itch.io

Oh, I hadn't noticed. Never mind about that one then, and sorry.

A fun game with a good difficulty ramp-up. The controls are pretty tricky, but I think it's part of the challenge. Having easy controls would just mean the game takes longer to reach the point where you cannot keep up.

Not really sure about the feather-collecting-shooting mechanic though. You have to be facing the nightmares to shoot them, and at that point you might as well press forward to ram them. The feathers bouncing off of enemies and potentially hitting multiples is fun but too random to really use.

I think I entered all three of them. In the middle dream I killed all the skelletons, I couldn't enter the left dream again, and in the right dream I can see some half-buried skelletons in the forest top-right but I can't get to them, or interact with the girl or the dog in any way.

Not afiliated with this game, but it did say press esc to skip when I played it. Or was that a post-jam update?

A fun game, a nice twist on the usual glue-down-the-trigger shmup gameplay, and funny mid-level cutscenes. While all the artwork individually was fine to good, I did miss a sense of cohesion. The dream-nightmare sprites have a rather different style than the ship for instance.

I would recommend eithr adding a score penalty to letting nightmares through, or adding a total high score of some kind. Right now, once you get a positive score there's no pressing need to try and shoot anything down.

A fun concept well executed. One bug I noticed: If I'm moving while interacting in the room-sections, the character will keep moving right and the interact-button won't work. The slider will just keep moving left and right until the time runs out, no other input is accepted.

Just wanted to say that I really liked the transition from dream to nightmare.

Oh, and I guess I should compliment the great title, given what I worked on ;)

A very cool concept, and personally I liked having to figure out what to do in this case. The mechanic of going into people's dreams and getting items from one to use in the next is very fun, though a few more levels would have helped to make it feel a little more involved.

I did run into one minor issue, when I picked up the fence, didn't yet know that left clicking placing it again, and lost the fence, probably by placing it accidentally in the pitch black area to the side of the level. I had to reload the page to finish it. It was my own stupidty that caused the problem, so decide for yourself whether it's something worth considering.

Thanks for the feedback. You're not wrong about the controls, the character is a bit too slippery. And we do have another third of just this level planned out, plus a few other ideas for other levels, so perhaps we shall work on those.

It's a fun idea, but as others have noted, the end-of-level trigger in level 2 seems to be missing, so I can't go very far. I went back to see if it was the window size that hid part of the level, but I get the same problem in full screen mode. And yes, restarting the game automatically if you fall down a pit wouldn't go amiss.

A solid entry, a lot of levels with a good central mechanic. Two minor remarks: The left mouse button was a bit of an annoying button to use when I was using my right hand for the arrow keys and left hand for the run and jump button, and that emergency torch seemed a bit glitchy, with it not fending some of the ghosts.

This is a very nice looking and highly addictive game. I liked the pixelated art style and font. (is that an existing font, or did you make it yourself? If the former, what's the name?)

My only problem is that I had a lot of trouble figuring out what the various units did. You said in another comment that the icons denote gameplay mechanics that didn't make it in, but are there any differences in the units? I found that 6 pointers in the first level could lose to much cheaper units, but later armies consisting of 6-pointers kicked my ass. So, do they area damage or something?

And what exactly are the other differences? It just bugs me that my best run (39) happened when I was just trying whatever, and that all attempts at executing a pre-planned strategy died sooner :p

I'm afraid I couldn't play much of this game, the aformentioned high sensitivity combined with the psychedelic background makes me nauseaus. I'll grant that it's nightmarish, but it may be a bit too literally so. The models were nice though, for as long as I could see them.

Also, the controls listed on itch.io don't seem right. WASD does nothing, only up and down arrow work for movement, but left and right arrow don't strafe or turn.

This game is certainly a treat for the eyes (I got motionsickness at the start from the wavy effect, but it wore off after a minute, then I was fine), with a great dreamlike look and feel to everything. Those longjumps also feel dreamlike. 

I feel the gameplay is held back by what seems like a significant RNG aspect to whether or not the platforms spawn in a reachable location and whether or not they are shrines (those orbs slow the descend of the platforms, correct?). And while the platforms slowly floating into position is again very dreamlike, it's hard to tell when they've finished moving and when you can actually make the jump.

