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Thank you for pointing this out and playing the game! :) I appreciate your feedback!

Thank you for playing the game and giving feedback! :)

Thank you!

Thanks so much for your detailed feedback!! I really appreciate your taking the time to write it and give such insightful and specific suggestions.

I especially found it helpful how you explained the issue with the lack of goals the game provides. I'm definitely taking that into consideration for the future, and I'm looking to add mechanics that provide more of a point to the game. I also think spelling words is a very cool idea that I hadn't considered.

Anyway, just wanted to thank you again for playing my game and your feedback!

I'd appreciate a link to the VOD as well!

Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!! :)

If I may ask, what was your favorite thing about Smart-Attack? 😃

Thanks so much for playing my game!! I really enjoyed watching the recording of your stream and hearing your feedback. Great chill vibes!

I agree that the concept could be a good educational kids game, and I'm currently trying to figure out how to best use that concept. This game was meant for an older audience (hence the retro PC game aesthetics and the "cheeky" jokes) but since it was a quick jam game, I don't know if that came through very clearly. As I continue developing it, I'm evaluating the idea of also doing a spin-off with very similar gameplay, but specifically for kids.

Thanks again!

Thank you so much for playing my game!! I had a blast watching your stream and laughed out loud multiple times. I really appreciate that you took the time to play it -- multiple times, even -- and your feedback is very helpful!

I'm glad the game comes off as hilarious, that's what I was going for 🤣

I agree that it has potential as an educational kids game. I've been playing with the idea of doing a similar spinoff game that's fully kid friendly, while also continuing this unhinged, "deranged educational game" concept separately.

Finally, I have already coded in volume controls for the next version.

Thanks again! 😁

Forgot to add this, but I'm curious what was your initial impression or expectation of the game was before playing? If you don't mind sharing.

Oh my god thank you so much!! This is really helpful feedback and I had a blast watching the stream.

I'm glad you enjoyed the graphics and objects. (The toilet is one of my faves, loool) Working on adding even more silly stuff to collect.

I will definitely implement volume settings -- I was actually working on that today after I initially saw your post. Having a more clear goal set from the start of the game is also a planned feature, as I plan more rougelite-esque features.

As for the items and words, each item actually has multiple words associated with it (synonyms), so trial by fire is what I intended. There are a looooot of synonyms. (D actually IS a correct answer for the naked guy, lol) Since it's easy to lose your combo, though, I'll work on making it less punishing to discover new words and maybe find a way to hint at the possibility early on without making it too obvious. I plan to have a dictionary of words as well.

Anyway, thanks again for your feedback! :) Appreciate you taking the time to play my game!

Thank you! Glad to hear it!

Thank you!

Thank you for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it! I'm taking into consideration your feedback about making it less punishing to try new answers -- that's something I've noticed while testing recently as well.

Thank you so much! :)

Thank you for playing! :)

I'm thinking of making some changes to the hitbox in a future version to make it a bit more clear. Glad you enjoyed the graphics and controls!

Fun concept! Lovely art and character designs. There are also a lot of nice touches like the props on the table and the fact that objects become transparent when someone's behind them.

It was a little hard for me to play since I often couldn't tell whether my line was actually damaging enemies or not. However, the list of planned fixes all sound great, and the use of the theme was perfect as well. It'll be great to see where you take this one.

This is just a random idea, but I wonder how it'd be if the movement tied in more with lines. Perhaps you move AND attack by drawing lines? That could kind of combine the movement, lines, and dash attack into one.

Thank you for playing! Were there any examples that come to mind? 

Later on I'd like to add a feature to let players suggest words that I missed, haha!

What a nice little game! Beautiful ambience and music! I finished in 10 minutes...with 47 deaths...😅

Thank you for playing! I'm curious, did the song ever get annoying? I'm asking because I plan to make a longer version of it.

Thank you for playing!

