Jason Woerner

Plantasia by DeathBySnail 2020-04-20T21:35:27Z

I wasn't always sure what was going on in this game, but as a sandbox, it was relaxing and very fun to play around with. It would be nice if the watering gave some sort of feedback as to what it was doing (is it actually doing anything?). Based on just this small concept, I could see this growing into a much larger bonsai-style game where you have to water and prune your plant(s) in various ways to get them to grow into desirable shapes. Really cool little concept!

Tiger Zoo by headchant 2020-04-22T21:44:56Z

The interactions for this game had surprising depth and strategy. It took me a couple rounds to get the hang of what cards were available and what I needed to balance, but it was quite enjoyable once I figured it out. The one thing I badly wanted was a way to either transfer cards between buildings (maybe at a cost?) or just remove them altogether (before I understood all the interactions, I would fill the tiger cages to the point where there was no room for a tiger, and a meat, and a customer, and a keeper - all of which were needed simultaneously). I know that is part of the strategy, but at least allowing the dumping of cards (again, maybe at a cost), would be helpful. Even so, the balance was really well done for such limited design time.

The art was simple and well-themed, and the pop culture nods were fantastic. The UI was simple to understand and intuitive to use. Really loved this entry, great job!

The Dumb Kid's Job by Yvanor 2020-04-22T21:57:52Z

I played on Normal difficulty, and actually found it just about right. I got hit by quite a few bullets, but there were plenty of first aid kits to keep me going. If anything, it was a bit easy, but that is something I really appreciate in jam games, since I like to see as much of the game as possible.

The graphics were decent, and the story and dialog were hilarious. I liked that there was a definite and attainable goal - great job putting it all together!

Super Smash Berries by masterkrepta 2020-04-28T00:48:43Z

Great concept - very ambitious for such a short game jam! A few things could be tweaked to step up the gameplay if you decide to support this game going forward: * The melee characters didn't seem to have any way to avoid damage from the bugs. Giving the bugs a half second delay before they 'attack' the player would be useful. * The bugs were often very difficult to see. Obviously there are going to be a lot of art constraints during a short game jam, so maybe something simple like using more contrasting colors would help. Make the bugs larger and brighter! * The floor could really use a texture of some sort, or at least a matte material. It often felt like I was floating. * Audio. I'm sure this was planned and there wasn't time, but adding in a few small bop sounds for the attacks and being hit would greatly help the feedback given to the player.

All things considered, you did a great job for such a short time period! Very impressed this was entered in the compo - I would have guessed it was a Jam game.

Keep It Alive by Pennycook 2020-04-23T08:45:06Z

Took me a number of tries before I figured the trick out =) Not bad for 5h or so! The one additional thing I would have liked to have seen is either a win condition (reach day 100 or somesuch), or a reward in the form of the plant growing larger and/or flowering. Despite the simplicity, it kept me wanting to work out the details until I got it down and was able to keep the plant alive ;) Well done.

Keep It Alive by Pennycook 2020-04-24T05:53:04Z

Oh hoh! After your cryptic comment, I tried again and found the ending :D

Keep It Alive by danman9914 2020-04-30T07:44:41Z

Simple mechanics, but fantastic job creating a rewarding play experience. The art, audio, and story all draw the player in. This game was just dripping with mood. Really wonderful job =)

Flight of the Cepheus by thedashdude 2020-04-21T21:19:37Z

Definitely needs a volume slider, but all in all, I had a lot of fun with this one! Reminds me of FTL and Oregon Trail. Very impressive that you put this together in 48h; great job!

SIPHON by OldBlack 2020-04-28T01:13:20Z

Very unique gameplay concept! Although the graphics were simple, there were incredibly atmospheric and combined well with the sfx and camera shake to create immersion. The one area I'd like to see improved are the larger rooms and hallways with lack of lighting - in both of those areas it was sometimes difficult to tell where I was and where I was supposed to be going (which you definitely do not want when your life is rapidly ticking down ;)). That said, I loved the bloom and the paint explosions and the whole feel of the game. Really, really solid for a 48h entry!

Life of the Party by agentparsec 2020-04-20T03:18:35Z

This game was really fun once I got the hang of the concept and controls. It's like a moving game of concentration, where you need to try to keep up to date on who you spoke to about what. It mimics real life :O The movement animations were cute and clean, and the music, while a little repetitive, began sounding drunk as you slowly killed the party. Very cool!

RestoPlane by GlacierEclipse 2020-04-28T00:32:19Z

I liked the "extra thrust near surfaces" mechanic, as it offered much more strategy than just a straight thruster setup would have. Great work with that! The graphics were simple, but all fit the same style and felt cohesive. I only got through 3 levels (they started getting too hard for me :D), but each one felt unique and required some different strategy. Well done!

