itch.io

Ah, thanks! I’ve managed to try that out now. I love the sound effect!

This feels really ambitious - I love the look of it - but the in-game text lets it down quite a bit. Partly that’s a lack of editing (spelling and apostrophes are a problem, and it just generally doesn’t get across what you’re supposed to be doing very well) but the main bugbear for me was that the font was incredibly hard to read. It feels mean to highlight that as a problem because it looks “glitchy” in a way that suggests the issues aren’t down to a deliberate design choice, but there’s a lot of text here and every page of it is a challenge to get through. That’s a shame because I also thought the evil robot overlord perspective was pretty funny.

Game-wise everything seems to work well but I was totally lost by the part-gathering minigame: it took me a while to figure out what the cards did, and even then I couldn’t tell if the numbers on each item were a price I had to cover or score I would get, or how they’d add up given that I was matching/harvesting entire groups of them at a time.

Still, this is a pretty phenomenal project for a game jam! I hope this doesn’t come across too negative - you said in the Discord that you wanted feedback more than anything so I figured I’d try to be thorough.

At the risk of causing you to crumble into dust, I’m only aware of it through a PS2 compilation of Midway arcade games. I’d love to play it on an actual cabinet someday, though!

The multiplayer is done! If you’re looking at the comment below that says “multiplayer would make it more fun,” I think they just mean that they didn’t have anybody to play with at the time. Single-player is quite a bit more reliable, though: I seriously underestimated the performance hit caused by synchronising all those robots between players.

Never thought I’d see a Joust-inspired game! I don’t think I’ve ever come across one before. The coin-collecting is a nice addition, though I found it seemed to reward simply avoiding the competition when playing two-player, though with more people I imagine it might become too hard to steer clear and then you just want the height advantage. A decent take on the “Fix It!” theme as well.

The graphics are amazing. They strike me as equal parts Bitsy, Inselkampf, and Persona. With just two players the map seems way too big - at the very least I wanted a steadier supply of trees so I could upgrade machines rather than just wander - but at the same time it was nice not immediately stepping on each other’s toes. I’m not positive this really fits the “Fix It!” theme since nothing seemed broken to begin with, but I figure it’s close enough.

Really glad to have been able to play around in this at least. Sure it’s not a finished game, but I’m super impressed by the overall look of the thing. The grainy camera and the breathing in the background are very atmospheric, as are the monsters. Genuinely creepy even as a tech demo!

I only played single-player so may not quite have got the full experience, but it was fun regardless. I was a little lost as to what affected the launch speed of my cube: just a little instruction would have been nice there. I also didn’t feel as though it was a particularly strong match for the theme, though I see how it’s relevant. A solid entry all round!

Short and sweet! I really would have liked to see more to this, but what’s there feels pretty polished. I played on my own, but given how short it is I’m not really sure what multiplayer would have added. Still nice to have the option, though!

This reminds me ever so slightly of the original Worms even though the gameplay’s completely different. I think it’s the pixel graphics and the colour scheme. In any case, it’s a fun little game! It seems pretty close to one of the templates, but I really like the way the level disintegrates. Playing on my own (which is always a nice option, though I can see how this would work in multiplayer), I actually found that constructing my way upwards made for a winning strategy so that element of the game seems to have a pretty significant effect. I don’t feel as though this exactly nails the “Fix It!” theme but it’s definitely relevant. Nice work!

Thanks!

This looks like a solid take on the jam theme, though I wasn’t able to actually fix any pipes myself (but could finish the levels regardless). Admittedly I was playing on my own. If you need two players on a pipe to fix it then that would make sense, but I feel as though I’m having to take a guess as to how to play this.

That’s hardly the worst problem to have, though: it strikes me as the sort of thing that may have more to do with how the game is explained than how it actually works. I see you say “you need two to play” so it’s probably on me for jumping into the game regardless, but it would be more helpful to know why you need two. Setting a minimum number of players to start a game might also help here, though for the jam it’s probably handy to be able to let one person at least have a go on their own. I’m certainly glad I could try it out.

In any case, you’re ten years old and you made an online multiplayer game? That’s really impressive! I hope you stick with it.

