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Lagrange is going to be so pissed at me. I used all my rarium escaping!

The music, cutscenes, world building, palette, and character design are absolutely top tier! I wish the puzzle levels were as aesthetically engaging as everything else, but I loved the puzzles themselves. They were very open ended, and I loved the continuing resource management. I wish the level select showed you how much rarium was in a level, how much you used to beat it, and what the lowest amount possible to use is. That would make going back and repeating levels a lot less painful. You could pick your worst performance levels whenever you needed more rarium.

Overall I love this world and game though! Looking forward to see what happens to this after the jam.

Really solid Zelda-like! I kept getting shocked about how more there was every time I made it to a new zone. A lot of the items here are really interesting. I especially loved the menu UI. There's some obvious polish to add here (a new song in each area would be nice, as well as some enemy hit feedback, and displaying the health and timer), but the amount of game here more than makes up for it. Great submission!

Actually, the opposite! There's no reason not to go back to the first dungeon. Once you've beaten it, you can always beat it, so it's a free 10 coins. Same for the second dungeon. Because you always start the next dungeon fully refreshed and the dungeons don't change, it's guaranteed money for you. The only downside to picking the first dungeon every time, is that after you beat the dungeon you have to press A to continue to the next dungeon. The menu has a "Back to Hub" option, but there's never any reason to select it. I wish my party just auto started at the first dungeon and then kept going until they died.

Excellent music, art, and vibes. The levels are bit too long/high scoring. It really makes having to retry punishing. The treasure speeds feel just right, though maybe letting them move down a little faster than they move up might let you save some otherwise unfishable treasures? So many great little touches though (thank you for allowing the player to pick up a treasure in the same space as a piece of trash! that buffer is so necessary!). One little touch I would suggest? Make the fisherman really struggle with the heavier treasures. If I have to suffer through slow movement, so should he!

For real though, this is a great entry, and really captures the Gameboy spirit!

Jams are hard! This is a great submission!

This looks great, and the tutorialization is excellent for 10 days. Sometimes the levels are really bare, especially above the track. This makes you want to go to the front of the screen to try and find anything and earn some gold before the time runs out, but you will inevitably by archered or batted for doing this and that feels bad. I especially wanted to shout out the music. It may not have the most music of any game in the jam, but that main song is a real banger. Great job all around!

Jealous of how elegant this idea is. Like a more stressful, old-school Wilmot's Warehouse. I don't think I'll have any feedback you haven't already gotten, and it all feels very intentional. I would probably add a score counter somewhere, and maybe take a page out of Wilmot's book and have a small break right before/after a new rule is introduced. But this is seriously polished. Great job!

Alright, fine. I learned a lesson Scrooge-style. My good deeds will be reward tenfold or whatever!

Really like the concept here. The core puzzle is nice, though I wish more rooms were a little more difficult, made the gold/salt decision harder, or tested your knowledge of the mechanics more (especially the last room, which is a total gimme). It was also a little difficult to tell which directions the enemies were facing. But this is a great base!

Points for the MOST secondary theme interpretation haha. I like the main mechanic and the art is wonderful. Some of the rocks in the pushing section were a little ambiguous about which square of the grid they were on. And it would have been nice to maybe learn about the charms themselves; when or why the character got them and cares about each one. But overall a really good effort!

Very well done! The spritework, animations, and especially the character portraits are great and very polished. I think having to select a dungeon and whether to continue after each is unnecessary. There's no strategic reason to not run every dungeon from the beginning or stop after any of them. There are things you could do to make these choices interesting, but in an idle game, you really only want to give the players interesting choices, so I would just take those out. It's a minor complaint though. This is a really great submission!

"Old Gold" just genuinely makes me think of the cigarette brand. I thought of a few other ideas, but ultimately decided, "Well, at least no one else will make their game about cigarettes. Probably."

The sprite work, animation, and title screen art is great here. The directional transitions are a nice touch. Good job getting anything submitted. Jams are hard!

