mDuo13

Art - Official Intelligence (an AI fever dream) by Ben Parisi 2023-10-04T06:36:06Z ♥ 1

Oh man. I don't know what to make of this game. It's a pretty interesting idea to make as much as possible with AI and see what happens. The results are a lot like I expected from the current state of AI: weirdly good in a few places, but lacking in grand vision, and frequently stuck in a few narrow pathways.

Some things that would've been better regardless of AI: text speed and walking speed. Both were just a little slow. Did you try to get the AI to do any animations other than sliding the main character around? That would've been nice, although probably quite challenging.

I'm not a fan of the "dump a bunch of celebrities together and make weirdly boring fanfiction" angle but that sounds quite fitting for the kind of story you'd get with ChatGPT providing inspiration. I did nearly lose it at the hilarious line about asking Zuckerberg for legs though. Very on-point.

Overall quite a fascinating and different approach. The eye, boot, and door icons for activating things are all quite nice and generic usability stuff like that seems like a good use for AI tools in the future. I think I personally would hate using GitHub Copilot, which I've heard described as, "a kid who's eager to shout out the answer before it knows the whole question", but it's cool to hear the other side too.

Space Ltd. by HolySparks 2023-10-04T06:11:41Z ♥ 3

Man, I was scared that I would not have enough APM to handle a second belt and boy was I right. Absolutely a trap of a purchase. Placing things into the grid under time pressure definitely works as a game mechanic but it was a little stressful for me. I was a little disappointed none of the upgrades were as intriguing as the ones in Frog Fractions...

Ghost peppers from someplace by Neeko69 2023-10-04T05:55:56Z ♥ 1

It definitely feels like a "first game in Godot" especially with its resemblance to the "Dodge the Creeps" tutorial in gameplay. The wipe mechanic is kind of unique, although it would feel way more "real" if even the failed wipes had some kind of sound & visual effect (scrubbing sounds? wiggling motion?) to make you feel like you're doing it right or accomplishing something.

I like color scheme and the way the screen area sometimes shrinks in one direction or another, but overall the simplicity of the game was a bit disappointing.

Congrats on finishing your first Godot project, though! Hopefully you learned some useful stuff.

P.S. the Linux build worked fine for me.

Pitch, Please! by Kyle Farwell 2023-10-04T05:44:04Z ♥ 0

The premise sounds funny, but I am not going to switch from Firefox to do speech recognition and I don't want a transcript being sent to OpenAI, either. I'll have to pass on this one, sorry.

I don't know by addaellis 2023-10-04T05:41:30Z ♥ 1

The itch.io link is a 404, which might mean you forgot to take it off of private

Ace of Space by n.feofentov 2023-10-03T10:31:06Z ♥ 1

Wow, a trick that's actually totally fresh! Surprisingly it ran fine on Linux (using WINE) even with the unusual take on the game window. Super cool gimmick, and good use of simple graphics: since it _is_ a pretty small window, anything fancier would've made it hard to see stuff. The death and hit animations contribute a lot. It is quite difficult to aim, feeling a lot like a really classic arcade game but with some modern twists.

Honestly I small little games like this¹ that do something different are what I love about game jams.

¹This one is a lot smaller than most, visually speaking. Very creative take on the theme.

Office Spaced by RobertW 2023-10-03T10:14:45Z ♥ 1

Sweet stuff! Very smooth movement, no bugs that I saw, pretty nice-looking and very "readable" graphics. The animations and sound effects for all the hits and things were great, very tangible. I wish the "keyboard smash" and "mouse whip" animations had just a _little_ bit more visible flavor to represent what they're called. My favorite part is how you can (and should) use the desk and chair as obstacles to block shots or hide behind. I tried a few times to keyboard-smash the chair so that it punched into the enemies, but I didn't manage to get it to work, if it's even possible. That would've been so sweet. Overall it felt nicely polished.

And yes, I did win! 😎

UPGRADE - OUT OF MEMORY by Worido 2023-10-03T09:14:36Z ♥ 2

Was there supposed to be audio? I didn't hear any. If not, maybe you should opt out of that category.

Neat idea, definitely needed a bit more calibration on the balance. Movement is pretty fast for how, uh, limited the space is; the pieces aren't that limited and they probably should be; I wish they affected player and/or enemy movement too somehow. Graphics are very readable & utilitarian if a bit simple. Solid entry.

Whiskers in the Dark by Diego Teran 2023-10-03T07:53:02Z ♥ 8

Ooh, cute cats! Love the illustrations. That last level was tricky—took me way too long to figure out that it's just two lights going around clockwise. I _love_ the lighting effects, like the subtle outline on the cat sprite that adjusts based on where you are. The movement in some narrow spaces was a little weird, but it's in general a very polished entry!

