itch.io

Pavelee!

Thank you so much for your kind review of my early build! Truly, you're the greatest!

I see where you are coming from for sure, there isn't a lot of direction for the player right now, and it lacks proper incentives and juice to keep player flow. Additionally, the combat can make use of JUICE to add layers to the combat mechanics that would be engaging and fun for the player to discover. Enemies are a bit dumb, yes haha.

I'm working on a full overhaul, and hoping to get it out by this upcoming January! Also working on a Steam page :)

-Ethan

Great to see another game by ProgrammerOnCoffee hitting the streets, I enjoyed playing it! Fun idea where you get two player avatars you have to think through how to use to beat the level. Made for some fun and interesting challenges!

I recognize that music haha, I think you know ;) 

5/5 stars!

Excellent as always pavelee!!! I had fun shooting the bottles although it was a little frustrating at times. I didn't understand why the camera shift and the bullet travel time was programmed in there until I read the description.

Thematically consistent, good sounds, the physics seemed right-on. A quick fun challenge. A great game!

Sadly I haven't joined the jam so I can't rate, but this gets 5 stars!

Overall it was kind of difficult to worry about the tetris side of things and the platformer side of things at the same time, but this is coming from someone who isn't that into platformers. I might also be using the wrong strategy as often I was worried more about clearing the tetris blocks as best I could rather than trying to advance through the level. I found it difficult to get any further than 50m in any of my runs. I'm not sure if you need to have the precision skill to be able to jump onto the moving tetris bricks, but that was often my only way to escape the green wall of death was to take a risky jump onto a moving block, which I would often mess up and fall to my death. It's definitely a cool concept though and it was entertaining to play.

A quick note on artwork, I think the colors could use some tuning. Specifically, the character color options aren't that appealing to me overall.

This game is a lot of fun! I especially like the colored-pencil like artwork and what looks to be watercolor brush? For the black blocks. You really captured the artistic theme here and the little noises the guy makes are fun. I also like the subtle facial expressions that occur when you interact with items in the environment. Kudos to a job well done!

Edit: I apologize for spamming this comment, the page kept giving me pop up messages when I tried to post like there was an error but it was just because I forgot to save my rating!

Hello! Thank you very much for your feedback and for playing the GadgetSmack pre-alpha demo! I think many other players are experiencing the same thing, and I've started working on ways to improve the game experience and help explain things better so they are more evident to the player through the design. Thanks again!

Fun card-like strategy, I like the shows although it was a lot to take in at first for how to win! Definitely could use a little cozy music in the background to help bring the whole vibe together, but I really like the cute animations and the gameplay is definitely there! For me, the window is not big enough and some of the game gets clipped (I wasn't able to see or use  my ribbons, and I only got a small part of the crate in the bottom left corner in my viewable window). I wish there was a fullscreen option!

Other than that man, I think this is a really solid foundation. Looking forward to future releases!

SergeantArcade, thank you very much for your feedback! These are all things I hope to improve on and correct in my next iteration. I do admit the enemy spawn rates were pretty insane lol, a classic case of the dev thinking things are too easy and turning up the challenge. The wall interactions are an interesting challenge too that I will need to figure out, nearly everyone has stated the same.

Again, thank you for taking the time to play my game and leave this review. I haven't played yours yet so I'm off to return the favor!

Hythrain, thank you very much for playing my pre-alpha demo for GadgetSmack! I hear your frustrations. The player has no indication of their current health, the JUICE BAR acts in ways you don't expect and is not explained, enemies behave strangely (they have no regard for walls and can get stuck), the objective/how to proceed through the level doesn't make sense and/or isn't obvious, the player can get stuck when it doesn't feel like they should, and the purple squares puzzle is random.

These are all great points that I will be working to make better for my next iteration. Thank you again for taking the time to play and provide this awesome feedback. I'm grateful to be able to participate in your event, and I hope to submit a better entry for the next one! Truly you are providing amazing value to Indie devs here, and I thank you for all your work making this possible :)

Also yes please I am interested in the VOD! Although your text feedback is excellent, it's always good to be able to watch how people interact with the game.

Thank you very much for your kind words, VOD, and thoughtful feedback! I have plans to come through many of your bigger critiques to have a beta version complete by January. Here are some things I aim to deliver in the beta version:

1. A story to the action that is engaging and doesn't take itself too seriously.
2. A tighter gameplay loop that is evident to the player and intrinsically rewarding, including "Gadgets" which will allow you to perform special attacks and have other effects on combat such as healing, dashing or sprint mechanic depending on which gadget you have equipped.
3. A keyboard-only control scheme. (Thank you for the commentary on this, I have considered it before and actually in the pre-alpha you can use the "L" and ";" keys to attack, but I'm considering other solutions as well.)
4. At least one boss fight.
5. Generally increased polish and artistic consistency & juice across the board, including balancing sfx :)

Awesome, I'll be looking forward to seeing you back!

