itch.io

Hi! I’d love to connect with some of you talented folk. Twitter: https://twitter.com/yokutekei

Also the artists twitter in case you want to follow her: https://twitter.com/KuuttiSnu

I guess… It’s just that we live on the other side of globe. It will quite likely be during night at some point for us. Knowing streaming time we could plan a little like whether to stay up late in case the stream is 1AM Monday local time or go to sleep early and wake up early at 6 AM on Monday for the stream and so on.

Original jam version here. https://yokutekei.itch.io/iron-mice-from-hell-jam-version

.1 Removed entering game from front page

Removed the prompt and ability to enter game from the front page as some people missed the controls page / instructions.

.2 Score during game

Added background to score shown during game to make it slightly more nice looking.

.3 Fixed animation

I forgot to remap animation from [E] button to [J] and [K] on the jam version. It is now fixed.

.4 New “Bug”

While refactoring rats to make the code look nicer(no behavioural changes) I accidentally introduced new bug to rats where it keeps looping run animation while it’s eating wire. We call it a feature now as it looks nice.

Results are hidden until IronMouse streams. It’s scheduled for Sept 17th for now. Changes may occur. Below is the whole message from mod and link to the thread.

Hello all!

Thank you all for your hard work making this gamejam a success as the voting is wrapping up today. The results of the gamejam will remain hidden until the time of the GameJam stream to keep suspense on what are the top 20 games.

Currently Mousey is planning to stream the top 20 games and choose the winners on Sept 17th, but this date can change based on Mousey’s busy schedule.

Finally, as mentioned in another thread, updating the games to fix any issues can be done in the meantime.

• Vellyne, on pinned thread: https://itch.io/jam/mouse-jam-2023/topic/3123356/gamejam-stream

All game developers really want to win, and send their own best work, I also want to win, I try to win,

Not really. Our team joined to have fun and to maybe get the game shown in stream.

I make good and optimal games,

Good and optimal on what metrics? When I tried your game my gpu started to sound like jet engine while games like Apex on max graphics are completely silent. So at least for performance that’s objectively false.

I want to try, and for all participants I have given a rating with Honest,

Thank you.

I want to ask what is your aim in joining the mousejam2023 competition?

To make small and fun game without stress or crunch. And maybe get shown on stream.

Of course you have to compete by sending your best work so you can be in the top 5

Maybe. Maybe not. If we happen to be in the top 5 it would prove otherwise. We just had chill time with no pressure. It certainly wasn’t everything we could have done in the time frame.

I’m happy you liked our game and the font. The font was actually made by our artist just for this jam.

Got reminded of a few good ones today so I added them to the post.

Was feeling bold at first. Died. Felt bold again. Saved by deez nuts. Best art I’ve seen in the jam and the story was wholesome.

Game: "ENDING: What did you expect?"
Me: "Fan service if I'm being honest."
Me: *Tries again but chooses the alternate path*
Game: "Cue the fan service"
Me: "Huh?"

Have you tried the new UI builder? If the canvas system is “a bi**h and a half”. Then the UI builder should probably be described as 5 of them and all of their extended family. I can see where they were going with it with the website like architecture but I don’t like it at all.

There are multiple easy ways to do so even without updating while not showing any of it during voting period. If you have the know-how and planned it ahead. I really doubt that would be it though. My best guess is fairness as in keep the games the same between voting period and mouse trying them.

Probably not. Vast majority doesn’t think about these sort of things. And you’re absolutely right that peoples trust could be exploited in jams. It’s why I’ve only played browser versions so far as it should be safer to my knowledge as browsers are designed to withstand the web and malicious actors there. But when you play a jam game or worded slightly differently run a random software from the internet on your computer, all bets are off as it could do anything you can and way more. But magnitudes faster.

But then again more often than not the games are safe even if warned by windows defender as it will pop up a warning from anything slightly suspicious. Like when the software is not digitally signed by a company for example. Well none of us here represent a company here nor will be signing the games digitally so it will most likely look a little suspicious to some antivirus software and trigger a warning.

