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Ah, I see! Yeah, the UI was probably the last thing on my mind because I was busy with bugfixes last minute. I did have plans for a more animated menu, but that had to be scrapped because of the time limit.

If I had a nickel for every game from this jam that could have followed the theme from another jam, I would have two nickels. Which isn't much, but it's weird it's happened twice.

I liked the puzzles at the beginning, but toward the end, I did feel like I was sort of brute forcing. I think maybe projecting the number of dots on each face on the floor would have helped, so that you can visually see "if I roll this way, I have this many dots left". I get that you can rotate the camera around to see the dots on the faces, but I wasn't able to keep track of all the dots in my head. Thankfully, the hints were there to bail me out on the last two levels, because there's no way I would have gotten them on my own.

Visuals and audio were great though, I have no complaints about those.

Thanks for playing! If I may ask, was there something specific about the UI that bothered you? A handful of playtesters mentioned that the UI was blocking some of the enemies, so I made an option to hide it by pressing right mouse or CTRL. It's not a very obvious tooltip though.

I didn't realize that this was your first jam until I read the description. Even though the game is simple, it looks pretty good!

A minor suggestion I have in addition to what everyone else said was that the characters all kinda felt the same, even though many of them looked different. It would have been a cool narrative addition if the characters had dialogues that changed depending on the character model, although I understand that depending on your timeline and experience, this may not have been realistic to do in 4 days.

It took me an hour, but I did it! Although, let's have a moment of silence for the some 70 mice that got electrocuted under my command.

The main thing that threw me off was the power system. At first, I didn't realize that I needed both power AND a yarn ball to activate the orange ball holder things, so I was stuck wondering why the ball wasn't triggering it. Another thing I had trouble with was throwing the cables up. I'm not sure if I was just unused to the control scheme, but I threw up a lot of cables by accident, so I kind of wish there was a way to cut a cable.

Also, I encountered a bug where sometimes you just get stuck on a cable until you get electrocuted or restart. I'm not sure why it happens, but I think it's if you throw up a cable too close to the wall. Another (possibly a) bug that I noticed was that sometimes, holding down the UP key on a cable would just cause you to bounce on top of the cable and not be able to get on the platforms. Both of these bugs were responsible for a handful of deaths, but not anywhere close to a majority.

Overall a solid entry!

I saw someone else say that it reminded them of Bad Piggies, which was my initial thought as well! Levels were challenging, but the fact that runs were deterministic each time meant that it was easy to see what went wrong and tweak my strategy until I beat each one. Had no idea if what I was doing were the intended solutions, but had a great time regardless. One of my favorite games from this jam!

The first time I played, I beat it with 262 seconds left. I then went back and tried a few more times and ended up with 372 seconds left. Everyone's already suggested making the shop "on the fly" instead of a physical shop menu you have to open, and someone already pointed out the lack of sound, so I won't talk about either of those. My main points of feedback are:

1. A single sprint can carry you as long as you hold down the shift button, which makes it slightly overpowered since you can essentially pay 1 or 2 seconds to knock a huge percentage of your time off. If you want sprinting to be reserved for hard platforming sections, I'd suggest putting a time cap on it (again, this is where the "on the fly" system would shine).

2. Looking around itself costs time, so while the longer paths may have been shorter time wise, I feel like going "off path" is almost never worth it unless you're speedrunning and you already know which paths to take (source: me, who sorta did try speedrunning). If you want to encourage the player to strategize more, you could do something like allowing the player to scout out the path ahead of time. Note that this would turn the game into more of a puzzle platformer than an action platformer, which may be good or not depending on what you're going for.

Anyway, congratulations on your two month milestone!

Glad you had fun!

Thought this was a joke game at first

Ended up unironically liking it, spent about an hour and a half beating all three levels and was rolling the whole time at how seriously you took this concept

Basically Sifu but crappier

10/10

I liked the visuals. I see a lot of others saying it didn't really feel like a rhythm game, and I would agree with that but only really toward the end of the songs. I think your beat system was fine at the beginning when there weren't so many notes, but then at the end it more or less turned into note spam.

Glad you were able to finish it! For what it's worth, I remember dying pretty often in early playtesting before I developed a strategy. It's definitely a hard game.

I beat it! I will say that I didn't realize that the Count of Down takes knockback at the beginning of the fight, so my first few games threw me for a loop because I would knock it out of the arena and be unable to damage it. I did eventually beat it by going in a circle.

I will say though, that I didn't use any of the firerate upgrades. Given the already limited ammo, I didn't see a point since I was focused on making every shot count. I don't know if that's just me.

Loved the art in this game, but had no idea how to assemble the detective board. I thought the way it worked was I would accuse someone, then if I didn't get it right one more would be murdered. I tried every possible explanation I could think of on the board and nothing happened. Do you need to press a confirm button or something?

