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Thanks for playing and the feedback! I really appreciate it, especially how to replicate the music bug (I had seen it but hadn't reproduced it yet). 

I hadn't really thought of starting the player at the CURRENT crank position honestly. The movement should be 1-1 so 1 rotation of the crank is 1 rotation of the player, but I think that there's a little bit of crank "drift" over time as well (just a limitation of the hardware I think?), so sometimes the crank movement doesn't correlate 1-1 all the time, but it should be fairly close. I can see how starting the player at the crank's position could be helpful, I'll have to look into that.

I'm working on another Playdate game at the moment, but I'll definitely look at an update to PogoArc at some point.

I've been programming for most of my life, and develop games on the side (mostly Unity over the last 8ish years, though that may change soon). Lua is a bit odd in some ways and I did have to learn how to structure my code (honestly the code for this is pretty rough right now), but generally once you're comfortable with 2 languages, it's not too difficult to learn another.

Pulp is a great way to dip your toes in development! It's a bit limiting unless you do a bit of coding, but I'd recommend it as a starting point if you don't have any experience! Just play around with it and set some simple goals on what you want to make. Your perception of "simple" in gamedev terms will change quickly, but it's a lot of fun!

Thanks for trying it! It's very fun/easy to make stuff for the Playdate!

Thanks! I didn't make the music, but the music is a little bit dynamic (there are 6 different loops and it changes them up a bit at random). I've made the game a bit easier now (will push in an update soon) so that you can get to where the music really kicks in faster :)

Thanks for playing!  I'm glad that that came together! 

I really liked this!  I'm not usually into more abstract games but this was really effective. I love how you were able to convey emotion with just some simple shapes. Really nice job!  Reminded me of this bit from Parks and Rec a little bit :).

Thanks so much for the feedback! I kinda wanted the wooden box + grappling hook to be an "aha" moment and I didn't want to explicitly say it, but I think I could have signaled it a bit better for sure. I do have 2 more levels ready to upload, but I'll wait until the jam is over to upload the newer build.  Thanks for playing!

Thanks, I'll take a look at yours!  I actually have an updated build that fixed the X key (and added a couple of levels) but I didn't have time to get it in before the deadline.

This is really well done!  The overall package is phenomenal (great art and music, and I'm surprised that the moving sound effect didn't get annoying :D). The mechanics were well introduced and the puzzles had a nice learning curve. I would have loved to see more "heroes" (where's the yellow dude in the logo and what was the plan for him?)  The last few levels took me some time, but I beat every one!

The only thoughts I had:

- An undo key might have been nice, it was rarely necessary but there were a few times that I accidentally hooked onto a box or key and moved it in a way that made resetting a little bit annoying. Similarly, a button for resetting would have been great, instead of having to hit esc--click on restart)

- It wasn't really clear that when "joined" you still won the level if a single one of your dudes went over the steps. I had thought that you still had to push them in individually, so there was a bit of over-thinking on one puzzle until I saw it happen.

Overall great work, great mechanics, amazing polish, fantastic job!

Nice!  I like the idea of minigames, and the idea that you have to pick the right ability for the minigame at hand with time pressure was cool. With only 3 minigames the concept didn't really get a chance to show itself, but there's definitely some potential there! 

Great job! The game is really fun, and you nailed the art/sound/atmosphere side of things too!  Note that I DID play the patched version, though it seems like the unpatched version is the same thing just without the undos (which would have meant I likely wouldn't have finished it) Here are a few thoughts:

• The biggest issue is that it felt like you relied a bit too much on the high jump. As a result, it felt like a lot of the game was just throwing all of your items over high walls, then getting the jump boots and jumping again... repeat. I think with the "anti-item forcefields", you could have made some different puzzles that didn't rely so much on the high jump.
• The act of juggling the different abilities was interesting!  It took some practice, but it was satisfying to throw up the item, grab the high jump boots, jump, and then throw those to grab the other item. There's a lot of potential for some cool skill-based platforming stuff here.
• It was a little annoying shuffling the items over walls constantly, because you weren't really sure if you would need them or not in the next area.  A more zoomed out camera might have helped, and/or if you had split the game into some smaller self-contained levels.
• A small issue - it was too easy to re-pick up an item after throwing it onto the ground. I was constantly afraid of accidentally throwing an item over a ledge, so I tended to throw my items down into the ground, but often I'd re-pick it up accidentally while I tried to move towards the other item.  A longer timer where the item isn't pick-up-able would have been nice!

Overall, this is a great gamejam game and I really enjoyed it!

This was quite addicting!  Very nice job! I got a score of 1629, which went on for a while! Here are some thoughts:

- It would be nice if the progress bar on the metal in the lava went away when it was "done", there were a few times I grabbed it too early though it looked like the progress bar was full. 

