itch.io

Ah I actually purposefully implemented that as an over shoot mechanic. So if you over shoot the basket (i.e., the basket is on the flight path, but is not near the end of the path), then it shoots your disc out by about a tile. I really could have done a better job communicating that to the user though. Thank you so much for your feedback and for giving it a shot! It's really cool to see other people play your work :)

Give mine a shot! 12 ratings so far :) https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

I'm curious what you think! I want to try to figure out a good way to get my game a bit more fun and engaging. It is definitely a vibey game, but I'd like it to be more immersive for the player. https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

Would love to hear your take on mine! I think it is a bit of a different vibe than others I've played and rated in the jam: https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

Thanks dude! So glad you enjoyed it :) There definitely are bugs, but might be hard to spot haha

Give it a shot! I'd like to know what I could tweak to make it a bit more immersive and engaging mechanic-wise. https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

Wow what a polished entry! There is so much content here I bet you guys didn't even sleep once during the jam!

I think there is a lot of potential here to make it into a full-fledged game if you continue to polish it up and work on the pacing a bit. I felt at times during the battles I knew what was going to happen and had to patiently wait for the game to go through to motions of the sequence. Perhaps this is a personal preference thing, but I felt there was a bit too much text. Kinda hard to avoid since it is an OS afterall, but maybe there is a way to work more with iconography instead of pure text? Small gripe to an otherwise top-tier entry!

Let's get some more download-only games listed! The ones so far have been great and deserve a lot of publicity. Here are some of the ones that have been listed that I really enjoyed playing:

https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737111 - great strategy and nice old-school GUI.

https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3735195 - deep mechanics and creative retro aesthetic

Great job! The aesthetic of the blocks and the fixed GUI reminds me of some of the old school web-based games I played back in the day. Like others have mentioned, there is a lot of info all at once, but once you get the hang of it the mechanics are pretty intuitive. 

I think you have created a great foundation to really build up and scale into a full game! Adding new tile types / resources / unlockables can add a deeper sense of progression to it. KEEP IT UP DUDE!

Try out mine! I'd be curious to hear what you think can be done to improve the funness of it. I'll rate yours and some of the others here too to do my part!
https://ftbox.itch.io/mini-disc

Just rated it and gave some feedback!

I thought about adding birds as well! Maybe you have to avoid them while they are flying otherwise your throw ends early or something. Thanks for the feedback :)

Thank you!! Yes, I think I could have done a better job of instructing the player at the start on how to throw and line up the shot. Really glad you found it enjoyable! I think I might want to keep going on this game after the jam and see where it takes me

Very nice polish to the game! The color palette fits the retro vibe SO well. I found some of the sfx to be a bit harsh on the ears - especially the mouse click that shows you have to click on the character. This might be more of a personal preference, but for such a simple game mechanically, I would have liked to see a very simple UI layout. When you finish a level many buttons pop up on the screen with varying text sizes and layouts. I felt it a bit cluttered for how retro a feel this game is.

But those small things aside, this is a top tier entry for a game jam! Very impressive you were able to scale to so many levels in such a short amount of time. You must have really designed the code and structure of the game well for you to be able to create so many options! Good job dude!

Let me know what they think! I play disc golf in real life too and tried to make it somewhat true to life haha

Love the concept! I don't think I've ever seen the idea of using your corpses to help you get through the game - really neat! I was a bit impatient and didn't read the game description and found the level with the vertical wall impossible... until I read the description and realized you could freeze your corpses and then things got a lot easier haha!

A little buggy at times, especially when jumping while touching a corpse on the side, but that should be an easy fix! (looking forward to future releases if there are any)

And the ambiance you set with your music is great! Really fits the dark vibe and felt super natural. Overall great job on this one!

Try mine out! I'd be curious what you think of zen mode in the settings! https://ftbox.itch.io/mini-disc

Tried it out, but unfortunately I couldn't get past the third jump puzzle. For some reason my box character kept vibrating side to side and would only jump to the right. If I really mashed the space bar I could get it to double or triple jump, but it was hard. 

Judging from the other comments though it seems like if you can get it to work it is a great game!

Thank you! It was hard work getting the procedural generation to work as intended. And even then there are still a few maps where the player is forever stuck behind mountains and trees :( But thanks for playing!

Yours was super fun too! Commented and rated :)

Oh, and one more thing! Pressing crtl+s to save is a bit cumbersome and I forgot a few times and was teleported way back to an earlier spot. It would be nice for it to automatically save when you pass through the gem.

Just commented and rated!

Great concept and execution! At first I was like, okay the graphics could use a bit of work, and then bam something happened that I won't spoil for the others haha! Solid movement mechanics and physics. Always important to get that down for a platformer like this one. 

