Thank you for playing and your kind words :D
Ah yeah that makes sense - I think there's definitely tuning that probably needed to happen with dash speed, aim speed etc etc. I appreciate your feedback it really helps :)
Thanks! :D And yes tuning the AI / the difficulty has definitely been the core thing around this game! It's tough, because after a while of playing you do get better... but should you tailor the difficulty of the AI for a Jam setting... I think there probably should have been bot difficult settings - lesson learned for next time :D
I promise it gets easier with practice :D (I've also tweaked things in a version that I might publish after the jam that makes things a little easier too)
Yeah I found that downtime hard to balance too - originally you could respawn but with a small amount of time ... but this basically ruined the whole premise... but I also noticed that, now you die for the round, there's a huge wait if that happens early. Spectate mode might help a bit, that's a great suggestion!
Thanks for playing.
An interesting idea/setting . I had a time where I think I poured the right amount, and I got a point for it. But then I was stuck in the pouring UI and had to pour to much to progress. Would be interesting to see all the stories you could tell to a player playing a barkeep with the occasional mini game of pouring drinks, changing barrels etc.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback.
I think I definitely tuned the car controls after having already slowly got used to how it was working...so it landed in a place that's not very easy to pick up. and almost certainly not the optimal solution. I can zip around the city pretty well but that definitely is a complaint that many people have.
Definitely a good lesson in testing and refinement here :D
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback.
I think I definitely tuned the car controls after having already slowly got used to how it was working...so it landed in a place that's not very easy to pick up. and almost certainly not the optimal solution. I can zip around the city pretty well but that definitely is a complaint that many people have.
Definitely a good lesson in testing and refinement here :D
Absolutely incredible entry.
Love this so much - there are lots of rhythm games - but this one felt the most like the rhythm mechanic was part of the narrative as well as just being executed well.
The only thing I would have liked would have been to be able to continue from a certain phase, or at least skip the tutorial, but yeah was amazing work :D
Thank you so much for your nice feedback.
The UI was definitely something I was a little worried about because I feel like I had too much I wanted to convey to the player and some of the static UI can get in the way of the dynamic UI (the direction arrows)
I think a mini map would really help with this (allowing the waypoint markers to have a dedicated location instead of at the sides of the screens) but it's really nice to hear that the UI still worked well enough for now :)
And yes - thank you for the nice words about the map - that was basically the aim of the project so it's really nice to hear it appreciated, thank you!! :)
Yeah I think that works well! I used to play a lot of MtG and there's a cliche of "Life is a resource" and "If you have 1 life or more, you're not dead" and I think exploring that space in lots of different video game genres is a really interesting vein for ideas.
Feel free to tag me if you end up with any more updates or large scale projects that expand from this - would love to see them :)
Thanks for playing!
Yeah - I started off pretty rough at the game... but after some play time it got much easier to hit accurately with the twin-stick shooting...
I also like the slight difficulty in hitting in this context, given it leads to long, drawn out duals where it's easier to dodge the bullets (like a bullet hell) than it is to actually hit... which then makes the duals very swingy - where just one hit nabs a bunch of time and puts more pressure on... BUT the dual doesn't end quickly so there's time for tension to build.
I think, on balance, there needs to be some tuning to make it easier to aim/hit... but not all the way :D
Yeah once you have the game tooling and mechanics in the levels were just variants and placements... Having some automated testing of them also helped so that I could have a good idea of whether they were beatable etc as they were created.
Congrats on the 3 stars :D (double congrats for doing it as the construction site foreman intended ;) )
Thank you, yes - Justin Timberlake was definitely an inspiration on this one ;)
The idea really works as a forcing function for players to push forward , but as you can see in the comments on here - sometimes it doesn't quite work so more refinement is needed :D
AND thank you :) I think the multiplayer is probably O K for the Jam but I would need to really test it's stability in a real setting lol.
Thanks for playing!
Loved this!
Big fan of the art style and weaving the narrative in to the gameplay and back the other way so well. Think there could be something here to expand in to a larger project!
Shame it ran a little choppy in browser, I think that will hurt how many people get to experience it but people SHOULD take the time to play it as it deserves it.
I like the idea of health draining down as a motivator to push a player to act and press forward.
I actually had a submission that was playing with this ideas as well: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-jam-2026/rate/4822158
Thanks so much for playing the game and your nice feedback!
Agreed with your thoughts! I had play-tested some other mechanics and variations but they didn't feel polished enough to make it in to the itch deployment. I also think very few of them would have solved the "just use the push charge every time" which definitely feels like the biggest issue ATM.
I also think even the 20 levels I DID include could have done with more balancing and refinement - in particular there's some building shapes that feel like more of the same...
I have toyed with the idea of a different mode instead of/in addition to the classic "Get 3 stars on all levels" mode: a Rogue-lite ish mode, where you would get a limited number of uses/limited funds across a run (which would mean even if there were some OP charge-types, you would naturally be motivated not to just use them every time, because you would run out.
Cool concept - love a wave shooter. Might be worth having the "press 3" for ball vacuum on the screen for the first wave as it's such an important mechanic.
I didn't read the instructions properly (because I'm the worst :D ) and thought I had to use the tractor... which I found difficult to drive and indeed, did not collect the balls...
Great work though!
Ahh yeah I see the similarity and the applicability.
I think I might do a bunch of prototypes (this mechanic in various different types of games and some tweaks to the mechanic itself) we'll see where that gets me.
Alas, I don't think you can sell ideas but hey , if they want to hit me up, they can :D
Yeah - I think maybe a higher density of players (smaller map or more players - smaller map might be better because then when there are fewer players remaining you're on a smaller map)
The AI are SUPPOSED to be aggressive in this way... but I think they probably need some tweaking, and as you say - with real players it probably works better.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I think if you are able to hide and get away with it you'll sneak through... and we need something to prevent that from being viable (maybe using some scoring mechanic to promote getting in the action) .
In the current form, the hope would be people start chasing you down though (as you win more time from shooting people with more time remaining in their clock) so to anyone on low time you become a very lucrative hunt.
I really like the time as a health bar mechanic though... I had some incredible back and fourth showdown which i've never really had in other shooters (because usually one of you dies pretty quick in a head to head)
Also very much agreed with your UI feedback - thanks for taking the time to play and comment :)
Thank you!! The nice thing about PCG is that once you have some nice assets (thanks https://limezu.itch.io/ ) you can just build a system around them and get something pretty great (I have dabbled in PCG quite a bit in other engines, so it was nice to try it in Gadot! )