- This game kinda made my hand hurt, since you can move as fast as you can tap.  This isn't really your fault, but it felt like maybe some movement restrictions would make the game a bit harder for "fast tappers" like myself. Once I got the game, it felt like it just became "how fast do you want to tap".

- The music and overall sounds were great! Very nice job. The game feels great to play.

Nice work!

Not bad!  I loved the art, and it's a fun "golf" type concept.

My main criticisms would be:

- I'm not sure if this really benefits from the simplicity of 1 button, you end up spending most of the time waiting, though the fact that you have to time it makes it harder to be precise (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

- I didn't like how the speed of rotation kept changing from level to level, it made getting a "feel" for the controls frustrating since it kept changing, meaning you had to rely only on the visual indicator

- I think speeding up the travel time and making it a bit more "juicy" would help this game out TREMENDOUSLY. Take a look at various easing curves - so instead of just slowly traveling towards your "hook point" at a constant velocity, it could accelerate quickly and "snap" to the target spot. It would make the game MUCH more satisfying and would cut down on the time spent waiting.j

Overall this is still great for a jam game, nice work!

Thanks!  I actually have 2 more levels already made, but I can't upload them to Itch until the Jam ends. I had a lot of mechanics that didn't make it in!

Really solid!  The animations were great, and the moveset you got out of a single key was very impressive. Awesome music too.  I'm very impressed. 

This is really nice! The graphics especially are top-notch.  My only real criticism is that it's a bit easy. I think it would have been really cool to have ghosts that moved a bit more quickly, so you were forced to balance between looking forward and seeing where you're going and keeping the ghosts stunned. As-is, the ghosts are basically never a threat.  I also think some good dungeon-ey music would have improved the overall ambiance a LOT.  That said, this is a really cool idea and definitely is worth exploring/expanding a bit!

Really solid, simple game!  I love the chromatic aberration effect on hit!  

Not too bad!  Once I understood that I could catch the bullet it became interesting, though the game is VERY punishing in that if you miss a catch or a shot, your bullet goes way too far away to ever catch again, and you're basically just dead. Some of the collision detection also seemed a bit off.

Nice job!

Really nice job!  I liked how simple it was, and the music/graphics were really nice looking. The only thing I didn't love was the camera, (seemed odd that it was always behind the player and didn't let you look too far ahead).  Otherwise this was a solid game!

That was... interesting?  Is it supposed to be a rhythm game?  The fact that you can just spam the space bar with no downside unfortunately ruins things a bit. You'd need a scoring system at least, or some sort of punishment for hitting space when it's not required.

Still, the game was pretty funny and definitely unique. Not a bad attempt! 

Glad you liked it!  I may update it eventually and add another 7-12 levels depending on how I'm feeling!

Great golfing game!  The artwork and concept are very nice!  The only feedback I'd have is that the "reset" button is quite big (played in browser) and got in the way of one of the later levels, and it also wasn't clear at first that clicking farther away from your character resulted in more force. Otherwise, great polish and execution!

Interesting math game, but at the end of the day you're just trying to find a number that is 1 away from one of the rightmost numbers, right? 

I think that this could be improved a bit if there was some more interesting decisions. At first, I thought that "11" would count as 2 1s, so I thought I should be trying for that, but it didn't. I also thought that the numbers were sliding down from the left, which would have made me plan a bit more, but again, that wasn't the case. With a few tweaks, this could be pretty cool!

Not bad!  I like the idea of a game where you have to defend while you charge a "super attack", but the problem is that the defending needs to be the fun part of the game. With how the game's AI was, a lot of the game it felt like it was just a very slow rhythm game, where I held left mouse and then clicked right to the "beat" of the attack, which wasn't super interesting. The dodge also was never really needed, and it was frustrating not knowing my health. It also wasn't intuitive that I needed to FULLY charge the crit bar to actually kill him.

Still, with a little better AI and some more interesting attacks to dodge/counter, this could be cool!

Really original idea and great design!  At first I didn't really know what was going on, but once I understood the mechanics it started coming together.  I beat it!  I loved how it seemed really impossible at first, and then you have that "aha" moment and you form a strategy.  Really nice job!

Thanks!  I also wish that I had more time for levels, decided that a bit of polish was more pressing but I'll update it later with a few more levels.

This is really solid and very polished.  The sound effects were extremely well done and that timer sound had me panicking 100% of the time.  The music was the only piece that didn't really seem to fit - the piece you chose has a really down and somber feeling to it, while the game itself seemed more lighthearted than that. 

