itch.io

Posted as a Review The Old Event #1: January 2025

Cool intro, nice little finding stuff in boxes in the apartment, but no music or ambience or anything is very felt. Convo after painting is hard to follow with how it is written. Weird. What's up with all the water in the kitchen, etc now. Ok, now we have ambience; redeemed. Somewhat. Why was the orange a banana in the code? What's up with the Now Loading screen?

This seems maybe a bit inspired by Oculus and also by Heriditary with the calls checking on art/work. Love the hallway transition.

Wow that whole planting seed at the tree and after was great with the call after. And now the freaky apartment jeez. Love the vignette now too.

After the road and wreck reveal it went very downhill though. Not obvious at all what to do and once I watched a playthrough to see what to do didn't even feel like finishing. Whoops.

Posted as a Review The Old Event #1: January 2025

Love the pixel art backgrounds. Music, eh. The music might be genre appropriate, I don't know, but it's very off mood and distracting.

Once again, story wise I am confused with this one, and maybe that is the point. There seems to be no thematic elements threading through the story as a whole, although there is a typical structure to the plot at least.

The details and plot reveals don't seem to coelesce into anything but some shock value, but even that is fairly disappointing.

Posted as a Review The Old Event #1: January 2025

Not a whole lot to say for this one. Very confusing at the outset and through most of it, almost as if it wanted to be oblique but for no particular reason. I would say nice job on the whole fragmented memories theme piece though, although it could be made way more understandable and/or guided at least, particular with the puzzle/tasks to push the experience forward.

I do like the overall sparse and ephemeral art and level design. Almost like being in someone's mind or memories. Same goes for the overall soundtrack, although it would be nice to have it be a bit more connected.

I'm fairly new to horror games, especially indie ones and I have to say that this one didn't make me feel much of anything other than confused and a bit antagonistic.

Very nice! I'm very glad that you had a good bit of fun with our game and nice to hear that you ended with a perfect score too! 

I don't think I ever spelled it out but when you catch endangered animals and out them on the Ark you get an Ark health recovery of 1 or 2 at the end of the wave. 

Yeah when I wrote the spawner placement code I just followed the square tile collisions so when you hit the corners it will essentially make a nest on the ground haha. I mean to go back and adjust that some because basically all the playtesters mentioned that, but it didnt affect actual gameplay much so I chose to focus on balance and otherwise more. 

Thanks again for the comment and feedback!

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

That is a pretty good point about the setup time and just letting it be unlimited until you place your spawners. We did want to have some sort of limit on it though, especially since the waves are time limited as well. On that note, an unlimited wave mode could be really fun and interesting. We may make that a bonus feature now! It gives that extra little sense of urgency while playing it. And you do get rest breaks immediately after a wave. 

Thanks! It was a stroke of creative muster when we came up with how to integrate them in a day or two before the end of the jam submission period!

There is a way to tell when your cast is recharged but it is not readily noticeable by many people. If you notice the light blue orb floating on your top right, it empties and slowly fades back in as your cast recharges. 

Yes, one or more of our game loop vars are getting crossed when trying to restart the game. Spaghetti code and such ;)

Thanks again for all of the feedback!

Very cool jam entry, especially for the other jam. Too bad you weren't really able to adapt this one at all for the LittleJS jam theme.

A tutorial section would definitely help this game a lot. It's a lot to take in to begin with, trying to get your head around all of the different UI and UX and mechanics.

Very cool audio and graphics as well. Did you do all of this music and graphics also? I'm not seeing any credits anywhere.

I'll have to give this another try to see if I can get further. I had the same experiences at most in the beginning here but will try again to leave some idle and go ahead and build houses at the beginning too!

This game also will not load for me. Just a gray box where the game should be.

This is a pretty fun entry, especially when playing on a phone or other touch screen device. 

I made it all the way through although with quite a few tries. My main advice would be to make the collision box on the bear smaller so that it doesnt get hung so often on objects that you are trying to jump on or past. 

Other than that I think the control scheme and overall feel is pretty good. It could definitely be refined more as with any jam game, but as it stands it works pretty well. 

Very cool project and I can see that you put a lot of work and effort into it!

This is really fun, but like others have commented, it could be a lot better if you just tweak it to make it easier at least to begin with. Slow down the customer rate a good bit at the beginning where you have ample if not extra time for at least the first few customers and then speed it up afterwards.

It could also be nice if you added a pause button (with or without a timer limit) so that you could pause the game to reference a recipe when you come across an order that you don't know right off hand.

