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Great job with character design! The minimal protagonist compared to the textured boss offered an effective contrast. I appreciated how each of the three eyes (at a time) had slightly different pupil sizes. Also I found it clever how you SPOILERS: wove the "remainder 1" eye into the narrative by having it be a quick time event.

Those commenters have got to be lying about scoring 3 to 6 seconds -- that's literally 15-30 keypresses per second. I would maybe believe it if we were allowed to smash all 3 keys at once, but you seem to have prevented that from happening. By the way, on that note, sometimes I encounter a situation where I attack all 3 eyes in quick succession, but only the first and last die (presumably because the second eye's key was pressed while still under cooldown). Have you encountered this? I tried it on Windows Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, and it seems to happen on all three browsers.

Lastly, the main menu fade-in and rising fifths-y intervals on piano lend a satisfying cooldown and respite from the fast-paced gameplay.

I know right!?!? Haven't been pranked like that since The Impossible Quiz.

I found this concept highly relatable, because I encounter this exact scenario whenever I'm late for work. I got 142m.

This game is legendary in its own right, let alone within 3 hours. It's so satisfying well-calibrated. The visuals, audio, physics, and level design all align into a clear and self-consistent aesthetic. Definitely in my top 3 for this jam!

This was awesome and so addicting to play. The concept of the last level where there's SPOILER: a ton of gold and a few hourglasses and no door to exit lent such a sense of urgency to pace one's self and collect it all before time ran out. I ended up getting Rank 3 collecting 70% of the gold.

My only critique is the grunting sounds when when both attacking and losing kinda break the immersion. It's jarring to have a realistically human-sounding sound in a stylized game. It's the audio equivalent of suddenly having a stock photo of a human face in there with all the pixel art. Be more discriminate about choosing sounds that align with whatever aesthetic you wish to convey.

Regardless that's a small gripe in comparison to the rest of this excellent project. Great work!

Whoa this is amazing and incredibly impressive that you used your own engine to make this game. I really enjoyed the twist of having to backtrack for the last level. Great work!

I really like the art you made for this. The fact the eyes move adds a TON of life and soul to the character, so excellent choice for that. Also the parallax effect lends a sense of space to the experience as well.

Very impressive how far you got in three hours. Great level design for the most part (I had to read the solution here for level 6). The portal reference helped me understand what the P stood for real quick!

That note about the lack of player damage reminds me: I thought it was a pretty interesting “meta” that I could sort of shield the flames by boxing tentacles away with my body, haha. Definitely an interesting subversion, even if it might not have been intentional. 

Wow, I’m surprised to hear you’re a beginner! In that case, I apologize for being so harsh, haha. Well, consider it a testament to your knack for pacing that I thought you were more experienced.

I think it’s fair to do it from the ground up. And just like music creators can listen to and collect music, you can also view and collect images that speak to you as well. You don’t even have to refer to them them consciously in your projects; just collecting them is enough. The style will bleed into your work subconsciously. 

Hopefully you will find this a suitable alternative. Best wishes to you, and I’m looking forward to your next project! 

First, the pacing and difficulty curve is excellent. Second, the soundtrack is fucking awesome. 5/4 time signature with that repeating minor sixth interval. It's haunting and sullen and grave. Perfection.

LETS GOOO I JUST SCORED 101!!! Visuals-wise, I'll start with the positive. The minions' design (tentacle-based) is the strongest. Very good, well-animated, and sets up this sort of fantastical and eerie but playful tone. Next up, the blaster works fine. I think even the campfire is acceptable, because it's a mere set piece. 

The main character needs work. Players MUST sense the main character had care put into it, because we as players are it. I get the sense you might partly be hiding behind a lack of effort (last week with the audio; this week, the visuals). Now, you might defend yourself against my accusation by saying you only had three hours. 

But we both know there are completely respectable and self-serious ways to produce assets under time pressure: you achieved it here with the audio. And you achieved it last week with the visuals, too!

Your SPECIFIC talent -- I'm calling YOU out specifically, here, because it doesn't apply to other, less experienced devs -- YOUR talent is ready to stand on its own merit, without having to hide behind the crutch of joke assets. Risk trying and failing, put your heart into it!

