itch.io

Yeah, we are a family studio. Our oldest really wanted to learn game dev several years ago. I've done it as a hobby since I was a teen, so looked at what was out there now and started teaching the whole family. My partner is the lead artist & storyteller, and I do lead programming, while the kids are learning all of it. Making a living doing game dev has always been a dream job for me, so when I lost my web dev day job last year, we switched to this full time. That is part of why we are trying to cut some corners to get the game complete and sellable sooner, rather than going full RPG.

Glad you enjoyed it! Our kids had fun learning about butterflies for this game. They picked which ones to include in the game and did the art for them.
FYI, There is a hidden path with an additional made up "Nebula Wing" Butterfly. If you collect it, it will stay with your character, flying over their shoulder.

Thanks so much for continuing to play and leaving great feedback!

I responded to some of the Inventory UI stuff on Discord, but you have some additional points here, so I'll skim over the stuff already mentioned for others who read this, along with the new stuff.

The Inventory UI is about to get an overhaul. We've made a few quick changes to remove the old things that no longer apply, such as the belts, but we now have a lot more space to work with. Since the change to item stacks, the bags do not need as much space, which can give us even more. We want to redo all of it to better flow with the new combat system. The filtering is something we feel is important to a smooth experience, but the current implementation is clunky. Part of that comes from the 2 item types (consumables & equipment). Some filters only apply to one type, and choosing them will remove all of the other type. We tried to make this clear by having the type selection be a drop down that changed which options were showing, but it feels like it just hides the most useful filters. We plan to redo the UI to make the most useful filters more prominent, and clearer. We are also adding a filter for Affinity, as well as one for Offense/Healing. We also want to add plenty of options for quick sorting. We will be adding some UI highlighting for things like matched Affinities.

I'm torn on the auto-sorting. We want people to get to know the characters and learn what works well with each. There are also a number of ways to play and we don't want to push players into a certain way of playing. Even among our team there are different opinions on which Slime should get which items. Our kids have a very different play style than the adults, and even my partner and I do things a bit differently. We really like to allow for choice and strategy. I feel like if we add auto-sorting, it has to be something they player can control. I have some thoughts on how it could work, but it will take time to implement and add a good UI for. I'm very logical and detail oriented, so I can see this elaborate system with nested boolean rules... but that would not make a good UI for the average player. We will think on it and see if we can find a good system. It will probably be a bit, as we will want to finish the combat updates so the rules can best align with the most important parts of it. Affinities will be important, of course, but there will also be some other filters that matter. We plan for Tanko to get some abilities tied to using armor, so that will be an important option to include.

Along with redoing the Inventory UI, we are planning to make a combined UI for multiple screens. The Quest Log will be part of it, and we will add new screens to view the character stats and their abilities. We will still keep some character details on the Inventory screen, and expand it to better show what you need to assign their items, but some details will be moved to where they can be fleshed out more. Pretty much adding your classic RPG details. Eventually you will be able to use some abilities outside of combat as well, which will be from the new screens.

I agree with you on the zig-zag movement being odd. It is an oddity of the container we use to arrange things there with auto wrapping. I have an idea for how to force it to move the way we think it should go, and will eventually get that fixed.

There is not much we can do about the Itch fullscreen button. For the one in our game, are your talking about the one in the Town UI? That is meant to hide and show the Town UI itself so you can see the town. You can change the game to fullscreen from the Settings, or using a hotkey. combo By default it is Alt-Enter, which is the one I'm used to programs using, unless they simply go with "F".

We should add a setting for the dialog speed. For now we do have an option to simply display all the text immediately without the animated writing it out, but that should be a slider to give more choice.

Our art is currently being reworked. We want a lot more variety among all the Slimes, both to make your party stand out from non-party members, and to give them each more personality. The base for the new slime art is almost done. The humans still need some animations added, and then all the clothing and accessories. It is probably still going to be a few weeks for the big art update, but we may start to bring in bits as we go, even if there may be some contrast between old and new.

I like your suggestions on the Item Transfer. In case you did not see it, you can use modifier keys for quick transfers without the popup. Shift -right-click moves half a stack, while Ctrl-right-click moves 1/4. Currently alt moves the whole stack. We had planned to make that one split the stack into quarters and distribute it to each Slime, but with the belts going away we now have the middle-click open, so the middle-click will take on additional quick-transfer options. Still, if there is only 1 item, there is no longer a need for the popup. When we had the belts it was still needed for picking a destination, but now I feel like the it needs a review for optimizing in general.

We appreciate your feedback. Just like you, we have acknowledged that we are only looking from our viewpoint and need to get other views. These jams have been very useful in making our game better. We originally focused on the quick game, but but as the story grew, so many commented on it feeling RPG-like, and wanting more RPG features. That was what had us decide it was time to embrace what we really wanted to make anyway, even if we have to cut some corners to make the project in a reasonable time period.

Glad to help! I've been enjoying the game. Just wish I had more time to play and get to the end. I'm thinking of trying the Treehugger next.

I have right clicked on various things, but did not do so on the character. I think I tried left clicking on it once, but should have acknowledged that the inventory and crafting used right click and it would be the same. The line about the cutting stuck in my mind because it had me debating if I really wanted to try the Furbuddy at all. I decided to go ahead with it, but wanted to get to the rats quickly test test it out.

On one hand, I am a prepper by nature and I like to know as much as possible to make informed decisions. On the other hand, learning by doing can be rewarding, especially in games. I think your current system of revealing things as you go is probably the better way to go for this game. Maybe have some basic items that are known from the start, even if the chosen class doesn't start with them. Similarly, if you are going to show what items can be found at a location, most should be learned as you go, but obvious ones can be known. For example, getting branches from trees would be obvious enough that it should be the known from the start.

