Woow, you just made my day, thank you so much for the kind words! This feeling like a proper game from 1989 is maybe the biggest compliment you could give, haha. That was also my perspective on the difficulty balancing: it should be really punishing and intense, but I can totally imagine that being a little frustrating. Your observations (I welcome nitpicks, haha) are very interesting, too! I hadn't thought about healing the player in between waves or exchanging their wool for money at the end of a wave. The first one is probably a good way to balance the game more in the player's favor. I like that the player has to exchange the wool and crops themselves, but yeah it is completely illogical, haha. Maybe the Pleasantville General Store just doesn't take wool! Lol.
I'm learning Godot right now, actually! I wanted to do one gamejam with Pico-8 as a 'graduation project' of sorts, if you know what I mean. I can't wait until the next jam, hope to see you there!
Woaa this looks amazing! But I can't get past the first screen, when the screen flips over, the camera shoots all over the place! I'm really curious what the rest of this game looks like, do you know if I might be doing something wrong?
Wooow this was cool! Especially the snappy sound design combined with the 'primary gameplay loop only'-gamedesign. Had a great time playing this one, and I think it fits into the jam them very well, too: like you say, saving the drones isn't that useful anymore at some point.
One thing I would love to suggest is that the lack of art (which isn't a huge problem, of course, this is a jam game and you focussed on the gameplay and did that very well) makes it kind of hard to 'care' about the drones, which kind of undermines the way this game fits into the theme. If they were, say, humanoids or something, that would go a long way with helping the player understand what is going on. Now the color coding of the player/drones/enemies suffices for gameplay ends, but just a slight tweak from programmer art to very basic character design would do a lot, I think!
Seeing the discussion here about the game being confusing, I took some more time to read the description and everything. I think it's a pretty interesting type of game, with the goal being to maximize carnage. The puzzle/strategy elements of it are fun once you understand them. I think even when knowing the goal/method of the game it's still pretty confusing. I would actually love to play a more fully fleshed out version of this idea: an arcade/simulator/strategy game is not something I can remember having played recently.
Also for this jam, the game would have benefitted from either a wave structure or a tutorial level, just to understand what the totems are and what they do. For me it's not a huge problem as it's also fun to experiment. The bug someone else mentioned, where the game freezes around 57 seconds, is a bit of a downer, but these things happen in jams! I really appreciate your creativity!
Really fun comedy game, had me actually laughing out loud a couple of time. This is how diseases are beaten, isn't it? The artstyle is super unique, the paper-cutouts-in-a-diorama is just beautifully done! I'm sorry to hear life threw crap at you in the week of this gamejam. Not only because that sounds tough, but also because now I'm really curious what else you could have done with the game! Right now it's not super involved gameplay wise, but the fun does sustain the duration of the timer the game is on. The mini-games were a nice touch, I think you very smartly allocated your time to make a game in which tone, gameplay and artstyle fit together well.
Hi! I'm glad you appreciate the feedback! But just to clarify: I'm not saying you're misogynistic, just that the protagonist was at times, which I don't think is necessarily problematic in any way. It is about dating after all, I saw it as a valuable commentary. And while I'm at it, haha: I thought your writing style is really fascinating and effective, to push the player into confusion and pull them out of it later one. I can totally imagine that's a hard balance to strike.
After seeing you write that the controls for the game are in the game description, I realised how to play. I think it's generally best practice to include the controls/tutorial in the game itself, just so that the game can be fully understood by itself. Especially because some important controls, mainly right arrow for repairing buildings, are not really intuitively bound to buttons on the keyboard.
The faith-mechanic is really interesting! It replaced 'mana' or 'energy' as something that actually fits really well in the internal logic of the game, that was smart! Doing attacks with the mouse was fun as well, and their variety gives the gameplay a fun depth. I'm not sure if the lightning attack actually functions well, I couldn't get it to connect.
Visually you've got a nice consistent style, I liked the chest-thumping the vikings do when attacking, that was funny. Information on the HUD wasn't properly displayed on my screen though, I could only clearly see the faith currency.
This is a good start for a game with just 4 hours of development time! Like someone else said here, it's crisply designed and visually appealing. Maybe you can let the player know the game controls with a text box or something.
This is really one of the most creative interpretations of the theme. At the ending of a round, seeing the others from the classroom either crossed out or not, drives the theme home very well. It's a fun game on top of that, too! The simple rules and art design made it very appealing to me, I think that was very well done! One thing I would like to give as feedback is that it was kind of difficult to understand the mechanics of the game. A short tutorial explaining the basic idea behind the game would have been very valuable, I think. Other than that, really nicely done!
Thanks! That's a really valid point, I couldn't think of other ways to give the player multiple tools with just the two buttons available. A good thing to remember for upcoming projects, thanks!
Very interesting entry! The characters are fascinating and distinct, and I liked the unreliable narrator. The one moment I was convinced he is an AI, like the other characters, but then there's something in the text like 'my left eye is twitching' and I'm not so sure anymore. A fun experiment with some literary quality to it! I appreciate the avant-garde language, but I do feel it's a bit aggressive in how sparsely associative it is. The misogynistic responses of the narractor are interesting too, and made me quite uncomfortable.
Really, really fun game. I like the name, I like the pen-and-paper aesthetic and especially love the level design. While simple, I think you've managed to design ten different levels with their own ideas and mechanics. It was a really cool curveball that some of the levels (especially the ninth, of course) turn into multi-screen, almost adventure levels. Impressive how you managed to make this under the time constraints of the gamejam! The slow motion mechanic is another super fun touch. How it makes seemingly impossible levels solvable is very clever.
