itch.io

How was this done in a 48 hour game jam? This is wildly impressive and is easily on its way to being a game ready for sale.

Only critiques are small nits like conveying some mechanics a bit more clearly like the damage system. But any nit I make is vastly overshadowed by the polish and execution present on this ambitious of an idea.

It's easy to get overambitious in a game jam and fail to execute on the idea, but I am seriously in awe of how well this is maximizing ambition and execution simultaneously. I sincerely hope y'all make this into a fully fleshed out game and continue making games.

Loved the aesthetic, loved the idea of the leveling system being a constellation, loved the evolving protag, loved the double challenge of strategically choosing skills + actually improving at gameplay to beat the evolving protag.

I think given the time constraints of a two day game jam, this is wonderful. Any critiques I have require more time to resolve than the time limit easily allows for

Loved the concept, but I think the current difficulty curve makes getting into the game + learning the mechanics a bit challenging.

If it started out with no garbage, then garbage was introduced + only one command -> steadily more commands, I think the gameplay could stay pretty much the same but be able to hook players early with significantly more ease.

Fun concept but there are two core competing mechanics. The level design + racing game feel makes the player want to go as fast as possible, but the point system being based on killing people rewards moving much more slowly. I think to really hone in on the concept of roadkill killing people, you have to either take the setting away from a racing track or reward both moving fast & killing people (maybe a multiplier based on how far you send a person flying)

Cute and great first foray into game dev.

Recommendations for next game y'all make:

• More conveyance: Where can & where can't the player stand? What damages the player? 
• Work on the physics variables more (initial jumping speed, horizontal speed moving in the air vs on the ground) as right now it feels a bit hard to anticipate behavior of the controls

Keep up the learning, growing, and creating. Always happy to see more people making games.

The concept and artwork are great, but the severity of the bugs made it very difficult to enjoy this as a game. Here's a snapshot of one of the places I got permanently stuck before refreshing the page.

  

I think fewer mechanics, more thoroughly tested, would enable players to really experience the potential of this game, because this game really does have a lot of potential.

Simply wonderful. Could succeed as is as a mobile game.  Only thing I might change for a mobile game is to allow some means of breathing room periodically, whether through pausing or through level segmentation. Level segmentation in particular would really help for the mobile market because then people can feel a constant sense of progression.

But honestly, given the execution on this game and pedigree of your team, I'm sure y'all already knew that. Well done.

wonderful game jam idea, could easily see this expanded into a fully fleshed out game.

My only critique is that I would have you dash in the direction of the mouse instead of away, since the normal movement is in the direction of the mouse. Because you have the bullet time effect, this isn't the biggest problem, but for people who like translating thought to action as fast as possible, having move + dash require not just two separate mouse buttons but mouse positions as well is a bit flow-breaking.

This was wonderful. Well done, make more games.

Only critique is that I'm not a huge fan of the drag and drop controls (I only have a laptop with a touch pad,  so dragging/dropping repeatedly gets uncomfortable).

No tab completion? Singular commands can include spaces in them? No fully fleshed out shell with a Turing Complete scripting language? 0/10!


On a more serious note, I love the concept and implementation, but I did struggle with the Box level, specifically knowing how to set the box's variables/which variable to set. I tried `box.frozen=false` and just checking for what the box's object name should be by just typing `box`. The "Press TAB to edit its code when touching it" was also a bit ambiguous regarding what `it` is, as both the subject and object are unclear. "When A is touching B", what is A and B? The player, the mouse? I tried touching the button with the player and pressing TAB, as well as touching the block with the mouse and pressing TAB, and it didn't take me to the terminal.

@TheCyberOne seemed to be able to beat this level, so the difficulty seems surmountable by some people, but for me that's where I got stuck. 

Brilliant. Make more games, I want a world that has your games in them.

Only critique at all is that I would like to be able to move faster.

Loved the idea and potential, but has a dominant strategy of just placing ships on opposite sides each row.

Turning space invaders into a turn based strategy game is a wonderful concept, would love to see it iterated on

There is a lot of potential here, but I think that a lot more could be done regarding conveyance of controls/how to beat the different minigames. 

I think if you increased the speed per level + did more to convey how to play each minigame, you could get a really strong addicting gameplay loop

There is a lot of potential here but as others mentioned, the physics could take some iterating on.  With most people desiring responsiveness/feeling like their results are in their control I would lean towards turning the tilt speed up. Spring speed would be fine if the tilt speed was faster.

I feel like this has the potential to be something between a golf game and super monkey ball.

I think to really drive home the `Instead of aiming and choosing the power of your golf shot` you should show the velocity after the firing ( to emphasize the differing velocities as well as give the player more information on what speed they're going at, and thus how they should move).

I like the concept but there's a dominant strategy of "flap, flap, flap, dash" on repeat.

