itch.io

I thought having less pipes and having to boot-strap to buying stuff was interesting, but on reflection, I'm not completely sure the game is better for it, as it just takes time away from doing what you actually want to be doing on a level.  On the other hand, having a little scarcity is probably good, I did like being rewarded with a feeling of "now I can build absolutely anything" once I got my income stream built up, whereas on the first levels I sometimes ran into a "oh, I don't quite have enough pipes to build what I'm trying to build, and have no money" situation, and the scarcity forced me (in later levels) to find a workaround for that problem... so, maybe I've argued myself back into thinking it's a good thing, hah!  Anyway, just some more vague feedback to (not?) help you decide what to do =).

Ah, yeah, damaged boards is a great idea that'd fit the theme of the game really well, I could see that working!  Never enough time, I guess =)

Very nice, and impressive in 13k!  I played a race or two against a friend, I love to see local multiplayer games in jams =).  Controls felt good, except one point where our cars got stuck on top of each other for about a minute :D.  I wish there was slightly more gameplay, maybe just a refilling boost meter, or speeds high enough that you need to brake around corners or something.  The cars, track, smoke all looked wonderful, I like the style!

The customization is great =).  I played a few matches against a friend and we had a lot of difficulty getting our robots to do anything vaguely useful, and the two first matches apparently ended with us each shooting ourselves with various guns, never hitting each other.  Tried melee-only after that and it was a struggle just to get in range.  The hand-drawn visuals are really cute!

Seems like the nice start to something!  I enjoyed trying to solve the levels using as few wires as possible, that could be a very interesting optimization problem on bigger levels.  I wish there was more content =).

Neat concept, it's like a streamlined Robo Rally!  My main complaint is that the computer is too dumb/predicable, but that's to be expected, I guess =).  It also feels a little bit like  whoever happens to be closest to the new, big point spawn is just guaranteed to get it, although I won every game, so maybe that wasn't too big of an issue ^_^.  I feel like this could be interesting as a multiplayer (possibly even N-player, not just 2-player) game, would play well on a big screen with controllers for inputs.  I liked the visuals, it provided a nice mood and felt very consistent.

Nice start to something!  I struggled a lot with the UI, often placing things I didn't want, unable to remove things due to right-click interactions in the browser, constantly losing what's in my quickbar and having to re-equip it after crafting another one.  I made it through the main quests, but eventually I got stuck trying to do the depot missions, my starting depot was apparently just broken, so I made a new one, was able to deliver iron to it, but could never get the second mission activated after activating the iron one, which seemed to just never complete.  I also had my assemblers often stall out when an insert decided to load more than 100 of one ingredient leaving no room for the second :(.  Dragging to place conveyors worked nicely, and the visuals tied together pretty well.

Interesting game!  I like the integration of the story with the little puzzles.  The puzzles seemed too simple (once I figured out which dots were implicitly connected to other dots, the solution was just lay things out vertically anywhere without any real choices involved...), I'd have liked something that let me try different things or optimize in some way (maybe just being able to draw arbitrary-long wires, or the pieces had some other constraints or some where larger or something).  It took me way too long to get the password (due to it being case sensitive and not seeing what I was typing :D), but after that it was smooth sailing. Visuals for the world and the puzzles were both nice.

Really neat.  The level select being a puzzle on its own is really clever!  Took me forever to figure out the "trick" for level 5, didn't realize an upside-down robot won the level, that definitely helped later.  I managed to get through all of the levels and enjoyed it.  Music was nice and chill.  Easy Undo and Reset were really nice to have.  Really interesting combination of Sokoban and "controls move multiple guys" (whatever that's called...) mechanics!  Level difficulty ramp felt great, every level was a challenge, and I had to keep learning new things.

The mouse is so cute... yet I hate him so much!  Nice balance of challenge.  I like hearing something has gone wrong but having to search a bit with my light to find it.

Pretty fun!  I managed to beat all the levels, only died once on the first level figuring out the mechanics and controls.  I'd have liked a little more feedback (maybe an audio cue) on where to stop to repair, I found myself often walking past it.  It was fun upgrading and finally getting to max upgrades on the final level =).  Sounds and music worked pretty well together with the game.

Fun little game.  I managed to get all of the achievements.  Poor planet Ikarael, it was so much more wealthy than its neighbors so it's where I kept sending my raiders, err, transports.  It would have been nice to have some reason to not send all of my ships to the same place (maybe only one ship extracting at a time, or, resource values go down if too many of the same are sold).  Nice entry to the jam!

