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Jeez, this music is incredible. I'm getting crazy Chrono Trigger nostalgia here! Fantastic game, really enjoyed it!

I played this awhile back, but knew I had to rate it when given the chance! Thanks so much for your submission, and your contribution to the jam. I hope to see you in future jams!

Thank you so much! I look forward to your input.

So glad you liked it! I think just about everyone gets stuck between the car and the hotel geometry the first time (me included!) so this is a good lesson for me to make sure there isn't a weird spot like that basically as soon as you spawn in. And yeah, I'm a sucker for upgrades (and intentionally left no cap on them because I get sad in games where you reach a limit and can't upgrade a stat anymore) and found jump height to be my favorite. If you pump just enough into jump height, you can leap clear across the map. And, again, thank you for the compliments to the music. I've never released a song before, so I am very much relieved that people think it fits the vibe well.

I thought this was fun! There used to be a carnival game where I grew up that was similar, where you couldn't touch the sides or you'd lose. I had a good time playing, I think my only suggestion is to have the music playing constantly, not restarting each time you die. I died a lot, so hearing the music restart over and over was a reminder of that haha. But other than that, great job!

So rare to see voice acting in a jam game! I thought it was a lot of fun, and nice to see another 3D game (I thought I was the only one!). I liked the game a lot, and everything fit together really well. I do kinda wish there were midair controls, just so I could make slight corrections if I didn't target my jump just right, but death isn't really much of a setback so I understand if this was a design decision.

This was fun! Spooky music and a fun and simple game mechanic. I enjoyed playing it when things were going my way, I think the only issues I had were that the horde was a little hard to manage, their health depleted a little too fast for my liking, leading me to pick health as an upgrade any time it was offered, and the zombies could sometimes pile in a way that only let one zombie attack the person, instead of 2-3. I'm also not sure if this is possible, but locking the cursor to the game window would be great, since the right clicking often caused me to bring up a menu, and if I did this while left clicking quickly trying to get the menu out of the way, it'd click something like Inspect Element that would bring me to a new page (not your fault, just an option of Edge). You can already drag to select zombies, I'd probably just have the player dragging to select and left clicking on the person to get rid of that possibility. But again, I did have a great time and I think you did a great job.

Mechanically, this game has really great, snappy controls and a really cool core mechanic. Visually, the game is really bright, almost at a PICO-8 level (not a bad thing! I liked it), and the soundtrack is appropriately retro-y. I think literally my only "complaint" is that I wish you had to beat it as both Ben and ZomBen before moving on to the next level, but that's only because I was curious about how I would've had to beat the level as either one, instead of just moving on.

The music was great! I think you did a great job here. Fun and simple mechanic, great vibes. The art was fantastic as well. 

Again, thank you so much for the detailed feedback. This is great! I definitely have a lot to learn; this was my first real foray into 3d, using navmeshes, and implementing any kind of AI in general haha. I absolutely agree about the level design, by the time I moved away from the initial prototype level I had created using ProBuilder and into something with the actual meshes, it was probably a little too late. I didn't have the time to get the balance and design just right. But! Now I know how to actually make a level, so I think my next time around will be much more fun and well designed.

Thank you so much for playing, and thank you for the honest feedback!

I definitely think multiple enemies of different types would've helped. My original plan was to have bats or some kind of airborne enemy (since you can also farm XP really easily by upgrading jump a lot and hopping on top of buildings, so this would've stopped that) but it turns out that hand-drawing like 20 sprites took much longer than anticipated, and it took a long time to figure out a probably super inefficient and convoluted way to billboard them based on the players viewpoint. I did some thinking on this post-jam and realized I probably could've just drawn it in greyscale and used a shader to make projectile enemies/different enemy types. That shader could've also tinted them red or something to show their approximate health too. Next time!

To go with the "All you can do is kill" feel, I had considered a "bloodlust" mechanic that would drain your health if you went too long without killing any enemies, but was afraid it'd be too annoying. Do you think something like that would've helped?

