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Alice in Deadland's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #12 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Aesthetics | #18 | 4.200 | 4.200 |
| Sound | #19 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Music | #21 | 3.633 | 3.633 |
| Mechanics | #23 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Overall | #25 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Theme | #36 | 3.967 | 3.967 |
| Fun | #41 | 3.433 | 3.433 |
Ranked from 30 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
Only me.
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Alhamdulillah, all the art, programming, and design were done by me. All the SFX and music in the game are either free for personal use or tracks I purchased over the years.
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Comments
love the art style.
Little bit to much story at the beginning :D and could have done with a little more tutorial element,..
But a great puzzle game set up, and I'd be interested to see if you continue this to mobile, or steam.
Thank you so much for playing the game and for your feedback. And hey, who knows, maybe you will find it on Steam one day. ;)
this is absolutely fantastic! I am so glad I still had time to play this, great job! It is hard to give any suggestions for the future, other than perhaps including a more interactive tutorial as it still takes some time to get used to. but that's just an optional nit-pick and the first level can be seen as tutorial as well :)
Looking forward for more!
Thank you so much for playing the game. I am really glad you had a chance to play it and found it fantastic.
I absolutely agree with you that an interactive tutorial would be great, especially since many players found the game confusing and hard to understand at first.
Thank you again for playing the game and for your feedback.
I thought the game was really unpredictable. I died so often, because the enemies kept switching their view and I didn't anticipate it.
It certainly is a very interesting idea
Thank you for your feedback.
Every enemy that has its weapon colored red will change direction. For those enemies, once they finish their turn, they change their direction before your turn starts. This was done to make it clear and fair for the player.
This means you do not have to predict anything, as everything happens before your turn begins.
Thank you again for your feedback, and feel free to share any other points that confuse you or that you think could be improved
Really polished experienced, great story, and interesting mechanics. Clearer communication of enemy behaviour would definitely improve the experience, but it was a great play, and art was fantastic!
Thank you so much for playing the game and for your feedback. Could you please give more details about what you mean by “clearer communication of enemy behavior”?
Here are my thoughts and some explanations:
If you mean the pushing direction when enemies push each other or other objects, it is random on purpose to introduce chaos and create different situations, making every attempt at the level feel a bit varied.
If you mean the turning enemies, every enemy that has its weapon colored red can turn. For those enemies, once they finish their turn, they change their direction before your turn starts. This was done to make it clear and fair for the player.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Yeah of course, for me I mostly just didn't have any idea how the enemies worked at all until they first did it, there wasn't any instructions on their behaviour (unless I missed something which is entirely possible). For example, the fact they only attack whilst facing you is not something I knew until I accidentally ended up next to an enemy and expected to die but didn't, I also figured since they kill the player they would kill each other so I set that up and they just pushed each other. This could be intentional where you want players to work that out, but for me personally the challenge was the puzzle and not having any info going in on how the enemies behaved took away slightly from the actual puzzle. It was an incredible game, and super creative mechanics, that was just one small thing that could have enhanced it for me.
Thank you so much for pointing this out.
In my past games, whenever I introduced a new mechanic, I added a short dialogue at the beginning of the level to hint at it. But with this game, I really wanted the player to relate to Alice in the sense that you do not know anything about the strange place you are in. You learn through trial and error, live her confusion, and survive by analyzing the chaos.
I see now that I may have overdone that in some parts, which led to losing some gameplay clarity. Thank you so much for your feedback, it was really informative.
realy nice puzzle game
a bit hard to understand at first but thats okay it usually takes a bit more time for me
nice game
Thank you so much for playing the game. I am glad you enjoyed it.
The puzzle mechanics are engaging and the art style is striking, but the controls can be unintuitive, especially with the WASD setup. The game's pacing might benefit from a more gradual introduction to its mechanics. Additionally, clearer visual indicators for enemy behaviors could enhance gameplay clarity. If you have a moment, I'd appreciate it if you could check out and rate my Halloween jam game too: https://itch.io/jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2025/rate/3971977
:)
Thank you for playing the game. The game could indeed benefit from more gradual pacing. My main concern was the average player’s attention span, and I really wanted players to see as much of the game as possible. That is why I even added the option to skip levels. I now see how that could affect the player’s learning process and their gradual understanding of the game. Thank you for pointing that out.
As for the controls, you made a very solid point.
Thank you for your kind words and your feedback.
Great job on this! The artstyle is really amazing, and just with a minimalistic palette youve made it look amazing, great work on that! The intro was really cute and felt very smooth to navigate. The puzzles were quite challenging but the mechanic was unique. im not great at puzzles in general and i dont play many puzzle games, so i think the difficulty was quite right. the music and sound effects added really well to the overall ambience. Overall, a complete game, solid entry to the jam ,well done :)
Thank you so much for playing the game. I am really happy that you liked it and found it a solid entry. As for the minimalistic palette, I really love it, especially monochrome, because it lets you focus on the overall drawing rather than shading, highlighting, and adding details, which take a lot of time. Thank you again for playing the game.
