Game and Physics: Water Cat by MoD_Wiz 2025-04-25T23:43:50Z ♥ 1
This is a really well-constructed game! The mechanics are simple but creative, and there were some pretty cool little puzzles. I also like that after you solve the puzzles, the focus on speedrunning adds another layer to replays. It's like two games in one. Love the fake retro console too :)
I thought some of the puzzles were a little basic, even near the end. It makes sense that they shouldn't be too time-consuming, in order to facilitate speedrunning, but I never felt like there were "clever" solutions to any of them - I kind of just threw things onto each button as I needed them, and everything worked out. I don't think you necessarily need any new mechanics to make them more interesting - just try to think of out-of-the-box ways the player could interact with the game systems. It's definitely tricky to design puzzles that are both interesting to solve and able to be done fast, but I'm sure you can do it! (To help with that, I would suggest increasing the speed of changing water levels/floating objects. It's sluggish right now and gets in the way of the speedrunning.)
In general though, this is a really concise package that does a great job at integrating multiple styles of play - that's not too common in jam games, which tend to be one-trick ponies. Nice work!
LD59 — Signal (33)
Signal Slip by Julester 2026-05-09T00:43:14Z ♥ 1
This is a super polished and unique take on a rally racing game, nice work! I liked the combo of low-poly graphics and cool video effects, it created some very interesting and immersive visuals. Nice breakbeats, too! I also liked how each level used the poor signal idea in a different way - slow loss of vision, fixed camera, and the total blackout. It made the game more varied and let you explore your idea more fully.
While I did really like the gameplay conceptually, in practice it can get a little frustrating - driving at high speeds with poor visibility is very hard and I often had to reset a level just because I got lost. I know the challenge of the game is trying to work past the video errors, but I think there are ways you could make the experience more consistent for the player. Maybe give them ways to fend off the poor signal, or get a bit of info about the environment (a radar maybe?) Just an idea. An easier solution which would definitely help would be to make the track visuals more clear - higher contrast between the road and surroundings as well as less clutter around the edges would make it easier to discern what direction you're supposed to be going, especially when you start losing details.
Really nice work! You've really made something brand new out of this genre.
GHOST CHANNEL by Tetracold 2026-05-08T23:56:51Z ♥ 1
This is an incredibly polished game for a jam, I love it! The haunted house theme is great, and the graphics are super charming - they look very Paper Mario to me. I liked the way you explored more of the house as you went, uncovering the story and different fun ghost characters. The evolving music for each colour light was cool as well. The game really takes you on a journey from beginning to end, which is cool to see in a jam (I went and played the post-jam too just so I could see the ending!)
The combat I found a little frustrating. It's just holding a light on the enemy until they die, so there's not a lot of action to it. And you can very easily get trapped in a corner and be unable to escape damage. Health packs are rare, too, so that damage is very punishing. I got all the way to the ending gauntlet and just got overwhelmed, which is when I discovered dying makes you do the whole thing again - and it does feel a bit like busywork the second time. When I died again I really didn't feel like doing _another_ whole playthrough, so I never saw the ending of the story, which is a real shame.
Great work! This is a super-polished, whimsical ghost-hunting romp, and I'm really impressed at the scope of it.
(Also, just a side note for the story - it would be nice to be able to re-read collected pages! I missed one my first playthrough and was disappointed I missed some of the story.)
LoneSignal by MEME4221 2026-05-08T18:15:27Z ♥ 0
This game is so cozy! The hand-drawn graphics are gorgeous - Xiao Shi the robot is super cute, the intro/outro cutscenes and very well done, and the backgrounds looked like paintings. (The autumn level was my favourite!) The story is simple and sweet as well, and the piano soundtrack ties everything together. Even though this is a wasteland, I wanted to spend more time just hanging out there!
I know the focus is on the aesthetic rather than the gameplay, but I still think a little more work on that front could help the game be more engaging. At least one more level would help fill the game out, and some more interesting things to do in those levels would be nice. Collecting the signals in the first level was alright, but the waveform-matching in the second felt a little random. Either a little bit more puzzle-solving, or a little bit more platforming, would help your beautiful art come to life.
Great work! What a nice, relaxing game to play on a cloudy afternoon.
