itch.io

This is a neat short story, perhaps a minute or so playtime, worth a play if you want some (blissfully fictional) bad news in your day.

No chess knowledge required, though it did take me a bit to realise that fact as I tried to figure out the controls xP

This was a lovely short story about a friend helping you through difficulties outside your control. It should only take a few minutes and has no branching paths, so I recommend giving it a look.

Who amongst us can't relate to a cute boy who drains the life from everything he touches?

I played the version on IndieGala and I'm intrigued by the lore, and I enjoy the concept of the gameplay. However, I find it difficult to stick with the game, because the interface for the most frequent action in the game - decrypting individual characters - is so tedious. You have to click through all the characters until you get the one you're looking for, and I haven't found any alternative. I'd love to be able to select letters by clicking on them in a table showing all the letters, or perhaps to be able to type them in.

It's not something I'm likely to get to any time soon.

However! You can try building it yourself, as the source code and all assets are available. It is a GBS 2.0 project so it won't work in GBS 3.0 for easy Pocket export, but you could try to put it into the version of GBS 2.0 modified to export to Pocket instead of GB, and that will hopefully work.

Please check the documentation on Tiled's website. Itch.io comments are no place for a tutorial.

What do you mean by "activate the standard set"? Your tiles are definitely usable with Automapping in Tiled. However, those tiles are probably also useable as a Mixed Terrain Set using the Terrain Brush, which is probably going to be easier to set up than Automapping.

You can probably get better help on the Tiled forum or the Tiled Discord, by the way. Both are linked from Tiled's website.

A very common reason for Automapping to not work is that the layers in your rules are named to expect one layer name, but your working map has a different layer name. For example, if your rules have "input_Ground", then the layer your inputs are drawn on needs to be called "Ground", but many beginners forget to name their layers and will have something like "Tile Layer 1". Could that be the issue for you?

Oh wow, thank you!

We have no plans for a physical version, sorry ): We're not against a physical version, but none of us has connections or the resources to make it actually happen.

Ooh, great idea to include the different railing versions :D

The tiles in this tileset are positioned irregularly, so it is not possible to use this tileset in many tilemap editors without editing the image first ):

I was able to load the original tileset image in its presumably intended form in Tiled, but it required manually defining where each tile is, since they're not on a uniform grid. Once that hassle is over with though, the tiles work quite well on a 48x24 isometric grid!

I did notice some weirdness when making non-stepped turns though - you can't always get a nice light line between tiles in corners, you have to choose between no line or a thick dark line. In the screenshot above, I went with no line.

In Tiled, to create the stair-stepped effect like in the mock-up without creating a load of layers or Objects, one would need to make three versions of the tileset: One with 0 vertical drawing offset, one with +8, and one with +16. Works nicely this way though, and allows keeping the tiles all in one layer.

Thanks for sharing this tileset :D Although I don't have any plans for it, I had fun playing with it, at least after I managed to load it as an actual tileset xP

These tiles would probably look amazing with a little programmatic bounce/displacement when the player is on them.

The project files are linked as "Source code" under "More information".

Thank you! I think this stuff is good to include in devlogs like this - as you said, some people want to read before they download, even when the download is small and simple.

I haven't used NEXXT at all yet because I don't do any NES work (hopefully one day!), but I'm keeping an eye on development and maybe stealing some ideas for other tools ;D

Any chance of a text description of the new features for those of us allergic to video? Since you mentioned a changelog, presumably this means you even already have such text typed up :D

Was on my way to report another bug when I saw your reply :] Sometimes, Retry makes me start with damage and velocity from enemies that were near my ship when I died in the previous run.

Particles are a hell of a thing xP I hope the fix won't be too annoying for you.

Is the immortality an actual bug? I thought it was perhaps just a consequence of stacking shields and regen. Either way, something to fix if possible. Speaking of shields and regen, it would be handy to see a list of current upgrades or stats on the level-up screen, to make it easier to gauge which upgrade would be most beneficial. After a few level-ups, it gets hard to keep track of how many of each you have. Perhaps the level-up cards could list how many you have of that upgrade already, that would avoid the clutter of a full list.

This game scratches the Vampire Survivors and Seraph's Last Stand itch :D Feels surprisingly polished for a ~3-day jam game. I'll definitely be playing more of this.

Unfortunately, I've attained immortality, so I can't die to submit my score, and this far in, the game lags so much that I basically only get a frame rate when I level up, during upgrade selection. Between level-ups I just get a frozen screen. This kind of lag can be remedied by limiting how many fixed-step updates you do per "frame", and if there's still time left in the accumulator after that, zero it out. This'll have the effect of slowing the game down when it can't keep up, but I think that's better than runaway lag. I noticed my browser's memory usage shot up from ~1GB to 8+GB as well, so there may also be a memory leak, or perhaps the game is just running so many updates that garbage collection can't keep up.

