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The music an general presentation fit really well and created a great atmosphere. The gameplay was challenging and fun. I had some issues in the song select, that the images and names were kinda displayed over each other, but I just picked something randomly :) All in all a fun game with good music :D

After I figured out that I have to be really quick, while moving outside of the orb, it was a lot of fun and I wished there would have been more levels, but I understand ofc, that time is always an issue in game jams ;) Loved the visuals in particular too and the controls felt very smooth!

One of my favourites I have played so far in this jam! It was so much fun cheering on the little orbs or swearing, when they bounced in the wrong direction xD Loved the music and the art style, general presentation and visuals of the enemies, too. I only would have wished for more attacks, also maybe a healing spell. But I really genuinely enjoyed this great game!

Very calming and laid back game with lovely art and fun gameplay, I enjoyed it a lot :D

I can see that working really well, especially with the multiplayer aspect! I wish you much success with that plan :D

I immediately liked the art style, which creates a great atmosphere with the lighting :D It's very cute when the little orb hides and the animation on the goblins when they catch you is great too. Gameplay is fun and engaging as well. I really enjoyed playing your game :)

The visuals and the music fit really well and the gameplay with the orb and the character is a great idea that's implemented really well :D The puzzles are fun too!

Thanks a lot for your feedback! The pacing was my biggest worry when calling it "done" for the jam, but with a bit of testing it should be possible to adjust :D And the two people sitting in one chair... I actually tried to fix that issue, but I could only make it worse, so I decided to leave as is for now, but it is well noted ;)

Thank you! Some of the assets are selfmade, some are not, I gave credit where it's due in the "about" section :D

Made me giggle :D

I really like the concept of the game and congrats on finishing your first game jam! :D I would suggest adding some UI, to show the player how much money they own or when they have to rest :)

I really like the visuals. The sprites are cute and the snow that is tinted a bit and not just bright white is very pleasant to look at, it gives the whole game a very cozy vibe! :D

Balancing the pace was pretty difficult, like what is too slow / what is too fast. So I appreciate your feedback on that matter. I also like the idea of coziness influencing tips :D

Haha, thank you, glad you like that little detail :D

Thank you for the feedback! :D

Thank you for bringing up that issue, it definitely needs to be fixed :D

Very cute game~ I liked the graphics and the gameplay is fun :D

I struggled a bit with the controls at first, but I love the calm and chill atmosphere :D

I really liked the kinda run-down bar atmosphere :D

Very cute, I liked the vacuum cleaner in particular, after I discovered it ;) I was not really sure though, if I cleaned everything properly, as I couldn't spot a meter that tells me my progress or something of the like :)

I love the music and the beautiful atmosphere you created with the art style and lighting :D All the stuff that "goes wrong" in this house and has to be put in order made me giggle xD

Devlog #2 - Days 3 to 5

Prototyping is mentally exhausting. At least for me. It's an emotional rollercoaster. I start with game mechanic 1, doing some research, watching a tutorial and it actually works as planned! Yay! Why not try another mechanic we need? Okay, doing some research, trying to follow a tutorial, making minor tweaks in the code for the distinct needs of this project... aaaaand, it doesn't work. Of course.

Continuing research on forums, watching tutorials, trying different variants and tweaking stuff I don't really have a clue about, things get messy in the code, because I have tried so many different things... I sometimes really "work", if you can even call it like that, like an elephant moves around in a porcelain shop, breaking everything I built before in the process of trying to add new features. Everything seems hopeless and

"I'm not able to do it anyways, what was I thinking, trying to make a game?!"

In situations like this it's actually best to let it sit, from my experience. Sometimes the solution for your problem ambushes you while you brush your teeth or do the laundry. And if not, you can always just ask the community, which is often a very great source for friendly advice. The only problem is, once mechanic 1 is successfully implemented, for mechanic 2 it's gonna be wash rinse repeat, statistical probability, considering my skill level. As I said, it's a rollercoaster.

