itch.io

Hi AggaZaw! Thank you so much for playing and for your feedback. I'm so happy to hear it's engaging and fun! :)

I'm glad because you said you want to keep trying despite getting stuck - I know what that can be like.

Your review is incredibly helpful to me because as a developer, I sometimes struggle with conveying the mechanics in a way that is intuitive to the player. So I really appreciate that you reached out!

By the character with the unusual appearance, you probably mean Alice - she's the boss character.

You can keep trying on your own, or alternatively, here's some advice on how to beat her:

• it's important to note that she has 2 phases: regular Alice, and Chaos Alice. She switches between them every 5-7 seconds or so. Chaos Alice is faster, invincible and does a lot more damage, she's the one who is a black shadow with a wide grin. You will hear the ticking of a clock while she's in this form - run away (holding the shift button) around her until she becomes normal Alice again and you can hurt her.

• remember to avoid the white arms if your health is low

• regular Alice has a lot of HP but is weak. You  can theoretically beat her at Level 1 (I've done so during playtesting) but to make it a bit easier you can level up first.

• you can get some more experience points by killing butterflies, as well as Humpty Dumpties once you're a bit stronger (the egg creatures near the edge of the cliff) while continuing to heal up at the points of light regularly when your HP gets low.

• face her by jumping down the ledge once you're ready

• the white arms in the bottom level marked "???" are enemies that are about as strong as the butterflies, but they give more experience points. You can try to avoid Alice and kill them to level up some more if you notice that she's still too strong.

I hope this helped a bit! ♥

I'll try to make the gameplay more intuitive in the future.

I adore the graphics, they're very nostalgic to me. Your game tells a really gripping story of psychological horror, anger and mental illness... very sad, but also fascinating.

The way the sounds, graphics and text work together to tell this story is deeply haunting, especially the sound effects near the end are disturbing. But it's the gameplay itself that is the most effective at making you go through the protagonist's turmoil, since as the player I was never really forced to do any of those horrible acts, and yet I felt like I had to, because like every game there's an objective to complete and I found nothing else to do.

Very well designed and a really cool interpretation of the theme!

Tysm, that's exactly what I was going for! 😆✨

First of all, I love the goofy yet uniquely charming premise and thumbnail of this game.

From my understanding I'll feed the lizard man a chicken and a cow, by throwing them into his hole as well as a cat which gets launched from a cat-a-pult? And I assume as a reward the lizard man will come out and play a song on that big wooden instrument from the thumbnail. That's a pretty whacky and entertaining concept! I think having a character (maybe the lizard man himself) stating this in the game would have been a bit easier than mentioning it on the game's page, people who haven't read the description thoroughly might not understand what the goal of the game is.

The assets you chose are very cute and fit the vibe that the premise has.

As for the actual gameplay... I don't really get it. I can run around and sprint, jump and interact with everything just fine, the controls are really intuitive. But I can't find the lizard man nor the hole, and while I figured out that I can distract the farmer by shooting the water tank, it doesn't give me enough time to figure out how I'm supposed to "get" the farm animals while she is away.

Same thing with the cat, I ring the bell and run over to where the cat appears to be landing, but either I'm too slow or I'm doing something wrong because I can't figure out how to "catch" it.

I think your game has potential but one thing to keep in mind when you're playtesting is that the player is doing all of this for the first time and won't necessarily understand everything without a tutorial. I'd love to give it another try though if there's something that I needed to do but missed!

Still, I had a lot of fun enjoying the cute animations, running around and exploring, as well as playing around with the game's physics and making the cow fall over lol :D

Thank you so much, Poulet Roti! I'm happy to hear you liked it, I challenged myself to tell the story only with animations and character design instead of dialogue 😌

I really appreciate your review :)

Thank you Knifish, I'm really happy to hear that! 😊

Ohhh the Heaven Bow! I didn't make the connection, even though one of the NPC's even mentioned it... I'll try it again, thanks! :D

I'm pretty sure Holy Holey Hole is the best name that any piece of media can have so you've already won in that regard 😁

It made me want to check it out immediately! Also, the graphics, presentation, music and sound design are gorgeous and very pleasant. Why can I not pet the dog though, that's a serious bug!

I did not expect to exit this fully furnished home with my wife and my puppy and even a fireplace and then it turned out I was actually in a tent the whole time... I wonder if Fiddle lost his mind and is just imagining living with a happy family? 🤔 It's very intriguing for sure. I really like the dungeon crawling aspect and the charming sense of humor!

My least favorite part were the Armadillos, I understand that it's kinda cool to have an enemy like that in the game but as a player I only get a sense of accomplishment when I can find out their weakness - but I couldn't, unless I got lucky crits or raised my stats with moves requiring grinding TP - so I usually just skipped them.

