itch.io

Oh, a very nice score! Thanks a lot for playing :D

Hi Mandy! Thank you very much for playing and for your kind words :D 1323 is already a really good score :O

Hey Tanasak! Thanks a lot for trying my game and taking the time to write up your thoughts! I appreciate it a lot :D

I am happy you liked it and recognized my efforts to make the game mechanics interplay! I definitely overscoped this game a bit for Ludum Dare, but I am really happy with what I ended up with :) I never thought of capturing a farmer in the corner with the scarecrows. That is a very interesting strat!

I fully agree with your comments! Most of those things I really wanted to implement, but did not have time for in the end. Especially the one where the player can choose the order of growing plants could make the game a lot more interesting I think. I would love to continue development on this game, but we will see how my motivation keeps up :P

Thanks a lot again for your nice comment!

The art was stunning and the music was beautiful! I usually don't really read visual novels, but this was a nice experience. The writing was good and it was nice that there was clear progression through the story. Very well done!

One tiny thing that confused me a bit was writing the down the scrumbled letters. At first I thought I had to create a word out of the scrambled letters, but it seemed any answer worked? I did not completely understand how it fit in the story :)

But besides that tiny thing it was a really nice experience! Great job :D

This was really well done! It was a very relaxed and casual experience, learning about these people and their background. The little minigame of connecting the stars was a great way of breaking up the pace a little and giving the players a breather from the story.

The music was incredible! I especially liked the song at the credits. When the electric guitar comes in it feels really powerful and like a great way to close the story. Really well done! :D

I had one technical issue, which was that my screen was too small too move the camera around in the stars minigame. I did not have any space below the game in my browser window, so I could not move the camera. Luckily it was easily fixed by connecting my laptop to a bigger monitor :)

This was an amazing experience! Very well done! ^_^

This was really cute and definitely suits the theme 'warm feelings'! For me the story progressed a bit fast, but this is honestly very understandable if you only have so much time to work on the game. The art was really nice, especially the character portraits were great. It gave a lot of personality to the characters. 

The music was amazing too! It felt very mysterious, exactly how I would expect a mage house to sound :) My only complaint was that the transition between different tracks was a bit sudden. Maybe a fade would have worked?

Really well done! I enjoyed it a lot :D

Thank you very much for playing! I am happy you enjoyed the game. I also appreciate your feedback very much. I will try to balance the sounds a bit more! Finally, happy to hear you enjoyed the music! I am very new to making music :D

Thank you very much for your kind words! Celeste is one of my all time favourite games, so it is high praise for me to hear you got some Celeste vibes from it :D

Haha, it is very interesting to hear that everyone experiences the difficulty in a completely different way. Also makes it very hard to design a game that is fun for everyone XD I am happy to hear you got some joy out of it :D

I have only recently started making music for my own games, so it feels nice to hear you liked it. At least it was not too annoying :) Thanks a lot for playing ^_^

Thank you very much for playing! I am sorry for making the game too hard. I think that for short gamejam games like this it is better to urge on the side of too easy than too hard, but for some reason it is hard for me to do >_< I am happy to hear you like the polish and art though :)

That is indeed a bug. Apparently I never tried to slide down that wall myself, so I never caught it. Should be an easy fix though, thanks for letting me know!

I very much appreciate you shared your experience of the story. This was the first time I tried to incorporate a storyline in a game, so there were bound to be some story telling mistakes. I can completely see how you would be confused by the goal of the journey. I will take that feedback with me for my next games :D

Ah, I see what part you mean. That is indeed one of the more difficult jumps. Thanks a lot for your feedback! :D

Thanks a lot for playing! I am happy you enjoyed it :D

Hmm, dying when you touch a wall or when touching nothing sounds a lot like a bug. Do you remember where in the game this happened to you? I did not run into this one before.

Thanks a lot for playing! I am happy you enjoyed it :)

Thank you so much for playing! I am happy you liked it :D

I was already afraid that it might be too hard. I have a tendency to make the difficulty curve too steep. I am curious where abouts you decided to stop playing? That might give me some feedback on finding the right balance

Multiple endings are very cool! Issues after building are always very annoying >_< It is often hard to find out what the problem is. For me with these kinds of bugs it is usually caused by the execution order of scripts. Eg., if you have two gameobjects that both have a Start method they may run in any order, even though you might want one to run before the other. Perhaps there is a similar issue for you?

