itch.io

I've been watching all of the dev videos up to this point, and it's been super rewarding to watch your journey!

Playing the demo now, I can really feel the amount of work and iteration that's gone into it :) The polish and overall execution really make it feel great, from the little nut and bolt particles getting pulled up by the magnet, to the little comments from your magnet friend a la Mario Wonder. The puzzle design is really clean and nice, too!

I was super confused at first about how to enter the robot thing - I thought after I bought the gun attachment I would be able to press Q to enter it, but you have to make a complete robot to enter it at all! I feel like it would be more fun and more customisable if you were still able to enter the robot regardless, but the extra parts just improved its capabilities :) I think the camera could be zoomed out a bit when you're in the robot, because it's quite hard to get a sense of where you are - although I GREATLY appreciated the little compass marker that points you back to base!

Loved the graphics and overall vibe of this game! The day>night cycle representing the timer was a nice touch. My one issue is I think it should show you your finished work on the screen where it shows your profit - I wanted to screenshot my crappy artworks but I didn't have time if I wanted to submit them in time! Maybe a number aside from the money amount could be helpful to better judge your artworks too? (e.g., "86% match", so you know exactly how well you replicated the artwork, as this isn't so clear from the money amount)

I think you could easily build on this in future by adding a few different tools (different sized brushes, spray paint, ruler for straight lines maybe?) 

Overall great submission!!

This game seems super ambitious (it's insane that you managed to add key remapping!) but it really needs a map or arrow pointing back towards the base! I gathered a bunch of materials but then couldn't find my base after wandering around for ages, which was a bit frustrating. I think it could be improved a lot with a small change like that though! 

This was surprisingly fun, but also quite frustrating with no checkpoints! The concept is silly but works quite well, and you came up with some interesting level designs to use it with. Nice game aside from the lack of checkpoints

Cute art and concept! You were super ambitious with this game - there are so many mechanics going on! I thought shaking the clouds and the grass to interact with them was creative and felt kind of fun to do, but combined with all the other mechanics it made the game too hard! I think that kind of control scheme could work in a more laidback, chill game, but with the time limit etc it felt too difficult.

Overall, I found it very difficult - I tried my best to feed the robots but I couldn't even manage to complete one! I think maybe this is because making one smoothie takes a lot of steps - you have to find a seed, then plant it, then water it, then throw it in the machine - and you have to do that 3 times per smoothie! Honestly, I think if you removed the time limit completely I think it would result in quite a good chill cosy game :)

Oh right! Well it looks really cool, I definitely wanna mess around with that in my next 3D project haha! 

This was cool! I really liked the atmosphere - the little bunker felt really cosy somehow haha. I found it a bit confusing at first because I didn't realise I needed two items on the bench, so maybe that could be added to the tutorial board's text? I was also a bit confused about what I was actually supposed to do with the objects haha - I made a dumbbell but it didn't seem to help me fighting or anything? Like someone else said, it would have helped quality of life a lot if you could hold multiple items and take them back!

I was really impressed with the overall feel and atmosphere - the particle effects and pixel shader looked really nice, and the overall vibe felt quite polished! 

thanks for playing! haha yes - the code for working out how happy they should be needs tweaking a bit because sometimes it has some bizarre results (I guess because you can freely move the points of the polygon, it can result in some weird polygons that the engine finds it hard to calculate)

yes please do! i would love to see what your students have been up to! 

Congrats on your first game! I really liked the idea and the pixel graphics work well with the pixel-by-pixel drawing/writing system you have.

Sometimes I found it a bit hard to tell where I was allowed to write (especially on the first screen) - maybe you could add some kind of highlight or dashed outline or something to make that a bit clearer?

Another suggestion could be to make it so that if you move your mouse fast it still makes a continuous line rather than a dotty line - I think there's some methods to do this with Line2D, although maybe you coded it a different way :) 

Anyway, cool idea, well done!  

This was super ambitious to try to make a full deck builder in a week, mad props for that - I'm impressed you managed it!

I think the mechanics need to be explained to the player better, though - I saw that below the enemy's health there's an attack number, but they don't seem to attack every turn, so I was a bit confused about how the enemy attacking worked? I don't know if that's a glitch or if I'm misunderstanding something, but I think copying Slay the Spire and just having the enemy's next attack value for that turn displayed there would be a good solution. I think some screen shake when the player takes damage would be helpful too (and perhaps a red overlay or something?) - there is screen shake when you do a big attack on the enemy but I found it hard to notice when I was taking damage.

Anyway, super impressive game and I think it has lots of potential if you polish it some more! 

