This was a very literal take on the jams theme, and reminds me a lot of many classic flash and roblox games. The visuals and sound effects come off as very goofy at a glance, but it fits well with the over the top concept the game is going for.
First I want to talk about the art. The title screen opens with a relaxing shot of the night sky, which I think fits the game well and sets the tone. However, it also immediately hits the player with 3 clashing art styles. There's a pixel art background, the “smoothed” pixel art text, and the non pixel art buttons. All these assets make the visuals feel a bit less cohesive, and give a less professional look to your game. To avoid this in the future, I suggest using a fully pixel art font with hard edges, and not using the Unity default UI. Instead, just set the UI sprites to “None” so they appear as full rectangles (You can even add a larger box behind your UI elements to add a nice border effect if you want).
Additionally, I find that having any movement on the title screen can help your game appear more professional and leave a better first impression. Making the stars twinkle or having some slight background movement could help sell that calm feeling you’re going for.
Moving on to the in game art, I noticed that the pixel density changes on many of the sprites (most noticeable on the storm clouds/tornados). Meaning that the size of individual pixels is not consistent, giving the game a less cohesive look. This can be avoided by not using the scale tool, but rather redrawing the art to be whatever size you need. Redrawing sprites is time consuming, and not always feasible during a game jam, so it's important to plan out exactly how big things need to be before you create the pixel art.
I did notice a very small amount of z-fighting. Particularly with the moon and storm effects. This likely won’t be noticed by the average player, but we always want to be careful with the “Order in Layer” when setting up our sprites.
However with all that said, I think the basic pixel art is quite clear and conveys all the information it needs to in a charming way. The environment's sprites look good and the particle effects used to create the weather makes the scene come alive. And I appreciate the little details like the glow on the moon, the animations when people get thrown.
As for the audio, I think the music fits the setting pretty well. Jumping between the different remixes of the song helps the music all fit together, and highlights the current setting very well. That being said, the loop is a little short, so having all the music be so similar does make it a bit more repetitive.
Speaking of the loop, there's an awkwardly long break at the end of the song before it restarts. I suggest cutting most of the silence at the end of a track so that it doesn’t stand out as much. It's not usually feasible for a jam, but tracks that are built to loop into themselves seamlessly are a bonus.
Additionally, I think blending between the songs would make the jumps between environments less jarring. As it is, going from day to night (or to the shop) has a very sudden tone shift, which could be avoided if the tracks took a moment to fade out/in. (It sounded like maybe you had some blending when hitting start from the title screen? If so its really fast)
Moving on to the sound effects. I think the sounds you have in the game fit pretty well with the goofy style. The noises the people make help sell the illusion of them being in trouble, and give some feedback to the player about the game state.
However, there's a lot of important areas that are lacking any sound. Many of the environmental effects lack any weight because they are silent (earthquakes, tornados, etc). And just as importantly, the player actions are silent (placing blocks, hitting certain buttons, etc). You made the shop feel good by having the cash and error sounds, but try to extend that out to hitting the button to enter/leave the shop, skip the day, and anywhere else the player can “Interact”.
Next I want to talk about the gameplay. I was impressed with the variety of storm events and I think you did a really good job of conveying important information to the player with all the little tooltips for incoming events and shop items. Most jam games overlook informing the player of what different features do, so this was really nice to have.
I also think the shop had a good variety of options that all seemed useful, making money management important and interesting.
I also like that your game had a clearly defined ending, with an optional endless mode. With a game like this it’s common to see it labeled as “Survival”, where you go until you die. But having that victory screen shows that you had a point you balanced that game around, and something for the player to strive for, rather than just playing until they get bored and quit. This is even more important in the jam format, where your players are looking to see a game to completion, and then move on to the next game (Not that we should be “Meta Gaming” our jam submissions, but it's something to be aware of).
With that being said, my issues with the gameplay are mostly related to the lack of agency I have over protecting the people. While it's nice to know what storms are coming, I didn’t get the feeling I could build different defenses to help my people more or less based on that information. Maybe this is a skill issue on my end, but I found that using the same “Dome” of blocks with Metal blocks on the sides to be the go to for every storm. This made it feel very random if the people lived every time, and made the building phase less interesting.
To fix this, It would be nice to have more specific answers to each problem. Like lightning could hit the metal blocks only, so the player can position those further away or not use them at all when they see lightning coming. Tornados could have no effect on metal blocks, making them better in those situations. A larger change would be letting the player pick where to put the people so they can start on top of structures, and then having the “High Tide” come above the island's floor, but conversely having hail actually kill people on contact rather than pushing things. Leading to a back and forth of building structures to support holding people up, or protecting them from above based on the incoming weather.
These are just random ideas off the top of my head and obviously may not work in practice. But my point is that it’s important to consider how our obstacles impact a player, and if they have the tools to react to them appropriately.
My other issue with the gameplay was the time constraint when building my structures. My first playthrough I was still spending most of my time reading what storms and shop upgrades did, making me miss building for roughly the first 3 days. And since the building was already pretty basic, most of the player’s decision making going forward was still spent looking at the shop/storm UI. Which overall made the rush feel unnecessary, since I imagine reading speed isn’t the skill you were trying to test in your game.
Another small thing, was I noticed I could grab and hold blocks with a left click most of the time at night. This wasn’t specified anywhere in the game as far as I know, so I think this feature is easy to miss (Unless this was a bug?).
Overall, I found the game to be a fun little chaotic minigame. Even though there were areas that could use some polish, the overall idea is good, and the little details help keep the game enjoyable. I apologize if this review was a bit much, but I'm doing this to all the games from this jam as I think critiques help us grow.