itch.io

Sadly, no. I planned to participate and even cleared the time, but then the town where I live got hit by two consecutive heat waves -- my brain basically melted down on Friday and didn't fully recover until Sunday, when it was too late to start from scratch. My participation mostly boiled down to rating other folks' games this time around. :-) Here is hoping that GMTK Jam 2022 will take place at a later date, when the weather over here isn't so extreme...

You know, if you do make a full game based around those characters, I'd play it. Though I am guessing that if you are tired of RPGM, it won't be until you learn a new engine... ^^;

Hey xdan, you didn't think I wouldn't comment on this installment, did you? :3

First of all, I felt this one was somehow... smaller than the previous two? It's not necessarily bad, it just felt like a "bottle episode", with only two of your regulars in the spotlight and rooms that are essentially shooting ranges to clear, rather than dungeons to explore. Also, there was much less variety in the environments themselves, wasn't there? The dialogue is still top-notch, though, I really enjoyed the banter. :-) Also, I was dreading the Return of the Positive-Negative Charge Puzzle, but it never came -- talk about subverting fan expectations. XD

Ah, OK, that adds an interesting twist to the gameplay, but it should have been communicated better. The main menu only says "LMouse = shoot" and the windup animation doesn't start up until half a second after you hold down the LMB, so it was really intransparent. Just changing the instruction to "LMouse = shoot (hold to charge)" would fix that.

Anyhow, the game is cute, and has unusual visuals, but it could use some more sounds, especially some cues for when you successfully match 2+ people, miss a shot, or hit a single person, since these things can happen off-screen, leaving you without any feedback. Also, I found the mechanic where the arrow bounces off walls very weird -- it has little gameplay purpose that I've seen, but breaks the "Cupid's arrow" metaphor, since arrows just don't ricochet like that IRL. Lastly, what do the heartbroken blue NPCs do? Just wander around until they disappear, or can they damage the couples you've already brought together?

No, there isn't anything inherently wrong with platformers, I just think that the genre is overused as the "default template", so to speak, whenever a game developer wants to tell a story. It's like Mario has made everyone believe that every aspect of human condition can be expressed with timed jumps. :-) ...which is not a criticism of you or your game, just a general video game culture observation and a pet peeve of mine.

I think just giving the player some indication of how close they are to escaping would alleviate most of my frustration. Just, I dunno, make the background lighter the closer you get to the finish, or add a message like ("You were X meters away from escaping...") when the bat dies...

This game is insane in the best possible sense of this word. XD

A neat little puzzle game. I especially appreciate the level select feature, though I don't feel like level 6 was a "final exam", so to speak. I think this could definitely use more levels to explore. :-)

Had to play this on my own due to quarantine, but eventually figured out the controls. I think it can be quite fun for two people, balancing the competitive and cooperative elements of the game, but it's hard to appreciate when you are trying to steer two logs at the same time. XD

Not much to say about the gameplay, but the fact that the game tells a coherent narrative from start to end and unterpins it (somewhat) with its mechanics is worth praising.

Awesome work -- that's really all I can say about this.

A cute game, though I couldn't finish it due to it hanging up after the first zebra crossing level... A little nitpick is that some of the levels with pedestrians are nearly impossible to beat on the first try because you have no warning which lane they will be coming from, making memorizing their routes necessary, which I don't consider the best of gameplay.

This is quite a treat -- I am amazed that you managed to implement so many genre combinations within the time limit. I don't think the game needs a lives system, though, since it's core appeal is the exploration of genre combos. I think it would work much better if you just kept the game randomly matching genres until the player cleared all combos at least once, then opened up a free genre select.

I am not a fan of wonky controls, but this game will certainly have its audience. Not much to say here, except that I felt that luck contributed much more to my survival time than anything I did...

I couldn't really experience the game properly without a human opponent (pandemic, you know), but I am not sure it would be fun even in multiplayer? My fear is that it would just boil down to a contest who can button-mash faster. While I can see some strategic element to this, with players engaging in mind games to make the other do what they want, I don't think it will work with real-time inputs. Maybe with some obstacles in on the field and players having to make their inputs in turns?

A very cool idea, though I found the jumping-off-blobs mechanic a bit wonky: the first couple times I tried that, I missed the other blob by a few pixels and didn't connect, concluding that this wasn't possible. Only after reading the comments here did I realize what the idea was.

