itch.io

It’s genuinely interesting to hear the thought process behind it, and it sounds like you have some passion for this kind of project.

Keep exploring and see where it takes you!

As an aside my parsing of the https://kaikki.org/dictionary/English/index.html data has 64405 7-letter words – I dropped proper nouns and slang to the best of my ability. You can download the word list (sans definition / word type) here

Video impressions at https://vimeo.com/814746749

Interesting idea with a very good technical execution. I did find it a bit difficult to engage with the core concept, though. I don’t know if that’s because I missed something, or if it’s really that difficult to engage with. I could stand to see this streamlined a bit.

Video impressions at https://vimeo.com/814745836

Obviously unfinished, but I appreciate that you submitted anyway.

Video impressions at https://vimeo.com/814744435

The simple mechanics did what they set out to do though they didn’t hold my attention for long. I was more interested in the narrative, though at some point I abruptly died and (presumably) lost access to it.

A little bit of juice in the way of sound effects and perhaps some screen flashes would’ve gone a disproportionate way toward making this feel more mechanically engaging.

Video impressions at https://vimeo.com/814742533

This is good for what it is, but it’s not quite ambitious / unique enough to stand out from the myraid of phone-word-games. Which, admittedly, is a saturated market.

It’s good that you aimed for a limited scope and hit what you were going for. Contrary to the usual advice, try to reach for a little bit more next time.

Took me a few minutes to figure it out – the auto-link took the closing ) into account.

https://vimeo.com/814379042

I really like the idea and theme of this – soft guidelines around imaginative play.

My attempt at playing it ( https://vimeo.com/814379042 ) would’ve gone better had I printed things in advance and had people to play it with.

If you have or hang out with young children, especially plural, check this game out.

Note that I keep wanting to call it “NightCare”.

Hey y’all, this is really fun!

Don’t let the PDFs scare you. Just open them (possibly in your web browser) and go with the flow – it’ll make sense as you move along.

Video review at https://vimeo.com/813593550

Don’t forget to roll after each Mission!

One area I usually struggle with is introducing the mechanics in a guided but progressive way – I’m glad to hear that worked out for you.

And I’ve got to tell some real life people about that swing (cello) album. It was a treat!

Thanks. After so many years of doing game jams (it’s been my on-and-off hobby since elementary school) it’s glad to finally get one right.

I’ll probably spend some time thinking about how I could adapt this into a full/phone game. Though my track record for finishing those is, uh, consistent.

Thanks! You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to communicate the idea that both the orbs and the open/close buttons needed to be clicked; the motto was a last ditch effort that looks to have succeeded.

And I was very happy about those music finds – might have to go to Belgium just to hit up a Brazzmatazz concert.

Thanks. A little wordplay goes a long way.

Glad you found it relaxing; a few of us frantically clicked our way into sore wrists.

You submitted your project before the deadline and that’s the only time management skill that really matters.

Mouth sounds are a quick and easy go-to if you’re in need of silly sound effects, and it’s hard to overstate how much having sound effects of any kind adds to the fun factor of a game.

Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks! I tried to pick songs that were upbeat and fun; freemusicarchive.org turns out to be a decent resource.

Do you recall which song(s) it was that you enjoyed? There’s a long piano song, a trumpet-heavy album, and a jazz/swing album. Different people have had different feelings about them though usually at least one sets the mood.

Yeah that was some other feedback I received but I didn’t wanna deal with any buttons for my first web game, partially because I didn’t want to have to explain the buttons.

I had trouble enough getting people to realize all the things that could be clicked on.

Glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah I’m not too thrilled with how itch.io has handled game jam submissions either. If I click on a project that needs to be rated it’ll take me to the ratings / comments page, which if there are downloadable binaries they’ll be directly linked.

I played a game or two without realizing I hadn’t seen the project’s game page, which in some cases contains instructions. You wouldn’t think they’d have you make a page for your game only to not show it, but there I was.

I guess part of the process is learning the platform. Still more comprehensible than gotm.io.

Took me a minute to figure out how this worked. I read the in-game rules twice – the first time I got overwhelmed by more and more getting added to the same page! Then when I started the game and energy sources appeared, I didn’t immediately know what to do with them so I paused and clicked on everything I could think of. I even restarted the game in case it was bugged. It took me a bit to realize that places to use those energy sources had not yet appeared.

It also wasn’t clear to me if I could just ignore bad events or if I was supposed to do everything or what the success/failure criteria were – mostly I just tried to match up shapes and symbols and at some point I ended up in jail.

I liked the idea but as someone unfamiliar with the genre (if it was a genre) it was a bit opaque to me.

Haha. I’m terrible in 3D so this was a bit disorienting and a few of the things were harder to see than they could’ve been.

In this context a tutorial person made sense and I liked how vast the universe felt (there was clearly a situation I was just joining). But be careful with the controls on a web game. CTRL is descend and W is move left but CTRL+W is close window.

