itch.io

Thanks for the feedback and for giving it a peachy play!

Yes, I can confidently say that most all of the issues encountered were for the most part exactly that "game jam constraints". We set out a very specific and defined scope for the game from start to finish and wanted to assure first and foremost that it was playable from beginning to end, not too hard, not too difficult. Unfortunately while tieing all the knots near the deadline the primary balancing tweaks were managed primarily on my end on the night before the deadline.

But with the numerics, actually the numbers are managed in a way where base stats that affect all sources (do not contain weapon names at the start) are % based, while weapons (katana, monkey, pheasant and dog) are raw numbers. The intent here was to give the player an option to opt for either percentage increase to all sources (upgrade the modifier) or raw number boosts to specific weapons (immediate power for just a single weapon/pet).

All this got a bit convoluted near the final stretch so we didn't have time to format the numbers to better represent clear stats. We had a UI setup ready to be plugged for the player to access via the pause menu to review all upgrades and their current values, again didn't get it rigged up in time and removed it near the end to not mislead the player with bogus static placeholder numbers.

As to attack speed vs attack cooldown. Surely are many ways around defining either in a game. Technically I'd say yes, Attack Cooldown may be more descriptive of the current attack function, given there is no windup to the attack, so there is no speeding up of an attack occuring technically. Attack speed would be closer to projectile speed in this case - the speed of the attack. But mostly I'd say this comes down to interpretation as to what is more accurate given definitions used. But good to have this mentioned to have us remind ourselves to take a step back on the stats naming and reassess for more accurate naming choices, which surely is based on both a cross between logic and common conventions.

The attack speed stat is per second. Surely the confusion is due to the attack speed that affects all sources and it being cacluated as a % decrease vs weapon specific attack speed that is in raw numbers minusing in order to decrease the time between each attack. This is indeed confusing without better visual representation to clarify what each upgrade covers as well as the formatting of the text and being able to seenyour current stats, again largely the game jam constraints hitting us there.

As to directions and knowing what to do during the game. Here we opted to lean more onto the "show don't tell" mantra even to the extent of not holding you hostage to conversations - you can just walk away.

You spawn at the very back of a town, the only path naturally leads you to the combat area and all sources of information are scattered along your path. Specific sources are highlighted immediately with a yellow exclamation mark to focus the players attention on them first and foremost, with the dog being immediately visible at the start. These key animals all have a common request "candy, snack, treat" to which the UI has a slot for. We opted here to let the player make the connections naturally. However where you get this candy/snack/treat was left behind on the cutting room floor due to constraints. That being clarified somewhere was indeed missing, only mild hint is you needing to slay the Ogres. But to help orienting the player we designed both the respawn system to lead you from spawn through the town to re-assess your options and made sure your progress outside the town was always retained for easy of continuing the fight - no pesky start over try again here.

There are many ways around this and it is good to hear where this approach faltered in your case, so many thanks for mentioning it. Always good to see where you get blindsighted with your design intentions.

Very much true with the enemy variety. Given the scope of the game, the intricate systems, cut scenes, voice acting, weapons and all of these, we didn't get around to the ranged enemies. Actually there are animations in place for the Ogres and different iterations for faces. We even had in place around 40 unique drawn facial expressions that work universally across all the character models, just didn't have time to implement the change of faces except for those splattered with monkey poop! 💩

Oh my, this message got a bit long. Well again thanks for all that feedback it is always very helpful to get a chance to review and reflect on choices made, why they were made and to have blindsights exposed. Very helpful thanks!

Glad you liked it, Peach shall be with all for Momotaró is on the watch!

OH my...  now I know the superior powers of an organic four leg drive. Those mountains are nay challenge no longer!

Great style, fun controls, would horse again!

Loved the artwork and taking some time to be the barista of the fables! Made me think of Wanderstop, making a nice bit of brew in a cozy environment.

Surely many ways this could spin into a very complex barista job given the various customers with fantastical tastes, but I'd imagine that would quickly ride off far away from the cozy angle... if that would be a concerns, unless a cozy bait-n-switch is in order! múhahaha

Great style and very well done introduction to the game and setting of the story. The fundamentals behind the game seems good, could become something very enjoyable with more various disruptive tools, modifiers, rulebreakers and more.

