itch.io

I never thought that this game would be played by children, as it is very challenging in player control skills. However, I am glad that you can find joy in it. I had not considered character development, but it is a direction that could be worth exploring.

Actually there is an achievement by continuously hitting ‘C’ 48 times. You’re really just a little bit away from reaching this goal. You can also try to defeat all the achievements (listed on the “Marks” page), and each achievement represents a character from anime or movies. Can you guess who they are?

Yeah, the feedback received for this game so far indicates that it’s not easy to understand how to play. Although the formulas have been modified several times, they still seem inadequate. Perhaps some elements that appear like ‘formulas’ should be removed (these were originally designed for the game’s theme) to make them more readable.

Because everyone’s mouse devices and settings are different, having sensitivity options in this game is quite important. However, this also highlights another area for improvement: users should be able to adjust sensitivity BEFORE their first game. Actually, I personally rarely use the Shift function (which is actually a suggestion from other players). Most of the time, I only play the game at a consistent speed. However, I can understand that some hardcore players may need more ways to control the game to get high scores. BTW, maintaining a certain numbers of C is crucial for achieving high scores in this game, it means that having a reasonable speed to consistently build up C is required. That is why I tend to prefer higher speeds.

There is something I forgot to say. Participating in this game jam has been very rewarding for me, and I truly appreciate the effort and time you’ve put into playing each game. Thank you so much!

The game is not as complicated as you might think. The only thing you need to do is avoid the alpha (white) particles as much as possible to survive longer and achieve a high score. Other mechanics, such as C (green) and H (blue), exist to help eliminate alphas and increase your chances of survival. At the end of the game, several different judgements are recorded, including your score, survival time, the maximum number of alpha particles on the screen simultaneously, and the maximum chain length of C / H .

The true intrigue of this game lies in devising methods to achieve various Marks (achievements) within such mechanics. Each achievement may require vastly different approaches, and some even demand strategic thinking. For instance: To attain the “Get a max-level H” achievement, you must rapidly touch the same H particle within a short timeframe to increase its level count. However, for the “C-Chain length >= 48” achievement, you must continuously interact with C particles while simultaneously avoiding alphas (which lead to game over) and H particles (which break the chain).

As one of the scoring criteria, the “maximum number of alpha particles simultaneously on the screen” is used. Personally, players often want to capture the moment when they break a record and the screen is filled with alphas. Therefore, the action of capturing occurs when the alpha count changes. However, upon closer examination, this indeed appears to be a bug. It would be more reasonable for the capture action to trigger only when the current count exceeds the lowest historical value for the “maximum number of alpha particles simultaneously on the screen.”

This game offers various control options, and the way different devices handle movement can vary significantly. However, I anticipate that players will likely choose one method they are familiar with for playing. Since this game may require precise control, using the WASD keys on the keyboard for control can indeed be challenging. The most recommended way to play is using the mouse in conjunction with the Shift key. Additionally, on the Options page (Variables), you can adjust the control sensitivity.

The name of this game, “Chain Reaction,” embodies two aspects. First, it involves alpha particles colliding with each other to create new alpha particles. However, in reality, new particles are generated only with a certain probability, intentionally set by the game design. If alpha particles were to grow too rapidly, players would experience an instant game over without much action. The second aspect revolves around the “C and H chains”. Besides serving as a scoring criterion, creating chains of C and H particles naturally occurs if you aim for a high score within the current game mechanics.

Sorry to hear this game has caused you any confusion. I hope you can find enjoyment again in the game by approaching it from a different perspective.

I enjoy neon visual designs, which give me the feeling of playing games in an arcade. The music paired with different difficulty levels is also impressive (The music of the "secret" level makes my body sway XD). Look forward to future developments and expansions.”

Some suggestions: 

• Sometimes you want to move just a little bit, but it actually ends up going beyond the expected distance. It may be nice to provide multiple speed options, such as holding down Shift to shorten the distance traveled, giving the player more precise control over movement. (Similar the sensitivity option in my game, BTW)
• Although the game mechanics are simple, it would be nice to provide a brief guidance during the first play.
• In the context of rhythm games, adjusting volume and movement speed is actually quite important.

