itch.io

Very cute, and quite polished. I liked the reveal of the Blanket Ending part way through as it introduced another aspect of challenge - tight inventory management that gets tighter as you make more progress. Fighting hordes of enemies while managing inventory almost gave it an early Resident Evil vibe, despite the setting. 

I also enjoyed the little details that are revealed over time, like how the mushroom hat grows into your body and increases your max health. Also adds to my theory that this is secretly a horror game! This is where the game really shines. As you go deeper, the game seems to reveal more mechanics and details that were always present, but unnoticed. Another example I liked are how items can get dirty (I'd already dropped my wet wipes when I realised this!)

I did find that I was often dropping items on the floor to make space to pick up a new item just to see its stats, so maybe there's some room to improve the ergonomics of inventory management. Also I often dropped items accidentally because 'A' opens the inventory, and also drops the current item, and I'd often hit it twice expecting the inventory to close the second time.

Hey thanks for playing! The lack of pause is indeed intentional, doom-style, however I admit the rendering technique does make the map very difficult to read under time pressure. The hearts heal you, but if you're not damaged (indicated by the lines getting shaky) then they do nothing.

Loved the visuals. I didn't realise there was a "trick" until I read some of the other reviews and played it again.

Once I figured out the combat system I expected to get bored as it's fully-deterministic, but I kept playing and I'm glad I did. Despite the combat being more puzzley than a typical roguelike, I died several times to groups of late-game enemies. I felt motivation to upgrade my character even though I knew technically the game can be beaten by repeatedly solving the puzzles, as I wanted to protect myself against my own tactical missteps and to reduce the number of puzzle repetitions. Once I got into a nice rhythm with the combat I came to enjoy its predictability.

One issue with combat is that it took a while for me to get confident recognizing which tiles were safe to stand on each turn, as it seems the tiles where an attack is telegraphed and the tiles where you can stand aren't lined up.

Nice touch with the random encounters with people who won't let you pass if you're not "green" enough. I never did figure out what to do there but I assume it has something to do with the tree...

I got the "good ending", so I'm intrigued as to what I could have done wrong to get the "bad ending".

Love the graphics! Would be cool to see it fleshed out with more gameplay.

Respect for rolling your own engine!

I tried again to reproduce it and I can't. I was probably pressing "R" instead of "B" to restart or something. User error on my part!

Loved this. Haven't made it to the end yet but I want to keep playing! The flashlight effect and the mist set an eerie tone, and there's a tension between wanting to wait to accurately aim at enemies and run away.

I enjoyed the cozy vibes and how minimal it is. In particular I think the way the map works is quite interesting, in that it doesn't keep track of where you are - just which parts of the forest have been visited - and you can take any action available in the explored region of the forest. It's a clever way to eliminate the need for backtracking.

It feels like there's a solid foundation but it would have been nice to see a little more variety of enemies, items, etc.

It looks really slick and the drifting is fun but I found the "turn-based with realtime ticks" a little jarring as the movement kept stopping and starting. I think it could be interesting to experiment with changing the animation style to be smoother, and may introduce a fully turn based mode. Also I'm not sure if it was just running slow on my machine of if it was running at the intended speed. Might be useful to let the player choose the game speed.

Also it seems to freeze after I die and I need to refresh the page each time.

Missed opportunity to call it "Quantum Tunnels" ;)

I tried to play it a few times but kept running into an issue where I had a single knight left at 100% but was unable to move, and the skeletons were all at 50% but they had split into more than 2 copies (all at 50%).

Also I found that the map was too zoomed in to really plan anything and I had to keep panning around to see all my knights, and movement animations were a bit slow. I think this concept has potential but the execution could do with some polish.

This was neat. It's impressive how much gameplay depth can emerge from just 3 inputs. I managed to win with an army of wolves with more wolfs spawning in constantly, plus enemies would set each other on fire when they attacked any of the wolves. Once you get your engine off the ground it feels really satisfying, though the first few times I thought I had it figured out everything would fall apart at a critical moment (usually running out of charges). Designing a build that doesn't get drained too early was interesting.

