LCStark

Clutteralism by Pulu 2018-08-16T14:53:17Z

This looks great! Is there a way to control the second player that doesn't require a gamepad? Anyway, it seems like this could be a fun little game to play. I hope you'll keep working on it. :)

Clutteralism by Pulu 2018-08-16T15:13:04Z

@Pulu No problem, fortunately I have the numpad. Just took me a while to find out how to change the controls. :) Awesome game!

Falling Town by Centauri 2018-08-15T18:17:57Z

Hey, nice game! fallingTown.png. A couple of issues that could be improved: - the comet is sometimes colliding with buildings and instead of destroying a tile it just rolls around for a while. After that is sometimes just disappears and sometimes it destroys the tiles during the next day. - a few times I thought there might be something wrong with mouse interaction, but later on it turned out that I was actually trying to click a tile through the semi-transparent background behind the UI elements. I guess it could be a little bit more visible. - it could use a way to skip / speed up the night phase. In the later days, when the game is basically just pressing the "next day" button, it really feels like it's taking forever. :) - it's very easy to build up all the available terrain, and after a few days all that's left of the gameplay is pressing the "next" button and waiting to see how long the city lasts. Maybe you could add a way to replace buildings (or remove buildings so you can build on the freed space). I guess the removal should cost some resources to not make the game too easy). - the camera sometimes makes it difficult to build new buildings. is there a way to rotate the camera? I've tried dragging the mouse, but it doesn't do anything for me.

Space Tomb Raider by LCStark 2018-08-15T14:51:07Z

Hey @bandygrass, thanks for the comment! For some reason the site couldn't save my Itch.io link properly. It should be OK now.

Space Golf by ctran13 2018-08-17T22:27:41Z

Great game! Very difficult, but very enjoyable. ;)

Chain Reaction by PlantProgrammer 2020-05-06T10:12:23Z

A really interesting idea! Though I played it single player, controlling two players myself, I enjoyed quite a bit. It's really satisfying to put one ball on the board and watch the chain reaction slowly propagate across the entire field. ;)

One thing I wish for this game is to be faster. When you're placing a ball, there's a really long time before it falls down to the selected field. In case of some fields, you're not even sure the click happened, since the ball is spawned off-camera and you can't see it until it comes really close. Also, sometimes when balls are exchanged between two fields they can get stuck on each other for a few seconds, further slowing the game down.

Another issue was the colour scheme. First time I played, the Player 1 colour didn't really stand out from empty fields, making it difficult to see your conquered area.

Also, you might want to set your Itch.io game window to a higher resultion. On full-screen it works fine, but it the default window the introduction screen gets squished really bad:

chainReaction.png

The game has a lot of potential for improvement. One idea I had was to introduce different types of fields. For example, you could have a moderator field, which would require more neutrons before splitting. You could also add walls between some of the fields on the grid to make some more interesting level layouts.

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing this one. Well done! ;)

Keep Hope Alive by joe40001 2020-05-10T11:33:04Z

An interesting concept! The programmer art might not be good, but it's workable. I'm not an artist myself, so I know how difficult it is to create something that at least doesn't hurt anybody's eyes. ;)

At first I found the game unbearably difficult - any single mistake send you straight down to the rock bottom without a chance to get out. After a few years I've managed to get out for a bit, before falling back down. Few years later, I've managed to reach the good times and spend the rest of my life there. Which is why I was surprised when the final screen told me I was a failure full of regret, despite having 17 years worth of good times. Perhaps that's something to tune a little bit.

Overall, it's a nice idea. I like how it shows that, while difficult, keeping the hope alive is always possible. Hang in there, you'll get out of this. :)

Protektor by rujo 2020-05-11T14:02:19Z

Amazing game! I love the fast-paced gameplay. The visuals are wonderful (if maybe a bit too blurry), music and sounds are fantastic. If there is one issue I had with the game is that the camera is sometimes a little bit too twitchy, especially when you're suddenly changing movement directions. It would probably also be nice to directly control shooting direction instead of having to rely on auto-aim. Other than that, I loved it. Right now I'm trying to complete level 6, I'll keep playing it till I finish it. ;)

Serveryard by ping78 2020-05-08T06:53:31Z

An interesting idea! It has a few quirks and bugs, but overall I liked it.

It might be a good idea to somehow show the player that their canister is filled. For the first couple of tries i thought the "fuel source recharging" was the progress of my canister filling, so I just stood there and waited for it to fill (up to whole 5%, I'm not a patient man :) ).

Do the planks placed on the roof disappear when it rains? I've placed about 6-7 planks on the roof, went to get some more. When I was cutting more trees, it rained for a short while. When I returned to build more planks, I had to start all over again, like they've all disappeared.

Gathering only one plank from a tree seems overly limiting. It stretches out the game unnecessarily. Also, since you can carry a lot of planks at the same time, it doesn't really add anything to the difficulty, since you can cut all the trees you want and then place all the boards when you have enough of them.

Speaking of tree cutting, when you do that the game slows down a lot. Are you spawning the planks when a tree is cut down? It might be a good idea to have them pre-spawned, but disabled until needed.

Overall it's a nice entry. I haven't managed to finish it yet, but I'm going to try a few more times. I'm enjoying playing it. ;)

Space Station Express by quadtree 2020-05-06T08:03:07Z

Well done! I like top-down shooters with movement based on classical mechanics.

What it could use is a "stop" button, which would auto-fire appropriate thrusters to slow you down no matter which way you're facing. That way the player would have some more control over their movement. Right now it can be a little bit too chaotic for you to deal with your ship movement, cargo requirements and the enemies at the same time.

One bug I've noticed - the game window should open anchored in the top-left corner of the screen, but instead it starts more to the left and higher, which causes large portion of the UI text to be invisible: spaceStationExpress.png The UI itself could also display your ship's current HP. Without it it's difficult to judge whether you can take some more damage before you really need to run away no matter what cargo you're hauling.

All in all, I liked this entry. The music was pleasant, the gameplay worked fine. I enjoyed playing it. ;)

Magic Garden by MaggardJosh 2020-04-21T08:46:10Z

A very nice entry! The art style is just great. The gameplay is pretty well done. Only problem with it I had was the damn bats - since you can only attack left or right while standing on the ground, dealing with them was problematic. Perhaps the attack hitbox could be expanded to reach targets a bit above and below you? Or maybe you could get an early upgrade that allows you to attack while you're mid-air?

All in all, a great compo game. I only reached the third plant, but I will definitely play it again and try to get further. ;)

Birdie Burglars by DDRKirbyISQ 2020-05-08T07:38:01Z

A cute and fun little game! The art style and the audio side are both extremely well done, it was a real joy to play it.

As for the gameplay, it works really well. I loved the cat animations, they reminded me a little bit of the dog in Duck Hunt. One thing I would change about the gameplay is to invert the direction you have to drag to shoot - while dragging down seems more "realistic", I feel like it makes the control really difficult. Dragging up would allow for much more precise controls, which is really needed when you have only one shot every few seconds.

All in all, I loved it. It's a really well done entry. Great work! ;)

Astronautical by tater-hater 2020-05-09T20:22:52Z

A good idea, I enjoy good orbital mechanics use in games! The game looks very interesting, too. It could use a little bit more player feedback - half of the time I didn't know if my shots hit the enemy or not. It didn't help that the enemy hitpoint bars still have a little bit filled even when they're dead - because of that I kept firing on an enemy who was long dead. astronautical.png

Other than that, I liked it. It has the potential to become a really fun and engaging game. I hope you'll keep working on it. ;)

Flight of the Cepheus by thedashdude 2020-05-02T12:23:51Z

A very interesting concept! The whole thing gave me some serious Battlestar Galactica vibes, having to travel a long distance while managing resources and having to deal with both morale and ship integrity deteriorating.

~~The only thing missing in my opinion is some sort of help screen, describing all the actions and possible things to gain, as well as resource requirement to execute them.~~

As I was writing that I noticed your previous comment about tooltips. I thought the "inspect" button worked only to check the people, not menu options. Perhaps it would be better if those tooltips appeared on their own when you hover over a button instead of having to right-click?

Overall it's a fun little game. I enjoyed playing it. ;)

GNAT#46 by arowx 2020-05-02T16:42:24Z

A nice idea! Kinda reminded me of old Descent games, though it's more open than that.

As others have already mentioned, the inverted pitch doesn't really work here. If you think it should remain in the game, perhaps you could have some sort of toggle to reverse it?

As for the difficulty level, it feels pretty high. Perhaps instead of spawning a large group of enemies at once you could either start with a smaller wave, or make that group spawn over time?

It's an overall good entry to the compo. Well done! ;)

Mutual Survival by FudgeMcGroobs 2020-04-29T11:10:30Z

A nice top-down shooter! Good job! I like the enemy design. They look creepy enough on their own, but their glitchy movement makes them even creepier. ;)

One tip: if you use Unity sliders as progress bars (like HP bars, in your case), make sure you disable "Interactable" on the Slider component. Right now you can still drag the sliders with your mouse. Fortunately, it doesn't increase the HP value, it just looks weird. If you only want the bar, you can also delete the Handle element.

All in all, it's a nice entry, props for using autofire on the weapon instead of forcing the player to spam the left mouse button. Well done! ;)

Death Trap by Xeke-Death 2020-04-20T20:32:02Z

A nice little game, which somehow is very addicting. It's gonna take me a lot of time to get over 2 minutes, but I will do it! :D

Guardian by fashionbatman 2020-05-12T04:57:02Z

A nice little game! It is simple, but the gameplay loop is satisfying, making you want to restart and play just one more time, everytime. It takes a moment to get used to it, but since the controls are pretty intuitive, it quickly becomes easy to play. At least for the first few levels, before it gets really difficult.

The difficulty ramp up seems to be well done - it's very easy at the start, giving you the opportunity to get used to the control scheme and the main mechanic of the game. At first it seemed to me like the ship keeping its momentum after using the shield move action would lead to a lot of confusion, but it actually both looks and feels natural. I'd probably experiment whether it wouldn't feel better without it, but it's an option I'm not totally against.

The audiovisual side is also great. It might be simple, yet it is clean and everything is easily distinguishable. The clouds slowly passing by were a nice addition. One thing you've already received feedback on is the UI, so I'll won't spend time talking on that.

Have you considered giving the player ship more durability? Something like "you can take two shots, but the third one will kill you". That would give the player a little bit more wiggle room, while it would also keep the option of perfectionist run without loosing any hitpoint. Of course then the game would require some feedback on hits, as right now the game just ends and there isn't really a need for one.

Over all, I liked it. It's a pretty solid compo entry. Good job! ;)

Space Drone Guy by TechnoNugget 2020-05-02T07:53:20Z

That's a really fun game! ;) The graphics look great, the sounds work fine for this type of game. I wish there was some background music to supplement it, but I get how hard it is to fit everything in such a short time. I loved that you used proper classical mechanics, though I guess it could use some sort of "brake" button, which would use thrusters to stop you in your place.

Prototype Towers by marbles 2020-05-15T10:08:19Z

A really nice tower defense game! It's a shame I didn't find it during the voting phase, but I'm glad I could play it now. ;)

The repair mechanic is really good. Usually, tower defense games devolve into just placing more and more towers, going for the sheer quantity. Some of them have tower upgrades, which reduces that a bit, but not by much. The repair mechanic totally fixes that problem. Of course, you still need more turrets to damage more and tougher monsters, but you also need to make sure you can keep up with the repairs.

One thing I'd get rid of is the timer on repairs. I feel like the repair itself mitigates player's efforts well enough, since they can only repair one tower at a time. Having the towers get destroyed when you don't manage to fix it in time seems like too much punishment. Just leave the damaged turret there, it will be a hindrance to the player until they manage to repair it.

Also, the third tower's ability to destroy your own towers (including itself!) doesn't really feel that good. Perhaps it could be replaced by something like a mine - you'd place it on the path and it would be one use only splash damage to everything in the area. With proper warning that it does damage your turrets, it should work fine.

I've played it twice and managed to win my second game. The music is really good, it does fit the game's frantic gameplay well. Overall, it's a very good idea, and a pretty good execution. I liked it. ;)

Your Inner Child (Keep It Alive!) by godsboss 2020-05-02T16:56:08Z

A nice tower defence! I enjoyed playing it. ;) There's a couple of things I'd change, though.

The enemy path is almost indistinguishable from the build locations. That makes it really difficult early on, when you have to quickly place some turrets in locations most needing them.

The amount of enemy types is pretty good, but what the game lacks is those enemies acting differently from each other, and to have a wider amount of turret types to counter those enemies.

Though I liked the idea of the baby in the middle slowly growing up as the various responsibilities reached it, it lacks a clear information on how much more it can take before the game is lost.

Other than that, the idea worked really well. I had fun playing it! ;)

Unicorn by JacksGamesSucks 2020-05-09T20:04:59Z

A nice little game! It looks like you guys had a lot of fun making it. ;) The drawings are really cute. If there is one thing missing from the gameplay, it would be some sort of checkpoint system. It's tough having to start everything all over again, especially because you followed an arrow sign straight into a spike pit. ;)

Overall I like this one. I've enjoyed playing it. ;)

Commandball by pjnovas 2020-05-10T14:30:45Z

A very good game! It looks amazing and it plays really well, once you get used to the control scheme. That would be my only issue with it - the controls are too confusing. Even when you manage to somewhat learn what everything does, having two players on the same keyboard doesn't really work, as a lot of keyboards has limit of simultaneous keys pressed. For a fast-paced game, having your controls not work means having a bad time. I guess it would be better to move the second player controls to the mouse.

Also, when I started another game, loading bar appeared on the field: commandBall.png

Overall, I had fun playing it. Well done! ;)

Gaia by Rodrigo Denúbila 2020-05-14T07:23:04Z

That's a nice and chill game. I wish I found it during the voting round. The art style is great, the UI is clean, the background music is just fantastic.

The game plays really well. I had some trouble during the middle age level, because those humans seem to damage the planet's health faster than I can plant new trees or animals. Eventually, I've managed to reach the modern era, where I encountered a problem - it's really difficult to destroy buildings with the meteor. More often than not, the meteor only destroys the land under and around the buildings, while leaving them intact (and apparently floating on this new lake): gaia.png

Also, there seems to be something wrong with the pause button. I've pressed it to pause the game to take a screenshot and switched tabs to start writing this comment. When I returned to the game, I pressed the pause button again to unpause, but then it just displays the "Paused" message. Clicking on `Continue` doesn't resume the game, it just closes the message window.

Overall, it's a wonderful jam entry. If there is one thing I'd change about it, I'd probably made the world a little bit bigger / everything else a bit smaller. Other than that, I love it, I had fun time playing it. Well done! ;)

Dummy Doggy by Nick Rafalski 2020-05-02T12:00:08Z

That was a fun game! Good looking graphics and wonderful sound effects, plus a pretty fun gameplay. ;)

I found it really great when I noticed that Dodger picks up spawned items and brings the balls to you. That was a fun addition. ;) It felt much worse when Dodger accidentally picked up a coffee and it made him sick.

There's also a small issue with the abilities. In the instructions above you wrote: > Use the MOUSE to select an ability to perform, and SPACEBAR to execute it. But that only works like that for the ball. For the treats and coffee when you click the ability it is automatically activated when you select that ability. That made me waste some of them when I just wanted to select them to be used soon.

Also, the ball throwing is pretty difficult, given it always throws the ball where your character is facing. I guess adding a separate throw targeting, using the mouse or second controller stick to target your throws, would work much better.

Overall it's a great entry. Well done! ;)

Cell Defence by bongo227 2020-04-29T10:50:05Z

A nice take on the tower defense genre! It could use some more feedback for the player.

The first time I played I didn't notice the mitochondria could be used to upgrade your ship, so maybe adding some sort of tutorial messages at the beginning (and perhaps an upgrade type symbol on the mitochondrion itself) would work well.

Also, speaking about upgrades, the bullet lifetime / range could use some improvement. I guess it works fine at the beginning, but the more enemies come the worse it gets. It would be nice if the player could upgrade their range.

I liked using the virus to mark the direction of the next attack, though it was a bit difficult to find them all in the time between the waves, especially when you need to also upgrade your ship and place some turrets in the same time. Maybe increasing that time a bit would help.

Oh, and one final bugbear I had with the game - the lack of autofire. Without it, the game relies on player's ability to spam their mouse button, which isn't really a good design. Players who don't like that will have a harder time, while players who can and like that will have an overpowered ship easily destroying all enemies. Adding autofire would add another direction of upgrades for your ship (reducing the time between shots).

All in all, a good entry. I had fun playing it. ;)

Madscape by Shigor 2020-05-10T07:41:31Z

A really nice concept! It could definitely use more instructions and a tutorial, something to gradually teach the player all of its mechanics. I've played for quite a while before even understanding what I'm supposed to do, and I still don't think I've figured out everything.

I think the camera should be more restricted in its movement. At one time I've switched browser tabs to see if there was something I missed in the instructions, and when I got back, the game board was nowhere to be seen. I tried moving around with WASD to see if I can find it again, but eventually I had to restart the game. Also, the zoom is a nice feature, but I think it's controls are reversed - scrolling up zooms out instead of in.

Overall it's a really interesting strategy game. It takes a long while to understand, but once you do it's pretty satisfying to play (and win!). I had some fun time with it. ;)

Life by esenti 2020-05-09T09:56:34Z

I love the idea of using Game of Life as part of your mechanics. Overall I liked it, though I wish there was some sort of a challenge here.

An idea I had is to use colours to determine block threat - enemies and their projectiles are red, your shots / spaceships are blue. When you generate a new block in the next generation, you set its color to the average color of its neighbours. You must shoot the red block to either make them disappear or to turn their color as much towards the blue as you can. If red blocks touch the bottom of the screen, they damage you. Blue ones would simply disappear.

HIVE by krammetje 2020-05-02T08:22:19Z

A nice RTS game! Three problems with it:

1. Itch.io window size is set to 1600x900. That made the entire UI not work as it should be - even the buttons in the menu didn't appear to detect clicks properly, like the button area was moved away from the actual button sprite. Try editing your game window size on Itch.io game page and see if that helps. 2. I guess most of this problem stems from the above, too. The game doesn't really explain itself well. I tried constructing some units, but they rarely actually appeared after clicking buttons in the build menu. I don't know if it's the UI problem or some game mechanic I don't understand. There's the "+1 egg" upgrade in the upgrade menu, but it seemed to me like it only worked once, and without the ability to construct more units it was difficult to stay alive for a long time. 3. Also a UI problem - since the UI covers the area where my worker bees are working, it's impossible to see if something comes from the bottom of the screen and attacks them.

Other than those issues, it's a good idea. I was happy to see an RTS entry in this jam. Well done! ;)

Croze's Moving Castle by croze 2020-05-10T11:07:53Z

Nice game! It's a great concept, having to explore in the darkness to find resources. It plays quite well. The only issue I had was that the movement was way too slow. The leap helped to mitigate that a bit, but I still think the speed should be increased by a large amount. There could also be more things to find in the darkness than just small campfires. The possibilities are endless! Overall I liked this entry, I had fun playing it. ;)

Feed the Machine by DeathStorm 2020-05-12T05:27:21Z

A pretty fun game! You've managed to create a lot of connected systems for the player to manage. It's pretty enjoyable to be running around, first trying to locate everything, then frantically trying to replenish your resources.

The UI could use a lot more feedback though. Your hunger bar is only visible when you're moving up or down. I usually spent most of the game moving left or right, so most of the time I couldn't see the bars getting low and lost. When a machine breaks, you have no idea it's broken and you have to fix it. It would be a nice idea to at least add some icons or text to the screen, something like "You are hungry" or "The O2 generator broke down". That way you wouldn't have constant access to full information about the state of each system, but at least you would know there is a problem somewhere and you need to take care of it.

Also, a lot more feedback when using things. Right now I can press E and not notice something isn't working. If I'm trying to use a machine and there's no power, play some sort of beeping or clicking noise to let me know it isn't doing anything. When completing the radio call for home, display some information like "message sent" instead of just hiding the interaction text.

While I understand the idea behind having to find each machine every time, I think once the player finds them they should have some sort of markers, letting the player know where they are. It would be better if the game remembered their location instead of forcing the player to do it.

The colliders could use some work, too. Pretty often I'd get stuck on things like the back of the chair, while stuff like broken pipes were very difficult to move to.

Overall it's a really good survival game. A nice jam entry, I've enjoyed playing it. ;)

Waste of Space by souperstrawer 2020-05-12T05:09:32Z

A really interesting idea! It's kinda like a combination of a strategy, puzzle and action games all in one package. The gameplay loop is very engaging, making you want to play more. The audiovisual side is good. My only problem with the game, which probably stems from not fully understanding the mechanics yet, is that sometimes it's difficult to know what your shields or lasers will protect. Sometimes I felt like despite having multiple lasers in the area a lot of rocks still got through. Oh, and I also think it would be a good idea to add some sort of damage indicator to the sections - right now it's impossible to know which sections need to be protected first before your base breaks apart. Overall, it's a great jam entry, I enjoyed playing it. ;)

Go With The Flow by Baby Dino Herd 2020-05-06T08:59:15Z

An interesting take on a rhythm game! I loved the bouncing audience, seeing them jump made you want to hit the right word at the right time.

One issue I had is that sometimes the music and the bouncing ball didn't really match. A lot of times I had to tune out the music and focus only on the ball to be able to press the button at the right time.

Other than that, I loved it. The idea is great and the execution is solid. Well done!

Worm Protect Egg by Gunturtle 2020-05-11T06:31:40Z

An interesting idea! Combining a tower defense game with Snake worked really well for your game. The presentation is also amazing - I just love well-done Pico-8 games. ;)

My one issue with it is the difficulty - it takes a lot of attempts to survive more than a few seconds. A more gradual buildup would probably serve the game well. Also, I don't think having to stun your enemies before eating them works really well here. The tail-stunning mechanic works fine, I just wish the worm could simply eat anything that came near his mouth. Sometimes you will miss an enemy by a very small amount and you have to maneuver quite a lot to try and stun them again, wasting precious time. Which almost certainly means you'll lose, since the blue bugs need only one touch of the egg to destroy it.

Overall, it's a great compo entry. I've enjoyed playing it. ;)

Symbio-tech by GenericToast 2020-04-30T13:17:46Z

A really fun game! I'm a sucker for anything using a hexagonal grid, so you had me there from the start. The idea is good, your objective is clearly marked, the controls are responsive. The only thing I'd change is to add a sound if you're trying to use your shield bash and it isn't ready yet (also maybe a sound when the bash finishes recharging). Other than that, I loved it, had fun playing it. ;)

Adrift by cdunham 2020-05-10T18:05:12Z

A very fun game! Though it's played like a top-down shooter, the gameplay is more akin to a puzzle game. Each level introduces new obstacles you have to overcome, gradually increasing the difficulty instead of just overwhelming you. The audiovisual side is good enough for a jam game.

My one problem with it is the turrets - I think they're firing way too fast to be a valid obstacle on such an early level. Perhaps setting their firing rate to something much slower, but adding a super-fast-firing turret later on would work better?

Overall, it's a really great entry. I've enjoyed playing it. ;)

L♪vely Rhythm by DiegoCTorguet 2020-05-01T18:38:57Z

A lovely game! The music is just great and the art style fits this idea. The only problem I had with it is music desyncing with the rhythm timeline - it feels like the music plays a little bit too fast, so the further you go the greater the deviation becomes. Other than that, it's a really good entry. Impressive for the short amount of time given. Well done!

Live Bomb by Demandooda 2020-05-11T07:03:51Z

A good entry! I haven't played a tower defense game where you had to create your own maze in quite a while, I guess the last ones were either Sanctum games or an old Flash game called Xeno Clash. It was refreshing to see that mechanic.

During my playthrough on the easy level, the dev console displayed a message: "Development Console: Ensure Read/Write is enabled on the Particle System's texture."

On the hard level, when enemies reached my bomb the game stopped with an error in the console: NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Overall, it's a nice compo game. It might be short and simple, but it is fun. Add more levels and more types of turrets and enemies and you'll have something pretty enjoyable for a long time. Well done! ;)

The Elons Xtreme by jkniest 2020-05-02T19:19:29Z

An impressive entry! I really enjoyed playing this game. It looks like Surviving Mars was a huge inspiration for you, and you've managed to use it well.

As others have said before me, the progression could use a little bit of tuning. I guess most of it stems from the fact you can't produce titanium on Mars and you need to not only wait for the ship to make a round-trip to Earth and back, you also need to mine enough resources to sell, and that will take at least two ship trips before you can even build your second living quarters. It would probably be best if you added some sort of titanium mine. That way you could produce small amounts of titanium on the planet, but you would have to juggle your colonists between different buildings, giving the player something to manage.

I also liked the implementation of the day/night cycle, but since it is important for the gameplay (since power producers only work during the day), you really should add a clock. The player should know how much time is left for their power producers to make electricity during the day, or how long they need to survive without power production during the night.

Overall, I loved this one. You've made a wonderful jam game, good job! ;)

SOS STARSHIP F1 by Tim Eriksen 2020-05-12T17:03:24Z

I love this idea! It feels kind of like FTL on steroids, but the direct control over the shuttle and your character makes it feel much more immersive. It has a huge potential, and there's a lot of directions to expand in: different types of locations to visit, bigger locations which you really need to explore on foot, there might be combat (both on foot and in your shuttle), etc. Add in some random events for additional flavour, e.g. you return to your ship and you find it boarded by pirates and you need to fight on foot inside your ship. The minimalist art style isn't bad, but it would be greatly supplemented by slow ambient music and some muffled sounds, like rocks hitting the hull, metal creaking, etc.

One thing I'm not so sure about this is the jump sequence. I feel like this simplistic arcade-style agility test with low-maneuverability ship is a little bit out of place. However, I guess with some upgrades it could feel a bit better - as you travel you are able to add shielding for your ship, protecting you from some debris damage during jumps, maybe a forward-facing laser to be able to shoot the debris yourself.

I've found one bug: on my second playthrough, as I gathered resources from a location and started to move to my shuttle, the camera suddenly shifted partially to the outside, and I lost control. Moments later the camera moved entirely outside, but I never left the location. The shuttle wasn't there to control either. None of the buttons worked, I had to refresh the page. The game didn't freeze / crash, because the oxygen was still going down. sosStarship.png

Overall, it's a wonderful concept and a nice compo entry. Good job! ;)

Edit

Oh, I forgot to add. If you land in a location, your character should probably leave the shuttle on their own. Right now you have to press `y` to dock, then `y` again to leave the shuttle. Since you can't undock immediately, it's obvious you want to leave the shuttle. There's no need for this additional key press. Same thing for leaving a location - you want to undock after you've boarded the shuttle.

Carnivorous by James Greenleaf 2020-05-07T06:32:49Z

A well done twin stick shooter! The audiovisual side is pretty well done. I've had a few issues with the gameplay, though:

1. There's way too many enemies to either destroy or avoid. Your cell is moving too slow to try and avoid them (and even if it was faster, there's usually not enough space to avoid enemies) and it's firing way too slow to punch through. 2. The enemies can't leave the screen, but your cell can. It looks like there's collider missing on the bottom of the screen, and you can move out of view to stay safe. 3. There wasn't enough difference between enemy types. At first you get two types of enemies, which don't seem to be any different. Then you get the darker ones which are much faster, but that's it. The larger ones work as powerups if you shoot them a few times, but they don't seem to die to your fire.

Overall, it's a good LD entry. Well done!

Battery Life by fazz 2020-05-06T08:35:49Z

A really atmospheric game! It makes you fear the monsters even before you see one up close. The creepy ambient sounds and music also work in the game's favour.

One thing I'd like the game to have is some way to mark your progress. Without it, the player just stumbles around in the dark, trying to figure out whether they've been in this corridor before or not. It does improve the mood of the game, but I feel like it also makes the gameplay itself too frustrating.

Other than that, it's a wonderful entry. Beautiful art style, great audio and amazing atmosphere. ;)

Life On Mars by Yorsh 2020-05-09T07:24:35Z

A funny little game! I really like the theme, I enjoyed trying to keep the little guy going. I loved those simple animations on the alien. The fact it covers its eye when it's hidden from sight helped a lot. ;)

If there's one thing I'd change, it's the satellite scan. Sometimes it feels like there's not enough time between seeing the shadow and the scan running to find a safe location to go to. Also, I think it would be nice to somehow mark the area that's going to be scanned - a few of the times I had nowhere to run, so I just move a little bit further behind the rock, but the satellite still caught me on the edge of its scan field.

Overall it's a great entry. It was really enjoyable to play. ;)

Egg Rescue by JesterSeraph 2020-05-02T08:35:26Z

A well executed bullet hell game!

The art style is wonderful, the music and sound effects make it feel like a real old-school shooter. My only problem with it was that it's difficult to judge collider sizes in some places. To shoot down some turrets you need to get really close to those ships, and sometimes even though it looks like you should be OK, the ships collide and you get destroyed.

Overall, it's a really solid entry. Good job! ;)

Pug Panic by Alex Davies 2020-04-21T07:47:07Z

Amazing game, I just wish I was better at it. ;) Perhaps it could use a bit easier difficulty curve, ramping up the challenge as time goes by. A simple tutorial to show how every system is operated would be nice, too. Other than that, I love everything about it. A well-thought-out indirect control platformer with great graphics and sound.

Commodore Commander by Alex_ADEdge 2020-05-08T07:23:08Z

A really amazing game! The visuals are simply stunning. The audio side could use a little bit more work, but I understand how difficult it is to fit absolutely everything in such a short time. And you've managed to fit a lot of things! ;)

When playing in full screen, the game window placement gets a little bit wonky: commodoreTanks.png

It does work in normal mode, though, so I could use browser full screen mode.

The tutorial AI bot - you can skip it's messages, but it would be great if I could press a button to display the whole message instead of waiting for it to slowly appear, letter by letter. It makes the tutorial a little bit too frustrating to sit through.

As for the gameplay, it's really good. I only wish there was some sort of checkpoint system, letting you restart your current level instead of throwing you back to the start.

Also, did I see correctly? Can enemies shoot through the glowing cubes without damaging them?

Overall, it's an impressive entry. I enjoy playing it, and I'll sure play more of it. ;)

Courier of Fire by Balgorode 2020-05-01T19:04:33Z

A really nice puzzle platformer! Great job on mixing different mechanics to create interesting levels.

I think it would be nice if every new mechanic introduced was explained a little bit. On level 1 you've added the text "beware the water" to make the player aware they should avoid putting the fire in it. You could expand on it and put more hints on further levels, like "use water to jump higher" on level 2 or "throw spikes at the cord to cut it" on level 5. The game could also use some background music, but I get how difficult it is to make everything in such a short time.

Oh, and as others have already said, the interaction button for the exit door isn't needed. Since you've opened the exit, you probably want to go through it anyway, just detect if the player entered unlocked door.

All in all, a well done LD entry. I enjoyed playing it. ;)

MiniDrone by Rewzu 2020-05-09T14:58:49Z

A really nice entry! I'm enjoying the calm experience of a lone space mining drone. ;)

I think the power charge bar should be visible in the on-screen UI, the tiny bar on the drone is really difficult to see. It's especially difficult at the start of the game, when your power reserve is so small. The player shouldn't have to play the entire game zoomed in to be safe. I'd also move the first battery size upgrade to be the first upgrade on the list, since the starting power amount is really small.

I'd make it so you don't mine just by standing over the mineral spot, I'd require the user to either toggle mining with right mouse button or to have them hold the button to mine. Right now it's easy to lose all of your power because you're standing on a mineral field.

Oh, and on some planets it's really difficult to see the mineral text on the day side - perhaps adding a black border to the text wouldn't be a bad idea.

Overall it's a really fun game. The visuals are great, sounds and music worked well. I had a lot of fun with it. ;)

Keep 'it' Alive by Jare 2020-05-02T07:20:34Z

Nice idea! And a pretty damn good execution, as well! Simplistic graphics really help to manage the slowly unfolding chaos. I really like games where you have to do something, but are limited in some way, so the stamina bar worked great here. Good job! ;)

Moluski by Piko Monde 2020-04-20T10:38:39Z

Good game, I like the idea! It could use a little bit more of feedback for the player.

The part with disturbing the birds nest - it would be better if the birds flew towards the cloud instead of a random direction. At first I clicked on the tree at least two dozen times and nothing happened, because not a single bird hit the cloud. I thought that either I've been doing something wrong or the game was bugged.

Also, I think I've managed to heal the old man, but the game could use some sort of information you've completed it - whether it is a message saying "The End", the old man rising up and moving around to show he's healthy before the screen fades to black, or something similar.

Keep it Fire by Mykola 2020-05-02T11:42:01Z

Great game! A well executed platformer. The controls are smooth, the graphics are nice, the music fits the game well.

The only issue I have with it is that it lacks any tutorial to slowly teach you everything. Instead, it just throws the instruction screen at you with a ton of text to read and remember. It's not a big issue, since the mechanics are not that difficult to learn on your own in a few short minutes, but I feel like a slower introduction of everything would make it better.

Also, the instruction screenshot here in the LD game description is wrong - the "take from bonfire" and "give to bonfire" buttons are switched.

All in all, it's a really good game. I had fun playing it. ;)

Crop Time by nicksmaddog 2020-04-21T08:08:51Z

A fine, relaxing game. The slow and calm music in the background works wonderfully here. :)

Here's a few issues I found: 1. As others have said, it really needs some notification about plant hydration status.

2. When you move the character and want to stop, the character doesn't stop immediately. A lot of times that caused me to waste precious time. I moved fast to try watering a plant quickly, but the character floated a bit too far and I watered an empty tile. I had to wait for the watering animation to finish before I could go back one tile and try it again. More precise controls would do great here.

3. I know it was probably not intentional, but you can plant crops on fence tiles. That is not a huge problem, just looks weird. One thing that can be problematic is that you can plant crops on the top fence row, but you cannot water them - I guess the watering can collider is too big for you to be able to reach the top row of the map.

Keep It Afloat by ZeGGamer 2020-04-26T07:56:50Z

A really good game! The controls can get a moment to get used to, but once you do they feel great. I think if you'd change the jump button to spacebar it would feel even better.

I love that the game gives you a lot of feedback - hitting the birds makes an explosion, both visible and audible, and the screen shakes. If your balloon air gets too cold, you get an alarm. Everything if clearly communicated to the player. I also like the slow difficulty buildup and a variety of enemies to defeat.