I had planned to test if I could eat the cooked meat, and that was part of why the fire was so prominent in my thinking while writing my comment. If you can eat the cooked recipes that use meat, then that would alleviate some of my concerns. Though, bad luck of not being able to make a fireplace impacts that. My previous run I had at least 3 fireplaces, and several axes, so this was certainly a bad luck run.

The biggest thing for me about the description was saying that you suffer damage from cutting animals. As soon as I read that I thought of the rats. I'm glad they did not cause HP loss, but it still did feel like a contradiction to the provided info. With the limited space for the details I'm not sure the best wording to say that the rats are excluded from it. Since they are likely to be among the first you encounter, and this game does encourage trying things out, it may be fine to leave it as-is, and let people discover through experimenting that this is an exception, and maybe there are other things that are not as they seem.

Yes, the 1st Mandelbrot. I'm fine with it where it was. I think it was just the way my mind was processing the image. It was a challenge, but the systems in place gave enough freedom and aid to allow players to work with it at their own level, and to skip past it if needed. If not for the aids, and being able to skip, then it might be to tough and stop some players. If you add more puzzles, then I could see adding more earlier and building up more slowly to it, but with what is there it felt fine.

I completed through #6, though that one was tough for me to picture in my mind and predict things ahead of time. It required a lot more experimenting with different pieces until I found one that I could place. I mostly did dragging, though realized that there were a few times that a direct swap would have been better. The designs were neat, though could be challenging. The flash when you get a piece into the correct position is convenient. The level progression feels challenging, but reasonable. The options in the menu are nice to have. Overall a decent puzzle game.

I played on PC, The simple swipe control still worked decently well. There were times that I wished there was a way to back up and go a shorter distance, especially once I realized that the distance traveled affected how much stamina was used. It was interesting having all movement based on the swipe attack, and not being able to move without using the same stamina as if you were attacking. It adds an interesting strategy, and need to often wait for enemies to come to you, or move into position where you can recharge as they approach. The upgrades were useful and offer a bit of choice in how you play. I had mostly started with the distance, then noticed the stamina use being affected and went with more stamina.

It's been a long time since I last played Punch-Out. This is a neat clone of it. I like the fantasy theme. From what I could see the core mechanics look to be good. Unfortunately, I had trouble actually playing the game. The left click was very unreliable. Sometimes, especially at the start, it would work, but then it was being ignored. I am aware of the limited energy for attacks, and even when I had energy and should have been able to attack I was not able to do so. I could move with WASD, and right-click activated the block. I pressed F12 to see if I could find anything in the console, and that activated the mobile controls. I was then able to defeat the first boss by using WASD for movement and clicking the on-screen "A" button for my attacks. I saw that there was supposed to be a chargeable attack by pressing "S" and left click. I never saw any indication that things were charging up from this, including with using the mobile button. It would also be nice if there was an indication of when you switch between high and low. Nothing visible seemed to change when I pressed the button, though looking at the console I do see it reporting that the state changed.

I am playing with the Vivaldi browser (Chromium based), on Linux, so it is possible some of the input issues are from the browser or OS.

The controls & physics are much better than the last time I played. It was also much easier. I played several times on Easy, earning $160, before switching to Hard. Even on Hard I was able to win about as often as I lost.

I like the idea of the karate school. Spending money to learn new kicks would add some needed variety. Right now it does feel a bit repetitive. I previously played the version with the map, and as I recall, some locations had you going around corners. A bit more variety in the building would be nice.

Adding the debug menu for adjusting physics is a nice touch. I didn't mess with it, but can appreciate its usefulness for testing. 

This was pretty fun. The variety of dice and random chance for what shows up offers a nice combo of luck and strategy. I played twice so far. I didn't get very far, only getting to the 4 enemies fight, and losing to the last of them, both times.

While the random dice to choose from is a good mechanic, it would be nice if there was a delay of a few fights before dice you get rid of come back. Each playthrough I had multiple dice I got rid of showing back up soon after.

Going from Credits to Options does not close the Credits, making things hard to read. It looks like several buttons do not close the previously opened ones. I went to the Tutorial before the Gallery, and when opening the Gallery it was still showing the last Tutorial screen. I closed the Gallery and went beck to the Tutorial and back to the Gallery, but it did not happen again. While reviewing the Tutorial as I wrote this review I went back through all the steps. Afterward I decided to check the Gallery again, and the Tutorial screen was there.

After the in-combat per turn tutorial finishes from pressing Next, your character moves immediately, instead of waiting for a dedicated click to advance. Since it did the first time there was an attack taking place, it took a bit to realize I needed to click to advance the first time the tutorial did not pop up. It would be nice if there was a delay on accepting the advance fight input after the tutorial Next button is pressed, so the player can see things as they would normally be and have to click to advance, unless they chose the Auto-Battle option.

After winning the first fight the left-most new die had a bit of its tooltip cut off on the left side. This just cut off half of the first letter, so was not unreadable. The current dice did not have this problem. This happened in each post-combat choosing of replacement dice, and sometimes the one on the far right also had some clipping.

If the mouse moves while holding right click the right click popup goes away. This was most noticeable while scrolling through some dice with long lists of details.

The Swapping UI could use with some instructions. With the battle UI being drag and drop, I expected the same there. When I realized it was click to select, I then expected to select all swaps before pressing to swap them together. When I clicked on the second thing I wanted to swap from my current dice and it changed, I did figure out what to do, but it would be nice to have a bit of info before. I'm used to a swap like this often being one and done, so I was hesitant to swap just one pair, when I had another I also wanted to swap. I like the reducing heal based on the number of swaps done.

In combat tooltips for status effects appear behind the health bars of nearby enemies.

