itch.io

You were right about the HP update delay. The game engine was acting on the correct value, but the UI was only ever updated when HP was lost. So if you were down to 4 HP, then you fully healed, you would appear to still only have 4 even though you did have 10 until you lost -1 HP, then you would visually jump from 4 to 9.

I fixed this and other things now that the jam is over in what I hope becomes a trend of actually continuing development on a project. I welcome any other feedback you have, and thanks again for playing!

https://applepieforge.itch.io/whack-a-zombie/devlog/878850/v001-posted

Thank you again for mentioning the bugs. I have fixed the UI bugs I believe and gave the HP changes a brief fade in/out to make changes easier to see (though I think I will do much more in this area after adding audio and other things). I welcome any other feedback you may have!

https://applepieforge.itch.io/whack-a-zombie/devlog/878850/v001-posted

Thank you for the kinds words! Good point on the zombie color scheme -- I am working to get those zombie images replaced with drawn art that will help (background too). Sounds is honestly probably going to come first because I really wish it had some already.

Second suggestion: annotation in the monsternomicon for the real counts of remaining monsters (as it is) but will added text showing what *you* the player think remains counting your right-click guesses for a given level number. I do enjoy the having to manually check, but I see that becoming less and less fun over time possibly. We will see.

What a well balanced game! Each playthrough taught me something new, the monsternomicon was indeed all I needed, and after winning a few different ways, finally seeing the dragon all alone was so rewarding. Very well done! This is my new end-of-day unwinding game.

EDIT: as I am starting my next playthrough, I'm finding myself wishing for a game clock so I can see how quickly I can get through it. I get why this should not be rushed by default, but a race mode to do best times for a given final score would be great for "late game"

Love this!!! I played this when you first published, maybe on a different account, or this one... anyway, I'm sad to still see the grayed out buttons. Just know someone is enjoying your work still!

Ur-Quan Masters meets Asteroids! I say that because I am very bad at the Ur-Quan Masters' movement mechanic and this me (good, nostalgic) flashbacks, haha. The game graphics and audio go really well together; post game jam, a little UI polish for the menu would go a long way of course. Well done, I like it!

Thank you! That's a great way to put it, I'm glad to hear I hit a sweet spot between tedious and overwhelming :)

Thank you! It's so cool to see people pushing to get better high scores. I wish I had more time to integrate a global leaderboard.

Thanks for the feedback. You're not the only one, so I'm working (offline) on overhauling the UI elements because they are definitely not consistent, and not great to start with in terms of making changes evident (especially when you don't have much time to focus on them with everything else going on).

I am continuing development so I hope in the coming weeks you will see something more interesting! I'm planning out a fairer ongoing speed curve, a few different visually distinct types of enemies, and boss battles (do not despawn until defeated, high HP)

Because I suck at platformers, at first I thought this was crazily unbalanced. However, I practiced for a bit and this is actually a really fun micro-level game. It's a bit fast for my taste, but I recognize that's probably just me. Having success for a level be achieved without too long of a series of correct jumps makes it rewarding for me (platforms with no checkpoints between a long series of perfectly timed moves are a rage quit recipe).

One note: it would be great to have a brief reset transition. Sometimes I had to simply wait for a fill death in between real attempts. Because it is so fast, milliseconds matter, and on attempt 1 I am trying to get to the star frantically and almost there but then I die and attempt 2 begins immediately, but I'm moving the wrong direction (which just a millisecond ago was the correct direction). This ruins attempt 2 right away so I may as well just wait to die and be ready to go for attempt 3. Even a one-second black screen fade out then fade in would help. I get for a game like this it shouldn't be very long since levels are measure din seconds, not minutes, but even a very brief pause would make a huge difference.

🤣

Ok, came back to play some more, and I gotta say, this is more puzzle than real-time driving and I love it. I feel like I'm doing the toy car version of Tokyo Drift when I can round blocks smoothly without running into anybody. You should expand this into a full-sized game with a single-player campaign!

This is well done! Intuitive and no tutorial needed. Loved the feeling of punching through a three ring enemy. I'm not sure I want to give any feedback about the game itself because I think the scoping is perfect as it is.