Great game, I loved playing it. ;)

Don't Lose Familiar by justalocalhero 2020-04-20T09:36:37Z

A fun little game. ;) I felt happy when I managed to reach my first new hazard type (the fireball), only to lose because the cat got too close and got killed by the blast wave of a fireball hitting the shield. Also, the little furball seems to love wandering around just as I've set up a shield for incoming blasts. Not a problem with the game, such is the nature of randomness. :D

Wonder by Ian Kettlewell 2020-05-09T20:59:45Z

A fantastic game! The mood was great on this one. Even though it was clearly designed for somebody with more steady hand than me, I didn't stop playing until I've reached the end. And even then I didn't give up - I know you didn't want anyone to get inside your heart, but I still did it. ;) I was kinda expecting some hidden message if I managed to do that, but the final level just restarted. No shame, the sheer amount of good levels in this game is amazing. I loved that you made the eraser tool big enough, I'd hate if I had to very slowly and precisely erase the lines I've botched. This one was perfect. Well done! ;)

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-04-20T08:56:16Z

@Hcursino Thanks for the feedback! Perhaps I've set the interval between enemy spawns a bit too high. During testing I found that very often before you manage to destroy all enemies on the map, another group spawns and you quickly get overwhelmed.

The second type of enemy does shoot, but unfortunately it only shoots the generator. I wanted to have enemies attacking the player, but I simply ran out of time to implement it properly. Because of that the challenge in the game comes only in form of trying to explore as much as possible before the next group of enemies gets to close to the center.

I'll work a bit more on the game and add the simple enemy AI I wanted. That should make it more difficult (and interesting). ;)

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-04-20T09:24:28Z

@singleshoe, @justalocalhero Hey, thanks for your comments! I was a bit worried about forcing player to return to the generator too often. I didn't want to turn this into a Defense game where you only sit in your base. I'm glad it worked out well. ;)

@justalocalhero No, there's only one theme, so I guess it was just a happy coincidence. :)

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-04-20T16:57:46Z

@singleshoe > Technically there is nothing forcing you to leave, you could just defend indefinitely (...)

Technically, yes. But if you want to win the game, you must collect all the parts. Also, enemy waves get stronger with time, so eventually they will overwhelm you. This version of the game has a long wave timer, so it might take a while, but it will happen.

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-04-20T17:13:25Z

@alexey-akulovich Thanks! Old id software games were my inspiration for this music. I don't yet have a lot of experience or skill with music creation, so I'm both surprised and happy someone got that. :) As for the enemies - I stopped working on enemy AI in order to finish the game for the compo. I wanted the enemies to be able to chase and attack the player if they get too close, but I simply ran out of time.

@xeke-death Thank you! I left the "friendly fire" option on while testing early versions. I figured it would stop the player from shooting randomly around the generator and perhaps force them to intercept enemies way sooner.

I'm glad the minimap exploration progress is useful. It was one of the last-minute additions, but I feel like it made the game much better. I didn't show the parts on the minimap, so the player has to actually explore instead of just going to the marked place. If I had a bit more time I'd actually change the map so it wouldn't show the entire map, just the parts you've visited and their neighboring corridors.

As for the explosions, I fully agree. That's one thing I regret not adding. I'm planning to add a small explosion when the projectile hits anything, plus a bigger explosion when an enemy is destroyed.

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-04-29T10:00:48Z

@artemftw Thanks! What screen resolution are you using? Next time I'll try to make sure it has a fullscreen mode and that it scales both up and down in it.

@pizzasgood Thank you! I'm glad you liked the music, it was one of the things I felt anxious about, for not putting enough time to polish it. As for the difficulty, I worked on some AI for the enemies, they were supposed to spawn more often and attack the player if they got too close. Unfortunately, time was running short and I had to cut that out. That also meant I had to make the spawn times between waves much longer, as enemies now bolted towards the generator and the player would be overwhelmed early on. In hindsight, I could have added a selectable difficulty level, making the spawn times a bit shorter on higher difficulty settings, but that's just a lesson for the next time. ;)

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-05-06T08:05:43Z

@trexxak Thanks! No, that wasn't intentional, but perhaps it's a good idea - when two enemies collide they combine to create a new and more powerful enemy. It's something worth experimenting with! :)

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-05-07T11:15:48Z

@ausstein Thanks for your feedback!

> As i have gathered from your other replies, you are not intending to do a post-LD version which is a shame.

I'm not sure yet if I'm going to do a post-LD version. Right now I'm busy with making another game for a different jam, and in the free time I'm trying to play and rate more LD games. If I have some time in the next few days I'll try to implement at least some of the features I wanted to have here from the start, but didn't have enough time. Hopefully I'll have enough time to work on it more.

> I would have added more feedback in general: for hits, a little screen shake a small explosion, for picking up missing parts a little screen glow or some sparkle effects etc.

Small explosions are one of the things I have on my to-do list. I haven't considered adding any effects on pickup, thanks for the tip!

> I would have added bouncing projectiles, this game needs bouncing projectiles :D

Now that's an interesting idea. I wonder how well it will work here. I'll try experimenting with it for a bit. Thanks! ;)

> I would have added some difficulty settings because right now it was very easy.

I thought about adding a slider that would change the interval between the waves. Right now I think it's not a priority, since I first want to focus on giving some AI to the enemies, which will influence the difficulty on its own. When that's done I'll see about adding some difficulty setting.

> Also a fullscreen option, (Usually just setting itch.Io to “click to launch fullscreen” does this automatically unless you are doing something with fixed pixel sizes, since this is only a modification to the hosting and not the game you could even try this now)

I might remember it wrong, but I thought the Itch.io full screen option doesn't scale the game window, it just puts it on a single colored plane and hides the browser UI. Either way, I guess it's a good idea to turn that option on. Later on I'll see about making the game scale well for several resolutions and aspects.

Thanks for a lot of good feedback, it means a lot to me! :)

Outpowered by LCStark 2020-05-09T13:56:53Z

@kjscott > There was a moment where the game froze a little but it then immediately started up again.

Do you remember what was going on when that happened? Was it just before enemy spawn? Or right at the start of the game? I haven't seen this bug before, it might be difficult for me to locate the source.

> (...) enlarged map (in my personal preference, would have worked better if it was centered on your current location)

The map is mostly centered, I've made it so there's a little bit of a deadzone before it starts following you. I was coding a way to scroll the bigger map using arrow keys, but I've ran into a few bugs and had to scrap that idea to finish in time.

Thank you for your feedback!

Friendly Fire by Diego Escalante 2020-05-06T09:32:05Z

A really nice entry! Pretty well polished for a 48h game.

I had an issue with chest opening, namely that if you stop opening a chest you have to start again. The time to open a chest is way too long for that. This can lead to annoying situations, especially later in the game, where you're almost done opening a chest and there's a bat incoming before you can finish.

A kind of related issue is having chest opening and kindling dropping on the same key. As you try to drop a kindling in panic, the game thinks you're pressing X to open a chest, so you don't manage to drop the kindling in time and the bats eat you.

Other than those small issues, I loved it. The art style looks great, the music and sounds are pleasant to the ear. Well done! ;)

Raid Healer Simulator by fydar 2020-05-06T09:09:29Z

A funny little game. :) I loved the idea, and the execution is pretty damn good, too.

One thing it could use is to have the description of skills inside the game - without it it takes many playthroughs to learn what each ability does (and which icon is which ability). In that way the difficulty curve feels a little bit harder than in a real MMO.

Other than that, the game is perfect. The chat was a cherry on top. Made me relive a lot of memories from games like Guild Wars or The Old Republic. :D

Dad Day by mudlee 2020-05-09T06:53:13Z

Nice entry! It was pretty difficult to keep them both safe. Most of the time one found its way to the chair. :( The graphics are nice and the music fits the game really well. It could use some game sounds, but I understand it is hard to find time to do everything. All in all, a pretty solid compo game. I enjoyed playing it. ;)

B.U.B.B.A. Express by Pizzasgood 2020-04-29T10:19:54Z

A great idea! It's a nice bullet hell platformer, adding the twist of a moving base was great and made the whole thing unique. Leaving the robot to gather turrets / scrap added a lot of tension to the game. ;)

One problem I had with it is that is too easy. When first enemies arrived, I hid behind B.U.B.B.A.'s head, shot them down, taken their turrets and mounted them on three forward slots. From that point on, the game almost played itself. Even if I mounted more turrets, the enemies were destroyed before they got in their range. To fix that, I'd propose three changes to the game: 1. Make the turrets do less damage. I think they should serve as support for the player instead of dealing the entire damage themselves. 2. Make the player gun more powerful, but restrict it's usage. Right now, the player can hide behind B.U.B.B.A's body and shoot from cover. Making it so player bullets collide with B.U.B.B.A. (even if they don't do damage to him) would give the player the need to come out of cover in order to shoot their enemies. 3. Spawn enemies from all directions. Right now, enemies all appear in the front of B.U.B.B.A, making the back turret slots useless. If some enemies arrived from behind or from above it would add the need to think about turret location a bit more.

Other than that, it's a pretty solid entry. The sound effects are nice, and the music is great. Well done! ;)

B.U.B.B.A. Express by Pizzasgood 2020-04-29T17:16:48Z

@pizzasgood

>I don’t quite agree about not letting B.U.B.B.A. do the majority of fighting himself, though I understand where you’re coming from. The thing is, this isn’t actually intended as a bullet-hell game. It’s supposed to be a salvage and maintenance game, with the player supporting and upgrading B.U.B.B.A. as he plods implacably toward his destination. That’ll work better as I add more enemy and weapon variety along with other sorts of equipment to mount so that you’ll have more choices and strategy. I’m also going to break him up into separate destructible modules so that you can experience minor failures and mounting tension instead of the current all-or-nothing approach.

Ah, I see! That sounds interesting. Can't wait to see how it pans out! :)

>Fun fact about the sound effects: B.U.B.B.A.’s engine rumble and the initial sound of him rising out of the ground are both just my voice. The engine rumble has some post-processing, but IIRC the rising-up sound is raw audio from me making a growling sound into cupped hands. Maybe “growl” is the wrong word; that makes me think of a throat sound, but this was upper-back-mouth sound. It worked way better than I thought it would.

Yeah, those worked really well! I guess that's the standard for making sounds for game jams - I've used edited sounds of me hitting a water bottle and a tea mug. It's amazing what little post-processing can do. ;)

Overwatch by rkhadder 2020-05-09T19:55:45Z

That's a really great entry! The idea of leading someone safely out instead of directly controlling them is fantastic, and you've executed it pretty damn well. Other commenters are right, I can definitely feel some Metal Gear Solid vibes; though the game doesn't blindly imitate MGS and works on it's own. The artstyle is great, the music (and voice acting!) are awesome.

If there is one thing I'd change, it is the way camera works. Currently, the camera constantly follows the ambassador. I'd change it so your game camera is focused on the in-world camera you are currently controlling. I'd even go as far as allow the player to lose the ambassador from their field of view (well, maybe leave something like an arrow pointing in the ambassador's direction). This would allow the player to scout ahead before leading their protectee to safety. Right now there are places where that is difficult - on the second level, after you evade the first guard and move upwards, you can't really see whats up ahead, and it's a straight corridor directly towards a guard. It's impossible to evade him when playing for the first time. After you've learned he's there, you know to hide behind the boxes and wait for him to pass. The first time I've played this, I hid there just to be sure, but the guard never came down (do I need to move far enough to trigger his movement, or was that just a bug?).

Overall it's a fantastic entry, I really wish there was more of it! It might be short, but I had a lot of fun playing it. ;)

DDoS is coming by Alexey Akulovich 2020-04-20T20:20:08Z

That's a very interesting idea! Using the services makes me feel almost like I'm playing some sort of reverse-Arkanoid. ;) Though I'm not very good at it, I think I'm slowly learning enough to survive longer each time.

There are, however, several bugs which I've found: 1. It's the same as @chloeofarroyo has already mentioned - after one game was complete and I started another run, it automatically started firing the throttling service until I was out of money (and as soon as I've earned 20$ it shot another one). After that game was done, I started another and the bug was gone. 2. I think your game remembers the game speed instead of resetting at the beginning of each round. I play for a while, I lose when the game becomes too fast for me to keep up, I click to start again and there it's super fast from the start. Refreshing the page resets the speed back to standard value. 3. I don't even know how that one happened, but one moment I was very low on cash and the game was running at a medium speed (I've played for maybe 20 seconds since the start), and suddenly the game sped up and all counters started to increase ridiculously quickly: ddos.png

Bugs notwithstanding, I liked it! Seems like a cool concept to expand on!

Ultimate Planet Habitat Support Tester 2020!! by mikouaji 2020-05-04T14:43:50Z

A very interesting game! It was fun watching each planet slowly evolve and see if it manages to survive.

My only problem was the game speed. It seems that the gameplay is linked to its framerate, so the more things the game has to calculate, the slower it goes. This means that depending on your choice of planet size the game will run differently.

The game said that a large planet could be heavy on my PC, but I actually found it run the best out of the four (maybe a little bit too slow). Medium planet seemed alright, but small one run way too fast for me to be able to influence anything, and the tiny one just flew past me and within a few seconds the game was over.

When it comes to gameplay, I guess giving the player more ways to influence the world would work wonders. I also wish there was a way to simply add a new species to the world without replacing an existing one. Maybe it'd be nice to be able to click a specific specimen to see its stats, like age and health.

All in all, it's a really great entry. I enjoyed it very much! ;)

Witching Hour by CaseyH 2020-04-26T08:11:08Z

A fun little game. I love the fact you've made the effort of having separate game levels to complete instead of just going "survive as long as you can". The graphics are nice, the sound is pleasant to the ear. One thing I'd change when it comes to gameplay is the hitbox size of the fireball - I felt like sometimes it damaged me even though it shouldn't. Other than that, everything is awesome. All attacks are well telegraphed, giving the player a good opportunity to react. Love it! ;)

It came from the sewers by Esben Jensen 2020-05-10T10:50:05Z

A nice concept! It could use more player feedback, right now it's difficult to "feel" anything, whether it's receiving damage or eating trees. It would be nice if the blob grew bigger the more trees it ate - it would make for an interesting difficulty progression. The dynamic map generation is nice. Overall I've enjoyed playing it. ;)

Keep The Spirit Stone Allive by Ausstein 2020-05-07T08:11:04Z

Impressive looking game! I like the overall theme of nature defending itself. Gameplay wise, it's a nice idea to combine an incremental game with a tower defense, it worked out really well.

Most of the issues I had with it you've already fixed in post-LD updates. There are, however, several still there:

#### Enemy units get stuck often, seemingly on nothing.

This one occured in one of earlier waves:

spiritStone1.png

And this one is the final wave. Almost all the units in this screen are not moving. Notice the units from the first screenshot are still there:

spiritStone4.png

#### The units spawned by wizards bug out horribly

When they're spawned they glitch in the ground for a moment, before being shot into the sky. They fall back down after a while, but they always fly back up with even greater speed.

Here you can see one just a second after being spawned, already flying off:

spiritStone3.png

#### HP bars are not visible through the trees

There's a snake behind that tree, but you can't tell, since its health bar is not visible.

spiritStone2.png

Also, overall the healthbars aren't really that visible to me. Might be due to my color blindness, but I also think they should be much bigger, not requiring you to fully zoom in to be able to see them. Also, perhaps showing them all the time isn't really necessary - just show them if a unit isn't fully healthy.

#### Plant and animal spawn location is (mostly) restricted to the area behind the stone

Most plants and animals spawn behind the stone, which causes some issues - the enemies can reach the stone without entering engagement range of your animals. Occasionally, a plant will spawn somewhere else (even on the other side of the river), but the animals are still tightly packed in one area.

Though it might seem like I'm overly critical, I really enjoyed this game. The idea itself is great, and the execution amazingly well done for such a short time. Nicely done! ;)

Keep The Spirit Stone Allive by Ausstein 2020-05-14T21:53:03Z

The post-LD version got some nice updates, I see. ;) The Terants no longer bounce, which is great. The NP generation info along with number of plants is great, I'd add similar info to your animals, showing how many of each type have spawned already. As for the creatures getting stuck...

natureDefense2.png

Still happens. :( Usually it starts happening a few waves in, several first waves move on through without a hitch. One time a group of spiders got stuck some distance from their spawn portal, but a few moments later one of my boars approached and started attacking them. When it got close enough, the stuck spiders started moving again.

Sometimes I've noticed the enemies look like they're following some invisible target moving around them. One of the later waves moved away from the portal a bit, then they all started turning towards the river like they were targeting something there. Moments later they were stuck in the ground.

Also, there seems to be a problem with UI layers. I've opened the settings menu when I had the nature tree menu open, and both menus glitched through each other:

natureDefense1.png

A simple change to sorting order of your canvases should fix that. ;)

Also, I think I've figured out one reason why your health bars are so difficult to see and read. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're scaling their width based on creature hitpoints - the more HP a creature has, the wider the health bar. It would be great to add some minimal width to all of them. You can see on the first screenshot those spiders have HP bars so thin they look like they were meant to go vertically (but they don't). The larger spawner spider has a little bit better bar, though it is still too small in my opinion.

One quality of life feature I'd like to see is to have the mouse scroll direction reversed. I'm used to having mouse scroll up mean going up and mouse scroll down mean going down. I get that it was probably supposed to imitate zoom, with scroll up zooming in and scroll down zooming out, but it's pretty disorienting at times. If you don't want to reverse it permanently in game, adding an option to reverse it in settings would be nice. ;)

It's great to see you're working on improving your game after LD is done. ;)

Keep The Spirit Stone Allive by Ausstein 2020-05-17T09:21:56Z

> Thank you again for the review!

You're welcome! ;)

> Actually I think changing the sorting order would not help since the canvas has to be in world space to allow for 3D elements. So the 3D objects actually stick out and are physically in front (Idk maybe there is a trick for this ). I think I will just close the nature tree whenever you open the options.

Yeah, you're probably right. I don't work with 3D in Unity often, so I didn't consider that possibility. Closing the nature tree will certainly work, and it isn't a bad solution. Since the player won't ever use more than one UI screen at a time, closing the currently open one when opening the settings will be fine.

If you wanted to keep it open, though, I had an idea that could potentially work. Have you considered using render textures to display your 3D models? With render textures you could display your models in a standard screen space canvas using a RawImage component. I don't know what the performance of that would be, but I think if you had a camera set to cull everything but those models before rendering, it shouldn't be that resource intensive.

As for the health bars: yeah, it's a problem that requires a lot of thought. One idea is to have health bars divided into smaller sections, e.g. have your health bars divided into boxes representing 10HP each. That way even if the health bars were exactly the same size, the player could see the rabbit health box had only three sections, while the dear had 10 of them. Or, have a mixed solution, where you're still scaling your health bars, but they have minimal and maximal sizes (probably depending on model size) and are divided into health boxes. You can then use color and/or transparency of these boxes to represent accurately how much of that box is damaged. Something like this:

https://emnh.github.io/rts-blog-screenshots/shots/health-bars.jpg

healthBarMockup.png

Either way, I hope you find a solution that satisfies you.

Desertification by hwaet 2020-05-06T10:31:25Z

A good idea for a puzzle game! I love the theme of growing the forest to fight the encroaching desert.

I see other people have already pointed out that the game doesn't really explain itself well. If you don't want to make detailed instructions or tutorials on everything, instead letting the player discover everything themselves, I think changing the end turn number display would work.

Right now, when you press End Turn you get a wall of numbers for a few seconds, without a chance to figure out what field did what change and why. I think you could separate that for each field type: first the player sees the effect the desert has on its neighbours, then the wells, then the plants. That way it would immediately tell the player the effect each field has on others.

All in all, it's a lovely game. The audiovisual side of the game is wonderful. The gameplay is solid. I enjoyed it. ;)

Boxes in space by DSF100 2020-04-30T13:02:18Z

A really good first entry! Great idea to try an Asteroids-like game with RTS controls! The simple graphics look well, the sounds - while a bit too harsh on my ears - give that old arcade feeling. The only thing missing is some simple fast music track playing in the background, I think it would do wonders for your game. Also, try implementing some sort of flocking algorithm for your squares, it might look really nice in here.

A solid LD game, well done! ;)

Save Dave by Kirbloid 2020-04-29T11:02:06Z

Holy crap, that has to be the weirdest combination of genres I've ever seen. And it works really well! One thing I wish it would take from games like Virtua Cop was marking the enemies when they appear on screen. Right now it's pretty easy to miss them, despite the audio cues. Other than that, I love the game. The artstyle is great, both sounds and music work well for the game. Well done!

The Pacifist by AlexFSmirnov 2020-05-09T19:30:09Z

A good idea. The unconscious bodies on the floor make it really difficult to defeat the remaining enemies in the area. If I was to change anything in this game, I'd increase the amount of damage done by all weapons - taking down even a single zombie using only pistol and fists feels like it's taking forever. I'd also give the player more incentive to not kill the zombies. Perhaps you could add something like money you'd receive for captured zombies after each wave and can spend on upgrades? All in all it's a really solid entry. I had fun playing it. ;)

Keep the station alive by ArturNista 2020-05-10T16:11:22Z

A simple yet fun game! Controls feel good, audiovisual assets are used very well, player feedback is mostly good. One thing I'd improve is to add better feedback on player getting damaged - maybe adding a little bit of camera shake, or temporarily blinking player sprite, or changing player sprite color for a short time. Overall, it's a great entry. I had fun playing it. ;)

Dave's Birthday Party by GoldenEvolution 2020-04-20T09:59:20Z

Great game, I had a fun time playing it. One thing I'd change is to increase the strength of your air gun a bit - right now I've either had no way of reacting to some dangers and lost pretty quickly, or I've played most of the game with the gun pointed downwards, constantly shooting to slow my descent. Other than that, a really solid and fun entry. :)

It Feasts On Gibs by Fezezen 2020-05-02T12:08:21Z

An interesting concept! Destroying those zombies feels really satisfying.

The only issue with the weapon I have is that it's projectiles are too small and almost invisible. It's difficult to judge the weapon's range because of that. Also, I think that the zombie attack is a bit too unforgiving - you can get into zombie attack range and immediately move out before their attack animation plays, but you will still get hurt.

Besides that, it's a really good entry. Nice job!

Chill Thrive by JDK2209 2020-05-10T21:18:48Z

It's a really chill experience! I love this game, the presentation is wonderful and the gameplay is satisfying.

There are two things I had issue with: - The air / CO2 mechanic. You say that I should drag it to generate wind, the faster the drag the stronger the wind. For me, if I drag it too fast it does nothing (or generates a very very weak breeze). I had to drag it quite quickly, but not too quick, usually dragging the windmill two or three times to generate a strong wind. I've played it on full screen, so it wasn't an issue of mouse leaving the game area. Not sure what the problem here is. - The growth takes a little bit too much time. On the first or second stage it's quite OK, but later on it gets a bit too long. I see that the progress bars get longer on each stage, but it really felt like their progress slowed down on higher levels of the lifecycle.

Overall, it's a wonderful entry. I enjoyed it very much. Well done! ;)

Xenov: Ascension by Alxertion 2020-05-04T14:25:39Z

A great looking TD game! The voxels and isometric view work really well for this one.

The gameplay is a little bit lacking, though. The enemies always come from the same direction, which kind of defeats the purpose of locating your main base in the center of a large city. It also gives you an easy way to earn more money than you could spend - just place those farms on the opposite end, and they'll never be threatened.

The city itself looks great. The flying cars were a nice addition to make the city feel a little bit alive. You could expand on that, making some of the lights on buildings turn on and off during the night. Perhaps adding very small cubes to simulate people walking would be a good idea, too.

The day/night cycle looked nice, I only wish the transition between the two was more gradual. All the colors suddenly changing made me feel a little bit confused. It also might be nice to actually use it as a game mechanic, making the enemies send different units during the night.

Overall it's a really nice entry. I had fun playing it. ;)

Body Guards by Hcursino 2020-04-20T09:20:36Z

Nicely done! I like the idea, we not only have to consider what to use to counter the enemies on the map, but also consider their placement carefully. One thing I don't like is that it's a bit too random - too often I find myself stuck with a group of larger enemies, with no cards or energy and really nothing to do but wait to die. As for the cards - I like the system, but their redraw animation is too complex to be informative. The player has to keep their eye on the game board, so the card respawn time should be immediately understandable. Perhaps leaving only the five colored drops lighting up one after another would be enough. The Gashapon is a nice addition. One thing I'd change about it it to balance it a bit better at the start. From my first run (I've reached level 3) I got enough coins to unlock all but 20 cards in the collection. I gotta say, though, I love the large selection of cards and units. Good job!

The King's Gun Guy by Leonardo Fraga 2020-05-09T14:20:53Z

A nice jam entry! I had fun trying to protect the old man from evil goblins.

I love the artstyle, and the sounds work quite well here. The gameplay could be a little bit more, explained, though. I thought I'd have to go around and explore the level to get the king what he needs, but there wasn't much to explore and I had to run back quickly to protect him from enemies spawning behind me.

I've played it several times and I've noticed several issues: - Every time I earn around 40k points the enemies stop spawning. The game doesn't end, there simply aren't more enemies to shoot. - When I'm in the upgrade menu, I can still control my character, or at the very least I can still shoot. - The weapon upgrades work well for the first 5 or 6 levels, after that the cost goes down to 0. I can upgrade weapons up to level 11, but anything above those first 5-6 don't seem to do anything. - In the weapon upgrade menu I can't see the entire tooltip on the rightmost upgrades - they go behind the edge of the screen.

I like very much that not only you had several different weapons, but also your upgrades changed how they work instead of just adding damage or speed. Though at later levels I couldn't decide between jblab and asdfas upgrades, at least I got the "I AM AWESOME" upgrade. ;)

All in all it's a solid jam entry. I've enjoyed playing it, I'll gladly check the updated post-LD version. ;)

It's Gonna Work by VirtualMan52 2020-05-11T07:18:57Z

A nice and funny game! Well done on adding a tutorial that explains every mechanic pretty well, it was very helpful. There are two things I'd change to make the game better.

First, the top and bottom chairs are too similar, they really need to be easily distinguishable on a first glance. During the tutorial, when it said I should go to the chair to control the laser wall, I first moved to the bottom one and I wondered why isn't it working. Perhaps replacing one of the chairs with something different (control cockpit?) would work well.

Second thing to change is the bottom chair - more often than not, it just gets in the way of me trying to move around quickly. I guess it could be moved farther from the portal to leave a passage through. That would make it much less frustrating.

Overall, I really liked your entry. Very nice game for such short compo time. I had fun playing it. ;)

Beeeees by Corporation 2020-04-21T07:54:30Z

Nicely done! As other have said before me, the balloon physics are great. Not only looking good, but also contributing to the gameplay itself. I'm not good enough to survive for long each time, so I probably haven't discovered most of what it has to offer. Did you add (or have you considered adding) powerups that temporarily modify balloon physics (like invert gravity so the baloon flows down instead of up, or maybe sideways, or reduce/increase balloon weight)?

Confluence by Dandala88 2020-05-09T20:41:11Z

A nice idea! I like the simplicity of the artstyle, perhaps changing the main computer to the same simple graphics would work better. Overall the game works fine, but I had a few issues with the gameplay: - Very often enemies spawned very near me, causing me to hit them fractions of a second after they spawn. I guess forbidding the spawn within some distance from the player would work well. - The level design isn't really interesting. Most of it is just long, straight corridors, forcing you to fly forward for a long time and think of something else to not get bored. In the lower section you made a slightly more interesting maze, but the fun of it goes away quickly because of the tight passages. You need to carefully maneuver through them, and since the controls aren't really precise, it makes for a frustrating experience.

Other than that, I liked the game. It's a pretty decent LD compo entry. The boss fight felt really good. All in all, I had fun playing it. ;)

Save the FOX! by Euforia Games 2020-05-02T07:43:19Z

Really nice game! I like the artstyle and the music. Two things made it problematic for me:

1. The branches should be more distinct from the background. Right now they look like background elements and it is pretty difficult to know where you can jump, especially when you're moving. Might just be my color blindness, but it made it really hard to judge my jumps. 2. The platforms are a bit too high for the player's jumping ability. To jump from one platform to a higher one you have to time your jumps perfectly, and the window you need to fit is really small. That makes it a frustrating experience of jumping multiple times to reach one platform, and usually you just end up falling all the way down.

Speaking of falling down, one suggestion I have is to add the ability to drop down from a platform. Press **`S`** or **`Down`** and your character drops down through the platform they're standing on. Without it the movement seems too limited.

Overall it's a great entry. I enjoyed playing it. ;)

The Last Flower by Unimaginable_Code_Studios 2020-05-08T06:39:10Z

A very well done platformer! The graphics look nice and clean, music and sound effects are pretty good.

I see that most of bugs and quirks have already been pointed out, and you have a plan to fix them. I'll add another one: in level 4 the rotating spikes are either a little bit too high or have too big colliders. It's really easy to touch them while standing on a theoretically safe platform. Not sure if that was a conscious decision or an accident, but I guess it could use some fine-tuning.

Overeall it's a really great game, especially for a first-time entry. I enjoyed playing it. :)

Stoke The Flame by indieaustin 2020-05-10T06:48:46Z

A nice compo entry! The graphics look really good. It could use some sounds and atmospheric music, but even without them it plays well. I've had a few issues, though: - The player moves too slow, it feels like I'm spending an eternity just moving towards the next enemy. - The radar could use a bit of work. Enemies are a bit too small, and the trees aren't shown at all. - There is a bug which causes the player shadow to slowly move away from the character, the more you move the further away it goes. After a while it looks like the character is floating mid-air:

stokeTheFlame.png

Other than that, it's a really solid game. I enjoyed playing it. ;)

Bugs And Glitches v1.0 by PeelyGames1019 2020-04-20T08:37:49Z

Nice entry. The graphics are good, but the animations make them look really great. Movement seems fluid enough to make this work nicely. ;)

One suggestion - when you're spawning things on the map (whether it is the hope tokens or the enemies), try not to spawn them at the player's current location. A couple of times a glitch spawned right where I was standing and I couldn't evade it. Also, the hope tokens sometimes spawn right on the edge of the screen, so only half of them is visible in the arena. Not really a big issue, but it looks a bit weird.

One bug I found - the game ends when the last enemy is spawned, you don't have to defeat it. ;)

KEEP IT ALIVE by yy404 2020-05-10T14:38:33Z

Congratulations on your first entry! It's pretty well done for your first game! If there is one thing I'd change, it's the camera location - currently, the perspective makes it difficult to see precisely where you're going. I'd also add a better explanation of game mechanics (like that vitality drops with time and you need to deploy mines before it drops to 0). Overall, it's a really good entry. Good job!

Keep Him Alive by Convg 2020-05-09T17:17:30Z

Well done on your entry! It's a pretty solid hack&slash for such a short time. If there's one thing I'd change about it, it would be to increase the time your character changes colour after being hit - right now it blinks so fast it's almost unnoticeable. I had fun playing it, now I'll check the post-LD version to see how much you've improved on it. Great job! ;)

Project Ark by TechnoGoth 2020-04-30T11:22:30Z

I loved it! I like the theme of trying to prepare for / escape from the coming disaster. The game is a little bit too easy - I was able to get the green ending on my first try, with the infection rate still around 2%.

One thing it definitely needs is to show how much resources you are earning each month. Without it it's difficult to judge how long you have to wait for resources for the specific ship part you need.

On another playthrough I've first researched the antimatter engine and installed it on the ship. A few months later when I got bored of just installing more habitats and solar panels, I added the conventional engine, thinking it would either do nothing or slightly improve my thrust value. Instead, my thrust dropped from 5.5 to 1, as if my ship is only using the conventional drive. I tested it further by researching other drives: installing the magnetic drive increased thrust to 1.7, installing the nuclear drive afterwards dropped it again to 1.2.

Other than those issues, the game is good. I guess it just needs more things to be a great one - more research, more types of parts, some type of events which could either benefit or harm your efforts, etc. It could definitely use some simple ambient music and button noises to make it feel complete. Speaking of audio, since the game has none, you should probably opt out of the "Audio" voting category.

All in all, great job! I enjoyed playing it. ;)

Peanut Butcher by Luca Pappalardo 2020-05-02T19:36:53Z

A fun (and funny!) little game. I really enjoyed it! ;)

The controls are good and responsive. If there's one thing I'd add it's some more information about the shooting. A lot of games in this jam lack autofire option, instead requiring the player to spam the "shoot" button. Seeing four separate shooting directions here, I expected the same, and played with frantic button mashing. You wouldn't believe the relief I felt when I accidentally discovered this game does have autofire. :)

Another accidental discovery was the ability to shoot diagonally by holding two arrows at the same time. It is intuitive, but not every game with four directions of shooting allows for diagonal shooting. Also, probably my surprise for the autofire played me here as well.

I had one bug-like issue with the gameplay: when I've completed a wave and a new one spawned, pretty often the small peanuts spawned very close to me, so I didn't have a chance to react. I felt pretty good about myself for completing another level, and suddenly two or three peanuts spawned like some sort of demons and jumped on me instantly. You could probably restrict the spawn to happen entirely off-screen.

Other than that, the game is wonderful. It could use a simple music track playing in the background, but even without it, it plays really well. I particularly enjoyed the idea of having your character slowly downgrade instead of upgrading.

Well done on your game. I had a lot of fun playing it. ;)

Apple Panick by peterfiftyfour 2020-04-26T07:06:30Z

A very nice game! I love the artstyle, simple and clean. :) The audio side in the game could be a little bit better. While the menu music and the creepy sounds around the edge of the map were great, the lack of music during the gameplay was very noticable.

As for the gameplay itself, I wish there was a better indication of your target. When holding a shovel it was difficult to dig new holes. I guess because I was too close to the existing ones, but some in-game indication would be nice. I'd also add some highlight to the currently targeted item, right now if there are two or more items close to each other I press E and pick up one of them seemingly at random. The watering indicator was a great idea, but it was a little bit too subtle (I've noticed it after two or three playthroughs).

Anyhow, I had fun playing your game. Good job! :)

The Battery by ilidanox 2020-04-20T10:27:52Z

Hey, congratulations on finishing your game! For your first LD attempt, this is amazing!

One thing I'd add to the light timer is some sort of warning - it can be pretty easy to miss when the progress bar starts ticking down. You can easily find yourself a long way from the light source with the lights already fading.

I've got one question about the light source and batteries - is there a maximum amount of power stored in there? If I keep throwing in more batteries do I get more time from all of them, or is it possible to have too much power (and thus waste batteries if more are thrown in)?

Catastrophe: Wildfire Firefighters by Kaappis 2020-05-10T20:54:44Z

This is probably the best game I've played this LD, how did I miss it for so long? ;)

The presentation is amazing. The whole thing is like a giant nostalgia trip, a love letter to the best games of old. At first, the overall look of the game made me remember hours spent on playing Capitalism back in the DOS era (or was it Win3.1 already?). Then I've heard the music and memories of games like the original Command&Conquer or KKND kicked in.

