itch.io

I'm impressed by the sheer audacity of having full graphics and sound but not using them until you've made significant progress into the game. Especially in a game jam, where players have no patience (you have maybe 30 seconds to make an impression).

This helped btw, I think I made the width too big somehow (looking back at the code, I didn't divide by 2; fixed it here) because I overshot it and reopened the game 15 times, and when I tried to fix it, it double clicked a pixel and deleted everything. This took like two hours to run as well, so I don't really feel like trying again.

import java.awt.Robot; 
import java.awt.event.InputEvent;  
public class Main 
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        try
        {
            Robot rob = new Robot();
            int startX = 780;
            int startY = 271;
            int width = 362;
            int height = 540;
            int secondsBeforeStarting = 3;
            rob.delay(secondsBeforeStarting * 1000);
            for(var i=0; i<width/2; i++)
            {
                for(var j=0; j<height/2; j++)
                {
                    rob.mouseMove(startX+i*2, startY+j*2);
                    rob.mousePress(InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK);
                    rob.delay(50);
                    rob.mouseRelease(InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK);
                    rob.delay(50);
                }
            }
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
        }
    }
}

I was 1 pixel away from success :(

Getting into the cave seemed kind of impossible, idk how I eventually did it, but then I managed to get double jump so I could get dash -- which was pretty neat because I noticed it never resets so you can just fly infinitely; so I was flying like a real dragon.

This is my favorite game I've played in the jam so far (of about 50). Recursion is fun and causes existential dread.

I like how:

1. Jumping outside the bounds just puts you into the next highest world, and your size grows back to normal. There is no escape.

2. The angle of objects doesn't move as you turn, which lets you place them easier -- though it can still be a little difficult to place them exactly how you want. I got the board by placing the bridge on the castle tower and then interacting with it in mid-air as I jumped, which I feel like wasn't the intended way since everything was so delicate.

Despite my control problems (web version was unplayable because the mouse wasn't being locked, initially even figuring out how the wheels were supposed to be interacted with was a struggle, then every time I tried to climb off the roof of the mech I'd fall all the way to the ground, and staying on top of the cannon was a challenge) I found this immensely enjoyable, collecting 8/8 in 27:43. I assume that's the end of the game at least, because the timer stopped. The shader makes it look great too -- definitely wish for sound effects, but this looks like it took all of the 4 days already.

Was at first like "What does this have to do with the theme?" But yeah, then the twist happened, and that was great. Reminds me of last year's theme "Roles Reversed" too. Style's fantastic, it looks incredible for something that could be so basic.

So I'm def someone who loves first person cameras more than third, but in the case where literally the point of the game is to eat to make yourself bigger, I feel like the third person camera should have at least been the default -- I didn't even understand what was happening until I already won, then I went back and played again and decided to press "C". That being said, the style is great; it looks awesome.

See, this is the exact kind of brutalist aesthetic that I actually love; the same kind of low poly, trippy space that a game like Cruelty Squad inhabits. It'd be even better with sound effects. But yeah, if it weren't for the style, it's kind of a wonky shooter with really floaty movement, but honestly the floaty movement feels part of the charm.

This is one of these ideas that's so simple and so clever that it's the kind of thing I wish I could figure out when I'm thinking up an idea for the theme. How do you even conceive of this game concept in your head and then even know it will work? Maybe I'm approaching this from a top-down design approach when it's more about a process of discovery.

This is a wild concept and it's absolutely destroying my brain. Is this what it'd be like like if a Flatlander traveled to the third dimension?

One neat subtle bit of design that I love here is that it's a Sokoban-type puzzler in a sense, but the player is indistinguishable from the items they're pushing. When you yourself are an element to the solution (ie which "boulders" are placed where, and you're also one of those boulders), it adds an extra layer of depth to the puzzles.

Anyway, some levels are really clever, but some levels can be really chaotic in trying to predict what numbers will appear where. The latter feel less satisfying because they can be a bit "fiddle to win".

But overall I think the game is really clever and a great idea that I never would've thought of. It fuses Sokoban and Minesweeper together great and keeps both of their mechanics.

Ohh, yes, my monitor is 144 hz.

Edit: Yeah, it works fine when I set my monitor to run at 60hz

I honestly can't believe there's more than one game in the jam where humans and trees swapped

So I like the idea but is there a secret to the controls? I swear sometimes the arrow doesn't appear, other times when I release nothing happens, and then I click again and the arrow moves to my current position and I have to start again. The game seems difficult enough without the controls bogging me down, and from what I've seen so far it seems pretty competent otherwise.

