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I'm surprised, this is fun! 🩵 Would love to see more of this, even if just a postmortem.

My favorite part is how you captured the movement patterns of each bit; flat circles the stadium, needle stays in the center, ball does its own thing. Didn't see many flower patterns but those are difficult to make. Also leap doesn't seem to react any differently from flat. I can feel the blades acting more or less offensive or defensive, which is great!

There are a few things that didn't quite land; The directional dodge seems to go to whatever direction the top wishes instead of the one you input, I only got the waypoints to do anything with the needle bit and they're a bit slow to interact with, and the AI's spin power varied too much between tests so I accidentally defeated it while trying to test some abilities.

I loved the ring out animations, and the presentation in general, although I think stronger hits could be meatier than barrage hits. Nice blade designs as well. The Saber blade seems really strong but maybe it's because they all have the same heights. I would love to see the camera zoom-in for hits that deal over, idk, 30% current RPM because they all seem to come from nowhere as of now.

Very cute, quite pretty! I did 49/50. Not entirely sure where the last one is haha.

i totally misread this as already being ported to godot haha
now it makes sense :derp: this is absurdly impressive, quests, inventory, all that jazz, even if it's clunky.
Good luck on your next attempts!

Thanks for playing Hythrain!
Yes, I'd love to see the VOD when you get to it. You can reply here or on any of the contact info in my blog (linked on my main page here).

I completely forgot about Fullscreen stuff, as I always instinctively press maximize, great catch there. Lucky me I began setting up some basic configs last week so for future-proofing I can update the game to add that.
This was a game from another jam but most players were RPGMaker devs so I applied to FQ7 for more varied feedback (although I ended up with very little time to test other games and only did a few 😢). Still, glad it wasn't too hard, I had a rough time tweaking the game to be less repetitive last time.

Once again thank you for your time 🩵

This is so cool haha
By the way, you can fix the crash on firefox by ticking "Use SharedArrayBuffers" when you upload to itch. It's also fixed in Godot 4.3 so you don't need to do this.

https://itch.io/t/2025776/experimental-sharedarraybuffer-support

best of luck! 💪

I've written all my feedback and playnotes in a google docs page, but here's my TL,DR:

Got boring from the snail’s pace the game runs at. I make more actions in a minute of FNAF than 5 minutes of this game, and it asks me to spend almost thirty minutes on any given run. Pixel art is fine, but could use more auditory ambience for immersion, and clear feedback on what is an anomaly and what is just the background at the start. It does a good job of replicating “I’m on Observation Duty”, but I didn’t find that game fun to play either, maybe second monitor content. 

I understand it's in early prototype so I may have been too harsh, but now that the mechanics are here I think you should focus on getting the atmosphere and game essence down; You want the player to be immersed, not bored, you want them to keep thinking and doing things, and you want the game to be quick and easy to replay (like more, shorter levels on the same locations). Also a lot of the horror from Paranormal Activity (probably what inspired Observation Duty) is Fear of the Unknown, and your anomalies should probably capitalize on that instead of being random, self-explaining things; maybe even take some existing SCPs as a starting point.

Random play thoughts in this google document, but i'm posting the tldr here:

Cute graphics, polished gameplay, nice sound effects.
Dialogue and text needs a second pass for better formatting (punctuation in particular), and extra UX stuff like notifying when CO POWER is full or when you gain money from buildings.
Stealth missions are unique and fun for me who likes both strategy and puzzle games.

Love to see people reinventing genres I enjoy or trying out new takes on existing formulas.

Had fun with this one, even if it still needs a lot of work, the core concept and character controller is unique and I liked it.
Here's my play notes, and I'm pasting the TL,DR here too:

Very cute, lovely title art and UI, nice music and sprites. Really unique control scheme, kinda mixing Slither.io with Vampire Survivors and it works pretty well. Your weapons are really fun, I personally enjoyed the shock collar and the cannon of all the ones i unlocked.

I think it needs more attention on design and balancing (which of course all FQ testers can help with QA) as well as more solid implementation of the features so they're less prone to breaking or lagging the game. I also think the cyborg body looks too much like a polka-dot snake, and you might want to compose it with square-ish segments with a furry snake underneath to better match the art, and I'm not sold on the square cats, they work mechanically but not quite aesthetically.

I don't have too many thoughts on progression and meta progression as it is, as it needs to be better balanced first, but I do think you should make level ups slower on both in run and at the meta level, and give extra XP and rewards if the player finishes a level.

The talent talk and code snippets were what finally made me understand the 3-layer architecture and it is so clever. Has inspired me to better split my logic and view layers, especially thinking about save data and such 🩵

Thank you for the bullet points, KV!
I'm not particularly great at writing but next time I'll try to give more attention to start and end than "last day rush", and I'm sorry about the bats 😅 Relieved that didn't stump you completely, and I really want to nerf a lot of things for a post-jam release.

