itch.io

I thought the premise here was so subtle and clever, with nice little allusions (all the poisonous plant stuff  for example). Gameplay was about as good as harvest moon, which is to say fun and exciting for a little, then pretty redundant. Cutting a few days off some plant growth would be nice. I know they are more advanced crops, which makes sense to take longer in a fully developed game, but in a jam game like this with no real time pressure, it just felt like extra busy work. 

Unfinished, but so many real fun parts. 

Fun to run and jump around as a cat for a little. I admit I'm terrible at mazes, so thanks for not letting me go to a previous map. That would have been disastrous. Having a general direction that the exit is supposed to be might have helped it feel less arbitrary. A little more variation in game play could have helped too.

My favorite thing was the cute cat sprite, with the monsters following second. Finally, I'm not convinced that cats are not evil! Could it be that the enforcement was right all along?

Nice and short! Combat was about as good as Dragon Quest's! I did grind to level 3, and this didn't feel like a chore, so the length was perfect for a game with random encounters and mazes. Despite the short length, getting those level ups and ultimate flail felt good.

I typically don't like games like this, but this one was pretty fun! The progression is not too difficult, though I admit I am currently stuck. I'm confident a good 5 minutes or less of exploration would get me the answer. May come back to this one, but gotta check out more games!

Writing could use a little fixing, as the grammar sometimes detracted from the story. The bloodstains, random skeletons, and mansion setting were all well done. Puzzles were also pretty clever overall.

Humorous and very quick little game. Any writer that accidentally summons a demon must be quite talented.

Great creepy setting and story hook. Voice acting was a real nice touch too. Had some nice jump scare moments in there, and the health bar, while not that important, at least made it feel like there were real repercussions to being bad at dodging knives. The creature was sufficiently creepy, though sometimes it would linger in sight, which took away a tiny bit of the terror factor. I completed the game, but in a panic I ran to the final room and missed important dialog. Might be nice to keep terrified players from missing that stuff by default.

Overall I had a great time with this game, and I did scream a couple times.

Just like in years past (2022, 2021)  here's my post covering my thoughts about the execution of the jam, results, mistakes, and more. This is also a helpful record for us to review if/when Harold Jam gets planned for next year.

Participants: 62
(Last year: 51)

Entries at end of submission period: 36
(Last year - 35)

Entries by end of judgment: 33
(Last year - 35)

By the end of the jam there were:

• 32 valid entries
• 4 disqualifications
•  2 honorary forum post entries

- Infinity Beatdown (but with Lucius) was disqualified for simply copying a previous game (this was a joke on my part). - Downfall of Heroes by Izzy didn’t make the cutoff, so it was allowed to join to get feedback, but disqualified before ratings period ended - Harold and the Proto Dog Demo thing was disqualified for not fulfilling the required elements - Haroldian Civilization was disqualified because it received votes from accounts that were participating in voting manipulation.

2 bonus entries posted in the message board. One was a late entry (Legends of Haroldia by Mopsikus) and one was a MoRPG with limited server up-time (Hrld Friendzy by Lochraleon).

Votes: 510
(Last year - 683)

Initially this was 725, but itch.io automatically removed 25 votes, and a review of the votes by itch.io led to 190 more votes being removed.

Average ratings per game: 16.5
(Last year - 19.5)

Distribution: Max 29, Min 12
(Last year - Max 24, Min 15)

Return participants: 17
(Last year: 20)

New participants: 10
(Last year: 11)

Dual Submissions: 6
(Last year: 4)

Ratings by submitters: 447
Outside ratings: 63

Extra special thanks to super raters! These special folks played and rated all the games. 

Berry

Sawyer

Aesica

Gensun

Successes:

Perhaps feedback will indicate differently, but the jam rules, beginning and end, ratings degrees, and general execution seemed to go on without any real problems. There was also no lingering TBA, no issues with submissions being allowed after they were supposed to, so we seemed to have fixed past issues. 

10 new people made up more than a third of jam participants! It’s nice to continue getting new developers submitting. It often feels like a totally insular, cultish server activity, so getting some penetration and interest from the wider community, or from members of the server who hadn’t taken the plunge before was a big positive.

This year we encouraged participants to emphasize characters other than Harold, which I consider a welcome and fruitful change. Being the fourth Harold Jam, I think it may be time to open things up to more variety, while maintaining the classic feel of jam, and I think that could be possible moving forward. 

Mistakes:

Overall, I think there’s always so much room for more promotions. My general lack of time and focus in other areas made it hard to dedicate the hours necessary to squeezing out those handful of participants or raters. 

