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I played for a bit, and I definitely could be missing something, but this mostly felt like I was clicking random upgrades and hoping they would accelerate me. As far as I can tell, the colors correspond to powers of ten, but I couldn't tell if I was spending a currency or just making the usable number as high as some cap. That made it more or less a guess as to what kind of strategy I should use. Eventually all of the dots were full... and I think that means I made a cell? But there wasn't any indication if that was actually right or if I missed a step.

This is a fun way to combine different game genres. But I felt I wanted my success to matter more. When I failed, I was only losing a few dollars, so it didn't really matter. As a thought excersize: what if they multiplied? So I really wanted to be as perfect as possible.

I also found the difficulty wasn't quite right as I was upgrading. E.g, I might ace slicing repeatedly until I finally get enough money to actually make it hard. Maybe there could be discounts for the difficulty upgrades if you're consistently doing well?

ambitious use of no text! however... without some kind of bootstrap/tutorial, I feel like I'm taking completely random actions, and there isn't a way for me to know if I made progress.

interesting idea! it felt satisfying to try to carve out areas for my base to expand.
However, for the 1st 4 tries I softlocked myself trying to figure out the rules =( 

The intended theme fit is that you end up creating an enormous machine just for a glass of juice. However, we definitely drifted from the theme a bit while finding the fun. =)

This is a really fun idea! Rearranging the dungeon was a neat touch.  Agree with others that maybe it's hard to see the theme connection though.

Nice idle-style game! I think the theming is a bit dry, which turned me off at first. (Constructs? Trust?) I still don't fully get it, but you do a good job of making me want to bounce back and forth between tasks and layers, without ever making it feel frenetic or completely overwhelming.

• The opening phase requires a ton of clicking with no meaningful decisions. QoL would be an upgrade or something that lets me auto place or auto upgrade? Or maybe the phase needs another mechanic.
• Breaking down each phase a bit further with gates to unlock features might help players learn what the different things are actually doing.. for example, in phase 3, I never actually learned what the "white dots" UI on the left did. I just kept clicking things based on what seemed interesting ignoring things that I wasn't able to modify / upgrade.
• Another (minor) example: clicking on the meteor doesn't appear to do anything, but if the cursor changed or if the meteor followed the cursor, that might help teach what's going on.

Fun and unique story concept! Unfortunately I hit a bug when the dragon woke up where the page froze =(

The dragon is cute! (and well drawn)

It took me a bit to 'get' what was going on, but I like this idea a lot. It was a really fun surprise moment when the game looped with my new species. abiogenesis really fits both themes very well! With a bit of quality-of-life tweaks, I think this could be an amazing game, and I'm quite impressed at how the game communicated things without text.

congrats on your first game! I played for a bit, but the pacing was pretty slow, which meant I didn't get to experience the prestige or final challenge

Thanks f1or sharing your game! I played for a bit but didn't immediately catch the connection to the theme. I'd love to hear about it if you want to share your thoughts

This definitely felt like an old-school arcade game. The wave design is great, I loved that enemies came from different sides and forced me to pay attention to my surroundings.

This reminded me a bit of some of the early arcade games. Easy to pick up and hypnotic! but I can imagine the difficulty spiking as the incoming waves get faster.

I tried to "double tap" to get 2 kills, but wasn't able to. That might be an interesting way for the player to have more skill expression. Or, maybe the attack window gets tighter or moves faster.

Great graphics and sound! And the theme interpretations are great, too. Amazing work!

I found myself struggling with color matching and some of the lack of feedback around it. Understandable for a game jam, but I was a bit sad I wasn't able to get further into the story.

I like the idea of a resetting memory as "waves", but it was a bit hard to see that play out in the game. The diary entries don't seem to line up with my actions, and it's not clear if I'm "remembering" something or if I'm "recording" something. I was also kind of confusing what caused a "next day" reset vs ... being forced to restart.