That all being said. Stay safe out there. If in doubt, don’t run the game just like with any other software. Doing a little research on the creator is a good first step. If they have been around actively for a longer period of time, they are more likely to be random dev just participating in a jam with no ill will.

ps. VMs would be good but highly impractical for majority.

Glad you liked it.

It’s quite alright. Thank you for playing our little game. I had good time watching you play the games.

We had a team of four. Each of us has done 7-ish projects or more. Some bigger, some smaller and some jams.

My favorites.

Cutie Conquest https://itch.io/jam/mouse-jam-2023/rate/2247583

CopperMouse https://itch.io/jam/mouse-jam-2023/rate/2247558

Ironmouse’s Quest https://itch.io/jam/mouse-jam-2023/rate/2246661

Hell Surfer https://itch.io/jam/mouse-jam-2023/rate/2243537

Haywire Dash https://itch.io/jam/mouse-jam-2023/rate/2247471

Our team had good time with this jam. Maybe some fatigue near the end. We are all gamedev students and have done a few games together before so we were already comfortable working together and had a shared idea of the tools we would be using, how we should work, share tasks and what we are going to use.

Some of the things we did I think are important:

.1 Communicate with teammates

I don’t only mean sharing tasks, progress, what tools you are going to use and everything else that goes to project normally. You should also talk about your expectations for the project. Why are everyone participating the jam? To win? To have fun? To learn new things? As differences in these will cause friction in the team. I’ve seen it happen before. How about, if there is a price, how is it shared in case you win? It’s often better to talk it out beforehand so there are no disputes. How about work hours and work time? Are you going to do it together after work/school/etc? By passing notes if some do it in the morning and some in the evening? How about if some can contribute less hours? Will it be a problem for some? For our team we have similar situation in life so it was clear that we would be doing the work during evening for the most part and communicated over discord during our work time. We also talked out the goal of this jam and for us it was to have fun. As for the price. Do as I say, not as we have done. We have not had explicit conversation about it but I’d say everyone has assumed even split in the case we win. I highly doubt there were any other ideas about it at any point.

.2 Using version control

It makes sharing your work easy as long as you know basics of what you should and shouldn’t do and communicate well enough. Rolling back / inspecting breaking bugs in code is way easier as you can compare changes between any versions you have. Works as a backup. My recommendation is ‘Git’ and it is what we used.

.3 Build often and test it on target platform(web, windows, etc.)

It helps to ensure there are no unexpected hiccups with the build. For example the unity player didn’t work as I had thought it would with itch.io and because of this guideline we knew to tinker with it from day 1 to make sure our game works well here.

.4 Submit playable versions early and often enough

This is to make sure you have at least something submitted by the end even if there are problems on your end or on the servers. There were a few teams in this jam that missed their mark on this one and it happens in every jam. At least on itch.io you can update the files until time runs out. Take advantage of that. This is even more important in jams like GMTK which basically break the servers every year on the last submitting hours.

.5 Have something playable quick.

Polishing, testing and fixing bugs often take more time than one might think. We had our games first playable version after the first day. Namely the level itself, the spawners, rats including their ‘AI’, player and killing them but everything was just boxes on screen besides the background. On the second day we had completed everything gameplay wise. Streaming was added as secondary thing to keep track of as smacking rats alone was not that interesting. The remaining 3 days were used to add the art, learning to animate in unity, adding sound effects, polishing, testing and tweaking the game and the UI.

