a spaceship captain involved in a war against an alien civilization. At the beginning of the game, he wakes up after some sort of brain trauma (he doesn't know what it is). He finds himself imprisoned and decides to break out in order to continue the fight. Each improvement in the graphics would be preceded by a journal (or "captain's log") entry detailing his current mental state. However, they would also be accompanied by the deterioration of the page surrounding the game (be it this ratings page or some external page). Words would start missing letters, text boxes would disappear, and so on, until the game was simply surrounded by a blank black background. As the graphics get clearer, it becomes more and more apparent that the opponents that he has been fighting are human. When the player reaches the last room, expecting to fight a final boss, they instead find themselves in their superior's office, who draws a gun and begins firing. Whether you defeat him or not (the writing of the ending slightly altered to reflect the outcome), it is revealed at the end that the brain trauma was the result of alien biological warfare, and that the captain has been having delusions that his own forces were the aliens. He was imprisoned for the safety of the surviving human forces.

Man, writing it out makes it sound more like a cheesy ZOMG TWIST than I'd necessarily like. Rest assured, I'd drop hints throughout and try to write it well. >_>

<b>END SPOILERS</b>

I'd probably take out the Xs/flames and replace them with something that works a bit differently. They don't really fit with the planned fiction, and tiles that kill you are a bit of a platforming cliché of mine; they were just the fastest/easiest thing to program. Other enemies/obstacles I planned on having were wall-mounted laser guns and characters (with guns, melee weapons, or both) that actually attacked you. I also wanted the character's abilities to improve with the graphics; wall jumping, shooting, that sort of thing. That stuff still really doesn't feel too inspired; I'd give more thought about it should I return to this project.

Coming Into Focus by Gjarble 2012-08-29T00:41:00

...aaaand now I know HTML doesn't work in comments. Go figure.

Coming Into Focus by Gjarble 2012-08-30T21:18:00

@FrederickK: Oh, okay! Yeah, I was planning on replacing the "screenshot" (really just a spritesheet I stole from the game assets at the last minute) with something more representative of the concept anyway. Per your request, I added a couple real screenshots, too, but I don't want the main game thumbnail to be just ASCII (among other things, that'd be hard to see as a thumbnail).
@gnx (also relevant to Cake&Code and Topher Florence): One of the hardest things for me, balance-wise, was the player speed. As it stands, the player spends at most 1/15th of a second at each tile, which I agree is too fast (and makes it seem like the player moves 2 squares in a single keypress- you just have to press it REALLYFAST). The problem is that any slower a speed and the player wouldn't be able to jump very far due to how fast the gravitational acceleration is (plus it would feel weirder during the graphical part when you have finer control). I thought that rate of gravity felt the best (not too floaty, not too rushed), but it's different for everyone, and it DOES make the game more difficult. I guess in a post-compo version, I would reduce the player speed AND rate of gravity (so the player can jump just as far)... in fact, that gives me an idea of how to make the concept even more connected to the theme... >:)

Coming Into Focus by Gjarble 2012-08-30T21:22:00

(oh, the @gnx thing is also addressed to eyehawk. Still wish I could edit comments on this page... >_>)

LD25 — You are the Villain

Reverse_Shmup by EARink0 2012-12-26T16:06:00

(Note: these comments were made based on playing the game on a Mac using Wine. If you can't replicate these issues in Windows, maybe they were caused on my end by Wine's conversion process- but I usually know when Wine causes problems because the performance is slow or much of the graphics disappear/are cut off. In this case, the game ran fine and looked as it does in your screenshot.)

A solid idea, and with some expansion, I think it'd become a very fun game. In particular, I think it would greatly benefit from some more collision detection. For instance, I noticed that the Battleship can pass through the outer walls and fire from beyond them, presumably out of reach of the Hero's bullets. Also, the Fighters spawn rather quickly when pressing down the mouse button, even if it's only held for a little bit (thus spawning a string when the player might have only intended to spawn one Fighter). I'd recommend changing that so a Fighter can only be spawned if the mouse is not currently over another fighter or something like that- this would also encourage the player to click and drag rather than just spawning in place. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if you were planning on implementing one or both of these but ran out of time, or if doing so was even what caused the game-breaking bug you mention in the description- collision detection really is a pain. Good job finishing what you did!

ECHO CHAMBER by Loren 2012-12-24T15:34:00

Oh my god, this is a lot of comments.

