itch.io

oh no!! That's such an unfortunate bug. I'll have to take a look at some point to see what could've caused it. I'm glad you liked the concept regardless, and thank you! I think there are a lot of areas where I could add more to this game and I would love to keep working on it in the future. Thanks for playing!

I'm sorry to hear that it was confusing, and I think that's a good idea - I originally had adding a tutorial on my list of stretch goals for the jam, and while I unfortunately didn't get to it, I think it definitely would've helped. Definitely understand management being a bit annoying as well; I tried to make the rats a bit more self sufficient later in the game to alleviate that, but maybe in the future I could find a way to work it into a more visible player-controlled mechanic. I'm glad you liked the sprites, and thank you for playing!

Thank you!! I spent way too long on the little tails, so I'm glad you liked them. I think that's a cool idea, and would definitely help justify the cost of the cosmetics.

I respect the dedication to the metagame o7 Thank you for playing! :)

Thank you so much!! I admittedly did not consider trackpad users and I definitely should have haha. If I come back to this game in the future like I hope to, I'll hopefully be able to figure out a good way to make the camera feel a lot better to move around. Adding more stages is a great idea, and something I would love to do in the future. Maybe you eventually power an entire galaxy...? Who knows lol. Glad you enjoyed that little easter egg, and thanks so much for playing!

Thank you!! I got that feedback about the camera movement a few times, if I come back to this game in the future I absolutely plan on reworking it at least a bit, like adding middle click and drag to move the camera or something like that. I also totally agree that rerolling should have a penalty, I didn't have time to work out the balancing for that during the jam but I think that would definitely help make the rats in the shop feel a bit more meaningful. Thank you for playing!

this is an incredibly polished game. the little character is super cute, I loved the little animations, and overall it feels great to play. the controls took a bit of getting used to, but according to my notes once I started getting the hang of it, I spent way too long just throwing the little guy around the levels. Great work!

hello fellow nemo :) this game was so fun! yay for gambling. it takes a simple mechanic and does it well - the upgrades are neat, braking is a nice touch, and I greatly enjoyed becoming unbelievably wealthy. Great work!

thanks for the reply! i really respect you taking feedback seriously. all I had written was that i got stuck, I wasn't able to comment right away at the time so I don't remember where :( if I have time after the jam I'll try to come back and check again! sorry I couldn't provide more useful feedback.

absolutely wild visuals, super cool to look at. unfortunately my browser kept lagging pretty badly, I guess it couldn't handle the sheer power of beyblades, but still quite a fun game. great work!

also, I really respect the absolutely complete commitment in the voice acting. really adds to the experience.

absolutely peak video game. 10/10. all hail honse.

this is such a nice, cozy game!! the text was a bit overwhelming - maybe if there were more of a panel with a light background and the text without the outlines? i'm not sure. this game kind of felt like a combination of kingdoms and castles and dorfromantik, and I happen to quite like both of those games, so I enjoyed this one. good work!

oh yay itch is finally letting me post comments again lol. very cool game!! the idea of playing as a spool of thread is super interesting, and the atmosphere is really neat. according to my notes I managed to be kind of bad at this game, but I think that was completely on me because it made more sense when I came back to it. good work!

very well done!! the art is wonderful, the background combined with the sound effects really make the game's atmosphere feel so nice and polished. number go down :) great work!

This was such a neat game!! The visuals were beautiful, and the sound design was quite nice as well. 

I agree with some of the other comments that the mine itself could maybe be improved a bit - I didn't mind mining the resources themselves, the sound effects and visual polish made them fairly satisfying to mine, but I did spend a lot of time just kind of wandering around mining for resources. Being able to freely reset the resources was beneficial here, but I do think that maybe having more resources closer together could be nice to cut out some of that 'wandering around on a blank screen' feeling. Maybe also adding in some various visual elements to break up some of the background, like  random rocks or making the ground get darker as you go downwards? I'm not sure. I also think that having a stronger gradient of easier materials towards the top and more valuable ones towards the bottom might have made the progression feel more meaningful. Regardless though, I thought this game was super polished for a jam game! The progression felt good, I found the game a lot more engaging once I figured out the teleport item existed, and I liked the sound a lot. Great work!

