itch.io

Had a lot of fun, and the levels were very well made.  I quite enjoyed the "Is it broken" and "Bridge" ones.  Bridge had me so close to a rage quit haha.  Also, on "Snail", I was REALLY worried on that last bend.  Maze game trauma flashbacks.  Was waiting for a jumpscare lol.

I think it's a really nice touch actually, but maybe setting it so it only happens once with the long animation puts a ton of emphasis, then once that's "flipped" having it swap to a shorter one for every time after that would increase ease of use without taking away that initial "wow" moment of introducing the mechanic!

Excited to see what else you make btw! 

SPEED.  Fun game, great visual and audio, and I kind of like how slippery it is, but it may have to be either capped at a certain point or allow the player some for of airbraking, but it was very fun and well implemented!

Ooh that's an interesting one!  I feel like this could be very well expanded on- I'm not sure how- but I really like what you've got going here.  I was like "why does it want me to remember what path I took", and then I was the red capsule and just went... "Oh god- I totally don't remember what I just did".

Fun game!

Absolutely gorgeous, and pleasing to both the eyes and ears.  Took me a bit to figure out what I was doing but I really like this.  A very unique strategy game.  Plus, I love me some good water effects! (Deleted double post)

Extremely fun, definitely could see this with a few more upgrades, and wishing the enemies spawned a few tiles further away, but this reminds me of the flash games that used to eat HOURS of my time back in the day.  Love it!

Really digging the ambience, and it's got a very creative gameplay loop!  It gives me lavender town vibes in all the right ways.

I quite enjoyed this actually- that mechanic of becoming a ghost and getting more momentum was a lot of fun.  I would say that maybe after the first level that you do it though you can probably make it skip the "intro" of becoming a ghost for more seamless gameplay, but honestly it didn't really take me out of it regardless.  Fun gameplay, pretty good use of mechanics, and I'll admit the music is pretty damn catchy.  Nice work!

Thank you so much!  Absolutely will give your game a try as well! 

Thank you so much!  I'm glad that you enjoyed the experience!  Also I absolutely love your icon haha.

I'm glad you asked!  Actually our team is currently comprised of myself, my partner, and a close family friend who we've known for years.  We have a few other people we are going to be onboarding for specific roles and because of their areas of expertise- but we're pretty fledgling.  This was the first game any of us have ever put out so we wanted to see our current capabilities.  I will definitely say that I need to have someone with better optimization and "code cleanup" habits, which is part of us bringing in people with more technical experience.  I tend to train myself as a bit of an all-arounder, but a jack of all trades is a master of none haha, and it shows in all the things I overlooked when I was finalizing the build.  Other than that- we have limited graphical experience and probably will be looking that direction as well.

Oh this is very helpful!  Yeah I kind of forgot to remove the sprint from the testing.  (I'll probably leave it but massively reduce the speed- feels odd to remove a sprint after it was in).  Hmm- as for not being to tell that the game was over I was thinking about adding some kind of audio or catalyst that draws the player back to the front of the house (it seems a few people have gotten stuck here as well).

I really like the idea of changing Paul's handwriting as well, that seems obvious now that you mention it but should be a quick fix to add a lot more immersion and clarification as to who was writing it.  I also quite like your idea for the world shift having post-processing and other effects to really sink in the uneasiness there- and you can probably expect to see a couple modifications to that hallway segment in post-release because it's been on our mind too how we could better deliver that atmosphere, and post processing sounds like a really good way to do that.

This was incredibly helpful and I really appreciate you taking your time to post this!  I'm also very thankful to you for taking your time to play our game, and am glad to hear that you enjoyed our story!  I know short-bittersweet narratives aren't everyone's thing and I was honestly decently worried about the reception of such a game.  Also, we would love your feedback on anything we post in the future!  You seem to have a very good head on your shoulders for game design and when we post our next projects, should you want to, we would love to have your input!