Thank you so much! :)

Great job! The GobLines are very cute :)

Lovely black and white aesthetic, and one of the most polished and complete games from this jam I've played so far. Wonderful job!

I enjoyed the concept and think it has a lot of potential for a larger game. In addition to that, the music fits perfectly. I like the little particle and text effects, and the fact that you can drive off-road, skip sections, and still recover! (It's just slower than normal, of course). The ghost high score board is a great touch.

I did find it hard to control the car. It has very little traction. The way to possess another car wasn't clear to me at first, and it can be frustratingly hard to aim correctly at a moving target while moving yourself. It's also unclear to me how much of an effect drifting has, and since the boost takes a long while to activate before it can actually possess cars, perhaps it would help if the boost started right when you released the button. Its duration could vary based on how long you drifted, kind of like Mario Kart.

I wonder if it would be more satisfying if you could simply run into the cars without needing to boost. Maybe slamming into them while boosting would net you extra fuel.

I found the concept's link to the theme rather vague, but I'm not bothered by that; this game really delivers in terms of overall quality.

Finally, it'd be cool to see your progress on the high score board relative to other ghosts. Perhaps the list gets more competitive as you gain experience. Am I near the top of the bottom? How many points before I defeat the big cheese ghost at the top of the list? Ha ha!

Anyway, you have a winning nugget of gold with this gameplay. Good luck and keep up the good work!

Lovely black and white aesthetic, and one of the most polished and complete games from this jam I've played so far. Wonderful job!

I enjoyed the concept and think it has a lot of potential for a larger game. In addition to that, the music fits perfectly. I like the little particle and text effects, and the fact that you can drive off-road, skip sections, and still recover! (It's just slower than normal, of course). The ghost high score board is a great touch.

I did find it hard to control the car. It has very little traction. The way to possess another car wasn't clear to me at first, and it can be frustratingly hard to aim correctly at a moving target while moving yourself. It's also unclear to me how much of an effect drifting has, and since the boost takes a long while to activate before it can actually possess cars, perhaps it would help if the boost started right when you released the button. Its duration could vary based on how long you drifted, kind of like Mario Kart.

I wonder if it would be more satisfying if you could simply run into the cars without needing to boost. Maybe slamming into them while boosting would net you extra fuel.

I found the concept's link to the theme rather vague, but I'm not bothered by that; this game really delivers in terms of overall quality.

Finally, it'd be cool to see your progress on the high score board relative to other ghosts. Perhaps the list gets more competitive as you gain experience. Am I near the top of the bottom? How many points before I defeat the big cheese ghost at the top of the list? Ha ha!

Anyway, you have a winning nugget of gold with this gameplay. Good luck and keep up the good work!

Lovely black and white aesthetic, and one of the most polished and complete games from this jam I've played so far. Wonderful job!

I enjoyed the concept and think it has a lot of potential for a larger game. In addition to that, the music fits perfectly. I like the little particle and text effects, and the fact that you can drive off-road, skip sections, and still recover! (It's just slower than normal, of course). The ghost high score board is a great touch.

I did find it hard to control the car. It has very little traction. The way to possess another car wasn't clear to me at first, and it can be frustratingly hard to aim correctly at a moving target while moving yourself. It's also unclear to me how much of an effect drifting has, and since the boost takes a long while to activate before it can actually possess cars, perhaps it would help if the boost started right when you released the button. Its duration could vary based on how long you drifted, kind of like Mario Kart.

I wonder if it would be more satisfying if you could simply run into the cars without needing to boost. Maybe slamming into them while boosting would net you extra fuel.

Finally, it'd be cool to see your progress on the high score board relative to other ghosts. Am I near the top of the bottom? How many points before I defeat the big cheese ghost at the top of the list? Ha ha!

Anyway, you have a winning nugget of gold with this gameplay. Good luck and keep up the good work!

This one has potential and is probably the most delicious concept here.

