itch.io

Thanks JustSomePikachu! Yeah I pretty aggressively subtracted everything from the game that wasn't directly benefitting the delivery of the story. So I only focused on what felt core to the experience I wanted to deliver. I was concerned that I may have removed too much, but I'm glad you enjoyed what was left! 😅 There are a bunch of endings you can explore, with more that will become accessible post-jam, once I fix a few issues related to the logic gating.

Hey ShenTzu! Wow, coming from the creator of Death and Progress that's quite the compliment. Thanks for being so thorough with the bug reporting, it really does help a lot that I know where to look and what to test. I've already eliminated most of the issues reported so far – and tbh, most of the issues came from not having enough time to run through a proper QA test in each of the routes. Plus, unfortunately I was unable to resolve a bug with the logic gating so in the end, with 5 minutes to spare, I was forced to turn it all off (which felt better than to permanently lock end-game content). Hence why you could skip all the puzzles. 😅

Great point on using the keyboard to select options, which also makes it fully controller supported. A game like this would probably work well on the Steam Deck / with a controller.

I'll post an update shortly after results are in. When you come back, make sure to try a different approach to what you did last time!

Any time :) If you do improve it post-jam, ping me here and I'll give it another playtest if you'd like!

Thanks Pauper Tim!

Ahh, right clicking. That's unexpected. Ok thanks! That helps narrow it down.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Check back in post-results and I'll have patched a tonne of bugs! Also, your save should work backwards compatible just fine. But if it doesn't, I've designed a bunch of different pathways through the game so you may like to try alternative routes the second time.

Cheers,
Nat

Well very nicely done for only two weekends of work! I spent essentially 4 hours a day throughout the week and 10 hours / day on weekends for Don't Read Chat!

Yeah you could definitely benefit from a dedicated playtest with a video / microphone recording from an external playtester, at least once a week for a bit while you work on improvements. I've never found that to be a bad thing. I'm really bad at racing games so didn't get super far (not your ideal playtester) 😅

1. Yeah, makes sense. Maybe having a bigger sign pointing to clicking the player then could be worthwhile. I dunno, I just got stuck several times because I kept forgetting to click on the player – and the hitbox for clicking him was kinda invisible so I clicked next to him several times.
2. Just big wide arcs left to right quite rapidly. Steady wide rhythm. It's my go-to for these sorts of games.
3. It wasn't taking itself too seriously, and in it's a submission for a game jam. On Steam I'd usually prefer to see more a polished art style. Or, if mixels are the art style, then usually it involves a heavy amount of fancy VFX to make up for it. But hey, I'm not saying the inverse would be wrong! It's just not my preference.

How does this have no comments? I feel like I've discovered a hidden gem here. This felt fantastic to play! The forecasting of attacks, smoothness of platforming, game juice in the camera and character movement, etc. – all felt really great. The soundtrack is a vibe, too. Is that an original composition? It's giving C418 in a really nostalgic way.

Thanks cryaning! So glad to hear the V.O. paid off, it was definitely a gamble. But we've been watching a lot of Blown Away lately, and all the contestants on there are constantly talking about how they're taking risks, pushing themselves, and trying techniques they've never done before. I felt inspired to do the same here, and I'm just glad it came out as slightly coherent enough to pay off.

You're right that your save will stay intact (in the same browser), so once I fix the logic gating, you can jump back in and try again! Also, there are loads of different endings, so even if you did start again, you might find that with your familiarity of the content, you're able to take a different path the second time. I packed the layers pretty dense with this one. 😅

Orangudan 🙌 you're too kind. Thank you mate, really appreciate your time playing and providing feedback.

I've got some ideas for improving the readability of the Explore Mode dots so will have a play over the coming days to see what lands best. I'm interested in your comment "I think my progress through the ship overtook my actual progress through what I was meant to be doing" - it sounds like you felt you got past where you felt you were supposed to be? That may be that I had to disable the logic gating in the end as there was a bug I couldn't solve with it in time, but it may also be a pacing issue with you feeling out of step with the content. Once I fix the logic gating bug and address the readability of Explore Mode, I'd really love to know if you engage with it better! 

Ah ok, thanks! I did some testing today and haven't been able to reproduce a black screen in the electrical room, but will keep at it. An issue I've been coming across is how enormously difficult it is to test every room's connection, since there are so many branching pathways, and each run takes 30+ minutes. I think next on the roadmap is to build a cheat system so I can get around the rooms faster to test specific things.

Thanks for the kind words 😄 it's my first solo game (publicly), so it means a lot!

Cool concept! For some reason, the game flicked black a lot while I was trying to play. I'm not sure if this was intended? I could start to get an idea of what to do in the beginning, but the black screen flickering became so heavy by 1 minute in that I literally can't play it anymore. Which is a shame because it seems like a really cool concept. I like your GDD, I can tell you put a good amount of thought into the brief. Hopefully it was just a tech issue on my end (I'm on a Macbook M2 on Chrome, if it helps).

