itch.io

Thank you for taking your time to provide super relevant feedback. I personally find it hard to objectively view a score result and see specific causes or areas to improve but your thoughts are very clear and actionable. I hope you continue to contribute to this community :) and well done on your placement this jam

Displaying all the controls at the bottom and having a simple right or left hand mode was super clever and streamlined, I might copy that in the future honestly. I did feel the first few levels were a bit long for what they were, but served as a good introduction into how to play, but the printers are really what brought the heat and fun for me. Nicely done :)

My favorite visuals so far this jam! Really cozy and fleshed out low poly. I did feel a bit of the physics interactions were awkward, specifically with things getting stuck upside down or depth perception issues, but the frequent use of snapping in place did make things go a lot smoother. I was a bit sad all my prep on day 1 did not roll over onto day 2 but that makes sense given new ingredients and teas kept being added. The tutorial was a bit intimidating, but all the job aids are both clever to the original job and really really helpful. Also bonus points for having the most fleshed out settings menu I've seen this jam. 

Super novel idea that works well with the theme! I do think the balance felt a bit off while playing and that attributed to me having a little less fun but overall I still enjoyed my time. I feel like it would have been better to either have a LOT more spray, or less enemies as having both a limit and the amount was rather hard to manage right off the get-go. Also, the sound when (I think?) the item spawn wasnt super helpful since it was hard to locate on the map, maybe a visual effect or a better contrast could help it feel like its appearing instead of the frequent wobbly noise. Still, I'm very happy with my time spent here :)

Great music, great art, and very very solid level design. I was worried I'd get lost or accidentally backtrack but the layout was very well done while also not being overly linear. The footstep audio did keep playing while I wasn't walking, and I would have appreciated a way to view the hints without having to talk all the way back, but overall this game very much accomplished what it set out to do in terms of retro walking puzzler. 

Played the first level, then jumped to level 6 and kept playing until I got three stars :)

Super well executed game that would likely have a lot more traction if it were a web game instead of a download. All the different grab animations were really well done, and everything present was very polished and your design choices feel super intentional and clear. I do feel like the game is lacking an additional complication or mechanic beyond just more levels, like different teas having different display colors/progress directions/brew meters, but that's also just me reaching to make a critique. Good job!

I was a bit sad the upgrades stopped at around 2 minutes because I was actually enjoying myself. It was also surprisingly difficult to control which fruits go in what order into the brew pots but rewarding to find the different combos. I also ran into a similar issue with sizing and trying to keep the right ratios but not being able to fullscreen, there is actually an itch.io project setting for a 'fullscreen button' that should allow players to fullscreen should they choose (or they could just ctrl+). Overall I think it's a very good jam submission and interesting spin to have a locked central point vampire survivor type game with a movable assistant, very cool idea :)

Hello fellow make your own sounds enjoyers 💪💪

The large wall of text tutorial did scare me but the game is also really easy to pickup somehow, prob because you don't really penalize the player much for losing fights, only just brewing bad potions. I do think some of the combos can be pretty busted but that is also part of the enjoyment of the game! I was a bit confused for a bit why I would win medium tiered fights, go and bet, then somehow end up losing to the easy guy but I suppose its all just based on matchups and builds. There is def a lot of depth in build variety which is really impressive for a jam game!

The game is giving me pineapple on pizza vibes but I like the bowling-tornado simulator! Was a bit hard at times to know how cleared the island was and what was it counting but the picture on the left that progressed through stages helped a bit. Also was nice that all powerups refresh between runs. Overall a really clever idea :)

I'm here to support any and all goblins 😤

Gameplay was very solid and intuitive! I think the 'feel' for dragging things could be adjusted so you arent bumping into them, but I enjoyed the overall vibe of the game. I also loved the random bird with headphones and the 'thanks' card for finishing the game

After a little trial and error, I have successfully brewed a potion 🫡
i think players are able to collide with trees which can make some of the paths hard to go down. The pixel art for Brofus is really good tho!

Simple and sweet clicker game! I agree with the other commenter that i wished my extra coffee would roll over onto the next floor or atleast do something for me instead of vanishing if I didnt press the new floor button immediately, but I enjoyed the updates/text on the screen reacting to each new milestone :)

That title intro was *chefs kiss*. The game as a whole fits right at home with other handheld types and is pretty fun! I had a lot lot of problems with the slow jumping blue slimes, but overall I still enjoyed my time. Also, thank you for making a full tutorial video showing which keys to press and how to play thats embedded in the game on launch but also letting it be skippable, thats the best onboarding I've experienced in any game jam I've done :)

You got so much done as a solo dev I'm really impressed! All the extra QOL you added (the tips, settings menu, controller mapping, dragging to select multiple units, keybinds) makes this feel really polished and the core gameplay loop is solid. If i had a complaint its that I had that I wished the cauldron menu stayed open so I could brew and control my troops faster but thats just purely my opinion

ohh im silly I didnt notice that there were two locks on the door! I just thought i was missing something but didn't check to the left yet at the time. Glad i came back to do so, that ending cutscene was really cool. And fullscreen did not resolve the issue on firefox, but switching to chrome seemed to work (html is weird lol).

