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I'm glad you found value in this thing I made! It's definitely a bit short, but there are a lot of secrets and easter eggs to be found if you want to look around for them. A staircase is actually a great idea, I might add that if I come back to this at some point! For now, there's actually no such thing as fall damage just yet, so if you want to explore the Lower Plains you can just jump off (although you'll have to start over it you want to get back up). Thanks again for taking the time to check out this experience, and I hope you enjoy any more exploring you may decide to do!

I'm glad you liked the writing! I've definitely gotten that feedback about the abruptness, and I'm thinking on how to fix that, but the idea of not knowing what happens next was certainly intentional! It's left ambiguous, and the player is left to come up with their own ideas of how things play out from there. Whether your memory comes back, or if Riley stops coming, isn't made explicit.

I see, I'll have to play it again! I was definitely trying the red bullets 😅

I love the idea of a bullet hell where you create your own stage, and this fits the theme very easily and understandably. It's interesting how removing a simple mechanic like bullets disappearing can create a whole new experience! I wasn't able to get the shield/bomb to work, but I'm sure with more time I'd figure it out (unless the shield is meant to be able to block things from the start, in which case not sure why it didn't). Great job!

This is a fantastic game! Unfortunately it got stuck for me: I tried to press enter and down arrow and all that but it didn't seem to work. When I got to Karen notes (where you're supposed to do core) the text file was empty. I definitely want to try again at some point, because I absolutely love the concept and execution and personality. Any chance we can get a reveal as to what K.A.R.E.N. stands for?

Fascinating. Fascinating and macabre and beautiful. Maybe this is because I really enjoy text-based games and meta stuff and all that but this was a legitimately amazing experience. I really am not sure what to critique. Everything was effective: the degrading text (which reminds me of the show Russian Doll, I think you'd enjoy it if you haven't seen it, it's on Netflix), the corrections, the consistency that is hinted at when the clubber remembered me wanting to talk, and confirmed with the charger. The prose itself was of course very well written. I really want to come back to this one, I am blown away. 

This game is dumb and I love it. The main thing I would wish for would be more control over the flapping jaw, but from what I can tell that was kind of the point. I unfortunately wasn't able to get to 2000, even while shimmying to try and knock my mouth open too much stuff just bounced out. I noticed you said you used pre-existing audio, which I assume means music, but I want to believe there's some giant compendium of this dude somewhat excitedly saying the names of objects. Good job on making a fun and silly game!

I love this so much. I know someone made a game inspired by Conway's Game of Life, was this it? Because I can totally see it! It's incredibly satisfying to slowly grow bigger and bigger and more and more unstoppable, but it balances itself as they get distracts (which I just love so much). At one point my little troop was completely wiped, but I scrolled around and found another group like twice the size of what I had had doing their own thing. I think this was a fantastic application of the concept!

This game was pretty fun! I feel like having a lose condition would make things more interesting, because then you can't just always go towards the closest one and actually have to cover the whole stage, but it worked really well! At one point an X spawned, then later some boots spawned, and when I picked up the boots it collected the X, so that may be some glitch to look into. I also never saw the scythe, but that might just be rng. All-in-all, a nice and hectic arcade-y game (although could be even more hectic with more stakes).

I'm very happy to hear I succeeded in that respect!

I'm glad my game had an impact on you! Maybe next year I'll do another one (although hopefully I'll have learned enough that I would do so by choice, and not for lack of skill).

It's nice to hear I was able to create that much of an emotional response with my writing.

I'm glad you enjoyed the story! The engine thing is definitely something I would like to do, I'm currently teaching myself html and css and such to build a UI for a text adventure, so hopefully future projects will be that much better!

I feel like this game could use a good amount of work, which of course is something that is in short supply when you're making a game in 48 hours. There are some obvious things, like being unable to grab a crate that is behind you, being able to softlock yourself by knocking over a spring, or just general jank that would come out if you were to polish it up for a post-jam release. There are also some more subtle things, like the fact that if you do listen to everything they say (my first run), there is no reward. You get very abruptly killed for no real discernible reason. This makes it feel like far less of a choice and more like the illusion of one. Sure, you could go through normally, but there is literally no reason to, so why would you? In The Stanley Parable, for example, following the narrator gives you exactly what he wanted to give you: a cool story with far-reaching consequences and you as the main character. As such, there is a reason to follow the voice. If there is literally nothing besides an abrupt and simple end, then one starts to wonder why the voice even expects them to follow. Finally, even if you do escape, there really isn't a reward. You just walk out of a room, and the game tells you you escaped. There is nothing to differentiate that final action from any other time you left a room before.