I love the wonderfully surreal ambiance. The game looks, sounds, and feels beautiful. I also like how you chose a villain that is not only quite abstract, but something negative (ignorance) in the guise of something positive (praise).

The instructions weren't quite clear- particularly how the player is supposed to "use your words" against the waves of retribution. I got it after playing the first time around, but it still wasn't entirely clear at first how the position of the media guys you click effects the way the praise shoots out of the chamber's mouth. Once I figured out that it was just weighting the angles, I was able to receive no damage just by clicking a bunch of guys that were vertically centered-ish, with a bit of angular spread (my first playthrough I survived 1 wave; the second, I quit after 252,100 points and 31 waves). I was able to (intentionally) lose immediately by just clicking people at the bottom-right of the screen, so placement clearly has an effect on victory, but there's a clear dominant strategy, so the game become monotonous and non-challenging. I would recommend incorporating some element that changes randomly every round (like the location from which the retribution approaches), so the player has to change their tactics accordingly, and has a larger chance of failure. The important thing is to make sure there's not just one thing the player can reliably do every round to ensure victory.

Also, since it seems from the comments like you weren't sure: you can use one of your entry links to link to a post-compo version, as long as you make it clear which version is the 48-hour version (it should be clear if you explicitly label your improved version "Post-Compo Version"). Participants are only allowed to vote on the 48-hour version. Be warned: you're not allowed to edit your entry page after judging ends, so if you want people to be able to easily find the post-compo version, you may want to post that link before then.

Interns From Mars! by Gjarble 2012-12-24T15:57:00

Thank you everyone, for playing and for the kind words!

@Frozen Fractal: Oh man, you're right! That's what I get for saving the music for last and only testing to make sure that it *starts*. Fixed, because I believe that counts as a "typo bug", not a new feature.

@Aswissrole: Yeah, I'm hoping to make them swing like an actual chain in the post-compo version, rather than just snap back to the center like they do now.

Interns From Mars! by Gjarble 2013-01-13T01:53:00

Again, thank you, everyone- this has been my best LD yet and I'm thrilled at the response you all have been giving!

@Mista Koo: Ooh, I like the idea of humans with different behavior; I hadn't thought of that. I've been debating back and forth on the subject of whether or not there should be anything trying to kill you. Might as well try it out when I come back to this (I'm planning on returning to it for the One Game A Month challenge).

@AlexFili: I understand and agree with almost all of that (all stuff I want to change when I come back to this project), but I'm curious about the timer comment. The timer's supposed to go up every round by a flat 30 seconds (proportional to the change in size of the level and giving you slightly less time per human). Did this not happen? If you generally had too little time at the beginning levels and too much time as you went on, I guess the timer increase is too high... otherwise, it might be a problem with the level generation- as in, the spawning of people and buildings is so variable as to create levels with drastically different difficulties.

@Gornova: I doubt many people return to game pages after they've commented on them (and after LD is over), but it's worth a shot: could you clarify what kind of problems you had? Did the ship go through the ground? Did something else weird happen when it touched the ground? I thought I fixed all the bugs like that in testing, so I'm curious.

Witching Game by kibertoad 2012-12-24T19:20:00

OSX user here, same error as jerrre.

APATHY by pbdiode 2012-12-24T14:53:00

I like the pushable blocks you use as obstructions- it's a very simple way to add a good chunk of depth to the gameplay. I doubt it was intentional to make the ground pushable, but it's funny either way (though it does make the game harder). Also, I disagree with the comments saying it doesn't fit the theme- I like that you used an abstract "villain". And, of course, the little captions really hit home (although I wish there was a way to read the captions when you collect a bunch of coins in quick succession- maybe it could be implemented as a multi-line text box that reads the few most recent captions or something like that).

The trouble with procedurally generated levels is that, unless you're careful, the game can generate some impossible scenarios. One I encountered a lot was jumping between pieces of land while being forced to push a block (that is, the block is low enough that the goat pushes it while standing on the ground, but it's too tall to jump over). It's hard to prevent that kind of stuff entirely. It also might be a good idea to include a different game over message for players who end the game with negative XP (about how you overcame your apathy or whatever).

If you plan on expanding this game for a post-compo version, one thing to think about might be how to make "apathy" manifest itself through the gameplay, instead of just through points and captions. Perhaps the more XP you get, the slower the goat moves? Or maybe the background becomes less colorful, or the music gets slower. Whatever you can think of.