I think the main source of the lag might be the particles associated with Arson and Flamethrower, but what it's worth.

A minor cosmetic issue I noticed is that the timer can only fit 4 digits before it gets a scrollbar xP An even more minor issue is that in full screen, the game stretches to fit the screen, even if that messes up its aspect ratio. Black bars would probably look nicer.

I hope you'll work on this game after the jam! With a little more polish, I think it'll be great. Aside from the lag (some of which I imagine is inevitable) and missing weapon upgrade descriptions, an options menu where the music and sound volume can be controlled would be handy. An option to use simplified particles might also help with lag.

Nope, looks like you ran into a bug! I thought I added protections against invalid inputs like that, but it's possible I missed some of the battles. Restarting the game and reloading your save should get the game back to normal, though you may need to redo the fight, depending on where exactly it glitched.

Hint: Dawn Will Come :]

Thanks! The task UI is definitely pretty confusing, but we did our best with the limitations we had and the feeling we wanted to convey.

Yep, there is an ending! The ending varies (a little) based on how you play.

That's fair. Inspecting things can help the dev find the cause to fix it, since presumably they don't have this issue on their end, but of course no one can expect you to provide that level of information.

Ah, it looks like all the white bits are black for you, except "options". Here's what it looks like for me, perhaps the various buttons are still clickable?

It's very odd that its showing strangely for you. Do you have some user styles that could be overriding the styles? The game is really just some HTML, so its styling may be overridden by other styling. The white text everywhere is coloured by the same style though, so it's very odd that "options" still displays correctly. Have you tried Inspecting the various elements to see whether they exist, and if they do, where the black colour is coming from?

If you click the settings gear again, it closes the settings and returns to the screen you were previously on. There should also be "Back" and "Title" buttons, and the settings button should be available on all screens of the game. At least, for me it is.

By "practice", I assume you mean the free dordle mode? There should be a "new game" button in the upper left.

It's guessable xP It's a word I've run into several times when reading about various language topics on Wikipedia, and it's rather memorable, so I guessed it with guesses to spare. For a one-off that doesn't even count against you if you lose, I think it's a pretty clever choice.

Are you sure it was MYRPH and that you didn't misread MYRRH?

You should be able to click the "Title" button to go back to the main menu. Do you not have that button?

If this is added, please don't call it "hard mode". It automatically keeps you from wasting your guesses, so for inattentive players like me, it makes the game easier rather than harder xP Maybe call it "strict mode" instead?

Same/similar issue for me in Firefox. Skips a bunch of unsupported features, and then:

Clicking to play either mode displays the mode's name on top of the menu, and that's it. This is what shows in the console when I click to play the daily:

Edit: Looks like it's been fixed. Thank you!

Yes. Working in a variety of styles and mimicking pre-established styles is a very useful, but underappreciated, skill as a game artist. Some artists have more aptitude for it than others, but like any other art skill, it's something one can learn through careful practice.

While, as skylarkblue1 said, art directors aim to have each artist fill a role according to their strengths without the need for mimicry, it's also not uncommon for games, especially 2D games, to have their look driven by one artist early on, and to require more artists to continue in that style because the original artist can't complete the work quickly enough or has left. While mimicry is rarely perfect, a skilled artist can get close enough that players won't even suspect that multiple artists were involved. This kind of mimicry is probably involved in more games than you might think, especially among visual novels and portrait-heavy RPGs.

Oh, thanks for the heads up! I'll look into this when I have time :D

Download an emulator, and use the emulator's File > Open... to select the GB file. There are many emulators out there, pick one. Since it sounds like you need something very simple, try Visual Boy Advance 1.8.

I don't know when it'll be as I've not been doing any GB dev since the GBcompo ended, but when I do get GBS 3.0, exporting a .pocket version of this game will probably be the first thing I do :D

I'm surprised the Pocket doesn't let you play GB roms even though it lets you play GB carts. I guess it's to discourage piracy?

What do you mean by a ".zipo version"? If you mean a stand-alone version that has an emulator built in, I don't think we'll do that, as I'm not familiar enough with pack-in emulators, how well they work, what the controls are like, etc.

If you want to play this game offline, please download a GB emulator of your choice (on Windows, I recommend BGB) and use that with the downloadable .gb ROM file. It'll play way better than it does in a browser, and you can pick an emulator you like rather than being restricted to whatever I'd pack in, and be able to customize your experience as you like :]

Seconding that "Cogitations" is a great name for a puzzle game with these cog mechanics.

I'd love to read about your puzzle design process when you do get to it!

