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A jam submission

hard timeView game page

a game about making donuts
Submitted by infinitestack — 1 day, 9 hours before the deadline
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hard time's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Uniqueness (Originality of the game)#34.1194.227
Fun (Overall enjoyment)#102.9383.015
Overall#103.0973.178
Balance (Speed of the game)#112.6132.682
Theme (How well the game fits the jams theme)#152.7172.788

Ranked from 66 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(1 edit)

Fun enough for what it was, the real highlight is the funny twist on the theme. I never figured out what the cops did in the map section though, it just seemed like you were able to ram through them with no trouble

Submitted(+1)

This game is pretty fun, up until the idle donut section, where it slows down. (I didn't finish this game.) I rated the game for before that part, though.

For the action sequences (defending and mazes) the game uses the OS's settings for keyboard repeat and delay. For the next game, look at how Project Iridium works and take that - it just repeats movement on a custom interval as long as the key is pressed.

This had a big impact on how much I enjoyed the action segments, which are most of the game. Instead of holding in a direction, I had to mash arrow keys over and over, which is physically painful for me. Eventually, I just gave up and held down the keys, despite it feeling very slow and making some of the spiral mazes take a very long time.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Fun- Pretty fun game, had good fun with it up until the second planet after which it felt like it slowed down significantly.

Balance- Balancing is generally well paced, but again waiting for bitcoin to flow in from the donuts becomes really slow after the second planet. I might just be missing something but I've been waiting for hours and still can't afford the next plane.

Uniqueness- The prison escape mechanic, stardust and escaping from cops, universal paperclips style donut selling- this game has a lot going for it, definitely. Solid 5/5.

Theme- Interesting take on the theme of "time" as "doing hard time". 

Overall, the game is fairly interesting, and unfolds really well. However, I'd like to see the game be more upfront about the cop mechanic. Once I discovered that cops only chase to the position that you were in when the warning was hoisted and that you can run into cops while they aren't actively searching for you to remove them, it completely changed the game. 

Other complaint- the stars menu is really confusing. I like the aesthetic ascii galaxy spiral art, but it makes it look messy and cluttered, and obscuring the main point of the tab, which is the planets.

cool game but i don't really understand the "time" theme here

This is a concept I would love to see expanded in all sorts of directions. 

(+1)

Definitely a lot of variety in this game! It's got the spirit of Anti-Idle in it.

I liked how the donuts are what make these cops possible to run around (though at some point you can just plow through them with enough stats). Regardless, I thought that led to a clever flow when it came to The Streets:

1. Get destroyed by cops

2. Upgrade strength to finally get past the first one

3. Upgrade donuts to be able to dodge these now-manageable cops

This whole sequence winds up making the actual looting portion very satisfying because you've earning it. HOWEVER, since I blew that money on donut makers, I don't think I'll ever afford that spaceship and see what it does :(

(+1)

good game. though do the donut maker upgrades still do nothing?

(1 edit) (+1)

Interesting interpretation of the theme to refer to “doing hard time”.

There’s a couple bits that I think could use explanation, like that stardust are “*” symbols, since by color coding it looks like the “!” symbols could be stardust. And it seems a location is “finished” once you touch each “!” symbol and collect each “*”, but I’m not sure if that’s correct. Also some of the “!” symbols indicate they did something, like the one that improves dexterity, but can still be collected multiple times. What about the ones that seem more like flavor text - did they actually do something that was just a bit unclear?

From what I can tell, I can kill a cop by moving into it when it’s not actively searching for me - this would be useful to tell the player. Also it made a pretty easy strat where you make the cop path to you while you’re next to a teleporter, then go into it, and back through once the cop is there. Insta-kill.

Also, very cool making a rogue-like system!

Really unique concept, don't really think this fits the theme that much, but really fun and puzzling having to work out the cops' AI

Nice, can't mute the sound and can't see the fucking input boxes.