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A jam submission

Synergy ForgeView game page

Forge powerful loops and exploit loopholes!
Submitted by dardasaba (@dardasaba6) — 7 hours, 17 minutes before the deadline
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Synergy Forge's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Narrative#1884.0234.023
Creativity#5244.1864.186
Audio#8643.5813.581
Enjoyment#15033.5353.535
Artwork#19083.6283.628

Ranked from 43 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
You forge loops (rings), and find *loopholes* in the available synergies.

(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
font: https://not-jam.itch.io/not-jam-font-pack
music: https://alkakrab.itch.io/
sfx: https://kenney.nl/

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Comments

Viewing comments 28 to 9 of 28 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

The game turned out really great! Puzzle games with such interesting themes always feel like hidden gems. Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

i loved the narrative! and it was fun to work through the puzzles. different kind of puzzles to the puzzle games i'm used to, where you've got to absorb thematic information and use that to figure out how to combo. you don't know the rules of the game that has the combos, you've just got to work it out. i think that's neat. thanks!

Developer(+1)

Glad you enjoyed and thanks for the fun stream!

Submitted(+1)

Spent way too much time hovering the play button for its sound.

Got almost all rings (9) without hints, one that wasn’t intuitive to me was the bloodstone + reducing enemy damage one.

The concept of OP rings sort of reminded me of Noita tbh. Overall, great graphics, sounds, pretty much everything!

Developer

Thanks teapot! Yeah, everyone always get that one last, I really should've made the effect "bleeding enemies deal less damage" or something to make it more understandable...

Submitted(+1)

I love the premise of deliberately trying to make loopholes here, but i feel like the execution doesnt make full use of the premise. I would have liked to have been able to see the various synergies in some sort of enviroment and discover loopholes that way, rather than just intuiting it from text, since that distances the actual puzzles from the premise of "discovering loopholes".
Some of the loopholes didnt really feel like loopholes as well, but rather more like just powerful combos, and the combination of "poison on crit + status effects can crit + enemies get closer on crit" really should have been a valid loophole imho.
The art is really good though, i love the designs for the rings, the story itself is also a fun take on the loophole idea.

Developer

Thanks for the detailed review! Yeah, being able to "show rather than tell" about the results would've been cool but was outside the scope for this jam, and you're right about the loopholes part, I kinda struggled to find ideas after a while so some of them feel a bit forced... Also, about the last point, I initially wanted to have some loopholes only have 2 necessary components, with the third one being optional for bonus score, but didn't end up implementing that system... Thanks again for all the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Super creative idea for a puzzle game!!! Great visuals and I love the text elements involved, they really help to build a wonderful narrative! Not sure how necessary the precision timing sections are, perhaps they need to be more challenging/varied, but even without them I feel this game could stand on its own as a puzzle game with some more discoverables implemented in the future! Overall an awesome job!!!

Developer

Thanks! And yeah I added the mini games to spice up the gameplay a bit but they're definitely too easy

Submitted(+1)

I love the art! It's super polished and has a great atmosphere, I also really enjoy the mini games. It feels so powerful to find a new loophole, I love that part!

Submitted(+1)

Amazing game! Great concept and story, the gameplay reminded me of Jacksmith a lot

Submitted(+1)

Felt really polished, i really liked the system of figuring out synergies, even though you don't apply them in combat, figuring them out is most of the fun of playing ARPGs for me anyway. I just felt like it sometimes the 3rd option just made it more powerful but did not contribute to the "loop" for example in one of the first ones, you had to choose "double your armour" but i thought since i get armour on hit and that is converted to hp im immortal anyways, so i might as well pick thorns so i can also kill everything faster, but that turned out to be a wrong answer.

Developer

Yeah you're right, I struggled to design some of those loopholes and a few became a bit "forced"... Glad you liked it anyways!

Submitted(+1)

Man it was a text game, but I had more fun than most 3D games! : ) Loved it, RIP the world, but dang we did it! haha

Submitted(+1)

For a text game really well done. The SFX and music really set the right mood and admosphere, so no need for crazy visuals. Nice story and implementation of the theme. But the forging minigame is too easy for me, while all the options for different rings a bit to overwhelmning and I forget what I already made. With these two features fixed, in my opinion a game ready for full release. Well done.

Submitted(+1)

At first I thought I was just in for a ring blacksmithing game which already had me hooked.

And then I got to the second level and I loved it even more.

Great concept with great art!

Submitted(+1)

So polished and lively! I like how narrative progressed with what the customers were saying such that it was pretty clear how things were going to end without feeling forced. I also really like the detail that the ring base keeps the appearance when choosing gems, really nice touch. Fantastic job!

Developer

Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+1)

Wonderful pixel art and a very creative idea. Good job!

Submitted(+1)

The Story and The Concept is really good, I also love the art style

Submitted(+1)

I really like the concept and the narrative you've built is intriguing.

Couple things I would do to make this more fun and immersive:
- the core gameplay loop is too repetitive. With more time you could find ways to make the minigames unique depending on which loops you choose, or reflecting the changes in the "world".

- I had to rely on the hint system. It wasn't very clear to me what customers where asking for. Maybe that's just me. But I would have loved to be able to discover it more for myself. Instead it kinda just felt like "here is new ring, gem etc. so that's next.

Overall this has a very unique hook, and with some more work I could see you blowing this out into something really fun.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the detailed feedback! The idea with the minigames is really cool! About the second point, just to clarify, there isn't any "customer requests" system, you can discover the loops at whatever order you want, the customer dialogue is there only for the narrative. But yeah from what I've seen people are finding the game a little bit hard, so I probably could've made things clearer.

Anyways, thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Keep it up, I only wrote a lot because I like the concept so much ;)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Level of polish is amazing. It looks great, sound great, plays great. Also love how you came up and implemented the 'loophole' idea. Good job!

Submitted(+1)

* But nobody came

Well I guess I got the genocide ending, I should have work as a farmer instead of forging powerful loopholes... Now everyone will remember my genocides... :)

I really loved the narrative and ending for the story, what an amazing gamee!! It's always really fun for me to find synergies in games, so I really enjoyed this!

Developer(+1)

Haha, I considered making the text "but nobody came" but decided that I probably shouldn't lol
Glad you enjoyed! :)

Submitted(+1)

Wow, what a narrative! I loved the story! I got 18800 in the end. The music was perfect for the game and the art style was super cute😎

Developer(+1)

Thanks! I'm very glad you played to the end because it seems most people don't (understandable but still unfortunate) which means most people miss the important part of the narrative... Glad you enjoyed, and that's a very respectable score!

Submitted(+1)

This was fun.  I enjoyed trying different combinations, even when I was fairly certain they wouldn't work, and I liked how the story built on what you made.  I think it might have been nice if there had been an option to see what loopholes you had previously created,  but wasn't needed to a fun play through.

Developer(+1)

Thanks! And yeah that's a good suggestion

Submitted(+1)

Really great an unique concept with some very amusing writing, beautiful visuals and sound. Great work! Thanks for submitting to the stream, VOD here.

Developer

Thanks again for playing it! Glad you enjoyed

Viewing comments 28 to 9 of 28 · Next page · Last page