Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Honest Dan
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 👥 | 🥉 | 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | The Curse of Cattenburg | jam | Graphics | 4.82 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | The Fregstival | jam | 68 | 4.18 | 3.96 | 3.94 | 4.09 | 4.59 | 4.27 | 3.80 | 4.10 |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Elevander of the Emu Express | jam | 37 | 4.27 | 3.91 | 4.06 | 4.53 | 4.84 | 4.22 | 3.83 | 4.27 |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | Star Tech: Deep Space Mine | jam | 56 | 4.09 | 3.94 | 4.25 | 4.26 | 4.23 | 4.07 | 3.14 | 4.00 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Beardadette and the Eternal Hiccup | jam | 56 | 4.16 | 3.93 | 3.80 | 4.15 | 4.62 | 4.20 | 4.09 | 4.21 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | The Lars Mission | jam | 12 | 4.38 | 4.20 | 4.01 | 4.28 | 4.70 | 4.40 | 4.10 | 4.23 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Fellowship Manager | jam | 696 | 3.56 | 3.23 | 3.38 | 2.75 | 3.81 | 3.50 | 2.97 | 3.29 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Freg, Fregg, and Freggy: The Last Band | jam | 104 | 4.14 | 3.86 | 3.90 | 3.65 | 4.59 | 4.38 | 4.00 | 4.18 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | The Curse of Cattenburg | jam | 12 | 4.39 | 4.07 | 4.20 | 3.99 | 4.82 | 4.44 | 3.75 | 4.26 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Bunnurse | jam | 177 | 4.04 | 3.71 | 3.77 | 4.17 | 4.37 | 3.59 | 3.82 | 3.75 |
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | 👥 | Bloodbarn | jam | 138 | 3.88 | 3.58 | 3.88 | 3.79 | 4.15 | 4.16 | 4.05 | 3.66 |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Vincent's Sacrifice | jam | 134 | 3.92 | 3.72 | 3.20 | 4.24 | 4.05 | 3.52 | 3.60 | 3.88 |
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | Honest Dan's Clutteral Damage | jam | 501 | 3.46 | 3.28 | 3.28 | 3.77 | 3.96 | 3.69 | 3.60 | 3.46 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Honest Dan's Trout | jam | 71 | 4.07 | 4.03 | 3.99 | 4.41 | 3.89 | 3.62 | 3.72 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | 👥 | My Greedy Dog Steve | jam | 308 | 3.70 | 3.41 | 3.33 | 3.62 | 4.16 | 3.37 | 3.32 | 3.53 |
Such nostalgia playing this sort of racing game <3 Enjoyed, was a bit of a shame it wasn't 100% clear about the pits, but understand it's a gamejam game so tutorials and stuff aren't often high on the agenda. You should be proud of yourself Tim!
I enjoyed the game, took a bit to get used to. I liked the graphics style and the retro changing colour palette for different attempts. I'd question the theme though, as it seems the more hats you have the better it is - as you can reach the coins. Fun little game witha good level of difficulty.
Really nice feel to the game, well narrated and presented. Wish there was a little more lighting to help give perspective since repetative textures were used in a 3d space which sometimes was misleading. Also would enjoy being able to simultaneously control the dwarves, felt the current set up made it hard to do two things at once. Great jam effort, enjoyed playing!!
Really unique and cool idea. I enjoyed playing, though had a couple of "bad luck" runs which would have enjoyed my experience if I only gave it one go. But had a few good runs and really enjoyed the mechic of the game. Good effort.
I loved the retro nostalgia feel, felt like a classic puzzle game. Nice how the snowmans visuals change as you go through. Great job!
A rich and deep game. Unfortunatly it wasn;t running optimally in my browser, so I'll avoid ranking it until I get another go. But seemed a huge game for a jam - with great vibe and an interesting game mechanics. Seems a game you could invest a good amount of time in to progress through the story, rather than the usual 120 second jam experience.
Really liked this, and played a bunch of herding games! great humour, and genuinely found it harder to have control over the sheep the more I had - and that was for realistic reasons too not some glitchy physics. Loved the theme and humour - made a fun game to play on stream :)
Nice approach to the theme, I like the idea of different leadboards based on the different scores, and you can customise the game settings as you please. Controls were not standard but worked well.
Loved playing this on stream! Great level of difficulty, combined with a great implementation of the theme. Loved the humour of the title, zoolander <3 You've done well and I hope others appreciate the game also.
I enjoyed playing this! My downfall was not realising that damage taken was changing the size of the ice! It's a cool idea and pretty original in my view. The controls were pretty tight too, and nice art style.
I really liked the art and vibe. The sprite work was fantastic, the skull boss thing especially! I wish you could hold some button to stand still and do angled shots. Good work :)
Wonderful game, thanks for letting me try it out on stream. First, the negatives: The gameplay, to me it almost felt like it was a battle of who timed the super R ability. If you use it, then enemy uses straight after, then it is negated and the cooldowns will likely repeat to align. Also, the theme of the more you have - the worse it is for your enemy is a mild copout in regards to the theme in my view - think it could apply to most games if you're doing it from the perspective of the enemy.
Now on to the good (there is way more good than there is bad!). It looks beautiful, the audio is high quality, all aspects of the game integrate with each other, and its very well presented in terms of menus and giving information to the player. Amazing job to you all!
This was a high rating mood and visual game, with a real topic. Thanks for letting me play this on stream. I enjoyed the playthrough I had, but feel it is a long game for me to do trial and error. It's not the length of the game especially, but since there is no use control between dialogs, it means replaying the game is less appealing as its just a case of waiting for the dialog options to try different combinations. Really liked your game, a good experience.
I may not be giving this all 5s, but it will be one of the games I remember most from the Jam. Thank you so much for letting me play this on stream, was such a blast. A bit more time to polish this it would have been even better. Good job!
Loved the art style of the glitch! The game became more fun when I remembered to collect the screern to stop the glitch generation. had a vew bugs when I died when game stopped responding. Would have liked maybe more levels or something to help me keep playing.
This was quite fun to play, though ended up being more productive to stay still and spin shooting, rather than moving around. It was a good basis, just think some fine tuning and a bit more consideration of how the game will be played will improve your next entry! Good job!
Some really nice ideas and art was nice enough. I would recommend hosting the WEB version on a different site, there are many adverts and once during play it actually redirected me to some dodgy website! I liked the idea of duplicating, either them or yourself. I was a little unsure what the end goal was. It felt cool picking up the enemies and then blowing them into the right place, kind of a HL2 Gravity Gun feel once I stacked up a few clones of myself.
I really liked this game, thanks for letting me play on stream! At the core of it is a simple word substitution game, but it was presented and executed so well, and I genuinely had a blast playing. Thanks, and good job!
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This.. was some effort. I played on stream, and I do feel bad for my viewers for each one of those 51 minutes! haha I kid. For me it was a challenging game, but as you heard on stream - for me I didn't find the learning curve and harsh controls too fun to get used to. Also found the visual style make the game hard to play, not sure why you went for the three colours thing. Also the difficulty between "rooms" really varies, some later ones are very easy, where as others require a lot more time for a poor player like me.
The positives - I think a game like this does have a market for speed runners who enjoy such harsh controls and lack or room for error!
I enjoyed watching Brainoid play this very much. Really impressed with your game Krass, its a good mix of humour and on point with the theme. The happy theme from the character animation and choice of music really went well together. Original and fun idea, and filling your house with items is satisfying in the way you implemented it!
I liked the puzzle element of it, was interesting scanning for sheriffs amonst the civilians. I liked that civilians could block you and make you drop your loot too. Having music change when enemy is heading for you is nice touch, despite a little repetitive but I don't blame you - it's a jam! One gripe would be that the screen scrolls northwards a little slow, which made runnning north a bit of a gamble. Also, I'd like unreliable Eddie to stand out a little more - other than just not having the white thing on the back of the cart! Good entry! <3
Really liked this! Had a blast on stream playing it, despite it being a clicker style game. Nice and challenging. The final type of challenge of *something* citizens was hard to figure out, other than that nice mix of challenges.
Really liked this, had fun playing it through on stream. The mechanic of keeping enemies away away whilst still shwoing yourself the way is interesting. It made some tense moments trying to get the stars. You feel overhwlemed by enemies, but you are able to control it well - its a nice balance. Would hhave liked a larger area to navigate, even a procedural based level, so there was more of a focus on watching where you're walking. Good job!
really cute game and art, nice idea - just gameplay was too slow and sheep too hard to manage to make want to try complete it. Lot of effort gone in though, good work.
Great idea! something I'd love to work through when I have a 2 hour train journey and no internet haha! Challenging, and elements of logical instructions like the old win-logo. Lots to keep in mind while playing, good work.
Had a lot of potential, great art and mood - but then found the gameplay lacked a little. Was fun to play on stream, thanks a lot for submitting!
Really great man. Good work within 3 days. Reminded me of knightfall! It seemed a game where you often die, even before you get gear etc. The boss mechanic at the end was nice and well executed.
This game has James vibes all over it! Really love the idea and concept, and super impressed you did it in 48 hours. Respect!
Enjoyed playing this through again on stream enough to write a second review! really funny concept, great humour, and visual / art style is so good for the limited time <3 Looking forward to downloading the sound clips on my phone to use as message tones... D:
Nice art, good nostalgic feel to the game. I felt the story was very predictable due to some of the script writing though. Nice enough to play through though :) good work
This really tickled me! I think for a straight forward idea, it's really well executed! Great work on sound effects.
I enjoyed this, thought took a while to get the way to have fun! I was trying to stay under 100% suspicion to begin, but then saw thats boring and a waiting game considering there is so much loot to take. However, the approach of raiding everything and not getting yourself in a dead end and caught - was enjoyable.
The more you have, the worse your framerate! Couldn't play with 200 unforuntatley. The car controlled really well, just slightly strange physics when you crash. Liked the way you did the buildings and bridges as destructable and like "cardboard box" style.
Innovative game and quite enjoyable to learn how it works. Thanks for letting me play this on stream. Maybe the safes could be more obvious, as could the ability to click on the lazers. Good job you guys!
Thanks for letting me play this on stream. well presented and good mood to the game. The theme match seemed obvious - the way more you collect the bigger you get - however I think you executed it well as it dynamically changes the game. I did find the controls a little off, the wasd on isometric along with the jump floating quite a lot. Great work.
This was the most enjoyable herding game I've played so far, in terms of game play mechanics and how responsive the controls were. I loved the fact that a seperate element of the game comes at night time, and that you are able to ward off foxes as the sheepdog, as well as direct the sheep. The low poly graphics suited it, and good use of lighting to convery the sun setting. Awesome job, shame there were no baaa noises to make it perfect :D
Once I got used to it, I found it enjoyable. Did end up feeling like I could cheese it a bit through sticking on one side and just timing sprays of bullets, but then it wasn't a flawless approach. The downside is that you go so fast you can't even predict what's below, but then thats the point of the game - it becomes hard to control if you go faster. A great feeling when you get a long falling streak with some rapid fire pew pew goodness! Thanks for letting me play on stream, good fun game that I enjoyed playing.
Really enjoyed playing this on stream. The controls of the drones is spot on, and you do feel more powerful the more hou powerup your drones. It does become challenging. I can see the relation to the theme of when you mine the ore it draws the interest of the creatures, however - I do feel it wasn't the overwhelming theme of the game. The visuals and audio all tie in well together.
Interesting approach to the theme! Enjoyed the visuals. Controls felt a little clunky, as if the jump collider didnt let me jump when still on ledge of platform. Felt intitially like there was no way to avoid the bunnies, but the more I played I realise there was strategy and so well done, good job!
Beaitiful mood and ambience you've got with this game. Was a lovely game to play on stream in between the random hoard of pixel art games we'd played! Props to you for conveying some emotion in a short project.
Thanks for letting me play this on stream. Many people in your team have created a very complete game within a short duration. Maybe I needed to get a few levels deeper to really appreciate the relation to the theme. Other than that, really loved it as I said on stream - it feels so good to play. Controls are crisp and responsive. Visuals all suitable and fit together well.
Thanks for letting me play this on stream! I really enjoyed the art, the cat, the direction of the game! I just feel that the unreliability of the physics detracted from the game play somewhat!
Thank you for letting me play this on stream! It was very enjoyable, original idea and good that you implemented decent AI to make the game enjoyable even when playing on your own. Good visuals and audio. I think maybe there's a risk people will say the theme wasn't too strong, as it doesn't seem bad to have more distracting cell splits. I can definitely see the influence of the theme on the game though.
I really liked this game! not sure if it's cause I've not played many strategy games, but it felt super interesting and original, and I enjoyed playing through it on stream. Has some good decision making, nice controls. The downside is that the debuffs are a bit subtle, and feel I had to hover over them in the top left to understand them - but doing so would waste time that could cost me the level. Good work on the game!
Thanks for letting me play this on stream yesterday! Took some time to get used to, but the mechanics were interesting as it is not intuitive to let enemies hit you in an attempt to balance your mana / health. The downside to this however, is how fun it is to not be able to attack and instead let yourself get hit. It was a fun mechanic though :)
Despite breaking my laptop on stream (haha!) I enjoyed giving this a go. A good balance of puzzle and platform in a nice 3d environment. Good work!
Seems a decent amount of depth with the difficulty increasing as the levels go on. Using the different powerups to strategically get the presents in time gives the game some scope. For me it seems I couldn't skip the intro on each attempt.
What a great effort - your first game and how lovely it was! The mood and art was all very fluid, good job! Had a bit of a bug where it seemed one sheep was still alive, but I couldn't find it - and therefore the next wave of sheep never came. Maybe some indicator could come up after 10 seconds of no interaction with a sheep? I worry he fell off the map somewhere but didnt trigger as dead, the poor thing!
The variety of chickens was charming <3 the sound effect will forever haunt me as I try to sleep.. howver :D Fun little game. Quite simple mechanics really, but had fun for a few minutes on it and nice presentation. Cheers bud <3
I had a bit of fun with this. Seemed unfortunately the arthritis was just another thing to remember to click, seemeed there was no punishment for spamming the arthritis fix button. However, still, a hod dog whackamole, how can you go wrong! Keep up the good work, good compo entry! <3
EDIT: Thanks @randomphantom for coming to the stream to help me see the error of my ways! have changed ranking to reflect the game now I've experienced it properly <3
I really struggled with this, a pink circle kept randomly appearing and filling the screen (I guess the game over animation) but when I wasn't doing anything obviously wrong? I would try and go slowly and generate the coins a decent rate and ensure I wasn't coming into contact with any of them - but it would just randomly do the pink circle game over thing. It happened as I buily my first minor, and I moved my black square away to safety before doing so but still it just randomly ended. Feel free to give feedback, I streamed it on my twitch channel (1hr30 into stream) if you want to check the vod - I'll play again if you can give guidance.
This was fun to play! The shooting required some prediction of enemy movement, and as you got more fame, there were more civilians to avoid with your big fat long range bullets! I got close to the end, was a nice balance of difficulty.. despite ramping up quite fast! Gj!
Nice work! I liked the simplicity, yet there was scope to learn the placement of the boosts to keep you going. And as they were in line with each other you did have some time to make up for mistakes! GJ!
Despite my latop cutting out during this - I think you developed a good atmosphere in the game. Shared many similiarites with amnesia and slenderman - both great games but as a result I kept comparing it in my head with those. I'll be honest, it got my heart rate up a bit! Looking forward to your next entry.
This was a cute game! little bit random with the "collect a tent, collect the wood, then go to the brown thing to go to next level". However, I did enjoy it, the jumper mechanic was good, and after a few levels I started to see how the puzzle element comes into it. Good work <3
Good mood and feel to the game. Loved that the art was literally drawn on paper but then used as digitial assests with some items layered ontop of eachother. Good humour, fun times! A bit random but def in line with theme!! You guys rock!
Nice game concept indeed. Good work, and despite the moving in rythm thing not being too obvious to the user and making them think it may be missing input - I think it adds to the game :) Good job!
I like this! Took a while to get used to saving up items. I found it quite a difficult game, but felt I could progress more and more when I focused on the mechanics. Good and itneresting game.
THanks for letting me play this on stream. Very creative and artist entry, interesting and I was keen to find out the truth behind it. The downside is, the process of discovering more and more words is very repetative and risks getting boring. Wonderful idea though, good jam entry!
Good atmosphere, a little bit short but enjoyed playing it on stream! The Good atmospheric sounds too <3
This was more fun than it looked to play! The controls works well, and there is a good balance of challenge. Great effort for the time given. The obstacles don't seem to pose too much of a threat, perhaps if the obstacles cause the kitty's to die it would add to the difficulty! Meow! I can now die knowing that I've herded virtual kitties.
Enjoyable game, I liked that you could try to skip the enemies to delay getting weak. I also liked that the punch ability was harder to use but didn't get weakened, meaning if you learnt how to use it at the beginning when you were stronger, then you would benefit from it later on! Enjoyed playing it, grats on the comp entry!
Enjoyed playing this on stream, thanks for letting me play it. Really nice implementation of some of the features and effects. I liked the visuals, though found the controls a little clunky personally (space to attack, up to jump isn't natural to me anymore). I liked the concept of switching between states. Good job
First play of this I was skeptical, but found it actually a game I could play time after time and found it a fun challenge. I was glad to beat your high score on stream <3 good graphics and some good humour too <3
I actually felt a bit sick after playing too with the camera movement! But that's not to say it's a negative, if anything it was that immersive!! Really well executed. Had the old school 3d FPS feel to it, with no jumping etc. The effects when drinking were good and noticible as you played. Shame I didn't have time to get to the boss whilst playing on stream... I got taken down :(
@steel-dev Regarding the theme, shame it wasn't obvious as we tried to implement it in three forms: - the more you feed Steve, the worse it is as he requires more and more food after each feed. - the more you level up, the weaker your character gets from debuffs that come with levelling up. - the more items you collect, the more negative stats you have to manage as gear has negative stats.
@lillybyte that Steve you speak of was a hero indeed.
@flippo did it stop you from running? or moving at all? It was only meant to stop you from running! Oops! ...I mean, feature!
@wowa @potti There is gear that will give you bonus movement speed, but that gear of course comes with negative stats to balance. Not sure if quicker movement speed or smaller map would be the better solution. Thanks for feedback.
@james-dunlap @elendow The idea to make Steve eat all the meat was my idea. I thought, if you present a growing dog with an overportion.. he would still eat it all! You are able to drop meat using the inventory hotpar (clicking the red X). I thought it'd be good to add another thing to manage, dropping meat to feed the correct portion, also making the next meal gathering easier as a result. However, it isn't very clear so probably a poor design choice! Thanks for the feedback :)
@safrmo Thank you so much for the kind words!
@moski it genuinely makes me very happy to see someone play and explore our game! yes, I agree with you - the damage yourself debuff is really harsh and makes it a bit tedeious. We didn't have a chance to try it to see how it felt if I'm honest! We could reduce it from 25% of your damage to either 1) a lower amount of damage, or 2) you can choose to eat meat collected to restore health. The second option is a nice (but harsh) solution I'd lean towards! Thanks again for the time you took to review <3 Level 8 Steve is where things get real... :D
Thanks @wheffle @twinGhosts @fluidvolt @randomphantom @sadsmile
The shame is - to be true to the theme, indeed the game does get tedius and slower - but that is by design! It was very interesting in fact, made us realise why real RPG games give the player new spells and shiny things to distract them from the monotomy of repetitive quests! Thanks for trying to give Steve a good start in life.
@rasco thank you very much for the detailed review. We are glad to hear your feedback. I think as game designers, we were aware it got "less fun" the further you got - but then the reason for that was because we made the character more limited - making the task at hand (collecting meat) harder and slower to do. This ofc is a bit less fun, but we felt it was so in line with the theme that we watned to keep it that way. However, a variety of quests etc could have aided, we do agree that with meat collection the only task - it can become repetitive. At the same time it added some strategy. Do you collect meat from far away and make a pile of it outside your house whilst you're still young and healthy? Do you use the most of your timers when thing's are easier? etc.
I'm glad you started to see the perks as intersting. Ofc, we are used to just wanting to grow our character, and get new abilities, and get more powerful etc. but thats standard RPG. This LD theme didn't align with a standard RPG, so that's why we went down this route <3 In hindsight we see that the theme approach does detract from the "instant fun" factor, but then I think the restrictions make it challenging to balance them and still compelte the game. The anti perks are harsh - the self damage has been nerfed a bit through making it possible for you to eat meat that you collect (but this in a post jam version, not available online atm).
Your feedback is really appreciated, thanks again.
@starlin when you have 3 meat for the first quest, you go stand next to Steve in your house and a button "Feed Steve" appears above his quest display panel.
@ethan-kennerly The dog does grow every time you feed him! once you get to around 5 feeds, you should notice him becoming bigger than his owner! Completing the quest doesn't unlock features, but levelling up does - these are presented to you on the level up menu.
@sgadrat thank you for your kind words, we definitely put in a lot of hard work :D We are glad you felt we brought things together well. The animations were all done with only 1 sprite as my brother who did the wonderful art was not fully available so we ahd to do our best to implement skeletal animation based on that. Balancing debuffs I agree with you, we have discussed these and are almost finished on a post jam version that addresses many bugs and issues that are present in the LD build.
@logicon211 Was it due to the major debuff "you can no longer pickup loot" perhaps? Thanks for letting us know.
@tvance thanks for your comment! We are aware it would be easier to increase the movespeed, but we felt we wanted to put the player in a position to choose between gear with increased move speed / not choose the perks to slow down the character. In our post jam version we did increase the general speed, and reduced the multiplier that the perk reduced player speed by - which makes it a nicer experience from that perspective! No, we don't have a cute dog to base this on unfortunately! We just like making silly games <3
@profan thanks for taking the time to give us some feedback! I think you summed it up well, fit the theme maybe a bit too well :D you end up wanting to win out of principle and commitment, rather than enjoyment haha.
Agree on the font, agree on the level up. For us, the level up couldnt be optional, else people could just avoid choosing a perk. Sure there was a better way to implement that though. Thanks again for playing <3
This was an experience! in terms of a fun game I'd play again, probably not! but that was your intention! To convey the feeling and mood of a call centre! good humour in the conversations, and I enjoyed the detail of the reviews coming up on the screen, and the motivational pictures on the wall.
Well done on making this game! Enjoyed playing this on stream. The music seemed like it didnt fit, but I actually enjoyed the relaxed music. I am glad I beat your high score! Quite a simple concept really, but I quite enjoyed it. Controls felt tight and responsive.
I liked this! Thanks for letting me play on my stream. It tooks some time to understand the colour mechanic, but the guns and the overusing them was quite intuitive to discover. The control schemes changing did add to the challenge for sure, and was quite satisfying. The pace of enemies coming was right in my opinion.
This was enjoyable to play! I kept getting wrapped up in killing enemies rather than collecting the coins! Quite difficult also!
So impressive, especially as you did it all yourself. Loved the art, and I think I would have gotten along better with the game! I was also clumsy and accidentally killed my followers with my AoE ability! Once I got the hang of it, I think I found it more enjoyable! Good work
This was enjoyable to play on stream, cheers bud. I liked the levelling up system, it was challenging, and despite simple style of graphics they looked professional. I enjoyed the idea of permanent upgrades to to make it possible to progress further into the game.
Enjoyed giving it a go, good work coding it up. The downside was the RNG meant some games are as good as impossible. I would have liked a slower difficulty curve so I could have experienced the mechanic of the filled snow buckets becoming an obstacle. Good ideas.
Fantastic game. I had never seen this mechanic, so felt original to me - but reading other comments maybe it's something that's been done before. However, I still rank you very high on that - well executed and the parrot was my favourite character... as he never cut me with scissors!
I really enjoyed playing this on stream guys! It was stressful in a good way, really well executed. On point with the theme and mood, and interesting to see the different endings and humour used within. You should be proud.
This was a lot more enjoyable to play than I anticipated! Challenging to keep the marbles on, and I enjoy that the high score is based on the max you've had on at any one point. It means you can keep trying to improve without starting over if things go wrong. Controls worked well, just as mentioned, mouse over doesn't affect things so much in the middle.
