itch.io

Straightforward maze-runner. Minimalist, functional graphics and UI. Music very good; upbeat chiptune/electronic. Gameplay is well-done! Character speed resets on collision, encouraging replay and mastery to achieve higher scores. This along with the explosion/force field power that is used to be defeat enemies and open doors (walls?) introduce a surprising amount of strategy to the moment-to-moment experience. Level design is also thoughtful with meaningful forks and a path that trolls the player at one point. Needs more content but solid experience already

Good-looking prototype with gorgeous main character sprite animations and moody, relevant backgrounds all set into a CRT arcade-cabinet presentation. Chunky voice clips and dark but energetic music. All in all, the aesthetics are on point with this one. Falls short in gameplay with some odd design and balance choices. Screen does not smoothly scroll but "jumps" forward a tile every second or two. The goal is to dodge or destroy obstacles but there is no other threat; obstacles damage your score but score is gained every obstacle cleared so it quickly becomes impossible to die. Game can be cheesed by spamming attacks. Still, great presentation; recommend polish gameplay loop and add some enemy variety

Short and clever visual novel/hidden object game. Reminds me of Slay the Princess in that the context and details of the story seem to change depending on the choices you make. The presentation is well-done; good font and palette choice, subtle and pleasant indicator when hovering hidden objects. Music is subdued and meditative.

The creators had a good sense of scope. Although very short, I didn't feel like anything was missing, nor did I feel like anything was unfinished. With minor changes, could easily imagine this as a short demo or a single scene from another, larger game 

The UI was really well done on this project. There's a surprising amount of feedback and polish on things like selecting menu items, screen transitions, and even the example buttons lighting up when pressed in the tutorial. The subtle background parallax was also pleasant. Despite the simple sprites, the game has a polished presentation

Thanks for playing the game on stream and giving your live feedback! You guys are super important to game jam and indie game visibility!

Sorry the cutscene text dialogue was so slow lol. Since the cutscenes were less of a priority and my time was very crunched, I wasn't able to implement a button input to click through individual dialogue boxes, only for skipping the whole thing, and I just kinda winged it deciding on how long each would take to cycle

As far as the combat system, I left a general guide at the bottom of the game page if anyone wants to see how it works in more detail before/while playing

Thanks again!

Hey, thanks for much for giving the game a try and for leaving a comment! CheeseFestivities did a great job with the music; they really came through with composing tracks for specific moods and scenes. 

As with any game jam, time was super limited, especially in this case since it was my first time creating a turn-based RPG, so I'm glad the story elements and cutscenes did some work. And limiting the combat abilities is actually a cool idea - if we revisit the game after the jam I'll try to incorporate that. I agree as is the game is a little too easy and some of the monsters are a little overtuned (like Dex, and I believe Pakka), so getting this feedback helps confirm my suspicions on the game balance

Thank you again so much! 

Thanks for the review! It's cool that you came up with a similar idea, I do find it to a pretty compelling premise - I'll try to check out your game soon. Thanks again!

Thank you for playing and for leaving your thoughts! I agree, we had a great musician and artist on the team for this project. I'm sorry the text speed wound up being too slow, but I'm glad you let me know - hopefully after the rating period I can revisit the game and add in adjustable text speed and/or button-scrolling. Thanks again!

Ouch, I'm sorry friend! I don't have a mac myself so I didn't have any way of testing before release - I believe it's related to the capitalization in the file name, which I wasn't aware of until after submitting. I will attempt to correct and reupload after the jam, but I'm sorry you didn't get the chance to play

Thanks so much for the kind words and useful feedback. We had a great team - lucky_drago did the art and CheeseFestivities created the music, and together we imagined the gameplay and mechanics

Any errors or lack of clarity in design implementation was my fault alone lol. I tried to come up with ability names that would communicate the type of action they were (basic, elemental, evasion) but I don't think this always came across, and it still kinda requires the player to know the stuff in the "Guide/Hints" section of the main game page. With that being the case, I erred on the side of making the game easier, so that even if a player couldn't figure it out, they'd probably still win by the odds being in their favor

It wound up being so easy that I had a hard time testing the lose condition and actually had to do the same thing you did lol. But with time being limited, I figured it best to keep it easier than hard. Thanks again for playing and giving such great feedback - if we revisit the game after the jam, I'll ramp up the difficulty!

Thank you! We had a great artist on the team

AWWW YEEEAAA

Thank you for playing and leaving such a kind comment! Glad you enjoyed it!

Fun casual racing game! Great sprite work, controls felt pretty tight

This is actually a legitimately fun experience. It reminds me of like, ad hoc D&D sessions you'd have as a kid in the car or cafeteria or some other place where you didn't have dice or books or anything and were just doing whatever for the hell of it. The whole vibe is very casual, very anti-professional, anti-commercial; the result of some purely creative mind let loose on a new medium with no expectations or fucks given. Great work!

hey, tried playing but got this error

Thank you for trying out the game and for the feedback! I agree that the gameplay is pretty simplistic - this was my first attempt at something like an adventure game, so building the core systems took most of my time.  Maybe next year I'll make the sequel with more interactivity! And no, due to time constraints, I could only implement the one secret unfortunately.  Thank you again!

Jesus where to begin. This is by far the most complex game I've reviewed for the jam so far. The narrative is deeply personal and presumably autobiographical. The trigger warnings are not a joke; this is a serious and up-close exploration of domestic abuse.

I'm having trouble even defining this as a "game," in that the term usually implies delivering "fun" and "gameplay." This is a piece of narrative, interactive software but it is not "fun." 

