itch.io

Thanks for playing and the feedback!

We're going to rebalance much of the combat after the jam. The weapons were meant to also get purchasable upgrades, to allow further customization, but we ran out of time. We'll work on the inertia/acceleration. We wanted the energy limit to be part of the strategy, but need to balance it better, especially late game. We made the first Energy Storage upgrade cheap to help early game, but it really depends on play style, and that still only gives a small boost until you get the regen. Once the core is balanced we plan to add late game procedural endless upgrades, along with new options for starting in higher difficulty dimensions.

Thanks again for recording your playthrough!

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

The bosses can be hard without upgrades. It is generally a good idea to warp back to the station to upgrade before fighting a boss. If you get to one, then warp right away while dodging. You will repair and recharge at the station. Then, you can warp back to where you were, in the boss fight, at full power. I'd recommend getting either more energy storage or shields as your first upgrades, depending on what you can afford.

FYI, you can click the fake, in-game only "ads" for 10 free scraps, each time you visit. They just pop-up a message in this version and don't go anywhere else.

Thanks. Game dev has long been my dream job.

I did hear some audio comments being made after I did jumps, but it was commentary on how you did, such as "Wow, that was almost impressive", and only after I had done bigger jumps. I did not hear any kind of instructions at the start, nor as I progressed telling me in advance how to do things.

I understand running out of time for in game instructions, but you can add them to the web page for the game. Uploads are locked during voting, but editing your page is not, so you could still update it to help others who play.

When I started the viewport was only showing me the top half of the play area. It looks like your viewport settings are using the defaults for landscape, but your game is designed for portrait. You should be able to edit the "Viewport dimensions" in the itch.io settings. If you just flip the width and height it should be fine. When I used fullscreen it showed the rest of the game, but the game did not scale.

The game could use with better instructions. You mention E to fire, but should also mention using the mouse to control the position. With the only control listed being for the keyboard I expected all keyboard controls. You comment the colors being good or bad "sometimes", but do not explain how that works. You also don't say if you should hit the colored spots, or go between them. They generally spawn in pairs, making it look like goal posts you should go between, but playing it seemed like you should hit them. In general, a bit more explanaition, even if it is on the game listing on itch.io, rather than in game, would help.

It also felt like sometimes the red and green spawned on the same spot, but you could only see one, and it may have been random which one triggered. I'm guessing that may have been what you meant by "sometimes". When I pressed E and did not hit a colored spot, the tape image did not always respawn in the viewable area, though pressing E it did shoot across the screen.

The sound when going negative was really unpleasant. The visuals were not that great either, but the sound had me turn off my speakers.

You've got a start for a simple game here, but it will need work to be enjoyable. Helping the player know what to do and how to play, will go a long way to improving things.

Glad you enjoyed! I wanted to add a screen to the station with stats like number of kills, total amount of scraps, and overall distance traveled, but ran out of time. I had not thought about per dimension stats or distances, but will add it to our notes.

Thanks for playing and the feedback!

My first playthrough I got an AR, and then a modified one, then got tried the sniper on the level where I got rushed and died. The next try I did not get any ARs for a while and the modified options I did get I could not afford, or were for weapons, such as the sniper, that I was not as interested in. It wasn't until one of the last waves that I finally had a modified AR offered, and I was almost to the goal, so skipped it. I also wasn't sure if the modified ones would be more effective against one type and less effective against another. It might be good to include a note somewhere on if they also are weaker, or still do base damage, to their aspect.

Not much here, but what you have is a decent start.

There are some good elements here, but the "glitchiness" and screen shake is overdone. The viewable area is already pretty small, limiting your time to react, along with some rather large enemies right from the start. There is just too much against the player. It also makes the text hard to read, which is problematic for new players trying to learn what your game offers. Pick the things that you most want to use and focus on them, while lessening some of the others. Maybe adding some things in later as an increasing difficulty, but right now it starts off with too much.

