Thank you, I appreciate it!
Crabman
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Thank you! :D I actually also changed the spawning in the update since that bothered me too when I finally tested it. Though now that I'm thinking about the fixed values, I wonder how the combat feels if I randomize the speeds a little bit, so every fight needs at least a little figuring out... Will have to give it a try!
I might also change that the timer pauses for battles now that it's all a bit faster, or at least set to seconds away from shutdown once you've beaten the whale.
As for the bomb screen, that was the first version of combat I submitted to the Nokia Jam last week. It was sort of an auto-battler that you could only help along with the bombs in a pinch (pretty much the Assassin's Creed fleet minigame, only bad and boring :D) but I didn't manage to finish the game at all, there's not even the whale in it. If you wanna see it though, I've saved that version here.
Anywho, thanks for your feedback!
It's indeed a bit of a mess. It's kind of an auto-combat that you can help along with bombs, but yeah, it's not very interesting or fun. I actually redid that completely for the Dying MMO Jam version, if you want to have a look at it.
As for Dragonruby, I'm not so sure about it either. It was fun to play around with something new, but there's a whole bunch of stuff that it either can't do or goes about it in a weird way, so I'm not sure I'll be returning to it.
Playing right now :D I'm wondering though if I hit a few bugs, because the professional training doesn't seem to work? It feels like it has about a big a fail rate as self-training and the fee doesn't get deducted (but I'm also not sure what it does exactly, what being circled means or how it affects the game).
The other thing I noticed is that the hours on the working horses don't seem right, it will often say it'll return in 0h, but then it takes 3-4 for them to actually come back.
Otherwise, the only nitpick I have is that I wish when I backed out of a menu, that I returned to the previous one, not back to the farm screen from where I have to open it again, that would make navigating a bit easier. And maybe a little icon next to the horse's name in the selection screen that I can see which one is there and which isn't without trying to open them all and see if they're here right now.
But yeah, it's a surprisingly fun gameloop, kinda reminds me of the kind of games we used to have on our graphing calculators in school, so I'm enjoying it greatly :D
Thanks! Yeah I kinda got sidetracked doing the fun but unimportant stuff like visual flourishes or making a minimap and ran out of time putting the actual game in :D
The original idea was basically that you're trying to hunt a white whale before the MMO you're playing shuts down, so you battle other players and level up until you're strong enough to defeat it. Maybe I'll make it in time for the Dying MMO Jam that part of that was inspired by, but I'm already getting lost in the next fun-but-useless coding exercises, so we'll see :D
Yeah that can be a bit confusing at first. They are frozen for three enemy turns, the first one being right after you cast the ice spell. So for the first frozen turn, it doesn't move at all, and then two more turns where it only has limited movement. After that it's back to normal, but you can refreeze at any time to bring the count back up (careful with fire though, that'll thaw it right away ;) )
If I may add my 2 cents: I don't actually disagree with you there. The first few levels still give you a bit of slack so you can familiarize yourself with the way it controls, but around the spiders and especially the graveyard level, the gloves come off, so to speak.
The game is very focused on strategy, and a particular approach to it at that, so after the first stage, using that strategy is mandatory to advance. I know that comparison is all sorts of tired, but it's a little like Dark Souls in that sense, there's a particular way you have to play or you will die. That includes a lot of trial and error until it finally clicks, which some people get a huge kick out of and some are left frustrated by.
Here's the good news though: Once it does click, you'll have a much easier time. You'll get more spells and upgrades, which opens up the options on how you can complete a level, and by the end, you'll probably breeze through, not because it got any easier, but because you mastered its way of thinking.
If that sounds fun to you, trying over and over until you have that satisfying "Aha!" moment, you'll probably have a good time. If it doesn't, you probably won't. And that's okay, it's a very particular kind of game, so of course it'll mostly appeal to a very particular kind of player.
Me, I love it. I mean, I should, I'm one of the developers, but I wasn't at all involved with the design, so I had to figure out what the heck Hackenstein was doing there myself. I do get a massive kick out of that though, but then, I also debug for fun, so what do I know :D
I'll upload the other version when the jam is over. I tried a couple things to get a satisfying yet playable progression, but in the end nothing felt as good as just not having one. I don't know, there's just something about how obnoxiously simple it is :D
I also think that there's just this sweet spot, where it's small enough that it's dumb and annoying, but not so small that it becomes too frustrating (at least for me :D)
Man, those goshdarn triangles... Nicely done! One thing though, even after playing it for a while, I'm still not quite sure how the buffs work or which does what exactly. At the same time, it's a fast-paced game and when things started happening, I found myself just going with it, so it's not a big issue either.
I thought it was all smooth sailing and then wave 5 hit :) Very nice ramp up in challenge, and lovely ambience and color scheme too! Only thing I was confused by was the upgrading, did it do anything if I clicked a turret again? It took the credits but I'm not sure I noticed it firing more or anything?
Ah, thank you for letting me know! That is indeed a leftover from renaming Katy to Katie, which apparently I didn't do properly with a Replace All. I uploaded a fixed and slightly expanded version. If you have saves from before that point, you should be able to continue with your playthrough. Thanks again!
Oh wow, thank you so much! That was really fast too :D
Yeah, sound I didn't get around to anymore. I only finished writing the last two endings with 5 minutes left to upload, so this'll have to be a post-jam addition.
But for now, I gotta catch up on some sleep and have look what everybody else did tomorrow :)
Thanks again!
Edit: Ok, I think I found the bugs you were talking about, if that was a certain character popping up where they weren't supposed to ;) Though it looks kinda cool. Might be something to look into, if I can't remember this event across restarts and have this happen on purpose...
That's an interesting interpretation... And I personally think that every interpretation is valid, so if that's how you saw it, then that's what it is. But of course, if you'd rather have an actual answer as to what my intention was, I can tell you :D (There's no spoiler tags here, so I'll just hide it behind a link: SPOILER)

Looks Like Rain is a short interactive fiction game I made for a friend's Game A Week jam here on itch.io, and I'm quite happy with the result. So if you have 10 minutes to spare, check out this odd little tale about a rather persistent little bug:
https://crabman.itch.io/looks-like-rain
The game was created with TinyStory, a small indentation-based CYOA engine I wrote for fun in my spare time. You can check it out on GitHub if that's the sort of thing that interests you.