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I'm a bit biased because I was a playtester, but this was a blast to play. Fuckin' hilarious. Even tho there's no drinking involved, by the end of each game we were all getting just as silly as if there was. Two games in a row is even more silly. XD

I recommend in-person is better than online, but online has been great fun, too. I agree 5-8 players is a sweet spot, but I did enjoy the 3 player game we did. Defs wouldn't introduce someone to hypno this way, but for peeps familiar with dropping it's amazing.

(More feedback. There's a lot here, but I'm actually enjoying doing some QA here. And I'm absolutely savescumming now. XD )

Ok, trying again with controller instead.

Except... I'm using a nintendo controller, and this game gets nintendo's A and B buttons and Y and X buttons reversed, and there's no way to change that. I know Godot has a couple of good keybinding changing tools in the asset catalogue. (Later, I realised the minigame that gets you to press buttons in order, like BBYXA, *does* map correctly! Even tho other minigames don't! So I lost that minigame because I expected the buttons to still be swapped.)

There's a struggle with communication between dev and player throughout the UI. The skull on the main menu is the exit button, but I had to click it to find out, as it doesn't look like an exit button and doesn't have a tooltip. Same with Depart and Remember. It's flavourful, but most games stick to well-known markers for a reason. Intermission was entirely a mystery, but I didn't click on it because that word communicates "stop playing" and I didn't want to.

Similarly, changing only the brightness of selected text in the Intermission menu is hard to track when you don't know what can be selected. As I was using controller, if I didn't predict where the selection would go, I'd immediately lose it. Then I pressed B (on my controller, A) to back out of the Intermission and it didn't do anything. So I tried Start (plus) and that made me exit to main menu, which was wildly unexpected. Even moreso, "Continue" brought me back to the Intermission, not the game!

B doesn't close the "Remember" or inventory or conversation log windows. Scrolling the conversation log on controller is very slow, and if the start menu is open, up and down scroll *both at once*. How... do I take the seed out of my inventory when not using a mouse? I always expect the inventory to close the menu when I leave it, but it doesn't, so I keep accidentally re-opening the inventory after I close it.

I noticed the game keeps opening on the wrong screen. I think there's a Godot setting about whether to force the game to open on one screen or not, but I don't remember too well.

I am definitely enjoying the game a lot more now, but a decent chunk of that is me turning my frustration at the UI into enjoying discussing game dev.

I just tried the demo, but I hit a bit of a wall before the game really got going.

(Feedback contains slight spoilers for the early game)

At the beginning, there's a minigame with a maze. It gives on-screen buttons and since I was using mouse, I decided to use those. But then there was a surprise time-limit that was way too short to complete. Had I known that, I would have used keyboard from the start, but it was too late to swap. Since that felt unfair, I decided to start again. But keyboard doesn't have a button for right-clicking, so when I switched to the mouse to do that, I made a mistake and left-clicked. So on the third try I got it, and then the maze was half the length and I got through it easily because of the keyboard.

Then I got the next minigame and finished it. But then I missed the third again because of switching controls back and forth. I would have just re-loaded the game, but you've taken control of saving. I would have been fine with that if it felt like my fault for missing the mini-games, but since it didn't feel like my fault it feels like it's punishing me unfairly. I can tell I'm going to enjoy this game, but I'm getting too frustrated with the controls to continue for now.

So I have some suggestions:

- Make the game entirely able to be controlled with keyboard.

- Have an accessibility option that allows manual saving if turned on. (I would probably turn it off once I got a feel for the game, but right now, it's brutal in an unfun way.)

- Make the difficulty of the minigames change for different control schemes (I know this one's a tall ask for an indie).

Plz, I love these kinds of games, and I want to love yours. ;_;

When I play games I like, I try to play the intended experience (at least the first time). Other people I know will try to break the game or just do their own thing. Even if we're all heading to the same goal, it's interesting to think of those approaches as different games. :D

The main thing I expect to be an issue is just... so many button presses to get across a larger board. Which is tedious. Not sure how to solve. 🤔

Because of the way the console encourages more passing the console to each other, it might be nice to have a way to show which stone the opponent placed on their most recent turn. Yes, the cursor is still in there, probably, but if you move it (and have ADHD), that information goes away.

Might be an interesting exercise to figure out how to allow for larger boards, 13x13 or 19x19, but still have decent UX on the playdate. I understand it being a bit much of a challenge for a small side project like this, tho, that's fair.

Cool little app, tho. Clean and simple. :3

I only just found this (I don't use twitter any more, so didn't see the notif). I'm amazed anyone would port any of my games. XD

I couldn't get it to run on the retroarch emulator, but from the screenshots, it looks very accurate. Goes to show how ports on older-style consoles would look vastly different where today they can look near identical. Wild and fascinating.

Physical copies seem to be sold out. Are there any plans to reprint? If the pdfs don't have chapter or page links, then physical copies are a pretty important alternative. (Plus I like having a physical bookshelf :3 )

My guess (without downloading it because I don't want 9GB) would be that the audio is raw wave files. Raw bitmap images, even large ones, shouldn't inflate the size *that* much. O_o

I've loved the full version of this game and unlocked everything. It's a delight. So much attention to detail in the UX. The final unlock is funny, too.

