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Ah that's fantastic to hear, thank-you so much! Thanks for the feedback, too, we certainly don't want anyone to be confused about what to do at the beginning. We'll look into improving the messaging there, and making it more clear how the two scales interact. Anyway, thank-you so much for playing and for leaving feedback: we very much appreciate it!

Thank-you so much for playing, and for your feedback! Yeah, track placement is something we went back and forth on but tried to make the least-frustrating method that we could implement reasonably quickly.

And you're completely right about the warning in kid mode - the next thing I wanted to add was a tutorial from Lenny if the player was in toy mode if a station was becoming overcrowded, but we ran out of time in the end. We've already worked on improving this for the post-jam version, thanks for highlighting 😄

Oh no! Well that shouldn't be happening. We were a little pushed for space so the dialogues can cover the rail dock in the kid mode but the dialogue should only cover the unlockable track pieces which aren't available when you're going through the tutorial. Sounds like a bug if it was covering more than that, sorry about that. If you have a chance to come back to it, please can you take a screenshot so we can investigate for a post-jam update?

Thanks! The "music being the same melody but darker" idea is one we hit on fairly early, but I don't think really delivered on until quite late in development. Glad you enjoyed it, thank-you for playing!

Thank-you for playing, very glad you had fun!

Thank-you for the feedback! The building mechanic was something we experimented with throughout, and it went through a few iterations. 

The first version was drag-and-drop, before we realised that would overcomplicate things when we didn't have loads of time (so we dropped it 😁).

The second version didn't have the 'rail dock' at the bottom of the screen, but instead each placement had its own little UI where you could place/switch piece/undo, but we found cycling through the different pieces to be more frustrating than just having them on dedicated controls.

The version that's in the game changed a bit when we switched up the scoring from "as a piece is placed" to "as a route is completed" - previously, only the current piece would appear as a ghost rail, but subsequently the whole route would appear ghostly as it hadn't been scored yet.

I think we could have communicated the spot you were placing (versus the rest of the route) a little better - maybe it could fade in and out? Or have a box around it to show current selection? There are a few options, but you're definitely right that it could be more clear.

Anyway, thanks so much for playing!

Thank-you so much for playing! The tutorials were one of the most important aspects for me to get in there (as without them the game is fairly incomprehensible), but we only got around to them on the final day of jamming so really had to rush to include them. Very glad to hear the mad dash at the end paid off!

Thanks so much for playing! Ideally we'll expand on this concept post-jam, very glad to hear the contrasting priorities are working as intended.

Thank-you so much for playing, and for featuring the game on-stream. We didn't end up having much any time for playtesting, so being able to watch people interact with our game live is huge for us!

Adorable, charming art style and a chill vibe. Feels like a completed, release-able game: no notes, incredible work.

Polished to a fine sheen with some very engaging puzzles. Felt like the level design had its own grammar that I was gradually learning as I played. Very intuitive, fantastic work.

Simple gameplay, immaculate vibes. I sometimes found it tough to time eating new objects when moving quickly. Maybe that's part of the challenge, but I found I enjoyed the star-munching section the best because I could use the increasing glow of the star to time my chomp. Maybe the directional arrow could increase in scale when getting closer to an object?

Just a thought! Loved every other part of this, probably the slickest game I've played in the jam. Great work!

Just wanted to drop in and remark on how elegant this design is. For my first game jam I put together a very similar concept, but this is leagues more fun just because it's much simpler - I really dig the timing aspect of the launch (my game had a slider to adjust), and moving the hole to increase difficulty is an excellent idea.

My only criticism is that level 5 is a significant difficulty spike: I'd have appreciated a smoother ramp up to that. I'd love to see an expanded version with different planets (maybe some bounce the ball off, so you need to ping-pong through levels) and balls (heavier variants have more momentum but are tough to squeeze through small gaps).

Fantastic work, especially for 48hrs.

Aaaaaah! This was very fun and gratifying to watch. Thank-you so much for playing it on stream and you're absolutely right: Lenny IS a menace! 🚂😈

The best introduction to any game in the jam that I've played by an absolute mile. So stylish! The amorphous blob was a little unnerving, and the way it moves was very organic.

I'd maybe have appreciated more enemy variety (different blobs with different abilities/speeds?) to mix up the gameplay a little bit, but I think you already went way above and beyond for a solo dev in 96 hours, given the level of polish on display here. Fantastic work!

Loved the hand-drawn aesthetic of this one, especially on the dragon attacks! Excellent submission and clever 2-layer interpretation of the theme, nice work!

Yeah, you should have heard the first draft of the adult-mode music: it was like a dystopian clown festival. Very pleased we managed to tone it down a bit for the final release but still keep the darker vibe we were going for, thanks so much for playing!

Thank-you so much for playing!

This is fun! We also considered a multi-level scaler (>2) where the gameplay would be the same (or very similar) in each level. One challenge we thought we'd face there is that the scale levels would feel too similar, so I appreciated how even though the enemies scale with you each new scale still feels like a new power fantasy fulfilled. I think part of this is the detail of still having the small ships whizzing around unable to do damage. Great submission!