One fun little bug/feature I found: hold down the 'R' key for a few seconds during play. The coins will stay in the same place while the land, blocks, and goat shift around them- it looks funny.

LD28 — You Only Get One

youGOO! - a webcam game by thebrainfuse 2013-12-17T03:16:00

Seems like a brilliant idea. However, on the Web version (I'm using a Mac, so I can't play the Windows version), I'm getting an error saying "WebRTC not available." For the record, I'm using Chrome as recommended. It worked at first, but with a ~5 second lag. I then got the error after closing the rest of my applications and refreshing the page (in an attempt to reduce the lag), and the error still happens no matter how many times I refresh/restart Chrome.

youGOO! - a webcam game by thebrainfuse 2013-12-17T21:25:00

Follow-up: I tried it again, and it works now. The lag was significantly lower, but still about 1 second, which means the 1 has usually changed to something else by the time it detects my fist. I then tried it on my (Android) phone, which worked much better!

Fly On The Wall by Gjarble 2013-12-17T03:50:00

@thebrainfuse: As promised, I updated the description with instructions.

Fly On The Wall by Gjarble 2013-12-17T04:42:00

Once you take the MacGuffin back to your starting position in level 2, the game should end by crashing due to an array overflow error (on my Nexus 4, it just exits out of the app with no comment). Whatever happens when you do it, once you've done it, you've completed the game.

LD31 — Entire Game on One Screen

Cuestick Gladiator by Gjarble 2014-12-16T01:41:00

Sorry that it's taken a week, not 24 hours (life and bugs got in the way), but a Windows version is now up!

@kill0u: Ah, yes, I did! Thanks for reminding me.

Thanks, everyone, for your comments so far!

LD34 — Two Button Controls / Growing

Snakedate by YoungHorses 2015-12-18T17:52:00

The game is not loading for me on Windows 7. I downloaded and ran the DirectX Updater as recommended, already had Visual C++ 2010 installed, and restarted the computer; still nothing. I can see the Snakedate.exe process running in Task Manager- its memory usage is staying fixed at 116 K.

Snakedate by YoungHorses 2016-01-02T01:06:00

To follow up on my bug report from earlier: I finally got this game running! I had been getting similar problems running a few other LD games on my computer, so I figured the problem might be on my end instead of yours. Then, one LD entry suggested a solution which solved my problems with all the games that had failed to run, including this one: disabling Avast (particularly the File System Shield).

Anyway, this game is hilarious (as is to be expected coming from Young Horses). I like the twist on the Snake formula- particularly the fact that the danger of growing too long is no longer the possibility of crashing into yourself, but rather making it more difficult to get more points due to being wrapped around too many horse-dates.

I did notice a few interface issues- for instance, the first time I got a date that happened to be on the second floor, it took me a while to figure out where they were, as there's no way to look up (or any indicator of where the next date is if they're offscreen). Also, I could not find any indicator of a time limit, so I was kinda caught off-guard when the game ended.

Still, those are minor issues, it's a lot of fun. Good work!

S(p)eed by Dayko 2015-12-27T21:04:00

Very good! The graphics are beautiful, the controls handle well, the music suits the mood perfectly, and the whole affair feels very polished. At first, I thought the plant multiplying into several stalks was going to make the game too easy (as it seems like, whenever you crash, there'll always be one surviving stalk), but I found that when the area of stalks you're concentrating on crashes, you have to quickly shift focus to another area of stalks, which makes for an interesting challenge.

The one thing that feels missing is a sense of progression. In other words, it seems like the game is supposed to be about seeing how far you can go, but there's little indication of how far the player has come, nor any particular reward for getting further and further (at least, as far as I got- I got a few checkpoints in before it got too difficult, generated a new level, and found the difficulty about the same). As such, my only motivation to keep going (aside from the general quality of the game) was the implication in the description on this page that there was eventually a surface to be reached (though I have no idea how close I ever got to it).