Other than what you already listed that you want to add, you may want to make some of the rooms more distinctive, or maybe add a map. I had to triple check that the room layout wasn't randomized.

Really effective minimalism here! The design looks and feels just right, and the puzzle is simple but often fun. Genuinely the first submission that not only could have been on the Gameboy, but I'm even shocked it wasn't. I'm unsure how I'm supposed to get par on some of the puzzles, but it was (usually) fun to try haha. Great submission!

FYI I really appreciated the ability to adjust the display settings, but technically those have two more colors in them than the rest of the game. 🤫

Wow! Surprised and delighted by this one. The idea is so original. The vibes are chef kiss. And the puzzle is fun! Maybe I'm the only freak, but I really appreciate the harder difficulties and I thought the map being inaccurate was both mechanically and thematically interesting. Mechanics, music, and art are all top tier. This is really special and incredible, great work!

Genuinely a very good first project made in a very short amount of time! I would suggest tying the notes to one of the instruments. Your kick is strong in the mix, which helps keep the beat in a rhythm game, but I never felt like I was moving up or down for any reason. It would be a lot more satisfying to move up or down to follow the melody.

Your fishing minigame is really unique! Essentially what you're doing is forcing the player to imagine a square where the treasure and fishing hook are randomly placed, and then in their mind move the fishing hook around based on cues from the bobber. It's sort of like playing "Hotter and Colder" with a blindfolded person. I'll pitch some ideas below, but I think leaning into that idea really brings out the uniqueness.

So I think I would try and expand the game in two ways:

1. Make the imaginary space more complicated. Maybe there could be a coral maze that you have to move the fish hook through without seeing. Or maybe there are hazards in the imaginary space like unexploded mines. Or maybe the player has to reel the treasure back to the surface dodging the hazards or fish that try and take the treasure back once the player has hooked it.

2. To counteract the increasing difficulty, give the player different and stronger bobbers. Maybe one that flashes red if you're too close to a hazard, one that disarms certain hazards, or catches fish. Maybe an upgrade for the sonar bobber you start with that displays a minuscule subsection of the hook's surroundings letting you navigate mazes more effectively.

You could then mix and match these in different locations that would make different strategies better or worse. Maybe Mr. Frog lost his treasure in the swamp which is full of hungry catfish and muck that slows you down. For the swamp then, it'd be more effective to use the bobber that glows red near enemies or maybe that lets you clear out the catfish first. But maybe Mr. Cat loves the high seas, and he lost his treasure in a part of the ocean with mines and strong currents.

These are just my first ideas. I just like the minigame. I don't think I've seen a fishing minigame like it before. (I wonder if the minigame is harder for aphantasiacs.)

Incredibly polished stuff! The soundtrack is some of the best I've heard in the jam, the art is fantastic, great UI/UX, and the vibes are just right! I wished there was a little more to the gameplay. As far as I could tell, there was no reason to select any of the fishing locations over the others despite there being a whole map for it. Just a little more gameplay inside and outside the fishing would really make this something special, but this is great work!

I will refrain from leaving a comment in French, as 90% of what I know is swear words.

This was a blast! Very funny and the difficulty curve is pretty great. There was a run where the game and strategy clicked, and then my next run I won the game. Simple, well executed, complete, and very Gameboy. Great job!

... Why is the protagonist called "Lime Worm?"

Posting the controls on the itch page would be unbelievably helpful. I was never quite sure what to do in combat. I pushed every key on my keyboard to discover that:

q = left
s = down
d = right
w = up / swim
f = swim
r = interact
] = palette swap

Still unsure what to do in combat. The sprite work in the dialog boxes is good!

The end screen makes it seem like all my new animal friends are leaving me behind on the island. :(

If I were allergic to gold, I think I would take up crocheting or cooking instead of piracy.

Frog gang!

The fishing mini-game is actually very cool. I would love to see how it could be expanded. The cleaning mini-game was a little less fun, but I love the pace and vibe of everything so it's hard to really criticize. Loved the different art styles. A really complete experience. (I also want to shout out your cover image, which I think is my favorite in the jam and is just a way better version of mine haha.)