I feel like I also noticed that if I missed an ingredient or two (or didn't know that I had already laid the bread down) and grab a sandwich before it is finished then it is marked as bad sandwich and I have to throw it away and start over, even if it was the correct ingredients so far but just missing some extra ingredients.

This is a very noble effort, but with everything going on in it, it just really needs some balance, and possibly some QoL improvements. Things as simple as being able to access the pastries from the side as opposed to walking around to the back (yes I know, that is more realistic, but this a game after all) could do wonders for the gameplay and ease of access. Being able to use the mouse to do things alongside the keyboard could be great too.

Great project!

One more note: it would be so much better if you could loop that music that you are using properly. It throws me off every time it starts over because it is not a perfect loop. Even if you want to send over the file you used I could loop it properly for you.

I like the intro animation a lot and the menu looks pretty good. I always have to click twice for New Game for some reason though and the Comics and Controls buttons don't seem to do anything.

Once in the game you have a good basic foundation to do more with. Would love another mechanic or two or some story to go along with what I am playing.

The music that I heard in it so far is really cool and seems to have a few different tracks from what I heard also.

Keep working on it and let us know if you update!

So I started playing and I like the intro. I was able to move around the house that you start in and exit it, but then I didn't really know what to do or where to go after. Do you have any info or advice for us?

Decent platform fighter game, but the gravity needs to be much less so that you don't fall so quickly from your jumping.

The fights are actually pretty fun and responsive even if simple.

I got to the end I think, but not sure if I was supposed to fight the other dog or not. I ran up to him and all of a sudden I was started over again. Is there an ending or what was I supposed to do?

I really liked this recreation and the graphics effects used for the poem.

However, it doesn't seem like much of a game at all. I tried a few times for the Easter eggs, but wasn't sure if I could find them using the mouse, by typing/pressing keys, or even by looking in the console for something. 

Maybe you could give us players more of some hints on the page to guide us a bit more to finding the Easter eggs and resulting medals.

If these Easter eggs are from the original program then I'm not sure that many (or any) of us are familiar with it.

Very fun idea, especially for an animals jam game.

I think the basic game loop is pretty great. It feels really good to go and fetch the kittens one by one and bring them back to the basket and have them drop in there. For some reason it does seem that there is a slight delay in catching a kitten and seeing it in your mouth though, which starts to matter in higher levels.

The main critique I would give is that there should be some sort of time increase as levels increase and there are more kittens to gather up.

I do like how you've incorporated score and even the pounce move into the gameplay!

Very fun idea, especially for an animals jam game.

I think the basic game loop is pretty great. It feels really good to go and fetch the kittens one by one and bring them back to the basket and have them drop in there. For some reason it does seem that there is a slight delay in catching a kitten and seeing it in your mouth though, which starts to matter in higher levels.

The main critique I would give is that there should be some sort of time increase as levels increase and there are more kittens to gather up.

I do like how you've incorporated score and even the pounce move into the gameplay!

This was pretty fun to start out with feeding all the animals with food. I never quite knew what was going on though because I could only read the first line of instructions that said to click on food to get it.

The food spawning noise was the worst and should probably either be turned way down or turned off. I actually thought it was a hunter shooting at the animals for most of the game.

It was fun to feed all the animals while they were wondering around, but I'm still not really sure what the overall goal is. I made it to level 6 or 7 but there were just more animals to feed and more time to use up until the next level. It seemed that all the rabbits in a level would almost immediately run off too so I could never feed them much of anything. The cows were the opposite and I just ended up keeping the store open to buy grass all of the time to feed them with.

This is a very fun entry and game! Kudos to you for making such a well put together and presented game. Everything from the menus to the overall look and design is well done and polished.

The gameplay itself is quite fun too between shooting and using the jetpack to jump and fly with. Love to rescue the animals out of the crates too!

Would love to play more levels or even have some sort of speedrun option unless I missed it!

This game was ok. It was very educational, but the game aspect could actually be developed more.

It would be nice if you at least gave the number of correct answers at the end of the game. It would be even better if you gave a different ending for a perfect score or for any score versus getting them all wrong as well.

I did really like how the picture highlights when you mouse over it, and the mouse cursor being a paw was very cool as well :)

The first level was fine and I really liked the graphics and the music also.

The cat moves a little too fast and is hard to jump up on small ledges with. The second level was way harder than the first level; a little too hard.

Thanks for the info. When I get time I will try to play again!

I really like the combination and the variety here. At first I just thought it was a match puzzle game and I wasn't very interested, although it was nice that you could zig zag while matching.

