itch.io

Alright, I have written a newsletter which you can hopefully follow along with for updates to the game.

I've finally gotten the full version of the demo up on our new itch page for PIE-related projects - thank you so much for waiting.
https://piexp.itch.io/sight-unseen/devlog/828528/newsletter-0-demos-out-what-a-w...

Blades brought me full force into TTRPGs and I'll always be thankful for your work and ability to draw out the creative relationship among players and storyteller/GM. I've met amazing people through it, so thank you John. I cannot wait to dive back into this really special setting.

Thanks both of you for checking in! Sorry, I've been so burnt out I still need to publish the proper build on here.

For expectations, the version that exists to play currently will take about 10 minutes to complete, but with all the support we've had, we're gonna be finding a path to make the full vision of this a reality (although it may take a bit of time). I'll set up a mailing list soon and get back to you folks.

I'll swap this one out (it's about 5 months old and is a proof-of-concept for our prototype) asap tomorrow.

Thanks again for the support folks :)

Absolutely peak. Audible gasp from me when I realised what was going on. Well written, great execution!

I'm curious what did you folks use for doing the VN system implementation in Unity?

thank you and im sorry for the material you had to work with

Really nice art, I like that you've also done a "controlling the security system" style game but taking it with a sort of Garry's Mod Deathrun style twist to it, which is nice! There are some issues with collision especially on the second game, and it would be awesome to see more polish and levels, but this was cool to see. I enjoyed the dialogue too between levels, quite witty.

Nice concept and I really like the way you control the fish, it feels very organic and like directing a fish swimming about - control, but not fully precise. I really like that.

The worms I struggle to get because they all spawn from the top but if I go to the top to try and catch the worms, there is almost no time to react to fish hooks coming down from the top. Maybe if they fell at different speeds and there was more of a "deadzone" time where that the fish hooks don't instantly catch you when they first spawn, that would add just a little bit of leeway and more strategy by giving the player reasons to go across the entire screen, rather than just the top of it.

Good work!

Really good execution on the "controlling the world" idea! Feels like a whole expansion on the mindbending parts of Baba is You when you have to try and control the levels. Nice exploration of all the different kinds of puzzles you could do with it!

This made me feel like I can actually draw

Nice work! I like the fading soundtracks if you are in the backroom or the main bar, it brings out that chaotic vibe. The gameplay loop is simple and solid so you can really expand on this with more complications as things go on.

I'm glad you went through and made this concept, I saw you were originally talking about it on the Discord in the jam and debating whether or not to do it. You made something nice and polished! I like the actual screenshots of the images at the end, and I liked some of the more difficult spots you needed to get to, such as the middair ones, you have to time it nicely!

I love brick breaker. This is so elegantly designed. Also your leaderboard API will be a lifesaver in future projects. Excellent work!

Really nice work with good polish! I like the shifting genres between the action / weapon testing and the chill crafting, it's a clever way to keep shifting the game pace. Maybe having it so there's a line of people who keep forming a line, and you have to try and clear up a very busy line of people could be cool, and give a more easily defined direction or "end goal".

This is fantastic lol. Needs so many more plays.

Nice art and good replication of the spooky atmosphere of FNAF! I think it could be cool to expand on the premise with more mechanics, perhaps with it being a bit more "chess like" and "red light, green light", as in FNAF the animatronics don't move while the camera is looking at them.

Great to see another innovative and super polished game from you folks! I'm impressed with how many levels and ideas for puzzles you have. A great way of exploring "roles reversed" in its most literal sense.

Cool stuff with the bribe mechanic, I wish the suspicion meter was a bit more like a tug of war - maybe you could balance it out by bribing person left or person right and giving them both chances. It has opportunities for expansion too, like maybe a secondary objective should be to avoid either player ragequitting due to the other person winning too much?

Nice entry!

The puzzle itself was really fun, but what set this apart as truly awesome was grabbing actual jam games from the screenshots and seeing the satisfying little end result. I... don't know how you implemented that but it's VERY cool, and it fits the spirit of the jam well, celebrating what everyone has made. Making a game that directly signal boosts and celebrates others' games as parts of the mechanics is some Dan Mullins-level meta shenanigans.

Great presentation (and sense of humour!) and really good use of scope in the time. I chose so many options that I instantly regretted and I really love that. A great approach to the "you author your own difficulty" theme that's emerged in this jam.

I liked the decisions you have to make when deciding how to make the game harder for yourself, I had to really think about whether double jumping or wall clinging would need to be removed first (I went with removing double jumping because the wall cling was quite essential for me). Really enjoyed that!

I think the game could be even better if you revisit the platformer controls, as there is a bit of acceleration and "lag" where I stop pressing a movement key and it keeps going for another second, which made the precision platforming nature of this game a tad frustrating at times. That and the jump felt a bit floaty and imprecise - having a system where you can control the jump curve a bit more would go a long way (if you've not seen the GMTK Platformer Toolkit that Mark made, that might be a good place to start).

Nice game and use of the concept!

Nice to see the gameplay loop involving strategic decisions! I used everything from the level of the person to their gear and class to determine if it was right to take their money or give them a quest. Unfortunately everyone I sent out on quests died, but at least I didn't go into debt!