I also tried to use the portals to get upgrades, but was being attacked and killed while on the upgrade screen. Maybe an experienced player who know what all the upgrades are can react quickly and pick an upgrade to get out before taking too much damage from standing still, but I expected that to be a temporary safe zone while picking an option.

This was an interesting game idea. It would have been nice to have some idea of the controls and what to do. Initially I  pressed a bunch of buttons and found the space allowed jump, and the left mouse shot out the frog's tongue, but did not see it doing anything. It took a bit before I noticed the mouse position affected the jumping direction. Eventually I figured out that the tongue could be used to swing, and wall climb, if used while jumping. Later I found some text that explained this, but only after I had climbed up a ways. That kind of text would be helpful at the start. I hopped around a bit, but with no direction or idea of the goals I did not get far.

I was getting the jitter pretty quickly once enemies started showing up, and it stuck around even with no enemies on screen. I did a bit more testing and it looks like it does not do it at the default embedded size, or 1080p fullscreen, but only in 4K fullscreen. With the pixel art graphics I had not  thought the 4K would be an issue and wrongly assumed it to be a design choice, but it looks like it was the resolution. Moving it to a 1080p monitor it runs fine. We play and review jam games as a family, so put them on a 4K screen to let everyone see them better.

We primarily use the Vivaldi browser (Chromium based). I've now also tried it with Firefox, and it seemed better, though still had a bit of jitter. We are also on Linux, so that may have an effect, though tends not to be an issue with most web builds.

I tried again to get to the Credits. It highlights in yellow, and when I click it goes down and turns white.  It stays that way even as I mouse over the others and back over it. If I press the up arrow key it will go back to yellow when the mouse hovers over it. No other buttons I tried got it to change.

A shooter based on fireworks is a neat idea. The controls were simple and worked for the game. The massive 3500 lives made it easy to get all the way through. For the bosses I just charged up to them and ignored the damage, except for the second one where I could position to hit them without taking any damage. Otherwise I pretty much just moved back and forth across the screen firing. There wasn't much strategy in my play. For the ending evasion sequence I found that I could go off the screen edges, so just found a spot and waited for the countdown to end. You have a decent start here, but it could use some polish and a bit more to it.

I found the controls to not be very responsive. It felt like it went too quickly from not moving to a surge of movement. I initially had a hard time just getting over the first small jumps. The jump felt slow to respond and I often went over the edge, and had to adjust where I jumped from. Then I found myself sliding off the other side, like it was ice. I tried with a joypad, using the analog stick, and that was better. Then I got to the big jump and could not jump it. It took a bit and I was getting ready to give up when I finally figured out how to use the explosions to jump. It was not intuitive, as I was expecting the missiles to be aiming at targets. I did notice that when it exploded nearby it pushed the character, but my initial experimenting did not give enough movement, and were not acting like a jump, so it did not seem to be usable for that. It would be nice if you included a bit more info guiding people to use the explosions for jumping, for those of us who did not get the TF2 reference. I managed to use the explosion jumps to get to the red bumpers. I was not able to get past them, and that is where I gave up. I had switched back to keyboard and mouse for that area, but the controls just did not work well for me. I think the explosions for movement is a decent concept, and could make a good game, but this one just wasn't working for me. Good luck.

This is a decent starting point. The core is there. The music and graphics fit together well with the style of game. It felt like the difficulty jumped pretty quick when the red fairies showed up, but after a few I figured out how to deal with them. I beat it with 9 deaths in my first play.

This was a fun game. It was pretty easy to get the hang of things once I saw it was auto firing. The upgrades themselves were nice, though the shop could use some work. It too quickly got to the point where rerolling cost more than the upgrades, and often I had multiple options for the same stat. My last reroll was going to cost 1024, and I only got enough just before winning. It would be nice if when you moved to the next wave the shop would reroll automatically once, or fill in the empty slots. Of course, on the other hand, sometimes there was a nice upgrade there early on that took me a few waves to buy, so it was nice to have that chance. Once I saw how the system worked I just bought every upgrade before rerolling.

