itch.io

I love the light effects!  Gave it a cool surreal look.  Part of me would love to have some more sound effects, or some music, but at the same time, the aura is kinda creepy and I'm a fan of that.

I did have a few issues with the scaling/controls being inconsistent and such.  I also noticed that it was possible to somehow "remember" the right click so that when I went to pick up an object, it would wig out perspective-wise and the rotation was still active, but at least that was reversible.  

I'm already reimagining a few movie scenes done in this art style =D.

A dang impressive amount of work 'ere!  Not only is this an ambitious genre to do in a game jam, but it feels well-balanced to me as well.  I'd echo the other comments about the DOS-era throwback vibes.  Almost gives me the feeling of a pre-apocalyptic Fallout.  Nice work!

Cool game!  I had a few glitchy issues like sometimes it would say I played a card that turn already when I had not (1st move and such).  I'm not sure if I read this right, but it seemed like you click on the icon in the upper-left corner of the card to move it, and the upper-right to scale it.  I was not able to scale any of the cards.  I clicked and it grew & shrank as if to confirm the scaling, but not sure what actually does it.  I think the introduction pointing out these details would be useful, but it didn't take me long to figure it out.  I'm trying it out at the moment on an old laptop which is not full HD, and I had to scale the browser out a bit to fit to the screen.  I could see that possibly messing with the mouse position, but moving the cards worked, so not sure on that one.

Nice!  The graphics are great, especially considering the timeline.  I would probably pull back the deluge of goblins on one side, that started to make it mostly about clicking accuracy/speed, and I think the strategy piece with different weights and such could get upstaged, but I love the design.  Theme is right in there too, no need to "interpret" it =D.

Just rated, very cool!

Link :): https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2023/rate/2397701

Cool use of the theme!  I agree w/ Lanyard on the mechanics bit, takes a little trial & error to pick up what you were throwing down.  Not a huge deal, though.  

I love those parallax layers back there, but it's easy to lose appreciation for them with the character being fast-paced like that.  This is not a negative, just something I noticed because I really like how the lighting effect was done in that background.

Regarding controls, just FYI, it didn't pick up my controller.  It's a typical Logitech USB Playstation II-style.  Keyboard was fine, I just mention this because the game explicitly mentioned controllers.

Only other thing is I noticed you don't have to press a jump button for each jump, holding it down will repeat the jump.  Pretty minor, just slightly counter-intuitive to me.

And my favorite facet of a game, to the point I think it would make a good category--atmosphere =D.  Awesome job there, 'nuff said!

Just reviewed :).

Here be our link: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2023/rate/2397701

This is very solid.  Even the title screen graphics are nice!  The music is also high-quality, and I think it fits what you're doing here.  I would think about possibly making a little more chill.  Not because it's "better" in any way, but just because strategy games, as we see here, the player is going to be spending a good amount of time in it, and might keep them around for longer by something like this.

Nice work!

Rated your game a while back, when sorting by karma.  Thanks for rating lots of games!

Here's ours: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2023/rate/2397701

EDIT:  Sorry!  Just didn't recognize your username at first, I see you're on the same team as bryengx, and he/she already rated us.  Thanks again!

I think the original Final Fantasy characters may have been more like this if their names had not been so limited in number of characters xD.

Anyway, fun little game!  I like the music and the sound effects that were added.  I thought it was neat that when zoomed out, you could see the entire level, although it did turn the characters into wee lil' bits.  I think that could be used as a strategy element too, like if a path were not reversible, but you chose based on what you saw when zoomed out.

Other than that, I would say it could just use a slliiiiiight tweak on the battle balance...I think maybe increasing the cooldowns just a little.  I see the idea there of using your heal at the right time, but I started to get the feeling that even if I didn't strategize that, and just used it when available, I wouldn't be able to lose.  Mind you I didn't actually test it enough to be sure.

Also nice job on the lighting and shadows!  Definitely adds a lot to the environment.

Very nice difficulty balance with the power-ups upon getting hit!  It's like Silver Surfer except fair xD.  Addictive too!  Music was good too, only thing I might suggest is add some sound effects.  For games like this, I feel like that's the haptic feedback before there was haptic feedback.

Great job!

This is really nicely done.  I think there are a few implementation issues, but I think a few tweaks would make this stupidly addictive!

But dang, one thing I will say, as a musician and someone who likes absurd stuff like StepMania :-P, this is a really creative way to take those concepts and make actual brain training fun!  It's quite difficult, especially when the circle on one side climbs up before the other side xD.

