itch.io

This looks like a really fun game, but when I tried to play it on the browser and later on a downloaded mac version, it refuses to allow me to navigate away from a small portion of the newspaper. If there's any way to get around this, I'd love to try it out. I'm on an old mac (High Sierra) so maybe that's the issue?

Nice work! Quite a lot of fun. I appreciated the old-school Windows-era nostalgia, the hacking mechanics (you definitely made the right choice in making them more forgiving), the simple game environment and the understated approach to horror. I wish the writing was a bit stronger and the climax felt a bit underwhelming, but I don't want to nitpick that too much given that this was made in just a a week. It's quite an accomplishment given the time window you and your team worked under. 

This is glorious and wonderful in its absurdity. Well done!

I like its simple charm quite a bit. However, I keep running into a glitch where if the enemy gets too close to a player character it becomes invincible to any attacks. If that were fixed, I'd definitely play this for longer. 

QUITE A LOVELY EXPERIENCE. GREAT STORY THAT HOOKED ME IN FROM THE BEGINNING. GOOD WORK!

YES, I FINALLY WON!!! Only took me 1.5 hours, but now I am the Master Of  The Maxxout! 

In all seriousness, good job! I loved the old school graphic style, particle effects and the warping through space background. Audio was strong too. At first I really sucked at the game and felt it was too hard. But after a while the challenge of it grew on me. If found myself improving rapidly and getting more and more into a state of flow. I found I couldn't stop until I finally cleared the level. 

What a wonderfully creative premise! Quite enjoyed this. 

Cool, I look forward to checking your future work out! And thanks! :)

Thanks so much for your detailed feedback! We're so glad to hear you enjoyed the game.

We're going to be working hard over the next year or so on an escape room that takes place in an elevator with supernatural elements, so stay tuned if that's your thing!

Will you guys be doing more work on "One Man Army" or games in the near future? 

That's a solid submission for such a short jam - especially given that you handled the art and programming yourself! That must have been tough. 

Difficulty was well balanced. I wonder how long it took you to tweak elements like the enemy spawning patterns and the enemy speed to where it was. I like the simple, almost hypnotic charm of it and the silliness of the AI messages. (Don't know what your concept for that character was, but I got the sense it was deliberately taking as long as possible just to mess with the player). Music was good too and the sounds were decent.

I've enjoyed your games on this platform and hope (though not expect) that I get the opportunity to play any more you might create. 

I know I'm late to commenting on this, but this is an exceptional submission to the 2025 GMTK jam. Audio is excellent, graphics and game play are excellent. Creativity is FANTASTIC! The fact that you and your team churned this out in a mere 96 hours is just crazy!  

My one criticism would be I wish it were a tiny bit less difficult. Even giving the player a second or two more a turn on the really tough levels could go a long way to save players from excessive frustration, and at times it's really difficult to hit the enemies before they kill me. That said, I was still able to beat all the levels in about an hour and I'm not an extraordinarily skilled gamer so that might render my previous point moot. 

Looks like it has a lot of potential. I'd love to play a more polished version of it if you guys create one.

Thanks so much for creating such a fun experience! You did a lot of things right with it, but more than anything else I loved how well you established a terrifying and compelling atmosphere. Every environment felt very polished - especially the ones in the mine. I got a strong sense that you worked very hard tweaking details like how decayed and weathered the old mining equipment and earth was. That ONE room was downright terrifying! I really appreciated other aspects like how rare the encounters with the monster were. A lot of horror games make the mistake of killing the player over and over again and don't realize that such stops being scary and and becomes tedious very quickly. I liked how often the presence of the monster was implied as opposed to confirmed. 

Thanks again for your hard work on this, we're lucky to be able to play it for free!

Wow, what a lovely and uplifting game! There's not one thing I don't like about it. Congrats on creating such a beautiful experience!

Good work! I really enjoyed the story and would love to play it more if you develop it any further. 

Thank you! I'm glad we are able to provide you with a fun experience that wasn't too difficult or easy (we struggled with that in our first game). Really glad you liked the art and music too! 

Nice work! Simple, intuitive and fun. Liked how the difficulty was fairly forgiving to avoid the tedium of starting all over again. Strong art and audio. A solid gamejam submission. 

Thanks! (And yeah, one of the guys who uses this channel has a mac so I know your pain lol. If anything, it's my fault that I didn't test the game as the only mac user in the group.)

I loved it! Easily one of my favourite submissions for this gamejam. 