If there were no upgrades in the shop, it would not focus on the reroll button, requiring use of the mouse. I primarily played with the controller. After clicking on the reroll button it did not update its value right away, but only did so after purchasing an upgrade.

The biggest complaint we have is the jittery screen shake when moving. I'm assuming it was a deliberate effect to reflect slimes jumping around, but it was a bit headache inducing. With that effect we'd not want to play this for too long at a time. It would be nice if there was a setting to reduce or remove the effect.

The Settings and Credits entries on the menu reacted to mouse hover, but did nothing when clicked on. Trying to use keyboard and controller did not work either.

Once I got a speed boost I was able to fly around the screen weaving through enemies and getting them to mostly clump together, making it easier to avoid them while circling. It felt like the collision shapes were very strongly in the player's favor and I rarely took damage, even when I thought I would. Once I got regen, I pretty much stayed right around full health.

The art is cute, and well done. The slimes are easy to distinguish, especially your player, which is really nice among such a jumble.

This was a fun little game. It took a few tries testing out different weapons, before settling on the AR as the best for me. I got the Sniper just before getting rushed in the water dimension, so it was a really bad time to be trying that one out. The SMG and Shotgun also worked decently well for me, until I could get the one I wanted. I never tried the pistol as it seemed overpriced for the stats.

You have a nice base here, but the progression could be better. Early on the weapons felt too expensive, and I often could not get any until wave 5 or 6. Even then, once you finally can collect enough scraps in a level to get a new weapon, you are limited to the 2 options offered. It would be nice if the random selection favored cheaper options on levels where you are going to get fewer scraps, and also that other cheaper options are offered. Once I got the AR I was fine and used the basic version to finish the game on wave 11. The plant enemies that shoot were the ones I had the most trouble with, due to the large number of projectiles that slowly moved across the screen filling it up in places.

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

Our kids have been an active part of creating this game. It was one of them who asked if the party could be Slimes during the original jam brainstorming. They really like Slimes since playing Dragon Warrior/Quest.

We are working on the tutorial. We tried to add all the things people have said they did not understand, but it did make it a bit long. I'm planning to add a tutorial for the inventory soon, and it will be based on popup tooltips. I'm thinking of adding something similar as a shorter combat tutorial option.

Currently you cannot consume/use any items outside of combat. We plan to change that, but it involves a new system for hunger/fullness to limit how much you eat and items having additional stat effects.

The Enemy Plans was a feature that was requested early on by jam players. It is nice to have for casual play, but does give you a big advantage. We plan to add in difficulty levels later on, and it will be one of the settings altered by the default difficulties.

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

The tutorial is a work in progress. In the near future we plan to add a during play option to skip it, but for now the only way to skip is in the Settings.

The party are Slimes. They eat the weapons, and other items, to power up their spit attack. As the story progresses it will comment on each Slime Clan having different abilities, and your party's clan has the ability to power up from the things they eat.

We do enjoy more open games, and would love to make one, but they also take a lot more time. We picked this style of game, with linear and automated movement, to allow us to work through a smaller and simpler style as our first story game, before we take on something more grand.

Later the party will get some equipment slots, but as Slimes, they will not be full suits of armor. Leveling up currently boosts stats automatically. Later we plan for the things you eat to affect the stat growth.

Thank you for playing and the great feedback.

This version of the game is story mode. We plan to release an endless mode later, which will skip most, or all, of the story. The story is a bit of the classic good vs evil/rebels fighting the evil empire, though with a bit of lightheartedness from some of the younger members of the party. We have a general story planned out, but are still tweaking the details to better fit the game format. We have plenty of story to tell, but also want to keep the game flowing.