Points by Tesseract 2026-05-07T23:04:06Z ♥ 1
My teammate and I actually DNFed a jam a few years ago where we tried to make something like this! You did a good job with it - I like the elegance & simplicity of the mechanics and presentation. It can get pretty frantic when the trains start piling up, especially when a new train appears from the depot you were just guiding another one to! One thing that might make it a little bit smoother to play would be some clearer visuals on the swapping tracks - it's kind of hard to tell immediately whether the straight or curved one is on top, and it would be nice if you could look at the whole level and clearly see the paths each train will take.
You've made a good start with music, too - it sounds maybe code-generated to me, which is pretty cool. I think you could make the compositional idea work a little better by making it less relentless and choosing a less harsh sound. Let it fade in and out a bit, create a chill ambient vibe. Keep it up, writing game music is super rewarding :)
Overall, great work! There's a nice zen atmosphere to this one.
Aurora 4: Prelude by ghost-in-the-toast 2026-05-07T20:10:22Z ♥ 1
Great entry! I love the demo disc aesthetic, and the drum & bass soundtrack is KILLER. There's no better music to jam out to while shooting spaceships. The 3D buildings whipping past add a great sense of speed which is only helped by those frantic breakbeats. Kudos to the musician, it's amazing work, especially for just one weekend!
The gameplay is pretty standard for a schmup of this style, but it works pretty well! I like the different weapons which add some variety & strategy to the game. Dual wielding is super fun. I did get a little confused by how you pick up weapons - it seems that weapons replace the slot on the side you move into them with, which is kind of odd and means I kept accidentally replacing weapons I wanted to keep. I think you should prioritize filling empty weapon slots when they're available. My weapons also kept swapping between sides when I changed direction, which meant there was no consistency in which button fired which gun. That definitely hurts the strategy aspect of choosing which weapon to use, but it'd be easy to fix!
As other people have said, I also think there's a bit of a difficulty issue. This genre is generally pretty hard, so I don't mind a challenge, but the one-hit kill is brutal, especially because your ship's hitbox is so large. I think letting you take maybe three hits before dying (and maybe even adding some heal pickups?) would let you keep the difficulty without making it frustrating. (Also, just as a side note, I'm not sure there's a point to the lives system - all a game over does is make me press start again on the title.)
Great work! A good schmup is always a blast, and the music was a real highlight.
Digital Squirm Processing by GuyUnger 2026-05-07T07:52:25Z ♥ 2
One of my favourites from the jam - this is so delightful! As an audio nerd myself I loved getting to play with all these effects, and it's cool to engage with audio more visually compared to how many musicians & sound designers do. It's even more fun when that visual is a cute little worm :)
I liked the gameplay a lot! The game manages to be a fun teaching tool about waveforms while also making puzzles out of it. Some of the puzzles could be a little more trial-and-error than real challenges (slide vibrato until it matches, slide distortion until it matches, etc.) but given the educational goal of the game I don't think that's a huge issue. I kind of wanted a final level that included all of the effects, although maybe that would be visually confusing. I bet you could do cool things with other ways of processing audio, too, if you ever wanted to expand this - maybe you'd start working with multiple worms and start dealing with phase and stuff? Not sure. But the game does work well in its current form!
The gameplay was also helped a lot by the sound design, which is just great. The waveform manipulation sounds excellent obviously, but even little things like the buttons and... worm noises?... made everything a lot of fun to interact with. There's very good auditory feedback for everything the player does, which is crucial for any game but especially one about audio like this!
Awesome work! I had a great time with this one.
Fight By Wire by brawnyfrogmouth 2026-05-06T17:41:09Z ♥ 1
I really like the cute hand-drawn graphics, and the combo of a turn-based economy game and a classic Space Invaders-esque top-down shooter is neat. It's a neat mix of strategy and action!
The gameplay didn't quite click for me - I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing a lot of the time. I tried it several times and am still not confident how the enemies are dying. I think you need more visual feedback for the actions you take in the game (SFX would be very helpful as well!)
The mix of turn-based and real-time gameplay also felt awkward. It takes a while to input commands (especially with those kind of ancillary open/close brackets) and the bullets move around so fast it's near impossible to avoid them. If I were you, I would make the bullets move on a grid turn-by-turn just like you do. Some more commands to add more strategy to the "coding" aspect would be nice too!
Nice work overall! It's super cute and the mix of gameplay ideas here has a lot of potential.
