itch.io

Great game! I absolutely love the N64 style graphics, and the polish/juice level on the UI is through the roof! I like how you briefly accelerate after stealing guts, it allows for some neat combo killings and route optimization. Awesome work!

So juicy! I really like the simple visuals and how reactive it all feels. I also like the wario-ware style where you have to quickly figure things or lose by lack of time. I had A LOT of trouble eliminating the red pointy circles, and even after reading the comments it took me more than 30 tries to get past level 2. 

Here's how I got past level 2 : I dragged and dropped the circle several times on short distances towards the edge of the screen while it was getting bigger, and managed to get it out before it got too big. However, that didn't work on level 3 because there just were too many red circles, and that method would have taken way more than 10 seconds. So sadly, I couldn't get past level 3. 

One other thing I had trouble with is the increasingly high sound effect that indicates the seconds elapsing, they almost hurt after the fourth beep, so I had to mute the game. But I really liked the title music.

I think the concept and idea are great, I absolutely love that examplar level of juice, and the elegant simplicity of the graphics. I wish I'd understood how to proceed, though. With a little bit more polish on the controls side, this could really shine! Is there more variety in the levels after level 3?

Thanks! More variety would have been too much for the scope of this jam if I wanted to keep the game as bug free as possible, reasonably short, and not too hard/complex for a jam game. Speaking of length you don't have to explore every solar system. If you mostly jump as far left as possible, the game can be completed in under ten minutes. 

I totally understand seeing all the solar systems can feel overwhelming. To show players that they are actually making progress (towards the left of the screen), I added big semi transparent circles that make the background darker and darker the closer your are to the end.

You only shoot during the final fight, it's a last minute gameplay twist, as I wanted to focus more on exploration and choices than on fights. For the travel sequences, I felt that shooting asteroids in space at a short range is not a very safe thing to do, as is shooting the other friendly ships that just happen to be moving in the opposite direction. But more seriously I wanted to keep them short and simple. The next versions of the game will feature an entirely different fighting system, random events, relics, and incentives for replayability.

Thanks for playing and for your valuable input, I'm glad you still enjoyed it!

Congrats for your first jam game! I played a few levels until my character disappeared and I was forced to lose on time. That's a neat idea for this jam, and for a second game it's impressive. I like the random generation, you could spawn more and more obstacles each time the player clears a level, introduce moving enemies... If you want to keep learning this is a great game to build upon. 

I won in 5:06! That's a neat concept, and great work for your first jam! The timing was really tight in some levels like level 6, I lost a lot of lives and wished I didn't have to start over from the beginning, but since there are not too many levels it's nothing major. I also noticed that the buttons stay pushed after you lose a life.

I had fun and would have played more! 😁

Thank you! I actually decided to join 5 days before the deadline, and also that I would respect my sleep schedule this time 😅 so I had to compromise on the variety of content. I have tons of ideas for after the jam though!

I got 10 points on my best try! 😁

Nice game with a lot of polish! I like how the snake and the music speed up when your score increases, it adds some nice tension. Your game looks good too, love the CRT shape. I think adding the option to toggle a scanlines effect could make it look even better!

Currently, I think there is no incentive to use the exit door instead of trying to collect more pellets because the game ends with your current score in both scenarios. Maybe exiting through the door could give you bonus points, or you could "store" collected pellets there and shrink back to your original size, but keep the speed and the accumulated score 🤔

It's fun, great work to all the team!

Even after reading the instructions, I had some trouble understanding how to play, mostly because I wasn't sure about what everything looked like, but after losing once, I got it and the fun started. I managed to survive a full 3 minutes during my best try 😁

I think the difficulty is well balanced for a short but focused run, the bonus lives are neither too rare nor too frequent, and the bonus black hole add an healthy dose of risk and reward. 

Your game could easily be expanded with more power-ups, like something that temporarily slows down time and invert the colors, or make several rythm based levels where the black holes appear in time with the music.

I would have like a Quick Restart button  rather than being sent back to the title screen when I lost, but besides that, I had a blast. Great work!

Wow!! Thank you, your comment means a lot! I do plan on making it longer with more randomness, planet types, unique events and relics, and several chapters like you described 😁 

To keep the scope under control, first I wrote down everything that I wanted and then cut as much stuff as I could without sacrificing the game essence too much. I also tried to keep an average playthrough at around 10 minutes for a jam game, and not make it too hard because the replayability is currently limited. But I’ll be expanding this!

Thank you very much! I wanted to spice things up a bit for the last level, this was a last minute addition, glad you liked it 😁

Hey thanks!! I have a lot more ideas, but I cut most of them to fit the timeframe of the jam. Cash will have many more uses in the next updates!

