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I found this to be really funny. it’s tricky to go as fast as possible without going too fast, which is an interesting dynamic. short and sweet submission!

neat little puzzle game! it’s an interesting concept with great execution. I think the only thing it’s lacking is some sort of structure, in order to provide a difficulty curve and incentive to play more. overall nice entry!

I loved this. being the Minotaur stomping down invaders and walls was just awesome!

on my first attempt I got 51800 — I only got hit because of misinputs (skill issue). I thought the beginning was quite slow, so on my following attempts I went into a corner to move back and forth until the labyrinth filled up.

the enemies without helmets were my favorite, as they could be taken down without using any resources as long as there was room to play around their 2-turn cycle. the rest of the enemies often required the use of a berserk charge to avoid taking damage — but that trivialized them as I got a berserk charge back when killing them. in the end it didn’t seem necessary to engage with the wall breaking mechanic at all, as it was enough to kite back and forth in a corridor while using berserk to avoid damage.

despite the flaws, I had a great time with this and it’s one of my favorite games of this jam. nice work!

the audiovisuals are just perfect, through and through. the title screen is weirdly nostalgic, and even the screen transitions feel completely authentic.

the gameplay is rock solid too, and delightfully brutal. the landing lag from a big jump feels so good. the branching-then-converging level design is slick. the variety in environments, obstacles, and enemies is really impressive for a jam game.

at first I thought only the special pickups gave power, it took me a while to realize that a combined 100 points from small pickups also give power. it’s very punishing to lose power when taking damage, but it adds to the challenge in a good way. there are real stakes here, which I think is core to the experience.

the first boss was probably my favorite part of the entire game, it’s a really cool moment! I eventually figured out a foolproof strategy though: just stay on the ground and time jump-attacks in-between fireballs. for some reason it never shot fireballs low to the ground, so it was completely safe.

I have a love-hate relationship with the flying skulls.

the blue balls gave me a lot of trouble, but I eventually figured it out and got through. I beat the final boss with zero power and only got hit once, it felt a bit too easy after the gauntlet that came before.

my only real complaint is about the “extra lives” — I think that system should be abolished, especially for a jam game like this. it makes a lot of people give up as they don’t want to start from the beginning again. I think it should just say “∞” and let the player retry the level as many times as they want without being sent back to the beginning of the game.

I found a few of bugs:

• getting a game over doesn’t properly reset the game state, so I had to close the game to start over with 5 extra lives.
• pressing “give up” doesn’t reset things either, so it’s possible to repeatedly farm the secret powerup at the beginning to start with max power. the game is still properly challenging though, as power is easily lost.
• being knocked into the ceiling from taking damage sometimes phased me out of the level and cost me a life.

I’ve played basically all the games in this jam now, and this is hands down my favorite!

neat little game! I had some trouble understanding everything at first. I agree with the comment below about simplifying the controls. after figuring things out it was quite hectic and fun, but it eventually got a bit repetitive as there’s not much variation. I love the cow, wish there were more chaotic stuff like that.

I think the sprite for “almost grown” and “fully grown” are a bit too similar — I often harvested unripe crops or accidentally let them wilt. also, I kept confusing the bells as they affected the opposite barrel of what I expected, so I ended up just ringing both.

overall really cute entry!

oh, one more thing: the height of the player character is pretty awkward — the thin but tall shape makes it really tricky to dodge horizontal threats. I think a shorter character would have made the game even more enjoyable. cheers!

I’ll add that control scheme as an option in the post-jam update. thanks for the feedback!

oh don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cool to have those dead cards in the game — it was part of my learning experience to realize that I shouldn’t pick them, it was a fun realization. and it makes sense that they help prevent softlocks, like you say. I was a bit let down that they couldn’t be used to expand the map, but it’s great to hear that you have some possible plans for them.

everything you’re saying sounds cool, I’m looking forward to whatever happens :)

every aspect of this game is simply awesome: art, audio, gameplay… it’s all top-notch stuff, and everything comes together incredibly well to form a cohesive and complete game with tons of charm. the scope is quite tight, but there’s still a lot of variation in levels, enemies, and pickups. it’s just a really well-made jam game.

it took me a few levels to realize there’s a double-jump, and a few more moments to realize it’s actually a triple-jump that lets the man fly by flapping his arms — is that foreshadowing? jokes aside, I assume it’s unintended since it’s pretty finicky. it only works from a short jump, so I guess it’s a bug with the variable jump height implementation. I’ll send a GIF on the Discord to show it off.