I'd like to see a list of the trophies because there one or two I never quite figured out the meaning of.

Sometimes randomly generation makes a puzzle that is unintuitive, in that you need to avoid a lot of efficiencies in order to solve it. I'll often use hint mode for those, and the solution can feel a bit iffy sometimes (though sometimes it's "oh of course, I should have tried that"). This is always the case with generated puzzles, of course. But it makes me wonder if people have handmade some clever puzzles. I wouldn't know where to look, tho.

I'm glad! I'm really proud of it, and have been thinking about what kind of full adventure I could write. And some UI improvements I could make (that text is tiny!) I can't promise anything, but I have dreams~ :3

I might have hit a bug? Catalogue version, if that matters. I did the tutorial first thing (well, I looked at the credits first), and then after that I chose Free Play, and it's doing the tutorial again for some reason. Does choosing tutorial from the menu not mark it as done?

Otherwise, I'm finding it enjoyable. It's easier than the train sim I played on PC, but that one was too challenging for a newbie like me, so this is good. :3

This is genuinely funny XD

Ooh, on android, and I just noticed that when I load game (at least after the game fully closes), the prices of everything reset, making anything I already had some of way cheaper than it should be!

...which I don't mind, but might not be in the spirit of the game. :P

The intention was that you would upload the pdx file itself, not the zip file. But I didn't realise you could also upload zip files, so I didn't make that terribly clear.

Tbh, I should also have separated the source into its own download anyway. I only didn't because I had something like 15 minutes to upload before I ran out of time. But I've corrected both of these issues now. Thanks for letting me know!

Grabbed the full version. This one's so much fun. I wish I could see a list of every card in my deck during the game, because I can forget what I've added when I pause the game for a bit. Also, it would be cool if I could see all the cards in a set between games.

I think you need to sell decks with this art. Really inspiring. XD

I... *assume* you can only double a single die once. So I can't use two carpenters to make a single dwarf worth 4 builders, right? The fact that it says "double the effect of 1 building dwarf" rather than something more specific like "make a single building dwarf worth two" made me double-take and question that.

Thanks for the answers! And yes, I've since started running it for one of my partners and we're really enjoying the game so far.

We noticed that, though the game implies a gothic fantasy setting, it doesn't necessarily require it. So we're pushing the worldbuilding a bit by making a dark/gothic cyberpunk setting: pockets of corporate dystopia dotted throughout miles of abandoned city with no known borders or plant-life, roamed by electricity beasts and crossed by magic-powered cyberspace. This game's godkiller is a Wronged clown. Formerly zir god was the god of laughter and comedians before a Disney-esque god consumed them and their worshippers employees in a company merger.

It's all very tragic. We're having a great time. :3

I found a (thing I would consider a) bug! It is very small. Most people would never see it, since the only reason to do this is when you find it for the first time, but if you switch from the kite shield to the golden shield while in a level (not the item select room), you drop back down to 10 health instead of staying at 13.

Also, when I set the options to allow pressing and holding to move, sometimes I'll go two spaces and right off an edge. Not sure what's happening there.

Oh, and it'd be nice if I could end a run from the menu or something, say if I realise I've grabbed the wrong gear or the start of a run went too badly.

Otherwise, I'm having a lot of fun with this. It's fairly different from the roguelikes I tend to play (dungeon crawl stone soup is the big one, and is entirely too much for the little playdate), but it's cute and does some interesting things. :3

I have a couple of questions about the rules.

If you fail to Wield a Power, the move says you can suffer 2 strain to achieve the effect anyway. But the extra information below it in the book (pg. 26) says 3 strain. I was wondering which was correct? Does the 3 include the 1 strain for "you're desperate for this to work"? If you didn't spend that, but after the roll failed you decided to push, do you only spend 2 strain total? I could see this going either way, so I could prolly answer myself to match the flavour of our campaign, but I'd like to know the intent.

Also, with Challenge Someone Dangerous, what's the motivation for requiring an audience? Basically, I want to gage what I should do if my player's Godkiller challenges someone without. Do I answer no to the "audience on your side" question, or perhaps does the action lose its divine nature and I fall back to Mortal moves, if any? Or something else?

I hope this design intent discussion is the kind of thing that would be covered in a future non-ashcan version of the game. I'm generally perpetually interested in design decisions, not just as a game designer myself, but also as it helps me wield the rules more effectively and navigate edge cases intelligently. (On that note, I find it interesting that this game, unlike many PbtAs I've played, actively encourages the GM to keep secrets from the player.) Anyway, very keen to see more of this game. :3

(Unsolicited game dev thoughts. Skip to the end for praise. :P )

Hmm... didn't the previous card-like version have a "how to play" menu item? Where did that go?

Separately, I had a thought about presentation. I can find it a little confusing to have the numbers under the tiles to be in the same part of the square as the number on top, and yet be referring to a different thing, while the number on top moves to the side. It's only a small annoyance, but I was thinking how to convey that better.

