itch.io

Missed the yandere tags and didn't see anything about it in the description, so it caught me off guard and kinda bummed me out.
Cute game otherwise, though. Voice acting does the job, and the effort is appreciated

Great concept, could be something very neat with a bit more polish and better controls/marking options

Very clever game, makes great use of its different elements and the interactions between them.

I do think that some of the later puzzles have a bit too many steps, moving parts, and layouts that obscure parts of the solution more than they really need to, but maybe people smarter than me are be fine with that. I still enjoyed beating it regardless

Try jumping or doing any attack (especially the upwards special move) in the defend phase, and you should see the difference instantly.

The story isn't meant to be taken seriously, it's comedically melodramatic on purpose haha

The small size of the game is due to the fact that almost half the stuff I made for it had to be cut last second. All the battles and cutscenes after the intro were made in one day at the end of the jam, since this is the only way I could have included a final boss Hawk death in time.

On the difficulty curve... different players had trouble with different parts; some people struggled on the birds battle and then two-rounded Hawk. That sorta stuff just happens with video game difficulty!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

I made it in GameMaker Studio actually; coding almost everything from scratch was a big part of the reason I ended up being so pressed for time to finish it in the end

Oh, that! Well, he intentionally fakes you out with the countdown before his fist slam attack, but it's not random, he picks one type of fakeout and sticks with it until he's taken enough damage to move on to the next. Sorry, I didn't realize that could come off as unintended behavior.

As for the slowdown on attacks, all of your attacks are slower if you try to use them during the enemy's turn, and the special moves are just the ones that are most affected by that. One thing that I do think I should've done is make those attacks stronger the more slowed down they are, but I didn't consider that until too late

I'm going to admit that I have no idea what you mean by "reaction times being janky." Telegraphs and guard timing are all consistent and working as intended, and that aspect of the game in particular is balanced exactly the way I want it to be after feedback from playtesters.

If it's just that the attacks are too fast for some players to react to, then yeah, I'm sorry about that... I always like to try to accommodate for players of differing skill levels when I'm making games that are meant to be harder, but I ran out of time to include the kind of difficulty options I usually do... Thanks for giving it an honest shot anyway, though!

As for the final boss and ending, there's just one ending that plays the first time you lose, and a different ending if you win

Well, what killed that feature was more like, poor prioritization. The code for using skills is in the game, but not the skills themselves, because I instead spent that time making a bunch of other things... which all got cut last minute to make the version of the game that got released instead. Still in the game's code, just unused and inaccessible. Like the half-finished world map and half-finished towns with NPCs and stuff, now reduced to a fancy title screen decoration, ahaha

If I hadn't started 10 days late and knew the direction I wanted to take the game from the start I totally coulda done it, but hey, that's game jams baybee!! Aside from a few things like that, I'm mostly satisfied with the form it ended up taking anyway

The game is beatable without perfectly timing your guards if you don't spend too much Power during attack turns, but I definitely could've made un-timed guards a lot less expensive.

I really wanted to focus on the tension that comes from managing that meter, making the choice to either spend more for a more reliable defense or risk it all for the reward of perfect guards in the middle of a difficult fight, but balancing that while taking into account players of varying skill levels was a real challenge.

The original plan also included skills that you could use outside of action turns, spending Power for uncontested damage or support effects, and a second party member who specialized more in that sort of thing. I wish I'd had the time to include that!

Oh for sure, made a couple puzzle-heavy games myself so I totally know how it is

There are only three battles, so you didn't miss too much.

I made it with GameMaker Studio!

Very fun concept, I love the ideas of a zombie making an event out of being put to rest, and of all the suspects frantically piling fake evidence onto the body until it becomes a chaotic mess.

I had a bit of trouble following the logic for what evidence to present, but got through it eventually and still had fun

I quite like the writing and presentation of this one. The hawk as a little parrot is cute, rest in peace little guy...
Small issue: it's possible to get softlocked in the stealth room if you get sent back to the start while the minecarts are in a spot where you can't push them out of the way from that side

The defense turns were intended to be just for defense with dealing damage as only a risky secondary option, but you make a very fair point, I coulda leaned more into the risk-reward side of things in that aspect as well

The dungeon is shaped like a heart, and the secret area is in the one square on the map that's missing to complete that shape (or if by "secret boss" you already mean the one in that room, then unfortunately there isn't anything else)

Although, if you ask me, the Fierce Aunnlettes aren't worth beating. The fight at the end of the secret area is the worst thing ever, even with the highest possible stats. Whoops!

I didn't consider that it might come off that way, oops!

Glad to hear you still enjoyed it otherwise 👍👍👍

Out of the 70-80 planned puzzles, I could only finish the first 28 for this game... almost exclusively the introductory ones in the bottom half of the difficulty curve 😅

Obviously I overscoped, but such is the game jam experience

Even if the controls are difficult and there's a bit lacking in the visual clarity and audio design departments, once I got the hang of the mechanics I was grooving.

