It's a very unique game.

By understanding the rules and using items, I was able to complete the game smoothly. But I didn't understand it at first. Ha ha. I could have realized it earlier by carefully looking at the menus, but I still felt that there were not enough explanations in the game.

But it was a very interesting game. The sound is cool too.

You Win!

It took me a while to figure out what the goals were, but I think I got it. At least I completed the game.

There is a lot of jumping in the menu, but that is kinda the idea I guess. I started to draw a map until I found the built in one...

Nice touch with ending tune.

Stay Safe!

This is a genuinely unique game among the one's I've played! The sort of minesweeper/battleships way of dealing with the combat is pretty inspired, though it took me up until close to the end to figure out how it related to the trigger levels and the room clearing.

The only thing I can really complain about is that the game's objective is really not that clear until you completely clear a trauma for the first time. I was wandering around for a while looking for an exit, not realizing I had to make one in a way, haha.

A minor bug I think is that combat encounters get triggered when exiting the B-menu or when walking into a wall without a doorway. 

I also have yet to figure out what mindfulness does.

Either way it's simple and to the point, a good length, and a well executed idea!

This is an interesting entry. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I it grew on me the more I played. This look is usually a little too old school for me like some of the other entries, but the music was catchy and the unique twist on combat kept me engaged and I was intrigued to explore all the rooms. Although, after the first couple of rooms I had to watch the tutorial because I didn't really understand what was going on. Also, I mostly randomly wandered around until I paid more attention to the menu options and saw there was a map and started exploring with more purpose. I wasn't sure if there was a way to win, except for consistently conquering your memories and exploring all the tiles.

I'm the epitome of mental health!

The game is fun and unique. I really enjoy the combat system, luck partially implemented as hidden information instead of only die rolls with consumables to gain extra information is typically the kind of things I'm very found of and I greatly enjoy an important dose of resource management as well so this really appealed to me. I also have to say I love the music in the areas that you've not cleared yet. 

This is a super cool game, thanks for sharing.

Your games are always fun and full of personality. I smiled a lot playing this one. 

I think I got to grips with your interface a lot better this year.
Head fun filling out the map and getting into a good flow.
Not sure if there was a win-state or not.
Playthrough: Solitary Ancient Ruins of SPLORR!! The Cosmic Horror of Infinity by TheGrumpyGameDev

Oh, don´t beat youself up, that you entries are too niche. I dig the Qbasic look and even if the controls are a bit cumbersome, you somehow get into the zone and it clicks. The battle system as a tool to deal with sanity and traumatic memories was a nice touch. I dig it!

I did watch the combat tutorial and I eventually figured it out, I was able to come to terms with 4 memories I think before I went insane. I think I maybe spammed a bit to hard when brute forcing for gaps.

Interesting approach to the theme!

Thanks for combat tutorial, it was really helpful! After spending some time playing it I kind of understood how it works in terms of risk-reward and started to form strategy on top of that. At first items and dungeon was confusing, but, again, after spending a bit of time I figured out that CBT seems to reveal tile ‘type’ on the map, while avoidance allowed you to skip facing a memory (which is super useful). I didn’t figured out mindfulness though, maybe it was revealing different dungeon tiles?

I had a couple of technical issues with your game though. First is that macOS will block dylib loading, but that can be fixed (if you trust that particular dylib enough) with xattr command. Second one was that I’ve lost control over ‘wasd’ buttons because I’ve accidentally switched my keyboard layout to cyrillic, which was confusing and I had to restart the game for it to work (I figured that out only while writing this review).

Nice touch in the end with a song :)

Another thing I had problems with is that you can accidentally press ‘w’ and ‘s’ after facing a memory and that will move you in the dungeon (maybe I was trying to play too fast?). And having ‘s’ to turn you around was confusing at first, but it was fine after I get used to it.

Overall I might say that your game surprised me quite a lot: plenty to explore, nice risk-reward battle system. I can see myself playing it again :)

That was a really innovative concept. If only dealing with mental issues were as easy!

Thanks for providing the video as it made it all make sense, and much respect for supporting gamepad navigation, too few people do.

The combat as really interesting. It’s almost a reverse bell curve. It’s hard at first because the triggering value is so high, but then it gets easier, and by the end, it’s hard tracking down the last few rogue Xs. (Well, not hard hard, but you get what I’m saying). I this this could be expanded on quite a bit.

A certain anthem playing at the end was a welcome surprise :D

Great job!

Interesting battle concept and good use of the narration with its mechanics. That you have to retry many times to do better than guessing.

At first I was very confused about the navigation. It probably was due to the keybindings being called left and right which made me think it was strafe left and right, while it was actually turn left and right. And since the map required a few presses to get into and out it wasn’t at all obvious at start. Once I realized it, navigating became natural.

I also missed the tutorial before I played but I managed to explore a fair share of the map before becoming mad. My strategy was mostly taking rows that showed blanks as much as possible. Not sure if that’s actually smart or not.

I must admit though that when I saw things on the floor I though I could interact with them somehow, but going into the menu system I didn’t understand “Ground…” as being pick up / interact / search that type of thing that I would have expected.

I also forgot to read the prompt about the memory in many rooms simply because my mind saw the puzzle in the middle and zoomed in on it. Perhaps it might have been good to put it a bit more prominently?

I’m guessing with a D-pad the going in and out of menus to map and back especially backing out, must be a lot more natural. It kept me avoiding the menus.

Hopefully this doesn’t read as me being overly critical, it was a nice game and it had interesting ideas in it.

No puns this year?

You know, I actually respect the tutorial video. An in-game tutorializing process could take a whole other week and I think most people are actually willing to take the extra step to see the games in their best light.

I like the game. I have no idea how you even make something in… Visual Basic? Or whatever this is?… but it’s very unique. The mechanic is a bit too random, but it feels satisfying to slowly improve your odds. Maybe if you could use items in “combat” to affect the results more directly.

Some gripes with there being no hotkeys for the map or items. All those menu key presses are tiring. Items also have unclear purposes. Is CBT and Mindfulness seemingly doing nothing some kind of commentary on your behalf or is it just less obvious?

Well, I eventually lost all my sanity and died, oops.

i liked this one. my windows installation gave me a lot of guff about downloading, extracting, and running it. XNA be like that I guess. Or maybe it's because the executable doesn't have a digital signature?  I'm not sure, don't quote me on this
The gameplay loop gets samey very fast, but the minigame itself is not bad, if you don't mind a bit of RNG. What I didn't like though is that the functionality of items you get is not explained anywhere. Some of them increase your sanity, but the rest don't do anything, or they do something I didn't notice?
Oh and rooms with 24 initial strength/however you call it is a bit much. Its up to your luck when you find and hit the first space, and then it gets significantly easier, but this also means that the variance of how much sanity a 24 room will cost you is extremely high -> basically those rooms decide whether your run is a bust or not.
I liked the oldschool aesthetic of the game, and sound/audio fits it nicely.

nice game/5