Matt Giuca

Deep space journey by Gaspar 2025-04-08T07:46:37Z

I love the setup of this. Just chilling on your ship while your home slowly fades off into the distance. It has a very "pale blue dot" vibe. Music would have really helped with the mood (even some off-the-shelf music). The twist at the end was neat. I wish there was a bit more either in between or afterwards, though I like the ambiguity of the final moments.

I found the game very jumpy, as in, moving the camera around would jitter a lot, also the shadows were very low definition. Could it be that the earth is the origin in 3D space and the ship is flying away from the earth, thus the player is subject to floating point rounding errors as you get further away? If that's the case, look into origin shifting: here's a recent video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQw-UVmInE (the earth should be moving away from the ship, which rests in place at the origin). If not, then I'm not sure what's causing that.

Depth Dive by Beebo Studios 2025-04-09T12:05:11Z

Haha, I just had to comment that my game (Deep Dive - click my name if interested) has almost the exact same structure (dive down to the centre of the earth and avoid obstacles).

Pretty fun setup, I like the commentary. It gets extremely hard from the second level onwards, I gave up after 40 deaths on the dinosaur level (I don't know how to not lose 2 health from the pterodactyl). Great art style.

SINKING by xWilQ 2025-04-08T08:24:16Z

Neat game, I like racing upwards to solve the puzzles while the water is rising. Maybe checkpoints would be useful, since I did die a few times and it was a bit of a chore to get back where I was. Also I found some unused items, like an extra torch (maybe it was just for redundancy but it was a little, "unclean" that I didn't end up using all my items). Also once I fell off a ledge into the water, which felt quite unfair since I didn't lose against the clock, just instantly lost because I was walking carelessly.

Perfect length, nice vibe.

Apprehension by GreenRadiation 2025-04-10T06:09:38Z

This game hooked me with its incredible vibe, drenched in atmosphere. I love the tile-based movement combined with low-res but bump-mapped walls, the spooky music, the little peeks of the monster. Plodding through the halls not knowing when it will show up.

Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of a maze of walls that all look the same. After awhile, it stops being scary and just starts being a chore to navigate (about half way through the second level I was getting more frustrated than tense). It doesn't help that the monster would seem to grab me immediately after I take a photo, some of the time. I'm not sure if that's supposed to happen or if I'm doing something wrong. The third level didn't introduce anything new so it was kind of boring, and I was relieved that it was the last level.

I can't state enough how much I loved the atmosphere of the game though, and for that it deserves high marks.

Help! I'm Trapped on The Torment Trapeze. by Yossarian 2025-04-09T11:21:28Z

This is such a cool concept, my first few moments with the game my jaw was dropping with the gameplay possibilities. Unfortunately, after 10-15 minutes and countless restarts, I found it too annoying to continue. I didn't feel I was able to really use the mechanics to progress.

For example, swinging on another dude just caused me to wildly swing around, and I can't really think of a reason to want to do this. The reverse gravity was similarly interesting, but I could never figure out how to use it to achieve anything, because I would have to time the guy picking up the arrow precisely with the guy who needs to use it to go upwards, and it would also mess up everybody else.

Maybe I just suck, but I just died a lot, and ended up becoming frustrated. Really cool idea. I think it would be great to start off in a space where there aren't spikes everywhere to learn the mechanics. Great work on the art and music as well.

One more thing: on the web build I couldn't figure out how to go fullscreen, which would have really helped with the mouse interface (I was often clicking near the edge and clicked buttons on the web page).

Swoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooord!! by She Wrote 2025-04-23T03:06:03Z

Fun setup, but I didn't really understand the mechanics. As others have said I couldn't really make it more stable by adding more to the bottom, so it just seemed to be about getting tall, then building quickly and being lucky that it didn't topple over. I managed to beat it once, but I didn't feel that I mastered anything, just tried over and over until I got lucky.

Abyss Prison by EpicGameFan 2025-04-23T02:58:51Z

Well done making an actual Gameboy game for a game jam! The art and music work really nicely. I clicked and saw a lot of codes but sadly did not have the patience to try and solve the complex puzzles, but I wanted to give a rating anyway because it looked like a lot of effort went into this.