.6 Have it tested by other people

Gamedevs quickly become blind to the rough edges of their darling. We had the game tested by at least a few friends every day to make sure there are no bugs and to see where it could improve. Things like the ‘light’ from streaming setup and the button prompts were added because of the feedback we got. I had naively thought that, “The streaming part is explained in the starting menu, surely people should know how to play”. Of course not. People want to start playing as fast as they can and skip it all. So the prompts were more than necessary to have good experience. We also updated the menu layouts a few times because of feedback. When testing with other people remember to keep quiet at least the first 10-ish minutes depending on game length to see how a player without the dev behind their back would struggle. It can be quite humbling and also quite a struggle to not say anything or help in any way. And as a final note. Bribing testers with snacks can be a good idea and strangers often give more honest feedback than friends and family.

.7 Have a web build if you can

People seem to mostly follow the path of least resistance. So more often than not. Games that can be played as soon as you enter the web page get played more than the ones that you need to download and install to play. At least by my experience. And also the statistics on ‘number of ratings’ in this jam.

.8 Premature optimization is the root of all evil

Jams are one of the few places where you can take enormous amounts of technical debt(make solutions that will hurt you in the long run) and never pay it back. Don’t worry about whether the code is good or not. Just get it working as fast as you can without breaking the game. Players care about the end result and so should you. Not about what’s under the hood. And you won’t be tinkering under the hood more than the duration of the jam anyway. So go wild. Same is more or less applicable to other areas as well. The goal should be best delivery in the given time and theme of the jam.

.9 Take the cheap optimizations

This may sound a counter to the previous one but hear me out. Some things can be optimized by right choices beforehand. There for it won’t cost you any precious time during jam and should be taken. These can range from choice of tools to the specifics of asset creation. For example you might be able to iterate faster with Godot as it seems to be way faster than Unity or Unreal both in editor and with build times. Take that with grain of salt as I’ve used Godot only a little so far. Another is texture sizes. Dimensions in power of 2 will be more optimal for memory usage. I wont be going into technicalities on that. Putting it simply the side lengths should be from the following list but they don’t have to be the same for both sides. [2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, and so on] There are more of these, many won’t be obvious and will depend on platform. So the best way to learn about these is to get to know your tools, platforms in depth and/or talking to more experienced developers about these.

Now all of this is just my opinion and some of it is bound to be wrong at least on individual cases.

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Sorry for the dry humor. :)

The scores wont be shown until rating period has ended. It calculates scores and winners based on ratings games have received. Gmtk2023 result page for reference. https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2023/results/top-marks

It shows high score and the last score in the controls window. (If anyone is wondering the score in this image, it was done as a test using extra software to test the limits.)

1. Go to your games page.
2. Click ‘Edit game’ on the top bar
3. Near the save button there is button called ‘More’ and there you find button called ‘Admins’. Click it.
4. Add your teammate as admin
5. Send them the confirmation link and have them accept it.
6. Tap the ‘Display as contributor’

They should now show as developers and be able to edit the project. It should look something like ours in the end.

My current record at the moment is 405’815. I hope to see someone beat it before the jam ends.

Best game in this jam in my opinion. At least on web side as I’ve gone through all of those now. I had thought I had seen most of what the game has to offer after the first level. I was not prepared for the boss. Made me smile. Thank you.

Glad you liked it. I’m also relieved by your and other people comments that it was easy to pick up as some of our friends testing had some problems with it in earlier version.

Glad you liked it. I’ve rated yours too.

Thank you. I liked your game too. It has been one of the best in this jam I’ve tried so far.

This is a master piece of a gamejam game. It looks, controls and feels good. It has nice music and has good difficulty scaling. I’d only wish there were more sounds/variation when collecting items.

Nice little pet sim. Managed to break it by spamming the music game. Good job overall.

Nice art and solid loop. The hitboxes felt unfair but you’ll get used to the pain. Excellent little rage game.

When I was young, there were these things called flash games. This reminds me of them. Good memories.

Cleared.

Played for 15 days. Didn’t get elected but walked away with 21k in the bank.

I love the art, couldn’t find any bugs and the core game works. The game could have used more feedback with attacks.

For any feedback. Please report bugs under bugs.

Show me how well you’ve done.

Post bugs here.