This is fun! I like that one player can focus on holding off pirates while another fixes the ship (or potentially a couple of people focus on different decks, since the enemies always start at the top). I didn’t get far enough through to be sure there aren’t other enemy types, but I would have liked to see a bit more variety earlier at least (though that might be a big ask for a jam game). The controls are pretty intuitive, though I wouldn’t have minded an in-game “J/Z to hammer!” hint. I got through my first round without ever quite working that out. (Getting interrupted by enemies makes it harder to pick up than it might be otherwise.)

I’m really glad you picked that up! I found that myself while testing but struggled to get the concept across concisely on the “how to play” screen.

This is really neat! I like the synergies between some of the vehicles - that you can follow a miner with a hauler, or a digger with pretty much anything else. It would be neat to play with a bigger group: it seems hard to justify running around as a scout with two people, but could be really handy to avoid a bigger group all wandering in search of resources.

I feel as though the biggest thing I’d like to see is more of an obstacle to harvesting the resources - maybe enemies running around or something - but that’s a big ask for a jam game. The only other thing would be a little “beep-boop” when chat messages come in (but having in-game chat in the first place is hugely impressive!).

Ah - it’s actually in the zip file I uploaded to itch.io (which is the same zip I submitted to IFComp) but itch doesn’t offer a handy method of downloading that.

There should hopefully be Linux, Windows, and Mac versions available now. I’m fairly sure that Windows and Linux will be consistent with what was submitted to IFComp - Mac might be a slightly older version since it was the lowest priority.

Have you tried hitting Escape while not in fullscreen? Sorry for all the questions - just trying to work out if this is a problem with the game itself or a problem with how it sits on the itch page. I’m almost positive I’ve backed out of the “special” menu myself when no moves are available, but it’s hard to confirm that’ll work nicely on every browser and every device.

Thanks for playing - and for the heads-up! Is there any chance you could let me know if hitting the Escape key gets you out of that situation? I recall at least one person getting stuck on settings that way, though if it completely locks up your machine and won’t even let you switch tabs then I imagine this may be a different issue.

Thanks! I considered background music (which ended up on the title screen instead) but found that the range of game noises competed with it quite a bit, so ended up going with a sort of background clock tick instead.

Rot13 because I can't work out how to add a details tag of my own: Ab. Gur whzcfpnerf pbzr jvgu gur ubhfr.

How did you do that, by the way? I've managed it on a game page before but the option to type in HTML doesn't appear in these comment text boxes.

I like the abundance of GDevelop jams. The timing doesn't always work out for me so knowing there's bound to be another one right around the corner really takes the pressure off.

I'm using Firefox in Ubuntu. Your screenshot looks like it's from a phone so maybe it's different depending on the browser/device? If anybody else runs into the same issue then that may make it easier to pin down.

Ah, sweet! That does feel a bit more forgiving (or possibly I just got better at anticipating where things would bounce since my first playthrough). I went from "bruised banana" to "banana boss!"

It's a great effort for two weeks - I hope it does well in the jam!

Simple but neat! I'm impressed by the variety of bosses. A slightly more generous hitbox for the goal would be nice given that it's very easy to lob a banana at it and have the ricochet hit you in the face (which is compounded by the fact that you probably want to be pretty close when you throw the thing in the first place).

I didn't like to bring this up while the jam was running, but please don't spam other devs' games begging people to play your own. Especially don't beg for "really GOOD" ratings: in a lot of jams there are rules against telling people how to vote so it's likely to get you disqualified.

I appreciate that it's hard to organise people to have a go at multiplayer games in particular, but this kind of thing is going to put them off more than it's going to help. Try offering a time you'll be online to play against every day. Try getting in touch with other developers who've entered multiplayer games and asking politely - once - if you can find a time to play each other's games together so there's a chance to rate them. Make it easy for people to have a go, don't just post "plzzzzzzzzzz" everywhere you can think of.

Really glad to see that this got 2nd prize for the jam. I didn't get around to playing everything myself but this was definitely one of the highlights. Congratulations!

GG

I think I ran into that looping tyre sound bug once myself, but it was in a multiplayer game where I'm pretty sure the host got disconnected. The sound in general does seem to be a bit much, though I think it may be another one of those things that's cropped up because I was well used to steering the car before I even added it in: I suspect it's much more grating if you're frequently taking more than one full circle to make a turn, rather than hearing it only briefly on each corner.

