itch.io

Holy shit, man! The award for most underappreciated game in this jam goes to this; the judges (i.e. me) have spoken.

---SPOILERS AHEAD IN THIS REVIEW; PLAYING IT YOURSELF FIRST IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ---

I love the whole concept of this game. The main gameplay, by which I mean the simulated puzzles, are pretty hard to wrap your head around initially, which I suppose will turn off quite a few players expecting a quick, cute platformer or something. But if you stick around for the show, you'll be rewarded with a Daniel Mullens-esque twist and some interesting dialogue (which kind of reminded me of Waiting for Godot). Finding all the alternative solutions for the puzzles felt like just the right balance between tricky and rewarding, so the design for that is very well done.

Additionally, the atmosphere in this game is great. First off, the music; did any of you guys compose this yourselves? If so, I'm impressed! I love how the tone shifts from slightly 'off' muzak to straight-up horror eeriness. The visuals work very well too, especially the first sight of all the adjacent monitors  was quite a powerful moment.

Truly the only small suggestions I could think of are:
- It would have been nice to see more effects of your progress, such as the main environment changing more after each alternative solution.
- The English grammar of some sentences is a bit shaky, which interfered just  a bit with the immersion.

From everything I've played so far, this is probably my favourite game so far. Great job, especially for a three-day project!

Very creative concept! The main idea for the gameplay's super original, the placing/destroying of walls is very smooth and the minimalist graphics work very well.

That being said, to me the game feels like it misses a whole lot of its potential. Some suggestions I have:
- The gameplay becomes very repetitive. Rather than constantly building on your old designs but just making them a bit longer, it would have been nice to see some other challenges to work around, such as unbreakable walls or just distinct levels in general.
- The time frame for being on time for the train is just a bit too small in my opinion.
- I think a speeding up button for the walking part would be very desirable, especially for the higher waiting times. Having to wait almost a full minute just because your path was three blocks too short/long is not very fun at all, unfortunately.
- My guy had a very free sense of physics - i.e., he was constantly constantly cutting corners and briefly walking through walls when it came to turns.
- You certainly  picked an... interesting song? But I'm really sure of dissonant salsa is the best fit for the game. Watching the guy traverse my maze for the umpteenth time with that music playing in the background made me feel just a bit like I was going crazy.

Nonetheless, the game is very promising, so good job! And hopefully my feedback can be helpful to you :)

Thank you for the review; the fact that you even tried to get all endings means a lot to me! Man, the mouse ending is such a great idea that I am genuinely jealous I didn't think of it myself.
And lol, I love the idea of the factory just being in the basement of the water facility; perhaps the purple chimpanzee is behind more than we think...

I didn't even participate in this jam, but man, this shit slaps with terminal velocity. The atmosphere is thick enough to be tasted, the songs are varied yet cohesive, and while there are some clear inspirations (something with a town and restless dreams), it entirely feels like its own thing.
Makes me wish I could engage in some clunky inventory management with Laren for real.

An incredibly charming little puzzle game! I love the concept; seeing this interpretation of 'Flow' made it seem so obvious, yet I wouldn't ever have thought of this myself. The limited colour palette is a very tasteful touch and makes the whole game feel very stylish and polished graphics-wise. The music fits the game very well too, it's very Baba Is You-esque (and that's definitely a compliment). I was very impressed by the level of numbers, especially given the time limit.

Unfortunately, the slow sliding-into-place animation does interfere with the flow of the game a lot, as has been mentioned before by others. Aside from that, I think that it would have been very nice to have a button to instantly pick up placed wires, to prevent constantly having to go through the whole map just to retrieve them. I also think that some of the levels, mostly the earlier ones, feel a bit too straight-forward, where it just comes down to 'connect thing X to thing Y' and repeating that a few times until you're done. This problem almost entirely resolved itself in the latter half of the game, though!

All in all, great submission, and I would be very interested in seeing an expanded/slightly tweaked version of this game.

One of the best game of this jam, and to think that this is in the novice category is insane! The thumbnail/menu art is of course very appealing and eye-catching, the flashlight-like revealing of the map works great, and the game just feels very satisfying to play. I also like the sound design, this adds a lot to the game feel. Plus, having a clear, playable tutorial is a huge bonus for this game.

My only real problem with the game is that it is just a bit too unforgiving. Right out of the gate, enemies start blasting at you with quite high precision. This means that you have to constantly be on the move; that paired with the low accuracy of your guns makes open spaces with multiple enemies very hard to get through. Getting hit is almost inevitable in such spaces - and this wouldn't per se have been a problem if there had been health pick-ups, something I greatly missed in this game. It made it so that the only real way to progress in the game for me was to simply remember all the enemy positions, something I think shouldn't ever really be necessary.
Also, a tiny detail: the rage meter is a great idea, but in reality it drains so slowly that it basically doesn't exist in the game. I think it would have been nice for this meter to have been more prevalent somehow.

