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Incognito_User

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A member registered Jun 29, 2022 · View creator page →

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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.

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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!

I now feel stupid - I didn't know that you could press E to tether and I beat the entire game without it by estimating angles of reflection and adjusting accordingly. Just went back and tried it with the tether mechanic and it was a far better experience!

Only major piece of feedback I have is about the tether ability's range. It looks like the range that you can use the tether is sometimes greater than the glow of the planet, and sometimes it isn't. This wasn't too big of a deal, but it did throw me off sometimes because I would shoot my ball at what I thought was the edge of the planet's range, only to not be able to activate the tether.

At first I was struggling to get the bar up because everything was sticking to my cursor. I spam opened all the programs but could never get system load past 50%. Then I realized I was thinking too hard and simply used the file search query repeatedly. Beat it immediately using the file search spam method, although I can't help but wonder if that was the intended solution.

Was it?

Fun game! Broke my brain initially and took me a few tries to get the hang of it. Was a lot of fun to logic out where the bullets were going to get them to hit the bombs. Made it to about level 40.

Obligatory joke: Driving in my car right after a beer

 The game does feel a bit unfair sometimes. If you're in a tunnel and a police car charges straight at you, there's nothing you can really do. Also, I do wish there was some kind of HP system, as it feels very unforgiving when a police car just barely touches you and it ends your run instantly.

But then again, I'm also bad at the game. I wasn't good enough at the game to get the metacog (my high score as 37 which I'm pretty sure I got from dumb luck), but I'm sure at least some people were.

If I had a nickel for every time I saw a ball being used as the main character this jam I would have two nickels. Which isn't much, but it's interesting it happened twice.

I do wish there were more sound effects. Also the music didn't loop for some reason, so most of it was me raging in silence.  The camera angle threw me for a loop as well, as I often didn't know if the ball was on the floor or not. A dynamic camera or some way to adjust the angle would be nice.

It was a very hard game for me - it took me three minutes to beat level 2, at which point I knew I was screwed. But nonetheless, it was still rewarding when I did finally beat the last level.

Oh wow, I learned something new about my own game today!
How did you do it? Were you sandwiched between the floor and the gate?

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"Huh, why is this so big?"

> waits half an hour for potato Internet to download file

> opens game

> sees video of violinist

"oh"

Nah, but in all seriousness, I do dig the unique artstyle, even if I had to wait forever to play it. I do wish there were some more interesting interactions besides clicking to spin though. I think this style has a lot of potential!

Of all the mouse wheel spinning games, I think this is one of my favorites so far since the wheel spinning mechanic actually feels like part of the game and not forced. I do think the game could use something like a speed bar to indicate how long the vinyl has before it stops spinning though, because it seems like the vinyl has some "momentum," so  you don't need to spin the mouse wheel continuously (I usually rolled the mouse wheel between notes).

Just wished the other song worked :( but still fun while it lasted nonetheless.

Thanks for playing!

Fun fact: Originally, the character was pretty much just the spinning beach ball of death from Mac OS, and the googly eyes were a last minute addition because I wanted to make it more lifelike. Very happy to see it paid off!

I did know about the gravity gate bug, but for one reason or another, I left it in (I can't remember if it was because I couldn't fix it, or because I thought it was funny). I found it by accident, but I didn't think it would be that big of a problem since rotating 180 degrees always fixed it. To my knowledge, there isn't a way to get stuck in a gravity gate in a way that you can't rotate your way out, although I could very well be wrong.

Congratulations on all those metagame cogs!

Admittedly, the level unlock thing was mostly me being lazy. The menu code was reused from a previous jam, and since the game I made for that was pretty hard, I decided to leave all the levels unlocked in case someone wanted to skip a level. Fast forward to this jam, and I ran out of time to add the level locking so the system remained.

As for the arrow thing, I just realized that you're the first person to have mentioned it so far. I added it initially because I figured the rule where you could only rotate on the ground would be a little counterintuitive, so people would want some kind of visual indicator. But then I made the tutorial, and I explained said rule while simultaneously forgetting to talk about the arrows, so in retrospect, I'm not sure why I left them in. Hopefully they weren't too annoying for anyone else...

Thanks for playing!

Glad you liked it!

Right, I was wondering if you ever experimented with making it so the notes corresponded to rotating the disk clockwise and counterclockwise instead of the mouse up and down? That's closer to how a turntable actually works in real life, although I imagine it may make the UI a little less intuitive.

Thanks for playing!

Glad you had fun!

Glad you enjoyed!

Was very surprised there weren't more DJ games this jam. Also, I didn't realize you only spent 12 hours on this until I read the description. Awesome amount of polish for something made in such a short amount of time!
I do have to ask though, does the direction you spin the disk matter or just the direction you move the mouse? Like, what if I spin the disk sideways?

I did it - I escaped the IRS despite my bad platforming skills (never thought I would say that)!

The bullet time thing seems a tad bit overpowered. I was able to bypass almost all the platforming sections using just the bullet time launch alone. Also, it looks like the screen stretching when enabling bullet time is a bit wonky, since the screen stretches but the start position doesn't change in the physical world to reflect that. As such, I often ended up launching myself in unintended directions since the starting point would appear to move from my perspective.

