It works fine for me on Linux when I launch it from command line.
If I try to launch it from desktop, nothing happens. It seems the game fails to open a terminal to be played in. The title screen can then be found deep down in syslog, followed by “Unhandled exception. System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot read keys when either application does not have a console or when console input has been redirected. Try Console.Read.”
The game description gives the impression that the simulation of the race is pretty detailed (probably why the same horse never stays in first place all the way, which helps a lot in making the races exciting), but as a player I would have liked to have more information in the game itself (for example, knowing in advance what kind of race the next race is going to be to train accordingly). Obviously in a jam you don’t always have time to do everything.
Maybe naming the rivals could help create some tension across various races. Getting to name your own horse is also always fun :)
Overall it’s a pretty fun idea for a game. Good job!
added “using System;” at the start, otherwise Console and everything else wasn’t recognized
commented out “Console.WindowWidth = 100;” - it seems to only work on Windows, there might be some workaround but I didn’t look into it and adjusted the console manually to get it to the right size
This is fun, I played it a few times without paying attention to the score and trying to clear it as many times as possible, kind of like a wordless, frantic typing game.
Playing it trying to get a high score resulted in a slower, more strategic gameplay - more focused on dodging and waiting, saving clears and dashes as much as possible.
I feel like the game could be improved a bit by making the letter distribution a bit less random (maybe instead of positioning randomly the letters one by one, positioning by group of 3 to 5 in predetermined patterns?), and less frequent in the top-right corner where the enemies spawn.
It took me a while to dodge even one missile - I’m a terrible pilot it seems - but I persisted, figured out the rhythm a bit, and got a nice 22 seconds run. I might come back to try 30s :)
Fun game!
(I also really like the cute blockiness of the clouds.)
You might be able to compile it from source if you are motivated (I used Mono on Linux and had to tweak the source a bit), but otherwise I think it is generally accepted that you can’t always play all the games in a jam - because of a lack of time, too many games, an OS issue, a crappy laptop that can’t run everything, accessibility…
Playing and commenting every game but one is already pretty great!
I managed to play your game on Linux by compiling it from the source, thank you for including it :)
Maybe the game/narrative could have benefited from a few extra leads/diversions, but it was still a neat fun game, I like this sort of things. The battery was a nice time pressure to make each decision feel more relevant.
The fact that you need to ground pound instead of just pressing a button to switch sides is really satisfying.
One small nitpick, the first time I saw the white spikes I really though they were just black spikes with a line on top, but I got used to it pretty quick.
I’m a bit surprised by the question to be honest. This is about always taking into account the other side, it’s a balancing act between left and right, a lot of games in this jame did things in a similar fashion (using left/right, up/top, dimension-swapping which in a way is just a third axis). It only applies it to a more puzzley/cardgamey/stategey setup instead of platforming for instance.
The game looks very good, it’s minimalist but very distinct.
I would have loved some form of complementary mechanic to help find the red cube other than looking everywhere quickly (maybe something with sounds?). But still, it plays kind of like a blind-folded game of whack-a-mole, it’s a pretty unique idea. Good job :)
This is neat :) Must have been pretty fun to figure out how to code this.
I guess the fact that it’s on a möbius strip means that there is a lot more horizontal mobility than vertical, so it takes more time for the tail to be really a problem and the walls are the biggest challenge. Maybe the grid should be a bit taller? Or is there a way for a second möbius strip to connect on the Y axis?
The mix of triangular movement and color manipulation seems really interesting. It’s just too bad it’s so short, I feel like this is worth exploring with more time than 3 hours.
The concept is really clever, kind of like playing soccer against an horde of angry triangles.
I would have loved the ability to use another input than the mouse though - by default I’m on a laptop with a touchpad and it feels like super-hard mode. (I did play it with a mouse eventually)
I’m not really familiar with pachinko so I don’t know how much you added to the concept (do the pin rotate in regular pachinko?), but it is really well executed and the hand-drawn look is very pleasing!
