itch.io

Wonderful hard-boiled writing style, remains evocative and consistent throughout. At points had a slightly non-native-speaker feel to it, but didn't detract from the whole. Worldbuilding was built into the narrative in a really natural way. Visually gorgeous. Easily among the top five jam entries I've played! Really painful when it ended, I hope there will be more parts :3

A fun little piece. The sudden ambience twist worked well, I was fully expecting a more navel-gazing drama style from the beginning. I feel the dialogue could use some work, it felt a bit stilted or cliché at times. Game ends in a series of dead ends unfortunately, I'm assuming due to time constraints.

Really strong entry! Snappy writing style worked well in this one. Gameplay was more rounded out than a lot of the other entries, although still had that walk-here-walk-there gameplay that's common in adventure games and which I don't particularly like. Fet like there was a lot more to discover, considering the time limit this is a really big piece!

The tone was fantastic, in every sense of the word, but came at the cost of clarity – for example, I still have no idea which voice was the Voice and which the Rune :D Parts of it felt like they came from or were meant for some other piece. Formatting didn't really work (fullscreen pushed the thing into a corner, without fullscreen couldn't see everything) but that feels more like an Arcweave problem :D The writing got really purple at points ("large yet small"), could have been tempered with more down-to-earth bits? Although the point, which it reached, was very much to go for the strange.

Good writing in this one, nice use of repetition. Felt more effective than immersive, functional piece, had the feel of an introductory piece to a new RPG setting. Gameplay elements felt a little tacked on, could have functioned as a more straightforward story piece? In any case nice stuff!

Really strong entry! Started off immediately instead of spending time on exposition and kept moving like a train, which I enjoyed immensely. The simple, purely-text presentation worked well for the piece. Felt very derivative (The Walking Dead, anyone?) but that didn't detract from the strong writing and good pacing.

Really interesting concept of supporting a band of adventurers emotionally instead of just "100 gp for rest at inn". Damn pity it ends where it ends x/ Worldbuilding was effective, the main meat of the story somewhat lacking due to the shortness. Little spelling and grammar errors distracted a bit. Overall a nice experience!

This reflected a D&D group's play session pretty well, right down to the tableside comics. The one-line-per-node solution didn't really work here, there was a lot of clicking through dialogue which made it a bit sluggish. The trapped-in-an-RPG setting made me wish for a more game-y experience, but it was very straightforward. Sound effects started playing on top of each other pretty confusingly at points xD

There was a very soulslike-as-an-adventure-game vibe to this that I liked. Good writing, effective language, could maybe have concentrated the poetical language to a fewer places? Right now it was very purple throughout, not my preference but subjective . Could also have done with less or more condensed description, it became a bit heavy at times. There was at least one dead end (fighting the knight the second time, "The knight looks at you derisively.") Left me wanting more, always a good thing!

Writing reminded me of old text adventure games, sweet nostalgia <3 Very solid writing overall, good tone, clear. The amnesiac story is an cliché one, but this is a good execution, did take a while before it took off. Left off on a fantastic cliffhanger!

Very nice bits of lore here and there, good writing at places. Started off with a lot of exposition that drew me out of it a bit, the connections and routes were pretty confusing (as well as at least one empty option). Xolo was a sweetheart, fun idea for an adventure game, having a secondary character to send on errands!

The writing in this was amazing, exactly the sort of shapes-in-the-dark worldbuilding I love. There were lines in this that gave me chills. Didn't really get the jam theme from this one but it certainly didn't make the reading experience any less. The game ended relatively abruptly, would really like more of this!

I'll admit, I went into this expecting to dislike it, assuming it was gonna be a simplegimmick or parody game. It won me over in about five seconds :3 No single element really stood out to me, but the game really held my attention and interest – the total was somehow really great. A bit messy at points, maybe, with grammar and wording.

