Remco

Feast Thine Eyes On Flowers by Hempuli 2025-04-14T16:39:33Z ♥ 0

I'm not sure there is 'more to this than meets the eye' or whatever, but when I looked up --- from my attempts to furiously figure out what the gem is (center of the earth? ... there's more sky down below there), and why I can't go down further, by crossbreeding flowers for length (maybe if I go up more, I can go _down_ more) or 'hardiness' (maybe surviving lower down is a breedable skill) ... etc etc...

...

when I looked up again, I saw I had accidentally created a beautiful garden, petals and leaves swaying in the wind.

Maybe sometimes a flower-planting game with neat procedurally generated flowers and a harmonious pastel color scheme really _is_ just a flower-planting game with neat procedurally generated flowers and a harmonious pastel color scheme.

EchoAbyss by Aincrad 2025-04-14T16:06:02Z ♥ 2

I like the general idea of the sonar (and the visual effect), though, maybe I'm missing something, but since there isn't any way that it shows the cooldown, and there isn't any penalty to spamming the mousebutton, I found the easiest way to play was to do just that.

(Oh, and I had to start the version on the itch website, the version here is either bugged, or otherwise the support isn't there yet; even if I press the full-screen button, there's a huge blue area overlapping my view...)

Slow Decline by Ntimi 2025-04-14T15:24:41Z ♥ 3

You've got a lot of detailed feedback already, so there's not a lot for me to add.

I do really like the overall atmosphere, very much supported by the graphics and the intro, and subtle things like the camera panning into the direction the game wants you to proceed.

I guess if I have a point of criticism it's in the linearity? Not just in the level design, also in the way you have to approach everything, while the general speed of the game, and its vibe suggest a more strategic approach -- I think that's also why you got at least one person above saying they lost all motivation when starting over.

AdventureGen by loveapplegames 2025-04-14T13:09:41Z ♥ 1

Disclaimer; I have some distaste for AI when used in art (and will not even use it even for code if that code ends up in a game, just to keep the line clear for myself) -- for reasons I won't go into here -- despite that, I wanted to give some of these a shot, even if just to see how they measure up to current non-AI efforts.

I've to say that I'm not impressed. Maybe I got unlucky, but only one of the games I generated was playable to the end (which was a completely linear bunch of rooms with 1 item usage; adding an oxygen tank to an escape pod), the other ended in the first room with an unusable item, and the most promising one I got also stuck in after finding a bunch of items that seemed they might be usable, but did nothing (although I admit I was so bored by that point that I didn't bother exhaustively trying all of the possibilities).

The art gave the impression that each picture was by a different artist, or even that different parts where done by different artist. It also doesn't fit to the writing; beyond the florid description of what basic functionality a room has, it doesn't really feel like it connects to anything you're doing (little as that is).

I usually try to have something nice to say, but I honestly struggle to come up with anything the games themselves have to offer (at least the ones I tried) that I can use for that. In some contexts it's important to give feedback regardless though -- such as gamejams.

I guess it's nice that you allow people to play the games others' have generated?

The fate of Carl by SagaDev 2025-04-14T07:27:17Z ♥ 2

It's a vibe! ... I'm not sure how much fun I had in the end though.

After a few rough starts where I didn't realize the guns where making the money (mostly because two times I had bad luck or something and the gun or flamethrower didn't bring in any before Carl died) -- I got the hang of it.

It's also a bit of a mood, the audio works well in context.

It does have a bit of a dominant strategy, where you should just mostly 1. buy any guns, 2. upgrade, 3. focus on repairs and getting the max up, almost exclusively in that order (though you may need one or two repairs or max-ups before that point).

Also, when playing, you're missing out on most of the spectacle, as nearly all time actually playing the game is spent in the blocky menu, not looking at the carnage behind you, where most of the graphics TLC went.

Welcome to Veinridge! by jinglecookie 2025-04-11T12:19:57Z ♥ 2

Ah, just as it was getting good.

Short, in a way (I mean, I can imagine it's hard to write dialogue with such a large cast of characters), but polished enough that I don't think many rough edges jumped out at me this time around.

A few things I did notice: - I didn't even have to bribe the bartender -- maybe a bit _too_ much of a cliche? - I think it's 'xeroxed', not 'zeroxed'. - There's a bit in the 'Miners Market' that feels a bit disconnected because you talk to the people in a separate sub-menu than you inspect each of their places -- giving the impression that you have three empty buildings and then a marketplace where a waitress, a post-office lady and a taciturn hardware store owner are standing around. - A cat missing, and maybe down a shaft in an old mining town -- a bit of a stretch, but is that a 'Night in the Woods' reference? - Instead of ❌️ in the top-left corner, the maps have the unicode placeholder character (for me at least). - The text that has _'... circled in red: 10/3' near the end has the choices partly overlapping them.

A Quest To Bear by Fis 2025-04-11T11:02:45Z ♥ 2

Very sweet -- a little oasis of rest when compared to most other LDJam games (very much appreciated when reviewing a bunch of them). When it comes to presentation, I could talk about the graphics, or the animation, or how well it works with the sounds -- but I think the most impressive is how it all comes together, which would be polish.

Interesting puzzle mechanics -- I mean sliding is an old one, but to have an 'inventory' (of sorts) and making health part of the puzzle is inspired.

OK, nitpick time (a.k.a. it's easier to talk about the bad bits, even in a good game ... sometimes _especially_ in a good game):

That said, (talking about the 'drop rock' bit) I'm not always in favour if introducing time/skill based mechanics in what otherwise looks like a 100% puzzle-game. Now, if you're careful with this --like I think you have been in the released levels-- I think you'd want make sure the intended solution never follows a route where timing is important. Still, it's annoying to not place the rock in the right spot, even if all that this means is that you have to backtrack -- which is made a bit worse by the long slides, and the perspective/roundedness of the corners you need to line up to.

(Now that I'm picking nits anyway, I'd like a 'redo level' in case you didn't pick up all of the points.)

All in all, well, if you add a bunch of levels, add the point-total to the completed levels, and made a slightly better win-screen, you could sell me this as a completed premium game for phones and I wouldn't blink an eye.

DEPTH CHARGE by JovialKnoll 2025-04-11T10:02:11Z ♥ 2

Nice simple arcade game. Also neat to see people still using their own frameworks.

By simple I mean the concept is simple -- I didn't think it was simple to control. At first I thought that was because I wasn't using a controller, but when I dragged out my old controller and hooked it up, I was worse.

I think I did best when I just didn't bother aiming (separately from moving the ship around) -- you can get pretty far if you just leave the aim pointing down. That does exacerbate another problem though -- since the charges lobbed at you by the subs only explode quite slowly, they can essentially box you in (especially at the sides of the screen.

I do appreciate the voice-clips (other sfx) and the hi-score table though (and the menu's, but that's part of the framework). (Nitpick; It's nice that it's possible at all, but it feels a bit odd to have to save the hiscore table manually...)

Fate of the Dice by Joror 2024-10-16T06:47:04Z ♥ 1

I beat the first 2 battles on my first try. The last one was a little bit more difficult, but after I realized it was attacking me from the back corners, and I put some of my own there to attack back, it was very doable. Which is one of those funny 'I almost beat it and then left the rest for tomorrow' moments.

As always, I like the vibes and the implied story -- I really wanted to see where this one was going. The PC seems to be some sort of new god -- I always like how you often play powerful (or if not, somewhat unique) characters in your games, but you always find a nice way to tie it into them being new at the job too.

I think part of the fun for me around this time is that I hardly ever play this type of game, but I do seem to enjoy them a lot whenever I do try them. -- Also that you really needed to understand the game or at least some of the tactics to beat the 'final boss'.

I think combining dice into the draw/placement game really gives it the extra kick it needs, in addition to the creative placement things you can do with 2 triangles facing each other (the sneaks where my favourite).

More critically:

It's cool that the placement of your dice affects where the opponent can attack given the type of their dice, but you can't really see that before you've placed your own.

I think the archers might be a little underpowered, compared to the others. Maybe if the 7-away face was also 2 hits?

I'm not sure why the dice that where considered more powerful (well, mostly) had to have more faces -- in a way, that makes them less predictable, so also weaker tactically (the one angel you can select for example).

These following are more general remarks w.r.t. your games (not sure if I've voiced these before):

While on the one hand I think it's a good idea to have everything in games 'hoverabe' -- even if you forget the brief tutorial, you can always find your way back to understanding the whole game. However, I think there's 2 problems with this, at least in isolation (though the last few games don't suffer from the 1st as much, since there's a tutorial now too). One is that I know how your games work by now, so I trust that I can find out basically all things I need to know that way. If you don't have that trust yet, I think it can come across as overwhelming (though you've gotten a lot better in this regard). The other is that, since the way it works is not by clicking, but by hovering, and then you can get extra information by hovering over the thing the hover just uncovered -- you then need to be careful where you point your mouse going through the other areas. For example, in the current game, if you get a pick of 3 possible dice (sets), and then you want to know what each individual face does, you need to finagle your way over there, without touching anything else hoverable.

Lastly, more specific to this game again; you seem to have thought of everything a player might be doing wrong (e.g. not placing anything, not placing a king, etc.), but the error message only shows when you hold the mouse-button when performing the wrong action. Maybe a list of messages would work better there? I'm not sure, a lot of solutions are clunky, this is just a difficult UX problem I think.

And of course some nit-picks and bugs I found:

These two images show visual glitches I found, fortunately, they don't impact the gameplay at all (sorry to scare you with 'bugs' in the chat).

double_trouble.png extra_face.png

The arch-fiend (or whatever they are) says 'the rest should', but that makes them seem like they're giving a suggestion. I think you might've meant 'the rest would'.

On itch, you have one tag that says 'ludum-date-56', not 'ludum-dare-56'.

After you won the game you get back to the menu, but can't actually restart it (the browser is unresponsive? Browser inspection shows 'USER ERROR: Overflow in RID validator' / 'at: _allocate_rid (./core/templates/rid_owner.h:120)' both in in onPrintError and 'Uncaught RuntimeError: unreachable executed' in callUserCallback).

A Shared Earth by Joror 2023-10-07T11:21:06Z ♥ 2

Hi! Time for my by now traditional review...

I like how streamlined you kept it this time. It doesn't seem overwhelming at all and you can play it on your lunchbreak, but the core of what makes strategy fun is still there. Story is also interesting -- may have been done before, but not nearly as much as you'd expect given the rich themes involved.

- When zooming in and out on the menu you can still 'select' countries (well, color them green briefly...) 😉 - (At first:) It isn't _entirely_ clear to me what establish colony and settle fleet is -- and what is gained from separating these actions. (Later:) No, I get it now. Still feels a little bit clunky that you need a colony and _then_ they can't just settle off themselves, but this fits both the story better and has more crunchiness to it (good, because it needs at least a _little_ even if streamlining). - It seems set up so that at least _some_ actions need to be aggressive (or willingness to live through years where the fleets are just dying...), I don't think there's a good path where the err, 'native population' is always pleased that doesn't end up with the first few fleets dead of starvation. - (Later) ... except if you make a mortal enemy of Antarctica .. see screenie 😛 shared_world_except_antarctica.png - There's a nice spot between India and China where you can capture about 40% of the world by population with a single embassy (and chuck in Pakistan and Nepal for good measure...). - A pox on you Antarctica! Don't destroy my Colony! (How did they do that?) - (Web/PostJam version at least, I'm on Linux Manjaro running an updated version of Firefox) > "Your Rotation has enced, Overseer ... Are you ready?"

-> Well, yes, (I'm ready to face the consequences...) but you won't let me select an option.

Dev-console: Logs seem to be spammed a lot, but if I limit it to errors, I see `'USER ERROR: Unknown event id: EndRotation2'` every time I click the 1st option.

I might do an aggressive play later, but I dislike playing the baddie, so maybe not 😅

(You're well aware of this, but I can't help but note:) Don't forget to rate others'! You know how hard it is if you start a week later...

GoBat by Bloodbane 2023-05-13T10:42:11Z ♥ 0

I liked the fast-paced nature and the chosen music.

I don't think I got a successful package delivery --I got the right color, and I tried every position around and on top of them, but it reacts just the same as dropping it on the ground and I get no points from the delivery-- but I could just pretend that I did, and the game worked just as well.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to reverse the shooting direction, since you can only shoot in the direction you fly in, but because you are delivering packages, you're inclined to move away from the bugs, so you have to do this awkward fly-to-fly away movement to actually shoot them 😅

Careless Couriers by python-b5 2023-05-13T10:24:06Z ♥ 2

(Sorry for the ramble here. I'm not really up for editing this down to a more manageable chunk of text right now.)

When I first started up the game (on Linux) I thought the controls where broken for me, so I also tried to start the windows version via proton, and even fetched my actual Windows lappy to try it out. -- I don't think it got much better, but I did eventually learn to not crash long enough to get out of the street and even turn multiple corners without crashing into anything*. I still can't make it out of the loading area _with_ packages and _then_ roam around though 😅

Still, it's an interesting idea, and if the rest of the game where a lot more forgiving (like nothing really kills you, but only slows you down) it might've worked. For example, it doesn't really respond when you get dizzy, and it leaves you right in front of the wall you crashed into, so you just have to intuit when you get control back or you crash into the wall all over again. And then when you steer too fast you get dizzy as well. I could mention all the other things, but it feels like everything is out there to punish you. -- I'd say pick either one or the other; really tricky movement that does have some joy to it when you finally get the hang of it*, _or_ the old-school 'three bumps and you're done for' game design, but not both.

*) The very brief moments when I _did_ sort of feel in control felt good-ish and a little unique, so I can see where you where going with this, which makes it extra awkward to have to tell you the rest.

(Also, are you sure it's equally hard on all systems? Maybe part of the problem is that it runs differently on each PC. It might just be me, but the Windows version felt _slightly_ better to control.)

Anyway, I think the music, especially the in-game loop is really well done. I like the funkiness of it, and it fits the city-scene well. The graphics are decent as well, though they could use a little more character. Its a nice touch that you can see people through the buildings.

Bundle Dumper: Florida Edition by cheesepencil 2023-05-10T17:58:45Z ♥ 2

I persevered until level 5 (or the one where you have to do 5 deliveries at least, you had to stay between two rows of drones) -- I took one look at the start and said 'nope'! Though this is actually praise, since I have a relatively low tolerance for frustration games; so this means that the difficulty curve is probably just about right. (Though maybe for a jam you should be erring on the side of easy.)

Since I took a decent number of deaths (I think I saw the retry screen at least once in level 2 and then about twice in levels 3 and 4 each), it did frustrate me a bit that it took a long time to respawn. Though that's probably to give a ejected baby a chance to just barely make it while the stork expires? (Though maybe there could've been a button.)

So _maybe_ not really 'for me', but otherwise this is exemplary of PICO-8: Small, retro, juicy and joyful in its own strange experimental way.

Mail owl by vidarn 2023-05-08T13:01:42Z ♥ 1

That was a short, but very sweet experience. I usually like my puzzles to be a fair bit harder, but this is mostly a story game anyway. Great art-style, not one you see often in games -- a bit like a children's book.

The most interesting part was the mirror puzzle. That has some potential, maybe if there where mirrors that flipped upside down, or rotated.

Schooled by arron-fowler 2023-05-08T11:05:10Z ♥ 2

Coming late to the party in a comment section is always a bit difficult. All the good criticism (both positive and negative) has been said in one form or the other already. You've cultivated some good 'quality over quantity' type feedback here!

Anyway. Saying (mostly) the same things in my own words will not hurt.

One thing that I didn't see a lot of in the preceding commentary, is people struggling with the controls: My fish ended up nearly embedded in the pond-floor a great number of times, because my aging brain apparently can't let go of the notion that 'W is forward'. (My ideal control-scheme, oddly enough, would probably be just 'the same, but with WASD replaced with the mouse'.)

I also had a little trouble picking up fish, but it helps a lot if you don't think of each as individual cases, but go towards a bunch of 'm.

In any case, when I could get it to work for me, yes ... the free-floating, expansive feeling you have when in the middle of the pond, traversing from a just 'depleted' spawn-ground to the next, dodging fish-cubes and cube-fishers is amazing. It would've been great on it's own already, but the music really gets you in the right mood.

Which brings me to another point; once you've brought at least one fish to the new spawn plant, it's best just to wait until they've bred, and then keep adding them to the same plant. (Or same with close-by plants, those are often more than enough.) So you've mostly only engaged with that previously mentioned 'wide' feeling when you're going to the next breeding grounds. (It was nice to have a small surface based one as a white one as well one time -- I think the smaller plants 'go out' earlier?)

I like the evolution mechanic, it's just the ribbon that ties everything together.

Isles Express by Cinterre 2023-05-07T10:30:22Z ♥ 1

I couldn't control the speedboat very well.

I like the intro-music though! The interface is also quite clear. The manual transmission indicators at the top are a cute idea.

Poppycock's Perfect Packages by Blaah Blaah 2023-05-07T10:29:37Z ♥ 1

Very polished, much attention to detail, like the trucks filling up pixel by pixel, not just a score, but a rank, etc. I understand the controls in theory, in practice ... I don't care how bad an actual automated system would have been in this world, but it's hard to imagine it doing it worse.

Sheep Delivery by zealous-coder 2023-05-07T10:28:49Z ♥ 1

This concept is a good one to expand on. The mix of idle game and side-scroller is clever.

However, since the numbers are rare anyway, I don't think it pays to wait for the second iteration of that number to get the baby sheep in there. So, I think the dominant strategy is just to go for all the numbered sheep, which can make it boring.

Apricot Kernel by riley9 2023-05-07T10:27:58Z ♥ 1

The interface metaphor feels very clever -- especially since it seems so cluttered at first.

When I do comment, most of the time I have more to say, but this isn't about the particular mechanics, graphics or music or what have you. Words always seem to definitive to describe something as multi-faceted as emotions. So I suppose a short message about that it made me 'feel something' (even though I'm like 99% sure I'm cis) will have to do.

Foggy Day on Mulberry Street by jminor 2023-05-07T10:26:54Z ♥ 1

(Tried playing against myself. At least I didn't have to pretend not knowing the other players' state with this one.)

Well, it's not clear to me that there is a dominant strategy, even with 2 players, so in that sense it's very clever for such a simple ruleset, where everything is open as well.

On the other, so much can change with even the last card (after all, the sequence only needs to be 1 off, which by necessity is determined by the last card even), that, as a human player just picking the game up for the first time, you can't really say much about the game in the early to mid state.

On the one hand (pun not intended, but appreciated nonetheless) this leaves the eventual endgame (where each player just has a few cards left) open to anyone not actively trying to loose, which is good.

But here is where it falls down for me a bit; since there is effectively _nothing_ I feel you can do to properly set yourself up in a direction, it just feels like the only thing you're doing for a lot of the game is only _setting up for_ the interesting make-or-brake situation at the end. (Kind of like if setting up the chess board, or those chess-puzzles in the papers, was/where half the game.)

(I have the nagging feeling that I'm overlooking something though -- not in the rules, but in ways this can/should be played.)

On situation that I thought of, a tad more likely to come up with 2 players, is that they might run out of cards before the street if full of houses (say in a situation where houses get lots of letters).

Sendburg Delivery Service by Bukaanka 2023-05-06T21:32:21Z ♥ 2

Day 13 never ends ... :laugh: (I think it's also the same puzzles as before instead of random ones?)

Anyway:

Other than the image for the key overlapping a box where it isn't really 'present', and the frustration of the last two stars of day 12, this is a very nice experience! (Though left dragging and and right clicking at the same time threw me for a loop in the beginning.)

Sure, it's 'just' a [tetr|pent]omino puzzler, but it's dripping with charm!

(Try doing the art and music as well, some time, it's very satisfying to work with your own assests, even if they end up looking worse.)

Grav Garb by Alchemic 2023-05-06T21:31:54Z ♥ 3

What you expect from reading the text and looking at the images: A fast paced adrenaline action shooter, with a shop and progression.

What the game is actually like: A slow but tactical game about avoiding too sudden turns, carefully displacing hazardous waste, one package-length at a time, while strategically managing resources like thrusters and repair-stations. With a shop and progression.

I mostly enjoyed it after I got over my initial disconnected expectations. The slowness does disincentivize trying things though, you're not likely to take risks (or try the level too often again).

Music is great for the mood.

As for the art, I'm more into beefcake than cheesecake. Still, there's a large variety of space-junk and if you'd spent the same amount of detail there the game wouldn't be done until next year.

Delivery City by digital bacon 2023-05-06T21:31:24Z ♥ 1

It's a start! Always a bit of a hassle to properly get random generation going and balanced, and you got it done.

I think I'd have preferred it if it way playable with keyboard completely ... all you'd have to do is assign the 1 and 2 keys to the tab-menu.

Lastly, the placement is a bit finicky, sometimes you have to move _away_ from the location in order for it to register -- luckily, it only shows the street-sign when you _can_ click, so it's not _too_ frustrating. (The street signs popping up are a nice touch in any case.)

(Side-note: It wouldn't start for me properly on Firefox, I had to use Chromium to get past the unity loading bar screen.)

Deli's Whale Delivery by theguy 2023-05-06T21:31:01Z ♥ 1

Got an error while trying to download the linux version _'An error occurred during a connection to w3g3a5v6.ssl.hwcdn.net.'_ I can still download other itch.io things, so it's probably not on my end?

Anyway. This can be a very relaxing game in a way... The 'sickness' mechanic makes it a sort of enforced zen experience -- if that makes sense at all.

The art is all over the place in terms of fidelity, but in such a way that it comes off as charming. The initial logo doesn't seem like much will be going on, then the whale is cute, but enormously pixelated, and then there are the more subtle 2d pixelart planets, connected with almost early 3D looking ribbons. If I where an art-critic I'd call it 'eclectic'.

(Having to drag the packages to the wale is a nice diversion that helps hammer home the theme b.w.t. -- Music fits the mood.)

I found that, while your score stays very low, if you instead of getting captured, make Deli sick (I should apologize to the whale, given what I did to them repeatedly...), you continue on with the next (stretch of) mission immediately, circumventing the pirates. This doesn't seem to be intended? I think it would make a bit more sense to have a complete game-over -- from the text I think that was maybe what was intended (what would probably also work; the loss of a single whale-heart ... or maybe Deli needs to slow down a lot when they get sick).

Deliver Us From Evil by F1Krazy 2023-05-06T21:30:21Z ♥ 0

Fortunately this particular crusader seems a lot more friendly than the real deal 😆

Anyway. Nice 'n crunchy, like a '9 bit' fantasy console is supposed to. For the most part it played smooth enough (liked the box-pushing), but I don't understand in what way precisely you take damage -- while it got easy enough to avoid damage eventually, when I did run into a mob, sometimes it seems I take damage, and sometimes not.

I got into the wall on level 6 and of course tried out what happens when you get out of the level (actually I maybe thought it was a secret). Nothing much, but it does seem like I now need to restart the game.

(I also liked that there are options and settings in the menu.)

Ultimate Package by Triangle Point 2023-05-06T21:29:47Z ♥ 0

Well that was nice.

Would benefit from some coyote-time (a bit of slack between registering the player is off of the platform and still accepting jump inputs goes a long way). Also I think the camera snaps a bit too hard when entering new rooms.

I do really appreciate that there are checkpoints! That unfortunately also introduces a bit of a 'problem' (not for the player though), in that the boxes don't really respawn, but stay defeated, or where they where, making it easy to skip past them when you reset at a checkpoint sometimes.

Defeated the big boss package by just standing on its head. Just as well!

Some good music as well.

Special Delivery by niterich 2023-05-06T21:29:12Z ♥ 0

(Played the linux version. No problems.)

Simple, but fun. The concept is familiar and done, but it's executed quite well. This wouldn't have worked half as well without the music (even though the song itself isn't something you'd listen to outside of a game).

I got (mildly) stuck on some trees once (the row of trees in the narrow streets between the loose standing houses) where I think I should've been able to get through.

The most fun I had was driving through the park, when the little scooter feels a little bit moto-cross (minus the jumping).

PRECIOUS CARGO (and some aliens trying to steal it from you) by jdah 2023-05-06T21:28:56Z ♥ 1

I couldn't get the hang of it _al all_, but reading the comments seemed like it should be easier than that. With the remark that the browser mattered with regards to sound --and that this is a homebrew engine-- in the back of my mind, I switched from firefox to chromium. While it was a lot easier (no sound this time, but I finally go to see level 4), it also hangs when there's too much happening on the screen ... which happens on level 4. What I see is that there are usually more aliens swarming the truck on Firefox, probably because they're getting offed less often (I think the turrets had a harder time aiming).

Anyway, enough of the bad news. I really liked how polished it all seemed when it did work. Like one of the better pico-8 games. The fat sound-effects where also welcome.

What I think you could do to encourage people to use the other items, is unlocking them from the start (or throwing the unlock cost way down), they're expensive enough as it is anyway, so you can't use them from the start.

Before I forget: A bit of a pet-peeve, but the price for reclamation is reduced w.r.t. the buy-price, and I wonder why? I accept that I can't do that in the real world, but what game-design purpose does it serve here to basically make the undo of the free-wheeling construction phase cost (in-game) money?

Rogue 'n Royal by Bauke Regnerus 2023-05-06T21:28:22Z ♥ 1

(Tried the Linux version, worked fine.)

It's nice to see something this polished. It all played very fluently. However, I think they're also some issues with the concept as implemented as a jam game; namely that you're stretching yourself too thin. It's true that the sum is more than the parts, especially when it comes to this particular game, but the individual parts are threadbare -- any less and they wouldn't have functioned at all. I think this also shows the weakness of using AI (as it is right now). It's perfectly serviceable, but bland. I think I'd have preferred something with character, even if it had been worse.

Possible bug: I could always give the king the skull, even if I didn't have it.

The art-style is nice too, and the main menu is quite full-featured! ('Not the band' made me smile.)

The Mailman by Castitatis 2023-05-02T14:39:09Z ♥ 2

Excellence graphics and sound. Very juicy, including the gameplay. Good little touches like the ammo being letters and the refills being mailboxes (and the doggos of course going to heaven). _Very_ short though, especially if you realize that you can mostly just outpace all of the enemies, and if they gain on you anyway, just take a nearby scooter.

I don't have much more to say. It's a simple, tried and true concept, but aside from the low difficulty (or rather _easily circumvented_ difficulty, since a low difficulty isn't in an of itself bad of course), very well executed.

(Oh almost forgot; The entire game is played on keyboard, but the menu's are mouse only. Bit of a pet-peeve of mine.)

Taent by Emily-TTG 2023-05-02T13:59:15Z ♥ 2

I'm in two minds on this. On the one hand, you have a great atmosphere, with the simple shapes and (an eye for) good lightning effects conveying that wonderful slightly off feeling of a well-kept but seemingly abandoned enforced concrete apartment purgatory.

On the other, the viewpoint moves really, _really_ slowly. Without a matching framerate drop (that I could notice at least), I can only assume this is intentional, to heighten the dread. This can be a double-edged sword --in fact, it just mostly frustrated me. A little less slow and I think you'd still have the effect, but I'd have been more inclined to try out different things, like trying to probe the depths of the darkened hallways, or try out which doors are unlocked if any. I could also swear it got even slower when [spoilers] the lights change to red. That _could_ just be my imagination though.

I think the game hung when I got to [spoilers] the delivery of the final? package to room -999 (fun fact: I initially missed the minus, and thought something like 'with a programmer creating this game, I'd have expected a minus in front of that -- as we're the most likely to be familiar with the oddness of a negative number where you'd expect a positive ... ah no wait, there it is'). When I got to the middle of the room with the package (without the package, I could enter and exit the room just fine), it did a fade-to-black, and then it just seemed to hang. I don't think the logs showed anything out of the ordinary (as far as I can judge the logs for a program I'm not familiar with anyhow), except maybe `[15:03:20] HAZEL: TextureSerializer::DeserializeFromAssetPack` at the end. (I'm on Manjaro on a Thinkpad P53s should that matter.

I like it when people use their own voice for the SFX. Really gives it that homebrew vibe. (Could maybe have used a little bit more effects, to disguise the fact that it's just a single human person.)

All in all not a bad little (in the best sense of that word) experience. (Unless there's way more after room -999 that I missed out on because of the maybe-crash -- reading the other comments now -- it seems that there isn't.)

Harvester Horizons by notime4games 2023-01-27T19:16:16Z ♥ 1

This is very simple, or at least the gameplay is. I get that the challenge (and joy) is supposed to be the driving, and you made sure that this is in and of itself a task with a little bit of challenge and wonkyness that you nevertheless quickly get the hang of. So that's fine!

That, the graphics and the sound work together to make it feel like yes, it's a big truck you're controlling from a distance (could've gone with a bit of screen rumble, but well, you can't do everything). This is also nice.

Yet ... There isn't really anything beyond that though. I drive a car about two times per week these days, and it's sort of comparable to that, when it comes to the 'fun' of the matter.

Soul's Path by Gabriel Chan 2023-01-27T19:00:14Z ♥ 4

Loved the graphics style and the fluid animation, as well as the audio, since there's a different (good and fitting) track on each level!

The basic movement feels good as well, if you're used to the upside/down flip. And also use the right-button measuring 'device' to make the max jump distance bearable. (It's not immediately obvious that's what it is. I think it would maybe have been better as either a permanent thing or something that shows up if left is pressed longer (slash only on release).)

