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That reload mechanic! It created some genuinely tense moments in my playthrough. I graphics have a charm to them and you nailed the oppressive atmosphere you were going for.

I’m thankful the flying monsters had footstep sounds as that saved me a few times :)

Awesome work!

I’m glad I got to play this before the rating period ended; this was fantastic!

The vibes were perfect. You captured both the theme and the cursed PSX aesthetic perfectly.

Usually, I would prefer movement to be quick and snappy, but this game is the exception. Considering you’re walking underwater, the slow, deliberate movement adds weight to every step and makes you feel like you’re moving with difficulty.

I beat the game, and it made me wonder if there were multiple endings.

I encountered a couple of minor hitches. I accidentally quit the game twice by pressing ESC. I had assumed the game would pause while decoding the audio from the ghosts, but I was instead killed by one of Neptune’s brats 😅

Speaking of which, they clipped through the walls a lot, making me think there were secret passages, but if there were, I couldn’t find them.

It has excellent atmosphere and visuals, and with many jam games, I wish it was longer so I could spend more time in this world you created.

Amazing job!

I got to tell you a secret. I also kept getting confused with the save and load icons. The number of times I overwrote my test save when trying out particular triggers is higher than I’d like to admit. Should that have been a good indication that I should replace them? Yes, lol.

Kudos for sticking with it for multiple runs. One of the things I forgot to do was to clear out all the state flags when restarting after death :/

Encounters while turning was a bug introduced after I refactored movement to have the “auto-walking” cutscenes on the last day of the jam. Naturally, that’s the best time to do all your far-reaching refactors! :D

You’re spot on about the encounters. Since I didn’t have visible enemies, I wanted to avoid discouraging players from exploring, so after every encounter, you have 10 steps (or turns, sadly) that you can do for free. After which, the change for an encounter gets greater. If you haven’t had an encounter in 20 steps, then you’ll have one.

Thanks for all the feedback! Your games are an inspiration!

What terrible luck about the cutscene :/ I should have made trigger locations “safe zones.” That’s going in my list of fixes for the post-jam version.

I totally agree about the squad indicator; having them react to your squad as you got close to each member was the original goal and the whole point we added it. Unfortunately that idea got dropped on the cutting room floor as the deadline approached :/

I’m glad you liked it and thanks for playing :)

Thank you :)

Thanks so much for playing the game.

I’m glad you liked the art and level design. I am so happy with her textures and monster design. They do so much heavy lifting here :D

I was unhappy about the sound mixing; everything was too loud or quiet, and I didn’t have a chance to normalize all the effects.

Thank you for your feedback; it’s greatly appreciated!

There is a lot of potential here!

Things I liked: The movement felt really good!

• Getting XP for every new tile you step one really rewards being thorough in your exploration.
• The combat system felt pretty good
• The visuals are great!
• The bold choice of making a character like Jil :D

As mentioned in your write-up, I got as far as I think I can in this version, which is unfortunate because I was enjoying my time with it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go break Jil’s door. :)

Great job!

For Derek Deagle, it was another day on the job.

Classic.

I liked this entry a lot: The narration, the atmosphere, the music, and the visuals.

It took me several tries to make it to the mirror realm because I kept dying and couldn’t find only one healing item, though, by the time I was done, I had 3 to spare.

Movement felt strange; the mansion didn’t seem to fit your chosen grid size, and I found a spot on the first floor that, if I walked to, would take me through a wall out of the grid.

I was able to cheese the combat a little. I could attack through walls. I discovered this when I inadvertently killed one of the spiders guarding the crystal ball while in the bathroom with the medkit. My knife also seemed to hit two spaces away in the mirror world.

These are minor quibbles, however. I enjoyed my time with it; it was a fun and tense experience.

Great job!

I defeated Apophis, and all was right with the stars!

I loved the Egyptian theme (I’m a sucker for it, really), and the banter between the sisters was amusing and well-written – I loved the answer to the riddle.

