itch.io

Hi Jil! Finally got around both Firefox and Chrome claiming that the downloaded zip was a virus. Edge pulled through for once? I really love the art in this, especially the character portraits and the 90s style web page looking upgrade backgrounds, they feel so nostaligic to me.

Which Flippers feel/work better? Top or Bottom?

To me the top flippers felt better, mainly because the camera moved a bit less so it felt easier to hit the ball with them

Are there any elements you don't understand?

Everything was easy to understand, outside of the red lights near the bottom flippers

 Do you want to know more about certain elements?

The red lights above the flippers, wasn't sure what to do with those

What is your opinion on the weapon choice?

Felt like a good amount of choice for the stage of the game, but a few more wouldn't hurt!

What is the thing/aspect you like most?

How the different upgrades change the flow of the game, especially around targeting the enemies

What don't you like?

How the Mochi Guardian was handled. The ball a lot of the time went up from the middle and straight back down directly between the flippers with no recourse. And it felt a little strange to just have an upgrade for it when you have used it as it didn't seem to give it back to you.

How do you perceive the difficulty?

It felt a little punishing sometimes when the ball would move super fast but the camera wouldn't nesicarily keep up with the top and bottom transitions. But this feels like it would be hard to fix and not have the transition feel jarring.

Is the game fair?

It feels about as fair as other pinball games I have played, though admittedly this isn't really that many

Do you normally enjoy other Pinball or Survivorlike Games?

Pinball no, Survivorlikes, very much

Definitely has a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses as you develop it!

Hi Coas City Games, thank you for your feedback!

Oh for level 6 I wonder if it is a bug or you were putting the cat in a box where it was going to get bapped (smacking sound with some Bap text particles popping up)?

I'm not an artist either unfortunately, but I do agree that I could do a little more with their expressions to bring out their personality a little more!

Hi Cometopuli! Thank you for taking some time to check the game out!

Blobby has been tripping up a couple of people, while he is really useful for making interesting puzzles he might be introduced a little early. But also I do agree with you about maybe introducing him with a couple of much easier puzzles with more basic cats.

Regarding your question about "if the goal is to fill all the boxes or place all the cats in the supply or both." It's both, all your cats need to be used and all of the boxes need to be full. Might need a couple more puzzles early on to reinforce this, thank you for the critique.

The level names staying up on the screen somewhere is such a nice QoL addition thank you!

Orange's yelling is a bit much I agree, especially when there are a few in a row. Need to follow my lead voice actor around the house with a microphone more I think.

Quick q for you because I might have spotted a bug in your screen shot, were you using a controller?

Hi Sinan, thank you for playing and I am glad you had fun!

Totally fair about the arrow, it is bugged because of some collider weirdness. But I am in the process of getting rid of it entirely with exactly what you mentioned later on in your message but didn't quite make the dealine for this jam unfortunately. I really appreciate the explicit feedback about it and the validation on the path I'm taking for it thank you!

You aren't the only player who has brought up the wording on the directions and it is something I am going to address asap!

Hi thepuzzlewizard! This feels like a really interesting concept!

Though while there is definite potential here, I feel like you need to go back and redo the flow for the purchasing and item creation section, it is quite tedious and pretty easy to break the menu flow especially where the recipe book 

Had a bug where on my ultra wide monitor where the inventory was offset to the left of the mouse pointer and couldn't select the items when hovering directly over them. As well as many of the UI items being obscured off the edges of the screen. It was fine when not playing fullscreen, but the Unity window is quite small so its hard to read the text.

For your feedback questions:

What was the most frustrating moment in what you experienced?

How intrusive the tutorial was, especially the basic controls tutorial. You are using standards such as WASD, mouse scroll etc. I am unsure why this needs to be tutorialised to the player and why it can't just be skipped.

What was your favorite part of the game?

The visuals, the game is very cute!

Was there anything you wanted to do, but the game didn’t let you?

Have some kind of interaction with the customers as they were coming in, outside of being able to see their stats

If you had a magic wand where you could change any part of the game, regardless of cost or complexity, what would you add/change/remove?

Simplified inventory management and some kind of interaction during the service (I know this is 2 but I feel like they are both super important)

What would you say you were doing in the game?

