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Meditations indeed. You managed to make my favorite game of the jam in one day.

Aesthetically very cool; in practice I only ever had one fragment spawn, so I'm not really too sure what the rest of the gameplay is! Played the Windows x86 version.

I wish I had an opportunity to rotate the wheel -- sometimes I'd pick a spell and basically be guaranteed to not have enough mana no matter what I do.

Besides that, I think it was a cool use of the wheel for a battle system. I like using it to generate mana -- I think that concept alone has legs. Cool aesthetic as well!

I ran out of time to play much farther than the 4th day, but it's a great concept with equally great execution. Sure, it could use some sounds, and I know you wanted to get more portraits in, but this is a thought out game concept that really works and builds on the wheel day over day. Great work!

Love the inclusion of both mechanics and how you used them. I like how lockpicking is slightly less precise and that there's both a payoff for doing it perfectly, but not an explicit punishment for failing it.

I wish I had a bit more guidance on what spell I was making, and overall the game could use more feedback on what's actually happening in terms of enemies taking/dealing damage, what kind of spell I'm going to make, etc.

Great effort for the jam and I'm excited to see more.

PACING! Everything's just a little too long!

The minigames are fun, and great tributes to their originals! It's all super polished and responsive. Just cut everything by like half and make it a bit less punishing!

There was a cool moment at the end where I was able to juggle breakout and fishing at the same time, but because so many of the longer minigames did a full reset upon failure, I really just had to wait for fishing to happen in the background and listen to the noise -- even though I really liked that fishing was somewhat based on waiting for a fish to be caught. It's very cool and authentic!

You're really poking at greatness with this collection, both in terms of experience and presentation, and you're just shy of it. Great stuff.

Very cute, bangin' banjo. Couldn't tell if I was actually shooting back or not? Did my best to dodge bullets.

Sound wise, a great argument for less is more. Good footstep sounds simply made faster for a sprint works well here.

I wish I had more time to play/rate stuff but this is cool! I bumped up to 4 character, then was like aw man I only get one action per person, then realized I had 4 actions across all characters and it all kinda clicked! Nice core concept.

Incredibly difficult though maybe I'm bad. Found the third level frustrating but it was all worth it for MON DIEU, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT PARMEGIANO!

WHERE GAME

A cool way to bring in another Oblivion mechanic, and while definitely not without its issues, I appreciate the big swing! I realized once I had picked my ingredients, as long as I made sure the ingredient I needed to be "greater than" and everything else used the smaller segment, I was generally fine. A fun experiment!

are you tellin me that toddlersoap actually does things and isn't just a weird discord cryptid?

Anyway, cool entry! Loved that it's just messing around with a thing and not trying to be anything more than a little jam entry about photographing birds. Messed around with the camera, tried to get the best settings, went "I don't get it" and then went "oh I get it." Great stuff.

Cool! Really loved the aesthetic, and liked the unique method of displaying the wheel on the phone. It didn't do much for me other than provide some tension, and I wasn't really sure if there was a scoring method for the wheel. My strategy involved turning the wheel until I had the biggest segment lined up with full (since there was no limit on rotations), activate that, look up to ensure the monster wasn't there, and then solve segments one at a time.

Not sure if it was a bug, but if I looked up without rotating, I was unable to rotate when I looked back down at the phone.

Either way, the vibe was great and I enjoyed myself.

It took a few hands to understand what was happening, but I get it. It's just hard to follow. Animations would absolutely help with the clarity, and it's a really interesting take on the lockpick system.

Having a card be locked in place was tough too; though maybe that could be solved by me understanding the game better from the outset. As it is, it's hard to play without the clarity that polish would afford, but I'm fascinated by it.

Stressful but in a way that feels intentional! The tutorial seemed simple enough, but I really liked how things got out of control so quickly.

I'm not sure if it's how the template works or a deliberate choice, but in Oblivion's lockpicking, there's a short window where the tumbler remains at the top after bumping it, and in this fast-paced environment, not having that meant that unless I was frame-perfect at fixing the engine, I was basically doomed.