But difficulty aside, this really is a great submission, so great job!

The title for most absurd game of the jam might just go to this one; but I think that's a great thing! The whole atmosphere is just so eerie, and I love how (I assume purposely) unintuitive and disorienting the whole place and sequence of actions feels (+ how questionable the whole objective of your job is).
The gameplay feels odd and a bit clunky, but weirdly enough this just adds to the liminal, slightly uncomfortable feel of the game. I actually enjoyed how the pill just slipped out of your hand when moving to fast; it adds both literal and figurative 'weight' behind this "purification pill" you're carrying. 
Now the only problem I had with this game, is that the time frames you have for each task are incredibly tight. Even on my third attempt when I was sprinting around as efficiently as I could, I still couldn't make it past 2pm. As such, I never got to see the second ending, I'm afraid :(
I think the main problem is the combination of the clunky controls and the high time pressure; I think either cleaning up the controls or lowering the time limit might fix this problem. Personally, I would opt for the second choice, but that's up to you of course.

Anyway, great job! You got a follower, just for how unique and interesting this game is :)
And by the way, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on my game as well, seeing as there's a very slight overlap between the two games (working in some sort of odd facility of questionable nature).

No problem! I can only make a Windows build, as you would need a macOS device yourself to make such a build in Game Maker, unfortunately. However, in my experience sometimes Windows builds also work perfectly fine for Mac, so you could try that?

A very stylish and wholly unique game; one of the most interesting takes on 'Flow' I've seen in this entire jam! The gameplay is of course quite simple, yet it's really quite effective. The same holds for the art style, it doesn't go for too much, yet its minimalism ends up being pretty slick. Oh and props for the sound effects being self-made, I'm always a big supporter of that :)

Some small suggestions I thought of while playing the game:
- The level select UI is a bit lacking in looks, especially in comparison to the slickness of the main game.
- The level 'dual vision' doesn't really seem to work; once you get stuck in a  corner, that's just where you'll stay for the rest of the level (unless I just missed some secret strategy, that is)
- The game goes perhaps just a tad too fast to really properly be able to react to incoming projectiles, making the game feel just a bit too reliant on luck rather than pure skill.

Anyway, I hope this feedback can be helpful to you! 

This is a pretty fun game that's this close to being very fun (and addicting) game. This basically feels like one of those mobile game ads you see for endless runners, but then actually fun. The combination of moving between lanes and aiming at and shooting targets has great potential.

The main issue right now is that the controls just aren't quite satisfying; and for about movement, this is of course something essential. For me, this mostly stems from the fact that you teleport rather than gradually move when pressing A/D, and that the over-the-shoulder camera while shooting can be a bit janky / that your missiles are often blocked by trees etc., sometimes you too little time to actually hit the targets. I think just a bit more polish to these aspects can go a very long way for this game, and I'd be interested to see where it would take it.
Also, to be completely honest, this game doesn't really feel related to 'Flow', and the explanation feels like a bit of a stretch tbh. That being said, this doesn't stop the game on its own from having great potential.

Man, what an ambitious game for a three day jam! Of course it could use a lot more polish, but I am willing to be more forgiving on that seeing how this is just .

I really like the atmosphere of the game, achieved through the combination of visuals, sound and gameplay. Hitting around in a frenzy just seems to fit the blasting beats very well, making the game feel very cohesive in style.

However, the gameplay itself can be quite frustrating, mostly due to the clear lack of needed polish. The game was quite laggy (even on a high-end gaming laptop), the enemies are too frantic and the bosses are bullet-sponges, you cannot really do much once you're being shot at from 3+ angels, plus the game just seemed intent on quitting out of the window whenever I clicked too fast (I'm not entirely sure if this is the game's fault or just something outside of it, but it keeps occurring).

In short, I see a lot of potential in this game, but this feels much more like a highly flawed teaser than really a finished product of any kind. Still, much respect to all the work you put in!

Looks like we shared some inspiration for this jam! Very interesting to see how our games have a  few core concepts in common, yet ended up being very different; as such, I would be interested in seeing your thoughts on my game as well!

The gameplay loop is a bit tricky to get into, especially as it starts off relatively fast with little room for error when it comes to lives, but once you get the hang of it, it's much more doable and quite fun. The rat invasion is a fun addition to the game as well, both thematically and gameplay-wise.