I also get the sense that you are intelligent. All you have to do is get a Pinterest, search "simple character design" on Pinterest, and start collecting images you like (that seem vaguely achievable). Then roughly base your next character's design off the general proportions you see in the stuff you like. The result might frustrate you. It may not look at all like the original. This always happens, and it's normal, and it's okay. The player won't see the original; all they'll see is your finished design, which I guarantee will look way better than starting from scratch. You can even get creative and combine two different aspects of two references. Stand on the shoulders of giants, I think this is all you need.

Lastly, choose a palette. You should be choosing palettes, like, YESTERDAY!!! 

Please excuse the unusual sternness in my tone, it's just every. Single. Aspect of this project is RIGHT THERE. As soon as the visuals catch up, you're pumping out solid gold. I would even be willing to devote a set of three hours just to produce assets for your next project, in whatever style you prefer, because of how much I believe in your vision and potential. Better yet, you design the initial character and then I will animate it for you.

Please take this to heart and keep going!

No one has praised the character design yet, so I will praise it here. The main character is very cute and appealing. Its design allows us to infer about this character's personality and therefore empathize and care about them more. Just as importantly, your palette choice is amazing. I had to go back to check, but yes. Your palette helps us get immersed; done right, the fact of the palette disappears entirely and the player is just "there"; which you accomplished. I like your unique visual style and sense of taste and would love to see it develop and expand even more over time.

This was awesome. I honestly got chills both times the monster flew right in my face, in spite of myself. I liked how the solution to the puzzle involved having to face one's fear in a way. This is definitely in my top 3 for the cohesive aesthetic and feel. It's a work of art!

Thanks! Two "Toxic Biohazard" presets hard carried the drop for song 2, but I did arrange the beats and play with syncopation at least, haha. It has been really fun just to turn my brain off and do whatever, musically. For one portion at the end there I was literally arranging it visually based on how the pattern looked in the DAW, lmao!

Just replayed it. Ironically, I had already rated it highly, but I have adjusted my rating to account for the fix! Great work and I was glad to be able to play through the game to completion.

The floaty surreal style and satanic imagery reminded me of Night in the Woods (its dream sequences, specifically, for the former). You gotta check that game out if you haven't already, could be huge inspo for you. It was an interesting quirk to discover that the character had rotation physics. There seems to be a way to increase acceleration by jumping while spinning. Maybe that's the secret to the difficulty issue we've been having?

I felt the same way as the other players -- the game seems prohibitively difficult: between the big drop and that long, winding, S-shaped vertical climb, there are literally zero ways to regain health and by the time you get to the big spiky jump at the top, you're flying 100% blind. I will keep at it, though, and see if I can find a way through. EDIT: And just like that, I'm eating my words. For anyone reading this who got stuck at the same spot, you're supposed to drop straight down, not diagonally. It's still a razor tight margin, but it doesn't seem impossible anymore.

YES, I BEAT IT! Just a couple final thoughts: 1) I enjoy how the initial screen is greenish; it really jolts the red into seeming redder than red. That was clever. 2) just something to think about from a game design perspective; I had zero incentive to use the campfires. There's just no reason I ever would need to use them. "Not taking more damage" doesn't help, it's just the equivalent of hitting pause. EDIT: Now that I think about it, there is no pause button, so the campfires could be a good "checkpoint" thing; but in that case they seemed a bit more frequent than necessary. Maybe I'm reading too deeply into this, but their purpose seemed a little ambiguous as a player. It's no big deal though!

Sorry if my thoughts are kind of scattered. Overall I liked the challenge. Thanks for the experience!

You're definitely on the right track. The sound design is the strongest aspect, which did the most to sell the mood. I also appreciate the color palette choice: majority dark and gray, with a splash of hazy warmth.

I do notice you had 30 minutes to spare. What if some % of the messages were negative, and clicking  on them played a more sour effect? Games do thrive on conflict, and thinking terms of "loss condition" / "win condition" will be the next step in your journey.

You might feel that this suggestion would tarnish the purity of your design; it might be a core value of yours that the game should be 100% friendly, positive, and unharmful. My only other suggestion, then, would be to do some vis dev exploring images that convey this mood you wish to convey. Pinterest's algorithm is excellent: once you find a single image whose aesthetic you like, it will give you dozens if not hundreds of similar images. Use this to explore your taste and challenge yourself to determine what, specifically, you like about each image. That alone is enough. The style and taste will begin to permeate through your work subconsciously.

Keep it up and I look forward to seeing your next project!

