itch.io

Loved the game! I loved the uniqueness of having a metal-detector-style game on my keyboard :) Only suggestion would be to have a better "beep" sound. Maybe something more radar-like? Thanks!

Loved the idea! Very unique and innovative. I had fun :)

I like the idea! Pretty cool. I feel like I had a hard time knowing what phase I was in. Maybe more distinct blink patters would have helped?

Cool! The bending of the rules is funny (audio can't affect gameplay if there's not gameplay lol). Good work!

I love the creativity here! It gets a little complex with all of the patterns and types of inputs, but given the jam restrictions, this is a fantastic entry!

@Jupiter_Hadley Thanks for including me in your series! It is very much appreciated :)

@mapedorr Thanks for for playing! I do have the arrow indicators telling you what state your flowers are in (normal, attacked but not taking damage, and attacked and taking damage), so I hoped those would be sufficient. The proximity sound isn't a terrible idea either. Thanks!

Fun! A true bullet-hell game ;) A little too challenging for me, but I liked the overall feel of the game!

Fun! I really liked the simplified control scheme. Made is nice and easy to play. Looks like you got pathfinding working well, and I too enjoyed setting the trees on fire :)

Super fun game! I've enjoyed seeing all of the updates on this one :) The visuals really came together, and I love the designs of all of the different stages. It's a fun, rapid-paced game very similar to Samurai Gunn. Love it!

Thanks for the new comments! It seems difficulty is a common theme. Unfortunately, implementing the enemy spawn rates was something that happened right at the end of the jam, and I didn't have much time to balance. So it'll definitely need some tweaking in that regard :) I plan on making a lot of changes after the jam based on all of this helpful feedback (like adding different bee types, @Delca!).

Fun game, and cute graphics! My only suggestion would be to have a unique key for each state instead of having to cycle through. I would panic when things got close and would skip over the correct state.

@BrazMogu Thanks! I actually was considering changing the core game flow and have it be even more RTS-y after the jam. Adding in a resource-gathering element and possibly even different types of bees.

@Absurd-O-Matic Thanks! I was thinking the same thing. I did implement some difficulty scaling in the game to make it more difficult the more bees you had, but I didn't want to go too crazy and punish people for doing well. It's definitely a problem I'll have to spend some time thinking about!

@Sparrowspell Thanks! I agree, the game does get hectic, and that's totally the feeling I was going for. I was thinking about a mini-map, but it's so hard with such a low resolution. That's why I added the arrow system. I was considering upscaling the game to 128x128 after the jam (pico's native resoluation), so maybe I could use the extra pixels for that!

Super pretty! Very technically impressive. I thought the game was very fun and challenging. Maybe make the enemies a little slower though? They were very hard to hit :)

Fun! The game felt nice overall but was very difficult. I think the little birds/moles that pop out of the ground and shoot are impossible to dodge! I liked it though, definitely reminded me of megaman :)

Fun game! I liked the little space man :) Maybe provide more in-air maneuverability? Also, this doesn't seem to be truly 64x64. I saw some smaller pixels and some rotated pixels.

Great artwork and a fun and unique concept! Very fun! A score counter would be a great addition :)

Great artwork! The horses were sooo cute! Well-done system. Maybe you could add some sort of external goal besides gaining more money?

I'm wondering if you pushed an update that broke the game? If I travel to the right, I just get to a screen without my character on it and I can't move :( The screenshots look fun though! ;) I'll check back later to see if you fixed it and give you a rating :)

Beautiful game! I love the look, and overall it felt very polished. The fighting mechanic was pretty cool! However, I felt the game may be a bit too difficult. I couldn't kill a single boss, and I consider myself semi-competent at video games ;) Also, I felt like the overworld movement mechanic was unnecessary. I felt like it just caused me to lose lives in a dumb way instead of losing them when fighting a boss. Great work though!

Love the aesthetic! The characters and world look so interesting, and the game premise seems very promising. Looking forward to future updates!