You're telling me I spent all this time making a big level when I could've made an incredibly fun game with just a hallway and a teleporting toilet??

Seriously though, I thought this game was super fun. The control scheme was a little tough for me to wrap my head around (not sure why) but I loved the big, chunky pixels and the combat was very satisfying. Throwing enemies felt like it had some weight to it, which was great. I think a 3d version of this would've felt very Power Stone-esque.

Great job!

I was so proud of getting the machines to glow and display 2d text in a 3d space that I kinda forgot you were being chased the entire time haha. But thank you for your input! You're like the fifth person, not including myself, that has gotten stuck there. It definitely happened to me, and I forgot to fix it! Thank you for playing!

This was great! Art was good, SFX were on-point, basically everything was as it should be. In the music, I heard a similar synth patch as the Merchant in Crypt of the Necrodancer, which I really enjoyed.  Probably not the only other game to ever use that patch, but kudos if whoever made the music put it in there intentionally.

I had the same question about the tower health, but I was thankful when an enemy walked in and I didn't have to restart!

That was a great experience! The game does a fantastic job of teaching you new concepts, and really feels like a small demo of a much larger game. I enjoyed it a lot. Some of the art was very reminiscent of Another World to me.

I wish I could say that my thinking was that getting pinned there would lead you to double jump out of there so you'd realize how useful jumping can be and upgrade it, but the more honest answer is that I think I just messed up with collider placement/level design haha. Thank you so much for playing!

What a phenomenal entry. Everything felt so high-value. The story is great, the gameplay is fun and reminiscent of Papers, Please, the art is top-tier, and the sound and music is excellent as well. I don't think there's much negative that I can say about this game. I enjoyed it so much!

Excellent artwork! The style was fantastic.

This is so good! The art is fantastic and the game is a lot of fun to boot. I really liked it!

This was a lot of fun! I played it solo, so the enemies did take awhile to die, but the shooting sounded really satisfying so it didn't really bother me. Great art, great aesthetic.

I liked it a lot! The movement was really snappy and the dashing and stuff was really Celeste-like. Thank you for the generous number of checkpoints! I died a bunch and it made things way less frustrating.

It was fun! I definitely see the Left 4 Dead influence here. The level was so big! I really could've used more stuff to shoot in the beginning, but it was a good time!

Someone else just told me the same thing! It works fine for me using Edge, but what browser are you using? I can't fix it now due to the submission window, but I can definitely keep it in mind for next time!

Were you using a gamepad? I thought I fixed that!

Thank you so much! I've never released music before, just been playing for myself all these years, so getting a compliment on it means a lot to me.

This was great! I really liked  it as a Survivors-Clone, and always love games where I can upgrade my stats and stuff. Really, the only thing I wish about this game was if shooting enemies that had C4 on them made them explode instead of just going away, it made getting the C4 as a powerup kind of tough because I was having to make sure I wasn't shooting someone who might damage a lot of other enemies. But, that minor thing aside, I had a great time!

So cool! Reminded me strangely of Baba is You, but maybe that's just because they're both overhead puzzlers. The puzzle solving was really interesting, and the way it added mechanics and stuff was really fun and unique. I loved it!

This felt like Witchy-Warioware, and I mean that in a really good way. The lack of tutorial with the tools was a little frustrating at first in the tutorial, but it wasn't hard to figure out what to do with them and looking back I think that was much of the fun and am happier for it. 

The art is gorgeous, fitting, and inspiring. The palette used was very good. Kudos to the artist. The music gave me heavy Akira Yamaoka vibes, and felt appropriately spooky and mysterious.

This is one of those games I'll need to come back to in order to humble myself when I think I'm a good pixel artist.

I really liked this game! I was a huge fan of Crypt of the Necrodancer (and am a musician) so anything that incorporates rhythm into the game is always a lot of fun. I wasn't able to beat the boss, but since I sucked at another rhythm game that incorporated the mouse I'll just chalk it up to being left handed and that hand being more used to having to be "on time" when playing guitar/bass.

Great work! Wonderful art, great ideas, and kudos for making a song/sfx that doesn't really ever appear to get grating no matter how often I heard it (I died a lot). Writing looping music like that is tough.

I did! It was great!

I really liked this game! Wonderful pixel art, great music, unique gameplay. Were there keyboard input options for this that I missed? I'm left handed, so using my right hand on the mouse to click to the rhythm was a little tough. But that's really my only "complaint". Great job!

I put one of the ammo stations across the street from you when you spawn in, but I think the filter makes the text not quite so readable haha. I considered making it glow too, but I didn't want a ton of stuff all glowy all the time. Thank you so much for playing!

Thank you so much for trying it out! Yes, it turns out my perception of the difficulty might be a little skewed since I played it from day one haha. I was nervous to decrease the number of enemies so that the level always felt full, but since they track you immediately it does tend to immediately create a swarm. In retrospect, having them patrol until you're within a certain radius and THEN move towards you would have helped a lot. I tried to do a few things here and there to make it easier: hits from the back do less damage, sometimes hits won't deal damage below a certain health threshold, and you can heal above your max hp as much as you can afford it, but I think addressing the enemies is the way to go.

In the future, I'll try to get more playtesters and learn how to implement a proper difficulty curve.

Thanks again for your feedback!

This was so fun! I really loved the art. The atmosphere was top notch, and it felt really cozy. Your game was one of the ones I most wanted to play when you posted your title screen, and the rest of the game did not disappoint!

Thank you so much for playing! It was so fun to watch! I see you went for a lot of headshots. I actually had an issue implementing critical hits, so they actually don't do anything, but interestingly there is bullet penetration for 2 enemies behind the one you hit with some damage falloff, so it's more advantageous to go for center of mass shots. I really enjoyed making this project, so after the jam is over I'd definitely like to implement more weapons!

This is hilarious. I got stuck there too, and I meant to fix it but forgot! You can actually double jump, but I don't think your initial jump height is enough to clear the hood of the car.

Thank you so much! It was a lot of fun being in the jam with you! Hope to see you soon!

Thank you so much! I'm working on a much better version, and your support means a lot to me

Hello! Alex here.

I typically do these things solo, but thought it would be fun (and in the spirit of the jam) to see if anybody wanted to collab!

I'm a fairly new dev and new to programming in general, starting maybe a year ago, and really enjoy doing pixel art. I submitted a game for the BigMode Jam and got 8th in Originality and 69th (nice) on theme out of over 800 applicants. I did all the programming myself, which explains why it wasn't fun, and I think with a competent programmer we could really make something incredible with your skills and my unique visual style. As a collaborator, I'm casual, enthusiastic, polite, and easy-going. I really enjoy thinking of new ideas, but am always open to constructive criticism to help me stay within scope. I have a strong vision but no ego, I really enjoy working as a team. My main influences are David Lynch, Mega Man Legends, the Mother series, and Metal Slug. I love using really saturated palettes, and my current favorite is called HeartGem, a 16 color palette that takes influence from the colors of 90s anime. You can see this in the 2nd set of images, where I was making (but was ultimately unable to finish) a Celeste clone where you were a stunt-girl called No Reshoots. The larger image was a squished level mockup so I could see how all the colors fit together and the overall vision of the level where you'd run down the cabin, slide through the vent,  and wall jump out of the crashing plane, jumping on crates until you got to the one that had a parachute.

Here is a sample of my art, all of what you see other than the "Rest!" and "Order Submitted! (et al)" text are original assets, created by me during the timeframe of the jam. The animated monster is something like 80-90 hand-drawn frames. It was a lot of fun to make!

If you like what you see, let's team up and make something incredible!

Here is my ranking sheet from the BigMode Jam. The theme was Power, and my game was about powering a gameboy by pedaling a bike on the left side of the screen to power the gameboy itself on the right side while a monster watched:

And here is my art for the games I've done: