itch.io

Got 110! According to the leaderboard, that’s not that good, but still, I had fun :)

Great boids implementation! The duck’s movement has a fitting mix of being predictable and unpredictable at the same time. I found it very intuitive to play.

For me personally, sitting through an entire round was a bit stressful. Maybe it’s because I need to be aware of everything on the screen at once, maybe it’s because the ducks are so cute and I feel genuinely sad when they die. Having something like a temporary powerup that made ducks chase away the cats would help with that and shake things up. Or maybe sometimes a friendly dog comes along to protect you? Or every once in a while, you randomly breed an eeeevil duck that the cats run away from? Some ideas.

Overall, good job implementing something so fun while still feeling simple!

I like the vibe! I see, I spotted a fellow Remedy-head 😎 The Eyes are well animated, and the little graphical flourish that appears when they communicate is great. It’s nicely unnerving in a non-grating way! The music adds to it, although a few more music tracks would have been nice. The game introduces new mechanics gently to you. Great onboarding! I played until squeeze, where there was just too much going on to fit in my head without it feeling like homework. Maybe a hint system would have been nice?

I also spot a little bit of ludo-narrative dissonance in the question of who exactly we, the player, are. The UI points towards us being some kind of controlling entity, maybe similar to The Eyes. I say this because the “Simon Says” screen is directly controlled by us. Well, assuming that “Simon Says” refers to the commands themselves and not the “max 8 commands” and such restriction. This implies we are the metaphorical “Simon” controlling The Dude that needs to reach the goal. This is further reinforced by there being a ludic disconnect between our commands and what The Dude does, as we cannot control his movement directly while in motion, but only indirectly, strategically.

On the other hand, The Eyes seem to imply that we are in fact The Dude. They say things like how we are there to entertain them while directly watching The Dude. In fact, their tone of voice fits a scenario where they have captured us for their own reasons, which visually fits The Dude’s situation. In this case, who is the metaphorical Simon?

Maybe we are supposed to be an incorporeal entity that is being held captive by The Eyes and The Dude is just a figurine that we ultimately move on a board, and the reason The Eyes look intensely at them is because they yearn for entertainment? Similar to when we look at a stage magician, we don’t look at their faces, but at what their hands are doing and at what gadgets they are handling? This argument is supported by the fact that The Dude does not have any animations, as you would expect from a figurine. Or The Eyes are breaking the fourth wall and addressing us, the human, directly?

Maybe this is all supposed to be ambiguous, but for me personally it feels like something that is not entirely cleanly communicated.

Over all, I enjoyed my experience with the game. I usually don’t like puzzle games much, but I played this one before going to bed and then decided I needed to play some more right when I got up :D

Proud to have become the life of the party!

Brilliant execution. You nailed the same kind of tactical consideration that is a hallmark of good deckbuilders like Slay the Spire, where you don’t simply want to add new cards but also get rid of old ones. I’m a bit surprised by the reviews that say “I couldn’t move much when I used 5 skills and only one movement card”. Yes, the game already allows you to just use one skill and one movement card if you were not so lucky with movement options! Throw away cards that are detrimental to your situation! But maybe that’s just deckbuilder experience, hehe.

The cards are varied enough that multiple play-throughs feel different. I also love how the game doesn’t throw all options at you from the get-go, but only displays the controls for level ups when you actually need them.

I’ve got only two little issues. First, I’ve played this on my macBook with a touchpad, and moving the cursor around fast enough to keep up with the beat was pretty hard. I imagine the game was optimized for a mouse. Maybe adding an option to slow the BPM down a bit would have been nice for accessibility. Second, the card’s descriptions are very fun, but also hard to correlate with what they will end up doing. Maybe that was intentional for the feeling of discovery, but I found it a bit annoying. Having a short effect description and some flavor text would have been nicer for me at least.

But yeah, nothing that really impeded my fun much. You did an awesome job!

