itch.io

Feels like a pretty complete game, with lots of nice art. Challenging!

If I had an immediate suggestion, it would be to add arrows keys as an alternative to WASD. On my keyboard, the arrows are so convenient and intuitive. But not a huge deal. :D

Hey there! Pixel avatar art looks cool. I love the camera perspective. When the 3d view came up I was excited to progress.

Unfortunately, I got a little stuck. I think a some more information on the itch page about who I am and what I'm trying to do would be awesome. Like ... "you're Doki, and your goal is to get to the top of the building" or whatever. Haha because I was feeling lost. The instructions say "LMB to shoot" ... but when I clicked the left mouse button nothing happened. Did I need to pick up a weapon or something? Seems like I missed something. I never found anything to shoot or how to do it. Haha.

One specific suggestion: if there's no reason to want close doors, then I'd say changing it from "E to toggle" to "E to open" would be more clear. If "open" is the only goal, then why toggle? I open/closed the doors a few times and watched the same dialogue a few times ... and giving the player that option if it's not relevant was confusing to me.

Carry on! Hope you keep making the project bigger and better!

Pixel art is very nice. Music is charming!

Couple of suggestions in the bugfix phase, if you have time: it would be cool to add a sound effect for the "!" moment ... as a new player an extra bit of feedback might help me. Also, a little bit of narrative background, even just in the itch page, would be cool. I wasn't sure... am I the character on the left? Am I Dokibird?

Good work getting a nice-looking game submitted!

Hey, big congrats on getting something submitted, even if it's a little rough around the edges! I hope you'll keep working on it. It looks promising.

Hey there, Austinx88! Nice work getting a game submitted! Game devs unite!

There's some awesome math and coding going on here. Getting something to move fluidly is so cool and satisfying. I hope you learned a ton and will continue to explore the possibilities.

I always try to provide some constructive feedback for games I try, so my suggestion would be to add a little more to your itch page description, to tell your players about the journey that led to to project, and what you were imagining to fit the theme, etc. I wasn't 100% sure what I was supposed to do... haha. But I gave it a shot! Let me know if you have questions for me as a player.

Looking forward to seeing more projects from you!

Hey there! Awesome job getting a submission together. Game dev is f***ing hard and so many people don't get this far. I know it's early in the post-deadline world, and you're probably just happy to have made a submission.

Anyway, I'm gonna do what I always hope people will do for me, which is give me constructive feedback I can use to get better. :D

So I'm a fan of pinball games, BUT I spend all of my time on a little laptop with a touchpad... not a real mouse... and so right clicking is kinda tough. Haha. So for people like me, a keyboard key for the right paddle (well, both paddles) would be a great "bug fix" improvement over the next few days. I think intuitively I'd want "left arrow" or "a" or be the left paddle and "right arrow" or "d" to be the right paddle.

Since my job as a game rater is to give 1 to 5 stars for each thing, I'm always SUPER grateful to folks who tell me how they targeted those things... and the itch page description is the place I look for that. So if you have time, telling me what you did to embrace the scoring rubric will always help me give higher score/ambience/humor (for this jam) will usually give a score bump.

I hope that's helpful! It's so cool that this jam gives us time to fix bugs and stuff. Please, I'd love it if you checked out my game, and I look forward to learning from your thoughts. Carry on! Make cool stuff! :D

Also LOVE your game thumb / icon / whatever you call it. Nice typography. Intrigued...

Hey team! Super huge congrats on getting something submitted.

So first things first... who did the art for the initial cut scene? OMG so beautiful and intriguing. Please find that person and give them a big high five and hug from a fellow artist. I was impressed. You got skilz, girl (or boy) ... and a sense of storytelling. Nice work.

Now, I know it's early in the post-jam period, so yer probably working on this, but a little more guidance on the itch page would be awesome. I really didn't know what I was supposed to do or why.  I ran around and reloaded and stuff, and I shot at the floaty things trying to kill me (I think?) haha but what was I supposed to be doing? I found a shack with an up arrow, and so I decided to go into that shack? But I couldn't until I killed the floaty bad guys? Haha not trying to be critical just trying to share the mind journey of a player. Usually when I'm confused it's because I've never played whatever game genre it's about... anyway, I might just be missing some context. But yeah, I was mighty unsure what I should be doing. I was enjoying the challenge of dodging the dragoons and what not... the game implementation was good. :)

So what I did like was the onscreen controls, saying clearly what buttons I needed to push. Seriously, so many games literally don't tell you what buttons to push. (I'm on a keyboard, btw, not a controller... in case that is helpful.)