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P.S. my headcanon is that those creepy hands that were grabbing the cats are actually people wanting to adopt or just pet the cat and it's only scary because the kitten doesn't know that

V-SHRINK by Zliebowitz 2023-10-03T07:05:17Z ♥ 1

Phew, took me a while to beat, but I got there! Very crisp and smooth action. Also refreshingly polished—there were some times I wasn't sure how I died but I didn't encounter anything that I could say for certain was a bug. That's no small feat in and of itself. Also one of the best applications I've seen of the theme yet, and the catchiest music I've encountered so far in the jam as well. So glad you included gamepad support!

My only criticism is I wish the super kick had a more obvious and dramatic animation, and if there was some visual way to tell when it was charged up, I didn't see it. I think I'd be happy to play this again in the future!

Tetromino Cleanup by f1tzy 2023-10-03T06:46:59Z ♥ 1

Yeah, I'm also getting a 404. Shame because the premise sounds quite clever.

H.amazon E.mployee L.earning L.ab by Rhoka 2023-10-03T06:43:58Z ♥ 5

Hilarious game, with lots of clever details in the voice lines, posters on the wall... even in gameplay concepts like how you have to de-possess some boxes _and_ deliver the ghost to the correct place too. It feels inspired by games like Overcooked without being outright derivative.

Unfortunately I ran into a few bugs (as is typical for these kinds of things) including one which ended two of my games. I think I fell into a pit while holding a box and after that I couldn't pick anything up (I could still hold the button to do the throw animation but couldn't hold anything to throw). Also, when I tried to play again without restarting the game, the second run was rude and probably bugged—I was stuck on nothing but blue packages forever and the floor tiles disappearing immediately.

I'm honestly blown away by how much you managed to get done—3D gameplay with physics, music and sound effects, social commentary, all consistent with each other... really good stuff.

Ex's Boyfriend's Pursuit by Georgy16 2023-10-03T06:16:15Z ♥ 1

Creepy. I managed to escape, but it was a bit tricky and not because the "puzzles" were hard. The interaction hitboxes for the doors and locks were tough to actually trigger—I had to walk away and walk back to get it to trigger. It would have been helpful if there was an animation or sound effect or something to indicate when a door wouldn't open because it was still locked or the lock wouldn't open because it was the wrong key. I wish there was at least one puzzle that required a little more thinking, too, but of course that's not easy to put together on a short timeline.

The sound effects felt pretty extreme for how they were used, like what I assume was footsteps sounded like slapping or popping balloons, and dropping a small key made a huge clatter. I guess that's part of the atmosphere, but it was a little confusing (like, "wait, is that supposed to be the sound of me moving?").

The coolest part of this game (other than the anime-style key visual) is the movement animations of the evil ex while he's tossing and turning in his sleep. They're surprisingly plausible but also just a little silly with the way he kind of spins around and clips through the bed.

I'm impressed with anyone who dares to make a fully 3D game in a jam because that just seems like a lot to manage. Nice work getting there!

Aeris by Loka 2023-10-03T05:52:40Z ♥ 2

Tough game and very neat (and literal) take on the theme! I wish I could hold a direction to keep moving; there were a few times where I really had to go pretty far. I'm not sure what's up with the "bring the tree back to life" step; as far as I can tell the only way to do so is to clip through spots not normally passable.

I did encounter a few bugs including one where I got stuck way deep in the wall, which forced me to restart while on the last stage. (Screenshot with spoilers) Also, some of the interactions between types are hard to understand, like how trees can sustain each other if you're clever about it, or water vs fire seeming to generate more water sometimes even if it's not attached to a source. Also, more basically, it's confusing that some water spaces are sources and you can't walk on them, but if they have air then their sprite is the same as the shallow water you can walk in and goes away if you pick it up / let it dry out.

Overall it was fun though, glad I was able to finish it without getting Cask of Amontillado'd on the second attempt.

Pegaseal by Miller 2023-10-03T03:34:28Z ♥ 1

I was able to get the game to open on my phone but it prompts me to install "the latest version of Google Play Services for AR" which, apparently, my phone isn't compatible with. My phone is a model from 2021 so it's not top-of-the-line anymore but that's still a bit surprising to me.

Even without it, I can get to the title screen and hear a nice piano ditty and windy ambience, but "Scan the floor until a city appears" seems stuck on the screen and although I can tap to fire off a bolt of something (with the dolphin sound, I guess it's echolocation?) but nothing happens and moving the phone doesn't seem to do much. So in the end it seems the app really isn't compatible with my device. Oh well.

