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E5Burrito

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A member registered May 06, 2021 · View creator page →

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A beautiful concept. Relying aggressively on players bringing solid story game chops to the table, Cabbages explores something like Stoic Philosophy through playful reminiscences of MUDs and other era appropriate collective online experiences, closer to BBSs than to today.

If a thing matters, it can be struggled against, at the risk of breaking yourself, a risk that increases with each thing struggled with. If it doesn't matter, it advances and evolves like cancer, but maybe by not caring enough you can cut out the part of yourself where it metastasizes. If it only kind of matters, play the victim, griping and moaning and internalizing and stabilizing the trouble.

So, is this twenty year younger you that you play, who faces trials of life similar to those you did but contextualized through the lens of your friend's memories, is this young you a stoic? A victim? Sisyphus, bound to be crushed over and over in the struggle? Or someone a bit less of an Ideal but more of a Human? 

I'm honestly a bit scared to ever play this. It's self evidently an emotional meat grinder, and looks designed to maximize bleed. I think it might secretly be a masterwork of horror game design. 

It's in a solid, playable (and enjoyable) state. Heads up though - as of 27Nov2024 there remains a scrolling issue on phone browsers (or at least the DuckDuckGo one) where the final screen with the end game statistics doesn't scroll, locking the player out of reset (prestige?) options.

As a big fan of both FIST and Cultist Simulator/ Book of Hours, this impressed me. I like how it treats knowledge of the Hours/Longs in a winking fashion, rather than a prerequisite to comprehension. 

The PDF has a bit of wonkiness that might not show up depending on the viewer used, but I'm getting unsupported bit warnings on most of the pages. It seems to be tied to a page wide image, probably a background? The whole Aspects chapter also fails to load anything. Again, might not be an issue on PDF viewers with more aggressive automatic compensation/correction protocols.

Thanks for hosting this Jam! I have an 'allowability question'-

In Markdown you can make text link to another chunk of the Markdown doc - "To begin play, create a character, then etc etc" with 'create a character' linking directly to the applicable chunk of the document. 

This feels like an edge case - allowing H1/H2/H3 suggests partitioning text for easy navigation, but the use of links reek of formating. 

Yay? Nay?

I don't know if there's a "Right" answer, but I would load the page in Incognito Mode, export the new game right away, and import that into your normal browser's version.

You might want to check out the annual Dungeon Crawler Jam here on Itch.  It's been going for a few years, there's a lot of fun short games in this ouvre.  (Very, very few anywhere close to as well polished or balanced, though!)

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Simply wonderful. This may be the most concise, hackable OSR/D&D house rule I've seen. Brings Dungeon World esque bonds into play, with a really clever and simple cost/benefit game. I imagine that the social pressure to reciprocate is thematically spot on. 


I've read dozens of pages of 'how to make mealtime in the dungeon mechanically interesting' hacks, but this is the only one likely to actually make it to my table. Seriously, check this out - all the bits and pieces scream to be reutilized in other aspects, so even if the tea time theme does nothing for you there's probably something here inspirationally for you.


(Lots of respect for figuring out that "inverted Depletion Die" makes a leveling mechanic. Of COURSE it does!)

https://e5burrito.itch.io/the-thing-about-is
My counterargument to your "Science trumps high quality conjecture as a mechanism for determining Truth" implication is complete.  Thank you again for the inspiration!

"Sears the potato"? So, the made up cult of which I'm the high priest and only member, "Spudology", explores the secret knowledge that can be derived from observing potatoes and potato related phenomena. Basically, we (I) contextualize life lessons and insights within the ouvre of potatoes. "A potato left in a dark place within a paper sack will eat itself, converting all its energy into questing roots that fill every inch of space. The wise potato teaches us, thereby, to prioritize removing ourselves from the situation when people are actively trying to keep us in the dark." That kind of thing. Less 'potatoes are divine', more 'anything is sufficiently complicated that you can contextualize knowledge about it into a metaphor or insight for something else..and if you're digging into one random thing deep enough to perform that analysis, why *not* a potato?' It's a quasijoke about making explicit what I think most people do implicitly, contextualizing new data or experiences in terms of the things they know particularly well already regardless of applicability.

Anyway.. Your slight against the wise tuber, and advocation of objective metrics over inspired truth claims reliant on viewing reality as metaphorical fractals, has been noted! In indy tabletop tradition, expect the inevitable refutation to be in the form of a TTRPG. 


