I finished it! I got the two other endings :)
....THE BAD ENDING IS SO GOOD 😭😭
I NEVER would've guessed that was gonna happen. Oml, it's just too funny.
Again, great work! It's unfortunate your average scores got nuked because you didn't hit the median amount of ratings. Your art score would've been high for sure :) I love the art for the blue girl especially; she's so cool.
I look forward to what you work on next :^)
Thank you so much for your review! :)
I'm so glad you noticed the thought that went into the game's design. Yeah, getting closer to the boss was intentional. Initially I was thinking the spring would "gradually increase" as you kept fighting but the player could just stay at the back of the map and dodge which was super boring. So I forced them to move closer to the bullets to get the last bits, which naturally trends the level's difficulty higher, and added the flowers to again get the player to move around and dodge :^)
The amount of tiles thing--the "grass spreading" depends on the direction of your cursor so make sure it's not that. But if you did know that, then it most certainly sounds like some edge-case bug I didn't catch >_>
I added the sound effects in the last two days before the game was due 💀💀💀I just... completely forgot about the flowers. Making sounds or finding sounds was more of a challenge than I realized it would be.
Pressing Q to leave was a thing I considered but it trivialized the game. You can just hide from certain attacks instead of dodging. It would effectively be a shield and those are usually boring. This is the mechanic from this game I liked the reflect on the most. When designing, I needed attacks that COULDN'T be dodged so that the player is forced into a loop, so I thought "spam them with snowballs and make it so they have to bury themselves to dodge it" and at the time it's the best idea I could come up with. Since burying yourself is effectively free immunity, I wanted to discourage it unless it was used the way I wanted it to be used. My thought process was "Make it so it has a large problem, like not being able to prematurely leave, so that it's not used all the time" but that ended up backfiring spectacularly.
Some people suggested making it use energy but that wasn't a good idea either: The attacks aren't choreographed such that the player can remember "Oh, in a few seconds the blizzard attack will occur, let me remember to save energy so I can dig". I didn't want to rely on memorization and replaying the level to "memorize" when attacks occur.
If I updated this game, I wouldn't add a shovel; I would add a way to "parry" certain undodgeable attacks because that requires some kind of player input, is intentional, and the player would have to move to the parts of the attack that are parryable. Think "Cuphead", where only some attacks are parryable. Maybe by aiming the parry towards the enemy, it could, over time, stun them for a few seconds as a little reward. It complements the high-paced chaotic nature of the battles.
That's my 2-cents @_@. For my first attempt at designing a game I think I did well overall!
But yeah, thanks again for the amazing review. I love the work you guys did on Bear and Hunger :^)
Man I love this game. It's so much fun! The puzzles were a head scratcher which is really impressive (and makes me think how much smarter that makes you to have thought about them @_@). I spent REALLY long on one level before realizing I can remove the beecons while the bee is buzzing by and then it all clicked :^)
Super impressive game. Love the spring vibes. Love the use of the portals to bring that seamless loop effect together.
A fun little game! I was a bit confused why some of the flowers would breed sometimes but not others though. Is that a bug or is that an intentional feature that I somehow missed >_>?
Otherwise it's a fun experience. I like the idea of collecting more flowers and decorating my hive garden more as you progress. It can obviously be expanded on, having some variety of music would be nice, and having the player move a bit quicker would be preferable. And I guess it's pretty slow to do most of the yard actions (Pressing "E" to select a tile, then moving your mouse to the button which dose the action. It's a lot of friction).
Otherwise, there's nothing else to say besides good work!
Beary good game :^)
A very polished experience. The art is insane. So much drawing, so little time. How is it possible @_@. I only had to draw 7 faces and at that point I was already spent... this game has gorgeous backgrounds, UI, a billion fishes (HOW DID YOU DRAW ALL OF THOSE), and even fun hats 😭
The audio isn't anything groundbreaking but it serves its purpose very well.
