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Thank you!

This might be the most viscerally fun game (not game jam game, game) I've played in a while! The control scheme is like nothing I've played before and it works so well! If you described it to me, I'd probably not believe it but playing this game just feels good. The amount of juice and polish put into this is impressive! I love the art direction and especially the character design. Seriously, this game is instantly addicting. At first I felt the connection to the theme was a bit tenuous (ok some cowpokes are scaled up and some are scaled down, sure) but that is, I think, key to this game working so well. If they were all the same height, aiming from one to the other would not be as engaging as it is now!

I think the one weakness this game has is that engaging with the mechanics on a deep level is not incentivized as well as it could be. The game becomes trivial if you just stand back and spam pot shots at cowpokes from a distance, rather than running and gunning. But the running and gunning is so much fun!!!! Ideally, the optimal strategy should be the most fun strategy too.

I have a couple suggestions, I'm sure some of which you've already considered or actively had to cut for time (I know the feeling haha!)

1. Adding terrain/ obstacles would make it harder to snipe cowpoke from a distance, forcing the player to engage. You're character controls kind of like a car so it might be fun to design the levels like you would a karting game, with ramps and turns etc. But even just walls and columns would go a long way to make the movement and shooting coalesce better.
2. Missing a shot doesn't feel very punishing since the gun doesn't reload and is fully semi-auto. I love how cowpokes are stunned if you hit their torso so that you can follow up with a head shot, but right now it's so easy to spray and pray that the stun is kind of negligible. Decreasing the rate of fire and adding a reload may help.
3. As the game "scales" the difficulty doesn't really scale with it. More cowpokes doesn't add more challenge, it just adds more cowpokes. It's just as easy to defeat a cowpoke if they're surrounded by a dozen or standing alone. So teaching them how to use their guns may help add scaling difficulty. It also might make the stun when you hit their torso more engaging. I'm imagining a scenario where a cowpoke is signaling that it's going to attack, and you have to decide in a moment: do I risk missing the headshot and eating a hit, or do I take the safe but slower path and stun them before they can get off their shot on me?
4. The dodge/ crouch action didn't feel particularly necessary or like it added depth to the already excellent movement system.
5. Unrelated to the game itself but, I'd recommend adding gifs to your game page! The screenshots are beautiful and expressive but they don't really capture what makes this game so much fun!

This is genuinely the first jam game I played where I immediately wanted to get right back in when I finished (I'm not sure if I lost or won lol) and if you release a post-jam version that really hones in on what makes this game so instantly engaging, I would sink hours into it without a doubt! Anyway, great work! Now, I'm going to go play it again.

Thank you for coming back to it! It's very easy to (literally) bounce off the first section, so I'm glad you gave it a second chance!

Thank you so much!!! I agree. I'm honestly a bit disappointed that I didn't just crank up the air acceleration a little bit. "Not falling off your mech" wasn't intended to be part of the challenge but it is artificially difficult in a way that is annoying rather than challenging. I did briefly consider letting the player decide which wheel would go where. Unfortunately, I simply didn't have the time (or intelligence tbh) to design a level with that any variations in approach! In a future version, that could be a cool idea for non-essential upgrades or maybe classes of controls that can be added in any order. I like the idea of taking mechanical ideas from construction equipment! For me, the moment this game clicked as "something" was when I realized I had accidentally designed the cannon to be scalable. Having a big ol' arm that can retract and rotate like an excavator would be a fun way to platform! Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it! Also I'll have to check out Mech Warrior 2!

I'm excited to see where you take this in the future!

Wow thanks! I'll definitely have to make one!

Wow thank you so much! I appreciate you sticking with the game through the jank! 27:43 is very respectable! Yeah I should probably add a note in the description that the game is "over" when you get all 8 and the timer ends. SFX is at the top of my list (well right under tightening up the controls) for a post jam release! When I was developing the game, I was making robot stomping noises to myself pretty much the whole time lol But, thank you, that's quite the complement!

