itch.io

As usual your entry is really good!

Visuals are really great, the retro look, animations, palette choice, all speaks the game of that age. Controls and keyboard-only approach fortifies it. By the end of the game I’ve built the muscle memory for most of the things I need to do.

I loved treasure chests hidden behind encounters, so you get a reward after taking some risk and get stronger as a result. I also like the approach I usually call “puzzle RPG”, which basically means that you need to find encounters you’re comfortable with, finish them, level up, find the next challenge, rinse and repeat.

The RNG when your character miss all the time is a bit annoying, but if you play strategically it’s not a big deal, it just makes each encounter a bit repetitive and a bit too long. A, C-2-1, rinse and repeat, sometimes it felt like I’m playing a piano and when my characters improve and get more powerful I start to play a different melody :D

Speaking of melody, just any basic ambient sound would help the atmosphere, however that wasn’t a big issue, as I was getting involved in the story and fights.

Ah, and one last thing - I think if you skip the selection, if you only have one valid target will help the game a little bit. For example when you’re casting a spell or shooting, you still have to press 1 or A, while they’re the only valid targets.

Here’s my play-through:

Thanks for playing the game!

Tasks were mostly Fetching (2 quests) and Kleaning (the rest of them), so yes, they were a bit similar, just with different enemies and dungeon parts.

UI and especially party management UX are not very polished, there’re definitely a bunch of ways to optimize them so it would be easier. It doesn’t help that you usually have so many upgrades in a very short amount of time, that you have to dive through the menus often.

We didn’t opt for any combat/event log due to a limited amount of screen space (we essentially are emulating 640x360 resolution with only a font being at full 720p res), but I guess that would’ve helped with tracking quests and what is happening during the combat.

Thanks for playing the game!

It’s so enlightening to see how others play, thanks for recording the play-through!

Maze was mazy, yep, I guess you were also a bit over cautious not to explore all the tiles there.

Yes, the shop has a huge list, so we had to make it a scrolling list and then mouse support wasn’t that good for that.

For the most part enemies also have a physical weaknesses, so you can do a full STR+AGI build and have tons of damage. For instance Ice enemies are mostly weak against the blunt damage, while nature (and trash) is weak against the slash damage, and fire is fire :D

Thanks for playing the game!

The scope was big, but in the end we were able to deliver. It was a first time for us to make party management and equipment to this extent, so a lot to learn too.

Teleporters are evil, yes. We felt that we might just put them in an optional part, but we didn’t have any optional parts this time, so they were blocking the progress. Well, the guest area of a dragon realm should be guarded properly with all the tricks.

Thanks for playing the game!

We are using “Master System” palette for the art + some brown colours from another palette, so these colours mostly reflect the way the look of games from the SEGA Master System. Minus the fact that we have a 4-tone lighting, which adds more shades.

Thanks for playing the game!

Yes, it’s not the shortest game we made this time, but I hope you enjoyed exploring enough to get the idea of the game!

Thanks for playing the game!

Well, you almost beat the game, so you only missed the last win screen and it’s not really an exciting screen :)

Thanks for playing the game!

Yes, keyboard-only controls was one of the design choices and mouse support was added mostly for convenience. The only two things you cannot do with just a keyboard is quick save/load :)

I’m glad that you regeared for different enemies, it might feel tedious with a lot of UI in the way, but you end up with a stronger build, which can two-three-shot enemies in most of the cases.

Quick load works only inside the session, hence “quick” in the name. We didn’t manage a complete save system and with a web build I don’t even know where to start with that (maybe there’s some functionality on itch which provides you with some storage or maybe cookies can be enough?)

Thanks for playing!

Having a consistent palette and one artist helps a lot with visual consistency. Having just one VST helps with audio consistency as well :) I’m glad that you liked the progression/leveling, it was all put together at the last moment and we didn’t have enough time to polish it properly, but it seems that it’s serving the purpose!

Thanks for playing our game!