The tutorial is very good, but I would suggest indicating both hands.  Just the order I did things in, I read the controls, saw I needed a right and left trigger, and was confused why only left was doing anything at first LOL--small potatoes here, though.

For any of the slightly faster-paced stuff, it gets a bit jumbled quickly.  

The biggest thing here, I think, is that the feedback (the green flash on the wheel) is when the square crosses it, not when the user hits the button.  The only visual cue the player gets is the rating which isn't precise.

I think if you kind of made that indicator a "shadow" of the square (and bigger) - taking a page from DDR/StepMania again here, and the aim being to hit it when it visually lines up, and the "flash" or whatever is the user's input, then it would be a lot clearer.  Additionally, I think if the circles were larger, that would make the squares more spaced out--which would let us actually "see" the rhythm differences better.  Stuff that lines up and offsets like 5 on 7 or something is really tough to pick up on with the current....scale ;).

Making that feedback correspond with the input would also make it easier to pick up on if there is, indeed, lag.  Calibration based on a super slow/obvious tutorial level could address that, but I know it's not like we got all year to make these :).

Anyhoo, just getting detailed there because I really like it, enough that I might clone this sucker and take a peek if I have the time!  

Love this one!  Definitely appreciate the detail, I'm curious how you handled texturing for a potentially infiinite set of meshes xD.  And great job with the gameplay, it's very satisfying.

One thing that I might have missed in the tutorial was it took me a moment to realize you could only slice "upward," but think that one's on me.

Honestly, the only fruitstrating thing about it for me was that it acted pretty screwy messing with my screen resolutions and such, and sometimes it didn't seem to detect properly, like the mouse position was off and couldn't click thus.  I have one ultrawide and one regular, but either way after I went from, say, the tutorial to the menu/game, it resized again.  

Ultimately, though, I could alt+enter and play it windowed mode and then it was more difficult to stop playing.  Great job!

Here's our link: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2023/rate/2397701

For us, the latest version of Godot can't do web builds if you use C#, just with the current evolution and state of .NET.  Chafed, so I get it.  On the way over to review your game :).

First thing I noticed is the polish shows!  Those things that any released game has, but are sometimes & sometimes not there in a game jam game--the menu, difficulty implementation, and that tutorial--all signs that work was put into this.

The graphics are also just plain nicely done as well.  Definitely enjoyed the mechanic too, a little twist on a Sim game.  One issue is it made me hungry :-P.

Nice job!

Sure thing!

https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2023/rate/2397701

Really liked the innovative puzzle style!  Also some details to appreciate in here like the camera adjusting and the perspective.

One thing I think would add even more is a little more feedback to the player, such as indication that he's pushing or that you've dropped the heart on the scale.

Also, just nice job in general with the Egypt aura!

Thanks very much!

Thank you!  Regarding the weights being physics, I needed them to have colliders so they would not overlap, in order to prevent picking up 2 weights with the mouse.  Once that far, it just made sense for them to be physics bodies so you could toss them in and they'd sail in like...well...weights!  Also, some might consider it a bit tedious to drag them directly to the spot when they can just be dropped in, there's the little dopamine aspect there to consider as well.  Certainly, that could be done with kinematic bodies, but not to any advantage that I thought of (this does not preclude said advantage existing :-P).

Thanks for mentioning the crash.  I don't know why.  However, just yesterday, I ran it on an old HP Envy laptop that I have, as it happens, and got a crash I had never seen before.  It was a memory access violation.  This old thing has a trash Intel on-board graphics and I have to run it on that thing with opengl3 (instead of Vulkan, Godot will prompt for that).  Hopefully this is just some crazy old driver issue, but good to know :).

This is very nice, and a clearly a lot of work in there.  The art in the town is great!  Also the music fits really well.  I see the Mario 64 move set coming into play :).  Only thing I think could use a little attention is the player controller.  Just small things like the Olympic jump seemed a little weird and sudden, and you have to look down to grow the item under you, that sorta stuff.  

One of those games that's easy to keep playing, nice work!

😃 Great.  After work, I'll get on over and review yours as well 👍

Here ya go :)

https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2023/rate/2397701

Made with Godot 4.2.

I'll absolutely review your game, but it'll be in the evening.  There's that whole job thing xD.

This is a bit of a pain point historically, I think.  You need to go in to the edit page of your game and find Admins:

You can add the contributer's itch account in there, and you get a link to send to them to accept.