The truck looked good in terms of how long it took to start building speed etc. Score on back of truck was a nice addition to keep the clean ui. Maybe have option to mute the music <3
Was fun to play, despite the few bugs I encountered on stream! The approach to the theme is maybe a little uninventive - that you get more enemies with each wave.
Really enjoyed this! played it on my stream, shame you weren't to see! I stole $640k <3 One small problem I had was that the stealth wouldn't be applied if you pressed it in the air before landing. You had to land and stop moving then press shift before moving again to be safe - which was the clunkiness about the controls. The art was wonderful, tutorial was good, and the music wasn't too shabby! Good effort, and ideal length.
Thanks for letting me play this on stream. Took a little to get used to, but then I understood. I think the first advert I got was the blue one which didn't have an obvious "close" button, so for me I didn't instantly get what I was meant to do. I liked the idea that were more than just bad adverts, to use ad buffs. It was challenging to find the different ways to close the various adverts as they popped up. while multitasking the movement.
Such a strange but wonderful idea. Got used to it soon enough, though not sure if the difficulty balance is right. Kinda gets to a point where I found I was just spamming lasers, aware that I was heading to an inevitable death! Fun though, and enjoyed playing on stream :)
Good effort, you should be really proud of your first game! Tiny bit of polish to the ending would make a world of difference!
Wonderfully presented game. Simply concept but really well executed, with great polish and a decent amount of depth still.
Well executed. I sang it's praises on stream, it has a great level of polish. For many,I think the difficulty curve of two characters is too steep, as they have different abilities / jump styles. Maybe to introduce the difficulty more gradually you could introduce another copy of the same character so the player can get used to the multitasking before also trying to take into account the different mechanics of each ones. Really nice game, be proud.
A promising start! I really like the idea of choosing between which crew members to sacrifice - but maybe still considering what skill sets they have - so having to gamble on which skills you're willing to lack on board the ship for the sake of oxygen!!
@bar0net @teelin Thanks guys for checking out the game. I managed to fix the bug that stopped anything from working when you started the game :D so feel free to give it another go, but if not thanks for coming by <3
@javasaurus thank you for your kind words and glad you got a bit of fun out of it.
@julia-lundman that bug has been fixed now. I am very sorry it affected your game play. When it said "Ive been thinking - you were going to get the ending script. So you were playing it right. The packages each day increase. Day 1 you get 1... by day 4 you'll get 2 a day... 8 will be 3 a day.. an so on. Thanks for writing such a detailed review. The satisfaction is based on the state of the house, not especially how much you've done - so if you try real hard but still have some things left.. it'll still annoy your partner. The cat is HIGH priority.
@swen has been balanced a bit now, 9 extra seconds a day .. but not sure if it'll be enough for you! All I'll say is the cat plays a big role <3 Oh - and if I saw you do such moves with 3 boxes... I'd be down on one knee.
@mateusboga yeah, I considered a check-list of things to do, but no time and also it may remove the "mystery" behind the satisfaction score.
@aterlamia cutting real life themes presented with cutesy pixels and chirpy music... :D no one will hear you cry.
@minibobbo thanks bud <3 Yeah there isn't much "skills" to the game other than memory so thats why I kept the box movement stuff tricky. Dragging it can give you more control sometimes. Thanks for playing.
@nam-nguyen appreciate the words - I am aware this entry wont compete in terms of rankings, but want people to see the concept and laugh a little <3
@iballs and the cat loved you.
@sirmichel its not about 100% one day - its above the long game. Hard work on one day will leave you with still mess! but thats okay, cause tomorrow it'll be easier... and slowly.. but surely, you'll earn that respect and a blossoming relationship ensues :D Thanks for taking the time to play it <3
@lillybyte no! #catslivesmatter
@lost-dutchman-software nice to see you again, glad you enjoyed!
@noahro ofc you're welcome to rate that. I'll release a proper post jam version in a week or so. The game breaking bug occured 100% of the time, meaning none of the dialog would work, the days wouldnt pass, the deliveries wouldn't come, the recycling wouldn't be taken away, etc. The bug caused a nasty knock on effect, but its what I get for leaving the coding until day 3! When fixing it, I did add some things to make it more clear - like the recycle bins so it was more clear where to place the bins, and covered up the UI elements that were not active, and added the how to play dialog and player select since it was done and not hooked up (tbh it just sets a sprite based on which button you press). Thanks for checking it out again, appreciated.
@yami-no-tenshi-8 appreciate the feedback. The time thing is intentional. I wanted people to fail and learn, since 70% of the mechanics were missing. It is now possible but hard. Also - if you work hard day 1 and 2, you'll get low satisfaction but by day 3-4 you'll be in control of the house and satisfaction is higher. Please see bottom of this post for more info on controls and satisfaction.
@colin-doody Thank you for taking the time to play it.
@apples-mmmmmmmm Thanks for reporting that bug. Yes my pause sets my state machine back to "PLAY" instead of "IN_DIALOG", I'll add something in to cache the "previous state" instead of just defaulting back to play. The aiming interaction is a problem. I was going to add sprites for different directions to help, but time. I'll do so eventually, or a small directional arrow. See below about controls, but also - really tried interact and pickup small item on same button, but there would exist some scenarios where it is highly frustrating as you cant pick something up (if surrounded by iteractable items for example, or wanting to drop something close to a storage unit so you can locate a specific item). I'll consider adding that white border trim to the edges of the UI bars. Thanks for feedback.
@xarras the game is meant to push some real themes in a disguised way. but for more help on satisfaction levels, check the info on satisfaction at the bottom of this post.
@merpader I knew some would appreciate the silliness! <3 wish I had more time to make a load more items.
@frittatenbank that picture's hilarious! did you try using the drag mechanic? You can actually move all directions while dragging, so can navigate boxes a lot more accurately. Regarding the satisfaction issues, check the info on satisfaction at the bottom of this post.
**CONTROLS**: Yes, I agree. Before there was a button for dropping small item too :D It could have been worse haha! I spent some time yesterday working out new controls. I have decided on WASD still, E for drop/pickup small item, Space for dragging. Then clicking I've implemented it so you click on the interactive objects to interact with them (cat, storage, package). This makes sense because for package and storage you need mouse to click to remove / place items anyway. It still doesnt feel great but it feels better - brain remembers clicking is different to keyboard press, I believe.
**SATISFACTION**: Many complain they work hard and get 0% satisfaction score still. This is reasonable. Your partner is judging the state of the house and the tasks you should have done to keep it tidy. At the beginning, there is too much for you to clear up. Logic doesnt matter, your partner returns and sees a mess and isn't happy. But over a few days you should be able to get most of the mess under control - then providing you keep the cat fed, you will start hitting those higher numbers. Remember: Cat > Unpack packages > Small items in storage > Recycle old packages.
@tinykidtoo That is a shame. It should be holding down left-shift, but to begin a drag you need to be "facing" an item and close to it. Facing has no visual indicator sorry, it basically means "the last direction you moved has to be facing the object". I am glad you still got some enjoyment out of it.
@rebelloeric there's a reason there's so many people with cats... :D The game play isn't right atm as most of the features I couldnt get in. It is hard atm, but that's because it gives the game some replay-ability as you realise the things you need to do to earn your partners satisfaction. Thanks for trying and reviewing :)
@echo-team the feelz indeed. is it obvious I've recently separated from a partner!??!?! :D regarding time - yes I set it to be fast. I wanted it that way, as it was the only way to add some "challenge" and "learning " to the game, an adds that pressure and lets your house "run out of space". Won't be that way in the "final" version I hope to create some day.
@furiouswitch comments like that are what make LD worth it <3 I have silly ideas for games often, not these "sell-able" products, but to see people enjoy them makes me know it's good I continue to make them. Thank you <3
@annie-owl thanks for playing. Appreciate the feedback - the controls have been addressed since, but yeah I haven't posted my current build of the game. For details how I changed it, see a few comments above under the header CONTROLS <3
Appreciate the above playing the game - but as I said in the details in giant letters "This was an existing build we uploaded as we had version management issues". We have just been syncing our code and will upload a build now. I do thank you for taking the time to play, I just feel bad you played a version that was like 10 hours prior to final!
@darkanice thansk for reporting them <3 we knew of these but felt it didnt break the game so left them in for now, but are on our list if/when we work on a post jam version!
Rumour has it @secretpocketcat, that the Slimes are actually the ones controlling Lucifer.
I really liked the originality of this game. The downside was having to move files then quickly switch focus back to the Unity window, but it was manageable. I am not sure how big a game it could be developed into, whether the novelty would wear off. If you added a load of different scripts to manage (to expand it), it'd essentially feel like a cheaper / less configurable block coding system. But I am very pleased to have been recommended this game and given it a play through.
I liked this a lot, and it took a bit of time to truly appreciate it. The whole balance of health = bullets = coins, along with getting coins from killing enemies but using the scoops to catch bullets adds a nice dynamic to a game that typically sees the player holding down shoot mindlessly and spamming the enemies. The 3 spinning wheels at the bottom was a clever little addition, I would have liked if it felt I had more control - maybe the timing of the shots stops the wheels - so it encourages you to time your shots (as well as be conservative). Good job as always Aurel
This was definitely an interesting one! The mood and premise was really good, and it was fun to look at all the characters and their silly hairs and hats and beards! Found it a bit hard to find the people based on how many people there were overall! I loved the visual when you found the right person.. as well as the cute Irish voice acting muahahah!
I really enjoyed my time with this game. It was an interesting combination of typing game meets platforming, where both aspects impact the other. I gave feedback on stream, but generally - just a bit more time to explore new powerups, as the difficulty seemed to ramp up just as you learn and acquire your first powerup. Good job!
As I said on stream, I bloody loved this!! From the very first shot, the animation and sound with firing that arrow.. it just felt good. I enjoyed the challenge of the bullet hell, and the mood was set with the visuals and audio all tying together nicely. One of my faves this far!
Enjoyed my experience with this! The whole design was nice, refreshing to have a game not focused on high scores or living/dying. Few drawbacks: the sacrificing life as a currency was a bit weak - the stars visualisation was nice but didnt feel anything like life especially. Also, the voxel icons were hard to perceive. However, overall I really enjoyed this. Set the mood well, the music was fab, visuals felt good and well scripted and presented.
Awesome atmopshere. Very creepy.. and it felt strange to be shouting things like "Quick, kill the kids!" or "Oh no, a doggo!" or "Let me eat you!" haha. everything tied together really well, I liked this. The art, music and general mood was fantastic. Took a little time to get used to the levitating controls, but got used to it in the end! I'm wondering how / if it could be expanded upon to allow longer gameplay, any ideas?
Great feedback all, thank you!
Thanks Sam! Big thanks to Brainoid too who did more work than me <3 A good idea about the resources in other places, and you risk leaving your farm undefended as a result. Thanks for the input and for playing our game!
Thanks for letting me play this on stream! I enjoyed the graphics quality, though did mention that it doesn't all fit together in terms of visual style. The sabre was too strong that it made me not want to use my gun! Maybe adding a cooldown on it would have helped? Good job!
You did very well, especially with limited time! I really liked the visuals, and the concept of gambling your life to get different "prizes" was a nice touch! Good job javabear
Thanks for letting me play this on stream :D For quite a simple "lane based" infinite runner, this really felt good and had me wanting to try again. There's something about these games that make me panic when it starts going fast (in a good way), and it feels great when I can avoid everything when its going fast. But an interesting concept of choosing to sacrifice life early to prevent the potential chain of saws that you're about to hit... it's expecting the player to be sensible but I'm sure most just keep trying to handle the speed. I'm wondering if an extra mechanic would be needed to stop sensible play of (for example) never allowing yourself to go above level 10? Maybe you run out of bacon to collect as it is.
This was simple but great. Very challenging with (what felt like) a unique control scheme that took some time to get used to and master, but it felt fair and consistent. The visuals were great, only thing letting it down was the font and text presentation. I know time was short, but it does cheapen the look when you've done so well with all the other visuals in the game! Great job overall, an interesting take on limiting how many "steps" a player can take in a platformer.
Cheers for letting me play on stream! I enjoyed the original idea of the day night cycle - losing control of your character and having to "control him" through other characters. The sound design was good, and if I had a bit more time or avoided some bugs, I'd have been interested in finishing it to see what happens at the end! Good job!
There was something about this.. that charmed me completely. Had a QWOP feel to it with the physics ragdoll based control scheme, and something funny about waving a sword at enemies to harm them. The premise was actually good too, the robot in disguise and slowly being exposed as you lose health. I am not sure how good this is technically, but I am sure I had a good time and wanted to play on. The lobster hands and big trots were creepily beautiful
Really pleased you took part in LD! This was a good game, had an intriguing game system in place where I felt I wanted to try again and do better. Sometimes it feels you get to positions you cant come back from - maybe adding the option to destroy existing things for resources would fix that. Also for future scope if expanded, different worlds would be good, where only certain things can be built on certain terrain - to make strategies need to be devised for different planets (rather than just cover roughly all of the planet).
I can tell you that I learned a few things during this game :D Really enjoyed the mood that you set with the audio and visuals and presentation of the instructions was in line with your mood.
A lot of depth and really good mood to the game. I think it was just a bit too difficult to understand what was going on. You start to figure out what changes what as you go along - but for a jam game I feel maybe the learning curve was a bit steep and it felt a bit random and the outcome of the game not strongly influenced by my actions (emphasised if you don't understand the impact of your actions). Love you got achievements in and included them on your title screen.
Would have loved if you had managed to finish this off more! The idea of scouting for new planets and having to move units around different planets once you've consumed them seems like it could be fun. Really could have done with some feedback when my click was actually doing something - it felt like nothing was working then I realised I had spawned 10 units ontop of eachother! Would have rated higher if it was little more complete.
Fun game! not sure if its original, but for me it was first time I've played that sort of puzzle game. It was good, I liked the mechanics - the only criticism for me would be: - Controls - Randomised apple drops can make for inconsistent levels on each attempt
Many good things about this! Visuals, audio, concept was cool! The down side was the gameplay got repetitive and the end game was only a lose condition - so the motivation to keep playing is impacted by that! Really lovely entry though - I felt an attachment to Tamo!
Remember that time I kept hitting replay on the first level and starting to question if the game had enough depth!? haha. I'm glad I found the next level button. You managed to add just enough mechanics as the levels progressed to keep it interesting and challenging. Nice take on a necrodanceresque game!
You know I enjoyed it from the time I spent on stream playing it :D Had such a great FEEL to it. It definitely takes some talent to do something as simple as this and make it feel like a genuine arcade machine. Cool design, presentation and an all-round good experience.
The cute dragon on my head that I shall not forget :D Initially I felt the controls wouldn't work.. but I grew to like them after playing it for a little while. You managed to make a game of luring enemies and outpacing them surprisingly rewarding and interesting to play! Good job
Loved this :) a different taste to your usual entries, but loved the ending and I kind of wanted to play it again to see how I could impact the end image. Some good things to think about for real life too, I always appreciate a game that can make people think.
I think this was a really nice implementation of a tower defence game. Was so nice to not be in typical setting, and the way you incorporated the typical abilities into themed house party goers! The speed up ability was great too :)
Congrats on another really full and impressive entry! Even though I know to expect great things, you guys still always leave me impressed. Thanks for the pleasure of playing it on stream <3
I feel like I should have understood science a little more to fully appreciate this! But there were some cool visual and the way the different units interacted with one another was rewarding to watch. Once I understood the controls to fling out the units, it felt nicer to play too.
@lex glad to hear you got to the end and liked the winning message.
@topbraj it was just a game, don't worry. #teamflatearth
@homunculusgames and @khaotom thanks for your feedback - the version you played was the last stable build we had before the deadline, which lacked UI hookup to give the tutorial messages along with scoring / time passing. Feel free to try it again now for a better experience. We tweaked the dont for the prompts too so no one else got confused.
@exevirus thanks for trying the game - good feedback on the whole. Regarding the "fun" rating, if you didn't find it fun because of the game mechanic / difficulty / controls - then that is fair. I feel rating us lower on fun because we are using a mainstream game engine (UE4) is a bit of a tough call though. Game jam is about making a game and learning. We want people to play it, but I'm not gonna avoid using Unreal incase some people have a 10 year old PC. I did make a "lets play" video of the game for those who can't play it and want to see what we made. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoNxETWZbyI
Hey - grats on doing the LDJam! Like I said on stream - the main pitfalls here is that the theme isn't really strong. I can see you put effort into making it seem important - but the thing you're keeping alive is essentially a glorified timer! However, I enjoyed the level design and was good to see a bunch of mechanics implemented.
Marko - really impressive - especially for compo! you always do a great job of art and audio combining together <3
I'm sure yourselves and everyone compares it to FTL. But that was vital to me playing it tbh, because it would have been hard to know exactly how the game works otherwise. I enjoyed, it had me playing a few rounds to try and beat it. Part of me feels maybe balancing was an issue - I seemed to do better my first go when I was randomly doing stuff and figuring it out, rather than the additional tries where I tried to do things purposefully! Great entry, you should be proud.
The Trout will be revisited.. it is high on my list of games to remake properly with the love it deserves <3
Really atmospheric game that was great to experience. I was tempted to play a third time as it felt I got quite close to the end. I wish there was a tiny bit more of a hint as to what I was to do with those angel statues. When your flame only lasts so long - puzzle design is important. You want players to be challenge to do it in time, but not lose due to trial and error. Great effort!
I am sorry for getting your woofer stuck behind the chairs in that doorway :( the light faded... all too slowly... his echos fading... the room... black with darkness.
Loved many aspects of this though :D the visuals, the playable character, the lighting and mood. Good job! <3
A great experience - really enjoyed it. The animations really brought it to life, and a game where you don't control the main character felt quite original (oh, that was a possible theme wasn't it?! haha!). Awesome job!
Thanks for letting me play your game on stream. I enjoyed the innovation behind the "level selection" which really pulled the gameplay and theme together. I would have enjoyed it the root that I was constantly pulling behind me had some more gameplay implications on the platforming element of the game.
Nice one Java. Was genuinely impressed by this effort. The only issue I came across with the WASD controlls not working for picking up the baby! But a fun take on the theme - a variety of enemies too made a slightly repetitive mechanic feel fresh for longer. Would have enjoyed a little more combat mechanics to make me feel like there was more decisions making to do.
The voice acting to guide the player was nice - it fitted the game but also helped you introduce the objective of the game to the player. Felt like it could have been a bit longer or had more mechanics, but an interesting take on controlling the cameras and being the "intel" in someones ear.
Really simple game but great execution and deceptively engaging mechanics! I had a blast with this. Wish the collision was a little more empathetic... some very long wing mirrors hurt my poor chicken!
Thanks for letting me play your game Crazybot! I enjoyed the time I spent with it. I would say it was more of a challenge of following instructions - but had a bit of mystery about it too that made it interesting. Think about how a player can engage with your game without needing you to spell out step by step instructions - that will be a great place to improve next jam!
Some cool visuals - I enjoyed the animations and vibe you went for with the main character. As I said when I played it on stream - the strategies to beat enemies would be one of the things to improve to make this game more fun to play. Also - it was great for your first platformer controller - but a little tightening up on the controller would make the game feel a lot better too.
This made me happy! I had a great time playing it on stream. You managed to take a relatively simple concept and add enough depth and decision making to make the game interesting to play and tempting to replay! The sounds too... ahah! :D
The controls ended up being great - despite my initial reservations. Felt fun - really good within the limitations of a jam. I feel it became a bit repetitive - though I did enjoy the element of unlocking different areas and that some patients needed you to go to different places on the way to the hospital.
Enjoyed this game - annoyed I didn't get to beat it D: the mechanic was nice - seemed quite "obvious" but then had a really nice impact on the game by restricting the players jump. Made you have to think about what you were doing - as it conflicting with the standard platformer controls we have all gotten familiar with.
Good work outfrost. A lot went into the game, if only there was a bit more of a rewarding game loop / fun mechanics, it would have given me more reason to explore the lovely world you created!
This was an inspired entry you could say. Really pleased you made a game and took part in LD snail. It made me laugh <3
The poor bird! I TRIED. I really tried. I'll be careful this time, I said. But alas. I killed another bird :(
I felt the time it took to hit the lose condition on the game was a little too harshly tuned. Especially for a jam, you want people to have to focus on the rules but not be punished too harshly when exploring an unknown level.
I like how you themed the game and your interpretation :)
I enjoyed the staying alive tribute bg music! I wish you had added some variation to the jump sfx since I spent 50% of my time jumping! I found the colours on the second level made it quite difficult to see the platforms, and the controls weren't forgiving enough in my opinion when jumping near an edge! Also - I'd say space for jump (at least as an alternative button to UP) would suit some players! I really liked the icecream melting representing the time/health remaining!
Ah Pomo, what an experience. I did find your dialogue took a bit too long to get through (considering I don't find nuggets funny..!) However, I enjoyed the game and I appreciate the effort you put into the presentation and scripting. For a jam - checkpoints would have been good. But at least you shared a video to the ending so people could see it if they wanted.
@arthurds you are correct, my mistake - I misremembered, it was the repeating dialogue!
Some really good things in this: The animations, the cute fog, the 3d models and their style, and the concept. I enjoyed the fire-finding device. I think the main drawbacks for me was the speed of changing between items and also I felt a little lost and so the idea of running around to find the fires again to ensure they stay alight was tempting. Would have been nice if the fire sound could have been a little more accurate so you could use it as a guide too.
Hey Fables!
I wish I wasn't in such a rush when I played your game - though it did add that mild amount of peril trying to race through it in 5 minutes!
I liked the concept of switching between old and new, and how it was incorporated both into the story and the puzzles.
It took a while to figure how things worked, but once I understood I started to enjoy more and am glad I spent time with the game <3
You did a great job of making a game about a ball on a white vector based black and white world feel pretty epic and dramatic. Some great story telling and a challenging game. Wish there was a checkpoint as replying the game three times in a row to try finish it got a bit too repetitive for me personally. Great effort on the whole.
I really enjoyed this, as you probably remember on stream!
We really wanted to do minigames to heal patients in our game, and playing your game made me realise how it should have been done. Keeping it clean and simple.
I think there was great depth, I wanted to complete the game, I enjoyed the slay the spire style map pathing system. Maybe a tiny bit more variance in the bugs would have been nice. One of my faves for sure - thanks!
This was a silly game that caused me smile! I would liked the difficulty to ramp up so I felt like I had to juggle things / react quicker. 3 minutes in and I didn't feel like I was under pressure to balance decision making. Great effort - glad you submitted your game.
Nice controls and visuals. I feel the difficulty ramped up too quick. Part of this is to do with the enemy AI. The way they just follow you means when you get X amount of enemies its going to start getting less fun to avoid. Perhaps having sub sets of the enemies attack on different times to make it feel a little more reactive for the player, maybe some different attacks like swooping in a predictable line instead of just following. Enjoyed my time with it though!
I liked this game! My only complaint is that the spawn point "drop zone" didn't show clearly where the robot would drop once you'd left the starting area. Maybe some shadow or indicator would have helped! It was nice that you put some thematic comedic dialogue between every level.
I liked the concept but it felt that there was no objective, and that I should just go forward fast enough such that it didnt harm the baby! I really liked the baby animations though!
"AH the music is cool"
10 mins after trying to get through the game...
"This music though...".
I enjoyed this game more than I should have. Simple mechanics but that physics twist that adds the unpredictability to an otherwise predictable genre.
I really enjoyed the chess-like movement mechanics. It didn't require too much of a chess knowledge, but still added some fun restrictions to the game that made it challenging. Switching between the characters would force your brain to have to rapidly switch between the different movement modes which was challenging but rewarding.
Really nice start - I remember you said you were hoping to develop it further! As I said when I played it on stream - thinking next about how to implement loops into the game would be an interesting challenge - but if done well could really improve the puzzle element of the game.
It did take me back to my time visiting Paris :D I was pleased to see pomo! The honk mechanic was nice
a really nice presentation with a solid concept. The two enemy types were interesting, I liked how you could use the large enemy attack against the smaller ones. If there were some level layout changes as you repeated, it could have been more interesting - however I appreciate that would have impacted the theme of stuck in a loop.