Would be great to have a downloadable build for a game like this I think, but Chrome at least worked pretty well.

Haha, but it's so tempting!!! (to change things last minute) Don't worry about it, I really enjoyed testing it. Please keep working on it!

I guess I found the game I'm good at, because I actually had to quit on purpose after getting into a positive feedback loop of ever-increasing charge. This game is sooo much fun!

If you used a HUD style UI for the score/battery figures, then all you need to do is add game content (more varied map layouts, enemy types) to have something I would pay money for. The graphics, music, and sfx all create a vibe I find very comfortable in an after-work arcade game.

Also, as a super frivolous feature request: please have random commentary emoticon speech bubbles from audience members when cool stuff happens, I kept hoping that would happen.

This was me at 100 charge then shortly thereafter deciding to purposefully click all my charge out so I could try other games.

Finally, a game I can play without high APM! This is a super fun puzzle and the rapid thinking makes great engagement. I would personally prefer a visual timer (like a decreasing bar or arc) for when I'm panic checking the time, but the UI is great otherwise. Love the neon sign changes as I progressed!

I think you have some logic bugs when replaying. I noticed after messing up this run that when I tried to start over with difficulty 1 (that's what the 1-25 should do, right?) the board was exactly the same as when I left it having just failed. This was consistent throughout. Other than that, the play is super fun.

The music is a good match for the short play session, but the loop could be a bit longer (don't worry, I didn't get to sound at all, so something is better than nothing).

Loved playing! I do not have good reflexes for platformers, but I was getting better at working with the bullet fire patterns with each run through. I liked the clear distinction between platforms that could block bullets versus not. The music was a great vibe, and having voice comments on actions/events was surprisingly helpful (not something I would have expected).

Note: I regularly got stuck on the sides of the X blocks that can stop bullets, meaning I would jump into the sides of them but then stick there and slowly slide off. I would expect to simply fall so I didn't get my timings messed up.

Oh wow, this is beautiful. The writing in the scenes and the scenes layered visually with the transitions... awesome.

I'm no good at platformers so I never made the leaderboard, but I loved it anyway. No notes other than the ones you already know (needs a death transition and audio, both things my entry lacks too)

Thank you!

Thank you so much! You have much better accuracy and reflexes than I do. This is not a genre I excel at as a player. Well done on that score. Waiting like that is the right thing to do, though I was hoping to make it tempting to take earlier as the pace picked up.

Yeah, the healing is pretty unsatisfying, right? I need animated hearts and sound effects to make it clear. The healing is immediate, but it's really easy to miss that it happened (also maybe you uncovered a bug if it didn't apply right away?

When the jam ended, I had gotten ever increasing enemy attack speeds, though the spawn speeds remain constant (other than the occasional wave). But the player's attack speed never changes, so eventually it will hard stop you because the enemies will attack faster than you. My next update post-jam will include the player also speeding up so it is still technically the same game just forcing you to play faster and faster. Then audio because the lack of audio makes me sad, but I ran out of time.

🤣

This is a great puzzle mechanic! I did not understand how to use the charge, but that's probably because I was not good enough to get it full :(

In case you are planning to hunt for bugs after the jam, check this out: shouldn't the four connected red blocks near the top have been destroyed? They were later when something else connected them if it helps.

Thank you! 1313 is higher than my own personal record during development, so I agree it is a lot. Well done!

I got to 9!!! My fingers were so twitchy trying to get the timing right. This is an awesome mechanic! You should make a fuller version after the jam with many different maps and audio. I would drop a few bucks on that.

The game idea is fun, but I struggled with not being able to change camera angles (or am I missing something?). There was a zombie fox that I could only approach by walking backwards without being able to see it because there was no path walking forward to it. Camera angle changes would make this one of the best games here. If I'm an idiot who missed the controls, let me know.

This was such a brilliant idea! Great work.

P.S. I can't read your game page with the blue and yellow theme.

Thank you so much for letting me know! I'll be sure to update the game page to warn other macOS users so they know how to get it working.

