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Zenzicube: Smoke Box & Rock Jock's's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #3 | 4.369 | 4.369 |
| Actually Fun | #5 | 4.432 | 4.432 |
| Sticking to the Rules | #5 | 4.486 | 4.486 |
| Promoting the Restaurant | #10 | 4.189 | 4.189 |
Ranked from 37 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Awesome game! It's amazing that you were able to implement mini-games, combat, and the cash-making quest system into one package. And pretty much like everyone else said, the art style is on point with the character models and pre-rendered backgrounds.
This was my personal favorite for the game jam I cant believe how fun and polished this experience was! Truly mind-blowing. Can't wait to see what you all submit next year.
Just absolutely oozing polish and charm. Adored the pre-rendered backgrounds, as well as the presentation around all the minigames. Really just nails a shared nostalgia for gaming at the turn of the century. Hard to articulate just how impressive this is!
Loved all the minigames to build up my team to face off squandrick in an epic boss battle. Had a lot of fun!
Wow!!! This game feels right out of my childhood!!! The amount of content and polish is utterly staggering! Truly one of the most impressive game jam games I’ve ever seen.
Genuinely amazed at not just the variety of assets and mechanics, but also how polished and well put together the presentation and UI is as well, incredible.
I mean. this one genuinely blew me a way. Everything here is just fantastic. Loved recruiting party members and RPG mechanics. As a big fan of Yakuza, loved all the minigames. I just want more. I feel like this could be a huge successful game outside of the gamejam. Incredible work!
Really love the visuals on this. When you enter the flying penguin it especially felt like a classic RPG. Great work!
Holy moly, where to begin! Beautifully evocative of PS1 and N64, those trees make me so happy. The prerendered backgrounds are masterfully done, and love seeing the mascots translated to this look. The roaming around gameplay is awesome; the social link moment was a wonderfully heart warming surprise, had a lot of the fun with Jackpot, just in general the joy of building up your team. The management gameplay is very well done, it feels like the Yakuza 0 Cabaret minigame crossed with Wario Ware-esque micro games, very addictive! I could play a full 8-10 hour game of this, very well designed and super fun.
Loved everything about this. The real-time outdoor visuals and the pre-rendered backdrops for interiors is such a nice combo. The core gameplay was genuinely engaging, and the additional "micro games" were the perfect accompaniment. Not to mention the Franky social link. Just pitch perfect.
I also appreciate the freedom given to the player to bankrupt themselves right at the beginning playing Jackpot, which I absolutely did.
This one amazes me. I can't believe the level of quality in this game's gameplay and visual design.
Blown away by the level of quality here, especially given just how many different things this game has going on. So many interesting disparate parts, yet everything feels cohesive and serving the central structure and aesthetic - incredible work!
The cut scenes are fun and were a fantastic for adding to the story telling.
It's unclear how to exit menus. Escape only works for some menus, backspace seems to work for all, but I had to figure that out myself.
The mechanics of the job game weren't super clear, and the front loaded rules explanation was way to much to take in at once.
Super tight game with a load of ideas. The art style really bulls eyed Megaman Legends, and the pre-rendered backgrounds are amazing!
Selecting new game after completing the game leads to some bugs.
Really liked the graphics and the vibes! Sending guys out on missions had a real Final Fantasy minigame vibe, like Fort Condor. I liked the different animations the mascots would do depending on the mission type.
The wall of text in how to play was intimidating, but I was able to blunder my way through after a cursory skim of the text.
Amazing style and vibes! Oh my gosh I can't get over how gorgeous this game looks. Would easily pay for a longer experience using original characters that aren't related to the jam. Shocked you were able to do this in such a short time too! Only had an issue with the game softlocking me into the gambling basement, but was impressed my progress saved. Loved it all around.
Thanks so much! And sorry to hear about the softlock. Did it seem like it happened after anything specific? I think in playtesting there was one time where the camera spawned in the basement but the character was upstairs (or something like that), but I wasn't able to replicate or figure it out.
I just went through the door to the recruitment area and spawned into the basement unable to move. It wasn't too big of a deal since the game did auto save after restarting.
The aesthetic is immaculate. The Wario Ware style mini games were a fantastic touch to keep the missions entertaining.
absolutely incredible. would gladly pay for and play a full version of this. the art is beautiful and the gameplay is fun and varied. i love the feel created by the home base area and all the characters within it.