As all the others, the art style is banger 🔥 I love a good metroidvania and this did not disappoint. If you decide to build it further post-jam, my key recommendation, as with many other submissions I've played in this jam, would be to get external playtesting feedback and iterate rapidly on their specific player journey. I felt a little friction in places I'm sure you didn't intend, and I think you'd really benefit from seeing people play your game and honing the controls / tutorials / mechanics based on that experience. Overall, great contender!

Haha, really fun and cool concept! I haven't seen this idea yet and tbh now that I've played it, I'm surprised I haven't. The interviewing mechanics felt easy to use. I did feel like it was a little hard to understand what to do next at certain points in the game, which could probably be eased with more external playtesting and player validation. Overall, solid entry!

I love a satirical rant. It felt surprisingly coherent to me to be honest. The early gameplay didn't feel like I had much control or power in the matter, which felt very on point for what you're trying to convey. I really enjoyed the idea of being an OP late-game God that didn't give a F# about the world by the end, but I found it difficult to get to that fantasy. I see the other commenters feel similarly, and I agree that balance is a key issue. If you continue with it post-jam, or for when you build your next jam game, I'd highly recommend getting as much external player feedback into your brain as possible, and building ways to get it into your design cycle. For me it meant releasing early and building in public. For you it could be different, even just hassling a few friends to play it every few days.

Neat little game! The input scheme felt tight and I really felt in control of my little guy. I wasn't sure that I felt super connected to the theme for this one, but I did enjoy the gameplay a lot regardless.

A few observations:

• It would be great to click anywhere to start, not just on the player
• Moving the mouse was a very intuitive control scheme. I was able to cheese it by moving left and right consistently; even in the wind, the constant movement seemed to override whatever environmental forces were applying
• The art style, while simple, felt really well done. I enjoyed seeing the little guy fall to his doom, hehe. I'm personally not a huge fan of mixels, but it worked in this context really well.

I love the art work! That's a huge strength of yours that I hope you lean more into with future work. I'd love to see a full game illustrated in this style.

I too couldn't fly the organ btw

Woah!! This is intriguing, what a cool idea! I love how you've made my attention the engine for progress. It would have been cool to make the little boxes selectable with the key 1,2,3, but actually I wonder if that's a response to having my attention used against my will haha. I immediately wanted the experience to require less of it.

Very thought-provoking little game, nicely done.

Haha, cool. I love the vibe! You're crushing it at game polish & juice. This felt really good to play, and I never got stuck wondering what to do next. That's tough to pull off!

P.S. you should turn the fullscreen option on in itch.io's Edit Game settings, it's not too late to do it and it helps a tonne with playability. I just used the debug console to make it fullscreen and enjoyed it much more.

Wow, this is a cool interpretation of the theme. I love your art style! Really clean lines in a way that shows a lot about the characters' internal state without being overt. For your second game this is really stellar, you should feel proud!

For your next games, my advice would be to focus on the player's journey very very closely. As a player with zero idea how to play, what menu buttons do I need to click at the start? Are they necessary? What keyboard or mouse buttons do I need to click? Do I know how to do that? Are you leveraging gamer knowledge (like WASD)? Is your game accessible to non-gamers? What device does your player use? Are they wearing headphones?

All of these expand your craft in different directions that I find provide constraints to let creativity flourish in really interesting ways. Anyway, kudos on your second game!

Interesting little game! Overall it was surprisingly crunchy and felt great to play. I noticed a few things:

• It was not immediately apparent that you can press space to shift perspective. I ended up nearly filling the right side of the board with tiles before switching over and doing anything with them.
• Once I started placing them around, I didn't really understand the nuance of what each tile means, or how to generate specific ones. I'm guessing that's kind of the point, that it's an exploration and memory game, but the explanation of what I'm there to do felt a little undercooked to me.
• I wasn't able to actually fail at the falling blocks side of the game, so it didn't feel like it had stakes. I didn't necessarily feel that fantasy of being a god taking over earth, which feels like what you might have been going for, and I wonder if you amped up the stakes a bit, if it would help with that power fantasy.

If you decide to continue the game, I could this working really well on mobile! You've got a really solid game idea here, it just needs to go through the car wash a few more times and get loads of external playtesting!

Hey, I felt you really hit the brief with being watched, it felt super on theme. The tutorial was spot on, I understood how to play with very little friction. You've "selected" the art assets really well, usually that kind of thing is quite difficult to get right, but everything feels cohesive and not like it's from a bunch of different asset packs. Kudos! 

Nice game! I agree about the UI being over-complicated and the theme being a very unique take. I'm personally a bit of a gumby when it comes to learning new games, and would have appreciated a little more hand-holding. But I might not be your target audience 😅

Is it WASD to move? I couldn't get off the pedestal, although I have been having an issue with moving in someone else's game as well. I'm on a Macbook, I can't imagine why the keybindings wouldn't work? Seems others were able to get it to work. Anyway, if you've got any tips I can try let me know and I'll give it another crack. The premise is super intriguing! I love wacky games like this.