This is such a cool concept!! I really liked the spin attack mechanic, it was really cool, plus yay for gambling. Unfortunately I guess I increased my damage way too much, because after the second time at the upgrades screen I basically couldn't move my character at all despite increasing movement speed and strength a ton, so I died pretty instantly on wave 11, but still a really neat game! The music and sounds were great, and the visuals were quite polished. Great work!

Thanks for playing! I think those are cool ideas, definitely things to consider for future updates. I've heard that it would be a good mobile game from a few people now, and I would love to update it to be compatible with touchscreens in the future, maybe after the jam. Thanks again for playing!

ok I didn't realize I typed that much lol. TLDR; rats are indeed randomized, you can move the camera with WASD, and I agree with a lot of your suggestions so they will be things I plan to tackle if/when I start working on this game again after the jam. Thank you again :)

Wow, thank you so much for the detailed feedback!!  

• I agree that the rats are hard to tell apart, especially once you have a lot. Unfortunately since I was working solo and made all the art myself during the jam, I completely ran out of time to add more rat colors and cosmetics. It was one of my stretch goals during the extra 24 hours, but I sadly didn't get around to it :(
  • I also planned to have a little popup with each rat's name and their stats when moused over, so it's good to know that that might be something I should prioritize if I come back to this game in the future! Name tags could also be super cute, thanks for the suggestion! I'll have to think about it more.
  • Yes, the rats are all randomized! It's nice to know their names were that memorable lol. Each rat has their name randomly picked from an array of unused names, and the stats and coat colors are randomized. I thought about having certain rats have specific traits tied to their names, like how purchasing a rat named Juniper means they spawn in wearing the full outfit, but didn't get around to adding more than that.
• They do! The incentive is highest at the start of the game, when they rest around 2.5x faster in the rest area, but I had a few people I talked to about the game mention it getting kind of annoying once you have a lot of rats, so the rats gain more energy sleeping in wheels (though still slower than the rest area) once you reach the city stage. I agree that it is kind of an unfortunate trade-off, so if I come back to this in the future like I hope to, I want to try to find a way to incentivize taking good care of the rats without it becoming overwhelming for the player.
  • Aww! Rats are adorable. You absolutely should be able to pet the rats and that was a grave oversight on my part, should've been my first priority, I will not make that mistake again.
• Not currently, no. I think it would be a good idea, I just ran out of time to figure out a good pricing system before the deadline. I admittedly think the whole balancing of the progression especially late-game could use some more work, even with the time I spent working on it during the grace period, so hopefully that's something I can improve in the future, and I'll keep all your feedback in mind once I do :)
• Thank you so much for letting me know, I didn't realize until reading your comment that I forgot to put the full list of controls on the itch page!! You can move the camera with WASD as long as you aren't currently in a shop window or timing minigame. I'm adding proper controls info & a tutorial to my 'possible to-do' list for after the jam.

I'm happy to hear you enjoyed my silly little rat game!! 

Thank you, and thank you so much for playing!

That's so nice of you to say!! Thank you. The original concept for this game definitely leaned more into idle game territory, and I sped up progression for the jam, but I think adapting it to work on mobile would be a really fun thing to work on in the future, I'll have to remember that. Thanks for playing!

Thank you!! Happy to hear the long nights were worth it. Thanks for playing!

Thank you!! That means to much to hear. I'm definitely considering coming back to this game in the future to add more content :) Thanks for playing!!

Thank you so much!! :D and totally understandable confusion! the fur colors for the rats themselves are purely visual, and then the colors of the cards in the shop is basically their "rarity" (pink is common, green is uncommon, and purple is rare). Basically just means ones with rarer colors have higher stats and cost more lol, but sometimes you can get lucky and get rats with rare stats in a cheaper category. Thank you for playing!!

This was so cool!! I hit wave 10 before my strategy of spamming dash until the number of enemies was less than 3 failed me and I wasn't able to recover. I thought the controls were pretty good, the spin speed felt pretty nice (sometimes a little slow when I needed to turn 180 degrees, but any faster and I think it would be too fast), and while I did unfortunately have an issue where about a third of the screen was black at the bottom, which sometimes meant i couldn't find enemies, it was still a cool game. The sound and particles made it feel very polished, and I thought it was great execution on a seemingly simple concept. Good work!

