itch.io

Hi, the start button should be in the bottom right. It's possible that your browser's resolution or zoom level obscures it, so you could try changing either of those things. Sorry - the game is quite buggy.

Thanks for your comment and feedback!
Regarding the graphics bug, I assume you're talking about the orange rectangle in the middle of the screen? That was definitely unintentional. You can ""fix"" it by zooming in/out with your browser (zooming out by 50% works for me), but we know it's really janky. Sorry about that.

Really solid, nice! In particular, the audio was fantastic. The scripted sequences felt polished and the writing was entertaining. The graphics were charming and definitely suited the tone of the game, although I think the anti-aliasing was a bit rough at times.

(Spoilers) I didn't get the hints that the fish were robotic, probably because I either wasn't paying enough attention or I chalked it up to a quirky writing/art style. I also didn't get any hints to the sub being run on human energy. Anyway, this meant that I didn't have a clue as to what nefarious things the narrator was up to. So when the plot twist approximately said "yes, the fish are made of plastic" I felt like it expected me to have suspected that (or thought I should've), which I didn't. I lost some immersion as a result.

But yeah nah definitely a strong experience. I think there was an impressive variety of mechanics for a jam project. Nice job.

Thanks for playing! Yeah the key returning to the washing machine is a plot hole and the clothes already being washed is a bug. I definitely agree with the need for more buildup and emotional connection. Thanks.

I think this was a quaint concept that was well-written. I thought it was realistic - I was glad to see that (spoilers ahead) Joseph couldn't convince Keith to talk to his classmates. Yeah, in reality I think someone like Keith would be difficult like that.

This is subjective but I thought that too much was stated rather than shown at times. For example, the part that explicitly mentioned Keith's introversion felt too unsubtle. That trait was already inferred from his actions.

There's no audio and the drawings are a bit rough around the edges. These things do hurt the presentation of the game.

I really appreciated the minimalist nature of this game. The visuals, music and writing are to-the-point and meaningful. I especially liked the narrator's voice and the dissonant classical music.

The setting was rather spooky. I liked how you undulated the terrain to obscure the light sources. However, I thought the setting was underwater until the black sun was mentioned. I confused the falling snow with bubbles. I think I was thrown off by the nautical-looking light towers and the thickness of the darkness.

Thanks for playing - that's definitely a fault on my part. I'm guessing that you didn't reach the end, so in case you wanna try again (or to anyone else reading this who's also lost), try heading to the laundry and clicking on the washing machine.

This was great. Super funny and the parody was such a nice idea.

I appreciated how I was mostly able to explore all the options presented to me, for example in being able to look behind every door at the end.

I'm not sure what can be done in Twine but the images took a while to load. They shifted the text once they loaded in, which looked at bit janky and required me to scroll down.

I got two bad endings and presumably missed the good one. Would you mind sharing how to achieve that ending?

Anyway, although I didn't understand the story, it was intriguing. At first I thought Rosa was daydreaming to escape a sense of hollowness, but then the void was introduced, and then the black sludge scene, and then the imprisonment of Rosa by Nellie? Quite obscure to me. If I may guess, does this story imagine a world where fictional characters reside in outside of their stories? A place where they can fabricate other fictional worlds but are burdened by the fact that nothing really exists?

The choice of graphics and music was appropriate. I was genuinely a bit frightened when the glitchy Rosa suddenly popped into view. Nice.

(Also, the response options weren't always highlighted in pink when I hovered over them.)

The choice of music and pacing of the dialogue worked very well together. Great atmosphere and intensity, especially nearing the end!

I couldn't quite understand the story. SPOILERS AHEAD: I saw a dead body next to the sword at the end. Maybe that was a previous hero who unsuccessfully challenged the narrator, but could it have been someone/something else? I dunno.

It's been mentioned but yeah the platforming was a bit janky, namely colliding with edges and jumping on slopes.

Really solid all-round, nice.

• The gameplay was unclear to me at first. I think the lack of feedback given by the UI was responsible. Adding fuel or feeding the monster didn't always result in a visible change so it wasn't clear that anything was being achieved. I guess that's because the underlying values didn't increase enough, but maybe if the "resource" displays were meters instead of icons, then those finer changes could be visualised.
• I thought the aesthetic was great. The audio was immersive and the fisheye effect worked well. In particular, the dialogue UI looked super polished and gritty (and was also easy to use).
• At the start I got the impression that the creature was going to be scary and threatening. I was surprised when it was cute. Perhaps this is an issue with tone?
  
• The writing was a pleasure to read!

I didn't connect the theme with the story. The narrator was moreso subjective than unreliable imo, although I found his innocent and very matter-of-fact dialogue quite charming. Solid audio too.

Also, I noticed that clicking would skipped the current dialogue. I think it would be better if the first click typed everything out and the second click skipped it.

The gameplay took me a little while to figure out. Since there wasn't much strategy I could apply, it felt a bit tedious and frustrating, especially in the Weaver level.

I really appreciated the story and connected with its themes. It was great to hear your perspective on the issues you explored. Thanks. :) Also, I like how your writing sounded very personal yet wasn't alienating at all. It made me think and reflect.