Interesting idea!  I feel like the levels were too same-y/too simple.  One level I had to think (had multiple inputs coming in to the same angle pipe).  The rest it seemed like every script was just "ROT R, SLP..., ROT L", and that solved it.  Seems like a good idea in need of more interesting levels!  I enjoyed hearing the sounds as the blips made it to the end.  Visuals were nice and wrapped it together nicely.

It's JavaScript (well, mostly TypeScript these days), but not much HTML (basically just a single canvas element :D).  It's my own custom engine (used for a few commercial projects, and lots o' jam games), but it's all WebGL and built like a native engine (I don't even use HTML/CSS for fonts and stuff, I do that all in WebGL...).  I might be up for trying a jam as a team, you can reach out to me at jimb.ly on Discord if that works for ya.

That's great, I love it when little innovates like that come out of jam games.  I'll happily steal that idea if I ever do a deep factory game :D.

Neat idea!  I had difficulty using the rotating block in any useful way - I used it on exactly one level (which had 2 inputs), and it maybe helped me pump them all through my one path, but I'm not completely sure it increased my throughput as things sometimes ended up flowing the wrong way and such.  After that, I mostly just stuck to using a single input and building a big pipeline for it.  My scores on the first 3 levels were: 330/1000 (took 2 tries, used rotator)/5700 (using just 1 input).  I ended up playing through level 11 or so, had a massive 26K score on level 6.  I couldn't figure out how the numbers' velocity worked, one time I had a hundred nodes approaching 4K after the last multiplier, sitting completely still on my pipe, not a single one making it to the end (total score was only like 3K :D).  I liked in the later levels needing to figure out a way to get a little income in order to start building my actual plan.

This seems to be a nice start to a game!  I think maybe the color names in the game description page are wrong, that confused me a bit.  I enjoyed finding ways to tightly pack things together, unless I ran out of free rerolls and I expected the cost to start going up greatly, but since it seemed to stay at 1 forever, suddenly it felt like there was no point.  Just changing that to exponentially increase the cost to encourage you to try to use all of your parts before rerolling would have, I think, helped keep me engaged a while longer =).   Congrats on your first game jam!

That was enjoyable, and felt just the right length for the depth of mechanics.  The jumping felt a little too floaty, especially when jumping up the staircase-like slopes at points, was a little frustrating.  The visuals were just lovely.  I felt bad harvesting scrap from my larger brethren, and was glad to see they got their revenge in the end :D.

I came for the cogs, stayed for the cog-puns.  I felt difficulty ramped up a little too slowly, I almost stopped playing pretty early, as the first 20 puzzles were basically just 1 of 2 things (either - just place a straight line, or just pack tightly) with no strategy required.  Levels definitely got interesting beyond there.  I appreciate the level selector and marking where new mechanics are unlocked, that's great for getting a better feel for the game!  I wished I had an easier way to undo (a hotkey, perhaps), as I often found myself wanting to try re-placing a single cog a number of times to see if it'll line up...  Music was nice and didn't get in the way.  Well done!

Wow, this was fun.  I managed to research Machine Tier 7 before it finally crashed.  Spent probably 3-4 hours playing this.  Was getting slightly slower and slower as I played, so presumably ran into some limit at the end.  You can see the minimap of my factory at least from this screenshot after the crash here =).

Definitely ran into quite a few bugs - realized the belts would skip a space pretty early, but that kind of  became part of the design constraints of the gameplay at that point =).  The factories not being centered on their 2x2 area when they got bigger was a little hard to work with.  Worst was them growing in the build palette meant that after tier 4 I had no access to iron bars anymore (no way to place a new furnace as I could find no hotkey for it, and couldn't get to it on the palette anymore), but I managed to work around it.

I didn't like being forced to use the new, larger assemblers/sellers/etc.  I almost got hard-locked when I reached a new tech tier, and the seller was now super expensive compared to the previous tier, more expensive than I could afford, and I didn't have any seller placed down anywhere near my science pack production chain :D.  Managed to route things back to an old one without doing too much damage and earn enough for a new, high-tier seller.

