Wow this definitely seems like one of those game jam games that becomes a popular steam game later down the line. It reminds me of "mini motorways" a lot. I love the ambition and I would say you pulled it off with flying colours.

Though a game made in 96h is always going to have some rough edges. If you plan on working on this more I have some feedback:

1) Changing between road types needs to be smoother. Building a bridge is a bit clunky since it requires 9 inputs:5 mouse drags and 3 button clicks (Drag road, space, Drag ramp, Space, Drag Bridge, Space, Drag Ramp, Space, Drag Road). There's a few ways to go about this, you could make it automatic, ditch the ramp type entirely and just allow roads and bridges to connect, or maybe "click+scroll" can just change the height of the road. Either way I think 9 inputs for 1 bridge is far too much.

2) Remove the "directional roads" mechanic. I'm not sure there's any reason the player would want to place the roads the wrong way around, so just make every road bidirectional. For example in the image below it's not immediately clear what is wrong and why the game says the loops are incomplete when they are clearly complete. What's worse is that finding the problem requires deleting every piece and putting it back to see if it's the one that's backwards. The graphics give no indication which way the roads are facing.

3) Lastly I would probably make the "erase" just erase tiles of all types. Since if I want to rethink a section it's a bit tedious to delete every type one at a time.

With all this negative feedback I don't want to give the impression that the game is bad, I actually think it's one of the best games in the jam.

This game is very well made. The pixel art is well done, the audio is cool, and the enemies had good variety. I especially like the fact that you can see the enemies coming in before they enter the stage instead of having them spawn in directly. I felt that really adds a lot of fairness to the game.

But if I'm being completely honest, I think the only area of the game that fell flat was the actual "loop" aspect of it. I appreciate the mathematics of it but ultimately it just felt more awkward than regular shooting.

Score: 19312

This game is very difficult. Maybe I am missing something but I barely managed to get 2 orders done before the timer ended. Score: 21

Loved this one. I think this type of game is common in the jam, where you have to redo the same level many times but your past selves help out. However I think this is a standout in that category of game because it is just well executed.

Won in 33 loops. Probably could do better

Hmm I might be stupid but I can't get past the second level

Fun game, really well made. Only problem I had was enemies attacking me from off screen. Maybe it's a skill issue?

Good game with good presentation. It feels like the basic sword attack is pointless and you always go with trying to max out the metre.

Mucho texto

Surprisingly fun for a simple game.

* When holding down a key, you can't press another to move in a different direction. You have to let go of the previous before pressing the new one.

* The melee attack is too slow and you can't move while attacking.

Full marks for me! Really fun!

Score: 8750

I liked the sound effects and the game had a good feel to it. I found it a  bit hard to dodge the bullets, maybe the character could be made smaller?

I like the idea, sort of like "Katamari Damacy". I did find it a bit fustrating to get stuck on all the tiny objects, it seem like you need more power to push things out of the way.

PS. Music was great

Yeah, supporting different keyboard layouts would be the next thing to do if I were to keep working on this. Not sure I will since it was just a one-off for the jam, but the source is available on github if anyone wants to take the torch

haha yeah theme is questionable. I was going to make it more clear by having zeus strike the moles down with lightning but it wad too hard to animate

This game taps into the innate need to see numbers go up

I spoke with Dzhake and it turns out this was an issue in a script they used to create shortcuts.

If anyone reading is experiencing similar problems, check the "Run in" property of the shrotcut. It should be the same folder as the game itself.

Arid Arnold - Out now on Windows!

Unique worlds

Travel to the lab, a hub of interesting technologies. Arnold can create a clone of himself, and you’ll need to coordinate their actions. Your inputs control both—if one jumps, so does the other.

In the lost kingdom, you must journey between past and future. A tree planted in the past will grow in the future, along with other changes between the two times.

In the land of mirrors, master the power of reflection. Step on the blue mirror and your reflection will appear. Your reflection can then stand on blocks in the reflected space, allowing you to progress through the level. However, be wary—your reflection may also obstruct your path. When necessary, you must dispel it to continue your journey.

The basic design philosphy of this game is to have extremely basic controls, but in turn have complicated levels. The basic controls make the mechanics external to the character more manageable. This is what I think creates the drive for players, hopefully they will want to keep exploring to find all the new and weird mechanics.

It's free. Give it a try! I hope you like it! :)
Thank you for reading.

A simple idea with great execution. The art is nice, the music is nice, the controls are nice.

This game is a solid basis for a platformer. The pixel art is well done. The game's mechanics are intuitive and easy to understand.

Here are a few points you could improve on:

• When walking down slopes, your character kind of skips along instead of travelling down them smoothly. This makes jumping while travelling down a slop particularly hard. The start of level 3 is a good example of this
• Some of the moving platforms seem to glitch for 1 frame, appearing a few blocks to the right then snapping back into position.
• Some of the levels include blind jumps where you can't see the landing spot. For someone who hasn't played the game before, it's not very fair to expect them to know where to go.
• When crouching you can't stop walking. (Not sure if this is intentional?)