What's great about the game is that it doesn't really try to imitate any one old game, instead it focuses on delivering a great gameplay experience of its own. The theme of the game is great, I've always loved games where you had to prepare for or fight an already happening disaster.

One thing I didn't like about the gameplay is, same as for other commenters before me, the lack of feedback on skills and cooldowns. The bulldozer usually takes what feels like forever to dig one hex, it really needs to be visible how much longer it'll take. It's great that after using a skill its button on the skill bar gets disabled, but for some reason it resets after several seconds, even though the skill is still working. Many times I've tried using my firetruck, noticed it didn't work, then looked around and found the previously spawned firetruck wasn't finished yet.

Other than that, I loved this entry. I'm glad you'll be working on a full release, I really see a lot of potential in this one. Well done and thanks for a fun game to play! ;)

Treeblocks by mincho 2020-05-02T16:21:38Z

Well done, I like the idea here! The game can be a bit unforgiving, but it seems balanced enough, especially for a 48h compo game.

One thing I'd probably add is an option to clear a smaller area than just 3x3. Maybe adding an option to also clear a 2x2 square would work (though obviously it would need to be expensive enough to not be overused by the player).

All in all, I had fun playing it. A really nice entry! ;)

Akula by Ilya_Nazarov 2020-05-10T07:03:13Z

It's a nice game! I like the art style. The shark, fishes and birds, little islands, everything looks great. Also, the Moon Shark bug at the start is pretty hilarious. ;) There are some things I'd change, though: - The shark jumps way too much after a single key press. You press the key once and the shark jumps up half the screen. It makes it really difficult to control when there's nothing around. When you have to move between a sand hill and an island it's almost impossible. I'd reduce the amount of force used for the jumps by a large amount to give the player more control. - The shark slows down even if you don't hit anything. It makes you lose the game even if you are playing perfectly. I get that you wanted to make sure the player eats other animals instead of just swimming through without catching anything, but it doesn't really work here. I'd probably remove that completely. Give the player a small speed boost when they eat a fish or a seagull, but don't slow them down below the starting speed. - I think the shark mouth collider is a little bit too small. Sometimes I missed the fish I was sure I should get.

Overall it's a really solid compo entry. I very much enjoyed jumping the shark out of the water to catch the seagulls. ;)

Space Station Alpha by kjscott 2020-05-09T07:10:33Z

Great game! I love well-done pico-8 games, and this is definitely one of them. ;)

The game is pretty hard to understand at first, even with the instructions. As you play, however, you slowly learn and remember what each thing does, it gets a little bit easier every time.

I have one question about the gun - does it let you kill the enemies? I've shot one with all my bullets, but all it did was move it one space back.

All it all, it's a really fun game to play! I enjoyed it very much. ;)

CellForm by watswat5 2020-04-26T07:43:18Z

A good and interesting idea with great implementation of flocking. I loved the music, reminded me a bit of Pit People. Very fitting for a game like this.

One thing I'd change is the trigger range for the enemies. It is difficult to approach them horizontally without making the whole group swarm at you, but if you accidentally approach a group vertically, they'll trigger even before you can see them.

Oh, and a "skip tutorial" button wouldn't go amiss. It's great to have it the first couple of times, but later on it's just slows me down if I want to try the main level again.

All in all, a really solid entry. I had fun playing it. ;)

The Adventures of Eggbert by BattleCat 2020-05-01T19:43:20Z

Well done, it's a great platformer! The artstyle is pretty good and the music is just wonderful.

Reading through comments it seems everyone has already notified you about all the issues I had with the game and you are working on them, so I won't have much to add here. If there is one additional thing I'd change is to perhaps make the character move faster - right now it makes the game feel a little bit too slow.

A well done entry to the compo, great job!

The Fire Must Go On by Owinmowe 2020-05-02T08:44:55Z

Nice puzzle game! The graphics look good, the music is really great. There are three things I'd add to make it even better:

1. Checkpoint system. When you complete a generation, the game should save the progress. It's really disheartening when you beat a few levels, then get surprised by something new and have to go through all of the same levels again. 2. The level end square should work automatically. Make it so the player can enter the red tile, and when they do the level is completed. 3. There should be some better marking of dangerous tiles. Because of the 3D view it's sometimes difficult to see where the water balls actually are and where are they going to shoot. Light up the tiles underneath the enemies, so the player knows those are the dangerous tiles. Likewise, when the balls fire the water stream, light up the tiles underneath it.

All in all, it's a really solid entry. I enjoyed playing it! ;)

Hedgehog Survival by Vaanrile 2020-04-28T09:27:58Z

Great entry! I love both it's visuals and the sound/music, they work really well in this game. It could use a bit more variety. Right now it fells the same throughout the entire playthrough, making interest in keeping those hedgehogs alive fall down quickly. Perhaps slowly introducing over time more types of hedgehogs, with different movement speeds and patterns, or maybe adding a special car once in a while. Maybe a police car or an ambulance moving faster than normal cars? Telegraphing it with blinking lights would be enough to give the player warning.

All in all, I liked it. It's a simple entry, but a good one. I enjoyed playing it. ;)

tiriplici by Trexxak 2020-05-02T06:53:53Z

Great idea! I love a game where you must control two things helping each other. Having two playable characters with different abilities makes for interesting gameplay.

My only problem with it is the movement of the toaster. Not only it moves way too fast, making it really difficult to control, but also it's very easy to lose it off-screen. Most of the time I lost the game because I've accidentally moved the toaster beyond my line of sight and it died to something I couldn't see. I think restricting the toaster movement to visible area of the screen and slowing it down a little could do wonders for this game.

Well done on your entry! It's a fun concept, I liked playing it. ;)

Message by NoamRaz 2020-05-02T23:05:24Z

An interesting idea! I love the theme of playing an internet packet trying to reach its destination. The graphics look nice, and the sounds fit the game well.

My one problem with it is that the camera is much too close - it's difficult to see anything ahead. A couple of times I've ran straight into an enemy because I kept forgetting that was the platform they were on. I think it would be better if the player could see where they're going instead of having to remember the entire layout of the level.

All in all, it's a really solid entry and a well executed first game jam. Well done! ;)

Tree Defence by Hoyr 2020-04-28T09:56:00Z

A really nice entry! One thing I would change is the player weapon fire - it would be good to limit the fire rate. Right now you can fire as fast as you can click, which makes the player a bit overpowered, but also makes the gameplay a bit frustrating. Requiring the player to spam LMB as fast as possible doesn't feel good. You could add an auto attack, where the player only holds down LMB and the weapon will fire once every few hundred miliseconds. That would also enable you to add some form of powerup to the game, which could increase your weapon fire rate (either temporarily or permanently).

Other than that, I really liked it. Nice job!

Don't Forget To Water! by Thor Lucas 2020-04-20T08:16:39Z

Amazing game! I like that you've managed to put many levels and slowly introduce more puzzle mechanics as the player progresses. The art style is great. The music is maybe a bit short and repetitive, but it's catchy and fits the game nicely. One small UI addition I'd make - have the level number / name displayed somewhere on the screen. For now all I can say is I reached the one with two trees and cracked rocks between them and I'm stuck for the moment. But I will definitely play this again. ;)

Keep It Charged by LaZZyDev72 2020-05-07T06:50:41Z

Well done on your first game! It's really good! The graphics look nice and sleek, the light music loop in the background is pleasant to the ear. The battery pickup sound was probably a bit too loud, but that's not a big issue.

I guess my only real issue with your game is the transition animation. Those fade-in / fade-out animations are really too long. It feels like I'm waiting forever for the next level. Other than that it looks like you've fixed everything already in your post-LD version.

I liked the way you used the walls to place instructions for the player. The memes were a nice addition, too! ;)

Nice game, I had fun playing it.

The Little Ship That Could by gama-11 2020-05-09T14:28:56Z

A very difficult game! The controls take some getting use to, but once you do it's really satisfying when you pull off those dodge-rolls. The graphics look simple but clean, and that's most important for a bullet hell. Sound and music are both very good. I've enjoyed playing it, I'll probably go practice some more. ;)

Keep him alive! by Rens Jan 2020-04-21T08:25:55Z

Interesting idea! Since it's basically a 1v1 combat, I guess the camera could be much closer to your character then it is right now. I'd also probably make the attack range a little bit bigger, since often it looks like both me and the opponent should score a hit, yet neither of us lost any hit points.

One bug I found: if, after losing the game, you return to the main menu, the music player from the game scene remains active. Since the main menu has its own audio source active, you actually have two music players playing the same track at the same time. Actually, every time you click play and then return to main menu after losing, another music player is added. The music track is great, but it sounds better if I can hear it from only one source at a time. ;)

Also, you might want to edit your Itch.io game window size. Currently it is too narrow and some of the text is off-screen: keepHimAlive.png Pressing the fullscreen button added by Itch.io doesn't help here, but if you click on Unity fullscreen it works fine. Since you added Unity fullscreen button you might want to disable the Itch.io one.

Lone Cabin by Alex Chrome 2020-04-20T08:01:05Z

Great game, but I believe it is a bit too unforgiving, especially given the slow speed of the character. I'd also give the player a little bit more feedback on their actions. When you gather resources, you could add an icon popping up for a moment when the gathering is done.

The main problem for me was the food/water/warmth meters are not visible enough. They're tiny and attached to the draggable character, which further obfuscates information. I think placing them in a static location in your GUI would be much better.

Water the Flowers by Andrew Hoyer 2020-05-10T16:17:01Z

A nice little game! It looks peaceful, but it's actually quite dynamic. The art style is great, the music nice and calming. Overall I've enjoyed the experience. It looks like you guys had fun while creating it. Well done! ;)

Air for Inspiration by studiocurtis 2020-05-02T08:03:15Z

It's a really good concept! I liked it!

One thing that bothered me was the letter rotation. After I've pressed the button, the air usually stopped flowing before the letter managed to rotate towards the fire. It made the game feel too random. Perhaps instead of constantly rotating you could give the player full control over the letter rotation? Have them rotate in 90° intervals (clockwise when clicked with LMB, counterclockwise when clicked with RMB) and only randomly select from which direction the air will flow.

Oh, and you should probably edit the link in the description here - right now it's missing the "https://" part, so it's not actually turned into a hyperlink.

Harvest Season by singleshoe 2020-04-20T09:47:08Z

Nice and relaxing! It takes a while to figure out the rules, but it was a time well spent. I can see this being expanded into a really good game. As for the randomness, I agree with @SeriouslyCrunchy, it can be too unfair at times. Perhaps the plants shouldn't die instantly, but rather have something like hitpoints? Each turn without a water takes away a hitpoint, until the plant dies. When you harvest plant with fewer than max hitpoints, it gives you fewer points (or the other way around - harvesting fully healthy plants gives you a bonus).

Tear the damn tree down by Glox 2020-05-09T13:55:15Z

Amazing game! It's pretty difficult to survive, especially on later waves, but it's very satisfying.

The game is well done. The graphics are nice and clean, everything is visually distinct, making it instantly recognizable for what it is. The sounds and music are nice. That track playing in the background is very fitting for a hectic arena fight. ;)

I love that this game has so many features. Multiple enemy types and variations, several attacks, ugprades... This game has everything. Even a sort of day/night cycle, though I wish there was more happening during the night than just making everything harder to see. Maybe special enemy that appears only when it's dark?

As for the few issues I had: - I think the camera is a bit too close to the character. It makes the whole experience a little bit too hectic. - The game could give more information to the player. When using sprint or special attack when it's not ready, there could be a beeping sound informing the player they can't use that action yet. The sprint could use a recharge bar, too. - A bit more instructions would be nice. For example, you need 80 (or is it 100?) blood to use your special attack, but it's not explained anywhere in the game. - Sometimes the triggers on blood cubes didn't fire when I got close to them, so I could use my character to push them around instead of collecting them. Moving out of their range and back again seemed to fix it. - The corn planting mechanic doesn't seem to do that much now, I'd either ditch it and make the corns fall out of enemies, or expand it.

Overall, it's a very well done jam entry, I had a lot of fun playing it. Good job! ;)

Sourdough Starter Kit by Edearth 2020-04-28T09:03:26Z

I loved this idea from the moment I saw it. It took me a while, but after 32 days I've managed to bake some wonderful bread. :)

Three issues I had: 1. The physics of grabbing things aren't really working as expected. Even the slightest movement to the left or right makes the object rotate by a lot. In contrast, when the object rotates to the side it takes a really long time for it to fall back down due to gravity. 2. Sometimes, if you drop an object close to another, you can't pick it up alone again - their colliders glitch through each other and become connected, and the only way to separate them is to shake them violently (and lose most of your progress). 3. The "Menu" button visible when you finish the game is active at all times during the game - you can accidentally click on it while trying to pick up the flour. Try moving your mouse cursor to the bottom of the flour bag. The cursor will change and you will be able to click the button to move you back to the menu.

In summary, I really liked this game. I gotta say, there is something oddly satisfying about trying to gently shake the air our of that container. While I felt like I had to work against the physics instead of working with it, I really had fun playing it, more than I usually get out of this type of physics games. I've even managed to get my score down to 14 days after a few more playthroughs. I loved it, well done!

Micros by Kuiefs 2020-05-09T20:10:08Z

An interesting idea! Having multiple cells and switching between them was a great concept, and it's realized pretty well. The movement is a bit slow - it feels like it takes ages to move (and then even longer to stop), so most of the life cycle of the virus is spent on fighting the controls. Other than that, I really enjoyed playing it. Well done! ;)

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-06T07:36:34Z

@ZwodahS Thanks! In a post-jam update I'm going to add several difficulty levels to choose at the start, that should make it better.

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-06T07:38:10Z

@josh-roby Oh man, I'm sorry for that. I'll add WASD camera movement, but as that would be a new feature and not a bug fix, I feel like it would be against the rules to add now. It will have to wait for a post-jam update.

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-06T07:38:49Z

@UkuleleFury Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-07T08:15:41Z

@Dharby Thanks! I had plans to polish the graphics once I was done with the gameplay, but I ran out of time. I'm glad you like it. I guess there is something to be said for simplicity. ;)

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-07T08:21:57Z

@Lees-Pac Thanks! I'm going to be working on this one a bit more, there's a lot of things I had ideas for but didn't manage to implement in time.

At first I wanted to give a separate rally point for every factory, but eventually I've decided against it for the sake of simplicity. I guess I could bring this idea back, once I've improved the controls a bit. The workers are getting stuck because there is no pathfinding at all - I've put it on hold until I'd add some terrain obstacles. Now that I think about it, I think I should probably add some basic collision avoidance before that.

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-07T08:35:06Z

@nardandas A single factory can't really do much more that that. You should recover abandoned factory rovers to get more drone-producing factories. The first one is just behind the first enemy base to the east of your starting location. You can recover it by getting your drones or your vehicle close to it.

Also, the drones have limited lifespan, so in order to be able to destroy more enemy bases with your basic drones you will need to move your factories closer.

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-07T08:44:02Z

@FireSlash Thanks for your feedback! I think I'll increase the time bonus for destroying the first base to give the player a bit more time. That should do the trick.

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-07T12:07:41Z

@Eldelhas Thank you! I guess once I've expanded on this idea, I'll have to make a proper tutorial for it. ;)

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-07T12:08:16Z

@leo-red Thanks! You can left-click the vehicle to select it. Once it is selected, you right-click wherever you want to move it to.

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-08T10:10:16Z

@darthone Thanks! No worries, the updated version will have a more gentle difficulty curve. ;)

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-09T16:19:35Z

@Empty-Set Thank you! It was supposed to be a tug-of-war RTS, so the lack of direct unit control was intended. I guess by having only a single rally point instead of separate rally points for each factory was a mistake that dumbed the game down too much, I'm going to fix that in the post-jam version. I also wanted to have more factory and drone types (as well as bigger enemy variation), but I didn't manage to implement them in the jam time.

Edge of Victory by LCStark 2020-10-09T16:20:01Z

@Fearawl Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. ;)

Waves Industrial by Wolfier 2020-10-08T09:34:53Z

Damn, I've just stopped playing Factorio after several hundred hours of addiction, and now you give me this? :(

In all seriousness, really well done for a short jam game. My only problem with it was that it was so similar to Factorio I've constantly found myself irritated because "R" doesn't rotate and "Q" doesn't cancel selection. This isn't really a serious issue, though, I'm sure if the game was expanded on and I'd play more of it, I'd get used to its control scheme.

I've also played the post-jam version. The folding left/right menu were a great addition. In the jam version I found myself stuck in the right-hand menu because I accidentally switched to it and didn't know how to get back. The post-jam version not only shows you the hotkey you need to press, but also displays a clearly visible switching animation instead of a slight glow you can miss when you don't know what you're doing.

Space Loop by IndivisibleParticles 2020-10-08T10:16:56Z

Nice little game! It looks simple, but predicting whether you hit something or not is much more difficult when you're moving in a loop. There's quite a few ways this could be expanded on - more types of objects appearing after several loops, objects moving on decaying orbits instead of straight into the black hole, the black hole itself expanding when consuming other matter...

Overall it's a great first jam entry. Well done! ;)

The Unstable Zone by Zarkonnen 2021-10-06T10:15:34Z

A fun "Choose your own adventure" type of game. So far I've discovered one good and one bad ending, but it got me hooked to try out more options. I like the narrative of exploring the unknown, with some hints of eldritch horror. The changed UI during the memory/vision was a nice idea, I think this could be a great way to expand on this concept.

Angry Girl Wants Buns by almost 2021-10-21T10:57:56Z

A cute little puzzle platformer! The controls are a little bit too difficult for my taste, especially on mood changes, but I guess that was by design.

SEXY BOOBY 95 by silkworm_sweatshop 2021-10-05T11:43:24Z

It may be "an abomination", but it's the best abomination I've played this LD.

Garbostackers by Runuchok 2021-10-05T14:04:22Z

Interesting and nice looking game! The gameplay is simple and you can immediately understand what you have to do. One problem I found was that the "How to play" button in the game doesn't work, but since the instructions are here on LDJam page it wasn't a big issue.

Unstable Rescue by RustyRobotGames 2021-10-04T21:31:34Z

Fantastic game! I loved World of Goo and to see it recreated in such a short time is just great. Especially given the fact it looks so beautiful. Really good graphics and well working physics. Great job!

Space Scavenging by namnam 2021-10-21T11:36:15Z

Wow, that was fun! I expected yet another box stacking game, but the jump-chaining mechanic made it a really dynamic and action-packed game. I loved jumping from one box to another, using boxes to shoot other boxes from the sky and gain multiple points in one shot.

One thing I think could work well here is to give the player a bit more targeting control. Right now, targeting is highly dependent on your movement direction, distance to the center of the box and movement speed. The speed alone makes it difficult to target quickly enough, but the turning rate also changes based on your distance from the center of the box, which sometimes makes it way too difficult. Most of the time I've abandoned even attempting to get a box near my ship, just using it as a bounce-off point to get to the next one.

The exploding boxes were a nice idea. First time I just thought it was a different kind of box, maybe worth more points, so I managed to place it right in the center of a nice pile of 10 basic boxes. When it exploded and I realized what I've done I was both angry and impressed. :P Maybe they could also be used in a different way - if they exploded a couple of seconds after being hit by the player, they could use it to shoot down whole groups of boxes in a vaguely uniform direction.

Overall, it's a really good entry. Good mechanics, nice audio-visual feedback and fun gameplay.

Unstable Landing by schwede 2021-10-05T19:49:30Z

Fun little game! It's been a while since I've played Lunar Lander style game, and it felt great playing it. I've managed to land at my second attempt with 65% fuel left and got it up to 70% on third. I think I'll try it a couple more times to get it at least to 80%. ;)

The Headless Horseman by datadazer 2021-10-21T11:11:15Z

Lovely little runner game! I love the artstyle and music, the pixelart animations look really fantastic here (I especially like the horse's run cycle ;) ). The Halloween theme is nice, I loved the pumpkins falling out of the sky. One thing I'm not so keen on is the size of the game - when you start the game, with the horseman near the right edge of the screen, there isn't a lot of time to dodge the pumpkins. It actually gets better and easier after a few collisions, and even though the game speeds up, I felt like it was easier later on. A bit more room on the horizontal axis might do wonders here. ;) All in all, great jam entry. There's a lot of ways this can be expanded upon, like adding more obstacle types, and maybe some pickups that allow you to "speed up" for a while and gain more distance on the reaper. I hope you'll keep working on this one, it's worth it. Well done!

SCANLINE by pdotjpg 2021-10-05T19:23:30Z

A fantastic take on the Sokoban! The scanline mechanic makes it really interesting and I don't even know how many levels I went through before stopping.

One bug I found - in this image on your Itch page you can see how the door is working when the box is phasing in and out: [SCANLINE gif](https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMTIyMDk5MC83MTIyNTkxLmdpZg==/original/jLzn%2FH.gif)

For me it seemed like the phasing box wasn't detected at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw01UFJBBAI

Other than that one issue, I loved this game. The aesthetic is just great, the game plays smoothly and the level/puzzle design is amazing. Well done!

Orbital Turbulence by Bewelge 2021-10-04T21:10:21Z

Nice idea and execution! I wanted to do something with orbital mechanics, but couldn't figure out a good and fun way to implement that. Your game both looks and plays great. The orbit projection when you place planets works really well. One of the better ideas is the speed-up slider at the end of the level, so you can see quickly if your solution would last long or fall apart immediately after. ;)

ENTROPY by egawag 2021-10-21T14:06:58Z

The game looks and feels great! At first I wasn't a fan of limited time for the grapple, but I've learned to love it. It kinda made me feel like Spiderman, jumping from one cube to another, never stopping. It also added to the mood of the game, as it never lets you to just sit in one place, forcing you to keep going. The one thing I'm not fond on is the mouse lock, it just makes targeting blocks too difficult for no valid reason. There's enough difficulty with trying to judge distance and hitting blocks before they move away from you. And I have to say, when a block runs away just before you've grappled to it and you don't find another one, seeing all those blocks run away from you as you fall down to the beginning, it just makes me want to keep trying. Well done!

UnBalancer by grizeldi 2021-10-05T10:15:01Z

A fun physics-based puzzle platformer. Somehow I've managed to complete all 5 levels.

The only problem I had with it was in level 5, where I wanted to use the white peg to hold the long piece when I placed more blocks on top of it. Due to the perspective and the camera position it was difficult to judge whether it would work, and placing the blocks at a correct position proved to be rather challenging. If you wanted to make more levels, I think adding some form of camera control to prevent those issues would be a good idea. Since all blocks are placed on a single plane, I guess giving the player ability to move the camera up and down would be sufficient.

I really liked the idea of level 4. I doubt it's the only possible solution, but I managed to complete it by making two separate stacks on the pegs and carefully collapsing them on each other so they remained stable. That looked and felt fun to do. ;)

Solar Colonies by Fenderbate 2021-10-05T08:28:40Z

This is the best one I've played to far! I love the concept of terraforming planets as a gameplay mechanic, and having an entire planetary system to terraform with shared resources works really well. I can see this be fleshed out into a really great management / colony builder game. The planets visually changing depending on their condition makes you believe you really are turning lifeless rocks into livable worlds.

Apocalypse Run by LCStark 2021-10-05T16:59:58Z

@pdotjpg Thank you for playing!

- autofire might be a good thing to add, thanks for the suggestion. - the gun turns instantly, it's a problem with low speed of bullets; I planned to add power-ups increasing that speed, but that was left out because of the deadline. I guess the initial speed is too low for a game without upgrades. - I plan to add difficulty level selector at the start, that should help with this issue.

Thanks for your feedback!

Apocalypse Run by LCStark 2021-10-21T13:05:56Z

@necauqua Haha, thanks! I've never really liked bloom in games, but since I've started playing with with it myself, it grew on me. I've probably overdone it a bit here, but it is an ongoing learning process. ;)

Mint by Préda 2021-10-05T07:31:47Z

Fun game! The graphics and music work well together to create the atmosphere of mystery and danger.

Stack Up by Barney25052 2021-10-21T11:19:52Z

Wonderful artstyle! One thing I think would work great here is giving player a bit more control, like perhaps separating player movement from the block dispenser. I loved the fact you've predicted players would get themselves stuck under falling blocks and added a remove powerup in such situations. ;)

Celestial Heights by shp 2021-10-05T20:05:15Z

Really fun platformer! This is an example of grappling hook mechanic implemented almost perfectly. It took me a moment to get a grip on how it works, but once I did, I felt like a crossover between Spiderman and Bob the Builder.

One problem I had with the game was that it's pretty difficult to get on top of platforms. That isn't a problem through most of the level, but once you reach the top layer with your lunch, it could be really tricky.

Other than that, I absolutely loved it. Also, the WebGL build didn't seem to have any issue for me, everything worked perfectly. 😀

Plains In The Sky by TevasLiutauras 2021-10-06T09:58:03Z

Really fun puzzle game. There's a bit too much trial and error involved in the aiming process, but it doesn't change the fact I did sit there and try to solve puzzle after puzzle. The aesthetic side is great - the game looks beautiful and the light music in the background sets up the mood without disrupting your focus. The concept of "snakes on plains" is funny, as are the level names, but the humour isn't overused.

I found one small bug: on the title screen you can left-click the play button really fast to skip a large amount of levels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63g-CZ4i1Mw It didn't stop me from enjoying the game, though, so it's not a big deal.

Overall, it's a really well done compo entry. Good job!

Pigs by HowlingShame 2021-10-21T15:19:36Z

Fun and cute game... At least it's cute until your pigs all explode! ;) The artstyle is fantastic. The music and sounds seem well fitting for the game. One thing I have issue with is that due to the perspective it's sometimes difficult to put the pigs in pens, and instead they fall outside the fence. Other than that, it's a really great compo entry. Oh, and apparently I am now a Great Pig Psychologist. I think I will print myself a diploma. ;)

🕷💩Poopy Parker💩🕷 by TheJunt 2021-10-21T15:41:25Z

Hahaha. ;) The very idea had me laughing out loud, playing the game made it even worse. The physics of the game made me constantly launch myself away from the level, but that made me laugh even louder. I've almost completed the third chapter, then fell down. Tried to do it again, but then I encountered a bug in which I was unable to detach myself from a pigeon, which is a sentence I never thought I'd write. I think I'll try that one again, thanks for the very fun entry. ;)

Dominion by Shootboots 2021-10-21T15:11:24Z

A fun and interesting game! I love tug of war games, so I loved this one immediately. It has some control issues, but once you get past that it's amazing. The artstyle is great, everything has nice audiovisual feedback. It's fanstastic already, I hope you keep working on it, as it has a lot of potential. Well done!

Love will Prevail by lesinvisible 2021-10-21T10:45:43Z

A very beautiful-looking game with an unsettling atmosphere. As others have previously mentioned, it could use a bit more player feedback. For example, quite often I didn't know why I could only perform one action per day, and sometimes I could take two (like paint and write in the journal). The story text didn't help here, as sometimes it said "it's like I still have a grip" or "I am exhausted", and in both these cases I couldn't do anything else other than start the next day. Feedback issues aside, the game is very immersive. I love the way the canvas and paintings were incorporated into the game. Were the paintings completely random, or do they depend on the changing values of paranoia, guilt, etc.?

Mission Control by PetTurtle 2021-10-21T14:49:14Z

Really impresive game for a compo entry! It looks amazing, and the gameplay is great. It might be a bit too difficult, though I'll probably try to beat it a couple more times after the voting is done. It might be a good idea to add varying difficulty levels, with the easier one having the Earth station cover the entire 360 degrees around the planet. I figured out I can set up my own relay network around the Earth, but that just feels like a chore detracting me from the fun gameplay. I liked the addition of randomly appearing satellites, though, they helped a bit a couple of times.

Chaos Theory by necauqua 2021-10-21T13:20:27Z

Making a puzzle game out of chaos theory? Why not! There is something zen-like about watching those shapes appear on screen. It was a great idea to add a soft-reset, but leave the previously drawn path on screen.

Sanity Check by BinaryPrinciple 2021-10-21T12:08:45Z

A quite difficult platformer! I was thankful you only needed to keep one emotion to not lose, otherwise I'd be in big trouble starting at level 2. ;) The controls are a bit too floaty - quite often I found myself trying to double-jump to a higher level, but got stuck because I hit the edge of a platform. I loved the random thoughts in bubbles, though due to the hectic gameplay I usually couldn't focus on them for too long. ;)

Magmanimal Island by Battlerager 2021-10-05T10:39:58Z

It takes a few moments to get used to all the rules and figure out how everything works, but once you do it's pretty fun. I like the idea of having to balance happiness of all factions, and citizen requests are a great mechanic. One thing I'd like to see added is the ability to speed up time - quite often I found myself without any cards to play and I had to wait until the timer ticked to the next month. All in all, it's a fun entry, well done!

Corovans by korolles 2021-10-05T21:16:24Z

I've wandered around the desert for a few hours, I bought Skyroom for my cows to play, I wandered some more, then I bought some cheap love to sell to some poor soul. It was fun! At least until the bandits chopped my head off to see what's inside.

As others mentioned before - if you continue working on it, it could probably use some sort of time warp or "wait until the next encounter" button. Other than that, there's a lot of room to expand on this idea and make it into something like Oregon Trail, only with more desert Bitcoin. 😁

Rocket C h a o s by Juanv 2021-10-21T13:41:13Z

A really nice take on Asteroids! The artstyle is great and the music is fantastic. The controls have a few issues, though. For one, they appear to be quite unresponsive, like the spaceship had a lot of inertia. Second issue is kinda related to inertia, too - if the spaceship collides with an asteroid, it starts spinning and never stops. Like after getting hit it keeps that rotational momentum forever, even if you move and turn around manually. The shooting also could use a few changes, like giving allowing the player to hold the spacebar instead of having to hit it each time they want to shoot. All those issues together made it so the best way to play for me was to stay in one place and spam the spacebar as fast as I could, only rotating to spray the entire game area with bullets. Fix those couple of things, and you have a really nice base game to expand upon, with more asteroid types, upgrades, maybe even some enemies? The possibilities are endless. Well done on your jam entry!

Bob's Underworld by chesschaser 2021-10-04T15:10:32Z

Nice entry! I've only managed to get to about 130m (for now!), but there's a huge variety of obstacles on the way so far.

The music track is short and simple, but that's perfect for this type of game, as it does not distract you from your attempts to go further and further up. The pixel art is looking pretty good.

One thing I had a problem with is related to the falling square stones. At first, I thought they were just appearing randomly. Then I've noticed the shaking/rumbling is telegraphing them, but it happened much too early for me to connect the two together. Only after my third or fourth playthrough I've noticed there's actually something telegraphing the location where the stones will fall, but to me it is barely visible. I've recorded some footage and after a few minutes I think I found out what the problem is: bobsUnderworld_1.png

The small rocks are displayed behind background elements, so they're barely ever visible. Fortunately, I think it should be easy to fix by setting a higher order in layer on the sprite renderer.

Other than that, I think it's a pretty solid entry. Reminded me of a few old Flash games I used to play. Well done!

Unstable Society by Glaikunt 2021-10-21T10:27:11Z

I like the interpretation of the theme. It feels like I'm playing a hack&slash or a top-down shooter, but instead of actual combat I'm calming people down. There's three things I think this game could use:

1. Some explanation of game mechanics at the start would be nice. It's pretty easy to figure it out on your own in a minute or two, but a quick instruction screen would allow the players to immediately engage without that trial and error. 2. A more precise indication of each person's stability. The random movement of everyone makes it difficult enough to complete each level, knowing how stable everyone is could give the player enough information to actually make a proper decision instead of just randomly encountering closest people until you are done. 3. I often found myself in a situation when two or three people were close enough to each other so when I approached to talk to one of them, the game force locked me in a conversation with the other. When encountering two unstable people that's fine, but often I approached two people, one of which was stable and the other wasn't. Instead of talking to the unstable one, the game locked me on the already stabilized one. This might just be a controls issue, but I think it would be better if conversations with already stable people were disabled - no need to interact with elements already fixed (as long as they remain fixed).

I didn't finish the final level. Best I could do is to stabilize both tin-foil hats before one of them approached an angry person and destabilized again. I liked the overall idea, and the tixerb theme was a funny idea. Well done!

Reactor by RefraX295 2021-10-21T14:27:20Z

A nice physics-based puzzle game! Nice job on introducing more mechanics as you play, and on having a good tutorial help as well. Two minor issues I have with it is that you have to wait for the animation to finish before you can play again, and also that you can't quit the game and have to kill the process instead. But those are small things that don't detract from having fun solving the puzzles. Good work!

Going Home by lb01 2021-10-04T10:59:10Z

I got back home! ;)

The game looks beautiful. It's a great example of what good lighting can do for you. Also, I think because of the way the map is shaped, it felt like the sun was quickly setting as I was moving towards the palace. That has given the game really great vibe.

I also loved the use of footprints instead of full models. It's simple and clean, different types of footprints allow for many types of enemies and give the imagination something to smile about.

Also, thanks for putting the first oasis so close to the starting point. Many games love to make the slow walk sections ridiculously overstretched. Here the one at the start is pretty short, but it gives the player a good idea of what will happen if they don't keep their stability at a good enough level.

Two things I found could be improved: 1. I think giving the player some camera control might be a good idea. I didn't get lost or stuck, but I did bump into walls a few times. The camera angle gives the game a kind of cinematic feeling, but I think allowing the player to at least rotate it to explore the world on their own would be good. 2. I found the darkest parts of the map a bit too dark. Perhaps an option to slightly modify the ambient lighting intensity could help with that.

All in all, it was a fun game for me to play. Well done!

Super Stable Charger Robot by caudatecoder 2021-10-21T12:37:22Z

A fun puzzle game. The aesthetic side is great, the game both looks and sounds like one of the classics. The round robot character made me think of Supaplex, though it turned out to be a totally different kind of puzzler.

The random nature of malfunctions can make the game impossible to complete. In the second level, there's an area where there are three platform levels, each one with the connector obstacle. When the microphone malfunctions, there's no way of telling if they are safe to pass or not, so I had to just wait until the mic fixed itself.

Another problem with that area is related to the same location. I got stuck on it for quite a while, because no matter where I was standing, I could hear the sound from more than one connector, which made it difficult to know when to move on through. Eventually I've managed to get through it by moving the camera away, but it didn't feel like it was the intended way to solve this puzzle. And immediately after that I got a series of doors which all needed to be charged to open, so I dashed through it afraid my charging system would malfunction in the middle and force me to wait again.

Overall, I really liked the concept. Given more time to design more levels with more types of traps, it can become a very good puzzle game. For now though, it's a very good LD compo entry. Well done!

