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There are no restrictions, no :)

Yep :) so long as it's not a full game template you're fine

You can update your cover, description, title, screenshots, etc - the only thing that is locked is game uploads :)

Not yet - itch locks uploads during the rating period. You won't be disqualified, you just can't do it! Uploads will be unlocked once the rating period ends :)

I've sent you a message on discord, we'll make sure your game is uploaded somehow!

Yep, you can still edit it until the deadline!

no problem - it pairs nicely with https://lospec.com/palette-list too!

thank you 😁 it's all down to https://mycolor.space honestly, I cheat when it comes to colour theory. And the parallax is just a particle effect! Each particle has a random size and speed, then I change the alpha based on speed so it looks like the ones going slower are further away. It's a really simple trick, but works quite well I think!

Hi! You'll need to make a playable version of the game that doesn't require people to go to a different site/download external software. For scratch, that means you'll need to package it up with something like turbowarp: https://packager.turbowarp.org/

Disqualified, clearly was not made during the jam.

This submission has been disqualified for obvious reasons 😂 please don't do this.

Don't start making anything for this jam before it starts!

Generally easier games will do better, you want more people to be able to pay more of your game ideally. Bullet hell doesn't have to be difficult 😁

And the theme will be a single voting category. It's mostly there to address blank canvas syndrome more than anything, so unless you care about getting the best score in every category (you shouldn't care about that) you don't have to follow it. We're more relaxed than most jams about that!

oof, I'm sorry - it's super common unfortunately, and discord don't do a great deal to prevent it! 

If you regain access to your account, let us know here and we'll lift the ban 🙂 

Hmm yeah you're not coming up - the link is definitely working though 🫠 try it on your discord client with the invite code rZycGS45kv

The link is active and working, what is your discord username? You've likely been banned, if you give me your username I can check why

Yeah I'm still working on that! Got a few things to clean up and strip out e.g. unity leaderboard ids

This is amazing feedback, thank you! In response to the continues, I totally get where you're coming from - but I want everyone to be able to finish the game. To get a high score you'll need to do it without using a continue, because your score gets strongly punished for for using them. It's possible to do deathless, I actually think 200,000 score is within reach! Every time you use a continue, point collectibles are worth 50% less. After you've used 5, they are only worth a flat 1 point as opposed to scaling from 100 -> 10 based on the ring timer

Hey, thank you! Yes being able to turn 180 instantly was a big departure from the original, but the game is very difficult anyway so I wanted to give the player as many options as possible

Thanks for the response! I will look into all of this, I should be able to make it work better. I'm sorry it didn't work out, but your experience is really valuable for us and I really appreciate the time you've taken to explain 😁 

Ah I'm sorry you had issues with it. What were the issues? I was active on Discord answering everyone's questions - that's your first place to go when you're struggling with something! 

This jam requires a web build

Thank you! 😁 I think there's a bunch of room to expand, it feels a bit like a "toy" rather than a game at the minute, but I enjoyed writing - it's not something I do very often 😂

Yeah I think it was a fun little toy, in it's current state I don't think I'd call it a game 😂 to expand, I'll be making it a mobile app and using on-device ML - that way you don't need an internet connection. I think it needs a proper branching narrative with multiple endings. A few different ways to use the AI, e.g. "you need to convince your neighbour that you're not doing anything untoward". I could switch that over to a text message type view, which would mean there's a few different "sections", adding to the variety a little bit. Maybe even incorporate some map based AR stuff e.g. "you need to do this ritual in a park". Maybe you get a "text message" notification with something new to do after a couple of days, that sort of thing!

Thank you, I really appreciate the kind words! The bugs actually happen due to the Google Gemini API request timing out, I'm exploring ways to do it on-device with no external request at all. Better for the environment, faster, probably a little more consistent too 😁 

Congrats on submitting! The music is quite nice and chill, and the core concept of circular Pong is interesting. The controls were intuitive and felt pretty good. I also liked that the score is displayed in the middle of the screen, that's exactly where my eyes are most of the time. Well done for not taking the usual option and dumping it out to a corner!

There are a few things that could be improved, however. Initially, I found it quite difficult to see what was going on, and the lack of an automatic reset after losing was frustrating. The checkerboard background pattern was a bit hard on the eyes, and the background change at 20 points was a bit jarring and threw me off. The power-up didn't actually end up adding all that much to it, because I found that I just ignored any extra balls 🫠

Overall, it's a decent effort for a game jam, and with a few tweaks it could be even more enjoyable!

Thanks for the kind words! I think animated text adds quite a lot to this style of game, it adds a bit of juice that you wouldn't usually get.

I did forget to set it to loop, such a silly mistake but I didn't play it for long enough with the sound on to notice!

I would really love to add some sort of sharing mechanic, or maybe even something like a "playground" mode where you can tweak the wording slightly and see what difference it makes.

Thank you! 😁 That's a good bug to catch actually, I always just pressed the right letters 😂 definitely taking it further, I have so many more ideas for it, and I quite enjoyed the creative writing challenge! The development was so much more chaotic than you'd think, I basically only worked on the code on the last day of the jam 😬

ha, thank you! I tried to keep the AI use absolutely minimal, it only generates the "strange powerup" and gives you a creative score. Everything else was written by me! So it's not like AI actually did anything for me, it wasn't used to generate assets or code or anything (because it is very bad at that).

I'm sorry it took so long before it ran properly, the gemini api request sometimes just takes AGES. It will eventually timeout and let you try again, but it's something I'm looking into.

Oh no, I forgot to set the music to loop 😭 didn't appear in my testing of course 😂

Thanks for playing! 

I made a silly little text adventure that uses AI to take your natural language and turn it into a score and gives you a nice little "Strange Powerup" (which was the theme of the jam). I think it worked pretty well! AI is, naturally, terrible at everything it does - so there's a lot of jank in the responses. This is the only way I can see it being used "creatively" in a game lmao.

https://wayfarergames.itch.io/abominable-butlers

I can't see any analytics for any game jams I've hosted. Is there something wrong on Itch's side? I am experiencing the same with different accounts, and other people I know that have hosted jams are having the same issue. 

That's intentional, that's where the challenge is!