itch.io

Heh, yeah, sorry about it. The idea was to make an interactive music video game, and that’s what Venus is. I toyed around with the idea of adding a new song/level, but either way it’ll still be a very, very short game. Glad you enjoyed it tho :)

Sound and visuals were atmospheric and immersive and there’s genuine tension towards the endgame. Full marks on presentation.

But… I do feel like success is very much dependent on luck: what your board looks like and what utilities you get. I understand that it’s The Point, some desperate death game that’s rigged against you. But that also means I didn’t really feel like playing it more than twice once I “got” the winning strat.

I think it’s a wonderful demo and I’m glad you’re still responding and shitposting down here in the comment section. I just think it needs a bit more complexity and replay value :)

משחק ממש יפה, הן אומנותית והן בזהות שלו. מרגיש כמו שילוב בין המהירות של “סלסט” והגיימפליי המתפתח של “אינסייד”. אתן אומרות מה שצריך, מעבירות שחקנים מסע מלא אקשן, וגומרים את כל העניין בלי למשוך זמן. אחלה של דבר, וההשקעה ניכרת. השליטה מצוינת (כולל קאיוטי טיים!), השלבים והמכשולים מאוד קריאים והסיפור, בעוד שלא הבנתי את כולו, מועבר יפה דרך גיימפליי וסצנות קצרות וחותכות.

אני כן אגיד שיש למשחק סוגייה מאוד קשה שאני רואה בהרבה משחקים סטודנטיאלים - השלבים קשים באופן “לא הוגן”: שיפודים במקומות לא נוחים, המתנות ללא אייג’נסי, וקפיצות סופר מדוייקות. לא היה שלב שלא יצאתי ממנו קצת מתוסכל. הייתי מסיר את השיפודים בצידי פלטפורמות ושם לב שברור מתי מפלצות הרוחות שמעיפות אותך לצד עומדות להסתובב, למשל. דברים קטנים כאלה.

אני חושב שזה פרוייקט גמר מצוין שצריך קצת יותר זמן בישול בכל הנוגע לפלואו. כל זמן שאנשים מתקשים זה זמן שהם יוצאים מהחוויה והאימרסיה נהרסת. אבל כן, בכל הקשור בתקש”ח אין לי הערות. גוד סטאף. בהצלחה!

נ.ב. ממליץ לעשות מחקר על תגיות באיץ’, להבין אילו פופולאריות ונכונות למשחק ולרכב עליהן. יש מצב שהמודרטורים של איץ’ יראו את המשחק ויתנו לו מקום בעמוד הראשי!

Thanks! Yeah, if I had a little bit more time the writing would have been sharper and had included more gags.

Really cute, and immediately intuitive. The TV shader was a nice touch. Like others have said, a bit more background music would have really sealed the deal. I also felt that the main challenge was less about puzzle solving and more about “cheezing” the controls and clutching those corners. Cool stuff, especially for the timeframe.

Charming, cohesive and polished, especially for the timeframe. Very cool interpretation of the theme too, reminds me of Superliminal.

I think the demo feels great. Movement has a good amount of weight to it, environments are clear but detailed, everything flows well, and weapons feel great.

That said, I couldn’t understand what the game expected from me. Melee enemies rush you for a fast reaction and drop dead quickly. Aiming is optional, meaning you can run and gun. However anyone with a firearm is dead accurate and you die quickly. You have no crosshair so you must rely on scoped or lasersight weapons, lean and sneak. Level design is also kinda funky, with cover spots on the one hand and cheeky enemy placement on the other.

You gotta decide if you’re going for a more tactical shooter or a faster-paced one, and tune your design to that. Because right now, you’re kinda stuck between both and satisfying no one.

As the game implies, you have to “climb” (use LMB) the tank to use the grenade

Creative little Inscryption-like that’s genuinely tense with great atmosphere. I recoiled IRL when I “shot” myself. Love how the game teaches you its mechanics little by little and then pulls out all the stops by the end.

I did get confused by the beer item’s description, and didn’t quite get what it does in-game. As far as I understand, you basically ditch the loaded shell; didn’t get what it meant by “the end of the round”.

Also, I thought that cigs should have been a curated item that both items get a set amount of at the start of each game instead of it being given to you at random. It means one side can basically cheese their way to victory if they get lucky. But I guess that’s the point :)

These nitpicks aside - very, very good stuff.

Hi there, thanks for playing! Hope you’ll keep going and find the story as fascinating as I did.

As for a Mac build… it’s a bit of an issue. Besides Apple’s gatekeeping “unsigned” software, I don’t have a Mac computer on which to test builds.

I apologize, as I know Mac users need to jump through hoops to play Windows-only games. But I can’t debug a build I literally can’t launch, and I just have to rely on Unity to do a good job - which I really don’t.

I do love me a horror game that uses unreliable tech as a game mechanic rather than a gimmick. Love how the first stage is a low-stakes tutorial for the second stage under pressure, and how you’re not really sure when security arrives.

