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There is this really beautiful alignment between theme and mechanic here where I'd get one response wrong and I start worrying about whether or not I'm going to be able to get through the conversation at all and I start having anxiety about saying the right thing and I start second guessing all my choices and even the ones that I'm sure about I have to pause and think "is that right?"

I will say that I did get confused at first about how to produce the new symbols on the second conversation. I actually thought I'd get different answers based on whether I was using WASD, the arrow keys, or my mouse. Its hard to say what the right choice is because on the one hand I think spelling it out too much would kinda take away some of the mystery. Maybe having like a mirror or something that you could optionally practice with could work. Maybe I'm just an idiot. Maybe having to struggle to figure it out is the way to sell the idea.

I went through the book playbooks and tried to broadly categorize the different abilities to see what commonalities they shared to understand how those ones were written and to give me a better idea of what trends mine might adhere to. I wanted to keep my playbooks in line, somewhat, with those of the base book. So some things that I pulled out and again some of these are incredibly broad or vague and do not belie the actual intricacies are; all 7 have an ability for expending special armour to protect against a consequence or to push yourself, 6 of the 7 had what I refer to as a super ability which is often depicted in the book as being able to do beyond what normal people are capable of (ex. the Hound's sniper ability or the Lurk's Ghost Veil ability) and most of those had options tacked onto how you can use it or how you can spend extra stress to enhance it, 5 out of the 7 had abilities that interact with ghosts or the ghost field, 4 out of 7 had a gather information ability, 4 out of 7 had a downtime ability, and 5 out of the 7 had two or more abilities that granted bonuses to the two skills they had built in bonuses for. So those are a few factors you could look at for your own playbooks. I used them to get ideas for where I could round out my playbooks and I found it helpful. I was surprised at the fact that there was only 1 playbook with a new xp trigger but I have seen that in a few playbooks on this jam, so clearly there are plenty of places where creators can diverge from the book. I think its a starting place but it is by no means comprehensive or prescriptive.

I feel bad about sniping this all in one go but it's Terminator, Alien,  Jurassic Park, ET, Die Hard, and Titanic which should be the both the last one in the image and the last one made. I love the pixel art movies. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

This is very clearly an unfinished game but I think that there are things to like here. You've built an interesting aesthetic between the visuals and the music. In particular I think that the water looks fantastic. I love some of the dialogue of the pirates and the idea of them asking you random questions for you to ensure your safety. They do seem a bit too random but the ones about sea navigation and the like seem pretty on point, and a lot of them delve hard into what I would consider to be pretty obscure or uncommon knowledge. It seems like you really pushed yourself to finish this and in the end it is a perfectly functional game even if it is missing a few things that might have been desirable. The concept is solid and what you finished works well together. I hope that you learned something valuable from this and that you use it to make the next game even better. Good job.

Interesting concept. I thought about doing a trading game before I pivoted but yours seems much more complicated than what I had planned. I like the trading concept. Having no ability to know what any given city wants made it feel like a bit of a guessing game but I feel like the idea was to make it almost like so the player has to figure out what each place needs on their own which is interesting. I feel like I needed a pad of paper to play the game. I felt that the actual navigation was the least interesting part given that there is no danger or cost nor benefit to that part of the game. This may have been a lack of time but it is a pretty unengaging aspect. I'd cut it entirely to focus on the trading (which was the more interesting half to me) otherwise you'll want to flesh it out much more. As it is, its mostly a question of whether or not you memorized the map well enough. I do like that because you need to book passage you shouldnt be able to just set up a route between two cities so you can rack up gold memorizing one or two things to ferry across (in reality there is a bug that lets you do that quite easily). I might recommend that prices be able to flucuate a little more to make the trading a little more variable and make it so you have to pay a bit more attention and cant just pick out one thing that every city needs and take that thing to them. It's a rough game but I see a lot of potential in this game. I hope that you consider keeping working on it and really start to explore the boundaries of it.