Thank you for the kind words :) I am hoping to get the balance such that there's a need to revisit previous areas each time you upgrade, but right now it gets ridiculously bottlenecked on stone tools. If there's anything else you see that I should fix let me know!

hey there! I apologize, what you’re seeing is a bug in the game engine I’m using (Godot 4) whose web builds for macOS don’t work with Chromium browsers. I *think* that Safari will work, but unfortunately I do not have a macOS device of my own to test that, or to build a macOS version for you :( would you be willing to test the game with Safari?

I never would have thought of that, but that makes total sense now, and would definitely make things faster as the game progresses  to later stages. I've added this to my 0.0.3 list. Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you! I think I'll keep developing it so feel free to check back in a couple months for something with more polish and content.

Thank you! Yes, I agree that's a pretty glaring flaw. I ran out of time for doing nice mouse over text explaining what hiring the worker would provide (for example, I think at submission time the stone tool maker "knapper" consumed 1 food and 1 stone to produce 0.1 stone tools each second). I'm working on that to add by the end of the month along with some other polish and added features.

The narration was not in the original plan; I added i ton a whim when playtesting. I'm glad you liked it :)

Like Tef Dev and Linku, I'd love to have control over the relative volume between the instruments/music and the clicking sound effect. Otherwise, I really love this concept! It was rewarding to see the audience fill out as we got instruments going, even though I missed out on getting the sax into the first show by two seconds :(

You and your sister did a great job! I have relatives with different colored eyes so it was nice to see a character with that as well :)

What a great leveling recipe! The ending was hilariously unexpected. The art style, music, and racing concept really made this fun. Well done! Would love to see this updated with more levels and update dimensions.

I like the mini game at the next level above base clicking, and would like to see what you envision at the future next levels. Aside from the challenges with the AI, I really like the pong element. It might raise the stakes if you lost all your not-yet-cached-out points but points went up higher the longer you don't cash out? If you wanted a riskier experience, as is it's a wonderful idle experience. Well done!

Just noting that I saw the same thing several times, so this isn't a rare edge case. Once the auto-play option is going, it's just a matter of resetting, but prior to that it's a waste of 20 tokens to reset since it will otherwise go on forever.

Never mind, I finally got it randomly in web view (not maximized, hence the "Rate for..." button from the Itch page over it)

I love that you made an RPG incremental with this ascetic. The balance felt pretty good, and the graphics and audio go together well. This could be an even better Two Crowns for sure. Although, I was sad to find that I could kill my own minions -- also, sometimes I watched my coins drift down into oblivion at a 45 degree angle to the ground?

I cannot tell you how disappointed I was when I got to the edge of the map and couldn't advance with my mad jumping skills :( if this continued into a linear world to explore with the same incremental spirit, I'd pay money for it. I realize of course there's no way that would happen in this jam, but still, it immediately sucked me in and I dared to dream. Regardless, absolutely great job! This is inspiring.

P.S. I was really hoping to make a three-deep stack of enemies to cover the tutorial text but they just started overflowing into my base instead, so this is what you get.

I'm so glad I tried the downloaded version after seeing the comments about the web version bugging out, because I very nearly missed out on this. A short clicker for sure, but having some new clockwork mechanic on each level making you think about progress not in a "make integer go vroom" way but "how am I supposed to get up there?!" way brought Myst magic into the genre.

The clockwork visuals in sync with the audio made this truly amazing. Guessing at how something worked and then getting it right after scratching your head for a second was rewarding in, again, a Myst fashion to me. You clearly make a good team. Keep it up! I'm hoping to make something as all-around polished; I think this game has to take the cake on that this jam.

Now to leave it running on the bottom level to see if there's any kind of eventual infrastructure challenge :)

This took me a minute to realize the automation was available by turning up the BPM slider because there's some time loop it takes to kick in (I'm guessing the instrument plays *after* a time rather than playing right away then waiting a time period) so I was turning the switches back off before the low level sound clicked in.

Other than that, this was super fun! Would love to see this expanded, and have some kind of temporary bonuses or boosts from specifically setting various tracks BPM to set up a "desirable" rhythm (bonus points if we can get another slider for each instrument to control how to offset the instrument, for example: if I set two instruments to 40 BPM, I could have them play alternating rather than always together).

Well done, this is an inspiring combination! It's too bad the web export didn't work :( So far Godot 4 has "just worked" so I'll go knock on wood now.