itch.io

Hey, so it ran fine on Windows, with the exception that Save & Quit doesn't actually save... it just quits. : ( 

I know a little about Godot (I've attempted to make a couple games in it), enough to find what you did with shaders, overlays, and lightning effects extremely impressive. It's also impressive that you programmed such a great variety of minigames for this in such a short time--typing one is my favorite, need more words--although some are a bit glitchy and there was one I think is impossible, the time the green sliders to hit the button in the red zone one: the red zone hitboxes are NOT what the screen indicates, and the final column is moving so fast I have no idea how you would actually time the butotn press exccept sheer luck. Speaking of luck, there are some passability issues with doors and especially the giant telescope in the observatory, someitmes you get stuck on the terrain at the worst possible time, and it really feels like you should be able to move behind the top half of the telescope.

The game is wonderfully tense as you try to avoid both the darkness and the static, managing light and door states. It was annoying that while navigating the darkness and locked doors felt strategic, there was absolutely nothing you could do to distract or divert the ????? (so as to not spoiler, I'm not entirely sure what the ????? is, but it sure looks uh, familiar!) and nothing to do except move in the opposite direction the static gets thicker in if you're in a corridor--even if that route is one you carefully planned out and lit up leading to a bunch of tasks, or hide in a corner and hope it doens't feel like moving in your direction in a room. I stopped playing in the end because every time you 'get got' by the ????? you lose several (three? half?) tasks completed. I know it's just the nature of videogames that when you lose/die you lose progress, but that's seldom felt as literal, punitive, or frustrating as here. I quit because it just felt like an uphill battle I'd never win (might have felt different if the save + quit actually saved, but I know from experience setting up game saving can be very finnicky in Godot). The game demands a bit more patience--hiding and hoping the ????? will move away from you and not towards you--than I'm capable of. 

So your game is at tense from the atmosphere and a genuinely clever core loop that reminded me a little bit of Alien: Isolation. If you wanted to take it to "legitimately scary", all you need is a 2D protagonist that is in any way recognizably human (this very site is littered with sprites that would fit the game's style, many of them both high quality and free)  and can be empathized with and is not a big round cartoon robot. If I was controlling a person, like pretty much any person, tense would graduate to scary for me--you can also, of course, inspire empathy for a robot, but doing so requires some very tricky writing. Adding world building, lore, or environment storytelling is just icing on the cake once you have this level of tension from the game's core loop and a protagonist that invokes empathy.

Alright sorry for the wall of text, all of this is obviously just like my opinion man, but tl;dr:

windows build works, but saving doesn't, I didn't beat it because of the severe progress loss of several completed tasks on each death, I think if you wanted you have the makings of likea  really good, feature length horror game here, and I confirm my initial opinion that this is a very impressive game for a one week jam and looks slick as all hell.

Yeah I just would have liked some more feedback and engagement, try to get eyes on the project as I try to work on post-jam versions. But I know my mistake, too...as usual, I saved absolutely no energy during the 'make the game' phase for the 'ratings period/interacting with people/networking' phase. I always do this, lol, self-inflicted crunch then pass the hell out once it's uploaded.

Anyway, thanks man!! What you said about the game here is very kind!

Wow, this certainly didn't get many ratings, did it. : (

Thank you very much. I'm working on the "I didn't get how to play" issue--a LOT of people had it, lol--for the real build. Sorry I didn't get to your game in time (I just saw this now), but you've got 28 ratings to my 10, so I think you'll be fine!

TYVM for the in-depth feedback. Absolutely, if I had more than a week, this would have been better tutorialized with a proper in-game tutorial that it sorely needed. Lesson learned is that the time I spent making the game look and sound super slick should have been spent better onboarding the player. I can see the text on the itch page perfectly clearly with no issues...but I guess my eyes are just built different, lol. I will continue tweaking the page so other, less genetically superior eyes (kidding, obviously) can read it without issue. Is it any light text on an opaque black background htat's difficult for people to read, or just highly saturated colors? Might try to change it to white on black.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback! This project will definitely conitnue in some form,. I'm way too hooked on developing it to stop, so keep an eye out for the real game's itch page to pop up some time this week.

