Thanks for your feedback! Yeah I should have added something cool if you jump in the pit a lot lol, missed opportunity for sure.
I definitely should have tried optimizing a bit better (I only tried on mine & my wife's PCs, hers is middling specs but of course as Pangbot mentioned incremental-enjoyers are less likely to have good specs hah) -- makes total sense. I think the vibration issue you mentioned might actually be tied to frame rate because I actually had no idea it was a thing (but the physics of holding the cube is like the only thing that is tied to the frame rate), that is really good to keep in mind going forward. I need to get a laptop or something to test games on in future! If you don't mind me asking, what are your specs (mostly CPU / GPU / RAM)?
As for the tutorial shop thing... yeah there is actually an arrow that you can JUST BARELY see above the shop, but I accidentally made it be the tiny arrow and not high enough (it was supposed to be like the big arrow above the rig in universe 2) hah, whoops! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. And the store being a bit too complex at first, makes total sense tbh.
Thanks very much for your feedback! :D
JoyousLlama
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Thanks for your feedback! It all makes total sense. I'm glad you could tell I had fun making it hah, yeah the pointless arachnophobia mode was like one of the first things I added LOL.
Rregarding the currency I definitely had intended to find some better use for the excess, mainly I was looking into gating higher tier upgrades behind multiple currencies together, but I ran into some balancing issues (who would've thought that largely putting off balance & e2e testing until 9 hours before the deadline was a bad idea lol)
Similarly I was hoping to flesh out the differences between each universe but spent a bit too much time focusing on the "fluff" hah, next time I'll try to balance out that ratio a bit more. With that said, my ideas for differentiators were terrible compared to the few suggestions you came up with, so thanks for helping me learn in that sense. If I end up expanding on it then I'll definitely take your advice, thanks very much
Also I had never heard of Berry Bury Berry, definitely would need to do a bit more market research into the genre if I do continue here hah -- I've played a handful of games but not enough, for sure. Thanks again for all your advice
This is a pretty good game, there is a good amount of polish in some areas and I think there is a lot of potential here if you were to expand on it. I really liked the idea of exerting the stars/planets for stardust but possibly harming my run if I push them too far, etc. -- and there is a lot of juice. It's a good game, nice job!
Here are some notes I took while playing:
- I like the SFX and music, the UI feels a bit blocky and distant though (a lot of things pressed against a different edge of the screen), might like to see a little more cohesion there
- If you click too quickly, it definitely seems to become a bit of a flashing lights hazard, would add some kind of warning to your game or reduce the strobing/growing effect. I know you are not supposed to click the star a lot, but the first thing I did upon launching the game (before I understood it) was flood my screen with strobing yellow and red lights haha
- I really liked the gameplay loop and the balance was pretty good. It was a cool moment when I realized about the 'Expand Universe' upgrade, that was a cool moment. And moving to planet automation etc., it felt good.
- One big pain point is that scrolling the upgrades menu is excrutiatingly slow... I don't have one of those infinite scroll wheels, so it would take me like 15+ seconds just to get to the relevant upgrades, which is not great. This sticks out like a sore thumb because the rest of the game feels pretty good, you might even be able to classify this as a bug and fix it now honestly, because just having 5x faster scrolling would certainly enhance the gameplay experience without adding any "content" ya know?
- I reached a point where the upgrade tree wasn't expanding any more even though I'd seen quite a few black holes, I'm not sure if I just needed more DNA or what -- but if the upgrade tree did end up only having that couple handfuls of upgrades, I would really like to see more. Though I understand it's a jam game and I'd already spent probably 20 minutes at that point, so yeah it makes sense the content had to run out eventually hah.
I can see the ideas for the game and where it's going, but I think it needs a bit of polishing before it gets to a state that can do its cool concept (reality-hopping) justice
Here are some notes from my playthrough:
- The 'Upgrades' button on the right confused me at first, I expected that to have the contents that the 'Antimatter' tab has. And there is no UI element to close it, so the player has to use Escape -- but some players might get confused/stuck there.
