SadColor

Revenge of the Samurai by Kalkatos 2017-12-12T19:36:24Z

Neat-o aesthetic. Very short, though.

Clicking to attack was finnicky. You could click past the enemy because they started advancing toward you, and you wouldn't attack even though you should have.

I think if you had it so you aimed with the mouse and clicked to attack when you were still, it would prevent that. It would also let you have scenarios where multiple enemies were advancing on you and you'd have to try to fend them all off, which I think connects to the theme a little more strongly. As it is right now, the connection to the theme is rather weak because there isn't enough gameplay or story to really reflect it. Of course, if you went back and added more, it could work just fine.

Also, when walking up the hallway to the final room, your character can auto-target an enemy from the final room even though there's an enemy much closer standing before the doorway. It doesn't matter from a practical standpoint as attacking the enemy still works as expected, but it can throw someone off.

Avoider by Linus 2017-12-12T20:04:32Z

What a neat concept! It got really annoying to play though, because certain movements or key presses would make the camera rapidly shift and disorient me, which made the levels take a lot longer to complete than it really should have. That happened on both versions. Maybe having the camera be independent of movement or just completely still would have been OK.

Pico Golf by Too 2017-12-19T07:53:24Z

The shooting would've been better like a regular golf game (press once to start the strength meter, then again to shoot), because waiting around was a little tedious. Otherwise, cool little game!

Somehow I one time hit a wall at an angle that made me completely reverse direction instead of just bouncing like normal, might be related to the same glitch where you can get stuck in out of bounds. Also, when you go out of bounds you can still shoot the ball before it teleports you back to the start and it raises your score.

Tail by conk 2017-12-18T06:45:27Z

I feel kinda bad because I didn't play that long...

The audio and visuals were definitely great and set a mood. Like a... calm, flow-y... mood. Look, I'm not good at describing things.

I thought the movement was nice but also frustrating. The momentum of your character didn't seem quite right (at least to me). I'm not sure how to explain it, sorry. I think it might be that you don't have like a real turning radius? Like, if you try to move from up to right to down, if you move too fast, you will just kinda... slow down... while you turn around... instead of naturally curving to down and maintaining speed.

Also, the way you rebound off of walls was rather annoying. If you hit a wall head on, it makes sense to completely turn around, but 99% of the time I ran into a wall, I was going almost parallel, but then it flips me 180 degrees! And then I probably run into another wall or two because of how the turning works and I'm not expecting to be suddenly going the opposite direction. Also related is that I think the hitbox for colliding with walls is a little too big; it doesn't really feel like you were actually touching the wall when you bounce off it sometimes.

I think the movement style is also at odds with the shooting, at least currently. Maybe if there was a bit of autoaim, or you just had a bigger bullet, or if you could aim with the mouse instead of having a pretend-second joystick with the arrow keys, it would work better.

Takomakase by Zambini 2017-12-18T16:29:53Z

I like the concept, but it was a little annoying. The difficulty should be separate from the number of tentacles you have, right now there isn't really any reason to try to get used to more than 2 tentacles because the game doesn't get any harder if you keep messing up.

There should be a different way to fail than just pressing the wrong key. I found it really easy to immediately level down as soon as you get extra tentacles because they just appear and there's no pause or anything to indicate that to you. It was also really easy to try to press a key during a time when you can press two keys for one sushi, or right when one goes off the screen, but press it just barely too late and it penalizes you. The conveyer belt shouldn't go off the screen until the actual end (at least in my opinion).

Maybe if you had to track which sushi you already fully prepared, it could work as the gameplay challenge. Like, you would have to prep+cut+plate one, and then let it go off the end. But if you left it underprepared or you tried to press the key for it again when it was complete, you would lose a life. Or if you pressed an incorrect key, one of your tentacles would be unable to do anything for a second instead of just losing the extra ones. Or both.

Happy Bot Mess by meursault 2017-12-04T23:48:04Z

I really liked it! It's good for the limited time.

The only thing I thought was weird is that doing an action also uses up your movement. I can't remember if it's usual for doing an action to end your turn completely in other turn-based strategy games since I don't really play them.

For some reason, a couple of times when I got a game over the game didn't end and the AI would move for a few turns, and then the game would crash. Then I just went and checked again and it went to a game over screen like it's supposed to. Weird.

Tentagraba by Huitre 2017-12-05T04:19:53Z

Adorable little game!

