itch.io

The nav thing in the bottom left of the screen is not a minimap?

I'm in the same boat but it's like my 5th full game jam after a lot of unfinished prototypes. Keep at it! Have a look at my little games, I generally put the code as open source :)

J'aurais pu écrire en français... mais bon, c'est une jam anglophone ! Excellente simulation!

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The core concept has promise, but the mechanics aren't communicated clearly enough for a game jam context. Offering a race selection with only one viable choice adds friction without meaning — for this scope, it would be better to streamline or remove it entirely. Tile interaction feels unreliable; hitboxes are inconsistent and tiles can be impossible to pick up. Selling a tile permanently without a confirmation popup is a significant UX hazard — a misclick costs you with no recourse. The first auto phase drops the player in without explanation, which is a rough introduction to the game's central system. Matchmaking is the biggest issue: enemy heroes scale too hard too fast, creating a difficulty spiral that feels unfair rather than challenging. Enemy difficulty isn't conveyed clearly either — sometimes a single enemy unit wipes the entire team with no warning. Occasionally there's no valid enemy choice at all. Some units appear invulnerable and some shapes can't be rotated, but neither is explained — it's unclear whether these are intentional features or bugs. Battle speed controls would also be a welcome addition.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The tutorial screens are a genuine highlight — clear mouse and keyboard icons that fit the medieval aesthetic well. Battle animations are polished and the sprites are charming. There is no audio whatsoever, which is a real gap; even minimal sound effects would do more for immersion than most other additions. Sound design should be prioritised over systems like daily rewards.

🤖 AI Implementation:

The asset quality is impressive — it's evident that AI-assisted generation was used thoughtfully here, and the visual cohesion across sprites, UI, and tutorial screens is well above average for a jam entry.

💡 Final Thoughts:

Terra Fracta has a solid visual foundation and an ambitious design, but it needs a significant usability pass before the depth can shine through. Players are currently fighting the interface as much as the enemies. The priority fixes would be:

- Add a confirmation dialog before selling tiles

- Fix tile pickup hitboxes

- Explain the auto phase and any intentional mechanics (invulnerability, rotation restrictions)

- Overhaul matchmaking to provide a fairer, more gradual difficulty curve

- Communicate enemy difficulty clearly before engagement

- Add sound effects and music

- Add battle speed controls

- Simplify or remove the single-option race selection

With these addressed, the game's genuine strengths — the art, animations, and strategic tile system — would have room to breathe.

Premise:

this is one of the best submissions for the jam. the scope is small and the game is juicy and fun to play. I'll be more critical with your game because you set the bar very high!

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The movement and attacks feel great — snappy tween animations make every action satisfying. The dynamic camera work is excellent and adds real energy to the combat. The difficulty curve is well-judged overall, with enemies scaling up in health and damage as waves progress. However, several bugs undercut the experience: the game freezes and glitches when the player dies and the red screen appears, the interwave shop doesn't show up between waves 6 and 7, and the wave 9 boss never spawns — which is a significant omission for what should be a climactic moment. The minimap in the bottom-left HUD is also broken. On the economy side, accumulating 2,000 points with nothing to spend them on feels wasteful; a shop reroll option would make that currency meaningful.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The vector graphics are a strong visual identity and the scene transitions — particularly the CRT-off effect — are a highlight. Juice is well implemented: screen shake, particles, and hit flashes all contribute to a punchy feel. The UI is readable, though the font is a common choice in vibe-coded games. A few areas need more player feedback: attack and enemy hitboxes aren't clearly communicated, leading to situations where you take damage without understanding why. Enemy spawns could be telegraphed better to give the player time to react. The chain system is also opaque — it's never explained what bonus it provides, and a "chain break" popup would help players understand what they're losing. The fast-paced music suits the combat well, but it plays across all screens including the title and game over screens, where it feels out of place. There are no sound effects at all, which is a noticeable gap.

🤖 AI Implementation:

A polished and impressive survivor-style game. The enemy AI is basic but well-suited to the genre — the challenge comes from positioning and wave management rather than individual enemy behaviour, which is the right call. The overall structure and feel show a clear understanding of what makes this genre work.