This one really took me along for the ride, I felt, was very intimate. Cyclical nature of the story was well-executed. Gameplaywise very simple, some of the gamified elements felt a bit tacked on. All in all great interpretation of the theme!

An amazing experience, the writing was spot-on, to the point and incredibly effective. Artwork complemented the storytelling perfectly. I really felt this transcended the game jam experience into a full-fledged art game – with a smidgen more polish maybe. Didn't really feel the jam theme with this one but all-around wonderful work!

Fun idea for a more mechanical game! Execution was quite unclear but that's mostly on the tool, didn't feel like a finished whole. Got stuck in the "final boss battle" when I ran out of cards :o

If only I could choose to work on job applications by clicking a button 💀 Good read, thank you for it!

Amazing experience, felt really grittily real; only complaint is the classic "wanted it to be longer" x3 I give it Mixed Pickle.wav/10

Really well-built an pretty game. Loved the gentleman, good jarring moment that I'll remember.

Thank you~ x3

I did not imagine you could use Arcweave to craft such a, well, game-y experience :o The visuals were amazing too! The use of color for associations was really effective

Thanks a lot 😊 We've both made war- and trench-themed entries I notice! Will definitely be playing through yours :3

Holy crap, that's awesome! Thank you so much, really glad you enjoyed it :)

Oh damn, I was hoping it'd magically just work :/ Sounds like the visuals are failing hard, the sounds tell me that you're loading the first level and (moving right) picking up the first ability. Either some part of my code is Linux-unfriendly (maybe the resource loaders?) or AsciiPanel doesn't play nice with it (some people in Trystan's tutorial had problems, but nothing like this). If only I had access to a Linux machine... but if I do fix it or find a workaround, I'll get back to you :)

I coded the game in Java in VSCode and it uses Trystan's AsciiPanel extensively, Maven as project management.

Thanks! I'm a huge amateur when it comes to coding, so I don't know how I'd go about making those builds. The .rar contains an executable .jar which (a cursory Google search tells me) is platform-independent - so it should/could/would work...? If you want to test it I'd be massively grateful :)

(i.e. a minimalist, textless real-time action roguelite - if you've ever smashed your NES in anger, you'll tread familiar territory)

As far as I know, "tasted the bitter fruit of life" is my own invention, from the phrase "the bitter fruit of <foo>". Unfortunately there's little more to the plot of the game: I ran out of time to add content, having to concentrate on mechanics. I would have wanted to write snippets of flavor text that could be found on levels, but what can you do. The game ends on level 50, where you face the people eater (patent pending).

Very true about the ESC key, I have a steady hand and I've never pressed it accidentally, but honestly it should pop up a confirmation box. It's unlikely that I'll add one at this point, already hard at work on the next project :D

That's correct. I originally didn't implement other diagonals than numpad since, honestly, I didn't even think of it. I've just updated a v1.12 with HJKL (the VI keys), which to me are incredibly unintuitive but won't necessarily be for others, and are certainly better than nothing.

I don't mind the cheating key being available if you find it - I don't advertise it (some people would rather not know, I'm sure) but it's one way to get to experience more of the difficult game. I trust people to police themselves :)

Wow, thanks! No relations to Cultist Simulator - I drooled after it some time back but my personal finances don't give way for such luxury. Very true about the >, I'll be adding it shortly.

The game uses Ashley, a lightweight entity framework that I did no justice to, and AsciiPanel, an ASCII terminal display.

EDIT: Just uploaded a 1.1 HOTFIX version which fixes a couple of game-breaking bugs. I blame lack of sleep and/or skill.

Starting my 7DRL entry in 10 minutes (12:00 EEST). I'm feeling super excited, success here would mark the first time I finish a game project. I might update more about the project here as a sort of work-diary for myself but might be the work takes first place.

The roguelike itself centers around eating and a hunger system. Hunger systems are often fairly forced timers on progress, but I'd like to see just how far I can take the concept, hopefully creating a hunger clock that means something.