Though it quickly becomes a fight against your keyboard matrix if you don't have a high rollover keyboard... I can't really fault the game for that though.

The lost strawberry by egordorichev 2017-12-08T11:46:17Z

Too frustrating to be very fun.

I think the biggest flaw is the graphic design. An extra color would be really nice. You only have two colors, but even with just two colors there is seemingly no consistent color design. Platforms, items, enemies, hazards, foreground and background elements all use both colors in the palette. Compare to something like Downwell, where the player, level, and miscellaneous objects are completely white, enemies you can stomp on are white with red tint, and enemies and hazards that cannot be hurt by stomping on them are fully red and filled in. This lets you instantly understand what obstacles are coming your way.

The next problem is with the way the theme is implemented. I think it works well enough, but with how much your view is obscured, it makes going through levels a matter of trial-and-error. I think it's at odds with the fast-paced mechanics of the game. I'm not sure if there is a good way to fix this with this concept, this may just be a thing that will bother some people more than others.

The third thing is the design of the levels. Most of them are okay, but there are some that start you off on a disappearing platform or immediately next to an enemy which can lead to some cheap deaths when you're trying to just look at the level for a second (which is made harder by the lack of consistent color design). Not only that, but having to make blind jumps to invisible platforms is really annoying. They could at least pop up occasionally so it's not completely trial-and-error... Finally, the exit of the level is somewhat unclear. You go off usually the top end of the screen, but sometimes the sides. Either way, there are times when there are no walls despite the fact that you can't actually exit the level through that way.

The fourth thing is with the general game feel. It's nice and fast most of the time, but maybe a little *too* fast. Springs and dashes launch you instantly at a high speed, which can be difficult to track due to the low resolution and obstruction of your view. This problem also happens when climbing ropes. Your momentum is conserved when you hit a rope, whether or not you are holding up or down to climb, so there's no real indication that you even grabbed a rope, not even an audio cue. Your sprite also doesn't change on the rope unless you are not moving horizontally. It interacts weirdly with your momentum and makes the climbing feel... bad.

The fifth and final problem I had was the lack of in-game explanation. This is rather minor, as you could just read the game description on this page, but the description is pretty lengthy. This is evident right on the first level, where you are told that you can press Z to jump, but not that you can climb, or that the thing hanging from the platform is a rope that you can climb! Then, in the next level, you are told "X to dash". This one might be a language thing, or maybe trying to be too brief in your description, but most people would associate a dash with something that moves horizontally. However, this "dash" only boosts you upwards, and isn't aimable horizontally at all, so you might as well just call it a double jump. Two other things with the dash that you aren't really told is that you lose it once you land on the ground, and that collecting one will destroy the enemies.

Sorry to be so harsh on your game, it's clear you put a lot of effort in it, but it didn't work out for me.

Duck Guardian by mahalis 2017-12-05T05:45:40Z

I love it!! Ridiculously cute.

...I wish I had more to say but it's pretty much perfect. I did end up playing as a katamari of ducks like the person above me though.

Adventures of Sir Eek O'Nommie And The Invisible Hand Of The Market by KafkaLovesYouy 2017-12-12T18:22:37Z

I'm also having the "repeat the same level over and over" problem, so I can't assess the game fully. But it has a nice idea.

I only had a couple small issues. One is that the camera doesn't stay at a constant position relative to your character, so it can be annoying to try to throw a coin while jumping. The other is that the walljump should maybe only happen while you are holding towards the wall you want to jump off (like Megaman X). There were a few times when I was just trying to double jump up something but because I was too close to the wall, it would wall jump on my second jump.

Edit: the thing with the camera would probably be fine if you could see where your cursor is, but with just the arrow it's a bit strange.

Cybercage Battleground by makiki99 2017-12-18T04:18:30Z

Fun, simple game!

Someone else said this, but I think if you had the ammo be a meter instead of/in addition to health, it would have been easier to track your resources. Other than that, it was solid.

Super Ploogy Rescue by 100th_Coin 2017-12-12T18:43:41Z

Nice! The control of your character was kinda slippery and floaty, but it didn't really matter since you couldn't be harmed.

Would've been nice to have like a counter of how many Ploogies entered the safety box, since sometimes they can jump really far back for no reason and you'll miss a couple when you thought you had 'em all. And sometimes one will jump really far back into an obstacle you just got past, but you have a lot of leeway in regards to lost Ploogies so it doesn't matter that much.

