Wave Matcher by R4ndomThunder 2026-05-04T12:55:43Z ♥ 1
At least on Linux, I can't get past the first screen - clicking the "Start Your Day" button does nothing.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → j3m
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 60 | Old Tech | 👥 | Pneumopolis | jam | ||||||||||
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Many Wearing Rapiers are Afraid of Goosequills | jam | 444 | 3.55 | 3.20 | 3.65 | 3.83 | 4.42 | 3.66 | 3.97 | ||
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | Stacking Zoo | compo | 196 | 3.41 | 3.36 | 3.05 | 2.38 | 3.52 | 1.93 |
j3m leaves an average of 13.3 feedback comments each event.
At least on Linux, I can't get past the first screen - clicking the "Start Your Day" button does nothing.
Really really hard to understand, yeah. I love games that drop you right in and expect you to pay attention and figure out the mechanics for yourself, so I was really trying to decipher it, but I can't figure out how it works. Probably with more time to do animations and visuals, you could communicate better what the rules are.
It might be useful if I describe my best attempt at understanding the rules:
- I understand that I choose a starting node on the left, and that shoots a signal towards the right. - I understand that I "program" the behavior of the signal by slotting in the "commands", Zigzag Up and Stay. - I don't understand why my signal follows the Zigzag Up command for about half the distance, then switches to Stay. What causes it to switch? - I was very confused as to why you let me program in some commands for the signal once at the beginning, but didn't let me change them. Just now while typing this, I went back and tried right clicking, so now I realize that's how you change them. Considering you add them by left clicking, and left clicking on them again doesn't seem to do anything, I would just make a left click be what removes them. - I understand that when I hit a grey Signal Loss node, my signal stops. - I understand that when the robot's "action" says "attack", I'll lose HP after I send my signal. - Occasionally, after I send a signal, buttons show up at the bottom left that let me choose to either Attack or Defend. I have no idea what causes them to appear or why they only show up sometimes. - The formula up top says that my base damage is 25 + attack nodes. The robot's defense says 9. For my money that means I should be dealing minimum 25 - 9 = 16 damage every time I attack, but many turns I seem to deal like 4 damage. - I don't know why there's a big band of colored squares on the right that go yellow, then blue, then red. Is that relevant to gameplay, or just cosmetic?
Given what I can glean from the game, this is how I currently *assume* it's supposed to work:
1. You shoot your signal across. If it hits a Signal Loss, you skip your turn. If it reaches the other side, you get a chance to attack or defend. 2. You choose to attack or defend. If you attack, your damage is equal to 25 + number of attack nodes you hit, minus enemy defense if they're defending. 3. If enemy is attacking, you then take damage. If you chose to defend, your defense is the number of defense nodes your signal hit. This is subtracted from enemy attack. 4. Repeat until one of you dies.
However, (2) does not seem to be the case because I only very occasionally get the Attack and Defend buttons, and when I do attack I can't figure out what the damage formula is, it seems to have nothing to do with the formula printed at the top of the screen.
EDIT: Okay, I experimented a little more. So it seems like the long vertical strip of colored nodes the the right of the grid is actually relevant to gameplay afterall - this was not obvious! It looks purely decorative. It seems you only get "attack" and "defense" buttons if your signal reaches the blue or red sections of the strip. But then why even put the yellow part there?? And how come the red and blue parts are called "defense" and "attack" nodes? I seem to get both the Attack and Defense options no matter which color I reach.
Wine version works - I'm missing libc++.so.1 on Mint 22.1
This was lovely! I finished it. This is a bit of a nitpick since it's so short, but I did find the tutorial a bit silly and heavy-handed. You don't have to hold my hand and make me click in specific spots, the player can poke around the UI and learn themselves!
So damn good, the use of lighting as both a visual effect and an indicator of line of sight is so smart. For levels like one of the harder ones that has a grid of torches, I could do with a more explicit indication that a torch was toggled, like making it flare or flash, sometimes when they're in a tight formation it's hard to tell which ones you're hitting.
Very nice pixel art, did you do it yourself? It's a shame it's stretched horizontally, I would have tried to figure out how to keep the correct aspect ratio (like make the arena a square, and repeat the background texture to fill the space around it)
This was a really interesting idea, although I was surprised at how easy I found it to be. A lot of the time you can get by with kind of just counting the number of beats. Reminded me of the Caveman Rock game from Dr Brain 4 (deep cut) which I always liked. Finger chopping was... an odd choice
Cute game, great vibes. The little sine-wave minigame was probably the best sine-wave based game I've seen this entire jam (and there were lots), that could have been the whole entry on its own! And yeah, 500 clicks is way too much. Aside from just being annoying that would actually trigger my wrist RSI and cause physical pain
I really liked this. At first I thought the fact that the whistle can actually get blocked by obstacles was suuuuuper counter intuitive, I had to read the comments to understand that. But in retrospect I can see that basically the whole game is about line of sight, which ties in great with the theme. Probably the fact that the whistle can't pass through walls could be communicated better visually (totally disagree with the comment above mine haha, to me those particles and the way they bounce off of walls just looked like a purely cosmetic effect)
I like the idea, but connecting the cables is SUPER finnicky. Like, game-breakingly finnicky... I couldn't connect a single one no matter how hard I tried! I had to quit before being able to connect any calls, unfortunately. Other people seem to have managed, so maybe it's just a problem on my computer?
