Mini Running Ant by drludos 2024-10-16T22:22:06Z ♥ 1
I don't think I've managed to get much farther than this π
I always love to see old console games in the jam, having tried my hand at a GBA game myself in a previous LD. I had heard of the console but it's my first time trying a PokΓ©mon Mini game. It's obviously very simple but I think the only thing it's truly missing is sound - though I don't know if PokΓ©mini games had any music.
Regarding the game itself, I felt that the ant's peculiar shape made it tough to figure out its hitbox. It looks like it doesn't kill you to hit something with your legs, but I think I sometimes died because my behind hit a rock? It's a bit hard to gauge in motion. Otherwise the main issue is that you sometimes have to choose whether to stay in the left or right lane, but if you're unlucky, the path you've chosen might be a dead end and there's no way to know in advance. I'm also not sure the the random rock placement is guaranteed to always leave room for the player, as I sometimes found myself in front of a barrage like this:
Congratulations on making something in such a short time! Especially if you had to learn the basics of making PokΓ©mon Mini homebrew along the way.
LD58 — Collector (5)
To The End Of Time by Kepsert 2025-10-18T14:58:55Z ♥ 2
Well done! The gameplay is quite simple, but well executed, with lots of visual feedback. It actually got quite hard so I had to switch to Easy so I could go beyond 6 o'clock... haha. I actually thought it would go all the way back to 12 but the boss happens a little earlier. I loved the fact that the music seems to progress with you; I don't think it's actually adaptive music but it does give a sense of things getting tougher, more or less in step with the bullet patterns.
One thing I noticed is that unlike the main level where your progress is rolled back when you die, the boss doesn't regain health when you do. The clock winds back, but you can pretty much die as much as you want until you exhausted his HP. Otherwise, the Quit button doesn't work on Windows :D
The visuals are very nice, with the time of day being a particularly nice touch. The controls are simple but reactive and intuitive. Overall, a very nice entry.
Opa is de Koning by Re-Markable 2025-10-11T22:01:06Z ♥ 1
Well that was almost excessively cute. The game has a few rough edges but makes up for them in charm. Even though I don't speak Dutch to know what the smaller voice lines was saying, having native voices was a nice touch - very gezellig.
Picking up an item can be a little finicky, it goes out of reach too easily and the button prompt stays open for a short time, so it feels like a bug when it doesn't actually pick it up. The camera should probably have some sort of physics to avoid going through walls and hills.
The graphics are quite original, evoking early PS1 games with basic texture work and low res rendering. Was the framerate choppy on purpose? That lent it some extra realism.
Of course the one item Opa didn't ask us to get, but probably should have, was pants.
Monsters in Jars by T4RAN 2025-10-11T18:25:56Z ♥ 1
I won! It's actually more challenging than it looks. I'm always impressed by compo games; there's already a lot of work to do in a game like this without having to draw everything! Music would've been nice, but in a 48-hour jam, something has to give.
The rules aren't obvious at first but the game is full of visual feedback that help you understand them, and that's the right approach. I actually think it's a pretty novel take since powers don't immediately activate, the creature has to wait for its turn. The strictly turn-based approach makes it easier to plan your actions.
Two things were unclear to me: what do the buttons actually do? They seem to be pause, normal speed and fast forward, but they seem to skip your turn when you click them. Otherwise, I would have liked a visual indication of whether my "alive" creatures go back to my deck after a fight, or if they're spent definitely. Great job overall!
The Witch Chef by dumchevdev 2025-10-11T15:52:42Z ♥ 1
It's a neat idea that reminds me a bit of Zelda BotW recipes, and a previous LD entry of mine (Flavors of Victory) which had ingredients to drop in a cauldron π
The game has a lot of juicy elements which feel nice, like the physics of the ingredients or the various dangling items around the room. The amount of illustrations for the recipes is a nice touch.
A few bits of feedback: the first few minutes in the game can be confusing, as it points you towards clicking the recipes on the right of the cauldron, but these are the "nothing" and "unknown" recipes and it's not obvious what it means at first. I would suggest giving a simple recipe that has the ingredients listed as a tutorial, which would help with my second issue: it took me a lot of time to realize the recipes tell you the number of ingredients (as bones).
I managed to find a lot of recipes organically, but the last one for me (Bone Appetit) was not obvious. I thought it would have eggs, like many types of pasta. I ended up brute-forcing until I found the solution. Maybe another way to help would be to add a tooltip on the ingredients to know what they are (egg, flour, etc.). In any case, congrats on the release and on a fairly polished entry!
In the Debt of the Night by Longfall 2025-10-07T21:19:40Z ♥ 5
This is simple gameplay but well executed - that should be an inspiration to us all, haha. You didn't give yourselves a harder time trying to randomize the list or make several levels, and yet this single loop has a lot to offer. The music and sound design are a highlight, giving the interactions a lot of extra flavor, especially with the spatialized sounds for your character's (and _her_) movements. The art is consistent and welcoming.
As a solo programmer myself I know it can be hard to integrate all the cool stuff artists and musicians make, and this entry seems like it doesn't miss anything. The approaching "enemy" near the end is a nice touch, and a very funny twist once you reach the victory screen.
A couple areas of improvement: I think the chest could be made more identifiable. I had found the key first, but I think I wouldn't have understood that it required a key otherwise. It can also be tough to realize that you picked the wrong item since it takes the place of the outline in the inventory, so you can't check that you got it right without putting the item back. Congrats for the release!