It would be nice if Discards were explained better. I don't recall seeing it in the tooltips, though maybe I just did not scroll enough to see it. I had at least one ability I took with it that never activated, and I'm pretty sure I saw another mention Discarding as well. My best guess is dice that don't get used due to defeating an enemy they were targeting before they were used.

Similarly, it would be nice to have more details on Armor. It seems like Defending adds Armor, but it does not say that it does. When reading about abilities that trigger on Armor, it leaves the question of if that is referring to Defend or not. Then seeing an ability that adds Stacking and refers to other armor as being replaced adds to the question of how Defend works. If defends gives you non-stacking Armor that is replaced each time Defend is used, or if Defend does not count as Armor, that would be good to know.

This is an interesting mashup of game styles. It took a bit to get the hang of it. I didn't use dash much at the start, which made it feel like there wasn't much to do as you bounced all around. Once I started using dash it gave a lot more feel of control, though with the delay it added a need to time when was best. I haven't made it to the boss yet, so can't comment on that. The first time encounter archers was unpleasant. With them being able to hit you at such long range, possibly anywhere on the screen, they feel a bit overpowered, especially for how early you encounter them. Possibly give them a shorter range, at least on the earlier levels. Once I saw what a threat they were, I tried to take them out first. Then the wizards were added, and it was a tough call for which needed to go first.

The contrast could use with some adjusting. The backgrounds feel to dominant and the battle elements can get lost, especially small things like the arrows. Possibly reduce the opacity of the backgrounds so they have a more faded background feel. The font in several places could also use with a bit more contrast/improved readability, especially the tooltips for relics.

I would add the weapon select info to the game page.

Good to know not to pick up ammo for a weapon before getting the weapon, as I was collecting them as I found them in world 1. I did eventually get ammo, and was grabbing every HP boost I could, in world 2, but did not acknowledge being able to shoot. It may have been for one of the other weapons than I started with. I was also low on health by the time I got to them, and mostly focused on running. Based on world 1 I was looking for the weapons, so in my mind did not have them and was not not watching the ammo amounts. I may have missed it if I did get some. When I next play I'll keep it in mind and try switching weapons.

I started playing with Furbuddy. Having the dog companion is nice, though not being able to eat meat is a big drawback. My previous play I used meat and steaks a lot. We will see how things balance out as I go. The loss of 3 hearts when using your companion in combat adds a good balance so you don't have too much advantage in being able to just rely on spamming that attack. With the tutorial I had to avoid the train wreck fight, but this time, with the dog and a sharp stick, I was able to deal with the threat. I don't recall exactly what was there last time, but I think the zombies were less powerful, and fewer, than previous plays, so that helped as well.

When starting the fight there is a quick message popping up about "Furbuddy spares X items". It took me a bit, but I think that is saying that there are that many items you can't use because of the Furbuddy trait, such as meat and bones. This message could probably use some work. It is fast. The first time I was not prepared and was not sure what it said. Then when I did read it, I didn't know what it meant. I'm not really sure the best wording. Maybe a more direct "prevents use of", instead of "spares". It would also help if the text was not positioned over the cards, and maybe let it stick around for another second.

With this being the first time beating them, it is also the first I see that even if you do so, you can't get past the wreck, or even search everything nearby. That changes the calculation, and in the future I would probably avoid the fight. I figured that after fighting them you'd be able to search and climb past the wreckage, or squeeze around the left side, gaining a short cut, and extra loot. Having the train car spot off to the right, away from the path was probably part of it, as you would already be going off the road to get there, so you should be able to get past the train by going to the left and around it. Though I did not seem to be able to reach it. I think it would be nice if you made the road under the train tracks look damaged/not connected in some way to signify the path can't be taken. Possibly shift the train a bit to the left, and/or make it longer, so it feels like it is more blocking the path. I did not do the tutorial this time, and what I recall of it was to avoid this route due to the zombies being too powerful, not because you could not go through, but maybe there was something more about it in there.

The description of Furbuddy said that cutting animals would hurt you. I was concerned about this, as the main way I fed the dog in my previous playthrough was with the meat and bones from cutting rats after the dog Chomped them. I just ran into my first rats, and cutting them did not seem to do any harm to me. It would be nice if the description clarified if cutting the dead rats after you defeat them is OK. Unless this is a bug and you should be getting harmed. If you should be harmed for cutting the rat, then it would be nice if there was an option for the dog to just eat the rat without any cutting. I made a fishing rod and tried fishing. I know some people don't consider fish to be meat, so wanted to see what I got from fishing. The results look to be the same as from rats, though cutting the fish did cost me 10 HP. Later I cut bees, and also lost HP, and gained meat. Gaining the same meat resource from bees as rats feels a bit off due to size difference.

I made it to Lakeside. This is the first time I am getting any stone or stumps in this play through. I don't have any straw to build a fire yet, but I can finally make equipable weapons. I am also really feeling the lack of being able to eat meat as my food is low. This was really the turning point in my playthrough. The lack of food meant I had to do things in a less optimal way, and I never recovered.

I made it back to the other side of the train wreck, though was in bad shape by then. I had too little food to be able to rest enough, or do many other things. I had to skip an area with 1 zombie left because I couldn't fight it and it was too strong for the dog to Chomp. I spent a lot of time going back and forth to rest spots as I'd get enough to rest a bit, then use that energy to search/gather the next thing. It seems like the far right train car cannot be reached from either side. It said it was too far when on the bottom side, but did not show up when at the top side. Maybe I just missed a spot that it is reachable from. With everything having a cost I did not experiment as much as I otherwise might. In the future I plan to just avoid the train wreck fight anyway.

I know that a lot of the game is based on luck. I had pretty bad luck this run. Having taken Furbuddy and not being able to eat meat I needed to rely on other foods, and I did not get enough of them. I also never had the resources to build a fire to boost them. I got 1 stone at Lakeside, and finally got some straw just north of the train wreck, after I had used the stone for an ax.