Woah you built a lot of things for this! Is it totally multiplayer? That's wild if true. I wasn't feeling the theme so strongly, but I did enjoy the smooth movement of the ball physics and line renderer. For future development, I bet this game would suit mobile really well!

I didn't feel the theme so strongly, but I did really enjoy the gameplay once I played a few rounds to figure out how it works. This feels like a lot of thought's gone into the mechanics, probably a couple paper prototypes, too. Keep it up! You've got something interesting on your hands!

Woah! This is sick!
Where'd you get all your art from? The little guy is sick! The camera and player movement feels juicy, the music is a definite pump-up, and seeing the whole map from the start really helps ground the objective without explicitly stating anything. I love a game without overt tutorials.

Note, though, I was way faster than the cops. I found it pretty easy to get to the end. If you work on it further, you could introduce cops in cars or on bikes to make it more spicy. 

Oh boy, this was a treat to play. The music was incredible, art is seriously well done in such a short timeframe, and the concept was really clever. I do love a literal take on a theme, and this takes the cake for literal interpretations. The minigames felt really hectic and over time I was really spinning a lot of plates! Kudos!

Yo that was fun!

The Records panel on the left was clipped out of my screen, in both windowed and fullscreen mode, so I couldn't quite tell what that was for. But generally the music was solid, the controls felt smooth, the camera angles felt great, it was a very slick experience! Loved the main menu. 

So, I inspected the element and made the game canvas fullscreen 😉 It was a lot more fun like that. 

In itch on the Edit Page view, you can check "Allow fullscreen" as one of the options. You can still do it right now it's not too late!

Btw, the header image having Start and Quit didn't help with the issue.

Unfortunately, this one doesn't load for me 😢

I'm getting this error, in case it's helpful:

0wasm_exec.js:557 Uncaught Error: Go program has already exited

    at globalThis.Go._resume (wasm_exec.js:557:11)

    at HTMLCanvasElement.<anonymous> (wasm_exec.js:570:8)

wasm_exec.js:557 Uncaught Error: Go program has already exited

    at globalThis.Go._resume (wasm_exec.js:557:11)

    at wasm_exec.js:570:8

wasm_exec.js:557 Uncaught Error: Go program has already exited

    at globalThis.Go._resume (wasm_exec.js:557:11)

I love auto battlers, there's something so chill and relaxing about smashing two armies together and seeing the results. This particular one reminded me a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic.. I don't know if that's showing my age, but clicking the auto resolve feature in the older games yielded a pretty similar feeling to this game. If you're planning on expanding it in the future, it would be cool to see a "fast track" mode to allow speeding ahead through the early levels – I did feel it started a bit tedious before it got challenging.

Hey this was really fun! I felt quite comfortable with the controls of this one, it reminds me a lot of Tallest Tale. I think if you were going to work on it any longer, an area to explore could be to make your attacks directional. I've seen a tonne of survivors-likes that do fixed patterns, but having more control over your attacks is a lesser developed area. Seems to be some room for improvement there.

Woah! This is seriously cool! The animations are awesome, they feel really fluid and slick. Reminds me of the old skewl stick wars animation series on Youtube from 2010s era. E.g. Slush Invaders type vibe. Very cool! And the colour matching was really interesting – I struggled a lot with it, but it was definitely a cool idea. I didn't feel it fit the theme especially strongly, but I know it's quite broad and open to interpretation. I'm thinking if you're wanting to expand this out later on, you could explore the mechanism for switching colours in more depth. I felt like in order to improve at the game, the skill was mashing C and stopping with fast reflexes. But wouldn't it be interesting if you could combine primary colours to make secondary colours, and the game took on more of a puzzle feel? Anyway just one direction idea. Nicely done!

Nice work! Controls were smooth, I liked the hold to jump farther mechanic. Shooting felt juicy and I liked that it wasn't 1 hit KO. There was definitely a lot going right here, I think with a bit more finetuning around platformer physics like honing momentum, working on coyote time, etc., you'd have a really smooth experience! I especially liked the 360 shooting angle, and felt like with maybe a jetpack or double jump, I could see myself having a lot more fun with it.

Unfortunately I didn't have a controller! Definitely would be nice to see some accessibility in the future, but I appreciate that time is short.

yeah okay, I'm sorry! I couldn't get it to work! I enjoyed the music and SFX design tho? 😅

Hey, I'm a bit stuck, what are the controls? I can move the mouse to look around but WASD or arrows don't move me. I didn't see any controls in the GDD either.

Damn that got difficult! Fun idea, I really enjoyed the pacing. Felt like a good difficulty curve. That's not always easy to pull off!