itch.io

The tutorial doesn't show up for me anymore after the first try. I read the entire thing carefully, thought it was a bit much with the terminology I hadn't seen before. Started my game, aaaand still did not have much of a clue what I was doing. :D

Gave it another 3 tries, still don't quite understand what I'm doing. I end up finding myself clicking all the buttons that are on the screen - I understand I can discard what I have in my hand. I understand I can draw new cards from the bottom right and I understand that I can draw an event from the top right. 
What I can't figure out is what I'm supposed to do with the cards I have in my hand, which ones I can place on the board and how I'm supposed to interact with them with the cards I have on hand once I have managed to put something on board. 

So all that added up, I think it'd be good to have some sort of visual indicator on the board as to which card can go where, potentially with color, potentially with a placeholder frame, potentially just with text. Also it'd be nice to look back on the instructions/tutorial if needed.

Our game is complex as well and with less of a tutorial (only in writing on the itch page) so I've really tried my best, more than once. But I couldn't quite progress any further to a point where I'm not randomly clicking everything that's on the screen hoping for something to happen. 

Loved the music, loved the menu with the sliders for the sound right from the getgo and loved to zoom mechanic, because my poor eyes definitely need it in pretty much every game.

Thanks for your submission!

It's tooo haaaaard! Hahaha :D I'm a terrible gamer, honestly. Don't take my word for it. I was dying on average once every 0.5 seconds on the second level with the watching eyes. It was like a drum machine of death sounds. 

I love the intro, the music and the story. Personally I liked it more than the actual game, but understand full well that.. well then it'd just be a story, right? :D The art is really nice, the mechanics were smooth, it looked amazing. So all positives apart from my personal experience that I just suck at the game.

I did notice 1 thing, accidentally - the music stops when you drag the page down by clicking the middle mouse button. (my scroll wheel is broken so this is how I go about.. it'll likely go unnoticed otherwise)

Well done, thanks for your submission! 

Go camp hexagon! Thanks for the words mbalrog6!

Hey Andreyt! Thank you for trying our game and leaving a comment. Glad to have been able to surprise you!

This is quite brilliant. 30 seconds mad dash to try and get the highest score possible. I love it! 

Not much to say really, very enjoyable, just racing against the clock to get as high as you can. No strings attached. Shoot 'm up!

Would've loved to see a highscore chart to compete with others. But I'm a huge highscore fan and I'm just a little crazy like that.. Doesn't add much to the game other than some competitiveness.

Thank you for your submission, I've thoroughly enjoyed it!

I like this kind of game. Flappy bird/helicopter game. Simple, nice and straight forward.

One thing that I struggled to accept was the hitbox. It was very very hard to avoid taking damage at level 2 and at level 3 it felt much like pinball :D

I initially thought I'd be training my ghost to become something better. I was attracted by that at first. It's a shame nothing was done with that initial idea. (You still could!)

Thanks for taking me back through memory lane with your submission!

I must know.. What is the goal? To get a high score by killing flies or to get the boss hp to 0? It it is the latter, how do I go about doing this?

I got to 29 and it was not easy at all! The aiming is really tricky, would've loved to be able to control aim with the mouse. But surely that'd make it an entirely different game/experience.

Thank you for taking me back to the starcraft 1 feel and congratulations on your submission! :D

Uff haha, that's really hard! 

I managed to get to 10! I'd recommend a little less souls and an increased attack speed to begin with. That'll go long way I'm sure.

Then maybe some powerups would be a cool addition and I think the size of the firedot can be increased so that it's a bit more present.

That said though - looks very clean. It all seems to work as intended and it's an enjoyable experience. I think if I'd challenge myself I could get up to 15??

Thank you for sharing!

Yeehuu "You made it!"

Well done there! Doable for a terrible gamer like myself, not overly complex. Easy to understand, yet enjoyable and smooth gameplay. Fell down a couple of times, got lucky a couple of times... Made it to the end in the first go.

