itch.io

Nice game! I had I little trouble getting the ball rolling (literally, not figuratively), but otherwise the game played pretty smoothly! I like to think that all the people in the chat are actually other people (or representations of other people) who helped you, but whether or not that's true, I hope you had fun making it!

Really fun and blood-pumping! I had a little trouble picking up objects and moving them to the inventory, but the visual clarity of everything in the game is incredible. Great work!

I've developed a frustrated relationship with D&D and TTRPGs in general from playing for a few years with a group I feel doesn't want me there. It was fun in certain moments, but otherwise I was left feeling entirely inadequate, regardless if I was a player or a DM. I decided I'd stop going a few months ago, and I haven't touched TTRPGs since. 

After playing this though, it brought back some of the joy in planning and thinking through dungeons and encounters. Trying and failing over and over to get the player through while also providing a challenge kind of desensitized myself to failure. It helps that you wrote the player's dialogue to be the friendliest, most patient, most engaged player than anyone I've ever met. I kind of want to try playing or running a game again after playing this. Thanks a lot!

Very well polished game! I love seeing the different ways people play with the theme; I had assumed it meant the player swapping roles with the obstacles, but there's just so much else that can be done with it.

I really like this level design philosophy of "here's a few constraints, there is no one solution." I know there are lots of games that get designed like this, but man, there REALLY need to be more games that get designed like this. Great work!

This looks fantastic! The timer system feels antithetical to the relaxing vibes a Pokemon Center has, and I feel like I should be able to put potions back if I dropped them but didn't use them, but the rest of the game looks and plays woderfully! Great work!

After the first level, it took me back to the main menu, and I wanted to cry. Turns out I just hit the Main menu button instead of Next level. God, I love spatial puzzles way more than I have any right to. Great work!

Try hitting space.

Nice job! I, as per usual, forgot to read the notes at the bottom, so I was really confused as to how this was "roles reversed" until I died, which ended up being a really enjoyable twist. When I was planning  for this, I wasn't able to come up with a role-reversal that didn't somehow involve an AI agent taking the place of the player, but after playing this, I'm realizing that it wasn't necessarily the player's agency that had to be reversed, rather just some property that traditionally belongs to the player (in your case, it was the player's upgrade system going to the world, and the world's randomization system going to the player). Even if to you this seemed obvious, I think that was really well thought out!

I think something that the game is lacking in is readability: in order to make this sort of game work, the player has to be able to connect points on the map to the current room, and because they can only access one or the other at any given time while playing, they need to be able to remember the room layout. Here's the problem: if it weren't for the enemies and barriers, all of the rooms would be completely identical. 

The simplest change I think you can make to fix this to add small cosmetic alterations to each of the rooms, sort of like what you're doing with the barrier blocks already. Easier said than done, of course; I know how confusing procedural generation can be, even in its simplest form. The fact that you pulled off a functioning procedural generation algorithm in under forty-eight hours, and, at least from what it sounds like, you've never attempted something like this before. Great job!

This was a really neat little game :) I'm glad I wasn't the only one to try the "develeoper instead of the player" idea; I was curious to see how to you exectued on it, and I think it reads way better than mine did! If you think about it, each edit to the game is like a branching level, so I could easily see this as becoming a full game given enough time. Great work!

Before anyone asks: no, this will not actually crash or damage your computer. I'm not that bad at iterating while loops.

Short, simple, and at the same time, surprisingly and terrifyingly complex; that's my kind of game.

You stumped me with the third ending, though. I feel like the hints for the last ending are just not complete enough, but they kept me busy trying out ideas for a solid 15 minutes. Great work!

Thanks for the feedback! We did trade quality for quantity a little during the final hours, and I'm a pretty poor judge of difficulty, so I'll be sure to keep an eye on these sorts of things in the future.

Man, this game had me smiling like an idiot the whole way through (even thjough I was playing by myself)! The SFX are so juicy, and everything looks so clean aesthetically (I really need to try using vector graphics in my games). Great job!

Thanks! Actually, if you're referring to the weird floor tiles that keep showing up, I used those sprites when writing the code to focus of the mechanical aspects of play before uploading any sprite work, but I had so much stuff to add that I just ended up keeping them like that.

Yeah, pacing the game wasn't something I had time for. Hope what you played of it was fun, though!

Yeah, I remember working on a project like this: those illusions are not trivial. Nice that you managed to pull it off without any detrimental bugs.

If you want some pointers on visuals, first off, there's nothing wrong with monochrome. What you have here is a nice starting point, but it feels a little flat, and not because you're using an orthographic camera. What I mean is that from the way the game appears there is very little meaning to be made of it. That's part of what visual identity is: extracting meaning from visuals. 

To establish the vibe you already have, one of abstract calm, you could add some dark grey background objects and elements. These could be unity primitives like lines, cubes, or spheres, or they could be more complex shapes or other cool impossibilities like the Necker cube. These objects could slowly rotate/float against the black backdrop, just to give the space some motion. 

Since you're using Unity, there are a few tools that could actually help you. Particles are useful for giving a sense of atmosphere, literally; particles help encode what the air is like in the space. Slow wandering point particles could resemble dusty air, floating wispy clouds show humidity, faster curvy lines show wind. Particles can also be used to show the weather, like rain or snow. Bloom is a also neat tool I would use here; it's a post-processing effect that can emphasize light by layering a little blur over the screen to give a glow effect to anything bright. If you're struggling with aesthetics, definitely learn how to use Unity's particle system and post-processing (they make anything look 1000 times better as long as you don't overdo it).

If you need some inspiration, look up some abstract art from Frank Lloyd Wright. I get that the designs might be a bit too complex for this, but I think they're a good starting point for some neat shapes that compliment what you currently have. Also, if you're interesting in making abstract game art yourself, learn to use Inkscape. I think it's really good for making abstract, geometric art.

Hope this helped! Best of luck!

Nice game! It was hard to track what was going on mechanically, but I understood enough to have some fun. Good work!

I've seen a lot of games like this, but all of them are on a 2d plane with no changes in elevation. I bet getting the programming down on this one alone was rough, but a stroger visual identity would do it a great service. Gives me monument valley vibes, really neat!

i am so happy to hear there are other artists out there like escher

100-Sided Die, after being 'beat' in a funny and simple troll game: "Ok, you can leave now"

Me: well now I'm not gonna do it

This is gonna sound like I'm complaining, but honestly these are just minor setbacks. Overall, I really enjoyed the shooter. I also understand that there isn't a whole lot of time to think about little things like this during the jam, and there's so many other things that are actually needed to have in the game before you can get to this sort of thing. That said, if you want to know how you could improve the game in post, here's a list of things I noticed:

There's some trouble where the dice result won't register in some cases, but I assume that's a bug. 

The dice seem to default to spinning on the up-axis, so the top result is ususally low, unless I've aimed the camera in a way that makes them bounce off a wall to spin differently. Of course, I really have no idea if that's actually how the rolling operates; the rotation could actually be RNG based, and I could just be getting unlucky. Just an observation.

Some stats like bullet number are just way more effective than stats like accuracy, so when playing I just end up using all my dice on that until I've got it to max. Upgrading stats like bullet speed didn't even seem necessary.

While the score depletion mechanic (where the scores naturally return to their original number) does keep the player from getting overpowered, it isn't really satisfying and makes my investment feel meaningless, particularly in weaker stats like accuracy. An alternative could be to make the enemies get more powerful as you upgrade, create enemies that actively deplete your scores instead of dealing damage, or even just having less depletion for less powerful stats.

Wow, this game has me on my toes the wholetime. Things get really chaotic in the last two levels, especially when the card I really need doesn't show up until the last second (or not at all). In the number kills number level, I don't think it makes sense to have cards of values greater than 6, but maybe that's part of the fun. Really fun game, love the aesthetic!

I love the atmospheric vibe and simple gameplay! After playing a lot of complicated games, it's really relaxing to see a game with really straightforward controls.

I got frustrated a few times when the game just didn't register my jumps, but it looks great and has a really relaxing atmoshpere.

The fact that you made this in Scratch makes it much more impressive to me (I could never figure out Scratch for some reason). Great job!

First game I've seen in Unreal! I'll say I got frustrated by the upgrade mechanics, but props to you for not making it RNG-based. Good job!

I love the retro aesthetics and little groove in the background, but the game is impossible to play without being frustrated by the weird frame rate glitch that makes me travel 2 spaces instead of 1 that the description says can be fixed by downloading the game (which didn't word). Without that though, this is a really neat game. Good job!

It looks nice, and I enjoyed the music, but there isn't a terrible lot going on mechanically, just RNG. 

Great game! Really simple and easy to get into. The sounds, despite only have one (maybe two idk), captured the satisfaction of rolling dice. Despite only having a few core mechanics figuring out the best way to optimize the game was really fun. Good job!

Good art direction! Would have been nice to hear things, but I know that sound can be frustrating, so I'm not holding that against you in a 48 hour jam.

This game itself, though, is frustrating. This could just be me, being easily really frustrated by roguelikes, but there is a terrifyingly high standard deviation for luck here. In one run I got 7 hearts and put at least 30 tiles down before finding something that could harm me. In another, I was literally surrounded at spawn by enemy spawners and pools of acid.

It's also hard to read at times: it didn't even occur to me that the game actually told me which tile I was about to place, it takes me a moment to tell if I was actually hit by an enemy, and the health bar colors are switched (red means health,  green means damage).

This is really well-produced! The controls are robust and snappy, everything sounded and looked crisp, and there's chickens, which is a big plus.

I think the gameplay was a bit confusing, though; you have to knock the chickens off the map, or let them explode, and not get knocked off the map yourself? And you can only attack after three rolls, and sometimes you don't wan't to attack? 

I didn't really know what I was doing, possibly because I skimmed the directions, but I still had lots of fun. Great work!

Post-processing looks great for the vibe of this game! Once I read the controls (which I frankly don't do often enough), it was much more fun! I think there were a few ways to make its tie to the theme stronger other than RNG, but I can get behind it. Great job overall!

Love the vibes! The art is clean, the sound design is juicy, and the music fits perfectly. I found it frustrating when I'm suddenly trapped by a huge gap or ledge I can't jump over but in general the gameplay is really smooth. The only technical gripe I have is that I can't see the entire game window in the web browser. Great job!

This was really fun! It's well-paced, and the bullets never felt overwhelming, just challenging. Also, thank you so much for making the bullets something ohter than white.

Nice shader! Would have been cool to see some other shooting mechanics. The game's really hard, though, not because enemies are strong, but because the die is so hard to control. Great work overall!

Thought it was a really neat idea! Would have been nice to play the other 4 levels, though.

I feel like the ability to throw the the die should have been one of the first things I learned to do. Also I got frustrated a few times after pressing the R key instead of the E key.

Everything looks and sounds really clean. I wish I had been able to do that in my other projects!

Great job overall!

oh my god me too! that was actually the first thing I thought of when I saw it