The art of the game and its mechanics were very beautiful and polished. The puzzles were simple yet complex, but the controls felt a bit unusual to me at first, though I quickly got used to them.
Thank you so much for playing the game and for your feedback.
Very nice puzzle game and i love the art, was a bit hard to get into but once i got it it was fun to play.
Only thing is the controls messed me up somehow, i expected the wasd to move the pieces around and i kept pushing W when i wasn't meant to
Thank you so much for playing the game. I am really glad you found it fun and liked the art.
Unfortunately, the controls were a big flaw in the game. It completely slipped under my radar, and I did not notice it until it was too late. I am planning to fix it after the jam and do proper player testing for my future games.
Thank you again for playing the game.
Very nice puzzle game, the shuffling of obstacles made for some very hectic levels. I noticed some of the enemies had red weapons while others were uncolored - is the red coloring an indicator of whether or not the enemy is capable of turning?
Thank you so much for playing the game.
As for shuffling the obstacles, that was intended to introduce chaos, and it seems to have worked well. :)
You nailed it! The enemies with colored weapons are indeed the ones that can turn. It might be a strange choice, and it was not something I planned for. My original plan was to draw a new sprite for each turning enemy, but honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to achieve that.
On top of that, it was really hard to come up with something that strikes the right balance between having enough detail and standing out on the board, no matter the sprite direction, especially with a monochrome art style and very low resolution (16 pixels).
What do you think would be a better way to distinguish between normal enemies and the ones that can turn?
Thank you again for playing the game.
Given the sprite sizes, I feel like the red-colored weapons were just enough to be able to notice it.
Geez, that was dark! I didn't expect it to end in such a morbid way, but still, it was true to the spirit of the season I guess.
Loved the game, the core mechanic is very simple and intuitive, but you can do a lot with it and really use it strategically, or just swap at random to see what happens. The game is oozing with nice juicy feedback, interacting with it is a joy, both on a visual and sound level. I liked the puzzles and how varied the enemies were mechanically. The whole process felt like a simplified version of "Into the Breach", which I mean as a compliment, of course! The story felt kind of goofy to me, but I felt like this was probably the intent. It sure teaches children to keep their distance from the TV screens :)
Thank you so much for playing the game. Honestly, this is the kind of reaction I have been longing to see, or rather to read. :)
I intended for the story to have an unhappy ending from the very beginning, but maybe I went a bit too far. I just hope it turns into a folklore tale someday so kids will not glue themselves to screens, LOL.
As for the game feel, I honestly used every tool in my belt for this one, and thank God it paid off.
By the way, I am over the moon that my game was even remotely similar to Into The Breach. I love that game.
Again, thank you so much for playing the game.
very unique and interesting puzzle game, i like that you put effort into the story and the visuals are quite appealing
Thank you so much for playing the game. I’m glad you found it unique and liked the art. I’ve been doing some exercises to improve my art.
Thank you again for playing the game.
This one was tough to get into, but a decent puzzle game once you did. I didn't feel particularly intuitive, but i can really appreciate what you were going for. The art is fantastic, and the overall vibe & presentation of the game is great.
Thank you so much for playing the game and for your feedback.
Just wow! Really good puzzle game. It reminded me of something like Helltaker, with puzzles that are technically simple but super tricky. Loved it! Definitely one of the best entries I’ve played so far :)
Also, I really liked what you did with the ending. For a moment I thought you wouldn’t go through with that, but I’m glad you did!
Honestly, you could totally make a sequel or a longer version and I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Great stuff!
(Side note: the controls were a bit confusing for me, haha. Using “WAS” short-circuited my brain and made me try to move everything with “WASD,” so I kept swapping things by accident.)
Thank you so much for playing the game to the end, it means a lot to me.
About Helltaker, I had never heard of it before. I just googled it, and it really does feel similar. I will definitely give it a try.
About the ending, honestly, I was aiming for an unhappy ending right from the start. I really wanted to break the “happily ever after” stereotype, and it just felt right for this jam.
As for the controls, they were not thought out well unfortunately. I will work further on them after the jam.
Again, thank you so much for playing the game.
Thank YOU for doing such an amazing game! :D Keep it up.
Whoa. Once I figured out the controls I felt compelled to keep going. What an awesome puzzle game!
I really like the style you went with -- simple, readable, and creepy but cute. My main gripe is that there's so much on the screen in certain levels that it can get a bit hard to read regardless of the style's simplicity. And the grappling hook skeletons I had to figure out mechanically, they were a tiny bit hard to tell apart. Some variation in enemy silhouette could help greatly with both of those problems.
Greatly enjoyed the atmosphere, thought the story was very fun and well-written, and I loved the dark twist at the end. One of the most brilliant games in this jam for sure, well done!
Thank you so much for playing the game to the end, you just made my day.
About the screen being too filled with props, if you mean the board itself, then yes, in certain levels it is indeed a bit too crowded with enemies, obstacles, and other elements. The obvious solution was to make the board itself bigger, which I did, but that also meant I had to extend the level design along with it, and I didn’t have time for that, so I canceled it. Maybe, as you said, making the tiles bigger would be a better solution.