Kiipu by Zathnic 2026-05-04T07:30:23Z ♥ 1
This is a pretty interesting little precision platformer! Not something I see in jams too often. I like the way you've placed the levels in a little "world" you explore, and the emergent mechanics that don't get taught all at once are neat too. From the start, that design approach was reminding me a lot of the game Leap Year, and when I learned about the bouncing mechanic it _really_ reminded me of Leap Year. Were you inspired at all by that game? It's excellent and similar in a lot of ways to your own.
I like the mechanics, and especially the way the levels are often just as much puzzles as execution challenges, but I think the platforming gameplay itself could do with some improvements. For one, the bindings are pretty weird (I've never seen S for jump in my life) but you can get used to it. Mainly the mechanics just didn't feel quite right. Wall jumping doesn't feel as tight as it should, and being unable to sit still on a wall makes precise levels a lot harder. Everything is just a bit too loose, if that makes sense - I kept fumbling with buttons after a jump or glide and slipping off a wall, which doesn't feel the best.
The level design also frequently requires awkward jumps around corners that don't feel very intentionally designed, and long stretches of these without checkpoints can get a bit frustrating. I feel that you could maybe have gone a bit further with the exploration aspect. Right now you mostly just move from room to room, but a bit more freedom could be fun! Just a suggestion. I should also mention the music - I like the ambient, floaty nature of it, it fits the gameplay well, though you could maybe have a little less silence in between.
Overall, really unique entry! I enjoyed getting some more challenging platforming in a jam game.
SigRider by LinsCd 2026-05-02T00:24:30Z ♥ 1
This is a really simple, elegant arcade game, I like it! The game feel is surprisingly good for a game controlled by the microphone. I especially like the way the wire bounces in your wake, and the grinding on top of vehicles is super satisfying (not sure if you've played Clustertruck but the sound design & truck hopping really reminded me of that).
In terms of gameplay, the best part is definitely building those grinding combos, but I didn't feel like the level generation gave me many chances to build up long combos - the vehicles always dried up. I wanted more trucks to hop on! I also found myself hesitant to stay in the air long anyway, because it means you can't see the hazards approaching below. This is bad because the mic controls, by nature, have significant input lag, which means you need a lot of lead time to avoid anything. I always ended up fast-falling as soon as I could, which is a shame because mid-air combos are the best part of the game! I don't want to suggest getting rid of the mic controls, since those make the game unique, so perhaps some sort of indicator when hazards appear off-screen could help with that?
Great work! I got into a flow for a while, it's definitely in that addictive Flappy Bird family of games.
lil lighthouse by Boxofcuriosity 2026-04-30T14:36:47Z ♥ 1
What a cute lil lighthouse! I really like the simple artstyle, it's both charming and moody and really makes you feel like you're alone in a huge dark ocean. I like the gameplay loop too, trying to balance efficiently gathering fish with having the tools to defend yourself.
I found the boat pretty frustrating to control - I know that's part of the challenge, but even with an upgraded boat I felt like I was slipping on ice, and that kind of turning makes it annoying when trying to gather tiny little fish in the dark. The very small view radius doesn't help when you're venturing far from the lighthouse. On that note, the time between waves is very tight, and again even with lots of upgrades I often barely made it back in time - which can be a death sentence when the higher health enemies start coming. It felt like I was blindly stabbing out into the dark looking for tiny fish with no chance to make it back before the wave started. I think some tighter boat controls and a bit more leniency there could go a long way (and maybe some sort of radar to help with finding fish?)
Great work, especially as a solo project! The atmosphere and core loop are great, and I think you've got a great foundation here :)
Signal Sweep by Archaeognathus 2026-04-28T17:42:47Z ♥ 1
This is a fun little puzzler! Love the space station vibe, and the graphics are both cute and effective for communicating puzzle mechanics. I always like a laser deflecting puzzle, so it was a good time. The last puzzle was especially clever - realising I had to undo and then redo my own solution to get to the exit was a cool twist.
I think a few mechanics could be improved on - the trash collecting doesn't add all that much right now, other than that sometimes you can mistakenly lock off a piece of trash and have to reset the whole level. The little corners with random stuff in them all to hide a piece of trash just distract from the puzzle. On that note, an undo button is sorely needed! The levels tend to be a bit cluttered with boxes, and it's extremely easy to softlock yourself. Redoing the whole level whenever this happens can be tedious. The addition of an undo feature and tidying up the levels a bit would really help the experience.