Also, unless I completely suck, I think it's not possible to ascend out and it's just a matter of seeing how long you last. In which case some sort of high-score counter might have been nice. (If you want to be strict about the hardmode challenge, it could just have platform-icons instead of a time in numbers.)

I like the idea here, but I had a lot of trouble playing the game. The introduction and how to play are welcome, but the poor English still left it a bit tricky to understand. But even though I thought I got the gist of it, I couldn't understand what I had to do in the game to make it happen. Even when guiding the baby, he would either not move even though the text said he was moving, would move but wouldn't do anything, or would interact in some way that had a completely different effect than I thought it would have.

And one small but very irritating point: The sound effect when you left click to move gets annoying very quickly, because you have to keep clicking to move. If holding down the mouse button to move, this wouldn't have been such a problem.

On the plus side, I do like the art for the props like the trees.

A very interesting idea. I really liked the background art, although not so much the blocky big-headed character art. Also, maybe I'm being dense but I didn't quite get the significance of bargaintown.

And on a gameplay level, even though I rested and saved before the rotating eye level, dying there put me back at the start of the level with only half health, but before three unskippable dialogues, which is kinda the worst of both worlds.

A cool and innovative concept, held back a bit by the unclear interface. I have played several rounds and still have trouble figuring out which nightmare does what. From what I can tell, bats and devils move faster, and the grim reaper hits everything in the square. But I also noticed bats and ghosts don't attack some enemies (skelletons for instance) and I don't know why. Also, most times one of the sibblings died it was because I spawned a nighmare he or she couldn't afford, and I couldn't see it.

Even within the hard-mode challenge, I think a few icons besides the spawn-buttons could have helped. One or Two arrows denoting their movement, a number or number of hourglasses besides them denoting their spawn time, multiple little swords or explosion-icons denoting the multi-hit ability, and... whatever determines when they do or don't attack. Plus, something like a line or a flashing bit of around the dream bar denoting how much spawining an enemy will deplete it.

This is a lot of suggestions, but I do think this is the best concept of the games I've played so far. And the art and sound all look wonderfully fitting. It's just that I can't figure out how I should play if I want to win that holds it back from being the best game I've seen thus far.

I like this game's concept, but I can't get very far into it due to the difficulty. It would be nice if the flash light actually lit up the level a bit more so you could see the enemies coming a bit sooner. As it is, unless there happened to be a lightning flash, I have no idea where the enemies are coming from so I have to hover near the lit area in the center, and from there I just can't kill enemies coming from different directions fast enough before they deal at least some sanity damage.

And as others have noted, the Ogres grabbing you looks wonkey and feels like it triggers from a bit too far away. Again, I can't actually see these ogres until they are so close to the bed that I can't kill them in time, and blundering into the dark just gets me grabbed.

Thank you for the feedback. I am happy with how the core sand mechanic turned out, and indeed with our opening art. As for the cons:

-This may not be lag. There is a relatively low ground friction, as the sandman is floating. It can be compensated for, but it might be a bit overboard. I'm working on a version with at least a few fixes, I can try out some higher friction settings. 

-We were going for a bleak look in the level (at one point there were more levels planned, this was the loneliness level), but it is true that the result is pretty pale. We'd have liked to have it shift to a more colorful dream version as you completed the level, but that got scrapped for time.

-We had rathered a few sfx, but again ran out of time implementing them.

-We also wanted some sand-cloud particle effects or a trail of sandgrains, but again, we ran out of time.

I was planning to upload a slightly tweaked version (in addition to the current version, not replacing it), and I thought about adding sand particles too, but that felt less like a bugfix and more like adding new features. It didn't seem in spirit with the game jam's time limits to start adding features to the playable version. Or is that fine, as long as it's clearly marked as an updated version, and the original jam version is still available?

This game's levels certainly have a striking dream-like look. However, while I get it's meant to highten the challenge, every level that has obstacles in it is made a bit too hard by the small light cone, plus the fact that the hazards are the same dark color as everything else.

