itch.io

Hey sorry as it is just an exe file, I don't think we can do installs. 

We don't have plans right now because we do not own a Mac which is necessary for the export. If we do get our hands on one, we'd also have to consider other technical details that we aren't sure of yet so we can't promise anything even then. 

It's about ten hours and longer for 100% completion but atm we have various circumstances that make it so we can't charge less than what it is on Steam.

GAME HERE

Hello!

My friends and I recently finished our first major game and managed to get the full version uploaded on itch (we have had a demo on itch for a while).

Rusted Moss is a challenging metroidvania with a physics-based grappling hook and high action gunplay with full 360 aiming! Heavy on the platforming, learn to move across desolate landscapes and hostile terrain while battling powerful bosses and discovering various weaponry scattered across the map. The grappling hook is easy to learn and difficult to master with a very high skill ceiling that enables sequence breaks and cheeky movement. 

The story is that of a post-apocalyptic faerie tale where as rust takes over mankind's iron machinery, the fae-folk and magic are finding their way back into a nature drenched world. You play as a changeling determined to bring humanity to an end and learn the secrets behind mankind's fall.

IMAGES:

TRAILER:

We released a pretty big patch for most of the major bugs but there's still some minor ones + changes that are coming. We think we are going to be on standby for about 2 weeks while we get another patch together.

And for itch, we are discussing putting a build together for it. There's some steam stuff we'd like to pull out of the itch build so wasn't as straightforward as we'd like as the level editor is also tied up with steam workshop for sharing levels. (might need to have the level editor function more like the demo's editor...) 

First time we've had such a big game so dealing with version control is a bit new and we should have been working off different branches a bit more haha :')  

I did not make those other games. Faxdoc did. She doesn't have plans for Linux versions for her games. 

Sorry I can't promise a Linux version. We definitely won't have one on release date and I'm unsure if we'll be able to after as we aren't sure how hard it is to do. Don't want to promise anything that won't happen.

Super fun game! Appreciate just the mouse controls as I'm super lazy. Really like the dice doing damage as I roll it and the random part of seeing what to get next. I was nervous at first because there were so many symbols but found learning what things did and how to play the game to be fun on its own too. It was a little hard to keep track on what was an upgraded dice and what I had in my arsenal. And sometimes I didn't notice when some dice was unplaced. Definitely super satisfying to play and I really enjoyed managing my battlefield. Re-rolling dice kept me invested on what was going on and planning where to fortify. I think it'd be cool to have upgrades for other things besides the dice abilities like dice placement or if some dice when rolling them did additional things to have more stuff to do during the dice rolling portion. But it is a more nice to have. Game is great already and it is always so super impressive what you manage to do! 

Hey! You can sign up for it here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/rustedmoss

Thanks for the fanart, it looks great! We are dealing with publishers internally. 

Thanks so much for playing our game! 

Sorry, we don't have immediate plans for a Mac download but will look into it down the road.

Hey, thanks for the interest! We won't be making a discord soon but it's something that is down the line we will make once we feel ready.

Thanks so much. Appreciate it! Hoping to apply the feedback we get from the demo to the full release. Thanks so much for taking the time to play.

Itch Page: https://faxdoc.itch.io/rusted-moss-demo

Been working with some friends on this game and finally got the demo released! Hard to imagine a few months ago this game nearly got deleted as it was just a short summer experiment and had no release plan... 

Quick Summary:
Brave your way through a beautiful but hostile landscape overtaken by rusting machine monstrosities. With a grappling hook, traverse devious terrain while blasting away at vicious enemies. Uncover the mystery to mankind’s fall. Dark folktales emerge as forgotten Fae come knocking on humanity's door.

Test your limits with tight combat that will push your gun slinging and grapple hooking abilities to their fullest!

Check out the trailer:

Thanks for the kind words! We were very inspired by the neon making process.