That is not to say this is poorly made or not worthwhile - meticulous care has been paid to the pacing and emotional beats of the narrative, creating an experience that is definitely engaging and, for some, possibly fascinating.  Others may find it too intense, I imagine. For me, it was rewarding but exhausting. This is to video games what a documentary on abuse would be to the film medium.

The actual narrative devices used do an extraordinarily good job at subverting typical video game experience. In most video games, character movement gives the player a sense of agency. In MM&M, repeated use is made of narrow halls or stairs where you are confronted over and over with uncomfortable scenes you cannot control, avoid, or prevent. Movement, instead of creating a sense of freedom, creates a feeling of inevitability, even dread. This is an extremely effective technique, and I applaud the developer for these vignettes

There is some very light gameplay - one block puzzle, one contextual escape room. The latter works somewhat, the former doesn't, but neither take much time away from the ongoing drama. Beyond that, all I can say is that this feels like it was important to the developer to make, and it feels well done from that perspective. I'm glad I played it and never want to play it again. 

If the Trauma Memory Simulation genre doesn't exist, MM&M has invented it

I'm on Windows 11 Home - I only got a CTD so I couldn't tell you if there was any sort of application-based error reporting happening, although there is a debug txt file in the folder with two time-stamped entries, so those might tell you something

[0612/143927.600:ERROR:process_info.cc(375)] NtQuerySystemInformation SystemExtendedHandleInformation: The specified information record length does not match the length required for the specified information class. (0xc0000004)

[0612/143927.653:ERROR:http_transport_win.cc(175)] WinHttpCrackUrl: The URL does not use a recognized protocol (0x2ee6)

Hey, I tried to play this but it wound up consistently crashing after the third dialogue/message box of the first scene. Will be happy to try again if it gets fixed

Thank you! I appreciate you checking it out and commenting! Glad you enjoyed it

This is probably my favorite entry so far. Primarily a puzzle game with some light combat/timing elements - imagine a Zelda game but with the ratio of fighting to puzzles inverted. The developer really nailed the puzzle side of this title; each stage introduces a new mechanic, first simply, then iterating on what you learned from the previous rooms, leading to a couple that really take thought. However, none of them feel cheap or like they were made uneccessarily complex to pad out the game time (which took me a satisfying half hour to beat)

Perhaps ironically, my favorite parts of the game was the fighting, used as a mechanic in one of the four stages and for the boss. The combat is designed in such a way that you can use the attacks and positioning logic of the enemies to create crossfires where they damage each other - or, you can rush in and brute force through them. This led to these encounters still matching the puzzle game feel, but with a degree of nonlinear solution that you can't normally get in a traditional puzzle scenario. Very well done

It's worth mentioning that all of this is done with an extremely elegant control system: 4-way WASD movement and two interaction buttons.  Both main buttons serve dual purpose as attacks and puzzle-piece movers. There is a third button (a dodge) but I wound up never needing to use it, and the arrow keys are optional time-savers except in a couple must-use cases. There is a very fine degree of attention that was paid to building the character controller - input delays on the buttons are just right, if you hold a direction while pushing an object you'll continue to slide after it without having to lift and repress the direction input, and the use of the keyboard to incorporate the arrow keys for the occasions where precise control of facing was a good decision, I believe. This could easily incorporate a gamepad control scheme with a dpad, the four thumb buttons are the arrow keys, and triggers/bumpers for the main buttons

Other than the cut scenes, the graphics of the game work just fine, although I would say the music isn't the best fit.  These are minor issues compared to the very engaging and polished experience present in Castle Colossus. I salute this developer - great work!

Super charming. Cutscene and thematic aesthetics, including great voice work, are the strong points here - the "swamp" made me chuckle out loud. Gameplay loop is solid as well, with an informative (and optional!) tutorial. Only about 5 minutes to complete, so not a whole to review, but that's not a drawback here. This feels like a demo to a real game. With a little graphical polish and more stages this could easily be expanded to a full release. Great job!

The fundamental elements of a Zelda-like action adventure game are here - the character movement is very responsive and feels good, the enemies rush at you with just the right speed, and there is some satisfying visual feedback when you score a hit and fun enemy death animations.  Progress is made by collecting keys from dead enemies (except 1, found in another way) to unlock gates to eventually reach the stairs at the end. This is a classic game loop and the developer succeeds on a lot the major necessities.

The game is hampered by a lack of balance, which is a constant factor as there is only one enemy type. Your attacks are limited by a stamina bar which depletes after about 3 swings (enemies take two hits to kill), which would lead to cautious attack-and-retreat gameplay if the enemies were any threat.  Unfortunately, there is a delay on their attack animation that only triggers 2 or 3 seconds after they collide with you, making it impossible to die unless you take your hands off the keyboard. My suggestion would be to remove the stamina system entirely (or drastically ramp up the amount you have/regenerate) and make the enemies much more dangerous - maybe a single heart of damage on initial collision and two hearts after they breath fire on you.

That being said, if the balance were fixed and a couple of the key doors were replaced with puzzles of some kind, this would be a completely playable and enjoyable game.  As is, it's a solid prototype and a great first effort for the developer.  Keep it up!

I enjoyed this!  

Strong premise, a protagonist struggling to retain his memory and humanity despite inhumane treatment.  There is a strong theme of disassociation that creates a surreal vibe throughout; the scenes are both absurd, and mundane to a Kafka-esque degree, at the same time.   The puzzles were the best part, challenging but also engaging.  Keep watching after the credits for the true ending. 

Hey, thank you so much! I really appreciate you taking the time to play through the game and to give me your thoughts!