itch.io

Thanks for the feedback! I had been thinking mostly about the original Legend of Zelda for inspiration so I didn't think of a dodge, but it definitely could be a good idea. And now that I think about it, even the Legend of Zelda had the shield for a similar purpose, I'll make sure to consider alternatives as well.

Honestly, quite excellent. The controls took some getting used to and I think it could benefit from a bit higher acceleration and especially deceleration, but it was still quite fun and I could see potential for more complex or difficult sections if it were expanded.

Thanks! Audio is definitely something I would have put in if I had more time, and I've had some feedback on how I could sharpen the graphics as well.

Fun once I got used to the controls! I think it might have been more intuitive to introduce one of the side paths before the opposite path, especially with the way the controls were explained. My thought process went from the first level "The controls listed up and down as teleport, but they don't seem to do anything" to the second "Teleport moves me to the other track, but when I try to move there it teleports me back. Is this a bug?" and it wasn't until the third level that I realized it was tube controls with a "skip 180 degrees" option. Having bottom+right or left for level 2 would have made that smoother. I even think that just forcing you to use teleport for the levels with only two opposite lanes would have helped, if three of the directions didn't end up all behaving as teleport I would have been more likely to try the 4th direction and realize controls were just inverted.

It's incredible that you managed to fit such a large and complex game into a gamejam like this, with a surprising amount of polish. The tutorial left me a bit overwhelmed, having a more guided system where you actually use each thing you learn before being told to learn the next thing would have helped me. I also found crops growing in a quarter day quite unbalanced; in my experience it took most of a quarter day to harvest and replant the whole field, which didn't leave much time to explore for more animals or do things in the town. I think it could have also benefited from more mouse interaction, it is already used for aiming and firing the shotgun, so being able to also use it for regular interactions in place of space/e, and sometimes for drag & drop on the inventory could have made the interface smoother.

Still, all of these are quite nitpicky. The game has a lot of polish and breadth, and a reasonable amount of depth, and I didn't run into anything that seemed like a bug (other than the wasps of course).

Thank you! I already got some feedback that going back to the start after killing a boss wasn't great from a gameplay perspective, and I can definitely see it being less clear than I intended as well. Most likely I would opt to use a short cutscene for that purpose instead if I made some changes. Audio was just something I didn't have time for.

The resolution is pretty low. I did my testing in just the small Unity preview window, and didn't realize until I was making builds a few hours before the submission deadline that I didn't make my UI scale to window size and had to just build with a low resolution to make it work.

Thanks for the feedback! I had initially hoped to have at least some sound effects but they didn't make it in time. I may try to put some in when I patch up some of the other minor issues.

Quite an interesting and unique game! I certainly didn't expect a (partially) traditional rhythm game from this asset pack. I did find it quite challenging when I tried to play it "correctly", but I also felt it was a bit easy to cheese. I found a lot more success completely giving up on paying attention to the music OR the enemies, and instead just mashing all four directions and left click as much as I could. I think the concept could be a lot more comfortable if the dancing and combat portions weren't quite so simultaneous. For example, rather than missing notes spawning enemies, you could have the enemies spawn independently while hitting notes fills up a "mana" reserve for casting the fireballs. This would allow more of an attention-switching style of gameplay where you could look away from the notes if a lot of enemies are attacking, pay a bit less attention to the "combat" area if the coast looks clear so you can build your reserves, or end up in a hectic situation trying to do both at once if enemies come at a bad time. The mana system would discourage the "left click as much as possible" strategy that works pretty well right now, and you could introduce a penalty for extraneous rhythm inputs to combat "mash all the buttons".

The game looks good and plays well for the most part, but the balance isn't quite there. The pace is quite slow because enemies take several hits and their projectiles block shots, but the player dies after a single hit with no checkpoints. This results in several minutes of carefully peeking around cover that often started over because of multiple off-screen enemies in an open space. I didn't manage to find the ending before losing interest in another attempt.