It took a little while to fully grasps the way I can "aim", such as shooting whilst going around corners (as bullets travelled through the walls), but once I understood that and got used to the controls, the game felt like it was getting more and more engaging. A nice novel idea, with audio and visuals aligned well.
This was a very enjoyable game - recommended by Elysia Griffin! I think I got the good ending, which was nice. Wish I had some explanation to the story you intended to tell!
I am proud I recognised that it wasn't a rotten avocado.
a good foundation for an interesting game experience! I like the potential and your ambition - and you should be pleased with home much you got done in the game jam duration! In its jam state it was easy to miss the intended purpose of the game, but I was glad you were in chat to help me see the games intended direction!
a nice entry! I wanted maybe a bit more of a finale, but still was a nice story. The spike hitbox could have been a little more generous, mostly for those wall jumps. Lovely atmosphere and art and story telling.
I enjoyed this Wendel! The main trouble I had was that some of the collectables felt like they could be positive things, but essentially it was a game of avoid everything. The way it loops makes the controls a little bit challenging (in a good way), and the time mechanic felt interesting. I also think its pretty cool you made it as a NES game :)
I jammed hard - thanks for giving me the ability to do so without any musical knowledge :D a great experience, and a solid example of how games don't have to be shooting or "win lose", that they can just be a form of expression and tell a story that people will remember or reflect on (or both!).
Screwball Scrambleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I enjoyed this, dear James! Really innovative and on point with the theme! Your UI / tutorials add a great amount of polish for a game jam game! Even if I was awarded 0 stars for my efforts :(
Innovative and artistic - and I learned about the Praxinoscope!! Despite feeling a bit confused, there were always enough options for me to try to figure out what to do - it didn't feel tiresome like getting stuck in other point-and-clicks can sometimes feel!
A really pleasant game! Crypt of the Necrodancer vibes for sure - saw a few games like it one of the recent LD's. however, this was nicely executed and presented - it was enjoyable to play!
I WILL NEVER FORGET MY TRIP TO DUDE RANCH.
That ending!
EPIC.
Good work Lucky! I quite enjoyed the hamster mechanics and how the game became less of a grind the more you levelled up - felt rewarding.
**NOTE TO ALL FROM THE DEVELOPER** - The game currently crashes on launch. We would appreciate if you come back and try it again, hopefully we can get a build up tomorrow night after work <3 Thanks for understand!
@happygamer500 and @federico-giorgi I'd love if you can revisit tomorrow night when hopefully we have been able to fix the build. We'd love even more for you to then re-rate the game once you've played. I'm not sure what you can rate if the game is crashing on launch :(
Thanks @crazybot - it is difficult to balance these things. The finding of the relics is pretty RNG with their spawn rate + your chance to land on them. The enemies get harder the longer you play too, to match your ability to level up your characters.
@crazi456 @teshimoto @federico-giorgi @happygamer500 the game should be working now. Please report if it crashes again!
@almost thanks for the feedback! Really valuable. There's a lot of balancing we'd love to do, and we plan on stripping out the card game in isolation to work out the best way to make the board choices more interesting. At the moment, things like Truestrike or Special are almost always the right thing to do - you're right. We also made the enemies really easy before release, which impacted things. More on that below:
**Regarding the difficulty / balancing** - We made the decision to set the difficulty low. This is something Brainoid and I both would prefer not to do with our games, but for the sake of the jam where people are often giving a game 5-10 minutes, we felt that giving the majority of players a chance to experience the game from start to finish was the right call. If you want to experience the game at a harder difficulty, the enemies you face get more difficult based on the rolls. I believe if you get somewhere above 30 rolls you should start coming across the most difficult packs. The "win" condition of the game is heavily RNG influenced too, which impacts the difficulty of the game - which isn't ideal. We have talked about scaling the probability of mobius tiles based on how many rolls you've had, but again - it extends the time it takes to play through the game.
We wanted levelling up to be related to combat, but unfortunately - it was outside of the scope of the jam so we had to stick with the basic implementation of a board tile rewarding you with a stat upgrade.
@davision thanks for your feedback! The art, music and scene set up helped give polish that we too are not used to achieving in a game jam - we're very pleased with it! A fair point about what costs actions and what doesn't, wish we could have explained it better.
Thats a shame about the first fight! The mage is indeed a glass cannon, and if the rats go first and both attack your mage and get a crit... then yes - poor mage will die! The balance is a little tricky, something we'd like to address in the future. For the jam, we were focused on getting it as "quick" and "playable" as we could, meaning low hp pools and ability to skip fights so you can try and complete the game without taking half hour!
@gamesplusjames thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you lifted the Curse of Cattenburg!!! We would have loved to have made a tutorial.. but yeah... TIME! So Action Points == The highest wisdom stat in your party. So if your mage who has 5 wisdom died, it would then use your warriors wisdom of 3 at the start of next turn. It is what makes classes like the bard valuable - they give you more information on the board / actions, despite only doing 2 damage.
Thanks for feedback! Sorry to hear about the crashes, were they just "Fatal Error" ones?
Shame the combat felt that way for you @bakemonomori - if you want to be more specific - we're looking for feedback to try and improve the card game element further!
Oh dear @jimbly - it seems you encountered some bad luck and indeed ending based bugs! Sorry about that! So in that second game - mobius may have crit you on his special. his special is 50% damage (that would be 4 of 8) then the crit doubles the damage - so that would be 8 :( The getting to the end by chance is a bit frustrating, perhaps we should have made it so once you collect all 3 you get to choose to summon mobius when you're next at the town. Appreciate you sharing your playing experience!
@mateusboga we are working on identifying the cause of that crash :( thanks for reporting it. We worked in Unreal Engine 4 - it turned out really great visually we are very proud of it!
The revealing and selecting mechanic was original to us too, we are currently going to explore if it has enough depth to make it worth expanding further :) Thanks for playing!
Thats some fair and accurate feedback Code - when I was implementing them I had a function where I could pass "CanAttackCrit" and.. it just felt like it needed some deeper design thought so it feel consistent. Should all special be unable to crit perhaps? or should the card specify if something cannot crit. An alternative thing I've considered too is to reduce the crit damage to 1.5 instead of 2. Really appreciate the feedback <3
@idan-rooze this is the exact sort of feedback we love to have! Thanks for the effort and time you put into giving the feedback - it means a lot to us!
@arscene Thanks for the feedback! Great points there. I'll address some of your points: - We agree about escaping. Initially there should have been a reward for fighting, but time meant our design had to work around that. Secondly, we wanted players (LD players, this is - who give a game 5-10 mins usually) to experience the whole game so decided that skipping battle could help people rush for the end boss fight. Ideally, it wouldn't be like that - if this were not a jam game! - The tile all change when you get back to town, but the tile changing when landing on it is a decent idea we will think about - Stats would have been explained if we had time for a tutorial... welp. Wisdom = the highest wisdom stat in your party will be used to determine how many actions points you have per turn. Luck = Adds to dodge and crit chance.
Thanks again, really appreciate it!
@fabula-rasa did you try the "graphics settings" version? this will let you change quality settings to potato and may make a big difference to frame rate
Very useful feedback thanks @fabula-rasa: You'll be pleased to hear we agree with you about it! The lack of incentive to fight, was not the design but more the limitation of time. The monopoly board mechanic was more to satisfy the gamejam and didn't particularly give us an ideal way to "traverse options" for your party. There was a lack of feedback on winning fights, completing events, and more - which we would certainly put time into if we were to develop this further. The E/P 1/2/3 cards we are trying to redesign and are open to suggestion. We want them to be specific such that it can feed into the potential strategy of attack order and educated gambles etc. However, we think its too unclear. Our current next iteration would be to change them to separate cards: attack 1/2/3 and defend 1/2/3 that can be used the same way by both teams. In addition to this, if there is no E or P 3 remaining, we remove any attack/defend 3 cards from the deck. Thanks again for your experiences, means a lot!
@oneiromancer fair comments. we decided to push for content and get the game flowing, rather than get the tutorial in. I was pushing for us to skip the board game part - and just do the card game and really polish it with a tutorial. but it would have lacked the loop and theme. We tried putting the pictures together, but yeah - we shouldn't expect people to read through an essay of pictures and description! Appreciate you giving it the time to play it three times regardless!
@hadi-danial Ah yeah bit difficult with just tank left, fair point. It almost feels like we need to find a way to gamble in that sort of situation.. Like sacrifice half your health for 1 AP or something.
Thanks all! Really appreciate the feedback and that you are taking the time to play the game.
Brainoid, Spacey and I are looking at taking the card game concept further as its own project. I'll post details soon if anyone's interested in following the games progress.
haha such a fun and silly idea - really glad I got to experience this. The ending too <3 PURE ART
was some good choice of colours and a nice style to the game. As I said on stream, I think it'd be great if there was a bit more to the enemy variance than different firing patterns. It felt like 1 shot killed everything - and there was nothing that prevented me from shooting and moving - perhaps some reload or more driving mechanics could have made it interesting.
Hey Marko - I gave you feedback on stream, but yeah - the main let down for me was the gameplay getting a bit less interesting / rewarding the more you played. Some original nice ideas though, classic markopolo atmosphere and mood too. Glad to have played it <3
A pretty solid entry :D The last puzzles hurt my brain a bit :D The only criticism of the puzzles is they tended to be quite linear - like you can access one lever, which will allow access to another lever - which will lead to the next etc. For me, that was good - as sometimes it can be too much to think about in my head when the steps you can take is limited - so I don't think it was a bad thing especially! Good work!
You do such great games solo! Your audio and visuals are solid, and I think you managed to introduce what seemed a novel game mechanic! It felt a bit difficult to me, like I was always playing catch up and not being too tactical. I wonder if there could have been barrels or explosives on the battle field spawning to give some element of strategy to it.
One of my favourite games of the jam :) It was far too late before I truly understood the implications of my actions :( I really enjoyed the fact it was a non punishing bullet-hell. Something really rare - its so common that getting hit will wipe you out and you need to start over. Lovely entry!
I quite liked playing this - the gameplay was pretty enjoyable, the movement felt a bit too quick for me as I found it hard to control the vehicle. However, I think that played into the challenge of the game, if it was easy to path straight then it would be easy to avoid hitting your previous laps ghosts.
An artsy game indeed! I do enjoy that LD demonstrates not all games need to be about highscores, killing or puzzle solving. It was interesting to see the speech and images used were ai generated too. Really enjoyed the music - set the mood. I almost wish there was a little more direction with the narrative, as sometimes I am left feeling a bit short-changed when I invest in a story to feel its completely up to my interpretation. I don't mind doing some of the thinking, but quite often I'm interested in the story the designer had to tell. I enjoyed!
Really proud of your effort! I found the R button a bit unfortunate, as I kept pressing it to Reload, which would then reset the level. The speed they shot and lack of "tell" before they fired made the combat feel a bit less enjoyable. but lovely little puzzle-combat-escape room game, keep working hard on game dev!
I think you could tell it was engaging by my determination to beat that last but one level on stream! A few little bits to nit pick, such as the level grace period when jumping! Maybe some indication that you're close to running out of time too (flashing or pulsing of the number). nice puzzle game though, being able to interact with the same objects between current and previous lives is a nice touch.
I enjoyed this! Really nice setting and presentation - I enjoyed the setting and intro. The puzzles theirselves were pretty good, not too challenging. The main problems for me from a gameplay perspective was: 1) you were unable to reset the level (frustrating if you badly misplaced a statue that blocked your level progress) and 2) like with most puzzle games of this nature, you know what you need to do in some puzzles and it feels a chore to know "I have to run and die in that spot 3 times to complete the puzzle". The second point was less of an issue in some of the more intricate puzzles. Really solid entry, great level of polish!
I do not want to remind you of what happened when I FINALLY grinded 2500 food for that treasure map... heart. broken.
Really lovely experience, Bauke.
Fans of the Honk franchise have been eagerly awaiting the release of Honk II. Honest Dan of IGN has had a hands on with the latest instalment of the HONK saga, and was left with his socks officially rocked off. A soundtrack that's worthy of a main stage is the audio backdrop for a classic top down, fast-paced, bullet hell, gun slinging shoot 'em up. Blast your way through two large levels, with 4 devastating weapons at your disposal. Despite little indication on which way to go, the clever use of locked doors allows a natural path to unfold through the demon filled rooms. The sprite work is good, with a great level of consistency between the environment and characters. Small touches of polish, like the animated doors, round off a visually pleasing aesthetic. The Honk fans will be pleased and we're sure this Christmas there'll be many a stocking stuffed with Honk II.
... anyway! General feedback - the rooms where you need to keep killing until a door unlocks could do with a bit more of a visual indication thats whats going on - as part of me worried you just had respawns and I was wasting time killing the respawns. Also, as noted on stream, the screen shakes was a little overkill for me - so perhaps an option to control / disable it would be nice!
Outfrost! This game! You witness the impact it had on me :((((((((
the building a human bridge mechanic isn't so bad, just I felt that sometimes I had to run quite a long way to get back to my bridge, and that repetition was a little unsatisfying. Didn't help that I was rubbish either. But I finished it. And then your narrator made fun of me :(
such a solid entry, despite the relatively small scope / simple! you've got higher scores from me than I've given most of the other games I've played!
Original idea, the looping mechanic was more fun because you travelled along the path of the loop, which meant it wasn't as simple as just circling enemies. The use of pixel textures on 3d objects added a nice level of polish - the saloon style doors. I liked the different environments too!
Simple but satisfying! And by simple, I don't mean easy :D quite a original experience from my point of view, and a good use of the shapes plugin! Good job!
You did good! The different platformer elements you implemented weren't simple, and I think it felt great to "spider man" around the level. The ball control felt a bit unintuitive, but it worked out once I learned how it operated! You put a lot of effort into the voice acting too - be proud, man.
I found the way of moving around in space really satisfying. Took a while to notice I could jump off of the asteroids. Was a nice and relatively straightforward movement mechanic that felt good! Would have enjoyed maybe a little more variance in obstacles or maybe some tight spaces to have to navigate through.
Was a nice concept and interesting - the main feedback I'd have is to scale the difficulty up in a more linear fashion - it felt a little up and down, with some later levels feeling easier than the previous! Also, perhaps a cleaner way to display the connection between the button and what it controls, so less lines are across the screen. Some good puzzles though - nice how timing impacted things.
A lot of character to this game! I appreciated the effort put in to the backstories. Took a while to get used to the mechanic, but got there in the end. I liked your way of giving a tutorial after you've failed once, rather than a wall of text before you even try.
This was a clever and satisfying mechanic. Good design to have the dots on the map to execute the movement elements. The swaying screen and countdown sound effects were things I'm not sure added a lot to the game, but it was a solid entry.
Great mechanics - felt fun to play and I found I discovered more about how the mechanic could be used as I played the game more. It would have been nice to have a little more interactions with enemies, as they looked cool and added a nice fresh dynamic to the puzzles. The moving platforms going the direction you jumped at them from was a nice touch too. Nicely done :)
I enjoyed this! A simple mechanic, but well executed - and a good balance. The thing that protects you from harm also prevents you from getting survival based pickups. The more shield you lose, that harder it gets. Clean visuals too. I think I didn't expect the really slow moving items to disappear once they touched my shield, so maybe a disintegrate effect could have helped imply that as soon as they touch the shield. Also, as I mentioned on stream - audio for impacts could be pitch shifted randomly to help make the noise less irritating over time. Great effort!
Really nice mood to the game - the audio and visuals really matched and set the mood you wanted to convey. Had hints of the old school games like Day of the Tentacle or Manic Mansion. As I said on stream, the main criticism would be that there only seemed to be a static subset of points of interest, and only one way you can really interact with them. As a result it felt like it was a case of just activating all the items and lurking in the walls. Perhaps if there were some expire on how long it remains haunted, or perhaps some bonus for staying close to a haunt victim.
Had a very good mood, really had the feel of the classic older generation of games. As mentioned to you on stream, I would have enjoyed if the movement didn't move the entire screen - it made it harder for me to know which direction I moved. This was exaggerated by the isometric camera. but with that aside, the mechanics were interesting and I really enjoyed the feel and atmosphere of the game. Good job!
Thank you for having the camera toggle :D Quite a simple but satisfying concept! It was nice that balance between conserving fuel and conserving lives! Lovely style too
I am glad I played til the end! A treat! The bubble vfx were a really good touch - added a lot! I liked the idea of upgrading your equipment too, and that it almost worked like a metroidvania - meaning you could explore areas that you were previously restricted from due to the depth restriction. The enemies were nicely done too <3
James you really did a great job. Your game showcases your humour and design skills. I spent 30 mins completing it, and enjoyed the voice over. Reminds me a bit of funner runner.... (hahahahaha). You the best <3
Today I quit my job as a game developer and enrolled in the Shiatsu Masseuse academy. I owe you my future success. Thanks.
(PS: really great game, I'm envious of the scope and engagement that you've packed into this wonderfully silly game)
Really nice mood, visuals and audio. The game mechanics were fine, it was enjoyable, though maybe not super deep. It was a really nice length for a game gam entry. The characters were great and really well conveyed. The controls felt good. The old screen effect was decent, but I couldn't decided if it was an improvement or not. Good colour palette.
You have clearly put a lot of effort into the mood and environment. It feels really authentic, but the downside is that it ends up bombarding the player with too much info before they get a chance to try out the game. Generally speaking, it may be nicer to stagger the explanation of the game mechanics. Introduce a mechanic > Let them try > introduce a new mechanic > let them try. Otherwise, you risk that they may have forgotten mechanic 1 and 2 by the time you've gotten to your long 5 mechanic intro.
That aside, it was a cool and novel mechanic. I liked the navigation of the ship, I liked the restriction of only being able to collect one type of mineral. I enjoyed the merging of different types of molecules too. I think the mechanics were solid and it was really well presented.
This was a really nice atmospheric game! The creatures did give jump scares! The way they lerped to you was scary though felt a bit harsh from a gameplay sense. Really enjoyed the choice of colours, and how the torch became more useful the deeper you got.
We were using Unreal Engine 4! It's not the most ideal engine for game-jams, without optimisation the games can be pretty demanding on your PC! However, I work using UE4 so I try and keep my hobby projects in UE4 too so I can keep getting better! Thanks for your comments!
Also, zimny11 - I'm glad you got the Ed, Edd and Eddy reference!
Thanks NoahJ! That's some good feedback! A few of those things were on our stretch goal list but didn't make it in!
The environment generation was meant to be a bigger part of the game, but we had to cut back on features due to time. Essentially the quests were going to ask you to kill certain mobs in certain regions, so you'd use the card to "choose your path". Some tiles would have easier enemies, some would have loot. We also wanted the concept of placing the same type of tiles next to each other would create hard version of those tiles where the bosses could spawn. It was still fun to explore some of the ideas in the jam though for sure!
Really appreciate the comments all! When you drag and hold a card over the "Play cards here" box, time slows down and a tool tip will show on the right of the card the describes what it does. The cards were too small to put a description (though we admit the tooltip isn't ideal as its easily missed!). I'll add this to the game page to try help others know for future <3
The audio and visuals were all made during the jam! Spacey3d is a talented 3d modeller and 2d artist! And BrainoidGames's house mate Barlas is the musician who made two tracks for the game. Spacey and I made did the voice overs. Thanks for the volume feedback and for playing it!
Thanks for feedback everyone too, glad the crashes aren't preventing people from enjoying the game.
Thanks jonah for taking the time to write despite not having a mac build! Unfortunately making a mac build in UE4 isn't as nice as Unity where just click Mac as a target platform! We are still looking to expand on our LD47 game (Cattenburg, also a card game), so we don't plan to push this one much further - too many projects to juggle otherwise!
thanks @jaoel for the help for those having the steam VR issue. We unchecked the option in Unreal for VR intentionally, but seems like there must be another setting hidden somewhere to turn it off!
@janures you may enter Pogona's next reality music star competition to earn a spot as a fourth freg! You must become a frog and rename to something that includes Freg though. May I suggest Fregrick or Freginald?
thanks all for the lovely feedback! Part of us would like to make a nice post jam version - but to get the game as deep / strategic as we'd like, it'd take quite a lot of more time - which is something we're all short of! But yeah - we'll see... maybe we'll use what we learned from this and develop it in a future game jam!
Thanks for the feedback all! We appreciate you taking the time to play the game!
Yeah, we really wanted to make it more difficult - but essentially we know that most people will give an LD game one or two attempts, and we'd rather people experience all of the content in those attempts. The balance of game would be different if it were not a gamejam entry :)
Haha, indeed - if we had our musician for more than one day, who knows - maybe we would have had more music! Glad you liked the two tracks though, I loved them!
Great to hear it ran on Wine - unfortunately making Linux builds in Unreal isn't as straight forward as it is in things like Unity!
Thanks for the feedback all 🎷🐸 🥁🐸 🎸🐸
Especially those who battle through the fatal crashes. We have tried fixing them but unfortunately they are hard to track down to the source, as it seems rooted in our tweening library.
@jaco-van-hemert some great feedback. We wanted to add a burn card mechanic, where you can drag them to the lantern to get 1% fuel back. We also had bigger plans for environments and path ahead - but weren't able to deliver on it. Agree regarding the RNG nature of it. Ideally, since frogs earn cards in different ways - we would have liked if you could re-order your party in order to utilise their card drop triggers (freg for example gets a card when delivering a final blow). If we tied the category of cards you get to specific frogs, it could have lead to the idea of giving some control and strategising.
@peachtreeoath I will play your game then, will be interesting to see the parallels! Thanks for the detailed feedback. I think we had some good design ideas, but for them to truly shine they need to be implemented correctly and the game have a bit more depth than we were able to get done in 3 days.
@lex here is a video (SPOILERS) with a full play through you're welcome to watch if the crashes are stopping you seeing the end. Thanks for your kind words and patience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHHf9F08qig
Solid entry Java! The mechanics are simple, yet feels like you want to try again and do better next time. I think the least satisfying way to die in this is when the bricks above fall down onto you. I found because its a game of kind of spamming dig, that the blocks falling mechanic didn't add a ton and caused some frustrating deaths. The pace is too fast paced to really think about blocks falling, I personally found.
Really good entry though - graphics and audio on point, and high score table always is a positive thing!
Bauk you've made me want to make this type of game myself after playing yours. You've done a great job, especially being your first FPS experience. The sword and shield feel good, and with a little few bits of polish and work it'd be a real solid RPG first person controller. I like your art style too - it works really well.
really trippy and a bit odd, but thats just the story! Really loved the GB implementation, the narration was presented nicely, and the game didn't feel too long to play. It was a good effort to combined different game mechanics into the one. Good work Gilokk!!
some good ideas and implementation - lacked a bit of direction as you said - but you should still be pleased with the mechanics you implemented! Not really related to the theme, but some good novel concepts. Memorising the click order for spells was difficult but would be something rewarding once you've practiced.
Why did you not show me what was in the package?! WHY!!
I enjoyed meeting the Demon Lord, however! Be good if there was some ramp up of mechanics over time, as it felt like each layer was more of the same. (my game had the same problem!)
This was great! I completed it first time and the ending was very satisfying. It was a bit of a mish mash of visuals, but ultimately it was an experience I will remember after this week - and thats a great achievement.
I enjoyed this! I think the first phase of avoiding birds and balloons was there least enjoyable bit - but once it got a bit more about using the dash and smashing through things - it felt better. It took a while to know the "break" icon was actually an icon - it looked a bit like spikes to me - so I initially avoided them. Enjoyed my time with the game - thanks for submitting it to my stream <3
DRUMS! Your game was good fun, so sorry that I am about to say this - but the drums was a highlight for me! Glad I completed the game, I had not played the game it was inspired by - but yeah - felt nice having to balance going deeper with the ability to return to the surface. Would be good if there was a benefit to planning tunnels strategically.
No playable game, yet still 3 ratings.. :D I don't understand why people rate a game that can't be opened.
@validdark @Juanlu there is now a build uploaded.
@juanlu click on your tile where your unit is, and then right click to move it. The rest is mouse driven. I appreciate the time checking it out - feel free to report bugs and we'll get on them this evening.