I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on Vale.  It's got it's quirks, and in the rush to finish we couldn't squash the performance bug or the note-menu GUI bug.  But notes still close properly with C.

Controls: E to interact with notebooks, C to close notes, Esc to quit.  After reading the last note, the game closes automatically.

We do have a planned update for after the GameJam to provide bugfixes and add a seperate ending with a soft credit roll, but I would love to hear your thoughts on it in it's current state.

Vale (Farewell) by BerryGood Games!

Lol gonna be 100% real with you, we had a typo in the door rotate code that made it fall over like that, and we all got such a laugh out of it as a team that I promised our developers we'd leave it, haha.  It's not a bug- it's a "feature" we say.  Oh- fun fact, Paul's toothbrush can be found having fallen off the bathroom counter (and the trash can contains my soul, of course).

So glad to hear that you enjoyed it!  We had to scope it back quite a bit but I'm really hoping to eventually have a full story to expand on this- one of the concepts that we had was having the player go into multiple final moments and experiencing multiple short stories from that perspective, as separate chapters for different people's passing.

Somewhat of a spoiler: the progression is Entry -> Dining Room -> Hallway -> Study (each note opens the next door)

If you're not sure where to go after the study- try retracing your steps. *hint hint nudge nudge*
Also huge thank you for checking it out!

Oh honestly I didn't even think about footsteps oddly enough.  It seems like an obvious one now that you mention it haha, plus I feel like the quiet section would have a nice atmosphere with the footstep sounds.  Yeah we made the mistake of running the tests on a higher-end pc, but the minute I tested the game on my laptop I noticed the frame drops.  I'll be giving that a few tweaks once I can for sure.

Thank you for playing Vale and thank you for your input!

Oh that's a nice way to look at it!  I quite enjoy that you have built yourself a modular framework for quick prototyping and rapid development- and honestly that's a really good idea.  One of my personal projects right now is template creation, making control schemes, camera schemes, interactable systems, etc in a versatile way where I can piece the "blocks" of code together to create a way to test concepts quickly and start putting a higher amount of playable prototypes out in a short amount of time, seeing which have the best impact or gameplay and figuring out which ideas to devote more time to!  (Nothing quite like the feeling of designing a game for a while and then realizing the harsh truth- that it isn't fun!)

Feel free to reach out any time I'd love to chat concepts and anything you feel like.  I'll probably open a guest chat channel on our company discord at some point  for developers to chit chat back and forth if you'd be interested.  It would be nice to have a community of like-minded people who are interested in the design process!

Played your game and really liked it!  I think power-ups and multiple tracks will add a lot of versatility and really like the idea of the quality of life changes too!  I feel like it would be a really fun party game, with 2 or 3 cars on a bigger map, and might be a really good fit for mobile!  I'm just imagining sitting there vs a few friends as the match becomes faster and faster trying to see who can live longest, haha.

I particularly like the charm of this one.  I'm a big fan of the art style and the fox's art style in particular!

Also, I feel like the theme, while touched on by the story, is actually better represented in the cycle of seasons.  It feels very fitting for "An end is a new beginning" to see the seasons going by and spring becoming winter, winter becoming spring, and so on.  Nice experience overall.

I'm curious to ask what you used to make the scene and background art!

I like the moving parts of the map being an obstacle that at first doesn't seem too in your way- but as you gain speed it begins to be harder and hard to time when you can "squeeze the gap".  Also, you did a great job with the pixel art, it has a wonderful style and you have a nice little jam going.   Fun game!

I 100% think your game would do very well on mobile- and if you do port it please let me know because I found myself having quite a lot of fun playing it!  It feels very polished by the way- sound, animation, and gameplay were all very smooth and felt very professional.  I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the balancing by the way- that's always one of the hardest parts for me to wrap my head around.  I'm one of those players who will backwards longjump my way into and out of problems, which makes it very hard to tell when I am setting the technical bar too high or low for the playerbase (doesn't really apply to Vale though, being that it was a narrative).

