itch.io

Really well done for a 4 day jam. I LOVE the art style its so cute.

I'm not sure if you are aware, but there is another game with exactly the same gameplay loop called Coal LLC. This isn't a dig (no pun intended) at your game, just thought you may be interested to know in case you want to continue this game further so you have a point of reference.

And don't let this dissuade you, I say this because I've been developing a similar game over the last 6 months as well so I've been looking for other games like it.

I will say that I personally find the timer + quota combo a bit too stressful for my liking, but there are a lot of people who enjoy Coal LLC so I don't think I'm really your target audience.

Good luck!

Solid game, managed to reach the end game with a full screen of towers. My thoughts:

* The art is really well done. The only nitpick is that the variable outline thickness feels a bit weird.

* The idea of time as a resource here is interesting in theory, but in playing it feels more just like any other currency, because once you produce more fuel than you spend, it is impossible to run out of time.

* The walls are really hard to use because the enemies are so fast and can attack through the walls if the tower is close enough.

* I wouldn't say the balancing of the enemies is terrible like the other guy, but I do think it could use some work. Particularly because in a jam game it's important that the game isn't not too hard to see all the content your game has to offer.

Incredible.

The shots are beautifully made and the pixel filter aesthetic really enhances them.

Made me feel stuff, not quite sure what yet, I think I still need some time to process it.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2830138027

Here's the vod you asked for :)

Your game is at around 2:45:00

Great game btw!

* Aesthetic is really cool, although it was difficult to appreciate at times due to how small the entities are and how fast they move.

* I like the idea of the countdown being a shared resource of hp and thrust and a timer.

* I think the onboarding could use some work - It is difficult to figure out what is going on when all the mechanics are introduced at the start. I think it would be easier to learn the game if you only introduced one mechanic at a time (maybe one per level?)

* Some of the sound effects felt a bit rough with some of the repeated sounds being quite harsh on the ears and some sound effects cutting out earlier than they should.

Overall pretty good game, I can tell a lot of thought went into how the mechanics interact.

giga poggers (gave feedback on stream)

Really amazing game, especially for being developed in four days. Here are my thoughts:

* The way the environment moved in a circle was REALLY cool and I can tell how much work went into it. Like just the flower alone would have taken so long to make the art for, considering all 6 stages and every direction.

* I thought the setting was really neat, the way everything was made of small human items blown up to a large scale (like the pencil fence)

* The writing was pretty solid, I actually felt bad for the beetle and the slug lol.

* The music was very pleasant to listen to and worked really well with the story, and I really enjoyed the way the dialogue mixed in the instruments. The drums coming in on the final day also made it feel climactic which was cool.

* The choice to have an interactive gameplay element splitting up the dialogue portions is really smart to make sure the player doesn't get bored of either too quickly. That being said, the dialogue portions did feel a bit repetitive after the first few days.

* The breakout game did feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the game. The character's feelings affecting their shooting style did help a bit but it still felt a bit jarring. Not sure how you would fix that though tbh without some major changes so its fine for the jam.

* The idea of having different characters in a breakout style game was really cool. One nitpick is that the way the blocks were color coded I thought it represented the number of hits to break. Also for the last day I didn't realise I needed wasd controls for a solid 30 seconds.

* I'm not really sure what happened at the end. All I saw was a block of cheese(?) appear and then there were 2 more sprouts, so it felt like nothing that happened actually mattered, but maybe that's the point.

Overall very awesome game, enjoyed it a lot :)

I love the pixel art aesthetic, its really cute and charming. The music also suits it really well.

Some things to consider:

* I found the jumping to feel quite floaty which made it hard to get my character to do what I wanted it to. I think it could benefit from jump physics more akin to that of super meat boy, where the character begins falling as soon as the jump button is released (doesn't need to be that extreme but somewhere in between would be good)

* I feel like making the obstacles completely change each loop kinda defeats the point of it being a loop? Because it kinda ends up just playing like a regular endless runner. I think it could be more interesting if obstacles were gradually added, without removing the obstacles from the previous loop, allowing the player to use the skill built up from previous loops to traverse more complex obstacles.

