So impressive for a jam submission, and also just a quality JRPG?! I'm still in the first Limm area (gotta get them flowers), but I think I've seen enough to go ahead and rate & tell you how gorgeous this game is. The battle music is going to be stuck in my head for at least a month--a sign of an excellent RPG haha. I also love the writing--it's funny and slightly ominous, and you've done a great job distinguishing the voices of the characters from one another. The puzzles are fun, too. Phenomenal work. I'm going to go back to playing it now!
Very cool lore, great music, and fantastic ideas here. I've played plenty of LCG/TCG-style card games so I was able to intuit some things about how this worked, but it was definitely an uphill battle to figure out what was going on/what I was supposed to do. The how to play section was extremely hard to read (I had to copy/paste it into Notepad because the green on black in that font is super tough on the eyes) and the writing was quite difficult to understand. That's coming from a person who reads card and board game rulebooks for fun. Images of the cards/diagrams of what you're talking about would go a loooong way towards making this more approachable to learn. My time spent with this was probably 80% reading the rules and cross-referencing what I was reading with the cards on screen, and about 20% playing.
While the game looks really cool, those visuals also make it super hard to read the text/numbers on the cards, to see which cards are which colors, and so on. I appreciate that you highlight the places the cards can go when you click on them, but, again, tough to see the transparent green amidst the busy background. Fullscreen is 100% necessary, but also doesn't really help! It's all still so small and visually busy. I wasn't really able to get into this because it was so frustrating trying to interface with it. I get that the style you're going for leans chaotic, but you still have to balance that chaos with readability (and by that I mean actually reading text, but also "reading" the state of the game by looking at the board) to get a playable game. That is critical in board/card game design and even more critical in a video game where you don't have full control over how closely to look at the cards or how to rearrange them in hand. I played a few rounds so I could see the basics and make sure I understood the mechanics of how to play, but now my eyes are sore so I doubt I'll play more of this in its current form.
I really hope this is helpful feedback for you--I love card games and the cyberpunk aesthetic, so I do hope you keep working on this. I think it could become a great game. Even if you don't keep working at this one, I hope you approach all the other games you make with as much creativity and zeal as you created this one with! :)
Really impressive work! I wasn't able to get far myself with the puzzles and the web version wouldn't work for me (froze every couple seconds), but it's incredible that you were able to craft so many interesting environments to explore in only a week. I'm glad you included a guide so I could see the parts of the game I wasn't able to reach myself. Keep at it, this is great stuff! :)
I'm not sure there's a game here. You can hide with S, limited by the grey bar depleting, but as many screens as I passed through, there weren't any changes in the environment or the monsters. I eventually decided to see what happened when the monsters caught me and... nothing happened, except the red bar filling up. I tried hitting other keys, since the description says "figure it out," but none of my keyboard keys seemed to do anything (apart from ASD ofc). Tried clicking on stuff, too, mouse left and right, to no avail.
The monsters are very cool, though, and I like the character's design! Just... wish there were a game to play.
I like that you chose to use your game to get across an environmental message. However, I think that message could be better conveyed in the gameplay itself, and that the gameplay could be improved to make it more fun at the same time. It felt a little off that there wasn't any interplay between the fisherman side and the fish side while playing as the fish--no hooks in the water and no other fish. Also, it would be interesting if the fisherman's activity was more closely linked to the amount of trash/the dying fish during the gameplay itself, rather than just as a note at the end. Maybe as you upgrade, more trash shows up and the fish get scarcer?
I think you could make the catching minigame a whole lot harder, because the differences between the types of fish wasn't noticeable for me until the fourth level fish and I think I only lost one or two fish throughout the whole story mode. I also didn't see anything negative happen when hitting the trash.
I hope you keep making games and improving, because I can see that you're very creative and want to tell good stories!
Fantastic work. My only note is I wish the reset button were somewhere further from the action button--I hit it a few too many times by accident trying to place the flag and then again when pressing 'T' to tow. (Since it's between 'em on a QWERTY keyboard...)
Had a lot of fun, though! The voice acting and music are both great.
Simple but incredibly effective. The sound design is excellent, and I love the blotchy patterns that get revealed as you move and die (which, for me, was very very often haha). Had a lot of fun with this one!
That makes sense! I haven't tried to develop any mechanics like that haha but it makes sense that it would be tricky to implement (since they're probably not their own collision objects?)
Love the idea and the colors you picked. I'm not sure how to score points and it's very challenging to avoid the wires--input feels a little slow. Also, the web version freezes when you lose. But I love your interpretation of the theme!
Oh, I forgot to mention--the visuals are awesome! And I love that you have to return to the control room to sketch out your plans on what to fix next in lights and unlocked doors. Really clever design.