Some suggestions/ideas I had while playing the game:
- The tutorial is far too wordy right now. Optimally, this would all be explained in-game; although I do understand that this probably was hard to do within the time limit.
- Apart from the rats, the gameplay stays pretty stagnant the whole way through. It would have been nice to see for instance more of a buildup in speed and/or complexity as you progress in the game.
- While I liked the rats, the features does seem pretty removed from the rest of the gameplay. It would have been nice if the two were somehow related (outside of both penalizing health if done wrong).

Hopefully this feedback is helpful is some form or another!

Man, what a great little game! The puzzles are very well-designed, the 8-bit graphics, music and sounds work great, and I love the gradual reveal of the memories. Seeing Game Jam games being well-written is truly a treat :)

Really the only thing I'd want is simply to have more of it; out of all the games I've played so far, this is probably the one I'd most like to see a full game of!

Alright, I'm going to be a bit harsh here, so apologies in advance.
The core gameplay of this game just doesn't seem to work out. I assume this is supposed to be kind of a puzzle game, but since the moved square are all a lighter shade of brown, it just becomes a game of 'press the light brown squares and win', which isn't very fun at all to me. I think it would work much better if you had either manually place the squares back into their original position, or not have the moved squares be a different colour.
Additionally, the presentation feels just a bit tacky. The animals remind me a bit too much of those 'learn colours with moving eggs' Youtube videos for children, and the sound effect played when they reach the shore gets a bit obnoxious.

Again, sorry for being so harsh; hopefully this feedback can be helpful to you!

I had no clue what I was doing for most of the game, and yet it was still engaging; and that's a good sign. The game looks great and is a perfect example of 'less is more' (I love the chromatic aberration), and the controls are smooth and snappy. It does get pretty stale after a while though, as you end up kind of doing the same thing for a long time. I could see the game being expanded with levels or something to go through? Anyway, nice job :)

A very original idea for sure, but the execution is unfortunately just a bit iffy. You have a very small window of error for each stroke, and especially the ones where you have to paint kind of upwards were almost impossible to get for me. Having to start all over after just one mistake is also very harsh, perhaps having multiple lives could be a  better alternative for this. Plus, the strokes on the canvas did not even remotely line up with my mouse (although that didn't matter too much, as I barely had time to look at the canvas anyway). I do see potential in this idea, it's just that the core gameplay loop isn't quite there yet.

Excellent visuals, good concept and great execution; you nailed it! It's a bit short and everything outside of combat is kind of weak still, but I could see some real potential for a bigger game here.

A profoundly  stupid game, which is to say it perfectly succeeds at what it tries to be. Just a fun little homage to raunchy flash games. I especially like the weapon variety and the dumb quirks each one had.

At one point, the music didn't loop when it finished, leaving me with just silence and remorse about my actions. I doubt this was intended, but it fit the game surprisingly well.

Great game! Really one of my favourites of the jam so far. The gameplay's fun, smooth and responsive, the graphics are slick, the shops are a very welcome addition; it's all just great.
If I had to give feedback, the only thing I could think of is that the wind background noise doesn't loop quite perfectly, but that's really all. Great job!

I think you said it best yourself; this definitely feels more like a prototype than a real game on its own. As such, I find this game a bit hard to rate as well: on the one hand I'm pretty impressed by the system, especially given that you made it in just three days, but on the other hand it's much more of technical feat than anything else.

I think I've fixed it now? There's a new version available on the main page

Very cute little game!

Some small ideas/suggestions I had while playing:
- The colour of the floor in the room is maybe a bit too saturated. Since the furniture is largely the same colour as the floor, it doesn't really 'pop' out, but all blends into one brown whole.
- The music resetting between each new room feels a bit jarring. Plus, using the same short song for the whole game can get a bit tiring.
- It would be nice to unlock more objects to place after each painting you're done with, so that the gameplay can remain fresh for a bit longer.

Hopefully this feedback is somewhat helpful to you :)

Fun little game. I like the timing aspect when fending off the enemies, and I love the "ENTER THE ZEN" voice-over lol.

My biggest tips are: 
- Sometimes, enemies spawn on both sides almost simultaneously, making it impossible not to get hit by at least one of them. 
- The window of hitting the enemy when they're walking towards you could be just a bit bigger imo.
- The music doesn't loop properly, which is quite jarring.

Great art and good responsive controls, especially considering the time frame it was made in. I see a lot of potential in this game for possible further development.
My main suggestions are to remove the 'leap of faith' sections (i.e. where you fall down and then there's suddenly a spike in the middle of the fall), and to make the voice acting a bit more audible, since it's kind of drowned out by the music. The 'flow' element is clearly present in the overarching theme and narrative of the game; I think it would also have been nice to it a bit more in the actual gameplay somehow, outside of a few sprites here and there vaguely alluding to it. 
Anyway, nice work!

