itch.io

It feels a lot like exploring the "dead zone" of an older cartridge like Metroid, where the out of bounds area instead contains the code from ram, but is being displayed as level data you can interact with. A very unique experience, and a relic of a simpler hardware time/constraint.

I don't really understand what I was poking, but it entertained me for a good 20 minutes while I tried to figure out the rules. It's a wonderful mix of consistency and yet no direction at all. Feels like there should be a mystery to solve, but I think most of the game is just random/procedural interactions instead? A strange feeling, and a fascinating cartridge experience. Thanks for making it!

Thanks! I really wanted the ball to feel good to control. The first iteration did not squish, but that made it hard to see where the ball landed or if it hit a slope. So despite the token cost I added in a squish delay to give the player some reaction time. The ball also stretches at the top for a little bit to help with the cartoon feedback feel.

I originally was going to ship just the red ball bouncing around. But that version was only like 300 of the 1024 bytes. So I managed to fit a whole game alongside it in the end!

There are probably ways to squish this even smaller but I liked the challenge of doing it by hand and coming up with something that compresses well. I'm not sure the source code here will preserve the formatting, so I have also uploaded the .p8 file to the game page in case you want to verify. I hit the limit exactly, just enough to allow a restart "run()" command. Enjoy!

Ahh, I love this. It's like the smallest pacman board, so adorable!
I do wish there was sound, but that limit can get harsh. Having all the ghost logic is amazing! I am terrible at it so can't see what happens if I win. Great game, super impressive entry!

Ooh, nice! Much better and way more fun to play with now. 😀

Hmm, the web build on the itch.io page does not appear to be working. For any future viewers: the source code link works!

I like it! Little orange circle bobbing around. I can see how this could be used as a visualizer/attention getter for music. The circle shrinking and growing reminds me of the rhythm game inputs, this would be very visually addicting if timed to a tune/beat.

Wow, this is nice! I made a little maze and wandered around for a while just admiring the rendering results. I love the little touches, like the stars and moon above, and the shading effects applied to different faces to show the boundaries where a corner is. I think some colors even shade differently, like different material surfaces. Really cool!

Ooo, this one is fun to watch. I really like the illusion of a wall or distance because of the different scrolling and size between rows. I wish there was a little more interaction. Like maybe poking it could cycle the colors used or control the speed. It's a really nice effect!

This is very art!

I wish it was a little better about having input limits to the movement. Many input combinations seem to result in the dot escaping off screen, and then the toy doesn't work. I think I can also zoom in too far, and shift it due to a bug? Hard to tell what's intended and what is because of the limits with this.

I did enjoy the puzzle of figuring out how to use it. And it does make very unique looking artworks! It's pretty neat despite the flaws. Thanks for the art!

Oh, this one is addicting! I played until I had trouble seeing because of all the black opponents, a sign of a very good game. Nice! It has this very addicting one more round feel to it.

The source by itself is really pushing the size limit here, so the commented version is available as a free download from my itch.io page. Enjoy!

We have been having technical hell getting any web browser version working smoothly.  The web really doesn't like rendering all the bullets on some systems. Please try the download build if you can!

Apologies about the sun and some weapons, some came out a little absurdly OP in the end. We plan to revisit post jam and rebalance the damages/fire rates to smooth it out somewhat.  (For the record, the last fight is a joke/high score challenge and cannot be killed in this jam version. So don't feel bad, there is no ending you are missing.)

We had too much fun making the aliens and the universal language communicator screen. Our cat is still very concerned about BlackDrake21 making random sounds at his screen, late at night, for hours, as he tried to figure out what an angry bell pepper head sounds like.

Actually, the only healing is a simple regenerate over time.

I agree, we could have done a little more to explain what was going on. Another feature I think lots of people are missing is that the weapons shuffle around between planets each run. We ran out of jam time before we could add any explanation screens to anything. Spent way too much time making funny aliens, oops.

Not knowing what is happening, but still having fun anyway is the core of a good B movie sci-fi experience. Glad you had fun!

Thanks for the feedback, glad it was enjoyable! We wanted it to feel like an old b movie or lost to time space game.

Regarding performance, there is only so much I can do with the HTML5 version to get it to run better. So many particles/bullets/ships all rendering at once is just not very nice for web games. I have some culling for the ships and bullets, and a lot of tricks to try and get it playable, such as sending all ships to a single rendering image each frame. I think the HTML5 build is simply struggling from the 720p resolution + running at 60 fps.