That Time I Crossed A Barren Desert To Protect&Care The World From Terrible Code by alaah 2020-04-22T20:57:39Z

Gameplay and controls were very intuitive, and the audio was great for this (music fit the mood, and the deep boom from the dropped spikes was satisfying).

A couple of notes on balance: The apples falling should not be random - sometimes it was impossible to complete a screen because I didn't have time to protect the character from apples *and* construct the necessary platforms to complete the level, and sometimes I did not have to worry about the apples at all because they randomly fell nowhere near Nem. Adding them in to give the player something else to worry about is good, but for this type of game, it should be in a consistent pattern.

Secondly, I really wished Nem would run back and forth when presented with uncrossable obstacles, to give me more time to build. One of the first levels required a 3, 2, 1 set of steps that I was barely able to construct in time (much less deal with the falling apples - I had to get lucky on that one). I would much rather have a little extra time, but have the puzzles a little more challenging. But maybe that is just me. I wasn't fast enough to get past the 4th screen or so; the timing on those falling spike barriers was just way too tight.

Making the game just a little more forgiving, at least in earlier levels, would make the game more fun and entice people to play longer. Despite those criticisms, very solid entry for a 48h jam, great job!

Keep the Fire Alive by stmatn 2020-04-21T10:59:22Z

Let me start by saying I had a lot of fun with this game. I do need to get my criticisms out, but know that I enjoyed the gameplay and strategy a lot.

Much as I loved the art explaining the controls, they were very unintuitive, and I had to restart the game 5 times before I figured out what I needed to be doing. Once I got the controls down, however, I had a lot of fun. The idea is neat, and forming the node connections was a clean mechanic. The sounds were very thematic, but they badly needed volume control; the building explosion noise was especially loud and jarring. The screen was also very difficult to see on a 2560x1440 monitor, so some way to blow the resolution up would be helpful.

Those things aside, I did really like this game - enough to spend the time restarting it 5 times just to get the controls down ;) There's definitely some potential here - good work! (btw, I managed to escape the darkness with WAY too many propellers!)

Keep the Fire Alive by stmatn 2020-04-23T21:28:53Z

@stmatn No need for embarrassment, I was really impressed that you were able to put so much into a game in such a short time. I would love to create this type of game for a jam, but I feel like it would take me much longer to get all the mechanics working. I entered a less complex game (pickup materials and drop them off at a tank in the middle of the room) and the #1 complaint in my comments was people did not understand the controls and what they were supposed to be doing. I think that's a really common theme with jams - we spend so much time getting the mechanics working, we don't have time to make a tutorial. The one thing you can do, is make a little tutorial out of game. Maybe whip up a couple of explanation images showing basic proper setup to get people started. Anyways, again, don't feel bad about it - I played so much of the game because, despite not understanding it at first, it was a really fun idea and I was happy to experiment until I got it down =)

Parental Instinct by Fatsheep 2020-04-23T22:49:55Z

Holy **crap**, man. I screamed so loud, my wife came up from downstairs to find out what had happened. Really, really well done atmosphere. The graphics, lighting, music, and sound effects all blend together to deliver a very creepy experience. At one point, as I was closing the front door, it passed in front of me briefly, but did not attack, and disappeared almost instantly. Not sure if a bug, or something you added intentionally, but it was super reminiscent of a horror movie scare! So well done. From a game design standpoint, I also really appreciated the opening phase where you turn off the lights - it introduces the player to the house layout, and helps build tension for when the core game actually begins. Great presentation. As someone above said, I hope you rate more games so that this gets some additional visibility - I think it will do really well if it gets more ratings. Great work!

"If the power goes out Interact with the fuse box in the basement"

...

...

Hard pass.

The God Of Adventurers by Lucille Blumire 2020-04-23T01:26:20Z

After a few tries and hiccups getting my adventurers killed and boring them to death, I made a pretty large (compared to previous attempts) map and made it to day 68! I loved the pixel art, and having several music tracks to swap between was a pleasant surprise. Other than more content, I don't have a lot of notes for this one. Very well executed jam game :D Great work!

Here was my 68-day setup, in case anyone is curious:

god_of_adventurers.jpg

Omiga Daycare by Wheffle 2020-04-22T20:39:18Z

I made $3125... definitely enough to retire ;)

The premise for this game was hilarious, and the little virtual pet interactions were great (my pixel rabbits kept getting poo on themselves!) While the concept was simple, you introduced plenty of variation, both in graphics and in the audio, which really added to the experience. Really great entry - clean, simple, and fun. Excellent work!

