That was. an experience. A+, highly recommend
dysprositos
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That's quite good! That is a correct description of the game, yes--in the full game there would be graphics for the dice, which you could interact with (say, "move your mouse over a die to scoop it up, click to roll all scooped dice), and also a clock with limited time, but... then it wouldn't be a bad game. ;)
The theoretical highest score possible is 306: with six of a kind in each number's category (6*(1+2+3+4+5+6)), a two pair made of 5s and 6s, a full house made of two 5s and three 6s, and the highest-scoring chance roll (25: 6,6,5,4,3,1). (Plus the dice-independent small straight, large straight, and six-of-a-kind point values.)
A really neat and unique horror game! It took me a bit to work out the controls, and the purpose of the pointing arrow, but I have now saved several good children... unfortunately I have probably been killed by more evil children. Sometimes they just spawn nearly right where you are! The footprint visuals are really good. I agree with the other comments that a darker darkness would help make the game even spookier, and that some visual indication about saving the good children would keep that aspect of the game from being reliant on the (limited, though good!) audio. I hope this game does well!
I really enjoyed playing this! I can't quite seem to get past 120 myself but losing doesn't feel terribly punishing! The one tweak I would suggest is not starting the music over when the game starts over (or offering a mode where it can play continuously). The music choice is fun and works well with the coin collection sound and spacing. Great game!
This game looks and sounds really neat, I wish I had the skill level necessary to play it instead of dying immediately after switching gears every time. (I can't tell how many colors were used to make the game either but that's the jam's fault for having extremely unclear rules.) I'm going to leave it unrated to avoid dragging the game rating down with my perplexity but it looks really cool!
Can't rate this because it looks like the version I had available to play was not the version you had done when the game jam submission period was over, but I have a couple suggestions that I think would improve what I played:
- Make sure the dialogue script matches what's being said. If the character says "I am afraid" then the on-screen dialogue should read "I'm afraid", no typos, etc.
- Name the language toggle after the target language (in the target language) i.e. "Castellano" when it's in English and then "English" (or handle language selection in a separate menu).
It looks neat, but it's hard to tell how many colors were used (just black and white, or also many shades of gray?).
I really enjoyed playing this and currently top the leaderboard as Gwen. Just linked it to other people I know who might like it. Timeless mode would be a nice option, as mentioned elsewhere. Another thing that might be nice is having to press Enter to submit the current word, rather than it happening automatically as you move letters; this would remove the frustration at being sooo close to putting in "LOTUS" when you now have to figure out what to do with "STOSS" or whatever. Some way to view previously-used words, or to get instant feedback when that is the case before locking it in, would be nice as well: or (which would make the game easier, so might not be desirable) it could just be the five current vertical words which are forbidden to repeat the use of. I'm also not sure how but it would also help to have some mechanic for getting (purchasing??) new letters over time (so you're not locked into a more and more restrictive letter pool as you go). Anyway, fantastic game, and I'm giving you almost full stars! (4/5 for music)
Ah, I see now--I was interpreting the goal as "place the objects near the sunlight so they can heat up, *then* place them near the solar panels so that the (stored) energy can transfer" rather than "place the objects where they can continuously and simultaneously heat up and transfer energy to the solar panels". That makes a lot more sense!
Another attempt at explaining the mechanics/controls of this game:
If you press the up arrow key, or A, or I, all of the movable balls in the game will move upward if they can. If you press the right arrow key, or D, or L, all of the movable balls in the game will move rightward if they can. (And so on.)
You start with six movable balls. Each carries its own illumination, allowing you to see the nearby stationary walls of the (looping) maze that is the gameboard. However, if a movable ball pushes on one of these walls, the wall will light up and remain lit on an ongoing basis, allowing you to understand and maneuver within the (looping) maze that is the gameboard. A movable ball will not be able to move if a normal wall, lit or unlit, is in its way. And while it is stationary in this way, if a moving movable ball runs into it, it (the stationary ball) will die; the goal of the game is to reduce your movable ball count from six to one in this manner. You are your own enemy.
A complicating factor is that when a movable ball dies, some walls may turn vengeful and deadly, seeking to kill the remaining movable balls. Fortunately, you can see this change (the walls now look like black holes), and also the killer walls remain stationary. (So just don't run into them!) You can also strategize around this mechanic, because walls don't turn deadly at random--it is always all of the walls that were last pushed on by the ball that died.
So, to get the highest score you can on a given one-minute run, you want to kill as much as you possibly can (earning two points per kill), while dying as little as you possibly can (losing one point per death). If you avoid the killer walls entirely, and reduce your ball count to 1, you can get 5 points. If you kill only one ball and then your remaining balls all fall victim to killer walls, your score will be -5 points.
Are the two stationary gray objects on the left hand side of the screen the solar panels? Are they wired up to the locked door? (Which I have tentatively identified as the bit in the center square at the bottom of the screen.) How long must a movable metal object bathe a square away from adjacent to the most-bright square in the game (which I assume is the solar light) before it has enough energy to transfer anything/enough to the solar panels? No action I take seems to appreciably impact the game state (except by making the movable metal objects no longer freely movable). If the idea is that each of the metal objects must sunbathe for some significant amount of time in real time (more than a minute, for sure) before it can transfer energy to the solar panels, then there ought to be some kind of visual feedback so we know what progress it's made and how much it has left to go...