I'll investigate further post jam to see if I can salvage the performance for this one. However, moving forward, any bullet hell games we make will probably stay download only. It's a constant technical issue I keep running into on making web games.

CORN! TORNADOS! YAY! :D

Ok, I gave this a couple tries. Still haven't made positive money but came pretty close the second time. That building penalty is really harsh, lol!

I think the biggest issue holding me back from trying it a third time is the buy and sell menu interface.  The timer still counts down (though isn't updated) when this menu is open, but the inventory itself is just not designed to be quick. The inventory management part would be much smoother if you either:

• removed the ability to sell corn, instead force using the conversions to milk and eggs. This would let you "auto-sell" the inventory without needing the strategy of what to sell/buy. Basically, streamline the gameplay loop so we can just run around between everything instead of managing the little arrows of a selling menu.  A bonus to this fix would be that the game forces the player to learn corn can convert up instead of trying to sell only the corn and ending with a big penalty at the end for ignoring the barn and chickens.
• If you want to keep the sell screen time management aspect, replace the arrow interface with something faster, almost instant to use. Buttons such as "sell corn" that can auto-repeat if held down.
• For either one above, controller/keyboard input on the sell menu would be so much faster, so the mouse doesn't need to be involved in input.

I got the main loop the second time, but it's still really hard to keep up with everything.

The other big thing that could help is some kind of "visual feedback" for how each building is doing. I think if we had some kind of hud or icon for the building healthbars the game would be a lot fairer to play. It's frustrating to walk across the map to check and see that the building is actually still at 3/4 health.

A smaller, easier thing would be simply to speed up the player's movement. That would help also alleviate some of the pain going back and forth between checking up on buildings/crops/selling. And I don't think it will off balance the game much since it's so harsh already.

Sound, music, and art were all quite nice. I love the idea here, and the game certainly feels frantic. With a bit of polish and maybe some better instructions, I think the game loop could go from feeling great to feeling really awesome! Loved the humor!

There also are a few routes where the scenario can get stuck or seemingly goes back to the menu. One playthrough I found the camp with 3 people, saved the villager, got the amulet, then the game pulled up the investigation with 3 dead people and I found a second amulet. The double amulet run then dealt with the cat and the game promptly just sent me to the main menu even though I succeeded at the bold option there. I'm guessing something overflowed or some state broke along the way, because most of the other times the game was pretty good at keeping track of time/events up the mountain.

I've also had a couple times dying to the final fight and instead of an ending the text just is blank, and the only option is the main menu. These were lost rolls so I assume the text would be similar to the "bad endings" of the fight, but it's a bit jarring to just roll and be told "go back to the menu" without explanation. I guess I rolled so badly the game master left in disgust, lol.

The overall presentation is pretty cool, I liked the use of sound effects, and the die rolling sounds plus showing the rolls helped me understand what was going on each choice. You also show what stat roll the buttons will use, this is a great bit of info to aid in strategy or playing smart, without revealing the actual outcomes. Very nice!

I wish we had a better chance to start out, maybe starting with a 2 or 3 of each stat might feel better. After a few plays I ended up just restarting if my stats went negative early on, as there doesn't seem to be a way to recover if the first rolls go south. I think the stats are good at adding tension, but they feel a bit off for actually playing this out.

I liked that we don't always have the stats to "risk a stat to do the thing" every time. That was good at capturing the feeling of weakness/pressure that the story has.

I found several paths that would give a stat boost for choosing to not engage and instead rest or refocus on the main mission. I'd love to see more of this. The current version has many of the neutral options also not do anything to the stats. I feel a bit robbed each time that happens, because I chose to "rest" or "focus only on my objective" but it wasn't reflected in the stats.

I also had a rough time visually on a horizontally wide monitor. It would be a good idea to limit the pixel width of the text display area, to avoid displaying long wide text that causes reader fatigue. Bonus points on the text size options, it's a good start!

The writing was rather good at capturing the mood and feeling of the game. Overall, I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for making it!

The engine is DragonRuby Game Engine, in case you are all wondering what Other (please list) means.

https://dev.to/excaliburjs/wave-function-collapse-d3c

Got here from the article found here. Wanted to create a link in case people find the itch page without context.

This is a very nice demo and explanation of the wave form collapse method! Thank you for writing and making it. The algorithm always seemed kind of mysterious, but now I understand it a lot more! For me, the missing link was the database of tile rules. A lot of other demos have too much logic going on there, you kept your explanation very simple. Thank you!