SNEK by weaselzone 2017-12-04T17:22:00Z

I had a bit of fun with it. The way the snake worked as you got longer was a little weird but seemed like it was just part of the challenge. Well, maybe until too much of your snake is stuck and then it flips you over and goes crazy.

Fear Of The Future by PUR3 2017-12-19T04:42:52Z

I think if there was some sort of actual platforming challenge, you could make the character aging significant by changing how the person controls, which would contribute to the theme. But I think as it is right now, you could have just made it like a text game and it wouldn't have really made a difference. As in, there isn't any real meaning behind the mechanics that you chose... It's just kind of tedious to walk down each path, and they are all functionally identical with some different text. The mood you created is very effective, though.

Super Goop! by Be3n2 2017-12-18T16:48:17Z

Good job! The idea is interesting, but isn't fully executed, though there's only five levels so I can't really blame you. It is a little bad that the last level doesn't require any goop (is there even enough to lose?) and is kind of a leap of faith, but only since the camera is so high up compared to your character.

A path to follow by Xephrys 2017-12-12T20:11:22Z

The art style is good, but the actual animation is pretty wonky...

The gameplay is pretty underwhelming too, there's no real satisfaction or challenge to combat or non-combat, and the ending doesn't really change either way.

Just one more level by OnlySimple 2017-12-12T20:18:12Z

OK little game conceptt.

It would be nice with more indication of what chests actually did, or if there's a reason to fight the enemies at all? The controls for aiming and shooting were really delayed, too, which made it annoying to fight.

Imbalanced by Lawrence 2017-12-05T04:40:10Z

Very neat little game!

Like others have said, a way to pan the screen without moving the mouse to the edge of the screen would have been nice. Same for being able to use the powers without clicking the bar at the bottom.

Sometimes the lightning strike seems to affect the animals not at all, or delayed, or not the right enemies. A little radius for it would have been good.

Frank's escape by Nyri0 2017-12-12T18:52:50Z

The building could've been a bit bigger compared to Frank, I kept trying to zoom out...

I would have said that the text prompts maybe could ruin some puzzles since they only showed up if you have the right item, but there's only the one thing, so...

Neat idea, maybe you can do more in the future (if you want to). Like if you have a certain amount of time to try to block off entryways, then when the time is over you have to escape and more or less people are in the building while you're trying to escape. I dunno.

Red eats Yellow! by Xynal 2017-12-04T17:38:13Z

I think it's an interesting concept, since the longer you take to get through the maze makes it harder to evaluate what path to take.

It could have had an occasional blue dot that would set the zoom level back some. Right now, finding the stairs is basically 100% luck instead of like 50% luck or something, if that makes sense. Like, even if you don't ever hit a dead end you could still not find the stairs before game over on the first map. I did find it a couple of times though.

The walls should have been a different color or shade of grey than the floor. It makes it harder to recognize the difference between walls and the floor when you try to think fast.

Treasure Balloon by Relsqui 2017-12-12T19:49:44Z

I like it. Like everyone else has said, the choppy controls are pretty poopy. Also would have been interesting if having more loot affected your momentum when trying to avoid monsters :o

Also, was a little weird that you drop loot near the right end of your balloon rather than from the center, but that's really minor. And I guess it's intentional (actually, it's demonstrated in one of the GIFs! oops) that you can escape being grabbed since you don't lose all your loot immediately, but it's something I wouldn't expect.

Wildest West by Shelvid 2017-12-18T05:26:02Z

I think it's fun? Honestly not sure. I think it was fun mechanically but just annoying bosses, maybe. I managed to beat the first boss after a bit, but I didn't have much patience for the second one.

I think the difficulty of the boss is too dependent on the fact that it can teleport. Sometimes the boss teleports very often, sometimes they will walk for a long time. Sometimes, the way they teleport seemingly chases you down, making it difficult to shoot at all or even dodge because the boss is so close. Sometimes, the boss just teleports on top of you and shoots you immediately!! Grr.

It would have been better if the boss actually had a roll animation, or if they would roll out of the way of direct shots to force you to make dangerous ricochet shots. As it stands now, you don't really have an incentive to try to make those shots because the boss might just teleport out of the way! So 90% of the danger is the enemies' shots. I don't think you can have more than 3 shots on the screen at once, so you aren't much of a danger to yourself.