Sliders are very fun to mash around and deal with and see what happens. Something something monkey brain neuron activation.

You have a piano roll motif for how the attacks happen, which is real clever and I like, but could you integrate that with the music somehow? So the music plays and switches tracks as the bullet patterns change?

Also, a minor UX thing that may be good to have, different patterns having different bullet colours - it would make my actions in the sliders feel a bit more impactful if I could easily pinpoint them!

Awesome work!!

Fun little strategy game, very Lemmings (if you want to expand on this further, I recommend looking at it for inspiration) but with a lot more emphasis on reducing their numbers instead of keeping them alive! Nice work!

Great showing especially as your first game jam! Congrats on getting so much done in a short time frame, hope you've learnt a lot from the process!

I really like this concept and the idea of "resetting puzzles back to their original state" is a very untapped style of designing a puzzle. I felt that some of the levels did feel like they were "just" puzzles and I just had to think about them in a traditional way, whereas it would have been so interesting to think outside the box and deconstruct what a puzzle actually is, and how you would unsolve it.

I liked the levels that more leaned into this, ones where the solutions were neatly lined up at the end and you had to unwind it into a more complicated solution. Instead of going to a portal, it would have made more sense to me if you had to go back to the intended player starting point (if it was a real puzzle).

This has created a really interesting discussion for me and the idea of it has some really cool potential. It would be worth looking at the approaches other games in this jam take to making puzzles, as it could help you gain a better perspective on how to "deconstruct them"!

This is a nice little one! Impressive what you can make in such a crunched down amount of time.

About what stuff you could add, I think it's just the controls that need a tiny bit more feedback. Everything being in one box at the top makes it hard to figure out what exactly I am doing, so maybe a different user interface would help.

Also, making it more interactive after you send out enemies could be interesting, like a bomb you send out and can press Space again to detonate it. It would make it more engaging after you validate each command?

Other than that, cooldowns and resource management are always fun design mechanisms to consider and work with.

This is really really good! Beautiful and perfect chill aesthetic and gameplay loop. I think the only thing I would recommend changing is the frequency you get fertiliser and water droplets. Sometimes humans ignore bunnies, and since they only drop 1 fertiliser at a time, it becomes a real waiting game and can get in the way of me wanting to populate the space with beautiful trees. At the rate I was going I couldn't expand very far because I kept losing a tree for every one I gained.

Despite that balance quirk, this is awesome and a perfect showcase of this theme in a more relaxed genre and design!

I really like the visual presentation for this, going from 3D renders to presenting them in 2D is a cool aesthetic. The gameplay loop is really solid and the way of framing choices through "magic sword" tropes is a very cool power fantasy you don't typically see.

The shop was quite clever, you have to be careful and balance getting healed up and avoiding getting sold or traded away. Really cool stuff!

If there were ways the battles could be a bit more skill-driven or gameplay-driven like slashing, that would make every part of the game engaging, as sometimes it becomes a bit of a waiting game. But in 48 hours that's not exactly a feasible thing to expect! Impressive work!

Really lovely art! This has potential, I definitely think zooming out the camera and maybe taking inspiration from Sonic style levels would be a great place to start improving things.

Also, having the boulder actually roll around would really sell the game feel (you can do this in Unity by decoupling the sprite renderer from the player GameObject, and putting it as a child of the GameObject, so you can handle animation without it affecting your movement)!

Hope you folks get well soon if you're still recovering - nice entry!

Fantastic execution, really unique take and forces you to deconstruct the rules of the game from the inside.

You could say it's Rules Reversed!

I had very little time and budget available for art so I leaned a lot into the minimal "radar" esque aesthetic - glad it still came across as readable!!

Thanks, sharply dressed bear! 👍

Lovely story and really fun game concept. Really like your spin on the reverse-stealth concept, making it so you have to be chased by everyone is very innovative. Made me laugh with the presentation of it!

It took me a moment to realise what the twist was, but I like the twist on the theme! Roles reversed, literally, as platforms become enemies and key items kill you when you are in the top-down perspective.

I'd like to see this lean more into the top-down bit, as it's like playing a platformer but from the background layer itself, which seems like a fun concept to explore!

I got 2390! Fun time attack game!

Phenomenal vision of art style and game feel, realism-focused games will never be the same again

Indeed, this is also my favourite safety tool. It's very comprehensive. Accessible on web makes it really nice for all players and fast to set up!  I recommend running this in your Session 0s, along with tools like the X-Card for when you are in play.

Superb, this feels like a virtual Rubik's cube in the way you think about how to solve each puzzle by getting the right face on the die!

Well designed puzzler! An interesting approach to the theme - incorporates the dice rolling but in a way that the player has full control at all times, as each time you cycle through the numbers in the way you'd expect. That's what you'd want from a puzzler to avoid friction between the player and the game.

Very fun to move around and enter a flow state quickly solving each of the boards. Would be fun to see some more variations and challenges that could rely on timing (e.g. maybe a swinging axe style puzzle could be cool!). Definitely could put this on a Steam Deck or mobile platform and have a neat time on the go!