The gameplay is simple but very engaging. I love collectathons and I like how this game approached the genre. Figuring out how to make the special fishes was surprisingly intuitive. The scary fishes turning into hats did take me out for a second because it was unreasonably hilarious to me. Who came up with that idea 😭 Someone had to think "Wait, what if the player puts the demon fish in the bait bucket?" and someone had to go "Oh, right. Good point... let it become a hat for the bear"
The game is a great package. Great work :)
WOW I loved the limitation implementation on this game! And the game itself is so fun too!
There's just one thing I REALLY wanted to see: Colour-coded pressure plates. If you add that, this game would be flawless for me. But otherwise it's hard to keep track of what pressure plate does what.
The idea is so cute! I like the little dialogue between the slimes. The title "Thanks, Bye" is just perfect in retrospect. The puzzle is simple but so fun. And the best part is, it's really easy to expand upon this game concept and flesh it out. Idk if your aspiration is to make a mobile game but it would be a great one, and I'd totally play while I'm stuck in transit. I like how collectables aren't a required goal but still an excellent reward. Some of them really scratched my head to get. If I just want to not get it, I don't need to: I can still hop my way to the end.
This was my little guyCute desktop game! It's very nice to see games like these to break up the otherwise repetitive nature of reviewing these games. I watched a few youtube videos while I was caring for my Hya's and Lily's. I LOVE the sprites that they have. The game itself is very simple and the scope is very small. There's no other complexity besides pressing buttons when told to but that's fine. The point really is to turn off your brain and admire the cuteness.
Had a really hard time rating the audio for this game >_> Is it a 1/5 because there's no audio, or something else, like 5/5 because games like these shouldn't have audio at all? @_@. I just... compromised.
The music, art, and voice acting were so charming! But honestly the music is the best part for me. It's so GOOD.
I am listening to it while writing this. It just melts into the background and it's so happy and cute and aaaa i love it
I think it would be nice if it was explained what a "match" is in this particular game. I was sort of confused what was going on and if I was winning/losing. The little voice remarks and the kind of "fate" I got did guide me though.
I loved the mechanical feeling of swapping the flowers. The controls are very intuitive in that regard.
And the spring theme? This game is spring distilled. Spring hasn't sprung out to me as much as it has in this game.
Lovely game :)
A pretty fun game! I like to think of this more like a sandbox. I collect enough nectar to get the next hat and see what it does, and then do it all over again. The game could easily have "stakes" but it doesn't need it. It's just a chill game where you fly around and collect flowers and that's perfectly fine.
At some point when I got the hat with the monocle I couldn't re-enter the hive for some reason and I made sure to triple check that no other flowers were missing so that might be a bug. But there should be some indicator at the hive when you've gotten enough honey (maybe the honey spilling out of the hive doesn't show until you get all of the flowers!)
OMG were you the one who played the game on stream!?
Idk if you realized this but this is probably the first time I've really invested myself in game dev. Seeing someone on twitch play my game, make commentary, and hearing the chat's responses as well... I've never felt so happy in my life before i don't think 😭😭😭 It was SURREAL.
Seeing people play the game in real time was SUPER eye-opening. It really shows how I should change my approach to play-testing in general. I've probably heard the shovel complaint, like, 5 times now. It's so obvious to me now but I totally missed it when I was playing it because I thought it was already really easy 💀I WILL watch others play the game before I release and not rush everything last second next time.
I'm glad you liked the Mouthwashing mention, fellow Canadian :^)
Oo that really explains a lot actually! And I'm glad you put so much time into your response,
Now that you've clarified the focus on this game specifically, it's clear what your goal was. And I can say wholeheartedly you completely succeeded in those goals. The presentation was amazing.
Also yes, fleshing out the characters, giving them depth and including the family, would've made the script jumbo long so it's good you didn't go that far for just a jam :^) I was simply critiquing the game outside the context of the jam as someone who wasn't inside your mind while writing. Knowing that you knew the writing felt 2D too but couldn't get to it because of time... that checks out 👍
> I... did know some people out there who can be loving, caring, and stuff, but the very moment you mentioned something that goes against their belief, their stance changed suddenly, like what you see in the story about how dismissive Itsuki become, cause it’s not just him, the whole family had that belief, so (according to the family) Kiyomi is actually the outlier here.
