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Haha you've got the influences dead to rights, thank you for playing!

That's very kind, thank you!!

Ah nice, I'm glad the new scoring is making things feel more intense! Thanks for letting me know.

I've just uploaded a new version which should (hopefully) be the last of the big system changes. The moment-to-moment tactics for getting hearts should be more interesting now.

Oh no! Might need to add a confirmation. Still not a bad score!!

It could have been for the best anyway, if you fail a room the score gets discarded.

no rest for the GOAT 😔

first attempt at the new scoring system! chickened out under absolutely zero pressure

Just a little heads up, I made an update today that changed scoring and a few other systems. It should hopefully make it a little more open ended and engaging. If you do end up picking it up again I'd love to hear what you think :)

(I'll also keep a link to the original version on this page so it's not lost)

oh my god look at em go!!! im pretty sure thats the first ever 14100+, congrats!!

Number 2 on the leaderboard, nice one!!

I have some plans for a post-jam version that should make the score chasing a bit more engaging.

tysm!! congrats on getting through it ((:

Such a cool entry for the jam!

The illustrations are obviously to die for, and give such a lovely character to the project. I really like the idea too, the vibe of a tight and simple tactics game powered by dice is really compelling. If you guys decide to take it any further I can't wait to see where it goes!

a rat broke my crown so I killed his brother to take its top hat and that felt like a fair trade.

I find the snake so charming, especially the squiggly animation. Its fun figuring out the different item effects and trying to navigate with an increasingly awkward body lol. Really cool game!

So much meat on the bone here! I love how entangled everything is, where starting a spell swaps the world, swapping the world unlocks certain movement options, and certain movement options are need to cast spells. It creates a nice knot that has completely melted my brain lol. Excited to spend some time improving at it (: 

Gorgeous style and a unique setting! I found some of the set pieces and enemies really unsettling. I'm not very good at roguelikes but I'm excited to come back and finish it!!

genius (:

This is so sick!! the generative sound stuff works so well in the worlds, the atmosphere is great. I love how alien it feels trying to bend the automaton to your will.

Oooo if you have any recommendations of other game poems that you like I’d love to hear them!

Poetry in games has been rattling around my mind a surprising amount lately. Gameplay loops and poetry both share this trait of rewarding repetition and study, I’d love to explore that at some point.

This is sick!! I know I mentioned it on bluesky but the sprite stacking looks so good. Having to squash zombies to get points and making the zombies damage the car was really neat. I love how even though the map stays the same, there's this constant ebb and flow between wanting to hit the zombies and wanting to avoid them. Took me a second to figure out the drift mechanics but damn do they feel cool 😎

This is the best I've been able to do so far. One day I'll crack 100K. 

Me and my gf will often play point and click games together, voicing the different characters ourselves. I literally can't think of a better fit for that than something like this. Its such a cool idea, can't wait to see where you take it!

I really enjoyed this. Its a very potent depiction of an experience I've only had a few times in my life - being awake in the city before everyone else, and having nowhere to be. I love how at times you play the eye, wandering around the skyline, looking for something that might provoke a thought. I found it really striking that as the lights are turning on one by one throughout the game you can digest each one, but when they turn on all at once towards the end they stop communicating to you.

Really cool experience, I don't think I've played a game poem before so thank you for introducing them to me! 

Hahaha I know exactly what you mean, I really love being in spots where you have to decide whether you can intervene and fix the vibe or whether you’ve just gotta leave the situation alone.

I’m glad that you enjoyed the bad vibe meter thing! To be honest with you I feel that its one of the weaker parts of the design at the minute. The numbers get big and move slowly so it lacks an immediacy that I suspect would make the game and theme resound a bit more. It’s something I’d like to revisit after the jam!

Ty for playing! I hope the memories of your 20s were welcome ones (its about 50/50 on fun/embarrassing for me lol)

welcome to the leaderboard btw 😎

Thank you!! I’m hoping that moving through the party starts out awkward and claustrophobic and becomes a little bit more natural as you play. Something like a memoir to my gangly teenage self lol.

and the first leaderboard entry from my gf! (Lauren HS)

Here's where we're at 😎

Such a lovely game!! Its designed with a very generous touch, feels like it just wants to grab you by the hand and show you delightful things. 

