The Great Gallus

Re-Re-Robot by Porcus_Pie 2022-04-08T15:46:31Z

Overall, it was a pretty fun experience.

I quite liked the puzzle solving aspect of having to use previous robots to work your way through the levels. Had some pretty fun levels to solve with the mechanic. I did feel that the robot's speed might have been a bit too high (there were a few times I died on my third robot after doing the set-up with the other two, because I overshot from the touchy controls or fell through a Replay when I tried to jump). I think that this wouldn't be as much of an issue if there was a way to reset just your current robot instead of the entire stage, as it would prevent having to redo a set-up due to a slight mistake on bots 2 or especially 3.

The mechanic of having your time double on Replays was a good idea, given the precision needed to move around and line yourself up with the previous plays. I actually missed the text to show off the Replay in Level 4 (I think it was?) because it's possible to finish it on your first iteration (I only saw it when replaying the levels to check out some things XD). Good that you provided additional information on the next level, as it made sure I wasn't lost because of that. Also, really cool that you included a Skip Level button in case anyone needed it.

Graphics were good with a lot of nice touches like the robot face being a recording symbol when doing actions, the line that went across it when dead, and the play symbol on the Replays. Also nice that the Replays are a different color (though I might recommend having different colors for the two stages of replay so it's a bit easier to tell between the two, not that it was detrimental to any of the current levels in my experience). Really just charming design overall.

Audio was good. I thought it was a cool detail that each Replay added another layer to the audio, that was a pretty fun thing to include that just sort of enhanced the experience and I really appreciated it.

All in all, great job.

CRAB IS INEVITABLE! by luthwyhn 2022-04-21T04:22:26Z

CRAB

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      CRAB

Was tempted to just post that, but I should probably do some commentary as well. Great job with this entry.

Gameplay was great. It felt a little awkward when I was using my keyboard for movement, but when I switched over to mouse controls (and knocked my mouse sensitivity down just a bit), it handled really well. I felt like I had a good deal of control over my positioning and it always felt like taking damage was entirely in my own hands. It took me a while to remember to try out the "bomb" attack as I was just having a blast taking out enemies with the basic attack option.

Graphics are charmingly retro in their design. Great leverage of PICO-8's limited graphical options to make a colorful world full of critters. Everything was clear as to what was going on, even when the screen was getting absolutely flooded with enemies during the final conflict. I would have love to have some cheery or zany music to go along with the feel of the game and its world, but it's understandable that you may not have had time to do sounds.

I do wish that there was a bit more lean into the inevitability part of the theme (or the delaying of such). If there was a way to delay the boss crab's inevitable return, I am unsure of it (though I unfortunately did not have time to test out if delaying upgrades and such impacted it). And the implication in the description that I may become what I am setting out to destroy made me expect that the ending was going to have me explicitly be taking the boss crab's place to wreak havoc (though, thinking on it while writing this feedback, I suppose that I did destroy an entire ocean's worth of critters to take on the evil crab... am I the baddie? O___O).

But in all seriousness, really great job with this one. You did a great job on all accounts and it was just a really fun game to play.

CRAB

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      CRAB

ghostlet by PaperAeroplane555 2022-04-21T03:20:09Z

What a fantastic little game this was!

Gameplay was a lot of fun. I thought that it was going to be pretty simple when I first saw the core mechanic of the game, but you really took the basic concept and ran with it to create some fantastic levels. Slowly adding new elements like the anti-ghost fields and the bullets to ramp up the difficulty was great too. Got a lot of mileage out of the concepts. I do wish that the floating death apples(?) respawned so that you didn't just have to restart if you messed up those sequences, but the levels were short enough that a restart didn't take long at all, so it's not really too much of a problem in the end.

Good job on the level design, particularly when introducing the bullet mechanic. I kept trying to find a way to zip through the anti-ghost barrier in that level (having pressed Jump almost immediately after being hit, as I was getting into the rhythm of doing) but couldn't figure it out, so one time I just didn't press it out of curiosity and, voila, I could immediately see the way it worked. The limited options in the stage make sure you really know how that works before moving on.

The graphics are charming. You made great use of the limited monochromatic palette you were working with. The main character (especially in ghost form) is cute and everything in the stage is clear and unique. I was never confused about what anything was once I interacted with it once, and even on the complex stages, things were still readable and never got jumbled.