Alien Disco by Ludokultur 2021-10-05T21:05:48Z

A fun little game! I always love PICO-8 games, and this one is not an exception. It has this nice layer of strategy where you have to consider your options and decide which one is best at that very second. A lot of times I found myself wanting to go for a stamina bar, but there was the right kind of light in the opposite direction. Having to wage when it's right to risk it makes the gameplay feel tense. The background music is also really fitting. Well done!

LD50 Of Drones by M2tias 2022-04-21T07:40:07Z

Well executed shooter! I had fun running around destroying those drones, but they always seem to inevitably reach the lethal dose. There's nice enemy and pickup variety. Thanks for making the left mouse button work on hold - a lot of times compo games force you to click like crazy without any reason. The movement works pretty well, though I think it could be improved. Perhaps by making the player a bit faster, but giving them some inertia? Also, health bars on damaged enemies would help to see how much difference damage powerups really do, especially when the larger enemies start showing up.

Oh, and I love the music! ;)

Decisive Battle by Erkberg 2022-04-06T18:49:36Z

A fun little game! I like this idea of going through a series of opponents, having to learn how they work to deafeat them. Even better was the idea that you could defeat them without killing them!

It was nice that enemy attacks were telegraphed, but for some reason, starting with the second enemy, they sometimes telegraphed an attack and then performed two or three attacks without warning. It would also be great to have different types of attack telegraphed differently, so you can know what to expect. Since the enemies don't seem to follow an exact pattern it would be useful to have this bit of warning.

It's a shame there's no sound effects, but I get that it's tough to fit it all in just 48h. The music is great, though, creates a really nice sombre atmosphere.

I'm glad you plan on making a post-LD version, I look forward to playing it!

Belecint by unpronounceable 2022-04-21T10:24:24Z

A fun little game! Simple game mechanics, easy to understand from the get-go, and the game starts you off easily, so you have time to get the feel of it. Nicely done!

Others have already said a lot of good things about your sound use, and I have to agree with them - it worked out very well! I'm kinda the same way about music making, and only recently I've started to read up on music theory. Your explanation on how you made it work sounds interesting, it gives me inspiration to do some musical experiments of my own.

Inevitable Cubes by schwede 2022-04-19T20:08:29Z

Interesting idea! Makes for a simple but enjoyable gameplay. All the mechanics are easily understood, and if they didn't the tutorial certainly would help. Nice idea with putting the menu / tutorial on a cube, it looks great!

I've managed to get to 02:30 so far, I think I need a couple more tries to get to the average score. ;)

Solar Death by simex 2022-04-19T19:33:19Z

Fantastic game! It looks stunningly beautiful, and the gameplay got me hooked immediately. I love just being able to zoom out at the start of the game and watch the planets dance in a "calm before the storm" fashion. Then the real game begins and I can put all those skills gained from hours of Kerbal Space Program to a good use.

Having the ability to destroy or change orbits of all the objects in the system was a great move. To be honest, I've had more fun trying to blow up all the planets myself, rather than try to protect the Earth. ;) I think at some point I've managed to somehow run the Moon into Earth and kill half its population, though I'm not yet sure how. I love that bigger bodies don't get destroyed immediately, but instead get shattered and multiple smaller pieces can fly off into their own orbits. Another fun thing was discovering I can get killed by my own missiles I fired earlier, and that I can protect myself from that by destroying missiles with more missiles. :D

One thing that bugged me - when targeting the missiles, if their projected course intersects with another object's orbit, the other orbit "lights up" to show the interception, but it does so in a pretty wide range. Most of the time, what I think should hit (because the game told me so) just turns out a near miss. Perhaps it would be a good idea to keep the current range, but also mark the other orbit in different color when you get it "just right", so it's easier to target.

Keeper of Colors by Lazzor 2022-04-13T16:04:17Z

I'm loving this concept. Making the empty world feel alive again is great. I liked how the music changes depending on the biome. I hope you keep working on it past LD jam, I'd love to see how you expand on that idea.

Fuse Lit! by pdotjpg 2022-04-19T18:01:49Z

A fun little puzzle game! The basic mechanics are pretty easily deduced after a few tries, which makes for intuitive gameplay. One thing I struggled for longer than I care to admit is the exact rules for fuse pushing. I think the "needs free space to the left and right sides" rule could be somehow explained, or better yet - give the player some feedback what happened when the fuse didn't move as expected. Overall, I had fun playing it. Solving these puzzles made me feel pretty good about myself, especially the penultimate level (which I got stuck on for a while).

I found one bug with fuse pushing. It happened to me in level 3 and the final one, but I think it's related to how you detect if the segment can be pushed, so would happen in any other levels if there's space to do it. If the end of the fuse is next to another segment, instead of lighting it up the end segment gets pushed and the fuse gets disconnected into separate pieces (see the video after 01:05). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCogTkYNEgQ It doesn't break the game, though, as you can light the fuse by standing on the second segment and it works as expected (other than the flame continuing through disconnected segments, but that was fun to watch ;) ).

Do Your Job! by Thomas Higgins 2022-04-06T20:45:24Z

No, I was too slow and got fired! It captures the spirit of working in customer service perfectly. After a short time I've started to hate all customers (the left one was the worst), I've learned how to optimize my work time (if you stand in the perfect spot, you can grab two coffees at the same time!) and decided that I probably didn't really need any food, water or sleep anyway.

The game (and gameplay) is pretty self-explanatory, but it could probably use a few icons here and there to help people understand it better and at a first glance. It could probably also use a "Quit" button, so we don't have to kill the process to exit the game. ;)

Binner Lady by PoshDan 2022-04-13T14:28:22Z

A fun little game! The physics of the truck (and other cars) is sometimes a little bit too wonky, though I think balancing that properly is a bit too time consuming for the jam timeframe. I'd love to see it improved after the jam voting is done. ;)

This feels like it could be a really fun physics based game. I'd work on reducing the amount of wasted time to give the player maximum gameplay fun - remove or drastically reduce the reset timer, give the truck better acceleration, etc. I'd also probably reduce the braking strength a bit. Right now it feels like the truck takes ages to get to decent speed, but then it stops almost immediately.

Oh, and I almost forgot - the music is banging! ;)

I'll buy us some time by Lex 2022-04-21T06:17:12Z

A really fun compo entry! The gameplay is simple and immediately understandable. You've got different types of enemies and multiple weapons to defeat them with, which is great. It could perhaps use some more warning about when each enemy will attack. I love this concept, it gave me some ideas for using a similar combat system in a strategy game. Some music would be nice, but the sound effects were really good. ;)

The Great Horde by LCStark 2022-04-06T20:25:44Z

@thomas-higgins Thanks! Yeah, I guess there isn't much point to move far from the castle. I have a few ideas about that, so there might be a post-LD version coming. ;) I agree on the single movement part, I'll have to figure out a nice way of dealing with that to make it less tedious.

The Great Horde by LCStark 2022-04-06T20:28:23Z

@sagiii Hey! Thanks for playing! I agree, in hindsight I should have ramped up enemy spawning much earlier to reduce the waiting by a lot. And I didn't spend a lot of time on the stats, I left them like this because I thought I'd add a fullscreen mode, but kinda forgot about it in the end. :|

The Great Horde by LCStark 2022-04-06T20:29:31Z

@stamestratagem Thanks! I'll probably figure out a way to scale up the enemy UI when you hover on them, that should help with this problem. ;)

The Great Horde by LCStark 2022-04-06T20:30:34Z

@erkberg Thanks! No worries, I look forward to watching you play more LD games. ;)

Ludare OS by foxwater 2022-04-13T16:57:46Z

Amazing game! It takes a few moments to wrap your head around it, but once I understood what to do, I was hooked. Kinda wish I had a GameBoy to play this on, as I think it would feel much more natural (and possibly easier?) to play. A good idea executed well, and the audiovisuals are simply stunning. Well done!

I.P.A.D by JGUR 2022-04-04T17:19:00Z

Nice take on Missile-Command-type game. Seeing those rocks blasted from the sky was very satisfying. It's a simple idea, but one that works really well and can be easily expanded upon, with more turret types, upgrades and perhaps special asteroid threats. Well done!

The Eyes Upon The Earth by N.O. Games 2022-04-13T15:03:48Z

Ooh, that's a nice one! Nice movement / shooting mechanics, amazing enemy variety and really polished audiovisuals. One thing I'd change is to reduce the camera shake a bit, and maybe also reduce the camera deadzone / drag. Good job on slowly introducing more enemy types as the game progresses!

Mighty Crossroad by hmightypirate 2022-04-21T06:55:47Z

A fun puzzler! Moving car intersections as a mechanic is always a fun idea. This one was a little confusing at first, especially given the short time you have before the tile is placed automatically, but after one or two playthroughs it becomes easy enough.

I've managed to get a car stuck in a roundabout. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugLrmRuBx7Q

That's gotta be a high score:

mc1.png

Faces of the Beast by stamestratagem 2022-04-06T21:08:20Z

A nice and enjoyable game! I think I did pretty good here: https://i.imgur.com/2aTGtAQ.png It probably helped that I saw this played on stream before, but still... ;)

I love the way it slowly ramps up the difficulty, first by making the faces more and more complex, then by introducing non-faces and familiar looking images to throw you off.

And for a game about a beast trying to literally steal your face, the art style is really cute. I also really like the background music, though it makes me feel more like it's a friendly game evening rather than me fighting for my survival. ;)

Gladiwaitor by Lone_Wolf 2022-04-06T19:34:41Z

Really nice combat system! Took me a moment to get into it, but once you get into the proper rhythm it becomes quite enjoyable. The "talk your enemy into attacking you" part was an interesting addition. One thing I'd change there is to make sure each enemy has a different reaction than the previous one - when I had to call my second opponent stupid I thought that this is always the case and all enemies act the same.

A Halting Problem by Honey Pony 2022-04-06T19:19:28Z

I always enjoy a nice command set programming game, and this one was no exception.

The drag&drop system was intuitive and worked well, for the most part. I think its drop zones could use a bit of adjusting. I had some troubles with moving an instruction to the very end or with placing an instruction in a proper place in a repeat block. I think it didn't detect the drop area properly and just left the instruction where I picked it up from.

I haven't finished it yet (I've gone through something like 10 puzzles), but I will definitely return to it later. ;)

Encroaching Void by Phil C 2022-04-13T14:47:13Z

Impressive compo entry! Others have already mentioned the auto-fire thing, so there's not much more for me to add here. One thing I'd change is to make the difficulty ramp up much faster, but I guess that's just personal preference. The music track might be short, but it's really nice. Shooting mechanics work pretty well, and the void / blessing mechanic is a really fun idea.

Macler by Teun de Vries 2022-04-06T15:54:59Z

Got to 380 seconds, and there were no more items to use. The game could use some more player feedback, maybe better explanation on each item what is it good for. I really enjoyed your music!

Oh No My Trophy by zimny11 2022-04-13T16:21:04Z

A great compo entry! The enemy variety is a bit overwhelming at first, but after a few tries it becomes much easier. As others have said before me, it could use some more work on the target hit feedback. Other than that, it's a really solid game. And I have to applaud your choice of traditional weaponry in dealing with intruders. ;) onmt.png

Delay The Invasion by Dannyk1994 2022-04-19T18:20:10Z

Ah, yes, the classic Monsters vs Vegetables. ;)

It's a pretty solid tower defense game. The controls work fine, the mechanics are pretty easily understood, the artstyle and music are pleasant to the eye and ear.

One "bug" I found - when a plant expired, its timer refilled to full value and the plant kept shooting for good 5-6 seconds before disappearing.

Right now, the gameplay is the same throughout the entire game - run to get a new plant, plant it in a free spot, run to get the next one. The big plant variety mitigates this a bit, but it would be great to give the player a bit more options. I thought it would be nice to give the player something like a watering can, which could be used to fill up the bars of already planted turrets. That way the player would have to make tactical decision, whether to keep their currently active turrets alive for a longer time, or to go and plant some new ones.

Overall, a really nice jam game. Well done!

Papper by GeneralSturgeon 2022-04-13T15:39:35Z

Really nice entry! it reminded me of those old Flash launcher games on Kongregate, like Learn To Fly or Burrito Bison. It does capture the same "just one more try" feeling as these games did. And - just as I did in those games - most of the time I manage to perfectly miss all the bouncy objects on the map. It got me hooked enough to try and beat other commenters records though. :D

ppp1.png

I'm guessing the score distance is rounded up, while the distance counter in the top-right of the screen isn't?

It could use a little more feedback, both on the launching angle and the upgrades. I felt like the "Lift" upgrade didn't really do that much to increase my air time.

1 Man 6 Bullets by Raphaeltan 2022-04-06T20:56:32Z

Wow! What an amazing game! The level of polish for such a short jam is incredible! Not only you've come up with a great idea, you also executed it very well. I'm amazed by how fast-paced the game feels, despite me having to spend a ton of time thinking through every move.

If there's one thing I'd change in it, make it so the enemies don't spawn right next to the player. Several times I've lost because I got myself in a corner and a zombie spawned in the wall behind me.

Running Out of Time by Arthur Mairs 2022-04-19T19:02:11Z

An impressive amount of work for such a short time! I got a few laughs out of it. ;) I loved the NPC's lines, it was a rather unexpected feature to find in a jam game.

I see most of the issues I had with the game (performance and controls in the web version) have already been mentioned by other people, so there's not much for me to add here. Perhaps one thing I'd change is the wording on the hover text when pointing at a pill bottle - it says "left mouse button to use", but left mouse button just picks it up, and you have to use it with "E". Come to think of it, is there any reason to hold on to them instead of always using them immediately? In that case, it might be better to just auto-use the pills on pickup.

Oh, and it would also be great to have an option to skip cutscenes - I had to restart the game a couple of times and couldn't skip past the intro.

Hospital Dash by brads.space 2022-04-06T17:29:37Z

Nice little arcade game! It has a really old-school feel to it. I laughed at the idea of chaining the patients behind the ambulance. :)

One thing I would change is to make the camera a bit less... flaily? Especially when backing up, it feels like it's a bit too wild. It made already difficult game a bit too difficult. My best attempt got me to 21 points: https://i.imgur.com/4pJjE3a.png

There were also some collider issues with the stretchers, one time I got one embedded in a building and were unable to get out, and here the last one got stuck in the ambulance: https://i.imgur.com/anPkTjP.png

Foundations by 0x746564 2022-04-13T16:41:57Z

Really nice entry! I always liked Solitaire, but I never played a Sir Tommy, so I kinda went into this blindly. During my first playthrough, I've stacked so many cards in one spot I couldn't then select the 10 at the bottom of the screen:

f1.png

I've lost four times so far, but I'm going to keep playing until I get it. ;)

Edit Got it!

f2.png

Space Onslaught by SharpLoaded 2022-04-04T16:56:14Z

Very nice! LarsDu is right, it does remind me of old UMS maps in Starcraft 1. I love the overall look of it, good enough sprites reinforced by simple but nice animations. The decomposing monster bodies animation was a nice touch. ;)

One bug I found - the turret / pillbox doesn't seem to have any sound when firing.

On my first attempt I managed to get 354 kills. The second one went a bit better: https://i.imgur.com/SsoQC5X.png

No Hope For Bope by Studio Vykanic 2022-04-13T15:55:21Z

I like a well executed physics-based stacking game, and this is definitely one of them. The music was great, though thanks to the block shapes I found myself constantly humming the Tetris theme while playing.

I didn't manage to save Bope, unfortunately. I'd say the game is too difficult for me, most of the time I end up frantically throwing blocks vaguely in the direction of the pit hoping some of them stick in the right places. ;) I guess making the blocks stick to the cursor until they are released over the pit would help solve that issue, though I'm not sure if that wouldn't take away some of the physics-based wild fun the game has right now.

Hexy by rasblo 2023-05-04T21:33:19Z

Simple, but nice! It reminds me of old dots game I used to play in my notebooks at school. And I always love a hex-grid game. The game's AI is interesting - it feels like most of the time it's pretty easy, but once in a while it turns out I've missed something, made a stupid error and lost. Still, I'm winning about 4/5 matches, so there's that for me. :P And the music's really nice, I love how it gets faster after the "Delivery". :P

hexy.png

Don't read all about it! by ThaProfesional 2023-05-08T13:22:08Z

A nice take on the theme! Let this pupper get his revenge. :>

The artstyle looks great, I love the intro comic at the instruction screen

It is a bit difficult to judge how far you have to be to bite, but it does get easier with practice. Eventually I managed to get him with just one paper delivered. I found two interesting "bugs": - I managed to attack the paper person right at the end of the level, so the end screen tells me I lost and they got away, even though the dog clearly achieved his goal: draai.png - whenever I start the game, the paper person starts their movement on the lawn, only moving down once they hit a flowering shrub; on every restart after the game is launched they move on the street only. draai2.png The music is good. Simple, but with some tension, fitting for the theme of the game. The dog barks and growls were a nice touch, too. :)

Parcel Panic by pdotjpg 2023-05-04T18:11:46Z

Really well done for a compo game! Even outside of compo time limitations it would be pretty impressive, especially the presentation side of the game. The packages come so fast I'd expect equally fast music to accompany it, but the slow & tense worked really well. It did evoke a bit of the same mood "Papers, Please" did, but it also gave me a bit more cyberpunk-ish vibe, something closer to the likes of Uplink or Deus Ex.

The controls can be a bit wonky, as expected with a physics-heavy game - quite often I was fighting to rotate the parcel properly to find the zip code, and when I did, I dropped the package off the screen. :( Though it made me think this could work pretty well as a VR game, where you could use two hands to manipulate the objects more easily. So far my record is 110 points, but I'm going to try and get at least 150. :P

POST'HIT by PaulLyaudet 2023-05-09T09:57:37Z

A really fun and hectic game! The audiovisual style is great, hearing all these letters yell as they fly towards their trucks was pretty funny. :P From the gameplay standpoint, I really liked that you could get rid of the evil parcels by throwing them on the trucks, and that it forced you to be quick or they'd throw other letters back.

I'm not sure if allowing other letters to walk off the trucks they've been loaded to is a good idea, though - to me this felt too much like I was herding cats, losing progress I made through sheer randomness.

I also found one bug, when occasionally the truck on the top of the screen sometimes kept counting down past 0 and going into negative numbers, but I didn't manage to pinpoint exact circumstances of this happening.

All in all, it's a great looking game, and I had a lot of fun playing it. Really polished for a jam game, well done!

Grocery Fulfillment Center by Flightless 2023-05-18T11:34:35Z

gfc.png

I love this idea. The managers were just a bit too annoying, which I think fits the game perfectly. Though perhaps it is an idea for another upgrade - increased power to push through them slightly more quickly? Also, the managers following and watching you when you go to the toilet feels pretty disturbing, which - again! - fits well for this game.

One thing I found a little bit funny is that the first upgrade - the mechanical legs - increases your speed so much it becomes difficult to control for a while, so until you get used to the new speed it actually feels like a downgrade.

Contraband Critters: A Tactical Transporter by makerart 2023-05-04T19:36:19Z

Interesting concept! It's like a crossover between a tactical game and an auto-battler. It's fun watching the bots pushing boxes in front of themselves and use them as cover. :P

George and Deliverance by MacDoom 2023-05-08T14:01:37Z

Really great compo entry! I played on the PC with a mouse, and while the control scheme might have been a bit difficult, I think it works pretty well, especially when you get used to it after several tries. One thing I'd change is to reduce the camera "look ahead" motion - it makes the screen too shaky when turning, especially when moving at higher speeds. Other than that, it's great, it does have that old Atari games vibe to it. :)

City Transport Ordeal by LCStark 2023-05-04T08:52:46Z

@rustywolf Thanks! I totally agree, I've noticed that it might be a problem and left it "to be fixed later", but didn't make it in time. I'll fix that in post-jam updates, for now I'll change the color a bit, though ultimately I think I'll be replacing all sprites with something better than quick test sprites. :P That should fix this issue.

City Transport Ordeal by LCStark 2023-05-04T20:31:52Z

@michael-darling Thanks! I'll be adding some light colors to it, but I do want to keep the color scheme rather simple and use muted colors. I wanted the controls to be a bit floaty to give that arcade feeling, maybe I've overdone it a bit. I definitely need to make braking better. :P

For the package/destination I was thinking about displaying package ID over both the package and its destination, but I'm not sure if that will be readable enough. I'll experiment with using some icons for that, since there aren't going to be that many packages on the map at the same time.

The multiple packages idea is something I thought about before, and I will implement it, though I'm not yet sure if it's going to be available from the start or as an upgrade to buy. I was thinking about making a shop and upgrade system, I even made sure I could easily change truck handling stats like acceleration, top speed and turning.

Stork Express by Pizzasgood 2023-05-19T20:31:04Z

It took me a while (and a lot of babies!), but I did it:

stork_express.png

It is difficult as hell to control, but after a while you can get used to it. And the gliding mechanic works really well, so kudos for that! I especially liked the thermal currents, letting you stay in the air for a long time without flapping.

I think the game has a slight problem with explaining how it is supposed to be played. At first I assumed the goal was to fly quickly and deliver the babies as fast as you can, but dropping a baby into the target spot seems nearly impossible when you travel fast. Carpet bombing only helped a bit with that. Another issue there is that when you drop a baby while flapping the wings, it can get stuck for a second before finally falling as usual. I thought that maybe making it so the player only has to drop the baby at the right time (while passing through the beacon / target marker) to consider the delivery done would be a better idea here.

After 2-3 minutes of playing I accidentally flew away from the city and got so turned around that I couldn't find it anymore. The city disappeared into the fog like it was a Stephen King novel. I flew around the empty map for a minute or two before finding the edge of the grass. I followed it to the corner of the map, then flew diagonally to find the city again (as I assumed it might be located near the center of the grass square), and thankfully I did. I think having an arrow pointing you to a nearest target would be a good thing to add. It would also help me near the end of the game, when I had only 3-4 targets left and I couldn't find them for a while, as they were not visible from far away due to the fog.

When I found the city back, I decided to see what happens when I crash into the ground, as I assumed I'd lose the game and have to start over, but that didn't happen. That made me realize that I could deliver the babies by crashing near my target point and spawning a pile of babies until one of them rolled into the target zone. That made the game much easier to finish - most of my play time was spent on delivering first 4-5 babies, the rest went rather quickly. Also, spending that much time taught me how to better control the stork and approach all targets slowly without crashing into the ground, so in my second playthrough I've managed to get several babies delivered in the first minute. I guess that's an improvement? :P

So, to sum up: like you said yourself, the controls could probably use a bit more work (I thought that maybe removing roll controls from the mouse and onto separate keyboard keys would work better?), the dropping mechanic might be made easier to control (I know! It's the 21st century and the storks improved their delivery technique with laser-guided babies! :P). Other than that - the graphics are simple, but it works in the game's favor, as everything looks pretty clear and uncluttered. There's enough variation in building colors and sizes to not feel repetitive. The simple sound effects match the graphics well. The music is nice, fun but not too intrusive. And I always appreciate when people add volume controls to games with audio - I usually have my speakers set at rather high volume, so being able to easily drop the overall volume in game to about 70% was really helpful :).

Salty Coins by Alexascher 2023-05-04T19:59:39Z

A really nice management game! I always love sail ship trading as a theme, so that's a solid thumbs up from me. The graphics are aesthetically pleasing and fitting the theme. I love all the elements showing on your path, like message bottles, pirate ships and what I assume is a Kraken to avoid. The message-in-a-bottle as game tips is a quite cool idea too. As others have said before me, perhaps it is a little bit too random, as you can lose through not being able to buy food anywhere. I also think it might be a good idea to have a timer showing for how many more turns will a buy/sell offer remain in the shop, so you can plan whether you'll make it in time to buy in one place and sail to sell in another.

Bundle Dumper: Florida Edition by cheesepencil 2023-05-08T11:34:36Z

First PICO-8 game I've seen this jam, and I always love them! Though it seems I'm just too terrible at it to progress far into it - after what felt like 20 tries I managed to reach the level with 3 deliveries, but got stuck on it. At this point I think I've turned enough babies into red mist to cause concern for the authorities, so I think I'll leave it at that. Love the visual style, the responsive controls, and most of all the anti-cheese mechanics. :D

Space Delivery by Kirbloid 2023-05-04T18:37:51Z

Really enjoyable arcade game! So far I managed to get 1020 after three tries. Determining where your rocket will bounce can be difficult at times, probably due to the different shapes of each rocket. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have additional control to restart the current level (in case you want to quickly start over), and after finishing the level allowing the player to choose whether to move on to the next one or try the same one again.

Courier Craze by Sprotex 2023-05-18T12:01:34Z

Simple idea, but it works! The controls are a bit difficult, but that makes for a hectic and fun gameplay. The customer noises were a nice touch, too. ;)

I've encountered one bug (I think) - after delivering 11 packages, there seemed to be no more customers for like a minute or two, then one appeared and I managed to deliver the 12th package, and after that there still were none in the play area. Sometimes I could hear them babbling in the distance, so I guess they did spawn somewhere in the red area and just didn't move anywhere near me.

Orbit Express by BmanStudio 2023-05-04T21:05:36Z

Really fun game! I enjoyed flying around and using planets for slingshot maneuvers to conserve my fuel. One thing I found weird was the control scheme - the K key being used to drop packages felt rather awkward. Might I suggest moving the thrusters from space to W (matching the standard WASD movement scheme), and using space to drop the packages? Also, I'm not sure the brackets for zoom are that necessary - when the game started I zoomed out as far as I could and I never felt the need to zoom in.

Also one question I couldn't find an answer to myself - do you need to just be within the drop zone, or do you need to also match the movement direction to planet rotation? I think a few times I dropped the package within the zone, but it went flying into space. I think it might have been due to rather high relative speed, but I thought I'd ask if that's it or something else. :)

I also think the difficulty could be a bit higher. After a while I just got bored and crashed into a planet to see what happens. Though this might be player-dependent, so maybe a difficulty selection at the start of the game? orbit_express.png

Orbit Express by BmanStudio 2023-05-08T13:41:34Z

> Wow! pretty amazing score there!! Would love to know if you used a keyboard or gamepad, and how long it took you :)

@bmanstudio Thanks! I'm not sure how long it took me, I didn't really time my run. Maybe you can add a timer in-game? And I played with the keyboard.

> But if I’m honest with myself haha, in all of those cases I flew too fast and “hoped” rather than made it “clean” - which worked 100% of the time for me.

Yeah, it was probably the same for me. It seems there are no shortcuts in orbital delivery. :D

Level Delivery System by Le Don 2023-05-09T13:05:53Z

A fantastic entry. Seemed a little bit confusing at first, but discovering what is it about and how it works was fun.

And funny! Going through the Secret Base Zeta as Dave made me smile all the way, but winning the Space Battle Delta by going on a date with the alien overlord made me laugh out loud. I played the Starlight Farm as the Stealth Guy and I was just as confused as he was - zero backstabbing? But it all made perfect sense in the end.

I love the visual style, reminds me of old Atari games. Also, making four playable minigames for a gamejam is really impressive on its own, making it so you have 4 separate characters and playstyles for each of them is even more so. Well done!

Robin Hood Christmas by cavedens 2023-05-09T11:39:52Z

Really fun compo entry! I've seen a lot of people interpret the "Delivery" theme as Santa delivering presents, so doing a game about stealing them was a nice subversion.

There's definitely something off about guards detection colliders. I think their shape might be a bit different than the shape of the light cone would suggest. Quite often I walked into the light from one of the sides and managed to turn back without being detected. On the other hand, the guards' detection range directly in front of them is so long they sometimes found me before I even saw them on my screen.

And they can see through the walls - at one point I was hiding on the bottom of the map, behind a building, and a guard approaching the front of the building managed to detect me. Because of that, best I could do is get 7 presents before being caught. At one point, one detected me when I was standing still in the delivery zone: rhc.png I'm not sure what's the best way to fix this, but one thing I'd definitely do is make the present delivery zone a "safe zone", so you can't get detected when you're in there.

The camera seems a bit close the player, but I guess that wouldn't be a big issue once the guards' detection is improved a bit. One thing I'd add for the camera is a bit of look-ahead movement, so you can see more in the direction you're moving in. Did you use Cinemachine for your camera? Try it out, it's pretty easy to figure out some basic uses for it, and it does have simple controls for things like look-ahead values.

Other than these issues, I really liked the game. The guards' movement patterns were cool. It was fun just watching them move around while trying to move quickly between the buildings and finding one of them decided it is the best place to patrol at the time. :P The music felt cheeky, fitting for a Robin Hood type of character. The environment seems well designed. The TV effect was nice, though it made me spend way too much time watching all the TV's to see if there were any hidden messages occasionally shown on the screens. Maybe it's a good idea for a future easter egg? :P

Final Delivery by PatateNouille 2023-05-08T11:16:31Z

Hahaha. It's the first time LD game made me burst out laughing. That ending was perfect, and kinda feeling like coming full circle - as it turns out, what I thought was just a small funny reference was actually a Chekhov's gun. Also, it feels like the person in C02 had some trouble during a game jam, so I can definitely sympathize. Sorry about your ducky! At least you got your (or your neighbour's) internet back. ;)

Amazing entry, it's a tonne of work done in such a short time. Stylistically it looks great. I especially like the chalkboard-style log of clues and objectives, gave me the vibe of something between old-style adventure games quest logs and a work of a conspiracy theory maniac. :P

I'll definitely play the post-jam version once the ratings are done. It still left me with unanswered questions - what's cooking in C01? What's the deal with the Knock Knock Guy? Can I convince the kid in D02 that I'm not a lame delivery robot? To be continued, I guess... :D

Final Delivery by PatateNouille 2023-05-08T13:00:08Z

> The Knock Knock guy was supposed to be just a dumb joke character, but maybe I’ll try making him part of a story too, I feel like at this point I might make everyone important in some way, maybe with the cheese guy, that girl in B01 or A01 too as their stories is only a couple lines long. Making everyone part of the story might work, though I honestly like it like it is, with few side characters serving mostly as flavor for the main story. And the dumb joke worked for me, there's something about the tone and timing on his speech that made me smile and start spamming E to hear more. :D

30 Minutes Or Your Potion's Free by Rustywolf 2023-05-04T08:36:50Z

Wow, that looks amazingly polished for a compo, well done! I love the graphics style. The cards immediately brought back all the time spent playing Slay the Spire, but overall pixel-arty style kept it visually distinct from it.

I've reached The King. First card I played was the Ice Wall and it caused the game to crash to desktop. I tried it again and it worked all fine, so I'm not sure what the issue was. Anyway, I've managed to beat The King after three tries and it left me wanting more. :)

Mystic Postman by interpixel 2023-05-19T21:16:54Z

Interesting game! Looks like you've managed to put a lot of things together in a pretty short time.

I'm having problems with understanding the delivery system. When I start the game, I have "0 deliveries to make". I run to a castle in the distance, and inside it I have several options to buy some skill gems, and also an "deliver items" option, which is giving me "+0 coins". I run to the next castle, it looks the same. After I visited 4-5 castles, the last option is suddenly showing it will give me "+40 coins", but I never picked up anything to deliver and at all times (before and after gaining the 40 coins) I still have "0 deliveries to make". I think it would be better if the player started with a delivery to make, having a specific castle to deliver a package to, and there should be a marker showing them where to go. When they'd reach the castle the quests could start spawning randomly.

The combat is a nice idea - it reminded me a bit of PSX-era Final Fantasy games, only without the time element. If you need to click an enemy to target a skill on them, having the ability to rotate and zoom the camera is a must, although you could probably make it much easier if you simply allowed the user to click on enemy HP bar instead of their model. Also, while the option to escape is a good way to avoid bugged-out fights, it kinda makes the combat pointless in the game, as you can escape from every battle without any consequences.

It was also pretty weird that I could just run underwater like it was no big thing (made for a much shorter way between each castle! :P), but it was really funny when I got attacked underwater:

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And even funnier when at one point I escaped the underwater combat and tried moving around the enemies, but kept getting stuck in their colliders. Maybe when you escape from combat the enemies should despawn?

Carnage Courier by DecrementedPalindrome 2023-05-18T18:54:32Z

Fantastic game! It felt great being able to build and rebuild during the fight.

> I was initially going to have a key to enter build mode instead of doing it automatically whenever you picked up a part, but that would mean that you can have the game paused for ages to rebuild in the middle of a fight which would make it less frantic.

I don't know, I think it would give the player a bit more control to make the fights more managable, but I don't think it would take away anything from the frantic nature of it. Dragging new components mid-fight isn't a huge issue, so I don't think manual build mode would change it that much.

> It’s interesting to see that some people find it easy and others find it hard. I think that means I got the difficulty right for these first levels :).

I'd agree with that, as early levels feel pretty easy, but the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly. ;) Perhaps it would be a good idea to increase it a bit earlier, though, because of the upgrade system. I'd agree with raptor851 here, as I was in the same position - I went through a lot of levels before finally dying, so I discovered the whole rogue-lite aspect of the game pretty late. ;)

One more thing I thought could be changed, if you're going to keep developing this - pretty quickly I found myself playing levels where I got 5+ enemies on the screen at the same time, and at that point it was basically impossible to evade taking damage. Adding armor to the ship didn't really help with that. Perhaps as the game progresses, the playing area should become bigger to give you more space to move around?

I love the upgrade system. When I first played through several levels, it felt interesting having to choose carefully between carrying more cargo crates and more weapons, but I thought it would work better if you were able to increase the size of your ship. And then I died for the first time and discovered you can do just that. Perfect!

As for the controls, I think Tim Leach is right, and it would feel better if the targeting just followed the mouse, though it wasn't a huge issue for me. One thing I found awkward was trying to control my ship after installing the auto-targetting/auto-shooting core on my ship - for a while there I was wondering what was going on and if there was some bug with the controls. :P Though this is more a problem with the ship part, not controls themselves.

The sound part of the game is great as well. Sound effects are simple, but fit well with the design. The music is arcadey and adds to the frantic feel of gameplay.

@Nillard I think it's the problem with the WebGL version - I had the same freezes every time a new enemy spawned. The desktop version didn't have that issue.

Popcorn Odyssey by 0X_VOID_X0 2023-05-19T22:15:41Z

A fun puzzle platformer! Though I'm usually terrible at playing them - the original jam version got me stuck on level 3 and I couldn't get past that wall behind first water hazard. It took me something like 30 tries before I decided to check out if it's easier in the post-jam update. And it was, I managed to reach level 8 before accepting my defeat (though I almost ragequit on level 6 when I somehow survived waiting through an entire circle of the taxi-bee only to be eaten by the final row of bugs due to a misclick). It might be possible I'm just too bad at it, but I think it could certainly use some form of a checkpoint system. Or maybe just make it so you don't lose your legs when hitting something and can use that to launch again midflight? Though that would probably make it way too easy.

