Customers and certain stations on the green side will give you one to three contamination points when you interact with them. (The math needs to be a little fancier to avoid taking any away by accident, but mostly it works as expected.) There's two 'score'-type values tracked in the top right- each customer gives you a set amount of money once you complete their order cycle, but pink-side customers give you bonus points in the other-category-i-forgot-what-i-named-it depending on how many times you interacted with them while contaminated. It doesn't do much beyond that yet, eventually in theory you'd be able to like. unlock shit
A visual indicator of the action queue is my number one thing I regretted not being able to add. I just couldn't wrap my brain around where to even begin, it's surprisingly complicated. Worst comes to worst, I might have to rewrite the whole queue so it's a more sophisticated structure? Depends on if I take an 'the station should be responsible for showing its position, if any' gh-style approach or go for the more complicated better looking classic 'each icon bubble should be associated with an event in the action queue to determine its spawn position and its constantly updated number' style. Neither will handle the same station in the queue twice well. i'm mostly glad the action queue held up at all
It's hard to make this kind of thing feel like it has consequences for that exact reason- the goal for expansion includes sound effect feedback and better visual feedback to make it feel like an equivalent value to ordinary score. I suppose I should think of things to spend both values on, but my brain is instantly resistant to the ordinary upgrade formula that it might just become cosmetics. Eventually there would be Real Girl Levels with clear conditions and shit that tie into the story, etc etc etc.
Speaking of the story, the tone is supposed to be pretty lighthearted, but it's very hard to strike that balance in This Day And Age. I think I just have to embrace the Not For Everyoneness and go all in. Rest assured, though, no great plagues getting started here.
also yeah art in gamemaker is hard to get the size right, especially when you're like me and a) don't know how the hell window resizing is even POSSIBLE and b) start on a tiny scale and don't realize you need to go bigger before it's too late T_T the first step is gonna be a test to see if building it bigger and camerascaling it to the sameish size will be effective at all lmao
It was a little hard to tell what to do most of the time, but I stumbled my way through. The combat was fun to watch happen, and I always love a good city builder
I had a difficult time figuring out the combat, but eventually I had a blast just swimming in circles seeing how long I could survive. The underwater motion feels SO good
Very cute! Frustrating as all get out, though- it was hard to see a lot of the obstacles, and the long sequence between getting caught and being allowed to try again meant I never really got into an 'attempt flow' or whatever it's called. Mix that with having to start from the beginning over again... I don't think this is supposed to be a rage game, but maybe I should put it down for a bit for my own sanity T_T
There's a bit of jank, but most of it was surprisingly charming. The dialogue repeating itself ad infinitum if you press space at the wrong time got at a deep-rooted game-glitch fear of mine, and it felt a little like I was fighting the camera, but the elf girls looking up at me with blithe smiles as they slowly sank into the floor was hilarious, and the way the characters' 'behind objects' shadows worked was fascinating. Excited to see more of this!
I was so excited to play this, I love tycoons and management sims so much. This is so cute and fun! The camera is the biggest weak point, but everyone else has already brought that up so I don't know what I can add here haha
This is so good-looking, so smooth-feeling, so much fun, and SO funny. I love your work, I'm glad you're back this year.
The cargo segment is a bit jank? The two events seem to be mixing each other up a bit. But other than that everything's running great. couldn't pick between cat and irl for the life of me, i'll have to replay it lol
also do i get a brownie point for spotting the homestar runner reference
my computer had a TIME running this, and I guess I figured out the reason halfway through when it started becoming a life sim. Is that just how all unreal engine games are, even ones that don't utilize 3d? brutal
Even the less finished backgrounds look great, to be honest. Your world sketches are super solid.
I couldn't get much into it once the game properly began, but what I did see was cool :]
plat-vore-mer gets the 'greatest pun of the jam' award instantly
The inventory system was SO clever, and the platforming was fun. Maybe a little too zippy? But I'd take too fast platforming over too slow platforming any day- mistakes feel more like my fault for not being cool enough to keep up, you know?
Very interesting! I like the minis gameplay, I can see that developing into something really complex down the line. It was also a breath of fresh air not to have to wait for text-typing lol
Surprisingly difficult. I'd call it unfair if not for the unlimited retries- the fast arrows are just unpredictable, and the way they can overlap each other? At first, I thought this was a rhythm game, but there's no rhythm to speak of here, it's just a 'quicktime' game I guess.
I have to score it low in harmony, but the art is great, and the cheesy dialogue integer overflows back into entertaining lol
It was kind of annoying and hand-tiring to have to click at every punctuation mark instead of being able to show the whole textbox at once, and the bobbing was a little aggressively fast sometimes, but every other piece of this was perfect. The character designs are adorable, the art is phenomenal, the writing is sweet and heartfelt, the bobbing is super cool (it's in-engine?! how the hell !! and it matches the bpm omg), and the music is great. 10/10 game
Always love to see RPG Maker used in inventive ways- I don't think that this kind of side-on 2d is something they officially support yet, at least? But it's great, it feels really natural. I do wish there was a run button, especially for the second puzzle, but the rpgm click support helps, especially with the way u implemented doors. (For other players: click above any door to automatically walk over there and enter it.) The group shot at the end is so wholesome as well omg
also the first background music samples the katamari damacy melody at one point which gets u bonus brownie points
The web version of this is completely not working (firefox). It's a pixelly mess T_T
mistook it for a rhythm game at first and was very confused until i figured it out. the visual style is admittedly a bit uncomfortable to me? but i got way too into trying to get the timing right and nearly forgot all about what was actually being depicted lolol
yeah, the 'wait and watch for a while until you think the platforms have synced up (they haven't you're going to get squished) and make sure to move precisely or you have to wait the cycle over again' combined with the very slow character is just stress-inducing >M< died just when i'd finally managed to make level 3 work and i dont even know how i got squished there
This looks super cool! The 3d-esque art is super neat, the sound design is good, and the puzzles seem like they're going to be really interesting. unfortunately i am this close to rage quitting level 3
Agreed with aeta that the writing needs polish on a construction level. Text is everything in a VN, you gotta give the right impression. I don't need any hands to count how many apostrophes are in this script, which is not a good thing.
I like the gameplay, it's giving Ace Attorney with the way the different actions are setup. There wasn't much impetus to progress other than the satisfaction of having seen everything, so my energy to look around kinda petered out after a bit? But I think I still saw a bunch of it
The character designs are super cute. It's not often you see pixel art this big, so you can really appreciate all the little details of the sprites.