Thanks for playing the game! We tried to target the old school vibes as much as possible.

Hey, that’s an interesting entry. It’s very non-conventional in terms of dungeon crawlers and it shows.

I felt confused by the combat system, I didn’t get the idea of what is going on until I’ve beaten up the game. But it really felt like a small puzzle in the end - go there, find bleach, use it here, find oil, use it in another place, find solvent, finish the game.

I really loved the voice over, in my opinion it always adds a touch of charm.

As kunic mentioned it felt like you’re always off the grid and dungeon crawling part wasn’t the strongest, as the dungeon was around 20 positions with actions not respecting the direction you’re facing and one of the enemies being completely off-axis.

It’s a great start for a first game! Keep it up, gain experience, rinse and repeat.

Here’s my play-through:

Very interesting entry, I loved the gameplay of the first part and atmosphere of the second part. As always I’ve enjoyed poetry and narration (I haven’t pointed it out in the video), it feels very personal this way, an author’s project.

I felt like input buffering with slowness of movement animation was a hassle for me, but that might be my setup? I ended up overshooting quite a lot from time to time. The visuals in the first part felt a bit flat, while in the second part you did a great job of producing a nice visual atmosphere by combining lighting, fog and particles (I think). Music gave a lot of nice vibes and wasn’t in the way of the gameplay, so it felt like a nice soundtrack.

One thing I noticed after the play-through is that in the first part you were rushed by boredom a lot which gave you little time to look at the upgrades and their description (it was nice when you received items after the fight, as you can stop and think a little bit). I guess having some kind of pause-not-pause in the first part to look at what is happening and what you’re upgrading would be nice.

But as always I’ve enjoyed playing your game and this is a solid entry with a nice twist and a personal touch. Thanks for making it!

Here’s my play-through:

Hi CryptRat! Looking forward to your entry!

Great entry, I’ve managed to even play coop with someone once and it felt nice in terms of experience. But then, at higher levels I discovered that you can just stack all the hats for one damage type right before encounter to make the game more trivial and I don’t know if that will work in multiplayer though.

I liked how you used most of the assets. I definitely hear a lot of different music there, a lot of different zones, it feels nice. Do you have procedurally generate dungeons by the way?

I got to level 8 and probably spent too much time with it (but not as much as Slippers and Local Minimum it seems!), but I had a great time.

Here’s my play-through if you can sit through almost 3 hours of recorded video lol:

Note though, that it doesn’t really save it to a file, it’s just an in-memory save to restore from if you die.

That’s what we do with a window right now, we base our resolution on 720p and then scale it 2x if it can fit the monitor (so it’s 2560x1440 on a 4k monitor) or even more, if you have 8k monitor for example. We can pad it with black pixels in fullscreen, though figuring out how to scale UI properly between jams will probably be beneficial.

Yeah, I’ve enjoyed it a lot :) Thanks for the game!

Thanks for playing!

There’s no minimap, though it might be a good thing to add, but it might be confusing with verticality (add a floor selection to the minimap as well?). We’ll think how it can be implemented for our future jam entries!

Combat could’ve been a bit better if we would customize it for each environment as well, as meatspace and dreamspaces share the same combat, though cyberspace does it a bit differently. We just ran out of time and would probably improve this in a post-jam build, this is a low-hanging fruit. We would love to explore more exciting and tactical options for combat as well, but in the current system it’s mostly about rolling a dice for a hit, but maybe we could add an additional risk-reward element to it post-jam too.

Thanks for playing! We were aiming for cyberpunk dystopian atmosphere and judging by your words we delivered it at least partially :D

Verticality was new for us and we struggled with it a bit, as it’s almost impossible to notice a ladder going down, but we hope to improve it in the next jam!

Thanks for the playing! I need to rewatch your play-through closely to figure out what else we can improve aside from the things you’ve mentioned.