Me too; I know people who when I bring up certain topics, they become completely defensive about it like they are a different person. It's a totally different theme that actually I want to explore in my writing at some point in depth. That same characteristic wasn't communicated enough for me to register that in Itsuki but pulling that off woulda been extra style points in a 2-week jam >:) And yeah it would explain Itsuki's behaviour very well esp. when family is involved.
You put a lot of thought into this VN
I love BBC!
The gameplay itself is very straightforward. There was just one bug I kept hitting where I accidentally make something that no one wants now (cuz the timer ran out) but new foods go to the same spot so when I try to drag the new food I drag the old one and I can't give the new stuff to the customer :(
But otherwise it's a solid game that's fun for a while. I don't know any of these foods besides sushi and miso soup and I can't even eat any of them besides "okonomiyaki", but man does it feel good to make these foods for fictional people in this game :^)
Cool game! A lot of the below reviews have already stolen the words out my mouth. This has so much content and it's crazy you made this in the time you had. The music is great! The aesthetics are cohesive . Confusion is an evil effect to give players! Controls were definitely on the strange side. So many customization options :^)
Now the best part is definitely the weapon building. MAN that is so cool. It look me a while to get another weapon... a cucumber... to use all the 2x2 flowers I had in my inventory. It took me a WHILE to figure out how to put everything everywhere (mostly, which controls to press) but when I got there I was able to smack my huge cucumber around in random directions dealing double damage... err
Great game. Just needs polish work
Took me a while to review because I wanted to explicitly set time for it. I got endings 4, 5, 6, 3, and, of course, 1 :)
I consider writing to fall under art and as such it gets a 5 from me. And the gameplay of visual novels is more based on how the player interacts with the "software" to "play" it. There's nothing too crazy or unique about the choices, but there are a lot of choices and there are enough to always effectively reflect what the player might want to say through Yuki.
My only gripe with the game is that this doesn't really connect with the theme of Spring and the limitation is inherent to the medium of VN's so it doesn't do anything ""out of the box"" besides complete the loop in a seamless way vs. the player pressing "try again!"
This is a beautiful game. Considering all of this was made by you (besides all the lovely assets you credited!) it just makes this game so impressive to me. The music and the cut scenes especially stuck out to me. The music, idek how else to put it into words, is just... SO pretty. You wanted this game to be somber and emotional and you were able to communicate that very effectively through the visuals and music. This is not a "novice" piece of work. You've created art.
I want to specifically point out that the composition of the artworks were surprisingly excellent in the cutscenes.
SPOILER WALL DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU PLAY thanks!
The writing isn't ground-breaking and that's okay! I can also there there's not "full" confidence in the English. Although I haven't done much writing myself (yet 😈) and there will be culture differences (so my points might be invalid)... I'm gonna say a bunch of things anyway and you can ignore me if u wanna: I think my problems with the writing are summarized by when Itsuki says "What, do you still think about that? Just forget it. It's too late". That's not a very nuanced or even in-character response. He comes across as dismissive of her and all I was thinking was "huh why would he say it like that". There's no crazy stakes stressing him out. Now, if he was straight up angry at her for being outside (maybe he was exhausted from searching and it was frustrating him), that changes the tone and emotional weight entirely and makes the scene make far more sense, personally. But otherwise, he clearly supports Kiyomi and is just looking out for her, like in those flashbacks and based on what he said his reasons were (no point in trying when the world is ending--again, not a super nuanced way to think), and I can only imagine after finding her that he'd be happy with the first thing he'd being "I'm so glad I found you!" and not "Ugh, finally, I found you" like she was some sort of problem and not literally his family >_>
Okay I realized I could've said this in a far shorter way: To me it's contrived and/or two-dimensional. I felt that way a few times throughout the story with Kiyomi and Itsuki. Let me know if you agree or not (hey u could message me on discord!)