Yeah! It's a bug. Funnily enough, we spotted it during the jam and just forgot to fix it. We hope to have an updated version that addresses it and that adds some more quality of life stuff too. Thanks so much for playing the game though! A retry button is a nice idea! Really appreciate the feedback :D

Thanks very much for playing and leaving feedback for our game! I'm sorry you had difficulties with the controls. We had the instructions written on the game page itself but as not everybody goes there to check out the page (myself included) it probably would have been best to also have them in the actual game. We did want to keep the controls super simple though which is why we more or less stuck to a mouse only thing. I'm glad you were able to figure it out! The hand tool let's you work around the workbench and pick up either the glass tube or the torch. I felt that gave it more of a workshopy vibe than a pure image editing thing as you are "picking" something up. I'm not sure if we'll change that too much in the post jam because I think part of it is about tool placement on the table. When you're done with the burner, put it to the side etc... though might adjust sizes to make overlap less likely. 

There was definitely a lot of research put into the game. There's actually a neon sign making place near where I live and the we discussed having me attend a class to try get more research. Though that would have taken at least 4 hours so we opted instead to spend those hours working on the jam directly haha. Our game is not the most accurate neon sign making simulator due to a lack of time/unsure of how much we wanted in the gameplay. Some differences are that during bending the glass, you would also be blowing air into it to keep the soft glass from collapsing on itself and maintaining a consistent diameter. We had an idea where the player would need to be blowing into the microphone while bending but for obvious reasons we didn't move forward with that as that would be kinda finicky gameplay and not everybody has a microphone. And that the bending took up enough concentration that we don't want to burden the player to also have to control air flow into the glass. We also didn't include attaching electrodes to the end of the glass tube. There is some discussion if we want to have that step in the post jam version. As for the gas filling mini game, that isn't how you really fill the tube up with gas. However, the gas mixtures we included are real combinations and we kept the facts Mr. Lam says about gas colours and the use of helium in tubes accurate. Nyveon helped keep us honest about it. Initially we wanted Mercury to be one of the gases you fill the tube with. However, mercury is placed into the tube as a drop of liquid that later vaporises, not as a gas initially which is why we went with different mixtures and had Mr. Lam just say there was a drop of mercury already in the tube. 

There's a few other neon sign making games in this jam though I haven't seen the same kind of bending if you're interested in checking them out. I might be missing some.: 

https://itch.io/jam/amaze-me-game-jam/rate/1096696 (Make a neon light and see them decorated in a city)

https://itch.io/jam/amaze-me-game-jam/rate/1096574 (Management neon light making game. Loved how it costs money when you "draw" out your neon light)

https://itch.io/jam/amaze-me-game-jam/rate/1097218 (Make neon lights by filling out combinations correctly. Hectic game like overcooked style.)

Hopefully you were able to finish our game despite those issues! I'm quite fond of the ending myself which is why we made it so you could skip all the bending glass mini games by hitting "Done" prematurely. Thanks again for playing!

Character creator is very cute! Nice little detail for the game. 

Thanks for playing our game! When I heard of the jam theme, I thought it was a great opportunity to have something centred around Hong Kong's neon lights :D Glad people are learning something about it!

The game's mechanics were definitely the hardest part of it. Before we all committed to doing the jam, we wanted to make sure the bending mechanic was possible. We weren't sure if we could do it in the time frame. Thankfully, it all worked out! Nyveon did all of our coding so really thankful to have him on the team. He has everything up on github too if you're interested in checking out how he did it :D

Thanks for playing our game and glad you enjoyed it :D 

Yeah we wanted to contextualise neon lights. When I heard of the jam theme I really wanted to make something about Hong Kong's neon lights and work a narrative into it somehow. 

Thanks for playing our game!

There's no need to guess if we are solo devs haha. You can view the contributors on our itch page and we also had a credit screen in game. The submission page also lists us out.

Nyveon worked on programming, I worked with faxdoc on the art, and sunny was our sound person and story. Victoryarcana worked on story. Just split up like that.