The controls of the game are a little weird. I'm fine with the way that it's entirely controlled by the mouse, but the collision is definitely a little off (especially rolling along fences) and your aim seems to be not quite where your mouse cursor is. Another issue is that if you try to fire right after rolling, you'll instead fire the direction you were facing while you were rolling, which makes the aiming feel more unresponsive than it actually is.

That's the major stuff, here are some minor points.

You can fire a shot and then immediately roll into it and damage yourself, which maybe shouldn't be possible? Like, maybe if the bullets were faster. Though the game might get pretty crazy then.

Maybe it's just me, but it took me a few rounds to notice that my shots bounced off the boss. I just didn't expect it since if any shot hits me, it disappears.

Separate SFX for you being hurt and the boss being hurt would be nice. Sometimes I wouldn't know who got hurt.

The bosses have 1 or 2 more HP than it actually displays at first. Like, the first boss has 10HP, but the first time you hit it, it will still say 10HP. But then the next times the counter will go down like normal. I just thought the collision was just bugged the first few times I noticed it, but it's definitely the case that bosses have more health.

But there's a really cool idea behind this game. Also, if you keep developing this, definitely add a multiplayer feature if you can! That would be siiiiiick.

Greed Mania by pcmxms 2017-12-04T20:07:03Z

Simple, fun game.

Would be nice if the enemies couldn't spawn right on top of you, but it doesn't happen very often.

The sound is good and fits the aesthetic but it was really loud when I started the game ;-;

I do wonder if it would have been good for all the collectibles to be one color, and then each of the enemy gangs was a different color?

Greed Mania by pcmxms 2017-12-04T23:14:24Z

@pcmxms Oops, I was on an older version.

The enemy colors isn't much of a major thing, just an idea. I think it could make it easier to pick out the different kinds of enemies when there are a lot of them on the screen & notice which type disappears when you pick up the kill item. It still makes sense with all of them being the same color so it doesn't matter either way.

Avoid the big red lady, OTOH she poops coins by Aarre Entertainment 2017-12-12T19:19:34Z

Interesting aesthetic and idea.

The light pillars from the coins could stand to be a lot more visible. Starting about 6 coins in, I had to actively search for the coin and red lady, which kind of hurt the tension. One time I was just running around fully lit for a solid minute or two until I spotted the red lady. Maybe if the area was more confined, it would be good.

Some camera control would be nice, too. The way it interacts with the movement is odd. You tap A or D, then the camera will rotate slightly, pause a sec, then rotate more to reach the direction you're actually facing. It makes it hard to scout the area and keep track of the red lady. I might know where she is at one point, but then I run out and grab a coin, and she's nowhere to be found (and neither is the coin)! Additionally, holding S will just make you run in a circle because the camera tries to correct to face behind you constantly.

Donuts!! by SadColor 2017-12-18T00:03:21Z

@linus It's donuts because the character is actually named Donut Vendor! Well, maybe that's not his actual name but I haven't decided one if he does. He does donuts!

Think I'll make a post-jam version 'cause that's what all the cool kids do. Drop really shoulda been down+release, for one thing... Then I can try to rebalance the gameplay some, it's very difficult as it is. I might also have a mode that's just juggling the donuts, since that was the original idea I had without the puzzle mechanic.

Donuts!! by SadColor 2017-12-18T15:22:15Z

@navot I had A/S in addition to Z/X because a couple of my friends who were playing it ran into keyboard rollover issues with Z/X. I guess it could help with some alternate keyboard layouts, but the real solution for that would be rebindable keys which I didn't have time for.

I can see what you mean with the A/D thing, but since I don't have WASD movement I figured it's just like having B and A buttons next to each other, if that makes sense. I thought it would be kind of weird to have your fingers on A and D if you don't have to use W or S.

Vertical Screw Up by Scott R Howell 2017-12-04T18:04:58Z

I like the idea.

It's fun at first whenever you are trying to get certain power-ups. However, a good bit before the "soft fail" state, you can kinda just sit in the middle and only hold space, which is boring. I think maybe if the medals did more than obscure your view, like spawn in a random spot and obstruct your motion or bullets, it might help with that. For that specific idea, it would also help with enemies feeling more dangerous if you could die from touching them.

I kinda liked that if you got enough spread, the bullets would start to circle around you. Too bad you can't move vertically though.