This is really cool, I just gotta commend you for it. It really captures the spirit of this jam, your expertly distilling the theme to its core and expanding upon it to a razor sharp end with minutes to spare.

The tiniest thing I could suggest, with the greatest returns, would be to devote some of your prep time (i.e. BEFORE starting the timer) to settle on 1) a palette, either from inspo reference or from the game dev palette website; and  2) potentially a mood board to guide your design. A little bit of vis dev goes a long way!

Of course, the "mad dash" look of the current visuals does have a certain charm. It was also wise of you to allocate the most effort to the demon's face, which is thoroughly striking. Great work!

Ah, I see. I never would have guessed the project's ores and caves had used the same process. Cellular automata for terrain generation was all the rage back in the day when I first got into game dev; nowadays, though, the hot thing seems to be so-called "wave function collapse." Of course, the latter might not be entirely relevant for this situation, I just wanted to mention it while we were on the topic in general. Love this stuff!

Hey, your game stood out to me as well because of the story-based theme. I appreciate your commenting. I'm glad you noticed the dynamic audio, too, haha. Another story-based entry worth checking out is analogecho's. I know you're into React right now, but if you ever wanted to try for a more conventional visual novel, Renpy is a super intuitive engine that covers the bulk of the overhead. Looking forward to your next project regardless!

Yeehaw!! I thought I was special for getting 3000 twice in a row... Very good and fun game with a solid, choice aesthetic. I have no complaints!

This is the most graycist game of all time. 

I love it!

This is more of a performance art piece than a game. I find it fitting how the thumbnail captures, after fumbling around in the dark, the player's single moment of discovery; that tiny duration where the player believes hope is not  all lost. And yet what seems like a light at the end of the tunnel turns out merely to be a distraction, lacking substance. There is no way out. There is no winning. Only slowly losing as the fleeting light fades.

I encourage you to embrace the darkness and see where it takes you. Just lock your bedroom door, disconnect your internet, grab a piece of paper, and on it break every law known to man. Show no one, and destroy all evidence. Discovering that level of freedom and safety, I think, is the way out of this debacle.

Just got done playing around with it. Looks like you're "stationary" (i.e. not rotating) when your cursor is at a central location. Any deviation from that central location sets you rotating, endlessly, in the direction of deviation (with greater magnitudes causing faster rotation). It is a very challenging control system, but there IS a logic to it!

This is so good. I cried at the end.

Because you wonder the whole time why it matters -- why does the speaker care so much? And then you find out why, so tastefully, at the end. It's masterful!

5/5's across the board. Yes, even audio, because silence is the most appropriate. How is this your first project???

I don't know if this is how the game is intended to be played; but I had to memorize the contents of the level and complete it entirely blind (because clicking on the map before hitting "begin" would make the top right torch icon disappear, but no torch would place). I got as far as the stage with three moving platforms before it became too difficult to memorize. This was still a unique challenge, even though I don't think this was your original intent.

I appreciated the therapy frame story as well. This overarching narrative helps lend a cohesion to the project.

Because of how much I enjoyed your entry last week, I had to play yours for this week, too. Props to you for going for a more ambitious project. I think you did a great job distilling Minecraft's sense of discovery, improvement, and achievement into a mini project.

I would have liked to see an exponential curve for upgrades. My whole playthrough I had been looking forward to absolutely destroying a 5x5 grid of blocks with a single click, and having my sight range expanded to like 50-100 blocks wide. (But then again, speed might then become a limiting factor, so maybe the equipment upgrades would need to implicitly upgrade speed). This to me is a more fitting way to reward the player and wouldn't have taken too much more effort; even a single tier at the very end of absolute godlike abilities would've sufficed!

Regardless, procedural terrain generation is no small feat to pull off within the time frame, and I commend you for that. What was your algorithm for ore clusters (maybe a pre-defined set of shapes with a set frequency per ore)? I'm assuming the caves were cellular automata?

The sound is so crunchy and addicting. This game as a whole is addicting. A couple highlights:

• I seriously appreciate how big the hitboxes for the asteroids are. Makes it much more satisfying and fun to play.
• I enjoyed learning the "meta" of clicking the asteroids as soon as they appear, often when they're still in the top third of the screen. Gives more time to pick up the others who might stray far.
• Another super satisfying moment is how it gets easier and easier as it goes along, just by virtue of the black hole expanding.

