Sigma development grindset achievement. :P
I'll be honest and say that I had to use the cheese skill of holding down all the arrow keys, and I still got hit once in a while XD
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Mental Gear Solid: The Twin Japes's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Comedy | #2 | 4.002 | 4.118 |
| Graphics | #5 | 3.944 | 4.059 |
| Story | #6 | 3.430 | 3.529 |
| Music | #6 | 3.487 | 3.588 |
| Gameplay | #12 | 2.858 | 2.941 |
| Overall | #12 | 3.258 | 3.353 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Good entry overall, super amazing art, great comedy! I think battle system was so clear (in theory) that it didn't need the tutorial... but (like others) the tutorial didn't really matter as it took trial and error to "figure" the system out regardless. Once the system was "figured" out.. I still was not even sure if i was just cheesing it or if I actually was on time haha.. which felt really odd. Still overall super good entry.
There is a lot to like about this game - the beautiful art, the witty writing, the unique tunes. The only downside is one that has been pretty universally harped on: the core combat mechanic. I honestly tried to play the way it was intended by holding down the arrows in the intended rhythm, but found it too hard to grok, so I just cheesed my way to victory.
Combat woes aside, the game is a delightful bite-sized romp, an exemplary scope for a jam game. Nice job!
Submitted
OnlyPigsHey this was a super fun entry! Seeing a Iron Brew style Harold was awesome, and the puns made me Har-Har plenty of times and never got Har-Old. Perfect scope, punchy storyline with references that I. . . understand.
I'll bet the part that many will have struggled with is the combat. I died twice at werehouse before I started to understand the timing. Holding the buttons was the first counterintuitive part since I'm used to just pressing the arrows. But even after I knew holding the arrows was how it worked, I wasn't sure when it technically started. Still, after I figured it out, I found it to be a fun challenge. Blocking enemy attacks is hard, but more or less required to beat the final boss, so I could see some people just giving up. Enough about combat - it was well catered to my tastes in gameplay!
What a mental experience! One of my favorite entries thus far.
Submitted
Investment Banker Harold vs. FOMOOverall: This was a big DNF for me. There is no way I could play this game.
Gameplay: The arrow keys are for twitch reflexes and people who don't freeze up when something is forcing them to go fast. My muscles freeze up whenever I have to do this twitchy, speedy kind of task. I was never, ever going to survive that first battle. (This also happens if I'm being forced to move accurate and fast non computer things, too.) So, basically, even though I like the idea I physically can't do it.
Music: It's scene appropriate.
Story: From what I got it's a very "This is a dumb Harold who needs to solve a simple problem" kind of story, and that fits in with the Jam well enough.
Graphics: Cute, worked well with the primes of the story. A color crayon world for a toddler hero. Very Dora the Explorer meets twitch style gaming.
Comedy: It had an amusing look ad feel, some expectations were subverted that gave the game a "Pee-Wee's Play house" vibe.
Not bad. The game play it's self did not match the tone, i think, but if the game play were actually playable I think I would have found this to be one of the more endearing entries.
Submitted
Dreamcore Island AdventureOverall: An absolute joy of a game with a great combat system and all the charm you'd expect from something with Iron Brew on the label.
Gameplay: Timing took me a bit to get but I got it after losing to the Werehouse once. The timing for dodging enemy attacks took some time though, and the final boss battle took a ton of tries because of it. I think you handled the final battle very well all things considered, between letting you instantly retry if you failed and keeping Haroldbeam unlocked even if you die. I love the concept, but more forgiveness or responsiveness on the timing would have been nice. Very impressed you did this without plugins though!
Music: Love the original tunes, especially the final boss theme. Sounds like something out of a SNES Contra game. My favorite musical moment will be touched on in Comedy though.
Story: Light-hearted and fit the tone of the game.
Graphics: Hand-drawn graphics had a lot of charm and I loved the parallax backgrounds.
Comedy: Got to the Werehouse and knew it's a Brew game alright. Love the way Harold "talks" too. I had a huge idiotic grin on my face during the entire Snake Eater sequence, especially the punchline. You pulled absolutely no punches with the objectives.
Submitted
Harold and the Curse of TeebeyaeThe humor is 11/10. Unfortunately, I can only judge much of the content loosely based on watching Padr's playthrough (which was a lot of fun to watch to be fair) as I was just not able to deal with the input system in any capacity.
You're supposed to match the rhythm of the inputs but the "check" for holding the input occurs so late that it's sometimes not always even possible to switch direction buttons quickly enough to meet the next check unless you're on a keyboard. I'm aware of the exploit to just hold multiple directions but I don't really like playing games to not engage with their systems, if that makes sense. (I also prefer to use a controller when supported)
And the lack of warning before the enemy timer makes it nearly impossible to parse their patterns before it checks for the first input and fails you. You might be able to fake it by holding down a random direction when they queue an attack, which fortunately the enemies seem to go second most of the time, but all told I would've just rather had a MGS parody flavored DQ clone. EDIT: one alternative suggestion for making the "CQC" less punishing would be to make it more like the Mario RPG / Mario and Luigi series where you get a bonus for landing the input, but the skill does something if you miss.
Art, music, vibe, and writing, all very good.
Hey man, thanks for playing - totally appreciate your feedback here. If I were able to patch my entry before rating ends I would 100% act on this as I acknowledge the flaws listed!
Thank you for your kind words, and for your feedback. Feels like I could totally fix this in like an afternoon, and am very glad you enjoyed the vibe, music, art, and writing <3
Yeah man this is definitely top 3 for comedy, graphics, and music, and if the "story" category was instead a more general "writing" criteria it would be a contender as well.
As you said the other stuff is fixable. In a hypothetical scenario where this gets an update post jam, I would give it another go.
Love the storytelling of this game, and the section where Harold is climbing the ladder is so perfect.
I also love the graphic, it is so stylized and consistent. Harold also looks so cute and handsome at the same time. Good job with that.
At the not so bright side, I struggled a lot in battle because the QTE feels so unresponsive and laggy. Besides that, there no indicator that showing when the QTE can be carried out. Well, I am using an old PC with undetected graphics card so the problem might be on my end.
Anyway, nice work on the submission!
Submitted
Late Hero and The Barrier of LightStory: I like the mgs style, the writing is funny and I genuinely laughed out loud on stream a few times. It’s like classic Brew but more wholesome. All in well put together.
Music:Edit: Had the wrong notes on the music here for some reason. Copy and paste gone wrong and it implied rtp style soundtrack. What I actually had written about the music is: Nice tracks and quite fun, no rtp and nothing overused, is an added bonus. Was going to give this a solid good but that use of song whilst climbing the ladder all for a gag 10/10 so I bumped you up a point.
Gameplay: Moment to moment gameplay was fine, nice puzzles and solid all round.
Combat: I struggled a lot with combat most because I had no warning when the enemy attack input was going to start. I think a little ding to warn the player, enemies about to attack would have went a long way. I did tap out saved at the final boss but will finish it.
Graphics: Score highly here because to pull off all your own graphics in such a short time frame and an entire short game is super impressive and it looks very KS. Map stuff is solid, battlers are fantastic.
Comedy: Will be hard to beat in this category, had me laughing almost all the time. Genuinely a laugh a minute.
Overall: A solid entry and another I enjoyed. Little tidy up on combat telegraphing and you’re golden.
This ended up as the funniest entry I've played so far this year! The comedic timing is great, and the gameplay (while a bit unforgiving in my opinion) is fun to master and has a decent amount of depth! Of course, the ending was top tier, and whoever drew that weird flesh worm during the musical sequence must be a very handsome man.
Submitted
Crueldown
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