One thing that didn't really work for me was why the skill tree is a tree and not just a linear path with a new node unlocking each floor. The choice of which side to take at a fork only felt meaningful in so far as which words it added to my "inventory", as if the starting rule at a node isn't helpful I can just rewrite it. And there's no choice to pick up the words you find in the dungeon, so mechanically it's equivalent to just unlocking those words at the end of the floor. I think there's some polishing you could do around how words are added to the pool and how new verses are added to the book.

Still I had a lot of fun playing this!

I loved the graphical style! I struggled a bit with the fishing mini game and found I was barely breaking even on stamina.

Cool game! Really liked the visual effect around the edge of the visible area and changing the colour depending on your heart rate. Replacing the traditional "food clock" with heart rate management led to some interesting decisions during gameplay. The whole thing felt very pulpy. I should rewatch Crank.

I had fun with this. I'm a sucker for factory sims. Impressive amount of polish and depth. Well done!

Hey thanks for playing and the detailed bug reports! I can't promise I'll update the game but if I ever decide to work more on it I'll definitely address these.

Thanks so much for playing!

Thanks for the stream! Also super valuable to know about the issues you were running into with OBS and also the annoying cursor offset bug when playing in the browser.

Really glad to hear you enjoyed it! Good point about tool tips. The "help" screens (select "Help" from the menu or press "?" during gameplay) have a page about organ statuses but I agree it would be better to convey that information within the UI directly (e.g. with a tooltip).

Dev log for end of day 6: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2024-day6/

Dev log for end of day 5: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2024-day5/

Devlog for the end of day 4: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2024-day4/

Devlog for the end of day3: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2024-day3/

I replaced my placeholder main menu graphics with this:

Day 2: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2024-day2/

My main focus today was dynamically-generated music. It took much longer than expected but I'm generally happy with the result. There's a song for the main menu and a second song that plays during gameplay. I'm totally new to generative music and composing music in general. The songs that my generator produces are very simple and don't have much structure. Something to explore more after the jam I think.

Trade in your organs for cybernetic enhancements and save the retro future city from corruption. I'm going to attempt to dynamically generate the soundtrack with a software synthesizer library I've been developing. So far I have procgen mostly working and a first pass at a visual aesthetic.

End of day 1 blog post: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2024-day1/

Thank you so much for playing on your stream :D. Glad you enjoyed it! If you want to find out what happened with your name at the end...I guess you'll have to do some more playthroughs ;)

Devlog for day 6: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2023-day6/

End of day 5. Added stats, the passage of time, basic game menus, several loss conditions. https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2023-day5/

Thanks for the offer but I don't think I'll have time to integrate music into the engine.

Finally finished working on the procgen system! https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2023-day4/

I spent today working on more procgen, adding the river to the world and making spaces for settlements to go along the river. I still need to generate the settlements so I probably have another day (hopefully only one more day!) of procgen ahead of me. https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2023-day3/

End of day 2. Today I focused entirely on high-level procedural generation; getting the shape of the river and location of settlements along the river. Tomorrow I'll be generating the settlements themselves and finer details and integrating the procgen algorithm into the game. https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2023-day2/

End of day 1. Got boat driving working as well as basic features such as visible area detection, doors, and walking around on the island, and also a subtle mist system. https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2023-day1/

My game will be called “Boat Journey”. It’s about driving a boat along a river with the goal of reaching the ocean without running out of fuel or otherwise becoming stranded, while picking up passengers who give you additional abilities.

Dev log here: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2023-day1/

Thanks so much for the screenshot. I think you're right about the bottom being cut off. I'll do an update that scales down the game so it fits on  the screen in all cases. In the meantime you should be able to zoom out in your browser.

Thanks for playing! I definitely intend to release a non-jam version of the game that adds rain sounds! The current motivation level is shown in the hud in the bottom-left. Is that what you meant?

End of day 6 post: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2022-day6/

End of day 4 post: https://www.gridbugs.org/7drl2022-day4/

A game about spending a few days in a forest, in the rain.

Submitted! https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2021/rate/950628