I wasn't fully satisfied with where I was at so continued to poke at this for a couple of days. I've managed to put in everything that was left on the cutting room floor, restoring the introduction and adding a proper ending.
If it's of interest, the original submission is still available on the main game page.
Sounds good. We're planning for Sat evening, and will probably just play whatever is on your game's page. Usually though we have a little peek at the games and their code in the days before hand? Just so that we can do our best to respect people's efforts & be able to add insight, y'know? So, I think your plan to get an MVP sorted is a good one.
I like to start my day by announcing 'E' loudly and jumping over a spike. Saw you shared the 8o file on the game page, neatly coded. For me, all the text on the game page is the same shade of green tho? Might wanna check it's theme?
I got over 99 points and it resets back to 0 which made me chuckle.
Plus, so like the jump lasts 30 frames and spikes are 64 frames apart. The coins can have a speed 4 - meaning that it will travel 256 pixels in the time from one spike to the next. This will mean that it ends up in exact same spot each time you must jump over a spike. Given there's only a few frames of leeway in between spikes to jump at all, your between spike jumps will also effectively be on a 32 frame counter, in which time the coin will have travelled... 128 pixels, and again be in the same place. So if you had to jump over a spike to survive, and couldn't collect the coin, then, you will never be able to! And there's basically nothing the player can do about it, it'll just fly over head forever, taunting you!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! There is an ending cutscene - if you would like to see it, I put it on the my github, there's a link here: https://github.com/Chromatophore/h8-2-Carry-Flag#goal
Perhaps I will add that progress indicator after all, to help spur people on.
I've added an octo cart, I assume that should be sufficient? I've also created a github repo for it with the 8o file at https://github.com/Chromatophore/h8-2-Carry-Flag
I'm thinking about the number 8 even more than normal. In particular interpreting it as an infinity symbol.
Not quite sure where to go with it but the idea of collapsing infinite loops seems appealing? You just are scrolling through and wrapping around a level forever until you can collapse it or something? I always like jam games to have a clear start and end.
That or I could make another space battle inspired game... Hrmmmm...
It's important to note that Octo, while allowing us to ignore some things, does also serve as a very good platform for developing games that would run on real hardware (from the eras where such hardware existed). Even though written today, this jam does typically receives a few submissions that have been created with this intent - running at realistic speeds and with the appropriate interpreter quirks. A good number of people are fairly passionate about retro computing and enjoy this aspect in particular - myself included. Sometimes the jam has been able to have the games demonstrated on the appropriate hardware, but, emulators for the specific platforms do also exist, which allow us to verify this to some degree.
To answer your question about the HP48 display - it's a little complicated? The HP48 display is updated from a buffer in the calculator's memory, but, it is on a line by line basis & spread out evenly across the entire 'frame' time - there's eg no flip() that updates the entire display all at once. The update rate for the whole display is effectively 64Hz, however the 'next' line is drawn at a rate of 4096Hz by the CPU, interrupting away from eg the interpreter as it goes, but allowing our code to run in between. This allows us to eg turn off a sprite halfway through it being drawn.
This is not quite the same as writing directly to the screen, but it shares some of the issues. The point where the line-by-line update coincides with when you 'delay' may also strobe across the display, as we have little to anchor it in place. If you might only have a sprite drawn into the buffer for eg 10% of that 64Hz tick, that may be the cause of the issues observed.
Even if that assessment is incorrect on a technical level, the strategy proposed prior has been shown to make games significantly more playable on the HP48, besides which it's generally good advice that helps keep flickering to a minimum. If any given sprite is flickering in some way, it will significantly impact its vibrancy on screen on the HP48, as the pixels aren't super quick to respond in either direction. On the plus side, it also means doing pixel queries to the display are relatively hidden.
Well, I hope that was interesting! The jam certainly attracts all sorts so, feel free to focus on the aspects that are most appealing to you!