I’ve tried my best to describe the game mechanics graphically, but it still looks a bit difficult to understand. It is not as complicated as it seems actually XD

T (red) generate alphas, touching it will not have any impact. But being near it increases the risk of being hit by alpha.

Simply put, only alpha (white) particles will cause you to game over. Then try to touch C (green) and H (blue) as many as possible to reduce the number of alphas.

Using the touchpad to operate may be relatively difficult because it is controlled by dragging. This game may require a higher level of operational precision, so the recommended way to play is still with a mouse and keyboard. 

Hi, this is a game I made for a jam I joined first time during last year. For this game jam, I will try to improve the gaming experience (on UIs and help) before the deadline and hope you will have fun playing the game. Enjoy~

I like the atmosphere created by the game, but unfortunately the screen is really too dark for me, I can only walk along the wall for the whole game process, and then suddenly game over. I tried to use WASD to move the character, use the mouse to move the perspective, but I am not sure if there are other interactions, and not very clear how to play the game. Maybe you can give some appropriate guidance at the beginning.

I really like the atmosphere of the whole game, especially the super cool old TV tube effects. The character control is also very smooth. Although I am not very good at action games, I still very enjoy the whole game process and fun. Looking forward to the next new levels, bosses, weapons and abilities.

Some suggestions:

• Make more fine-tuned adjustments to make the operation smoother, such as having a certain tolerance and automatic alignment when passing through doors or narrow passages, so that you won’t get stuck because of a few pixels of error. Make more subtle judgments when picking up or placing the keys to the door.
• Add more guidance in the game. For example, when you get a new weapon or ability, you can give a timely picture or animation explanation, so that players can more easily understand how to use the new weapon or the effect of the new ability. The prompt text seems to disappear after showing once, maybe you can change it to show again when the character returns to the place where the prompt is displayed.
• Personally, I prefer gamepad to keyboard-mouse, and it would be nice if the gamepad and custom keys are supported.

Bugs:

• The first time I played, the prompt showed click to shoot, and the enemy also appeared before I got the weapon. Maybe you can adjust the game process to ensure that you get the weapon first, and then start facing the enemy.
• The font for showing the typing effect is missing.

The production is very complete and well-made. I like the overall sci-fi visual design. The level difficulty is progressive and timely to guide the players. I really enjoy the whole game process and puzzle-solving. Great job.

Very outstanding visual design, the token mechanism also adds some strategy and fun, overall it is an interesting and well-made game. I really don’t have much knowledge of literature and religion.

Some suggestions:

• When you can’t answer the question, theoretically it should be a game over state, and now I feel like I don’t know what to do next. 
• It would be nice to provide some appropriate guidance before the game starts, explain the gameplay, token usage, etc., to make it easier for users to understand and play the game.

The combination of Tetris and platform jumping is refreshing, and the cartoon hand-drawn cats are so cute. It feels like there are a lot of interactive mechanisms that can be extended, such as buying accessories with special effects, or adding trampolines, conveyor belts on platforms, etc. Overall, it's a fun game and has potential.

Maybe it can be simply summarized as, while dodging the white (alpha) particles, try to hit the green (C) and blue (H) particles at the same time? The red particles are only used to generate white particles, and they actually do not affect the movement and scoring. It’s just that because it produces white particles, there is a risk next to it.

A bit unique game mechanism combining match and stacking. I also like the hand-drawn style of visual design. The physical collisions and bounces in the game also bring some chaos and fun. Actually, I’m not very good at reaction-type games, the current speed is really quite difficult for me, but overall it is an interesting game. 

Some suggestions: 

• You can provide some simple guidance before the game starts, explaining the control, elimination rules and scoring. Let users enter and enjoy the game more easily. 
• UI can be further improved, especially the menu and scoring panel, which can be matched with the theme and add some visual design. 
• The web mode needs to be optimized more, the delay is particularly serious, and there is a huge difference from the downloaded version.

