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I love this. thank you for making it.

Is there a way to play it a second time? When I re-load the page, I'm still at the credits. The 'Back' button works, but... I don't want to click it three hundred times.

Hah! Or maybe I'm just not tall enough...

This was interesting! The voiceover was a fun surprise, and the writing was enjoyable. You did ramp up the patronising/smart-arsed thing a bit too quickly for me. 'Yes, I could have taken the dot product...' was annoying, but 'Ah, forgot to implement the jump' made me laugh.

Gameplay-wise, it's a fun idea. I couldn't see the top of the dice properly, though, because of the camera angle. Possibly just me? I did my best, but that made it pretty hard to engage with the core idea.

A fun experience, though. Hope you make more stuff!

This was interesting! My favourite parts were the sound and the general ambience.

Mechanically, I would more easily enjoy this gameplay if there was a better way to visualise the rotations of the die. The 3D visualisation did not work at all for me, personally. I agree with those below who said that it felt 'backwards', and that I wanted the freedom to try much bigger rotations, so I could plan several moves ahead.

I think I would also love to see the dice animate through its moves, too - this would make the spatial reasoning a lot more enjoyable for me, personally.

Thanks for letting me try this out!

This was fun! A great first game - well done.

On my first game, the 'three' roll just made the enemies glitch around in their current position. But I tried again, and it worked - love how they go towards your mouse cursor as you hypnotise them

Thank you for sharing this. Hope you make lots more games in the future!

This was great fun! Loved the artwork.

The goal was a bit unclear, at first. I thought we had to give at least the target number. I then realised we had to give exactly the target number. But (I think) the average of the included ingredients will be rounded down to the nearest integer, too? But I'm sure all that is easily cleared up if you choose to spend more time on it.

I would also consider removing the satisfaction penalty when the player clicks TRASH. The randomness means that bad combinations are going to be inevitable. (The monster wants five, and I've rolled a one and a two, for example.) Challenging players to recognise those combinations and trash 'em quickly is fine, in my opinion - but we're already being penalised enough by the wasted time.

The penalty for trashing (even though I had no control over when I would need to trash) made the strategy of 'keep retrying and wait to get lucky' a lot more effective for me than 'actually engage with the mechanics'.

Awesome fun, though. Thank you!

Nice! A fun, retro boss fight. I loved the art style, and it was fun getting to know the attack patterns.

The only thing it was missing, for me, was a health bar for the boss. I played a couple of dozen times, but gave up eventually, because I had no sense of whether I was remotely close to winning. The health bar can really help create that 'just one more try' feeling.

Thanks for letting me play this!

Nice! A fun, retro boss fight. I loved the art style, and it was fun getting to know the attack patterns.

The only thing it was missing, for me, was a health bar for the boss. I played a couple of dozen times, but gave up eventually, because I had no sense of whether I was remotely close to winning. The health bar can really help create that 'just one more try' feeling.

Thanks for letting me play this!

This was fun, thank you!

A couple of notes, if you're interested:

• I would find it even better if the controls were tighter. I rolled high speed and acceleration, but the ship still felt slippery. Dodging the enemies is more fun when I feel like I'm really in control.
• Fewer hits to kill the baddies! Even with a high roll for my rate of fire, and a lucky mid-game roll to reduce their health, I still felt like I was hardly making a dent. Let me feel dangerous!
• Would you consider making the initial rolls more impactful? I didn't notice much difference between low and high rolls. What if a one is borderline useless, and a six is comically overpowered? It could be an interesting way to really lean into the central mechanic.

Thanks again for letting me play!

I really love this! Thanks for sharing it.

If you're looking for constructive feedback: I successfully increased my notoriety on the first turn, which felt great, but then I got many turns in a row with no chance to raise it any further. I was playing thoughtfully and spending a couple of minutes on each turn, and I understood Notoriety to be the main form of progress, so it felt slightly disappointing to have a long stretch of play with none on the cards. 

Some kind of pity timer might help? Unless a bit of thematically-appropriate despair is supposed to be part of the experience ;)

This was definitely rough around the edges, but I liked it. If this is what you can produce in a night, I'd love to see what you can produce in a year. Thanks for letting me play it.

This is awesome. I can easily picture it as a weirdly soothing app-store timewaster. Thanks for letting me play it!

Loved the visuals. Beautiful, creative work!

I liked the idea of the gameplay, but struggled a lot to understand it. I gave up and returned twice before figuring out even part of what was going on. I do think there's potential in the idea, if you plan to keep developing it. I would personally enjoy it more if there was an additional effort to communicate the mechanics and perhaps mitigate some of the randomness. (Once I had all five colonists get dystentery on the first turn before I could do anything, which admittedly did make me laugh.)