As a side note, some little brat dropped his pet off with me with 1/3rd of its health missing! I need an option to call Child Protective Services on him! XD

Keep the bee (Jeez) Alive by dhim 2020-04-21T11:48:56Z

The main component I was missing was the ability to shift my objects on the Z axis. I kept trying to stack things that would tip off off each other either forward or backward, and I had very little control over it. Even so, I had fun tinkering around stacking things. The controls were really clean and the graphics and bloom rocked =)

Dr. Glebin's Electric Brain by Daniel Alhadeff 2020-04-21T11:33:56Z

Loved it! The gameplay was simplistic, but captivating. I did feel it got repetitive too quickly - I'd like to see the difficulty ramp up a little faster. I really have no other criticisms... Graphic style was great, and the font perfectly fit the theme, music had an engrossing beat, and there were enough tasks to perform to hold my interest for quite awhile :D Great job!

Social Distancing Simulator by Ruoyu 2020-04-20T07:49:58Z

Too soon? I don't know how accurate these conditions are, but this simulator was really cool and a great way to show just how fast a pathogen can spread. I was never able to beat it, but I had a lot of fun shutting everything down and trying to avoid the inevitable collapse of my entire health system. The swarming mechanics were especially cool.

Seasonal Survivor by rigdonware 2020-04-22T01:22:25Z

I liked the simple graphics and animations; they all fit really nicely into the style. Some music and SFX would go a long way to help complete the mood. The umbrella mechanic help keep the gameplay from stagnating, although I would recommend shorter seasons (by about half), since things do get a little repetitive.

The balance for the first half seemed good, but by the time I got to fall, there were no more sun/water days, and even spending all of my money on food and water, I slowly ran out. I'm not sure if I was missing something, or if I just didn't stock up well enough during the summer (I had to spend $300 on umbrella and swatter upgrade, but otherwise all my cash went to food and water).

All things considered, this was a well executed concept. Great job!

Get off my Planet! by CrumblyBread 2020-04-23T00:37:41Z

This was a pretty fun defense game. Good job throwing the shooter + upgrade system together in just 48h!

The largest areas where I feel it could be improved are: * Hit Detection: The shots always seemed to hit a little under the cursor position, so you had to aim "above" your target. Would have liked to hit exactly what I was aiming at. * Distinct Waves: I wasn't sure what constituted a wave in this game - it felt like small or large masses of enemies just sort of appeared randomly. * Easier early levels: Even once I figured out the basic gameplay loop, the enemies took so many hits to kill, either I or my tree would die faster than I was able to spam click and reload. Starting with lower health enemies and ramping up as the game progresses would be good. * UI Tooltips: The store had no indication of how much anything costs or how big of a bonus it was going to give. If not tooltips, then just a short description beneath each button listing the price and effect would be good. * Weapon Differentiation: Having two different weapons was cool, but aside from auto fire and less damage (?) on the rifle, I wasn't sure what the purpose of having a second weapon was. Was one of them more effective on certain enemies? I had no way of knowing.

All that said, I did enjoy the action, and making a few improvements could turn this into a really fun little shooter!

Get off my Planet! by CrumblyBread 2020-04-23T02:07:21Z

I know what you mean - UI work usually takes up more of my time than most of the core game mechanics. I ended up trying to go with a game that didn't need a lot of UI on this one exactly for that reason ;) Again, great job for such a short time period. Designing a game from concept to completion that quickly is no small feat, so congrats on finishing it!

Keep the Reef by maaxoom 2020-04-21T21:07:39Z

I was about to write a comment and noticed @verttixpertti said exactly what I was going to say. After a short while I figured out that there was no point in trying to strategize moves and I actually wanted to just be matching things as fast as I could. While that is not an invalid playstyle, match 3 games tend to benefit from allowing the player time to try to set up really long color runs. That said, this was a neat little game, and kept me playing awhile while I tried to build my reef up enough to attract some fishes! Cool concept :D

CORRUPT TUNDRA by keanutah 2020-04-22T22:37:17Z

Great job! I have no idea how difficult it is to create a 3D game in a 2D engine, but if you did engine work here as well, wow! The gameplay was fun, and the simplistic graphics were well-stylized to fit the theme. The music and sfx all fit together nicely and created a great mood. Everything was really cohesive, and there was enough variation to keep things interesting for longer than the average game jam game :D

Pug Panic by Alex Davies 2020-04-22T19:55:32Z

I've seen a few other games of this type during this jam, but this one had, by far, the best presentation! The graphics were great, the music was tense, and the idea of having to control the minigames to affect something that wandered around randomly was really creative. I did find the initial difficulty to be a little harder than I would have liked, especially the constant popups that would move all of my carefully organized windows around. There was so little margin of error for observing what your dog was doing and what needed to be disabled that by the time I got the popups closed and even found the window I needed to interact with, it was usually too late for him =( Poor pug. Could also just be my slow reaction skill... All in all, I thought it was great concept, and I had fun playing it. I think it would be a blast if the difficulty were brought down a bit and ramped up later on. Great job!