Things I liked

- I like the concept for making the food. Pressing buttons the right amount of times kind of reminds me of a rhythm game. Once I got the hang of it, the button pressing was kind of fun.

- The music is really good! I like how there's a new loop once you're doing well.

- I enjoy that this game is has its own clear identity. It's not just a generic food making game, you're making sticky rice with grilled pork! That's fun! And it makes me hungry.

- The ending certainly takes you by surprise. The dramatic editing was entertaining.

- I only heard a couple of voice clips, but they were kinda funny.

- "Keep up or get yelled at" is so funny, I literally LOL'd when I read it. And it's literally true in the game, which is also funny.

Problems I had

- The game does not make it clear what you're supposed to do. It really needs to VISUALLY show that the up button does Rice, right button does Pork, etc. For example, you could arrange them in buttons on the screen like the arrow keys, and when you press the arrow key, the matching button does a little animation. I had to look at the itch page for instructions and have it up on my other monitor the whole time. It's surprisingly difficult (and not that fun) to coordinate/remember when it's not visually laid out. 

- I agree that the food-making needs some kind of extra challenge, probably a speed or rhythm challenge, to make things feel more complete.

- There is also no backspace button. The game does not immediately realize when you mess up, so when I realized I pressed something too many times, I was like..."Oh. I messed up. There's no way to go back. Bummer. Just have to press Space anyway." You could choose to have a backspace button or just immediately mark answers as wrong when you press a key too many times.

- The 'it's not what it seems' theme is there, but I thought it felt tacked-on, since it's only part of the ending and doesn't affect the gameplay. However, I respect what your team was trying to convey with the story.

- Is something supposed to happen when you fill up the bar completely?

- The load time was a bit long for me, but that might just be because of Godot Engine, with its big build sizes.

Other

- The first time I got a wrong answer, I was greeted with a screaming clip that said "GOD DAMN IT!!!" Which is kind of funny, but IMO is a little much, since the game didn't really set expectations or tell you what you were supposed to do.

Wishes for the future

Keep at it! Keep making games and having unique ideas. Good luck!

This one's great! Very simple and works well. There were a couple of suitcases that stumped me. My best score is 90/100.

I like that you put the images of the banned items in the corner for easy reference. And that magnifying glass effect is really cool. 

More randomization might be nice, since I think I noticed some of the same suitcases on my second playthrough. The paper at the beginning also has a low-contrast color combo that is difficult to read. But those are minor issues. 

If you wanted to expand on this later, some lookalike items would be a fun bonus to add more depth. (like water guns, or red phone charging bricks, or steering wheels) That would also push the "it's not what it seems" factor more, haha!

This is overall a solid game. Great job!

This is a strong one! Overall it's well-executed, especially for the time constraint. You should both be proud. :)

Things I liked:

- Great music, and a large soundtrack especially for a jam game

- It's a great concept for a bullet hell, well worth expanding into a larger game. It's interesting that you're upgrading the boss instead of yourself!

- Graphic style and sound look great, and the overall artistic direction feels polished.

- I like that there are many choices to upgrade your boss.

Problems I had:

- My biggest problem is that the game gets pretty repetitive. The boss battles start out at a medium difficulty rather than easy and doesn't get that much harder with the upgrades. The battles aren't unreasonably long, but over and over again, the same battle gets old. I think a little less cooldown on the player's bullets, or the ability to do more damage, would help speed things up a bit.

- My controls briefly got stuck walking to the right. I'm not sure how. I fixed it by pressing the right arrow key again and letting it go. I have 2 monitors and I was playing in fullscreen on one of them.

- It would be nice if you could see your character's hitbox. There is currently some guesswork as to whether a bullet will hit you. The way Deltarune does it is clever: your hitbox shows up as an overlay when bullets are near.

- Also, the bullets are so large that sometimes it's not feasible to skillfully duck and weave around them; you have to try to outrun them or get as far away as possible.

