itch.io

Cool, thanks for letting me know! I wish you the best with development c:

Aw, I very much relate to writing a character that parallels or is sort of aspirational to a recovery of my own. I hope now that you've released the game you feel better or have clarity or whatever it is you needed.

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SPOILERS BELOW IF ANYONE ELSE IS READING THIS
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Regarding the ending, here's my personal take:

I was surprised by the note it ended on, but, after thinking on it, while it does feel a little "cliffhangery" it's good that it doesn't expand on, show, or even briefly mention how the big stuff shook out. Doing so would have gone against what the real story was and what the master wanted Vrin to experience. It would have cheapened the stories of and little connections made with the characters of the town. The final note would have put all focus on the grand ambitions of nations, rather than the joys and struggles and mysteries immediately around you, where you and everyone else actually exist. This isn't to say we shouldn't be conscious of and maybe sometimes even take part in the moving of mountains, but we shouldn't get so swept up in it that we stop living in the real space and lives surrounding us.

...aha, the more I think on this story, the more I realize how much it impacted me :p But yeah. I'm a big appreciator of unconventional endings, and all that stuff above is something I've already been wrestling with in my own life, so... maybe I was just especially primed to enjoy it lol. Regardless, I think you did great work c:

I loved this game.

The flow of exploring, talking to NPCs, trading items around, and learning little spells to do even more of all of that, was just really pleasant and smooth. I had already finished the game before realizing there was a 1.01 update, but personally I had no troubles figuring out where to go. For me, everything was just the right scope to be easy to follow but exciting to be like "Oh! I know where I can use this!"

The writing wasted no words, and did a great job of giving a richness to the town and characters. It's very gentle in every way, but no less affecting for it. I found it funny, intriguing, and the whole segment with the old lady brought me from "cute and silly old lady xD" to "i'm actually crying a little..." to "holy shit this lady rules!" I hope you don't mind the comparison, but that character in particular broadly reminded me of the many witch characters in a book I love called The Sapling Cage, like she could have been a character in that world. That may be partly due to the political revolution stuff in your story. Speaking of which...

I found the political revolution stuff to be a fascinating touch. To me, it remained in the background, but served dual purpose in that it gave weight and depth to some characters and the larger world, while also serving as a backdrop to highlight the more important message you wanted to get across (a message that resonated with me quite a bit).

It's a smooth, gentle, breezy, and flat out lovely game. Thanks so much for making it and sharing it!

I streamed it too, so if you wanna see that, here ya go. I give some additional off-the-cuff thoughts at the end, around 1:41:37.

I win! This was awesome. I opened this after just waking up so I must have been delirious when I skimmed the page for controls and only saw WASD... I played the first couple levels without realizing I could recall the axe, and it wasn't until maybe the 2nd to last level I realized I could teleport...

Cool! Sure, you can go ahead and do that, but where possible please do include a link to the itch page and mention that the bonus pack and SFX pack are available there. Thank you! c:

Thanks for reporting, and sorry about the issue ><

I know the cause and I know how to fix it. It's just that the fix is pretty daunting. I hope to get to it fairly soon, though.

adored this... the space between my destinations was filled with research of fairies and exorcisms

Awww this is really cute... You got a lot of personality out of super simple animations. The ending made me very happy <3

1. Download "X-YZE_LINUX.zip" and extract it.
2. Inside the extracted folder, you should see 3 files: "_CREDITS - X-YZE.txt", "_README - X-YZE.txt", and "X-YZE_LINUX.zip". Extract that .zip file.
3. Inside of that extracted folder, you should see 2 more files: "X-YZE_LINUX" and "X-YZE_LINUX.sh". You should be able to run either of those.

Retl / Ann mentions you may need to mark them as executable. I'm not a Linux user, so I can't tell you exactly how to do that. However, a quick web search on the topic gave me this result, which may be helpful for you: https://askubuntu.com/questions/229589/how-to-make-a-file-e-g-a-sh-script-execut...

Just uploaded an update (V 1.02) that should fix the pause weirdness with controller, plus adds a setting to boost the brightness of the PUR background. Many other things too, but hopefully the bugs you experienced are taken care of now. Thanks again for letting me know about them and tracking down some of the repro steps!

Oh wow, yeah the way it looks in that capture card recording is way darker than intended. You're supposed to be able to just barely (but still reasonably) make out the silhouette of the level against the BG, but it looks like the BG shows up as basically just full black.

I'll figure something out to address that. Maybe a config menu setting that boosts the brightness of that BG specifically... maybe an outline around the level... will have to think about it.

Oh and when you say the dark level doesn’t show well on your capture card, are you referring to the contrast between background and level, or something else? Would you be able to show a screenshot?

Thanks for playing!

