itch.io

Ah, I never really formally declared it on these pages, did I? Sorry about that. The circumstances around this project got complicated, both on the collaborative side and the mechanical side.

I wouldn't really consider myself a great programmer, but the way I coded this ended up being Particularly Not Great; when hosted for long times on a server, it became a memory hog unlike anything else. We tried out various different things to fix it and there were streams attempting to handle things, but everything ended up making it worse--at one point we even had the then-admin of the master server come in to help us monitor and debug things, with a record low of 12 minutes before a server crashed.

I had a lot of fun working on this project, but unfortunately my code wasn't (isn't?) very network-sustainable and every attempt to fix it only made it worse. So it ended up kind of hamstringing itself before it really took off.

Speed Booster: Berserk replacement. Bolsters your fists. Also bolsters your driving (hold sprint + forward).

High Beams: Infrared replacement. Boosts your headlights (custom bind).

Afterburner / Blueshift: Bound to reload/zoom by default. Go fast.

This rules. The hallucinations make even well-known levels carry surprises, and in later levels I'm never really certain if it's a hallucination or something real. Very tense, keeps me on the edge of my toes; I love it!

Well done, man, keep it up!

Yup. Minor bugfixes and text edits. Small QoL changes not worth making a big update post about (among them being the voodoo doll low-health spark disconnect and the pointer errors on the Fuse Injector), but enough back-end work that I figured it'd be nice to have as a representative version for any future downloads.

If I remember correctly, there are five endings total. Three of them are variants of each other, one is a bad ending, and one requires special circumstances.

Thank you for playing!

That's a bit unfortunate, but I'll wait patiently for if you decide to follow up on it. Thank you very much for the response, and thank you again for your hard work on this plug-in!

This is absolutely wonderful, thank you! I bought it, downloaded it, and started doing all sorts of wonderful things with this. I appreciate this a lot!

Is there a way to interrupt the input of a textbox, such as if the player runs out a timer?

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much! I like racing and I think there's a lot of storytelling potential there, so I wanted to give it a shot. I'm glad to see that people are liking it so far.

I would be sincerely flattered. Please go right ahead.

Is there a place where I can see progress as you develop it?

Congratulations to everyone!

I loved every moment of this. Well done!

Thank you very much for the criticism! I appreciate it a lot.

You're spot on for the inspiration, presentation-wise I'm a huge fan of Crystalis and wanted to harken back to that. I'm a huge fan of light puzzles, but it seems like a lot of people get stuck on it long enough to break the flow...
That's unfortunate, but it's also a wonderful demonstration that sometimes my wavelength ain't the same as other folks'. You're probably right, it might be better to just figure out something action-focused to throw people into right away. I'll going to need to think of a way to streamline things a little bit.

Most of the knowledge I gained from this I'll probably take to my next project and finalize Calandria up with some polish and a couple fleshed out areas; that being said, I appreciate the feedback all of the same! Thank you again for the criticism!

Well, this is unexpected.

Seconding Ronove on congratulations to everyone; making something ain't easy and everyone deserves praise for that.
This was one hell of a fun contest and I'm eager to see how it goes.

I see... That was brought up by someone else, too. I'll admit I've been PC gaming for so long that "ESC = menu" is just naturally ingrained into me, so I was genuinely baffled for a bit when it was first mentioned by another reviewer. I guess that goes to show that a wealth of experiences for testing is important, huh? It's important to get stuff that you would've never thought of.

Thank you very much for letting me know! I'll see if I can include some control references in the game for future versions.

Congratulations! As to be expected from the brilliance that spawned nec[H]roma.

I haaaave fixed that bug and it should be fine in the post-IGMC hotfix version, now.

Yeah, while reading over diaries and stories, That Thing struck me as something that could be very wonderful to base a game about and write about. I'm glad that the music and writing bounced well, I care a lot about audio design and I had a lot of fun writing character interactions.

It was definitely tough, but I had a lot of fun making dungeons. It feels...fun, just mapping out traps and figuring out ways to set up puzzles. I'm glad that it went over well!

Thank you very much and thank you for your feedback!

Congratulations to the top spotters! This was one hell of a contest, there were a lot of fantastic entries and it was fun going through a lot of everyone's games.
I'm really, really glad Ouroboros got the top spot, it deserved it. I'm going to need to go through the other games on the list, there was a lot that I missed and a lot I ended up not being able to get to.

I'm happy getting 13th place. In fact, I see that as an absolute win.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did Escape not work for opening the menu?