However, I don't think the timed sequences work very well for me. (That's also because it's Friday evening and I lack the patience for it.) Movement before that point could be deliberate and thought out. (I also had softlocked before that, but by reading the comments it seems I could press R to reset the room and that worked.) I made it up to the chase sequence, and out of the first 'screen' of that room, but after that I just gave up (for now, might return later to see if I have recharged).

I also kept thinking that, since when the clouds disappear you're just left with the screen edges, there'd be branching paths in the areas where there weren't any clouds to begin with. But that's just death. I don't think anyone (else) would have much trouble with that though.

Despite the above, I still mostly enjoyed my time with this! 🙂 (Also there can never be enough games about foxes.)

PUMPKING RISING by peringo 2023-01-27T18:27:40Z ♥ 3

This game gave me _very_ good first impressions. Graphics, audio and scope of the game are phenomenal. Polish is also evident in most matters (there are a few little annoyances, such as the shop not also closing with 'e', the seemingly somewhat large hitbox of the character, and the way you can't place objects anywhere in a big radius around the bell, right clicking for the seeds feels takes a bit getting used to), but otherwise, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is a full game instead of a jam one.

I do however have a little problem with the balance. Most of the fun 'buy upgrades', 'discover what this wacky new seed does', etc. is in the beginning. If you've seen everything twice over, you're not even half-way to the goal. While it's satisfying to see that you placed your traps well enough to stop the bulk of the attack, this also leaves you with the combat, and the farming. Both are quite repetitive in their own way, and most of the driving force, except for the end, is now gone.

Some other random stuff I enjoyed: I do really like the way you implemented the mouse-wheel menu. The short music loop you play during the intro and story is just really well done. The expression on the main character, and the way the people are also pumpkin 'themed'.

BROCOMAN by arturogcdev 2023-01-26T20:57:34Z ♥ 2

You went for a mood and I can respect that. I recently watched a speedrun of something called 'I must east sushi or I die' (not entirely sure I got the name right). The unhingedness of that strongly reminds me of this.

All the extra stuff on top does tend to get in the way of the gameplay though. (Also in the sense that my laptops couldn't really reliably handle all the effects, making it slower.)

Crawling to the Brink by CataclysmicKnight 2023-01-25T23:36:36Z ♥ 1

_Having a physical game, that's also mostly meant for more than one player is really the hard-mode of the Ludum Dare ratings phase._

Anyway, while it may have been a little more difficult to set up and get going than a normal LDjam game (especially since I apparently lost my deck of cards -- what is a game designer without one?) I did have a lot of fun when I got going. I played solo, but I still got the feeling that I outwitted 'myself' on a number of occasions. (Though some turns didn't offer a lot of choice. And I think I only had to use the skip-past-end-of-card rules once in the entire game.)

(As an aside, I'm not entirely sure I can see the theme... I suppose the cards are harvested after 'growing' them in a sense,

Here's a photo of my game a few turns in (and below that, some observations I mostly wrote during play):

a_few_turns_in.jpg

- I assume the active analyst switches per turn (since it just says 'frequently', and the alternative seems a tad unfair to the 2nd player).

- I found it useful to put the white (Ephiphanal) dice in between the two oracles. (See photo.) That may just be me though.

- I think I avoided peeking at the specific (Oracular) dice when I was the active analyst, so I couldn't perfectly (well, in theory, I change my mind often...) predict my own moves as the secondary analyst. Or: ... a turn later I realized I can just roll them afterwards though 😅

- Balancing the great amount of dice rolled to keep the game snappy with the need to use a particular color (for the specific dice) is nice.

- Most (immediate) strategic things seem to happen when you can move more than once on the same card in the same turn. it lessens the choices made a bit in this phase of the turn (unless you rolled 6es) but also gives you a bit of breathing room, and it still really feels like you're getting somewhere as the _active_ player. (Since the 1st phase of the turn, after the die rolling it feels mostly like the secondary analyst is 'in charge'.)

- I assume that when moving a diviner, you can only move your own pips. And here I realize that you always only move your own, you just _force_ the other player to do stuff sometimes, but it's still their 'choice' (even if there is none). This means you _never_ move anothers diviner, only make use of them to move your own ... which means that, while the game has a lot of random inputs, every choice is (technically) yours. Somehow realizing this simplified a lot of the game, like condensing it into a shape I could very easily grasp.

- It seems movement is mandatory in a lot of cases (when all cards are still on the table and no 6es have been rolled for example). This keeps the game snappy, but I wonder if there's some space to be explored in giving possibilities for _not_ moving (on a card for example) say with a few 'abstain' resources. (Would fit in with the story less though... or at least the way the rest of the game seems to interpret the story -- does that make sense?)

- I assume the rule for the empty oracle space always holds, instead of just for the specific case of a not-really-lost diviner that should be placed on an empty space. (This also ties in with the advice given under solo play of the Saboteur 'preferring empty spaces'.)

- What if an entire oracle is empty? For example, suppose there's only one card left in total (I don't have to suppose myself, since this is what happened...) How does the 'move on any card on the opposite oracle if there's one empty' rule go? Actually, since that card is a 3, and I have to take 4 actions for each applicable set of dice (the dice for the other oracle now do nothing I suppose), each analyst will lose 1 diviner each per half-turn, and the last card will never clear...

... I think I just game-overed 😅

(It bears repeating: I did really enjoy most of it! 🙂 )

Sow'n'Reap by PhilStrahl 2023-01-23T12:05:58Z ♥ 1

Hi! You said in your stream you still need ratings 🙂

Before I rip into this (its just ... sometimes a games more interesting properties are not its highlights, you know -- that always gives a bit of a skewed review) I have to also talk about the things I really liked about this game. The soft but understated graphics stile fits perfectly. It's also colorful and pastel enough to not 100% go the 'beige euro board-game' look. The audio is enough to liven up the game, but wise enough not to get all 'in your face' as it understands this is a puzzle game. I also really like where you got your inspiration(s). Cellular automata 'F.T.W.'. It's also, like a lot of LDJam games this time around for some reason, just pleasant to play. Lastly, good job on including keyboard shortcuts (... though I think I only used the space = next day one. Also in the very beginning I thought the (1) .. (4) might be 'action-cost, but I think that is more one me.)

It also feels oddly balanced for a game where I thought a bug (well, maybe) was one of the game-mechanics:

I originally thought I was going to begin this review with: "Today I Learned: You shouldn't immediately fertilize seeds on planting." My first run had 216 days... but seeds immediately fertilized seemed to take ages to sprout. Could it be the case? I looked it up, and sure enough, there's special 'slow release' fertilizer that you can have as a 'starter' for rye seeds. -- Well, that must be it then. After realizing that, I did another run where I got 117 days with this information.

Then I read some more of the comments. It turned out to be unintentional.

All of the other systems and overlays, while impressive, I had (felt) not actually _needed_ during the game. -- Watering seems only really 'needed' in the level with clay in the middle, as far as my play-style goes. For the rest, it just seems a matter of planting seeds close to the water, being careful to only fertilize when the no-nutrients icon shows, then harvest and sow. This is a fun enough way to play the game, and, seeing the other comments, still competitive enough to get near a high-score.

What I think I'm getting at here is that for a game of this scope all the systems seem a bit like overkill. (This feels very familiar to me.... last time --so not this* LD-- for example I tried to physically model a system -- for what was a point-and-click adventure 😅 )

Anyway, all of that is a lot of words just to say I found it a pleasant little game.

win_sownreap_small.png

*) edit/PS: Coming to think of it, my _current_ submission had a cellular automaton implemented at one point ... but I decided to scrap that when it turned out that I had little time left and the game I was trying to build with it wouldn't have been fun.

Crop Creep by dikkop 2023-01-21T20:30:02Z ♥ 1

While I got to 99% at one time (I think it might've been miscounting, given the mess I made), even after trying repeatedly, I can't get that high anymore. I'm honestly not sure at who's better at completing crop-circles, the easily startled farmers, or me 😅

While it might be frustrating at times, it can definitely pull you in.

I think the shaders might be a bit much for my poor lappy though, the game lagged something fierce in fullscreen, had to play windowed. The graphics look good tough, and the kinematics on the bug are nice.

Mustered by arron-fowler 2023-01-21T16:52:19Z ♥ 1

It was somewhat zen, like you said. Played it for longer than I wanted, since it's quite easy to get sucked in.

Sound-effects and ambient music work very nice, in that they don't get in the way, but do really enhance the atmosphere.

Since my land got larger, the camera kept drifting south most of the time. To mostly focus on the lake I built on one side of the map. I had a hard time placing things where I wanted occasionally because of that. Fortunately when I placed something, the camera would drift there, giving me some time to place other things. (It wasn't _too_ bad though.)

I'm not sure there is much purpose to water. (Other than placing ducks on the coast.) Maybe if coins where a bit rarer, it could be a bit of an 'unwanted' block, but even then you can mostly just put them on one side of the map.

I could get by with basically only standard cards, since they seem to have everything except the stones, in such quantities that often you fill up the landscape with enough variation anyway. The stones only seem to exist to give you access to Premium cards, but then the premium cards seem to basically give you the same as the Better cards, except with a bit more livestock thrown in.

But I enjoyed it, and that's its own reward.

Big Veggies by Raphytator 2023-01-21T16:15:59Z ♥ 1

What I always like about the clicker games (I can't really call this one 'idle'...) made during jams is that they have a definitive end. Just a nice little experience.

Music fits the 'pumping' experience, with the tuba or whatever it was bomping away.

At first I was a bit confused about what I could afford, but it turns out the money on screen is just the earnings of the _current_ batch of crops, not your entire money pool.

I'd have liked it if there was some statistics at the end, like 'you clicked this fast', but that may just be me.

P.S. 'Honey' is spelled with one 'n'. I know that doesn't make much sense given how the pronunciation is with a short 'o', but that's English for you...

You reap what it sows by Mephistase 2023-01-21T15:36:33Z ♥ 1

The version on here took too long to load (and got some scroll-bars), so I tried it on itch.io and that worked.

Short & sweet. I got about 4 paths (throwing it out, dying of over-watering, dying of drought, 'addiction' ending).

There are a few grammar mistakes: 'what specie is it' -> 'species', 'it need a lot of attention' -> 'needs', 'feed us and be feed' -> 'be fed' (yes, the first 'feed' is with two ee, the second is another tense, so only one e).

Nice restricted use of color! One nitpick though: I'm decent-to-good at seeing color-changes, and it was clear to me when the plant needed water and when I would over-water it by clicking one more time, but I think (maybe?) it might be a bit too subtle for a lot of people. Especially since it's mostly the outlines you have to pay attention to.

RED HARVEST by magno chuntey 2023-01-21T13:45:37Z ♥ 0

Good job on the graphics! (Audio was very low for me as well.)

Concept is solid, but I found the execution a bit frustrating: Mostly in that it seemed if that the others hit me at all, you could not get up (I think it happened once that I could attack). You can't sneak around everything, or really see far enough to avoid that, so it will become a bit trial and error.

Star Harvest by Geckoo1337 2023-01-21T12:45:28Z ♥ 1

A very satisfying effect.

I found that you can the initial part of the level a little bit when clicking when stars where just moving past one another. I don't feel like I have control after the initial few explosions at all though.

A minor inconvenience: You need to wait for everything to have died down, even though it says 'level completed'.

It's nice to have a game be completely generated from relatively compact source, everything generated from that.

P.S. Sadly audio won't play. I know there should be some, since you include a header file for it. So if you're missing out an audio rating, that's the reason. I played under proton on linux though, so it's also probably on my side. (That maybe also explains why I couldn't find my lappy named 'deck' on the leaderboard -- though now it gives me a 503 when looking at it.)

M.E.A.T. Rancher 2199 by Brendo 2023-01-18T20:55:12Z ♥ 1

Nice concept! It was confusing at first, until I glanced over the comments and caught onto the word 'projectiles'. I had somehow missed these in my first attempts. Maybe I'm just tired from work.

The vibe is cool as well, though I sadly couldn't hear the music very well with all the SFX going on at the same time (well, unless you stand still). Not sure how I'd fix that though, since the 'big machinery', 'messy' sound is a large part of the mood. Maybe lean into the juice a little more?

From a gameplay perspective, there's some interesting intersections between arcadey gameplay and strategizing going on, but as it is now, I don't really know how to approach it.

If go for strategy completely, then I'm immensely helped by the fact that tiles where the blight has been, but are now 'rubble' (for lack of a better word) don't grow anything, and will not ever if you don't drive over them. That means you can essentially just pick your own difficulty by letting the field bloom out the first time, and then only clearing areas you think you can take. I managed to make a 'loop' where I'd wait a few seconds, then went around again, if careful, slightly more than exactly a full truck, slammed that back in the barn & then started again, all without seeing a single projectile (maybe a few infected ones). I stopped when I had done 10 loads or so.

On the other hand, I don't seem to manage very long when I don't strategize at all: When I just drive around without any care other than what's going to happen in the next second or so, then it feels a bit _too_ chaotic to me.

Still, something you can start playing immediately but manages to have a bit of a twist is always welcome though!

A Walk in Nature by SplitPainter 2023-01-17T20:32:44Z ♥ 0

A nice tranquil experience, for a bit :-) -- I did think the music was a bit much tough, maybe I'd have preferred just the birdsong and other nature sounds.

I actually didn't mind the speed. If the player wants to walk slowly, then walk slowly, just like in real life.

And because apparently I can't stop complaining about a beautiful little game: I think I'd have started off the player near the middle, instead of the edge of the world, where the artifice is already visible if you just turn around.

Metal Petals by Infraxion 2023-01-17T20:19:02Z ♥ 0

I absolutely got sucked in by the mood, possibly because of the excellent audio design. I did note a crash in the web-version, and at some point playing the other version, I noticed the audio doubling up, which _may_ be what caused an earlier comment here that I glanced over to describe the grass sound as grating, despite the original (un-doubled up) sound enhancing the atmosphere.

I really enjoyed this, but I do think the interactions outside of the story (tractor, ladder, end-area) could use some work (or maybe it's better to keep it 'pure' and leave that out altogether even?). Mostly in the sense that you basically need to check back on the ladder and the tractor, without any explanation as to why those suddenly _do_ work (from what I could see at least).

Something which is neither here nor there: I kept expecting a fake-out end where it would basically just go: 'Now do this again but only pick the metal ones.' ... or something like that, in order to get the best ending 😅

Hayday by Avi 2023-01-17T19:34:52Z ♥ 1

Just missing a few sound-effects for the complete experience! Well done in such a short time. Did you know there's a game-jam each week that's within 3 hours (out of a weekend)?

The only thing that had me confused in the beginning of crows hurting the farmer, instead of being out for the seeds.

Bee Happy Harvest by kir Pow 2023-01-17T19:28:58Z ♥ 1

Surprisingly fun for how few game-elements there are :-)

I very much also agree with every point in the above comments.

In addition, I found that sometimes, a flower would spawn right underneath my bee. Perhaps that also explains why I went slower than I thought I should when only picking up a few.

Maybe the 'problem' of people playing it safe (me included) could be dealt with by a different kind of flower or other benefit in the top row(s)?

Stealth Organ Harvest by SharpLoaded 2023-01-16T22:13:21Z ♥ 2

Very tense atmosphere! You left some features out, but what _is_ there feels very polished already. Like those before me already said, that impresses as a compo-game.

The only thing I have to add is that maybe I'd have liked an indication of where the mobs are moving to / looking at. (Unless you want the game to be about the observation as well, instead of just planning & execution.)

(P.S. Given my own games' title, I had to play this one, of course.)

Farmer Rabbit's Wild Ride by joyrev 2023-01-16T21:53:16Z ♥ 1

I love the song! Together with the graphics (and tilting cam) it gives a slick feel.

The gameplay itself seems a bit simple, but maybe I just didn't go far enough. Are there any pickups other than the bullet-burst (lighting) one? I found myself missing a heart pickup (because if low on health, you _would_ risk going for a health-pickup, when with any other there's less choice in a sense).

Also like the puns... would have gone for 'ne-crops' myself, but I can see that this would maybe not scan to people less used to wordplay.

Harvest Time by malcore 2023-01-16T21:39:58Z ♥ 0

I know it's true for most LDJam games, but this really looks like you where planning to make something bigger. (Three hooks, not just one. The ability to click the 'goon' button again, while away, even though there is just one, etc.) I also understand why your eye fell on my game (speaking of organs falling...). As it is, it's a little contemplation on life and death, with a twist ending. There is not that much more I can say about it. Well done finishing the jam! (One last small thing: When you click to open the body, it seems to also take away the first of the three organs sometimes.)

The Last Outpost by Joror 2023-01-15T21:26:20Z ♥ 1

Five people left? I thought there where just four! The three orcs left behind because they could defend themselves, and one leftover Amberman. I searched the map carefully. Did it count _me_? Surely ... ah, there...

I had forgotten a dog. Unforgivable, I know. The little rascal was hiding their pixels on those of the marketplace-table. It was fitting, I thought. The first ones I saved ... Well, I hoped. Better than this world anyway. Anyway, of the first ones I saved, just about half of them where dogs as well. The others, the first-comers.

I had hoped for some closure. There was the salving music, and the curt message that they where in a better place, and then ... 'continue?'. An interesting place to encounter a question mark, even though it is, indeed, a question. Like 'end?' I thought. Maybe.

I've always wanted to create a world where you evacuate, and dwindle, rather than grow, grow, expand, exterminate. Others have already done so. In fact, this is one of those, in a sense. Maybe there _would_ be a hard endgame, where you have to struggle to maintain your previously expanding empire, now hollowed out from the inside, rather than attacked from without (or as the case may be, in addition to).

So I persevered. Of course I was still slightly lazy. Rather than the strict 'you don't try to skip the arrival phase' I held to previously, I now found it more fitting to just skip as quickly to the end as I could. Assigning (consigning?) more and more of my wards to the uncertain Other.

There the dog went. There the turn went. The attack phase started. The _last_ attack phase. The Harvesters' minions, crept slowly to the temple, all the while destroying. (Perhaps I should have mad use of the fact that they all always seems to plan a path to the temple).

Eventually, they came upon the temple itself (for the second time -- or third, if you count the world I lost). The last time was last turn, when the orcs had still defended it, and, if the Other permits, lived to tell the tale. As I knew they would. A heroic last stand seems kind of like an orcs bread an butter, right? In a manner of speaking anyway.

Then, the temple of Alesh was no more. The monsters had overrun it. Just as well, my people save in the Other.

A turtle languidly sauntered towards the pile of monsters now in the middle. A true land of bones and ash now. But we had overcome.

And then, before I had time to wonder if I truly _had_ done the right thing, before I could remember that the instructions said to _wait_ instead...

... my browser crashed for the second time.

---

I ran into the maximum char length. I'll have to make a second post for the actual review.

Persistence by James Dunlap 2022-10-04T20:43:24Z ♥ 1

Tried to download the linux one. Flagged as a security risk, so that may be the problem for the others as well.

Alapai by GapaGames 2022-10-04T20:03:06Z ♥ 1

The art began to grow on me after a while, there's quite some subtleties like a full death animation and 2.5D stuff going on if you pay attention to this seemingly simple game. A lot of attention seems to have been payed where little is necessary for a game-jam (see also: amount of levels).

There's some weird goings on with the point buy system for the cards: At one time I had 85 points, bought an 80 card, and ended up with negative points. At another time it wouldn't let me buy any, even tough I had enough.

Also, there's a bit of a negative feedback system going on where the worse you do, the less upgrades you're able to buy. However, that's balanced by there being no real fail state, and it just being a score attack.

I got 840 points for the full loop.

Incursion by Doccrazy 2022-10-04T19:46:36Z ♥ 0

I like the trippy graphics! The light bending shader was probably fun to code. (Though effects like that are not the only thing that makes a game have good graphics of course.)

On the other hand, this was hard to control, to the point that I had some trouble even getting to the anomalies to begin with.

(The single sound effect that was there was satisfying in combination with the rest of the effects ... but I'd have liked some more.)

Oh, one final (small) thing: The game over-screen flits by too quickly if you're shooting. One thing to do is to not be able to dismiss such things with just a single (half) click.

ASCII Arena by Not The Loading Screen 2022-10-04T18:52:38Z ♥ 2

I'm not usually one for rage-games, but this one is so slick. The action (re)starts instantaneously, and the levels are so short that trying over and over again doesn't even truly feel like losing. (I have a pretty low frustration limit usually.)

On the one hand, I'd like a more slowly ramping up difficulty but ... I'm not sure that would have worked? By dumping the player in an already hard situation, you say 'It's OK to lose a few times, this game isn't easy -- and we're not even going to make a big deal of something as inconsequential as dying'.

Aesthetically it all hangs together as well... art (bloom), music, etc. paint a nicely cohesive picture.

Very solid effort. You didn't reach for the heavens, but what's there is polished to heck and back and has some thought put into it.

Rusher Crusher by Oleksandra 2022-10-04T16:50:08Z ♥ 3

There's no loose condition, but you still _feel_ like you're doing something -- and indeed, the particles flying off and grabbing the coins are very satisfying.

I had to see if there's an end -- SPOILER: It ends after the pumpkin. Your car is just ... there, and doesn't shoot 🙂

Disco Roller by owca 2022-10-04T10:40:59Z ♥ 2

Somehow relaxing, despite it being a action game. Maybe it's the music setting the mood. Also fitting graphics. 🙂

What I'm missing is, when you don't jump into a hole, how much 'health' you still have left if you touch another color. If you _do_ jump into a hole, I'd like a little more feedback that this is what happened (the first few times I focused on the colors so much that I didn't notice that I should also avoid the holes, leading to me being confused why some things are insta-death and others have some grace.) I mean, maybe it's just my brain-hungover-from-jam speaking, but perhaps some sound-effects would help there?

New Edition - A Publishing Adventure by Capitals 2022-10-04T10:24:32Z ♥ 1

Some very good and unique aesthetics! I won and survived somehow, but I've no idea how 😄 -- though I generally could get at least some of the articles I wanted in there, I think. (This wasn't helped by how the article you point at not always being the one that is selected, especially if dragging and in a pile.)

Some sound-effects would really help, even simple ones. (They don't take long to make either if you use simple generators.)

Given the way that this is set up/implied, I thought there would be different outcomes, but it's just 'you won/survived' at the end. This wasn't really a problem though, just a little unexpected.

Lava Crossing by GibsS 2022-10-04T10:06:07Z ♥ 2

Very simple to play. Strangely zen feeling for this type of game -- which I like.

On the one hand, it's satisfying to go further during a good run, on the other, some of it can feel a bit luck based (though it also feels like there is a bit of a system in place to guarantee that there always is some sort of possible path? I.d.k.)

Best score so far (after 5 to 10 tries I think?): 256 meters left (66% to go).

Farming Game by Anatintti 2022-10-04T09:49:14Z ♥ 1

Ah, don't forget to press space on the plough as well... threw me for a loop for a while 😅

At the moment, there's not much to it, though I don't think the art is that bad,and it's a complete little experience. However, the little bars in front of the tools are barely visible, so it can be a bit confusing that you can't drive in there directly, but have to go through, just as with the sheds.

You seem to have barely any time to harvest. Might have been better if the tractor would move a little faster?

That said, I like how the interface is diagetic, you can do everything with just driving around with the tractor (and space).

unbeLEAFable by MYTHRILSMITHS 2022-10-04T08:31:40Z ♥ 2

The art is & atmosphere are lovely, I especially like the careful application of bloom.

I had a hard time keeping up with customer demands due to a little lag, but also that none of the plants' names are never mentioned anywhere -- but the customer refer to them by name! Also given how far apart everything is, and that there are tables in the way, 10 seconds feels on the short side to me (though that could be post-gamejam-day brain speaking).

Silvi by nardandas 2022-10-04T08:07:25Z ♥ 1

Loved it! The artwork and the concept match each other perfectly, and you made the 10 seconds limitation work so that it neither feels restrictive nor boring.

I didn't read the description properly at first, so I was a bit confused (especially as to what the fan & wax did), but I found I could breeze through the early levels if I placed the fan underneath the pot. (I also tried to put the tools back by right click, but that ended the level -- which also threw me for a loop in the beginning.)

Lastly, it wasn't really clear to me how the way I shaped things resulted in either leaves, flowers or stems. A little primer on plant growth may be required for those of us that don't have green fingers! 😅

There is another reason I like this one so much and that is because it is very similar to an idea I thought up in the long ago, but couldn't conceptualize how it would actually play ... but you made it work, so now I don't have to anymore 🙂

Aito Deliverance by Joror 2022-04-06T13:37:03Z ♥ 3

I'll return to this later ... it seems to be a bit longer. For now, my running commentary up to this point:

- slick! outdone yourself with the intro -- _very_ atmospheric

- Text sometimes fades before I can read it (was looking at some other stuff on the screen). Ah, wait they are hovers. Right. - 'No I can't trust me?' -- Ah when seeing that ending, it may not have been a typo after all.

- drove to Jason, before I got to work, but nothing happened ah I see, I have to drag a package to his 'in-box'

- on a related note, the text for the 'Artisitic Ending' overlaps the title

- hm the left/right thing is for the interface, as expected ... a nice touch, but does it matter much in a point-n-click?

- somehow I didn't even get into the RedWood app until my second playthrough ... it's great to slowly figure things out this way :-) otoh, I hope people don't miss stuff because of that, you know how the rating always goes

- shame I can't copy the hex-code Aito sends me, typing it in (not doing that manually -- I'm on holiday) to the translator was a bit of work I think the next one is a YT video? maybe? ... hm though. backwards?

Inevitoffice by Lako 2022-04-06T12:52:38Z ♥ 1

So the first minute or so you're supposed to stay in your office? As soon as I went out they yelled at me when talking. Later, the same prompt is used when they _do_ want to talk to you. Is that on purpose? It would fit the setting.

After a while I got a string where I could just click on my desk and the points went up, because that's what they wanted me to do at that point. I only went out whenever the !!! didn't go away when clicking on the computer. By that point the demands where more about talking to other workers.

The boss never seemed to want anything. I just went back to check, and clicked a few times, but they only scolded me for interrupting. Also very fitting for the setting I suppose...

Sapper Master by yusovv 2022-04-06T12:31:05Z ♥ 3

I got to about 88. I found it easier to slice the wires vertically in the end. Since it seems there is only one wire to cut each time, you can sometimes look for the only different color, which makes it a bit easier as well.

In my first play-through, I got in a state where there where 2 sets of wires drawn over each other. The I died, since that was my third heart.

All in all, it's a bit repetitive, but the art is slick, and I like the way the cuts actually erase the pixels.

Was this inspired by 'Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes' by any chance?

The VortExperience by Hawkin 2022-04-06T07:34:07Z ♥ 2

I was a bit tired of referential humor, but the good voice-acting, and '... unstable ... I'm not really supposed to use that word' won me over. Also it seems to go for being it's own thing _just_ enough. Also you just went for it ... there are a lot of lines.

At first aiming took some getting used to, but once you found a spot to park your mouse and your character, so that the goo drop-off isn't that far away then it becomes almost easy. I got about 90 and a half seconds that way.

Lastly, I do appreciate the character selection-screen.

Last Stand by Diannara 2022-04-06T07:17:36Z ♥ 2

I like the art, and animation. The battle system seems solid as well, if just a little on the simple side (block, attack, block, attack). I still liked it, as 1. it felt reactive enough while, 2. the animation and SFX still gives a seeming weight to your 'tools of trade' which makes landing a hit or block feel satisfying, and 3. the addition of blocking makes it about twice as deep as most LDJam-games in this style anyway. (Well, other than the fact that if 2 goblins are attacking you, and their attack is out of sync, you have no chance to block one of them.)

I also like the way you deal with potential out of bounds problems. I don't think I've seen a death timer that way before, and it fits the story well.

One last thing: I'd really like a mouse-sensitivity setting. It was playable once used to it, but when playing Unity games I always have to turn that setting all the way down. (At least here its manageable enough, but I've had to stop rating games in the past as this made it just unplayable for me.)

Sundae Driver by Juutis 2022-04-05T18:30:10Z ♥ 1

I feel the time limit is _very_ tight, even on the first day it feels you absolutely need to go over the sidewalks to get the ice-cream delivered. Though you _can_ drive through most obstacles, so that's fun.

Otherwise a nice atmosphere though! It feels like the sun is just setting. Also the other cars tend to get stuck, but I was just wondering if that can be used somehow as a tactic.

Last Look Up by ClaytonRumley 2022-04-05T18:12:49Z ♥ 2

I like the idea that the 'delay' part is for a reason, rather than just senseless. That hadn't occurred to me until now. (Though ... in the original concept for my game the pickups where going to be wandering people you saved as well.)

There's a bit of cooldown on the shooting, which I understand is to discourage button-mashing, but I wonder if it couldn't have been handled in another way, perhaps with a finite energy, as it felt very limited.

Kessler by EagleV 2022-04-05T17:52:03Z ♥ 1

The huge pixelated HUD and the actual smooth 3D game-window make an odd couple, but this game makes it work somehow.

The controls felt smooth, it was easy to get into, which in turn helps make it fun to play. I don't really care for the music though. (Maybe try something ambient if you really don't have the time for it?)