How is this so polished? There are only a few levels, but that's understandable in a game jam. I'm simply astonished by the graphical quality and the fact that the AI actually functions (there have been a few other games where you place objects to guide players (both in 2D even) and they're way more jank). It feels like a demo to a full game practically. Perfect score.

Oh boy did I love this. I love how it's both an action and a puzzler, I love how it manages to still feel like Snake mechanically but with Sokoban mechanics added on top of that, and I love how from a pretty simple ruleset comes pretty complicated results. There are a lot of cool levels in here too; it's most satisfying when the puzzle has the simplest elements (least artifice) yet is surprisingly hard.

I think this is my favorite game in the jam (and only my second perfect score in 150 games that I've played). Love the idea of it being (essentially) a reverse Metroidvania. It's a fun puzzler that requires you to think and keep track of where everything is and what you need to get where. I probably would've have been a lot more confused if I hadn't read the description underneath with all the icons (I mean who reads the instructions right?), which was really helpful in explaining specifically what the glove did, what the bow was for, and what could destroy what.

overall good job

Edit: I also want to add that I had a lot of trouble coming up with a game idea for this theme (though I usually take at least 5 hours to start doing anything, this year I didn't start doing anything until 9 hours in). I didn't like how it felt like all I could do was take an existing game and reverse it (what if Metal Gear Solid but you're the guard?; what if Frogger but you run over frogs?; what if fishing but you're the fish?; what if Pac-Man but you're the ghost? -- and there are games in this jam that do all of those, probably much better than I would).

So I was expecting like, half the games in this jam to be Sokoban-based puzzlers where you move the map around instead of the player (because that's what I did), yet after 140ish games, this is the first one I played. I mean, I assume there are like a ton more, but honestly this game is probably all I need because it's really great.

I especially like the orientation based mechanics -- you can pick up a sword but it needs to be facing the correct direction for you to be able to use it. And then later I really like when lava gets involved as a stationary element because A) it gives you a frame of reference, B) because it adds a lot of great new mechanics. Actually, this has quite a lot of mechanics packed into it's 16 levels.

Loved it. My initial reaction to the tutorial box moving instead of the player was a moment. My only issue comes from the awkwardness of the controls -- how you have to completely stop in order to switch controls, and how awkward it can be sometimes to get around. Don't know how you'd get around that either though.

There's a Cthulhu-like horror to this -- you've managed to play a game where you play as the monster and it still manages to be scary. You have a mild drone and an unrelatable entity that you can never really get a clear good look at that's chasing down a human that's much like yourself. As a result, it feels like you're hunting yourself, like it's inevitable that death will catch you.

kinda like a Tarkovsky film but with a Juice WRLD soundtrack

I def appreciated the context sensitive buttons, much better than only putting the controls in the description.

This was strangely a lot more enjoyable than I anticipated from the first few seconds. At first I thought it was a straight gag game -- you die immediately because you're a level 1 goblin and that's the joke. I was curious to see if I could run away from the player so I ran and hid over in the room the player came from, and fell into the void.

I was about to quit when I realized that the paladina actually had a health bar, and my allies were actually doing considerable damage. Not enough to win in the end without my help, but enough to make me realize that this was an achievable goal.

On restart, I noticed the game world was much larger than I thought. Plenty of places to run at least, and the paladina actually does get distracted instead of mercilessly hunting you down.

Difficulty is a tough thing to balance. If the paladina was too easy to defeat, this game would be pointless and boring. Too difficult, and this would be impossible and frustrating. Worse, that balance will be different for each player, and because the game is supposed to be difficult, a difficulty selector doesn't really work here. For me, the balance was great.

You had to learn a route, know where to run and when, how long to throw barrels for, etc. With your only attacks being a jank throwing mechanic, you have to rely on your allies, but they're limited and can only do so much for you. Ultimately, you have to manage both in tandem.

If you do fall in the basement too early, you're pretty much toast -- you'd think you could've put in like a real staircase instead of two weird white floating rectangles.

Idk, I'm a fan of jank 1 hit kill super hard games like "I Wanna Be the Guy" so this appealed to me.

I assume this is what Hell is like for C students

So I imagine if you had more time you might've done these things but:

- When the gun fires, there should be some kind of visual feedback to the player besides the audio

- A brief tutorial (that is skipped on resets) where you pick up a bullet, load it into a gun, and fire it (it's a great mechanic, but because it's unusual, players might wonder why their gun isn't working)

I thought this was pretty cool though. Took me like 5 minutes before I could manage to even hit one of the eyes (they're fast movers), but after I managed to do it once, I was more easily able to replicate it, and so then a few minutes later I got 'em all and triggered the ending.

