Hanami - Push-Up Farming by Beavl 2015-12-17T02:58:00
Funny game, wish I could appreciate the gfx more though since I'm fixated on the bars.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → PeachTreeOath
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | Monkey Oolong Harvest Bop | jam | 45 | 4.13 | 4.16 | 4.17 | 3.79 | 4.28 | 4.07 | 4.12 | ||
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Exorcist Patrol | jam | 26 | 4.28 | 4.21 | 4.53 | 4.31 | 4.22 | 3.27 | 3.86 | ||
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | STUDY LADY (cookie mix) | jam | 303 | 3.83 | 3.35 | 3.69 | 3.02 | 4.46 | 3.96 | 4.12 | ||
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | Cro-Mathnon | jam | 563 | 3.65 | 3.69 | 4.05 | 3.62 | 3.32 | 3.42 | 3.06 | |||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | One-Butt Alien Corridor | jam | 673 | 3.65 | 3.63 | 3.90 | 3.13 | 3.22 | |||||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | Bust-a-Loop | jam | 288 | 3.90 | 3.89 | 4.21 | 3.86 | 3.48 | 2.89 | 3.06 | |||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Food Chuck | jam | 514 | 3.80 | 3.78 | 3.55 | 3.13 | 4.04 | 3.70 | 3.76 | 3.72 | |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | Survivor Slots | jam | 186 | 3.86 | 3.80 | 4.20 | 3.80 | 3.56 | 3.00 | 3.34 | |||
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | 👥 | Blood Chest | jam | 305 | 3.68 | 3.70 | 3.69 | 3.56 | 3.73 | 3.47 | 3.68 | 3.30 | |
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 👥 | Jesus Take the Wheel | jam | 57 | 4.08 | 4.07 | 4.14 | 3.78 | 3.93 | 4.44 | 3.94 | ||
| 2018 | 42 | Running out of space | 👥 | Polar Panic! At the Disco | jam | 286 | 3.67 | 3.55 | 3.74 | 3.76 | 3.88 | 3.86 | 4.10 | 3.72 | |
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | 👥 | Keyboard Army | jam | 317 | 3.70 | 3.47 | 3.89 | 4.15 | 3.71 | 3.54 | 3.41 | ||
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | 👥 | Poser | jam | 584 | 3.44 | 3.17 | 3.69 | 3.50 | 3.10 | 3.36 | 3.25 | 3.13 | |
| 2017 | 39 | Running out of Power | 👥 | How I Met Your Great Great Grandmother | jam | 51 | 4.08 | 3.93 | 4.29 | 3.69 | 3.15 | 3.40 | 3.33 | 3.36 | |
| 2017 | 38 | A Small World | 👥 | Meteor Jam | jam | 144 | 3.81 | 3.84 | 3.27 | 3.50 | 3.39 | 3.42 | 2.40 | 3.25 | |
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Roomba Rampage | jam | 78 | 3.96 | 4.02 | 3.86 | 4.31 | 3.58 | 3.47 | 3.80 | 3.63 | 100 | |
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Dinosty Warriors | jam | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Vishnu Launch | jam | 827 | 2.94 | 3.09 | 2.62 | 3.50 | 2.63 | 2.70 | 3.00 | 2.66 | 100 | |
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | City Strike | jam | 783 | 3.02 | 2.90 | 3.46 | 3.50 | 3.02 | 2.78 | 2.78 | 2.77 | 72 |
Funny game, wish I could appreciate the gfx more though since I'm fixated on the bars.
This game title opened up an old wound of mine that I never did finish Lands of Lore =/
Great graphics though.
Was surprised it wasn't that hard to control, at least until you have a ton of units. Really skeptical at first but you proved me wrong.
Seems like it could be a good game with some polish. I kinda ended up just mashing once I had enough farmers, and my game started to bog down hard.
That's actually a somewhat unique prestige mechanic for an incremental game, the fact that you need to harvest in order to have a different/better set of crops.
This is the first farming game I've seen that solves the issue of crops being non-unique. Normally it's just pricier seed = more profit, more or less. You actually made each one have its own resource payload req, good job.
Decent implementation of a farming game.
What a fantastic mood this game creates.
That intro tho
Haven't personally played a puzzle-feeding game, usually they're more sandboxxy so I like the change of pace.
Good take on the feeding game genre, definitely matches the theme well.
Fantastic, the level design must've taken a long time just to have all the bg elements work.
Decently challenging, I didn't mind the difficulty.
Adheres to theme very well, fun to just watch your army grow.
Interesting concept but lacks game play.
It's a bit difficult to tell what is going on; the graphics aren't doing a good job of showing what is part of the scene and what is just there for display. Once you realize you are on a fixed path though it becomes more interesting.
Would be kinda cool with some environment obstacles as the circle gets bigger.
At first I thought I was getting old and reactions were waning, but then the comments made me feel better =)
Very addicting, though viral vids seem a bit OP.
The shooting is unique and I haven't seen this theme used before. Very cool, though it can get repetitive.
Also getting only black screen and sound effects.
Great game, challenging but rewarding.
Thought it was gonna be a Flappy Bird clone based on the description but was pleasantly surprised to see a relatively unique game.
I can tell what types of games you like to play :)
Reminded me of the shmups where you get bonus points for grazing bullets.
Ok this is one of the more interesting ones I've seen this jam. I thiiink I know how to ID them by now but I won't spoil it either.
I'd like to imagine an mmo version of this game where you need to divide raiders into protest and internet use groups :)
Cool story!
Love the title, after staring at these for this whole weekend.
Really solid little game. Two primary forms are well done, don't need to over complicate things and the quick form is nice for those that just want to beast the game. well done.
Enjoyed this
Liked the concept, though kinda a liberal interpretation of the theme =)
The light footsies are real. Right side needs be oki options though.
Pretty hard at first until you learn to use the environment to your advantage, can never go wrong with farming games.
Good concept and well done level design.
Took a while for my brain to finally remember the shape sequence
Extremely solid, easily one of the better ones tied to theme.
I can always appreciate growing mechanics.
Great concept! Those shields were quite frustrating, but I couldn't stop playing until i beat it.
You already know that, but great graphics style.
Neat little design, read your directions before hand and could pick it up right away. good job!
Decently addictive game, haven't seen a gathering game like this before.
This was a difficult game to progress in, partly by design and partly due to non-functioning game mechanics. I liked the puzzle aspect and trying to decide which form was best to use at any moment. The collisions definitely need work though before we can decide the true potential of your game!
Nice art style! The final boss didn't seem to work for me though. She just stood there while i stared at her with my fish eyes.
I lol'd as soon as the first shift happened.
Really great game, I stayed all the way to the end and felt like an idiot for not getting some of these. 5 star humor for sure.
Tough game but good idea!
Thought the game was bugging out on me until I re-read the title of the game :)
Clever idea but the controls were a bit stiff in the beginning.
I like the art style, game is hard to play in the LD built in window though I must say.
Good potential, I wanted to play more.
Hope to see more levels of this. Great concept!
Seriously innovative game! I actually thought it was like pipedream where you couldn't rotate the blocks but I eventually figured out the right click works.
Personally haven't seen that bouncing bullet mechanic before, lots of potential to expand on the gameplay.
awww I was hoping for more levels
Haven't seen one of these in a while, good job!
Those monster screams will give me nightmares haha
Simple idea but well done!
This felt a bit too close to playing pacman; I'd be interested in seeing you expand on some different mechanics. It was a bit frustrating without a visual indication of time. Overall presentation and quality were very good.
I liked the progression of the chopping tool and the associated faces. The graphics themselves were good and look like they probably took some decent effort to create.
I didn't really understand the purpose of the aura, it didn't seem to add too much to the game. There are some issues to be worked on (as stated) but overall I liked it.
I had a good laugh while playing this. Excellent interpretation of the theme! Graphics were definitely interesting, I would have liked to see even more spaghetti! There were some minor glitches causing me to fall through walls/floors. I would have liked to see some sort of spaghetti eaten stat too! Overall very interesting, keep up the good work!
You must've put a lot of work into this, well done.
Deep meaning and symbolism about a coming of age teenager ready to take on the world.
The idea has a lot of potential. With more variety in enemies you could really get something going here.
Didn't expect the whistling mechanic, very creative.
The lifespan is the white ring around the avatar icons, they'll drain over time. The more you upgrade an avatar the longer lifetime it'll have. Thanks for the feedback!
Yea, we tried to squeeze in gameplay that matched the lore the best we could. We learned a lot just doing that part haha
Great progression, pacing, controls, sound, and overall unique experience!
The effects and lighting when you hit the walls look absolutely amazing. The idea of dueling vampires w light is something I haven't seen before either, very clever.
Amazingly clean engine, style reminded me of something like an 8bit Shadowrun.
The pokemon collecting aspect was a really good call, and the ability to make custom combos.
What can I say? Most addicting game I've played this Jam so far. Pretty similar to last LD. Great job!
Enjoyed the change of perspective from 3d to top down. Good mechanics for a stealth game overall.
Funny take on Party Hard haha
Haha this is pretty trippy. That's a shapeshift alright.
Well done with linking the whole thing together and not leaving out a student.
Great music, nice art work and visuals. Fun mechanic and good number of puzzles. great work.
Good music, levels and mechanics. Great job all around
Solid platforming game. Good job!
Haven't seen a pinball RPG since Rollers of the Realm. You could definitely expand on this idea and get something interesting.
<-- Fangor. Had some fun matches against Jared. GG
Game was strangely satisfying.....
That last level was kinda sonic-like.
Top score: 41! A clever little arcade game with a surprising amount of strategy packed in. The mechanics and graphics are simple but the game play is definitely interesting and leaves you wanting to come back for just one more round each time.
I would suggest adding perhaps different starting arrangements to vary the game play, otherwise you could find an optimal shot that would work every time.
Overall great entry!
I agree with the above, I thought we had covered every interpretation of the theme possible in our design discussion but this is something I didn't even remotely think of.
I am the god of war now! Too good!
This is how I walk irl
Like the background and art style. Nice job.
Feels like the early game of a 4x game, that's a good thing. Unfortunate there's a performance issue for the web version though.
Haha I was not expecting that art at all.
When the real life mummy apocalypse hits I'll be sure to watch out for books that spawn out from the ground.
As a current dumbphone user this game is my jam. The horizontal movement does feel a bit weird since momentum doesn't carry over.
Nice style.
One of the more true to theme games out there. Combat is a bit simple but the polish is all there.
You made some good choices about upgrades. A lot of people make stale upgrades like do x more damage, or you now throw 2 potions, but the ones you had were interesting enough to have me keep going to see what was next, good job.
You put a lot of effort into the systems here, it's pretty impressive. I had a bit of trouble getting a civ started though, I was only good at being nomadic.
Man those are some death-defying leaps you make us take... had to hold my breath on a few of them.
I agree with a lot of the other posters. Very solid and polished look. Might wanna considering having the easy to kill enemies up front to quicken the early game pace.
Ok that was actually really cool. I could see that kind of gameplay show up in a lot of variants. Just wanting to see how big the stack got put pressure on me to be careful.
Reminds me of Base Wars on NES where even if your opponent if outplaying you on the outer game, you can always just beat them up in the inner one. Pretty cool.
I think adding some special moves as you progress like rolls and such would be a good addition. That dragon is pretty scary though.
Solid level design, I always thought there needed to be more pyramid maze type games out there.
Like what you have so far, I restarted a few times til I figured out the right build order. But then there's the depressing end to the fun when resources are gone :(
I actually really like interesting coop game ideas like this, too bad I'm no good with the claw grip though..
The calendar idea is good, haven't seen that general idea outside of mobas.
Haha well.........it's ancient technology alright :)
You really like your hexagons don't you :)
I appreciate the youtube vid, helped me get going. I suggest for others to check it out too.
Throwing is a nice twist on the classic ball catching game. Well polished!
That was the most unique one I've played this LD. The controls were tight, speed was GTA1/2 level. Probably wanna slow down the zooms a tad haha
Extremely solid game, all the juice feels just right.
Bit hard to tell what can interact with what. If you highlight items/squares with what actions are available that could go a long way.
Holy crap that blew away my expectations. Hit the theme perfectly and you did the pyramid building mechanic differently and much better than others I've seen this LD. Thanks for not forcing us to have a minimum grade before proceeding cuz that would've been rough...
Lots of good systems in the underlying code, very impressive.
Very creative! Kinda reminds me of the coop puzzles in Magicka, but more focused and action oriented. You could really have an interesting game here if you continue adding elements and weapons.
Great talent all around, especially for your age!
Same, though I eventually just looked at the screenshots and saw the possible patterns. I think it's a cool concept of using your resource to activate buildings, similar to how power works in FTL. Give some more tension and uniqueness to the buildings and it could be really fun to juggle the water around.
As a huge fan of Mini Metro this game caught my eye. 229 secs from my last run. Like MM, it's very fun trying to juggle all your shortages with the slowness of the cursor, making you consider all the logistics as you play. While the aesthetic is interesting, the lines don't mean much in the end. You might want to try making the game with the same gameplay concept, but using actual water/farm sprites instead. Great job!
Had to brace myself for a screamer when I opened that closet, the internet has ruined me.
I do like my idle games, but you might want to consider having some extra art and stuff pop up as you buy things to keep people interested.
Glad you were fairly generous with the combinations, it felt good to know that most patterns would do something if I just winged it instead of remembering everything.
Great music!
Almost as intense as its annihilation counterpart.
Haha we had talks of a dino Cao Cao attacking from the east but we ran out of time.
@simple_blue Yea we had those things but decided to simplify the UI in the end to make sure people just focused on the objectives and blowing everything.
@qzqxq Yea there's a health system but we had trouble finding a good place for the HP bar to live.
Nice effort. This is very impressive work for a 12 year old. Keep at it!
Good call on the upgrade system, definitely made me keep playing a lot longer than normal.
That javelin looks amazing, surprised no one else mentioned it.
Fun game, had to dig up some classic gaming skills for this one.
Card games are tough to do for game jams. Usually you need a solid built in tutorial to guide people around. Decent attempt though.
Incredible and unique game. The push and pull of resources near the end is very intense and you really struggle to figure out what you should pick next. The package is damn near perfect.
Great concept, great music, very unique and deep game.
I thought the multiphase idea was actually very clever, I haven't seen it packaged like this before. I was hoping the final boss was gonna be the whole shebang and you didn't disappoint.
This would be a great way to introduce people to coding!
Mad respect. I was trying to look for the best voiced word. Anything better than cat?
I've seen a variant of this where you use 1 road to allow 3 lane traffic to get through without crashes, but you have a puzzler game here instead of action. I think that's awesome and something I haven't seen before. You can probably make some pretty crazy levels with this game design, though it's certainly overwhelming once you have multi-vehicles.
Good graphics, but the transparency and speed killed it for me. Could do with a tutorial. CLOSE to greatness.
Nice music, good style. A bit hard to see enemy bullets.
"Are you just going to stay in your room and CODE GAMES forever?!"
Good level design, has an addictive metroidvania feel
Good mood, crazy start, i admit I didn't finish after I cut myself.
I win! I liked that a lot, although the plot was pretty dark. I liked the artwork and the audio.
That is one fast paced game.
This made me realize I've never even seen a 3 little pigs defense game before. Seems to obvious now.
Agree, you should put up some extra instructions on this page but it seems like you can't pick up water. I thought the concept had potential though.
I'm not waiting 300s.
I was afraid of the movement at first as well and can see people having trouble with it, but I started to love the drifting shots I could do since the beam stays up so long, so good call on the beam time. You put in more content than I expected w the talent system, and honestly the multiple beam system is a really cool idea, I'm surprised others aren't noticing that.
Very nice graphics! Plane controls seemed really tight, but weapons were tough to use. That did make the kills very satisfying though.
Feels well made, and the graphics/animations look nice. I wish there was more to do!
I had a little trouble with the game randomly resetting back to start? Not sure if I pressed something I shouldn't have.
Reminds me of Ultraman on SNES, minus the funny voices.
Full spread!
Was this inspired by Kid Icarus at all? I suddenly had nightmare flashbacks from the NES days cuz of how its designed. If not, you should add in some of the level design ideas from that game (smaller platforms near the top) to make the platforming more interesting. If you already did that, go ahead and ignore me, I honestly couldn't get too far once there are too many ghosts on scree. The ghosts and their attack physics are absolutely HILARIOUS. I actually didn't mind dying from them cuz I was laughing every time they swarmed me.
Inception spinning floor is lava, absolutely brilliant. Tighten up the controls and you have a real winner here.
Hah, reminds me of the There Is Only One Room flash game with the elephant. One key difference is that you actually allow multiple ways to beat the level here, nice job.
Lol. lasted 3 seconds.
Great idea! The first good humor entry I've seen so far.
The spells seem kinda weak compared to the rate enemies are spawning.
Slick presentation and interface. Didn't have the confidence to pull off rocket jump > tail strike combos with the control scheme, but what can you do :)
Great idea, I was immediately interested once the game started. Even rhythm gamewise it was fairly unique in how you had to parse the different parts of the screen. I wasn't entirely sure how long the song would go, one fun thing you could add is a visual to show how close you are, like the sides of the walls get pushed out as it gets filled, or you can see silhouettes of the party in the windows.
I killed a set of spiders, explored some more thinking I was pretty safe, turned around and I had an army behind me lol. Stealthiest spiders ever.
I liked the intro presentation, it was actually really clean but you might wanna speed that up a little in the future, or allow skippable.
Give my regards to whoever did the sound design for this, hilarious. Agree on the upgrades being blocked by the panel issue. I still noticed things upgrading and that's what kept me going.
The story initially struck me as similar to that Passengers movie coming out....and then it went 0-100 real quick haha. The story kept me entertained throughout, especially cuz you didn't take long to make the story have weight.
I wish I new french. Graphics and controls handled well. If only I could understand it...
I tend to avoid story games but you made very digestible pieces of text and the mystery feel was intriguing enough to keep me going.
Great execution but I couldn't help but draw parallels to Dangerous Spacetime. 1 extra mechanic probably could've shaken things up.
I play clicker games, I was ready for this!
Very intuitive controls and mechanics. This could be a pretty good mobile game if you kept going. Bold move with the entire vision/mood of the game, seems like you had the whole package in your head and went with it right from the start.
I expect to see this game place pretty high. If you could more convey abilities that relate to an idle game you might squash the complaints about non-controls.
Welldone, first MP game i've played and I had friends to do it with. VERY PLEASANT SURPRISE!
Had fun with this one! If you wanted to take it a step further, maybe you could slowly charge a lazer beam to defend yourself with? Good work, like the sound/art, overall look and feel is nice.
Loved the idea and the 'art' haha. gameplay need a bit more but it felt myst like!
Held my breath on a lot of jumps here, but I managed to beat it. The lava level was a bit tricky without a shadow but eh, you can kinda gauge it without that. Really clean look in general.
Love this concept, and sound effects. AI needs a little work but I understand this can be 2 player. Overall top 5 i've seen tonight!
If you made a diorama like that in middle school you'd be accused of getting help from parents :)
Good concept, the game felt a little unbalanced though - maybe if the bed recharged faster, it would feel like I had a better chance keeping everyone happy/rested? Nice job overall.
Really enjoyed playing through this! My people died early and often but it was very entertaining. Art is nice too.
Style was great! Could probably be a little shorter to avoid duplicate questions though.
Game should end with 0s left, and panic induced with no death and less length of time from last scare should reward more. Overall fun though!
A principle of game design is making choices important and interesting, and you completely nailed it here. Even early levels matter because you're desperately trying to preserve resources for future success. Love how you boiled down tactics to its pure core, great job.
Cool idea!
I'm always a huge fan of farming games that break the mold of "optimal crops". I haven't seen one with your mechanic at all.
Overall, above average. Technically sound, good delivery, ran great. Would have liked the text delivered in a somewhat less intrusive way though.
Everything in this game is extremely satisfying to do! I probably would have swapped the first and last bosses, that insta-kill was pretty rough, while the final boss was a pushover. Amazing job, I enjoyed this a lot!
Good use of the one-room theme!
Technically sound other than overlapping images. Given the rating options, it rated higher than i would have liked to rate it but I am rating the fields present in an honest fashion.
Very cool concept. The results screen is showing different customers than the ones i catered to.
Took me a little while to figure out how to pick up a passenger without murdering them. Otherwise really enjoyed this! The physics work well and the art is cute! Looks very "finished" relative to other submissions. Good work!
Great way to brush up on my WASD skills. This is definitely one of the better uses of the theme I've seen so far.
Controlled well, good gfx but was a little slow for me.
Nice graphics! Great feeling of hopelessness and panic, it takes a lot for games to do that.
Not the most polished of games but at least the shooting felt good. Like Mik3 said, a death with perhaps a ragdoll animation can bump this game up a full notch.
I could see this translanting to mobile well, good timekiller.
Be careful with the high pitched square waves, they can be a little harsh to hear.
I think a smaller room size could make for some more interesting gameplay, or maybe supply/deposit points in other directions. Good start though!
1051! Great idea for the theme!
Top notch graphics, music, and atmosphere!
As a non-picross player that was pretty challenging. I still really enjoyed the variation on the genre though.
Not bad. I know people here are mostly saying it feels slow, but one way you can alleviate that is maybe making the early level enemies have less HP. You can scale up afterwards but it's nice to jump in and pop people right away.
The artwork is of course very strong, and this is gonna draw in any simgame fan. I was kinda hoping for more progression, but you can only do so much in a jam. Nice work.
Overall I really enjoyed playing this game. I smiled the whole way through and shared it with a few others. I got lost after I got the shovel though. It might be because I am slow.
Noooooooo I crashed right before the end. The game is pretty good, only wished I could skip the cutscenes after the nth time.
I think this concept has a lot of potential. A simulation game where placement formation has different benefits is pretty awesome. Kinda like the sims except placement isn't completely arbitrary. If things other than the tables could form up (like 4 plants into a tree) and create different benefits, then you can force the player to make some pretty compelling decisions.
A lot of very solid aspects to this game and it is addictive. I'd only ask for more things to spend all of this money on.
Neat game, would like to see it expanded.
I did the same strat Aun did. Perhaps vertical shooting enemies can help change that up.
Love this idea. Some added dungeon mechanics like monsters and treasure can go a long way. I think the fastest way to fix the roomstacking complaint is to just map spacebar to instant-place.
Reminds me of Lethal League mixed with a shmup. The mechanics are there and its pretty fun, but it gets fairly chaotic later on and you feel like you get hit fairly randomly. An air dodge or deflect could help to reduce that feeling. Still a good entry as is though!
I played this way more times than I should have hahaha, 98% CLUB REPRESENT!
Interesting wave game. Would like for the attack to be a bit more impacting, fast/crisp and have a sound effect.
Nice amount of juice in this game. The wall dash looks pretty cool, though I expected gameplay to revolve around it somehow, like if you dash through monsters you get a combo going or something.
Amazing game, very creative!
Not sure what's going on with my controls, am I supposed to be moving extremely slow? Seems like a nice Party Hard variant otherwise.
I wanted to cheer Krautman up.
Was having a great time but seemed to freeze on stage 7 :( I've seen a few games do the whole defender the dungeon schtick, but I haven't seen a twinstick do it and it was a blast.
Almost rhythm game-like in execution, was pretty fun because of that.
2/5 would kill self again.
I really liked the art direction.
OH look, a tape. Oh Look, a messed up ouch. Oh WHAT THE FUCK! Dead. 4/5.
Controls feel solid, graphics look good. Could use a little variety though.
What a unique game. I've never seen a multitasking game that was actually themed, usually it's just random warioware games thrown together with no connection. I thought the game was excellent. You have to gauge the asteroid distances and angles and find an optimal spot ahead of time to do your irl task. I want a hard mode! Give us a chance to fry our brains.
Zombies spawning on me got the best of me. Otherwise, not bad.
Place cursor under player.
Hit jump.
Hit G.
Repeat!
Jumped up 3 minutes, no payoff. THE BLUEBALLS!
Interesting combination of snake + Splatoon. Maybe a bit more attacks or powerups could've spiced it up the strategy variety.
Nice style. I haven't seen Kawaii horror like this before.
Even though it was short I was engaged the whole time. I was interested to see what kind of progression there would be as the days (years?) passed.
At first I was worried it'd be like a weaker Mario Kart battle mode, but you have a few things that differentiate from it. First off the room setting is unique. It's kinda like playing the Army Men games, where just by being in a house setting it transforms the experience. And then you have the furniture flying around which is just hilarious, nice job.
Love this game. Challenging, tight controls, good feedback.
Only thing I'd like to see is a 25% increase in starting damage to feel balanced.
Well. Done.
Can never go wrong with Jezzball!
Was excited to see a VR physics game here, and certainly in the destruction genre. It was tricky to place things at times, but once you got it, it was worth it.
I like the art and the concept! The core mechanics feel good. You should definitely take the time to make this feature complete if you can.
Great foundation! I think with some clever level design, and multiplayer this could be incredible!
Game looks great! Art is good, needs sound and I think I bugged it out after eating three fish in a row. Be interesting to see the finished product.
That was a really clever concept! Needless to say the game really shines once you see all the crazier shapes come in. I think a really good change would be to go with a durability system similar to Hearthstone's weapons. Since they only lasted one round I felt like they were similar to potions in terms of decision making (hoarding til you needed). So weapon durability could differentiate them a bit better.
Seemed interesting at the start but it was pretty hard to get anything going, even after several playthroughs. Maybe the physics issue.
WASD does not work unless the game is maximized. I really like the speed of this!
Nice coat of paint over a classic game.
One of the things I look for in games are visual upgrades as you progress, like Diablo 2 where you get to see more than just bigger #s. Even when the mazes got daunting, I still squeezed out a few more runs just to collect more fireflies to grow my horde. If you wanted to get a little nuttier with the aesthetic upgrades, you could even have each firefly add an additional instrument or note sequence to the music. Pretty inspiring game!
I am a fan of idle games, and this was an interesting anti-idle twist on one that actually suits LD very well. It was right on with the theme. I would propose that high score instead of being purely based on closeness (which encourages enormous patience), be both a factor of closeness and time so that a player that optimizes the efficiency, then perfectly executes a difficult stop gets rewarded big. Regardless, it was still a fun, fresh idea. Good work!
Very cool concept! The look and feel of the game is amazing, I really like the sliding around when dodging the lions. I thought the rhythm running idea is great, but it was very hard for me to tell what the benefits of it were (the speed wasn't obvious to me). Either a dust trail or even DDR text that says "Perfect!" could help with that. This was honestly themed very well and the first LD38 game for me to 5-star for Mood. Everything in its presentation came together amazingly.
Very fun game, I probably spent the most time on this game over any others. It was interesting to see another take on the passenger/destination genre, I thought the lesser emphasis on logistics and the auto-pause were GREAT changes. I could sit there and really plan out my movements that way. I'll be honest though, I hardly ever looked at the center of the screen. I really only paid attention to the corners where the UI was, so I would rather have had the UI close together to make clicking have less travel, and the player can still use the globe on the right side or something if they need the context + distance optimization.
Hopped in it recently and servers seem to be fine, looks like I missed the boat though. The art and color schemes are all very soothing. I like the shader usage and lighting placement as well. The gameplay is understandably simple, and it's quite scary to fight the spiked box, but luckily there's no big punishment for death.
I must say, that was oddly satisfying to play. I was skeptical at first but the planets were close enough I really wanted to finish, and you just naturally want to put things in order once you start. Impressive speed coding too, I feel like the landing system and the cage system would be prone to bugginess but clearly you handled those well.
It's like Bop-It, but played by a god :)
Pretty solid concept. I know time is short but I'd have love to see a few more disasters to manage so you can really achieve the hectic feel of a multitasking game, where your brain shuts down from the input. Pretty consistent game and theming though, good job.
I wasn't sure if rotating the planet did anything. Also the game has performance problems when you get all of the towers built and upgraded. Still you kept me playing for that long, so good job!
Rampage!............on crack!
I will upvote any giant city destruction game, I thought it was pretty fun even if it was simple. I was hoping I would visibly see the upgrades work, especially with attack speed. Dunno if it actually went up but I pumped a lot of money into that. The upgrades were a good decision, I'm impressed you have some people playing through 20 levels above me.
I love the idea of running around a mall with a wallet that fires like a machine gun! I think there is some depth missing here, but it is a great start. Perhaps something else like chasing sales around could add some depth. The music is very good. There is a lot of great work here.
Nice twist on this genre, it can really go places. I would maybe suggest some longer term purchases, or maybe have lumberjacks not consume on return, to not feel like you are constantly struggling with your economy.
Fantastic amount of juice, the gamefeel is great. I liked the trickiness of the missile ships, how you had to kill missiles but make sure you saved the ship to eat, though as some others have pointed out, the giant lasers were pretty brutal and tended to sever most of your progress which was unfortunate.
Agreed, this was like Overcooked mixed with Audition Online, with a nice emphasis on optimization. When I came in to review this I was unsurprised you had DDR in your name :). I liked how there was no downtime at all, which is an advantage over Overcooked. If you had spare cycles you could always grab an additional mushroom to save off so that was really neat. It was a constant optimization train of gauging whether you could squeeze in another gather or focus on the recipe. Really cool game!
Very nicely polished and simple to learn game! I found myself dreading when the fish went low though, because i couldn't seem to get the foot controls to work. I was able to work my legs over anyway be swinging around with my arms though, making it possible to get over 2 mins. The game looks and sounds great, and I had fun playing it! Great work!
Controls went haywire at times (I would keep running in the opposite direction i was pressing, and sometimes i couldn't deploy turrets). It was a bit fun trying to taunt the spiders so they would stop attacking the ship, but alas I got rekt. Sometimes the RNG gods smiled on me, and others they laughed at me with regards to the mineral placement. The game looks great and the transition between wave and rest music was awesome.
I think the concept has a lot of potential but you will certainly need a lot more decisions or abilities to achieve that. Something like a deckbuilder is a game type that has controlled-RNG and can be pretty addicting to play. The UI itself is pretty slick though and the entire theming is nicely unified.
Great concept, great look and feel too. I did encounter GwtException: Task already accepted. I really liked the music too.
This is a really subtle thing, but I really like the bounce effect you get when you crash into a planet, rather than just absorbing it and moving on. Kudos if intentional.
A crazy LD-fied version of Rocket League! I liked how there was room for a lot of high level play if you actually took the time to master the game, like shooting multiple rockets and timing that with gravity so they combo together, not that I could get anywhere near that kind of play.
Good core base here, though like you pointed out, there's only so much you can make in a survival game in such a short amount of time. I was really impressed with the level generation, I honestly spent several minutes just walking around analyzing it. The biomes are very congruent and mesh together nicely. We had to tackle that ourselves and that took up a huge amount of time. Perhaps next time try to prioritize in game tooltips so players know what their building will do, even if it means cutting features. Hope to see you expand on this project later down the road.
I love how you can create challenging games that keep people playing. It was tough and I died a lot but I never felt frustrated enough to quit until many tries. Lots of depth and strategy here, great game as always.
Nice implementation on the rotating small world. I also like how the tree is shooting meteors haha, or at least I think it is. I never had a UFO land but I understand your decision to err on the easy side, I do the same thing myself. Kind of a moot suggestion but if the UFOs shot things downwards it could spice things up, though that was the mechanic we used so idk...
In my first playthrough, I was concerned about the monsters first, so i built an archer tower immediately, then got stuck with no money to buy a gold mine. Maybe it could replenish very slowly without a mine so you don't get stuck in these situations, or perhaps there could be another freebie currency like wood. Anyway, other aspects of the game worked really well, I liked the look and feel. The music was good but the loop was a bit short.
This is a fun variation of centipede. It looks and feels really good.
For whatever reason I could never bring myself to give other tiny world games a 5 on Theme. Maybe it's because of the limited movement spaces and black background but you're my first to give a 5 for that category. Some cool puzzle ideas here though I would've liked maybe 1 additional mechanic to play with to keep the gameplay fresh.
I didn't think there was room to iterate on Breakout but you sure found it. Very clever take on the genre. I think I'd enjoy it more if the controls were more arcadey and didn't use forces to push the paddles. It's really hard to do last minute saves when there's a lot bouncing around, unless that was intentional.
Wow, what a brilliant game! I was actually ready to give it a ton of stars just for the fact that it was looping vertical shooter where enemies stayed in the world and spammed the screen, but then I realized it was warping the world on hit too. There's actually some nice autobalancing built into the game since you gain extra firepower from your side ships coming in later. Would be awesome to explore this mechanic further down the road with more bullets that can hop and affect your sides more. One of the most creative games I've played so far.
Died my first time getting to the last barrel, then said screw it and speedran the next run to win :). The graphics are simple but you made it consistent so that tightens the experience a lot. I also like that you sprinkled a bunch of random pieces of obstacles, as well as having a lot more enemies than I expected. The color scheme is also great, the mood in general for the game is very uplifting.
Just incredible you pulled this off seemingly bug free, that mechanic couldn't have been easy. I agree with the above, I did tend to use trial and error more as it was difficult to consistent predict how the world would morph. I thought you created situations even more interesting than Fez and other similar games though, you had your own unique take on it. Great job!
lol the game gets a little creepy when the music stops and you just hear the weird moaning. Cool take on snake, I kinda wish the world was smaller so it would ramp up in difficulty faster but ah well. It differed in snake in that situational awareness becomes a thing and you have to keep a map of it all in your head, especially in the later levels.
@croze Rocket blocking the meteors was something we discovered accidentally early on and left in because of how fun it was (pretty necessary for no-upgrade runs too). Thanks for the comments!
I liked the careful thought you put into the abilities and designing the levels around them. Others have mentioned the UI as problematic, but honestly I thought it was great. I'm glad you put the ability text right by the button because I was staring at this page's instructions for a long time trying to memorize them. Great art style you have here, everything is so consistent!
I had a similar idea in terms of using "Small World" like that but couldn't tie it together. You found a fun way to implement it and sprinkled some extra innovation in there. Some of the levels are pretty well thought out and I certainly died quite a bit trying to beat them. Good job!
Got really excited when I fired up the game because I do like resource collection games. AFAICT the survival resources all act the same so that was unfortunate, though I assume you had some extra ideas in mind you couldn't implement. I think the UI and goal of the game is reasonably ok to understand. Only gotcha is I didn't know about clicking the 2nd button to harvest until coming back here to check out the gifs, so good call on that save.
Awesome idea, haven't seen a game like this before. The levels are bitesized enough to keep you going so I made it all the way through to the end. The UI and graphics are simple but you kept them consistent so that was fine. Most important you did a very steady ramp up in difficulty so it wasn't overwhelming for new players. Very solid entry!
Alright man, hopefully you don't take this the wrong way but I was laughing throughout the game. The dialogue, the constant walking sound, the instant respawn to room. I loved it. The game is quite hard and has a lot of content but whatever, 5/5 humor.
Wow man, super creative game! I haven't seen a simultaneous parallel game like that before. I paused a lot just to eye the details you put in both worlds, and the changes between them. You put a lot of effort into making that creepy world. 5/5 innovation
At first I thought it was a pretty standard shooter. When the powerups kicked in though, I was super impressed. Very creative implementations of the extra weapons, can't say I've seen that nerf gun idea before. In terms of art, I wasn't as impressed with the game itself, but the title screen looked fantastic, so kudos to whoever did that. Lastly, great use of the theme, it's more on the original side compared to the others.
Curious to see what other ideas you had in mind with a bit more experience under your belt. Like others, I didn't mind the art being simple, it has its place with certain themes.
This is probably the funniest game I've seen in LD38 so far. The graphics and sounds are top notch. And the gameplay went pretty smoothly once I figured out the 1st click on the object brings up a context menu. Keep up the good work!
Super unique theming, I loved beating up on those punk kids! The game is immediately engaging and it's fun to run around in all the chaos. To shake things up, perhaps obstacles could be added in future versions, not unlike in Gladiator :)
Did you make all the assets in this game? If so, I am extremely impressed. The humor from just having so many different people walk around was great. I loved the concept and thought it was very creative.
Though this game has a lot of borrowed concepts, it still kept me playing for a very long time. I can beat it on easy but only after 10+ tries of learning to really be really efficient with all my movement. Looks like you cleaned up a lot of the UI issues in the post-jam version so I don't need to go into that. All in all, fun but tough game, and for whatever reason I always thought I was within reach of beating it, so I just on playing over and over.
What a professional looking game. It's rare to see a polished title screen and escape menu in LD games. The 3 separate flame exhausts on the planet are AWESOME since they actually react to the controls the user is pressing. I'm also glad you don't punish the player for running into larger objects like a lot of absorbing games do (minus the sun). I'm not sure about the music choice, it came off to me as creepy rather than ambient. Overall this is one of the most polished entries I've seen so far.
Cool art direction. Clearly the goal was to have a solid atmosphere/feel to the game and you hit every category (art, music, UX). Pains the gamer in me that you can't go too crazy with the planet growth but that's expected.
Why must you cause me sorrow by having all my babies die so often :(
Good concept, I've made a dino city destruction game myself in the past and you can never go wrong with that theme. Like others have said, it's a bit easy, but a simple fix would be to have the missiles/buildings ramp up, but somehow have your babies live longer so you can form an army. That way you can change up the gameplay by having increasing powers, while facing deadlier challenges that offset the increase. Thanks for the game.
I managed to both get the carriage out of the flask and ride up the flask very quickly, both seemed like bugs. I definitely appreciate that you are thinking outside the box with what physics based puzzle games can be. Sometimes you just have to try a zany idea just to see if it can be done and if it can be fun, and this was definitely not anything I had seen before. Good job finishing this!
Curse that small platform! I was never able to get past level 1 after many tries, but it was engaging enough that it kept me wanting to play. One tip for platformers is to allow jumping a little bit even after you run off a platform. It makes it a little more forgiving and feels better too. The curved world effect is great and certainly fits the theme perfectly.
I was intimidated at first because usually LD sim games are overwhelming and only the devs know how to play, but you did a really good job easing the player into the game and mechanics. Even little things like the tooltips went a long way for me. Lot of cool ideas here and I'm curious where you would've went if you had more time.
First off, let me say I really like your dedication to the community here. Lots of posts/reviews and nice blogs too!
This is a pretty polished experience, from the title screen all the way to death. The monsters are simple but hey, they do their job. I definitely loved the guns when I stacked buffs for the first time, they felt great.
I think the music is maybe an incorrect choice. I'm a big fan of chiptunes but I don't know how well that one fits a Mad Max theme, even if the game is 8-bit and frantic.
Really solid entry though, I played this more than a lot of other games so far.
Wow I'm impressed. I'm actually a fan of simpler/1-hit fighting games (Divekick, Bushido Blade) because it boils down mindgames to its essence and you achieved it here. The simple mixup of anticipating shooting/shielding was pretty fun, and it's always satisfying to feel like you outsmarted the other player.
Those predators are actually pretty scary! Mostly cuz I would die if I was mildly reckless. I could see where you were trying to go with the game and the dog as a weapon/tool is a pretty neat idea. Health would've helped a lot with the difficulty, though it sounded like that was planned but nixed.
The idea of protecting a planet is a nice twist on the asteroids formula. Unfortunately your beam is so strong (at least from the runs I tried) that I didn't have to worry about it most of the time. This is a fine line to walk and I'm not sure how you would balance it. On one hand if you make it harder or provide less laser ammo, it could be a frustrating game since moving the planet itself is clunky (this isn't a bad thing). If you can find a way to force the player to have to juggle their ammo with moving the planet around that seems like a good place for the game to be.
As for the entry, nice consistent feel to the game all around; looks, sound, movement. Even though the laser doesn't have any special fx to it, it still feels strong because of the animation and sound. I'm also impressed you had time to implement both arcade and endless. For an LD game that's rare.
On a side note, thanks for your review of our game. I was surprised at the level of effort to put not just into the review, but editing the video to keep it concise for the audience. I'll definitely be checking out further work from you.
Edit: Site screwed up and double posted, can't seem to delete post.
I was watching my food so anxiously as my plantation workers tried to collect the last bit of wood needed for the stone teleporter. Could they do it before running out of food? They did! This is a very satisfying game! Autonomy is the goal of many games like this and I like how you made it the end game, while for the whole game I'm like "Stop teleporting in and taking our houses and food!"
Oh wow, our team decided to do a game about earth being bombarded by meteors too. Yours is about defending it though instead of escaping it. The weapons felt great, and it seemed like early on the meteors were mostly coming from above or near my character, as it went on they seemed to come from anywhere. I think maybe an indicator would be helpful so you don't discover one is coming in from the other side with no warning and no chance to make it around. The bullets being tied to the camera was a little weird, but it actually turned out useful when trying to hit far away meteors arced around the planet as in the above case.
What a devilish way of getting people to keep playing and not quit from the death restart ;) I liked the visual effects, you got away with simpler graphics just with the shaders and juice. Very challenging game but seems doable enough that you're willing to continue (until you die on the 4th level for the 10th time)
I loved watching the planets scream! Very solid entry: great sound, great feel, great look, and great fun!
The game feels really good. Controls and camera work are great. It was quite satisfying being able to hit something full speed, and turn to finish it off without slowing down much.
This had a lot of cool interesting mechanics in it. I'd love to see some more levels fleshed out, but the current world looks and feels great! I love the puzzle element at the end, I'm sure that's something that could be fleshed out in more levels as well. The music was really good and gave this a very solid atmosphere. Keep it up!
Well executed, the presentation was very solid. Even though you had pixel art, the globe still matched the motif (nice touch with the pixel shadow).
As for the gameplay itself, pretty unique concept, who woulda thought fake news would be so hard to sort out!?
Very impressive work, it has a ton of breadth and clearly took a lot of work to make. I actually liked that it was a simple pirate game. Whenever I play a new one, I'm afraid it's going to have a complex trade and faction system. I like the gameplay of just fighting harder and harder ships while upgrading your own + crew. Though the different crew placements could use extra balancing, I liked that each slot really had a unique use to it.
Really good take on the genre. I actually liked the controls, otherwise it'd be a pretty trivial game. This is probably the first snake game I've played where I had to deal with an orbit, so that + the controls made it feel very good. In addition, the fact that you actually looked different, and not just grow in size and length made me want to keep going.
Interesting use of gravity mechanics, I haven't seen it done in a dodging game like that before. The game ramps up quite fast I must say, so it takes several tries before players get to see more of the mechanics. Your art style is clean and polished and the custom made tutorial you put on this LD page is a nice touch I rarely see in other games.
Super interesting idea, but lacking on the execution side. I know it's hard because of time pressure, but if there was an easier start that guaranteed people would bump into each other early, that would help explain the gameplay early on. Also the player wouldn't be as overwhelmed as they are in the 2nd phase. I'd love to see this game fleshed out more.
Great choice of camera distance, totally conveyed the small world feeling. Awesome aesthetics, even in the animations like shaking the tree. I thought it had a lot of further potential for puzzles, and am not sure if there was more to the island resetting, but I very much enjoyed what I got to play.
This is a cool stealth game. I agree that some kind of vision indicator or warning when they are close to seeing you would be nice, but the running from an aggro is also pretty fun. I would maybe have preferred arrow controls to clicking, but it isn't bad, and the pathfinding seems pretty good.
Never seen an eyebrow fetish before, guess I need to get out more.
The UI is sooooo good. At first I was like "man does this guy expect me to memorize every movement pattern?" and then I immediately found the tooltip system right after. Very easy to play w/o going through even a tutorial. Big props in that department. The gameplay itself is simple and satisfying. It's like a faster paced roguelike.
Agreed the battery should be a tad more forgiving, or perhaps the bot upgrades could be a tad cheaper. Like others said it was hard to experience the full game at the farther ranges just cuz you could get some bad sequences and kill you off.
I love how you emphasized 'running out of power' on 2 different fronts :)
I like the take on the theme. It's definitely a bit of a tense game since you are a little hesitant on the controls. I found the slipperiness to be the harder part rather than the jump controls, and I'd slip off ledges when I didn't want to. The slowdown effect when you're nearly dead is pretty awesome, though I died just about every time when that happened so it was more a slow, agonizing nuclear death rather than a close call haha.
Wow I haven't see the Toribash mechanics really implemented into another game but here it is. The gamefeel is surprisingly good and you must've put a decent amount of work into not making the robot just fall over all the time. I really liked the slowdown on hold mechanic, even just the visual portion. Neat, one of the more original ideas this LD!
Great, professional looking art and UI. The controls could've used some tightening up but I guess that did induce a little bit of panic in me as I tried to optimize my job. Perhaps if the boilers did slightly different things it could've shaken up the gameplay a tad more.
The generator concept is actually pretty unique. Don't think I've seen a game that fully revolves around this concept. I only played on normal difficulty but it did seem like even the towers had a bit too much hp (especially when you have all kinds of bullets raining down on you) so that kinda got in the way a bit. The levels seemed to be well thought out so kudos to that.
Are there really any players here who would say anime is a mistake though!?
The art is great. Yes people tend to like pixel art for the sake of being pixel art but I love the style you put into their faces, that's some Ren & Stimpy type stuff.
I felt a bit disconnected from the gameplay. I think having less-defined goals made me care less about my decisions and it left me hanging.
But hey, like you said, it's accurate to how real life works. Most accurate politics simulator yet.
I laughed a ton at this! The music, the graphics, the pokemon names, and even the gameplay all fit well together for an enjoyable experience! Great work!
Damn I was hoping to be the first person to notice the triangles of success!
Nice, polished game. Other than the already mentioned things about difficulty, I thought it was very clean and the typing felt good to do, mostly because of the sound effects, despite you saying you'd like to work on the audio more next time. If anything, for this kind of game with simple interaction, maybe some smaller particle effects or something on the letter when you type could go a long way.
This game reminded me a lot of Dungeon of the Endless, both in aesthetic and also the powering of rooms mechanic. The urgency caused from constantly running out of power was a good touch, though I was kinda hesitant to explore more as a result. Pretty enjoyable game, I'm impressed at the amount of level design put in this.
TIL I am not a very good nuclear engineer. My main gripe is just at the camera zipping around while i'm trying to modify the control rods. The rest of the game was decently educational.
Definitely one of the most original LD games I've played in my gamejam career, not to mention one of my most highly rated now. At first I thought you could only pick up 1 bot, and even then I thought it was really creative. Once I started exploring and figuring out the pole vault, then I was just plain impressed. The emergent gameplay from the controls is fun to try to master, the graphics are unique and the sound is solid.
What a shame you currently don't have enough votes, please keep trying to bring up your vote count because this game is really one of my favorites!
This is gonna kill me, where is the 3rd ending!??!?!
I tend to not care for game stories but you had me intrigued right at the key, and everything past that. I demand more.
You know, I actually had low expectations after you said "I made all the code etc, badly!" and also that you ran out of time. That was way off, it was actually a really fun game. First off, this is the only game I played this LD that had multiple resources running out. Every other game just had power counting down but you had 3 which was really cool cuz I had to make sure my playstyle covered all 3. The gfx and sound also exceeded my expectations, especially the fact that you snuck in so many nice special effects and shake. The main downside was the walls were quite scary and unforgiving in how they bounced you. If you ran recklessly into narrow corridors that was pretty much gg. Fun game nonetheless!
Even though the wires is the hardest minigame, it's also the most interesting of the 3. If anything I'd try to make more of those types of games since they require a bit more thought. Good start of a game.
Cool game, I've only seen one other metroidvania-esque game this jam and you did a great job on yours. The first notable thing was the jump animation was excellent. Even though it's a "small" thing, the fact that you see it a lot, you get to appreciate such a smooth animation. Secondly, you had a good mix of multiple lives + Metroid upgrades for a unique gameplay experience. I looked forward to each new upgrade to see what you had in store.
Cool concepts here...the gameplay is pretty unique, with the witch following and covering you with the shield. Using just melee it's a bit too straightforward, but I definitely see the potential once you toss the spells in. The spells are a bit hard to hunt down at first and you run around w/o direction for a while. Some kind of radar or compass may have helped catch nearby objects.
The game's look stands out nicely. It seems raw at first but it actually all meshes together pretty nicely... font, sprites, UI, background. Also, did you write something to pull from the LD name database to grab all the monster names? Great touch on that one.
Great gameplay. I've implemented a similar concept in the past (without the decay), so it was a cross between PvZ and your game. I like the amount of strategy involved though, that's the beauty of turnbased. You can go in much harder with your design and patterns. Good variety of cards and they each had their role on the team.
The only thing I'd like to see is some indicator of how many times you've used the card. I was aware of the decay but I would've liked a usage count (not really necessary though).
Any chance this game drew inspiration from Furi? I loved the pace of the game. Just a boss fight followed by a small amount of exposition while you got some rest for the next fight. 2nd boss is designed extremely well, I only had a sliver by the time I beat him. Also, while writing this comment, I still have the title screen theme playing in the bg purposely. Such a great song that doesn't get as much play as it deserves since its title only.
I disagree with a lot of the QTE comments here, I think you used them nicely. Each time you varied it up, it matched what was going on anyways so great job on that. The feeling of powering down was pretty apparently, so you really hit the theme on its head. FWIW, the very first idea that popped into my head for this jam was a game about a character in My Hero Academia that undergoes a similar process.
What a great game! Took me many tries to figure out an optimal build order for Earth (I ended up going right for oil at the start, only after I realized how inefficient coal was people-wise). Once I did, I entered the next phase of your game-design which was optimally juggling your resources with activating/deactivating the right buildings, and also only producing as much as you needed. The ship-loading phase is a bit scary atm, with time ticking down as you need to figure out exactly what cargo loads to pile on, but that did get better over the course of runs as I learned generally how much resources weighed.
The game concept itself is awesome. The idea of going from planet to planet and stripping them away to get to where you need to go is a 5-star theme to me. I haven't seen something like this and it's very compelling. In a later revision if you really wanted to up the addictiveness you could have the planets potentially have a unique powerup you absorb when you colonize it, like +10% oil gain rate or something, and you'd get that rogue-like feel to it. I really wish people would give this game more time and power through the learning curve, I think the balance of all its game elements is shockingly well done.
And to answer your note on my game about large team size, yes it's absolutely an extra challenge. We brainstormed for maybe 3-4 hrs before we even put boots on the ground, and didn't agree on the final game elements until Saturday night. I'd say 6-8 people is the max optimal LD team from my experience, but I really do enjoy piling on all my friends and making it as chaotic as possible.
Really impressive stuff. I think I have a different interpretation of the game than everyone else, because it seemed like an actual game to me where you had you juggle your resource to progress. There's one thing I noticed in this game I don't see in other games all that much. Usually the fun is in the resource spending, like burning your turbo in a racing game, but gathering back your resources to get back to that state is less fun (with the exception of F-zero, those power zones are awesome and satisfying). You managed to connect the charging so well to how music normally does call and response...I felt it was just really organic gameplay. Great job!
Hey, pretty similar game to mine!
Clean sprites and clean interface. The art is all consistent and looks good as a result. The game IS straightforward and could use another mechanic but you already noted that. Regardless, the look and feel of the game is solid and a great foundation for a game.
I think the most interesting enemy was the spiked one. Even in the stage with just 4 running around you had to pay attention to their timing and also spacing so that you didn't accidentally punch right into the spikes of another one, should definitely look into having more of those kinds of elements. The controls are tight and you never feel like you died a cheap death because the levels and enemy movement patterns are all reasonable, or it was your fault you ran out of ammo.
Sidenote, I liked your story about last second coding. I've been there before and it's funny when you realize typing speed ACTUALLY matters at that point.
Sorry you have to hear so many opinions on the graphics but I also agree the game gets hidden under all the juice. The aesthetic itself is very clean and distinct and controls are tight, wish I could see those shine more.
I liked the general concept of this, trying to piece together the timeline, though I may have missed the ending if there was one. The buildup is really great but perhaps I got lost in the maze as well.
Normally I'd call out the game for having a minigame out of nowhere......but I happen to love memory games so I enjoyed it :)
I tended to just run forward and shoot the majority of the time and that seemed effective enough against the enemies so that was pretty simple. I think the fun was in managing your jet power properly and making sure you could make the bigger gaps. Even though the graphics were pretty low-bit, it was very consistent so that gets points from me.
This is definitely a good start. I like the details of the assembly, seeing the beak come out on a platter and get attached and all. It would have been great to see if you could screw up and assemble the ducks wrong. The final stage actually had a pretty interesting limited light design that worked out well to spice up the simple switches mechanic. This definitely has a ton of potential.
Superb game design, well done! The different actions you needed to do an only so many resources reminded me of a single player Overcooked in a way in terms of resource/time management. You wrapped it up in a very cohesive (and humorous) world and it just felt so polished.
Just saw your comment about 2-3 player coop attempt as well, looks like we're on the same page.
I think the concept and story is pretty cool. I've rated a bunch of games already and I personally haven't seen one about anarchy when there's no power (The Purge style almost). I definitely wish the combat was shorter because I was very scared to experiment as a result of that since death would be painful. Looks like this game was going to have some really cool places it was gonna go.
Wow, you have all the makings of a 4x game here. I agree with the above, you might not have been given the playtime you deserve but I thought the gameplay was pretty addictive (I tend to like 4x games). For a one man team, you have a good amount of polish despite the amount of core systems work you did. I went in expecting a buggy UI among other things but I thought it was easy enough to use and play.
I actually liked that you ended up giving us unlimited money so I could just play around. I was having trouble directing power to the right parts until I realized this, and then I could just experiment until I got it working. There aren't too many TD games where you have to worry about power and lines so this was a nice take on the genre. TBH I expected there to be more of these (we planned one ourselves) but that didn't end up being the case.
As a fan of incrementals I really liked this variant on the genre. I like the interplay between the different resources, it's always good to have several carrot on sticks to keep the player craving different goals. The concept of the rabbit itself is pretty funny. Good job on the game, you had me playing way too long.
Oof, pretty tough game even after I figured out the sequence for the a decent build. Certainly takes a lot of tries to get right but I suppose that's hats off to you for keeping me wanting to learn the game. There is an large amount of systems, resources, and buildings here and I'm impressed you crammed them all in this jam. Needless to say, some warnings ahead of time for when resources were going to be out would've potentially helped the player exp. There were many a shocking death over here.
Not gonna lie, I kept going back and choosing different spells just to see all the effects, guess that's an old habit from old CYOA books. I liked your creativity in some of the routes, you really planned some of the stories/events well.
You win the best death sequence for LD39!
The penguin itself actually looks pretty good (I only notice this cuz it's so zoomed in on the title screen). The enemies are sufficiently frightening since it's all 1-hit KOs. Like others said, more HP or checkpoints could've helped w the brutality of making a mistake. Personally I found the controls to be pretty intuitive and didn't need to look for them. And once I saw the 2nd seal also flying around on a jetpack I knew I would have to dole out extra stars on humor.
Certainly nails the theme on its head, and oh man dying to the King BatBot was painful. I thought the UI was a nice touch and my favorite part of the look.
To be honest I'm not really a fan of manual 'upkeep' mechanics where you have you continually press something to maintain it (like UN Squadron's shooting system). I'm not sure how you could tie the current system to a more meaningful one though, and you have a more unique game as a result so I guess I can't complain :)
I both agree and disagree with Vizitas. I think the idea is pretty cool and you certainly did an amazing job cramming this into the jam/game itself. But using the console too much could get tedious so you don't want to go overboard there. The effort you put into the art/music is also incredible, seems like you have a decently veteran team. Not only was the command console fun but you also went ahead and modeled the old win95 stuff as well. Nice job.
As usual, you guys have produced another top notch game. Everything about it suggests your team is a professional one, or at least extremely well trained amateurs. The thing I find the most incredible is that you have a decently complex idea going on here, yet I was able to learn the entire game without a tutorial. This is very hard to achieve in LD and you managed to do it. Bravo guys, I always look forward to your games.
I think you're already aware of the issues w the jam version so I don't need to mention that. I will say I'm actually impressed you took extra time to make so many different asteroids, that was pretty cool. I did make several attempts to try to win regardless, I do love my mining/upgrade games.
The music was an interesting choice, completely flipped what I thought the game would be like based on the screenshots. Like another poster above I tended to just use the ice spell for most situations. I liked the variety of enemies on the other hand and I could see there was good effort spent on their attacks.
I am grateful this is a melee game rather than a typical shooter, there's a lot more thought in the gameplay as a result, especially since you gave us defensive options as well. It's fun trying to space yourself perfectly in a crowd of lights.
Very impressive graphics, loved the mood of the game. I kinda wish there was more of a ramp up in gameplay elements because I felt like I had seen everything after a few node.
Really enjoyed this game, there was so much depth involved even though it was just a few mechanics. Perhaps it was just because I couldn't get far enough but upgrades to your grid-size would've been great. I didn't necessarily mind the RNG deaths, I think that's a part of a roguelite, the idea that you want to roll the dice one more time and see if you get better luck this time around. Well thought out gameplay and interesting use of the theme!
I agree with @daepso, I think a variant you could do w/o making it feel too random is something like minesweeper clues that tell you how many mines are around you before you shine your flashlight, that way you can have a risk/reward setup where you can gamble on where you wanna go if you only have 1 neighboring mine. As is though it works as a memory game and I haven't seen one built like this before.
Such a meta and accurate game. Even though it had straightforward mechanics, the depth of the game lied in the optimal juggling of resources in real time, and that alone really makes the gameplay pop. It gets pretty tense as you get near the final hours and are running out of resources (much like a real gamejam). Also, I appreciate the change-up in gameplay, there are a bit too many 'collect the battery' games out there so this was a great change of pace. My main takeaway from this game is to load up on vuvuzelas for next LD, who knew they were so effective!
This almost plays like Elite Beat Agents or OSU, where you have to time your taps to the beat of the music. I find this mechanic to be very satisfying. Consider how you might be able to spice it up to differentiate this from those titles (like maybe competing bees that try to steal your flowers, or bogus flowers that are actually predators.)
Great mood to the game, not many entries this LD that has that adventurous spirit. At first I thought the mechanic was a little gimmicky but I very much liked the bomb effect from comboing timings.
I'm glad you made a decent effort on making true bullet hellness. Lots of devs tend to hold back for gamejams but you made a nice one.
Clearly an allegory to the current events going on ;)
tbh I thought the art was pretty out there at first, but by the time I reached the lollipop area I actually really enjoyed it. It started to come across more to me as creative afterwards, though the candy corn area was still insane lol. Looks like you put a lot of time into the story as well, I didn't expect that much content compared to similar games this LD.
Really enjoyed the concept of train upgrading and resource management. Would've been cooler to have some more control over what types of weapons to use so that more interesting decisions could be made, but it was good for the span of the jam. Of course the visuals and presentation are top notch. They go a really long way here.
When I fired your game up, I actually thought "oh great, just a pacman clone" at first. I was definitely wrong. As soon as I noticed the meters at the top, I realized what you were going for and it all clicked. What a cool variant on the formula, and it applies to the theme perfectly. The game got pretty intense for me at times when the robots closed in (or I messed up a jump), that's certainly a feeling I don't get from Pacman. I think a cool feature would be to have the robots get a little faster as they neared battery drain, to connect the battery to gameplay more.
One thing I really like to see in games with upgrades is a visual indicator rather than just a number go up. For example in Diablo where upgrading charged bolt actually shot out more projectiles. As simple as it was I just really liked seeing the light growing and that probably kept me playing more than anything.
The game just feels good to play. TBH I was pretty happy with the animations and presentation even though they were simple. Nice use of the game mechanics throughout all the level design, I'm sure you had to put in a decent amount of playtime to get those all lined up. The levels that were open and gave you a lot of choices were challenging and satisfying to solve once you got it. Give my game a shot sometime, it has a somewhat similar premise in terms of limited movement puzzle.
The orbs alone being key'd to the music was fantastic. The story also really enhanced what would just be a straightforward game. Thank you for offering a version with just the endings on it.
Brilliant game...
-The player realizes what to do within 1 death, no tutorial needed.
-It did take me a bit to realize it was the solar panels that needed to be in the light, I thought it was a hitbox issue at first. Once I realized this, it just made it better because I've never seen a variation like that before so I really like that touch.
-Well thought out puzzles. You really explored different ideas on the mechanic and made me look forward to each one.
5 stars
Boy you guys have been working hard on reviewing games!
I really liked this game concept, don't think I've seen something that was exactly like this in terms of collecting resources as they fly by. I think a lot of things have already been said, so I'll just second the comment(s) about having the resources visible at all times. I had to pretty much just write down my resources on notepad sometimes to keep track. Aside from that, still a good variety of resources and buildings to play with.
Absolutely loved the Superhot gameplay mechanic usage, it spiced up what's normally standard fanfare. I could see you exploring that even further with more UI elements that expand on it. The polish is also incredible, just about everything had something juicy in it.
Interesting start of each stage having to destroy asteroids in order to get more bullets. That concept has potential, especially when you have to dodge things during that time, making it feel like a bullet hell (a good thing). Keep up the great work!
I clicked on this because of the icon and was not disappointed. This was a cool twist on idle/clicker games. The moving back and forth made it actually more work though (and consequently a different experience). I'm gonna have wrists of steel tomorrow. I didn't actually get bored of it like in normal clickers, i fought through the pain. I was hoping for some relief, but the only relief is to get fired. What a message about life!
I found a few spots where i could climb to heaven, but there were no good pics there. I explored the caves more and found some good stuff. I like that the pics showed up in the gallery too. That was a nice touch. Just need a few more gameplay elements like enemies and/or powerups to extend your torch and this could workout well.
Great way to blend a minigame game together. I've seen a lot of them but you've tied them into a coherent (and funny) story so much better. The graphics and animation are superb, seemed like a good amount of effort was put into that. And of course, that mating scene was something else...
Woof that was a tough game until I realized I should just go to the marked exit area. I would go there and see a monster so I'd avoid it; didn't realize it was just guarding it. The exit meter itself is very unique and added a lot of strategy to the game. You mixed and matched a lot of different things and ended up with something pretty cool. I like my innovative games and you are definitely one of those.
Super, SUPER creative game here. A key thing that stands out with this game is that you are already familiar w all the potential answers, so you sit there and analyze all the options in your head before you go in (assuming you're running out of enough lives). A great puzzle is one that makes you think and project your idea into the world before you do it. Other puzzle games only have a small language that the user can use so they don't necessarily think through as many options as this game. One of the best LD ideas I've ever seen.
After I read that shots took away power I mostly conserved ammo and just tried to run past everyone. Luckily I got the artifact early on and I felt like I had to freedom to shoot again. Only on 2nd playthrough did I see that you don't just plain die from shooting too much. No complaints here, just some thoughts that went through my mind as I was playing.
Out of all the decisions and systems to consider, the one I enjoyed most was choosing between upgrading special skills vs spending it on events. It reminded me of the Heroes of Might and Magic decision to choose between exp and money from chests which was always a hard/interesting decision. I saw there were a good amount of strategies that can be attempted in playthroughs, so there was a decent amount of replayabily for me as I tried different paths. I wish I had more time to read all the flavor text flying around but there was just no time as it's a frenetic game. Excellent work for a compo game, there are so many systems implemented in such a short time.
Awesome job on the tutorial itself. It's so hard to plan time for doing a proper tutorial, I think it's actually the best one I've seen in an LD (yes I know its a lower bar haha). I'm also impressed you had all the hex math done in time, did you already have experience doing that? I feel like that would've taken up so much of my LD time but you clearly had time to put in lots of other polish. Great job!
Really impressed with the underlying engine for simulating the world, even the mere attempt at doing it. The art and UI is really pleasant, and admittedly the reason I clicked the page in the first place. Although I took a look at all the ? hints, it was still overwhelming in the beginning because a lot of things were happening, like the bear attacks. I didn't notice how to beat them until I came back to this page. Overall a decently polished entry to LD.
PS. lol @ the decimal bug
Probably the first fighting game I've seen for LD, and I'm a huge FG player (plus I loved Divekick). Unfortunately looks like I reviewed this too late and can't try online against anyone else, but from what I can tell:
Good RPS system between the 3 different attacks. Mindgames, ho! Can't quite tell the usefulness of backdash. It theoretically seems quick enough to whiff punish the low and dash attack from max range, but I'd love to see how the devs utilized this since it's scary to back yourself closer to your plug. Good pacing of the game. Gives you enough time to think about what the opponent will do next and how to counter.
I definitely can tell the game will be fun once I can find another person to play with, nice work.
Wooooooooooooooooo you guys did not hold back on the difficulty! Loved the game, great polish all around, notably in the level design. Very tight levels that never seemed impossible, made me just keep retrying. If there was even one thing I would change it would be to not have the music switch on deathstreak cuz I liked the first theme so much. One of the best games this jam.
Addictive game, I'm pretty prone to incremental/idle games so I had to keep playing til I finished. I could be wrong about this but it felt like the top choice tended to have more gains than the bottom one so I would lean towards that almost every time (unless I remembered the prev results). I really liked the interface. It's very clean and I knew exactly where to go with only the minor tutorial (which I also give props for, LD games have like a 5% chance of having a decent in-game tutorial).
Nice concept, the controls + hecticness of all the objects makes it pretty frantic in the beginning. After a few upgrades it's much more manageable. I think if there was a bigger variety of enemies it could really bump the replayability up a lot. Also the player's decision making would be pretty tested. A great start to an idea!
