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Nice work! Love the characters and dialogue, I looked forward to the next cutscene each time. Love the details, too, like the medal around the “neck” of the submarine. I like games where the difficulty level is a little frustrating, but where the game keeps me playing, and this one did that. The gauges at the bottom for tracking your stats worked well and the depth damage worked smoothly, too. Amazing that you made it in 4 days.

The tilting hitbox definitely took some getting used to and was initially frustrating when trying to pass through two-block sized openings, e.g., but on repeat plays I got better at it and started using it to my advantage. The hitboxes on corals also felt a bit on the aggressive side in a way that made it hard for me to know how to maneuver between them (or fire a torpedo between them). I tried out the dash a few times but had a hard time controlling my movement and integrating it, so I ultimately played the game without it.

I made it all the way to the end (?), defeated the boss and got the notification to press E, but when I pressed it repeatedly, nothing happened. I beat it a second time, making sure I had all the feathers, same thing. I beat it a third time and this time tried to rush all the way back to the crane at surface level, thinking maybe I had to be there, but it was such a long way back to the opening out of the boss area that even with 15 seconds to spare after beating the boss, I never even made it back to the part where I could start ascending again. So at that point I called it a day, but it was fun for sure. Only wish I had seen the final dialogue (if there was one?). Nice work!

This is great! I played to the finish and laughed out loud several times. The muffin man NES remix music is so, so good. The very earnest voiceovers were great, and the vocal effects recall the voices from arcade cabinet video games. The Streets of Rage / Double Dragon-style beat-em-up made for fun gameplay, with the added muffin twists making it even better. Nice!

Your games are always excellent, I was happy to see this one come across my feed. I played to the end and had fun – thanks!

This was a really interesting, fun, and complete game – awesome work! You created a great urban atmosphere with your artwork, and I can tell how much work went into making all the various scenes come alive with people, deliveries, buildings, cars, vendors, sounds, etc. The mechanics functioned well, and I loved the variety of types of gameplay I engaged in to play this – it kept it much more engaging and interesting than narrative-driven games often are. I was even learning Vietnamese proverbs and expressions – I love it. I’d never heard of “cozy horror” as a genre, but this was exactly that.

[Narrative spoilers ahead]: Maybe the best part, though, was that the game was expressive: it linked the financial struggles of a young person in the city to the very real precarious situations he finds himself in: isolated from family, alone during Tet, financially compelled to take a suspiciously low-rent apartment that subjects him to unhealthy conditions, harassment, etc. Wrapping it in the supernatural/horror element felt to me like a means of expressing that danger. Awesome work!

I don’t speak Vietnamese. I played this game by using translation tools on my phone, and searching online for the Vietnamese cultural/linguistic info I needed. It was well worth the effort!

Nice work! This was a fun game, with a nice level of frustration that made me determined to finish – just what Celeste players enjoy :). I played it to the end (including moon round) and had fun, and enjoyed the music as well. You designed the levels well. I enjoyed the late mini-game aspect too (funny), though I couldn’t get my input to match the audio prompt (being purposefully vague, here), timing-wise. The howl button/animation was a nice touch, too – Great work! Some feedback I hope is helpful: I experienced some occasional jittering of the screen/parallax when I moved horizontally on moving platforms. Separately, when I mouse-clicked the right-hand option after the end mini-game, I think it highlighted that option but nothing else changed, and when I then hit enter, the pop-up selection disappeared, but I stayed as I was (again, being vague but I hope that’s helpful feedback). Thanks for making this!

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[Mild Spoilers ahead!] Cool idea, interesting game and definitely thought-provoking on how this kind of puzzle could lead you to the solution. Very cool that you did this in a day! I do crosswords semi-regularly and I completed this puzzle with liberal use of the “check” function. One hard part of the concept is that the clue doesn’t indicate which part of speech the solution is. (To be fair, sometimes crossword clues don’t either, but they typically do, and if they don’t, they almost always narrow it down). Part of the puzzle here is also that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so the commonalities between the images are needed to guide the player to the correct solution. The AI worked against the puzzle a little at times in that regard, as, e.g., where a mallard and a goose are apparently pictured in the vertical word on the far left, which could lead one away from the answer, or where the images for the horizontal word across the top don’t seem particularly related to the word, and are probably referencing a movie that was made with that word as its title. The fact that that’s a hard word to make an image of is likely why the AI ended up leaning on movie images. Anyway, as you can tell I had fun doing this and thinking about it – nice work!!