The zooming and moving camera is a great concept, but could use a little work on the third level where it zooms in to the player, but then not to the map. Made it challenging for me to know where I was jumping down to. But just that simple camera animation made the earlier levels much more engaging since it was intentionally visually basic.

Not sure if bug or feature, but if you have a vertical wall, you can just continually mash space bar to jump up the side of it! Made clearing some levels a breeze haha!

Yeah, I'll be honest, THAT WAS HARD! Probably the hardest entry I've played so far! But wow wow wow that hand drawn background and animation are really crisp and clean. Your team did a great job putting it all together!

So when we load up the game, we are immediately thrusted into drawing the first prompt. Which all makes sense because there is a prompt up top and it is easy to understand that you are supposed to draw on the canvas. But it isn't too clear what would give you more/less points per sketch.

Perhaps instead of putting the context for the game only in the game's description on itch.io, you can make a menu screen or some sort of intro mechanic where the reason for creating the art is told to the player. Or some other bit of context to show what a good drawing is compared to a bad one. That way, regardless of if the player has read the description on itch.io, they would have enough information to understand what is going on.

The music is great though! It kind of reminds me of Balatro. How did you make it?

Nice relaxing vibe! It was a little difficult to intuit what I was supposed to do. But the music was nice and relaxing.

I'd love some feedback! Particularly in how to make the game more engaging and fun. I'll go ahead and play yours and others in this thread too!
https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

SUPER MONKEY BALL!! This is a great game! Love the cutesy little birds in the menu background. I think the controls, especially with velocity dampening need to be slightly adjusted to make it easier to maneuver in tight, precision oriented situations. This would play amazing with a joystick.

Great job dude! Keep making games - you are going to kill it.

Heyo! I think you'd really enjoy my game. Also thanks for taking the time to give feedback on all these games! A little comment on someone else's work goes a long way in their journey to improve and you are doing a great job at it!
https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

I'm curious what you think!
https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

The aesthetic is really nice with this entry! I had trouble with loading times and lag spikes which made playing the game as intended quite challenging. So unfortunately I was not able to finish :( 

I loved it! Super great entry here. I think the colors really bring the whole game together. You should add more screenshots of gameplay to the subbmission! That is what got me motivated to download it and I think more people will try your game if you do!

If you guys are seeing this, try out this game!! I love the beautiful world you can explore. Animals are adorable too!

Try out my procedurally generated disc golf game! Go into the settings and select Zen Mode to just explore the worlds without dying if you want ;) https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

Good entry to your first game jam! I agree with the other comment about the acceleration and deceleration - it was challenging to control the character when I was sliding around. I felt that I had to either keep going and jumping without stopping  to keep the momentum, or risk not having enough to clear a jump. 

I had the same issue with not getting things past a prototype stage. I felt that each individual part had to be perfect before I could move onto the next. But after a while I realized that in order to actually make whatever I was working on get better, I had to get many different projects under my belt. Once I realized that it was easy for me to walk away from half finished or broken work so I could learn more by starting and trying to complete more projects.

Best of luck in your game dev journey!

That was pretty fun! Reminded me of Ultimate Chicken Horse a bit. The music and sfx fit the vibe very well. There were a few UI bugs for me where it looked like the whole screen turned blue for a little while, but I got the hang of the controls pretty quick. One improvement that I think would make the game a bit more interactive and fun is if we can control the spring! Great job on this entry!

Fun game! I had to disable a browser plugin I use that closes the current tab if I right click and drag the mouse, Inadvertently closed the game a few times :( But the creativity is huge with this game! Especially the menu where each element pops in. Very nice to see a menu done in an interactive way. It would be nice to see a skip button after the first go through of the menu though (I had to click through it about 5 times to get back to playing the game which was a bit annoying). Really great job on this one dude!

Thanks for the review! And I definitely agree with you, having a small number that only shows up when you are throwing is a bit hard to see. I have some ideas and will definitely update the game further! Thanks for playing :)

I'm noticing a lot of download-only games aren't getting the recognition they deserve. Makes sense because it is easier for folks to click a button in the browser and immediately start playing, but unfair to those teams who made games which require a couple of extra steps to play.

So please reply in this thread if you made a download-only game to get some more publicity!

Here are a couple I've tried so far that I've really enjoyed:

https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3734584

• Super simple graphics, but such a great aesthetic!

https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3738815

• Top-tier dialogue that actually made me laugh out loud!

And, of course, my shameless plug

https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028

What a vibe! Great atmosphere with the tall lights pouring into the levels mixed with the music. I thought the controls and handling were a bit too tight at times and the camera was too responsive when you move back and forth very fast. I remember seeing somewhere that you can have the camera not be tied directly to the character, but rather a rectangle around the character. That way when you make small sudden movements, the camera isn't going to immediately move in that direction. Might be a good way to improve it!

Let me know what you all think! https://itch.io/jam/shovel-jam-2025/rate/3737028