Thanks very much. It really feels amazing to read detailed comments like yours! Like a shot of dopamine. 

Glad it made you feel like learning to make neon signs. We definitely put a lot of research into it. We even considered taking a small neon light making course during the jam period but haha ended up doing more art assets instead. 

Bending the tubes in the light mini game is definitely pretty tricky. So we made it optional. We wanted people to be able to enjoy the story even if they'd rather not do the mini games so we made it so you can just click "Done" even if the letters aren't perfect. Wanted it to be stress-free and have the player feel it is ok to mess up. It's more about the experience.

The bending mechanics were definitely tricky. We wouldn't have participated in the game jam if we weren't able to get it working. Nyveon, our programmer is the real MVP. He coded for an insane amount of time to get it right. He also posted the code publicly if you are interested in seeing how it works! 

The sound design is also one of my favourite parts of this game. Probably the most sound polished game I've submitted in the jam. Nyveon and my sister worked together to get over 60+ sounds into it. And I love the bending sound a lot.

Thanks so much for leaving such a thoughtful comment. I really enjoyed reading it. And thanks again for taking the time to play our game!

Yeah I ended up picking it up on another playthrough. I didn't see it on my first one! Definitely a cool game, fun to hear you are going to keep working on it :D

Yes! Completed Neokyo City! I think the idea of a side scrolling open world is neat. Super ambitious for a game jam! I enjoyed the interactions with the NPCs. They really added to the vibe of a city. I do wish I knew more about the world. What is Neokyo city? Why do I need to free the denizens? Lots of things to explore there! 

Some game feedback

• Felt the map wasn't built out for ease of platforming. I understand it is kinda a puzzle but at the same time, being an open world, I think I'd prefer more convenient traversal. There was a cool platforming portion where you need to climb pretty high up. I found that challenging and fun. There were however lots of places where you easily hit your head and you kinda need to jump and strafe up. There are a lot of those. They are far from impossible to get past but are also obtrusive to the feeling of quick precise platforming I feel
• I think it would have been nice to have a bit more explanation on the hacking. It isn't super obvious which number is the active one you need to stop. It makes sense once you figure it out but I think the active number indicator isn't noticeable enough. Maybe even having an instruction on how "X" would stop it would make getting into the game a bit easier.
• It would be nice to see an indicator on what you can interact with. Nearly missed the power boxes for the hacking because of the lack of sign.
• Not sure if it is by design but being shot at by the drones makes the hacking harder. I'm of two minds in this. Part of me feels because you have to start over at the beginning if you are being shot at by the drone, it's too punishing and it feels RNG if a drone spots you or not. The other part of me feels I think it can be orchestrated to be a tense situation with higher stakes. Hacking under pressure... trying to be quick before the drone spots you

I thought the movement of the drones was super cool. Definitely felt anxious trying to out run them and hide. I loved talking to the NPCs. I did find the jump to feel really good!! Jumps and ease of movement can definitely make or break a platformer. Your game feels really good to move around in. Though I was a bit critical of the level design, I think if the movement of the player didn't feel as good as it did, I'd dislike the level design a lot more. Because of how good it feels to jump and move around, I was able to navigate the trickier spots of the level despite how low hanging a lot of the ceiling was. So excellent job getting the "feeling" right. It definitely balanced out the areas I was not as fond of. Just feel in a lot of platformers I play in a jam, you definitely got the right thing going in terms of game feel. 

Nice job on the entry! Seems there's a lot of opportunities to explore the world you've been crafting :D

Absolutely love these shoot em up games. I think you added a lot of fun spice into it! I like how the map changes in a course rather than a long straight corridor. It did add some challenge when your ship could only shoot in one direction. I think power ups for multi direction shooting could be a nice thing to add. Definitely gave some cool rail shootery like vibes. I really enjoyed it! Also found the music really awesome. The transition to the boss was done soooo well. It was very immersive. The retro sounds you had meshed really well with the gameplay. In general, I liked the retro sprites though some seemed different in style and didn't necessarily match each other well. Was a little more noticeable in the explosions. Art assets seemed to be a bit of a mish mash. That being said, they did their work overall in the game. I love the cutscene detail in the opening with the pilot getting into the ship as well. Really cool shoot 'em up that made me feel more immersed into the world than others with all these small details you have put in! Just what a fun ride it is! Just a blast to play.

