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I guess some humans take a more direct approach when banishing the goblins back into the forest?

Joking aside, thanks for playing the game and letting us know! We’re aware of a couple of places like that, y’know, game jam issues. If you pay close attention, you might notice the trees leave a lot of room on the right-side of every doorway ;) We plan to make less bodge’y solution in the updated release of the game.

That is such an adorable drawing, I love it! The sign in the background simply saying “Home” is such a nice touch.

I watched your playthrough of the game, and I had a big grin on my face the entire time. The way you covered the maps in notes and cute sketches is exactly how we wanted that to work out (also, justice for cage-cat)

You might be interested to know, we are in-fact developing this game further! You can check out our announcement video which we released earlier today:

One of the devs of Hoping for a Home Here! We’re so happy to be featured in the collection, it honestly feels unreal. Huge thank you to all the other devs in the jam who left feedback on our game during the jam. We were allowed to update the game for this collection, and we tried to take as much feedback as possible to heart <3

Of course, also thank you Ducky for putting the collection together! This jam has been awesome.

We recently used this asset pack for a recent game jam game, and it did really well for itself! Couldn’t have done it without these assets, thank you very much! Feel free to check it out: https://averyshinycoin.itch.io/hoping-for-a-home

Thank you for this one! We used this friendly lil’ goblin as the main character of a recent game jam game, it did really well for itself and lots of people complimented the character! Feel free to check it out! https://averyshinycoin.itch.io/hoping-for-a-home

That’s awesome! I love it

I had to come back and check this now that the results are out, grats on the high rank! Love to see you ended up uploading some screenshots too!

Heck yeah, glad that you liked it!

You wouldn’t happen to have grabbed a screenshot of coffee-Gabbo? We love the goblin art people come up with

We’re glad to hear you liked it! The sounds is definitely something we were aware of, though it fell into the “We’ll fix it later– oops time ran out”-bucket (surely a unique issue that no one else in this jam had). We hope at least that we caught the right atmosphere with the sounds we have.

Thanks for checking out the game, even if it wasn’t your favourite!

I’m so thrilled you liked the ending at least! We were going back and forth on how much time it was worth spending on it, since we didn’t know how many people would see the whole game through, but we ultimately decided the game needed a good ending to tie it all together.

OH! And here I was just cooking on vibes. I thought those were just all the available recipes, like a cookbook (and that the list was bugged because it kept changing <.< ) That makes it so much easier.

Edit: I tried it again and got 6 / 7 satisfied customers (yay!), though 3 of them just wanted raw bone. Sister, this whole helltown is full of degenerates.

This is a cool one! I agree with some of the previous commenters that it felt pretty overwhelming at the start. Making a connection to Papers Please which this seems to draw heavily upon, I think it was important that that game started off with a simple binary “Are you from Arstotzka, Y/N? (Glory to Arstotzka)” and then ramped up the complexity from there.

Then again, that game also took longer than 4 days to make, so the comparison is unfair. Still, I think what you’ve made suits the theme great, the graphics are well drawn and the gameplay still manages to tickle the bureaucrat part of my brain in just the right way.

In a jam where lots of games had the idea of “platformer, but your corpse can be used as a platform”, this one remembered the crucial detail of making the platforming and jumping actually feel good, and for that you’re already ahead in my book. I also enjoy that you let me respawn immediately before the next death pit, rather than having me run back from the start or a checkpoint every death.

It has a few points of frustration; there were a couple of blind jumps where you had to jump off a cliff without seeing where you would land. Given death is unavoidable and lives are limited, a couple of bad jumps early could mean a whole run was dead and you wouldn’t even know it.

Overall, an enjoyable game though!

Great take on the theme. It was a bit finicky to guess what the customers wanted based on the thought bubbles alone, but after a couple of attempts I got it down to a solid three (3!) satisfied customers!

… I mean, I never said I was good at this job.

Good fun though.

Some goblins flee the light. Others see it as a challenge. Thanks for checking out the game, we’re glad you liked it!

Thanks for checking out the game!

The obituary reports a death which presents an opportunity for our goblin hero to find a home for the night. That’s at least how we were thinking about it. In concepting, we had plans for there to be more of a detective-murder-mystery vibe going on. Time forced us to scrap a lot of ideas, and we decided to prioritize the stuff we thought was fun, even if that made the connection to the theme less clear.

Glad you liked it either way!

Thanks for checking the game out, we’re really glad you enjoyed it! It’s awesome to see the map scribbling being used the way we hoped for.