I see a couple of other people suggested including a score counter- that's one way to do it, though I think they're assuming the game is endless. Assuming I'm right that the game has an end point (reaching the surface), then a similar method of tracking the player's progress could be a slider that slowly moves up as the player gets closer to the surface. Either method would be an indicator of how well the player is doing that would motivate them to keep going. However, I think the game's lack of GUI elements is something worth holding on to (it really enhances the mood), and that you could achieve this effect a bit more subtly. Perhaps the cave should change appearance as you get closer to the surface- more sunlight gets through, moss starts to appear, that sort of thing. Maybe you could also take advantage of the parallax effect by putting large, distant objects in the background as landmarks for the player to slowly move past, such as more cave openings, underwater lakes, or even ancient underground temples and stuff.

Also, a far more minor note: the instructions should mention that Esc is the pause button- I had to do a little hunting for it (I tried Enter and Space first).

At any rate, I really enjoyed this. Good work!

Macosa and the Cave by: Stefen Menzel/Andrew Herbst by stefenism 2015-12-27T21:52:00

I really like how many different ways you demonstrate that the growth mechanic can be used to advance through a level- you definitely prove that this simple idea has enough flexibility to extend to a lot of different level designs. I must admit that I'm not sure why the gun makes the pig creatures explode instead of grow, though.

You're right that the controls are the biggest issue- the post-jam update is definitely a step in the right direction, though I'd still like to see improvements in collision, particularly with the mushrooms and inclined surfaces in general (so you can walk up them instead of having to jump around them).

One other thing: when going backwards through the entrance of a room (for example, exiting out the left side of the second room to go back into the first room), the player character appears at the beginning of the previous room instead of the end. This led me to accidentally restarting a few rooms because I backed up too much in the next room (for example, when I reached the final room with all those enemies, I backed away, accidentally going past the entrance, and thus had to do the previous room with the vertical corridors all over again).

Cideogen by Crefossus 2015-12-27T03:00:00

I sympathize with your time issues- time management is always the hardest part of a game jam for me.

The game is cute (the sound effects in particular are adorable), but the design could use some refining. In particular, I found that the sword soon grew so long that I was killing enemies offscreen simply by repeatedly swinging whenever I entered a new area.

Ball Crusher From Neptune by Stending 2015-12-27T02:41:00

Nice! I like the minimalist feel, and I can definitely see this becoming addictive. I also like how both themes are mechanically important. And yes, the music is great, too.

I do have one quibble with the controls. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but when I tap one direction then quickly tap the other, the ball dashes. This is not expected behavior for me- I'd rather the ball dash only when I tap the same direction twice, rather than risk accidentally dashing when I change my mind about which direction I want to move.

It would also be nice to have some visual and sound effects to reinforce events like bouncing off the light beam, the appearance of a new light beam, and crashing into the planet (in other words, to be more "juicy", if you're familiar with that as a game dev term). Effects like that can subtly make these events more satisfying to the player. But overall, great job, especially considering you did this in just 10 hours.

Hey, My Name is Joe! by Pixelaborate 2015-12-27T03:43:00

The visuals are quite cute. I like the idea of using sabotage as a difficulty modifier. I do wish the Sticky Keys one was explained a bit more (I get the reference, but not everyone will, and I'm not sure exactly how Sticky Keys works, because I always turn it off after I get that alert).

The gameplay does get monotonous after a while, but the game is short enough that I felt motivated to keep going the whole way through (noticing how far the date was from the end of the month helped).

At first I thought the protagonist's job was to simply sort the buttons by color, but based on one of the mustachioed dude's comments, I guess he's supposed to be eliminating defects from the production line? I just realized that the "'A' OK!" and "Recycle" signs are supposed to indicate that as well. Those labels might be a bit clearer if they were directly underneath their respective buttons. I do also wish the defective buttons were defective in a way other than being a different color- being cracked, having a missing hole, or stuff like that. Implementing defects that way also allows to to increase the difficulty be making the defects more subtle as you go on.

Feed Me! by UrbanHelsing 2016-01-04T02:34:00

Interesting use of the two-button controls. I like the control scheme you chose, though I was a bit thrown off by how long you have to hold down a key before the boat moves substantially.

The pattern matching mechanic to catch a fish was cool too, though a bit too forgiving to be a challenging obstacle. On the other hand, I agree that the fish were very difficult to find. Several times, I accidentally rowed into a fish without seeing the ripples in the water, and there where many long periods where I did not see a fish at all (usually ending with my fish starving).

I really like the story behind the game, and the gameplay concept you've created. With some polish, I could see this being really fun.

