itch.io

Interesting sandbox/proof-of-concept (PoC). Always a fan of cell-shading art style. It was cool to experiment with the 3 different attack styles (though blue is OP given that it's a ranged attack).

It was unclear to me when I could switch masks, so some indication would help. Given that this is more of PoC there are definitely other areas for improvement (e.g. hit feedback, gameplay loop), but this is a good base to build off.

Nice work on the audio as always! I liked the addition to dash in mid-air, made traversal more interesting than a simple walk and jump platformer. I was unable to proceed once I got the door with the Up arrow! Not sure if that's where the game ends. 

Might help to enable the full-screen button option on itch! The other QOL improvements like checkpoints and coyote time as mentioned below will be nice too!

I think this might be the hidden gem in this jam. The mechanics is super interesting and creative, and extremely on theme. Even in the earlier levels, I was already very impressed with the well-designed puzzles and implementation. but I keep getting surprised by addition of new content. The different mechanics are all cohesive and on-theme too. I like the minimal aesthetic and color scheme. The puzzles' difficulty curve was planned well. Got challenging towards the end, but never unfair.

By the nature of the game design, it takes some degree of perseverance to complete the end-game puzzles. Making a mistake in calculation requires a full reset. I can't think of an easy way to circumvent this, but I think players who are motivated enough or enjoy the challenge will have no issue pulling through.

Some UI elements can be improved. I was thrown off a bit trying to resize the early stages mask due to the presence of the Black dots are the cardinal points. The later addition of a resize option made this confusing. Might be better to leave out the black ones that are static, and make the resize points more obvious. The difference between the resize and move NPCs, as well as the manually activated vs the masked-over switches can also be made more distinct. The game would definitely benefit from enabling the "full-screen" button option on Itch to improve accessibility for people with poor eyesight. I'm not colorblind, but the choice of red/green might cause problems for those impaired, so many an option to switch to high contrast hues might help.

The let down here would be Audio. The SFX were jarring and can wear on the player as time goes by. The absence of a vol slider forced me to mute the game altogether eventually. A more pleasant choice of SFX and addition of some complementary BGM would go miles in improving game-feel.

That said, this is likely my favourite entry so far. I sunk more time into this than I should. But I always find myself intrigued by the ingenuity of game design in entries like this. Tremendous effort.

Great work as always! Amazing aesthetics and with just the right amount of juice in the GUI. Satisfyingly addictive to the point of me wishing that there were more levels to enjoy!

This is an amazing entry! I really liked the interpretation of the theme, and the implementation of the creative idea. The controls were intuitive, and the ramp up in difficulty of puzzles is very well-paced. The BGM fit perfectly with the casual puzzle gameplay. Tremendous effort!

Thanks for playing Plague!
Yes our team really came together well for this project :D

Thanks for playing Choo Choo!
Glad you enjoyed the game :D

Thanks for playing Noxeal! We were hoping to go with a cute vibe, and we're glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing hkatt, and for your high praise!

Ideally we would have had a in-game play-by-play tutorial so your issue with the confusion of discovering the shaking mechanic would be more seamless, but glad you figured it out eventually!

We built the idea around our common desire for a cozy game, and "Ghosts" were tagged on after the theme release, but agree that it's quite loose!

Thank you for liking the game! :D

Thanks for playing Clipper!

Initially there was indeed a plan for a "Chill out" mode, where patience checks are removed, but we didn't manage to get around to it. 

A flipbook menu sounds cool! Might even help with memorization of drink recipes. 

Indeed, the theme for unseen was lightly tied to "ghosts". Thank you for enjoying the game nonetheless!

Thanks for playing tanguy! Wow 2405! I don't think we even got that far in our playtests! Might have been some unexpected bug that only you chanced upon! Thank you for sticking with the game for so long!!

Thanks for playing Yuwo! Ah yes.. the "River of Souls". That always trips me up as well, but it's the "boss fight" of our cozy game.

Ah I get your idea on speeding up the drinks shaking if active effort was directed towards it! It makes sense~! We had forced it to go on autopilot as we wanted to enforce multitasking, but now that you mentioned it, perhaps a player could have had the choice to hyperfocus on one mixer and shave off 1-2 seconds! Smart idea!

Thanks for playing Koso! And I saw your A+ report card!!