We would love to create a full, epic JPRG, but that requires a lot of time. We picked this linear style to try to get something released sooner, and use as a springboard for the next project. This style also translates well into mobile, which is how many people play games these days. We are debating adding some forks where you can choose which path to take, but will probably save that for later to focus on the core gameplay first.

Items have levels. The level is shown at the bottom left of the popup tooltips. I can see how adding something that is always visible would help, but then debate adding indicators for everything else, which would not fit. We will think on this and if we can add some indicators of the item details. The item levels match the game level, which is currently planned to go up to 20, so it would need to show the number, rather than just being a color indicator. We also plan to add a sort feature, which will allow quick sorting by level, or several other options, and could help with the quick feel for how powerful an item is. We also plan to add a reason to unload older stuff, so you won't have as much weaker stuff to worry about.

You can currently disable the tutorial from the Settings screen. We plan to add a tutorial skip option in game. We just added the skip for basic dialog right before the jam submission. The tutorial uses a more complex system, so needs extra code for the skip to work with it.

With your characters being Slimes, you can't equip most gear. At the start you can't equip any extra gear. Later, there will be an option to upgrade your belt with a harness for a helmet, and a special pouch for accessories. The equipping will be done in the Inventory, where we have 2 more slots that are currently hidden.

The save system is disabled currently. There are some bugs with loading to the correct spot in the event system that need to be worked out. We figured that the current demo is short enough to not really need it, so have put it lower on the todo list.

Thanks again!

FYI, while it would be nice to have a built in option for fullscreen or adjustable resolutions, you can use your browser's zoom to make it bigger on the web version (works with many itch.io web games). I had forgotten to comment on the resolution myself because I was playing it full window using the zoom. We play and review jam games as a group on a 4K screen, so the resolution was certainly an issue for us as well.

I like the idea of using a game to encourage people to stick with the pomodoro cycle. Having something to do can certainly encourage people to be more willing to stick with it, rather than just thinking they have to take a break, with nothing planned. Plenty of people play mobile games with a timer limiting their actions, and check back as soon as the time is up to do their next thing, so I could see this working well for them.

I like the idea of being able to shrink it down and dock it to a corner, but even the small size could get int the way. It would be nice if you could also add a tray icon option for when you need your full screen, but also want to know when time is up. It could be a simple icon and a counter. Perhaps have an option of what to display, such as time remaining or amount of mana. Similarly, showing a notification (as an option) would be helpful.

I had a notable freeze when I finished the tutorial. I am on Linux and played this in Wine, so that may have been part of it.

If I click to create a goal, I do not see a way to cancel it. I can get out of the screen by clicking on one of the other buttons at the bottom, that are barely visible beneath the create goal pop up. I was in windowed mode, so maybe that affected the size and position, but the create goal screen is bigger than the previous and covers most of the bottom buttons for me. When I come back it is still on creation, rather than the list. I added one and could then remove it. It also looks like you can only have one goal at a time. It also looks like you can add goals of any length, then mark them completed immediately, to get lots of coins.

After I had 5 mana I went to do more, and did not know what to do next. It would be nice if there were tooltips over the items you can buy to explain what they are and do. Is everything just decorations?

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

I like tower defense games, so figuring out strategy with just 3 towers was pretty easy. I do agree that for jams and demos it is good to keep things easy, and we often do that as well. Adding a push is something for later development. We started on a tower defense game ourselves while ago in Godot 3, though never finished it, which helps with thinking about how they should work from a coding angle. You have a good start. I look forward to seeing how you develop the mechanics.

Great classic console vibes. I made it to level 7 on my last run, before the unexpected fireball killed me in a doorway. I got several achievements, but only 1 almanac page.

It was fun trying to figure out each new enemy and the best way to deal with them. The one that caused darkness when defeated was quite the surprise. I started by collecting and destroying everything, until I ran low on ammo. Then I was a bit more careful with ammo and skipped blowing up some boxes or activating the Vulcan (in game the killed by message looked to be spelled "Vulvan") Cannon.