- There doesn't seem to be any upgrades for the manual gathering itself, and it is instantly outclassed by the automations. With as far as I got I only ever saw the 3 basic automation upgrades, not sure if I missed out but more upgrades in general would be nice, like something for the manual gathering to keep it interesting & worthwhile.
- The screen to purchase automations takes up the full UI and replaces it with a dark gray box that has 3 lines of text -- since there is no reason gameplay-wise to exit the screen (as manual gathering is practically nothing once you get 3-4 upgrades) is the gameplay loop quickly becomes "Look at this gray box and click the words when they become white". If you could integrate the upgrade buttons inside the world/environment, or at least have the box be smaller and semi-transparent, I think this would help a lot
- At one point I clicked the '10000 Upgrades' button (in top right of Upgrades menu) just to check if it did anything; looks like the 3D environment changed but nothing else. And the environment maybe was incomplete or didn't render fully as there is a lot of grey space (where the floor looks like Mars dirt basically). I don't know how to get back, or what the gameplay effects are
- Having all the UI elements be in the very far corners requires a lot of intentional looking around. I actually only have one functioning eye so my irl FOV is pretty limited, and this exaggerated head/eye movement genuinely made my eyes strain after a few minutes haha. I had to resize the window and make it quite small, but then I could barely read the text and had to squint... I would say make all the elements (text, buttons, etc) bigger and bring them closer together. Not in such a way that they are distracting or in the way, but so that the player can keep the environment (the cool visual part) in their FOV while also checking how much Antimatter they've built up, etc.
- I'm not sure if there is a bug somewhere, but I don't understand the progression. I have bought each of the 3 upgrades hundreds of times, I got my Antimatter up to the 8 digits, but I'm not seeing any options to move forward... on a second glance I'm seeing the 'Upgrades' screen seems to indicate that I need 100,000 upgrades (from the Antimatter tab I assume) to prestige once? And maybe that's how I get Relics? But with how the upgrade costs are curving it feels like it would take a millenia to get 100,000 upgrades, so I'm guessing that can't be right and I've missed a system somewhere. I can't figure out how to change back to the original 3d environment (I assume 'universe') so that probably has something to do with it
- Generally I would recommend including a brief tutorial or, at least, explaining a bit more in-depth the controls and flow of the game on your itch page. I see the page mentions that the resource will need to be gathered in each reality and then she can hop again, but I can't figure out how to actually do the hop. By this point I don't even remember what I did earlier to hop the first time, sadly.
- I would really appreciate some SFX or some music; I think "curious researcher hopping between realities" lends itself to some really cool music themes and it would add a lot (at least for me)
I do think that with another 1-2 weeks this game could get to a pretty good state if you worked on some of these things.
(Also PS, I normally wouldn't solicit feedback for my game but y'know, as you can see us downloads-only gotta stick together haha. If you get a chance in the next week please give mine a try and let me know what you think :D)
(Oh and PSS, I see another game from the jam just uploaded a web version yesterday. Since you used Godot you could probably upload a web version as well, that would likely attract a lot more feedback for your game since the rating period still has quite a few days left!)
This game made me laugh, it has a deceptive amount of charm haha. I love the premise, after the initial 5 seconds it took me to understand I audibly laughed. The background being crumpled paper and the sloppy MS-paint style upgrades actually served the game well, which is an impressive feat
I also like that you ultimately have to end it via manual clicking rather than relying on the upgrades, that was pretty fresh and felt on-brand for the game. I will say the upgrades don't feel very balanced; I was able to use the money furnace like 4-5 times for each use of the rocket, but maybe I misunderstood and the balancing was supposed to be backwards too lol
There was a few bugs, like with the progress bars erroneously filling or not filling. But nothing game breaking really, overall this was a charming little game for sure.
PS: I also laughed that donating your money to charity is too slow so eventually you start rocketing it into the sun instead LOL. I imagine all those previously-cheering people looking on in horror. The real billionaire experience!
