We're aware of this bug, and I'm sorry to hear this happened to you :( I would recommend just press A as little as possible during the game. If you need to heal, you can also press spacebar to avoid this.
We're planning on making a post-jam version that addresses this issue and some others, as well as some balancing (maybe new features too???). We'll look into the UI issue as well, thanks for pointing that out.
Thanks for the feedback and glad you enjoyed it despite the bugs!
haha no way we did the same thing then. In my game you bounce a ball back and forth as one of the main mechanics, and I knew going in Godot's physics would not give the results we wanted. Had to whip out a pencil and paper to do some trig and figure out where the ball should go if it hits the edges or needs to bounce off something. Basically made a custom rigid body system, though still leveraging built in collision detection with Area2Ds for some cases. Tough problem but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Hate to say it but that kind of math might be ahead of you if you go down that path lol... good luck with the game!
ace_of_4s is back with another BANGER! I loved Phixer and Fantom and love this game too. So stylish, so well introduced, so beautiful. The only thing, and I mean the ONLY thing I can say needs improvement is the story. It still gave the game a reason to exist though, which is all a video game story really needs. All around excellent work my guy, keep it up.
Dang this was good. I think it overstayed it's welcome by 5 levels or so, but the color mechanics were really cool. The laser physics seemed just a tiny bit off to me, so it was frustrating to get the lasers to do what I wanted. I really think this game could use an angle set or steps for rotating. But hey it's hard to make a puzzle game like this where you give the player all the ingredients and let them cook. Brave even. I might have set the kitchen on fire at one point and lagged the game out (using the glitch with getting an infinite prism loop another comment mentioned). That's not a knock on this game though, figuring out that I could do that was a treat :)
Very unique, I like it. The game however felt a bit slow to me, like it could have had more responsive and snappy controls. The jump is very floaty, the obstacles (at least on easy) are so far apart it is trivial to notice them. The tutorial was highly appreciated though, clear and concise. That said I died during the tutorial and had to start it all the way over, which was a bit annoying, but at least it isn't too long.
I wound up playing this for like 30 minutes, feels really good! It scales very well difficulty-wise, and is a solid survivors-esque bullet hell. I only wish there was a proper ending where Sad Goblin Wizard Boi can leave the dungeon, but still very solid. The music was pretty good as well, was enjoying hearing more and more of the track as the rounds got longer.
Wow ok. As a huge Balatro fan (Completionist+ club) you did such an excellent job of recreating the look and feel of Balatro, great work. As for the game, I will say the rules are a bit too complex for there not being an in-game tutorial. I had to read the rules of the game 3 or 4 times over before I got it and I'm still not 100% sure I understand them. Even then I feel like the game doesn't offer much in the way of variety or strategy. Maybe that's because I only played it once, but I'd imagine every game of Reflectro would play out about the same, and whether you win or lose is based more on the luck of the draw rather than the player's strategy.
When I say all this though I think I am just comparing your game to Balatro itself, which isn't fair. However, much like Balatro, this is a quite original concept for a playing card-based computer game. I think with some refinement of the rules and mechanics, it could be something pretty cool.
A unique take on the theme. The game seems unfinished to me, unless it was a bug, but I couldn't get past "The Expedition" phase, and that phase didn't feel like an ending. But otherwise a solid foundation for a Witcher-esque universe.
As someone who has made not one but two games with a lot of reading in them, one thing I have learned is that long-winded exposition is a killer for enjoyment. Glad you made the prologue skippable, and I think the game still makes sense for those who did skip it, but that kind of exposition is better left sort of sprinkled throughout more interesting and engaging bits of story.
Oh yes and the music fits quite well and the sounds were great!
Cool concept! Was not expecting to play it for 30 minutes but I did, made it to Defiance 26 with ~39000 points, though I got bored around Defiance 20 and stopped trying. Not to say the game is boring though, far from. Just think it gets a bit same-y after a while. More enemy variety and some more upgrades and abilities would help, though!
I loved the action of the hammer swing, so juicy with the sound and the screen shake and the cool little pattern, every swing was a treat.
A couple of mechanical issue I had: I noticed the special move (forgot what it's called) you have to wait like a full second after your last swing to use it, which didn't feel great, led me to using it less that I think was intended. I also feel like having multiple enemies become red in the same tick feels unfair, especially the square guys. They could generate 3 or 4 red tiles at once, often on opposite sides of the screen, so you basically couldn't avoid damage. Maybe that was intentional but I didn't love how that felt. But overall, still loved the game.