@paulsams Thanks for playing! aye - a lot of numbers, but yeah - a tribute to the "spreadsheet simulator" that is football manager is what we were going for! Each of the stats do something, but that isn't well communicated :) charisma increases chance of recruiting, hunting increases chance to catch fish or hunt animals for example.
And fair @ollieoa - fun and accessibility wasn't high enough a priority for us this time round!
@coderaurus @dinwy @zimny11 thanks for playing all! Brainoid did great on music, I love how quick he can make something sounds so epic. The 2D sprites in 3d really gave a lot of character too thanks to Elysia.
We agree it would have been nice to see each unit health in battle (like when you monitor the energy of players and do substitions in FM). Appreciate you giving the game time <3
@fabula-rasa thanks for the detailed review!
I agree with pretty much most of what you said. You'll be pleased to hear these are issues we discussed since the start, but time meant that we didn't have time to make it more focused on the player experience. We wanted a way to choose your fellowship, and that recruitment would be a case of choosing the right people for your army too. We wanted the unstable king to pop up periodically and declare something that would impact the game - such as restricting gold (if we had implemented our gold mechanic to pay the fellows!). We would have liked to have scouts you could send out before a fight to learn about the armies battle block strategy, so it gave you a reason to adjust yours (rather than going in blindly). The unstable stat was meant to play a bigger role in combat too, something you'd visibly be able to notice. But yes.. three days wasn't enough :D much respect for playing it and giving detailed feedback to us! We are glad you enjoyed the commentary and the vibrant world :)
@mtabasco we wanted to add a scouting activity you could do when camped near enemies, where it would gather information on nearby armies... but alas.. time defeated us!
@tricky-fat-cat honk is always a pleasure. I didn't comment enough how professional the game looked and felt.
@ty-victorson Yeah we lacked time to do a tutorial, but we hoped at least the popups saying why peeps died would at least be the hard-tutorial to at least explain the mechanic. but yeah, finding out how to lose by losing isn't always the most fun experience in a game!
@gno-evenimente I am glad to see the appreciation to the silly concept of football manager tribute! That is unfortunate (but useful to hear about the UI flicker). I noticed when recording a gif the UI would disappear periodically, but my eyes wouldn't notice it in game. I wonder whats the cause of that.
@animawish haha thats so good to hear you say! its what I said when we ran out of time to code restrictions on how often you can recruit - that the tax of having to micro manager 50 drop downs would be painful enough!
@chairshot-games Thanks for playing! So when a unit dies out of combat, it should popup and say "X units died from starvation" or something similar. Essentially all the out-of-combat stats (energy, food, water, hygiene) go down each day after you spend the day on a tile - and if it reaches 0 they'll die. As for battles, it is simulated so some will just lose their HP based on the simulated positions and ongoing combat.
@denzil-gomes braioidgames did great work to get the commentary working, it really added a tiny bit of personality and silliness that we wanted!
@rookrules thanks for playing! I've not played blitzball but hearing you describe it in stream makes it indeed sound similar to the management style sim this was inspired by!
@rufson congrats on the corrections :D yeah, 100% agree we would have benefited from having filters and bulk actions to make the assigning of roles less tedious. But I also agree we would have benefited from more time haha!
@coleslaughter the death of Dan the Dishonest proved pivotal in the legacy of the Keyboard Cowboys.
@dante2001 thank you - yeah we know its not "obvious fun", these games the fun comes from satisfaction and learning the systems. We didn't quite get far enough to get to that level of satisfaction - but still it was fun trying!
@anchorlight fair points! I actually implemented the enemy units so they could be moved and weren't tied to tiles, but ran out of time to implement something that would move them. I agree some of your suggestions would have really helped us nail the theme. We wanted popup from the king sporadically as well that would help portray how unstable he was, making up laws that would impact your fellowship.
@klosterliv thanks for your feedback. You aren't wrong that in its current state, the required way to survive does focus on repeating some of the "less interesting" mechanics. For us it was about trying to micro manage, and so thats why we decided to make each stat require a day to adjust. We could have simplified it by making resting make you drink and eat, and perhaps that would have more suited a game jam. We also wanted to have easy batch select features, like "set task for all" as a button, and a way to order / filter based on stats to help the process of micromanaging. We did use a formula to ensure you could counter the decay, HOWEVER we didn't have to balance it with player enjoyment at the centre of our minds. Appreciate you gave it ago, and sorry to hear it wasn't enjoyable for you!
@klosterliv thanks for the follow up! The however was purely meant in the sense of "we did have logic in there *but* it doesn't really matter because we didn't balance it to be fun. Appreciated the input!
Congrats Tim, for making a driving game that made me think differently about how to control my car than any other driving game has! I am not familiar with racing, but it made you really think about momentum. I was pretty bad at it, but once I got a controller I got a bit less bad. Seems you made a lot of fun track content but I wasn't good enough to reach it! Enjoyed my time with it.
I liked this entry! I think the mood was its strongest point, it was a lovely balance of the visuals and the enemy design that gave that impression. I also enjoyed the approach to taking damage / death screen. I think perhaps the difficulty could have ramped up a bit slower. I enjoyed the "stay longer to power up but you will get overwhelmed if you stay too long".
I really liked the mood set in this game - the combination of music, visuals and general setting worked really well together. The split mechanic felt interesting but the level design didn't give me enough reasons to utilise it. Had a good time with this, great effort!
I made it just in time! I need to get me some of those light-weight bookcases, it'll make moving house a breeze next time! Good atmosphere and silly premise. I messed up a few times with the wasd mapping with the isometric angle - I've no recommendation on a better way to do it, just when its pure 45 degree it can feel like a 50 50 gamble which way a key will take you. The audio was good, I liked how it changed when the cultist had you in line of site! The art assets were great too!
A lot of content, and very ambitious! I gave a lot of feedback on stream, but to summarise: The theme spawned the idea, but it didn't quite feel like we were delaying the inevitable when playing. Perhaps the sun region could get smaller and smaller over time? Left clicking again outside of the UI when the build menu is already up feels like it should close the UI. I was a bit unsure if drones would continue to salvage materials from a place until it was empty or if I had to micro manage them.
Really liked the idea of an RTS builder where you have to rebuild again - it was a refreshing twist on the genre. Means you don't have to forget about early build order and keeps you on your toes.
Really innovative and original idea, which was also funny! It plays on our expectation as gamers! Gameplay ends up lacking a bit after you progress further, but otherwise a really good entry!
Looking forward to playing this James! Would love to do it on stream, but if our paths don't meet I'll write another comment and let you know what I thought <3
James! as you saw on stream, I had a blast with this! One or two elements are missing to make it feel a solid formula, but if you keep working on it - you may be able to find those missing pieces to make it feel complete! It felt influenced by a certain award winning card game, but also felt different. The card design was funny, Ninja Gary was me best boi. Until I met the Wrestling Champ!!
This was a solid entry, felt really original and I think it was a clever integration of delaying the inevitable with the shooter game mechanics. Having the number completion value decay over time helped with the strategy - I wonder if some item you could collect to halt decay for a period or something could be interesting.
The animations used make a big difference - from the initial gameplay to your character swimming off after falling in. Small touches, but I appreciated them! The blue font on some screens wasn't the easiest to read against certain backdrops. It ramped up in difficulty pretty quick, but that was well balanced with an unlock system! I think maybe I'd have liked the planks to be more central, as my eyes were focused on end of the pier (right side), or bottom left (where new pieces spawn), so it felt a bit challenging to jump my focus around rapidly. I had a good time with this, and love you you took a simple idea (tripping over) and turned it into a solid gamejam game :D
This was a very solid entry - I think I gave a lot of feedback on stream so I won't write a wall of text here. However, the concept felt great. The main thing that could make the experience nicer for players is: 1. Ramp up the difficulty slower (more enemies, but don't increase their health) 2. Have a more predictable "rage" accumulation. I respect it needs to remain semi random, but at times I waited for 75% of my health before I got my free move. 3. Use different sprites / colours to represent enemies that have more health 4. More visual / audio feedback to help players "feel" the stun mechanic during the chaos of a fight. 5. Sometimes being surrounded (left right top) felt a bit too harsh. Maybe a aoe knockback you could use every 20 seconds or something could be nice.
Good polish, I liked the bits of text you but on some of the obstacles that gave the game character. As for feedback: I think the pickup audio didn't suit rest of the game style. Also I feel the theme wasn't very strong for me, it was just that it gets harder over time. You chose good music to use in the game. The visuals are clean!
@krunk thanks for such a great review! I really see your point with the difference between pickupables in Overcooked. Due to scope we decided to consolidate the pickup and drop mechanic so that you have to place it back where you found it (it meant we could use the same base code class as other lab equipment!). However, it is clunky and one of the areas we would have loved to given more love! Glad you got to experience some of the "humour" :D
@bastienre4 Yes, we will try and get a fix for that - some issue with multiple UI elements interfering with each other! Glad you found a work around. And I agree, @spacey3d knocked it out the park with the graphics!
@anchry Thanks very much for the feedback :D really kind words and we glad you enjoyed our 3 days of cram!
@mateusboga Sorry to hear about the crash :( as for the launch code, the text at the top says "Enter the following text:" and then has a phrase underneath. You type the phrase, and it will fill the screen with code then compile when you've finished typing. Thanks for taking the time to play and give feedback :)
@leorid Hey! It is up, we were indeed updating it as we hard a crash reported that could occur on the win condition... ! Fixed now though - I hope you enjoy!
@beefsock really appreciate the comments and the company during the LD jam streams. Its really draining, and sometimes during the jam I question if I am really enjoying it, but always at the end it feels worth it!
@fog-ryu Thanks for playing the game and giving feedback.
Any ideas for more in-game feedback? At the moment there are lights on every device that change colour when they are not operational (Blue is good, Red is out of action), the machines vibrate aggressively when the vines entangle them, and the lab ai voice announces almost all of the issue that can occur with the equipment. Do you think something like a list of problems on the HUD/UI would be something that would have helped?
The tutorial we worked hard to condense down to 5 points, that you can bring up at any time by pressing tab - it may be less overwhelming if you don't try and memorise it all and check it whenever you feel like "I'm not sure what to do".
@fog-ryu thanks for the feedback - yeah I understand what you mean. These days its interesting, it feels a design choice whether you want to present player with all info on HUD, or have them be responsible for remembering things (like the Elden ring UI vs Assassins Creed). We thought it would make it more manic if we didn't give you a HUD that showed everything. However, we agree if there was a progress bar you could see without having to "use the generator", it would help. Thanks again!
@reronin the lizard :( it didn't take a pre-flight shot, and rules are rules!! haha we did want to have it so you could feed plants to the lizard but had to cut the feature!
@niklas-zhaga thanks very much! 9 is really good! I think the highest we've watched someone get is 12!
@sloke-t thanks for feedback - sorry about that, sometimes you can get "stuck" on machines, usually pressing E again will "disengage" you from it. I hope you still had a good time though!
@arya-s I am glad at least some appreciate the humour snuck in there hahaha!
@squimmy thanks for the feedback! We havent seen the plant not growing bug before, so thats good that you reported it and something we can look into if we continue working on it! We agree the launch code is one of the biggest hurdles - people just think they use it when they are ready to launch. Also its placement means people don't often find it when first playing. We would have like to tutorialise things a bit, would have done if we had more time. It is also true about the water and the fuel tanks, some signage or colour coding could help, but then I think a tutorial introducing the equipment would also work. Thanks for playing :)
@caudatecoder thank you, really nice to see - as I missed the live stream! :D
@thebooksnail yeah the sweetspot mechanic I've seen a few do wrong - its been hard to watch someone stand there for like 60 seconds as the fuel tank trickles full! Thanks for playing :)
@escapade 100% agree with a tutorial! If we had another half a day :D
@markopolodev always a pleasure to hear from you! Grats on completing Extra!! Really appreciate your detailed feedback, and that you liked the details we put in the game.
@bauke-regnerus it is not John, I swear!! Well, actually, we should check with spacey... maybe she used him as a reference....
really nice solid entry! The mood was good as it felt like a genuine retro game. I liked the way that the water filling unlocked certain areas of the map, and having multiple of the same coloured keys gave people choices to make when unlocking sections. It wasn't intuitive to me that I could jump higher when moving full speed, so would be good to find a way to help players learn that somehow.
I've always wondered how it'd be to be a Binner Lady, and now I don't have to. I think the vehicle controls were great, the vehicle felt rightly sluggish and having to reverse to achieve the goals made sense. I liked the little lift and put down animation too :) I think some extra gamification would have benefited the game, to make it feel either like there is a risk of losing or that the gameplay evolved as time went on.
A solid entry! It was nice to have some depth to the game alongside the usual stellar art and audio. I liked the card game mechanic, its hard to make card game AI in a jam duration that feels realistic, though I think a small amount of detail (like stopping them using a heal on full health) would have been enough to feign more intelligent AI. Good work to the team!
You did well, especially since you had some technical difficulties! I liked the radar mechanic to help you find the zombies, I also thought it was a good challenge to keep your eyes peeled for rustling bushes. I think with real players it could be fun, because it becomes a mix of pve and pvp there, where you can take advantage of someone being distracted by a zombie and get some damage done on them!
A great game! I think it maybe ramped up a bit too slow. It felt good to play, don't get me wrong, but it put me off trying again as I knew I'd need to get through the "easier bit" for 4 minutes before it got the challenging bit. I liked the aesthetic and the mood created by the art and audio. I didn't give a rating for audio as you mentioned on stream that you had made the soundtrack for a previous jam.
A great example of how small scope and a game without too high an asset budget can still be great executed!
a great job to create an overcooked meets tower defence mechanic within the time constraints of a game jam! I found the concept funny and silly! Would have liked some variance in orders, some negative or positive effect about how fast / effectively I fulfilled the order.
I enjoyed this Marc! As always, great to see representation of physical games in LD. I think this had some great qualities to it. I made some suggestions during stream, I'll try and summarise:
1) the LD50 rule felt a bit too much of a coin toss. I would be interested in seeing how a more iterative "push your luck" mechanic worked, where you can pay extra to roll extra dice. For example: You roll 8 die. But realise you are short on what is required. So you can roll an extra N dice, but for each new dice you have to add another 1 to your total. So I may choose two more dice to roll. Say my 8 dice totalled 30, then to roll 2 more I add 2, so 32. Then the dice land 4 and 2, so takes me to 38. Maybe I am still short, and I can choose N dice to roll, but this time it costs 2 per dice. I roll 2 more dice, so 38 goes to 40. The dice land 4 and 5, leaving me on 49.
2) I would like adding more strategy elements to it, such as getting to keep 1 of the face up cards per rounds, allowing you to have more control over the dice criteria you need to satisfy.
pretty simple but crikey we had fun! I always enjoy that you try and make collaborative games, which in turn helps bring people together in the community. I think this one was good because it could be fun to play single player too, and had a short round-duration which made it great for keeping people engaged.
As always, really enjoyed your entry Bauke. I think I'd like if there was a reference of the buildings that become available per year along with the ones you've yet to place. That would allow better planning! Really nice clean aesthetic, the little touches like UI to show the + or - were nicely polished! I enjoyed!
Love that I am credited for the 1 audio clip :D
Had a good time with this, despite being bad at it! I think if you could take a closer look at the board you need to assemble pieces on to, it would have helped. Maybe if you had infinite time to look at the pieces to learn them before a shift too, that could have been interesting!! really solid theme and mood, bit too plausible :D
I enjoyed this! I think the carrying mechanic was well executed and added a skill requirement to the game what is greater than some of the other games in the Lucky Lefty saga. Once I realised you could drop items from above, I realised that there was more depth to the gameplay too! The collectables at the bottom seemed a big investment to get, probably the hardest area to harvest from. Some more UI feedback would have been nice to help me know when I'm approaching an end game criteria.
I really like this! I liked that I started with the familiarity of chess rules (modified pawn, though!) - and then had to think of how to apply them in a different puzzle environment. It was really impressive how you worked in the enemy pieces, I think it added a lot of depth when you had to think about baiting the enemy pieces too!
I enjoyed the way you had to keep an eye on the blue orb, as it added an extra element to the genre. I liked also that your pushback ability consumes your blue bar, making it a trade off. I didn't like that the small enemies hugged you - but maybe it just needed more feedback to help you notice they are on you. Towards the end they move faster than you so if you dont know they are touching you - you can die fast. I also feel the whole "upgrade" system is quite common now, and so it'd be good in future to think of more original ways to implement the upgrade screen (since a pause with "choose 1 of 3" is quite disjointing and common place these days.
@honest-dan since you asked for a suggestion, you could keep the same system even but at the end of a wave instead of throwing a popup on the screen, place the powerups in the level with some dialogue on the screen saying choose one - this is the exact same thing but doesnt disrupt the players control of the character. Something more complex could be offering players challenges that control which they get. For example: basic one: survive the wave. medium one: collect 10 blue orbs before completing the wave. hard one: Take no damage and complete the wave. Obviously needs some further thought than that, but hopefully that gives you something to consider in future!
Really great entry, glad you came to an idea you liked! I loved the towing mechanic, and the concept of a spreading fire and the futile attempts to push it back. Over time it became a slight negative though, as you felt the task was pointless as gameplay wasn't evolving yet you kept losing more and more!
I liked the concept, of an ever expanding train - yet also you add to the things you need to maintain! The pipe minigame I think was the best. If we could get a nice way to balance the things going wrong based on how far apart they are, so it feels like the player has a better chance.
An original concept, the movement allowed it to be a very skill based game (not something I was great at, haha). Keeping momentum, planning routes, all felt good. the ui for "points now decrease faster" was a bit big for what it was, my first impression of that UI made me think I needed to pay attention to it. Lots of scope for high score runs on this too, good entry!
A good game, pomo! I enjoyed it! Definitely one that you have to keep playing to get used to the controls and predicting your movement. Really nice mood set by the audio and trippy visuals at times. Nice that you added checkpoints too, for accessibility!
I had a blast with this! Think I had a score of 3500, which I was proud of! It seemed interesting the strategies of timing when you place peeple, and where - as it could push back the inevitable! It was all very thematic too, felt it was simple but well executed. I would also have liked some more feedback to know how close to the town I was as I get pushed further and further down.
I enjoyed playing this on stream! The speed it takes to turn the cannon, and your ability to stockpile missiles, means that there is more depth to this game than initially meets the eye. I thought it was neat how you integrated the scores and statistics into the ending message.
Really enjoyed this little arcade game. I respect that the dynamic nature of the level meant that it acted almost as a sandbox for players to design a strategy, but in order to build a strategic landscape it requires some rng and discipline. Loved the old school arcade feel, reminded me of being away on camp as a kid and playing bombjack.
I could have played this for a lot longer, which is both a positive and a negative. It made starting a second game feel less tempting as I knew it'd take me 15 mins to catch up to where I'd previously achieved. The gameplay in grinding material gathering games like this isn't for everyone, but I liked that there were different weapons to choose and that you were able to position yourself to mine efficiently. I think the UI interactions could be improve, mostly the visibility of a buildings actions when you interact with it, and the closing of menu's once they are already open. Great that you managed to fit a lot of depth in regarding crafting.
A very silly game, was a memorable experience! I like that you put expressed your humour in the game, both in premise and voice lines.
It ended up getting really interesting - I was engaged in it the whole time. It felt I could cheese the maths one a bit, by writing the answer but not submitting it. The whackamole one felt like I just needed to press it once when it went yellow. The simon says was more tricky. All together felt good and hectic, so I think you achieved what you hoped! Perhaps a "its about to blow" warning colour light (after yellow) would have been good too!
I feel the character, in art and feel were very well done. It all felt very cohesive, from the flame attacks, the flammable materials to keep the flame going, and being in these dark environments. I felt bad killing the cute little rattos though :D
I was not the most generous of reapers, but still, there was some that at least had me consider it! I think any game that can get people thinking and accessing their moral standpoints certainly has merit. The spritesheet used was great and helped set the mood and give a nice polished feel.
the music and the little sock animations made this game as charming as it is :D a very simple concept, sometimes I felt "being good at it" was purely down to a persons ability to quickly click and drag, though I liked in pair mode it added a bit of strategy so you prioritise certain socks when it all gets a bit too fast to save all socks.
Really nice game, I had a good time with it! I liked elements of strategising, however it did feel a little bit governed by luck. Whether this be whether there were crystals nearby, or the teleport location (though I admit that is a gamble mechanic the player is in control of). I think the avoiding death element could have been more fun if the distance they travelled ramped up slower, so that you had more opportunities to out manoeuvre them. Sometimes it really felt like it could catch up so quick that its was mostly down to the rng of items rather than player decisions. I know it sounds silly if it has less move distance than you to begin with, but it would still get you in a pickle if you found yourself leading down a dead end. It could even be used by thoughtful players to scout out the map and plan future escape routes early on.
Simple but effective game. First impression is "Flappy bird" but then you realise... no this has a lot more to it. You can move left and right, but also the delay from shooting the air to when it impacts the bubble is an interesting dynamic. Then you also need to consider if there is a path between them. really enjoyed it, a great challenge.
A really fun and silly concept! I liked the plugging hole mechanic, and how you have to choose to only do one action at a time. the spamming space made the game great to play once, but to play longer it ended up being too demanding to spam the space bar continually. Really good theme interpretation!
This was good, I liked the full-feeling eco system that you created! I quite liked how the things worked in harmony. I would have liked to see more warnings / feedback when the lose conditions are nearing - as the UI was quite small and hidden away in the corner and my run finished without me knowing. It was my fault but it still would help prevent the negative feeling of losing without realising you were going to lose! I'd like the idea of being able to let trees grow longer to grow bigger food, so there's a bit of a tradeoff to make - harvest asap to make sure you don't run out of fuel, or if you are well organised you can get more fuel per tree.
A lot of effort went into setting up the scene and the story. It made the game a bit of a wall of text to start with, but I think it set the scene up for a story where you understood the situation which helped the twists and turns have an impact on you as a player. Some original ideas too! I would have liked if there were multiple endings!
A really nice concept, and nicely illustrated. Sometimes when the mechanics of the game interact with each other, it can cause some frustration - such as the swap happening mid jump, it feels difficult to control any momentum when it swaps back later on. I think with some further thought about making the game feel better to newer players to avoid some of the frustrations, that this could be an interesting puzzle game. Great polish for a jam game, too!
Very charming game! You managed to make the upgrade process not feel tacked on like many shooter-with-upgrades feel in a game jam. the art style and premise were great, and I enjoyed the humour. I also thought it was an interesting design to have players have to choose between collecting their coin vs protecting the house. Nice one!
A very silly concept, well executed. It feels very frantic, and because of the nature of the game you end up not getting mad when you fail. Not sure how it could be expanded, but perfect for a jam game!
I liked that this was a little deeper than expected. It could be good to help the player know that there is a sweet spot on the swinging - because they may get confused and feel they can never go wide enough to get the furthest out food. I think it was a neat skill based game though, requires good prediction and accuracy to do well in.
Hey Krass! great to see you taking part, a pleasure to play your game! I like that despite me claiming "its not too complex, I just need to focus..." - I still kept dying and wanted to try again and prove to myself I could do better.
Enjoyed this! for a simple mechanic, it starts to build in a good way and made for an entertaining session! It was cool to used other peoples seeds so I could try and blame my failures on the seed.. only to see - nope, I was just not very good at it! The delay mechanic didn't feel overly useful, but I can see maybe it coming in handy later in the game with things like the teleporter. I would have liked more positive conditions, the sword was nice but felt the only good thing that ever happened to me!
Hey James! I was glad to have Elysia at hand to rope into a few rounds of local co-op! We did have a bit of a giggle! It would come from no where that all of a sudden her goal location was accessible. Was fun to try block her off then in those frantic moments. The reset button didn't seem to work for us, so we got stuck some games which was a shame! Great to see you take part <3
Grats on a nice compo entry! The game over screen called me a loser :( haha!