I kinda don't understand this one, I played for like 20 minutes and feel like I got pretty far (because the glasses upgrade is busted since it gives like 6x your money for such a low cost haha), yet I never had any opportunity to get a single green gem for the persistent upgrades, at least not that I saw. I picked up a lot of orange gems though that seemed to deliver some lore but not too much else? It did take me like 15 minutes to realize you can scroll up/down in the upgrades section so maybe I just needed to dig deeper into those bottom upgrades?
The art is nice, especially the animations I'd say. But the music does not loop for very long, it only lasts a couple of minutes and then just stops haha, definitely worth looking into fixing that bug as the game gets kind of monotonous quickly, especially with no music
The sword swinging animation locks you in for a really long time, unable to jump or slide - that means you have to avoid all the enemies entirely or else you will eventually come into a situation where you are swinging at a line of 2-3 enemies until an obstacle comes along and it's impossible to dodge it -- that's pretty frustrating
It's easy to understand the game's direction, the progression is clear and such. However, it feels extremely slow and tedious for a jam entry. You do have a decent framework for the game, if you could rework the balance and speed things up a bit, maybe add a few QoL features then it has a lot more potential than what's been reached here, I think
Considering this game was submitted to 3 other jams as well and didn't follow the themes for any of them... it seems a bit questionable to me, but yeah I dunno. I guess that's your perogative hah, I just question the motivation for it?
Last point, it really seems like AI was used to generate much of the text. Like the achievements, the descriptions, etc -- it is especially noticeable in the humor which seems very much like AI. Did you use AI? I see some of the other jams you submitted this to are strictly prohibiting AI and the itch page for the game says no GenAI was used, so if you did in fact write everything by hand then I would definitely try and be careful going forward to not use the same overbearing writing style (and especially humor) that AI is known for haha
Nice job,this is a neat little game and I like the concept. The art is cool (especially the increasingly huge wings lol), the story is a little light but y'know, when you're a flying fish who cares about the lore?
I will say, the final wing upgrade is such a huge boon, it can basically solo the full run once you buy it. Unfortunately, the first wing upgrades are so underwhelming compared to the boots that I put the wings off until much later than I should have, and I got to ~25k with the boots (and level 2 wings) few times which was... a slog. I feel like the wings and the goal should be rebalanced, but I dunno
Alsohe sword hitbox seems to be mostly to the left of the character, which is a little bothersome sometimes when the enemies are approaching from the right, it seems harder to time the swing. But maybe that's just me
Overall it definitely did feel like a mid-2000s flash game, I can see learn to fly influences here. Though I agree it reminds me a lot more of doodle jump
It's a nice game and I like the visuals (especially the missile explosions look cool). However it is very easy to break the balance quickly, it only took a minute or so for me to reach a point where it was fully hands-off... I'm not sure if there is an ending, but I played until almost 500k cash on hand
Also I'm not sure if there is a way to remove turrets/factories after placing them, but if not there definitely should be tbh. It's very possible to put yourself into a horrible position by, for example, placing too many factories down in the first 30 seconds haha
Really good and well polished game with a great UI and music imo
However I am apparently horrible at it because it feels like I wasn't able to make nearly enough progress before my starting pausebank ran out, and operating at 1x speed feels pretty painful. Normally I would just afk and wait a while to build it up, however even if I afk'd for 30 minutes it would only give me 5 minutes of 6x speed which is a bit discouraging, doesn't feel like nearly enough to make decent progress. I guess the early game is just a bit harsh and I'm too dumb to claw my way out of it properly?
Still, really good game and super polished all around.
It's a neat game, the lore is cool and it's very on-theme. The music is great too, very fitting & catchy.
It feels a little tedious that the research is unlocked AFTER you finish with all the "increase resonance in this area" clicks, ultimately the loop is to click a bunch, assign a researcher, then wait for a while and kinda just stare at the screen haha.
The writing is really good. Some of the humor is a little heavy-handed but most of the jokes land pretty well. Overall a nice little game and I enjoyed it, good job!
I like the concept of the game, draining universes of resources to progress is a pretty cool theme. It seems a bit abstract though in that, it's not really clear why we are hopping forward I guess. I did like how at the top it was saying things like "Will the next planet have sentient life?" and "Consider stopping.", there is a lot of potential to explore this kind of thing for sure.