On the right, you have gems and roman numerals. What if, when you remove a tile, the number on the tile stays in the same spot, but its backdrop shows either a gem or an imposing roman numeral? Similarly, since you can place notes on tiles, maybe if you make those numerals look more scratchy and hand-drawn, and in the style of a gem or roman numerals?

Still, this is such an elegant little game. I still occasionally boot this game up after nearly a year of it being on my playdate. It's good. :3

(I wonder how a hex grid would change the deductions?)

Ok, this time I'm pretty sure it's a bug. XD

Several tiles had no matches on the board at all.

Version 1.1, Daily layout, Pup, first attempt (later attempts seemed to be fine). Noticed it early on. I didn't use shake shuffle.

Granted, this is the first time I've noticed this in over 26 hours of gameplay.

Ah, which I've never used! That makes sense. Whoops. XD

I think I found a very subtle bug. In the soundcloud playlist, there's piece called Sunset Overlay, which I've never heard in-game. Checking the game files, it does seem to be there, but it's not in the list when I flick through the music, nor has it ever come up randomly.

Ah, I found a bug. When a level starts, if you press the home button and go to the options menu while the tiles are still arriving on the screen, the timer never starts, and you can finish the game with a time of zero seconds, maxing your score.

Ah, I bought this game on the playdate catalogue. Do those people not have access to it?

Weirdly, it was the fact that there's a sitelen pona tileset that made me go "Ok, what is Mahjong, and will I enjoy it enough to get this game?" And it was worth it! pona mute a!

You're welcome! ^_^

And, gosh, yeah, I know that blurry jam feeling well. XD

Oh, I said "don't fill in" because, if everyone is "human" then it's effectively the same as leaving it blank.

What I meant was, the word "ancestry" carries meaning and differentiation within species; they are historical and cultural lines of people. Elves, goblins, and the like, are species, not ancestries. Those species may have many ancestries within them (For example, Goblins from this one country vs. Goblins from another vs. Goblin nomads, etc), but they are not ancestries themselves.

Which is why it feels so bizarre to have a field called "ancestry" and then effectively ignore it in a human-only game. That sort of thing can feel a tad too close to dismissing race and culture as important to people. Which is why I suggested either acknowledging it more in the rules, or removing the word "ancestry" from the field and leaving "species" on its own. There may be other solutions, of course.

I hope I was a bit clearer this time. I'm not the best at communicating my points. <_<

This looks cute as heck. :3

It's a little strange that, for a human-only game, you don't fill in the "ancestry" box. That could be filled with real-world or fictional ancestries. Or, if you prefer not, calling it simply "species" on its own can still work for the fantasy setting without implying something humans have a variety of.

Still, cool approach to an Ironsworn hack. :D

It is very cool that this exists. Just knowing it does makes me happy.

Why call it "utala"? Just checking, but it's not a competition or the like, is it?

It seems to have been a while since you worked on this, but some feedback:

• The pre-made puzzles feel randomly generated. I'd like to see puzzles that have an "intended solve path". For example, a puzzle that teaches a technique, or one that has deductions that nicely lead from one to the next. Or even just a puzzle that looks like something.
• When you right-click a tile to see what affects it, it would be nice if there was some animation to the purple tiles to draw the eye. It can be hard to tell exactly which tiles have changed colour, especially when the view has to zoom out to show them all.
• On that note, I'd like to not have to hold a button to see these. Physical disability can make holding buttons difficult, and this game requires a lot. Perhaps a click to toggle would be better?
• I'd also like a way to see which tiles are affected by the current tile, not just the other way around. Just as a visual reminder.

All that said, I love the ruleset. It's a very clever game. I hope you finish it.

Edited to add:

• Please wait a moment before showing the win screen, or have it out of the way somehow. I want to see the final animation as the colours fall into place. It would be satisfying!
• You have undo. What about redo? I often accidentally click undo too much, and I miss what I undid, which can be confusing.

Ha! Immediately worked. Should have been obvious to me. Thing not found, so install thing. I appreciate it, thankyou. :)

suwi mute a!

Huh, the "linux" build seems to think it's the steam build? At least that's what the folder says. Either way, it doesn't run.

I'm getting:

./rawexec: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL2_image-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I would have loved to, but it was a game jam, and I ran out of time (working alone, and discovering it takes way more maths than I expected). But also, annoyingly, it was hard to find the fun. It's a fun proof-of-concept as-is, but if I were to put more effort in, I'd want there to be more to it than just a maze. And it turned out to be really hard to take in a fun direction (especially as a dev that likes procedural generation over hand-crafting).

Still occasionally thinking, though. It would be kind of a shame to waste such a good game title. I'm still proud of that. :3

Well that helps!

I'll still test on Wine first out of curiosity, tho. :3

Oh, good to know about Proton, thanks. Had no idea it was related. I'd test on Wine myself, but I'm poor enough I need to be sure it's gonna' work before I buy a game. I just know how good itch is for devs.