Mantra by Haotian Chen 2023-10-03T03:08:48Z ♥ 0

Download doesn't work. Seems to be an empty file...

Shrink Up by 0Point 2023-10-03T03:07:19Z ♥ 0

Dang, I was hoping it might run in WINE, but no luck. The screenshots and concept look quite intriguing though!

Eel With A Gun! by Lomna 2021-04-28T06:30:32Z ♥ 1

A diagonal shmup, interesting! It was tricky to remember which direction is which, and certainly chaotic, but unique. Nicely animated pixel art. The pew pew sound effects for shooting were spot-on, but I couldn't tell which sound, if any, corresponded to me getting hit, which seemed to happen a lot... The music was kind of whatever, but at least you had music, which is more than many compo entries can say.

Are there discrete levels or does the one just go on forever? I'm never sure if I've seen everything or if I'm just being bad at video games and there's more content.

Hole Town by dob 2021-04-28T06:13:45Z ♥ 1

The voice samples were funny, and the flavor text was some nice light humor. I don't know how deep the mechanics go, but they were fun to play around with and the game lasted long enough to do some cool things with them without overstaying its welcome, so that's very nice. It would be cool if there were some mechanic other than bombs that would let you dig the edges.

It's a pretty satisfying, short little experience that feels pretty complete for a compo game. You could probably do more with it, but it doesn't feel like anything is missing. My only complaint with the gameplay is it was really hard to tell which rocks were bigger than others, so I kind of gave up trying to figure out how to set up the perfect combo and just dropped more rocks until they lined up. Maybe if there were not as many sizes it would be easier to tell them apart.

The graphics are charming and functional, with no issues with contrast or anything like that (just the rock sizes). I'm OK with that.

Thanks for this. I hope you become as rich as your character with the dubious rock-dropping hobbies.

Soil Surfer by bentglasstube 2021-04-28T05:33:45Z ♥ 2

My poor worm fell into a centipede track that was carved through solid rock, hit a dead end, and couldn't get out! 😭 2021-04-27_222425_716087344.png

Also, the game doesn't quite fit on my 1080p screen, but the scaling feature didn't seem to work (just got a black screen).

The gameplay is neat and pretty unique, and fits well with the theme. I was so mad at myself for managing to just barely dodge out of the way of the food, by accident, over and over again! The music is solid, the centipede sound effect is appropriately scary, and the sprites are simple but effective. The color palette in particular gives me an "DOS / early Windows game" vibe, which is not a bad thing at all.

Food definitely seems to become more scarce further down. I guess that and the hard rock are the limiting factors on how deep you can go. And it's kind of hard to avoid the centipedes sometimes (the audio cue helps but it's not clear what height they'll come in at, and once I had it spawn almost on top of me so it was impossible to get out of the way). Certainly seems like better living to stay in the fertile topsoil and collect all the goodies there. I guess that's the life of an earthworm alright!

Well done!

Savestate by Monkosum 2021-04-28T04:36:19Z ♥ 1

Really cool concept and surprisingly polished for a compo game. (Except, I guess, for the parts where it crashed on me, but maybe that's because I was running it on Linux via WINE.) The level progression is smooth, there are cool visual effects, the sound effects fit nicely and the music is groovy. As @sode points out, it does a disservice to the background music that it gets interrupted and restarted so frequently as you load the save states.

One of my major difficulties with this one was the controls being mostly on WASD. Jumping with space and moving with one hand on WASD is something I have plenty of experience with, and I could also handle moving with the arrow keys and having action keys where the left hand could use them, but having to manage load and save states on one the same hand that's controlling left and right movement was rough.

Also, just like with classic save states (ah, memories of ZSNES) it's all too easy to overwrite a good save state with a useless one by accidentally mashing the save button when you want to press load. Having some kind of buffer or log of previous save states to revert to would make it a lot less punishing when your mind blanks and presses the wrong key (as mine does a lot). Listen, sometimes it's like, "I want to make a save state at the top of the jump. Ok, jump, I'm at the top, top is up, press the up button (W)! Aww, @#$%, I just loaded my save state at the bottom..." But even that's much better than the opposite, which also happens.

Still, I think you're onto something really cool here and of all the compo entries I've seen, this might be the one I'd most like to see a finished version of.

Dwarven Mines: Hunt for the Evergreen by mrtnldm 2021-04-28T02:20:43Z ♥ 1

Yeah, this game looks like a great start but could certainly use a little more something to do. As best I can tell, there's no difference between the hammer and the staff except the staff has a cool glowy effect? I'm certainly into the pixel art with modern lighting style. (It's reminiscent of the HD-2D games like Octopath Traveler.) And the music has a great, ominous opening chord... which periodically loops. Ah well, such is the nature of compo games.