I particularly liked the fact that it was not super easy to time the shots against the ghosts in combination with your jumps as they were strategically placed not at the very top and not at the very bottom.

Also read that you've created this on the backfoot of your first course and all by yourself! That's commendable, very nicely done. Congratulations!

But you learned? :D How far did you get?

Thank you for your comment!

Hey Ryan! Thank you for your extensive comment and all the valuable feedback you've included. 
The game is challenging as is, even for us. So there might be some ground to be gained in terms of balance. At the same time we thought, well "we're generally terrible.. surely other people will be able to come up with much better strategies than us, right?". 

Well, turns out that the first step in enabling others to do so would be to explain a bit more how it works. The itch page itself contains most of the explanation so theoretically you could get up to speed there, but it'd still take a couple runs undoubtedly. Tooltips and tutorial to be added, I completely agree.

There is a way to win! The last wave is wave 25, if you beat that then you win. But I'll be honest with you, only Lewl has managed to do so. Myself I've not gotten past wave 14 or so. 
The map should expand with 1 ring every 2 waves. And as you rightfully stated, when the zombie reaches the end a necromancer spawns. If the necromancer reaches the end then you've lost. That would be the concept that relates to the theme, where the death of the zombie is the beginning of the necromancer.

All that said and done, thanks again for your extensive response to our creation, much much appreciated!

Thanks for the feedback bjorvack. We've tried our best to make the icons resemble the buildings in a way, however I can completely understand that that itself only starts to make sense after you're familiar with the buildings.  Anyone that is not yet familiar would need to be brought up to speed with some help info/tooltips. 

Appreciate you stuck with it in order for it to make some sense though! :D

Hey Seth! Thank you for your comment. What level did you play on which difficulty setting? And how far did you get?

Hey Stealthyshiroean, thank you for your comment, it is much appreciated! 

Very glad to hear you've enjoyed the general idea of the game. I'd say we're quite pleased with the general concept/potential and  the puzzle idea as well. Evidently, and that is confirmed in the feedback, some clarifications as to how the game should be played and what the goal is would be a welcome addition.

Yeeee! I love highscores in a game! I'd have loved to have a highscore ranking in our game, but time didn't allow for us to get to it. Unfortunately.

Needless to say I had to keep trying until I had the highscore :D

Very enjoyable. I started to feel a bit like an idiot for not being able to remember the location of the symbols in the underworld. Literally every time I picked up a new one I had to look where to put it instead of being able to memorize it.. But that's me being dumb, nothing on you.

The shaking when stuff was being hit in overworld was a bit much for me, could've been toned down a bit. Have you managed to reach the last wave? It gets really hard when you have zombies that are spawning out of sync of one another. (If you can manage to keep them in sync then you can go on for quite a bit - but with humans spawning as well, by the boatload at later stages, this becomes very tricky!

Nice one, thank you for your submission. I very much enjoyed it.

Thank you for your reply! I have watched the video and you do make it seem a bit easier than it felt like for me! (although 75% of the video is level 1/2, so technically I did.. you know, complete 75%?). 

Even more so than in my own run through I realize that it is not about the game, it's all about the memory and the story. I do sincerely hope that it has helped you in your process. It's a beautiful reflection of your emotions.

All the best to you Ryan, thanks for sharing.

Oddly satisfying and seriously macabre at the same time!

I think I did pretty good. I got up until rafts and then it said "nothing more to say, take care". Not quite sure how you'd do it, but maybe it should have to be a bit more difficult in one way or another..

All in all a very enjoyable game, very creative take on the subject and never would've come up with such an implementation myself. It's amazing to see what people can come up with!

I would've liked to see the corpses change as they go through various stages of "being processed" I think an indicator as to where to click would be a great addition too. Basically highlighting the edges of whatever it is that you want to pick up/drop off at when you hover over it/select it.

Job well done I'd say! Thank you for your submission and sharing your creativity with everyone.

I'm very conflicted in my comment here, but honesty goes a long way and I wouldn't want to withhold either of the 2 parts from you.