Don't touch the goblins! by Horbee 2020-04-23T09:24:45Z

Even though the game told me not to... I touched a goblin.

Maybe more than one. In fact, I got so surrounded by them I had to wedge myself in a corner and rapid-fire to keep them off me ;) The controls worked nicely, and the lighting was really cool. Not a lot of depth to the game, but I liked that it offered a definitive chunk of gameplay and rewarded me with an ending and a score.

Nice work for a short jam!

Heavy Petting by WongKongPhooey 2020-04-20T21:21:54Z

For such a short game, I had a surprising amount of fun. The controls and gameplay were intuitive, and the music kept the tension up the entire time. The ending cracked me up =) Most of the games I've played here have not had definite endings, so it was really refreshing to see a small but polished game I could play from start to finish. Great job!

Long Live The King by JavaSaurus 2020-04-20T22:58:53Z

The airborne baby was hilarious :D The graphics and lighting were great at setting the mood, and the animations all felt really solid. This feels like a great precursor story to a larger game. Now I want some special moves or spells I can cast at the enemy. Great job!

Me and My BEAST by Electric Blue 2020-04-23T22:13:51Z

Very cool concept! I loved trampling over the tress with the beast. I kept getting overwhelmed after a couple minutes of play, but I assume that was intentional. I felt bad for the beast... he just wants to eat his wheat. Wish there was some way I could have saved him and "won" the game. Or maybe there was and I didn't figure it out?

Either way, I loved the dual mechanic of controlling the rider and the beast, each with different abilities. Very impressive for a short jam, and very creative. Also loved the pixel art. Great job!

Ignited by The Blue Hatted 2020-04-20T21:32:07Z

Great little concept. Like someone else said, I'm amazed you got an online game working in such a short time. There were only two other players online when I played, but I could see this becoming some mad hijinks with enough others running around attempting to douse me.

Drone Explorer by TheReal Infinite 2020-04-28T01:00:49Z

This looks like a fun game, but I haven't rated it yet, as I'm unable to get the miners to build, preventing me from progressing. Is that a bug with the current version, or am I doing something incorrectly? I'm able to build my initial turret by clicking it and clicking on the map, but no matter what combination of clicks I try to use for the miners, they do not place (I have 3 in my inventory, as far as I can tell). Are there specific nodes they must be placed atop, or should I be able to set them down anywhere?

Drone Explorer by TheReal Infinite 2020-04-29T21:50:24Z

@thereal-infinite Scoured the entire map in a grid pattern and was not able to locate any ores =( I took a quick dig through your source code, and the ores and background tilemap are all on the same sorting layer and ID, which means Unity may magically decide to display one over another on any given machine (which seems to be happening for a few of us). You can fix that pretty easily by changing the sorting order of the ore to something larger than 0. You will then need to adjust some of the other sprites' sorting orders as well, but it will ensure that they display properly on all machines =)

HiJinx by DarriasArt 2020-04-20T07:32:12Z

The platforming controls are fairly rough, but the graphics were great (especially the run animation.. ahahaha!) and the music kept me playing long after I otherwise would have. Something about that techno beat gave me twitch skill confidence I shouldn't have had, like I could just dance through the air between those birds! It ended unhappily for me every time ;)

The Last Ship by FedorL 2020-04-20T07:06:38Z

Sad that you only had half a day on this one. For what it was, it was very cool. Would be neat to add in more astral bodies to float between. The rocket definitely needs more boost... Even my exhaust couldn't change direction ;)

Destructive Reconstruction by MantarayTV Games 2020-04-21T11:46:22Z

Great job for such a short time period. I loved the explosion FX :D Took me some time to realize I never actually needed to set the plat down, since if either it or I was hit with an explosion, it ended the game. Would have been cool to have a puzzle or two that required dropping it to solve. Still, really well done, and I liked that it had an achievable ending!

