Very cute little casual game!
I've seen the mechanic here and there throughout the jam. still a very cute mechanic.
I'm a big fan of the fact that there's one optimized route to take, and you're given (prompted!) the chance to beat your record, this gives every level a limited amount of replayability, which is nice. Would be even nicer if we could see what IS the most optimal number of moves, I think I got each level to be most optimal, but I'd like some confirmation! >:(
Otherwise, I think the game could benefit from some non-instant movement from the dice, a little (quick!) animation could go a long way!
As well as some sound effects and music!
But also you've critiqued yourself and I think you understand pretty well where you'd want to take the game and what needs to improve, thats awesome!
Wooooooooow!
I dont know what else to say! This is an incredible submission!
Fantastic art, fantastic animation, fantastic use of space, and fantastic filling up of empty space so it doesn't feel empty!
I love that the enemies all feel different and have tougher requirements based on their relative chess value!
Unfortunately I couldn't get any further than the wave after the rook :( So I'm unsure if there's a queen/king piece, but if they exist, I'm sure they're marvelous!
Absolutely near perfect submission. If I had to nitpick one thing, I would say: Be more generous with how easy it is to hit enemies, and to pick up dice (both of these can be fixed by just making the dice hitbox just a tad bigger!)
And finally I'm not sure if you need the mechanic of swapping dice if you run over another, I feel like that messed me up more often than helped me, and it doesn't feel like it's supposed to be an obstacle 😅
Overall, incredible!
Had an absolute blast blasting poker chips and cards!
Great use of theme, great tie-ins, and everything is related to something casino-esque!
I love the animations, and even the controls! The game gets a lot easier once you start memorizing what faces you want to land on depending on how many enemies there are (usually 5-grenades and 6-laser are the best).
I also love the knockback you get from using any of the weapons so that you are randomized again, and you can either chance it, or try to finesse it to a number you want/need.
Its great that the relative power of the weapons are stronger the higher the number of pips!
I also love all the feedback and the juice of the game, but honestly, pump that up to eleven! I want to see bigger explosions and more screen shake! gimmie gimmie
Overall, beautiful submission!
(P.S. Could use a boss 😉)
Wow! fantastic art and great animation altogether! Very impressed with the visuals, and with the music/sfx which fits very well!
I'm also impressed that you were able to get so many minigames together!
The one criticism I have is that there was a general sense of same-ness for all of the fights, even though different characters looked different, and had different animations, they all had the same fight mechanics. It may have felt a little more unique if certain character types had different minigames associated with them.
I'm also not sure if the health mechanics made a lot of mechanical sense. I kept expecting harder enemies to take more than two "wins" to beat. But that's a minor thing.
Overall very pretty and very impressed with the art :)
Not having more levels and more content per level (different enemy types instead of just the saws), is one of my biggest regrets for sure! The intent was to have one hazardous path, one path that required high jumping ability, and one path that required fast run speed for each level... Needless to say, took too big of a bite there 😅
First off, the art is incredible for 48 hours! Absolutely insane!
That being said, I didnt really understand why the character spawns arrows that hurt him whenever he dashes. Furthermore, the controls are very very clunkly. especially for a bullet hell/hack & slash. I understand that the intent is to use the lance to get around quickly, but it doesnt really work as intended. I would speed up the character a lot, and make his movement more responsive, then you might have something that could be very fun on your hands!
You get extra points for giving me nostalgia vibes from the old(ish) show "My Life as a Teenage Robot". I absolutely loved that show as a kid.
I think the idea is incredible, and it works very well. There's really not too much that needs to be done if you wanted to turn this into a fully fledged game (machanic-wise).
A few more attachments here, a few more puzzles there, a little black screen bug fixing ;) and boom, you've got yourself a pretty finished mechanic/game!
I don't really think theres anything that needs "fixing". It mostly just needs some polish, juice, and its pretty much there, full game.
Overall, great game, solid mechanic, and a big hit of nostalgia, thanks for that!