The art is excellent, and I liked how the final boss fight looked different. Speaking of which, I love your fight screen layout; it very much reminds me of the hyper-polished modern JRPG combat screens. The music during combat was pretty great, too. Combat didn’t pose much of a challenge once I leveled up a little and got a few upgrades, and the final boss was a walk in the park – for a jam game, that’s perfect, honestly.

Kudos for fully supporting controllers!

The only two minor issues were that in the pause/character screen, I couldn’t click on the setting button either with the mouse or gamepad. Also, using Hathor’s healing magic outside of a fight would have been nice.

Great entry; great job to all of you!

The music rocked on this one!

The art and the humor were really good. The level up sound effect reminded me of Dragon Quest (so bonus nostalgia points there!)

Unfortunately once I killed the first tentacle, the game crashed :/

Great entry though, good job!

Oh wow! That was fantastic. Phenomenal work for just 3 days!

I thought the art direction was distinctive, making your game stand out. I enjoyed the exploration a lot. Well done!

I love the art in this game! The animation is so well done!

I enjoyed the exploration but ran into a bug. I could no longer move the character when I transitioned to the second floor. This was on the web version if it helps.

Otherwise, this was a really cool entry, good job!

Short and sweet, I loved this entry! The lockpicking was well done, and I enjoyed how different things in the vault looked (being vague here to avoid spoilers)

Why was there so much blood? Why did I pick up a knife? Why is there a sassy eldritch tome? I want to know more!

Great job!

Thank you for the detailed feedback you’ve provided!

It’s funny that you mention the combat is just a little better than RPS since combat in my title last year was exactly RPS, so I guess it’s an improvement :D

One of the things I’ve struggled with in my jam games is putting good puzzles; I think I need to devote a little more time to it. I get so hung up in the story and dialogue that I run out of time for some of the gameplay :/

Originally, I wanted to have the monsters visible on the screen moving around with the player, but I ran out of time and had to resort to the old dirty trick of invisible spawns. It was a good experiment, but I prefer having the monsters visible so you can clear an area or at least maneuver around them.

I’m glad you liked the ending cutscene; I’m really proud of that one :)

Thanks again, and I look forward to your next game!

Thank you so much for playing it :) Glad you liked it!

I like the idea of a rhythm-based dungeon crawler. Too bad you ran out of time. Solid idea!

This has got to be the most original dungeon crawler I’ve played so far!

The digitized hands, the “splorch” when attacking the future menu items, it all worked really well together.

I loved the sense of humor in the recipes as well!

Great job!

Ha! this was fun!

I really dug the monster design in this one. The combat system was cool, and I enjoyed the parry mechanic. I was having a hard time figuring out the right timing for the bat, and I was inconsistent with the other two. But it all clicked with the final boss; he only hit me twice, I think.

Good fun, great job!

This was a cool entry. I dug the premise: waking up from cryosleep on an empty ship.

I liked your art style, as I’m a sucker for the pixel art/voxel aesthetic. The music and sound effects were good at setting up the mood. For some reason, the gun’s “pew” really tickled me, though.

The movement was really good, and the only weird thing I encountered was when I shot enemies on a diagonal, I’d turn to face them (45 degrees or so, depending on where they were), and then I was stuck in that direction until I turned, which fixed it.

Anyway, this was a really fun entry. Great job!

Thanks so much for playing it, I’m really glad you enjoyed it. I wish I could have elaborated more on the story. This is not the last you’ll see of Cygnus, for sure :P

Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it :)

What a polished entry! This was amazing!

I thought the UI was very well executed and looked great. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize I could spend my AP on skills. On the abilities side, magic proficiency is free, and I could spam that as much as I wanted.

I loved the story you created for this world and want to know more. The pixel art aesthetic was very well done, and I was impressed with the verticality and design of the map!

Excellently done!

This had a really fun art style and the music rocked!

Sacrificing party members was not what I expected, and making those decisions several times during the run was really interesting. It was like looking at a machine slowly breaking down over time with nothing you could do about it.

I had a bit of trouble with the combat since my keyboard doesn’t have function keys (I have to press another button to enable them), so I found myself spamming ‘1’ a lot, and seemed to work pretty well ;)

Good job!

