itch.io

I am completely unsure how to rate this. Utterly blown away by what y'all made here. This is a WHOLE strategy game and I just passed half an hour exclusively playing for fun, not for scoring. Made it halfway through summer. There were some days where I couldn't do anything substantial because I needed an axe and didn't pull one, and couldn't buy seeds because I had no money. It eventually worked out (and learning I could use crops to gain energy that day or in the future certainly helped)!

As has already been said, can't really give this too many points on NES feel. What's here is incredibly polished but neither the audio nor graphics seem plausible for the NES. Don't let that put this game down though because like... it's a full game. Made in around 2 weeks. Still blown away by how complete this is! I'll probably bookmark it and share with some friends when the jam is over. This is exactly my kind of game LOL

This might qualify as a rage game LOL

At first I was mad about there not being checkpoints but in reality it's not a long game. Routing a safe path to the end while getting all the gems was fun. I didn't know you could slash until the boss, so maybe that skewed my perception haha

Wish there was audio! Or maybe there is, and I've broken it somehow?

Also, if you die (not game over, just respawn) the gem counter doesn't reset despite the gems themselves respawning. You can go over the max that way.

Kinda cool subversion of Castlevania! The UI had me thinking it was time to break property and slash some zombies, but the light mechanics were a really nice surprise. I didn't get too far. I thought walking off the right side of the screen would transition to the next level, but instead I just walked off the map and died. I'd like to see more explorations of the light mechanic because the concept of temporary vs. permanent light sources and enemies reacting to light differently seems like a delight. Looks like a recipe for multiplicative design!

Y'all probably know this but the web build isn't configured properly for itch, so I had to download the .exe. My computer was unhappy but I'm a little too trusting of internet executables 😂
I bet other folks aren't so trusting and that's why y'all have less ratings. This entry should get some more eyes on it!!

The concept for this is incredible. I love how you get dropped in with nothing, and the mechanics, game-over screen, and title of the game explain the premise. Floating in space, a timer counts down. You land on a planet, You Are Out Of Fuel. You die, The Sun Awakens. Each planet's threat level marks its hostility. And planets in closer orbit to the Sun have higher threat levels. The goal was never stated and I haven't beaten the game, but I can imagine very clearly what it is. This rocks lol.

The music is also stellar. It communicates the same feelings of isolation, threat, and growing stronger (as the songs regularly start soft and get real groovy!) Please release the soundtrack when y'all finish tinkering with the game. Please!!

My main points of criticism are SFX, the leveling screen, and difficulty. It seems like most collectables on the planets don't play sound. You collect fuel to leave the planet, but I also collected a moon-symbol thing and wasn't sure what it was. Having a sound there could associate it with something else, which would help. The leveling system itself was cool but often times it would pop up while I was slashing an enemy, so I'd accidentally click an upgrade before I knew the menu was up. As for difficulty I like the enemy designs and level system, but the threat level being tied to distance from the sun has an interesting issue. Planets in further orbit are naturally a bit farther apart since their orbit is much longer. That made it harder to find low-threat-level planets. I never saw a planet with a threat level of 2. I died very fast on threat levels 3-5. I was able to cheese a threat level 4 planet by killing an enemy that got stuck, which let me level up a few times. Still ended up dying very fast though!

Keeping my criticism specific because this game's concept and presentation are very cool. Some little quality-of-life changes would go a long way. Everyone who worked on this should be proud!!

Hard to figure out what to say since it's a prototype. It's definitely the most vibey prototype I've played in a while! The music is my favorite part. The character designs are all so cute and the movement feels nice!! I knowww it's a prototype but I would've liked to do the first little part that's here without damage boosting over the spike pit to the right of spawn. This could be a really cool outdoorsy themed game where u beat up 'n befriend all sorts of wildlife n critters,, i'm here for the vision

Wow okay, this was a lot more than I was expecting! At first I was ready to drop the game. Was confused by the basket system, thought I was pressing the wrong button and accidentally opening the shop. Once I understood what was going on though, the fun appeared!

Love the idea that most of the shop items are technically optional. Every purchase feels like progress and you can get pretty "strong" once you get a basket upgrade and the doubled sale prices. I was also very surprised by the inclusion of a little animated end cutscene! Feels like y'all set up my expectations with the gameplay and story, and when I collected the crystal ball I thought "did I finish the game? what does getting the crystal ball do?" and it turned into a nice little sequence. 