This is probably the best game of the jam, but much like Harold in Time and my own Voidskipper I think there is a lot of fat and padding that ended up here.
Mansion could've had half the rooms, I started escaping from the latter half of the forest enemies, and I'm lucky I avoided all avoidable enemies in the car section otherwise I would not meet the 45 minutes.
Despite all that? Loved the game. The visuals, the (strange?) music choices, the very cute and complete story... Congratulations, Lumi, you're great at this 🩵
and yes harold be like me fr fr

I can't score this a 1 star in comedy because I cannot believe someone would earnestly make a game as... uh... challenged as this
so it did make me laugh at harold stuck in the endless abyss of Miss Bat

Aww, I really wanted to see more of Harold and David!
But wow, for the little you made here, there's a lot to highlight. I love the CGs for the journey the heroes embark, they hit the right notes and fit with the music very well, and the Elder Scrolls combat had me really intrigued, the hand animations helped a lot.

I completely forgot to switch to compat so a few testers couldn't play it at all; Lessons learned.
Thanks for playing! :heart:

Thank you for playing! Also sorry (not sorry) for having you curse a few times hehe.
I'm taking in all the feedback, and I should probably cut the waves a bit when I patch this post jam. There are loads of designs i wanted to do but, y'know, time constraints.
I'm glad to hear you liked the mechanics even if design was repetitive, I've been working on the systems for a while!

I can see hints of a really wholesome slice of life with Harold and Lucius, but for one reason or another it didn't make the jam deadline. It happens to the best of us 🫂
If I can share some advice that helped me in jams, is starting your development with the end, the payoff scenes first, then work on the initial setup, then the filler. Say, scenes we can see Harold and Lucius's relationship (brothers, roommates, couple, whatever), then the intro, then minigames.

I have to tell DJ this again but, no, any bugs people may have found don't remove the fact this is one of the best games in this jam, period. It has my 5 Overall, at least.

Really funny, really cute, amazing sounds that highlight the story, unique and inventive combat that's surprisingly balanced. The game doesn't overstay its welcome, doesn't waste your time, isn't too trivial nor too hard. I have nitpicks but no complaints.

I have one complaint actually: I wanted more.

It's one of the games ever made

Thank you for taking the time to beat Reid!
You summarized my regrets with Reid's AI better than anyone else me included, that's great hehe.
Lots of people mentioned controller support for Voidskipper so I'll prioritize that better next time 💗

Very blursed. Thanks KV but now I need to teach myself japanese so I can forget what I read :derp:
Jokes aside, really cute, really brief, had fun, and that's what we look for in Harold Jam 🎵

I needed a shitpost game from this jam soooo much hahahaha
Thoroughly loved this one, amazing. There's not a lot of gameplay at all but the story was intriguing and the music slapped hard for whatever reason.
The yaoi beat drop makes this a 5 comedy contender easily.

I don't want to give this one a low score because I love these little logic puzzles so much, but out of respect for the rest of the entries I need to 1star you on graphics and music, sorry ron :heart:
The little story was random but very funny and very much in the spirit of Harold Jam, I enjoyed it too.

(for anyone having difficulty, up your attack at the "bonfire" and you should be ok)
I thought I was going to hate it because of how bad the controls felt... But the respawn is quick, you don't lose your EXP on death, and you can actually level strength to the point you can "out-jank the jank", so I ended up having some fun for the brief time the game lasted. The final battle was very doable, I only died twice but from me trying to parry like a dumbass, I should just attack and roll.

I actually find this one of the funniest games this jam, the jank controls combine with the strange animations, absolutely massive weapons Harold can hold, the absurdity of whacking goblins out in one hit by the end, the death messages... ngl it didn't have any jokes but I was smiling throughout the back-end of the game.

(also shoutout to the very decent Harold 3D model, he's really cute)

I'd absolutely love to see it as a full length game, given more polish, better tutorials and fixing bugs (if you wait as your last action the wait doesn't work, etc).

What is it with haroldjam 2024 and impossibly long games haha...
I've completed two of the three zones and already clocked in over an hour. Looks and sounds nice, premise is just a better execution of my World of Harold crossover in terms of gameplay loop, so I'm pleased to see all the characters, and the intro is lovely, but story past that is just a few character intros and fun fake harolds, I have yet to see more of the plot. Wish I could have seen more interaction from the characters but alas the game is already way too big.

As for gameplay... There's a really cool gameplay loop here, and the "turn mana" system is a lot of fun, but between me not playing the earlier games, the sheer complexity of how many parameters and buffs and debuffs and skill effects and resources I had to maintain each battle, skill masteries which didn't seem to do anything, as well as both not having any sort of autosave (game overs in a jam setting are painful) and me not knowing there was a shop or inn so I had to stress with 2 potions and no heals for a while, all combined to a stressful (even if mechanically rewarding) experience.

Going into a bit of detail, the tutorial for binding equipment to your characters wasn't great so I accidentally avoided the mechanic for one entire zone (i didn't even have an Equip menu option!) and having started with the Future first the holes in the wall for shops looked like the other non-interactable holes and terminals and machines in the wall, and I couldn't parse the signs as signs. I only wrote all this so you know what to avoid in the future.