First off, just going by the intro cutscene, the writing is incredible, and the idea of a flower that is essentially nepenthe, and the clever name, forget-me being a play on forget-me-not. I love that shit.

Why on God's green earth, though, would you bind any key but 'S' to 'move down' if W is move up, D is move right, and a is move left. Every single time I touch the keyboard I'm fighting the muscle memory of 255 other computer games controlled by WASD that I've played. X should be idle. S should be down. Or just give the player the ability to rebind controls. But if I wasn't constantly idling when I meant to move one tile down because of this weird control setup, I would have enjoyed this exponentially more...and I already enjoyed it a lot!

Now, as for the game itself, it feels completely unique. It is a traversal-based puzzle roguelike, and I've never played a game of that description before. If Death Stranding were (well, infinitely less pretentious, and developed for the Commodore64) a roguelike, it would be this. There is plenty of room for improvement, and the thing I missed the most was music! Some nice crunchy 8-bit chiptune sounds would be absolutely perfect for this. I loved the Shadowgate meets roguelike aesthetic of everything. I haven't beaten the game yet, but I wanted to get a rating in before the window closed.

This looks AMAZING. Gives me very strong shadowgate plus roguelike vibes. The aestheitcs slap. That said I....kind of hate the keyboard control scheme. It took me several minutes of alternating between trying to move my guy and looking at your instructions to realize that this is the only game I've ever played where X is not down. I'd also consider adding keypad movement for those who prefer that for each access to orthoganl and diagonal movement. Out of curiosity, if it's left click to interact anyway, why not left click to move to a tile? ('I didn't want to do pathfinding in a one week jam game' is an incredibly valid answer). Another comment coming (I'll put that one on the jam page) once I've spent some time playing the game, these are just first impressions.

e: holy heck, I just noticed by accident there's no limit to the number of consecutive tiles of water you can leap over. That's awesome. I had assumed you could only hop over one or two tiles. You may be naked, amnesiac, and unarmed, but at least you're an olympic long jumper! 

Thank you, this is the most in-depth feedback I've gotten and I really, really appreciate it. I'm sorry I missed the voting period but I'll get to your game because "complex" excites me. I've been working on the UI. This is what the new gameboard looks like. Also working on much better tutorializing and player onboarding.

Your cash ($$) and AP yield are determined by the operations and operatives you have installed. The cash yield is the number in the top left of an op card, and the AP yield is in the top right. 

Yes, an operative sortie is your only option to attack directly. And yes, the most common reason not to sortie if it would get an operative killed, but you can get more tactical than that, sortieing only on the turns the operative has a 'good target' and saving their secrecy by not sortieing on some turns. You can theoretically win by killing the enemy, by the way, when you sortie you can click on the OpFor HP, but enemies in the back row will 'block' your operative, like MTG. Occasioanlly, though, the timing of spawns and advances means there's no intruders on the back row to block and you can get through to damage OpFor directly. I uh, don't think it's actually possible to win this way in the jam build, though. I was aiming for "very difficult to get this alternate win condition" but landed on impossible. 

AP is spent to cast certain orders. Some orders cost cash, some cost AP, some cost both, for instance 'Engineered Commodification', the 'print moeny' card, costs only AP to cast. The AP cost of an Order card is the number in the purple box at top right. 

A CM is a countermeasure, the orange cards you install in board slots. Any permanent that's not purple is a CM. Most intruders have 'summoning sickness', but intruders with 'RAPID' start coming at you as soon as you spwan. Other than that it seems like you mostly get it? The only tricky thing is that cost is upper left for all non-operative cards, whereas for operatives, top left is cash yield, and top right is ap yield. So they're in the same places on the card as an Order card, but they generate resources, they don't cost them.

