I love the art style!

I'm not quite sure what FLOSS is, but your game should be original/made for the jam. Using an existing game is highly discouraged.

Hmm, maybe the FAQ isn't worded very well here. So basically that's referring to existing assets you didn't make, like ones from opengameart, etc, hence the note on crediting sources. So, I'd say it's at least not in the spirit of things to make all your own art ahead of time. You can obviously try things out to see what works, if needed. But keep in mind that most people will be doing all their work within the jam period.

Yes, that's allowed as long as you follow the rules of both jams and their time limits. For example, you shouldn't start a game for that jam, before LRJ starts, and then release it in LRJ, you should make it in the time both jams overlap.

The effects allowed by that rule are ones that work on just the 64x64 area. What you want sounds similar to the web allowance for borders:

My game is for web, can I add border art outside the 64x64 limit? YES! As long as it's part of the page and not rendered by the game.

The difference is yours would be rendered by the game/Unity. If you really want to do it, go ahead, but my advice would be to have it as an option which is off by default. As I usually say for these questions, you will not get disqualified for doing it but the people rating your game might be a lot stricter!

There's no restrictions on input, only resolution. :)

Short answer: No. Because it still breaks the resolution. And depending on the characters they could easily be seen as sprites. And it could allow you to easily get past the challenges most people face with having text in their game.

Long answer: Yes. You could add this as an optional mode, similar to how CRT effects and such are allowed (as long as they're not enabled by default).

The reasoning behind this is simplicity. The use of resolution is a rated category, and it becomes a lot easier to rate if the rules are simple and defined. This is why optional effects are allowed, because the end user would have to explicitly enable them, and they'd know not to count it against you. Most people rate 5 stars for just meeting the resolution (rather than creative usage of it), but this means that when something clearly breaks the resolution restriction it can easily knock your position down!

I am personally against blind/blanket censorship, so no, there's no rule regarding the content of your game! The only thing I ask is that if your game does contain content that some may not like, then outline it on the game page front and center so people can make that choice themselves. Itch also allows you to set a content rating, I believe they are; NSFW, and 18+. So also use them if applicable.

You have it correct! Just on screen. Only the final render needs to be at 64x64 or less. 

Post any free fonts, suitable for LOWREZJAM, here!

Just before the jam last year I released this pixel art font pack:

• https://jackoatley.itch.io/ikkle-font-pack

• https://www.dafont.com/pixel-inversions.font
• https://www.dafont.com/doomed.font (Used in the LRJ image)

Lol thank you! And thank you for releasing your sprites in the first place! They did get some minor edits, to make them more handsome! :)

What's your browser and specs? We can do a downloadable version, but we use tools like NWJS and Electron to do so, these are basically standalone stripped down browsers, so I can't guarantee it'd work any better for you. It's only been tested on Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

You should have seen it when it really was a maze! I didn't even get through it in that state! ;)

Thanks, and yeah Voidcrypt is a bitch, but it's really just a puzzle in observation. Once you work out that you're meant to paint the walls with blood (bullets also hits walls and paint the floor) it becomes a lot easier. It could definitely have been executed better though. I think the main problem is that up to that point it's too easy, the player gets no training to prepare for the void! :P

Would it be acceptable to have images used only for data, like height maps, not count towards the color limit? The reasoning being that they are not actually displayed in game, the image format is only used as a convenient means of creating and loading maps.
And what about counting towards the sprite limit? (this wouldn't actually be a problem for us, I don't think, 256 sprites is tons for our idea, but would be nice to know!) 

Hey bud, I messaged you on Twitter regarding the prize shirt for placing top 5! Could you reply there or message me on Discord (if that's preferable)? Thanks. :)

Hey man, I couldn't find a way to contact you, so could you contact me on Discord or Twitter? We owe you an Aseprite license for coming 1st in Theme category! :)

Hey man, I couldn't find a way to contact you, so could you contact me on Discord or Twitter? We owe you an Aseprite license for coming 2nd in Theme category! :)

Really liked this game! It's a great take on the combination concept. And it was just the right level of challenging for a jam game. I liked the art, but the scaling did put me off a little along with some other not-quite-pixel-perfect things. The sound and music was great, and I like how the music changed with the area. Awesome!

Really nice game. I think for the jam you should have made it a little quicker to get through though! It's a bit of a grind! Though I see from your other comments that you're actively updating this and improving it, so I'm sure you'll fix a lot of these issues. :)

It would have been nice to have 2 or 3 music tracks, just to mix it up a bit.

You could, but is it really that major? Mine has a score bug too, it literally gets so high it overflows and goes negative, lol.

As CrowdForge has been down for a while we decided to facilitate making teams in the Community forum. To make this easier for you, for others and for us to manage, we provide this format. So you make make a new thread for building your team and people can reply to it to join and you're welcome to discuss things in there, you should define the open positions on your team and mark them as filled when someone has joined. We can lock the thread at your request when the team is filled or may may leave it open for future discussion if you like (but please make it clear the team is filled). You can have any number/types of roles, the below format is just an example of a consistent structure to make it easier for people browsing for a team to understand.