Yeah, I see your point on the to-do list. I guess maybe the granny could say to herself something like 'let's do the other tasks first'. Or Maybe you can make the "write a letter to Trevor" appear only after you did the other tasks? I am not sure what the right way to handle it would be and there is probably a better one :/

I am very sorry to hear you lost your grandma recently. This makes me appreciate the game even more. I am very sorry for your loss. I think this was a beautiful little tribute :) 

I loved the atmosphere of this game! The art and music, together with the setting of visiting an aunt felt very relaxing. The turn based combat gameplay was a bit unexpected for me (I expected something a bit more relaxed after the introduction), but this may not be a problem.

The game played very nicely and intuitively. Maybe it needs a bit of balancing here and there, eg. this special attack that costs energy was very strong and could one-shot almost anything. On the other hand this tickle enemy felt very strong and impossible to beat. For me at least :) 

Really well done! I wish I could do pixel art like that ^_^

I usually don't really play visual novels, but this was a surprisingly fun experience. I played through the entire story, even though I did not plan to spend too much time. I guess that means the story was captivating :) I really liked the multiple storylines that run together and finally merge. The characters were also interesting and relatable. Very good writing ^_^ The art was very beautiful as well! Were these photos with some filters over them, or were they paintings? Either way they fitted perfectly! Finally, I very much appreciated the content warning at the beginning. This might be important for some people.

A minor point of feedback is that during the first few sentences I was confused who was speaking. Eventually I figured out it was a narrator using 'you' to describe the main character. At first I thought it was a conversation between two people, but this did not make any sense.

Very nicely done! :D

I loved this a lot! The art and story were both amazing, so I completely disagree when you say they are low quality ^_^ I think you did a wonderful job! What helped a lot I think is that all the art was consistent, giving the whole game a more professional feel. The music was also chosen perfectly, including the change of music at the end. Very well done :)

Clicking on various items in the room and learning about the life of this kid and their dad was very wholesome, and the two cutscenes were just amazing. I would have loved more cutscenes, but completely understand the time constraint >_< In the end I chose the painting over the ruler because I felt like it had more emotional weight.

All-in-all amazing job! I honestly don't really have any critical feedback. I enjoyed every bit of it :D

I was very sad for the grandma. She tried so hard to stay in touch with Trevor and gave him lots of love, but she did not get any in return. I think this game captured the life of some elderly people very well and how much they can enjoy the time with their grandchildren. At the beginning of each day I was really hoping Trevor would show up this time or at least write a letter.

The mechanic of writing a letter at the end of each day was very clever! Similar to Amaan I could not bring myself to play the mean granny, even though I wanted to >_< I wonder if what you write actually influences the outcome? Anyway, it really immersed me in the story and made me think about it.

As I usually try to give a little bit of critical feedback as well, here it is: It was not so clear to me what button to press to progress the story. I just mashed every key on my keyboard and eventually found it to be E. I was also wondering why writing the letter to Trevor was not on the To-do list as well? The first day I was a little confused what to do when I had done all my tasks. A final thing is when I had to chop wood I tried going out the front door, but this did work :)

But, that said, I really enjoyed this game a lot and appreciated very much what you were going for. I fully agree that the time we spent with our grandparents is valuable and we should not neglect them :) Thanks a lot for making this! Great job! ^_^

I love the addition of the starfish! I think they are very powerful and let you get much further, but they take some brainpower to use. They can be very useful as a deciding factor: when there are a few possible squares where a jelly can be, they can show you which you should flag. In addition they are powerful when they are absent, because you can determine that certain squares cannot be a jelly, because there would have to be a starfish if it was. It reminds me a bit of solving sudoku puzzles ^_^

The change with the shells is really nice too. I like that they are now a complete positive; they both give you a drain and they give you useful information. Although I feel like I get quite a lot more than I actually need

I have no idea what you would need a mute button for, because the music is so awesome, haha :P

One thing I noticed while playing this time is that I accidentally let the water reach the top, even though I had enough shells left over. This felt a bit annoying, because I could have easily prevented it if I had payed attention. On the other hand, automatically using a shell when the water gets too high is maybe also against the idea behind the game :/ This is not really criticism, but just something I noticed if you are interested ^^

The last thing to make it complete I guess would be a nice tutorial in the game, but that may be quite tricky as there are quite a lot of rules.