I'm certainly not well enough coordinated for this game, but that being said, its very cute and very well made. Its a relaxing little game (even if i can never get those damn high hearts >:( )
Like others have mentioned, the only thing that bats against the game at the moment is the little desync bug. But I'm sure thats an easy fix, so my ratings weren't at all influenced by it :)
I honestly don't have much critique to give, its a very good game. Would work really well as a mobile with either swipe controls, or just two different buttons, up & down.
Some updated art, a little more juice, and some more reasons to play (highscore? collecting coins as well?), and it would be a pretty complete little casual game!
The mechanic is very satisfying to use, like others have said. I think the game has a nice amount of polish with the rope's "bounciness", and the way the ball squashes and stretches. The SFX also does a good job as well!
However, I have a few small gripes.
I think the fact that the camera tracks the player so tightly makes it quite hard to click on very specific spots. I think that this might work a lot better with touch controls however! Something worth trying?
At first i found it odd that i had to right click on a node to remove it, because as the camera moves, it might get a little difficult to right click the right spot of the node. I thought it would be nice if right clicking anywhere on the screen should just release the rope. However, then you introduced us to the second and third rope, and I realized why this may not work. So in the end, I would say that the colliders of the nodes should just be much bigger so that they're easier to click.
Like I said, just some small issues for me.
I think with some updated art, a little post processing, and even more juice and polish, this could be a cute little mobile game!
Really cool take on the retro racer game.
Things that I really liked:
- The presentation of the game is phenomenal. Everything is on brand with that "vaporwave"/90's retro low poly look. And it works really well for the game.
- The control scheme is great. We (the gamers lol), have been conditioned through years of playing games to build a fluidity in using the WASD keys and the mouse together. This game leverages that precognition allowing you to easily build an understanding of the control scheme.
- The game slows down the speed of the two crafts when apart, and speeds up, when combined. This is great for 2 reasons. One, its harder to control two moving vehicles at the same time, than it is controlling only one. At the same time, it makes sense in-world. When the two crafts join together, they use their "added" propulsion together, thus making the green craft faster (Also, really cool that a blue and yellow vehicle combine together to make a green one).
Things that could use some tweaking:
- The combination of the two crafts should be almost instant. A game should never feel like it is the reason that the player failed to do something. Failure should always feel like its a product of a decision the player made. When the player makes the decision to "combine" and still dies, it feels like the game is cheating them out of their decision. When the game requires the player to make split second decisions, and then doesnt act on those decisions immediately itself; to the player, it feels like they made the right choice, but the game decided to act too slowly to resolve their choice.
- MORE BLOOM. I love the look of the game so much, that I want more of it. Everything should be bloomy to an extent. The ships should have glowing strips. The rings should be pretty much all light (yellow is pretty good, but blue and green need MORE).
- Some more post processing? Things like scan lines?
- A little more "juice" when collecting rings? This could even be achieved by just putting in a looooot more rings. Because it "feels good" to collect a lot of things!
A very unique take on the bullet hell genre. There's even a little bit of strategy involved, which is nice. One drawback, that I'm not even sure its a drawback, is that, in general, bullet hells will allow you to play the entire game without ever getting hit, if you can be good enough. I understand that that's not necessarily possible, especially when the ship gets incredibly large, but it can also feel very unrewarding for the player when there's absolutely nothing they can do to stop their parts from getting hit. At the same time, those parts keep getting replenished over time, and the only part that really matters is the core. I think what you've got here is a case of "how to solve item hoarding". Because the added guns act as "consumables" in a way (they get eroded over time), people will have the tendency to get attached, and not want to lose them. But the game is designed in such a way that you eventually HAVE to lose them (more or less). Its a very interesting problem to solve. You have to some way, tell people that "its ok to let go of this gun, youll get another".
Overall, very unique idea, very cool idea as well, and it's definitely something I'd consider revisiting after some amount of polish!
Superhot meets a 3d platformer, and it's a match made in heaven.
There's just a ton of juice in this game, it feels SO satisfying to throw the ball, to slide around, and just maneuver in general. Love smashing through doors, through windows, through....people?
There's a tiny bit of jank with the magnets, and the chain around the ball, and just generally felt like we were carrying a balloon, instead of a heavy ball, but honestly that's mostly all nitpicky stuff that can be ironed out if the game was worked on a little bit more.