I attempted to play, but the game over screen & menu were not lined up and would not let me retry/continue.

I liked the idea of shooting to the beat. Some feedback on the gun "jamming" and/or a visual cue for when you're doing well would go a long way!

Thanks for the feedback, and agreed that checkpoints would help. I'll remember that for the next game!

Polished entry! Loved the art & audio. The actual puzzles left me wanting more, and I wonder if the theme could have come into play a bit stronger too.

Amazing work! This feels like a full game! I loved the cutscenes, writing, and game mechanic. My only complaint is that the levels themselves just needed more playtesting (e.g, many levels are more or less impossible for multiple attempts only because I don't know what will be coming... a Celeste-style "viewfinder" would be an easy fix). For a game jam, that's totally expected though.

One personal preference thing: you created a very cool spellcast mechanic, but then limit it to a square grid. Given the nature of the spells, an Okami-like "draw a circle" could have been more evocative!

Huge thanks for adding the accessibility options. I would not have been able to see the ending without them :) Even with both on, the boss was hard for me!

Stealth is a great choice for a "sound wave" theme!

Nice use of aesthetics to carry the theme. I don't think I know enough about vaporwave to see how it connects to the gameplay, but I got the sense there was a bit more to the game than I picked up on.

Glad you submitted even if incomplete, as I think there's something interesting here for sure. Definitely not a fail!

Wave 10. I was focused on increasing attack power so I could try to kill reds faster.

A simple but solid game across the board!

One wishlist item: let me hold to rapid fire shoot (or have some other restriction on how fast I can shoot). Forcing me to click quickly become an accessibility barrier.

Great use of minimalism to capture the emotions of the player!

For me, I felt a bit like the theme is fighting with the central idea of the game. As the player, I feel the wave when I slam, but I don't have much actually agency in that moment. That leads me to focus more on the "puzzle"/optimization aspect of the game. This isn't really much of a criticism of the game itself, as this could easily be a full game (as others pointed out, big SUPERHOT vibes)

The ending hits pretty hard... and emphasizes that conflict about the player's agency. Hope you are doing okay <3

I like the theme interpretation! I passed level 2 on accident and got stuck on level 3, so it's hard for me to judge the gameplay and the connection to the echo mechanic. Any hints?

Very kind words, thank you for playing :)

Very creative! It has as almost cozy-game vibe despite the RTS-like mouse movement. When someone finally got home dry, I imagined that my 'game over' was that person drinking tea by a fire :)

Very innovative! Loved "waving", and The Draw Together was touching. I was hoping for more moments where the two characters shared an interaction. I could definitely see a full game from this idea!

It had a bit of vibes of 1000 X Resist, pretty cool! It feels either very personal or very ambitious for a game jam. Or both!

Nice theme interpretation! Calling these QTEs is underselling the idea, since the sequences aren't just "press X". The actual keys line up with the check in pretty satisfying ways. For me, that counted for a lot, as I was actually paying attention to the characters and the check names in a way that I didn't expect.

I like the theme interpretation! I got stuck on the first distress signal though. I got the radio green (but it was an alarm, no human voice), I think I typed in the frequency correctly, and I "dialed" 911, but I can't figure out how to actually start the call, or if I missed some other step. Then I heard a scream or something and I think the game broke (can't change the dial anymore).

I'm not sure if I was missing something, but I don't think I had any meaningful options during my run. Is the intention that eventually I have enough mods that there are interesting trade-offs?

Cool concept! Agree w/others there's a lot of room to improve the gameplay, but I like the solar collector idea as another "wave" theme touch.

Waves as an obstacle is great. Even though it seems obvious in retrospect, I can't think of many games that really lean into it. Cool idea!

I like the theme combo of waves of enemies + wave-themed attacks. It took me a bit to figure out, but once it clicked I had fun figuring out ways to chain different attack types together.

Thanks! Appreciate the kind feedback

Thanks for playing!