On a audio note - while I totally get not have time for it during a solo jam, in my opinion music and SFX should be your top priority if you choose to continue development. SFX are crucial for the feel of a game, and music ties the whole thing together.
Great work!
RAVTZN by F1Krazy 2026-04-26T19:23:05Z ♥ 3
This is a fun little puzzler! Ciphers were a good pick for this theme, and you did a great job wrapping it into a game - the UI is super clean. I'm a sucker for anything with this kind of language decoding angle, so I had a lot of fun! I like the little story developing through the messages too, it adds some depth beyond just decoding Caesar ciphers and the like. And the title reveal at the end was a nice touch.
I think the gameplay could use a bit of work. The real game in my opinion is the Vigenere ciphers - Caesar and Affine just don't provide a lot of gameplay, especially with the neat decoding tools you've built. I know there are strategies to do ciphers like that faster, but it takes like 30 seconds to cycle through all the Affine combos, so there's no point really. The Viginere ciphers, however, are fun - hiding the keys in the messages is a pretty cool way of turning them into puzzles. In order for that to work, though, the messages need to be on screen for more than two seconds! Look away for one second and you've missed them, and there's no way to go back. (That's especially easy to do because when spamming through Affine combinations there's no way to predict when that message will pop up.) I had to replay the whole game twice because I missed a message both times - partially my fault, but it was really frustrating.
This is a very impressive solo project, though! Ciphers are always a lot of fun. With some QoL changes this would be a smoother experience, and I think if you delve further into the story and puzzle aspects (there are some other cool ciphers out there) there's potential for a more involved game here. Great work!
STAY ON AIR by Ethernal Tech 2026-04-26T18:07:21Z ♥ 1
So, first off, amazing presentation. The pixel art is both great-looking and readable, the music is perfect for this kind of game, and the sound design on the waveforms is excellent! (Every channel actually changed what it said audibly! Not 100% about phase though, that's hard to hear unless paired with another waveform.) The levels seem to be randomly generated too, which is very impressive (esp. in terms of the landmasses), although it's possible you pre-made a number of them and just randomly choose, which would also be a lot of work by you. Nice work getting an effective tutorial in during the jam too, that often falls by the wayside!
I didn't find the gameplay super engaging, though. It's just moving sliders until a number gets high. The actual graphics and theme of the game are largely irrelevant. There can be some challenge trying to do them all in the time limit, but it's just a measure of how fast you can move a slider. When I saw the waveform visualisers and audio I thought I'd actually need to look at that and try to solve puzzles with the different parametres, but that never really came into play. The idea of stabilising the signals is great, but I think that process could be more interesting. (Maybe some added gameplay with choosing the directions of signals could be neat too? Maybe you need to redirect signals to different towers throughout the game. Just an idea.)
Nice work! This was a fun puzzly experience with some super clean presentation.
Bee Bee Revolution by Xeltide 2026-04-26T17:50:11Z ♥ 1
This is a really cute game! The bee dances are adorable and I enjoyed exploring your little world. I really like the idea behind the gameplay too - learning dances and repeating them to bees is a fun, video game-y way to direct bees to flowers.
In practice I found it a bit tedious though. Even with your bee speed upgrade, the game is pretty slow, and there really isn't much gameplay other than flying out, memorising some button combos, and flying back. I guess there's room for skill in how many dances you can comfortably memorise, but it still wasn't super engaging. (By the way, could I have repeated flowers? I kind of assumed not.) I think some more complexity with how you manage your bees could help out. Maybe there are other tasks bees have to complete to keep up the hive, so you have to manage their time between those and pollinating flowers. Some more interest in the part where you fly way out to flowers could be nice too.
Overall, really nice work! I just love the idea of dancing bees. With some more layers of gameplay I think this could be a really fun tycoon-esque game.
Bons Baisers de Roquebrise by Kerdelos 2026-04-25T21:40:47Z ♥ 6
This was a really interesting jam game! I like the focus on narrative, and the lighthouse aesthetic is nice. Lovely watercolour visuals and chill beachy radio tunes. The back-and-forth between the dialogue segments in the day and the gameplay at night struck a good balance between chill vibes and tension. The writing was good too - each character had a unique voice, and you built the mystery well. Really tested my French knowledge, haha
I do think you could improve a few things. The ship-redirecting gameplay is a good idea (and the sync between the window and console views is super impressive!) but I found it a bit off in practice. The mechanics took a bit to grasp at first - from what I gather ships can navigate on their own in the light, but otherwise I have to direct them? Having to enter the ship codes is clunky and I often lost just because I fumbled with the dials. I was never fully clear what the win/lose conditions were - I assumed ships had to reach some set destination, but you could actually just send obstructing ships out into the blue and the game counted it as a win. The game also never really accelerated in difficulty - in fact, the final level (which was supposedly set in a hurricane) only had two ships and was easier than one of the previous ones.