Thanks for playing!

I loved it! It reminded me a bit of the board game Tiny Towns, where you have to strategically place buildings on a small grid to make them score as much as possible.

This kind of chill experience where you can take your time is right up my alley. It was a bit on the easy side, I had a group of houses and nearly a full row of towers which gave me way more than enough money. 

I think the play area is too big, as it stands there is no chance that you'd be forced to place a factory adjacent to a house because of a past mistake, for instance. So it's not difficult to place the houses all together, the factories all together, etc. By drastically reducing the grid size, you could force the player to make compromises when there is not enough room left.

A very solid entry, thanks for sharing!

Thank you for your kind words! The travel segments actually get harder (there are 3 « difficulty zones »), but not by much, just a little more obstacles and some wandering ships. I had to refrain myself on the scope, but l intend to add more random elements, like unique events and relics, plus ramp up the difficulty once the jam is over.

Ainsley made it safely home! 

Such a great take on the theme! It's all very cute and poetic, I would have played many more levels set in different environments. There is potential for expansion, like to gather and lead lost kids, find hidden collectables, etc... But even as it is right now, your game already feels complete and polished. Great work!

I won! I like the graphics a lot, especially the player rectangle (so cute!!). I had some trouble with jumping and then I realized I could use the momentum from when you expand to jump a bit higher. I had fun!

I sort of formed an empire! The crown is a really nice touch at the end 😁 My fingers hurt a bit after all that clicking, you could probably have halved the hp of the rocks and trees or allowing the player to find or create tools to increase their harvesting power, but it's a work in progress.

Besides that, this is a cool idea and I can see how cool you can make it with more time, with different biomes, NPCs, etc!

This is an ambitious project with a lot of potential! I like how things look so far. I managed to place walls and buildings, including towers, but I never managed to recruit soldiers. I too wonder if everything is immortal, if you have the time, you could include a short description on your game page about what works and what doesn't yet, to let players know if there is a way to win or lose the first wave.

I loved the atmosphere and graphics! It starts really easy and chill, but it actually becomes quite a brainburner as time passes. My empire peaked at 29 planets! 

I had some trouble keeping in mind that the rings meant what the planet produces and the dots meant what it needs, so I spent a bit of time and mental effort trying to actively keep that in mind. If you can figure out a way to make it visually more obvious, I think it will be that much easier for players to enter the flow.

The idea is very solid and building your network felt really satisfying, I enjoyed playing! Thanks for sharing your game!

Oh, I didn't see the dust because the view was zoomed out and the contrast with the kitchen floor got lost on my small screen, but it's actually super obvious in the screenshot 😅 Thanks! I finished the game, it's one of my favorite take on "expand" so far!

Thanks! I voluntarily kept the travel sections very short and on the easy side because I want to make it more about the choices, route planning and growth management of your ship, so it's not meant as a chaotic & fast paced bullet hell 😅 

Wow, that's a great idea for the theme, and that level of polish is through the roof, great job!

Sadly it's a bit too tough for me, I couldn't even beat the first boss. I'm good enough to not die but not good enough to grow sufficiently, so I can't comment on much more than the graphics, vibe and theme implementation.

I feel that the length of the fights can suffer if the player gets stuck in that purgatory state (not big enough but not dying either), but I like the idea that the closer you are to defeating the boss, the riskier it becomes because it's harder to avoid the bullets. That's a solid mechanic as long as you can keep the length of the fight in check.

I wasn't expecting a farting game at all, but it certainly fits the theme! It's fun for a little while, I think it'd work very very well as a couch multiplayer game for some quick fun. You could select your arena, toggle the bots and introduce random modifiers. It has potential!

I played for a bit, I think I have a grasp of your general direction with your game.

The visuals are really great, it's a pleasure for the eyes and even though there no combat and no challenge to the player's expansion yet,  it's really fun to try and optimize your placements between your buildings and the hexes like the wheat fields. 

The cards were a bit hard to read for me, I found the text a little too small, and the numbers of the IU (meat, gold, etc) were not aligned to their respective label, but that's easily corrected.

It's not directly related to your game, but on your game page on itch, I think you forgot to check the option that allows the player to make it fullscreen. Because of that, it was bit harder to play and see the cards. If you haven't already, you should edit your game page and check that option, it will make things easier and it doesn't count as modifying your game in regard to the jam rules.