I only did one game with Furbuddy, and acknowledge that my luck was bad this run, so take that into consideration. Having said that, I think it might be good to adjust Furbuddy to not be meat in general, but the meat of furry animals. Maybe permit fishing to be an acceptable source of food. I don't know how common it is later, but it does seem rare at the moment. With your plan for expanding to travel by ship, it will likely be a more common location. Having a dependable source of food is important for survival, and with how little the fruits and more common non-meat items provide, it does feel like no meat is a pretty big negative for Furbuddy. Being able to grow food on this ship could help to offset this. Next time I will try one of the other classes.

You've made some nice improvements since I last played. I like the new infinity symbol for crafting items that won't be consumed. That's really helpful in deciding what to craft. The filters work well, and are easy to use. The UI improvements in general all look good. Splitting the keys also feels like a good change.

I like your idea for expanding the game. I may not have reached the end of the current part, but continuing on the boat fits the game well. The concept looks good. I like how you were able to incorporate it into the existing systems.

I was happy to see that while this is a download only game, it was marked as supporting Linux as well as Windows, and Mac. Upon downloading, I only saw a Windows executable. If you have Linux and Mac versions, then you will need to update the file. If you don't have versions for Linux and Mac, then please don't list as supporting them.

This is a decent start to an Asteroids clone. The controls are simple. Pressing down bringing you to an immediate stop was unexpected, but is very useful. Movement feels reasonable, though it can get crazy with one of the power-ups. The power-ups being time limited is a good way to prevent the player from becoming too powerful, while still giving some bonuses. The enemy ship spawning 2 when you defeat the last one is an interesting choice. It is a threat and it would be nice to remove the threat, but doing so can make it worse. I tried just rapid firing at them destroying them as they spawned, but inevitably one would get a shot off in my direction before long.

It would be nice if you added a high score so players can keep track, and try to beat their previous record. I didn't pay much attention to score during the game, but at the end it would be nice to see how you did compared to previous games.

I read through your dev log. It looks like you have been editing the same dev log with regular updates. It would be better if you made new dev logs so people will know when there is new content, and can read just the new stuff, without having to scroll through all the previous things they may have already read through. It also looks like you responded to someone's comment in your dev log, but not to the comment itself. Responding to the comment would generally be better. The person is unlikely to see your reply in the middle of an older dev log. With a reply they will get notified and you could potentially have a discussion on it.

The first thing is that I would add a button to the select ship screen to advance. Pressing enter is not intuitive when you have a button based UI at that point. I saw the comment here, and in the controls, but plenty of people will jump right in to play, and that could be frustrating.

I played several times. eventually I went left a bit and down, getting to an area where the gems were spawning, but black holes were not. Several messages showed up at the bottom such as "making things worse" and "slow down". The game eventually locked up. My score was at 626 at that point. I retried, and found I could consistently go down and left a short ways to escape the danger zone. Then I just held left until I hit the edge, before holding down to the corner. The I went right along the bottom, and was at a score over 500 by the time I started to see black holes, though things started to lag by the time I was at the bottom, and got worse from there. I stopped when I saw the black holes and tried to back track, but hit one, and then things locked up again. Here is the error from the console:

game.js:652 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading '176')
     at lostlive (game.js:652:62)
     at game.js:886:25
 lostlive    @    game.js:652
 (anonymous)    @    game.js:886
 setTimeout
 check    @    game.js:884
 gameLoop    @    game.js:1011

I did not see any repair kits, and with a single hit destroying you, I'm not sure what damage they would repair.

The new ship sprites are neat, but the ship is small and the background dominates. The ship really feels like it is lost among the background. I'd make the background, at least around the ship, be something that contrasts with the ship so the ship grabs the eye. The whole background could get a slightly faded/semi-transparent look to it to help it feel more like it is in the background.

This is a decent start. The basic concept works, though is very much luck based. As long as you are not trapped when you start, with a bit of strategy, and fast fingers, you can lure enemies away from the path you need and generally get around them, until there are too many. I made it up to level 11, on Medium, when I messed up and pressed the wrong key while trying to quickly slip by an enemy.

The first thing I'd suggest would be adding some instructions. List out the controls. When starting I tried the mouse, WASD, and then arrow keys. Update: While writing this out I expanded to fullscreen to try to describe thing better, and found that the movement controls are listed, but cut off by the default web view. You may want to adjust the Viewport size on Itch to be taller so it shows the controls. When using the Itch fullscreen toggle, the game itself did not scale, so other than seeing the cut off controls, it does not seem useful. I did not see any mention of how to use the scrolls.

After getting the scrolls I pressed several buttons to see if they did anything, and did not notice anything. What are the scrolls and how are they used?  The game page mentions that the number of scrolls changes based on difficulty, and you have a counter of how many you've picked up, but they don't seem to be important. There are also tiles with red things on them. They look like maybe they are meant to be bombs, or perhaps a fruit? It would be nice if you explained what they are and how they work.

If the scrolls or red things can be used to remove or stun the enemies, that would help add more for the player to do and feel in control, rather than it mostly being luck of where things spawn. There are plenty of options for how to expand this into a bigger game. As it is, it is a good starting point, but it needs more to be fun.

Some background music and additional SFX would also help.

This is a decent start. The basic mechanics work well.

I like that there are protected areas, especially at the start before you collect your first weapon. It would be nice it the starting point was looking at the entry to that first building to help guide where to go, rather than looking around and suddenly being attacked with no way to defend yourself. 

The enemies were pretty easy to deal with, as long as you had a weapon and ammo. The turrets that shoot back fell like they should be tougher than the spiders, though with them shooting at you I appreciate that they are not harder to destroy.