Yep, that softlock with the switches has been fixed with the 1.01 update.

As for the pause menu/thumbstick issue, I’m not sure… I had one person playtesting on Steam Deck, and they did have issues with the gamepad not being recognized, and that some gamepad inputs would pass through to the OS, such as the left face button opening the OS on-screen keyboard. We never entirely figured out the reason for this, and we hadn’t encountered the issue you’re describing. Some of their issues were fixed when they ran the game via Steam rather than via desktop. Which way are you running it?

Someone else, playing on Windows and with gamepad, seemed unable to pause at all. I’m wondering if this is all related…

Please do report back if you learn any more details! 

Thank you! Nice to hear a bit about the bonus material c:

I don’t have a Linux machine so I can’t directly test it myself. Can you provide more info on what’s happening?

<3 <3

I'm very happy to hear this! Nice job on the 3 levels. Good luck with the remaining ones!

god damn this was raw

This is delightful. The time bullet mechanic is used in really pure and clean ways. Very unpretentious, which I greatly appreciate. It's just enough to give a unique mechanical flavor while keeping the overall experience direct and simple. That's not to say this game is overly easy though -- I crunched pretty hard on a few levels! I'm also beginning to recognize a distinct E.G.G. charm and personality that naturally comes out in what you make. I like it very much C:

Still working my way through a clear, but this is really cool! Your influences are super recognizable in a nice way (the Solar Striker-ness of it all makes me very happy :3). I like how the stages set you up (and, in a way, require you) to really learn/use the heat and reflect mechanics. Two relatively small twists to a familiar shmup setup with more depth than one might assume.

I haven't made it past stage 3 yet, but I've gotten farther with each attempt. Latest attempt had me die just before the stage 3 boss (that final stretch is scary!!!). My strategy so far has been to chase the 1up as efficiently as possible at every opportunity, even if it means making some encounters last a bit longer. Can't always stick to it when things get dense, but it's nice going into stage 3 with 2 lives in the bank. Now if only I could stop taking a death on stage 2...

I'm still figuring out the reflect mechanic. Most of the time I use it, I either miss and get punished with heat drain, and/or I get a face full of bullets as soon as it releases. I think I'm subconsciously moving up while I charge the reflect, which may be putting me in a bad position. I suspect there are some subtleties to how the mechanic works that I should figure out though... hmmm...

Lovely work, friend! Looking forward to working through the rest of this! Great job with the music btw!!!

I love soaking in small and simple moments like this. Sometimes the beauty and depth and wonder of a normally mundane time and place just floods you. I think it's important to relish those moments, take time to exist in them, let it bring what thoughts it may, just absorb it all. We easily forget how vast the world and our existence is. I'm so proud of you for making this, and you did a great job capturing these feelings!

After a humble victory in round 1, my beloved Dizzy Duzzit stumbled in round 2. I began to question my faith in DD... and so I placed a cautious experimental bet on the illustrious Football. A misstep in retrospect. At this point, if I wanted to eat at all for the next week, I desperately needed a win. I put nearly all my remaining money on Amy Bee, who had easily won the last few rounds. Surely this would be safe! ...but as luck would have it, Amy Bee tripped and injured their eastern pseudopod! Irrecoverable!!! Broken and hopeless, my tummy growling in a furious hunger, a mere $50 to my name, I crawled back to my beloved Dizzy Duzzit. Through a tearful embrace, I apologized for my betrayal and we made amends. My final bet would be on DD, who has always been there for me! However... my betrayal had clearly taken its toll on them. I watched as they stumbled and limped across the track, tears in my eyes and tears in their stigma and paramylon bodies, until they eventually collapsed across the finish line in last place.

We both knew what this meant for us...

...I will never forget you, Dizzy Duzzit. You were delicious.

Just gave it a shot via Tabletop Simulator! At first it felt pretty punitive starting with no Appeal cards, and some turns I was completely at the whims of the dice because I had used all my Appeals. However, as I kept going I felt like that kinda works in service of the light "conflict resolution" narrative. It's a neat bit of texture c:

I would have instantly lost on turn 1 if not for the grace rule! After a bumpy start, I think I got pretty lucky because every diamond Challenge I overcame happened to be right before a Charm space. I never had more than 2 Charms the whole game! I can't quite remember, but I believe I failed maybe 4 Challenges out of the 16 I encountered. Here are the Challenges I faced (in order of left->right, top->bottom):

Since I only ever had 2 Charms, the spade Appeal effect was very strong for most Challenges since it guaranteed a win for diamond/club Challenges, and pretty high odds of a winning heart/spade ones. I also definitely made use of the rule that lets me draw an Appeal even if I move backwards into a light space. I think that's another interesting way you get some of that conflict resolution narrative in there (learning more about someone/their views through a conversation with them gone poorly).