Something to consider, if you do happen to be targeting an HP48: actual pixel on time is very important. This is because the pixels of its LCD are quite slow to transition between on and off states, and you are effectively drawing directly to the display. If your processing time per frame is very high, it's very helpful to avoid the pattern of
and instead use a pattern that resembles
This approach could be helpful in other situations, too, such as when you're targeting eg 30 or even 15 fps due to massive processing requirements. While the above may seem obvious, the issue it would solve usually seems insignificant in Octo. Both eg my own game, Octopeg and the lander game Sub-Terr8nia, while perfect in Octo, were initially basically unplayable on a real HP48: each game's main sprite was basically invisible. Both games were modified from the first pattern to the second, and then both played perfectly.
This is a really good game and a great experience. I like the story, and I like the payoff, it really feels pretty complete. Like maybe there's a level in the middle that doesn't need to be there. The flow of the game is good when things go to plan, but, actually losing a level doesn't feel great - getting those post defeat hints might be better experienced in the middle of levels that are more confusing, or if 'you are doing it right, but, keep doing it' can be messaged to the player somehow. I think narrative games are best enjoyed when you kinda can't actually fail? While that's a little hand holdy but it means everyone gets to come away smiling. This was definitely really good, and is worth the time to play.
I was super looking forward to playing this game! Then, I discovered it was effectively a 50/50 guessing game, and I guess I was a bit disappointed? I know how those odds are gonna play out - I'd have really enjoyed being more in charge of the 'flipping' side of things, and maybe having the result give bonuses or rewarding certain behaviours. The animation and general art is really cool, and the game looks very stylish, I sadly just... don't really feel the need to actually play it?
I wanna add though that I really appreciate you giving feedback on every other game in the jam.
My top score is 42! That makes me the most qualified to say that, just like real hacky sack, possibly the idea of it is more fun than the actual playing. Generally you know what you want to do, but, translating that from mouse control to foot to ball is a tricky proposition. Perhaps gamifying the experience more would yield more enjoyment, such as hinting you towards/predicting where the sack will be landing (ballistic trajectory, after all, humans are good at those!), & offering like 'after touch' or a slow motion to allow for more control in tricky situations to recover. Having to hack your sack at something in particular, hoops for points, or enemies, or whichever might yield greater joys, too. Still, fun for a hot minute as is, though!
There's quite a lot of things to do in this game. It's tough to really know where you might want to go or what you want to do, or if you've done the things the floor panels say. Controls were a bit uncertain, sometimes I would go through a barrier suggesting I'd get a javelin, but, seemingly no javelin? You could display those controls in game, rather than just on the title screen, and having UI elements that inform on eg how jump height works would probably allow me to better understand how the everything all fits together. A fairly confused 2p playground.
Thanks for taking part in the game jam! All the necessary parts of the game are right here, and especially if you have enough local players this seems like it could be a bit of fun. Because it's a 2 player game, we weren't really able to demonstrate it on our review video. Well done for making it though, especially if it was under the constraint of a week.
Ah, I enjoyed the reveal of this game. I almost always really enjoy your games, and this is another good example. I suspect that there's a few issues with the game progressing exactly as you'd intended? DoomGoon is right, there are a few cracks in the experience, but it's definitely a fun little adventure that had me laughing, and there were a lot of good pay offs. I would love to see things get even more explosive, I suppose. Better feedback on how your brooming is really effecting your stones might help correct any incorrect brooming techniques, and keeping momentum across the throw line would feel more intuitive perhaps. You guys did great!
I choose death! I love everything about this game, except I guess for waiting for a stage to be over? I love the idea but honestly I felt completely out of control of my ultimate fate. Even with a route mapped in my head, brain control was tough, so everything felt either random, or a surprise. I never really felt like I could work towards success? Death seemed sudden, and unexpected, and would put me off having a second dink-a-round. This has the legs of a very fun game, but I think giving the player more lives, or a say in if eg a recycle causes a fresh drop, some small flow adjustments like that would help me a lot.
