itch.io

Fantastic! Especially love the artwork.

Love the ghostly noises!

It's not my type of game, so I'm looking at it as an outsider to the genre. Take these opinions with a grain of salt.

I appreciate that it appears nicely polished. I like the UI theme and the audio events on button hover, etc.

The long list of items was a bit much as a novice. A tiered progression system, with item unlocks  or tutorial level with 5-10 items might have been nice. Customers often came in asking for things I didn't have, so I wasn't sure if I was supposed to close shop and go buy it, or just dismiss them.

At first, I didn't realize I was supposed to reduce prices offered to the vendor from 100%. I guess I expected they'd give me wholesale prices by default. And I didn't have any sense of how low could I offer, nor how high could I sell. I guess that's the whole point of this type of game? Would a probability indicator be out of place? I like that it's a press your luck mechanic, offering too little or requesting too much, but I didn't feel like I had a sense of how hard I was pressing my luck.

Overall, good entry. I just need more exposure to this type of game.

Nice idle game. I guess the bar at the top it the astronaut's lifespan? But nothing bad happened when it ran out, so I cranked the speed to 16x and made everything. (I guess that circumvents the dopamine reward feedback loop from most idle/clicker games, but I can see why you'd include 16x speed for a game jam audience.)

I just missed audio. Don't underestimate the importance of audio. 

It's like a mini-metroidvania, where you have to gain skills to unlock areas. I like it. 

How did you get 4 ratings without a game? Did you accidentally delete the files?

It looks like you put in a good faith effort to make a game. You deserve more ratings.

I like the ambitious idea. The long tutorial was a bit slow and hard to take in. Consider adding hover tooltips to all your in-game elements, and/or some kind of instructions on your itch game page.

Great entry for a first timer!

Great game. After all the great peacock dances, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to do something specific to "win" the stones in the middle. I quit after making about 15 more citizens. I love me some ambient games though. It's nice not to have to fight off violent enemies for a change.

Works great with a trackpad!

For a second I thought I had to swing the hammer with my mouse. Then I was a bit disappointed to find I could just push them.

Nice graphics. 

I liked the paper doll monsters. Just wanted some small animations on the body parts. Even just a little rotate when they activate. Good job for your second jam though!

Like others, I couldn't read the tiny UI. Might be a window scaling issue in the Godot settings. That or your eyes are much better than mine, or maybe you don't use a tiny laptop for gaming.

Wow. Nice job on your first jam! I felt pretty proud of myself exploiting the double damage / double defence bug. But then I gambled all my dice away into skulls and lost the will to continue.  That must be one of those hard game design problems, protecting players from their own dumb selves.

I'm back after hearing that the game is a lot like another game, Slice & Dice. I didn't know about that one so I went and bought it to try it out. So your homage made a sale for them.

After playing S&D a few rounds, I can honestly say there are some things I like better in your game: I like the slightly easier difficulty by default. That hits my sweet spot. I like the way the player has more control over what classes they'll get. I like your arrow drag mechanic, which feels more visceral than click, move, click. I like your hover tooltips, which give me information without unnecessary mouse-clicking. I like your unified HP, so I don't have to manage block for specific characters. It's a bit more casual than dice & slice, but there's room in the world for a variety of game difficulties.

There's nothing wrong with piling onto a game genre. Duke Nukeum was a clone of Doom, way back in the day. There's a thousand Slay the Spire variants now.

On the other hand, your dice assets do look very similar. So maybe more reskin could have been in order.

Overall though, I think you've improved on that game in many ways. Now you just need to add a bunch of content , maybe reskin the dice, and get it on Steam.

Looks like I forgot to include any instructions for the mouse-controls. The Space Whale's acceleration is determined by the distance the mouse cursor is away from the whale. The whale will try to face the mouse cursor, but it's intentionally slippery. (Hard to turn in space.)

Cute idea, but yeah, the map seems too big without a quest pointer or hints. Would have liked some audio feedback as well. Great entry for your first submission though! Don't underestimate the importance of audio.

Some people are saying the camera is too zoomed in. It zooms out more, based on the speed you're moving, but the default zoom may be too close, making it hard to look around.

Thanks for playing!

I struggled with how much guidance to provide. Initially I had a bunch more levels with each step spelled out explicitly, but I felt like it was too much hand-holding, like a series of fetch quests which turned into a chore, inducing players to just do the thing as quickly as possible to get to the next level. So I took them out and made it more "do whatever you want."

Perhaps a happy compromise would have been to provide occasional hints or achievements. 

Fend off an alien, protect a city from asteroids, etc.

Also, a lot of intended content was cut due to time constraints, fear of introducing new mechanics at the last minute, and developer sanity.

Thanks for playing!

Great start for a first game jam. Looks like you could have benefitted from 1 more team mate for SFX or VFX. Not so easy to make a juicy card/dice battler in 9 days solo.

Nice entry. It's still fun single player, just to see how long of a run you can have. I imagine that coding an AI player for this type of game would be murderously difficult.

Very fast paced. Nice work.

An idle/clicker with no delays has a weird dopamine feedback loop. You owe me a new mouse button.

I liked it. Was only disappointed that my 100 grace didn't seem to pay off.

I love the graphics and audio. Nice chill vibe too, which I love.

Too hard for me, but nice entry. I loved the aesthetic.

Great entry. I enjoyed my run. I'll probably come back and play another round or two after I've tried a few other games. Balancing this must have been challenging!

Love the graphics and animations and audio and overall aesthetic and atmosphere. My only beef is the 8-10 second delay after death. For a jam game in particular, that feels too long. You might consider making cutscenes skippable, unless the time delay is a deliberate choice to punish players for dying.

Nice. Elegant. Straightforward. Felt pretty complete. I didn't notice any bugs and I liked the audio and visual feedback when I landed hits. All that's left is a bit of animation, fancier textures, and maybe some different types of enemies.

Glad your kids will be receiving the best possible education. Don't let anyone tell them otherwise.

Well done making so many planets! I agree the controls feel a bit slippery. You can switch to mouse controls by clicking the button in the bottom right corner, but those are even more slippery. I prefer WASD.

Phase or boost to get the whale out of a jam would be a nice addition. Great idea!

Thanks. I wanted much more interactivity and events and behaviours, but .. ambition often exceeds time and ability.

That was super fun and charming. I felt a connection with the character. Very nicely polished.

I'd love an option to speed up the text.

Pretty slick graphics. I like having two different modes of play.

Nice effort for your first submission. If you add SFX to attacks and hits, you'll be a long way toward a much better experience. (So many devs ignore audio, or leave it to the last minute. I'm not sure why.)

Amazing game, but it's really hard to play on my mac because it doesn't stretch to fit the window.

Nice premise. Early game pushing flies into the trap feels challenging. Nice upgrades. Pacing felt slow if I missed the indicator and couldn't find my new body parts. Maybe you don't need the "go and find" gameplay element.

Thanks for playing. You probably understood it well enough. :) It's my attempt at making an ambient game with no hit points or death or brain-melting puzzles. Just fly around and have fun.

This seems like a professional game you could sell on steam right now.

Oh, that upgrade felt so good. Little frog to super frog. Nice touch showing it in silhouette initially.

Sadly, I didn't beat the level with the box on the ramp over an abyss. The box physics seemed too unpredictable.