itch.io

Well, yeah, back then you needed every byte you could get, so everything had to be as optimized as possible. These days, it’s much less of a concern, to the point that file sizes can balloon by a hundred times due to inefficiently duplicating raw uncompressed assets in every file rather than referencing a single instance squeezed to a fraction of the size, and (unless it’s a massive project) no one cares because it really doesn’t matter. A lost art from the good old days when everything was harder and objectively worse.

The inline CSS on this page has ul lists at 100% width. The user_tools links (follow dev, rate game, etc.) at the top right are structured as a list, which here extends the entire width of the window, covering the download link. (You can easily see this by adding a background_color to ul.) This means the download link cannot be accessed.

This fundemntally breaks functionality to no benefit. Please fix this.

This game’s page has all ul elements at 100% width. This means that the Follow/Collection/Rate links at the top right extend all the way across the page and cover the download link. Please fix this!

You can still access the download link from the page source, or again by going in through your Library page.

Not really a “chapter” if one is all there is and will ever be…

It’s a Ren’Py game. Ren’Py is a visual novel engine. Visual novels are what this game is one of. What this game is one of is a masterpiece.

If you have a means by which to run Windows or Linux software on your Mac, then yes, it works on Mac. If you don’t, then look into virtualization.

How though? No mouse or touchscreen

You should work for free

FWIW, the Itch launcher installs the full collection but only runs one game, doesn’t let you choose.

Ooh, thanks! That’ll definitely help, gonna go hunting.

I still don’t understand how the filesize seems to be ten times what it could be, or why you don’t have separate downloads for Windows and Linux builds, but it’s not that much space anyway by today’s standards. I was just surprised at the compression ratio; sorry if I came across as complaining or criticizing.

Anyway, it’s a neat game. I find it really helps to work backwards from the goal, like it sometimes does with traditional mazes. Almost feels like cheating

Can you give an example of a secret, maybe just the easiest one to find? Haven’t been able to find a single one yet.

So what is up with this? The only language that’s set on my system is English. Why would this launch in Chinese?

How does this game take up over a gigabyte?! Couldn’t the Linux and Windows builds share files and cut the size down to half a gig? Which still seems unreasonable for an aesthetic that used to fit on floppies… I mean, the main level files alone are dozens of megabytes each, and they compress down to one, so what’s taking up all that empty space?

Where the heck are the “secrets”? What does one even look like?

Whitelist it in your antivirus, or disable it. If it’s the built-in “Windows protected your PC” message, click “Run anyway”; if that button isn’t there, check your Defender settings.

Really, you’ll want to try the support channels for your antivirus software to find out what to do about false positives.

The camera isn’t always able to keep up with your ship, especially if you fly closer to the ground. If you fly offscreen, the view just freezes until and unless you blindly get yourself back in frame.

Can you make the camera more aggressively follow the player?

Hi, this is a bug report.

This game identifies my Xbox Elite Controller (wirelessly connected through Bluetooth) as “Bluetooth LE XINPUT compatible,” with several issues:

• the triggers aren’t detected at all (so no default strafe button)
• the right stick’s Y-axis is nonfunctional and X-axis is treated as if it were the Y-axis
  • pressing left moves up, pressing right moves down
  • actually pressing up or down does nothing
• clicking the right stick (aka R3) does what the nonfunctional Start button should do

All of the above inputs work as expected in any other game I play, without making any changes.

Yeah, for sure! Doubt much good could come of keeping it on their (sometimes malfunctioning) radar.

FWIW, the currently listed download does not work through the Itch launcher.

Ah, yeah, good point =(

No Steam early access?

Unless I’m mistaken, this is poorly designed, with cheap hits from things like jumping down onto offscreen spikes you have no way of knowing are there until you’ve already done so.

How the heck does this take up five and a half gigabytes? I’ve never used Unity, but doesn’t it let you compress your assets? I mean, the biggest asset file in here at over half a gigabyte zips down to one megabyte. Feels like something went very wrong in the build.

The easiest way to beat this game is to eliminate all expenses except for enough military to ward off monster attack, and then each turn either invest everything or sell everything depending whether the market has a positive or negative return. Do take care to end each turn with expenses + 1K to avoid going broke. Finished with zero buildings, zero citizens, and over 10,000K.

What are the controls? How do I brake? Needs better tutorials

I lowered the sensitivity on my actual mouse to play this. No idea if the game engine allows such an in-game setting, but that would be great.

There’s something wrong with the styling on this page—beyond a certain window width (983 pixels here), the trailer and screenshots in the, let’s see… right_col column div completely disappears. No right column.

Edit: It seems to be due to the .right_col{display:none} in the internal style tag. If that’s intentional, it doesn’t hide it at smaller sizes or higher zoom.

The Itch launcher doesn’t know how to handle self-extracting archives (I think it expects straight-up .zip or .rar?), but once I find the game exe, it runs smooth! Although gamepad aiming seems to be broken.

Any idea what the issue was with the old version? It was absolutely toxic to my system, let alone unplayable.

As soon as I try to start playing, the game takes 100% CPU for a moment, then eats up all my RAM and drops to one frame every few seconds until either it crashes or I quit. Leave it long enough (I think less than a minute) and I get “call failed” errors for things like CreateTexture2D, and every open window on my system goes blank and unusable.

Windows 11, RTX 2070, 16 GB RAM, 1440p

With both the .exe and the web player, the sound is horribly distorted, even on the PICO-8 startup chime. Is this intentional?

I had this same issue on Windows when watching a “You’re too overwhelmed to feel this right now” timer tick down. It reached 1, and the game froze. Quit and reload, and the game loads frozen. Mashing esc did nothing but toggle the options menu. Doesn’t seem to be any recourse short of starting a new game.

Did it disappear from your purchases or something?

There is some disagreement on that front. Some on here love the game so far. I’m about to try the demo, but wishlisted it on Steam and plan to buy day one regardless.

Why are there two demo downloads for each platform? Different versions?

Edit: Nope, the PC demo downloads at least are identical, same MD5. Must be a mistake.

As long as you’re logged into the same account you bought it on, you should be able to download the latest update. That’s how everything on itch works. Were you logged out or something?

Hey, thanks for replying! Sorry about my cranky… review? Guess I was running short on patience. But yeah, that workaround did the trick!

I stand by what I said, though, even if I regret how harshly I said it. I like the idea of this game, but I don’t like this game. And you should feel bad for making something that a stranger on the internet doesn’t like! (no you shouldn’t)

Missing instructions:

Use the left stick to navigate the menu, and the left shoulder button/bumper—not a face button—to select.

While playing, red squares will appear and grow. Position your crosshairs over them with each analog stick, and press or hold the shoulder buttons to shrink them down to nothing. If you don’t, the square will turn darker, which will hurt you but also make it worth more points, until it turns black and stops growing.

With a controller. The only buttons in use are the shoulder buttons/bumpers. Face buttons do nothing, keyboard and mouse do nothing. The tutorial messages only stay on screen for a set amount of time, so you might need to take screenshots or look it up on YouTube where you can pause it to read everything.