The story also lacked a bit of payoff, I think. The mystery was cool with the ghost ships and crackly messages, and I liked the dilemma of whether to help this mysterious voice - but the game doesn't give you a choice, you have to help it. Then when you do the game just ends? No wrap-up for the missing teenagers, or radio pseudoscience, or that corporate guy who joined our channel. I felt like there should have been some ramifications for helping the AI, but there weren't. I'm curious if there was more of an ending that got cut during the jam.
Very nice work overall! It was fun to play something more story-based for a change.
What's Wrong With My Keyboard? by Ch1k0_9kA 2026-04-24T19:59:53Z ♥ 2
I love the old PC vibe, it feels so cozy and warm! Lovely art style and fuzzy bitcrushed lo-fi keys in the music. It's a clever little puzzle platformer too, with some laser deflecting puzzles that reminded me a little of Portal for some reason. I like that you justified the puzzles through the broken keyboard theme as well.
I enjoyed the little video game word puzzles as they gave context to the levels (even though they weren't really puzzles themselves). I did find myself wishing you did more with them than just being the order you send the lasers in. Maybe the levels are themed somehow after each game, or maybe you solve the word puzzles inside the level rather than beforehand? I also thought the puzzle designs were a bit inconsistent. Some of the reflecting box ones were great (the one with three columns of boxes was my favourite) but some others were too simple (the save block one at the end was barely a puzzle). I found myself wanting a bit more challenge, but maybe you could add that with more levels in the future. The game feels like it ends after the tutorial right now!
On a mechanical note, the laser reflecting is a great mechanic, and I like how you have to hit each block in a certain order. I also appreciated the generous undo feature, since it meant I didn't have to redo levels if I hit a wrong key. In my opinion, getting the signal from the USB at the start of each level and putting it into the first block was an unnecessary step - it's not really part of the puzzle, but it's an extra mechanic in the environment that confused me a little at first.
Really nice job! I feel like I've been transported to the 90s.
Mom, I'm In Space - MIIS by Eden_Zorro 2026-04-24T16:58:00Z ♥ 1
I really love the space graphics and the humourous dialogue! The exploration is really well-done too, it was always fun to stumble across new things in the world.
The asteroid-destroying part I found pretty frustrating, though. They come fast out of nowhere when you're just trying to get around or complete a task, and they do tons of damage. You can't freely aim your gun (mouse/right stick aiming would be super helpful), so if they're above or below you you're screwed. Dying just makes you redo everything all over again, which just makes me feel unmotivated. Plus, half the time they don't even drop crystals, and they barely ever drop med packs, meaning you havce to shoot dozens and dozens of the things to get anywhere. I managed to find one of the two story objectives, but after dying three times late in the game I gave up on finding the other one, which is a real shame because I didn't get to see the ending!
I really like the space environment though! I think a cleaning-up of and de-emphasis on the junk shooting mechanic could really help the game. As it stands it felt a little bit like busywork when I really wanted to explore.
What's Up? UFO! by picross 2026-04-24T01:56:41Z ♥ 4
Wow, what an incredible jam game. It feels like a polished release. The 3D art is really well done, I love the music and sound design on all the aliens, and the calming, spacey atmosphere of the planet is immaculate. It's enjoyable just to explore the environment you've put together. Really impressive job.
I like the gameplay loop too - it's really satisfying to suck up bigger and bigger aliens throughout the game. (I was hoping for more than there were, but it's a jam so I get it.) It creates a nice sense of progression. On that front, I did find it odd that aliens typically spawned only around my base, leaving the rest of the planet mostly empty. My main critique, though, is that the game lacked friction. I'm not saying you need action or enemies or anything, it's a cozy farming game basically, but there really wasn't anything standing in my way as a player. (There was one bit where an asteroid or something appeared and I had to press a button to stop it, but that doesn't really count.) I just sucked up defenceless aliens in order to increase my ability to suck up more of them. Some sort of challenge or strategy around how you deal with later-game aliens might help keep the player engaged. The battery hunting was pretty simplistic too, and I bet you could do some more with that.