Very fun little puzzle game with some good level design. The visuals are simple but very charming, especially during the opening cutscene. The game's a bit short, of course, but it kept me wanting more, so that's a good thing!

Here are some ideas/suggestions I came up with while playing it:
- You could add more keyboard inputs rather than onscreen buttons. For instance pressing 'R' for restarting and Space or Enter to Continue to the next level. Since the mouse isn't used in the gameplay otherwise, this might feel just a bit nicer to play.
- The UI seems a bit amateurish, it reminds of cheap mobile games. Especially the 'the water can now flow' text feels redundant, as we've already seen the water flow through visually.
- The sound effects could be improved a bit, to make the game feel more alive. For instance, you could add a small 'splosh' sound every time you take a step, and the object moving sound could be a bit better as well in my opinion.
- You could possibly add a step counter or even assign stars based on the number of steps it took the player to finish the level, as an extra optional challenge. 
- If you were to add more levels, gradually adding new mechanics is highly recommended, as the game might run stale otherwise (but don't worry, for these six levels it definitely didn't yet).
- This would probably be the hardest thing to implement, but it would be really nice to have a button which resets your last step (in the same way Baba is You does). This might be very useful, since on wrong step can mess up the entire level and starting all over is of course never fun.

Hopefully this feedback will be somewhat helpful to you!

The visuals are fantastic, but the gameplay is bit, eh... confusing? Even after reading the game's description, things happen so rapidly that I barely had a clue what actually did anything. Everything just kind of flashed by, and I still don't know what the flow meter does exactly, and especially not whether any of my actions actually influenced it.

If the gameplay was a bit more comprehensible and gave the player a bit more feedback on their input, I'm sure this could be a great game!

For a 3-day game, this is just stellar. The presentation's by far the best I've seen in this entire jam, the gameplay's super engaging and quirky in the best way possible, the concept is unique; there really just isn't anything not to love here.

Fantastic work!

Welcome back, Mario teaches Typing.

On a more serious note, the presentation and polish of this game are fantastic. The gameplay's simple but effective. A short but sweet game.

Lol that voice acting is fantastic, possibly the highlight of the game.

The art's very cute and polished, and the gameplay's pretty fun too! My complaint is that the spawning points of the timers can be a bit unfair (sometimes even right under a log), that in combination with the slow moving makes it very difficult to actually keep going for a long time.

A great concept; I especially love the introduction of new types of platforms along the levels. However, the actual gameplay itself is quite shaky, especially because the physics are a bit janky and unreliable. The tiniest of bumps in the road can cause a complete standstill, and the trajectories when falling or launching can be a bit haphazard.

Nonetheless, I love the design, there's some great potential here. I'd love to see what this game would be like with some more polish!

The concept and visuals of this game top-notch. Incredibly charming.

You do seem to be very much at the mercy of the ghosts' spawn rate though. And I think that a better sound effect for when shooting out of another ghost could give it a bit more 'impact'.

A short, but pleasant and pretty experience. It doesn't try to go for all that much, but what it does, it does pretty well. The atmosphere is nice, and seeing the particles move with the wind following your input is a very satisfying touch.

The only two suggestions I'd have, is that the boat doesn't actually tilt at all right now, which feels a bit odd, and that the wind sound is a bit too harsh, especially for such a gentle game as this.

What an insane amount of work for just three days! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish the game; I really tried, but when it crashed/soft-locked me for the third time in a row, I decided to give up. Still, I'll give my thoughts below (not focussing on the story too much, as I haven't seen how it unfolds. FYI, I got up to the part where there's a flashback about Stella's medication).

- The art is just great; the mixture of pixel art and hand-drawn portraits works well too.
- The characters clearly all have their own distinct personalities and never feel boring or generic, so that's great
- The concept of overhearing or remembering conversations while mopping is very nice. That being said, the mopping minigame itself really isn't fun, like at all (so the skipping option is a very wise addition). The moth minigame's much better, though.
- The game is somewhat railroad-y. Sure, there are points where you can technically do a number of things in any order you want, the in essence the game is still playing itself outside of the minigames. Personally, I'm always a big fan of dialogue options, presenting items to characters, etc. to give the player more agency.
- And, as you stated yourselves, the game is not quite polished yet. Normally this wouldn't be too much of a problem, especially for a game of this scope during a 3-day jam, but since these bugs are currently game-breaking (meaning you have to redo possibly 10 minutes of gameplay), this is quite an issue for now.