This is extremely creative, and a fun twist on the theme. The between-level comics were very cute, and I enjoyed the variety across the different levels.

Gosh, I spent so long not realising I could bind A to the robot's jump, though, and I can tell you: I had a much easier time when I did.

This is so impressive for 96 hours (basically three mini-games in one) and I hope it gets expanded after the jam - feels like there's a lot of potential in wiring up your own control scheme, and the only thing I wanted more of was options of what to wire up.

Having more controls on each device that you'd have to juggle could be really interesting, and so could allowing for more complex wiring - how about effectively programming something to play a platformer by binding multiple patterns to the same inputs so that when they overlap they create the correct sequence? -..-..- + ..-..-. = -.--.--

Anyway, bottom line: great job to all involved!

The best iteration on the "scale things to fit in another thing" puzzle I've seen by a significant margin. Juicy interactions, great art, and appealing music go a long way here. It's even more impressive for a 48hr entry - amazing!

Yay! I caught the whale! Very much enjoyed playing through this one - it gets pretty tough in the middle there, felt like I had a big run of only GIANT fish. Had fun discovering all the different fish types, and the visuals and controls were very polished. Plus, the sound effects fit very well. All-in-all, an excellent entry, great work!

Thanks for playing! We had a couple of different designs for the rails in mind, but eventually settled on those classic wooden tracks for maximum nostalgia. Very gratifying to know that element worked for you, thanks for commenting!

Thank-you so much for breaking down exactly what we were going for, this was a really fantastic comment to receive

We’d have loved to increase the contrast between the goals even more, but you totally nailed it: we wanted all the things you care about in the kid scale (making curved tracks that veer close to obstacles) to be antithetical to the things you care about as an adult (an efficient railway system that gets passengers to destinations as quickly as possible).

So, so glad that landed for you. Thank you for playing, and we very much appreciate your thoughtful analysis!

Thank-you for playing! Glad it gives off those chill vibes for you 😁

It's fantastic to hear you had such a good time with it. With a little more time we'd definitely have liked to make it truly infinite, but we're just glad people are actually making it to the win condition. Thank-you for letting us know you got there, and thanks so much for playing!

Scouring the jam for other train-themed games, came across this, and didn't know what to expect. It's great! Very much enjoy the blend of visual novel and game mechanics, and the photo aesthetics add to the vibe. Great job!

Thank-you so much for playing! And thanks for the feedback on the audio, completely agree. Last year we ended up with audio that was too loud so I think we over-corrected a bit for this time around. So an improvement I guess, but still not perfect.

Thanks again, will make sure to check the LUFS next time 😁

Thank-you so much, that's great to hear. And thank you for playing!

Yay! I also found another train game. Glad you enjoyed the style, thanks for playing and for the feedback. We originally couldn't decide whether we wanted to build a factory game or a train game so it's fun that you combined the two.

Very innovative take on the theme. This feels like it also has some rhythm game potential if you wanted to turn it into something like that - like, placing notes to the beat, and also hopping over them, placing more notes etc. 

I had a little difficulty with the controls - I wonder if the placing of notes could also be a keyboard/gamepad control? Just a thought.

Playing it reminded me of the bubble jumping mechanic in Animal Well:

Hey fellow train-enjoyer, great work on the rail building mechanics and extremely slick design - feels pretty polished 😎🚂 I really liked the way all the systems interacted, and placing new trains onto rails was particularly cool.

I did find it a little tough to pick up to begin with - I'd have appreciated a more gradual tutorial (though being able to go back to the manual with the little pixel art 'for dummies' icon was very neat). Other than that though, I found it to be a chill and fun time. Great work, very impressive for 96 hrs!

Thank-you for playing! Very glad to hear that aspect of the game worked as intended!

Thanks so much for playing! Communication of the 'coolness' system was something we could have improved on, I agree. Initial concepts involved areas of the ground glowing a different colour to indicate levels of 'cool', and displaying multipliers on different track pieces as the player is placing them. Thanks for the feedback: maybe we can improve this in a post-jam version.

Thanks for playing! Yeah, we wanted to really emphasise the scale change with colours, style, and UI differences. Thanks for the feedback!

I very much enjoyed this one. I agree that the tutorial was maybe a little difficult to parse, but I didn't have too much trouble and I appreciated how levels layered on and combined different mechanics. It's a really neat puzzle game with some solid design and excellent visuals + attention to detail (the blocks building the scene transition is sweet). Great work, thanks for submitting - will come back later and see if I can beat the other levels!

Thank-you very much for playing! Glad to hear you enjoyed the cool points - we settled on that metric pretty early on as the most sensible way to gauge success when playing as a child. Thanks again!

Thanks so much for playing! Very much enjoyed your game also, despite letting down so many penguins.

Thank-you, so glad you enjoyed playing our game!

Oh cool! Will try again and look out for the upgrades. Particularly the maw, I think that was my favourite turret (even if I didn't use it much)