(I once ran a one shot about spelunkers trapped in a haunted cave, and the survival of half the group ended up riding on whether a PLAYER could tie a knot in real life that he insisted his character could in the game. BS Internet posturing about potatoes aside, I've accidentally used 'RL experiment as in game success criteria' before and it rocks. "Let Us Relitigate etc" highly recommended, tuber heresy aside.)

As a player, if I manage to steel the man from the GM do I win or lose?

Nice! Maybe throw this their way (I'm not on Txitter), it's a replacement for dice I came up with a while back. I know some detainment facilities are anal about dice...

https://e5burrito.itch.io/pbtlota

You're a lot farther along than I am (I left my 'time machine' back in Trimps) , but at the 'just recently unlocked towers' point I wouldn't advocate waiting that long. 

Even a few of a new type of heirloom make a massive difference, and there are some to be found in the towers. Add in the mild bonus of the low hanging attack/health crown-bought boosts, and I think it makes sense to burn a few keys pretty quickly.

Thank you!

I had picked up on the shards sticking around after equipment changes - it's the reason I have the first ten pieces of equipment at/ approaching level six, even though I don't typically use half of them once I'm anywhere near my zone cap/ in the struggle.

I'm getting them faster than that, although I'm not sure what is boosting the speed. I guess it doesn't really matter since whatever it is I'm unlikely to be able to micro manage it.

Code Delvers, can I get an assist?
What determines the likelyhood / trigger for a Mystic Shard?  I'm not seeing anything in the notes or tooltips, and it may affect how I run my Horde delves in the early phase.  (Is it a per-mob chance?  Should I stay in a one-hit-kill zone, with taunt mode on, to max out the shard income rate? Or does the current or max zone affect the income rate?)

You're right- one of the Baker kids (ie child of the Powered By The Apocalypse creator) made a card driven TTRPG  about aquatic salvage that has really strong, dark Helcomb County Lake Dredge Appraisal vibes.

This is beautiful. Thank you. I was unwilling to run RR&F for my group because I didn't think I'd get the buy in on the hefty manual for what might end up being a one shot, but you've solved that issue for me.

For newcomers, I'd still advise that the GM get the full version from Kumada1's page, but this wonderful write up is almost certainly sufficient for the other players to fully engage.

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I'm not familiar with the creepypasta, but the USSR sure tried to kill off the idea of God. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Unio... )

Glad you enjoyed the read! If you try it out at the table, let me know how it goes.

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Thank you for your review, and especially for pointing out what stood out as tension points! 

I need to rework the presentation of OOC at a minimum, for sure. It's ambiguous right now if 'pushing through' just makes you vulnerable for the rest of the scene or for the rest of the session.  (Edit : My post jam version now reduces the recovery time from a few hours to a few minutes of secure, peaceful recouperation.)

Re : The Director, that's a specific NPC rather than another title for The Referee...which I should probably look for a way to emphasize early on. Given that they're forced-retirement age in 1991 (heavily implied in the cover letter's background text), and three-letter-agency recruitment typically cuts off in one's early 30s, they've been in the field since the late 50s or so. Anyone but a male would have almost certainly hit the glass ceiling before being put in charge of the Agency.  Pushing the game even a decade into the future would have allowed me to use gender neutral terms, but then I'd miss the sweet spot between the Cold War and the (openly acknowledged) War on Terror.

This game has about four months of playtesting behind it, but I've had to reassemble it mostly from memory.  I'm interested in your opinion, but ESPECIALLY about things that don't make sense or seem incomplete.  I've tried to err on the side of brevity and leaving some fruitful voids, but suspect that'll come with being overly ambiguous in places.

Corrupted Flesh feeds the Cleaning Ritual, which lowers Corruption.  Corruption goes up each Horde level, and if it's in the positive (IE you haven't been able to keep up with it via the Cleaning Ritual or other Corruption lowering perks) the enemies gain a bonus to their attack and defense.  If it gets high enough they start getting bonus special abilities.

So, Corruption is a pacing mechanic to keep rapid-repeat prestiging from being super-viable.

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Still a quite lovely game.  My favorite non-ending idle / incremental on the site thus far.