Thank you so much for playing my card game (I put a lot of work into polishing it to look slick and sound good that probably would have been betterr spent tutorializing) and giving such in-depth feedback. "What is clear to a TCG/deckbuilder player and what isn't" is one of the most valuable kinds of feedback I can get!

My number one recommendaiton would be, if you can, calibrate brightness at game start. normally, I find the "adjust brightness until the center image is barely visible" step annoying boilerplate, but I think for a game like this, it's essential. On the level in quesiton, for instance, I could see absolutely nothing without flashes, no box, no button, just pitch blackness, on my monitor anyway. But your game's vibes are still pretty much immaculate, IMHO, which counts for a lot.

So I figured out how the invisible walls work (it really wasn't that inobvious, it's just in a jam context I tend tot hink "this is a bug" before I think "these walls are delbieratlety invisible". Got past that screen and made it past the skull screen.... but then I was out of flashes, there was no 'flash reloady' thing like on the seocnd screen and restarting did not restore my flashes. No idea if this is an actual bug or just another instance where I can't figure how I'm supposed to proceed.

welp, this always happens, I'm so tired form making the game (this game: https://invisibleinc.itch.io/nvr3vr-digital-blackout-bjam-vers) I crash and then when I wake up I find out I missed the stream/discord. oh well. one of these days, I guess!

Hey, don't feel bad at all, first off none of these games have the potential to cause me true rage, and secondly, it's a game jam, everyone releases with SOMETHING broken (I'm sure I did), it's like a tradition.

I am really digging the aestheitcs of this, it's as the kids say "a vibe" but on the second map I can't proceed because there's like...an invisible wall, between me and the bats? Unless there's a gameplay mechanic I'm missing. But the invisible wall exists whether I flash or not.

So I've reached the second map and I can't proceed because an invisible wall seems to be blocking me off from the bat zone. Do you happen to know if there is a way to work around this bug? i really, really like the idea of the game's gameplay, as very little as i was able to see, and the aesthetic is chef's kiss.

Yeah, in-game tutorialization is definitely a thing that would have existed had I not run out of time. I actually really like my color scheme, going for a 1990s neo cyberpunk arcade cabinet kind of deal, Out of curiosity were you playing on fullscreen? I find the cards perfectly legible, or at least the tooltips that you get on hover fully legibile but that doesn't really mean anythingb ecause i already know in advance what the words say and what the cards do. I wasn't 100% satisifed with the UI obviously and I will see, if I conitnue this post-jam, what I can move around to make the cards more legible while sitll trying to keep enough screen real estate that the player can track everything that happened.

Thanks for your feedback!

Thanks! I hope I executed it with a reasonable degree of functionality and polish within the time frame. Were you able to beat it?

 The darkness and literal ticking clock give everything a spooky mood... [spoiler]even if nothing spooky ever actually happens[/spoiler]. The timer is very well balanced against the tasks you have to complete, and the oil slicks are a great touch, as are the boxes in the storeroom rearranging themselves for each playthrough. But I couldn't finish, because the physics around the boxes and dropping items into them is either bugged, or incredibly finnicky. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, someitmes an order I wasn't even trying to fill got filled, it was very unpredictable and eventually frustrating. Still this is super impressive for a first game jam entry.

 The darkness and literal ticking clock give everything a spooky mood... [spoiler]even if nothing spooky ever actually happens[/spoiler]. The timer is very well balanced against the tasks you have to complete, and the oil slicks are a great touch, as are the boxes in the storeroom rearranging themselves for each playthrough. But I couldn't finish, because the physics around the boxes and dropping items into them is either bugged, or incredibly finnicky. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, someitmes an order I wasn't even trying to fill got filled, it was very unpredictable and eventually frustrating. Still this is super impressive for a first game jam entry.