Really wonderful work, though. I played through the whole thing and it was a very chill experience.
Sigul Signal by Bloodbane 2026-04-24T00:33:29Z ♥ 1
I really liked the retro arcade presentation! The title screen and graphics are really fun, and it definitely felt like playing on an old cabinet or something.
The actual game, though, I didn't get a lot out of. It's pretty basic gameplay, and the one unique mechanic (the lures) is cool and helps with crowd control, but doesn't amount to all that much. The movement is also a bit clunky, slowing you down whenever you shoot or land from a jump. I was glad for the controller support because D-pad really fit the retro vibe, but it was awkward to have to manually redo all the binds to make that work.
I love the aesthetic though! Keep it up :)
PINGRIMAGE_ by Prismapunch 2026-04-23T22:35:58Z ♥ 2
What a cute little puzzler! I love the clean aesthetics and the adorable little robot noises. Great use of the theme too to create spatial puzzles!
I did find a lot of puzzles were fairly trivial, just making chains of robots - I think they'd be more interesting if you focused on restricting the environment and number of tools, rather than putting a dozen robots in a big field, which just lets the player do whatever. I also don't fully get the point of the 3 signal limit - all it does is make me have to redo the whole thing if I misalign the robots slightly. (Which is easy to do - a lot of levels require positioning the robots right at the edge of their range, which can be a little frustrating. I wonder if it would be more streamlined if you placed them on a grid?)
Great job overall! I loved the chill sci-fi vibe, and there are some good mechanical foundations here.
(By the way - your UI doesn't resize when you fullscreen the game, making it very tiny and hard to read. Might be worth a fix!)
For Boom The Bell Tolls by pickens-inc 2026-04-23T21:44:26Z ♥ 1
The voice acting is such a fun surprise! I like the funny story and all the different boss characters are great. I like how their personalities are reflected in their fighting styles.
The combat itself didn't really land for me, though. I like the idea of playing melodies to command the ship, but it gets really tedious to walk back and forth inputting what amounts to very slow button combos. Plus, because the bosses are so unpredictable and your reaction time is so slow, there's really no way to fight effectively. All I could really do was run back and forth spamming triple attack and heal as much as I could until I died on the third boss. There wasn't any strategy to it and it didn't feel as intense as a battle should.
I think this could work better if there was more interest to the melodies - maybe lean into the musical aspect, and have you respond to enemies' melodies? I'm not sure, but it feels like there's something there. The game would also work a lot better without the 3D movement - just put everything on one screen. It would make it a lot less laborious.
Love the characters and story though! That poor cat :( Just needs some more interesting combat to go along with it.
(Side note - the third attack command, which I assume is shield-piercing, never worked for me.)
Vice Signalling by Dogshroom 2026-04-23T19:48:00Z ♥ 5
Ooh, another mystery game! This is super stylish, and the dialogue is well-written & full of character. It's all full of intrigue and everyone has their own voice - plus, everyone's making hand signals on top of it all! Great humour too (*Stulti et Avari* - hilarious). I love the inclusion of a language-deciphering mechanic - I recently played Tunic and Chants of Sennarr and loved that aspect in both. The way signals combine with the words people are saying makes for some interesting deduction.
My main critique is that I didn't get to do a lot of that deduction. Characters are constantly making signals, but because the dialogue proceeds automatically, I have no time to decipher most of them. While I can enter signals into the bottom to figure out what they mean, doing that makes me miss parts of the scene - and replaying the scene to deal with that takes forever. That meant I missed a lot of the depth you put into the character writing. I know I could've paused more, but doing that every half-second gets tedious. The ability to rewind line-by-line (and maybe advance dialogue with a button-press) would allow me to dive into the hidden signals more.
I also didn't get a chance to use much of the language, because I could only reply with one symbol. That's a shame, because it looked like there was some real complexity to it! (I know this is probably because writing a dozen versions of each exchange isn't feasible for a jam, but I still wish I could've experimented more.) The game didn't let me try to solve the mystery, either - I was suspecting Stultus Frivolus because he kept disagreeing with defeatist statements about the emperor (or at least "begrudgingly agreeing"), but at the end my character accused Capricious without my input. I guess I was wrong, but I would've liked the chance to choose who to execute myself!