Equipment mastery gain, as displayed in the tool-tip, is wrong.  I'm seeing things like 681 pts for a boss a level, and 3.55 pts (5%) for a miniboss.  5 percent of 681 is 34.15, significantly higher than advertised. Minibosses are either giving approximately (but not exactly) tenth of the intended mastery points or the tooltip is misdisplaying the income rate.

I'm pushing through this right now.  Given that you posted about two months ago, you've hopefully blown through the blockade.

Good cards help A LOT.  There's a +3 equipment card that's perfect for leveling up gear in the Tainted World pack.  The extra pieces of gear outclass the x1.25-type bonuses most other cards provide and ought to buy you an extra level or two.

There are a few pieces of gear worth getting to LVL 2 as a priority - Star Shield, Longsword, and Fire Orb spring to mind.  The lvl2 boost lets you gain a 50% bonus to the passive, which buys you a lot of division shields and critical hit power.  I'd advocate having those active on the "way up" to the levels where you're struggling, since the boss fights grant the most XP fastest.  In fact, I'd consider a handful of taunt-heavy no-card runs since the point where these early equipment items start gaining XP is so low.  Those extra rounds without damage from the division shields and pushing Crits above 100% chance has a HUGE advantage - you'll soon find one in six hits or so doing over quadruple damage, which beats any of the active equipment attacks.

I burn most of my school bonuses on Horde.  It helps - a bunch of extra levels to things you only need to buy once and you've got another x2 or so to damage and health.  Gems spent on tripling the efficacy of heirlooms are generally well spent, too.

You should be able to get the Corrupted Soul Capacity up to seven to ten days worth with a bit of patience.  Then, with MORE patience, cap it once at that ridiculous value.  Now your Cryo will be vastly more productive than being active, at least for a while (this is what I'm working on at the moment).  While you're waiting for the CS to hit cap, remember : Minibosses at any level have the same CS drop, based on your highest Horde level hit (since prestige, I think).  So if you can barely squeeze through to a high-nineties value level, then back off to a lower level where you can comfortably get 1-hit-kills.  That way you can use all your equipment that boosts Miniboss spawning and drops and still wipe them out reliably.  Every day or two, check to see if you've got enough bones to squeeze out another level, each of which should cut a day or so off the time-til-max-CS.

Reviewed by the Dice So Nice We Said Dice Twice folks over on their wordpress site, which brought me here. (https://dicesoniceisaiddicetwice.wordpress.com/2024/01/07/horrid-mysteries-is-th...)
Their summation is roughly : Conditionally better than DREAD for your one shot spooky gaming.  High praise!

Awesome!  That's exactly the info I'm looking for when I'm searching for assets.  I hope that helps with sales / drawing interest.

Hey Brother! When people are digging around for music for their game, the Terms of Use and Copyright status are super important considerations. You might get better uptake if you put those on your page. 

You have a lot of individual pages, so maybe just a quick note about attribution or use limits on your user profile page?

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You might want to check out 1,000 Blank Cards and Dvorak (they're on Wikipedia). Hoyle makes blank-faced playing cards, you could put a deck together with some friends easily enough.

I "Activate(d) Bonus".  It changes the button to indicate that the Bonus is Activated.  That's good, I guess?  I'm not seeing additional options, or a change in production, or anything that might indicate what this "click five thousand times to access" button actually did.

- Generally speaking, you never want a player to be more than a few seconds from making an interesting choice or shifting their attention to a new game element.  Even in a visual novel, where there's plotted fiction unfolding to pay attention to, you don't want to go more than maybe 40 seconds without offering the player at least the impression of a choice. Starting with 302+ clicks to make the first change, which just ups the click return, without any secondary gameplay elements, is a killer.

- Scaling in idles and clickers tends to be something like "Press the Button, gain resources at the speed you were plus one.  Also, the cost of Pressing the Button again goes up by the power of 1.17".  What you've got here is a tripling of expenses each time, which is incredibly fast cost progression - it's times three to the power of two, as is.  Again, a killer when coupled with the lack of secondary gameplay elements to focus on.  If there were another co-running game that reduced the upgrade requirement cost, or also upped the click return, or whatever, then ~maybe~ a tripling of costs might work.

- The player's displayed money need to be adjusted when they make a purchase, not just when they make a sale.  If I spend $270 of my $300 on an upgrade, it'll still show me as having $300 until the next time I make a sale, at which point it corrects to $30 + (Sale amount)

- As noted by ikegotti, having employees kills the manual 'create snapback' button.