Next issue is that I announced my sabbatical, without sharing any date, so it seemed like I was departing the community immediately. Got some farewells and nice comments, and now months after some final goodbyes, I awkwardly remain.

I did fully intend to have the submission time extend through the entirety of March, but I forgot that March 31st at midnight leaves 23 hours and 59 minutes in the month. Luckily I don’t think this messed up too many people aside from myself. 

I can’t end this section without mentioning the problems with the ratings. Results took a minute to post and 25 ratings were removed from itch.io’s algorithm. A surprise entry took 1st place in 5 out of 6 areas, and few games had a huge amount of 1 star ratings. We suspected and confirmed that voting manipulation occurred, and itch.io support removed another 190 votes. All in all, it took more than two weeks for us to get our final results, which made celebrating the winners less satisfying.

I do want to thank everyone for their patience and maturity. There was not mudslinging or venomous speculation. There was acceptance a lot of acceptance and understanding, and the voting manipulation was totally thwarted, and unfairly boosted submission removed. In my view this was a fair proportionate response, and I am so grateful to everyone for keeping the pitchforks and torches to themselves. I admit my pitchfork was sharpened and my torch was blazing, but everyone else being magnanimous helped me be more mature as well.

Cheating in public voting jams is always a risk, but we will be wise to consider this possibility going forward and see if there are preventative steps to take going forward.

I'm always astounded by the time and energy put into this, and these jams have been the most fun I've had in the community. They remind me why I've stuck around for so long, and why I know I'll be back. Whatever thoughts, comments, complaints, suggestions you all have, please drop them in our feedback form below and help the next Harold Jam be as awesome as possible.

https://forms.gle/awAbk8AKKLJiqAdq7

Final results are in! Itch.io support removed votes intended to manipulate scores. It does look like the ratings distribution still reflects the original, so it may not be accurate, but the rankings ought to be.

Congratulations to MoogleRampage for being the overall winner with the mindblowing A Harold Between Worlds 2: Reid Shift!

Congratulations also to our other category winners!

• Gameplay: Rage Against the Dying by Sawyer Friend
• Music: Stuck in the Liminal by callmeDJ
• Comedy: Paragon by Human
• Graphics: Milk Quest by Gensun
• Story: Rage Against the Dying by Sawyer Friend

The prizes have either been sent or will be sent soon! Thank you all again for your amazing jam efforts and for your inhuman patience as we dealt with these novel challenges.

We'll be sending a post-mortem and a survey out soon to get feedback for next jam!

Lots of amazing jams here (I really like I'll Save Myself and Singing Drums), but Reunited by Happenstance may be the best song I've ever heard composed for a jam.

Wow you went through a whole hero's journey leading up to Piggr! You have truly earned the title "KV of a thousand engines." I wonder if you have any strategy for getting so many plays. It could have been its accessibility, but did you do anything else special to spread the word and get ratings?

Thanks again for the adorable and charming entry. We never know what we'll get with a KV entry, and this one was a pleasant rodent themed surprise.

This is such a well-balanced description of the pros and cons of MV/MZ (and Yanfly vs. Visustella or non-obfuscation vs. obfuscation). True its specific to your projects, but I think it probably applies well to others choosing their game engine.

I'm really glad you could make use of MZ! Hope it is a valid option for future jam games, but it sounds like MV will rightly forever be the Axial engine. 

I was wondering about Katina's combat, expecting some variation of what Nova does.  Also amazing that you got so much done last minute and I'm so glad you made it on time. You did pull out all the stops for this one, and I thank you from the bottom of my Harold-heart.

Still waiting on a response from itch.io! I'm sorry for the wait everyone! Will update the second I get word.

Love this Slim! All those struggles are so relatable. In the end you cranked out a solid, super fun game in very little time!

For posterity, here are last year's:

RE:Punch

The Legend of MV: Harold Between Worlds

Harold's Sword Quest

Harold: Show-Stopping Hero

hrldings

Super Har-Type

Harold and the Dead End

Here's a compilation of devlogs for the jam! We've got some awesome games here, so read up and learn from the process.