Oh No My Trophy by zimny11 2022-04-05T17:41:58Z ♥ 1

I understood the tutorial screen just fine. Glad I went through it, otherwise I'd have thought the blue ones just going through fire is a bug. (I did notice that the bike-pump does something weird to the blues, their sprite goes dark and it moves a bit over the map.)

Also the keys on top showed as 1, 2, 4, 3 for me, but I still needed to press 4 for the 4th item.

All in all decently fun, with some nice polish.

EDIT: Oh and it wasn't clear to me at first I could just move the mouse instead of click.

AstroPhysical by Arihan10 2022-04-05T10:41:37Z ♥ 1

That was a lot of fun :-) I like how you sell the franticness of the situation mostly through gameplay. (Though music and graphics help a lot too.) The solar beam is difficult to get, though sometimes it seemed easier.

It's a bit of a shame that, when you smash the asteroids to smaller pieces, the smaller pieces _almost_ follow the same trajectory, so most actions actually don't delay the asteroid as much. I tried breaking stuff up into smaller pieces and then deploying the gravity thing, but that didn't seem to do much.

The nuke was cool! Though the first time I could deploy it I lost the game while in nuke mode, so it sort of got stuck until I pressed escape, then I lost my mouse cursor. I thought it was a weird, buggy ending screen at first because of that :-p

Fox Driver by rolferm 2022-04-05T10:20:34Z ♥ 3

I'm on Manjaro. It won't start for me :-(

There's a long stack-trace, but the gist of it is, it can't find a bunch of functions. Not only things like `gl_window_open`, but also more basic seeming things like `lisp_sqrt`.

I'm not in the right headspace right now to figure this (error) out.