Also it took me like 90 seconds of staring at the screen after launching the game before I felt prepared to click anything, because I had no idea what I was looking at. Since there's no tutorial, I highly recommend updating the game's itch page with a bit of info about what the player is supposed to do and such
Great little game, I really liked the plinko minigame a lot. The farming was alright, it did end up growing on me (no pun intended lol) but if it had been as good as the plinko one this game would be a real gem (it's already pretty great!)
I love the unorthodox art style and sound/music, the game is fun and easy to comprehend. Though it took me way too long to realize I was supposed to be AVOIDING the depression bubbles, I think I hit the depression threshold 6 times before I stopped to think about why. Lol
Really fun little game, I can tell you had a lot of fun making it too. And those are the best kind of games
The game is indeed very playable now, the fullscreen button adds a lot -- I really liked this one. The progression feels good, the coins and pickup system are pretty juicy (SFX and visuals are both quite good). My only suggestion would be that some kind of pickup magnet upgrade is needed because it is quite frustrating to ride what feels like inches away from parts and not hoover them up; this is especially noticeable when destroying obstacles and visually riding over the parts but not picking them up.
This is a really good little game, I guess it doesn't fit the theme but y'know, for what it is, it's great. Nice work!
The art was nice, the little bits of humor (such as being an orange in another universe) were nice. The gameplay itself was good and I enjoyed that there were unique mechanics for each different person, I particularly thought that Faun's was cool. That said, there wasn't much of a story or anything but it kinda seemed intentionally surreal in that way as far as I could tell (and what do I know)
Admittedly I didn't realize that all of them required different numbers for automation... I got Faun up to e80 before I happened to check the tab and see I only needed e35 lol, oops. Also some way to change between them other than clicking the labels would be nice, so I could continue systematically swapping between each & buying upgrades without moving my mouse too much
Some kind of SFX or music would be good, definitely seems like the kind of game that would benefit a lot from cool music given that the art clearly had a lot of care put into it too
The gameplay itself feels a bit light, but the visuals and systems are nice and polished.
I would like to see more upgrades, I was at a point where I'd bought all the upgrades and there was nothing to do but wait 10 seconds for each self and/or wait 1-2 minutes to manually purchase one (because they each costed 50k+). At that point the only gameplay left was to sit watching the 'Unreviewed' screen, click the stats button, and accept whichever number was green. And this process felt a little slow since there was no way to upgrade my auto collector, etc.
I also think that if the player could purposefully create a 'build' by choosing an imbalance then it would be cool. Like instead of everything being raised equally over time just to reach 100% in each, if you could intentionally pursue a disproportionately high 'Social' facet which would then have some affect like gaining more energy from each self, etc.
This is a good framework for a game, and the first few minutes I was really enjoying diving in - it just got old a bit due to the actual gameplay loop itself kinda running out of steam once you buy all the upgrades, I feel. (although I left mine running afk for a few minutes by accident so maybe that messed up the balance a lot somehow)
The art is great, as others have mentioned. I guess the card gameplay itself has been uploaded after the jam deadline like you mentioned, so I'm not sure if it counts but, I kinda didn't really understand it very much anyway. I got stomped in my first few matches because my hand would eventually fill up with 0 atk / 0 def (or 1 atk / 1 def) cards and it felt like the enemy almost never had those, haha. Maybe it's a skill issue
The visuals and audio make for a great atmosphere, this is a really cool skeleton for a game that has a lot of potential. I'm not sure how it follows with the theme (and I'm not sure if it's an incremental game?) but for what it is, it was a pretty neat little experience (at least in its current state)
This is a cool idea for a game, and I'm impressed that you said it's your first time implementing an upgrade system as it seems like there is a ton of upgrades and content to see!