My favorite part were the surreal worldbuilding, the dungeon itself as well as the boss encounter designs and most of all the story / writing. The references were funny and the characters were endearing.

I can recommend this to anyone looking for a comfy JRPG experience!

Congrats!!!! 🎉

The story and the art are exceptionally adorable! And I, for one, welcome our new feline overlord. ;)

An alternate universe where I'm talented and popular on the dance floor!

It's a masterpiece! 🍾

I really love the art style and presentation, as well as the music and sounds! I think it looks really good. There were some parts in the beginning when there is some wide open, unused space, and it messes with the pacing a bit. But I was really happy to discover all the little Biggy frogs! In general, the character designs of both the player character in his differend modes, as well as the enemies and the NPCs, all of their little quirks have to be my favorite part of the game. They're so cool and have so much personality!

This is also what made the boss fights great. The boss' design translated into the fights themselves, communicating clearly what their abilities, their strengths and weaknesses would be when you're fighting them.

This brings me to one last point, which is that I was unfortunately not able to beat the game. The red boss with the many different hands was too hard for me (the difficulty selections screen was right! 👶)Once I was able to finally beat the second phase, I would immediately get my ass kicked in the third phase. Starting over again with the first phase was starting to get frustrating after about an hour :(

I will maybe try again at a later time when I have more energy and focus, because I am still really invested in the story and the world!

I really loved it! The second to last level was starting to get frustrating, but just enough to keep me motivated, and omg it felt so good once I figured it out, and then collecting all those orbs was the perfect reward for sticking through it <3

Really really fun, I think my favorite part of the game was the sense of humor during the written segments, and how the tutorial is introduced. I liked switching between modes and I think it worked really well with the theme!

You're welcome, and thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you very much for your review! I'm glad you liked how I used the engine.

Thanks Toro, it makes me happy to get feedback from someone who likes the genre, that's very useful :)

I'll do my best to improve upon this in the future! 💪

Thanks Madog_Porter, I love that idea!

Thank you so much! Beepo appreciates your efforts anyway <3

Thank you for your feedback Wavemonade, that's very helpful to know! Also, I'm happy you liked the art and gameplay :)

Thank you for your helpful feedback! I'm sorry to hear that it wasn't fun for you.

To answer your question, my thought process was that it felt satisfying when I was struggling for my life, slowing down and still managed to safe myself by recharging the battery and eventually pick myself back up again.

You're right that the main gameplay consists of avoiding the other robots, you can't influence the combat otherwise. Next time, I will try to make it more clear to the player and make it feel more rewarding. Maybe by giving the points more purpose and allowing the player to purchase upgrades with them, which had been my initial plan. Once they hit you, you can then decide whether to run away, or continue fighting them so you will lose even more battery but also gain some points for killing them.

I'm glad to hear you found some charming aspects in the game that you liked, it's nice that you gave it a chance anyway! :]

Aww I'm so happy that people seem to like Beepo! Maybe one day I'll make an update or a sequel with a happy ending for Beepo ❤

Thank you :D

I know what you mean, it was actually my first time making something like this in RPG maker as well.  I'm glad you appreciate it :)

I was inspired by the battle system from Eternal Senia, which is also an (slightly older) RPG Maker game. Even though the final result came out different in the end.

Also, that's good to know about the audio, thanks 👍

Thank you Klenzer! I'm glad to hear that, it means a lot :)

Awwww it's okay, RIP BEEPO :D

That's great to hear! Thank you Clownsparade :D

Yayyy! Thank you so much, Beth! 🤩💖

Congratulations on winning the jam! Your game deserved it and it speaks a lot about how much potential you have as game developers. Looking forward to see more from you in the future :)

Oooh I love that! Thank you for your insight :)

You're very welcome! Also, after GMBinder "bullied" me a bit once it came to exporting the pdf right before the deadline (it just refused to include the final page and I had to remake it in Homebrewery), I don't know if I would still recommend it after that. You're obviously very talented at using Word, I thought you had used something super specific for the design! :D

And a cheat sheet would have been more like a bonus, I totally get it since you already did an amazing amount of work in the limited time - it was more of an idea for the future. :)

By the way, I have a question: So, the GM is the Reader, and the players are Fateweavers. And then there is also the Fateweavers in the game world. Theoretically your player character wouldn't have to be a Fateweaver right? You could still play a commoner? Or would that not align k with the Minor Arcana skill check? :D

I'm asking because I have an idea for siblings where one is a Fateweaver and one is not, I think that could be cool to play (as you can tell I'm really in love with the world!)

Good luck to you as well, although I'm sure you won't need it, this is an amazing submission!

Awww, thank you so much!  That means a lot, I really appreciate it! :D

Ooooh mysterious 👀

You are very welcome! :D

I'm so sorry for any confusion I caused. It was not my intention. I genuinely like the game and what it's going for, and wanted to be helpful.