Great game where you really had to pay attention to optimizing logistics. Like others said, the simple hexagon discovery animation just felt amazing compared to a basic fog of war, I was really excited to see what was around each corner. The environments have a clean look to it so the overall feel was excellent. Personally, the game was perfectly balanced cuz I won with 7 seconds left lol
Great presentation for the game. The title screen especially made a stellar first impression on me. In general all the animations are impressed and not typical of what you see in LD. I wish I could get a chance to enjoy the gameplay more, the game is awfully hard when there are 8 clouds blocking the way back and you pray there's an alternate exit. Good job giving the impression of paranoia from the monsters + outside boundaries closing in on you.
Great idea having to choose between recharging and building more turrets. I only wish the difficulty could have ramped up to put my giant turret network to the test. This is definitely an idea that can be expanded with different towers, enemies, and rewards, perhaps even multiple bases. Great work on this!
I used the green bolt quite a bit since it lasted so long, so technically I thought green should switch with red in terms of cost. I had fun anyways, the zombie jump animation was unexpected and hilarious haha.
Been marathoning Slime Rancher this weekend so I was naturally drawn into your aesthetics right off the bat. The help button is actually quite good as is. If you forced the player to see it right in the beginning, I'd imagine a lot of people would just skip it anyways so great call on that. The gameplay itself is pretty solid. I'm a fan of incrementals and was craving some extra unlocks and such, but as you noted you already have this planned in the future. Nice job!
Like another commenter has mentioned, it started off very strong with a nice confined atmosphere and mysterious music+city. Afterwards it was a lot of dying as I tried to navigate the city and avoid pain. Reading the comments after I had played explains a lot and I'm sure you already have ideas on how to improve. Very good start to an idea though.
Neat puzzle game with a good presentation. The graphics and all the little animations are solid and very polished looking. I think the level progression is pretty on point for an LD game, though I personally would've preferred some more curveball puzzles thrown in.
For 4 days I was like oh god, I have no idea how I'm supposed to figure this out, I must be missing something. It finally clicked on the last day and I caught the contradiction and I think I deduced it correctly and it felt fantastic. Love the presentation, I really like alternative UI games, and needless to say the graphics are superb. Overall a great change of pace from the rest of the crop of games!
I actually liked how you had to juggle where to spend your batteries. It would've been extra interesting if maybe the choices became asymmetrical, like maybe if batteries were less effective on the player over time it might encourage them to use them early, but power up the base later on. Just something to force a decision on the player more.
Nice change of pace from the other games out there. I thought the first round was pretty funny and a good twist to the normal voice command type stuff. I thought the game was REALLY well paced, I thought it was going to maybe get repetitive but you knew how to pace your game just fine. The art is absolutely amazing and very professional looking, to the point where it's almost unfair :). Great job!
Loved the presentation, everything is clean and tied together well. The interactions between the different ingredients made this the most interesting for me. If you just stacked them in order it would've been a pretty straightforward game but at least this provided a [good] learning curve. Can't praise the UI enough, that progress bar at the top is super professional!
I gotta say, I normally don't have the patience for adventure games and avoid them. But you had me lolling at the first scene, and then once I got to Ton-Hi (including the BG for his store) you sealed me in. It was hilarious writing coupled with great music so I stayed til the end. Awesome work, and also one of the few adventure games I've seen this LD.
I know you, like everyone else, were pressed for time on implementing this. But oh man if there was a visual upgrade each time you got a perfect or something, I would be hopelessly addicted to this. Thank you for showing us the art of the possible when LD devs focus on refining the core experience to its max.
The music is fantastic in this game! This felt a bit like a bullet hell game where i had to watch how much i moved, which is a cool concept. I would make the UI elements smaller so they don't obstruct too much of the screen. Good work!
First 5 stars I've given for humor this jam, the premise is hilarious, and the 3d model is perfect for the occassion. Nothing that hasn't really been said yet, the cats were quite challenging to get around so at least a checkpoint would've helped things. But once you got going into the house itself it was very fun, especially because I didn't expect to see a stealth game for this theme. I'd love to know where you drew inspiration for this idea haha
Great level design, the solutions are pretty tight and must've taken a lot of testing to get right. I figured you were going to make it like that so I made sure to be pretty efficient and thorough on my smoke cleanup. Great game for OCD players haha
This is probably my favorite game of the jam so far. Complete gameplay with fully fleshed out level design. Not sure how you found the time to do all of this solo, even just the playtesting would've taken me hours! I was surprised to see comments of people quitting early, I felt compelled to get every upgrade and finish.
I loved the idea of multiple playthroughs with Metroidesque unlocks. It felt like everything was interconnected, from the drones to the portals. The progression felt perfect to me, with my only qualm being how slow I suddenly felt moving away from drone 2. Can't praise this game enough!
Great plot twist, very memorable compared to other story entries here. I think the highlight of the game was walking around a mound while the white tower came into view, and your narration covering that. It was just good framing using the environment and it actually made it feel pretty epic. You guys showed some real variety of talent in this game, I thought it was fantastic.
Though there's a sea of light-power based games, I like that you at least added the twist that the character is running out of awake-power as well. Just a hilarious concept to me.
Not sure why everyone is saying it's peaceful, that was a depressing game (in a good way)! I felt more like the movie Gravity where you were just alone and losing hope. Even though unintentional, I liked that the controls were harder to use since most of us expected the thrust system. I would miss batteries more often and it'd just make the situation feel more desperate.
This is a great start. I think what it could use is a scale up in difficulty somehow as the game progresses. Perhaps harder enemies or more of them could show up after a certain score. The procedural gen actually worked pretty nicely to generate interesting layouts. The graphics and feel of the game are solid. Great work!
Wow that was a really well animated explosion! Most LD games have pretty simple ones or they use particles effects, but you handmade it all. Same goes for the cutscene in the beginning, I'm impressed you guys put forth the effort on those, it really shows. As for the gameplay, I think it's a bit simple but at least it was very easy to get into. Great job on the music, it didn't really fit the gameplay for me personally, but I still appreciated how it sounded.
Good call on highlighting the path to take, that would've been a nightmare otherwise. Lining yourself up correctly might be slightly hard but I got used to it quickly. Reminds me of the Battletoads ramps and how finicky they were to hit, but it was still fun. I actually really like the UI design up top. Maybe its easy for you but I personally have trouble with doing stuff like that.
Shockingly I actually realized I liked the slippery controls, it made it more challenging and engaging than a straight up vacuum. It's definitely much better in 2p mode and I could see it being even better with 4.
Well I can agree with the title here, I stopped fearing growth and loving the nuclear power plant :)
I had the same experience as the above user. Seemed pretty simple at first just keeping up w nuclear, but there's an inevitable wall to go through regardless. I think the game, like many construction games, can be addicting with the addition of just 1 more element or building to spice it up. Nice job regardless.
From what little I know of actual gazelle behavior it actually felt awesome to sprint at a pack and take one down. You made a good decision to make the hitbox large because when I went for a solo one I missed like 4 times and thought it was gonna be a rough time, but I ended up having an easier time once I found packs. I honestly loved the colors you used in the game. The bright orange saturation made it feel like a lively savannah, you did an awesome job on the setting. Not gonna lie I didn't expect much after seeing the title screen but it was way better than I expected.
210 seconds here (jam version), this probably the most fun game I've played this whole LD. At first I thought "oh I'm just going to burn through this game in no time" but the power drain rate + the Bop-It style minigames made it super frantic near the end. It was awesome, I didn't think a clicker game could be that good. The graphics and UI are top notch, but I still have to commend the gameplay for taking it this far. I had to throw my hands back and forth to hit spacebar and then back to mouse to mash quickly (I use 2 hands for that). Superb job!
I finished playing, then came back to make sure your name wasn't Zun. You really got the Touhou feel down with the art, music (Damn good btw!), and bullet patterns. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and am incredibly impressed that you were able to accomplish this in a game jam timeframe(I have struggled with trying to make a bullethell of my own in the past, and that wasn't even for a game jam). Also like a true Touhou game, Lunatic mode kicked my ass hard. Phantom Move was my favorite ability, though the others were pretty neat too.
Oh man now I'm having an existential crisis!
Interesting game, I tried to play with the decisions I would make irl and there were certainly a lot of unexpected consequences, but luckily I pulled through in the end. Good writing, I really liked some of them like the kids + feet in kitchen. TBH when reading the description of the game, I thought there were going to be butterfly effects where decisions you make early on bubble up and show up later in a crazier form. Perhaps something to consider as an alternative way to tackle this path and make consequences even more unexpected.
Hard to give praise that hasn't already been given, so I guess I'll note how awesome the little tilt is on the camera when you do a hard turn (at least, I THINK it's a tilt).
Dat acceleration sound in the beginning tho
Pretty tough game, especially weaving in between obstacles. It scared me a number of times from the sudden death trying to squeeze in gaps. Solid game for the time spent, I will be forever scared of 8 lane highways.
I love out of the box concept for games. Brilliant portrayal of chaos uprising using just a map and its appearance. Agreed with others that you could expand on this later with upgrades and such, but as is you have a very nice fundamental concept going on and it's fun to just play and maximize the logistics of your units.
Super cool idea man, Shadow of the Colossus meets Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. One of the qualms I have with LIADS is that the player movement is really uninteresting. You move around some ladders to get to the optimal spot to shoot, but you may as well just take that minigame out and put a delay on your node switching. You solved that issue here by making switching weapons an actual skill-based process that you can get better at. Nailing a seat from across your mech feels awesome and like you're actually improving. I played the compo version and I didn't see the issues the others had with the controls but maybe it's from having experience with the genre.
Really innovative experiment. I look forward to seeing the outcomes at the end.
I this the puzzle & dragon mechanic? I haven't played it myself but I guess that's what that's supposed to be. Nice take on the match-3 genre, I haven't seen one that does something quite like yours. Really good creativity here and the whole package feels good since you tied all the animals to it. The otter sprite is amazing btw, and all sprites are impressive in general. One thing I feel like matching games really need to hone in on is the juice. I know you had some with the scoring and animations, but you can really go far with some of the flashiness that the others have. I totally get that there's only so much time for features, but that might be something to consider prioritywise in the future. Nice game and great innovation!
Super, super good game, probably in my top 3 this LD so far. The best thing about this game is that it's brilliantly easy to pick up and play. Anyone can figure that part out easy. Oh man is it hard to master though. I've never played a dodge-em-up where I actually needed to think at deeper levels like you need to do in this game. The art choice on the planet gave it just enough personality to bump up the other categories such as art and humor too. Can't stress it enough, this game has an awesome concept behind it and I loved the execution of it!
Surprsingly I went for the enemies first and only realized I could remove the hair after a few rounds. Maybe that's just the gamer in me....
Wow, really great idea and execution of the theme. You really have to think fast on the way down to get a successful level built. Even once the level's built, I actually felt pretty tense making my way back up since you'll occasionally have difficult jumps like when you stack 2 platforms on top of each other. This looks like a great mechanic to expand on for future versions if you add different mobility options. One of the more unique games I've seen this LD, great work!
The player animation + crazy item-mouse physics was pretty funny to watch. This is only the 2nd game I've seen so far with a hoarding mechanic where you need to dig deep to access some things, so it's a fairly unique mechanic.
Boy does this guy love paintings of animals though..
Wooooooooo 2 secs early! Very nice gameplay made out of just 1 button too, it's pretty hard to make an interesting 1 button game without resorting to some uninteresting mechanics. The balance of this game is shockingly on point (unless my 2s finish was a fluke) so well done on your testing part. I really liked how nervous I felt once I was gigantic because it was easy to misstep into houses and I had to take some smart gambles. Very creative game, I loved it.
Facehugger babies.......I like it! Surprisingly I haven't seen too any other baby/kid games this LD, and it never popped up in our brainstorm sesh either, so kudos on a unique theme, in addition to a unique game in general. You kept surprising me with the different ways you could throw babies at me (maternity ward, stock), so great ideas all around.
Sidenote: Read your About and some comments about your team, I can totally relate to some of your experiences. I also field a large team of whoever random people are around that weekend, and it's quite the challenge to reel in features and finally focus on making a simple, polished game. This hasn't happened yet but one day the dream will be real! Sigh, there's an idea we should've done. "The more feature creep the worse it gets"...
Oh wow, I totally thought this game was impossible until I came back to the comments section. I enjoyed the playthrough I had even though I couldn't finish. This was the first game I saw that used visual glitches as the difficulty ramp.
Nice, elegant gameplay. I actually had the exact same thought as @neontropics, with Tetris Attack as the first game that popped into my head as well. I would assume it took a decent amount of testing to get all your sections to feel right, especially once you had your full layout setup so kudos on that. I kinda liked that you went with the 3d objects even though it's a very 2d game. Main reason being I've probably seen more 2d games with this gameplay so it's a nice change of pace.
Great job uniting all the game mechanics so well! This game reminds me of Downwell, where one action has many different consequences tied to it so using it (the steam release in this case) needs to be a careful decision. I also really liked that you had a cooldown to it, otherwise it would've felt like any standard shooter where you reload when there's downtime and nothing else. By adding a cooldown I had to really maximum my shots and make sure I didn't need to reload any time soon. Great idea and fun game in general.
Soooooo much better as a turnbased game than if it was one of those typical realtime dev sim games. It allowed you to have more interesting decisions with the cards and all (imagine this as a deckbuilder!) I liked the thought you put into the mechanics such as having to weigh combo vs code quality and juggling all your meters optimally. One of the more unique games I've seen this jam!
Absolutely brilliant. You gotta tell me, what % of the jam was spent coding the game and what % was spent on level design? I can't believe you accomplished so much in the timeframe, this is one of the most complete LD games I've ever seen. Level design is amazing, the art is actually quite impressive too. It's pretty hard to make ultra low-bit characters and items look recognizable and you pulled it off so well. The music was never grating either, I really enjoyed it. Superb game!
This LD I've been loving the games that allow people to intentional "get worse" just so they can see how crazy it gets. They know us players can't help ourselves in that regard, and your game is one of those haha. I loved seeing how crazy my character could look and the game itself was a nice throwback that made me resurrect some old skills. Great theming too, I can now look forward to our post-apocalyptic future if I get to have 8+ arms to flail around!
I can't believe such a small gameplay twist could change the meta so much. As soon as I had the revelation that I needed to slow down my shots and pick them carefully, I realized I hadn't really seen that in too many games, certainly not for long periods of time. The game mechanics all wove together so well just with the ice wall element. You not only had to shoot carefully, but also shoot in certain directions so you could make sure it was an even playfield.
I think a hilarious consequence was that I knew full well the powerups were bad for me, but I used them all the time cuz it felt to good to shoot. Devious design there and great job all around :)
Oh boy you guys must be super busy with the reception you're getting :)
I'm glad I wasn't just imagining the Skullgirls influence, it's nice to see that aesthetic right down to the UI and font. In that case, it would be crazy to see a full implementation of this idea with more than just the basic attacks. The game itself is good, with the art being spectacular of course. I was pleasantly surprised with the AI preventing me from doing an easy cheese to victory and I had to think up a good strat to finish them off. One more thing I'd like you note, you made an AWESOME first impression with the title screen for me. This is a jam and usually the title screen is a relative after thought. You've inspired me to try to match that kind of polish in my next jam!
This is a very creative idea! It kinda reminded me of Papers Please and could have benefited from similarly depressing music and sounds. My only disappointment was not getting to see all the dogs I lost and various other impounds in my frantic bill paying. The popup hell was also a nice touch. You really put a lot of effort into this, Congrats!
Great a e s t h e t i c s think alike! I'm surprised I've never come across a self-pong game before. Needless to say, the look and feel is amazing. One day I'd like to do the same and do a simple game and just work on full polish like you did, but the temptation of features is always too strong...
I think the most interesting thing about this game is that you KNOW the game's just gonna get harder as you pick up the DLC, but you do it anyways cuz you want to see all the different guns and enemies that spawn out of it. I mean there is the gold aspect but I thought that was secondary to the content unlocking. The upgrades kept me engaged all the way to the end of the weapons so you did a great job there.
I've done 6 LDs now, and have reviewed hundreds of games. This is the first game I ever held my breath on. Pretty much nonstop too. Not even sure why since there are other difficult games on here, perhaps it's the controls, perhaps it's the hilarious faces, or the physics. Amazing job, I think it's more important to draw an emotion out of the player like that than any other rating category there is.
EDIT: I tossed a reply to your post on my page. Maybe one day ldjam will have messaging....
You have a really good sense of gamefeel, the game plays smoothly and awesomely. I, like some others, was also a little confused at the love meter at first. After I while I just started mashing my mouse and the results were good. One thing I noticed was that if you knock the enemies towards the inside of the map they don't die (I believe). It would be interesting to make a mechanic out of this to break up some of the simplicity, just maybe juggle them for a bit before knocking them out of the arena for some bonus points. Just some thoughts.
Wow, a working grass growing system and some cow AI, very impressive. The game reminded me a bit of Slime Rancher, down to the enrage mechanic + music change when it happens. I like the take on the theme, and with some more cohesion between all the elements (music doesn't really fit the art), you could have a real contender here.
I definitely like the concept of the game, you can never go wrong with a good heisting. I liked the layout of the town and there was a nice variety in the placement of the walls and cops for the chases. I think I had the same qualms as other people. The slowness is somewhat tolerable but it's a pretty big drag when you need to bring loot down from the top of the entire map. You can always outrun the cops once you let go of things so the game is more of an exercise in patience. For a non-artist you did quite well. The characters look prison architectish, and I could see the extra effort you put into things such as the main menu.
What a great experience and some cool tech behind the scenes. I think one of the best indications you have of player engagement is the fact that you have soooo many comments sharing what they've created with everyone. Any LD game that can get me to replay it a bunch is a winner in my book so good job on that.
Sidenote: I'm curious about your team now. How can you add more coders or artists to the team if the names codecat and artcat are already taken?!? You should add @SecretPocketCat above ^ while you're at it :)
Also got stuck on level 9. This is a superb puzzle game. And I forewent playing many other games just because I wanted to beat this, and ultimately sleepiness won. I may return to finish this. But i just have to say what amazing mechanics + level design this has! The music was good, but the gap between loops was a little jarring. Maybe try to end the theme on less of a final note but a dominant note/chord that wants to resolve back to the root(beginning of the song).
Ok guys you win, you got me to play the entire game lol
Firstly I do love incrementals and have played them all, and I initially thought the lore was getting in the way and useless. It didn't take me too long to up all the building counts just to see what you've written next, you completely pulled me in. Outside of that stuff, even the art surpasses a lot of other ones out there. Good job and great sense of humor.
I love seeing the consequences of your actions in this game. After I saw the first tornado spawn I was like "oh.............oh this is gonna get crazy". As someone mentioned above, I ended up spending a ton of money building up countermeasures rather than actual mining. I thought the game was pretty fun and only wished there were more towers I could throw out or upgrades. I totally understand you were probably at the limit for a solo project but man the potential is too good to pass up.
Moodwise, despite not having music there, I'm going to rate this very high. The first RTS I played was Dune 2 and I can't help but reminisce about that game when I play this.
@Zeriver Totally! We brainstormed out 15 different cliques and considered each one having its own mechanic for reputation gain rather than AOE but alas.
@pkenney your reviews are always so introspective, they give incredible insight into what a player is thinking as they're playing :)
My goal is pretty simple. Any gaming friend I have I try to bring into gamedev because I know everyone has great ideas in their head and would love to take a crack at it regardless of their skillsets. Some people are already veterans of their craft, and others I'll teach Unity/art/music/design so they can contribute somehow. Despite what some people think, this is a terrible idea for optimal game quality, as it is super chaotic coordinating everything at once. Regardless, this makes for a really fun environment and we are also forced to churn out some pretty crazy ideas in order to satisfy the entire group. I'm constantly growing the crew, and usually if they're missing from the roster it's only because of scheduling conflicts. Thanks for asking!
I love multitasking games and I'm glad you seemed to have tested this well and made it reasonable. I've seen a lot of these games go too ham and the player's hardly get a chance to see the game. Nice plot twist, I honestly thought it was just a pong game since I didn't read the description. Real talk though, that chamber transition sound needs to be toned down, it totally jumpscared me lol.
Hah, we were actually planning to take our game in this direction in terms of having different minigames per faction, but ran out of time. Good to see the idea get implemented somewhere though, I haven't seen this yet from the other games. I really like the theming of the game, the 1994 is a super subtle touch, and I use a dumbphone myself so I feel right at home.
Always a fan of your guys' games. They always have a unique idea and feel to them. In general there aren't too many games that utilize a "groupie" mechanic so this was cool.
Haha this game was pretty funny, the tomato throwing was so random (though highly true to real life). I actually really like the feel of the game, I liked the feeling of progression even though it didn't particularly have any gameplay changes as a result....I just enjoyed seeing the company title upgrade. Great concept, the different minigames certainly kept me going for a while.
Agreed, this is actually really unique. 3d Runners are a pretty tired genre so it's good to see something new. I didn't realize the flowers were actually rocks until the 2nd run, but other than that the game makes sense to me. You uh, definitely have the theme right lol
Wow this is actually a really clever game. I haven't seen anything quite like it other than maybe Spy vs Spy on the NES where you had to remember which furnitures you placed all your traps in. I like that I can play with some mild memory strategy to it. I was sorting a pillar by warm colors on the left, cool colors on the right in the later stages to help with recall speed. In addition, I liked that execution speed mattered as well so the game ended up feeling very frantic in a good way. You absolutely nailed the theme on its head!
This is a top 3 game for me so far. I didn't think people could come up with new stuff in the music game genre but you guys managed to pull it off. The idea is super charming, especially with the penguin just spinning nonstop. The gameplay itself is EXTREMELY fun, especially on hard mode. And obviously the music is top-notch, coming from a rhythm game player.
5/5 innovation, I haven't seen anything like this.
This game is hilarious, I honestly didn't think I would ever get the hang of it but I eventually got some accuracy just using E and Q. Occasionally E>W>Q combo if I was feeling cheeky but that was pretty much my limit. Our team brainstormed a qwop juggling idea but figured we'd never be able to implement it right so I'm glad SOMEBODY out there went for it. Like you said, really satisfying game once you get the hang of it.
THIS is a mechanic I've been waiting to see all jam but haven't until now. I love how you have to weigh your upgrade costs vs saving up for a win, and playing the whole balancing act in between that. I love games where that's not an easy decision and you're constantly trying to figure out how to play it optimally. Really fun concept for a TD, made it a lot more interesting than others in the genre.
Interesting concept. I like that you threw in some new pieces because that shook up the formula enough for me to dive in deeper. I like the hold mechanic but I don't think it fits in well with Tetris because like you said, there's no reason not to hold down the button and just let go when you're in trouble. I think it might be a better mechanic in something like a Tetris Attack/Puyo Puyo style game with falling blocks because that'll give you the ability to set up complicated chains you couldn't do in the normal mode. I appreciate the attempt to reinvigorate a classic game though, it makes you really think outside the box to surprise people.
Played a few sorting games this LD now, the element that makes yours stand out is you can skillshot the presents into the baskets to be more efficient. It's a small optimization move to do but it feels really visceral doing it and it made this game more engaging than the others since execution was involved. The overall polish is excellent and kudos to your music person for making such a fitting theme!
Nothing better than flying out of the water like a dolphin..........but as a scuba diver :)
The art looks great, especially once you're near the bottom and you're surrounded by the scene it looks pretty legit. I feel like it's a backwards take on the theme though. The air only helps you rather than makes things worse, unless I interpreted it wrong and its the diving+loot that's hurting you.
I think it's ok to "give away" the twist early. Lots of stories do it (hell, Tarantino movies do this on the regular), but it's still interesting to explore the psyche of the characters involved anyways. That's how your game came across to me as rather than a big plot twist game. I did think it dragged a little bit but it kept me til the end regardless.
Great game, I replayed it quite a bit not necessarily because of the high score board, but because it was addictive just to see how big of a train you can get. I loved how skillbased it was, and if you were good enough you could get super far (though I didn't really).
Always a joy to see your artwork. Pretty clean mechanic you added and it feels great every time you use it.
Hilarious use of the theme, things got pretty hairy quick. I'm really curious how you got the pathfinding to be so smooth. I was shocked the cats never got stuck behind any walls or especially furniture. I did get some cats apparently spawned in an enclosed room though so I never did find out who was behind the fire!
Omgoodness this is awesome. Your game title COMPLETELY fits the actual gameplay. The game is such a joy to play and I was laughing most of the time wondering WTF the AI cars were doing. Some were just driving in circles, others were just literally standing on their front bumper like a statue. Did you code in a bunch of randomness?! The closest thing I've seen to this are the chaos levels in Road Redemption such as https://youtu.be/KZ-DDxcgLHA?t=495. Good job man!
Ah ha I gotcha. We implemented skateboarders in our own game and I really wanted to reuse the player controls which were vehicle controls. Unfortunately the ended up with the AI skaters running into walls most of the time so we had to stick with reusing the walking AI from the other enemies =/
At first I thought it'd be too straightforward because of the slow speed, but all my typing muscle memory came into play and betrayed me for a while. Got a hang of it by the third but it was a really good twist to standard typing games.
I really liked the story you made here, and I generally don't care for a lot of lore haha. What got me was a decent punch of humor off the bat so that clicked with me and I started paying attention to the story more. But also the story progression was very fast which is great for a LD-length game, you gotta hook them quick. I actually didn't expect the ending, the way you were going with the story I expected it to be some kind of trap set by the village to kill off the main character, so that's how engaged I was with it. Great concept, and even the gameplay was some VERY unique. The idea of juggling your resources and powers w/o dying/overheating if you will made the otherwise-standard platforming into something interesting. Very nicely done!
Simple concept but executed really well. I just plain liked playing this. Boy does this game get hard if you drop the ball on something (backspace issue especially). Like real juggling, you just kinda mess up the following items as a result. I'd love in a future version to be able to jump towards the harder levels right off the bat, I was totally in the typing zone and wanted to get right back in there after the loss!
Very cool mix of graphics, it looks incredibly polished and didn't realize this was a solo game until I clicked back to this page. Fairly straightforward gameplay so not much to say there, but at least it was pretty satisfying especially to see feedback from the game like when Billy gets fatter. I feel your pain about webgl and custom shaders. It's super upsetting to work on a game up to the 90% time mark, toss it on Itch and realize it looks nothing like Unity editor. This is a hard lesson we had to learn a bit back...
I'm a huge fan of Simon games, I actually made a java applet Simon clone as my first game ever! It's very rare to see variants of a memory game and so I really like where you went with this entry. This is the closest thing I can think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egb0iTLfjM8
That's not the hardest example per se, but the concept's still pretty cool where you're trying to retain some info in your head, and if you keep running into things it gets harder and harder to keep that info correct. Great potential!
I liked that you took the time to actually code up a few paths, I definitely played a few times to check out the endings. The attacks were frustrating to use though. I think I would've bailed on the multiframe attack and maybe switch to a regular poke type animation to make it feel better. The art however, is pretty good. It looks like a vectorized version of those old japanese art paintings. Nice unique style.
Fantastic execution. It's like a Metroid + Lunar Lander type game and you've captured the theme perfectly. The danger warnings are effective in creating that ominous feel of the planet turning against you. How quickly the world changes and reacts to you is awesome and it really feels like you're interacting with the gameworld.
Perfect way to do a multiple robber heist game with simple controls. Fairly challenging game. I'm really glad you gave us the ability to just go to hard mode so we could see what the full design of the game could be. I thought the art was good, but the music could use a bit more variety.
Btw, we actually made a multiple board puzzle game last LD too so I know just how hard it is to design those levels, you can scope it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/how-i-met-your-great-great-grandmother
Really impressive game. The most notable thing is the polish. The art looks good, the physics feels good, and the sounds are very well done. Something just felt really good about getting big combos and hearing that pitch shoot way high, that was probably the main reason I kept on playing.
Gameplay-wise, at first when I played I considered it a clicking accuracy game so I was like "oh an Osu-ish game, this should be fun". After things piled up though, I finally realized mashing was the only effective tactic left for me so I just barreled through all the ink and controlled the pile with that + slapping things. It was a pretty unique experience and can only get better with more juice. Nice game, guys.
Holy CRAP this game's concept is insane lol, you gotta tell me how you guys came up with this idea. Super clever, one of the most unique LD concepts I've ever seen, and something we all can relate to..................to some degree. Amazing juice, great UI, lots of polish all over. Game was very fun to play as well, I think the unforgiving timer was helpful in achieving that. Awesome job, you have one of my higher votes!
Alright, this game was actually pretty addicting and had some nice game design to it. The fact that the shotgun angles were random would change my playstyle and route every run. It felt a bit like a........shotgun roguelike basically. The graphics were deceptive and I'm glad I went ahead and played anyways. You did really well for the amount of time you put in. I think you could actually take this idea a lot further, I haven't really seen a game with this kind of mechanic.
This game is hilarious. It's super hard juggling the optimal input vs output of the bunnies, so I thought the core gameplay was interesting. They can get out of hand sooo fast so I found myself playing over-careful most of the time. I really like the art you have. Lots of small details like the animation of the rabbits themselves clearly shows off your efforts. They're such simple sprites but when you take the animation into account it looks great. Really Fun game, I wouldn't worry too much about the "cruelty" comments :)
Cool game, I really liked the particle effects. They're all small/subtle but are tuned so well they look awesome, especially the laser of course. Great juggling game concepts in here, it would've gotten crazy if you implemented all those other states you had planned. I'd love to see this taken further.
Good concept and ties to the theme well. The one issue that jumped out at me has apparently already been covered in the comments which is that when I reload, all I do is dump my ammo so I can move freely again. I think if you popped just one more mechanic/consequence in there you could have a real winner.
This is a new one for sure. I think you're on the right track for gameplay and it'd be really cool if there were even more effects you could have by mixing and matching what you have on the boat. Current game is awesome though, everything felt tight, polished, and professional.
Very professional looking game. One thing that really makes this game stand out is its daring color scheme. It's fits the mood very well and makes every day feel very ominous. I think the combat is a bit simple, but personally in these types of games I do prefer to have a robust SimCity portion of the game anyways and you had a nice system where the players had to think about their building placement a bit. Ultimately this is a great start on a deeper game, just needs some more gameplay to fit that polish.
The art is awesome. Lots of variety in the crowd, and of course the many frames of animation on the many character. The bulls are probably a bit too shiny but what can you do. Unfortunately the gameplay is a bit rough. The tomatoes come too quick to react to so you're pretty much at the mercy of RNG veggies. I think a simple slowing down of those could make it feel more like a proper dodge em up. Pretty impressed you did this w/o much Unity experience under your belt.
Awesomely done game. It must've been pretty hard to design all that cleanly and stay cohesive. Music choice was a little odd to me, but at least it stands out. Really solid experience, and I didn't mind the game length since this is LD after all.
The item collecting and hand switching seemed odd. I think just the core game of delivering coffee to all employees was pretty decent on its own, especially if you could have incorporated obstacles or setbacks. The graphics are great, and the music definitely sets the right tone! Congrats on your first LD!
Generally I don't care to play twinstick shooters because they tend to always be the same. You on the other hand have actually made one where I have to think about what my move will be instead of just pointing and clicking. I think this is awesome so I commend you on the innovation. The game is nice and challenging, and more than anything I actually appreciate that you allowed full level select right on the main menu since LD reviewers have a huge queue of games to play. Fantastic work!
First off, my team has always struggled with how to integrate a tutorial w/o the players constantly skipping it. Putting it in the title screen is a great idea!
5/5 fun for me. You have really unique gameplay here and I'm glad you have the 2 variations you have to do (deliver + cleanup plates) for variety. I loved how simple the game was to pick up, though I honestly didn't think the game was possible at first. I'm glad I stuck through and learned how to balance my plates better, I just had so much satisfaction from improving my abilities.
I was most impressed by the AI first of all, I thought it was going to be 4p local play only but I'm glad we could taste the 4p chaos w/o that. Fun concept and in the right direction. Main thing I wish I had was some indicator to show if I was going to pick up the food vs getting hit by it. I was always a little paranoid to pick up even a rolling piece of food cuz I wasn't too sure if it would be velocity-based and ding me for it. The art is awesome, didn't even need animations to make it look good, and I'm sure that's a big reason you pulled people in.
Wooooo that's a tough game to win! I really liked the ambition of the idea, juggling multiple cities with multiple resources. My gameplan was to juggle the #s in a way to make sure nothing ever closed in on zero. I tried multiple times with multiple policies but couldn't get the hang of it though, and I only mildly understood why I couldn't trade to market sometimes. I don't have any suggestions that the other players haven't covered already, but that was my gameplay experience and I hope it helps.
I'm a fan of launch games and have made one for LD in the past. The game feels pretty good and I did several runs. I was trying to figure out the optimal timing for the boosts + the angle......there's definitely some depth there but I couldn't decipher it as well as the other reviewers here. Naturally w/o the time constraint you could add the features full games have like upgrades and different obstacles, but you have something solid with what you were given, nice job.
A note about throwing engineering principles out the window for jams, oh you should embrace this from minute zero :). I personally singletonize almost everything just to crank out code just a tad faster.
98 secs, great mechanic to add to the dodge em up genre. Instead of just relying on nonstop circular movement, the additional blockades let me change my route and strategically get hit by viruses so I could dump them later. It's rare to play this type of game and actually have thought to it vs just relying on survival instincts.
Any Slime Rancher inspiration here? Even the shot sounds reminded me of it, which is a good thing. Even though it was a really simple game, the rolling of the monster and having to change angle to match the mouth height was engaging enough, and in general it was super satisfying to feed the monster due to all the nice effects you had going on. Could possibly add to the game by making him more mobile but I'm not sure how annoying that'd get. Either way, nice little game, the random ending did make me chuckle!
Hah! I like how The more you have, the worse it is but the better it kinda gets...
I liked the multitasking aspect of the game. It really reminds me of the game No Heroes Here. Your game is an interesting tug o war game but I do wish there was just 1 more option in the game so that it wasn't just a straight forward bilge and shoot and who can do it better. The polish is awesome though. Music is immersive, the art is solid and you put a ton of really small details into it too like the translucent looking ocean objects.
Our game started with a very similar premise to yours before branching away. Glad to see other people pursuing more unique takes on the theme. I also like your very straight to the point title :)
Perfect interpretation of the theme. I like the AI you put into the game. Seemed to have both a chase mode and a bit of a wander mode. We had some AI in our game as well and that was a nightmare to get right. I ended up camping in the left area behind that well and just letting friends spawn for a while. Playing the game normally is super fun though, you have solid gameplay.
Good concept, the game gets pretty nerveracking level 10+. I really like the outlet as obstacles idea, simple but effective theming. Tbh I thought the music was pretty grating. I understand you did it solo though so I'm sure you couldn't spend too much time on it.
Loved it, I didn't expect that gameplay at all when I looked at the description. I liked having to make choices in a turnbased environment, it lets me weigh the decisions more and it lets you create more interesting scenarios. The backpack minigame is AWESOME. What a great combination of skill, problem solving, and judgment all rolled into one.
At first I tried to play it carefully and just gather gold and items, but eventually I said screw it and gunned it with a handful of bandages. I managed to get through it by picking the safe choice every time but barely. Haven't played that kind of variant of the genre before, very cool.
Pack it up boys, we have a winner. I actually judged it based on the cover, thinking "oh well, at least the gameplay won't be that good" and you proved me wrong. Innovative and fun. Game's too good.
Awwww was really hoping there'd be some upgrades to spend all that train cash on. Interesting start on an incremental game, could do a lot more than other games since it's got physics to it.
Pretty funny game. I liked the sprite variety and I lol'd when I saw the 4th cat's design. There was also another cat that sounded a bit like a goat(?) when petted that caught me off guard. It definitely would've been nice to see what the word count to win was because I had a similar experience as the other posters here. I like the idea but just needs 1 more layer on top to solidify it.
Super impressive amount of systems here for a solo entry. Like others have mentioned, the battle system was pretty rough so I also tried my best to run around enemies while recruiting and looting as best as I could. I actually really liked the recruiting system. There aren't many rpgs where party members are as easily gained yet expendable as this one so I thought that was a neat system. Tbh I wouldn't even know where to start if I was doing a similar project, there's just so much to it lol, even something as small as the boat probably ate up some good hours, nice job.
When I first played this game I thought "oh, yet another one of these platformers where I can't traverse backwards this LD". I'm glad you threw in that 2nd block when you did and I saw the true brilliance of this game. You did an amazing job wracking my brain in several dimensions, and the simultaneous play alone created a bunch of nice gameplay opportunities. Definitely one of the more well designed games this LD, you achieved so much polish and so many levels in such a short time.
Played it through twice hoping to get a true ending lol. I actually liked the world you created, it was pretty engaging and I looked forward to how you tackled each part of Dr McSneer since you made each one pretty different. I'm interested in what you think about Bitsy, it's the first time I've heard of it. Did it have any limitations to you or was it perfect for your scope?
Zeriver's review is spot on, the difference in points really helped shake up gameplay and force you to make decisions. I will say I thought the game was dragging on a bit until the first worm came (and I accidentally let it run too long). The pacing was much better around that time, I think you could shorten the early section a bit as players shouldn't need too much warmup time on this. I like the overall aesthetic and I've always found it funny how VLC picked one of the most recognizable objects in the world as their icon, so I always think about that when I see one on the street...
Clever take on the theme, it became immediately apparent in the 2nd level when I was dumping the blocks on the other side of the room and going "oh crap, this is starting to block my actual grabs". I agree with most of these comments about tedium in the puzzle design, tightening that up will improve it a lot. Overall I think you did quite a bit for a compo game and it was fun to explore and mess with the physics to get solutions.
Pretty unique game. It also took me a while to figure out what to do at first but afterwards it snowballed fast. The presentation is great and it looks like you were already prepping to have this go on mobile since it fits very well on those screens. You put a great coat of paint on everything and it looks professional. I thought you did a great job of balancing and creating tension with the chicks spawning so fast and impressed with the systems you accomplished.
Pretty challenging game, I guess we're all used to matching same shapes and colors but not matching opposite shapes together so my brain worked a little slow on this one. I think the levels collapsed at a pretty good pace and kept you on your toes. The art and colors were solid and unified and gave off Super Hexagon vibes. Put in some blaring EDM and you could match that even more lol
You guys tortured me so much trying to beat this game! Everytime I got a lucky streak of bear attacks I had to put in like 2 cities as punishment. This game is fun and stomping out the numbers is really satisfying. The cards feel a bit skinner box-ish as I kept playing trying to see if I could get a good run and finish the game but I actually never did despite putting in a good amount of time. Gratz on making such a deep game in this time. I really liked the change of pace, this game is pretty unique compared to others in this jam and an excellent take on the theme. Perhaps I'll revisit this near the end of voting when I have more time and finally knock it out~
This is the 2nd Bitsy game I've come across, and it also happens to be a surreal adventure game. Maybe there's some kind of connection with Bitsy users and artsy games lol. Sucks that you only had a couple hours this time around, I really like the games you make every jam. Either way, despite just using simple graphics, the color gave the world a unified look that doesn't look too bad. Also want to give props on learning a new framework and executing on it quickly. I'm sure Bitsy isn't terribly hard but that stuff adds up.
Have you played Space Run Galaxy? This really reminds me of that but taking a management/building concept route instead. I think the others have already covered the obvious in terms of complexity and such, so I'm going to highlight some game design things instead. I think the concept is pretty awesome, to juggle a number of spaceship systems while making sure all your resources are being used properly. I liked that you forced the player to make some tougher calls on which system to build, and if you expanded on more modules that'd be even better. Perhaps making a game that had small supply chain economies could be interesting in this scenario. Great concept overall, polish and expansion will make the game match the idea!
I was ready to come here and post that there's no way you beat your own game but after a few more tries I really got the hang of rodeoing the neutral blobs around and finally got it for a super satisfying win. The game is really fun, the odd controls made it interesting trying to corral things and trap them correctly. I felt like the game was basically over if half the screen was taken up, so I had to made sure my opening was close to perfect. You really succeeded in making the pink enemy a super scary threat. Even getting mildly close to it made me really nervous and I had to make sure there were plenty of other guys for him to aggro first. All in all a really good way to take the theme to the max with the sense of claustrophobia + very tough difficulty level.
First off, the primary reason I kept playing and even went for some coins was cuz the music is totally awesome. I definitely disagree with what others have said about this being a derivative work. I've never seen a game in this genre that had half the elements you had. One thing I always disliked about the genre was that the solution usually is pretty easy to see. However, since you have the snake mechanic + so bombs and ESPECIALLY the teleporter, it made it really hard to parse out the answer just by glancing at it. Level 12 was the one that shined the most to me. I liked that you had to wrap yourself a few times to build a proper wall and then go from there, which fully utilized your mechanic and made it stand out from other similar games. Amazing work on the game and making it full fledged with multiple levels!
You guys have great branding, I always remember who you are once I see that logo pop up lol, especially since you're one of the very few that do it.
The screenshots and instructions were intimidating at first but I was happy I had no trouble jumping into the game. There was only a small delay in scanning the belts for the required items and then quickly finding the item in the shop if it was missing, which wasn't too bad after the first few times. Graphics, music, presentation, top notch stuff as usual. I just really wanna give a shoutout to the innovation in this game. You took a time management game and really painted over it in your own style and gameplay so it really stands out.
Interesting game focused on decision making. I really liked how you had a limited amount of resources to spend on the more damaged folks, it made me hesitate and gauge if they really needed the help. The game (mostly cuz you had 4 options) reminded me a bit of Reigns, though it didn't quite have that gameplay. I think you could bring in some ideas from that game and expand on your concept to have choices that raise 1 resource, but take away from another. Or save one group but hurt another. Really a great start to something unique.
First off, when I first loaded the game I was immediately reminded of this theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuBQJ3eeCT8. It may be a bit of a stretch but the structure and notes just reminded of it a lot, and that's a good thing :)
It's rare to see a new type of puzzle game on LD, much less a new AND fun one. I think you did a fantastic job creating something simple but with a high skill ceiling, all the elements of a great game. Even if you didn't polish it up I would've been very impressed, but you slapped a nice, juicy coat of paint on top of it anyways. I think my only criticism for the game is that I would've liked the right clicks to be able to be hit with no downtime in between so I could make faster plays like puzzle games of old. I was still impressed you even implemented left-click + right-click though so I guess I can't complain. Great job.
I did it! Man that avatar is hilarious, I kinda liked how janky it was. I enjoyed the puzzles and I'm happy you didn't hold the players hand through how the platforms worked. I liked figuring it out on my own. You put in some clever ones in the end and I could really see the potential of this concept (as long as the player somehow got a bird's eye view of the full map). Pretty creative entry, I haven't seen one like this all jam.
@agecaf @local-minimum yep that was something we were still playing with at the last minutes, which was getting a good "meta" down. I think the best way right now is indeed to do very careful clicks/nudges to get things in place, though you will need aggressive clicks to save icebergs from going offscreen - each one is precious. I had the same thought about how cool it would be if the meta was to knock animals on their sides so they wouldn't run off but it's hard to do that reliably in this version.
@pkenney oh crap I think you're right about the click raycast being set too low. I actually couldn't figure out why the clicks were off centered, especially when you click above an iceberg near the top it goes flying up lol. And you're totally right about the juice, we had some extra physics things in the works but they were so buggy we had to cut it. Thanks for the feedback and great catch on the disco ball mirroring the water :)
@Kodiqi personally I've always thought "weapon" is pretty strange, just stare at it for a while...
Wow, can't say I've ever seen a game like this (maybe I should buy Frostpunk if it's similar...) but I love the concept, it's really inspiring. The idea of continuing to build a city as a wave slowly swallows the backend. I could see a lot of potential with this if it had tech trees and further mechanics. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out why I couldn't build new buildings in the lower levels. I know that's how the game is supposed to play since I can see the build outlines but something was preventing me from building, maybe it's cuz my resolution prevented me from clearing out the side-rocks? Not sure.
The graphics could've used a bit more uniformity but I actually really liked the color scheme. It was a bit surreal and just kinda gave off a pretty intense mood, especially once the sun rose. SUPER ambitious game for a solo effort and some true potential for further work.
I did clear out the rocks but not all of them in a row. I couldn't reach some of the side ones due to resolution. It gave me the building preview where it would kinda place it but turn red.
So are you guys an actual game studio or what? If so, let us know cuz you always make some of the best stuff every LD. The game is unique and brilliant. You really have to plan out your routes and also be a sucker for punishment. It's like the Dark Souls of puzzle games lol. I LOVE how you make the players think on the fly since there's RNG that makes you take different routes and analyze the playfield during your playthrough. Even though I played for a long time I always had a sense of tension because the difficulty level was so high and you had all these moving tiles that gave you a sense of imbalance. Your games are so good and I really hope you become a full fledged studio if you aren't already one.
Tbh at first I think this would mostly be a fantastic looking game with less substance only cuz other entries like this tend to be like that. You very much surprised me however. I thought you did a great job exploring all kinds of gameplay themes with just a few mechanics. Very Braid-like in how you were exhaustive in showing the different ways you could play with the world. Of course the atmosphere and graphics were a cherry on top, but I'm glad you have a very solid game foundation here.
Have you played Tinertia? This reminded me of that, but a more floaty, explorey version of it. I was actually pleasantly surprised when I climbed on the ceiling for the first time. Totally didn't expect that, probably because I failed on the side climb so much earlier lol. I did a decent amount of leaps of faith later in the level and it scared me every time since there's the death pit in the beginning, but luckily you placed some forgiving platforms there and I didn't need to restart the game lol. The concept is solid, I think you scared players properly in the beginning and I always had a sense of tension even if I felt like I was moving pretty fast.
There are 2 genres I'm impressed at seeing in an LD: RTS and fighting game. I think I've only seen 1 of each in the past few years... The ambition is admirable and it's unfortunate there isn't a Rating for elegant code :). I ended up where Tony was which was staring into the abyss of the hole I had made, pondering my life and soul. Hope to see the updated version soon, I'll definitely give it a shot!
You guys must've had a busy weekend to cram something like this out. I've come across a few inventory management games this LD but yours has been the best by far. The fact that you placed pretty limited time to actually move things around was pretty innovative, and gave a lot of tension in the early parts of the game. I'm glad to hear you guys are continuing work on the game, I think I speak for everyone when I say there's a ton of potential here and plenty of directions to take it, especially adding class systems or just expanding on the dungeon aspects. Great job and I expect this to place high!
Excellent presentation, I haven't seen anything like this before. I loved the different ways you expressed the game through the medium, especially the part where the couch showed almost an inventory of items popping out. I'm curious, was this a framework that you guys used or did you roll it up yourself?
Gorgeous game, your UI is amazing and all the little attentions to detail really stand out, like the little highlights at the bottom of every button. Great start to a game, certainly some more buildings/economy/supply chain would help break up the late game meta but of course you did an amazing job with what you have given the timeframe.
Holy team size! I've been there before and I know it's quite the challenge coordinating all that so props so whoever lead this. Really solid art both in-game and in the popups, and even the subtle motion in the main menu shows your attention to detail. I'm curious what you guys had planned for the full game, were the resources for just upgrading your avatar or some actual basebuilding? I imagine the former cuz managing a base with all that flying around would be pretty nasty. Good job overall, I'm sure you guys knew where to tighten up gameplay but just didn't get around to it.
Agreed, this is like the proper sequel to Rampart lol. I liked how you expanded on the idea quite a bit, the enclosure system is cool and I liked how there was a sense to progression built in w the new towers and all. Very impressive for a compo game, there's a lot of systems here, from the pirates running around to the Tetris building system itself, no clue how you pulled all of that off in the timeframe. One of the more unique games I've played all jam, you surprise me almost every LD.
Agree w psychead, I've always found the Elder Scrolls rucksack minigame and interesting, not necessarily cuz of the action itself, but because you start to develop a natural sense of value/weight just by glancing at a room, a sort of 6th sense. I like the idea of focusing a whole game on that mechanic and would love to see this taken further.
Argh I keep telling myself to put an in-game tutorial like that at the start screen and always forget til I see someone do it well! Seriously there are so many nice little touches that you did right here. The eaten enemies showing up in your stomach, the forgiving difficulty (I was deathly afraid of dying and restarting the whole thing, especially on the archer stage), and the fantastic final level where you drop your guard and go ham on everyone. I am extremely impressed with this game and I can't find too many faults. At first I thought it was a little too far away from the theme (a lot of other twinsticks this LD have had the playspace shrink), but then I realized you're doing the same by making your hurtbox grow so you did well there too. Awesome job, one of the better entries so far.
Beat the game fairly fast, easily one of my favorite games this jam. The presentation is brilliant, the graphics, the music, the transitions. I think what's most important was that you can truly play around in it like it's a sandbox. I didn't have to worry about choosing wrong, I could always revert and figure out another tumbler in the lock. I really enjoyed wrapping my brain around some of the puzzles and thought the game was super engaging. Definitely voting this one high, great job!
One of the more unique twinsticks I've seen in an LD. So far I've mostly seen games where the walls just collapse on you rather than you create one. I think it's a really clever idea, though could use some polish on execution. I just kinda shot people at point blank to create either no wall, or a tiny wall. There's nothing wrong with this but the enemies do spawn a bit too slow in this scenario. One or 2 more mechanics would go a long way here, but solid foundation regardless.
Nice work on this one, we made a similar game but with a different flavor to staying on the ice. I thought the AI was quite effective, especially when it came down to a 1v1 I was hoping to bait them by the side but he beat me in the game of chicken lol. I was really glad you had the field customization options on the main menu. I definitely played around with that a bit and had a lot of fun seeing tons of penguins blasting off from the spawn location. I haven't seen that in any LD games and it gave it a nice sandbox feel. Cool game, try out our fellow climate change iceberg game!
Amazing game, bravo! I'll be completely honest, I don't like to read too much text in games so I started skimming and just blowing through all the screens on the first playthrough. I sensed something was there though, and once I got to your final screens it definitely caught my eye and I realized I had just skipped through something profound. I replayed the game, read everything, and made all the hard choices you wanted the player to think about. Really great ideas and story here, it was very touching and makes you think about your own life. The presentation was fantastic and I loved how each card was its own scene, w color scheme and music and everything. I apologize for skimming over the first playthrough, I could've missed something great here!
I really liked how you got faster and faster as you played the game as you started to recognize patterns and realize where you could and couldn't move. My favorite puzzle game is Tetris Attack because it has a huge speed-skill ceiling and I saw hints of that concept while learning your game which is great. The level design is interesting, I wonder how you came up with that? I know I would personally have been lazy and probably just made a big square to play in, but I think you had some more ideas in terms of constraining the player. TBH I did feel like there needed to be just one more mechanic to keep up the longevity of the game but I don't know what, perhaps some kind of chaining system but that doesn't really fit here. I think you did a great job putting together something with a high skill ceiling with just a few mechanics, always the sign of a good puzzle game.
Woo I'm impressed with some of the scores people are putting up here. I feel like every time I do a good run I accidentally step onto a falling platform or get hit by a meteor and end it all. Agree w zeriver that you do a lot of little tricks to up the tension and make it feel like you could die any time, you did an excellent job with that part. Fun, tight controls and a good sense of fun game design, well done.
My first thoughts were pretty shared by others here already so I won't go into that too much. Amazing intro/gfx but could use some more mechanics in gameplay. One thing I really want to highlight is the amount of personality you put into the characters. The scared/awkward main char, the wobbly small minions, and oh god the tall minions. I don't know how you guys even came up with that animation lol. Impressive entry and it really makes other artists want to step their game up.
I think with some tweaks you could have a really intense game here, with some tightknit dodges and gunplay (barrel rolls of course). Looks like I discovered what others did which was hold a direction and get through haha. It's nice that you're still doing updates, I could see some good paths for this game to go.
There's been a few inventory/storage management games this LD, but the thing that stands out about this one that it's turnbased. I liked that it allowed for more strategy and decisions rather than just flat out reaction speed and tetris skills. I found myself stopping and thinking through a lot of options and I think that made it stand out against the other ones in the genre. Like others said, upgrades and stuff would make this super addicting. Great job on the design on this one!
I love the throwback to Commando, probably a top 10 NES game for me. I also loved the Gauntletness of the game, which I guess is also a top 10 game for me. The pace of the game was good but the lower left sections seemed to be unusually empty, not sure if it was procedurally generated and I got bad RNG. You have some talented artists on your team, I look forward to future entries from you guys!
Geez what a polished game... it looks incredible and it feels great too. Some definite Geometry Wars vibes here, you did amazing. The gameplay is really tight and reminds me of playing Stepmania doubles on keyboard lol, just mashing wasd and arrows like crazy. I like the decision making you have to make in the game as there's quite a lot of routes you can take at any time. I'll definitely follow you on future games and look forward to seeing what else you can do.
Super engaging game, one of the most I've seen this LD, I'm impressed. It reminded me of Grow where it was just a puzzle box and the unlocking of parts just kept driving me forward. A lot of games you can just play a few minutes and be like "oh okay, I get this game. Next." but your gameplay and presentation just kept surprising me. Great job on a really unique entry!
Eyecatching game, the sprites definitely got a lot of people to click in here lol. I only understood the game once I took my time and saw the void encroaching on you. I surprisingly haven't seen this implemented yet this LD so props on that. The game is definitely on the easy side but I got what you're going for regardless. Some tweaking on balance and level design (perhaps a level that makes you go left first so you get really close to the void) can really push this further.
Good take on the inventory management genre that I've seen a lot of this jam. It's been interesting to see what everyone's doing as the metagame to lay on top of the inventory system and you chose to have a decently hectic match game. I found myself mostly stocking up the smaller items and having 0 or 1 of the big items just cuz they took too much room. I didn't mind the drag and drop not being perfect, it actually gave me a sense of tension since I wasn't always sure if I could land the item on the person, especially if they were moving. I think that's a concept you could keep in further versions, having moving targets that are harder to land on. I really enjoyed the pace and challenge of the game, good job.
Amazing job on the game and working with such a large team, the level design must've been pretty nasty, especially the later levels. I do wish the earlier levels stepped it up a bit faster. I thought the levels were pretty easy and obvious, but I guess you always need proper onboarding, especially for an LD game. I really liked the variety of obstacles, you did a great job exploring all kinds of game directions with just the core mechanic.
I actually really liked the speed of the jam game, I'm pretty used to RTS speeds so I loved the frantic clicking and resource assignment. With that said, I did get into the happiness pit of doom like others have, no matter how fast I clicked since it was very dependent on food RNG. It looks like you addressed those balance issues post-jam anyways but just thought you'd like to know my experience. I think it's a seriously cool concept, the idea of a fast paced city building game. Add in some more mechanics that require decision making rather than reaction speed and you could have a really unique offering here. Incredible job for a first LD!
Wow really challenging game! It actually requires a lot of situational awareness, like a bullet hell game almost. I thought this was extremely fun and could get to 69. Even though the concept is simple I thought this was a really innovative time management game with franticness to the max. Tbh I wanted to play more but my finger started getting tired from all the clicking lol. Great job, first 5 star for Fun I've given.
Super good game, I'm so glad you added a UI mechanic to show when the bags weren't compatible cuz I certainly started to lose it when you did double combinations. I'd love to have seen your brainstorming session or design docs cuz you kept surprising me every step of the way, especially when the illicit weapons came out lol. Not only did you fit the theme perfectly but you made a truly fun and frantic game, I'm very impressed.
The look of the game is amazing, and I know you had to have come up with a lot of this cuz I can't really think of any precedence for it haha. The way you integrated the UI into the diorama world looks great, and I ESPECIALLY love that you threw your name and handle onto the grass as well (and tutorial!). I like how the battle world is in the backyard of the inn, and that you never actually leave the scene. Everything here is cohesive and again, feels like a nice little diorama. Great ideas here, very inspiring!
This is definitely one of the most eyecatching games I've seen on any LD frontpage lol. Really clever theme, dare I ask it's inspired by real life events? The gameplay is pretty straightforward so I really like the time constraints you put on the player, it forces them to make some hard optimization choices. Nice entry, I'm pretty sure you'll score well in the humor category.
History was made.
I ded too many times :o. I've seen a decent amount of this game type throughout the LD and it's always interesting to see how the authors interpret it. Your game ramped up the difficulty and mechanics pretty fast and I liked that. There wasn't too much handholding and you gave us a lot of tools and obstacles to play with early on so I'm grateful for that, especially after having so much practice with similar games. I wonder how much time you even had to code the game given all the level design you did, normally these games have several authors, with people dedicated to level design so I have to well done on that.
One issue I've seen in almost every twinstick game made for an LD is they don't know how to break up the gameplay enough. It's usually just basic circle strafe runaway tactics and that's it. This is the first one I've played where you actually had to think about your routes and how you were going to spend your time. Wave 8 was where it really kicked in and I could see where this game shined. Having to figure out which blocks to push and how, while making sure I had good shooting angles at the robots was super fun! Fantastic variation on a genre that is kinda stale imo. I can survive til wave 20 or so only cuz there's a bug where my movement gets locked and I'll run into zombies, or maybe it's not a bug and I just keep clicking off the html5 section lol. Either way, great job and awesome work for a first LD.
Super creative game that gave me a new experience. I played it at least an hour but never could beat it. I tried a lot of different strategies and items but only came close once. I like the decision making you force on the player as there's a lot of sacrifices you have to make. In fact I'd say the entire game revolves around careful sacrifices lol. The only frustrating thing for me was not being able to choose the path I took in the water, so running away from the Cthulu could really hard sometimes since I'd just run into rocks or a tentacle during the autopath. I love this concept and the dual screen usage though, I'm extremely impressed with what you made in a weekend.
I didn't mind the different controls. Tbh there are already a lot of twinstick shooters this LD so the controls changed how I played, where I had to keep my angle stationary and adjust position rather than run and gun with normal controls so you needed a different strategy. The game is definitely pretty challenging and I'm glad you put screenshots of what the later levels look like cuz I had a hard time getting there lol. Good job for a first jam, the only thing you should consider in future ones is to make it more forgiving so players can get to see everything you've done.
Funny dialogue during the cutscene "running out of space" lol. Good job on a first jam but the balance could've used some tuning since I mostly spammed w on the right edge of the screen and did fine.
Nice ideas here, I kinda wish the monsters spawned a little more frequently so make the r-clicks a tougher decision to make on the fly. I was able to plan out and maximize the reloads decently as is. I disagree w some above comments, I actually really liked the moving platforms (I didn't know r-click was a mechanic on first play), but I thought it added a lot of variance to how you moved on the platforms. Without it, you could just keep 1 patch alive and keep abusing that, but in your version you had to keep some width to the paths in order to not get blocked by a raised platform. Very nice game design touch!
Hey fellow iceberg game! I love the effect of the sinking ice, it looks amazing for 2D (we had to rely on 3D for our stuff). The game is simple but I liked how you really playtested it a lot and made the levels have tight requirements. A couple obstacles to make the problemsolving a tad more challenging would've been cool but I really like the challenge presented in the game already. Nice work!
Nice concept, I got 18 max myself. One thing I really like about this game vs other typing games is that you have a crazy amount of rare words in here so you can't rely on muscle memory. Did you intentionally find a rare word dictionary? lol is that even a thing? Another thing I really, REALLY liked about this game is that it's a short typing game. Wayyy too many typing games here take a long time to play, especially if you're a good typist, so I'll play like 5 mins and then get bored and quit. Great job standing out in a normally stale genre!!
The best part of the game is definitely the beginning where you're kinda planning your next purchase and wondering what you'll need to do to optimize the build order. Like others said, the balancing gets out of hand pretty shortly afterwards and I end up spamming the final 3 buildings because of overabundance. Concentrate on that early game feeling and how you look forward to seeing what the next building will unlock and you can make an addictive game here.
Cute game, I really liked the pace of the game. If it was less frantic it would've been a bit of a drag. The gameplay is nice and simple, though it would be nice to have more of a choice in the run. The current one is whether or not to hold onto gold, which is an interesting one, but the rest are more of a reaction game. I really did like the protagonist though. There are way too many of these RPG runners that just have a knight. Good job shaking up the status quo!
Oh wow, good to know! Yea that's exactly the kind of stuff that make the player sit and think a bit about what is optimal.
Really challenging game, you put a lot of thought into the level design. The game kinda reminded me of The Witness where you had 1 core puzzle mechanic, but you explored it in different ways, not just in the puzzle but outside of it in the puzzles where you could walk outside of the boxes. Admittedly I wasn't able to finish the game but I sure tried lol.
Unbelievable polish, you guys basically made a full game here haha. You guys have to be pros in the industry or something. I've seen several games of this genre throughout the jam, but you kept adding surprises throughout the game with some really clever ideas. This game is very inspiring and it makes me want to step up.
Super tough game at first til you play a bit and then look over the rules again. In terms of sacrifice and decision-making, there are certainly a few points where you get a little stuck and you debate between a couple paths to take and guess which one's the safest, but for the most part you try to find the path that has the most items you can collect to get through in one piece. The game is almost like Desktop Dungeons where you can just sit back and calculate for a while on how to progress and I like that, and a few more rpg mechanics could really put the player in the position of analysis paralysis (a good thing). Cool concept and I liked how you really made this as a game you would enjoy playing daily yourself.
Pretty in depth game you made. I'm really glad you included a sample screenshot of a town so that I could piggyback on that to understand how to build a good foundation. Once I got that going I was able to make a lot of progress. Getting hit by a pirate is super brutal and pretty much game over, but that's ok, I assume that's part of the design. One throwback I got from this game was Dune 1. In that game, you were constantly hounded by the emperor asking for an increasingly steep tax and I haven't seen that used all that much so that was a neat idea. I'm impressed with how many little systems you put into this game, and as a compo game on top of all that! Cool game with some neat ideas.
Hey, looks like we brainstormed some very similar ideas... hectic vehicle multitasker + running over people + obituaries, high five!
This game is super challenging, like a hardcore version of Flight Control. I tried my best to make loops simple to follow and keep track of but I can only do so much protecting the pedestrians. I will say the first time I had 2 trains collide made me lol pretty hard, there was some fantastic build up there.
I think the art, colors, and UI work together really well and present a pleasant game to jump into. Aesthetically it's just very pleasing to watch it all play out, and I'm glad you weren't too brutal with the resources so that I could play for a while w/o worrying about mass deaths tooooo much. I think this kind of gameworld lends itself to upgrades and stuff super well (like Mini Metro), and can have a lot of potential in future versions.
I really loved the presentation of this game. For a game with a lot of resources you really made it intuitive what the goal of the game was and how you were reaching it. I've always liked FTL but tbh, I thought the combat got tedious after a while so I liked how you made a streamline version of that that just focuses on decision making, sort of like Reigns. I agree with others, it was just hard to know what outcome actually happened on the rolls but it's not gamebreaking. I just trusted the #s and hoped for the best lol. Again, really great, streamlined concept that definitely made you weigh RNG vs the resources you had on hand. I think a place you could take it further is toss in some REALLY unique items like idk...something that lets you skip an encounter altogether, or halves fuel drain during travel, and then make the player decide if they want to sacrifice a ton of resources to get those bonuses. I think that'd be a nice addition that could make those sacrifices just a little harder :)
I've seen several reverse metroidvania games this LD where you have to sacrifice powers, but this is the first one I've seen that put it into a tight, coherent package. I think the puzzles are VERY well designed, I can't imagine how long those must've taken to make. One thing I liked about this game is that you didn't pull any punches. I tend to be a little wary of puzzle games on LD because I feel like the early levels are a bit boring while the devs are trying to teach the players how to play, but you had such a great, in-lore tutorial that it didn't take long to pick up, and that we could dive right into the juicy parts of the game asap. Tbh I usually tackled the puzzles by trial and erroring a little first, before figuring out the basic chains of events to clear the level. I figured that generally you want to clear trees before giving up the sword (depending on the puzzle) so I liked the feeling of getting better at your puzzles by recognizing level design patterns over time. Very impressive game design, I really hope people don't judge the book by its cover on this one because there is some real good stuff here.
That's awesome. Over the years, my group has really only done 1 puzzle game (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/how-i-met-your-great-great-grandmother, we usually rely on proc gen levels instead) and we had a very similar approach and thoughts. We tried to start with an initial "theme" to the level, but it was a bit of new territory for us as well so some levels could've been tighter/looser. We revisited it post-jam a little as well because it's just so tempting when you know there's a solid core behind the game. If you do some post-jam updates I look forward to seeing them!
I can't believe you pulled this off in a weekend. The presentation is so good and the game itself is super addicting and I wanted more. For such [relatively] few cards you mustered up a lot of strategy focused around the sacrifice mechanic. Very fun game and impressive game design.
Reallllly great entry. I'd say this takes the cake in terms of hitting the theme because although of lot of entries show sacrifice, this is a game that REALLY made me consider what to lose and what I had to gain from it. There are many tough scenarios where I had to consider what to keep alive for the longterm and if it was worth the risk of keeping certain units around. Brilliant gameplay and presentation, never expected to see a game like this. The overall theme of the game reminds me of the Ender's Game movie. I loved how the fleet works together and sacrifices everything to overcome the enemy. Even the ominous music loop helped the atmosphere and I just had to play to the end. Awesome game, if not slightly painful whenever I accidentally let a bullet slip through and rip my formation to shreds!