Nice work! I saw this new game had posted and was looking forward to playing a new installment in this genre – I played to the end and it didn’t disappoint! There’s a great, dark narrative told here, and you do a good job of breaking it up and weaving it into the gameplay so that the player isn’t overwhelmed with text. The flashlight and its limited charge were well done – it makes you really feel the darkness.

The game forced me early on to figure out how to fight enemies with the knife, so I actually felt more comfortable fighting that way than with other weapons; only for the final enemy did I use the gun. (I also didn’t realize there was a dash until after I finished!). The fighting was ultimately nicely tuned so that there was a strategy that required dexterity that would win if executed, but that also was challenging (I died many times).

No bugs to report, I had fun – nice work!

Great game! Once again you really excel at making a character with a lot of expressiveness in her movements and mechanics, which makes the game more fun to play. I laughed out loud the first time my character was “rescued” – very fun. Great art, played smoothly, and I played to the end and enjoyed it.

Great game! I played to the end and enjoyed it. Love the artwork and palette, love the NES vibes, great music, and the character art and animations were excellent. You implemented a lot of mechanics here and they played smoothly (I didn’t end up using roll or phase, but loved the phase animation). It’s rare to see a solo game dev do both artwork and mechanics/level design so well. I got stuck at the final boss and couldn’t figure out how to do damage (like others, I attacked the eye, gears, hands, but wasn’t noticing any progress; a comment here gave me enough of a tip) – the scene is pretty chaotic, so perhaps more audio/visual feedback on gear destruction would help? I had fun, awesome work!

Yes, that’s it! The opening above you is not shown on your screen shot, but the game window should auto-launch large enough for you to see it (otherwise, perhaps maximize the game on your screen?). But yes – you’ll have to figure out a way to get out through that opening above…

Nice job on this! - I played this until Level 1 stage 4. The hand-drawn artwork is excellent and has a cohesive charm. The infinite-runner pacing is nice and controls are intuitive. There was a satisfaction to hitting a series of jumps and rolls that made it fun - nice!

Virtually all of my deaths were from beehives, as the timing of the roll is very tight on those. I enjoy challenge in games and even frustrating challenges (part of the fun), but the gap in difficulty between beehives and everything else (timing platforms, clearing ground objects, etc.) was quite large for me, which gave me the feeling that beehive colliders would benefit from being smaller, and other types of challenges might be emphasized more? Or perhaps start the player with a narrower/easier overhead obstacle? I wasn’t improving much with practice on beehives over repeat plays, which is why I didn’t make it to the end. I hope that’s helpful player feedback – Nice job on this game!

Nice – you very nearly beat the game! Hint: look for some light and signs of life from above and see if you can escape that way. Thanks for playing the game!

Nice! The sense of place in this game created by the art, music, and storyline was great – having never been to Singapore, it was interesting to read. I played it to the finish, with the third game definitely being the trickiest for me – was happy when I finally got it – nice work!

Very cool – beautiful artwork, engaging gameplay, and a really nice balance between narrative/text and interactive play. The story here is creative and I like the sense of agency you give in this game, with multiple endings and choices. Really impressive that you created this end to end – nice!

Nice job making it past the boiler room -- people usually say that's the hardest part!  

[Hint follows:]

You're on the right track -- there is a way past that maid, but it's not the same way you got past the maid on the top floor.  Maybe, without knowing it, the maid herself can help you!

Thanks, guys!