Speaking of!  Huge thanks for checking it out!  It's got those couple kinks I mentioned, and the ending is a jarring end (you'll see what I mean haha, no it's not a bug), so it has a way to go but this was our groups first game release and I feel pretty good about the direction it took.

Oh- and also if you add more abilities to your game you gotta keep rolling with the puns now!  You set a high bar gotta keep it going, haha.  Had a good laugh at the names.

This one's dangerous for me!  These wave based games have this funny effect of making me lose tracks of hours of time lol.

Excellent work all around- graphics are great, gameplay is thoroughly enjoyable, and the sounds match perfectly to everything going on.  Also I love the puns in the upgrade names!

Haha- it was our intentional- jam closes in a half-hour ending.  Little suddden eh?  Thank you so much for playing!  I know it was quirky, but I hope you had a good time!  (Will probably update it later with a short credit snip before the game closes cause it's kind of jarring)

Oh I like this concept!  Sounds fun!  I'll throw in a link, but I might be at work around that time.  I'll see if I can get my lunch late in the day and tune in!
Wishing you the best with the stream!  Hope to be there!

Vale (Farewell) by BerryGood Games.

E to interact, C to close notes.  And a big thank you to anyone who checks it out!

Ooh!  Okay that was fun, and the way back turned it up a notch.  I saw the warning on screen and was like "oh there's probably something coming that counts as a kill zone, like a scrolling "death wall".  Was pretty calm about it.

Then I saw the arrows and went 

Nicely done!  Also good use of the soundtrack and ambience!

That soundtrack change triggered a fight or flight.  Well done, loved the experience!  Fun control changes and surreal gameplay!

"Going into this game jam I prepared myself for criticism knowing that I am a noob myself, but I was surprised by the positivity and supportiveness of this community. "

Stack Overflow took all the toxic ones, the positive ones are what's left on itch.

Nah I jest, this was a great jam to participate in as a first jam, and in fact that's what my team and I did too.  We decided after messing around with some design principles for a while we'd finally put something out to the world, and despite it being a little under the radar I'm actually really happy with it.  We proved that we could get something out under pressure, and proved it to ourselves more than anyone else.  I think we needed the confidence boost of getting something started, made, and done.  This jam is a great place to build some development confidence and I'm glad it sounds like you had a really good experience too!

Also very much enjoyed your game-  I loved the control swaps and the almost surreal techgore snippets.  The soundtrack warping halfway scared the absolute living ghost out of me while playing it in dark at midnight lol.

I think Swagturtle made an excellent point about scope by the way!  For example, in our project Vale, we were running out of time pretty badly (working full time jobs on top of development is a rough balancing act).  Like you, we were also in the last 5 minute club, and I honestly thought our build wasn't going to make it in time.  Thank God it did!

We had a lot of things planned for the final project that never made it in, things that had DAYS of work put towards making that just couldn't reasonably fit in.  For example, Vale was originally supposed to have an opening and closing cutscene- for which we took LIVE footage of ourselves as the "actors" and rotoscoped abstract pixel frames over to create short animations for the project.  When it came down to implementation- there simply put was no feasible way to incorporate it in the timeframe that felt like it belonged in the game, and we had to scrap it, effectively making the only thing we got out of all that recording and animation the experience we  got from doing it (which to be honest, is worth it's weight in gold).  Scrapping those parts, which at the time seemed vital,  eventually allowed us to actually finish the project in time.

Also, not an experienced developer myself quite yet, but I think I'm starting to realize that just talking about your games, ideas, shortcomings, successes, all of it- keeping the communication open between yourself and other people in the game design field- keeps the ideas fresh in your mind and sets bars for yourself to continue to reach and accomplish.  Chatting with other people who also make games will give you fresh perspectives and might even help you think past roadblocks that might come up.  Oh- and like Brackey's says- if you ever find yourself working on a problem that seems to defy the very laws of the universe- it might mean it's time to take a break and come back to it refreshed.   The answer might be easier than you think.