I'm glad you enjoyed participating in the jam! And congrats on being a finalist!

Yo HasH, this game was fantastic. Leaving another comment because I had to come back to play after the jam finale, I had the music stuck in my head! Yours was easily in the top 3 in my vote.

In a side note, looks like you added another song to the update! Tbh I'm not as much a fan of the new song, the first two were really in their own element and it felt a bit out of place coming back. Still a fantastic experience though, I hope you continue to make more amazing games!

I got the 2nd ending and went to heaven after getting hell the first time, but I'm not sure what I did to trigger that. Fun game I liked the music too :)

What a fun game! I forgot to leave my comments here before, just getting back to it now. I unfortunately couldn't try multiplayer mode which is part of why I held back my comments. It's a fun arcade game, very duck-hunt like but in 3D, it was neat! Having the ducks multiply definitely stressed me out and I think maybe caused a balancing issue with the amount of time you have to survive for. I found the aiming to be jittery as ProgrammerOnCoffee said, but I liked the scope view, it felt pretty good. It's missing a bit of visual art polish and the music didn't seem to fit the vibe of the game, it felt like old YouTube vlog music that you'd use for B roll of someone walking through an airport. Didn't quite hit the right spot for me.

Congratulations on your submission, and honorable mention in the livestream! Keep building :)

TeaHands, it has been incredible having you as a part of this jam. You really brought a lot to the table and inspired others in the community to share their own work here with us on the community page. Even though you weren't able to submit, I think I can speak for everyone here by saying this jam would not have been nearly as much of a success as it was without your participation and engagement. The main reason we started this was to help build a strong community about our collective passion for indie games, and your contributions have helped bring that dream closer to reality.

It has been amazing getting to know you a bit through these devlogs, and we hope you continue to engage with us and the little community we have started here at The Indie Den <3

I second this motion, let the people watch birds! Haha

Brandon, I have to say I truly enjoyed your devlogs, and playing your game. Yours is the only one taking place underwater! And you already saw my comments on your initial cutscene dialogue that I thoroughly enjoyed.  It was an honor and a privilege being able to help motivate you to push through and finish a game with our game jam. Whether you choose to continue this project or start a new one, we hope you will continue to build on this incredible jam finish and make more games. I for one, look forward to seeing you in our next jam :)

This was an incredible idea, I had a lot of fun playing your game! So sorry your whole family got sick, that's never fun. Whether you decide to continue updating this game or not (please let us know when you do update it!)  it was an honor selecting All hail the Ghooth for the top 10, and congrats on placing 4th overall! You have our love and respect for sticking with it and making something awesome. We hope to see you in our next jam!

Oh one quick additional comment is when you snipe the geese their buddies all just stand around like nothing happened. Very easy low-risk solution to kill all the geese from afar without ever putting yourself in danger, and they don't do anything to protect themselves from elimination at-range.

Browser version took a while and didn't load for me. Downloadable (win) took a while to load as well but once I got playing things were super smooth! Really liked the AR and the snipers. The gooses don't have great intelligence, they sorta bum-rush you which is fine for a jam game! I also turned down the difficulty to about half on the slider so I don't know if that impacted the enemy behaviors. Future updates some more intelligent enemies would be cool.

Congratulations on your submission, keep on building :)

Hi score 3092! Great job with this one, awesome little game and I love the intro dialogue, really adds character to the whole thing. 

Congrats on your submission! Keep on building :)

Yeah so I'm pretty good at this hahaha I got to 64,500! Being able to see the vision of the zombies helps a lot, because I know exactly how close I have to get to tease them into my boost splat that kills them. I had a lot of fun with this one, but it would be cool to see additional upgrades, maybe allow eating the ducks while you're infected to get more points while you go back to the stinkpot, and also doing the infinite map like how pac-man does it so when you leave one edge you come back in the other side. I found myself liking to run fast in one-direction rather than try to stay close to the pot, but it would be cool if the pot wasn't so far away by the time I need it. 

Congrats on your submission and keep building :)

I'd like to see someone try to beat my score. -> 64,500!

I agree with this!

Amazing, gameboy vibes. Loved it. Needs more! I couldn't beat goosebert :( the big balls are difficult to dodge once you run out of mirror power especially at the end when there are lasers happening at the same time. Probably by design, I'd say it's probably pretty well balanced. Would be more fun with a 2nd player but the pace was slow enough so I could play both at the same time pretty much.

Congrats on your submission and keep building :)

yep using W key worked for me to get my goose up there!

This was fun! A silly concept that I enjoyed diving into. I think you can run far away from the items and the duck spawns. I almost didn't figure out how to play as I thought you had to click the play button instead of moving the duck into it. That part wasn't super clear I stumbled on it by chance. Best score I got was 17. Sound design could use a little work and could benefit from some more polish. Also whether I could escape the ducks or not seemed sort of random to me, the game could benefit from some balancing and recording high scores. Overall a fun time!

