StraightUpGruntled

Selective Drilling by Xwilarg 2025-04-07T19:24:48Z

This is a cool concept! I really like the diving down and coming back up to spend your coin on things! I have a couple of things of feedback for the game, and I hope it can help if you decide to work on it more:

-The drill overheat mechanic is tricky, since the player has nothing they can do while they wait for it to cool down. Makes fighting enemies hard, as well as when you are mining you just have to wait. Possible ideas could be to have drills have durability and you have to buy new ones, or the overheat cool down could be quicker, or maybe the player could have a shield bubble while their drill is cooling down. Also I think maybe the overheat sprite for the drill could pops out more for visual clarity. -Idea for the Overheat: Maybe drilling takes more time per block, but the overheat charges up if you drill, and if you stop drilling, it will start cooling. But if the overheat meter reaches too high, then you have to wait for it to cool all the way down. Then this creates the mastery challenge of drilling then waiting in shorter bursts, and if they reach max, then they have to wait longer for it to cool down back to 0. The player then has full control over the mechanic, and there can be a bit more mastery to it! -Jump and gravity is really high. Makes it a bit tricky to move around and navigate the game, especially when fighting enemies. I would just balance it a bit more. You want it to be low enough so the player can process when they are in air and figure out where they are going to land. -Visual player feedback is incredibly important, and I think you have a lot of places here to play around with it. I would give hitflashes, particles, screenshake, and various things that would help indicate when I'm getting hit, and when something else is hit. Also death animation (even if a single static frame) and waiting in place before teleporting back will help the player to process why they died and what from. -I think the invulnerability frames are also really short. Longer period to be invulnerable after being attacked would be great! You generally want it to be larger for player, and almost none for enemies. Always good to skew towards giving the player more power than the enemies, but this can vary by game. -I really like the gameplay flow and the recall animation and particles! I think those style of particles could be cool for when things are hit.

Overall great job! You have a really strong core for the game, and I hope the feedback helps!

The Drop by Langotriel 2025-04-13T23:05:39Z

TheDropScore.PNG

d6 pool by Uzpykes 2025-04-07T20:11:47Z

This game is mechanically fun and innovative! When I finished, I actually found myself playing again due to how engaging and interesting the mechanics were. Combining the chance of dice rolling with the mechanics of pool, with the idea of there being layers is really cool! The risk reward completely shifts throughout the game based on any given scenario you are in. The later levels felt less risky in a way because I knew I would simply go back a step, but at the same time, felt riskier if it had certain colors that I needed. Also gaining points for reaching a new surface is great, and helps to balance the RNG aspects of the game.

A couple of really small pieces of feedback, also because I genuinely think this game could be insanely good with just a teeny bit of polish (which I'm glad you spent so much of the time on the mechanics and working it all out because they are very simple, engaging, and fun). These are really for if you decide to keep working on the project at all: -I would love to have a bit more sfx and some music. I know that's something that is hard to find time for in a jam this short, but for post jam, I think it could be really cool to see the music slightly shift each depth in. -Would love some visual feedback when balls hit the edge or fall off, and seeing the score counter go up in some way. Something as simple as a counter pulsing in size and color when it changes could help a lot for the player to connect together what results in what going up. I ended up figuring it all out in the end, but visual pulsing and indicating would make that even faster to figure out and make the game feel super intuitive. -I think it could be really cool to see how the environment around the dice could change as you go depths in. Maybe the surface of the dice could even change a bit as well. -Click and drag could have been an approach for the pool shot mechanic, but I actually really liked the simple click, as it prevented my hands from otherwise cramping up from holding left click so much.

I really hope you work on this after the jam or consider it, because it's really fun and interesting!

EDIT: I got two bugs. One of them I rerolled to a new side and the charge arrow was rotated in a weird way. The other one I moved a depth in to a new dice, and the dice didn't recenter to the middle to let me progress and I got softlocked

Dead & Buried by Frogravity 2025-04-08T21:05:03Z

This was a quite fun and charming little game! The audio was fantastic, interactions felt great, and the humor and story was fantastic! The mechanics of moving the coffins into graves is fun, and trying to place things near each other is fun as well.

I think if you planned to expand upon it at all or polish it, I think adding some sort of time limit or penalty could be interesting, and provide some really great challenge. Right now the game starts to get repetitive a bit (The use of new things introduced each day though was great, and the humor won me over!), but maybe zombies start to appear and attack the existing graves or something, and you have to click on them to attack them and defend. Or maybe it's kind of like those party games where you get orders over time, and there's a time limit per day. That way it feels more frantic, and there's more skill involved with what the player can do.

Very well polished short experience, and great for the scope of the jam!

Depth Rhythm by CaptAndrey 2025-04-10T06:44:19Z

This is a really cool idea, but is really tricky. You have a really cool mechanic here that I actually think is really interesting, but the issue is the rhythm starts when you drop the first rock. This means if you drop the first rock off of the beat of the music, it makes it more difficult to time things, causing the music to go against the mechanics.

I think the best fix would be to have ambient environment sound for the game, and the music track doesn't actually start until after you drop the first rock. Each puzzle could be a really short almost sting like track that is the length of the rhythm pattern. I think this would immediately help a lot, as you wouldn't be fighting against the music. And then you can play an almost win sound when they succeed!

While the player could just drop their first drop on beat to the music, it means if they accidentally miss, they have to do the whole pattern off the beat. So starting the music tracks on first click could help.

I like that it feels like a casual, rhythm based puzzle game that has multiple solutions actually. And I personally don't mind the trial and error, and I think people who are fans of puzzle based games that commonly have a level reset button won't mind either. I actually like discovering the length of each hole, and it's kind of fun to piece together the puzzle, especially since it has multiple solutions it seems.