As for feedback - it may have been a web build issue, but the cursor didn't match up to where the block was when dragging blocks. I would have liked to be able to rotate the blocks maybe? But I think I am too used to tetris, and tried filling the bottom first - where as in your game I could have filled from anywhere!
really unique idea, delivered with amazing presentation, mood and most importantly - SASS! You guys are great at creating really original ideas and delivering them well. Grats my loves
absolutely great entry Lucky! you both did great, demonstrating how to take a simple mechanic and deliver it in style and enhance a players enjoyment.
@akai-syuuichi - thanks so much for letting us know! We updated the build now so it packages with the Unreal pre-requisites (basically, if you've not run an Unreal Engine game on your PC before, it will now install the required components for you). If you find the time to give it a go, we'd love to hear how you enjoyed it!
@karen-shum thank you! I always say I want a title screen where you can trial the controls, but every other jam I run out of time and just throw up a static image for the title screen instead! Glad you liked it.
@guitarbro we were really worried the 10 second would be too long. We had most puzzles initially require a hiccup, to jump further or throw your item further - but in the end we simplified each puzzle to make it not essential since waiting around 10 seconds if you mess up can feel terrible. Hiccups ended up being a way to speed through bits, which worked as a nice compromise. Thanks for the feedback!
@mavvy Brainoid did great with the music, feels very cohesive from level to level! He also made it so you hiccup on the beat to try help with the timing, which was about as much as we could manage in the time! spacey makes lovely assets too, so its a pleasure trying to make them look good in editor!
@inksun thanks a lot! we often get carried by the art haha! It is every 10 seconds you hiccup - you can delay it by drinking water for certain puzzles though.
@creepyounguy cheers, means a lot!
@pianoman373 great to hear about the sounds! what's funny is most sounds I had to double the pitch of, but the hiccups spacey recorded were high pitched enough so left them as they were!! Yeah there are some tricky puzzles in there (SPOILERS INCOMING: you are right about timing your hiccup, you need to reset your hiccup with the pool of water so that your hiccup happens between the two others - like on the first 3 hiccupers you walked past).
@thebooksnail thanks for the feedback! yeah, we really hoped to get some play testing from people before we submitted, but time didn't allow. It may run a bit different on various PCs, which could impact the load times and cause situations like you described :( Let us know if you give it a second go.. you can defeat those pesky wasps! (SPOILER: Remember, they don't like fans and they also lose interest quite easily if you're quick).
@lex tbh it takes us 30 seconds to add alternative controls, we will make an effort to get that in future jam entries! Thanks for the feedback.
@chybby yeah the final puzzle was crammed by brainoid in the final hour or so, so its a little janky and not exactly the most obvious - but glad you still got it!
@merijn-schaap glad you mastered the hicjump! We wanted to make more puzzles reliant on it, but decided to have it work more as a "optional short cut" sorta mechanism, so people didn't get stuck!
@sean-esopenko thanks for the message! Ah yes, I think we overlooked the rock type updating your last stood on material type - sorry about that! Did you manage to get the turtle to the shaman? :D
We too look forward to when Unreal Engine web builds are a reliable and accessible thing!
@rickylee haha! I remember you saying "challenge accepted!" in Elysia's stream to do this! We wish we had the time to make alternative ending if you bring the turtle :D
@nick-shooter thanks for the feedback! So I actually decided to keep the momentum it inherits low when releasing an object, as we wanted "larger throws" to be something you could utilise the hiccup for. You'll notice you throw things much further when hiccuping. We didn't want to have to force people to use the hiccup mechanic, but yeah it did make things easier if you utilised it. However, we still could have added a bit more momentum to make the windmill bit a bit more tricky. As for the cog bit - glad to hear you figured out that new way of doing it! The intended way was to stop fan with rock, run cog into the lift, then run back and remove the stone - then the hoarder would get killed by fan when running back to his home with the cog! I can def see how it would have felt a bit tiresome doing it otherwise!
@jag thanks very much, spacey makes lovely 2d art and we are glad you liked it!
@fedir we did have a carry animation, but ran out of time to implement it sadly :( Was spacey's first time doing 2d animation for our games, she did good!
@daivyishere thanks for the kind words <3
@yellowkamel thanks for playing on stream, glad you liked the character! hic!
@eroaxe thanks a lot for the good feedback. yeah we agree, the puzzles don't always suit a jam. A vague puzzle in a game like inside you don't mind spending 10 minutes on figuring out... but in a jam I don't think the audience is the same or as patient. Murder of hoarders was sadly a valid strategy... they just love the shiny :(
@jeremy-ryan lovely fan art, Beardadette is honoured! We agree about the hiccup timing. The music beat and the screen effect does help, but the screen effect coming on 1 second before isn't as helpful as it could be. The intention was for it to start to fade in more intensely, but we never got the chance to refine it properly. I think maybe something subtle like 3 dots above the character that would come on like a 1 - 2 - 3 - HIC count down would have helped.
@jvdwijk thanks for kind words. We would have liked another half a day to polish all, but we were happy with the core aesthetic at least!
@stvup thanks for the feedback! brainoid designed some good puzzles - they had the risk of getting people stuck, but we're pleased you enjoyed solving them!
@zubspace thanks - our first time doing this style in Unreal in a jam, we think it came together well! 2d stuff in unreal has a bad reputation as there are issues - but was fun to explore it!
@thoastbot appreciate it! yeah we felt the theme was going to produce a bunch of games of the same type - so we wanted to find something that was relatable to all yet not something conventional in a game. Due to 10 seconds being quite long, we had to make sure not all the game puzzles / platforming relied on the hiccup, but glad it still felt a core part of the experience.
@michaelaranda thanks for your solid feedback when playing it on stream!
@rincs Beardadette is flattered by your praise. She's actually blushing! :D We are glad you enjoyed our game - one of the biggest parts of the jam for us is hoping people enjoy and react positively to our games!
@mika314 yes, there's a bug with orientation that happens if you press R to restart when you're already in the process of restarting! Fixes itself after another restart though so we didn't rush to fix it! As for the cog puzzle, its a tricky one - the intended way was to stop fan with rock, run cog into the lift, then run back and remove the stone - then the hoarder would get killed by fan when running back to his home with the cog! However, occasionally it bugs out and the hoarder doesn't get killed by the fan, so it can be a bit finickity.
@bobfish thanks a lot - its a highlight of our jam to watch other people on stream play and react to our games. Appreciated your time.
@tyrannas yeah - we wish we could have made the UI / visuals easier for people to know when the hiccup was coming. We had a timer on screen when debugging, which tricked us into thinking it'd be okay - but def was something people took time to learn.
@ukulelefury thanks for playing our game (and for your keynote video!). So I think the trouble we have is that the puzzles can be brute forced, and from watching streamers play our game we notice a lot of people kept trying the non-intended solutions until it happened to work with some luck / good timing. This can leave the player feeling frustrated or not understanding how they solved the puzzle. Most of the puzzles have a solid way to solve them, but yeah - a flaw of our design perhaps to not force players to solve the puzzle only in 1 way.
@badcop it was great to watch you play - thanks for streaming the games, don't worry about the vod! we were there LIVE! <3
Hey @langotriel - really glad I got to check your game! A neat tank mechanic, that felt fun to control and was pretty original experience. I like that it felt like an arcade game, yet there was still a sense of narrative and finishing the game. Despite not really having a story, the setting and voice acting helped set an environment for the player to exist in!
as soon as a friend linked this to me, I was like "This by the same people who did the collaborate art game last time?"! It has your signature! create a clean well presented framework that allows online non-real time collaboration to be the heart of the experience. good idea! I expected when I selected a track on the final bit that they would be playing in my band, but it didn't seem to work that way. Wasn't sure why I was choosing the tapes pre show as a result.
Grats on first place!
I was not so good at this game :( I found I didn't get better the more tried, I am just an unreliable human clock :( Glad to see you take part instafuff!
2 hours down, still need to go. I will soon need a doctor...
Grats, you have a great ability to design relatively simple ideas that translate to great community experiences.
Hey outfrost, loved the concept and the atmosphere of this chill train management sim! I was glad to have you in chat to help me understand how to interact with it. With a nice UI and hand holding to learn the mechanics, could be real nice experience to hang out in
solid game! the combo of picross with the falling tile fallguys puzzle was a great mash up and worked really well together. the ten second timer made it too - as you couldn't just sit and plan, there was always a sense of urgency. A lot of accessibility actions too, which is a nice touch.
You did great to set up all those experiences, and definitely aroused a sense of curiosity in those environments. Could have easily missed the objective, but the room with the items points player in the right direction at least. I liked how the scenes changed. Maybe not the most "fun" experience, but definitely a good experience that I'm glad I found.
This made me sad. I tried very hard to get anywhere near the leaderboard, but alas, I failed. My slow rocket ship was destroyed repeatedly by the space cookies :( A fun multitasking game, with a lot of "RNG react fast" moments. I think because the game was so difficult, I was mainly struggling with the asteroid game - before even considering the distractions. I may have enjoyed a little bit more if the game was a little easier to begin with!
Really solid game - a nice straight forward mechanic thats challenge yet addictive. The main thing for me was making it accessible / easier to track. I think if you made a larger crosshair cursor, and gave your character a bright outline, so you never lose your character, it'd allow players to focus on the main games challenges and strategies more.
lovely visuals and mood in this. I enjoyed the narration to ensure the rules of the game were understood. It was satisfying when you finally got it right - though I'm sad I couldn't walk out of the door that opened!!
I think the 10s mechanic made it a little frustrating - as it just added the need to run back to activate and try again. if the mirrors were free rotation, it probably would have been better to try line them up without the light on - but as it was 15 degrees increments - it was harder to guess the right way (for me at least!). The only other negative as I felt a bit motion sick due to high sensitivity and field of view!.
Loved the sound design. That game over screen music felt dramatic every time :D I was a bit bad at controlling it initially, but slowly got better - though always felt a little out of control. Wonder how it'd feel if it zoomed out when you when outside of the screens bounds?
Really nice atmosphere and mood. Loved the desktop feel and the way you integrated help and credits into a desktop environment! Nice art and character too
I must admit I almost gave up. The most frustrating issues were the jumping (couldn't jump unless centre of your body was on the platform - seemed a bit unresponsive) and that you'd get stuck on edges of platforms. The spike timer on the platforms that switches spikes from top to bottom seemed too short - ended up jumping and dashing over them instead which felt a bit like I was cheesing it!
I stuck with it, but didn't make your scoreboard!
I was especially pleased to see FRIEND in there. What a lovely cameo, it took me a few seconds and then it clicked... this was the beautiful creature from Honest Jam! :D A silly game, well written, and I love the character you give with your art style.
Nice game! Great mood and the audio and visuals worked well together. I expected letters to switch when dragging, if you wanted to keep this control scheme I feel having the other letters part when hovering to help indicate where you're going to place the key could help. I'd also have liked to see the answers for the words I didn't get on game over - as I'm still not sure what some of them were! The stacking mechanic is great, lets you get overwhelmed but means you don't lose time invested on a word (for example, if word was removed when you ran out of time, it'd had felt more punishing and less fun)
Hey, just letting you know the HTML / Web version doesn't seem to display on your itch page. It's downloadable but doesn't show in browser!
So many missed opportunity - I feel attacked :D
A nice game, good reflective piece. I know you had your hands tied because of the theme, but I found the decisions far toon fast. It meant I couldn't really read most of them. I think maybe that's intentional because you want people to feel like there's so much to do but you can't do it all. Just was a little frustrating when I'm trying to read stuff and another one pops up on top of it. So I ended up pressing choices without reading them.
Always nice to have a game that you can reflect on.
7 minutes 10 seconds and I'm proud... after my first time of 28 mins :D I liked how you married together the puzzle side of the game and then the old-school platformer boss - they felt different but not disjointed! Satisfying mechanics, the only annoyance was some of the jumping puzzles / collision!
I liked the handheld console vibe and the transition from one type of game to another. a nice way to split up the work in a jam too, I hope to make minigame style game in the future too!
Hey this was a neat little game. Once I started to see the modifiers I felt it made it a lot more interesting. Jumping seemed the most safe way to get points, but I did like that any form of near miss was rewarded. Makes it not just about surviving, but also about living life on the edge. Adds replayability.
Meow! I am a dance dance revolution cat! It was fun to resolve combat that way, and got more intense as time went on. Lots of mini elements that I like individually, rolled into one. Be great to have the DDR stuff sync to music, but I know that'd be a lot to do in a jam!
great solo effort in 48, the assets were good!! main feedback was that the camera was too slow to turn, and I found the objective a little confusing to begin with. Felt I needed to be doing more due to the time limit, but appreciate that was the theme!
all the weapons were a joy to experiment with! hahah! I spent far too long just using the first weapon, but the gameplay got a lot more fun once I could use the other great weapons. Really fun animations and weaponisation of the body organs <3 The music was banging (especially one of the tracks!). I like that there was a bit of vertical traversal in this too!
A few issues I encountered: one last enemy was somehow stuck up ontop of a small wall, which meant that the wave didn't end! I hunted him down and slayed him though, so all was well :D Secondly, maybe it was the FoV, but I felt like it was hard to gauge if the enemies were close enough to damage me or not. Felt like they could hurt me from further away than I expected!
Great job team!
One of my favourite bits was when you come across a STACK of cats, just waiting to be sucked up and captured :D Only downside with initial gameplay is (could be RNG based) that I could often stay quite low in the sky and avoid all the enemies. If they were able to shoot downwards too, it coulda made it more challenging. Good scope for a jam too, I could learn a thing or two!
I enjoyed this! I didn't mind the grind so much, as I felt I was still perfecting some of the later mines by the time I got the jetback. I'm glad I saved for the jetpack first though. Some good progression, always satisfying to access new areas in a level that you couldnt access previously.
Hey, glad to see how this turned out ursa! It was, unsurprisingly easy and addictive to play, these bullet heaven genres just have such a satisfying feeling :D I liked that the different terrains had different move speeds, and that you had to move around to collect things to level up. I got wrecked when I got to the crabs with swords haha :(
Really chilled experience... BUT THEN - my harvester got stuck :(
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The music was good, and also the presentation was very clean. I got the impression it was meant to be mini, like a toy harvester in a little dirt pit (like a sand pit). The shallow depth of field on camera was effective too! Enjoyed, thanks James!
oh wow @gamesplusjames, picking up the tractor is a big play! I just picked up the crops! You can optimise with some tractor pickups, but then prob wouldnt be as chill :D
I was pleased to do this in 26 days! I think it was a nice blend of automated AI mixed with placed items (bombs and mines). I think I was lucky to get the mines so often in the post-game cards - but they made the gameplay more fun too! I also liked the idea that you need to budget and plan a little, since units take some time to arrive, along with the weekly tax. The one thing I'd say is that it was unexpected that time passes fast on the world screen - so I accidentally lost days to it before I noticed!
Really nice execution. I enjoy the triangular tetris, and the way everything has been packaged up is (as usual) very coherent and well executed. What started as cute farming ended up in sacrifices.. what have you done to me
I had a good time with this, nice one Andi and co! I think it was a nice relaxed game, which had a blend of "I don't quite know what I'm doing" mixed with "I have a rough idea how to explore and earn new tiles". So it was a friendly, non-punishing experimentation game. Some satisfying combos too, especially with the ripple effect you get with chain reactions.
@lex Thanks for letting us know! We forgot to package the build with the Unreal Engine pre-requisites! We've updated the download now to have that, which should fix those missing DLL issues. Please let us know if that resolves the issue?
@jeremy-ryan really appreciate the valuable feedback! Thanks for checking out the game and giving it the time to understand it. Yeah, there is a lot of detail that we just packed into tooltips rather than explained properly to the played haha! We actually did have more funky wall combos to begin, but decided to do just none, sides or top and bottom in the end. The reason: it became very confusing when placing tiles on bottom half of wheel, as it was upside down, so the wall ended up being the opposite side to what was intuitive!
@lex from googling, it seems they are two direct X based DLLs. It could be a local machine setup thing. Some suggestions on installing the direct X DLLs I found when googling the DLL names.
@xeke-death thanks for the feedback! RNG does play a role early game sadly, yes.
So workers don't cost any power. So if you need to be careful with power resource, then you can use workers. They aren't as good as a chain of buildings though, no. and they don't contribute to chains. So yes, not the best! they only last on the board 3 turns, so nice thing with them is you don't need to worry about them clogging up space on the board (like solo buildings do).
Def learned its hard to get balance right in a game like this, without writing code to deal specific cards to the player.
@tricky-fat-cat there is no way to clear the zapped tiles! The crystal was a last minute attempt to try give the game a lose condition, as it should get harder over time as there is less space / contiguous tiles!
Hey lex! A nice and original concept! I too found it hard to get past level 3! I think I made mistake of trying to chase creatures off the farm, instead of just interrupting them eating the crops! The concept was cute and very good for the theme. Made me empathise with the scarecrows... I thought they got to just stand around all day, but it was hard work!!
Grats to mini javasaurus on his voice acting! I did actually say when I played it that I wondered if it was your son! The mechanics were nicely implemented - the challenging steering was a good addition as otherwise it would have been a bit to methodical to get a good score! I liked the mix of strategy and control!
An interesting experiment jitspoe! I found the controls pretty hard to control, but at the same time it was more-in-line with how the character would move. Was great how fast you went if you built up momentum. I just found it quite finickity to aim.
The difficulty stepped up after the first level :D took me a while to realise I wasn't meant to try zap all the things I found in level 2! I liked the combination of having to capture the souls as well as zap and avoid the nasty bois.
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A thing of beauty! I wanted a bit of a celebration when its completed, but still the little thumbs up cursor was a nice little reward haha! Online jigsaws are great, Elysia loves doing them and does it with her stream community sometimes. I like that you included various sizes for the jigsaw; it meant I could get one done solo without a huge time commitment. The snapping mechanic was clean. How did you enjoy CEO, kuvi?
Hey Tricky! I enjoyed my time with Goblo! He was a cute little boy and the world you put together was interesting to explore. You did good on your first 3D platformer, it generally felt good to control and camera was fine (post jam version). I liked how many different things you added to the game for the platforming - like the clouds, bounce pads, moving platforms, spinny things! The enemies felt a little bit out of place in the world, and also wasn't super clear why certain attacks were needed vs certain enemy types. For the time, you lot did fab!
41 first time, 40 second time... I think I've hit my "level", clearly worse than most other people haha. I didn't do the tutorial, but picked it up quick. The harpoon animation was nice and it was good to spot the difference. I found the first fish a lot easier to identify than the later weird fish. I think the speed it came on towards end meant I didn't really have time to actually understand the difference. Also the later fish, like the green face one, neither one looked "wrong", so was hard to remember in the moment which was the bad one. I liked the special appearance of a special boy too! very accessible, easy to play, and good highscore game.
Great polish to this game. really liked it, a great example of relatively constrained set of mechanics polished well! The planting ammo reminded me of Qazi's shotgun farmers, but the platforming one-stage arena reminded me of bomb jack or other old arcade games.
I got 978lb's of crops, I'll be eating for MANY YEARS AHEAD!
I am embarassed to say it took my third try to appreciate that I needed to get the crops in a good state with right click, then left click to harvest. I did read the sign, but felt like I was getting points for just spamming right click (like a fool!). It is an interesting balance - especially with the distribution of growth progress, means its challenging to get all crops to optimal growth state! Had fun! The swarm was scary :( I liked the death screen!
You do not disappoint. A pleasure to see another of your entries, despite taking a bit of time - it was rewarding and well thought out. You did great to integrate your idea/story into the original puzzle mechanics. Having the flashlight on seemed to have very little benefit, but with some additional levels / puzzles I'm sure it could have been utilised more. Da iawn!
I was glad to join the 25 club on my play through today. I think this was novel idea, and your mechanics added opportunities for players to strategise, more than usual in bullet hell games. The only complaint was the pacing, because it took so long to get to where I died, I feel repeating it all again would be cumbersome, as it'd likely not be challenging to repeat 90% of what I did on my first play through.
Hey this was actually a lot more fun than I expected out of a 3 hour game! At first I was a bit put off by all the numbers that I could tweak per shot. But in the end I either memorised some rough numbers for height based on a set power, or I tried eyeballing a bunch on the floor, both ended up working pretty well! Had two rounds and tried a couple of strats, feels like I coulda improved if I kept going though!
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Hey krass, had a couple of blasts through this! General premise was easy to get into, and I quite like that it combined decision making with aiming skills. It always felt like I was playing catchup which is good. One downside is that I felt like on my second attempt, when I attempted to be more strategic and focus on closer rooms before the orange/purple ones, that I ended up getting a worse score! So not sure how much depth there would be to the gameplay, it might end up being that each play through feels roughly the same. I had a good time with it though!
very original content! Had a good time working through this. Its gonna be tough to appeal to everyone with these sort of games, but great if you got a bit of time to focus on it! Appreciated the warning about doxxing too, thoughtful.
I think this is one of your best entries, in terms of combining puzzle elements, platforming and pacing. Glad to have tried it out on stream, thanks for being there <3
The game feels strategic, which at times felt a bit overwhelming for the way my brain tries to solves problems! But a nice idea, original experience. As suggested on stream, I feel having a "loop" instruction would have been interesting, as often my strategies would have involved looping (like pick up and deliver water x 4, then deliver burgers to burger restaurant for the rest of the day).
Mechanically it was nice, it was satisfying to watch the drones do their job! It was sometimes hard to predict how far through their task list they would get until you press play and watch, but then that was part of the game cycle! Good that you had a button to speed up the day too.
An absolute banger from the keyboard cowboys. a big challenge for a game jam, so its understandable some room for improvement in the annunciation etc. But what a blast, some great silly writing, original innovative experience, all with a humorous playback of the entire story at the end :D I do wonder if you'll make games like this when you start your own studio!
I had fun with this! I think the idea was very novel, and I think the dialogue between you and the customer service operator was engaging and funny. The gameplay felt a little too easy for too long, but that may be related to the powerups I got. Woulda liked if there were bits with higher spawn rate maybe with enemies that forced you to use your roll. Really good entry overall ^o.o^
I delivered cake! and only died 3 times in the process, granny will be pleased!
A simple enough game, that was brought to life with the art assets and funny atmosphere. I didn't realise you could run, which could have made the game better. Also, I think having short cuts was a good idea, but I didn't notice them - so maybe a bit more held leading the player through the shortcuts would have been benefitial.
Replayability is tough sometimes with games like this, other than beating your previous time, you feel the gameplay may be a similar experience. Perhaps if it had more regular hazards, where the player had to change their path more often, it would make it feel more like a game you could "get better at" and play more often.
Great entry, proud of you smashing through this as a new father! You created a really engaging, replayable, arcade high score game. The bike movement felt on point, and there game required precise navigation to keep the combos going. The dogs felt a little too punishing at times, since you couldn't really avoid them if you happened to encounter them head on.
Yes, the link to the itch page has been added above now! We were just finishing getting it uploaded properly, as it is submission hour :) a few bugs but hopefully nothing game breaking, enjoy!
Yeah a challenging game until you really master the controls. Important to learn that cursor position is KEY, so you can control how far you "flap" or "dash". Also, choosing to flap (cursor above chicken) or dash (cursor below chicken), along with learning how to control your glide will make a big difference.
@0x-void-x0 so we ended up avoiding a tile map. as we were just doing the one level, we ended up designing it as one big asset, and iterating on it a bit before giving the "shape" to our artist to make a "proper version" of.
@theartifacts there was a bug where you couldn't flap if out of stamina, which stopped you from gliding after running out of stamina. This hopefully has helped with what you described, but its still very much a non-intuitive controls game!
@jeremy-ryan we are honoured, again! You've done Elevander proud! You are very right to say getting over it style. initially we didn't plan for it, but I think the restrictive controls combined with a challenging intricate map lead to that experience. We wanted "easier slow ways" and "faster master ways", but I think we did it a bit too tight.
@lex yeah the controls we like but people find them hard. It may work well on controller, but we wanted to try a one handed mouse approach. On a less restricted map it may not feel so harsh.
@nani thanks for the feedback - its okay if mail gets delivered late, but I can see how it can still feel like a negative experience.
@kirkami yeah we wanted it to be something you really need to learn and master, but indeed its a challenge if the game becomes less fun / frustrating during that learning process. Thanks for feedback
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This was on the "hard mode download too".