Yes, you're correct - I should have been more specific and clearer in my feedback. Let me try again:

1. It worked really well together and didn't feel disjointed at all! You and your writer did a good job.

2a. Calling it a "portal" was a total brainfart on my part, sorry.

The word I was looking for was genuinely something else, something like "downward slope", I think. I was trying to explain where the "leap of faith" section I was talking about could be found, and I called the big slope that leads downwards to where the boss room is (when the Witch says "but if so many witches died, then...") a portal. I guess I must still be somewhat sleep deprived from the jam 🙈

2b. In any game that has platforming, a literal (not logical) leap of faith is when I can't tell where to go next and have to jump ("leap") off of a platform to find out. The faith part refers to "I think this is the right direction".

This first screenshot shows me standing on a plattform: link

And this next screenshot shows me on the one I'm supposed to land on: link

Even though the second platform isn't that much further down than the first one, it's just ever so slightly off screen. Sometimes I can see the top parts of the heads from enemies, which gives me an idea that there's a platform there, but then seeing the enemies also gives me incentive to look for another way.

A lot of older platforming games (like the Lion King) had something like this but it's not as common in modern games anymore (it's sometimes used for getting from the end of one level to the beginning of the next).

If it's in the middle of the level like that, it is usually something that a designer might not notice (after all, they know where to go) but a playtester might - however, it's not a design mistake or anything, it just comes down to personal preference for players.

The reason I even brought it up and asked whether it was intentional or not, was that I thought something like this aligns really well with the Fool Tarot card. Because the meaning of going headfirst into a new beginning, which is a figurative leap of faith, and also because most of the artwork for that card shows the Fool literally about to walk off a cliff. If there had been a hint that such a section was about to come up by the character picking up the Fool Tarot card immediately before, it would have been almost like a mini-puzzle to tie into the narrative.

3. I'd love to help but I'm struggling to find out what exactly causes the bug myself. I don't have any experience working with Godot. think it's a combination of dashing and jumping at the same time, and then colliding with something? I did get the bug a lot, usually when I was trying to perform maneuvers and especially during the boss fight. Maybe my play style is what caused me to get that bug a lot more than the other players :/

I just played it again for about an hour and here's some screenshots of every time I got stuck, arranged in an imgur album: link

4. Maybe it was just a skill issue on my part. I did notice the blinking, but I was still not able to hit him enough times to kill him, I think. I'm sorry you had to work on the game while recovering from the vaccine and I hope you feel better now. I think for a game jam, especially when there's only 10 days, it's way more important to have a good proof of concept / prototype of what you're going for, than to have a bug-free experience. I still brought up the bug because I wanted to be honest about what kept me from finishing the game. Your health is more important than any of that, though, so please take care.

5. Good news!!!

As I was trying a couple more times, I was finally able to beat the boss and get to the end! So don't worry, you don't have to do that!

I love the little message at the end. It was a really good ending  :D

The assets you've decided to use look wonderful together and had an overarching aesthetic. I really enjoyed the story and how you incorporated the theme. The main character slowly uncovering Tarot cards while the realization that something might have happened to their friend is starting to set in made for a good hand-in-hand combination of gameplay and narrative.

There's a "leap of faith" section shortly before the first portal, was that intentional? I find them to be a bit discouraging in action platformers and metroidvania style games, but it also kinda tied in well with the theme of the "Fool" Tarot card - if those two sections had been closer together in the level, my interpretation would have gone from "oh, huh, I didn't see that this is where I was supposed to go" to "that's genius omg".

The buildup to the realization and confrontation of the main character's loss also served well when it came to hyping up the boss fight. Although I ran into a few weird collision bugs that had me stuck in the middle of an animation and flying off the map.

Sadly, when I was finally facing the boss, I was unable to beat him. It was hard for me to tell if I was even weakening him, and now the bug I previously mentioned had gone from kinda entertaining to game breaking, because if it happened during the fight I had to start the entire game over from the beginning again, I couldn't just let the boss kill me and retry from the respawn point since I was still stuck.

Overall, while that final part was a bit of a letdown, everything leading up to it had me excited and I can't wait for a more polished version where I can finally beat that Death guy and see how the story ends, because so far I'm hooked! ❤

You're welcome - and yeah it's not hard to believe you had a lot of fun writing the dialogue! I'll look forward to it if you decide to do more dialogue based games, you seem to have a knack for it.

Yayyyy, that's awesome! I hope you'll have a good (spooky) time and I'd love to hear  how it went :D

Thank you for your review 😊, I'm glad you thought the rules were easy to follow, that's a relief to hear.

Wohooo, a fellow physical game!

Since it's for at least 2 players, I can't wait to try this with a friend ASAP and then get back to you about how it went!