Wow, what a take on the theme. This was fun, even if some of the challenges felt very punishing (looking at you, dancing game). I also loved the touch that the priest was playing the typing minigame while you were stealing the flowers.

Heck yeah, more games about goblins. We too made a game about helping goblins and-

Wait–

Wait what are you doing to those goblins?

Oh no, not the goblins D:

In all seriousness, super charming game. It took me a few attempts to get it right, and I ended up bringing out a pencil and paper to start keeping track of things, but I got it to work in the end. I also fail to see why the game fails if you clone yourself; that seems like the ultimate elixir of life when you think about it ;)

Heck yeah, more games about goblins. We love to see it.

This was fun, it felt like a ‘90s strategy PC game. I agree with the other comment, the bomb-goblin wave (bomblin?) felt like a huge step up in difficulty, they just wrecked everything I had made. I would have loved to see your main tower having a light attack, just so you don’t automatically lose if the enemy has 1-2 goblins left.

This is a fun and creative take on the theme! The graphics and music are super charming. It took a while to getting used to attacking on spacebar, most other games in the jam reserve the spacebar for jumping, but once I got my brain rewired it was super fluid and fun!

That’s totally understandable, I think everyone has a whole host of features that were left on the cutting room floor for these jams. This really does feel like something special, and I hope you’re able to develop it further once the jam is over.

(Also, I just noticed now that there actually is an indicator for when a weapon passively reloads, it just got lost in the chaos on my first playthrough)

Holy hell gang, this game is sick. Please, you need to upload some screenshots and gifs to get more eyes on this, it deserves all the attention it can get. I only downloaded it because I skimmed the comments, and I’m so glad that I did.

It’s 5’s across the board. Develop it further and slap it on Steam, I’d buy it.

Below is a list of features I’d like to see. Please don’t take this as criticism, take it as a threat:

• Let me swap weapons with the scroll wheel
• Show me on the HUD of when a weapon has reloaded. Swapping from the pistol to take down a flyer, to the shotgun to faceblast an overzealous robot, then to the rocket launcher to send 4 quick shots into the boss feels amazing; but swapping to a weapon you thought was ready kills that momentum dead in its tracks
• I want more points for stylish kills. Quick swapping weapons / multiple kills with one shot / headshots / kills while rocket jumping / 180-snap targeting. Give me MORE and give it flashy messages that comes up on screen.
• Once the rifle is unlocked, the pistol felt like it lost all purpose outside of being a dedicated bell-ringer. Perhaps it could be reworked to keep it more relevant?

Ok that’s all. I’m gonna go back to play it some more now

What the f*ck did I just play

This game plays like a feverdream in the best way possible. I have no notes, Steve is amazing

Ah, yep that’d do it! I thought the icon meant I needed to tap it.

“Hey doc, I know you ordered a new heart, but we got an empty takeout box in the delivery instead, think you can make it work?”

No notes, I love it

Love this take on the theme, didn’t think I’d see a Plate-Up-esque ghost matchmaker in this jam, but here we are. I would have loved to get some clearer indication of what you’re currently looking at. Many times I accidentally picked up a ghost instead of seating one, then when clicking E again to return it, I instead picked up a third ghost? It made the game more frustrating than it needed to be. Overall though, I found it enjoyable. Good take on the theme and a super cute graphics style. Also, we stan gay ghosts in this household.

The first boss had me worried. The hitboxes on the boss and spikes felt bigger than their sprites, and the attacks didn’t have enough wind-up to really avoid. It felt unfair more than anything. But the second boss really saved the game in my opinion. Much more varied attacks that were telegraphed well and with tighter hitboxes. It took me a few attempts, but it never felt like I died from something that wasn’t my own fault. All in all, good music, cool graphics, fun little story (hate it when I die while taking a pee pee, and have to go kill death, so relatable). Overall, good scores from me.

I did encounter some funny bugs on the Death fight. In one attempt he went into overdrive and started doing two attacks at the same time? Another time he straight up went invisible whilst spamming fireballs? I dunno, at least I think they were bugs. They were a fun challenge though.

I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, but after the first screen when the characters touch the game simply gets stuck in a loading screen for me? Other commenters seem to have gotten further, so I imagine it’s on my end.

I found the hard-drawn style very appealing, and the voice acting was on point (even if the Well? Did you find anything? got a bit repetitive on the fifth attempt) It was also bug-free on my experience.

I wasn’t able to find the third ending, but I also don’t play a lot of visual novels so maybe that’s a skill issue on my part. There were some small touches that I noticed and liked, such as the the lilies being more “hidden” than the poppies; stuff like that shows more thoughtful game design.