I don't really see how the game suits the theme, though. You write that the player must choose between two power-ups, but I can't think of how that actually connects to 'saving' anything, let alone not saving 'them all'. On that note, the choice of power up, at least in my route, didn't influence the gameplay greatly. I could 100% be wrong about this, I only played the game through once in its entirety.
The sound and music are fine, but not too engaging. All in all a really fun game, I had a great time playing it!
Really fun and engaging entry, congrats! I had a really good time playing this, it fits the theme very well and feels like a detailed, layered game. Especially for a gamejam game, I'm really impressed! One thing I was thinking about often while playing was when exactly my animals would be eating, and when they had eaten. Maybe I missed feedback about that? At any rate, really nice entry! I can totally imagine this being developed a little bit more and being a really fun mobile/web game.
What a submission! Love the PS1 graphics, love the design of the world, really enjoyed driving the car and the mini-games (starting up the car, reloading) were great ideas to bring the game to life with the addition of minimal features. I'm seriously impressed you managed to make this for a gamejam, incredible! This is like a Crazy Taxy-Resident Evil mashup, I really enjoyed playing it. The picture-in-picture camera was a very nice addition, though it did confuse me at first: it made me think the survivors were killed at the point that the next survivor was brought into focus. Maybe this could be solved by just writing 'another survivor!' instead of 'survivor at...', that would (I think?) communicate to the player the picture-in-picture is just cycling through available survivors. It'd also have been nice to see in-game what the controls were, now I just had to intuit what buttons to press to enter and start the car, and guide survivors into the car.
At first I also wanted to write that the lack of a map is annoying, but I'm actually beginning to think (like you probably decided) that not having one is better: that forces the player to get to know the map more. If I have more time I can totally imagine coming back to this game to get to know the surroundings more. Really excellently done.
Especially reading on your submission page this game was made in stressful times, it's really impressive what you've come up with. I haven't seen another game that so viscerally tunes into the theme. You accomplished quite a strong tone from just text alone, which I found unique. It's also very courageous to have addressed war and refugee crises in a game jam. Here's some things I ran into that you might find useful to know for future projects!
I would have really liked to have some kind of visual feedback of which resources changed after decisions. It wasn't totally clear to me which icon belonged to which resource at first, and when the text comes up, I can't actually see my resource counts. That'd be nice to have when I actually start making decisions. Then afterwards, just a small textbox showing how much units of a certain resource changed at the position of the resource icon would have been informative. The text of a question for help, while nicely written, now overflows the screen! Nothing game-breaking, but for a game that relies on text it's just one of those bugs that's a bit annoying (at worst).
At this point I don't think I encountered an ending, can that be true? Apart from once or twice to see what would happen, I never refused help and don't think that actually had any repercussions. Finally, my Bastion resources could go into the negatives. These are probably things you couldn't get around to due to time constraints, but it does mean there's not really any tension to the gameplay now.
Finally I want to stress again that I thought this was a really nice addition to the jam, especially in terms of atmosphere, subject matter and narrative.
Just stunning in terms of visuals. Very impressive how you pulled that off in such a limited timeframe! There also being a narrative, especially with multiple endings, is really quite special.
The gameplay is less engaging. While the animation is nice, just like there being a second wave after the half point of the boss' health, I didn't feel the combat was really tense or anything. I also noticed the hit of an attack on the witch registers before the animation suggests there should be contact, which I found confusing at first. The dash could also have been utilized more, now I didn't really need it. Maybe a second attack that forces players to move horizontally quickly? I can totally imagine the time not being there for features like that, of course!
All the same, a really cool submission I enjoyed playing, listening to and looking at!
I really enjoyed playing this! Got really into the flow state, very impressive how you managed to evoke that. Kind of fits the 'narrative' of the game as well, the meditative state the player character is in. On the other hand, playing the game is kind of stressful too, so there's some thematic friction there, too. Not that that hinders the experience in any way, of course.
The main mechanic is enjoyable, I feel like you managed to find a good sweetspot of when a drawn shape registers and when it doesn't. The circle is maybe one exception, but I was playing with mouse, so I'm not sure I can really put that out there as criticism.
The game matches the theme okay, I would say: I missed three characters, but don't feel like it's unreasonable to not miss any of them. What I mean is: I don't feel like I was forced to make a tough decision, I just didn't get around to saving some of them.
One other thing I'd like to put out there as 'criticism' (though I really liked the game!) is that the combo system could, maybe in a more developed version of this game, be given more importance. In my experience, the most optimal way to play was to just be very quick with drawing the shapes, not necessarily looking out for combo's. Maybe, if players engage a certain soul by drawing their first symbol, they're 'locked' to that soul and have to finish it. That would heighten the importance of thinking ahead, which isn't really required right now. Just an idea!
I loved the opening cutscene. An 'ETA' for an extinction event is pretty funny. Like the Defender-esque gameplay, in some ways it feels like a graphical update for an arcade classic! A downside is that there's not a lot of tension here. I wasn't really in danger at any point. It was nice of the second level to switch up the visuals, but it'd be nice to have seen an update to the gameplay. One small thing I could imagine making the gameplay a bit more weighty, is to have there be some kind of penalty to movement during beaming up humans. Right now there's not really any risk to beaming up humans. If I'd be slightly slower, for example, or beaming up civilians would cost fuel I'd have to restock at a place where I'm at more risk of being hit by something, that would increase the tension, I think. The animation for letting go humans before they've entered the spaceship was pretty funny: if you can force the player to 'give up' beaming up humans, they'd see that more often. It'd give the game more of a slapstick quality. These are just ideas, though, maybe you tried them out and they didn't work out! Just my two cents.
Given the time given for development, I think it's really impressive that this game has a very distinct visual style! I liked that a lot.