It's strange, because starting off, the game felt very difficult, but then once this dominant strategy was found, the difficulty evaporated.

I actually think taking some inspiration from the pacman ghost AI could be really helpful. One ghost aims for where the player currently is, one aims where the player was, and one aims where the player is going (iirc, my memory on this may be a bit stale). 

I think the flap/dash mechanics (general feel/refresh times) were solid, but this style of game is really AI dependent, and that's where I see the most growth opportunity.

no big deal, bugs are expected in a game jam. And as mentioned in my original comment, loved the game and looking forward to seeing your future work.

I loved the idea of your past actions becoming what you have to respond to in the future. My game utilized the concept as well, but not in a rhythm focused way like you.

I think something that could add a lot of depth to the game would be to increase the BPM over time. Then starting off the BPM slow could make the game easier to get into for non-musical people, and then kicking up the BPM can reward people who love the game.

I found the gameplay to be much too slow. I liked the old school presentation, but the game could have benefited from some of the more modern iterations of breakout in enhancing the gameplay.

Loved it, especially how puzzles involved mastering execution of the mechanics. Only issue I found was a bug where the AI could get stuck past the finish line

My feelings on this are complicated.

Overall, I loved the idea of evolving the test in increasingly goofy ways. What I feel conflicted by is the introduction. On the one hand, starting on  a few repetitions of the base captcha sets the mood to be properly subverted. On the other hand, the base captcha is not engaging, so it risks turning people off early.

Two options are to only have 1 base captcha, or show some progress meter, but both of those risk compromising the expectation subversion.

If you do find a solution where you maintain the expectation subversion while also making a more engaging hook into the game, lmk, I would be interested in seeing it.

I really enjoyed this and feel like there is a lot of potential for further fleshing out.

One way in which I think the puzzle element could be enhanced + less required actions from the user, Instead of having to choose the target of an action, the target is determined by turn order (i.e. action targets 1 previous in turn order/1 after in turn order).

This is my favorite thus far. I love old school shooters like time crisis and house of the dead, and this feels like a new & fun take on the genre. I would love to see this made into a full game.

the randomness of the birds AI felt like winning/losing was out of the player's control, which doesn't feel great. If you could show maybe the next half second of the bird's motion (a dotted line as to where it will go), or maybe even less than a half second, would could keep the random mechanics entirely the same, but it would feel more in the player's hands whether they win or lose.

cute, fun, with a lot of untapped potential for a more fleshed out gameplay loop. 

Controlling two ghosts at once, having multiple pacman, having different levels. All directions in which you can take this concept to expand it beyond just the pathfinding algo

Clever, cute, and fun. Primary critique isn't even really a critique as much a note: Not every game needs to have longevity, and I think this game works best as a short clever concept. But in terms of replay value or the potential of scoping this into a long term game, I don't see many options for this game.

So I wouldn't even describe this as a flaw in this game, just a consequence of the concept. 

Had fun though, loved your playfulness, and always appreciate another solo dev

One really small change that I think could have enhanced the gameplay loop would be not to survive as long as possible, but to do this more level based, where every level has a time limit to survive for.

I think this concept was quite entertaining, but the core loop needs to have some element to drive people to want to master the game

I really enjoyed this to the point where I don't have much to critique. If I were to stretch a bit, a critique I can think of is that I feel that it didn't align with the theme of "Roles Reversed" as well as it had the potential to. When you play as the level designer, you are just moving pre-existing elements, not really designing the level. 

But this really is a nitpick for a game jam game. Again, I enjoyed myself, and good job on this game.

I got stuck on the level with the "1" wall and blocks. I tried pressing all of the buttons (number buttons and arrow keys) but nothing seemed to work.

I did quite like it and played it a few times. However, eventually I realized that the player's leveling happens once a minute, whereas the hero's leveling requires killing the player's monsters. Thus, there is a dominant strategy of just waiting until you leveled a few times, and then spam with your notably over-leveled team.

If the player only leveled based on doing damage to the hero, that would definitely address this dominant strategy 

I loved the art style and concept. The gameplay was fun, but at least in the first few levels it felt too much like there was a dominant strategy of being able to win with just one flower turret.

I think that reaching the cooldown faster (fewer shots) + making switching easier (through a single keypress vs a mouse find+click) would have led to more of an incentive/requirement to make the most out of the game system

I liked the concept, but as mentioned by kinami, the spaceship is a bit too nimble and the spaceship being able to go off of the screen felt a bit unfair.

I liked the opening cutscene, but I would have liked to be able to skip it once I played the first time. The gameplay goal kind of reminded me of the early Tony Hawk games' graffiti mode. I enjoyed the idea of the people trying to chase you, but I think I would have preferred the people are trying to clean your mess.