Into Conflict by C4Scar 2021-04-28T02:06:59Z ♥ 4

It took me a long time to understand the interface. I spent the first part of the game wondering... Which color am I? What do the checkerboard patterns represent? (rebels, invasion, or both?) Are the numbers I see on the board my own stats or the stats of a territory I have selected? How come sometimes when I click on a territory the rebels win at some point and in other cases it goes away after a while? Are 3-way-or-more conflicts possible? (I think the answer is yes but only the top two contenders are shown on the bar??)

I think I kind of figured it out eventually but by then I was quite far behind. Some other things, I still don't get.

I applaud you for taking a different approach to the theme, and I agree with @pdotjpg that "painting a map is always satisfying". The graphics, for as simple as they are, are a good part of that; once you get past the UI there's certainly a rewarding feeling to the little population meeples, and the way the water level cycles up and down is a nice touch.

The Long Walk by SquareBoxCompany 2021-04-26T20:04:18Z ♥ 1

The graphics are quite nice! You got a nice variety of sprites in there and the characters have a decent amount of style despite being pretty pixelated.

Unfortunately I don't quite understand what's I'm supposed to do, and it seems a bit buggy. It seems like going through the door causes the room contents to shuffle (it's visually jarring to see things move around as that happens) but pressing E to "Loot" things mostly does nothing? At some point it looked like I had looted a gun, and then later on I think I looted bullets and it overwrote the gun in my first inventory slot? So in practice, I just had to wander back and forth between randomized rooms until the zombie guy randomly showed up and stabbed me to insanity...

It feels like the start of a good game, but maybe you didn't get far enough in 48 hours to make it really work?

A Journey Down by RedHermit 2021-04-26T19:54:21Z ♥ 0

Yeah, need a download link or something

The Rabbit Hole by Will Chambers 2021-04-26T19:53:00Z ♥ 0

Dang, I tried to run it in Linux in WINE and had no luck. (That's not entirely surprising, but often enough I get lucky and things just work.)

Fishing the Deep by DDesignDude 2021-04-26T19:50:12Z ♥ 1

I wish I had a flash cart so I could try this on my actual NDS! It's been quite a while since I used it, but the DS is one of my favorite consoles ever. But since I don't have one, I caved and used the Desmume emulator (I'm on Linux).

I really like what you've done here. The graphics and music are both very pretty (and honestly kind of impressive for something done in 48 hours). It might've just been the emulator but the sound got a little choppy at times.

The gameplay is the most under-developed part; the timer goes for a generously long time but there isn't much to do in that time. It definitely would be rewarding to have a few more different types of fishes with different rarity, movement patterns, etc. but obviously that's the kind of thing that takes time. And I don't really see what the point of moving the ship left to right is, since the position of the hook seems to depend mostly on where you touch the screen... but it's nice that it can move. But there is a strange kind of satisfaction with pulling a big haul of multiple fish in one cast.

The pixel art of the fishes and the boat are both top-notch. And the main menu has a help screen and everything! That's polish.

My own Asteroid by loonydrope 2021-04-26T09:05:33Z ♥ 2

The music is strangely catchy! It's pretty exciting how fast you can get going if you're not scared! I appreciated the little story illustration cards, too. The handwritten text is kind of hard to read, though. You should probably just type it next time unless you're going to be very careful about handwriting it neatly.

I appreciate that it has an ending, too. Simple but sweet story.

Down the Stairs by Luis Giron 2021-04-26T07:00:47Z ♥ 3

First off, just having a quick help screen to start the game is a big plus. 👍 It makes a big difference to have a little direction and to kind of know what to expect.

I like the idea of having a turn-based tactics game where your actions are somewhat limited, and I think you could do some interesting things with randomized movement too, but combining them into one game design is kind of un-fun. I found myself wasting turns and running out of points because I happened to roll way too much and go past the enemy. It seems like the optimal play for most cases is to not move and let the monsters come to you, since that way you won't waste a turn overshooting or undershooting on an unlucky roll.

The graphics are very charming and look quite polished. I appreciate the head-bob idle animation, which reminds me of Undertaker, and makes me think the game should have a bangin' soundtrack for the characters to jam to. (Given that the music & sound category isn't listed, I'm guessing I'm not just missing it.)

The interface works smoothly and doesn't feel sloppy or unfinished at all, which is impressive on the short timescale. I made it to about Cave 6; am I correct in guessing that it's endless?