Stuck in the Liminal by callmedj169

Behind the Liminal Pt. 1: Prologue - The Waking Dream

Behind the Liminal Pt. 2: Story - The Concept

Behind the Liminal Pt. 3: Gameplay - The Experience

Behind the Liminal Pt. 4: Comedy - The Cast

Behind the Liminal Pt. 5: Graphics - The Art Collective

Behind the Liminal Pt. 6: Music - The Sound and Score

Behind the Liminal Pt. 7: Overall - The Journey

Behind the Liminal Pt. 8: Lost Souls - The Cutting Room Floor

Beyond the Liminal Pt. 1: The Analysis

Beyond the Liminal Pt. 2: The Postmortem and Conclusion

Paragon: A Haroldverse Story by Human

Paragon Postmortem

Infinity Beatdown (But with Lucius) by Human

Infinity Beatdown (But with Lucius) Postmortem

Rage Against the Dying by Sawyer Friend

Postmortem 1 - Intro/Development Pacing

Postmortem 2 - Combat

Postmortem 3 - Story

Postmortem 4 - Music

Postmortem 5 - Learning MZ

Postmortem 6 - Creating a Quality Game

Ascentower by Apho

Postmortem Devlog Thingy

Post Jam Update and Stuff

Milk Quest by Gensun

Milk Quest Design Philosophy

Postmortem 1

Final Post mortem

Harold Between Worlds 2: Reid Shift by mooglerampage

HBW2 Reid Shift Scope Retrospective

Detective Who? by slimmmeiske2

Jam Post Mortem

Piggr by KV Kingdom

Piggr Post Jam Postmortem

Hi Harold Jammers!

Congrats on reaching the end of the jam! You may have noticed some confusing results (starts at 2nd place?) or read some prior discussion. To summarize, we've confirmed that some questionable voting activity skewed results unfairly. As a result we have disqualified one entry. We're reaching out to itch.io directly to see if they can fix the ratings themselves and give any more insight into what happened. Until we get word back from them, we can't guarantee the results up now reflect the final rankings. The actual events leading up to the questionable votes and the party or parties responsible can't be fully confirmed at this point.

For now:

- Don't fully trust the rankings as you see them. They may change going forward.

- Try to withhold judgments, accusations, and speculations for now. There's still a lot of information coming in and there may be more to the story than we currently know. Thanks again for your patience and try to direct confused people to this post and or to the mods on Discord if they have more questions.

I've been saying this for four years now! Thank you for finally backing me up on this.

THIS IS THE REVIEW I ALWAYS WANTED, AS IF IT WERE UTTERED BY HAROLD HIMSELF

Glad you found time to check it out KV! "Eye-catching" is a very kind euphemism!

Aw yeah, thanks for acknowledging it all! I dream that my legacy is a future filled with more tastefully sexy Lucius renditions.

Ronald that was mindbreaking! I loved it. The puzzles were so satisfying to figure out, and kind of insane in a good way. The chatbot said some pretty weird stuff, but it worked for the purposes of the game. I think talking to the monster was the hardest one to trigger the right response for, but everything else was right on and seemed to accept a decent variety of responses. 

This game gave me real Harold Gets Screen Time vibes, which is a very strange vibe that only you can capture. Thanks for bringing another amazing and absolutely unique entry to the jam!

A lot going for this game. Dress spheres made for some fun mechanics and those transformations were great! I admit I settled into a combination that worked, but with so many choices, there seems to be replay value. The eventing was good, writing had some fun moments (a few spelling issues), but overall really well done. 

Combat was the biggest drag to me. The boss enemies had too much hp in my opinion, and even when they weren't challenging, it took a very long time to defeat them. The mobs were too easy in the case of the robots, or again, had too much HP like the golems. 

Finally my biggest issue with this game is the really frustrating need to die 5 times to win. It was honestly just really unfun. I was expecting a potentially challenging boss, but then she was a total push over. I'm certain some people would have quit, thinking it was just an unwinnable and broken battle. Aside from that, it was a really solid entry!

Well written and designed game. Didn't know what to expect, but Eric and Nina are a wonderful team (and the angel's alright). It was fun doing some input combos, but I there were a few things that made it less than ideal. I only realized on the final fight why some of my attacks weren't occurring. Seems I lacked the resources but didn't know it. the multiple resource pools kind of threw me off. Also, the short time to input attacks often made me pick the wrong moves thinking I as a different character, or just because it took me too long to remember the attacks I wanted to do in rapid succession. I picked easy mode, and still found it a bit difficult. The optional boss doesn't quite seem possible, which was too bad. A little less HP on that guy (like half) would have made it possible, even if super hard.

The visual novel style storytelling was impressive, and I loved the different expressions with the art. I think you're the only one to pick a non-HTML MV ally, so thanks for throwing one in! Nina is an especially cool choice, and your ancient dragon take is good enough to be canon. 