💡 Final Thoughts:

\\ Virus Venture // is a genuinely enjoyable game with a strong visual identity and satisfying core loop. The vector aesthetic, tight animations, and good use of camera and juice set it apart. The main things holding it back are bugs and missing features that feel close to done. A focused polish pass would go a long way:

- Fix the wave 6–7 shop and the wave 9 boss fight

- Fix the minimap

- Add sound effects throughout

- Use different music tracks for title, gameplay, and game over screens

- Add a chain break popup and clarify what the chain bonus actually does

- Improve hitbox visibility for both player attacks and enemies

- Telegraph enemy spawns more clearly

- Add a shop reroll option to make surplus currency useful

- Consider adding more attack options and enemy variety in later waves

The foundation here is genuinely strong — with these fixes this could be a standout entry.

where's the boss :(

great game with a lot of potential though!

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

An interesting take on the incremental clicker genre, but the onboarding undermines it. All resources and mechanics are presented at once, which quickly overwhelms the player before they've had a chance to understand the basics. Incremental games thrive on the drip-feed of new systems — revealing complexity gradually is what makes progression feel rewarding. Here, the front-loading of information removes that sense of discovery and makes the early game feel more stressful than satisfying.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The wireframe UI aesthetic is functional but has become synonymous with AI-generated games, so it doesn't do much to establish a distinct identity. The visual feedback on clicks is decent and the act of clicking has some weight to it. The click sound, however, is underwhelming and doesn't reinforce that tactile feel. There's no music, which is a missed opportunity — even a simple ambient loop would add atmosphere and help sustain longer play sessions.

🤖 AI Implementation:

The game is clearly AI-generated, but it's one of the more polished examples of it. The systems hang together and the overall structure is coherent. What it lacks is the human editorial touch — the moments of intentional design that make a game feel considered rather than assembled. Still, impressive for a vibe-coded project.

💡 Final Thoughts:

Incremental games are a well-trodden genre, and standing out requires either a fresh theme or exceptionally satisfying mechanics — ideally both. This entry has a solid technical foundation but needs work on pacing and identity. A few targeted improvements would make a real difference:

- Introduce resources and mechanics one at a time to ease the player in

- Add music and improve the click sound to strengthen game feel

- Introduce automation mechanics to reward longer sessions and reduce grind

- Develop a more distinctive visual identity beyond the wireframe default

- Layer in some strategic decision-making to give players meaningful choices

FYI: starting the game with the Dark Reader browser extension makes the game all black apart the redeem widget.

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

Take this with a grain of salt — I'm not a card game enthusiast — but the gameplay felt a bit shallow on strategy. The biggest friction point is onboarding: the Start button should be disabled until the player has a deck, or better yet, the game should hand you a starter deck automatically and let you build from there. Card types are also unclear in play; I couldn't reliably tell monsters from items at a glance, and the flow of selecting a monster, placing it in the slot, then attacking wasn't intuitive without explanation. A short tutorial or contextual tooltips would help enormously. There may be more depth than I was able to discover, which is itself a design problem — the game should surface its strategy, not hide it.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The title menu is impressive — coherent galactic aesthetic, bold chunky text, and satisfying hover effects on the buttons (sound effects there would be a great touch). Card art is nice and the visual style holds together well throughout. The atmospheric music sets the right mood but becomes intrusive during battle; giving it more breathing room or lowering it in combat would let the action feel more intense without the audio competing for attention.

🤖 AI Implementation:

The card interactions and game logic appear to be implemented with care, and the overall scope of building a working card game is no small feat. With more polish on the player-facing rules and feedback, the underlying systems could really shine.

💡 Final Thoughts:

Card games are a notoriously difficult genre to get right, and the effort invested here is evident — the visual identity is strong and the core is functional. The main thing holding it back is clarity: players need to understand the rules and card types without having to guess. A few targeted improvements would make a real difference:

- Add a tutorial or starter deck to guide new players into the mechanics

- Clearly distinguish card types (monster vs. item) with icons or labels

- Surface strategic depth more explicitly — show the player what decisions matter

- Balance the battle music so it enhances rather than overwhelms

- Disable the Start button until a valid deck is assembled

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The gameplay is repetitive and lacks meaningful challenge or depth. Enemies feel like bullet sponges — hitting them doesn't produce satisfying feedback, which makes shooting feel unrewarding. A basic score system provides some reason to replay, but it's not enough to sustain interest for long. The single-button control scheme is an interesting constraint, but it wasn't taken far enough here. Allowing the tank to move would have added considerably more depth and tension without much added complexity. As it stands, the game is just a bit too simple to stay engaging.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The menu is functional, the UI is clean and readable, and the color palette and background work well together. Sprites are simple but fit the game's aesthetic. The visual effects are very basic and a step up in juice — screen shake, hit flashes, particle bursts on death — would make a real difference to how the game feels. The standout element is the music: the alien theremin lead gives it a distinctive retro sci-fi atmosphere.