Playing with the prototype reminded me of Zachtronics games, and I think a game  in that vein, with these mechanics designed around building machines that accomplish specific real-world(-ish) tasks given a specific set of pieces, would be very interesting. I think the limitations that Zachtronics games tend to set are also informative: everything is on a grid (usually a hex grid), and those pieces that can change size only do so in a small range and in increments that correspond to this grid. This limitation should allow the cogs' teeth to match up, since there would only be a small number of cog sizes and relative positions possible. Early in a Zachtronics game, you start with only a few pieces available with which to solve each puzzle, but as you progress, you earn new pieces required for solutions. You can go back to early puzzles and build potentially smaller (spatially), simpler (fewer pieces), or faster solutions using these new pieces. The games keep track of the complexity of your solutions along several axes and let you save your solutions for each puzzle, encouraging you to try different approaches. For the final few puzzles, you have every piece available and have to show a full understanding of their interactions to solve them.

I tried playing on Itch, but I just got a white screen and clicking "New Game" did nothing. These warnings and errors were in the browser console:

Edit: Whoops, just saw there was another thread about this lower down, sorry ;~;

As it says in the description:

Music composed, conducted and produced by Michael Cherdchupan. All rights reserved.

This means it is NOT licensed for use in YouTube videos, streams, etc.

I played through 1-133 and then 4521-4685 in a single session (with emulation pausing when I wasn't playing) before this occurred on 4686.

Next time I get around to playing, I could play in BGB instead of VBA and send you a savestate of the glitch having happened, would that help? I might also be able to savestate every level and get you a savestate just before the glitch. Just watch, in BGB the glitch won't happen.

Played a few levels today from where I left off yesterday, and hello glitch :D I didn't notice any cursor slow-down before this one, but navigating the menu to get back to the level select did feel laggy and eventually got unresponsive. Level 4686.

Getting back to level select, that was also glitched. Going to other levels, even on other pages, did not get rid of the glitch.

Going back to the main menu did not fix the glitch. I guess this is why I got in the habit of power-cycling.

When loading a level in this state, some of the background is corrupted too:

Definitely some kind of overflow, but good luck finding where xP

Oh, I didn't try select to reset. Thanks!

About the cursor bug: I *think* the number of levels before it happens varies, but it's possible that just depends on what level I was playing last time I reset or how far I was from a "problem" level when I resumed play on any given day. It usually took a good while to happen but happened regularly enough that I got used to it, but I wouldn't be able to tell you how many levels it took. Somewhere on the order of 100-200 maybe?

I did mean power cycling fixes the problem when I said resetting. Unfortunately I don't remember whether returning to the level select fixes it, and I never tried returning to the menu. I ended up always resetting for a reason, but it's possible that reason was simply speed. Naturally, playing through over 200 levels just now (1-133, 4521-4661) to see if I could trigger the bug didn't achieve anything xP

It's weird that the glitch is preceded by laggy behavior in the cursor during normal gameplay. The cursor becomes laggy in the middle of playing a level, rather than right after it's first loaded. This symptom makes me doubt it's related to the way the levels are stored. I also don't remember the glitch happening even once during the early levels, so I wonder if perhaps it's connected to time spent playing a given level, or time spent playing in a given session.

I'm sorry that I don't have more specific information! I'll reply again when I have something to share.

Just finished all 10000 levels. This game kept me from checking out any of the other entries for GB Compo 2021 because it kept me busy so long.

I agree with an earlier comment saying it's not particularly difficult, but it's good as something to do while watching movies and such. The difficulty feels like it tops out somewhere in the Intermediate range, after that it's mostly minor variations on the same few layouts with only a handful of levels that felt unique. That's not necessarily a bad thing though - for a time-waster with no progression, padding like this is welcome.

IIRC level 600 (or maybe 700? one of those) is solvable in a single move, I think the procedural generator goofed there xP

I'd love to see a couple of additions:
- A "reset" option in the in-game menu. Sometimes resetting makes it easier to see an alternate approach. A reset option would make this more convenient than going back and forth between levels.
- A random mode that selects a random level from among the 10000 after every time you clear a level, instead of going to the next one. Mixing difficulties should make a more varied experience for replays.

Lastly, I repeatedly ran into a bug: after playing a while, the cursor would sometimes start lagging. This would eventually clear up, but every time this happened, the cursor would appear glitched out starting with the following level. The sprites making it up would be shown spaced out much more than usual, making it appear huge, or, less frequently, the cursor would appear to be 16x16, with the middle segments missing. It would work normally aside from the glitched appearance. Changing levels wouldn't fix it (but the bug could happen again, leading to a potentially differently looking glitched appearance), but resetting the game would. I used VBA to play, which I know isn't a great emulator, perhaps it's some error with the emulation in that, I haven't tried using better emulators for this. Since it happens after playing for a while though, I suspect it might be some kind of overflow.