I got to the final boss on my 3rd or 4th attempt, but didn’t manage to beat him. I initially really enjoyed that final level, but the fight underlined my main critique about this game: untelegraphed attacks. it applies to nearly everything that deals damage, like snakes and birds close to the edge of the screen, but it was especially egregious during the final level when Thoth summons ghost gators from below. I guess the pattern is learnable, but dying to unavoidable attacks was kinda lame, and I didn’t feel like playing through the early levels to try again. maybe I’ll try more another day though.

still, it’s a minor complaint (or skill issue), and I think this is a 5/5 jam entry regardless. nice work!

PS: I loved GobblePobble too

Snek eat snak, Nak snak on Snek, Nak regret. 5/5 :)

yeah, I’ve learned my lesson — it’s a bad idea to be vague about mechanics in a jam game lol~

I was actually considering tank controls, but I decided against it because I thought it would be unapproachable for some players. I might add optional tank controls in the post-jam update, I think it could be fun.

thank you for the kind words!

brilliant title pun hahaha!

visually, some of the pieces are quite charming, but it’s overall lacking color as large parts of the screen are just grey. the walls and the ground has the same color, making them hard to distinguish at a glance, especially when zoomed out. the scale of the map is quite impressive, even though it’s not completely filled out.

the music is really fitting, I particularly like the menu music. looks like you didn’t fill the credits screen in the game, so I can’t tell if you made it yourself.

about the gameplay: I absolutely adore the idea of controlling and automating a hoard of lil kobold guys, but the execution here is somewhat lacking. I managed to set up the egg-automation in the tutorial, but it didn’t seem feasible to automate much in the real map. still, it was fun to manually move the hoard around to grow the numbers, arm everyone with weapons, and finally raid the town. unfortunately the kobolds didn’t want to drop their weapons to pick up gold, so they didn’t manage to bring anything back with them.

the game is quite rough and clearly unfinished, but I enjoyed what’s there — it’s always cool to see boids used for different ideas!

to be brief about the presentation: stellar pixel art, satisfying sfx, moody atmospheric soundscape, fitting music (with a nice touch of dynamism for the day-night cycle), and a lovely sense of impending doom. this is all very impressive and highly polished for a jam game — and then there are the mechanics…

it takes a while before things start happening, especially when dealt a bad starting hand. during my first run there were long periods of time when nothing happened, until the fire started picking up towards the end. also, it seemed like the challenge wasn’t to place rare building, but to randomly draw them in the first place. I ended my first run with hundreds of each resource, and nothing to spend it on.

I almost stopped playing after just one attempt, but I guess the relaxing pace (and the score screen) gave me time to think. I realized that I had a lot of ideas for new strategies, like letting fires spread to get more faith (which incidentally made the game a lot more hectic too, which was cool). I really enjoyed the sense of discovery, trying to figure out how I could maximize the score on my following attempts. my best score so far was 4987 on my 3rd attempt, but I’m sure I can do better, which motivates me to play more. I’ll definitely come back to this after the jam!

trying to balance getting faith from spreading fires without making too much of the land nonburnable is an interesting dynamic, it adds a lot of tension and urgency to the otherwise relaxed gameplay.

the main progress gate seems to be rock, and it’s important to get a quarry early. restarting to get a good starting hand seems essential for a good run.

a lot of things are dependent on randomness, which I like, but it would be nice to see some more agency (like deck-building or something).

meadows and forests are basically dead cards — the opportunity cost is huge, and there’s no real benefit as a lot of things can be built on charred land. at least forests have the benefit of allowing more camps to be built, but meadows seem completely useless.