A month late and I already thanked you beforehand on the IGMC page, but thank you again for the feedback. This input is going to be quite helpful for fixing things up.

I'll be pretty upfront: I didn't really like this game. It felt a lot like a visual novel broken up by sections where I had to walk to areas and interact with glittering objects. Not that there's anything wrong with visual novels, they're quite a treat and Higurashi remains one of my favorite games of all time, but I'll admit I'm a simple man and when I jump into a game I generally would like to be able to affect things with my interactions with a world.
Learning that collecting the cryptic notes and checking the skeleton friends didn't affect anything in the long run really took the winds out of my sails, and the only real branch in the story being based on a choice at the very end felt...very anti-climactic.

I suppose if I had to sum up my thoughts of the story as a whole, it would be "anti-climactic". Without going into spoilers, the revelation that the Lord who fights off heroes is actually a bad person who does bad things isn't exactly a far reach to make. And given that the protagonist is apparently quite fond of him, that the ending hinges effectively on taking someone else's word for it and then moving on immediately afterwards feels very much like a rush to a climax. There's no rising action where he slowly comes to terms with what happens, no conflict where he has to second-guess himself, no verification of certain things, just "is that why this happens?" "yeah br0" "damn".

I don't want to seem like I'm just pounding the negative button endlessly, though. I was really impressed with this game right from the getgo. You've got a wonderful introduction that sets a dramatic, mysterious mood right away. The character being verbose would probably turn off a lot of other folks, but I love how much you could interact with and how much he could say about a lot of things. And kudos for making use of self-switches to have a long, wordy first-interaction and then a shorter follow-up on further interactions! The character portraits were also all extremely well-done, and everyone had unique designs, and your mapping game is absolutely on point; shit's gorgeous, is what I'm tryin' to say.

You've got a wonderful introduction, a cool world, some neat characters (I got very attached to the skeletons), and it just...felt like it all fell flat at the end. It felt like nothing I actually did from a mechanical standpoint really mattered.
I really, really don't want to seem like I'm just pounding the negative button. I was actually leaning back in my chair going "do I really want to post this? everyone else seems like they're having fun" earlier. So please feel free to completely disregard all of this.
But a game like this just ain't my cuppa joe, and I felt it'd be good to be honest as to why.

Still, thank you for your hard work. I'm eager to see what you make next, and I hope you continue writing stuff like this for a long, long time.

Very cute game!

The art was quite lovely and the presentation was wonderful, and I liked how streamlined the combat was. I'll admit I ended up kind of staring at the last screen going "So what happened?", though. I don't actually get the story.

Still, the atmosphere was top-notch and I liked how streamlined the gameplay loop was--there was no need for introductions, tutorials, or anything of the sort. Just boom, action, go right away. And I liked it a lot!

Well done!

This is definitely one of my absolute favorite games in the IGMC. As soon as the second character popped on screen, I could not stop laughing. It's clear that a lot of heart went into this.

The technical aspects are definitely wonky. There's not a whole lot on the gameplay side of this game; the (rare) battles are kind of mindless, there's a lot of spelling errors and event errors, it's possible to softlock yourself easily in areas by NPCs wandering around...but you know what? I didn't really care. I kept on going because I was so in love with the characters and wanting to see what happened next. Both of the side characters and their interactions with Jiro was incredible, and I'm so happy that you managed to push through and get it out.

I don't know if you plan on continuing this or just want to dust off your hands and start on something else, but whatever the case is, this game is definitely one of THE highlights of the IGMC for me. Well done, mate! Damn well done!

#StickSupremacy

This game very much feels less like a game and more like an appetizer, which I guess is the point given that it's a demo. On the one hand, my appetite is very much ready, on the other hand it felt a little bit like it ended as soon as it started. I guess for a demo, though, that's very much a case of faint damnation!

The interplay of characters was interesting, the bouncing between them was neat, and the initial writing got me quite hooked. I'll be interested in seeing where this goes next!

Thank you for playing! I'm looking forward to seeing what you make, if so. I have a deep soft spot for this aesthetic and gameplay style.

Thank you very much for covering my game! I'm very glad you like it. I'm eager to get back to it and to polish it up!

This is easily one of my absolute favorite games in the contest. It's extremely charming, it's simple enough to grasp, but there's a lot of potential for more puzzles and more difficult battles. The only real problem is that it just seems to cut off right when it starts getting teeth, and juggling menus is kind of a pain.