Anyway, strongest rating for me is ambience... music and those beautiful intro scenes get a bug high five for me. Carry on! Best of luck with future game dev. :D

OMG I was so happy to get this as one of my randomly-assigned reviews. I saw the animated intro gif on the discord and was BLOWN AWAY. Super great sense of motion and color. Beautiful work to whoever did that. Literally one my favorite things I saw in the progress thread.

Haha I know it's right after the deadline, but when you get a chance, please provide some more instructions on your itch page. I was eager to check it out... and didn't really know how to play. I was a little disoriented, but that was fine. The music and ambience were strong enough to keep me engaged... and when I found the vinyl with the entire internet on it?! Haha I laughed out loud and was 100% in.

Once I got the combat I was flummoxed. Haha nothing that can't be fixed with a little play testing. But yeah, I died fighting the 1st robot, and was discouraged. So maybe a sort of training level? Could very well be that people who play similar games to this would know exactly what to do. But I found myself randomly choosing options and hoping for the best. :) Alas, did not work out for hugbug. (Don't feel bad, I ALSO had zero time for playtesting before the deadline, so I'm 100% sure there are things in my game that are obvious to me and SO confusing to normals. Haha.)

But YEAH excited to see progress. I REALLY want to know the human beings who made this, as there is a lot of talent and vision here, and I hope my confusion doesn't discourage anyone.  Carry on! Fix bugs! Make beauty and art! 5 stars for ambience. Onward.

Haha. I tried to play, but then I read your notes. GOT IT! Not rating yet so you can add some gameplay notes, fix a bug or two, etc. I like the music! I like the vibe! Let me know when you're ready for me to give it another try. :D

Hey, awesome job getting something submitted! From what I can see, the, the pixel art is cool, and the music is badass!

I know it's super-right-after-the-deadline, but thought I'd suggest you add some "how to play" notes to your itch page? Haha I wasn't sure how to get the game started. I think I figured it out? But I was a little confused.

I think to start the game you have to press WASD? Wasn't 100% sure. But it's awesome that we have the extra bug-fixing time to add some notes to our itch pages! Happy to provide more specific feedback if my rambling isn't clear. (Also, anything you can add to your page about how it fits the theme would help us poor raters.)

To be clear, I haven't rated your game yet, as I'm assuming you're recovering from crunch on the jam deadline. Let me know how I can help. :D Excited to see your project progress!

Okay, this is 100% 5 stars for theme, creativity, and gameplay for me. FUN! Very clever little mechanic that made be think. The pixel graphics are charming, and the music is lovely. It's hard to find a music track that doesn't get annoying sometimes, but this music is a perfect balance of pretty and engaging. Puts you in the right mood to solve puzzles, right?

I was intrigued by how you DO NOT want upgrades all of the time. It's actually easier to solve certain parts of the puzzles with shorter explosions, and that emergent detail was so freaking fun to discover. You find yourself counting exact distances to not blow up your gems.

The only "bug fix" I ran into was to consider having the character automatically end their move on an exact grid location? Like sometimes I'd over-run the corridor I wanted to go down, and be slightly frustrated that I had to back track. I noticed that you have some nice "auto correct" so if you're nearly in a corridor, it will slide your avatar onto the grid, but maybe that tolerance needs to be tuned up a pixel or 3?

One mechanic that I thought might be cool for a future iteration would be bombs that can destroy upgrades. I could imagine wanting to strategically keep your explosion shorter. Just an idea. Overall a very solid entry. Thank you!

Congrats on getting something submitted! 2 weeks went by so fast. Haha.

I like the idea and the copy on the cards is clever and amusing. Spot on for Dokiness. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to play? I clicked on the cards, clicked on my open card spots, and tried to drag and drop, but nothing seemed to happen so I must have run into some bugs, or maybe I just misunderstood. Hopefully you can fix some things over the next week. If you do, let me know and I'll give it another go! (I'm on a Mac using Chrome.)

If I had a suggestion, it would be to expand your itch page with some examples, and consider using bullets to break up the text into something that's a little easier to read and absorb.

All the best!

Haha this video shoot looks like it was insanely fun. Nice work on the costumes and props. Appropriately campy and so, so 80s. A really strong entry, IMO. Super great luck with the jam!

Oh my! Haha I did have a fun time reading your story. Poor Gorlizard. At least it died happy.

Really nice, complete entry! I loved the banter between the scientists, good humor beats. My only wishlist thing would be to get a little more Ascendant assets into the game, but other than that looks like an insane amount of work. Congrats on the entry and good luck with the judging!

