itch.io

Seems like 5 minutes is a common theme among some games in this jam haha

Like the other 5 minute game, I think that time span is a bit too long for a short-form jam game. I wanna jump right into the boss fight, but maybe that's a personal preference. I did love the effort that was put into both halves of the game. The exploration stuff was nicely implemented and the boss itself was sleek as hell.

However, I'm not spending another 5 mins preparing for another boss run, so gonna skip on completing this one

Interesting concept to be able to use the coins from the boss fight to make the player stronger! If this is your first jam (as the other commenter said), then congrats on the submission! Would have loved to have sound effects, more boss behaviours (apart from just walking and attacking) and different player attacks.

I'm sorry but 5 minutes is way too long for this type of game (I type furiously as I just died on a run 4 mins deep). I appreciate the souls-like dodging, but with attacks seemingly not having any effect, there seems to be no reason to directly engage with the boss?
Nevertheless, cool spritework and I was genuinely shocked to see the boss jump

I couldn't get this to work! At least, I didn't really know what to do

I love the concept, super Outer Wild-sy. Good work on the shader and modelling too, the vibe it exudes is incredible. However, I honestly could not figure out how to beat the boss. You can't really run away from it (I think?) as it pulsl you in with its gravity and spamming weapons at every possible moment still didn't work (nothing can kill a planet I guess).

Also, the game files are pretty large 500MB+ for MacOS! Sensing some optimisation possible there.

For those who get stuck at the first level. Go to the black zone and just jump on it. You'll be sent down.

Anyways, I echo the sentiment of the previous commenter, the boss was pretty scary and the procedural animation was cool, but the combat and movement mechanics were fairly unpolished with the player being able to just leave the stage at any time.

That was an amazing idea! I won't spoil too much but I love how your decisions are a double edged sword that helps the boss too. Definitely very jank, but expected for a jam game. Enemies could use smarter navigation and the sprite clipping was weird especially when projectiles / your sword could go through walls.

Great job all around!

I am very very very impressed, that was amazing! A blend of charm, polish, and sleek gameplay that exudes style. You can really feel the personality of the developer shine through in this, which I value highly in any game.

Loved the switching between attacking the asteroids and the boss, loved the mix between pixel art cutscenes, the 2D alien sprite, and the low poly asteroids and spaceship. Many different styles aesthetically used together! And the gameplay was short and sweet.

Also appreciate that you referenced the voyager's golden record, such a nice tidbit of knowledge.

The gameplay is super polished, but it struggles from balance at times. Sometimes I get swarmed by asteroids that I can't avoid and I ended up just holding left click to cheese the boss's phase two.

I loved this! So much charm and expression. The spritework is amazing and the combat mechanics are pretty intuitive. Of course, with any jam game there is room for improvement for polish in all aspects. Parry window was a bit weird to get as I was aiming to parry the centre of the plate, not the edge.

The second boss was so charming! I loved the Cuphead-like fight. It was much more lacking compared to the first boss (only one main attack), which is a shame because I really preferred that boss.

Yeah I'd like to see someone try to beat my score of wave 51. Once you figure out the skele meta, it's a game of patience and I tapped out at 50. Anyways, I guess the relation to the theme is that you are the boss? Makes sense in concept, but it feels like another vampire survivors-esq game and the line for boss fight becomes a bit blurry

Balance-wise, your mace and spell become basically irrelevant at deeper waves and the boss is so big that you can't strafe projectiles at all.

PS: Love the online leaderboard

Love the game name. Love the game.  Simple, short and sweet. Controls were jank, and the animations weren't really made for the models (some warping happening). I didn't try to go for parries, but I feel you could power through the game by just spamming attacks.

I'll be honest, I am not a huge fan of visual novels. I understand the appeal though. Nevertheless, I did love the mechanic of having the game flow like a messaging app. Our brains are so used to Discord/Slack UX now that it just felt intuitive to play through. The fact that the texting style was relatable too and in short messages made it so nice to progress. I guess I'm in the target demographic haha

The game was surprisingly fun! Each character was nicely defined and the story itself was easy to understand. Everything flowed nicely from the first day to the last.

Like the other commenters, I didn't piece together the relation to the theme until I read the game's description. I felt I locked myself into a specific ending by my first choice (which I had mistakenly picked), and then I was locked into the super authoritarian (or I guess neutral) route. I assume there's three routes (neutral, all good, all bad), but I didn't try to get all of them.

Great job on the game and incredibly impressive to be pulled off by one person.

I originally thought the game was impossible until I realised parries restore health! Not gonna spoil anything but I wish there was more apart from the enemies.

Concept was fun, loved seeing the different attack patterns. Felt the game play to be not so challenging though, as I could skip through to the end of the level without having to fight the enemy dice

Interesting game. The blocks didn't have enough synergy to make complex combinations, the bomb felt like a net zero. But loved the concept and had a good time with it.

Even more interesting that the entire game is in one file.

Very fun two player game. Pretty limited by the fact that you can only draw one card per turn. Love the luck and dice element in here.

Loved it

A really impressive game! Super creative and technically impressive

Loved the visual polish and concept with the dice. Wished there were more visual cues with the dice and how they affected combat. Also weird rotation bug with the weapons

A visually impressive PICO-8 game with a surprising amount of content! Loved the use of tiling in its level design. Really brought out the strengths of using the PICO-8 aesthetic. Completed it all but wished I could see the different dialogues from all the endings.