Great work, this was fun to play and it fits nicely with the NES tradition of vertical space shooters.  I was feeling pretty good at that halfway point -- alas, an illusion!  I played to the end end and had fun.  In level 1B, the long strings of blue enemies (and maybe also the single red ones?) kept coming down and encircling the screen while I was fighting the boss, which i assumed was just a step-up in challenge that forced you in closer to the boss and required quicker player movements/reactions, but when the 2B and 3B bosses didn't have that, I realized it may have been an accidental overlap of game phases.  But it actually worked really well!  Nice job on this game.

Nice!  After I got the hang of it I got to 326 and saw the Princess float down -- fun to get a little reward like that after seeing my guy faceplant several times.  Love how it became a kind of percussion rhythm game where you had to read the music quickly.  

Thank you so much for your kind words and feedback!  I wish I could have made it longer -- especially after putting in the overhead time to get the mechanics and animations working -- but I was working down to the final hours and had to keep it short to get the game completed.  I usually do longer jams but I couldn't resist an NES one that only comes around once per year.  Thank you for playing it!

Thank you so much, and thank you playing!  I appreciate it!

"The princess was finally found" -- whew!   It's like you knew how many tries it took me and added that "finally" in advance :).  Nice job on this and congratulations on your first game -- you had several levels here with many different types of platforms and different mechanics, which is great.  The grappling-hook mechanic seems like it's notoriously difficult to get to work right in games, but in the portions of platforming that were designed for it in this game, I thought it worked well.  I also enjoyed the platform that carries you a distance and then ejects you -- those are just fun to ride.  And perhaps most of all, I liked that this game had an otherworldly strangeness to it, in the abstract backgrounds that are often just barely indecipherable, and in the coloring.  Nice!

I'd echo the point made elsewhere that the script on your camera should track the player in such a way that there is always some distance between the player's feet and the bottom of the screen (and head and the top of the screen), particularly in a game like this where you are descending downward.  I got some feedback on an early game of mine that there should never be any blind jumping at something you can't see below, and I've avoided that ever since.  (As an alternative, you might have the camera fixed vertically, but colliders that you touch that shift the camera down one full level, and then remains vertically fixed again). I'd also look into "coyote time" and how to add that to your character controller, for a nice feel on all these close jumps.  Finally, I'd suggest either giving your character a full double-jump (with the jump force about the same on the first and second jump, and limited to only two jumps), or none at all -- here, one could rapidly press jump to have the character descend indefinitely up into the air, and with small/uneven amounts of upward force.  Sometimes I'd do it and hit my head on a collider that was probably intended for falls from the level above, and I'd be killed.  As you've probably heard before, if you have the luxury of a non-participant who can playtest while you watch, that always unearths issues one is often blind to in development.  I hope that's all helpful feedback -- nice job again on this!

Nice work!  I played this to the end and it did a great job capturing that Zelda vibe.  It was very engaging and kept me in the zone to the finish.  At times I was stumped on what to do next, and at times I had to take a few lives and some trial & error to beat a boss, so I liked the challenge level as well.  And of course I love a good NES-style secret!  Nice job!  On further development, you might consider constraining the knock-back of enemies (when struck with e.g. sword) to the single x- or y-axis on which it was struck.  When our hero can only attack on even 90-degree angles, having an enemy (who the player has "lined up" for attack) be knocked slightly off-line from the direction of the strike, and then continue its walking path into the hero to hurt the hero (and the hero's sword can no longer make contact) -- this somehow didn't "feel" quite right, maybe because I've been conditioned on the knock-back of grid-based walkers in NES Legend of Zelda?  Just my two cents, others may disagree (and enjoy the new combat considerations it presents), but I thought it might be helpful player feedback.  Nice work!

Thank you for playing and for your kind feedback!  Thank you also for pointing out the bug -- I had never seen it, but I went back and reproduced it and will try to update it with a fix after the jam ends.  Thanks again!

That makes sense, in hindsight -- of the enemies, the rats got me the most.  I have the unfortunate playstyle of hording game assets if I can at least get by without them, to avoid the dreaded "I ran out of bullets" feeling :).  