After I got the second weapon (Gatling) I did not know how to change weapons. It was more useful, and I finished the level before running out of ammo, so it wasn't too bad.

I did not manage to find any weapons on the second world. I found a town where I could walk through buildings, lots of ammo, and lots of enemies. Just no weapons.

Twice the game locked up on me. It killed WebGL and refreshing the page gave me an error about not having WebGL the first  time. I had to restart my browser to be able to play again. The second time I was able to replay after refreshing the page, but had also taken time to write this comment before trying, so maybe the delay helped. The first time was in world 1 as I was trying to figure things out and was pressing G to get to the menu. The second time was after I made it to world 2 and had run around a bunch. Based on the console messages I think it is memory related, but I'm not certain. I was playing fullscreen on the web when both crashes happened, so could not see the system stats. It took a while after locking up before it closed.

It is good that you have the controls on the web page, but adding a short in-game tutorial, or even signs with text giving instructions, such as the basic controls, would be nice. The second area could also use a bit more guidance on where to find your first weapon.

Overall it felt like a good base. I stopped playing due to the crashing, and would have played a bit more and tried to find the weapon otherwise.

I like your changes. The crowd mechanic is a nice idea. I like that it gives the player move to do directly towards winning.

Right now it is a pretty easy to win. I did the tutorial for the campaign day. Once it seemed like I did not need to stick around anymore at the protest, I went off to do other things. The barricade was eventually beaten down, so I went to gather more of a crowd, built a new barricade, and started another protest. As soon as the protest started I moved on to do other things, and before I did much else, I had won.

The second time I played through I rallied a bunch of houses to start and put a barricade at the same spot as in the tutorial, before heading over to protest and win. I'm assuming that the attack on your base can come down any road, not just that way, though they did the same route that time. I'm guessing that the first time may be set to use that route. In the future I would probably place the barricade closer to your home, past where the road splits, so you could cover all paths with just 2 barricades.

Obviously the crowds are new and not balanced yet. It was easy to win on the first campaign day. Perhaps consider adding a mechanic that limits how much protesting you can do at a time or in a single day. Maybe the corp calls out security or local cops to disband the protest. If you are really low when starting, then maybe allow more to be gained since they don't consider you a threat. Really, this is just about keeping the game going longer than winning on the first day, which will likely come as more is added and the game is balanced. I look forward to seeing what else you have planned  for the crowds.

I like the Control Tips. Having multiple tips there and being able to click through them when you need is nice. It is convenient to be able to look back through them if you aren't sure on something.

When establishing a building, if you select one that is too expensive the text turns red. If you go back to one you can afford it stays red.

We do have some debug options for skipping ahead. They are all limited to in editor for now, and are not fully tested for stability, but adding a way to access them for testers who want is a good idea. I'm trying to finish the combat updates before the end of the month, but after that I'll see about setting up a hidden cheat menu.

Thanks for playing and the great feedback!

The 2 big things we are currently working on are art and combat. We are starting with the characters, which are getting completely redone, but all of the icons and item art will be getting updated as well.

The first combat update should be ready soon. We are removing the belt, so you will only be dealing with the bags, though do not currently have any new systems for auto moving items to the individual bags. We do plan to add a shortcut (Alt right-click) that will split an item stack and give an equal amount to each of the Slimes. In combat, instead of starting by choosing an item, you will pick an ability, and then choose the item to use with it. You will be able to pick any item from the Slime's bag, though many abilities will have limits on what items can be used with them, such as a fire ability needing a fire item. To start it will show all items that can be used, but later we plan to add in filtering as well so you can narrow it down further. We are hoping these changes make the combat more enjoyable, and the item management less tedious. Once the combat is updated, the inventory UI will be reviewed and updated to better align with the new combat. The Quest Log and Inventory will be joined into a new UI, which will also get new screens for details on abilities and character stats. Hopefully the new systems will resolve some of the issues you are having with it.

We want people to be able to explore & enjoy the towns. If you click the button at the top left of the town menu, the one with a white square and arrows, it will minimize the town UI, so you can see everything on screen. Click again to restore the UI, You can also click on the menu entry for any option you have opened to close it. We have plans for the future to actually have your party, optionally, travel to each of the town locations. There is a, currently hidden, toggle at the bottom that will allow you to change this right from the town menu. When enabled and you select a location from the town menu, it will be hidden as your party moves to the correct building, before opening to show the interaction options. We need to update the towns before this will be ready, but it is something we think will make the towns feel better, even if we don't offer the player full control of the characters to explore them.

Obviously, getting the save system working again will also be a big help for playing further, but there are just too many new features and changes being worked on that we never quite get to it.

We really appreciate the time you put into playing and your feedback!

We are happy our feedback was helpful. Thank you for crediting us. It is always nice to know the effort is appreciated.

Visual shaders like CRT can be cool, but I know that they can also give some people a headache. I'd recommend adding an option to disable it. From a glance at the shader you linked to, you can probably just hide its Canvas Layer to disable.

This lends itself well to being a good simple mobile game. The beach feel was cute and worked well. The graphics and audio were nice and fit the feel of the game.

The SFX for collecting the seashells was a little quiet compared to the other ones; balancing the sounds a bit more would be nice. It would also be nice if there was a different SFX for your player losing a star and the rocks hitting something to help convey information.

I liked the tutorial. It did a good job of giving the basics.

It took me a bit to figure out how the stars work. I acknowledged that collecting the seashells made the seashells number increase, and started actively looking for stars and shields. When I didn't see any stars, I realized it was probably connected to moving the sandals when in the wrong direction or getting hit by a crab. The shields took me a little longer to figure out. I went through a few levels before clicking on the crossed swords and learning they were a shop. I had thought the swords were a combat mode or a leaderboard, not a shop. You might want to change the icon to a dollar sign, a building, or similar to better convey what it is.

