Jayjader

Cryptographer by Firebelley 2018-08-13T20:15:17Z

Great game, loved the execution on this jam's theme. I think a bit less inertia for the sideways movement would have made the controls feel tighter. Also, level 9 seems to require "exploiting" the fact that a wall stops registering the player movement during its "retreat" - a.k.a. between being hit by a bomb & having finished applying the bomb's affect. If you're counting on the player to figure out this behavior themselves then it makes the level a *big* step up in difficulty from the previous ones.

Floppy Drive Lemonade Stand by Jayjader 2023-10-02T17:53:34Z

Note to macOS users: you might need to hold down the "Alt" or "Option" key, right-click, and select "Open" to be able to run the game. I don't have a mac developer license, so macOS doesn't trust my game by default unless you force its hand a bit.

S.P.A.C.E. by Pentaworks 2023-10-03T17:05:05Z

Quite a fun orbital mechanics simulator! I appreciated the diversity in "game mechanics" across the different game modes and how they each changed things up differently.

My favorite modes were probably the one with the most junk, and the "anti-gravity" one.

I suspect that if I had someone to sit down at the keyboard with me, the versus mode with junk would prove to me my favorite.

I also really enjoyed the music's contribution to the mood.

Tetromino Cleanup by f1tzy 2023-10-04T15:00:18Z

Great mix-up of an otherwise very familiar play space. Good choice on the genre of music to use as a soundtrack. I got up 870 points in my last try! I found that by staying in the bottom right corner, the reduced travel distance lets you almost instantly fill up the right-hand queue when the next 4 lines come in. This easily got me to 600-ish, at which point the debris blocks started becoming too numerous for the strategy to remain reliable.

A small complaint, and 2 suggestions:

- the alarm sound starts to grate on my ears when it's on for more than 5 seconds. I'm not sure if the "next level"/next 4 lines trigger timing is pre-programmed or reacting to the game state, but there were several times when the alarm would (to my ears) not stop once the new lines were in play but continue on regardless. It *did* help make the situation tense, but the alarm sound just made it really hard to concentrate and I ended up overall feeling like I couldn't properly push my mechanical skill at the game to its fullest.

- it would be nice to have and indicator of your block grabbing/breaking range, maybe a highlight of which block(s) will be affected by a grab or break given the current player position and orientation. It took me a couple of runs to realize that it's more than just the block in front of the drill I see in the visual animation.

- it would be nice to be able to pick up blocks while in the middle of a jump/fall, if you're pressed up against them.

Overall a fun game, and I definitely felt the theme come through!

Dark Water Dash by quinnr 2023-10-04T15:17:53Z

I had fun trying to dash to the finish line while squeezing past the starfish! I could never figure out what controlled the direction at which the flares came out - in my first 2 runs they started out going straight down from the sub but then started firing forwards until the end of the "course", while in my 3rd they only ever fired downwards the whole way through.

Limited Dimensions by Sovunia 2023-10-03T15:36:25Z

Good cohesive graphics! I particularly liked the background ornaments, and the room transition effect feels very nice - it has just enough character to stay interesting *without* becoming disorienting, *and* is quick enough to not interrupt the flow of gameplay.

There appears to be a bug where I fall through the button-platform in the first room with elevators unless I'm holding W / jump.

I couldn't progress further than that room; I never managed to time the jump properly for getting out of the bottom passage. Could be a design flaw, could just be a skill issue on my part.

The biggest overall flaw for my experience was how slowly the big heavy crate falls, especially compared to my own character speed. I think I would have preferred that it fall at least as fast as my character, as that's closer to how it would happen irl - unless you want to establish that they somehow have a very high air resistance in-game. More importantly, if the crate fell faster I think I would not have burn out as fast on retrying the later levels.

Nice game overall.

Celestial Retaliation by Digol 2023-10-04T15:49:32Z

Loved the art, especially the enemies. I was very pleased that you allow the player to fire as fast as they can press the key on their keyboard, just like my favorite shm'ups when I was a kid.

The player's fighter movement feels a bit clumsy. I think 2 things could be improved:

- it lacks a bit in visual responsiveness/indication of movement. If you simply added an extra pair of sprites for it: one representing the ship tilted, say, 30 degrees on one side, and the other sprite for the same amount of tilt in the *opposite* direction, and then you swapped to the proper "tilted" sprite when the player moves up or down, it would bring the graphics to a next level of polish already.

- it's not easy to move a small distance without going further than intended. I'm not sure if it would work better with a controller/joysticks or if the implementation is intentional, but in my keyboard experience it felt impossible to slowly drift into being lined up with an enemy.

Good job on distinguishing the audio cues for player damage taken and enemy death so effectively! I never mixed the 2 up even when they started heavily overlapping.