Remember, Apollo by AdamCYounis 2020-04-20T04:17:18Z

I may have some bias because I watched a fair bit of the livestream making this, but for a 48 hour game jam, this game is absolutely amazing. The pixel art is all top notch, and the concept and execution of the node connection is fantastic. I was intrigued by the atmosphere and story as well. I only ran into a couple of gameplay issues: Hitting a node with too much force would start the story text, but my character would then fall off it and rest his position (from that node, so nothing was lost but continuity). Making the node-pull mechanism absolute if the character got close enough would probably be good. And secondly, I shot over ledges a few times, landing a level or 2 below on another node, which would reset my position to a previous level. This sometimes made it hard to keep track of the story, and I'd have to re-do the platforming puzzle I had already completed. This wasn't a huge issue, however, and is quite forgivable given the sometimes non-linear nature of the story.

Fun to play, engaging story, and just really solid presentation overall. From start to finish, this looks like a professionally produced game =) And also I am going to dig into the shaders you used to create that fog-clearing effect and steal them ;) That was so cool!

Backwards Undertakers by KirKami 2020-04-20T21:15:39Z

The controls felt a little difficult to use (I might have had better luck with a controller), and I kept getting swarmed by evil ghosts, but I can see how this would be a fun little multiplayer experience. The music was decent enough, and all of the animations were great for such a short jam.

As far as gameplay elements, the level needs a kill floor if you fall off the main area, as there's no way back up, and when you shoot a ghost it gets stuck in it's death sequence, which seems to refresh if you continue to shoot it. Simplest solution would be to remove collision as soon as it is hit.

Great work for such a short time period!

Keep cats alive! by Odeyalko 2020-04-20T03:01:21Z

Cats! I loved the meow noises, and I was sad when my cats began starving. Guess I shouldn't have taken that long voyage to the eastern edge of the world...

IGKNIGHT: Keeper of Flame by sacredbacon 2020-04-22T20:17:37Z

Fairly simple concept, with great execution. The UI was well put together, and the gameplay interactions all felt solid. I liked the mousewheel-to-aim control, which was a welcome change from most game where you simply had to mouse over the direction; it added a bit of extra challenge that I found fun. The graphics were cute, and had nice animation, and I liked the tense little theme song that seemed to be increasing in tempo as more and more dragons spawned, increasing my sense of urgency! Great job =)

READ THE LABEL by winterbeak 2020-04-20T03:43:34Z

Very simple, but very fun concentration/attention to detail game! Reminds me a bit of Papers Please. The sound was clean, the writing was excellent, and the minimalist art was all very in-theme. Well done!

King's Table by PetTurtle 2020-04-20T06:51:27Z

Really fun, and great graphics. Loved the concept! I want to sit down and play more of this; I'm too tired to devise sneaky mazes to efficiently kill chips, but I'm going to revisit it later for sure. The damage highlights on the squares gave great feedback on how the individual pieces were attacking, and the gold value listed above the ghost pieces helped keep the UI to a minimum while still intuitively communicating functionality. A+, will play again!

Keep Vlad Alive by zimny11 2020-04-20T02:51:52Z

I love farming games! The pixel art is really clean, and the UI interaction all feels really good. The little + symbols to buy more bags took me a couple of tries to find, but after that, I figured out the tools pretty quickly. I was unable to sustain Vlad on any of my attempts, however. My blood mushrooms always fell behind my production - if there is a secret to it, I did not discover it =( But as I said... I love farming games. I'll be back to play this one again when I have more time.

Keep Vlad Alive by zimny11 2020-04-23T02:35:34Z

Went back and re-played it with the new game balance. Nice work! I did not know about the special 1-per-row bonus, but I did manage to complete the game :D Really fun to come back and see the improvements made.

Blooming friends by InfinitiVoid 2020-04-20T20:47:56Z

Wasn't entirely sure what I was doing :D I managed to buy some lights and some water, and sometimes it let me buy salt... but the plants' nutrients seemed to go up and down on its own? Also the 3 buttons along the bottom of the screen did not appear to do anything. Some additional explanation of the controls and goal would be helpful (just on the game page - these don't need to be in the game itself). That said, I enjoyed playing it - it felt like a mix between an incremental and a farming game; both genres I love!

Final Interrogation by Gamer Fates 2020-04-23T09:19:39Z

I really liked the concept, and the art, animations, music, and UI were all really well done. For a narrative-based game, I would have liked a more cohesive story. None of the witness' statements matched up, and there didn't seem to be any way to tell who was telling the truth. I guessed incorrectly on my first playthrough, so on the second I skipped questioning them and just guessed for my other pick and got it correct, winning the game.

If you decide to expand on this idea, I would recommend requiring the player to uncover specific pieces of information before they can correctly guess. If they attempt to guess too soon, they could get an ending letting them know that they did not have enough evidence to convict anyone. The other thing I felt was missing was the ability to cross-examine witnesses. Once I've learned that Witness A knows Witness B, I want to get a new dialog option when speaking to B so I can ask them about that connection.

