Yeah, the tutorial is the weakest aspect of the game imo, I wrote the whole thing in 30 minutes because it took so long to implement. Glad you were able to figure it out though!
Love the unique retro art style and theming! It was very refreshing to see something new. The level design was also really cool, I enjoyed wandering around these alien caves.
Pretty cool little game! I liked the camera controls; the ability to fly around and watch the bugs approach was cool. The models were very cool. The balancing was a little rough, the walls are pretty useless because you get so little money and the bugs just path around them if you only place a few. The generator also had too much health, I was doing terribly and won anyways because I could just outlast the bugs. Also, an in-game tutorial would really help because when the game started I was totally confused and had to scroll down to read the tutorial. I really liked the addition of the mech, it made the gameplay more dynamic. Tower defense games can get boring when you’re just waiting for your turrets to kill all the enemies, and the mech alleviated that.
Thanks for the kind words! I tested in fullscreen and the crane still stops when the cursor goes offscreen, I’ll have to come up with some other work around to fix that. The music is not intended to loop, the plan was for it to only play in a few key moments to not draw the focus from the ambience, although we didn’t have time to put together a lot of the ambience unfortunately. I’m glad you liked the mechs! My teammate Meta drew them, and it was by far the most time-consuming part of the project for them, but I think they turned out really good.
Pretty fun little game! It was surprisingly difficult, I couldn’t get past level 3, but still fun, I got to be pretty decent at quickly spotting the little round guys, and the music was good.
I like how the henchmen light up when your mouse is near them, and that you don’t have to put the mouse directly on them to select them, that made the game feel much more responsive and less annoying.
I was initially very confused on what to do because I tried to jump right in without reading the description and there’s no in game explanation or tutorial so I had to stop and read the description.
Thank you for the super detailed comment, this is really helpful feedback! I’ll try to respond to as many points as I can:
nice typewriter font, seems very fitting :)
Thanks! Meta found that hunting around on Google Fonts and specifically picked a creepy and somewhat obscure one to make it feel unique
Controls are layout-independent!
I’m glad other keyboard layouts work, although that was not intentional lol, I guess it’s just a side effect of the library I used
Dots to show interactions + dynamic indications: really user-friendly. :) Including the red colour; by the way, tints of grey + red is really great relatively to the theme.
Thanks! It took a few iterations to get them looking nice. They were originally grey, but they became extremely difficult to see
Ah, you can examine things only once! Actually, good to know what has already been done. :) BUT you have not to miss the lines!
It drives me crazy in games when you can interact with something over and over again and get the same results, this also made some other things slightly easier to code.
Just realizing now that the view (including top-view characters) and flashbacks are reminiscent of “Hotline Miami”. :)
Never played Hotline Miami, I was actually inspired by Darkwood
in the past: misspelling “themself” -> “themselves” (first one I spotted including the game page; I noticed the writing seemed conscientious :))
‘Themself’ is correct grammar when referring to a single person of indeterminate gender, or at least that’s what I was taught
dot on lamp not obvious, as there is a circle! XD Really small detail, nothing serious. Suggestion: maybe make the white dots’ opacity ‘oscillate’? This would help ensuring the dots are always visible. Maybe also add a black outline as safety, in case a dot gets displayed on a white element.
The dots originally did have a border, but we thought they looked ugly, but I might experiment with it a little more
You REALLY see the coffee stain rings on the coffee table! X) Awesome attention to detail.
Thanks :), Meta insisted that they be clearly visible
Weird, during the line on drawing people, the camera is centred on a couch with nobody on it (although I sat), and on one of the screen captures, this very same line is displayed while the character is shown sitting at the table… I wonder if it is a bug.
The player is there, but they’re hard to see due to low contrast, I’ll try to fix that for the next patch
Small detail I notice: the walking animation keeps the right frame when you turn. Yes, I am a sucker for checking details. ;)
Me too, I spent way too much time perfecting the player’s walk cycle. Did you notice that the characters shoulders and hands are visible above furniture, but their feet are not? It’s almost never noticeable in game but I spent an entire hour on it lol.
misprint? “somebody who wants to poison” -> “what somebody who wants to poison”
Thx, fixed for next patch
Takeaway: very atmospheric narrative game, both visually and for the ears, with awesome writing. Having the constraint materialize as a flashback is cunning. The debugging-turned-final feature of dots and the use of colour also made interacting very clear, including knowing whether some action is a point of no return or not.
Thank you thank you thank you!!!
The only and obvious possible criticism I can really think of would be on gameplay: I tend to think having the player as an actor rather than a spectator is paramount, and even if you go for a heavily narrative game, you can still make things less linear or let some guesswork for the player, so if it were just me, I would wish there were something along those lines in the prototype and the final version, but it depends on what you want to achieve, and if your aim is to tell an interactive story, then discard this. ;)
This was for two reasons:
It was easier to code
We wanted the story to feel inevitable, we know the Escapist is already dead right? We didn’t want the player to feel like they could have any action that would save the Escapist in order to make the story feel more tragic. We may end up giving the mortician more agency though.
Tysm! It makes me so happy that you connected with the theme and tone!
And yeah, it was a lot of work, I basically spent 10 hrs a day for three days drawing furniture. Thankfully code-wise this game was pretty simple.
I like your ideas! We’ll definitely be adding more to spice up the both the flights and the moon exploration sequences. I think you’re right that the first few levels are too easy, Meta actually told me to make them more difficult but I ignored them lol. Designer hubris I guess. I’m glad you liked the artstyle! This is my first project with multiple artists and I’m so glad it didn’t end up discordant.
Thanks for the feedback! I agree, it is pretty boring after the first few moons. This was way too ambitious for a jam game, we would have loved to add all the things you mentioned but unfortunately we did not have nearly enough time. The lack of any weapons was a deliberate choice though, I wanted chill pacifist vibes. Adding a progress bar is easy, I’ll throw that in the post-jam patch. I’m glad you liked it, expect more from us in the future!
I admit, we were not expecting players to have difficulty figuring out the Stalkers, but in hindsight that makes sense given other creatures reactions to sound. I’ll go ahead and add a line suggesting that sound may help against Stalkers.
As for saving… I don’t really feel like it’s worth the effort to implement such a complicated feature in a three minute long jam game.
That was amazing! It’s really challenging, but it’s so funny I kept at it just for the heck of it! Once you get past the steep learning curve it’s really really fun.
Thanks again for the music! I’m planning on using your music again for another jam game. I’ll edit this to include the link and attribution once the project is submitted.
Wow that was clever, and really grim! I love the way you interpreted the limitation, I never would’ve thought of that. The art and atmosphere is really incredible and really pulls this game together!
Thank you! As for the black screen, which version did you download and what level did this happen on if you remember? Also I really loved your team’s game by the way, it was really creative!
This is really fun! I love that I can make the bullet orbit myself then slam it into enemies. This is really delightful little game!
Your game page is completely devoid of information (or maybe it just wasn't loading for me) so I had no idea what to expect from the game. Maybe add some text explaining a little about the game?
Really cute! I love the art style and sounds effects. The premise is really neat, being able to make blocks move together. Could really do with a tutorial, I wasn't really sure what to do when I got to the third screen. I know it has something to do with flinging the blocks over the gap, but I'm not sure how to pull it off.