Flamekeep by ArBe 2022-04-05T10:07:29Z ♥ 2

When I try to run, I get:

~~~ [remco@deck out]$ ./run.sh & [1] 66432 [remco@deck out]$ ./flamekeep: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL2_image-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[1]+ Exit 127 ./run.sh ~~~

Please pack your dependencies with the game! SDL2 is relatively common, but a lot of people won't have the right version installed.

(Also the download says 'fixed' ... per the rules of the Compo, you'd have to document what game breaking bug you fixed in the description here.)

RogueTime by shared 2022-04-04T12:39:35Z ♥ 2

The jump feels a bit floaty, and the environments seem a bit empty, but otherwise, there is a bit more content here than you might see at first glance. Well done. Would have like some music (or some more sound effects, but who am I to talk this time...)

I found that I could cheese most of those big knights ... which was necessary, as they absolutely decimate you whenever you do get caught. I had a decently easy time once I found (more) health regen, from that moment on I could just only take the good upgrades.

Final Warp by Kraxxi 2022-04-04T12:13:45Z ♥ 1

The frantic situation is good (though it could have done with some sort of difficulty curve that slowly ramps up ... I have to opposite problem in my own game). Music helps with that feeling.

The ships look nice, but when controlling it, it feels weightless.

There's not really much else to say... er .. maybe it would help if instead of a health bar, the opposing ships just flashed when hit? And then your own health/oxygen meters could be at the bottom. Reduces visual clutter.

Parachute by JulienLussiez 2022-04-04T11:24:38Z ♥ 3

I give up, I just can't find the 'F', nine letters. I go the rest though!

Anyway, I love what you can do with a minimalist style like this. People often don't realize simplicity like this takes effort too. And attention to detail, like the understated sound-que and one actually falling _faster_ when you miss.

On the other hand, there's not much more to it than that though. I really like the vibes, but well ... even 'hangman' is more involved in its way.

(Are there any easter-eggs?)

Make sure you clearly note it when the game updates, and what you have updated, as that is required (at the very least for Compo/48h), so people have a (sort of) chance to judge what was there initially.

Speaking of uploading things: I was so annoyed that I couldn't find the one with 'F' that I wanted to look up the source-code, but there isn't any? AFAIK that is (still) required for Compo/48h.

Live Long And Prosper by i_am_lloric 2022-04-04T10:34:06Z ♥ 1

Hi! I'm on Linux currently, so I thought I could try out the Linux build. If I DL that, I get the Windows build instead though. Thought you might like to know. (I don't currently have Wine or a VM set up properly, so I can't play at the moment. -- Don't worry I didn't rate yet, as you shouldn't rate games you can't play.)

Singularity by Glaikunt 2022-04-04T10:18:11Z ♥ 2

Slick intro and outro. I like the art-style in general. Feels like something different. (Doing a lot with a little, like I tried in my current game as well, but maybe a bit less successful depending on how you look at it).

The concept of capturing is nice. Would be a bit more strategic with more that the main character though. On the other hand, that might mess with the vibe you're going for maybe.

Even though the game left me with positive feelings (despite the robot-heads best efforts), I mostly have a little list of bugs+ and other things I noticed beyond this (it's like that sometimes...)

- The wabbits and other creechers can spawn inside ('on'?) the robot-head. I was able to 'get' it once the blocks grew to a full row in front of the head. See screenie. - The walk distance is 'as the bird flies', but the character needs to walk there, so sometimes you can walk over blocks you can't reach because you _can_ reach the destination. (Due to how abstract and surreal the surrounding is, this ... I'd maybe have thought it was on purpose if this wasn't a gamejam-game.) - Due to the way the animals evade you, and you need to trap them, and they spawn the grass on capture; nature will always spawn in the corners and edges of the map, rarely covering the center. - If you're 1 block away diagonal, and the animal is trapped in a corner, and you click that tile, you will swap places (as the movement is never diagonal, and there are techincally 2 paths, and the critter will always take the other one).

(+: Pointing them out is not 'asking [you] to fix them', right? :-p -- I just assume that you'd still like to know if people ran into them.)

singularity_screenie.png

Anyway, good job. Felt nice and relaxing to play, which is what many of us probably need right now.

Okay & Alright by tcstyle 2021-10-10T14:47:04Z ♥ 2

There are so many subtle things going on here that I almost lack for words. It's not just the chains taking away control, some action mimicking the words that will appear is happening for nearly every phrase!

As for the art, the music*, and how it all fits so, so well together: It reminds me of that story about a client coming back to complain to the artist, that, yes, it was very pretty, but did they really have to pay so much for 2 pen-strokes, and wait for years for that? Then the artist takes the client on a tour through their house and countless of sketches and studies done in preparation for those two lines lie on all surfaces and pour out of every cupboard and chest that is opened. (It may have lost something in the retelling, but I think about it often.)

(*: It's interesting how music you suspect wouldn't be that (for lack of a better word) 'good' on it's own can nonetheless perfectly fit a certain mood or other piece of media, isn't it?)

One last thing: When I put it in full screen immediately after the haxe-flixel logo, it took a very long time to load (or maybe I already clicked a few times when it was still loading something and then needed to click again to start). So much so that I almost went to close it and write a comment about how it wouldn't start for me. I've been trying to reproduce it, but no luck, it now starts fine.

Polygonal Animal Stacking by Flying Dog Fish 2021-10-10T14:01:06Z ♥ 1

Maybe I should make my next game hand-drawn too, judging from my own reaction and then seeing it reflected in the comments :-) Also the game will not (with the exception of spawning a new animal or ... keyboard?) progress unless you're ready. This, together with the music* gives it a relaxing vibe!

I'm sorry to say that I couldn't really get the hang of the rest of the game though. Since the floor is an ellipse or sphere, and the animals are really slidey, there's only one spot where you can realistically drop them. It's not like this gets better when your tower gets higher, since that's very likely, through no fault of your own to collapse as well before you get into any position that you have an actual choice as where to place the next.

Some smaller remarks: - For the 'animal appearing at the mouse cursor': It's not so bad once you know about it. I'd still have preferred for it not to be 'active' already. (Though I suppose the explosions can be fun when viewed from that angle.) - The big elephants feel very light for some reason? - Little bug?: I'm pretty sure I got something like 'final score 15, max score 16' at my first attempt.

(*: A few LD's back a gave procedural music a go as well for a couple of times --Wolfram Tones in my case-- it never felt really satisfying to have made though -- more like curation that creation. Also this party ('Aiva.AI') keeps the copyright if you're not paying them the highest tier? Yikes!)

Red Flag (Le Temps des Tempêtes) by Achiru 2021-10-10T13:39:48Z ♥ 2

I really like the music, which fits both the general atmosphere, which in turn fits the theme!

The waves felt good to sail over! Having played both the 'bugfix' version of the original Linux build and now (to check this) also the web-version ... I don't think the version I played on Linux actually contained (all?) of the bugfixes: I wasn't able to move backwards (zoom out) or forwards (zoom in) there, seemingly at all.

You can get pretty far by just rushing ahead and having a good spread with quick volleys, instead of carefully aiming :-)

P.S. With regards to the part of the discussion about post-jam uploads: For what it's worth, I'm one of the people that always does download the jam-version if available, and I appreciate both being around. As long as people provide a list of changes and (unless those changes are game-breaking bugs) there is a separate jam and 'continued development' version, I'm a happy camper. After all, sure, part of the responsibility is in the developers hands, but we have some responsibility as raters as well to pay due diligence if the developers have _clearly_ indicated what's what.

Tanks 'n robots by Douwe_Ravers 2021-10-10T13:02:35Z ♥ 1

That's an impressive intro & outro you have there! For the game as a whole: While I'm a bit less inclined to be impressed by something that is 'just' 3D these days, you've put in the artwork and time to make it work in a compo-timeframe, which is also impressive.

I'm sad to say that (after the initial seconds when I rolled off a hill and I managed to right the tank up again) I found the game(play) itself to be a bit tedious? Because there are about 2 things that can happen:

- You take aim from far away (if you're lucky, you don't even have to wriggle your mouse cursor for the green target but can just shoot), then take them down one by one as sitting ducks. - At some point the ones left over are too far away and you need to advance, and you occasionally meet an AI that is heading for you. Then (due to the slowness of your tank) it will mostly turn into an 'I shoot then they shoot' then repeat ad-infinitum until the opponent is dead (it won't be you since health is plentiful). Unless there's trees, but that just gives you even more advantage.

Which also, I suppose, means that the controls are intuitive! Also it can't have been _that_ tedious, since I was never outright bored or anything.

Just a note: While it _is_ allowed to fix ('certain') bugs after the end. You're at the _very_ least also supposed to make a list of the things you changed after, per [the rules](/events/ludum-dare/rules) > Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline. **You are asked to highlight the changes you make in your submission (a short change log).**

Some smaller remarks: I'd have liked a bit of music. Couple of typo's: Luckely -> Luckily, Stabelize -> Stabilize.

Beep Boop Boba by candlesan 2021-10-10T12:41:22Z ♥ 0

I liked the music (though it felt a bit in your face rather than a background track sometimes), the fact that you can get silver & gold besides just finishing the level. Plays nice as well. Every machine has its own character, but that comes with a downside... some of them just work when you interact, for others there's a button. Like I said, that mostly works in the games benefit, but you might want to teach that to the player a bit more clearly.

A related example, at first I thought 'why pick up a cup as a separate action'? But then it turned out that you could run the machines in parallel, which opens up the game a while lot.

Other things that could be (visually) improved (to teach players) is the difference between an empty and a cup full of coffee (mid-grey versus black), a little ice versus a lot (even though the level title already hints at it), and the little bit of yellow on top (perhaps because it's seen from the side?)

(The theme felt a bit tacked-on, as well.)

Lastly, I'm just glad that this was easy enough for me, so I could see the later levels. And fun enough that I wanted to!

A 6h rush to produce anything by Masaru 2021-10-10T12:17:51Z ♥ 1

Well played with the name. I have enough trouble doing things in 48h, 6 must be a nightmare :-)

I generally like the switching sides mechanic (especially that a tile can be made to switch back as well) and ... I have not much more to say than that, unless we talk negatives. I won't bother with mentioning most of those, given the context.

One thing that I did notice was that I could consistently get a (soft?)lock if one of the tiles flipped back to me. It wouldn't let me pick a side to attack with, but it also wouldn't let me pick up a new tile (I played the web version on Firefox under Manjaro Linux).

Political misdirection by LeReveur 2021-10-10T12:06:29Z ♥ 1

I like the neon-minimalist style! It fits well with the abstract gameplay.

The progression was a bit too quick for me, but all that means is that it's probably just right for the more twitch-game oriented players that this is meant for.

I do have a few other remarks:

- Why the three-way 'vote' that doesn't change anything? - I once was forced to choose between 3 identical options, which then ended my game. If you expand on this, it's a situation you want to prevent before the player gets to see it. - I had a game-over (I think the same one maybe even) where there still was a little bit of the smallest party left. (See screenshot.) - Some sound-effects would really have helped here.

red_left_over.png

Curse of Apep by cogcomp 2021-10-10T11:34:08Z ♥ 0

Neat full featured menu screen, nice graphics and a cool game-over animation! I also feel that the move vertical vs. move horizontal blocks puzzle gimmick was inspired, and matches the theme. (Though it can get a bit glitchy when the enemies bump you into level-geometry... while that does _also_ feel unstable, I don't think that that's what was intended.)

However, this falls into the pitfalls of a lot of pre-2000s puzzle games, in that not only are there enemies (fair enough) and often have zero to do with the puzzle at hand (ok, that can happen), but are seemingly placed to frustrate the player (the crawling ones most notably). I think that's what the other commenters where getting at too, as yes, it is hard, but that didn't necessarily _have_ to be a bad thing. This type of hardness is just made out of frustration though. (Also true of the lightning effects ... if the monster-placement had been different, this would've indeed helped make the game more tense and atmospheric. It still does partly, but now it's become part of the frustration as well).

Overall _definitely_ not bad for a compo, I just don't really feel the pull to play any further, which is a shame.

Critical Mass by RatoGodoy 2021-10-05T20:09:09Z ♥ 1

Excellent use of dithering and particle effects! :-) I also really dig the title screen.

It's a fun idea as well. However, it seems to me that, the higher the level is, the more dashers there will be to disrupt you. So unless I misunderstand the game (which is possible) it will form a certain point onwards always be beneficial to focus on _gaining_ mass, which loses the balance concept in the noise.

Speaking of noises ... (Please ignore if you already know this and there was just _literally_ no time or something like that) Basic SFX is one of the easiest things to make during a game jam: After all [generators like these](https://sfxr.me/) are legal even for Compo entries.

Contact Nesigur by Trexxak 2021-10-05T19:37:00Z ♥ 1

Love the concept ... looking at some of the less used features in an engine and asking yourself _'what can I do with this'_?

Artwork absolutely fits the rest of the experience ... and the theme.

One thing I ran into (or rather _didn't_ run into) at the start was that the 'press R to reload' was just outside of my screen. So I thought I had to restart it every time (well until I cleared the first bug that it ... oooh I get it now _bug_ ha!)

As for the rest. Hm. Can I guess that you haven't worked a lot with freeform input from users yet? (What if I set things to -1? What if I delete a part but leave the json well-formed? What if I garble the json? etc.) Unless the crashes are on purpose of course, then you succeeded brilliantly! If that was an accidental thing then well, it's extremely hard to get it right for all circumstances.

.

.

.

**spoiler** @jk5000 You have to change stuff _inside_ of the file. **spoiler**

Don't Kick The Oxygen (more of a physics sandbox really) by shreemp 2021-10-05T17:57:19Z ♥ 2

I guess the divers' chance of survival is _shrimping_ by the minute :-p

The Nuclear Nightmare by Betamorfosis 2021-10-05T17:45:47Z ♥ 1

Ah, score-attack games are always a little bit addicitve, and this one makes it easy to love that. At the risk of making the comments section sound like a broken record _this is really fun to play_.

Maybe you could make it more visceral when something, like not landing on your rear, makes your red bar go up?

One other thing I noticed is that the reported number on the highscore screen and the 'new high' don't always match up. (See screenshot.)

unmatched_score.png

Gunsundheit! by Papabirb 2021-10-05T17:06:20Z ♥ 2

Ha, the sun going like _'WTH?!'_ is a nice touch :-D

For the 'holding right' problem: Might I suggest that you let the meter fill up (a lot) faster if right is pressed? Then you can also counter-balance the 'always left' with some sort of time limit. After all, your date and/or the movies won't wait forever!

While I'm not colorblind myself, I think it's neat even people in jam-games start paying attention to accessability. There should be an 'Accessability Jam' maybe?

I noticed that sometimes, shooting and turning left happens so closely together in time, that (almost?) the only way you can tell is by another ominous siren on top. But that's a status indicator, and doesn't really tell _when_ you made the mistake.

Also it doesn't really seem to matter how many bullets you have really, right? It fills up quickly enough, and fires quickly enough, that it doesn't really matter if there's 1 or 6 in the magazine.

Anyway, sometimes I keep noticing these little issues in otherwise fine games. I guess what I'm trying to say is: The idea of an armless, gun-nosed man running around trying to _not_ shoot things is very creative, carries it through the simplicity, and it otherwise plays fine ... though I don't feel much like replaying it now that I've gotten to one destination already.

Dutch Dyke Defenders by Groogy 2021-10-05T15:57:13Z ♥ 1

As I watched the stream, I can't really give my first impressions any more, so I'll leave that to others. Instead, have a slightly unsorted list of remarks!

One thing before we get started, I see that I mostly wrote is a bug list ... so I wanted to say that I _did_ enjoy playing it! There can hardly be anough pixel art simulations with a cute look :-) (Also, note that this list is at least partly based on that you may want to continue with developing it, so are interested in stuff you obvs. couldn't get done during the jam itself.)

- First, I really wonder how well I would have understood everything if I wouldn't have watched the stream. Given the help and hovers I think I would've gotten it, but without any other comments there's no way to tell (yet). - Sometimes a flinter-thin layer of water will prevent you from building ... fair enough, but it's really hard to see sometimes! - Overflowing flood barriers are really only known by guesstimating if it's over yet and seeing the effects. Would be nice if it was more clear. - I get that it's a worker placement game, but people who don't play a lot of board-games may have some questions about where your workers go when you destroy stuff. Since everything costs money as well, it may be a good idea to return the worker, for some extra strategic depth? - Not everyone may realize flood-barriers can be built in water (making pumps _a lot_ more useful). - Maybe it's an idea to _always_ make the first effect a storm of some kind? The other effects are a little underwhelming in comparison. Well visually anyway, to the point where you may miss that they're happening. The tulip booms and crashes in particular, since they also happen when you don't have any planted. - Visible time until the next 'step' would be apreciated (like, when do I get my $200 do not pass start and workers?) - Everything is quite slow, and the speed up doesn't seem to help much (it may be quicker, but as the screen-update lags when sped-up it doesn't _feel_ quicker). Maybe I'm just in jame mode though? The upside is that it can be played as a sort of idle game. Let's see how my micro-Dutch terrarium is doing! - Pipe _repair_ costs a full worker. Given that a pipe is (10 riks^ and) 1 worker to begin with, and once you have at least one tulip fields workers become the problem... I think that's a bit much. [^] I'm old enough that I remember the slang/abbreviation for Rijksdaalders :-p - I'd like to be able to set priority for building stuff. Though doing that without clutering the simple interface is another problem... - Lots of sky may be a Dutch thing, but there's also a lot of ground. There's lots of screen real estate locked up in that! Not sure what to do about that without making it not Dutch any more though (no high buildings because we don't like 'em and not a lot of stuff underground because that muck is not workable in that way). - Pipes have only bends and straights I think, no crossings (T or otherwise). - I'm not sure a town always does something on upgrade? Maybe show a little message what has happened, so people don't have to hunt for that. - Maybe it's an idea to distribute water (more) immediately if the difference is higher than 1 (instead of just one at a time). You get into weird situations if you remove a flood-barrier and the sea was high one one end and low on the other. - The little plus for the forced town upgrade _almost_ entirely blocks one tile. - I wanted to see the game over, but instead found what I _think_ may be a dominant strategy: Build nothing but a few tulip fields, and then occasionaly grow your town. Just let it drown. The people can swim, and, more importantly, repair water-damaged buildings!

_EDIT_: Oh almost forgot! I managed to get my tulips safely buried in a mountain by raising land! tulips_in_land.png

The Unstable Zone by Joror 2021-10-05T14:15:38Z ♥ 3

Very atmospheric again. I'm used to this from you by now though :-) You really are pushing your shader wizardry to the next level, and it shows. The Joror humor (t/m) in the Joror description boxes (patent pending) is present as well, and that's not a bad thing. Is that an XKCD ref I see?

It took me an _embarrasingly_ long time to find out that the green dots contain unstable matter. And an even _longer_ time to find out that the more aggresive ones contain more, so I shouldn't just shoot it. That was _after_ I failed to notice for the longest time, that, to collect stuff, I should position my ship so that the little blue field that is coming out of the same part of the ship as the blue beam is coming from, is the only intake. At this point I had already shot the majority of the green stuff in the level, so I started again. I got further along, so I thought I might actually see the end of this game, it took me a while, but now I have collected almost half of the unstable matter ... which was about one or two minutes after I noticed that the more cargo I hold, the more inertia and less top speed the ship has. Then I accidentally got sucked back into the far part of the level by the stream. At that point I had been playing for what felt like a really long time, so I stopped. (At some point I might attempt a third playthrough, going back and forth to the AI, like in my first attempt.) I'm not sure how much of this is on me, and how much of this is on the game. (On the one hand, the scanner indicates that the pirates have unstable matter --though in my defence the info screen doesn't always show up and the capital U is in dark geen on darkish grey--, but I don't think it specifies anywhere how the tractor beam works.)

Some other remarks: - Dialogue system should have a back button: I wasn't able to get back from the rest of the conversation without closing it and opening again. (Closing the dialogue isn't obvious either.) Also the QBits wheren't shown on every screen that I might want them on I think. - Not sure if on purpose: The very large crate can't be illuminated (but does show up breifly when disintegrating). - Control scheme is really nice, feels very intuitive. - Idea for the tractor beam: Make it the entire side of the ship, not just a small part. - Why can I turn the light-tool off? What purpose does that serrve? - When tractoring, sometimes objects disintegrate, other times not. And as I rewrite this from my notes, I think that that may be because the also receive damage from bumping against my ship? - Another thing that isn't mentioned, is that the nanites need raw materials (and not, for example tech-part ones -- or even it being free). - At some point I got some debug info to show when I pressed a key I think? Little white boxes with numbers on 'em. I thought I might check it out later ... but then I forgot they key and/or actions that lead me to that :-p - A very small detail, but I noticed the tech counter is stuck when sucking in parts with the tractor beam. It still counts them properly, and dissapears, but the number (unlike the raw mat) doesn't go down in the info box. Maybe that's only when combined with raw mat though?

Unstable Mines by AppoxGames 2021-10-04T18:59:50Z ♥ 1

Almost all has been said already by others. I'll add my voice to the chorus when it comes to the concept ... lots of potential for this single player physics bomber-man! And the audio is subtle, but very nicely done.

About the only new thing I have to say (unless I accidentally skipped over it when reading other comments) is that perhaps it would be a good idea to have some sort of indication as to where the new boxes will land?

Connection Unstable by hotaloca 2021-10-04T18:48:23Z ♥ 2

Heavy stuff! The background changes where a nice touch as well. And, as the others have said, the mood is great, also due to the whole 'setting the stage' bit at the beginning.

(Flicking with a mouse is ... weird. Took me a while to realize how to scroll is what I'm saying. Not really an issue if it's mostly intended for phones though.)

The only thing I was a bit annoyed at is that the text almost never hints at what the 'right' answer is to proceed. That does give it a very dream-like feeling though, so maybe that's what you where going for?

The Vortex by Liam 2021-10-04T18:05:45Z ♥ 1

Lots of comments already, if I want to say something _completely_ new, that leaves me with ... Well you _do_ have a nice color scheme, I think.

While I largely agree with the above (voiced SFX is nice, controls/'feel' could stand to be improved, etc.), I actually do have more to say as well.

First, I want to add a small detail to the control-discussion: I'm not sure if it's the key-rollover on the cheap keyboard I use, or the game (or maybe I just miss the coyote time described above) but the avi wouldn't always jump and I think it mostly happened when I was already pressing a direction.

Then, yes, the level design is nice but ... Playing these jam games I'm always interested in what they add to the table design/'innovation' ways. I'm not seeing a lot of that here. Probably you knew that though. (I also wonder why you introduce the 'seal the vortex' mechanic so 'late' in the game?)

Lastly, though, let's not end on a low note: About the difficulty level ... if _I_ can finish a game on a Monday after doing the compo (although TBF, I almost gave up on level 4), then I think you might be able to say that it's not _too_ difficult 🙂

The Walls Are Tumbling Down! by zubspace 2021-10-04T10:45:50Z ♥ 1

Nice idea! For me, it would probably work a bit better if you lifted even more from pac-man (being exactly as wide as one tile, always move forward and use arrow keys to only turn, etc.). Now it's just _mostly_ a top-down shooter. Being able to shoot the walls (well, sometimes, I didn't figure out why some walls where easier to shoot than others) is a nice trick that opens up some neat tactical thinking.

Also perhaps make the first level(s) smaller? It'd give more of us a chance to see the whole game-loop. Clearing the entire field will take a while.

Lastly, I wonder why the reload mechanic is even there? It didn't really seem to add anything, in my opinion.

Still, it's a well polished compo game.

P.S. Seems the single row of games shown on top of the main LDJam page are not ranked by # of ratings right now? Huh.

Anti-Bomb by IcyLava 2021-10-04T10:22:16Z ♥ 1

If this was the only game I needed to play today, I think I'd definitely try and become a bit better at the central mechanic, so I could pass more than the initial 3 jumps that you actually need an antibomb for. As it is, I think I gave it a fair shot, but whether it's me or the game I could not really get past that point.

I think largely ignoring the players current velocity when an explosion goes off (just mostly take the direction the explosion is going in) would have already helped me a lot though, as when I jump in the opposite direction what happens now is you just basically stop. Or just make the physics a bit slower?

This has dome good potential though I think! (You show of at least a lock/key mechanism in the trailer.) The controls also feel nicely polished for a compo game.

Lastly, it would be nice to have some way to properly exit the game, as it is in full screen.

P.S. Seems the single row of games shown on top of the main LDJam page are not ranked by # of ratings right now? Huh.

Portal Problems! by LadyMistLeaf 2021-10-04T09:36:56Z ♥ 1

Ah, it's a sort of crossword in the form of an adventure-game! What made it enjoyable for me was that the descriptions, while a little bit easy, weren't _completely_ obvious, giving it a nice word-play kind of spin. (Also there are some objects left-over at the end --as red herrings I presume-- just a little bit of cleverness that I think should be noticed.)

That said, I'd hoped for a bit more, even for a compo game. (Also I'm surprised that anyone that can denoise their audio that well didn't put a _big_ reverb/pitch effect on a demon's voice ... but that's just me probably 🙂 By which I mean to say, I think the voice acting adds a lot, and if this where my game I'd definitely put the Audio category back on.)

P.S. Disclaimer: Due to browser being browsers, I could either play this with sound, but the spacebar would scroll the itch.io page instead, _or_ download it, but then it wouldn't play the intro narration (though it would play both the bad and the good endings).

P.P.S. Seems the single row of games shown on top of the main LDJam page are not ranked by # of ratings right now? Huh.

....To the Ends of the World and Back by Peace Of Cake Games 2021-10-04T09:08:38Z ♥ 1

Combining visual novels with other types of gameplay has lots of untapped potential. On the other hand, the gameplay part, the way it is here looks more like a tech-demo ... which is not too surprising given that this is a compo game (as opposed to jam).

As for the story, I'm intrigued, but it cut off for me when Grace said something along the lines of 'wait, is that?' (it was just getting good), and the screen faded to a complete (opaque) white. After that, the game seemed to continue, but as I couldn't see the access pad it faded to a complete black after a minute or so. Either I'm missing something (very possible) or it doesn't run properly for me. (There's also the lack of mouse-pointer, and sometimes the yellow outlines are missing for me.) I may try later on a different OS/browser combination.

Oh, and I enjoyed the 'you are about to watch some high-brow cinema'-type intro with the white text on black background.

Downer Diver by MkMuffi 2021-05-13T14:54:28Z ♥ 1

Simple, yet ~~somewhat effective~~ neat.

Some remarks: - The screen is stretched in a horizontal direction rather than vertical. Since the gameplay is vertical, to me it would have made more sense to have the aspect ratio the other way. Was this intentional? (Perhaps to shore up the difficulty?) - I really like how, on the one hand, the minimalist look of the art is both very effective and ~~somewhat~~ cute, but I can also see how it could've been produced very quickly by someone (more) experienced (than I am). - Music is nice. - Are the sharks _meant_ to mostly not move? - Just 'Game Over' when I found the treasure chest was a little disappointment. (But at least there was a chest and it didn't just stop at the bottom.)

_EDIT_: Made the language a little less negative (see strike-throughs), accentuate the positive!

Plague by Advay 2021-05-13T14:30:55Z ♥ 0

The best thing about this game is the foreboding soundscape! That is to say: I'm impressed by the audio.

The difficulty ramps up _fast_. The first three(?) or so levels are all almost trivial, you only get to see what the mutations look like when the virus keeps replicating in the 'you win/next stage' screen. Then after that the final level before 'thank you for playing', there is so much virus that it replicates so fast that you loose _before_ you see any mutations. Unless you use the kill-pill, in which case you just won the game.

It's a shame because the core idea seems solid (apart from not really connecting to the theme*), but I didn't really get to engage with it, or even experience it. To the point where I'm wondering if what I'm looking at is just a lack of time taken for balancing, or if I'm running into bugs.

(Speaking of bugs: On the win screen I could see a lose screen blurry-ly underneath it... I found that the screenshot I took of it didn't come through. On the same screen, I had no mouse-pointer and could not actually press the quit button.)

Graphics are decent (I wonder if the slightly more 'photorealistic'/textured viruses is on purpose, to make them more scary/more stand out on the backdrop of the more stylized/abstract tissue behind it, or if that's just a thing that 'happened'). Also it responds snappily to mouse input (plays fluently), which I appreciate.

*) I feel that you could easily have said 'deeper and deeper into the body' and had some different backgrounds for the levels. That would have worked! But hindsight is 20/20, and never is that more true than for the peculiarities of jam games.

No Way Up by gagapete 2021-05-12T12:43:44Z ♥ 1

So I finally found some time to not just play, but also comment...

I found that most of the things I had to say on this one where in advice form, so please ignore if the following comes off as too patronizing.

First: I _did_ enjoy playing around with this, to see how far it could go. It has a sort of 'old DOS game' feel to me (but maybe that just shows my age). The way the main menu is handled is innovative (though not everyone likes unlabeled choices as a design choice -- I think it's a bit of a debate UX wise). The intro sequence above-ground on starting the game is also very nicely done!

That said, I do have some criticisms:

One the one hand, (and it could just be that I'm missing something here!) it felt like there weren't much actual decisions to make (deepest I got was level 12, and to me that seemed mostly luck based -- most of the runs take me to levels 7 ~ 9), since every card has a somewhat obvious application on the other, while luck or idle games can be valid, it does need your attention basically all the time. If you want to expand this game, I think it would be advantageous to decide which of these you'd like to be, so you can focus on delivering that experience.

A lot of effort has gone into doing a little animation for nearly everything, and having all kinds of different backgrounds, which means that the quality of the art seems to be all over the place (now I don't think technique is everything, but: the spider has outlines, most other things don't, lighting seems to come from a different direction for lots of elements, the way texture is handled is different for nearly every single object ... I guess what I'm trying to say is that it lacks consistency?) For jam games, it's probably best to focus on a few standouts, rather than try to do everything with the same quality.

I have been 'guilty' of lack of SFX myself on multiple occasions, but consider this: Sound-effects can be generated within 15 minutes (just search online for 'sound effect generator'), and most of the time, it makes the feel of the game so much better -- lately I've started actually recording SFX instead of generating them, and even then it can still be a done deal within the hour. If you don't leave it as literally the last thing, it will never really eat that much into your time (music is a _little_ different, in my experience).

P.S. I played both online and on Linux. Both run fine! I appreciate the scaling and full-screen (toggle!) options you have. Always nice to have more than the bare minimum of functionality!

Alcheminer by Joror 2021-05-02T17:07:34Z ♥ 1

Overall I do enjoy this. It's a bit hard to judge as a jam game, since it takes way longer than a few minutes for a play-through. In a way it's impressive that you've made a game that can be played for longer in such a short amount of time. I think that there are dry spells however (pun not originally intended, but welcome :-P ). I've tried a few times to keep it short, and I've yet to uncover the 2000 'E' 'Deeper and Deeper' layer. I may try again after the burden of also reviewing it at the same time is off my mind. Especially since the summoning box has space for exactly one more item ... so I must be missing stuff.

The game doesn't have a main menu. It's not really _necessary_ since no time-based events start at that point, but it can be a little overwhelming in the very first few moments, especially since all menu's and dialogue boxes are already on screen. The main one you need to pay attention to (at the moment you start) is in the center bottom, but the only clue for that is the 'next' button.

Other than that, I think the process of tutorialization went really well! Sure, you only get a hint of what motors do (or that pipes work slower the more there are), instead of the full picture, but it's enough to get you to the point you need. (And the only way you can really loose mone... err mana, is with the cleanup process). I think you're getting better at creating a welcoming atmosphere for new players, while not simplifying the core concept of your games (too much).

It looks like it should be a very strategic game, and maybe it is, but to me it felt similar to playing solitaire... looking for the next card or looking for the next cave. This isn't a bad thing, but I wonder if it is what you where going for. Fortunately there are less ways to get stuck (again, also thanks to the generous buy-back mechanics).

Other things I like are the little sprite, the subtle lighting, and the implication that your nephew is either 'Kevin Sparklefuzz', or his dad, named 'Sparklefuzz', named him 'Kevin' (I guess I'm trying to say that I enjoy the idiosyncratic way you always treat the story bits in your games). And I shouldn't skip over the fact that (when it's working properly), it's very satisfying to see the pipes work and suck up the 'vital alchemical spirits' in the caves. Also smaller things like the logo on the itch-page that has the little sprite in the C.

That said, there are some things that I think where a bit off... mostly just bug-like things and packaging nitpicks (well, besides that it seems to take a little long ... but I think I wouldn't necessarily say that if this wasn't a jam-game):

- No waste is generated if no job is accepted ... that is, if all current jobs are at 0/0/0 then you can just send up whatever up top. (Or at least I saw that happen one time). - In the windows version at least, the numbers on the assignments dissapear when you go over the main entrance cave with them. Curiously, other caves don't seem to have this effect. - Web-version is slow. Starts out very playable, but more pipes and _especially_ the deeper reaches can make it lag. - When I have an old network of pipes, it won't reconnect to the new one, no matter what direction I draw the connecting pipe in. The new network in question (when I tried) always had a pump in it, so _maybe_ it has something to do with that. - I _mostly_ ignored timed rewards, as they don't seem to pay extra. - I _mostly_ ignored anything other than red/blue/green, as there seemed to be _very_ little of the other stuff. - One time (when I did go for the white 'Hym'), I had blocked it, but (perhaps since there was a pipe full of 'Gren' between the incoming Hym and the toggle) the node right before the toggle 'ate' it. Mail me if you want screenshots or gifs, you have my address and I'm sure I can find something. (I think this happened when I played the web version as well, except I don't remember the scenario as well).

Nice one, wonder how it will do?

Save It by sundhar 2020-05-09T09:02:01Z ♥ 1

I think what I like the most is the way the difficulty only slowly ramps up, very smooth.

