itch.io

This was a joy to read. Thank you for including the designer’s commentary; it is a real gift.

Are the systems modules licensed under the Forged in the Dark terms?

It’s the core of a good game. As it started up, the last thing I expected was metal guitar. It could be fun to really lean into that, Metalocalypse-style.

Good concept. The core loop is a good, traditional economic model. It makes me wonder what could be done to remove the repetition. I am reminded of Torchlight, which was the first place I saw a pet that you could fill up with your extra items and send to the store. What a relief that was! I wonder what a similar kind of thing would be in this game, that keeps the essence but requires less running back and forth to the truck.

I appreciate the multimedia attention that goes into crafting something like this. I’ve often wondered at the emotional affordances of visual novels vs traditional novels. Thanks for putting this in the jam—it gets my wheels turning.

All the elements of a classic adventure game in one jam. The music definitely evokes a simpler time. I had a little trouble figuring out the hitboxes when it came to the blue slimes; I got through it, but I’m still not sure exactly what triggered their color change.

The music is a great match for the gameplay. It wasn’t entirely clear to me when my power went up or why. As others have said, it’s a good core (like Katamari) that could be expanded if there were interest.

I am intrigued by map-making games. I know it’s a short-term jam project, and it makes me wonder at the opportunities afforded by the theme. What is it about malls that makes them interesting, and how do the formal systems of a mall impact the narrative aspects of them? For example, the architecture of a mall is intentional, and the times I spent as a teenager in the mall were influenced by the architectural and commercial design.

It would be interesting to iterate on this design and see what would make it capture the essence of the theme such that it could be evoked to younger people who don’t remember the time of mallrats.

Quirky fun aesthetic, but I had the game lock up on me. I played the Web build on Chrome on Windows. In the second dialog, the audio got “stuck”, and the window went nonresponsive.

Thanks for checking it out!

One of my favorite TTRPGs is PDQ since you gain XP for failing rather than for success. I like to keep this in mind when I also fail my real-life skill checks :)

I just pushed up version 1.0.2, which includes two significant updates:

• The game doesn’t crash after boldly encountering the beast at the peak ascent.

• Each attribute now starts at +1 instead of 0.

Thanks for your feedback!

Thanks for the comment about the size too. My intention was that it would be played on phones, and when I ran it in my browser, I just narrowed up the window. I thought about adding more robust sizing support, but that seemed out of scope for a jam project. You’re right that it’s awfully awkward to play wide.

Oh dear, double amulets should not be possible. It must be an error in the script, possibly a root cause to the other problem. Thanks for the bug report!

Thanks for checking it out!

One of the things I learned from making the game was the real cost of writing branching narrative. I will leave it as a puzzle here: if you type in the name of the author whose work inspired the story, you will get a little surprise that makes it easier to see all the things :)

Thanks for checking it out! I wrote a bit about my inspiration on my blog: https://paulgestwicki.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-endless-storm-of-dagger-mountain.html

Is your journaling game published somewhere? I’ve only tried two games in that genre, one being the excellent and recommended Thousand-Year-Old Vampire.

Thanks for checking it out!

I ran out of time for a full options menu, but text animation control would be the first thing in there. Note that you can click/tap the text to skip the animation.

For what it's worth, from within Steam, you can go to Games menu, then Add a Non-Steam Game to my Library. Put in the path to the executable, and presto, it shows up in Steam and can be called via Big Picture mode. This is how my kids and I have been able to play a few of the Epic Games Store giveaways from the family room TV.

You should be able to plug in multiple gamepads and have it work. We do that through a SteamLink. Unfortunately, I know not every gamepad is detected out-of-the-box by Unreal Engine, so I'm afraid if your particular hardware won't work... it just won't work.