Scares on Schedule by python-b5 2025-04-09T12:33:55Z

Game looks and sounds amazing. But it is way too hard. Not just a little bit too hard, a lot too hard, in multiple respects, to the point of being super frustrating.

I just played for about 15 minutes (over about 6 runs) and managed to get 2 scares during that time. The fact that there are multiple villagers coming that each need to be scared three times before they reach the end which takes about 90 seconds... even if you play all the minigames perfectly I don't see how you could scare more than 2 or 3 villagers before becoming overwhelmed, and then the game says "villagers are coming more frequently now".

The minigames themselves are all too difficult and require a lot of mouse dexterity. The fact that I don't have any choice of minigame (since I *have* to attack the frontmost villager) means I need to be good at all of them.

- Hover: Probably the easiest, but I still managed to complete it only about half the time. - Boo: The first ~10 times I tried this I couldn't get it, and couldn't even figure out what it was asking for. When I finally did manage to click at just the right time, I kind of got the hang of it and can get it right more often than not, but the fact you have to do it 3 times means it wastes a lot of time even if played perfectly. My people were often off the screen by the time I completed it. - Music: There are way too many chimes (bars) and they're too thin, unnecessarily requiring mouse dexterity in a puzzle about memorization. I could cope with memorizing a sequence among 5 chimes, but my brain can't cope with remembering whether it's the 8th from the left or the 9th from the left. - Extinguish: Almost impossible to click more than 1 before the time runs out. - Match: I can just about cope with these "follow the hidden card" game when there's one card to follow. I can't imagine ever being able to follow two at a time. I didn't feel there was even enough time to identify the two matching cards before they flip over, let alone follow both at the same time. I never beat this one.

I like the idea of this game but if I could balance it, I would drastically lower the difficulty (then maybe ramp it up after you've been playing for awhile).

1. Make each villager start with just 1 scare needed, and ramp up to 2, then 3, over time. 2. Have a health system so you don't have to stop every single villager, that way if a villager needs a scare I don't like, I can just let it go through. Heal back up if I scare a lot very quickly. 3. Hover: Reduce the time I have to keep it going for. 4. Music: Reduce the number of chimes (bars on screen) to 5 and make them fatter. 5. Extinguish: Triple the amount of time available. 6. Match: Just ask me to pick one card out of three (not match). OR don't do the shuffling (just show 5 cards, two the same, flip them after a short while, and ask me to match the two that are the same). Not both.

Icebreakers! by npckc 2025-04-08T08:09:23Z

Very adorable! The writing style is spot on. It has a very Undertale feeling of being in an ominous place of monsters who just wanna be your friend. I like the them of not just exploring the "depths" but also having deep conversations.

The Abyssal Trenches by redemptor 2025-04-23T03:35:33Z

Great mood. It's very tense having such a limited field of vision with only brief bursts of light possible.

My main criticism was the normal issue with "collect all of the things" games which is hunting down the last 1 or 2 sucks. Would be better to have a quota and not have to collect all of them.

Also the squid sometimes blocked the exit making the game unwinnable (like the screenshot above). I beat the first level but it didn't seem like the second level was very different, just longer.

Deep Space Misfortunes by DazyLude 2025-04-23T03:23:57Z

What a cool submission. I love how detailed the systems are, and the risk/reward of going up and down hyperspace levels.

Some feedback: - I couldn't see the "max HP" of systems which made it hard to know how damaged they were. - It kept saying "you can't change levels if your bridge is broken" but there was no "bridge" system to fix, so I never figured out how to do that. (Perhaps "navigation" is bridge?) Also "I guess I'll fix it" is misleading since it implies that choosing that option will fix it, but it's really just saying the player should fix ... I think "navigation" but I'm still not sure. - I don't think there's a way to get more ingots, which means once you've spent your two extra ones you have no way to bribe cops or aliens. That is kind of frustrating, I would expect if there's a resource I can use to bribe that I could obtain more of it somehow.

Still, I managed to win on the first try so it was enjoyable and not too hard.