The feel of 'clunkyness' is, I think, in large part due to the fact that the overhead view is isometric, making the cardinal directions (up, down, left, right) not map to the same (up, down, left, right) on the screen.

Sound effects are easy to make with online tools like [Bfxr.](https://www.bfxr.net/) (requires flash!)

Servant Snake by C1FR1 2020-05-09T08:55:09Z ♥ 1

There's a lot going on here and you're managing it admirably. I like that it seems that you really thought about the ramifications of the alterations you made to the basic snake formula, all feeding into the risk/reward strategy. (Like for example, turning back into yourself would have make the original snake very boring, but here not colliding into yourself isn't the main goal anymore. Or the way the opponents also die when they bump into your side, giving you a reason not to just try to avoid them all the time.)

That said, I do think the difficulty ramps up rather quickly, and the tutorial, while very welcome, feels decidedly unpolished. (The 'active' menu is a nice touch though!) Also my screen seems to dim when playing the game sometimes?

Could really use some sound effects as well. You can easily add these by using online generators like [Bfxr.](https://www.bfxr.net/) for example (requires flash to run!)

juxta.LINE by fiaKaiera 2020-05-03T21:04:31Z ♥ 2

Oof! I'm really bad at rockband style games, so it won't come as a surprise that this was _way_ to hard for me 😅

It has a nice atmosphere, and I'm impressed with the tutorialization.

You put a lot of work into grading my game, so I feel bad for leaving you with one and a half paragraph, but this is really all I can make of it at the moment 😓

(I like the lefty-flip that you implemented ... I'm not actually left-handed, but I mouse with left most of the time anyway, so the IJKL controls where appreciated at least!)

Dumbulance by Juice Lizard 2020-05-03T20:41:58Z ♥ 1

Can't have been easy to develop for a limited system, so props for that! It's challenging but certainly not impossible.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to put sound in the format you used, but it would've helped a lot (you can use generators like [BFXR](https://www.bfxr.net/) (warning: flash)).

It seems that you can only initiate an action; if you press up or down, you cannot do so a second time for the same animal (or ball). IS this intentional?

Friendly Fire by very dark lord 2020-05-03T19:53:02Z ♥ 3

I've not seen a lot of games with humour this time around, so this was a welcome change. Of course the tree-lyrics where the high point for me as well 🙂

I also loved the menu's & animation.

I had some trouble with the double-jump (not the infinite one) though, while getting through the game was no problem (though the hitboxes on the moving clouds in the mountains could stand to be a bit more wide), I could somehow not make it work when I was on the highest tree (though it was nice to realise you could 'climb' the trees). Oh, I also could still hear the jumping sound on the end-screen when I pressed jump.

Herblore by Rustywolf 2020-05-03T19:28:46Z ♥ 0

Oof, it's very hectic!

Keeping my tools in the middle and only focusing on one or two plants seemed to help, but you might want to focus on having a little more gentle ramp-up (even though the tutorial/guide & what the plants are saying is already very clear).

At least the experience is quite smooth, the interface always does what you want it to do. I think I'd visually distinguish the manure and the medicine though, as I occasionally grabbed the wrong one.

Super Survival Ball by Quinn_Patrick 2020-05-03T18:58:25Z ♥ 1

Simple doesn't have to be bad! I liked this entry. It was somewhat addictive, and had a nice tempo & ramp-up. I think it worked best when I focused on just one or two balls to 'keep alive'. (Also the different audio effects on the different balls was a nice touch.)

Other than that, I don't have much more to say, but I did notice that while I didn't make it into the top 10, I could still fill in & submit the name-field.

Edit: One more thing: It _could_ just be me, but very occasionally, the balls seemed to get briefly stuck in the text on the screen.

Fire Up by oscarglo 2020-05-03T18:52:48Z ♥ 1

I was pleased by the lively menu's, and given that level of polishing, a bit surprised by the lack of sounds. It's really easy to generate sounds with a program like [BFXR](https://www.bfxr.net/) for example (warning, requires flash). One time, it took me less than 10 minutes.

The pixelart had a pleasing effect, there's just something about isometric pixelly city- & nature-scapes that really clicks for me (see also the icon of course).

That said, I struggled a bit with the goal of the game. Well, to burn stuff down, obviously, but besides that. Was the goal merely to burn as much of it, or to keep it going for as long as possible? Given the theme, I guess the latter, but that isn't really clear anywhere else. And _if_ that is the goal, why not just start it somewhere, and when it's nearly out, plop down the next thing you have? (That is, I think there's an easy to deduce optimal strategy.)

YAB by Lars-Erik 2020-05-03T16:55:19Z ♥ 1

The sound effects are very fitting (if not always ... tasteful to listen to 😄) and help with the atmosphere.

Simple gameplay doesn't have to be a detractor necessarily, but I found myself wondering what the point is of the 'alignment system' with respect to gameplay. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it seems you just pick an alignment, feed as much of that type of food (and it wasn't always clear what does what ... a sausage is neutral apparently?) and then hope you don't get stuck with _too_ much food of the opposite alignment.

Still, it was a nice little experience, and didn't overstay its welcome.

Morose by 100th_Coin 2020-04-26T16:47:15Z ♥ 1

Neat! A lot of work went into this, and most of it shows of!

It felt a bit weird to be fighting bees and other pollinators as a gardener 😅

A lot of the flower attacks felt the same for me... Perhaps it's also since you can't really see the strength, especially since it takes multiple hits to make on heart go away (my health never seemed in danger, or even lower than 3 hearths ... what's up with that?)

It also think maybe leaving the flower, and harvesting it yourself, after a victory, would increase the sense of ownership of the player over the garden.

(Also... +- 140 games & 100 karma feedback. How? How doe you manage to play, judge & comment all of those in just one week?)

Frostbite by NachoCP 2020-04-26T14:21:03Z ♥ 1

Well that was fun. The balls of eldritch energy or whatever it is you shoot feel very immediate and powerful, even without the audio (which I normally am a bit of a stickler for). Nice touch varying the spread pattern as well.

I found a very easy strategy for my first play-through. Just stand in the middle, keep the mouse-cursor very close to the wizard and blast away! You can press space very quickly if you don't have to WASD after all. I worked around the visibility problem by keeping the top fire at the top of the screen and just continuously fire in that direction, then mop up anything that comes for the bottom two fires (because they're in the middle of the screen & I can see everything around them).

I think some sort of score system would also work very well with this.

Rampage by PhilStrahl 2020-04-25T23:48:34Z ♥ 2

Very fun and colourful! Tight design. Short, but you probably know that by now.

I've read through the other comments, and the only thing I couldn't find (but maybe I skipped over it), is that shift + WASD + space can give your hand a bit of the cramps 😄

(Especially if you use the wrong shift for this, but still...)

(Also jealous of the excellent tutorial... One of these days, a game of mine is going to have a playable tutorial, one of these days...)

Edit: Just remembered:

- It's a zip bomb (that is 'extract here' puts all files in the current folder). - Some of the passageways where a little small, which could let the cat get stuck between a rock and a hard ram. Maybe you can do something with shadows to better indicate where the character is viz-a-viz the obstacles?

Stranded by notnullnotvoid 2020-04-25T23:43:05Z ♥ 2

Wow, that atmosphere... It's not just the graphics or the doable but somehow still _very_ tense gameplay, it's also the _excellent_ audio design. Like the way that the sounds shift when you get further along (or the light is dimmer).

I think I found that some of the monsters got stuck on a wall sometimes, which made them unable to flee the light, which in turn made them a bit hard to avoid.

Also, I know this concerns AI in a jam-game, so it might sound really nit-picky, but I found that, especially in the beginning around the bonfire, the monsters clump together so strongly (right outside the light, closest to your position). This means you never really have to worry about that they sneak up _behind_ you.

Pitcher and the Whale by sjandybae 2020-04-25T23:29:48Z ♥ 3

This was so much fun! The little fox character is so cute! It seemed a bit hard at first, but I got some confidence after the first day ended (which happened very abruptly).

I love how restructuring the game completely around the needs of the whale, water, & the bucket changes a lot of the normal platforming conventions. (Caring about someone else sure changes things, doesn't it?) Like that the character, and the opponents, are just straight up invulnerable.

Sunlit by palsina 2020-04-25T23:24:07Z ♥ 1

Loved this concept & the art!

Kept playing until the end and then spent a good 5 minutes trying to get higher than 292m., but it was the end of course.

I can't decide if I'd prefer a version of this in which the tree would have some weight to it (a single branch can grow to a ludicrous extent in the current form) or if that would either mess with the thematics or the gameplay too much.

I wonder what decides what 'route' the growing leaves take? Would it make it better or worse knowing that precisely while playing this game?

Lamps by qkjosh 2020-04-25T23:17:42Z ♥ 2

So impressed by the rigged model & the atmosphere.

I made it to the end without understanding the puzzle ... or rather, I thought that there would be more to it, so I was surprised to see ... the way out.

For me, the dog sometimes clips through walls. That is, it went next to a door rather than through it.

Thought I saw an object move without my (well, the dogs' anyway) involvement ... probably a lamp falling over in the near dark, but it was spooky as heck.

Protect the Pup! by Maindric 2020-04-25T23:09:50Z ♥ 1

Not a bad start.

- Consider not starting zoomed in - Maybe some sort of high-score or other 'progress' element? - I could hide under the trees for a long while...

Rewilding: The Story of Wolfhead Valley by ChloeOfArroyo 2020-04-25T23:01:20Z ♥ 0

The theme is very on point here! (I love all the wildly different nature based games that we get with 'Keep Alive'.)

I like that there's not just one way to do things, and that those tie together at the top of the food chain. That you can try to do so much with so little elements is the hallmark of a good strategy game, I think.

From the looks of it, some other people got quite far with 'only meadows & rabbits'. Monoculture may not have been your intent when designing this game though.... In that case, I think it would work a bit better if there where penalties, or if score didn't go up linearly.

I didn't even miss sound effects that much, but I'm always surprised when people leave those out, since simple ones are quite easy to make.

Feed me! by Liam 2020-04-25T22:57:12Z ♥ 1

I like the colour-scheme, but I really couldn't stand the music.

I tried to keep up by first serving the far-away bones, but such tactics don't really work for the other resources. Then when the timer grew very close and the tasks where supposed to be handled too quickly I just let a few tasks go and stood by with some bones -- unfortunately at that point it was already in the 'more sludge' stage.

Egg Mother - Keep It Alive! by Barrier 2020-04-25T22:50:22Z ♥ 1

I haven't seen this kind of control scheme in a while 🙂

I like the funny sound effects ... except that the 'agitated bird creature' one plays _constantly_.

This has already been mentioned, but still: Also props for putting an accessibility feature ('i') in a jam game!

You Have One Job by LeReveur 2020-04-25T22:45:40Z ♥ 1

While I usually like my choice-less games with a little bit more of an unfolding story, and this one could've used that too, it does have some polish going for it. (Or maybe I just like buttons to have functions 😛)

To be completely honest, I was a bit surprised when I scrolled back up and this turned out to be a jam game, not a compo one. It feels more that scale to me (not that this is _always_ a bad thing).

I like that the punishment for missing a button is smaller when you just missed it!

The long grey button is pretty sneaky, it tends to be forgotten even if you know it is there. Someone else commented about the 'secret orange buttons', so I had to keep playing to see if that lead somewhere. To be honest they're hard to miss once they pop up. I can't hold on all _that_ much longer afterwards though.

Maybe you could make it so that the health slowly creeps up again the longer it goes alright?

Hydro-Carbon Rescue by Joror 2020-04-21T14:57:05Z ♥ 2

So cool & atmospheric! 😄 I really enjoyed this one.

**spoilers**

There's some really cool ideas here, the beginnings of sort of top-view metroidvania, the way you both move and build-up your bot with the squiggly arm, which you also use for the puzzles (well, puzzle). Also scanning objects is a nice way to reveal information, makes you feel you've earned it somehow rather than just being told.

The atmosphere is excellent, especially in the beginning, when you truly do not know what you'll run into. I do have a bit of a gripe with the light though: your grabber needs to be close to objects, but the light beam is a point source a little bit away, making very close objects harder to see sometimes.

I'm not _quite_ sure I completely understand how the mechanics of the little drones work. It seems the brightly coloured ones (either red or green) can recharge you when you grab them, but the red ones will try to take some of your energy and the green ones move away, while the grey ones are (have become) just duds? Is that it?

I know what you've already got here must've been a _lot_ of work, and this is _really_ nitpicky given that it's a jam game, but it somehow feels a bit short? I think it's just that you only use the power-beam once, and that the girders don't go to unexplored rooms eventually, but just permanently block things off (which is not what you'd expect, since you can go through the blue door once you got the right McGuffin module). Maybe also because you attach the plant in the beginning, and then only attach _one_ other module? ... I should stop since you're probably well aware of this.

I tried a run without the lifeform as well. Nice to see you got a message for that! Though if you complete the run, and then run out your own battery, it still says that the lifeform will perish. Could just be a bit of a dark end though, not uncommon in some SF 😉

Lastly, I wonder if you can get it into an unsolvable state... I think you maybe can push the powerbeam module to the wrong side? Then again, this is meant to be a bit of a trial and error thing, if I read between the lines.

Flower Defense by Evolving 2020-04-21T10:36:07Z ♥ 0

First a minor nitpick: You named your zip 'LDGame'. A lot of people do that, and if you're reviewing games, it can get very confusing very fast.

The art is cute!

The level ends abruptly after you lose, there isn't even a sound. I know from experience that this can confuse players. ("What'd I do wrong?", "What just happened?") In that same vein, it'd be nice to see some visual confirmation of the hp of the critters and I don;t even know if the main character can get hurt or if the red-hues damage they appear to take is just for show or not.

Some music would really spice this up!

Oh, for others playing: the left mouse button was slash for me, not space as is written in the description.

Shashou the Panda by Mark Kelly 2020-04-21T10:31:29Z ♥ 1

The level of polish surrounding the title screen brought a smile to my face.

The range of your weapon unclear, it worked better when I pretended it was a knife and just ran up to the hunters (this managed me a hi-score of 3880).

The speed & difficulty is high enough that the repetitiveness doesn't really matter _that_ much (for the amount you play a jam game anyway), but I can imagine that, combined with the simplicity of the basic gameplay, will get quite boring after extensive periods of play.

Balloon Operator by Bit Assembly 2020-04-21T10:26:14Z ♥ 1

Jealous of the tutorialization you got going on here 😄

This has a lot going for it... It'd have been easy to go for just the base mechanics, but you also introduce the water & valves mechanic & decently polished on top of that.

The art itself is already fine, but you're doing a pretty good job of animating the sprite, I think (disclaimer: I can't animate at all).

Maybe introduce the valve mechanic with only one balloon in the stage?

This could really go with some music!

Keep Math Alive by BrotherByto 2020-04-21T10:23:18Z ♥ 1

The speed is _just_ right that I want to keep playing, and I got the feeling that I _could_ keep playing indefinitely (I gave up on purpose in my runs) ... on the other hand it feels _very_ repetitive, leading to the familiar 'I'm not having fun anymore I really should stop playing' feeling, while continuing the game.

I question the choice to put an ad there in the jam version. What does it add for reviewers?

I appreciate that the scoring is just based on time, not on the number of numbers, which incentives play like '+5 then -2' instead of just hoping for a +3 (which isn't there, but you get the idea).

Dr. Statnil's Dodo Egg by Voidsay 2020-04-21T10:16:13Z ♥ 1

I had some issues with the game cutting off the lower fifth of the screen on my linux (also mint) machine ... (maybe something to do with having two screens of different sizes), so I had to switch to the other laptop for the windows edition.

It's nice to see a game with (what is technically) a working AI, handling physics, in a compo submission. It may be very simple, but you just don't see that everyday 😄 ... also I'm tired; I lost to the AI 5 to 21 against.

That said, the AI can get stuck in a holding pattern very close to the net. Luckily the ball is close enough by then that you can touch the ball and get the AI out of the pattern. (... or even standing _on_ the net.)

I find that I don't have much more to say, except that I'd have appreciated some music. Some nice beach tunes?

🌸 Conway's Garden Life by joonamo 2020-04-21T10:08:45Z ♥ 2

A timely homage to Conway! Sad to hear about his recent passing.

It's certainly an intriguing idea, but patterns in the game of life are hard to predict (for us humans anyway), meaning you either have to look up some generators or just hope for the best. There isn't a lot you can do, especially if you're in a losing pattern, leading to a lot of restarts. I'm not sure if that's what you where going for?

Props for actually gamifying 'The Game Of Life' though 😄 and the scoreboard certainly does it's job when it comes to 'I wonder how that high-score got started', especially since you can view their solution! That last bit is a really nice addition that's easily overlooked.

Bruno's Bootstraps by Erin 2019-10-29T18:34:44Z ♥ 0

I'm not sure how much can be said about this: The game does little, but does so quite nicely.

I like that there is some tutorialization that then smoothly transitions into the normal gameplay.

I'd like to have a few more things to see beyond the moon, since if you get into it, you can get high quite easily.

The music is soothing, which is nice, though I'm not sure if it fits the game. Then again, I'm not sure what _would_ fit :-)

Terra Nil - Reclaim the Wasteland by vfqd 2019-10-08T21:51:29Z ♥ 1

I'm in awe... there's so much on display here. Gorgeous pixel art with translucency and animation. Relaxing music. The amount of polish that has gone into this is staggering for a compo game. Not just in the game itself, but in the extra bits like that you can zoom or have working difficulty settings, or a dedicated button for screenshots.

It's so nice to play a game in this genre where you're _not_ destroying nature as a byproduct.

The game itself can range from relatively easy to challenging to impossible, depending on the map. Case in point, at one point in generated 3 small size maps without rocks in a row.

The balance is great, and I probably think otherwise if I play a couple of more times, but I think now that either the water-pump _or_ the calcinator (but not both as they make a powerful combination) is a little on the expensive side. (At least if the excavator can't be used much because all the riverbeds are in slightly the wrong place, like in my large size playthrough.) Also I'm not sure if you'd need the excavator very much if playing map sizes of regular or below (I didn't need it in my medium size/normal difficulty playthrough) ... this is just speculation though, I might be off.

Some other things you might want to take a look at (besides the small map generation) if you decide to make a post-jam version:

- You can run out of funds, then 'unrun' out of funds if the last thing you built generates enough for the next purchase. - When deciding where to place a windmill, I noticed that it was sometimes rendered behind some rubble that was on top of the dirt. - I was able to build a windmill (I think on or near the edge of the map) when not on rocks. This gives you a windmill that doesn't power anything, which is a bit confusing. (With 'regular' buildings you have: oh this doesn't work because it's not powered by a windmill). - A warning when something you build would go over your funds would be nice (as well as a bulldoze or some other way to remove buildings).

_E.T.A.: It worked just fine on Linux Mint_

ulis43 by Anonyte 2018-12-06T09:56:02Z ♥ 1

For anyone playing on Linux: `LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./lib ./ulis43 &`

The music was nice and the art style cute. Other than the comments the others made (more feedback, more help-screens), I find that I don't have a whole lot to add, as it's a simple game otherwise (which doesn't have to be a bad thing).

Arden's Artisan Artefacts by blinry 2018-12-05T22:33:20Z ♥ 5

Utterly charming :-) The game really relaxed me with its atmosphere.

I found that creating the larger shapes could be a bit tedious, since occasionally you're just waiting for a needed part to show up (this becomes frustrating when the effigy has the 'not heavy' requirement as you can't dump pieces on your work any more).

Part of it's charm is the way it's been polished, it mostly weaves in the tutorialization quite naturally. (Except for the rotation, and a couple of other things like 'you have limited space' and 'storage is finite', but those are easy enough to figure out. Also on the last 'level', the humonculus needs to be light and that isn't mentioned I think?)

In a similar vain, the snapshots of the players work at the end are a nice touch.

... and of course I likes the characters and/in this world, neither of which are given a full explanation, but hint at something much stranger stories :-)

A Prisoner's Decree by ETdoFresh 2018-12-05T20:35:08Z ♥ 1

On opening the menu and on losing a level, quit is the only option, which takes you back to the splash-screen. Then you have to play all levels over again... I'd recommend to have a 'retry level' option at the very least, it's pretty hard to judge this way!

A hint for next time: Music is always hard, but there are some awesome and very quick generators for sound-effects, that would help so much in this case!

Maybe they start at different positions in later levels, but I only managed to separate a subset of the prisoners one time. What I'm trying to say is it could've lead to some interesting decisions if you could have more individual control. (Or a m I simply missing something?)

I like the little 3D model and walk-cycle of the prisoners.

I wonder how this would play if you'd been able to flesh out your ideas more.

He-Who-Is-Beyond-The-Sun by Joror 2018-12-05T14:24:35Z ♥ 1

Hey Joror!

First off, the atmosphere is incredibly effective. So much is done with the ominous backround noise/music, a bit of creative texturing, and a few lines of text! (It reminds me of the Arkam Horror boardgame, except without the tedius arbitrariness of that game.) The main idea of having 3 outcomes for each slain opponent (which you know beforehand) is also a nice evolution of the Slay the Spire concept.

I think there are two issues with this one (besides some annoying bugs). (Although both of those have positive sides as well.)

The most important one is that nothing is explained. You just launch into this game and are supposed to figure it out. This may be intentional, since it fits with the darkly occult/mystic vibe of the game, but... well. This will be escpecially vexing for people that've not seen Slay the Spire (I've only seen parts of playthroughs myself).

Here are things which might not be clear (_most_ but not all of those are sort-of like Slay the Spire, but not all of them!): **Also for anyone reading along who misses a description, here's an attempt**

- Your cards are at the bottom, the top cards represent the enemies. - The drop down menu those show on hover over, are things you can get if you defeat them (I missed the white text at first). - They're playing with open hands, and those attacks don't all go off, only the one they selected, and this happens after your turn. - You don't just click cards, you have to drag them. - Your attack is for _one_ enemy specifically, so don't just drag the card into the void. - Your turn isn't immediately over, but you have a 'Precence' each turn with which you buy the cards. It's the purple-ish number (both on your dash and on the cards). - 'Secret' is basically your health meter. It's the blue number (both on your dash and on the cards). - But some cards also cost Secrecy, making it you mana as well. - Precence resets each turn, secrecy doesn't (which would be somewhat clearer if the names where less thematic). - Each opponent has 3 healt stats., which is different from the one you have. Each of those _individually_ is enough to defeat an enemy. (Which plays into the choices you have to make.) - On the map screen... which colors/shapes are which? It doesn't say. (This one's also pretty easy to figure out for the obvious ones, and I get that you might not want to get into the others' immediately...)

Which is a lot to learn for a Jam-game! No help-screen, no tutorial, no epxlanation. As an experiment, as something thats 'fun to play', and as a game, that may still work. As a Jam-game? It'll be difficult.

_ < reached max content count appearantly?: continued in the next comment ... > _

Slightly 2 Overbuilt by JammedGame 2018-09-04T20:05:00Z ♥ 0

Great interpretation of the theme (literal, but fitting very well with the actual gameplay). Fun as a puzzle as well.

For me, only the main menu has music/sound... is this intentional? I think you could've extended this music over the main gameplay easily as well without any harm.

Please do include some more explanation, or at least make the little icons stand out some more, even (especially?) when they're greyed out... or instead, just make the 'tier 1' buildings that you can build in the beginning without requiring any of the others light up. (Maybe that was the intention? They didn't for me, which made it very puzzling when I couldn't build the others ... until I discovered they had little grey icons on then, and the others didn't).

I also wonder about the replayability... I was in a rush to get this rated before time and haven't checked thoroughly, but I think the building-blocks stay the same shape each time? Not sure how to overcome this, but if you do; well, you've got a solid 'basis' (this result) for building your 'rocket' (any hypothetical post-jam version) on!

Also: nice relaxing pastel colours! :-)

Bityville by Blueman 2018-09-03T19:30:11Z ♥ 1

It may be easy, but I haven't found a dominant strategy yet to get there quick (current record is 177 days), so that's good :-) The player needs to mix it up a bit, as only building apartments nets you no money, but if you only build offices at first, your population will take too long to build up.

I'm experimenting a bit with parks and taxes, but I'm not sure how parks or taxes influences the rate of people moving into your city (it seems it does a bit?) It doesn't seem to be explained anywhere.

Also, when you upgrade a building fully, the park behind it becomes hard to see. It's (probably?) upgraded when you click on the parks general vicinity (because I can hear the sound), but you don't see the green color of 'upgradable' anymore.

Nice aestethic choice as well. It does make it very hard to see which building is an office, and which an appartment though.

Music is nice enough, and I've got no complaints about the controls :-)

ETA: Oh, almost forgot one criticism: The only adjacency thing you have going on right now is w.r.t. the roads. As in; it doesn't matter _where_ you build a park, as long as it's build. (But this is a very small issue...)

_( I only refer to my own game in feedback when I find a game that has some connection to mine, but a city-puzzler with isometric perspective and a pun in the title relating to urbanization hits very close to home :-) )_

The Circuit Designer by Aggrathon 2018-09-03T18:45:48Z ♥ 1

I quite like the tutorialization here! But maybe what is a very gentle introduction to a programmer, might confuse someone else? I'm not sure how well the 'status'/requirements would come of to someone new, for example.

Also something I like: the SFX is really nice with the wire and other placement effects.

Anyway, it's very nice to see more Zachtronics-type games during this iteration (I found at least one other during rating). Yours is a nicely minimalist interpretation :-)

What I like a bit less is that its just bog-standard gate-logic. Now that's fine, but I can get that everywhere else as well. A story is also missing, and while the 'blueprint' thematics fit the minimalist interpretation very well, it also feels a bit uninspired? Every Zachlike (even the majority of homages) usually include some fantastical element to make the logic required _just_ a little bit unfamilliar.

Thankfully, the placement/erasure/rotate controls are well thought out. Even the wire can be stretched over longer spans. Well... except around the corners, but you can't get evrything in a Compo entry :-)

Minor stuff: 'The and gate 2' level can be solved with only a NOT-gate on the middle input.

Pyyrolysis by Ace17 2018-09-03T18:14:47Z ♥ 1

The atmosphere was super-tense... definitely a great mood there!

I think the space-station is just way too large. You could've gotten the same feelings/message/etc. across with far fewer of those cleaners, I think. If you as the dev already say it's very hard, it will be almost impossible for players. (Unless you've based the 'very hard' on a few willing play-testers during development?) I do think that you're right and it would be doable if I could be convinced to spend a long time on studying the layout of the station... But while the moody lighting and the grey walls work for the atmosphere, they tend to be a bit too samey for fun exploration.

I've worked with a lot of different 3D viewers and data at my different workplaces (and even written one or two), so the way of movement felt really super-intuitive to me :-) ... but I can see that other people might have problems.

These two issues make me thing: Maybe you could've made one or two pratice-levels? Introducing the idea and giving the player an early sense of accomplishment, without losing the thriller like feelings to repetition.

(Potentially there's also the getting dizzy and feeling nauseas issue, but I've not encountered that ... yet.)

This is the first game I can think of (in an LD-Jam) where I'm not sure music would improve the experience :-)

_(I get some script-console errors too by the way, but for me it's `Error: WebGL warning: texParameteri: pname 0x2803: Invalid param 0x2900.` .)_

The zero-G makes this stand out quite a bit, and with some polish and rethinking this could be a very good game.

Hexboard by foepje12 2018-09-03T10:28:05Z ♥ 0

You create a very nice mood with only minimal graphics and no sound-effects (which could've been generated with a tool like [this](https://www.bfxr.net/) in a few minutes, something to keep in mind for next time?).

The actual strategy part is pleasant as well, though, since there are very little instructions, some things become a little unclear. Like life only seems to matter for the archers, otherwise it's just chess rules? Or the way the opponent moves whenever I just select a piece. (I know chess works the same in real life: Touch a piece and you move it, but putting it in your own game in this way seems a little extreme, if it's on purpose. I'm not sure if it happens all the time, but more often than nor it seems.)

I wish there would've been some way to see the places an opponent can get to. It may be clear once you know the rules, but it would also help with teaching players those rules during play.

I also seem to have the hardest time beating level 3 :-)

Lien Acres by HoldMeImScared 2018-09-03T09:38:43Z ♥ 1

The map is pleasantly SimCity Classic inspired, and the music is similar too, but both are good in their own right as well. Playing from the perspective of the farms (often, but not always) left out of the SimCity series is a nice twist. Playing it feels smooth and polished, plus your possible actions are clear from the beginning (excepting that in what way I lose money each season will always be a bit opaque to me... the tax rate isn't really shown anywhere I think?)

The land-grab option seems quite balanced despite being random. During my first playthrough, it even seemed to get higher chance of effectiveness towards the end of the game. (Perhaps tied to how much the city has already taken over?) But my second made it clear that I just got lucky last time.

It's a small detail, but I also like how the end-text changes depending on which of the two outcomes you get. Another small detail is the tower, of which the city doesn't seem to build more, but is there to give the impression that the city has some sort of centre and outskirts.

If I have a big criticism, it is this: During each stage of play, there seems to be only one 'correct' (dominant) style of play:

- In the hectic, somewhat difficult beginning: Spam wheat throughout the entire map until you can reliably afford corn. - Then there is a short stage that is mostly about mixing in more and more corn until you can afford the greenhouse. - Keep planting corn (and _maybe_ still a bit of wheat) while you mix in more and more tomato-fields (which seems to be limited to 2 at first, but almost as soon as I build them, this restriction was lifted). - Keep planting tomatoes until you can afford 'delay land-grab', and later on 'friends in low places', and keep spamming those while planting tomatoes only.

Thus, there is really no reason to keep wheat or corn around when you can afford tomatoes, and the greenhouse upgrade is a one-time only thing, leaving only three options to play around with. Even there it just seems 'spam each of these as often as you can'. It becomes less a game of strategy, and more of luck.

Another, related issue is the strange difficulty curve: Hectic in the beginning, as you struggle to get enough wheat out, then more and more sedate and drawn out. This even becomes worse in the end, as your money dries up, so you can't pick the options as often, and the fields don't need replacing that often because you just don't have that much any more.

In a way, this is of course very much in line with the 'fighting a losing battle' motive, and it helps with the mood in that regard. Impressive if intentional! Still, the gameplay suffers just a little.

P.S. I normally try not to promote my own game in feedback, but this time our respective games just match up almost perfectly: So, if you'd like to play from the perspective of the encroaching city, maybe give my game a try :-) It doesn't match 100% (as you don't fight a farm, or anything, per se) but the inspirations are drawn from the same place.

Breathing Space by Jake Elliott 2018-09-01T22:04:05Z ♥ 0

Well, you got me to play it multiple times, which is a good sign :-) So far, I got; the 'surprisingly dark' (at least twice), 'oddly meh', 'fluff', 'dead in the water', and 'this is fine' (three times now) endings. (Yes, I tried to save the dogs as well, see below.)

You can take some wounds if you have enough med-kits, but I think I've seen only the 'relax a minute' card which takes away problems of a more psychological nature.

To my taste, the writing is indeed very good ('a madrigal of mouths' in particular is something that will likely linger in my subconscious for quite some time, and I'm equal parts concerned an intrigued by the crewmember snacking on spatulas), but as you try to find the different endings, the cards start repeating. I know you've written a lot of cards in a small amount of time, but eventually it stops to be about the writing at all and is just a means to the different endings.

As you learn the different outcomes, and know which sort of ending you'd like to try this time (on my last few runs I tried to save the dogs, for example, but got waylaid by my fragile psyche) it just (seems to me at least, but maybe I missed something?) to become a matter of luck (which events you get this time, and to a lesser extent, in which order).

The visual effects of turning the cards, and the little icons flying about are nice.

Some smaller issues:

- On my smaller laptop display, if I go fullscreen, the 'Start Running' button overlaps some of the text. I think this is present on at least one of the endings-screens as well. - The 21th century _confectionery_ vending machine somehow spit out a very mundane ('no fantasy') set of bare minimum rations. - (I think) Taking along a single crewmember (and too few foodstuffs) can cause the ending where you're chewed on by dogs, but that same ending implies you took multiple crew along with you.

Hoard by gelisam 2018-09-01T20:41:13Z ♥ 0

I was this on Phil's video already, but I don't think that I would've had any difficulties picking up the basics of the gameplay. Though maybe it should be made slightly more clear that gifting stuff to your rabbit-friend is most likely to make them unhappy. If you approach it completely as a puzzle-game, it seems reasonable to assume this, but I remember when I watched the vid that I thought it would have involved more social interaction, until about the second or third item.

I must say that this game is a lot more fun to actually play than to watch, though :-) I'm not usually someone that likes 'menial task' games, but this one kept me playing all the way through the end.

The most important criticism I have is _please move the reset function key out of the way of the rotating keys_. I accidentally restarted the shoe level at least _twice_, causing some creative language here... :-) Eventually I just mostly rotated everything the other way around.

The wheelbarrow was quite funny, I'd have liked to play that 'fresh'... now I knew what was coming. (It's also a nice way to ensure the end-screen can stay mostly the same if you do win.)

_I almost didn't notice there was music!_ For some reason it shows up as a 'play' button (and the time + mute button) underneath the webpage. It didn't autoplay, so I had to click it!

I'm at a bit of a loss to come up with anything more that hasn't already mentioned in the vid or here. Phil was pretty thorough!

ETA: Oh, I've seen your comment above: only had to get rid of the wheelbarrow and the carrot as well (probably could've fitted that one as well, but I wanted to feed our friend something good). I think I even made screenies of some levels?

Lancaster Electronics Ltd. by Flatgub 2018-09-01T20:39:19Z ♥ 1

_ Sorry, this is a way too long comment that overanalyzes parts of your game in various daft ways, but I saw a Zachlike with a rainbow-ish logo recommended on the itch.io picks and I just couldn't stay away. It's a bit unwieldy and my attempts at editing somehow only made it worse, so ... enjoy! :-) _