I really liked how you had a bit of variety in the mini games. Aside from just the memory game, there was also the one on holding down the arrows. I enjoyed the sound design overall. Definitely got the submarine vibe with the gentle beeping rhythm of the background. Felt like I was under the sea with the muted music. I did feel the mini game sounds were a little jarring and loud when contrasted with the soft ambient music so maybe there is some sound balancing that could be done to make the effect noises not too jarring. One little quality of life thing is that when the same symbol is shown for the memory pattern, I could only tell it was the same symbol because the sound beeped twice. If someone is hard of hearing or playing without the sound, I think it would be hard to play the memory game because of that. I think a visual indicator would be nice at that point. I loved how large the map seemed. It really felt like a deep ocean that I could go exploring in. It was nice after periods of what seemed like emptiness to suddenly start seeing the glowing fish. Wonderful mood shift as you get deeper and deeper into the ocean and how the areas started getting darker. There's some really nice ambience there! Really cool to see the neon theme used underwater rather than in a cityscape. Nice work on your submission!

Hmm might have to give him another try then. I didn't see any indicator he was taking damage so assumed he was bugged and quit the game unfortunately. I played and heard him say "what" twice so thought I was doing something but he kept on with the same pattern until I quit because I didn't think anything was happening. But I'll try it out again! I didn't have a lot of power ups so maybe it would just take longer.... How many times does he say "What" before he reaches his final mode?

Think this is a really nice solid puzzle platformer. I loved the cute graphics you had. The puzzles were well made and I had fun navigating them. One small point was that I did get stuck on a block at a level and had to restart. I couldn't move when the moving block went above me. I got squished. Even though the graphics were really minimalist, they really were of a nice quality with a nice amount of bounce and just how the liquid looked! it wasn't a bad looking game at all. Felt very satisfying to take actions. Entertaining and solid :D Hope Jupiter Hadley plays your game haha. 

Very evocative game . I think it's a really creative interpretation of the theme. I enjoyed how the mechanic lined up really well with the theme and emotions you were trying to convey. It was tense to see the blue bar fill up and just feel more and more like you couldn't function. It was claustrophobic and difficult. Think you did a good job at setting that mood. I also enjoyed the little safe spaces you had. Definitely felt like a nice moment to breathe and listen to the calming beats. Visuals are fantastic. The feeling of being pressed in an uncomfortable position with staring eyes is a really awful environment to be in. I think you really showed the feeling of just being squished in the masses of faceless people that just adds to your anxiety. The neon colours really work nicely. Just love the art style you used a lot! Nice job!

Really enjoy this game. Think this game out of the entries I played, makes me feel the most like: I'm gonna jump back in soon! I didn't do too great but found myself replaying it several times. The graphics are awesome, the music very fitting and really gets you in the mood. I love the 3D sound. Also super appreciate the toggle to turn off the shaders!

Very polished entry, had a blast with it. The variety of enemies was great. I love the sprites for them. One minor thing could be I wish upgrades dropped more frequently. And I wish the green enemy bullets were a different colour. The green bullets look similar to when they die so those I get hit by more on accident. Might just be a player issue on my end though haha.

Whole game just a real fun high octane joy to play. Fantastic enemy design. Fast paced and fun. Nothing much more to say!

I'm gonna go back and keep playing now :D

EDIT: I went back and played it. Made it to the boss. There might be a slight bug there. Wasn't able to kill the boss and hte boss didn't seem to be shooting out bullets like in the screenshot. Just expanding and popping up. So  I was firing at him for a super long time and nothing happened. I love his voice though! Really adds to the whole game vibe. 