I found the font pretty hard to read, which sounds minor, I know -- but it did impact my appetite to engage with all the stats, which seemed like the core of the game.

Definitely interesting, though. Thank you for letting me play it!

This was great! I played up to level ten, and really enjoyed it. The mechanics are interesting, intuitive, and well-tutorialised, the puzzle design is good, and everything about the presentation supports the core of the game beautifully.

Overall, one of my favourites that I've tried so far. Thank you for letting me play it!

This was fun! The concept, the dubious graphics and the writing all made me laugh. Good job.

Gameplay-wise, I struggled a bit. Only having three shots made it seem like you're supposed to think carefully about each one, but I couldn't really work out the mechanics or the tactics of a good shot versus a bad one. I also didn't get why some of the people seemed to have their arms sticking out (practically ripe for a surprise gluing) but seemingly didn't work.

Still had fun, though. Thank you!

This is a cool idea! Very impressive to see a complex game like this created in just 48 hours.

I didn't play for too long, but I've definitely gotten absorbed in games like this before. If you plan to keep developing it, I personally think that a good area of focus might be on juice, as in the overall 'feel'.

It seems like the core loop is incrementing the resource counters, so that should be fun and engaging in and of itself. Simple animations while the machines are working, maybe seeing the resources bloop from place to place along the connector lines, maybe some interim milestones to build cool stuff the player will want -- no doubt you've got loads of ideas anyway. Those things all take time, of course, so I understand why they wouldn't make it into the jam build.

Anyway, this was super interesting. Thanks for letting me play it. All the best!

This is brilliant! My favourite that I've played from the jam so far.

The core mechanic is fun and well-executed. The sound and visuals support it perfectly. I love how the enemies shift between hurting you and being your only hope of recovering from a mistake. I found myself wishing for an in-level restart, but not having one is what forced me to play through setbacks and actually helped the game to shine.

Enemy formations and movement patterns are varied well, and blocks with interesting new mechanics are introduced at just the right times. 

My only real complaint is that I occasionally just had to watch the timer elapse on a promising run while I waited passively for the right block to appear. But even this, I hesitate to criticise, because it encourages you to make a tricky lunge for a block that's coming in at the wrong angle.

Overall, I love it. I would definitely consider buying a full-game version. Thanks for sharing it with us!

Ahh, I see. Thank you for the explanation - that makes sense. All the best!

Aww, that's so kind! Thank you for looking. It was my first game jam, and I had to cut it short at lunchtime on Sunday because it was my dad's birthday. I did finish a wee game, and was very proud of myself, but I didn't get the chance to actually submit it. Next year, I hope!

One other thing which occurs to me: I wonder if it would be good to have some kind of visual feedback when the player tries to use the controls while in darkness. It's great that the flower changes to indicate the moment when you pass in and out of the light. But maybe some acknowledgement that you've pressed the keys, to indicate that the controls are broken on purpose, not the game. Anyway, great job, I love this one!

This was great! The gameplay is interesting and original, and the art is weird and excellent. The light and shadow in particular was executed very well.

I struggled for a minute with the battery-things that you push into the bulb-things. It wasn't clear from the art (at least to me) what they were supposed to be. But I figured it out eventually, so it wasn't a big issue.

The little ending cutscene is lovely. Thank you for letting me play it!

I feel like I can barely even control this, but I've played, like thirty games? So... good job.

The connection to the theme feels a bit stretched. The idea of sacrificing your limbs to gain jump speed is interesting, but I don't think it works yet because it usually just happens by accident (see above about the controls!) and, at least in the web build, the boost is so big that I never survive it.

Overall, though, I had a lot of fun. Thank you!

Absolutely love the visuals! For how simply everything is constructed, the little flame-creature has an amazing amount of character. It feels great to just zoom around.

Obviously there's room for a bit more depth in the gameplay, and I wasn't clear why you actually need to join the two lanterns in the first place. (It seems like you're lighting the first one with the creature's own flame, so why not the second, too?) But clearly that's not a major issue.

Overall, I really like this. Thanks for letting me play it!

Love the art and the characters! The mechanics are solid and interesting too. The control mapping was quite difficult to use. Perhaps you could also more clearly communicate the rules about when you can pick up and put down the head, because in a few places, I couldn't tell whether my approach wasn't working because I was pressing the wrong button, or because of a bug, or because I hadn't solved the puzzle correctly. Overall, though, I liked this a lot. Thanks for letting me play it!

