itch.io

Alright so, you're lucky I'm a GameMaker developer as well, so yes, I can unpack yyz files and play the project in-engine. However, I can't even do that. Something's corrupted. Maybe it's the version of GameMaker I'm using, but I straight up cannot even open your project in-engine. Sorry...

Oooo, OOOOO!! OK, I SEE YOU! So, there was no description so I was like "oh, ok it's an idle clicker" and then my run ended and I see roguelite elements?? That's crazy. Good stuff. Unfortunately I gotta rate narrative and audio with 1 star because there was neither audio nor narrative, but I did enjoy what I played!

Thank you!

That's what we were going for! Thank you so much! Believe it or not, we had more planned but even though we finished early we wanted to make sure what we had was fun enough.

Yeah of course! So basically what I mean is that one hand, the word selection UI allows for the loop gameplay to happen, but also since the words are all kind of floating about and you only have a limited amount of time to make heads or tails of what words are part of that soup and where and had an even harder time finding which ones rhymed and how best to connect them. Oftentimes I found that the bars I constructed made no sense as an actual spoken phrase. That's pretty much it though, I had no other issues with the game and thought you did an amazing job otherwise!

Art is killer and concept is super duper creative!! But in execution, it seems to not stick the landing...  The UI is a double-edged sword where it's required in order for the actual "loop" aspect to come into play, but the way the words are just thrown onto the screen makes it hard to find any that make sense when strung together in a sentence, let alone words that rhyme. I really really really really do love the art and sound design and game on a conceptual level, don't give up on this one!! :D

Thank you!! :D

Thank you Mr. McRae o7

If the ice sk8r lady is not secretly the protagonist of gen 10 pokemon or the new jet set radio game I will be disappointed that such a kickass character design was only ever used for this super fun one-shot game 10/10 would sk8 again

7.8/10 Too much meter :)

At some point there's a huge difficulty spike, dunno how it happens, but the concept istelf is super neat! Not exactly sure what the fish and scrap metal do, maybe just edit the itch page itself to house that info (or if it's there, I am blind and did not see it). GG on that art, Rick. Keep forgetting you're a really good pixel artist for some reason. Well done on the polish on the programming side as well! Can't wait to see y'all after break.

Neato!

Ayyyy, what are the odds?

Even though it's past voting time, I'll still play yours! I'd love to see what differs in our approaches.

Regarding "explaining ourselves better", we actually learned from the last jam that we did that intuitive in-game tutorials for jam games are an absolute necessity, because a lot of people got confused about how our last jam game controlled, and we took that feedback into consideration for this game.

Thanks for liking the art and music! We put a relatively decent amount of thought into them for a game jam deadline.

And yeah, beyond buying every move in the shop, not much incentive to keep going, which I agree is a huge issue. Maybe in a post-jam update, but that's if that even happens.

Sorry, I'm just now seeing this, I've had to work my day job all this past week, and although it's past voting time, I will still play your game!

I agree, there's not much of an incentive to keep playing beyond buying everything in the shop, but hey, it's something!

There's a smaller font in the game files, we didn't have enough time to change the font of the text before the deadline. We tried to compromise by putting new line characters everywhere instead. Thank you for your feedback, and glad you enjoyed it! :)

Appreciate it! Thank you for playing it!!

Yes!! I always turn to Mega Man as inspiration for all of the music I make. I use the same instrument sets too. The turn-based combat was decided last minute. It was originally going to be an auto-fight, but we thought it best to give the players something more to do to be active.

Thank you for your kind words! :D

So believe it or not, buying characters was left on the cutting room floor. We called it the "hiring" system. We just didn't have enough time to implement it, and figured the thing people would want to customize the most would be their moveset.

Oh and thank you for the music compliment!! I love composing for my games.

Also yes, we're well aware of the game's accidental insanely easy difficulty, and we're equally sorry for that, but I'm glad you still had fun regardless!!

Keep saving that pity money, you'll get that shiny new damaging move in no time flat! :)

I get to make this poor sap named Tony lose the only money to his name (that being $20). 10/10, would spin again

"The power of suspicion... in the palm of my hands."

GG Evan :)

So... I actually didn't realize that the achievements give you hints about what to change about your strategy, and I'm really dumb for not noticing that in a game literally called Underachiever.

Great game, surprising amount of content, great concept/puzzle design.

Art style reminds me a lot of Neutronized's games (in a good way!! I love that art style, so naturally I love this too)

Really creative concept.

Was gonna criticize the level select screen as unnecessary at first before I realized that it was the only thing that motivated me to complete the whole game since I knew how much content there was and how much I had left.

Also, love the squash and stretch on the ball. Not really the easiest thing to do with pixel art, but it looks great.

I can concur. Really fun once I learned you shot by stepping on the arrows. I love that you progress two characters at once.

Ahhhhhhhh, silly me! I'll definitely be trying again with that knowledge in mind!!

I, like a few others, accidentally skipped the tutorial and never got it to refresh. Seems like it'd be fun though!

This is gonna sound like a weird bit of praise but I LOVE how the tutorials were handled in this game. No text, just purely discovery told through images tangible to the game world.

The concept is super creative and has a lot of potential, I just think the introduction of the main mechanic took a liiiiittle bit too long to get to. You could probably introduce it as early as stage 2.

Other than that, banger game. GG.

The dialogue was great, and gamepad support is a nice feature. I loved the game a lot! That being said, I might be doing something wrong and can't get past the third level?

Thanks so much! It's now my life's goal to obtain the final hidden super secret 15th star :)

Thanks for the feedback! And don't worry, a lot of people shared the same sentiments about balancing and the lack of loadout saving.

The Persona series is a really interesting comparison, but I totally see it now. Good catch!

Not sure if we'll be working on this post-jam. Only time will tell.

Hey guys, this is my completely justified and totally not joke review of Lakitu Simulator 2023. The racers all thanked me. This would never happen, as Lakitu is never thanked. Very unrealistic, 0/10.

Jokes aside, this game was very fun and I could play this for way longer than I probably should if I let myself. GG

I'm guessing that means you liked it?

Yeah, we tried implementing it, but couldn't get it to work in time for the jam. But I'm glad you had fun nonetheless :)

Hehehe, thanks! My inner Dungeonmaster really shone through with this project I think lol

Oh, I'm sure too. Our GDD for this game has a lot of stuff left on the cutting room floor, we had to shrink it down to bare necessities for jam time. Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks! We appreciate it!

This idea was actually sitting in a notebook of mine for like 3 years, so naturally, I too would want to see this be expanded upon. I just thought using it as the concept for this jam made sense. Now whether or not we'll actually continue work on it has yet to be seen. Probably not, but it's also a little too early to tell.

We spent a bit more time on the UI than we usually do, so thanks for noticing! Glad you liked it!