I appreciate the boost option from the main menu because the upgrades were quite slow to unlock (or maybe I am terrible), so I never would have been able to see much of the content naturally. Similarly the music is fun but can get a bit grating after a while (maybe the loop is a bit short) so the option to disable it is nice QoL -- though of course it's not ideal to have no music playing, I guess
Some way to speed up the expedition would be nice, if there isn't one that I missed. Especially in the very early game I was often placing my paths and then just watching for a full minute or so each time, maybe there could even be some kind of reward for being quick to place all your paths and then you can watch them run through at 3x speed or something once you've done that? I dunno
Looks like you put a lot of care into this, with the intricate upgrade system and even the YouTube video explaining how to play. I think it's a cool idea that definitely has some room to keep growing!
Nice, I see you implemented some of my minor suggestions and I think it does help the flow a little bit, (though I think the red multipliers are bugged now). It's obvious that you care a lot about this game, good work on it!
However, it is actually against the rules of the jam to add new content during the rating period; you are only allowed to fix bugs for now. Once the rating period is over, you'll be able to update the game as much as you like, of course
There was some discussion about these rules in The IGJ Discord Server yesterday, I'm not sure if you're part of that server so I just wanted to make sure you're aware of the rules. Try not to update the game with any new content until the end of the rating period in about 2 weeks, I wouldn't want you to get disqualified or anything since it's clear you care about this game haha
This one has a lot of charm, I liked the balance and it was a nice experience even though I encountered a few game breaking bugs (clicking the dwarven universe portal before fully advancing the dialogue got me locked and I had to reset, as well as the PR screen issues mentioned by others, etc)
I saw that theothertallguy mentioned in the Discord today that some of the bugs will be quashed soon. I look forward to taking another look closer to the end of the rating period, and will replay & update my rating around then.
We will watch your career game with great interest.
This is a great game, there is a lot of content here and it feels very polished. Honestly it feels solid enough to be an actual demo, which is super impressive!
The music kind of reminded me of FTL in some places, I liked the art style and thought it worked really well. It fits the theme great, and yeah overall this is a great game.
On my first play through it took me until Universe 14 to realize that I could research things with a colony deployed (i.e., didn't have to be in the void) ... I felt so stupid. Until then I was questioning why every tech research barely costed any resources (as I would end each run with hundreds of thousands and then need only 80) and why it seemed like the game was wanting me to keep hopping back & forth so quickly, haha. Whoops...
After going back in again, I beat the game with 3 minutes left on Universe 2. I think I'd agree that the drone foundry is a bit too OP, there might need to be some kind of maintenance because once you've stacked up a couple thousand drones everything becomes pretty trivial, and there's no real barrier to that (because drone foundries produce drones that can easily afford more drone foundries, etc)
I'd also like to see a "+5%" button or something because there is a big difference between +5 and "dump all 800 of my inactive drones into this one thing" which meant I am often spam-clicking the +5 to get the drones to go where I want 'em
This game is cute, I like the concept and the art/music/etc were nice.
Resetting for only one scroll each time feels maybe a bit slow, and I was disappointed to see that it didn't seem to reset the Yokai behavior at all (unless I misunderstood) -- it might be nice for each reset to feel like a bit of a breather, especially since I thought the Yokai felt to be a little overwhelming after some time.
Maybe it would be nice to have more upgrades, related to the Yokai behavior? For example, maybe an upgrade that changes the mechanic so a mouse HOVER over the Yokai would send it away - that would help clear up most of the frustration and anxiety (since multiple could be sent away with no worry about the overlapping hitboxes) while still keeping the same need for players to balance between both dimensions and stay on top of things
Also the ability to swap dimensions another way (space bar, RMB, idk) would be a nice QoL thing, although it might break the current balancing which is based on moving the mouse to the top right each time. Unless I totally missed something that already exists for that
Overall it's a nice game and very unique. Good job!
Thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time and rating it :)
As for the automation aspect, I wish I'd made it more clear that it is supposed to be from the upgrade columns which increase the passive tick rate & the launch power & accuracy for each rig -- with enough upgrades, each rig is actually able to shoot its resources directly into the respective pit! Therefore you can set each one up to run continuously while you focus on one, or however you like to do it haha. The base universe becomes the fastest one eventually and the other universes feed into it as well (though I think there's a bug with that particular upgrade)
Regarding the download & file size... yeah, I agree with you on both points. I should have looked more into setting up Pixel Streaming; it might be laggy & ugly but at least it'd be more accessible haha. I also definitely should have spent a couple more hours focused on reducing the game's size... it's partially due to engine choice, and partially due to being nooby . I might end up trying Godot sometime for sure, sounds like it would help solve both those issues
Thanks again for your time & feedback! Hope you have a great day ahead
This is a great game, The art is nice, the sound design worked pretty well., and it was very polished. The gameplay and progression were satisfying and, as someone who's never played a non-jam 'cozy game', I really liked it.