Having a face paced, endless mode and a slower paced, puzzle-like mode was a nice touch. I thought they both worked pretty well.

I'm on Linux, so played using Wine. It seemed to play fine.

The thing that I think is most needed, is a bit of instruction on the rules and controls. I see that using A and D are in the devlog, but I read that earlier and forgot by the time I played. There is nothing in game, nor on the main game page, mentioning them.

You talk about keeping an eye on Reginald. Is that related to being able to change your position? Is it that you can move for a better viewing angle, but if he is not in your field of view he may cheat? Or can he cheat even if you see him? Is there any way to actually counter his cheating? Can you catch him? Can you prevent it? If the system is that he may cheat at any time, but especially when you are close to winning, and there is nothing you can do about it, then no, it is not fair or fun. There has to be some gameplay element to it where you can have some control, even if it does favor the computer cheating. Having to take all your shots while keeping him in view is limiting, but would at least give some control. Of course, if that is the case, then he should be moving around. This will both give you a chance to get different angles, but also can't rely on staying in any one place.

It took a bit to get a feel for the shooting controls. I had missed, or not remembered, the devlog comment on the A & D controls, but eventually did find them, and they were a big help. I got down to 2 balls remaining. I think he was at 3 or 4. Then he cheated, adding more balls. After this I tried to keep him in view. There was no more cheating, but I also was not doing as well.

The physic feel fine. I don't do a lot of pool games, and the viewing angles were a bit limiting, so it is hard to tell why any shots missed. It could be physics, or it could be I wasn't lined up as well as I thought. I think full 360 degrees of rotation would be nicer for lining things up, but the current system isn't too bad. If this was going to be a full standalone game, I'd say it needs the full freedom of movement, but for a mini-game, the current way works.

The delay at the end of a turn feels a bit long, and could potentially be shortened. It feels like it might be waiting on the physics to fully stop to see if any more balls will sink, but when it looks like nothing is happening it feels off.

The bits of dialog work well and give the character some personality. The animations also fit, and I like how he is mostly waist up, and often floating above the table.

Overall, this feels like it would make a good mini-game.

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

The art is a WIP right now, and more of concept art, than the final vision. We are experimenting with different techniques to see what we like best before updating everything.

We have a new "Training  Hall" that will be added to the town in our next update, which will hopefully help clarify some of the things that have confused people. We are also updating the tutorials to try to make them clearer, though the game is changing quickly and the tutorials don't always keep up.

Thanks for the feedback. We currently have support for skipping sections of dialog, but haven't yet implemented a system for skipping full sections of story. We will keep it in mind as we add more features. Though this is a heavily story driven game, so skipping story is a bit lower on the todo list.

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

We try to be as accessible as we can while still making the game we have in mind. It helped that we started making this for Godot Wild Jam which does rate on and encourage accessibility. Readability is the main reason it took us a while to switch to using a different font, and we spent weeks reviewing them before settling on the current system. 

In our next update the Trainer Terry interactive combat tutorial is being moved to the Settings, and we will be adding a Training Hall to the Town screen, so people can read up on the topics they care about, and skip the others. Eventually we want to merge them so the Training Hall can start mini-combats to try out individual topics, but that will need some new systems first.

We are redoing the combat system. We have had other requests for the strength of abilities and items, instead of just descriptions, and we will design the new system with that in mind.

I agree that requiring the player take the action is better than just describing it, but the current logic doesn't have an easy way to track that for progressing, and it never quite got high enough on the priority list to get implemented. After the combat overhaul it should get added when we update the interactive combat tutorial.

The Inventory screen can be a bit overwhelming at first. It just got a redesign enabling item stacking and using items. We had a Help tab before, but realized as we were getting ready to upload the new build that it was out of date, so it has been hidden until we can update it. One of the options in it is a button to restart the tutorial. There are some more changes we have planned for the inventory, and we will see if we can implement some changes to make the base UI a bit more intuitive as we continue to work on it. The new Training Hall is going to cover more than the Trainer Terry fight, so hopefully some of the tips added there will also clarify things.

It looks like a lot of progress has been made since I last played. The tutorial feels much better, though it still takes playing through to really learn all the pieces. The visibility of the threat and other zones are much easier to see. A lot of text is more readable.

I would recommend adding a slight margin so that text does not run up to the edge of its container. 1 or 2 pixels is likely enough at this scale. You could potentially add a Content Margin to the Panel Style Boxes, or use a Margin Container. Things are much easier to read already, but this is a fairly easy way to make things a bit better.

I like that as the first fight continues more tutorial text shows up to help point out things as the player is learning.

On the level complete popup it would be nice if the buttons for "restart level" and "proceed" had a button look. When you hover it is clear they are interactable, and it is pretty easy to figure that they should be, but they look so much like the rest of the text in there, with only a slight difference in coloring, that a border, or faint background color difference would help to draw they eye. Personally, I'd also make the "PERFECT VICTORY" text centered horizontally.

When Endgame starts it would be nice if you had a popup detailing the changes that are in effect. The text does not give the immediate impression that you should hover it for more details. When it started I had characters lined up well for a push attack, which I used right away, only to see no damage. Only after wasting actions on that did I acknowledge I should hove the text and was reminded of the no damage on your turn limitation.

After clicking through the menu to look at all the options, I clicked on "Start of level". "continue at" was "<null>", and it loaded the combat UI, but there was no game board or characters. That button should probably be disabled if the value is null.

There are a lot of mechanics in this game. I like that you have a mechanics reference on the pause screen, but it is somewhat limited. It would be nice if you added more of the various abilities and mechanics there. You may want to consider using a Foldable Container for the mechanics display. The title/topic can be a toggle button, and when it is clicked it will expand out to show the details, while all others will be closed. This will allow the player to scroll through a longer list of things with a sort of table of contents, and when they see something they want to read more on they click to just expand that, instead of having to scroll through all the text and looking for the headlines to find what they want to read.