- Is there ever a reason not to sell your entire inventory?  Why does the bulk sale option require quantitative adjusting if the player is never going to not sell everything?

- Fundamentally, the gameplay loop is "Click a single button A LOT, then click another two buttons, then repeat again on a longer cycle.  Eventually hire employees and replace clicking that single button with waiting."  You need some choices or strategic depth or particle effects or something to push this beyond the entertainment value of watching a leaky faucet slowly fill up a drinking glass.

It seems like clickgrape has figured most of my issues with this entry out, since a lot of these problems are resolved in his next clicker game (NFT Hustler).  I'd recommend a hard pass on this SnapBack entry, and to look at their more recent entry(ies?) instead.  [Issues attached to this post as a comment.]

I once had an old half-broken F150 that wouldn't die.  The solenoid kept going out on me, so I'd jump-start it by shorting out the unit with a big ole' screwdriver.  Sometimes instead of starting the engine would freeze up and refuse to turn over and I'd have to crawl under it and, reversing my grip on the screwdriver, use the handle to bang away at specific parts of the undercarriage to free the frozen components.  The steering wheel was a little loosy-goosy, so I kept a spare ViseGrip in the glovebox - if the wheel ever fell off, I could clamp onto the exposed shaft and shove the screwdriver into the loop at the end of the ViseGrip, driving home with the screwdriver handle in hand, something like forklift-style steering.  I kept that screwdriver squirreled away in a dry part of the truck's bed, so if I ever locked my keys in the car I could smash the window easy-peasy.

Sprinting Owl's stuff reminds me of my old screwdriver.  Tight packages with just a billion little mechanics, inspirational bits, microsystems and hacks that can keep your TTRPG endeavors running, interesting, and vaguely threatening.  I've bought a bunch of the items included in this bundle separately already, and it's still a steal for me at $13.  It's probably something you should buy too.

They're pretty mild - I unlocked two cards, could have gotten a 10% increase in the amount of grain my farm put out.  I wouldn't sweat it.

These are nice!  I dropped a link on the FIST TTRPG discord channel, hopefully that sends some clicks your way.  Trifolds are becoming the gold standard for mission/scenario design over there.

Ahhhh, that makes sense.  Thank you for the clarification and the link!

Great tool, folks.  Thank you for putting it out.  I like how flexible it is regarding users making new elements for it if they're decent code wranglers, and how button monkeys like me can manually tweak their SVG exports in Inkscape to get any poses we want that haven't been officially implemented yet.
Two requests!
1 - The poses of the example characters shown at the main menu are a nice addition, but when the user 'Open This Sample' the default positioning of features / pose is booted up.  I can _kindof_ intuit how to go from Baseline Default to the example shown on the main menu, but it'd be illuminating to have the Sample load pre-calibrated for their more emotive positioning as initially seen.
2 - Do you guys know there's an "AR14GAMES" account on itch?  It looks super shady and has a 2022 link to "the demo version of Mannequin".  I haven't done a hash comparison or anything, but from the comments about it not running properly I'm guessing someone's using your title to push spyware/viruses.  

This is fantastic.  Good unlock pacing, nice AFK / Active loops, good spread of ~idle sub-games (that are surprisingly well developed given the number of them), excellent attributions in the Info section, lots of thought clearly given to ease of use. 
If there were a Support button, I'd throw some money at this free game.  The designer deserves it for achieving so much more than the average Itch entry.  Top 2% for sure, possibly a contender to steal Trimps's mantle.

Extremely evocative. It's hard, seemingly impossible, to simultaneously have a single person both playing and directing a game AND to drive a strong sense of being out of control, subsumed within a situation beyond your understanding. This pulls it off, and on a bookmark sized piece of media. 

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Consider re-exporting this : I'm seeing a significant portion of the edges clipped off in the PDF, to the point that I can not discern some of the vital text. Image file seems okay though.

The use of literal voids in the bookmark to direct the player with just enough guidance to help them build a story into the fruitful void you've left? Brilliant design.

Nice use of art, too. A real challenge with such limited space.

Alternate Idea  : Solo play, same ~general~ trope/talent list on one side, story prompts on the other.  Player places the bookmark randomly, then has to narrate how they overcome the prompted challenges using a skill / talent that is aligned next to a vowel.

Different bookmarks for different PCs in different dramatic circumstances, with different traits and different prompts.