I think there is some real potential here for a whack-a-mole roguelike. Not sure what that would entail, but I'm here for it, great job!
It's very arcade shooter-y, with the twist of some kind of rabid shaman trying to kill you and eat you. It's like Slender... but you just have a gun now. Kinda. It's very simple, I'll say. It's mostly just click and shoot at the things when they are visible. I appreciate the attempts to make the game more substantial by adding a reloading minigame and unjamming, but in the end I just find it's a bit too simple to be fun for me. But what is there is solid, I wouldn't say anything here was buggy, just maybe unfinished and unpolished. A good effort and a cool art style!
Glad you enjoyed it! It's very fair to point out the lack of gameplay, it's just a big dialogue tree after all.
I spent a good amount of time on the sounds, but I wish I spent more, feel like the balancing is off especially when playing through speakers. All the sounds are home-made! The monitor hum and beeps were made with tones and noise generation in Audacity. The keyboard sounds were made with an old-school mechanical keyboard I borrowed from a friend.
Thanks for playing!
Made it to wave 25! It's a surprisingly well-balanced experience, with an equally surprising amount of depth to the upgrade choices and possible builds. I would have liked the early game to have some more variety, maybe starting with some money or having cheaper starting upgrades so you can get started on upgrading right away rather than after room 3 or so.
I also noticed a few of minor issues, nothing that hindered gameplay though. Those issues were:
1. Sometimes the bone-chuckers would just not chuck bones? Seemed to be in certain rooms, I think pretty consistently in the top left room they would just kinda walk around.
2. The center room seemed to not have a shop? Made me think it was a chance thing for each room to have a shop but no, that seems to be the only one without it.
3. The wall at the bottom of each room, while looking cool and adding some legitimacy to the space, would often cover up enemies. I found myself walking into that blocked area sometimes and would run into an unseen enemy, which didn't feel great. You may make the perspective sort of even more top down, like The Binding of Isaac.
Ultimately, I really enjoyed this game! I could see this expanded with more weapon upgrades, enemy varieties, and perhaps a more involved story or some kind of end game.
Absolutely phenomenal. No notes. Just a really, really solid little game. Excellently written characters, beautiful pixel art, and a tightly designed map traversed with intuitive and fun mechanics. I literally said to myself "no f***ing way" when I realized what the last power did. Not to mention, of the games I've played so far, probably the most complete and persistent implementation of all three wildcards at once, which is crazy. And you have controller support??? Full marks all around.
It's a cute little game. I liked the goofy art and story, but what does GBI stand for?? Or did I just miss that lol. I found the game to be really easy, but other people are saying it's too hard? I think this game would benefit slowing the player down and adding more projectiles. Since the player is faster than the ghosts it was simply too easy to just run circles around them and shoot. Even the boss was trivial. I wasn't able to finish the game though, I think I got softlocked at the end, with fixing the portal. At the very least it was unclear what I had to do there. But I did like how it played, felt good to control. Overall a solid entry, especially as your first jam game!
Pretty cool! Not sure if it was intentional, but I really liked the fact that the music emitted from the center of the arena, it sort of grounded the game, made it feel like I was really moving in a 2D environment, very cool. Also the spiked enemies would like... duplicate when I shot them? Once again unsure if that's intended, but it definitely felt bad, like shooting enemies gives me more enemies? What? Plus I would say the controls left some to be desired, the aiming in particular was tough, probably harder than intended. You might turn this into a twin-stick shooter like Enter the Gungeon or The Binding of Isaac, the aiming problem would go away. But a cool aesthetic and some good music makes for a decent game, especially for your first jam entry!
It's an interesting game with an interesting premise. The controls are very floaty, which leads to gameplay that is probably more difficult than intended. And I think some sound effects and music would do this game good. But hey, it basically has Super Mario Odyssey's main mechanic of taking over things to get new abilities, which is really cool! Good job!
The art style here is just... so good, I love it. Every time the door opened I kept hoping they were going to be a character I hadn't seen, because I love them all. My favorite is cloud person (name proposal: Skye).
The game itself could use some polish, though. In particular the flow of having a new customer come in is a bit tedious, it's a lot of clicking on small buttons that are far away from one another. You have to: advance the conversation to see what they want, switch to the summoning view, then once you've dragged in the ingredients (which controls pretty well) you then click the summon button, then click the present button on the other side of the screen, then advance the conversation one last time... It's kind of a lot when one recipe, once in the summoning view, takes just a few seconds to enter if you know it already. All that is to say, as a relatively small gripe, the game could flow better.