Some bugs people are finding, if people do the score chasers with this we'll need to fix up a few things!!
@firinor we decided we wanted it to be part of the games "original feel". Not sure if you figured it out, but clicking below the chicken while grounded makes you do a "hop" on the floor, similar to walking. if your cursor is close to the chicken, it'll be a short hop, if its further away (left or right) from the chicken, it'll be a longer hop. So you can effectively walk with that. Tricky controls and we've seen a few people not pick up on the nuances of it. If you haven't fully understood the controls, I agree the game would feel unfairly hard.
Thanks for feedback! @harami / @furtive-pygmy Alternative controls is something I've been thinking about. The cursor location controls what type of jump you do and how far you jump, which made the controls hard to translate to keyboard whilst giving players the same level of control. I have been thinking about controller though - it could work with analogue stick.
@strangeryann I loved a short hike! We are curious how a big level would feel with this game. The cramped level ended up being a bit more "getting over it" than "a short hike". but we were really torn on how to design the level, thanks for the feedback.
Gliding in the game does feel harder in cramped space, but it ends up being a tool to make difficult jump sections but also allows you to replenish stamina while travelling - so at times its a big time saver!
Finally, regarding the character - thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it may not be appealing, but our aim was to have a bird that "can't fly very well", as we wanted stamina mechanic meaning only N max flaps in a row. So we found a bird that doesn't fly too well. We initially thought of a really fat bird! So the idea of looking always out of breath is I guess what we were going for. But not the hero you wanted :( haha.
@jatinstic-gaming - so you aren't the first person to mention it. Its not very intuitive, but instead of seeing "hold click to glide", see it as "if you click and hold, you will jump THEN glide". If you click to jump, you can't click again to start gliding - because clicking again will trigger another flap.
it may have felt better having glide on a separate button to jump, as quite a few people struggled with it.
@kgurniak91 - @spacey3d could give more info, but I think it was photoshop hand drawn, not vector stuff. Good feedback about the stamina replenishment - we wanted to try and encourage people to glide more (since you replenish while gliding), but it can feel bad indeed when you have to stand still for 2 seconds to replenish! As for the cursor too far left or right, this might be a bug - we can look into it!
@droo-shayne thanks for the good feedback! I do know what you mean, we've been trying to think how to improve on the formula - it feels like *something* is missing and we aren't sure what. We did start implementing "package weight affects flight" during the jam, but didn't enable it as we felt it'd be confusing having jumps feel different based on how much you're holding. We also had idea of fragile packages, which would break when dropped. but ultimately it'd just be high score chasing. Be fun to have a "completion state", we are open to suggestions.
As for parallax, I agree but I think I am happier with how it looked this way. I actually did a small 5 min devlog on this that shows the difference: you https://youtu.be/lFj0dVD1beQ
@pomo thanks for checking out the post jam controller build. Any feedback on how the controller feels / button layout? We are thinking about how to shorten the game, but yeah - sadly its not easy as each "delivery" from start to finish takes some time, so wholesale changes may be needed. We'll have a think anyway.
@tricky-fat-cat @erlioniel @ludumdaredevil thanks for feedback - it is appreciated. its a shame that it was frustrating / hard for you. When we decided to go with controls that have a high skill ceiling and weren't super intuitive, we knew we would risk alienating some players unfortunately. We just felt if we made the controls have A and D to walk and space to jump, it would have felt just like any other platformer. Our gameplay is relatively simple, its mastering the controls to survive that make it hard.
The balloons were innovative, I just wish I could have utilised them more - it'd had made traversing the world more fun! Cohesive art, it all fit together well and set the tone of a not-too-distant future world. Where CDs are valuable artefacts of the past haha!?
What wonderful cover art! Really stands out from the crowd! and appreciate a good pun!
This was one of the, if not the, most satisfying game to control with a controllers triggers. Really felt it was a challenge vs myself, to keep my cool when I started making mistakes! The drone audio was good and authentic, though perhaps could be a little quieter. Really nice solid entry. Potentially a bit "long" for a jam, I didn't mind though as I was enjoying.
just a quick note to say... I loved the name. Wasabi Whiskers. What a legend :D
Lovely visuals and atmosphere created with the solid voice acting. Satisfying to play, and paced well - it finished just as the gameplay was starting to feel a little repetitive. Solid entry!
Hey @javasaurus, this was fun! I played web so I didn't make it on the leaderboard, but I would have been second place! I feel the hitboxes could have been a bit larger on the good balloons, as the WASD movement meant the movement was quite sudden and found myself narrowly missing a few of the balloons. The downward movement was surprisingly slow, but added some gameplay as you knew you had to start moving down ASAP if you wanted to get down low after being high.
One thing is I'm struggling to rate as I'm not sure how much AI generated content was used. I'm guessing the main level assets were made by you, but the title screen and music maybe were generated? A reply will help me give you what I consider a fair rating!
Gave this a good few goes and had fun with it. Both weapons ended up being good, which is nice - as it made playing through it multiple times more appealing. I also tried a blood thirsty strat on my last go, which was less profitable but importantly - more NOBLE! Dante, protector of the people!
Great entry again Camh! Clever and unexpected mechanics. Nice to have a puzzle game where there isn't 1 perfect solution, more that the puzzle is more fluid and just a task to manipulate the environment to meet your goal. I liked that the ball turned into "lure" whilst in movement, added that extra dimension to it.
I found this a bit too hard, but I think my brain isn't suited to these sort of games either! I got 3 deliveries eventually, but sadly my efforts were all hail mary's and less reactive strategy!! The sound bytes were funny and added to the mood, but my level of play meant I was re-starting so often that it starts to irk you when its the 50th time of the music starting / butterfly line :D
I liked the intro and the interaction between the characters, and some funny writing too!
Thanks booksnail for making digital version of marcs very clever and intriguing game! I enjoyed playing the "fast solo" version of this, it raised many tactical decisions during the play. It also helped me appreciate how that fancy shape fits together in the way it does! Could be a solid game idea to pursue, especially if the theory around this shape is a new thing? or was it just you only learned about it lately? Great job regardless!
Really solid arcade game, you've done well. Really clever to combine the delivery of mail with juggling, especially when YOU get tot decide how many to juggle at once to set your own multiplier. Puts the player in control of the risk vs reward situation, which is good in this sort of game. I had a habit of missing mailboxes, it might be because the map was moving and I was releasing it a bit too slow, so maybe a bit more generosity on the hitboxes woulda been appreciated.
Apparently I beat Pomo, which is a successful feat in its own right!
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I love the clean Bauke style! A novel idea with the map traversal, and the mini games. The mini games ideally could have been fleshed out a little bit more, but thats the nature of a game jam.
I liked that there were different routes to travel that opened up different options. I also liked the various tile sizes making me think of "routes that let me explore more tiles".
A very full game, again with probably too much content for a game jam! As I mentioned on stream, I'd love to see 25% of the content and then spending the extra time making the UX feel tighter and more engaging (and less frustrating!). These games def have that feel of classic 3d platformers like mario and banjo, and you bring together the 3d assets well to build a world. I think the level design feels good, but at the same time its hanging on the old charm of those games - where you're expected to run around and collect everything, perhaps without moment to moment fun / challenge.
Snail you've done it again! I am jealous how well you make these games solo that end up having replayability and fun within small scope. You did good!
Hey @lanalux ! The ambience and setting is cool, and it was quite original to have a driving game where you don't do the driving. It was pretty relaxing to be honest having it playout while I relax and chatting with stream :D I get a feeling you had more ideas you wanted to get in, but ran out of time perhaps? For me, if I was build on this, I would probably look to add a map which showed the locations of the pickups and drop locations. Then the players decision making is based on which new orders are located ideally, such that they can deliver promptly and pickup/deliver things that are in close proximity. With some system where you get a better tip based on how long they are left to wait.
"Thai me up" made me giggle as a name, along with a few of the other food place names!
Had some fun with this one! The helicopter model was good, and I enjoyed the impact of the "crash landings". The controls of helicopter were good too, initially I felt it was too hard to rise up again once you develop some downward momentum, but in the end I learned how it worked and I think it worked well.
Would have been great to have some more interesting level design, that would challenge the player to be accurate; where mistakes would lead to running out of fuel / crashing more often.
You did good! another challenging high score attack game that the community will enjoy I'm sure. I struggled a bit with controlling the board and aiming, but a lot of that is down to my inability :D items getting caught on props around the map sometimes caused frustration, but made sense mechanically.
Some good original ideas here. I liked the two games running in parallel, the avoiding of the asteroids during travel and then the game of pong. I got to the end of the spline, so I think I finished the game as I stopped moving?
The obvious downside was that the pong game grew stale after a while. It was original to abstract the number of packages to deliver to the health of the game. I would have liked if maybe the different type of "balls" had different mechanics or movement, to freshen up the gameplay based on what item was being "delivered".
The visuals were good, and I enjoyed the Windy puns <3 always appeasing the egg god.
Seeing this bag posted on the home page literally about 30 times in the last week, I thought I'd finally see what it was about. I can't decide if I regret that decision.
Good atmosphere. The shallow depth of field felt like it shouldn't be combined with the low res textures, but it still worked well surprisingly. I like how the pipes around the area were colour coded, I felt you were trying to guide the player, though I still felt I was wandering about aimlessly somewhat. A good experience overall.
I did get stuck sadly in the vehicle, here's location incase you're interested: Screenshot 2023-05-06 105217.png
I had a good time with this. The multi directional driving made for an original experience, that took a little time to master but felt rewarding. Who doesn't love doing a barrel roll? The post jam improvements dealt with almost all of my critique, so good job with that. I liked how you paid tribute to previous jams with the names of your building too :)
I delivered maximum treats and the cat now loves me. I win life!
I loved how the eyes of the cat tracked me as I moved around. Such a silly game, loved the dramatic delivery; the intro sequence and the surreal "level is the cat".
Quite fun to play, I liked that you could stroke the cat to go faster, which gave player some more gameplay decisions to make. Having more than 60 treats was a good idea, making it not feel too harsh as some of the treats seemed unattainable based on the hazard positioning.
A good atmospheric point and click game. A good idea to have multiple endings, but without too much dialogue / interaction options, it made playing it through more than twice a bit of a stretch. It was cool that you sped up the walk speed on successive play throughs though, for sure!
I liked the lore, the story telling, the animations, and that sense of mystery and unknown.
Always a bit sad when I missed the punchline and got punished with 0 points.. but the punchline is so important in comedy it sadly made sense to design it that way! I think I kept pressing it twice, or pressing the following word to early which would cancel my previous one. I wonder how it'd play if you stopped it from turning a green into a red if you've already got it green? May be too easy and cheesable perhaps, just mentioning it as I kept doing it by mistake.
The jokes were funny, along with the generated voice :D I think you did well to split up words into chunks for the rhythm element of the game. Good job!!
Very solid arcade game :) had some challenge precisely controlling the car with A and D, but still manager to get better over time and enjoy myself. It seems you addressed a lot of my concerns in the post jam version too, which is great to see! Really good music by the way :)
A very silly game packed with personality! I liked the lore of the main character and the way you told it via the funny dialogue. The controls were quite a unique experience. Could have been interesting to have different BPM occasionally (or in future, in different areas / levels), as it would change the feel if the player had to choose a new direction / boost twice as fast, for example. The music was a real bop, and the mood was great - combining an unaware robot thinking they are doing good but actually causing havoc. May have been good to have a bit more of a challenge or means to fail the game, I wasn't quite sure how the fuel worked - it felt like HP in the end? Glad to have checked out your game and to see you getting involved in LD again Flighty!
Fun concept. I was using firefox and sadly the address bar would occassionally lag and not update. I could still move and hear the sounds so could play blind, and it'd eventually kick back into life. But it kept happening on 4th level so I ended up stopping as it was frustrating when I can't see my character!
The concept as I said was good, but the "your character doesn't fit" when you are writing giant green text felt like not the best reason to be in the address bar!
hahaha what a fun silly game :D even though it essentially boiled down to running around finding cats and seeing what items had blue outlines to hid stuff, the hiding places were good and made sense, and the whole setting and aesthetic made it fun to play through once. Really liked the kitty models :D and intro to the game via the phone call was cool too.
Main control issue I had was aiming projectiles was based on last moved direction - maybe this was better on controller if it was twin stick? I didn't have a controller on me to try!
The idea of space getting reduced as you chose your upgrades was interesting - a bit of a doubled edge blade. Just felt like you were forced to do it else you'd not upgrade. Did some of the powerups reduce the size by different amounts? maybe that woulda made player choices feel even more interesting.
Nice concept, feels like you got a core for something like vampire survivors too if you ever wanted to explore that.
I really enjoyed this! Having to balance the two games was interesting, though it felt a bit turn based switching from one to another. I feel it'd be interesting if the tetrino pieces could have interacted with the minotaur while falling. I wonder too if the amount you move could have impacted how fast the hunger rises? really liked that you chose the minotaur theming, it suited great and I liked the character :)
I score 78!Screenshot 2023-10-07 130435.png
The bird noise - SQUAAARK. I think this was cute, the yoshi style "eat and spit" mechanic was cute, and I loved how the bird size changed with it - which fed in well with the theme. Like you've mentioned above, delaying death screen a little would be good for the player's sake. Fun experience!
This actually got more fun than I expect. Seemed a little basic to begin, but when things speed up then you feel you've always got something to do which feels good.
some feedback: - took a while to understand it took 3 stones to expand the land, I knew I could expand it but after picking up my first stone I tried using hands to put in water but didnt do anything. - I liked the hold-to-use upgrades, as I tried doing that before even seeing the upgrades existed, so changed the way of playing. It did have a negative that I kept accidentally expanding my island when trying to harvest crops, but thats something that could be seen as strategy - dont have crops next to coast line. - I did not notice the shop until about half my time was gone :D - I wonder if having crops expire / grow bigger coulda been interesting - be interesting if there was some more benefit to expending land, some bonus based on distance between things for example
Hey @coleslaughter - tried to play but like a post above, I got a crash shortly after selecting a team :(
Hey! Very ambitious game for a jam, love games that can get people playing together. So when I started, entire map was yellow, but I came back as blue with a mission. I actually wasn't sure how to start, it was like a top down view and I think I needed to click somewhere but I couldn't see anywhere. I ended up clicking and maybe dragging somewhere and it then moved me somewhere to actually start playing. but then I was free to roam! Bringing back blues reputation after too long of yellow dominance. I am grateful I only had to complete X% of a little grid to claim it! Once I completed one, I wasn't sure which way to go to get another. I could press esc to go back to menu which worked, but disjointed the session a bit. But once you know the general layout of them it wasn't required. I was alone I think, but I imagine having some points of interest / competition could be interesting. Like special things to claim that give you speed boost / wider coverage for X amount of time. Gives people reason to go to different locations in the map and to encounter other players. Had you considered ways to build on this? Also realise playing solo on the map prob wasn't the intended "way to play"
Really wonderful entry! A nice change up from the usual style, yet shows a clever design as always. I think the tutorialisation was great, wonderful choice of words and the breaking up / combination of them adds extra depth.
I found it got tough maybe a bit too sudden, noticed when I played I got stuck on Nothing Is Impossible. The use of a hint button was great too. Think I just needed more time and is a game that keep your noggin ticking for plenty of time.
Had you come across a word puzzle like this before> or you make it up? it was pretty sweet. Nice aesthetic too.
Hey @jeremy-ryan, thanks a lot for checking out the game - good to see you as always!
I am glad you realised sacrificing food or fregs is also a strategy. With the limited space, we didn't want to make it too tower heavy because it'd just be a cluster f*ck!
We wanted it to not be hard, but people could take time to really try optimise. Chaining fregs together is the main mechanic for score, whilst sacrificing food tiles is ideal, along with some turrets far enough away to kill enemies before they drop a bomb on the shrine.
Limited space you are right - we do have a mechanic to spawn obstacles (pillars that can't be built on or destroyed) but I think it isn't setup for earlier levels or isn't breaking - the game needs a balance pass. We may hotfix that in to appear in earlier levels so people understand where we were coming from. We also have it coded so the tower can change in size each floor, but in the end we didn't have time to balance to know if it would make the game impossible if it went smaller.
Sorry that you had a sudden death. That is one of the known issues - its meant to warn you for each tile you can't place and reduce health of shrine, but atm it just insta-game overs.
We did speak about the tongues! but our creative mastermind spacey felt that the fregs were there to worship not fight! :D
@tricky-fat-cat - which bits were counter intuitive, so we can consider fixing in a post jam? Thanks for feedback!
Thank you all for playing and for the feedback!
@danyclockworker @namnam we are grateful for our artist and frog lover spacey3d!
@tricky-fat-cat thank you, really agree. We had tool tips for the tile types and enemy types on the HUD, but we think many people don't know they exist :D
@erlioniel you can blame me for the long page! I tried to simplify it a bit since your post to not scare other people! Its not overly complex as you said, but we def could improve on explaining a few things to the player :D
@merdeboi thanks for the feedback! We usually make the game too hard, so in this one we thought we'd ramp it up slower... but we missed the mark a bit. Its a bit of a slow ramp, then gets a bit too hard too fast! We are considering making a "hard mode" for post jam where it ramps up faster to make a play session take less than 15 mins!
@tmpxyz Thanks for your feedback! The enemies (apart from one of the harder ones in later levels) will attack the first thing they come across in their chosen lane. The turrets are limited, because you can place fregs/food to "intercept" enemy attacks to prevent shrine damage too! Let us know if that helps?
@anton4ik-dev we started easy so people don't lose instantly, we wanted everyone to succeed the first 5 levels, but those who understand the game best can get higher score. It starts getting harder after level 6 - not many make it past level 10. Be good to see you on the high score board!
@milan8890 something thats only explained in the tool tip or game page is that turrets need to be adjacent to food tables (the purple piece type) in order to provide them with ammo.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
You introduced the mechanics well, good tutorialisation via the level difficulty. The mechanics were interesting and felt natural, good selection of props for the mechanics. Visuals were good! a fun puzzle game with a cute character. The grappling hook presentation was a nice way to package the movement rules and added character. I guessed things right without thinking too hard about it sometimes, which felt good. Coulda done with R to restart (or Undo perhaps). Woulda been nice to have a bit more audio or music, the "victory sound" ended up getting a bit repetitive in isolation.
took an while to understand the way you can interact with the game after collecting chests and "quests". I think hitting yellow tiles makes the tiles grow up instead of smashing them? not sure if red did that. a bit more of an explanation of that would help players, as all of a sudden all the tiles change colour and your first thought it "danger".
looks cool though, pixel shader used works well with the skelly aesthetic. Things piece together nicely setting a good mood. Was engaging to play
This was a creative idea, and an original experience. I think it suffered a little from a word being tied to meaning, as sometimes I felt I wrote something that was misinterpreted and lead to them getting closer. But it does represent sometimes how people don't get hints by the line of conversation you give! I really enjoyed the driving level with its music from your last LD game :D really nice feel, mood, visuals <3
I feel dumb but I couldn't figure out how to get past the room with the first. I tried unwinding the threads in different directions to try have a thread land where the threadless one was, but then the threadless one removed. Tried hitting red one, or leading bullets from red one to empty one. Prob something simple, but it means I've not got to explore rest of your game sadly :(
a classic and silly kuvi special :D The visuals are really good, paid off making the tool you did imo! You often think of fun multiplayer experiences that really respect the theme, kudos!
I desired windmillers.. and I wasn't disappointed. The font is on point, general feel suited the game's setting. I think you did great at wrapping typical platforming / dodging skills with the rock concert vibe. The crowd pushing each other is great, some of the sections were a bit tough to dodge or at least I feel I had to die to learn a few times! and ofc - the classic Bauk art style
I liked the simplicity yet original experience. I like that when spinning, you have to manage slowing down else you launch out all of your loot! Would have benefited having a progress tracker on what you have collected so far, I found it hard to track my actual progress. Satisfying and hypnotising spinny aesthetic! Thanks snailsnail games!
a CLASSIC Pomo, in the sense that its a very difficult game to master :D It is a little bit of a shame as people may miss out on the content that you've made, but I did check out the video to see the stuff I didn't get to. The setting was funny, the visual novel turn undertale - guessing it was AI art for the visual novel stuff, but the in game art was actually done really well. It def felt like "oh this is undertale", which I think was the intent - but can be both a good and a bad thing. I think yours felt like a tribute rather than a copied idea, if that makes sense.
This has an original mechanic. The title screen I didn't realise it was a top down perspective, but once I started it made sense and the original way to move around felt fun to explore. The distance it travels is just slightly misaligned with the indicator which was a little annoying, but just a minor gripe! Good juice!
Felt and looked good! very juicy, very intriguing. I played the jam version and felt it was a little less strategic than expected. It felt too rewarding to stand still and attack repeatedly vs choose sensible movements. I found the teleport ability I wasn't expecting to click to use it - maybe E again woulda made more sense - but that could just be me. I did not realise I was getting upgrades for 10 levels. I love that you added an auto buy option for them though - and I was glad it wasn't the classic, intrusive popup after each round to choose 1 of 3 upgrades. It felt nicer, just maybe needed more attention to help new players know there were upgrades. Lovely clean UI.
Has a good amount of juice going for it. Nods to super hot with the audio bytes? Found the drag indicator a bit counter intuitive to begin, but got used to it pretty fast!
Really liked the audio on this one, really matched the aesthetic. For me, I didn't have too much fun as I don't think I'm very good at it. The most fun I had was with the wood chuck example, as it was a lot easier for me to try find optimisations and include trailing or leading spaces etc. I wasn't fully understanding what the max length of characters we could encode into a colour was either. Was helpful it showed a line under the top to show what the colour represented though. Cool idea, just the pattern recognition wasn't something that hooked me - I wouldnt survive in the future clearly :D
Really liked the old-school fps style. Somehow I read the description but still got confused when I got insta-killed from behind by the wave that chasing me! Maybe a death screen with some info about how you died, or a animated death would help silly players like me understand quicker. Lots of depth, cool models created, decent controls and I kept wanting to play again to get further!
This was awesome sauce! It started, I thought - oh, a cute game - seems simple enough - I hope there's a bit more to it than this coin collecting.. and maybe real enemies instead of those orange arrows. But soon, those orange arrows started to mean a lot more to me. They started to be the only constant in my life. I was drawn to them, as they were drawn to me... neither of us could co-exist without the other. Until the end. And the end was full of sadness.
...until I saw that replay button :D
In seriousness - it was really top notch audio, visual effects, and mood. Could have quickly turned into a horror! Theme wasn't typically challenged - like happy cute / vs creepy glitchy won't be understood by the majority, but you've still got plenty to be pleased about!
Considering its a text-based game, you really managed to get across your personality and humour and I really enjoyed the time it took to play. A slight bit of Repetitive Strain Injury, but I'll be contacting your lawyers about that don't worry... D:
This was a great game to find! Saw you were in the danger zone and glad I clicked on yours! The main critical feedback I'd give is the first levels were too long and a bit boring due to just one instrument, then the later levels were too easy / short and didn't punish much for missing the notes because I could afford so many instruments. However, balance is difficult thing - especially within the game jam. I half expected the sound I made to have an impact on waking the cat, but I don't think that actually a mechanic! Good job with your game glad to have played it <3
Big game with a surprising amount of content! Yes a lot of the game is spent reading and moving from room to room (and maybe dying to traps.....) but the scripting was interesting, you gave personalities to the characters and it was an enjoyable experience. A small bug stopped me completing all of the dialog but I still guessed the right person! Thanks and congratulations on making a very entertaining a memorable game!
You're a very good designer and pack games with a ton of impressive features! A few quirks with the UI and the timers still showing during tutorial, but to be expected in a LD (they weren't broke, just was a bit confusing to a new player! the ui thing - i mean that it seems like you can click on an action when the dialog menu is up, but the click just dismisses it, so then you end up having to click again). I didn't have enough time to truly experiment in the kitchen, but really enjoyed the different mechanics you added - really blended that cooking game theme to it. I've seen some "cooking" games where you just click once and you have food and that was it - this really felt like you took the mechanics of both genres and blended them :D Good work!