Deep Dive by Matt Giuca 2025-04-08T11:29:52Z

Hmm, I encountered this last night due to a Godot bug and I worked around it, so I'm puzzled why it's coming back. I've only seen one other report about it and I can't reproduce it myself. :(

Deep Dive by Matt Giuca 2025-04-23T03:37:48Z

Thanks @0x-void-x0 ! The lava section starts to hurt you over time so the only way through is to go faster. Ideally you start that section at a high speed, and quickly pick up 1 or 2 green stars soon after, and then you'll get through with no trouble. (That's the last stage.)

DungeonDescent by thisyc 2025-04-08T08:41:19Z

Matching a huge chain is very satisfying. I like the idea of pairing it with a roguelike. The balance probably needs work - I didn't really concentrate on learning the mechanics (just picked things at random) and actually found it pretty hard to lose; I was healing more than I was getting hurt, without really trying. I think the skulls strength should grow a lot more over time.

I also did not remember the briefing screen and couldn't understand a lot of mechanics, for example, I never figured out which of the skull's numbers was their health and their damage. Tooltips would be good.

Great work for 2 days.

The Hole by dstoc 2025-04-08T07:53:49Z

Nice idea (golf where you have to collect coins as you go). I really feel like this would benefit from hand-crafted levels where you can set up each scenario with interesting obstacles and an appropriate par, whereas the procgen approach makes each level the same but longer. Still, I appreciate the procgen algorithm worked well enough that I always knew which direction to go in.

Misplaced by manabreak 2026-04-21T02:57:33Z

I like the concept of only being able to see the ground when you jump (or something like that), but it was kind of undercut by the fact that I'm always jumping and I could basically see everything at all times. Near the start there was a pit of spikes in partial darkness, indicating there might be more puzzles where you have to use the signal mechanic to probe your environment before moving, but there wasn't really anything else like that. So it ended up being a fairly straightforward (if difficult) platformer.

The hardest part (the second set of windmills) would drop you down right onto an old checkpoint, so you couldn't easily retry, you had to climb all the way up again.

I would have liked to see more exploration of the cool vision mechanic, perhaps if it was based on a limited resource rather than simply jumping.

The Lineman by tater-hater 2026-04-20T13:17:29Z

I like the simple story, it's clear a lot of work went into this.

I had a lot of trouble with the actual signal UI. Firstly I was very confused about up and down ... am I right that the main switch "up" is on and "down" is off? That's not how most power switches I am familiar with worked and I got stuck for a long time on that. Needs an LED to show "on" / "off" status. And also I couldn't figure out what the signal 1/2 buttons were for, especially on the first one. (I think those were just breakers right, not needed in the first puzzle?)

Phantom Hunt by Jesús González 2026-04-23T01:25:55Z

Cool idea of a "turn based shooter" where you can think precisely through the moves, and undo is a great addition. It almost has a Superhot feel.

I couldn't really figure out what the blue/red lines were for. The first level with that laser it went off when I killed all the ghosts, but I got stuck on this one: phantomhunt.png I figured you had to kill the ghost to block the laser with its grave, but it didn't block.

Midnight Transmission by Liam 2026-04-25T01:16:03Z

Nice little adventure. I like the shady men in black catching you (would have been good if they moved around a bit or something, but as you said, you were time constrained). For now, it's at least good that they seem to spawn more over time so they end up being a bit of an obstacle near the end.

The "triangulation" is a bit funny if you think about it - triangulation is normally required to determine a point in space given that you know its distance (but not angle) from three other points. In this case, you know the angle, but not the distance, and it's in 2D, which means you can find the point with just two scans. The third is just a confirmation (and helps narrow down the inaccuracy of the first two scans). But I did find myself getting a bit annoyed having to find a spot for the third scan, given I already knew roughly where it was from the intersection of the first two. Perhaps only require two scans, but reduce the tolerance for the angle (so I am required to be quite accurate on the first two scans). And also build in a middle colour which is "close but not good enough to lock in".

Dr. Cool Whale Against The Electronicles by Yorsh 2026-04-23T01:17:41Z

This is super neat, very polished, and a good mechanic. I am always a fan when action games make you change your play based on the different enemies and think about who you're trying to attack.

The TVs (low freq) have a lot of health, but it actually makes the upgrades more meaningful (even if the strategy doesn't change between runs): increasing low-freq damage is better because it helps you deal with the harder low-freq-absorbing enemies.