Thanks for playing! I'm especially glad to see so many of you enjoying the turn-based decision making, because admittedly it was my first time making a turn-based game and I had no idea if it was going to work with the theme.

Art and sound were awesome! Took me a few tries, but I eventually managed to beat him with just a few seconds left on the clock. I see someone talking about a more intuitive way to defend, and I'd agree with that. The defend menu was so unintuitive to navigate for me that I eventually felt like I was losing more time and damage trying to defend. In the end, I won by spamming his weakness, face tanking the damage, and repairing when necessary. I never used the booster or the breaker for a similar reason.

Admittedly my strategy was probably not the best (I assume it's faster if you do use the other skills, as I almost ran out of time), but it was more realistic for me to be able to pull off.

Help, I don't understand how to play this game. I can keep the sanity meter up fine but it seems like I keep getting spotted even when I release the keys before the boss radar goes over the red cone. How does the trigger for the boss work? 

Wow, this was awesome! I loved the art and the sound design. I also liked the more unique take on the theme (unfortunate that the theme wasn't "spin to win" but I still think it was a good fit regardless). The puzzles were fair and challenging enough to be rewarding without being frustrating.

Well, for the most part. I almost broke my keyboard after getting stuck on this particular level for about an hour. But when I figured it out, I felt like an idiot, so I think it was more of a skill issue than anything wrong with the level itself.

Glad you enjoyed! I had a few concerns about the RNG being too heavy to allow for interesting strategic play for new players, so I'm glad it turned out fine to at least some degree.

Thanks for playing!

The turn-based system was by FAR the most annoying part to implement especially in such a short span of time, so I'm glad you liked it!

Thanks for playing!

I don't know if you figured this out, but you can hold the right mouse or CTRL key to temporarily hide the UI. It tells you on the bottom right corner, but I don't know how obvious it is - maybe I should have made the info toast a bit bigger?

Glad you enjoyed!

Love the use of the art and the music!

I struggled a bit with the controls. Personally, to simplify things, I would have made the consume and the attack key the same, since you're not really likely to be doing both at the same time anyway. Someone else mentioned the consume thing, which I agree with - maybe a prompt that appears to tell you when you can consume something would be helpful?

Also, I'm not sure if this was intentional, but the enemies that walk on the floor can push your character around. They also walk through ledges sometimes. Unfortunately, my bad platforming skills prevented me from making it past the first level, so I can't say much for the rest of it.

I fought on for quite a while until the game raised taxes. Then everything started to go downhill from there. Would definitely like to see a more polished version with more story (especially on how I ended up with an alien cat).

Was expecting there to be monsters, animatronics, or whathaveyous at the end since the warehouse gave me horror game vibes. Felt relieved when that didn't happen, then looked at my paycheck...

Sequel with more lore when

Had 0 idea what was going on, but decided to try my best anyway. I don't know if this was intentional, but it seems like there was a cooldown on the keys, so I couldn't type at my usual pace. However, typing about one or two characters a second worked. I also like how I got called out for bad contrast, cause I was literally just playing around with the colors and didn't realize they were actually going to try to read it. As you can see, doing things at the last minute did not end well for me.

Tl;dr: don't procrastinate.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing!

I'll be the first to admit that the balancing on this game was a total nightmare. After my first round of playtesting, my players told me the game was way too easy even by just spamming random skills, so I played with the enemy spawns to try to make it harder. The problem was that even small things (such as adding 1 hp to enemy spawns) had such ridiculous effects on difficulty that it was really easy to accidentally make the game unfair.

You can definitely get a higher win rate with good strategy, but sometimes the game really does screw you over by not giving you what you need for a few turns. Even with my method, I only won about 3/4 games, which was okay but admittedly far from perfect.

I love how you had this idea even before GMTK2026.

Unfortunately the mouse sensitivity was way too high so the game was pretty much unplayable for me, but I would love to see a more polished version of this. Maybe a spiritual successor to the sequel to the world's worst fps?

Wow, a very different take on the "enemies have countdowns" idea! I'll be honest though, I'm not entirely sure if there's any reason to be worried about running out of time. I always tried to wait as late as possible before killing enemies to run down my timer, and I would still always lose to not having enough damage output. Maybe I'm not strategic enough with my items?

But anyway, you should give yourself a pat on the back regardless. Making roguelikes is no joke!

Took me a while to learn the rules, but gameplay was pretty smooth once I got it! Only thing was that sometimes I would move my mouse to the edge of the screen and accidentally move the camera. A border or something that indicates when the camera moves would have been nice , but that's just a minor QoL preference on my part.

Also, I don't know if this was intentional, but some of the burger orders were...slightly unconventional. One of the things I had to learn was that a burger doesn't need to have a top and bottom bun, as I expected every order to require a top and bottom bun implicitly. I had a guy ask me for an upside down top bun on top of an upside down bottom bun, and another guy who literally just asked me for two pieces of lettuce. I did think it was pretty hilarious though, and besides, who am I to question the best and freshest burgers of the Musty Wagon?