Very well made game, 4477 points here at best. It was a bit of Overcooked mixed with physics game with an excellent presentation. Definitely big humor points here for having such happy fruit mixed with the brutal blender action. I also think you get extra points for playing on the sacrifice theme twice. Once for the blender, but again for the pit in the middle of the screen. Those poor fruit falling in the middle cuz they weren't worth of your ingredient list. You guys even put some extra love into your ldjam page! Lots of goodness overall.
Excellently made game, really unique experience and just seems like a complete game.
I always know I'm going to get visual + audio performance whenever I play your games. The collisions against the targets was super satisfying. Very good combination of sound, light, and shatter effect to create juiciness. Personally I've come to rely on screenshakes (probably too much) and I'll have to add some of your techniques to my toolbox. Hard for me to dissect the audio process you chose, but there seemed to be some dynamic audio that got peppered in there. I know you're an artist and you want people to have their own interpretations of your games, but I'd love to hear your thought process from going from the theme to what you came up with since it does seem pretty abstract and probably above my head.
Really good take on the trolley problem, I had trouble myself finding a way to make the idea interesting and more than just trial and error decision making. I didn't think to have realtime execution elements to it to create the fun.
3 levels stood out the most to me: 1. The first level that contains 4 exit points, and you need to hit 3 levers. It is actually hard to get the last lever in time because you can't start the level out holding diagonal (for me anyways), so I had to time that initial start Mario Kart style to get all levers in time. Probably my favorite level because I felt like I had to do an optimized speedrun to complete it. 2. The level that looks like the pound sign and has the train wrap around sometimes. I was actually hoping there would be more levels like this because you could really make the player think hard on them. 3. The final level. Awesome idea and brought a smile to my face.
I think the rest of the levels can be relatively straightforward. Usually I just tried to hit all the levers in order and it would work out for me. Again, I think if you focus more on those top 3 ideas you could push level design boundaries here.
Regardless, the game is super well executed. The POV animation has no real gameplay meaning, but it is a VERY nice touch. Overall art and sound is fitting and the game just feels so solid. Great idea and great entry all around!
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Phew, took me several tries til I started developing better strategies. You nailed the theme so organically. I was playing by splitting up the group and playing carefully one by one. But when I died in some spots, the monsters would see the rest of the group as they passed by and carnage would ensue later. At some point I finally realized the genius of the empty 3-wall rooms.......that if you get spotted (which you inevitably will), one of the best things you can do outside of crazy micro, is to just park your guy in that room and let him die in peace. The 3 walls will basically seal in the monster for the rest of the group. Pure genius man.
Of course there's the other sides of sacrifice which is figure out which people need to be left behind because they're being chased but you don't want to jeopardize the group, and also if you see the stairs and don't want to risk searching for an extra life. I saw a lot of parallels in our games where you kind of have to juggle having more people for more safety, but juggling all those people against the risk of more obstacles became a delicate scale you really had to pay attention to. So you effectively had 3 sacrifice mechanics organically built into the game, without any explanation needed.
Overall I really liked the game feel. My favorite coop game of all time is Monaco, and the sneaking + the running away is a bit similar to this game, because when you run away from cops in Monaco, you also don't want to jeopardize your teammates. It's a very hectic chase where you're quickly trying to plan an escape route based on where your teammates positioning is. Of course, that game has a lot more mechanics like bushes to hide in or traps, but the same realtime chase planning is there which is awesome. One thing I did during my chases was to really pay attention to the order my tab was working in. Though @foxor is right that it's hard to know which character you'll switch to, it is possible with some planning. For example I would put a character next to the exit button so if I'm chased I can just run onto the exit, quickly tab and then push the button.
It's hard for me to think of improvements but I'll give it a shot. My first thoughts are if there can be more use of multiple people rather than acting as a lives mechanic (if you store them by the start, or the exit if you're lucky to find it early). I don't have a specific idea for that though. The other place that could be interesting if there was more than one person to rescue on each floor. Like a random chance for another person or another item. The reason would be to add a choice to continue exploring and weigh the risk against just going to next level after a rescue. Just some thoughts, the game itself is just great.
As with your previous games, your polish is truly insane. Not just at a game level but your blogposts are also all super professional and have a lot of attention to detail. Our team actually initially talked about a similar concept of bodyguard sacrifice, but we couldn't find a good way to put it all together. The way you did it is excellent, since even though the mechanic is relatively simple, the execution makes it so interesting. I found myself juggling the general positions of my guards to help with certain angles even in downtime, and the idea of a realtime angry birds is something I haven't quite seen.
In terms of polish, everything just comes together so well. The particle effects everywhere blend in super well. The guards coming back w casts was AMAZING and I wanted to keep piling them up. The helicopter completely caught me off guard and added to the chaos. I even appreciated the little megaman slide sprite when they skid. I'm not sure what else I'd add to this game other than more enemy types. Perfect game to port to mobile and I hope you do. 5 stars easy.
Pretty fancy reskin on Go. I'm glad you went with a 5x5 grid cuz it does change the feel of the game quite a bit and convinces you it's an entirely different setting. It did confuse me why the game didn't end once it hit the win condition but I played it out anyways with my friend and got to the win screen.
Really great experience and I'm now aware of Spring's existence, makes me want to try it out in a side project. Easily one of the most on theme games I've played yet. I thought you did a good job balancing out the spells and making the player think quickly about which one to use. I LOVE how the fireball killed your own units, so that spell had a built in sacrifice mechanic where you had to carefully choose the position of the fb to kill the least allies.
In addition to that, the map itself was designed in a way where you had to make decisions on which side you want to hold off at any given time. Since you used a single avatar to control rather than traditional RTS controls, you could only really save 1 side at a time so logistics and positioning became another factor to consider.
My general strategy was to (2) big groups of isolated enemies, (3) them if I had to run somewhere else, (4) if it was a super mixed group or the boss itself. (4) was a total boss killer so maybe that one should've had a lower duration effect on it. I tended to not do personal combat since the payout didn't see worth it so I didn't use (1) much, and I couldn't tell if (5)'s poison mechanic was in the game or not. I know it blew away orks but (4) took care of that scenario for me. Those ragdoll physics are excellently satisfying though...
In general if I had to summarize my thoughts, the game contains some real, organic sacrifice gameplay and the addition of the spell cost ups the ante on the formula. The game made me make a lot of quick decisions on the fly about how to spend my towns resources and it just felt great in general. Awesome work!
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The character alone is an amazing tech demo and something I haven't really seen before. Normally I shy away from qwop-ish games but the game was just so unique I kept plowing forward. I think the game can be quite punishing if you fail a level by missing a throw though. Not sure how to remedy this though I did see you had toyed with the idea of just making the character a bit faster which would help with returning to your last point.
I enjoyed the lore and especially the character, it kinda reminded me of https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DrhfmklWkAEeWCl.jpg. I am quite curious how long it took to code up that character, from the trash summoning to the jump mechanics.
@pkenney Haha thanks for the anecdotes, always good to hear what's going on in the players' heads. The prayer meter was something we made strictly to prevent the meta of just holding onto 1 car and ignoring every other one for ease of play. By having many cars, you should generate more prayers and discourage the 1-car strat. We didn't have enough time to balance this though, as the more cars you have, the more pedestrians you run over, and you'll run out of prayers anyways lol. Also, we do have WASD, I neglected to put that in the desc until now.
@phearbot lol that's a pretty accurate description. We were actually initially shooting for the famous Raiden toothpaste laser look at first, but that proved to be a hefty task. https://youtu.be/5TRkEOY3_kA?t=1846
@boltkey We aren't all together locally but it's all my friends spread across the US over the years. It is quite the challenge with NONSTOP merge conflicts and game design clashes but we keep honing ourselves each LD. And yep, (for @pandanym too) we did try to find a fine line between tight controls and loose controls to get the feeling of chaos while managing all the cars, thanks for playing!
@mza Nah, we thought that would be hectic and kinda unnecessary so he just swaps his arms as he plays, I know it's visually confusing. Thanks for playing and yea, we really wanted to make the player feel a sense of losing control as the game ramped up.
@shulololo tbh I don't remember the exact path, but according to this side of the mind map we went Sacrifice -> River of Souls -> Jesus Sim -> Jesus Take the Wheel. We were actually 1 vote away from making the River Peggle game that's on that same branch.
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@tigerj that stream was so satisfying to watch, your reactions were everything we had hoped for in our players :). Yea, our team works remotely in all the US timezones and it is exceptionally hard to coordinate. We keep pushing our size limit though and have managed to survive without total meltdown so far with the experience and processes we're building.
@hav24 haha I'm surprised how much mileage we've been getting on the wince face. For the arms it was a combination of unity LineRenderer, bezier curve calculations, and dynamic material length. There was quite a bit of work to get it to look right and respect all the sprite layers but we're very happy with the end result.
@pkenney thanks man, it's our best yet and I'm super shocked at the humor and innovation scores!
Top notch art and effects as usual. I know you had more planned but I'll review what I can.
When I first played the game, I experimented with the different moves until I realized I really only needed the sword and shield. The sword is a longer range stomp (though worse recovery) and the jump just is really risky. It would be cool if there were more uses for the other attacks, and I was thinking something like Karate Champ: https://youtu.be/RCq3AjLsrrw?t=423
I think the core game is pretty satisfying and the walk/attack animations all feel very good. I'd love to hear what ideas you had on the final version!
I am super impressed with the systems and concepts you've built. That's a lot for a jam. The different minigames must've taken a lot of work to get all working, but you managed to squeeze them all in in ADDITION to a tutorial. In general you did a really good job coming up w pretty innovative systems, yet tying all of the economy together very coherently, where making one choice affects another resource in a meaningful way, and you're trying very hard to juggle all those #s. You certainly have to make sacrifices after a quick calculation of what goal you're trying to achieve at the time, well done.
Back in the day when I played Mario 3 battle mode a lot, one of my favorite mechanics was the berzerk mode. We used to just intentionally berzerk everything and then start playing just because it made things more hectic. I loved how you added that additional mechanic to the SCB formula, it made me think a bit harder as I played. I liked the variety of enemies in general but wish they could somehow attacked me from different angles or timings. If you play it safe, you can usually tackle any scenario because of the strength of the shield. Perhaps a shield resource could add to the decision making and force the player to implement dodging or positioning to their playbook.
Needless to say, @tay-elenberg does incredible art and is one of the reasons I always check out your games. Very polished game overall, well done.
The concept is interesting, but the execution left me wanting more polish. Not only was I getting stuck in in the corner of the ledges, but even my tombstones were getting stuck there as well. Then sometimes you could dislodge the tombstones but then they would start sliding. I think a checkpoint system would help with game because it did get rather tedious replaying the same parts of the level over and over again.
I rated you higher on fitting the theme because it was an interesting take on it where you literally used your tombstone as stepping blocks. If they had weight it could make the level varied if you also had to think of a tricky way to drop a tombstone on a button or lever to activate a door or whatever.
I see some potential in your idea, but it definitely needs more fleshing out and polish.
Good use of a single resource in many different ways. I especially liked the parts where you had to place them on a wall, grab them then quickly jump cancel to get higher w/o wasting a resource. I think further exploration of those kinds of mechanics could separate the game more from the pack.
Tbh I didn't see the mice as a sacrifice as much as a resource to progress, though the parts where they just explode in blood and unlock a gate were super well done. Overall, I was surprised at how many different uses you piled onto them and was actually pleasantly shocked when the boss appeared.
This game certainly makes you think on your feet. The game is quite brutal and there's not a lot of room to maneuver. It sounds like you already know what balance changes to make though so I'll cover the rest of the game. I liked the unique artstyle, you took the Aztec traditions and mixed it into your own style. The javelins feel awesome but I was always scared when I got a melee weapon. Perhaps get it to feel more like Zelda and it'd have a better feel, or maybe if it could knock arrows away. I think the traps were one of the things that really stood out in this game, and if you could hone in on that mechanic and have more traps that worked on the enemies it could add to the game and maybe even the sacrifice theme.
I think you did a really good job giving the player a reason to keep playing in the form of introducing new ships as a progression model and then having them upgrade their current set. I think one thing you had a bit of was that ship choice was actually a decision to make, and that bigger wasn't always better. Sometimes you wanted the smaller ships to clear things out for a while, but when things got too messy you'd jump onto the turtle ship for safety. I think continuing to push that kind of game design will really make the game stand out some more for the post-jam.
Overall I think the game has a really good feel to it. The situations you end up in require a good analysis of what you should be prioritizing, because you have such a variety of enemies and obstacles. Things like where to move, what to shoot, are all basic twinstick concepts but when you add in the hijack, it adds another dimension of when to time it, and who to not shoot so that they are full hp when you jump on them. I wonder if it'd be possible to design some situation where you needed to repeatedly hijack/swap between 2 ships a lot to beat and encounter or boss, like if 1 ship had missiles and another had guns and for some reason you needed to keep both around. Could be tedious but could be a way to take the hijack idea further.
I was pleasantly surprised when I got my first upgrade, I actually didn't expect that + when the gun enemy got introduced is when everything clicked in my head as to what this game could be. Even though it was a simple twist to the formula, the sacrifice mechanic immediately fixed one of the worst things about twinsticks - the fact that you always pretty much just kite in a circle and shoot, with little variance. With this game I added in the corpses to my positioning, and changed my routes a bit to knock them into the goal while killing things. Now I do agree with @kamekai , if the corpses despawned this would solidify the decision-making even more and up the ante on positioning, but I'm ok with it as is. Another thing you could add to keep differentiating your game is to make the zone move around, so the player doesn't get too comfortable with 1 route and maybe have to think on the fly a bit. I think this game has a lot of potential and when I got that 2nd upgrade hoo boy, I felt SUPER powerful.
Oops I should rephrase that, I meant it stays in one area til you reach 30 corpses or w/e, then it teleports to another area and stays there for another 30, so that it doesn't just vacuum everything like a roomba. But yea, just a little thought I had while playing.
Super clean and cohesive package as usual! The initial impression is one of the best I've seen from a solo game, it's hard to imagine how much work it was to get the art, narration, and UI to all look so good for the player right off the bat.
At first, when I saw the first sacrifice level, I did think it was going to be very similar to other "die to keep going" types of games, like where you have unlimited clones and keep using their dead bodies to jump on and continue. I was really glad to see the arrow mechanic though! That was unexpected and added a lot of depth to an otherwise tame genre.
I feel like you always consider putting speedrun mechanics in your games because there are some clever tricks you can do to go fast in this game, like immediately grabbing an arrow as soon as you bounced off a monkey, and the fact that levels have multiple paths depending on good you think you are.
This game was an excellent evolution from your previous. I'm impressed you can keep pushing your genres forward while still applying a high level of polish to your games. Great job!
I'll share my experience as I went through the game. In all honesty I rarely like narrative games because I'm mildly impatient, and when I saw the gorgeous art I just figured it would be a pretty game with simple gameplay. I skimmed the initial dialogues but I got hooked once I actually had to do a sacrifice. At first I thought ok, that's a pretty clever mechanic, and was curious how it would continue to play out. As I kept playing, I was shocked that I reached a point where I actually felt remorse, particularly with Rikka and the lumberjack. I think it hit me when I first saw a dialogue from the blacksmith that said things got bad after I had arrived, and for some reason I felt like that was directed at me, rather than my avatar, probably because you created that file manager mechanic. The remorse continued growing after that, and when it was down to 2 people I could really feel it.
I was very impressed with game, probably will be a top 5 for me this LD. You guys had a keen sense of creating emotions in the player, not just with the dialogue but also the art. The hanging heads and somber music were genuinely effective at creating the right atmosphere and guilty feelings. Concept is top notch and I'm curious how long it took you guys to come up with it. I've seen some variations of it in previous LDs but never as well executed as this one.
Definitely a top 3 game for me so far. I think clone games are ever so slightly popular in indie puzzle games, and then having to play multiple at once are even rarer, but still a concept I've seen. The part where you TRULY shine is with your realtime elements. Instead of just putting a timer in you have organic elements like sweeping lasers that'll end you if you don't manage your clones quickly enough, and that mechanic alone just takes your game to another level. Avoiding bullets, trying to hide behind pillars, and managing the formation of your clones is all under pressure and it gives a gamefeel I don't get in too many games. If you plan to take this further and want to give it a coat of paint (kinda like Narbacular Drop -> Portal), the game kinda reminded me of The Prestige (spoiler alert). Check that out for some story inspo.
Well designed game with some REALLY tight levels. It looked like you guys did some good playtesting and tightened the timers on the levels really well. I'm not gonna lie, I got stuck at Jungle Staircase and gave up after many tries. I eventually had to just watch @mrjoshuamclean 's stream to see what the rest of the game looked like. I really enjoyed the experience regardless though. You guys didn't hold back on difficulty, had lots of parts that just felt fun, like doing midair sacrifices onto buttons and just booking it through a lot of sections. I think you guys stick to the theme very well, and very organically.
I hate you guys, I was planning to knock out at least 10 reviews tonight and this is the only game I played lol. Super addictive game that was right up my alley, I love turnbased resource games and you did a wonderful job with the design. Like any good simulation design, every resource you gain puts pressure on another system, and you keep juggling all the different sources and sinks til you get a satisfying equilibrium. It took me several tries before I had a system down to reach the mushroom generation building. Phase 2 is the road to the launchpad and that's a whole nother deal that I never was able to solve, but I got pretty far.
There are so many layers of sacrifice it's unbelievable. You sacrifice floor space, built up skill points, buildings to scrap up enough resources to build something else. I am super impressed with your team's game design abilities and have played this game more than anyone else's so far.
Really good twist on the formula! It made me think of traditional shmups with bomb clear mechanics, except now the bombs are tied to gameplay difficulty. Instead of just bombing every time you are near death, you kinda have to weigh the bomb vs losing visibility, brilliant. I think that really hits on the theme of sacrifice, and with your gameplay being as tight as it is, it really put the game high on my charts.
The gameplay and concept is solid but I wish the health to spirit change wasn't as brutal. The reason is cuz the max spirit shot is SO satisfying to use. I can see it being hard to balance though, if you drop more hp orbs just for that, then the no-spirit shot build will just get stronger unless that's tuned too. Others have already pointed out how additional enemy types could force the usage of spirit, like anything that just runs faster than you, and I'm sure you can figure out some other ideas for that.
All in all, the core is good and the basic aesthetic is coherent and consistent. The tie to the theme is there and a few more mechanics to force decision making on the player will spice this up nicely.
That's a really good question actually, I've never really thought about what waves vs continuous gives you other than breathing room in between waves and maybe more concrete progression goals. Agreed with @nekonyo on the difficulty especially revolving around the power of the 1st weapon.
As soon as I fired up the game you already got points for the presentation. Anything attempting to put an LD twist on Oregon Trail attracts me immediately. The art and sounds are extremely cohesive for a compo game so the overall first impression was way better than most compo games.
Our team has run into your problem of creative well drying up before, but instead of writer's block, we had puzzle game level design blocks so I know how tough that can be to squeeze out those final lines of inspiration. Nonetheless I thought the writing was pretty solid and I enjoyed seeing my posse meet its misfortunes in so many ways.
Someone here mentioned it being pretty reignsy. I think the first playthrough certainly feels like you don't have too much control over your caravan and it's hard to pick up on any gameplay patterns if there are there. As a thought experiment have you considered how the game would play if it was more like Reigns where you could see the results of your actions before you make them? It would certainly give more power to the players in determining their fate, but it's a big design change and you'd have to make sure there was a lot of balancing involved. You'd really have to find an interesting way to push and pull on all your resources to make the player feel like they were making big sacrifices.
That's just a suggestion on where the game could go in the future. With that said I'm just overall impressed with the breadth of the game and look forward to seeing your post-mortem of the game. I think there's such a nice core game built here that you can take it into some really cool directions.
I've rated a lot of games already but surprisingly haven't seen any "throw characters at zombies to slow them down" concepts yet. The plan did backfire a bit on me though, as the cat eating animation is slower than your pickup speed, so it was better for me to run around and lead the aliens to a pack of sleeping cats than it was to catrifice one of my own in order to pick up/drop off. Perhaps if the cat throw was a little stronger it could encourage me to toss it around a box easier to lead them down a bad path.
I actually REALLY liked your usage of a diagetic UI to show the drop off. It's a small touch but putting the UI as a part of the world instead of just an overlay is a nice touch I always appreciate. Overall, I think people already covered some of the core changes to help the future version of this game so I think you're on a good start.
I'm gonna go against the crowd here and not call it a Reigns-like :). If anything, it reminded me of https://store.steampowered.com/app/501320/The_Shrouded_Isle/ which is a murder deduction + sacrificing game that has a similar concept. I think it would be neat to find 1 more game mechanic to add onto the deduction-side of the game to push it just one step further. Overall this game was still pretty fun, and finding the killer per round was very satisfying, especially when you had 1 heart left. Unique idea and execution for this LD, good job!
Totally awesome entry, did you actually recreate all the lemmings mechanics/sprites or was there some sort of library to help out? I've always wondered how to do the pixel by pixel destruction w/o it being computationally expensive. I'm always impressed with these kinds of entries but this was the first one where I had to multitask a bit and think about how to transfer abilities from one window to the next. I agree with some other comments, I'm super impressed you did this all bug free, did you already have experience with this type of tech?
Oh man that's super awesome you worked on Worms. Yea we tried this back in LD38 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/meteor-jam and we ended up just using big tiles for the landscape since we couldn't figure that out. I'll have to give your alg a shot in a test project sometime.
Evading the veggie police while juggling my restaurant popularity was super fun! I think there's a build that's a bit too strong though, it's when you focus on carrots for an early start but then do full onion and ignore everything else. I made it to 15,400 pts before my schemes ended!
Not gonna lie I initially clicked this game cuz I love cooking games. I was happy with what the game ended up being, and it was an interesting perspective into that type of 'protagonist'. You know, the cooking kind.
Not a bad start to the game. Like others, I'm curious what you would've tried had you had the full weekend to work.
Nice twist on the formula. I loved the idea of constantly upgrading weapons and can only wish there were more upgrades and guns. I only got to fully upgrade 3 of the weapons, was it just me or did the rocket have homing on it once it was boosted? Either way, it's a decent shooter and pretty fun to rocket jump and blast away.
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I'm a simple man. I see Gas Gas Gas I upvote.
Couldn't beat your score but I actually thought there was some nice strategy to the game. I treated it as a quick memory game where as you traveled left and right you made a quick note of the items that are over there and try to remember them as Gorth gave out his requests. I think it's a super cool concept but it gets tough when the well starts drying up and you have to run pretty far or hope the rng saves you. To focus on what I think is the fun portion of the game, you could maybe have 4 paths instead, 2 each side where you can jump up or go down, and then make sure you spawn things just a tad closer to Gorth. That could emphasize the memory aspect of the game and make it frantic as you run around trying to remember which path had that giant meat collection building up.
The game itself has a good pacing to it. I really had fun especially grabbing those cows and tossing them in. I think if the throw had some distance on it that could make the delivery of the food pretty satisfying too. Overall a pretty complete experience and well done for a first jam!
I had a couple thoughts before coming to the conclusion the others did. When I first loaded up the game, I actually thought the goal was the opposite, to fill the stage with as many people as possible without having them fall in, so I was actually carefully choosing my shots each time. After I noticed the score I still was a bit careful, since the game reminded me of those redemption arcade games with the coins you have to push in to the bucket. I'm curious how you guys will end up stopping the spam meta, though something quick like limited resources should be a quick thing to try out. The game itself is very eyecatching and absolutely why I clicked the game in the first place. Excellent presentation and idea, just needs that 1 tweak to solidify it.
Can't beat wave 7 but enjoying it nonetheless. I actually disagree with a few comments on here about the pacing. I really like the "slow" shoot and how you stop to attack. In a way I kept seeing the game utilize the theme in several other ways.
- You gain distance by kiting then sacrifice your spacing to take out groups of enemies - You sacrifice health to run through groups of enemies (or tank hits) - I was trying to start waves at the top then slowing work my way down to the castle to refill, so I was sacrificing territory to allow kiting
I know these are looser interpretations but the slower pacing made me think more about my shots and where I needed to be to make them safe, as well as should I shoot forward to clear a path vs clearing the pack behind me. I thought the game overall was very solid and the rolling astra animation alone nets this a lot of stars in the graphics category. Fantastic polish for a compo game too!
Woo a fellow giant team, and looks like your first LD too? I thought the game is very coherent despite how many cooks were in the kitchen, you must've had pretty strong direction right off the bat. I really loved the concept and was surprised I've only seen 2 games involving sacrificing to zombies to slow them down. I think with a few more event types in the game to force hard decisions on the player the game could really take off.
This game lollllllll
Honestly one of my favorite LD games ever. The concept is hilarious and unique, but most of all the gameplay is solid. It's a crazy mix of Elevator Action, Ghouls & Ghosts, and uhhhhhh, some kind of baby management sim. I think 42 babies is doable but I can't quite get there, I can get 35 at best. Correct me if I'm wrong @caseyh but with some patience and some more planning I think I could achieve a ton of babies. My strat is to build up babies by just tossing them onto the floor when I get a hold of them, and only sacrifice a baby when it's as close to sac time as possible. Then when you're ready to cash in, you start tossing them like crazy and get ready for the absolute onslaught of enemies that's about to run you over. That's the hard part, and in some ways requires a bit of luck in using your doors properly as a resource and racing across town. I think I'm a bit too impatient and either accidentally chuck some extra babies prematurely into the pit, or I threw them too far from the pillars to be useful during the crazy portion. I may revisit this later this jam after I've gone through reviewing other games. Brilliant gameplay though, I loved this.
Couldn't help myself, I had to try it more!
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@caseyh Yea, or perhaps the babies can only survive on the ground for x amount of time. The strat is strong but I had a lot of fun developing it, and I still had to run through that crazy gauntlet at the end too
Actually a really unique use of the theme, especially using a car setting. You gave us basically 3 resources to juggle, cash, bullets and hp, and you had to make play by play decisions on how to handle each situation. I thought the cash+Gerald mechanic was BRILLIANT, because tossing cash to create mines was the optimal way to handle certain cars, but the difficulty in setting it up was higher since there could be other obstacles in the way (vs just gunning them down). Luckily bullets were fairly scarce so it encouraged being creative w your other resources.
TBH, I could only get a bit further than the spike strips after a few tries so I couldn't actually tell how much more content was after that. I totally feel you on not having time to balance and polish the level progression. Our game ran into the same issue, and a last minute bug prevented players from noticing there is actually distinct level progression over time, and players were wondering if the game had just stalled out.
I thought your game was excellent and had some really clever takes on the genre. I'm curious to hear what the other levels contain but alas I can't seem to get to them.
You get a huge amount of innovation points from me, though probably because I was a massive wc3 fan. When I fired up the game I got the concept immediately, and it brought a wide smile to my face. The gameplay is simple, but it was such a brilliant pov to have that no one ever considers. Loved the giant characters to make it feel like you were playing on a WC tabletop battlefield, and it made me miss things like orc burrows and all the peon quotes. One concept that might be interesting to add would be to have 3 possible locations of the enemy and you have to figure out where their base is first. Tbh I'm not sure how to make that fun since it'd be another trek if you ran into the wrong base but that's just one of the core concepts of scouting 4p maps.
ngl, the whole time I was thinking there's no sacrifice if I can just send spirit wolves out :)
Hah, thought it was gonna be a straight ethics test at first but got caught off guard with the immediate switch up in choices. Something that would be super cool for a game like this would be something like the Telltale Walking Dead results screen where you can see the what other people chose and if you were in the majority or minority.
Super ambitious game as a solo dev, the game reminded me of https://www.kongregate.com/games/gazthomas/tangerine-tycoon which has a different play area for each subsystem as well. Your game is super hectic on the first couple playthroughs but I did get a hang of it once I reread your game description. Like @swanijam said, you combined the UI of Tangerine Tycoon with a realtime resource juggling game and came up with something unique. Some more polish and tutorial should get this game up to where it should be.
Very pleasant game to experience, both in terms of graphics and music. The animations were solid especially when the sacrifice happens. I have to say the game is quite easy. Even in the double digits the levels were generally pretty obvious how to approach them, so I'd say don't be afraid to up the ante sooner for the players. Pretty good puzzler nonetheless and I'm impressed how many levels you packed into this. Did you just have 1 teammate knocking out levels the whole time?
Small note, the main menu doesn't scale well with ultra-widescreen and I couldn't see the buttons to start the game until I dropped the rez to a more normal one:
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Interesting concept, the execution was a little crazy though. The thing I liked the most was that using grappling hook reset my jump count and I could do some cool hook cancels as a result. I was ok with the controls, I think a lot of people here must've just been using dash too much like I did on my first run. It's fine otherwise. The sacrifice portion of the game looks truly awesome. You did great making the choice seem ominous like there was an evil force guiding you. I think you did well for a solo game and also trying a genre you hadn't attempted before!
I'm actually gonna rate this one pretty high on graphics. For a pretty basic UI, I really liked the squiggly animations for personality. It honestly bumped up the look and feel of the game by a couple magnitudes for me...I'll have to put that one in the toolbox myself.
At first I was wondering why I had to type employee #s when I could just click the portrait, but I understood once the plot started unraveling. PS. I was hoping the dog was behind everything :)
Absolute fantastic game! You don't hold back at ALL and you had me trying hard right off the bat, I loved that. The puzzles were all very interesting and required tight execution and less about trying to figure out what to do, kinda like Celeste's game design. Like others said, the game felt genuinely satisfying to solve because you have to plan out your routes and button timing. The presentation is the proper amount of whimsical and I never got tired of that music. I think there are many things you could do with the core mechanics and should definitely consider pursuing this further.
Suuuuuper hard game. The game is pretty satisfying to play, at least when you have a few grenades ready. The speed of the enemies is pretty insane though and you can only play so long. Please tell me how you guys came up with this idea lol
Wow, VERY polished entry for LD. You definitely nailed the feel of Furi in this, from the weapon loadouts, the bullet hell, and even the look and feel. I definitely found myself playing it safe a lot and using the gun mostly, I didn't have too much confidence in my slash and dash abilities. I actually really like the cockroach enemy you created. Pretty unique enemy and you really kinda created your own world here, nice job.
19 secs in my first run. As an idle game enthusiast I am embarrassed by my inability to play a true idle game. Forgive me.
I did play it again and held it for a while. I always know when I play a @local-minimum game I'm gonna get a special experience :)
Holy crap man, this was an awesome game. From the initial looks of it it seemed like you just threw together a bunch of random ideas, but when you play it they all work together in tight unison. It's really rare for me to stumble upon a speedbased puzzle game I like (my fave is still Tetris Attack with its high skill ceiling). I could see a LOT of depth to your game where players plan ahead different routes based on the 4 blocks that are entering their space and trying to quickly maximize the output in their head. Also like you said, I loved how there was a macro element to it. I definitely haven't played a puzzle game where I had to manage multiple resource node production vs combo points like that so it added another element of frenzy to this game. One of the most innovative games I've played in any LD, I'm glad you didn't let the loose themeing affect your decisions.
Bah I can't beat your score, so close!!! FYI I can't input my full name cuz I have a P in it lol. I'm convinced the next level strategy is to build 2 chains, 1 on each side as much as you can while juggling upgrades. It's super hard though I've come close to the top a lot and just die at the last second. I want to reiterate, this game is brilliant and you should definitely look into taking it further. If not for the graphics I'd give this a perfect 5.
Incredibly fun game! I haven't played your previous games, but when I clicked on your account I was drawn into your concept of having a continuing series in LD. I probably would've beaten this game on the first run had I not been so damn tempted with the volume upgrades...
The upgrades vs hp decisions were painstakingly hard, and this game was tuned very well to an experienced gamer. I thought the firefights were very interesting not just because of the variety of enemies, but because the arenas tended to be somewhat claustrophobic which made positioning that much more crucial.
As someone who also runs larger teams, I'm really curious how your team evolved to this point. I glanced at your older games and you only have a few people on them, so I think it's just cool to have this series grow like that. It's early on the LD voting timeline but this has been one of the most fun ones I've played.
Totally great experience, even though it was linear it didn't matter, you crafted a super engaging game that kept pulling me along. This is one of the rare games, if not the ONLY jam game that has ever made me want to keep playing based on music alone, it's that good. I'm a huge fan of To the Moon and you evoked some of the same emotions from that game (along with every other music reference you had in there lol). Super polished experience and a little reminiscent of Gravity Bone in that it just leaves you with a smile on your face about the whole thing.
Very engaging game! Took a little to figure out a good strategy but I loved how all the resources in the game were so intertwined. Even though a game like this can be pretty obtuse, I thought the 3 demon summons were really good at drawing the player forwards and making them understand the overall game w/o even a tutorial. I think this game is completely on theme as lives are truly a currency and not a tacked-on mechanic. I thought the final sprint of the game was actually pretty intense, as my suspicion was getting close to 40 and I wasn't sure how many turns left there were on the summon. I think I ended the game around day 64 but could probably do much better after the things I learned about the game. Awesome game, one of my faves this jam!
Something that stands out about this game is that it's playable w just dpad, or basically a 1-finger game if it was on mobile. I've found it hard to create compelling 1-finger experiences myself but you created a unique setup of elements here with such simple controls. I think you're right that the sound design was pretty key to completing the core loop, as just going back and forth between the coal was surprisingly satisfying. The game seems basic at first but you have to juggle speed, defense, and positioning which are all tightly wound together so as a player it's fun to think about all those aspects and what you want to concentrate on. You definitely got me to yell out when I got swarmed by 4 guys while I was chasing my train (and prevented me from getting a perfect score D:). Honestly a pretty original and fun game that inspires other ideas for me. If I were to tackle a train game I would've probably just given my character a gun but I'm thinking I should try more things like this.
dang this game ate nearly an hour of my time! The crafting is super engaging and I made everything in the game afaik. I thought the LD theme was woven into this brilliantly and haven't seen that kind of interpretation yet. Using age as an ingredient itself was very interesting and it was fun to think of a shopkeeper that constantly juggles their age to craft what he needs. The ingredients/recipes were designed very well as there was a strong push/pull on every resource, and as a player I loved mastering the recipes in my head and knowing exactly how to do what. I couldn't seem to get an ending after day 15 or so so that's a bummer, but overall this was a fantastic entry and one of the longest I've played.
The king is back!
You always know how to craft very tight systems that work together in unison, and this game is no different. I thought all the stats were pretty compelling so the choices were pretty difficult to make, which imo is the sign of great systems. The most engaging part of the game for me was the stats and just building them up. For a roguelike, I think it's actually pretty rare to make the player want to truly explore the map and not just gun towards the stairs. I think classic RLs were good at that but for some reason a lot of modern ones make me not want to do it. You give the player a lot of incentive to explore so kudos to that and kudos to another excellent game.
Fun and hectic game, you really recreated the feeling of the old Cruis'n USA games with the little touches you added. I liked that there was a bit of strategy in knowing when you brake on the hard corners to maximize your blood meter, but ultimately the game was forgiving enough you didn't need to do anything crazy like that. I do think the concept has a lot more untapped potential given the world you built, would be curious to see what else you can come up with.
@local-minimum yea it can get tricky trying to make room for a good throw in the later levels. Though the body can be an obstacle, we found out it can also be used as a way to control the treasure positioning by throwing looters right into yourself when you're in the center of the arena.
@corbak yup, a linerenderer with some fancy bezier+vector math behind it. Funnily enough, we had a similar concept in our previous game, but this one was done with a different programmer and different code.
@balance686 good idea on the cursor, I actually found that symptom myself. And yea, I think the core tongue code broke like 6 separate times cuz there were so many hands in the code lol
@bradur hah yep! The final waves are daunting at first but that is my goto strat for finishing it. Some people like to camp 1 treasure, others like to always toss enemies at themself to control treasure positioning. We were happy a few win strategies could develop from the gameplay.
@duke yea I think the game will run at 144fps and the velocity calculations for the tongue were off so it would have that slow moving tongue for your setup. Unfortunately I only caught this in the final hour of LD so the best I could do was throw up a disclaimer. Appreciate the writeup despite all the hiccups!
@papaver yea that was a design decision we made early on - to make the mimic move slowly so that they couldn't cheese certain aspects of the game. I had no idea you could move faster pushing yourself w the enemy though lol, that's genius!
@gil4 yea at one point I was trying to make a more official team site like @moski does but I haven't put the time into it yet. Basically my goal has been to bring as many people I know and meet into gamedev so projects have been a big hodgepodge of experimentation and testing out different teams. If I ever settle with a more stable project I'll start posting about it but yea it's mostly short term and small scale stuff.
@coleslaughter you know strangely enough, I built a windows version as soon as I came across that fps bug, but it somehow worked even worse! I could barely even move the mimic. Definitely something I'll put on the checklist in the future and I appreciate you going out of your way trying different browsers. One emergent gameplay we stumbled upon was tossing enemies either into each other, or against yourself to drop the treasure more in the center. I know it's pretty unobvious but we thought that was cool and left that in as a more advanced tactic.
Another ambitious game from you! It's really inspiring and tempts me to do something like this, though we tried a city sim ~10 LDs ago with questionable results. Curious what your dream sim game would be if you actually had the time to make a full one.
Really cool presentation of the game. It's subtle but I like the slight camera angle tweaks you do to stand out a bit from others. The screenshot for the game actually drew me in because of this. The gameplay is solid though the one thing I really love to see in god games is the city truly flourishing with life. I'm sure you could achieve that affect with only a few tweaks but it crossed my mind. I think there's a lot of breadth to the game so I'm impressed with how much you were able to squeeze in in the timeframe, nice job.
Arggggggg I played this for half an hour but couldn't figure out how to beat the boss after getting all the orbs! I thought the game had a huge variety of things to do which is awesome for an LD metroidvania. Usually it can get pretty tedious between sections but yours was great. I definitely spent the most time on the right section, and the game in general was pretty hard, but I didn't mind the constant deaths. The game absolutely created tension as I was staring at my lifebar most of the time in fear of spending too much. Nice level design and fun game overall.
Very cool concept, I loved how you actually tied not just currency to life, but also currency to the moral choices you had to make at the end of each level, definitely the first game this LD I've seen to do something like this. Your team seems very skilled to pull something like this off in a jam, there was just so much thought put into the creation of this world, did you kind of already have it built in your mind beforehand? Even the gameplay was solid. Right in the 2nd world you put in some challenging bounce pad positions and you kept me on my toes the whole time. Excellent entry!
wow, very clever game! I've played lots of similar games (at first glance) on flash and mobile, so I thought it'd be standard fare, but you added 2 things. 1) manual movement, which made the skill floor/ceiling a lot higher since you could make crazier jumps based on what you were going for, and 2) more importantly the consume gold option is GENIUS. It completely changes the decision-making in this genre and makes each jump pretty thoughtful as you're weighing your life bar vs positioning+where you're gonna fall. Overall, I loved the simplicity of the game yet you were able to create so much depth with some small tweaks. Excellent game design and excellent execution!
Geez what a solid game. Dunno what you did to get my autoclicker to not work but gj lol
Dang, got stuck on level 16 but everything before that was super satisfying to figure out. Dunno what you did but the levels were just really engrossing and I just kept playing level after level. The puzzle design is super tight and I liked that I could see only 3 animals on the itch.io page. Tbh if I saw more animals I would've been overwhelmed and might not have kept going cuz the puzzles would just get so complex lol. This is an incredibly solid entry which wracked my brain a few times. I still remember the hamster game you guys did before, you guys are pretty good about trying new things and ideas.
Incredible game, easily a 5 on innovation. There were so many things that went well with the design it's unbelievable:
a. Deciding between typing full words or typing short ones for best speed (debating typing vs platforming skills)
b. Deciding which letters/words to type out to create the best platforming sequence for you
c. The juggling between typing and platforming, at one point I was doing stuff like jumping up a vertical line while typing it rather than using wall jump, and also trying to play 1 hand while typing minimally with the other hand.
soooooooo much emergent gameplay from this, though I eventually asked a 2nd player to just play coop with me and we had a blast trying to coordinate and guess each other's intentions. The only ding I have to give is the connection to the theme seems like a stretch. Make no mistake though, this is one of my highest rated games for me and one I'll be sharing a lot!
I was a little skeptical at first after seeing the initial pace of the game, but it didn't take me long to understand what a few of the people above have said, the combat was actually very satisfying. The heavy attack had weight to it, the opponents splattered in a satisfying way, and the whole limb system was suuuuper impressive to me. And that was just the core gameplay! I liked how you went for the whole inventory and upgrade system and I would love to see what you can do w a full version of this game.
This is actually the first game I played this LD that used the Sonic rings mechanic, I expected more because it came up a few times in our brainstorm sesh, but oh well! This game is super solid, you put a good amount of effort into making the core game feel fun and you definitely nailed it. Just shooting the enemies is very satisfying and the trees add to the experience a lot even though it's such a simple addition. I'm also impressed with the graphics because this game stands out so much. It's a shame you couldn't get it done in time, it's very well made and a big improvement in polish from your last LD.
This is why I love LD. This game is played from such a unique perspective, it's brilliant. Like others, I loved the movie playing in the background. Out of curiosity, if this was made in Unity, how did you do that?
Every part of the art is awesome. I was drew in from the logo at first, but every part really did impress me. The gameplay is shockingly interesting for being so simple. Color me impressed, I look forward to future games!
oh duh that makes sense. I've used rendertextures for camera output but totally forgot it could do video that way too, thanks.
I felt like I was playing Sabin all over again :)
Took a little to figure out the gameplay even after reading the infograph, but once I got going I enjoyed punching in the combos super fast. I realllllly loved how every piece of the game was a piece of art, including the UI. It made it feel very cohesive and intentional, it looks amazing. One thing that kept pulling me forward was in fact, the enemy types you chose and me wanting to see what was next. I loved the ambition in this game as you guys tried a ton of ideas I've never seen in LD before, fantastic job!
Really great theming and presentation in general. Even though the amount of upgrades were relatively short, there was just an innate pull to the game that made me want to build a fortress. I was a bit surprised you guys squeezed in that amount of polish in that short amount of time so kudos to you. TDs are naturally easy to scale and expand on so I look forward to future version.
Really engaging game for me, I was already pulled in by the main screenshots cuz it seemed like Her Majesty with a dungeon crawler behind it, and you made a decent hybrid of those. One thing I thought was interesting was how all the stat juggling was hard to calculate, I was tempted to bust out the calculator and figure out what an optimal path would look like, but I decided not to and just play the game straight. I'm curious what kind of scores you can achieve. I don't know if there's a very optimal strat out there but I got ~230 gold and 14 monsters down. Great concept and I'd love to see an evolved version of this.
Pretty unique experience, obviously the art caught my eye first like a lot of people, but it was a different take on endless runners that I didn't expect. I thought it was a nice twist on the formula by having your past pigs lay out the keys to success with your future pigs. I think the gameplay can drag a little when you're trying to figure out the last section of the level since you have to wait til your pig gets to the end, but that's forgivable. Maybe in the mobile version you can just have more checkpoints or something. I loved it when you had to combine tools, that was the best part of the game. Parts where you had to jump, bomb, then create a bridge all in one. Keep pushing on that mechanic and your game will be even more awesome!
Very unique game. It's a bit making a dota-invoker based TD but you have to juggle 2 things at once. Like others it took me a little bit to get a strategy down but I eventually figured out quick ways to summon and heal. After summoning and ridding myself of poison, I would bring both hands to the arrow keys so I could hit up, right, down in quick succession and just keep rolling my hands til I was full life. As silly as it sounds, I can't think of one game where I've had to roam my hands around and do combos (except maybe Stepmania lol). Really neat gameplay and I loved seeing you push traditional TD game design to a new front because TDs tend to all play the same.
ps. incredible job at giving out LD reviews!
holy crap I jumped off the big ramp and landed right on a barrel and flew away lol, awesome. Great job wrangling new people in and showing them the ropes, that's usually my role on these jams so I know how much time that can take. Fun concept and you really focused on what makes it fun which is the core driving-over-people experience lol.
Is that music from something? I swear that tune sounds so familiar but I can't pinpoint it!
hmm, I think it just reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Q1Rj9Kri8
Simple addition to the genre but I thought the game was engaging enough to finish. I actually really enjoyed the final level because it had a decent difficulty to it in terms of timing. I agree w some of the sentiment above, I think the game really shined when you were presented w a choice of confidence in getting through traps vs taking guaranteed gate damage, and also the choice of when to grab a potion or not. The game overall has a decent amount of breadth to it given that it was a solo project so well done on the jam!
I liked that there was a huge variety in the different powerups you could obtain, it was certainly a reason for me to replay a few times to see if I could get a solid run. No way I could get something like 8k score though lol, that's super impressive. I actually liked that the glide wasn't too OP, it was just a nice course correction skill and let me do some pretty sick landings. For me the difficulty was just perfect. There were so many thin platforms I really had to stay on my toes and it kept the gameplay really interesting to me. Nice game and execution!
Surprisingly challenging lunar lander game! First off I really liked the general gamefeel. The ship felt good to control, but the vfx and sfx actually made it even better, especially the effect you produce when you recharge your batteries. How did you make that effect anyways? Was there a simple way or did you actually just make 8 particle systems spew out or something? Secondly, you are an evil level designer :). The first shocker was at level 4 when I just went full speed into the 2nd set of spikes. I started playing much more carefully after than but I liked that each level had a clear theming to it. Very solid game w a lot of content for a solo project!
Tbh..............I actually liked this more than Cultist Simulator (at first) lol. I know your game is more simple but it is more focused and presents your options more intuitive than I thought CS did. Now, CS did grow on me eventually but I had to replay it quite a bit to figure out how to finally play it. I think your theming is amazing and I loved the concept of reviewing your life. For a compo game this is absolutely insane execution, I can't believe you did this alone!
Really clever character design! I usually only see things like slimes that drop portions of themselves, but I loved the coinroll along with the greedy businessmen that want a piece of you lol. You also used that mechanic as a way to create a platform and jump off of them and I thought that was genius. Definitely one of the better themed puzzle platformers I've seen and you created a nice, gentle atmosphere in general with this one.
Really interesting take on the life sim genre. I sure hope I have this same luck irl so I can live 160 years :)
The game is super engaging in the beginning and I loved seeing all the different event cards you offered. I think late game it definitely slows down since you can deal with negative cards relatively easily, but in the end you are stuck dealing with them. I suppose that models real life pretty closely so I can't complain there haha. Pretty curious how you even came up with this concept, it's very unique and pretty addicting to unfold the whole board. Well done!
Not sure if no one else is playing coop but I couldn't actually play that, it just kept skipping levels after 1 sec into the level.
Tottttally didn't expect that gameplay or theme when I opened it up, I just assumed it would be some kind of doctor sim game. Tbh, I wasn't even too sure how the metagame was supposed to play out, just a vague idea of mafia money and cops, but I just had a blast filling up my hospital and extracting as much money as possible from people. My favorite game was the syringe one, it was just satisfying to nail that sucker perfect. I also laughed pretty hard when I first missed my organ deployment, just like in the real world. Ambitious game, can't believe you pulled something like this off. I see you have a decent sized team, did you split the coders off to do different minigames?
@very-dark-lord oh wow, you did a really good job dividing up the work then. I guess that makes sense given how much general breadth there is to the game.
GREAT job on making the enemies fly around like that on impact. The best part of this game for me was to swipe and keep comboing them in the air for a bit. It really gave the sense you were a huge treant and just batting these armies around. This game is just packed and I'm impressed with how much you fit into this game. Most importantly you really hit the theme on its head. The life currency isn't just a tacked on mechanic, it's very ingrained into the lore of the treant/forest so it makes total sense.
Haha, I loved the core idea of the 2nd portion of the game. I know you didn't quite do this but it reminded me of this part in Fallout 2 where you have a choice to give someone a ton of cash early on, but near the end of the game this guy actually invests that money correctly and pays you back 10-fold. I felt like I was being punished for my decisions early on and that was pretty neat. I said this last jam and I forgot YET AGAIN but I need to steal how you animate your text in logos and such, it's such a nice effect and you're the only one that does it in LD lol.
Really fun and unique take on the theme, excellently presented and hilarious concept. This is one of the most original gameplays I've seen in an LD and it was actually really tough trying to figure out when crew member to toss out. I DID tend to throw out the orange first just because they were the most fun to watch go out. That then turned it into a really crazy timing game as the cannon swung around wildly, awesome. I think this core gameplay is super solid and a full version with more things could go really far. Almost close to a perfect entry for me!
https://pbfcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PBF186-Guntron.png
I really liked the concept of the game as it took me a bit to get the hang of what all the options were for scrap and how to juggle them. There were some instances where I really had to choose my positioning carefully if there were bonuses scattered too close to obstacles, with enemies firing all around it. The game does seem to go on for a while if you knew what you were doing, got to 2k myself. I can really see the potential of the game if it had more cooking time but the core is certainly there!
Was there any particular game you used as inspiration for this game? I've played quite a few life sims on web/mobile and was wondering if it was one of those. I liked the coat of paint you put on the genre. Usually it's just plain text but I felt like the digital interface really emphasized that the clock was ticking on your life. Since I expected standard life sim gameplay, I thought it was pretty funny how some of the choices lined up. Like going to art school....then construction worker....then back to art school lol. Only halfway did I realize it was a more freeform game than I had expected. Fun concept, I'd love to try making one of these games myself one day. Perhaps when I faff about next year.
Very engaging game that kept me interested the whole time. I thought that was unusual because normally I might start getting bored if a game is too simple but the whole world pulled me in, and also the levels were tuned just right to make it feel like you were making it to the finish line juuuust in time. The art is astonishing. I loved all the little effects you guys did, even the title screen where you faked a few shadows, and the moving square backgrounds that moved at a steep angle rather than 45 degs... just so many great touches. The music reminds me of Earthbound which is one of my faves, so you also get a lot of points there. Really polished game and it makes me want to reach those levels too.
I love memorization games and holy crap is this game hard. I think if I spent a good hour on it I may get it down, what is your high score? In general I really like the concept and am surprised I haven't seen it before. This should be an app to replace flashcards lol. I appreciate your effort in modeling and animating so many things for a compo game, this was way more content than I'm used to seeing. Another nice touch was the win screen, I did play a few times just to see what kinds of messages I got. Neat game and I wish I had the extra time to sit down and nail this score down!
Incredibly polished game, I got around level 35 before stopping because nothing could really hurt me, though I do understand the enemy #s were rising and were eventually going to consume me anyways. I can't believe you guys only have a few jams under your belt, you seem to be very seasoned as this is a hell of a game!
I've always wondered what a more complete version of Reigns would look like and this is a good peek into that world. For whatever reason I do think your presentation is more interesting in that game and I could really see where you were going w the project. Sounds like you had the engine ready to go by the end of the jam but didn't have much time to really just crank out cards and gameplay, I know how that can be. Really looking forward to updates on the game as the theming just draws me in so much.
Any chance you got some inspiration from Cult Simulator? That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this game as it looks like a real time worker placement game at a high level. If not, then that might be a cool game to draw some UI inspo from for a game like this in terms of elegance. Neat game overall and I like how much you pushed the boundaries of game design here.
Woo this game is quite difficult! Creating platforms from your life is pretty unique and the level design is very tight. I liked that the game required some pretty quick reflexes and thought to how you were going to retrieve your blood in various situations, like quickly jumping up a few platforms while sucking blood back in. I replayed the levels quite a few times trying to even get the minimum amount needed. No doubt your game is extremely blood themed, with a total commitment to the palette so I give some points on that front. Overall this seemed like an impressive game to level design for and balance so gj handling all that solo.
just like @loadsofmana, I ALSO support inanimate waifu characters (as you saw in our game). I usually blow by LD cutscenes cuz they usually don't match my sense of humor but your game hits the spot. Absolutely hilarious narrative that drew me in, and a really unique gameplay on top of that. I've never seen gameplay like this, a crossover between prophunt and a stealth game.....kinda? Great choice of UI in putting the character face right in the game. I know this probably isn't your inspo but it reminds me of UN Squadron, where the face was pretty needless but it gave it a lot of character. Grats on putting out such an original game!
Is this the same @shunao that did the CEOtaku mascot? Didn't expect to randomly across their work here!
Game was really fun and it gets super hectic around wave 5 in terms of juggling your health via shots or whip, and also juggling your town's life vs your positioning. I got to wave 6 and really loved the pacing of the game there. The art is of course, incredibly solid, and all the small touches you do on the menus like putting in the large avatar and such really add to the world. Great game and a solid package overall!
Boy do I love Doodle God. I actually haven't seen too many people try that formula, I liked your approach to visualizing the concept, it really helps me remember which combos I've tried already so I don't look like a fool (again, something Doodle God constantly does). One thing about this game is that it can a little tricky guessing what things may combine with what so it can come down to a lot of trial and error. Nice, ambient atmosphere which matches the theming very well.
Wow! What an unapologetic old school exploration game (that 33rd coin was pretty devious). I too did not actually get the owl. I think I just knocked over the statues and continued running off or something, but good to know that wasn't needed anyways. I've never been this engaged in the atmosphere of an LD game before, probably because 3D is rarely done, and even more rarely done this well. This is probably the last game I plan to rate this jam and holy crap, thanks for leaving me with such a great last impression. I spent quite a bit of time of this game and a big part of that was how professional and cohesive the level design all was. Awesome job!
Cool mechanics! Honestly even the lasers being realtime in a turnbased environment was a good enough touch but you added in the pickups on top of that, though tbh I would've love to see more things with the realtime mechanic. Speaking of lasers, that 1st laser level was TOUGH. There were lots of paths and timing variations to try so it was fun poking around all that. I think the last level may have its tuning off as you can just rush to the end taking the shortest route. If anything that laser level could've been the last level haha. Either way, it was a fun world to explore. From my perspective the AI still seemed...intelligent in the sense that I couldn't easily predict which way they were gonna go so that very much added to the complexity of coming up with strats.
I agree with @erebus , for a 5 hour game you have a fun game with a pretty unique mechanic. Since the level is procedural and the game is timed, I figured the optimal strategy was to basically draw a spiral with my path, collecting as much as I could. So with the controls (which work brilliantly btw), it was like a very delicate balancing act of keeping to the spiral, while doing minute adjustments if there happened to be bigger clusters nearby. If you do veer off the path, it can be hard to correct as you have to maintain a mental map of the spiral you've created. Actually the more I type about it the more I enjoy the game. It really is a solid core game mechanic and you've balanced it incredibly considering I had like 2 secs left to go from a good run.
Hey fellow shipwreck game!
I considered the idea of a trade-up game myself but couldn't think of a way to make it engaging. I really thought you did a good job pulling it off. The first thing I noticed was actually your intro. The team logo is professional and the LD logo just gave it even more umph. I reallly liked the art style, though as much as I love a man who can walk using only his feet, the characters were on the weaker side mostly cuz they seemed less consistent with the environment. The environment though, was awesome to look at and was one of the reasons the game just kept pulling me forward. The choice to use a black sky was incredibly bold but I loved how it turned out, it really makes things pop. Screenshots don't do this game justice, once you're in you can tell a lot of work was put into making it all work together.
The rpg feeling of this game was great even with the short amount of content. This is probably because everything gives you a MASSIVE power boost which is really satisfying, especially the skates. Some of the effects as also extremely fun to watch like the mansion at the top just blasting you with candy. I've played other halloween games including Costume Quest but I really loved your approach to this.
Wow there is a lot here... I was definitely smiling during the ending sequence cuz I knew that beautiful quote was about to come up.
First up, the upgrade mechanics. At first glance I had assumed it'd be a typical 'unlock everything' game that I see in LD from time to time. But you really made it interesting right off the bat by only having the "unlock right" happen, that was brilliant. Cuz then you place players in a 1-directional puzzle and you only focus on that. It wasn't gimmicky and I liked how woven into the gameplay it all was.
Secondly, the megaman-ness. This game is great. As a MM vet, the game is a bit on the easy side but the boss is tuned just right. Got him on first try but barely, since the blade speed is super fast. The pacing and difficulty felt to me like a modern take on the older MMs.
I've been following you for a bit now. This is your first compo game correct? If so, why'd you go solo and how was the experience? I say that cuz this LD was my first solo LD as well so it felt very different. Also, I've always wondered since you're clearly one of the best here at making awesome tunes. How long does it normally take you to crank out a theme?
ooo ok, yea I started around LD34 so I missed those ones, I'll definitely have to check out your history more. I can definitely see why Ripple Runner did well. I haven't seen a game use a reflection mechanic that well since http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g2/stars.htm
Yea solo vs group work is pretty interesting now that I've experienced it. On one hand with solo you don't have a lot of firepower so I had to cut out a lot of ideas early on cuz I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. But on the other hand I felt like I entered flow state way easier because I didn't have to discuss direction with 10 other people every hour.
I'm definitely envious of the music composing speed and it's really inspiring me to get that down too. I did some rounds of pixel dailies myself and I know that helped me whip up simple art quickly. I did love the tunes in this game, there were a bunch of recognizable motifs but still plenty that were all your own.
Thanks for all the insight, your work motivates me to keep working on my craft!
Holy crap this game is mindboggling. I do think the game makes sense but I had to read you explanation comment on that link. You totally baited me. When I fired it up I thought "oh alright, another slide block game" but you proved me wrong quick. You get a 5 for innovation for sure, because it wasn't just the gameplay you had to figure out, but also how to show players info in a nice way and I think you got it. I actually thought I bugged out the game the first time I hit a reverse level! Also, THANK YOU for putting in a level select menu. 30-some levels is a ton to design in jam period, but I was glad I could preview all the later levels I wasn't smart enough to reach.
Definitely giving this a 5 stars for theme, this is one of the most unique takes on the LD theme I've seen. On my 2nd try I basically spammed the cheapest ad campaign for a while and I managed to get that first position. I personally was afraid to attempt another campaign soon so I just left it in the bg like an idle game til I got enough for another campaign lol. Is there a better approach to playing the game? I couldn't figure that out but at least my strategy worked for me :)
Ultra-hard mode is suuuper fun, though it seems like the enemy towers also die quickly so as long as you survive the initial wave you're in the clear. From here on out I'm only going to refer to that mode because I enjoyed it more. Honestly the controls were fantastic, there were so many aspects to optimization that made the core loop very engaging.
1. You have to time your landings to land on things right as they spawn, which is very fun and very tricky when you have 4 things building at once 2. You needed to basically shoot the gems into the portal efficiently, so it was like a basketball mechanic (and then preferably land on a gem as it was spawning) 3. Do tricky stuff like grab a drill and quickly drop it off, purchase another building, then re-pick that drill up
If anything, I was very sad the boss died too fast, I was just having fun how to build an efficient workflow. The game is kinda like Kingdom: New Lands but with heavy execution requirements. I'm definitely glad you decided to release the game even though it didn't fit your personal standards, I know how that can be. But really I see plenty of good stuff here.
I'm sure you're aware of the flaws but the main ones for me was not particularly knowing the difference between the bots (though I noticed Hulk only cost 150 in the orig version so I spammed more of those hoping I was abusing something). Also without a minimap or something it's unfortunate I can't see the destruction I'm leveling upon my foe.
A more simple improvement I might add is a small platform in the middle of the y-axis that you can build on. I suppose some players might find it annoying that they're bumping into it but I think it could change up the flight routes you take and create some interesting execution.
Overall a really good vertical slice of an idea. I think you have a knack for slightly weird flight mechanics and I loved how you mixed it in with a good dash of strategy and planning to make my brain work a bit.
c l e a n graphics. I was definitely taking notes on how you designed it, awesome job. The gameplay itself reminded me a lot of Into the Breach rather than XCom because you give away hints about what the enemy is going to do so that I can plan accordingly. Like someone said, all this needs is some metasystems and RPG/deckbuilding elements and you have some real potential here.
Once I started this game there was no stopping me. I HAD to grab everything, that's how compelling the theme and presentation was to me. I think a big part of that was that it was single screen gameplay so I could see all my goals at once, but knew I could only swim so far at first. Definitely a 5/5 on theme, I haven't seen anything better this jam and probably won't.
I loved that there was a mix of objects above water for you to plan for, and then objects below the water when you had the resources to risk grabbing them. It provided a mix of strategy and luck to me. Even though the objects weren't TOO different it was still a perception thing.
Ultimately what I like most about this was that you can call it YOUR raft. Not just the custom layout everyone will inevitable differ on, but even the little touches like tossing the radio or keeping it, and simple plant placement made it feel homely which is shocking to me. That's not an easy feeling to achieve and you guys nailed it. I think the art style and color palette really contributes to this game being a nice, relaxing adventure. Amazing job as always, kudos to the entire team.
Man how am I gonna trip on an apple like that?!
Excellent game and the main reason I love reviewing games on LD. This is a really unique mechanic that I admittedly didn't fully grasp at first. I initially thought "what's up with this game? I can just mash on beg and be done with this." Once you start getting an economy going though, there's a lot of brilliance to the design. Money is a constant thing to juggle, higher priority than even HP. I loved having to play risk reward calculations constantly but at the same time being able to make smart decisions (which my game also experiments with). Maybe I'm just foolish but it took me a long time to realize I should flip 2-3 coins depending on how many I need split up, and then make my decision based on H vs T values. Once I realized that I started making a decent amount of progress.
One thing I like about the game is that there are distinct phases to the game. I think that's something all good game should have to keep the player on their feet. You have the begging phase in the beginning where you're just trying to minimize damage, the economy phase, and then building quest items while maintaining your cash flow. It's all very well done. What's even more unique about this game is that you can easily go BACK to a previous phase, even all the way back to a beggar if improperly planned. Again, this helps shake up the player's plans and keeps things interesting.
It's hard to think of additions I'd add to the game, it all seems so well connected. How did you guys come up with the mechanics?
@herman-chau YES! I love Dicey Dungeons and you can actually see its influence in the game I submitted (via actions at the top with requirements). Honestly I liked this way more than Reigns because there are more goals and thus decisions mattered more, at the cost of complexity of course but LD people have more tolerance than most.
I've played a few spaceship building games this LD and I have you say you guys nailed the upgrade system the best. I think it's because each module is very noticeable and very different from each other, it really does feel like a proper roguelike in the sense that upgrades feel very satifying to get. As others have mentioned, the combat is on the easy side so you unfortunately never get the chance to use all the firepower you have at the end (I had 30-some modules on before I finished). Either way, similar to a fishing game it's really addicting to hunt down and get a nice catch.
The art and sound are super cohesive, you guys have a very complete and packaged presentation. It's a total shame that the main menu theme is only on that screen because it's an AMAZING theme that I think a lot of people won't stick around for. It starts off spacey, goes into an Owl City-like vibe, and then this cool, alien-like future that has exploration/hopeful tones. I left this one on repeat for a while. Another thing that caught me off guard was that you used a lot of panning in the game music. I like it but what is the reasoning behind that cuz I never would've thought to use that?
I think it goes without saying that more modules and more enemies could be added to the next version of the game. Are there any other features you had planned but couldn't fit them in? The only twist I can think of is if the trophies were somehow detrimental to you, like they take up 5 blocks or something. That would be one way to increase the difficulty over time w/o actually tuning any enemies. Cool entry and I feel like your logo needs to include that 5th guy ;)
ooooo "when the same pattern of notes repeats twice, so I pan it such that it adds this sense of dimension rather than it all being flat and centre" that's so smart. I honestly felt that but I couldn't break down why it was working for me.
@fizzpowmike1 slime slots, I'll have to look that up!
Yea I actually created a whole dialogue system where the characters would converse w each other and show their personalities but I ended up axing it cuz I was afraid there was already too much on screen. I'll have to port that to another game sometime.
@solo6383 totally, I really tried to weave skill and luck into the core gameplay. I think a full version might be more like a roguelike or boardgame where events are more randomized to give playthroughs even more replayability
@random-storykeeper I love it when people tell me they won on days 17-19 cuz I know it's super tense in that situation with tigers and storms flying everywhere but you manage to magically make it out in time. Totally understandable about missing the guide, it's not exactly a common mechanic.
@philomory that really is one of my regrets lol. I thought about doing it but it required persistence between scenes which wasn't set up yet and it was 5 am so I just crashed. Thanks for playing though and ~10 days is very fast!
@flaterectomy Totally get that. I actually read your blog post last night about consistency in art and I thought about how I could improve that next time around with some better planning. Thanks for the insight!
@fallingflatstudios That was something I wanted to pull off but wasn't sure how to not overwhelm the player. Like I wanted the events to all do different things like say, if you leave a Storm showing on a reel (in one of the 3 positions vertically) it would get zapped and be locked the next round. I leaned on the simpler side but yea I think w a longer game I could introduce those mechanics more slowly to the player. I appreciate your input!
@ketura great analysis, I've always wanted to explore deckbuilder mechanics in other genres and you actually picked up on some of my motivations. I like that you broke down the emotional impact of certain actions, that gives me a lot of insight. I wonder if I could add more reusable combos that are like the Beach Party so players feel positive progression rather than missed opportunities.
@wheffle ooo tbh I didn't think about the hover one, especially if there was a small shine or particle effect on the icon stack. I'm possibly considering it for a further release so any feedback is good!