Making and selling icecream

How would you describe the game to friends and family?

An icecream stall tycoon game.

You might want to check out your windows build, itch has flagged it as a scam and quarantined it for some reason.

I'm  sorry that this came off a little negative. Contrary to everything I'm really looking forward to where you take this because with a few tweaks and fixes it is definitely a game I can see myself putting a bunch of time into.

Thank you for playing and for your feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

The guard cat feedback is super valuable and you aren't the only person who has brought it up, I think I have to go back  and improve the rule for that one. I think it isn't triggering when people expect it and should just always protect no matter what instead of after a delay.

Really fun concept! I did enjoy the challenge of controlling the ship, it felt quite thematic.

Bit confused by the targeting priority sometimes even with asteroids right next to me the ship would shoot off the screen, maybe some kind of click targeting for the player would help with prioritisation? 

Looking forward to seeing where you take this idea in the future!

Hi Boss Grand! Just posting my probably pretty unsorted thoughts on the current version even though I've given you some feedback since I've already told you a few times I find it quite fun!

• Would be nice to be able to go into the settings menu and skip the tutorial
• I like the addition of the Undiscovered tag on items
• There is something weird going on with the audio when the animations are sped up to 3x sounds like they are being played multiple times maybe? Its especially noticable with the coins after the end of the round or purchasing a trouper between days
• Speaking of audio I turned SFX off because of the above, but could still very lightly hear the coin sound playing when cards were being processed after holding
• I do wish there was some kind of difficuilty selection mode that can bump up the score needed, especially after I have done a few runs on it
• The text on Letters of Marque explaining what they do is really small and hard to read
• Would be nice to have the upcoming debuff in the last round of a season open by default when you are on the travelling screen, i totally missed that it existed for a bit and almost lost a run because of it

Still find the game really fun, especially when taking a bunch of outcasts and really leaning into the risk reward gameplay

Thank you for playing and for your honesty! 

TBH I'm not 100% sure what my final goal for the game is at the moment I'm just enjoying working on it alonside a couple of other project but mobile is definitely a consideration.

Link with the password in it

This is such an interesting idea for a design challenge!

1. What round did you get to before quitting?

Round 6

2. What was your strategy, if any?

Focus on buying as many cards as possible to buff one die as much as possible

3. What did you most like?

The interaction between the cards and die

4. What was frustrating?

Not being able to carry over coins to the next round, feels like it is missing a bit of a risk reward. Oh should I keep my coins to get over the line or should I spend them on the chance to get a really good card.

5. What did you wish you could do?

I know this is totally against the point of the project but being able to see the dice themselves roll, not having that tactile thing always feels like it takes away from things with dice for me.

Such a cute presentation, I love puzzle games like this!

Difficulty spikes pretty hard after the 1st couple of puzzles (around the 1-5 and 1-6 range) 1-5 feels like a very important puzzle for the mechanics but the number of wyrms suddenly jumping up is a little intimidating.

Was slightly confused that you introduced a new mechanic in 2-1 but it doesn't show up again until a couple of levels after, but I thought the new block type was a really natural addition to the gameplay.

Played through with mostly using the mouse and for a slight improvement is there any way you could update the input so you can click and drag as well as click each block? Wanted to play through using arrow keys as well but seemed pretty unresponsive with just them from time to time, had to press a couple of times to register an input (every other input type was totally fine), not sure if there was something going on with my keyboard or there were some issues with input tracking.

Music track seemed to just play through once then stop for me as well.

Did play through all of the puzzles and definitely enjoyed my time (finished all of them minus 2-5 and 2-6), do have to say though, the smaller puzzles felt much more interesting than the big ones with a small number of wyrms. I'm sorry this sounds a little negative, but this was really fun and I'll definitely come back to play some more with any updates!

You are totally right about the boxes thank you, I'll get that fixed! Did confirm that the math is right on the patting, but what you are saying about it being not hugely noticeable is very true and will buff the rate on a few things in the next build.

Bugs reported on October 2 should now be fixed

Thank you for playing and I am glad you enjoyed it! I'm sorry for the bugs you encountered I'll look into fixing them!

