hmm. i'm not sure how long a few minutes is or what you mean by brute forcing things, but it doesn't sound like this describes my experience well. i understand that optimization is key and i did optimize at the deeper more zoomed in levels in order to produce more ants at higher and higher levels. i'm happy to leave it with the understanding that i'm not part of the intended audience but i felt a bit bad about my experience being described incorrectly so i am only commenting to clear that up! congrats on finishing something that others seem to be enjoying for the jam :)

q2: a few times. at least once each until i got the ability for ants to carry two resources at a time. then i began to lose steam and figured it wasn't that important to further optimize everything.

q1: hmm. this is a good question but i am not sure i can give a good answer. so maybe i'm not right about my diagnosis and should have not made one? overall, paths seemed like a nice way to visualize specifying specific sequences of actions, but something about it bugged me. i will describe some moments from my play experience:

i yearned for a way to split the flow of ants in a more mathematically pleasing way, but did not want to draw a supremely excessive number of paths - e.g. perfectly optimizing a den that wants 16 of one and 18 of another is only possible by drawing 8+9 paths... i suppose that is not a control scheme thing.

at times i wanted to send ants down specific paths to balance numbers out but i couldn't do that without destroying paths which i didn't want to do.

i did not figure out how to add nodes to a path between existing nodes, i was kinda checking out mentally at this point.

i found a trick where i could send an ant to grab a resource and plant it, and have that one ant repeat the action in that path a few times, to craft quickly. that felt like an exploit, but a good/fun one.

i did not feel very rewarded for trying to make perfect flows. seemed like more of a sheer numbers/waiting game.

this one is hard to get my hands on, i'll try though. in comparing your game to other games i have played, the node-path-ant-control is the only way to gain resource and perform actions, so i must wait for everything. i like when i have a body, and the factorizing supplements that, makes me more powerful. (e.g. i can pick up and deliver coal myself, but it is less work to get ants to help me.) not sure if this is useful, as it describes a fairly different dynamic... as i said at the start im not much of a factory gamer and for me it checks out that the root of my complaint is "im forced to play a factory game with no player-avatar-action component" ;P

hope that was useful.

i played the first three levels. i got pretty much used to the controls. as an attempt to create a control scheme this was definitely a functional game and control scheme, and i could have probably made use of the fireball spell if absolutely necessary. in any case, i did not really use the fireball for anything in the time that i spent with the game.

melee attacks are not that satisfying. i found jumping had quite bad feel, and it was easy to slip off the edge of platforms for one reason or another. finally, when i fall off the edge of a platform, it takes a long time to respawn. in general this created a system which did not entice me to spend much time with it, and additionally consumed more of my time than necessary which more rapidly drained my desire to continue playing around.

in the levels that i played there was not much interesting use of scaling, but the mechanic itself was fun to experience. the levels did not feel too good to play either, but i will chalk a lot of that up to the movement and combat mechanics not being particularly responsive or good-feeling (see previous paragraph).

i would like to specially note that while the opening animation is very nice, it feels as though more effort was put into "branding" the developers than into the game itself, and was prioritized to the active detriment of the game, which is especially frustrating, as a player. this has been mentioned by another comment below so i won't give this an excessive amount of attention, but will note: an animation of similar quality that attempted to communicate or express something more related to the game experience itself could have been a big plus.

speaking in practice and not in theory, i came back to the game for a second try while writing this review, played level 10 in search of a more interesting use of scaling -- and found the platforming very annoying, so intended to quit to the main menu and play a different level. i accidentally quit the entire game and in that moment did not want to sit through the animation for a third time, so i simply did not play any more levels. you may interpret and react to this report as you choose. i have obviously spent a lot of time writing this review so it is not purely a "time" thing :)

played for longer than i expected! i don't usually stick with factory style games. i understood the way to progress immediately and was not too surprised throughout the game.

i think what will stick with me is that initial experience of having to scroll, scroll, scroll down to the smallest scale from the largest. it was a long enough scroll that i almost did not go far enough, but eventually i did.

there is also something here which i recognized but is not totally common in factory games, which is the way each layer feeds into the one above it. i enjoyed that part of the system, but ultimately lost my love with it due to its relatively rote re-use.

finally. i suppose that the unusual control scheme deserves some recognition. it's experimental and it basically works but is somewhat unpolished. things that i would find easier in other games are quite awkward in this game. i am not sure how to describe the full breadth of this awkwardness. i don't think that i personally took much from this experiment, but it's always possible for an experiment to highlight a more interesting way forward for a genre. (not that every experiment must lead to innovation - but i would like to note that i don't think it really spoke to me of the other themes of the game either.)

Umm, thanks itch. I'll just post the image a different way.

Hello! Not sure if you're looking for bug reports but this one seems to be major... I've used a drawing tablet as well as a laptop touchpad, and every keyboard button I can think of, but I seem incapable of using these interaction icons. Is this a bug of some sort or am I just missing something?

