itch.io

Thanks for the feedback, definitely some of the early fights are a little "interaction light". You might have gotten a little unlucky too though, there is a force that pulls every top towards the centre already and a boundary force that pushes them back into the circle, on top of all tops homing in on enemy tops (acccording to their brashness). If I do an update I'll try tweaking some of those values!

Probably the most serious game in the whole jam. I know you joked about unskippable cutscenes but they should definitely be skippable. It took me a while to figure out the timings on when to swing to consistently hit my opponents, but the game was enjoyable once I got there. When is Honse! 4?

Super cute. Loved all the pixel art and the mechanics were really creative. Some more feedback on how many lives the boss has would be helpful, after I hit him three times I wondered if it was an infinite fight. The background music was a jam. 

Incredible. Beautiful, totally cohesive art style. Adding the shadow as the arrow was a great touch, but once I got used to the controls I found I barely even needed to look at it. The game feels great, looks great, sounds great. It would fit right in in a "new retro" collection like UFO50. I see in your screenshots there's a parallel tutorial, but I don't remember ever seeing that in game, but exploring the controls was fun in its own right. Very glad I got to play this :)

Excellent song as a backing track, would have been cool to have some collision sounds to go along with them. The movement/combat felt very responsive and well-designed, but it seems like the best strategy might be to just avoid your opponent and pick up the stamina charges. All in all very cool and very fun!

Very unique. Loved the art style and the way the little globs moved around. I thought the level design was neat, especially since there were a few that you literally had to spin to win. Also your itch page is very nice, great work!

Interesting, thanks for the bug report, I didn't know about that one!

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the detailed feedback! I think all of your points make a lot of sense, if I do an update after the jam I will try to implement them!

I had a lot of fun with this one! It's really fun to just blast the other guys off the arena. The final boss guy was pretty tough but not too crazy, really well balanced.

Not only are there Legally Distinct Spinning Tops but there are Legally Distinct Building Bricks as well! Loved the toyroom setting and all the models that came with it. I thought the difficulty could ramp up faster, especially in the beginning. My favourite powerup is the knives!

Very polished, loved the camera zoom in on the tutorial prompts. I most liked the level where you climb upwards. I thought the tutorial prompts were more confusing than they were helpful, but that might just have been me and I beat the game anyways so no issues with the actual controls. I liked the addition of the extra collectibles/alternate paths to try out. 

Let it ride! I had fun, but didn't totally understand the timings on attacks.

Very serious indeed. I won on my second run but I'm not really sure why? Popularity gains/war progress from events seemed pretty much random. Loved that the oil refinery name changed every time, Dinosaursoup was my favourite.

Great, consistent visual identity. I loved the office chatter noises. I got a leaderboard score but some of those scores are wild, how do they do it!? Excellent choice to include the phone on the title screeen so we can figure out the mechanics before starting. 

Incredibly unique take on the theme! Probably one of the most well-paced metroidvania games I've played in any jam. I think letting us know that we can stop the wheel ourselves was definitely the right choice, at several points there was only one creature type I wanted (and if I got another I had to find a spot to die :( ). Very effective use of minimal sound, especially loved it when the piano played back to you on a successful unlock. 

Mostly unrelated but I spend most of the game wondering why the "big frog" got the small symbol and the "small frog" got a big symbol. It took me way too long to realize that the "big frog" is probably acually a mole(?). 

Great work!

Very unique interpretation of the theme and a super polished UI. I played this on my phone and didn't have too much trouble with the three washers. Loved the little sock ghosts!

Great concept and execution. The puzzles are cool and the visual theme fits perfectly. I think the coloration on the blocker tiles could be adjusted to make it clearer what blocks what. Loved the sound the crank makes when you turn it, very clicky! 

Thanks for playing and for the review!

The visual style you've landed on us super cool. Loved all the quips from the parrot. The steering was pretty difficult but it was fun to spin the wheel really fast. Very satisfying and a cool experience around!

Nifty, great little twist on the clicker genre by tying two currencies to the click. I played this on mobile and think some of the minigames might be taking double inputs from screen presses  (unless you're supposed to always move two spaces in the grid game). 

I thought the incremental bit was quite well balanced, perfect for a gam jam entry, and I liked how the two currencies alternated between which was harder to get/more important as you chose different upgrades. 

The game also just has cool, chill vibes, I wish applying for jobs could actually be like this.

EDIT: forgot to mention that the ragebait moment was great!

Thanks for the share! Works perfectly on mobile, appreciate that you took the time to add those! I thought the visual style was nice and suited the genre you chose. The puzzles were well-made, as others have said it would be nice to have more levels. 

Thanks, it was exactly what I was after!

Thanks for sharing your game! Worked flawlessly on mobile. You executed really well on every aspect, I thought the menus and tutorial screens looked great. The gameplay was straightforward in a fun, arcadey way. As some others have mentioned. It would be nice to have an indicator telling you which direction the guy will move when you unfreeze. Very fun!

If you've made a web game that is playable on mobile, please share a link to it here! I want to play/rate more games but will be away from a PC for a little while. 

Thanks!

I'm fairly happy, I only had so much time because of work, but I feel like I managed to get a lot done. I had some stretch goals that I never got around to that definitely would have improved the aspects that are the main criticisms I (and reviewers) have, but I think I largely made the game I set out to make:

https://fourfortyfour.itch.io/mark-of-the-vortex

Very creative/unique. The creature designs were cute and the descriptions were very serious. I think spinning was mostly irrelevant, you could just put a creature in front and spam attack. I was also not sure if I won or there was a bug but after one fight the "continue" screen just didn't appear.  Loved the concept and would love to see it fleshed out a bit more!

Very cozy, the spinning/pot making mechanic is super well done. I would have liked to have a few more colours to work with!  Well worth the download!

Very unique take on the theme. The puzzle mechanics were well thought out and added new layers to the base mechanic. There is a bug where if you move backwards and then hit "undo" before you've fully moved, you can teleport backwards an extra square (and even outside of the map). 

Very creative interpretation of the theme, great visual design and clever puzzle mechanics as well. The particles were a little intense for my laptop, which made timing on some of the meat+lasers levels difficult, but I had a lot of fun anyways!

Here's mine, it's an auto battler with tops: https://fourfortyfour.itch.io/mark-of-the-vortex

Cool vibes and an interesting mechanic. Nice and juicy with those Balatro stylings. You should probably cut out the first 8 or so rounds, it's trivially easy to get a million or more points in a single hand/spin. 

I played for a long time and would love to see the concept fleshed out more!

There's something a little charming about controlling an awkward top from various camera angles in order to navigate the levels. I enjoyed it once I figured out what I was supposed to do.

Very fun! The controls are a bit slippery but at the same time it feels like a classic arcade game. Loved the visual style with the rotating arena. 

Cute game! I thought the voice-over tutorial was very charming. It took me a moment to realize that the big red Xs meant "you can put an upgrade here". While the tutorial was playing I was just shuffling hamsters around and had lots of starting energy. I thought it was very well-balanced and the fact that the hamsters had different stats was a cool mechanic.

5/5 very serious. I thought the bullet time launch was OP and allowed me to skip a lot of the platforming. The dialogue was fun (why does the cat have to file taxes if he has no income?). The animations and movement were top notch! 

Super fun, once you get the hang of it it's a real flow state generator. The incentive to just keep spinning is very on theme and also differentiates this game from other games like it. Loved the visuals and audio. 

Great game, my favourite I've played so far! I loved the juice on the scoring phase and the sounds were all great.  I played for about 45 minutes, I hope it's okay that I share a few thoughts/bug reports: 

 - I bought maybe 50 melons in one run and never had a single one show up on the board (it appeared to give me oranges instead)

- Roses are busted, unconditional +6 means you can't lose once you have a handful of them

- The happiness bar appears to be uncapped. I started using the food button to re-roll my shop and eventually the happiness just never goes down

- It was either very unclear to me what a "line" was or there are some bugs around that mechanic. The only times I ever had a line scored was when it was a horizontal line, and even not all horizontal lines scored. I bought the Paylines upgrade 10 or so times and this never seemed to change.  e.g. in the below screenshot, only the Orange, Orange, Joker, Joker line in the bottom left scored, when I would have expected to score at least a few more.  Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed this and hope you keep up with it after the jam!

Very creative, loved the audio especially and how weighty the blocks/player felt.

Very satisfying to play, and a creative take on the clicker genre! All of the sounds were really well chosen. I wish there was no limit on the number of plots you can place, so you could fill up the entire field! I unlocked everything, I thought it was very well-paced.

Before you unlock the auto-harvester, if you put a plot too close to the top of the screen, it will mean you can't harvest those plants. 

Thanks for playing! And thanks for letting me know, the logo works fine on my devices but I'll try to troubleshoot