Ah what?! A board game?! So cool. From what I can tell from the rules it looks like a neat project. If you ever create a print-and-play version, let me know. I'd love to try it out. :D

Ah dang, I can't rate this one because I only have a Mac. If you have time to post a gameplay video, that'd be rad for us weirdos. I'd love to see more of the game. The screenshots look great!

Nice song! Is that you singing? If so, I love your voice! If not, I love whoever did the vocals. Hits the 80s Ascendant vibe just right for me.

Nice project! I'd love to hear more about your creative process and how you put everything together. Maybe you could add some more of that to the game page? Congrats on getting a submission in, and super good luck with the judging!

Oh no, I can't play this one because I only have a Mac, but based on the last cutscene this looks incredible! I'm a sucker for the old PS1 look, and this scratches that itch. I laughed out loud when the guitar came out. That's how you beat a Gorlizard. Haha! Nice entry, and good luck with the judging!

Really cool video. Nice pacing and build up. Love the retro vhs look. Super great illos! Only suggestion I'd have would be to post it to Youtube or Vimeo so folks can watch it with one click. :D

Thank you!

Thank you, AgrMayank! Hope I run into you in future jams!

Thanks, Crude! Let's stay in touch on Discord and who knows what might happen. All the best!

Thanks a ton, Kreelien, for your amazing feedback. Very helpful to me. My biggest weakness as a game dev is probably around game mechanics and fun, and your suggestions are so great. On it!

Thank you thank you for the feedback! I completely agree with your thoughts, and I'm making some notes for potential fixes. I'm thinking of doing another game jam with this "engine" ... and your fixes would really improve things moving forwardm, too. Iterate and improve is so much easier when people leave such thoughtful comments.

Wow, really nice Blender animation work! The lighting and camera movements are really lovely. The storyboard / scene sequence builds a lot of anticipation, and it feels 100% in the ascendant world to me. Solid submission!

This is a really rock solid entry. Nice animations, great use of the provided assets, and huge attention to detail. Good work!

I love the idea of a kind of contemplative and sad return to the past. It's intriguing to see where the Ascendants came from and to be reminded they were normal people. Too bad the deadline meant you had to cut some of the puzzling elements, but the story gave a sense of what that would have been. I really love the typography and game thumbnail. The project has potential and I hope you'll keep working on it, or something like it. :)

Hey congrats on getting a working game into the jam! I'm too slow with my mouse to be any good at it, haha, but it works. Maybe in a future version have the biocores start a little slower? Some particle effects or screen shake could add a lot if you wanted to juice it up. Thanks for sharing!

All 5 stars for me across the board. This is so freaking cool. Very smart to do a non-digital submission, and what a fun project. I bet you had a blast doing all of the painting and detailing. It's really beautiful and I can't wait to see what projects you do in the future!

I love the physical nature of this submission. Haha being on itch I just assumed everyone would be making video games, so kudos to you for doing something so different! I bet that'll get some points from the judges. The laptop looks awesome. Best of luck with the rest of the jam.

I LOVE the little computer terminal UI. Very cool way to provide the tutorial and navigation. The pixel art in the game is appropriately cute and the lighting and particle effects are nice. Easy to learn how to play. Congrats on getting a working game submitted despite being sick. Hope you feel better and continue working on the project! It has a ton of potential, and is already a pretty good gameplay experience.

Haha okay Crude, I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but it did make me laugh, and the animation work is impressive. The environments and characters are spot on for the setting. A nice filth entry. Good luck with the judging! This one had a great chance.

The setup is clever. Having to download to see the image creates some fun anticipation. The idea that the human biocore is a heart is poetic and interesting. 

The atmosphere in this game is excellent. I love the subtle animations and pixel art. The parallax scrolling is beautiful, perfect for a casual kind of game. I also struggled with the controls, so adding some more hints to the itch page would be an easy fix, and down the road you could explore an in-game tutorial or something like that. Nice work!

Haha I love this concept. The live chat and voiceover announcer is very clever and well implemented, and the 2.5D pixel art and lighting are awesome. The music and overall mood fit Ascendant perfectly. In a future version it would be nice to have the game controls appear on the screen, maybe? Haha it took me a while to figure out how to attack. Great submission overall!

Haha nope, though it's there under the covers. The original plan was to have an extra act in the middle of the story, where you have to save the quarantined survivors from the Spore Storm. Gah. Ran out of time and had to cut it. Maybe in a future release I'll restore. Thanks so much for playing!

Lovely concept and nicely written and performed. Excellent submission. Especially loved the legal disclaimers at the end. Perfect tone for Ascendant, IMO. Hahaha.