I played this solo, so I'm curious how it might feel different with more players all working on the same Challenges. For as relatively simple as the rules are there's a lot of variety to how it feels as a game, and nuance to how the narrative can come through. Maybe I'm reading too much into the narrative aspect though (or maybe I'm not reading into it enough? :p)

It very much feels like a game that could have been cobbled together by families/a community over generations (positive!). I'm assuming it is in fact a fictional thing though? Either way, cool! Nice work! I had a good time c:

Cool!! Just read through the rules, and you came up with some interesting uses for these familiar components. Each player having their own slice of the board is particularly neat thing. Looking forward to trying it out when I get a chance!

Very cool, thank you!

10/10 would enjoy a teeny tiny yuri fairy smooch again

this rules. gripping all throughout, and has me extremely interested to find out where the other games take this.

Great work! Such a lovely atmosphere with the music, color choices, and map design. It feels like we're getting such a small glimpse into what feels like a big, fleshed-out world! I wonder what else these characters are up to...

Immediately gripping and visceral, brilliant in its simplicity. One of those games where you don't realize you've been holding your breath and slowly leaning closer and closer to the screen until you suddenly hit game over. Real good!!

Hoo boy that's some of the realest horror I've read. Nicely done!

I do see the issue even in the sample project, on the 3 "iterating downwards" lines. Strange that you don't see it though. Must be something funky on my end, though I'm not sure what. Oh well :p Thanks again for the cool engine though!!

I don't think I was doing anything non-standard, though maybe I was without realizing it. My little fix works fine for me, but here's what I was seeing FWIW:

With no changes to the code: 

If I remove the filter line:

With my fix:

Maybe Firefox just doesn't like that particular filter?

Learned about this tool a while ago, and have been itching to use it for a long time. Just released a tiny thing using it. Had a lovely time c:

FYI, I ran into an issue where text was rendering weird on Firefox -- sometimes totally unreadable. I narrowed it down to the bottom of drawText(). Something about the combo of "globalAlpha = 0.8" and "filter = 'url(#remove-alpha)'" was causing it. I basically just did this to get around it:

if (navigator.userAgent.search("Firefox")) {
    console.log("firefox detected, failsafe to make sure text is readable");
    ctx1.globalAlpha = 1.0;
}
else {
    ctx1.globalAlpha = 0.8;
}

Everything else is the same. No clue how robust this is, but hey it works fine enough for my purposes. It does make some letters weirdly bolded, but it's better than the alternative.

Really striking atmosphere and visuals! Sorry to hear about the dev struggles, but I think this is still a cool addition to your catalog! I'm curious what you had planned for the story 👀

Can't believe I never rated or commented on this back when I played it!

This blew me away. I loved the anime, so I was bracing myself to make a >:T face at your memeing of it... but it was actually incredibly cute and emotional and touching! You basically nailed the character personalities, too.

Beyond being just a lovely story, this project opened my eyes and mind to new ways stories could be told -- ways that don't have to be super feature-rich and technically-complex. It made the idea of making a visual novel feel realistically achievable! I actually starting porting an older project into this little engine. It's on hold for now, but I fully intend to finish it up in the near future!

Thanks for making this!!

An utter delight! Bump combat revival!!!

Of the caves I found I think there were only 2 I wasn't sure what to do with... Pretty sure they would've gotten me the secret sword and shield, so I wound up fighting the final boss without them. It was hard! I had to spend time analyzing and practicing the attacks/sequences. I never fully figured out the logic behind what attacks are chosen, but I definitely gradually got more confident. After a break, I managed beat it by the skin of my teeth and my heart was POUNDING! Incredible. Just perfect.

I really enjoyed the design notes too. Some really interesting thoughts in there. It definitely made me think about my own project in some different ways. It's great to hear about design done in a more intuition-based/vibes-based/"because i thought it was cute" way, as opposed to the extremely common (and frankly exhausting) rules/mechanics/Game Design way. Your mindset here is something all us gamedevs should embrace more. Thanks for writing that doc!

I will be shouting about this game for a long time!

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Yeah, choosing coffee will always give the stuff I wrote from my perspective about the location, and the hot chocolate is Alix's. There's no branching or anything like that :)

Loved this. Perfectly paced, cute and exciting visuals, and super satisfying to finish a stage. I was dumb and actually didn’t realize you could change momentum left/right (despite reading the controls…) so I thought it was designed specifically to where you just keep bouncing around the screen and can only flap lmao. It was actually pretty interesting playing it that way. Anyways, great work!

Wow this is extremely cool and cute! You explore a lot of different ideas with the mechanic, and those ideas are all super varied. The whole thing is this nice little arc of tension and difficulty, complete with a tense set piece boss fight. Extremely cool!