I'll catch that ginseng one day! Really spot on for a mon-like thats retro, has fruit, and a resource, well done. Was difficult to get to the tool in each area since the area is full of mons that would be easier with said tool, but it was still very doable! I woulda killed for a run button tho q.q

I'm not sure what went wrong for me but 

1) My mouse wasnt locked to the screen so it was difficult to turn around and navigate

2) I talked to the npc on the right to get the key but I was unable to unlock the door even after going back and trying a few tiems

I still really enjoyed the atmosphere set up here! both the visuals and sound worked very well to enforce the setting and vibe :)

I'm not sure if everyone was just being super nice but they didn't mind when I gave them incorrectly ordered potions. I also audibly cracked up at the one that went 'oeioaieioaieoao' lol. 

My unordered thoughts and opinions:

• Visuals are great! Really nailed both the on screen visuals and low poly van
• I do really wish instead of switching scenes between the van and storm screen had some zoom transition instead of the hard cut
• I get worried about lots of text tutorials but your game was surprisingly easy to pick up! I felt confident I knew what I was doing after a minute and one restart
• I was not a fan of the forced camera movements on turns, when pressing the button, and i think mine was rotating on its own for a bit?
• music was a bop and very on theme but did cut/reset between songs a few times and scene transitions
• I loved all the details like the text chat screen (albeit was a little hard to always read), radars, and visual storm on the displays
• I thought pressing the button after selecting my choices on screen was a bit repetitive

I appreciate that you stuck to your guns and wanted people to use the old fashioned manual. A lot of retro games arent 'hard' per se but they just weren't as beginner friendly and you nailed that, surpassing just looking and sounding like a retro game (both of which you did awesome at). I reached up to day 8 before throwing in the towel. 

I do feel the bee minigame is a bit irregular and sometimes I could instantly catch a bee by spamming the A button, but all the other ones felt fair and were enjoyable. I also do think having an indicator square over which drink you were selecting on top of having it display at the bottom like you had would make it a bit easier to remember where you are in the scroll.

Overall great game and great job!

It took a read and re-read of the tutorial but I end up with a really long run going all the way to leviathans domain ( I think?) with not much but basic hooks and a desire to fish lol. Some of the shop/stop UIs are a little clunky, like the combine card one, but for the most part I enjoyed it still! The game really really changes when you can go back and buy new cards from the shop, before that it's fairly autopilot which makes sense. I also really enjoyed the fights with multiple waves, but got a bit confused on attack order a few times and dropped my first run from making a mistake on that. Also, are the map/legend tiles based off of anything? They're a bit tough to understand

For the most part, I really did enjoy what you've got here though! From the bits of story we are getting to the core mechanics, this is a really good proof of concept, I'm very amazed at how much you managed to get done in such a short time! Great work :)

As someone who also got stuck on that page, clicking right below the first signature at the bottom of the page on the web version seemed to work for me!

Well, unfortunately for standard logic which would suggest making a scanner an object of sorts that can accept multiple jobs, I made each scanner its own instantiated object and only able to accept one CV, and they spawn at the position of the right scanner unless the left scanner is missing, or a third scanner is unlocked. The left scanner disappearing was one of my least favorite bugs to fix but I thought I had them all, alas. 

Glad you still enjoyed the game! Interacting with the papers was also my favorite part and I spent wayyy to long getting that feeling the way I wanted ^_^

Glad you enjoyed it in spite of the difficult onboarding!

You are 100% right, it should for sure have that extra click in the middle between slow text read and going to the next message. It wouldnt have even been that hard to implement, just slipped my mind. Thank you for the kind words, glad you found the traits funny

I never even thought to test safari for bugs, but I had my hands full with just the chrome and firefox ones haha. Glad you still thought well of it in spite of the issue!

Very good gameplay fundamentals, and most of the balancing is pretty good too, decent idea splitting the game up into levels, otherwise progression would feel so slow if you had to start over from level 1 every time. I do dislike that the shotgun ships AI just runs them into you instead of just blasting you from close range because thematically it doesnt feel right to me that spaceships would do that, but that's just my opinion. I also feel like the shotgun wide spread and long travel distance kind of invalidates aiming and promotes spamming in one direction. But don't let my vague critiques dissuade you, I really enjoyed the game!