I should note that I ended up making quite a similar game to yours, so I am definitely biased in that regard.

Hey, I'm the developer of the other looping endless runner tetris game (funny how they are so similar lol).

I love the aesthetic in your version, being set in a bedroom with lego as the tetrominoes.

There were a few things that negatively impacted the experience, the main one being that the player could phase through blocks if they were short enough, which obviously didn't feel great, but I'm sure you realised that already.

I think the choice to have the player automatically jump is an interesting design decision, and while not inherently bad, I feel like it does remove a lot of the skill expression of the platforming aspect. This means almost all the skill expression is in the placing of the tetrominoes, which then naturally makes you kind of think what does the platforming aspect actually add to the experience over just normal tetris.

One other thing to consider is the fact that it is actually beneficial to the player to wait as long as possible between placing the tetrominoes in order to travel as far as possible with the least complex obstacles. I solved this in my game by giving the player exactly one tetromino each loop, however I'm sure there are other ways you could incentivise the player to place the tetromino earlier.

Overall really good for a 4 day jam, hope I didn't sound too harsh just some things to consider in case you want to develop it further.

Really cool game, definitely a lot of depth derived from the combination of the different mechanics.

One thing I noticed is that I think the camera zooms out a little too rapidly as the size of the ship increases, which makes it difficult to see the different entities on screen, especially the projectiles (which funnily enough is the opposite of the feedback you gave for my game haha)

Also very slight nitpick: I don't think it make sense to have a parallax effect on the stars - they should just be stationary in the background (unless of course the scale of the ship is comparable to that of a star lol)

Overall very well done :)

Hi, thanks for playing my game! I'll check out your one as well.

I should also note that the camera does gradually zoom out as the size of the ship increases, although it could definitely still be tweaked to scale slightly more rapidly.

Hey Firebelley, thanks for checking out my game and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Just to answer some of your questions from the stream:

"I would prefer to have a definitive end to the game rather than just survive as long as possible" - I hadn't considered this at the time, but in hindsight that probably would have been a lot better because a lot of people had a similar issue of snowballing into an unkillable lag machine by the end.

"It would be cool to be able to rotate the ship" - This was one of the first things I implemented into the game, but when playtesting it, it just felt a bit janky and difficult to control. I also figured it'd be better for a game jam to keep the controls as simple as possible. But this could certainly be explored again in the future.

"Maybe the way you're trying to find the nearest enemy for each turret could be causing the lag" - This is almost certainly the biggest contributor to the lag, because you're were right in that I was doing it as inefficiently as possible haha. Your suggestion about using the collision system is really helpful, I'll have to give it a shot.

I thought it was a really interesting take on the theme the way it affects both player and enemy bullets. One thing that stood out was that it was kinda tricky to tell what mode the circle was on. I could see that the circle changed thickness a little bit but maybe if you had green for the growing mode and red for the shrinking mode it could be more clear.

Interesting mechanic, however I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go in the second level. Also, some of the art assets looked a little out of place as some of them were in a pixel art style whereas some of them were higher resolution.

The game had a really nice aesthetic going with the moody atmosphere. One thing that stood out to me was that the enemies did not visibly react when being shot, so I wasn't sure if I was actually doing damage. This could be improved by adding particles or a hitflash effect. Also the window was stuck in a super small resolution which made it hard to see what was going on.

Cute little game, the second form was really cool. I thought the player moved a bit too slowly when it was larger because it made it impossible to dodge the enemies.

The game is pretty good in the horror aspect, but it seems too hard to find batteries when the light is at the minimum size.

Cute little game, love the chill vibe of the music. One thing that stood out to me was that you have to wait a very long time between waves of enemies, which made me lose interest.

Very unique game, definitely had to make me think! I think one thing I found kinda confusing that I couldn't tell which side of the ship was forwards and which side was backwards so I ended up going the wrong way when shooting the forward button.

Cute little game, I really loved the shader you used to create the retro feel. I think the main thing that was confusing for me was that it was not immediately clear that the enemies, when in their smallest form, are supposed to be collected rather than avoided. It took me until about wave 5 to realise that haha.