Now with all that said, I still rated the art (aka the writing) at a 5/5 because I cannot stress enough HOW AMAZING this VN is! And in 14 days! And with gorgeous music! I just wanted the above critiques to let you see my perspective as a vegetarian-poutine-eating Canadian who consumes media sometimes :^)
I'd love to see what you work on next!
Surprisingly excellent! I like the idea that the 9-5 worker bee grind is what hits the "seamless cycle" limitation :) The loop with finding the flowers then heading back to the hive to communicate where the are through dance sparks so much joy.
I think there is a bug that disables you from collecting more flowers. Not sure how to recreate it but after restarting it fixed itself. It did confuse me for a while though :^)
Quick me thing: Using the words WASD vs. the arrows threw me off. Typically the left, right, up, down arrows easily translate to WASD movements through muscle memory but the WASD letters don't really translate to directions. I would find the dancing game far easier with arrows to visualize the movements vs. letters I think 🤔
The bee sprites and animations really are the cherry on top.
Amazing game! This has got to be one of the most "complete" packages. The art, music, and programming are REALLY well done.
I loved the music so much. You can tell the composer knows what they're doing. I liked the sped up music too--I went "aw that's nice" when I first sped up the time--but after a while it loses its novelty and feels a bit too on the nose.
The art is also amazing. The work done for the UI, the flowers, the environment; it's a lot, and it all looks very pretty.
And from a technical perspective, this game has quite a lot of depth. I haven't seen the code but there's a lot of moving parts and complexity so the effort there was probably great too.
As for the gameplay... yeah I was quite confused. The first red flag for me was the tutorial was quite long without really "showing" what you were talking about. The baby step approach where you introduce more complexity as you go fares better in games like these (esp. game jams) because getting info-dumped is a deterrent and lots of people don't really wanna spend time trial-and-erroring and tryna figure things out. I didn't really know why my stuff weren't growing and the inventory didn't have a blurb about it (was I supposed to look elsewhere?). Sometimes my poppies would grow and then hide? My Hibiscus's just didn't grow at all. Mannn I'm no farmer; I'm studying Computer Science
But otherwise I see the potential. It's a really polished game.
Good work! This is great for a first game jam submission. I liked how your reward for playing and getting further lets you purchase cosmetics. Quick suggestion: I think the jumping would feel a bit better if the "fall" was faster.
Nice work on the art too! The fox is absolutely adorable and the player customization for it is really cool.
Very relaxing game. The best part is the graphics by far. The low fog, the colours, the grass, the little mouse guy, all the 3D models for the homes, they're great! The driving mechanics are refreshingly competent too and it was fun moving around the town.
My only gripe is that the controls are a bit strange for me. I usually think of "E" as the go-to "do" button but F is also there for taking/placing packages so my fingers do a bit of gymnastics before figuring out the right button to press.
Great work though!
Pretty fun! I can see this being expanded very easily too. I especially liked the cohesion between the sounds, art, ui, and the gameplay. The music and art is especially charming.
A lot of people below have already said a lot of what I thought, but one thing to definitely do is increase the hitbox sizes of the tiles. The visual for the tile is much *larger* than the hitbox. When I click, I have to click the small seed, not the larger square-ish tilled land. A bigger hitbox would just make it a little less frustrating to drag your guys there or plant/water your crops.
But otherwise I like this game! Good loop you got there
Cute game! I liked the art and the concept of taking photos and stuff. There's a lot of visual noise and it's difficult to tell what you can walk into and what you can't. Also, look into "y-sorting" so the ground items go in-front/behind the player in a more visually pleasing way. Not sure if it was intentional but the UI moved with the camera/player movement. If it wasn't intentional, you can easily fix that by moving the UI under a canvas layer node.
The game is simple. Besides pressing space to take a photo there's not much else to do. I'm excited to see how the game evolves :^)
Solid game! There's no crazy depth or anything but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The gameplay has very little variety so it does get boring after a while. I think the movement is also quite slow so it's not too much of a challenge; it contradicts the scoring system which I think is used here to encourage beating your old score/comparing with others competitively. I had to "stop" myself from continuing because it otherwise woulda went on forever.
Also, nice work on the visuals! And from a technical side I can appreciate making this ground-up using raylib.
Thanks for your review! I appreciate the depth :^)
I wanted to talk about your polish suggestions (all points I agree with btw)
1. The dash remark is a good point. I haven't created an explicit reason to use it but the few people who I "did" see play the game used the dash for attacks that didn't really need it but still got them out of sticky situations!
2. Already done. I can't update the submission but this is the problem I am the most sad I didn't fix earlier >_> The invincibility makes the game SO much better in the later levels 😔
3. Yep I agree. I was adding sound effects on, like, the last day, so I didn't have time to create something associate with the "rolling snowball" attacks
4. Oh that is a bug!
5. I forgot to push that attack to later in the fight💀. You were "supposed" to have time to prepare for it. It's also too large I am realizing now.
All things I will fix >:)
Again, thanks! I love seeing feedback like this. It makes me regret not getting play-testers before releasing
This game is SOOO polished! Really it's exceptional. The animations, the gameplay, the characters, the environment, the flowers, it all looks and feels really good.
You have multiple methods to put the flowers in the vase (clicking and dragging) where most games would just make you drag (painful). The input to click on a flower to remove is very well done--there is a neat border and everything and it feels very nice!
The flowers and fillers all go in nice predefined positions and it makes the bouquets look very aesthetically pleasing :^) I appreciate the programmer's efforts.
The gameplay is simple and there's no harm in that. There are no "rewards" or "stakes" you sort of just make the bouquet and give it. Inherently seeing the bouquet made is a motivation but the novelty runs out quickly and it'll become boring. How do you make bouquet creating novel while keeping it cute and comfy? That's an interesting design question!
I wanna repeat that I really love the art! Super pretty
Well done with this game you guys
Nice work on Strawbee! Taking the essence of Flappy Bird and adding a little (strawberry?) zest to make a Flapbee Bird is a great way to get a finished game down given how you just had the weekend.
Man I hate myself for spending so long on that sentence 😭
You have lots of room to keep going. Keep updating that todo list
Very nice game! I really like the sounds and music especially. It helps make it a very cozy experience. The mechanics are very intuitive; I like how you were able to tell the player how to make a flower by letting them hover over the missing one and highlighting the required pair--no words in sight! All visual.
Small notes I had: Some indication before the wind blows would be nice instead of it just happening suddenly. Also the wind sound is a bit loud/distracting; It overlaps the lovely music!
Thank you so much for your review!! I appreciate the depth like wow that's a lot of words.
Yeah the taking damage thing is pretty bad. The day after posting the game I added a 0.5 second invincibility right as you leave and it fixed the whole problem (because you get time to dash away). I AM SO UPSET HOW EASY IT WAS TO FIX
I agree the art style is pretty boring. I had to sacrifice lighting, shaders, and effort in the character sprites because I had no time left. Turns out working on a game while doing an internship is hard >_>. But thank you for your remarks regardless! I'll definitely work in a team next time to offload a lot of the work so I can do the creative things :)
And for the limitation thing I mean ur not wrong it's not endless LOL. I interpreted the theme of "Seamless Loop" as "having a loop that feels so seamless that it goes on forever" and not "literally" going on forever. I guess that's part of the fun of jam's with themes :^)
Again, thank you so much for all the nice words.
Absolute cinema.
Really, wow. This was a piece of art. My jaw is a bit uncomfortable now having finished the whole game with it gaped wide open.