I liked this!

I struggled to understand what was happening and how my decisions affected the outcomes. After a while, I started picking randomly. But the visuals and sound were good enough that this was honestly still kind of fun.

It's an interesting idea, anyway. I feel like a good tutorial might go a long way, if you plan to keep working on it?

Thanks for letting me play it!

I like the aesthetic, and the basic homing bullets feel great!

I found the weapon-selection tricky to use, possibly because the images were quite similar. And I wasn't 100% clear on what actually happens when the enemies join you. But overall, I like it. Thanks for letting me play it!

I had no-one to play with, and couldn't really figure out what was happening or how it worked, but for what it's worth, it looks and feels pretty great!

The art is great! Weird and delightful.

I found it a bit unhelpful that the picture for each recipe is just... a cup. Unless I'm missing something, there's no way to know which cup represents which recipe except by trial-and-error. I'm sure that slightly different recipes or more distinctive images would solve this, no problem.

I also couldn't see a connection to the theme. Is there one?

Anyway, thanks for letting me play it!

I liked this! The visual aesthetic is great. The gameplay is cool and the concept of forming shapes to solve each platforming puzzle is super interesting.

I didn't play far because I was getting an odd bug (?) in the WebGL version where the jump height was sometimes enormous and sometimes pretty small. (I couldn't see any pattern to it, but apologies if this is an actual mechanic that I was missing somehow.)

For that reason I dunno if I was solving the puzzles as intended, cheating my way through with a glitch, or having a harder time than I was supposed to!

Really cool idea, though. Thank you for letting us play it!

I like your forest! It feels lush and green :)

I found the first jump to be a little buggy. The first few times I tried to use the Oakdust to get over, it looked like I was landing successfully on the other side, but I died anyway. Since this is the first introduction of the main mechanic, that made it hard to know whether I was actually playing the game correctly! My guess is that the colliders just need a few adjustments, so I'm sure it's an easy fix, if you'd like to keep working on the project.

Thanks for letting me play it!

Thanks for making this and letting me play it! I'm having some trouble with level three on the browser build - when I pick up the cube, something happens and the room changes, but I seem to die almost straight afterwards.

From what I saw up to then, it's a cool idea! If you plan to keep working on it, I think that adding a visual indicator of the goal, and explaining the puzzle angle (where you deliberately can't move the platform backwards), would be good places to improve next.

The robot's movement feels good, both fast and smooth. The way you can push the civilians around feels quite good too, and from a technical perspective it works well.

Personally, I didn't manage to find much depth in the gameplay -- I could block the shots, and push people out of the way, but neither option evolved much and it was difficult to do either consistently. I'd be more motivated to practice and experiment if there was a higher ratio of gameplay time to waiting time. I also wonder if it would be feasible to control the difficulty curve slightly more by (for example) giving more warning time on each shot, and reducing it as the player progresses.

I also couldn't see the relevant of the rope - you can push the civilians around individually, and the rope grows to whatever length you need, so I found it slightly confusing.

Overall, though, this was interesting, and it's great to see a complete game made in just 48 hours. I've never seen gameplay like this before, which is cool. Well done!

The robot's movement feels good, both fast and smooth. The way you can push the civilians around feels quite good too, and from a technical perspective it works well.

Personally, I didn't manage to find much depth in the gameplay -- I could block the shots, and push people out of the way, but neither option evolved much and it was difficult to do either consistently. I'd be more motivated to practice and experiment if there was a higher ratio of gameplay time to waiting time. I also wonder if it would be feasible to control the difficulty curve slightly more by (for example) giving more warning time on each shot, and reducing it as the player progresses.

I also couldn't see the relevant of the rope - you can push the civilians around individually, and the rope grows to whatever length you need, so I found it slightly confusing.

Overall, though, this was interesting, and it's great to see a complete game made in just 48 hours. I've never seen gameplay like this before, which is cool. Well done!

This was fun!

I've seen games like it before, but never played one. I found the puzzles to be challenging but achievable, which was just right for me.

The core mechanics are well-introduced and easy to understand. New elements are added at a good pace, and visual cues make it easy to intuit what they do.

The exception for me was the timed zappers on the last level: at rest, these looked sort of like buttons, which they're not; then when they flash, they look damaging, which again, they're not; then when they turn to a solid block of colour, they don't look especially dangerous or important, which they suddenly are! Of course, this was easy to work around with trial and error, so it certainly wasn't a big issue.

The art was simple but pleasing. It looks like the time was invested on the slimes over the rest, which was a good choice.

Overall, I liked it very much. Thank you!