Cool game! I thought the transitions between the two "resolutions" were pretty cool, although I do feel like it goes outside of the spirit of the jam. I love the idea of traveling through a body though, and I thought the heart rate monitor in the corner to indicate health was neat! One suggestion I have is that the walls you dodge could be more distinct from the background.

Fun game! I loved that you included two different visual styles, almost like you had a "remastered" version at the time of launch :p

My one suggestion is changing how the levels scale. Initially, I had three waves of two blue aliens in a row. I wasn't actually sure if I was advancing levels. Subsequent replays showed that these were random waves. Maybe just have hand-crafted waves? Sure, that means you couldn't have infinite levels, but I think it'll make for a better experience overall.

I like the concept! I love games where roles are reversed. Well done! One observation I had was that the snake behavior seems a bit unpredictable. After playing a few times, I couldn't figure out how to get the snake to bite itself.

Beautiful game! I loved the artwork and animations, and you clearly spent a lot of time drawing that huge map. I thought the prose you got as rewards was very pretty and was the carrying force that got me through the game (even with back-tracking to get a few missed stars ;p), but with the number of stars I had to collect, I was hoping to get snippets a little more frequently. I guess I just really liked the concept and wanted even more details :)

Also, as others have said, maybe there could be more incentive to play in close-up mode? I tried to play in it as much as I could to experience the artwork, but I ended up playing zoomed out a lot to make collecting stars more efficient.

Overall, great job!

@Amorphous I agree, sometimes telling which bees are where can be difficult, especially when there's overlapping swarms. I have the counter in the top right to help you see how many bees you are currently carrying, but there's no indicator for each flower. Which limited pixels, I opted not to have per-flower counters. Changing bee tint or transparency would normally be a good approach, but I'm using PICO-8, which as a limited 16 color palette, so alas, no luck there :/

I also agree it can be difficult to tell what the foxes are attacking. I wanted to have two distinct attack animations, but time got the better of me :)

Thank you for your thoughts!

Game looks great! Love the overall aesthetic! I also thought the combat system was pretty neat. One suggestion I had was maybe to put some indicators on the map as to where points of interest may be? I felt like I just sailed around until I hit random events. Still fun though!

Fun game! Graphics were super cute. One observation I had was that the game seemed to be too easy. I played through 5 levels or so and never ran low on air. Maybe scale faster?

Also, I never found a reason to have to dig through rocks. Maybe have spawn patterns were rocks surround an air canister? Or maybe just have more levels of dirt hardness, where part of the game is having to make judgments over which path is fastest based on the different hardnesses.

@jernej Congrats on scoring that high! I always die by the mid 200's :p Performance is a known issue, unfortunately. You start to feel the restrictions of the PICO-8 once you get above 50-60 bees. I tried pulling a lot of tricks to speed up the calculations, but it's still something I'd need to continue looking into if I want to flesh this out into a full game.

Thanks for playing!

Beautiful game! I loved the different items you could pick up. Felt very fleshed out in that regard. One suggestion is to maybe make the combat a bit more clear? I was shooting fireballs at a wolf and could seems to kill it, and I had a very difficult time landing a shot.

Super impressive that you wrote this in Shadertoy, great job! Performance was fine for me. One suggestion is that maybe you make it more clear how to start moving, and maybe add a goal for the player to work towards (e.g. collecting things).

Great artwork! Very cool! One suggestion is that the "back" button when reading text could be made visible without having to mouse over.

Very cool! One suggestion I have is that when memorizing the colors, sometimes on the grid screen there are many colors similar to those I memorized. And those colors may be right next to each other, meaning I can't deduce which one was correct (both would make a valid path). I feel like my eyesight is being tested less than my memory. Maybe stick to a distinct color palette?

Love the graphical update! Looks much cooler, and I appreciate the fact that it now conforms to the 64x64 grid :)

Very fun! May I ask, why did you choose S, Space, and Up as the three keys? It'd definitely be easier for me to pick up if it was three adjacent letters, or even Left, Down, and Right.