Overall though, it's a very nice game!  It feels like it's just missing some sort of actual scoring system, and it would be good to go for a mobile game.

Super cute art and music!  The overall feel of the game is great, and the basic interactions feel pretty polished.  

That said, it feels like there was some missed potential with the gameplay.  Overall it's basically just a very simplistic DDR-type game with some cute visuals.  It might have been a bit more interesting if you had to figure out which keys to press based on the stuff happening on the screen - like if you had a random recipe to make, then have to get various ingredients with different keys and chop/prepare them with other keys.  As is, the gameplay is linear and not super interesting.  

Still, great job on the overall presentation!

Awesome idea!  This was pretty enjoyable to play and I think that the core idea is well executed. The little "thud" sound when you get a guy to the goal was very satisfying and the visual design was pleasant enough to work for the game.  I think this is one of the more innovative titles I've seen in the jam.

Since I liked it, here's some more in-depth criticism (note that I really liked it quite a bit, so don't take this as me saying the game was bad, these are just the things I didn't enjoy):

• It seems like you purposefully made it so you "can't look too far ahead", but I don't think that that was a great design choice.  There were plenty of times that I messed up because I couldn't plan things out, and all that means is that I had to restart the level after messing it up the first time. It would have been nicer if I could have seen the whole level, then started it when I was ready.
• Along the same lines, it was a bit frustrating to not be able to "undo", especially in the longer levels. A single misplaced jumper or switcher basically leads to you needing to restart the level.  
• A dialog to prompt the player to hit "N" for the next level would have been nice.  Also, it would have been nice to know if it was impossible to complete the level with the current number of guys left alive, so I could restart earlier.
• Some of the later levels get a bit repetitive.

Overall this is a really cool little entry!  

Good job on atmosphere and feeling.  Having a weirdish main character was also interesting.  The gameplay itself was somewhat boring though.

I got a VERY low framerate when playing this in Chrome, but it ran fine when I downloaded the Windows build.  

Overall it's not bad!  To be honest, I didn't really see the differences when hitting poles - when I was going slow it didn't really seem to change anything, and once I started going fast I would just bounce off the ledge with 1 hit.  

Good job on the presentation and music!

Thanks!

Thanks!  The mines are just mines, haha.

I think that it would actually work pretty well on a mobile device!  We hadn't really thought about that but we could definitely do an interesting control scheme.  We'll see!

Cool concept!  The initial presentation was great, and the art / audio is really well done.  

It was very unclear how to spot the spy.  The "hint" of "he is slightly faster" was somewhat helpful but overall just comparing the speeds between various guests wasn't very fun.  When the dossier said that he was "stealing objects" I was expecting to be able to spot him doing this, but it didn't seem like the level contained any objects that he would be doing, everyone just wandered randomly.  It was also unclear that I needed to click on him multiple times... he just turned green at first.  

The "dance" part was a fun little DDR thing, and was a really cute way to beat the game.  The music does get desynced from the arrows about halfway through the song though.   

Overall good job!

Really nice job!  This was surprisingly entertaining.  The only thing I found annoying was if I shot too quickly, the shots would collide in mid-air and either cancel each other out, or spawn more dudes in the lane since the shots might not have matched.  

Also I was a bit disappointed that there were just 3 levels and not an actual endless mode/harder stuff, but it was still quite good!  Nice job on the everything.

This is a cool concept!  It was a bit annoying to have the page scroll when I hit up/down.  Also, it seems like the note window (the time where it accepts a key to control the snake) was only AFTER the actual note?  If I hit the key barely before (or even sometimes right on) the note, it wouldn't move.  It would have been nice if the window was before and after the note.

With some faster music and more interesting rhythms, this would be really cool!  Nice job.

Neat idea!  The music is fairly catchy and the sounds work well!  I like the idea of swapping between each guy, but then I noticed that you only "lose" if both of them die, which sort of ruins the "tension" of the game since you basically never have to switch, you can just choose to play one or the other.  If you died when either one died, it would be more interesting.

Also the alien's hitbox felt very unforgiving, and the game threw situations where it was impossible to save both of them at once.

I keep having an issue around the 2nd dino where the game stops accepting my inputs.  I'll be throwing the ninja stars and all of a sudden nothing I press will do anything.  I can still take damage and the dino is attacking me, but I can't throw stars, jump, or move.

I loved the music!  The little robotic "FIskBoi" was hilarious.  The jump sound was a bit grating though.

Overall the platforming mechanics are a bit basic but they do OK.  The above water/underwater requirements were a bit interesting, but overall it felt like I just had to stop playing the game for 5-10 seconds every time my meter was running low.  If more of the platforming had been underwater, and if the meter filled up a bit more quickly, it might have been a bit better.