Earth Assimilation Readiness Protocol by PurpledArtFrog 2026-04-20T12:57:27Z

Yeah sadly I am stuck loading the web version at 0%. The Itch link goes to your edit page, not the public-facing game page. Reply here if it's fixed because I'm up for trying a janky overly-ambitious prototype!

Earth Assimilation Readiness Protocol by PurpledArtFrog 2026-04-20T14:08:19Z

@purpledartfrog Now it says "Uh oh! If you're seeing this error, it means I can't find your index.html file."

Signal Desk by fnelix 2026-04-20T04:31:46Z

Really polished Papers-Please-like. I like the mood, the tactile controls (especially how the camera jumps between different views but you can still see everything in the periphery).

For me the actual gameplay was a little confusing and repetitive. I was never really sure what I was supposed to do with the ones that neither said to accept or reject, and the summaries at the end weren't really clear about what things I did were "good" and which were "bad" (like missing bad info, is that good or bad?). The complexity never really appeared so I was just accepting and rejecting based on names. At one point it said to reject a certain frequency which made me go "aha I can see how this is going to grow in complexity and become a challenge to keep all the rules in mind", but that frequency didn't come up, and there were no further rules other than names. So I'm a bit mixed on it.

Awesome job on the presentation though, I love it.

LoS: Linked by Theo Ratkin 2026-04-21T03:17:17Z

Great concept, I think this could have been a really interesting one, but as others have said the controls were too unwieldy.

Aside from the control on the craft itself (why is it unnecessarily wide and asymmetrical?) I could not figure out how to place a single relay. I eventually managed to pick up a cube but I was pressing Space and Z and nothing happened. Near rocks, away from rocks. I couldn't figure it out.

LoS: Linked by Theo Ratkin 2026-04-21T10:38:06Z

@theoratkin ah I did not realize you have to buy satellites at the base before you can place them. The instructions say "buy/place" which I took to mean "buying is the same thing as placing".

Astral Pilgrimage of Sound by auxiliarymoose 2026-04-21T06:40:27Z

Very cool one. You required me to do the thing I was hoping I would be (but ultimately wasn't) required to do in Outer Wilds - line up planets and listen to the signals stack up.

What let it down for me was the movement, which while realistic, is too floaty and unresponsive for a game as I would constantly be drifting past where I wanted to be. Getting around is quite painful. I think one quick fix would be to have an (unrealistic, I know) "brake" key that would slow down the ship's velocity towards zero, so if I am about to get an alignment I can slow down.

I managed to get one alignment and that was enough for me, but it was a cool moment. Thanks!

Astral Pilgrimage of Sound by auxiliarymoose 2026-04-26T00:51:18Z

I don't think a "parking brake" is necessarily going against realism. Obviously it isn't literally a brake on an axle, but it can be presented as a ship computer applying thrust to match velocity with whatever celestial body is the current frame of reference. (In your case I think the bodies are all static, so in practical terms this is just zeroing out your velocity.)

Doesn't Outer Wilds have a match velocity button which helps you "slow down" when near a body? (It's been a long time since I played it.)

Sine Factory by oxnh 2026-04-21T06:28:16Z

Cool Zach-like about manipulating sine waves. It was cool to play with for awhile but multiple limitations compounded to make it feel extremely space-constrained / claustrophobic and the challenge was less about how to route signals and more about getting the layout perfect.

The addition of the oscilloscope is cool but it's so space-constrained that it's hard to use.

I got stuck on the "`sin(x) + 1`" level. I can't figure out what's going wrong and there isn't any room to route the signal to the scope so I can see if I'm wrong or if there's a bug. Here's what I've got: sine-factory.png

(Basically `sin(x) + sin(x) / sin(x)`).

- I wish you could rotate pieces. - I wish the board was a little bigger (or maybe infinite). It's weird that you can zoom in and out even though the board is so limited. - I wish you could connect an output right next to an input and it would connect without a wire.

With all of those limitations stacking up, I have *just barely* enough room to connect everything up to the output gate, and there is no way I can route the output signal to the oscilloscope to inspect why it isn't working.

Sine Factory by oxnh 2026-04-21T14:04:24Z

@oxnh sorry if I was harsh - thanks for the tip on that level. I will go back and try to proceed. (Yeah now I look at it it's obvious that it's twice the frequency!) Note that I had trouble getting a node to output on the second level so I was wondering if it was a game bug.