*** Make sure you hit the checkbox - "Display as Contributor" I think it's called.

EDIT:  Here's the link to the YouTube video, apparently didn't show up from pasting in the itch settings for the purpose:

I like the dystopian aura :).  The shrinking ray effect was cool too, and I espicially like the dude in the window.  Kinda gave me a Saw series vibe, neat game!

Many thanks!

Already visited your game, great stuff over there.  And yeah, only downside to Godot is you can't do a web build in C# right now, but that should be alleviated sorta soon.   Thanks for checking it out!

This one's great!  The music is spot-on, excellent job there.  Couple spots I got a little hung up where I think you have to zoom to actually shove the ant where you need to go, but it seems to me that's a deliberate part of the puzzles.  Still playing around with it, but this is a good game.  A lot of times a game is simple in appearance and you can tell it's because the dev is just new to the whole thing and getting the hang of it, but in this case, I can see it's kinda like 12 Angry Men.  It's a great movie and it only needed one set because it's a great movie :-P.

Thanks!  Yeah we made a puzzle platformer for this jam in 2020 xD.  

Thank you!

A lot to this game for it being done in a month!  I like that your character gets to take part in the defense instead of just watching everything burn LOL.  Few bugs (excuse the pun), but they were minor and didn't affect playing the game.

Nice job!

https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2023/rate/2397701

I dare say these threads are the heart of Game Off xD.  Review coming up :).

This is a really neat game.  I would agree that a little more intro would help, but it's definitely surmountable and fun.  The music made me feel like calm underwater, which contrasted with "Hungry!" hahaha.  The first time, I didn't realize it was kinda like Lufia 2, where the enemy only moves when you do, so I booked down a corridor to my death xD, but just once.

Once that's established, the puzzle style became clear.  One thing I think might improve it even more is if the difficulty was not partially the need to know the layout somewhat, and find that out by perishing first.  However, I'm fine with the explanation that I'm not smart enough to do it right the first time LOL.

Nice work!

Neat puzzler!  I was also a little confused at first, but not for long, and was generally able to progress.  A few things were unclear to me, though, like every "2 actions" would result in the yellow stuff extending in the direction--which I thought depended only on the 2nd direction at first, but then I tried (just experimenting in level 2, having the first action be right, and then the second action be right again, and the yellow stuff didn't move at all.  However, up, then right made it go right.  So I was just confused there, like why the direction of the first action seemed to matter, but only in some cases.  I might have missed something though.

That aside, definitely enjoyed playing as that bit I mentioned wasn't keeping me from going on.  One thing that might be a good idea is if the restart level button is not next to the action button, someone might get to the end of a level and accidentally press restart... Not that I would do such a thing, but others might, you know...LOL :-P

Definitely hard to beat Anubis for this theme :D.  Some high-quality sprite art in here too, nice job!

You have some blockers to playing.  The game is in native Python, so anyone who wants to play it will need a Python environment set up and the modules you used installed.  I'd recommend you package it up as an .exe using PyInstaller or something similar.

That said, I did start it up, but as soon as I clicked on the 'C' or what-not, it crashed with this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "C:\Users\q\Downloads\Scale-Runner-with-audio-5\main.py", line 870, in <module>

    level = levels[level].playLevel()

  File "C:\Users\q\Downloads\Scale-Runner-with-audio-5\main.py", line 499, in playLevel

    debugMenu.push("fps", 1/self.deltaTime)

ZeroDivisionError: float division by zero

Thank you!  You're definitely right about the weights, I wrestled a bit with how to keep from being able to spam them.  I think given more time, I'd implement a more robust state machine.  One thing you can do is slide the weights along the beach and knock a few in at once.  It was too much fun for me to take out xD.  Thanks for playing!

Thanks very much for the kind words :).  https://yousayrandy.itch.io/ did the design part of this game, and you can see his reply to the first comment below if you want to see the highbrow roots of the idea xD.  Thanks again for trying it out!

Awesome, I can't claim those are rookie numbers yet, but to add to this, people like you should be rewarded!  

As time permits me to review, I've been sorting by Karma (Pretty sure that's the most games reviewed):

Reward folks that are doing the divine work :).

I caught a Mahi-Mahi and now I'm craving seafood xD.  Nice work on the visuals & audio and setting the mood.  One thing I think it could use is a little feedback on the cast, like a little splash effect for the line going into the water (that way you don't have to do a full fishing rod/animation :)).

I was a little thrown by the circle/clicking at first because I didn't realize you could wait and read it, so I sort of panic-clicked the first few times and was not able to read the text LOL.  But once I read it, I became a wealthy angler!