Also I wasn't able to finish the game because I ran into a bug where no more customers would come in on day 4 :( I really wanted to finish it, a real shame.
Aside from this, the idea of the game itself is pretty good. There's an element of shop-keeping and management, although that's relatively simple, but also this element of discovery of creatures to summon. You're given these wonderfully vague hints about how to make the variants of each summon and that's just excellent, bravo. I'd love to see this game get a coat of polish, plus a new mechanic or two (maybe a money system where you actually repair your house piece by piece?). Great job!
Hating SUFFER.er is kind of the point lol, so you nailed it. I hate them, too, that's why I made them. Something to reflect on: you say SUFFER.er only said things you knew about yourself, yet you hate them... does this mean you hate yourself? Or perhaps just a part of yourself?
And yes, I'm doing just fine. I posted about some self-reflection I've done during and after making this game, you can read about it in my comment under vpeter1119's comment.
Thanks for playing!
Wow. Actually incredible. You managed to create such an intensely unsettling atmosphere with so little, my heart was racing in the dark maze room, genuinely. I mean, it is really short, but the ending is just... I loved it, I said "woah" out loud to myself. The PS1 shader is a nice touch, but does lead to some graphical bugs, was seeing some z-fighting on the dresser. All in all, excellent, can't wait to see more from you.
Really cool and funny concept! The dialogue is great, even the slightly broken English (like exclusively using "u") was really charming. As other people mentioned, it has some bugs and needs some polish, but I think you already know that, so I won't harp on it too much. You did a great job for your first jam entry!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
I did not use a dialogue plugin, but boy do I wish I had. I checked out Dialogic, which seems very extensible and powerful, but I couldn't get it to do what I wanted it to immediately so I say "screw it I'll make my own system". And while I did make my own system, it's very rudimentary and entering new dialogue was an absolute pain. But it works, and that's what's important.
And yes, I'm doing fine. I know the game is a bit dark, depressing even. But I think making things about your negative feelings can help you process them. This game has been getting a lot a praise so far, and I feel a little flutter in my chest every time someone says "wow this is great!" or, like you, says that they had an emotional response to it. And I have to reflect on that, realize that that's my desire for admiration, and I have to not let it go to my head. Let's just say, if I hadn't made this game and instead made a different game, I probably wouldn't be processing this praise in the same way. Making this game has forced me to shift my way of thinking about making things, hopefully for the better.
Cool concept, I wish there was more! I couldn't get the "REPLY" feature to ever work, a shame because the little bits of dialogue were fun. Having minigames for each action is such a charming concept, and are a big part of why I want more of this game. I feel like there is a whole world waiting to be explored with that one mechanic alone. The idea of linking actions to the key of the highlighted letter in the word is neat, but I think it lends to some awkward gameplay, where I'm stretching my finger over to "g" to gather something, when "e" is unused. Cool and unique, but ultimately I think it hinders gameplay. This could be a cool base for a management game, like a House Flipper or something like that. Love it!
Ah what a cool concept! Parallel universes with puzzles that span across them, so cool, would love to see this expanded on! I will say, the puzzle clues did feel a bit simple. They mostly boiled down to "there is a thing in a place, go interact with it", and I feel like a game like this could greatly benefit from some more substantial puzzles. There were some good ones in there though, like [SPOILERS] the puzzle at the back of the hallway with lining up the pictures and the carpets, which took me a bit to figure out (in a good way). But puzzle games are hard (I would know, I've made one before, and it wasn't very good). This is a great effort for 9 days! I will also mention the sounds, or lack thereof. The interaction sounds, though simple, did help, but footstep sounds or just transition sounds when walking between rooms would have helped made the game feel more real, more lively. Also some simple ambient or spooky music could have livened up this game a lot and made it a bit more enjoyable. All that said, I think you nailed some of the most important aspects, like the story, the setting, the overall concept, and fitting with the theme. Great job!
Yeah the note about gameplay is fair, there isn't much here. It's just one big dialogue tree at the end of the day. The shader is adapted from this one, and I took the hard black border from this other one. Thank you for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Never thought typing in a terminal could be so thrilling! I will say, as someone who isn't the strongest typist, it got a little tedious having to retype the tests each time. The saving the last command was great for fixing typos, but a full command history like a lot of terminals have would have been a nice touch. Also, wasn't loving the music at first but found myself bobbing my head to it after a while, so I'd say that's a win. There is clearly a high amount of effort on display here, from the realistic commands and operating system to the details and jargon that each command spits out. Not sure about the appeal beyond programmers/people already comfortable with using a command line interface, but for me this was a really great and charming experience.