I really like the idea and I think with a little more work this could be a really fun game. More indication of when Im too close too things and how much time is passing would be nice. I often found that time was passing even when I thought I was far enough away from things. It seems like as long as an object is on screen it's killing time. Also with no indication of where the galaxies or whatever those are you can slam into two or three before you even realize it at decent speeds. I really liked the slingshot mechanic although the planets often overlapped with killer objects which made me begin to avoid them when I could. The other problem I had was that my speed bar didn't always line up with how fast I felt like I was going. Sometimes I'd be clipping along and then my actual speed would dive sharply but my speed bar stayed up. I'd slingshot around a planet but my speed would stay where it was. Also having the speed bar contribute to my time bar was confusing given that they were on opposite corners of the screen. Basically I felt like I always needed to be watching the corners of the screen (minimap, time bar, and speed bar) more than I needed to watch the middle of the screen where the game ostensibly is supposed to be played. If you could build those HUD elements into the main screen it would play a lot smoother. I hope that you keep working on the game because it really was fun.

I liked the aesthetic of it and having to manage two different characters. The control scheme is a bit convoluted and your cryptic, poetic instructions did not help. Like others I died several times without understanding why until I figured out that my mouse was sending the butterfly directly into the first set of spikes. I also didnt figure out how to open doors. I restarted once so I could re-read the instructions but still didnt see it. I really thought the game was broken until I read everyone commenting on how long the game was that I went through and hit every button on my keyboard. J really does seem like a random choice for that function. The platforming gets challenging and rewarding as you go on and you really put a lot of good, hard work in such a tight timeframe to make this a really rewarding platformer. I liked it. Good job.

I enjoyed it although I did not make it very far. The style was nice. The AA guns were annoying given that you could not kill them. I know you were telling a specific story and it may not work with that but it might be nice if each plane could take out different enemies. Maybe Charles' plane is a bomber that can take out the AA guns while Franz' fighter could take out the flying enemies. A thought. I just think it would be cool if both planes had a purpose besides not dying.

Yeah, for the jam I wanted to keep it pretty specific to the front end experience and to try to make that feeling kinda specific. I wasnt sure how much other people would understand the translation of it, but it seems like a few people did and thats pretty rewarding. Given more time I definitely would have liked to explore what comes after that point, but with the time I had I'm pretty happy with it. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the comments.

Yeah, it might have been nice to delve into the back end of it a little more but given the time constraint I wanted to make this section of it strong. Im glad that you got that experience of it. I wasnt sure how well others would relate to the idea and that it might be the sort of thing where I got the very specific idea that I had but it wouldnt translate well. Thanks.

Thanks. It's a little on the slight side but Im pleased with the result and Im glad that you enjoyed the experience.

Thanks for playing. Im glad that you got that experience from it.

Yes

You win the award for the game that had me saying "Okay one more try" the most times. The jumping is very precise which I appreciate and made it rewarding to complete even the easiest of obstacles but I never even came close to beating the game. I enjoyed my time with it but man if that wasnt brutal. I like the idea of the room changing as you beat parts and looking ahead and being like "man how am I going to beat that", it was just unfortunate that in most cases the answer ended up being "i wont".

I would rate your game but it looks like it is controller only and unfortunately Im not actually sure where the control that I used to have near my computer is. Sorry.

I liked the puzzle ideas here and I wish there was more of it. Making everything a little larger would have been nice because telling what was going on or planning could be a little tricky especially if you get into levels with more things happening. Good job overall though.

Dang this was hard. It would have been nice to have a push/pull button to make it easier to line up blocks, part of the difficulty came from blocks not being exactly where I thought they were when I left them and being able to push/pull in a more deliberate manner would help line things up a little more precisely. Also helps shift the feeling of screwing up from the game and the designer to the player which is always good.

Appreciate if you hit mine in return.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462670

This is a pretty fun and addictive arena shooter. I found the controls challenging and the slow-mo I thought at first was the game lagging but I think there is utility to both. I never found the control scheme 100% intuitive but maybe a little more time with it would fix that. I had fun seeing how well I could do though the answer was never great. Thanks for this.

This game is absolute pandemonium which I appreciate. My first match was over before I had really figured out the controls (1 is an odd choice for attach btw but that might just be me). It does feel like the game mostly resolves itself without the player having to be involved much at all. If you complicate the AI a bit, involve the player more, and add some more things to interact with and use I think this could be a really sweet game.

I kept thinking that this was going to be a limited design possibility and every level you kept surprising and stumping me. The last level took me a minute or two before I got it. I would love to see how far you could push this given more time. Good job.