For constructive feedback, I think it'd be good to have some audiovisual feedback to indicate that you're returning to the shop automatically because the basket is full. Would help tutorialize the game much more naturally. Also, I had 4 cursed items and found one in the shop...? But after purchasing, it didn't seem to count towards buying the crystal ball. I decided to do more fishing and hoped it would cause the store to refresh. I found another cursed item while I was fishing, so I technically ended the game with 6 cursed item (the UI only showed 5).

That's all I've got. Fun little game! Good job team :)

Can definitely tell this is pretty early, but you have a good platformer base here. This game would definitely benefit from either a zoomed out camera, or a camera that doesn't follow the player exactly. It was hard to make jumps using the clouds when the ground was off-screen!

Wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, but I love Kirby's Adventure so that's a plus to me!

Audio sounds just right and the art is adorable. I did get a little frustrated trying to grasp the mechanics. The level design asks for verticality frequently but the player can't really access much vertical movement without landing on the yoyo, which itself requires at least two actions first (jumping in the air, then throwing out the yoyo to land on it). The physics feel good but I would have liked an easier way to ride the yoyo or some other means of moving vertically, like swinging around the yoyo like it's a pivot point mid-air.

I'm mostly complaining to complain. What a cute little game!!

Def 5/5 gameplay, introducing and removing rules using the stage name is sick and combining them leads to interesting combinations. Can see this being fun to play and compete with others on haha!!
Could never figure out how "Parry" works. That's my only real complaint.

Dungeon conquered in 5:14 with 5 curses!

Cool stuff here. I was unclear on the jumping mechanic. Sometimes I just couldn't make jumps even though I was moving horizontally like the tutorial said! But I do love the idea that you have to get the apex of your jump to line up with platforms so you can climb onto them. Feels like a mechanic that'd come from the early NES days where Arcade devs were trying console development for the first time. I can imagine a refined version of this on a cabinet at a bar for sure.

Music is really nice and the vfx when hitting enemies also look great. Good job here y'all!

Thanks for playin'!! Crouch was planned but I ran out of time, it'll be in a post-jam version.

Thanks for letting us know! Z-key is a known issue, but are you saying none of the input works? Can you walk around?
Pressing up on a window will take you to the stage fwiw 
TY for playing regardless! ₍^. .^₎⟆

Oooo, this looks promising! The dodge seems really fun and the idea of it getting more intense as you survive would be very exciting.

I don't know if this is the case on gamepad, but at least with mouse+WASD, aiming is pretty much completely broken. It looks like the turret aims towards your mouse but is also affected by the ship's rotation, so even if I landed a sick slowmo dodge I couldn't really hit what I was aiming at.

I like what's happening here though. The design itself is clear and focused, and online leaderboards front-and-center give a clear objective too. See me at the top 10 if these issues get sorted :)

Very fun for only 7 hours of work! 

Some notes:

• The cones in the last few levels added a lot to the game feel, letting go of accelerate became very important and felt unique
• Unfortunately though, the 7 levels prior felt kinda clunky without it

Could see this getting updated to improve the tree collision and add more levels/a level select. Grats on submission!!

This is my first time seeing it. Looks cool!

If I visit this project again after the jam, I'd like to add more movement options to Vi! We also have functionality for respawning, checkpoints, and environment hazards, but didn't have much time to make assets for it. We were most directly inspired by BRC and A Hat in Time, so I'd like to include more complicated level design that incorporates/rewards fun movement :)

thanks!! i agree. and i'm not biased either. 😂

Thanks! This is my first time programming a 3d project, and most of the jam was me figuring out the math for the dive. We do our best out here 😆

Cute little board-game experience! I have some issues with the game design (how most of the game is controlled by randomness) but the art and audio are both nice, and the issues are probably fairly simple to fix!

The amount of RNG removed most meaningful choices. The main choice appears to be between rolling for movement and rolling for stats, but both can lead to lost HP and this choice disappears during the boss. Unless I missed important info about the system? Oh well!

I'd recommend letting players input when the die is on their desired number, like lining up slots in a slot machine. Even if there's still chance behind-the-scenes, the input would at least add an illusion of control. That's all the game really needs to feel good tbh!!