Thanks!

Thanks for explaining. We will think on this and see how we might incorporate something into the story.

Thinking on it, that bit of dialog about looking for the camp after the fight came from our earlier game idea of wanting to quickly move to the camp and not wanting a lot of dialog. We've just left it in since then, but it is something we have discussed revisiting at some point, and it tends to just be left in as an easy way if directing the player toward the camp that is coming up. We will see about reviewing all the early dialog leading to the camp, as it does need more work to better fit the way the story has grown.

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Yes, this grew from a simple fast paced game to more of an RPG. We are reworking a lot to get a grander RPG feel to the game.

Our game is a story driven RPG. Adding characters in later towns does not fit the story, so we have to work with how best to make it feel better within the story limits. We have heard this comment before, and it is why you start with 2 before the optional Trainer Terry tutorial fight, and then meet the rest of the party. We are working on adding a new Training Hall to the Town where you can click on topics to learn more. We are hoping that breaking each piece up will help.

The art is a WIP. We have had others comment on it looking flat as well, and we plan to go back over everything to add more depth and polish.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback.

Yes, for now we want it easy so more people can see more of what we have in place.

We are working on redoing the tutorial. We like the idea of having an interactive tutorial, but enough people have said that the current Trainer Terry fight is too much at once, and not clear, especially on the affinities. The affinities affect both offense and defense. In the next update we aim to add a Training Hall to the Town, which will be similar to the Tavern, but with the combat tutorial pieces broken out into clickable buttons so you can read what you want, and reread any if you need to. We will reword things and try to be more clear. It will likely get more wordy, but we are hoping that breaking it up into pieces that people have to choose to click on will make it easier to understand and less overwhelming. We are also considering adding more topics than just combat.

Thanks for the feedback on the new interactions. We are going for a more classic RPG feel, so there are going to be a lot of random NPCs with short world building, or completely unimportant, dialog. It is there for those who want more in the world. We are continuing to refine things and do want the NPCs to be interesting, but they are also, mostly, optional for those who don't like the extra talky bits. We do have the one that adds a minor side quest, and in the future more will have consequences, such as offering quests or items, but these will all be optional and typical of the kind of RPG we are inspired by.

I'm not sure I follow your points on the combat and enemies disappearing. Most classic RPGs don't talk about what they do with the corpses/unconscious enemies after a fight. They just disappear and the party moves on, unless you are collecting body parts in the loot, or you manually loot the corpse after combat as in some ARPGs, and even then the rest of the remains are ignored. Is your issue that the enemies are humans instead of the typical "monster" enemies? Even when there are human enemies the remains usually just disappear and no one talks about what happens to them. I think part of the idea behind it is that showing corpses and specifically talking about what happens to them may cross some lines for ratings. Many RPGs even switched from talking about killing and death to using terms like "unconscious" and "knocked out". You start in areas populated by Slimes, but as you move on you get to areas with human villages, and many with mixing of various races. The humans living in the area are just as in danger from the invaders as the Slimes, and they do talk about defending themselves from these invaders. As we flesh out the story we will likely include more introspection on the amount of death that is happening. We plan to include messages from others about what is going on elsewhere and at those points there will be more about the greater scope of what is happening. The story is already progressing to show the changing mindsets as the youthful innocence of the team wears off and they accept the grim reality of the situation they are in. 

For the core gameplay, we are planning an overhaul of combat to give the player more to do. The original jam concept was meant to be fast and simple; something you could play on mobile on the way to work. With the growing scope the combat feels too simple, and yes, we can see how it can get boring and repetitive. 

With the recent update to item stacks we did change how the belts are filled. We no longer auto fill the belts, but let the players decide what they want. Before, with only 5 slots, you always wanted them full. Now, when you can have large stacks you may only want certain items and don't want the belt cluttered with more. When you use all the items in a stack during combat it will be replaced by the first item from your bag that is not already in your belt. Outside of combat the belt needs to be manually set.

Our original UI was based on click to select and click on new slot to swap. We've since added click and drag support, but retained the original method as well. This is something we need to revisit as it doesn't fit the classic RPG UI, and I can see how it would be confusing. We did this largely for accessibility reasons as it works for joypads and keyboard. We may make it an option that can be enabled when using a joypad or just keyboard.

For item sorting, that is a Godot thing. Sorting arrays in Godot is not "Stable", so rerunning it does not guarantee the same results. Equal values may shift positions on each run. The multi-parameter sorting is more consistent due to the additional values that are compared. We will take a look at the sorting and see if there is a good way to make the single parameter sorts more stable. I have an idea that should work for this.

Sorting by Equipment Slot will be more useful later. Abilities will be affected by certain types of items. For example, some of Tanko's abilities will use armor.

I can see how the combat end collect loot, followed by the chest collect loot, with both opening the inventory might be inconvenient. We will look into adjusting that to only open once there. We did also add an option to turn off auto-opening the inventory after collecting loot. The default for now is to keep it on, so we will want to fix the double open.

Cooldowns will be going away in the combat overhaul. We will keep in mind how best to show the state when we redo it and see if there is a good way to display it without hovering.

I will look into why the cookies might be moved instead of used. I've not seen that before. Can you clarify what you mean by "menu" in "Using a cookie in the menu puts it into the character's inventory instead (but you can use it in the inventory)"? Was it in the shared Party Bag (top section)? The Slime's personal Bag (bottom right)?

Thanks again for the feedback!

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

The inventory filters should save between opening and closing the inventory. The sorting currently does not, which is for performance reasons. The item stacks reduce the number of slots by a lot, so we are looking into the possibility of keeping the sorting always active as well.