A neat little puzzle game. I feel like I have seen similar ideas in the last two jams, but it fits the current theme perfectly, so I have no problem with that. Special kudos for a smooth difficulty ramp-up and easy level resets -- the progression was the smoothest I've seen in this jam. Would like to play more levels of this.

A pretty cool concept, if raw execution. I feel that you could have done more with the whole size-and-weight-changing mechanic, but as it stands, this is a solid proof of concept.

Now, here is a game I will probably play again for a long time after the jam is over.

OK, so the art and animation are gorgeous, and the idea fits the jam, but I had no idea where I was supposed to go. I am guessing, up? I kept running into dead ends and breaking the egg, and because I had no idea whether I came closer to the goal on this run, it got too frustrating and I never finished it.

How do I shoot? I aim in the direction of two NPCs and press the left mouse button, but nothing happens.

OK, that was pretty fun, although I must admit that I failed to memorize which locks correspond to which season -- I think in a full game, you should maybe start with just two hearts/seasons and expand from there for a smoother progression. I wanted to add that the tune is pretty catchy, too, but it seems you haven't made it yourself (?), so no points for that. :P

Pretty good for a first attempt at game-making, though you should definitely add automatic level reset if one of the boxes dies. Also, while the controls are pretty responsive, the collision detection is either wonky, or the red boxes have a much bigger kill box than is visible, making jumping over them a blind leap of faith at first.

An interesting idea, but the controls are finicky and require splitting attention between essentially two games. I can imagine it working better as a coop (one player navigates the maze, the other keeps them alive).

An interesting concept and fits the theme well, but the controls are very wonky, so I beat the last few levels by space-mashing, before giving up on the one with three shadows. Also, I see what you were doing with the narrative theme of emotional baggage and personal shadows, but I am not sure a platformer is the best genre to tell that story in...

Best game I've rated in this jam so far. Really nice execution and art, an original idea that fits the jam well, and special kudos for making an actual ending cutscene -- that was a great touch. 10/10 would play a full game based around the concept of two robot buddies.

Sorry, doesn't run in either Firefox or Opera on my end, either.

This is a very cool gameplay idea and I would love to play a full game based on it, but for the love of God, please add some checkpoints to your levels if you insist on having insta-death spikes in them. After 20 attempts at clearing level 2, I gave up because running up to the moving lamp (where I always messed up and died) was just too boring to continue.

Welp, it didn't automatically restart for me after a game-over... In any case, while I see how this year's jam theme is expressed in the joining of the two sword-launchers, I feel that the fact it is always rotating makes it a better fit for the last year's Out Of Control.

Also, I would be worried about getting a C&D from Nintendo's lawyers. ;-)

This was a neat little game, even though I got stuck at level 5 on my first run because the character de-spawned -- I think it had something to do with trying to jump just as he was spawning in after dying. Anyhow, the idea of coupling two controls is not the most original, but you got the most gameplay out of it (and the fact that you cannot stop running unless against the wall harkens back to the last year's jam theme IMO). One little nitpick I had was that the first level is IMO harder than levels two and three because the latter both have "safe parking spots", while the first doesn't, which makes the difficulty curve dip somewhat. In terms of progression, I'd place level 1 after 2 or even after 3.

Checkpoints are an obvious solution, but it would be more fun to instead have to use the same mechanics to get back onto the track after falling off. Maybe instead of just resetting your position, there could be another, continuous track down below that you could use to backtrack a little, then jump back onto the main track?

The concept is cool, but the game could really use some kind of a recovery mechanic beyond "go all the way back to start". Right now, this is less of a game with a multidimensional possibility space and more of a puzzle to guess the One True Sequence of Timed Button Presses.

Thank you!

For your first game, it was pretty well-done, and you have good gameplay ideas. :-) Regarding sword capture, it wasn't very clear to me when the second enemy (the first that can actually capture it) was "countering", so I was under the impression that the sword got captured automatically if it stayed near an enemy for too long.

Yes, I wanted to try my hand at asymmetric gameplay for a while now, and I'm happy that the result was a success. ^^

Welp, I didn't have any artistic talent, so I had to put everything into polishing the gameplay. ^^

This game is great, the first one in this jam that I gave full marks to. :D The controls take a while to get used to, but until you get the hang of it, lots of laughs are had. My only nitpick would be that I'd like to be able to restart the level with R at any point, rather than only when I yeet out of bounds.