Choice on the sounds were good too. The ghost sound effect felt like it matched the phasing concept, and the death (and complete, actual death) sounds were very fitting.

On the theme, you mentioned that the inevitable isn't technically delayed despite the death reversal (with the inevitable being death). I think that you could have hammered it home by having the level goals play the "death" animation to send you to the next stage, which would really give you that delay. Either way, I think your play on death reversal works pretty well for it.

Thanks for this game, it was a great experience. If you plan to do anything more with this concept in the future, I'd love to see what else you can come up with playing off of this design idea!

PS: Really cool of you to include a level skip feature! Even cooler including the ability to go back (which I don't think I've seen in any other game I've played for this event)

Feline Flood Fiasco by potatolain 2022-04-08T16:42:56Z

Great job! It's really cool to see an authentically retro game done in the time frame for the Compo!

Gameplay was pretty straightforward and easy to understand. I felt that the levels were designed in a good way to get the player acquainted with the mechanics, like with the first level having no threat at all due to the water being behind walls and the sixth level having no danger to work out the new block mechanic. Most of the puzzles were pretty simple to figure out, but I must say there were a few in there that were head scratchers (like level 19, which took me a bit of experimenting to figure out)!

Graphics were great overall. Cats are very cute (naturally) and the tile design is good for ease of knowing was is going on. My only criticism along this line is that it can be a bit tricky to differentiate between the water and ice sometimes due to similarities in color and lack of a dividing line (like the light blue tiles have). Maybe using darker colors for the water might help (perhaps using the staircase color palette)?

Audio was good. The song was pretty catchy and felt like it fit well. The cat meow on pick-up was adorable and the higher pitched version of the sound for when they drown is horrifying (I made it through the whole game without losing any to drown because I always reset the level before that, and restarted it just to see if it had its own sound and I regret it >_>).

Having done some retro console work before (NES included), I know there are some pretty strict limitations for what you can do, so it's impressive you got this done in such a short time. Also, that base engine looks pretty cool. I might just have to play around with it a bit when I have time in the near future.

Edit: I completely forgot that I wanted to say that the name is fantastic!

Slime Zone by TheMadPangolin 2022-04-06T18:13:15Z

Fantastic game!

Really enjoyed this entry. Only had time at the moment to get a Silver rating, but I had enough fun with it that I very much plan to come back around when I have the time to go for that Gold (will probably have to do some external controller binding, I'm terribly bad at platforming with keyboard v_v).

Graphics are really solid. The slime is adorable and the animation when it jumps is great (nice little shimmer on it). Each block type appearance being quite distinct was great for quickly being able to identify what was going on when things got chaotic.

Most blocks where pretty obvious in their effects as soon as I hit them. Only ones that weren't with their exact effects were the Plus and Arrow blocks, but the Research Notes were really helpful in that regard (though I did get the Ice block note like five times in a row at the start XD).

I do quite like the mechanic of the Black Hole growing and getting slower as more blocks are on the field. It gives some options on how one wants to try to handle the situation (keep less blocks but having to move more quickly, or have to fight through the clutter with a bit more time to spare but more difficult maneuvering around the Black Hole), which is an interesting bit of strategy to have in a quick game like this.

Nice touch with the floor blinking before it vanishes. I didn't know that was coming the first round I played, so that visual indicator helped a lot. It was immediately obvious to me that I was going to lose the ground and I had to scramble up onto the blocks.

The only thing that wasn't immediately obvious was that I had a wall jump (discovering that almost got me killed as I sort of latched onto the outside wall), but as soon as I discovered it, it was really helpful in giving additional options.

Anyway, great job with this entry! It was a blast to play!

Eleventh Hour by Jeremy Ryan 2022-04-06T09:49:50Z

Really cool game!

Overall, I quite enjoyed the concept and the gameplay. It really felt like it would fit excellently as the penultimate level in a longer game, which would be really cool to see.

I liked the mechanics of the kunai. Having their hitboxes remain active until they embedded in the ground was a nice feature, as it led to some cool moments were the falling kunai from an enemy death could chain into another, which was nice for effect and also a good feeling if it saved you. Being able to bounce them off of the walls to hit the laser enemies was really convenient as well when things got hectic.