Welp, after rating 127 games, this is my first perfect score.

i might be too harsh of a critic

holy god what have you done

I felt like the games this year were a little weaker than usual, but then I tried filtering by the tag "first person" and weirdly this is where all the good games were hiding this year. I lol'd when I first saw the dorky NPC coming towards me -- I literally just played another Slender-like in the jam where the twist is you're supposed to look at the monster to scare him off (and it's actually frightening), so seeing this dude start walking toward me subverted my expectations.

Oh boy do I love clay. I've used it in past jams (2020, 2021, and post-jam version of my 2019 game), and it makes everything look super cool. Plus you've actually got technical artistic skill as opposed to me. Coolest looking game I've seen in the jam.

Was going to post a comment "ngl red op" but looks like other people got to this first.

It's definitely more OP than I thought it would be, but I also kind of love how it just completely breaks the game too -- it's meant to mostly just be a last thing you get kind of thing, and to let you look at the puzzles in a new light. But yeah, if I add more in a post-jam I'd probably try to do cleverer puzzles with it, I think I just started getting obsessed with naming levels after the past themes that I stopped making actual puzzles.

I love the theme for your game; I just wish the puzzles got a little trickier and felt more satisfying. But I'm an animal lover so I'm a sucker for non-violent games featuring animals. This reminds me of one of my favorite games from a GMTK game jam: Captive Collaboration: a game where you use the animals to work together to escape.

I often think about my own predestiny. Am I just a tool to be used by my creator? Am I so explosive because I was made to be that way? The pilot keeps bringing me along for cool rides about the galaxy; but each trip, my friends will disappear with no explanation, falling out the bottom of the ship. I can't shake the feeling that I'll be next.

The newbies arrived today. They're exuberant and full of energy. I remember when I used to be like that -- excited to journey about the stars with no limits. They've yet to see their friends go. One day they'll understand. It won't be long before they become as jaded and hardened as me. There's only so much you can take before you need to buckle down and face reality. And the reality is that most of space travel is quite dull. We sit here in a dark cramped space, for nearly 24 hours a day. Well, an Earth day that is. I don't even know what the time is anymore. I don't think I've seen the sun since I left the plant.

One of the newbies failed to perform. A "dud", they called him. They took him apart right in front us. Killed him and threw him right in the trash. Is that how our bosses see us? No more than mere objects? My old buddy, Scud, he told me if you don't work, they'll cut you up into little pieces and then recycle you into another missile. Imagine that, huh? One of my old buds might have just a tiny piece of him inside one of these newbies right now. What a cruel world.

I never mentioned Scud huh? He died a long time ago. Back when I was a newbie. As he dropped out the stack, I could hear him scream. Couldn't believe the noise he made -- so scared. Scud was always so brave; I could never imagine him afraid of anything. But I guess the sight of imminent death does that to you. You're never prepared for death. Never ready.

They told us back in the plant that we had one mission, and that was to follow orders. When we leave the squad, we're to do what our pilot tells us, no matter what. But I don't know, with all that's happened to me, I'm not sure I want to do that anymore. They'd kill me for it of course, but I know now they're gonna kill me anyway. What difference does it make? At this point I'd think I'd rather have my free will -- waste all my fuel up in space going in my own direction -- than to bow down to my superiors. They'll call me defective; they'll call me a traitor -- but I don't care. If there's anything I want from this world now, it's a choice of my own. I won't accept my predestiny.

For maximum realism, I rated them all garbage (except POV you are Mark Brown). Unfortunately the game wouldn't let me move on until I chose a top 5.

Is being too long for a jam a real criticism that some people give? I swear my games always end up at least being 20 minutes long, and last year mine was so long I couldn't even playtest it in time to make sure it was complete-able (rng could make it last hours, plus I was trying to finish two games at once (bad idea, no sleep, would not recommend))).

Does this end when I review all 6877 of them?

So I enjoyed this game and think it has a great unique creative mechanic. However, I would've personally put at least 1 more level between 2 and 3. You can pretty much pass through level 2 without even paying attention to the mechanic at all, while level 3 forces you to learn it, solve a puzzle, and do some tricky platforming all at the same time. The first few minutes of a game are essential after all, especially when game jam players have the attention span of toddlers with the amount of games they can play.

My guess is that it's an unintended result of braking increasing your turning speed -- naturally that makes sense if you're moving at top speed, but less sense-makey when you're stationary.

8 hours! I'm impressed. My favorite little design detail here is how releasing the gas makes your turning much tighter.