Trying to build what amounts to a full and fully featured Zachlike experience when you've already worked on and abandoned your first idea can't have been easy. That even got it in some sort of working order, with graphics and audio as good and coherent as these is even more impressive! There are so many little bits that are good, like the little light on top of the 'Lancaster', or the subtle effect of the 'typed' screen, the totally in-mood SFX, the way it asks you which thing you want to edit when there's multiple you could've meant (even though the only time it's needed is if you want to rewire your solution)... oh, and the notes that where stuck on with tape :-)

Unfortunately, it seems that these great ideas/ambitions/efforts end up being paid with in usability and tutorialization (and music, but I found the lack not very serious, given the genre), and in my opinion at least, some of the game mechanics (as opposed to the overall idea).

For some reason I've got the hardest time wrapping my head around the IO flags module. Some part of my brain just finds it really unintuitive... 'spooky action at a distance!' :-p (As in, you're at this supposedly basic level, where you have to do nearly everything manually, and yet this IO chip just cycles the inputs/outputs without connecting to those?) I think it's mostly my mistake though... I ended up skimming the intro, instead of going over it properly, then doing the fist level in a way that solved it, but completely misunderstood how the IO worked, getting through the second level with a similar flawed technique, then hitting a snag with the third level, reading the comments and seeing there was a problem with it, then trying to solve level 4, still with my flawed understanding. But then there's also that you get the first read/write without the IO-flags mod.

Some smaller issues, some of which may also be me being somewhat daft:

- Condition check: Is there a way to select which input is the flag and which the condition? I haven't found it... - Took a while to find the 'delete' key (I don't think it's mentioned anywhere). - Backspace is back to menu is also not mentioned anywhere. (Props for making the help/level-intro {re/dis}appear on command though!) - The 'arrow forward' key to mark checkboxes in the IO-flags (while enter _does_ work in the Math Module) is a little unintiutive as well (and also not really mentioned?) - Probably also on me, but it took me _ages_ to find that you could _scroll_ through the menu's (I think you _did_ mention this somewhere...) Well, _nearly_ all menu's... some still have keyboard only commands, like the ones in the combinator/logic modules. - The different 'modes' felt a bit clunky, since _almost_ all actions could be done without the modes.

Box-Bot by Hello1423 2018-08-30T19:22:15Z ♥ 0

_(Note: The `.zip` does not have a top folder, so extract-in-place just unpacks all into the current folder.)_

Very nice idea! :-) Not sure how well the theme fits (I get that there's a conveyor taking you to the lava, but I think the connection is tenous), but the theme doesn't really matter that much anyway.

On a more serious note, I think that the controls are hard enough that getting stuck behind a tall box is not quite recoverable for a player new to your game. Breaking boxes is hard enough to pull off that I feel it doesn't really compensate enough. Maybe next time, consider to focus less on an upgrade system that some players won't really have much chance to get to use, and more on a gradual difficulty curve.

On the other hand, the physics run pretty smoothly, which is great relief after a couple of games that ran way too slowly and/or where buggy.

It's polished as well: The graphics and sounds fit well together and create a nice mood.

_Don't forget to rate some more games yourself! You're only at about 12 ratings received, and it'd be a shame if this one ended up without a ranking!_

U Kill U Fall by Ronchiko 2018-08-30T19:18:46Z ♥ 0

Great animations!

I think the idea is pretty good, tying the shrinking platform to the number of killed enemies... but is there a story-reason for it? Connecting a bit of reason to it might help make sense of the setting, and also helps with the immersion

The jump is very high... the game ran a bit slowly on my Windows-lappy, but it took about half a minute to reach the ground again! What also doesn't really help is that the view is really zoomed in.

I think I defeated one of the big monsters by standing above their spawning-point, and thus bopping their heads.

The A, D and P points remain a bit obscure, even after re-reading the instructions. You could've left them out and just focussed on other things. The different weapon upgrades are fun to discover, though.

Adding audio to your game would help a lot with the mood/flow! An easy way to generate audio (legal for compo) is [this site](https://www.bfxr.net/).

It remained quite fun, even with some of those issues (in case of the jumping, partly _because_ it seems not quite right).

_ETA: Don't forget to rate others! It'd be a shame if your game ended up w.o. a rating!_

(Running) Flying out of space by Kaboosh 2018-08-30T19:16:52Z ♥ 0

The recoil is an interesting effect, but I think it's a bit too strong.

It took me a few retries to get the shift key to work, maybe that has todo with my Windows settings.

Another small issue is that (the menu on) the Game Over screen didn't seem to work for me; in order to retry, I had to quit the game and restart.

You're off to a decent start, but this game will need some reworks before it can truly shine!

_ETA: Don’t forget to rate others! It’d be a shame if your game ended up w.o. a rating!_

Shipping Error by runner_alien 2018-08-30T19:15:25Z ♥ 1

_Note: Not everyone has unrar installed!_

Different sound effects preceding the debris/offices are clever!

I like how the rocks just destroy each other as well, giving you a chance to keep the playing field open. But you can't 'get rid' of the offices at all, so even the most skilled player will stop the game after a relatively short while. I think, if you'd really want people to get into it, there must be a (difficult?) way to keep playing (maybe the playing-field slowly drifts rightwards or something).

Why do offices/debris they come in batches? Would it spice up the game if it where randomized as well, or is it worth it to keep it this way because of strategizing. I can't really think of many situations where it's that helpful to just know the type of block when the shape varies wildly, and it could be solved by having a 'next block' preview as well.

You probably already know this, but some music would really help! :-)

This reminds me of a very old game, Blockout, but this has a different focus.

Anyway, solid entry when concerning the basic gameplay, and it's nice that there are already some effects like the rotating debris and the boosters under the buildings. It could use even more of that juice; particularly screenshake would be a good one to add to this game :-)

Edge Of Space by Valden 2018-08-27T20:28:48Z ♥ 1

What a rush! Seemed quite hard at first, but once you get into the swing of things (and in my case, avoid getting the laser upgrade, minigun worked best for me) it becomes doable to get a quite a while in.

Has a bit of a Luftrauser vibe to it -- here though, the concept is even simpler, but I find that I don't mind, since for this game, everything is in the execution. Everything just flows and handles so well that it almost doesn't even register.

Big fan of the music, 'hopeful' in a way that only some retro-chiptunes seem to manage, seems to have as much filtering over it as the (also great, or at least very 'alive' and in a style I like) graphics/animation (to achieve the 'old arcade-hall speaker' effect to it no doubt).

I like that the screen shakes just a little bit even if you do nothing at all, just to give it the feeling that you're going so fast the ship is about to blow up all on it's own, never mind the big white void.

The only criticism I have right now is that your eventual success (or lack thereof) seems to be a bit too dependant on the initial ships/upgrades you get thrown against you. (Though the randomization keeps it more replayable I think.) But maybe that's the reason the upgrades don't stack? Because that would have been neat, at the cost of making it even more arbitrary.

FORK THIS!!! by J0ye 2018-08-27T20:27:14Z ♥ 0

Lots of options! You tried to put a quite large feature set into such a small ammount of time. Particle effects, options to pick a different vehicle, a space level, physics, et.c etc. Always nice to see, but...

Ooof, it's buggy... I've seen all kinds of physics mess-ups, forklifts floating in the air, forklifts capsizing and pusing boxes sideways. One time I even multiplied my forklift every time I started a game, which was hilarious, but probably not intended. All sorts of other small issues as well, like my current score at the beginning of a new run is my old highscore. Not to mention going right through not only the walls, but nearly everything else as well... The 'drop box' command occasionally not working (or it feels like it anyway...) Maybe a good idea next time to focus on making sure that what _is_ there _works_, instead of cramming in lots of features. You just don't have that time during a 2 or 3 day jam! Even if you do, you probably don't want to take that risk, and just add new stuff later.

The menu music and diegetic sounds-effects work well for me :-)

The bugs somehow make it _more_ fun, not less? Despite all the problems (and perhaps because of them), this somehow manages to _work_ quite decently as a game, which means there must have been something there to begin with :-)

Sorry to sound so negative (sort of?)... it's not quite as bad as it sounds how I describe it here, but I can't think of a better what right now to get my point across?

Some fiddly little unimportant points:

- You try to offer both `.rar` and `.zip`, but the latter one is actually `.7z`, which not everyone may have either... - Something I noticed with a few games here but've yet to comment on: The menu's are mouse only, but in-game it's keyboard only. - 'Unlock tank' hi-score in the select screen is not the same as the 'Creator hi-score' in the main menu?

Into Asteroid Belt by Jakub Kazimierski 2018-08-27T20:23:35Z ♥ 1

I sort of like that the asteroids have some physics, and can bump into one another, I did see two getting stuck on each other at the edge of the screen for some period of time.

While it's fun, and the controls are smooth, it sometimes felt to me like the hitbox is too large (which probably means it's actually fair, but a lot of games fudge these things in favour of the player in-order to make it _feel_ fair as well).

The retro-graphics and tiny window make this one stand out a bit (an a good way!), but ultimately, there's not a lot I haven't seen before.

Try adding some sound-effects/music/screenshake, see how it livens up the game! :-) For quick SFX generation (allow during compo as well), you could for example use [this site](https://www.bfxr.net/).

I did almost miss the clever take on the theme (I'm a bit slow today), but luckily I saw a comment pointing it out!

They Came while I was jogging by amras0000 2018-08-27T12:53:47Z ♥ 1

(Tried both on Windows and Linux, both run fine.)

Quite an experiece! I really love how the 'menu' at the beginning is integrated into the game. Also how you think it's simple at first, but it just keeps on changing on you :-) (The last one was quite tricky for me, as I thpught the crosses where some sort of structural support beam.)

The controls feel decent as long as you don't collide with anything, then they can feel a bit clunky, in that it's sometimes feels harder to get away from a wall than it maybe should be.

It's also not quite clear at first that, while you can't walk over the burning rubble, you _can_ walk over the non-burning craters. While this mechanic is a neat bit of game-design in it's own right, I think it can be signposted better. Maybe make the fire more clear?

The humour through environmental story-telling is very well done, especially in how the slightly dissonant music makes it all feel like the comedy of errors which it is.

You could maybe add some SFX to the screenshake?

I had a great time trying to out-jog the enemies (that reminds me, I should start my own run soon in real life...)

Eject Tape by star-sought 2018-08-27T12:50:18Z ♥ 0

Polish, music and SFX, graphics, all very nice, and I like the way you do tutorialization (throughout the game, rather than just the beginning; the little arrows after you solved the mazes). On the whole, though, it felt just a little bit too anaemic for me (despite the size of the last maze), probably because given the style of gameplay, I expected a little more story.

While it's good that the interpretation of the theme is less literal (I can see why some others like it!) the way it is now feels a bit bolted on to me.

It _is_ very relaxing, and plays smoothly, which is always a nice bonus in between all the hectic pace of the other games :-) Which is to say, the mood is great!

Armageddon by Swess 2018-08-27T12:44:05Z ♥ 1

Triangle-based art in 2D ... nice style choice! Also, the level of polish is amazing for a compo-entry! (It 'even' has an exit button -- why do so many other Unity entries seem to forget this?) The hazy fire shader is a subtle but nice effect as well. I only have trouble getting the controller back when I switch out of the game writing a bit of review, but that gave me the chance to try the keyboard layout as well. ... I can see why you recommend the controller, but fortunately it's still very playable.

Occasionally there is a piece of fire I can't seem to extinguish... it _seems_ to me this sometimes happens when you try to do it with a tile of fire that has just landed.

Gameplay is challenging (in a nice way), but I suspect it'll probably become repetitive if I would only manage to stay alive longer.

Maybe make the extinguisher and the water-balloon take up a different slot? It would hurt the simplicity a little bit, but may be worth it for the increased strategy and would help you stay alive juts a little bit longer. Or maybe just make it so you can pick up multiple items (with a low limit of course).

Small typo: 'to protect youR land'.

Unbelievable Space Runner by Derek Volker 2018-08-27T12:41:03Z ♥ 1

The music really makes this one, it fits so well to the game :-) In fact, I think the whole package is pretty polished for a compo-game, when you consider the pixel-animations that where needed.

The parallax is also a cool effect. I noticed however that part of the stars/space dust moved at the same speed as the planets, making it feel like they where glued together. Maybe consider making _all_ of the stars separate parrallax layers?

The game flows nicely, enough challenge to keep you from dozing off, but otherwise quite easy. While the phasing does add something to the game (and I like the visual effect for it), I didn't end up using it a whole lot, since it's often easier just to avoid the planetoids altogether. Unfortunately, this (to me) made it very close to a standard 'avoid the things' sidescroller, with only the (also not quite unique) speed-up mechanic to set it apart.

Some minor remarks:

- The music is louder than the menu-SFX, which is better than the other way around ouf course, but still. On the other hand, I quite liked that all sounds stopped if you clicked out of the game, which is useful for writing reviews :-) - The effect on speedup is quite appropriate, but it lasts very long and takes over the entire screen. I didn't run into anything because of it in practice, but I have to wonder... - Is 'Dr. Kumari' in reference to anything, or just a nice bit of inclusivity? - Some typo's in the help: 'his dream _to_ reach the void', 'slowly _absorbs_', 'he must run in space', 'makes _him_ run faster'

SANDSTORM by Lucien Catonnet 2018-08-21T22:01:42Z ♥ 2

The visuals and soundscape are stunning! (Landscape and soundscape?) It reminds me a bit of Journey in the colour scheme at least (also the sand of course).

The overarching 'select next destination' screen gives it just enough of a twist that it isn't just one of those 'avoid the blocks' type things. Bit of a StarFox vibe there :-)

Besides the technical issues (which I won't bore you with, but the whole process took quite a while), it was some time before I realised that the seconds displayed aren't how long you're supposed to survive, but how long your next leg of the journey can maximally be. So at first I always selected the lower numbers! I was confused as to why I died almost every time, despite boosting all the time and surviving those few seconds. Once I realised what was really going on, it became quite a lot more fun and I got to the end after just a few tries (b.t.w: 'congratulations' is a word that's always pluralised in English).

All in all, it (and it's different parts) feel(s) quite cohesive, and really pulls you in. A neat accomplishment.

There are a few (other) minor issues I noticed:

- You can click through too quickly at game over, making the process even more confusing (see above). When I noticed this in my own game a few LDs back, I made it so that a key doesn't count if it wasn't pressed in the current 'Room'. - You can't exit the game from _within_ the game. I know we all like to have people play our games, but this is a bit much :-) - My controller wasn't supported, even though it mentioned 'LT'/'RT' buttons :-(

P.S. So, Vulkan: How's that working out for you? Is the engine open source?

Shredder-Boy by ShaggyFox 2018-08-19T13:48:09Z ♥ 1

First of all, I really like how you've presented any information in this game. Despite accidentally starting the game without reading the accompanying text, it was all so clear that I grasped everything nearly instantly. The pictures underneath are an especially big help in this regard, but this dedication also shows in some of the details, like 'x more packages in y seconds'.

Graphics are decent, sound-effects are good (the shredder itself in particular is very satisfying). No music though... I know you probably ran out of time, but I always think music is an underestimated aspect of the whole feel of a game.

While I did occasionally notice that I couldn't put a box down (or pick one up) while there was seemingly enough space (probably because it's hard to judge 3D space as presented through early 80's style 2D pixel-art), it did feel 'solid'. Just like the walking is just a bit frustrating because its slow, but it still feels decent because it doesn't feel 'slidey'.

On the other hand, the slowness does feel oddly relaxing after a few minutes (usually just fifteen seconds before I lose :-) ), although I don't think that was the intention. Maybe the lack of music plays into this?

So, the execution is pretty smooth, and the theme (in a very straightforward manner) fits just fine. I'm just not sure how fun executing a simulated menial task is? But I think speeding it up and adding lots of 'juice' (screenshake, bumps, particle-effects, more SFX, etc.) might help that just fine!

Quicksort by Manuel Magalhães 2018-08-19T13:45:35Z ♥ 1

It may be open-game-art, but it still looks coherent, despite being from different artists. That's a skill as well! Like the other players, I found the input a bit awkward. Maybe you could have the robot hang overneath, on rails, so that only one action would have to be possible on each square, but then you loose the 'move around stacks of boxes that are in the way' part of the game. (What doesn't help is that you have to find out by experimentation that the max. stack height is 3 boxes.) But for me, too, if you got the hang of it, it becomes doable.

Also, possible bug; it seems that each out-box beneath (south?) of the one you deliver a parcel to also gets a new request. Meaning, if I put one in the top-left corner, all out-boxes will get updated, but if I put one in the bottom-left corner, only that one will update.

Since my short term memory is pretty garbage, I couldn't reach anything resembling a 'second wave'. But maybe I was close? I have no idea! I'd have liked to have some sort of progress-bar, timer, or even just a score.

For sound-effects, there is [a very useful site](https://www.bfxr.net/) (you need Flash... yeah I know) that can generate SFX on the fly. When I was in a hurry a few LD's ago, I generated some and put them in my game within half an hour or so. Takes very little effort, and spices up your game immensely.

For something more positive, I think the introduction-text is funny and well-written.

BIO-EX-DEUS by Joror 2018-08-14T20:02:45Z ♥ 1

Hi Joror! First this: *I hear no audio of any kind* ... is this deliberate?

This one reminds me a lot of the one you submitted for LD#38 ('Angelic Design'), except I think I like this one better. A lot of things, from the game-design, to the balance, to the clarity of the UI (it's immediately clear what's happening), feel _streamlined_ and balanced. The theme feels more fitting to this concept as well.

I thought at first that the best move was just to build up the terrain first, then place the pops, and then just 'manually fast forward', but fortunately the more interesting strategy to plan ahead a bit and mix up the 'left side' and 'right side' commands a bit seems to be better. (I could not get more than 4 stars with the first strategy, but got 5 stars (610 points) otherwise.)

A thing I noticed, is that the intro-text gives you the impression that it's a tutorial, but the full game has already started. Not that bad, since experimentation is the heart of this game, but you might want to reword that slightly.

So, in conclusion; while it may lack (audio? and) elaborate graphics, once you get trying to find a way to get those 5 stars, it opens up into a really neat little tightly designed experience. That takes a few games, and is enough to amuse anyone. I'm not sure the re playability is there once you get those 5 stars... I did, and I might play it some more, but the challenge is gone now that I've got a decent strat going for me. However, if you make this into a campaign, with some special challenges and a bit of a story (like with your last game), it could make a _really_ nice (board?)game.

_I know you sometimes do; so please don't forget to rate some games! :-D_

Big Box Mania by jka 2018-08-13T16:39:19Z ♥ 1

Polished presentation. Could've used some music, but is fine without it, as it is conductive to a claustrophobic mood.

I like that you can push/pull multiple boxes, it really opens op a lot of the game once the drop speed starts increasing.

Fun, but the game-play doesn't vary (other than increased speed and franticness), and, though the overall look is smooth and even stylish, I'm still in essence looking a bunch of light-grey cubes. (But, same as with the silence music-wise, that _does_ help a bit with that feel.)

Book Crook! by Ossi 2018-08-13T16:37:46Z ♥ 1

The overall presentation is nice (I have a soft spot for the music here), but without that timer or 'next' button, there really can't be _any_ strategy, or much of anything at all.

There's just not a lot I can say about this one. The titles are funny? ('A Guiding Write', 'Heroes of Flight an Panic' indeed.)

Props for including options to toggle music and SFX (separately even), though!

Volka by Cisco 2018-08-13T16:33:55Z ♥ 1

Stylish!

It took me so long to realize that you wheren't supposed to shoot the dark circle indicator top-mid. Some explanation would've been helpful! But it all slowly began to make sense when I realized that you could click _while_ the shot was still in the light-green. (Nitpick: 'Avoid the green'... well, the background is green too!)

'Kill the green' stays on screen even after you miss, and are thus vulnerable again.

Hard as heck, but time to retry is 0 and the base gameplay is fun, so it's one of those 'challenge yourself' things. There's a certain rythm to it, so it's easier when you play a few rounds in quick succession, rather than wait between them.

Very tight game-design; it's a neat little package which packs a punch.

ETA: Since a few people have put there top scores: after a bunch of tries mine was 60.

Running Out Of Space - A Warehouse 'Sim'! by RavenFlame 2018-08-13T16:30:53Z ♥ 1

Slide-in menu, a small but nice touch, likewise the control-scheme hint as part of the environment. Fireworks, nice, more workplaces should have them :-P (Particle-effect or animation?)

I thought I had a strategy (touch forwards/backwards a few times until the forward speed is right, then steer left/right only), but then I got stuck in the wall. So I had to restart. (I even got stuck on another box in the loading area briefly.) Once I compensated for that, the game got easy. (Then I found out there is no real backwards, it's 'just' a break, and the backwards motion is because someone apearantly decided to wax the factory-floor, so when you break hard enough...)

It does feel fun to control though, despite --or perhaps even because of-- the slipperyness.

I sort-of like that you can't drop boxes if they're not in the right place, but given how easy the rest of the game is, it feels like this fork-lift has training wheels! In fact, this could be a fun game to show to young kids.

It doesn't leave much space for making _choices_ though, it doesn't really matter if I pick up the brown or the red box, since I'll make it anyway, and I have to do the other once even so.

It's very short, but as I'm rating, I should thank you :-) At the very least it doesn't overstay its welcome! (Which might be a problem with my own game...)

Ah, one last thing, the zip doesn't have a top folder, so when you unpack it, the files go everywhere (also called a 'zip-bomb').

TINY TOWNS by BearishMushroom 2018-08-13T13:42:01Z ♥ 3

As the dev of a somewhat similar game (which is the reason my eye fell on this one) ... you've got a lot of things in there that I had to scrap because of time-constraints. The context-sensitive help is an _especially_ nice touch, but the properly connecting roads make me the most jealous (as I found an easy way to implement this years ago and would've taken me, art included, just another hour(s?) or so).

The music is good enough that I don't care how repetitive it is, and fits well with the excellent deceptively 'simple' art-style. I just noticed that the placement of the buildings is _animated_ as well. Nice!

Difficulty ramp in the beginning is excellent. ... just how many levels _are_ there anyway? They seem to be too 'on purpose' to be generated, but I have to wonder... if so, that would be quite impressive, especially in Compo.

The design is so tight, you (almost) can't take anything away, but it still offers a rich experience. You could've left out the 'base-happiness' maybe, since you can go negative anyway? It might screw up the balance of the current levels though, but is the design-space with the base included really that much more interesting?

There's no sound when you select a type of building with the buttons below (as opposed to when you place something).

Is there a way to completely restart a level? Bulldozing one-by-one can get a little tedious, even on such small levels.

A minor issue: When extracting, it's a so-called 'zip-bomb' (meaning the files land all over the place, instead of being in a folder).

A question: I see you use LÖVE, which is AFAIK 2D only ... so is this 'real' 3D or are you using stacks of offset layers?

All complaints are very minor and all praise is well earned. Best I've played so far! This may not mean a lot at the moment, but I suspect it'll stay that way for some time to come :-)

Hoarder Disorder by REBDC 2018-08-13T13:33:56Z ♥ 8

I like that you can select multiple levels, with different difficulties. But, like the rest of the game, you seem to have put a lot of work into things that don't immediately pay off. For a 2-day game jam, if the idea of different levels is important, why make 4 when you can get away with 2? Then you could spend the time left over polishing. The graphics could use some work for example.

Another example of this is the music. The dissonance may fit the 'disorder' thematic you're going with, and I did end up getting used to it, but that's about the nicest things I can say about it. Related: Mute music doesn't work on my PC. I like that you've thought of it as an option, though! (It's the thought that counts? :-P)

The special items can be either used or handed in for score, which offers a nice strategic choice. Well, sort off: I ended up not using the special objects a lot (since they're a bit too expensive for what they do). I only ended up using health-kits (when I really needed them), which is a shame, as it negates the strategic choice.

It took me a while to realise that the mouse is not just 'direction thrown', but the object will land on the mouse-pointer. This makes the game way easier, as I didn't have to run back to the area each time. (Also I stopped throwing objects into the lake when playing the first level.)

I'm not sure opponents spawn often enough on my end? I can survive 10 seconds in the house easily, and I'm not exactly known for my quick reflexes or twitch-game abilities. Though maybe it's just better to avoid the opponents altogether, since I mostly don't bother with the special objects.

P.S. You know, I'm sure there must be games out there where 'well, my mom could beat it' is the hardest difficulty, because the devs' mom is just that good ;-)

The Crappy Shipper by elenesski 2018-08-13T13:21:38Z ♥ 1

Pretty fun. Nice combinations of mouse/keyboard play and different kinds of physics (2D for the boxes, 1D for the ship).

I mostly like easy games, especially when rating LD :-) Not everyone does, so I think it can stand to be a bit more challenging. Luckily, you can crash your boat (like I did the first time), giving it just the slight added difficulty it needs to be fun.

The ship behaves diferently when going backwards and forwards (load/unload vs not). I can't really figure out wether I like this or not. On the one hand, it adds a little extra wrinkle to the game, which it may need. On the other hand, it just seems a bit arbitrary and potentially slightly confusing. Would the game really be less fun without it?

The music is well done for a Compo-game, but can get a bit repetitive.

The graphics are stricly functional, and do not get in the way, but I wonder what this game'd have been like with a little more attention in that area.

Some minor issues:

- It doesn't say anywhere how many packages you can loose. By experimentation, this seems to be about 25. - No way to quit the game.

Lastly, something to be aware of for next time: Your splash-page said: _"sound effects from soundbible.com"_. Great that you specify that! Though technically, since this is a Compo game (as opposed to Jam), you have to make _everything_ apart from fonts and basecode! Generating them by something like [BFXR](https://www.bfxr.net/) already counts. You made the (excelent) music though, and since that (seems to me to be) harder than a few easy to generate (and barely hearable) SFX, I'll still fully rate the audio.

Minigulf Gods by Joror 2018-04-25T20:59:41Z ♥ 2

Hey! Glad to see you finished yours.

Anyway, cool game. Oceans and islands always make me happy 🙂

Music and sounds are great! It really sets that 'dawn of Civ.' mood.

I think the golfing part works well, and pretty smooth. When you 'hurt' the islands, it always feels like it wasn't the games fault, but mine. I even somewhat like that when you prepare to 'strike' (blow?) it doesn't hold forever, but slowly removes force again. It feels like you're holding your breath. On the other hand, I don't think that's explained anywhere.

Occasionally, I golfed one of the islands behind the top explanation box, so I couldn't click them.

I like the art/animation as well, like the subtle 'rewind time' effect and the nice polished buttons with the slight light effect. Little touches like that, as well as the exposition really help to make it all very polished.

The other 'half' of the game, the strategy... While it shakes up the golf enough to feel fresh, I don't think it gets complex enough here to really shine. Only the demon-map at the end requires any strategy, and I found that the best way was just to attack with all three at once.

Also, I can **sea** the pun in the title. I guess, if this played out under-water instead of on top of it, you'd have called this _'Snook-er'_? 😉

(P.S. It might be that the term 'Primitive' is a bit of a loaded word in English, but I'm not even sure if that applies to the current context. It's just so you know, in case someone just posts a one word comment without explaining themselves, again, like last time 😛)

(P.P.S. Don't forget to rate!)

Showdown by Shodanon 2018-04-24T13:18:15Z ♥ 1

_an apology and some feedback_

Hi! So, one of the members of your team posted a suggestion for a change to the way LDJam is run. There where a lot of negative responses, and --I'm not sure what I was thinking, but-- I felt the need to add my own half-baked ideas to the stream of negativity. I apologize for my part in what might've felt like a pile-on, and hope there's no hard feelings. You've given me something to think about at least!

Therefore, I've decided to review at least this game, despite not finishing my own this time around. This, of course, by the rules and website design, means I'm not allowed to rate, but can only use my words; a little irony which you might find amusing 🙂

---

Let's start of with some things I liked and then list I few things I didn't.

The animation that plays during the gun pick-up is a nice little touch. As an aside, in contrast to the previous commenter, I found that I _could_ pick up the guns the opponents dropped.

There seems to be a _lot_ of modeled environment, as well as the guns themselves. I found myself wanting to explore the top of the city, the giant pair of runways that seems to exist near the clouds, but could find no way up there. Perhaps this was due to the excellent music, which in concert with the lighting created a tense but mysterious atmosphere.

I also think the slow-down mechanic is a neat idea, and working quite nicely. A sort of 'softer' version of Super Hot. Feels satisfying. (Is there a reason the guns are in their stomach? Despite the little back-story posted here, I'm still not sure _why_ I was shooting.)

First impressions where not nearly so glowing, the web-build didn't grab my mouse-pointer, and (but perhaps this is my mistake) because I only read the description later, I didn't know you could pick up the guns. In my defense, 'F' is not really an accessible key. (Or is this on purpose?)

The controls feel incredibly floaty, but more than that, a little uneven. It sometimes feels you're moving more than other times, as if you're on some rubber band. I also got stuck sometimes. Fortunately, when I did get stuck, jump always worked, although jump doesn't seem to work some other times.

Also, like people have said, game over does very little at all (besides playing a sound-effect). Which isn't so bad when you're at 0 HP but still want to explore the level, but it feels less fine if you've fallen down a pit (again), but still want to explore the level.

Lastly, I don't think Western and Cyberpunk are, even on the surface, incompatible. They've got a lot in common! But that's a very minor point, the theme is there to inspire, not to deny.

All in all, there's _something_ good here, I think, but it's suffering from a bad first impression.

Fat and Furry-ous by Tex Killer 2017-12-28T16:42:39Z ♥ 1

_(Hi @tex-killer, are you the same as the one I played with 'Rude Bear Rabble' with? I was 'Bremco' there.)_

In any case... The music in your game is just spot on! I loved the purposefully dissonant menu-tune and the friendly credits-jingle. 😄

The graphics have that nice, home-made feel to them, without feeling like they're worse off for it.

Gameplay-wise there are some balance-issues I think: Try as I might, I basically always fail if I eat even one cheese-ball. There just isn't enough time to burn off any fat on the wheel when that's happened.

Blind Trust by monika 2017-12-28T16:16:07Z ♥ 1

I like the bit of balance to the scoring system: A card that may be worthless to you may be valuable to some or all of the other players due to the score 🙂 In the same vein, there's an (extra?) reason for stashing; a player finaly can get to see (one of) the reversed card(s) they held, but at the cost of not having it in their hand any more.

I _love_ the concept, it _sounds_ like a ton of fun to have a hand half inward and half outward turned cards ... and I may even end up actually trying to play this if I get friends over. Sadly, I'm quite alone today, so I'll have to skip the 'Fun' rating. Should _maybe_ skip 'Overall' as well, but you're in dire need of ratings, while you rated plenty yourselves, so I'll try to make some sort of guess 🙂

One idea: What if you could _choose_ to reveal or not reveal a card when bidding? You can open a card up to the other players when bidding, so they'll believe you, but then you have to pass up the opportunity to have it be completely unkown to them. It would've been even better if you could _reverse_ that property somehow, so that you get rewarded (by withholding info from them) when you play riskier (by offering an open card). ... or maybe you played around with that idea during dev. and it got nowhere?

One last thing: Not every locatlity/card-game defaults to 'Ace is one', so for example _'A-6'_ meaning 'Aces and 2 through 6' could potentially cause some confusion.

COINS by oab 2017-12-28T14:40:50Z ♥ 1

I like the little house-upgrades. They're hardly noticeable until I go the second house, so consider making them bigger, or have the first few happen with only a few coins.

Related: It would also be nice to have the total amount of coins displayed after you die 🙂

Love the chunky coin sound. Also: nice but minimalistic graphics/animation.

Rude Bear Rabble by alexrose 2017-12-28T14:26:17Z ♥ 1

Ambitious! ... and you managed to pull it off as well, once I got over the annoyances of, well, a good deal of waiting and having to deal with other people.

Important stuff first: We had fun. (Or I had fun at least, the others _said_ they had fun, but as they're the aforementioned 'other people' who knows what they're really thinking? 😋)

We had enough difficulty with the cooperative parts that the whole 'saBIRDeur' aspect of the game that we didn't really bother, but we had enough fun trying to get each other to the other side that it did't really matter.

... which was a bit clumsy, really. I've got no mike on this box, and the 2nd screen has been out of commission for a while: So I had to switch screens in-order to communicate with the others while playing. If you're doing multiplayer again, consider _either_ - chat on screen _or_ - fit the (separate) challenges on one screen so it's all visible

There's also the bit where the moving platform teleported right from underneath me. I may not exactly be the best at platforming, but that one wasn't my fault. Not that I mind, writing net-code within 3 days can't have been the easiest task, so props for that.

Process Invasion by tuxmain 2017-12-28T12:22:07Z ♥ 0

(_If you know that much about processes, you should know enough not to make a zip-bomb_ 😋)

Anyway. Loved the little introduction that played while the game had already started, felt very movie-ish 🙂

Got (slightly) stuck a few times, but could always solve it. Maybe make the hit-boxes rounded?

The bombs where fun, but it was way more convenient to just click everywhere -- I could (in general, though not always) just keep clicking the next proc.-box while the little light-up animation was playing, which made the (relatively) slow and cumbersome bomb redundant.

Though I liked the music and the atmosphere it created, I wonder if the resultant mood is really the thing you where going for. Maybe, if it always ends at **[SPOILER]**. Then the story becomes a brave but futile struggle, and the music _does_ reflect _that_. Or maybe I've just missed any good ending 🙂

BOXKILL by warxen 2017-12-28T11:46:59Z ♥ 0

Amazing! I especially like that the menu functions as a hidden tutorial.

I also the way balls light up the more you laser them; it's quite subtle, but you still get a sense of how far along you are without complicating the HUD.

Among the very few suggestions I'd be able to make is that you maybe should drop one of the wall-sections right at the start. I died _very_ quickly in my 1st attempt and at first thought it was a graphics-glitch. I wouldn't even have mentioned it, but reading through the comments here it seems that at least one person didn't play long enough to see one of the walls fall.

Related to that, I also want to know why so many people go with the '1 strike and you're out' model with these games. I guess it's simpler, reduces clutter both in mind-space and screen 'real-estate' but is it more _fun_? You could say it's 'more challenging', but the moment-to-moment difficulty would remain the same if, say, the player gets 3 lives: You still have to dodge the balls.

Not that there's anything wrong with the fun-factor in this game! Far from it! 🙂

