This game has such a solid game loop and basic gameplay elements, but as many others have pointed out inventory management makes the game quite frankly unplayable right now.

Since it's a crafting game, we need to be able to be able to store items in the base. Or maybe even a backpack to hold the items. Right now you have to carry ALL of your items, so if you die you're completely reset. And since your hotbar is so small, you constantly have to only pick up a few items and throw away older items. This makes looting feel really bad.

Yay!!

I slayed those pirates!

On level 38 you don't need to use the portal, I'm not sure how it's even supposed to be used.

Overall very amazing game though! Puzzle design is excellent. Only thing you can improve upon would be fixing glitches. Like if a box is bumping into a wall prevent the room change from happening even if the player is holding the button. How you have it set up the box spazzes everywhere and it makes the parts where you're supposed to ride them a little frustrating sometimes.

Wow! I really liked this game. It's really simple but still incredibly engaging. Also nice sound effects and visuals!

I really wonder who made them 🤔🤔🤔

it seems like mistakes were made...

let the guilt set in

hey at least you gave him a hat 😊

I know! after I killed him I thought "oh I'll just reinstall" but when that didn't work I felt so guilty seeing the results of my actions lol.

The first time he was on holiday he was alone...

The second time I took him on holiday I was alone 😢

Yeah this game was a lot of fun! It was fun finding the unique rooms, there's quite a few actually. The candle room, radio seed room, secret code room, mall, cabin, creepy alterations, pool, church, weird skybox room. Is there anything special in any of these rooms, or are they just different rooms to travel through?

I also really really like how you find the true ending. The narrator guy practically tells you how to win when he reads the rules to you, but it took me a long time to realize lol. After I found it I was like ohhhhhh.

The game went all black after I planted radio seeds... Why did this happen? I ended up restarting because I couldn't do anything.

Was there something I was supposed to do? The lights on the sides of the planter box just went out and then I waited for a while but nothing happened.

Also in the small corrider room with angled concrete arches and no roof, you can climb the arches and get on top of the wall. This lets you see the rooms from the outside, it doesn't look intended.

Also also, the screen going dark happened a second time. After I picked up the radio seeds a second time. I escaped planting them in this run... is it a coincidence or are these radio seeds haunting me???

This is a really cool game! I love the different boss fights and how they all come together for a final boss :). The Phoenix boss was incredibly laggy for me though, in their final boss form and in their normal form.

Other than that really fun though! Cool mechanics and cool art style.

I didn't download it from the browser, but honestly it probably isn't just you.

Sorry about the upcoming wall of text.

First thing I'd like to mention, is that your game is more "small" than it is "short". Even though the premise is simple and runs are only 1 minute long, it does take some effort to find a good deal of the endings. I spent about 40 minutes on your game and didn't find all the endings (which is good because I was having fun the whole time; the unknown endings gave me a reason to keep playing).

It's small in the sense that the scope isn't very extreme, you just click buttons for one minute and then read and look at cool art, but not short because finding those endings can take some time comparatively.

When I played your game, I ended up keeping track of the endings I had previously gotten on a white board. I just wrote the letter, the name, and a quick summary of what I did to achieve it. I did this because it was too hard to juggle my previous endings around in my head because eventually I had gotten probably like 15 or so of them. It was hard to remember what I did in the past and was hard to think of new ways to proceed.

That being said, I do believe me taking notes is probably a lot more than most people will do. I imagine a lot of people who play the game will just try to cram everything in their head and then eventually stop because it's too hard to continue. This is bad because finding the endings in your game was really fun! You should do everything you can to encourage players to keep searching for endings. Your game isn't challenging at all, so I think players not knowing how to continue will serve more to frustrate them rather than make them feel more rewarded by challenge. Homegrown Pet is essentially the opposite of a 'rage' game like "Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy" or "Cuphead". This is just my own observation about your game though, so I'm not sure if other people will find other aspects more enjoyable or play the game differently than I did. These frustrations the player may have is arguably their own doing, but in game design any frustration for any reason is bad. I do think they're really really light frustrations, maybe frustration is too strong of a word, but they're not good nonetheless.

So essentially what I had in mind was a way to give everyone notes because they probably won't do it on their own. More specifically, a non-intrusive guideline to keep the player organized. Like instead of having a how to play screen at the beginning you could have a home page with a "Play/Start New Run", "How to Play", and  "Previous Endings" buttons for example. When you click the "Previous Endings" button, it shows you 21 boxes with their letters next to them. The ones the player has never gotten would be gray with a ? icon, the ones they have would have some other icon. Like maybe a picture of a book for the bookworm humanoid ending, or maybe even just a zoomed in picture of their face for example.

Keep in mind all of what I just said is extremely hypothetical, and mostly just what I would personally add. Everything is completely at your discretion.

I suggest this for two main reasons. The first is obviously to lessen frustrations of the players, but secondly is to give the player a tangible reward. If the player can physically see an unknown ending and then see it filled in later, they will experience a sense of reward for their time and effort spent searching for that ending. It's also just really satisfying to complete a "To-Do List", and it gives the player a reason to become a completionist.

You could make a written guide for the players, but I personally think that would be overkill. At least if not done correctly. I'm assuming you mean like a complete answer sheet to all the endings. Part of the fun comes from finding the endings yourself, and if you have a resource that tells you how to do that it would just become pointless.