Until then I'll review based on what my experience trying this alone is like, even if from my understanding it's not the intended way to play :)

First of all, I will admit that I was a little intimidated when my pdf reader showed me the document was 32 pages long.

But then I realized that this is because you have spaced out the text beautifully and included some extremely aesthetically pleasing designs.  When starting to read the text, it was like a patient friend was gently guiding me as I was learning about how to play this game - and before I knew it, I was absorbing the whole book in one go.

The mood this game is setting up is just really well put, starting with even the intriguing title, the downloads page and the trailer. With the right cover story, the mechanics of a game can immediately become just that much more fun, especially for a TTRPG this is essential. And the writing style is just perfect for the kind of ambience this is going for!

All of it builds up to the simple yet powerful mechanics. I love the idea of sitting at a table with friends, and just telling a story in the candle light, drawing Tarot cards.

I think the one suggestion I'd have is that, even if it's pretty clear to understand from the writing style, it's still handy for TTRPGs like this to have a "cheat sheet" with a condensed overview, one for the Fateweavers' and one for the Reader's convenience. It would save them from flipping back and forth in the book whenever they have to look up a table.

However I could also get it if you say that adding this wouldn't be in the spirit of what you're going for, since the table of contents already has handy links and it would be advisable either way for the players to just have their own notes.

The world you've built for Fateweaver is just incredibly immersive. Personally, I can't wait to pair this system with something like Decuma by Golden Lasso Games, which also uses Tarot cards.
We'd use Fateweaver to build or characters and have the basis as a setting, then with Decuma we would build upon that and create relationships in between the PC's, and then we would get back to Fateweaver to play the actual adventure within that world.  I'm getting excited thinking about it!

I made my own character by drawing cards, in case you're interested, I drew a two of Swords and the Hierophant - I imagine they must be working for the City Watch, training new recruits. Since the Two Of Swords is somewhat indecisive, maybe they have an inner conflict about which motto of the Trinity they would align themselves with, particularily the Luminous Weavers and Equilibrium.

By repurposing the Readers Tools a bit, I learned that they would uncover hidden truths and mysteries (The High Priestess) and later learned they were manipulated from the shadows (The Fool), so it sounds like while working for the City Watch they uncover some kind of conspiracy...

It will be fun to play out their story! Thank you for making this, I'd say I'm exactly the target audience for this kind of thing - I was hoping I would get games like this out of this jam once I heard the theme was going to be Tarot cards. :D

The way the characters interacted with one another was absolutely precious. Moirai, the best friend character, who has this mentor role / "older sister" type personality, being contrasted with the younger, shy customer, Pandora, it really made for an interesting dynamic.

It was like the main character was helping Pandora, but she was also somewhat talking about herself there when she gave a reading about being nervous and unlocking your potential.

I could really see how the main character is possibly going to grow in the future by helping others out, which is where I think a lot of the beauty of Tarot comes from. This game could be a great tool for teaching people about Tarot who aren't familiar with it yet!

Also this goes without saying, but I have to mention how the art is just absolutely gorgeous. The sprites are kept simple and yet communicate the personalities very clearly, with good body language and expressive shilouettes!

Last but not certainly not least, good job on including some nice music tracks with the game! It was refreshing to listen to and fit the mood perfectly. The tracks sometimes overlapped with itself a bit for me, when I switched the window focus especially to take notes, but that might be because of the engine or my browser, maybe.

Please don't worry too much about the bugs since this is a solid proof of concept game jam release, after all!

Do you know if there's going to be dating in the final version? 👀

I knew I was in for a treat when I saw that cover art and the exclamation: "Heavens, the world starts tomorrow!"

I don't know what else to say other than that this is hilarious! Thank you so much for making this, I had a blast! I love my little creatures, Neopets wishes they were this cute, lol :D 

It's also very relatable because I too am sad on the outside and empty on the inside and have a screaming man-face coming out of my rear 😔

Just your average daily monster struggles.

You're welcome 😁👍

Agreed, having the space to fill in some of the details for themselves can add to the player's connection with the game and the character. Great work on building the game in just two days!

... damn.

That was haunting.

This is really well-written. You are really good at describing atmosphere. The man hanging from the tree, the wet roads during the rainfall, the store... I could vividly see those places in my mind as I was reading the story. You didn't even have to go into too much detail, the mood you set up already did way more than writing even more text could have done.

I've been struggling to rate the categories like "graphics" and "audio" if the game doesn't have any of that, but in this case, it's almost like they were actually there, from how you were describing them. If you had added some big painting of the scene, like what the convenience store looked like, it might have actually taken away from the story and made it less personal, because this way I was automatically adding my own little details from places I've been to as I was reading  - and made them darker in my mind.

With the "ending" and the "choices" you also really did something that can only really be achieved in an interactive medium such as this, you really used Twine to your advantage here, and yet it was still unexpected the way you executed it.