Broken World by Wayward 2015-12-27T01:41:00

Very funny. I do wish there was more variety in the music, but what you have is nice (it took me a while to realize how short the loop was). By the way, there is a bug with the music, at least on the OS/X version. Once you reach the title screen after beating the game, a second instance of the music starts, so you hear it playing over itself.

Curse of the Slime Queen by mike.cullingham 2016-01-02T00:37:00

This a very unique kind of gameplay, both in controls and overall concept- I like it! I especially like the design of the last level, and how it forces you to figure out how to move to prevent the red from reaching the green before you get back to it.

At first, it wasn't quite clear to me how exactly the game worked (particularly how I was supposed to become a large gold slime), but I understood eventually: getting to the goal makes the player-controlled slime gold, then it shoots out gold things that infect other green pieces, until you infect enough pieces to win. I was confused why, at some points, the gold and red pieces didn't seem to infect green pieces, but then I reread the "Known Issues" section and realized it was just a bug.

It is kind of hard to tell what direction the player-controlled slime is facing, since the indicator has so much rotational symmetry.

Space Beards by Gjarble 2015-12-18T17:14:00

@The Merge Conflicts: Thanks! Do you have any suggestions for how I might improve the controls to make them easier to use?

Space Beards by Gjarble 2015-12-27T21:08:00

@UrbanHelsing: Oh! I was not aware of that bug. I wonder if that's the problem that The Merge Conflicts was having, too? I can't get it to lock in thrust mode- it there some situation in which it consistently locks up for you?

Space Beards by Gjarble 2016-01-04T22:58:00

@The Merge Conflicts: Yes, that's an excellent description. Thank you!

Melissa - A Game of Choice by Imagos Softworks 2016-01-01T23:46:00

Wow. This is deeply disturbing and thought-provoking. You truly succeeded in creating an impactful work of art. I notice you wisely opted out of the "Fun" and "Humor" categories, though I'm very curious how people would choose to rate it there- and what that would say about the people in question.

After pressing each button to find out what they did, I tried advancing through the game by pressing only Z, to avoid hitting the poor guy anymore. My heart sank as I found out it only looped the same animation, and that pressing X was necessary to progress. After that, I quickly figured out that the true choice was whether or not to play.

I immediately started rationalizing away my decision to continue- I had made it a personal goal today to rate back everyone who left a comment on my entry, and I can't fairly rate an entry if I quit it 10 seconds in, so dammit, I HAD to finish, whether I liked it or not. And indeed, after every single punch, I was hoping it'd be the last, staring at the bar at the bottom of the screen to try and figure out how close I was to the end.

But then again, what does it say about me that I prioritized that personal goal over not subjecting myself to this imagery? What about the fact that I actually felt a wave of relief when the guy fell to the floor- the moment that in real life would likely be the worst part of all? Because I made it to the end, does that mean the artists are calling me a bad person?

That last question is what always bugs me about works of art that examine the people viewing them (not just games, I've seen films and short stories that take this kind of approach too). It can feel like the artist is leading you to a certain conclusion, then judging you for reaching that conclusion. My instinct in these situation is to get bitter- to argue against the message, to call its reasoning unfair, to proclaim myself the exception to the rule- but perhaps I'm just continuing my rationalizing after it's all over. Perhaps it is as simple as saying I did a bad thing. Maybe the lesson I should take from this game is to accept the way I played as a mistake, instead of taking it an affront to my character from which I cannot redeem myself.

Or perhaps I'm assuming too black-and-white an intent on your behalf. Perhaps the goal is not to pass judgment, but simply to get the player to question something to which they would ordinarily give no thought at all. And no matter how one approaches this game, I bet they'll be leaving with questions. That's what makes this game so powerful.

Organ-izer by The Merge Conflicts 2016-01-01T22:04:00

Great stuff! It's a wonderful take on both themes, with a really cute aesthetic and a decent amount of polish. The gameplay is easy to learn but difficult to master, which is impressive for a game that doesn't rely on familiar genre conventions. You scoped well, and it shows.

I was a bit thrown off by how the controls were demonstrated before the start of the game. Since nutrient people were already spawning during the tutorial, I thought I was already required to guide them to the right body parts, and wasn't sure how to do that with large parts of my view obscured. I like how the nutrients spawn during the title screen, but I'd recommend that you temporarily turn them off during the tutorial.