It’s unfortunate that you couldn’t finish it, as you have a real eye for a cinematic experience!

Some things I’d note would be to have bigger grid cells. In corridors that I thought might be 2 wide, I could move 3 spaces sideways – I’m not sure if maybe the player is on the boundary of each cell rather than the middle of the cell.

Anyway, good work; I’m sure you’ll get further in the next one!

I really liked the premise and the monster design! You were very sneaky with the teleporters and spinner LOL :D I’m sure zooperdan must have loved that! :D

The movement feels good and I enjoyed the combat too.

Great job!

Thanks for streaming the game! I caught up on the VOD and it was pretty awesome :)

Thank you for taking the time to play it :)

Thanks for playing! I’m glad you liked it!

And thanks for warning me about the OOB issue, I’ll have to track it down :)

The tactical combat it really well done and a welcome change from the usual combat. It took me back to when I was a little kid playing my very first crawler, Pools of Radiance. It was really well-executed, intuitive, and snappy.

Having the guided combat under “Learn combat basics” was a great idea. People don’t usually read the itch page to figure it out. As a jam game, having the combat instruction before the combat worked well, if you’re going to develop this system further, having the tutorial during the combat screen would be ideal, especially if more complexity is added.

Story-wise, I love the humor and I really enjoyed seeing a familiar cast of protagonists :D

I loved it, this is one of the most unique entries I played :)

Thanks so much for the feedback!

The non-linear health bar is a great idea, and I’ll be sure to incorporate that :)

Thanks for playing it, and I’m glad you enjoyed it :)

I never implemented de-spawning items from the map 😅 but the stat boost got applied.

I’m glad you liked the ending, it was really fun yo put together 😁

Thanks so much for playing it and for your review.

The radar is a little underbaked and was supposed to be more important but we ran out of time

I’m really happy you enjoyed it!

Thanksfor playing it, I’m glad you liked it:)

… And for pointing out my oversight. That’s really embarrassing.

The combat mechanic was really fun and juicy, and the art looks amazing!

This was really fun! I could also have worked for last year’s “Duality” theme :)

It took me longer than I’d like to realize that I can scroll the inventory by clicking on the list and dragging. I was despairing that all my good loot was inaccessible :)

The UI looked amazing and great job on the pixel art. The counting of days on the library walls was a nice touch. I really was enjoying the librarian’s meta story :)

I encountered a couple of bugs: At some point most of the enemies stopped billboarding and didn’t animate or attack me. I could not wear the holy platemail as the paladin, and got stuck in one of the taverns.

With a little more content, I could see this as a fully-fledged game.

Great job!

Holy crap… wow. That was amazing!

I loved everything about it – the art, the combat, and especially the humor. You got me with the “Spencer’s next to a Cinnabon” line.

The dice combat was excellent and I absolutely loved the the automove. The special events in Solitude surprised me in a good way.

Speaking of Solitude, that was an excellent twist on the theme, and I loved it.

Great job, this was fantastic!

There is a lot of potential here. I love the setting, and together with the low-poly style, it gives me Alone in the Dark vibes.

It’s unfortunate that you ran out of time; this kind of mixture of mystery and horror is totally my jam, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Good job!

Very impressive for only nine days! This has a lot of promise and I hope you continue working on it.

Really good presentation; it took me back to playing the first Wizardry. I liked the auto battles and that they didn’t “lock” you in position.

If there was some way the heal in the middle of the level, I missed it. The more of the map I explored, the longer it took me to get back into the action once I made the trip to town.

Pretty solid entry, as always.

Great job!

That was a really innovative concept. If only dealing with mental issues were as easy!

Thanks for providing the video as it made it all make sense, and much respect for supporting gamepad navigation, too few people do.

The combat as really interesting. It’s almost a reverse bell curve. It’s hard at first because the triggering value is so high, but then it gets easier, and by the end, it’s hard tracking down the last few rogue Xs. (Well, not hard hard, but you get what I’m saying). I this this could be expanded on quite a bit.

A certain anthem playing at the end was a welcome surprise :D

Great job!