I came here because I was intrigued by the themes described in your cohost post and wanted to get those feelings! Looking forward to more.

hey chris, i appreciate the message! let me give you a response that i hope will satisfy you.

cruel world had a very clear intention from day 1, and at the time i decided to allow people to continue buying it, it was done out of greed and excitement. it wasn't true to what it was supposed to be, or who i want to be now - or even who i wanted to be then. there was a lot of cool stuff that came out of cruel world, but continuing to sell it was, in my eyes, a mistake.

any external criticism was unrelated to my personal judgement; it catalyzed my decision but was by no means the cause of it. in this case i would say that removing my game is something i did because i wanted to own up to that mistake, to learn from it, to become better, as you say. it has been a long time coming and i'm happy to have done it.

regarding having demos for paid products: cruel world was... i never thought of, or never wanted to think of, it as a product. to approach it in that way is too much of a shift for me right now. if i revisit cruel world for some reason in the future, i ought to consider a demo, if my goal is to sell more copies.

i like demos for commercial games! i remember lots of people saying that demos were a "bad idea" for indie games, 5-10 years ago... i don't know if that advice still holds or if it was ever even good advice. there's opinions on both sides.

i look forward to releasing a game with a demo someday. it's intimidating. i make small games, and i worry that a demo for such a game would be so small that the paid version would be almost nothing by comparison.

anyway, i'll figure it out.

love, droqen.

p.s. please check out Gentle World. you can still check it out. i hope you enjoy our videogame.

Thanks for playing, Alex :) Glad you liked it.

Yes

Maybe someday! It's a server-based game and I initially released it in a manner that would limit the number of people who would flood the servers. I regret not sticking to my original intention (to stop selling the game after 1 day), and this feels like a better ending than releasing it for free & putting no effort into it.

Possibly I could put effort into doing a good free release, but today is not that day.

yeah. i made it in Bitwig Studio using a synth called Surge XT a few months ago, and you hear it here passed through several built-in Godot audio filters.

(<3.)

that's correct

i think i made it to the top of the world? on t op of Words Mountain

<3

whoops. it happens. the turnout for the last one was pretty small, i'm not sure if i'll even do another one since i didn't have time to participate in this most recent one... i'm surprised you remembered this exchange from so long ago! i'm sorry you missed it.

that rules, i love a good voidscape.

Theme #10 will be...

. . . If you're on your 10th game (will anyone get here?), I'd like you to write a poem, or find an old poem that you (or someone you know) has written and use it. This is of course a lovely mirror to #5's poem written by a child. Anyone can write a poem! This isn't a race, the first poem posted here won't become the theme for everyone, but please feel free to post it here when (and if) you finish your 10th game.

droqen

Theme #9 will be...

Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll)

Somehow, this poem feels like a good flipside to #4's The Road Not Taken. Perhaps it's just the classicness of them both. As always, the full text below: 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
      Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

I'm almost at the end! I'm looking forward to trying and failing to make ten games... I've learned that maybe entire poems aren't the best themes for the VMJ, lol. They are a little much.

droqen

Theme #8 will be...

Oh no. Now I have to transcribe this one.

Very clear white floral smell. Almost dusty. I
say white flower because it reminds me
specifically of a flower bush on the way to the
Jamaican restaurant near me.

There is another smell that reminds me of a
fancy hotel or ugly furniture with ornate
wooden legs.

The kind of wealth that is very outdated and
unappealing now. This smell feels very dated.
Sort of like how I imagine rich people would
smell like 70 years ago.

This smell has a very broad and cloying
element to it that makes it seem like it is
designed to cover a worse scent.

About 3 hours later this smell is almost gone.
Very mellow rose.

I'm a little late with this one in my time zone, but let's just pretend I didn't miss or almost miss a day. This obviously mirrors #3, which is another Smell Review. Honestly, I had no idea how I was going to finish, but then this new piece, Lady Vengeance, specifically the middle paragraph (or stanza?), gave me the inspiration to keep going. I was trying not to repeat poems or poem-types, but I wanted to post this so I decided to use a little repetition to do 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Thank you Matthew!

droqen

Theme #7 will be...

Missing a kick
at the icebox door
It closed anyway

This notable 'contemporary haiku' by Jack Kerouac mirrors #2's notably non-contemporary haiku. I like this form! A different Jack, as in my fellow letterclubber Jack, introduced me to both the contemporary haiku form as well as this poet as well as this poem specifically. Enjoy.

Oh, and please remember you don't have to make a game about the actual content of the poem. Make a haiku game. Make a game about futile actions. Make a game about whatever you feel. Don't justify yourself! This jam's themes are not here to be taken literally! Go wild.

droqen

Theme #6 will be...

TUNAFISH SANDWICH PIECE (from Yoko Ono's Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings)

Imagine one thousand suns in the
sky at the same time.
Let them shine for one hour.
Then, let them gradually melt
into the sky.
Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.

1964 spring

I don't know if I'm allowed to transcribe a piece of writing that I have access to on a public forum, but what's the worst that could happen? I GUESS I COULD DIE.

I first heard about Grapefruit from an Eggplant podcast episode where they discussed Fluxus. I recommend it. (The podcast, as well as the movement/community (Fluxus), as well as the book.)