What a juicy game! I have no idea how to defend the goal! I liked this a lot but I often felt like my true enemy was the controls. I feel like the space to shoot mechanic maybe should also function as a 'momentum dump' button so you can just stop or exchange your speed into the ball or something, because it was really easy to just, not put in the exact right amount of fine control. The racing seemed like it would be exciting but really it just felt punishing? Some fine tuning and I'd probably play this game for hours!
I'd love to feel compelled to throw just one more goblin. As it is, I'm not too worried about doing so. It's clear the player character has no lover for them, so, I'd love to see them get thrown faster, perhaps in bulk, into more dangerous obstacles and more bizarre situations. There are a lot of ideas you could still explore with this, I think! I hope you keep on with making games, cheers!
It took me a while to figure out what this was. When I finally realised, I thought it was really funny and kinda clever? I can see the appeal and how it could work on mobile, with notifications etc. I think that this game would kinda benefit from 'fake multiplayer' though. Obviously, you can't defend while you're asleep though.
We couldn't really show it on the gong show, unfortunately, but, I think this is a funny and interesting idea that I hope gets explored more in some way.
I don't know what this is. I tried to work it out, but, I still couldn't! I'm very proud of you for having created it tough! It seems so well put together and is very impressive, but you're gonna lose a lot of people, dropping them in at the deep end. A tutorial video, an in game getting-started mode, or even just hints while you play, would help a lot.
This has legs, although it doesn't feel super novel. I'd strongly suggest neatening up the controls in terms of what the ball does, firstly to prevent the player from freely changing direction mid movement. You may want to explore the golf aspects more, such as sand traps or looking to mini golf for obstacles, or, add in special powers like giving the player a 'club' to put on the map to allow a redirect, have them be scored on hits/time/score etc for each level etc. I feel like I should be earning stars though. I enjoyed the game though, and mostly agree with the other comments.
I played this game for a long time. Sometimes online high score tables in jam games really just get me. Each little game felt good to play and felt different from the last - it's really easy to just end up making 4 games that either aren't fun to play at all, or all feel the same. I had some trouble with being only able to play toilet-roll-hoops once per playthrough. I got quite interested in gamesmanship aspects of the minigames:
These small balance(?) issues(?) aren't really marks against the game though, rather succulent morsels for me to discover. Bottom line though, I really enjoyed this game.
This game was silly, the comic pacing with the long jump was good & it generally doesn't overstay its welcome. The minigames feel nice enough to play, but usually you're often a bit uncertain what success looks like for the running and dancing? I mentioned in the gong show, I kinda wish the faces all sang along in time with the music. It was good, I liked it.
I managed to beat your game. It was a nice experience and I think you did a pretty good job putting a game together. I like the story and aesthetic of the game (one of the few to have nice cutscenes), and I liked the two factor element of having both the 60 second timer, and the 60 seconds of rewind available. There's a lot to like about this game, and it feels like anything that is not quite on the mark would be easily shifted with another weekend, so good job!
The time rewind has two purposes - combat, and puzzles, and gives you a 'replay' of your character right up until you started the rewind. I felt a little bit clumsy using it to my benefit, though. Maybe it could benefit from having some shortcuts for the player - if you consider your rewind clock your resource, perhaps having other ways to use it would help, such as easily leaving a clone in place, or firing multiple shots at once, without actually performing those tasks themselves in exchange for a 3s/5s 'chunk'.
As we saw on the gong show, though, the main barrier to enjoyment is the firm 'back to the start' if you touch an enemy. While frustrating in of itself, it also compounds on any other issues a player has (eg while getting comfortable with controls). There are a lot of possible solutions, I'd advise you aim to be cognisant of the player's experience and what that worst case scenario for them is, as well as thinking about how what probably now seems like an obvious problem people will have was able to sneak through your own & any external playtesting. Given all of this, you combined a lot of elements to make a really solid and (mostly) enjoyable submission, so, well done guys!
