itch.io

Congrats on entering your first jam! You did a great job. The game is a unique concept. Makes me think of the god sim games like Black & White but your sole purpose is to destroy the civilization. 

If you polish this game past the jam stage, my biggest points of critical feedback would be: 

- The current energy / use ability system feels punishing. I found myself waiting around to regain energy quite often. I kept wanting the unlock to cost points gained from successful actions and the ability to use your skills to be on cooldown instead of costing more resource points.

- Predators definitely feel a bit too powerful right now. A wolf almost killed the human a few minutes in for me, without me having to intervene at all.

- Readability could be higher. The up-res'd 8x8 art makes it difficult to tell what the icons are, especially. While you did a great job with the info window--and while it absolutely should still exist--I think relying on that alone prevents the player from getting into a flow state. My recommendation, especially if you make this a full Steam release, would be to make it a fairly small fixed resolution in terms of window size with the option to fullscreen. That way you're presenting the optimal experience visually, but players can change it if they really want to.

Thanks for sharing this journey with us! You did a great job, so I hope you don't mind the critical feedback. I always find it helpful on my own games. 

This is a fun, unique take on the theme! I loved your art style in this and I think it worked very well to sell the idea of this game. As others mentioned, a tutorial would be a must, and I also felt a bit punished by the timer until I figured things out. My favorite part was the unique descriptions for each monster in the book. I really loved that.

Can't wait to see what you do in the next round!

Fun little game! The art and sound design fit really well together. I agree with others that I wish there was more juice. I especially would have liked smoother screen transitions between levels. I also had an issue where I just couldn't do the next level because it didn't seem to link up to the one before it in terms of collision shapes.

I hope you continue on with this! I'd love to see what more you do with it.

I enjoyed watching this one develop in the discord! The game juice you added really amped up the satisfaction, so great job on that! I'd love to see a little more feedback on interaction, however, as I wasn't entirely sure how my actions were increasing/decreasing the score relative to the timer and number of tomatoes.

Best of luck in this round!

What an incredibly clever puzzle game! My original concept was a line drawing puzzle game but I just couldn't figure out a way to make it fun enough. You've got that in spades. The VFX are especially fantastic and add so much to the game feel. 

Very fun game. I can't wait to see what you do next round!

Great use of theme and a fun concept! I thought it was a really unique take on spectacle as well as the network modifier. I will say, I could have used a lot more feedback. It was hard for me to see anything when typing and I was super confused as to what I was meant to be doing the first run through. 

Best of luck in the round!

Cute game! The choice of assets was well suited to the whimsy of the gameplay. I did notice a major bug with the retry option in that I was unable to move my character. I had to just refresh the page and then load from menu instead.

I agree with other commenters that the UI could use another pass. Much of the game also feels superfluous, which really stands out when you have to walk all the way back to the table after trying again. If you continue with this game, it might be a good idea to focus everything on the core gameplay and reinforce that as much as you can.

Best of luck with the round!

So sorry about the HP bug, I hate when stuff like that happens to a final build. :/ It's a shame, too, because it feels really good to move and shoot. Something about the bullet spread is extremely satisfying.

Best of luck to you! I hope you're able to fix the bug in the next round!

Thank you! Yeah, I usually slap my Itch page together, but I wanted to do a little bit more with it this time since presentation is such a big part of this round. 

I completely agree with you about a tutorial! It's at the top of my list for future updates. Hopefully in round 2. :) 

Can't argue with you there!

This is incredible. I think your choice to homebrew your own WebGL worked out really well for Itch integration. It adds so much to the experience. The art is obviously top notch, but the music and sound effects add a ton of creepy atmosphere. 

The GB palette for this is incredible, and it definitely reminds me of something like WarioWare. I can't believe how much you made for only having about 1-2 hours a day to work on it! 

My biggest criticism for something to look at next round if you continue with this process is that I definitely wanted a little more feedback on my inputs and especially when I missed something. It wasn't always obvious what killed me. Oh, the audio was also really quiet for me! Especially the music. 

Amazing job! Can't wait to see what you do next round. 

Thank you for taking the time to play my game! I'm definitely going to continue working on it whether I progress or not--at least to fulfill the potential I saw in it.