Hey the itch page is kinda fighting against your u/x here. Without the game fullscreened, my mouse isn't captured by the screen, so in trying to look right my mouse slides off the screen and I'm no longer in the game: on fullscreen this problem doesn't exist, but the escape button bound to pausing and bringing up the menu now just unfulscreens me. I'm new to designing games to run in the browser here, but I noticed that some devs used 'TAB' rather than 'Esc' for their pause menu, which gets around some of the problem.

Thank you! Happy to hear it! Actually I don't play this kind of game either, weirdly enough, at least not as a videogame but as tabletop physical games, that's a different story. I've been a recovering/relapsing MTG addict most of my life, though, and fond memories of Android: Netrunner are the primary thing that inspired this game, I think. 

I just disagree with most points you made. I'm not going to enact the effort of explaining why for the most part.It's fine. I've been doing this a very long time. Apparently, so have you. I think we're both veterans, and we can agree to disagree as to a philosophy towards this kind of thing. I mean I see you've done 7DRL, that almost by default means that you have assembled something even more intricate in the same timeframe: roguelikes are fucking complicated. And I'm extremely proud of what I made here, I put in over 60 hours over the course of the week we had (it's not so much I have too much free time as that I'm unemployed/disabled which means all of my time simultaneously is and is not free time).

The poor contrast text on the itch page combined with a background that wasn't fully opaque and a background image that was also text-heavy, that was a genuine rookie mistake that I should have known better and I fixed within one minute of you pointing it out, so again, thank you for that was useful feedback. As for the cards inside the actual game, I'll continue tweaking the UI, everything is perfectly clear to my eyes while playing, at least fullscreened, but I should be able to get a variety of feedback from a variety of people on that over the course of the jam.

But also, idk, "I must play as many of these 47 games as possible" also just isn't my personal approach as a dev participating in a jam. It's a borderline Sisyphean task to try and play eveyrthing especially once you've just gone all out to get your game in on time. Generally, I prefer to pick 6-10 games that look right up my alley and try to give each one the time it deserves, whether that's 20 minutes or an hour. *shrug* We can agree to disagree on all this stuff, man.   

So uh, did the stream fire today at noon even though the games weren't submitted until four hours ago, or was it rescheduled? I'd like to tune in when it happens just kind of hoping that's not RIGHT NOW.

thanks!

This is looking extremely cool. I love the screen grain effect. Is there any chance of a downloadable build? This is right up my alley and seems like the kind of game I could take my time with, so I'd love a version where I can save, quit, and return. I don't know how much content is actually here but it FEELS like a lot. If there is a save/quit function and I just didn't notice it, well, d'oh!
e: I did play long enough to die. The way the darkness encroaches on you then swallows you up is fucking awesome.

Sidequest completed.

Well, for the itch page, I can try to make the fonts more readable, so that's actionable feedback. Totally unsure what "the colors need a lot of work" means in the context of the actual game. I mean it actually sounds a lot like you didn't even try the game! Also I'm not sure "too ambitious" is really a bad thing for a jam entry. I wasn't aware "playable in a ten minute span" was a requirement for the jam, but you're tehcnically correct, the best kind of correct--it takes me closer to fifteen minutes to finish a match on Normal difficulty. Not exaclty a 30 hour campaign.

oh HELLZ yes!

very much in crunch time now lol, compiling now

Hello, game link for NVR3VR: DIGITAL BLACKOUT to be placed here when such a link exists. I haven't watched one of these since I entered bigmode jam in 2023. I'm stoked to see people's games.

these are exceptional! As soon as I have nine bucks to scrape together for something less essential than food or shelter, I very much look forward to getting this pack. Hope you're still active, Badim!

these are absolutely amazing and unbelievably slept on. if you're sitll active on this website I'd love to give you a free copy of one of the games i've made using these, this is truly exceptional work and extremely geneorus to give it away free for commercial use, I wish I could afford to tip you.

some of us done been here since the earliest days of the original. - "Max McGee"/Legion

Very excellent, I'd be excited to see how that goes. I haven't gotten a chance to test it myself yet (I sadly am between gaming groups at the moment) but on paper, at least, if everyone at the table is comfortable with the complexity level of say, D&D, they should be able to generate characters and go through combats very quickly (the game is pretty high lethality, especially if you're one of the bad guys). Anyway, you tell me how it runs! And feel free to check out any of the several other indie games on my page (some are videogames, many are pen & paper, many are free or cheap).