I both liked and disliked having to go pick them up. I liked it for the way it limited the ammo and required you to be careful when retrieving them if you were out of ammo. However, with the punishing damage mechanic of losing all progress on your timestepper from a single hit, there were some points where it felt impossible to grab the kunai and not get damaged, which usually meant it was impossible to finish the charge in time (though that does tie in quite nicely with the theme of inevitability, so I don't mind as much as I might in another game).

The aesthetics were were really on point, with the monochromatic color scheme slowly shifting from that lovely lavender color to a deep red as you run out of time. Having the sun right in the center as a very obvious indication of the timer and impending doom, as well as the underlying tic-toc on the music was really nice (especially with the tic-toc becoming frantic when you are just about out of time). Great design on that stuff.

I did have a few issues while playing. First off, full screen not actually being full screen but rather just a larger window did lead to some troubles with clicking outside the window when things got frantic, causing loss of focus and almost a guaranteed game loss. Second, the kunai hit detection was a bit dodgy sometimes, where I'd throw a kunai at an enemy and it would just fly straight through them, which usually led to hit on myself and a lost attempt. Third, and this is less a general problem and more just a suggestion from my experience, but I frequently lost track of my standard mouse cursor on the screen when moving it around in the frenzy, so maybe it would be of benefit to have a custom cursor for the mouse that both fit the aesthetic and made it easier to keep track of?

I had a great time with the game. Great job with it!

Edit: Immediately after submitting this review, I went to close the window down (I had left it up while writing up the review) and it had the white victory screen XD Must be some sort of bug with the timer running in the background or something while on the main menu (I don't have time at the moment to try and replicate it), but I thought you might get a kick out of it.

The Great Flood by cassowary 2022-04-07T05:54:30Z

That was a great short and sweet experience!

The game was pretty simple to understand and hop into, with the instructions by level giving good guidance alongside the level design to really understand what's going on, such as with level 2 having paths that were the exact length to move between flood levels to enforce that concept.

Artwork was cute. Love that the frog is wearing a rain jacket and boots, that's adorable. Rest of the graphics were good and it was very obvious what was going on, with nice touches such as the light blue water around the edges of the structures and such. Good that each contiguous region of land is clearly marked with a numeral, makes it clear where everything it all of the time.

On the design, good decision to add extra inaccessible steps to the side to indicate the water level when the actual level did not have a given Roman numeral (such as the III - VII on level 5). Always felt like I knew exactly what was going on while planning out the stage thanks to that.

I did forget that there was an Undo button despite seeing it at the start, but at least I recalled the Reset so that wasn't too much of a problem. Perhaps adding it as a pop-up if the player hasn't put in an input in a while would help (or just a reset button in the corner, though you do really use all of the screen space pretty effectively, so it might be hard to find a spot).

Thanks for the great game.

teleBOTation by Phoenix Fireflower 2022-04-06T08:51:57Z

Very enjoyable game!

Graphics were solid and the robot was adorable, especially the animation it has when you finish a level. The music was catchy and I quite appreciated that you had the tempo as the generators were powered up/down.

You got a lot of distance out of very few mechanics, which is always cool to see. Great job on introducing the mechanics along the way, like, how the trapped block in level 2 is set up to basically force a swap teleport to show the player that it is possible. Good stuff.

There were some really nice touches with your design, like the changing shape of the cursor and sound effect when it changes to the swap teleport or the wires in the walls showing where the effects of the deactivating triggers go.

My only criticisms on the design were 1) that the generator inside the non-teleport zone on level 4 wasn't immediately obvious to me that it was part of the non-teleport zone, so I had to just reset the level when I tried dropping down and swapping with the bottom block, and 2) using the same symbol for shutting off lasers and deactivating the non-teleport zone makes it not as obvious what that trigger does (though the wires to the effect destination help a lot with working out what it might)

As a note, it took me a while to realize there was a jump button (it wasn't until level 4's non-teleport zone), because I ended up using an exploit without realizing it to finish level 3. If you click to teleport, then quickly drag your mouse cursor to another position before the teleport occurs, the robot will teleport to the new position. I thought it was just an odd teleport position when trying to repeatedly teleport up (I was doing it at the start of level 3 as I wasn't jumping), but I did some testing and verified what was happening. You can even teleport into non-teleport zones with it.