@local-minimum the opposite arrow thing has been a problem for several other people, I didn't realize something like an undo would fix that so great suggestion. ARGH I didn't notice that 'in order' was still in the game, I meant to take it out but forgot! It was cuz I used to have actions take both scatter (any order, like have 3 wood anywhere) and in order resources. What you just said though made me think of some ways to push a 2nd version, where there are some more videogame mechanics on top of the core mechanics, similar to how Dungeons of Dredmor (and your LD game) places realtime mechanics onto a turnbased core. Thanks and it's always a pleasure to hear your feedback.
@zuf oh that's a good idea, just make the top item feel like a clickable button in the first place. Someone else had mentioned to me that a swipe interface might make it feel tactile on mobile, and that might sidestep the issue as well.
@herman-chau yea that's a good idea, giving players the feeling of progression not through power but through more control. I considered stuff like choosing a class in the beginning like a roguelike (or Dicey) where maybe one class allows 2 free spins a day, vs a class w more actions or something. I'll definitely think of this one and thanks for the feedback, I really was afraid of those last 2 actions not being attractive to players so I kept them down to requiring 3 resources only.
@madbarron yea that's a great strat and I wish I had more routes the player could take but that would've been probably too daunting if I had too many available actions. Either way, just remember if you get stranded irl to just keep the parties going!
@mao another good one! I had ideas such as a giant gorilla taking up 5 slots (so if you land on it, it represents how hard it is to run away from it), but I actually didn't think about one that just plain locked you if you hit it. That would be a terrifying entity to have on your slots
@ynneblack great feedback, I'll definitely be taking another look at how I can onboard the player w that many unfamiliar mechanics. Glad you didn't quit altogether and gave it another shot!
@pkenney loved hearing the playthroughs, especially the ups and downs of RNG lol. Agreed, I really wish I had time to have an undo so players would feel like they could play with the reels more and not have to sit there with a calculator. I actually really like the idea of a consumable. That would've been a neat, repeatable action to take that essentially stores up actions for later rounds, and cheaper than a beach party since it's just one-use. Glad to hear the game is hitting the "just one more turn" feeling, it makes me more confident I have a good foundation if I continue.
@Papaver Holy crap day 7, don't know how you guys do it. Now that you mention it, hovering over a person could also highlight how far they can move with the # of moves you have. Great feedback!
@sibi that's pretty funny actually. I'm not a huge boardgame player but I'm really fascinated by their game design. I knew there was some game that I had heard of before that was island survivor themed (which was Friday), but I mistakenly recalled Robinson Crusoe instead. I then proceeded to spend the first few hrs of the jam watching YT vids on how to play Robinson Crusoe. I derived SOME inspo from it, but I was mostly thinking "holy crap this is the most complex game I've ever seen". And yea, the game does get harder but you also have the potential to gain more max actions and reels so I was hoping for it all to balance out in the end. Thanks for the feedback!
@itsdanidre your avatar looks like the characters I have in game :)
@koemeterion totally get it. There were 2 things I had in my head. 1 was that each event would change something on the island graphic itself, like if you build a shelter, it'd appear there and give a visual reward. I was pretttty sure I wasn't going to get around to this so it didn't worry me. The other thing I had was a dialogue system where the character/slots would comment on what was going on in the actions. I actually did have that working but in playtests people seemed to mostly ignore that content so I nixed it. Appreciate the feedback!
@ayrekyy awesome! Glad people are still enjoying it to this day.
It's not often we get statbuilders on here, I'm usually pretty drawn to them. This game I found decently difficult though. I tried a few runs but couldn't quite figure out the right balance of stat growth. Not to say that was a bad thing, I was definitely engaged for a long time and loved that there seemed to be a few different paths to try out.
Whoa this game is an unsung hero. Great mechanic I haven't really seen before. The weight of the ball + the moving pit of death made the controls challenging and engaging. My personal favorite moment was ~5 from the end where it was diagonal left to right and it looked like a ladder of sorts. Honestly EVERY section kept me wanting more cuz you guys kept switching it up and testing the player's dexterity in different ways. The last section in particular had me holding my breath every run. I loved your gameplay, 5/5 Fun.
Something has to be said about the art direction too. The game is very "Orisinal-esque" http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/ which is an art style I haven't seen replicated in many games. It was very soothing but still had the sense of conflict through your gameplay. Overall an awesome game and I hope more people see this!
There seriously aren't enough parry mechanics used in genres outside of fighters. There's Cuphead at best but I think it could be explored way more. Loved seeing it here in a shmup. Normally the only thing you think in a bullet hell is where to dodge, but w this mechanic you have to take a step back to analyze the pattern, and figure out where/when a good gap is to parry and then fire back, so a totally different approach to situational awareness. Another potential mechanic is Kirby-style stealing, where you parry a laser beam and get to fire that back once, adding a whole new dimension to shooting. Good foundation for sure.
Like others I was impressed at the scale of this game until I looked at your guys' past games. Seems like you always make these heavy system games which is pretty awesome. I'm curious, what are some of your favorite games to play since you have some influence from them? I feel like something like Factorio or maybe Cities Skyline...
Good to hear some of the strategies in your posts above. I was trying to figure out some good builds to keep afloat and it's good to know that I wasn't crazy thinking I had to be optimal right off the bat. My game is a bit on the difficult side as well but I will agree with you, just make a game that you're happy playing and you'll feel good about it in the end!
Concrete Jungle is an unsung hero! It's one of the few deckbuilders on Steam that strays away from typical RPG formulas and I think there's a lot of potential in that space. Thanks for mentioning Product Line and Blueprint Tycoon, those are unfamiliar names to me. I'll definitely check out your other games sometime as well, I remember really liking Towers of Nuclear a while back.
lol I like the way you phrased the end. Yea it's like if euro-board game people were entering competitions where people typically submit Monopoly. It takes skill and teamwork to build a team game w/o anything working for a long time, meaning everyone can hold onto a shared vision of the final game even if there's nothing working.
Excellent themed game (and oddly satisfying to eat the world like that). I liked that you ramped up the difficulty pretty quickly, that was pretty key to keeping me going. Around level 11 is when it definitely started taking me a while to get past levels. I liked that each mechanic had a real world tie to what it represented (like the city taking 2 hits), it was just another good tactic for drawing me into the game's universe.
I really love incremental games and play them pretty frequently. This was a great take on a higher quality art one and I think it has some unique things here w the presentation. In the genre, your core mechanic has to look and feel good since it's practically the only action you take in the game and you really nailed the effect. It was super satisfying to click, both graphically and audibly. I did bust out an autoclicker right off the bat though, and as others have pointed out, it grew the size of the bank to an extreme amount within a minute lol.
The upgrades themselves are very satisfying. In a lot of idle games they are strictly multipliers, or if you're lucky they might spawn a new building in the view. With yours I was eager to see what guy would pop out of the van. It's a small touch but there was a connection between what you upgraded and who's on your crew so that was very cool.
There is potential for further depth here like having different crewmembers do different things, or stronger at different missions and I'm sure you have a list of planned features. There is a niche for these types of games. Games such as https://store.steampowered.com/app/1056390/Ultra_Savage/ are idle games with a heavy coat of paint on top and I think you could qualify for that market.
I'll give you guys my playthrough experience cuz I know that can be insightful. My approach was to start but running over the bottom buttons, then clicking on them and hitting space hoping it would do something. Took me a little to actually move north. From there I hit each level one by one and checking what the results were. I noticed 1+3 were the same and 2+4 were the same (unsure if procedurally generated) so I flipped on 2+4 and nothing, then 1+3 and got out. Tbh I didn't fully make the connection between the colors, I was going to analyze it as my next step but I guess I lucked out. Neat challenge was a change of pace from some of the other games this LD.
At first I was a bit worried about the game because my dinky laser wasn't all that impressive, but then I realized ramming people was pretty darn efficient so then I started to get swept into the game. It's really neat because it's kinda like Katamari or agar.io but you have to at least rotate your ship to pack protection into any holes in your shape. And of course once you get enough ships you have 20 some lasers firing at people and the game changes from an absorption game to space fighting which is awesome, kinda like an early game -> mid game -> late game shift which is a great trait to have. Tbh though I played like 5 different runs and could not get past those last ships. They are beastly, but maybe I just need to be more patient with them. I tend to duke it out more or less, or get caught in a lot of crossfire too soon.
This is a REALLY great iteration on the absorption mechanic. The lasers and shields alone show the potential of this concept but I think there's even more to explore with new ship parts. Very exciting idea and loved playing it!
Agreed with above, I think the funniest part of this game is you can say no thanks in the beginning and the game just quits on you. I absolutely laughed aloud there.
The gameplay is super engaging and has a big exploration aspect to it. The large amount of choices and events give you the just-one-more-click feel because it was just fun to see all the different ways you can hone your resource counts. I feel like it's impossible to beat it on your first try because you don't have a sense of what cards to save up for, but then you lose and gain some experiences about what kinds of goals you want to reach next time, like 4 stamina for going on the mountain. So speaking of enlightenment it's almost like each time you play you're reincarnate with some knowledge of your past attempt and can do better this time. I'm probably looking too far into that intent but since I just played your game, it just sucked me into that whole world of sacrifice and enlightenment.
Seriously the presentation and polish is incredible. Are you guys pros? You guys may like the game I made this LD. It's a bit in the same vein in terms of decision-making and being system heavy. I actually built a similar mechanic where you gained resource tokens, juggled them, and prevented them from getting to 0. However, I nixed it because it was too confusing. That makes me appreciate your game even more because you pulled off what I couldn't. Also, did you have trouble balancing this game? I can't imagine what you could do other than just play it a ton.
Out of all the "feature unlock" games I've played this LD you really stood out by offering upgrades for the enemies themselves. At first it reminded me of You Have to Burn the Rope where I was like "wait........is there really no reason for me to upgrade the enemies???" so I really liked that you gave players the option to opt out of that til the end, I found it hilarious.
The unlocks for the enemy definitely inspire other ideas for me. Something like a version of your game where the only thing you do is be forced to upgrade the enemies, so you're trying to pick the option that would least destroy you >:). Similarly I loved how played with the different tracks in music to feel like you were upgrading it. In general all your ideas were very inspiring, an easy 5/5 for innovation from me.
Surprisingly, the game was actually somewhat difficult because I was paying a lot of attention to where the energy pellets were and eating damage from the enemies, such that started getting scared when I was down to 2 hits. I will admit that was when I started paying attention to the gameplay more because I was more excited about the upgrades at the time. I think the actually fight gameplay could be retooled in another version.
Overall, I came into this game expecting a bit of the same from what I've been seeing in other games but was pleasantly surprised. I think the enemy upgrade system has serious potential and would love to see that explored in the future!
Couple things that really stand out. First is definitely the graphics. I've never implemented it myself but I've always like the 2-3 frame squiggly animation in games. Even if someone is not great at art (not in your case) it can make it pop and salvage an art style. Secondly, even though the controls are simple, I liked that there was slight thought into choosing which one was the best one. TBH I struggled with figuring out the correct mappings here and could only ever survive a few days. Most people looked gloomy, like say, the businessman with a briefcase. But eventually I found that he responds to smiles better. Now that punk kid, he's even better. Just smiles and donations all day! Very cool coat of paint over a recognition/reaction style game.
That is the least voxel-y voxel art I've ever seen. Was it achieved with just unlit shaders or something else? There's quite a bit of personality to the game with the camera angles and the baby frogs hopping all over you. I'm glad you don't penalize the player too much for falling off the level, I definitely got cocky thinking I knew what the level design was going to be, only to fall to my doom every time.
whoa I scanned the comments and I'm surprised no one got this score (unless I missed it) but I maxed out the score at 9999999 or whatever. On my 2nd attempt, I was running around clicking like a madman like usual but my finger started getting really tired so I just parked myself in a small corner pocket and twitch-mashed on my mouse. The enemies just piled up and you can go on forever until your tendons run outta juice :)
Regardless of that run though, the game was a great experience. I love when a game is consistent on all fronts. The fonts, the gfx, the music all came together so well, probably because it was done by 1 person. But the gameplay was also very cohesive too. Before I cheated the game I was really enjoying scrambling around, picking up hurt walls and either replacing them quickly, or keeping them around for quick deploys like a Jackie Chan fight or something lol. I'm shocked you guys have so few LD games under your belt, this seems like something a much more experienced team would pull off, so an amazing job to you!
The most engaging thing about this game wasn't just the atmospheric and art, I actually liked the powers the most. They weren't just "here's 50% blast radius" or something. Each color was VERY unique and had their own playstyle tied to them. I didn't mind having to stretch my finger, I thought it added a lot to the execution ceiling. It was very fun once you got all the powers, it kinda reminded me of the Torchlight mage where you're constantly jumping around casting a bunch of different spells on your toolbar. Very engaging gameplay with a terrifying 1-shot enemy.
Really neatly packaged game, I saw a lot of things here. First off, the levels were actually quite engaging. You kept me playing cuz every level showed off a new idea/mechanic and it just pulled me along. Of course, the 2nd level mechanic probably could be explored more in future levels by having different routes that took off different amounts of icing, and perhaps ones where you have to dodge icing that's timed to hit you when you don't want it. Either way, the intentions of your level design was super clear and well done.
Were you guys going for a tiltshift effect with the postprocessing? If so, that's something I've always wanted to try but a. I've never gotten it to look good and b. I'm always afraid it'll run like crap on webgl or mobile. It looks like you found a decent solution though and it really helps sell the miniature world look.
Lastly, this is one unique theme haha. Not sure how you guys came up with a muffin for main character and gameplay but it's a great idea since they are decorated from scratch after all. Very creative and the game in general was hard to put down til the end.
Definitely the definition of "start with nothing"! Like many others, I started just clicking around on the words trying to piece it all together. I started out thinking it was a Simon Says type of game, but little did I know you guys put in SO MUCH MORE to the game. It was fun parsing out the language and syntax, though I think later on when there were many NPCs and many words, I started to lose track of who I had said what to (not sure if that had mattered) and I started to really get stuck in the later areas. Regardless, the game is very bold and unique. I normally think Mastermind-inspired games are too cookie cutter but all the elements of this game came together to make me want to play and explore more. I really felt like I was learning stuff about the world along the way so that was probably it.
I haven't seen a breath mechanic used for balancing stuff, what was the original concept? irl meditation itself is the hardest game. It's like a bullet hell of thoughts sometimes...
I do admire you setting a goal and executing on it. It can be pretty hard not to feature creep so hopefully you felt like you broke your curse of overaiming :)
Holy crap this execution! I normally run gigantic teams like yourselves but I usually can't get results this cohesive. How do you guys do it? Have you all worked together a lot? I only see 1 other gamejam with this crew.
Hard to come up w feedback nobody else has. It's a great engineering game with a splash of unique art and theming to go with it. I love that it conjures up doodles everyone may have done as a kid. I died many, many times but I loved finetuning things over time and learning how everything worked together (and how much launching power they had). The thing I like about this game the most is that there are just so many solutions possible, I always love seeing that type of stuff. Awesome job!
Really unique experience but I just could not get very far. What are some of the more successful shapes to use?
16 letters w/o looking anything up
~44 letters when just typing as fast as possible, stupid PROLOGUE!
So......I actually do like playing typing games and this one isn't half bad lol. I realllly like the concept of something being revealed or something happening as you're typing something out, haven't quite seen that before. I definitely got very nervous as I went further cuz punishment is so heavy, but such is the curse of typos.
I'd love to see someone write up a monkey script to play this and see how long it takes.
woo! Got to wave 8 or so. I actually really don't like Space Invaders but this was infinitely better. You really had to be careful with your positioning. Basically any time I saw fire shot down I'd first make sure I was safe, but then also quickly access if the blocks around me will blow up and make me fall to my death. It was a constant calculation of safety and that extra layer just made the core loop so much more engaging. Fun game overall, I'm surprised that small iteration made so much impact. What's the inspiration behind space squid though? lol
Haha, nice improv there then!
Very neat concept and cohesive visuals. I know it's possible to spam tiles but I think there's still some goodness here with some tweaking. As an action game, it is a frantic game of spreading out your pieces correctly which isn't always easy (there really isn't time to choose the best piece though, you just grab one and analyze later). When a wave is about to hit, you have time to drop 2-3 pieces to guard places on the fly. Honestly w just 1 mechanic to protect against spam, I think the game is fine as is. Even without a queue to show waves, I liked that it was a VERY quick reaction/analysis/placement game, so great job on the execution!
Side note, is it mathematically possible to build a formation that permanently protects against all dangers?! I'm not clever enough to figure that out.
Honestly I'm super impressed you were able to come up w a unique core gameplay system and have it be this fun. It really shines once you get more than the rock because now you're making quick angle decisions based on what you want to use at the time, and the radius is big enough that your angle choice makes a drastic difference so I found it really engaging at all times. If mobile-port it could work as is, but if a pc adaptation you could have movement which would REALLY lift the skill ceiling cuz now you're adding your positioning into the mix. Great core system w lots of room to grow!
played a little more. oh DEAR that boss at level 4, is that even possible to beat? I just got a nonstop faceful of rock. I thought of something else while playing. Once you get 4 weapons it's very tempting to spam and I think the game loses a lot of its goodness there. Consider a combo mechanic in the future where you do bonus dmg. That may be a way for people to pick their shots more carefully cuz it's super satisfying to nail those long range, awkward angle (90 deg) shots.
I thought this game was pretty engaging actually. I didn't find it too confusing mostly because each playthrough is relatively short, so since the game takes place in essentially 2 scenes that loop over and over it was easier to keep track of everything going on. I think your writing captured the feeling of lucid dreaming pretty well, though the main thing that sucks about lucid dreaming is that once you start thinking too much about stuff it'll kick you out of the dream haha.
I'll admit I could not figure out the true ending because I thought I had tried every combo, but once I came back to the comments section I saw the walkthrough and was able to complete it. Great twist and it made everything else make sense afterwards. Excellent execution and bold to have confidence in your writing ability like that. I actually had some dialogue in my game for an iteration but I didn't think I could pull off good dialogue in time. I now have a bigger appreciation for LD games like yours.
Wow, you've done a ton of reviews and it's only day 1, love the dedication!
Funnily enough I just tried a similar LD game before arriving here, so it's interesting to see the contrasts in design. You're the first one of seen of this genre where you actually take away abilities, that's very unique. Aside from taking away vision you lock up controls differently at parts and forces the player to change up their mindset. Speaking of vision, I liked that you took away vision, but gave it back in the form of fireballs so there was always a way to pull it off. In general I like that you played w turning on and off mechanics and forcing players to use what else is in their toolbox to solve their problems. This game has a decent amount of breadth for the timeframe, so all in all great job to the team.
Oh my god this game.
oh MY GOD
This is hands down...the funniest game I've ever played on LD. If I could rate 10/5 I would. It's pretty silly right off the bat, a guy rotating rapidly around a booster. I pick up a few pieces, then maybe blow my ship up cuz of a bad config, only to spin helplessly in space all over again. I then start figuring out how to assign things properly to not blow things up. And now I'm playing it safe and not moving as fast while my guy is just JITTERING AROUND MY SPACESHIP HOOKING UP PIECES like some kind of rabid space spider picking up whatever it can to add to its web of death. It's so absurdly brilliant I can't believe it. I don't even want there to be a balance pass, just keep adding more to this.
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I am really bummed that some of these reviewers clearly hadn't played much of the game and commented anyways. I loooved the active listening portion. I tend to fly through text as well, and that was a bit of a meta-mechanic that made me pay attention to what they were saying more, as well as showing the character's growth arc which was pretty brilliant. The game honestly had some funny moments as well like the spongebob text and also the camera work when flying out the house.
I honestly didn't think too much about this game at first thinking it might be a bit of a joke humor/narrative game, but it showed unexpected heart in the 2nd half of the game. I gotta give huge kudos to the writing and boldness for executing on a game like this. The game world is engaging and more importantly, memorable.
I had many thoughts about this game and @aurel honestly covered all of them. I too played well over an hour but I did get stuck on the 5s. You definitely created not just the feeling of exploration, but of powering up over time. Every time you discovered a new node there was a chance it was a new tool to add to your arsenal and I've never really seen that before. Progression via environmental discoveries or something. And then every time you reached a new level and gained a new mechanic, that was a huge surge in power and it made you change the way you looked at the map itself. It was a super addicting game and it's a shame this was your first LD, I went to your profile hoping to see other gems!
Nice, I can tell you put a decent amount of time into tuning because you pretty much end with < 1/2 a second left per level lol. Solid execution and cohesive all around (gameplay, art, sound). I wonder if there's a way to play more with the color mechanic than just as a timer, seems like some unfulfilled potential there.
I actually liked this idea a lot. There's a few trading games I played this LD but this one took the most "skill". I liked it because it was a lot like Price is Right where you have to be decent at knowing how things are priced. I could see this working further if you had prices that were even closer to each other so it was hard to make the judgement, even better if it was multiplayer! Great job w the concept and the execution, both gameplay and art-wise.
The game was pretty addicting and it got me to go all the way and kill everything. The game is balanced quite well as others said, I basically ended the game with 3 hp left or so. I thought the game was fairly intuitive. Once I realized the lips monster had armor, you can generally deduce if future enemies had armor or not just by looking at them so well done on that front. Even though the RPG-ness of the game was just a small adjustment, I thought you hit the theme well and again, it was engaging trying to collect more think points. Also, great job on the BG, very Earthbound-like!
Who's responsible for this game? I DEMAND ANSWERS!
First off, that gif is the most enticing thing I've ever seen. This was a must play.
But actually, digging into the gameplay, it's VERY good. At first it's frustrating cuz you kinda blame the RNG for all your mishaps. I was determined to beat this game though so i pressed on. There were lots of tricks involved, and I found that the strategy was essentially to find ways to burn through your cards to get through the next section. There were tricks like hitting walls with your front and back cards, using rotations heavily where you sometimes just spin in circles, etc.
The core gameplay was mindblowing to say the least. You had to quickly map out the path in your head and keep it in your mindspace while juggling all the cards. It gets even hairier when you use backwards cards to move forward because you now have to twist the route in your head and work that way. All the while the queue is moving forward and you have to doublecheck that you didn't miss a spot.
I don't even need to say much about the humor cuz I know everyone else will. You guys went all in on the concept and I loved it. I unfortunately only got to the 5th or 6th checkpoint. The game as you probably know, doesn't restart very well lol. Which is hilarious cuz all the bodies fly everywhere, but the game eventually becomes unplayable :(. Let me know if you, the devs, could even beat this game, it's one of the hardest yet beatable games I've seen here.
I totally forgot about Roborally, brilliant way to put a spin on old mechanics.
We had the same thing happen with our Unity. WebGL was working perfectly until the final hours.....so we had to just opt for a Windows build.
lol that's hilarious. You can monkey-typewriter your way to the end of the game, I didn't even think of that. Yea I was tempted to try to beat the whole game but didn't want to attempt if it was gonna take 8 hours (which I suspect it might :P)
This game is still my favorite this LD so far.
This game just oozes style and seems to be one of your fortes. That is, creating a world+vision in your head and going ALL IN on it. I agree with others here, the game just kicked into another gear when the cart tilts and it just breaks the player's idea of limitations in their head, very brilliant mechanic.
On a side note I had to look you up since I've enjoyed your past 2 game jam games. I love that you're an industry vet that takes game jams seriously and loves the community. It's great to see that because I find that a lot of people in the industry don't make time for indie efforts like this. I'll certainly be following you and am excited to see a full release of Sacrifices Must Be Made.
Wow this game is so well done. You guys did an amazing job making all the enemies/disasters totally different with different threat curves. It's like a good bullet hell game where you have to analyze what's going on on the screen and quickly come up with a plan based on what you need to handle and when. I know people are mostly calling it a clicker game here but really it's a time management game like Diner Dash, but allows for more "skill" in the core gameplay if you can click faster. Also, was the music inspired by Megaman? The theme really sounded like a mashup of Dr Wily + Shadowman to me. Anywho I loved it, great job.
Wow, I'm super impressed with the amount of content in this game. Thank you for putting in those difficulties with less-grind. Although I spent a lot of time in this game it was nice to have an accelerated mode to get back to rating LD games.
The best part of the game is that every fish has a different personality and fight tied to it. Also, you included very rare fish into the mix too. The combination of both of those made hooking rare fish very satisfying. The spawn rate of those fish were quite low though which is understandable for a longer form game. But I did snag some kind of ultimate, max speed fish once in the ocean but fail to catch it. I went through seemingly 50 octopus but never saw it again so that was a bummer.
Overall a fun game. It's not often that there's an LD game that provides a longer experience with that much breadth so great job on that!
Edit: I think I did miss the LD theme in this one, what was your interpretation?
Neat concept and something that would certainly fit in the mobile-space, controlwise. I attacks felt pretty satisfying because of a combination of the cat animations, as well as the general whack a mole feel of the game. I thought the 1st level was actually the hardest level because of limited ammo. I liked that there was kind of a risk reward decision, where you want to take a shot as early as possible to start the ammo-regen process, but you are afraid you might miss because they're almost about to duck behind the bush. There were some tense moments at first but I eventually got the hang of it. The later levels were easy for me since I didn't need to worry about ammo.
What was your gameplan for coming up with music for this one? You had some jazzy tunes early, and the last theme seems like something that would belong in Donkey Kong Country. I thought the soundtrack was great, it was the primary reason I played all the different levels lol. Overall the concept is really engaging. There's a lot of charm to the idea of cats trying to protect a bird. I feel like there's a Looney Tunes with this concept but can't quite remember it..
ohhhh yea that sneaky/funky soundtrack you see in heist movies and such. I totally get it now. Thanks for the breakdown of inspo, I love hearing about that stuff!
Decently difficult game, but VERY satisfying when you complete them. I was actually stumped on the first ramp puzzle for a long time but I got it after a while. I actually think swapping the first balloon puzzle with that might be a better progression for the player, mostly because you're given so many tools for the ramp level that it can be overwhelming. With that said, the balloon puzzle is the best part of the game and I'm impressed with how finely tuned the game is. I really liked the overall Lemmings concept and you definitely hit the nail on the head with the theme here.
Nice theming and bold messaging. You guys didn't really hold back when it came to pointing out the hypocrisies or fallacies with the system. A few people mentioned the walking speed being an issue. While it does get tedious when you're going for all endings, I thought it was really important to have that speed for the first playthrough because it's really important to give the player negative space to think and reflect in. Good entry overall, very cohesive experience.
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I'm starting to understand your trend of exploring challenging controls :) I fear to see what kind of full, commercial game you would make...
I very much enjoyed the gameplay. One of the first things I noticed was the small pause when you hit something. That's actually not really that common an effect. It felt as good as when you eat a ghost in Pacman, which is one of the best examples of that effect that I know of.
The controls were very fun. I like it when a game shows you a possibility where you're like ok I can do that, but then you struggle to achieve your vision. In your case I mean how you can see a huge line of guys lined up, where you're practically salivating, and then you miss half of them because the angle you're landing on from the halfpipe is off. My biggest combo was 12x which was super satisfying.
Lastly, I think one of the more interesting things I noticed was that there's actually a few decision points in the game. For a simple design I didn't expect to make that many interesting decisions, but they were definitely here. I was always gauging how much I could get away with focusing on points and not defense (kinda like your previous game). I would think "ok, I can go for a couple scoring attempts before Mother will take damage" and try that. However, you can also MISS hitting that guy who's about to hit your base, so your decision-making was based on how confident you were in saving your base, so I found that to be surprisingly challenging.
I don't particularly have any constructive criticism but I think you could get some good bang for the buck with new enemies which I'm sure you're aware of. The reason I want to highlight that is because I could see that adding a LOT to decision making. You only get short glances at the enemies in this game, so if you saw some faster enemies you'd quickly have to change your route or consider going back on defense. This is definitely a really intriguing core concept and I loved that you gambled on making such difficult 3D controls. The game is way more interesting because of it.
The whole time I was playing this I was thinking "I wonder if these guys used Crusader: No Remorse" as inspo. After seeing the 1999 release date I'm almost certain of this now...
This game is amazing. One of the best implementations I've seen of the 'fish survive out of water' concept I've been seeing a lot. Mostly because there's a lot of choices to be made. Some realizations I had over time were:
- Screw single gun gunplay. Yea the baby takes more damage but the firing rate is too rough - Make sure to pick up baby while operating consoles, to save on HP even more - That final run was pretty challenging. Eventually I decided to shoot at the bugs as early as possible. And once I got to the gate I would just drop the baby to tank hits while I opened it lol. Btw that baby can tank alien hits LIKE A G
So in the end this game had very fun puzzles and level design. There was tension at all times because of the baby and short levels, but also I really liked how RNG played into the game. Some fights would go well, others I would break apart easily. That variation in gameplay made it REALLY stand out against other games like this, because it wasn't just a repeat-improve loop. There was that bit of tension as to whether the run was gonna go right or not. Great job!
This game is super fun and really intense. It has the same tenseness of Sonic underwater levels.....but even worse because things can go so wrong even when it's a simple step. I loved how I'd be grabbing a nearby astronaut but miss him, and suddenly the pressure is on to find a better way to position yourself in the route while getting that oxygen again. The gamefeel is solid as always and again, the tension is through the roof despite the game looking like it's supposed to be relaxing. A great entry, it's impossible to guess what you guys will make next.
Lvl 37. How do you have such a good control over the player's emotions? All I could think the whole time was OK, my heart just jumped right there, damn this guy. Super tight design and the right levels of juice. I'm nothing but thoroughly impressed.
I love the core gameplay. The controls are simple to understand but actually quite challenging to master even though there are many others in the genre. I think it may have just a bit more space drift than other games which adds to this feeling of skill-ceiling. I thought the enemies were pretty charming actually haha. I loved how you'd get close and they'd kinda scurry away like a slow bug. One thing that is rough about balancing this type of game is wanting to stay close to the hive at higher levels. I found it safest to hang by the hive and right click from afar since that could still kill things, so I found myself looking at the minimap more than the game itself. I think that's fine because once I was more confident, I'd go out more and more often to hunt things down.
This is absolutely the most polished game I've seen from you. I actually thought a team made this at first and then I saw it was just you. All the small effects and particles on things really added up, along with the consistent artwork!
Yea there was a last minute call to arms with some of the other CO folks so you can check out their work in my game :)
Haha that makes sense about the resolution. How does the AI work in terms of moving towards the player, if at all? I couldn't quite tell if that was in there, but certainly when they sit back it makes sniping a solid strat.
Really engaging game, it reminded me a lot of Plague Inc where you're just upgrading your subject in various ways and watching how it plays out. I think it's really fun to have these types of games cuz you can just replay and experiment around with various things. The VN portion was a pretty interesting mashup. I guess when you think of it, it's not too far off from a normal dating sim formula, you just swapped out the statbuilding portion with a tech tree of sorts. Neat twist to the formula and also a unique theme/story that's not commonly covered!
I found the game design to be really fascinating. First off the game is a 3rd person stealth game, where you're focused on hiding something from everyone else. That alone was a really different twist I haven't seen before. But you didn't stop there. There was a whole resource management portion of the game too, where you had to collect and spend resources, but since the monster follows you, you had to think a little on the best route and timing to gather resources without triggering the customers.
So basically while playing this game, I was surprised at the amount of decisions I had to make for what seemed to be a simple concept. Although the general concept/mechanic is really interesting, I did think the execution could use some work. Sometimes the gameplay really shined where the customers got close to the monster and created tension, but other times the mechanics didn't mesh well together. I'm not sure what a fix might be other than level design? Not sure. Either way it's nothing bad. I think you have a really ambitious game design here. I'm glad you went with the idea and I can see a brilliant design somewhere in all the complexity.
Impressive game as always, this is the game for people that love exploration. It was always a joy to see new areas and hear new themes. I was always really intrigued when a new quest character popped up because they had so much personality to them.
Was the purpose of the minions to make sure your friends didn't take damage? They were so fragile I'd be surprised if anyone 100%'d this game. I think it's possible but it would take a long time with very careful play. I'll revisit this game after LD rating is over and try to do a full completion, though I'm scared of losing someone at the very end lol.
Side note, probably the funniest thing I've seen this LD is the grandma just POPPING like 20 seconds into venturing out into the world. I actually thought that was part of the joke til the end ship told me I needed them...
@local-minimum I actually thought the same thing! In the final hours when we put it together I was like whoa, this is actually a fun little trainer..
@joh Yep you're right, we unfortunately didn't have time to have a proper gameover but yea, after we implemented it I thought hmm, this could actually work with a few more polish items on it.
This is a really funny concept and I hadn't seen this done in any of the other jam games despite the fact that we've probably all played something like this growing up. I like that in some way it's like a rube goldberg machine that you're constructing on the fly. There are many kinds of games that do this but not in a real-time fashion like the way you do it. The game is inherently enjoyable because of the theme, friendly graphics, and just wanting to see how big a crowd you can generate. Took a bit to get over the learning curve but I'm glad I stuck with it!
I was pretty impressed with the different levels you could squeeze out of that simple mechanic. The last 2 levels of the game really got me nodding and saying "oh yea, that's really clever". I could see where you were going with this, where you could have even more difficult trick shots while juggling different colored gems and not touching obstacles, but I'm glad you kept the jam game simple enough for people to finish and see the concepts. I didn't realize this game was a metaphor for life until I read the description just now, that's a pretty interesting twist though I didn't catch it in game. Overall I thought this game was really fun, I played it til the end after all. I thought it was challenging and gave me a chance to learn a few new mechanics I don't normally flex. Nice, creative entry!
I love how absolutely creepy the machine is, it reminded me of Sinistar but even worse. Even though the game and tutorial are a bit overwhelming at first, I liked that it required me to explore a bit to learn the ropes and get a feel for where everything is. The lack of UI certainly made me paranoid about all the systems, especially after I died the first time. I totally agree though, you really just have to make design choices and learn from them. That's a good attitude and it's the best way to get better. Ambitious game with an impressive amount of systems.
lol nefarious is an accurate word. I got stuck on level 10 as you need to play pretty perfectly and consistently to make it through there. I spent a LOT of time on your game though.
I've played a ton of short level platformers as it's a pretty popular genre for LD. I reallllly liked the twist you added though. It's like there's now 2 phases to the stage, 1 to clear it and 1 to make it out alive with the fish, and sometimes those 2 phases blur heavily. I liked how you could divide out the level so that the fish had to be transferred through the level differently than the player, it just gave you more to think about in an otherwise simple genre. Great game, you must be a hell of a platformer player because you had TIGHT timings on everything :)
One of my first thoughts when playing this game was "I'm glad he put up his source code cuz I wanna see how these shaders are done!". I wasn't aware of who you were, but after looking through some of the comments, I now see you have a website and a bunch of tutorials so that's fantastic, you have a new follower :)
The game itself is fun though can be pretty punishing. The very first run I played I actually spawned in the corner surrounded by 2 blocks, so I had no idea what was going on lol. In subsequent runs I more understood the game design because I had more normal levels. I know this game's a bit obscure but it kinda reminded me of Atlas Reactor which is xcom but w more interesting abilities and movement. The game feels REALLY good when you make smart plays like funneling enemies into an area and then AOEing them down.
Like others pointed out, the tutorial was tough for me. I was piling a lot of info into my head and couldn't keep track of it all. I only understood all the mechanics after a second pass. The flavor text is nice but it did add to the difficulty of keeping all that info in my head.
The game and atmosphere it beautiful and there's quite a bit of tension in trying to keep the player alive. It sucks when you get a level that has no blocks near you but like you said, this is a pure roguelike in that sense :)
$4590 here, this game is tough! I've seen a lot of tamagotchi games on LD but this one shakes up the formula in a much needed way. Usually they're pretty simple, but simply multiplying them added a whole new level of multitasking to the gameplay. I liked that you threw in a monster as a twist to it. Are there any other unique ones further out that I didn't reach?
This game needs more attention! This is one of the most solid core gameplays I've seen so far. It's very kinetic and feels great as you're building momentum and swinging around like a space Spiderman. The decision to make your colors change as you level up and get to later levels was brilliant, because after I had seen the first level and how it plays out, the main thing driving me forward more was how cool I could make the main character look. The game is very addicting not just because of the upgrades and testing the speed limit, but also that you feel like you're mastering the game over time. Very very good entry! 5/5 fun
10/10 title and cover art!
Great twist on the Keep the Party Going theme that's popping everywhere. Even if it's mechanically similar, the dog alone makes it stand out haha. The UI is nice, simple, and understandable. We actually use a bit of the same idea in our food truck game. The game really shines when it gets super hectic of course, and you're just running around doing driveby barks. Fun game overall!
What made you guys go with a 2D game this time? Usually you have 3D looking art.
First off, I gotta say that the story is a really nice touch. A nice, short exposition that makes this one stand out from the other beat-making games from this LD. It actually gave a bit of a haunting feeling as Energy was running down and you knew this was the last signal from humanity.
The gameplay is intriguing and it I liked that you had a somewhat unusual UI for making your beat pattern. The visuals stand out a lot and it's a bit more immersive than it normally would be. Overall I liked that there was a bit of exploration to the game in terms of not just finding the best sounds, but also playing with the different mechanics like group selecting and just rolling around.
Wow this game has a lot of content for a jam! I played all the way through and definitely enjoyed the upgrades. Around level 13 is when I started just running through everything because I had enough life by then and I didn't really need gems anymore. One thing that was painful was the backtracking you have to do on a few of the levels, but other than that it flowed well. The chicken is balanced very well and was the right amount of challenge for me. Great job!
Heh, I'm happy to see other people here are avoidant of horror games. I was hesitant to play at first but I was like nahhhh, these people made On the Fly, there's NO way there's a jumpscare in this lol.
So for my first playthrough I ran around lighting things up properly. The purple glowing doors really confused me, I figured they would open up eventually, but the further I got, the more I questioned if I was playing correctly. I didn't pick up on the light duration as an indication of the correct path to go. I thought I needed an item or upgrade to progress through there (similar to the purple doors) so I made a mental note of it and moved on. Ultimately the thing that did me in was that I thought I had seen the same hallway a few times and was going in a circle in a haunted house. Given my previous confusion in the above notes, I thought I was playing incorrectly and exited.
I read up on the comments here and once I realized there were only 4 floors, I fired it up again and finished it. This is not any bad criticism of any kind, I hope I could outline the thoughts going through my head and what may have gone through the heads of other players. The concept is very intriguing and there really isn't similar gameplay out there (I could be wrong, I do stray away from horror after all lol). The atmosphere most reminded me of the early basement scene in To The Moon. Don't want to spoil it if you haven't played it, but it has an amazing effect of revealing the contents of a basement similar to this game. Also, you get bonus points for creating a nice LD page itself. Creating a little story out of the gifs and markdown was pretty clever.
Great job on the animations, you gave the vampire a ton of personality. It's unfortunate I'm always scaring away the wampire as that walking animation is so good. I liked that there was a bit of risk/reward to your options. At first I started with garlic as it's safer in general, but then I started using the cross more because there are no pits at the top so it seemed safer. However, it DOES expose you to stakes more, so you really just have to juggle your risk that way. Pretty cool game!
This game is REALLY innovative, I love it and am still playing. In terms of a full version, I don't know if this could translate directly, but I absolutely think you have some interesting components in here that could be taken further. This game is basically a real time deckbuilder of sorts, mixed with.....merge mechanics I suppose. It's hard to find just 1 analogy for the gameplay cuz there's so much to it.
I love the concept of building up your deck WHILE you're in a battle, using a tableau of different upgrade options. Compare this to Slay the Spire where you're only upgrading your deck outside of combat. I think it's really brilliant and you get the sense of claustrophobia that a lot of merge games have when your slots are piling up and you're trying to make the best of what hand you were dealt. How far can you get in this? I can't actually get past alpha but maybe I'm missing something about the strategy.
FYI I was thoroughly confused in the beginning, mostly because the game looked strange on my widescreen monitor so I couldn't tell if it was bugged or not. The main thing I missed was that right-click is discard, and the whole game unlocked after that. So to anyone reading this comment who also has that issue, just make sure to right-click. This game is worth your time if you're looking for innovation. This game is a 6-star in terms of innovation, I think this is basically a new genre of deckbuilders, so great job!
Really great mashup here. It's both satisfying to build up your towers, and devastating when you lose them. I'm not even talking about the lemon trees, I felt like I failed each plant when they died! I found it rather easy to find a good workflow so I was able to build a strong army and sustainable economy early. Unfortunately I didn't realize there was a set amount of waves, I thought it was endless so I quit early. Regardless, the game loop was fun, especially early on when I wasn't quite sure where to place things and what to build. With more plants and enemies this could surely be a hit.
Ahh ok thanks, I will revisit this after going through all the other LD entries then!
Really wanna play this but I need some pointers. I'm picking up the sticks and drag n dropping them onto the fire but nothing seems to happen. I'm going out into the darkness to grab sticks too but my fire always dies out in a minute or so. What am I missing?
ahhh the moss first, that'll probably do it and I didn't think of that, thanks!
Was able to play after that guidance. At first I was actually a little afraid it was going to be too close to Don't Starve. Whenever I see that, the game usually tends to be a subpar version of DS. I'm glad to see the game was really focused on the fire itself and built around that. I thought it was an engaging game and felt like a "fire RPG" lol. I liked that you didn't HAVE to have the fire light your way, and that you could pick around in the darkness if needed. Also, the art was very pertinent cuz that character basically had my face in the beginning as I struggled to figure out how to play and keep that fire from dying. Ultimately I didn't finish the game but got pretty far. I kept misgauging what the fire could absorb and accidentally stuffed out my fire with the big log. Regardless, the game was fun and I played it quite a bit.
At first when I played this game, I have to admit I was a bit impatient and jumped to the last level after I thought I understood the game. I died a lot and then went back to clear the levels the proper way. When I revisited level 8 I loved it so much more. It's almost like the first 7 levels was leading up to 8, and 8 really showed the brilliance of the gameplay. The solution is real clever and you feel very smart when you clear it. Great twist and I encourage everyone to rate after they've experienced or cleared level 8 first.
The game allows quite a bit of flexibility on game design and I'm impressed with all the things you showed. The multiple character aspect is definitely the most intriguing, as other games like this don't explore that much. Good concept and execution overall!
Wowwww this game is very hard. I found that if you take basically 1 hit it was basically over since you also lost speed and vision. It actually took me a few runs before I realized you can go under the table. Once I figured that out things went a bit better and my highest score is 900.
I found the game fun because of it's difficulty. I thought the monsters were EXTREMELY scary because of how devastating a hit is. I'm not sure I agree with making the difficulty any easier. I think for jam games it's important to make sure the difficulty doesn't prevent players from seeing all the content. But since you have all your content up front, I think it's fine to just challenge the player a bit. Good entry, I really liked the vision effect as well as how the sprite changes as your flame dies down.
Ahh I didn't notice the blue indicator either. My music kept playing offbeat but I just adjusted and shot in between beats lol
The game is pretty polished and is more interesting than most aim games. It's impressive you got the mp3 loading and everything to work in the jam timeframe, have you done that in the past? Either way, solid entry and a good variation from other games using the "keep the beat alive" concept.
PS. we weren't looking to make an aim trainer but our game ended up playing as one lol, give it a shot when you can.
Gotcha, it's impressive regardless and yea it's always good to reuse libraries.
I really like memory games, the first game I ever coded was Simon back in Java lol. This game is super hard though because there's much more variety in here and a bit less memory queues you can use. Your game has great art direction and I'm surprised this is your first LD game given this level of polish. Great job!
The gameplay here is a bit underrated. The gameplay actually has a pretty good innovation in the grab mechanic. Usually shmups are all about positioning and well, shooting, but in this game you have to weave in the grab as well. So when you see a wave, you pay attention to when and where you can grab and stop shooting to pull it off. Very cool mechanic, it lets it stand out quite a bit in the genre. You also put a good amount of effort into making the waves interesting as well. Solid entry overall!
Clever theming, the concept is quickly understandable and the controls are forgiving for getting out of tough areas. The game is QUITE tough though, because you die so fast. I ended up playing extremely carefully, as if every block could a landmine. But even then it was easy to jump into the wrong spot because it was a bit of a memory game too. Would be interesting to see how this game plays if you had just a little more time to live as it could make exploring feel a lot less scary.
There's some great atmosphere in this game. I think the best part of the game was actually the beginning, leading right up the the title of the game. Presentation like that REALLY stands out, it's very rare in jam games or even real games. The game had some decent tension, not necessarily from the stamina bar, but more from the atmosphere and extremely dangerous tentacles that 1-shot you.
One thing I think could be improved is the variety in level design. I could feel the progression of challenges in the beginning. But after a while I felt like the same skillsets were being tested so the execution became rote.
Overall the game did a good job pulling me forward. A big part of that was the intro, and the rest was because of the things in between levels. They were mysterious and intriguing enough to get me wanting to find out more. I had a sense of what the game was about but I'm glad you made it more concrete at the end. I'm not much of a fan of total interpretation cliffhangers like Braid, I think that's a bit lazy so good job there and good job on the game!
LOL I like the title. Totally thought I was coming into a grand strategy game when I opened this, only to find a rolling game. When things go right, this game makes you feel like a god, like when you pass through the birds and dogs. It was fun watching the physics happen, and the game always felt fresh because you always rolled down just a little differently most of the time, so it wasn't just a rote memorization game, you had to think on the fly about placement and angle. The instruments playing on collision was an amazing effect, I'm surprised at how blended in they sound despite playing randomly. Great presentation overall!
Very solid entry. The core gameplay is simple but well executed on, not just on gamefeel but on juice as well. The upgrades are where this game really shines, and they come often enough that it's really hard to stop playing. Although I think the rapid fire is the strongest, the big laser beam was the most fun to play with. I liked that it had a long duration, so that you can do nice trick shots where you clean a line, while other ghosts charge into the side of it. A lot of depth put into a simple weapon.
Some criticism is that the essence visually looked dangerous to me, so I thought my guy was being pelted by projectiles nonstop and I had no way to stop them. I knew the HP wasn't going down but it still took me a while to realize those were beneficial, and that there was only 1 projectile monster in the game.
Overall I definitely wanted to play this game from start to end. Very addictive, and in my winning run I actually didn't have any duplicate upgrades (where 1 weapon replaced another) so it really made me wonder how strong my character could get. Awesome job, engaging game!
High score: 97!
This game made me laugh aloud immediately. It also scared the hell outta me cuz I didn't know the knife was gonna come so fast. This is literally the best reskin of the Battletoads race level I've ever seen. How much further does it go beyond my score? I wanted to try more but I was getting hypnotized by the game in my post-jam state. Overall a very well done game and the best one I played so far. Amazing job from a new team, you got a lot of 5 stars from me :)
Great writing! You have a really good sense of dialogue flow because it was very easy for me to pick a choice every since prompt, as they would be things I would say irl, even the snarky ones.
Because of the music, I was pretty sure the bonsai was going to turn into a monster or something, so I made sure to play it like Five Nights at Freddie's and be careful. I'm glad that wasn't the case, at least with the ending I got.
Overall this was a nice deviation from the other game I've been playing this LD. I was skeptical at first because I'm not much of a narrative game player, but your dialogue was relatable and it drew me into the world very quickly.
That poor turtle swimming and getting harassed by sharks is a charming concept. I didn't mind the sharks as much and I understood why they were there. They were essentially a time limit to force you to be somewhat optimal about how you gathered food. Underwater look and movement speed felt pretty accurate, and the shark certainly gave you a sense of danger and survival. I have to agree that the game could've been condensed a bit more, because after the 5th thing you grab or so you kinda have seen most of the gameplay. Fun concept though, with some more time you could've brought out those turtle personalities even more!
I love stat-raising sims. This game reminded me of Tokimeki Memorial... minus the whole dating system. You captured the stat juggling feeling well and the art style lends itself well to the bleak mood of the theme. I realllllly like your cover art too, as that facial expression captures a surprising of emotion. I'm impressed with that record of 6 days. It seems like RNG is involved so I tried my best but still could only manage 3 days after a few runs. Great job, the game really stands out from the crowd!
This game is definitely fun to just run around and hit buttons since the tartigrades can interact and jump around in weird and fun ways. There were some spots where the game design really shined, namely when you were using multiple characters. There were a lot of levels where I didn't really need multiple and it ended up being a fairly standard platformer. Nonetheless, good job exploring the concept. I can see the idea has a lot of promise and you could do plenty of variants of this in the future.
Ambitious concept! I really like ideas that play with calendar aspects. Your game reminded me of https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/taskmaster-2000 which also has that kind of mechanic. The game was a bit hard to figure out what the flow was, but it was playable regardless so I just kept moving forward.
Hehe that was something alright. Was the anglerfish meant to be used for something else? It looks really good compared to the other pieces.
Pretty much impossible to not wanna play this game from the screenshots lol.
Really fun and unique gameplay. The slight sliding of the movement both gave the game a bit more challenge, but also gave you the slight rolly feeling of an office chair as well. Collecting the biscuits was surprisingly enticing, probably cuz the art was so well done on them.
Dunno if you guys know this game but most of your enemy cast looks like they belong in https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160330/Fight_of_Animals/ haha.
The combat is interesting because unlike a twin stick shooter, you have to be very careful about your positioning vs the enemy. The addition of environment obstacles and attack-windup mechanism makes it even harder to find the right spot to be in, at least if you're trying not to take a hit.
Always a joy to play your games. It always has an innovative vision behind it and I love playing them.
I tried going in blind. On my first shot my mouth was just agape watching everything unfold lol.
Eventually I figured it out and started hopping from planet to planet though. As I understood the game more I started trying wackier shots to try to hop past planets more. Afaik that was what you were going for. The game idea definitely makes for some great screenshots, it certainly drew me in.
There are some clear issues but others have already covered them. I really liked this entry because there have been lots of orbit-loop games this jam, but this is the first one I've seen where you kinda create your own orbits. Not only that, but I haven't seen this style of game where you could also affect things midflight. Usually it's a gravity based shot, you watch it happen, then it's over. Great job bringing some new things into the mix!
Ahhh reading comments I actually didn't realize the ray beam spawned enemies. When I first looked at screenshots I thought it'd be something that moves in a circle chasing you around.
I liked the progression of the game. The shop upgrades were VERY strong so it made it feel worthwhile to keep running loops and powering up.
I really liked the grenade! Some people said it's unintuitive, and I suppose it is, but that's how the mechanics worked in Jackal (NES) which was a great game, so I was very fond of that decision.
The music really sealed in the world. It ramped up menacingly and the sounds all had a satisfying punch to them. Nice game with tight design :)
Dang, can't figure this one out! At first I thought the game was going to be impossible because of the movement and inability to look around (so can be hard to know when you're being pursued). In the leftmost encounter (turn left, then left) I noticed the pumpkin was just staring at the wall. I breathed a huge sigh of relief there because then I realized it had scripted paths so I just had to figure it out through trial and error.
I figured out how to juke it in a few areas, but I can't tell if I'm on the right path. I've gotten to the big server room and have tried lots of permutations. It's possible I don't know the actual goal (I assumed it was collect all the messages), but after a dozen+ attempts I'm stuck.
Overall it was a cool idea. I actually hate horror games, but after I figured out the AI I was much more at ease. It was a bit of a pathing puzzle game, but alas I couldn't complete it.
Cool entry, and an interesting deviation from your past projects!
Ohhhh, I did notice the door was open but I got confused because I thought I had explored it already lol, thanks for the explanation!
Dang, I thought I'd be the first person to figure out you could mash-click through it lol asdf.JPG
Regardless of that though, it's a neat timing challenge. Since it's a circular game, it's a tad harder to judge speed and distance than normal so it's a cool skillset being tested. I could get maybe to the 7th orbit naturally.
Nice work, I'm always down to play games like this :) Did you have a particular game you modeled it off of? I know there's quite a few with this sort of layout, but Almost a Hero is the one I've played the most in this format.
What I liked about your game is that it's more straight to the point than some idle RPGs. I know this is probably due to the jam time limit, but this version really focuses on raw numbers going up and quick playthroughs rather than a huge emphasis on strategies and counters. So there's more emphasis on power/progression and also the feeling of being stuck in a loop.
Tbh I expected more incremental games when I first saw the theme. There's actually been very very few so I'm glad you gave me a change of pace. Addicting game - great job on the design decisions you made!
Sidenote: I also noticed you have dark/cthulu-esque theming in a lot of your games, doesn't seem like a coincidence anymore ;)
Very clever :)
When I started out, I thought "well ok, I've seen these sorts of games before." I thought it was a nice twist the the platform was forever rotating at least, that gave a nice twist to execution where it was already a bit hard to gauge the velocity of the balls (just the nature of that kind of presentation).
What I didn't expect was the speed up, or the bulb getting brighter. I loved that the game just kinda evolves or time on all fronts including sound. You could really feel the sense of progression, almost like an incremental game.
Great job given the very short time frame, I'm impressed!
Saw your article on Gamasutra and decided to see your stuff :) I've been doing LD nonstop as for a while as well, it's not easy!
Woo this game was tough! I didn't think I could get past the first spike section but I eventually did and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I'm glad the checkpoints are fairly generous - it's the main reason I kept going because I could quickly redo the section I was it. Ultimately I got stuck a bit after that where there's a T-junction with spikes everywhere. Only looking through the comments did I see you could use the ring as a guide on which angle to take, I never thought of that.
I liked the game regardless though, as I enjoy tough games and don't mind grinding at them for a while. You must be pretty good at the game yourself to tune the game to be as such (my game is similar where it's tuned more for me). The presentation of the game is incredible, and the choice to have a basic "tutorial" was great because I felt super satisfied when I cleared the rocks. Great work!
Although the claw is slow, it really made catching the fish all that more satisfying. The first time I got a 2 in 1 I was so happy since they're so valuable.
I remember thinking "I'm not sure I can do a lot more stages of this" after the 1st round. I was pleasantly surprised to see an upgrade shop! Especially one where I could pack the waters with collectible fish. Great choice and it definitely kept me going longer.
The overall physical look & feel of the game is amazing. Very playful and alluring. Would you mind sharing tips on how to achieve the bobbing effect on the fish? I've attempted buoyancy code in the past but never made anything look that good.
Neat entry overall and a pretty unique premise. I've seen lots of space orbit style games. I doubt I'll see another fishing one :)
I avoid horror games and movies like the plague but I thought hey, it IS halloween, let's jump in! I progressively lowered the volume each time something got spookier lol, and I DEFINITELY dropped it to a minimum the first time the beast got me.
I got stuck a few loops later but I can definitely appreciate the game for what it is. I thought the eye close mechanic was very cool and I really like the "locked room mystery" setting, like the Hateful Eight. Being stuck in a loop here actually accentuated the horror theme a lot, because it makes you feel a sense of dread that there's really no escape.
The art is really great and cohesive. Hell it even looks like you took a decent amount of time making that title screen look good.
I love how you're always evolving your style and experimenting with new ideas and genres. Happy to have played this game despite my cowardice!
I hear you. It's always good to challenge your game design abilities by tackling new things and diving into unknown territory, but at the same time, it's also nice to sit back and just build something with a skillset you've already mastered. I feel like you not only have a mastery over these sorts of games, but you seem to be able to just pull new ideas out of the hat so easily lol. You must have a good brainstorming framework.
My first impression was of course, chaotic. But the fact that the game is played in a simple loop helps SO much. It gave me the sense that I'll master the controls eventually, since I don't have to worry about a shifting environment.
I actually think the key mechanic was very well done. This kind of game could get frustrating and make you wanna quit, but taking a hit is actually not that bad. Because the keys can only go so far, you think "ok I can still collect those back easy" kinda like in Sonic. There are so many games like this where you touch something and you die and have to start over, that's bad. But here you're given a chance to show off your ability to recover.
4.1 was when I really started to feel mastery over the game. I pulled off some sick jukes and weaves and all I wished was that I had a recording going. The entirety of chapter 4 was actually not that bad by then. I don't remember the actual number, but one of the stages right before the big bot was the hardest for me. It was fairly simple, I think just 3 enemies and some gates, but I simply hadn't developed the skillset for it yet.
As with most of your other games, there's a lot of tension when you have 2 or 3 keys and you have to weave through a bunch of bots. For me, this is the best part - nonstop rising and falling tension. Of course, this only applies because I'm a player that enjoys these sorts of games. I can see other people feeling like they're stuck in a loop of loss.
Overall this is one of my favorite ones of yours, maybe top 2. The reason is actually because of the tight loop. It really puts the focus on the core gameplay. You make a lot of split second decisions based on you position/momentum vs the enemies and keys. It was interesting to feel my inputs develop over time where I was making so many micro-corrections by the end of the game. Fantastic work.
You gotta tell me how you came up with this idea, it's brilliant and the first true 5 star innovation I can give!
I've always enjoyed sniper deduction games. I actually have quite a bit of hours into https://store.steampowered.com/app/303590/Hidden_in_Plain_Sight/
I've always wanted a single player version of that, but I couldn't figure out a way for the AI to be interesting. You bypassed that altogether by having the invader have unique properties vs a unique deduction system. You managed to create a rare, single player sniper deduction game which I didn't think was possible.
The game is super fun with lots of emergent gameplay. I had fun tinkering with code blocks, though admittedly I played it safe lots of times with simple leakers and letting it run. I didn't mind that because I found it fun and challenging to try to spot the invaders manually to some degree. I did peek at the video you provided which I'm grateful for. You showed a lot of concepts I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
One of the few LD47 games I plan to try more in the future. I'll be browsing your older games in hopes it's just a much a gem as this one :)
haha awesome @ale! That's not a commonly known game so I'm happy to have found another player :)
I'm generally not someone attracted to text/story adventures but I'm glad I stuck with it. The ending was !> chilling and very Black Mirror-like.
You did a good job with the pacing - keeping the playing in the dark and revealing what was needed. The gameplay felt like a wild goose chase dealing with incompetent people, kinda like a bad customer service call haha.
When I got to the main gameplay screen, I did get the impression I was going to have more of a power % puzzle to play with to move on. That wasn't the case. I suspect you wanted to do more of that but ran out of time, just a guess.
Cool game regardless, welcome to the world of solo LDs :P What made you opt out of a team this time?
The music in this game really carried it for me. Super catchy and I didn't mind hearing it over and over. Although like others said, it goes away after the first loop which is sad lol. What did you make it in? It kinda sounds like Beepbox but it's done so well it seems like it might be another tool.
I hear you on the lack of time issue. Some of the levels are a bit repetitive but I understand you could've done more with some more time. Overall I thought the concept was pretty clever and there's an air of mystery to the game as you try to figure out what the heck is wrong with your owner.
I thought this jam was gonna lead to more ho-hum ideas, but everyone is proving me wrong. You are especially one of those. Unbelievable how you had such a fresh idea with such simple gameplay.
My best score was 42, it took me a bit to figure out a strategy. My first impression was oh god this is hectic, trying to juggle all the colors and angles. Once you get used to it though, everything slows down in your brain and makes sense. I started to line up my rotations better and handle the scenarios where there were multiple objects. I started to use spacebar better as well, as it's best to conserve it as long as possible.
I think the alien collision decision was a good idea. I actually assumed they WERE cancelling it other out so I was always in despair when it happened. Only a few waves later did I realize the situation. It now became the best option there was since you don't have to worry about shooting things into the wrong goal.
This game has a very high skill ceiling. I could see some people going nuts with this. If it weren't for having to review so many games I'd definitely spend more time on this. Maybe after review period is over :)
Great job showing off your design chops. It can be hard to innovate on core gameplay because so many ideas have been explored before. Amazing entry!
Neat idea, definitely woke me up because of the speed haha, had to really pay attention. For me it was a rather quick experience, I beat normal and hard modes first try, but I do like that you were careful about difficulty since I could see this getting pretty tricky (and also make your eyes dry up).
I thought the loop visuals were really neat actually. The feeling of jumping from one to another is so much better than just fading out and now you're on a harder stage. Good twist to the formula.
Overall I thought the entry was good. I like tight, action experiences and this is the definition of that, well done!
I'm not familiar with three.js development. What are its strengths and weaknesses?
LOVE the presentation. There's so many small, subtle pieces of polish here it's hard to believe it was a jam game. From the clock-like turn timer that lights up based on which turn you're on, to the small, flickering fireflies that permeate the battle.
Growing your team is very addicting, and you did it in a way I've never seen before. It's a bit like a very light "programming" style game and you're programming the attacks you build up over time. Very cool. Speaking of programming loops, the while-loop character is so awesome once you get her :D
I ran into the same bug as the others. I reached the end on one playthrough and was forced to sit there.
Of all the games I've played so far, this is probably the most innovative, and also the one with the most untapped potential. You get the same feeling of strong power progression as you get from incremental games. Where would you have liked to take this game in the future?
I'm surprised there's only one comment on Snowpiercer. This game concept is actually great because I can live out that setting which is a really uncommon experience. Got to the end and beat it but I wish I got to have a nice axe-wielding scene :P
Thanks and sorry about the difficulty level! You can click the gear settings in the top right to skip the tutorial if you want to see the rest of the game.
I was on the fence about the tutorial difficulty. On one hand I knew this would be a tough game for a lot of folks. On the other hand, the game only gets harder so I felt like I really wanted the player to practice that difficult loop.
Thanks for putting in the time to try to figure it out anyways :)
@nick-rafalski Yep, unfortunately you do have to progress and unlock the moves again, that's my fault! I'm glad you still got the gist of the game though, that's great feedback.
@dotsquare Thanks a lot! I've never attempted a FG or beat-em-up before because they are complicated and daunting genres. After pulling this one off though, I feel a lot more confident about playing with these ideas in the future. I love fighting games personally so that'd be great for me :)
@ariya-reddy I appreciate that :) I know it's a pretty tough tutorial, but the game does get harder from there on out. If you want to see the full game, you can click the gear in the top right and skip the tutorial. Also, this guide might help you with timing/spacing for the tutorial: https://imgur.com/a/bn1mbLB
@papaver Yea I noticed some playtesters doing that but didn't have time for a true tutorial that explained where to stand and all. Glad you figured it out though, and the fact that you could clear some 4-move levels means you had the execution, but the explanation of moves was just bad. Absolutely agree @ sound effects, the hitstop on punch impact already feels pretty good, a big thud would help even more :)
@patrickjr haha, I'll go see the local butcher and bring some boxing gloves. Yea, as you unlock new attacks, each new attack is harder to time or space properly.
@sulo @tom-a @letterafterz Thanks all, I know it's on the challenging side but I'm glad you can see how it might play out regardless. If you want to just see how the tutorial is played out, here's a guide: https://imgur.com/a/bn1mbLB
@letterafterz nope none taken at all! I just wanted to help since my tutorial is lacking. You're right though, fighting game veterans have taken a liking to the game and go pretty nuts with the combo creation. If I ever touch this up I'd definitely like to be more friendly to players that aren't super familiar with the genre.
@croxel-studios yup that's very much the inspiration for the look & feel. It was actually very helpful for development because
a. it's easy to create
b. the poses are still recognizable to people
Glad you stumbled upon this game!
@acuriosity LOL that's hilarious. I'll grab you for voice acting in a full version :D. That's a great sequence and a good test of both timing and spacing.
@robonaut121 I'm really happy to hear that :). I knew this game would be a bit niche because I chose not to lean towards being accessible. I wanted to focus on giving those players who have decent execution skillsets to be able to combine it with their creativity and show off their prowess. I know that is something I'm looking for in games myself and rarely find it.
@duke Bingo! That was very much my inspiration. I don't mind spending a lot of time in training mode. To me it's actually kinda relaxing to just hit buttons and not worry about losing ranking points to people online. Thanks for playing!
@flazone Totally man, the last hours of the jam were so painful because of the decisions on what to cut. Shake cams were practically next on the list. But certainly a future version would have those to give some of those moves proper justice!
@melhem-fares Glad to hear that! I lamented on the decision to keep the game on the hard side cuz I knew it would be a barrier to some folks. But I knew that for people that stuck with it, it would make each level very gratifying to finish.
@flawed Thanks a lot :) I was having a lot of fun even playtesting it.
@reef Glad to hear it. I play fighting games but I think they are NEEDLESSLY complicated in a lot of areas. I was hoping that with 1-button gameplay and no jumps, other folks can experience a bit of the joy that I get with combos.
@landosilva @floata-1 @flaterectomy @badpiggy Definitely hear you on the sound thing. Fighting games have some GREAT sound clips and it's a shame I didn't have the time to pop them in, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp8U3WRDsZ0
@flaterectomy @badpiggy @mykola Thanks guys :) I would love to flesh this out in the future, especially since this is one of my favorite genres, but I'm tied up with other projects atm. Would be cool to give it a Slay the Spire overarching map where you're collecting moves and battling enemies with different properties like high gravity.
@int Hah yep! Sounds like you got decently far if you unlocked cloud kick. The moves get harder to time and space as you get further, and cloud kick is very challenging to combo due to its low knock-up. Well done!
@steventus Loved the challenge! When I saw blazing heart in there I knew it was gonna be tough. I has a lot of pushback to the attack so it can be quite difficult to combo afterwards.