Very nice time! Thank you so much 😭

Thanks for playing! I'd love to add some subtle music (and not so subtle sfx) in a post jam version! You're way ahead of me on spinning the cannon ;) If you're stuck in the big area after getting the "crouch" wheel, there's a cave off to the side that might just fit a slightly shorter mech!

Thank you so much! I really appreciate you taking the time to find the little details. I was laughing to myself for a solid 5 minutes when I realized I could attach a ladder to the cannon. 27 minutes is a pretty solid time for a first run-through!

Thank you! Jank is a good way of putting it 😂

Thank you! I like that idea! It would be fun to delegate different tasks throughout the mech.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! I'm very much thinking about expanding this game into something closer to a full release. I also found it very easy to fall off the mech. If you click the Right Mouse Button, the mech will come to a stop wherever it is. The controls are not communicated at all in game 😬 but there is a list on the main page, if you feel like giving the it another try! Either way, thanks so much! I really like the idea of grappling onto the mech, maybe rappelling down to collect precarious pickups.

Really impressive to have basically made two games in one jam! Both the 2D and 3D sections were so full of charm. I love this little world. And I love the people inside making bad art out of pure love. Very relatable haha Absolutely jump scared by the The Room reference lol There were a handful of typos here and there and the 3D platforming took a second to get used to but neither detracted from an otherwise fantastic experience!

I like the idea of having to balance vertical scaling with movement speed by dropping down. I didn't feel that dropping down to a faster route was often an optimal strategy though. The slow movement speed was still fast enough to be faster than dropping down and climbing back up would be, and the fast movement speed didn't feel fast enough to get out of the way of falling objects. I think a little tweaking of numbers here and there would go a long way. Solid concept and adorable art style!

This game is why I love game jams. Where else are you going to find a game about weighing the soul of an anarchist ant who did jobs for the ant mafia? High concept, didn't overstay it's welcome, cute style, and solid physics. Also love that you didn't crunch for this! I've destroyed my sleep schedule for days in the past for these kinds of jams and it has never been worth it lol My only real feedback: you spend the entire game interacting with the world by placing boxes, and your introduced as being "in charge of scales." Since your final task is to weigh the life of Susan, it would have been thematically and mechanically cohesive to make that decision by weighing down a scale, one side or the other, rather than selecting from a menu.

Cute robots, class struggle, what else could you ask for in a game??? I love that the shift in scale comes with a qualitative difference in how you play the game. Honestly, I know it's game jam jank, but auto-quitting the game when you get discovered did instill a sense of dread in me that few other stealth game have done before! Also it's humbling to see how much polish you were able to put into a 3D game like this! And hey, It's nice to see that in our AI future there's still some room for us primates to find employment ;)

I love the push and pull of wanting to take risks to collect more coins while trying to preserve the coins you do have. I really like the visual style. Having also submitted a 3D game with a scaled down (heh) resolution, I respect the amount of charm you were able to put into your game. Especially under such short time constraints! There was definitely a little jank (what game jam game doesn't have a little jank!) Especially when respawning (?) the physics could get a little wonky. But, honestly, the toy like style was so charming it wasn't even that upsetting getting tossed off the mountain by a slime lol Great stuff!

The level of polish (especially with the art design) is very impressive for a game jam! Really loved how much character you were able squeeze out of these little beans! They're great! I do have some feedback, please take it with a grain of salt, I did not complete the entire game only the first five levels or so so I may have missed something that nullifies what I'm about to say: I'd love to see the scaling aspect taken a bit further. Right now, the amount of little guys you have stacked up feels like a quantitative resource. Managing them is fun, but I didn't feel like I really had to think about the size of my stack beyond do the number of my guys match the current obstacle i.e. do I have enough stacked up to get past this guard, do I have enough to toss onto those buttons, do I have enough to finish the level. I would love to see a more qualitative difference when you have more or less beans on your stack. Maybe you get too tall to access certain areas that only a single bean can fit through? Maybe you can jump over small walls with one bean but not 3? I think there is a lot of potential here and with the instantly charming art style I'm hoping y'all take this further! Honestly, very humbling to see what y'all were able to accomplish in such short time in a 3D game!