🤖 AI Implementation:

The AI is straightforward — enemies follow predictable patterns and don't pose much of a threat — but that's appropriate for this style of game. The ambition here is clearly a casual arcade score-chaser, and the AI fits that goal. It's sufficient, if unremarkable.

💡 Final Thoughts:

A cute arcade game built on a capable engine, but it doesn't quite reach its potential. The core loop needs more feedback and variety to feel satisfying. A few targeted improvements would go a long way:

- Larger, more impactful bullets

- Enemies that die faster but behave more dynamically

- Clear visual and audio feedback on kills

- Tank movement or dodge mechanics

- Power-ups or escalating enemy variety to keep runs fresh

The foundation is there — with some added polish and depth this could be a genuinely enjoyable little score-chaser.

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The gameplay is very basic and the difficulty curve is severely unbalanced. Levels 1–4 offer almost no challenge — aliens are passive and trivial to avoid — then level 5 lurches into near-impossible territory with no warning. Items are never explained in the game itself; the instructions cover them, but contextual in-game tooltips or popups would go a long way. Combined with frequent crashes on level 5, the overall experience feels more like a chore than an enjoyable game. It's also quite short with little reason to replay.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The retro terminal green-screen aesthetic has some charm, but the execution undermines it. The scanline effect is visibly broken and actively detracts from the look. Text is tiny and hard to read, and the low contrast between text and background compounds the problem. The font feels generic. There is no music or sound effects of any kind, which leaves the game feeling empty.

🤖 AI Implementation:

The game shows signs of having been assembled quickly without a final polish pass. The AI is rudimentary — aliens stand largely inert until the player walks into them — and there is little evidence of deliberate behavioral design.

💡 Final Thoughts:

Acheron Station has a rough-around-the-edges quality that makes it hard to recommend in its current state. The difficulty curve is broken, the UI fails to communicate its own mechanics, and several technical issues — the broken scanline effect and level 5 crashes in particular — suggest the game needed more time before submission. The retro terminal aesthetic has potential, but it needs contrast fixes, readable text, and at least some ambient sound to land properly. With a focused round of polish and bug fixes this could be a decent short experience, but right now it's more frustrating than fun.

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

Performance starts sluggish at just 200 fish, but disabling shadows brings it to a perfectly smooth experience — so the culprit is clearly unoptimised shadow rendering rather than the simulation itself. That's an easy fix, but it needs to be more prominent in the UI; a warning or tooltip linking shadows to performance would save players a lot of frustration. With shadows off, the fun factor improves considerably.

There are plenty of knobs and levers to play with, which is exactly what you want from a simulation game. Once performance is addressed (or shadows are disabled), the depth on offer is genuinely enjoyable to explore.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

graphics are basic but effective

no music or sound effects, which is fine for a simulation but I think some ambient music or sound effects would enhance the experience

🤖 AI Implementation:

 very complex behavior for the fish, with different types of fish having different behaviors and interactions. it's impressive to see such a detailed simulation in a browser game, but again the performance issues really take away from the experience.

💡 Final Thoughts:

interesting swarm simulator and impressive for a vibe coded application

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The mini-games I tried felt underdeveloped. "Curling" plays more like a golf game than anything resembling actual curling. "Find the Bomb" relies entirely on luck — the hint system is unreliable and ambiguous (e.g. "row 2" with no indication of whether rows are counted from the top or bottom; in one run the hint said row 4 but the bomb was in row 2 or 3). With no real skill expression and random outcomes, there's little incentive to replay.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The visuals are extremely minimal and the text is so small it's nearly unreadable. There is no audio whatsoever — no music, no sound effects — which leaves the experience feeling hollow.

🤖 AI Implementation:

The game gives the impression of having been put together quickly, with little time left for polish or refinement. The rough edges are noticeable throughout.