After day ~10 the portal transfer time becomes quite tedious. This is partially because everything else is much faster by that point (mostly just right clicking the mail, then left clicking the bag, etc) so the portal becomes a much higher percentage of the total time. Partially though,it's because those later rounds have a heavier emphasis on the Moss postage, and there is no mail bag there. I completed the game on day 12, and in the last couple days there were many instances where I had to portal back & forth for say, 4 out of 6 bits of mail. It became very noticeable; would like to see an upgrade to get the mail bag in the Moss universe as well to improve the flow :)
I like that there is a trade-off between repairing the mail ASAP or strategically letting a few go to waste and prioritizing the desk upgrades first instead. By the time I purchased the normal-universe tools I was making my money back for each repaired item (5 seals) which felt good actually; I didn't have to throw away too many before then, which I was expecting. With that said, I think the desk upgrades are a bit undercosted for how valuable they are. I saw some discussion about incentivizing repairs by adding a +1 to the stamps you get, but I think a better way might be re-evaluating the desk upgrade balance. The reason buying repair tools early is suboptimal is the opportunity cost of how strong the alternative (desk upgrades) are. The normal wage reward for delivered mail seems like incentive enough for me given the right balance, I think.
Overall, I think this has a lot of potential and would like to see it fleshed out into a full commercial game. Nice job!!
This is really cool, though it took me a while to understand the leveling and sacred flame mechanics. I know there is a journal entry that hints at this but somehow I did not see it until 16 minutes in (by which point I'd figured it out) haha
I am terrible at puzzle games, but this was some cool exploration and I liked the writing. I agree that it has some good potential for improvement, glad you hear you're already planning on it! I appreciated the little (i) icon with journal entries that had hints, like "You are done with this statue, no need to take it with you anymore"... definitely necessary for a noob such as myself, haha.
It feels great unlocking new statues because it feels like a real power spike haha, good job with the balance there.
One thing I would say, I'm not sure if there is a way to speed up the game actions themselves , if not then it feels maybe a bit tedious at points, like the start when it's always the same string of actions for (so basically just waiting 30 seconds) , or the big ones that take 15-20 seconds etc. For me all the waiting kind of detracted from the exploration / story a bit, I was excited to get back and go one step or two steps further to see what's ahead, but often that would take 2-3 minutes just to get back haha.
Good game overall, I liked it. Seems pretty unique
I had fun with this, it was really cool. Made me laugh that the first encounter is Goblin Daycare lol, even the younglings huh
The gameplay loop was good, it felt good being able to autorestart (both actively and passively without 'You' in the party). It was pretty satisfying and it was easy to see a clear progression generally as well.
I think the balance was good overall, but I was surprised to see that the 'Strong/Tanky Magic/Martial Othermes' had their own curve regarding cost that started at only 15 ME. Because of this as soon as I could purchase the "remove party size restriction" upgrade I was able to buy like 16 Othermes and enter the final boss lair for the first time -- maybe that's intentional though. Unfortunately the game froze on my party's the 3rd attack and I had to close it. Not sure if it was because I had too many party members or what. I'm tempted to start the game over again because I liked it & want to see the end, but there's a good few other games to rate first hah.