With these kinds of games it's inevitable that some people will look for, and find, the answers somewhere online. But you giving answers is different. People going online to find answers is 'cheating', and they know that. But when you give it to them it's 'part of the game'. This would encourage people to find the endings through an answer sheet, which makes the game less fun, and then blame you for making the game unfun.

Kind of like if someone uses wall hacks in Super Metroid they're the only person to blame for making the game unfun, but if the developers gave you a gun that one shot everything it would be the developers fault.

With all that being said, I do think a guide like this implemented correctly could be completely fine and even helpful. As long as you are very adamant about the guide you made being external from the game itself, it should be fine. You could post a guide online or something, just probably not accessible within the game.

Lastly, keep in mind that I'm just one person. These are all my personal observations and I play and enjoy games in my own unique way. I tried my best to think of what's best for your average Joe, but I could easily have missed some important insights that others wouldn't have. I hope you listen to what I have to say, but I also strongly suggest you get other insight from more people too.

Your game was really fun and I had a blast playing it! Keep up the good work.

Go into the actual files of the game. If you're using the itch desktop app you can click the cog symbol next to "Launch", and then press "Manage", and then "Open folder in explorer".

Next go to Template > Font. In Font there should be "VL-Gothic-Regular" and "VL-PGothic-Regular". Open these files, and press the "Install" button on the top left. Make sure you install both of them.

I'm not sure how easy this would be with the program you used to make the game, but this game could really benefit from having a save file so you make a list of all the endings you've gotten in the past. The game just has so many endings it's really hard to keep track of which ones I've unlocked and which ones I want to try to explore next.

I'm suggesting to add a save file solely to have a tab where all the previous unlocked endings are. Even just a little icon of the ending with the letter ending next to it would be super helpful (you could just use grey question marks or something for the ones that players still need to find). You can also maybe add a description of how you generally get to the ending if the player clicks on one they already unlocked? I'm not sure if that would take away from the experience though.

I do think you should put these instructions in place of the "Don't forget to download VL Gothic to start the game" phrase.

As it is right now it's pretty vague, and not everyone knows how to install a font or where the font is. Just mention the font is already downloaded and in the game files, but still that we need to actually install it.

Also, this game is really cool! Keep up the great work man!

Crowscare spoilers:

Wait, how is Ryo out in the night?? Does this take place after the story in Crowscare? And he's also not a scarecrow, did his dad cast a spell on him or something?

Yeah, it would be really cool if you just kept cycling and cycled straight into the burger place every time, instead of it going dark and being teleported there. Especially since you can barely see in front of you so you have no idea when you'd arrive back at the burger place.

Although tbh it is kind of a specific nitpick since everything else was really really cool. Maybe in an update later down the road.

Such a great ending. Super short and to the point, just a few seconds of the camera panning over made me realize everything at once. It was unexpected, but made complete sense. It served as an explanation for everything that happened in the game, but in a way that still lets the player draw their own conclusions.

Just FYI this build can't be installed via the itch.io client. Only by downloading the files directly. You might want to repackage it to fix that.

A really emotional game. I ended up writing all the gibberish the computer spoke, but I can't figure it out either lol.

Such a cool experience! I got a little spooked when I stopped playing my violin lol.

Are you not planning on selling it on itch.io? From what I know, itch takes a smaller cut right?

Oh I gotcha, I never noticed

Why did the game use my webcam? Once when I started for a split second, and again after I finished. I thought it was gonna be a trippy and show me my face sometime during the game, but it never did.

Was it a glitch or something?

Great game! I had a lot of fun playing it. Even though it's relatively short, I'd recommend trying to implement controller support because these types of games are much easier to play with one. Especially if you want to make more games in this style.

This made me extremely uncomfortable.

Would play again. 10/10.

This is a nice game! I love the artstyle (especially the footprints).

Idk. I've given him all the crystals and he phases though them. Walking into him makes him fly to space, which is pretty fun :).

I don't know what they are going to do, I don't think they do anything yet. There are 4 total, they aren't very hidden. I've tried burning them, putting them in my face, putting them on my bed, giving them to the golem, putting them on the mirror, having them touch eachother, nothing happens.

AXES!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I have a semi detailed idea here. You should be able to build axes. there would be 5 types of axes you can make customers.

• 1 ingot makes hatchet head
• 2 ingots makes axe head
• 3 ingots makes great axe head

• Hatchet: 1 Hatchet Head + 1 One Handed Handle
• Axe: 1 Axe Head + 1 Two Handed Handle
• Great Axe: 1 Great Axe Head + 1 Two Handed Handle
• Double Sided Axe: 2 Axe Heads + 1 Two Handed Handle
• Double Sided Great Axe: 2 Great Axe Heads + 1 Two Handed Handle

I'm 100% certain this is going to be implemented, since there is a design for a better shop in the current map, and he went through the trouble of designing the shop shop you're currently using too. If he wanted a completely new shop he'd just make one new one, but he made two, you can probably upgrade shops soon :).

I personally didn't find anything wrong with the tutorial.

1. What version of the game I'm running: 0.0.7 (latest)
2. Description of bug: Guy walks into door and won't let me close it. Even if the shop is closed.
3. An image: I did have an image, but I can't find it.
4. Steps to reproduce the issue: No idea, it just happened on it's own.
5. System specs: 8 GB of ram.

I'd say in between the door to the furnace and your bedroom.

So I can't help but notice that the water and fire crystals are unnamed. Could they be named Wisdom and Rage? or do you have other plans for them?