I also think the river graphics could be improved. It may have been an intentional effort to create a "wavy" texture, but I don't think it worked very well.

Still, it was fun and challenging with a mixture of timing, reaction, and planning to take out each enemy; a few checkpoints would have really brought this up to a solid game.

Quite interesting! Definitely the most creative use of assets I've seen so far. It was quite difficult though, it ended up as more of a memory game than anything else because you had to memorize exactly which tiles were safe in each version of the map in order to move between them in time. I think there should be a bit more lenience in the timing of the switch though, there were many times that I died even though the death animation played in an in-bounds square; I'm not sure if I was a couple pixels overlapping the wall or if the sprite kept moving briefly after death, but it happened quite a bit and wasn't a great feeling.

Straightforward, but decently executed and fun. I struggled to pick up passengers at first because I couldn't drive slowly to make tighter turns, but I eventually realized that driving in reverse helped adjust more precisely. It also took me a few attempts to figure out reasonable paths to different locations, in particular the small wooden bridge is very easy to miss and the larger bridge requires a path that's not obvious to go around barriers.

Quite a fun and well polished game. Performance in the browser wasn't perfect, but you already noted that in the description. Difficulty was reasonable, and I neither struggled to make progress nor played through without effort. I wasn't always completely happy with the camera angle, but it was good enough. In a full game I would expect to see more specialized serfs and more varied enemies, but this is quick to play and learn which is good for its length.

Thank you! I may try to incorporate some of the suggestions I've gotten once the gamejam rating period is over, some of them should be fairly straightforward.

Thanks for the feedback! I agree on the bosses, but it was tough to fit in significant AI with the time limit and just upping the numbers doesn't make very engaging gameplay. It's definitely something for me to think about though.

I really like the atmosphere you managed to put together from the tileset! The ability to look around was nice for that, though I found the controls for doing so very finicky and I usually preferred actually playing in the top-down mode.

Without rules enforcement or competent AI, the single-player gameplay is basically meaningless; if you want to win on your second turn you can, otherwise all you can do is hope the AI doesn't decide to move onto your king. In multiplayer it's probably more reasonable; real-life chess doesn't really have rules enforcement either after all. I think it could have been better to lean more on that and allow more manual control so players would be able to make advanced moves like castling and en passant as well as undoing moves if all the players agree on it or custom rules and board setups.

The concept of an alien imitating humans to infiltrate and destroy a company is interesting, but there are some issues with the execution. The biggest one in my opinion is you can't really see where you're going; as mentioned in many other comments going through doors is blind and the camera trails behind rather than looking ahead. I think this could be improved by changing the perspective; the game is 2D but has a virtual third axis going through the doors, while the ability to view other floors seems to have minimal utility. A top-down perspective would let you view both relevant axes instead.

There's also a balancing issue in terms of where the difficulty is located. For me, the only two points of difficulty were walking through doors and immediately dying, and not knowing whether I had subverted all the employees, neither of which were engaging to me. The system of "Make sure you don't overuse one of the strategies!" seemed interesting, but the strategies had no differences other than which key you press. If the options cost resources you needed to manage, or gave different rewards you needed to prioritize, then the choice could be meaningful.

I appreciate all the detailed feedback! Projectiles getting faster in each stage was intentional, but I can definitely understand that the arrows were too slow. I think the difference between the slowest and fastest projectiles could have been narrowed quite a bit for better gameplay, and combining with a wider view and longer engagement ranges would probably help as well. I had the walk back in the game as part of the intended narrative, but it's definitely bad gameplay and probably better done as a short cutscene. Your feedback on the sprites is also on-point.

Thank you!

Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad the concept was clear enough, some of the details I had planned didn't make it in time. That's also good feedback on the balance, I was more concerned about it being too easy but I guess that comes from knowing how everything works.  I definitely didn't find the best settings for importing assets either, I'll try your suggestions next time I'm working with pixel art.