I hope my feedback is somewhat helpful! :)

Very fun concept and charming presentation! The gameplay is very punishing though, and a lot of my deaths felt like they were kind of outside of my control, instead being due to the wind not being as responsive as I'd like.

Also, while leaving behind stackable corpses is funny at first, it can kind of quickly clutter your screen. So maybe it would be better if only the most recent 10 or so corpses remained?

Anyway, good job :)

Third time does indeed seem to be the charm, and everything seemed to work this time! I'd gladly help you improve your game even further, so I'll be giving some more thoughts for points of improvement below.

The game has a lot of charm, mostly helped through the hand drawn art. Even though idea of combining objects into presents isn't per se unique to this game, I'd say this game has the most unique approach to it. The little crafting minigames are a great addition, along with some other little things like upgrades between rounds, multiple types of dispensers and starred orders, which all help to make the game feel very complete.

That being said, I guess I would still consider this 'a game with a lot of potential' rather than a finished product. Some of my main thoughts were:

- The spacing between orders coming in seems a bit off. At times, the queue is so cluttered that it is literally impossible to finish every order, while there were a handful of moments where I found myself idly waiting for something to happen. The former is the largest issue for me, as it kept me from progressing past stage 2 (where the toy houses are introduced), I'm pretty sure there was just no way for me to finish all orders on time and not suffer gigantic losses.

- It took me quite some time to realize that the anvil is for wrapping instead of crafting (I guess my heuristics got the best of me). Not only did this make the game somewhat more difficult at first, it also initially kept me from completing any toy houses, as the doll would already be sealed away into a present by the time my brick was done. I guess this could be explained a bit more clearly in the tutorial section.

- Speaking of crafting: I found it a bit bothersome that the toy houses can only be crafted by adding a brick to a doll, in that specific order. If you change this order and try to add a brick to a heart (something which seems quite a logical possibility to me), it turns into trash instead.

- As with any long-running minigame, the gameplay runs at risk of becoming the stale. The lack of music doesn't really help in this regard (although I saw that you were still planning on adding that later).

- It would be nice for there to be an option to quit the crafting minigames once you've started.

That's quite the list of complaints, but don't take it as something negative! The fact that my thoughts are so specific means that I found the main game to be fun and satisfying enough to want to see it further improved :)
I hope all of this will be helpful to you!

I love the presentation and concept of this game! The combination of character design, particle effects and music all worked very well together. The inclusion of things like a leaderboard, tutorial and settings make the game feel pretty complete as well.

I must admit that the rules of this game weren't  very clear to me, though. Even after getting second place on the leaderboard, I still don't know what actually causes the Game Over screen. There were also some slight peculiarities such as the bullet being blocked even though the path was clear, presents that were supposed to be fired getting stuck under the sleigh / other presents, etc. But nonetheless, playing this game was actually really fun! So kudos for making a game that's fun enough to not frustrate when it doesn't work quite as it should.

Oh and I accidentally messed up the leaderboard by entering a name that was too long, oops I guess.

Thank you for playing the game!

I agree that the timing of days and events is tricky to nail down, as I wanted to strike the right balance between enough time to prevent stress, but not so much time that boredom would ensue.

My plan is to tweak the game once the jam's over (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to change anything before the rating is done). Among other things, I want to make it so that the total time starts a bit higher, but decreases for each successfully crafted item. Hopefully that will appease both the slower and faster players.

Of course!

When it comes to sound effects, the easiest way is to use royalty free samples (found for instance on Pixabay). If possible, I recommend using an audio program to edit the sounds as well, so that you can trim the sound down, add reverb/delay, edit the EQ using an equalizer (also great for editing out unwanted noise in the sample), etc.

Making music is a bit dicier, as there many factors coming together here. I recommend picking a program (be that a more simplistic/accessible one such as Garageband or Audacity, or a more expensive/professional one such as FL Studio or Ableton Live), and just start making stuff. Watching a handful of tutorials for both production and music theory can definitely help (one of my favourite YT channels for theory is 8-bit Music Theory, definitely check out "Music Theory Minute" if you're a beginner), but I'm personally of the opinion that nothing will teach you the ropes quite as well as just messing around until you're proud of something. It definitely helps to then compare your product to something you look up to, focussing on one or two aspects you want to improve upon at a time (e.g. song structure, compositional density, mixing, melody development etc.)

Anyway, hopefully that might give you some places to start!

This game immediately hit me with some intense motion sickness, so I unfortunately wasn't really able to continue. Perhaps a more zoomed out view and more gradual camera tilt could improve this?