I'm just... gahh how is this possible in two weeks, seriously!? The amount of work done is so insane. The animations, the backgrounds, the mechanics... I know it took FOREVER to choreograph those notes for the rhythm game and/or create a tool to do so. Even just having those constellations pointing at the buttons in the menu... that's all time and effort I appreciate.
The 3rd rhythm level's music... man. I locked in so hard for it. It's gorgeous and full and powerful. The work put into the sound and art really sold the ambience that wanted to be portrayed. You did it; you've won.
Unfortunately there isn't a 6 star option to score the audio. I'm sorry!
The game was so fun! I loved the rhythm game parts especially. Idk why but having it angled (instead of the notes landing parallel to each other) helped understand what notes I was meant to play a lot better? Also, it was also slow enough for me to digest but not too slow that it was trivially easy. I wanted more!
And the level design!? I'm a big dumbo when it comes to platformers like these. I've spend an embarrassingly long amount of time wandering around in Hollow Knight tryna understand where I was supposed to go next. This game just guided me the whole way through and I somehow never managed to get lost?? Now, I did notice the incongruous paths that led directly to the big machine thingys after beating the rhythm level, but I'll let it slide ;) The rest of it was very immersive.
Beautiful. I'm gonna give my keyboard some rest now
This game is a really good package. The music, the visual style, the sounds effects they all complement each other very well. Idk why this goofy game has become one of the games I locked in the most for?? It's so entrancing; I really lost track of time for a while. I can see this evolving with more elaborate obstacles or movement mechanics and whatnot.
The peach tree gravestones were inventive. The cycle of life hits both themes of spring and the seamless loop :^)
My only gripe is that the holes are hard to see so more visual contrast would be nice.
I am not normal about how much I love your artstyle. IT'S SO GOOD
I love your art i love your art i love your art i love your art
It's fun abstaining from using the renpy back button knowing the game has a seamless loop. I went through it a few times trying different dialogue options. Super charming. We need more VN jam submissions!!
Did I mention how much I love your art? Man its so good
Fun stuff! Btw, just like astralstew the audio cuts off for me (Firefox). In Godot when you have an mp3 file (which I suspect you are using!) you should double-click it in the file explorer and enable looping at the file level, not just the audio player.
Also idk if this breaks the game but I think the amount of pollen you get should be determined by the height you hit the flower from right? Because at the start you're incentivised to take baby steps to reach the flowers--shooting at full force is more of a "gamble" to hit a flower... or did I misunderstand a game play mechanic? >_>. If that choice is intentional ignore what i said lol
Really good all-rounder
Oh darn this really sucks. I didn't get to playtest on a weaker device or optimize. I feel really bad; sorry >_>
I dunno if you already have but maybe try checking to see if hardware acceleration on your browser is on. Without it the game might struggle
But I'm glad you liked the stuff before the boss. I'll try to fix performance after the jam, or just release a non-web version which should improve things by a lot.
Amazing art! Really the environments are fantastic. The flowers and character sprites too... super good!!
The gameplay is cute and complements the aesthetic and music. Great communication between your team!
Minor gripe: The player has slippery movement like ice. It's doesn't feel the best. I'm not sure if it's intentional or if there's a reason. But, having more "direct" movement gives more player control and it feels nicer to handle
Thanks for the review! It really means a lot.
I am aware of every one of those problems. Truth is, I just didn't have the time to design solutions.
1. Small projectiles: Small so they're easier to dodge, but the sprite's outline was embed in the sprite so scaling it down makes the outline thinner too. Woulda created a shader instead with adjustable borders
2. I hate the shovel (lowers player control when underground--cannot be broken out of early--forgot to add invincibility after leaving) but I couldn't think of anything better to hard-lock the player from beating Frost to create the loop. During my ideation stage I couldn't get creative but had to start working ASAP (I spent 2 full days before writing a single line of code!). In hindsight, a method to "parry" certain projectiles is a far more interesting mechanic.
3. Undodgeable attacks would've been ironed out with more playtesting but I couldn't get to it :( I know Lumi had a few
I learned how to read :)