itch.io

Before anything else, I want to say: Congratulations on the scores! Top 100 overall is impressive in a competition of this size. The Graphics, Audio, and Theme scores were especially well-earned; the aesthetic is polished to a glowing shine! 

I definitely liked the game more than I didn't; there were many less-frustrating games in the jam that I still enjoyed less than Space Infused Daycare Simulator. The protagonist's physics-based movement was polished and fun, and I should have focused on that more in my original comment.

I'm not surprised that there were planned features that fell on the cutting room floor; most problems with game jam games tend to be the result of a lack of time to implement and iterate, and difficulty is the most difficult design problem. GBJam 11 was also particularly hard for me, and I was not entirely satisfied with my entry when the deadline came. It is what it is; it wouldn't be a jam if it didn't put us in a jam!

I still vividly remember my first playing this. Even after seeing the thumbnail and title several times while scrolling the entries, it was only after the infants were let loose in the station that I remembered the other thing SIDS stood for. You got me good; it was very funny!

I hope life is treating you well.

Yes, for three parts of a telephone number. I apologize if it was too confusing!

I apologize for taking so long to get back to you.

Just after I read this comment, I tried opening the game and got the same error! Weirdest thing was, it only happened when I connected through WiFi. When connecting through mobile data, it worked fine.

I've pushed an HTML update that solved the problem on my end. I hope it solves it on everyone else's as well. 🤞

I think it's a file networking error. The extension which allows for large amounts of character frames in a single character used a highly unfriendly file-naming system, with brackets and spaces. I've changed the nomenclature to _8_8_8_8 instead of [8 8 8 8]. It seems like an obvious mistake in hindsight.

Thank you for your patience!

As I don't want that information in the comments section, I've decided to create and post a text walkthrough. I probably should have done that sooner!

1. Open the menu ('X' / 'Q' / 'Shift' / 'Esc' / Right-click).

2. Select "Items."

3. Select "Letter."

The jam has been a nice break!

Good game; it's very subtle in its execution. It prompted me to watch the entirety of the web series so far, and it is great!

That's good to know! It was a bit ambiguous; maybe it could read something like "++Fire / –Atk", or something else to clearly denote that more is being added.

Oh! There sure is.

What a nice concert.

That was fun! The animations are very polished, and the mechanics are well thought-out. The HUD inside the mech was an excellent detail. All-in-all, just a great game.

The resolution seems a bit large.

Great work!

• but for some reason I didn't get any audio...

That is very concerning...

If you don't mind me asking, which platform do you use? (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.). To clarify, was this on the browser? If so, which browser? Did any strange console errors appear?

Of course, there's no pressure to answer. Thank you for the feedback!

Competent. The perspective shift is fun! The ending card is very cute.

The resolution seems a bit large.

Good work. Congratulations on the submission!

That was fun! It's a competent execution of Sokoban. The story is cute!

The music is a little annoying, but it has some good ideas in it.

The audio seems a tad quiet. Of course, that's better than it being too loud, but it's still a bit strange.

I noticed a browser console message that appeared when I interacted with dressers and doors:

Yes, it sure does!

Good work!

That was fun! The mechanics are competently implemented. The rover is interesting.

It took me a while to realize that I could refill the oxygen by going south to the ship. Before that, I assumed I just had to speedrun the game!

Great work!

That was cool! It's a tad slow at times, but the mechanics are fleshed out and well-considered. The elite battles are interesting!

The laser ship palette (green) is a lot harder to distinguish; the bullets blend into the background.

The audio is a bit imbalanced. The music is much louder than the sound effects.

Great work!

That title sure is a pun, huh.

I hope this wall of text doesn't seem harsh. You all are trying to do a lot of extremely difficult things at the same time: make a physics action game, perform macabre comedy, and create a game in 10 days. Doing even one of those is an achievement in and of itself.

The art is great, and so is the soundtrack and sound effects! "Baby down" is a funny animation. The character design is endearing! The concept is a good double-take on the theme. It's fairly accurate to the Game Boy aesthetic. Using zero-gravity tether physics to transport babies is a good conceit for grim slapstick humor. There are a lot of good ideas here. It's an easy 5-star in almost every category.

The gameplay is bad. It's wildly random and frustrating. It took me hours to beat the first section, and it was only after I lucked into finding Mom and the babies in the span of 7 rooms.

The level is labyrinthine, and it takes so long to find anything if you get unlucky. Even failed runs last forever. I didn't even find Mom in most of my runs. Having to keep the entire layout of the level in my head didn't help matters. Maybe the player could start at Mom? A Metroid-style map would also be helpful. The level should probably be shrunk as well.