I'm also wondering why you opted for a random level order, when there is (in my opinion) a large difficulty difference between them. There's a level without hazards, then there's one with hazards but at least generous platforms, and then there are levels with one-tile platforms, with the light cone not reaching the hazards, the next plaform, the jutting-out blocks on the ceiling that'll block your jump and dump you into the hazards, or some combination of them. I'm afraid it's not a difficulty I enjoy, despite the novel premise and the nice look of the game.

Yeah, I couldn't complete the hardcore levels. Frankly the two before that were murderously difficult, although I did get those in the end. As best as I can figure out, you need to use walljumps to be able to move forward while facing backwards to slow down the nightmare wall, but I couldn't find any way to do it fast enough on the hardcore level (and it was very hard on the second-to-last regular level). Am I missing a mechanic? Because the nightmare wall really bumrushes you on those last levels.

I don't think the controls are clunky for the most part, although it is very easy to get into the wall-slide mode when just trying jump over a block. That level that has you jump between two blocks at the end is very annoying because of it.

The music distorting when the nightmare gets near is cool, the rain of fire too but it's hard to see because the screen also goes black.

I really like the concept of this game, but the gameplay is rather tricky. I found it very difficult to gauge distances from a first person view. The best strategy I found was waiting on the start platform for a nearby high sheep, run into that, and then hope that there was a conveniently placed sheep halfway that I managed to maneuver to.

But I don't think that strategy got me passed level 3, and unfortunately I think the game resets you back to level 1 every time you lose. Plus, I find that you're basically screwed if you miss a sheep while you're still moving up or only slightly down. Once you descend a little, there's no real way to get back up that I found. Even if I hit a sheep while below the target platform, that generally only slows my descend a little, I had no chance to get back up. It isn't real physics, but since this is a dream, maybe make the speed at which you're bounced back up higher the lower you are. That way, you can actually come back from missing a sheep at the start of your jump.

Edit: Okay, I played some more and I have on occasion been able to bounce back after falling deeply. I will say that the inability to look around does still make it a bit RNG-ish if you can hit more sheep on your way up, as they are in your blind spot. Also, I noticed that the number of sheep on the other platform show what level you are on, and that it doesn't reset. I did actually finish the game.

Also, while I loved the both the black-spot particle effect (do you happen to have a link to the project or a screenshot of the settings? I might like to implement something similar in my future games) and the sight of sinking ever deeper in the black nightmare, it took rather long to complete my fall and reset the game. Maybe speed that up by a factor of 2 or 3, given how often you die. (Well, how often I died anyway).

It took me a while to get what I needed to do (clicking left to fire only worked sporadically, holding left to fire was the way to go, why the first level ended), but then it was pretty fun.

Story wise, have I got it right that the guy is taking something illicit to stave of his nightmares for a while, but eventually* the nightmares come for him after all.

*I noticed the patern in the pill-section of the level looped, and didn't seem to get much harder after one loop, in which case you could actually keep it up perpetually.

I'm not entirely clear how the Mandalas work. I saw nearby nightmares dying occasionally, but I couldn't figure out what determined if it worked or not. Is it a damage-over-time effect while they are nearby or something? There isn't really any feedback. I see there's a little yellow light around them, so maybe you could have that light flare up when it's doing its thing, or something like that.

And one minor point, there seems to be an occasional glitch that shows a black line below the pill sprite, which appears and vanishes as I moved forward:

A nice game. The art is a little too plain and static and the game rather short, but the music is good and the dream/nightmare transfer is very well done.

Yes, it seems to be correct now. Thanks for all the help.

Ah, it seems that during my frantic searching for the publish button, one of my team members managed to get it published, now we've got it twice (https://itch.io/jam/geta-game-jam-8/rate/448088 and https://itch.io/jam/geta-game-jam-8/rate/448089 ) Terribly sorry, but the last second stress seems to have caused a bit of a mess.

What would you like me to do to fix it? We'd prefer to use the link https://itch.io/jam/geta-game-jam-8/rate/448089 . I can just put a link on the duplicate page that directs to the main page.

Thank you, you're a lifesaver.

Okay, it was set to draft, but now the timer has expired. Can I still get in somehow?

Our game is ready at https://bificommander.itch.io/sweet-dreams but I can't seem to publish it

Title says it all: We're trying to meet the hardcore challenge. We're just wondering if showing the title og the game at the start screen is allowed or not under those rules.

Oh, good, not just me.