This was pretty fun! I think there should definitely be more upgrades, as you could basically buy every weapon after round 1 (unless I'm misunderstanding something) and I wanted to buy more exciting stuff after I started getting the gold bars! The giant metal bars are weirdly satisfying to collect, also. A small suggestion as well: the guns don't really work at short range because the bullet gets spawned at the end of the gun - maybe you could extend the bullet hitbox backwards so it covers the player's body when it is fired too?

thanks so much!!

yeah implementing the hammer was a little tricky - basically the robot heads are a textured Polygon2D (with the polygon points manually placed around the outline of the texture) and the hammer works by finding the closest point of that polygon and shifting that point towards the center of the polygon (as well as the adjacent points with an exponential falloff)! and then I used some of the intersect_polygon scripts from the Geometry2D class to calculate how well it matches the target polygon! 

Great game! So much juice and I thought the UI design where you could leave the playing field to upgrade was very elegantly done. Making different elements and metals into the enemies has a lot of potential in terms of cute characters! 

Cute concept and fun for the most part! I gave up on level 20 after 10 minutes and 200 deaths or so. I think the hitbox on the spikes could be a tad smaller than their sprite, because when you're trying to wall jump over a wall with a spike on top of it, the hitbox feels a bit unnecessarily punishing. Aside from that, I really enjoyed the aesthetic - it was very simple but had some nice effects that elevated it. 

So glad to hear it made you laugh!! That was definitely my main goal haha

I really enjoyed the twists you made on the VS formula - making levelling up something that makes you vulnerable creates some interesting decisions, and I liked the dual-purpose design with making the anvil a weapon, too! The little hammering minigame also added some nice tension to those moments. I wish there had been an end state though, as it makes it less fun when you have to manually restart when you notice you died! Also I think there could be some more feedback when you gain enough exp for the next level. Good game and concept! 

Thanks so much for the feedback! 

Nice game! I loooooove the visuals and presentation, it looks and plays fantastic. I do wish there was less backtracking, as it got a little tedious constantly having to go to previous rooms to fetch buttons. I do like the idea that you have to work out what the actual controls of the game are, though. Maybe other levels could have other control inputs, like a fake wiimote or something, haha.

I am so confused ahaha, I tried playing a couple of Michael Brough's games too to see if those had some explanation but I am still so confused hahaha

Genuinely really enjoyed this! Very creative concept and well implemented, and I enjoyed the little touches of charm like how you can enter the paintings(?) on the walls. Reminds me of the Link Between Worlds zelda game on 3ds. 

Some creative level design ideas, too - I really loved going under the carpets to evade the guards!

One suggestion I have is that if the gameplay is all about noticing tiny gaps, the object and wall graphics need to be simple enough that it's clear what's supposed to be a gap and what's not - sometimes I found small gaps in the brick walls that looked identical to ones you could actually go under, but they were probably unintentional as you couldn't pass through them haha. Maybe if you developed it further you could add unique "crack" textures/modelling to make the cracks/gaps a little clearer?

I also found the sound effects pretty funny - although the guard alert sound literally made me jump the first time it played ahahah.

Thank you so much! Yeah, unfortunately the level design was a little rushed and was mostly finished in the last day or two - I was fairly happy with the puzzles themselves, but I think you're definitely right that they don't do a great job of teaching the player how the mechanics work. And that's true about the small gaps too. I think soon I'll try and make an updated version with more polish and more thought put into tutorialising the mechanics properly! 

That's actually a really good point! The hitbox is waay smaller than the sprite, but since I already knew the size of the hitbox myself I didn't think to teach the player that you can actually fit through one tile high tunnels... I reckon I should either have forced the player through a one tile high bit in one of the early levels to show it's possible, or maybe adjust the size of the sprite. Super helpful feedback, thank you!

That makes sense - things always get left on the cutting room floor in jams :) would definitely be cool to see it developed further!

Cool implementation of the flatland idea. I saw a couple of other entries were also inspired by it, but I think this one did it the best - the thin line (rather than the colours taking up the whole screen) and the patterned walls made it easier to navigate and perceive as space.

Definitely interesting to wander around and talk to people and I enjoyed how you worked in aspects of the book like how the shapes have to be careful around sharp angles hehe. A cool atmosphere overall.

Cool implementation of the Flatland concept - I have also thought about making a simulation of Flatland before - turns out it is pretty difficult to comprehend haha. I had an issue where since the mouse isn't fixed to the centre of the screen I couldn't turn a very wide radius. But you don't really need to move a lot so it wasn't much of an issue.

I thought maybe the dialogue should start automatically as I found myself wandering around for a while before remembering I was supposed to press space!

I really like the aesthetics - the character designs are cute and the overall vibe has a lot of charm.

The mechanics were also cool - the buttons that shoot the other player up if the other player ground pounds was really creative - love that.

I would say I wish there was a more forgiving checkpoint system, or the characters had a few hitpoints rather than dying in one hit - with 2 characters there's twice as much chance to instantly die ;) I found myself repeating the beginning of the level a lot which got frustrating, especially when I died from offscreen spikes a couple of times.

Overall great entry, especially for a 1 person team!

Fun game, I enjoyed the level design and the main mechanic was cool.

I think the mechanic could be improved if you were able to "preview" what was in the other time before switching - I died a few times by having spikes spawn on top of me when I shifted time.