Promising game concept for sure, well done!

Great use of the theme, mythbusters avert thine eyes! there are NO MYTHS!

That music really jams, feels good when returning to the menus. Talking about the menus, they feel great, simple clean and nice to use.

I would had loved if the upgrades were not mandatory in order to capture better shots = even though it logically makes sense. Would feel great and rewarding be able to apply your practices mastery of the photoshooting art to still capture great shoots, without the powerful upgraded equipment.

Very on point theme, fun to anticipate the impending yule lad and their pray to be hidden away and then lose yourself in physics panic mayhem. Gnome shall find their treat!

Great vibes, felt like an early version of a spooky short hike. Aiming to hit the spiders and landing jumps was a bit tricky with very little visual indication of either, also those spiders respawning really made me just stop attacking them after a while and opt for running past them.

I definitely liked the writing and feeling of getting lost in the forest with a fittingly ominous music.

Very good use of the theme, the Harmonica implementation was fun to have around while perusing the dark, surely many fun things can be done with that!

Clearly Gísli is not just a coding wizard but a voice acting wizard as well, many wizard hats worn!

Glad you enjoyed the ensuing ogre slaying mania and saving the elders. Peach be with you.

Definitely like the concept. As soon as both the bounce directions got introduced to my pool of beans, that is when I started seeing some potential in the game design. Finally I could end up sabotaging myself even more if I made the wrong move, which is great. That aspect to consider intrigued me the most. 

Quite fitting style and I like the mood set by the music, especially with the creepy eyes offering "good" beans that will definitely bring you ample luck and good things. 

Thank you, I'll pass the compliments to the Chef.. i mean the Coding wizard! Gísli (❁´◡`❁)

I love myself some bézier curves! Had a great time noodling around with them, very apt name, perfectly fits the concept. Very Bézier, much Plesier!

After a good while manipulating those handles, I finally managed to overcome the 9th level. I won't say it didn't crossed my mind that there might not have been a deliberate solution to the 9th level, however it turned out to be solveable, so props to a good challenge ramp up - only exception being level 5, that stumped me for a while much like appropriately challenging 9th level.

I will agree with the others that having a larger space would be more enjoyable, however I can see how the limited space plays into the challenge. My immediate thought to possibly fix this issue without compromising the challenge, is to keep the same limited space where the bézier points are allowed to be manipulated within and extend the visible area outside those boundaries exclusively for handle manipulation, I expect that should eliminate the issue and retain the challenge.

Overall a very solid game, great job!

Werner never fails, Werner is great!

I was looking to consider whether to flush or to let live, however I saw no option other than to simply wave at the beings forming in the bowl, with no effect. Werner's words made me consider my opinion of the small life forming in the bowl. Perhaps a "no flush" option is as life is, you might love it, even if against your better judgement, as spoken by lord Werner.

Let's continue observing the toilet bowl of life ಠ_ಠ

This to me is an interactive art exhibition, and good one at that, perfect alternative approach to using the game medium to express your art. I'd say it's perfectly good without being gamified. a Well presented message on social media, doom scrolling and general effects of modern day tech conveniences... or inconveniences, depending on the perspective 😅 ..or at least that's what I read out of the exhibition 😁

 I very much enjoyed this one, very consistent visual presentation - especially liked how the backdrop of the itch.io page seamlessly matched the in-game backdrop.

Very enjoyable vibes, reminded me of how much I enjoyed Life is Strange. The artwork looks great and it was enjoyable to explore around, interacting, slowly getting introduced to the characters and unravelling her story with Andrea, one interaction at a time.

Regardless of the unfinished state, good job!

Thanks a bunch for the feedback and great to hear you enjoyed the game.

Yes, the camera, it was perhaps ill-advised to unintentionally induce sea sickness, regardless of how thematically appropriate it might be. This issue unfortunately flew by us while focusing on implementing other aspects, we will 110% get this fixed looking forward - and we are keen to look forward.

The shop was another causality of neglect while racing towards the deadline. You are very much on point, there is currently zero feedback in the store when making purchases. We actually have a sound effect ready within the game project already, however slipped by us in having it rigged up before the deadline. That sound effect was the intended bare minimum feedback for making a purchase, a hefty "Ka-ching" sound. Another intended change I intentionally skipped making due to limited time, was to adjust the whole store screen UI to better reflect the current upgrade stats and quantity of abilities held within the store menu itself, rather than only being visible on the distant screen UI. There is that and the store is missing an option to simply press a "back" button to quickly exit rather than scrolling down the click "exit". 

