itch.io

Okay, I got a fair amount to say now. First about me getting stuck... actually I'd say most of what you described was pretty clear, there were just a few missing pieces that left me incapable of filling in the gaps. First was that the container didn't matter, which was probably the most helpful thing in the How To Play to point out. The second thing was specifically the little icon with the partially full triangle beaker. I had absolutely no idea what that meant, I kept looking around the room for a beaker to fill up or something. (I now understand that this basically means "1/2", but I only got there through trial and error.) If I'm being honest you can probably just remove that prompt as an option and it'd be the simplest fix, maybe it can, but I never saw it come up other than in the obvious case where 1/2 a purple = a pink.

Anyways, enough of that, I can actually comment on the game now. I really like the idea, it's very creative and inspired! I think you could turn it into a really fun little game with some tweaks:

• First and definitely most important is the pacing, it took probably 2 minutes of gameplay before the requests got spicy, and a lot of that time was just waiting for new customers to walk to the window. Also the physics of moving things is really slow, like when dragging an object from one side of the counter to the other then I have to wait for it to catch up to my cursor.
• Second is that the scale itself is kinda jank. I had some difficulty trying to weigh out a bread-load of milk, I started by placing the pots on both sides of the scale, and tried to put the bread on one side, but it didn't register. I figured out a better method later, but my first method feels like it should have worked. So I was a bit surprised later when putting the pot on the cheese DOES work. But actually... I'm impressed you managed to get it working as well as you did in the time constraint, as I understand it, game physics engines can be kinda unreliable at precision stuff.
• Lastly is that depth perception is a real problem, I kept bumping things into each other because it wasn't obvious how close or far I was holding something, and my pours were very inaccurate. Some gamey drop shadows would probably help, but if I were to make a really spicy suggestion, I would say it should be a VR game... (okay for the game Jam, that would have admittedly been insane to even attempt, but I still think it'd be perfect as a VR game.)

I hope the feedback is helpful, but keep in mind I still had a good time playing! The physical comedy of the whole game is quite amusing, and you got quite the chuckle out of me the first time a customer asked me for a measurement of milk expressed as a math formula of random objects, really underlines how ridiculous the whole thing is.

Has a really nice game feel, sounds very nice too, very crunchy, I really enjoy it! A bit repetitive on the easy difficulty... and when the rng forces you to wait because the platforms synchronized on opposite ends of the screen, or if a rock spawns above the spring you need to use to progress, those little things hurt the pacing, but it just needs a bit of ironing is all. Got a score of 1195 on Medium... I would've liked to try Hard, but yeah it's bork.

Unfortunately I feel like the "no text" challenge is really hurting your game, I can not figure out what to do. Was able to fill 2 orders, but beyond that I got stuck really quickly. The only feedback I'm getting from the customer is :( which just leads to trial and error. I don't feel like this is supposed to be the challenging part either. If you can provide more clarity I'd give it another shot.

Ah, yeah, I just had to turn my volume way up, even so the laser noise and music are still quiet relative to the other sounds, definitely could be punchier.

And I did manage to grab the egg on a rerun, it was not easy. I kept trying to use the tongue-retract momentum to loop up and over, but it rarely worked the way I wanted. Instead I managed to get up from the right side checkpoint with a well spaced swing. I felt maybe I could've used the box to do better, but it got kicked somewhere I couldn't reach, and respawning doesn't reset it's position. Actually I wanted to double-back to get it on my first run, but was held back because the final obstacle can't be traversed backwards. But the fact I was motivated to come back later and try again is a testament to your game's quality.

Excellent concept, very well executed too. I'm a big fan of the twist you put on the main mechanic near the end, that was delightful. The "swinging" is definitely a bit undercooked, but it's something you can get used to and for a game jam it's quite functional.

As far as suggestions go, the visual clarity needs some work: maybe try darkening the background tiles so it's easier to tell what is a wall or floor and what's just decoration; and I had a hard time at first differentiating what you can grapple and what you can't, maybe you could put a little sparkly animation on the grapple points to make them really pop off the screen.

Yes, I finally found another entry that made a game about a scaled animal climbing stuff!

Seriously, this is fantastic though, best entry I've played so far. Some sfx and music, maybe tighten up the collision physics a bit and you'd be golden; but as far as progress in 48 hours goes this is very impressive, I think you prioritized very well.

Now if only I could figure out how to get that 4th egg (are they eggs?)

Thanks! Yeah I wanted to make one that shows the first little bit of your travel arc but alas, time constraints.

Oh I did! I played a good 30 minutes before falling down like 500 meters and lost my motivation to make it to the top... but I had fun while doing that. By game jam standards, I'd call that pretty engrossing.

Very unique concept, really cool... a bit frustrating for my tastes tbh.

If I could make a suggestion, I imagine your "shoot" code is doing something like:

velocity = charge_time * normalized_direction * MAX_VELOCITY

...if that's how it's implemented, this might explain why it feels kinda physically unintuitive... for example if you shoot straight up your kinetic energy converts into potential: ½mv² = mgh, solve for "h". Basically you gain height in proportion to the square of the velocity. So if the above really is your code equation, doubling the charge time means you launch four times as far. Which is why there isn't much differentiation on the lower end of the charge.

Instead you want it to be energy based, something like:

energy = charge_time * square(MAX_VELOCITY)
velocity = sqrt(energy) * normalized_direction

Well... either all that, or it doesn't work like that at all and I'm just bad and coping. :P