Ah, 3D asteroids. Ultimately, while it's a captivating idea, I don't think it really worked out too well. The main things that stood out to me as not a lot of fun was, asteroids were really far away, I couldn't tell how far away the asteroids were in order to know how much to lead them, and because I had to go into turret mode, it was super easy to lose track of 1-2 asteroids and then lose almost instantly. That element reminded me of an earlier game you worked on, UFO Cattle Battle - in your game here, you do have the red laser traces, which were an improvement.
All that said, it looks pretty cool, the ship effect, the planet and environment look pretty well put together, it was actually really enjoyable to just fly around, and I was looking forward to what the game might play like.
But, in the end, it feels kinda unaccessable and unfun? I think to start with you'd really have to find a way to make actually shooting the asteroids feel more enjoyable - explosion effects, maybe a scanner that let's you know where to aim to lead them correctly, or, maybe ditch the manual firing and have the ship auto fire cool homing missiles that would be neat to watch. If a solution was found there, perhaps next the gameplay could be made faster, doing 60 seconds to defeat a wave, rather than a wave every 60 seconds. Maybe with the mother ship jumping back to warp and hitting another asteroid field as the next level?
It seems like ultimately this game idea has some really tough to tackle gameplay issues, and I think you had a good stab at putting something together, and there's definitely some meat on this idea. It was really interesting to see it in the flesh as is, and have a play. I thought you put together some nice technology for the game, too, and I really do think it could go places, given enough time to figure out the issues that were brought to the forefront.
Ugh this game is so cute, I love it! I didn't have too much trouble with the font, and I liked all the different silly little minigames. My favourite really was that the last step which required you to hold the button for an amount of time and when I got there the first time I only had 3-4 seconds left - it was delicious and I both loved and hated it. I also quite liked the story, too.
The art and audio work that went into the game is stellar, and I feel like you were probably able to fully realise your idea for the game. If I wanted to try and pick faults, I guess I could say it's a bit shallow? The puzzles could really be (and are) anything and don't feel super theme inspired in of themselves - maybe a way to expand on it would be something like, add an extra dimension onto the story, where instead you have to find a hidden secret way out of the loop to double down on the theme? But the story that is there is a good fit, and, well, thats just the reality of a jam game. I can't really offer much more than that - I had a good time playing it, the game's neat, good job, your experience & competency really shines through.
This game is really stylish, and the hunter is very effectively menacing. Despite spending a lot of time with this one, I wasn't able to beat it though. The later levels, for me, devolved into repeatedly trying to execute the same plan over and over until I didn't die, either by getting pinned by eyes, ground shrapnel beasts, or falling to my death.
The controls feel responsive enough but there's just something about the jumping and running mechanics that seems to lead me to not be able to accomplish the things I really wanted to on a regular basis. Because the cost of failure is reseting the level, it becomes a little bit of a slog. I imagine the gong show made this apparent.
However, look at me complaining about some difficulty issues! It's a case of a fly in the ointment - straight up, this is a really neat and very playable game, and you did a fantastic job! Well done!
I actually really dig everything about this game - I love the aesthetic, the music is rad, the sound design is spot on. It's all great... except I have absolutely no idea how to really play it and every time I try it totally kicks my ass. It's really easy to irrecoverably oversteer, or, understeer - the controls feel almost numb. Re the theme use, the 60 seconds of slowmo? If you only use it in small doses, you don't really notice that it has a limit until it's all gone - and it could as easily be 40 seconds, or 75, it doesn't seem like it makes any big statement. Plus it's a limited resource so, a lot of people are at first going to avoid leaning on it, and you're going to rely on the rest of the game to feel fun to hook those people.
And, unfortunately, although it genuinely seems like there's some deeper & enjoyable gameplay to be found here, it pushes a new player away reaaaal hard, almost right away. I really do feel like everything that's here is solid, but, it only has the weird 'expert' mode that you're supposed to get after beating the regular game 5 times or something.