Also, was a bit silly that teleporting onto a battery on your last teleport both recharges your battery and kills you. Not really a big deal in the end and it did make me chuckle when it happened the first time.

Hope to see further iteration on this in the future. Would be cool to see what else you can come up with puzzle-wise! Thanks for the fun game!

NAP GUARDIAN by nethead 2022-04-08T15:12:15Z

Fantastic job with this one!

Gameplay was great. Took a moment to get used to using the dash as a jump (main from the moment of charging needed), but getting a chance to play around with it in the tutorial let me get comfortable with it before getting thrown into the action and I rarely missed any jumps after that practice time. Also, being able to just hold down attack the entire time was great because it let me focus solely on where I needed to be, which was often really important, particularly in Hard mode (and especially when that new Hard mode enemy type dropped in from all spawn points simultaneously).

The game's aesthetics are fantastic and have a great style. It's really obvious what's going on in the world at all times and the enemies are really easily distinguished between, which really helped me to know where I needed to focus my attention. Also, I really adore the little character portraits that accompany the dialogue, they were a great touch. The music was great too (I have the game up in the background while typing up this review so that I can keep listening to it).

Speaking of the dialogue, it was pretty humorous which was great. I had a few chuckles during the tutorial, which is always a nice to have, and the characters' personalities really came out.

Honestly, my only "criticism" is that I wish there were more! More characters, more levels, more enemies... more everything! So basically what I'm saying is that I hope you decide to do something more with this project after LD, because this feels like the kind of game that I could really lose myself in playing.

Thanks for the wonderful game!

Heat by Wuppos 2022-04-07T06:44:41Z

Good straightforward game with a easy to grasp concept. Solid fit for the theme.

Love the aesthetic design. It's clean, simple to see what's going on for the most part, and the monochromatic color scheme fits the theme well given its fiery coloration. The only issue I had as far as the graphics went was occasionally losing track of a human's HP bar, but usually I was already in the losing stages of the firefight at that point so I was going to lose soon anyway.

Gameplay is pretty easy to understand. It was definitely noticeable that the fires were killing people a lot faster, especially when multiple fires cropped up around the same time. I found it a bit tricky to get the people out quickly, as something in my head kept just trying to pull straight out rather than through the door, though I got used to it after a bit. I'm also not great at rapidly clicking, but only having to click three times on a flame wasn't too much of an issue. I had a fun time with it once I got the hang of it, even if I never managed too high of a score.

As a heads up, I did have an issue with grabbing the people at first, but it turns out that was more of a personal system issue (Chrome's hardware acceleration was off, which led to a bit of stuttering), but I figured it I should mention it in case anyone else is having similar troubles so that they can enjoy the game to its fullest.

Thanks for the cool game!

Keep it Secret by Zettabit 2022-04-21T04:03:54Z

Very creative idea for this one! It's certainly an implementation of the theme that I never would have thought of, but it fits so well with it because rumors really do be like that!

Gameplay was simple, but it certainly didn't need anything else to it. I thought it was going to be pretty simple to keep the rumor from spreading throughout the office when I started, as I was able to break up talking groups really quickly and effectively. That is, until the boss started moving. It was fine for a bit, but once he was in between me and one of those sharing the rumor, I figured it wouldn't be too much trouble to have one more person know...

Boy was I wrong! It quickly began to cascade out of control, flooding around the office as I was trying futilely to maintain some semblance of damage control. It felt like I was fighting the inevitable tide of a zombie plague or something, even if it was just the rumor "infecting" my co-workers. That had a great frantic feel as I was trying to keep track of the rapidly increasing count of those in the know and what they were doing.

The game just had a great feel to it in its simplicity and expert execution on a clever concept. I had a good bit of entertainment myself coming up with what sort of embarrassing rumor they might be spreading and really getting into the role of trying to stop it.

The graphics are simple but look great (love the boss's angry glare) and it's easy to track what's going on thanks to the red names and text boxes (and the exclamation points). The way that the characters sorta bob back and forth while walking added some personality to it, and the sound effects of the player's break-it-up shout were pretty entertaining.

Great job with this one!