during the final moments, I’d love to make a futile effort to put out the fires before the city in inevitably engulfed by fire. it doesn’t even have to give points or anything, I just like clicking the flames :)

bug: clicking “Exit Game” freezes the game on web.

superb submission overall!!

simply stellar! you had a great idea that fit the theme, and you executed it perfectly. the branching levels were really cool, I even backtracked at one point to try a different path when I was having trouble. I had a lot of fun with the bonus levels as well. level 12 had some tricky jumps, but I eventually figured it out and made it through.

to nitpick a bit: I think the divebomb homing angle was way too wide, as it sometimes sent me 45 degrees sideways, sometimes even into spikes. also, the spike hitboxes felt a few pixels too big — I would have appreciated a tiny bit more leniency for the bonus levels. lastly, I thought most of the writings on the walls were decent as unintrusive tutorialization and flavor, but in my opinion some of the positive affirmations seemed really awkward and out of place… that said, it didn’t really detract from the game, so no big deal.

overall awesome entry!

funky music and cool visuals! I absolutely dig the style here, and bouncing around feels satisfying.

the gameplay concept is really fun, I love the idea, but I found that it was a bit poorly balanced and it got quite repetitive. over the course of 25 waves it went from being too easy with no dangerous enemies at all, to six off-screen cannons that took shots while I was helplessly bouncing around trying to reach them.

there’s a bug where retrying doesn’t reset the waves or points, so I got to experience the later waves with a smaller arena — I think that was more interesting than spreading things out over a massive space… don’t get me wrong, I really like how the arena shifts in size and shape, but I think it got way too big beyond wave 20, as enemies spread out too thin and a lot of stuff ends up being off-screen.

also, I was expecting some kind of upgrade system since the description says “roguelike”. I think some active abilities to use while bouncing around would add a lot of depth to this concept.

overall good entry, just missing a bit of balancing and variation to make it great.

I liked the writing, it’s very somber yet somehow hopeful. the silence gives it a certain mood, though I think it’d be even moodier with a soundscape. the minimal 1-bit art fits well, but the transparency of things made it look a bit messy. I tried going outside the room for a while… is there really nothing for us out there? I think it’s cool how the whole thing loops back on itself — my conclusion is that we should try again, and keep growing!

thank you! that’s a great idea about changing colors, I’ll add it in the post-jam update :)

now THIS is my kind of jam! quick, ruthless, and absolutely hilarious. lovely art too!!

I was confused why the game ended, but I read the comments and figured it’s because of the queue length, it’s just not clear in the game. also, the timer doesn’t seem to do anything — I read it’s tied to the score, but I seemed to get 30 points regardless of time so idk. finally, it’d be nice with a quick way to try again after it’s over. once wasn’t enough!

anyway, that’s all beside the point — this is a stellar submission lmao

awesome Snake-like!! I like how hectic this was thanks to the Ikaruga-esque color changing. I was a bit disappointed when I realized I could brute-force every level thanks to the generous invincibility after taking damage — but after seeing the end screen results mocking me, I was motivated to play again and minimize the damage I took. in the end I had a blast! the boss was my favorite part.

slick minimal visuals with some nice flair, though the bullets are TINY and hard to see at times. the music is very fitting too, but it seemed weirdly panned to the left for some reason. (maybe something’s wrong with my headphones?)

I have one complaint about the controls: trying to do a tight U-turn often lead to a backtrack instead, and the timing was very hard to figure out as it depended on the current movement timing. waiting too long lead to a wider U-turn, but at least it was safer.

nitpicking aside, this is a really cool game with a fresh genre mashup, nice work!

the cult mood here is so good, everything comes together really well — great humorous writing, awesome 1-bit art, and a wild change of soundscape that sells the difference between each side of the operation. there were some lines through the text, which looked a bit weird, but other than that the entire presentation is superb.

the gameplay was interesting too, albeit lacking clarity and I had to stare at my numbers while clicking a choice to understand the consequences. after a while it felt a bit repetitive as the same choices kept appearing, and some choices seemed to have a “correct” answer that I just picked every time. hunger confused me a bit because it’s the only resource that’s supposed to be kept low — it makes sense when considering the resource name, but it’s weird that it’s opposite of the others. also, I think the pacing could be improved a bit by letting the transitions be skipped or fast-forwarded. I beat it on my second attempt, which felt reasonable.

overall great entry, only lacking some clarity and variation in choices.