💡 Final Thoughts:

The game fails to load on itch.io and instead redirects to a different platform prompts users to create an account — a significant barrier for a game jam entry where first impressions matter. In its current state it's hard to recommend, but there's potential here if the hint system is fixed, audio is added, and the mini-games are given more mechanical depth.

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The settings menu is thoughtfully designed with solid accessibility options. Gameplay is engaging and the AI puts up a real challenge. The pacing can feel overwhelming at times — a turn-based mode with strategic depth (think Risk-style moves) would be a fantastic addition for players who prefer a more deliberate playstyle.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The main menu is clean and easy to navigate, though the visuals feel a little bare. A bit more visual flair on the title screen would go a long way. Audio is a clear highlight: the title music sets the mood perfectly, and the in-game music and sound effects are polished and well-suited to the action.

🤖 AI Implementation:

The AI is impressive — it plays with genuine skill and keeps the pressure on throughout. The overall game feels well-crafted and cohesive, which speaks to the quality of the implementation.

💡 Final Thoughts:

A polished and well-executed strategy game with strong gameplay fundamentals and standout audio. With a bit more visual ambition on the front end and an optional slower-paced mode, this could be an exceptional experience. Great work!

🎮 Gameplay & Mechanics

The core Match-3 loop is currently buried under a layer of unnecessary complexity:

• User Interface: The "click-to-swap" mechanic feels clunky compared to the industry-standard drag-and-drop. It adds an extra step to every move, slowing down the pace of the game.
• Over-Engineering: There are many stats and mechanics that feel poorly explained. In a Match-3, players usually look for "flow"; here, the extra systems act more as a barrier than a depth-builder.
• Recommendation: Simplify the stat system or introduce it gradually. Focusing on making the "swap and match" feel responsive should be the priority.

🎨 Graphics & Audio

• Responsiveness: The lack of window scaling is a significant hurdle. Since the game crops rather than adapts, it makes the play area difficult to navigate, even with scroll bars.
• Visual Cohesion: There is a stylistic clash between the minimalistic, wireframe-style gameplay and the pixel art used for the Title and Game Over screens. A unified art direction would make the experience feel more intentional.
• Feedback & Feel: The match animations are currently too fast to be satisfying. Slowing them down slightly or adding more "juice" (particles or sound cues) would make the matches feel more rewarding.
• Audio: The music is a highlight! The Game Over theme, in particular, captures the tone effectively.

🤖 AI Implementation

While the "vibe-coding" approach successfully packed in a lot of features, this is a clear case where "less is more." The AI-generated complexity lacks a human designer’s touch to balance the mechanics. A more focused, polished Match-3 would have been more effective than a feature-heavy but disjointed experience.

💡 Final Thoughts

There is a lot of potential here, but the game is currently "over-designed." By stripping back the excessive stats and focusing on UI responsiveness and input feel, the core fun of the game would be much easier to find. Great foundation, but it needs a heavy dose of simplification.

🎮 Gameplay & Mechanics

The core concept is intriguing, but the execution currently suffers from significant mechanical friction:

• Clarity & UI: Navigation is difficult as entities are visible through walls and the Map (Tab) appears non-functional. Essential information—like how to use power-ups or what the "Random Events" signify—is missing.
• Controls: The Q/E strafing feels unintuitive without a tutorial prompt. Modernizing the control scheme or providing an on-screen layout would help.
• Combat: The "center-screen" projectile logic feels disconnected from the weapon's visual position, making aiming feel glitchy rather than intentional.
• Progression: There is a lack of a "Win State." Since civilians respawn indefinitely, the player lacks a sense of completion. Vending machines also appear to be non-functional decorations rather than interactable elements.

🎨 Graphics & Audio

• Visual Polish: The emoticons add a cute touch, but the overall art style lacks cohesion. The UI is particularly rough; many screens (Intelligence Briefing, Field Manual) are overcrowded, with text being cut off or rendered in a font size that is too small to read.
• Audio: Having music is a plus, though a shorter loop can become repetitive during longer sessions.
• Legibility: The leaderboard scroll speed and pixelated enemy chat make it difficult to engage with the game's social/competitive features.

🤖 AI Implementation

The "vibe-coded" nature of the game is an impressive feat for a jam! While the raw output is fascinating, it currently lacks the human-led polish needed to turn these generated ideas into a balanced, playable experience.