The overall gameplay is great - the controls feel nice, the levels seem to have a nice progression to them, and they keep introducing new mechanics (and there's an impressive amount of them!). The camera zoom on launch power change is great, too, though maybe the game could use some sort of manual camera movement system to look ahead at the level before going there with the popcorn. That would especially be helpful when you have to start dealing with the timed leaves (which probably should be distinguishable from the standard ones, but if you wanted to make a trap for the player it works pretty well :P).

The graphics are nice, there's the cute main character, some nice tiles, lots of obstacles and angry bugs. The audio design is also good, with everything having its fitting sound, and a nice cheerful background music. Well done!

Baby Juggling by BridgeOnAStick 2023-05-08T13:33:50Z

Cool idea! It gets really difficult when you're trying to juggle three babies waiting for the next stork. I often managed to fling them too fast and they flew out of the screen, not letting me catch them again. I like the idea of doing tricks to earn better score multipliers. Maybe there should be "best delivery score" stat at the end of the game? I'm pretty terrible, but I managed to get 66 points on one delivery, and it felt really good. :)

The Envelope by DzejPi 2023-05-04T22:10:24Z

Wait, I'm the monster?! Noooooo!

Nice and atmospheric game. Starts a bit like a 3D "Papers, please", I was expecting more of the "repetitive menial work causes you to go insane" rather than a survival horror, so I was surprised. And I think I got lucky - I started to look for one of those planks I saw lying around to use as a weapon, and I just randomly found "a weapon". :D

Andromeda Delivery Service by lisyarus 2023-05-04T19:26:11Z

Wow! This might be my favorite physics-based LD entry ever. It does have the same quality as KSP, where you can sometimes feel stupid for not finding a solution immediately, but the satisfaction you get when you do find one is even greater.

I found the fuel amount to be maybe a bit too generous (even when traveling to far-off planets I never came close to being out of fuel), but that's not an issue for a jam game. Plus it allowed me to do a lot of experiments with various types of constructions and see them flopping around.

The light background music fit really well too, and I like how the engine sound was just another note to play. I don't know if this would fit this kind of game well, but maybe this could be a bigger element of the game - have each WASD key have a specific pitch, so the player can play simple melodies by firing the right engines at the right time. :P

Ultimately, I chose to explore the universe with my tried and true flying brick: ads.png

04 Mail Service by Asieke 2023-05-08T12:00:15Z

A nice puzzle game! It feels a bit like a hexagonal-grid version of Sokoban, which does work really well. I liked the twist of added level verticality later on, that made me really think before doing every move.

The controls were pretty un-intuitive. Maybe it would help to map them to a more hexagonal shape on the keyboard - imagine if W on the keyboard is your character, then 2 and 3 would be the two "up" directions, Q and E would be the two "side" directions, and A and S would be the two "down" directions. Or better yet, move it one row down to use only the letter keys, and center this layout around the S key.

I liked the simple background music - it fits really well for a puzzle game, something slow and unintrusive to not distract you from solving your current level.

Chalkboard Deliveries by Locke8 2023-05-18T17:34:25Z

Others have already mentioned some problems with the tutorial, so I'll just add to that a problem with the UI in general - you're using a pretty stylized font, which makes it difficult to read when the text is too small. Even at full screen, the text isn't big enough for me to read comfortably, so focusing on reading through that entire tutorial is especially difficult.

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Also - what version of Godot are you using? I've noticed this jam that most (if not all) Godot 4 games have problems with the WebGL version, as they don't start for me at all when played in an iframe (like on itch.io), returning an error "The following features required to run Godot projects on the Web are missing: Cross Origin Isolation - Check web server configuration (send correct headers) SharedArrayBuffer - Check web server configuration (send correct headers)". Depending on the game, it can sometimes work when opened in a separate tab.

There are also occasional problems with unit selection and orders. At one point, I had the same issue ski11az had - it looked like trucks were not "unselected" and trying to issue orders for one truck issued it for all previously selected trucks. The other issue is the trucks don't wait for the order to be confirmed. The tutorial text says you can shift-click a path, then either confirm it with Q, or mark it to be looped with E. My problem is the trucks don't wait for "Q" and start moving immediately, which means if I want to make a looping path, I have to move quickly and finish the entire path before the truck reaches its first point.

Other than these issues, I think it's a great game. It feels a bit like a simplified Transport Tycoon, where your main focus is on just transporting the goods, without worrying about stuff like building roads between locations. The art style is simple, but that works in the game's favor. It also looks pretty good. :) One thing I think could be changed is to lose the transparency on the truck and buildings - the grass being visible through them looks a bit odd, and I think if they weren't transparent it would make everything look much clearer.

The mellow music worked pretty well. The game feels like the music should be faster, but it being so chill actually helped me relax enough to set up some proper pathing on multiple trucks and progress further. ;)

Solar Express by Jellybean 2023-05-18T12:27:49Z

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Great idea! Having to time your journey right to maximize money earned from a job feels really good. The graphics look pretty good, giving that oldschool vibe.

The camera in general works well, sometimes delivering nice cinematic shots of your ship traveling through the system. It does however, make some awkward transitions or stuttering on occasion (probably because the ship itself stutters as it tries to follow the planet on its orbit). I wanted to take a look at your camera code, but your source code link returns a 404 error.

Spatial Delivery by Michael Darling 2023-05-04T20:19:09Z

Nice and pretty hectic game! It feels pretty easy for a while, but then you buy a second drone, and it all becomes frantic clicking. After a while I figured out I can hold on for a pretty long time just by selecting each drone and queuing orders to fly across the screen, there and back again.

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That allowed me to pause for a few seconds and enjoy what I've done.

One thing I might have missed - is there a quit button? I was closing the game using alt+f4, but that's not the most convenient solution. :P

earthmover by dishwand 2023-05-18T10:28:44Z

A great puzzle game! The aesthetic side is amazing, I'm feeling strong PSX vibes here. ;) That and especially the rolling cube movement reminded me of an old game called Devil Dice though that was more action-arcade than puzzle.

People have already mentioned some of the issues I've found (like the need to have skippable dialogue), so there's not much for me to add here. One thing I'd perhaps consider adding is some sort of indicator telling the player what to do at the beginning of the game - if the player needs to just "roll around a bit", perhaps showing some sort of counter, counting down with each "step" to show the player they are actually doing something (right) instead of just rolling around in confusion. Or maybe some sort of objective list in the corner of the window? Something like "move around (0/30)", "connect to the hook", "move package into the delivery slot".

The sound design is great too. With such a chill mood it's easy to make simple and small sound effects feel jarring, but you've made them just as relaxing as the rest of the game. Perhaps it could use some slow mellow tune in the background, but the sound of the waves on its own felt pretty good.

Orbital Operations by bmacintosh 2023-10-16T20:14:50Z

Really awesome game! I got hooked instantly and spent way too much time playing it.

So far I've managed to get to 49 ships dispatched. But every time I lose I just want to try it again. :D The idea is pretty simple, but it's a good one, and it's executed really well. Basically, the only thing I didn't like is the radio messages limit. Because of it, I found myself asking the same ship several times where did they want to go, because when they answered another ship started talking and the message I wanted to see got lost in the chatter. I think putting the destinations on the ships on the map would probably make it a bit too cluttered, but maybe having them as icons in the radio interface on the right (visible only on selected ship) would work well?

Another thing you might want to add is some map marker for incoming ships, like maybe putting a circle with an arrow to mark where the ship will enter orbit and in which direction. In the meantime, just adding the direction they're coming in in the message would be great.

The game looks nice. There's not a lot of graphics here, but what's there looks good. The planet looks cool, the orbits are well marked. The interface looks good and is responsive. Everything looks clear, and visual clarity is pretty important in a game like this. I liked the small flickering animation on ships changing course, it's a small thing, but adds a lot to the immersion. :)

Also, a small issue. I don't know if you went for Compo instead of a Jam by accident, but in the Compo external assets (other than fonts) aren't allowed, even if you disable rating in that category. I don't know if there's much point to disabling the music at this point, but it's something you might want to remember for the next time. :)

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Pineapple Burger Pizza by godsboss 2023-10-07T22:23:46Z

Funny game! The combinations of pizzas are... let's say interesting. :D Double-sausage double-burger pizza was the best.

The game could use a bit higher difficulty level. Everything is explained well, so it doesn't take very long to figure out what to do and you can pretty easily keep on going forever. And while you get a few orders where you have to really think how to place and rotate everything to fit required ingredients on a tiny pizza, you also get ones where the pizza is giant, but all you have to add is two octopus ingredients, so you just place two boots and have a mostly empty dough.

Regaining lost reputation was a good choice, as I always like when a game allows the player to make a comeback instead of forcing them to restart. Though for this difficulty level it doesn't feel like it is required. Or maybe having a smaller reputation range than 10 would make it work better.

The game looks good, I liked the animations on the customer! I also loved the way you've built the tutorial - separating all the info and putting the help/info buttons in respective locations made it much easier to memorize it all before playing.

It's a nice compo game, with a good (and fun!) interpretation of the theme. It's a solid base on which there's a lot of ideas to expand on. And it made me hungry for some burgery pizza...

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Purple Pop by silkworm_sweatshop 2023-10-06T21:33:35Z

Really fun game! With my first attempt I got to around 6k score before all my bacteria got eaten, but in the second game I knew what I was doing, so I managed to survive a while longer. And that gave me enough room to experiment with different strategies, so eventually I've managed to learn how to survive basically forever.

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And as you can see some of the bacteria got out of the petri dish, which I don't think is a good thing for all the people outside.

If you do work this into a bigger incremental game, I kept thinking about how it would be nice to be able to finally get rid of the red bacteria once and for all. Maybe a system could work where if you'd mutate enough to become completely resistant to the reds, you'd get some time of freedom, then a new mutation would appear with a different type of enemy, maybe requiring a different solution to evade or defeat.

Also, great work on the audio-visual side of the game. It looks, sounds and feels fantastic, everything seems well polished.

PIO by sbeif 2023-10-11T11:09:01Z

Fun game, with a clever concept for the main mechanic!

It is also pretty difficult. It seems at first like it's a puzzle game you need to approach with caution and think everything through, but then you get thrown a curveball of having to figure out precise movements and timings. For the most part it works well, as most of my problems were related to trying to execute everything at the right time. One thing that I think could use a bit more work is the collider for eating range - quite often I found myself in a situation when an eagle coming diagonally looked like it should be in range to be eaten, but it wasn't and I got killed. Eventually I've managed to figure it all out and reach the end:

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The graphics look great - the level tiles and the background are simple, but they work pretty good. PIO looks cute, so do the eagles - I could almost forget they're trying to kill me. The background music is pretty chill, which helped me to relax and figure out a way to solve all the levels. I loved how PIO's voice got deeper as he grew in size. __PIO__ :P

LD#54 - Meteor Shower - C64 by Endurion 2023-10-07T23:11:02Z

Amazing compo entry!

It's a very oldschool game, with everything that entails - mostly the good stuff, with some of the bad. Like the diagonally falling meteors spawning on the other side of the screen and immediately hitting the side without giving me any chance to react (come on, game!).

It's pretty difficult, but I don't think it's too much. Once you get used to the controls you can quickly get better at judging which rocks you'll manage to get in time and which ones you should just leave. And I'd say the hit detection on the pulse and asteroids is pretty forgiving, as you can quite often hit a rock pretty far off center, or even hit multiple rocks with a single pulse. It's also good that you don't have to run around for long before you can take shelter inside to replenish your O₂, as you get a short break (and the needed hull repairs) before the next round.

Despite that, you will occasionally get punished hard, especially if in your hubris you think that you definitely can make it to a rock and have it land on your head. Thankfully, the playthrough is pretty quick, so if you lose you just start over again immediately and try to beat your previous score. Several times I found myself just starting another go instead of switching tabs to write this comment. :P

Basically the only thing that is missing is some background music. The sounds are great, but they would be even better if they were accompanied by some simple chiptune. Other than that, I think it's perfect. Sure, it could be expanded by having more threats and upgrades for the player, but I think that it would work against it's old-school simplicity.

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how you use it by ThaProfesional 2023-10-19T16:47:44Z

Fun little game! It's pretty quick to get into, controls are intuitive and work smoothly.

The graphics are great, and the little comic intro story is perfect. Kinda wish there was a similar comic at the end of the game, but I'm assuming it wasn't really feasible within the time limit of the compo.

As for the fallen enemies and their swords still having collisions - I too think this should probably go, as quite often it caused me to get stuck just through some random luck of enemy dying in just the right location. Though it led to a few funny cases. For example once I got stuck between a pillar and a dead enemy, the remaining enemies charged at me, the first one bounced off my sword and killed the other two before throwing himself at my blade. :P

Another solution would be to leave the sword collisions, but give the player a way to get out of that situation. Like maybe adding a key to "lift" your sword up, so you can't swing it at your enemies, but can at least get out of being stuck.

I went through the game several times, it was very fun! I guess I've proven I've got both the size and the skills to use it. :) Well done!

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Rim Runner by pinkemma 2023-10-02T17:18:12Z

Very fun game! The ever-expanding enemy fleet is giving me some serious FTL vibes.

Played it 4 times so far, but didn't manage to (fully) win yet. First time I got caught (damn you, Space Cops!), second time was same (though with a bit better score). Third time I suddenly won the game by reaching the Rim, but I didn't have enough fuel upgrades to reach a settlement. That win made me think the distance to the rim shouldn't be displayed by your ship and affected by zoom, but rather as a GUI element like oxygen, fuel, and the rest.

The fourth time surprised me as well, because I've bought 2 oxygen upgrades and 1 fuel upgrade, so I had 200 oxygen and 200 fuel capacity, yet I still got the "you didn't reach settlement because low fuel" message.

Also, a funny thing - consider adding a warning to come to a full and complete stop before docking with a space station. Otherwise, depending on your ship's orientation, you can cause yourself a lot of neck pain. :D rimrunner_1.png

And speaking of orientation - is there a way to rotate an item in your cargo hold? The tetris-like shapes made me think there should be.

Oh, and I've also found a bug with upgrades for your ship - once you buy it and put it in the cargo, it disappears, and instead of the sprite there's only a slight tint where it was placed. It's still there, cause you can pick it up and can't place other items there, it's just invisible: rimrunner_2.png

Overall, it's a very enjoyable game. The more you play it the more you learn about general pricing of all goods and get better at predicting what's a good trade and what isn't. And the need to be constantly on the move adds a lot of tension.

Grid Bots by Ayced 2023-10-05T22:20:49Z

Really fun game! I liked the enemy design, they kinda reminded me of Total Annihilation's K-Bots.

The progression is done pretty nicely, with each new enemy adding a new challenge to avoid or defeat. The perspective makes it a bit difficult to aim perfectly, but I think it's something I'm getting used to the longer I play it, so I don't think it's a big problem. One thing that I think is a problem is the world / camera wobbliness. I'm not one to get motion sickness from playing games, but that made me understand those who do.

The idea of changing biomes is great. It took me longer than I'd care to admit to figure out I should move to the other color before the first one falls down, in my defense I'm playing it pretty late in the day and am tired. :P I liked the wintery biome the most, it's shown there's a lot of room for level variation in this idea.

Nice work on the audio side of the game, too. The sounds are pretty good, and the music track is really fitting for this type of game.

So far I only just made it to Big Bob, but I guess his days will be numbered when I get some rest and try this again tomorrow.

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Panic Color! by dhavavamba 2023-10-03T21:18:30Z

I am absolutely terrible at this game! :D So far my best record is 24.

The controls take a while to get used to. Once that happens, I think it becomes slightly easier. At first my biggest problems were running directly into enemy fire, then running into my own reflected shots. When I realized I could defend against projectiles by firing my own, it became much easier. The dash works pretty well, I think, as I'm just too slow to use it at the right time most of the times.

One thing that felt slightly weird to me is the unlimited fire rate. I don't think it is a huge problem, and for me it was really helpful in actually destroying anything, but what makes it weird to use is the fact that my projectiles collide with each other, so if I fired too quickly, all my projectiles were instantly destroyed.

Booty Hole by AffinityChris 2023-10-06T18:18:04Z

Damn difficult, but really fun!

It's tough to make a physics-based game in a jam and make it work good, but I haven't found anything here working wrong or weird. Everything looks and works smooth and as expected. At least as far as the physics simulations go, because as a player I have to say that everything went everywhere but where I wanted it. I seem to get better at it with every try, so it's definitely a player issue, not the game itself.

I love the anachronistic look of the ship, the old school steering wheel gave me the vibe I was controlling some sort of a space pirate, down on his luck, trying to get some money to get back on his feet and get revenge on someone who stole his warship. The chill yet upbeat music also weirdly fit - I kinda expected something more fast-paced and tense, but this one fit very well when I was looking at my money slowly falling out of the container and drifting off into space, thinking "oh well, here comes the next one".

Also it feels right with the general weirdness of the game. Like, for example, catching falling treasure chests would be weird enough, but fitting with the aesthetic of the ship. Then there's cats, out of nowhere, for no reason. Though many cats have died because I've moved my booty hole too much, and that's a sentence I can't unthink. And I don't know why it made me laugh, but there was something funny about randomly finding dozens of car doors drifting in space. :P

Ultimately, I think I got to a pretty decent score. I guess I could try and get better, but I think that's a perfect finish. Great game!

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Obelisk by Untitled Studios 2023-10-10T22:46:11Z

Wow, that took a long time to get through! And by get through I mean "reach tier 6". And by a long time I mean a bit over an hour, since that's about as much time as I've spent on it before realising I got addicted to digging walls and killing slugs.

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There's a lot of mechanics to unpack, so it takes a bit of time to understand it all and get in the proper rhythm to be able to play it, let alone play it well. It took me a while to expand far enough to find my first turret, but those have helped A LOT to survive for much longer time. Then I figured out better how to use combinations of pushers and boxes to send more crystals from farther away. One thing that didn't really fit the game for me is that crystals stop other pushed crystals - I felt it would have been better if pushed crystals gathered others in their movement line, so you could slowly expand into this crystal highway delivering them from multiple sources at the same time. If that would be too overpowered, limiting the travel distance for crystals would make for a good mechanic too, requiring players to plan relays / repeaters every X tiles. Or maybe making a special building that acts like a single-direction pusher, but embedded in the floor, so it only pushes crystals that enter its tile? Don't know which solution would work better here.

It was also great to see another game use the theme to create a soft limit of space instead of a hard one. Especially in a game like this, expanding your playing field is one of the better parts, and going out to find more machines adds a cool element of exploration. It could be a little bit toned down though - while upgrading the Obelisk to tier 2 opens up a rather small amount of space, tier 3 already unlocks more tiles than you can explore before reaching the next one, especially since the enemy amount grows fast too. I also agree with orangeoceans that the amount of crystals needed to upgrade grows too fast. I don't think I've finished the game below tier 5 after my first game, yet getting to tier 6 seemed very difficult in comparison.

The audiovisual side is amazing. I loved how the slugs looked and moved (at least the three types that I've seen, if there's more later), the building sprites look great too, everything is beautifully animated. The sounds and music are just perfect. Especially the music, it's giving me the same vibes as FTL soundtrack - it's not fast and hectic, but it does build the tension wonderfully.

Other than that, there's not much more for me to say but: amazing game! Doubly so, given that it was made in 48 hours. I hope you keep working on it after the jam, it feels like there's a lot of potential in it.

Mayor of the Mountaintop by Roboimuri 2023-10-02T18:45:21Z

A fun city builder! The aesthetic side is perfect, I love the 1-bit graphics. The music also fits really well, it reminded me of several older games like Constructor - it has this nice "urban" feeling to it.

The need to hold a number key to construct a building felt rather weird, perhaps it would be better to simply have it as a toggle? It felt a bit clunky, but didn't harm playability at all.

I think I've reached a pretty stable city, as I'm almost 50 months in and it's still growing nicely without the need for more buildings. Got the population of over 100 happy people with room for many more: motm_2.png At this point game became a bit laggy. When trying to place a new building or inspect an existing one it lagged for a short moment, but at the end of every month it freezes for about 5 seconds.

Overall it's an impressive amount of work for a short jam game. Well done!

Gridlock: A Tiny RTS by Hare Software 2023-10-18T19:58:52Z

What a fantastic throwback! From the get-go it made me think back to the time I've played Tiberian Dawn for the first time. And it felt like it had a lot of other influences too. One that seems particularly strong to me is from a game I didn't play a lot, but did watch a few people play, by the name of Z. I don't remember much of it, but I can vaguely remember it having a similar system of conquering sectors rather than exploiting resources on the map, which was rather uncommon in RTS games at the time.

You've done great work on implementing a working classic RTS control system. I didn't even need to look at the controls before going into the game, everything was intuitive and worked pretty good. The one small issue I had was that if you right-click your army on a building, they won't move. Several times I found myself ordering troops to move to a sector then realizing I right-clicked on the flag, so they did nothing. Not a big thing, but it would be nice if the units moved to a nearby location.

The graphics look pretty good. I love good pixelart, and the little animations on units are doing great work to make everything feel alive and dynamic. Same goes for the audio part, it's great to see there's a variety of weapons each with its own distinctive sound. The nice tense music in the background feels like a cherry on top of a cake. :)

The voice acting has to be the highlight of the game. The intro/outro sequences are well written, both fun and funny! It would be easy to make these too cringy, but the voice actor has managed perfectly to make them over the top without taking it too far. All the units sound great, too! I've enjoyed clicking through all of them to make sure I've heard all the voice lines. It's nice that you've managed to record more than one line for each unit - it might just be one line more, but it does help reduce the repetition greatly. Hearing that you've done that, I started spam-clicking each unit hoping you've also managed to add some easter-egg lines of units getting angry for being clicked too many times. And while you haven't done that (and who would in the short jam time? :) ), I still enjoyed the lines that were there.

I've found one small bug in several playthroughs, at least it looks like a bug to me. There seems to be a limit on how many units you can control. You can select however many units you like, but if you select too many, right-clicking anywhere doesn't seem to work.

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In this screenshot you can see that I've also managed to get over the command point limit (I think two buildings created units at exactly the same time). I thought that this might have been the cause of the issue, but it wasn't - in the next game I tested it again without going over the limit and it still happened. It also didn't seem to be a problem with any specific unit, as I was able to select half of the entire army, move it, then do the same with the other half.

Also, while not a bug per se, it's something that made me curious. Is there a specific reason the building queue is limited to 17 units? It feels a bit like it's a reference that I'm missing. Either way, it's good to see you've implemented a good queue system, remembering the order units were queued.

Another thing I liked is that you've made randomly generated maps. The maps might be simple, but having them randomly connected makes several playthroughs not only viable, but pretty fun.

Overall, it's a really impressive jam entry. Bonus points for going for a nostalgia trip and executing it so amazingly well. Great job!

Landfall by LCStark 2023-10-02T17:31:45Z

@tesseract Thanks! I was going to make a quick tutorial at the start of the game, but ran out of time. Perhaps I should have added some sort of notification to the landing pad when you build the first house.

I didn't do automatic job assignment because I wanted the player to have full control on what resources are used - I didn't want new colonists to get automatically assigned to wood farms the player might have prepared for later and use all the water, causing food shortages. Perhaps I should have instead found a workaround, like assigning them to pumps first or giving the player the ability to disable a building so it's not auto-assigned. I'll think about it in the post-jam version.

And as for multiple copies, that is an oversight on my part, I'm going to implement it now for the post-jam version (as I think it should be a quick fix).

Landfall by LCStark 2023-10-03T20:29:08Z

@enreh Holy crap! That's a lot of buildings! :D It makes me feel kinda glad I left camera movement and a larger map for later and didn't manage to put it in the compo build :P

Production numbers are definitely unbalanced. I screwed up production code, so as a quick fix I had to make it so every building produces 1 unit of resource per job and all I could do within the compo time was to manipulate production time, so it ended up how it is now. That's probably the next thing I'm gonna work on.

In hindsight, I should have definitely added key bindings for buildings, as well as the multi-construction. I've already added building with Shift key in the post-compo build, I guess key bindings are next. :)

Thanks for playing for son long and for the feedback!

Landfall by LCStark 2023-10-09T12:16:27Z

@noya Thanks! I've seen seam00se's game somewhere before and added it to my to-play list, perhaps I should put it higher up. I'll check it and your game later today. :)

Landfall by LCStark 2023-10-10T07:25:11Z

@untitled-studios Haha. :D My idea for this theme was that you land on a small archipelago in a huge ocean, and the "Limited Space" is the amount of space you have to work with at the start. It was always supposed to be a soft limit, one you could expand using large amount of resources. Though technically there's also the hard limit of space, since in this version it is limited to one screen only. :]

Desktop Madness by DodoIta 2023-10-05T21:07:43Z

Great interpretation of the theme, and a fun, well-made game overall! Everything looks clear and intuitive controls allow you to easily get into it. I loved that the icon types had several different variations each, it definitely helped keep it visually interesting. And I also loved the stylized look of the entire interface.

The whole game looks like it had a lot of effort put into it. All the gameplay elements work smoothly, there's a lot of feedback elements on player actions. And there's a lot of interface elements which aren't really necessary, but they definitely look cool. The volume slider works fantastically as an in-game interface element, the errors showing up on the task bar made me appreciate the attention to detail that went into making this game, but what really amazed me was the context menu and properties window, which don't seem to serve any purpose but to look good, and that they do. :D Given those it might be weird to expect even more, but I thought it would be great to have the option to empty the trash bin (maybe as a gameplay mechanic - for more points? or that it gets full eventually?) or some easter egg in the start menu.

The music is great too, really suits the fast-paced gameplay. It does kinda feel like it ramps up towards the inevitable end. Bonus points for letting it play in the background while the game isn't focused, so I could listen to it while writing this comment. :D

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Oh, and I almost forgot - I expected that overtime viruses would appear to be named the same way as non-virus files, and I'd have to distinguish them just by the small dot icon. So thank you for not setting that trap. :P

Hazel & Hector by cassowary 2023-10-02T19:38:51Z

A really well-made puzzle game! The puzzles aren't very difficult, since I was able to solve them all, but they do provide a pretty good challenge.

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Though I must admit I found myself - once or twice - thinking that a level is deliberately leading you into a trap you can't get out of without restarting. Thankfully, both the Undo and Restart options are available.

The controls are pretty polished. I especially liked that you can drag over multiple tiles in one go, even when pushing another hare, rather than forcing you to go one step at a time. The pushing also worked pretty good, although I found one possible bug - when one hare pushes another into a grass tuft, sometimes the pushed hare will eat the grass, and sometimes it won't. Here you can see the white hare on a tile with grass still present, but they won't eat it.

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Overall it's an amazingly polished compo entry. The graphics are great, and the hare animations are very cute. The music is pretty chill, allowing you to relax while solving the puzzles. Great work!

Crampy Kitchen by BisnessPirate 2023-10-03T19:25:56Z

A really nice idea! A hectic kitchen is always a good setting for a game in my mind, add to that forcing the player to work with limited cooking space and you've got nice arcade'y game. I've had the same bug that aerial has found (with the lower-right vegetable being ungrabbable), and also sometimes when moving quickly my vegetables would get stuck in the cooking pot handles, and I couldn't take them out:

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In one such case it got even weirder - I used another vegetable to push the stuck one out, and it got stuck in the vegetable I used to push it out, so I basically had a twin-tomato.

The game felt pretty difficult at first - quite often I found myself lacking the veggies I needed and I lost before new ones arrived. At some point I accidentally figured out the bins aren't just for decoration, and it made it much easier:

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I guess that was because the tips screen was visible only once before the game started, and it is a lot of text to take in at once. Having it on a separate screen in-game for reference (i.e. in a pause menu) would be good, but even having it in the main menu would allow the player to re-read them without reloading the entire game.

Overall, it's a pretty good game! It has several simple mechanics which can be quickly understood and it's addictive enough to make you want to try just one more run to do a bit better.

Starfold by errantlime 2023-10-05T21:50:31Z

Really nice game! It might just be me, but I don't think space mining is ever getting old. Add to that progression of upgrading your ship to be able to mine more and faster and I'm hooked for hours.

I liked that you didn't settle on either a fully inertial movement system or arcadey control and instead have a mix of nearly-fully-inertial with dampeners. I'm not exactly certain that the slow braking when dampeners are off is necessary, since it feels pretty good coasting from asteroid to asteroid with dampeners off to save fuel.

One thing I'd add is some way to detect asteroids. I think I've managed to mine everything there was, but it would be nice to have some sort of radar, kinda like you have the waypoint for the station. In the end, I finished the game having a pretty decently-sized cargo bay, and the last few hauls of ore gave me a good amount of money to buy more cargo space quickly.

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It's a solid jam entry. It has a lot of potential to be expanded on, and from what I see you already have some nice ideas for updates, so I'll be looking out for those in the future. :)

If I Fits, I Sits! by cheesepencil 2023-10-06T18:56:16Z

Perfect fit for the theme! :D

Good idea on switching the sides the cat comes from, and having the cat be sometimes longer or shorter than the box, as it forces you to be on your toes and choose quickly whether to stop the front or the hind end. The speed increase made for good progression, too.

The aesthetic part is great, it makes me want to try and make a TIC-80 game myself. The graphics are clear (cute cat!) and the sounds are fitting. It might use some simple music track playing in the background, but with such a quick turnover between playing / restarting / trying again I didn't really have the time to miss it much.

Also, I wouldn't say it is too difficult, but it does ramp up rather quickly with the speed. It's not too tough to get a great fit, but I don't think I ever could get a perfect one. If anyone manages that, I congratulate you.

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Moon Base Constructor by SeaM00se 2023-10-09T18:56:07Z

Amazing compo entry! It's impressive how much you've managed to do in only 48 hours. All the systems needed for gameplay, all the different types of buildings, plus all the sounds and music... Nicely done!

The artstyle is great, I always love simple and clean pixelart. And the accompanying music fits it really well. Though speaking of music, I've had one issue with it - it seems that after the track finishes playing, it doesn't restart, leaving the game without music for a long time. Then it starts again at seemingly random times. I've thought that maybe it restarts on building construction (or at least the victory goal building), as it happened several times when I built something, ~~but that might have been a coincidence~~. After trying it several more times I'm convinced the music restarts only when you build one of the victory buildings. If you don't, the game stays silent.

One thing I'd like to see added is keyboard control for the camera, like with WASD keys. The screen-edge is pretty difficult to use when playing in windowed mode (though it's fine in fullscreen).

Other than that, there's not much more for me to say that others haven't already. Well done on making a cool game, and I hope you're going to keep working on it after the jam!

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Moon Base Constructor by SeaM00se 2023-10-09T19:24:36Z

@seam00se Oh, that makes sense! No worries, that one track is great. It does remind me of something, but I can't figure out what. Did you have any specific inspirations for it, or was it just an effect of music jamming? :P

[in frame] by PizzArt64 2023-10-20T10:46:34Z

Really cool idea! And executed pretty well, too. I loved going around and just taking pictures of the environment.

It took me a good while before realizing what needs to be done to progress. It would be good if there was some feedback on why your picture wasn't counted as complete (like the character saying "there's something missing here" or "no, I need to take that without that other thing in the shot"). I've spent quite a lot of time trying to take different angle pictures of a single gear only to realize that there's another one nearby and I have to have them both in the picture. Though once I figured it out it became pretty easy and it felt like I've stopped wandering through the same corridors over and over again and started speedrunning the game. :)

The atmosphere is great, you've managed to capture an abandoned industrial building pretty well. The low-res texture style looks fantastic, especially with this lighting system. The sounds are quite good too, increasing the feeling of being in a large empty structure without being overdone.

The biggest problem after the lack of feedback is the collisions with the terrain, which can sometimes get you stuck. Three or four times I got stuck in a place I couldn't move out of, or even couldn't move at all. Best solution would be to fix all these places, but since it would be incredibly difficult to find them all I think it would be better to have some way for the player to get unstuck. Yeah, it might be slightly immersion breaking, but it's much better then the player being stuck and forced to restart the game.

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After four or five restarts I've managed to find and take all 8 pictures. Having a folder of saved photos is a nice touch. ;)

Last God's Bidding by Daxic 2023-10-12T16:31:13Z

Really nice and polished jam game! Despite being a game about "going through your final exam", it feels really relaxing. :)

Everything feels really well made - from the main menu with sound settings and difficulty options, through the introduction / tutorial, to the game itself. Graphically, the game looks beautiful. Soundwise, everything has its appropriate sound, and the background music makes the whole experience pretty chill.

One small bug I found - after you start a new game again (whether you've won or lost the previous one) and place your first building, you can hear the sound of dialogue letters appearing on the screen, and it keeps playing for several seconds like the dialog was being shown somewhere in the background. Though you can stop it sooner by placing a second tile, so it's not that big of an issue.

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I really hope you'll keep working on it. I can see a lot of potential ways to expand on this idea, so I'm interested to see which way you'd take it. :)

Musical Tunnels by Lakea 2023-10-08T11:09:49Z

Nice take on the theme! I like games that use music as part of the gameplay.

It's so difficult! I tried a lot, but I've only managed to get to Baa Baa Black Sheep, and after about 10-12 tries I only got through 22% of that. I think at this track the distances between the notes become too short for me to do the moves in time, and if I try to start sooner I make the first turn while still in the previous note and I collide with it. Maybe it would work better if the "gate" you already passed through (and the note was played) was removed (or had removed collisions)?

I'd agree with LeviDSmith that it's sometimes difficult to properly measure the amount of movement needed, but for me the biggest problem is that the movement is "jumpy", i.e. the camera instantly rotates to the new position instead of doing it smoothly. I can see well enough where I should move to, but when the world jumps with every move I lose track of the target. I guess it would be difficult to set the timing of smooth rotation properly - make it too long and you won't give the player enough time to react before getting to the next obstacle. I think that a quick but smooth rotation would be better than the instant switch, but it might take some work to make right.

The audiovisual side is pretty good. The models are simple, but for a game like this that's a must - too complicated shapes would only make for a distraction and could make it difficult to align yourself properly. The music tones sound nice, though I think the tracks could have used some light rhythm playing in the background.

Other than that, it's a cool game! Well done on timing the music with the visuals right, from what I've seen in the past few LDs that can sometimes be tricky.

Mecha Walker by Le Don 2023-10-19T17:16:04Z

Really cool game! It does have the same FTL feel of exploring the world without its need to runaway from an enemy fleet, so you can really go everywhere and take your time to figure what is what.

The game looks great, especially the mech sprite with interchangeable parts. It might be "held together by bubblegum", but it's cool as heck. The map is pretty functional, so it doesn't really need any changes. What could use some change perhaps is the shop area. There are a lot of different mech parts available from the get-go and it's pretty difficult to wrap your head around it all. Perhaps a slower introduction of various parts would be better, but then it'd require a much longer playthrough, which means a larger map, which means a lot more time than was available in a jam, so it's understandable that you did it the way you did.