Neat idea though it has a few bugs. Space and the music were a good way to set the meditative mood of combining resources, so I was taken by complete surprise when the shooting happened. After that I was prepared for it, but the second wave combat mode never ended after the last orb was defeated. I started the third wave while still in combat mode and that one went back to the regular music before the last enemy was defeated. After that I couldn’t do anything with the ship – I’m not sure if there was no ending screen or if it was bugged out. I enjoyed it enough to be sad I didn’t get the ending.

Heh. Simple but it got the idea across. I liked the positive affirmations and the horror-adjacent aesthetic though those were a bit in conflict with each other. It might’ve been more cohesive if say the lighting of the room improved with additional affirmations.

This was a surprisingly well thought-out entry: the mechanics interacted in a clever way (dodge and block both cost stamina, blocking slows speed, attacks move guys, purging fixes movement, etc), the narrative was compelling in a dark and twisted way, and I got a laugh about the source of energy because I didn’t pick up on the visual cues of the main character initially.

Very nice for a short project. The graphics and colors were cohesive, it was quickly clear what to do, and the visible timer which reset upon scoring added both a sense of urgency and a small potential for tactics (come back to known batteries later).

Haha, that makes sense. I thought it may’ve just been a deliberate decision, mad-scientist style, because only a mad-scientist would come up with an idea this cool. Keep at it if you’re motivated – I’d play a full game built around this concept.

I thought I was using the new boxes but there might’ve been a hitbox issue. And I definitely know how initial plans change over time and time constraints. Keep jamming and you’ll get better and honing and preserving your ideas.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it. The first sentence in my design doc originally was “you are the energy source” but my first idea was also a mouse-tethered water bucket. The plan changed substantially over time and I can see how the theme became a bit abstract.

Thanks! I almost didn’t add any sound-effects, both due to time constraints and the artistic fear of inadequacy. But I know cognitively that sound effects make games better, so I forced myself to do it. I was immediately glad I did, and I’m glad to hear you enjoyed them.

Glad you enjoyed it. I tried for a simple challenge well executed, but usually I bumble the progression.

Thanks! Obviously I can’t take credit for the compositions but I did feel like those tracks matched the vibe. It’s also good exposure for the bands in question – I had not heard of them before searching for publicly-available works, and now I’m likely to seek them out.

The instructional words should’ve been better-illuminated (though the jokes were fine dimmed out). It was an interesting concept but I think it would’ve been better if the block pairs were numbered or something – I connected a Red and a Blue in the maze and best I can tell it didn’t do anything (the one door I could find was still locked), so either I got out-mazed indeed or I assume they weren’t matching Red/Blues. Good first jam though!

I liked the uprezzed-pixel graphical style along with the low-poly models. Mechanics were simple enough though I didn’t feel motivated to keep going after the second(?) floor – there wasn’t enough variety in gameplay or level design. Still, it was well-executed for what it was.

I really like the concept here! The idea of altering one’s movement / powers to progress through challenges on a mostly-fixed screen is an enjoyable one.

The controls were a bit awkward (I wanted to use WADS but there was a Q in there, if I used the up/down/left/right arrows I couldn’t shoot, etc) and I managed to get myself stuck near where you spawn.

The concepts were well-introduced and I think with a little more polish and juice this could be a compelling experience.

I actually really enjoyed the aesthetics of this, tense indeed, and while I can appreciate just forcing the player to read instructional words before the gameplay begins (I’m tempted to attempt that myself) it was unfortunate that I had to sit through it every time I died. Or at least none of the buttons I tried skipped it. I probably would’ve played it more were it not for that.

This was a decent if somewhat abrupt experience. Took me a minute to realize I could jump. I enjoyed the music and especially the robot sound effects. I was able to adjust to the slippery nature of things, and after my 1’22” run I felt like I’d seen what it had to offer.

The movement felt good and the limited animations (tilts / squints) based on the character input were surprisingly effective but the enemy hit boxes were a bit rough. It’s a common practice to make the collision area for good things a little bigger than the visible shape while bad things is a little smaller.

I was a little confused by the use of buttons (instead of panels) for help text, but I eventually determined that it was a keyboard game.

I then did not realize until after I reached the end that you could use the mouse to rotate the camera. That probably would’ve helped.

I liked the sound effects and music and lighting (though it would’ve been nice if the song didn’t restart when the level did; one way to get around that is to have an autoload singleton scene that controls the music), though I don’t know that I would’ve known what to do had I not seen the TV show.

Good call on stating the number of levels, so when things started to get tough I knew how much I had to power through. Took me a good minute on the level where you had to [spoiler]use the same mirror more than once[/spoiler], though maybe that was just me. On a later level I only needed half the mirrors.

SFX, graphics, and music were all very cohesive in a way that complemented the mood of the game.