Ah yes, I love the joke about people making Vampire Survivors like games for GMTK. A tale as old as time. Definitely not me

Anyway, I burned up a couple times trying to get used to the controls, then a couple more times playing even after I knew what I was doing. I kinda wished the arrow just showed up on the HUD instead of forcing me to open the map, because I would always either overshoot or undershoot the tomb. Most I ever made it was Day 2.

Also, what do the hunters do? It doesn't look like I have a health bar, so do they just reduce your counter or something?

Gonna be honest, it took me a bit to break my Tetris habits and learn how to actually play the game xD. Also, I didn't realize that there were bombs or lasers until my third run through, although I'm not sure they helped me. By the time I actually had to use them, things were already falling way too fast for me to keep up anyway.

I have to ask though, how does the chain detection work? It seemed like sometimes the game would clear some blocks outside of my intended chain and sometimes they wouldn't. Did that mean there were other chains the game noticed that I didn't?

Idk if I'm doing something wrong but the time limit seems pretty strict. I tried a few times and the closest I got was 30/40, but I consistently ran out of time day 15 or so. I probably could have done it if it unlocked the next building as soon as you hit the goals though - often times I would have all requirements to meet the "get x by this day" but I would still need to wait for said day to arrive, stalling progression (this is the number 1 change I would make if you have time).  Only thing I stabilized was houses, storage, a single research lab, and anything else the game told me to. Am I just supposed to be maintaining buildings as they go instead of spending any time on it at all?

Played this for a bit and got frustrated with the timing at first, then realized that I could use the countdown timer to time when I lit the fuses and it was fun!

The hitboxes feel way too small though. At first with the matches it was managable because at least I could get a feel for where the fuse was supposed to be lit based on where the match head was. But when I got to the Christmas level, I was totally stuck when trying to use the rope grabbing mechanic. The hitbox on the fingers was way too small and I was never able to consistently grab more than one fuse in time on any given attempt. I probably did that level about 20 times before I gave up. If you're reading this before the deadline, I would definitely increase the hitbox size for both the fingers and the matches.

Glad you liked it!

I must confess that when I first nailed down the mechanics, I didn't really know what to do with any of them. So when it came to level design, my workflow was mostly just "cram a bunch of stuff into the level, run through it, and see what's fun." Glad it worked out!

Thanks for playing!

Funny you say that - the music is by Waterflame (see description). I normally make the music myself, but I ran out of time this jam.

OHHHH that explains a lot, thank you so much! I didn't realize that most of the RPM was actually from your tachometer and not from the time bonus, so I was frustrated when I grinded really hard to get my time down a few seconds for only a marginal increase in RPM. I also didn't realize that the contour of the bowl had such a big effect, which probably explained why I was losing (I kept trying to stay in the center). Finally finished the Max Blade with your tips!

Alright, I finally beat it after dying 51 times! My verdict: very unsafe. :)

A few notes - I noticed immediately that things like coyote time and jump height control weren't included. This probably contributed to a huge portion of my deaths, as I was too used to it from other platformers and would walk off ledges constantly.

Also, I'm not sure if the wheel results are scripted or what, but I got ghosts on the first spin, and in my opinion, this was the most annoying hazard by far. On top of being able to actively chase you and pressure you to move, the ghosts also sometimes spawned slightly hidden from view. Since they can travel through platforms and are invisible while doing so, it's easy to be standing on a platform and get ambushed out of nowhere. I did eventually learn how to deal with them, but it was more so through trial and error and memorizing where all the ghosts were in the level.

I'm wondering how any of you made it past the third level. I read here that you're supposed to go into the boss fight with at least 8000 RPM, but I probably gave it about half an hour and at least 50 attempts and was still only able to come in with 7200 RPM at most. But even then, I feel like it wouldn't have been a problem if you had more control over your blade. The blade fights felt really unfair because it seemed like any input I made with my cursor weren't responsive enough, and any dashing movements would constantly overshoot. This was especially apparent for the Titan Blade, which had a tiny arena that was very easy to fall out of and a huge profile that was hard to maneuver past.  It also did so much damage that if you so much as touched it (which was very easy to do given the above), you would lose hundreds of RPM instantly, pretty much guaranteeing you a game over with the slightest mistake.

I really wanted to finish the game, but I couldn't. Am I missing something?

Hey look, another rotating world game!
I don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet, but the center of rotation seems to always be around where you start, and not where you actually are. This made things pretty hard for the larger maps, because the further you got, the more aggressively the walls would move during rotations. Also, I'm not exactly sure how the jumping mechanic was supposed to work, so I just beat the game without it.

I like how even though there were a few rotating world games this jam, we all had our own takes on the implementation. Would love to see this concept polished further!