As for the map, I liked the random events between towns, but I felt like there were too many of them happening during the travel time. Several times I've had three events during what looked like a not-too-distant journey.

I've had one small bug during my first playthrough - after one of the jobs my condition dropped to -11, but I was still able to play until my fuel dropped to 0 and I got stuck and starved. I wasn't able to replicate it in any subsequent playthroughs, so I'm not really sure what caused it. I definitely went on one of the hard difficulty missions while already low.

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Blocked by zimny11 2023-10-19T11:07:19Z

A really nice puzzle game! I'd say for a first try this is very well done. :)

The puzzle difficulty seemed alright. The hardest one for me was level 5 "Tricksy", as it required thinking a lot of steps ahead. I've spend a lot of time on that one before I decided to cheat a little bit and make myself a real-world hacking tool for your game:

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which made it much easier to plan everything. :D

I think my biggest issue with the game, especially in this level, was that when you fail the Glass Shape breaks and disappears immediately, and if you click play again you have to wait a long time for it to travel to the failure point. One part of that issue is something others have already mentioned and said a speed-up button might help.

While I agree, I think a better solution would be something like a "step-back" button, which would allow the player to basically rewind time one (or more) steps and implement fixes on the run. It would be obviously more difficult to implement, since instead of a building mode at the start and playing mode after you'd need the ability to pause and make changes, but I think it would be a better solution, as it would waste less time and therefore feel less frustrating. The only issue with it might be that the puzzles would then be too quick to get through, so it might need some testing.

Another idea would be to add two buttons - one for speeding up, which the player could hold pressed for faster speed and release to slow down again, and another for a "skip to next block" functionality, which would rapidly move everything until the next block was encountered. It would help with getting through all the waiting time when the shape is just moving bigger distances in a straight line.

The other issue I had in level 5 was that in the right part of the map the shape was moving rapidly from one rotation block to another, so I kinda lost track in what position and orientation it ended up when it broke. Maybe leaving some sort of ghostly shape or pieces of broken glass on the tiles where the shape last broke would help to mitigate that?

Smitner mentioned the issue of blocks getting stuck on border tiles, and I've seen that one too. It happens when you've got a block on a border tile and you click the "play" button to change the state. After that you can't pick that block anymore.

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I guess one way of dealing with that would be to not allow the block to be moved over a border tile, changing the blocks location only when the cursor moves over an empty space. Another would be to remember where the block was picked from and checking all block locations on changing from "building" to "playing" state, reverting wrongly placed blocks to their origin.

I liked the additional levels. They weren't too difficult (though I've spend a bit of time on A2 to calculate the solutions), but they've shown you have some pretty good ideas on how to expand the game with more mechanics.

Visually the game is pretty good, everything looks clear enough and is easy to understand at a glance. Sounds are good too, as is the music, though it would probably be better if the music looped in the background - right now I have to press M twice to restart it once it finishes.

Overall it's a pretty cool idea, and well executed. Nice job!

Hexed by Tesseract 2023-10-02T17:54:58Z

An interesting take on a classic game! Nice idea with the time-based AI versions, it took me a moment to get used to how that works, but it's pretty fun to try and beat them all. The controls are pretty good - I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to have the keys make more of a hexagon on the keyboard (e.g. using WE, AD, ZX for controls), but the controls you have don't cause any issue for me. Bonus points for having both keyboard and mouse controls!

Limit at Infinity by APG 2023-10-06T19:58:51Z

So at first I had the same problems as others with running the game - either the infinite loading screen or the Cross-Origin Isolation error. I've switched from Firefox to a Chromium browser and while it too showed the error, the game managed to run itself.

It is a great game, but it definitely needs more work on explaining itself to the player. First I think it needs some better way of showing the player they actually can build something. This could be solved by something like a simple tutorial, or maybe highlighting one of the floor tiles to attract the player there and show them the construction list.

Speaking of the construction list, while it looks nice to have short separate building lists, I think it would work better if all the constructions in the game were visible there at all times, with maybe greying-out the unavailable ones and giving them a tooltip explaining why you can't build them (i.e. "not enough X resource" or "can only build in a corner". Having the buildings be visible gives the player a goal to strive for. For example, if the Abyssal Thread was visible at all times, I could check its requirements and think "alright, so I need these resources to build this, and it's a lot, so I need to build up my resource production first".

The overall aesthetic is great. All the units look nice, and while the buildings are pretty simplistic, they fit the game's theme well. And the theme is reinforced well by the soundtrack, giving the vibe of being somewhere deep underwater in the unknown.

The game fits the jam theme great, while at the same time having a fantastic way of circumventing it - you've got limited space, but you play on several different connected spaces. It's a great idea and it has a lot of potential to be expanded upon.

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Bound Balance by imwonderr 2023-10-03T18:20:01Z

A really fun and well made game! It takes a couple of tries to get use to all systems, but after that it becomes really addicting to try and keep everything running for as long as possible. One false step and those pesky humans will expand themselves into extinction. I love that every run has a differently-shaped level and different amount of tiles to place before you start - it makes replaying the game more interesting when you find yourself in a different set of circumstances.

It could use a little bit more feedback on the skills. I got that the lightning strike reduced the resources the villages use, but it didn't work consistently - when the village was growing it reduced the growth by some amount, when the village was decaying it made the decay quicker, but when the village only had +1 growth it did nothing.

One thing that I'd perhaps add is keyboard shortcuts for the skills. I found myself pressing 1/2/3/4 all the time to try and select the skills quickly, then had to click them because I remembered it doesn't work that way.

Eventually, after 4 or 5 tries I've managed to create a situation where I think the level is stable and will last forever:

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On another run I got more of the map destroyed, but I managed to keep a single T3 Village alive for quite a while. :)

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Oh, and it a really nice feature that you've added the time speed up that stops at the next event instead of just running until disabled - makes it much easier to react to anything you might have forgotten to check in time.

And great job on the graphics! The artstyle looks really polished. I love a good hex-map game, but when it looks like that I simply love it. :D

Train Trouble by Harmadillo 2023-10-08T13:22:46Z

Nice compo entry! It's actually the first game with trains I've seen this LD, there should be more of them! :D

The idea is really good, a kind of scrolling shooter with quick levels and resource management between them. The idea of having a hub from which you go to places and have to return stuff back is pretty good, though I think it could use some differentiation between going there and going back - even a simple running train right-to-left instead of left-to-right might work nicely. Having to decide whether to use the limited space to gain more resources or keep the morale up is a great idea, I can only see it becoming more important as the game progresses.

Two small bugs I found: - the "Upgrade" button doesn't seem to work - it takes 100 resources, but it doesn't upgrade anything, as my turret and my cargo wagon are both still shown as "Level 1"; - several times the "Repair" button has shown a negative repair cost and I actually gained resources from repairing the damage, it might be good to clamp the values to 0;

Star Step by Kyle Spence 2023-10-11T19:44:46Z

Nice physics-based platformer! At first I tried playing with what I thought was the intended mode of movement, i.e. magboots, rotation and jumping, but I did find that rather slow and bit difficult to precisely control. The gun-thruster mode was very fun, though - my favourite moment was probably the larger section with several turrets where I could disable the magboots, fly in and shoot the turrets a couple of times before the force propelled be back into cover.

The sunlight damage caught me by surprise, too, but after a moment I did figure out what it was. Maybe having some sort of icon when you're exposed to sunlight would work better to inform the player what is going on. Another thing you might consider is making the first section where you encounter it a bit more shielded, especially at the end - so you move through the sunlit area, but the landing zone is in shadow. First time I played through that part I was still trying to use just the magboot jumping, and once I got to the landing area I tried to rotate quickly in panic so I could enable my magboots while still taking damage.

And one small thing - it would be nice to have a full screen mode. Usually in games where you use this sort of weapon targeting system I move the mouse as far away as possible to give the best precise control, but in windowed mode with unconstrained mouse cursor that causes me to accidentally click outside of the game window. And since the game doesn't pause when that happens, it can be deadly. :P

I also liked the way it looks and sounds. All the sprites are clear and you can easily tell what is what. The slowly rotating floating boxes really added to the atmosphere of the game. And the music does reinforce the being stranded in space theme.

It's a cool entry, I can see a lot of potential in it. The physics system works great, so it can be used to do some fun things, both for puzzle-platforming and for some action segments. I hope you keep working on it after the jam. :)

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Natura by DzejPi 2023-10-04T19:59:58Z

Interesting game! I expected it to be a pretty slow paced and chill experience, and it turned out into a rather panicky simulator of trying to collect all food before winter came. :D Honestly, if you're planning to develop this more, I think either way would work, though if you want this to be more relaxed I think the seasons could be somewhat longer.

The bees are really cute, and it's quite fun just sitting and watching them fly around.

I found two small bugs with the colliders. One is that there is something invisible I keep colliding with near one of the starting trees. Somewhere around this place:

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there is something like an invisible tree - running forward just makes me run in place unless I move sideways to pass it.

Another bug is the ability to place stuff on top of other things - which felt weird when I accidentally placed a tree in another tree so high I couldn't get the apples, but felt great when I realized I could create Sky Hives:

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Terrain Tactics by Asieke 2023-10-19T16:19:47Z

Oof, it's really difficult! Furthest I've managed to get to is round 7 before there was an unreachable enemy. This is one part of the game I don't really understand - why is the game over when an enemy is unreachable? I think the game should continue, either the enemy will die when the terrain underneath them gets destroyed or the player's units will. Plus it's not always that the enemy really is unreachable, as at least twice I found myself in a situation where my bows were diagonal to an enemy that was deemed unreachable and could shoot them.

I like the idea of terrain getting slowly smaller, with tiles slowly getting destroyed, but I think it would be a good idea to telegraph which tiles will get destroyed next. Right now it's totally random chance whether my units will survive or not if I send them anywhere near already destroyed tiles.

HEXAK by Phillip Scott 2023-10-04T19:07:38Z

Amazingly well done game! There's so much stuff here, it's really impressive you've put all of that within just a short jam time. Visually it looks great, the ambient music is fitting, and so are the sounds. After several playthroughs I've managed to get a pretty decent score:

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One issue I had is with the solar panels - hovering over the solar panel button doesn't say it can't be placed near a mountain. I found that out by re-reading the "How to play" screen.

Dante's Reinterpretation by Locke8 2023-10-13T19:58:50Z

I love this idea! My first idea for this jam was to make a similar game, but I abandoned it after I figured out I couldn't have done it justice within the timeframe I had. Glad to see someone else went for it!

I thought that having the limited space of a single screen to fight in would be enough to fit the theme, especially with some other obstacles in the rooms. The barrier idea was a great reinforcement of the theme. Having it both as a soft movement restriction and your hitpoints was brilliant. I also loved that killing enemies restored it, so if you got hit by few stray shots you could still come back by evading the rest and getting rid of some of the enemies.

Some people have already mentioned that the game could use more feedback in several areas, and I agree. Redoxeide mentioned the time you can spend in the darkness. How about making it so when you are outside of the barrier, a circle of darkness slowly closes around you, starting at the edges of the screen and shrinking until it touches the barrier and you lose?

I went through the game several times, trying to go for different powerups each time, and it would seem that you did a pretty good job on balancing it out - I didn't feel any particular option was too overpowered and each choice was a valid option to go for.

The hard mode was a great addition, too! The game became pretty hectic once several spread-multi-shot enemies showed at the same time. Also the idea of giving the player choice to risk more enemies in order to get a reward of more power-ups worked pretty well.

On the audiovisual side, I think it's pretty good. The artstyle is clear, which I find most useful in a bullet hell. The little animations are great, I loved the enemies exploding like blood fountains when they're killed. It would be great if there were more of those, but I know how difficult it is to make as much as you'd like during the jam time. The music was great, especially the haunting scream-like sounds in the background, they created a really spooky atmosphere.

I hope you keep working on it, there's a lot of potential for fun additions here. Like maybe going for a sort of New Game+ after you go through all the levels? In the description you've mentioned Dante going through his journey over and over again, so it might fit to have all the levels show you which circle of Inferno you're currently going through, ending with a boss and then starting over with stronger enemies and keeping all the powerups.

Overall it's a great jam entry. Well done!

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Grid Island by Hiding.Dev 2023-10-16T17:45:14Z

Fun little city builder!

Presentation-wise it feels great. All the buildings look really nice, and I appreciated each one having several variations. I've spent some time clicking on the buttons just to see them all. :) I also like the little animations, they really make the game feel more alive. And good choice on the music track, it helps to build the mood a lot!

As for the gameplay, it's pretty good! It's a nice take on the theme, it's easy to get into and it makes you want to play it just one more time to try and get a bit better score than the last time. It took me three tries until I won, but then at least a dozen before I got a score I was happy with. :D

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SUPA SEAL-MAN!! 小さな氷山島に魚の事故!! by MoonDweller 2023-10-11T09:16:18Z

Very fun game! The mood is amazing, the aesthetic made me feel like it was some sort of modern version of Takeshi's Castle. And the gameplay made me recall Crash Bash party minigames, so that's two cool things I liked reminded in one game. :)

I agree with others that it can be confusing at first (during my first playthrough or two I thought I had to eat the fish and the iceberg sank because I got fat :P), but you can get used to it and figure it out after a couple of tries. One thing that felt slightly weird to me is I couldn't tell how many fish it took to start sinking the iceberg. It might be because the gameplay is pretty hectic, but I thought that sometimes it went down with a much smaller amount of fish than before. Or do the fish get heavier with time? Maybe it would be good to make the sinking a more gradual process, or at least give the player some more warning signs that things are starting to go wrong.

The sounds are well fitting the game, but the music is just banging! Good thing you don't pause and mute the game when it isn't focused, so I can listen to the music while writing this comment. :D

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Mantra by Haotian Chen 2023-10-11T13:04:42Z

Very well made jam entry!

I'm not a huge platformer player, but it felt to me like the difficulty was - for the most part - just right: not too difficult, yet still challenging. The save / checkpoints are pretty well placed, so you don't have to repeat a huge part of the level if you fail a jump. The only part I found a bit too difficult was the final quadruple-dash jump to the end of the game. In the end, I couldn't complete it this way, but after several tries, when I was about to give up, I found that you can also do it in another way, which proved much simpler.

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I haven't found any problem with the wall jumping or climbing, everything seemed to work as intended. There seemed to be some occasional issues with the double jump, as it sometimes looked like it didn't register the second space press (and I wasn't in the white zone), though I didn't manage to figure out the exact occurrence conditions. Other than that, everything handled pretty well and the controls in general felt very smooth.

The idea of having "spaces of limit" is a pretty good interpretation of the theme. The UI showing you which of your abilities are disabled was also a good idea, as it's pretty easy to forget which zone you're in once you move past its border.

The game looks simply beautiful. Everything looks amazing, and while all the sprites are really high quality pixelart, I don't think there's any doubt the main character is the best of them all, especially with all her animations on all the moves.

All in all, it's a very impressive work for such a short jam. Well done!

Animal Teleporting by JamesW 2023-10-06T09:34:58Z

A really nice puzzle game! It's a great take on the theme, and pretty well executed, too.

There's a big variation in the movement rules, but it's introduced gradually to make a nice learning curve. I also liked that you didn't make just a single rule per animal, mixing them was a nice choice. It added a lot of stuff to consider while taking your path, but remembering all the rules makes solutions (or at least parts of solutions) instantly come to mind when you focus on a specific part of the map, so it wasn't too difficult.

All the graphics are nice (though the croc is probably my favourite :P), and the mellow music allows you to focus on thinking.

Not much more for me to say here, other than I agree with others who said it would be nice to have a way of selecting animals via keyboard, though I think instead of a single button it would be better to make it two buttons for previous / next animal - I found myself switching back and forth between animals several times, so it would be better to have a button to go back than having to cycle through them all.

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MineRaider - LD54 by SoloAdventurerGames 2023-10-11T19:08:13Z

Nice little scavenger hunt! So far I've managed to get a high score of 590.

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My main issue with the gameplay loop is that the time is simply too short. I went through it about 20 times and most of times I've had a problem even finding 10 items in time to return to the elevator, so I didn't really feel the need to use the inventory system and manage what I'll drop and what I'll keep.

Also there might be some issues with the ground colliders - in my third or fourth playthrough I've managed to drop through the floor while sprinting:

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I'm glad to see you're going to keep working on it. I agree with Jens, a hub and quick repeating rounds can make this into a pretty robust game. Maybe even unlocking new mines with different environmental hazards (in addition or replacing the lava)?

The sound design is great. The ambient sounds really add to the feeling of immersion. Visually, the game is great too, it does have this slightly Minecrafty feel to it.

Oh, and one rather small thing you've added, but I really liked it - putting some of the resources on the ceiling. The lighting system made them tough to spot at first, but once I found that I really started to look around everywhere. :D

Room by noya 2023-10-09T18:07:38Z

A nice tiny sandbox!

Well done on making multiplayer work well in such a short time. From what I can see it works great and there's surprisingly little delay.

I actually used the multiplayer feature for a slightly different purpose - I've opened a second window with the same world to use as a preview for when I edited the tiles. Works perfectly!

Tile editor is easily the best feature. One thing I think it's missing is the option to copy/clone a tile in the editor to create a new one from it - that would make creating entire tilesets much quicker.

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Scorched Asteroids! by svkj 2023-10-08T07:48:25Z

A really fun throwback to old Scorch! Made me recall all the times I got angry at MIRVs not hitting where I wanted them to.

The gravity mechanic is an excellent addition to it. Getting trick shots perfectly and hitting the target feels really satisfying.

The game looks great, and I like the way the asteroids reshape after a hit. Though it does feel weird that I am changing the ground under the enemy tank when the shell hit a rock far above them. Seeing your explanation for it makes it a bit clearer, I guess I'll have to write an implementation of metaballs and do some experiments myself.

On the audio front the game is good too. All the needed sounds are there, and the background music is banging. It makes me feel more like I'm playing a scrolling shooter like Raptor rather than Scorched Earth, but it does hit the nostalgia button.

As for the controls - maybe changing the tank sprite to have a distinguishable front and back then controlling movement with A/D as forward/backward buttons would work better?

LD54: Closed Capsule by Thvald 2023-10-14T12:03:03Z

Nice little jam entry! I really like the artstyle and the accompanying music, it fits nicely with the theme of being stranded in space.

The playthrough is pretty quick, but that makes it easy to go through the game multiple times.

Matching colors of the damaged system with their names is a good idea, but it could prove problematic for colorblind people. Maybe it would be good to also add the same color-matched exclamation mark next to the system name?

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No Pockets by QaynDecim 2023-10-03T17:36:29Z

Nice take on the theme! Just having a single item slot would be pretty standard idea, but having it be a single item you have to steal from your opponent makes it pretty interesting and fun to play. Plus it makes you strategize for a bit to either wait for the enemy to get an item you really need or try to defeat them more conventionally. The graphic style is great, though it could use some more feedback on what's happening (especially when the enemy uses the ultimate weapon).

One bug I found - if an enemy uses a regen item and gets killed, the next enemy keeps the regeneration buff.

Disco Seducium by najjaman 2023-10-16T17:13:41Z

Nice little rhythm game! I'm usually terrible at those, so it's great you didn't make it too difficult! :P

I've played through the game several times and everything seemed to work well, I didn't get any of the sync issues others have reported.

Not much for me too say that hasn't already been said by others before me... Though there are two things I'd add: - show a score at the end screen, as it would be great to see how well you did - how many notes you've hit and how many were missed or mistakenly pressed - add a button or some other way to restart the game from the end screen

Other than that, great game! The music is really banging. :D

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NarrowLabs Rumble by stmate03 2023-10-06T22:04:54Z

An impressive amount of work for a compo game! I've only made an FPS once, a long time ago, and I remember it being a difficult experience, plus I've made less in a week than you have in just two days. :D

I like the visual design of the rooms, they reminded me a lot of old-school Doom (maybe because of the barrels?) - only more cramped, which would fit the theme!

Sadly I didn't manage to get to the end. I've tried playing around 10 times, but every time the game ended with a crash. Furthest I've managed to reach was to destroy all but one of the robots from the second room. The large group of enemies took me by surprise, but if felt nice trying to fight them all while slowly trying to retreat back to the start. And trying to manage the resources at the same time made it a really hectic experience.

To add to all the feedback you already have, I think it would be good to make enemy projectiles a bit more visible. Maybe adding some lights to them, so they're clearly visible as they travel through the dark rooms would work?

Limited Sanity by kenevil1 2023-10-03T20:17:05Z

Really nice atmospheric game! The artistic design is simply amazing. The humorous comments were great, though at some point they seemed to start going a bit more insane for a bit, and I started wondering - is my character going insane, or am I?

Unfortunately, I couldn't see if there is an ending or not. I've cleared all the rooms, but at one point I noticed one of the cable / wire / zig-zaggy thingy stuck partially inside the couch. I tried to remove it using a dumbbell, but it just glitched through the couch (and the floor I guess), so I think that was the last item I couldn't get.

I also had a rather weird experience with the "toy room" - at first the door leading to it wasn't there at all, it was just a slightly differently colored rectangle on the wall. After some time, a door appeared there, which made me think it was like another level unlocked because I cleared enough of the first one. As soon as I entered the toy room, I turned around to find the door I just entered through wasn't there anymore. I put all the toys in the chest and opened the other door, and I ended up in the bedroom. I turned around and the toy room was gone, with the living room behind the door. I'm not sure how much of that was spooky design and how much was bugged, but it felt pretty creepy. :p

There are also some bugs with picking up items. I assumed I had trouble picking them up because of weird positioning, but sometimes some items would just be stuck and I couldn't grab them at all. Other times, I couldn't drop the item I was carrying and I had to jump to release it.

Also, is there any purpose to the whole in the wall in the living room, or is it just to tempt me to try and throw away all items in it instead of the bin? I've tried throwing several different items in it and nothing happened, so I'm not sure.

Limited Sanity by kenevil1 2023-10-03T23:01:26Z

@kenevil1 Well, I guess I'll have to play it again tomorrow then. :P

Keep Inside by Wallbreaker5th 2023-10-05T20:30:48Z

A very clever idea for a game, and the execution is pretty damn good as well... But it has some very frustrating issues with controls.

After playing through it all I'm still not sure if I was more helped or hampered by the automatic selection of the nearest node. It was very difficult at times - especially when two nodes were pretty close together - to figure out in a blink of an eye which node will be moved, and quite often it wasn't the one I wanted and I failed the level. Though that probably is something I'd get more used to with time, as after a while it became a bit easier and the failures happened less often.

Bigger issue is that it is played on a canvas in a browser window with unrestricted mouse movement. For more precise control I dragged as far away from the node as possible, but that often meant my mouse cursor left the canvas while dragging. If I released the mouse button while it was away from the canvas, it acted unpredictably - i.e. it didn't detect the mouse-up event, and the node was still dragged. Best way to handle that would be to restrict mouse movement to the canvas using Pointer Lock API, but that would require at minimum drawing the cursor on the canvas yourself.

Without that, after about 30-40 attempts to complete the final level, I've worked around the issue by forcing the canvas into fullscreen mode, and that finally let me complete the game: ki.png

The idea is simple, but very effective. Thanks to the area of the polygon remaining constant as its shape changes, you get a lot of strategic choices, like whether it is better to drag the vertices directly on the way of the ball or to push the vertices in the back to move the entire polygon forward. And given the fact you've got to think quickly, you get a pretty hectic gameplay that gives a lot of satisfaction when you complete a level.

I really loved that the music changed based on the distance to the nearest point on the edge. Just the changing faces on the ball would be enough feedback, but the music getting more intense really built up the pressure.

Fruit Fitting Frenzy! by Gwen Dekker 2023-10-03T17:18:32Z

I was going to say that rule 24 had me beaten... But then I saw in Pawel12's comment that it is the final rule, so I kept going. And I made it!

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It's simple, but well made and definitely not easy. It has this addictive quality all good puzzle games should have. Several levels made think "OK, I'll try for a minute more then I give up", and when I found a solution I went "alright, just one more level".

And as for it being your first LD - well done on keeping the scope small enough for a game jam. If you choose to continue working on this one, I have an idea which you might want to consider: optional rules! E.g. add a rule 25 saying "A must be next to B" OR "C must be next to D" and the player can complete the level by adhering to one (or both) of them.

South City Worker Exam by Phobos001 2024-04-16T20:38:13Z

Interesting entry! It's amazing how much worldbuilding you've managed to put into it! And the world seems really interesting, a nice mix of scifi, fantasy and horror (among other things! :D) put together with some thought, so it doesn't feel disjointed.

Others have already mentioned it would be great to get a final score or even the result of the exam, and I agree. I've played through it twice and was a little bit disappointed I didn't get anything "special" for completing the second attempt with 100% correct answers :(. Thankfully the game has impressive amount of story, so it didn't feel too bad for the lack of an ending. Also, if you'd have a final result, I thought it might be a good place to put some more lore behind different game endings, based on how well you did. It would also be a nice reason for players to replay through the game. Maybe another thing to add some replayability would be to modify the responses you get based on which answer you select. There's definitely a lot of ways to expand on it, you can tell the game made me excited enough since I'm sitting here, thinking about possible continuations, instead of fixing my game's bugs. :D

Patty Panic by thomz12 2024-04-25T15:13:08Z

A really cool entry! It feels kinda like a streamlined version of Plate Up!

The graphics look relly cool, the artstyle looks great! I love all the little icons and animations. There's a large amount of variation in customer looks, so they don't get boring either.

One tiny bug I've discovered is that sometimes the customers waiting in the line don't show the `!` icon and there is no visible timer for them, but I haven't managed to figure out a way to reliably reproduce it.

The gameplay loop is easily understandable, and it eases you in slowly to get into the rhythm. It's a pretty good idea to start with just one customer, so the player has a chance to observe all the actions you need to perform in order to completely serve one person.

The audio side is cool as well. All actions have their own sounds, giving good feedback to the player. The music sounds pretty good too, but it makes me wonder if you've perhaps wanted to submit this as a Jam entry and submitted as a Compo instead? According to the Compo rules, all the music should be created within the 48h of the Compo, while the Jam allows you to use previously-made music (with opting out of the category).

Overall, it's a really good entry! All the more impressive given the fact it's made in a custom engine. Well done!

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Nexus by denvil 2024-04-23T19:23:10Z

Really cool concept! I've always wanted a game about managing quests and choosing the right heroes to complete them instead of doing all that busywork yourself. :D

There is a lot of waiting, especially later on when you get to the challenging and hard quests. I enjoyed reading all the little info texts telling you what the heroes are currently doing on their quests, but it feels like there should be something more to do in the Nexus. Perhaps just adding more quests and tubes would help solving the issue, but it might also be better to add something for the player to do in the meantime. Maybe a way for the player to help the heroes with their quests, like sending buffs or equipment?

The deployment mechanic was a bit clunky - it took me a moment to find where and when to throw the hero capsules. During my first playthrough, I've spent a lot of time just throwing them off the edge, as apparently they didn't get detected by the tube colliders properly. Props for adding a teleport-back mechanic, both for the items and for the main character! (A couple of times I got a bit too close to the quest screens to read the text... Oops!)

The graphics are really impressive for a compo game. I especially enjoyed the globe revolving in the background. :) The music is fine, sounds exactly like something I'd expect to hear in a management game like this.

Overall, it's a great compo entry! And it's a pretty good base to expand upon, I think this idea is worth working on beyond the LD time limits. Well done!

The Department by schwede 2024-05-03T19:59:03Z

Hey! Nice to see you back doing LD! And also having switched to Godot, nice! ;)

You've used a really funny idea for the game, running a departament in a company that generates all its income from internal meetings and watching slides. I think I know some people that do actually think this is how it works in the real life. :D

An idea for an expansion - give the player several different types of actions to perform during the presentations, like "add a motivational slogan" or "throw in a funny quip". On one hand, that would give the player something else to do during the slide show instead of just waiting for a timer to fill. On the other, you could use that to have people with different personality types, so some would react better to certain actions while others would ignore them, giving the player several options to balance the entire team.

Oh, on the topic of actions during the meeting one idea just came to me - have some of the losing focus people occasionally start doing some things like tapping on the desk or clicking their pen, which makes others lose focus faster and you need to look at the person to make them stop. :P

The graphics are cool, I loved the idea of having an avatar generator! Having several different slides for us to see as we make our presentations was also nice to see. All that was missing was some sound and music to round everything up.

At first I thought the game would be too easy, as people lost focus too fast and I rarely needed to change even a single slide. Then I got more employees and things got really tough, nice balancing mechanic! And it's always great to see a compo game have a built-in tutorial. :)

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The Great Salmmoning by OadT 2024-04-26T18:04:26Z

Haha, that story idea is ridiculous, I love it! :D

What works really well here is turning a failure into more help for the player. If you're not doing good enough and fail to feed the bears, they turn into salmon, giving you more opportunity to feed the rest. Brilliant!

The graphics look great, I love the artstyle! There's clearly a lot of effort put into it - everything is animated, you've even added a distortion effect for things underwater. One thing I was especially grateful for is the off-screen bear indicators, they're really helpful! I also loved how clearly you can see the state of each bear, through the ritual having visible progression.

One issue I had was with the bears catching hitboxes, as sometimes it was pretty difficult to figure out it the fish will get caught or not. It seems like the hitbox goes quite high up, so the bears easily catch fish flying over their heads, but I'd guess it could be extended a bit more to the left, as this appears to be the side I'm misjudging most often.

The sound effects are good, fitting for the game. All it needs is some light music in the background to reinforce the mood of the game.

Well done for letting the player skip the dialogue at the start faster, it makes it much easier if you're starting the game again. Though since you can't skip the animations, it might be good to add an overall "skip intro" button to move immediately to the "press space to start" screen.

Overall it's a really cool game, very impressive work for such a short compo time. Nicely done!

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Come By by the4thcircle 2024-04-25T13:43:33Z

I love PICO-8 games, even though I'm always terrible at them. And this one is no exception. :D

There's a lot of stuff to unpack here, congratulations on managing to complete so many things in the compo time! Having a separate practice level was really good, tough it almost felt like a trap :). At first I had some trouble with getting used to the controls, so I used my character to direct the sheep... Which was brutally taken away from me in the hard level :P. The controls are pretty difficult to get used to, and really difficult to master. Some more feedback on the actions would definitely be a nice thing, like maybe showing small icons for current action? Few times I got my dog out of the level bounds and couldn't really remember which combo was to call him to come vs to go away, so some form of marker would be useful.

Also, the timing needed for the double commands feels maybe a little bit too short, and quite often I found myself apparently taking too long to press the other button, so instead of moving the dog just changed its stance. This might be a skill issue, though, as I think with more practice I'd be using the controls much quicker, but I think it could use some tweaking to make the practice a bit smoother.

The audiovisual side is great. As with all great PICO-8 games the graphics are simple, but clean and easily distinguishable. The sounds on actions match pretty well, though I must say I wasn't entirely certain about the "pet the dog" sound. When I first heard it, I thought you might have added both petting the dog and accidentally stepping on it, which made me feel terrible for a moment. The title music is fun, kinda wish it played during the levels, too.

Overall, it's a well made compo entry! I've had a lot of fun playing it. :D

Summoned Army by dasilvacontin 2024-04-16T21:10:59Z

A cool little tug-of-war RTS! Reminded me a lot of cool old Flash games I've spent a lot of time playing. :D

One thing I think it could do better is on the visual presentation style. On one hand, by making the game scale so the game area fills the entire window. Right now everything takes place in this tiny square area in the center, and the units are so small it's sometimes difficult to figure out what's going on in small areas of the battle.

Another thing would be some better player feedback, maybe explaining game elements a bit better. For example, I've figured out the inside of the unit is it's health bar (as it dropped on taking damage and got back up when healed by the Healer), but a lot of times it looked to me like the unit didn't have any HP left, yet it remained on the field, still able to take several more hits before going down. Also, it looks like units can be selected (as hovering on them puts a thicker border around them), but is there any point to it? You can't control them, and selecting a unit doesn't seem to affect its attack or health in any way.

Also - did you submit the game in the wrong category by accident? You are using a CC music track from external source, which is allowed in the Jam category, but not in the Compo category.

Overall, it's a pretty cool entry! The rock/paper/scissors mechanic of units gives it a pretty good tactical depth, and while the game is easy to get into, it gives you enough challenge after a few levels to keep you interested. Well done!

He Who Sleeps by benskca 2024-05-03T21:09:06Z

Fantastic compo entry! Probably the best atmosphere in an LD game I've seen in this event.

It has some pretty nice level design, showing you early on where you'll have to go later once you unlock some upgrades. In one or two places it was a bit difficult to see which parts of the wall you could go through and which were solid, but I'd guess that's a colorblindness issue. Plus it wasn't too bad, after hitting an unexpected wall once I took a closer look and that was all I needed to notice what I was missing.

I'm torn in regards to the lack of music. On one hand, it would be great to have some nice dark ambient theme. On another, the silence made the subtle sound effects work really well for mood.

I loved that after you get the second sheep you immediately get teleported back, it cuts out a lot of time retracing the same path over and over again, and keeps you more invested in the narrative. Smart move! It felt really good when I got to the "bigger sacrifice" section, as doing them in rapid succession made me feel really... evil. And then you made the player retrace that path one last time with the final victim, which really gave me this feeling of doing the one last big action before the end. Such a simple thing, but it does enhance storytelling greatly.

I've played through it twice and I loved both times, great LD game. Well done!

Tom Has Joined a Cult by LCStark 2024-04-16T19:51:29Z

@phobos001 Thanks for the feedback! The idea of playing from character perspective does sound nice! I kinda started working from the point of having to place the character in the right location and trace shapes by moving them. I thought about just using the mouse control, but I figured it would make it too easy. In hindsight, it might have been a better choice. I might change it in the post-LD version. :D

Tom Has Joined a Cult by LCStark 2024-04-16T19:52:25Z

@dasilvacontin Thank you for the detailed feedback! Yeah, I've struggled a bit with how to give the player better responses to their actions. In the end, I thought the sound increasing pitch as you fill out the shape would be a good enough way to point the player towards the solution. I've also added in the last minute the filling progress circle inside each shape, but I agree that it isn't really that clear, especially overlapped with a second progress-bar for possible failure on each pattern. I've thought adding different sounds on pattern completion / failure would help, but I guess they're drowned out by other sounds and the music. Anyway, I'll definitely think of better player feedback for an post-LD update!