First and foremost, I think it's very commendable what you've done here. Essentially devoting your efforts to your late sister. The emotional attachment is noticeable as the story really comes through. I can see that there is a lot of you, your person, your life and your love in the game. Thank you for sharing your emotions, I can't imagine it'd have been easy.

Then regarding the game I have got to say that it was very, very frustrating for me! I could not get past a single group of black hands without touching them, not once! And after I finally reached the second level.. I couldn't get past a single jump without falling down, not once! 

Now as with most games, it's hard to tell whether I'm doing something wrong, whether this is intentional or if it is not. But I could not see myself push through another 3 stories having to fall all the way back down every time because I'm simply bad at the game.. And I'm sorry for that, because in a way I'm very sure that it deserves a full run through.

Your submission as well as your bravery in terms of putting yourself and your emotions on display like you've done are, as I already said, commendable. Thank you for your submission! 

Niceee! It's the second game that I see using the mechanic of leaving behind a corpse when dying that you can then use to progress in the game. It's very clever! (The other game that had it was called Inferno, it was in 3d though).

Very enjoyable. I think I was off to a good start and more or less understood what the goal was. Smooth sailing... And then there was a level with 10 helicopter platforms!? I mean.. :D 

I was not able to complete that level. It felt like quite a severe increase in difficulty all of the sudden. 

I laughed a lot because of the line "that's a smart way to destory those boxes" - I don't know if it was intentional, but it's a good pun! 

Thanks for your creation, inspirational! 

Going by the fact that you've managed to complete this in just 2 days - by yourself - I have to say I'm very impressed.

That said though, this doesn't quite feel like my kind of game. I wonder what ideas you have in your mind that you did not have time for to implement, because it is an original take on pinball for sure. Why it is not "my kind of game"? I think it's mainly due to the fact that it's a quick reactive game and it all goes way too fast for me. The bright colors don't make it any easier for me personally.

In any case, thanks for your submission. Really cool to see what some individuals can get done in just a matter of 2 days. Hope I'll ever be able to reach a similar level of efficiency. Congratulations! :)

The very first thing I noticed was that you submitted 6 days before the deadline! Wonder what you could've done with all that extra time!

I enjoyed a decent runthrough! I particularly liked the fact that the enemies did not chase me to death, they have just a small aggro radius, which feels pretty spot on.

I died because I had to drop down and fell into something that I couldn't even see to begin with.. 3 times on the same spot haha :D I'd have liked to know what I should've done different. Maybe a small delay of 1/2 seconds after dying to show the screen and give the player the opportunity to see what it was that killed them would solve it already?

mann 6 days before the deadline!! Imagine. Thank you for your submission! 

I'm not entirely sure if this is good or not... But I got 2924! I beat the first level on the first try! And I'm genuinely terrible at reaction games haha.

I had not touched pinball for a very long time, brought back some memories. I believe I last played a pinball game around the time I played the winter olympics 2000 game on pc. 

It was very difficult for me to see what was going on, more so in the 2nd map than in the 1st one, mainly because it was very light and my eyes are pretty poor.

Everything seemed to work well, bouncy balls worked fine, flippers worked fine, speed seemed good, everything felt realistic. Could even hold the release longer for a stronger release and even tilt did what it's supposed to do (I did get stuck once :D)

So all in all, thank you for your submission and bringing back my memories of pinball!

Aaaah, there we go. Okay, so the problem was that in my first 5 attempts I was not able to complete the very 1st level.. And in the very first level there are simply no buildings to be built! Ha!

Reason I was not able to beat the level is because I did not understand that my fireballs were actually hitting things as they seemed to randomly evaporate at various different stages of their lifetime.

Managed to get a few levels further this time around until I got beat by a ghost thingy.. boo :D

Thank you for taking the time to explain the predicament and allowing me to take in the full experience. Well done stealthyshoroean! :)

Had me laughing on multiple occasions! That alone makes it worthwhile and I thank you for your submission!