I found a few routes but wanted to make sure I picked a stylish one. I decided to make one that combos Blazing Heart into Blade Drop, which looks very fancy but is quite difficult. Comboing 2-4-3 was stupidly hard because the height is delicate and you have to hit 4 on the way down. I actually mess up the 3rd loop in the gif accidentally so you can see how tricky it gets.
ss5.gif
Thanks for the detailed feedback, the combo you submitted was super fun :)
@lazyalarm Great points, and in retrospect I should've had an easier ground slamming move in the beginning. Even if it was the same properties, but straight up and down, I think people would've been able to connect it a lot easier. Thanks for the feedback!
@ale Haha I knew it would be hard to find fighting game players since they're rare, so I'm really glad you found my game! I went with "a game for everyone is a game for no one" and took a risk making a tougher game for people that like to string together moves and feel the satisfaction of combos. I'm really glad you feel that way and I definitely enjoyed just playtesting this game. I hope to revisit it in the future but I'm tied up with other projects right now D:
@doot Thanks for all the feedback, I agree with basically every point. The increased hitstun was actually a thought I had as well. For example, in Lethal League, the hitstun goes up every time the ball is hit, which can lead to incredible hype moments like this https://youtu.be/Jw1XKcsafx4?t=689
@archimagus Very nice, unlocking all the moves is no joke so I can tell you put time into playing this. Thanks a lot :)
@indigo Sorry about that! That was such a rare case (hit Buster Dunk + a projectile on the same frame) I had a hell of a time hunting down the bug. I eventually gave up in favor of squeezing in more features but it's good to know that this is a problem that is popping up.
@joedev Glad to hear it! One thing I was hoping was that even though the game is on the hard side, the combo sequences are short enough that the player can make frequent adjustments to their timing/spacing and eventually nail it.
@pkenney That is a fantastic summary of a typical fighting game experience. I'm pretty into the genre but it is RIFE with problems. Like you said, the amount of new people entering the genre is just a tiny amount. The majority of the community are folks that have been around for years, if not decades.
I personally enjoy training mode because it can be relaxing compared to a nonstop pvp experience where your ranking-points are on the line. I indeed wanted to bring a bit of the joy of hitting combos to other people. I took out jumping, direction input for special moves, and filler moves like jabs. All of them only add a small amount to the experience at the high cost of even more barriers to entry.
I really appreciate the constructive criticism. Often there's a sentiment of "listen to the customer's/player's problem, not their solution", but you actually provided a bunch of great solutions I hadn't thought. If I do a followup to this I'll absolutely keep those in mind!
@super-hadoken I expected no less from a person named Super Hadoken :)
- Dash is not a bad idea. I did want to simplify movement which is why jump isn't in there. Perhaps setting it to a 1-button dash like on Q and E could help with keeping execution simple. - A lot of those move properties would change up the balance of things. I'm totally down for tweaking things in a future version, but they do have consequences. For example Arcana Punch is a long windup because I wanted to make it harder to connect with it's long startup. Similarly Cloud Kick could lift the opponent higher, but it would be less challenging to combo. I don't mind throwing in new moves that are variations of those though. For example I really wanted to put Genocide Cutter in it, and it would just be a DP but higher height (therefore laggier and harder to followup with). - Good point for the checker pattern. I wanted to focus the eyes on just the characters (I thought it was busy when placed lower) but I think there could be other visual indicators to help with movement and spacing. - Haha, I wanted Jack's flying stomp to be a move. I thought it'd be super hard to combo with it's long startup and crazy spacing..............much like the actual move.
Thanks for all the feedback!
@dk5000p lol I definitely thought that during playtesting. I was like, I wanna test this on a fightstick... Glad you enjoyed it despite the foreign controls, it was made with you all as the audience in mind!
@namidasai Agreed, fighting games don't offer enough single player options and this could be a nice way to teach people how to use their moveset more creatively.
@wakobu getting voices in for a full version would be so fun. BUSTAH DUHNK!
@chao Thanks for trudging through that, I'm glad at least you got to play with some of the experimentation with moves. Combo creativity is not often rewarded in fighting games and I hoped to bring that aspect to light.
@ddrkirbyisq that is a crazy hard combo to land! I too, experimented with arcana punching people into the side of a landmine and it's quite hard to time that without them touching the ground. Balancing was indeed quite interesting, where the tiniest of changes to values (like knockback) could drastically affect a move's performance. Great feedback overall, appreciate it :)
@nikolaj haha thanks a lot. At least this time the enemy doesn't beat up on you!
@rafaelgiordanno I would love to turn this into a full game myself but don't have the free-time to. Fighting games have really bad single player options and I think it could totally fill in that gap.
@coleslaughter thanks man, that was super fun to watch! You picked up the game quicker than I expected - your timing was on point. For the record, I thought that Capt Falcon was perfect.
Unlocking moves was indeed a tricky balance since the influx could overwhelm some players. For anyone who wants to just try out all the moves you can go to https://peachtreeoath.itch.io/bust-a-loop-all-moves-unlocked?secret=NsLuWrrok6ChuQYCh9XmoUyptQ
Click the gear in the upper right if you want to skip the tutorial.
@pkenney thanks and same to you. One day I'll figure out those other categories :D
Phew, I got triple digits, living the dream!
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Fantastic polish to the game, there's a lot of nice and subtle juice going on. I really enjoyed the dangling handle with the rope physics. Everything in the game just had a touch of polish to it that I wasn't expecting.
The gameplay itself is very nice. I'm glad you opted to make it so you can make matches while spinning the loop. That changes the gameplay away from the standard "lock into place" type of gameplay and more into something unique to your own. Really great stuff.
The overall concept and theming is hilarious and draws you into the game quickly. It only gets better as things get more and more chaotic.
This was a really tight experience and showed off clean, interesting gameplay. Pretty much the definition of a good gamejam game. Awesome job!
Wowww what a deceptive challenging game! My first impression of the mechanic was: "ok I get it this is gonna be on of those cakewalk games." I should've known better given some of your past games :up:
I didn't expect you to lean into the narrow path idea that much. I also didn't expect the idle-looping element to cause me that much trouble. The combination of those 2 elements made this game very tricky, in a good way. It made each press of the spacebar delicate and important. Sometimes my brain would spaz out and just drive into a wall for no reason lol, because it was probably trying to figure out how to rotate my way out of the situation.
Very very enjoyable. 1-button games are challenging to do really interesting stuff with but you pulled it off. Obviously the game mechanics/levels are quite extendable as well.
PS. have you ever played Clu Clu land? Very much reminded me of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QitNp1YjmPk
Yup it's a bit like that. You choose which direction you want your arm to grab, but then have to let go with the right timing like in Loop. I believe it gets a lot faster in later stages and that was tough when I was a kid lol. That's a great onomatopoeia actually, and not one I've heard of!
Very good theming, I certainly felt the despair of being in the labyrinth, especially after I cleared a loop the first time. One thing I liked was the variety in the maps. One of my first thoughts was "ok, that was a neat maze, but I don't know how many more mazes I can take". But then in the 2nd one you introduce jumping puzzles right away, you read my mind.
Idk if other people know this but if you hold down shift, you get a run of sorts. This helps a LOT with the speed of the game, especially in later loops when you already know the general way to go. Nice touch.
Ultimately I couldn't find the 3rd shape, I was missing the triangle. I thiiiink it had to do with the sign that said "this is not the right way" but I didn't know how to get to the ledge. That sign could've been true for all I know lol.
Either way, it's a nice little world you built, I would've loved to beat it and shut Zog up!
Ok that was super clever :)
I usually try to play an LD game blind before reading instructions, just as a challenge and to give possible interesting insights. When I played the game blind I thought it was a basic defense game where you block shots. Of course with this thinking, I had no idea how to get the % to go up lol
Only later did I take a look at this page and saw you have to spin the logo manually. Such a smart design choice! I haven't seen anything like that before. I then hopped back in and it was a totally different experience this time around. I took so many more hits because I was trying to juggle spinning as well. It was very challenging and I loved how the game "scales" to the player's skill level. If you're really skilled, you're busy cranking the logo even more, so you never feel bored. Great idea and game!
$2438 here, @jenkinz94 is too good
Pretty much impossible not to at least be curious about this game. The art and concept is just so unique.
I actually really enjoyed the unusual controls. Quickly pulling in the opposite direction and then mashing L/R is not a skill I practice at all, so that alone kept my interested trying to figure out how to optimize everything.
The highlight of the game by far was the golden dude coming outta nowhere for the first time. Did NOT expect that and it put a smile on my face.
Very well done. Usually with games with this crazy a concept and art, the gameplay doesn't live up to it, but it certainly did here!
Finally my dream fantasy of being able to play Frog and Toad in a game lol.
From a high concept point of view I loved this game. A pair of frog friends where one is relatively useless, and another one who can casually time travel and jump much higher. Sooooo good. In fact it's pretty unique cuz most games try to have both characters be somewhat powerful in their own right, but here Brown just mooches haha.
Like @duke said, there's quite a bit of entries like this this LD, but your overall execution does make it stand out and made me not feel theme fatigue here. Even the tutorial was presented very well and in line with the world.
I love a good incremental that shakes up the traditional formula. It's a lot more rare than you would think!
You did an interesting gamble here regarding the upgrades. You don't actually get to touch your track much early on, and you're forced to look at the research more. At first I had a slight hint of annoyance because it felt like it was going to take forever before I could add a second loop.
However, this was actually pretty effective for me. The loops were a huge breadcrumb. I saw your gifs earlier and thought "I want that too". So it became a goal for myself and I was willing to trudge through it all to get there haha. Dunno if you intended that but it worked for me.
One thing that was unfortunate was that the research panel covered up the screen. The game is a real joy to watch, but I had to keep that open because upgrades come in fairly fast in the midgame.
I really liked what you did here, you got me playing for a while. I actually personally am interested in evolving the incremental genre as well so you get extra points from me :)
Very very interesting design choices here. You're bold designers! I'll see what I can breakdown.
First off, probably the highlight of the game for me was reaching Go and being able to get another party member. It completed the entire looping experience and gave me a goal to continually try to reach. I REALLY like the entire board game meta. In a world full of short experiences pieced together by a Slay the Spire-like overworld, I'm glad you tried something different here.
As for the card game itself, my first impression from reading the directions and looking at the screenshot was that it reminded me of Karuta. I'm glad the memorization wasn't THAT taxing though. The memory aspect is a crazy twist to the genre with a lot of potential. I don't think it came into a play as much as it could have. As in, if the cards didn't flip back down after a reveal, it wouldn't have made too much difference for me as there weren't a ton of things to memorize. Perhaps some variants where you could play risk/reward and reveal a bunch of cards, at the cost of taxing the player's irl memory.
The waterfall movement of the cards was another unique mechanic you brought in. I indeed liked the strategy of choosing whether or not to give away the card reveal or not. It was reminiscent of Slay the Spire to me where I would carefully map out a combo to make sure I didn't take any unnecessary hits.
One of the things that impressed me the most was that you were able to mimic the card movement that you see in Hearthstone, I'm very surprised at that. I feel like that's take me a bit too long to implement to get it to feel right, but you got all the right hoverspeeds and angles correct!
Overall I'm a big fan of innovation in games and I'm really happy to see such a bold entry into the card game world. There's a lot going on but it all seems to work together somehow. Looking forward to seeing how you add more things to the game since like some said, it can feel straightforward at times with lighter decisionmaking.
Very good presentation, it reminded me a lot of Just Shapes & Beats in terms of blending art, music, gameplay, and screenshake altogether.
I liked the tension there is at the end of the game. There's a lot going on and I thought I was going to die for sure but luckily I closed it out. There's a good amount of obstacles to process, and the circular nature of the game makes it difficult to judge speed and gravity, in a good way.
Overall this is a really nice, tight experience. I thought the boss design itself was a standout feature. The bounciness on the ball and the face make it seem so alive and animated. Well done!
A game that engaged me VERY quickly, one of the best in medias res intros I've seen in a game haha. The concept was just great and there aren't many falling loop games this jam with a story (though I did find one other one).
At first I thought the game was strictly a falling simulator where you talk to people in the right order, but I'm really glad you threw in some falling velocity puzzles such as getting the right speed to handle the platform and lever.
This is a really cohesive experience. The art and music all add to the whole concept and even subtle touches like the metal UI were put in there. Really great job :)
Pretty neat mechanic, I haven't seen Blek til you mentioned it and yours is a theme more up my alley. The execution is a bit rough around the edges as you mostly try and angle and hope for the best, but it's understandable since you have a short LD this time around. The concept and prototype is still interesting though.
Where would you have liked to take this game if you had the time?
Very fun way to depict a supply chain, probably the most playful one I've ever seen. I liked how friendly the interface was and the humorous/novel objects. Certainly a nice change of pace from the standard wood/ore -> factory stuff.
I was kinda dumb and actually thought every island was isolated. Only after looking at the gifs when I was done playing did I see you could go across islands, so I had to go back in and try that haha.
Overall it's pretty good. The sense of discovery is there, just wanting to figure out what the next item may be. Very impressive game for a jam timespan!
Pretty neat take on this concept. I played a few of these loop-to-kill games so far but you have the most unique control scheme. My favorite thing to do was just make a gigantic loop from 1 corner to the next and let that run it's course - it'd basically kill everything.
Dunno if this was intentional or not, but you can hold X to stop yourself doing the loop movement. This gave me even more precision and I could tackle just about any scenario without taking hits.
This is one of the better Pico action games I've even played, how hard was it to get the player to travel in a circle like that? It could be easy, I'm just not used to seeing it from Pico games.
Nice action game overall. Solid application of pacman-esque sounds to top it off!
Nice work, I know it's a bit short but the speed of the final boss stages actually caught me off guard. Luckily I could more or less just form the same triangle so it was just a matter of executing on that. The concept itself is pretty neat and I haven't seen many games this LD that did this sort of mechanic.
How did it feel to try out a more action-y kind of game this time around?
You caught me off guard at first. The screenshots implied a platforming/action game and then you get the story right off the bat. I actually thought it was gonna be a 100% choose your own adventure dialogue game which is pretty unique haha.
You do transition to the actual game though. Similar to others it took me a bit to figure things out but not too bad. Not too long before I found the triple jump. A bit more interesting than similar games due to the dialogue, it certainly fit the definition of stuck in a loop :)
ROFL now you guys are just plain trolling with that size a team :) I actually want to discuss this a bit before going into the game itself.
First off, there are a few people here saying this kind of game is mostly possible because you have a large team. This is a misconception, I can't stress enough how a a 15 man team is INCREDIBLY hard to pull off. I've done LD with ~13 people a number of times and I know it takes good leadership, communication, systems, and teamwork to do something like that. Hell, brainstorming alone can take hours depending on the personalities involved. A large team is great for a normal project, but under the jam time restrictions it can be chaotic. Big kudos to you all!
I'd love to hear how you structured your team (whether in a blog post or here). How do you all know each other? Did you have a leader or was the direction spread across multiple people? Were you able to get most of what you wanted in or did you have to cut a lot of content? I'm very curious because I was always trying to improve my team's game quality, but since other teams don't get this big I didn't have anyone else to learn from.
As for the game, like others here I am not a fan of horror games or movies. At all. However, because it was a 2d platformer with good controls, that gave me a lot of confidence. I thought "ok well, I'm good at these games, so even if something jumps me I can handle it. That eased my fears quite a bit and I could play it nearly at my normal comfort level.
While the enemies were scary and dangerous, I did feel myself improving each death. I started to understand their AI over time "oh crap they can jump!" and where they tend to spawn. I game over'd the first time, but beat it on my first try after I tried again. In some ways I was relieved the game is relatively short. I was afraid I was gonna have to go through that entire first section again if I died.
Very well done game. Tbh when I see art that good and clean, I actually get skeptical about if the gameplay can match. This is not the case here. You have a solid project all around, and I hope to see 20 people in the credits next time ;)
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Thanks for the breakdown!
- Ah ok, I was suspecting that about work colleagues. It helps a ton. I tended to pull in random folks a lot ("hey you code? Why don't you join me this weekend...") which made it hard to grow quickly in overall skill across jams, but I liked the challenge. - Yep I totally get it, it's very rare to have people that can do the full weekend. We rarely even got 1/3 to do that. - Haha, for brainstorming I would usually try to take a backseat because 1 less voice helped reach an agreement faster. I'm glad you guys found one that resonated with everyone.
Well I had an interesting experience with this game... When I started, I assumed A and X just translated to left and right on the keyboard, as I did not have a controller plugged in. So I started playing the game without realizing there was a jump or eat button.
The spikes were challenging to say the least. My playstyle was lining up the grubs, ramming into it for a bounce, and then trying to land on other grubs like Burrito Bison or something lol.
Needless to say it was incredibly challenging. I must've played that for 20-30 minutes trying to figure out how to get past certain spike formations without grubs to bounce off of. I finally gave up with a high score of 700ish.
Only when I came back here and read the comments did I realize I was playing the game wrong the whole time! I hopped back in with a controller and it was like the weighted training clothes came off, I just breezed through it.
Anyways, regardless of which "mode" I played, I still enjoyed it. A unique theme and a good take on the looping worlds idea!
Hahaha "DBZ style training"
Tbh I'm not sure, I guess I'm Ultra Instinct Goku at this point because I can't see myself dying any time soon. I just mostly feel crosseyed at this point and have to stop lol.
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Edit: That's a good point about the grubs acting as a shield on the spikes. I would never had known that had I not played the wrong way at first. In my real runs I could utilize them as a temporary shield and gobble them up after I got over them.
Played this post-jam end. Wish I found this beforehand, I would've given it a perfect score. Amazing work!
Haha great entry :) At the end of it I didn't expect to be judged for my performance, I would've been a better parent!
For my strategy I don't think I had too much trouble. All I did was grab the kid and wait til one of his needs popped up. That way you're not time-pressed and chasing him around with the cursor. If anything, a hard mode where the kid was even MORE frantic could be really fun.
One thing I especially enjoyed was the sunrise/set mural. I am assuming you did it that way to save time, vs a sun and moon rotation, but I haven't seen a daynight presentation like that before, it was super cool and inspires me to use it somewhere in my games in the future. Unfortunately the game is frenetic enough that you can't look at it for too long (in game at least).
A good mix of new ideas in here, very deceptive given my initial impressions of the game. Awesome work!
LOL wow, thanks for making the time limit relatively forgiving. That last lap is anxiety inducing because you get hit so much and have to watch the timer tick down menacingly.
Couldn't screenshot in time but I had 20s left on the clock when I beat it. I think I could do a lot better with some practice, what was your best time?
The game is fun though. I suspect people will probably dislike the controls but I enjoy a challenge. I like experimenting so I tried a lot of different techniques. The best one I could come up with was start holding drift a bit BEFORE turning to induce slide. I would tap shift in certain ways at the "apex" (I use that term loosely with this game lol) to try to not spin out.
I think the most hilarious and giffable thing in this game is going up the hill but then getting annihilated by a car coming from the other direction. Hilarious especially since you can't see it coming.
Great game, what a great twist on the ghost racer idea!
30.43 here, @ausstein is too good!
I definitely played this several times and I enjoyed trying to beat my score. The twist at the end is great and seals in the theme perfectly.
Gameplaywise it makes for a great speedrunning game. A bit of difficult controls and also tight paths to navigate make for some very fun challenges. Very fun game, and satisfies my desire to live and race as a snail :)
Quite the challenging game, I really liked the transition effect when you die and go to a new run - much more satisfying than just fading to black or seeing "retry?" pop up.
A lot of the game felt fairly good, like a slow Sonic but you can run over people lol. There was a part in the first level I got stuck on for quite a while. Right before the portal, there is a big jump. However, there are also humans dropping down on that area. I got beaned in the head like 3 times in a row so I figured it was an intentional obstacle (in retrospect, I don't think it was).
I realized it must've been due to the height I am entering that area with. So instead of jumping directly onto the side to side bumpers, I timed it so I would hit it with a half jump. That ended up working for me.
I know the mechanics probably aren't coded like that, but I just figured you'd wanna hear a player breakdown of how the levels seem to work :P
Overall, have an endless runner that isn't a ninja or animal is pretty cool in my book. It gives the rock of ages feeling but in a new kind of format. Cool game :)
Played it for 15m but still can't figure it out, can I get some pointers?
No prob, thanks!
So I played this game on an ultrawide monitor, it is was SUPER intense lol. The reason is because the game fov stretches out like crazy, and I can only see a few tiles to my north and south. Because this game is heavily up/down movement heavy, it made a basic thing pretty perilous as I could barely see what was ahead of me. The 3 hp thing didn't help either, and I would frequently end up with 1 hp.
None of these are criticisms though. I enjoy hard mode so that actually added a lot to the atmosphere of the game. I did end up beating it after a few tries, and I was definitely sweating bullets making it back to the top of the ship with only 1 hp.
I actually liked the design of the ship level. You took some time to actually flesh out some things like what could pass as a cabin or dining room. It also made sense to descend to the bottom since the thrusters were there.
Great sense of terror overall from the game!
This game has such an enticing gif to bring you in lol. You did a really great job with the model and how it squishes and squirms around, it's a really great effect that makes the dog feel properly chunky.
Although the levels were a bit straight forward, the reward of seeing the loops complete actually drove me to keep playing. Great concept and great execution :)
Wow this was a very nice deviation from the standard aim trainer. A real cool variation where you need both speed and precision on the drag!
Like others I tried to go in blind but couldn't figure it out. I was assuming I needed to drag a line from the center to a ball and release when the ball was nearby, but alas. I came back here and your description helped me along just fine.
The last puzzle was by far the most fun, a bit of execution mixed with memorization (my game does this as well). It took a few tries to remember which ones I needed to backtrack on but I eventually got it.
Some of the scores here are quite good! Really impressed with some of them.
A unique entry overall. I really like aim trainers, made one myself last jam, and this is a take on it I never thought of. Awesome!
Oh man this game is just insane! The game felt like a classic shmup in the sense that you can just keep tacking on more and more upgrades and become a whirling ball of death. The best thing to do is to try to stack only one attack and see how nutty it gets.
My only regret was that it's so hectic I don't have time to appreciate everything that's going on. There are a lot of interesting visuals or icons or UI but I only have a slight memory of them because my eyes are hunting for spell orbs or heart bushes more than anything.
Really crazy world you built and the music selection fits it well. Solid experience overall!
Btw, you mention if you use a duplicate spell, it makes it stronger. How strong can it get? It was hard to tell just with experimentation.
Ahh that's for the clarification, I love that kind of stuff in games. Like in Diablo 2, charged bolt shoots out 1 bolt. And each time you level it you shoot out 1 more bolt. That's all I need to keep going...
I really liked the movement choice. Like you said, it would've been fairly generic otherwise. I actually haven't seen a movement scheme like that before, and it certainly conveyed that fact that you're a bunny haha.
In some ways it also turns the speed upgrade into an interesting choice, to trade speed for precision (not that the player realizes this beforehand). But I think that's really cool. I like games that can scale up to the player's ability to handle something. The lvl 2 speed made me think just a bit harder on the best way to move.
I ended up just gunning down the left side of the skilltree to close out the game. I didn't actually expect there to even be a skilltree and that added an extra of engagement for me.
Nice mood, nice music, nice job!
Wow, very unique take on the theme. In respective, I'm surprised there aren't more Lost Woods type of games so this is brilliant.
At first I didn't get what the torches were for, I just kinda spammed them (as I'm sure others did). Once the level finally looped, I had an ah ha! moment. It immediately made the whole game better because I knew what I was about to get into.
I eventually did find the hole. I'm sorta glad I had unlimited torches because I felt free to place them. I do wonder what it'd be like if you only had say, 5 torches and you had to pick up previous ones.
Annoying? Maybe. Strategically interesting? Maybe?
Nice entry overall. How difficult was it to make that kind of looping world?
Ahh ok nice. I thought you may have been teleporting the player around but that sounds much easier!
Rofl is this gonna be your guys' signature style? Crazy, cartoony cooking related games? I love it.
I love the title and theming of this game. I'm gonna guess I won't see any other soup loop games this reviewing period. The gameplay definitely gets hectic later on, though I never had trouble with the memorization portion personally. I really liked the idea of it though, it's very clever and not an often used mechanic.
I can't believe you guys (or maybe just @doot) only started doing game dev a year ago. The amount of polish and sense of fun is so apparent. You gotta let me in on the secret. Great job!
haha that makes it even better! I've been there, in terms of having a large team, but swapping members in and out and bringing in new people. It can be real tough to manage that since experience levels are dynamic but it looks like you got it figured out :)
I got as far as some other people here. Got the key from the bird and did a number of other things but couldn't figure out how to finish it. Unfortunately the deaths are so devastating I could only try this a few more times.
As for the game itself, I really liked the concept. It's like Freddy Krueger except you're in a locked room with 2 different dimensions. A very cool concept.
I know this is a pretty unrelated game but it kinda reminds me of Phoenix Wright where you have an investigation scene, and then a different minigame later on. In this case, instead of a court scene, you get a little bullet hell sequence.
A decent amount of work for a solo endeavor. I think there's a lot of good comments here on what you could do with some more dev time. Overall it has a nice, creepy vibe and a sense of despair as you're stuck in the loop.
Very fun! First completion was only 3 mins, but I'll share my playthrough thoughts anyways.
Phase 1: I tried to be gutsy and play the boss up front, just cuz I like to do that sort of stuff. Only later did I realize the hand has travel time, so when you move further back you can squeeze in more shots before having to roll. It's possible that might optimize your times @jefvel but I don't have the skill to prove it.
Phase 2: A simple circle strafe did the trick here, I don't remember how much or how often I rolled.
Phase 3: Just a much less efficient version of what he does in that speedrun. I didn't realize you could pop in some shots when the dual cannons are going on!
I really enjoyed the game. The phases are distinct and make you think in different ways. The thing that caught my eye with this game was the gif of you just nonstop rolling around lol. It was funny and intriguing. Great job on the jam!
Very tight game design, loved it. Like others said, the idea of having to change speed by picking an orbit is not something I've really seen. Certainly not in the context of dodging and collecting things. It's the perfect game length for a game jam. The game ramps up to the right difficulty in the right amount of time (for me). I could only get a score of 51 at best. It gets quite hectic for my reaction speed and I end up just praying I don't get hit by something. One of the best core gameplays I've seen in an LD, not just specific to LD47.
Wowww very clever stuff here. My first impressions were alright this is a little neat. But once I did the 2nd turret level did your level design really click for me. It took it to another level from just planning out your moves and spacing, to one where you needed to worry about your MOUSE position in the future. Brilliant!
I actually got stuck on the first turret for a while. It was my fault because I thought you could kill the turret. So I actually sat there for a while trying to figure out how I could kill all 3 opponents lol.
I like that our games have a bit of similarity to them, where you can't just recklessly perform your sequence/combo, but have to think about the consequences of your spacing and timing.
Really solid entry, I expect this one to place high :)
I play on a wide monitor and only coming back here did I realize there's info like the timer and such. I couldn't see any of that on my screen.
I don't know if it's the lack of info visibility but I can't figure out how to play this game. I can beat the 1st level by going right, but I can't do that for the 2nd level. Am I missing info or is something being cut off on my screen?
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3840 x 1600, thanks!
Thanks for going out of your way and doing that :) It was......MUCH easier this time around and beat it in maybe 3 mins.
I actually really liked the level design. Levels 5 and 6 had the tight precision I really like in platformers (funnily enough, the game I made also requires good timing and spacing so you might like it). There were certainly a few jumps where you get a tad nervous because you have to jump super close to the edge. I think that's a great feeling, and for me is what makes a platformer memorable to me.
Short and fun. I wouldn't have minded harder levels either because the loops are only 6 secs long so dying doesn't feel that bad, and you get lots of chances to correct your timing. Thanks again for the fixed version!
Funny and relatable concept :)
The first time I played, I felt like I scoured EVERYWHERE but couldn't find the key. Like others, I would accidently fly out of the house and finish it that way.
I didn't want to cheese my way through so I tried a few more times. Eventually I gave up and had to cheat and use the hints from the dialogue to clear some of the levels that way. So I at least got to partially experience the intended gameplay!
I liked the gameplay of throwing around furniture quite a bit, it kept me engaged until I got stuck. It reminds me of https://store.steampowered.com/app/1179210/Kill_It_With_Fire/
Nice classic twinstick with a nice twist. The core gameplay was fun, and by the time I thought I had seen everything, you threw in the weapon upgrade choice. NICE touch.
At that point I actually thought the gameplay was gonna be constantly going around a loop picking up more and more upgrades so I was a bit bummed it was only a 1-time thing.
Regardless, the boss fight was excellent. Just the right amount of variety. It was also in a claustrophobic space so it felt extra intense.
Great concept overall with a lot of room for it to grow!
My god man, how do you come up with this stuff? This is easily one of the most innovative idle games I've seen. And I've played well.......all of them.
I didn't quite get the concept when I saw the timeline and how the game was playing out. Only after the 2nd time I got to scrap did I connect all the dots. What a cool concept, a reverse order idle game where you utilize prestige in a backwards manner. That actually works really well because on prestige, you don't have to work your way back up to see the new content, it's given to you right away. In general the reverse-prestige is something that a game designer could easily mess up, but you made this look so easy!
The layers themselves were also interesting. Layer 2 had a neat tradeoff of time vs multiplier, and as you got more unlocks, you could move up that ladder. Layer 3 could be it's own standalone game and is certainly something I haven't seen before.
I initially considered making an incremental myself but now I'm glad I didn't, it would've paled in comparison to this. Great job!
As someone who normally avoids these games (other than To The Moon), I definitely stayed to the end. I think the relatable premise hooked me and kept me in. Just a story about relationships, the ups and downs of it, and most of all, regret.
Having the items be able to be seen in any order is really daring. Often a storyteller can guide the listener but controlling the rise and fall of action, such as continually going between happy and sad scenes like in To The Moon. But that's the advantage of the game medium isn't it? To give the player some agency in how they approach things. I just went right and clicked things along the way, so it's possible I went through the "intended" path of the story.
I'm a bit glad the story didn't have some sort of super crazy twist. In some ways that can be a crutch that devs can rely on too much instead of just creating interesting characters you can relate to like you did.
That is a huge team that apparently just manifested out of thin air lol (only 1 game). How do you guys know each other and how hard was it to coordinate that many people?
Really nice change of pace from other games I've played this jam, great work!
That's all the more impressive then :) I used to run large teams for LD with fresh folks as well so I know how crazy it can get with nonstop coordinating and communicating.
Very cool. The chillness of the game reminded me of Outer Wilds, which was also a chill, exploration looping game. The puzzles were a good level of challenge for me, I actually liked that they weren't particularly obvious. I only was able to get 2/3 keys though, I couldn't figure out the clock one in the end!
I'll have to echo the thoughts of others, I didn't expect this game to have been made by newbies. The art and character animation caught my eye right off the bat and it set the tone for things to come. The levels look like they took quite a bit of work to make. Not just the large backgrounds but also coordinating with the artist to place everything correctly. The audio as a warning mechanism is very unique. After a while it became 2nd nature and I knew when I was about to loop.
Cool and ambitious game overall, well done!
Nice idea! I thought about making a phone game about nonstop scroll loops as well but couldn't thinking of a good premise to do with it. Your game mildly reminds me of the game Orwell in terms of reading and parsing truth and inconsistencies.
It took me a little bit to figure out what was going on. After rereading the instructions did I realize sharing was the only thing that matters, not likes and dislikes. And from there moved on.
I liked that there was some tricky wording placed throughout. Sometimes I'd just glance at a paragraph that looked "official" and share it but lose some points. Only after I read it over again would I catch the hint of bias to it. Serves me right for skimming!
One of the more unique entries this LD. I like seeing new things so it was a breath of fresh air. Good job!
@gwailofi has anyone ever told you you have an amazing username?
Well this game certainly follows the theme! I've ordered food delivery before with botched orders, so I can related to the premise.
I'm kinda glad the UFOs aren't particularly dangerous, it can feel painful to get kinda far and then die, so I didn't have to worry about that. Though it sounds like you intended to add more obstacles and possibly stronger AI lol.
For a first game, I can't fault you much. It looks like you scrambled a new team together to do this as well. Hope you guys keep it up!
Love the meta idea, that there's a looping audio inside this looping game. Hate to admit it but I could never figure out that minigame after several tries. How tight is the timing?
Regardless I could see where you were going with this game. You can definitely start to feel the despair of the character's life as you move forward, just doing the same thing over and over again.
The art is really bold, I'd love to know the process you had for coming up with something like that. Nice work for having so many new folks on the team, I know that can be tough myself!
Thanks for the reply :) Yea I suspected it was just my fault for identifying the loop improperly.
I play incremental games quite often and I love variations like yours that put you in a unique setting. Sure the core gameplay gets a bit repetitive, but a) I think that was the point you were going for, and b) like any good incremental, the carrot on a stick are the upgrades. You have good upgrades where the player not only understands the power spike they'll get from them, but they're also spaced out reasonably well enough that they feel like they can get it in a reasonable amount of time.
I was always tempted to go idle and leave it alone, but every time I got some money, I was always close to the active upgrade (microtransaction) so I felt obligated to buy that and play manually for a while to be efficient haha.
I actually really like the screen movement. It gives some kind of feeling to an otherwise static looking screen. I'm gonna have to borrow that idea for similar stuff, I didn't realize it'd be so effective.
Nice entry, it can be hard to innovate in the incremental genre but you have a really unique presentation!
PS. I saw that you like hard games in your profile. You might like my entry this jam :)
Can't believe you guys squeezed a level editor into this lol, though I guess it probably helped a lot with development once it was in place.
A TD with cars is a great pitch, surprised I haven't seen that concept before in retrospect. The cars are really satisfying to kill, since it gives off that Ding! on success. The wind mechanic is especially fun when you can send a whole train of cars off to their doom.
One thing about the game is that progression isn't too satisfying. I know it's the time limit of a jam, but after playing a few levels, I just skipped to the last level because I was just using the same skill set and knowledge every time.
The base of the game is solid though, and has a lot of potential paths for it to go in. You have a great presentation on top of everything as well, which makes this really attractive and giffable.
Wow I'm actually shocked you hadn't played Necrodancer, I just assumed you drew inspiration from it lol
Either way, I loved the take on it - a guy who can help but stop, dance, and pose. Makes me think of voguing (the dance style) itself, which is doing that every beat as well.
I liked how sokoban was the other core element to the game. That gives it an identity and not just being appearing like a Necrodancer-like, which there are a few of them now. I could tell you were starting to come up with some neat level designs and puzzles. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to beat the first stage that featured the drill! I tried many times and many variations. I even saw some comments that said you could push it but that wouldn't work for me :(
I still appreciate what you've done though. Very clever idea and great theming!
PS. Where can I find some of your music work?
yea Necrodancer is basically a roguelike but you're forced to move, so it has all those combat/item mechanics in there. I think you have something different on your hands and it's worth pursuing. Get used to the comparisons though lol, you'll get it a lot.
No prob on the music, I just saw you mentioned it and I like to see what else the devs on here are up to.
Great entry for your first transition to this side of the dev world :)
I've played just about every idle game out there myself, so I already had an autoclicker on hand to play through your game which helped a ton. It's a great start and I thought the theme fit very well.
If you did have more time, where would you take this? There's always so many routes a clicker can go, whether it's more resources, or more upgrades, or a new mode altogether.
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The way you meshed the drum loop in with the shots was brilliantly done! Even though I didn't make an "optimal" loop, I loved that I got to just take my creation for a ride and see how I did. Like others said, after playing this version you can easily see how this game could be expanded with metasystems and upgrades to keep tuning your loop. Really awesome potential on top of an already fun game.
This is your first LD game but it seems like you guys have more experience than that. You have a decent sized team and a lot of polish, so have you all worked on projects together before?
Really impressive overall and it's one of the few music looping games I played this LD~
This poor hamster and his nightmares of spikes and.....stack of paperwork?!
I really liked the camera angle of the game. It's not an often used angle so it makes it stand out a bit on that alone. It reminds me a bit of Booster Hill https://youtu.be/SANO28TAiA4?t=94
Like others, I actually didn't realize it was a rhythm-esque game until a few levels and deaths into it. I'm glad the rhythm aspect is optional, the last stage is a little daunting. Though I'd probably be able to handle it, I did play it safe and stop the rhythm movement just to avoid the devastating death.
I personally thought there may be a lot of hamster wheel games this jam but surprisingly this is the first one I played! I liked the game overall, very bold vision with the art and presentation :)
Yo having Chase on the team was a cheat code, that theme is sooo good!
Really fun game, I loved the extreme camera actually. It's intense but it gives a type of challenge I haven't seen in another game, the ability to judge trajectory when down isn't down, very cool twist and unexpected. It also makes a hell of a gif.
Like others brought up, after the initial fun of going ham, you realize you actually have to be real careful if you want to get a high score, which ends up killing the fun a bit.
Regardless, I can still see the heart of the game throughout this especially if you ignore score attack. You have a game that's just a joy to experience, where you're moving frantically to position yourself in the right spot at the right time and watching the chaos ensue.
The concept is immediately understandable and intriguing when you fire it up, that's one thing I really like about the idea - the player knows what they're about to get into. What I didn't expect was having to pick up the ammo as I looped around. That was very clever and it made me be more careful about my trail as I was moving around.
I think the gun on autofire was a great idea. It forced me to occasionally deviate from my route just to optimize my attack. A standard twinstick shooter is kinda boring imo, since it's been done so much and there's not much depth to the gameplay.
For a similar example to your shooting mechanic, see Archero. It has "stop in place to fire", so now you have a tradeoff between dodging vs dps. Against an enemy that fires a lot, that's a very daunting thing to manage, and one that's more interesting to me than circle strafing while firing willynilly.
I really liked that the speed picked up, it came in at a good time when I had thought "uh oh, don't know if I can do 10 loops of this." so great timing there. I did eventually die immediately to a multi-shot which was a bummer. I mistakenly assumed I would have invincibility after getting hit haha.
Very solid game, great ideas overall!
FYI, the game can't be played on an ultrawide resolution. I just changed my rez though to get it to work (bottom 2 answers don't show).
Boy those are some tough questions, it was a miracle I was able to do a natural 4-combo (no buffs added to that)! I remember seeing you guys poll for questions so you must've farmed some good ones. I really wonder how many people will be good at the book questions, I basically knew none of them lol.
Like others have mentioned, it wasn't the best use of the theme, but honestly I really like the change of pace from this vs all the various digging games out there. It's hard not to be drawn into the world you created. Everything is so cohesive in the presentation, right down to even the writing.
As a side note, I REALLY liked the different avatars you provided. It's an awesome bonus for the players who have followed your work for a while now as I have. Overall this is yet another entry that serves as an example of what LDers should strive for :)
I definitely disagree with comments that say you should speed things up and be able to swing around willy nilly. This game is actually a very nice change of pace from the other grappling hook games I've seen so far.
At first I was surprised and frustrated that there was a lot of impact damage. But after playing more, I understood this game had a different vision in mind. The game is more about careful exploration with a dash of fear, rather than empowerment and letting the character fly through the levels unharmed. This really heightened the experience for me and made it interesting trying to navigate the dangerous levels, especially once the lava kicked in and added a whole nother dimension to be afraid of.
I really liked how long the grapple was, something straight out of Made in Abyss. It was fun just rappelling down long areas and seeing what was to come. Overall, an interesting angle on the theme and very tense. Not sure why people were saying relaxing atmosphere when you could die around basically every corner lol.
Did the same, the first thing I did was google the term lol.
I had the same experience as @jakob-willforss, I sorta speedran it and missed a few fistulas. When I got to the bottom, I saw nothing was there, so I flew back up and grabbed everything I missed and went all the way above "ground". Went all the way back to the bottom and nothing there so not sure if something went weird with the triggers.
I like wonky controls like this - I prefer the challenge of trying to move quickly through levels set up this way (which is why I decided to just go full speed). I'm glad you opted for bounciness and not ship-damage because I would've been destroyed haha.
Will we be seeing a Fistula trilogy the next time a descending-theme comes up?
Ohhh ok, yes I think I must've been flying around the whole time at the bottom, that explains it.
The thing that stood out most to me in this game was the menu. Or rather.........the lack of it! The way you integrated all the upgrades and map parts into a diegetic was super cool and it really grounds you into the museum, that you're really building it up and that it's your HQ. A simple zoom-in to bring up the menu and bam, there it is.
The mechanics are fairly classic miner stuff with a dash of Terraria in terms of having tools that could help you get around. I did think the digging was a tad unusual where sometimes you could dig further away but I suppose that mostly helped me speed things up anyways. Having the fossils be hidden is a little more unusual for the genre and makes exploration somewhat more random, but in return you do get a little bit more reward when you do discover something.
And wow, you fit in a save system while you were at it!
I can't resist a good upgrade game...
There's a few cool things you did compared to other diving/digging games. I liked that the shop could be brought up anywhere in the world and it wasn't really a giant panel that took you out of the "immersion". Cat Goes Fishing does this as well - even though it's a subtle effect, it keeps you grounded in the world.
Each upgrade feels GOOD. They are strong and you can clearly see its effects immediately. No +10% power here.
I thought the ability to fly above the water was weird at first, but actually you can use this to your (slight) advantage. Once you get a strong engine you can pop out of the water and refill your fuel right as you dive back in. The momentum will give you an early speed boost. This barely has any real effect on gameplay but it was just plain fun to do.
A solid game, I played until I owned every upgrade. I'm not totally sure if there was anything beyond that but I'm sure I was close enough.
The orb system is actually quite innovative. Not just mechanically, but thematically speaking it made perfect sense. It was a bit of a challenge/reward system like gold/silver/bronze, but integrated in a much more interesting way than just 3 levels of timed goals.
The gunplay was solid. I liked that there was quite a delay between shots. That plus the audio and effects made snapping around and pelting heads feel very good. The enemies WERE a bit scary in the sense that they could nail you if they were only mildly close, but at least you healed us between rounds.
I too, enjoyed jumping around on the trashbags (or black balloons? they sure acted a lot more like that!). I managed to stick myself in a corner and farm those bears for a while. Even without the corner, damn it was fun to bounce on those things and just shoot around and explode everything. Super visceral.
Really good stuff overall. Your team always manages to squeeze in mechanical surprises I don't expect and that's what I come here for! Unrelated but have you guys always had the Silver Surfer game over screen? I thought that was great but not sure if you use it in every game.
This is the first narrative-dialogue game I've played of yours and it's fun to see you guys flex your skillsets across many different genres. The game has a lot of variety in it that keeps pulling you forward (the mirror mechanic helps set this up). But there's always a new backdrop, or minigame, or just music to pull you along. In some ways it reminds me of the pacing of Journey where there's a lot of ups and downs in the storytelling to keep the pace interesting.
The music is notable as always. A lot of the music reminded me of To the Moon, probably since both games are more about roaming around and exploring rather than fighting. The beach theme was easily my favorite.
Overall I think you captured the idea of falling deeper into dreams and dark thoughts pretty well. There's a lot of character and creativity put into the world design and it really sells you on the idea of exploring worlds just are just bit off.
Not only do I really like clickers, but I really like ones with timed challenges too. This is fun and I love how condensed the experience is. It's a fun little math/optimization problem, and I ended up playing it ~7 times because you added in that high score board.
The presentation of menu-based incrementals are almost always dry and bland. I am SUPER impressed you managed to make this genre something fairly exciting to watch in motion. If anything, you deserve a lot of innovation points just for that.
A great game that certainly kept me busy :)
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Man this game is super addicting! It's got a "just one more play factor" to it because there's a lot of randomness, yet you feel like you're under control of the randomness.
My best was 990 and it took me a while to figure out how to get there. One of the sections I would gun for every time was the "V" with a bunch of purple pills on it. If you get that, you're somewhat guaranteed to go far as long as you manage your cells well.
One thing I like about this game is the naturally increasing difficulty as you fall down faster. It gets very hard to correctly weave your box right in front of a red one, or to choose the correct angle in order to bounce your ball in the right direction to nab 5 pills in a row. Stuff like this is what really hooked me, because again, even if you miss, you feel like you were just close enough and could make it next time around.
I'm impressed with the theming, this was a really unique take on the theme. Even if there are other deep learning games, I doubt they'll have this kind of presentation. I think this game is an unsung hero this jam. If people can get past the learning curve, they're in for a treat.
Just amazing core gameplay, you still manage to uncover new kinds of game designs I've never seen before. After playing your game, I REALLY like the idea of controlling a separate, physics based object. It's sorta like a game where you manually kick around a ball, except in this case it's so much more because you have to ride it, and the bounciness gives it a life of its own.
I went in blind and it looks like I figured out your tips anyways, in that exact order. Like your other games, I start off awkward and clunky, but then ride a smooth curve of improvement and I always see better and better progress by the minute. That stuff is addicting.
The big key for me was indeed jumping off as soon as the drill started. From there I eventually learned to control my jump height so I could continue my combo across columns. By the end of my playthrough, I could dance around each column with a full combo unless the height difference was too much. I ended up getting to the red blocks which I think are doable, but require no more than a couple mistakes or you're done.
The game is great as is but I wondered if different kinds of tiles would help or ruin the experience. On one hand it seems good, to add to the decision-making and shake things up. On the other hand it feels REALLY good to time the tile rising and continue your combo. That wouldn't really be possible if you had to be careful about bombs coming up or something. Perhaps just a stun object that spawns so that you would have to do something fancy like jump off your friend to get over it.
Probably the most innovative game from you and one of my faves. Looking forward to the next!
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The time limit mechanic was a great twist. I've played a number of shapeshift games in LD, but I think this is the only one I've played with that sort of mechanic. I was surprised with how much it added, because now I had to be careful about when and where I switched. This added a good variety to what would normally be a rote exercise in going small and then going big when you reached the exit. Here, you had to quickly "big-cancel" when you reached a tall section and then move forward. The execution actually felt very nice when performing this quickly.
Like others said, some of the level mechanics/ideas do overstay its welcome a bit. Although as I mentioned earlier, even though the levels weren't particularly challenging me after a while, I was getting faster at managing my size changes and figuring out sections on the fly which felt good - mastery of the mechanic.
The end section was a nice cherry on top of everything and a great cap to an insane concept. Not many games can pull of the inception idea well but yours felt good.
What I really like about this game is that it really challenges you in novel-ish ways. We're so used to playing platformers at this point that the challenge can be pretty rote. But you throw in a number of obstacles here that I haven't seen, even in a circular platformer. Stuff like the shifting sands that uncover dangerous things. Having to time your jump and angle is really interesting here, and it's stuff like that that really solidifies the core gameplay on top of all the other cool things.
LOL that intro. I like how the phone fell out even though he was just standing there.
I really liked the turnbased twist. When it comes to turnbased vs realtime, a lot of people often opt for realtime for a more actiony feel. What they forget is that you can create a lot more complexity and depth of situations in a turnbased setting because the player has time to think about the situation (like AOE vs Civ). Because of that, it was interesting to see your game where you could plot out when you wanted to use your bubbles and how you wanted to kill the enemies in front of you. The piranha required a bit of oldschool Rogue know-how to beat effectively.
So the game has a lot of potential to go further. I really liked how tense it got in the final puzzle when you're running out of oxygen and need to squeeze by the squids. There's a lot of room for more of that stuff if you wanted to tighten up the oxygen nodes and force players to be real careful about their moves.
Really cool idea overall. I only caught one bug. I was able to move the rock more than 1 square by hitting arrows multiple times during interaction. I was looking forward to abusing this but couldn't reproduce :P
I'll have to echo some of the other people's statements. I initially thought is was the same sort of puzzle games I've seen in the past but you flipped it on its head pretty quick. The spring jump adds a nice dimension to the game style immediately and you start to look at the levels in different ways.
Early on I initially thought the jump was more of a hindrance and I could easily mess myself up if I wasn't careful. By the end of the game I realized that you can actually get yourself out of many situations with it and it was much more flexible than I expected. I believe it was the figure-8 level that taught me that because I was really racking my brain on that one. From there, everything went much smoother after I made that connection.
The enemies were another dimension that caught me off guard. The timing elements weren't too tricky, but it got me to think about my route just a bit more carefully. Overall I liked how you took a familiar concept, and threw in just a few extra elements to really expand on the concept and make you think about it in new ways. Great job!
The game is an interesting romp where you're a platformer but need to keep your obstacles from spreading. My initial impression of the game was that the game was interesting but potentially the fire clearing could get a bit tedious. The saving grace was that it was actually rather fun to clean up a whole room. A bit like Visceral Cleanup.
But the end of the game really showed off what it was made of. I saw you wanted to give off the feel of a tense situation where the room is getting flooded with fire. You sorta achieved that here, though of course clearing out the room was doable. It was a bit like a puzzle game at that point, where time matters. How do you clear the room when the fire keeps spreading? What route should I take? How fast do I need to clear it?
These are not questions I often get to ask myself in a platformer. This ended up being a very unique experience in terms of gameplay and I was very surprised with what I saw. Great innovation here!
This game was quite the hippocampus test :) I imagine taxi drivers would be good at remember all these room layouts but I definitely had trouble. The slimes were definitely threatening at all times and it made it difficult to figure out the best way to weave through them all. I suppose that's why you leave food everywhere, as you can run into no-win situations - which is fine.
It was very deflating to search 90% of the rooms and realize the key was way in the other direction! Not much you can do about that really. I suppose if you reached a dead end, you could give them 2 or 3 sandwiches to have made it worth their while lol.
I really liked your gif and explanation. I wouldn't have thought to use a bit of physics to provide the randomness. That's a super cool idea, and technically is quite fast to implement from scratch compared to a standard one (at least the first step). Thanks for sharing!
@wheffle I considered maybe a mech theme to make the slower turning make sense but you're totally right about your observations. I wanted to try for a more tactical game than a microing one. Thanks for the feedback :) I'd love to get all the correct RTS controls in there in a real version.
@neonjeff haha, I thought the term "one-butt kitchen" was common but a few people told me they hadn't heard the term before. I like that lore idea though :thinking:
@maybeagoose You'll have to select a character by pressing 1-4 or clicking their portrait up top.
@bytinggames thanks, those are all great suggestions :) You hit the nail on the head, I was more interested in the idea of being stuck in a corridor with your chums than anything, so all the game elements tried to focus on that feeling. That's the main reason the turn speed is so slow, so that you rely on tactics and teammates to get out of the situation. Increasing the turn speed would indeed increase accessibility, but it would take away the dread of being snuck up from behind and caught off guard. ...like a real alien tunnel!
A gameplay video to help players who are struggling. The general idea is to identify what is dangerous and cover that area. Don't use grenades unless you absolutely have to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDwcrZARxCM
@pkenney as always, the gameplay breakdowns are much appreciated. I just now realize that in some ways it can be even better feedback than suggestions/solutions. Because as a dev I get to diagnose the problems from my angle as well. I'll be taking that into account with my future comments :)
Your insight into the upgrades and threat analysis of enemies gave me a ton of info into how I should present them. For the record, small enemy bites are 1% damage, exploding enemies are 10% when too close, and big guys are 30%. And only now do I understand how important it is to convey that since people probably overestimate the danger of the small guys like you said.
Fun game that definitely lures you to play further with its upgrades. Some of the modules here are pretty unique, and I didn't expect the core gameplay to be about countering weaknesses which is pretty novel. Gives me shades of Octopath Traveler in that regard.
I didn't look at any guides when I went into it so I mistook the airblast as some kind of oxygen generator so I avoided it in my final runs. I could make it 90% of the way there playing without it. I eventually checked back here and saw my folly though.
I did like how gold becomes obsolete over time. It's like a worker placement game and you free up workers as certain things are no longer relevant to your goals (in this case, the miner and the radio). So I thought that was really neat and you could play into that even more in a full version.
Good stuff, the game looks great and I'm always a fan of fishing/mining stuff.
Absolutely brilliant! There are a bunch of VVVVVVV-likes, but not only did you tie it to "lore" really well, but you took it in your own direction as well.
The biggest difference is that you don't control when gravity changes directly, your positioning and timing does. This created really unique scenarios when it came to stuff like speedrunning, where you would purposely do some weird routing to make sure the beam was in the right spot at the right time to do some optimal jumps. I liked that there were multiple paths as well, so you could be -relatively- creative in your approach to things, depending on your skillset.
The constant up and down switches were very cool since the level design was spot on. I found myself quickly and constantly scanning both the floor and ceiling for opportunities to progress. Also, the distance from you to the UFO also affects the beam, and thus the platforming and level design. Very interesting stuff!
The music using the beam AS part of it was so good. Everything about this design is so tight.
My last comment is on the game concept itself. Your concept was straight to the point and I got the twist immediately. The idea of using ceilings to avoid getting sucked up was very smart and a great way to pull in the player. Fantastic job~
This game is just insane, nearly perfect execution across the board. Some of the golden sections were very challenging which made it even better, and stabbing the dragon was an unusually satisfying experience.
Fun stuff, one of the more satisfying things about this is how the enemies can die to obstacles as well. It's really satisfying to have 3 of them lined up against a wall only to have spikes plow through them all.
The game is quite scary to be caught in the middle of multiple enemies. While you CAN carefully pick up bullets from multiple angles, it's not worth the risk as it's easy to mess up such a thing and lose a precious HP. I usually just flocked to the furthest bottom area (that couldn't get hit by spikes) and turtled it out. I wouldn't say the game is terribly hard, but you do need to make sure you don't get caught in bad situations.
Regardless of that, I do like some of the hecticness the situations generated. It wasn't always easy figuring out the best way to prepare to absorb hits so I was always kept on my toes. An impressive game, especially for a solo effort.
Haven't seen a variation like this before. It's like Diner Dash or Cook Serve Delicious where you have to figure out the best approach to taking orders, except for this one it's a different execution minigame. I loved that idea.
Because you're mostly choosing which ones to tackle, I always tried to chunk the actions together to make it quicker. I always brought my left hand to my mouse for the acupuncture to hypertap for example, so it was costly if I didn't chunk that action.
You guys always seem to make games that are easy to play and hard to high score. I don't even want to attempt a high score because you get a whole lotta crazy people that are willing to speed run the hell out of your games :)
Very fun game with a jarring intro to get you in the right mindset. Kudos to coming up with different and interesting inputs to mimic real life techniques.
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Really fun game, you should get more eyeballs on this! The mechanic is quite awkward at first, but by the time you beat the game, you get good at catch the sword midair and utilizing your jump double cancels to basically continuously move. It feels great when you reach that point.
Yes bouncing the sword REALLY high gets it stuck, but I can't help but be entertained when I throw a sword from downtown and it actually lands on something. Or multiple things...
Again, this game really shines once you get good enough to bounce the sword and constantly catch it to continue your momentum. I wish there was more content and levels so that's a good thing. The game started to really spice it up in its boss battles. Awesome job.
This is the first attempt at a game like Creeper World that I've seen - I always thought the concept had other places the design go move towards. Your game is a bit more on the traditional TD side and less on creating sprawling networks, which I liked. I also like the idea of the corruption coming out in waves, such that you could throw in the early-descent mechanic. It's always fun to have push-your-luck mechanics in TDs.
I had a relatively simple playstyle. I just placed pulsar towers along the boundaries around the portals, generators around them, and then solar towers behind those. Upgrade high traffic areas a bit after that. Descending early on the last map is quite dangerous and I stopped doing it beyond layer 4.
Overall an excellent game, I was able to clear the last stage fairly easily but the game feels pretty intense at all times because you don't know just how much damage the next layer will do. And of course, things get pretty hairy as your network gets compromised and you have to turtle up in the corner.
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Wow, there's quite a bit here for a jam timeframe, but after glancing at your older games it looks like you already had experience with this kind of stuff so I'm sure it helped.
The power up system was pretty interesting, and I don't think I've seen too many games where the enemies could use them too (outside of the really classic/hardcore roguelikes).
Like some others said, the 4-way attack was a bit tricky to handle, especially with the bow, but it is what it is and you just adapt your firing pattern to it.
The difficulty was right up my alley. I used to play doubles on DWI/Stepmania with a hand on each side, so this ended up being simple to finish. You must have quite a bit of rhythm game background yourself to tune it to this level.
In general I've played a lot of rhythm games and this is the first time I've seen a cohesive story tying it all together. This was absolutely brilliant and deserves way more recognition. The idea of tying the left and right portions with how the mother and daughter would be play together was meaningful and it immediately put me in the right mindset for the game. Then as the the characters grew up, the difficulty of the notes reflected that as well. How did you come up with the idea? I want to take notes from you.
This is going to be a game I recommend a lot in the future - one of the most innovative ones I've seen, and certainly for its genre.
The choice of music was fantastic, and I was even more surprised to see that you composed it yourself. In the initial section of the game I couldn't help but smile because of the Pokemon-snap-likeness + music + atmosphere. You made it feel like it was going to be a pretty fun guided tour of strangeness.
The pacing changes are a good twist. Especially at 1k because the section right before that is a bit slower on normal mode. I really enjoyed the scanning mechanic in general. It gave it enough of a skill requirement that kept you engaged with what was going on.
How did you create the cave? I figured you were just choosing random points and connecting them but there were some parts that looked really good, like when rocks jut out and such (like in your 2nd screenshot).
Very cool experience overall. Again, the first couple minutes especially are an amazing combination of sights, sounds, and gameplay!
Ooo I actually wasn't familiar with what you could do with that. I'll be keeping those in mind when I need something like that. Thanks!
That is one manly main character, down to his Conan-ish death scream lol. I would've liked to have a partner to play this with. Judging from the gif you put up, it might feel like a cross between Nidhogg and Smash.
As for the solo play, the game is a bit intimidating at first as you're jumping down into the unknown, but you start to get the hang of it, especially utilizing the double jump to save yourself, even after falling on an enemy. I think the parts that really shined were the Quickman sections where you had to outrun the maze.
The art is great and cohesive. I loved the animations and it reminded me of stuff like Blackthorne where you have pixel art with just tons of frames that make it stand out.
How much time did you guys spend on the multiplayer vs the singleplayer? It's not often you see a game with both. Actually........I can't think of another LD game that's ever done that so I'm not sure how tough that would be on your dev resources.
Anywho, you got the most important part of the gameplay right, which was smacking an enemy. Even though the game could get repetitive, that part NEVER got old. So I had a bit of "Just one more smack" syndrome going on until I eventually slipped one too many times. Good job on this game, I'd love to hear what the lore is for this person just heading down nonstop and beating up demons. Maybe it's just a Sisyphus thing...
First off, your website URL and content is on another level. I got Power Dunkers on repeat as I type this.
You absolutely nailed the theme in such a novel angle - going deeper and deeper into conspiracies. It helped that I was playing this way past midnight, so you putting my real time in to game just heightened the experience even more.
When I first started playing, I thought it was going to be a bit like Orwell and I would have to pay a lot of attention to all the details. I'm pretty glad it was more of a VN and I could just enjoy the pacing and story. I'm not too much of a VN person but I did like the way the game was presented in terms of using various mediums.
I ended up really liking the story although I was a bit confused at first because I couldn't quite tell what the setting was. Since the game was so eerie I thought maybe it was an unreliable narrator and I was being taken for a ride of paranoia, or perhaps it was a simulation.
I'm VERY glad you put a summary of the story at the very end. I've never seen that personally, and that helped me fill out the missing 15% of the story I didn't fully connect. Again, that was a bit of me questioning if the content I was seeing was reliable, rather than necessarily the writing.
This was a cool game overall that really surpassed my expectations. The conspiracies and mysteries were presented in a way that really perked my interest and kept me moving along. Very bold idea and execution!
16881 was my highest score, I really liked what you all did here. By raising the skill ceiling on the falling mechanic, you separated yourselves from all the other falling deeper games this LD. The mechanics felt a bit like Mario's cape in SMW, where you sorta pulled back and forward and the cape could go into a dive state. When you get really good with the dive, it feels reaaaal good to go fast and dodge obstacles. After a while you just pray you don't smack into something big like the doghouse :)
Excellent execution, both on an artistic front and technical front!
Those depth charges scared the bejeezus out of me :laughing: The water sounds rushing in were very realistic too which actually added to some of that terror. I actually expected the game to be more of a chill, exploration game at first, even after the hint of tentacles were shown in the beginning. I most DEFINITELY didn't expected what would happen in the 3rd room and beyond.
Well done with the level design. There were some good, solid principles in play here like giving a window for the player to look through for a bit of anticipation, and the way you revealed things was paced pretty well. When you first go through a long tunnel it was disorienting and I forgot which way was up, but that was remedied once you land in the hub area. So it was good to take the player on a bit of a journey there as well.
The most memorable moment for me was toss a flare at the vertical tentacles. The way they reacted to it was just really well done, from the speed of its movement to its sound. Great job on paying attention to the experience and focusing on unfolding all the action in good, tense ways!
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Took me 7 tries or so, this game is brutal! I absolutely loved your game. I am actually glad you depicted the lock with negative space. It's less obvious than moving actual squares into place for example, so for me I really liked that it racked my brain a bit trying to move pieces so fast. Great job on choosing the difficulty for the game, it was right up my alley.
One interesting side note about your concept: with normal fighting games after you land a hit, you then play an execution "minigame" of comboing your opponent for a reward like max damage. I found it really interesting you managed to achieve a very similar effect by using an actual minigame, rather than using combat mechanics. That's something I really haven't seen before, and it's an interesting design to think about.
I love innovative ideas and this one is one of the better ones I've seen in a while. Hope you keep doing future LDs!
This game exceeded my expectations around every corner lol, amazing job.
The first twist of how to play was awesome, you had really good pacing there because I most definitely thought the controls were messed up. Even kicking around the car was well done because it still (mildly) adhere to car physics so there was a bit of skill involved in it. If you COULD align the car correctly with the road, it felt very satisfying to blast it.
Going deeper each time, yet another clever and hilarious twist.
And like others said, the jokes didn't get repetitive nor did you overstay your welcome. This game was an excellent package overall and probably will be one of the main ones I remember from this jam.
Really fun concept. I wanted to go further but fatal crashes seem to still be in version. Nonetheless I saw a lot of things I liked.
Using light as a dodge/crit mechanic was really interesting, along with using lantern fire as a resource. I think this could be explored even further as I haven't quite seen a game like this regarding light management.
I also liked the concept of saving your card hand between battles, so there was a sense of hand management there, such as saving your heals for out of combat or saving the big hit card for the boss. That's pretty novel to me as I normally see games like Slay the Spire where your hand/deck resets every match. This added an interesting layer to playing my cards.
I enjoyed the experience, I could tell you had quite a lot to do as the game is very ambitious. I'm always impressed with what you accomplish in these jams and this game is no different!
P.S. we actually ended up with mildly similar games in concept. Auto movement to the upper right and auto-ish party-based combat. I TOO wanted environment generation to be a thing but that didn't happen :P
I really liked this game. Have you played Fights in Tight Spaces? It's very similar in concept but in a few ways I actually prefer your game. The main difference is that your game is very fast paced. You can quickly decide your action and then execute on it. So it still feels "real-time" even though it's turnbased, because once you get in your groove, you're pushing and swapping things all over.
I loved that you emphasized the obstacles so much in this game. I started out using just normal attacks more, but once I got the hang of the obstacles, I was very much just weaving in and out of them and annihilating enemies.
I played all the way through and beat the game. By the time you get to the boss, you are good enough at the game's concept that he's a pushover. Overall an excellent game and one that makes you feel GOOD playing it as you do hotter and hotter combos and decisions.
Is that............Donald Duck I'm fighting? lol, interesting sound effect.
Great job figuring out how to make a single player Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime without........making a single player LiaDS. I've tried to think of a way in the past and couldn't come up with anything, so the wheel mechanic is quite elegant.
After an approach where I just have everything on full blast and hurtling downwards (which failed), I wound up with the same strategy as @local-minimum so I sorta bypassed a lot of the intended strategy. I did play around with the controls for a while though and I appreciated how the mechanics worked together. Somehow bringing in FTL mechanics where you can upgrade your battery systems to wield stronger tools would be a good path for a future version.
A fun game that really keeps you on your toes and wakes you up. I liked that each section offered something new. I was flying through the stages pretty quickly until I hit the lightning section. That was was pretty tricky but was smooth sailing from there.
The addition of the penguins was definitely a good idea since the stronger players could shoot for the if they wanted and they were my favorite parts of the game, especially the one in the lightning section.
This game was actually pretty unique. Not that I've played it but maybe the only game that is similar is that one mobile game where you slash weakpoints and block attacks - forgot the name. But I like what you have hear regardless. It's like a simplified FPS boss rush type game. Short but shows off the concept really well.
The graphics effects you have are really good. It adds so much to the game and makes it stand out for some normal, faux-3d type game. I was also fine with the simplified combat. It was challenging enough because of it's pacing so it fulfilled that need.
Very cohesive package overall. I thought it was going to be a normal dungeon crawler going into it but you definitely surprised me. Nice job!
Definitely a game that makes you want to keep going just to see how it evolves :) I really enjoyed the difficulty, it made a lot of sense too since it is skiing after all. Both these points created a pacing where you see a cool sight and what's ahead, and then the tense moment where you actually have to navigate the section. Just nonstop rising and falling tension which makes for a great experience.
I'm curious how your team is divided since it had a lot of work done on the art side and the level design side. Is the majority of your team artists?
Very memorable experience and a great way to weave "ski" and "trip" together.