"balance issue wise, I do sorta lowkey want to make sure you reach that point of ridiculousness when it comes to having a ridicolous amount of shield"

Super fair point. I can say I really enjoyed the ridiculous amounts of shield so it's a plus for my player fun. Feels good to feel powerful :D

What an incredibly well thought out puzzle game. Love the little gamemaker logo haha. Felt so happy when I figured out the robot can jump on top of another one. Super cute and it's a sign of a good puzzle when you can go "a-ha!" when solving it. The levels ramped up really well allowing me to learn the game without reading long instructions. Each level taught me a concept in NeoRoboJack's world so the difficulty ramped up in a great pace. Really enjoyed it. The art is really good. All signs of a super polished and satisfying game. Sometimes when I play game jam games, I'm excited to see how a limited theme is creatively interpreted. As "neon" is such a broad theme, I wasn't super sure what to expect. But games like yours make me glad it is such an open theme because you can see just something really cool that someone made. It's a great idea that's a lot of fun. The level design is superb and everything is just really well done. 

The concept of this game is super cool. I really really enjoyed it! Probably one of the most creative mechanics in this jam and I really had fun playing it! I think my biggest issues were more of the hitboxes. I noticed sometimes I was dying to spikes even though I was appearing on a flat surface. Noticed that on the level where you have to grab the key and jump down spikes on both sides. Even before I grabbed the key, I was on the flat platform to its left and seemed to be dying as well. Same for the level where you are chased by the pink arrow and after that jump, there's some fire and spikes you had to go to get the key before going back to the door. I noticed that even though the arrow didn't hit me, if I hit my head on the ceiling, I seemed to be getting killed by the spikes above it. Even though those spikes weren't for the ceiling... if that makes sense. I think a little signposting as to what the hazards do might be helpful in the game. But to be honest, I never really had trouble with that part. You respawn so easily it's pretty easy to figure out and just learn from your mistakes. I particularly loved how you could kinda do a blind run of the game without using the light.  I think there's some fun speedrunning potential there with how fast the game resets. I love that it is forgiving to deaths. Was playing around trying to see how far I could go without using the torch. The graphics were pretty well suited for this game, the sound and musics were nice too. Game gave a fun challenge that I loved to play!

Hahaha love the art for this. It's super charming. I love the little cutscene in the beginning too. The hand made art and the animations are just so delightful. There's a lot of variety in the backgrounds as well! The boss design was also really cute. It does get a little hard to distinguish what I should be avoiding or not but finding a blinking star did have an interesting challenge to see if I could spot it amongst the rest of the images. Felt similar to a "Where's Waldo" in that sense because of how busy the backgrounds were. Super dynamic and cute game! Before I realised there was shooting, I accidentally did a pacifist run straight to the star. The boss must live!!

I had to play this game after my friend said it was a blast. I ended up playing it for 90 minutes haha. Though I guess I also had a really hard time finding the boss! Anyway, it was super fun regardless and incredibly polished. I have never played slay the spire before for some context.

Have some little nitpicks on this game. I really loved it so these things are pretty minor and nitpicky. 

UI Related Issues

• Heart symbol on how many turns the token will last is a little confusing. The heart made me think of health rather than turns. Maybe something like an hourglass would read better
• Had issues with dragging the card. Several times I thought I had dragged a card but I did not. As the card itself does not actually drag, it is also doesn't read quite well. When you drag the card, the targeting is not super prominent either so it is easy to be mistaken. Would almost prefer clicking a card and then selecting a target though I guess that can be seen as less immersive.
• In the shop, the "Buy" sign looks like a button you can press. It did not read as a question, I think because the borders surrounding it look identical to the borders surrounding the "yes" and "no". In the store, I had clicked "Buy" a few time before clicking on "Yes". I think having the action be the button would read faster to most people. Their thoughts being "I want to buy something", and then seeing the "Buy" button. Think this is also trained because lots of online shopping website would have "Buy" as the button to press. Maybe just have the button read "Buy -40 gold" or something like that and the other button be "cancel" or "go back"
• It's a little hard to tell if the map would expand. Sometimes I would see a monster on what seems to be an island with no other paths to it. It looks like a deadend. So some indicator of maybe fog or arrow indicators that there will be more to the island would be helpful. I nearly missed a path because of this. 
• Wish the sprites were a bit bigger