Overall, the game looks and sounds great, and the narrative & writing are really, really well done. I got really into the mystery and the social/language deduction aspect. I think the main point of improvement would be giving the player more time to think during scenes, and giving them agency in the puzzle/mystery aspects. Awesome work, guys!
a Saunter by kukaracila215 2026-04-23T18:27:05Z ♥ 3
First off, I very rarely see large explorable worlds like this in game jams, so kudos for that! I like the sound design too - the whole game is very relaxing.
To be honest though, there's not really much of a game. The world is nearly entirely empty and I have no ways of interacting with it is a player. Now, games don't have to have action gameplay to be fun. They can be puzzle-based, or even just be about vibes like this. There are lots of popular games out there where you basically just walk around (I'm thinking Journey for some reason).
I think you could make this kind of game work by either adding some level of narrative, or even just more fun secrets to find around the game. There were a few here - for example, I thought the "I dare you to jump" sign was funny. Except, when I actually did jump, nothing happened (I didn't even drown, I could just walk on the water). You need more interesting things to find in the world, and some way for the player to *affect* those things, because otherwise it feels very sterile. Maybe there are people you can actually talk to, and they need your help with something. Maybe there are items to hunt for. Maybe something's going on in that cabin other than just a meme. Lots of possibilities!
Nice atmosphere though. I think you have a good start here :)
Stargazer by plutonicrock 2026-04-23T17:29:04Z ♥ 2
I love the story in this one, and the art is genuinely stunning. Incredible work. It's both beautiful and something I've never seen before, especially in a game jam. I also love the way you used music and sound as part of the design.
Unfortunately I really don't understand how to play. I found a star with the telescope, but I can't figure out any sort of pattern to how the dials affect the frequency. By fiddling randomly with them (which takes a while because you have to spam-click), I managed to make the static go away a few times, but pressing Space did nothing but send a little ping sound. A moment later the static came back and I had to find a brand new dial combination. So I never managed to find any verses or build a poem, which sounded really cool.
If you have any guidance on how to play, I'd be glad to give the game another go :)
Cipher Tower by Teaminister 2026-04-23T00:06:02Z ♥ 1
I really, really love the scrapbook look of this game, and the gameplay sounds really cool and Papers Please-esque, but even after reading the whole description I can't figure out how to play :( I understand what I'm *supposed* to be doing, but I just can't seem to interact with anything. The first briefing letter I only got past by accidentally dragging it into the garbage can, and the second one I got (a Caesar-encoded letter about a pig) I managed to load into the computer, but that was about it. Nothing else on the screen seemed to react to my mouse, even stuff mentioned in the description. I couldn't use the paper buttons, the keyboard, the pigeon, nothing.
I'm going to hold off rating this for now, but if the game does in fact work and I'm just missing something, I'd be glad to give it another go! I was playing the web build on the LDJam site - not sure if there's another somewhere else.
(From a design perspective - assuming everything is working, it might be a good idea to make things animate a little when you mouse over them. It feels like pixel hunting right now and I genuinely don't understand what I'm doing wrong.)
Guiding Signal by Kevin Meissner 2026-04-22T22:04:20Z ♥ 3
Such a great vibe! Great use of 3D for the ocean environment, and the ambient SFX are lovely. It was a really relaxing environment to solve puzzles in. I liked the signal mechanic too! It made for some interesting routing puzzles, especially when different directions overlap.
I did find a few levels a bit directionless, especially the larger ones. The money mechanic is very cool in that it makes you add detours to your route, but because you keep the money after ships crash it means you can just send them into a market for a while, build up a bunch of money, then delete that route and finish the level, which isn't very satisfying. I also found myself wanting a bit more nuance in the ship movement - right now the signal towers force them into cardinal directions even if the ships barely touch them, but I feel like the ships should maintain whatever angle they had coming out of the signal. That would allow for more interesting routing!
Overall, super cozy spatial puzzler. I liked it a lot.
Signal Garden by kintsugi 2026-04-22T21:03:07Z ♥ 1
It's cool to see a really technical puzzle game like this in a game jam!
