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It's a complex game with a lot to teach the player. So the first 5 settlement levels are basically a 2 hour tutorial.

There's nothing stopping you from not following the instructions, but the build area is quite small in the lower tiers.

I'll watch the video.

The "Japanese VA" you are referring to is actually a constructed language specifically for the game. It is machine generated, but as with animal crossing, it was always going to be, as nobody can speak the language.

At this current stage, pawn needs are not implemented and the pawn manager is lacking. Pawns will play a progressively larger role as the gameplay progresses. The grinding in the first hour of the game is intentional, as it is meant to direct the player toward automating tasks. The new pawn manager which I will be working on today will better facilitate this transition.

Now let me go watch that video, I'll come back with a response.

Yes, I am in the process of designing the new pawn manager. The current one was just meant to be a placeholder. You should be able to see their inventories for example.

The "lack of resources" Tudi message appears when a pawn can't find the object they are trying to harvest. There are alot of reasons this can happen. Most of the time this is overharvesting. There are other corner case reasons, but for you this was not-overharvesting. Rather a complaint about their job being conflicting with their gathering target. This should be ignored. I have removed that Tudi message in its entirely, as its already in Logs [L].

The storage chest is visibly shown as open, if it is in use.

All storage is shared.

The same bug which caused aspirations to screw up, caused them to use the stonecutter to make Ashlars. I found that kind of funny. As it means one of the pawns was using the stonecutter while you weren't at the camp, using up all of the stone they were gathering.

Stress is not working, pawn needs are not implemented.

As for the "empty" Storage Crates. They are not empty. All storage from all sources is automatically combined into a single accessible inventory. You can only access this inventory from Chests. I admit is was painful to watch you check every chest in the camp not noticing they all contained the same items.

Pawns will always upcycle. So they will convert 9 logs to 3 lumber, then 3 lumber into 1 plank. I do plan to have the pawn manager give the option to not upcycle.

The spinning wheel questline will now check if you already have the cotton you need to make thread.

>It would be cool if I heard a low tone right now.

Sure, I can do that.

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If you were playing this from a tiny ass window on a 4k monitor. The fullscreen button is F11.

Alright, I'm like half way through this video.

Some of the bugs were so bad, I've been programming while watching through the feedback. I have uploaded the first of probably a couple builds I'll be putting up today.

Here is part 1 of my response.

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About audio adjusting in real time. The volume of an audio object in gamemaker is set at the time of play. So I reset all audio on menu close. I've been trying to find a good way around doing it this way for a while.

The save buttons shouldn't have been in the splash page options menu at all. It was an artifact from combining scripts. Fixed.

I'll give label boxes a white border instead of a cyan one.

For name input, it actually activates a toggle for custom name input mode. If the input in empty it generates a new name. I figured that the rainbow text was a good enough indicator of the edit mode being toggled. The edit button itself now also changes color.

Pressing enter actually confirms the name change. Nobody is doing this, but there is a catch for this when the characters are submitted. I have added this function to the edit button.

Sprint is now on by default. (Shift toggle sprint)

You cannot destroy objects while in the pay respects animation.

You can pay respects the totem at any time, but there was a bug where the totem was being targeted from the wrong square. Standing on the square south of the totem would have worked. There is no way you could have known that.

I have yet again reduced rain noise. XD

That weird thing with the job switching. Huh, I've never see that happen before. After quite a bit of testing. I've determined that it is the newly implemented aspirations system. This was happening, because while pawns can choose a different job to perform on their own. They were not checking other professions aspirations, before setting a new one. Scrolling through the list of professions caused them to accept all jobs, and all of those jobs aspirations. Going on a job fair.

Thank you for responding.

Since the time you've played the game, the following changes have been implemented.

• Trees now drop an extra log with a 50% chance (1.5 logs per tree).
• Quests now check if advancement tasks have already been completed. For example, the number of total constructed chests or structures. If there is a teaching quest to say, built a Lumber Mill; if a Lumber Mill has already been built, it will now be skipped. The same goes for housing structures.
• There were numerous other changes such as the addition of an indicator for which square was being targeted, and a reduction of the movement speed penalty for overencumberance. 

