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well making a game on pico-8 is almost like making a prototype for a game idea you have, and making a game on pico-8 is relatively faster than other game engines or frameworks,  and after testing it myself, I see as the best way to make a game for a game jam.

And for the remakes, yea there is no popular games from pico-8 but their remakes are, like celeste they have made it on pico-8 first but the reason was they have originally made first celeste for a game jam, and after that they remade the jam on a framework, I don't remember which but it was a framework and not an engine.

But I recommend and prefer pico-8 for 2d jam games, because making a game on it is pretty fast, and it teaches lua one way or another, which is a great language, now I am working on LÖVE (a framework for lua to make games) for the remake of this game, I really like the idea I came up for this game that is the reason I want to make remake of it, if that goes good I may announce it on discord server of the jam, and upload a playable demo on itch.

And btw, gamemaker is not that bad, the only limitation of the free version is commercial use, which is not good if you start game developing with 0$ and plan to sell your game, but if I were time travel to start of this jam with the experience I now have, I would still make the BigHandsWizard on pico-8 first, since jam had a long time limit, maybe I would think about making it on LÖVE, but I love and appreciate my time on pico-8, I wouldn't be able to make this game for this game jam, if I never knew about pico-8.

I guess this goes into the genre called true rougelike ig (the games that are really similar to original Rouge), I am kinda not experienced on this genre, and they look confusing to me, but ascii type of graphics are really good, I have liked this pretty much, even tho I think I am not eligible to rate a game in this genre, this looked solid to me so I rated it  on a scale I think it would be fair an generous.

Well me landing on pico-8 is quite a journey, I joined this jam at the beginning 25th december and I was attempting to make a platformer shooter on Gamemaker but got frustrated and dropped, after that I tried to make a topdown shooter still on Gamemaker, and while working on it there were times I couldnt work and got frustrated again and dropped that off too.

At that point I was thinking of giving up, and I was watching some videos (I guess it was Juniper Dev's make tiny games video) and I heard about pico-8, I knew me getting frustrated earlier was due to my scope being too big, and after learning more about pico-8, I heard it is good for people which give up and get frustrated because of starting with a big scope, so I decided to go on with pico-8.

After making a quick flappy bird clone as a warm up, I thought I should continue with pico-8 and try to make a game for the jam on it, and at january 5th, 5 days before the deadline, I started working on BigHandsWizard, and it was a really good experience to work with pico-8.

Well me landing on pico-8 is quite a journey, I joined this jam at the beginning 25th december and I was attempting to make a platformer shooter on Gamemaker but got frustrated and dropped, after that I tried to make a topdown shooter still on Gamemaker, and while working on it there were times I couldnt work and got frustrated again and dropped that off too.

At that point I was thinking of giving up, and I was watching some videos (I guess it was Juniper Dev's make tiny games video) and I heard about pico-8, I knew me getting frustrated earlier was due to my scope being too big, and after learning more about pico-8, I heard it is good for people which give up and get frustrated because of starting with a big scope, so I decided to go on with pico-8.

After making a quick flappy bird clone as a warm up, I thought I should continue with pico-8 and try to make a game for the jam on it, and at january 5th, 5 days before the deadline, I started working on BigHandsWizard, and it was a really good experience to work with pico-8.

it is a really good game, the platformer mechanics are really well made, I remember when I used to bang my head on the wall when I was trying to make a platformer game xd, there is a reason the game I submitted is not a platformer even tho at first I wanted to make a platformer-shooter, I still get the ptsd of me trying to make a wall climb/jump mechanic xd, so respect to the one who made the mechanics of the game! And it is kinda unique to see someone who didn't implement the randomness to the mechanics but to the game design itself, well made!

I don't want to repeat what everyone mentioned about the level 4, but it is still annoying.

Thank you for your compliments! In my opinion most of the downsides of the game is caused by me starting making this game when there were 5 days left to deadline, so I couldn't get that much playtest, and couldn't make the tweaks and little fixes I had to do in time, my only playtester was one friend of mine which had a laptop with broken fans (he kinda risked burning alive to playtest the game xd), and he wasn't able to play the game that much.

And for the health I wanted to go for a different way of making ui, so what I made was adding the green ring that closes in according to how low your health is, and same goes for the mana, it is represented by the rings around the hands of the wizard.

It would have been better for the game to introduce the ui and the element cycling in a tutorial, so player would understand the ui and the core mechanic of the game a little bit better.