Thankfully, if this is just a demo, that means more is going to be on the way, right? I'm going to eagerly be looking for more news as time goes on! Thank you for your hard work, and I'm looking to see more adventures of these two dorks!

Very cute! I enjoyed my time through it. The game did feel a little toothless, combat wasn't very dangerous and the dialogue told me what to do most of the time, but I wanted to see what happened by the end and I wanted to make sure everyone got out by the end.

The word "wholesome" was rather losing all meaning in my mind by the end, admittedly, but that's mostly personal taste. If you liked writing it, then stick with it!

Thank you for playing!

I would very much like to expand on the maps just a bit. There likely won't be a whole lot of additional content added, but at the very least I would like to add a few extra rooms, an expanded in-between area, and some more interactive items.

Spears are badass, there should be more of them in games. If I do another Zelda-like (which I really really really want to) I'm like 90% sure the protagonist of that will ALSO use a spear. Why? Because fuck you that's why.

Thank you for playing!

Thank you for playing! Will make sure to change.

Thank you very much for the critique!

The keys infinitely respawning is something I definitely will need to fix, thank you for letting me know about it. I'm also going to need to do something to be more obvious about the door. I'm not sure how I'll tweak it, but I'll have to do something.

I appreciate your support! I'll be sure to keep working on this and give everything another run of polish!

I wouldn't quite say Japanese-modded, but I did install Japanese fonts on this computer due to being interested in Japanese RPG Maker games.

Good to see another Zelda-alike in this competition! I had a lot of fun with this game. The controls originally took a bit of time to get used to, and me and my friends guessed the twist right out from the getgo, but it was a genuinely fun romp.

I suppose the biggest thing I'd like to see from this game is "more". Ultimately, the action just consisted of a screen of enemies, then a boss, then a screen of enemies, then a boss, and repeat. The actual combat itself didn't get too difficult, I would've appreciated a little more teeth to the fights that I could just mash attack on while getting hit, and I would've appreciated a couple alternate paths depending on whether or not I upgraded a lot or went out from the getgo.
The special upgrade gave us all a laugh once we managed to A: Figure out how to get it, and B: See it in action. Amazing. Almost worth the price of admission alone.

Bonus points for not having any major defining bugs in your game--you thoroughly tested all of these systems and made sure everything worked! I struggled a lot with that in my own entry, ahah.

Good luck in the contest, and well done on your game!

Thank you very much for playing! I'm glad you were able to get multiple endings, and I'm glad you liked it.

I would very much like to expand on it and continue it, even if just a little bit after the gamejam concludes. It just needs some polish and finetuning. Fix the bugs, add a couple more rooms, provide a touch more NPCs to interact with, polish up textboxes, etc.
I think there's a lot of potential with this, and after the game's done I very much want to take the gameplay/graphical style and port it to something bigger.

I am absolutely continuing development. In the background I'm already working on several fixes for various things that have been pointed out by streamers and colleagues, and I'm also contemplating how difficult it would be to expand the map just a touch to include more things to interact with.

It won't end up being expanded into being a super-huge game, but I do think I'm on to something special and I'd like it to be fleshed out just a touch more.

Thank you very much for playing! I hope the next build is less buggy for you.

I actually had a lot of fun...playing??...this game. This has a lot of the fun inventory-shuffle and item-collecting that makes gacha appealing in the first place but without the ridiculous wallet-gouging that takes advantage of people suffering from gambling addictions. I really liked this!

Game started off pretty interesting and entertaining, and I like the idea of your [spoiler] being decided by the actions you decide in your [spoiler], but there's not really a motivation NOT to do certain things. Very frequently I was given "tips" on how to do something but there wasn't an option to do anything else, and combined by the confusing plot by the end I just...wasn't really 100% on the game.

The mapping was quite nice, though! And the title art that you've done, along with the music selection, was top-notch. Well done!

I liked the game, but out of all the games I've played, this was certainly one of them. It felt like it was supposed to be a tie-in to something larger, something that I didn't know about and wasn't aware of and haven't heard of.

The ramen thing didn't really seem to add up to anything at the end, and while customizing it was cute and provided some cute art, there was no real variance in ingredients and so the third time and after it got to be a question of "well, why?". When he was rising up again at the very end due to [spoiler], I almost half expected there to be a cheesy punchline of "I found what it is I'm fighting for...and it's RAMEN!". Or something.

Music and art was nice at least, and the character writing was cute. I'm a big sucker for tokusatsu and it seemed like this took a pretty Ultraman-alike road. I dig it.

Whenever I try to play the game, I keep getting errors about missing files.