Overall this was a nice game, and felt like playing a classic NES era game. 

The web page colors are hard on the eyes, especially the yellow font on blue background.

To start there are a pink and a mocha sheep which have the same genes, but breeding them does not allow getting a mocha sheep. This seems a bit odd.

It would be nice if the UI allowed swapping/trading sheep by dragging over them, instead of needing to remove a sheep from the breeding slot before adding a new one.

I'm still experimenting with the first breeding, and moved the mouse over the box, cause an sound. Clicking on it shows a list of sheep, and a big blank area that looks like it might be for details, but there does not seem to be anything I can do with them. Later in the show it does get explained, but it would be nice to either hide this at the start, or give an explanation when it is first opened (if before it gets explained).

After the ribbons are explained I added all the ones I could. Eventually it showed a blurry circle. On hover it did not give any info, but I was able to click on it and enter ribbon mode, but could not give it to a sheep. I was also able to click the refresh ribbon button and lost points, but got the same thing back.

I also regularly wanted to drag the ribbons, rather than click to select and click to place. With the drag and drop of the sheep, it just felt more like that should be as well.

The hazard messages get annoyingly long. It would be nice if they could be condensed into fewer messages, such as a summary of all that happened. Allowing click to advance/clear the message could also help.

The sleep hazard was really annoying since it happened every turn meaning only the newest sheep in your hand wasn't asleep.

The art seemed decent for the style of game, though the photo of a hand did not fit well with everything else.

I think you have a decent start here, but it needs refining. This is not my style of game, but for what it is it seemed to work. The big thing for me would be improving the UI (more consistency and reducing long message delays), and improving the hazards.

I like that you can click to speed through things, if you want. I restarted several times to test things and it helped to be able to skip over the things I'd already read. It seems like a decent start for this style of game, though it is not a style I normally play. The music and SFX worked well for the setting. I like that clicking around and exploring allowed you to get a useful item for later to beat the boss, even if the character didn't know it would be useful.

The help, about, and preferences text on the title screen are hard to read. They could use with a background, even if it is semi-transparent. The Keyboard and Mouse tabs on the Help screen could also use some decoration (background/border) to make them look like tabs. Combined with everything else on the title screen, I had initially thought they were column headers and was looking for the mouse controls. Only when I did not see the mouse controls, did I think they might be clickable. The Accessibility Menu is an example of the kind of background that would make the others easier to read. After starting the game and pressing Escape, they are much easier to read.

Starting the game the dialog comes up and I clicked through, then had an image, with no indication of what to do. I clicked around and clicking on the staff did something, but nothing else seemed to. It would be good to add some kind of indicator, or instructions, to guide the player. The enemy (?) drew the eye more and so felt like the first thing to click on. After playing a bit more, I noticed that the cursor does a color flip when hovering over intractable stuff. I think the colors are a bit too similar and the indicator does not stand out enough, especially when first playing. 

Why does Naya have a different outfit on Tuesday? It would be good to add something to the story about this.

There are a fair number of typos, including spelling, grammar, and spacing issues.

The biggest thing I noticed was that the collision shapes are too large for the images, especially the spikes. I tested on the first spikes on the starting level, and had a very clear several pixel gap between the player sprite and the spikes when it collided and I took damage. This was most noticeable when jumping over them only to find the triangle spikes seemed to have a square collision shape. It also feels like the collision shape does not change when the animation shows them as being low. I again used those first spikes, and timed a jump to land when they were down, but it showed the collision with a large gap between the player sprite and the spike sprite.

Through testing I figured out that there is wall jump, wall slide, and double jump, but it would be nice if it was noted somewhere what the abilities are. Platformers can have so many different abilities, letting players know which you've included helps.

The controls are decent. Platformers aren't my usual style of game, so I can't compare to many, but they worked well enough for me once I played around a bit.

When you lose the game over screen includes some stats, but getting to the end does not. It would be nice if the final room also included the stats.