But then it took me to the town/village view and I was like, what is this? I got to place animals and then use a shovel and place a tree and bush, etc.

I thought that was pretty interesting and fun. So I went back to match more and then I had a whole bunch of vegetables along with watering cans also. I figured out that I can feed the animals vegetables and that I can change the land up with the shovel, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out anything past this. I figured I could plant things and then water them and have them grow but I couldn't figure out how to.

Then at some point I tried to use my shovel on the hole and then my shovel was gone so I really couldn't do a whole lot after that.

It's quite a fun and innovative idea, but if you could guide us a bit more even with instructions on the page before we play that would be great.

Good submission!

This game is amazing!

I've only made it to World 3 so far, but I have to take a break for a while because it's late and I need to play everyone else's submission also!

You've really made a fantastic entry here, from the initial idea, the game design and mechanics, and the implementation and execution. Kudos!

While I can see that much effort and time and care has been put into this game, I just don't think I dig on the whole card or gatcha genres as a whole.

I did play for a while, but didn't end up collecting much of the set. I was a bit confused on how to progress as well. I kept using the +1 gold over and over to buy packs. I did upgrade a couple of things to get better cards, and also 3D. Wasn't really sure what the 3D is or what it does other than it upped 3D in the top right to 1%.

I do have to say that the presentation on this one is very good though. I can definitely tell you took time to design and lay it out well.

Thanks a lot for the more in-depth explanation of things! I may try playing again soon now and see if I can't follow some of your advice :)

Nice submission!

The game itself works well; I'm not a big fan of tile matching games like this, but I did play for a bit just to get a good feel for it.

The mechanics themselves feel good as far as clicking and switching tiles and matching them also. Nice animation for that. I think the sound for matching could be better and inspire more to continue playing. Right now it kind of sounds like a whiff like you are missing or I guess the tiles are disappearing. A more satisfying sound would be better. The tile switch sound is just fine.

Some background music would be great too, especially a track where you could increase/decrease the tempo as the player started matching more or less tiles one after another.

Another big thing would be to simply introduce a timer or goal of so many matches to advance to another level, even if the level was just a numerical designation and didn't change the level design at all.

Either way, this is a nicely laid out, working implementation!

Very good, calm and relaxing adventure puzzle game. Love the puzzles that you have put into this short jam game, and I feel like it is pretty perfectly paced. 

Lots of media (graphics, audio and music) for just a month long jam, so good work on that! 

The mechanics themselves are pretty decent between moving around and interacting with the keyboard and mouse.

Would love to play more if you end up making more levels.

Great job!

I don't get an error in the console of Firefox or Chromium when playing, but it also seems to freeze for me in the first dialogue convo with the wolf. Would love to play more, but just can't get any further. Will refrain from scoring for now.

Pretty cool concept and execution here.

I like the base game of aliens identifying animal species from Earth with their spaceship. This could definitely be added to, expanded on and refined also. More levels and maybe even biomes for different levels would be cool.

RIght now it is kind of easy to just spam the scanner and glance down a little bit to make sure you pick up a species or two that you haven't yet. It would definitely be nice to have a timeout or overheat on the scanning tool so that you can't just spam it the whole time. 

It would also be pretty cool to expand the map out and allow for the aliens to explore around with movement keys, and also to have the animals hide or run away to an extent to make things a bit more challenging. Or another idea would be to randomly or semi randomly pick a species to target and you have to find that certain one at the time, or if you do then you get bonus points for finding the current targeted species.

Anyway, this was a pretty fun little concept to play with and pretty well put together for what it is.

Nice incorporation of theme!

I played a handful of games, but never really seemed to catch on to much strategy to playing besides make your pieces fit as quickly as you can and then delete one if you can't fit on the board when you are done.

I think I did pretty well, especially my last time, but I really don't feel much better about how to actually play than when I first started. I'm not sure if the pieces and white and black sheep combos are all tailored to fit into each other or just generated randomly.

I played on chill speed the whole time and it was still a bit too fast for me. I can't imagine what stressful speed is like!

I didn't try chicken mode yet, because like I said I'm not quite sure on the standard mechanics yet.

I do think that the game itself is very well made and implemented. I didn't encounter any bugs and everything worked as expected.

Nice incorporation of theme!

I played a handful of games, but never really seemed to catch on to much strategy to playing besides make your pieces fit as quickly as you can and then delete one if you can't fit on the board when you are done.

I think I did pretty well, especially my last time, but I really don't feel much better about how to actually play than when I first started. I'm not sure if the pieces and white and black sheep combos are all tailored to fit into each other or just generated randomly.