The format (example):

Thread title, something like: "Team (1/4) - Retro Platformer"

Positions (1 / 4 filled):

• Programming - Filled (can put names here if you wish)
• Art - Open
• Music - Open
• SFX - Open

Information:

(Do you have an existing idea? Where will communication primarily take place? Are you looking for specific skills/styles in potential team mates? Do you have examples of your previous work?)

All the fonts in this pack are 100% free to use. For distribution I'd ask you include a notice in the same folder, basically the name of the font and a link to the itch page of the font pack and a note saying "do not claim as your own". So, no obligation to include anything in the game itself, just that small note/txt file in the folder with the font(s). DM me on Twitter if you have further concerns: https://twitter.com/f_oatley :)

I don't think you made this specifically for JamCraft, as it looks like you just spammed it to loads of jams. I'll allow it because it's not just a troll, and it's your first game, but I would advise in the future to only submit to jams you actively entered and took part in (not just "any that vaguely apply").

The .jar doesn't work for me, opens up to a black window.

The music was really nice. The player upgrades are a bit bugged I think? I had a really cool looking tank thing, then when I got the last pickup I change to the original looking thing but just with large tracks... I think if you cut the scope of this back sooner you could have had an epic game here; just upgrades (combo upgrade) and shooting, maybe in a smaller area. But as you say, you tried to go further with it and you learned some new stuff!

I quite like this idea! Though I wasn't sure what some of the elements I made were. But I can see there's real logic to it, when I made a sapling, my first thought was water, I got a tree, then my first thought was fire, and I got charcoal or something. It'd be handy to have a tool tip when I hover over something, so I know what it is. I think swapping the left/right mouse button functionality would make more sense too, and lead to less issues with wasting a whole stack!

Really well polished! Combat is very satisfying. Audio works very well. I think there's a bit of an art clash, like everything other than the player is fully fleshed out. Not to say I don't like all the art, it's just a weird clash to me. It wasn't fully clear to me how to talk when I started. And, at least in the Linux build, there's my cursor and seemingly another cursor you draw in the game? And for the time I played I didn't have to craft, I just levelled up strength and 1-hit-slapped everything, and ate raw vegetables!

I look forward to seeing this game evolve some more!

The fuse mini-game doesn't seem to work the second time? It thinks I'm not holding anything. But it worked the first time and I was able to make Poison Dust. How much can you actually make in this, as I see a lot of stuff in the shop?! :)

Definitely need settings to tone the graphics down. AA, bloom are things I never have on anyway, but this was a little choppy!

Anyway, this looks awesome and I think this would be a great base for a merge game. It already looks similar to Civilisation 2048, for example. Though I think this'd be more suited to a game where you pickup/place the tiles rather than shift them, then like 4 matching tiles automatically goes up a level.

I'm actually not a fan of the focus effect, where you bring the focused tile up and lower the rest. Maybe if this was more subtle, rather than taking everything out of view...

But yeah, really cool, look forward to seeing this evolve!

Thank you for sharing! Very few people enter these casual jams with the expectation of just winning. The goal IS to have fun, experiment and learn new things, so in this sense you successfully jammed! :)

Your game does look rather in depth, and that's a great concept! BrewDog meets JamCraft?!?!?! :P So I do hope you can finish it some time and share it.

Logging camps generate wood. Negative children was a side effect of fixing a bug where children had children when there was no adults. It's actually a lot harder to simulate this stuff than I expected! :P

Hey, it's Linux Mint + latest Chrome. But I thought I'd try again and this time the keyboard worked. Considering last time I did refresh the page several times to no avail, this is weird. I can't even find a way to break it now, I thought it might be the touch implementation; it uses overlaying divs, maybe that was restricting focus somehow... But, I don't know!

It's a little tricky to get used to. Once you learn how to edit properly, you then need to train yourself to not press anything else, like space, to complete it. So it's a little annoying in that sense. Maybe a little more time to edit in the early levels, and if editing space should just complete the edit and not drop the block. Just minor things like that. Otherwise it's a neat concept!

For some reason keyboard controls wouldn't work for me here (Linux + Chrome), but I was able to complete it with the touch controls. Very good all round, though maybe the music starts to grate quite soon, being such a short loop! I love the map, the general design and how big it felt because of the low rez, and all the potential hiding places. The sign posts are a great touch. The only place I didn't go, looking at your map, was the orchard(?) next to grannie's house, did I miss anything here? :P

I actually didn't mind the "blurry" text, it's actually still clear to read. And everything else in the game has a similar aesthetic. Very simple game, but quite entertaining. Could have listed the controls somewhere, I always go in assuming keyboard!

Love the music. And the game plays smoothly. Maybe I just suck at it, but it was very trail and error; like going through a door, unless you know where to move before going in you can get trapped and stabbed to death pretty quick! But really well executed, shame that, as has been mentioned, the rendering isn't quite resolution perfect!

Thanks for playing! And GameBeans can be found here: http://gamebeans.io/ It's in Beta-ish and moves kind of slow because I have other projects/jams quite often. But it's a JavaScript IDE, so in that sense there's nothing missing from it, lol.

G is by far the hardest character to fit nicely in 3x3 pixels! :P