Thank you for playing and for the bug report!

Thank you for playing and for your kind words! I definitely agree with you about the onboarding flow and have an update coming to the game in the next couple of days doing pretty much exactly what you suggested :)

Thank you for playing and I'm glad you eventually made it though the 1st level :) Totally agree that it is too hard right now and have an update coming in the next couple of days that will hopefully help with it!

I really like the suggestion of being able to reposition the cats after placement, will definitely take a look at adding that!

Hi Nova games, this is such a cute little game, I love the art style and the run animation of the player character! It did take me a little bit to work out what to do though, maybe a little bit of handholding right at the start (even on top of the pop up in the top left of the screen) to show the player exactly what to do would help out a bit?

Maybe something like giving the player 2 items that will merge and not letting them progress further (stop spawning the little guys that give items) until they have combined them.

Outside of this (and some sounds and other polish things which I'm sure you have a big todo list of already) I can see the full version of this being really fun!

Thank you for playing and for the helpful feedback! Need to work out how to fill all of the boxes. I might need a touch more tutorialisation :)

Hi AtlasFun, I love bullet-heavens and have spent more time than I would like to admit in them! Your characters and art are so cute and there is a solid base here, but just have some suggestions as a genre-lover. Though this is probably going to be a bit unstructured sorry :(

Feels like the intro is really long and talks about the mum chicken coming back from an adventure, maybe it would be nice to let the player get into a round or 2 before this so they are a little more invested in the game before introducing a lot of characters?

I'm not sure how I feel about getting the experience for killing the dinos right away. The experience orbs/blobs/crystals being drops that the player has to collect in other bullet-heavens adds an extra layer of risk/reward for the player. Is it worth going for that xp? Can I dodge well enough to get it without losing too much health? Or should I go and maneuver the enemies around so that area with a lot of enemies in it now is clear in a bit.

The mushroom mechanic, while interesting was a little hard to parse while there were dozens of different dinos chasing you all throwing out their own danger zones. Working out the colours at a glance while doing a bunch of dodging and making sure you are aiming your weapons correctly, was a lot as a brand new player.

Though definitely appreciated that each of the dinos weren't just walk up to you and hit like many other entries in the genre.

Little wish list thing is to be able to use the mouse on the map!

Looking forward to seeing what you do with it as you continue the rest of development and I wish you the best of luck with it :)

Thank you for playing!

Hmm I think maybe I have to make sure that cats are a little more distinct because I know the 2 you are referring to, maybe the colour pallet is too close and just flipping them isn't quite enough, thank you for the feedback.

Have an update coming soon which should help a little with the figuring things out, but thank you for pointing out that it still needs work :)

Thank you so much for playing, I hope you enjoyed your time :)

Definitely right about the music, working on finding more that match right now!

I get what you mean about the "how long the fun of the game would last" and have some ideas that will hopefully change up the flow of the game a little more :)

Hi Hythrain thank you for checking the game out!

Oh thank you for pointing out that I missed the full screen option, definitely just a page setup oversight on my part.

Catalogue of cat's you've completed puzzles with is definitely on its way! Just that little duplicate card bug is being a pain and slowing progress, but thank you for the bug report and the recommendation they are very much appreciated!

"black cat on stage four knocked the other two cats out when, prior to that, they had never bapped a cat that  was already in a box" this is a good point actually it does break the interaction rules with that cat, I'll update that level because thinking about it it is quite confusing.

Hi fellow cat game maker! Loved the papercraft aesthetic and how clear everything was even without a tutorial or any text at all. Had a lot of fun with the different towers and being able to reroute the enemies so easily.

Did miss the 1st couple of card acquisitions though, probably because I am blind, but got used to clicking on the right hand of the screen to advance so my eyes were over there after a battle had finished. Maybe force showing them to the player and allowing them to skip from there would help with this a little?

Good luck with the rest of development :)

Thank you for playing and I am super glad that you enjoyed it! Thank you for the stream link too, will definitely check it out!