I see, that makes sense about the “Def” UI — it’s a really confusing design decision though.

cool editor!!

thanks! I realize I made it way too obscure! in short, biting yourself creates a white circle that destroys red spikes.

thanks for playing! I would have loved to do a leaderboard, but alas.

I just checked out your VOD, it was very interesting to see how you played — that you avoided biting yourself, which is the main twist of the game (y’know, like the ouroboros). that’s my bad for not explaining things at all.

a couple of tips in case you do try again:

1. longer = hungrier, so bite off your tail to slow things down.
2. biting yourself creates a white circle that destroys red spikes.

I wanted the game to be a bit mysterious to encourage experimentation, but I realize it ended up being way too obscure, and I think most players miss out on the main gimmick of circling red spikes to score big combos.

I appreciate the feedback! do let me know if end up trying again :)

nice Gnorp-like! it’s quite satisfying to interact with the production line, and even more satisfying to build up an army of lil’ mush guys that restlessly slave away for the greater cause of growth. despite the chaos, the entire game has a smooth relaxed mood — the dreamy music is very fitting, and the pixel art is hilariously adorable.

to nitpick, I think buildings should start at max capacity 1 instead of 0, as it’s a bit disappointing to save up for an expensive building that doesn’t do anything before it’s upgraded. other than that, it’d be cool to see the houses stack up when built.

overall really awesome entry!

I agree it’s generally a good idea to make games too easy rather than too hard for jams, it’s just not my cup of tea. you intrigued me with the idea of a genocide run, so I gave it a try. it really emphasized how little variance there is in this game, as now it’s down from three abilities (charm, heal, attack) to two abilities (heal, attack). I don’t mind minimalistic designs, and I gotta say you do a lot with the few mechanics you have, but the balance is way off. it felt even easier on levels 1-3, but Poseidon got me on level 4 — it seemed nigh impossible, which was really cool! for the first time I was forced to use the terrain to my advantage, and actually think about my moves. I had to be strategic and careful, which is what I was initially missing. it took me three tries to finally kill everyone in level 4, and then came level 5 which was completely trivial… it was quite a let-down. in the end I spent most of the time tediously going through the motions without much thought (tbh I had to put on a podcast in the background to stay with it), but I did really enjoy level 4 for what it’s worth.

this time around I also noticed there’s terrain info at the bottom of the screen, I completely missed that the first time I played. there’s a bug though: flying units attacking grounded units on defensive terrain show “Def: 0” but still do -1 damage. grounded units attacking flying enemies on defensive terrain show “Def: 1” but still do full damage. I guess the logic (or UI) for defense on flying units is erroneously applied when they take damage instead of when they deal damage.

anyway, I hope I don’t sound too harsh, I know most jam comments focus on the positive aspects (which this game has plenty of) — but I’m here to give my honest feedback, and I’ll be blunt: beyond the awesome presentation, the gameplay is very simple and often tedious. if the entire game consisted of only level 4, I wouldn’t have any complaints. it felt way too long for what it is, even after just one playthrough, let alone two.

I only finished it once, I have too many jam games to play this week. I assume the dialogue would differ based on who sat on the throne at the end, is that what you mean by other endings or is there more to it?

the audiovisual presentation feels completely authentic, and the entire game is incredibly charming. the amount of polish and breadth is impressive — I think this is the longest jam game I’ve ever played, and in return you’ll get the longest jam comment you’ve ever seen. there were a handful of minor annoyances (see below), but overall this was quite enjoyable!

my only real complaint about the gameplay is that it’s way too easy, mainly because so many units have access to the powerful charm ability, and it really snowballs when you can charm enemies that also have the charm ability… not a single god (friend or foe) died during my playthrough, which was kinda wholesome. charm is a neat dual-use mechanic, both for healing and for convincing enemies that you’re cool. I love the little quips by charmed enemies. I just think it would be nice with more variation in abilities, instead of everyone having charm.