Played on macOS, not a problem after following the instructions below. This is a really impressive game. Super small file size and lots of depth and polish. I kept getting surprised at how many features were packed into this. It's hard to see the relation to the theme and the visuals are pretty cool, especially when it comes to some of the spells involved.

Really wished there were more indicators on what effects were on me, or where the fireball was going to land, etc. The game is also insanely hard. But that only means there is so much depth.

PS: Thank you for the vim key bindings lol

Interesting concept, love the turn-based style and animations. Everything clicked after a few turns. Definitely hard to give feedback because it feels like a prototype of a game and would love to see everything fleshed out with a proper win/lose scenario and such.

Why my itch die

CTRL+W for a control is wild. Interesting prototype-y game, would be cool if it was fleshed out more.

Bro when I turned to stone above that wizard and watched him fucking disappear after literally dive bombing him, I could not contain myself. That was hilarious. I do feel like I solved the last puzzle in a weird way? The gargoyle was moving in the flame and was unharmed, but it felt like the only way to do so.

Also, interesting use of dialogue and camera animations. Wish there was more content.

I fucking lost it when I dive bombed a wizard

Ok there is a lot of jank. Ella keeps getting in the way, the player's movement and animations are desynced at times, and jump attacks reposition you after you land. The phoenix fight is also pretty damn hard and the decision to have jump on W and dash on SPACE and the ability on ENTER was... interesting...

BUT, I played through it all and got both endings (hint: don't abuse your power too much and waste Ella's lifeforce). And I can say that between the art, the music, voice acting, and story, I was deeply moved and captivated. Very cool stuff.

After you get past the jank, this game is really beautiful

Pretty interesting game. Love the attention to detail. Really feels like a Hitman scenario when you're on the verge of getting caught. It is a simple gameplay loop, but it can get samesy and pretty easy after a while

Not really a huge fan of idle games, and I felt like this one was a bit too slow to progress properly. I feel like you need to have this in the  background for a long time to build a proper engine. Also, the audio doesn't loop.

Nice execution of a puzzle game with the theme. Definitely creative in that aspect. I do feel like the puzzles were wayyy too easy though? I would just go around and find an alternate route, finishing the game in 2-3 turns when the limit was like 12.

Maps could have used additional puzzle elements and smaller area to ramp up difficulty. Introducing more free spaces just asks for cheese solutions.

Hahaha pretty fun tiny game. Love the little procedural animation stuff with the reindeer's reins.

That's the most content I've seen in a game jam game in a while, congratulations! Everything oozes "handmade" and I loved exploring the world. I was very impressed with the quest system and all the little interactions that you made for each quest. I can't imagine how much time it took to make the entire level, and also the sound! I have a feeling I skipped some of the side quests though, if there were any.

The core mechanic of the flute wasn't too engaging, but I guess that's to be expected of a cozy game. Would have loved to have  seen more ways the flute could be used. Also missed opportunity to have sound for each flute technique. I fully expected to hear some jingle whenever I pressed J, K, or L.

DM me!

I'm really impressed with this game. I loved the concept and creating my own spells. Being able to fine tune the damage amounts and seeing the mana cost reflect for autobalancing was a great idea. The final boss had a great attack pattern and I enjoyed every bit of it. It was lacking on aesthetics and polish, especially with the tutorialisation of the game. I needed someone who had played it already to instruct me on how to play it.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I hand to click the stars to gain mana. However after learning that, I had a blast with the game! I played on trackpad btw lol. Loved being able to cast spells as a tower defense game. Feels like making a spell-only deck in Clash Royale.

I definitely feel like the spell should have been toggleable with number keys, or even made draggable. This would kill as a mobile game. Could use a lot more visual polish and different enemy types.

Interesting game! I really enjoyed the variety of spells and how to cast them. Of course, not all spells are created equal, but it seems like everyone has their own favourites. Mine was definitely the laser beam. The sound effects for the basic laser was nice, but it was underpowered.

The game could definitely improved with more balancing, smarter enemy AI, and a better boss fight.

Really polished game with a great mechanic. I loved the pastel visuals and the 3D models. Everything came together in a neat package. The gameplay itself was unique, though I didn't feel the 'spell' coming through as opposed to the 'cast' part of the theme. The UI, camera animations, and scene transitions were top notch.

I do have some gripes about the UX of the game though. It felt very unintuitive to press F to exist out (instead of ESC or something similar), and having a red/green highlight to show what was being added or not would have communicated this better. I had some difficulties drawing a square at times, and I didn't see the need for the avocado, but it was fun to just make things.

Aesthetics and ambience pulled through quite a bit and I love the zoom out animation to see what you've created.  The gameplay mechanic was satisfyingly unique, but a bit hard to use when chaining together fish. It was fun to just venture out into the unknown abyss. Great for some chilled, laid-back gaming.

However, it was a bit too zoomed out to appreciate the 3D models of the fish and the cards didn't feel too great to use. Also, I would like to have seen more spell variation (I only encountered two)

Great experience wrapped in a neat little package. I enjoyed the core mechanic and it was really maximised in its use. The art, animation, and small details like the particle effect really bring it all together. For me, the best element that carried this game was its use of storytelling. Having continuity and seeing the effects of your potions on this small community was incredibly satisfying and deepened my interest in the lore.

The gameplay did only feel like a means to an end, to enjoy the story and art, but perfectly scoped nonetheless.