Oh yup that bug, working on finding out what is going on but it's one of those I just can't get it to happen on my side, even though multiple people have reported it ones :(

Thank you for playing and I'll pass on your kind words about the sound effects to my 2 voice actors once they wake up from their 10th nap of the day :)

Got some onboarding ideas that will hopefully help with the what to do feeling, trying to find that balance between the player working out the rules and experimenting on their own vs. being too frustrated with the game feels like it's going to be a lot of the development of this game!

Oh you are definitely right about the number of audio tracks! I just grabbed the couple of low-fi songs I had on hand sorry haha.

Really fun mash up of solitaire with roguelike elements! The art, especially the little blob guys, was so cute! And the transpose mechanic really feels like it helps with my issues with this type of solitaire, namely being like 2 or 3 moves off being able to finish it but because the card you need is trapped with no way to flip it over.  

With the location of the transpose button and how small it is I did miss it for the 1st round, got stuck on the 2nd and was about to quit the run and start again and then happened over it what felt a little accidentially, maybe making it a more prominent feature in the UI would help this out a bit.

I can see the shop items really bringing a lot of variety to runs! Best of luck for the rest of development :)

Thank you for playing and I totally agree with you that there is some clarity things that I can do to help a little. And on con point 2, ok now I'm feeling bad, might have to do specific lines for each of the puzzles!

Thank you for playing and I am super glad that you liked it! Have a few ideas that hopefully will help a little with understanding the behaviour but definitely want some trial and error in there too. Thank you again :)

Thank you for playing, I hope you enjoyed your time with the game! Definitely trying to find that balance between being clear enough but having the player have to work out how each cat works because I agree with you the discovery is a big part of the fun.

Thank you for the bug report too I'll get to squashing :)

Thank you so much for playing and especially for the feedback on the early puzzle difficulty! I'll definitely check out the bugs :)

Sure! Would definitely be interested in helping you troubleshoot in future builds :) feel free to either reply to this thread or send a message request on discord, should be able to find me in the indie questing discord under the same name!

Really interesting take on a Sokoban game! Not only having to worry about the player's position but also the location of the right thing to possess really adds extra depth to the format.

Really appreciated the undo individual move button in addition to the restart the entire level button.

Good luck for the rest of development!

Hi AtypicalCroqueta, This is such and interesting concept and when I saw it pop up on Bluesky I could not wait to play it and was very exited when I saw it was a part of this jam! I really like the idea of collecting different resources by solving a rubik's cube and an autobattler? Sign me up!

Had a couple of issues with my screen size (3440 x 1440) though where some of the UI overlays would reach the edge of the screen and some of the tutorial text just went right off it:

So because of this it took a few attempts to work out a couple of the mechanics as it is very front loaded with information you need to be able to play the game properly. 

From a first time player perspective it is very hard, I don't think I got past 3 individual fights and found myself dying to the 1st enemy in 3 out of the 6 attempts I made. There is a lot of information to parse and 

Really looking forward to seeing how you continue to develop this, with a few balance tweaks this feels like something I could spend hours and hours exploring different runs and builds in!

Hi Gamma and Toad! Posted my full notes to Gamma on Discord so you probably have seen all of this in a different form, but commenting here because of the spirit of the jam!

Had a lot of fun with this! Especially with the Bouncy ball seeds, so fun and found myself using them more than the mop to pull off random skills shots!

Did find myself not really interacting with the seeds outside of the bouncy ones and the default grow on the chunk ones, but that feels like it will most likely be addressed in future levels, so less of a concern with the mechanic itself and just an observation on my experience.

Was definitely a different experience from other games that I have played and it feels like with later levels everything will combine together into a really fun experience, can’t wait for more!

Super cute and cozy game you have here! I loved the art and how characterful it was and really enjoyed that it was a tactics game without the combat and the task list format that you went with.

One little thing that caught me a little bit was how the only way to reset was to do everything from the beginning if you made a mistake while trying to work your way through the puzzles, would be nice to see not only just your undo move button, but a go back a turn option as well, especially as the levels get harder.

Would be nice to see a couple of QoL things like being able to hold R to restart and have some way to re-centre the map on the saga map scene, but overall a great little experience!

Thank you so much for checking the game out and for posting your playthrough! I'm sorry I couldn't make it live but will definitely watch it through :)