I think the game could use a crosshair change to indicate where and when you can use stuff, as I was mindlessly clicking most of the time, and that the ending was kinda predictable. Still, a great little thriller.

A really clever way of turning Battleship into a horror game, reminds me of Stories Untold in a way. I can only assume the prologue is about the tenants realizing they’re collateral damage. Strong stuff, doesn’t overstay its welcome and respects your intelligence.

Responsive UI is fancyspeak for “the buttons scale and look good in any resolution”. Godot doesn’t have this by default, you have to enable it. The reason is that the method differs for each game and artstyle

Cool experiment, I love me some first person post-irony simulators. I also recently made the switch after The Fuckening and Godot has its quirks.

If you want responsive UI, this doc page is a great guide since Godot’s terms are a bit peculiar. Also you don’t have to export all the engine DLLs with your build (unlike Unity), enable “Embed PCK” when you export your game.

Thanks! That game I mentioned is called You Find Yourself in a Room. Heads up, it has many explicit insults directed at the player.

baba is cat

simple, light, adorable.

Incredibly polished and faithful to the original formula, and in some respects even better (mainly in terms of game feel). Nicely done. My only two complaints are that the game is generally a bit slow paced, and that I wish I could hold LMB to place units quickly instead of mashing it.

oh wow you really went there

Fun, hectic physics game. It’s so fast and silly that you can’t really stay mad at it, and the Game Maker explosions were a nice touch. I will say I felt there were times the game “cheated” me into a hit by spawning extremely fast balls at times.

Played it a few times and my record was 650.

If you polish it up and pack it into an app, I could def see myself playing it while waiting for the bus.

At first I thought I’d actually be fighting the army I placed. Then the twist came and it was so much better. Very cute little game, loved the little character barks.

h̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶w̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶c̶r̶u̶l̶e̶t̶y̶ ̶s̶q̶u̶a̶d̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶d̶r̶o̶p̶p̶e̶d̶

No but really, this was great. No bullshit, all style. Having a CROSShair and giving you infinite ammo is ascended game design.

Clean concept, clean execution. As hard or as cheesy as you want. Good shit.

Hi, the game was originally created as I was learning Unity. The code does not support localization in any way and rebuilding it would be very time-consuming for such a small project. Unfortunately what you see is what you get :(

טוב לראות ישראלים בתגובות. במבט לאחור הייתי צריך ליצור הייפ עם התקשורת הגיימרית כדי שזה יגיע לעוד קהל אבל ויתרתי כי לא ביקשתי מאלישע רשות בהתחלה. בסוף שלחתי לו את המשחק והוא מאוד אהב. תודה רבה ושמח שנהנת!

Hold right mouse button to raise your weapon, then, while it’s raised, hit the left mouse button

That white bar is a loading bar, I think you countered a launch error! Either your device doesn’t support WebGL or there’s some sort of server problem.

I had the chance to handle a single action revolver of some kind before The Pandemic. Think it was a S&M but don’t remember.

The fact these old guns have a genuine learning curve makes actually loading and firing them oddly satisfying, and that’s what I was trying to replicate with this game. Glad I managed to hit that very specific niche:)

For a first game jam entry, this is actually pretty darn good.

I don’t know what went on behind the scenes, but conceptually it seems you avoided pretty much every rookie jammer mistake: you focused on a single, core gameplay idea with a small scope. You crafted a striking style that fits that gameplay idea. You tried new things out. You even had time to polish things up with writing and 2D art.

I understand that you want to keep developing the game, so outside of tips like “more enemies and variety”, which I’m sure you’ve already thought about, I’d like to focus on three things that kinda bugged me:

• There’s a noticeable delay between hitting LMB and the sword actually swinging. This is maaayyybbbeee due to the game waiting for the idle animation to “finish” before transitioning to another animation, but don’t quote me on that. Either way, it makes combat feel sluggish and “off”.

• Readability issues. I loved dashing about - it’s great and satisfying. I gathered that it has a cooldown, but couldn’t find a UI indicator for it. Also, I believed the lantern had an internal HP meter, and by filling it up with light I was “restoring” it. This led to an issue where I was stuck in the dark with zero light and had to blindly flail about (I would mash E to fill the lantern with light). I don’t know if I was right, because the game doesn’t really telegraph that. Both of these are examples of gameplay-critical info the player needs clear, concise info about.

• Focus on “juice” or “game feel” as it were. Faster movement, camera animations, more impactful sound effects, explosions, particles, the whole shebang. If your main focus is first person slashing, it should feel great to do for 5 minutes.

Other than that, capitalize on the 2D art a bit more. It’s genuinely well put together.

Anyways, that’s what I had in mind. I love the core game design and I feel like you pulled it off extremely well considering it’s a 7-day game jam and it’s your first one. Y’all got potential. Good luck :)

P.S. Unreal packs every damn engine feature into its builds, which results in overinflated file sizes. Not really your fault, Unreal’s just like that. I’d recommend looking into optimizing builds in the future.