Thanks for playing ZanLayla! We had to tune the difficulty a few times across our own testing but we hope we got it to a fair level for a game jam (Trivia: initially there were 4 maximum concurrent ghosts lol)

Thanks for playing Fae, and for your compliments! We're really glad you liked it :D

Thanks for playing Procrastination!
We had not thought about using the tip money as a currency, but it makes a lot of sense after you mentioned it! Maybe shorter shaking speeds or more shaker slots etc.!

Thanks for playing kryione!

One of our concepts was for the player to remember the recipe as the game progresses such that they no longer have to refer to the order sheets, but I think we got carried away with the number of recipes as it was quite fun to come up with them haha. It was impossible even for me to recall what ingredient goes where after a while. Allowing upgrade by using tips would indeed be a cool feature! Might even open up potential for purchasing of new ingredients to make new drinks possible. Thank you for your feedback!

Saw your character drawing process on Discord and really wanted to check out your game! I was not disappointed!

The art on this project was awesome. I really liked the character design and the UI/UX elements. Beautifully crafted. There was also a surprisingly copious amount of writing done! Must not have been an easy feat for a jam of 9 days with a small team. 

I too completely wrecked poor Auren and Lynn in the duel. They must've thought that i was Harry Potter in disguise or something.

Its a really impressive entry! You should feel very proud of yourself. I don't usually play visual novel games, but I really enjoyed the world building on this. I hope you continue building on the world of Belveren.

Thank for playing Tboy!! We managed to finish the core mechanics early, so we had the final weekend reserved for polish! We're relieved we didnt need to do a last minute crunch for this one!

Thanks for playing Suwavey! We're glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing Omaga and for your kind words!

Our artist and musician will be very thrilled to hear your compliments :D We're glad you liked the game!

Thanks for playing iLLe!
Hope that you managed to make it past your shift unscathed :D. We wanted to give the gameplay some dimensionality by forcing some multi-tasking.

Trivia: Some of the drink names reflect the different nationalities of our team members :D

Thanks for playing Ashie!! Glad you liked it!

Thanks for playing Galvanator! Out artist very quickly whipped out the different ghost types, each with their own animation :D

Thanks for playing Pebble! Our artist and musician collaborated to materialize the radio concept, I liked it a lot too. We also had fun coming up with the drink recipes and names, some of which reflect our team members' nationality and culture :D

Firstly, kudos to the team for attempting a turn-based isometric grid game. It must not have been easy to code the movement logic.

I liked the creative concept of switching between layers to navigate across obstacles. The idea has the bones for a turn-based bomberman-styled game.

I was slightly confused about how to progress the game, until i chanced upon the "Turn" button which passed the turn. Changing the visual indicator on that button would help make it clearer (e.g. changing the label to a verb "Pass Turn", making a hover and pressed effect to show that its a pressable button etc).

The other unintuitive areas are explained by your lack of time in finishing the game. I assume in the final product, the player would not have to pass on the enemy's turn, and the initiative will pass back to the player automatically after all enemies moved. It was not immediately clear to me what the Red X's were. Initially i tried bombing them, but that didnt work.

After figuring how to move, i had fun making my way all across the map to get to the HQ! I was gleefully about to press bomb, but for some unknown reason i died.  I even moved as much as i could to the north to avoid the gopher guards there. But alas.

Pity, i would have liked to blow up the dang gophers' HQ.

Incredible entry, and solid all rounder.

The visuals, the accompanying score, and the well-synced musical tension when triggering guards. Everything was on point. Aced the Theme and perfect usage of the Immersive wildcard as well.

The pacing of the level ramping up in complexity was well thought out, and the difficulty was forgiving enough for a game jam's context.

Pretty much perfection in all aspects, i'll be very surprised if this entry doesn't win!

Cool take on the theme Unseen with microbes! I cleared it with 199 score :D

I really like the creative idea of having different layers of zoom! The UI and gameplay was intuitive. in the earlier levels I was getting complacent about having more lives than the max threshold, but this quickly went away in the higher levels where collisions were unavoidable.

The SFX was useful in providing feedback on collisions, and the golden arrows were a nice touch (else i would have been completely lost in the huge petridish)

Solid entry!!

I was drawn in by the cover art and was not disappointed! The art is so charming, and the accompanying instrumental score gives it a cozy vibe! I went around trying to collect as many creature types as possible! The fidget widgets were fun to click on and cycle thru their animations :D

I noticed that there was a star grading for each locale, but unfortunately, I did not understand how the grading works. I was only able to 2 star the first area :(

Unfortunately, I was also unable to figure out how to play the band battles. When I do nothing, I win! But when I actively tried clicking on the spotlights and spawned instruments, I lose instead. It looks to be a fun mechanic if I can just figure it out!