A small issue: I think there could've been a smoother transition when progressing to the next level to distinguish that event from dying.

Thanks for your comment! This is great feedback.

It's probably a bug, sorry about that.

Cool, I really like the serious look you accomplished. Felt polished and compelling. I think a click-based interface would've been more intuitive, and it would be cool if, say, you could hover over a deal and preview its effects on your inventory bars (pretending the 48h time limit didn't exist).

Wow I'm really surprised at how fleshed out this is for such a short jam. I tried choosing different responses and damn there really is some genuine story branching! Endearing characters too, the duck theme is great.

I found some transitions to be a little rough, like at times the swapping of illustrations wasn't quite synced with the fades or the dialogue. And a small thing - I would've liked the end screens to be held for longer. They went away really quickly.

Neat sprites! Although I think it turning pixel snapping on would've improved the look a lot. The character also seemed to be vibrating as it moved around and that made it look fuzzy.

Unfortunately I don't have a controller so I'm unable to play it as it was intended.

Anyway, I thought there were issues with the keyboard controls since the engines sometimes didn't start, but then I noticed that the dysfunction followed a pattern. So actually this was intended right? I think a visual effect might've made this clearer.

Nice, really polished. Turns out you can drop a spring mid-air and it'll launch the robot up if it collides with it. A few levels could be cheesed with this. Idk if this was intentional, but it was fun.

Scored 6800. Nice lighting! I think it would've been nice to be able to activate the rockets using spacebar to allow one-handed play.

The Windows zip works fine for me so I'm not sure what's up.

On the game: I liked the toilet paper theme haha. Since playthroughs are very short and kinda require both hands on the keyboard, having to use the mouse to click restart was a little annoying. Maybe restart could've been bound to a key as well.

Great theme. I think being able to access the help during the day would've been nice. I wasn't a fan of the chromatic aberration but the overall art style was really charming.

I thought this was very clever. I loved the mechanic of moving diagonally and the fun beamy glitch VFX. I actually liked that you didn't include an explicit tutorial, it worked with the minimalism of it all and made learning more exciting. Though, as you mentioned, some concepts could've been split up into multiple levels.

Being able to hold down keys would've made movement more fluid.

It was possible to jump too high and be left waiting for the character to plummet. A skybox would've helped to solve this. I also think it would've been better to load the entire level and have a centered camera as there was some flickering in the scene swaps. Though, I liked the tone and plot of the game and the monster did a good job at being scary.

Once I got the hang of things, the game was appealing - but the initial learning process of wrangling the camera and finding the logs was quite frustrating. I would've liked to see my facing direction on the minimap and bring up the tutorial/controls in-game. Still, this is very impressive for a 3-day jam.

Pressing restart always triggered a restart, even if it was pressing during the death animation. This lead to moments where I was waiting on a queue of restarts to each reset the character. On a similar note, I think restarting could've been quicker. I also would've liked the camera to always roughly center on the player, especially between different segments of the level, although I'm not sure if that would necessarily be a good change.

I thought the glitch mechanic itself was clean and well supported by the pixel art.

The sound effect of the tip pop-up became grating. CTRL wasn't a great keybind for me as CTRL+A/S/D/W triggered functions on my browser. Though, I liked the whimsical feel of the game.

Yep.

Don't worry about it, that was the ending, it just wasn't supposed to loop.

Nope. Shit. I'll see if I can fix that.

Thanks for the feedback, I completely agree with your criticism. I'm ashamed at how poor the design is and will note the contrast issue.

For anyone who's stuck on finding the key: you can find it by interacting with the doormat outside after speaking to the bartender.

This felt complete. The lightheartedness was in the bgm, animations, enemies and so on. Little details like the smooth healthbars were great and the shooting mechanic was surprisingly deep. Though, the boss was easier than some of the earlier sections. I think more difficulty would've helped to bring out the cool stuff you made.

Neat idea, great job on the clean execution. I can only say that there wasn't much point to having lives since there weren't any checkpoints.

Satisfying to beat, although I think the theme was a burden. The buggy walls forced an arbitrary trial-and-error approach. Once I got past that, the obstacle dodging and visual effects were nice.

(Sorry if you got three comment notifications from this, I had an issue with the page reloading)

I couldn't figure out what the power-up things did and would've appreciated an clearer indication of when the glitch teleport was recharged. Still, that was much harder than expected and I felt the need to beat it.

This was a lot of fun. The endings and crash logs did a great job of strengthening the theme.

The cutscene and tutorial text was too big, especially when playing in fullscreen.

Oh, I had no clue that you could shoot! Although it was satisfying to finally beat the game, the third level was quite frustrating due to the wonky platform collision (in one case I landed on a platform and died to spikes beneath) and the seemingly oversized enemy hitboxes. I think you could've benefited from tidying up these things and providing clearer controls.

Although my brain is tiny I was eventually able to beat the game. I thought it was great for what it was.

Neat! Although at times the up/down controls for the bot didn't seem to register, or felt like they were fighting against the bot's automatic movement.