I think the one move I didn't really make much use of was the teleport, because the button was awkward to press and it felt very risky to use. But, I loved the gun-kicking and gun-exploding and it felt great to rack up big damage on an enemy with repeated shots, kicks, and gunsplosions to the face, or handling big groups of enemies by kicking their bullets all over the place.

I actually expected the bosses to be a bit harder, but I'm not complaining. Enjoyed the couple good cinematic bits with them and the last boss's big final patterns, even if the dialog that probably would've really tied it all together was missing.

I adore Panel De Pon, but this didn't click with me in nearly the same way. The new garbage blocks blend in with the other blocks visually and mechanically, really mess with the control you have over your board in an inconsistent and confusing way, and are extremely difficult to intentionally make chains out of for the kind of back-and-forth volleys of big attacks that I like to see. The other new mechanics didn't do much for me, either.

That's just me being a purist and wanting more of the original experience, though. It's fine to do your own thing rather than making a direct copy, and it's an otherwise generally solid game.

Besides that, there's just that the designs and colors on the blocks are a bit too noisy and hard to parse when quickly surveying the whole board at a brief glance, and the sound effects could've done a bit more to convey what was going on, I suppose?

Everyone else has already talked about how I feel about the gameplay, but still, top scores for every aspect of the presentation at least

Fun writing with a very cute premise!

There are lots of creative and unique bullet patterns, but I gave up on actually dodging any of them pretty much immediately. To that end, I think making the swords charge much, much faster (especially the bullet-clearing one) might've helped it work more as a game?

If you're leaning more into the visual spectacle than the difficulty then you may as well make the player over-the-top powerful as well, otherwise the players who care about not getting hit will feel powerless and frustrated even with infinite lives

Easy 5 stars for the visuals, so cute and silly

The combo of enemies that force you to keep an extremely far distance to not get instakilled and their hitboxes becoming only a couple pixels on the screen when you do makes this very inaccessible to someone like me who has never played this sort of game before, but it's fun when you can get into a groove

I knew about the airdodge, but couldn't make much use of it beyond occasionally adding a bit of correction to missed jumps

The spritework is undeniably gorgeous, some genuine top-notch pixel art especially for a jam game, and the chiptunes were very nice. A very ambitious entry with lots of skill on display, even if it didn't get finished.

I gotta dock a few points for gameplay though; it's generally solid, but I had to restart multiple times after dying due to being unable to move backwards or turn around in the air, bumping into enemies as I was trying to attack them (especially the aerial ones), or getting leap-of-faith'd by the camera. Nue is also hard to aim and kinda useless :(

I fully agree about the difficulty curve. Had to cut half the areas I wanted to do, and didn't have time to finish the real challenging level(s) in area 3, all because I spent that time building all the levels as areas you could walk around in when I could've just had a simple level select menu :( Sacrifices made in the name of The Vibes...

Kaguya and Mokou will get back together after a dramatic trading of blows and an emotional argument about what it means to live forever

Sequel, probably not. Another story in the same world, outside of the castle? Perhaps~

Hard to say, my estimates always end up being way off. Really would like to have it done this year, though

Slay the Dark Evil Queen; there's a demo available for it but it's quite outdated by this point

At first I was very concerned by the lack of sheep, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the game was still very cute and good despite the absence of that essential element.

The tunes in the rhythm sections got my head bobbin' a few times, especially Farm Machine

I love Romio and Juriette, it's my favorite lesbian romance story by the famous Japanese playwright Lilyium Shakespeare

My main project has been taking away a lot of the time I'd like to be able to spend finishing this one, so it may take a while, but I'll do my best!

Of the stuff I've worked on, this style of slash-n-dash action RPG combat might be my favorite, so I'll definitely return to it again with a full commercial-size project someday. I'll probably do more with the first-person dungeon crawl side of things someday too, though with an entirely separate project, haha

One of her, one of the ghost, one of both

So, it took me a bit to recognize your username, but, funny coincidence; I have in the past definitely considered hiring you for a future project at some point. This game was sort of like a practice round for that project, but I'm not sure if I'll ever end up with the budget to like, hire people, in general. I do respect what I've seen of your writing abilities quite a bit though, so the idea is appealing

I showed her several photos of that person but they didn't work, seems to have turned out to be a bug with the photo system

I've stepped away from the shorter regular jams for personal reasons, but I'll still be around for the pride jams!

If you want moves with less commitment, use light attacks and dodge-cancel often.

I may have sobbed a little while reading this. Cried, definitely

I'm not entirely sure, it was something to do with the conditions for how the "landing" state was being set. The bug ended up disappearing when I was fixing something else entirely at around that part of the code, so now I may never truly know

Yep, I got that bug fixed for the next version. It showed up within hours of release and I couldn't figure out what was causing it in time.