I made some notes while playing:

• there’s an inconsistency where pressing X to close the charmed dialogue also opens the menu, it was a bit annoying but I got in the habit of pressing X->Z after charming.

• when I got in the groove and started pressing buttons fast, I was meaning to select a unit and have it move up, but instead I pressed X->up->X on an empty tile and quit the game without warning. luckily it happened early on the second level, and I was careful not to do it again.

• I found it a bit weird that I had to skip a bunch of turns while holding the temple after clearing the second level. I get that it was the objective to hold it, but when everyone is on my team, what am I waiting for?

• it’d be nice to see countdowns for levels 2 and especially 4, to know how many turns are left.

• I almost lost a god towards the end of level 4. it was actually a bit tense for a turn or two, that was the highlight of my playthrough :)

• Heracles has a really long dialogue about “the twelve labours” on level 4 that exceeds the dialogue box. same with Zeus’ charmed dialogue on the last level.

• I like how not everything is explained, like different tile types affecting gameplay, and I enjoyed figuring that stuff out.

• pressing “skip turn” on the win screen gives a dialogue about losing.

• I wish I could adjust the volume after starting the game.

…

overall great entry, you went really hard on the NES focus and it paid off!

the audiovisual presentation feels really authentic, even down to the screen transitions and jingles. the music is lovely and the visuals are very charming. overall it’s a cool package, I like how there are multiple games in one, but 2 is a weird number. I wonder if you aspired to have more games, but I guess you didn’t have time for any more.

Hanging Gardens — fun concept, a single-screen puzzle-platformer with a mechanically interesting implementation of growing plants. however, I found the gameplay to be lacking, mainly due to how the enemies work. their timing seems entirely random and unpredictable, leading to some unfair deaths. crickets can suddenly jump while you’re jumping above them, and dogs change direction without warning. sometimes the crickets even double-jump, is that intended?? I got to level 7. in the end I didn’t enjoy this much, as the wonky jump physics, unforgiving hitboxes, and annoying enemies brought the experience down. I mean, there’s a charm to wonky mechanics, and I enjoy trying to master them… but in this case it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

Tower of Babel — neat word-puzzler that started out very easy, and I cleared a lot of levels without realizing that words had to be real words. the challenge picked up after a handful of levels, and I had fun racking my brain on the later levels. I got completely stuck on some though, and I’d appreciate a quick way to exit a level to try a different one, but it’s a minor complaint. this was a really clever game!

bug report: in menus, the controller joystick seems to input a direction every frame when held, making it quite unusable. d-pad and keyboard works fine so no big deal.

(note: I copypasted this comment between your submission pages for GWJ and 8BJ)

the audiovisual presentation feels really authentic, even down to the screen transitions and jingles. the music is lovely and the visuals are very charming. overall it’s a cool package, I like how there are multiple games in one, but 2 is a weird number. I wonder if you aspired to have more games, but I guess you didn’t have time for any more.

Hanging Gardens — fun concept, a single-screen puzzle-platformer with a mechanically interesting implementation of growing plants. however, I found the gameplay to be lacking, mainly due to how the enemies work. their timing seems entirely random and unpredictable, leading to some unfair deaths. crickets can suddenly jump while you’re jumping above them, and dogs change direction without warning. sometimes the crickets even double-jump, is that intended?? I got to level 7. in the end I didn’t enjoy this much, as the wonky jump physics, unforgiving hitboxes, and annoying enemies brought the experience down. I mean, there’s a charm to wonky mechanics, and I enjoy trying to master them… but in this case it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

Tower of Babel — neat word-puzzler that started out very easy, and I cleared a lot of levels without realizing that words had to be real words. the challenge picked up after a handful of levels, and I had fun racking my brain on the later levels. I got completely stuck on some though, and I’d appreciate a quick way to exit a level to try a different one, but it’s a minor complaint. this was a really clever game!

bug report: in menus, the controller joystick seems to input a direction every frame when held, making it quite unusable. d-pad and keyboard works fine so no big deal.