Dreamer's Depths by Kraemahz 2021-04-26T02:29:32Z ♥ 5

I cleared it! I like the concept of boosting into ledges to jump so much I kind of wish the game didn't have a traditional jump button. The atmosphere of the background images and color palettes works well, and I really like the "portal to the next level" effect.

The placement of the hearts is on-point. I was just barely at low health when I got to them several times. Props for that.

It's kind of tricky how going over even a really small hump can cause you to become airborne. There's one spot in the second level (where you double back to going left) that's especially difficult to navigate because of that.

Goober Bros. by pvg 2021-04-26T02:17:36Z ♥ 1

I don't remember Mr. Driller being a VS game! I don't know about starting the players facing each other where they can shoot each other to start the match, though.

Did you know you can keep shooting the bad blobs to keep them in their death animation indefinitely? Poor guys.

Deep Dive by Joshuc 2021-04-26T02:11:30Z ♥ 1

Those darn bats! They kill me almost as much as my own bombs. 👻

It's a tried and true premise, and it works. I like the pixel art (the dirt texture is nicely detailed and tiles well for example). Wish there was some way to get health back.

Under Pressure by OadT 2021-04-26T01:59:27Z ♥ 1

Things are going swimmingly! And by that, I mean I suspect my crew are swimming. 💦💦💦 2021-04-25_184729_834107371.png

It could really use some guidance regarding how to make a halfway-passable or basic submarine, like an example build. On my second try I managed to get something that could kind of wiggle its way down to 134m. The physics are pretty funny though. It has a "oh god, look at it fall apart" charm kind of like one of my favorite board games, Galaxy Trucker.

FALL GUY by matthewrobo 2021-04-26T01:41:03Z ♥ 2

I did it! 2021-04-25_183818_091419608.png

I don't understand why "championship" mode sometimes jumps the opposite direction. It seems like the yellow guy has a facing, but I didn't quite figure it out. Some of those screens were pretty hard, but it was satisfying to figure out how to get past them. The green bouncy surfaces were extra fun.

Nuclear Chaos by pixlark 2021-04-26T01:32:21Z ♥ 2

Dang, I tried to get it to run on Linux using WINE and it didn't work. The concept looked promising, too. I see your source has a comment about a Linux build; is that real? Could I compile it myself to try?

Jupiter Diving by juju 2021-04-26T01:23:52Z ♥ 2

It's somewhat basic, but it works! Those dang square ones keep getting me! It would be cool if there were a depth meter on screen to show how much progress I'm making. Is it supposed to be kind of a square screen view?

Theodores Tumble by headchant 2021-04-25T23:51:53Z ♥ 0

The download link is a 404 for me. Maybe there's a typo, or you haven't set it to public on itch.io?

Deep Space Beat by Srynetix 2021-04-25T23:50:28Z ♥ 1

The polygon aesthetic is very cool—it has a very retro vibe while the color palette is more modern! And the music is a neat groove, although I kept dying before I got very far into the song... My best was just under 5000m. ("That's... bad", thanks game, I know. 😅)

The Life Aquatic by Cary Stanley 2021-04-25T23:43:09Z ♥ 2

OHHH, ZE BEAUTIFUL FISHIE!

It's very difficult, but strangely satisfying. I love the concept and the voice samples brought a smile to my face. The BGM has a very "watery" feel to it, too. Well done!

Earth Diver by BarelyEvenGames 2021-04-25T23:34:11Z ♥ 4

Not a bad endless runner / shmup type game! I like the pixel aesthetics (could probably use slightly more color?) and the background music is a good vibe too. Nothing too surprising or unique in the game design, but it runs well at least. Not sure if the stars do something (upgrade??) or if they're just worth more points.

I'm So Deep by liammasters 2021-04-25T23:27:22Z ♥ 4

The concept is intriguing, but feels like the kind of thing that would work better in a party game with actual humans. (It's a little reminiscent of the Jackbox robot rap battle game.) I'm guessing you're using some kind of natural language tone analysis, which seems just too unreliable to be used like this. Maybe if the game provided more direction up-front, or feedback as to why a poem was "So deep" or "Trash" it would be a little more satisfying to try and figure out how to succeed; as it is, it feels like every poem is a shot in the dark and it doesn't feel nice to be rated as trash for not understanding what the game wants you to do. Also, the princess's prompt poems are tonally all over the place (mine seemed to have a fixation with evil and lice??) which provides even less direction as to how to proceed.

I can't say I cared for the music, but I love the way the protagonist rolls onto the stage to give his poem. And there's something charmingly satisfying about the way he bites his lip in satisfaction when at a "So deep" rating.