It's funny that we had such a similar root idea about repurposing something for jobs, but could not have had more different games! I enjoyed the different reasons on why the animals were good and bad at certain jobs, and thought it was smart to have certain jobs have differing overlapped days so you'd need other candidates for them!

Also how'd you make a leaderboard?!?!

Really would have fit right at home on armor games or newgrounds! It's a simple mechanic but great execution and with lots to interact with I really enjoyed playing

and yes, I did go back and to get all the achievements :)

While I can see you didnt have enough time to do everything you wanted, everything you have done here not only looks great but works really well together! Sad the shop wasnt working, but getting all these shaders working must have been a headache. Even though we both had a text-reading+scrolling style ala animal crossing, its refreshing to see such a different implementation. Great work :)

Well, I've officially made it past day 1 now, though just barely! I still do wish it would tell me what I did wrong when I do something wrong, but the puzzling and order making was still interesting enough for me to give it a few tries :)

I was excited to play this one after seeing your WIPs on the discord! Super bummed about your export bugs :((

 I'll leave a comment and not review now and hopefully if it can be fixed I'll come back and update! And glad to read you're still working on this project, I know the version we are seeing is far from final (or intended) but I can still see a lot of care was put into this

You are so talented i could cry 🥹

Seriously though, if you didnt make such a largely scoped project and just settled on something easy to learn and web exportable I dont doubt you'd place well. Heck, you likely will place well in this jam just from visuals and art alone.

I got a bit lost on the first level which had no enemies and wasnt sure how to leave it, but played like 10 level and I would def wishlist this on steam if that means anything to you! I had to figure out a lot of the things myself (like type advantages, energy rollover, etc) and still am left with many questions like: do i need to follow just one path to the other side of the planet? Why do enemies hurt some but not other enemies? 

But please dont let my vague critiques pull away from what you accomplished in just 9 days. As I said in the start, you are very very talented and this project just oozes your passion for being a dev!

A very interesting take on the theme! 
I think cluing in the player to press E under the googly eyes and other pick-ups might be helpful, I spent a very sad amount of time cleaning all the available space and wondering why i couldnt go under the bed or pickup anything. oopsie! I also expected the roomba to fully drive like a tank, but the easier scheme did make cleaning a bit easier. 

I also feel you'd have a lot more downloads and reviews if you had uploaded a web version to itch instead of a download, but that did not stop me from enjoying it anyways. Ended up with A rank due to my mindless wondering, and honestly cleaning was my favorite part. 

Simple but great execution! Plays like a mario-party minigame, but feels more relaxing (atleast until the belt starts to speed up). But everything here has a high layer of polish, like the physics tuning and responsiveness of the objects. I have nothing to critique for what is here, but I do feel like this just reads like a minigame, there isnt enough other mechanics to keep me engaged for longer than just one run. But with so limited time to make everything, I think this is super well polished and executed!

You hit the nail on the head for some of our hard design choices we didn't really end up with a great answer to.

1) the scanned resumes do disappear, but only after 30s which was likely a bit too lengthy, as the user has already scanned new resumes by then

2) The pop-in on top was, unfortunately, the alternative to pop-in on bottom of the stack, where the user then has to dig under all their existing papers to find it, if they even noticed it spawned. I do wonder if there was an alternative between the two extremes, but we weren't able to implement any in time.

I appreciate the feedback all the same! Thank you for playing

While I enjoyed the music and visuals, I unfortunately could not get past the first level after reading and re-reading the tutorial section on the page.Is there a button or key im supposed to press when i have all the right ingredients in the grinder? Or am i supposed to put the ingredients in, add the cup, and press something to get the bean juice? Unfortunately, I was not able to figure it out :(

Super job slowly scaling up the players difficulty! If i was the dev for your game I would have thought keeping the first few 'hand holding' levels would be too simple for the user, but as the user that with the intro cutscene really solidified my understanding of the mechanics so quickly and without any words! bravo

Not another game tricking me for a time longer than i would like to admit into enjoying math lol

Seriously tho, other than the little onboarding ramp up where im starting to understand (i did just spam click the right option for haggling the first few days...) the loop is really addictive

Unfortunately for my thrifting customers, both Freddy and my digi game are never for sale :) 

Overall loved this game !

As a puzzle game enjoyer, I liked the setup you have here and would be interested in seeing what further mechanics you would like to implement. The overall gameplay reminds me of into the breach or hoplite (a small and likely unheard of old mobile game with tile+turn based puzzle gameplay).

I'll be sure to revisit to see the improved version! You have are really inspiring to accept the feedback here and still want to do more with the project! Maybe I'll re-release mine with the features I left out for time