Tom Has Joined a Cult by LCStark 2024-04-16T19:53:01Z

@freakyzelga Thanks! You're probably right about it causing too much frustration, I think I'll be changing this for a post-LD update. I was worried that it would make the game too easy to play, but in hindsight I think it will be better. And if it's too easy I might play a bit with tweaking the required shape precision. :)

Tom Has Joined a Cult by LCStark 2024-04-16T19:53:25Z

@enreh Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, the two colors are my poor attempt at adding some more last-minute feedback for the player - the blue one filling from both sides is the shape fill percent required to complete it, while the vertically-filling red one is filled for painting out of lines, and if you fill that you will fail that shape (i.e. it will be disabled, but won't be counted as completed). The second one is especially difficult to understand, since I've made the failure state really tough to get (as I thought it would get too frustrating otherwise). In hindsight, I'll definitely need to think of better ways to present the player with progress on each shape.

As for the crashing - I'm assuming you've played the HTML version? Did it crash with an error, or did it just freeze? If it is the latter, then it probably just took a long time to load the next level, as it is totally not optimized at the moment. I'll see what I can do to make it load a bit faster, maybe add a "loading" notification in the meantime. In the end I think I might have to scrap that idea altogether and start from scratch though. With how I made it I had to simplify the last level in last hour of the compo, because the HTML build couldn't load it due to too high memory requirement. We'll see if I can make something out of it in the next few days. :)

Tom Has Joined a Cult by LCStark 2024-04-16T22:16:28Z

@enreh Yeah, that takes a while to load. I've put some timers in and the HTML version on my machine takes about 8 seconds to load the first level, 25 for the second and over 50 seconds for the third. :( I'm going to start doing some optimizations tomorrow, but right now I'm not even sure if I should count that as a bug and apply any fix I make to the compo build, or just add a notification that it is loading and not frozen, or leave it as it is. I'm going to have to think this through. I'll definitely put anything I do in a separate post-LD build.

Tom Has Joined a Cult by LCStark 2024-04-25T17:24:26Z

@dishwand > very meditative! It was kinda something I thought about during development and wanted to eliminate it, or at least reduce it, but perhaps I should pivot entirely in that direction. I might experiment with removing the timers, making the drawing more precise and adding some other things to increase player focus. Might be interesting.

> i would have liked to see an extra mechanic or two, but i appreciate the focus as well. Yeah, I only added the rotating patterns int the final level in the last hour or two of the compo. I was thinking about having something like placing candles on the intersections in the patterns, but didn't have the time to experiment with it.

Tom Has Joined a Cult by LCStark 2024-05-03T19:44:03Z

@ty-victorson > also on the first attempt that I failed on, I was still able to control the character and draw the lines and wanted to see how far it would let me go and I managed to beat it after losing which was funny lol

Haha, thanks for letting me know! Let's just call that one an extended practice mode instead of me missing a fairly obvious bug during the development, huh? _quickly compiles a patch_ ;)

Necromancer 101 by Ty Victorson 2024-04-30T21:05:32Z

A really cool jam entry! Made me think back to all the time I've spent playing Chrono Trigger and old Final Fantasy titles. :D

I'm not sure I'd agree with others commenting that the mix of 2D and 3D didn't work. Sure, you could go for either a fully-2D or a fully-3D game (which would definitely be easier), but I think it could definitely work and make the game pretty interesting-looking. Right now the biggest problem with it is that they seem to have totally different aesthetic, but that's something that can be fixed with more time. I'll agree with the other sentiment, namely that the world is too big for the current method of travel and character speed.

I don't know if it's just a bug or an intended thing, but you can pull enemies from a group and defeat them one by one instead of having to fight the entire group. On one hand it is interesting, in that it makes you move more carefully, on the other I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a game about precision movement :P. It also makes the game ridiculously easy, especially given the fact your army gets fully replenished after every combat.

The game definitely needs a lot more player feedback. For someone familiar with jRPGs it should all feel pretty intuitive, but it still feels like you need to stumble into the right thing to do a couple of times. It wasn't really clear how the game works and what it wants you to do. For example, when I found a village with some enemies and an entry to the castle town, I didn't know whether it's better to keep going forward, or maybe explore the current area and build up your army first. In the end it turned out to not be needed. In a much bigger game it might be alright to leave such a thing for the player to discover, but I think in a jam game it should probably be more straight-forward. Kudos for putting two entrances to the town on both ends of the map, though, making sure the player definitely won't get lost! ;)

The turn-based combat works really well! The only issue with it I encountered was that I didn't always know when my summoned units would act - it feels like sometimes they could take action immediately within the same turn, and sometimes they were delayed by a turn. Not sure if there's a bug there, or it's just an issue with the lack of feedback. Other than that, it felt pretty nice! I enjoyed the large variety of different attacks and status effects, and all of them were pretty intuitive for me to quickly get what's useful in what situation.

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Oh, and one more thing - I liked that all the units had their own specific sound effects, that definitely made the game feel more complete. And bonus points for having the most realistic wolf sound effect ever. :D

Haunted Forest by zimny11 2024-05-03T22:53:39Z

Whew! That was a tough one! Thankfully, I've managed to finish it before the rating time ended. :D

I love the artstyle, the 1+ bit graphics work really well to build the atmosphere. One thing that could perhaps be improved is to use the red a bit more often, but on this one I'm not certain - it might make it feel a bit more special when used really sparingly like that.

The movement works fine, but I have a bit mixed feelings about the attack. Having to use move + interact to attack gives you a nice way to attack in a specific direction, but it also makes it difficult to time your attacks precisely to push the enemy away. More often than not I found myself just spamming it and hoping for the best. It might be the combination of the key control, game perspective and maybe the hitbox colliders not being adjusted well enough that made it feel awkward.

On the topic of enemies, they do seem to be a bit too difficult to me. The camera is confined to a pretty small area, so it's extremely easy to accidentally get into aggro range, especially when moving vertically. Decreasing the aggro range might make it a bit too easy to evade them altogether, so I think giving the player a bit more visibility would work better here. While I hated the deer, the bear-wolf-like monstrosity was great, I even tried playing fetch with it, but it never brought the stick back. :(

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I'd agree with previous comments that the interaction indicator would probably work better if it was shown in-world near the object you can interact with, but it gave me another idea. When I first saw it, I thought that it might be something like a "danger sense", letting you know how close you are to the nearest enemy. That might be one way to give player better ability of evading enemies without making it too easy - just have an indicator that increases in strength the closer you are to an enemy. You'd be able to see that your getting close to the deer guys even when they weren't yet visible for you, and it wouldn't be too easy, since it wouldn't tell you their exact direction.

The sounds are pretty cool. I was thinking that maybe some music would nice, but actually the lack of music works well to enhance the sound effects here. If anything, any music you might have add would have to be rather light to not detract from the current atmosphere of the game.

While it took me a while to finish it, mainly due to being rather tired and not being able to remember where everything is (I really need a map today, lol), I finally managed to complete the game. Worth every minute! :D

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Summoner's Emporium by imwonderr 2024-04-16T22:05:11Z

Really cool game! It immediately made me think of Slime Rancher, but with some other elements mixed into it. And the result is pretty interesting!

The tutorial is pretty long, it takes some time to explain the game systems to the player. It would be good if there was a way to skip it - first time playing the game it was fine, but on the second and third time it meant having to click through it all to start.

It's nice that you have a way to exit the interface using the Escape button, but on one hand it would be better to have it as a button on the screen (making it more obvious), on another it should probably be bound to a different key, since in WebGL builds Escape is first used to exit the fullscreen. In a best-case scenario, you have to press the button twice to exit the interface, and you'd have to re-enable fullscreen every time you do it.

Having the slimes produce everything for you means the game doesn't feel so grindy, but it has a small problem with downtime - several times I found myself just sitting there, waiting for currency to slowly trickle in so I could buy another crystal or a brewing stand. It would be nice to have something for the player to do in the meantime, maybe a way to manually generate at least a small amount of resources by clicking a crystal yourself?

Overall it's a pretty cool game! I like both the concept and the execution. It has a few small bugs, but nothing game-breaking and all should be fixable. There are a lot of mechanics which work pretty well as they are right now, and each one of them can be expanded in interesting ways if you plan to continue working on it after the jam. Well done!

Pulse of the Ethereal by DzejPi 2024-04-30T22:03:59Z

Wow, now that's a really impressive compo entry! Well done on making such a well-built game in such a short time! I can only imagine how much pain it took to figure out all that vector math. :D

In my first playthrough I've managed to get to the Thinker, which thought me to death I guess. But in the end I got my revenge, even though it took me a few more goes.

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It felt nice to have two separate kinds of weapons, with the rockets being a more special kind, with limited ammo, forcing you to use it sparingly. I also really enjoyed having the shield - quite a literal life-saver! One thing I'd perhaps add to it is some feedback on how long it's going to last, maybe make it blink as it reaches the end? Maybe fade it out with transparency?

I've also encountered the bug with auto-shooting sometimes being interrupted. I'm not sure what the cause is, but after looking at your code one thing I'd try is to move the cooldowns from the `_process` to the `_physics_process` method. I found it's better to have the gameplay-related timers be based on a constant delta instead of the FPS-dependent `_process` delta. Definitely makes it all more stable and predictable.

I'll agree with other commenters that aiming can be difficult, but I'd guess that's something that can be solved with some more time. Maybe adding a crosshair will help, or maybe it would be better to have something like a laser pointer shooting straight out of your ship? Tough to say, I guess that's something that needs some experimentation. ;)

The sound design is also pretty good. Everything has appropriate sounds, and there's a cool tune playing in the background. It does feel a bit arcadey, but it actually reminds me more of some techno songs and remixes from the late 90's and early 00's. :P

Overall, it's a pretty cool StarFoxy game. I had a lot of fun with it, it made me want to replay it until I got good enough to finish it, and then some more for a good measure :). Well done!

Air Fried Ice by MadR 2024-04-28T20:37:26Z

Pretty fun card game! I love the visual design, especially the board and the creatures. The chill music in the background is also pretty fitting. :) One thing I'd add as a small improvement is maybe zooming in on the card you are picking up, so you can look at it more closely before placing it - it's not really important for the gameplay reason, but I felt like it would be nice to see the creature design more clearly.

Not much more to say here, others have already pointed out the same issues I had. One thing I want to add is an idea for possible expansion - maybe it would be nice to have the different creatures somehow influence the gameplay as well. Maybe something that would make each round last a bit longer would be adding hit points to the creatures and making some creatures take more / less damage based on which of the three creatures hit it, e.g. the fire snake taking 1dmg from the butterfly, 2 from the bat and 3 from the owl. Or maybe instead of hitpoints have some sort of crit system, which would regenerate one peek if you manage to get it.

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Fury Duty by krummja 2024-04-25T16:32:20Z

Really cool take on the theme! The game was pretty easy to get into, so it didn't take me long before I could say "justice has been served!". One thing that was missing was some sort of ending, if not some sort of MK-style Fatality, then perhaps just the voiceover saying "K.O.!". The graphics are cool, and the music is absolutely banging. Nicely done! :)

Reverse Rituals by freakyzelga 2024-04-16T21:26:05Z

I really like the idea of a reverse-summoning, it made me laugh. :D Others have already mentioned things I wanted to write about, so instead of repeating the same things I'll just mention that the variety of characters you get is great. So far I've got Joy Junior, Sinister Sam and Max Fury. It kinda makes me want to keep replaying it to find them all. :D

Court Summons by dishwand 2024-04-25T16:10:29Z

Cool compo entry! :)

There were some problems with loading the web build. At first, the progress bar went to full, got replaced by the loading circle animation and got stuck there, repeatedly printing in the console: ``` still waiting on run dependencies: dependency: wasm-instantiate (end of list) ```

After a few refreshes, it added another error before those: ``` Loading failed for the \ with source "https://dishwand.github.io/dishwand/LD55/main.js" ```

Fortunately, after 10 or so refreshes it suddenly loaded. Not sure what went wrong there, I guess it's just one of those issues caused by Godot 4 not fully supporting HTML exports yet. After that, it worked well for several playthroughs.

Really impressive work you've done there. While the concept itself is pretty simple, you've added a lot of variation to the types of levels and targets to find. Mixing them both makes the gameplay never feel boring and it keeps you interested for the whole duration of the game.

I've done pretty good with the first act, but started getting some difficulties on the second and had to restart it twice. For the second time I've enabled the colorblind mode (which is an awesome thing to add, thanks! :D) and I've managed to finish the game with it. One thing I'd like is to have a way to restart the game without having to reload the whole thing, but it's a small issue, as the game loads pretty quickly. Letting you skip through the dialogue is also a fantastic thing, it's pretty easy to miss and leave the player having to wait through it all, especially on repeated playthroughs.

The graphics look pretty cool. I liked the little variations in imps looks, the shapes of their eyes, ears or horns. It made later acts more difficult, as having to quickly find three imps of the same type gets really tough when everybody is constantly moving. One thing that sometimes felt unnecessarily difficult is when an imp stayed turned away from the camera for a really long time, it might be nice to add something like a "nudge" mechanic with the mouse to force them to move. Also, while the colorblind assist really did help, I think it really should stay always oriented towards the camera. Quite often I found imps irritatingly moving sideways, so I couldn't see the numbers at all :P. Oh, and I also enjoyed all the little descriptions on the summoning orders, quite funny and - again - quite a large number of them, so they don't get boring. :)

The audio side is pretty well done too! All actions give good feedback with their own sounds, and the music track is a good background for the gameplay without being too attention-grabbing.

For a 48h game jam, it's a really impressive game. Well done!

Temptation Summoner's Aprendice by Baluj 2024-04-25T16:49:41Z

Really cool idea! A tug-of-war game, but instead of playing as one side against the other, you play against both of them and have to balance their fight to get as much for yourself. I love it! :D

I agree with others before me that it could definitely use some more feedback to player actions. I'd also add that having a visible cooldown indicator on the temptations is really needed, as without it it feels really confusing as to why you can't place them anymore, or when they're ready again.

Necro Jam by Weirdo_Studios 2024-04-23T18:26:10Z

Fun little game! Plays like a bullet hell, but instead of shooting enemies directly you spawn skeletons to attack them, which is a pretty cool concept. :)

It could use a bit of explanation on how to play it, though. I kinda expected the spawn skeletons to attack enemies near me, but they seemed to be always targeting ones far away (do they simply select first enemy on the list by ID or something?). Another part I got slightly stuck on was the shop - it took me a while of randomly pressing buttons before I've figured out how to buy anything. A prompt with the key, or even controls in the pause menu or in the game description would have helped greatly.

There are also some bugs - you can spawn skeletons outside of the level, a lot of times buying items in the shop doesn't seem to do anything other than reducing the amount of diamonds you have, a few small others.

Overall it's a nice entry! The sprites looked nice and I liked the little spawning animation. Looks like a decent base to expand on. :)

Curse of the Mystical Mushroom by BACON BEAST 2024-04-26T20:03:40Z

Really cool game! It feels like a crossover between an incremental game and an autobattler, filling a really nice niche, I think there's a lot of potential for this style of games.

The artstyle is pretty good, and I like the style of billboarded sprites in 3D space, kinda make me want to make a game like that myself! :D

The animations of the forest felt weird at first, seeing everything - bones, logs and living trees - move in unison felt somewhat uncanny, but I guess that added some weird mood to the game. Did you experiment with having every object have a slightly different animation speed to make them look like they're all animated independently?

The music is nice, really fitting for the mood of a witch stuck somewhere in a forest.

I really liked that your mushrooms retarget when there's a ghost nearby instead of just continuing to attack their current target and take a beating. Well done on adding that one small but important piece of AI! :)

Overall, the game is really great. It feels good to progress, and once you upgrade the max mushrooms high enough it gives you that real sense of power, especially when you start seeing them quickly obliterate the low-hp targets. I'd say all that's left to do here is some more balancing on the upgrades, as for example the "free premade mushrooms" upgrade is practically not worth it after the first level - I've played a lot, but I don't think I got the cost returned for anything beyond the second upgrade. I thought I might play till I got all the upgrades, but the final few got a bit too expensive for me to try and grind for them:

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Also, for my first playthrough, I've focused on getting the time extended as much as possible, and it made me feel like it would be nice to have something for the player to do during the level. Perhaps some buff / debuff spells you could cast for a small energy cost? Another thing which would be nice is to add some bonus reward for returning home before the timer fully runs out. Oh, and while we're on the subject on the timer, I've discovered one interesting thing - fullscreen apps with media playback should prevent screensaver from appearing, yet while playing your game mine still activated. Not sure if it's a Unity bug or if perhaps there's something you've missed in the build options.

It would also be cool to have a max button for the buying mushrooms - clicking individually or holding the mouse button takes way too long once you get your max mushroom count higher up.

One small bug I found - the furthest mushroom on the right has its HP bar displayed behind its sprite:

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I thought that it might have been the bones behind it, or a spawning ghost, but once everything was cleared, there still was an HP bar partially obscured right until I've destroyed that mushroom.

Overall, it's a really fun and well made compo entry. I hope you're going to keep working on it, as it is a cool idea, and I can see many ways in which you could expand it further. Well done!

Fedora Fury by Vantalogic 2024-04-23T18:50:13Z

Funny little game! :D I really like the concept of getting defeated enemies as summons. If you keep working on it, having a big enough roster of enemies to fight and collect could make it really interesting, adding some tactical choices of selecting the right summons to combat specific enemy types.

One bug I found in the main menu - after clicking on the `Controls` button, I couldn't get back to the main menu. Clicking the `Back` button didn't do anything (I don't think its interactable at all), I think it might be because of the big brain sprite shown over the right side of the screen. In fullscreen it works fine, though.

The artstyle is pretty cool! I especially enjoyed the sister flailing her arms wildly to attack things. :D The music is also great, really matches the mood of the game. I got to the end, found the scroll and possibly created the worst superhero ever. I fear what he'll do next time...

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Don't Scratch That Itch by Local Minimum 2024-10-23T20:52:29Z

Really bizarre and disturbing game! Not only because of the concept, but also the matching audio design and weirdly zooming and moving camera. Mechanically it worked pretty well, it took me a few moments to figure out how the creatures are attracted to the cursor and you have to balance that with the attraction of the hand and its inertia. It might have been too easy, if it weren't for the disjointed camera movements. On one hand they weren't too disjointed, so the game was still very much playable and didn't make me want to throw anything at the screen. On another they gave the game this sinusoidal movement between moments of rather easy gameplay with time to rest and moments of panic when the camera got zoomed in really close and the rashes were all around you. Pretty damn smart design, I love it!

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Tiny Turf Tussle by Alchemic 2024-10-25T09:37:31Z

This game is amazing. It has all the qualities to make me return to it again and again. There is something deeply satisfying about seeing your build slowly evolve, get better and better. And when it fails instead of feeling disappointed you think "hey, just one more try, this time I'm gonna win more!".

Aesthetically, the game is great. The pixelart style is wonderful, with some nice animations added to the top. Intense music and some nice sound effects that feel like taken straight out of the NES era really enhance the experience.

The mechanics side is great too. There's a huge variety of units and buildings, and the limited choice you get at the start gives the game a lot of replayability, just to see if something else might work better than the last one. The Fast Forward button was great, though I feel like the game could sometimes just detect that all the enemy structures have been destroyed.

Overall, this is a really impressive jam entry, nicely done! :D

Space Oyster Mining Company by irwatts 2024-10-25T08:56:53Z

Pretty fun little game! It takes a moment to get into the right rhythm of if, with having to manage the three parts of the conveyor at the same time, but once you do it gets pretty satisfying to watch the oysters come in and get processed. The graphics side feels way too overwhelming, with lots of different effects all trying to distract you from doing the job you were assigned to do. The controls feel pretty responsive, though I had a weird issue with the bin selector - it felt like sometimes it wouldn't move at all, but then it would move on its own after a pearl got caught, like it only registered the keypress after the next pearl. Pretty cool music, great for putting you into this meditative flow you need to play a game like this. Well done!

Fuel Metal Jacques by grena 2024-10-25T18:41:46Z

Well, I guess the theme didn't say you can't massacre the tiny creatures... :P Perfect little jam game, seemingly full of charm until you discover the horrible truth. Then it turns into a colorful macabre simulator without really needing to change that much. Well, "not that much" unless you are paying attention to the ship's translator system... :o Lovely graphics and sound design, cute animations, well executed mechanics - everything you want to see in a good jam game!

Cicada & Les Grenouilles by Jajo 2024-10-22T20:05:15Z

Interesting game, made me think of some great classics in the NES era. :D Great looking sprites and a nice catchy music in the background ;)

Wish I was better at platforming, but after some practice I've managed to reach the second (or third?) level with jump pads. There's a nice progression to the game, and slowly introducing more mechanics with each level makes it feel not too overwhelming.

One thing I'd change is the crystal collection mechanic. Right now, you've got to collect them all and then all the frogs shrink down. Maybe it would work better if they were split into groups and each group would shrink one or more frogs? That way you wouldn't have to run in panic to get all the frogs before they get big again, and wouldn't have to wait as long for crystals to respawn.

Overall, it's a really great compo entry, impressive work done in such a short time! :)

Ogron Gramsay's Culinary Journey by N.O.X 2024-10-21T16:00:55Z

Really fun (and funny!) game! It reminded me a lot of old Flash launcher-style games, with the short level playthrough to gather money to spend in the shop in-between the rounds. The additional layer of having to turn gathered ingredients into recipes to actually get the money was pretty interesting, and there's a ton of different recipes to cook! The graphics look good, but what gives the game a lot of character is all the little animations on basically everything. The music track feels really fitting, and the sound design is pretty good too! Mechanically the game is solid, though I think I'd modify the costs of upgrades a bit. With some practice I finished the game at day 14 while having both upgrades still under level 10, and after another week I managed to get the endurance up maybe 2-3 levels at most. Getting to 50 seems like an impossible task! :P Overall, it's a really cool jam game, well done!

First summer - a bee story by Chocolat-Endive 2024-10-22T21:07:55Z

Pretty cool and relaxing game! Love the aesthetic, and the background track, it really fits the calm gameplay!

The upgrade system is pretty cool and well implemented. One thing I'd maybe add to it is better marking of your current range, like maybe making the flowers out of range (and maybe of different type of pollen than you have) darkened / greyed out, so you can see at a glance where you can and can't go.

I made a lot of bees, I hope that's not too many and that it's enough food for the winter. :P bee_story.png

It Ant possible by voodinator 2024-10-25T16:48:58Z

Don't put yourselves down, for such a short time it's an amazing thing you've created! It made me recall all the hours spent playing Lemmings back in the day, you've managed to recreate the feel of the game pretty well here. The sprites for the level parts and the ants are alright, pretty good choice of assets here. The music is rather calm, but it does have a bit of that classic Lemmings cheekiness to it. Mechanically there are some minor bugs, but that's mostly stuff that can be avoided by the player, so it isn't such a big issue. Overall, it's a great jam entry, well done! :D

Bug Squad by fabula_rasa 2024-10-25T08:39:30Z

Amazing jam entry! The graphics side is just fantastic. Ton of extremely cute creatures, nice environment and the... additional "environmental hazards" are really well drawn. The little animations do a lot to make them feel alive. Sound design is pretty great too, well chosen music track adds tension a game like this needs. Mechanically, the game is well executed, it made me recall all the time spent playing Into The Breach with similarly-designed creatures and their abilities. And it's similarly difficult! Nice job on giving us the ability to rearrange the acorns to modify our builds, that adds a lot to the overall strategy.

Zanymen: Tiny Town by Brainloaf Studio 2024-10-23T20:37:33Z

Really cute and relaxing colony sim! Gotta love the chill gameplay and finding out all these zany characters. And the background music fits it all perfectly! I've played it for a bit and I think two things could be improved here.

First one is the citizen ordering. Every time you want to order someone to do something, you have to click through quite a lot of the dialogue. To harvest resources you need to click character, skip dialogue, select action, select resource, skip dialogue again. And that's assuming the character doesn't have anything to say about their life at the moment. It feels like it could be optimized somehow, and maybe if a character wants to talk to you about something it could be a separate option in the actions you choose (and maybe you could add something like an exclamation mark over their heads to let you know they want to talk?). Having a list of actions display immediately next to the dialogue box could probably speed it up.

The other one is that building construction gets pretty slow pretty fast. Last two or three buildings in my playthrough took ages, because construction can only be helped by at most three people, and each one of them can add one resource at a time. Maybe the more expensive structures could be built by adding more resources at a time, or some characters could be better at building things with specific resources and they would boost that speed?

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Overall it's a pretty cool jam entry, a comfortable game to relax by. And I had a lot of fun with it. :D

Are you listening? by Sockenpuppe 2024-10-25T19:55:56Z

Really great game! I don't play visual novels often, but once I saw the title card for this one I've felt kinda drawn to it. I've played through to get all 3 endings and all I can say is that I really liked the way you told this story. Using tiny creatures to represent depression pulling you down and blocking the "good" choices was a great idea, and a really creative way of interpreting the theme. The art style is just amazing, I think I'm gonna get through the game at least one more time just to get a better look at every picture and appreciate all the details you've put in them more. Sound design is also done really well, the whispers in the background feeling like subconscious thoughts going through the character's mind. Once again, amazing work, well done!

Turdvivor by Fork on the Table Studios 2024-10-22T20:22:03Z

Ah, some classic toilet humour! I'd agree with previous commenters that it would be helpful to know your destination if you want to sneak by all the enemies. I really did enjoy the distraction elements, though, didn't expect that to be a part of the gameplay. Pretty cool soundtrack, too! ;)

BeltCo Mining Inc. by smilewood 2025-04-13T09:44:50Z

Nice, someone else went with a similar idea to mine! :D

I like the way you implemented the movement and rotation system. Free rotation following the mouse, but pretty slowly, does work pretty good for an old mining vessel. I also liked that there is some inertia to the movement, though I think it would work better if the level didn't end until your ship completely stops - a couple of times I was drifting towards the station and I think I'd reach it with inertia if the overzealous rescue ship didn't decide it needed to "rescue" me.

The mining system is pretty great too, makes me regret not finding some time to implement one I had in mind for my game. Having to extract the mineral asteroids from clusters to get more resources makes for more interesting gameplay than just firing and collecting the result.

Graphically the game is pretty good. I love the parallax effect in the background, with few layers of stars and the variously coloured nebulae.

Overall, it's a really cool game. Pretty impressive compo entry, well done!

Treasures by mgear 2025-04-13T08:48:57Z

Cool little game! I'd agree with other commenters that it evokes kinda same feeling as QWOP, but the controls are certainly much easier to get used to here. One thing I'd perhaps change is to add a bit more friction from the water - it felt like using Q/E to spin was constant battle to overcorrect in one direction or another. Maybe playing it with analog controller would have worked better, allowing for more controlled changes. Though that's more of an issue of convenience, it didn't really stop me from beating the game quite quickly.

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Also, thanks to the power of swimming through air, I managed to picture a scene of the main character relaxing on board of their ship with the treasure they got.

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I liked the light, chill music in the background, it definitely helped make the game a more relaxed experience despite the rather hectic controls. Worked pretty well! :) The graphic style is also great, reminded me of old Atari games, but with modern touch.

Overall, it's a really nice compo entry, well done!

Wrinkles by OadT 2025-04-13T08:24:16Z

Nice take on the theme! Instead of going in the depths, try to get rid of them. :)

The dialogue during the gameplay was a great idea, the narrative really adds to the mood of the game. Graphics are simple, but for a game like this it means they're clear and don't make the gameplay harder. Here everything's pretty responsive and you won't get stuck wondering if there's something you've missed.

The physics system worked pretty well too. Only the last level got some funky issues: wrinkles.png

I don't think that's healthy for the patient. :D

Unbound by LCStark 2025-04-09T17:27:44Z

@dzejpi Thanks! I've made the collector work like that because I planned to have more equipment to install on your ship, and I made it so the more you have enabled at the same time, the more power (and thus more fuel) was being used. Though I think you're right, perhaps when I limited the scope and left just the collector I should have let go of that idea too. Might be something for me to remember for the next jam - when you remove planned features, make sure everything left makes sense. :P

Unbound by LCStark 2025-04-13T15:17:53Z

@zimny11 Thank you! Yeah, looks like there is that issue with the collector, gonna have to fix it in the post-jam version. The collector was going to be a physical thing, it got cut because of time. Might work it back in eventually. As for the moving asteroids, I'm not sure, like you said it would probably make the game much less relaxing. I might experiment with some slow rotation, though, might look good and not be too stressful. :)

@oadt Thanks! Yeah, there were more resources planned, both for collecting / crafting at the station, and used by the ship. Sadly, they became victims of scope cuts. :P But at least I have a lot of things to improve in the post-jam version!

Unbound by LCStark 2025-04-13T15:23:15Z

@quasilyte Thank you for such detailed feedback!

> Maybe a per/5 or per/10 seconds consumption could help for the longer term planning, I dunno. :D [...]

At first I was considering making it so you'd have to return to the station yourself before the fuel runs out or you'd lose, but in the end I figured that would make it too punishing for the player. Maybe a separate mode like that could work, though, then the additional long-term statistics would really be useful. I was also thinking about having some sort of map on the station, so maybe adding a planning stage where you could plot the best course would also fit that mode?

> One another idea is making the grabber far less costly to upkeep (maybe 0.5/s?), but a bit more expensive to turn on. [...]

I wanted the grabber to be a bit more physics-based - after enabling it, it would follow the mouse and use resources only when moving, and you'd use it to grab resources and bring them in to the ship. With separate resources for fuel and equipment power it would also mean you could balance it by either moving the collector to a different position, or moving/rotating the whole ship instead. I didn't think of adding an instant cost of turning it on, that might be a nice thing to consider, thanks!

> Assigning the grabber to [1] is a weird choice tbh. This is the sole controls command I had to look up. [...]

Yeah, there was going to be more equipment to unlock. Maybe for the next time I need to make a simple sprite resembling a keyboard key to make it more obvious, placing it both there on the label and in the pause menu controls screen might do easier to connect the dots without having to scour for the controls later.

> I tried using ctrl, but it seem to do nothing. Is it implemented?

Ctrl is kinda the reverse of what space does for movement. Normally, when you rotate the ship and let go of A/D, the thrusters auto-fire to stop your rotation. If you hold Ctrl, they won't do that, and you'll spin freely until you let go of the button. Maybe I should have called that differently than free rotation, it was the first thing that came to mind. :)

> I posted an upgrade screen because one of the background stars confused me with a “next screen” arrow. :D [...]

Hah, that's what I get for trying to use Itch.io's theme system! Maybe I should add a disclaimer to best play fullscreen then. :D As for the radar I think you're right, either making it opaque or only going transparent when there are objects below would be better.

> I wonder why it’s a JAM instead of compo if you made everything yourself during the jam. Did you ran out of time and needed an extra day? I’m just curious.

Yeah, I ran out of time. I was gonna go for the compo, but I had less time over the weekend than I hoped for, and when I finished the game was pretty bare bones:

compo.png

I thought it would be better to give it at least another few hours the next day instead of posting what I had at the time.

Again, thanks for playing and the feedback! :)

Unbound by LCStark 2025-04-13T16:42:25Z

@quasilyte > A simple convention of adding [] around the label could help here.

Funny, I've used that before, but somehow with this game I totally blanked on that.

> Even after reading the description you provided, I have no idea how to use that ctrl thing. :D

Don't worry about it, it's pretty useless anyway. I only added it because I thought it fit - since the movement has a way to move with/without inertia, I thought rotation should be the same. In the end the cost of rotation isn't that big to make it something you'd need. I'll think about it for an updated version, maybe I'll find some way to make it more useful and it will lead me to a better explanation of that system.

> I can recommend this template, in particular: https://jannikboysen.itch.io/easy-releasy

Thanks, I'll look into it! I've never done much with the Itch page customisation either, so at least having some examples to poke at might be helpful if I find the time to experiment with it. In the short-term I'll probably increase the window size and add a border like you said.

> Thank you for the detailed response (and for an elaborated feedback for my game, I always love that and it’s one of the main reasons to participate in LD; “good gaem” does not hit the string for me anymore)

Sure thing, that's why I'm doing it too. :) I'm happy if I can write something more than just "I liked it", especially if I can add something others haven't mentioned before. And most of the time after the compo/jam I feel like I haven't done nearly enough, so getting some good feedback helps me focus more on the good part of what I *have* done. Not to mention getting someone else's perspective on things I might have gotten tunnel vision over the course of development.

Unbound by LCStark 2025-04-19T22:14:07Z

@decosense Thanks!

> I didn’t understand why my fuel drain was so high until I found out it was caused by collisions because I used asteroids for breaking. It would be good to have some kind of feedback when taking damage, maybe some fuel leaking into space from the collision point.

There is no collision damage (I wanted to have it as a separate HP system, but decided against it for the jam), the fuel is drained by using thrusters (separate for movement and rotation, so using both is more expensive) and having the collector turned on. Using asteroids to brake actually saves you a lot of fuel. There's also slow passive drain of -1 (without the upgrade). Other than that, only way you could increase the drain is by holding T, as I left the debug quadruple drain button in the game. :P

Unbound by LCStark 2025-04-25T23:46:40Z

@rbbhn It is procedurally generated, though the map is used for the entire playthrough. I wanted the player to have to venture out further and further as they progressed, though that feeling is certainly limited by the fact I didn't have the time to implement more resources and upgrades. I also wanted to have dynamically loaded and unloaded chunks to make the map infinite, but sadly not enough time again, so it's just what it is at the start time.

Folder Depth by Zigtalk 2025-04-12T21:37:11Z

Pretty neat idea! I like your take on the theme! The aesthetic of a file manager is pretty well realized. Others have already mentioned most of the issues I had. One thing I'd add to their feedback is that the pop-up messages might be better if they were just click-anywhere to dismiss instead of having to press the tiny X button or wait. There's also a click-through issue on them - multiple times I clicked the message window and the game detected as me clicking on another file or folder and I think I got double penalized. So far I've managed to reach level 4, and while the moving folders at first didn't look like they were going to change things much, they do make it way more chaotic. But I guess it's a pretty good simulation of how you see things when you're trying to quickly find something when stressed. :D

Neon Wars by StefanHolst 2025-04-25T23:30:18Z

Pretty cool tower defense game! One thing that I'd like to see added is the ability to build more than one turret at a time when holding shift - the F1-F3 keys do help with that a bit, but still it would be better to not have to spam them. Pretty decent sounds, and together with the graphics they form a pretty fun aesthetic. Nice work on the rocket launch animation, looks really cool to me! :D

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Sea Dicegarden by zimny11 2025-04-09T17:22:55Z

Pretty cool concept! I agree with colisan, a journal tracking your progress would be really great. Though I managed with tracking things in the notepad. :p And I definitely can understand overscoping in this LD.

