itch.io

This was a fun demo. I appreciated the sense of exploration. I wishlisted it, which is rare these days.

Some things could have been clearer that were more UX problems than gameplay ones:

• it took a while to figure out why the crank turned into a lock, and how to get the crank back 
• I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to manually control the lockpick and the maze - I'm a big fan of automation, but almost everything else was interactive, it would have been cool to try to do this manually for a bit
• Mr Whatever not showing up in the demo but having an action unlock it implied to me that the demo was over. I only did the next car track because the music was on in the tab and I was about to close it thinking I was done and noticed there was another thing. that was confusing

After the mountain of AI slop writing hitting itch and "perfect" design it's so refreshing to see something at least appear hand crafted without unintelligible ai writing. Thanks for sharing and I hope you do well.

Pretty good. Some improvements

• clicking manually is so powerful and the game is so slow otherwise that you practically can't play without it. I had to use an auto clicker to stay sane. Needs better balance or more clicking options.
• Needs a way to automatically buy upgrades
• Needs a way to automatically Charge

Frequently freezes on Mac Firefox for up to 10 or so seconds. First happened when clicking on the first stone, then happened when first pressing E to put stuff in the smelter box, and then again after all items were put in the box.

Tried the game, any clicks or actions freeze the game for 3-5 seconds. Clicking to place the bottler, clicking on the bottler, etc. Can't play like this.

Hi, it's in a browser, specifically. Firefox 156.0.1 (aarch64). I came back and played more, and it only happened before either reaching the first goal or second goal, or thereabouts. Starting a new game in a private window was immediately 100% reproducible. Start game -> sprint -> game freezes for 1-2 seconds -> continues. 

Seems cool. Game freezes for a few seconds every time I start to sprint, though, quite annoying.

Seems like it could be fun but I retried like ten times and can't seem to make any progress. Gun shoots super slow, baseball bat does minimal damage, 1-4 does nothing, mashing buttons next to what looks like crates does nothing, I kill the first zombie and then the horde appears and I just die with "hauled 0" repeatedly. I don't see any way to make this work,  I give up.

Helps deal with emotional processing the same way Tetris does, but it's more boring in a good way so that it's not addictive. nice. 

what do blue coins do?

I seem to have found a bug: I can't upgrade Barracks from level 2 to 3. It says "uses 4 food" but I have 9/9, and it costs 305 wood/203 gold and I have 2534 wood and 1102 gold.

Neat, but the jump mechanics are holding it back. Watch this video it will change your life:

Really fun! I really wish you could rotate the pieces though, feels too restrictive to have to match them exactly. Nice idea!

Looks really fun but I can't play it because the text is microscopic, unreadably small. "What is this, a card game for ants?!" I hope you can find a way to fix it!

Looks cute but can't play on laptop trackpad because I can't left and right click at the same time.

The Dark Souls of Tetris

Nice art! Unfortunately I can't play it, as it takes a very long time to load and then either right as it loads or right before, it crashes the browser tab. Safari (Mac), Firefox, Chrome, Brave all crash. One time I was able to get into the game on Firefox and then it locked up after a minute or so of clicking. I've not seen this happen before in a browser game. Hope you can figure it out!

Thanks! I played some more and got pretty closed to 7 towers, maybe 9-10 or so, good to know there's a way to push even more. I definitely started seeing some value to ÷2 when trying for minimum towers. That kind of "win strategy" reminds me of Zachtronics game goals where you try to win with lowest cost, lowest area, fastest, etc. Could be a neat mechanic for your levels.

Showing cooldown and visibly showing a tower firing would both be quite helpful.

I hope you continue developing it, the unique premise offers a lot of opportunity for interesting game mechanics. Good luck on the game jam!

Seems like a fun one. Bravo for trying something new but I personally don't like the "overheat" mechanic or whatever, where the more you fire the weaker you get. Waiting for weapons to recharge while waves fly by is kinda boring and seems counter to this kind of kind of gameplay. Especially with bosses it feels like being punished for playing the game. Neat to try something different though, maybe you can find ways to keep the mechanic but not be disruptive to gameplay. Or just ignore me. :) Thanks for the game, hope you find lots of success.

Neat idea. Some classic game design mistakes like not explaining things to the player: 1. what does upgrading axes and finding better quality axes do? doesn't seem to make them any stronger. 2. what is "spiky" and "hammer" and the other affixes? 

AoE effects are generally not useful but could be improved by tweaking some combination of making the area bigger, doing more tick damage, sticking around longer, triggering more frequently (and these could be improved by upgrading/better quality probably). 

I ran into a bug that made me unable to progress, I hit the home button and then "play" and then trees were invincible. They would take like 2/3 of their health damage, and then would stop taking damage. I tried buying different axes and upgrading and stuff and nothing worked and I could proceed. No biggie, I was almost at the end anyway. 

Good job, hope you get a good grade.

Yeah, it's fun and I've beat it a few times but agreed that the balance is a little off. You have to really rush everything to stay ahead, it's a frantic game to stay ahead of the curve. 

Since towers fire slowly (and it seems like the monsters can only take so much damage at once or have invincibility frames?) it's better to spread them out along the first row. Once you have 10 -5 towers you should be able to start buying -10 towers. I usually have 5 -5 towers at the top and then the other -5s spread through the second row, and the -10 towers on the bottom row. Once you're buying -10s there's no reason to buy -5s. Last game I won with 100 health was 11 -5 towers and 7 -10 towers

In all of the games I played, I was only able to afford the ÷2 tower once, and it wasn't helpful as the monsters were already ahead of the damage output. Seems impossible to be able to buy the ÷3 and still do enough damage to the monsters. I think it would be better with a little tuning to make more money, make monsters scale more slowly, space them out a little more, or something.

Really cool idea though to use the math as the monsters. A little tweaking and it could be quite an interesting game.

In case anyone else sees this looking for an answer, you can make (or find) a treasure chest and put your old junk tools in that. If you found a chest, can use the "pickup tool" to pick it up and move it. This can keep your inventory clean.

How do you buy guns?! I have 2500 credits and I'm trying to buy the Scrapper (for example) and when the gun is selected it says "BUY 1500 CREDITS" but pressing Space, E, shift, every button I can find does not buy the gun. The "start" stays locked saying access denied. I've mashed every key on my keyboard and nothing will actually buy the gun. Help. :( 
Edit: turns out I can't buy gear either, but I can buy buffs. What's wrong?!

I always thought a game based on The Missing Piece Meets the Big O would be cute, and this is pretty cute.

It's such a great foundation, if you're done working on it, open source it and let us build more!