We also started with the Godot Wild Jams and trying to make our games accessible with multiple input methods. It can certainly limit design choices and make you really think on how best to handle input.

It is good practice to make sure all instructions are in game. For a jam putting them on the game page due to time constraints is reasonable, but as you continue to develop I'd try to put them all in game. I do not see any mention of pressing Esc/C/R1 to cancel building in game. In that vein, I'd add a setting to change which controls are shown on screen, between keyboard and joypad.

For the current 3 towers, your joypad controls work, but if you add more, you'd eventually run out of buttons. You may want to have 1 button to start build mode, with the last selected tower, and use L1/R1 to move through them. This is not as fast as a dedicated button, and requires a bit more paying attention to which is selected, but would allow for additional towers. One option for speed, would be to have the top button (triangle) start with the last selected, while the left  (and right buttons (square/circle) start at preset towers, spread out among the options. This would allow quick access to placing multiple of the same tower, but also allow starting at known positions. If you had 9 towers, and started at #3, you could then know to press L1 twice to get to #1. Still not as fast as keyboard with being able to press the number and get there in 1 press, but allows a bit more speed within the constraints of a joypad.

With keyboard, the tower placement puts the tower in front of you, while the controller seems to favor having it on the same tile as you. It would be nice if the 2 inputs were consistent in the positioning.

When you are in tower placement mode and the tower details pop up, the tower list moves down. I'd recommend adjusting it so the tower list is anchored in the lower position.

There should be some sort of timer or push for the player to advance. While writing these comments I left the game running in a background tab and built up a lot of corpses. Obviously, this can be something for play balancing later, but it was something I acknowledged and used as a strategy. I restarted and built 3 Dead Towers, then waited while a bunch of enemy troops came in and were defeated. Then I'd advance until my Dead Towers could hit the enemy towers and place 2-3 of them. Once the enemy Tower was defeated, I'd build up more corpses before taking out the town buildings. Then I'd advance and do similar for each town. I'd build enough Dead Towers to cover me, while staying our of range of enemy towers to place a line of Totems. Then I'd start my wall of Dead Towers, while watching my health and after every 2-3 towers placed I'd move back to be healed. The tower placement was a quick move out then down placing the towers on consecutive tiles, trying to avoid getting hit. With the Totems already out, this went quickly.

It would also be nice if the game over screen included some stats, such as how many towers and skeletons built, how many enemies defeated, and how much decay had been spread. I went back and covered all the tiles I could before advancing to destroy the last structures. I placed a tower too close to the final flag building and destroyed it before I could cover all the tiles.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the death/decay theme (I know it was last month's GWJ theme), but the game itself has a good foundation and was fun to play.

The tutorial is a work in progress. We are trying to find the right balance between explaining things that people say they did not understand, and not being too long. We also want to add one for the inventory screen, which will likely use tooltips popping up to explain the various areas. You can currently disable the tutorial in the settings, and we plan to add a skip option when it starts.

In combat the player info is at the top left and the enemy info is at the bottom right. The name is in the middle. Above and left of the name are the affinities/elements the character is strong with, while above right is what they are weak to. Early game most are only weak to Death, and enemies don't have many strengths. Below the name shows any armor affinities they have. You can also click on the info box to get a full screen stats screen. The 2 screenshots to the left here with blue background are the stats screens. Actions and items also include their strong and weak affinities, if they have any, near the bottom of their tooltips. We also just added the Slimes' affinities to the inventory screen to help pair up the item affinities to the Slimes that can use them best. This was added just before final submission, and the screenshots haven't been updated with it yet. Early game the numbers are all small, so they don't have a major effect on most enemies. The mini-boss in the town 1 encounter would be the main one where the difference in damage can notably make the fight easier to handle.

On the inventory screen, the bottom left shows the Slimes' belts, which is what they can use in combat when it starts. The bottom right shows their bags. When they use an item from their belt in combat, it is replaced by one from their bag. The top right is the shared bag. If their personal bag is empty, they will pull from the shared bag.