The little units that produce higher-tier components without inputs were fantastic.  Price felt just about right (they're the only thing, besides that one seller, that I found myself saving up to buy), and they're very satisfying compared to "okay, now, let me double the size of this boring part of my factory" and let me focus on the new, exciting part.  I'm curious what other factory games you've played might have that as a concept (because I'd probably enjoy playing them), or if that was something novel?

Individual pixel art was nice, everything felt recognizable and pretty unique, even all of the components - I found myself able to just use the icons to recognize what I need to craft rather then needing to double-check the names, which was nice.  If only the tooltip tips on the assemblers also used those icons so I could tell at a glance which one I was lacking =).  Overall composition felt a little inconsistent, with things being scaled different sizes as they grow bugging me a bit.

Maybe interestingly, I never realized, until very late, that you could cross belts - since the underground was unlocked initially to solve that problem, I didn't even think to try until I did it accidentally (and at the point I figured it out, I was too scared of belts mixing due to bugs, I mostly avoided it :D).

Overall, really awesome work, I've enjoyed this one more than any other game in the jam by far =).

That was surprisingly engaging!  I'm not usually a big player of RTS games, but I enjoyed this.  I'd have liked a little more feedback while placing refineries (often couldn't tell where I could or could not place them, or whether or not they'd do anything useful when I did place them there - I ended up with a couple harvesters just sitting around, maybe one was stuck, one was just slightly too far from ore, maybe?).  The tech tree felt very fleshed out, that's a lot of buildings and units!

Neat game!  I died a few times due to mechanics that I didn't yet understand - one time found a door that was apparently locked, another time unlocked a door but stepped on it when the timer reached 0, which apparently was too late :(.  The inconsistent resolution/scaling/interpolation of the pixel art bugs me, but, despite that, a lot of the graphics are really nice, I love the robots!  I enjoyed trying to fit the most valuable stuff in my bag.  The die roll animation was pretty cool too.

I seem to be stuck at the same place - it doesn't seem possible to buy the Crusher blueprint, as it "requires earlier blueprints", however after buying all (2) blueprints that require only ore, I'm left with only blueprints costing Iron or better, and no way to get iron...

That was fun!  I think I found (and abused) a "bug" where I could place things like conveyors where I wasn't supposed to (left click to pick up a conveyor, try to place it somewhere and fail, right click to cancel, and it goes to the "failed" place - really helped me buff my pachinko machine!).  I wished it remembered my rotation selection between placements, or more easily let me place multiple things, I kept placing conveyors going the wrong way.  Income growth felt good, opening up the new factory was nice, especially with each new area having a new mechanic to explore.  

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for playing!  Music's not my strong suit so I like just layering a bunch of musical sound FX and as the game gets going it starts sounding somewhat like music... though also somewhat like noise when you put it on fast-forward :D.

Thanks for playing and glad you liked it!  The exit after the green dragon is just back the way you came, should be basically the only way you can go (though, maybe not obvious since it's where you came down and our protagonist makes some inaccurate comments about never returning :D).  You save game should be there if you wish to resume =).

Nice entry!  The Library for reading in-world explanations of things was nice, I thought.  Early on I wished if there were fewer than 8 enemies it just showed them flat for easier attacking (if not using an AoE), but later the difficulty quickly fell behind my power so I just held SPACE constantly so it didn't matter as much, but that's it's own problem =).  I love the Dregg.  The little (I presume) class-specific challenges were a fun bit of variety in the dungeon.  Thank you for the reminder to save!  I agreed to the dragon's request, but, of course, had to reload and try the other way (made it to depth 3, character level 10 so far... but it's exactly as monotonous as the dragon described :).  Audio and visuals were very nice, consistent and pulled together nicely.

That was a lot of fun!  Death graphics are lovely.  I appreciate the paper doll reflecting what armor and clothes you are (or are not ;) wearing.  My only complaint is I fat-fingered selling and sold the armor I was wearing and I wished I could buy it back (seems like the shops had an inventory anyway, if they'd just added it to their inventory if they didn't already have one, that'd have been slick).  Luckily it was only a minor setback and I found another shop selling the best armor later, and I trudged on... to victory!

That was a ton of fun!  I love the visual style of each of the areas, though it feels like maybe it should be Win95 Crawler :D. I was slightly disappointed I didn't have to play minesweeper while walking around the board (though that would have been quite a bit more work, I'm sure ^_^).  My only (minor) complaint is that keypresses weren't queued, so sometimes I'd try to move and turn and I'd end up not turning which felt jarring.  That, and the Dragon at the end I kinda expected to be Naturally Speaking... (hopefully someone gets the ~Y2K reference...)