The saucers are awful. One of them is a cool obstacle, but 3 of them in a room and 25 of them on the station turns the game into an RNG nightmare. They're so erratic, and their grab ability is so powerful and constant, that most runs were entirely at their whims, especially when one decides to go mach-speed with a baby in tow. There was this one time I was bringing the third baby back, only to find that saucers had dragged the other two away from Mom; that's how powerful they are.

This would all be problem enough, but the frustrating gameplay also kills the humor like a saucer with a baby. It was initially funny that I was entrusted to use a finicky physics-based tether system to transport fragile infants across a crumbling space station. It was funny when I would take a corner wrong and they would bump into something and I would be like "oh dear! I can't believe I did that!" It's funny when it's the player's fault, is what I'm saying. It's not funny when wild RNG saucers kill children, I just think "Damn, I have to do all that again!"

I was pleasantly surprised by the boss fight. The twist was amusing, and I was glad I wasn't going to have to worry about random rooms. Unfortunately, it had similar problems. It didn't seem possible to tether the babies to the poles (I tried a lot!). The poles being up for only a couple of seconds was needlessly difficult. At one point, after Mom grabbed the children from space, she got stuck on something and caused a physics freak, killing basically everyone.

Then, I got softlocked because I vented Mom and the babies, the ship wouldn't close, and I couldn't untether myself from the pole.

It's not unsalvageable. Most of it is very impressive! It's just marred by a few bad design decisions.

Also, I'll be frank: it probably warrants a content warning.

All-in-all, great work. Congratulations on the submission!

The streamlined item interaction and combat is an interesting approach. The art and palette is pretty. The soundtrack is great!

At one point, the random item chests gave me 8 rings, and I couldn't figure out what they were used for. Strange occurrence.

The character froze after interacting with one of the cave doors: the entrance to the room with the drunk man blocking the exit.

Good work!

Proficient arcade-style gameplay! The art and palette is warm and relaxed, yet readable. Great work!

That was endearing! Imagination is always a conceit for a good story.

The audio is a bit imbalanced. The voice acting was much louder than the music, especially during times when individual clips stacked on top of each other.

Good work!

I got to Day 7. After building a massive farm, twenty plants each, and planting every tree, a few people finally arrived. One of them told me how to look up at the stars, and, for the first time in my entire playthrough, I looked up and saw the earth in the sky.

So, um, that was surprisingly somber and hopeful. The farming, while it could definitely use some streamlined controls, was a good kind of repetitive. The art and character design is very cute. The soundtrack is nice and calm. Very proficient all-around!

It was a bit confusing at first, although I did get the Harvest Moon inspiration fairly quickly. Things made a lot more sense once I realized that harvests can be converted to a LOT of moon dust. Everything else is much easier to do once the agriculture is strong.

The audio is a tad loud. Some of the menu sounds got a bit grating after a while.

Fantastic! Great work!

This feels like one of those experimental isometric platformers from the 80s, in both a good and bad way. The art and soundtrack is great; there is a lot of creepy foreboding atmosphere!

The mechanics are unfortunately quite bad. It's almost impossible to tell where you are while in the middle of a jump. It's very easy to fall off of platforms. The hitboxes for enemies are weirdly large. Collisions for hallways are strange. Various bugs. I couldn't finish because I got stuck on the other side of a warp and got stuck in an endless loop of death.

It's not unsalvageable or anything; all of it can be ironed out. For one, I would try focusing the camera on where the player's "ground level" is, instead of where the player is in the air. It might make jumps less confusing.

The audio is a tad loud, especially when sound effects start stacking on top of each other.

All things considered, good attempt! Congratulations on the submission!

That was cool! The atmosphere is creepy and ruinous. The art is superb. The inventory was a tad awkward, but usable. Great work!

Competent! Astronauts destroying each other on impact and with bullets was an interesting mechanic.

The audio is a bit imbalanced; the player death sound is much louder than the music.

The resolution seems a bit big.

Congratulations on the submission!

That was fun, albeit grim. The mechanics are solid. The art is polished. The voices are a nice touch!

The audio is a bit imbalanced. The sound effects are a bit louder than the music, and the end-of-level explosion sounds are especially loud.

Great work!

That was fun! The drift-charge mechanic is a nice twist on an uncommon trope. The music is chill and ethereal. The art is striking and saturated.

The audio is a tad loud. Peaks often approached, and sometimes exceeded, 0.0 dB.

Good work! Congratulations on the submission!

That was cool! The level design does a great job of teaching the mechanics. Those endings were strangely foreboding.

Did you compose the music?

The audio is a tad loud.

Good work! Congratulations on the submission!