Overall I think if it were a little less punishing I'd have a better time with it, but it's a really strong concept that's still fun in spite of its brutality.

Like others have said, it's a cool idea with the multitasking that doesn't really function. Dodging obstacles didn't seem to matter, and I was able to spam the max segment, which I opted to do since there wasn't feedback on whether picking one option or another was going to be effective ahead of time. Needs a bit more work to get the concept there, but I can see the vision.

Yeah ngl I banged out the boss in like 2 hours during the final night and instead of staying up until the zero hour to make the boss fun I just called it. Somethin' to fix for the Steam release for sure.

Interesting!

I was basically able to Attack everything nonstop until the 5th fight, at which point I died and got kicked back to the beginning.

There's something interesting happening under the hood, but I don't think it's communicated clearly enough. Far as I can tell, seasons are essentially weaknesses in regards to attack, but seem to affect every action to some degree.

Either way the vibe was immaculate; I was bobbing my head and enjoying myself, even when I was confused.

Part of the fun of the jam is gettin' to prototype something, and it doesn't always work out!

I think if I had a bit more control over the shape of my wheels, it might land better. Or if it was... turn-based? And my wheels would spin based on how big the segments were. Like YOMI Hustle but with wheel and car.

Either way the experiment is cool and I'm always glad to see submissions to the jam. Hope you learned something and give it another go next year!

3:03 baybeeeee

I like it! The enemies coming out of the ground kept me on my toes, and I liked that they gated me off. Also the animations were really charming. Felt like there wasn't much point to the power values on the wheel, but I was still at least forced to think about directionality as a resource.

Yeah I think it's a kink.

The game froze when I killed the second goblin in the room with two keys. :(

Persuasion wheel lockpick is galaxy brain. Love the concept, though I would've loved getting to pick up an extra rotate or something; rotating back and forth was hard!

I'M A WHEELMAN

Only thing I ran into is despite being a certified Lockpick Expert, the lack of polished feedback on the lockpick made it hard to tell when I should actually trigger it, and I lost. Vin RegularUnleaded would not stand for this and neither will I.

The repeated cutscene killed me tho and it was great

Cool as hell, great use of wheel and links them together in a way that... almost feels like lockpicking? I hope you'll reconsider the game being added to a Steam release -- with a bit of menu polish and some pensive music this'd be a great addition.

And I thought the horror games were stressful.

This ruled, and as an ADHD-haver (like many of us game dev types) it was all too relatable. Managing to stuff in 5 wheels, a mini OS, some fun writing and genuine introspective moments is a hell of a thing for a jam game, too. Nice and polished, clear communication of what the mechanic is, and a great throughline with the theme. Fantastic job.

I did play and plan, but nothing seemed to move. Using the debug keys weirdly got the game to start for me. Looks like you tried a lot of stuff here, and that's all we ask here at WHEELJAM.

I think I see where this is headed.

I got the gist of using the two wheels in tandem, though I never seemed to move up or down, nor move permanently. I always reset at the end. The notion of using the wheel to control both position and element is a novel one, and I'd love to see this fixed up and polished, because the concept is undeniably cool.

I like the concept! It was a sort of ATB take on wheel combat, which I can only say having seen/played a few wheel-based games.

I think having to pay attention to the particles and kind of casually suss out the info in real-time led to me just memorizing which wheel pattern worked best (up, left, right, down or whatever) rather than actually learning which segments were good? The base idea of working to find the most efficient way to take down an enemy group is a good one though. Art is great too; I love the little wizards and the environment, and the music was a bop.

Running out of time is the eternal problem with jam games. The framework is cool though; I can see the vision. I too ran into the debug teleport. I've left worse things in jam games before, lol. Nice to see the wheel get used for something closer to the original, even though all the innovation and weird framings have been cool. Solid showing!

This... is weirdly the farthest thing I expected from a jam game. It's difficult, and I sorta bumbled my way through level 2.