It took me a while to figure out what the icons below and above the enemies meant, but once I figured it out, I like the moving in combat.  Unfortunately my character had only ranged weapons so it felt like I was just kiting them backwards the whole time :D.  Once I had a couple stuns in my deck I basically never got hit again, which made the combat a lot less interesting.  The UI for combat felt really nice though, I enjoyed it!  I was disappointed I never got to spend my biomass (never got to 200, which was what I wanted to buy...).  Finally, wow, I love your gorgeous graphics and renderer, it all felt very nice and cohesive.  Sound a music fit well too.

That was very... colorful!  I got quite lost in the first level and it took me forever to eventually find the DRAGON panel.  At the beginning I noticed gamepad worked, so I tried that, however the gamepad movement was not stuck to the grid / doing 90 degree turns so I got misaligned a bit :D.  I wish there was more opportunity for deck-building!  I didn't make it all the way to the end, and only found a few pieces of equipment (which were great upgrades), but it seems like the only real deck-building was at the shop at the beginning - I wish I could have trade out some of the equipment/cards I bought for others after using them and seeing how they felt.  I guess I'll have to start a second playthrough to do that!  Music really fit the game well.

That was the most fun I've ever had cleaning dirty rags.  Weirdly compelling experience.  First game of the jam that's gotten me to pull out the ol' graph paper and draw a map (and use a highlighter on it, so fun!) :D.  A cleaning/rinsing hotkey would have been nice, or a "clean all" that used all of the rags at once, but I enjoyed getting into the rhythm of it.

Short and sweet, but I liked it!  The environment graphics are especially nice.  I liked the enemy sprites, but they didn't seem to quite fit with the feel of the rest of it.  I would have liked just a little more interesting dungeon design (seemed nothing much to do except a full search) - maybe just a few locked doors with switches nearby would have added a bit more variety.  Really nice cohesive design of the framing around the game (and integrates well into the Itch page!).

The intro was wonderful, and the closing as well!  Very nice look down telegraphing before actually jumping down, made it easy to see when I was leaping down into danger.  The Flyer I found early seemed overpowered compared to most weapons I found later, although with the randomness in damage it was a little hard to tell.  Combat was a little uninteresting (except when they had ranged attacks I could dodge), but felt solid enough.  Gaining max HP from collecting new items is a really nice mechanic, rewards me for exploring everything even if the items are useless =).    More items = more fun!  Very nice visuals and atmosphere, it was fun to explore.

Short and sweet!  I found myself "playing the map" too much, instead of looking at the 3D view - maybe the 3D view was just a little too hard to parse - or, had the enemies shown up in some way on that view, then I could have just played there and been more engaged (and, maybe, the levels are so small, you would not have even wanted a map).  I made it through to the end, once I figured out the timing on blocking =).  Running this in a terminal is excellent fun!

For anyone wanting to play on Windows (or super-safely on other platforms), if you have Docker installed, simply run this:

docker run -it --rm jimbly/maartene-embers-escape

For reference, it's just a 3-line Dockerfile:

Seems to work fine on Windows!

Very nice!  Fixing skeletons is fun, it felt good to see them back up again, and the minigame was simple but engaging.  Dungeon puzzles were pretty good, I stepped on spikes _so_ many times you'd think I would have learned... eventually...

Yeah, it makes it hard to find them in the Itch app too!  I've started just copying the URLs there if I need to download one...  I'm not sure on the cause, though I'm under the impression games entered into jams get less exposure in general (probably for good reason), but might also just be a case of games not being tagged right or missing some metadata, or just an Itch bug...

Thanks for playing, and glad you enjoyed it!  That cat shows up (in various forms) in my 4 other jam crawlers if you search for it... :D

What a wonderful experience!  Everything felt polished and flowed well and I don't really have any suggestions to make :D.  I enjoyed it all the way through to the end.

The audio is really lovely.  I like how each menu option has a slightly different pitch, I enjoyed scrolling down to the end of the shop's item list to hear what it would do :D.  Music got a little repetitive, but was still nice.

Really nice visuals, lots of variety between areas.  I like the mushrooms.  Overall look was nice and consistent.  Was that a particular palette?  It felt almost 16-color VGAish, but obviously not quite...

(edit: oh, and enjoyed the spinner(s), you had to have some!)