There's something I'm not sure I understood : on one hand you have an "end turn" button, but on the other it seems like after you've played your cards, you can wait indefinitely and reap some bonuses every X seconds. Is the end turn button used only to draw more cards? If so, those cards could be drawn automatically once you've played your current hand.

All in all, even if it's unfinished, I think it's very solid and interesting as a concept, I would very much love to see how far you will take it should you decide to continue working on it. As a fellow gdevelop user I can tell there's some impressive programming under the hood, you can definitely make this shine. Thanks for sharing your game!

Another roguelike! I really enjoyed your game, I was able to beat it on the second try. Overall I found it really clean and polished, and I love the concept of optimizing my formation using random gear before battling it out in the next room. I think there is a lot of potential for a bigger game here!

Alternating between the inventory and formation menus was a bit fiddly, and the dead party members do not disappear from the formation menu before you try to rearrange them, but besides that it was a smooth and very pleasant experience. 

I'm in love with that idea! It's simple but incredibly effective in terms of narrative. I can't progress past that point, am I missing something? 

4:41:775!

Super neat idea! I like how quickly it restarts when you die, and that you have to restart voluntarily once you activate certain switches. The graphics and atmosphere is great too, I enjoyed the narration at the start and in the walls. There is some fun trolling here and there too, great work!

My only nitpick is that sometimes if you push crates too fast they go over the hole they are supposed to fall in, I lost a bit of time due to that, but it's nothing major. Would love to see this expanded further 😁

Wow, thanks a lot for the kind words! I'm glad you had a great time 😁  There are regular fuel drops during the boss fight, but it's best to visit a gas giant before heading to the last fight.

Sadly I couldn't finish your game, but I spent a good hour on it.

I really liked how satisfying and addictive breaking walls feels,  just like in Minecraft. In fact, that's mainly what motivated me to "try one more time" the dozens and dozens of times I died. I'm not such a fan of the bombs insta-killing you, especially when it happens in your back and you're somewhere that looks interesting but you're not sure how to get back where you are. I think it might have been fair if the bombs only removed 3 of your life points or so, especially because the dungeon is a bit too big. 

I tried to methodically break as many walls as I could, but I couldn't find even one of the four shards that appear at the top right of the screen. Are you supposed to craft them from the different types of soil you collect? I had 7 life points when I had to quit and was surprised I didn't stumble on one.

I also liked how polished and clean everything feels, and how fluid movement is. That room in the beginning with references to your previous games is super cool, too! I had a good time but sadly had to give up since I didn't understand how to make much progress despite exploring what I think is a vast portion of the map ☹️

I was able to conquer my traumas, even though there was a lot of repeated wall-headbutting involved at the end, when my trauma level was 3 or less and it took a lot of combat to bring it down to zero.  I had fun figuring things out by myself and managing the resources by writing down where the sanity pills were. Also, bonus points for the theme implementation, the categories were really relevant and that combat system with partial information is very original.

Great game, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for such an in-depth review on what didn’t work for you. It’s a shame you couldn’t record anything, but it’s nice that you wrote your thoughts in such detail.

I agree that the font is quite hard to read. You can actually take as much time as you need to read the story text, you have to click to advance to the next scene. But I will probably be replacing that font.

The potions heal the character with the least health/energy when you click on them or use the shortcut key. When you levelled up, the button that appeared was for a new battle skill, so you didn’t miss anything.

As for what the crystals do, it’s explained when you collect the first and second ones, you normally can’t miss it, it’s an explanatory text that stays on screen for a minimum of 2 seconds and until you move again.

Besides that, I agree that battle is a bit messy, I made the first fight almost impossible to lose to give players time to get used to the controls but that might not be enough. I was too far along development to change anything but I considered making it turn based instead, and I think I will do that after reading your comment and some others 🙂 I will take your precise feedback into account because you make lots of valid points.

About the loop, there is actually some foreshadowing. Every 10 crystals you collect, you will unlock an “exploration power”, such has being able being able to walk on water or being able the traverse specific wall portions. You may see a crystal or path just out of reach and then unlock the corresponding power. The dungeon is built like a mini Metroidvania, so there is some natural backtracking. The loop grows longer the more crystals you collect, that’s the gist of it 🙂 

Thanks a lot for playing and trying a few times!

I played it through and enjoyed the whole experience quite a lot. I love the auto battle system and the constant improvement of your party through the generous loot and XP, that made the game quite addictive to me! 🙂  I agree that the levels are a bit too big and repetitive, I had some trouble finding the portal that lead to the next level and lost some time backtracking.

It would have been nice of each level could have had its own wall and floor textures, or at least a different color scheme, to give the impression that your are progressing, and also I wish there was subtitles because English not being my first language, I'm sure I missed some of the lore/hints.