Overall, incredible game.
I think the idea is unique and really cute. Its an interesting little puzzle game that can certainly be expanded on.
There are, however, a few changes that I would like to see happen.
First off, and probably the biggest offender is that the game doesnt give you all of the required information to beat the level. Sometimes the blue and purple nodes are hidden off-screen, and the player kind of has to guess, or try, fail, and try again. I think it would be a lot better if the puzzles all fit on screen fully, and the player could plan out, ahead of time, what they wanted to do. This gives the player more agency and more opportunity to plan their moves.
Overall cute idea, and interesting prototype for something that can become a full-fledged mechanic.
I love games that can be played in a co-op environment as well! So it's got that going for it! The art is cute and sound effects are bubble, which fits in with the rest of the game well.
I would say, if you were to continue evolving the game:
- It needs more variety than two types of enemies (which are actually just one kind)
- Some reason to keep the player coming back, the score is nice, presenting the player with some sort of graphic that represents "this much more to beat your high score" or "you've surpassed the high score by this much"
- More things to do. Killing enemies is nice, but am I supposed to pick up coins? or powerups? What can I carry forward from playing the game once, why should I come back? Do I collect coins to unlock skins? other characters? different powerups?
The core mechanic is solid, and its a cute little co-op party game, but now comes the building blocks on top of that.
Overall, very nice little jam game!
First I can talk about the visuals, and audio. The game is very cute, and i love the little animations on the people. The music also fits really well with the game (albeit a little repetitive, but its a jam game, so i totally get it). Overall the game looks and feels amazing. I get the feeling that we're kind of "playing with toy soldiers" more than commanding armies in an RTS, and I think you should totally lean into that, maybe with a tilt shift effect on the camera to really make everything look tiny, like miniatures.
The gameplay and mechanics work really well for a cute little jam game. I think you did great! But if I were to come back and play this again, I think it would need some balance tweaks, and some UX improvements. First off, Lord Redwood wasnt much of a threat once you got a tiny little economy going. It might be a little hard to balance the AI, but he only seemed to attack when I attacked him, and he did so pretty infrequently. Also I'm not sure if the game mechanics were applied to the enemy settlements. They didnt seem to count up population over time. This made overwhelming the enemy a little easy once you got the idea of the game. Also I'm not sure what the idea of the neutral locations was about. I just kind of felt bad invading them :( Maybe some sort of recruitment mechanic in the future? Maybe utilizing gold to bribe/buy their loyalty to you? And allow Mr Redwood to do the same. And then allow full-on invasions to happen as well if you would like to take over the neutral townships the old-fashioned way!
UX-wise, just some very small things like, show the player their gold production per day somewhere, also notify the player when a township is full and is ready to "harvest" (ew, thats not a good word). Right now, houses/towns that are full, light up blue, just like any other production facility. But they should show up a little bit different when full because while production locations need to be full for their effect to take place, houses and towns need to be NOT full, to serve their function. Another thing is that the player cannot select how many soldiers to move out. So if moving to a farm, and you click from a full house, 5 soldiers move out, but the max space of a farm is 1, so 4 soldiers just kind of disappear forever.
Some other things:
I liked that the maps are randomly generated every time.
I LOVED how simple the tutorial for the game was, once you did a thing, the game assumed that you knew how to do it, and it would stop prompting you. Very nice and out of the way.
Overall, I'm a big fan! :)
The instruments being layered on top of each other was a brilliant idea. Because the game had very simple and concise "escort" missions, they did not feel like a chore, and added a neat little story element to the game. Once all instruments were collected, I think the game became a little hard and dependent on luck. The problem was that sometimes, no matter what you did, there was no way to stop all the bats that were attacking the orchestra. On my first playthrough, this really bit me hard, and I failed because of it. I understand that its a tall order for a jam game, but the end sequence really needs some sort of smarter bat spawning system to make it feel fair.