I am absolutely terrible at this game, but the movement controls feel pretty well tuned and tightened! My main critical feedback would be in the wall jump. I feel like I'm not getting the force I'd want when pushing off from the wall and it makes any wall jumping required for the levels feel a bit button mashy.

It's a shame the web build didn't render the glow correctly! I'll have to download the game a bit later and see it in action.

Beautiful game regardless, though. Best of luck to you in round 1!

This is such a cool idea for a game. I love that you've implemented daily puzzles. I also really appreciate the accessibility options. As someone with poor and limited vision, the giant typeface and animated feedback help immensely. 

It's crazy to me just how versatile the Bullet behavior is. I would have never imagined it being so responsive to multiple collision sources in such quick succession. You've inspired me to go play around with it!

Holy cow, I'm in love with this art style! I've wanted to make a sketchy, pen and paper style game for a long time. You found an excellent way to do that, and the animations are incredible. The unfolding one is especially top notch. 

I'm unsure if my headset is just on the fritz or if there really is no audio, but if it's the latter, I hope you add some in the future that fits the aesthetic! And I agree with others that I kept wanting to use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom and right click to rotate the camera, but I saw you're already planning to add some more mouse control options.

Overall, great entry. I can't imagine you'll have any trouble making it through, so I hope you continue this game in the future! Maybe making it into an expanded management sim where the more of a crowd you amass, the more drivers show up, the bigger tracks you can get, etc. 

Would also love to see something that's a consistent drain on resources to balance it, since it's fairly easy to max out your money. 

Thank you! I did so much research for this jam. XD I wish I'd been able to represent it a bit better. I'm hoping I can update it so it's more clear that the minerals are being freed for use by the trees and traveling through a network to the tree roots. For now it had to stay abstract.

Yeah, the option to buy more energy was a rushed add I didn't get much time to think about design wise. I'm going to consider the energy budget and economy going forward. I basically didn't want players to be locked out of succeeding, so I figured paying for a bit more energy to finish off a tree might help. 

Thank you for the critical feedback! The economy is definitely something I wish I'd spent more time testing and tweaking. Will definitely be doing that in the future. 

Thank you for the feedback! I hear you on the not being able to see well. I had it force fullscreen on itch at first, but I decided it was better presentation wise if it stayed on the decorated page. However, I will absolutely add a fullscreen mode. As someone with deteriorating vision, accessibility is very important to me.

Thank you for posting such detailed feedback! That kind of player feedback is absolutely something I want to add in the future. It's great to get comments like these because they help me actually improve and polish this idea to be the best it can be. Even if it's a simple concept, I want to do everything I can with it to push my skills as far as possible.

Everyone has already commented on the art--which is beautiful--so I want to comment on the sound design as its the first thing I noticed. It's fantastic and adds so much to the button presses. The tones are weirdly resonant in a way that's assertive but still pleasing. 

I'm sure you'll sail through this round, so I'll just say I can't wait to see what you make next!

Very cool idea! I love how you animated the wings. It looks surprisingly believable as a physics object. More than I thought it would be for wings made out of weapons. XD I definitely missed the sound/music, so I hope you end up adding to it in the future!

Best of luck in the round!

Great use of the 2 button modifier! Also great use of the asset packs you listed to create a cohesive vision. It's a "simple" game in concept, but definitely challenging! (for me, anyway... XD) It's also awesome that you let your son "help" on this. 

If you carry the game through to a future round, I'd like to see some difficulty balancing/scaling. I probably just suck at the game, but I did find it hard to ramp up to a flow state where I could consistently dodge bullets. Also, maybe a quicker restart after dying.

Best of luck in the round!

As someone who lost many hours to the original Peggle in college and Peglin more recently, I'm excited to see how this one develops. Using AI art is an interesting twist and the concept is solid. I saw in replies to other comments that you weren't focused so much on polishing the other game elements, and I do think lack of sound design cuts into the enjoyment of the gameplay--for me, that's one of the most satisfying parts of these types of games. But the VFX were great!

I'm really curious what behavior(s) you applied to the ball to get such responsive bouncing. Was it just physics? 

Promising game, I hope you get to move on. Best of luck in this round!

What an infuriating game that I can't really be mad at because it's so ridiculous. XD The VO is incredible, and your audio choices really made the whole experience. The art style fits well. I was weirdly mesmerized by your line width choices on the curtain--probably because I had to restart so many times.