Oh, yes, also, I'm back! I'll be posting the back five themes over the next five days (including today) because I had a resurgence of inspiration. By that I mean I came upon a good constraint for narrowing down the scope of the frightening task of posting a poem every day: each poem will be some mirror image of its associated poem from the front five! If you're having trouble you could try the same with your ten games. If you're running out of juice after five games, maybe remake or modify them to make the remaining five!

droqen

I wouldn't assume so! Maybe link to the song and ask players to play the song while they play?

Theme #5 will be...

The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out

I will be taking a short break after this, and resume posting themes #6-10 later in the month!

Please enjoy the final poem of the first half, The Tiger. You might have seen it before, on The Internet? I look forward to everyone's games about the tiger and freedom.

droqen

Theme #4 will be...

The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost)

I read this poem for the first time in English class in school when I was a teenager, and it was strangely memorable... and then over a decade later, I still remembered it, not as anything particularly amazing, but as a well-known poem that I knew, too. Then, pretty recently, I happened upon a self-described POEM GUIDE for it which revealed that I had perhaps been fooled by the poem. Well, at least, it presented a new interpretation which seemed to make more sense to me, which seemed less trite, than my half-remembered version of it.

Here is the full text of The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Here is a link to the POEM GUIDE I read, by Katherine Robinson:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/89511/robert-frost-the-road-not-taken

droqen

I like interpreting these smell reviews very much; I made several colour palettes inspired by other unpublished smell reviews in futile attempts to capture their full depth... it makes me think about how a smell review is itself a futile attempt to capture the full depth of a smell. It also strikes me that in describing the other smell reviews as 'unpublished' this is maybe publishing it? Am I publishing a smell review? Anyway, enjoy! It's pieces of writing like this that made me excited to do poems-as-themes in the first place.

Theme #3 will be...

Transcribed:

Very flowery and sort of fresh linens-y. Another
sharper smell I can't really explain, almost a
sharp soap? Mild old lady vibes but not in a
bad way.

Very clean, very bright spring vibes. Reminds
me of chambray buttons ups and commuting in
the evening when daylight savings changes so
you get out of work in the daylight


I don't know if it's "me" but I find it very calm
and enjoyable

By MatthewLacker, with permission.

droqen

p.s. probably my favourite translation in this context is the simple

pond
     frog
          plop!
                                       Translated by James Kirkup

please feel free to share your own favourite or selected translation!

Theme #2 will be this haiku, by Matsuo Bashō:

古池や   蛙飛び込む   水の音

I don't expect it to mean anything to you in this format, though! It means nothing to me in this format. Assuming you can't read it in its original language, please use these "thirty-two translations and one commentary" [http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm] to come to some understanding of it, or any other resources you might like to use.

Then you can return here, and decide what the theme is for you.

droqen

:)

I like the sound effects.

Theme #1 will be...

I've transcribed the full lyrics of this song below for your convenience:

Well, I
think I'm gonna make me a tuna salad sandwich
The tuna tastes so great with the celery
And when it goes with the mayo and the lettuce
That tuna taste, so savoury
Tuna
is high in protein
but oh so low in calories
Low in fat
Low in cholesterol
Tuna is the thing for me

Sometimes
dolphins get caught
in tuna nets

So I guess I'll have to chance it

Enjoy and have fun!
Please remember you have thirty days to make your games, so you should have plenty of time to pace yourself.
Try thinking, "If I make each game in one day, that means I can take a two day break after every game!"
I'll be back tomorrow to post the 2nd poem.

droqen

p.s. some tips:

i have, still, never successfully made 10 games myself for this game jam! if you do all 10 you're doing better than i ever have or perhaps ever will ;) if you can only make 1, that's totally fine. make as many or as few as you'd like, or as you can. i do suggest not spending too much time on any individual game though. use this opportunity to see what you can get done in half or one-tenth the time you'd normally spend! try it once anyway, you might be surprised!

hello here are some questions i think i usually get when i run the variety megajam!

hey i just realized that although faq stands for "Frequently Asked Questions," it could just as well stand for the singular "Frequently Asked Question." a faq contains faqs! weird.

faq#1 - so am i supposed to submit 10 games separately or all of the things i make in 1 game?

it is completely up to you! people have done both.

faq#2 - are there any themes?

yes, i will be posting them one per day from dec 1 - dec 10, unless i get delayed/busy/distracted.

faq#3 - do they have to be 10 different genres? i can't

genre is up to your interpretation! it's my hope that you run up against this beautiful wall and this starts to disintegrate what 'genre' means to you. take a genre and break it in half, into two separate genres. combine two genres: is this a new genre? take a genre and remove something important: is this a new genre? take a genre and remove something unimportant: is this a new genre? have fun with it. inventing new genres in order to looophole your way through this rule is totally within the spirit of the jam.

~

if you have any more questions please ask them wherever you'd like and i or someone else will endeavour to give you a good answer.

love, droqen.

just remember the consequences... when the chickens revolt all those heads will ROLL!!!! or, uh, if you hit the automatic reshuffle without the diamonds. that one's less flavourful.

no limit! you can have as many royals of any suit or face as you like in your court.