I found one bug which made one (or more?) dice stuck in the top left screen:

seadicegarden.png

It also caused some of the green slots in the plots to get blocked with ghost dice, I couldn't drag any new dice in those positions. Later on the ghost dice also appeared in the top slots, as I couldn't press the blinking button to spawn a new one. But fortunately I've managed to stumble towards victory anyway. :)

seadicegarden2.png

After pressing space to restart, game started with all dice in the top left corner, and after dragging them to the slots it turned out I was only given 4 dice, without any greens, and couldn't do anything.

seadicegarden3.png

Reloading the page did help. :) I think the bug might have been caused by me adding a new die from the die creator - I had 4 green dice and I wanted to see if I'll get a fifth one if I move one down to a plot and try spawning one. Either that was a bad move, or there was some timing issue with harvesting plants when a new die was spawned. Not sure which one.

The game looks pretty cool, I liked all the plant variations and experimenting with combos to see them all. :)

Big Pig & Dig Gig by sami822 2025-04-13T20:32:36Z

Really cool game! I love the aesthetic, and the pig theme was pretty funny. :) I liked the background music, though it made me feel I'm gonna go explore some creepy dungeon instead of pretty cute pig mine.

Mechanically, I really liked how you "limited" the elevator with some blocks, not letting you go too far too quickly, but still letting you dig out those blocks and go further when you feel like it's a good idea. Only thing I'd change with the elevator is make it follow the player better. A few times it felt like it was following me down at the right rate, then when I was trying to jump out of a hole it got about half a block over the ground level and remained there, even though I was standing right next to it. Another time I got really surprised when the elevator landed on my head and held me stuck between it and some blocks, luckily it didn't get me stuck for long.

Story bit seems like a classic, go down there and find your brother, but I'd say for such a simple story element it works fine and you realized pretty nicely. The not-exactly-separate plot of looking for the golden oatium made it feel like there really was a big story there, so that's cool. :) I also enjoyed finding the few random pigs stuck in several locations.

The main gameplay loop worked pretty well. Several block types of different hardness, several different resources and an upgrade shop all felt quite good. One thing I'd maybe modify is to make the upgrades a bit cheaper, to make the game jam playthrough go quicker, but that's only a small balancing issue and those are tough to get right in a jam anyway.

All in all, pretty fun and cute game you've made there. Well done! :)

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Rooted Deep by DzejPi 2025-04-09T16:12:45Z

Really cool game! You really did the "atmosphere" of underwater justice. The look and feel is just right. The controls might be a bit floaty, but given the location I think that's a plus. :D

Reading through the comments I see that other people have already pointed some of the issues I've noticed, so there's not much more to add for me. One thing I'd add to that is that perhaps the sound on trying to pick up fruit shouldn't be played if the fruit is still growing, only when you do actually collect it. Or maybe have a different sound to let you know you can't pick it up yet?

I agree with liquid's comment, throwing in a Subnautica easter egg could be fun. And definitely try playing it, it's a really good game and might give you some inspiration for further expanding your concept. But keeping it mostly a farming game would definitely make it something unique. :)

Overall, it's a pretty impressive compo entry! I loved playing through it several times, even if it did cause a mild case of anatidaephobia.

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MS Drowning by Anton Florey 2025-04-19T22:06:38Z

Wow, really impressive for a jam game!

Presentation-wise, it's simply amazing. You've made a pretty cool artstyle for everything, in-game objects and UI alike. Adding the little animations like wavy reflection on the water surface or bubbles on movement just added another nice layer of polish on top of already cool looking game. I don't know why, but the little transition when you're going from the ship to the ocean floor felt really great for me, served well to build up the excitement of going on a new adventure every time.

The music is great too. While short, the syncopating rhythm is interesting enough that it doesn't get boring on repeat. The entire composition is nice and chill. The only negative thing I have to say about it is that I can't hear it while writing this comment, so I'd suggest adding a setting to run in the background (via Unity's `Application.runInBackground`) ;) .

I enjoyed the responses your bot gives to buying a new upgrade. Zoooom! :D And while the bot wondered how you could make so much from gamedev, I was wondering how it was possible to earn money from very old decomposed gamedevs. Nice easter egg, though, and totally not too cheeky about the ratings. :P It was also nice that after finishing the story I could continue playing until I found all the stuff and got all the upgrades.

msdrowning.png

One slightly buggy thing for me was the way the grabber interacted with the robot. First thing I managed to do purely on accident was to pick up a bike and use it to invent infinite flying without upgrading the booster, simply by pushing myself up with an item. Other than that, I think everything was working as it was supposed to. While I didn't expect I could also grab fish (and bring them up to sell), it was a nice touch. :D

Overall, it's a really well developed jam entry, great job!

O.R.B.I.T. by robin_schmitz 2025-04-13T14:34:14Z

Really cool game! Pretty innovative movement system, but it's also intuitive and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. It felt great swinging between the planet, figuring out when and where to best tether myself to turn or slow down / speed up. The fuel was generous enough that I don't think I ever got below 90%. The art style is great, I love that the pickups are very distinct from all the other entities. The Earth changing as you slowly fix it was pretty great addition, too, really helped to enforce the sense of progression. The background music is amazing as well, some nice gentle synths to make the whole experience totally relaxing. :)

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Fifty Floors of Flavor by Hulya 2025-04-14T18:26:28Z

Hah, a classic story! Pretty nice idea for a jam game. :)

I tried pineapple pizza 4-5 times in the same game and she finally said yes to it. Maybe being persistent does pay off. :D

I enjoyed the food variety, especially the weird ones. Seems like that would be perfect way to expand the game, just add more and more bizarre ideas. "Milk and banana ramen?!" :D

There were two bugs in the HTML version that I found. First one is that, I have no idea why, after you click on the game and it captures mouse focus, the mouse keeps moving to the right on its own and you can't stop it. It's pretty slow, so it doesn't prevent you from moving where you want, but it does feel weird seeing this ghost movement. The other bug was that the "Try again?" button doesn't seem to work, in order to play again I needed to reload the page. Luckily after the initial load, subsequent attempts load pretty quickly.

I've kept playing until I got the second ending, and the "Try again?" button there worked.

ffof.png

All in all, a pretty simple idea executed in a very realistic fashion. :D I've had fun playing it, nicely done!

In the DEPTHS by Planetary 2025-04-12T20:35:27Z

Really cool game! I always loved incremental games like that, so getting into it was pretty easy for me.

The physics-based movement is pretty cool. As others have mentioned, it sometimes displays inaccurate trajectory, but I think you're right that it's caused by character nudging another collider - I found that it most often happens when I'm either in a tighter spot or if I try to launch on a flat angle near the ground.

One thing I'd change is to make the upgrades cheaper, or increased the amount of resources you get from pickups. Maybe it's cause I'm bad at the game, but so far I've spent around 15 minutes on it and barely got to 200 meters. I've followed the initial guide, but every run I managed to get enough coal to get just one or two upgrades, so the progress was really slow. I can see that there's way more to discover in the game, but at that pace it would probably take me a few hours to see it through to the end. At least I got to the stage where there were some enemies trying to make me into a pincushion! :D

The graphics look pretty cool, I especially enjoyed the falling water and that it wasn't just a decorative in the background, but physical particles that interact with your character as you move through the water stream. A simple music in the background and sounds on movement and interactions worked pretty good as well.

Overall, it's a surprisingly big game for a jam entry, but it's a fun one! And unless I'm mistaken, it does save the progress, so thankfully I'll be able to return to it later and see if I can get further instead of having to start from scratch! Nice work! :)

The Fall by Teist 2025-04-08T18:45:15Z

Pretty cool game! Reminds me of old Minecraft dropper maps, but with a really great aesthetic! :D Usually I'm not that great at games like these, but I guess you didn't make it too hard - I managed to get to the end in my second attempt. I've tried it a few more times to see if I might have missed anything, and still managed to complete it, so I don't think I was just lucky the first time. :D Level design is pretty good. Usually games like these like to surprise me with an unexpected combo of obstacles, as if to force me to memorise the entire track to complete it. Here everything felt just right, like it was flowing pretty smoothly. There's plenty obstacle types (I think I liked the beam spiral the most - so satisfying to get through it perfectly at high speeds!), so the track doesn't get boring. One thing I might like to see added is a max speed stat after a run - I think I've reached around 500kph before hitting a wall to avoid the solid circle in the centre and slowing down again. I've done a few runs to see how fast I can get, but tracking the speed yourself is difficult while trying to concentrate on not hitting anything. But I gotta say I did enjoy listening to that music each run. :D Overall, really nice jam entry, well done!

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Hireblades by quasilyte 2025-04-13T10:25:49Z

Really interesting turn based tactics game! Getting into it is pretty difficult, but once you start getting the grasp on all the units you start to get better with every mission. Though that takes a while, since there's such a huge amount of units and traits to learn. :) I also liked the multiple-actions-per-turn idea, much more interesting than letting the unit move as far as it can at one time.

I've seen that others have already mentioned most of the issues I had with the game. One more thing that I did find a bit confusing is with one of the missions where all my units started spread around the edge of the map. Before I managed to regroup them together, during enemy turn I could hear enemy attacking me, but couldn't see which unit attacked where. Maybe moving the camera to the enemy unit before it attacks would have worked better here for some combat awareness.

Stolen Heart by LyaMgtt 2025-04-12T21:22:59Z

Really cool card game! I wish I finally made one myself, maybe next time. :D

As someone who played a lot of Slay the Spire, this reminded me of it in the best possible way. I really liked the large amount of different cards and their skill combinations, as well as the really big variation of enemy types. And the art style is amazing! I loved it all, characters, cards and enemies. The Octoplush was probably my favourite. :D I've played the game twice with Athena and once with each of the other two characters and so far I've managed to only reach the Dragon three times. I'm hopeful with a few more tries I will be able to defeat him. :)

Others have already mentioned that it would be cool to have some sort of animation to better see enemies' attacks causing damage, and I agree with that. If you come to the game without much prior knowledge, you might get confused as to what's happening at what time. One thing that I'd also like is to see what the max HP of my character is - a few times I was wondering if it was worth it to use the healing skill, or if I'd just waste the card and a turn because I'm already at full HP or close to it.

Overall, the game is really cool, I hope you keep working on it! :]

Edge Digger by Arthur Tang 2025-04-14T18:51:48Z

Pretty cool entry! Graphically it looks really great! There is a bit of a disconnect between the menu animation, the graphic interface and the main playing area, but they all look amazing in their own right. The movement feels pretty smooth and responsive, and the animations and sounds are reinforcing that feeling pretty nicely. Once I somehow managed to press "E" and instead of mining the block next to me mine one further away, but I wasn't able to reproduce this issue. Other than that, everything worked as expected. It's well designed and gives you the feeling of skill progression - first playthrough I failed in mere seconds, but each one after that got slightly longer and a few times I felt invincible for a few seconds, able to just dig the right way through while outrunning all the errors. :D One thing I didn't enjoy was when my good run was ended by getting into a dead end without a way out:

ed2.png

Not having those would probably be preferred, but maybe they could serve some purpose as additional (rare) obstacles and you'd need another mechanic (like jumping) to trace your steps back a few blocks and choosing a different way?

Overall, it's a solid fast-paced game! I'm not very good at it, but it did give me the feeling of getting better with each run, not to mention the "one more run!" approach seemed to come naturally. The soundtrack definitely helped with that. :)

ed3.png

Duplo by CrozzY 2025-04-13T14:56:11Z

Really beautiful game! I'd agree with other commenters that the control scheme could use some more quality of life improvement. My main issue with it was that it was difficult to target the nodes to between various locations - either it doesn't always recognize the click in the right area, or there is some collider issue there, because quite often the character didn't move at all, or moved in only to turn out it's not in range of the room exit.

There might also be an issue with the character itself, as a few times I noticed that it made the selection sound after clicking it, but then it didn't move anywhere after I clicked the floor and I had to select it again. I thought that having some way of distinguishing whether the character is "selected" or not might make it more noticable, like a different idle animation or maybe slight color tint when it is selected.

As for the resources, I think the sticks were the biggest issue for me. The sun and mineral gathering have their animations, so at least I knew something was happening, but with the sticks nothing happened. I didn't know if I was in the right place to collect them, or if I was slightly off and had to move in closer before trying again.

The idea and look of the game are great. It was a pleasure to watch all the little animations while moving around the place. The story element of trying to save the tree was a pretty nice thing too, made me pretty invested in trying to do my best.

All in all, it's a really cool entry. I hope you're gonna keep working on it after the jam. Well done!

into the forest depths by Fliegen 2025-04-13T20:05:20Z

Pretty cool game! I love the aesthetic, both the entity sprites and backgrounds look great! Gameplay-wise, I think the combat could probably be made a little bit easier. Right now it's too RNG-dependent and it's pretty easy to lose the entire game just through sheer luck (or lack thereof). Like I got done by a Granny twice just because 4 of my attacks in a row missed. Oh, speaking of Granny, I got a but where I killed her torso, yet she still kept fighting, just with a floating head and legs.

itfd.png

The body part system is pretty interesting. I liked the way all the parts became more transparent the more damage you did. One thing I'd add is some better way of knowing what the effect will be of destroying a specific body part. Like cutting off arms made some enemies unable to attack, but others just got damage reduction. And I'd expect cutting off enemies' legs would make escaping easier, but when fighting this guy:

itfd2.png

I tried escaping to see how it works and I got away successfully only after 7 attempts.

The monks on the road were pretty helpful, but I think it might have been better to get some other (or just more abundant) method of healing after combat. Maybe something that would make you choose between healing and getting better equipment? I liked how you could talk yourself out of some combat situations, but still I only managed to reach the Mutated Gnome once, and I barely sliced his legs off before he finished me.

Bonus points for the dialogues, they added some pretty humorous element to the game. :)

Overall, it's a really nice jam entry. Well done!

Depths of the Void by EZduzzit 2025-04-17T06:49:48Z

Really fun idea, and executed pretty well too! The camera controls were a bit difficult, but thankfully I've managed to work with them (thanks to an undocumented feature of Q/E keys :) ). I'm also not sure how the weapon arc work - looks like you need to be positioned in the right way to have a clean line of fire for a gun, yet most of the time while it looked like I could fire both the side guns and two of the front ones, my ship only spawned 2 projectiles, and not from the guns I'd expect it to. At few occasions I've heard multiple projectile launched sounds, but only one of them spawned and hit the enemy. Aligning yourself directly towards the enemy seems to work best and all 4 front guns fire as expected. Gameplay-wise, it felt pretty cool! I liked the intuitive idea of slowing down to make tighter manoeuvres then speeding up forwards. I think having the speed at just 2 max might have been too limiting, maybe having more options there would give you more tactical options. The sounds were pretty cool, background music fit nicely. Overall, a really nice jam game, well done!

West Coast '96: CIBUS DAEMONUM by rbbhn 2025-04-25T23:44:01Z

Ah, what won't a man do for some good pasta. :D What a fantastic journey! The other commenters are 100% right, this definitely wins for the art direction. Not to mention the humour! When the gameplay segment stared I was already smiling, and then you've managed to earn a few laugh out louds through totally unexpected by me (though well fitting) references. On the audio side, I did like the TTS, but I've made the mistake of playing with my headphones while having system volume set to quite high. I think the game might have used some volume controls to prevent being a bit too hard on the ears at few points. :P Overall, really nicely done! Great jam entry!

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Twilight Beacon by graebor 2026-04-23T13:44:15Z

Really great entry! My only with is that I was actually any good in playing it, but I'm afraid it's a bit too much for me. 😅

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The moment I discovered the bonus point mechanic I got totally distracted by it, even if I wasn't bad enough already. But I feel like I am slowly getting better with every playthrough, so I guess it just might be an issue with not having enough practice yet.

I'm glad you decided to make it a Jam game and add the music, it definitely makes the experience much more immersive. And the music slow-down you get on losing feels really appropriate. The sounds of antennae moving felt pretty good as well! Together with a really cool art style it makes for one impressive jam game.

Phantom Hunt by Jesús González 2026-04-23T12:46:42Z

Pretty cool idea! I'd agree with previous comments that it could perhaps use some more info on what to do in the game, but I did manage to figure it out after a couple of levels. Though I haven't figured out you could pick the signal antennae until the final level - I thought the puzzle was to use what was in the level and didn't even try it. :P

One thing that I would change / add is the ability to turn in place. You can only pick up items if you approach them directly, and while that wasn't really an issue for me here, I can see it becoming a potential problem when levels get more complicated. And I remember that sort of "mechanic" always felt to me like it was just an annoyance. If you could spend one turn to just rotate your character without moving, I think it would be great.

The undo system works pretty well, nice job on the implementation! Having it instantly return you to the previous state instead of reversing the animations and forcing you to wait makes it really smooth to use.

Also, I really like the background music track. Gives you this nice feeling of something dark and mysterious.

And well done on making your own custom engine in Rust! Everything seems to be working pretty neatly, I didn't notice any bugs or unexpected behaviour. I've been looking into learning Rust a bit more and maybe figuring out how to use it for gamedev, so I might look at your source repository for reference when I get the time. ;)

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Celestial Bodies by rynti 2026-05-03T11:54:56Z

Haha, what a concept! :D

On one hand, game feels like classic old launcher games, letting you make incremental progress with each launch. The idea of having to build a signal connection is a really nice addition on top of that, but what really elevates it for me is the delayed control mechanic. I've been thinking about a game idea implementing something vaguely similar, so to see it executed in such a fun way feels really cool! And it really does work well, thanks to controls being smooth and responsive with zero delay.

The game looks and sounds pretty good! Artstyle is pretty solid pixelart, enforcing the ridiculousness of the premise, and the soundtrack feels really fitting for a space launch game, showing you how serious these dudes are.

I've played through it twice and managed to reconnect the solar system for all the bros. Well done on the game! :D

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Midnight Transmission by Liam 2026-05-03T12:09:49Z

Pretty cool little game! Triangulation feels like a pretty good mechanic, and it's executed well too. Those damned Men in Black managed to catch me a couple of times (I risked too much and I paid for it :P), but I eventually managed to go around them.

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Artstyle is great, and the creepy background music reinforces the mysteriousness of it all. Mechanically it's also pretty good. One thing I think I might have changed is adding some more granularity to your speed control, but since the game isn't too difficult as it is, it's not such a big issue.

Overall, it's a pretty solid compo game, nicely done!

Signal Circuits by Alex Mulkerrin 2026-04-20T19:37:07Z

Ah, logic gates. Always cool, always fun to play with. :D

I've managed to get through the first 10 levels pretty easily (with the XOR gate taking a moment, but still...), but I can't seem to figure out the Adder. 10+10=100, so I feel like I'm missing the third output here, and just handling the two doesn't seem to be enough.

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It feels like it might be a bit too big of a jump in difficulty. I'll definitely come back to it after a good night's sleep. Even if I don't figure the adder out, there's 3 more puzzles to solve there. :D

Great job on the presentation side! I love clear visuals like that, especially in a game that asks you to figure out complicated stuff. It could definitely use some quiet simple ambient music in the background, but it's not a huge issue - getting focused on the game makes you forget about stuff like that pretty quickly. :)

Network Bridge by Coda Highland 2026-05-04T16:49:37Z

Pretty neat jam entry! Getting some cool retro vibes from this one in the best of ways. There's a decent variety of enemies, making you find different ways of handling them. I really liked dealing with the mines, especially in the final level, where I just flew around to collect all of them before turning around and destroying them all at once. ;) Getting some nice upgrades for your ship as you progress is always good to see, definitely a good choice on making them rewards for rescuing everyone instead of just going for the relays.

Sound effects are pretty well done! I especially loved both the pea-shooter and laser enemy sounds. ;) I wish there was some simple ambient music to acompany the experience, but I know it's tough to fit everything in such a short development window. The artstyle looks really cool, I loved all the character portraits and played several times to make sure I've seen them all. Looked like a lot of nice HotS callbacks in there, along with some Sailor Moon and - of course - Rocky. :)

I also experienced the bugs Arnage mentioned - no victory screen, and pressing escape just stops everything and no pause screen shows up either. I know that they're there since they show up for a few seconds when the game first starts, but they never display properly during gameplay. And finishing the game just leaves you in the void in an "undefined" location. I rescued everyone, but got lost in space myself.

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Overall, it's a really cool jam game! Nicely done!

Network Bridge by Coda Highland 2026-05-05T00:20:58Z

@coda-highland Yeah, it's not working for me in the game at all. I can hear all the sounds, but there is no music.

Network Bridge by Coda Highland 2026-05-05T09:05:38Z

@coda-highland I'm on Firefox (specifically, Waterfox) on Windows. This is what the console is showing me: screen2.png

Flirting 101 by OadT 2026-05-03T11:29:16Z

Pretty cool puzzle game! Mechanics are simple, but together they combine into a compelling experience. And a difficult one! Might be because I'm a bit tired, but I had to skip a couple of levels at first and return to them later. One of them was the "multiple signals" one, which felt pretty tough until I realised it was all about timing. Figuring it out felt really good, which is a great thing to have in a puzzle game. Nicely done!

Graphics are really cool, I like the clean style. On one hand it looks like a classic Atari-era game, on another nice fluid animations make it all feel really smooth. Sound-wise it is pretty nice too! Interaction clicks make it feel responsive, and the "target" reactions just made me laugh out loud. :D Shame you couldn't add some light music in the background, but yeah, limited time and all that.

So far I haven't finished the final level yet, but I feel like I'm close. I'm gonna try it again tomorrow, maybe with a fresh look at it I'll see what I'm missing today. ;)

Routine Mission by Flightless 2026-05-04T16:20:41Z

Pretty cool story! I've played through it 3 times to check all (?) the endings. The AI voices were alright during the beginning, but obviously lacking in emotional nuance when it started to get more interesting. Still, pretty serviceable for a short experience like that. Music was appropriately tense and mysterious, good job on making something that's not too attention grabbing - the way it is, it provides perfect ambiance for the story.

I also liked the "signal", as it sounded appropriately menacing without being too grating on ears. There were a couple of occasions when I got locked into conversation as the signal was active and audible, so maybe it could have used some special check to remove it after a second or two once a message starts, but it wasn't a big issue.

I also enjoyed looking for some other signals across the spectrum to see if there were some hidden things in there, like maybe foreshadowing some stuff, and that made me think that perhaps that would be a nice way to expand on this project in the future - placing more smaller messages here and there that aren't necessary to find, but can provide some additional flavour.

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All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience, well done!

Signal Operator by TasakaSama 2026-04-21T16:41:03Z

Pretty cool game! And pretty damn difficult. I feel like it is a little bit too unforgiving with the hit boxes. And it got me in a couple of additional ways, like trains stopping mid-intersection even though I'd expected them to not react to the signal once they've already passed it. And then there was the reversed arrow in the final level. ;)

But overall it's pretty satisfying. I'm glad I don't need to worry about the amount of derailed trains, though, I'm sure that would be a problem. Especially since in some levels I used one line of trains as battering rams to make sure lower ones could pass through safely. 😁

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Valiant Stars by LCStark 2026-04-20T18:19:04Z

@paracorn @alex-mulkerrin Thanks!

> If this was more than a compo entry I expect there would be more ship types and perhaps multiple signals. Yeah, I actually prepared a everything to have multiple type of motherships to buy, each one spawning a different type of corvettes, and each type of corvette would have its separate signal to control. But yeah, scope cuts had to happen. We'll see if I can find some time over the next few days and weeks to implement a post-compo version. ;)

Kuiper Space Rescue by Saering 2026-04-23T14:25:58Z

Really cool idea for a jam game, and what a fantastic implementation! :) Gameplay feels smooth, and everything is very intuitive. Nice idea to have you start very close to one of the satellites, so you can immediately find out what you need to do in the game.

Clearly marked mission progress and a helpful direction marker for the nearest satellite made it feel pretty easy, but that's good - it feels way better to have the challenge be navigating the obstacle course rather than just getting lost in it trying to locate the target.

Audio side is pretty good as well, but I'd agree on the note about the engine noise - it is a bit too grating, especially since it is quite crackly. The rest of the sounds felt pretty good and fitting for the general atmosphere. Visually, I don't have much more to add, other than the game looks simply fantastic and I love the aesthetic. ;)

The upgrades were a pretty cool idea. I did enjoy getting the increased scanning speed, it felt really appropriate (and painfully short) for the gameplay. The speed upgrade a little bit less so. There is a timer in the game, so maybe making it track the time you took from start till the final satellite is repaired and displaying it on the end screen would make the speed upgrade feel like something more fitting for those who want to complete it as quickly as possible?

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Overall, it's a really great jam game. Well done!

GAME OVER: Earth by The1 2026-05-03T09:40:54Z

Pretty damn old-school-cool game! Mechanics are simple and intuitive, but very smooth. Art style is great and evokes the feeling of nostalgia nicely. The musical transition between days is great and atmospheric, though I think it might have been a bit better to have some very light music during the days themselves to reinforce the eerie silence.

First time I played I got surprised by those hypersonic missiles, but after that I got a pretty good hang on it. And I think in a way the game gets a bit easier in later levels, since missiles get clustered much more often - in early days I sometimes had to think very carefully whether to fire an ABM or wait, and I completed them without any remaining, while later on I was basically just spamming them and still had some left at the end. Though I do believe they either get faster or spawn closer in the radar shadow the further in you go, since they did finally manage to get me. But 29 days doesn't sound like a bad score. ;)

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Radio Free Earth by ditam 2026-04-28T16:08:30Z

Pretty cool idea! It was a bit unclear what to do first, but reading the Controls in description here helped with that. From there it was pretty smooth sailing right until the end, when I had relays installed everywhere and still haven't reached 100%. Turned out there was another planet far to the left which I've missed, since no ships were going that way. Oops! :D But hey, I got there eventually. Maybe having some sort of directional marker towards nearest object not connected to the signal network would make it better? Or some sort of active pulse-scan to find objects that still need to be connected?

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Robo Island by JoeShanahan 2026-04-27T16:42:51Z

Pretty cool and relaxing game! Gameplay is very intuitive, and with those nice animations it feels like there's is a lot of feedback on player actions to reinforce it. I liked the 3/5 merge resource increase, and how the resources only merged while moving that specific resource (and not when they were moved due to switching with something else), that gave me some options to move stuff around without wasting stuff on 3-merges.

The robot control UI was a little confusing at first, but it only took a few clicks to figure out. The game looks pretty, I do love the cute little robot! And while music wasn't done for the game, it was a pretty good choice - it fits the feel of the game nicely.

One thing that I was wondering about was if the resources wouldn't be better if they were made infinite. Right now, they are functionally infinite as far as getting to the victory screen goes, so the resource fields depleting doesn't really feel like it's that important. And it's especially well visible with the research / data - after finishing the game I spent some time to deplete all the fields and I ended up with a ton of SD cards with nothing to spend them on. Which reminded me that a couple of times during the game I wished for some sort of trash can to get rid of resources I didn't want to free some space. :D

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And, despite the warning that there's nothing else after that, I couldn't help myself. 😁

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Overall, that's a pretty good jam entry! I had a lot of fun playing it!

Edit Hmm, looks like images don't work for some reason. I'll see if reuploading them later is going to fix it, as right now it doesn't seem to do anything.

Signal Interference by Phoenix Fireflower 2026-04-30T08:56:58Z

Holy crap, that is an amazing game! I fully agree with previous comment, this definitely feels like it's an early version of a complete game rather than *just* a compo project. The visuals are really good, but I feel like it's the sound design that does wonders for me here. I especially love how the music transitions between the battle scene, it feels really smooth. ;)

Mechanically, it is pretty interesting too! Though I'd agree with some of the previous comments that at this point rearranging the card isn't as important, I can see that changing very easily if you are planning to continue working on this project.

One small bug I found - if after the battle you choose to upgrade your card, if you hover over the card list and use scroll wheel, it will detect that as a click and upgrade the hovered card without actually clicking on it.

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Overall, that is one impressive compo entry, with an amazing level of polish. Well done!

INTERSIGNAL by zimny11 2026-04-21T16:12:13Z

Pretty cool concept! It took me a moment to wrap my head around it, but since it is pretty intuitive, it didn't take long. At first I played in the default zoomed-out view, which made the font on stellar objects unreadable, but thanks to some nice colour-coding it wasn't difficult to figure out what they meant.

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After several games, best score I got was 19. It would have been 20, but I had a red signal left over from noise conversion that I had to use, and it destroyed one of my blue nodes. Shame I couldn't just discard it, but oh well, such are the rules of the game. ;)

Art-wise, it's a really pretty game! I love the three scannable objects, seeing them made me wish for some larger exploration or strategy game where you'd be able to see more of them around. ;) The interface is pretty good looking too. Even though it's just moving a couple of signal nodes around, it gives you the feeling of operating a larger electro-mechanical machine, full of dials and switches.

The only thing that felt off a bit was the two animations on the data analyser - connection between the two top-left nodes and connection between the two bottom-right ones. It kinda made me think there might be some sort of mechanic to gain bonus points from having both nodes be of the same colour, or specifically two blue ones in case of the top one and two yellows (or maybe red-yellow?) in bottom ones. It felt appropriate, given the colour-coding of the signals, so there was a bit of confusion with that.

Sound design is pretty nice too. I like the discreet space ambient tune in the background.

Oh, and there we go. As I was writing this post, I've managed to beat my record. :D

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I better stop now, I'd like to rate some other games as well. But yeah, definitely well done!

Call Me by MrWarranty 2026-05-05T09:42:47Z

Pretty cool idea! It starts being pretty easy, but additional mechanics added over time make it more complicated as you progress.

People have mentioned maybe marking locations of the strong signal, but I think it might be better the way it is right now. What I would have added is some sort of *ping* sound on when you actually find the strongest signal location, and maybe a small icon on character that found it, so that it is more difficult to miss. An "undo" button would be really cool - restarting the whole level is fine at the beginning, but once you get to the dogs (poor puppers, by the way), having to restart everything and clear the level again feels a bit too punishing.

The game looks and feels alright. Art style is the finest programmer art, which is always great to see instead of something automatically generated. Nice music in the background and funny sound effects (which mitigated a bit feeling bad about the doggos) also fit pretty well.

Overall, it's a solid compo entry, well done!

Awaiting Response by DzejPi 2026-05-05T15:41:19Z

Really atmospheric game! And pretty tough to figure out, but I've managed after several attempts. ;)

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I'd agree with previous comments that it is quite unclear what you are actually supposed to do, but I don't think simply giving hints would work here - I feel like that would only make it too easy and ruin the experience. I think that it could maybe be solved by getting better feedback on player actions, so they could figure it out by observing what happens. Right now, if you interact with objects, almost nothing changes, so you don't know if you have influenced anything and if so then in what way. When you finally cross the interaction threshold, your camera turns around and the monster is there.

Maybe making it more gradual could help. Like after 1-2 interactions there's additional background noise which sounds like the monster is in the area, then with a few more you can occasionally catch a glimpse of a dark shape moving somewhere far away from you, few more and sometimes you can hear something running just behind you, and eventually when you interact too much monster comes to get you. If you wanted to add additional hints to that, then instead of a straight hint at the end screen, you could add a short text describing how "agitated" the monster was, which should hopefully direct players to the right idea.

Despite those, game is pretty cool! The visuals build a very creepy atmosphere, whether it's cramped corridors or a spacious office. All the assets work nicely to give you a sense of unease. The blinking lights in the office got me a bit, though, as I've spent some time trying to figure out if they might be blinking in any pattern or if they're related to the computer triangulation thingy. One of those several misdirections in the game that managed to make me smile. :)

Sounds are pretty good too. I'm still not sure about the buzzing in the background, though. I've played the first couple of times with it on, and after a while I thought it might be a bit much. But after playing it again with buzzing off I wasn't sold on it being better. It feels both like it needs something in the background, whether it is the buzzing or some music, but it is also quite "busy" with the constant beeping, ringing and the "help me please". And I'm not sure how to change it for the better. Maybe making the phone ringing quieter and more rare, and using the buzzing as feedback for interaction limit could work? Dunno. Still, what is there felt appropriate for a horror game, helping to build a tense atmosphere.

Really well done compo entry!

Junction Keeper by Richard Baltrusch 2026-05-03T10:39:23Z

Pretty cool little game! Though the management of all the trains gets hectic quite fast. In fact too hectic for me to complete level 3. Several times I restarted for it to just spawn two trains on stations right next to each other, going towards each other and crashing within seconds. When I managed to live a bit longer, I seem to not judge correctly how far away I need to place the signal for trains to be able to slow down and stop, so quite often they just run the red light.

Graphically, it looks pretty good! Watching those little trains move around feels pretty satisfying, and the chill music in the background makes it even better.

This is probably my best score from the final level. Looks like I am slowly getting better at it! ;)

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Signal Strength by NikiProT 2026-04-30T07:52:31Z

Pretty cool idea! Running around with the tablet and turning on devices reminded me of Stationeers a bit, which is a good thing. ;)

One thing that I might have changed is the tablet animation start point or speed. At first, when I pressed tab nothing happened for quite a while, and only after a few seconds the tablet emerged from the ground as I was looking down. I think it would have worked better if it was more responsive.

Intercept by paracorn 2026-04-20T18:13:21Z

Pretty cool! Feels like a nice classic incremental game! Everything you need is there - start by manually getting resources, quickly figure out how to get some passive income and level up everything. And then additional resources start showing up. Nice! I really liked the way satellites were implemented - instead of just giving you a flat bonus, they sped up your income considerably for a while. That felt more satisfying. Also a nice idea was having job licenses being something working for all jobs and having separate cost in each resource! And pretty damn good work on the visual side as well, and while it is just a tiny thing, I really enjoyed the sight of all the workers running around at the base of my radio tower.

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Signal surfer by poddub 2026-04-21T17:14:25Z

Tried to play your game on Itch, but there seems to be a problem...

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The LD one did work, though, so I tried it... And it took me multiple attempts before I figured out the feel of the game. At first I thought I was losing due to how the map is built (like getting multiple increasing hills one after another, so I kept launching and slamming into an uphill slope), but eventually I've managed to mitigate it.

The feeling you get once you launch and get the zoomed out view is pretty good. But I'd agree with people before me, having some air control, especially during those moments, would have been amazing.

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The first several tries ended too quickly, and I didn't realise how exactly the game over mechanic worked. I feel like the game could be a little bit less punishing in those initial moments, as it feels if you'd get a bit more time during those early attempts, you'd get a hang of proper controls more quickly. Because the restarts happen so fast in the beginning, it doesn't feel like you're able to learn much about it. But eventually it clicked and I did start getting some better scores. Eventually I even got up to 6 digits, so I think that's a pretty decent score already. ;)

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Overall, it's a really good idea, pretty well executed, and looking amazingly good! Especially for a compo entry. Well done!