Super gripping, by the second or third area I was being pulled through by no will of my own. Very direct in its writing which feels more necessary as our times become less subtle. Sorry I'm late to the party, but thank you for making this (:

This game definitely rocks, but I'm especially grateful to it for introducing me to the rest of your work. Really excited to play through some more stuff!

games rock

This is an insane thing to have achieved inside of pico8, incredible work!

The presentation is obviously wonderful, the procedural animation looks so natural. The ecosystem is really compelling to be inside, too. Being the second littlest guy is very exciting, especially once you start zipping around the map. I love how the different predators encourage different styles of play, it creates a really natural cycle in the pacing that matches the atmosphere of the game.

I know tadpoles aren't quite frogs, but as a frog lover you still get extra credit.

Thanks for making and sharing this, so cool!

Thanks for letting me know about this, looks very handy! I've been exploring pico-8 lately and might use it again for this jam, but you can never have too many tools in the belt 😎

Thank you! These look really cool, I'll dig into them this week.

Hey everyone!

This’ll be my first 7DRL challenge and I’m a little conscious that I don’t have much experience playing roguelikes (I’m mostly familiar with Qud and Michael Brough’s work). I’d love to cram a little before the exam, does anyone have recommendations for what they consider to be “essential” entries in the canon? I’d especially love to try some games from previous 7DRL challenges.

Appreciate any pointers, thank you!!

That's a great UX suggestion about clearing the sonar, a couple other people have mentioned similar issues so it'd be a big improvement. I reckon it could be squeezed into a v1.1 without too much trouble!

The procedural generation was really fun but SO token hungry! I'd love to revisit the idea in a different engine to explore more ways that the levels can overlap - obstructing some areas, giving you spaces that you can look into but not drill into, going up and down between two floors (kind of like what you suggested on bluesky!).

I really appreciate you taking the time to play the game and leave such a thoughtful comment, thank you!

Thank you! This worked for me

Have been excited to play this since I first saw it! I've only been able to get up to 2-3 so far but it's very addictive so I don't think I'll be able to put it down for very long lol. 

I was surprised at how puzzly it ended up feeling. Trying to route to the tenants without getting pinned in by the zombies was really engaging, especially as the layout of the levels got more intricate. Some of the seemingly obvious decisions have a lot of depth to them also, at some points I would spend a life over a bullet because the respawn gave me a better chance of getting where I was going for fewer resources. That tradeoff felt cool.

It goes without saying, but the presentation is just incredible. The music is gonna be stuck in my head (:

This is really firing on all cylinders, really remarkable that you were able to squeeze this out of PICO-8!

The boss design is great. The 3 bosses each felt like they were focused on different styles of combat (AOE, ranged, dueling) and yet they each also progressed some larger ideas that were woven between them (AOE attacks by Dhriti, followed by AOE attacks across little islands by Shriv). The difficulty was tuned to perfectly match the scope of the game. Each boss took me 2-3 attempts as I learnt the patterns and developed some strategies, it felt really good.

The writing was great too. There's only a handful of lines but they manage to imbue the world and the characters with a lot of substance, and the ending is very cathartic. The sparseness that is required for a PICO-8 game is turned into a strength of the storytelling.

Really really enjoyed this, thank you for making it.

Tysm!! Really admire your work so that means a lot :) 

I really love this!

The theming of building the constellations is super comfy, I can't believe how much heavy lifting the background stars do in portraying the night sky lol.

The system is great too. The early puzzles have such a limited range of choices that you pick up the rules really quickly, and then all of the more interesting properties unfold nice and naturally over the course of the game. The subtle restrictions around line of sight, jump distance, and intersecting lines build up to some fun surprises that you surface really well in the puzzles. I especially like the puzzles that iterate on the same constellation but move the green stars around.

It has that magic property where you can build intuition with the system just by messing around, and then the intuition eventually drops a solution in your lap. Feels so good!

Really cool game!!

Link to Adam's talk!