- When you die, it seems that your progress (the enemy difficulty) is reset to 0. I wasn't a fan of this. This also happens if you go past the max in level 2.

- Music on both levels loops incorrectly

Wishes for future development (if you decide to do more):

- I would love it if you could upgrade yourself instead of just your enemy. Maybe the enemy gets WAY stronger with each upgrade, but you can also use the difficulty points to buy upgrades for yourself. That way it's like the Vampire Survivors thing where the adversaries are ridiculously overpowered, but so is the player.

- I would also like to see the option to either upgrade past the max or just stop at the max. Like once you reach 300 difficulty points, you can move on to the next level, or you can choose some of the upgrades you skipped last time, and get other rewards in the next level for doing so.

Great job on this entry. Again, it's got a fun concept!

Great art style! I love the character designs you came up with. I think my favorite is the player character!

I also really enjoy the little details in the presentation, like the handmade feel of the backdrop, and the lightbulb shorting out with sparks.

A couple issues I noticed:

• I was only able to get to round 2, and like others mentioned, the monsters in that level move too fast to be able to tell whether they're human.
• Sometimes when I try to shoot a human on the bottom row, it doesn't register and instead thinks I shot the monster behind them, which can end the game.

I also noticed there's a lot of waiting around, for multiple reasons:

• Round 1 tends to be slow paced, with sometimes not enough humans to shoot from moment-to-moment, so it seems you actually can't keep your combo bonus up even if you're a good shot
• Sometimes monsters/humans spawn at the very corners of the game, making them very hard to see, although I often was able to tell they were humans. It felt like a bug, though.
• The reload system feels like it punishes you for just playing the game normally, since after every few shots, you have to wait to reload and may lose your combo. I think it would be more fun if ammo slowly recovered itself automatically, but you still need to use bullets sparingly or else miss opportunities for points. That way it only punishes "spamming" and lack of accuracy.
• One time when I played, I spent a really long time in Round 1 and didn't get to Round 2. For whatever reason, the trigger to Round 2 did not fire.

Anyway, I think the use of the theme is fun, and a cool way to showcase lots of lovely character designs. This is a strong contender.

I'd love to see different types of movement and other variations. Maybe some characters flip over, changing from monster to human and back! Maybe some bounce around the screen!

Your concept is solid, so once some of these issues are ironed out, this will be a "scary" good time!

Hey, I just released a slightly updated version on a different Itch page that has this bug (and some others) fixed! Let me know what you think :D

https://happycrazywild.itch.io/smart-attack-game

This does not count toward the ratings for this jam, of course!

Thanks so much for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I will definitely address that bug in a future version later on. 

Thanks for playing! Added that to my list of things to address later. Thank you!

Thank you for playing and for the feedback! I'll make the instructions more clear in the future!

Ooops, just double-checked, it looks like that's totally a bug 😅 Thank you for the bug report! Adding to my list!

OMG thank you!!!! 🥹 That warms my heart, I'm so glad you love it so much!

As for the softlock issue, it's possible that is a bug 🤔 Have you tried moving to the other side of the screen and coming back? The Items all regenerate and change to something else when they are far away from the screen. So if you put a lot of distance between you and those items, they should be different when you come back, and a certain percentage of them will always be correct! (Again, unless it's a bug lol)

Congrats on finishing this game! You should absolutely be proud!

Highlights:

• First off, the amount of total content of this game is super impressive! In my notes I just wrote "So impressive??? How do????"
• Beautiful pixel light effects, and they seem to be pixel-perfect too!
• Polish and attention to detail. It's great to see a jam game with such immersive ambience. Lovely UI transitions too. I noticed that little cursor animation when you shoot the blaster!!! What a cool detail! I love stuff like that!
• Cat is so cute
• Delightful illustrations and background art. My favorite is the concept art behind the itch.io Run game button.