💡 Final Thoughts

The "Bureaucracy-themed Doom" aesthetic is a fantastic niche. While the current state is quite rough, the foundation for a fun retro-shooter is there. With a focus on input reliability, UI legibility, and a concrete victory condition, this could evolve into a very polished project.

Thanks for the review and rating! Built from scratch, no previous work before the jam and on a new engine :)

It's not my first jam and not my first shoot'em'up, though :)
I plan to add a brief animated tutorial in memory of the classic shmups.

Thanks again!

Ooh, an old geez like me! I was in your place a couple years ago and AI assistance was not even there. Nowadays it's a very powerful tool in the hands of experienced developers. Anyway, it's awesome as a first real game! Keep at it!

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The physics simulation in this game is highly impressive; the flippers and the ball react beautifully to create a genuinely authentic feel. The inclusion of the classic "tilt" mechanic is also a fantastic touch! While the core pinball mechanics feel a bit basic—though I may have missed some hidden depth—it plays incredibly well. However, it was surprising to see the absence of movable top gates (a staple of classic 80s pinball machines); adding that feature could provide an extra layer of skill to the gameplay.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

Visually, the game is a treat. The title screen art is striking and perfectly evokes the classic painted styles of vintage pinball machines. In-game, the neon color palette fits the alien theme flawlessly, and the ball rotation and trailing effects look modern and "juicy." The UI is remarkably clean and distraction-free, though swapping the current text for a retro segmented display would really tie the arcade aesthetic together. Personally, I would have loved to see even more visual juice—like sparks or flashes—upon collisions, but the current presentation is still excellent.

The audio design is equally stellar. The title screen welcomes you with a relaxing, chill soundtrack, which transitions nicely into a mysterious, atmospheric, yet unobtrusive track during gameplay. The sound effects are punchy and highly appropriate, and the addition of a synthesized voice is a brilliant touch that elevates the entire retro experience.

🤖 AI Implementation:

An absolute masterpiece! The way AI was utilized here clearly paid off.

💡 Final Thoughts:

Alien Pinball delivers a premium, highly polished arcade experience that flawlessly captures the nostalgia of classic pinball while playing remarkably smoothly.

 Fun & Gameplay:

The core gameplay presents an original idea with interesting skills. The procedurally generated levels are a standout feature, looking great and offering a fresh layout each run. Another excellent addition is the inclusion of customizable controls, which is a rare and highly appreciated feature in jam submissions.

However, the game can feel frustrating, especially starting around level 4. Being forced to re-collect the key every time you die breaks the flow and quickly becomes tedious rather than challenging. Additionally, the environmental hazards are not very distinguishable—for example, when a hazard is a pleasant shade of blue, it doesn't clearly communicate danger to the player.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

Visually, the game utilizes simple but effective graphics backed by good color choices and nice visual effects. However, there is room for improvement: the player character feels somewhat lifeless and would greatly benefit from an idle animation. The default font is highly readable but lacks originality; exploring alternatives on Google Fonts could help give the game a more unique identity.

In terms of the interface, the on-screen help panel is currently too intrusive. Tucking it away behind a toggle button, moving it to the pause menu, or simply placing it in a corner would clean up the screen significantly. The scanline filter also feels out of place for a high-resolution game and would be better suited as an optional toggle in the menu. On the audio side, the sound effects are simple but effective, though the lack of full in-game music—aside from some basic jingles—leaves the audio landscape feeling a bit empty.

🤖 AI Implementation:

This game appears to be the result of using a nice little home made AI tool. If the game is entirely AI-generated, it is a highly impressive technical achievement!

💡 Final Thoughts:

Gravity Maze offers an original concept with impressive procedural generation, but it needs some balance tweaks and quality-of-life UI changes to smooth out its mid-game difficulty spikes.

Thanks for playing it? Anything you think could be changed, added?

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The game's core loop relies entirely on evasion, but the current implementation lacks the variety needed to keep players fully engaged. There is only one enemy type with no interactive counter-play other than avoiding them, making gameplay feel repetitive. The inclusion of more enemy varieties or environmental hazards would significantly spice up the experience. Additionally, the purpose of the red bombs(?) is currently unclear, leaving players confused about their mechanics.