So I kinda really love the premise of this game. In 60 seconds, do X, but, we're not going to tell you when it's been 60 seconds. That's great! I like to think I have a pretty good sense of time, and this game stroked my ego nicely when I found that that was indeed the case. Also, I totally remember you guys from Geometry Smoocher, nice to see you again!
I'd have appreciated it if the character sprites were like, waay bigger and a little more emotive of what actions you were taking, or if there were some clear sounds or feedback, as dodging is so critical to success but it doesn't feel like it does anything at first because the sprites don't seem able to convey it. You could take your art as is and probably even just like, 2x it. It's also real easy to get pinned to the edge and not feel like you have any control, too. Showing the controls during the bout would probably also make it a little friendlier.
I'm assuming that the game is win/lose/super lose. Maybe there's a way to truly 'win' and break the cycle, I don't know - it would be neat if there were, though! This game could go to a really good place for me with just a little more TLC - you had a great idea with this, and it's still probably one of the games I'll really remember from this jam. Also, I do like the characters are both women, and almost literally nothing draws attention to this fact in any way.
I really like the idea and art style of this game. I like the purity of the idea of 'the game is literally 60 seconds, you just have to survive'. The rewind mechanic fits in with the time theme, and the gong at the very end was a nice little joy. Also the art is rad, did I mention that?
You really missed a trick though - When you have free time rewind, it can make gameplay feel very disjointed and twitchy. At the end of the game, during the credits (which should also last 60 seconds) I'd think the player should get to watch them successfully beat the level from start to finish as a single successful timeline, so, they can get the full experience.
I guess the worst thing about this game though, unfortunately, is the controls. The player character just does not feel enjoyable to control - it wasn't a latency thing for me, it was just, it didn't feel right, the jumping especially, and that tarnishes an otherwise pleasing little romp through the environment. Perhaps consider giving some leeway wrt jumping when leaving a platform, perhaps some more air control, and making the top of your hit box a little more forgiving (I feel like it's too easy to headbonk into a platform above you). With a little tweak to this game here and there though, I'd encourage you to be showing this to your friends and be like 'hey check out this cool game I made' - I really think this is a solid idea that lets itself almost get away with 'jump scare' style deaths due to the rewind.
I enjoyed my time with Hekko. Which was about 52 seconds, as I beat it the first time I played it. Then, I enjoyed exploring the environment and trying to leap out onto the ground to see if there was anything up there. The radar system, once you figure out how it works, is very effective, but perhaps isn't congruent with what people are used to wrt radar systems.
Its a nice little package and an enjoyable diversion, it has the sixty seconds in as a time limit - it could be more themey, I guess, given the single level doesn't really hammer it home. I get the impression you had an objective/plan and stuck to it though, due to the early submission. You did a good job picking out the art pack and building on what was there, and I think you wrote a sufficiently compelling story to tie it all together.
Just judging it as it is, I think this is a neat submission, but one that fails to leave a big impression, either negative or positive. However, that's usually the sign of a great foundation - this game could go places, and you did a good job of assembling the pieces that are there into a complete package, so, well done!
I lost way more time playing this game than I thought, but I don't regret it at all: its gameplay really appealed to me. I had some problems with the controls - for example, when ascending the tower, I didn't feel like it was me vs the tower, it was more me vs the jump button. I think some games give you like a frame or two after you fall off of ground to still be able to jump, not sure if you're doing something like that but, that might help the situation - perhaps also a reimagining of the tower of some kind, eg as a clock tower with swinging pendulums to dodge.
The game looks really nice, and I liked the audio & music, it plays like an idea that was fully realised. The worst I can say against it is that it might benefit a little from a few more iterative steps over what's already there. I never once got hit in secure storage. I had the same bug with items others have had, especially with the basement & getting the wrong item. That very much had a fly in the ointment vibe to it which should tell you that you did a great job with this game - you caught your lightning in a jar and mostly stopped it from getting out in a way that really worked for me. Great job!