A very nice update! Thanks a lot! I enjoyed it greatly :D

Hi Tanask! Nice to hear from you again :)

As the developer I have had a lot more practice, so I think 50 points is already very respectable! :D Thanks a lot for your kind words

There is indeed no sound. I participated in Ludum Dare with this game and I ran out of time >_<

I did realize I could shoot the fireballs to stop them! I did not realize at first, but at some point it felt natural to just try shooting them. For me this made total sense, and I did not have a problem figuring this out at all :)

I often just put all my upgrades into movement speed, but maybe I should have put a bit more into reload time. When the boss began I was usually also at one or two lives, so there was not a lot of room for mistakes. But as I said, I dont think of this as a problem. It is okay for a game to be challenging :)

Haha, needing to follow tutorials makes total sense! I have been doing game dev for quite some time now, and I also still follow tutorials if I want to learn about certain features of Unity. However, I think it is great that you try to make your own original stuff! This is what is most fun for me, and you can learn a lot of things from it. ^_^ I am happy to hear that you find peoples comments encouraging! This is one of the greatest things of a gamejam for me. Just hearing from many other game developers and talking about gamedev :D

Sorry for the long text, haha. I am curious what you will make in the future! :D

I love the looks and feel of the game! The pretty pixelated style, together with the minimal sounds makes it feel very coherent and atmospheric to me. ^_^ The game was also super polsihed, with great player feedback. The buttons in the main menu alone are super satisfying to click, haha XD

In principle I liked the gameplay a lot as well, but it was a bit frustrating for me at times. Whenever a text showed up in the top left I needed to drop everything to do that thing. For example, I was digging some rocks to prepare for the evening when hunger popped up. I decided to finish digging my rock, but because of this I was late at my food and died. I in these kind of games I want to do things as efficiently as possible, but for this I need to know a bit earlier that I am getting hungry. I guess a hunger slider does not really fit the style of the game, so I would not recommend that, but maybe the text can have some effect on it that gets more intense as it becomes more urgent? Maybe it fades in a bit slower? This is just my experience, so please feel free to ignore it all if it does not fit your vision of the game :)

The tutorial was great and explained everything really effectively, although the highlights were not so very obvious in the beginning for me. The only thing I was missing in the tutorial were the controls, but these I found in another tab in the main menu.

Hopefully you don't think the feedback is too harsh! I really like the execution, feel and gameplay, and I think you did an amazing job with this game! Thanks a lot for making this :D

This was really satisfying and fun to play. Especially at the beginning of a level I was standing in the center of the level, watching the black circles of where the enemies would spawn, and then just bang-bang-bang picking three or four enemies of in quick succession. That was really satisfying when I did it ^_^

I think this game was created very well gameplay wise. For example, the fact that you can walk around and shoot a bit in the main menu is great, because you can see the controls and try them out. This way you wont be surprised during gameplay. The only thing that was a bit confusing to me at first was the special, because it was different each time I used it. Eventually I figured out is was randomized each time, and that the little symbol above the lightning bolts indicated it. Maybe it would be nice if you could practice this in the main menu as well?

Otherwise I think this was really good and a lot of fun! The difficult scaling was perfect, and the upgrades were very impactful, but not overpowered. Great balanzing overall! The boss was very difficult for me, and I did not manage to bit it, but to be honest I think that is fine. The final boss is supposed to be difficult :)

I see know that you started learning game development only three months ago, in which case this is even more impressive! I think you already have a great grasp on important things such as player feedback, difficulty scaling and balancing. Really well done and good luck with your further game dev journey! ^_^

I liked this a lot! It is classic snake, but executed really well with a few twists. I think chaning the environment every 10 coints was great touch. It made me have a real sense of progression, and it kept the game interesting at the same time. I also liked how the game looked and sounded! The music was fitting and did not become annoying either. All-in-all a really nice experience. :D

My main point of feedback is that it is a bit slow in the beginning, but I guess this is a normal thing in snake. In the beginning there is not yet much challenge, because I move very slow, the level is not too complicated, and the dragon is still very short. I really enjoyed the later levels, when you have to think about where to move, and make sure your own body is not in the way. However, in the beginning these challenges are not yet there. Perhaps there could be a checkpoint system or something?

