itch.io

this is all I could ask for in a review and so much more. thank you so much for the detailed analysis :))

https://gr0n.itch.io/divine-dining

hom, my guy, i finally gave this another go. and while i *really* wanted to love this because of the amazing ambiance, i just couldnt get behind it.

i think maybe thats because the game relies to much on memorising this one language. i can envision a version of this game with the timers made much more lenient, but where the fictional language is randomised on each play. that way, the game remains a test of translation, not of memorisation.

the audio was great, the graphics were great, but there was no y-sorting. all of the tutorial text was off the top of the screen on my 1080p monitor, so i had no clue what to do lol.

oh god, you had such an unfortunate bug :( i dont even know how to fix it because nobody else has reported it

liked ths a lot. it was very hard LOL but the controls were nice

oh i loved this :)

hmmm i think this was quite flawed honestly. it's essentially overcooked, but with only one recipe, no upgrades, and no possibility to multitask.

i assume there were two furnaces to encourage multitasking, but the fact that making a sword locks you into the process for the entire time means that by the time you finish your first sword, your second iron bar will be destroyed in the furnace.

art was very pretty, sound was great. im very open to discuss this game more with you if you'd like.

not a bad little survivors-like

this might be the best experience ive had playing jam games in this jam. really good job.

some things need a bit of refinement, the writing felt a little too wordy sometimes (only a little) but overall i just loved this...

a nice little proof of concept. i'd want to see where you'd take this with another week of dev time.

pelleds :) i loved this. the fish is beautiful. unfortunately doesnt fit the theme though

liked this a lot. overall, very good :) but there were some points of frustration

- i ended up just doing the same solution for every level

- logs burning in the fire during the building phase is very frustrating

good job making hangman :) although it definitely doesnt fit the theme

the music wasnt synced up with the movement. really killed the gamefeel for me

day 3 and 4 seem to be pretty huge difficulty spikes, definitely need to iron them out

its in the bugged tutorial, you give them wine

we were unsure whether item picking up/dropping would be done via mouse location or last movement direction, and we went with the latter, but i think the former mightve been better

lack of mouse controls was my call, and its safe to say it was the wrong one. apologies.

your game is fun itself. it wasnt super clear how to get upgrades or enter lighthouse mode, but i figured it out. things could do with better signposting, but you've got a good loop.

stuffing your page with AI art was not great, though. not a fan of that at all.

i do apreciate the ambition, but overall i think this was just alright. you definitely a lot right, but it was the jank that left its impression on me. mechanically and story-wise (in game story, not what you  wrote on the page) i dont believe this fits the theme in the slightest.

- the objectives just required scouring the map, it gets very frustrating. some kind of in-game map of where objectives are would help a lot

- stealth was very much optional. the "calm" approach is no better than sprinting around and knocking everyone out. it enemies could do with being more threatening once aggro'd

- the timer is just salt in the wound. losing only means you have to re-do what you've already done, it doesnt add any interesting gameplay challenges. instead, if the timer actually brought a "storm", like aggroing every NPC in the town, it would both fit the theme better and be an interesting mechanic

- navigation was kind of buggy

- the game's 2D art looks overall a bit cheap.

my game used godot and animated sprites and we saw no such lagspikes. its not a compiler issue

i had some fun with this. there are quite a few things i would change.

storm/no-storm modes should be more impactful, and switching should be instant and/or on a button press. as is, i just stayed in storm the entire time, because changing took too long and calm felt bad.

movement was far too imprecise. jumping felt kind of off, like, i never really wanted to jump because it usually just got me hit. the character felt too slippery, and enemies took maybe one too many hits each.

the art was beautiful. i really do apreaciate the animation on the main character.

this was harsh i know, but i promise can see the bones of a genuinely fun experience here.

i liked this a lot, but the lagspikes in webGL is a major issue. i obviously dont know what caused them, but i expect you're doing something like loading the character sprite when you instantiate them?

i think this game generally controls quite poorly. the slippery movement and jump mechanic seems at-odds with the focus on precision movement challenges. attacking costing HP feels at odds with enemies that spawn infinitely and spam projectile attacks . i also didnt know how to control where the attack went? it didnt go straight all the time. basic enemies taking two hits is too many. i also dont understand how it fit the theme at all.

graphics were pretty

for your next jam game, i recommend you take a totally different design approach. there's clearly some coding talent on display, but it didnt resolve into an enjoyable game because of your design decisions.

send _varii (discord) a picture of your eviction screen and you (and your game) can make it on our leaderboard!

oh wow we really had the exact same idea :3

so, this has the appeal of incremental games to me.

people like the experience automating the gameplay out of incremental games. instead of intending to remove the left-right swiping strategy (which is essentially an automation of gameplay), why not add upgrades that automate that strategy.

either, more levels of quantum so that you can sit your circle still, an auto-seeking circle, or an auto-swiping upgrade. or maybe some combinations

on firefox, the fullscreen button appears to crash the game

LOL I sincerely apologise for any raised blood pressure I may have caused :3

I am *so* glad to hear you enjoyed it :)

your suggestion about movement directions is an interesting one that I'll definitely have to test. my gut tells me it would be a bit unintuitive but the current system definitely isn't good enough so for sure something needs to change.

day 10! I'll put you on the leaderboard!!

to echo quinten, this felt kind of like more of a tech-test than a game. which, if this is your first game, makes a lot of sense actually.

when taken as a tech test, its not bad by any means. good job :)

i just love this concept. being forced to show empathy for people who are just about to die really gets me. its a concept i really want to see expanded in one form or another.

that being said though, the QoL was lacking. a map wouldve been nice, as well as an in-game journal, maybe? NPCs just standing around when unposessed also felt a bit weird, i ended up leaving the grandma in someone else's house lol

the main menu music goes so hard

i love the concept, but the chess AI being so poor really hampers the game.

black blundered both their king and queen into me before any crazy rules could show up :/

this rules

:skull:

bro was rattled they didn't make gta6 in a week

https://gr0n.itch.io/divine-dining

message _varii on discord with your failure screen and you'll be added to the leaderboard