At the end we get into game jams for the experiences and the challenges right? People learn the stuff they experience better than the stuff they watch/read, now for sure I know that if I am gonna make a game with radical ui designs like this, I have to also make sure the player understands it fully whether by a tutorial or something else.

For now I am planning to remake this game in LÖVE, with using the player feedback from this version of the game to not repeat the mistakes, maybe I will announce it on the jam's discord server when I make a playable demo of the remake. 

Once more, thank you for your compliments and feedback!

This is really cool, altho there could be improvements like some actual threats that would make you swap polarity, or the collision with the limits of the gameplay window, it is not that good to be able go out of the screen where you don't see the player, but the soundtrack and it being going faster when you get hit is really cool, great game so far tho!

I think this one has one of the most complete and polished gameplay mechanics out of all the games in the jam, the Art is not that consistent but it doesn't matter that much unless it affects the gameplay in a bad way, which most of the time it doesn't, but this gameplay deserves way better art, so far great game!

This is one of the rare games that is oriented around a story and kept everything else simple from this jam, altho I don't get how does it implement the jam's theme to the game, but story is really cool if you pay attention, and the soundtrack is great as well.

Very fun game, the main game loop is really good, but sometime the music is getting bugged but that doesnt affect it that much, I would like the game to be a little bit more challenging, like if it was a little bit more difficult it would be more fun, altho it is still fun, and like challenging gameplay is not for everyone right? I am just enjoying challenging games more.

this is peak.

The idea is really good and it is pretty well implemented, the inspiration is very clear but you have made it very original, I am just sorry because I wasn't able to play it long enough due to me being kinda too sensitive to this type of content, but good game overall.

I guess that is due to my game having low clarity, the background is too cluttered to see enemy bullets and when you add the player bullets to that, the clarity gets killed, and after I have added other stuff I had no time to change the background, but if you had fun that makes everything worth it!

Thank you! I know the clarity is kind of a problem for my game, my best guess is that background is too cluttered to see other stuff, but at the point I have added other aspects of the game like enemies, enemy bullets, and health pickups, I had so less time to rework the background, so I had to keep it that way.

No problems man, at the end, the experience we gained matters the most, don't get sad, my game also has been rushed and lacks a lot of things too.

I had a lot of fun with this one, really well made.

This is so good, I have really loved this game, the idea is really good, it is really well implemented, and the lore is really good too, this one is really one of my favourites from this jam! (10/10 voice acting)

the idea is really unique, I like that very much, and the game is actually challenging, the idea of letting players see the hitbox is a nice touch and really helping, and I guess player gets slower when seeing the hitbox, which makes this a good ability with a fitting cost of sacrificing movement speed, altho one thing about the game I would like to touch on is the hitbox location, normally in topdown 2d games the hitbox is at the feet of the character, and it is what is natural for topdown games, but for art aspect it looks cool at the chest of the player, but I wanted to mention that one thing that was weird to me, overall the game is quite fun and good, music is really good too.

No problems, I knew instructions stage is not a good place to explain this mechanic of the game, I get it people tend to skip the part that mentions the controls, I would like to add a tutorial to explain this mechanic, which would make this aspect of the game more clear, but there was so less to do with this limited time :/.

Thank you for your feedback! As I started making this game at 5th of this month, I had less time than given, I was unable to do some fine tuning to those aspects you mention, I did my best to indicate when an enemy attacks with vfx and sfx, but that wasn't enough as it seems like. I wanted it to turn into a bullet hell as the waves go up, and player has to position carefully to avoid attacks most of the time (except the bone enemies which are always going near player, so you have to dodge them but else is up to positioning), I mostly want the game to be a little bit challenging but not unclear, and for the changing powers aspect, it was explained in the instruction stage which also mentions controls, but the lore of changing powers did not made into the game due to limited time, if I could, I would like to add lore to that but I couldn't.

I love this so much, this game's atmosphere feels like the old times in creepy beta minecraft versions back when we used to think herobrine was real, and a little bit silent hill vibes, absolutely one of my favorites from this jam, I love the random map generation, a nice way to implement randomness, altho the map generation has flaws (like sometimes doors spawning at places that they should not), but its expected for a random map generation to have problems, but skipping those, the atmosphere and art is very beautiful, feels creepy in a good way.

This is really good, the idea and the art is beautiful!

The theme and art is really good, gameplay could have some improvements and would be better with some bug fixes, like when I die, there is no game over screen or a restart function, but the idea, theme, and art is really good!

Thank you for your feedback!

Yeah there is a health pick up that could drop from enemies by a 1 in 5 chance to drop from skull enemies, and it looks like a green plus sign. --->