I saw the flying cow in the opening scene before clicking ahead and reading the explanation, I thought it was hilarious! And most notably at the end when you left me with a moderate level of niceness and I got a bunch of cutesy dog pictures, ha! :D

I think you did really well, the opening scene looks stunning. The story is nice and easy to grasp, little bits of humor in the game top it off nicely for me. Very enjoyable.

The angry house was difficult to manage until I remembered I could go faster with shift. I'd have enjoyed a few more levels, but that's also a compliment on it's own I guess. :D

Well done!

Hey there! I'll enjoy me a racing game don't mind if I do! 

It feels very nicely put together, the menu is done very nicely, with sliders for the volumes and all the buttons fully working like they should. 

"Go touch grass" made me chuckle.. :D

2 things that I could point out that felt a bit off were that there was a sound queue when passing by a barrier nearly every time (the very same sound queue when picking up a soul). If it's intended then maybe a slightly different sound queue would be nice. And secondly I felt like I got hit by barriers on a few occasions where I shouldn't have been, if I were to guess it's probably just because I'm bad but it felt like the control input could use a minor delay or so (yesyes.. just press the button a bit later, I hear you :D)

Thanks for your submission, I've enjoyed it!

That was super enjoyable! The dialogue was hilarious. Reminded me a little bit of Douglas Adams writing style. (And I love his writing!)

The third? fourth? level was definitely the most challenging - the one where you have to jump up a couple times first while collecting a blue and purple crystal. Maybe that should've been the final level. The rest was pretty doable. I really enjoyed the mechanic of "hidden" rooms/gems. Reminded me of Wario 3, which I played quite a bit on my gameboy back in the 00's :D

If I were to give you some feedback it would be to definitely maintain the dialogue. I didn't care too much for the crystals and the specials, it's mostly in the dialogue, finding the hidden souls in the secret rooms and opening the portal to advance. Maybe up the soul requirement for the portals to open so that you're forced to grab more of the souls. 

And maybe (going by the wario 3 analogy from before), set extra portals in a level that you can only open with more souls and would require you to go back to previous levels after gathering more! But that's a whole other development path surely.

Thank you for a very pleasant experience! I'd read books of the writer if they-d have any. 

Hey there! Nice work man, I read this is your first Jam and you did this all by yourself. You can be proud!

When I started the game and the beat dropped I was instantly bobbing my head *dududu dudu dudu* :D. After a few tries I was looking for a mute button though, not too big a deal.

I read the instructions before playing for once.. So I read that I had to left click to build stuff and press space to shoot.. and WD to move up down.
WD to move up down works really really smooth!
Space to shoot seems unreliable, not sure if intended or not but the range of the bolt varies greatly.
And I think the most concerning part was that I could not build anything! I'm clicking left right and center (probably in the wrong place eh?) but I have not managed to set up a building.

Needless to say, my fireballs could not keep up with the invading horde and I died, in all attempts in pretty much the same way :D

Let me know if I missed anything, I'll gladly give it another few goes with some buildings to assist my dark magic!

Congrats on your entry!

edit: After reading the comments, clearly I'm the only one that has not been able to figure out how to build anything.. But please do tell as I tried again just now and I just don't see it :D

That's.. Wow. That really hits you! The artwork is beautiful, the story very relatable. It really takes you on the journey that is the story of the game, you get pulled in. 

I was surprised it ended as soon as it did and I thought the little puzzles were quite easy - but I understand full well that, that is not the main purpose of the game.

What I really missed was sound/music. I see the comment below me stating that the music was really nice so I must be silly, but there was no sound for me. The options menu also appeared empty (I did look for sound!), even unplugged my headphones and all.. Not sure what's up :D

Thanks for your submission and inspiration as to what a game can also look like!

Yeeee! That was super enjoyable. Every time I came across a new obstacle I felt smart because I knew what to do-ish. Maybe that makes it a bit too easy? 

After my first attempt (in which I was consumed by my own sanity..) my strategy was to not kill anyone. Just run around to avoid hits and let myself get killed by what I needed. That worked extremely well and kind of made the fighting mechanic redundant in a way. I'd play around with that a little so that you may need to actually use the fighting mechanic a bit as well.