I was also wondering, does the dragon go faster as you get to later levels? I feel like when the dragon came out of the portal it got faster and faster, but when I pressed spacebar and released it again, the dragon returned to its normal speed. Maybe this is a bug? (I am not sure, haha)

This was a really solid entry! Great job! Especially if this is your first published game, then I think this is really promising! I hope you will participate in more game jams in the future ^_^

This was amazing! A really refreshing different kind of game, with a super cute story. I like to play detective games, or at least games with some kind of mystery, so this fit the bill perfectly! :D

The art was also really nice and fit extremely well. Together with the music (which did not become annoying even though it repeated all the time) and the sound effects at the right times, this game had a great atmosphere! I loved it a lot :D

In the gameplay I really liked that clues you found could help you make an educated guess of which location to search next. The only thing I found a bit confusing at first was that one location could give me a hint that Jessica ran to the north-east, but when I then pressed the tile diagonally up and to the right I got some completely unrelated event without any Jessica. I guess it would have made more sense for me to get a small indication that she went past this way, without giving any more clues. Maybe this will tell the player they have the right idea, but might need to search a bit further. But this is really something minor, and might just be me of course :)

Anyway, I had really great fun with this! Amazing submission ^_^

Great job with this game! It was a lot of fun to play. This reminds of the time I tried to create a similar game a long time ago :D

The gameplay was great, there were a variety of enemies, pickups and even a boss fight! And even though these kinds of games can quickly become very chaotic and unclear, I think this was not the case here at all! The music was also a great fit for the game, and the sound effects gave a nice amount of feedback to the player. I really liked it!

Maybe a tiny point of feedback is that the enemies were pretty hard to hit. I think this is because they moved a lot faster than the bullets you were shooting, or maybe because the bullets were pretty small compared to the planes. This might not be a problem, but just something I noticed. Another small point is that sometimes the enemies planes would suddenly turn when they were at the end of the screen. This caught me off guard a few times and they suddenly flew into me, which felt a bit unfair.

Anyway, I think this was really well made and a great submission to the jam! Great job! ^_^

I am happy you liked it! :D Thanks a lot for playing

Thank you for playing! :D

This was so much fun! I played through the whole game and wanted more at the end :D The character felt great to control, and the enemies were fair. I loved the way you did your check point system. Each time you respawned at the same location, but because certain doors stayed open or because you retained certain abilities, you could just skip the parts you had already done. This was really good!

I also wonder why you have this option to skip the story? I don't think there was a lot of story to go through, and talking to most of the people in the town is completely optional. Having this option made me afraid that there would be a massive lore dump, but that was not the case at all. 

I think the puzzles were designed very well. During the combat I sometimes felt like I took undeserved damage (especially during the boss) because of the size of the hitbox. You have this diagonally top-down look, so to me it feels I should be able to walk behind the enemy sprite a little bit without problem. However, as soon as I touched the sprite I took damage. But this is just a tiny little detail though, and might also just be me :)

I ran into the same bug ass kiddolink where a dialogue box is stuck in the screen until I change rooms. However for me it happened with the dog that told me how to dig.

Finally, I also really loved the looks of the game. The dogs were really cute, and everything was also very clear gameplay wise. The animations also looked smooth and worked really well. All in all an amazing job with this game! I really enjoyed playing it :D Thanks a lot for making it and submitting it to the jam!

This was a really cute and pretty game! The sprites, the after effects and the sounds/music all fit together really well to create a very cosy atmosphere :D I also loved that everything was interactable in the main menu! That attention to detail really shows the love that was put into the game I think :)

The games were great too and, as also mentioned on the game page, they were really hard! The only thing that was a bit frustrating was having to go to the menu and wait for it to become evening each time you lost (and because the games were so hard I lost quite a lot >.<). That is what it felt like for me at least :)

A second (small) point of feedback is that when I first loaded the game I was not sure what I was supposed to do. I just started randomly clickling around in the main menu, and then at a seemingly random time a game started playing. After a bit I understood I could change the game by pressing the tv, and that the game began when it became evening. I don't think this was a big problem, but there was a bit of friction there.