Can't wait to see what you do in the audio focused round!

Thank you! Yes, I want to have a sound cue and maybe a text cue when the player is out of energy for the day and tries to click. I also intended for the minerals to have different effects, but ran out of time. :( Next round, hopefully!

Thank you for your feedback and for taking the time to play my game!

Crazy amount of polish on this. My biggest criticism would be, outside of playing in fullscreen, everything feels very small to me. It fits the vibe it felt like you were going for, but as someone with impaired vision, it was a bit hard to appreciate everything as much as I wanted to.

Beautiful art and sound design, though. You'll have no trouble getting through round 1!

You did a LOT with a little! It feels like you scoped this really well. The boss fight is fun and engaging without being difficult. The effects really sell the game, though--especially the film grain. That combined with the sound design for the projector and the ragtime music made for an excellent experience.

Best of luck in this round and I hope you continue the game in round 2!

Very fun, juicy game. The art style fit it well! I also think you did an amazing job with your modifier. A crush style puzzle game was a great fit for spectacle, too!

Best of luck in the round!

Very polished, fun game! I think my favorite thing is actually the transitions. It really adds to the polish and helps communicate the whimsy of the game.

Best of luck in the round!

Great to see another Construct game! This is a fun, challenging entry. I tried so hard to get the Peaceful ending, but just couldn't hack it. Fantastic use of your assets and engaging game overall!

Best of luck to you in the round!

Thank you! That was planned, but I ran out of time, unfortunately. :( Hoping to add it if I make it through to the next round and it makes sense to keep developing this one. 

Thank you for taking the time to play and comment!

Thank you! I'm hoping the theme will allow me to develop it further--assuming I make it through.

The biggest thing was that I planned for each mineral to have a different effect. I also planned for you to be able to hire mushroom workers who would automatically gather some minerals or do some other task each day. And I wanted to have daily modifiers, so one day maybe calcium would give you 2x the sugar or only phosphorous would spawn. 

Yeah, unfortunately I ran out of time to implement that. :( I have some ideas for the future, if I get to work on this more. 

Thanks for taking the time to play and comment!

Thanks for playing and taking the time to comment!

Took me a couple tries to figure out how to maneuver the car properly (I was just hanging out at the bottom of the screen previously... I don't think I've had enough coffee this morning...). Like another commenter noted, the controls are very tight and feel responsive, especially considering you can only turn. I was also reminded of Destruction Derby for the PS1. 

Since you left some very helpful critical feedback on my game, I'd like to do the same for yours. I'd definitely like to see, if not a tutorial, some text or a graphic that explains that you need to hit as many cars as possible but avoid head-on collisions. Seems like it should be obvious, but initially playing it, it's hard to know why you died. Part of that is the size of the sprites, I think. I'd love to see them a bit larger. Not much, since it seemed like you're trying to crank up the number of cars on screen for the spectacle of it, but just a bit. 

Speaking of spectacle, some polish notes that could help with that: I actually think you could slow down the collision animations/add more frames to the explosion to really sell that contact and make it super satisfying. I also think it would be cool to lean into the drift mechanic you've implemented and slow time juuuust a bit when the player has a near miss. Like let's say I'm about to get a head-on collision with another car and I drift out of the way at the last second. Would really sell the tension and spectacle. 

I think my favorite thing about this game is that it's a great example of scoping appropriately for a jam. You focused on one fun mechanic and did so much with it, and still had plenty of time to make great visuals and add appropriate audio to enhance the experience.

I'm not colorblind, but I do have very reduced vision, so differentiating blue, cyan, and purple was a bit difficult for me at times, but it was hugely helpful that all colors had different sound cues. 

Great entry and best of luck in the round!

Thank you for taking the time to play and give critical feedback! I really appreciate it. It helps me know how to improve the game.

I agree with you completely. I'd designed different mechanics for each ore to make them unique. I like the idea of different colors for the trees, too! I'm conflicted on days passing automatically. It's definitely annoying to press the button, but I wanted to make sure the player was aware of what was happening. I could potentially have a sound cue play and a brief wait before the day passes, so you know to expect it without having to hit a button.

Also, I planned to add modifiers based on the day that would have made the gameplay more dynamic. So one day, you'd get more minerals from calcium nodes or their effect on trees would be greater, etc.