I had absolutely no clue that E was a Key until my second run where the gate told me I needed E. :D

Great job, especially considering you've done this on your own, did not have the weekdays and you're just starting out. Really impressive!

The barriers being destructible caught me off guard haha, I may or may not have been spawncamping the crate whilst hiding behind barriers :D

2nd entry I come across that "multiplies" the enemy when you kill it - considering the goal is to reach the highest score.. The only strategy is to kill enemies and deal with the consequences.

It may very well be completely intended, but I think a goal that is not in direct conflict with the mechanics of the game would serve nicely. Something along the lines of "reach point B" or "Gather as many crates as possible", while keeping the multiply mechanics in place. 

In any case, thanks for your submission and thank you for the feedback on our game!

Nice! That's a decent result for a first few runs or so. (My favorite map too!)

It is true that you don't get resources from killing enemies! There is a harvester tower which collects resources for you over time! It is the building on the top left that looks like a coffin. You definitely need to build one of those, otherwise.. Yeah. You don't get resources like you said :D

Thanks for the feedback!

Nice! Thanks for letting me know, I'll be giving it a proper attempt when I can find a little pocket of time today and share my thoughts with you here afterwards :)

Oh man.. I had an entire week of vacation to prepare our game and I was exhausted by the end of it.. Then I had to come back to work again.. "back to the real world", unfortunately haha! 

I did indeed notice the strat, I thought I was super smart too! Until I got my ass kicked. Like I said, I didn't quite get all the mechanics/tricks/options. I'll try to sneak in another attempt throughout the day to see if I understand it a bit better this time around and maybe can find another viable strategy! 

You stating that it could potentially be intentional makes me want to try again! What did I miss!? AaaaAAh :D 

Really really lovely work! I want to give other submissions a look as well so time is limited, but this is definitely one to come back to! You can be very, very proud!

My apologies if my feedback is not clear. So I've played again just to try and explain you. (I see the fullscreen button now though, that's great!)
In the image below you can see that I passed the first obstacle #proud. Now maybe I just don't understand what to do.. But when I walk to the right of the frame here, the view does not change. The character simply walks out of the screen and I die at some point, presumably because there is another obstacle.. But I can't see it as the view remains exacly as you see it (apart from the character walking out of screen).

Is it any different from you, when you play it directly in the browser here in itch.io?

Thanks for your feedback Ali Yagmur! Which map did you play, on what difficulty and what wave did you manage to reach?

Thank you for playing our game and your feedback! 

That makes 2 of us! I still don't know how to win the game, I think I managed to get to level 6 on easy mode on the "horizontal" map. Uff. Surely some elite gamer will finish it though, right!? Let's see. Some ingame explanations would serve well, agreed. Thank you!

As for the maps, we kind of made all the maps at once before testing them. When we got to testing we realized that some of them were quite stale at the start with a very white center. In the end this results in those maps being a little easier at the start (but also quite challenging at the later stages). 

Glad you've pulled through, managed to grasp the concept and leave some valuable feedback here. Thanks again!

Thank you for our game and your feedback Don Tnowe!

I think we're very much in agreement about the learning curve being quite steep and the benefit of having a little more explanation in the game itself. On top of that the game is quite challenging, you definitely need a handful of attempts before you get the hang of it, which in a Jam with 900 games might turn some people off. But thanks for sticking through and providing some useful, much needed feedback!

We were aware of the cheesy workaround you mention! I don't quite recall if it was implemented intentionally like that in the first place, but I do know that we kept it in intentionally as to add a little more "puzzle" to the game and provide opportunity to try different strategies and make building placement one of the most vital aspects of the game.

What would you have done differently to balance the game out more? 

Thank you for playing our game and leaving a comment, it is much appreciated!

Thank you! The intention was to make it quite puzzly indeed, I think we've achieved that, especially on the early stages. (maybe overdone it a bit ha!)