All in all, I think there is a lot of potential. Portal and The Stanley Parable are both some of my favorite games of all time, and their core idea is the same: You are fighting back against some authority figure that is desperate to wrangle you back under control. I think this game could really use more attention and consideration, taking the time to decide what is special about that theme and what interesting situations it allows (does the controller try to kill you? Bribe you? Make promises about what you're leaving? Lie about where you're going?), and of course polish up the gameplay a little. When you are able to explore these ideas more fully, which I completely understand is very, very difficult to do in a limited time period, that's when you can start to have a really, really interesting interaction with the player.

I really like the concept, and the use of the numpad is genius! It's weird to say, but it almost feels like a flight sim or some other thing where you control something complex: with one hand on WASD and the other on the numpad. That said, I struggled quite a bit with the controls, I seemed to move relative to how the character was facing which could get really confusing given the fixed perspective. After the second level I wasn't able to progress any further: the enter key didn't work, but I think the idea is definitely there! With some more work this could make a fantastic game!

This was a really fun experience! I can see other people share the same idea I had, that being for checkpoints, but honestly I had a great time regardless! It's fun and challenging, and I definitely want to play more after the jam!

Edit: Another thing I noticed was the character kind of vibrates when against something or at the top of the water, but that can easily be polished away post-jam!

I'm glad I was able to have an emotional effect with the game I made! The idea of scrolling through twitter or otherwise distracting yourself is actually something I thought about and intended as an option, that is a choice you are making, to occupy yourself until Riley comes back. The time between messages actually used to be 2 seconds, but quite a few people had trouble keeping up so I bumped it up to 3 and that seemed to work much better. Of course there are always gonna be people that find it too fast or too slow, but I thought it best to err on the side of leisurely as opposed to overwhelming. Thank you for the feedback!

I'm glad that you found value in my game! This game is entirely coded in really, really basic C++, using Microsoft Visual Studio. I used incredibly simple things (console output, if statements, and waiting which I found by looking up). https://www.cplusplus.com/ and https://www.w3schools.com/cpp/ are both amazing resources if you want to look into it. Probably 90% of my time in this jam was spent on pure writing, which I just developed through practice and reading other things! To be honest, if you want to aspire to make something, I'm sure with some work you could put together something far better than what I made!

I'm glad my writing was able to create such an experience! I can see the bit about the ending, but I'm not sure I would change it unless something big came to me. The console scales to any resolution, meaning making the spaces would be essentially impossible, but if I were to make a GUI and such for it I would definitely make sure to neaten things up! Thank you for the feedback!

I'm glad you enjoyed! The stages of grief wasn't an intentional, explicit connection, I decided to focus on Riley's process of dealing with this, but I imagine my knowledge of the concept definitely influenced my understanding of that. I'm happy to hear the waiting didn't put you off!

This is actually a really fun shooter! It actually feels a lot better than some of the other shooters I've played where you have less control. I'm not 100% sure why this is, but I think it's just because you're able to focus entirely on where you're aiming. The only thing I really struggled with was when the turret malfunctioned, I couldn't quite figure out how my mouse affected it, but given the point is that you are struggling with the turret I don't think that's really a problem. Great job, I think with more variety and innovation it would make a fantastic time waster!

I've definitely been considering a post-jam build, but I don't think I'd do one unless there are multiple changes that I feel change the experience notably 😅

I'm glad the theme resonated with you! I'm am also beyond happy my writing was up to par, I tend to doubt myself a lot (heck, there were two updates the day of submission changing a single word each time), so that's definitely encouraging!