I love the graphics in this game! The 3D models are really cute and concise representations and the pre-rendered backgrounds look really authentic to PS1. The Mega Man Legends vibes of the town really top it off nicely. I like the idea of recruiting a team and sending them on missions. Awesome!~
Interesting ideas here, there's a lot of pieces that are each fun on their own. The weirdest part is that it somehow managed to be both over- and under-explained how everything fits together. The "wall of text" in the rules is confusing, and I'll admit I glazed over it at the end--I'm assuming the money system and (especially) the level-ups are unimplemented, but I'm not sure. It also took me a surprising amount of time to find the attack button in the boss fight, and I don't think the weapons other than the dual cleavers did much of anything.
Thanks for playing and the feedback, I really appreciate it. Also, thank you for mentioning the level thing, I had everyone at max level for testing and forgot to change that back, haha. That should be fixed now.
Couple of questions if you don't mind so I can make improvements:
Were there any bugs or issues you encountered with using or obtaining money or was it more that you felt it wasn't useful in general? The money is used to buy new characters at the inn, gamble with jackpot, recover hp/mood at the clinic, build the training ground, and then boost character levels with extra xp at the training ground (after it's been built obviously). I also planned to have purchasable weapons and items that could change stats but didn't have time, unfortunately. It might have been tuned too generously, though in terms of how much you earn per round. I do also feel like some of the systems aren't as effective in such a short version of this game (specifically like resting at the clinic, which would make more sense over a longer amount of time/rounds).
For the weapons, were the spatula and ketchup bottle not actually doing any damage or were they just ineffective in their design? Damage wise the spatula should do 20 per hit base damage, the cleavers are 10, and the bottle is 5.
Honestly, I didn't realize any of those options to spend money existed--I saw the other doors in town, tried to open one and it didn't open after pressing buttons (and it wasn't obvious it was interactable in the first place), so I assumed the buildings other than the main one were just decoration. I did find the one conversation with Frankie, but other than that it didn't seem like I could do anything in town other than talk to people.
Oh, so everyone was max level in the version I played? That would explain why I didn't have any problems completing it without spending money (my characters didn't seem to take much damage in the prep phase, and I started with more than enough characters to cover all six slots at once). Level 5 being max level also didn't seem blatantly obvious, between DSD being L99 (obviously none of my characters would get there, but a little advancement wasn't implausible) and each of the bonuses in the boss battle only being ~one bar.
The bottle seemed like it was doing something, but it wasn't obvious what made it better (maybe it was ranged?). The spatula didn't look like it was doing anything--I'm assuming it was a slow attack compared to the fast attack of the cleavers, but it wasn't practical to use since you're dodging all the attacks (and I don't like slow melee attacks in general). I think what made the cleavers the best is that they had an actual attack animation that was responsive--the bottle didn't really.
I wonder if the doors thing was a bug. I haven't had that in my playtesting but I'll definitely keep an eye out for it, so thanks for pointing it out. It should be 'E' or left face button (which will light up on the bottom of the screen when you can interact with something). Could be I need to make the interaction box on the doors larger.
For levels my original idea was to have the max be 20 but I lowered it to 5 since it's only two rounds to keep it at 30 minutes or less (Schippie is 99 because he's just too powerful, haha!).
Yeah I tried to have it so the spatula was slower and more power and the cleavers were more nimble. Maybe I should make the damage disparity bigger or just rethink the spatula attack pattern. The bottle is meant to be a ranged weapon so I made the damage the lowest since it's easier to sit back at a distance with it.
I suppose a big part of it is also the boss itself, I was hoping to have different phases that favored each of the weapons (so like one is power, one is speed, and one is range focused), but didn't really have time. So I can see where they aren't all as effective as they should be currently.
Thanks again for taking the time to play it and give feedback, it's already helped a lot.
No problem--at the very least I helped correct an obvious oversight :)
I think part of my interaction confusion is that the bottom of the screen isn't an obvious place to look--I think I remember seeing that once on a character or something, but wasn't looking for it when I interacted with a door. It might just be user error combined with a lack of need for things--good to know there aren't a ton of systems that exist but don't do anything ;)