The game is linear and designed to use the auto-movement system that is currently in place. It is meant to be simpler and faster paced. We are currently working on the story mode, but also plan to add an endless mode.

Thanks for playing, and the feedback.

This was a nice improvement from the last time I played. The UI is much more clear, and the tutorial has plenty of detail. The tutorial dialogs do feel like they might be a little too long and repetitive after the first set, and could be condensed down a bit. The "blah" sound effect is amusing at first, but also gets a bit repetitive.

The unlock system is a nice addition for replayability. I like that you can get gems beating the bosses and spend them how you want on unlocks. Having to beat the current level to unlock the next also feels rewarding.

The stat icons over small cards feel a bit crowded, and can make it hard to see what the card is, especially those with a lot of effects, such as the Super Tomato.

The Bull pet says +5 damage per Charisma, but seems to only give +2. After merging it still said +5, but looked to go up to +3.

When starting fights I often had some of the enemy's cards appearing on the screen in random locations and waiting. They then move into place when it was their time. I'm guessing these should have spawned off screen.

In combat, when multiple effects, such as damage and healing, happen at the same time, the text for each is on top of each other and you can't really read more than the topmost one.

The Sheep is my favorite card. I love boosting its attack up as high as I can, even buying cheap small cards just to sell.

Overall, this is a lot of fun and looking good.

This was a nice RPG Maker game. The story seems well written, and there is nice world building. The towns feel well designed. This is a good start. I like your brief description of the missing cutscene before transitioning. 

We ran into an error that prevented continuing the game. When fighting basic slimes, when they attack it gives a "Loading Error" "Failed to load: img/animations/Cure4.png". We first got this just after saving so reloaded and played a bit more, but ran into it again in another fight.

Due to the bug, and trying to get to playing more jam games, we did not get far, but will try to come back and play more later, after the bug is fixed.

The missing sprite is from the first tutorial. It looks like your player is just a white smile at the center of the orangey 4 pointed star.

If you don't want to use HP numbers, then I'd remove it from the tutorial dialog. Having it there had me looking for where it was shown and wanting to know the numbers for my own characters.

I'd hide the placeholders for the current demo. If they don't do anything, and don't need to be visible, then might as well hide them to reduce player confusion.

This has a neat mechanic. It took a bit to get the hang of throwing the rocks well, as I often waited to long to release.

I like the concept, though I think the mana system could use a bit more refining. When you have full mana you can throw 2 rocks, at full speed/power, regardless of the displayed mana level, but then need to recharge to full before you can throw again. It felt like the mana level didn't matter and could have simply been 2 dots. If you are going to have a mana level displayed and fast throws use more, then It would be nice if the remaining mana level affected the power you can throw with, and you could throw any time you had mana. I know in the dev log you mentioned trying to reduce the ability to throw constantly. If you could do many 1 dot throws that might be too much, but the mana level system just does not feel like it conveys the current gameplay well. If you want to stick with needing to recharge for a certain time before throwing, I think it would be better to break the recharge and available throws apart. Have 2 dots for the throws, and a progress bar showing the current recharge state for getting the next throw back. This would allow a certain amount of recharge time being needed per throw, but also allowing the player to be able to recharge just one at a time.

I managed to play through all the levels. The first mass skeleton level was tough at first until I learned how to use the rocks well for blocking, though still sometimes had an arrow slip through at an angle I did not expect. Overall this was fun and a great start.

The art and character concept are cute. The gameplay is pretty smooth. It would be nice if there was a bit more clarity somewhere that to complete a level you need to collect enough Yolkium and purchase the "upgrade" of advancing to the next map before time runs out. Possibly also make that "upgrade" be a different color, or have a border denoting it as different.