Obviously, writing is everything for this kind of game and it was excellent! I don't just mean the game dialogue in the game, I mean the description too. It was actually that which hooked me in first. Without knowing the context for the gamejam, one could be forgiven for believing it really is a product description for an AI. Mainly because there aren't any implications about how dangerous it is until the last bit. It identified your game as something very different from other submissions early on.  

As for the game dialogue, it's very engaging indeed! You did an excellent job of making ELLA-M very relatable to (what I imagine) almost anybody from any culture. The question about whether the player has ever felt like they care more about the characters on a tv show than their actual friends and family was especially brilliant. At the same time, ELLA also seems equally inscrutable. It was a bit like watching an actor playing a trickster. Always wanting  the audience to question their character's sincerity. Keeping them on their toes all the time. I even wonder if ELLA has something akin to D.I.D. where it's a system of personas that vary wildly in the amount of sympathy they have for humanity. 

I do wish there'd been more variety in terms of audio. Like of course that's far from the most important facet for this and it certainly didn't ruin the experience. But I think it'd enhance the more dramatic moments of the game. Like if sounds accompanying ELLA's dialogue would change based on its sudden shifts in mood. Or it could be more subtle, like changing just for a moment when certain words appear to indicate to the audience that said words are key to deciphering ELLA's true intentions. 

 I think I like it enough to pay for a full version if you ever happen to create one. 

Quite enjoyed what I played thus far. Would probably be interested in playing a longer and more polished full version. The art style is especially strong! I'm glad you scored so well re. that, you deserve it. Especially given that you both programmed and coded the game! 

The difficulty felt balanced. 

I like the story and dialogue.

Audio was good except for one thing - the sound heard when you navigate through the key menu is painfully loud and abrasive. You should either have it play more quietly, decrease the volume of the highest frequencies (which you can do pretty easily with a free program like Audacity). 

Apart from that minor nitpick, this is a solid submission. 

I quite enjoyed it! 

Very creative interpretation of the theme. I liked the humour you injected into it (arguing on reddit, lol). Difficulty seemed pretty balanced. Seems like a good choice to be as forgiving as you were for "deaths", especially for someone like me that generally sucks at card games. Thanks for crediting everyone who provided assets for this too, really appreciate that as someone who shares audio with people. 

Thanks again for taking the time to give us such thoughtful feedback! It's very validating and helpful.

Simple puzzle concept, but you really elevated it with the art style and theming! I found myself playing it all the way through till the end. Really well done!

I like the story aspect of constantly going through your phone for far too long. It was a bit confusing to figure out what to do at first, since you're put into the gameplay right away with no explanation. But once I got into it, it was a fun little game to play through!

This was a great puzzle game, and a compelling narrative story to go along with it! Really nice job!

This was an interesting idea, and a nice attempt. It's not really a good idea to have the player go back to a previous level when they lose. 

Really nice platformer! I really like the story and art!

This was really cool! I enjoyed the puzzle of finding the optimal path through the factory to try and get as many upgrades as possible. Would be nice to get another kind of benefit from killing enemies other than conveyor belts, because they're kind of useless when you have too many. Also some sort of way to speed up the belts would be good. But I had lots of fun nonetheless!

This game looks really nice! The WASD controls for the vehicle were a bit hard for me to work with though, and I didn't really like that the Shift key was both sprint (on foot) and brake (in vehicle); those are opposite actions and can be a bit confusing.

The game is good. It's great that it's playable on mobile, though I think you would benefit with some keyboard control too. I was playing on desktop, and I accidentally clicked outside of the game, which didn't register as a jump.

This was a really cool idea! Great execution on the UI and level design. And fantastic job on the art!

This was a very interesting idea! Having your shots loop back at you kind of discourages you from spamming shots, and you're forced to concentrate on your accuracy. I must say, I found it quite the challenge!

Quite an exhilarating ride! I encountered a few UI issues in which some text was overlapping at the end, but aside from that, I had a fun time!

This was quite fun! Adding the different loop shapes was quite an interesting twist to the puzzle! 

Very interesting gameplay! I like the roguelike elements!

This was quite a fun puzzle game! I think you could improve the controls a little bit by allowing us to click and drag the puzzle components around the map, instead of having to switch to the 'X' and back every time you want to adjust the placement of something. Even a 'clear all' button would be helpful.

This game's got a bit of a personality! Very funny stuff; just reading the credits was worth the playthrough!

Nice re-implementation of Balatro (I'm a fan). I like how the music evokes more of a chill, relaxing vibe compared to the original.

Good work! I liked the intro, cute and quirky art style. The ska music was well-written and fitting. I like the simplicity of just working with one button. The level of difficulty felt a bit high, though. Might be a good idea to make it easier to avoid hitting the log. 

Good work!