Simple yet novel concept. Even though it's a puzzle game at heart, it still FEELS like a city builder of sorts and conveys that same sense of progress which makes it really impressive. All villages did was give you more resources, yet it felt good to nab a huge block of them as if you really were playing a strategy game. Nice sleight of hand there :)
I'm curious how you even came up with the idea. It's really easy to pick a theme like that and get drawn into common tropes. I always love how devs come up with the innovative ones. Awesome game, I played it to the end, was very hard to stop. Sometimes puzzle games can overstay their welcome but you kept throwing in interesting challenges using the same core mechanics.
What a well done variation on the mining concept. You did everything right when it comes to expanding on the core gameplay. The economy forces you to actually get further rather than just grind out the easy sections up top. The fact that exit shafts become more spread out as you get further adds a lot to the tension as you push your luck and try not to die. I know people are raving about the art (deservedly so), but there is a lot to say about your understanding of how to keep the player interested. Awesome job!
I know they don't play the same but this game gave me some Commander Keen vibes. I think it was due to the art style mixed with a simple collection core gameplay. The jetpack and drill led to a bit more personality in your game (2 layers of drills!) so that was a good touch. Like others said, I just sorta flew over most enemies so that took away the tension of the enemies. Probably a bit of a good thing since deaths were a bit painful.
I always like necromancer-ish games and it's fun to just see how big and chaotic things can get. The presentation is amazing and the UI well done. I actually liked the dragging feature, it felt more intuitive to me.
With that said, I'm not sure if there was a strategy to this game or was it mostly just a game about building and upgrading guys as fast as I could. If there was more strategy that I missed, please let me know. I know you can drag characters around a bit but that didn't seem useful beyond the beginning areas.
Overall I really liked the feel of the game. It somewhat reminded me of elevator stages in beat em ups when enemies drop down and it's go time. All the chaos in the final areas was definitely a sight to behold.
I liked the variety of environments, it definitely compelled me to keep going just to see what all the systems were going to be and their mechanics. I will say that it was a bit too frustrating to die near the end with no checkpoints, so although I tried a dozen times or so, I never could complete it.
A couple of really good touches I noticed. First off the tail looks AMAZING. How'd you pull that off? Secondly, see where your previous runs died was very cool as well. It was hilarious to see 6 of them whipping around just on one tooth.
A lot of it reminded me a bit of Ren and Stimpy, which was a show that had no qualms about weird closeups on bodily subjects. Pretty unique game - not sure how many other devs will attempt this kind of idea lol.
Absolute coincidence, but I JUST started watching Rick and Morty this week and I watched that episode maybe 2 days ago :dizzy_face:
Really good point about the graveyard, I hadn't thought of that angle. Thanks for the detailed breakdown on the tail. I thought maybe it was using some kind of joint system (if Unity) but it looked too good to be that. Really awesome that you pretty much figured out how to make that visual from scratch.
I can not believe you pulled off a game design like this. When it comes to "a roguelike without combat", you lose so many levers to pull on for upgrades and you assume the game will be too simple. You managed to find ways to keep it very interesting though, mostly due to the hole and obstacle mechanics.
You figured out so many clever angles on the upgrades and they're a joy to get. In all honesty, gaining access to new types of movement in this sort of design is WAY more interesting than just getting a sword that does more damage. You've really shifted my mindset from this game.
Collecting all the upgrades becomes an intrinsic goal quickly, and you start to feel like a god as you gain more and more powers and can tackle trickier situations. I may have been 4 or so upgrades from having them all but my game did freeze up :O
I actually really, REALLY liked the music choice. It was a very pleasant loop and took the edge off of bad situations and dying. Bold and good choice.
Just a brilliant design all around and one of the best I've played this jam!
I've seen digging games and worm games so far, but not a compost heap one lol. I actually really enjoyed that it was a much more chill environment with bug friends rather than enemies. I could focus on exploring and just enjoying the environment.
I saw you said you had a lot more details planned. Did you mean exploring within the compost box or once you move beyond that? Like some kind of cycle where you move to the real world or something.
Either way, I thought the level was all composed really well and was interesting enough to explore. I didn't realize you could zoom out until I re-read the instructions and that helped me finish it. Fun concept!
Very interesting twist! Funnily enough, I wanted to have a StS overmap in my game as well but couldn't squeeze in the time, so I'm glad to see someone pulled it off.
I actually found parts of this to be pretty engaging. The real-timeness of it offered a different twist on things since time is now the currency, so you take hits as you play bigger cards, not just spend up to an SP cap. Because of this, I found myself having a couple strats, one where I'm just dropping attacks as fast as I could, and the other for extreme healing (needed for bigger ships). I basically just use my fastest attacks to cycle through my deck and then use heals when I can.
One thing I couldn't figure out through play: how long do buffs last? I grabbed various cards with buffs like +energy and -accuracy, but I couldn't see how long those buffs lasted, unless they were permanent? I think overall, what's missing are more combo cards. Like to play into the realtime nature of the game, a card that allowed double damage for 2 seconds so that the player might save up for a big salvo when that card comes up. Obviously you're limited by jam time so it's not a big deal in the end. The existing system does allow for some light combos.
Glad to hear you plan to expand on the game, I think there are plenty of places for the game to go and I've never seen this kind of theming with a deckbuilder. Super excited to see what comes up!
Couldn't figure out what to do until I scrolled down, REALLY glad you put that hint in there. After that it was pretty easy - just wait for a handful of mats and then build a tower in the corner with down+block and eventually get to the top.
I will say it is VERY fun and challenging to try to build a tower in the middle of the stage. It was fun to watch they physics wreck havoc while you tried your best to salvage it. Perhaps it could be tune so that that was the primary playstyle (or building a pyramid to have stability).
Overall I thought this was a pretty fun concept. Though rather than going Deeper and Deeper you're going higher and higher :P Spamming blocks for the sake of doing it and watching the physics go haywire is definitely worth playing around with.
You innovated on 2 different fronts here - the mining and the upgrade progression. Pretty bold of you to toss in 2 completely new things but I guess it IS Tetris which is a game that really hasn't been iterated on much. Though I never QUITE figured out the digging rules, I had a general sense of when I would cut into the dirt and when I would not, and almost always got to where I want to be. I think that's a good result of the design if I can sort of fumble my way to the goal I had in mind so very nice job on that front.
Ye old medieval remix of the Tetris theme was a perfect fit and the interface is solid even though you had to crap in a lot more than a normal Tetris game. I liked how you went all in on the theme, from the texture on the background to the nice serif font you chose.
The upgrades certainly kept me going a few more rounds so I'm glad you threw that in. Some of the pieces were fun to play with and really changed my approach. Neat game!
So tbh, I wouldn't have actually tried this game out unless I read the comments. The graphics were so good I just assumed it was a narrative game which I tend to avoid. When I found out it was a boss rush, that was what got my attention :)
Very fun experience. Afaict, you're meant to take hits and rely on getting bubbles. For example, I couldn't find a way to dodge the eel at ALL. If that is was indeed an intentional design decision, then I actually think it was a really good decision. It upped the ante on everything and made you feel helpless... as you should against giant leviathans.
Like others have said, this is also the first boss rush game I've ever played in an LD. It must've been difficult to make enough time to craft the quality boss fights. Nice work!
I generally don't find much innovation in bullet hell games so I was surprised to see your game. It had a couple things I hadn't seen before. 1. A roguelite meta with upgrades. It seems like something obvious in retrospect, but afaik I have never seen a true bullet hell with this style of metasystem, maybe a normal shmup at best. It was enjoyable to grind it out. I did maybe 6 or 7 loops, usually beating a couple bosses each time. 2. Specifically colored balls. When the fox shot out 2 orange balls and 1 white one, I thought that was a magnificent touch and it really stood out.
I liked the game but I also like bullet hells in general. I would've liked the slow button to be a bit slower, or you might want 2 levels of slow like in some Touhou games, but I managed anyways because the bullet patterns were relatively forgiving. I did find it VERY enjoyable to move point blank to the fox and bomb it for half it's health. Super fun.
It was interesting playing the game and changing your mental model of the game over time. You have no idea what to expect going into it. After the first fish interaction, I pretty much just clicked on everything and hoped it did something.
Then I got to the ordering puzzle and then I was like oh OK.....this is a real puzzle game. And so on. Basically every puzzle sort of surprised me because it was a different thing from before.
The ending TOTALLY caught me off guard and had no idea what was going on. I did read the comments later and now understand. Definitely not something I've seen in a game, much less even heard of. Nice little educational game :)
This game was a blast! Like you saw on stream, I actually didn't know you could turn your turret for a while, although I did manage 830m with just that technique.
I initially thought I could just turtle in the corner since it would mean I only needed to turn 90 degrees. Outside of having to dodge occasionally, this worked out well. The problem is that hitting enemies far away is quite difficult doing that, and missing shots vs a squid will definitely ruin your day.
It's fun when it gets super hectic and your goal is just to run around in circles collecting as much score as possible before you die. I really enjoyed this game and the leaderboard was a great addition!
Nice work, for a compo game you squeezed more work than I would have expected. Several different parts to the fishing system, a good handful of collectables, and a cohesive package or audio to go with it.
Fishing games are a dime a dozen, but you managed to toss in some new things I hadn't seen before. I've never seen that depth selection mechanic. I've also never seen one that gave you experience per new species you found. That made collecting that much more compelling and drew me in to keep playing.
The first item I got was the bow and I thought that was hilarious. It definitely set the mood that I was going to be fishing up some pretty interesting items.
I'm a big fan of fishing games and have made one myself. I think this was a solid package and you have a really good grasp on what makes these games enjoyable.
I reallly wanted to be good at this game without resorting to slomo but I played so much better with it on :sweat_smile: The game has a real good feel to it. The bow is basically a gun and a grappling hook in one, so flying around bouncing on top of dudes is awesome.
The graphics were really cool too. I've NEVER seen a pixel vignette before so I love that you went all in on that style. At this point I can just tell from a gif that it's your game, which is a good sign. You're getting better and better at the presentation, the motion lines when dashing were a nice touch ...even though I didn't actually need to dash that much. Well done.
There are so many nice little touches here, it's awesome. The music got my head nodding almost immediately. The little wink at the end. Getting knocked into the camera. All those little things just elevate this above the others.
I really enjoyed the core gameplay. You kicked the difficulty in pretty much right away, so it kept me on my toes and paying attention. And also using a lot of old, dormant NES skills...
So yea, extra shoutouts to the level designer(s). You took a small amount of mechanics but kept remixing them in ways that made me think differently. Really well done game!
I love how bold the concept is. I can count on 1 hand how many games throw you into a tutorial with time limit, and you had to scramble to read and process what to do. I wouldn't say it's a best practice, but it definitely fit the theme of this game - trying to quickly pop out all these potions under pressure juxtaposed against the whimsical text.
I didn't catch that recipes were order sensitive until I read the comments, that does explain a lot of the difficulty. I did enjoy collecting ingredients and trying different things, but I really only ended up with 3 recipes found by the end of it. I will say that when you DO finish a recipe, it is *very* satisfying since you felt like you discovered it yourself, rather than just follow a list that's given to you.
There is a lot to take in in a short amount of time. You're scrambling to get recipes to work, but at the same time there's interesting text to read, and cool things in the background like the goblin shark. Even though it feels like a lot, it mostly ended up immersing me more into the game. Great job on the concept and making something cool out of it!
Side note: I'm always interested in game design blogs, what kind of topics do you plan to talk about in yours?
I initially thought this would be a Lemmings-esque game but I quickly realized it was its own beast. After I saw how difficult it was going to be, I put on my thinking cap.
One of my first strategies was to corral all the molatoes off to 1 side with signs. Can't have a ceiling fall on you if there's no ceiling! It didn't take too long before I realized the folly of this decision - you'll run out of money eventually.
A few strats later, I figured I could ignore the signs and just focus on keeping the miners alive with reinforcements. It'd be a bit like an aim trainer at that point, just quickly recognizing when parts would collapse and stop it. That ran into the same issue of running on of money too, as it was pretty dependent on RNG without signs.
Finally I came to the strat that others seemed to find most effective: just keeping 1 alive. I got very far with this tactic, a bit into the total darkness area before I was pelted with a stray rock.
This game was fun to try to figure out! I suspect the "proper" way to play is to properly use signs to point miners at the ore, and using that ore to keep reinforcements up. I'd LOVE to see a video of people playing this game w/o resorting to using a solo molatoe, I feel like I could learn a lot from that.
Ahhhh ok, nice control! I tried to do that but wasn't as good with my reinforcement placement and let too many stray guys die.
I couldn't help but laugh when I got ending 1 in a matter of seconds. Not because of the writing or mood, but because I barely got to see the game yet :laughing:
I was interested to see where the writing was going to go. Because you woke up in such a confused and sudden state, I thought the player was going to be the murderer all along but couldn't see people in the correct reality. I think it's because the setup and pacing was similar to the Tales of the Black Freighter sequence in the Watchmen Director's Cut.
I looked into it too much. In some ways, the way you ended the story was more of a twist than that since it wasn't what I was expecting. Nice work exploring new kinds of games and genres, I like to do the same myself. That's what LD is really all about imo.
I don't play D&D, but now I can tell people I have a level 10 wizard.
It's hard not to put this game down, you most definitely want to see how the game plays at max level. I'm glad you made the upgrades linear and not exponential. Mostly because in a jam, you don't really have time to grind out expensive upgrades so I really enjoyed just experiencing the game and how nutty it got over time.
The game is a blast though. Really fun to watch with just enough interaction to keep me busy, but also enough leeway that I can just watch the physics happen :)
I really liked the concept of the game but had quite the hard time getting far in it. I must've played at least 10 rounds but could only beat the mailbox mission lol.
I went in blind and figured I just needed to rough people up with my fists. Only after I scrolled down and read the instructions did I realize you needed to go into debt. From there I just kept buying laser swords and smacking people with them. Probably overkill and not cost efficient, but I was more focused on beating the missions before optimizing.
I eventually got used to hunting down the PI and the layout of the map, that took me several tries to learn along with the combat system. It is quite scary to accidentally run into a cop. I know that's intentional so I have no beef with it, but I was terrified of running into the same cop multiple times since it drains your time so much.
In my best run I beat the mailbox mission but then got hit with a debt gameover. I'm not sure how to make more money than what I did, even if I did buy cheaper weapons.
I still enjoyed the game in the end. The intro got me into the right mindset of a hired gun. The game reminded me of classic GTAs, including the little alleys you can run through. Although there wasn't too much to the city, little things like that made exploration enjoyable. Good job!
$1,390 final score. What a great mashup of genres! The closest thing I've seen to this is Battle Chef Brigade, in terms of having an ingredient collection portion and a cooking portion being different minigames.
I haven't seen a game utilize mining the way you have though, as mining games usually just have a straight up upgrade mechanic once you reach town. With your system though, it creates some actual thought in the mining since you have to gun for recipes. This creates decisions like "am I ahead on time for recipes? Maybe I can start carving out a route towards these mushrooms in case I get a swarm of those recipes".
As simple as it was, I actually really enjoyed the cooking portion. Several times I found myself teetering on the edge of failure, whether it was an order about to go away, or the round time itself was going to run out. So clicking on those relatively small ingredient icons was nerve-wracking, in a good way.
This seemed like a random mashup at first but the more I played it, the more I understood just how well the mechanics worked together. Kudos for making a mining game that's more than just a mining game!
Really, really great immersion. I love the early experience and how you get into the mood of the game right away. You and your friend are dying (ESPECIALLY your pal), you have no idea why, but you gotta suck it up and move forward. After the first few deaths you start to realize how careful you really need to be, either with your stealth or your resource management, this game is TOUGH.
I could only make it to the 2nd tick of the bar-map through sneaking around and avoiding conflict. Is there a trick to using the gun that I'm not aware of? I can usually get a shot off if no one's moving, but it seems like there's a dead zone where I can't shoot if they get too close.
Very interesting game! The first playthrough I struggled with understanding the colors, as others have. I assumed I was some sort of god-like entity for some reason (not a nation) so I just plopped down units right into various enemy home bases, thinking I was successfully causing unrest in territories.
After coming back to the comments section, I learned a bit more about how I should be playing. I then started to really understand what the game was all about. Big ol land grabs in the beginning while trying to keep a low profile. I really like how this game is divided into 3 phases:
1. "stealth phase" where you build your economy under wraps 2. A conquering phase where you take enemy territories while stomping out enemies in your own countries 3. All out war where you don't care about reputation anymore and go for the win. At some point you're left AND right clicking furiously on a zone to deploy everything you got.
I really enjoyed the territory battles. It was especially fun when there were 6 nations all battling for the same chunk of land. That's something you don't really see in a strategy game and it has a great fantasy to it.
I'm not sure if adding a tech system would add too much complexity or if the game's elegance is good enough. Really great base game concept here and I'm curious how you could expand it. Either way, very cool game. I had a bad first impression but I'm glad I stuck with it :)
Cycle 8 here. It took me a little bit to figure out things but once I did, the game definitely puts you in the zone trying to figure out optimal routing patterns.
I initially thought you couldn't cross wires. I thought "umm, this game is impossible." But after coming back and checking the screenshots I realized my mistake. From there, it's almost like managing the wires in your computer and making sure they're nice and neat, trying to keep any 90 deg angles limited to the center of the playspace so that you don't get blocked on the sides. Of course, there's still an RNG aspect to it, but the game was fun enough to try a few times.
This was a fairly polished game so I'm pretty impressed. There are a lot of small graphical doodads and effects that really sell the game, and absolutely conveys the LD theme by the end of it.
This game just makes an awesome first impression. I had a boat with all sorts of contraptions on it and it just flailed wildly lol. I went back to the drawing board almost immediately.
What a bold decision to not have even numbers on the good components. Honestly I'd love to see if someone can figure out a way to make use of the wheel, having only 1 available. I tried a few combos but the fastest (and safest) one I could use was 2 boosters and 2 paddles.
Edit: just found your tips and tried it out. A wheel in the back is indeed very fast, as long as you can control whatever other parts you have equipped. The potential to flip over suddenly grows with that.
Overall, a VERY unique game. I haven't played a qwoplike where you can actually design your own builds. Even though I knew some combos would be a nightmare, I would experiment with it anyways just to see how crazy it would get. Easily the definition of "unstable".
@peace-of-cake-games Kirby's Dream Land 3 is my favorite Kirby and I had the exact same thought playing this :)
Really fun with 2 players! There is enough chaos on both sides that can cause misses to be had. I liked that both players had something completely unique for them to do, which I think is necessary for making interesting coop games.
All the little animations and particles just worked so well. The juxtaposition of the top cat getting into a pounce stance and then just hanging their from a parachute is just hilarious and gets you into the world.
As always, not only do you have the polish, but you always slap in novel game experiences while you're at it. Bravo!
Finished it with my hands being super clammy now :) Like others, I blitzed the 4th spotlight not thinking there would be a 5th one so it all fell apart. Though if you can get to the 4th spotlight, it doesn't take TOO long to get back to where you were.
I played a few other balancing games like this so far. There's a couple key differences yours has: 1. Yours is the first mouse-control one I've played. This allowed you to have a much higher height platform than the others because you have way more control than the keyboard. By the end of it, I honestly feel like I learned balancing lessons that I didn't pick up from the other games on how to control your speed, namely because the boxes get so stacked high here that their momentum is *extremely* important to understand. 2. You have strict boundaries on the sides. Because of this, I couldn't just wing it until I got the right amount of speed for the side-spotlights. It's a bit similar to the Gran Turismo training levels where you have to break at the exactly correct time to make sure you slide into a target zone in time.
This combination made this my favorite balancing game so far. I felt like I was genuinely learning some skills here because of those constraints, and it really felt amazing to be able to control 4 boxes like that.
When I saw the theme, I figured it would be right up your alley. You got your priorities straight though with spending time with the fam, there'll always be other jams!
Always good to keep pushing your jam limits. I know you guys have a very high bar set so it feels bad if you don't feel like you met it, but we're all in that boat here. I spent a ton of time with multiplayer and photoshop tutorials myself.
My playthrough of this game was in phases: 1. Learn to move backwards and kick like crazy. While the least effective phase, it was certainly the most fun. 2. At some point I realized I could just hold down space and put my horse in a permanent planche position (lol). This was a bit more effective as I didn't have to worry about timing and the knockback force seemed to be more controllable. 3. Finally, I accidentally pushed in a sheep driving forward, and it dawned on me I could just push all the sheep into the goal much easier... I ended up doing that and won pretty easily.
I'm curious what the planned version was going to be like. I'm sure that pendulum axe was a sign of things to come.
Overall it was a fun concept that immediately interested me as soon as I got in. Hitting the sheep the way you want was challenging, but hey, all the games this jam are. Great work for using so many new tools :)
56 is my best here. I like how it's a bit different from say VVVVVV where you can sorta hover on a line by mashing space. It adds an interesting execution part to some of the gameplay, though it can definitely backfire if you miscount how many times you hit space and reverse yourself right into spikes.
Nice job applying various visual effects to help with the simpler graphics. It winds up with a relatively unique look to it. Also, your game desc is pretty funny, I would've expected this to be called Larry the Unstable Balloon!
@papaver lol great catch! After getting a nullpointer from divide-by-zero, I made it do 9999 damage, then -9999, then finally settled on just 0 so people wouldn't think it's a bug. And yea, there's nothing I found more devastating than getting a multiplication operator, but then accidentally getting a 0 right after D:
I'm actually really interested in multiplayer experiences, but with LD it's always so hard to find people on at the same time. I might keep pushing async game designs and seeing how I can make things feel more interactive.
@wedgiebee very good points, and I too realized that too late in the final balancing hours. I probably could've just kept the equation slots shorter and focused more on the level design so that players would have a bit more control over their fate in the final stages. Thanks for the feedback!
@robonaut121 now there's a good spark of a thought. The different rounds could have a random condition, like make sure you're an even number, or be a number between 10 and 20. To make it not nightmarish it could be a little map like Slay the Spire where you have some control over which challenge you want. Thanks for the idea!
@local-minimum that's a really good idea and should be possible to save off timestamps so that it can playback a live recording, that would make it feel very intense. And omg at negative numbers. Not only is that easy to implement, but if I reduced the slot count, it would give some needed complexity to make up for that in a fun way. Brilliant :)
@mhorth oh man, I love the meta-layer of evaluating equations to place into your equation. That sounds super hectic so I think the idea is great. Couple that with some of the ideas I wrote for robonaut and that could put your math skills to a real test. Thanks for playing!
@mhorth Love it. Another variant could be Price Is Right style where you try to go up to a number but not over it, giving you some intense moments where you're not entirely positive if you should grab that last number :)
@jerem-watts I was trying to figure out simple ways to code in "unstable" elements to the stages and remembered Samus' stage from Smash. I ended up implementing the mechanic but not bothering to hurt the player out of time constraints, so it was half intentional lol. Indeed I ended up using that technique as well.
@nobongo Thanks for the shoutout on the multiplayer portion. Indeed I wanted to have quite a bit more stuff to show off between the players but couldn't connect the dots in time. I'm glad it at least gave off some perception that you were facing against the LD community since those are true input names after all. Next time around I'll figure out how to keep fleshing that out so I'm glad you gave me some hints as to what the feeling of it was.
@peace-of-cake-games haha it was a chaotic world back in caveman times! This was merely an accurate portrayal.
Whenever I see a game like this, the first thing I do is check the comments to see if it's actually scary and/or has jump scares. Luckily the signs give it away that this will be a gentler experience so that is a nice effect of that design choice.
Direction-wise, I like how at first you hold the player's hand, but eventually the world opens up and the signs are a bit less easy to find. And sometimes you might even backtrack a little. But similar to Journey where eventually you can see the mountain goal, the red factory eventually gets noticeable enough to guide you and it ends up having a similar effect.
This was probably an accident, but I love how when you restart, you can still see remnant of the explosion that killed you. In the really open areas, this helped guide me to my previous location :)
So yea, I guess I wanted to point out and praise how even though this was a dark game that messed with your situational awareness, you used a lot of clues to allow the player to figure out where to go next. That's great design.
Scanning the comments, am I really the first person to click the "Do Not Click" button? Now I feel silly >_>
I didn't expect that many levels from a jam game, certainly not with the amount of graphic polish you put in and small team size. I felt like I was challenged in several different ways and there was plenty of variety. I like that one of the levels was the opening section to Ninja Warrior as well, since I recently got to try one of those courses.
The most fun parts of the game were the disappearing blocks and the rainbow road ramps, in that order for me. You really got a sense of speed throughout those sections which feels great since you're on such thin platforms.
This is a minor criticism but I felt like the levels were strung together with too much variety. When there was a new mechanic introduced, it didn't necessarily show up in the next level if my memory serves correct. While this led to keeping players on their toes, it sorta messes with the rhythm of going through the levels, like a song building up but in a bit of a chaotic way.
I still thought the game was quite fun though. I used to play Monkey Ball a ton so the mechanics and levels reminded me a bit of that. I was very impressed that you could convey this computer world so well graphically. The soothing music caught me off guard but it's nice to have that kind of music in a game where you're gonna die a lot. Very complete game, nice work :)
I pretty much held my breath the entire time I played this game. I love how there are lots of different strategies you can use. At first you might think you should just extend the neck and play it safe with balancing. But as you get more comfortable with the mechanics, you can sorta swing and jump over your head constantly like a jump rope. Even then, this is still not easy at ALL, as the head weight is extremely sensitive. I really liked that about the game because it gives this a high skill ceiling, as is usually the case with your games.
Getting to the goal is incredibly satisfying because the level will instantly end, usually as you're about to hit your head on something. Basically every stage ended with me making a mad dash to the goal to free myself from the pain. Very fun game!
On my first play, I definitely laughed out loud when I died in 1 second.
The concept is really good and the hecticness reminds me of Pako Car Chase Simulator. Unfortunately the balance is a bit too hard. I'm not convinced anyone here actually beat the game without using the diagonal trick.
Aside from that, everything works well together. The constant explosion sounds, the floors giving way, the intimidating lava everywhere. The scariest feeling is when you miss your shot at the Safe House, and while you're trying to go to the other entrance, the floor keeps giving out and eventually you're totally blocked.
Cool game and it sounds like you have some really neat tech in there to get it all to work.
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There are so many games that strive to capture the feeling of Oregon Trail, but fail to do so unless they straight up mimic the formula. You managed to create something brand new here that pushes it in a whole nother direction, while still keeping the same great feeling of exploration. Some kind of combination of OT, FTL, and HOMM almost. Did you even pull inspiration from other games or you just pull this one outta thin air?
I really enjoyed trying to figure out the puzzles you set up. The magic system was a great twist to the formula, immediately adding several layers of options on how to optimize the stages. I beat the first stage fairly quickly, but the other 2 I couldn't quite get.
Out of all the LD games I've seen in a while, this one has the most potential for a full version and I'd absolutely love to see it. Amazing gameplay, and all the additional stuff like great graphics and excellent polish are just the cherry on top :)
@rongo-matane thanks for the breakdown! I'm probably in a similar boat where I have played or seen tons of games, and am fortunate to have my brain be able to pull from them easily. Your game probably isn't super Oregon Trail-y in terms of mechanics, but it does share the same general sense of a journey of a ragtag band of followers trying to survive, which isn't as common of a theme as I'd like.
Awesome presentation and another game that makes you go WTF. At first I started out trying several runs where I collected everything, but that was taking **incredibly** long so I figured I would just finish the stage for. Even that took a while, though I eventually finished with 3:33.
Honestly some of the parts make you feel absolutely awesome like playing a Sonic level. Moments like when you flip over a ramp, grind at a 45 deg angle, then nail the landing. I'm sure someone out there's gonna get good enough to pull that all off consistently.
Seriously the presentation is great and fits the control scheme well. I was indeed looking for a restart button, and lo and behold it was there etched into the desk. I always restarted til I got the faster of the ska songs. Really fun game, and if I were 20 years younger with unlimited free time again, this is something I would keep playing to try to master.
[Tip for other players] If you get stuck on your back, grab the screen and make big circles. Seems to be the quickest way to right yourself back up.
Were you guys inspired by the Raccoon Whisperer? lol
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Really, really solid work on the level design. The game legitimately made me curious to see what else you guys put in there because you didn't really have anything particularly repetitive. I guess that's the beauty of a jam game, you get to just throw the whole kitchen sink in there right away. I was particularly impressed by how some things were tuned, like how the halfpipe was JUST high enough for you to grab the hotdogs, rather than have to jump to get them, breaking the flow of the experience.
The only level design adjustment you might need (if you wanted to guide players more) was to make going down at start a more obvious first choice. The first time I played I went right for the button and then head right, but after starting over, it seemed like the text was designed to have you go downwards instead.
The overall game is very pleasant to look at and just run around in. The bowling alley as a room was just a delightful surprise and a nice way to cap it all off. Very cool game, and not one I would've initially brainstormed for "unstable" haha.
I like bullet hell games so this one definitely kept me busy. I tried several times but could beat that second boss though, the extra fast kunais were really hard to deal with compared to the first boss. I never ended up using the target lock-on mechanic because I was so scared of losing any life. That's fine though, I don't mind just straight shooting and dodging.
This is a very polished presentation in general and the music is incredible. A shame this never got finished for the PS1, though there were so many shmups back then it probably would've gotten lost in the mix.
Simple and fun. I really like the speed of the game you picked. The speed plus amount of things that can get on the floor makes choosing a route relatively interesting. I liked that there is some aspect of queueing up vials if you keep putting things into the mixer. That was one reason I was able to get my score. It did backfire though. I believe I probably could've played forever but it bugged out and didn't give me the correct color result when I had several vials queued.
Great idea and I think some additional obstacles that might change your routing would serve to push this even further. Maybe something where you need to apply a specific color to it to do something.
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Incredibly engaging game that makes you balance the desire to make a huge, flourishing economy with the perils of toppling over.
I thought the way you set up the economy was different and very interesting. I did not think there would be resource generators, so when they came in, I would opt for those to save space. In this way, it's a bit like an idle game but you don't get into that idle portion until much later than normal. Because of this, the generators were extremely valuable and it felt great once I had some in place since I wouldn't have to worry about that resource any more.
The tech buildings that unlocked more things were great subgoals to work towards. Without them, I'd have to spend extra time figuring out what building did what and the best way to approach it. These barriers let me focus on sets of rooms at a time.
I'm really glad you didn't make this game super hard. It would've been frustrating to see all these lovely room options but keep failing trying to get to them. I ended up finishing and it was a such a unique experience. Great job, this game makes for amazing gifs.
Btw, this game didn't play well on ultra-widescreen monitor. I couldn't actually see my resources, though I didn't actually need to. I didn't realize it was even a thing until I looked at the screenshots afterwards.
Wow that was actually an incredible experience. I totally didn't expect that given the screenshots, and thought it might just be a pretty game.
The game gave me an intense feeling of being left behind. That everyone is leaving for rapture and you're trying desperately to cling on and be one of them. It was a lonely feeling. You even feel a bit angry at these darn cubes for moving so fast without you. I believe this feeling happens because you start out in control, with the cubes helping you as allies, but they get increasingly faster and distant and you lose control.
Gameplaywise, you are required to use a bunch of tricks you don't normally do. I actually really liked the FPS lock. What it forces you to do is manage you angle as a resource. So you might pull in one direction for a while, and then quickly do a 180 to help return back to the group. The limited hold was an obvious design decision so that you can't just hold onto a cube forever, but it also creates some interesting risk reward scenarios. As you run out of time you have to very quickly assess which cube to hold onto next. Is that cube stale? Is it going to fly away by the time I do a 180 and aim at it? Those sorts of decisions.
This was a fantastic game and I'm extremely impressed. Not many games evoke emotion for me, and certainly not one without a story. Throughout my 15-some LDs I don't think I've ever given out 5 stars across the board, so this might be the first one.
Strange. Interesting. Tantalizing. With an intro as enticing and accurate as mobile game ads even.
I agree with comments above, hammer IS versatile. Zuckerberg might know a thing or two about using them.
The gameplay was actually pretty unique. I really liked that you only gave hints as to what each room needed, rather than always explicitly saying "RAT" or something like most games. This led to some hecticness as you were trying to be as fast as possible, *while* remembering where items are, *while* figuring out what item to even grab.
Grabbing the wrong item was usually costly, because that meant you wouldn't have that item for the future since resources were limited. I thought that was a neat aspect and added to instability piling up.
The 104 distraction was actually really interesting. It was a way to slow down the players and making more phone calls pile up. Though in the end it was up to the player if they wanted to just speed through all the dialogue or not.
There's more clever gameplay here than meets the eye. Great job!
Brilliant idea. By stage 2 I immediately realized how much potential the concept had, and you just kept delivering on it!
One thing I really like about this game is that there are several ways to beat stages due to it being physics based. On top of that, doing tricky shots makes you feel so cool, like lining up a complex pool ball shot. I hope someone out there makes a video of something like that.
Unfortunately I think I got stuck due to a bug in the post-jam version. Hitting the sheep or the snake at the bottom seems to do nothing:
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Regardless, I thought this game was super fun and tested a skill that I don't often practice. Some kind of physics chain-reaction skill where I have to figure out how the ramps are going to shift based on what weight I'm removing. Very enjoyable experience and great level design :)
@tevasliutauras ah ok thanks! It honestly took me a while to realize there was even a bug because the game was so polished that I assumed it was me lol
5 stars for theme for uploading an unstable build. Very meta!
JK, will give it another go if you get a bugfix out. I actually thought I might be able to just never aggro a red and beat it but that's not the case.
Loved this game. The funniest moment was absolutely when you reach the book for the first time. At that point I was like "hah that's funny, that was a cool game." I totally didn't expect there to be ANOTHER section of the game. Very SOTN-like haha.
I thought the surfing moments were extremely fun. They aren't particularly difficult be because it's tuned to have you just hold forward and you'll automatically surf on them. The hardest stage for me was the one where you needed to drop dynamite on the lock midair to the right, after running up the ramp. Once I got that timing down though, the rest fell in line.
This game was extremely well-made and paced. The concept was immediately understandable and engaging which help draw me into the game. And the cherry on top was the humor, especially how the 2nd chapter starts. Great job!
Congratz on the score! You're pretty darn consistent at placing high :)
Super addicting game, enough to get me to round 10. The way the game evolves has you firing like 10x a second. At that point it feels more like an incremental game than anything, which isn't a bad thing. The firing rate upgrade + more enemies spawning + 1-hit kills creates and epic-feeling game!
I don't think this balance was intentional, but it actually seems like the upgrades naturally put you at a dead end. For example, with 1-hit kill you can probably just sit in a safe corner and shoot all day. However, the rampage mechanic forces you to run out of the corner. Normally this isn't too bad and you could run back, but eventually you'll pile on so may upgrades that shorten your duration that you're just rampaging every few seconds. At that point you might as well just play normally. However, that was what got me killed eventually. So if that was an intentional balance design it is a clever one. If not.......it's still a clever one.
945 here, had I not seen @korfi 's comment I wouldn't have thought it was possible lol. It definitely made me put a lot harder.
The gameplay is pretty unique and turned out to be very fun. I initially thought it might play like Tricky Towers, but this tests a whole different set of skills. One thing this game has that I hardly ever see in other games is extremeeeely careful mouse movement. It's not often that you have to move something that carefully across your screen, and in the end it feels like balancing an egg in a spoon. Very cool consequence of the gameplay.
I think I can get over 1000 if I park myself in a corner and pray that the blocks are summoned right above me, but every time I tried I was not so lucky. Would love to hear what kind of scores you can get yourself!
I'll have to echo what some of the people said here, I was VERY surprised with this game. My initial impression was "ok, this is Monkey Ball but with a wheel, I've seen this." Then it was "Ah it's got Katamari stuff, this is a bit more interesting."
But by the end, you showed off some REALLY clever ideas I haven't seen. So the concept of a rolling game + strategically building up your ball to take on obstacles ended up being far more than I expected. Perhaps it was the unassuming graphics and music that led up to that (though that victory theme was amazing).
Very cool entry with a ton of potential for more if you can keep up that level design pace.
Surprisingly fun and unique game! There are a few highlights worth mentioning:
1. Long range sniping shots feel amazing because it's so much less guaranteed than a game with a normal sniper function. Watching them fly away because of a snipe is incredibly satisfying.
2. The first time you hit several people and get a domino effect, you really appreciate what the game is, a physics based tactics games. One I haven't really seen before.
Yea it's a bit easy but you showed off what the concept can do. I'm sure the people who have a partner to play with could really mess with the game and really figure out some cool strategies.
The last and coolest thing to note, the main menu is like Megaman X's, which is a built in demonstration of what the game will be like. After seeing that and seeing the map, I already knew exactly what I was supposed to do. Great "tutorial" without being heavy handed on the concept!
Ohhhh very cool. I wouldn't have thought of any of those factors so I'm glad you explained it. Let's me appreciate it more :)
Whew that was intense :O
One thing I like about this game that the other balance games don't convey is the whole glass + square peg feel. That plus the general weights and physics made this feel like an actual glass table that was wobbling around. I thought that felt both fantastic, and also something familiar, unlike say a disk on top of a pyramid.
That wobbliness definitely led to some very intense moments, especially with the spread shot that makes you go fairly far away to escape.
On the topic of a different sort of balance, whenever there were 2 shooters and one of them was a split shot, I knew I was done lol. I maybe got past wave 10? I tried to keep count manually but it wasn't easy keeping track of that while playing.
I really liked the concept. It was a very close quarters dodging game with balancing to boot. A totally intense game experience even for bullet hell vets like myself.
Got it! physics2.png
Absolutely amazing game. It's immediately and obviously fun right off the bat!
There were so many things you did correct with the core gameplay that other games don't necessarily pay attention to. The weight of each object is not only tuned well, but the friction all feels great in a game like this that needs so much precision. Secondly, I loved how you grab the object at the mouse cursor and it hangs that way, allowing you to intuitively adjust angles or pick up a single side of a couch. How did you do that? Did you attach a hinge joint where to clicked?
Lastly, I love how many extra random objects you threw into the mix that weren't particularly necessary. This serves to give people additional challenge in clearing the play area, while also giving certain players the chance to go the extra mile and show off their skills. Most importantly, it just plain adds to the chaos which makes success feel that much better.
I thought the hardest level was the second to last level. While the final stage is a good test of everything you've learned thus far, this stage has the pits of doom, which makes everything that much more tense.
I loved this game, one of my faves for sure. One thing I would've liked is the main menu button to be a bit further from the restart button, and maybe a different icon. I actually clicked that 3 times, once when I was halfway done with the game too. Another thing would've been a button you could hold that would highlight which objects are connected to the grass. It took me a while to figure out the final stage. I was very close to winning but had to really carefully scan what piece was out of place and experiment a lot.
Nice concept, not one I've really seen done before where you're trying to quickly ride whatever wave is in front of you. I ended up making it easier for myself by shrinking the window very small, so that the buttons were closer and I could see the 4 main components easier. I made it to day 12 and it seemed like I could just keep going, especially after I noticed there was a pattern of switching back and forth in the later days.
I'm curious what else you had in mind for the game. I clicked on debug and saw all kinds of stats. Are those actually implemented in the game or are they holdovers for future development?
What I really like about this game is that you have to pay attention to your meter at ALL times. Not just during engagement with the enemy, but also between engagements, because you're quickly assessing how you might approach the fight.
I love that you added hp to the mix. It adds 1 more strategy to the mix which is to heal all your health and then wail on whatever's in front of you. The game is really intense at all times because you're usually only a couple attacks away from death. Though I did find that the game gets much easier the 2nd time around, because you're not quite as afraid of the AI after learning their patterns. It mostly gets tough when there are multiple enemy types thrown into the mix.
I thought this was a really cool entry. I had only played your FPS games so it's need to see you branch out and show off your other design chops :)
7:40 myself. For your record run, how many deaths did you have? I thought the oil rig/ship level was particularly nasty, since you usually had to run through that section fairly fast.
Very fun game though. You can feel yourself mastering the game very quickly and it doesn't take long before you pull off a sick move or 2. I realllly like the addition of moving stages to the formula. It really added a ton to the usual Lunar Lander formula. Not only that, but you have a pretty good sense of level design. Not just in the layout of the levels, but also the theming which added even more to the flavor.
What was the lava stage supposed to be though? It was kinda a monster but looked more like rocks?
My god. I probably died 2 to 3 dozen times on the ship stage lol. Awesome work on the game!
Something I liked about this game was that it gave a feeling of unease, like those utopian society stories where things aren't as they seem. The happy music clashed with the visuals of looking in on a game (rather than playing a game), which accentuated this feeling even further. Honestly I half-expected it to go zany DDLC style.
In some ways I'm glad you left it to interpretation. What are the other 2 games? Is Babbit really a game character or is he trapped? The atmosphere really makes you wonder. Very cool!
How is this game so unbelievably cool? I'll try to point out stuff people aren't already praising to the best of my ability.
1. You can exit the ship in space. There is literally no reason to do this. That's why it's so impressive you put it in. 2. The fact that you have to hold left and right for boosters just feels so **good**. Though a lot part of that was the intense juice you put in when you go at full speed. 3. Putting the queue line for the capsule. Yet again, no true gameplay reason to do this but it added so much to the experience. It made it feel like a living world that was still going on in the BG even after you flew off the moon. The vast majority of devs would've just given you points as soon as they touched that base.
I think overall you did an amazing job of anticipating what players would want to do and experiment with. Just wanna run down people with your ship's exhaust? Got it. Have great surprising moments like getting hit with a capsule? Check.
One of the most surprising entries I've seen in a while, I was impressed around every corner. Truly amazing.
Such a clean game in so many ways, I'm very impressed. You guys did an incredible job with the UX, making everything understandable with all kinds of context clues. Like highlighting where you can place things, changing the cursor icons, and locking the areas you can target (like with the ground attacks). Everything was super intuitive and I barely had to read anything to understand how it works. That is fantastic for a strategy game!
The pacing and progression felt good and left me wanting more. This is one of the more visual clicker games out there, so seeing my base unfold for a bit felt awesome.
I loved how the simple coloring on the enemies ended up working well together. It was enough shading to show off the structure of the enemies. The ground units in particular were animated very well.
Very cool game overall. I've played every clicker game out there and I think your mashup of idle + strategy is pretty unique. Great job!
Unrelated, but I did end up looking up @fishmasterino and saw that they're a fighting game head. Try out https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/bust-a-loop if you haven't before, you might like it :)
INCREDIBLY fun game so far, but do you have any tips for winning? Once you clear the 3 gray tasks, it seems like it's an inevitable fall to doom because the crown quests take forever to come (unless there's some trigger I don't know of), and your stamina keeps dropping and can't keep up with the quests.
Edit: nm, I think I might have something here...
Well, I ended up playing *quite* a bit, the longest of any game this jam. Unfortunately I think the game is either bugged, or the RNG chance for crown events are way too low, as I'm on turn 187, with all 3 officers at lvl 40, stability of 5, Nomans Steppe unlocked, but still no crown event.
The reason I can get far is because I use a small trick of placing officers down to delay the turns counting down. Afaik you MUST play like this. Playing normally will simply get you killed due to stamina attrition. Example opening:
1. Orange on green card 2. Orange on orange card 3. Green on blue card 4. Green on green card 5. Blue on blue card 6. Blue BACK to the roster area. Never ever hit next turn if you have a green checkmark because they don't get stamina back returning this way.
Example of being on turn 26 with no life loss and full stamina:
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In instances where you have 2 cards with 3 turns on them, you can dance units on them to "mark" them for easy kills later with this trick. With all that said, I couldn't beat the game lol
Regardless, the game is very well made and I clearly had enough fun to keep chipping away at it. I love how the instability of empire growth is completely modeled in the game mechanics. The more you open up the map, the more crap you have to deal with. This is very boardgame-esque.
Tbh, the dancing around strategy I mentioned actually made this game even more fun. That, coupled with making sure everyone's around the same level, and risk/reward of using the right colors, made this a totally unique experience and a great use of the theme. My favorite game so far!
Very bold concept! I like seeing your LD progression over time because you're branching out into more complex games over time. I wonder what you'll be making years from now.
I think marrying convos within non-VNs could be done in clever ways. This is my favorite implementation of it https://youtu.be/o1g02WH7dEE?list=PLaMjvL2xXxO5jf_-UokTrRXyoJ7HQ2KGW&t=151
The Wangan series peppers dialogue throughout the story mode stages, usually on a straightaway so the player has time to read it, similar to how you did it in between unstable sequences. I think it's a good way to weave in the lore without being a cutscene that's not interactable. So needless to say, I like how you did it here as well.
Your gameplay was simple enough to grasp, though I did have some dread that there was going to be a lot more tasks to do. In some ways it was good that there weren't too many so I could focus on the story.
Great job and keep pushing those limits :)
The use of water for this indirect-control game made perfect sense, and it gives the player some immediate context on what they need to do. It definitely feels good to fill up a small pool around buzzsaws to use as cushioning, and then have your boat ride around it.
I'm really glad at the use of checkpoints. Some of those levels got so hard that it would've taken super careful play just to clear it. Although by the time I got to the end I was feeling pretty confident about the boat movement.
Overall I thought it was challenging and conveyed unstable without being TOO frustrating. Maybe it was the soothing music that helped with that...
I haven't seen any puzzley games like this that also has upgrades. That plus the leaderboard honestly made me play way longer than I normally would, so great job on those choices.
The game is 100% intuitive and I just hopped right in without needing the tutorial. My strategy was to pack the center with the largest objects, and as asymmetrical as possible. Upon looking at your video did I see you can put the large cube around the edge to keep things inside a pen. Genius!
The visuals are perfect. Clean and fits the music perfectly. In fact, the entire presentation reminds me of Viridi now that I think about it. A tad less relaxing than a game about succulents though...
Very impressive first LD entry, it's certainly clear that you've had some dev experience :)
My playthrough went something like this: 1. Initially I tried to play in the lower regions since I hadn't picked up on the movement patterns yet. I also invested a lot into the 25g upgrade with auto shoot because I thought it would eventually just let me sit there and AFK, which is always fine to see in upgrade heavy games. The combination of this led me to lose many times. 2. Eventually I realize I can stay on one of the upper left platforms and be able to hit many rows at once. I also invested a bit more into gun upgrades. This allowed me to get far, but then the platforms would drop out underneath me, and I kept dying soon after. I actually initially thought this was a bug, but your voiceover gave me a hint that it was intentional. 3. I realized (I think?) that you get more gold if you stay alive longer, so I would shoot enough to keep just 1 enemy alive, then go to the top and finish them at the last second. Around now is when I strictly bought gun upgrades. 4. Lastly, I connected the dots and realized I should just stay at the very top-middle platform and snipe. This would prevent me from falling to my doom when the platforms went away. After farming a few rounds like that, I slipped and fell, but I was strong enough at that point that I could sit on the lower-left ledge and kill everything. 5. At this point I could live forever as I only had to time my reload correctly when I opened up a big enough window to do so. I even purchased the Next Wave button a few times and had no problem. Really the only issue was finger fatigue lol, so I quit eventually.
I thought the concept was great and I love games with multiple build routes. As long as the game is hard enough (which yours is) it instantly adds a problem-solving component to the game as you try to pick apart what the best build is. Although I would've liked to see some more visually-impactful upgrades, you can only do so much in LD and the ones available were good enough.
Great job and I hope that breakdown gives you some insight!
Sometimes I can be pretty skeptical about awesome looking LD gifs - that the gameplay might end up not being fun and it's all show. That's not the case here. Even though the concept didn't sound great when I started the game, I go to see what it really was over time.
This gameplay was super novel, it was a variation of Space Invaders but done in such a way that it tests many other skills, like timing and resource management. Often I would miss a cursor, and then quickly calculate if I can either make it to the next line, or burn all my letters trying to hunt it down.
And uh, of course it tests your mashing skills as well :)
Just a really great idea overall. The art isn't just slapped onto the game as theming. You did an incredible job marrying the gameplay with the theme and presentation. This game is impressive!
Pretty interesting concept. I couldn't actually make an elixir though. From what I can tell, the ingredients you need to experiment with are the soil types and the seal types. MAYBE the material you use to burn too but I sorta assumed you need to use wood.
I tried every combination of that but got an explosion each time so I'm not sure where I went wrong.
Either way, this is a pretty unique game and I loved the vibe of being an ancient Chinese alchemist. I could see this having even more things to make in the future which would be pretty cool.
Whoa what a ride! I initially thought it might be a sort of aim trainer with different kinds of mode switching, but you took this mechanic all the way to the end and explored so many aspects I wouldn't even have thought of. You actually introduced the puzzley elements at the perfect time, because the clicking aspect was just about to start getting stale.
I really loved that you didn't make the lose results affect you that badly. Just a few seconds lost really. I actually like that you didn't put a speedrun timer up which is very popular in LD. I normally don't have anything against that mechanic, but after playing your game I realized how damaging that kind of mechanic could be. It would really ruin the chill atmosphere, and I wouldn't have been able to appreciate all the small details you put in.
The art is super cool and I've never seen a nice, textured mouse cursor like that. I'd actually love to know how you created that gel/clay like texture on everything. I'm not very good at 3d so everything looks like default unity stuff when I try it.
I thought this game was truly excellent and you just kept impressing me around every corner. Usually with LD puzzle games with lots of stages, I quickly go "ok I get it, show me something new". That didn't happen with this game, which deserves a lot of praise!
This is actually a pretty innovative game! I've seen quite a bit of Getting Over It style games but this is one of the more unique concepts. The clock hand in particular I haven't seen before. At first I thought it was a light gimmick, but once you started speeding things up, it really became quite the minigame.
I know that if you put in UI indicators of your controller angle that would be way too easy, so no complaints from me. But for the first stage, I did get stuck on the 2nd to last one for FORTY years! It was very tough and I had to skip it. Oddly enough, in the 2nd stage I was able to complete ones with similar speeds and directions. Now that I think of it, perhaps you simply narrowed the timing window on that one.
The arm angle for jumps is clever and diegetic, rather than having some UI pop out of nowhere to show your aiming direction like Angry Birds.
I unfortunately got stuck in stage 2 though I tried my darndest. In some ways the bricks reminded me of the gears in Double Dragon 2. Those were a nightmare for me as a kid, and having to go back a while because you missed a jump from a brick to a grass platform was just as painful :) I normally don't/can't stick with these games long but this one was enjoyable.
Very interesting, you caught me off guard with the design. After the first battle I thought it would be rote and repetitive, but in the following battles you quickly showed that there was in fact, going to be a lot of intention in the stage/battle design. Some of the patterns I saw in the game were quite clever and fun to navigate through.
The bullet hell dodging wasn't the only cool thing. You clearly put a lot of effort into the worldbuilding and it shows. There's a pretty clear line between the peaceful running around and the intense battles so it's interesting to jump between that a lot.
Like others said, some of the extra running around hurt, though it turns out I ran around way more than I should've only because it took me a little bit to figure out how the echolocation worked. Probably wouldn't have been as bad if I picked up on that earlier.
Definitely a very impressive effort for a compo game, I doubt I could pull something like that off that fast. Great job :)
Floor 11 here. Mostly died cuz I was playing too fast and didn't notice I opened up a pathway for the queen to kill me >_<
The game has amazing replay value. I didn't expect that much variety in cards to change up gameplay. Even the simple addition of hit points to the game wound up added plenty of depth to the rest of the mechanics, allowing for spread shots and distance to be very meaningful.
The slot cards are especially strategically interesting, especially if you have the card that allows you to fire after using a card. Now you're really breaking the rules and doing some nutty combos and repositioning tactics.
8.5er Skeleton Survivor is such a great title :D
I was hoping to see some VS games this jam given the theme. You actually improved on several things and weren't just derivative (I have not played the latest VS version so these comments could be outdated): - The shotgun having some wind up before firing is great because it allows me to position my attack without jeopardizing my position as much. I can just aim and then go back to my original route rather than constantly thinking about my facing. On paper this SHOULD be the same thing, but for some reason I felt like I was strategizing more with this shotty. - The zamboni machines being immune to knockback, thereby making my aura tactic useless was a good idea. No afking here! - Being able to upgrade the size of the barrels, not just the quantity was super satisfying. It certainly create a lot of visual chaos, but it's almost like a risk/reward thing - use these super barrels at your own risk.
Loved how crazy it got near the end. This gameplay style of being over the top definitely fits the franchise. Great choice!
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That's a neat concept, though with a pretty grim take that all fish will die eventually lol.
The presentation is great, with lots of graphical touches and the harrowing waterfall rocks that slowed you down. Touching a pack of fish felt *fantastic*. Personally it was hard for me to get more than say, 15 fish, but over time I just expected that to be the case.
I was pretty incentivized to get my little swarm growing and getting far. Only got 25 fish though unlike some pros here. A failed split attempt cost me dearly!
Great animated title logo btw :)
Some straight up Orisinal vibes here, I loved it and it's been a while since I've played that sort of game. The gameplay, while simple, still had enough of a mastery curve to keep it interesting. Making it have an angled bounce like Breakout let you do some neat stuff like set up all your objects ahead of time since you had an idea of which way the kiwi would bounce. It feels great to perfectly set up 3 objects in time without having to touch them again.
It goes without saying that the art and sound design are top notch as usual. Though iirc, this is the first full-sentimental game you've done in a while.
Great message and way to subvert the theme. Doesn't overstay its welcome because you keep introducing new instruments to play with over time. Really impressive stuff :)
@sakura-magika that's awesome and I'm glad people had similar experiences to me :)
Haha I didn't expect this evolution of VS-like games to arrive so fast. And it actually works really well? The decision points come down to figuring out what's effective, and then creating an army that can break through the defenses. It's more like a game where you sorta just run different experiments over and over and observe the results.
The fact that the mech upgrades as well is a GREAT twist to the idea. It puts a lot of pressure on you to time your upgrades well, otherwise it just keeps gaining speed and firepower and makes mincemeat out of you. It definitely feels bad to be on the receiving end of this deal for once.
The game has enough build flexibility that I was willing to try several attempts and combos. After the first run, I had a sneaky suspicion that the best build would be to power up just 2 species and then try to spawn big wave of them. That way you would be efficient. As fun as it is to upgrade the entire army, surely it's just free food for the mech.
That ended up being the right call, mostly because speed is such a huge factor so you really need to specialize. I was able to win at 3:03.
This game really does have good future potential. Having different mechs, maybe even mech parties, and having different monsters to choose from sounds like a very fun formula. Even better if you throw in branching upgrades like how other roguelites do it. You already proved it out halfway, hope you keep going with it!
My typical reaction to your other physics game are a lot of tension and breath-holding. But this is your first game I've played that didn't have a loss condition. It was more an implicit failure from loss of momentum rather than something the game dictated to you.
I thought this has some really interesting consequences. My reaction to this game was more of my eyes just drying out from intense focus lol. There is effectively no downtime because you are constantly attacking the pendulum whether you hit or miss trying to conserve the momentum.
So even though I didn't feel *tension* itself, I was still fully engaged, if not MORE engaged due to having a pretty singular goal of gaining speed.
I actually never did get all 3 secrets, just the center one and big air. The secret goals were a really nice touch and inspires me to try something like this where I create an interesting toy first and foremost, and then give some hidden goals for people to find, rather than explicit ones. I feel like that leans into the exploration feeling you want to give to people along with a toy so that they are encouraged to creatively probe the game.
The fact that this is a physics game helps a lot with this approach. There are other hidden objective games like Achievement Unlocked. But in these sorts of games you're kinda just playing against the designer. Trying to get in their head and guessing at their secrets. For Drag on Chaos, you know that all the secrets lie behind mastering the physics, both in the pendulum and the lazy cursor.
So ultimately I think that's what I really like about this game. There are a lot of implicit rules that are built right into the core of the game and you stick to it. All those rules cascade into a system that really keeps the player engaged and wanting to master this simple looking toy. The extra feedback of the trails + increasing music definitely adds to this feeling.
Lemme grab some eyedrops..
Just when I thought I've seen every possible iteration of the stacker concept, I came across this game. I haven't seen one with an organic time limit like this where you had to start making risk reward decisions dynamically. Basically, if the last piece I dropped was a big square, I would try to drop another piece asap. But when it was small, I would wait until my piece came around before placing it, giving me some time to get the timing down better. This is all made possible by the lava timer because otherwise there's no need to optimize!
My highest score was 34, getting onto the leaderboard is good enough for me. I feel like it's a bit RNG dependent though, because on some runs I would get like 5 holes right off the bat, but in other games I wouldn't see one at all. They make a huge difference and I'd be curious what the spawn rate on those suckers are.
The physics implementation of it all worked very well and it made each drop feel intense honestly. I forgot to doublecheck but are the leaderboard stacks ACTUALLY the same stack as what the player got in terms of positioning? If so that's very cool. There were some runs I had where I was practically building a bridge horizontally which would look funny on the leaderboard.
@nick-rafalski got it, thanks for the explanations!
@russ-moonbase I was surprised at the timing consequences myself. There were many times during playtesting (when I was trying to be optimal) where I didn't upgrade one of those constant generators early enough, so I sighed and figured my money was best spent elsewhere.
@ddrkirbyisq Thanks for the feedback :) It's my favorite music genre but from what I can tell the genre has had a general falloff since 2019 or so. With that said, I think it's simply something a lot of people haven't heard yet so it still has a lot of potential. Funk in general seems to have had a mainstream resurgence lately so that will help.
@pkenney that's one of the most accurate analyses I've seen about the structure of the game so far. Although it's an idle game at heart, the timeslicing aspect ends up having some unusual consequences, like changing it to an "on-rails" game (like an on-rails shooter) for lack of a better term.
The thorough breakdown of the experience helps so much! This game has had a wide variety of reactions since it's fairly unusual, so something like that helps me break down what exactly was causing some of those responses.
@sakura-magika @mhorth @coatline @gaming-night glad to have presented the genre well to you :) I think it's a genre that's both misunderstood and underutilized so I often try to show new angles on how to approach it.
@ehon thanks for the page shoutout! That's something we only started doing recently. It's a nice thing to add post-jam (since it's not the game itself) and can wrap up the experience in a bow.
@wuppos that's a great, thorough breakdown of a first-time clicker experience. They technically are games that you can let run in the background and succeed in, but you identified the "skill" involved in the game which is trying to figure out what's the best thing to buy and when (and to fight the urge to buy the next available thing lol).
@coleslaughter zero issues with your breakdown, I've seen enough of your streams to know that you guys have a solid critical eye so I appreciate it! There were in fact, lots of places where I was like "hmmm, should I do X or Y?" and you basically nailed several of them and lent insight to them.
Speed of game: too slow and people get bored. Too fast and people are clicking wildly, not even noticing any of the art. You made a great point about how since its design is so different, it ends up not coming across as an idle game, and demands your attention differently.
Communicating rate: Absolutely correct that the value of each generator is obscured by a) each one ticking a different amount of times and b) you can't see them all at once to compare them easily like in a normal idle game. This one I also debated but then decided to leave it as a small "skill" for the player to develop in figuring out the optimization puzzle.
Not saying any of my decisions were the correct one, but those were some of the unusual consequences of deviating from the genre conventions and you broke down your viewpoint on them well.
@cakestorm thanks a lot :) I'm glad to hear all the art efforts were worthwhile cuz they were definitely costly haha. But a comment like this justifies it.
@cyzaine changing at different levels would definitely be pretty cool. It might even give a reason for people to focus on world 1 if the milestone upgrades did something big, like a blanket global modifier or something.
@mhorth haha no prob. I'm happy to get interesting comments from people over anything and I'll probably always try to push on the innovation category regardless. I legit gave yours a higher one too because I have never seen a live leaderboard implemented that way, but people mostly focused on the Fruit Ninja comparison so :shrug:
Crisp, clean combat :) When I play these games, usually the first thing I try to do is see what kinds of cancels I can do. I couldn't find anything useful other than attack -> backdash, and dashing into the boss' head which does a tiny hop over it (this one was not useful at all but occasionally looks cool.
You put in a lot more variety in the boss attacks than I expected. Especially when the fire pillars appeared I was like "oh okay, we're doing THAT now". So excellent work overall on making an interesting game!
Wow! This relatively simple mechanic actually has a lot of interesting consequences to it which were super fun. My first run was a somewhat disaster, but at that point I realized how precious every decision was.
1. Jumps needed to optimized. Afaict, jumps do take extra energy? So anywhere I could get away with a single jump vs a double jump, I went for that. 2. Never leave a person topped off. That's just wasting energy that could be regenned, so you had to juggle people around. 3. Frankly, you just couldn't miss any jump. There's this really harrowing jump at the bottom left of the map that I probably missed 6 times and I was just sweating the whole time watching my bars drop to nothing.
Fortunately, those misses weren't toooooo terrible and I still managed a decent score: asdf.PNG
It was a relief to see the map loop. The reason is because I was thirsting for HP, and once I saw all the familiar gem locations, I could play fairly optimal because I already had practiced those jumps.
In general though, this concept is hilarious with the 2 segways which drew me in, but I stayed for the gameplay which imo, has some serious legs to it. Awesome job :)
Really unique presentation of erosion, seeing the air bubbles go up while your own blocks was pretty hectic. I actually couldn't really tell what the logic was behind all the clicking (due to having to keep everyone alive quickly), but I ended up going with a strat where you box in the sides, and then try to encase those suckers in :P
SUPER clever theming. I doubt I'll come across another game with this concept this LD!
I didn't terribly mind the fact that you couldn't see your timer. I thought it added an element of threat to the game, which works extremely well with the concept. You SHOULD be afraid of turning into a werewolf so this helps sell that feeling.
The legos were a hilarious touch seeing this big bad monster have to carefully step around them. It gets to even the best of us!
This was a very fun and unique jam game, really entertaining and a lot of polish.
I failed this game at least a dozen times, but I'm really glad I stuck with it. I actually scanned the comments here and on Itch but none of it was particularly useful. You sorta need to just tinker around with the economy until you figure it out, unless you need an exact walkthrough.
My advice for anyone struggling: pay attention to your resources and how they pile up. From there try to figure out what would be an efficient way to move all your resources along and keep things occupied. The mistake I made was treating this not like a supply chain game. I was taken in by the theming and spectacle, but ultimately your strategy fundamentals will save you here.
Since I played 40m+, needless to say I thought this game was amazing. The turnbased movement of the titans works extremely well here. They are able to move in more predictable ways which keeps you calm while at the same time imposing huge threat onto the player. This concept was done in They Are Billions, but I think this style works much better because you aren't taking constant light damage all the time on your walls and can focus on the grand scheme of things.
Finally, I loved that final stretch of the road when you go for the orbs. Sure by then you probably have an efficient economy going on, but just seeing the flashing titans + your slow, big headed carrier run around gave me a sense of dread that it might fall apart still.
This was a brilliant idea and probably a top 3 entry for me this jam!
Though the game concept is simple, it still plays with the important concept of logistics so decisions remained pretty interested as you tried to figure out the most efficient thing to do as damage appeared. The playspace does narrow down over time which makes this a bit easier, so when you're down to a handful of rooms it's much more simple.
The energy boost was a really good idea. I was initially dashing around constantly and didn't realize I couldn't repair without it. Once I realized that, I *only* used the dash to run to rooms that were already in danger of dying.
Though they rarely appeared, the energy instant refill powerups were extremely interesting because that would immediately change your routing and running behavior to maximize the use of it. Those were very fun moments in the game.
I was glad I read about the bomb points ahead of time. I would prioritize that over everything because the points were worth so very much.
I thought this was a pretty neat game, and that the energy concept was enough to give this enough depth for strategic play. I think if there were more immediately consequences to your actions, it could find a broader audience (rather than people who are mostly into optimization tests) as well as fill in the "void" some people are mentioning. Great first LD entry!
Wooooooo that last level is a tense one!
I think the last 2 levels in particular show off a really unique consequence of the mechanics. There's actually an unusual push/pull effect created from the shrinking balloon. On one hand you are becoming a smaller target, allowing you to navigate harrowing areas a lot easier. On the other hand, you're running out of time so you need to mosey on. It's funny and interesting to be trading one source of tension for another. I did like your final stage design because it was so different from the others and you were using a slightly different skillset.
The control scheme wasn't just unique (including when your balloon spins out of control), but the idea of air getting sapped from the holes is *definitely* something I hadn't seen before. I imagine there could be some crazy player who is super air efficient and knows how to maneuver the balloon 1 airstream at a time.
Lastly, great job on always pushing your LD projects in different directions. I'm curious how much of a priority it is for you guys to do different things. For a while I thought your team had the humor category on lock and might stick to that.
Bit of an interesting setting. Almost looked like a golf course in space which isn't something I see every day. TBH I actually liked the moving boxes mostly because it shook up the puzzle design and gave it more of a puzzle flair.
Doing a remake is a pretty neat idea. That's a bit tempting for myself since my early projects were.....not so polished :)
IMO, the sun-as-the-timer alone warrants noting. It was such a nice way to tell when you would need to time travel, although since it's not totally precise, I would often just time travel probably unoptimally just to be safe. But it sorta had the dual purpose of visually brightening up the scene, but also giving you a visual sense of relief as the timer now retreats back into safe territory.
The game was pleasantly challenging. I will say that on a wide monitor, I found myself turning my head quite often, but that should be a rare case for most players.