Nice job with this!  I played to the end and enjoyed it, and using the different abilities was fun.  In game jams it's often tough in the time crunch to do endings, but you did a really good one here -- nice!

This is a fantastic entry, I loved it.  When it opened I was so thankful that someone had done a space shooter a la Astro Warrior, and I was super impressed when it switched over to a Zelda-style top-down.  Having been conditioned by Zelda, I went around this game pushing all of the fixed blocks on the floor to see if any would reveal a staircase or something.  (Even now, I'm thinking, "but did I push *all* of them?" ).  Great music, great art, very smooth mechanics.  I only wish that it was perhaps a bit harder, so as to give some of that old NES game frustration, and more importantly, to keep me playing this game longer.  Awesome!
 

Nice!  It took many tries, but I played this one to the finish on Level C (whew!) and had that nice feeling of completion from a difficult game.  I was confused at first about what I was supposed to have the princess do with the yellow things and had several deaths at that point (I think I was pressing A a little ahead of time to hit the vampire on the run -- in reality, it was better to press it when he's right below -- and those near-misses were making me think he wasn't the target).  It's an engaging game and you get into the flow of it, which is great, and after each death I wanted to jump right back in.   Love the colors and background, too.  Nice job!

Great game!  Over a few sessions I played this to the finish and had fun with it.  You did a nice job introducing the different enemy styles and abilities so that it never felt overwhelming and you were able to layer them in later puzzles.  You did a nice job infusing a puzzle game with the personality of your characters, too -- I thought that was great.  And I saw your note about using the passwords instead of continuing, so that wasn't a problem.  I think on the first puzzle with the 90-degree view enemies you marked the floor to give a sense of it, but I was still unsure for a while about how that worked, and how the view wrapped around obstacles -- as another commenter noted, a visualization like flashing tiles on the first introduction could be helpful, though I worked it out eventually.

This game is another interesting one because I don't think these types of puzzle games were popular on the NES, or perhaps even existed at all  (I don't recall any, perhaps an NES historian here will!), and yet there's no hardware reason why they couldn't have been (as might have been the case with a first person shooter or open world game).  And so with this jam, we get one!  Nice!

Nice work! I played this one to the finish and enjoyed it.  It gave me Castlevania vibes in the art and player movement, and the NES feel was excellent all around.  I love a few secrets in a game so I wasn't disappointed there (no spoilers).  Early in the game I fired several times at the knight and it didn't defeat him, so I figured the armor prevented gun damage and stuck to the sword for the rest of the game, assuming the gun was for the assassination scene.  When I had passed through the series of roof chambers and approached the final scene, I was *ready* with around 60 bullets. 

Nice job on this!

Nice job!  This definitely gives cozy and mellow vibes (also, your game page is expert level).  It's thought-provoking to see this style of game set in an NES jam.  The biggest sellers of the era seem to all emphasize quick reactions and dexterity challenges across the dominant genres -- action/platforming, adventure, puzzles (e.g. Tetris, Dr. Mario), and sports games.  A game that got your heart rate up was a success.  Nintendo only later hit on the idea that peaceful, relaxing games were also appealing, but it makes one wonder what might have been if the NES era had had games with this approach.  Nice work!

I love the artwork in this game -- all the crates and trucks and boarded windows got that '80s "mean streets" beat-em-up style just right.  All the little details you added in the scene make it so fun to play in this world -- that Kickboxing Club poster in particular and the way you got the perspective right is so impressive!  Great opening scene (nice details there, too).

Gameplay-wise, on my first several plays, I felt like I couldn't do much more than mash the punch key and try to avoid being attacked from right and left, and it felt like I'd inevitably take a single punch in between button-pushes and suffer an apparent one-hit death.  For several plays it didn't feel like I was getting better.  But I kept in mind that the game developer can usually beat their game easily, so I kept looking for strategies.  [Spoilers ahead] I realized that duck-punching keeps the enemies at a distance and make it much less likely to take a punch from an enemy (even if it deals less damage); I realized that using jumping well allows you to corral the enemies on one side of you so you can't be punched from behind, and it also crosses-up the enemies so they punch each other (loved that); and I came to understand (correct me if I'm wrong) that even though your health meter only appears once you've been hit, the damage you've sustained from prior punches doesn't heal when your health meter disappears -- so those "one-hit deaths" weren't one-hit, they were just the final blow.  And I used those strategies to beat the game.