This game had some of the most original stuff in the jam! I think a little polishing on gameplay would have made a big difference, but it was impressive as is.

Moogle made a game with two party members!!!? Your powers have doubled!

This was such a fun entry, I played for two hours straight. The combat was varied (if you wanted it to be), extremely creative, and held more depth than I think any of us could explore fully. I can't believe you crammed so many different combat styles into the game, along with the move altering party members. Balancing this must have been insane, but I never found it too tough. A bit too easy perhaps, but that sounds about right for a tricky game like this. 

Story was really good too, and a great follow up to last year's entry, and the music choices were quite fitting (needed more metal for Infinity Beating down :))

There were a few little things that must have been unexplored due to time. I used some tutorial item, which led to an immediate crash. The title screen credits are pretty funny too. Therese gave me some stand-in dialog, although the game did break the fourth wall a few times, so I will pretend Therese was ironically saying those things in game. 

The scope of this game was off the charts, and maybe the biggest flaw was cramming so much awesomeness into a jam game. I will attempt to judge on the first hour! It might have been possible to cut this game a bit into a smaller package, but perhaps it is even better totally ignoring the jam time limit. Once again one of my favorite entries. 

Felt like a pretty straightforward RPG Maker quest, nothing really stood out overall. I did like the story and the mystery surrounding Harold's whereabouts. Combat followed the same strategy no matter the boss, so it got a little redundant. Glad to see no random encounters though! A few bugs made it tricky to progress:
- Invisible player has to interact with Marsha to continue quest

- Invisible player has to interact with the grey door to become visible, or somehow make it up the mountain while invisible to progress soon after that.

Probably made some people quit when they got confused. Thanks for the entry, and hope you can continue on to part 2! We need to reunite the team!

Really enjoyed this! Found 18/20 clues and baffled as to what I missed. I also didn't realize I needed to be really paying attention to what the murder weapon was, so I totally whiffed on the guessing part. I found the whole premise quite charming and executed well, even if rushed. Playing elementary in the middle of a murder investigation seemed totally ridiculous, but in retrospect it kind of fits perfectly. Thanks for getting in an entry!

Thanks so much for streaming! Wish I had made it. As the commenters pointed out, there was an ascent up the mountain, and Marsha said the line as a gab text (then she teleported away because she got fed up). 

And thanks for the generous ratings! I would say gameplay deserves a 1 star because it was just hitting confirm for text. But thanks for the positivity.

This is an extremely impressive entry. First off in terms of graphics, I'm struggling to think of anything I've ever played in a jam that matches its graphical excellence, cohesion, and completion. The expressiveness of the facesets was one thing, but the map sprites added even more, and you've got a real talent for expressing a lot with their motions. I could feel Therese's exhaustion as she sighed on her break, and Lucius' ridiculous dance just makes me want to hang out with him and be his friend. Attack animations, tilesets, battlebacks, battlers, all came together in a phenomenal package. 

The other aspects off the game were impressive in their own right. Battles featured some unique mechanics that were interesting to explore. The story had depth, and really tread some dangerous ground with the topics, but I found it well done, despite some of my reservations with how the narrative might flow. Music was chosen well. 

This entry is definitely a contender for overall!

Not sure what I experienced here! This is a fever dream I'd expect to wake up from in the midst of a Harold Jam. The ambiance was really cool, and there were some impressive scenes put together, but I admit, I really have no idea what I experienced here.

The game crashed when I was teleported to an ascent and some weird creature descended.

I see it was kind of a cinematic game, but I found myself really impatient with the text movement. I prefer to speed through a bit faster. I also haven't played Star Shift so maybe I missed a lot of references. The Giga Buff Chad Harold insert was pretty funny though.

Lots of cool things about this game! Clearly a lot of time doing some customization of things like icons, enemies, status effects, etc. The more Harold heads, the better imo. Some cool randomization going on with the stages, though it still was repetitive after a few floors. Combat was alright, but status effects remaining after battle wasn't fun (especially blindness). There was also almost no incentive to battle after gearing everyone up. I kept on fighting in hopes of some extra badass weapon, but they all felt super par to me. Customizing defensive items was just a roll of the dice, so I just picked a random shield. 

One weird glitch was the ability to use the stat items infinitely. This worked for a little bit, but then a little later the items did legitimately disappear, so not sure why that would happen.

I found a lot of parts humorous. I laughed out loud at the staff description. The dialog felt like it was all in the same voice - and didn't distinguish themselves in their personalities. And out of personal taste, I found they were all just really mean to each other in an off-putting way. 