Really really liked this. I love the mood and unique dreamlike world you created. Definitely very hard to play as an actual game though, very difficult to read the dialogue while watching the signals
Cute! I think I figured out a strategy that works every time to win. If you only move along one axis (say horizontally), I think you're eventually guaranteed to land on the square you want. So you move only horizontally until you're vertically aligned with the target, and then move only vertically.
im so good at video games
I LOVED this. Great idea to make a Pikmin-like for "signal".
Nice! Not too hard. You get Lasillian easily, then you're just trying to figure out whether it's soon or future and whatnot, and the glyph for "time" appearing in the title of the tense table as well as in the glyphs for adult and child is enough of a hint to get all that.
That was great! I finished it. Unfortunately very laggy for me, and this laptop has an nvidia GPU in it. But I really enjoyed the atmosphere.
OMG, I instantly fell in love just from the fact that you actually made me tap out Morse code for real instead of just giving me two different buttons for dot and dash. I felt like I wanted to send longer sequences, like what if you're only allowed to send one message every 10 seconds or something, so you have to pre-program a whole sequence of moves?
Running under Wine on Linux, all I can see is a splash screen of a Wi-fi bars symbol?
Doesn't seem to run on Linux (through Wine) unfortunately, not sure about Windows
I feel like I'm playing a Shockwave game in 2004 for a Cartoon Network show that never existed! (in a good way) I love all the aliens, I did feel it was a shame the relationship between inputs and outputs felt a little inscrutable, so it was difficult to play with any real sense of intent. Maybe a fuller version would have a richer set of mechanics for manipulating the coordinates?
This is so good! The look, the color palette, the music, the gamefeel, the concept.
Really well executed, great atmosphere. Just one thing, was the music created just for this project? If not I believe it should be opted-out of the Audio category!
I can't seem to place anything, am I supposed to be clicking on the map to place the nodes?
EDIT: Ohhh I get it, I was trying to place shields right away, but you need regular nodes first.
Very confusing game for sure, UI would need some workshopping in a finished game, but I love the concept of a tower defense with some kind of communication network mechanic like this, nice use of the theme. Love the weird visual aesthetic/universe you guys created
Doesn't seem to want to run under Wine, for some reason, but looks cool
I really wanted to try this, but when trying to play through Wine on Linux, I think the game is broken for some reason... this is all I see when I start the first level, nothing I click on does anything. https://i.imgur.com/dUGtINk.png
This plays beautifully! My only problem is I got completely stuck at the "10" door. I searched multiple times in the entire area and could only find 9 creatures total before that door. The mechanics could have been a little better communicated sometimes, like it wasn't obvious the death animation was in fact a death animation (I thought my guy was trying to pick up the blue pig the first time it happened), and for that one blue pig that initially gives you the blue creatures, it wasn't clear that there was anything special about him, so I just avoided him like another enemy.
I really liked this, I kept playing way longer than I needed to just to rate it. I do think the mechanics were a little confusing though, like I'm still not sure what the point of the neutral souls is (you can't seem to convert them?) or if the devils eventually convert your angels to other devils or no. Are you intended to have multiple squads of angels, or just one big one?
I want to rate this, but at least running it on Linux through Wine, it's broken... pressing enter to bring up any kind of menu or popup instantly also closes it, almost as if the game is looking for KeyDown rather than KeyPressed events? I really like the atmosphere and the look of it though
This is awesome, it reminds me of playing with one of those little hand-held physical games that you tilt and you have to get the little balls in the sockets
Oh my god I am such a sucker for this artstyle. At first I totally forgot you were supposed to not hurt the pink guys and thought the game was just really hard. Once I realized what I was doing wrong it actually became really fun, although I wish the animation when you click on the blue dudes was punchier and more responsive. In a full version it would be cool to see something a little more complex than just clicking on things for the mouse aspect, like maybe dragging shields around to block. This could almost be a rhythm game
score: 13548
I found the hand jumps out so quick that you end up kind of just giving up on trying to dodge it, and the jumping felt a little strange. But I loved the look of it, the mood and the concept of being a fairy dodging an insect collector was just so cool
Wow this is really good! My only complaint is sometimes for some reason, it feels like an enemy should die, but they don't
Really cool concept! I like that you actually tried to build a mechanic around the tiny creatures instead of just reskinning an existing genre. If you were going to develop it further I would say improve the hitboxes (sometimes a bee hits something when it feels like they shouldn't, or I try to draw a line on them and it doesn't work), let the player "queue" a line on a bee while it's gathering, and maybe make the punishment for crashing a bee a little less harsh
Broken in Firefox! Works fine in Chrome though!
LD60 — Old Tech (2)
Bugs From Home by mineiwik 2026-10-22T09:50:51Z ♥ 0
This doesn't seem to want to start for me on Linux - the window opens, I can see a blue background and hear music, but no game (edit: oh, I eventually got it - maybe my GPU is just too slow on this machine. It was taking a while for any graphics to show up)
Download_BTC.exe by Khante1883 2026-10-22T09:47:51Z ♥ 0
10/10 would throw my computer out the window again