As others have said making oscilloscope something "built in" or otherwise free in terms of space would help. If you think about it like an electrical breadboard, the scope is not something you need to fit into the design, it's something you plug in temporarily.

Blacksmith's Apprentice by ellaris 2026-04-21T03:05:38Z

Cute idea. I was a bit confused about whether I was supposed to follow his instructions or just do my own thing (turns out it was the latter). That could have been made clearer with better visual AND auditory feedback when my strikes are working, rather than waiting for the percentage at the end to understand if I was doing it right or not. (I guess it's got particles that show that, but it wasn't that clear to me.)

ESCAPE_OS by Sylvic 2026-04-20T04:13:32Z

Very hard! I think before looking at balance, look at the controls because it's pretty tricky to a) be cycling through four commands (constantly having to look at which one is selected) and b) press E every time I want to issue a command. Ideally there would just be four keys, maybe 1, 2, 3, 4 which instantly issue an order to the mouse cursor when pressed.

I like the airlock feature but I couldn't ever get aliens to be sucked out.

It's way too hard to identify individual crew for SHV - they probably should be more distinctive.

Lastly please add a fullscreen button - it was very hard to play this in a small box in a web browser.

ESCAPE_OS by Sylvic 2026-04-20T13:08:05Z

@sylvic FYI to do full screen on LD you have to trigger it from a button inside the game. In Godot it is [DisplayServer.window_set_mode](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_displayserver.html#class-displayserver-method-window-set-mode)(WINDOW_MODE_FULLSCREEN). On web builds this won't work on startup, it has to be in response to a button press.

Echo by FunnyPumpkin 2026-04-25T01:32:28Z

Really cool idea and very polished. I like the slow introducing of new mechanics like echo towers. (I didn't ever really figure out what the stain-glass windows actually do, but managed to get past them anyway.)

I'm stuck on what some commenters say is the final level (the 5x5 grid) and it's a bit frustrating, I'm not sure if there's a trick to it or if you just fly around and keep hitting them until they're all orange, but I've tried for 5 minutes and ran out of patience! But a very well deserved high score overall.

Telepathy, Rhythms & Fingers by LesDremlet 2026-04-20T13:31:36Z

Great idea. PICK A FINGER.

I liked "reverse engineering" a drum machine. In terms of UI, one request would be that clicking a slot would play the sound that that slot makes, so I don't need to actually put something in the slot and play the whole sequence just to learn what sound that slot makes.

Other than that I thought the moment-to-moment was pretty fun, but it dragged on too long (there wasn't enough variation to support 10 rounds - maybe could have limited to one hand each). And when I finally got all 10 fingers, there was no ending? It just said "Take this" and there was no tape and nothing to grab and so I just had to quit.

Notgate by Umaiit 2026-04-20T06:54:22Z

Man I am not good at Sokoban games but this is a neat little twist on the formula, having to get something close but not exactly knowing where the "correct" place it should go. I got stuck on the same level as @roroto-sic.

The one frustration I had is I couldn't find any Restart Level so when I completely messed up I had to spend a long time undoing all my actions.

Notgate by Umaiit 2026-04-20T10:13:27Z

> Why are you an F?

Ah I was wondering that but I think (extrapolating from the name) you're a False signal, trying to become True or something like that?

Cosmic Relay by ghettobastler 2026-04-20T12:36:01Z

This is a super fun plate-spinning game! Really creative to have a basic "shape sorter" game interrupted by constantly having to switch screens and do mini-games, and I feel like the balance was just right.

It was confusing at the start (I didn't realize why there was an X and I couldn't use it, not having internalized the screen switching controls). I also found the input prompts quite hard to read, which might be a limitation of the Pico (not sure if those input prompts are the "official" Pico buttons) but in particular the arrow keys were really hard to map in my head and could use an extra pixels to properly define the arrow shape.

In terms of the overall gameplay I think the biggest weakness is the lose condition or lack thereof. From what I can tell there are basically two ways the day can end: either the message queue fills up, or the timer runs out. Neither of these are "lose" conditions as you go on to the next day all the same, and the only consequence for filling up the message queue is opportunity cost to increase your score. I personally find "score" isn't as motivating as "you might lose the game" so I would rather that filling the message queue is an actual loss condition, so a bit like Tetris, in the harder levels I am fighting to stay above water and not be filled all the way to the top.