So while there are strategies here to master, in further development, you might work on building out the combat mechanics so that the player feels like they can become more skillful at fighting, and can use different attacks on different types of enemies.  Jump-kicks, leg-sweeps, dodges, weapon pick-ups, etc. -- the stuff I imagine from Double Dragon, Bad Dudes, Ninja Turtles, etc. , could be good additions.  Just my two cents!

I really liked this game and would love to see more -- awesome work!
 

The third stage was very tough but darn it if I don't love a game that frustrates you and goads you on to try again! I kept at it and reached the princess, accompanied her home, and beat the final boss.  That final heart collection was a nice victory lap for the player after a hard challenge -- a nice touch!  This game scratches that PacMan itch, and all that Arkanoid bouncing in the third stage kept an element of randomness that made repeat plays new and difficult.  Even so, there were strategies that one develops over time to get better at each room, and that's the sign of a good game.  Nice work!  Fun game!  

Thank you so much for the kind words and feedback, it's really nice to hear feedback on elements of the game design like this.  Thank you also for making these videos -- this is super helpful (and fun) to watch and it's a real service to this community of game developers in several ways.  I saw the throw that zipped through the hitbox in your video, and the gameplay around the opening/closing doors also pointed up some things I didn't anticipate -- all very helpful, thank you!
 

Thank you!  I looked up a playthrough video of Marko's Magic Football and I see it -- it's fun to hear people's references with these games.  Thanks again!

Awesome, thank you so much for this feedback!  You are totally right that it should have a skip-through on the intro -- it's one of those things that was on my list for polish, but I was still writing music on the deadline day and wasn't able to get back to it.  Thanks again!

Thank you for your kind words and thoughtful comments -- I appreciate it!

Great art style, and you really created a vibe with this game with the art, back story, enemy, and background city that I liked a lot.  The boss battle was very fun, with the bravado of the character and enemy animations adding a lot.  I actually played it a few times -- the first time I jumped/dodged/attacked my way to the end.   The second and third times, I worked on incorporating the switch-places mechanic.  It's tricky to get the hang of that mechanic, but once I was able to deploy it and switch places to injure the enemy or avoid a rock ball, it felt very satisfying.  I had fun with the game, nice work!
 

Nice work on this game -- great art and animal animations (otter was my favorite), nicely harmonious palette choices, and solid mechanics.  I also liked the creative take on the jam theme.  Improving my score enough to make it out of the first stage was a bit of a struggle for me, but I kept after it across about a dozen plays, slowly making adjustments (testing nets, otters, bait, eagles, bears, and the placement of all of the above, and trying to strategically juice them with coffee) to get it over 200, over 220, 250, 290, and finally 300 to make the second level -- success!  My first intuition was to place the cursor on the land, so it wasn't until play 6 or so that I realized there were water-based options, for whatever that's worth (maybe I'm just dense).  Nice job!

This is a very cool entry.  First and foremost, the music is excellent -- I stopped at the title screen and just listened to it play through.  Upon starting the game I was very disoriented and it took me a while to get my bearings as to the rules of this universe and its objectives, and I mean all of that in a positive way.  It was fun to figure out and it all felt otherworldly.  I played it to the end and enjoyed it.  Upon playing a second time, I figured out the fast-movement mechanic (I spent the first play slowly dodging), and that was a nice as well.  The post-end romp was also fun.  The "overclocked" image was a funny take on the difficulty an NES would have had with this (my browser, Firefox/Mac, actually popped up a message about the memory use or similar while the game was loading, but it did ultimately load and play smoothly).  Nice work!