Unfortunately I couldn't really figure out how the game worked. I can tell that I'm adding and subtracting numbers with the plants (so it's about using the space effectively to get the right frequency/power), but how exactly all the plants worked and how the waves propagated never really made sense to me. I think a game like this really needs a clearer tutorial. I also think the oxygen timer hurts the gameplay. It's really tight and only serves to stress you out while you're trying to solve the puzzle. I didn't have enough time to figure all the mechanics out.
Nice job overall! I think you should keep working on this after the jam and see how you could refine it.
Delayon by Stormdrill 2026-04-22T18:35:59Z ♥ 1
I love the cool, neon, sci-fi vibe in this one! I also liked the variety of different ways you used the signal speed gimmick. I think this is worth a post-jam update to explore these mechanics further (the stealth thing only appeared once, for example) - the game felt a bit like it ended after the tutorial. I did appreciate the checkpoints, since these sorts of timing puzzles can be pretty trial-and-error.
My main piece of advice would be that I think you could improve the game feel. Everything moves a bit slow and slippery, there aren't any sound effects, and there's not a lot of feedback from the game as to what you're doing. It seemed to me the signal moved slower depending on which objects I clicked, but there wasn't any visual in game that suggested that. With some snappier movement, strong SFX, and more clarity in the mechanics, I bet this game could really stand out. Nice work!
(By the way - I was able to cheese the final puzzle by sneaking past the edge of the gate hitbox. Might be worth a fix post-jam!)
Tiny Signal Lost by Strega 2026-04-22T04:56:59Z ♥ 3
What a cute little puzzle-platformer! I love the hand-drawn look and the story and NPCs were a lot of fun. (That ending was so heart-warming!)
At first I wasn't sold on the depth of the puzzle mechanic, but once you added the different signal strengths the puzzles became really interesting. The final level playing with the timing of all of them was super neat! The platforming aspect could be tightened up a bit though - the player character is pretty slippery, which hurts when you're trying to do things fast and die in one hit.
(By the way - the SFX are very, very loud, and I had to turn them down nearly all the way to be able to play the music at a reasonable volume. I might change that post-jam!)
Ultra Jammed by Jag 2026-04-22T03:01:41Z ♥ 1
I love how cute and cozy this game feels! It's really fun exploring the town and bowling over all the physics objects and people. I like the World Cup theme too, and the frantic Overcooked-esque gameplay is a good fit.
I think it maybe needed a little more depth somewhere - fixing the signals was nothing more than pressing a button for a few seconds. I also think the movement could be a bit more satisfying - the dash seemed to kill my momentum more often than not, and I really wanted to zoom around and knock stuff over!
Overall, great job!
Petalgrams by chelC 2026-04-22T01:31:16Z ♥ 0
The mixed media aesthetic is such a cool idea! The whole game is so cute and it really made me care about the plights of these poor bugs. It felt like playing with toys :)
I didn't quite get the gameplay - the bugs never gave any feedback on why they liked/didn't like my answers, and it seemed like there was a lot of ambiguity. (Is the non-coloured text important? Why do some emotions share colours? How do I decide how many flowers to put in? How is the game scored? etc.) It didn't help that during scoring, the description didn't always seem to match what the hint book said about the flowers.
Overall though, I do like the idea of a puzzle game where you have to deduce emotions from dialogue, and it just needed a bit more clarity. Plus, the visuals are extremely well-done. Congrats!
BounSynth by CptNero 2026-04-21T19:41:58Z ♥ 2
I love synthesizers, so getting to tinker with one while playing a game was pretty neat! I loved how the song built throughout the game and evolved with my actions. I did find that the actual moment-to-moment gameplay was a bit slow-paced and fiddly - it's mostly just turning dials at the right points, but it was really easy to take a second too long and bounce into a pit. Some more interesting mechanics for the synth dials could also add a lot!
(Also, on a music note - I might suggest not using gain as one of the dials. It meant I had to keep turning off cool parts of the music in order to play, but I wanted to hear the whole song you'd built up!)
Signal's Shift by Snowdrama 2026-04-21T06:48:17Z ♥ 2
I love the very visual take on the theme! The waveforms look great and are fun to tinker with, and it's satisfying when you finally manage to make them click.
It did feel like a little trial-and-error though - I understand vaguely how waveforms sum together, but not well enough to do on the fly in a puzzle game. I think if you had some more puzzles I would've been able to figure it out. I also didn't feel like the platformer part of the game added very much - it was never very challenging, and kind of just ended up as a delay between puzzles.
Great work overall!