I do wonder whether you could remove RNG as a factor by keeping a constant number of asteroids out of the black hole's reach (and annother constant number within it). Another way to make it even more skill-based is to have the asteroid respawn rate be some function of the current number asteroids on screen: this would incentivize players to drag asteroids into the black hole even if they lie directly within its path; because doing so would decrease the total number of asteroids on-screen. 

But overall within the time limit you did a great job and this is definitely in my top 3 for this jam.

HOW??? I literally missed zero and got 5.75. Is the respawn rate dependent on how many are on screen or something? Like, eating them faster makes more spawn? EDIT: Okay I got 5.85. Man I feel like that's gotta be the limit, lol.

Very challenging game. I enjoy how consistent your aesthetic is across entries. You are very good at delivering a cohesive and immersive experience within the time constraints. I have no critique, and much to learn. Great work!

Oh man this was a lot of fun. Initially I saw the fact I had 25 health, and the monster had 100, and I could dash a couple times per second, but the monster can shoot bursts of like A HUNDRED TIMES MORE, and I thought for sure this game was impossible. I in fact tried to play it just to prove how impossible it was. But that all changed when I realized the monster's health is seemingly decremented *per click within range*, not per actual successful dash (which I maintain would be insane and impossible). So the difficulty ended up being pretty manageable, just ultra daunting-seeming at first (which, the surprise ended up being quite thrilling as well).

For me the concept is clear. The monster has 99 health (top right), and you have 25 health (top left). You're supposed to dodge the monster's bullets and dash into the monster by clicking towards/through him in order to damage him.  It's a bit too laggy on my laptop from 2015 but I'm gonna try playing on my desktop to see if it's any more responsive.

I commend you for putting a story into your 3-hour project. I liked being able to learn more about the backstory as the game progressed. I also found it quite novel that the dialogue was delivered via pop-ups. This could be an interesting plot device or character trait if contrasted against more conventional means of delivery. 

Great work on the visuals as well, especially for having had so little prior experience. I recommend collecting albums of art you find visually appealing and using that as stylistic reference in your projects. Stick to a limited and consistent palette. You can use a "gradient map" to restrict any arbitrary photograph to a certain set of colors. I use it in Photoshop, but Gimp is a free program that (I just googled it and it) has this feature.

Looking forward to seeing your project next week!

I got the ending where my pet turned into a sort of slim elephant creature, I believe from becoming so muscular from the constant exercise. I did feed him a ton before that, not sure if that had anything to do with its transformation. I loved tamagotchi growing up. In retrospect I find it quite odd how we ascribed feelings to those little gadgets. There is a lot of untapped artistic potential here and I appreciate you for recognizing that.

This was a fun game and nice challenge. Not sure if I'm imagining this, but I appreciated how the different types of food had different cook times (the chicken leg seemed to cook the fastest?) The most frustrating part is having to precisely dock the machine to the exact top of the microwave; I would have much preferred if the hitbox were larger. Regardless, I enjoyed this and appreciated the experience and learning curve.

Wait you were able to beat the game using a single microwave with 20 seconds to spare? That is crazy. I tried that first and ran out of time, lol...

This is a fun entry. It makes me want to dive into the point-and-click genre (no pun intended!). I managed to solve the code on my own, but I needed some help for the last moment, as indicated in one of my other comments. One gripe I had is, I didn't really understand how SPOILERS: stabbing the whale in the eye yielded the matches. But that's a relatively minor gripe. I always say a little sound goes a long way, and you accomplished that here with the superb selection of underwater ambiance. Great work!

Lol, thanks for mentioning the little hole, I would never have beaten the game if not for your mentioning it.

I got stuck on the code for a while, but I finally figured out. SPOILERS BELOW!

The first step is to find the locations of the three codes. Once you find them, it helps to say it out loud. "A to B"... "C to D"... "E to F"... eventually, I realized the first symbol represents the Xth slot on the safe, and the second symbol represents the value at that entry. i.e. "slot[A] = B", "slot[C] = D", "slot[E] = F".

That said, I am currently stuck on the moment a bit after. Good luck with your playthrough!

This is a fun concept. Took me back to cave exploration in my Minecraft days. I liked the twist of being able to see a bird's eye view of the entire map in the beginning, in order to plan my route. I would like to see this expanded to be more difficult. By the way, a little audio would go a long way -- just mash the "random" button on any free chiptune sound effect generator and save the ones you  find usable! Lastly, great job on the walking animation.