What I liked most about this game was its balance of being lighthearted while still keeping ominous tension in the background. The dialogue is funny with a lot of personality, and you don't really find any threats for most of floor 1. Of course, after a couple run-ins with the alien on floor 2 you start to realize just how bad things can get. So the end result is you still feel like you're in a lighthearted romp of sorts, but the threat of the alien forces you to at least try to play optimally and to get the hell outta there. It's certainly a great incentive.
I couldn't actually complete the game though :( I got to the part with grabbing the Gundoom model but I may have missed a key piece of dialogue because I wasn't too sure where to go next. I went to every room, searched whenever I could search, and tossed a good amount of flashbangs.
Regardless, I enjoyed my time with it and I'm still curious what the 3rd woman will be like given how different the first two are. Might give it another go before the review period ends!
I can't believe people were getting to wave 20+, my fingers were already dying by the end of story mode!
This game had an excellent presentation and it made it a joy to play. Just a really fresh take/angle on the defense genre that kept it really interesting.
What were the differences between the towers though? I don't know if there was any text I missed on what they actually did. Even if there were, I was usually frantically farming resources so I may not have seen it anyways.
I never realized the pun in the title despite knowing Cantonese, that's a clever one :)
The effort you put into the running around and attacking animations went a long way. Since there isn't a terrible amount of content, having those things be in the core more than made up for it. Like others said, it was fun to just run around and smack things around. The penguin eyes turning into X's in particular made that action 3x more entertaining.
On my 1st winning playthrough, I ended up smacking my boss which was a mistake. When trying to get back to where I was, I kept running into cars and dying haha. Eventually I played it patiently and correctly and got the win. Neat game!
FYI the game doesn't play well on ultrawide monitors. It was still playable though even if I couldn't see my items.
The rage mechanic is very clever and unique! I haven't seen this sort of push/pull on deciding when to attack vs stand there except in Fantasy Strike's throw break system. It's a really nice way to practice patience in a genre where buttons are everything.
The enemy rage mechanic technically serves as a way to discourage beating up 1 guy, and to encourage juggling multiple enemies. Which is a very cool concept and not a common one, but in practice, you'll probably get hit in the back trying that so it's quite scary to do so.
Looks like you addressed a lot of those issues in 1.1, but I do want to say that the core idea is quite good even without those changes and it has good potential.
Best I could do, it got pretty rough best.PNG
The multiple weapons and limited ammo worked very well. It actually makes you think pretty hard on what you should be firing. *Especially* because the difficulty ramps up pretty fast halfway though.
I liked the extra effort you put into selling the setting. The characters having different outfits, the ominous cat portraits in the BG, and of course, the wild kissing animation lol
@alyd-asmar haha, always take a free win when you can!
I think this was unintentional, but the fact that all the games were pretty easy to accidentally click and start the game over is actually pretty clever. Without it, the player is likely to exit at will and finish up the game, but with this one you're more playing as the avatar who won't stop playing. It's a great use of mechanics to sell the theme :)
lol ok it was right on the border of being intentional/unintentional so I couldn't tell, which makes it even better!
Very engaging incremental! It took me 4 attempts before I figured out what the strategy should be and was able to clear it and get the true ending.
This game really parallels how RTS' feel to me, whether its AOE or SC. You start off just harvesting and having a great time watching your city grow. But eventually armies come in and ruin your day and you realize you need to spend time and resources building an army - something you don't really care to do but you have to do for the sake of your economy. So I think you actually modeled an RTS experience down to a raw, incremental format which is very cool and not something I've seen often.
The shading of the fruit on the underside of the tree is such a nice touch that I don't think a lot of people would have considered.
I really like that even after you got the castle, there is still room to grow the tree, and exponentially slower at that. It's nice to feel safe and grow the tree in peace rather than ending the game as soon as you got the castle.
Having to deal with an actual threat put a lot of pressure on me to optimize which is something you normally don't have to deal with in an idle game. I thought this was one of the best incrementals I've played in recent times and very much enjoyed it, well done! You should check out my game too, it's also a visual incremental and a similar style of ending :)
I think the looser controls are totally fine. Since there aren't any threats, it's ok to push the players a bit on their execution.
I really struggled at first, but I eventually got the hang of it and had a massive surplus of days, maybe 2000? Sat at 133,000 population too before I think I saw most of the content.
It was kinda neat to see the doodads and buildings in the galaxy, though it can feel sparse after a few minutes of play. Was it just me or were there no fries around except for in the beginning? They were the most satisfying to collect so I was bummed!
Were items supposed to fly off the ship when you moved to fast? That seems to be the case with visuals, but when I dropped them off I still seemed to get full value so I didn't really mind.
All in all, it's a fun core concept. I lost some intensity in play due to having so many excess days, but I can totally see why you would balance it that way. In my first playthrough I struggled to even get back to the station haha.
44 high score here. I love how the concept makes absolutely no sense lol.
I liked that you had autocorrection on the car itself. I think the game would've been a bit too easy to fly off the road otherwise. It took some getting used to, but eventually you learn to use it to your advantage.
Another thing I did was try to only merge with cars when I hit them head on. It was pretty risky to merge with them at an angle at high speeds. I thought this was an interesting risk reward mechanic.
Brilliant game, you've done it again!
There is a fantastic interaction of resources here, mostly derived from the idea of breaking tiles and that stepping on tiles prevents further breakage. This means that you must consider: - How to protect your king in normal chess fashion - How to place units at the boundaries to make sure your playspace remains alive
This meant that there were some incredibly tense fights, especially with a low amount of units, where you needed to do some costly duels, all the while the stage is breaking and you eventually lose. Although this means the game is easier with many units, you are still susceptible to getting hit from multiple angles, which is a natural way to prevent the player from having infinite units. Something like this isn't sustainable:
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Other random, interesting points of strategy I saw: - If you have a pawn you really need to keep a path open for it early. This is very hard in later stages. - Typically in order to get a kill with the king (due to their slowness), you need to quickly spread out your units to hold the territory. This kinda reminds me of SRPGs where you purposely try to give your weak units last hits to catch them up in exp. With the addition of the breaking tiles this makes it a much more interesting tactic to pull off. - The 6th or 7th stage where the rook is castled by trees is really clever. Some chess intuition kicks into play here and it summons up old thoughts on the game.
The rotating camera is lovely.
I really sunk my teeth into this game for a while. I didn't even talk about the story and presentation, the gameplay itself has enough cool things to talk about. You added some relatively simple rules to Chess and explored it super well. Excellent game.
I *really* liked the core combat. At first I played it straight up by trying to match the colors of attacks to enemies. But at some point I realized the active frames start so fast I might as well time J K L to be an absolute machine that just grinds through whatever's in front of me.
Throughout the play, I also saw you could direction-cancel to hit 2 angles at once. So I'd start my attack facing left, and then quickly hit down to hit another angle. This was of little use given that the first phase is pretty easy.
.......but little did I know I had the opportunity to test these skills! The sorceress fell down and now I had to take on the huge wave. I was excited to try out both the above skills are were confident in them so I actually parked myself in a corner and let myself get surrounded. That ended up being a mistake as I didn't have enough close quarters practice and just got swallowed up.
Gave it one more try but 578 is the highest I can manage. What can you get @justuspan ? Once the bosses come in it was way too hard for me to keep things under control.
The game is excellent and I loved how it pushed my execution abilities. I personally want to be able to skip the 1st phase and get right to the survival portion, but what can you do :)
@justuspan omg that's such masterful play, you tuned it PERFECTLY imo. Someone who can get to that level is gonna feel like a god. You were making absolutely optimal decisions in that video!
LOL the lethargic Speed Racer pose. Absolutely brilliant.
This is easily my favorite concept I've seen this jam. There is an unbelievable amount of innovation here: - An "unoptimal" routing game where you maximize roads and time rather than taking the shortest path to victory - Randomized cities(!) I can't believe you had the time to implement one that created such clean looking cities. Any insight on the algorithms you used? I'd love to try something like this for city generation some day. - A great story and character personality that ties into the gameplay perfectly
Back in the day I would just work in fast food kitchens rather than the cashier so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone. The character was too easy to relate to...
I maxed out my score on the first 3 stages but then got lazy later on. I'm glad you put a cap on it at 200 so that players didn't *have* to completely paint the town red. But at the same time, this core gameplay of quickly analyzing the longest distance route was so unusual and engaging. Never had to flex those brain cells before.
All the little touches on the MC driving and looking around sold the setting of her driving in total boredom. This game is a gem.
@stalemeat wow, thanks for the detailed writeup! It definitely makes a lot more sense after that breakdown, especially since the last few steps obscures it well.
This idea is too funny, all odds are against you! Even the opponents don't have bombs that's how you know this race is rigged. Speaking of the AI though, it's pretty great to watch them fly out the gates.
There were a few runs I had where I managed to get all the bombs off me in one go. Couldn't figure out how to do it though. Sometimes I could even do just running very slowly into the barricade.
One thing I really liked was how you just had diegetic tutorial panels built right into the stage. Can't say I've ever seen that in a racing game before. It fits well because the speed isn't too intense so you have time to read it anyways.
The game is flexible and I had fun doing stunts or trying silly things like racing across the mountains as a shortcut. I'm looking forward to seeing your magnum opus where you combine all the mechanics from your previous car games.
Just when you think every chess variant has been done, you see something like this.
I really enjoyed this game, AND it winds up being a great teaching tool for teaching coverage and territory control in the actual game. Around stage 9 when you introduce the baiting is when the formula changes up quite a lot. It certainly made it a lot more difficult to play, but I think it was quite needed since otherwise you'd mostly have to rely on adding more enemies or something.
A nice ending to the game since the skeleton has been staring at you the whole time and you sort of forget it being in the background, and a perfect way to tie it back to the theme. Very cool game.
The progression of dialogue and relationship between the boss and hero were definitely the highlight of the game. It's certainly not something you see terribly often, and even more so from the boss' perspective. That meant there was good opportunity to throw in some novel dialogue and you delivered there.
There was good combat depth for the amount of controls you gave the player. I hadn't expected jump and magic to be wielded in several ways but the game system ended up allowing for that.
Wow that's a lot of playtime for a jam game. I was surprised it kept going (in a good way).
Really interesting strategy to try to pick apart. I am assuming the safest way to play the game is to clear all the blocks before going into platforming mode. Since it's LD though, I tried to be as quick and efficient as I could be, foregoing a lot of the combat blocks.
I thought this was a fun tradeoff to try to juggle. You get less real estate to play with, but a lot of time gained from not having to fight as many things in shmup-mode. I could see this leading to a lot of replayability as the player experimented more what what types of platformers they liked to use on various stages. Of course, once things got hard things changed where it was more a puzzle and you were trying to find a good setup for you to complete it.
The forced mode switching is a neat mechanic in general that I don't see very often. It makes you think about the stage in 2-dimensions. That is, as you are filling the blocks you are consciously thinking about how the platforming section is gonna go once it's complete. This adds to some mental depth to the game.
This was a hectic game that was worth the play, great job on the execution! Also, gratz on sustaining such a large dev team. Must've taken a good amount of practice to get there :)
Man this game is unbelievably polished with great timing on the theme. I'd be surprised if this didn't get top 10 in a few categories.
I'll touch only on the gameplay since the art quality speaks for itself. The game has a nice effect on the player because you immediately think about FromSoft games and what it'd be like to play as one of those bosses. So you pretty quickly buy into the fantasy of being a boss - more so than other boss games because of this tie.
I think the part where you really differentiate yourself from similar games is when a 2nd hero steps up to the plate and you have to fight multiple at a time. That's something I don't see too often and it immediately kicks you out of whatever rote pattern you've already been using. I think leaning into this aspect even further will get some great gameplay out of it.
The spells were varied enough and I really liked that you only had 2 to choose from. That made the choices fairly critical and also made the playthroughs feel very different.
The game theme and fantasy promise really sucks you in. And with the long learning curve, it kept me playing for a while. I'll definitely be keeping track of future games :)
Suuuper unique game idea, and a relatable one! Even outside the theme, I haven't really seen a game like this where your decisions get placed into execution commands. It makes me think of Sabin's special moves, except here your choices actually matter.
I must admit, I didn't pick up on the strategy and elemental effectiveness until I read it in a comment. Personally, I didn't really have any trouble just punching in the moves super quickly. Because of that I didn't look for opportunities to optimize. But now that I'm aware of the underlying strategy it does make me appreciate it more.
I wouldn't mind a hard-mode with some finger twisting action :)
Nice! We had similar concepts in having gameplay that sync'd to the beat. This isn't something I've seen before in a topdown shooter. The art/music/gameplay really lined up quite well.
I couldn't help but be inspired by the gameplay especially once I saw the upgrades. Since you're lucky to have a music artist on the team, it would be really neat if a full version tied different weapons to different music instruments/tracks. So if you pick up missiles, now missiles are firing to the bass or something.
But I digress. For the gameplay I mostly did a gigantic circle strafe. I'm sorta glad the HP bar was forgiving, I definitely ran into a lot of enemies when they spawned right next to me lol. I thought it was really neat that the arena size shrunk and it became VERY apparently once you were near the end of the game.
The ending was a very nice touch honestly. It plays right into the shrinking arena by making you feel like you're screwed but having someone drop down to save you. It worked better emotionally than I expected.
A very cool concept that shows what a beat sync'd game can do. I could see this going further with more work, great job!
Won't lie, you got me to come into the game cuz I thought it was a quick 6 bullet challenge, but you got me to stay through the gameplay even though it was more than 6 bullets :D
2 things I didn't expect: - Superhot slowdown - Bullet speed such that I had to factor in bullet travel into my initial shot
The 2nd aspect led me to taking only straight on shots or very short ones. I'm not sure the absolute best way to play but it does seem like some high scorers here are finding a nice room to park themselves in and just take simple shots.
I think that aspect could use some improvement, but don't get me wrong, I played this game for a long time and enjoyed it. The polish and juice is through the roof and I'm happy you made the multiplier meter so gigantic, practically Guitar Hero levels of size. All the color changes and effects all add to the fun when you end up clearing the entire stage.
The concept is solid and if you do a full version it'll mostly come down to your level design. I think the larger rooms will add more strategy and opportunities to do things like purposeful bullet catches. Bullet catches do absolutely feel awesome when intentional, but I mostly just got them accidentally in small rooms.
However, the small rooms are incredibly satisfying and doesn't really get old. Much like nailing some perfect AOE in a game. Would love to see what you come up with in the future, this game was awesome!
50 ratings in half a day? You're like an LD celebrity now lol
That was a really neat twist of a game. I initially forgot I could dodge so I was Dark Soulsing the first enemy trying to figure out how to hit and back off optimally. Eventually I realized that was not how I was supposed to play the game and found the dodge.
The puzzle aspect is very WarioWare-y and it was fun to recontextualize everything accordingly. Simple scene and simple controls, and you figured out how to wring possibilities out of it. Very cool.
I was mostly impressed with the innovation here. I can't say I've ever seen a beat em up puzzle concept so this definitely surprised me. I feel like the genre could use a lot more of these ideas.
One of my my first impressions was "whoa, there's a lot of content in this game", especially by the time I ran over to the tent/marketplace area. Indeed like others, I noticed that kiting was an option, and in a sense that was the real Delay the Inevitable for me.
I have to say, I am terrible at Dark Souls games, so when I was able to down the big guy in the beginning I felt ecstatic. So thanks for the confidence boost :)
Another thing I really liked was the oddly creepy atmosphere. It actually starts with the dancing circle setting up the stage, and then you start seeing the other villagers aggro you later on. I was surprised at that feeling and I think it was a combination of level design, art, and music.
Great job on being able to run such a massive team for LD! I used to do this myself so I understand how much of a nightmare it can be too coordinate all the moving pieces. The gameplay is solid and I didn't notice anything that stuck out sorely.
The song you used for the empty houses totally reminded me of some existing game I played as a kid. There's no way I can remember which game at this point, but it was really surprising.
When I started the game, I actually mistook that tutorial arrow as a guiding arrow telling me where I needed to go, so I started to make my loop around that whole area. I guess it ended up doing the same thing it was meant to do regardless because I managed to go through the game anyways.
As you already know, the boss HP is a bit much. Even 250 might be too much unless it's given more phases or firing patterns. I was actually happy I didn't take damage so I could park myself and slowly whittle it down over time. Otherwise, the overall design was fine because you could place yourself in between the 2 lines of fire to practice some shmup skills.
I thought the section in the lower right where you claw through the darkness was pretty good. I'm curious what you would do in the full version. You may be able to play with that as a full mechanic because it was pretty satisfying.
Great job on continuing to experiment with a variety of game styles!
@peace-of-cake-games yup, shooting those to clear a path reminded me of https://youtu.be/AoQAS2O7Nc4?t=87
I like the chasing idea too!
A very fun presentation that practically demands a click. The concept is immediately engaging and a fresh take on a formula we all know.
The concept was very unique and I struggled to understand what to do on first playthrough. Honestly that's not bad though, as the 2nd playthrough went very easily and I was outpacing Bario by 2 or 3 screens without a sweat. Honestly for a jam, even though you got a lot of comments about how easy it is, it's probably better to have that than the other way around so that people can experience all your content, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.
It felt really good to upgrade buildings, especially castles to gain slots. I skimmed the comments but I don't see anything talking about the enemy types - I couldn't tell the difference between the different workers/tokens at all. I ASSUME the evolved ones were better than the mushrooms, but when I stared at them in action, I couldn't actually figure out any differences. Can you explain what the differences were here?
Overall the game was very interesting and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the feeling of building out the world map, which is something we've traversed through many times from the opposite angle. I like how much potential this game has as a post-jam thing as well. Great job!
LOL this is the first game that genuinely made me laugh out loud. Other games have humor and I might smile or acknowledge it, but the crazy speed at the end totally caught me off guard! 17 was my best:
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I liked the controls a lot more than I thought I would. You roll your fingers like right->up, creating a galloping effect and sound which is very pleasing. So maybe that might run counter to what you're thinking about regarding QOL. I think being able to blindly mashing would be a mistake in a game that's already fairly simple.
I didn't realize I was going to be timed so I didn't try SUPER hard. But even with that in mind, I thought the raindrops were implemented well and kept the player motivated. They sucked when you got hit with them and I would decide to try a little harder each time.
I really enjoyed the game. It has a lot of character and bold execution. Awesome job!
The graphics, perspective, and animations all reminded me of old 16 bit games that were forced to master all these tricks to give the illusion of 3d. I'd say you got that depth down pretty well!
After getting the first ending through nonstop spirit bombing, I was wondering how they heck you squeeze 5 endings out of this. But upon diving into the speech options I could see where you opened up those options. I thought that was all very clever because typical this sort of stuff simply offers you 2 options, which is the violent path of the peaceful path. It's also cool that each path had their own mood to it.
I'm a little curious what ends up causing the keys to not register as well. I got a little superstitious and would start clicking everywhere before the round started, hoping I would activate something with the focus. Pretty sure that didn't do anything.
Overall a pretty neat interpretation of the theme. You must've put a decent amount of work into the BG too which was very cool to see changing and giving the sense of falling all the way from the sky.
A game about revenge bedtime procrastination, definitely a really unique concept I haven't seen this jam even though it's probably something we've all done a bit in our lives!
I think the threat of the monster was a necessary ingredient to making the whole game work. It needed to be visually scary, and it needed to do a fair amount of damage once it hit you. This added to the perceived difficulty of the game and immediately makes you stop playing lazily.
I thought the gameplay worked very well as a result. It's sorta a logistics game where you have to quickly figure out how many phones you can grab, if you should pick up any energy boosters through your route, and most importantly, can you do it without getting tagged by the monster. Since you have lots of rooms, each serving as its own puzzle, the game kept me really interested from the variety of layouts to consider. Some of them were especially interesting like one that was shaped like a 3-pronged fork, with phones in each prong.
I'm a little glad you were generous with the energy boosters as it let you take your time more if you want. I personally just blitzed through the stages if I could, resulting in leaderboard 40 which probably isn't great lol.
Anyways, I think the concept works pretty well and the monster chasing you is the highlight and is implemented well. Gratz for fielding a big, solid team and managing to rate so many games with meaningful feedback and not just spam!
I agree with a lot of the sentiment here. Usually the folder-based games follow a certain format so that's what I expected. You broke all those rules though and created something I haven't seen before.
It's not JUST that you're navigating files and reading things. It's that you are actually upgrading your inventory and even ability to delay time ever more. By far the coolest thing I saw was when you copy paste a new rule into your rule sheet. Not only was it brilliant but it gave me a sense of progression I wouldn't have felt from a videogame.
This gives me confidence in your team that even if you DID have a coder on hand, you would've blown us away with something just as well. Awesome job and thanks for trying something so new :)
Felt like I was playing The Witness on steroids lol.
A seriously excellent game with a unique presentation. Basically every aspect of this game oozed originality and intentional design. I liked how progression was fast and apparent. That is, the player itself gains skill very quickly because the symbols are fairly easy to memorize over time, and your mouse speed starts increasing as well as you get used to the movement patterns more and more.
I like how there was some mild decisionmaking to be had, usually juggling between choosing your most dire squadmate vs choosing someone with multiple of a debuff, thus making them an optimal choose. It does get easy once you figure out all of the above, but I have no issue with that since that's the reward for mastery of the game's skillsets.
Music and gfx all solid. The UI, although VERY daunting in screenshot form, ended up being a breeze to learn. This is one of the coolest games this jam for sure.
You know, it's funny you brought up idle games on my page, cuz I was viewing your game as an idle game too! I know it's more of a simulation, but I felt like the clicking to remove metal + buying machine generators was actually the same sort of economy you might see in one of those games. There were some runs where I just sat back and stared at the plants taking over.
It's actually a little unfortunate the primary, initial strategy is to build machines away from the plants because you don't get to watch the plants grow. Though now that I come back to the comments section, some people were actually using them to block the plant grow which was something I definitely hadn't considered.
The system itself is pretty clever, with different interactions between the plants and machines on multiple levels. This allows for depth and flexibility of how you want to play.
Ultimately I think this game's strength is in its incremental visuals. It's a joy to see the system grow and be self-sustaining........until it's not lol. I certainly couldn't keep it going for a terribly long amount of time, but I could still see where the design shined. Great job and clever idea!
The thing that easily stands out the most is the readily apparent leaderboard at the bottom. It's a fantastic idea and I think a lot more games should to play around with that concept. That was sorta something I wanted to do with my last game but didn't have the experience to whip it up quickly. Out of curiosity what tech did you use to make that?
Even regardless of the retention benefits of wanting to climb the leaderboards, its mere existence made me pay more attention to the game *immediately*. I knew my score would "matter" now, and I knew that even the easy, early stages would be likely contribute to my final score importantly so I would try to focus and get optimal combos early. Each time I hit one of those gold meteors and shot past 8 people, it felt super satisfying.
I tried the post-jam version and I think the limited meter was a great solution. I haven't played Fruit Ninja in a very long time but I assume that mechanic doesn't exist in that game.
I underestimated this game at first! I thought it would be a pretty looking Fruit Ninja with a different theme, but you quickly showed new features that ended up being a much more engaging version. Awesome work!
I never though I'd see an aim trainer themed this way, that's actually extremely unique :)
My first run I prioritized taking fires out asap. But after reading themes comments and seeing that my score was WAY behind at 34, I figured I should try to do people first. That didn't work either! Turns out I was just bad. Trying harder I finally am happy with 75. You getting 100 is insane though...
The decision-making was light but effective since this game is all about hecticness. So you had to make quick decisions on the fire vs person choice, identify which person might be nearly dead, but also the chance to click something correctly. I would favor packs of people because if I misclicked, I might pick up some random guy while I'm at it.
I really enjoyed this game. It also highlighted to me how few games there are that sorta play with this concept. Usually they are time management games like Diner Dash, but Heat is all controlled by your mouse so it more directly tests the player's clicking abilities. Great stuff and I wouldn't mind seeing future versions!
This is a really funny and unique concept! I think the best part about the premise is that you have no real idea why you're motivated to keep moving forward and faster, you just are.
I had a fairly similar experience to @carlos-murillo in terms of stocking various items vs using them. I also thought the speed aspect of the game was a very interesting risk/reward mechanic to slow you down, other than the obvious ones like the cop car or the space dust. IMO there are very few games that let you play with speed in this sort of way so it was nice to see you explore it in a very organic way that was totally in line with the theme of the game.
All the perma-upgrade items felt AWESOME to get, but it was quite hard to know which ones were which on the first few playthroughs.
Overall I'm a big fan of the speed looting concept here and you explored it in a VERY novel setting and game theme.
Agreed, this is probably the most unique take on the theme yet. Instead of delaying the inevitable-game-mechanic, you're delaying the inevitable human desire. TECHNICALLY.........we could go through this entire jam proving you wrong, but that would've been utterly impossible to achieve.
..I suppose someone out there could run a clickerbot that constantly extinguishes. I'm not sure what will happen in that case with your code. Maybe if enough saboteurs banned together they could overrun said bot.
44.7 best here.
The extra effort put into the tutorial really shows. It was done very cleanly and you delayed the Next button such that the player had to practice at least a little bit. That gave me a lot of time to fully understand how the AI of each square worked.
Conserving momentum through your dashes is something I haven't seen in these types of controls and I think it was a fantastic choice. You wind up with less control and now had to factor in 3 things before letting go: what your current velocity is, where you're aiming, what obstacles are around you. That extra 3rd variable creates a lot of depth for a small mechanic!
The game speed was an interesting mix. On one hand, it plays so fast that it would be suicidal to stay on normal speed. On the other hand the slowdown mode makes it very easy to analyze what's going on. I think for gameplay reasons this is a good mix, but there were times where I wanted to sit back and revel in the chaos but couldn't as a result.
The ideas all work very well and the execution is very high. There's just a lot of nice touches to everything. From the font choice to the power gauge. Well done :)
@ideaspersecond oh man that'd be so cool. It's kinda like when you beat Civ and it quickly replays how the world changed over time. It's just nice to sit back and appreciate what you just did. That'd be very nice to have in!
Doh! I didn't see the best ending tips until I came back here. I had the book of notes filled and thought I had every item so I just went for it (turns out I was missing the key piece of mead anyways which I don't think I would've ever naturally stumbled upon without a hint). I'm not a VN savvy person and now I know I really should've saved before starting the ritual...
I did play it a few times trying to to solve the mystery though. I didn't know what to expect coming into the game, but when I saw the map and especially once I got quizzed and understood the game structure I started to pay extra attention. I thought the game was quite interesting in how you could get conflicting pieces of evidence in your notes, so you had to pay special attention to the dialogue to figure out who was lying or not confident in their answers.
So my takeaway from this game was its concept of being one of those logic-lying-puzzles mixed with a VN and the result was a lot more entertaining than I expected. Coupled with an unfolding world it was need to explore and learn not just about the new characters, but ultimately the clues they had for the ritual, forming a longterm goal to think about the whole time. Awesome concept and pretty innovative!
Excellently balanced gameplay! The RPS aspect is pretty obvious as to what you should be doing. That gets you over the initial hump of getting into the game. But the REAL juice is figuring out *exactly* how many units you should be placing to conserve your resources. That, in addition to fact that you can run into army sections that field multiple units, results in a surprisingly high skill ceiling for such a simple mechanic.
I honestly think you can take this concept a lot further. This is a good game to reference for campaign ideas if you decide to do a full version: https://armorgames.com/winter-falling-price-of-life-game/18961
Very interesting, this is the first 1h typing game I've seen as well. Here's the evolution of my play which may be useful for you: 1. Started off typing with 2 hands, expecting a normal typing game 2. While clicking and dragging items around, I realized everything was on the left side of the keyboard so I switched to KB+M 3. At some point I hit the wrong key and I see that you can type things out of order. I've also never seen this in a typing game and it set the stage for the next realization which was... 4. I started mashing more and more. Sometimes I would do some smart mashing with just 1h so that I could drag stuff around. Sometimes I did 2h. Sometimes I would take 4 fingers and just roll them down my keyboard.
I did end up quitting around 5k stage because I figured there was really no end to this strategy (though I didn't see @dining-philosopher 's score before I quit.
Definitely a very unique typing game variant with a lot of potential. Nice work!
4205 high score here. I probably could've done a lot better but I started to play a lot more loose later on and also experimenting with the wilder sounding cards.
Since you're eyeing a full version, I speak more about that angle. I think you have *very* good potential in this game. One of the problems with Slay the Spire-likes is that they're mostly all the same. You change up the conditions of the game here with the inclusion of a 3rd party, the refugees. So now instead of figuring out how to simply dump damage on the enemies while keeping your HP from attritioning too much, you have to figure out how to efficiently corral those people to safety alongside that.
This creates a risk reward mechanism where you try to save as much refugees as possible, even risking some extra damage in doing so (in the theoretical full version that is. In this version you prioritize your hull). I think this creates an effect that other deckbuilders lack since they have the singular goal of taking as little damage as possible - and thus always having a best answer in every round of play.
I think this will be a key point for your team to hammer on. Now you can allow for more styles of play (among other benefits). I for one, usually like to take extreme risks. If I could be rewarded for saving a ton of refugees that grants me some awesome upgrade, I'll gladly take critical hull damage :)
Overall this was a very clever twist on a tired genre. You did well for this complex of a genre in such a short time, and you also seem to have a good plan forward for a future version. Great work and keep it up!
That's an interesting take on building rail systems. Usually in something like Factorio, you simply make the most efficient system and evolve it over time. THIS was much trickier though, as you needed to set up a complex system that can reroute things, be easy for the player to switch around and understand the path, and most importantly have enough room for multiple trains to run on.
Coming back to this page I see you have a screenshot with a layout much smarter than mine. Being able to just send a train on a looping journey for a while would've helped traffic a lot!
I thought this was quite fun. Of course it would've been easier to have a bit more room to play around with, but the space constraints made it much more challenging and fun up front. I could see how you could easily tweak difficulty simply by having the depots spawn closer to each other, as mine did in one of my runs.
Fun game with further potential in it!
Come on now :grimacing:
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The game gave me an existential crisis as I contemplated the meaning of smashing pumpkins, playing games, and staring at my computer screen in general. 10/10.
What a great concept. You get to play out the fantasy of being a badass ninja without any crazy execution requirements.
My first impression was that it was like For Honor, and it was simply a test of directional blocking and reactions. But I'm super happy you kept exploring the idea, far beyond what I thought was possible! Some points that jumped out at me: 1. There are some with so many shields that you have to basically figure out routing on the fly, generally with only 1 second to spare. 2. The red zones placed into the middle of the diamond were brilliant. They are like ITG mines that you have to avoid, and they change things up SO much. 3. There was 1 thing that wasn't fully explored but I played around with it anyways. There's the idea that you only need to minimally touch a shield before returning to neutral in order to save time. This wasn't NEEDED though, but I thought it was fun to play with that idea anyways.
Overall, I found the game to be on the easy side but that didn't cut out any of my enjoyment of it. I think the concept has quite a lot of room to grow and that is not something I expected on first play. Great job breathing so much life into the idea!
Came here after your post about new genres. I'm definitely a big fan of new ideas and your screenshots implied it was going to have some. They were right.
The clock mechanic is definitely something I haven't seen before, and ESPECIALLY the idea that different things happen whether it's in the light or darkness. My absolute favorite section was the gravity one. Absolutely brilliant and it was extra fun to play in to boot!
Darkness spawning enemies was a nice idea, but in practice I didn't really notice it too much. I think it's because the enemies are on the easy side so I didn't worry too much about them even if they popped up. Regardless, I understood the design and could see it shine with some tweaks.
I'm curious what other modes/stages you could have with this mechanic given more time. I was surprised to see the gravity stage for instance, so I'm sure there were some other great concepts left on the cutting room floor. Very neat idea and I'm happy to see someone pushing innovation fronts :)
What an interesting combination of mechanics. At first glance it reminded me a littttle of Wilmot's Warehouse, but ultimately it's a different beast of a game altogether.
I noticed there are a lot of optimization opportunities all over. 1. While you wait for more blocks to fall, you can start packing things together. 2. Even MORE so you can pack things such that the next set of blocks fall right on top of them. 3. Before using a nuke canister, you can more smartly pack things up and clear them in a more efficient manner.
So it was fun messing around with all that. Though....tbf none of that mattered all that much. I had a score of several hundred before I ended up just quitting.
The game is satisfying at a core level though. It DEFINITELY feels great to bring a big block to the detonation chamber and watching it all go poof. Who knows, perhaps this game will go big and we can all curb the dangers of nuclear waste disposal.
Honestly this is a great concept. Not just gameplay-wise, but when you load into the game and grok the idea and what you need to do, a lot of things immediate click into place as you what you're going to do. You know you'll be playing around with jump heights as the clock rotates. You know you'll have to make sure you float back, etc. Idk, like my Balloon Time life flashed before my eyes after the first few pops lol. I think that revelation-effect was pretty interesting and got me hooked.
The first run was simple enough. I actually thought "interesting, this is probably the easiest pkenney game yet." But then I saw the score screen and realized the horror. HAVING TO HIT EVERY BALLOON CHANGES EVERYTHING!
Failed the 2nd attempt but got it on the 3rd: asdfasdf.png
The game seemed tuned juuust good enough because you had to learn a few execution tricks as well as better strategy. What stands out about the game is that as the balloons come up, you're doing a lot of calculations actually (this feeds into the grokkability of the game). You're predicting the positions of the balloons based on their color, predicting where you'll be when the heights are right, and then quickly coming up with a basic flight plan to handle that. This was VERY cool. Simple and effective mechanics that have depth when combined together.
Very fun game. I wonder what it would be like with harder levels when the clock spins even faster. I think those calculations would get very intense, even without changes to the balloons. Not to mention just being able to stay on the platform naturally. Spinning too fast of course, would force people to just jump in the air a lot and land when the platforms come around again, so it'd be a balance of speed.
Typing emojis while under the stress of a time loop reminds me of this scene lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tim29CDbo
Got out in 26 loops. I'll have to echo was others said. This is probably the most interesting text adventure I've ever played. I mean that literally because generally you have an idea of what to expect out of these sorts of games. But the concept and especially the interface you explore the world with are especially new and immersive.
I'm impressed at how few elements you needed to make the player feel like and escape a time loop. I've certainly played time loop games before, but you always had a lot more graphics to sell the gameplay. Here, with the secret word use and experimenting with different machine states, you put the player in the shoes of the character instead of just playing an avatar. The game surpassed all the expectations I had from just that screenshot, which is honestly really unassuming!
Very much got stuck on the "this one is tricky" stage. I spent a good 20 mins on that stage and still couldn't get it! Got any hints?
I thought the time factor for the game changed a lot at first. I was right, but in a different way. I thought that because it was 10s, every level would simply be short, which I liked.
What I didn't realize however, was that I was simply clearing the levels too fast, or hitting R when I thought I wouldn't make it in time lol. So I never actually saw the ghost mechanic until the first stage that had 3 colors on it.
Now that I was playing the REAL game I had a different experience. I liked the interplay of Sokoban + pushing blocks in such a way to protect yourself from the ghost LOS/pathing. It really shook up the normal way to play these sorts of games. Cool idea!
Rain on the windows, haven't seen that before. A very nice effect!
Compared to the other contemporaries like Overcooked and PlateUp, this game had more of an emphasis on carrying the tray around. I thought that was a very nice twist to the formula, because now you were thinking about optimizing your routes and making sure you could remember who had what. I liked that the cooking portion (or cleaning up messes for that matter) took a backseat so that Overbrewed could have it's own feel for the genre.
So to be efficient, this is a bit of a memorization game since AFAIK you couldn't easily tell which drink was which once it was placed somewhere. I would try to stack the counters a bit when I had breathing room, and try to remember which ones were which to add to my speed.
The later difficulties are definitely made for 2 people. I didn't have a partner to play with but I imagine it would've been fun to do, although it's unlikely much coordination would happen like the other games. That's because there's just so much to remember, it's best just winging most of it and doing your thing I assume.
A good take on a genre that still has a lot of room to explore. Every single one of them emphasizes hecticness and dashiness, so it's great to play one where I could just be happy serving customers :)
I'm SO glad you provided the walkthrough. I was getting stuck around the 2nd and 3rd set of enemies because I couldn't reliably figure out the lightning mechanic. I had some semblance of when it worked, but I'd often run into scenarios where I'd die and be like "wait a minute...." The video showed me the way and I was able to piece it together though.
I absolutely love the idea of a weapon that when wielded incorrectly, is a dangerous one. I don't often (ever?) see something like that. Usually it's in the form of a card that gives you [+10% crit / -5 move speed] or whatever. But having it be a tangible thing you deal with in the form of lightning is far more interesting. On top of that, it's LIGHTNING, meaning the player already has a general sense of how it should work. Great choice.
Getting to safe zones was definitely very intense. I could see why you went with the timer mechanic and it's a good choice to do that. It allows you to have tight timers without putting an extreme execution requirement on it.
A really cool concept and it'd be interesting to see how many more things you could interact with beyond candles and enemies.
Super super fun. It's still the beginning of jam rating time and I feel like I've already seen how the theme can cause some normally standard genres to feel fresh again. This is no different. Instead of just walking up to people, isolating them, and beating them up, this mechanic turns it into a much more strategic fare. On top of that, you took advantage of the theme and really brought it into the player fantasy. Who wouldn't want to do the Five Point Exploding Palm on people? It made you feel REALLY good to nail 3+ enemies with it and kill them all at once. Super badass feeling, this is so good.
These levels are so incredibly fleshed out, expansive, and most importantly DIFFERENT from each other by miles. Each one has its own theming and skill to master. It really reminds me of Mario Kart in how different the stages can be.
The game is very fun and invites a lot of replay. While I'm not much of a mastery player for platformers, I found myself replaying to check out different areas because there was so much to see and do. I said "NAH" when I went around the back of the cliff in stage 1 and saw that there were a bunch of gems over there for some poor fool to get.
I could be wrong about this, but was higher speed always punishing? I'm not totally sure if there were spots where higher speed allowed you to reach things you couldn't get normally. I WAS puzzled by some of the bumpers and assumed they might synergize with higher speed but I couldn't get that to work. If not, then I think that would be a great addition to the levels. I would love to 100% some of these levels but I'll have to do it later as I've already spent a ton of time on it haha.
There are too many nice little touches to mention, so I'll just mention the biggest one which is how each speed boost gives you a different animation. Although it's painful to go up in speed, at least I can do it in style! Really an incredible package overall.
I'd love to play other games like this, what games inspired the idea?
I had played some variants of this this jam but I REALLY liked the direction you chose for this. IMO better than the similar games. I think the biggest factor of all was the variety of things to do and the sense of progression through a tourney. Even though it's such a simple mechanic, you found ways to stretch it out. I probably would never have thought of the multiple opponent one. Even though you're mostly just facing the superior opponent, it still adds a lot of flavor to the battle. It's a lot like Wangan Midnight where you're suddenly battling 2 or 3 cars at once. Sure, there's only 1 to worry about, but it's cool to see opponents with relationships to each other, even if it's kinda simple in this game.
My strategy evolution: 1. After a few matches and figuring that the sound didn't help, I turned off the sound altogether to help my timing 2. After failing too many times just counting in my head, I'd tap every second with my hand to be more accurate 3. At some point I realized I could do better tapping in between seconds as well. Dunno why I didn't think about this earlier. Ghost stepping is something people do in DDR all the time to help with timing. Once I did this it was easy to get consistently under 0.3 or so.
I never could figure out how to beat the time master. I'd like spoilers at some point!
This was a very cool take on a mechanic and how you can expand on top of it by providing a world. The dialogue made me feel like Ryu, who just travels the world looking to fight, which is much funnier in this context. This was an awesome concept and I enjoyed playing through it.
Thanks a lot @flaterectomy @ronn-fever! That kind of stuff was indeed in the works and I unfortunately had to throw it all out as the deadline crept up on us. I'm happy to know the core design is solid on its own though.
@russ-moonbase lol I'm always happy when my game ends up being difficult to describe for genre. When I uploaded it to Itch I was met with: unknown.png
I ended up just picking "card game" even though it hardly fits. And thanks, we really tried to focus on more polish this time so @evedoll put in some work learning animations.
@moonblast I'm glad you picked up on the magician concept even though we didn't really explicitly talk about it. The general idea was based on Paw Patrol and we thought it'd be really fun to eventually have had 6 different kinds of exorcist types to choose between if we had jam time.
@dgspitzer Evoking Touhou is high praise :) Similarly and coincidentally, Double Spoiler is my favorite one BECAUSE it's a very innovative bullet hell design. We're on the same page with the music generating idea. That was something I thought about and quickly tossed it out because I had no clue how to implement it in time lol. But you describe it even better than I had it in my head so perhaps if I get to make a full version of this...
@wheffle you know, I've been having trouble describing the game concisely. I might adopt that tagline instead lol.
@fireslash Thanks for the feedback! One of the concepts behind the boulder was something you could fire off early and potentially connect to combo much later on, so it's no surprise it behaved in tricky ways for a setup. Somebody actually sent me a video of them starting with a boulder and ending with it, intentionally dodging the ghost up until the end. I wasn't even sure that was possible until I saw that.
Agreed with the timeline actually. Even something like snapping features would've been nice, but since they were just sprites, I didn't have the time to figure out all the nice math on scaling and transforms in time. A preview scrub would be VERY interesting to try to code :thinking: :thinking:
@ursagames thanks for the playthrough breakdown and I'm glad to hear the core's good enough for expanding upon. I've also noticed that jam vets like you tend to recognize which parts of the game were limited by the jam time without even being told it!
@haotian-chen yep there's Chinese there but it's so distorted it's very hard to make out what he's saying. We were leaning towards an Asian exorcism theme at first but then thought it'd be funny if you had an international squad of ghost busters :)
@mhorth haha great guess :) Yes it was a pain making it deterministic and I still don't know how to get it to 100% without maybe writing my own physics engine (would love to hear suggestions if anyone knows). Really happy to hear that replaying was worth it. Now that you mention it that IS hard to achieve and might be a metric I'd wanna keep in mind more in the future.
Love the gif. IMO lots of speed/bounces + everything landing makes for the most aesthetic ones! Thanks for the writeup.
@aristurtle I appreciate you noticing the itch page! We put in extra effort after the jam's done to make all that even though we're running on low sleep so I'm glad it has some impact. Thanks for the breakdown, it's always good and useful to hear the details of a player's experience.
@pier-v you nailed a design challenge I had with the game. Without a timer or a HP limit (like a normal Roguelike) you actually don't know when you've reached a fail state (I believe there are some impossible combos in the game but I'm not 100% positive). So your breakdown is legit and it's good to know players are thinking about these things too.
For game mastery, I've been pretty impressed at the challenges players are setting up for themselves so there is good opportunities there. Here, someone unleashes a boulder as the 1st attack, but it LANDS as the last attack. He does it by bouncing the panda around in crazy ways dodging the boulder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRCx_JKFm2c
@deprecat @technonugget I had been considering adding other enemy behaviors but never actually thought about if enemies attacked back! That's a great idea and would open up a whole new class of cards like defend and reflect. I think I hadn't considered it because I didn't originally interpret this as a JRPG game like others have stated. So everyone's interpretation of the game has opened my eyes up a lot as to how players see its mechanics. Really great comments from everyone :)
@tyrannas nice setup! I can already tell by looking at it that there's a ton of movement due to vortex and squirrels blasting people around.
@pkenney that's honestly some fast learning, even I rarely just 1-shot the boss like that haha. Your breakdown of engaging with the timeline experience + experimentation is invaluable to me as that is the most unique portion of the game and I wasn't entirely sure how people would pick up on it, so I enjoyed reading the thought process as usual.
@bqq whoa, shielded from a direction is a really unique idea! One thing that makes it work in this game and not feel asymmetrically ugly is that the sprites can naturally convey that. Something holding a shield on its left would 100% fit in this world and force people to change up their strats. Thanks for all the feedback especially all the UI details you picked up :)
@papaver glad you noticed that about the replays, that was very much something I wanted to have in there so that people could get a chance to admire their work if they pulled off a cool looking chain. It added some extra engineering work because of a few states that get introduced but I'm glad it had an impact. Thanks for playing!
@wuppos thanks for the playthrough insight, and thinking more about it, I think your game had a similar pacing where it's smooth sailing until the final boss/puzzle where you really need to think :D
I THINK there are some spell combos that might be impossible to beat the game with. A lot of the easy-to-hit-with spells are weaker so picking too many of those might make it mathematically impossible. With that said, I've had a lot of players show me how to beat the game in crazy ways, including using only ONE caster (all spells on 1 bar), so I'm not sure!
Such a solid game. After the tutorial I expected it to be more arcadey and that I would be done with the game in a few minutes. Then I saw you had an expansive world. I STILL thought it was going to be a quick experience.
But after more exploring, I saw that there was a LOT more thought and intention put into this that I expected. First off, the water wasn't simply to float the fish up and down. Your jumps changed, as well as some other environmental objects.
Then I started noticing and playing with the puzzles more, namely the pillars. I had to resource manage my hats to make sure I could survive while enacting my plans. I think that intensity and sense of danger helped the game a LOT from just being a simple collectathon.
Basically the whole vibe I got from this game was the same one I felt when I played Supraland. I loved opening the secret areas. I loved seeing how the water mechanic played into everything. I won't even go into the hilarity of the seagulls and hats, everyone else has already covered that.
So a great job creating a Metroidy game set under the sea, something I don't get to explore much!
What a charming game! One of the first things that stood out was the sound design. Having things make sounds that still harmonized with the current theme was excellent and totally immersive.
I loved the concept in general of a kind and humble entity just running around fixing things. I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be, but some of the icons led me to imagine it as a mitochondria just running around fixing cells.
Game was fun and it ended just as I felt like I was truly mastering the game. You did well with how few mechanical elements you put into the levels, more relying on the core mechanic and how the environmental objects interacted with the player. A very solid design!
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"It’s about the motion of the potion." Not bad, not bad...
I jumped right in without reading the description: 1. First I played around with the different gathering methods 2. Then the cat started jumping in and I realized I shouldn't do the hardest thing while it's around, which is swipe. Instead I did the clicking one to offset it. 3. Then I found the cauldron screen, and decided I should just go in there and stir things while the cat is around. Lo and behold, it didn't attack in there.
Came back after I was finished and it turns out you had that as the main tip description lol, so I'm glad I figured out the "meta".
Art is super clean. And clearly you have someone on the team that enjoys random wordplay.
Also is an accurate depiction of a cat. Just goes to town with its face and mucks up all your ingredients. Not to mention the song that plays once it goes nuts. Fun concept.
Can't believe I haven't discovered your games before. I'll definitely be following from now on.
I think this game is the perfect example of what a game jam game should be in terms of pacing. Good games show their hook early on and then explore it for a while, basically juggling the player's interest levels like balls and trying their best to keep it up. The issue is that with a lot of jam games, they start to run out of steam after a while once the allure of the hook slowly goes away.
There was none of that here, I couldn't believe it. The hook is immediately recognizable and grokkable, and my brain started to light up thinking about what the game would offer. The thing is......every time I thought something like "I wonder if the dev will make me do more complex clock turns" or "I wonder if the dev will make me use the hand as a platform", you delivered on that the VERY NEXT SECTION. Like you were reading my mind as to what I wanted to play. Nothing overstayed its welcome.
Let's talk about the ending. My god was the ending so good. The idea of moving the clock + our innate knowledge of how numbers are created digitally culminate into an eureka moment where you get to feel super smart for solving the last puzzle. Utterly brilliant and an amazing place to end the game.
So basically, you start high, and then end even higher. You even tossed in some good humor just to collect even more LD points. I am incredibly impressed. This was a nice, tightly managed package and possibly the best paced game I've ever played in a jam.
Ranking #9!
Man, when I got to the rating part and recognized every game I thought: oh nice! These guys put in all the top games from previous years. Only looking back here did I realize you made them all lol....... What a plot twist, and a testament so how good your team is.
The game was very fun. I thought it might get repetitive, but I ended up looking forward to what kind of variations you would do for each minigame. I was especially impressed at how fast I could type all the code out since I think we all type similar things (although I apparently rely on the IDE to shortcut things a lot).
The game is so clean, I'm always envious of your polish. I feel called out by the ending where you're fixing bugs post jam lol. Truly an accurate depiction.
So many nice, little touches you had in here. Like someone already mentioned, the tutorial is stellar, and mislead me in an enjoyable way that made me really start to pay attention to everything in the game. The visual effects are SUPER well done, you have a really good eye for small details to make things pop. You used some simple squishing and squashing on the characters, but somehow the end effect is that they look like they're bobbing up and down like an old school cartoon. Very neat!
The gameplay and theme itself was very engaging. I brainstormed something similar but it wasn't nearly as clever as this. The whole locked room mystery - but you have to figure out clues while the clock is ticking... now that's smart.
The 10 sec did put a lot of pressure on me so I had to wing a few calls, usually incorrectly. I think that's what separates this game from other detective-ish games. In a detective game you play logically and go over clues and connections. Here, you're judging based on intuition which is VERY unique. Superb job on the concept!
"For that 10 seconds or less, I'm free." YO you're not gonna believe this, but for my HS senior picture, my quote was actually "I'm not running!". I could practically quote that whole movie back in the day lol. I ended up afking a few more runs just to see what quotes you guys threw in there.
Game was super fun to play around with. I think the janky controls (which honestly seems like a nightmare to code) + the constant wiggling bodies were totally necessary to make it interesting. A perfect doll with joints would've been trivial and a totally different game.
Presentation is so good. Nostalgic backgrounds (the laser BG cost extra at our school!). I was praying there would be a yearbook section at the end and you delivered on that.
Best custom pose I could pull off. The face of someone crossing the street at the wrong time: asdf1.png
Very cool game. I'm curious how difficult the implementation was! The 3D art looks surprising cool for a jam game.
Tbh I didn't mind the controls being a bit loose. If it were tight like say, Megaman, it probably would've been trivial to complete. This added a bit of execution requirements to things, especially when you had to climb the tower.
Speaking of Megaman, this mechanic reminded me a bit of some stages from Megaman X5 and 6. There are stages with global mechanics where something happens every few secs, and you might need to dodge or hide behind something or die. The way to make this work and not feel random is to have it properly themed such as this: https://youtu.be/HgMX3v3D4Z0?t=75
And I think you did that perfectly! Having a beam come down from the sky is immediately understandable and tied in with the world the player was in. I knew what to do next and execute on that plan. A very good choice.
I didn't have any trouble with the ketchup cannon. There were only so many elements on screen and you gave it away in the text that you would have to beat it in an unconventional way. Still, more hints generally isn't a bad thing in jams where player investment is lower.
Kudos for try new things and new genres. I know it's tough and I often feel like I get held back trying to do new stuff all the time. But hey, what better place to do it than LD?
@wheffle haha I appreciate it. I always look forward to trying your games as well!
First impression - I got hit with a wave nostalgia at the movement+camera+setting. It reminded me of Battletech for...DOS? Crazy how I haven't seen that style in decades.
Quick note though, I got a bug a couple times. One where the enemies were dead and I seemed to keep getting hit. Luckily I was able to cast heal and finish the battle. I got it again a few fights later, but this time I only had the option to punch so I got locked up when I pressed it and had to restart.
2nd playthrough, killed the katana boss but in the next fight, as soon as I did my 1st suplex it froze up as soon as the clock finished rotating.
I'll give this one another shot later this week for a full review in case you find time to knock those bugs out. Or I can pray I don't step on a bug lol. It's super interesting so far and I'm looking forward to it though!
I'm uh, gonna need a hint for either the blue or green key >_> I ran around for a long time, reaching level 7 trying to find them lol. Nothing is more deflating than coming back to the comments section and seeing that no one had that problem.
Got it, thanks! I forgot about that because I only read the dialogue in my first playthroughs and tried to speedrun the second time around to catch up.
Third time's the charm lol. Finally beat the game, though by this 3rd run I knew everything I generally needed to do and blew by everything.
I loved the concept of time and curses. You probably played it safe on difficulty (as I also do every jam) because the curses were overcome with simple enough strategy and mindfulness. Regardless, I could see how that mechanic could really shake things up when fully realized. I tended to AOE things down with brawl and the other AOEs before picking the rest apart with non-resist abilities.
I liked the build up in the story leading to the boss. My personal taste in narrative is something that really sets up the villain, either in their backstory or sense of danger, so I was definitely getting a lot of that in this game. Of course by the time I got to her I could roll over her, but the anticipation was there!
As usual, I always expected something a bit new from your crew and this didn't disappointing. Very impressive that you tackle new genres all the time. And lastly, making a game where the 3 main characters have 3 different mask designs? I love it.
The immediate atmosphere was pretty immersive. The UI, the tactile interfaces like the notepad and computer commands, and of course the constant rumbles from explosions, all helped to drive the player into the story and world. You could've just have a mouse based interface, but the addition of the typing mechanic helped sell the idea much better.
NGL, I didn't use the notepad provided. Instead I kept a Windows notepad off to the side and jotted down every new nation that came about. On top of that, by the 7th connection or so I finally realized I didn't even need to browse the NAT directory, I could just type the first few letters of the nation and get something. This, combined with my growing list of quick lookups allowed me to start to burn past the levels. At least, until the next section where there were more things thrown at me.
I found the voice lines pretty entertaining and well acted. It was one of the things that carried me forward. I think some of the sections overstayed their welcome a bit. I think maybe just doing 7-8 connections would've been more to my taste, though unfortunately that would've meant less lines :shrug:
The connection interface is surprisingly fun to use. It feels satisfying to hit a perfect connection after doing all the detective work. Not that perfect connections are terribly hard, they just take a while to figure out.
So I think that was one of the more enjoyable parts of the game to me. How do you take a simpler concept like Papers Please while keeping its ideas fresh and entertaining? Well, you figured it out! Cool game.
I'm really surprised with what the temporary tower mechanic did to the game! In a normal TD you just quickly place down towers at path bends. But here I had to think about timing so that I could maximize money. On top of that, there were enemies that didn't follow the path either, so I had to quickly calculate where and WHEN the best place to put a tower would be.
This is a really interested concept that I think could be used in other variations. Arknights has a similar concept in assassin units that are stronger as soon as they're deployed. I think your idea has a lot of legs if you keep exploring it. Very cool idea!
Alright I know this game had a lot of silliness to it, but wtf there was actually a lot of innovation here. As an old Kongregate user, I've played every launch game under the sun. This is one of the biggest deviations I've ever seen, while still being super fun!
Instead of the usual earn $1000 then buy the next upgrade (which is fun, but pretty samey once you've seen it a million times), you have the concept of trading up. Using weaker resources to grab stronger resources on the outer rims. This is done via the organic method of simply having the better resources on the outside. This plays more to the risk reward elements of the game. Due to the fact that you have scarce resources, it pushes you to optimize your 10 bursts to make sure you set yourself up for success.
I'm shocked at how well all these elements worked together. Having more tiers of resources would highlight this mechanic even further, but I could already see how the flow of the game worked and was something I haven't quite seen before.
I won after collecting a couple moldy cheeses which seems to be one of the stronger items out there. This game was a serious surprise and I was tricked by it's unassuming nature lol.
LOL the nod angles are great. I can only imagine an entire zoom call of people doing that but the boss not noticing.
An unsuccessful attempt at breaking the meta: asdf.gif
My first run was disastrous, mostly because I was moving the mouse a lot petting the cat, and still getting used to what the minigames wanted me to do. Wasn't too bad though, I was able to clear it on the 2nd run. The icon dragging one was by far the most terrifying one since it took the longest.
The art is very nice and I'm really impressed with your vector art. Everything is animated well, there are lots of little details and shadows, but most importantly you conveyed emotion so well with it. I've also felt like that nuance is pretty difficult with vector but it seems like you've had a lot of practice in that arena. It's also not a common technique in LD, and when it is it's a bit more simple.
Overall, definitely a funny and novel concept. You could've stopped at just the concept and had it be juggling the cat vs work but you went the extra mile by having both systems have their own forms of minigames. Having 2 scoreboards at the bottom was pretty clever and added to the feeling of juggling 2 different things with 2 different fail states, not something I've seen before!
I really liked the choice of having more slidey controls. Having lower control of the vehicle made things much more intense and unpredictable. That, combined with the semi-randomness of the lava generation made sure I replayed a few times due to how hard it was.
I've played a similar LD game to this before, but that was square/tile based and the stage would fall out under you. In comparison, the noise generation added SO much to the feel of the game. It looked really good and sold the idea of well, driving in a volcano.
I liked the journey of learning the game over time. At first you realize that lava is VERY dangerous. Even a small pixel will kill you. But you start to understand how it expands when the 10s are up. Then you start to get better at pathing once you can predict how the lava grows. It's super fun! I could only get to 54% though, at which point the lava pools are too unforgiving to bypass (unless there's a luck factor involved). Are you able to clear the game?
Haha this is definitely a challenging game, and so far this jam I haven't seen anything like it! There have been no building games in 10 seconds, and the fact that there are so many ways for something to go wrong it makes it even worse (in a good way). I'd love to see someone master the game, it's definitely possible. On some Fortnite levels of rapid building.
Not sure if I ever hit the enemy tank more than maybe 6 times. I started with simple 1 cannon tanks, but eventually started getting okay at stacking my tank better and assigning 2 cannons. But overall, I probably failed on 90% of my designs anyways.
I really do love the overall concept. I know the theme is probably too limiting, but a version where you have variable amounts of time to construct something (maybe due to a resource you farm) would allow for some nice progression. Pretty ambitious entry overall, I'm not sure I'd know how to code something like this myself.
Bravo! One of the best LD games I've ever played. I feel like I'm the first to finish it here because that was insanely difficult.
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I really don't want to spoil anything but I'll give 1 hint because this game is worth discovering on your own. Draw a map.
Some of the things I picked up on my own were great, and I felt VERY accomplished when finishing this. It honestly seemed like you had this idea for a while now, but it fit the theme so well it seems freshly designed. Another great entry, thanks for taking up a full hour of my LD review time lol.
Yes, the QR codes had a very interesting thematic consequence to them. It was almost like uncovering ancient runes and using a translator to show you what they meant. This is different from just seeing text in ancient-y font. Or foreign text that animates into English. Super immersive and a great decision!
Unlike others, I actually didn't think of Mechs first. The round shape of the top actually made me think of ED-209 first, and finally I got to play as that terrifying enemy...
The controls threw me off at first, but I realized what was going on after a few restarts. Even more so was around the 4th stage or so when I realized I didn't have to kill everyone and could just beeline it to the goal if needed.
For such small levels, I was actually pretty impressed by the amount of variety in the levels. Like the tank one where they move back and forth. It took me a few tries but I started using the cover available to me eventually. Even better was that you would repeat stages but manipulate the ammo given to the player so you'd have to tackle it differently. Neat!
Tbh, I never did get to see what happens after the 10s mark. I either just died or finished haha. I'd love to see what the game would be like with the waypoint/time dilation aspect fully fleshed out!
You won't believe this ....but during our brainstorm session we came up with "a game where you need to multitask work vs a game. The game will be Vampire Survivors". I opted out of that because I didn't want to make 2 separate games in a weekend.
AND YET YOU DID IT. Crazy!
The first thing I did was zoom in on Itch so that I could cheat a little and see the screen better :P But it didn't take too long before I realized kiting monsters were quite easy in the game. Not unlike VS itself lol.
This was a very fun concept though, combining a lot of different elements together to create a unique setting. As someone who worked in a donut shop before, I will confirm all of this is totally accurate. I'm impressed you squeezed so many aspects together in time.
Is the victory screen pose a reference to anything? I know you guys like to do that sort of thing.
When I first started this up, I thought it was just going to be Crazy Taxi-esque and you had to run over the hotspot to win. Once I saw that you were trying to get into the spot before the poor yellow car, everything clicked and I just started laughing.
Then I got the replay where I got to see the orcs falling over and such which made it even better. Actually, there were a LOT of great small touches. I think the absolute best thing I saw were the multiple colored palm trees lol. I thought: why don't ALL games have things like this!? Screw realism, the random doodads honestly was one of the main drivers of me moving forward and playing more level.
I don't necessarily think a skip replay button is needed. I think the main issue is watching your replays of you failing. Watching replays of your success is totally necessary.
Lastly, I wish I recorded it, but my best moment was pulling an Ace Ventura 2, flipping over every car in stage 3 and landing on my back. I felt like an absolute king.
Hilarious take on the AI trend. It's just mechanical turks underneath it all!
I had assumed this was going to be another AI art generation game, of which I've seen a few this jam now. But this was a great surprise. It's funny to be on the other side of things - a reverse turing test of sorts if evaluation was involved.
Either way, nice entry to shake things up a bit in this art world. One day we'll find out you were right all along.
Pretty interesting how the scores cluster a little. I got 185 years myself and there are scores that are very close, or the same as that!
As an incremental game this was very well done, and a new style of active play I haven't seen before. Usually you have a clicking mechanic that gets boring extremely fast. Then you have full automation games where you purpose is just to buy upgrades. That's a better option but can still make you feel a bit too far from the core gameplay.
But basically you combine the 2 elements together. Your active play is to repair your constantly failing automation, which is much more engaging than simply clicking mindlessly. All the little juice that goes into watching your workers flop all over + picking them up and deploying it thus becomes extremely important since that is your main action in the game, and you executed super well on it.
The meta upgrades are very satisfying to use, especially buying the upgraded roads where you can now micro the resource flow less and just focus on finishing out the pyramid.
Great presentation overall which got me interested in it in the first place. It's nice to see something fresh in an otherwise stale genre.
What a fun ride, I thought all the concepts were pretty darn funny. Even though you all (probably) divided and conquered on a lot of the minigames, it still shared a cohesion of sorts. I guess that's the benefit of going a pretty silly route, non-cohesiveness can feel intended.
The only game I couldn't figure out was the grandma one. And skimming @100th-coin 's video, perhaps he didn't either, so I could use some pointers :)
My favorite game was getting the pastry back. It wasn't terribly hard, but I enjoyed the camera movement and well, the satisfaction of getting my food back!
As I've said before, fielding such a large team is seriously impressive. And the fact that lots of the same people are sticking around is another testament to that. Well done on such an ambitious game.
After playing through again you're right, I do see the progression now. I think it was a couple factors for me: 1. I was mostly looking at 3 things, the hamster, the grandma's face, and the score. None of those were really changing, and that also meant I wasn't looking at the monitor gradually changing 2. After seeing no feedback when timing spacebar, I thought maybe you need to LAND on the heartbeat. So I would keep switching between the 2 hoping to see changes on the grandma's face to no avail.
Hope that breakdown gives some insight!
Very interesting game! There was a lot to my discovery journey and how it evolved: 1. After the 1st few battles and realizing speed was important, I crossed my arms to play. Nothing bad about this, I do this quite often when I need fast movement since my left hand is better at movement. 2. Took me a few rounds to realize which ones were susceptible to attack vs magic. I thought the shape might've mattered too, and the animations threw me off. 3. A few rounds later I finally realized the kill order mechanic. Now everything was clicking into place. 4. Died for 1st time at some point here 5. I had been using magic to kill the purple ones because I didn't know how many colors there'd be. I finally went duh, and realized it could be killed by either. 6. I pushed through until level 18 and finally stopped there since I wasn't sure when I'd finally die.
None of those are complaints. I thought it was a very fun journey of figuring out the rules under pressure and then coming up with a strategy. I felt very awesome starting with no real clue what was going on, to making decisions well ahead of time and dropping fast attacks.
This was super fun, and I think even if a player knows what to do, there's still plenty of challenge to be had. Great concept, and ESPECIALLY a good one in a stale genre that normally just relies on narrative to carry it.
I had a similar idea to some people in the comments section. I basically tried playing 2 games here. The first one was the serious one where I read the bios and did my best guess. But later on I tried the variant where I just winged it and judged people based on the portrait. I actually thought that version was a bit more fun. The reason is because the portraits are technically the more interesting thing to judge, and when you only have 10 sec, you're so focused on the (more accurate) bio than the picture that you don't really get a chance to look at that. Of course, by just looking at the pictures, you get things wrong OFTEN.
None of this is to say the game is bad. In fact it was very unique and it was really fun to see the portraits and make judgments on them. On top of that, it was also fun to observe how the AI interpreted certain traits about us measly humans. What a teacher would look like. What a "builder". Very interesting stuff.
This was a bold entry given the state of AI being on the cusp of becoming huge. One day we're look back at the first batch of AI API games and remember this one fondly lol.
Very neat twist! For the first several cycles, I figured this was just a time loop escape room, where touching a clue meant a dead end for the run. I thought "ah alright, that's neat I suppose". After unlocking the first door I started thinking this would be a tight speedrun game with only a few rooms, since in 10 seconds you can only do so much.
But then something clicked for me.
!> I had JUST played Blink the night before, which has a blind navigation mechanic as well. Lo and behold, walking around in the darkness was possible, AND the timer didn't move! I think I ended up beating the game a bit faster than normal, just because that idea was already primed in my brain so it didn't take long to consider it.
So I thought the idea was super clever, and certainly not something you'd see in a real life escape room. Great plot twist that immediately shot this game up several ranks. Great job!