Loved the sound design too, especially the sound of an enemy approaching. This kind of minimalistic experience is right up my alley. Very solid entry!

A lot of good ideas here, I love your concept! I like the low resolution pixel art a lot, and how you can explore space from your ship, head towards a planet and then explore it. The atmosphere was oppressive, I enjoyed that a lot too. You might want to pull back the camera a bit, because when you are directly facing a wall, it takes the whole screen and it can make orientation harder. I lost some time on the mining planet trying to orient myself in the dark/blinking section, but besides that, it was a very enjoyable playthrough. Great work!

I played it through and had a blast! I found myself immersed in your game, it gave me an old "Alone in the dark" vibe that I loved. The corrupted version of the house is a very nice touch when you are back from the mirror world. This amount of settings and polish is commendable.

I found movement very smooth and enjoyable, I had occasional cursor bugs (it would stay "?" for a while), the mini map didn't get updated right after teleporting to a new location, or the gun would sometimes clip through the decor, but nothing major. 

Sometimes I had the impression that the grid wasn't always square, for instance when moving from a room to another, it felt like the character took more than one step. That made interacting with some elements a bit more complex, like the spheres you have to stab from just the right angle in the mirror world. It didn't prevent me from enjoying your game a lot, though. 

Great work!

Thanks for the tip! I managed to beat the game 🙂 I enjoyed the story, your game is very cohesive as a whole.

Your game is visually gorgeous! I think your screenshots undersell your visuals, which is a shame considering how great the game looks. They are a bit dark, you could have turned on the crystal "flashlight" on before taking the snapshots.

Overall the level of polish is awesome, I love the dialogue system, the consistency of all the visuals and the verticality of the dungeon layout, which is rare enough to be pointed out 🙂

I too spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to pick up the pixel art flowers, but then I found a potion and understood then that the flower can't be picked up 😅

About the controls, I found movement very fluid and pleasant. My only minor complaint is that there was no keyboard shortcut on attack or interact with things in front of you. I prefer to use the arrow keys, but since using the mouse is mandatory for battle, I had to use WASD to keep my mouse in hand. Nothing major, though.

I didn't reach the end because I got lost at some point, near a room that has two weight switches (loved that by the way, dropping items on them both was intuitive but made me feel smart), but I played for a while and had a great time. Overall a very solid entry, congratulations!

Thanks for your kind words! You're right about ESC, I wanted to provide a quick way to exit the game but didn't take the time to implement a confirm popup.  I'll include that in my template for the next time 🙂

The visuals are really neat, and I love the color scheme! It's clearly unfinished but the idea of a dungeon crawler on a boat has a lot of potential. You could make the boat slightly bigger to allow grid movement on it, and add more stuff the player has to do on the boat. I hope you continue working on it, I think it's worth it!

Your game has potential and could really shine with some more love, the concept, I love that you added cutscenes and a proper intro, but I agree that the text is too fast to read, especially if you you to look at the pictures. Also, the protagonist looks different in every single picture, which tends to be the case when using AI. The first time I launched the game, it froze at the end of the intro and I had to alt-F4, relaunch and skip the intro to be able to play.  Allowing to skip the intro is a nice touch though 🙂

I agree with others that moving is a bit tedious, it feels like you're moving half a square, and being able to hold the W key to advance would have being nice. I often got stuck in the middle of a corner and had to strafe to advance, so it didn't feel like a square grid. It also made it a bit hard to gauge if you're close enough to hit an enemy.

I was able to go completely out of bounds right after rescuing the girl, at the a corner where a shield and mace are stuck in the ground. It's also a bit too dark, which can make orientation more difficult if the dungeon where bigger.

There is clearly a lot of potential, and a lot of things you spent too much time on like the story, cutscenes and inventory can be re-used if you want to continue working on it.

The mage does in fact start with a magic ability, he’s the only character whose base attack consumes energy points (it’s also stronger than a basic sword attack, for instance). 

For the cleric I think I will do that, but I will have to carefully rework the game’s difficulty progression (it will take way more than the few hours I took just for that Saturday night). The basic idea for not giving her a heal spell immediately was to make the beginning of the game a little bit harder but make her more useful as the game progresses.

Also she needed a base attack in case anyone wanted to play with 3 clerics. One of the earliest ways to play Final Fantasy 1 in “hard mode” was to pick 4 white mages for your party. That was my reasoning 😁

Thanks a lot for detailing your thoughts, I’ll use this game mostly to improve my new dungeon crawler engine, so your feedback is very valuable!