I love the aesthetic, and love the almost toy-like aspect of it. It definitely gives the feeling of fiddling with a device and learning by doing, which I enjoy a lot, and feel like if I sat down with this for a good 30 minutes I'd understand it. It'll be one I come back to on a night where I'm feeling contemplative and not wanting to play something high-energy. Despite having a pretty complex ruleset, the actual systems are really elegant, and I like that despite having a lot of shared DNA with an automation game, there's no real time pressure to figure this out.

Really dig it, even though it's something I won't always feel like playing.

I like the system! I like how you managed to keep the colors having their own core identities while still engaging with the wheel. It's a really nice integration, and if I still regularly played MTG I'd prolly print off some proxies and give this a spin.

Y'know normally I hate tower defense, and it turns out the key to making me like it is throw a wheel on it.

No, actually what did it was smooth movement-focused gameplay, cool and varied waves, and a really active approach to the genre. I felt the impact of the wheel less, but that's probably because I just figured "damage good" and didn't experiment much outside of trying to get my largest slice into damage.

Loved playing it, loved the soundtrack, and loved the buildup over time. Well-paced and frantic in a way that was exhilarating rather than exhausting.

Simple premise that gets out of control really quickly. Made me want to go fast to really get my little sounds out, and honestly I was so focused on having fun with the inputs that I didn’t even notice the wheel at first. I was just like… yeah moving up, down, left and right is totally wheel.

Anyway, great little game, liked the pacing and escalation over time. Very cute, fun, and responsive.

I haven't gotten to finish this yet because I've been going through every game as quickly as I can, but I really need to come back to this. The basic mechanic gets expanded upon so well, and I felt myself slowly unraveling like a madman as I realized what I needed to be doing. Pretty soon I was throwing the wheel on every surface and checking to see what happened. When I knocked the statue over I almost jumped out of my seat in a mixture of surprise and excitement. Really great pacing so far and I can’t wait to come back to it.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT BABY

Difficult and spooky! I like the commitment to being slow, clunky, and noncombative. I also like that there weren't any other limiting factors like ammo or health other than what actively had to be managed in the moment. It was like guiding my avatar through a panic attack at any given moment, which works. It's a simple but elegant use of the wheel for a great little horror romp.

Man, this is so good. I'm so bad at rail shooters like this and I'm bad at this one too, which means it's very much in that difficult arcade-y lane. I really like the implementation of the shield mechanic.

The best part is probably just how easy it is to understand -- it's easy to get that small slices go to the bullet icon ones, and it's easy to do at a glance. The hardest part is just timing reloads and getting consistent, but the information for me to get better at the game exists, which is a really impressive feat alone in a jam game, much less having a full rail shooter for it. Great stuff.

I wanna give you a prize just for making that weird little dude who crawls at you. In the final around he came at me a second time and it was genuinely unsettling, even though I knew what the consequences were. The atmosphere is just phenomenal, and as someone who isn’t usually wowed by horror’s atmosphere other than for goofs, the little dude is a sort of reminder that the best horror is also kind of funny?

The wheel gameplay was cool; I liked searching for books and figuring out my own multipliers. It added another strategic layer that the core wheel kinda lacks sometimes.

I love the little guy though. I want him nowhere near me and if I saw it in real life I would kick it clean across the room while screaming.

KARL

I really like the irreverence and funky music paired with just getting fun pictures of fish that people doodled in your notebook. This feels like the kind of game that would exist as a bespoke arcade cabinet somewhere like Meow Wolf if its presentation were polished up. The core concept is great. I'd love to be able to rotate the view to get a clearer idea of where my actions are sending me so I can find more fish, but sometimes the thrill of just finding the Illustrious Lobstmaid makes the slightly random feeling worth it. I only wish my real-life fishing trips led to finding such fascinating creatures.

Conceptually rad, and the execution ain't half-bad! I love the idea of the wheel controlling both sets of actions; it's a great reframing that makes it a lot more strategic, to the point where battles started taking a few minutes each as I read through text and tried go get the best solves -- and in some cases still failed!

Very cool way to have multiple uses of the wheel throughout while keeping the core mechanic intact. I love the overall kinda cryptic vibe of trying to earn favor with these massive gods/beings, and the very scrawly black-and-white art style keeps it feeling very mysterious.