Gotcha, thanks for the explanation! It wasn't clicking for me that each bomb looks at the numbers independently based on the direction, but now it makes sense
I like the twist on Balatro, but I think if I hadn't played Balatro before, this would be really hard to follow. Even having some guesses, it's hard to remember what all the different bonuses do just from their visuals. It would also be nice to see a preview of the final score for the hand before you submit it. If you had more time to add more fanfare and effects I think it would help too. The bottom part is informative, but a bit of a slog to interpret.
Still, it has some similar dopamine moments as balatro and is different enough that you have to think about strategies in a new way.
This is what I thought, but when the are sharing it in the 10s place rather than the 1s place, it seemed like it was going down by 11 at a time rather than 20, which surprised me. But maybe I misremember how things were arranged.
We thought about it at one point, but worried it might make it too simple. At the time it was before we had sounds, which we thought would help more. But it's a good suggestion we might come back to. Thanks for playing!
Way more gruesome than I expected haha. The colored sand coming out is clever (and gross).
Decently fun and creative idea. It feels like the difficulty ramps up really quick though. Both playthroughs I ended up with only 19, even though the first time I wasn't as good cause I didn't fully understand the coloring.
Simple but not easy! Decently fun and I like the idea of adding the challenge for 3 stars (but I felt I did well on one early level and still only got 1 star :(
Took me a while to understand what was happening (I still don't understand the way the points work.) Felt like I was lacking agency most of the time. But the visuals and sound+music were pleasant and chill
everyone likes an epic escape! Though at the moment since it's a straight shot, just pressing space finishes the game. With some more obstacles and maybe checkpoints of different explosions I could see it being interesting.
I was gonna say the same thing! But maybe besides the cursor icon being big, there's also maybe not enough feedback that you've "grabbed" a piece or not.
Was surprisingly fun for something simple (after I changed the sensitivity - on my trackpad it was insanely sensitive at first. Might want to call out that there is a setting for this.)
Had a lot of fun with this. Exploding things is always fun and getting the upgrades and figuring out what new destruction I can do was a great loop. Feels like it has lots of potential.
I do wish I could change the cannon direction to have a bit more agency in which path I will take from the start though. And it would be nice if the explosions resolved a bit faster - feels a bit slow and floaty at the moment. Also could be cool if the camera angled to a more overhead view during the explosions to better see what's happening.
Overall really liked the game (and the name). Congrats!
Really like the game idea! A dart RPG essentially. Impressive what you gone done as a solo dev!!
I had some technical issues though. On Firefox the font didn't load at all (I just saw grey boxes in the UI). On Chrome I could see the UI, but the default game window is too small and the UI and gameplay area is not really useable/readble. Finally, fullscreen on Chrome I was able to play normally (although there's a bug where the remaining darts become hidden - possibly after using an item?
Still, it's a creative idea and executed decently well. Could see this becoming a fun full-fledged game. Congrats!
The simplest of minigames, but with heaps of polish. Goes to show how far polish can take you! Very fun. The audio in this game is everything, well done.
I think you only see the upgrade screen if you stay in the room until the skeleton death animation finishes playing, which kinda goes against the count down timer. But maybe I was misunderstanding something
I'm not sure I understood the building phase (in the controls it says I can pick up blocks with left mouse click, but this didn't have any effect for me).
The shooting phase has some draw in a tower defense kind of way (but I didn't get very far since I couldn't move the blocks and eventually got stuck under a pile of them 😅
I like the idea though and would like to have been able to play more!
There are "slots" around the character that we didn't have time to add UI for, but as you change levels, the number of slots changes. This was meant to give a sense of scaling up, but we probably could have done it to a large extent than we did.
The game was harder than I thought it would be! Felt overwhelmed quite quickly. Maybe a slower ramp up could help ease the player into the mechanics and get used to the aiming?
Also not sure about the functionality of the absorbing (when it makes sense to use, what the consequences are besides increasing the difficulty).
But I do like the concept and the asteroids like gameplay works well!
I like the toss of the block being the way to interact with the UI haha. Respect the consistency.
The physics on the block I'm placing felt a bit too much. Would have been nice if I had more stable control of it and its rotation until I place it.
The first checkpoint of 10m took me a few tries to reach! After that I got some of the other checkpoints in that same try. Maybe the first checkpoint could be a bit lower?
And why would I want a circle?? :p
Otherwise I had some good fun! Congrats on the game
Some specific things about the controls (as others have already generally mentioned), you want to aim for them to feel intentional and snappy. Getting good platformer controls can take a lot of tweaking or prior knowledge. There feels like a slight lag from when the player presses the jump button to when they actually jump, and the momentum of the forward motion is continuing during this time, which would lead to me falling off the edge without ever jumping. This disconnect feels frustrating and like it's not my fault, but the game's fault (a game can be difficult/frustrating and still feel fair). You could consider giving a few frames of wiggle room after the player has left the platform to still register the jump. You can look into GMTK's own video on Celeste to get some other ideas.
Also I think it's quite common for space to be the jump button. You could have both w/z and the space button be jump and leave it up to the preference of the player.
It's also worth considering the intention of the level design. The first level is fairly simple in design, but not simple to play though. The jumps between the platforms are difficult because of the low ceiling and the fast forward movement of the character, mixed with the low friction with the ground. If the intention is to teach the player about shrinking to get through the smaller corridor, then just do that, and just once.
Good game ideas though, which fit the theme nicely. I also liked the art and that you added a bit of story.
I ended up with more than 100% taxation, which I count as a win :) It does feel like I have to side with the peasants as much as possible or I lose. Could be interesting if there's a rubber banding affect where the other classes start to fall behind really quickly. Overall though, very creative!
despite you saying it's incomplete it's actually pretty fun! The style is also pretty great. Reminds me a bit of snake and I could definitely see myself playing this in class for longer than I should :)