The game had a lot of interesting things going for it! Could act as a solid base for more development.

Really enjoyed the journey here! Of course I loved Re:Punch's combat, and this offered some novel variations with a party of four, the ability to act with 0 HP, and all those skills to consider. I found it well balanced, but I could see how playing this without remembering Re:Punch could be a pretty tough task. I also made some really foolish mistakes, thinking that guarding my teammates would lower the user's aggro, and not the target's, ensuring I got some buddies killed. Learning the different tells could be challenging as well. Didn't expect that first AoE, though it seems obvious in retrospect.

The story was pretty touching, and I think it worked even without knowing any references. I like this Reid - full of both doubt and excitement (but he's no Harold). Thanks for this poignant send off. I don't even feel the need to punch you in the face talk deeply with the different aspects of yourself. The server will be in capable hands!

My favorite thing is that you call the faces "mugshots" :) Made me laugh.

For color switching glitches, there was some point where invisible Reid switched to another character but the shards still stayed visible. Then going back to Reid manually he looked visible but I couldn't touch enemies until I became invisible then visible again. I think switching by performing actions would be what tended to make things weird happen.  

Main thing I don't like about switching colors is the loss of a turn. I would almost always rather power through an enemy with a sub-optimal match up than lose a full attack. That doesn't mean that I want the mechanic removed! Just that the cost of switching should be lessened a little, not fully, because changing freely also feels unfair. Something like a weak follow up attack, or buff added when switching colors, depending on which one it is could have made it feel more worth it to me.

I did grab all the shards! I need to go back and get fewer this time around and see what terrible things happen!

Ahhh you had to tease those derelict chambers!? The art here is amazing. Harold and Marsha are so adorable. I know this is selfish, but please, please complete these assets (along with Lucius and Therese), get them out of the way in time for next year, then just rock out a complete, full length jam game! Running around with these awesome little characters is so fun, we need more!!

Okay, so gameplay wise I do think a few tiny things could have improved the experience, short as it was. Basically a little feedback on the puzzle switches. The total lack of sound made things feel weird. The final puzzle of the last room I couldn't quite figure out if I had missed something earlier. A simple "wrong" buzzer when I picked the wrong sequence of suns would have clued me in and saved a lot of backtracking. 

Since it was such a big room with a lot of different mini-puzzles, I wasn't always sure that I had actually solved the prior one. Having either separate rooms, or having blocks preventing access to the previous part until you've solved the current puzzle would have helped orient me as a player. Still, didn't take too long to figure out, and was a fun ride for what it was.

For your game DJ, I will sat at the title screen for as long as I needed to hear a couple loops of the soundtrack. I was not disappointed! Gameplay was so tight from beginning to end, and the writing was on point too. Alex was hilarious. Man, you somehow discovered another flavor of himbo, and I love it. 

The game was well paced, combat went quickly and was satisfying, and puzzles were fun, if not a bit easy. Noticed a few little glitches in the character switching when they used their skills. Must have been such a pain to event those. Still, they worked!

For combat, I think some ui prompts would have helped, though only three elements made it way easier. The hearts being damaged by the same color, whereas the other enemies are damaged by their weakness color is a bit of a contradiction in messaging I found confusing. I also didn't like switching colors, so I dashed through combat in a red rage. Need to see the alternate endings (if there are some). Really impressive work once again DJ!

I'm at once really impressed and severely disappointed! This game has really surprising polish. Right from the title screen, there are nice touches that show how much effort you put into this. The eventing was really good, with characters gesturing, showing emotions, moving dynamically in scenes, all time consuming things to event in. Combat had some really cool touches as well, with a neat use of the "gung-ho" system. Really nicely scoped it seems also, with a short straightforward tale, but with multiple dungeons of with different personalities.

I'm disappointed because a few glitches led me to get locked out of progress after the 2nd boss (and nearly prevented me from even reaching the 2nd boss). I ended up seeing the post 2nd boss scene twice after being invisible for a while, and then was teleported to the ice boss's room without a chance to fight him. After attempting to backtrack, I was softlocked into staying in the ice dungeon forever. 

This is really sad because I can see how much effort was put into this game, and players may totally miss a good chunk, including the conclusion. 

I'd also add the random battles are a bit redundant, and should be pared down to maybe 1/5th their amount for a jam game like this. It was dangerously close to the time limit of an hour, and a lot of that was just me running from repetitive battles.

Would love to check out the fixed up version of this some time!