All things said, a great idea, and very nicely presented =)

Reforest by Fizzget 2020-04-22T21:59:46Z

Damn! I wanted to play this - it looked really interesting from the splash art (so good job with that!). Alas, I do not own Tabletop Simulator. Kudos for making a board game so quickly, though! I haven't seen that in LD before.

Blokrok by VerttiXPertti 2020-04-21T21:26:32Z

I loved the simple, clean graphical style, and the gameplay was easy to understand and fun to interact with. I especially liked the addition of the moving cage, which gave me an additional objective, and kept the action from stagnating. If I'm being honest, I mostly died because I was desperately trying to tap rocks in the direction of the cage instead of fully worrying about blocking my scissors ;)

Farm Defense by Hexmith 2020-04-28T00:22:11Z

This has a great foundation, and a lot of potential for being a fun tower defense. I see you have a number of additional features planned, so it sounds like you already have a handle on that - I look forward to seeing what this becomes in the future!

Great first jam entry =)

Akula by Ilya_Nazarov 2020-04-22T22:05:56Z

Flappy Shark! The art style was great (reminds me of Jaws on the NES). Gameplay is simple, but intuitive, however game balance is definitely off. As others have noted, I died even after eating every single food source a number of times. At bare minimum, I need to be able to keep moving if I play perfectly, but considering the added difficulty of dodging terrain, this should really be more forgiving about missing food objectives. I would have liked to see more of the game (I don't know if any additional mechanics were involved), but I never made it past the 3rd fish/bird, as my shark always starved =(

Good job on finishing the game, however, I think it could be quite fun if the difficulty is relaxed a bit.

S.L.I.M.E.S. Division by Yoshify 2020-04-23T09:46:26Z

Well... that escalated quickly O.o

Graphics, presentation, and just straight fun-factor are all top-notch on this game! I felt like I was playing something I'd purchased on Steam. The difficulty ramped up really quickly, but I suspect I just wasn't purchasing the right upgrades, and will have to give it a few more tries to see how I do. Really, really great entry. I've mostly been playing Compo games, so take this for what it's worth, but even among the Jam games I've played, this is by *far* the most polished. Great work!

The one critique I'd like to offer is that I felt like I needed a way to zoom my camera out just a little. The widescreen gave me plenty of vision to the sides, but meteors coming from the top (and especially the bottom, where the extra UI was) were very hard to catch; by the time I could see them, they were already on top of me.

Dragon Flower by timeloopedpowergamer 2020-04-20T07:21:15Z

I tried quite a few combinations with this game, but most of the time I was unable to determine how my choices were affecting the game. To make this a compelling puzzler, more choices need to be added, and more feedback on how my decisions are affecting the course of the game. The writing and art were nice - it has a good foundation, just needs more content.

Swarm by DerKuchen 2020-04-20T02:38:50Z

This was a fun little concept! Like others have mentioned, I enjoyed the way the swarm moved. If you ever decide to expand on this idea, having things you could do with a larger swarm would be fun (attacking enemies, or shoot them out in a direction to avoid losing them). All in all a very solid concept and execution for such a short jam =)

Hosted by pulkit garg 2020-04-22T01:55:48Z

Very cool game! I love idle/management games, so I had a lot of fun with this. My fans mysteriously disappeared on my first playthrough (not sure where they went, I was being hacked and screen was covered up, and when I came back the fans were gone and all my servers were on fire - bug? or maybe I missed seeing something), but I did much better on my second playthrough. I have a couple of notes on the game balance: Firstly, more expensive machines did not appear to be any more efficient (cost or electricity) than less expensive ones. On my best run, I built nothing but Raspberry Pis, which had the added benefit of never needing expensive cooling systems. More clicking, but less other management needed. Definitely want to reward the player for purchasing the more expensive machines. And secondly, I felt like once I got the revenue slider in the sweet spot, I never had to change it. Would be good to either have user tolerance for ads go down over time or fluctuate with number of users. This is a neat mechanics, but once you have it set correctly you can essentially forget about it, and I'd like to see it utilized more.

I also ran into a game-breaking bug on one of my runs =( The "Fix Vulnerability" button is behind the "Pay Monthly Bill" window, yet you cannot click on pay bill if the vulnerability button is sill up. So I got stuck when I was hacked right at the end of the month and I was unable to click either button to continue the game.

All that said, this was very impressive for a 48hr jam. The UI could use some work, but the 3d graphics were great, and the controls were intuitive. Great job!

YOUR RAGING SPIRIT by madbookstudios 2020-04-23T00:50:25Z

Took me a little while to figure out I was playing Bear Smash Brothers, but once I got that down, everything fell into place ;) This was really fun, and I greatly appreciated that it did not reset me to the beginning when I got overwhelmed by several waves of clouds.