A bigger track is a neat idea. I did consider it while making this (particularly as the Kenney racing pack seems to include assets for wider corners), but by that point it would essentially have meant building a new one from scratch. I'm also not positive how it would affect the gameplay: chances are it would mean less running into walls, but it might also offer rather a long way to drift off course. But if I added more tracks to the game, having some wider options would be one way to increase variety if nothing else! The balloon battle idea is an interesting one too. I feel as though it would probably require weapons/powerups that might mean a departure from the two-button control scheme, but at the same time I can imagine forcefields, orbiting drones, melee weapons popping out of cars - the sort of thing that might be activated on pickup and then simply remain in play until it timed out.

Ah! I was wondering if anyone would ask about the controls. Part of the reason is that I felt as though if I went with WASD or arrow keys, people would end up trying to turn left due to muscle memory: every other game of this sort allows it, so I wanted something substantially different so players wouldn't have a finger hovering over a useless key out of habit. As to why "A" and "M" specifically, I type on a Dvorak keyboard and those are the two keys that are positioned the same as on a QWERTY keyboard.

If you want an easier option in the short term, GDevelop can produce an .apk file you can just slap on Itch for people to download. It's unlikely to get as much traction as a game in the app store, but it works just as well.

This game is simple but neat! I like that the buttons have some "weight" to them so they'll keep sliding after you let go of left/right. I did notice that the objects seem to fall in the same place every time, though, so you can pretty much just squat where the hearts drop and never have to worry about getting hit by a crate. Some sound would help it feel a lot more lively, and I wouldn't mind a more exciting background as well. Still, not bad for 48 hours!

Yeah, a couple of people have mentioned that. I think because I got the hang of it while testing, I didn't realise that people would take so long to get around the track when picking it up for the first time: based on the fact that the game has more ratings than leaderboard entries (and that the slowest recorded times are in the region of four minutes), it seems a fair number of players don't manage the full three laps at all. Once you can get round the corners reliably, it takes less than two minutes to finish. I'd quite like to expand the game, though, and will definitely throw in a one-lap practice run if I do.

I like this - and I was impressed how many rocks could be on screen and still offer a chance to avoid them! My guess is that there's a certain element of luck to this at some point, but a good player should always have a significant edge over a bad one (especially if they can make full use of the dash - I found myself inching around far more slowly). I'd like a little more sound and I feel as though some dust or something kicking up when the boulders hit the ground would be nice, but that sort of thing would just be the cherry on top. This makes great use of the theme and I hope it places well in the jam.

This is really cute. The camera is a bit buggy, as others have said, but what I found I really missed was checkpoints: I don't really want to take another run at the fairly trivial spider chase to take another crack at avoiding the foot (which seems to come down so quickly I've got very little hope of avoiding it - or at least would take more tries learning to avoid than I have patience for without a checkpoint). Love the take on the theme, though!

I love this take on the jam theme. It's great to see something with LOADS of buttons that nevertheless obviously matches the "only two buttons" prompt. Obviously it's pretty simple (and I agree that the difficulty could be tweaked), but it works well! There's more to this than the extremely common card-based memory game that it initially resembles. Given the simplicity of the gameplay I wonder if there could be more in the way of sound, particle effects, etc. - I want a little trumpet fanfare when I hit those two buttons and a WHOMP WHOMP if I hit the wrong one! - but since it seems you're planning to do more with this you could always add that kind of success/failure feedback later. Even in its current form, I think it's one of the stand-out games of the jam for me.

I really like the two-button control scheme for this: it feels as though the character can do everything you'd expect, but with just those two buttons. It's very intuitive. I'm less keen on the graphics: that font on that background is virtually impossible to read. (I also notice that the text at the beginning seems to slip off the bottom of the screen, which I found happening in my game as well to an extent - it seems as though it might be a common GDevelop issue so if you ever work out what's going on there I'd be keen to hear about it!) The sound does the job and there's certainly some innovation here. My one other quibble is that I'm pretty sure I got a game over when an enemy spawned inside the player character, but it's fun all the same: it's hard to fault a jam game over something little like that.