Thanks a bunch for the compliment on the characters and animations, I very much appreciate hearing it. The intent behind the designs was to try to create something visually distinct and whacky, to fit with the crazy premise, great to hear it landed well! 😁 I set myself the goal of creating all the art in the game from scratch, from modeling, texturing, rigging and making the characters modular by design for possibility of variants (only 2 made it in time). Only the animations needed a little help from Mixamo to get base animations in place, save a bit of time and rather spend time altering them and editing as needed, some squash & stretch methods (build animation being the clearest example).

Those are some damn excited fans, hyped for the eventual match. I'd be afraid to see what level of hype would be reached, once the match us underway 🤯

Enjoyed this one, great use of the theme and exceptionally good artwork. Had a good time getting waved around!

Love the visuals, they are absolutely great! Wish there was a bit more to the fundamental gameplay as covered well by other comments below.

Feels like there is ample potential for a spin-off based on the characters. Why does the priest need to cross the water, where is the priest heading to, how did the ferryman become such a beast handling the waves?

Curious to know more about their backstories, the art intrigued me well enough to bring such questions to mind.

Same for me as with HobbyStoreRonin, cannot play. Only see a very promising horizon off in the distance with towers, something that I am very curious to explore.

Hopefully you can have this fixed up, I am very much keen to give the Shell Riders a spin!

Very well executed game and a great idea for the theme. Did part of the idea come from wanting to get more "physic"-al with lemmings? 😅

This is definitely a promising foundation that could become a solid game with a bit of adjustments with some of the levels - as stated by other prior to me here - exploring more functionality opportunities and playing around with the concept.

Two things that caught my eye that I'd want to provide a bit of feedback on:

- Shrinking the Rocks colliders. It feels often as if they should be in position to fit into a hole but don't.
- Wavelings heading. Perhaps have them orientate their heading/direction based on the direction they were last shoved in, rather than only by bumping face first into walls.

Overall great job!

Brilliant, great to hear that you had a load of fun with our game and thanks for giving it a spin!

Regarding the speed upgrade, you're probably right that it could do with a cap. However we intentionally left it uncapped, as a sort of "double-edged sword", if you upgrade too much you'll have to live with being Speedy Gonzales for the rest of your run.  (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

You completely hit the nail on our head with the camera, we didn't put enough time in jigging around with it to get it feeling just right. Definitely will improve that. Perhaps an unintentional sea sickness effect? 😅

Really intuitive and original concept. Seems quite promising to me what could possibly be done with this, regardless of me also having issues making it past the 2nd level. I can very much appreciate the effort required to draft up solid levels while fighting the chaos of physics systems, good effort!

Seems like a promising concept, the act of matching waves based on hints seems intriguing to me, especially considering where this could be taken if explored further as a concept. However unfortunately I also had the same problem as the others, I didn't manage to overcome the first puzzle. I expect it is as "Master Builder" noted, a case of the necessary frequency being too specific to hit. It would had gone a long way in improving playability if there were some sort of indicators implemented - hot & cold style - as you approach the correct wave length.

Brilliant, getting freaked out is a high praise in our book! Thanks for giving it a spin. 

However all language related accolades must go to Neptune, he took to Icelandic like a sailor to the sea! Never expected that an ancient roman deity could learn a new trick, especially with that temperament... it's a miracle!

Made a "How-To-Play" section on the page, detailing various aspects of the game, giving clearer understanding on how the game works before setting off to harbor some riches!

Many thanks for all the wonderful feedback from all those that gave our game a spin at the Game Makers Iceland showcase event.

Thanks alot for the feedback. We will definitly consider adding more control over the rewind mechanic. It's supposed to limit the character in regards to his actions (invisible doggy leash if you will ^^) and also serve as an easy option to rewind back to the start once you accomplish what you need to. There were more ideas around that mechanic that we thought to implement, but as you mentioned, time constraints stopped that :). We are currently considering what we'll change when going forward developing this game and this is exactly what we want to hear :D.