Hey I didn't exactly pounce on this comment right when it happened either but 10 days is better than 52 lol.

Wow, I missed this message by 52 days? Man, I suck! 

Firstly, thank you! I sure hope you were able to convince your friends to try it.

Yes, I am still nominally working on the game master's guide, which was mostly done at the time of posting this, but various other project have stolen my interest in the interrim, as this (it seems this is always the case) never really took off.  The BAD SCIENCE setting is also nearly complete, but same deal. If something ever sells decently, it'll get my attention and I'll be on it like a dog with a bone, but otherwise I have a kind of squirrely attention span when it comes to new projects and new ideas. That said, I have every intention of finishing the GM Guide for this and eventually the BAD SCIENCE setting, I just have no idea of the timeline. That all being said...

I'd love actual playtest data or to even participate in an actual playtest, if having the creator there wouldn't be too awkward. Hit me up on here if you actually managed to organize a squad to play SQUAD, that would actually be awesome. 

Thanks so much, hey, if you get a chance to read it, let me know what you think, if you get a chance to play it, doubly so! Uh, assuming you are the cool person who just bought the first copy (timing of sale, reply, and follow seems to check out)! Otherwise, just thanks! : )

Yowl is a storygame for two to six players where you are a Pack of Dogs in the City: not truly domesticated, not truly feral. Most likely none of you has a specific human anymore: you decide what happened to your human and why you are on the streets. 

You aren't just a good boi or good gurl: you are a Hero.

Like most Dogs, you still care about Humans. Humans are filling the streets of the City in great Hurting Herds to yell about other humans who are dead because they are sad, and scared, and angry. The political specifics elude you: you are a Dog. But you can tell they are hurting, and giving voice to that hurt on the streets of the City. The hurting herd of them is large, and upset, and needs your protection. Humans in armor, who smell wrong, who smell like the outsiders they are, have invaded your City. These humans, who won't hesitate to kick their fellow humans, let along dogs, are appropriately called Boots. 

The Boots do not like the hurt noises that the Herd is making--they remind you of other humans, the kind of humans who would kick a Dog that was yowling in pain to shut it up--show so they are flooding the streets with pain gas and BOOMS and kicking and beating the Herd and anyone, really, who gets anywhere near being "in their way". Worse than the Boots and their beating sticks and their kicks and their BOOMS and the pain gas is that the Boots have brought their own Dogs, armored & muzzled "Law Dogs", who have been perverted and brainwashed and conditioned to act just like the Boots. The Law Dogs are killers. They will kill humans and their own kind w/o mercy. Armor and training have given them an unfair advantage, to boot.

One player plays Man. He is in charge of deciding which City the City is, what the Hurting Herd is upset about, who exactly the Boots are. He is in charge of controlling all humans, including the Hurting Herd and the Boots and everyone else. He also controls the Law Dogs. He is also a "story facilitator" and an "impartial referee". Man should describe what is happening to Dogs in terms that Dogs can understand. Man should remember that Dogs cannot read, cannot understand human language (except for its very basics), cannot do math, and cannot understand abstract concepts, although they can smell emotions and intentions and an incredible array of olfactory details at frankly ludicrous ranges. Man's most important job is providing a "dog's eye view" of what is happening in the game. 

On a personal note, my last few releases on here (over like, the last few YEARS) have gotten no engagement and it feels way too often like when I launch a game here I am just hurling art into a void. Alls I'm saying is, if people bought this (Dear God I need the income), read it, played it, and told me what they thought of it...that'd be really amazing. But I guess the "PLAYED IT" part is the most important to me. 