You could have different hole types as well. Maybe a hole with a trampoline at the bottom that causes a second bounce or something like that.

Thank you for making this, it's a really cool interesting mechanic and game!

The Clockwork Heart by Adam Gallina 2025-04-07T19:51:51Z

First of all, the style and mood of this game is fantastic. It feels quite cohesive for a 3D game made in only 2 days. It's really cool! The visual style is really cool, and I'm a huge sucker for the lower res textures in 3d environment style. I think with more lighting, fog, and other things it could be perfect!

I noticed that there were some parts of the level where you have some meshes fighting sorting (basically weird artifacting with two meshes directly on top of each other) which usually you can fix by taking one of those meshes and slightly offsetting it. I think main places were on the wall to the right of the clockwork heart cage, and on the floor right inside the clockwork heart cage.

Moments like finding all the statues and discovering the chest felt great! I think maybe you could lean into those moments by having something visual or audio happen when those things are discovered (I'm thinking like in the newer open world Zelda games when you discover new dungeons how a little jingle plays and a text thing appears when you discover them)

I got to the very end of the game I think, and I struggled to find the solution. I also ended up softlocking myself I think by accidentally placing two statues on the same area and then not being able to pick up the others.

Overall great job! I hope I can loop back around to try it again to find the final solution!

The Clockwork Heart by Adam Gallina 2025-04-08T03:59:27Z

It was really great! Excited to try it out post jam with the touch ups you do. The world building is really great, and some of the puzzles, while simple, made me think and felt really satisfying to solve!

Pandora's Return by googlypoo 2025-04-10T07:02:17Z

This is really fun and an adorable game! This is a beautiful tribute to your pet.

I had a lot of fun with the exploration, and the art and sound of this is fantastic!

I think the only thing that I really would have liked is a way to go into a fast speed mode with the autobattler, but I think watching how things unfold is part of the experience.

I like the little damage counters that appear as they do attacks! I think you might be able to add some squish pulsing and stuff for when they take damage as well.

One small thing I noticed that could be a quick fix, I got a run where I was presented with all healing abilities for the first room, so I couldn't attack enough for most of the enemies. However, I am able to dodge the enemies, so I can avoid them!

Again, great job :D

Diamond Divers by StraightUpGruntled 2025-04-07T20:14:42Z

Seems like I should have had a section of the tutorial explain how you move the cart since a couple people had this as an issue. Friends of mine have done the same thing as well so that's on me for not making it clear design wise.

The cart moves in the direction that the player is looking. So you look in a direction, jump on the cart, and it will push it in that direction. Also you don't have to time the jump input each time you land on the cart. If you jump on something, you will automatically chain into another jump. So you can simply move and aim once you are jumping on the cart. It also takes into account a little bit of where you jump on the cart. So you will have a bit more control if you jump on the edge furthest from the direction you want to move in. Hope that helps for anybody else trying it!

Diamond Divers by StraightUpGruntled 2025-04-08T03:11:55Z

@frib Thank you for this feedback, I really appreciate it. I was torn at first because I really enjoy the jump mechanic, but I realize now that it can sometimes make it tricky to simply move around. That was originally the design intention, but I realize it's not great when it's the only way for you to get around. I'm currently working on different movement control styles, and I'm thinking about incorporating both. You can stomp on the cart to move it like the game is now for small adjustments, but you'll also be able to interact with the back of it to change to a move mode that's more vehicle push like.

Diamond Divers by StraightUpGruntled 2025-04-08T03:45:01Z

@adam-gallina Thanks for playing! I really like that idea actually. And I'm thinking that maybe jumping on the cart is something the player can always do, but it doesn't decrease in speed. So you can jump on the cart full, and it will push just as much as empty. Then the player can push from behind in a vehicle control way as the main mode of movement, and then jump on it when it starts to get full.

I also discovered a cool thing. If the player pushes the cart in a vehicle mode, they control both the player and cart at the same time, meaning they could jump with the cart over pits until it gets too full and they can't make the jump.

Thank you again for your feedback from both of you. It's incredibly helpful and opening up the concept for more directions to develop in post jam!

[An idea I'm playing with is adding various attachments to the cart, stuff like saws, shields, diamond magnets, etc. Then the jumping on the cart to make small adjustments has even more purpose because you can rotate the cart to angle certain attachments towards certain things.]

Diamond Divers by StraightUpGruntled 2025-04-09T21:53:29Z

Thank you all so much for the fantastic feedback so far on the game! I've been working on the game over the last couple of days post-jam, and I'll post a link to it at the end of the rating period of the jam for anybody interested in checking it out.

Breachy Sub by UpsettiGames 2025-04-10T06:28:05Z

This was really fun actually! The movement is really quite fun, and once I got the hang of it, was super fun to maneuver around. Also incredibly strong mechanical implementation of the theme. I really like how you can start charging up your jump more once you get the weight. I think this could make a really cool simple metroidvania like game actually. Also the camera shake and responsiveness of the combat is awesome!

I have some feedback if you plan to work on the game more. A lot of these are pretty minor things too! -I think there is probably a small bug with the little cursor where on the right side it can't be seen. (I'm sure you maybe know and ran out of time) -If the cursor locks into the grapple points when you get close, it could be nice of the actual grapple aim also grapples in so it perfectly goes to the point. Would help a bit so the visual indication aligns with the control. If it feels a bit too easy at that point, then you can lower the snap range of the grapple points. -I found myself a little bit lost at the end of the game. Maybe some sort of indication to help guide back, or a way to prevent super large backtracking. (This is probably on me for not playing a lot of Metroidvania like games) -Collision boxes for the coins feel a bit small. I found myself missing them quite a few times when I definitely felt like I should have hit them.

This was really fun, and fantastic job for 2 days!