Overall, solid game. I enjoyed my time with it, despite not usually being into visual novels. Hope to see you make more stuff in the future

Thanks for checking our game out! The writing mechanic turned out a bit unintuitive, we wanted to communicate it better but time ran out. I’ve updated the control guide on the itch page to clarify when you decide to continue :)

Hi, would you be willing to offer a sample kit of this asset pack? Mainly interested in trying the basic geometry, so just the most basic floor and wall tiles. I’m currently looking for an isometric asset pack like this, but I’d like to get a sense of how it feels to build with before I commit to a purchase.

Yesss, thank you very much!
Also congratulations on your high ranking! Hope to see you lot again next year. 

I like that the game sort of went in stages, first from "Wait, what am I doing?" to "Oh, I need to reveal all the rooms" and finally "Ok, how do I make a stage to collect the keys and reach the end?". I also tried to figure out if I could softlock myself, but was happy to see that wasn't a possibility.

I would have liked to see more puzzle elements to it, a few of the rooms seemed a bit redundant; maybe a room which let you go back up one room to allow for backtracking could have opened up more possibilities for puzzles, but the game was short enough that it didn't outstay its welcome.

Thanks for checking out the game! We did test letting you only steer with the tethers during development, the short answer of the result was "Frustration"

That said, a fair number of the levels are beatable without A and D if you want a challenge!

I want to love this game, I really do, because I find the concept of a "Tower defense but you need to program your towers" to be really interesting.

In execution though, I can't help but to find it lacking. The control scheme with WASD felt clunky and unintuitive, and I feel like the game would have been better served by just letting the player mouse-click on the plots and turrets.

For the turrets themselves, anything that isn't "Shoot" felt like a waste of a cycle, especially with the basic turret. The Auto-turrets should have been better in principle, but given it takes them a cycle to aim at their intended target, by the time they actually get to shoot, the target has already moved on. That said, once I got to play with the more advanced turrets  I feel like the game became more fun.

With that criticism out of the way, I still enjoyed the game enough to see it through, and I'd love to see this concept polished up and expanded upon. I've love to see more turrets that give you meaningful secondary things to do, like the Tesla tower charging up. As I said, I find it to be a very compelling take on the "loop" idea (especially when you're throwing it to a crowd of game creators after a game jam ;) )

I was a little bit iffy on the grid movement at first. After a couple of levels I came to appreciate the exact controls, though it still felt awkward to mix digital sideways movement with analog jumping; sometimes it felt like I had to mash the D-button to make a long jump to the side, which felt more like brute force than intentional gameplay.

Once the rooms started rotating it became a little bit too brainbusting for me to try and plan out a clever path, and it became more a game of "the floor is lava", simply trying to make it to the exit whilst touching as few tiles as possible, though I found that fun and I'm writing that up to skill-issue on my part. Ultimately it was still fun to try and solve the dumb situations I got myself stuck in without having to do a full reset  (and on the note of resetting, thank you for only turning back to your last step if you messed up instead of resetting the whole level).

Tl;dr solid game, and it makes good use of the "do the same level several times"-idea without having the "Loop"-theme boil doing to a glorified reset button.

Thank you for the honest feedback!

We were wondering if you could elaborate on how you approached the first few levels, and what you feel caused you so many resets?

A lot of the feedback we've been getting is that the game is very hard, which wasn't the intention for the first few levels. Our worry is that we've badly communicated how we intended the levels to be played. For instance, an issue we've seen in the early levels is that players think they need to use every single Energy Anchor; but that makes the game way more difficult than just gliding through most of the level with the regular controls and only hooking on to an Anchor when you need to catch yourself and reset.

I don't think I can say anything that hasn't been said already. Gameplay is stellar, graphics are amazing, sound design is peak, music is a bop (please give me a link so I can listen to it outside of the game, I'm only half-joking); not to mention that it's a super creative take on the theme of "Loop". The fact that you were able to put together a game this well-made in 4 days is nothing short of a miracle. 5's across the board, slap a price sticker on it and release it on Steam.

Tl;dr: All hail the winner of the 2025 GMTK Game Jam

(Although h*ck those blue circuit-breaker guys, I hate them with my entire soul)

Hell yeah, we love a good twin-stick shooter.

This one was a little rough around the edges, but the shotgun had a great feel to it and the enemies were challenging enough (Plus, screaming eagle with a gun?). The boss fight was fun as well, and had a surprisingly varied set of attacks.

I'd like to suggest a change for the gamefeel: let me reload my shotgun in increments, where one reload-spin = 1 shell reloaded. I kept instinctively pressing reload after each shot because I wanted to feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2.