If there is a bundle or several bundles to support good causes (at the time I release this dog game, the world sure is on fire) I'd love to have Howl be a part of them.

Love it. "This is a TTRPG" is a flat out goddamn lie here. My only critique is how few people have a physical dictionary to hand anymore these days.

I'm surprised there aren't any comments on this page, considering how much action I've seen on some of your game pages.  Of the 15-25% of the 80,000 games you've released in the last several years that I managed to read, this one in particular is very special to me. Congrats on the gizmodo feature, that's awesome. 

Have you ever thought "what if Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but (moderately less jingoistic and) a fast-to-learn, quick-playing Indie TTRPG"? Well, I made that game, it's called SQUAD: Tactical Espionage Action Roleplaying, and you can

get the full core rulebook/"Operator Handbook" very cheap here

The goal was to make a crunchy, easily learned TTRPG of high-octane modern military action and deniable missions. The game's been out for a while but I've done a deeply inadequate job of promoting it, so I'm not sure anyone's actually played it yet, and I'd love to see that change.

 Here's more info on it:
"SQUAD is a tactical Tabletop Roleplaying Game for one to six players and one GM. The players control an elite team of two to six Special Forces Operators or comparable Black Ops special forces, engaging in Tactical Espionage Action: dangerous deniable missions against high priority targets all around the globe. The GM controls the rest of the world and everyone in it, chiefly a rotating cast of fascists, Ultranationalists, terrorists, drug cartels, human traffickers, and wackjob fundamentalists that exist mainly to be shot in the face. In the event of two or less players, each player can control two or more Operators, but the more players, the merrier! SQUAD is designed for fast-paced, tactical, mission-focused gameplay, with simple and clean mechanics still designed to provide a maximum of tactical opportunities and options.

SQUAD is designed to generate operators quickly, to play quickly, and to be very easy to learn but tricky to master, with a wealth of crunchy tactical options, Perks, loadouts, grenades and gadgets available to PCs. While it's an apples to oranges comparison as D&D is high fantasy and SQUAD is military stealth action, combat in SQUAD is still designed to be simpler and faster than D&D combat while providing comparable tactical depth. 

SQUAD features seven Primary Skills, seven Weapon Classes, 25 Perks, and a whole catalogue of MilSpec hardware for Operators to kit up with. The core resolution mechanic is a d6 dice pool system where you roll 3d6 plus your relevant Skill(s)--squad features a unique skill stacking mechanic--and Weapon Class versus 12. Every two points over 12 on the roll is a 'Raise', with every Raise representing an increasing Degree of Success on the action, more damage from gunshots, more bullets hitting the target with automatic fire, and so on.

The SQUAD Core Download consists of the following files:

1. SQUAD Operator Handbook (Complete): Everything you need to generate operators and all of the game's core rules can be found herein.
2. SQUAD GM Dossier (Still In Development): Everything the GM needs to outfit and field OPFOR (the Opposing Forces that the Operators will be up against in their missions. It also contains everything the GM will need to design missions chock full of a variety of tactical challenges, cinematic set piece moments and dramatic roleplaying opportunities for the PC Operators to tackle, and an assortment of optional advanced rules to customize the game experience. It also contains a small selection of ready-to-play sample Missions which can be played as is, altered, or used as templates and examples for designing your own.
3. SQUAD Operator Sheets: Character sheets for PC Operators.

 SQUAD's default milieu/setting is "modern day special forces", with modern day loosely defined as having started some time around 2014 and extending up until the moment you are reading this. It is designed to be easily configured into other "modes" such as futuristic bughunts in space, cyberpunk scifi missions (think Shadowrun, with very high-level runners), historical Special Forces action (especially Cold War era), or adding a splash of Weird fiction/supernatural horror. That last option will be the subject of the first planned Setting/Expansion pack for SQUAD, "BAD SCIENCE".

Thanks for checking it out, far from my first rodeo game design wise, but I'm still extremely eager for feedback from anyone who's read or even better played it!

tomato tomato