PS: those blobos are definitely just axolotls, you cannot convince me otherwise.

Simple, yet brilliant

The 0.000003 were a tip ;)

Very charming! I like feeling like a pirate’s advisor, that was a neat idea :) The quest texts are engaging and often put a smile on my face.

I got a bit confused by how predicting the weather would actually help me. I know the quests depend on the weather, but correlating the predicted weather with what would happen in a quest was rather hard. I also didn’t quite get how the stones are supposed to be read in practice. So I went the other way and simply clicked on the choice that seemed to make the most sense in the moment. I am pleased to say that me and my ghost crew managed to get the trident in the end!

Note that I first played the game on mute on my phone. I think this is the first game this jam that actually works on a phone, so kudos for that! I then went back to play it on my laptop with sound so I could vote on that. I was surprised to find it way less playful / innocent / merry / “Monkey Island-ish” than what I imagined while first playing.

In the end, the whole thing really felt like a tiny adventure, thanks for that :)

That makes sense! Yeah, AFAIK there is no consensus yet on how to do turn-based in Bevy. There’s an open issue for that to come up with an example, but so far, no one has tackled that yet

You got something playable on your first stab at Bevy and game dev, that’s great already :D

It took me a little bit to understand that I get the points when the clothes hit the bottom of the barrel instead of the top. Maybe adding a little green bar there would have helped? Or maybe you could make the barrel slightly translucent and have a fully opaque cylinder at the bottom?

In any case, be proud of getting something done for a jam :)

Nice artwork, lighting and atmosphere! The Diablo-style UI done with pixel art is a nice touch, haven’t seen that before :) I also like how the cycle forces you to not go too far away from your pursuers so that you are ready to strike back when the night starts.

I found the game a bit tough. Maybe increasing a good chunk of your health on a kill would be nice. Or a bit faster movement. Maybe turn into a bat that makes you faster but also doubles all received damage while in that form?

In any case, this is a really great looking little game with a ton of charm and atmosphere. Good work!

As a fan of Tnua, I was curious what cool movement stuff you would implement. And I was not disappointed! The air dash is incredibly satisfying to use, well done! Just wish the regular movement was a bit less sluggish so it would constantly feel nice to zoom around ;)

Wow, the garbage telekinesis is really, really well implemented! It looks hella cool, feels smooth, the garbage being picked up is always intuitive (as in, it always seemed to grab exactly what I wanted), the shooting has nicely tuned parameters (the shooting speed is nice, the damage is nice, etc.). Great job! It reminds me a lot of how well the telekinesis is implemented in Control. I don’t have any improvement suggestions beyond what you already know (sound, gameplay stages, tutorial, etc.), but what’s there is amazing!

The style, gameplay and camera remind me a lot of early Game Maker games I used to play a kind. Thanks for bringing back some fond memories :)

As a big fan of jank, I like the janky turning! I would like it if landing in the grass didn’t doom you to drive forever though. I also realize that allowing turning in the grass would mean that you can just avoid the street entirely. Maybe make the trees also obstacles to account for that? Not sure.

Last, I really like what you did to the buttons from the template. Do you mind if we maybe add them to bevy_quickstart?

Very addicting! I like how the wild west theme is neatly followed throughout all abilities. The graphics have the same kind of charm as something like Baba is You to me :) Adding more music layers per day is a nice touch.

I found the combo of haste + tire overpowered, but that’s not a criticism. Breaking the game in a fun way is part of the joy of these kinds of games!

One thing I would improve on is adding a bit of constraint to the first few upgrades to guarantee that no run will have bad starting options, as that is simply not as fun. See how Hades subtly pushes the dice to round out the runs.

Ah, I forgot to mention one thing: the abilities are also quite nicely varied! They all felt distinct enough for me to get a feeling for them and how my run was going to evolve. Good job! :)

Neat little game with a good variety in levels. Hope the ducklings were not too dizzy :)
I especially liked the “BOING” sound effect and the gentle screen fade between levels. Nice touch!