This really feels like one of those games I'm too dumb to play but wont give up on. I'm going to come back to this game and beat it. I love how quickly you can iterate on ideas. I do wish that your board didnt reset between runs because I would often just drop some bits so I could test and then figure out where I needed to go and it always felt like step 1 of that process was remembering exactly what my last pattern was. Good job.

Well I'll say that it's clever as hell. Kicking doors felt really satisfying. It's a bit weird to have to run into a room of enemies backward so you can grab your only weapon or spend a bunch of time pulling it off the wall. I also found that in a fight I wanted to drop the door right in front of me and it would end up being placed in an enemy  which meant that my dual purpose weapon and shield was serving neither purpose which was a little frustrating. I really do hope that you keep working on this because I do love the idea and would love to play more.

Tricky to learn but once I got the hang of the mechanic it was a neat little puzzle game. It's an interesting idea to play with.

I liked it. Reminds me of some of the weird and experimental flash games that I used to play that would bounce between a few games at once. It does feel very rhythmic and like as long as you're paying attention you could probably go forever. The red light only ever lasts just less than the length of time it takes for your pump to go from full to empty. With a little more random chance (which admittedly might not work for this set of mingames) I think it could become a lot more of a chaotic good time. Keep working on and experimenting with the minigames and this could become a madcap masterpiece.

I'll get in on this.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462670

This is really clever. I enjoyed the puzzle design and the use of the intercom was clever as hell. I would love to see you put some more time into building out the puzzles and really polishing this up. This is the beginning of a really neat puzzle game.

This is a really slick game and very cool. It would be nice if there was a little more indication of what the effect of a card would be before playing it. I still have no idea what the fireball is supposed to do except create flames that run around the board randomly and kill me. It would be cool if killing enemies could unlock new and better cards. I think its really fun and I hope that you keep working on it.

I had fun with it. I like the idea that your failures can cause trouble for you in the future making each move a little more dangerous. Having a little more screen space would help with planning and make it easier to play although at the same time not knowing everything ahead is also fun. The suicide mechanic was a little dark but mechanically I think it worked well as a puzzle tool. I think you could really run with this if you keep working at it.

Dropping my game here to try to pick up a few more responses. Please check it out.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462670

This is probably one of the more ambitious games that I played and I loved it. The controls are a bit stiff and confusing but I think it's great.  The one thing I would note is that where you can and cant go with your current outfit is unclear. My first game I walked into a hallway and got warned that I wasnt allowed to be there and shot at, at the same time. Then I couldnt get the elevator to down and had to wait for the drones to swoop in and kill me. I would love to see you polish this up some more and take another crack at it. Thanks.

I think I get what's going on and I like the concept. A background would go a long way to selling the movement and something to indicate when you are being hit and when your enemies are being hit would really help with clarity and with selling your hits. It would be nice if you could swing the hammer in either direction to fend off attacks as well but I could understand not doing that as well. It looks like a first time game and I think for that its a good job. I hope you keep working at it.

I like the concept here and I hope you continue to build on it because I think it's really cool. The card upgrades are a little complicated but I think it becomes pretty plain pretty quick. It is sometimes hard to understand what is going on in a round, what effect you've had with your card, what effect the enemies are having on you, etc. Making the game easier to read will go a long way to making the game more tactical and fun. Also, and this might just be me, but I dont think I was setting enemies on fire with my card the way that it was supposed to. Also, and Im sure you know this but your music doesn't loop so after a few minutes its just sound effects. Anyways, I hope you keep working on this because I like it.

Im going to have to come back to this game. I like it though I did not beat it. The atmosphere is impeccable and I like the one lightbulb mechanic. So far this is the only real mystery game that I played and I really dig that part of it.

Well it was certainly strange. I liked the flinging mechanic though it was a bit challenging due to how short and precise it was. I think with some more work it could make for a real good platforming game.

It's simple and rough but I think the concept has merit and that you continue to work on it. I can't say it's the most original idea but it's something that I havent played yet in this jam. Good job.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. It is challenging and stressful as you watch that clock tick up to try and find a good word. I think this would be a lot of fun as a race type game similar to the wiki game.

I love games where you are your own worst enemy and there is no game that fits that description better than this. I loved that I would start off by trying to plan to be clever knowing what would come and lining up my shots and a few lives in the whole thing devolves into chaos. Once I save this I'm going to give it another shot.