Problems I faced:

I apologize if some of this seems harsh, but I feel like it's much more helpful to give my honest thoughts, since that's what I'd want someone to do with my game!

• You need checkpoints on every screen. This is #1 issue. It made the game extremely frustrating to play.
  • For a narrative game, nothing kills the vibe faster than having to restart parts you've already aced over and over. For me, it made the game feel like it was overstaying its welcome.
  • Game took at least 25-30 minutes to play cause I kept gettin' killed... buuuuut I did stop to take a lot of notes during that time lol
• Control issues
  • Jump feels rigid and uncomfortable because your X speed is always at the maximum, just with the sign flipped depending on the direction.
  • Dash feels bad and unreliable because it gets stuck on ceilings, and you need to be already jumping in order to use it, which is confusing for my fingers and leads to a lot of frustrating deaths. Dashing to the left in particular feels uncomfortable.
  • W key can't jump, which makes the WASD combo uncomfortable. I also felt when using the arrow keys, the dash button (Shift) is not that comfortable to press. 
  • Gun shoots with way too much cool down (delay between bullets). Let kitty mow down those suckers!
  • There are too many buttons and functions to comfortably juggle, if you ask me. Why do we need the stun enemy feature AND the shoot enemy feature? Can't they be merged? Full disclosure: I'm biased towards simple-control games (Super Monkey Ball is my jam).
• Visibility - many platforms lack contrast.
• Did not like boss battle
  • Takes too long. Boss spends too much time with shield up.
  • My strategy involved camping on the left side of the screen and mashing the gun button. It's easy once you do this but he makes a few cheap shots. 
  • I'm glad that worked. I was so frustrated by that point, that if the game had asked any more from me, I may have quit, which would be a shame because I wanted to see how the story ended. (I'm a very impatient gamer, lol.)

• Story didn't really land for me (WARNING: MILD SPOILER)
  • I feel like I missed something since I was playing cautiously, trying to get through the levels without getting massacred. But the twist left me scratching my head, like..."Oh. That came out of left field." It technically conforms to the theme because there's a twist, but the gameplay isn't a large part of that twist.

Bugs/specific issues:

• If an enemy is very close to you, you can sometimes shoot directly through it, missing it entirely while it murders you :( See level 2 room 2
• Can't read text message in Level 1 room 2. Text box is cut off the corner of the screen
• Steps in Level 1 room 3, room 4. Room 4 also has very frustrating jumps with dangerous ceilings and the collision is unclear
• Robot in Level 1 room 5 moves way too fast. Player isn't sure whether to stun it or shoot it and then dies :(
• When you try to put together the robot puzzle but you haven't completed all the levels yet, it acts like all the wires are put in the wrong position. It would be more satisfying if, with each level you complete, one of the lights turns green.
• Level 3 room 1 has a bump in the road on the right side that made me think going to the right was a dead end.
• Home: Trigger for the "Tools and photos" popup can make it impossible to use the ladder. You try to climb the ladder, but the popup freezes your character. This happened after I completed all levels. I thought I was softlocked until I realized I had to hold E and the up key at the same time to climb while the popup is up.

Anyway, thanks for sharing and working on this game, and reading this Great Wall of Paragraphs lol.

Again, it's a huge accomplishment to get something working of this level of polish and quality in just 10 days! Every jam game has rough edges and despite that, there is so much good here. You clearly understand atmosphere well and have the knowhow to create an polished, immersive environment that FEELS finished despite being a jam game. No default Unity fonts or obviously misaligned pixels here! 

Keep up the good work!

Thank you! :)

Thanks so much for playing and rating! Good feedback too. Added to my list of things to address later!

Thank you! That means a lot :)

This game is so cute! :)

I got "Keke Is You"

Thank you!! :) I'm proud of how the UI turned out. I was inspired by the highly polished, animated UIs you often see in Nintendo games (and others, like some Sonic games) especially since the GameCube/DS era. I plan to add even more flair to the UI in the future!