Despite the consistent self-criticism in the game, I like the little narrative-focused experience that's here. This could definitely be a fun exploration of each character's personality and how the clutter of their offices communicates their feelings towards the work environment. Too bad about that sandwich, though! Would've liked to find it :)

You can throw downwards to boost yourself up :)

Okay this game is REALLY cool and I wish it was more clear what actions were happening, because it seems like the player's attacks activate and loop on rhythm, and the same goes for the enemies...! A rhythm based cooldown-action game is a wild thing to try for a jam. I just wish I could clearly see when I can and can't use my attacks, how to regain charges indicated in the top right, etc.
Keep it up because this could be fire!!

Cool concept! I like how fast the idea of a "moving object" changes over time. Doors, prison guards patrolling, a flowing river... if I made it further, I'm sure the ideas would continue to surprise me!
Unfortunately, I got stuck on the river screen. Standing on the red button activated another one, leaving the red button would despawn the other... and I couldn't freeze time on myself or either button. Stopping the river didn't seem to affect much other than if the river could push me or not.

I like this mechanic a lot though, so I encourage you to iterate on it after the jam! Best of luck!

33 was my high score! I can see this being a fun game to expand on. I like the idea that it's not height, but bounces that adds to your score. You can try to box the ball in but if an object isn't the right size, you might trap the ball or knock it away instead.
I believe the game would benefit from an outline of the object you're about to place, and the Tetris Hold/Next UI element. Being able to see what block comes next could add an element of forward thinking, rather than how it goes now with spamming left-click to box things in or trying to play pong with the ball as it leaves the screen.

Also, it might be more clean to have the game end when the ball exits the screen horizontally, instead of just vertically. Sometimes the ball would leave the screen and I'd have to sit there doing nothing for a few seconds before the game marked itself as over. 

Y'all should definitely work on this more because it feels like a classic browser game! High score, silly physics, easy to retry. I probably don't have to tell y'all that I wasn't feeling the theme in this one, but then again, I did anticipate a lot of folks interpreting "loop" as "game loop". Still had my fun with it all the same :)

Hype moments and aura. If y'all add some music and maybe let the camera see people behind you this'd be so much funnnn. See me in the Great Hamster Wheel Race

Hi! This game was made for an arcade cabinet, so the controls are pretty unorthodox on keyboard. Check the section on this page labeled "Controls" to see how player 1 navigates. Thanks!

Highlights
Always a fan of unique twists on popular genres! The level design here feels in touch with the core mechanic too, and that made my brain go :) as I figured out how to navigate. And that game over screen is really nice too. Whole game looks pretty!

Lower points
Some control stuff felt a lil janky. If I held a direction down to aim the head, threw the head, then threw it a second time without re-pressing the direction, the head wouldn't go where I wanted it to. I also managed to get myself stuck in a block, see screenshot for more! 

I'm gonna be picky about music cuz I'm a nerd hehe. The composition of the first theme that plays is nice! But the sounds wouldn't be able to play on GameBoy. Most people tend to miss that part so I won't knock it too hard. :p

Really enjoyed this overall. That lil opening cutscene is all I needed to like the strange headless skeleton. Lots of charm throughout!

Won't spoil much, but you'll want to start by heading to the top right of the manor for the first power. There's some puzzles along the way

Love the art style!! The setting is also very cute, playing as an evil scientist guy zapping objects with his grow/shrink ray while he escorts baby kaijus feels sufficiently quirky for a silly game like this. 

I love the idea of this game being broken into small challenges rather than a long continuous level. IMO, the scaling mechanic here felt strange (buggy?) because it wasn't always clear which objects were scalable. I assume it's only the objects with an outline when you hover them, but I couldn't always scale up my lil kaiju guy. Certain props also had thick black outlines too, despite not being scalable. Outside of that though, fun game! Music matches the charm, hatching eggs and sacrificing an upscaled baby kaiju gave variety... solid entry overall!

Nice!! Randomized wave survival with upgrade branches makes this a fun game to play and replay. I did have a very hard time reading the font, to the point where I felt like I didn't have enough information to make a decision at some upgrade screens. If you fix that and maybe also do a balance pass with enemy behavior (would sometimes get screens of entirely stationary enemies who couldn't hurt me because they shot in a straight line), you'll have something that feels great to die and retry to.

Good work!

