itch.io

The looks and songs are amazing. I didn't really enjoy the notes being all over the screen and jkl sometimes being on the right but then suddenly on the left felt cheap. There's a reason other rythm games have strict lanes. The vine system is cool but its a bit too difficult to keep track of like this.

I think you have to enable continuous collision detection since the balls sometimes clearly pass a portal but they don't hit it.

Cool jam game. It's fun to see how patterns form and later on the opposite happens, complete chaos because of the balls bouncing on each other and disrupting everything. Which is also fun. Would be nice to move portals since a small change like upgrading portal speed or ball rate can ruin your setup.

Happy to help, I hope I wasn't too harsh or anything! I do think you got something nice going here. Good luck!

Sorry, I don't know exactly which one I missed. I think it was somewhere halfway through.

Regarding the trial and error, maybe its more that the limited moves (oxygen) conflict a bit with the puzzle aspect of trying to find the position of the ghosts. I'm using the lantern and flashlight to explore the level, but when I move around too much I have to rush to the exit and will probably die, thus having to redo the level with more knowledge. This means I'm just going through the motions, marking ghosts that I already know the position of, instead of deducing where they are. Hopefully this explains it better.

To be clear I think the levels are great and enjoyed the game a lot!

Played all the three levels. Some short thoughts: the game looks nice, the sprites fit the Windows 95/98 type aesthetic. The colors are well done too. It was a bit frustrating that I couldn't beat the 2nd wave of the first level without leakage until I got some of the meta upgrades. No clue why this is listed as clicker/idle/incremental since it's none of those things. The tower types could lean a bit more into their strengths, I could beat the final level with just berserkers. When I used inferno towers their blast radius never seemed large enough to hit multiple units. It would be nice if towers didn't target units that are already about to die by a shot from another tower, so shots don't get wasted.

Overall pretty nice game. The design could be made a bit more focussed by pulling some of the meta upgrades into the main levels. For instance, allowing to further specialize specific towers by spending rubies, emeralds during the level. And the enemies could use a bit of variety. For instance, put bats in clusters of three so the infero towers area of effect can be put to use. As it stands, the meta upgrades feel like a grind required to beat the levels in the first place.

Played all the levels and I liked it! The timer and trial and error were a bit jarring, but as the game progressed I got used to it. I enjoyed the writing and the whispered voice acting is unique, but good. I gathered every piece of paper except for one. Nice job on the itch page theming too!

Fun game. The first level is a bit difficult since you only get cash for going over the target. The random starting memory card means sometimes you can't trigger it at all. I got the one that requires 4 different animal types to be in one shot, multiple times.

Looks and sounds great!

Good stuff. Love the knight helmet xp buffs.

Loved the demo. The pacing of the action is great and the little quips with the mage are fun. Very unique movement mechanics too.

Very well done. Bit sad there was no saving the person at the bottom. I thought that was what the return path would be for, to get her out! I enjoyed the escape nonetheless.

Oh I see, normally it shows in the top right when the game was part of a jam so I didn't realise. It is always difficult to get the correct scope for making a gamejam game. And I can relate to dealing with unexpected difficulties at the last moment, those final hours are scary!

The updated page design looks great by the way.

Looks nice and it's atmospheric, but the gameplay is a bit awkward. A few points stood out to me which made it difficult to enjoy the game.

- The first thing the game tells me is "Press E to use your lantern". But since I start in a lit up area I'm just pressing E and see nothing happen. This is not a great start. Make the first tutorial about the movement, tell the player about the lantern when they get to the darkness. That way they can actually see the effect of pressing E.

- I can't see the lantern meter while it's in the dark.

- I'm using the lantern to see obstacles/enemies coming, but simultaneously I don't have a visible healthbar. So I don't feel any tension when walking through enemies. It might be better to have checkpoints and send the player back after a single hit. That way you have to really understand the area before you can get past it.

- The platforming isn't great. If the jumps weren't as tight I could focus more on the lantern aspect of the game.

