Cool game! Great atmosphere, calm but foreboding. I enjoy the aesthetic of the game a lot.
Gameplay concept is interesting. I found it the most fun/engaging when i had a choice to do a more urgent task (that has less time) or one that was further away (takes more time). for instance you can put off refilling the generator for a while because it's near the shed, but the docks are far and take more planning and investment. There might be more of those moments if the timers and/or distances were longer and/or more varied.
The added element of repelling ghosts while running around doing tasks adds a nice extra thing to account for.
I'm clearly missing something because the character's jump can't make it over the second pillar at the very start. Based on some comments there's a way to jump higher but after 10 minutes of experimenting with the controls I couldn't figure out what the input is supposed to be.
check the game page for instructions/controls. I didn't manage to get a proper tutorial or anything. I wish they showed the game description on jam submission pages!
If we all "adapted" we would swiftly live in a world where every piece of art around us is an algorithmic rehash of the last original human ideas that were published X years ago.
dev should be commended for the effort of making a video game, and simultaneously condemned for soliciting money using unethical tools (trained on unpaid/uncredited artists and actively supplanting artists' roles in projects like this)
If this dev is simply "recreating their own drawings using AI" then why is this fact not disclosed in any of the marketing? Your argument would hold water if they detailed their process and showed how they only use it to glitz up their shading or whatever. Given what the art actually looks like and the lack of reference for what the creator's art looks like without AI, we shouldn't assume they've done any more than give the AI a pose and rough character design to work with. The visual assets created are still unambiguously the product of AI generation.
great concept and I enjoyed the tech demo, but I got halfway through playing it before I realized all the art was AI. I wouldn't actually mind if it weren't true that BOTH: > this page nor any page about the game, nor their patreon discloses that the art is made using assistance from generative AI (EDIT: okay if you dig into the tags on this page it has the ai tag. I don't believe this is sufficient and I would bet I'm not alone in feeling that way.)
> they are actively soliciting money (through patreon) for development on these titles that are using AI trained on unpaid/uncredited artists' work.
I had to dig through the discord to find the creator discussing their methods. Apparently they do sketch character poses, but I couldn't find any detailed documentation on their process. It would be inaccurate to say they "basically draw it themselves and let AI fill in the blanks" and you can tell as much from the art in game. What's kind of disappointing to me is there's really only like half a dozen or so still poses of three characters thus far? A perfectly achievable scope in a reasonable time if they chose to use their own finished art. I think the planned game is also a reasonable scope to have genuine human art done, either by the creator themselves or a partner/contracted artist.
I'm not going to be as vitriolic as other commenters but the fact that AI use is not disclosed at all in any marketing surrounding this game is unambiguously unethical.
Please reconsider your dev workflow or at the very least your level of forthrightness with your audience.
not sure if im allowed post links like this but here's a mega link to the zip i just redownloaded of the jam build. Thank you for the interest in playing my game ^^
Fantastic! I can tell Rain World inspired you and you have great taste. The atmosphere is top notch and the visual style is excellent. The use of stark shadows and ambiguous terrain contrast, while frustrating at times, is a really quick and effective way to get me thinking about every step and approaching this world with a sense of caution, fear and fascination. The little popping plants on level three, my fave. It did seem like on level 3 i got three or so consecutive rests where the only thing around was food behind blue card doors and nary a card in sight.
I ended up finding TWO guns and an axe and a grenade on floor 2 after getting booted from 4 and 3, and on my run through three i fell and died with both guns ;_______;
Feels like a full game even though I don't think I reached the end. Might try again later tonight. Good job!
no don't apologize, thank you! That's really heartening to hear.
In order to suit the theme most, I leaned more into aberration crafting as the core point, when really the potion crafting is the foundation, and something you need to get decent at to keep the economics rolling to eventually have the resources you need for aberrations. In a future version there may be more reward or narrative focus on keeping your shop running at the same time, but the narrative stuff that is in the game only took shape on the last day really!
And also, those additional plot beats definitely would involve Zombie Ricardo, so take heart in that haha.
oh yeah that feature is a must-know for 2d games in unreal. i didnt realize it existed until i watched cobra code's fantastic tutorials on the subject.
And yeah, I actually downloaded a plugin to add niagara particle support to widget BPs, but i didn't have time to learn or implement them unfortunately.
Also it's not intended to be confusing when things explode--it happens when too much energy is produced (more than 3 in a slot or more than 7 in the center) but with how elements react when you use multiple reagents in the same reaction it can be a bit hard to tell what the end result will be. I had intended to convey that better with vfx particles representing the energy moving from place to place in the circle, but I ran out of time!
Thank you for playing my game and for the thoughtful feedback!
I think you raise a really good point! And I think respecting the player's need to actually "waste" ingredients in figuring stuff out by being more generous about it is a simple change that would have big positive effects! (Edit: I've just implemented single items in the shop with quantity between 1 and 3 for a small bump in price in the dev build and I think it does in fact make a world of difference, so thank you again!)
Unfortunately I only had a playable build on the second to last day and had no time to get any playtesting feedback. I'd like to prioritize that in future jams but I'm still glad I actually managed to finish one :D :D :D
Anyway, if you liked the game, I will likely update a post-jam version with some bugfixes, more polish, and certain balance changes like this! Stay tuned :3
Cute game :3 A bit difficult to execute a long term breeding plan with intentionality, but i like the creative use of hex color codes to make it appreciable at a glance instead of needing to constantly check a list of stats and tags.
Also I have a feeling this was partly inspired by a certain defunct flash game, and i wanna say i see n appreciate u ;3
cool game! I like the jetpack platforming. Might be even neater if it were a little less floaty or with a little more air control. I also dig some of the visuals/post processing room and the night vision activation was a nice touch, reminded me of Metroid Prime.
You're spot on about that, lol. For better and worse I like it and it's been my primary engine since I started learning it a few years ago. I plan to make different kinds of games in it. I've steered clear of Unity for Reasons but I may still learn Godot at some point, or make 2D games of this scope in Game Maker instead which I have experience in as well. Notably, this project was also a prototype for a mechanic I plan to add to another game as well, that I'm making in Unreal, which is why I didn't use GM for the jam ^//^;;
I will definitely admit this game is a bit arcane! Part of that is intentional, but the other part is lack of playtesting. I'll endeavor to make it more understandable in the future, as well as polish up things including the sprites. But I'm glad you like them anyway :3
Unfortunately the scaling thing was something I realized once I actually built the game and surprisingly it's NOT a simple fix for unreal engine games. I found posts on the epic forums complaining about this from 8 years ago! In a post jam version i aim to fix it but I think I will have to resize all the elements in every widget to do so <_<
And ur right, a dialogue speed slider would be clutch. I should have thought of that--it would have been a quick fix!
dragging the mouse to queue moves for the squids should be better explained, but this is a really neat way to handle the "reverse pac man" idea! I like that you don't just play as one of the squids in real time but tactically maneuver all of them. Fun art style.
This is a great take and I can see why it's hot. To offer another perspective, I love the new character design for Candace because it's the opposite/complement to what's described here.
That Candace seems like a perfect businesswoman that happens to be a slut and is adept at ignoring the lewd.
But the current Candace is like the perfect slut who has found a way to hack in it corporate life. I love the vibe of her trying to keep composure and generally not being good at it. Her productivity problems might annoy people but no one can really be mad at their employer-provided cumdump for long. (see: the "mistakes in your report" dialogue)
The feeling of sluttiness endearing you to a community or allowing them to gloss over flaws/mistakes is a powerful fantasy this game captures perfectly.