Congrats on your submission! Keep building :)

I got non-playable frame rates both in browser and download version. I had my friend try it and had the same issue on Mac. Shame as this looks cool, I wish I could play it the way it was intended. 

In any case, congrats on getting this submitted! Keep building :)

Windows build cleared for entry. Game should be called a precision platformer, it was very difficult and buggy (level art would come in and out occasionally) Really hard to get through the tunnel part of the first level, I never made it after 10 or so attempts and got frustrated and quit.

After my 3rd attempt I had seen all the adaptations that were the "hidden geese". Some are subtle like when the feet are the only changed part bc they're tiny. But really once I figured it out the game was boring because I got too good at it. Got to 67 before I voluntarily smacked a duck to end the game.

I'd recommend adding some additional challenge as your score climbs higher. Maybe your time to select gets quicker, or the ducks/geese come flying in faster and faster. Some cool upgrade or score multiplier would go a long way too, and a leaderboard.

Overall I had fun. Congrats on your submission! Keep building :)

Character mechanics were pretty floaty, I felt like you could use more gravitational force bringing the character back down to really tighten up the movement mechanics. Overall I enjoyed running, jumping, and crawling through the tutorial level and I'm looking forward to later updates.

Congrats on your submission, and keep building :)

Fun game! I got to 454 for my high score after about 10 or so attempts. Started to get the hang of it there but interested if anyone got a higher score!

The overall vibe is great, and I see how you stretched the theme here to make an interesting puzzle game. The timer and high score elements are really good design choices and kept me coming back to challenge myself. Awesome work and it looks well polished too!

contrats on your submission!

Wait is the song a recording of you playing guitar!? SUPER COOL. I also love that you have two modes, the chill mode and the "no birds allowed". One addition that would be nice is to see my score live when I'm playing no birds allowed! I got to 182 final score on my first playthrough, now I'm just letting it run to listen to the nice guitar and watch the birds swim in the pond in the chill mode :)

Edit: love how it keeps the high score on the main menu. I played again and got 247!

WOW! I was honestly hoping someone would run with the "hey the theme is a childrens game let's put it in a squid game environment" take! And you exceeded my expectations! This is an awesome game. I got a bit frustrated though because the game is difficult. Not that I would change that, but you have to be very quick and precise with your dashes to avoid taking damage, I was button mashing in panic lol. It's one of those games you die round after round until you learn all the little secret passageways and kinks to finally be able to beat it. I beat the first guy but the second one was tough and I gave up after about 4 attempts on him. Great work and congrats on your submission!

Dude congratulations on your submission. This game is incredible. It's simple but the vibe is eclectic, and the puzzles are really fun to play. Good work!

Calling all jammers,

That's right, you all know already but we're going to have a little bit of fun with selecting our jam winner. Mark your calendars for:

This Saturday September 6th @16:00 Eastern we are going to be reviewing the top selected games with StayAtHomeDev and Seth Coster LIVE on Twitch at the Indie Den: TheIndieDen - Twitch

The winner will be decided by community (that's you all!) and panelist votes. Who's bringing an army to stack the odds in your favor to vote for your game?

We're incredibly excited to celebrate all the amazing games you guys made. We'll see you on the stream!

-Ethan

WOW, when I slapped my first goose and realized that it would chase me (usually in a circle if I chose the correct goose) to go back to the spot it started to retrieve an egg I was SHOOK. What awesome and creative theme adherence to the game Duck Duck Goose! Very elegant solution, and not only that, but this game SLAPS.

Puzzles were genuinely fairly difficult and fun, and I like the addition of the river and alligator elements that helped add complexity to the puzzles in a fun and interesting way. You really had me dialed in for 7 levels before I reached level 8 and decided I was good for my first playthrough. 

As constructive feedback, while "Q" makes sense for "Quack" I wish it was SHIFT. This would allow me to chaotically spam the quack much easier when I'm tooling around the map. Q is hard because I I'm using WASD to move, so it takes me out of my movement groove. I did love smack talking the geese after I won a tough round with a cackle of quack-ter.

Music was a bit repetitive, wish there was more variety in later levels, but really not a big deal on that because if the music was changing up a bunch it may have taken away from my concentration. I noticed the subtle change when the geese start chasing you, nice design choice.

Great game. Congrats on your submission!

This game has not been cleared as download-only for this jam. Please provide justification for why you were unable to submit a browser build.

I saved the prince(ss)! Love the animation you get on the title screen at the end it was a fun surprise :)

Overall the game is simple and it delivers its premise well. I love the walking animation, the neck action and flippers are great lol, that was probably my favorite!

Congratulations on your submission!