What a great experience! the beat detection felt really tight, and I really appreciate the effort that went in to give people the chance to callibrate the offset incase there was some audio delay for whichever reason. The sounds used we great, personally I found the movement sound added to the music and I couldnt stop tapping my leg as I was playing. The visuals were relatively simple with the retro / polygon approach, but they were executed well and the glow shader gave it a nice vibe. Great effort <3
I think this game is good for the theme because I think both "game types" indeed make the other problematic. Snake movement is restrictive, and relatively slow. You will fill up the screen if you dont get power ups, but powerups make it harder to survive, but then you dont get many points if you don't get powerups. So quite a few decisions to be made by the player, I was personally very bad at this game :D but regardless, good implementation - if there was effort made with sound and improved visuals this would have gone down even better!
I love how you force the main mechanic to be understood just to get out of the first room. Loved the mechanic, I think most developers like to think they are good typers, and to combine with FPS was just sublime. The names were quite humorous, ofc the fps elements ended up lacking when you had to turn and run and type in the corner then shoot - but ofc thats the very nature of 2 incompatible genres! music and art were "on point" too!
I got back to earth, and didn't have to eat my beautiful crewmates!! That's a success story in its own right! Considering it was a visual novel style game, I quite enjoyed it and found the text wasn't too long and I never felt "oh great here's a wall of text". Had a bit a balance the player had to be in control of, which made it mentally stimulating! nice effort and I enjoyed my play through <3
This was a genuine fun one to play!! I was worried there'd be a lot to read with another card game, however the cards were super easy to digest and recognise, didn't really kill the flow of the game. The downside to that is the cards acted more like a load screen rather than really combining elements of a card game - however, I still feel you combined the two genres relatively well! I would play again <3
Lovely art in this, good ambiance and in true Krass style this game portrays some of life's normalities in their true sobering light. I managed to progress my relationship with Eggplanto, but unfortunately the date button seemed to be bugged and I could take it to the next level. Love the idea though, had quite a nice little game loop to progress through - and thats coming from me who despises clicker normally! <3
What adorable cats you have dear Waterytart! I enjoyed the concept of having to use platforming skills to keep control of your turrets, reminded me a lot of the old diddy kong racing egg game on the N64. I'd imagine this would be fun multiplayer, as then you can be mad at your friends for stealing your "owned" platforms, rather than those pesky green cats!! Keep up the good work <3
Hard to rate properly when it hasn't really tried to fit in with the jam's theme. but good visualiser, and the fact you did the music too is really impressive. :)
This mood created by the visuals, colours and music in this were really impressive - it is clear (as you guys said) that you created something simple but put time into polish and quality. I personally don't enjoy clickers, but I enjoy my time exploring your game. If it wasn't for the audio and visual quality, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed as much so really good job. Note: thats nothing personal, that's just the genre of clicker games. I did enjoy the concept of balancing the difference resources and think it suited the clicker nature. The incompatibility could be questioned, though naturally idle and survival don't often get put together.
This was entertaining - once I understood you lose multiplier for stepping on the middle again, and that you just need to pass over the arrows at the top, it made it interesting to think of the best moves to maximise points! I had quite a pickle with the "left right" combo though, as was no way to hit them without resetting bonus - but guess that's a part of the game and sacrifice that has to happen :D Good job and blending two genres in an unconventional way!
The title didn't get me excited, but from title screen onwards it was an absolute blast. Really enjoyed the conflicting genres - and I think the music used when switching between modes really helped emphasise the difference between fishing mode and race mode. Graphics were nice too, I only played on my own #foreveralone but it was still fun to a grip of the mechanics! awesome job!
Adorable! I like cats, almost as much as cat fanatic himself!! Frogger meets tamagochi! The character sprite made it very easy to like, and as always frogger style games always have an element of difficulty and challenge to them! WOuld have loved to see more features to interact with your cat, and perhaps different routes / obstacles as venture out to get what kitty wants! <3
Music is so point!! And the art is really nicely put together and suits the game. The two genres are made more difficult through being combined, so I think your game is good for the theme. Would have liked to see more minigames, as I found them all interesting to do whilst keeping an eye on fat panda and his requirements!! good work all!!
I think the fact you needed over 10 pop ups to explain the game shows that this was maybe a little too complicated for a LD game. If there was no time limit, perhaps it would have not been so bad. But when you only had 30 seconds and you trying to remember the host of instruction that you've just clicked through - I felt I wasnt really about to experience the game the way you wanted me to. I feel bad because clearly a lot of thought and effort has gone into this game, and I think the concept is clever - of stealing from the future but repaying it before the time catches up.
Really original concept! yes its a gimmick, but it actually works really well, and the visuals are really impressive. Managed to make a 3d model fit in with pixelated world of retro gaming. Took some getting used to, but the controls are actually quite tight. With some added sound or animations for getting hit by ball, it'd help a new player be aware of that mechanic. Awesome work!
I see you commented about the bugs and how things didnt turn out the way you wanted them too, but I still really liked this entry. my plan A this LD41 was to create a rhythm based bullet hell and I think it would have been quite similar to this - I gave up on the ideas as struggled to get something to detect the beats accurately in the music. Despite some glitches, overall the rhythm of the enemy shields was predictable. As I said on stream I'd make it so enemy shields reflect bullets to make it more punishing for shooting off-rhythm. Good job cap'n!
PS: Score of 12000 <3
First off you think, oh stealth rhythm - sounds different and interesting enough...
But then you play it, and realise it's a wonderfully created and designed game that provokes stress, relief and satisfaction as you slam out those licks and sneak your way past those pesky guards.
The level select screen shows that the game has some class, and I'm sure with more time you could add a bigger range of guitar rhythm sections to vary the gameplay some more. Really impressed with how you merged these two game types.
Music is cool, it all works together well... once you get how it works. I personally found having to press two directions at a time in order to move slightly unnecessary and it added to the difficulty, when the game was already decently challenging. It really took a while for me to understand the movement. It does seem that the rhythm is correct, it just felt weird that you could press direction early, then it move on the rhythm - took some getting used to. However, that is more my fault than yours. The visuals were simple but clean, and the music was great if all created within the jam!
Memeory games! great when you've got of time to kill... but then, that wasn't the case here with bullets everywhere! really original concept, despite the simple style of art, the art well executed and consistent - I found the game to have a good challenge, maybe would be nice to allow turrets to be turned off after a while? I found the blue bullets vital, but quite rare, and quite difficult to collect once many turrets were on at once. but then - thats the nature of the game, and I respect that! Good effort, enjoyed playing!!
I played this for far too long :D its one of those games where you feel "I will do better *next* time". And then you just keep trying! The mechanics are simple but deep enough to make the game challenging and some strategies can evolve. Also dash control adds a mechanic for the player to master in order to improve their performance. Love that a two player mode was also available, wish I was so alone that I had someone to play with...... anyway!! Great game :D
really nice polish to a great little puzzle game - not sure if its original but I've not seen it :) like the cute character you've given the blocks. The aesthetic makes a huge difference to the experience. Only let down here is the theme, but you def should be proud of your game! even moreso for compo :)
This was a fun experience, even if a little short! Your voice over, despite being a quick fix to no tutorial, I feel added a lot to the game and mood! I was particular impressed by the split screen mechanic - the rotating split screen that is. The concept itself is nice, was a bit tricky to play p1 and p2 with just one person - but thats not your fault!! Would have been nice if there was perhaps a larger level with my decisions to make, or perhaps a risk of death if p1 was overwhelmed by those mean old flower god minions!! <3
that creepy laugh. why did I play this at 2.50am!? really enjoyed the challenge, made more sense once I understood contact in 3d made an enemy in the 2d world. Enjoyed that you sometimes had to back track 2d world in order to avoid enemies in 3d world, and to shoot enemies in 3d world you sometimes had sacrifice your position in the 2d world. Shared controls are an interesting head-f***, and I found this quite accessible! :D Good work!
Good compo effort, I liked the level of detail in the "talent trees". Seems I pressed the "give money" button on first play through though, which then meant I could buy everything and so I missed out a bit on the leveling up system. Interesting to combine driving with things that you'd usually find in a platformer like spikes and traps etc. One note on the driving controls, when you reverse, I expected the directional controls to work "the other way around". Some variance in tracks would be nice. I liked the area where you go into different building for different purposes, reminded me of rogue legacy pre-castle.
Really cool you guys got a 3d game out, I really loved the poses for the different cards and their actions <3 A nice concept, picked it up pretty quick - but after some time it felt like their was not much reason to survive. I think if you were able to accumulate something, or unlock house upgrades or cosmetic stuff, maybe there would be more incentive to keep going. Also the ability to just cycle though cards at no negative made me wonder why I shouldnt just bin cards until I get what I need.
This was a charming pucker of a game! Really liked the concept, think it'd be really fun multiplayer. Its got hints of subbuteo, curling and hockey (and air hockey!). I think if mastered some dirty little combo moves could be set up. passing was quite hard since all players moved simultaneously, and blocking other players felt less important since it was turn based and you knew they werent going to get in your way! Really fun and original idea, looking forward to the online experience!
Seems very hard to control inititally.. but as time goes on... you realise it's still really hard to control! but thats the physics game for you!! It is vital to hold up when you expect a new block to fall, it took a bit for me to learn that. the mood was good, the slow paced tetris tune suited the lingering physics of the blocks! Fun effort!
Visuals are really great - sets the tone. Really nice illustrations to help explain the cards. I found it very overwhelming to begin with, and even once I got a grasp of whats going on, I think the pace of seemed a bit fast. HOWEVER, that was the intention, to merge the fighting game with a card base game. I think the genres do conflict, as card play and cooldowns means you cant use the punches and kicks as you please, and the pace of the fighting games makes it hard to plan your attacks with cards. Due to jam, understand there's no tutorial, but a game like this would really benefit from such a thing! Good effort champs!
Very polished game throughout, music was good and nice to see a few different tracks for different areas (boss for example). Visuals were nice, cards fitted with the intended style / artistic approach. One of the few flaws I found was just lack of intuition within my first few seconds of controlling the game - meaning menu navigation etc. I had had on wsad and the mouse, and so arrows and space on menus, and escape closing the program caused some accidental navigation we could say! I initially though having the I key to access your deck was a bad thing as its between left and right hand, but you dont use it during combat etc so I actually think it was fine.
The spells became quite satisfying to use once you got used to their use and timings etc. A few spells I found harder to use / inconsistent, like arcane missiles. I also found some spells a lot more useful - so in future a look at maybe balancing cards would be worthwhile.
Combat was a little samey on the normal rooms, but was please to see different mechanics / format when I came across a boss. A bit of audio / visual feedback when you take damage, maybe some invincibility period afterwards too, would have been appreciated. Maybe some of the "standard rooms" could have some more variance, maybe some obstacles or something to line of sight enemies, or even areas of danger which are not enemies (traps etc).
But the above critique is of a standard game, to think you all this in a game jam entry is super impressive - even with the team size you have. Good work people <3
Didn't expect to be in a mine cart!! but once I got used to that idea, it became a fast paced dodging and shooting game, with element of levelling up. A nice idea to keep levels between attempts, in line with the RPG theme but moreso it allows players to get further each time and want to keep playing. had a good vibe to it thanks to the music :)
The visuals were really impressive. Music and sounds a bit loud by default but suited the mood you attempted to set. Would have liked the options menu on the main menu, not just in game. The concept is good, and I can imagine it would be even more fun if the words produced were a little more conventional (I know you've mentioned this in your description, so don't worry) - and also if there was a way to balance the difference in obstacles from run to run - to make each run through a little more consistent in terms of difficulty. A lot of content and impressive options / views for a jam!
Took some time to master the controls and understand things properly, but once I did I found it very stimulating and enjoyable to play! Even though it's turn based, you still get stress of constant waves of bullets that you get in a bullet hell game. Especially for your ages, great job!
What a wonderful visual game, with fitting ambiance. I was able to guess the two genres without reading the description which is a good thing - however there is question marks over their "incompatibility", as it ended up seeming like they actually complimented eachother - as the restriction of colour matches is very similar to the gating that you get in a metroidvania style game. Really polished effort, enjoyable to play <3 great effort guys.
Very much an interesting combination! I figured how it worked mechanically within the first few steps which is good! I liked that some moves have auto follow-ons like the "falling", however sometimes I felt I had to press forward or backwards when in midair, and wasn't able to just fall back to the ground whilst jumping upwards. Maybe I didn't press down to see if that worked, in hindsight. Didn't get through all the levels, as I found the third one quite challenging. To improve, it should be a bit easier for the player to predict the movement / timings of projectiles. Really liked the idea though, you could do speed runs that were based on number of moves and have high score tables for that which would be interesting.
Lovely visuals, fell in love with that cute squirrel pretty damn quickly! I don't really play tower defense games, so I wasn't so aware of the "upgrade your turret always" rule that tends to fall within the genre. The platforming elements were some limited, would have liked to see maybe a more diverse scenery away from the tree where you would have to jump carefully to place an advantageous turret etc.
I actually liked the system of reacting to cards, timing your use of them to avoid bullets, and the challenge it added to simple navigation around the map.
Unfortunately I found it suffered a bit from RNG, where I'd get stuck in a corner and have to spam cards in hope of the right direction to get out of the corner. Perhaps this could have been coded in to help played avoid getting stuck like this.
The music unfortunately was a bit much after a few minutes playing. Nice combination of genres, interesting and rather unique gameplay too!
This was really neat idea, I think it was executed quite well - if there was more time to get the mechanics more solid I think this could be a really interesting game to play. I think maybe adding lights onto your own vehicle could be another mechanic you could add, where you need to turn them off to reduce visibility to others, but as a result it makes your visibility worse. I think you managed to mix 2d and 3d really well, it had nice look to it, only downside was the enemy cars doing very sudden movements! good effort loud!
What a memorable game! The visuals and audio were stunning! The games were engaging, seemed a little simple to begin, but then the TRUE nature of the game reveals itself. I managed 3800 and was quite proud, but you guys should be more proud for making such a little beauty! it was rich in content, highly polished, had humour and fun to play. The genre blends for the minigames I guess you could say were not too incompatible, more just unconventional game combos - however the blend of the shooting and the minigames was more incompatible, as they added pressure with the need to earn bucks to buy ammo. Would have been harsh but maybe interesting if the games didnt pause when you looked away to shoot. Awesome effort <3
I had a lot a fun. And the most success on a date I've had for years. I can't wait for her to call me back!!
In seriousness, this was good fun to play! Some glitchy physics stuff but that is to be expected when taking on such complex mechanics! Two valid genres combined, the face feedback was good, would have liked more feedback when I knew I had completed the game - as it was the same as when I lost the game! I'm sure people will remember this game, good job!
What a clucking fantastic ending to the game! not often does an ending make you want to carry on playing for another 30 seconds :D The beat itself I think is so close to being accurate. It seems you just need to predict the beat, even press it a split second before the beat to get it to register, but its really satisfying when you get into the flow of it and start doing beat after beat. I think maybe if the heart was closer to the character, or if he bobbed his head to the beat or something, could have helped as I found watching the heart made it easier to jump on time but it was way up out of the way in top left. Visuals were great, though I did experience the tile tearing (lines between tiles showing). Levels were well designed and required you to slowly progress through combos. I'm imagining how a different beat would allow for different level designs, and that makes the expand-ability of this game actually pretty decent. Good work bud - your sprite work is great, be nice to see some more environments next time too <3
What a wonderful game idea! I've not really played space exploration games since captain blood on the Amstrad! However, I found this actually quite relaxing and enjoyable, and despite not being typically married together, the the genres ended up working well together! Would be interested in seeing how it feels with all the features implemented that you had dreamed up! Good work bud!
Really intriguing combination! one of the better platformer + X combos I've played. The taking in turns to make your move, whilst still maintaining full control of character is interesting. Having to think if you're in range of enemies and where will be a safe place is a nice bit of strategy. Graphics are nice, the sound unfortunately a bit annoying but does get you into the rhythm thats needed for this type of game. Almost finished it... but I failed you. Forgive me....
This was a really well put-together game! I really liked the way you chose your deck, and it was good that you included a tutorial. The card images and texts were quite entertaining as well. I know the whole genre incompatibility was meant to make the game challenging, but it almost become too challenging to enjoy. It was quite a complicated system to fighting, however that does give the game depth - but sometimes too much depth in jam game can put players off. really nice job on the whole <3
It started.. and I wondered where was the platformer mechancis! but I enjoyed that they were incorporated into the board game, and the visuals and coins etc definitely tied the board game with the platformer genre. I felt it was a little too RNG based, but then aren't most board games! The cards helped reduce this RNG dependency, but there weren't enough cards perhaps. Good work, really glad you still submitted despite your challenging circumstances!
This really changed the way you play tetris, and I feel the theme integration was very strong. I found it challenging as not having direct control over the puzzle shapes makes tetris a lot harder - therefore it shows the themes were somewhat incompatible. I found the aiming difficult if the block wasnt directly in line with one of the platforms personally. Great visuals, audio suited and gave nice audio queues - although did get that x-files vibe from the song :D Good effort captain!
This was a very well presented blend of modern and classic block based games! I liked the integration of the block clicking in the "how to play screen", added an element of teaching the mechanics to the player without a "tutorial" so to speak. One thing that my brain expected, was that horizontal lines would be cleared like in tetris, but it's good that they dont - because you end up trying to stack as much as you can, and then click on the groups when you have a load ready to get big matches and also keep a combo going. Good effort <3
Really nice visuals on this, the colour palettes used worked really well and the contrast of the UI against it made it clearly known to the player what was UI and what the world space (since the Ui took up a lot of the screen, I think this was important).
The concept itself is nice, I like dungeon crawlers and the idea going deep and things getting more difficult. Lots interesting mechanics had been implemented, the turn based card system does indeed change the dungeon crawler experience, and does lead to some interesting decision making. The main gripe I had was the card generation, a few times I was left with unplayable cards and after a shuffle I still had no cards I could use and by that time the blasted bat had sank his foul teeth into the fleshy part of my supple neck....!
I'd like to see / play this again if the card draw system didn't cause some frustrating situations. Really compelte and solid effort, even moreso for 48 hours! Good job dude!
What a very fun entry!! The character design, visuals, humour and mood were all very good! The game idea itself was good, the downside is the slight sync issues on some of the levels. I could see the story was the element of RPG, it felt like going to pokemon battles with other trainers when you talk to them :D I'm not too sure how much the genres conflict, as it seems a nice way to balance dancing through having short levels to overcome and some stories varies! Really enjoyable entry <3
Thank you all @Akusan @SuperTibbles @zeMenno @isopoly @Vasco Freitas @Peter Jonsson @Darby Costello @egordorichev @waterytart @theArtifacts for your useful and kind feedback! It is much appreciated and I'm looking forward to getting into play LD games over the coming days.
With regards to the incompatibility - my definition of compatible is ability to co-exist without any problems or conflict. From my perspective, both of these games-types cause problems and conflict for the other. You struggle to make lines because the ball destroys your existing lines and pieces as they drop. The dropping pieces also interfere unexpectedly with the movement of the ball. Also you are not able to simply clear the blocks and win like in breakout, instead the high-score approach of tetris forces you to try and keep tiles and you need to make lines to extend your remaining time - thus increasing your potential high score.
@Zukureneno @SupremeKurt @Team Luminous @Reizo @bar0net @Ruoyu @Velocity7 Thanks for your feedback! I'm hoping to stream playing LD games Wed eve and Friday eve - so I'll go through and try out games of those who gave feedback when my queue is empty!
@mintarcade So kind! thank you good sir! @MZA Glad to hear, seems the genre mix is indeed posing some challenges ;)
@Crsrc You end up resenting that ball and the path of chaos it leaves behind it!! Good suggestion, I guess space could be rotate clockwise, I just felt I needed to offer both rotation directions - but indeed no harm to add one of them to space! Won't add now as after deadline, but will take it on board. Thanks!
Thanks @Colisan , @kamtar and @HS_Dave for feedback and kind words!
@TSK those were the days.... where if a game didn't load you'd blow into the underside of the cartridge rather than check twitter for announcements from the devs!
@MarkoPoloDev Grats on 2nd place, and thanks for playing bud! Yeah annoyingly its not a code issue, I think its itch io blocking access from their site to the leaderboard site (dreamlo). Think its cause its http rather than https, so not much I can do now.
@MarkoPoloDev http://dreamlo.com/lb/5ade3f54d6024519e0ef5ea3/pipe
@Anne Ogborn @stardynamic @RamiaD @David Boeger Really appreciate you guys taking the time to play, and that you got some enjoyment out of it! In previous jams I've tried big ideas with deeper content, but this time I've learned that concentrating on a single mechanic and style allows people to engage with the game easier <3
@Adrien Dittrick that's the way to do it - focus on the tetris part to get more points and time, and just "manage" the ball, and stop it from ruining your beautiful tetris rows! :D glad to hear you struggled - it was intended to be that way <3
@Nash - thanks for feedback, glad you found it good to play!
Regarding incompatibility, you're entitled to your opinion - though I'd ask you to consider my perspective that I listed at the end of my entry description. For convenience, here it is: "The Theme: With regards to the incompatibility - my definition of compatible is ability to co-exist without any problems or conflict. From my perspective, both of these games-types cause problems and conflict for the other. You struggle to make lines because the ball destroys your existing lines and pieces as they drop. The dropping pieces also interfere unexpectedly with the movement of the ball. Also you are not able to simply clear the blocks and win like in breakout, instead the high-score approach of tetris forces you to try and keep blocks. You need to make rows of blocks to extend your remaining time - thus increasing your potential high score."
@kr4ft3r Appreciate your words man. Regarding the extra ball, you do get an extra ball every 1000 points you score. I however seem to have not mentioned this in the instructions - sorry! I had also considered powerups every time you get a line - such as speed up / increase size of ball / paddle, as some of those would make the games even less compatible! but ran out of time :)
@Nash thanks for taking time to reply. Regardless, you're entitled to your opinion on it - a game is often about the individual players' experience!
@tigerj thanks for giving it a go! I wish leaderboards worked too, but as mentioned - dreamlo leaderboards require payment for SSL leaderboards, and itch.io don't allow access to not HTTPS things via WebGL.
Thanks all: @Adam Wallberg, @BauBau, @Dragojt (glad you found it hard :D!), @Yozamu @Richnou @folex70 (It would be hard to port to mobile due to many controls needed, and also I'm not sure how licencing works since this plays similar to tetris), @Iluvatar!
@HPMNK interesting feedback, cheers. I thought about the controls for some time. I considered right click, but this posed two problems: 1) the mouse is no longer just for the paddle control, and 2) right clicking in browser I was concerned would bring up a context menu. Regarding the rotations, I almost went with R or Space for rotate, but was concerned proper tetris fans would not enjoy one way rotation only. I should have made space / r do a rotation regardless, but it's too late now! I'll be playing games this evening on stream so I'll try give yours a go then <3
@HPMNK in about an hour. I'll have a queue, but its my first "open queue" night, so at the moment it's empty at least!
@BlueMirror Fair enough about the control scheme. With dropping tetris tiles however, it IS implemented. Hold it down, and it falls pretty fast (i didn't want it to teleport to the bottom, but it'll get there fast). I coded it so that it wouldnt start the next piece falling fast though, as that can be frustrating that you making one piece fall fast then makes the next piece start fast. You have to re-press down again and hold to make the next piece go down faster. Glad you felt the frustrations of the ball. It's a swine.
@Cassio Eduardo fair enough bud, I did fear they were two simple things to try - but when I scrapped my jam entry after 1 day and started again, I opted for something with a decent scope... yet still only just managed to finish it. I did have plans for powerups too, but not the time. THanks for feedback.
@Blinkenlights don't forget a wedge of lemon. Belissimo!
@recursor @Hi Im Greg @acoto87 thank you for feedback :)
@joltjab I've written a few times in info etc, unfortunately the highscores only work on PC version! sorry <3
@TwinGhosts thanks bud <3 plan c reverted to plan B - glad I stuck with it!