I really like the fairy-tale picture-book visual design, the character looks very cute and the watercolor-style painting is also very pleasing to the eye. It feels like reading a story book. The movement is smooth and easy to control. Overall, this is a fun and well-made game.

To be honest, I’m really not good at platform games, and I can’t finish this game and give professional advice on this aspect. These are just suggestions based on the few levels I played in the early stage, you don’t need to take these suggestions too seriously 😉:

•  The main mechanic of this game is to use weapons as platforms to jump. This mechanic is actually quite common in other games, it lacks some originality but it is a fun mechanic. If you want to make this game stand out in platform games, it needs more interesting level or interaction design.
• The UI can be more refined and improved, some words are really too small to see clearly, and putting the whole keyboard on the screen doesn’t seem so necessary.
• Some of the key configurations are not very intuitive for me personally, it would be better if they could provide customizable key settings.

The sci-fi visual design is eye-catching, which reminds me of Virtual On and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The shooting and movement is smooth, and the weapon upgrade also makes me want to keep playing. Overall, it is fun and has great potential.

Some suggestions:

• Often play halfway and suddenly get hit by the enemy or fall to the edge and game over, it would be better if there are visual cues on the screen or use a minimap to show the surrounding environment when close to the enemy or the edge.
• The UI can be polished and improved more. Especially in the score display, game menu and the interface for choosing upgrades, some more visual design and presentation can be added.
• It’s a pity that there is no audio, the fit BGM and sound effects will bring a completely different level of gaming experience.

Bugs:

• When click quit button, it bring me to an error state which is in a black room and cannot move around. I need to pause and choose quit again to back to game menu.
• The Linux version is broken. It shows "Error: Couldn't load project data at path ".". Is the .pck file missing?".

I really like the atmosphere of the whole game, the character and its little company are so cute. The action design is also very smooth and adorable.

In fact, I’m not very good at platforming games, playing with a keyboard makes my fingers knotted. It would be nice if I could use the gamepad to play (The movement seems to work, but other keys are not).

Actually, it is just the theme of the game, and it has nothing to do with the real experiment. Particle collisions will make their directions and speeds change randomly, rather than real physical collisions.

I once wanted to try to reproduce the real collision, but as the number of particles increased, the amount of calculation required also became larger and larger. This caused the game to be unable to run smoothly, and in the end I had to give up the plan. 😕

UPDATE: v3.3.2. The C/H chain animation is done, and the effect is better than expected. The gamepad control is supported as well.

The animation is finished, the effect is better than expected!!

I am the author of the game "Chain Reaction" ( https://sibevin.itch.io/chain-reaction ). It is the first game I made, and I used it to participate in the first game jam of my life two months ago, but I didn’t get a good ranking at that time. Although I know that enjoying the whole process of the competition is more important than the result itself, and after all, the time and experience are limited, the initial version of the game is not very good, but I always feel a bit disappointed. 

I hope to continue to improve the game experience and enhance the ability to make games through this jam. Any suggestions and feedback are welcome, and have fun with the game ~

Good luck with your dungeons!!

I’m glad to work with you, but I haven’t received any messages yet... You can add discord friend @kaitwang , and we can discuss the details there.

Hello, I am the author of the game "Chain Reaction" ( https://sibevin.itch.io/chain-reaction ). Currently, the BGM and SE of this game are directly using free materials, but I have always hoped to have an opportunity to create exclusive music for this game. 

Regarding the BGM of this game, I set it to be a space, sci-fi or cyberpunk theme melody. Because it is an action game, I think it can be more lively and fast-paced. In addition, as a BGM, it must be able to loop. There are currently 5 timing points that will trigger SEs. 1. When Game Over, an explosion sound is used. 2. When U hits C or H, a sound similar to upgrading or casting magic is used. 3. When alpha splits into multiple particles, a glass breaking sound is used. 4. When alpha is eliminated by C, a sound similar to bubble bursting is used. 5. When an achievement is attained, a tada sound is used. Of course, those are just my current choice, you still have the greatest creative freedom to change anything you want, even add extra BGMs or SEs for different pages or new timing points, as long as it matches the tone of the game. 