VERY fun game. In terms of pure fun this is probably the best I've played this jam. But even beyond the fun factor I noticed some very good things put in there.
I personally haven't seen a racing game like this where you are locked into 6 segments. I've certainly seen games where you can loop around the track, but this was new to me. Roughly like a "3d" endless runner. I think that decision was GREAT. The reason is because those loop racing games tend to be pretty hard to orient yourself in and hit things with precision. As a result you would have to slow down the game a lot to help players. But since Terminal Velocity gives you 6 sections, the player can focus less on the controls and precision, and more on what track they need to be on. As a result, you can crank up the speed like crazy and test that instead. An excellent design decision!
I love how you keep evolving the effectiveness of the leaderboards every game. In some ways I think this discrete (rather than continuous like Space Ninja) might've been more effective here because I really didn't have time to look at the leaderboards until a checkpoint was coming up. I loved staring at the left side of the screen as I passed a checkpoint, watching me climb up high, and then get back into the game. Very, very motivating as usual.
I landed at #7 and am happy enough with that. I drastically improved my scores once I started using brakes more. Not something you often think to use in an arcade racer, but it definitely help me set myself up correctly. The brakes were tuned very well and don't slow you down needlessly. This is a very impressive entry and you have a good feel for making the gameplay exciting using just a few mechanical concepts.
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LOL that's hilarious about the brake light. Yes I found it super useful and used it before a lot of the obstacles. For some of the spinning ones I'd actually just brake to pass it rather than switch tracks, if I calculated it'd only be a small brake-time.
Nooooooooo just as everything clicked the game ended. I was just about to show off my clockmaking skills.
Tbh I didn't quite understand how gears and bands necessarily affected each other. I blew by the tutorial a bit quick, and even then I don't think I absorbed the concept. Not too bad a problem though. I did a lot of different combos in the last stage before having an ah-ha moment and finished it. I must say that the victory after bashing my head against the stage felt very good and much more memorable than if I had just been guided to victory.
It's pretty clear the game is extensible and you put a lot of work into the various possible states of the clock. Although a little awkward when dragging things around, you protect against impossible locations due to the various positions. I feel like that probably took a long time to set up and debug.
Very interesting game in the end. I genuinely learned something new playing it and hope to use it.......somewhere in the future.
Fun, classic game loop. There are few games like this on mobile, but here you have the advantage of being a jam game where you can go a bit crazier with the upgrades. So instead of giving a few millimeters of range to the player for the range upgrade, you give some nice, chunky range that matters.
The lightning fence is a neat twist I don't see very often, and I like that you have some variety in the waves, so it's meaningful to blast down a group of small enemies just with the laser.
Curse you random evil narrator!!!!!
That's what I shouted at my monitor when I finished the game. In all honesty, those ghosts were terrifying. I think if this was a 2d or topdown game, the effect wouldn't be here at all. But with the lack of peripheral vision plus fairly fast ghosts and instant kills, it was kinda scary holding down those buttons. Luckily it wasn't TOO hard and I got away in time for most of the buttons, so it all turned out well in the end.
The puzzles were nice and clean. You could understand almost immediately what you needed to do. The main X-factor was how to handle the ghosts that were going to swarm you after turning mortal. Actually now that I think of it, there was a puzzle where a ghost was hiding behind 2 companion cubes. I put the cube down on a button and I didn't see anything nearby that opened up. I assume it opened up something down the hallway then.
My favorite puzzle was the last one. Partially because it was different than the others, and partially because it happens after an intense section of dodging ghosts and I finally didn't have to worry about them anymore!
Neat game and it must've taken a fair bit of balance work to make a lot of those puzzles so tight. Well done.
Is this named after the Major Magic's arcade or is this just a coincidence?
lol nice, I've been to the one in MI a lot and didn't realize it was even a chain.
I was pretty disoriented at the start but it didn't take me too long to realize the best strat was to head towards the bottom of the map so that you can get a full view of the arcade when the lightning hit. After that, it was kinda like "Speed Where's Waldo" where you had to quickly find the rod in those brief moments.
I honestly thought that concept was pretty neat and I haven't quite seen that before. Maybe it's a mechanic in horror games but I don't really play those. I think there could be even more design opportunities in that space.
The team size is huge! I used to do big teams too so I know how much more difficult it is to make a game with that much coordination. Kudos to you guys for sticking around, it can be hard to glue big teams for a long time.
You had some interesting ideas here and ultimate get extra points for reminding me of that arcade :P
lol funny idea, now I get to attend a doujin event just like my favorite anime CGDCT.
I got probably only half the references but there was still humor to be had even if you're not a total weeb. I loved that the anime bro is happy with the maid no matter what he says, just toss the doll at them! I also liked the masked up girl who gave off Watamote vibes, especially because of the things she asked for (I suppose both girls achieved that).
As for the gameplay, certainly a bit simple but that also meant it was easy to pick up. My first attempt went to hell, but on my 2nd playthrough I got 13k Yen (LD upload doesn't appear to work rn):
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The cover art and title was a great hook and definitely got me interested in trying, but I suppose that's because I already like that theme and wanted to check it out. Doujins or not, this was the only 'match good to customer' game I've played this jam so it was cool to see how it would be explored, fun stuff!
Celeste and other similar, knowledge-unlock games tend to bore me a bit because they dole out the knowledge so slow. I can tell there are more fancy tricks available to the player, but they are hesitant to reveal that until they think the player is ready, dozens of hours later.
What I really like about Bun Hop is that it is a TOTALLY condensed experience of that, which fits me much better. I quickly realized after stage 2 that I could go back to stage 1 and redo it. I opted out of that because I figured I could do it later. But once you showed the crouch dash I was like alllllllright, let's optimize some of these old ones. As a result, every stage felt exciting to start because I figured I was going to learn something new and useful, rather than being another practice chamber like Celeste would be.
The levels are timed tightly! Some of them I was beating at just under the 10s mark. Looking at your screenshot, you definitely went way under though, so I guess it's only tight for the intermediate player :)
Overall I felt like this game was a pretty unique experience due to its speed of progression. I had an unexpected amount of fun with this because quickly you learn things and get to apply them to past stages. And at some point, you realize that every stage can be completed in under 10 secs, which not only made me curious htf some people cleared a stage, but it would also motivate me to try it. There are stages in say, Super Meat Boy that can take a minute to clear, and it's super frustrating to die near the end. But with a 10s limit, you know you're not going to waste much time if you fail. You did a great job exploring this genre with the theme applied to it, well done!
Lol like others, I couldn't help but stick around until limit break, and then played a bunch more floors after that just to reap that reward and enjoy my hard-earned work! I'd say if there wasn't a chase item like that, I wouldn't have stuck around much more than after I maxed out my dice weapons, so great job on that.
Coming into this jam I actually expected a lot more weapon switching games. It might be possible I somehow subconsciously avoided all of them, but this was the first one I saw that did it. It was interesting to change up shooting strategy and positioning as your dice changed, though once I maxed out jump height I could always just dodge things until I got a more effective weapon. That was a nice surprise btw, because most people wouldn't think jump height would be terribly valuable here but it definitely is once maxed.
A pretty neat shooter with a classic, addictive upgrade loop. It's nice to see a pure random game after seeing so many roguelikes with 3 card choices pop up lately (including my submission :P )
This is truly the Smash Bros of FPS. I actually really liked the knockout mechanic. In another FPS, I would've been scared about bullets in general, so I'd either be hiding behind raised blocks or circle strafing like crazy.
But in this game, I encountered a feeling that I only get in melee games, which is the ability to walk in front of your enemy and face them head on (if you wanted to). I could take hits and not fear dying as long as my positioning was good and I had territory behind me.
The falling blocks makes this knockout idea work. Without it, you're tediously shooting people off the entire stage. But here, you can quickly gauge the floor layout, move to an optimal location, then knock off the enemy.
I really liked the change in the formula and could see how you could lean into that mechanic even further. This is a well executed game that surprised me on several fronts!
This is so fun to play with. The best toy-game I've played in a long time. I've probably done a couple dozen pictures already..
The AI seems to struggle with outlines vs blocks of colors, so I started getting better results when I switched to doing that. It's kinda funny that even though you're being assisted so much by the AI, you slowly learn to give better inputs to it over time, not unlike a game!
But I have to give credit to everything else. This is by far the most interesting presentation for AI art I've seen. Much more than a simple prompt/upload system, you get to feel like you're really contributing to making it. The peaceful music and solid UI streamlines everything. I think the 10s limitations actually adds 2 things: 1. Replayability because it's too hard to send in your perfect painting 2. Because it's so chaotic, you actually end up with some unexpected and delightful outputs
Incredibly fun one that I can send to non-gaming friends. I definitely plan to play this a lot more throughout the week.
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I gave the game a couple playthroughs so I could see how the different paths were done. On my first playthrough, I was especially wondering how the heck you could have 7 different endings with that many choice points! I understood a bit of the design better after the 2nd ending though.
This entire jam, I've noticed that people are applying the 10s mechanic to all sorts of genres and it's really interesting to see the different effects it has on that genre. For example, a TD where you towers only last 10 sec means that you don't just decide 'where' to place a tower, but 'when' as well.
This is the first VN I've played so far so I was thinking, what does the theme offer and how does it change the impact of the game?
I think your creative direction in making a slower paced game with more contemplative thoughts was a good choice. I think when you can read at your own pace, you are tempted to blast through the words and just make it to the next section. So in this case, the game is more like a movie where you have to experience the media at the pace the director picks.
When it came to making a choice, oddly enough I think the timer made me think about the choice MORE! In a normal VN I might quickly choose my gut option and go with it. Here, I would still do that, but then I was given 7 more secs to reconsider and think a bit harder about what I wanted.
So kudos to you for exploring this idea. I didn't expect it to feel so different but the theme helps add some new flavors to the normal VN. Excellent execution!
BTW...was the Void Song a reference to Invader Zim?
Please let this game make top 5. It's so funny yet so clever. I loved how you threw in tons of tricky scenes to throw the player off. I totally thought Indy was going to stroke his chin when he first lifts his hand up.
The game is a test of movie memory, and also general anticipation of patterns if you don't know the film. I've never seen anything close to this.
And it wasn't just a test either, you had so many funny clips in general. I never thought I'd see a Whiplash reference in LD haha.
A fantastic game and one that I've been sending to a lot of friends because it's so easy to grok. Very good job!
Much more enjoyable than I expected. I know there's a bit of a similar game in one of the Mario Party's, and I was expecting something like that. But since this is just PVE, you had to make up for that hole somehow. The combination of disappearing signals + the smaller threshold for accuracy led to some surprisingly intense moments!
I like that in the starting rounds, you can see how far off you are at first. I generally was -100ms or so, which made me second guess a lot of my later clicks. There's a surprisingly psychological effect from the previous runs on the later ones.
Best I could do was 9 though, all my rhythm game experience is in shambles.
The decision to use a close and locked camera angle was pretty interesting. It made me think about what it offered for this type of storytelling.
The first thing is that the character/avatar is really up front and center, almost the size of a visual novel art. This put you in the character's shoes more, not to mention showing off the art which of course was excellent.
It also affected some of the path choices and feelings when you took them. The lower path on the far forward/left area I remember feeling claustrophobic because I was walking into the camera. Because of that, I thought this would be the correct path and you as a designer purposely wanted to make it uncomfortable to travel on. ...the path ended up throwing me onto a normal path anyways haha, but I still thought that was an interesting consequence to the mechanic.
So in the end, this game came off to me like a 3D VN of sorts, especially since the paths were almost literal branching paths. I think you are on the right track to something pretty interesting if you continuing honing it.
Possibly the most aesthetic game I've played so far but that goes without saying :)
Moving targets + multiple targets + arcing projectile have a surprising amount of consequences to them. Take away any one of those elements and it falls apart and turns into a simple Angry Birds game that doesn't take any thought.
For this, I felt immediate calculations going through my head on each level. I had to figure out when and where to shoot based on the path that you designed. There's definitely some lizard brain fun in calculating these sorts of things, and I could feel that sensation happen.
So I'm quite impressed with how a few tweaks could change a gameplay up so much. It makes me think a few variations of this could be interesting too, such as lining up headshots in a sniper game. Very fun for such a short ride!
43 times. Honestly the game made me feel super cool for killing things in the dark. Especially around the end, I was able to just dodge and duel things with the lights off. Those were very memorable highlights.
I thought there was a fair amount of variety for the amount of mechanics there. You mixed and matched well, even putting in neat sequences like the part where you just dash forward and pray.
I liked that the combat was crisp and responsive, though it did have some trouble keeping attack direction against the walls (and maybe in neutral? not 100% sure). But otherwise, the fact that enemies are mostly 1 or 2 hits adds a ton to the experience. Encountering a small enemy in the dark for the first time and just 1-shotting it based on timing simply feels amazing. A well executed and well explored game!
First thing noticeably cool - the cover art. It was actually the main reason I clicked into this game in the first place. It definitely evoked some door breaching action which, while not totally accurate, still matched how the game felt.
The game is really interesting and fun right off the bat. It's a bit like Monaco where you're sneaking around, except it covers one of the biggest issues with that game which is the ability to just hide forever. The red zones forces action from the player, and the level design is done such that they play hand in hand together.
Would the game have been better without guns? I'm not terribly sure. I did miss some of the stealth once guns were introduced, but I can understand how there are only so many stealth designs that you can do with only 1 enemy.
The last level in particular turned basically into Hotline Miami, or if you want to use a looser analogy, the last level of Max Payne 1 where it's go time, and all you're doing is blasting everyone away using what you learned. It's very fun, very intense. I sure died a lot, but won in the end.
Overall the design is very tight. It didn't seem like anything was wasted and you guided the player from interesting level to interesting level. The intensity of the game is ramped up with all the nice effects you have in there, ESPECIALLY the exploding heads. I loved the feeling of power from the shotgun. Awesome job!
The theme of 10 seconds changes the experience of the game quite a bit. Normally in action games, time limits USUALLY don't change our play experience all that much unless the game revolves around it. But that's exactly what happens here. Basically, in normal Snake you are simply focused on not getting killed. But HERE, as soon as you hit a new level, a few calculations are made based on one question: "what is the best path for me to take in the next 10 seconds?".
That calculation is a rapid judgment of path length vs walls (including your own body). I think it's a really interesting puzzle to quickly solve since the time limit means your path can only go so far. Even moreso because the world wraps which is extra hard to consider.
So I think the overall thing I'm noting here is that you get the benefits of time limit (pressuring the player to play better and more optimal) without the consequences of it (game over -> restart). Any failures simply add to the attrition the player feels over time, and boy does the game get hairy later on.
I had a ton of fun with this one. Great execution and strategy tester. Well done on executing the concept!
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I'm glad you returned! Game design is complex, and even small mechanics changes can have big consequences. But yes you're right, when it comes to first impressions it can be difficult to squash just-snake comparisons until you get people to dig in deeper.
Played this going through the winners. Very deserving of the #1 spot :)
Oh god the blueberries scared the hell out of me lol. Clever twists when coming up to every minigame. I had no idea what to expect after doing the first one.
One of the things that surprised me the most was the shadows actually! While I was harvesting eggs I couldn't help but stare at the back wall a bunch.
I suspect I won't see another game where you're making pancakes as ants so hey, bonus points for being unique!
Once I saw BOTH the wave and hidden mods I was like yep........the name is DDRKirby for a reason :)
I'm so happy the narrative wrapped up the way it did. I think an issue with a lot of jam games is that they tend to be designed with the pacing of a normal game in mind. Where it feels like there are some lingering threads even when the game ends. But you wrapped this game up with a BOW. A perfect jam experience.
Actions were all super satisfying. A big part of that is the sound design, followed by the animations. The final area is of course, the best because everything's building up to that moment and it's fantastic watching the crowd slowly change over to your side.
Ending on a high note is always great. And during the credits it reminded me how much effort you put into the whole game, like the different characters, and the texting system itself. Really well thought out game that was finely executed.
What a well designed game! Like Roguelike combat but in its purest form where it's a puzzle game without any stats or leveling involved.
I thought it was going to be a very manageable game until I got eaten for the first time. Then I realized I needed to put on my thinking cap. From there, positioning and enemy management started coming into play. Any enemy on its own was easy to kill. The hard part was making sure you never got put into harrowing situations where groups of enemies could checkmate you. At this point I was utilizing the rocks more to skip my turn which was a smart mechanic.
I actually can't sing enough praise for the intro cutscene. Seeing some penguin babies and then diving into the water was very motivating and put me into the context of the game in 2 secs. Incredibly effective.
The game feels very good to play and it feels even better with familiarity as you learn sequences and combos and can kill things quicker. Nice work!
My greatest fear is to do a LD and not be able to finish a pkenney game. I thought this was going to be the one because that last level looked so daunting. I made the gamble that I should just water only the bottom 4 flowers and luckily that was it for me.
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Delivering the tomatoes is unbelievably satisfying. In this day and age people always talk about juice, and then cite THE juice video. I think this game shows how you can do a lot with a little. I think there's a hidden element that makes it extra satisfying too. I do think the difficulty itself makes it work. Because you know every tomato absolutely matters. All the levels are tuned very tightly so I feel that itself adds to the "juice" of delivering.
I've absolutely never seen a game where crops died that fast. That in itself is a fresh mechanic. I suppose the closest equivalent then would be Overcooked but you're juggling everything yourself.
It really is an interesting concept, I'm still thinking about it more. There is no single player Overcooked because usually you think "well this would be fun with more players". But you showed that it can work in this game. The game is very roughly a little supply chain game and you're trying to make sure you optimize your output flow by juggling watering plants vs delivering. On top of that, there are tricky-ish routes you need to take because pushing around tomatoes may or may not help you. I generally don't like saying this because it's cliche on LD but this seems like one you could go further with because it's pretty expandable.
Loved the hidden strategies in the game. Deceptively strategic is a fine bar to set every time.
Return of the king! Happy to see you finally get an LD trophy. I honestly assumed you already had one :D
No doubt my favorite of your text-based games, and also one of my favorite ones in the genre in general.
The hook is immediate. I can tend to read quickly through text, but when I read the part about the tentacles grabbing people I was like wait WHAT and made sure to read more carefully. It is an amazing premise and not often explored in games surprisingly enough. Certainly not in parasitic hunting form.
The UI is intuitive in helping the player figure out what they're doing and the premise of the mechanics. Watching the HP countdown immediately gave me a sense of urgency and understanding of what I needed to do.
What I did not expect was a small element of "skill" to the game. Learning the parts of the ship and how they're named and how to navigate it had some mastery to it which is very uncommon. I bumbled around on my first playthrough, but on the 2nd one I was able to navigate much better, putting the security cams to much better use and knowing how to quickly get to the snack machine.
Cornering 2 crewmates and wombo comboing them felt GREAT. I don't care if it was a bug lol.
A super fun entry which made me rethink the abilities of Twine. I'm curious, is it difficult to implement this stuff in the engine? Whenever I see a Twine game it tends to be a much more straightforward narrative game. I'm curious if you're pushing it to its limits or if it's always been able to do this but people don't.
ahhh ok. The map and HP definitely threw me off but that's great to know that that's a standard capability.
You read my mind when I was playing the game. I didn't read the tutorial text going into this game so I wasn't aware of the scrap mechanic. I started shooting robots as normal and they bounced around like a pinball so it take me too long to realize they were invincible. So then I thought "I wish there was a VS game where I'm pushing enemies into killzones." Lo and behold, that ended up being the primary mechanic in the game!
The strategy change was a lot different from the others. You now have to camp around the scrap heap. On top of that, you needed to make sure your shot angles were correct and would push the robots in. This already created a different enough strategy that felt fresh.
Although the bouncing mechanic killed me MANY times (24 was the highest I could reach), I'd still say that the design choice to do that was great, mostly because I'm tied of the same shambling zombie mechanic and having things come at me.
The upgrades were pretty different as well. I can't help but guess you went for the implementation because you lacked the time to make a whole UI and selection menu :P Ultimately I'm ambivalent on the choice of upgrades instead of HP taking a hit, I think it could go either way.
For such a loaded genre, you still managed to find a fairly unique design in it. Good stuff!
Didn't expect to see a Powerwash Simulator type game in here :) It was actually pretty fun replaying and trying to get onto the leaderboards. I bareeeeeely squeaked in at 2nd to last with 707.
I am curious though, what determines tractor speed? Sometimes it went faster or slower than I expected and I never could figure it out. Does mouse position matter at all? Sometimes I'd pull the mouse further away and hope that it would make it go faster. I'm guessing it's purely based on how many you're harvesting at a time but not sure.
Either way, the game is super satisfying, and speedruns were harrowing as you would clear out a row but then accidentally leave 2 stalks standing, killing the whole run!
@joykangpae @wuppos @mhorth really happy you guys recognized the strategic element to the game. I too, don't think it's obvious at first play. But after a few rounds, learning about positioning really takes you to another level.
@local-minimum I appreciate you playing even with the wrist issue, hopefully the controls helped with that lol. And I'm a fraud, I only had black tea around to drink while making the game myself haha. Great feedback, I'll definitely keep it in mind!
@meep great catch, that was actually one of the games that inspired the gameplay. What a nightmare of a level lol
@doctor-zeus you read a lot of my intents as well :)
#1 an interesting thing I've observed is how strategy and execution co-develop in a player. At first the game is execution heavy until the player starts realizing there is strategy to spreading out their monkeys in certain ways. But funnily enough, that is actually capped by the player's own ability to throw monkeys far - so their strategy can only be as complex as their execution.
#2 that is totally a viable strat and I use it depending on the situation. The real reason I didn't have a larger penalty was because I didn't have enough time to explain it to the player. The UX wasn't quite good enough to show it I thought. A tutorial stage would've been better. So ultimately I said screw it, I'll let the players get off easy on that one.
#4 I learned something new the other day, that in Tetris, depending on the version you play, you'll either want to leave an empty column on the left or right side of the well. This is completely due to the different rotation behaviors across different Tetris versions.
The correct answer does seem to simply have a rotation-switch button, but I think it could be interesting to see what positioning strats develop as a result of how the tosses work.
I'm definitely a fan of making a game in a genre you don't know, it gives a chance to see a lot of novel mechanics since the dev may not be familiar with all the tropes. VS clones could certainly use a dash of innovation right now.
So I'll talk about some of the differences and what they entail: - The first thing I noticed was that the resources spawned from the coconut tree above it. I thought that was fantastic since it quickly gave me the goals of "follow the trail of coconut trees" to level up. Most games either spawn from killing mobs (which doesn't encourage exploration) or they just spawn powerups willy nilly in the middle of nowhere. So the theming of the trees and such were a good idea. - The different terrain. To my knowledge this also hasn't been done before, and immediately gave me vibes of Heroes of Might and Magic terrain. This allowed for some risk/reward and decisionmaking. You didn't go too hard into this mechanic, but I liked that it was there and you could certainly play more with it if you had time. Trying to run out into the ocean only to have boars eat me alive was a terrible end.
I really liked your approach of making the terrain more interesting to navigate and scattering your rewards that way. Since you haven't played VS, you may not know that the terrain tends to largely be arbitrary and ignored. I think it's a lost opportunity and you showed some ways designs can evolve for that!
Incredibly engaging game, it was hard not to want to finish out the game. I was on my way to 300 lavenders when I thought of the genius idea of seeing what would happen when I totally walled myself in... The game of course, totally lagged and died on me.
But I got a very good taste of the game leading up to that. Summoning the different animal friends was the best part. I actually liked how the automation was unreliable. I grabbed a bunch of raccoons and prayed that they would plant seeds but they tended not to. I think it's good to have that sort of imperfect behavior, because otherwise the automation would be TOO easy like Factorio. It wouldn't make sense for animals to be perfectly trained anyways.
Like many others, it didn't take too long to create a kill-tunnel for the gnomes to run through. It was super satisfying to blast down the tunnel and 1-shot everything. I think if they took multiple hits it really would've ruined the experience, despite that being the logical thing to do to up the difficulty between rounds.
Another impressive entry, and probably the one with the most longevity given what some of the comments are saying. Super good game.
lol this a wild concept. I wouldn't have thought of this from Harvest. It was super fun to just watch the chaos unfold, I was hardly playing optimally.
The tool I liked the most was just the tri-spinner. It had a whole lot of coverage and would easily bounce animals over to other nearby traps. I didn't realize I could carve out water myself until a bit later. It is definitely strong and you can set up some creative mazes with it.
I'm not toooo sure why but I can't finish the game. There are 2 animals left and I'm constantly knocking them off the stage. Ah well, fun game regardless and I'm very impressed with how many towers you bothered to put into it.
The thing that caught my eye first was definitely the overall concept. I like merchant/caravan games, and I certainly haven't seen a travelling tea maker before. So the cover art was evocative and enticing.
You probably made the right call to just gut the harvesting and focus on the people interactions and tea-making. I'm honestly not sure how you could do harvesting with that engine and make it not too tedious for the player.
It was neat that although there is no exp/leveling system, I still felt a bit of progression as I was learning new recipes and or course, brewing the right one as well. I wasn't sure at first if I was going to get a ton more ingredients and recipes but luckily it wasn't bad. Definitely a different entry from what I've seen so far!
Very unique idea, probably the most oddball one I've seen yet. It's one thing to harvest teeth, but to "grow" cavities in people beforehand is a very clever way of leaning into the theme even further.
I do like my shopkeeper games so it was a nice, though simple implementation of one. Tbh I had a bit of trouble keeping my money up between the days, but I at least got to experience the loop a couple times. Mashing was totally fine with me. I was impressed you went through the trouble of even implementing different houses to choose from.
Looks like you have a team this time around instead of a solo venture. It's good to have more firepower! Hope to see it continue to grow and churn out more LD games in the future.
I can't believe how well thought out each level is. This is the sort of stuff you'd see in The Witness, where you're really thinking outside the box on how to explore the core concept. After the first few stages I thought OK, they'll probably just kinda increase complexity and strategy. But little did I know you were just teaching the player the basics so you could REALLY test them later on!
Fast Food was the first one that showed me the light. I immediately thought about Osu and I thought it was hilarious how I was playing a *farming game* but suddenly my mouse speed and accuracy was being tested.
Tortoise and Hare was a brilliant use of shapes and tiles. Ok well, a little creativity is required on the hare's depiction but the idea is there lol.
Scatter Plot was very very tricky to optimize. This is where I learned to really juggle my tools and "plant over" other plants in order to not accidentally cut them.
After the Storm - so cool. IMO harder than the last stage since counting out how you're going to lay things out is very difficult. The final stage I mostly just blasted things onto the fast tiles.
I was kinda skeptical coming into this, but ultimately I believed in its title + the promise of fastpaced action. It delivered! I was tested on several skills I've never seen before. Quickly tracing my previous mouse movements, which still being themed as crop harvesting, was very innovation. And then there's the strategic side of it which is figuring out what the best things are to trace in the first place.
The different crops having different growth rates are a key to making this all interesting, otherwise it'd be all pure tracing routes. There are lots of great directions the game can go in, and from what I've seen from your creativity skills, you're more than capable of continuing to surprise the players.
Overall this is a very raw design, and I mean that in a good way. You went for a very novel gameplay and it's great to see a game pushing the boundaries. This is one of the reasons I do LD, to see what people can come up with on the cutting edge.
Wow there is a lot of content here, you put your whole team to work! I remember running off to the right side and getting lost in the woods because there is a big spiral there with lots of seeds. I definitely didn't expect this much map from a gamejam game.
I'm actually not sure I've played a game with this concept before. I've seen games where you farm/harvest and then convert the crops to money, which buys defenses (Farm for Your Life I think does this), but I haven't seen one where the crops directly are used as ammo. It was a pretty neat idea and I could see how a full game could really utilize that.
Another novel thing you did was have it be a boss rush game rather than a wavebased. Usually for a farm defense game you have to deal with waves of enemies. I *really* liked the change of pace where you face bosses who look pretty different from each other. This gave it a lot more personality than just waves of standard enemies.
I know what it's like to be a on big LD team so I know that it's very difficult to coordinate (5 people is way easier). The fact that you only worked on it in short bursts of 4h is even more incredible. So I think you did great considering that and hope to see you try more like this!
Im glad zungry listed out the solution, I kept getting stuck on some other details that misled me and probably why I couldn't solve it in the end. It was a good cast of character with very diverse backgrounds. It actually made it pretty relatable because I would map some people I knew to the characters and think about it that way.
It felt great chipping away at the mystery chunk by chunk. It's possible I missed a key branch but I still enjoyed what I had uncovered. I also really liked the extra music that played whenever I was onto something. It very much matched the atmosphere of suspicion and mirrored how I was feeling about the subject.
This is a pretty unique LD game. Don't think I've quite seen a mystery game where you're looking at people's arguments/stories and then choosing based on that. Nice job!
I honestly never thought I'd see Angry Birds with a metalayer and real game surrounding it, but here it is. Then again, I don't think it's even crossed my mind before lol.
I legit really enjoyed it. The shooting mechanics were very satisfying. Hitting long range shots, while not totally necessary, was very enjoyable. I suppose both our games had that factor in it :D
I saw you have plans to expand the game which is great to hear. I usually don't give suggestions on adding breadth of content (cuz LD is so short), but I couldn't help but think how awesome it'd be with different dragon types and upgrades. It was such a great design!
Oh, I did run into a bug where I touched an archer and they launched me above some top collider. I could no longer move below it to gather gold and got stuck in the air :C
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Hah, when I first saw your game I couldn't help but see the similarities to our game. A nice friendly animal grabbing leaves in a physics environment.
Even though the game appears simple, there is a lot of thought and care put into elements that I really didn't expect. Like others pointed out, you didn't HAVE to add the double dash mechanic. But as soon as I discovered it, I tried to see how little I could touch the walls while playing. You didn't HAVE to have the final vacuum effect leaving the stage, but it gave good variety to the visuals and pacing.
Honestly it's a good amount of polish for a 1 person team. Really good job!
From the screenshots, I thought this was going to be Papers Please type of game. Tbh, I'm not really a fan of those types of games, because they tend to just be shoddy ripoffs of PP without adding anything unique. I was really glad this game was not the case! Instead, it was a rapid fire Where's Waldo game, of which there are very few games in that category.
The faces were fantastic and you made good use of a face generating system to make it relatively hard to pick out the correct face, especially in later levels when there's a lot of people running around.
There seemed to be quite a bit of variability. The first time I played I could only get 6. I often had to wait several seconds until the guy popped into frame. Only upon coming back here and seeing posts did I realize that was a very low score. I tried again and got 14, with a lot of contract-characters being on screen already. Judging by your comments, the 1st case should've been rare so I'm not sure what happened.
Either way, I did enjoy the game very much. This is a genre I always want to see more of but there doesn't seem to be a lot for it. The later levels were awesomely hard and really challenged me. Great stuff!
lol I hit 20k and decided to call it, since I saw you had 16k. Then when I submitted I saw you put up 42k :unamused: :unamused: :unamused:
There are few games where you think "why haven't other games done this?" where you have a simple concept that's really effective. I honestly can't think of another game that does the power-up-powerup mechanic, yet it works so well. The closest I can think of might be something like Smash TV where you leave powerups around for when you might need them, but in those sorts of games the powerups disappear over time.
Here it creates this nice, opt-in difficulty where you're creating your OWN obstacles of sorts. Big ramifications.
Funny story about Geometry Wars, but that game led to the very first game I ever made. I made it because I HATED how long GeoWars1 took to spin up - the first 10 minutes were super boring, so I tried to fix that problem.
But your game scales due to this opt-in difficulty. Instead of being a boring first 10 minutes, I was already trying to figure out how to get close to enemies to execute them, and generating a maze of powerups for me to avoid. So only after a few rounds I'd be pushing my limits in terms of the difficulty I was looking for. Really inspiring design, I'll have to think about what other genres you could apply that to as there is a lot more potential here.
The enemies were varied enough to give the classic twinstick feel of analyzing the screen and figuring out a strategy on the fly. If it weren't for the shield, I think I would've been done for. In late game, I personally think the most satisfying sequence was harvesting an HP regen and then snagging a full powerup once you're about to die.
Harvesting at the last second reminded me of pokemon, and there was surprising risk/reward to it. To get a regen one you would have to be very careful with your shots, while the shields were a lot easier to obtain.
Another impressive entry from you. The novelty of discovering new enemies and powerups carried the early game, and the depth of mastery carried the end game. Main reason I quit was cuz I felt like I could go forever haha
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The concept is quite hilarious. It's like a fight in a phone booth, except instead of people it's farmers and sunflowers in a really tight space.
This was the highest score I could manage:
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The beginning was rough as I kept trying to use the scarecrows effectively. Eventually I just ignored them nearly altogether. The strat I developed was based on the aggro system.
Step 1: put 2 sunflowers together and then sacrifice your 3rd sunflower. The 3rd one makes it too hard to hide your other seedx.
Step 2: constantly place your corn where the farmers will end up, but away from your sunflowers so that they will draw them away in the opposite direction
Step 3: prepare for when sunflower seeds need to migrate. This is the most dangerous part of the game and you need to set up the farmers in a way that they'll give you space to safely migrate
I'd love to hear any other strats for this game. It's unusual (a good thing) which is why I spent a lot of time puzzling it out. Very unique idea!
The mouse mechanics reminded me of this game, which also features a rat with similar attacks https://store.steampowered.com/app/1283430/Fighting_Fiends/
The early parts was super promising. I liked that you showed off the cat fairly early. Like others, I actually thought the concept of being a rat in a field was really engaging and I hadn't really had that experience before. Having a nice, powerful dash really sealed the deal since you could scurry around like crazy, as a mouse should.
Overall I loved the idea. Dark Souls but a field mouse is a great pitch lol.
When I first saw this design I was actually a little intimidated. It seemed like there was total freedom in combinations and that it would take a long time to figure out how to place things. I'm not sure *exactly* why, but it ended up being easier than I expected! In a good way - I was pleasantly surprised.
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The banana/onion combo helped a lot actually. Rather than being an obstacle, it actually reduced the solution space a good amount and helped me make easier decisions. It's a good thing you didn't add TOO many more rules because I'm not sure if I could've remembered them all lol
A final, neat touch you had was the cool night/sunset victory screen. It's an unusual combination of colors and elements so it really stuck out to me, and gave it a nice cozy send-off.
I really enjoyed the game. It actually reminds me of Wordle in the sense that the game seems hard at first, but due to the rulesets and constraints, the game is easier than perceived and made me feel extra accomplished. So I'll just ignore that fact and pretend I was clever playing the game :)
Oh my god I can't believe some of the screenshots I saw coming in here. There is a LOT more flexibility in setups than I expected! A serious testament to the design of the game and how much creativity it allows.
I really enjoyed this game. It's an intuitive concept, yet not one that I've really seen or practiced before. You perfectly tie this in with the theme of inspections in a shady country to seal the deal.
The quilt was a brilliant idea. I've seen other stacking type games in the past, but none that used this sort of joint-system. It made it very unpredictable in a good way. Like some of the comments here mention, it was harrowing to watch as your perfect quilt sunk under the weight of the grain and have you lose in the end. Unlike the others, I found this fun and a nice challenge to overcome.
This appears to be your group's first LD entry, and it is SUPER impressive for being that. Hope to see more from your group in the future!
So happy you put up a video showing the full run. I was missing two and couldn't figure out if I needed to catch a certain amount of fish before they could start spawning. To my surprise, you caught a salmon right off the bat!
Very fun game though. I got the feeling of really being an explorer-hunter where I was hunting for rare species all along the map. Probably like many others, I actually spent a long time just farming fish until I realized I could just leave and start finding the rest of the fish to finish the game. I suppose that's due to how the upgrades were spaced, and once it got too far spaced I realized what I needed to do.
Really cool that this is your first LD game, and even cooler that you're very active in reviews too. Great to have you here!
Ok, that was very unexpected, and very funny lol. So much lore you just imagine after you step out of the portal and deliver the food.
I really liked how there were consequences to your decisions, even if small. After a while I realized I could position certain enemies apart, like the peppers on the left and the tomatoes on the right for instance. The rolling guys were NASTY though, as I tended to have trouble timing my own rolls against them.
Ultimately, I think the best thing about this game is the contrast to punchline. I loved how the music changed and has a high-pass filter-ish sound to in. Once you exit the portal, everything returns to normal and you hilariously just serve food to the customers. Everything is timed perfectly and the joke is executed well!
I suppose this is some hellish combination of Pokemon Snap and a runner :). Game was very tough in a good way, I actually haven't seen a multitasking game where you had to hold over something without looking. The birds were pretty hilarious, like the sphinx bird you can see right up front. Just for effect, having a little trophy/collection case on death showing what you're missing (if you added more birds) would be a neat thing to add replayability.
Oh boy this is like how it feels like when you play 3d chess for the first time and suddenly all rules go out the window. Sounded like a pretty mild mashup of games at first but then once you play it you realize how crazy it gets since the core mechanics of the 2 are at odds with each other. I kinda would be interested in seeing a high level breakdown of this game, seems like there are some broken tactics but I'm not clever enough to figure them out.
Outdoorsy on first attempt! I can forgive some of the lack of instructions since you noted you would post them later.
You were along the same lines as us, we wanted to make a unique deckbuilder and I personally wanted a fishing one too. Yours is a pretty unique take, it's not quite a normal deckbuilder but it has some different elements like how the hand and lake all work, I don't even know of an analogy except maybe like.............mahjong........... lol. The bottom portion of the game was iffy and harder to grasp but the top portion was fantastic and a great way to represent fish-reeling points. GJ finishing a card game in this timeframe by yourself, I know our group was coding right til the very end cuz of all the corner cases and such!
lol the randomness is pretty intense. I actually like the core gameplay of the running games. I haven't seen that mechanic implemented like that, it's usually just mashing. I imagine you can get really good at this system with enough practice, which is more interesting than other variants.
Two things I really noted.
1. Personally, I haven't seen any games using the Necrodancer mechanic. It's a really cool one and I'm glad to see someone take it and run with it in a different genre like twinstick.
2. I feel like I've played a decent amount of games but I also haven't seen your hp representation before, when enemies just lose sides as they weaken. Super succinct visuals and representing meaning.
Awesome job overall. Obviously you have some real polish here but those 2 things were pretty unique.
I really admire large teams that can perform in LDs since we are one ourselves and I know how hard it is to coordinate everything, so grats on making such a polished game. I'm curious what the breakdown of artists and writers there were? Seems like there was so much work on every front I can't even think about how you'd split up your team like that.
I really have to say, I know you're already getting a lot of comments about art and aesthetics, but I have to emphasize some things. A lot of games, especially LD games have gone with the 80's look. My god, you took it to another level. This is not an LD level of work. This is some seriously professional looking stuff. I'm blown away. You took a lot of care not just into the sprites but the UI as well. Nothing but praise here.
I don't expect to see another racing/quiz game hybrid this LD, seems pretty unique so far. One game to take a look at is Tales Runner - Math King. If you want to go further with this but take it to a more action game, that's a great example to study.
Best part was just the tracks themselves. The routes were hilarious and it was fun to just watch the environment as you twist and turned up mountains and such. I could see the towers having a bit more impact especially if you could lay more devastating traps down to stop whoever's in first place.
Wow, surprising mix of games here. Just the drunk shooting alone probably could've warranted a fun game but the added mix of typing added a great layer. I would try to maximize things by reloading while I was waiting for the next set of words to pop up and such, and also trying not to take any shots aimed around the body when I was very drunk. I didn't expect to see that much depth given the screenshots but you proved me wrong. Really creative entry.
Good start on a game. I share similar concerns to others, in that I can just sit there and move if I happen to be in front of gray block. To really give it the shmup feel you can add movement to the blocks and have them grow in more dynamic ways. As always, your visuals are on point though and you're really good at making things feel kinetic even when there's technically not much going on.
Broken record here, but great job again! The thing that impressed me the most about this game was how simple gameplay was transformed so PERFECTLY with the driving mechanic. A split enemy (which are normally annoying) now turns into an opportunity for a sweet drift combo, and a charging enemy now turns into a very satisfying parry minigame where you have to make sure you're facing the right direction at the right time. And of course the last boss reminds me of Gran Turismo trials where you had to tightly turn around 1 pillar. I really do like the potential of this idea and you can go pretty far with adding more Zelda-ish mechanics and tools.
Cool concept. At first I thought I needed to match the direction with whatever icon the date had until I realized the icons didn't match your ability set. I was trying to figure out some kind of mapping between face and what to do, like happy face -> respond with eggplant but I couldn't find a connection. On your game page I believe you do say you didn't get around to it and that's alright. I assume you were looking to do something along the lines of teasing out people's characteristics and how they like to talk and then matching it. It would be brilliant since the game is already a bit frantic trying to look up and down and get the mappings correct. Really interesting entry.
I'm a big fan of incrementals so I had a clickbot on hand to play with. Similar to @Forest I just used it to mash and get points since you can hit a pulse multiple times. I think a collection aspect does go with just about anything, and even though the gameplay ended up being straightforward for me, I still kept playing just to see what was behind those silhouettes.
Whoa I didn't know you do LD, surprised when I saw your name (426 SP here)!
This reminded me a bit like Frozen Synapse where you kinda had to gauge and predict enemy movements and take actions accordingly, which is a good thing. A few more AI/enemies types will make this really engaging since the decision making is a bit straightforward right now. As expected, nothing but a nice clean interface from you. Taking advantage of card combos and such is gonna make this game brilliant, great start!
Ah ha, I wasn't sure if the kisses were a toggle or not but now I know...I think I lost by 1 or 2 kisses. I really liked the idea at first but it did drag longer than I had hoped. Maybe a few different obstacles instead of just the chaperones could've spiced it up, or maybe an AOE ability. I still love the theming you applied to the game though. That's what caught my eye in the first place and drew me in to play.
Jeez, you guys are incredible. The polish is unreal, the innovation is top-notch, and on top of that you guys are still rating and creating awesome post-mortems. I don't know what else to say but that you guys have a good shot at top 10.
Wow what a fast paced game. Tbh I kinda wished the cars didn't have rollover so I could really make some crazy turns like in Micro Machines. I agree with @SecretPocketCat that the cooking could've been more intertwined, the mashup was a bit disparate. The game title is genius and I would've loved to see your plating idea come to fruition!
yoooo the look and feel is so good here! The intro screen alone is great, but then the camera pans and the cactus are all rubberhose dancing too. Also, when dawn starts to hit and the shadows slink away, it creates an unbelievable mood to it while the skeletons are all rushing you. The dawn effect is by far one of my favorite effects I've seen in any LD, despite how subtle it is.
It took me a failed try to realize when the timing for the hits needed to be. I thought the gameplay was also excellent. You had to kinda scan the field and plan out what you wanted to do for the next set of drumbeats. The healing was a bit straight forward, but with more tools or guntypes I could see a player making quick decisions on loadout and then executing it to a beat. Really good entry with lots of post-LD potential!
The Dark Souls of farming games...
That was pretty damn hard, I actually couldn't finish it. I could get pretty close but my god sometimes the cows just go mad and make a break for it to the other side. I'm glad you didn't make the poop an obstacle, that would've made things impossible for sure. I liked it, one of the hardest herding games I've played which would normally frustrate me, but you went for the theme perfectly with this one.
Looks like I wasn't the only one to horde all the homing weapons :)
Really good concept. I wish maybe it drew more than one card so I could play around with builds and decide what I want to save for harder bosses and such, but alas. The core gameplay is solid, and any bullet hell game will make me sit up in my seat and pay attention. Played til level 14 but it looked like the enemies couldn't get harder than that. Unfortunate!
Brilliant way of bringing in the chaos of John Wick into an understandable setting. Capping knees to disable people while handling the rest of the scene is straight out of the movies. A bit like SuperHot but better theming, awesome work.
Extremely engaging game! It was a very nice balancing act between all your resources. And the last leg of it (building juuuuuust enough factories to make it to the last building safely) was pretty intense. Sure the game is relatively easy if you take your time, but put a time limit on it and you have something very challenging on hand.
Probably the most unusual mix of genres I've seen yet. I love my Monkey Ball and I can see an endless amount of content you can put into this. Pretty much any standard dungeon crawling mechanic just gets morphed into something crazy using this. I wonder if this is doable on tablet gyros, that could really tackle an unfilled (afaik) niche.
Really impressed with the art, the first time I saw the tower pop up I was really surprised. The gameplay was intimidating at first until I realized I can kinda just mash with 1 crop to build up the resource and go through the 1 by 1. Really cool idea and reminds me of Farm For Your Life which I loved. Good job!
I don't really agree with some of the other reviews here regarding knowing what towers/creeps do, TDs have always been about exploration and poking at how towers fare in battle. Trial and error is the name of the game so it all made sense to me (though I was surprised at how weak the AOE tower was). I was thrown off by the attacking phase and thought that was a pleasant addition, though the VN portion of the game didn't seem to weave in very well.
Geez this must've been so much coding to even get the base game up and running, I commend you! The game was the perfect difficulty level for me. I could just barely get the maze finished in time sometimes, though I did get the hang of the 2nd phase on the next try. Lots of breadth done for an LD, nice work.
@Kwisarts Yea, we needed a few more hours of cooking time to establish the game conventions, but ideally: - The player would choose between recruiting more units to their army/hand, vs deploying them - More variance in the card names. The core idea was that since this is a real-time typing game, we replaced the Hearthstone mana concept with character count. So the length of a strong card should be a lot longer than a weak card and naturally take longer to type
Thanks for the inputs!
@jhandsy Wow we didn't even think about building decks around similar card names for combos and such (or perhaps short curse card names you don't want to type out on accident like "fever"), that's brilliant. Thanks for playing!
Our team talked about doing a topdown fps but we thought it'd be way too hard to implement. I applaud you making one, there's some really cool ideas here. You solved the issue of camping so elegantly by having the player need a minimum velocity to even shoot in the first place. You have to find a good balance of movement but still getting kills so the genres were mashed together pretty well. Honestly I liked it most when I flung myself into the air with a ramp and tried to capitalize on it. That was super fun but really hard to aim since the bullets we're always shooting where I thought it'd go. Very engaging idea and kept me playing for a while.
Brilliant idea! I'm loving this jam so much, we get to see ideas like yours come up. Definitely haven't seen anything like this before. The game is really satisfying to play, especially with the built in ups and downs of catching and riding the fish. I'm super sad I can't get this shark though, I wanted to see how crazy it can get.
In general the mood of this game is 5 stars. The colors and motion all make it seem bright and hectic. Fantastic entry.
Talk about "just one more turn"...
I always love Team FQ games, you guys make consistently great games that push design boundaries. This game is no exception. At first I was pretty turned off by the full RNGness of the game, but after I explored the skill trees and equipment I realize you can hone it the way you want. It also gives the player a chance to customize the game based on how much of a risktaker they are. Addictive entry that kept me playing for a very long time (still trying to beat it).
Got it, there's some exploits involving the skills :)
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Really nice game and idea, and putting the equipment right on the ball itself was a nice touch (it's always nice to see your upgrades in play). I did a few others already mentioned it but the lava being insta-death was pretty frustrating, especially when you were on a pretty great run. I know it's a roguelike but dying in that sort of way always hurts. I think your game idea has a lot of different ways it can go. You chose a pretty unexplored genre here and would love to see you push it more!
I was actually pretty impressed with how the jumps happened after you stuck to the bottom of a platform. Not sure if you got that physics for free w the engine but it hopped and spun really nicely out of the stick. I like the idea of each girl being a different stage. It's kinda like MegaMan, but a girl instead of a Robot Master. Would be cool to have the girls have wildly different level designs (moreso than currently) but hey, there's only so much time in a jam.
This game is amazing. The controls are a bit slippery but the movement and weight of the attack feel fantastic. Haven't played something like this and I'm impressed you were able to make all that art in the timeframe!
Pretty good execution on the concept. Have you played Forced Showdown? Really underrated game that employs the same principles. I think you have a really good start, but at the moment most of the enemies can be dispatched with good ol circle strafing and shooting, while your minions seem to just die too fast to make those cards really worth it unless you horde them. I think you could do quite a bit here with different guns and powerups (again, take a look at Showdown) and I'd really like to see another version of this.
Nice work with the game. My gut reaction is to ask for crazier stages. I used to play Albatross18 a lot and it had such an advantage over standard golf games by having fantasy courses and worlds like playing on battleships. If you could expand this and take advantage of truly alien worlds you can really push this far!
By far the best thing you added to this game was the giant art piece in the background. After a few questions I was like 'ok, I get it' and was tempted to move on. But then I noticed I was climbing, and that even in space, the gradient was changing just a bit. That small little tweak to give a feeling of progression was enough to keep me going all the way. Good job to whoever thought of that!
I played this game several times, not even sure why lol. The music is awesome (especially for any THPS vets), the feel of the game is great, and it's actually a pretty unique concept I haven't seen before. That was some serious gawking I got to do!
Dear god 600 pts, I can't even imagine. The mp actually reminds me ever so slightly of Laser League (just happened to get that through Humble Bundle recently) where it's a pretty honest dodging game where you can mess around with other players indirect by dashing them into hazards and stuff. Really, you have a surprisingly fun game here, and I got some flashbacks back to my Jezzball days. Even with that experience though, I could only muster ~50 pts after many playthroughs in sp. Great job!
I really like the boldness of the concept. I do wonder if you thought "yep this will be fun" within the brainstorm hours because I'm not sure I would've had that much confidence in such an untested idea. I liked the fairly large hand and I understood why you wanted to have such similar cards to finetune your approach to an enemy, but I was hoping for a bit more very unique cards. I see your comment above about how to fit text on small cards and we actually ran into the same issue with our game where we didn't know how to convey complexity via card text (it didn't help that our game is real time so you don't have time to read it). Again, I really liked the innovation here and the guy definitely kept me busy for a while.
Surprising social impact game, I actually never knew about how deforestation could affect desert growth like that. I thought the Simcity graphics throwback was awesome, haven't seen that in a while. The gameplay was tough to figure out. I understood the idea of using mature trees as a foundation to fight off growth but I still had trouble in the later portions of the game understanding how to improve, and I'd just place trees where it seemed to fit. A few more mechanics could make this really worthwhile in terms of environmental effects, but there's something to be said about the simplicity of its message currently :)
Super clever game. I'm pretty sure all the CS people here are gonna have a smile on their face playing this. Now you're making me imagine all kinds of games visualizing merge sort and such...
Any Absolute Drift influence here? The visuals are eyepopping and put together so well. TBH, I was really scared to go fast so I just kinda crawled my way forward a lot and didn't use boost and such unless I absolutely had to. I think the game in general feels great to play but I wish I wasn't punished so hard for wanting to fly around fast. Maybe some more room for error? Either way, I have to reiterate that this is one of the best looking games I've seen so far this LD.
First off, I really appreciate you giving a "give money" button for people in a rut who still want to see the rest of your game. I think I'll add a cheat menu in future games as well so help normalize skill levels. I definitely like the concept and it reminds me of SNES Off Road where iirc you could keep racing and just upgrading your car. Of course, you have much more significant upgrades here that affect the experience so it stands out there. The physics is definitely scary. It was a tossup every time I hit a wall how much I would rotate lol. With that said, there's a decent amount of obstacles here, a bit more than I expected for a compo so nice job on that!
aw boo... was having a lot of fun but got stuck on Type Here as well :(
Pretty good play on the idle theme. Maybe even using more "buildings" and sacrificing them could've been a cool path to take too
The first impression I got was that the 2 genres were kinda mixed too separately and that I would've liked them to be more integrated rather than 2 minigames. I think one thing you did REALLY well was that even though they are different, you tied them together with the aesthetics and mood of the game. Without that constant crazy feeling and being berated by your paranoid thoughts the game would've been too loose but it makes sense with the way you did it. Definitely a unique feeling game and I'm glad you pushed those boundaries.
One of the few 5-stars I've given out for Theme. Tbh I was hoping to grow into a giant and just stomp on cars when I saw the mushroom, but alas. Definitely a unique setting for a walking simulator that I haven't seen before so it had a lot of novelty going for it.
I think @BryceLTaylor makes a really good point. This is one of the very few TDs were you can earn money outside of the core game and get yourself out of pits. I liked that the fishing was decently skillbased so a better player could earn money faster. It was very satisfying to land a cast right on top of a fish. All in all I thought the fishing really shined, but the TD was kind of standard fare, but I guess that's the idea with this LD theme :)
No bugs on my end, but if I had to toss out an idea to integrate the 2 sides better you could try something along the lines of:
You can store fish or certain fish drop tower upgrades, then you can apply these onto the towers rather than just buying them (you still need $ to buy the actual tower). This could make rarer fish pretty valuable and give the player more of a link between the games than just cash. Just an idea, I'm sure you guys had plenty of great ideas that fell on the cutting room floor!
Finished the game, not sure if this was intentional or a bug but I seemed to get a huge speed boost after level 2 and that made things significantly easier. I'm actually a big fan of this genre hybrid and can tell you there are very few entries in this (3 good ones that I know of). Check out Valkyrie Sky and Mirror War for some inspo if you keep going with this idea. If so I'll keep an eye out for your followup!
I think the slot shot mechanic is absolutely brilliant and I wish you could've shown off how you planned to do upgrades. I actually disagree with what others are saying about it. IMO you should treat the slots like a deck of cards, and much like a deckbuilder (say, Slay the Spire), you should be able to purchase new slots to bring into the deck, or even pay to take out harmful ones like bombs (or get cursed and have more bombs thrown into it). Then you'll kinda have this running list of upgrades going on through your gun and the progression would feel awesome. I think the wheel so remain random whenever you bring it up, as it's implemented now. What I liked about that mechanic was that it was a quick memorization game where you had to quickly identify a pattern and then execute on it. This could also be the cost of stacking your gun so that you have tons of bullets in it. If you popped in 15 bullets, it would take much longer to cycle through and you just inherently go through a level slower, assuming they even wait a full cycle to memorize it.
Sorry I just kind of minddumped there. I think your game has massive potential and it just sent a lot my gears turning. It sounded like you had a ton of great ideas yourself and I'd love to see them implemented!
Gotcha, I could see it going either way. I agree that most people will lean towards a faster pace unless you completely changed the mood of the game to a slower platformer.
I've played Rollers of the Realm before but you integrated the RPG/story aspect much better than they did. It felt a lot more like a quest than a pinball game that happened to have level ups and upgrades. Amazing polish to the game even if the pinball flippers had some oddities to it (like holding down a button). I think it's great you explored more RPG tropes with this game, please keep it up!
That is probably the greatest walk animation ever, what a solid prance! I liked the idea but the game probably could've used a few more hrs of dev time to get to where it needed to be. Some variety in enemies to shake up the gameplay would've really fleshed this out.
Some of my favorite games in the past are Rock & Roll Racing and Super Off-Road, so I played your game til I was nearly maxxed out. One subtle touch I loved was seeing the car plumes change color, like red and teal as you upgraded it. That's not something you see very often but it's a great touch. It's like in Diablo when you upgrade a spell and now you're shooting 4 charged bolts instead of 3, that small visual upgrade is so much cooler than just raw stat boosts. Tbh I actually just plain liked the racing even w/o the rpg aspect. I though the track was pretty challenging to maximize since the road was relatively thin, other racers are on the road, and your handling is not great so you touch the grass a decent amount. I'm a fan of racing games so I'm biased, but I loved trying to master the track, as simple as it was. Subsequently as I was getting new upgrades I was changing my lines and routes, like cutting through the grass on the hairpin once I had an ok amount of speed. That was another unique aspect to your game that's not in the ones I mentioned above. I miss these kinds of games and would love to see another iteration of this one!
Wow the swarming looks really nice and it feels satisfying to corral the fish and fire down the line. Fishing upgrades are always addicting and I found myself trying to at least see the full upgrades even though they were mostly just power upgrades. Just being pulled into the water and then fighting fish is hilarious though and definitely something really unique.
Very nice Hotline Miami paced game. I thought the twin stick controls felt pretty intuitive though I'm glad you gave the player a lot of health to make it a bit more forgiving. The enemies move quite quickly, which is fine once you learn their patterns after a while, but there's so many thrown at you in the beginning it's hard to keep track. I'm sure in a full version you'd have a slower ramp up of enemies so that's understandable. Like someone mentioned, this kinda reminded me of Battle Chef Brigade which I really liked, so seeing another entry into the cooking brawler genre is great to see.
Not gonna lie, the first time the zombie popped out I got a mild scare. Nice job with the plot twist, I definitely didn't expect it. Gameplaywise I haven't seen a meta-Wario Ware like that where you had to juggle minigames at different levels of play. Very clever and would be cool if you could push it one level further to solidify the concept. Great job.
Honestly this was probably my favorite game this jam. You explored the mechanic in ways I didn't expect and it felt amazing whenever I one shotted an enemy in one note!
Not even taking the the cards into account, the jump cost itself was very clever. Tack on the cards and it gets even better. Though given the avg card cost it is definitely in the player's interest to conserve their cards unless absolutely necessary. It was really nice to think about how to approach a level but it definitely came with a lot of trial and error to learn the stages like old school platformers, which isn't necessarily a bad thing :)
lol the Trout Platinum Club....I actually came into this comments section to figure out what % of people could even get trouts and now I feel bad. Really great merger of 2 genres. I've noticed that there are a few games that are merging 2 somewhat close genres and coming up with some really unique stuff out of it and you are one of those people (rather than the typical dating sim + platformer or all those games popping up this LD). Really well done and the game really stands out in this crowd.
Any chance you've played Black Survival? That actually is a really fun game and your game is very reminiscent of it. Even though it's turnbased, your game is still very tense as you try to dodge and fight quickly with typing. Since this is a bit of a steeper learning curve game, perhaps an easy mode that slowed down AI actions would've helped us out.
Really great style! I could see the potential here so it's unfortunate you couldn't finish. With some weapons you could go for a Seven Samurai type of story where they were samurais protecting farmers from bandits. Amibitious goal, I'm impressed you went for such a complex game.
I was really impressed when I fired up this game. You must've taken a decent amount of time to design up each level and all the iterations/positions of obstacles that can be in there. I thought this was a great concept and would be cool if you could affect your deck a bit like purchasing different level layouts and buffs to help you get through things later on and have some progression.
Really clever idea. I was wondering when we'd see the SuperHot mechanic used on a different genre, and here it is. You feel like a badass making some "hard turns" and "quick decisions" while going through the track so the game feels great. The walls are devastating though, since it's hard to correct your turn after a time stop. I wish there were a lot more checkpoints scattered throughout so LDers could see the whole game. The presentation is pretty polished actually (you chose a really good font) and all the colors are harmonious. Game looks great and I hope you guys make it to 20 votes!
How can you not click this game? The concept is so enticing. Tbh, compared to a normal jrpg I found the Outfit Readiness meter more compelling than bringing down hp meters for whatever reason. Maybe it was the novelty, not sure. In the end the additional feedback you get from watching the outfit grow and complete itself really drew me into the game and made me want to see what the final product was. Great game elements to keep the player interested, awesome idea!
I actually like playing 'sp mmo' type stuff. Sometimes I just like grinding for the sake of it, without the hassle of online, especially if there are solid upgrades. What kind of skills/classes do you intend to have in a more fleshed out version?
That's 2 incompatible genres alright lol
Probably one of the more humorous entries I've seen, the physics is super wonky though I wish it all just moved a bit faster, especially when handling rollovers (I do love how it slowly rolls back into position after a while). I definitely didn't expect the acrobatic racing and Tony Hawk style scoring. That was an excellent touch to the game and I suspect that took a lot of code to detect things correctly. Really clever entry.
So polished....I'm gonna have to follow your future games. 2 things I really loved about this game. First, there was only 1 screen to it, just a nice, complete UI to look at with a well designed interface. Secondly, I loved that the farming was actually connected to the pinball, not just a 1-way street like I've seen in these other games.
Really engaging game that makes you think hard as soon as you realize you have 1 hit deaths. The balance between movement and attack cards was a very slippery slope though luckily the enemies aren't so threatening that they'll pin you, and you can play relatively safe to progress on. No doubt that you could easily push this concept further with more weapons and monsters, so well done on creating a nice, extendable game with unique gameplay.
Pretty hilarious as you go into triple digit strokes and you just don't even care anymore. One twist you can maybe do is lower the gravity and make the ball pop up more. To be able to shoot the ball midair would add a bit more flair to it rather than just be 'your clubs are bullets'. Still, it was a fun romp regardless with a decent amount of tension between ammo usage and that damn ball rolling away!
+1 points for doggo butt
Even though this jam is meant to draw out unique ideas, lots of people managed to still overlap on ideas by having the same trains of thought. I don't think I'll see a dupe of your idea though, it's unique in this sea of card-game/farming-game hybrids. I thought it was a good tweak to the Pikmin formula. Tbh I would've liked the shepherd and dog to have maybe one more unique aspect between them because I felt like I was more just moving a blob with 2 ends carefully like I Am Bread. With that said it's a very challenging herding game with a lot of tension since the wolves are so vicious so you have to be pretty careful with your positioning to make it through. Nice job!
I agree with what some people said about movement or missing the key. The speed is a bit frustrating but the core concept is fine. Don't know if you've played Epistory but that's a great entry in the typing dungeon crawler genre (uh I guess there's only 2 games in it). But you can essentially play as fast as you are good at typing. If you can harness that same feeling you're gonna have something really fun since it's the typing that probably the fun part of your game.
You have a really nice feel to the game. Good screenshake, the art style fits well together and the shots are satisfying. At first I thought the controls were a bit awkward but I saw @superpokeunicorn post about it being like a finger tongue twister and that made me look at it in a much more positive light. Great start, I can see some cool potential with this.
Best looking game I've seen in the 3 years I've done LD...... I'll definitely be following your future work.
Nice concept - I always like takes on "what happens when...", and the art is great! It definitely adds to the underworld feeling. The levels were challenging at first and made me want to beat them all. I was impressed by the AI but I finally conquered!
I'd have to say that this was the first time I've seen the swipe right/left in game form, and it feels right! The sudden turn of the game was pretty awesome! The chat was also great. I can tell you put a lot into this!
Cook Serve Delicious on crack. This game is awesome in that you can try to single-thread everything, but once you get comfortable you have the potential for some crazy multitasking. I've never seen a multitasking game with this high of a skill ceiling. The game is very fun and really wracks your brain if you want to go ham.
Played post-jam version and wow that was super fun. The boss was very hard and I had to go back and heal 3 times but eventually took it down. Pretty sure I played the game for an hr with a friend. Incredibly polished game and I can't believe you this this in such a short time.
One of my favorite entries so far! I was laughing most of the time, the humor is great. After I finished the game I took a look at the genres.........and I was super glad to see slice of life there. You certainly hit the the nail on the head for that one. Loved the bounciness of everything and lightheartedness. Just a really great entry all around.
Holy crap this game is brilliant. It started to really shine at the 2nd puzzle when you can hide behind the glass on the right and maneuver the cannon from there. It makes you think in 2 different dimensions and it was such a nice take on 1st+3rd person at the same time. I think the game shines the most when you have to handle the 2 pretty separately like in those instances, and weakens when you can just hide mostly behind the turret. Really expandable mechanic with a lot of potential if you add different cannon features to it. I don't think it was frustrating like the others have said, I think it comes back to the essence of play for me (try things, experiment with it and see what it does) and that was fun. I do think the death penalty should be just to retry a room or something, since it takes quite a while to backtrack to where you were, or perhaps just making enemies take only 1-2 hits.
You mixed these genres much better than I expected. I couldn't tell, does becoming lovers with someone actually halt the flow of troops? It seemed like the case but wasn't positive. I thought it was REALLY cool to see how my dialogue options affected the playfield. In a full version, if you could change more things than just the flow of troops that would be amazing and it'd fully weaved the gameplay together. Bold idea and good execution! Very impressive you could manage such a complex game with that many people on your team.
I love the hiding places, and the hilarious dialogue options! I laughed quite a bit playing this, and could definitely sympathize with the main character that just wants to get home to see his show!
I think one of the strongest things you have here is the pickup time vs loot. One thing you could add to the risk/rewardness of the game is to have stronger loot chests take up more time, that way the player will have to judge how much time they have left and decide whether it's worth it or not. Same with maybe a health pickup, where they're using time as a currency to trade for life. At the moment the game is more straightforward since you kinda run and grab everything you can, but I think with a bit more cooking time and variety and a focus on time as a limited resource you can make a really tense roguelike out of this foundation.
Not a bad idea. Like others have said, ramping up the difficulty faster would've helped, but the core concept of the game can be very fun. Have you played Audition Online? I used to play that a lot and doing button presses in a quick sequence like that can really make you sweat. They made an entire game out of that concept so I think it's already validated pretty well. A few tweaks and you can have something nice here.
This game deserves a lot more votes than this. Really fun and addictive game. I'm actually glad the attacking system doesn't work cuz I just wanted to see the city grow. Really impressed with the game design in terms of resources and contention.
I tried out the latest version and I will say it seems pretty bug free. The gunplay wasn't half bad, the skeletons were just fun to pop since you could fire pretty nonchalantly and they died quickly. The grappling hook probably could've used a speed upgrade in order to keep up the fast pace this game deserves. It has a pretty large surface to cover so it'd be nice to zip around at a good speed. Nice job cleaning up the game post LD!