itch.io

I see! I tried pressing enter to lock in each digit, but it would always detonate the bomb immediately :(

The music and art fits the game pretty well! The mantling system felt kind of strange though, and I wish we didn't have to start at the "zoomed in tutorial view" whenever we died. :/

I almost managed to make it through the first level until that blasted sticky keys warning popped up! XD

This is a pretty cool entry and it seems fairly well polished. It's pretty hard, but I think that I would have a fun time playing it for a bit if I spent a bit of time practicing.

This is a cool take on tetris with the bomb timer mechanic and the scan line. The music and art matches the game quite well, and I can't think of anything to critique with this one. Great job, especially as a solo developer!    :)

Thanks for playing! I wanted to expand the tutorial level a bit so we would have more time to introduce each mechanic and ensure players fully understood, but unfortunately we ran out of time in the end.    :/

The UI looks pretty nice, but the lack of sound is a big deal, and the game could really use some kind of tutorial. I tried following the directions to move around the player, but a number of the buttons didn't seem to work and nothing was happening. The game looks pretty complex and I'm sure you spent a lot of time developing interesting systems for it, but unfortunately it doesn't matter all that much if a player is confused and stuck sitting there wondering why "Pull off current task" does nothing.    :(

This was a pretty cool idea! I wish there were some sound effects though, and the music started to get repetitive fairly quickly.

This was a nice little driving game. I would have liked it if there was a little more going on as you tried to deliver food (e.g. random events) to keep things from getting repetitive, but overall it was pretty fun!

I normally like these kinds of games, and I've made a few of them in the past myself, but the extreme FOV change made the gameplay very unenjoyable and the yellow text was impossible to read. The artwork also left a bit to be desired, as it looked like the default UV map texture in most game engines. 

If you're unfamiliar with developing games for this genre, my advice would be to look at professional games with super fun movement systems (e.g. Titanfall 2, Mirror's Edge, etc.), try to figure out the core elements that make them feel good, and then try to replicate those features in your game engine of choice. This will help you get a feel for what makes these kinds of player controllers fun to use, and you'll have an easier time making fast paced movement games in the future.    :)

Wow, I think this has been the best arithmetic game I've played during the jam. I only have two critiques:

1. I can tell that a lot of time was put into the music for this game, and I love how there are different parts that play depending on whether you're in battle, fighting bosses, in the shop, etc. Unfortunately, the loop that plays for the regular battle theme is too short and it gets really repetitive by around stage 15 or so. Everything else music and soundwise is great, but that one loop started driving me crazy after a while.   :(

2. The art is super polished, and I really like the animations...but why did you guys go with the hand drawn digits for the cards? Everything else feels so professional, but the cards still look like debug programmer art.

I only point these things out because otherwise it seems like this would be an almost perfect arithmetic game. I spent a lot longer than I would have expected playing it compared to a number of other jam entries, and it was a lot of fun too.

The pictures look cool! Unfortunately the level selection screen did not appear to work properly on a 1440p monitor, and when I finally clicked somewhere on the screen that had one of the invisible level buttons, it was definitely not the tutorial level, and I didn't know what I was doing.

The art style and the sound effects are pretty nice! I think it would have been nice if you had added some dramatic music to go along with the countdown though (and it would have been really cool if it got more intense as the timer ticks down further).   :)

Thanks for playing!

1. Yeah we started level design way too late and the artwork left a little to be desired. XD

2. It's briefly mentioned in the tutorial, but if you jump and press left mouse, you'll do a dive attack instead.

3. Originally we planned on having a full stealth system in the game. The eye shows whether or not enemies have detected you, but ultimately it's not all that helpful because we realized last minute that nobody would want to be stealthy with our bird assassin character.

4. Yep, we turned the gravity up to improve the feel of gameplay, but in retrospect, I can see how it could make the long "go up vertical" sections off the map somewhat tricky to navigate.

The art and music was really cool, and the game looks polished, but I couldn't figure out how to play. :(  The ghost self wouldn't jump high enough when I held up the platform.

Edit: After looking at the video, I gave it another shot, but I kept running out of frames right before the ghost would land on the flag. 

This entry seemed really well polished, and I liked the atmosphere created by the art and the audio. I wish that the game had explained what some of the modifiers did before I picked new dice though, as I initially didn't understand what "Ivory" or "Spirit" were supposed to mean. Overall, good job, especially as a solo developer!

This was an interesting take on the theme, but the game could definitely use a bit more polish and levels. It's super hard to build 3d games for game jams as a solo dev though, so congrats on what you managed to accomplish during that time!

This was hilarious! I'm shocked that this didn't have way more ratings because between the music, the visuals, the story, and everything else, this was an incredible jam entry.

I liked this little clicker game, and I think the audio and art fit it quite well. It was a very chill vibe and I ended up playing the game until I reached the goal.  :)

Wow, this was really well done! The audio and player art were great, and I liked the narrative element to the game. My only two critiques are that you can't full screen the itch.io window and that if you fail, you have to go through all of the dialogue again! Otherwise I'm really impressed with how much you managed to do as a solo dev. Congrats!

The art looks nice! Unfortunately I struggled with the controls because I couldn't figure out how you were supposed to "lock" a number in place without detonating the bomb, and I think the game would have benefited from a proper tutorial.  :(

Thanks for playing! Level design was definitely our weakest point in this jam after overscoping and having unexpected delays behind the scenes.