Considering you mentioned only working on this for about 1 week due to the steam sale, I am impressed. I think this game has a lot of potential actually, and I'd like to see it fleshed out for sure. I'd say definitely consider pursuing that if it's something you'd be interested in
Only thing I'd say is uhh, it feels like the theming is a bit loose - I appreciate the lore and reasoning and calling them "Othermes" but when it might be a Wolf, Fairy, or Modern Soldier it feels like it might as well just be called "Recruit random party member" hah. I think it would be cool if each one was a little closer to the base 'You' but with some amount of variance -- maybe if you could also adjust their equipment and focus and such -- that would feel very fitting. But yeah I dunno
PS: I audibly laughed when I saw my Spider was 'attacking with 8 fists', just the mental image haha. I've been bitten by spiders irl but never have I been beaten into a pulp by what sounds like a move from an old kung fu movie
I liked this game overall, it was pretty neat. Although to be honest I will say that the early game and end game (storm with a pool) both seem considerably stronger than the mid-game... maybe the gameplay loop doesn't hold up long enough, but I was losing interest after about the halfway point. I think the upgrades themselves don't really change enough or do enough, and there is quite a few levels to wait for. The weather effects were cool though and definitely helped keep things more interesting.
To my untrained eye, The pixel art was nice. I quite liked the music too, though it ended up being a bit loud after a while and I didn't see any option to turn it down in the game. The UI was pretty good but could do with a few improvements (I also didn't realize about the 'Auto' tab until quite a few minutes in hah). I do think it was an enjoyable little game
28 minutes for 1.3 quadrillion, a lot of clicking though. Little over 5,000 clicks (forgot the exact number since switching back to this page lol)
This is a really well made little game for what it is. Especially since I see you mentioned on the page it was made in Scratch! The UI is nice and responsive, sounds are good, balance is pretty good, etc.
There is definitely a lot of clicking at points, but I guess that's the nature of it huh. I guess it'd be cool if it matched the theme a bit better too (even just naming the planets like Earth-160, Earth-807128, Earth-65, maybe?), but yeah this is a really nice little game!
This is a good game, it's pretty basic but I liked it. The balance feels pretty good and I thought it was cool how each timeline has its own kind of theme, nice job!
Here are some of my notes:
- I really liked the ending, after finally finishing all 16 timelines I thought it was a beautiful way to finish things off, lol. Definitely worth the time investment
- The main bits of the UI are pretty nice and polished, though the explanation text after splitting into timeline 2 is way too small (and at the very edge of the screen). The actual point counter itself feels juicy which is good. When unlocking a new timeline can the prior upgrades be collapsed together to make room for the new rows maybe?
- Some kind of audio might be nice, maybe some music idk
- It's a little bit hard to keep track of which timelines I've completed in the last cycle , I guess that's a skill issue. But can the UI help indicate this somehow possibly? Maybe the 'Set Timeline' could open a window from which to choose each timeline and that window could have some info?
Fun game, fits the theme well & in a cool way! I really like the art style and the game itself feels surprisingly "juicy" with the shoving and blood splattering.
Here are some notes:
- The distinct creature designs are really nice and fun. They are also very distinguishable which added a lot since you can see exactly how each universe is progressing at all times, good job on that!
- I also like the UI, it is very clean and simple in a good way. I might like more info about each upgrade before purchasing it though, for example I prioritized the second Blood Amount upgrade because I mistakenly thought it would be 2x instead of +1
- I like that red and green kinda leans into their own strengths, I might like to see this represented a bit more even. Maybe blue could be the catch-all for general things like creature cap & spawning behavior with red leaning more into hovering (e.g., a bigger hover area, faster tick rate, less push back, or bonus blood for killing creatures via hovering) like how green is currently fully for idling? The current implementation is good too, though
- Idle Damage feels a little underwhelming at the mid-late game, after I bought the final 'Idle Dmg Targets' upgrade I realized that it was only hitting half the creatures that would spawn even without 'Spawn Targets' or 'Creature Cap' maxed
- I'm not sure if it's intentional, but some of the upgrade costs seem a bit unbalanced at the end... I maxed the red upgrades when I still needed ~8k of green & blue to max, even though I was not focused on red at any point. Maybe it's because of the health differences? Either way, suddenly it felt like "a waste" to see my red blood ticking up into 10k+ as I kept working on blue hah. The pacing is great up until like 70% of the way through, though.