I played through on easy and normal, then did one map on torment just to see the difference. It feels like it gets easier as you go, since you can have upgrades, and there are more of the larger ore clusters. There should probably be some added challenges on later difficulties, such as tougher blocks requiring more power to break through, or hazards to avoid.

It would also be nice if the clickable area for the upgrades was a bit taller. There were a few times I was trying to rush and missed.

Overall, this was a cute and fun little game.

I think you have a nice concept here, but it needs work on explaining/showing things to the player better. The line colors are much improved from the last time I played and far more visible. I like the addition of the tutorial, even if it could use some improvements.

The UI and tutorial need some work. Having played this in a previous jam, I had an idea of what to do going in, but still found the tutorial confusing. I think the biggest issue is that the tutorial tells you to use Brace, and then says to beat the enemy, but does not clearly walk you through dealing damage. From what I could tell, the only way to deal damage in that first tutorial is to rely on reactions, but Brace removes your reaction. I think it would be better if the tutorial had a character with a different ability and/or walked you through using a reaction attack once, the way it has you use Brace. Part of the confusion also likely comes from the order of instructions. You mention the reactions, then go on to selecting and deselecting. Then you have the player select and use the Brace ability. Someone starting out is likely going to think they should be using abilities like you taught them, and probably has not fully processed the previous info on reactions, that you did not have them use, especially since it is just move into position and end turn. Maybe have them use Brace for a turn, then on the next turn have them use a reaction as part of the guided steps in the tutorial. It would also be nice if the dialog box went away after you had nothing more to explain, as it did cover up things while playing. The player's unit/subordinate seems to be missing. The lines show where they are, but there does not seem to be a sprite there.

You mention the enemy HP amount in the tutorial dialog, but it does not look like HP amounts are shown anywhere else. It would be nice if the HP numbers were shown, at least for your own units.

When I got to the second tutorial fight I saw to red things that look like maybe they are bottles lying on their sides, with Godot icons nearby. I tried hovering and clicking on them, but could not figure out what they are. They are also in an area you cannot initially get to. It is also odd to have a character that is in a spot where it seems they cannot move, but still show the movement grid when selected. Getting the enemy to 0 HP  caused everyone to quickly move around to the area that had previously not been accessible, including the unit that previously could not move. This could use with a bit of explaining in game when it happens. I think something flashed on the screen, but it was too quick to read.

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

We do plan to change the font, but haven't gotten around to looking through to find a good one. There are plenty that look cool, but aren't as readable. We want to pick one that is readable to us, but also add an option to allow using a more normal, highly accessible, and less stylized font.

For this game we are not going to do a lot of equipping gear. The player characters are Slimes, so would not be wearing a full suit of armor. Later in the game you will be able to upgrade your belts to add more slots, but also to allow equipping some gear. For now we plant to allow helmets and an accessory slot.

Thanks. We are a small family studio trying to learn game dev, and live the dream of making a living with it.

For the dialog box, there were a couple things that made pressing space or enter less intuitive.  First, with the arrows, it looked like a tutorial that expected you to do the things it was telling you about to advance. Second, tower defense often relies heavily on mouse, and with most of the UI seeming to be mouse based, being able to advance it with the mouse made sense. I started with trying to follow the instructions in the dialog, then tried clicking on the dialog box, and finally fell back to pressing space, because yes, it is a common way to deal with dialogs, it's just that in this case it was not the first thing I thought likely. A good, intuitive, UI can be tricky. People think differently and trying to predict what will work well for everyone, or at least most, is tough. We've done several game jams now, and UI issues have been one of the things that people have commented on as a reason to stop playing sooner. To start, adding a note on how to advance is a quick and easy fix. Eventually, I would recommend allowing escape to exit back to the menu at any time, including during dialog. Adding mouse support to advance the dialog would also be a nice to have feature.

I understand the challenge of working as a solo dev. I spent years doing it solo as a hobby. Now I work with my wife and kids on our games, and it still requires wearing many hats and picking what piece to focus on getting to the next step.