@Swen thanks so much for such a detailed bit of feedback. I agree with all your points. Regarding the double ball loss, it surprises me because as soon as it hits the "death zone", its velocity should be set to 0. Could be something to do with a speed enforcer I put in to try stop the ball from rarely stopping / slowing right down during a game. Thanks for the headsup! <3 appreciate your words!
@David Boeger genuinely makes me feel great knowing people are getting enjoyment out of something I made :) Thanks
@radmccool thats the beauty of it. A true trouter grows to respect the ball, not swear at it each time it ruins your wonderful tetris plans. I am still not a true trouter :(
@Lyrcaxis thank you dude :)
@Corbak you aren't the first one to not know that! I've watched two people play this who didn't touch the dropping pieces for the first minute or so! Not sure if I should directly tell people, or just make the arrow keys control things too?
@BoltKey really sorry about your experience with web version high score. I did have a note in bold under the web player trying to warn players, but understand most people will not read that. Can I ask what you meant by infinite state? And glad you could master it, I think a real version of the game would have some increased difficulty or different difficulty modes perhaps - it's nice to see there are people who are really good at this who enjoyed working out the added challenge that breakout added to tetris. I'm really really pleased to hear you felt it was an elegant combination - I feared my idea would be too simple for a game jam, but really pleased I went with it now. Thanks for the feedback also - I thought Q and E would give players control of both directions, is this not something competitive tetris players tend to care about? I could add it so W rotates clockwise in addition to the existing controls perhaps. Fair enough about the colour preference. and Yes the blocks shading is off as my implementation was based around rotations and I didn't code anything to compensate the sprite rotations. It surprises me about the rotation point though - are you positive about this? My implementation basically turns it, checks if any active parts of the piece are out of range / colliding, then reverses the rotation if so. Perhaps I checked out of bounds before I checked the block was active - I'll check the code some day :) How do you feel powerups would add to it? I considered making negative powerups that you get as you get more score, like faster ball, bigger ball, double ball - as all would make it more difficult. but then not sure if it would be too much.
@Talops indeed there is a difficulty, yet to really mess with players I designed it so you must focus on tetris to get more time / better score, meaning you need to neglect the more challenging aspect :D sorry!
@Brent dreams can be crushed, but you can always dream again. My mother never understood when I told her I wanted to grow up and be a trout, but I never stopped dreaming.
@OhFiddleDiddle very nice comment, thanks for letting me know <3
@David Boeger you may not have the highest score, but you have claimed the trouts virginity! :D
@JuicyBrucey Thanks for your feedback juicy! I wish not to argue, but just to present my perspective on the theme. It is fine if we don't agree on it, but wasn't sure if you saw what I wrote about incompatibility in the game description section - will paste it here for convenience: _With regards to the incompatibility - my definition of compatible is ability to co-exist without any problems or conflict. From my perspective, both of these games-types cause problems and conflict for the other. You struggle to make lines because the ball destroys your existing lines and pieces as they drop. The dropping pieces also interfere unexpectedly with the movement of the ball. Also you are not able to simply clear the blocks and win like in breakout, instead the high-score approach of tetris forces you to try and keep blocks. You need to make rows of blocks to extend your remaining time - thus increasing your potential high score._
@King Kujito <3 so pleased to hear this!
@Carvster that pesky ball. at least you're still calling it a ball. I have a special name for it, but it may get censored if I write it here... :D thanks for playing bud, glad you enjoyed!
@ManBeardGames I played a round this morning mate, and thought the exact same thing. I didn't think to add the hold control mechanism to the left and right movement - but if I could go back I'd add it in. A few small changed I'd make - but I'm making an effort not to do any updates! Thanks for detailed feedback man
@randomhuman Thanks for that man, and the logo looks tacky but I wanted something that was a bit retro :D I agree about the music, upbeat music wouldn't be right in this mash up!
@marioman68 @PatrickRMC @NorthernHawk Thank you all for your kind words. Northern, maybe you can collaborate with me on music next time... :D
@BoltKey You legend! That celebration paddle dance, will be known as the Platinum Dance <3 I am flattered by you and @David Boeger 's dedication. You've made me feel this gamejam was definitely worthwhile, regardless of how the ratings turn out. I worry because of 100 votes I've received it's going to be hard to do anything but get an average rating, but now I don't really care - I know some people have got some real enjoyment out of it.
Club Trout Members: David Boeger, Boltkey. Platinum Trout Club Members: Boltkey.
@Dovakla, @Pietro Ferrantelli, @Bauxite Thank you for such kinds words :) @Rebecca Kremer appreciate your feedback and was really good to see you experience it on stream! hope you continue to stream after ludum dare, we have a nice community of game devs active and I think people would like your personality.
@legavroche Thank you :) it is a difficult game indeed, but some have been able to master it somewhat. I think an easier mode with more time and more time rewarded when completing a single line, perhaps lower the amount of points needed to earn an extra ball too, could make it more accessible.
@visumecadroide shame you found it too hard, but it was the intended design. Once you get your brain handling both aspects of the game, it is very rewarding surviving longer. I did consider some big fancy graphical "trout" when yuo get 4 lines etc, but you compare to the inspiration of tetris, there is only a small sound when you get 4 lines, and nothing for a single line. I decided to follow that style, but as a result for players used to "modern" games, I can understand why you thought it was boring. These sort of games aren't about entertaining people with visuals and sounds though, its about overcoming a challenging and letting your concentration, precision and focus have time to shine.
@Jin9310 and @ooku super kind words, thank you very much <3
@Tero Laxström Yeah... it's definitely one where you can't afford to take your eye off the ball for too long!
@ludipe I'm pleased to hear that! I was concerned about the concept being simple when I decided to go with this idea, but for once I finished a jam game without half of the planned content missing :D I think I'll do the same next game jam, but this time try not to start a new idea at the end of day 1 :D
@LemonBalmGames @MagmaFortress Such kind words, really flattered and proud - thank you! @MaximBegunov @Tayrnarion @krammetje @arron-fowler thank you! @Darkwing00Duck I will give it a go when I play a few more LD entries and leave you some feedback @Bartosz Hey, thanks! The game was coded using C# within the Unity game engine. I used PyxelEdit to do the art. The music was composed and created in ableton.
@Bartosz sorry, fixed it now :)
@mortus Hi, thank you for the feedback - can I ask what sort of janky collisions you mean? I tried doing my own physics but it started going bad and reverted back to unity based physics, but would like to know what stuff you find janky so I can try and make it less game-affecting?
@Houruck thank you <3
@joh appreciate your detail review my man, good to hear your feedback. Thanks!
@TheSheepster thanks for your feedback man! I think to begin with it's definitely hard, but like juggling - once you begin to let your brain multitask, it starts coming together :) The sounds I would agree were not my strength, something I hope to learn more about in future. Thanks again
@jamfella thank you <3 very pleased to hear it was original and the game provoked those moments of "Ooooohh I can do *this*!"
@mortus thanks for explaining in more detail. Will be things I can think about if I ever find a way (due to controls) to port this to mobile.
@HagamosVideojuegos thanks so much, so pleased you thought so!
@Tim Ruswick Thanks bud <3 cheers for playing it.
@Nuthen indeed, the ball is not a friend. more a beast to tame!!
@LeviDSmith Yeah I really liked the mechanic of using the dropping pieces to deflect the ball - hard to execute correctly but adds scope for some hard-core plays.
@DDRKirbyISQ Yeah I wanted the "hold down" controls to not move on to the next piece, as to beginners it can end up in accidental shifting down of the next block, and with the ball moving around too I decided to have to repress down on a new piece would be a good middleground. I would have added the "hold" controls for left and right too - but didn't think about it til after the jam!
@lonewookie @Mau thanks both for giving feedback <3
@Rosik Yeah needed an end game, and wanted to steer good players to complete lines to extend the timer and get higher and higher scores - so it becomes a game of planning and execution rather than purely who can control it the quickest!
@huminaboz Thank you man, I really enjoyed it too, was more satisfying than I envisioned when designing it :)
@Lost Dutchman Software Let me know what they think! I'm not sure the rules on trying to monetise this on app store etc, since its based on two existing well-known games.
@veztron thanks for that! I had to add some small variance to it to avoid the stale mates. You can still get some long horizontal loops, but I liked them - a rare chance to focus just on the "tetris" element, yet you still need to time the moving of the pieces down to avoid knocking the ball out. Oh and I've never got a trout. 2 people have recorded theirselves getting one and sent it to me :D
@Maakep really pleased you enjoyed playing it <3
@Ratherjolly thank you! If I ever get a decent port to mobile I'll let you know :D
@Crimson @Akadream cheer guys :)
@vilcans the ball is a foe, not a friend :D some say it can be tamed... but I am not so sure about it myself!!
@Ballin thanks bud!! @rkoshino if it continues, please see a doctor. Otherwise - glad to hear it :D
@Lucas Hoffmann <3 <3
@Ethan Kennerly Glad it made you feel interested! I think the trick is to use the "down" control (S) to move the blocks down faster, so you can stack more blocks quicker.
@AlejandrodeCea Really really pleased you feel they are incompatible!
@Joror I completely agree, lacked some polish and juice - message on UI for life up, line clear and a trout was planned but never implemented.
@larzan @LittleStone Games thank you! If you want me to try out yours on stream, I'm doing a finale stream in the hours leading up to rating deadline.
@SecretPocketCat thanks for suggestions. There is a formula to the direction ball bounces off paddle. Regardless of travel direction, if hits left side of bat it will bounce left, middle it goes straight, right it goes right. Regarding blocks falling down, I decided to go with the "tetris" style, where they don't fall down unless you've cleared an entire row. Otherwise you'd run into combos which really isnt tetris style - it'd be more like a match 3 game. The lack of distance between bat and tetris board is something I will consider.
@PeachTreeOath really pleased you felt the gameplay stood out. Yeah, I've not entered the trout club :( only two people have achieved so far to my knowledge.
@jenninexus you are too kind <3
@Poio hopefully the melting was enjoyable at least!!
@Darkphnx have really thought about two player, could be done as coop or vs - where you try and make it harder for each other. Dont think I can put on app store, tetris are pretty tight on their IP.
@csanyk really appreciate your detailed review, and am pleased you were able to pick out some of my design decisions. in hindsight I agree with you that the difficulty of achieving a trout (and lines, to a less extent) means the points rewards should have been greater. If you want me to check out your game, pop by to my LD41 finale stream I'm hosting in the hours leading up to submission deadline <3
@StrangerYann
Regarding the gameplay - I'd encourage you to try playing again and think about the conflicts with the two "approaches" you highlighted in your review.
*1) Play just Arkanoid and have no Tetris pieces to play:* This is correct. They give you the lower amount of score, and never extend you time. The game is labelled as a "high score game", so essentially if you play this way - you're choosing not to try and score well or extend the time in which you have to score. I'd say the game is designed to encourage you away from this game play, since it's a high score game and it is expressed on the UI and the "how to play" that you get more points for lines and extend your time.
*2) Play tetris and avoid stuff with arkanoid ball* Well, that is kind of the point of the game. The difficulty is, the nature of arkanoid means it is near impossible for you to avoid stuff with the ball. Meaning, it conflicts your ability to make tetris lines and to do any serious planning. When Tetris lines are the way to score more points and extend your timer, then it is about managing the conflict the combination of these genres give you. You have to be selective about what blocks you break. You can use the arkanoid ball to change the shape of the puzzle landscape to fit pieces in. You can change the shape of a tetris piece as it falls so its more useful. You can use the falling tetris piece to deflect the arkanoid ball to protect your puzzle landscape from being spoiled.
So on the question of how does the combination serve gameplay, I'd argue that infact the combination makes you think different about how to play two classic games that you are likely already familiar with. I'd remind you that the theme was about INCOMPATIBILITY. By definition that means that two things coexisting causing problems or conflict for each other. I'd argue that trout encourages you to play the games differently than you normally do, because the problems and conflicts they casue each other. A by product of that is a different type of game play and strategy, which requires not only mastery of the two original base mechanics, but the ability to react to the problems they cause each other. I am happy with the two concepts I have combined and believe they produce interesting gameplay and decisions for people to make.
I do wonder how much time you gave my game while doing your review. Part of your analysis on gameplay is based on a rare bug that I had highlighted in the game description page. Perhaps you should have restarted the game if you had sensed something had gone wrong, to allow yourself to spend time experiencing the game as intended.
@puppetmaster rating now closed my friend - sorry
Very impressive game, regardless of jam or not. A good level of difficulty, I do enjoy the satisfaction of bullet hells. You really nailed the metroidvania concept too, the gating felt balanced and intuitive. Visuals were all consistently good. I feel a good atmospheric sound track would have really added a lot to this game, as the few sound effects are good - but in isolation sound quite feeble. Goodluck developing v2!
This was good man - thanks for submitting to the stream to be played. The two mechanics involved are interesting - not sure if conflicting, but still made an interesting game :) Could be interesting if you could spend resources on creating new resources on your side of the battlefield, rather than unit to attack each time :)
Some great effort gone into this. I like the idea of the combination, and they do impact one another. Downside is the beat em up element was repetitive, and you knew to expect it after each shot so became a little more tiresome. Could be something more balanced like chance of fight increased based on how good your golf shot was, so they effect eachother moreso. Some more enemies / attack moves would have been nice too.
for what is there, there's some really positive things. I think you do some good pixel art and the controls felt good. The downside was scope - and that you weren't able to implement all the ideas that would have fitted these genres into your game jam entry! Hope you had a blast making it :D
I found the controls in this made the game very difficult HOWEVER - that is the point of the theme! There were some things you could have done (such as use a sprite for the car to / particles for skidding effect) to help the player understand the movement mechanics of the car on their first attempt. I really liked the boss, he had 3 distinct phases, that were fair. Every death was due to my own inability to control the car! I think with a bit more polish, a game like this could do really well in LD. Good job!
initially the genre crosshover didnt hit me... that was until I got into my first fight.. and realise how long a turn based rock paper scissors game would take! the enemy has 10 health. There 33% chance of doing damage to him. On average, I'll have play 30+ rounds to defeat him! all this while the menacing poison cloud is drifting in... engulfing the battlefield!! Enjoyed the little touches like the script and the ai player names as they died! :) and for the record... I won, pro tactics employed :D
Nice polish, audio / voice added a lot, and good art instantly gives a good impression. The game mechanics are interesting, the idea of having to resist attacking some enemies is against the norm of a slasher style game. Having to focus on colour matching and counting 3 was a good genre blend. I enjoyed the subtle rules too that made the game more challenging the more you wanted to gamble! Found perhaps improving the colliders and Ai, and perhaps and indicator to show your dash cooldown could all have made the game a little better.
really feeling that this combo could be something that's popular and addictive to play on mobile. the rules are simple, but the rng and performance under pressure is what makes this enjoyable and makes you want to play again. Music, art and presentation were all on point. That credits song though......... :D good job guys!
Really great vibe and mood to this, I'm sure other have said but that retro hotline miami vibe was strong in this one¬! Really impressive visuals, seemed too difficult to begin, but on my... maybe 6th attempts it started to click. The hard bit initially was throwing the ice cream to the cars, but you grow to learn the patterns of their movement eventually. I found I was avoiding cars quite easily, the genres are not as clear cut as some entries but I can definitely see where the inspiration was drawn from <3 gg
I really enjoyed my time this game! played through it twice, and it didn't feel repetitive despite only finite amount of cards available. I particularly enjoyed the gamble element of adding debuffs to rooms before you know what room cards you're going to get next. The controls were clean, and really original and enjoyable! The "have to play a card" mechanic was really incompatible with platformer element - meaning it caused problems - therefore that's really inline with the theme brief! GJ!
One of the most "feel good" games I've played - it had a real sense of innocence and involvement. The relatively minimal graphics were very well executed and added to the theme. The tutorials on the level without any popups were great too. I really adored the music building up. The down side is it wasn't too difficult, but it fell more like a story for me, like I was liberating little villages or something :D you should be proud of your effort dude!
The controls for the ship were nice, and interesting to play those controls in a "exploration with walls" sort of environment. Music was a little repetitive, and graphics just a tad rushed. An extra hour on art may have given the game a better overall feel (for example, your ship / character is a non-even triangle shape). The enemy sprites were quite cool. Also - if you're going for a pixel art style, you should try and keep all your sprites in scale with each other. meaning - the bullets that are fired should have the same pixel size too imo. Interesting play, good effort!!
This is a nice concept and it is clear you put effort into the story and conveying emotion and how the character felt. It had some interesting mechanics (breaking stuff with items inside, enemies, darkness). A few bits of critical feedback (don't take it personally, I say it to try help!). The shame with this two genre combo is that it actually functions like a run and gunner game. If you imagine the princess had a gun, and there was no first person gun on screen shooting, it would function exactly the same in reality. Secondly, it was very distracting as a player to have such contrasting art style. It doesn't matter how good or bad the art is, but it should be consistent - your seemed to mix different styles, resolutions, some really fancy fire particle effects - and when all combined it just felt very disconnected! I enjoyed the story, the dark level was fun, and glad the princess was okay again!
Hey bud! really enjoyed the majority of that! The card mechanic was refreshing, loads of card games this LD - but this was nice in the way that it just added the card to your deck, and you had to cycle through your deck to find the card you want without really knowing what would come next. Multitasking this in high pressure situations (like fighting an enemy while looking for a health card draw) was good. The level became a bit tedious to navigate once you started running low on enemies. Maybe HP bar on your character instead of bottom right would have been a nice addition. The camera movement was just that little bit too quick when you changed direction also. Nice entry mate :)
really cute puzzle game, based on the cards, mana management, and having a finite number of resources to solve level. Music really fitted with the game, could have kept playing the levels are they were challenging and rewarding when figured them out. Felt I guess a bit more like a puzzle game rather than platform (if we're talking about genre blends), however I think the end result is really good.
The music was nice and fitted the game. The visuals were decent, the logo really nice. I found some UI improvements could make the game easier to grasp - such as maybe gold icon and place that icon next to the cost on the card so you link two things together. A larger range of "turret" types would have made the game more interesting to play. Seemed quite similar to a standard tower defense game, good effort!
This was a really good game! at first I thought "great, fishing and horror, this will be really fun....", but it was actually implemented really well. Despite the fish graphics not looking too "real", that almost added to the horror with their animated mouthes, the sounds when they lunge at you, and the speed in which they devour your wormy self! You really set the mood and create good blend of two unconventional genres.
It was quite hard, but made me laugh and had a good blast for the 5 minutes I played!! I liked the physics based tactics, such as blocking enemies with corpses, climbing on enemies for height, and jumping off balance platform with enemies on it, and leaving them to topple to their death below! Would have benefited from a HP indicator perhaps to help you know when you're nearing death. Good job!
Ahhhh this was so fun! When I saw the concept, I just had to give it a go. FYI - web version didn't really work for me, never loaded after I pressed start game. In seriousness, if they had this as a mini game on FPS (like overwatch) that you could play while for a game in the queue, I think it'd be great! your version would be better if it had some sensitivity settings so I could get it more in line with the sensitivities I tend to use in FPS games. Kudos!
What an enjoyable experience! The story was actually really nicely portrayed! And the sandwich making side of things was really sweetly executed! the thing that was missing was true intregration of both genres, and same variance in the sandwich making. I would say that there should have been an ending, but we all know Carson was a hungry boy, and his hunger was never truly satisfied!! You should be proud of the charm this entry had!
Played this post-results. Despite not having many votes, I do think your game is a good example of a game that got few votes but still deserved a high ranking. Good job
Really loved the visuals and mood of this one. I think in this type of game the visuals are really vital in getting the players to engage and care about the characters. Seems a cute one could play through with little ones too, which is rare for a LD game. Good job both!
really liked this game, the audio was great and I didn't sick of the music! The graphics I really liked, well executed pixel art. The main thing really is a bit balancing to keep the game challenging as you get further and further in. would be interested to see how you guys would approach that. maybe some more platformer elements could have found their way into the game, things that conflict with the tower defence genre, in order to really hit incompatibility theme. Really enjoyed!
A very complete game, and probably one of, if not the, most fun games I've played the LD. Personally I had some difficulties with the controls, based on if you started your click and drag close to edge of screen, you weren't able to continue dragging "off screen" and as a result couldnt get the maximum velocity on the sword. One possible solution to this would be to add a cancel button (maybe right click), so that I can cancel and "regrip" the screen if I find myself in the situation. I found the game quite hard but I think I would have completed if I gave it more time, so seems a good difficulty. Almost all aspects of the game were really impressive! One small tip would be to slow down text if you want the player to read it, it disappeared far too quickly on that first level. Awesome effort and game!!
The driving controls were better than a few racing games I've played during LD, though still made steering a bit challenging - I felt I had to stop to turn any decent corner! the speed of the car also meant steering wasn't really a priority. However- that became part of the game, it was more about trying to handle the fast pace of the car whilst still managing typical platformer elements! Had a bit of fun, the visuals were all consistent and quite pleasing, music fitted with the vibe you were going for too! Cheers!
I am so sorry I had a family emergency mid playing your game on stream, and you had gone when I came back. Your game had such scope for interesting things!! I like the idea of different emotions winning and that changing the way your character reacts to situations in the story! It was pretty cool concept, understandably you werent able to finish everything within the jam - there would be a lot of scripting and possible branching. Good ambition, was nice to play your game :)
I really liked this combination of genres! Quite a clever combination indeed, and nostalgic - as both seem a "thing" of the past these days. I found design of having to change your ball into a different tool to allow you to interact with you buddy was a good design choice. To improve, I think just a more varied pinball tabled would help a lot, to make it a little less easy to repeat the same shot consecutively. Awesome effort, especial for compo!
The simple (and common) graphics style was consistent and looked quite polished. its one of those where you should expect to die a lot, however it did feel like I was responsible for my death which is a positive thing. I really liked the console and the potential that had- how ever I felt the majority of the things in console were gimmicky rather than actually having the impact on the game as you're playing. Thanks for letting me play!
I really like the concept of action based fps. Unfortunately the Webgl version wasn't working very well, and I don't think the textures worked. The rabbits were still terrifying, don't worry.
@Team Luminous it was chrome, and everything was dark - I believe the textures hadn't loaded.
Effective visuals, am I right to say you make / use 3d models and then use a shader to get that style? I quite liked the idea, the run animation (spoiler) when she starts chasing you made laugh! Didn't succeed on my date, but I think if I gave it another go I'd know what to try differently. One or two tiny bits went too fast to read (when walking from lobby to kitchen I think). enjoyed playing!
Really impressive opening visuals and video to the game. I'd say the content differs quite a lot, however this is just done in a gamejam so ofc a fully fledged racing game may have been quite a lot to do. I liked how there were multiple cars and they seemed to compete at a decent level. I think the platform genre elements needed a bigger representation, there were collectibles but they didn't feel essential to get, and the jumping was the main platformer "part. if you are going to carry this on, I'd recommend working on a control scheme that feels more "car" like.
Very polished game, visually, music and felt really good to play - tight controls. Good humour and genuinely enjoyable to play. The dating thing became more of way to regain health and distract, I guess it would have been nicer to have more influence on the dating side of things, for example - your responses lead to different endings when you get to meet you girlfriend. Really impressive overall!
The restrictions of movement and placement of traps due to being in a car really added to the challenge. I would have liked to see more trap variety that was more reliant on the timing of placement perhaps. Also be wary of white font on light backgrounds on the UI, can be difficult to see (your help menu for example). Good effort champ!
This was a really relaxing a rewarding puzzle game. it was quite intuitive I think, which was good in one way because I felt immediately capable and good at the game - however it could be a slight negative as it was maybe too easy to perfect each of the levels. but further levels and mechanics and maybe enforced movement on a beat on some boss levels could add to the game and its challenge.
I enjoyed the combination, feels they did have a negative impact on each others game play, and your natural instincts. The slight downside I found was that there was no reward for getting a "line", however, I cannot think how you would have rewarded it and it looked sensible. I basically ended up having my stack grow up and up since lines didnt clear. I think the idea was to leave the zombies alive longer so they clear lines for you, but by then you'd already built up high and the problem snowballs. I did find it hard to see the shape under the helicopter too. Was fun to find myself struggling to multitask too :D