Those are some very good scores!  We worked quite hard on thinking up and balancing the chance with the scoring and strategy options.  Very glad to hear it felt intuitive to learn!  Thank you for playing! :)

I am one of those people, tetris connected regular, and I can assure you, the feeling is exactly the same.  Having skills just prolongs the pain before the end. (Though it does get better scores.)

Oof.  I was not ready for this at all.  Thank you for opening up my mind to a new level of (sucking at) tetris I had not seen before.

I know it's supposed to be "just bad lol".  But there is a surprising amount of strategy to last longer.  It's not pleasant to play like Tetris is, but it does have a strategy, and can offer moments of satisfaction all the same.  Before it reminds you what you are playing and smashes all your joy into the ground with a thing you forgot about.

I love it.  An experimental exploration that is almost, but not quite, worth the pain to experience.

This was rather nice!  I liked it, the art was cute and the music is perfect.  I felt some of the clues are a bit obscure, but usually that paired with another that made it obvious later in the timer.  I enjoyed my time as a doggie detective.  Nice idea, well executed. :)

Hmm, I don't know how to play this one, I think there is a bug with the reset button always being shown.  I eventually randomly spammed space and hit some kind of ball to get a score of 8.2 or something.  The character also just moves upwards and runs off the top of the screen, making the whole game get stuck.

I think there is a good idea and some neat art here.  You need to fix the bugs before people can enjoy it though.  I'm on Microsoft Edge browser if that helps narrow anything down.  Good luck!

I tried a lot and really wanted to like this one, but it is just a bit too frustrating right now.  I could not quite master the mouse aiming controls, and the double reticles and camera floating behavior combine to make it a little confusing to read/feel under the time pressure of say, 1 second before a crash.

The level seems well paced and looks awesome!  But it also can be hard to see where to go, so I had to use a lot of trial and error.  I think given the speed requirements I would have liked it a lot more if the acceleration was just taken completely out of the equation by auto-thrusting forwards.  (Though I only saw the first level, so I don't know if this would become a problem later.)  The game is most fun when rushing just past a few obstacles using the boost.

It's easy to end up upside down or at strange angles, which makes the actual tunnel twists feel more like guesswork.  As silly as it might look, I think a big neon arrow or line leads along the wall to the correct exit direction would really help.

I play a lot of racing games like F-ZeroGX, Redout 2, etc.  When this was flowing well, I got that same awesome kick of "barely scraping by death while blazing at high speed past glowing stuff".  Those moments are really fun!  One thing those games do is have blazingly obvious main paths, but a super tight "real optimal route".  For example, in Redout 2 most of the tracks have a literal "middle line" to follow on the track surface.  What this does is give a speed rush past a few "easier" obstacles even if they are not quite on the perfect path.  But also punishes them in time penalty for veering a little off course or taking a turn wide/bouncing off a wall.

I think a similar "soft hardcore" approach could make this a lot more fun to play.  I would have a lot more fun if I could almost run the entire cool tunnel level nearly every time, but often fell just a bit short of reaching the goal/exit because I had not followed the "perfect" run.

Still, this is very impressive!  With some tightening up of the feel and visual help for the gameplay, I think there is potential to get a great polished mix of an almost puzzle/racing game within the tight timer each run is restricted by.

Oh, I loved this one!  Each game is super clear to read and understand, the artwork and sounds are great! (Love the impact of the ending grade sounds for the different ratings!)  I was a little lost on the balloons game but got it after a few plays.  Great, tight experiences, would love to play more content if this is expanded on. :)

I'm not sure there is anything I can do about the browser lag, unfortunately.  Dragon ruby seems to not like rendering this many sprites on browser if you have a lower end system or a browser that caps framerate/memory use.  I have no control over the loops, the game code is just updating a bunch of hashes and ruby values then passing it all to dragonruby to render.  

The download one plays full speed for what it's worth.  I hope you can try that!

I'm poking Godot and testing tossing some literal numbers around in VR.  No idea where this goes yet, doing all the tweak things required for controls and grabbing things in VR physics land.  Hoping to make some kind of puzzle game using the theme, but learning VR in a new engine is rough.  It's close to Unity, my old engine, but different enough and without my big asset scripts pool I would normally smash things together with.  I feel like a noob again, lol.

Hi.  Do we have a discord or other channel for general jam questions, feedback, bouncing off other designers, and so on? 

The only links the jam rules provide is to the YouTube channels, but that doesn't feel like the place for this kind of jam discussion.

What is a good method to communicate with the jam hosts?  

This form is getting some empty no reply threads.  We have over 600 participants so I'm surprised there isn't a chat hangout for this big of a jam.