Thank you!!

thank you so much 🥺

Thanks for all the feedback and the compliments!! I reported the music looping issue on the title screen during playtesting but Single Shot said it was intentional... :p give my music more screentime darn ittt

I'm impressed you found a bug with the Botanical Gardens boss that we didn't, we were in a discord call screensharing our gameplay to Single Shot and yelling at the boss for it being too difficult LOL
Hope we can fix all this stuff post-jam! You rock for catching all these things and playing our game :)

Ok wow, this game's really fun! At first I was like "aw man, I can't believe I have to start over from the beginning every time I die" but... levels are really fast and it's almost a warioware-like flow state when you get really far in! The lover just kinda ascending towards the player like a magnet is fun too.

My only gripe is that sometimes the lover dies offscreen, which can be frustrating near the end of the game. Didn't beat it but I liked how the difficulty increased each level.

Def an underrated entry. Music is solid, especially the 4th(?) track where it gets dramatic and fun. :)

Love me a good survivors game. Great job with this! I like the idea of using inventory space for the theme, choosing places for powerups was pretty novel at first. But honestly, the player levels up so slowly after the first few upgrades that I wasn't able to ever max out the inventory. Also at some point during my run, the game just... closed? Didn't crash, the window just stopped being a thing. I was having fun though, and that's important. I don't think the Gameboy'd be able to render so many enemies to the screen at once, but that aside I really liked the sprite work for the enemies and player. Had a great time overall, be proud of this one!

Also, when I reopened the game, the mouse was in the window and transformed into the left-right drag icon. I dragged out of curiosity, and the window froze then closed. We love game jam bugs!

Isn't a review of the game, but after downloading Windows marked the .exe as a trojan and removed it from the OS entirely. Not sure what caused that, but...? Might be worth taking a look

I like the concept of the gameplay. The wild movement and jetpack as a limited action could be used in really fun ways! But I found the very first bits of the level design frustrating, because some jumps were only just barely doable with the jetpack filled all the way. There was also a tutorial explaining how to pick up items, but I never learned what item I picked up, why I did, or if I could use it.

As for the Gameboy part of the jam... the resolution, graphics, and audio don't fit within the limitations of the Gameboy. The limited colors are fine, but the window's not square and the audio uses realistic sounds (the Gameboy could only produce sequenced music on a handful of waveforms and audio had to be intensely downsampled through DPCM). The physics are also likely not possible on the Gameboy. I'm no programmer so I can't 100% verify that, but the amount of smoothing between values required to recreate that feel could take up a lot of processing time.

This'd be a cool gameplay mechanic/vibe for you all to improve on post-jam though, I like the premise a lot :)

Like Clark said, the graphics feel like they belong to an older console... the Game Boy could absolutely run this, but it feels like Happy Space Cleaning Day's inspired by really really old PC games or Atari 2600 games. Sound's also pretty harsh. High notes in chiptune have to be written very carefully to avoid this...! I struggled with that a lot when I was getting into chiptune.

Imagining what this game would look like was fun though. A person walking through different apartments and inspecting all the furniture to clean things up sounds like it could be cozy (like how Power Wash Simulator got very popular off a similar idea).

Congrats on getting your game in, and happy ratings!

Heya! This is cute and I like the idea of creating a custom alien to platform with. The music was fun and the sound effects were (importantly) pleasant on the ears! That doesn't always happen in jams like this.
The game itself is pretty short, though I guess you all probably know that. Is it just me, or does the level sometimes have an extra eyeball enemy on the right side? It could be cool if the level changed a bit each time...! Maybe that's how this game works, but I couldn't tell after about 5 go-throughs.

Congrats on making it to the end of the jam!

Nice job on this! I played normal and easy and will probably give hard a shot soon. Cool that there's these options in a jam game!! And seeing the "hero" party have different party members in easy made me want to replay again in hard.

I was a lil confused at first with the summoning screen. I'd assumed I could summon multiple of the same unit so I kept clicking the one slot and wondering what was going on with my remaining mana. Bit silly of me in hindsight!

Also would be nice to have the player's menu buttons hide while the attack phase was happening. Would be a good way to direct the player's attention to the action!

Congrats on submitting, this was a nice lil experience!

Took me a minute to find the game, then another minute to figure out how it worked... but the puzzles are really smart and having a block that destroys the dangerous blocks added an interesting layer to the puzzle solving. Didn't beat it, but I had fun with what I played! Glad you were able to get something in, if it ends up counting.