Wow! Thanks for playing all the way through! That's quite the complement! Feel free to post your time ;)

Thank you so much! And,  I like that idea! Maybe a timed gauntlet to get through an obstacle course where you have to climb all over your mech to get through quickly. Or if you mech gets damaged your controls starting going haywire one by one until you fix them or enough break and it's game over.

Instantly addicting. The game really clicks when you start needing to juggle your character with multiple jumps. When I missed the fairy at the end I immediately had to replay! And then 2 or 3 more times...

Thank you! I agree. I think one of the biggest weaknesses of the game is the lack of visual cues for interacting with items in the game. Definitely top of the list for post-jam improvements!

Thank you!

Happy to supply them!

Thank you! Did you run into similar problems with the Windows version?

If you're playing on Web Browser, you may have to click on the embedded window to connect your keyboard and mouse inputs to the game. This seems to only happen some times? If the Web version isn't working, I'd suggest downloading the Windows version through the Itch client. Let me know if any of that helps resolve your issue. And thank you for giving the game a try!

Thanks for playing! And for the feedback! I agree with you, visual feedback is majorly lacking. Top of my list of post-jam features is some indication as to which ladder/control you're targeting before you actually interact with it.  Right now, it's very easy to think you've grabbed a control only to end up doing a little shuffle because you were half a foot too far away. Once you get used to the distances, it feels less sticky, but that's also one of those things you get used to more easily as the designer while you're spending hours play testing. Hope that didn't stop you from enjoying the rest of the game! Thanks!

Hey thanks! That's very nice of you to say. I'm planning to put out a post jam version with more actual game attached to it.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462733#post-869733  One Hand Drive. Here's a driving game where you can only control one input at a time.  You move your hand with the mouse and press Left Click to take control of the steering or the throttle.

HeadCannon has entered my canon of top GMTK 2019 games. I mean that with no hyperbole. It's a simple concept,  a sidescrolling shooter where you only have one shot (and its your head). But the execution is where the game shines! The moment to moment gameplay is always engaging.  Every new enemy brings with it a new challenge and changes the way that the game is played. Most importantly the central mechanic enhances the game instead of detracting from it. Scrambling defenselessly across a field of enemies to pickup your only means of defense is just as engaging as lining up those same enemies for your shot. Speaking of shots give this game... one.

Honestly one of my favorites so far! Constantly engaging. I love that scrambling to reclaim your head is just as much fun as lining up a shot to maximize your score! The character controls are excellent and the art/music are great. A cool concept well executed! Really well Done! 

Edit: I just noticed that the world changes color when you lose your head. That's really good player feedback!

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462548

Here's DodgeMaster. A surprisingly engaging game about dodging rockets and protecting the last vestiges of a space fleet. Quite a simple mechanic but effective. Don't... dodge... this game. 

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/unrated

For the angels among us who don't want to see any games go unnoticed. Why don't you take a dip in there and show the rest of us in the comments any underrated gems you may find!

This is quite an addicting game for such a simple mechanic! You did a good job of working within your limitations and making the most of your time and energy. I think the connection to the theme might be a bit lost on me. But all in all I'm impressed! You somehow made moving your cursor around the screen pretty engaging! Good Job!

Interesting concept. Curious to see how you iterate on this. It's unfortunate that there isn't an art and sound section cause you killed it in those departments! Looking forward to the sequel!

Hey thanks! That's very kind of you to say! And that's fair, I'd also like there to be more game here  😂 I'm hoping to add on to this idea soon. Thanks for trying it out!

Thank you for the very kind words! I really appreciate the feedback! Yes collision is definitely on the top of my to do list for the post jam version (once I learn how lol). I agree that the controls could use some retooling. It's, frankly, very poorly communicated but there technically is a break function. If you push up on the throttle it accelerates in reverse. You can use that as a break. Unfortunately I never added an obstacle where you would need to do that so I'd imagine most players will never even notice that feature.  I am thinking of adding a hand break too. Something to let players drift. Again thanks for the feedback!

So cute! Love the simple art style. The fountain is amazing. Though the connection to the theme is a just a little bit of a stretch I would love to play a full version of this.