Thanks very much for playing and leaving feedback for our game! I'm sorry you had difficulties with the controls. We had the instructions written on the game page itself but as not everybody goes there to check out the page (myself included) it probably would have been best to also have them in the actual game. We did want to keep the controls super simple though which is why we more or less stuck to a mouse only thing. I'm glad you were able to figure it out! The hand tool let's you work around the workbench and pick up either the glass tube or the torch. I felt that gave it more of a workshopy vibe than a pure image editing thing as you are "picking" something up. I'm not sure if we'll change that too much in the post jam because I think part of it is about tool placement on the table. When you're done with the burner, put it to the side etc... though might adjust sizes to make overlap less likely. 

There was definitely a lot of research put into the game. There's actually a neon sign making place near where I live and the we discussed having me attend a class to try get more research. Though that would have taken at least 4 hours so we opted instead to spend those hours working on the jam directly haha. Our game is not the most accurate neon sign making simulator due to a lack of time/unsure of how much we wanted in the gameplay. Some differences are that during bending the glass, you would also be blowing air into it to keep the soft glass from collapsing on itself and maintaining a consistent diameter. We had an idea where the player would need to be blowing into the microphone while bending but for obvious reasons we didn't move forward with that as that would be kinda finicky gameplay and not everybody has a microphone. And that the bending took up enough concentration that we don't want to burden the player to also have to control air flow into the glass. We also didn't include attaching electrodes to the end of the glass tube. There is some discussion if we want to have that step in the post jam version. As for the gas filling mini game, that isn't how you really fill the tube up with gas. However, the gas mixtures we included are real combinations and we kept the facts Mr. Lam says about gas colours and the use of helium in tubes accurate. Nyveon helped keep us honest about it. Initially we wanted Mercury to be one of the gases you fill the tube with. However, mercury is placed into the tube as a drop of liquid that later vaporises, not as a gas initially which is why we went with different mixtures and had Mr. Lam just say there was a drop of mercury already in the tube. 

There's a few other neon sign making games in this jam though I haven't seen the same kind of bending if you're interested in checking them out. I might be missing some.: 

https://itch.io/jam/amaze-me-game-jam/rate/1096696 (Make a neon light and see them decorated in a city)

https://itch.io/jam/amaze-me-game-jam/rate/1096574 (Management neon light making game. Loved how it costs money when you "draw" out your neon light)

https://itch.io/jam/amaze-me-game-jam/rate/1097218 (Make neon lights by filling out combinations correctly. Hectic game like overcooked style.)

Hopefully you were able to finish our game despite those issues! I'm quite fond of the ending myself which is why we made it so you could skip all the bending glass mini games by hitting "Done" prematurely. Thanks again for playing!

Glad to hear you liked it c:
Thank you very much!

Thanks for playing our game! When I heard of the jam theme, I thought it was a great opportunity to have something centred around Hong Kong's neon lights :D Glad people are learning something about it!

The game's mechanics were definitely the hardest part of it. Before we all committed to doing the jam, we wanted to make sure the bending mechanic was possible. We weren't sure if we could do it in the time frame. Thankfully, it all worked out! Nyveon did all of our coding so really thankful to have him on the team. He has everything up on github too if you're interested in checking out how he did it :D

Thanks for playing our game and glad you enjoyed it :D 

Yeah we wanted to contextualise neon lights. When I heard of the jam theme I really wanted to make something about Hong Kong's neon lights and work a narrative into it somehow. 

Thank you very much!

Glad you liked it! Also I agree the sprite work is great, faxdoc and happysquared did an amazing job on it!

Made with lots of love! We worked really hard on this, so very glad you liked it c:

Thanks for the comment :D

In the brainstorming stage of the project, the main mechanic was a big source of insecurity as we asked ourselves "will this even work?" Thankfully, it did! Hahah.

It actually means a lot that you found the story relatable... Glad it could be meaningful to someone c:

Thank you very much for the comment, and glad you liked it!

A lot of trial and error with the programming, and a lot of math hahah! I'll probably be writing up a devlog on how it's done, but the source is all public on github (linked in the game page)

Very glad you liked it! Thank you very much for the comment c:

Yeah I definitely went down a google hole when it came to neon lights. During the jam period, my sister told me there was actually a glass workshop near where I lived and they were offering 1-day neon light workshops. Haha, I was super tempted to join for our jam "research". I mean 3 hours making actual neon lights is totally helpful for making a game right? Guess in the end we decided not to do it and spend the day making assets instead... haha. Maybe next time we'll sign up just because it seemed soooo fun tbh. 

The tube shaping mechanics seemed like a major pain. Nyveon takes all credit for coding those. We weren't even sure if it was possible to do within the time frame. I didn't want to get everybody's hopes up about doing a jam so asked Nyveon to make sure he thought it was possible first before committing completely. So there was a LOT of time spent on experimenting with those and research. 

Maybe in the post jam version we could have the sign you make display somewhere in game. We were thinking on the title screen. But for immersion purposes kept a nice one to show in the final cutscene.

We haven't collaborated before but schedules nicely lined up and decided to go ahead and give it a go. Was a lot of fun :D Been so happy with the people I've been meeting since starting game dev a year ago.

Thanks for leaving feedback and playing the game! Sunnydaze would be thrilled to hear you enjoyed the music :D She also did most of the sound design and we ended up with 60+ sounds... haha. I was super blown away when she sent over the bending sound. Thought it was perfect. It's probably the most sound polished game I've ever made in a jam.

33/35 is a really fantastic score. The final "S" can be super hard to get 5 stars on! 

Thank you very much!

Glad you liked it!

We had a mix of more gameplay focused and more narrative focused folks on our team, so I'd like to think that lead to the balance we found here.

Very happy you found it to be a good use of the theme,  I too thought the idea our designer came up was a brilliant use of it :D

Thanks for the comment c:

Thanks for playing our game! I'm glad you found something in the game that you enjoyed! I felt some people might be more into narrative games and not into the glass bending at all so we made it semi-optional where you could skip all the glass bending sections by clicking "Done" prematurely. So happy to hear that people also enjoy the glass bending :D Yeah we're discussing some QOL stuff for the post jam version. The torch definitely being something we want to focus on. 

I've been interested in neon lights in Hong Kong for a bit so hearing the theme for the jam really made me want to make something featuring them. Glad it worked out!

Thanks! We were researching a bunch on neon lights. The gases were originally neon and mercury but nyveon made sure we got our facts right and started watching neon light videos during the jam time where he found mercury is inserted in liquid form so you wouldn't be pumping mercury gas into the light tubes. 

I was surprised at how many sounds we ended up using in the game but my sister definitely did a good job making the sounds. I really liked the glass bending sound. Think we ended up with 60+ sounds in the game. Nyveon made a huge list of possible sounds and we went from there. 

Oh yeah the reset thing is a big QOL thing we have to fix. We discussed an undo button but it's pretty hard to determine what is an action with the way our game is. 

Thanks again for playing!

:0 !