I’d appreciate if there was an in-game way to tell how many levels were left. The simplest solution would be to just display a number after each level. Also, to reduce the waiting periods when hunting the last stray ducklings, you could make the level spin slightly faster for each duckling collected to give the level a nice flow.

But good job overall! Very charming :)

Definitely did, and I also enjoyed my playtime before that :)

Nicely implemented strategy game! It reminds me a lot of some other game I played ages ago, but I can’t put my finger on it.

The base implementation is solid, I’d just love some more variety on top like the buildings having actual differences, like the tower shooting stuff or a way to recruit new warriors or have archers.
It’s very possible that the shop already supports this or there is a hidden UI for these things, but I quickly fell into a cycle of surviving a night -> spending all money on the lost buildings -> repeat, which left me without any money to play around with in the shop. Except once where I tried to buy a sword, but it didn’t let me? Maybe I needed the blacksmith first? A bit more in-game UI and guidance would be good, I guess :)

Anyways, what I was able to play was very competently implemented, so good job!

Gaining XP being an active choice is a clever twist that instantly adds an element of planning. I also like the item variety. Greatly appreciate the “cool looking stick” that does nothing except being really cool ;)

Saving time by just displaying the Debug into is a pretty clever hack. Sure, it’s not pretty, but it sure seems time efficient and I did not consider it.

One thing I would have changed even considering the time limitation is some color coding. I first didn’t realize that the individual trashes were entirely different items and was just confused as to why they seemed to do different things, until I realized that the text on the upper left was not the same each time. Just automatically generating an Oklch color palette by spacing the hue evenly based on the amount of items would already do the trick :)

Even the description of the game is already supremely cozy! Everything about this game conveys a message of inner peace. I greatly appreciate the emotions this evoked in me :)

I love the handwritten stuff and all the tiny polishes. The sounds are calming, the birds and boats add a nice variety. Bumping into a friend is an amazing feeling.

It’s a small touch, but I like how the game is set in the real world. It’s not unnamed water world, but a journey from Australia to the Arctic. Kinda adds a level of relatability and honesty to it. And a bit of education, too! Another small touch that is lovely is the slowly changing hue.

I’m a bit sad that the fishes are afraid of the whales, but I can’t blame them.

That’s a neat idea :D

Hehe, thanks. We didn’t have enough time to add sound effects or camera movement to the pedaling, so I’m glad the effect still holds up.

Driving into the props is the jump button :D

Wow, great sense of aesthetics! If you wanted to add some more gameplay elements, I recommend checking out the game Insaniquarium for inspiration :)

Even so, this is a friendly and chill desk toy. The snails are my favorite! Thanks for putting a smile on my face :D

FYI the default macOS terminal does not run this properly, but iTerm2 does mostly :) Only the right-click does not seem to do anything. For others wondering why their fishies looked different from the screenshots: try resizing your terminal!

There’s a ton of tiny touches that make interacting with the game feel nice:

• Pressing A / D respects where you are hovering your mouse
• Having reached the flag marks the level as cleared even when you accidentally rotate too much and get your dude away from the flag
• Hovering over the bottom text box introduces the text box itself, which is quite clever
• The game does not just have a “Here’s the controls” text, but actual onboarding puzzles that slowly introduce concepts in a clear and progressive way

I did not finish the entire game because these kinds of puzzle games are not my cup of tea. But that’s not a criticism towards this game; its execution is nearly impeccable! My biggest issue is probably the background music, which was nice at first but got annoying after a while.

In general, the level of polish at display here is amazing. Good work!

Walking around the clock is a pretty good idea. There’s a kind of ludo-narrative coherence at play here that I appreciate. The spritework is cute and the soundtrack is a banger. My only issue is the lack of enemy variety and the ease of combat.

