itch.io

Hi Matt, thanks for playing my game and sharing your feedback! It's especially good to hear that the more subtle aspects of the delivery being noticed and appreciated. Your analysis and recommendation are spot on.

I'm planning to add a UI element that pops up once the player has collected the first 20 gems that flashes "upgrade!" with an arrow pointing to the closest upgrade location, in a post-jam patch.

Nice one! Just played it and provided some feedback.

I'm curious what you'll think of my game: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4080214

This is a fun mini power-fantasy defense game!

I love the low-key graphics and audio - good sense of style there. Simple gameplay loop, very direct type of control. You can probably make some money off this as a mobile game. Steady supply of upgrades provide steady progression, and I thought the upgrade rarities were very cool, though maybe they also have a drawback in that they end up being the only choice in that upgrade cycle since they are probably optimal.

What I think detracted from the game a bit was the incredibly repetitive music. I think the effects of Q and E keys could also be telegraphed to the player a bit more clearly.

Overall a very good game, well done!

You'll definitely notice the difference with the upgrades. The ones except the movement speed upgrade will make your attacks a lot stronger. The Gun Damage and the Shockwave upgrade will also change the sound to be more powerful, so your Shockwave will gradually change from a 'boom' into a 'BOOOM!' :)

Thanks for playing :)
The goal is to simply survive until the timer at the top expires (6 minutes). To survive, upgrades are necessary, which you buy with gems from the 4 locations at the corners of the map - those are also shown as blue circles on the minimap.

Nice one Talha! Played & enjoyed and commented :)

Have a go at my game: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4080214

What a neat little game! The atmosphere you set with the visuals, the fog and the music was very good. The controls were and the objectives were clear, which matters a lot. One issue I had (which might 100% be specific to my system) was that the aim sensitivity was too high and I didn't see a way to change that in options. I also thought the appearance of the T-Rex was very abrupt - unless I was too dumb to notice it coming while smacking the mushrooms :)) But I'd expect a beast such as that to at least make some thumping noises. So it was a very sudden Game Over.

In the end, this was one of the better entries in this jam. You guys are are obviously talented and I hope that you keep making games.

Thanks :)

You're welcome :)
For the item system, I can think of two options:

• Have the enemies drop credits only. You could put everything in the shop from the get go and let the player anticipate, plan and hopefully salivate on the juicy upgrades , and motivate them to collect all the credits. Have the credits expire after a few seconds (like in Surwave) if you want to add some extra pressure & tension.
• No shop. You salvage the items that the enemies drop randomly. You'd probably want to tie the quality (e.g. weapon strength) and the quantity (e.g. ammo) to the tier of the enemy.

The first one gives the player more direct control and choice on how to spend their money and the second one adds an immediate reward and progression mechanism and randomness.

Played, enjoyed and rated both of your games.
Here's my game Surwave, I hope you enjoy it: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4080214

The writing, visuals and audio were all good. You managed to enrich and improve on the classic minesweeper formula. I had a good time with this, nice one!

Hey, finally got to play your game. The controls were a bit unusual in a good way; the boost in addition to the absolute directional movement seem to give more flexibility in controlling the ship but also added a bit to the challenge.

I also appreciated the very clear and to-the-point tutorial that did a great job in easing me into the game and taught me the controls. Two _minor_ oddities were 1) the tutorial wanting me to press P to actually pause the game :)) But you also made the best of the pause screen by putting a list of controls there too. And 2), the fact that I collect the drops from the enemies but then have to go back to the shop to purchase them. But again, these are very minor things that didn't really detract from the game. 

It's clear that you had a pragmatic mindset and a clear vision for this game which results in a wholesome experience for the player in general.

Overall, a very solid game with outstanding music & SFX.

Solid game. I quite liked the eerie audio effects , and the crawl-by-mouse-drag was super original - at least for me, as I haven't seen such a control mechanic used before.

This game is overflowing with juice! Absolutely powerful sound effects, fun fast paced gameplay. Good graphics too, although I think the texture filtering was unintentionally left on during gameplay, which made it look blurry compared to the menu screen where things were nice and crisp. Also, my health went down to zero and then I kept racking up skulls, and after a while I got a "game over" very abruptly. But still, these things don't really detract much from this game. It was very good!

This game was adorable! Graphics, theme interpretation, audio effects and the music were all very good. I also appreciated how you put the controls right at the bottom for quick reference.

Speaking of controls, one thing that I felt could be better was the somewhat odd mixing of keyboard and mouse controls: The crafting seems to be controlled fully by the mouse except the actual crafting action with Enter, which requires an unnecessary hand movement. Also, perhaps collecting shells with click rather than E (which also introduces unnecessary hand movement) might've been more ergonomic, I think. But these are minor things in an otherwise very good game.

Overall; a very nice game packed with happy vibes.

The graphics and environment design was good, and the creepy sounds succeeded in sending chills down my spine! I didn't find the mechanic of picking up rubbish one by one and then throwing them into the bin particularly engaging, especially at relatively low frame rates. But I do appreciate the fact that this is probably the standard pacing in this type of game. And in the end, I felt that you did the horror/tension bit really well, which is probably the most important thing in this genre. Though wasn't my cup of tea, this is a game with potential!

The game has all the right ingredients with its simple and very likeable wavy graphics and sound effects, and a quick glance at the Settings page reveals all the controls. Still, unfortunately it wasn't a smooth experience trying to figure out its mechanics. As a player I would have appreciated a more gentle, gradual introduction to the mechanics, ideally through a very simple first level or two to ease me into it. Still, I think this game has potential if you want develop it further. Thanks for making it!