And then I would say that the countdown timer is kind of too similar to the message queue filling up (they are just two different ways to require me to move fast), so I would replace the countdown timer with a message quota that fills up: once the quota fills up, I win. That way there is a clear win condition (send X messages) and a clear loss condition (have Y messages in the queue) and I can have the satisfaction of *just* filling my quota before the queue fills up.

I say the above as constructive criticism because I really enjoyed the overall concept and rated it very highly. Good luck!

The Message by Matt Giuca 2026-04-20T12:50:50Z

@ellaris thanks for the feedback. Performance can be an issue on web but I think it's worse when zoomed out (I am drawing a line for every sample which is slow when zoomed out) so it can help to just zoom in a bit. For the second one, you aren't really trying to set a specific number, but draw visually between the peaks (zoomed all the way in). The challenge is identifying which pulses are "high" and "low" frequency, which can be done either by ear, or by simply drawing between two peaks and checking the frequency number (some of the pulses have a higher frequency than others).

The Message by Matt Giuca 2026-04-21T06:44:46Z

@nikiprot Thanks for trying! For the pulse width you are supposed to draw between two of the "big" pulses (so for example from the first peak of one to the first peak of the next one). For the code width you are supposed to draw between two peaks of a single pulse (so for example, from the first peak to the second peak) - the challenge is figuring out which pulses are "low frequency" and which are "high frequency".

The Message by Matt Giuca 2026-04-24T23:13:29Z

@fadingdreamstories

> There were a few frequencies out there that gave me a false positive (it sounded like something, but when I found the actual one, it was very different).

Those are "other radio signals" coming from space. The tutorial text keeps stressing that you find "irregular" signals - those other ones are supposed to be simple repeating sounds such as might be coming from a pulsar or some other non-intelligent life, whereas the actual signal you're supposed to find is a long sequence of irregular high/low frequencies.

Thanks for perservering!

The Message by Matt Giuca 2026-04-26T00:55:12Z

@auxiliarymoose thanks for the detailed constructive notes! I definitely think the UI and instructions could use some work. I put them together very quickly.

I thought about showing a spectrogram instead of just a time signal (Godot even has built-in spectral analysis so it wouldn't even be that hard), but then I figured that would be even harder to explain to people not familiar with signal processing, so I kept things simple. I would go down that path in a bigger version of this game.

Warning From Deep Space by MrMastin 2026-04-21T06:13:17Z

Cool, I like how it's pretty chill but slowly terrifying as you uncover the message and more black particles appear. The particles don't seem to hinder you really, maybe they could cause the message to change location so it is a bit of a setback and you therefore need to avoid them.

Through the Dark Forest by tweekus 2026-04-20T12:55:02Z

Nice idea. I do think the balance is off: I managed to win easily, then on a second playthrough I wanted to see the "bad" ending so I signalled every star and still won, and finally got the bad ending on my third playthrough by deliberately skipping all the neutral stars. I think it's harder to lose this game than to win it, which is kind of a shame because I think there's thematic value in seeing the bad ending.

I'm also not sure what the harm is in skipping a star - presumably there's a "bland" ending if you didn't signal enough.

While You Were Here by jpat 2026-04-21T07:08:38Z

Wonderful style and vibe. I like the simple puzzle mechanic of controlling the golem remotely and having to manipulate the box.

The third level became an exercise in frustration for me (even after your hotfix), taking around 15 minutes as every little thing went wrong (it is so easy to get stuck in that level if anything goes in the wrong place. It's hard to get the box from the 2nd platform onto the golem, and the last facepalm was that I went to the exit and the golem was slightly out of range so I was stuck on the right side). Is there a reason why the signal has a limited range at all? If I could signal from anywhere that would remove one source of frustration.

Anyway, a really classy entry. I'm glad I was able to finish it.

Signal Run by medusatea 2026-04-20T13:05:59Z

The lack of reset without reloading the game is painful on a game where you die in the first two seconds.

I was unable to figure out the timing to jump over the first obstacle.