My only wish is that the game had simpler combat and 70% less roaming enemies. Combat seems pretty deep and customizable but while I would gladly play a longer game, it challenged my patience as a jam game.

A bit below what I expected. I'm... conflicted to be honest. Like, I had some fun playing it.
Premise is great, love what you presented as the story, seeing all these characters fight for their own reasons, but even then it could've been more brief, I clocked at more than an hour despite how quick battles were, and the final payoff could have been better, so I can't rank it 5 in story.

As for combat, except for Therese whose game plan required me to understand the opponent and was actually really cool, and Oldhar which could buff its defense twice per turn, everyone else's META was different levels of Use Attack, then End. To the point Tefka had no impact because I killed her before Lucius and Reid got a turn. Heals and Dodges were very underpowered, maybe because you wanted them to be symmetric. I'm very curious to see this battle system expanded but alas, I have to judge your balancing as well.

It would be fine if battles were attractive but the lack of any animations, even RTP defaults, saddened me more than the occasional "Reid instakill combo" situation, so the only tad of flavor i could capture from combat were skill names (which were pretty cool, I wanted to see them in action so much). Lack of feedback also made many of the enemies' skills feel pointless because you can't deduce Low Morale's effect before playing as Therese and it was hard to notice Brave reducing Oldhar's cooldown that flashes on screen once every two seconds.

I see what this game could be, it's just not in front of me, and that makes me sad. Can't rank it too low because I wasn't not invested but the lack of balancing killed the payoff.

I love shmup games so of course I had fun here hehe. The only thing that I think holds this back from being more fun is just more polish. Like, faster movement, smaller hitboxes for the player. Less Gradius and more Thunder Force 4, but that may be just my taste
Story is simple but the premise is fun, and the final sequence was fun too 🎵

Thank you for playing! I was so worried the fight was too hard but I'm glad you beat it!
I've made a google doc with the end cutscene on the main page, it's very short but I made it with care 💗

so cuuuute 💕💕

Took a while to get the rules but explaining it as "Tic Tac Toe but if Triple Triad" helps.
When that clicked, though, I had a lot of fun.
Surprisingly good game design here haha. Sometimes the AI wouldn't make an optimal move but that helped me learn, at least. Could use with more polish on the UI and, like, any sound at all, but this would be a pretty decent game outside the jam constraints too.

A surprise pick for me, I enjoyed this oh so far more than I expected!
Just when I think I kinda get the system I start gambling too high and now I'm in danger of not living the next week! It got really tense sometimes. I think there could be more work on the presentation but the game design is on point 👌

Loved this one, made sure to get 3 stars on all levels :)
Makes me really nostalgic for the old times of playing Angry Birds on my Galaxy Y haha.
I ran into some inconsistencies with physics but it comes with the genre, and I slowly got all the tricks. Had a lot of fun! 💫

Cute and relaxing. I loved the visual style.
I wish it had a bit more game feel though, it does play really slow and doesn't get faster.

Lovely little game :3
Had special attention taken to animations and sound effects. Reminds me of Donkey Kong on the gameboy, one of my favorite games. Wish it got a bit harder but I had fun!

Simple little game. Relaxing music.
The fact the level didn't restart when the spaceship hit a wall threw me off but I kinda used that as a shortcut sometimes. Not keen on the ship taking so long to accelerate either.
There's a good variety of levels, some took me a few deaths.

I'm proud to say I got a higher highscore than the dev at 79.920 :D
Simple and fun. It's one of the most polished games from the jam (although I did miss the tutorial only being on the main itch page at first).
Tight controls, making sharp turns with boost is satisfying, and with how responsive the camera is I didn't get lost too often.
My only grievance is that it takes a _looong_ while for the game to get harder and fast-paced, runs take a long time, which makes replaying difficult.

My highscore so far is 1277.
This game is SO COOL!! Art and music are incredible, it has an amazing vibe.
While I think the theme implementation is alright (again, the vibes are great), combat is very unique so I place innovation really far. Managing the push and pull of the drunken-ness meter is fun, and so is timing your shots. There's stuff to unlock and all.
My only complaints are that mechanics aren't very obvious (too unique?). I had to read the text a few times _and_ play around a bit to figure out enemies have weaknesses, and that the aim sometimes isn't very helpful and could get you in trouble (even when not drunk). Maybe if it completely ignored enemies too far away or had some way to not pingpong around distant enemies.
Props to the team, this game is rad!

I got a "Great" grade, Mr. Vamp said he's safe with his wall of 10 animal plushies :3
Had a fun time overall, I love interior decorating. I actually completely forgot i could rotate things haha, and some objects were hard to interpret (i think there's a television?).
I actually think it's a unique take on the theme, and the vamp's comments on my choices did help me a bit, so that's nice.

simple and cute! the combo system is interesting with some layouts being made with certain combos in mind.
reminds me of those flip phone games where you had stages and score metrics to beat 1, 2 or 3 stars on each.
there's room for expanding here.