itch.io

Can’t believe this is your first game/game jam – it played really smoothly for me and the combat had lots of good feedback. I especially liked the art style!

I got to the point of the bear costume, and, despite it being in the description of the game, was still a funny surprise to see in pixel art. Then I got the weapons and it said I was ready. But a second or two later, it crashed. I tried again and the same thing happened.

(If it’s helpful, I’m playing on Windows 11 with a newer GPU that should be able to handle Forward+ graphics.)

BTW, I did really like the music.

This was an interesting choice of subject and there were many little historical details that gave it a rich feeling. I feel like I learned a lot. And I appreciate the effort you made to post it in Spanish and English.

I think the reason there haven’t been other ratings yet is that was a bit tricky to figure out how to play it. I normally use the Itch.io app for downloaded games, but the app wouldn’t let me install it. Downloading the .rar, and then opening the html file worked, though. I haven’t used Twine before, but it seems that the html file here should be able to work as an embedded game on itch. I believe it would either have to be uploaded alone or inside a zip archive and renamed index.html? (https://itch.io/docs/creators/html5)

Tried a few times, and then took Humane Tiger’s advice below and got a bit further, but I wasn’t coordinated enough to kill more than a couple enemies with the shuriken. However, I still tried many times because it was fun and snappy, and the restarts were quick, and I really liked the high energy music and sfx. Ishikawa Goemon seems like a really rich choice of subject, and I appreciated all the historical background.

This looks like a ton of work between the assets, sound effects, music, dialogue… I especially like the music and sound effects. Thanks for mentioning changing the controls. I really liked the style of being able to walk around and talk to the different characters, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to figure out the culprit. I may have misunderstood, but it seemed like there were multiple guilty people, but you could only accuse one?

Perfect score!! And thanks so much for the feedback! I totally hear you on all those points. Agreed that the question of highlighting objects is always a tricky, but I personally prefer some kind of hint also. The timeframe of the jam ended up deciding the matter for me the other way this time, but I think some kind of sparkle fx or glow could’ve worked here.

Thanks so much – really appreciate the feedback! It’s reassuring to hear there weren’t performance problems!

Really appreciate the detailed feedback! I agree about the lack of suspense – one idea was to have the guards inside the house and add some low-risk stealth mechanics, but there wasn’t time to add it. It does seem I didn’t communicate well enough that this game was about the immediate fallout of Hypatia’s assassination.

It’s been a while since I played a text adventure game! Nice choice of setting. Your descriptions were quite vivid. I felt like I could picture the temple and the guards.

One note – the two pictures on the webpage didn’t load for me, so I thought it was broken at first. But when I clicked continue, the text worked without a problem.

Brilliant! Loved the dark humor, the comedic timing, the fast-paced minigames.

Very nice! Mickey is getting all the attention, I didn’t realize Minnie Mouse was also public domain now. My… condolences?

I’m curious about this answer, too. Looking up Heyer, for example, Project Gutenberg considers one of her works from 1921 to be in the public domain in the USA (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38703). Wikipedia considers only laws local to California/USA to be relevant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#:~:text=In%20the%20US%2C%20any%20work,by%20that%201928%20date%2C%20though.), and itch.io seems to do the same (https://itch.io/docs/legal/terms#14-governing-lawjurisdiction). Since they are the hosting sites for the content, does that mean the creator’s and players’ countries are irrelevant?

Excellent entry! Well-polished tutorials, interesting mechanic, and great graphics/sound effects/control feedback. I would have loved to play longer!

Really impressive for your third game! Loved the graphics and the soundtrack. I love tower defense games and this has a lot of potential with some more features like upgrading or replacing towers.

Really nice graphics and sound effects. The voiceover scene at the beginning and the transition to gameplay was really cool. I appreciated the contextual control hints. I had some difficulty moving in the direction I intended (I think it was because I was using a keyboard and it’s an isometric grid?), and there were a couple times I ended up being unable to move past a certain spot without knowing why.

Tight controls, great feedback, and really well-polished. It was really fun! I appreciated that the difficulty ramp gave me enough time to get used to the controls.

This was neat. I loved the graphics and the animations, especially the cute shrinking animation. This was a tough platformer (for me, at least). I kept missing jumps by a few pixels and sliding into the coals.

This seems like a really ambitious game with a lot to do. I really liked the pixel art graphics, and the visual and audio effects. I wish I had more time to do things before hypothermia set in, so I didn’t get very far.

This was an interesting take on the theme! Having to strategically choose which order to mine the light blocks was a really creative mechanic. I did keep soft-locking myself, even on easy level. Maybe a little more information about the surroundings (like lighting up all the adjacent squares, or at least the square in the direction you’re facing) might have been helpful?

These puzzle mechanics were a neat twist on the theme! I also really liked the sound effects and music. I’m not sure if sometimes collisions weren’t registering, though? For example, sometimes hitting spikes did nothing or bounced me up and sometimes they made me restart the level.

I liked the smooth movement! The graphics were great and I liked the sound effects and music. It took some time to get the hang of the controls, but the tight feedback from the graphics and sound effects were helpful in figuring out what was happening.

Thanks so much. Really appreciate the feedback! And, yeah, I created the cutscreen animations the last day of the jam and they were my favorite part. After I realized there was no way I was getting the combat working in time, I was like, what’s something I can get done in this time?

Sorry, the other levels were cut. Thank you for trying it!

Thanks so much!

I liked the gameplay concept and the graphics! It was a bit on the hard side with trying to move the mouse while the player and camera are both moving as well, and I see the other comments have some good suggestions for making the UI easier.

This was a neat concept and I liked the scrolling world. I did have trouble in dodging traps like the below comment mentions.

Neat game! The way the cat and the lighting followed the computer mouse and snaked around obstacles was really smooth, and matched well with the music. The movement actually overshadowed the actual capturing of the mice for me – more visual/audio feedback on that end might be more motivating.

This was great! I loved the artwork, the sound effects and all the little details in both of them. The dialogue was well-written and engaging. There were at least a couple times when I wasn’t sure why the cat I chose wasn’t the right one, but it didn’t matter because it was a fun experience either way.

Very cute art style, and the music fit really well. The controls were smooth and intuitive. I assume the goal was to break things and not get caught? It might have been helpful to have some directions and/or hints in the UI.

I really liked the arcade style! You hit a really nice balance in difficulty that was motivating to keep trying – it wasn’t too easy, but it also wasn’t hard enough to be frustrating.

This was fun! The music, sfx, UI and artwork all fit really well together. I liked the style and the movement controls were really smooth. I had some trouble coordinating with the timing of the shooting. For some reason I kept expecting it to be faster – maybe because the music was faster?

So sweet and cute! I love this take on the theme. I had some trouble initially keeping the controls straight. Once I realized I could use the mouse to click on the rock/paper/scissors, it was much easier (though probably slowed me down a bit).

I enjoyed this! Loved the high energy. Controls were intuitive and the gameplay, music and artwork all fit really well together.