Inversiosynthesis by rojo 2017-12-27T19:49:07Z ♥ 1

_That was a nice little experience. Glad I am 'Safe at Last!'_ 🙂

I could easily see this as a mini-game within a larger game. If you've just damaged your spaceship and need to repair it. I wonder, however, how much strategy is really required, there's a rather large element of luck involved, an in my play-through, I didn't bother with strategy at all (though it came close).

Something else to note: The explanation could've been a bit more clear. For the first two-and-a-half 'boards' I assumed that you could _only_ match the same symbols. (Which would've made the game a but worse...)

I really like the gentle humor. _'It's all very scientific'_ indeed 😄

(I wonder, how much did you need the third day? Not sure how I can explain this, but it somehow _feels_ like a really well polished Compo-entry rather than a Jam-submission. But not in a bad way? Or maybe it's just me being weird 🙃)

DodgeBomb by DragonZlay 2017-12-27T19:10:52Z ♥ 0

Consider toning down the audio on the lasers: They're always shooting _anyways_, so why have the sound at full volume?

That said, I agree with the others: What is the purpose of the shop? If it's a parody, or there for humour/expositon --as at least the first 'hint' is-- why put it behind a wall that high? I think the 'reward' feeling kicks in quite quickly; you could have players unlock the first item(s) as soon as they've collected as much as 1 or 2 crystals. This is _especially_ important in LD-entries, as people often have only a couple of minutes to rate a game; you want the 'time to awesome' to be as short as possible!

Hm... Also: I think the hitboxes on the expoding bombs feel _just_ a tad too wide. I only noticed it once, so it couldn't have been a big problem, but it bears repeating everywhere: When it comes to players; you always want to err on _their_ side, not the games' (even in cases where the game would technically be in the right).

Otherwise a nice entry. I really like the minimalist style of the menu's for some reason. Guess it just appeals to me?

garbage sort by pragmascript 2017-12-27T18:26:20Z ♥ 1

_Garbage Hero!_ 🙂

I like that you keep the 'discarded' boxes on the factory floor, maybe you could do something similar with the ones that get sucked into the wrong chute?

I'm ambivalent on the way the lead-up to the loose-condition is handled, on the one hand, a warning-light that first flares orange and then red is a great 'what's going on now? am I losing? how much can I still mess up?' moment, but, on the other hand, it's less clear and it'd probably get old quite fast on replay.

Very polished, but on the other hand it didn't really deliver anything that I haven't seen before.

Full Shelter by SimonBeats 2017-12-27T17:36:59Z ♥ 0

There's not much consequence for overfeeding them... but perhaps that wouldn't be fun 🙂 (I mean: I can see that the amount of food goes down, but even that refuses to subtract if the red bar is full-up.)

Not entirely sure, but I think this _might_ be the first time I've seen anyone added difficulty-levels to their Compo-entry. Nice! 🙂 (Although it's understandable not a lot of people do this...)

First jam and also finished within only slightly more than a quarter of the time = Impressive!

Charge Arena by PurpleAlien 2017-12-27T17:22:19Z ♥ 1

_You don't get a score when you're 'winner winner \\(^o^)/'?_ 🙂

It took me a while to realize that the left-right keys _rotate_ rather than send your buggy that way, once I got that, it became surprisingly fun, despite (or because?) the controls felt incredibly sensitive, especially when it comes to rotation. -- For a while I even thought that the connection to the theme was: 'The more energy you have, to more energetic and thus _difficult to control_ your craft is' 🙂

The graphics are _very_ nice for a Compo-entry. Add some sound and fix the controls a little bit and you'd be very close to a 'full' game release.

Takomakase by Zambini 2017-12-27T17:04:26Z ♥ 0

Stretch effect for the arms looks nice; also maybe a neat workaround to have a 'squishy' character that actually _can_ be animated this way? 🙂

It took me a while to realize that the belts actually form one big belt: I was testing how playable it still was if I just mashed the top row (it works that way, but it's a bit less fun than playing it properly).

'One mistake and you're back to 2 arms' felt a little punishing to me. I mean, sure, you don't even loose health, but gaining arms is the actual fun part of the game. Maybe you could add the arms one-by-one instead of in powers of two? Then you could just remove a single one in case the player messes up.

I don't think anyone mentioned, so perhaps it's just me, but I don't think the music loops? Sound effects would've also helped a lot!

Keep up the good work!

Conservation Island by kix334 2017-12-22T21:46:52Z ♥ 1

On my second try I managed to hold on slightly more than 293 seconds ('only' around 500 bunny-kills tho') by: - Clicking in the middle of the island (almost always the most populous region of the island) when the pop-count got over 25 or so. This way I didn't need to care about hitboxes (or even the position of the hammer, really.) - Burning everything if it got up to 60. After a number of burns I ended up with 32 bunnies of the same gender. I'm sure someone could do better if they're more adamant about not getting to 60 and/or having better luck with burning stuff down.

Love the rotation-effect here, really seems to suit the music somehow? Speaking of: For something you say is auto-gen music, this is really amazing. I'll check out that site for certain! 🎶

Great use of theme to make something conceptually simple and easy to grasp, but very creative 🙂

Oh, and cheers on making this within less than 1/3 of the time allotted!

ETA: Forgot to mention: A timer in view during play (instead of after) would've been a nice (but not _really_ necesary) addition.

25 - The Golden Age by Ambeurk 2017-12-21T19:52:03Z ♥ 0

- Hm... why is 'time to ourselves' a prize-cup? From the 'bad ending' I got, it _seems_ that it's more about selfishness than time really. _(I suppose I can get a little egocentric sometimes, but I always say it's different from egoistical)_ 🙂 - Spelling errors caught: "but this won't happened", "it's not big deal dad, I can tell you" - The first time around, before the repetition sets in, it can be hard to gauge how an answer will influence you 'balances'... but that's just like real life I suppose 😅 _(So, was it intentional I wonder?)_ - Rising to the challenge, even though you've got about 1/2 the time of a full Compo is always admirable of course!

Space Miner Niner by jchaplin 2017-12-18T21:48:20Z ♥ 0

Haha, wow does this ever remind me of my LD#39 entry! _(I had to cut a whole section here just talking about all the coincidences...)_

Anyway! You where off to a good start, I think. I wonder where it would have lead? Why where there so many types of different mineral?

Why'd you opt-out of graphics? I think the art is _really_ nice.

Better luck next time! 😄

Laundromat (unfinished) by euske 2017-12-18T21:40:21Z ♥ 0

Since you say it's unfinished, I'm completely unsure how to rate this. I won't list the things that I think are missing, since you probably already know that.

However, this is just to say: I can see some potential here: The interface is simple enough, but it does leave room for some puzzely and/or arcadey complexity 🙂

Don't give up! Keep up the good work!

Lil' Digger 2: The Revenge! by CF207 2017-12-18T21:18:22Z ♥ 0

Nice to see such a variety of platforms. If nothing else, I now have a decent NES-emulator on my system 😋

It also runs quite smoothly, and uses a 'modern' health mechanic rather than discrete hearts or instant game-overs. The same health is then also reused as time, creating a sort of 'soft' mechanic, which I like.

Other than that it may be a bit _too_ faithful to the era. The above is nice, but not anything I haven't seen before.

**NOTE:** You’ve not rated any other games yet. If you want to receive a score/ranking at the end or just want to get some feedback, you’ll want to be rated by other people. To get their attention, then you should play and rate other games, so either you’ll be noticed (higher up) in the list(s), or (if you’ve commented) sometimes people directly play/comment/rate yours ‘back’.

Camera Cut by Kasper HdL 2017-12-18T20:45:54Z ♥ 0

Good news: your Linux-build works ... _errr_ for me as well, I just saw that the previous commenter already checked that out as well 😅 (I _did_ have to alter the permissions to get the executable to run, but, while not a 'professional' way to deliver your game is par for the course on Linux when rating LD-entries 🙂)

Anyway, I had fun, despite that there wasn't much more to do than just _'get the orbs'_. I think it's the presentation; the psychedelic shader, the bumpy music and the way the ball jumps (when you get it to) make it quite satisfying to play somehow. Good effort for a compo-submission!

**NOTE:** You’ve not rated any other games yet. If you want to receive a score/ranking at the end or just want to get some feedback, you’ll want to be rated by other people. To get their attention, then you should play and rate other games, so either you’ll be noticed (higher up) in the list(s), or (if you’ve commented) sometimes people directly play/comment/rate yours ‘back’.

Alien Overflow by Mismatched Games 2017-12-18T10:55:01Z ♥ 2

I like the little bit at the beginning, when there is a crash-sound and the force-field goes down 🙂 The art is decent anyway, despite the darkness. Other than that I agree with most other commenters; why have shooting by mouse at all when you can't aim that way?

(Not sure I can see the connection to the theme very well?)

Keep up the good work!

All You Can Eat by wwwhizz 2017-12-18T10:32:40Z ♥ 1

Moving around is slippery, but fun. It all forms a very cohesive whole; graphics, music, the fun bits of exclamation the character makes, etc 🙂

I did notice that it got very easy to play when you just stood outside of one of the windows, or just go back and forth on the 'top row' just outside the windows.

How hard would you say working with a fantasy console is versus, say, C++(/SDL2)-dev.? (If you're familiar with something like that anyway.)

The Hoarder's Curse by FuriousWitch 2017-12-18T10:03:40Z ♥ 1

A decent take on the theme, I think!

Sound effects or some music would really help this one.

I don't have much to say besides that which has already been mentioned (controls, something to-do while you wait for enough cash for a new tower) except perhaps that the _feeling_ that you (the player) should be able to do something else _may_ partially come from being 'present' in the game-world as an avatar. I wonder how many would still want other stuff to do if the perspective was top-down, and you could just click on the foundations to build a tower? (Although that would take away from the charm of the artwork/game, and doubtless the issue would still be present, albeit obscured.)

Keep up the good work!

GLORIOUS INTERNET POINTS by Ale 2017-12-18T09:39:37Z ♥ 1

Nobody told me it was a _killer_ birthday clown! Admittedly I shouldn't have tried to prank the law beforehand...

This is not usually my sense of humor, so I didn't really get a big laugh out of it, but I can still see how it's nicely put together. (And even I am not immune to a tombstone that specifies my death was somehow due to a combination of ... well, see the bit at the top of my post. That at least got a good smirk out of me 🙂)

I did notice that you have to keep buying the second act. I can imagine that's intentional, but when I clicked it, I thought it was a permanent upgrade, like the other things you can buy. (Maybe it was due to not using the second thing the first time I bought it?)

Christmas Happy Hour by pndaa 2017-12-17T21:19:06Z ♥ 0

The graphics and especially piece-wise animation are nice 🙂

In the message at the beginning it took me a while before I realized that the grey-shaded objects corresponded with the arrows.

It also took me a while to get the hang of it, and then it became playable. However, adding more delay makes it harder, but does it make it more _fun_? I'm not sure!

Decent mood though, despite killing santa over and over again (or maybe that was on me). I think the mood might actually have been somewhat better when not dismembering him on game-over.

Backpacker by dungeonsoffear 2017-12-17T20:21:55Z ♥ 0

I like the 'build your own difficulty' the selection-process gives you in the beginning 🙂 You can do a fair number of different things within the game, but there's not a whole lot of visible feedback, especially if something isn't supposed to work (like clicking the matches when there's no wood).

Oh, I also had some difficulty getting into horizontal openings.

Keep up the good work!

**NOTE:** You’ve not rated any other games yet. If you want to receive a score/ranking at the end or just want to get some feedback, you’ll want to be rated by other people. To get their attention, then you should play and rate other games, so either you’ll be noticed (higher up) in the list(s), or (if you’ve commented) sometimes people directly play/comment/rate yours ‘back’.

Headquarter Administrator by Vegevan 2017-12-17T19:48:48Z ♥ 1

Seems the city needs to be lvl. 6 with 100% satisfaction to pass the first level? Despite this it all seemed to work, and I _think_ I get it? At least well enough to pass (as of writing) on to the 3rd map 🙂

ld_zero_game_lvl6.png

Overall, I sort of like the concept, I think. A builder that reveals itself as a space-filling-puzzle when you start playing it. If you look at this through this lens, all the waiting for money/food/satisfaction to pile up can get a bit tedious (but not too bad!)

For a compo game, there's a lot of complication here, and though there is a manual (which attempts to be quite thorough) I think I missed, for example, that you can move the map with the arrow keys. So, very good on getting it all to work, and smoothly playable, but I've noticed players (and especially people who rate for LD, and thus have a limited time to spend on each game) don't respond well to _'just a manual and then right after that its you versus the full complexity the game has to offer'_ and are much happier if you introduce the concepts one-by-one (which takes more time to program unfortunately...)

(Hm, I should also note that I was also confused by the first move, where you have to put HQ on road-tiles, but I think the manual states that you can _only_ build barracks there? 😅)

**NOTE:** You've not rated any other games yet. If you want to receive a score/ranking at the end or just want to get some feedback, you'll want to be rated by other people. To get their attention, then you should play and rate other games, so either you'll be noticed (higher up) in the list(s), or (if you've commented) sometimes people directly play/comment/rate yours 'back'.

Badger Runner by Artem Ravbetsky 2017-12-17T17:51:22Z ♥ 1

Graphics-wise it's pretty neat; I like the animation(s) even though it's 2-frame. What I didn't like where that a lot of the time, some of the obstacles seemed pretty unfair/unavoidable. Some sound would really have helped, and it might be easier to make something than you think, with tools like [this](https://www.bfxr.net/).

**NOTE:** You've not rated any other games yet. If you want to receive a score/ranking at the end or just want to get some feedback, you'll want to be rated by other people. To get their attention, then you should play and rate other games, so either you'll be noticed (higher up) in the list(s), or (if you've commented) sometimes people directly play/comment/rate yours 'back'.

Snowballing Out of Control! by Shipshape Detour 2017-12-12T20:03:36Z ♥ 1

Pretty smooth, and I think a great concept 😄

Anyway, I think it would _seriously_ help this game if it had some jingly music (mayhap with bells in) and/or some SFX with snow sounds. ... but this has been mentioned already I see. (Why'd you opt out of 'Mood' anyway? It has a decent mood I think?)

Another thing that I can think of is that the snowbanks, even if they connect brilliantly to the _theme_, don't do anything _other_ than make life difficult for you, meaning that the best way to play the game right now is to avoid them completely, like you would with trees. I think you can make this mechanic more interesting (and you even have the 'grass = less snow' implemented already) is if it also had some positive, like if the added snow made you either go faster, or _make you able to survive more trees to the face_. Just a suggestion of course!

Reversed Negativity by RNGSilvercraft 2017-12-12T19:43:09Z ♥ 1

Unique concept! I had some fun as well 🙂

(I _almost_ missed that I had to _hold_ Z, as some other people in the comments _might_ just have... 🙃)

That said, I missed a visual timer or something for how much time I've left until we enter the negative zone, or vice-versa. (Or is that intentional?)

I was also impressed by the music (for 'just' a compo entry). I've even noticed you've made a second song, but hide it all the way in level -- what was it... 5 or 6? Which would be just a-OK for a 'full' game, but (sadly) remember that some people might only play your game for about 2 minutes when judging on LD. _(Maybe there should be another compo where people play each others game longer, but that would probably also require a longer creation time as well.)_

Get Wasted! by Newton 2017-12-12T18:48:06Z ♥ 0

The visual effect was a nice touch, but I kept expecting to walk funny as well, which didn't happen. It also occurs to me that it might be nice to have some sort of score at the end 🙂

Nicely done.

RedCell by kkneville 2017-12-12T18:10:05Z ♥ 0

The other commentators have mentioned a 'stiff' jump. I think that may be because it doesn't register more than one key at a time?

(Also you mentioned fixing a bug that should prevent players from dying when touching green, but there's still a spot that I die sometimes when I'm not in it.)

A fine effort for a first time. Keep up the good work! 🙂

DROP by Syrapt0r 2017-12-12T17:54:24Z ♥ 1

I thought the contact-point for the grappling-hook was a background-layer window ... I even got the coins in the first section you're supposed to grapple laboriously with 'just' the 'hand' itself. Only when I got in the room with the second 'window' did I understand 😅

Anyway, good job on the grappling-hook mechanic!

I did notice I that, if I die, I lose the coins I had saved up until that point. Is that intentional?

Widget Satchel by Noble Robot 2017-12-11T12:47:16Z ♥ 1

When it comes to the game itself, I can't think of a lot that hasn't already been mentioned the amazing (and adorable) art, the slippery controls (but only in your unweighted state; when you're laden down the game controls just fine), the nice music, etc.

Well, there is one thing I suppose: I got stuck on a robot when starting the game (because I didn't know it was a mob yet -- is that specified anywhere before you begin?) and after I shook myself loose, I got the same camera-overshoot problem that another commenter had. I sort of suspected that it was because I got stuck earlier, so I restarted, which fixed the problem.

Concerning the Linux build: I had to adjust the permissions, but it's not that much of a big deal. More serious was that I had to force-stop the game when I was done, which was made difficult by it grabbing the focus.

I'm a lot more positive about it than I let on here. Sometimes (not always though) it seems like the more negative comments I have, the more I enjoyed it... 🙃

Beer Pong Arcade by banan 2017-12-11T12:12:11Z ♥ 1

Well, the Linux-build works! ... but next time, could you please set the executable permissions to 755? I had to 'chmod' it by hand. (While I'm complaining anyway; if you zip things up, can it be within a folder? If I get a bunch of zips in my downloads I want to be able to unzip them there...)

Anyway! The game itself. I really think some soundFX for the pingpong-ball would help a lot with the immersion. The music is nice 'n jazzy, which makes you relaxed no matter how many times you miss 🙂 Other than that I don't really have a whole lot to add to what's already been said.

Greed Mania by pcmxms 2017-12-11T11:28:28Z ♥ 1

The controls where very responsive. I liked the effect you use to show 'here comes a new one'.

I question the decision to make the wall deadly, since it's hard enough already, although _of course_ they'd have done the same back when they made the original arcade-games.

All in all very well done for < 8 hours!

ETA: Played on Linux, works well, but the actual 'window' parts of the window are missing, so I couldn't move it across the screen 🙂

Sheep without Shepherd by navot 2017-12-11T10:59:06Z ♥ 1

That was so much fun I didn't even notice it hadn't any sound until about the third level 😄

My keys stuck sometimes, but I very much suspect that's the laptops fault, not your game. Also the I got stuck in the fence once, but at that point there was only one sheep left.

Brilliant idea, well implemented and, like the others said, good job on the flocking!

Kittychaos by larkinia 2017-12-11T10:41:35Z ♥ 2

The flavor-text and music really make help this very adorable 🙂

I'd like a cool-down after you've lost one of your lives: I lost two at the same time to the same animal or thing multiple times.

(Also this family _really_ has a rodent problem... I don't think just the cats will be enough 🙃)

ANTagonist by schizoid2k 2017-12-11T10:15:37Z ♥ 1

Concerning the keyboard controls: Maybe have the mouse be the direction instead of a second set of keys? This would also allow you to port over the 360-degree approach over to keyboard/mouse.

Other than that: I like the inherent silliness of _shooting at ants at a picknick_. Which in reality --with its destructible plates-- would probably ruin the picknick about as much as the ants themselves 🙃

A cozy winter walk by tinyworlds 2017-12-05T19:56:43Z ♥ 1

Well... You never know how much you need one of these kinds experiences until you pick up another one. Thank you, just what I needed this evening 🙂 Loved the atmosphere you create! It reminds me of some ['self-care-jam' games](https://itch.io/jam/self-care-jam), and also of [_Lieve Oma_](https://vltmn.itch.io/lieve-oma).

I like how, even with a color palette this limited, you still found it important to reserve one color for the interactives.

By the way, just how many flower seeds is Johnny supposed to give you?

(I also expected to see the foxes, but you can't have everything, I guess... 😋)

LD40 (BEAT2K) by Shivankar Sharma 2017-12-05T17:39:46Z ♥ 1

Certainly not bad for a first time 🙂

Maybe you could shorten the death-animation/sound? It seems quite long given how quickly you can die.

Saving Mr. Mittens by vividreality 2017-12-05T17:33:03Z ♥ 0

I _do_ have LÖVE installed, but maybe it's the wrong version? The main menu (_New Game_, _Options_, _Credits_, _Exit_) won't let me leave, although I _can_ mouse-over. (Currently on Win7 + mouse/keyboard.) It seems like I'm unable to rate this at this time, sorry :-( Maybe I could try later on my laptop w. Linux on it?

Fox Flares by tcstyle 2017-12-05T17:19:35Z ♥ 1

The artwork/animation is just adorable! (The story is actually quite dark now that I think about it. That poor fox...)

Concerning the difficulty; maybe a large part can be fixed by just stretching everything out horizontally juts a little bit? I found that a lot of my difficulties where just in overshooting platforms (... until the 'superjump' blocks after checkpoint 10 or so at least.)

Corrupture by Chyme 2017-12-05T16:37:15Z ♥ 1

Well done! A simple but ingenious idea and a good execution.

Nice color-scheme as well. Seems the art has a bit of Hyperlight Drifter influence but it has something of it's own as well.

Maybe next time you could have a tutorial or help screen? (That's really the pot calling the kettle filthy given my own history, but it's good advice nonetheless.) Consider that, for LD, some people only look at your game for about a barely two minutes, and I only got the main gimmick about the second time I ran out of 'ammo'. (I'm _still_ very tired tho', so that may be it as well.) 'Strength comes at a cost' has many different interpretations after all!

Oh, and I like the little animation/polish touches as well 🙂

Suburb Jogging Simulator by timon 2017-12-05T16:01:34Z ♥ 1

Hi, I'm sorry I can't play (and therefore rate) this, I _think_ because I'm on my old Windows 7 box.

It gave me the following error on start-up:

suburban_error.png

_(Errr... Just noticed it's in Dutch, but it basically says 'The program can't be executed because XINPUT1_4.DLL is missing from your computer')_ I tried to fix it, but even when I now that I got the DLL it just shows another error (so there's probably a reason 'they' only start supporting 'XInput 1.4' from Win 8 onward...) 😟

The More the Bloodier by BloooBird 2017-12-05T15:24:41Z ♥ 0

So, is there a strategy to this? Because it seems to me the opposing gladiators turn fast enough, your own speed is slow enough, and they come right at you; that there is no other way than to just rush at them as quickly as possible, and hope they don't do too much damage.

Some pretty decent art tho'; nice light effects 🙂

Castle Diorama by SuperUserNameMan 2017-12-05T14:52:56Z ♥ 2

Nice 'n quiet. Appreciated during these busy days 🙂

The art has a very clean and polised look. The day/night cycle was also nicely done.

Both the cloud and the pull-down trees took me what seemd like ages.

If I've any complaints, its that most of the things you could do where 'one use only'. Less 'puzzle' and more 'where's Waldo', to put it in other words.

I _think_ I can see the theme as well, since you're destroying things to make 'more'?

Video Games by Bastienre4 2017-12-05T10:36:39Z ♥ 2

Great tutorial! Maybe could've used a skip button as well, but that's really a nitpick.

Another very small item; when it comes to the pong game: You control the ball in all other scenario's, but there it's the paddle.

I like that, even if you're not at the top, you can still see your own ranking. That might've helped people to play a few extra rounds 😉

Subtle use of a noise shader 🙂 It would've been so easy to have just the colors alone, but this soft-glow/noise makes it so much better, even if people mightn't pick up on it consciously. On that note, the death effect is spot on!

P.S. Just a fun note: While rating other entries yesterday, I ran across [something](/events/ludum-dare/40/get-in-shape) quite similar to this entry. (Also, if I'm comparing anyway... it's close to the _initial concept_ of my own game, although _that_ eventually (d)evolved into [this](/events/ludum-dare/40/get-in-shape) It even includes a pong-game 🙃)

The Dark Castle by Joror 2017-12-05T09:17:06Z ♥ 2

- I like the way the background noise starts soft and ramps up. - Speaking of which, the atmosphere is tense and pressing 🙂 - You can choose 'rescue boyfriend', but it still assumes you're attracted to the demoness (although that might be correct for some people as well...) - I've got the 'remorse' item twice. Maybe I can use it twice, but it still looks a bit strange when you see it the first time. - Perhaps those options that would be possible, but clearly instant game-overs could have some sort of warning icon? At least as a toggleable option. Or would that make it too easy? - Oooh, the endings are shown on the left. Nice touch! And they're clickable 🙂 - On my way to a third ending, I found a screen where none of the options where possible: daan40_bugged_screen.png The secuence goes like this: _1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 3, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, no options_

I want to try the 'corruption' ones as well, but my old 'handicap' of 'never choose the evil option' rears its head... 🙃

All in all, lots of work in 3 days, but I think it payed off! By which I mean it's very compelling.

Level Onslaught by OrciFried 2017-12-04T20:57:19Z ♥ 1

Nice use of animation! That + music really helps to set the mood. 🙂

I somehow get back to the help-screen instead of the menu each time I die.

(I think I even got a helmeted skeleton to stand on the characters' head at some point, but I overwrote that screenshot and now I can't recreate the situation. But that was funny more than annoying anyway 🙃)

Game of Virus by CiderPunk 2017-12-04T20:38:58Z ♥ 1

Took me a long while to find the virus! Maybe spawn the player somewhere in the vicinity? Or have an indicator.

Matter creation/destruction is _very_ satisfying, but it might be more effective if I didn't keep getting stuck in my 'own' matter...

The concept is very unique, and I can see something that looks very much like fun from here: I think you're on to something! 😄

Be Yourself by Noa Calice 2017-12-04T19:54:02Z ♥ 1

Great use of theme!

It's nice to see someone attempt a bit more 'deep'/'meaningful' during LD 🙂

The music, shuch as it is, was ... distracting, I mean, I get that it's probably the _point_, given the message, but still.

The comic was nicely done, altough in my present post LD-state, I sat there for about half a minute before I realized I was supposed to click through 🙃

Get in Shape by Prostone 2017-12-04T19:35:08Z ♥ 0

Oh, I love how this one reminds me of movie titles from the 60's and 70's. Really gives this piece an unique mood! 😄

Each new window gives you an anticipation, like 'well, I wonder what this next one'll do, then'.

It's (can become?) also quite easy: nothing really stops you from keeping only one of the windows and ignoring the others. Given that all windows on the right side can be kept alive by just spamming the respective keys, it loses challenge fast if played that way.

... but I guess that's not really how you'd inteded for people to play?

Truly excelent use of theme as well!

_(P.S. You know, call me a fun-killer, but the phrase 'quit like a pathetic loser', is yeah... Let me put it this way: is that really one of the first things you'd want a new player to see? It also destroys the strange minimalistic mood you've build up IMHO)_

A Walk To The Finish Line by jk5000 2017-12-04T19:10:50Z ♥ 1

_(Seems we're in the same timezone or something? Not sure how I keep running into you, even accounting for the ammounts of reviews you leave.)_

A puzzle game! 😄

Red on yellow (instruction text) might be hard to parse for some people.

Nice 'n slow ramp-up learning curve.

Reminds me a bit of lemmings somehow. Given the sounds they make on exit, it's probably intentional.

Camera rotation-buttons could show circular arrows?

I like the extra little touches like the menu coming in late, or the extra 'no's swirling around when you fail.

Holiday Parking Panic! by FormalCloud 2017-12-04T18:42:50Z ♥ 0

Hm, you've created a game that's more entertaining to lose than to try to win 🙃 (That may not be a bad thing mind you...) (Or it could just be post LD state of mind?)

Satisfying screenshake on explosion.

Love the effect that the music gives, considering the situation.

At first I thought "Although it's hard enough as it is, it still feels like the car comes to a stop too suddenly. I've no suggestion as to what could be done about it without making it harder though." Then: "... wait nevermind it seems the description of what _shift_ does was below the window cutoff". 🙃

Deadline by Sholf 2017-12-04T18:22:51Z ♥ 1

_(Please put the files in a folder before you zip them.)_

I like the music!

A background with streets / building or desks would help a lot to ground the setting. It seems kind of empty now...

It also seems kind of easy (but not _too_ easy), which is good, because I'm pretty tired tight now. 🙂

World Domenation by SvartTand 2017-12-04T18:01:30Z ♥ 2

It's nice that you can change the window-size, and that the graphics scale, but somehow I don't think it works as intended 🙃

At first it wasn't clear to me that I had actually build a builder. Once I got that, I didn't get that they don't have any movement after build. (Reversely, domes can build other units immediately?)

Kudos for attempting a strategy-game for the compo though! It's actually playable, and the tension starts right around turn 3 or 4 already. The time for playtesting alone must have been something...

Some music would do wonders for the mood, though... 🙂

Hm. on selecting an alien unit, the 'Move'-button is not crossed out.

I think builders are a bit too expensive? Although none of my starting area's have been very forresty, so maybe it's that.

Dense Revolve by fiaKaiera 2017-12-04T17:29:25Z ♥ 1

What a difference a button makes ... due to my tiredness I somehow missed that 'C' was reload at first. Suddenly it became playable! 🙂

It's challenging; I wonder if this can be improved if you remove everything except the core challenge: What would happen if you removed the spiky platforms on the side and the dropoffs directly below them. (So that the only deaths possible would be the big sawblade and the starts.)

The art and details (eyes bobbing up/down when jumping, etc.) are quite nice. Seems that minimalism is a powerful tool, given that you'd had only very limited time.

The font can make it hard to get that you'd need to press _R_, not _A_ to reset.

(P.S. I could play it just fine in Chrome... maybe I switched those options around another time?)

Smack`Em! by mess110 2017-12-04T16:54:35Z ♥ 2

I like the scanline effect!

Running out of time could be clearer... maybe implement a warning sound for the last three seconds or so?

Infected Pong by PhillSerrazina 2017-12-04T16:26:26Z ♥ 1

Neat concept! ...but of course I would think so. I hope _my_ 'version' of Pong didn't give you any popups 🙃 _(Context for that statement: @phillserrazina reviewed my game, I'm here to return the favor it now seems our games, while very different on some level, have quite a few things in common as well.)_

It's just _slightly_ confusing that Pong-points are different than regular points. I get that you want more fine grained control over points than just score-by-opponent-miss, but I still think you could merge the two.

A sound-effect when you're not capable of buying the selected thing, and/or the Pong-score embedded in the shop-window would help as well I think.

Using the mouse & keyboard for something semi-unrelated like this played quite well, but I found that I'd often get game-overed before I could really use the anti-virus. Maybe having 'three strikes and you're out' (or something) instead of 'miss even once is out' would help with that? Or maybe I'm just too tired from the weekend r.n.

JUST SPEND IT! by Siarhei Rakuts 2017-12-04T14:28:20Z ♥ 1

It seems the jump-button isn't always registering for me. (Especially when the other buttons are pressed.)

The 'store' icon is kind of out of the way, and had to be clicked. Would've been nice to have a shortcut button!

Keep up the good work!

Orbiomus Gamma by Priweejt 2017-12-04T14:14:39Z ♥ 1

Nice minimalistic design! I always like the strategic choices that come with something that is both an advantage _and_ a disadvantage.

Speaking of the powerups, you could've just dropped a lot of them: This wouldn't be overpowered, since each comes with the slowdown as well! More importantly, the less players'd have to wait to get to the 'meat' of your game, the better 🙂

There didn't seem to be a large difference between the modes. Going from 'easy' to 'for weird people' seems like only slightly more than a single step should be.

Oooh, actual leaderboards ... I guess these are the things those new half-stars are made for (something that doesn't feel worth a _full_ extra star in and of itself, but should perhaps be rewarded anyway.)

The lost strawberry by egordorichev 2017-12-04T13:45:11Z ♥ 1

The (default) color-sheme looks very cool in a retro way, but the only way to tell 'will this platform supports me' and 'what does it do' is experimentation and memory, which is less than ideal.

Also, it took me quite a few tries to find out that you can _only_ dash when a certain sprite is present.

While there is an addictiveness to it, and resetting to current room instead of the beginning helps a lot, it's still hard to get to the point where the theme starts mattering.

That said, movement feels both very fluid and satisfiyingly 'chunky'.

Mood-text on each new screen is also nicely done, and the music is on-point 🙂

MultiCaring by Kurupapuru 2017-12-04T13:26:08Z ♥ 1

I don't think I've seen the combination of 'physics based' and 'animal care/tamagochi' yet, so the idea feel very creative. 🙂

It seems all the things have weight... but the food was a lot harder to move around than I think is fun. On that note: 'Ballnimals' can be moved around with left-click, and stuff that has a left-click function only when right clicking? Or does the little arrow icon toggle?

No tutorial, which isn't really _that_ bad in cases like these (as it's perfectly doable to discover the rules while playing) but it still would have helped. No exit button and _esc_ doesn't work either - I get that people should play the game, but this seems a tad extreme! (I kid, I kid 😉)

I like it for the inherent chaos that invaribly develops, that sort of thing nver ceases to amuse me 😄

Music/sound would've helped with the mood. It's not as hard as it looks and a lot of fun to make!

Mission Power On by FuriousWitch 2017-08-22T15:41:02Z ♥ 0

It seems you map *both* picking up items *and* shooting to the same left-click action? Or do I miss something?

Eclipse by SaraMartins 2017-08-14T10:33:49Z ♥ 2

I felt quite immersed, even though it's basically just a maze 😄

Occasionally I would seemingly get stuck in a place, but the arrow-system in the interface sort-of made up for that. I'm not sure how you'd be able to fix that without taking away from the experience.

I'm left pondering the meaning, especially since the 'maze' is very simple in the daylight cut-scene, but transforms into a more complex shape by moonlight. I don't really need an explanation, I just like pondering 🙂

The Leech by Peter Sheehan 2017-08-14T09:21:29Z ♥ 1

I *really* love the long, twisted, shaking intro (as it creates a great mood) and it seems that there are a lot of different fights... but casting a net this wide seems to make the overall, complete experience a bit muddled: What I mean is that IMHO you maybe could have spent some of that time to fix some basic issues, like the sleeping --which is quite crucial-- but not explained in game, and will only work when you stand next to the pillow (as opposed to the entire bed). The way controlling the kid doesn't *quite* feel like you've got rockets in your arms. (Maybe adding some screenshake on 'launch' would help?)

On the other hand, unlike some of the others, I could follow the *in media res* opening quite well. It seems pretty clear what's going on to me at least! 🙂

I've found some typo's as well, and have collected some of them: - hold onto somethin - youre pappy - thos guys - wespon...

In case you'd like to fix them!

Li'l Icarus by PouleyKetchoupp 2017-08-13T20:59:56Z ♥ 1

The first time I made it he was 34m. above sea-level 🙂

In contrast to some of the other commenters, (IMHO) I *don't* think it would be a good idea to re-skin the game or give it a lot more mechanics: I think it works so well precisely *because* you have little control over the character; you feel powerless (in a nice melodramatic way) and are frantically trying to save poor doomed Icarus. That helps to connect it to both the original myth and our current theme, which is precisely what makes this such a minimalist but powerful experience.

Nice music and smooth controls as well.

The only (small!) criticism I can think of right now is the game-over scene. It's basically just 'you died' or 'he lives', which is a little anticlimactic. In general; just a little but of polish here and there would've elevated this entry from 'good' to 'great'.

Mr Mayor's Energy Crisis by HuvaaKoodia 2017-08-12T06:35:41Z ♥ 1

It's sometimes good to have unknowns in the game, like not knowing how many % of the wind turbines needs to be applied to save or kill the eagle, but it could sometimes feel like slightly too much. For instance, the last day when even with all power at 100% I didn't make enough to satisfy the population, but it turned out to be the last day, I tought I was a gonner! 😄

Overall I quite like it... like you said, I think I recognize those ducks from somewhere...

The humorous newspaper adds a lot to the game, not just as throwaway jokes, but as something that makes the town feel slightly more alive.

Low Battery by MaggardJosh 2017-08-12T06:08:46Z ♥ 1

Attention to detail just makes this one 🙂 Now I actually liked the music, but there is an option to turn it off. There are things like a level selection-screen with stars, little animations to support the sound-effects, the way the level slides into place... In all this is just a great example of a minimal game-design polished until it shines.