Overall a fun game! Great job

Thanks for your feedback! I actually agree that I didn't make that as clear as it should be - you can press S to see the layout of the tiles in the 2nd dimension, but I think it's quite a difficult thing to convey in a way that's easy to understand.

I was actually thinking of making another prototype based on this where the portals would just flip everything inside them (e.g. empty space turns into ground and vice versa) - I think that would be easier to understand tbh. 

I really liked the interpretation of the theme - was actually a really cool moment when I pressed E for the first time and it went 3D haha.

The gameplay was pretty fun but I thought the dash mechanic could have been more fun to use - I'm sure there's a cooldown on it but when playing it kind of felt like it just randomly worked when it felt like it - often I would press space thinking I would dash, but then didn't. Maybe some UI element could tell you when it's ready or not? Also, for me the cooldown on the dash felt a little long for the dash to be that useful, but maybe that's personal preference!

I also thought it would have been fun if there was some kind of danger when you're in FPS mode - maybe there could even be different hazards depending on the mode you're in, like stuff that harms the driver but not the tank, etc. I think there's some interesting potential there!

There were a few polish things I noticed - when I played the tutorial for the first time, I killed the boss before the tutorial character had finished speaking, so I didn't get the full tutorial and was a bit confused when I played the main game. Also, I think the first time I played I couldn't find the parts I needed to repair the tank xD not sure if that was a bug or the graphics for the parts are not clear enough?

Yeah, Jaqui did a great job!! Yeah - unfortunately the game is unfinished since we ran out of time, so the game‘s progression doesn’t work in its current state. We are going to upload a finished version separately within the next week, though.

Thanks for the comment! Yeah - unfortunately we overscoped and ran out of time, so it is just not finished >< we are going to upload a post-jam version separately though within the next week, which will work as intended!

Thank you so much!! Really appreciate your comment ^^

Thanks so much for playing, and for your feedback!

Hmm, I think you could be right about the controls - I was thinking of showing how full your breath charge is with a circle that expands around the player - maybe that would help? 

Cool puzzler! Quite a unique idea for a match 2 game - although i think it would be cool if the insects spawned away from the edges and you have to match something either side of it to kill it - I think that would be more intuitive too.

Cool aesthetic too, I like the combination of insects and robotic imagery.

I liked the art - the storybook narrative was cute. I thought the enemies and spikes were a bit unforgiving - I think it would have been more fun if you had a health system so that it wasn't insta-death.

Creative idea! I really liked how you used different kinds of syllables to add to the character of each enemy (I really liked the second guy who says stuff like nyanyanya and hahaha!)

Agreed with bulbandrei that it's a little confusing at first - I didn't realise I had to type a number before I could type one of the attacks. Also, I think some more feedback on the amount of damage your attack does could be good - I assumed while playing that longer words do more damage, but I was never actually sure.

One other thing is the 4th enemy's sound effects are super loud ahaha - maybe turn him down a bit!

I can imagine you turning this into a fun Japanese Kanji learning game, where you have to beat enemies by typing the right readings for different characters or something!

I liked the concept - quite a creative direction to take the prompt. I think it could have done with a small tutorial or help page, as I had to work things out by trial and error and didn't quite understand how the breathing worked at first (e.g. on the first level, I thought the red square, where you need to place the animal to win, was red because it meant the wolf would detect it!)

I can see some potential for interesting puzzles with the idea, but the current levels are a bit too simple - there were usually only a few spaces not directly in the wolf's path.

I liked the graphics - isometric is a lot of work but it paid off I think!

I wish there a few more levels - it felt like I had only just started to understand the concept before it ended! It's a game jam though so it's understandable!

My game also featured a wolf haha - although we took very different directions!

Very polished and fun game! The art, UI, and sound design were all on point and I was impressed with how many different systems you managed to get working together. I also enjoyed the general silly tone (which still managed to be tense) and the references to other games (Among Us ship layout and tasks, the Ratchet and Clank (?) laser minigame).

I finished it in 28 minutes, without ever actually going to the security room... I wonder what's actually in there. As someone else mentioned, there is a softlock if you go into a locker while attached to an oxygen tube (I think), which was annoying as I had to just let her slowly run out of oxygen.

My only other critiques would be that the player felt a little too powerless relative to the aliens! I know making the player feel powerless is a useful technique for horror games, but I felt like it got in the way of general navigation around the ship a little... I found it especially annoying when an alien was just sitting in the way of where I needed to go, as they didn't tend to move from their location very often once they're there. Also, the lockers were a fun idea but in practice they didn't feel that useful, which contributed to my feeling that the player doesn't quite have the tools to evade the aliens properly. I still gave it 5 stars for gameplay, though, as a jam game that I can play for 28 minutes without getting bored is quite an achievement!

This was cool! I beat it :) 

I liked the idea for a physics based puzzler, and the actual levels were quite varied and creative. I thought the mechanics could be polished more to make it a bit easier to control - when you suck, objects tend to really get in your way which can be quite frustrating.