I do hope this game gets fleshed out more! The bones are already here for an immersive adventure that children would be enthralled, and I would love to see this in their hands.

What a visually appealing game! I really loved the art on this one. The illustrations reminded me of Quentin Blake's work, and brings me back to my childhood of reading Roald Dahl novels. The watercolor background and parallax layers really do make you feel like you're traversing in water. Even the Sonar ping was wonderfully colored.

The SFX also added atmospheric tension to the game. I did hesitate to venture forth as the surroundings got darker and the music loomed ominously. 

I didn't manage to get to an objective, but I suspect this was a navigational error on my part. I did get to what looks like a pair of radioactive goggles where my hard-earned thrash disappeared, but I missed seeing what the characters said about it (something about polluting the sky).

With some polish and finessing, I think this might be a candidate for an entertaining interactive children's book! Kudos to the team for the entry!

First off, huge kudos to the team for attempting an RPG with turn-based combat for a 9days jam! It could not have been easy on the programmers! There is a lot to like about this game, and it has the bones for a good RPG! 

The art is immediately eye catching. I love that the starting menu has an overlay shader that recedes with the tide. The characters and enemy design are awesome (when I can see and appreciate them)! I particularly love the aesthetics of the dire wolves.

There were multiple tracks for different areas, and every single one is a banger. SFX goes well with the attacks launched.

Unfortunately. I wasn't able to see thru any combat sequence to its full potential. Enemies either disappeared midway thru the battle or after casting their attacks, and there was no way to end the battles despite attempting to target and hit their vacant spots (the text feedback still shows that hits were landing). Brightside, fleeing always works and I was able to progress the game by constantly fleeing to see more of the game world.

Commendable effort by the team!

Thank you for playing lirana! You got the gameplay idea we were going for! The shaker is indeed to encourage multitasking, kudos on that!!

Thanks for playing Passivist, and glad that you enjoyed it. 
Our artist and musician will be thrilled to hear your compliments! C+ means you still made it thru your shift unscathed, and failing a few orders is actually a secret bonus (you get to see the ghosts go "poof" haha! 

Thanks for playing Antonio! Glad you enjoyed it!

Amazing work passivist!! The game is like an onion with multiple elements that surprise you as you peel thru it.

Chronologically, the music immediately sets the mood for a cozy space-based game with its ethereal quality. The control scheme tutorial on main menu blending in to transponder was genius, and it gets better when seamlessly integrated into the starting exposition.

Then comes the actual core mechanic of visor switching, and I was blown away! The concept is right smack on the theme and the "immersive" wildcard. The distortion shader lets you see from the perspective of LaGeorge, and the visual indicator in the form of a color wheel is awesome! The Geiger counter was a nice QOL touch and smoothened out gameplay without having to constantly scan for enemies.

There's even writing and branching narrative for this! I especially like the tongue-in-cheek immersive, breaking 4th wall "method" to restart the game!

The quick respawn  helped to resolve some of the bugs that crop up when dying (e.g. sometimes not having certain visor layers swap) and switching the visor layers often resolves this issue!

There's so much potential for future expansion, where layers can be added to provide new challenges! Awesome work all around!

Perhaps LaGeorge should stick to less exotic places for shore-leave in future xD

Thanks for playing Tim, and for your thoughtful feedback!

Decided to go with a color palette from colorhunt.co this time for the visuals and I'm glad I did. I'm not an artist by any shot, so having something pre-curated was helpful. I was lucky to find open license audio assets that matched the art style and theme of the game.

You're absolutely right about the salience of the pellets. The "instructions" "eat-me" and "avoid-me" were shown on the main menu, but only briefly if the user clicked play game straight away. Could have been a visual indicator at game start to show it, since the initial pellets were statically spawned.

Thank you for your kind words!

Thank you for playing Falcon! Ah the instructions about eating the pellets were only shown on the main menu, but it wasn't the best place for it on hindsight! I wasnt able to replicate the replay red screen bug, hopefully it was a once off error with the webbuild!

Thank you for playing Martin! The goal was to submit a simple but complete game this jam. But you're exactly right, I had to resist the urge to add in mechanics and break the promise I set to myself many times :D

Thank you for playing chimerian! Yes the goal was to submit a simple but complete game, so I think we've achieved what we set out to do!

Thank you for playing Chuske, and for lasting till 150 points!
I think thats probably when the viruses dash at high speeds and spawn rates, so its a great level to reach already!