Feels great, looks great, just as long as it needs to be. I particularly enjoyed the contrast between the adorable, pastel-colored aesthetic and the obscene enemy names. You can add a random name generator in there to have really capitalize on that.

I did find the controls a bit odd at first. Having to lock unto an enemy to fight makes for smooth 1v1 combat but an awkward extra step when fighting two or more enemies. Also, though I love the idea of mouse movements to dodge in theory, I found it a bit inconsistent and opted to just disengage from lock-on and move manually.

Overall though, it’s an immense amount of polish considering the short timeframe. While I suck at it I can still appreciate the effort. It’s a bit of a button masher, but that’s the whole fun of it.

Which was also something I threw around in my head! But opted to not use it just to keep it tight - one hit and you’re dead.

Y’know, in hindsight I think that had movement been a 2-character command instead of 4 or 5 players would instinctively move more just by virtue of how easy it would have been. Thanks for the kind words though, appreciate it.

Thanks! Figured I won’t be the first to make a first person parser, but at least I can try going for style over substance.

It’s true, you can cheese out the game. I did try to implement a constantly depleting HP meter you fill by killing stuff or by moving. It solved the issue, theoretically at least, but it felt like cheesing the player right back. I wanted a tight game with no wasted commands or superfluous elements.

Eventually I opted for a simple combo system and a few enemies that block your path and change lanes. Is it enough? Not really, and had I had more time I would have enhanced the spawn algorithm and added more enemy variety to truly create a more dynamic experience. But I’m happy with what I got.

I saw your progress on the #7dfps hashtag on Twitter, and I was immediately hooked. The artstyle and audio effects are on point - even if it wasn’t technically possible on old arcade cabinets :)

I did think the movement is too floaty; gravity and air control are low while movement speed is high, leading to an unresponsive scheme. I also thought there was a weird amount of mouse acceloration which discouraged me from aiming.

But the game design is solid. Mechanics are introduced in a safe and contained environment, levels are tight, objectives are readable, and nothing is really wasted. If you do keep working on it (which I recommend you do), I’d tighten up the movement and sell it as a speedrun game. Good stuff.

The main inspiration for this game came after spending an hour chatting with ChatGPT and thinking, “huh, I can make a 7DFPS game out of typing.”

The secondary inspiration was revolvers and, uh, yeah, funny word.

First of all I’m glad to hear itch is still a focused service in your minds. I’d rather have itch do one or two things really well than 6 okay-ish things.

There are a few creators use virtual PDF readers or zine makers to publish essays or comics here, and it’s a damn good workaround for writeups. I reckon folks will use the blogging feature to talk about anything that doesn’t fit into any particular project or product: game design, tutorials, personal ruminations, reviews, rants, comedy, or even just travelblogging.

A good example to look at to fit all these different categories into one uniform design is probably Medium. It’s easy to work with, easy to share, and has a minimalist but extremely versatile design. It means devs who wanna pull off a #screenshotsaturday can have a place while also giving a place for longform tangents.

As for the blogging platform’s placement in profiles themselves: Notifying followers is a good first step, but it’s extremely hard to find them organically. Itch already has options to add a website link and a Twitter link in one’s profile settings menu and have them show up at the top of your creator profile. Why not add a link to a profile’s “blog” or “blog posts” there? Sounds like a plan.

Horror-comedy done right. Legit made me tense while also suitably making me snicker at the absurdity of it all. A tad too frustrating for its own good, but that’s kinda the point I suppose. I would not be surprised if this kind of customer service is why the cold war lasted for 50 years.

never have i heard such high praise for one of my games before

(The game was designed as the most literal interpretation of the jam’s theme, as well as a tribute to the self-aware, crudely drawn games of 2000’s Newgrounds. I don’t know if I’ll ever expand it and how, as it’s a very dumb game, but if I ever do I’ll let you know)

Hi, just released a patch that expands the sensitivity sliders’ values. Thanks you for your patience and for giving me a heads-up!

Heh, fair enough. Early in development the ever-important issue of “what if they stand around swinging in circles tho” was even more prevalent.

I think making short swings against trash enemies coupled with smart AI kiting and dashing is the best way to reliably get an impressive score. Then again, the game also accepts players who just want to take the spinny way out and watch the fireworks. If slashing meeps ain’t fun, why bother?

Addictive, punchy, satisfying, readable yet extremely appealing art, and it’s all inspired by the peerless Inscryption, which is always a win in my book.

Not a big fan of letting the player character run around aimlessly, but once you get used to the different powerups and attacks it’s a bit more manageable. You can cheese the game a bit by spamming left click and increasing the size of your bullets, but the visual spectacle is worth it. Good job.

It’s immensely polished and satisfying with heavy Vlambeer vibes, no doubt about that, but it suffers from a difficulty wall. Took me a bit to realize the game auto-attacks, for instance. I tried different things to find a good strat yet the number one thing that worked is spamming spacebar to win. A bit frustrating but it’s juicy enough to keep my interest.