If you mean the level in general, I’ll be honest with you. Some of my past games were a bit too empty, so I was determined not to make the same mistake with this one, but maybe I overdid it. One thing I did to keep the focus on the board itself while still keeping the surroundings detailed was to make all the props around the board inverted in terms of color, hollow in a way, so they blend in better and help highlight the board itself.
Again, thank you for the feedback.
I got a little lost with the controls they seemed interesting and I did win a level but to be honest it was sheer luck. Into was a little long going back in (my game has the same issue).
The music, art and style were cool :)
Thank you so much for trying out the game and for your feedback. I totally agree about the controls. I’m really grateful that you and many other people have mentioned it, and some even shared potential solutions. Feel free to share any other points you notice, it really helps me a lot.
I absolutely love the game's visual style! It's truly fantastic!
Aside from a few issues that have already been addressed, I find the whole thing truly enjoyable. Considering it was made by just one person, it's truly excellent work. Keep it up!
Thank you so much for playing the game and for your kind words. I’m really glad you liked the game.
I somehow finished the game. The game is interesting but left me bewildered. Couple things that I wondered throughout the game are: 1) why is there a tv tile and a yellow tile? 2) How do I know if there are going to be fireballs coming from the top? 3) where do they come from and why do they hit me sometimes and not the at other times.
Thank you so much for trying out the game and actually finishing it, that really made my day.
To answer your questions:
Why is there a TV tile and a yellow tile?
Since the core mechanic of the game is swapping, you can never reach the TV itself. That is why there is a yellow highlighted tile. The yellow tile is the one you have to stand on to reach the TV, so it is actually the goal: to reach the yellow tile.
What is the benefit of the TV then? The yellow highlighted tile moves relative to the TV, so by moving the TV, you can position the yellow tile where you need it to be. The yellow tile is just a highlight, a conceptual indicator, not a physical object in the game, unlike the TV.
How do I know if there are going to be fireballs coming from the top, and where do they come from?
I’m assuming you are talking about the summoner, the enemy holding a book in the last two levels. The idea behind that enemy is that it can attack the entire row or column in its direction. So, if you are in that row or column and in the summoner’s line of sight, you will be attacked regardless of whether there are tombs, enemies, or anything else between you.
Why do the attacks come from the top?
To indicate that the attack targets the entire row or column regardless of what is in it, I made the effect look like the summoner is calling down fireballs from the sky. It is meant to look like a rain of fire. Technically, they spawn at the camera’s max Y position and the X position of their targets.
Why do they hit me sometimes and not at other times?
I tested the game and have not encountered this specific situation, so I will need to test and dig deeper to understand what might be causing it. Thank you for pointing it out.
Lastly, since you finished the game, did you like the jumpscare? It was my first time ever trying something like that!
Can’t explain it, just feels weird when playing for some reason, but it make sense when you explain it.
It startled me, but I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a jump scare until after reading your reply.
Hello again
About the jumpscare, maybe I should have exaggerated it a bit more, but I was concerned it might be annoying rather than a fun unexpected surprise. I had planned to go crazy with the audio, but then I toned it down for a better user experience, or at least that’s what I thought
Extremely interesting game. I thoroughly enjoyed playing! Swapping rows/columns was a really nice mechanic that lead to some interesting ways to solve levels. The visual and SFX blend very nicely, the overall "feel" of the game is fantastic. Art style too, visually consistent and very charming!
The mechanics were not too difficult to pickup, although I can understand how they can potentially be confusing. I can admit control scheme felt a little strange as someone who associates WASD with top-down grid controls.
Something I was wondering about was how the board pieces interacted! It wasn't entirely clear their behavior, such as which enemies moved first or where exactly a gravestone would land if it was hit. Also, the starting cutscene felt a little slow-paced.
Nevertheless, this was an awesome submission, especially considering it was made by one person. Defiantly something I could see myself enjoying and recommending to others!
Thank you so much for trying the game. I really like the points you raised.
1. Control scheme: Unfortunately, it was not very well thought out and could definitely use more work, or at least give players the freedom to set their own controls.
2. Enemies’ turn order: I intentionally shuffle the turn order every round to introduce chaos and open up the possibility for many different situations. I thought it worked well with the fact that enemies can almost push anything.
3. Pushing direction: In general, the pushing direction is random among the four tiles around the object (up, down, left, right). If none of those directions are available, it goes to the diagonal tiles around the object (up right, up left, down right, down left). If no tiles are available at all, the object stays still. I made this random, just like the turn order, to add more chaos.
Thank you so much for trying the game and for your feedback!
Really interesting concept. The puzzle mechanic was a really neat one. It was cool to have a cutscene. Liked the music and SFX.
The cutscene, while cool, was too long. I had tuned out by the last couple frames. The controls drove me insane. I kept pressing the wrong thing and dying.
Really neat game overall.
Thank you for playing the game, I’m really glad you found it neat. All your points are solid and I completely agree with them. I’m planning, hopefully, to update the game after the jam.