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Chute minigame was surprisingly fun, probably because getting a jackpot was actually possible (I think it's way easier to do it here than in the IRL version of the game). I never bothered with the wheel minigame much compared to the chute one though, it just seemed kind of boring. Did end up finishing the game and getting the hat.

Incredible game! Started simple but quickly got very chaotic at the end with aliens approaching from all directions. Stasis field was a bit funky as I realized I needed to grab the middle instead of the side, but didn't notice any bugs. Just barely managed to do it on the first try.

Chill game! I love how the "difficulty" was sort of gated behind the upgrades, so you didn't move on to the next level until you got the hang of the previous one (or unless you were reckless). I do wish there was a way for me to pause while I read the upgrade descriptions though - I wasn't able to read a whole lot of them since I was often busy trying to keep the bar up.

Help, I got stuck on this room. I assume you're supposed to get a human down here, but how? 

This game is absolutely ridiculous in a good way. The networking, intern deployment system, creative upgrade names, and final boss all had me dead from start to finish. I burned out by accident a lot, but I still managed to beat the final boss without having to divorce my wife (brand new sentence).

Thanks for making this!

Thanks for playing!

Glad you liked it!

The SFX volume does change, but you need to hit the restart button for changes to take effect. Admittedly,  I probably could have made it so that it updated on the fly, but the settings menu was a last-minute addition. Also, I just now realized that the difference between the max and min settings are only about +-10 dB, so it may not be super noticeable.

I'm not sure what you mean by the bug where you can't die, because I tried doing that and I couldn't replicate it. The being able to move while the settings were open thing is 100% a bug though, and it's because I made it so that the ball node could still move when paused (hence allowing the rotation gimmick to work). But that also made it so that I couldn't pause the ball, even if it made sense to when opening the menu settings. I probably could have implemented that better, in retrospect.

Took me a while to realize that money is preserved after death. Also, the machine gun weapon seems a bit funky, I feel like it should shoot while you're holding the mouse instead of using a switch that turns it on and off. I also think more cues when you hit the enemies would make the game much better; on anything other than a one-shot it was really hard for me to tell if I was even hitting the enemies at all.

Anyway, congratulations on your first game!

Thanks for playing!

To be honest, I did have plans to make levels where you needed to use the bounciness to complete the level. I ran out of time to implement them, but I left the bounciness in there because I had gotten so used to it by that point that it felt wrong without it, and figured that the ability to instantly brake by freezing would fix it if it ever became a problem. I'm a little disappointed that no one seemed to use the freezing for its secondary purpose though.

I'd like to know how the RPM system (or I guess basically this game's equivalent of an HP system) works. I wasn't really sure what to do beyond just "try to dash into the other blade without letting them do the same to you".  I'm not 100% sure if that's what you're supposed to do, but that's how I beat the final boss after a few tries. For what it's worth, I never played with beyblades as a kid so that was the best I could do xD

What are you supposed to do with the merry-go-rounds? I just pushed them around a bit to see if they squeaked (they all seemed fine). Was that the trigger condition for inspecting?

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Glad you liked it!

I mentioned this in another comment, but if you hold space or left mouse as you hit the floor, you can actually start a freeze right as you land. A secondary use of freezing (besides being required to start a rotation) is removing all velocity, allowing you to land without bouncing. Seems like very few people used this mechanic though.

Thanks for playing!
The music wasn't made by me (see description). Although I was originally planning on making my own music, I ran out of time. Glad to see it was a good fit regardless though.

Thanks for playing!

Since we're still in the 24 hour window where updates are allowed, I just went back and put in a patch that slightly shrunk the hitboxes of the spikes. Hopefully that makes things feel a bit more fair.

As for the turbines, the reason why they aren't that powerful was because I tried to design the levels such that you could usually see where you were going. Since you can't rotate in mid-air, I figured it would be frustrating if you committed to a rotation only to fall into a spike pit, so I wanted to keep the maps small.

As for the design decision to not allow rotation in mid-air, that came from the decision to make it so that losing all velocity was a prerequisite to rotation. I had initially planned to allow the player to keep velocity while rotating, but I couldn't figure out how to design levels around it, among other technical issues that I wasn't able to figure out in time. Of course, I could have allowed rotation in the air while still keeping the freeze system, but that would have simply made the rotation mechanic into flying with extra steps. In the end, I went with a "you can only rotate on the ground" system because I felt like it was scoped well enough for this jam.

As for the GPUParticle2D thing...yeah. I'm pretty proud of how I made use of the features available with GPU particles that I previously didn't have with CPUParticles, but in hindsight, I really should have thought of the performance tradeoff I would be making on the web build...

At first when I looked at the controls I was confused why the D was missing from the WASD. Then I watched the news reel and it had me rolling. At first I still kept trying to right turn because of muscle memory, but once I got the hang of it, I really liked it. My productivity may have dropped 97% from not being able to right turn, but my enjoyment probably went up by more than that so I'd say that made up for it.

Oh oops, looks like I uploaded the wrong image. I was able to get out of the pit fine, the actual part that I got stuck on is circled.