When I was at 5 hours left, I noticed that my dude ended every fight with full health even without using any special abilities after equipping plants and paper clips. So, as an experiment, I went out to buy groceries and left the game running. When I came back, I saw that my AFK strategy got me all the way to the CEO. At least he defeated me :D

But I really like the underlying ideas and mechanics. Good work!

Clever idea! I imagine a cool educational game could be made like this :) I’m a bit confused as to why I wasn’t able to buy more rings after I reached iron. Maybe I needed to buy more upgrades? In any case, the playtime I had was very satisfying!

The MONCH sound effect is great :D Collecting all the hampters is surprisingly tricky, so I had to skip 3 friendos. Maybe reduce the bounciness a little or OR make the bounciness even bigger so you can use it to propel yourself up into the sky. Artwork is really cute :)

Aww thanks, that’s such a nice thing to say :) I’m also quite happy with how it turned out :D

That’s great to hear! Balancing was very tricky considering that we quickly knew the map by heart, so I was worried we would be way off :D

Looks like this comment got duplicated somehow, so I deleted the copy :)

Can confirm that I get the same crash on your game, but not on bevy_quickstart. Weird.

Very satisfying to play! The spherical world is implemented quite well and is visually appealing :)

I’m playing this on an older laptop with a semi-low framerate right now and the movement is inconsistent. I suspect the cause may be that you may not have used a fixed timestep for the movement, so that is something to consider for next time ;)

I found it interesting that one side of the planet is dark. Kind of adds an element of “oh heck, I shouldn’t dodge to the right or I’ll go into the low-visibility zone!” which spices up gameplay.

Overall: Very good job on the game!

Hehe, I see :)

Fun fact: the cars were originally supposed to be ramps, but that required changed the max climbing angle, which made the physics even jankier to an extreme level, so I had to leave it out. But yes, I’d love some ramps, maybe even with speed boosts :D

Got to around 150 :D A simple concept masterfully executed. There is a great degree of polish in everything. I think if you released this as-is on mobile devices it could be fairly successful. The music is suspenseful and ominous; it really sets the tone. Reminds me a bit of the works of Andrew Prahlow, but more subdued. My only complaint is that the game becomes a bit monotonous after a while. I know it’s designed to be an infinite game, but I would have personally quite liked seeing an attainable goal dangled in front of me. But tastes vary, and I think my suggestion may well make the game worse for someone else, so it’s probably fine as-is :)

The controls are a bit overwhelming because this is essentially a cheeky music editor, but that is completely irrelevant in the face of that awesome default song you’ve made. Something about it made me supremely nostalgic for old Nintendo games I played as a kid and I got a bit emotional, so I had to figure out the controls of this thing now! Adding new nodes is very satisfying. I don’t know how, but there is a tendency for whatever you do to the machine to end up sounding nice in the end. Great work! I’ll definitely come back to play around with this in the future :) And thanks for the warm, fuzzy feelings.

That works for making them despawn permanently, thanks! Now how do I get them in my inventory? My hotbar stays empty, no matter what.

Great concept, great simple style, great music. And extra kudos for having an audio toggle! I also like how the last upgrade tells you that the game is over. Clever!

Unfortunately, the game starts dragging towards the end when it starts looking like the simplest combos, like all blue and one ping, are more effective than anything “smart”. Having multiple rings is great for experimentation, but a bit demoralizing when you keep building some smart system and it still performs worse than the really simple, boring ring next door.

But that was only towards the end. Most of my play-through was highly engaging. Thanks for making this :)

Great graphics! Reminds me a lot of Risk of Rain 1. The player character looks really cool and has nice animations. The dash feels responsive and has a nice range. Only thing I’m missing is some kind of death animation for the enemies; having them despawn instantly feels buggy. A simple solution could be to ease their alpha down to zero while they stop moving.

Very chill! I like the color of the concrete a lot. The scene has a very distinct “vibe” to it that is hard to put into words, which is a hard thing to achieve.