Yeah, all these instructions on the page are due to a kind reminder from Kordanor and you, that game might be confusing and page instructions might help :D

Your initial points are there as a replacement for initial character creation screen. They’re confusing, I agree, and we can improve that in post-jam build!

We’re not doing full-screen yet, but we’ll definitely look into making a full-screen version maybe post-jam. I just don’t want to support any non-integer UI scaling, as it might not look good and break, but we can figure that out after the jam, without time pressure :)

Yeah, story-wise I would recommend reading the explanation on the page to get the idea of what is happening. We might revisit our story-telling after jam too, as we have the story, but need a tool to tell that story properly.

Thanks for playing! That was my initial build as well, don’t let enemies get close to you and hack every door possible :)

Regarding the restart - there’s a “save” button right below items, it should save your progress right at the point when you pressed it. Maybe it’s not very noticeable?

That’s such an interesting experiment. It almost feels like you had a junior engineer or an intern who doesn’t have enough experience in the industry and you tried to guide it to make a working game. It kind of did, but at the same time it’s a very rough game and maybe that is what where we currently are in terms of AI capabilities of writing game code.

I loved that you’ve used a lot of enemies from the tileset, that was nice to see so many of them, but the combat itself wasn’t too fascinating. I found an exploit when you can attack as many times in the turn as you wish as long as you press attack button soon after starting the previous attack action (I guess it’s not being blocked until all animations finish). And I found rogues to be too powerful, so I just had a 4 rogue party which obliterated anything it touched, which was fun for some time. But after 2-3 battles and figuring out that no abilities work it just became a chore.

I would love to be able to explore dungeon more and combat less, but I guess your AI intern wasn’t cooperating too much :)

Anyway thanks for your service to the community, it’s a good example of completely vibe-coded game, here’s my play-through (I’m sorry if I sound a bit too frustrated in the video):

Nice entry!

I think I’ve missed something in the game, as I was able to increase the difficulty only once and I’ve never encountered the way to gain a title or to get that hitpoints increasing shrine again (I’ve used it at the beginning for +3 hitpoints). So I ended up with ++ items in all slots and 23hp, which was enough to escape underworld 5 times.

I liked that this game has an exploration element on the world map and different tilesets in different dungeons.

Idle combat is nice and deterministic, so I feel like at the point when you know that you can kill an enemy with the build you have right now without losing any hp you should just skip that enemy as there’s no risk and no reward in that action. And exploring some of the bigger dungeons with combat which are too easy (maybe I should’ve find a difficulty increase shrine to change my mind) becomes meaningless as you will not get any new loot, you can clear them without any risk and the only thing you gain from it is coins, which I couldn’t use :(. I would love to see an option to “idle” dungeon in the case when it’s not dangerous anymore. And a way to escape from the battle would be nice too!

I would probably try again with a different class later on to explore it further.

But it was an enjoyable game, here’s my play-through:

That was super confusing at the start, it took me quite some time to figure out what is going on. At first I thought that it’s about rhymes or word length, and only after several major fails I figured out what I supposed to do.

I would call it a fantastic narrative crawler, it plays well, 6dof disorients you, while all the narration adds a lot of charm to the game and is the foundation for the game. And all the puzzles/choices adds a lot to the game, makes it a whole.

I wish that my blood will stay longer on surfaces, but maybe this way it’ll be even more messy and harder to figure out where you’ve been.

Great entry, would love to crawl something like that again!

Here’s my play-through:

Oh I loved puzzles so much. All the ways to move around to get to the goal, all the illusionary walls, nice touch.

UI felt a bit wrong, maybe because of resolution, as it looks all right on your screenshots.

Everything else felt pretty much how it should for such a game.

Here’s my play-through video:

Hey, nice game. I was very confused at first with combat controls, but after a couple of tries I’ve figured it out!