The art was nice (the fire was especially cool) and the animations were all fitting. The physics felt good, and while I was not always particularly adept with them, it certainly felt satisfying to slam things off-screen. I set the volume to no, but never got any sound, which would have improved the game even more.

Even so, best fighter I've played this jam so far. Great job!

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-21T12:48:27Z

Added a more comprehensive instructional image, since there's a lot to take in when you're first dropped into the game! (thanks for the feedback @quichi and @sndr) It explains what the dispensers look like and how to feed resources to the alien. Hopefully it's helpful =) And thanks to everyone who's played and left feedback.

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-21T22:58:13Z

@stmatn Thanks for the detailed feedback! Working with the mixer is definitely tricky, and if I had more time, I would have liked to add a way to remove components from it (when testing myself I kept putting the wrong things in and being forced to mix them for a recipe I didn't need ;)).

As far as your bug with the iron, that was probably just visual. There's an issue on both the mixer and the burner where once you create fire, the particles for it turn back on even when other recipes are inserted. Sorry about that! One of those small, nagging issues I just didn't get to in time. Glad you enjoyed the game overall though, and once again, thank you for the detailed feedback!

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-22T07:04:36Z

@mickm The original idea was to have custom art for each resource dispenser (a pile of slugs for the meat, a platter of sulfur, etc), but I ran out of time in the end and had to settle for just changing the color of the initial placeholder art I'd added at the beginning of the game. So it goes with game jams XD Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-23T00:15:39Z

@camilo-quintero Thanks for the feedback! I did toy with different distances when first creating it, but I decided against a more distant camera just to keep everything large enough to read. I'd certainly like to improve on that game, and I think adding a camera zoom feature (maybe with mouse wheel) is a great idea.

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-23T02:41:50Z

@meelo All really great points, and things I'd like to address if I spend more time on this. I especially did not like forcing people to remember which dispenser was what; those were supposed to be placeholder art, but the mechanics ended up taking longer than expected and I am not a great artist, so I ran out of time without creating more intuitive dispensers. C'est la vie. I'll try to scope more lightly for the next one... or improve my art skills/speed ;) Thank you for the detailed feedback, I appreciate it!

@aplite Oh man - adding in a way to save your level or just pick a level from the start menu was on my initial feature list, but I ran down the clock just trying to get everything finished and working in time that I never managed to add them =( Will definitely have to add something like that in for a future version. Glad you enjoyed playing, and thank you for the compliments and the feedback!

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-23T09:30:28Z

@fizzget Oooh, so I take it that means you beat it? Thanks for playing all the way through :D After doing so many of these playthroughs myself, I know it's rare to spend that much time on any one game, so I'm glad you enjoyed it enough to get through all that. I tested that it was beatable, but it could definitely use some balance tweaks. I'd love to add more crafting recipes, as well as some level variability. I'm tempted to revisit this idea, but with better underlying code and some more simplistic pixel art, since my stuff, as noted above, looks like it came out a 90s high school computer class ;)

Thanks again for the feedback, I appreciate it!

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-24T05:56:38Z

@pennycook Oh man... so that sparkle in the bin is a leftover particle system I forgot to remove from the player, and the bin happens to have a particle mask on it, so you can only see those particles when near the bin. So... yeah, that interaction is not supposed to be happening, but there you have it :D The bin actually glows green inside in the Unity editor version (hence the particle mask), but for some reason that never worked properly in the exported versions; I'll have to debug that later. Good catch, btw - those particles are pretty subtle ;)

Save It With Fire!!! by Jason Woerner 2020-04-25T00:16:52Z

@crumblybread Oh, swapping items would have been good! The things you miss when you rush production... ;) I'll definitely add that in when I iterate on this. Thanks for the suggestion and the feedback!

Mind The Vagazar by Ryan Ackermann 2020-04-23T01:04:33Z

The UI and graphics are very clean and polished, and the music really helps set the mood.

While the movement feels good, the attack hit detection was having some issues - sometimes I'd be unintentionally killing cows halfway across the screen. As others have pointed out, there did not seem to be any win conditions, only a loss if too many hunters accumulated, which was very easy to avoid once you got the mechanics down.

This is a great little entry, and by adding a score and a ramping difficulty to eventually overwhelm the player, I think this would feel like a complete game. Good job!

Carry the Fire by Ciber_Turtle 2020-04-20T03:53:40Z

Solid platformer! I loved the boom effect and the the overall feel of the area. I only made it through about 5 fires, so I'm not sure how complex the jumping puzzles are, or if any more mechanics are added in, but the part I saw was all really good. The one downside, as noted by others was the failure to jump - I'm fairly certain, after some experimentation that it had to do with the character bouncing slightly upon landing. If the character was mid-bounce, attempting to jump again would fail. Still, very solid little game!