About the game development part, it can actually do a lot of subtle adjustments and applications on audio in game, such as dynamically change the BGM when certain conditions are met, or changing the volume of the left and right channels according to the position of the mouse cursor, etc. But currently this game only temporarily lowers the BGM volume when the game is over. At the current time point of this jam, it may be too late to add new mechanisms. But for the project itself, we can continue to improve the game experience for various possibilities together in the future. BTW, this game uses the bevy game engine ( https://bevyengine.org/ ), and if you need to compile the game on your own computer, you must set up the rust ( https://www.rust-lang.org/ ) development environment. If you just want to apply new audio in game, another way is to replace the corresponding audio files in the installation directory after installing the game. 

There are a few things that may need to be mentioned first: 1. Because this game is a free and open source project ( https://github.com/sibevin/chain-reaction ), the materials used in the game such as images and audio will be as a part of game's source code and released with the same license (GPLv3) for people to download. But you still own the copyright of your work, and can also use separate licenses to release it if needed. 2. This cooperation may not be able to pay fees, but in exchange, your name and work name will be listed on the credits page of this game (the References page in game), and also on the corresponding itch and github pages. If you are interested, please feel free to contact me with discord: @kaitwang.

The new feature "Achievement" ("Marks" page in game) is finished. Can you beat them all?

A new version v1.3.0 which supports persistent settings and adjusted particle speed is available on github now. FYI ;-)

The operation of building and destroying rivers is a bit unintuitive, and it will be really chaotic in the end XD. 1500 is probably my limit. BTW, the ghosts are SO cute!

Sorry, I forgot to push the latest code to github > <. Now the latest version (v1.1.0) should be available. 

An interesting and promising game, I can imagine there are many possibilities for future development. The UI is also well done, although the pixel style is not my favorite. It is a big surprise that the enemies do not follow the path, especially when the road is painted so clearly, adding some extra challenge and strategic thinking.

The bevy-ui-navigation and persistent storage features are also what I have always wanted to do, but the game jam week is really too short, and I couldn’t make it at the time of submission. In fact, the github repo has been updated a few days ago with a version that integrates bevy-ui-navigation, and also fixes some UI bugs, but it is still in the game jam voting stage, so I can’t upload the updated version.

With the current version of the alpha (white) particle speed (should be reduced in future versions to make the difficulty not so high), using the keyboard to play this game is really not very advantageous, because you need to have a certain speed and accuracy in controlling the U (yellow) particle.

BTW, my personal highest record is 95s ;-) A good strategy is to hit the C (green) particles continuously, keeping a certain number of high-level C (green) particles on the field, so that the number of alpha particles can be effectively maintained without being too high.

In fact, the automatic mode (which is running in the menu background) was made earlier than the game mode, because I was also curious about what the results would be by applying these formulas. Interestingly, it took some time to keep the automatic mode balanced, that is, not to let the alpha particles be completely eliminated, nor to let the alpha particles increase infinitely and cause the program to crash.

What I mean is that because the background is fixed, it is not very intuitive to judge whether you have really moved to avoid the flying objects just by using the radar interface. But overall it is fun and interesting. ; )

It is a bit difficult to adjust to the right speed, too slow will make the challenge too easy and make the game boring. Maybe introducing a life value mechanism is a good idea, so that players have a certain tolerance and don’t game over at once.

Maybe it can be summarized as don’t touch whites, and try to get greens and blues as many as possible?

The interface is cool. It would be clearer to see the current movement if the background moves along when moving. Several times I didn’t know what happened and was directly hit by a sudden planet meteor.

It would be better if there was some visual guidance on the direction when the sheep ran away, because the field of view is a bit limited. BTW, It is impossible to save all the sheep at night. As the master, you shouldn’t just light the lamp, but also show some vampire abilities. XD

Using missiles as a way of sending gifts is a bit wicked XD. It would be better if there was a small map to show the target. I got lost several times when the level is up.