Vanquished 10 monks top, I feel like I’m running it sub-optimal, but it’s also a great puzzle game of sorts “how to beat the most number of monks in limited number of turns and with these abilities, while monks move around” :D

Movement felt snappy, combat was a bit counter-intuitive first, but it felt nice after figuring it out. I feel like adding a “wind up” state for combat will make it a bit more intuitive as there’is currently no indication if you’re going to hit something or not.

Here’s my play-through (sorry for calling it “Pile of guts”, that’s what was written on that page lol, so I ended up using it as a name of the game lol):

Even though it might be a rushed experience I liked it a lot.

I think the best thing I liked about it is the idle combat and character progression, it felt really nice to see your characters grow in power and overcome more powerful enemies.

I felt like sound in combat was a bit too loud, startled me first time I’ve played it :)

Several times during the play-through I had a bug when game registered my movement commands twice instead of once I think. At least it felt this way.

Great job, I would love to crawl it a bit more!

Here’s a video of my play-through:

Hey, I’ve had an interesting journey in this game! Loved the optional dungeons you can visit and the whole overworld travel mechanics.

I feel like maybe perspective can be improved as well as movement, but other than that it felt well in the crawling part.

Combat wise it was too straight forward without too many choices at the start, but it was nice to see tactical turn-based combat implemented in the jam, looking forward to playing it more!

Here’s a play-through (sorry for the voice volume, I didn’t realize that my mixer is sending game audio alongside microphone):

Nice entry, I’ve made it to the third or fourth level I think? Game crashed on me in the tutorial zone, but then I was able to play it smoothly for quite a while.

I loved the movement, it’s very snappy and responsive. I didn’t really understand the combat, felt like bumping into enemies just worked. I also was able to craft everything, but didn’t see the use for iron ore I found later in the game. Do I need to equip the sword somehow, and/or do I need to craft the second sword?

Kudos for using raylib!

Here’s a video of my play-through (sorry for the voice volume, didn’t realize that my mixer is sending game sound alongside voice this time):

Super short game, but it has a bunch of nice elements, like compass! I also loved that you spawn an effect when the spell hits something, nice touch.

Though the game is too short to judge the rest of the stuff, the perspective can be improved I think.

Here’s my super short play through:

Great job with this game!

I really loved the “go” sfx vibe, added so much to the game!

I feel like turning around can be made non-blocking, so the movement will be more responsive this way, otherwise movement wise it felt nice (except that turning and strafing was switched relative to what it’s usually are).

Combat wise I started to develop strategies, which is great, but it feels like if you make turning a non-turn-provoking action it will make this game even better. Plus I’ve noticed that enemies in most cases acted before you (which felt a bit wrong), but sometimes they acted after you, so it was harder to plan ahead.

Music, overall vibe of the dungeon, throwing random things at enemies, it all felt great!

Here’s my play-through, I haven’t finished the game though:

Super nice entry, great job!

I’ve managed to climb up to the “dragon” boss I think, but was unable to escape.

I liked the art style, the whole environment, how dungeon is laid out, it really makes a lot of sense, as you navigate all those different passages and it feels like you’re exploring.

I think that movement/actions can be a bit more responsive, it felt a bit strange at times not being able to act, when I wanted to. I feel like adding an instant reaction, or advancing time, when player acted would’ve worked better, but at the same time giving Old Fart that sense of slowness is brilliant (though even for other characters it feels too slow for me).

I didn’t understand how to use bows and wands at first and melee weapons felt like a faster way to progress through the game anyway, so I ended up almost ignoring all the magic and ranged stuff.