If you ever feel like chatting on some concepts or anything really feel free to reach out!  I quite like the direction your games seem to be going and would love to check out any other works you put out too!


Vale (For anyone interested)

So just want to check in on the rest of you guys and see how you feel about this?  Any plans to update your jam project once ratings are finished?  I'm personally going to go squash a couple of bugs I found during development that got pushed back due to time.  It would be interesting to hear what you plan to add, change, optimize, etc once you are able to put your patch 1.1 updates if you catch my drift.

For ours: Definitely going to fix the menu interaction (controls work but there's a "dead" onscreen x on the notes window that snuck its way in with no functionality, and going to do some optimization and text layout changes.  I really underestimated the  time it would take to make builds too so I'll be going through and removing any unused assets and cleaning up the files.  Probably going to add a main menu and proper credits scene as well,.

Anyone else got some post-launch updates planned?   I'd love to hear your ideas!

Edit: Here's ours if anyone is interested!
Vale (Farewell) by BerryGood Games!

Not bad!  I do agree with the idea that the separate moves should either come from different platforms (so as to not soft-lock yourself by choosing the wrong ability) or have the wall jump as part of the standard moveset and have the dash be a limited use mechanic (jump-pack, or some other type of item for example).  Pretty decent use of sound overall, got kind of jump scared by the death sound lol.  Couple of typos here and there, but it makes up for it with good level spacing and a pretty smooth experience honestly.  The restart button is a very nice touch.  Good job man!

Wow!  That was an experience, not only does it feel well put together and comprehensive, but I feel like that perfectly encapsulates the theme of the jam.  I can definitely see some of the inspiration leaking through, notably Dome Keeper and if I'm not mistaken the character portraits remind me of Papers Please (excellent games as well).  Now I know I say you can see the inspirations, but the system you ended up creating for this was not only unique, but a lot of fun to play.  I'm a sucker for upgrade based games like Learn to Fly from back in the day, and that progression is tons of fun!

Couple of highlights: I really enjoy the flavor text from each individual character death,  the fact that you can kind of "cheese" the mines to avoid early death, and the slow pan back to the ship forcing you to look at all your sacrificed crew feels perfectly in place for a game such as this.

Nice work!  Will definitely be checking in on your other projects too!  Keep it up!

Thank you!  Yeah I'm excited to say I'll be putting out a bug fix and QoL patch after the game jam finalizes to address some of those issues, and add some final polish to the lighting hopefully.

And I'm really glad you could connect with the story!  It's something that's hard to visualize or understand until you go through it with a close loved one, and I had recently lost a family member who had been suffering from it as well (Bless her heart though, she made it to triple digits).  I always viewed death as a gentle thing- something that takes that pain away.  I liked the idea of leaving letters for such a person for when they enter the afterlife, a kind of welcoming back of memories long forgotten or distorted.

Really, a big thank you from our little team, glad to hear that you enjoyed Vale and we hope to bring you other interesting experiences in the near future!

Glad you like it!  Excited to try yours too!

Thanks for checking it out!  Glad you like it!  Yeah once I'm able to update it I'll probably go through and fix a couple things- I think too many particles are spawning which is probably related to the framerate bug.  I'll be checking yours out too shortly!

Sorry we didn't get the remap in as quickly as we hoped.  E to interact, C to close notes, p to pause, esc to close the game!  Thanks for checking it out!

Oh God I could see myself doing this for way too long.  If I had this on my work computer I'd probably never get anything done.  It seems easy until you realize that there are only so many 4 letter words out there, and you eventually leave yourself a weird letter at the end.  Nice job!

I'm not going to lie- I had way more fun playing this than I like to admit.  Feels like a good mobile game tbh.