This is such a cute game! I just threw on one of my favorite silly playlists and it was quite fun. Pretty difficult - the apple took me like 3 or 4 attempts, and I barely scraped by with the rock, but still a fun game. I thought the combat was pretty interesting, and once I figured out the controls, it was really enjoyable tossing the little cat around the map! The graphics were really charming, and I think with just a bit of sound and some visual effects, (and maybe making the game a tiny bit easier lol, or I'm just bad at it) this could be a really nice complete experience. Good work!

This is definitely a very difficult game, I got pretty unlucky, but it was still really cool! The visuals and sound worked together really well, and the game as a whole felt super polished. I think it would be cool if there was a way to maybe roll specifically for healing yourself or something, since seeing my health slowly tick down while the enemies refused to miss even once was a little unfortunate, but I suppose that kind of just comes with the territory for a very luck-based game. Great work!

another game containing rats! great stuff. Super atmospheric with the sound design, and I thought the pixel art characters with the eerie 3D world had a really cool effect. I unfortunately got stuck on a gravestone while looking for more rats, but still a neat experience. I agree with some of the other comments that a counter for how many rats total needed to be collected might've been helpful. The first time one of the characters just... ascended into the sky was quite funny. Good work!

truly a game of all time, I got 120 spins. Very silly and goofy, it might be simple but its undeniably charming lol

Thank you!! Happy to hear you liked them. Their little faces were so fun to draw lol. Thanks for playing!

Thank you again for the feedback! I finished implementing the cosmetics system today, and updated the money system to have a (hopefully) much better feeling of progression. I unfortunately ran out of time to add any more rat colors, since they take time to animate, but that'll have to be something I'll consider coming back to in the future. Thanks again for playing!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to recreate the bug today, so I'm not sure what caused it. I added a couple safeguards to hopefully keep it from happening again, so fingers crossed! Thank you for letting me know about the bug though, and thanks again for checking out my game :)

Also a solo dev, if anyone wants another game to check out!
https://itch.io/jam/theveryseriousjuniperdevgamejam/rate/4719659

Thank you so much!! Yay funny rat game. I didn't have time to properly balance the money system yesterday, which I will be fixing today. I'm glad you enjoyed, and thanks for playing!!

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it. Making the art for this jam was so much fun. Thanks for playing!

Thank you for the kind words!! That is definitely an unfortunate bug, I will look into that today and hopefully get it fixed. I'm glad you liked the art, and thank you for playing!

Thank you so much!! there is actually a whole cosmetics system that I didn't get implemented in time so its disabled in the current upload, but i'm working on finishing it up today which I think should help :)

I like the idea of more skins too, so I'll add some if I have time! And yeah, the money and power production currently have really high multipliers for the more rats and wheels you have, and I didn't have time to balance it before I had to sleep. I absolutely plan on fixing that soon since I agree that getting too rich too fast messes up the game's progression. Thank you for playing!!

Hello! Thank you for playing! That's understandable, I hadn't gotten a chance to update the itch page until around now.

Basically, there are random holes in the ground scattered around the map. Robot bugs spawn from these points which drop parts you can use to craft turrets to fight even more bugs, and they also give you "dna", which you can spend to mutate your turtle.

I'm glad you enjoyed the controls and the turtle, and thank you for giving it a chance even without instructions!

Haha a fellow procrastination-themed game, you love to see it. This is such a fun concept for a game - I like typing fast so you definitely had me engaged combining it with a classic space invaders type game. Nothing seemed to happen after I finished the homework so I think I missed the ending, but still a cool concept regardless, and the random stuff in the entertainment half each time was quite funny. Great work!

This is really quite cool!! The visual style is quite neat, and I really liked experimenting with the different spells. Getting to strategize and use the enemy's movement against them was rather fun, and I liked the concept of not only having one spell per room but also getting to choose, since it basically tripled the number of levels. Good work!

Really awesome game!! The visuals are incredible, super polished, and the animations as well. I liked the combination of perspectives and art styles, and everything together really made it feel a bit like a fever dream in the best way. The sound design was also really cool and engaging. All together, a incredibly creative entry! Great work!