I played on chill speed the whole time and it was still a bit too fast for me. I can't imagine what stressful speed is like!

I didn't try chicken mode yet, because like I said I'm not quite sure on the standard mechanics yet.

I do think that the game itself is very well made and implemented. I didn't encounter any bugs and everything worked as expected.

This is a really fun game!

I think you've done a very good job between the balance between the speed of the snake, the otter (I think?) speed, how often apples spawn, and also how otters seem to guard apples that they are near.

Very fun!

Very glad you enjoyed it, and that you were able to win and see the ending too!

Yes, the friendly animals end up doing most of the work for you, but you do have to do a bit to help out.

Were you able to save any of the endangered animals that randomly show up? There is an Indian bat and a Hawksbill turtle that you can grab and put on the ark. 

Very nice comfy project to roam around and kind of relax in and enjoy the pretty colors and landscape. 

If there was a bit of backstory presented at the beginning before you get into dialogue with the villagers I think it would be much better.

The systems that you have built seem to work quite well though: movement, dialogue, entering houses. I like how you included some medals to get into the mix also!

This has much potential to be expanded out. I really like the core that you've built here for a nice action/adventure or light RPG type game.

I did find some weird loading bug where the background tiles never do load and it really looks like you are out in the void. I was very confused with people talking about flowers and paths and rocks my first playthrough. Once I simply loaded the  page again it was fine though:

I also wasn't sure about the various black tiles I came across as well, or if that was part of the void concept:

Pretty neat little racing game. I unknowingly picked the rabbit first and killed the first race, then didn't do so well picking animals after that!

More level variety and just general time and TLC would be good for this game. Very good start to some fun and light gameplay though!

Pretty neat little racing game. I unknowingly picked the rabbit first and killed the first race, then didn't do so well picking animals after that!

More level variety and just general time and TLC would be good for this game. Very good start to some fun and light gameplay though!

This game is so twisted and sadistic... and so much fun!

I really like the idea and concept and you definitely pulled the core mechanics off here! It feels so good to aim, place the crosshair, and then "pull the trigger"! I do not know how you got that gun sound, but it is very good for a lofi sound. The only thing missing is pulling the slide and loading another bullet in each time.

Would be really cool to see this one expanded out a bit and either add some sort of timer, or a panda kill count for advancing on. Even adding some upgrades or something too possibly and different level layouts, etc.

Nice job!

I played several times and got up to 37. The game is pretty easy to pick up on considering is only uses one button/key to play.

I think the main improvement that you could make (besides adding graphics and audio), would be to add some type of damping/interpolation code function to the player movement. Right now when you press the W key the movement is immediate. It would be nice if there was some acceleration instead of immediately going to top speed when pressing and releasing the W key. This would give the whole experience a much smoother feel to it.

This one is a lot of fun and very easy to pick up and put down. If you do put more time into it you could even make levels that unlock once you finish the current one or get past a certain time on a  level.

This was really fun once I got past the very beginning. Starting immediately was a surprise and then figuring out what to do first made me die 2 or 3 times. 

Once I figured out what to do and to stay pretty far away from the beginning enemies then I was able to get a few weapons very quickly and things got a lot easier immediately. This is when it really started getting fun, running around taking out little slimes or whatever they are. But then the lions and birds showed up and it got more interesting. More cool animals showed like a gorilla; I liked that a lot. Then after like 10 minutes or so it got a bit repetative what with the music track and kinda doing the same thing over and over. The hidden grass collisions that you mentioned didn't help either, but understandable for a jam. Also the scrolling level seems very slow to graphically refresh and kind of hurt my eyes a bit when trying to concentrate on it while moving around. It may be the laptop or screen I am on so I will try it on my desktop sometime too, but this laptop is pretty powerful so I don't think that is the issue.

Very cool concept overall and it was very enjoyable to play! Is the level procedural or one big map that wraps around itself?

This is a very cool prototype for a game. I really like the main loop with the procedural level and being chased by all these "animals" the whole round. I will echo others' comments about it is kind of weird to have to die to progress to the next round though. I am still a little confused about how to get the other weapons too. I saw the upgrade tab but I couldn't find where to buy a pistol or shotgun, or if I had to find or get them some other way.

Your upgrade screen looks pretty big and you put some time into it, but once again as above I really didn't like dying to get to this again, along with not figuring out how to get other weapons.

The game itself was fun, just felt really incomplete without some real graphics, sounds and music going. It is a fun gameplay loop though.