We also often keep the left panel showing the full party. With the recent switch to staking items, the bags no longer need so much space, so we are reworking the UI to see how best to keep the most useful elements always visible. The item details at the top right of the inventory was added with the item stack update and used to be part of the shared bag's space.

We are planning to add highlighting and details for matching the items to Slimes. We are still working out the best way to do this, both the calculations of who should be highlighted, and the best UI elements for it. The combat is also going to get an overhaul, so this will likely wait for that to be completed so it best represents the usefulness with the updated systems.

We are working to make the combat icons showing the enemy plans larger. Right now we don't have the space for it, as the bottom row already bumps up against the top row. We need to increase the spacing between rows in combat, or rearrange the icon layout. The larger spacing requires making sure they don't collide with anything on the maps. This is definitely something we want to do, but has turned out to be more of an undertaking than expected.

Glad the tutorials were helpful. We are still working to find the right balance, as many find Trainer Terry to be too much. I have plans on a new alternative to the interactive fight that we will be trying in the near future, while looking for a good way to keep that interactive fight as an option.

We have had several requests for a preview of potential damage and it is something we plan to add with the combat redesign. Not sure if it will preview exact damage, or be a potential range, but we do want to give more feedback to help players pick the best abilities and items.

This was great feedback.

Our jam is about feedback, and improving our games and ourselves. I've not seen anything in your submission so far that violates our rules, so I do not see a need to ban it or you. Since you have learned about jams and are working to improve in the future, you are doing exactly what this jam is all about! We will give your game a play when we do our next round of game plays, which will probably be closer to the end of the month.

I don't have any links handy at the moment, and before I'd share any I'd want to reread them and make sure I was sharing a good one with links to the data from a proper study and a clear explanation. That will take time that I don't have at the moment. I'll try to keep an eye out for any new studies and if I see a good one soon I'll share it. Feel free to do some searching on your own as well. AI is a hot topic these days and there are more studies every day.

Most AI bans refer to the results of Generative AI (Gen AI), Large Language Model (LLM), or Machine Learning. There are several common primary reasons for the ban. One of the most common is due to rights. Most Gen AI contains stolen work. You  must have the rights to everything in your submission, and if you use Gen AI that was trained on materials they did not have the rights too, then you do not have the rights to the results of that creation. Even if they claim to only use their materials to train the AI, nearly all of them use a core that was originally trained on stolen material, and few release all the training data for you to validate the claim. This applies to coding Gen AI as well as graphical art.

For some it is due to the environmental impact. The extreme energy and water use requirements are causing severe harm to the communities where they are built. They consume so much for what they can produce. Being run by big corporations they can get away with these harms and the people in the areas nearby suffer without any recourse. Beyond the local communities, they consume so much, and contaminate the environment so badly, that the effects of the ever growing number of these facilities is affecting everyone.

Another common issue with Gen AI, including from a coding perspective, is that people often use it as a way to not have to learn the topic, do the work, or pay someone to do it. You are getting the results of other people's work that was stolen and not learning or improving yourself. There are plenty of people out there to make a quick buck using AI slop to create a bunch of garbage to sell, and often submit to jams for free publicity. Modern AI very commonly hallucinates and gives you bad information. If you never learned the material in the first place, then you won't know when it lies to you. Buggy, messy code, that is based on the work of others, including work that the AI company did not have the rights to, is being thrown together to create garbage that is then flooding the market. Many jams are about the people who participate doing the work to learn and improve. According to studies, the use of AI harms people's ability to think for themselves and make most only become more reliant on it, rather than learning to do better by using it.

We agree with all of these reasons and do not support Gen AI in any form. Pre-Gen AI things like basic auto complete based on coding standards or what is already in your project are fine. If it is powered by one of the Gen AI companies, then that is not. Getting code from a Gen AI system, whether a chat bot or something built into a tool you are using, is absolutely not allowed.

This feels like a good start for a fishing mini-game. The core mechanics are in place and work pretty well.

The biggest thing that stood out to me is the delay between pressing the left mouse button and the fishing rod showing. It would be good to show something right away to give the player feedback that what they did had an affect. If you want a delay before the fishing starts, maybe try showing the rod angled backward, and rotating forward as if casting. Adding a bobbing motion to the rod, or something floating on the water, would also add a bit of feeling like something is happening.

This feels like a good start, but needs polish.

I stopped at the base where you can adjust some settings, but things were not clear and a lot was clustered tightly together to make reading the details harder. 2 options were off by default. The tooltip text said if disabled it would do things, but it wasn't clear if toggling the option on would be disabling, or if the current off state was disabled. It also does not describe the alternative.

The controls worked well when zoomed in, though when zooming out the movement seemed to not work much, if at all, and it often felt like there was gravity pulling the ship towards the bottom of the screen. Toward the end I would zoom out to locate the remaining enemies, and maybe take some sniping shots, but if it took more than a single shot I zoom in so I could move.

The way the controls were described with single click to fire Railgun, and hold to fire Minigun, I thought both were active and which fired was based on the button press. It didn't register to me initially that those were the "Main Weapon" that is toggled by Q. I think part of that came from how long the Minigun takes to spin up before firing, which made me initially think it wasn't working. I mainly used missiles for the first fights as I figured out the controls. Once I got it figured out I used the Minigun to start, but then mostly used the Railgun and missiles.

I had a lot of lag when staring, especially when zooming. It got better, but certain areas still lagged as I initially explored. It might help if you could show a loading screen and preload the textures underneath it as the game is starting. I was playing on the web.

I like the concept, and I think you have a decent start. It just needs some work to iron out the kinks to make it more enjoyable. Adding more to the base, and cleaning up the UI there will also help.