itch.io

Thanks for trying. I’ll be sure to let you know when I put out the fix :)

Hi, thanks for trying my game! I would’ve updated the game by now to fix the bug you’re experiencing, but I’m currently on a trip so I can’t do so :(

The work around that has worked for the most people is using specifically Firefox, and/or not going full screen. I totally understand if you wouldn’t want to download a new browser just to try out my game tho lol. Regardless thanks for playing :)

This game is really cool! Really enjoyable gameplay loop, I found myself hooked for a while lol. I got to the 1000 gold cap, which I didn't realize was the end when I was playing, I just thought it would be a good stopping point. 

Really fun! The art is pretty good, the music is a nice background sound while I'm upgrading the shit out of my houses, and the mechanics are simple to understand, yet surprisingly didn't get boring at least for me.

One simple suggestion I'd say is about placing buildings. At first I tried placing buildings with left click, and when I did that the building appeared to be placed, but wasn't actually there. I figured out how to do it after a few minutes, but I think left click would've made more sense as a place button. I get wanting to separate the interaction and placing inputs, but there really isn't any time where I would've wanted to interact with a building while placing down another, so I think it would've just simplified things nicely.

One other thing I found was a little bug. Basically if you sell houses/great halls, you don't lose the miners that they gave you, but you get the red crystals back. So you can basically buy a house, upgrade it fully to get maximum miners, and then sell it to get your red crystals back. Of course because when you buy a building the next building costs twice as much this isn't as game-breaking as I thought it was when I first discovered it, but I'm still guessing it wasn't intentional.

Anyway, great game! I really enjoyed it. I'm excited to see where it goes! :)

Wow, thank you so much! You pretty much got it spot on with the story. Bell is mainly inspired by aspects of myself, so the story feels very personal to me. I'm glad that the effort I put in came through on screen. :)

I'm also very glad you enjoyed the gameplay! I did attempt to strike a balance between the gameplay and the story, and although I'm not sure I struck it perfectly, I'm glad you enjoyed it. 

Art is definitely not my strong suit, so the style of the art was just based on what I knew how to make lol. Considering that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. 

It means so much that you enjoyed the music!! It's one of the aspects I'm most proud of, so it means a lot for it to be acknowledged.

I'm so happy you're excited to see it continue!! I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to keep people up to date on development yet, but I'll be sure to let people know on itch.io somehow. Your comment honestly just made my night lol. Thanks for playing :D 

Yeah idk why I kept the ability to go to previous rooms lol. It breaks the game in a lot of different places

Thanks! Yeah, the story did end up being very similar to Omori in a lot of ways lol. I was trying to teach the mechanics in a nonobvious way so I can totally understand getting stuck. Thanks for the feedback!! :))

Well, I've actually personally found issues with Unity's 2D URP shadow-casting system where it would unnecessarily be handling shadows outside of the lighting range depending on the scale of the object - I had to add custom code to the 2d shadow caster in order to make my previous 2D URP game w/shadows performant for that very reason, so it might be in general performant, but in particular the 2D shadow casting is definitely not perfectly optimized.

Also, I know for a fact that my raycasting is not the issue, as doing some quick profiling shows that the raycasts I'm doing are using a total of 0.4% of the CPU the game is using, which is an insignificant amount in the scheme of things. Believe me, I did try to bring that number down, but it was about sacrificing performance for the accuracy of visibility detection with my objects, and I wanted to be as accurate as possible so objects wouldn't pop in and out of existence while you could still see them.

I was merely suggesting hardware could explain the game being laggy for you but not other people (like myself), not that it would cause the game not to run. As I mentioned, I know for a fact that the text not showing up (which was the "browser issue" I was referring to) is due to an issue with TextMeshPro materials, not due to any lack of optimization.

Regardless I appreciate the advice. Sorry if I'm being defensive - I'm trying not to be but I know that I am to some extent. I definitely am not an expert on optimization (it is definitely one of my weak points), so I'll still definitely consider your advice for the future.

Actually, optimization has nothing to do with the issue. I already fixed the issue with the text not showing up - had something to do with TextMeshPro materials. It just isn't fixed yet because I can't update the game until after the voting period. Also, I haven't yet gotten any feedback about optimization being bad, although I'm not at all surprised, since I had to do a bunch of my own raycasting and algorithms to detect if stuff is in shadow.

I never saw that self-harm and suicide was against the rules. Could you maybe provide a link to show that? These are the only rules for the jam I could find, and unless "Don't be a dumbass" is the rule you're referring to, there is nothing here that suggests what I did was against the rules.

Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the game besides optimization. I'll definitely see if I can further optimize the game in the future, although I did quite a bit of profiling and found that my own custom raycasting stuff never lowered my performance significantly, so maybe it's just an issue with your browser/computer? Unity's URP 2D lighting system isn't exactly perfectly optimized for WebGL on its own, so it could just be that, and that's not really my fault. Regardless, thanks for the feedback. :)

Thank you! Yeah the light mechanics were a bit tricky to make puzzles for. On top of that, since the cutscenes took so long to make, I didn't have much time to make puzzles, so I ended up opting to have more simple timing stuff. I definitely would've loved to make some more complex puzzles for the game, just didn't have enough time.

The introductory puzzles are a tricky thing because I really wanted to try and communicate the main mechanics without actually telling you anything. I think that some of that worked, but I get that some of it didn't. I'll think carefully on how I want to change that for the future. Also, I like the suggestion of highlighting stuff when it changes - that could definitely aid in the puzzle-solving process.

I'm glad you liked the story! I totally get that it's a bit predictable - I realized pretty early on that I'd have to have a content warning, and that would end up spoiling the game pretty bad, but I don't think there was any way around that unfortunately.

Anyway, thank you so much for the detailed feedback! I'm glad you're looking forward to future developments - I'm planning on this eventually becoming my first Steam release, but it'll probably be a while before that happens. Feedback like this is invaluable toward getting the game ready for that, so I really appreciate it. :)

Thank you!! The story is pretty personal to me, so it means a lot to hear that you connected with it. I'm so happy to hear that you're excited to see it finished! I plan on this eventually becoming my first release on Steam, but it's going to be a while before I think it's ready for that. Glad to see someone is looking forward to it :)

Thank you! I'm happy you enjoyed the boss fight, took me a while to get it right.

Yeah, the story is definitely the main focus of the game, but I get what you mean when you say it breaks up the pace. I was originally planning to have a higher gameplay-to-story ratio, but the story stuff took longer than I expected and I didn't want to cut anything from it, so it left me with a lot less time to add gameplay stuff. I'll keep this in mind for the future. :)

Thank you! I'm really happy how in particular the music turned out. Glad you enjoyed it. :)

I totally get the frustration with having to repeat that dialogue, I'll make sure to fix that when the jam is over. :)

Loved it! Simple concept, executed really well. Only thing was when I got the different potion colors I thought they'd change something with gameplay, but I now get that it was just to make a prettier picture at the end :) Great game!

Would love it if you could also check out my game? :)

yeah, I don’t know why I kept the ability to go back to previous rooms. Breaks the game in a lot of places… 

If it’s the level I’m thinking of, you just gotta walk in front of the light on the second platform. But regardless thanks for playing :)

If anyone else comes to read this, I just wanted to update everyone and say that the game I was making this soundtrack for is done! (Or at least the game jam version of the game is, I may work on it more in the future).

Here is the link: https://coderedyt.itch.io/the-hiding-place

Loved it! The chords in the first track definitely give off that underwater vibe, and instantly set a really great tone. I really liked the atmosphere and vibe of the night track, your description of it definitely feels very accurate. I also liked the atmosphere of the deep ocean track. The slight distortion on some of the low chords really gives a nice feel. I think my favorite track was the boss theme. Very different in style from the others, but I think it works really well. I loved the dynamic feel of the melody and the slide on some of the bass notes. The last track was also really nice. I loved the melody and chord progression. The somber tone definitely fits a game-over track.

Overall, I really liked it! (Sorry if my feedback was a bit repetitive, I'm not very versed in the terminology of this stuff.) Great job on this. :)

Thank you so much! I can definitely see the OMORI connection. It wasn't a direct inspiration, but I have played OMORI and the soundtrack is really good, so that's a huge compliment. I should probably clarify that I didn't *just* start using FL - I have used it before, but it was the free version and I was mainly just messing around. However, I did just recently purchase FL (for this jam as a matter of fact), and I'm glad I did. It's been a blast to use.

Again, thank you so much for the kind words. I'll be sure to check out your submission as well. :) 

Very good game! Feels very polished, and with a decent amount of content as well in terms of the cards. The gameplay is fun, the art is amazing, just a very solid entry. You struck the perfect balance between content and polish. Great job! :)

Our game by comparison didn't strike that balance, spent almost no time on polish lol. Maybe you could check it out? :)

that's odd, I haven't had anyone else have errors. Could be a browser issue?

Not quite. Rotating would be like if the player could spin. When I say change direction, I don't mean the direction the player is facing/looking, I mean the direction they are moving in. 

I dont think you mean rotate. I'm guessing you're talking about the sensitivity of the movement, and how long It takes to change directions? Because the player object doesn't actually "rotate" at all.

thank you! :)

yeah the shoot power up is really quite useless - it was actually added on the last day, and I made it underpowered cuz I was really worried about accidentally making it overpowered. I didn’t want the game to turn into a top down shooter

Holy shit this game is pretty. Seriously, great job on the art! The gameplay was also pretty good, I used to play a lot of these types of games a long time ago. One slight critique would be that the tilting of your guy midair feels a bit unresponsive, but it's really not a big deal. Still an incredible experience, great job on this! :) 

Wow, what an interesting concept! Really cool hearing all the different patterns created from the simulation. Great, unique take on the theme! Good job! :)

short and sweet - I loved the idea of being a dog that has to bark at different things happening around your house, and I think the house rotation was a good use of the theme! Good job :)

Fun, simple game! Neat concept executed very well. Would've liked to have seen more levels, but as I know from working as a solo dev on game jam games, it can be quite tough to find the time. My only complaint would be that the movement and camera rotation felt a bit off, but frankly that wasn't really a big deal since there is no pressure from a time limit or enemies or anything. Really nice puzzle game, good job! :)

We actually tried this control scheme, at least partly. (moving was still WASD, but we tried mouse for dash) but most people on the team preferred it the way it is now. If we had more time, maybe we could have allowed for both! :)

Sorry yeah it doesn’t have full controller support. Was one of the things that had to go by the wayside for the sake of time. Will definitely add it after the jam is over though! 

Glad you liked it :)

You’re indeed correct, the level design is metroidvania inspired! 

Glad you liked it :)

ah I see. Yeah I was expecting people to use WASD to move

thanks :)

not really sure how else we would've done it. There are plenty of games where you move with keyboard and shoot with mouse (such as all fps games)

Thanks! I’m glad you liked it :)

The leaderboard was made using lootlocker, more specifically using this video tutorial: https://youtu.be/u8llsk7FoYg 

Pretty fun game! The gameplay is basic, but pretty fun! Seems like a game I could spend many hours playing on mobile. Also, I love the wordplay by saying "wave x" and having a wave animation play. Good job!

Also, maybe you could rate and play my game? :)

What an incredible game! Very nice graphics, amazingly polished feel, and great music too. The gameplay is fairly basic, but very fun! Seriously a great entry, good job!

Also, maybe you could check out and rate my game? :)

A very fun take on snake! The hunters really add a lot to the game. I also like that the hunters sleep during the night. Otherwise, I think the game might be too hard. Really great job!

Also, maybe you could play and rate my game? :)

Great game! Simple and fun gameplay, nice graphics, and great music. The game does feel a bit hard at first, especially without a tutorial, but I got a handle on it pretty quick. Good job!

Pretty good game! Simple concept excuted well. The graphics are really nice, and I like the way the music slows down when the leaderboard comes up. Only thing I'd suggest is adding maybe power ups, or some other mechanic other than dodging the ball and collecting points. But I get that it's hard to find time to add that stuff when you only have 3 days. Overall, good job!

Also, maybe you could play and rate my game? :)

This game is an absolute masterpiece. Right as I opened it up, I could tell this game was built different. The music is so amazing. The way you used the theme is great too. The explanation was a bit long, but the way you made it like a job orientation was very smart. Honestly, I really liked this game. The gameplay itself isn't anything to write home about, but it was pretty fun. Great job on this.

Also, maybe you could play and rate my game? :)

Dude, the art in this is amazing. Really great job. The menus are really nice too, although the leaderboard might be a bit bugged? The gameplay could use some work, though, as right now it's pretty boring. Maybe adding a new mechanic could help, but I'm not really sure. Still though, pretty decent game for being made in 3 days. 

Also, maybe you could play and rate my game? :)

Pretty good game. The gameplay is simple, but nice. I honestly don't really have much to say, except that the attack helicopter part at the end is amazing. I died pretty much instantly when it came up. 10/10 would die again.

Also, maybe you could play and rate my game? :)