Overall, it was a cute little game, and I liked it :)
This is very cute, and the worldbuilding is great! Love the intro cinematic, and how it gives a very brief introduction to the world of the game. The tutorial screen is very concise as well, but I would be careful with choosing colors that are so close together to represent key ideas in your game. The biggest downfall is the responsiveness and "tightness" of the controls. I'm not sure if that's an artifact of the web version, or construct itself, but I found it very difficult to control the characters.
I think the fact that the game is presented in an isometric manner, but uses cardinal controls makes it so that the player feels a "disconnect" between the two. Maybe I'm a bad gamer, but I felt like I had to constantly think about which way I was going to go when pressing a button, rather than just doing it from intuition. This, coupled with the fact that the characters can fall off the platforms leads to a little bit of an unpleasant experience in my opinion. The atmosphere of the game worked for it, for sure, and the characters were likable. The joining mechanic was interesting, and I would like to see that explored a little more.
As a proof of concept, I think this has potential. I'm impressed by the enemy character art, and the mechanics are certainly interesting. As far as execution, well, without a win or lose condition, it's hard to see this as a "game" necessarily. That being said, I think this is an interesting mechanic worth exploring further, and I would love to see what could come out of it.
I love the name, and the cartoonish presentation of Biff and his iron companion. The throwing mechanic is definitely the star of the show, and in my opinion, the game should focus almost solely on this. If this were a trajectory-based game, I believe it could lead to some fun mechanics. I love the idea that the character is limited by the length of the chain around his foot. This takes agency away from the player, but then gives it back in heaps by allowing them to throw the ball. This is cartoonish, and hilarious, and it works very well in the game's favor. Also the "flying" sprite/animation also plays into this humorous theme.
The mechanic of stretching over obstacles is interesting and unique, and this is compounded by the mechanic of "glom"-ing other globs, which adds another layer of interactivity. The platforming controls are a tiny bit wonky and loose. Also the visual representation of "stretching" could be conveyed a little bit better. Right now it just feels like we're duplicating ourselves a few times. The core game idea is solid and can lead to a neat little puzzle-type platformer if expanded on.
The controls were very tight, which is a requirement for a game like this. It felt very snappy, and thats a good thing. The art and animation was cute, and it worked for the game. The fact that you are literally "eating" your enemies, and gaining both hunger, and health when you do so, is an interesting take. This allows for the game to be "harder", or throw more obstacles at the player, because they have this mechanic to rely on to gain back health. However, it was a little hard to tell when I was hitting enemies. Perhaps incorporating something like hit flash would help solve this problem. Currently, I believe the game lacks content, but has a solid foundation.
The core idea of the game is solid, and It could work very well as a unique take on the platformer genre. Unfortunately the physics can get a little unwieldy, and "wonky" as you jump about. It seems like the engine has a hard time, especially when the saw gets stuck on platforms and the character falls back to the ground due to gravity. I also found that the player controls need a little bit of "tightening up". Sometimes they felt a little floatly, and sometimes unresponsive. The fact that the weight of the saw swinging about can have a physical effect on the player, like pulling them towards the saw, is an interesting take, but I would be careful not to fall into the trap of "taking away agency" from the player by affecting their movement too much.
Very unique and interesting idea. It does require a tutorial however. It took me quite a bit of time to realize what I needed to do on the menu screen. Once I had that figured out, the game was fairly straightforward. I was stuck for a little while because I didn't know I could move when becoming other objects. Another thing that would be nice to have pointed out would be the "immovable" plates from objects, such as "locked" and "important". I would have loved to keep on playing, but the black hole level had me stumped and I could not continue. If you tell me how to pass that level, I will give it another go. Overall a very very cool idea. My jaw literally dropped a little when I realized what was going on.
The game is very stressful, and it presents a unique challenge. I feel like the controls could be tightened up to allow for more precise movements. At the moment, it feels like I'm waiting for the game to "catch up" to what I want it to do. And this makes it feel like a little bit of a chore. I would suggest a different control scheme for the game. Perhaps dragging & dropping? Maybe a drag & drop control scheme would feel good on mobile. Also playing around with the idea that you can obtain more "body parts", so you can be a little longer, get places easier, add an element of puzzle solving perhaps. The core idea is good and I believe it allows for evolution.