Also, since the bone-bridge is controlled entirely by the physics engine, it made it a bit difficult to be as precise in my movements as it felt like the game demanded of me. For example, if I have a yellow nutrient quickly followed by a red nutrient, I'd need to raise the bridge as quickly as possible after the yellow nutrient gets off, but I had trouble doing that without accidentally lifting up the yellow one or letting the red one fall before it reaches the top platform. Then again, I reached age 72 on my first try, and since that's a reasonable human lifespan, I guess the game's telling me I did alright, and the game's not too hard. I feel like it's important for the player to feel like each failure is their fault, though (it helps them feel more in control), so maybe it would be better if the bridge were easier to control, but the game was more punishing of individual failures. Then again, the way the nutrients spawn, the player is forced to sacrifice some of them at times, so maybe the higher punishment rate would just make things more frustrating. I dunno... as I can attest from my entry (which you've already played), difficulty balance is *hard* and requires a lot more playtesting with other people than a game jam typically allows.

By the way: while you are allowed to make bug fixes during the rating period, I think balance tweaks are technically not allowed unless they're for a separate "post-jam version". I'm not going to take any points off my rating for that, but I figure you should know for future reference.

Bryan by LikeAstudio 2015-12-27T20:16:00

Yeah, time management is always the hard part for me too. Trust me, it'll get better with practice.

I like the art style, though I would like to point out that the player character appears to be drawn in a different perspective from that of the enemies and environments. If we saw a bit of the front of the character, like we do for the enemies, it'd look a bit more natural. I do understand that that can be harder to animate, though.

LD35 — Shapeshift

Perfect Form by samreid 2016-05-01T19:56:00

Very cool concept! I was a bit confused as to what was going on at first, but I started to enjoy it once I understood the rules. You deserve a lot of credit for communicating such abstract mathematical/geometric concepts through a relatively intuitive gameplay process.

Still, there were many levels where I felt like I didn't really know what I was doing and just got lucky by clicking the right series of buttons. This was because it was very hard for me to imagine what the shape would look like after multiple transformations, especially for the operations that change the number of vertices, like Snowflake, Radial Mirror, Delete Vertices, and Invert (I'm still not entirely sure what Invert does). If you're making a post-jam version, I'd recommend lowering the difficulty curve of the first two modes by not introducing these transformations until much later in the game. This would give players time to understand the rules of the game before you ask them to also understand some of the more complex kinds of transformation.

Skeleghost by nuuup 2016-05-01T16:26:00

I love the surreal music for each of these levels. I agree that it should be clearer which walls the ghost can pass through and which it can't. I do also wish there was a visual distinction between doors that teleport you and doors that exit the level. I do like how you designed each level to require both the ghost and the skeleton, though.

Paranormal Investigator by kwmx 2016-05-01T20:32:00

Very neat! I love the concept, and the difficulty feels balanced (aside from the obvious-object problem, which you appear to have already fixed).

TowerShifter by mzhovnach 2016-04-21T15:38:00

Nice concept, and the graphics are great. I found it kinda funny that my primary strategy was to summon smaller animals in front of me to act as meatshields so the towers didn't shoot me. I also did not get the popups with the stats for each animal, but it was simple enough to deduce some things about them just from playing: the Bear is slow with high defense, the Bird is fast with low defense, and the Fox and Wolf are in between. That said, it wasn't exactly clear to me why I should choose one animal over another at any time. I guess part of this is because I don't know what the towers do, or how they affect the animals differently. For instance, how does being an Air animal affect the Bird differently from the other animals? Does it dodge shots more easily? Can some towers not reach it? I did figure out that the yellow towers *only* shoot the Bird, but I don't see a difference between the red, green, and blue towers. If some of this information was clearer, it might be easier to form a strategy.

morphing fantasy by zetsumi 2016-04-21T15:11:00

You may want to mention that this game requires the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015. I tried to run your game and got an error saying that the file msvcp140.dll was missing; I fixed it by downloading the Visual C++ Redistributable.

Anyway, an RPG is very ambitious for a game jam, and I'm guessing you built it from scratch rather than using an engine. That's not an easy task, so good job for completing it! Unfortunately, I couldn't find the first boss before I stopped. The level was very large, and even after I had fought maybe 15 or so battles, I was only able to explore a small fraction of it and couldn't find anything other than trees and rocks. Also, clicking on an enemy to attack didn't work much of the time.

Gjarble

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Comments by Gjarble

LD21 — Escape