Here’s a video of my incomplete play-through (OBS froze in a mid-run):

Thanks for playing! The writing was an afterthought and was done in the last moment, so it might really be confusing, sorry about that. One thing that could help in this case is to talk to both sides in the dreamspace, you might see a different perspective. The whole plot (which we’ve tried to communicate via dialogues) is that you found a dark spot in the network and that this spot is occupied by a facility. The whole facility was built and driven by a super-human AI some time ago in order to use humans as resources by placing them in capsules (you can see them in the meatspace all the time, the green ones are occupied, the empty ones on the rails are for future victims) and then placing them in the dreamspace, so they’ll be happy and driven, so the AI can harvest their mind state. But those dreamspaces lacked detail and creativity and when AI discovered an alien conscience fungus it captured it, connected it to the system and used its consciousness to improve dreamspaces. That worked only partially, as that fungus was able to produce some of its kind in the meatspace, capturing physical space in the facility, so AI retracted to the cyberspace and was only able to hold it ground there and partially in dreamspaces. Fungus, being a prisoner, tried to ruin dreamspaces and produced some monsters in there with limited success. This is where you come in and either help get rid of the fungus in the dreamspaces (effectively severing some of the control that fungus have on dreamspaces and limiting its abilities), or you help fungus by eliminating occupants of those dreamspaces, who are humans in those capsules, effectively straining AI of its power even more. Those two sides play you as their puppet as they only open passages in spaces they don’t live in (fungus in the cyberspace and AI in the meatspace), so you need to eliminate some of the forces of the other ones. When you finish with the last dreamspace you are actually captured in the dreamspace yourself, which looks almost identical to your world, but that’s another story :D We ran out of time and were unable to write 4 different ending texts or an ending level, so we decided to leave only one. We’ve initially planned to have different endings depending on whom you helped, so if you only helped fungus you’ll end up destroying the AI and leaving the facility, if you’ve helped only the AI you’re in the dreamspace with no way to escape, if you helped fungus at least once then you’re in different dreamspace and have an option to find fungus emissary and escape.

Thanks for the feedback! I’ll check out if we can figure out how to fix iframe container, it might only be an issue on big resolutions.

Oh, I was wondering if they’ll affect my guys and was a bit afraid to try :D

Oh, yeah that scheme will probably work way better for me as well, thanks for thinking about it! I got used after some time to just press the corresponding buttons, but that would make it way easier.

I decided to ignore chicken for the sole reason as it didn’t look too good stats-wise. I wish there were a hint in the start saying that chicken is useful beyond combat. And I went to kill those robots as a test for EMP grenade effectiveness as well.

That’s a nice crawler!

Loved the retro style in the graphics, minimal audio design, keyboard controls.

At first battles were a bit strange, but as I gained ranged weapons they became way more structured I think and I had a lot of fun, even without a numpad!

I have found at least one secret room (I think it was a secret room) and I loved the ice puzzle!

Overall I’ve greatly enjoyed this game and loved how it was structured and laid out. An automapper was the essential thing to find in here.

Here’s my play-through:

What a nice game, it feels like a complete and a really polished game!

I’ve enjoyed the crawling, the combat, the art and the music! For combat I think the only thing I was missing is the description of how it works (ingame), but I guess I’ve figured it out during the play.

I don’t have anything to critique. Game was really good, I’ve defeated every enemy except the hidden one and it felt like all the features were adding to the game (I especially loved the pathfinder).

Here’s my play-through:

Interesting approach to crawling and shooting :)

Atmosphere is super nice, all these whispers “name’s Hard Boiled”, all these lines of the character when he’s approaching some parts of the level are really nice.

In some portions of the game I felt a bit surrounded because in order to shoot you need to quickly move your mouse and you cannot turn in the approximate direction you want to face before you hold RMB.

Other than that it feels like a nice little game with funny characters, voice acting and generally feels quite polished, good job!

Here’s my play-through:

Very nice one.

I think this card/coin mechanics work pretty well as you can aim at positive sum or burn through enemies coins in order to defeat them faster. I liked how you can have different strategies based on cards you have on hand and in the deck, that seemed like a good balance.

Sometimes movement was unresponsive, I don’t know when exactly, it was just ignoring my movement keys for a second or two couple of times during the play-through.

Crawling and the dungeon were nice, but I would’ve liked to have a clearer understanding of where I am, something noticeable. Though in the end it didn’t really matter, as you just go through enemies until you reach the final boss.

Here’s my play-through: