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Joey Schutz

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A member registered Oct 23, 2016 · View creator page →

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this is beautiful, ian :') it's pretty amazing how moving it is to just amble around. it's like a heartfelt GIRP haha which is an amazing thing!! just gathering leaves in my basket, swishing around on screen, it all just feels very tactile and delicate and additive into something that feels so sweet, and quiet, and meaningful. and the ending!! just lovely -- grateful for a new ian game!!! :)) 


(ps congrats on the amaze nomination!!!!!!!!!!!!)

thanks ac! :)

omg new fran banger alert!!! love that i hold not just one but BOTH high scores as of writing; great leg animations on the up/down movement haha, and grateful for more explorations of play from THE fran dot itch :))

let's gooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!! :)

i love this game...took me basically the entire game to grasp the controls (in a good way). love that the bones stick around after eating the wings, and also that the diary is there and takes up space. at one point the diary was stuck between my mouth and a chicken wing and it took a lot of effort to contort my arms in a way to knock it free. the final gauntlet of chicken wings was great, especially a few moments when i got multiple in a row. so good!!

22!! inspiring

SO GOOD. can't stop playing. i think the farthest i've gotten is ~round 12 or so, but it feels like i can make it farther....time will tell....eunice b dibbles unite!!

this is so so so beautiful, wow. a very moving collection of thoughts / images / experiences. there is an air of tragedy in a lot of them, and i found myself incredibly moved by how much hope and love they all contained for the world, for their communities, for themselves and each other. you have presented them all with such grace and radiance -- it frames them beautifully. the way your world shimmers and hums and moves meshes wondrously with the texts; i went to spend forever here. and the music and audio!! this is surely a fault of my own but i hadn't realized you did audio stuff (and i am thinking back to the angelically beautiful sounds of R.E.M., the wonderfully tense textures of Crossing -- i LOVE your sound + music, wow). a stunning work <3

wow, pretty in love with this. forefronts the visual beauty of language on the page in a way that is quite striking -- in this way reminds me of hao's bike game, and actually an art series my (artist) roommate did called The Shape of Language which you might like! but also in many ways this is quite different -- i love the idea of staring at this moving image (which carries visual and linguistic meaning at once) and fighting to keep up with a pace i set for myself (by setting the autoplay to 1 second, as instructed). somehow having set the pace myself (even by instruction) gives it a very different quality than having it forced upon me. also quite interesting trying to find a "stream source" -- gives the visual movement meaning, even if i struggle to find it. when i first played it i felt it was too short but actually i love how brief and fleeting it is, never allowing the feeling to settle, but rather capturing the feeling of things falling out from under me, at all times, before i can grab hold. great!

nice -- took me basically until the end to realize i could shift between layers of physics which made for a sort of chaotic playthrough haha but texturally quite interesting! nice feeling just sort of having to wait in these rooms, all with their own feels and tones to them; and the overall structure of it is loose but just enough to ground everything in a way that imbues it with human meaning. have fallen off of prototype studio games but this is a happy return! :)

this is really nice. good "zone" game, but i like that sometimes there's so much going on in the background that i'd really like to look at but doing so causes me to lose focus and fail haha. aesthetically very gorgeous game. could look at the different towers for hours i feel like. lovely! :)

wow, really adore this. the feeling of pushing through leaves and debris is pretty amazing. i love how mysterious navigation is, how difficult it is to parse the layers from each other, and then how good it feels to latch onto a new ledge and climb ever higher. the ending is playfully beautiful, and i ended up taking the plunge back down, causing all the passed layers to come rushing back -- gorgeous!

omg that trackball is huge haha, and super pretty wow. trackball controller makes a lot of sense for this! and np!! :)

love this. the textures in this game are pretty astounding. i really like the feel of mouse + WASD but WASD rotates the image in sort of unwieldy ways (rather than the traditional move) -- feels disorienting and off kilter in a really striking way. i only saw one scene (the tree scene) but the feeling that the environment could change at any moment gave it a real sense of life and dynamism in an interesting way. would love to put this up in the background some time to see more of the scenes :) just lovely!

btw, if you don't already know them you might like GURN GROUP's games! they make little games that feel like they share a similar space with this :)
https://gurnburial.itch.io/

new best is 90,048 B)

nice. it's an interesting feeling being forced to spend so much time in a small space. you've built a really tactile and interesting little nook, and in combo with the really dim and limited lighting i found myself continually surprised by it -- it wasn't until about halfway through the game that i found the buddha statue, for instance (which was a very nice moment), and then shortly after that i found the small scarecrow. certain rock formations struck me differently at different moments (like there's one that really juts out high nearish the edge, and when i came upon once more after finally starting to properly map out the space in my head, it jarred with how i thought i understood the area). this is somewhat of a drumbeat for me haha, but so much of traditional level design logic seems to focus on how we can shepherd players to and from locales as rapidly and efficiently as possible. but i find it to be quite beautiful and enriching to stop and spend time in these places, have levels that stop and start in ways that force me to engage with them, or just generally have designs / spaces / experiences that are not afraid to present their own frictions, which have sharp edges, certainly, but give us something to latch onto and mull over.

i've not watched the movie so i think i missed a lot of the context / some resonance with the text, but apart from that it sets a nice tone; and it's refreshing and quite striking to play such a small game with voice acting (and incredibly good voice acting, at that)! beautiful little game :)

this game is so so good omg. you create such evocative spaces. amazingly funny and charming game, and the sense of movement is pretty amazing too. i love how floaty and dreamlike the jump is, the supreme and towering scale of everything, the feel of falling between rooms / spaces. amazing ending haha. so good!!

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nice. i like how the level titles sort of coach you through the mechanics. the concept of the puzzle mechanic is really cute in a way that gives the whole game this nice warmth. a lot of the puzzlescript games i play tend to be much too hard for me haha -- i suppose they end up falling into this design rabbit hole of taking ideas to their ultimate extremes, to see how much complexity you can wring out of something seemingly simple. but i think what i most love about puzzle games is these small little expressions of an idea, the little surprises that arise from nuances of rules i hadn't fully grasped. i love this game for not falling down those rabbit holes, and being content to simply live in the difficult-but-not-dizzingly-so area. lovely little puzzler :)

really like this one. mechanically simple but you get a lot of nuance out of it. i really like having the 2 lives per tomato, it creates a lot of interesting scenarios where i was strategizing over whether i should let certain tomatoes drop and lose a life in order not to create inconvenient blockades, and sometimes i would create barriers of full-life tomatoes that were protecting my last-life tomatoes which felt really satisfying. the pace is great as well -- like how long it takes between tomatoes. a lot of the game is this tense anticipation, trying to decide where to position my mouse between releases, which parts of my tomato wall felt the most vulnerable (and thus which ones i needed to protect the most!) and i LOVE your mechanic of not keeping a high score, but having to choose when to die haha, it creates a really nice risk/reward mechanic!

high score is 17!!

so good. could have kept jumping through ladders for probably 100 more rooms

played this at wonderville last night and loved it. don't think i've ever played a 3D net art game before, but it feels great pushing through 2000s era sprites. there's a beautiful chaos to it all that really comes together wonderfully in the end. amazing :)

my whole life has been leading up to this moment

this game is so hard omg -- been trying to beat it for a few days haha. perhaps tomorrow i'll be ready...!

feeling of sweeping through a bunch of hands is really great, and once i get into the "zone" ducking and dodging the bad hands feels incredibly fluid and juicy. music of course is great. the moment (***spoilers!!!***) halfway through when the hands slow down is a wonderful moment, and the subtly shifting background gives it a lot of vibrancy and life in a great way. these sorts of deeply difficult games often carry with them a nice humor, and i think you get that here as well which i love. often find myself chuckling at a fresh defeat, given the goofy absurdity of a towering blockade of solo-cup-laden hands; but somehow (perhaps it's that it restarts immediately, or that the skill curve is very nice towards the beginning, or simply that swimming my mouse through green-flashing hands feels great) it feels like a very encouraging game if that makes sense lol, like it wants me to succeed in ways difficult games don't always feel. lovely! :)

27!! my new one is 23, i am coming for you.....!!!!!!!!

22!!!

also just realized this is an excellent "alive time" game!! :)

so good! kinda surprising it took you this long to make a volleyball game haha. i got completely sucked in...it reminds me of wii sports, in the sense that it feels like a very "pure" distillation of a sport, ported to a videogame. it looks at a single interaction and dissects all the nuances of it in a way that is really satisfying and gripping. like wii sports, also love the simplicity of the visuals -- it adds to the "pureness" i think, and gives it real charm :) love this one!! 

my high score is 15 😎

really liking these small little experiences you've been making :) i love them as these small snapshots of ideas. reminds me of lawra's talk (not sure if you made it to that!) where they talked about building out an idea just enough to show the idea, and then immediately stopping (maybe even before there's a full "game" built out). i think it's a really interesting approach. your little games lately have felt so playful in a very freeing way, not at all concerned with traditional "gameness" (which i think most (all??) of your stuff seems to explore in a very beautiful way!) so that they feel like they're building out their own little language of digital play. very exciting!! <3

as all the others have said, this was lovely :') simple but moving; every small part of it really carries its weight to mesh into a beautiful whole

love this one. the feeling of rifling through someone's desktop feels so intimate, but the goofiness of the chomping cat and the general vibe keeps it from feeling intrusive, and instead feels like this warm, shared space. desktops feel like such vulnerable spaces to me, where we can learn so much about each other through the random detritus we accrue or burn away. poking around, even within a "gameified" and curated space feels like becoming beautifully close with a stranger before they vanish forever. 

i love your choice to mechanize the act of throwing away files! for me at least throwing things away grants relief but also a bit of pain. transforming it into this silly act of play made the pain go away, but as the screen slowly emptied i began to feel a real sadness again that made the whole thing feel very emotionally complex (in a great way!)

in many ways this is a very different game, but it reminded me of flan's Museum of the Saved Image, where they moved all the files on their cluttered desktop into a unity project haha -- i think it's very beautiful, you might like it!

https://flan.itch.io/museum-of-the-saved-image


anyways, just lovely. thank you for making me this desktop cleaner :)

i played this some time ago (probably around when it first came out, which itch tells me was 3 years ago (!)) and it's one of a handful of games i find myself returning to again and again. it's one of my very favorites :)

there is something so strikingly beautiful about mundane moments. i think its in part due to the fact that the "non-mundane" parts are the bits we remember, and carry with us. it can be quite beautiful of course to find old videos or pictures or mementos of those times. but they are things i already had, in a way. finding these snapshots of ordinary life for me feels like finding new time, as they unlock parts of myself that had been lost to the mill of churning memory space. i find it can be very nourishing, and moving, to relocate these glimpses of how i once lived, in ways and places now lost or altered.

of course i'm not sure if the places and photos in this comprise "mundane" moments for you, but somehow they capture that for me: glimpses of old woods i used to trudge through as a teenager, or blocks of light that used to fall in the corner of my parent's kitchen. i think you present these ideas with real depth and compassion. every time i visit i find myself moved again. 

i remember very vividly how excited i was pushing through your photo walls the first time i played this. it's a great mechanic -- almost feels like finding a hidden dark souls wall without the extreme esoterica haha. but more specifically feels to me like pushing through tree branches to reveal an opening in a grove. it's no great fanfare, which i like: it's just seeing something new. 

anyways, i wanted to leave a comment since i've played this so much and never said so :) i love this game! thank you for making it <3

this was so beautiful. i can't think of a game quite like this where it's a triptych of "toy" games around a theme. each little scene is so playful in its own unique way and they all augment each other in a very tender, delicate way. a very sweet, gentle little game that left me very moved :)

also omg love the picture of the little guy on the wardrobe

nice, very soothing :) it took me a minute to figure out how to move the clothes haha, but once it clicked for me i loved the mechanic -- feels very methodical in a way that replicates the feel (if not the motion / physicality) of sorting through clothes, thinking through what to wear. i like that you never put the clothes on! it's like an anti-dress up game where you get to see all the shirts you could be wearing without the satisfaction of trying them on haha; interesting feel to it, made me focus on the clothes themselves, think less of their tangible utility i suppose, and rather than worrying about committing to a single shirt it was nice just thinking about what the different shirts evoked to me (if that makes sense). the lack of a more concrete beginning / ending gives it a real mystique to it that i quite like -- lovely :)

yeah i feel you replicated that really beautifully here! and yeah, i played Small Worlds for the first time earlier this year and was also surprised how contemporary and fresh it felt :)

this was beautiful -- reminds me of bit of the Small Worlds flash game: (https://archive.org/details/small_worlds) but here the effect of only ever having the small halo around you visible creates a very different experience. it feels very mysterious and exciting just to explore and map out the world, partly through movement, and partly through memory, trying to cling to all the crannies i've seen and visited and marked in my brain. you've paced it very really beautifully --  at first just moving felt very difficult, as i didn't totally parse that i would fall into cracks so easily. when the VVVVVV mechanic was revealed i began to feel very confident in my movement. the ending is just beautiful. lovely :)

omg i am so honored to have a game mostly for me!! :') LOVE this one, another fran banger. i keep refreshing the page to see if it will lurch in different ways and have come to the very satisfying conclusion that it does not haha. first play had so much gleeful anticipation to see if the camera would swing back around to the ball and it was this great cat and mouse game of wanting to refresh but not wanting to do it right before something new would happen. i think what i love about this game  is that it's this hyper brief moment captured and recaptured. it's really fun and silly constantly refreshing the page to replay this 0.2 second reaction, trying to glimpse new things haha. so good :))

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this was so incredibly beautiful. love how unassuming it opens -- i thought it was going to be a fun / goofy physics-y movement game where it was about the challenge of maintaining a straight flight, but i felt my breath catch immediately as the ground shrunk below me. it's amazing how pointed and moving it is. you get so much out of the stark, top-down viewpoint, forcing you to just stare at what you're losing as you mechanically "succeed." and your use of sound is so efficient, and understated -- feeling the music collapse into the wind is a beautiful, lonely, captivating feeling. also a great title!! before playing i thought the title was funny but now i find it genuinely moving haha. i love this game :))

nice. feels like a thecatemites + grace bruxner game. all the art is so vibrant + expressive and it feels really nice and fun just walking around and listening in on all the various people populating the line. i'm not sure if it's possible to get into the bathroom D: but had fun exploring regardless :)