I have downloaded the video. So you are free to remove it. :P

• The music no longer resets in option if audio levels are not changed.
• Added a visual indicator to show what grid square the player is currently targeting.
• You can now destroy items from chests and your inventory.
• All controls are now listed in the options menu. (Although, they cannot be changed.)

This is intentional. The player is meant to feel the task that they are trying to automate, to give them incentive to automate the task. You can, if you want to set your pawns to gather wood right out of the gate.

>there doesn't seem to be an option to discard items

There is not, I'll try to add that today if I can. [[-- Done --]]

>The tutorial said that I can reassign pawns to different jobs but I can't figure out how to do that.

The game page lists all of the controls. [M] is the pawn manager button for now. You appear to have given up before the game teaches you this.

The controls are now listed in the options menu.

>I assume a "builder" job for the pawns is planned? 

The code for this job is written, just not implemented. It is meant to be unlocked.

>it's also not immediately clear what your character is lined up to interact with

In the middle top of the screen it tells you what you are interacting with. By default, you harvest from the square you stand on. If there is nothing there it takes from the square to your north instead. I considered swapping the two of these, as I make the same mistake myself.

There is now a flashing rainbow indicator showing which square you are locked on to.

>The music resets every time you pause the game.

Yes, I am well aware. It has been in my to do bugs for a month, I just have other priorities.   [[-- Fixed --]]

Also the pause button is [P], not [Esc].

Thank you.

>It would be cool if you friends had like a want/ need system that changed them, like if one likes to play instruments and you build them a guitar they sat and played it once in a while

Planned when the leisure need is added. The plan is to have personalities that prefer different leisure types.

Intellectuals that like reading.

Creatives that like painting and writing.

That sort of thing.

A minimap is planned.

On my todo list are buildings that provide a map, its status, and demographic information about the town.

Currently, none of the pawn needs are implemented. The player will be managing issues between them as well.

Each totem advancement rank increases the claim area, which will expand to the entire playable zone.

As for resources. The game is balanced around the pawns gathering resources. Not sure if you got to the part that teaches about assigning specific jobs to pawns.

I can add a new game button, no problem. :P

>overencumber

Sure, I can adjust that.

>rain is loud

Easy to fix.

>ten wood logs for every chest

Well, now the trees give more logs. However, the whole point of the game is to get others to do this work for you.

>text box on the right

It shows a history of all of the messages in the journal. They will contain important information.

Oops, left in 100 golems.

Fixed

• Tudi and Golem should no longer crash the game when shot.
• Doubled the interact distance to Tudi.
• The destroy keybind will now longer show in the build menu.
• Trees now have a 50% chance to drop another log.
• The capacity of all storage has increased by 75%
• Pawn AI can now partially deposit their inventory.
• Common objects constructed during advancement objectives are now checked before asking the player to build them.

I'm just really good at prompting suno. I do editing to the music after to remaster it, that way they have consistent levels.
You can assign professions with the [M] button. They will not do multiple jobs by design. They will be in profession categories.

Biggest complaint, no WASD movement. Easy enough to implement both control schemes simultaneously.

Short game. Basically it is as if tictactoe was built by a historically gladiatorial caste system. Collect the stars, get a high score style arcade game. I did the math and determined that there as a point at which the player cannot win because all liberties are covered by a projectile object; as the speed of the objects increases over the course of the gameplay.

Not sure if the frequency of objects appearing resets after each run. Found that if you sit on the game over screen, you can see how the randomly spawned obstacles progressed their spawn time delay. Not sure if this decreases all the way to zero.

Either way, not bad for a simple game. I would like to see a larger playfield at some point.

Fun, reminds me a of World's Hardest Game. Which it should because the game's basic mechanic is the same, avoid the dangerous objects; move to collect "the reward" and travel to the exit.