Otherwise amazing work on everything really, the art, sounds, games. This was really enjoyable :D Thanks a lot for making this ^_^

I really enjoyed playing this! There was a great gameplay loop, with playing, choosing an upgrade and then upgrading your ship. Each level you really felt like the ship improved an you got further in the game. The music and sound effects were also great and fitted the atmosphere very well.

The low-res style was really cool, but sometimes it made it hard to read the text. I think it would help if you either increase the size of the text, or choose a pixle art font that matches the resolution you are going for. I often make pixel-art games, and this is one of the things that is always really tricky to get right >_<

And secondly, I think the balancing might need some work. For me the first levels felt really easy, and the upgrades felt very powerful. For example, in my first run I got a package of three shields. This was extremely powerful, because I could protect myself from all sides. However, the boss was suddenly super difficult and I did not stand a chance. Of course, this was just my experience, so do with it what you like :D

Finally, I did not fully understand how the maximum number of modules worked. I noticed that sometimes I could put an extra module on my ship, whereas other times I could not. I saw the number in the top left, but this one often gave me some weird numbers, or did not help. (Like, one time it was -1, and another time it was 2 but I could still not place any modules). It was also not totally clear to me what some modules/upgrades did (like the ghosts, or the cats? I did not understand what they did).

Anyway, I hope you don't think my feedback is too harsh! I really enjoyed the game, so I just hope that telling you my epxerience helps you create a better game in the end. Do with it what you like :D I want to stress again that I had a great time playing, and I really hope you will continue to work in it. Thanks a lot for making this :D

This was really cool! A nice short but complete story. There were a few things you had to figure out, such as how to get the ticket or how to get the machine working again. But for each it was clear what the problem was, and there were enough hints pointing at what you had to do. Because of this I think it was really satisfying to solve the problems in the end ^_^

My only real complaint was that it was very easy to accidentally close a text box before I had read all of it. Otherwise the art and music were nice and matched the atmosphere really well.

Great submission! I enjoyed this one a lot :D

I am happy you liked it! :D I will definitely think on the tutorial, it needs some work. Thanks for the feedback ^_^

Thank you very much for telling me your early experience with the game! I totally agree that it needs some work. But it is good to hear that you figured it out eventually and that the rest of the game is fun :D

Thanks a lot for your great feedback and kind words ^_^

I am happy you enjoyed it! :D Thank you for playing

(Btw, if you want to skip level 8, you can press level 9 in the main menu ;) )

This was a really nice and solid tower defense game! I liked the idea of having two different types of enemies, the ground and air ones. This makes placing towers a lot more tricky, because you have to think what kind of tower should go in the most optimal spot. Great stuff!

At the very beginning I was unsure where I should place my towers, because I had no idea where the enemies would come from. Maybe instead of the road just vanishing off screen it would be clearer to have some kind of castle or fort you are defending? Or at least some other way to make it clear which way the enemies will go.

I also thought it was a shame the game ended after 40 rounds. It could have been interesting to maybe have fewer rounds, but different locations or different paths. But I guess you know this :) I was also wondering what the extra loops in the game are for, as the enemies never seem to take those paths?

From a gameplay perspective everything worked great. For me it was actually pretty clear what the house did. Does it just generate more money like it says in the top right? It took me a bit of time to figure out I could also upgrade my towers, but I liked it a lot when I did! The staggering ability on the ground units is a bit overpowered though, haha XD

Very nicely made and a great submission for the jam! I enjoyed this a lot, thanks for making it ^_^

This was a fun bit of chaos! At first I expected spacebar to just make the character jupm like a normal platformer, so I was a bit confused that it did not at first. But after a while I understood that the game has a skateboard-game like combo system, combined with a zombie shooter. A really cool combination that I have never seen before! Once I understood the aim it was a lot of fun to jump around and do those edge-slidey moves (what are they called again?) whilst shooting zombies.

If I can give a tiny bit of feedback on the menu. I was a bit confused in the level-select screen, because the first few levels were shops and character customization places. In the end I figured out that the actual levels were behind those, but maybe it would be good to put the actual levels first in the list. So that people can start playing immediately, with as little friction as possible.

This was great fun, thanks a lot for making it! :D