Just one screenful of instructions on the controls - thank goodness no text wall -, charming music and art, innovative mechanics, well balanced puzzles and it felt rewarding after every level. What more could a player want? This is without a doubt one of the gems of this jam. Very well done.

Nice little game with good music, though telling what the different objects are was a bit hard. Thanks for the submission. I like this genre a lot.

Congratulations!
Now try it on hardcore difficulty ↻(𓄼 .̀ ̮.́)Ψ  :)))

Thanks for playing. Yep, the map is just a square but at least that allowed me to tune e.g. the placement of upgrades easily. FWIW, the map texture and all the 'foliage' is randomly generated each time, although I know it doesn't really add much. If I ever end up developing this game further I'll surely be adding more irregular terrain features and more varied map shapes.

Hahaha yep that's all intended - upgrades are a big part of the game. And the feeling of getting overwhelmed - at least until you get some upgrades - is deliberate. Thanks for playing, it was fun to read your feedback!

You definitely want the upgrades. I don't think it's even possible to survive without one but I'm happy to be proven otherwise. After a couple of upgrades you should find yourself blasting through heaps of bad guys with ease.

I set the game's timer to 6 minutes for two reasons; I wanted to emphasize that the game in its current jam entry form is meant to be played in a quick run without getting too involved, but also because the music track was 6 minutes :))) I'll take the fact that you wanted to play more as a compliment, though :)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Due to my computer not running Windows I wasn't able to try any Windows-only game (most recently posted games here were, including the OP's game Madman). I did just rate GargantuaM87's Sinful Waves, as it was playable in the browser. Pretty neat game.

Would love to hear your thoughts and have your ratings on my game: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4080214.
And yes, we can now rate any game we want after having rated 5 from the queue!

I also think that art and music was really good. Fun game overall, and I loved the jump height mechanic and its connection with the waves. Why not sync the wave with the music's beat? :)

Good news everybody, the jam host has fixed the rating queue settings and now we should all be able to vote on any entry after having rated 5 from the queue. I'd be curious to hear how you get on with my game: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4080214

Curious to see how hard you find my game. You'll be overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies but it should get much easier once you figure out a couple of patterns. I honestly don't know how hard or easy it is to 'figure it out' from a fresh perspective and would very much appreciate the feedback: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4080214

I think the random queue idea is actually a very good one, and should make the rating distribution a lot fairer.

However I agree that there should be a threshold (around 10-20 IMO) after which you can rate whatever game you want. I was surprised to find that this is not the case after rating 47 games. At this point, in all honestly, what remains in my queue is what I would rate quite low and I refrained from doing that and have stopped rating altogether.

Thanks for playing!

Yep, that initial brief stutter is something I'll patch once the jam voting ends.

The audio in general was very well done, the music was good and the sound effects were very good.

I think more feedback on power up effects would have been better. The HP one was clear but the other two were a bit ambiguous. I think the blue one gave me a shield (which lasted a very short duration to be usable), and I assume the pink crate was fire rate, but "Click Me!" was a bit ambiguous because it needed to be shot?

I think the game was neat overall.

Ahh, minecraft in 2D with a twist. Just as I was getting worried that I won't ever be able to climb back up out of the cave, the tide came and I thought that was a good idea. I wasn't able to get up to the surface though.

Music was very good, and I also appreciated the fact that the level generation was at least partially procedural. I think there's some ambition put in it, technically, and it may turn out to be an interesting game if you decide to develop it further.

Thank you for the kind words.

To get the gems, you must kind of 'get inside' the crowd a bit and get surrounded, rather than trying to avoid the crowd and stay outside. You can blow a path forward through the enemies with the gun and the Shockwave will be a big help in not getting completely overwhelmed.

The game rewards risk taking by being close to the enemies and thus being close to the gems to collect them as they drop before they expire. I guarantee you that you will have more than enough gems for 4 upgrades - including two tier 2 upgrades if you want, but this is a bit harder.

There's also an easy difficulty setting in the Options that you can set before starting your run , which will get you started with 10 gems and more hit points.

Cheers :)

Thanks for playing my first game! It won't be the last :)

I hope you guys enjoy my game: https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4080214

This had the best interpretation of the theme I've seen so far, and the premise is original. I managed to find and pick up a few items, and while I'm sure stumbling around was expected, I stumbled a lot and couldn't make progress. Still, this was one of the most remarkable games I've played in this jam.

Enjoyed this a lot. One thing that might be improved is the clarity on the upgrades. At the end of the first wave I already had $1300 gold, and bought a ton of hammers to repair my ship (which was at 30% HP). But then at the shipyard I couldn't really do repairs as that also required gold that I no longer have because I spent it all on drinks and hammers and a couple of accessories :)))

Glad to hear that you liked it.

I intended to make the upgrade spots at the corners clear with the minimap where they are marked with bright blue, and also mentioned them in the game description under "Tips". Still, feedback taken. I think I could've done something like popping up a notification that points to the nearest corner once the player had enough gems for an upgrade.

Thanks for your time playing and sharing your feedback :)

Good game. The little tap dance at the end of the waves was a nice touch :)
Sometimes it seemed to have trouble registering the clicks, though. And I kind of wished that the bugs were cockroaches instead of moths :)))

I really liked the minimalist graphics. It would be nice to have some audio, unique projectiles for the towers and maybe a bit clearer enemy path to communicate to the player the better places to put towers on.

You have a strong, original premise here. It was just too hard to get the boat moving. Still, one of the better entries I've played this jam :)