This game has something much better though: line of sight avoidance mechanics. Which itself is pretty sick. Every want to play a game where the most dangerous thing in it is a lens flare? Now you can.

Graphics, juice, and music are wonderful.

The title deserves better art for how surprisingly fun this game is to play.

Thank you. I'll be posting dev logs here as often as I can.

My current best is 158. We will see if that improves.

o7

Thank you for the feedback. I need to make a bit of a revision to the onboarding. It's mostly knowing what the stats and enemy colors actually do that is the problem. (That and there is alot happening on screen at once.) I'm considering removing the auto-advance timer so the player has more strategic control over moving forward.

I would be happy to be on stream, although I will not show my face on webcam. I have a vtuber avatar I can use for that, if you need something that moves. 

I think the game really would benefit from some sort of onboarding period. (That and not pushing the player forward.)

Thank you. I did enjoy how the game started to feel after I implemented the screen shake. Yeah, the attribution dropdown was an idea I had for my main project, which I was glad I was able to test here. (For the record, only half of the music is Kevin MacLeod. There are songs from other artists in there. :P)

I'm about to post a devlog to the game page which has a video explaining all of the mechanics.

I was trying to resurrect the feeling I had playing old flash games with incremental systems. I think I did well there. The game has alot of hidden mechanics and secrets. Some I didn't have the chance to fully implement before the due date. However, I think I'll be making a substantial update the the release version after the voting period.

Thank you, really appreciate that. :P

Guess the game would have benefitted from a tutorial or some onboarding huh? ^---^;

HP bar is the red one on the left side of the screen.
Orbs double the stat of their color, only one can be activated at a time.
Your character's color indicates which orb is active.

Requires a controller to play. Cute atmospheric environmental puzzle game. Gravity is quite low in this island. MODE license plate text is drawn overtop of water if you go into it.

Fun game with drawing mechanics. Very smooth gameplay and cute style. I like this game alot.

Cute game with a fun premise. I have an issue with logic about how a bacterial colony with 30 members can still "die" from losing HP. Perhaps make HP and ammo the same variable. I wasn't even aware I could "shoot" until run 3. But then again, I didn't read the instructions. Overall a cool concept.

Town down shooter. Lags quite a bit in the browser. Game modes were interesting and different. Splatter effects were drawn overtop of walls. Every enemy is a bullet sponge with little or any variation. You can fire at enemies off screen well outside of their firing range allowing you to kill them without threat. Only the number of enemies matters until you are overwhelmed.

Mode switching types were unique. Basic puzzle game. Most of the levels were completable without switching modes because of the amount of control the player is given in the air. You can jump and switch to glide in mid-air for alot of control.

Mode switching types were unique. Basic puzzle game. Most of the levels were completable without switching modes because of the amount of control the player is given in the air. You can jump and switch to glide in mid-air for alot of control.

Cute puzzle game. Really like the puzzle mechanics. Unique solutions and problems early on.

Music was, a choice. However the game itself is a wonderful and unique puzzle game. I would definitely try this out if you like puzzle games. Starts out simple, ramps up in complexity. Very nice.

Fair.

I've added some information to the game page, including controls and base mechanics. For the mode switching I doubt you'd want that text to be present any longer that it already is, considering how frequently the mode switching might happen. Thank you for the feedback on that, too late to fix now. Maybe later.

"...forces a permanent progression on the player..." Is feedback I don't entirely understand.  You get a new weapon if its better than the one you already have equipped.

But yes, I did throw alot at the player at one time. Then again, the game happens over multiple runs with very low stakes. Consider it a learning experience.

Download file contains a folder named "BigModeGameJam_BurstDebugInformation_DoNotShip".

No problem, I've been hitting bugs all morning as this is the first significant player count I've had on the game. Making this real easy for me. Crushing them left and right.

Sorry about that, Oct 14th 2023 Build 2 fixes that issue. It was caused by implementation of new features I forgot to include in the new game script.

The worst part is that this game had 50ish downloads with that problem. Oof.

(Looks like you posted that just as I went to sleep. Woke up to that. :P)