- An ending title card might be cool when you max out all upgrades
I liked this game, I think it's a cool concept and it fits the theme really well. The two universes working together helps me realize some things I should have done better in my own submission, haha
Overall, here are my notes:
- The UI could use a bit of love. Things like the points counter after each run for example not being centered with the three buttons; the shop window having elements all over with little cohesion or alignment, etc.
- The same grey boxes & buzzer SFX are used in many places, this is quite noticeable with the buzzer since it's loud and unpleasant. Maybe it could be a quiet sound with some VFX as well? (I was hearing it A LOT until I realized you can hover to see what each thing costs...should have read the description first! My bad.)
- I think unlocking more slots sooner would be nice, to see the number boom exponentially more quickly. Even if the higher tier upgrades costed much more to compensate, it would be fun to have three tier-1 red items within the first 5 cycles instead of taking like ~10 cycles to unlock the second slot alone
- It would be really nice QOL if the red items would all stay selected, and if they had the same friendly names they have in the shop ('multiplier 1' instead of 'multi_red_1' for example). Another nice QoL would be the ability to play again immediately without visiting the shop if you know you don't have enough to buy an upgrade & don't have any slots free
- I think it would be really cool if there were upgrades that could blend the two universes together. For example a blue upgrade that slightly increases the red mult with each click (say 0.05x), or a red upgrade that periodically adds some amount to the blue counter based on your current red mult? Maybe purple upgrades that impact both depending on each of them (e.g., less effective if the balance is too lopsided)?
- The red upgrades seem to all add to their mult every 5 seconds exactly, so it's fairly easy to math out exactly the optimal upgrade setup... I think it would be cool and dynamic if the red upgrades operated on a range, say every 3 to 7 seconds. Maybe the higher tier upgrades could have faster intervals but less of a boost to the multiplier itself, even? I dunno.
Take it all with a grain of salt, I'm a total noob in this genre. Just figured I'd give ya my 2 cents!
This is an Unreal Engine 5 game, which means I don't really have a way to get it working in the browser -- but it's totally fine if you don't want to download it, hah. I get it
I'm just glad to have made something!
Although if you did want to give it a shot, some amount of feedback would be really nice :)
You have got a lot of solid feedback already and it seems you plan to maybe update the game after the jam ends, I think that would be a good call because it seems you've put together a really good foundation here (although a bit buggy/unfinished due to time constraints, as you mentioned). I do think with proper time and TLC this could be really cool.
I also wanted to say, the art is really good, and your implementation of the various menus is impressive too, I do imagine that took quite a lot of effort for something that kinda flies under the radar of most players as it seems like a "given" for a game in the genre
This is a cool little game overall, congrats on your first jam submission!
Good job, I liked the movement and the dash generally. I will say, the dash is pretty floaty when you use it to go up in the air, and spamming upward-diagonal dashes to move around seems to maybe be the best way; I just skipped most enemies like that haha
I see you've gotten a lot of great, actionable feedback from others already. I didn't dig too much, but also don't wanna repeat too much yet again haha. I didn't see any mention of the boss you implemented, and I think the animations and art are awesome but the fight itself could use some tweaking. The boss runs very slowly, but it's still quite hard to beat because it seems to have a lot of health (cannot tell due to the web build issue you mentioned in the game page). Also, the animations are maybe a bit confusing, oftentimes I would get the boss locked into his attack animation one way, jump around him, but then he is hitting me while I'm behind him. Since I couldn't see his health and I felt like I had hit him quite a few times, I ended up giving up on that section actually, I hope I didn't miss too much of the game
Overall it's a good start with some potential for improvement, great job on your first ever game jam submission!
Thanks! Yeah a feedback system makes total sense, it was too far down my TODO unfortunately. I learned a lot about prioritization this jam, haha
I do feel like there is some potential there too for a fleshed out FPS Roguelike, that sounds fun to make. Although I would certainly remake it from scratch because right now there is a LOT of spaghetti and jank shoved up in there. Especially from the last 2-3 days when I was tired of grinding and just trying to crank stuff out. I remember at the very end I had to touch on the system I made first, and I laughed at how nice & tidy it was lol
Thank you for playing & for your feedback!