Balance Issues

• Went a total shield build (ended up with 16K shield and 46 health) haha. That card to make the shield permanent with double shield is super powerful. I didn't see much a reason to stock up on health because of how easy it was to get lots of shield.

Performance Issues

• This is probably solely on my end but the overworld was lagging for me. Not sure why but lots of games in this jam have been performing poor for me .... I have a nice laptop but the current theory is that gamemaker games are running on my integrated graphics card on default for some reason

Things I really loved

• Music was great! I spent such a long time in the game and didn't get a headache from it. It sounded good and worked well. I love the orchestral stuff in it. Really well done. It fit the game vibe well. 
• Building up crit was a TON of fun. Really went wild on the tokens and gave such a sense of reward.
• Final boss variety? I think I had a different boss from what my friend had and he played the game twice over as he really liked it.
• the background effect on the battle screen was super cool.
• Love the meep moop sound when there's no energy left haha
• The screen that indicates a battle is starting is absolutely awesome
• The floppy disc cards are a neat little touch that work well into the theme

When it comes to this jam, I think this game ranks one of the highest if not the highest on fun. What a blast with an addicting loop. Can't wait to see this expanded! If you do, are you sticking to this theme? Or branching out once the jam restrictions aren't in place? 

Honestly, super blown away by what you made in the jam timeframe. 

Yeah I definitely went down a google hole when it came to neon lights. During the jam period, my sister told me there was actually a glass workshop near where I lived and they were offering 1-day neon light workshops. Haha, I was super tempted to join for our jam "research". I mean 3 hours making actual neon lights is totally helpful for making a game right? Guess in the end we decided not to do it and spend the day making assets instead... haha. Maybe next time we'll sign up just because it seemed soooo fun tbh. 

The tube shaping mechanics seemed like a major pain. Nyveon takes all credit for coding those. We weren't even sure if it was possible to do within the time frame. I didn't want to get everybody's hopes up about doing a jam so asked Nyveon to make sure he thought it was possible first before committing completely. So there was a LOT of time spent on experimenting with those and research. 

Maybe in the post jam version we could have the sign you make display somewhere in game. We were thinking on the title screen. But for immersion purposes kept a nice one to show in the final cutscene.

We haven't collaborated before but schedules nicely lined up and decided to go ahead and give it a go. Was a lot of fun :D Been so happy with the people I've been meeting since starting game dev a year ago.

Thanks for leaving feedback and playing the game! Sunnydaze would be thrilled to hear you enjoyed the music :D She also did most of the sound design and we ended up with 60+ sounds... haha. I was super blown away when she sent over the bending sound. Thought it was perfect. It's probably the most sound polished game I've ever made in a jam.

33/35 is a really fantastic score. The final "S" can be super hard to get 5 stars on! 

Yeah definitely a big appeal of the game is the immediate respawn. Makes things less frustrating and encourages you to try again. Hard to find a balance!

Really enjoyed the gameplay of this very much! The polish was very good. I also just loved kinda lining up the moves I wanted to do while manoeuvring a ship that was soooo fast. Think it made for a fun challenge of part trial and error and part reaction time challenge. I think it'd have been nice if the obstacles reset when you died as well rather than kept going to make the route planning a little smoother for those trying to get through a run as fast as possible. Overall though, really fun game. Loved the rainbow effects and the polish and made for something really enjoyable.