Virtual Fish Tank by Jay Berlin 2020-04-22T20:10:42Z

I liked the idea here, and this looks like it was probably a lot of fun to create! I felt like it mainly suffered from pacing; there just wasn't enough for me to do. It did not necessarily need more gameplay: If you added some chill background music and more scenery, that would have been enough to make it a meditative style of game. As is, I felt more interaction was necessary to keep the gameplay interesting. There was no score or timer listed, so I wasn't sure if I was working toward some ultimate goal, or if I was just supposed to keep feeding the fish until they all died, which would have taken probably 30 mins or so at the rate my food was holding out.

Despite those criticisms, I think this was a very cool little tank simulator, and was impressively polished for such a short jam. Great job!

Kitty King by matt2728 2020-04-22T07:00:16Z

Omg, for a rock-paper-scissors system, you would be impressed at how many times I forgot which cat to counter the enemies with :O Once I figured out the handy little arrows that you added pointing to correct enemies, it made the game MUCH easier and enjoyable for me, so kudos for that system! I loved the art style and the paper background. Would have enjoyed some music and sfx, and maybe a boss fight, but all in all, I really liked this game and had fun playing it =) Good job!

Sacred Gardener by Hanamigi 2020-04-21T11:22:20Z

I would really have liked to see more feedback on what my watering the plants was doing. Did I need to be watering when they weren't wilted, or should I be continually watering even when they appear okay? I kept both plants alive for around 5 minutes, but it was unclear if there was an endpoint to the game.

Animations were great, and the sound (aside from the music :D) was solid. Good job!

AetherPath by quichi 2020-04-22T06:54:24Z

Really impressed with the depth of content for a jam game here. This is my favorite genre, so I am certainly biased, but I thought the mechanics were all pretty straightforward and the gameplay was fun. Obviously there are a lot of things missing that I'd like to see, like mouse-over tooltips and easier ship and planet selection. But UI work often takes more time than the game systems themselves, and, again, there was a LOT of content here, so I understand why you wouldn't have gotten to them. Very, very impressive - I spent a long time playing this ;)

Cool Plants / Chill Beats by Witdarkstar 2020-04-23T01:13:58Z

Really wanted to try this out, but I get this error when trying to run: cool_plants_bug.jpg

I tried moving the exe to different directories, and got increasingly confusing errors, in which it was looking for folders within folders. Not sure why it isn't working for me, as others seem to be able to play it =/ I'll try downloading it again tomorrow and see if it decides to work for me then!

Cool Plants / Chill Beats by Witdarkstar 2020-04-23T22:03:54Z

I tried it again today and it worked! And yeah, my antivirus has been messing with pretty much all the executables, but I don't think that was it. I'm betting it was some weird Windows 10 permissions thing. Whatever the case, I was able to play today, so all good.

I enjoyed the zen experience. No pressure, nice music, great scene and lighting. The UI had one of the cleanest presentations I've yet seen this jam. Really great job making that look professional! I liked the few little easter eggs in the room too. Being able to play with the scene was fun. I never did figure out the watering. I over-watered my first plant and killed it, and after that I just stopped watering altogether, and the plants seemed to be fine ;)

I ran into two bugs while playing: * When buying a new plant/pot, sometimes the 'Total' listed was incorrect. I would get combos like a 1000 plant + a 1500 pot totaled 1001. It did not affect the actual cost of purchasing the combo, just the display of the total cost. Always seemed to occur when upgrading to a new plant type. * After zooming in on a plant and selecting a new plant type and pot, but not purchasing, I zoomed back out. When I zoomed in again, the options I had selected were still selected, but instead of showing me the new plant/pot visuals, I still saw my current plant. After purchasing, the appearance changed correctly.

Good job with this. I think you hit the experience you were going for =)

The 24th Century Surgeon by DeSpiciestBoi 2020-04-21T11:13:03Z

Badly needs instructions on how to view the different layers! I almost gave up trying to play this because it didn't seem like I could do anything but give the patient blood and O2.

For anyone reading that can't figure it out, use 1, 2, and 3 to switch between layers (really you just need 2 and 3).

Apart from that, very cool concept and a clean execution. I managed to save a guy ;D

Stand Still by Draelent 2020-04-21T21:29:25Z

Omg... I just realized that what was killing me at the beginning half the time was the "Level 1" text :D Hilarious! Very simple premise, but great gameplay for something thrown together in 7h. Nice work!