I'm glad you found value in what I made! Presentation is definitely something I would want to actually put work into if I was to make some sort of proper release of this, at the very least stop words from getting split between lines 😅

I'm glad you found quality in the concept! I definitely understand the controversy (for lack of a better term) over the waits, but they're not really meant to make you feel helpless. I put them in to have the player think about what is happening and, if they choose, to imagine Riley trying to collect themself. I definitely am still trying to think of perhaps a better way to do this, but taking them out completely I fear would give less weight (no pun intended) to Riley's words and reactions. You can't just skip through things, you have to let them chew through it.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have definitely considered looking into such tools, but I think in the end I'm going to focus on improving my skill with more versatile engines like Visual Studio and Unity.

This was really cool to experience! I definitely plan to come back and play it in full when I have time! There are obviously things that could be improved, mainly in the genre of polish (animations, enemies falling from the sky, combat, that kind of thing), but just seeing what you got done in 48 hours is astounding, and I wasn't even able to get to all of it! This is really solid, and I think you should definitely keep working on it for a post-jam release; I would certainly love to see what you can do given the time you need!

It's a great concept, and I love how intuitive it is concept-wise. I found it somewhat frustrating in practice, sometimes from the timer or having to constantly take a hand off the arrow keys to use the mouse, but more than once from my own lack of skill/forethought/ability to adapt. I can totally see the potential, and I definitely don't think it's poorly programmed because I had trouble with it! I think the concept stands strongly on its own, and with some tweaks this would make a fantastic puzzle-time-waster!

I really enjoyed this game! It definitely felt very out of control, and I can only imagine how it feels to properly get a handle on the flight. I wasn't quite able to figure it out in the time I had with it, but I definitely plan to come back to it and see if I can get it! The manual was absolutely perfect, I loved the humor and it so perfectly created that feeling of "WHERE THE H*CK DOES IT TELL ME HOW TO FLY THIS THING?!!". The art was really cool, I have no idea how you do it, the only problem with the visuals was that the Unity splash screen was blurry for some reason, but that really doesn't matter.

This is such a cool game! It reminds me of Baba Is You. I enjoyed playing it quite a bit, and it was cool that the rules get established in a different order each time, really cements it as a cool puzzle roguelike. I was confused at first because I expected it to be turn-based, but once I figured it out it was perfectly fine, and it didn't take me very long at all. Great job!

It's an interesting idea! The gameplay itself was a neat idea, and while I couldn't bring myself to start smashing and rolling my hands around I can definitely see the appeal! The theme seemed kind of insistent, and I couldn't quite see the connection to the gameplay, like how this is earning money and why you want to take medicine and do therapy, but overall I would say that doesn't make it less enjoyable, just has a minor confusion that can be ignored.

I'm glad you find value in it, and that the waiting didn't put you off!

I'm glad you liked it! That was certainly a big part of the intended experience, that you feel the frustration of wanting to remember but being unable to.

I'm so glad you found enjoyment in my game! I definitely didn't expect people to find it fun. I like that you pointed out the minimalism, because that hadn't fully occured to me and was only partly intended. I have a very limited skill set when it comes to programming, so this is pure console output and if statements really. I chose this idea (I have a list of like hundreds of game ideas I've had over the years) because I realized I could pull it off with this limitation, but I didn't think of how it adds to the theme!

Thank you, and good luck to yourself! Your game is marvelous, and I like that we seem to have had somewhat similar interpretations of the theme!

I'm so happy to hear you found value in my game! I definitely was hoping to create that feeling, so I'm glad that succeeded with you!

I'm very happy to hear I was able to create that empathy! There are certainly a few dialogue options that only lead to a difference of a line or two, those mainly exist for the sake of role-playing. If you are the kind to crack jokes or be silent and see what happens, those options are available to you ^-^

I'm glad you found value in my game! There are basically two endings, to pull back the curtains a little. If Riley loses hope, which happens by the use of discouraging dialogue options, they will give up, otherwise the game ends after the fifth day.

I debated a lot with the waits. Fun fact: they were originally 3 and 5 minutes respectively. In the end, after a lot of feedback, I got it down to people being willng to wait for about a minute, and I couldn't bring myself to bring it much lower. I left them in for the sake of their artistic value, the point largely being that you, like the player character, can't do anything but just sit and think or distract yourself.  This game is definitely not very competitive when it comes to participating in a game, but I've honestly just accepted that. I set out to create a meaningful experience, and I feel I've been able to do that, but in the end that's up to the players that are willing to wait it out ^-^