On day 3/4 (days bleed together, really) I made a power up I really liked. Took me like 3 hours and was animated even. I was very happy with my progress until I found out that I can't really bake transparency in Blender, which makes my little power up look very unspectacular and underwhelming in Godot and makes it basically unusable. There's probably a solution for that, if you are skilled enough. But I am not yet, unfortunately.

So I decided to work on my prototype and implemented my magician model and the player is now able to control her and the mesh even rotates in the right direction when moving and even the animations work! Not super elegant, admittedly, but I actually wouldn't have thought I'd come that far in this regard.

I obviously had a run that evening, right?! So why not take it next level and implement a camera that follows the player? I followed a tutorial, step by step, but somehow... when moving around in the game, the camera was a real mess, it was wobbling around and swinging wide when rotating which caused serious motion sickness just when playing 1 minute. Okay, I can just delete the camera and backtrack my steps and everything should work again... You probably already guessed that it didn't. But after letting it sit for a while it struck me, and I did some minor tweaks in the code. A path, that was accessed was not existent anymore since I deleted the old camera.

Well, at least I didn't break the whole thing, "the cup is halb full and not half empty". So, my wisdom for today would be to always remember to make regular back up saves of your game folder to save you from unnecessary grief and stress.

It can't be a coincidence, that the word "problem" sounds pretty much the same in so many different languages, can it? Seems to be a very common phenomenon. But first things first:

For a bit more than a month now, I'm spending huge amounts of my free time figuring out Blender and Godot, to make games for fun. While I feel I can already do some stuff I want in Blender, Godot is still very much a moloch of settings and code I don't really understand. And that's exactly why I thought "keep it simple for your first game jam", since I really want to be able to present something at the end of this event I don't have to hide under the carpet for.

The theme of this game jam is "free", so after my brain came up with mostly pretty much unexciting brain farts or utmost unrealistic crap I can't possibly program in my wildest dreams, I think I found a nice, short and easy idea, that should fit my skills:

"Freeing a giant while having to fight off enemy waves"

Admittedly, this concept doesn't reinvent the wheel, but I should be able to crank out the code for it and also some nice 3D models that don't insult the eyes of the brave players who will dare to free a giant...

"I can do that! ...right? right?!"

Well, my little magician 3D model with the shiny gem in its staff turned out quite nice if I may say so myself. So far so good.

So, why not start working on the code for some of the mechanics, I mean, you can never start too early with prototyping...

• Player movement with a sphere as placeholder? Check! Smooth as a peach.

•  Tapping a button when standing in an area to break chains? Well...

10 minutes in and I was shaking in my boots, or as they say in German: "My butt reached ground ice". After staring at the screen for entirely too long, trying to find out what the issue was and fiddling around a bit, I decided to ask in the MFGJ discord for help, because doing it alone wouldn't lead anywhere. I received some very useful advice and so I learned today how to make my own variables that are not numbers and set them to true or false. This way the chain break mechanic seems to work now! Thank you again for that awesome help!

 After sitting in my chair, leaning back and sipping my coffee with a very satisfied face, I noticed, that the chain isn't vanishing properly, when it should, so I decided to move the script to the parent node, easy breezy lemon sque...!!!

Yeah, didn't work. Okay, back to where we started, by hitting Ctrl+Z a few times (Ctrl+Z and I have a very close relationship, we don't make that a secret). But, and I still have no clue why, nothing worked anymore, still, even after undoing! I had to put down my coffee cup in disbelief. What was the fluffin problem? All checking of the script didn't really help and, since it wasn't exactly what you would describe as "long", I decided to just recreate it, this time on the parent object, and tada! Everything worked again, even the vanishing when it's supposed to happen (please do not ask me why).

After making a separate extra copy of that progress I decided to call it a day and get back to it tomorrow to maybe implement the actual player model, with rotation and the fancy nancy stuff that comes with it. Until then, party on and keep your butt away from ground ice.