That was fun! The mechanics were competently implemented. Although, I think the "perspective line" coming from the current cube could be more noticeable.

The music on the title screen is a lot quieter than the level music.

For some reason, the black on the outlines of objects is 34;32;52, which is a different color than the solid 0;0;0 background.

The title screen has 5 colors. ( 6 if you count the different shade of black. )

All-in-all, good work. Congratulations on the submission!

That was fun! The art is superb. The mechanics are highly competent, and the bosses had good designs to them. The music is also pretty cool.

I accidentally broke the game by dying as Chip-Chimp was defeated, which caused them to not appear again. I walked out of the room and ended up back on the first ship. Strange glitch.

The sound effects seem a bit louder than the music.

All-in-all, great work!

I'm not sure.

If the ship's control is something your team plans to change, it would probably be added to the list of disclaimers on the game page. If it's not going to be changed, I don't really know to contextualize it in a way that makes sense. That's your team's decision.

The art is cute!

I think this would've been better as a high-score based game. Setting an explicit goal, especially so high up, only highlights how frustrating the gameplay is.

It's a bunch of little things. Not being able to move left/right for a moment after bouncing / jumping is annoying. The hitboxes on the bats are too large. The balloons were unhelpful and dangerous to use. The strange sideways strafe-jump. Just, so many little things that would be fine as a half-a-minute sampler, but are absolutely draining as a three-minute challenge.

There's a strange black flicker effect every time the level resets, after the fade in.

The audio is a tad loud. It was consistently peaking above 0.0 dB.

The donuts were cool!

All-in-all, good work. Congratulations on the submission!

Competent! I especially liked the last level.

The character art is cute, but a lot of the tile graphics are muddy. Some of the walls look the same as the floors.

The pace of the character is good for moving through small passages and moving boxes, but very slow for everything else. A run might be helpful.

The resolution seems to be a bit large.

Good work. Congratulations on the submission!

That was cool! The mechanics and level design are very polished.

The font is a bit hard to read in long stretches.

Great work!

Competent! The enemy designs are cute.

Does the "+Fire / –Atk" and "+Atk / –Fire" add 1 and subtract 1? I'm not sure why I would choose a +0 overall if I have the option for a +1 upgrade.

Congratulations on the submission!

That was fun! The mechanics are solid, and the art and soundtrack contribute to the moody atmosphere. The asteroid proximity indicators were very helpful.

My only note on the gameplay is that, although the camera was highly proficient in terms of showing the most relevant area, it did have a lot of fairly distracting shake to it.

Good job on including volume options! That being said, the default volume (maximum) is a tad loud; the audio regularly peaked above 0.0 dB. Consider setting the default Master Volume three or four notches lower. Also, the "menu back" and "enemy destroyed" sounds are a bit louder than the other sounds. 

Great work!

You made a complete, well-balanced, beautifully illustrated, masterfully soundtracked, and addictively fun shoot-em-up game in ten days. Congratulations! Bravo!

My one note is that there could be an option to turn off the hard flash effects (the saucer and dumbbell enemies, the "destroy all" flash, the flash on the "select weapon" cursor, etc.).

That was fun! The art is quite cute, and the mechanics are competent. The music is a bit strange, but quite pleasant.

Those were cool boss fights! A bit long without ammo, perhaps, but the mechanics were solid! Although, the first time I beat the map boss, I hadn't beaten the key boss, so I got blown up with no chance.

In the starting area, the enemy shooting sounds stack together and become considerably louder than everything else.

The resolution seem a bit large.

Good work!

That was fun! The art and soundtrack is proficient and cute. There's a solid mix of puzzle and VN elements. The story is heartfelt and endearing. Great work!

That was cool! The art is cute and readable. The puzzles are interesting. Despite no clear demarcation, it was always apparent what the goal objects were based on the level layouts. There's a lot of charm!

The audio is a bit imbalanced. The UFO and level clear sounds are a lot louder than the music.

The resolution seems a bit large.

Good work!

That was cool! The art and character design is great. The soundtrack is energetic, yet foreboding. The premise is strong, and the mix of shooter and search gameplay was interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about the trial-and-error gameplay. I managed to win, but it feels like the lack of knowledge about the area and amount of survivors mostly prolongs the gameplay past the point of novelty. In new runs, it felt like blind luck that I stumbled into new survivors. I don't think there should be a pin-point accurate compass, but maybe a vague "There is a person within a 100m radius" type indicator. Enough ambiguity that it is still a search, but not so much that it becomes stumbling through darkness.

Great work!

The luminol shooting mechanic is interesting. I wonder what it will reveal?

Congratulations on the submission!