At Moonbow Entertainment we technically could open our discord to the jammers if the hosts need it. We haven't launched any public discord channels and are just a vanilla server. But we do use discord for internal design stuff.  I'm the head admin and for now its just our staff of 2. 

@bargi and @PolyMars, let me know if you need some help here.

Oh no, they are adorable!  It's a very simple game but it brought us both a smile today.  Thanks for making it! :)

Once we had the boosting mechanics, that loop seemed like the best way to go. Constant risk/reward between being immortal and having to be careful which trees to clip through. Glad to hear it works!

I agree about the timer bonus popup. We ended up putting those indicators in near the end, so I recycled the code for the tree fragments. I agree, it could be telegraphed better.  Thank you for playing!

All credit for the sounds go to Blackdrake21, I did add some code to randomize pitch but he did all the voiceover work. Our cats were not amused with him growling at the screen over and over to get a good take, but we hope they forgive us someday.

Thanks for playing! There isn't a way to "win" the game, it's just for high score chasing. We thought it would be a better message if the dragon keeps just showing the kobold more kindness instead. So the slope is endless. :)

I scored 19, and then kept matching or lowering that score every time, so I don't think I am very good at catching random showers of bouncing things. There are a lot of bouncing things, so definitely on the jam topic there!

The game is pretty funny, I love how they just are tossing a bunch at you while you are trying to catch them with such a small pot. It made me laugh imagining what sort of cooks would be doing this method of adding it to the pot.

I do wish the game explained what a Frijoles a la charra is on the summary screen. You did make me look it up though, so the game was educational (and sounds delicious)! :)

Nice little minigame!

I discovered on my own that we could move the bunny with arrow keys after shooting. It wasn't intuitive to me to try it but helped me get quite far, around 1500 before landing on a dreaded plant. I think some instructions explaining that we could move after shooting too would have made this clear.

Another improvement would be to make it clear how high the bunny is when it is off screen.  It feels really random when it comes back down. It almost defeats allowing us to move it around, since we have no chance to know when it will come back down. I'm not familiar with the original game, so maybe that is just part of the chance.

The little characters are all quite charming, music and sounds have been chosen well too! Very cool little game! I had fun!

It's innovative, and funny.  But I'm not sure this is fun. The bouncing tower placement seems to work against the idea of tower defense, making managing your resources utter chaos.  This would be ok as a challenge if we could still plan for it, but the projectiles seem to wobble about and have a mind of their own instead of being reliable distance/bounce bullets. So even with what feels like the "right" angle and power from last play, the gun won't land in the same spots when the level is tried again.

I also had several bugs, like sometimes the currency would just float around the cursor instead of being collected. This basically killed me the first game I played as I can't spend the currency if it hasn't collected yet.

Last, you can cheese it really badly if you just always shoot very low speed defense spawns right around the player. I think having a ranged or exploding enemy would help eliminate this issue, so we have to keep the enemy far away. I surrounded the shooting point with the first guns and was basically immortal after that. 

One idea you could try is to make the guns defense based on how much "oomph" the player shot them with, or perhaps even how many wall bounces the gun did before stopping. That would encourage taking the risky bouncy shots over the safe small putts.

I feel a game to be found here if you embrace the chaos and balance for it carefully. It started being a little fun every now and then.

I think with some clever level designs, and better physics for shooting the defenses, this could really become something great.

Wow, this was very adorable and cute.

I had a couple of issues: 1. the dialog skip inputs would sometimes feel a bit slow or not respond. Tapping again usually fixed it and continued playing the scenes. 2. there was no way to exit the game, so I had to ALT+F4 to get out.

The art is rather adorable, the game also works really well. I like the little bouncing when moving, and that it is actual bouncing instead of just an animation (meaning we can bounce and slip off an edge if we are not careful.) The charge up to jump higher also works pretty nice!

I kind of wish we had a gameplay answer for when an owl was attacking us. It seemed some would chase me but aside from running away we don't seem to be able to attack or fight back. Often, I just used the invincibility frames from being whacked to charge up a jump and run off to other parts of the level, that seemed to work but feels cheap.

The poor foxy needs a treat though, lol!

One way to expand it could be to add some other objects. Maybe a sun that pulses to create a base beat. A clump of asteroids that cover an entire octave, but lack the momentum to escape the planet they bounce off from, so they create a melodic repeating note pattern when repeatedly bouncing off a surface. A black hole that spits out the planets out the white hole placed elsewhere, to create dynamic "loops" of orbits/bounces. All kinds of strange generative things could be done.