Machinic

PinPalBall by CodeChomper 2024-10-12T02:53:46Z

I'm a big pinball head, so I was pretty hype to see this submitted! I've tried making a pinball game before and know how tough getting the physics right can be, so nice job on not only making this have stable physics, but also feel good to play. The "feel" is tough to do right, and I think you got that pretty well.

Unique choice to have the gameplay cycle be based on score countdown rather than number of balls -- Not sure I've seen that before. I think with a bit of balancing this could be an interesting twist on pinball's normal play cycle.

It was a bit tough to get a sense of what the different game mechanics did - I could tell something was related to the creatures falling & getting pushed back up, and the drop targets "guarding" them, but I couldn't connect the details.

The sound effects for Warning! "woooop wooop" and Drain "Awwww" are a little shrill - especially when they would sometimes play additively, which was a bit rough in headphones. I think some of this is volume balancing, but I think tweaking the sound effects to have more frequency coverage (rather than being closer to pure hums/tones) could help.

I was a bit surprised to find the add-a-ball scoop wasn't overpowered. This could be because there aren't things like kickback, ballsave, nudges, and other ways to save a ball that would otherwise be lost -- it's easier to drain, so it makes sense to have add-a-balls be a little easier to attain. In terms of difficulty balancing, one note I'd say would be that it's ok to not have a ballsave timer, but it feels bad when so many of the strengths of plunger pull immediately drain. I'd try to tune the lower/upper strengths to make it a bit more likely to not just go straight down the middle/an outlane.

Visually, I like what you did with the light-emitting dividers between the inlanes and outlanes, and the arrows leading into the two orbits. It reminds me a bit of Jersey Jack tables in terms of their colorful inlays/inserts.

Overall, great job. I've followed your itch, and hope to see cool stuff you do in the future!

Critter Conflict by SpiRiTs 2024-10-12T04:35:40Z

Compelling character design, cute sound effects, fun music. Overall, quite fun, and I could see myself circling back to play this some more.

Tiny request: Being able to skip/fast-forward the story prologue (pokemon skip-to-the-end-of-the-page style) would be a nice quality of life feature.

SolarFactory by LarrySeinfeld 2024-10-12T04:23:17Z

I liked playing around with the simulations. I almost wonder if this would be more enjoyable just as a sandbox simulator game - I kinda felt like I was just roughly guessing at the starting conditions that would bring about the goal, it was hard to connect causes to effects intuitively.

Head'quarters by YogurtTheHorse 2024-10-08T09:34:22Z

Incredibly cute animations and character designs, great art direction, fun premise. Good music & sound design, overall one of my favorites of this jam.

Critter Mayhem by MachWerx 2024-10-12T04:49:30Z

Great fundamental mechanics. Very fitting soundtrack. Cute use of boids (I think?). The gameplay would feel a bit more rich if you could scatter/split, and had an advantage to grouping up (maybe getting more from food)? Obviously it wouldn't have to be that specifically, but something to make the gameplay more nuanced.

Cyber Critter by rucksack 2024-10-12T05:19:04Z

Fun game premise! The graphics are cute and gritty in a fun way -- reminds me of Ultra Fight Da! Kyanta 2. Nice job making the hexagon grid work, it added interest in a way I'm not sure would have been there in a similar-but-square-grid game.

Electronic Egg, You by CYT 2024-10-07T11:58:00Z

I love your art for this! I'm not sure how to play this game, though.

Ant Samurai. Polergus by tsukigan 2024-10-08T09:18:34Z

Love what you did with the screen shake & zoom, intensity movement vignette-y triangles, rainbow combo lettering, and so on. Good work on fleshing out a compelling narrative premise so quickly!

Tiny Friends :) by daflamingpotato 2024-10-06T23:58:26Z

Very cute sound effects! Mechanics seem fun -- I got stuck on the first level after getting the key - not sure if that was me missing something, not being able to throw the guy over the wall, or just the limit of content made for the jam.

Scam Ants by Rosalyn 2024-10-12T03:37:35Z

Having a lot of fun with this. There's a lot of charm to the goofiness. The train station is particularly cute to me. It would be nice if it were easier to tell which ants were interactable. Unless I'm missing a mechanic, the progression at the start is a little too slow -- possibly because of how far away locations are from each other. I'm not sure whether the "Better Production Quality, Permission for tunnel B52, Bigger bags" guy is just not implemented, or if my game is glitching. It's just a small thing, but I really like being able to run, jump, and do a 360 while still moving forward -- it feels in-character.

Mightosis by Machinic 2024-10-08T10:12:31Z

@daflamingpotato Thanks! And for splitting: that's fair - we tried to balance it so that you needed to split to have enough energy to make it in time, but it seems like we're going to have make some tweaks.

Horseless Headman by SwanBoat 2024-10-08T09:45:24Z

Great art and sound design - some of the best I've seen this jam. The attacking could maybe be improved so it feels less like it's just holding the mouse over the enemies -- but I also get that the separate character & weapon are part of the premise, so take that with a grain of salt.