- It would be nice to have two keys for changing the lantern. One to make it brighter, another to dim it.

Sorry is this is overly critical. I hope the feedback helps. PS you can change the theme of the itch page to match the game's colors, also helps a lot with the atmosphere. Keep up the good work.

217 stars, 224 with bonus points. Really enjoyed it. It's nice that there's no point requirement per level so I felt free to experiment and play around. Excellent game!

There is a bug with glue balls. The tooltip hover stays on the location in the shop that I took a peg away from with the glue ball. So it still says "pizza" where a pizza peg originally was.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/AV9wkUh

Good stuff, I love the wacky faces on the balls. Steam ball had me chuckling

Some feedback: the stats don't reset between rounds. For instance it still shows stats for the mouth and coin pegs even though I haven't used those this round. But maybe is intended.

The alternate universe peg is diabolical. I spent more than my entire "main" round in there just for +10 points 😂

Eggs + gum balls make for a pretty nice combo. Can turn weak gumballs into newly spawned balls from the eggs.

I managed to beat the final boss with only 1 pollen ball remaining o.0

Thanks for playing! There are no plans to develop this any further. I appreciate the kind words.

Loved it. Great ending, and doesn't overstay its welcome. The amount of rocks covering the planet when you have all the upgrades is very satisfying. The artstyle, music and sfx are great as well. Also, the game runs buttery smooth after the update.

Thanks for the fix! Will give it another try tomorrow

Cute. I like how clean the pixel art is. Managing the different sock colors and even ironing them is fun but when the different perfumes/detergents started showing up that was a bit too much for me.

Makes my GPU blast at full power. Might need a frame limit setting.

Enjoyed the demo, very elegant puzzle mechanics and looks slick. Took me a while to find the solution for level 17.

Pretty fun game. The art is cute and I enjoyed all the different bug types. It would be nice if the building/upgrade UI was a bit bigger when zoomed out.

Maybe I saw this incorrectly but I noticed when I have 15k food I couldn't buy an upgrade that costs 15k. Make sure to round your prices up and the balance down! So 14.6k food becomes 14k, not 15k, and 15.1k cost becomes 16k.

I enjoyed it! Needed a few tries to figure out what upgrades were important to get before certain waves but that's ok since the rounds are so fast. Might need to give the player a little foresight if you're planning on making the rounds longer.

For instance, dying to the first dragon because you don't have long range arrows is fine since it doesn't take too long to get there. But it would suck if there are more gotcha's like that 10 minutes into the game.

Nice job on the optimizations. People with older PCs will apreciate that and it's always good for a game that runs in the background to be efficient.

I think I'll check it out in the 1.0 release. I've enjoyed one of the earlier versions and wouldn't want to spoil the fun by playing every intermediate build.

I'm intrigued by your loot algorithms. DP table, heuristic flow? Never heard of those. All I know are simple loot drop tables :'D

Short but sweet incremental game. Great original concept. Very satisfying when the hourglass rotates and a blue grain goes in first. The upgrade tree could have been a list with more space to display the info without having to hover.

The chopping is really satisfying but the upgrade tree isn't that fun. There's no reason for the tiers to be there. It becomes a bit tedious to get all the tiers and not worth it to read the descriptions because of how often you are buying upgrades. Just give us one big upgrade instead, or at most 2 big tiers per upgrade. That way getting the upgrade feels like a milestone.

Would also be nice if there was any actual difference between the trees instead of just recolors. For instance medium trees being chopped down in phases, first the branches then the trunk.

Finally, "The Forest" gives so little wood that it's not worth investing in. If you want to give us passive income it would be more satisfying to have something on the main screen. Like an infinite tree on the side of the island that is being chopped by an automatic axe and you see logs flying to your pile.

Overall a fun game with a strong start that left me a bit disappointed with its progression.

The cart/bin is a clever mechanic and not something I remember ever seeing before. And the puzzles are well designed. The intro and overal design of the game are great as well, what more can I say. If I didn't have to watch my spending it would be an instant buy, for now I can only wishlist. 