Sorry about that! I found out yesterday from some of the other players that basic melee attacks don't work when you're on the right side of an enemy facing leftward.   :(

It was a simple fix on my end and I'll update the game post-jam to address it, but for now, I'd recommend sticking to the bow and the dive attacks! Those are more fun to use than the regular ones anyway. XD

Makes sense. We all have to make tradeoffs in game jams. XD

It's mainly because ChatGPT is the only tool that starts section headers with things like rocket emojis. You also have em dashes and all of the text has the same 1-2 sentences per paragraph structure that you would get from a chatbot. Feel free to decorate your page however you like, but the current look gives off the impression that you were too busy at the end of the jam and asked an LLM for a description that you could copy paste into itch.io.

Ohhhh, I see. I might give it another shot today then.  I got to a few of those altars and held down E, but it just seemed like the player was sitting there praying while the hourglass kept ticking, and would be about to die if I didn't get a move on.

Yep, the music is more of a minor thing, and I think it could work alright here too. I just mentioned it because it definitely wouldn't fit if you were going for a more fantasy/magic vibe like the name "Spells" would imply. These are small nitpicks though and I think you did a great job!

No worries! I'm on Windows 10 and was using Brave (a chrome variant). 

If I were to hazard a guess at what might have caused the bug, my first instinct would be that you're probably doing some kind of raycast/collision box check when the player hits the interact button to see if he's trying to interact with the door, and it's probably colliding with something else. As a result, I wouldn't be surprised if when you try to get a pointer/reference to the door object, you might end up trying to call a function that doesn't exist, or if you cast the collided object, you could be left with a null reference if it's not actually a door. I could be wrong of course, but that would be the first thing I checked if I were you.   :)

This was a pretty cool read. I was curious about how the development process had gone because your game's systems looked pretty complex and everything seemed super polished in the end!

The art looks great, the music sounds nice, and I'm sure the system is well designed! However, I'm going to admit that there's just way too much going on in the itch.io page, and this game desperately needed a tutorial. It felt like I was reading a board game manual, and while I normally wouldn't have a problem doing that, I am sadly not at 100% brain capacity tonight. (This has been the 49th jam entry I've played, and each one takes a bit of a toll.)

Based on the other comments, I'm sure you've got a great game here,  and that I would probably enjoy it if I sat down for a good 15-20 minutes and tried to understand how it worked. Unfortunately, I'm a bit too tired to do that at the moment.    XD

I really liked the game's music (especially the little things like how it gets quieter when you go underwater music), and how how you used the timer mechanic as a resource that the player had to manage! I wish that you had added some kind of checkpoint system though, because it's really frustrating to get pretty far before dying and having to restart all over again. I think that mechanic works better in games where the player can always move fast when they're trying to get back to their original position. :(

Wow, creating your own game engine in C++ is crazy dedication! I've wanted to do something similar for a long time now but I've never had the time. Unfortunately, I had the same issue with dragging the icons to the recycle bin at 1440p, so I couldn't play the game.    :(

Yep, it's understandable. We all have to make tradeoffs during jam games after all. XD

Yep those trees were...certainly something. XD We didn't have time to get a decent looking texture for them, so last minute we decided to slap some green background tiles down and make them sort of look like trees.

Wow, this was a really unique take on the theme! I loved the art and the music, and everything seemed really well polished. I did wish that there was some sound effects when you were attacking enemies though, and it would have been really cool if the music got more intense as more of the land disappeared. Overall I think this was one of the most creative ideas I've seen.

This was a really cool take on the theme! My main critique would be the music and the sound effects, which didn't really give a "dramatic boss fight" feel to the game. Otherwise I thought it was pretty cool. I do wish I could have used left mouse to counter though instead of E, since that would have made it easier to press WASD at the same time.

I liked Portal, so this was a pretty cool puzzle game! I think it would have been great if there was a little bit more of a story to go with it, but there's only so much time during a game jam after all. :)   The SFX worked well thematically too!

I really liked how the music started speeding up near the end, and the game felt very polished. I especially appreciate the tutorial. I just wish there was a narrative part at the end when the date arrived and you could see whether she liked the place or not!

The artwork and the music seem pretty good! The game could use some sound effects though and maybe it would be better if players could attack in some way without relying on mariokart style item boxes that spawn in random places on the map. It kind of just felt like I was sitting there dodging attacks while waiting for another item box, and when I got it, I had to stop and select an item before watching it vanish really quickly while I ran back to get in range of the enemy.

The art looks good and everything seems pretty well polished, but I feel like something's missing with this one. You're going down to get money so you can go down farther, but the only reason to go down farther is to...get more money so you can get upgrades to go down farther? Maybe it would help if the player had some kind of larger objective (e.g. he knows that there's something at the bottom of the ocean, and he's trying to make his way down there)? It just feels a little aimless right now.

I really like the chill atmosphere as you fly around and collect resources! I do wish that there was a little more to do when you were on planets though, and I think it would be great if you were trying to fly towards a target destination while collecting resources to survive along the way.

I will also warn you that at a glance, your Itch.io page looks like it was generated by ChatGPT (especially the emojis), and that might put some people off before they've tried the game.