Keep Cool by Nebiros 2022-04-07T07:17:04Z

Cute game.

Graphics were cute with good designs for both the player and the enemies, and were a real highlight of the experience. I particularly liked the walking fireball with its mischievous grin. The main and pause menus looked fantastic too, and I like the effect you put on the main menu with its perspective. It's a cool little touch that adds a lot of character to the entry. Also, I appreciated the funny little comments on the How to Play menu.

Gameplay was pretty good overall. Movement felt a bit sluggish, even when getting up to full speed, which occasionally made getting up on ledges a bit tricky, but it was mostly easily controllable, which is good. I didn't understand that the slide maneuver would work in the air as a long distance dash at first, so I was unsure how to get to a lot of the goodies on high platforms on my first few runs. But I eventually worked that out and it was much easier to play afterwards.

Getting to bounce off of enemies when you had the snowflake power-up was a nice little thing to discover. There were some interesting moments where colliding with enemies while under its effects launched me forward at an incredible speed, which was surprising and exciting (even if possibly not intended).

I think that there's a bit of a quirk with the timer on the power-ups. It felt like the snowflake timer was inconsistent, usually lasting the same amount of time but sometimes it felt much, much shorter, which is unfortunate because getting to launch forward carefree for a bit when protected was a lot of fun but could prove unexpectedly risky if that happened.

Also, as a side note, it was pretty entertaining to just slide off of the level to the left and free fall. XD

Good job on the game.

Delay Dragon by dindotjs 2022-04-07T08:14:16Z

Pretty fun! It was a nice, quick experience with a bit of challenge to it.

I thought the dragon design was cute and well animated. The graphical style in general is pretty good and has a nice cartoony style to it. Fits well with the upbeat and bouncy music you've got going on. Also, the animation for resetting a stage is pretty humorous, nice work there.

Controls were good. It took me a moment to get the hang of using the fireballs to traverse the stages, but it was a cool idea that worked well once I did. A funny thing of note, the lava wall won't start moving until WASD or Space are pressed, so it's possible to navigate a fair bit into some of the levels just by using the fireballs. Definitely isn't necessary to complete any stage, of course, but it was fun to play around with.

I felt that the levels ramped up in difficult pretty smoothly, with the last level being tricky but certainly manageable (though the speed at which the wall was moving was pretty startling at first XD). I do wish that there were more levels to the game, as the "Thanks for playing" screen came up just as I was really getting into the game. But it's always nice to see a fun, short, polished experience.

I noticed that there was the ability to shoot fireballs upwards, which I assume was just a consequence of the way that the shooting mechanic was designed since it wasn't used anywhere. I wouldn't know what would be a good way to use it, but it would be cool to see an iteration on this game in the future to see what sort of levels you could come up with using the mechanics with more time to play around with design.

Great work on this entry. It was really enjoyable!

Bombthrow by LakeDev 2022-04-21T03:47:47Z

Great job with this entry!

Gameplay was really solid and fun. Overall, it felt really smooth and intuitive how everything operated (character movement, jump and bomb arc). I think that the bomb pickup could be a bit smoother (it always felt like I stalled when getting it because of colliding with it), but it really didn’t have much of an impact on the experience as the bomb timer was just lenient enough that it didn’t matter. I do wish that the bomb didn’t start ticking down until I started moving, though again, it wasn’t that much of an issue because holding right when restarting made it not much of a problem.

The levels that you had time to make were enjoyable and I liked the concepts that were introduced in them. Having to backtrack or use your bomb throw to pick up time extensions added some variety to what would otherwise just be a mad dash, which made it interesting to play, particularly in the levels where you had to learn said mechanics (good job with the level names giving some hints as well). I also wish that you had more time to make levels, because I was having a good time with it.

Graphics aesthetics had a good style to it. I appreciated the giant red exclamation point on the side of the bomb. I think that the time extension power-ups could use a look that points at their function (a plus, fuse, clock, etc.) as it is not immediately intuitive as to what they might do until you pick them up, but that is a minor criticism.

Really good entry you have here overall. I hope that you plan to expand on it in the future, because, like I said earlier, I was having a great time with it for the six levels that you had time to construct. If you do, I’ll be excited to play those too.

Also, yay Godot!