I really liked the way this looked and felt! Took me a few plays to realize that picking up tiny bullet-dots would refill my energy bar just(?) as effectively (without destroying my health bar), but I did better once I did. Perhaps you could have the score / high score display on the main screen after health runs out, so it's more clear that the game is over than just "WASD isn't letting me move anymore" (and so you don't have to figure out why it's not displaying at full size in the sidebar)? A really clever and replayable game concept though, and it looks fantastic! The use of the limitation sounds neat but I wish it had been documented in the game / directions itself (rather than just on the submission page).
Kill (and be killed) by running one movable ball into another (stationary but movable) ball. The walls are always present but only light up once you've run into them; after a given movable ball dies, all of the walls that it last touched turn deadly.
There is music, I don't know why it wouldn't be playing for you...
Thanks for playing and commenting!
Game or tech demo, this was neat! I did eventually work out what I was doing with the tank controls enough to get the transponders to the door (using the back of the arrow as a scoop and backing up), only to realize upon pinging that the goal was in fact to arrange their *distances* from the door appropriately, which would have been slightly easier... I would probably not have the skill-or-else-patience to play a full game of this, but I definitely dig the concept, the music, and yes the graphics. (The graphics are minimalist but that means they don't get in their own way.)
You can't lose Capture, but you can lose Between (if the computer moves its piece between your two pieces, rather than you moving your two pieces to be on either side of its piece--same arrangement but who made it matters) and Territory.
I have a slightly more elaborate plan for connecting the three games, adding replay value as well, but I didn't have time to implement it for Trijam, so I'll be updating this after the jam is over.
Thanks for playing!
I really enjoyed this game! Clever mechanics, great puzzle design. My favorite puzzle solution was scything the train to shorten it to convenience. The short number of turns per level made restarting a level not so frustrating. One issue I had was that it seemed like once I selected a piece and clicked Attack, it didn't quite seem to be possible to move the piece with footsteps instead of attacking. But restarting (by running out the turn counter with End Turn quickly) wasn't too bad! Also I liked the graphics!
This was a fun little puzzle game! I got stuck for quite a while on the penultimate level, but I worked it out eventually. I liked the sound effects and the simplicity of the death methods. Having the number of phoenix feathers collected flash when it wasn't enough to go through the end-of-level door was helpful. The one tweak I'd suggest is to either sync movement to the grid, to widen the hallway, or to auto-correct the sprite position when necessary: there were several times that I was unable to get into a hallway until I walked away to "bleed off" some of my positioning on the axis perpendicular to the hallway, so that I would stop running into one or the other hallway wall when trying to enter it. Overall, nice and straightforward!
I liked this idea a lot! The little touches--the clicky sound the robot runner makes, the background art--are very nice. It wasn't clear to me why I got a game over (Main Menu/Restart) screen a couple times on Endless mode without being stuck or falling into the fire; it might have to do with the battery/coin pickups, as what they signified or affected also wasn't clear to me. Good use of save points to keep the game from being too repetitive. One thing I found interesting about this game concept is that it really is possible to lock yourself out of success, because if you explode/steam too early on a pipe you're not going to be able to avoid that since there's no way to close up airholes... Overall, a very neat twist on the endless runner genre, and excellent use of the limitation and the theme!
This is a nice little game! The directions in the description were a bit opaque, but I eventually worked out what the game is doing and how to do well.
One bug I found was that it's possible to select the same number twice for a single operation, resulting in the operation execution clearing one operator symbol and one number total. If you do this at all, you end up with a grid with no operator symbols, just numbers, and no apparent way to proceed as the power level drops...
I really liked the buildings lighting up in the background as grids are cleared. I wish I could do well enough to see it fully lit!
Looks cute! I'm not very good at avoid-the-enemies type games, and I found the double jump mechanic pretty hard to engage, so it was a problem for the bunny whenever midway through a given level's grocery list a bird would decide to fly by at exactly bunny-jumping height while the rhino continued charging back and forth looking to gore/trample the bunny... I'd be angry too!
Thank you for your feedback!
What I'm gathering is that my priority after the rating period ends should be to update the game with an instructions screen with visual elements ("anatomy of an order" etc.) so that it's easier to understand how to play than the text-only description can enable. This was something I was planning to include! but couldn't justify when I was over time as it was.
I just finished making (and will soon publish) a related game, Tea Run, which uses the (dice-selection) lavender color for each table/order's teacups. That's a tweak I can also make to Tea Time that should prevent that particular (understandable!) misunderstanding.
Yeah, the interface was easier to navigate before itch.io decided it didn't feel like having Canvas render the two .svg-based buttons ("roll unplaced dice" and "add a new order") on anyone else's computer except my own. (The buttons are still effectively present, just invisible...) Thanks for giving it a shot anyway!


