(note: I copypasted this comment between your submission pages for GWJ and 8BJ)

incredible concept, and pretty solid execution! it feels like Snake + Tron + TLoZ. I found very punishing to start over from the beginning after a single mistake, especially if that mistake being in the wrong spot as a round guy rolls onto my head from the side… but that edge case aside, after finishing it and seeing how short it actually is, I get why you made it so punishing. I’d love to see more of this!

the entire presentation is delightfully hilarious. I love how the car rattles around as trees disappear behind the ever-growing monster that’s apparently bopping along to the music — oh, the music~ … please provide a download link for the soundtrack, I want “du-du-du-du-du-dututu” as my ringtone!

when it comes to the gameplay, there’s not much too it, just spam click and occasionally buy whatever is affordable in the shop. I think the shop button could use some clarity, as it’s currently hidden away in the corner and it took me a bit to realize it was there. and I think it should either pause the game, or display the countdown so it’s clear that it’s not paused.

overall this is an awesome vibe, only held back by the simplistic gameplay. great job!!

what a trip. wild visuals, dreamy music, and fabulous mouth noises. the gameplay is slow paced, but it’s a nice contemplative mood. I can’t believe you got The Rock to star in this. his resolution is so high I can literally count the hair follicles on his bald head. the game lags whenever he’s on the screen. it’s perfect :’)

bug report: hitting ESC freezes/crashes the game (using Firefox on Windows)

the visuals are fantastic and the music is SUPERB. the jam theme/wildcard splash screen intro thing is really cool too. maybe I missed something, but I grew like 20 plants and nothing seemed to happen. I loved the mood though!

hahahah realism, brilliant response!! I’ll try your tip about walking around the wall, thanks!

the look-ahead was actually kinda nice! what I mean about the stiffness is that the camera feels rigidly attached to the “car”, so every little movement directly affects the camera. I think it would feel better with some sort of camera interpolation or acceleration. it’s a bit hard to notice in games like F-Zero X/GX as they are very tightly tuned, but try to notice how the vehicle isn’t perfectly tracked during turns, when boosting, or after being slammed — they have a decoupled camera following the vehicle, not directly attached to it.

stellar audiovisual aesthetics, I really love the gritty mood! the mechanics are intriguing too — the chaos of vines growing ever closer while I futilely chop away at the leaves, it’s quite enchanting, even satisfying. I thought it was a bit weird that the attack direction is based on movement, not mouse aim, but I got used to it. vines kept growing between my invincible barriers, it was hard to gauge the collision boxes so I guess I kept placing them too far apart. it seemed entirely impossible to survive after a handful of seasons, but that kind of inevitability is very welcome imo. awesome entry!!

the whole sequence of growing from an acorn into an eyestalk into a one-eyed sheep-devourer was inspirational. it has the energy of a nostalgic desktop pet. I wonder how it would grow further, given the chance, if there was time. overall really fun entry!

thanks for playing, I really appreciate the feedback!

like I mentioned when we talked earlier, I wanted to keep things vague to encourage exploration, and I thought “ouroboros” was enough of a hint for the circling … but I now realize it’s too obscure for a jam game like this. I’ve updated the game page to be more explicit about the circling, and I’ll add a GIF to show it off tomorrow. thanks again!!

(PS: nice score! the key is to go for big circle combos~)

it took a while before the pace picked up, and I think the game was too easy even when there were a lot of flies. imo, spamming fireball is too strong, dodging the fly shots is too easy, health is too plentiful, and there’s not enough variation. I quit when I got past 300 stars to avoid repetitive strain injury from spamming the fireball hahaha!

it’s an interesting idea to choose your own upgrades by combining beans, it would be cool to see more combinations, but alas time is limited. delaying the reward felt novel, but I was a bit let down that there was only one stage of growth — there was no choice around the harvesting, like waiting longer before harvesting to make it more powerful or something like that… y’know, risk versus reward.

the music is awesome, very fitting! visually, the pixel size is very inconsistent, and it doesn’t feel very cohesive. but I love the little animation for the plant face :)

overall not bad for your first jam in only 4 days! I like the ideas but the execution is not quite there yet. keep growing!