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How decidedly uncommon!

I'm playing now, great sound effects.  Not sure how to control anything - it seems that the batteries mostly take systems offline, which I can't imagine wanting to do, and I am unable to rotate the ship... I was excited to realize someone was calling me on the "cell phone," and thought they might offer some insights.  No dice!

Figuring out the control schema is definitely the "meta-puzzle."  Speaking of which, I have not yet figured out the control meta-puzzle for your game!  My lives are short and brutish.

Hello name buddy.  (Did you name your game after our game, or is this a wild coincidence?)

That is so cool!  Nice job making it that far.  I think I'd feel like continuing past that level as well if it didn't start so zoomed-out.  (It would probably be a good idea on future versions to limit the distance of the initial starting points.)  I'd enjoy seeing what sort of algebra you used, if you want to post!  And, looking forward to trying your game.

Thanks!  Your game, likewise, was very difficult for me, and also gave me some PTSD flashbacks!  ;)

Thanks a lot, glad it frustrated you!

I'll check out your game as well.

Beat a dev!  I got to level 30...

This is great!  I'm especially impressed by the level design.  Every piece comes together well.

This is hilarious.  The songs, the sound effects, the way the slime wiggles.  It's good almost-mindless fun, which may be appropriate for slimes (I don't see a nervous system floating around in there) and you can bash at the keys and make the game feel real-time, or take your time and plan your moves.

I would like to know how many levels there are.  Starting each level as a lowly lamp-and-apple-muncher is a bit of a blow to my ambitious slimy ego.  When will I achieve my dreams?

Hey, this looks fantastic.  The px3d demo on your site is very good, but I think this is a huge step forward in terms of diversity, atmosphere, palette, and feel.  I know you didn't get to finish all your goals for this jam, but it's still a big picture success, I think.  I'll be following your project!

I think this is a cool concept and solid implementation.  I like the emergent Sokoban-style stuff that can happen as you're trying to push boxes out of the way.  The flavor text adds humanity, and urgency.  When I first opened the game and saw the "helpless citizens" calling for help, I actually felt a little panic.  "I don't know what any of this does," I said aloud to the citizens, attempting haplessly to (G)rab my water gun.  The interface started to make sense very quickly.  The game scales in difficulty well, so level 3 really feels like a new problem.  Sometimes citizens burn to death even before I can get to the building, so maybe future versions could have a set minimum distance between citizens and starting flames.  I tried to chop all the pyros, but they just keep coming!  What is their deal?

Thanks for the game!

Two notes that may be useful:

Unit stats (as damage/life):

• farmer: 1/1
• bandit: 1/2
• armored bandit: 2/3
• samurai: 2/2

When using brackets to adjust speed, tap the key a few times rather than holding it down.  Left bracket speeds the game up, and right bracket slows it down.

Hey, thanks for the kind words!  I love the film.  And it is definitely intended as a coffee-break game.

To answer your questions, left bracket does speed the game up.  You do need to tap the key a few times, rather than hold it down, which I should probably make a note of.

Farmers do attack bandits, often successfully!  But there are some complications.  One is that they won't attack if they're afraid.  They become afraid if they can't see a samurai in their field of vision.  The other is that five of the bandits are wearing armor and carrying better weapons, and the farmers aren't much of a match for them.  Armored bandits are a serious threat and are best dealt with by luring them into positions where they can be struck twice in one turn.

Unit stats (as damage/life):

• farmer: 1/1
• bandit: 1/2
• armored bandit: 2/3
• samurai: 2/2

The odds are always against you in this game, as the war-weary Kambei would tell you, sighing and rubbing his head...

Update: success, but with many features left for the future:

• a setup phase where you can dig moats, place fences, and train farmers
• different bandit abilities
• ranged weapons
• different samurai attacks for each of the seven
• little speech bubbles above the heads of units, with random flavor text responding to events
• a title screen

This was a lot of fun, and got me to start actual work on a project that's been on my mind for over a decade.  I'm really impressed by the submissions I've seen so far.  Congrats to everyone.

What is the BEST place to sleep, though?

I just want to say that my favorite line of code so far is this one:

  samuraiNum = 7;

Link: https://benhem.itch.io/seven-samurai-rl-7srl-7drl

Seven samurai are hired/manipulated/guilted into defending a village of nervous farmers from an attack by desperate bandits.  The bandits have the advantage in terms of numbers, equipment, and skills, so it's up to the samurai to help the farmers hold together.  Place cunning traps!  Attempt bold acts of heroism!  Manage resources wisely!

There are some inspirations looming in my mind (aside from the Kurosawa film). These include Hoplite (Douglas Cowley), with its terrific simplicity and use of LOS, and lack of randomness.  Also Theseus and the Minotaur (Robert Abbot), a great puzzle mechanic where the player can move one square at a time, while the minotaur moves two squares.  Both games pit user cleverness against an enemy force that is stronger in every sense, except that it behaves in predictable ways.

As I work on this, I'm also realizing how much it resembles a battle scene from the old SSI "Gold Box" AD&D games.