Very challenging--I've played about half an hour so far, because I dig the minigames and I NEED TO KNOW WHAT'S IN THAT LOCKER, but haven't come close to finishing it. I hit seven tasks completed, then ran straight into the hostile force and gave up for the time being. I was getting frustrated having to wait for the hostile/corrupted ai thingy (excellent enemy!) to move along so often, while not being sure where it actually was/if I could just walk past it. That did give the game a good horror factor, though, and the game + minigames are really fun, so I'll probably come back later and see how far I can get with a cup of tea, a snack, and a lot more patience!
I love the intro framing story--it really intrigued me, and I think the concept of a twin-stick shooter with a heart is fantastic. Some notes, because I care and think this project was cool and could be even cooler:
1) The initial intrigue of that story (and your fantastic thumbnail) led me to hope that the gameplay that followed would continue the story in some way. Not that I didn't like the twin-stick shooter, but it isn't nearly as exciting as a twin-stick shooter where your actions are called into question somehow, or the daughter you just kissed goodnight stumbles into the scene, or... something. If you're only going for "this is the inevitable end for this guy," I still think it needs something (even just a snapshot or a couple lines of text!) at the end to connect his death back to the story. Because that story is great!
2) I think the pacing of the shooter could be accelerated quite a bit, because it was not very challenging for the first 9-10 waves.
3) You start with one of the best weapons in the game and are prompted to swap it for a knife and a bat long before any other gunmen show up, which felt kind of off.
4) This one is suuuper nitpicky--the camera felt a *tad* too slow in following the character's movement.
All that aside, the shooting was fun, the enemies were interestingly varied (did they move at different speeds? It felt like they did and that felt awesome), and I think this is a great entry. :)
I agree with Beebster's notes, and will add that it's disappointing that after your HP goes below zero you just... stay there. No option to restart, no end screen, just sitting there motionless watching your health go further into the negative. I do like the concept and the faux agar.io/slither.io feel of it, and I think the "skins" were a nice touch.
Hey so the "better tutorial" (which I waited to look at until after failing like three times because I, a fool, didn't realize I had to stay in the lights) is one of the best things I've seen in this jam so far. It made me CACKLE. My current best is only 103 seconds but I do feel compelled to keep at it--you've created a really interesting, fun gameplay loop here, with great visual and sound design to back it up. The little plop sounds of the lanterns are marvelous!
Wow, thank you! That really means a lot to me--I've only gotten into doing art recently and I'm glad my efforts are already paying off. So glad you enjoyed it and I appreciate your feedback!
Very nice touch to have the music switch with the background. It was a tad too unforgiving for me--I made it a few rounds in each time but was losing a heart almost every time the background switched. Cool idea, though, and cute design! :)
Excellent idea--I love that you picked a relatively-obscure historical narrative to tell in this game. I like the low-poly art style, which in my opinion limited the violence nicely. I was expecting way more graphic gore based on the content warning haha. I LOVE the look of the monsters (they're terrifying haha). I do think that there were some areas where you could improve this. Up until finding a house to hide in and the fight, the action was very regimented. I think there's space here to let the player explore instead of directing the action so specifically, so that they can discover the story a little more organically.
Also, while I think this character is incredibly cool for shooting from the hip while waves of shadow monsters charge him, I would have appreciated a reticle or that he bring the gun up to eye level for aiming. It was impossible to tell where I was shooting and if I had hit anything with each shot. I made it to the final wave by basically firing at random somehow but can't bring myself to go through that much chaos again at the moment, so unfortunately was unable to finish the game.
Very cool, unique game. I'm glad I played it--thank you for creating and sharing something so interesting!
A game where I get to manage civil infrastructure?! Hell yes. This was a neat little game. I do feel like the music was lovely but didn't quite match the vibe. The controls were also a bit fiddly and I couldn't figure out how to erase placed lines without destroying the pylon, which was a little irritating. Overall, though, I had a great time. Thank you for creating and sharing this!
This is very cool--I was NOT expecting what I found in here. I haven't poked around in those archives for over a decade, so playing this felt like stumbling back into an old haunt. I figured out how to navigate through this pretty quickly, but I've played quite a few terminal-style games recently so the methods have been on my brain--may still want to add a hints section to your description to help folks get started, because it's so cool! I explored through all the directories I located, which I think may be the end? Unsure if there's more, or how to make the funky new functions do anything important, but I had a lot of fun testing the theories I had about them and really enjoyed reading through all that I found. Awesome experience!
Simple, but absolutely terrifying. The sound effects of the hands on the glass was PERFECT--had me jumping every time. Managing the camera storage space was a genius addition, especially since it required mousing over to the button and clicking delete for each photo--that slight time requirement created some good tension. I think to really polish this, it would be cool to show the photos on the camera as they're being deleted and have a short cutscene for the two types of failure/the victory. Would just make it that much more satisfying to reach the end (although it already is!)
Web version works! First time I tried it did not, but I refreshed the page and it did. Cool art and I love the narrative. Wasn't able to find the path out of the white void--hit walls on all sides and only found the one scrap of paper.