Very polished entry! The music and art are great. Everything that's there is polished and works great and would feel right at home on the Gameboy. After I got the hang of it, I found myself wanting more, but I think ultimately that's a compliment.

Frog gang!

The art here is wonderful, and the platforming is a little tricky but ultimately very rewarding. A lot of great level design here that requires fully understanding and even sometimes abusing the platforming mechanics. I think just a little bit of air control (it's very funny the first time you slide down a long wall past the door you're trying to go through; it's a little annoying the tenth time), and a little UI (definitely coins, an indication that the flag is saving your game, and maybe a map) would go a long way. This was a lot of fun though! Great job!

This made me hungry. And also want to buy a fez. Do you think I could pull off a fez? Be honest.

3D Game Boy game gang! I absolutely love the look of this. I played for quite a while and never got to the end of the round or another round. It was also trivially easy to just stand in front of the treasure chest and shoot skeletons as they approach. A second treasure chest on the opposite side (aft) of the ship would have made it so I had to move around more. The song also becomes quite repetitive after playing for a while. The shooting is really fun and satisfying. I wish the skeletons got pushed in the direction you hit them from. But it's hard to complain when you get to just absolutely blast the fools.

3D Game Boy game gang!

I liked the presentation and visual assets. I wish there were more levels that explored the central sokoban twist. The last level showed the most promise though!

Amerijapan seems lovely this time of year. The atmosphere is nice as is the art (the yearbook especially, but I liked the night woods scene as well). The main song is good though gets a little bit repetitive. I enjoyed it.

Okay, admittedly when I signed up for the jam this year, I went and checked out a few games from GBJAM 13. Lifelik was my favorite one I played. So I was excited to see you back with another game. And I was not only not disappointed but blown away! This is really good! This is seriously impressive stuff. It's out there aesthetically, but this is the best game I've played in the jam so far. This could be a real, released game though obviously for anything but the Gameboy.

The puzzle here is great! One of the best "Game Boy" games I've played (I guess that's what the "Gameboy Soul" category is for). I could totally see getting obsessed with a larger version of this (both in the past and present). Obviously sound would help, and you know this, but I think a little UI pizzazz and feedback would also go a long way. Still a really excellent submission.

I didn't get controller working on web, but locally I've played with a controller, and honestly it was way harder. So not getting it to work was a blessing in disguise really. Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the kind words! And that's kind of how you're supposed to play. Obviously, ideally you nail every jump and never slam into a wall and make it all the way to the top cleanly. But once you do mess up, the best course is to jump higher than the wall in front of you, get off the pogo, walk forward, and then get back on your pogo to maintain jump height and scale up buildings. Maybe disappointingly, you're playing it right!

The ship to ship combat game is a little too difficult and 1 dimensional. Call me a landlubber I guess because I vastly preferred exploring the islands. I thought the color palette and tileset were standouts.

I think the main character is Jesus. Here is a list of evidence:
- Can bring the dead back to life
- Can walk on water
- Was lost in the desert for 40 days trying to find tobacco

Loved the art! Especially in town and in dialogue.

3D Game Boy game gang! Really like the main mechanic and look of this thing. Ended up hard stuck in one situation; you have an unused button, so you may want to use for a quick reset or something. Love the basic idea here though! Would love to see it expanded. A fun aesthetic twist on Paper Mario or Fez.

So hard. Maddeningly hard. I liked the different physics in different areas, and the shifting color palettes were nice.

Great final moment. Plays almost like a short film with QTE prompts. Great intentional use of color palette, and it's full of striking images. The ending is pretty abrupt; a game over screen or credits or title there would feel a little less jarring. Really respect the intention and vision here.

Thanks for playing! I was obsessed with the idea of "3D Game Boy Color game." I liked the impossibility of it. I really tried to make everything else - animal mascot platformer, weird corporate shovelware, simple gameplay and minimal UI - as Game Boy as I could. But I knew that the core idea was so un-Game Boy that I could never succeed 100%.