Also the old lady had some gold but not that much! Waste of a good ice block honestly.

Loved it. What a rich environment to explore. Would have been nice if the character had more air control. The framerate seems jittery. It was less bad when I turned off dithering, I don't know if the "PS wobble" effect had something to do with it. Really clever interpretation of the jam theme. The insects as resources felt very natural.

VirusTotal has no problems with it when scanned. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/d36a1a411e3ba9b9d5c2a522171b64b87cf2598f2255...

Very pretty. The twist at the end made me feel a bit bad for the lil' guy, it's well done though. I thought there was going to be some kind of supernatural entity that would be unhappy with our MC yoinking money out of the alternate dimension. The puzzles were fresh and non-trivial, but not so difficult that it would hurt the pacing.

Very well done, I enjoyed the visuals and sound design. The animations for the robo-pigeons made me chuckle. It was never really clear why I got X's. Is it when you make a real pigeon fly away? It isn't communicated that well.

Progression is rough. Having to rebuy all the upgrades at every stage isn't great. Especially at the stone stage where 4-2 doesn't get you a new upgrade and you have to reach 4-3 to get to the fifth stage, only to do it all over again with just a wheel spin to show for it. Went back to first stage to get the third star and it gave me an achievement. It gave me the 1.2x achievement multiplier but I expected a bit more from it. The wheel spins also feel a bit unfair, I don't know how much faster my progress would be if I had better wheel spins. Feels like getting punished by the randomness. Even if you had the theoretical best spins you wouldn't know it.

Look and feel of the UI is perfect, and the sound design is amazing too. Love the unique sfx on every stage.

Sorry if this is harsh, just sharing my experience. Overall it's still fun but at 4-2 I tapped out. As I understand from your dev log linked below there will be global upgrades in an upcoming version so most of my concerns are probably addressed at that point.

Amazing pixel art! The moon and nebula are so pretty.

Fun game but weird to tag as incremental. This is more an arcade game.

Cool game. Reminds me of Astrodle but with rounds.

Just a heads-up, the game lags a fair amount when spawning a lot of lightning bolts. This is in the web version. My guess is you either need an object pool for the bolts, or improve the way the targets for the bolts are determined. Maybe space out the chains over multiple frames.

I have to say the same thing I say about all Nodebuster clones. I wish the rounds weren't there. They force an otherwise satisfying gameplay loop of destroying asteroids and buying upgrades into a really rigid structure. One of the great things about incremental games and games with lots of upgrades in general, is that you can see the upgrades pop from too expensive to affordable as you're gaining money. That's not possible with rounds and a separate screen for the upgrade tree. Most people love the format though, so I guess that's just me.

At least the upgrade tree is more legible than in other Nodebuster clones, with nice big text and good contrast. Good design on the icons too, giving them a different shape after purchasing. And no tiers is also good. Finally, not having to play 3 rounds to buy one upgrade is nice, definitely keep that.

I like the asteroid types, keeps the game fresh. It would make more sense if the radioactive asteroids did damage in an area around them before being destroyed, instead of leaving a cloud after destroying them. It would also differentiate them more from the lightning asteroids.

Adding a visual effect to critical hits would make them feel more impactful. Also an idea for an upgrade: have the black hole emit beams every time an asteroid enters it, a bit like hawking radiation.

I beat the game in about 30 minutes, using all the upgrades. Overall really well done.

Amazing art and theme. I'll keep the feedback short since it's still in alpha.

Some possible bugs with screenshots. 1: the description for research is in French, even though the rest of the UI is in English. 2: if you start crafting something, then interrupt the task by going to gathering, if you go back to the craft menu the progress bar and animation are still playing. Screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/xChH2ni

Is this inspired by Milkyway Idle? Reminds me a bit of that game. In Milkyway everything is milk-themed (craft armor from cheese), and here it's mushroom themed (craft a hat from mushroom leather). Very cool. The animations are cute btw.