Airship Engineer by ryte2byte 2017-08-11T21:19:19Z ♥ 0

I concur with the other commenters that it's still rare to see a Compo entry with 3D that is this polished (although the cat-model clipped through the avatar-model once, but this is a very minor issue). Impressive w. 16 hr. less too! What was your first attempt and why didn't it work? 🙂

What I think would help cut-down on the tutorial length (or necessity) is to label both the boxes/crates/etc. and the machines with a picture of the animal resp. produced/needed. (But maybe I shouldn't complain given the state of my own meager help-screen... 😅)

Maybe place the grab-hotspots a bit closer while you're at it? Seems fine for 'experienced' players, but you could maybe get some extra mileage for the 'first-timers' if you allow the 'fuels' to be grabbed from the side of the barrels and whatnot (also pickup things I dropped on the ground accidentally from a wider radius).

Jumping Jehosaphat by moltanem2000 2017-08-04T16:37:34Z ♥ 0

Haha, humor, innovation *and* fun in a compo entry. Colour me impressed 😄

Anyway, just a comment to say that resizing the window can do some funny things, like erasing the battery in the intro screen or disabling click-n-drag if resized too small in the game proper. Not a problem, really, just worth mentioning if you'd like to continue working on it.

No Sorcerer's Sky by TheFlyingKeyboard 2017-08-04T16:28:54Z ♥ 1

Hm. You've got a lot of comments! The only really new things I could think of is that (apologies to others if somehow skipped past these points if they were made earlier): - scrap collection starts off quite slow, which compounds the problem of the confusing interface, since it can take a long time to start up if you don't know that you should build the alchemy-lab first - I found myself accidentally clicking the building menu's while I meant to click on scrap

Other than that I really like the game-over screen though 🙂

Robot Head by Resat İnci 2017-08-03T21:08:26Z ♥ 0

Nice pixel-art! Getting a real '90s vibe here 😄 I'm a bit disappointed that I couldn't rate the cool, fitting music as well.

About the difficulty; Yes it's hard (especially as I'm mousing with my left hand for now), but I wasn't really *stuck* at all; each time I played I got a little further (which is still not out of level 1, but whatevs.).

A small thing: The third and fourth '?' signs can be a bit hard to read as they're on single-width poles.

Archetype - Running Out of Power by cakemonitor 2017-08-03T20:31:35Z ♥ 0

Puzzle game, yay! Reminded me a bit of *The Talos Principle* for some reason (maybe the bits where you have to work together with a record of your past self?). There's even more than one level 😄 Pretty good interpretation of the theme and making that work as a concept as well, I think.

Controlling it on your lonesome can become a bit tedious though, but I completely forgive it that, since it's really meant to be 2-player (and I think it would be a lot of fun with 2 players).

The sound-fx where a little harsh on my earphones though, at least compared to the music.

D34TH by Falk Bruskeland 2017-08-03T20:03:15Z ♥ 0

Some music would really sell this for me. It just seems like the kind of game that needs more sound. (The verry little audio that *is* there is pretty crisp though.)

I also like that you have to hold, instead of just touch to really recharge. I'm less convinced of the need to separate power and health-bars though, they feel too similar: does it really add much to the game to have them separate?

**EDIT**: @coomzy The *z*, *x* combo is because they're right next to each other, easily (on a QUERTY keyboard at least) reachable for the left hand. That won't work on an AZERTY keyboard (and a whole slew of others), so that's why you sometimes see *x*, *c* instead, although that has it's own problems. Really games should just have configurable keys, but that's often too much for the limited time we make LD games in.

**2nd EDIT**: @falk-bruskeland Oh, just a small request, but could you maybe not make a zip-bomb (compressed file without a top level directory) next time?

Forgetting Things by player2point0 2017-08-03T19:48:01Z ♥ 1

Nice use of theme here 😄 I also like the mood.

The tutorial was well done, but I found myself occasionally stuck and when this happens it's just often unclear if it's either *intentional* (that is, part of the main gimmick) or whether it's just the games 'rough edges' as an LD-compo game. (Well, or just my lousy platform skills...)

I'm not sure what can be done about that, but unlike some of the other commenters I thought that not knowing beforehand what was forgotten is part of the games appeal: after all, you don't get a message when you've forgotten something in real life either 😉

There's No Place Like Home by Remzo 2017-08-01T22:06:09Z ♥ 3

I got it working on Linux, as you requested people try. I had some trouble with getting it to work full-screen until I tried my native resolution (see my comment on your post for a screenie).

I like the subtle 'Geiger-counter-like' warning for the asteroids that isn't really explained, but easily grasped. ... But not explaining things also leeds people to assume the TV is important.

Really like the art-style in this. Neon seems to be the hip thing this time around for some other entries as well (but different enough thankfully) 😄

Saturnalia by graebor 2017-07-31T21:35:50Z ♥ 0

I've no idea what I just did, but I enjoyed every second of it! I hope the now three ringed sphere is happy with my connect the dot skills 😉

Snark aside, I think it's time to break out the superlatives: absolutely stunning visuals! A mood to linger in!

SOMETHING IS WRONG. SOMETHING IS WRONG. SOMETHING IS WRONG. by Heather Flowers 2017-07-31T21:20:39Z ♥ 2

I always like these game-poems in LD, a moment of moody quietude between all the explosions (not that there's anything wrong with those either). I've not little more to say, much like the game itself: it says what it has to say, an then **NULL NULL NULL**

Power Ring Facility by Herman Chau 2017-07-31T21:01:08Z ♥ 4

Oh! Before reading the above comment I assumed it ends at 1.003, just as I really was getting into it (past the 'stop' hallway) as a sort of metacommentary on game-devs running out of power during LD 😅

(I see now that I also missed the 2nd screenshot, clearly showing a level I haven't got to yet.)

Anyway, I really appreciate how smooth it all feels, despite getting stuck outside of the level once: stuck.png ... and then there's no way to self-destruct, so you have to reload the game.

Love the aesthetics.

It's really creative as well! It's nice to see that there's still room to invent your own thing, even in platformers.

All Systems Online by stormforce02 2017-07-31T17:06:12Z ♥ 2

The intro-screen mentions the 'A' key instead of the 'S' key, as the description here correctly mentions.

I like building things, especially when they get to 'do' stuff later 🙂

rop by cyfixus 2017-07-31T16:10:57Z ♥ 1

Could you please choose another font for large amounts of text next time? 🙂

Anyway, it was nice'n tense, but since there's no warning beforehand, one of those purple mobs could drop right next to you.

I like the light effect for the avatar; you could probably have done the same for the other robo's (just add their light to your own).

Sea Life by Laien Pathfinder 2017-07-31T15:59:37Z ♥ 0

It took me a while to realize some of the mechanics, like your health depleting faster the more plastic you eat. In my case, I probably got confused when you mentioned 'starving', but the meter's also there for oxygen (in the end just a health-meter).

I like the music, but some more sound-FX could maybe also help. Graphics are also nice 🙂

Also, if the message is important, why are sharks so hard to evade? (At least I thought so...)

Power Tripping: Keeping It Cool by Sarah 2017-07-31T13:28:20Z ♥ 0

I like the clean, stylized look.

I couldn't get a better rank than 'D Fridge' tough after 4 tries (maybe because I'm still tired?), so I didn't get to see what 'Power Tripping' is 😄

Not Like This... by quixatocs 2017-07-31T13:12:11Z ♥ 1

Challenging! But in a fun way.

While I appreciate the way it feels to have to hold 'W' (so you're actually feel like you're holding something), it sometimes takes a lot of tries to get hold of a battery, making things feel a little clunky.

I also had some trouble in gouging how far any blue-bubbles stream would let me jump.

I like that you've put some extra work in the game-over screens, though!

Electric Neon by kamikaziuk 2017-07-31T12:55:48Z ♥ 3

Haha, the pedals are quite a bit different in this alternate neon '80s 😄 I adore the atmosphere, music, visuals!

A couple of small remarks: - any already picked-up accu's (sometimes?) stay gone until you restart the entire game, is this intentional? - 'reverse' doesn't seem to listen to the steering wheel, OK for in a game but I'd never get in this car in real life! 😉

Got to about 73 in 'hard-core mode'. I think 'hard-core' here is more challenging, fun an different, to the point I think you maybe should have left out the keys.

There shall be light by FuriousWitch 2017-05-19T04:17:06Z ♥ 2

At first I thought I was being clever by just carrying a torch around all the time and not putting it down adn then just running in circles. But as I sit here writing this, haveing the game run in the background... I can just not seem to lose? Maybe it's because I also placed a torch *inside* the portal.

I like it when you get really close and they just scoot off to the edges of the map very quickly, for some reason this struck me as funny, but maybe I'm just tired 😆

Anayway! Certainly not bad for a first-timer! 😀

The Other by tommakesgames 2017-05-18T20:22:52Z ♥ 0

Interesting. If you've read the description it's a bit too easy to figure out shouting isn't the thing to do. Not that I would have done so anyway 😄

I just found that after I had collected all the letters, (Why that word? Wasn't the whole point to make people relax a bit?) I couldn't actually exit. Brilliant political commentary or a bug? I guess the player decides! 😉

Although maybe I should try shouting at the door, come to think of it... (and in the game!)

Diaspora: Ghosts of Humanity by Steve Sparkes 2017-05-18T19:13:52Z ♥ 0

Amazing! Surprising to see this in both the given and recieven sides of the '0-ratings' catagory. You do know you need to rate & give feedback to the others right?

Anyway... I liked a lot about this, from the 'filmic' intro movie to the actual in game graphics, to the clever gameplay ideas. Also the gentle tutorial messages. 😀

However, I also had to hunt a bit for the second destructable brick (it doesn't help that both types of brick are both coloured slight variations of red...)

One last thing ... I'm probably missing something obvious, but, why are you humanities last hope when 'all humans have died'? ❓️

Planktos by SaraMartins 2017-05-18T18:51:40Z ♥ 2

Nice! I really apreciate the smooth animation. Also very clever to make the 'winning'/larger player slower! Sadly, I had to play it by myself, but I could see this being quite fun with 2 actual players instead of just hands 😄

Gotta Catem All by tbeakl 2017-05-18T18:43:55Z ♥ 1

Only 29 for me 😄 Very simple, but you snuck in a lot of polish into it, like all the different descriptions!

I'd have liked for the numbers in the battle-screen to be in front of the move-name. Also, sometimes it shows the choice from the last time in the new battle-screen, causing me to type '11' or some such.

Otherwise, good job!

Shrinkage of Sirrah by Thalikoth 2017-05-18T18:14:22Z ♥ 0

@asteroid2k Apearantly so, it ends for me after the third question as well. Maybe it's meant that way as 'you have a limited time to live on this planet'. The end-values are your scores then.

I'll score accordingly given to that since they've got 0 ratings and deserve at least one, but otherwise ... Well, the idea of 'what to do if you've got a limited time to live' as a society is cute, but it isn't really explored indepth or well, mostly at all.

@thalikoth You tried! Keep trying! 😄 If you need some pointers on how to use SDL / SDL2, see [this very useful site](http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/) taking you through it, step by step. (Or even read the horrible, horrible source code to my [game](events/ludum-dare/38/liftoff)... ) If you ever should decide to leave 'programming in (almost) plain SDL2 during a 48hr. game-jam' to masochists like me, and/or need a more 'beginner friendly' way to make games, try GameMaker or Unity. There is no shame in using these! Previous multitime winners (@managore, GameMaker) and popular vodcasters (@quill18, Unity) are using them, so how wrong could it be? 😉

Exploitation by Jimbly 2017-05-18T12:05:35Z ♥ 1

The basics hang together very well. 😄 But beyond the intitial confiscation of ports, and putting a few pop. there building a harvester and a mine... there isn't really all that much to *do*?

Maybe the addition of some extra threat (besides starvation) would help; an additional loss condition I mean. The simpelest to add (maybe) would be (avoidable?) monsters. Make it a bit more frantic!

So, a solid framework, excelent for expanding on but with little meat on its bones. Kind of like my own game TBH, which you got to discover for yourself as well 😅

SubAttack by RustyRobotGames 2017-05-17T17:08:08Z ♥ 0

I my addled brain dreamt up that the RMB was for photographing the fish instead of moving the camera 😅 I guess I should read the description first, huh?

Anyway, I think part of the difficulty of controling the sub is that it looks more or less the same, no matter what direction (mostly forwards or backwards) it's facing, it looks more or less the same, despite the stellar graphics.

Good job on finishing this within compo-time... you could've told me it was a jam entry with a team behind it and I wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.

Crustal by Coffee Bland 2017-05-17T16:46:58Z ♥ 1

Lovely concept, good execution 😄

I'd have liked some more explanation; it's *there*, but it's so small people can easily ignore it, and the blue boxes only give a 'press space to release wave' *during gameplay*. You could file that last bit under 'well its fun to have some mysteries', but I'm very tired from work right now, and it took me quite a while until I read that you should use WASD to shoot 😓

Desktop Adventure by Gama Croma 2017-05-17T16:10:22Z ♥ 3

That was fun! You just have to add some music to make it really swing, I think. 😄 Everything controls quite smoothly, and is animated nicely, and the whole desktop aesthetic is visible in all details, like the 'help' and 'credits'. The whole teleport idea adds *just* enough variation to make it stand out a little bit (besides the polish).

Very small quibble: Note that the floating panels that describe the protagonists remain in a fixed place when switching to full-screen.

Star keeper by Alexandr AndroidDev 2017-05-16T18:32:03Z ♥ 1

I can't believe nobody mentioned 'Le Petit Prince' yet! There's even a bit about 'your love' in the description! 😑

Hm, *that* may be why people had difficulty grasping the goal of the game... I could see it being a bit confusing if you don't get the connection.

Anyway... lovely game! 😁 You might want to have some visual indication for the cool-down on the lasers though maybe?

vijver by Celine Veltman 2017-05-16T18:06:04Z ♥ 1

Makes me wish I had a rock to skip 😄

Someone mentioned a screensaver, but I'm also curious if (and how) this would work as an animated desktop background. In that case the sound-volume would be just right instead of too soft too, I guess...

Abyss by srakowski 2017-05-16T17:56:06Z ♥ 1

This only 'clicked' for me once I read the discription (get it? get it?) 😉

I only wish that you didn't have to press '0' to exit a shop or planet... why not also enable the WASD keys in that situation? It would help a *lot* to make the experience smoother, which is important for a clicker!

Also sound. Just one or two dinky SFX's would really help here, it wouldn't even need music! But I guess 'no one can hear you click... in space' 😋

Vespuccia by dusho 2017-05-16T17:40:44Z ♥ 1

Nice! 😄 I like how you put a vat of rum right next to the main character at the start, that shows some insight.

I had some problems with the spikes though, maybe it's the skewed perspective, or just that the spikes are yellow and so is the sand, but they hit a couple of times when they 'felt' they shouldn't have.

Also, the menu mentions music, but none is playing... did you just run out of time, or did something go wrong on my end?

Good job anyway!

Bio Noid by zetashocker 2017-05-13T20:24:33Z ♥ 0

Not a novel concept ... but so, *so* well executed for a jam-game 😁 (Well, except for the whole not being able to press 2 keys at the same time issue, but that's been mentioned several times already...)

A few random thoughts in no particular order: - Just as I was about to make a mental note of 'there should be a way to regain health', I noticed the regen. Nice! Just not explained... I can't decide if that's part of the charm of the game (and intentional) or if it actually *want* it to be explained. - During my second attempt (1st boss) I kept trying to jump on the similar looking vans that also pass by, since it looked that this might be possible. - The world in general is not explained, but since it clearly seems cohesive I actually like that. Makes you wonder what te story is and draws you in without overstaying its welcome, or feeling like it tries to hard. - When the first form 'dies', right before it falls into the hole in the road, it looked kind-of ... cute? I felt a bit sorry for it, but maybe I just have 'Shadow of the Colossus' on my mind lately 😉

Globe Trot by Richard Michael Smith 2017-05-10T16:25:44Z ♥ 4

Hi! I tried it on Linux 🐧 (well, sort of, in a virtual environent, hosted by Windows). First the important bits on your end:

1. You've compressed everything with rar, which would be fine, except that the ditro I've tried (Mint 18.1, based on Ubuntu which is in turn a Debian derivative) *thinks* it can unrar by default, but it really can't and gives a cryptic error message. I've had to `sudo apt install unrar` before I could actually get it to work. 2. The file permissions are not set up to 'execute', so the program won't start by default. Please do a `chmod -R 755 ./*` on the folder (or just the executables) before you compress and you should be allright.

Both of which are quite easily fixable by 'experienced' Linux users on their own, but are an anoyance and, more importantly, not everyone is 'experienced' 😄

Anyway, it ran, but I'm pretty sure I've got my virtual environment installed wrong since it ran so slow it needed a minute to register a key-press. *Pretty* sure the problem is on my end though. I think it may have started from the .iso again instead of taking the install on the virtual disk or some such.

Then I remembered I could just run it on Windows as well 😁

Anyway! On the the actual *review* ... 📋

Wow! I had to double-check whether this was a compo entry 😄 On one end it's *really* simple, but everything feels just so smooth and polished and the music is *just right*.

Any real gripes I have I could basically find in your wish-list. (Although I'm not sure having to worry a lot about the buildings *all the time* would improve it.)

Haveing a high-score table would be nice indeed, but before that, you could try featuring the last hi-score more prominently. I almost missed it!

Yeah, I missed more 'lives' or 'health' at first, but on the other hand, it does force you to learn some strategy. And the time to get back into the game is quite short! It's a tough balance...

I'm not sure the alien model on the title-screen is the best idea... I spent some time trying to decide what I was looking at and decided that it was *probably* some sort of alien. They work as smaller models, and it's nice to have a larger image so that you can see that it's probably a shield that blows up when you've hit them the 1st time, but I'm not sold.

Other than that ... I just really like to glide around the planet and see the patterns my laser-shots make 😄

A Tower in the Mists by sorlok 2017-05-06T22:40:16Z ♥ 0

The tranquil music and level of polish (for ex.: the wear and tear on the tower, the pond on the balcony to the right, the clear sounds, the very nice font*) make this feel like a world to be inhabited. 😌

Like the other reviewers I felt the combat system has a lot of *possibility* for depth, but if you're mostly just guessing what the opponent will do next turn it loses a lot of that potential. (Altough there may be a little bit more to it and I'm just too tired to see it.) It's still nice though. Also, I'd like some way to replenish magic-pts (or maybe I'ven't just played far enough?)

Small quibble: Aea says 'As fast as humanly possible', but weren't they 'Miscanth'? 😄

*) Couldn't find it in the attribution. Is this just the standard RPG-maker font? I suppose if you cater to people that write games with lots of text you better have a nice standard font! 😁

MagiSEED by Vivoubos 2017-05-06T09:24:31Z ♥ 1

*(hm most (all?) of my points have already been mentioned, but I've had this written up before reading the comments and it seems a shame not to post it 😄)*

The concept, the little story and the puzzles make this into a very nice submission for the compo!

You do a pretty decent job of introducing the player to all the different elements as well!

I liked that it's not just big/small, but that you have different levels of smallness. Do the seeds show up later in the game as well? (I played about up to the big plant throwing leaves.) It seems kind of a shame to use a fun mechanic like that *only* for the first room.

The music gets a bit repetitive, but it's a lot better than not to have anything to listen to.

I also liked the little walk animation 😄

The Deific's Guide to Creating, Exploiting, and Destroying Pocket Worlds by Smiling Cat Entertainment 2017-05-06T09:18:31Z ♥ 2

I really liked the concept, but for me there was a bit of a difficulty spike in the beginning, since I could produce water and fire by combining the before-elements, but when I tried to make a few worlds with water and or fire, they basically just produced base-elements again, and maybe 0.01 💧 or 🔥.

Anyway, the manual is both clearly and humorously written, and I'd no difficulty to find out what to do in what could potentially have been confusing, altough I needed to look around for what I created for a (small) time, since my first run took me some ways of the spawning point. (Might want to leave out the word 'lame' though... it can be seen as a bit of an insult to handicapped people.)

There is an annoying issue with renaming worlds, in that, if I had previously renamed a world, then approached another one without clicking the mouse, the textbox of the next world would accept input, leading to a lot of worlds eventually named 'wwwww wsssssasww' and the like 😁

With a bit of polish (maybe add a landscape and some jumping) I think you could get this to work quite well.

Protolife by icxon 2017-05-06T09:14:29Z ♥ 2

Just. Amazing. 😀 I love basically everything about this!

The only (neligable) criticism I would have is that the tutorial doesn't (I think) explicitly mention to use tab to switch to the amino-acid, but everything is so well explained in the screen that it really doesn't matter. Hm, altough, tab, is a long way from the space-bar coming to think of it.

If you're planning to beef this game up later (as perhaps you should, since it has the best concept I've seen this LD) it may be fun to experiment with *even more* kinds of 'buildings', since a lot (but most certainly not all!) of these 'just' shoot. Maybe a structure that slows down the red bits for a bit, but can't shoot of itself? A thing that's just a very strong shield? Since you're basing yourself on Conway's: a structure that builds smaller structures? Or amybe it just repairs them?

50ft by 50ft (or How I Died In Space) by RockhopperGames 2017-05-05T21:08:54Z ♥ 1

I've noticed that I've come to appreciate the quiter LD games (and I don't mean sound here) so much. Reviewing when work throws up a stressful project is much nicer this way 😄

I loved this. Twine *really* works well with irony and sacasm (and a gifted author of course). For example, the whole bit where 'hard work' slowly turns into 'hard work, luck and parents' (a theme repeated if you talk to Rick) when you select the Hong-Kong penthouse as your abode. Or when 'TV show' eventually morphs into 'watch idiots die in space'. I'm not sure a static book could ever convey the sheer *bitterness* of the protagonist that vividly.

Oh, and I've noticed that, while you did it correct the first time (Huygens), your write it 'Huygen' from the 3rd report onwards. I've noticed other typo's before (I wrote down 'their'... but not where you made the typo or what you should've replaced it with). But. Well. This was all written off-the-cuff in a single weekend, which, given the quality of the writing, impresses me, and one has to expect typos! 😉

LD38 - Big Dreams by Iron Leonem 2017-05-05T19:37:40Z ♥ 1

Well, that was cute 🙂

I've played a bit myself and I've been reading the other comments... I have to ask, why not reduce the amount of time to the powerups by a huge ammount? I couldn't even get to one before the first time I died (they appeared much faster in the second time). That may or may not have been on me, but I think 'time to awesome' should be reduced as much as possible 😁 Or maybe just have one or two spawn right from the beginning, then 'business as usual', just to get the players interest.

@valmay I think they spawn from the buckets? But then more buckets *do* appear out of nowhere? Not super clear, but I could see it working with some more polish on visual effects.

Slime Assault by Bumblepie 2017-05-04T17:08:11Z ♥ 0

Sorry, I *probably* won't have anyone to play with for some time 😔 I felt only confident enough to rate the audio, which sets quite the mood! Is there a let's play somewhere I could watch?

Too Many Weird Aliens by iandioch 2017-05-04T16:56:30Z ♥ 3

I like that you have to watch out for 'frienly fire' here, it gives a bit of extra tactical depth to the whole ship-health/earth-health/enemy-position gameplay.

Other than that I quite enjoyed the audio-effects, all nice, heavy, *bit-crushed* sounds, as is approriate to the mood of the game. 🎶 💻

The ship felt a bit slow, but that might've been on purpose; creating the tension nescesary for the player to really feel like the last defender of the earth. I tried something similar (with the sounds as well) in the last LD (37) but players didn't seem to like it, a fair number complained about slow gameplay. It's a subtle/tricky thing to get right apearantly!

Anyway, I can imagine this could become quite addictive, if you add some nice (and surprising) powerups and/or different ship models! 😁

Amoebros by Spinaljack 2017-05-04T16:33:16Z ♥ 1

Addicitve! 😄 I also found myself going for the ones that 'stood out' in colouring patterns, despite nominally trying to optimize things. I just like green and purple I guess...

Anyway: Maybe part of the whole 'tutorial' problem is that the initial text suggest that you can 'help them eat'.. which is true... *indirectly*. Once I understood I could only take any meaningful action during the period the 'edit' menu is shown, I got used to it quickly. And it aquired the aforementioned addictive (albeit repetitive) qualities. 😁

Also, I know you can select them after a strain's died out and *then* see their names, but I had a rather hard time of keeping track of who was who during the whole 'fighting and eating' phase (maybe since I lucked out and Agility was high right of the bat?) This could perhaps be remedied by adding a ⏸️ button (and then still have their 'names' shown on mouse-over of course)?

Small Planet by ZebraInFlames 2017-05-04T15:23:07Z ♥ 0

Simple, yet effective. A nicely polished --given compo-time-- homage to [SpaceWar](http://spacewar.oversigma.com/) 😄

An actual working (and even somewhat challenging for a fumble-fingers like me) AI is also a delight to see in a compo entry!

Glad the others recommended the 4-vs-4 play. While not as chaotic as I expected from the comments, it's a nice way to play. I understand the descision to lead-off with the 1-vs-1 play though; the easier for the whole of play to be grasped at once it is, the better for the player. Although it would've helped to paint the players team-mates in a *slightly* different color of blue (or red, it's nice to have options 🙂) when in the 1+ vs modes. Well, the centering takes care of any confusion, but still...

Also, I think I accidentally got autofire 'working' (as in, I didn't need to click for the ship to fire any more) a couple of times. I'm not quite sure how to reproduce this, though. But it's a 'good bug' (as in, clould lead to more fun), so maybe leave it in? 😁

Daily Routine: the smallest worlds are the ones we get stuck in by Samurai Spark 2017-05-04T14:56:21Z ♥ 4

**Spoiler** heavy, then again, so are the other comments 😉

As a wise movie-computer once said: *"Strange game. The only way to win is not to play."* 💻

What I really like about this entry is how it slowly ramps up the hints. I'm pretty sure, for instance, the book was not on the floor of the TV-room on Day 1. Also after a while *all* the mails tell you the password. And why would the cereal sub-game just *end* like that when the others tell you you're still doing great? Very subtle 😄

Anyway, unlike the others I'm not *sure* music would've been right in this instance. The silence seems to fit the mood of the game. You'd need *very specific* music to get the message across, IMHO. Or maybe multiple pieces that share the same notes, but get more depressing or slower each day.

not on my pizza by wareification 2017-04-30T21:15:42Z ♥ 1

So, after I'd finally found someone to play with, I can share my (our?) thoughts. My sister doesn't play a lot of games, but after she understood what everything was (she thinks 'pizza Hawaii' --as it's called here-- is gross though, *can you believe her?*) she got into it and gave it the verdict of 'fun' and even 'maybe I should play more games' 😁

Other than that I think the graphics glitched mildly a couple of times. Also, it wasn't really clear what was hurting us sometimes, we lost a couple of times without (we thought) a clear reason, but it turned out the tomato's can hurt you even while they're on the ground. This makes sense in retrospect but ... well here's where sound (and a little more explanation in the description usually comes in handy). 🔉

Also an understandable, but somewhat offbeat descision is to lock mouse input for the duration of the game. Doesn't really help when I'm trying to switch between my spreadsheet whit scores and the game 😅

Lastly, I like the inherent wackyness of condiments and ingredients fighing on a pizza!

Starstruck Ducky by HuvaaKoodia 2017-04-28T07:42:26Z ♥ 2

Well, that was amusing 🙂 It may be a good idea to keep track of what's already said, or give each duck a different *pool* (haha) of chit-chat to draw from. Otheriwse everyone keeps failing psychology for the same reason!

Den by La mecanique du plastique 2017-04-28T07:24:53Z ♥ 6

This is amazing 😲 The overall atmosphere is just superb... I really got the feel of being the aggrieved Kaiju in a monster-movie! 🐉

You can get stuck a bit occasionally, both in the tunnels (maybe the hitboxes have too many corners?) and with the last puzzle: **[ spoiler ]** I had the hardest time getting the little humans to drop on the lower platform (and then I forgot I had a scream option and had to do it again). It was really easy to do that on the second playthrough though, even as I did the same actions!

Also, the head can get detached from the body while charging a hit in certain conditions, and at some point this happened: den_screenie.png 😉

Oh, one last (very small) issue: The text says 'clic', but in English, that would be 'click', with a 'k' on the end 🙂

*I think this one's going to get a pretty high rank...*

Space Travel 15 by jk5000 2017-04-27T22:36:31Z ♥ 1

I'll add my voice to those saying that the go/airport buttons would feel better if closer together.

Also, this may just be because I'm tired, but at first it wasn't clear to me why passengers that didn't need to go to the particular airport (UFOport?) you're at wouldn't stay on the craft. Haveing them stay at the airport you just went to *does* give it an additional tactial layer though! 🙂 (I also totally missed that time stops when landed, but that's on me...)

One last quible: You've to click the start-button twice in the beginning.

Sorry for all the negativety, but overall I enjoyed it! 🙂

Diminishing Lands by drazil100 2017-04-27T21:31:45Z ♥ 1

The 'barely hang on to the top of a block' (slightly different than the also present wall-jump) was really a life-saver for me, and somehow made the game feel a lot more polished. Overall experience is very basic, but it all works quite well.

I also (like people above) noticed the blocks from the second-to-next 'quake' showing up, instead of just the next. Maybe it's as intended, but I think it would afford more strategic thinking if they could have different graphics. (Perhaps just even more alpha / background-blend?)

Johi Farm by AVAVT 2017-04-27T21:02:00Z ♥ 3

Most of what I was going to say has already been said far better above 🙂 so I'll just leave you with this: I really quite liked the jump animation, so goofy!

Blomst 🌻 by Ava Skoog 2017-04-27T19:47:31Z ♥ 3

This is so relaxing! Due to various reasons I'm quite tired, and this is just what I needed. Like a miniature holiday on the clicker-like version of SimEarth 😌

A couple of (mostly very minor) quibbles though: The shop doesn't show the habitat for whatever fauna 🌱 you're buying. Maybe that's intetentional, but I would've liked it. Also, whenever you're done with a large menu, you've got to scroll all the way back to *Back*. Another menu peeve is that, when you go back to a more top-level menu, it resets to the first option (causing me to cycle between *Sell* -> inventory empty -> *Back* -> *Sell* -> ... doh! etc.)

Though I sort-of get why the option is there, I still have to ask; why'd I ever want to press 'R' for any plant 😉

(Also emoticon in the title, nice ... I wonder how far we can use MarkDown for titles. Would the checkboxes show up??)

*ETA:* Definitely keep playing until atmosphere completion is > 50% if you want to see the 'good' graphics (not that the first set is bad at all... I guess it's a part of the goal!) I also like that there is a 'keep playing option' after mission end.

Mr-Vpn by tobia88 2017-04-27T17:17:44Z ♥ 2

Inspired by a certain previous winner are we? 😉 Anyway, it's more than different enough to stand on it's own! A nice little adventure, with a twist.

I had some problems though, even in the bug-fixed version (the other one wouldn't show me the way to gmail). Like the time I was able to close the explorer-window while Mr.VPN was still in it. (I tried to reproduce it, but the second time it *did* prevent me from closing the window...)

*Edited To Add:* Oh, just a small tip: Please don't name your zip or executable (only) after the jam. Quite a lot of people do that, and some of us like to download a few games first and then play them... Please use the actual name of the game or even your own!

uP-8: Microprocessor by Spaceman 2017-04-27T16:31:47Z ♥ 1

"We will find our own pitfalls thank you very much..." Wisdom for the ages 😄

Is 'RUN' covered in the manual? Finding out how to make the code, er... run took me longer than the first two levels combined. (But that may just be because I'm very tired right now.)

On the plus side, it's awesome to have an actual Zachlike in the jam, including the requisite 20pg. manual! I think the graphics are awesome as well, please don't be so defensive about it! (Not everyone likes the same styles.)

On the negative side, it becomes pretty clear why Zach-games themself chooses to simplify or gloss over certain aspects of coding or harware. There is a lot of tedium involved if you stick that close to the actual inspiration... At least you can copy the ASM! 😁

Some sound would help as well, with the mood you've got going you wouldn't even need music. Maybe the keypresses of one of those old IBM-keyboards?

One last thing: Re: The FarmVille comment in the manual: C'mon, snark is ok, but just, well, no need to look down on different gaming experiences and tastes y'know? Besides, not everything that looks cute has to be easy; have you heard of, say, ['Jelly no Puzzle'](http://qrostar.skr.jp/index.cgi?page=jelly&lang=en)? I mean: I prefer Zachlikes like this and hard puzzlers above a lot of things 🤓, ... but you don't have to put others down to be great yourself 😎

Anthill Multitask by Asturk 2017-04-27T11:40:53Z ♥ 5

Don't let the graphics or the lack of music* fool you: This is an elegant concept with a goodly ammount of polish when it comes to gameplay. By which I mean a nice and clear tutorial (and actually a tutorial, as in 'interactive') and a relatively gentle ramping of difficulty (aided by the clear indication of which minigame is about to switch 'on' at each stage).

If you could invest some time in music and graphics (or get someone else to do it), maybe you could get some mileage out of a post-compo version.

As an aside: I got 148 on my second try, which already gave me a 'Gold' rank (but I got a bit lucky with the mini-game combinations, I think 😁).

*) As opposed to SFX, which are basic but work.

Angelic Design by Joror 2017-04-27T10:52:56Z ♥ 2

Nice to have some music added... It felt kind of silent in the 'pre-release' version you sent us on monday evening 😄

First of all, mad props to you for codeing an entire 'grand strategy' game in 3 days. Despite that I keep loosing, I do definitely feel at least a small pull to try again!

Haveing played it a third time now, I think it merely 'too hard' as opposed to 'way, way too hard'. I think the main problem is that there are too many catagories; one effect is that it's too easy for a race with say, 'very strong magic' to gain a level in 'pie making' (err, I mean, 'spirit').

Or maybe I just don't place enough of the fantasy races on the map... are the levels tied to the size of their 'nations' as I assumed (may be a wrong assumption)? Hm. That would also answer the question of why you'd need 'curse', and why the growth rate feels sligly too slow to me! Maybe I shall try a fourth or fifth time, after all 😉

I still think that the varois menu's could use some color... The first time I played it, it took me a while to notice 'See Challenges' which players definitely need to click at the end of the game!

Oh, I spotted another typo (a real one this time). The first time you mention 'Chaos' (when the word is emphasised with black lettering), you've spelled it 'Choas' (not a bad name in its own right, though).

I like all of the modifiers on the names. I got Cannibal Halflings that where peaceful. I guess it's just their way of honouring their dead... and I bet those snotty Elfs named them that anyway. Stupid race-ist Elfs... 🙃

Wrong Delivery by g12345 2017-04-27T00:34:25Z ♥ 2

Guess I'll prove I'm not (just) about the ratings 😁

The concept is quite simple, but the controls are fluid and I somehow ended up playing for quite some time, hoping to find another ability (so far I've jump, shoot and double-jump).

Some sound-effects (and music if you've got that down) would improve the overall experience quite a lot. Have you heard of [BFXR](http://www.bfxr.net/)? It can semi-randomly generate sound-fx, which you can than tweak. It's even recomended on an official LD-page somewhere.

Alysson by Jod 2017-04-27T00:10:05Z ♥ 2

I stand by what I said over chat. It's short, but packs quite a punch despite that! Of course I had to play a second time before my 'official' feedback, and that gave me the chance to do some things differently. While it still leads you to the same outcome before a certain choice, the second playthrough, more than the first, gave me the feeling of actually having some control over the character. Even though him not being the player is quite a large part of the point...

The only thing I miss somehow is the time to let some of the choices or impressions 'sink in'. Reading asfter all, takes up a lot less time than writing 😄 Well also some music, or sound of any kind. The upside is that you can just use your own music I guess? 😉

I also found some more typo's then just the 'realizde' one I mentioned earlier. There is a misspelling of favourite in there somewhere and at least another-thing-I-can't-remember-right-now.

Before I close, I'd like to mention that the line 'Singular became pleural.' is brilliant (in context) and works on many levels 😁

One last thing: How'd you like working in Ren'Py? Will you be sticking with it, or is it back to Twine for the next one?