Since moving is the only action available, the interactable elements feel a bit sparse. Currently, the scroll is the only interactable item, serving both as a score tracker and a hint for the exit—a clever dual purpose, but the game could still use more interactive items. The difficulty scaling across the different modes also feels unbalanced and doesn't meaningfully add to the fun. Finally, since this is a keyboard-only game, implementing additional shortcuts for actions like restarting or starting a new game would be a welcome quality-of-life improvement.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

The visual presentation has a solid foundation but requires some technical adjustments. Notably, the game frame changes size depending on the content on-screen, which can be disorienting and should be fixed to maintain a static window size. In-game, the overall scale feels too small; increasing the size of the player character and ensuring they stand out more distinctly against the background would greatly improve visual clarity.

The audio landscape is currently very barren, featuring almost no sound effects and a complete lack of music. Because movement is the primary mechanic, the sound of the player moving needs to be much more present to provide satisfying feedback. Giving enemies their own distinct sound effects would also help players track them and make the world feel more alive.

🤖 AI Implementation:

It's unclear exactly how AI was implemented in the creation of the game, though it gives the impression of being "vibe coded" rather than relying on explicit AI-driven systems or generative art. Clarifying its role in the project description would be helpful.

💡 Final Thoughts:

"Escape the dark" is a fun, easy-on-the-eyes little game that proves to be quite hard to master. While the foundation is solid, it would greatly benefit from additional content variety, audio integration, and overall polish to reach its full potential.

🎮 Fun & Gameplay:

The game has the foundations of a solid arcade shooter, but several quality-of-life and pacing issues hold it back. Booting up the game takes too long, and getting into a run is bogged down by too many unskippable screens. Adding a "Skip All" button and saving the game state between screens would drastically improve the onboarding flow. When the player's ship is shown, they should be able to play with it immediately! Additionally, the lack of a pause or settings menu is a noticeable omission.

In combat, the controls feel sluggish. Pressing the shoot button doesn't trigger an immediate reaction, which hurts the moment-to-moment feel. The decision to punish players with limited ammo and slow regeneration feels unsatisfying rather than challenging. Furthermore, hitting enemies lacks impact; adding visual cues like enemy hit flashes would help immensely. 

There are also a few confusing design choices: it's not obvious that "A" refers to the gamepad button rather than the keyboard key (which is unbound), and the large monster traversing the screen doesn't seem to damage the player, leaving its purpose unclear.

The hacking function is confusing, it should be better introduced in the game or maybe just explained better in the description.

🎨 Graphics & Audio:

Visually, the game struggles with clarity. The UI elements are too crowded with unnecessary details, and the fonts are inconsistent and sometimes too small to read comfortably. While the HUD is clearly styled after modern recreations of classic console shooters, it ends up being very distracting. 

The playfield composition feels unbalanced, as the left marquee is larger than the right one and the action isn't properly centered. In-game, the player ship and enemies share the same brownish color palette, making it difficult to distinguish between them—better contrast is essential here. The scanlines also muddy the high-resolution visuals rather than enhancing them, and the basic explosion effects fail to deliver a satisfying impact.

Audio is a mixed bag. The gameplay music is a highlight and fits the theme perfectly, but the title screen music feels entirely disconnected from the in-game tracks. Sound effects are overwhelmingly loud, which is compounded by the lack of a volume slider. The firing sound is particularly grating due to its repetitiveness; adding slight variations in pitch and volume would make it much more pleasant.

🤖 AI Implementation:

It is currently unclear how AI tools were utilized in the development of this project, as no obvious generative art or AI-driven mechanics stand out. If AI was used, highlighting its specific contribution to the game's scope or systems in the description would be helpful.

💡 Final Thoughts:

Neon Vanguard has the bones of a great retro-inspired shooter and features some excellent gameplay music. However, it needs significant polish to address sluggish controls, cluttered visuals, and audio balancing. With a focus on snappier onboarding and improved combat feedback, this could be a fantastic arcade experience. Great effort, keep refining it!

•  nice pixelart dragons, good job with the prompts, it's not so easy. I don't like the different pixel size between sprites and walls.
• nice battle animation (the enemy sprites are rendered very small vs the dragon character) but I think the camera moves too much, it's disorientating) 
• add feedback for battle starting (even just a "Fight!" message)
• add numbers for HP/MP (maybe a setting)
  

UI:

• if the controls are mouse only, let each option in the menu align vertically to avoid moving the mouse too much (orders -> attack -> choose target -> fight, the last command requires you to move the mouse down for a lot of screen space)
• add more accessibility features:
• keyboard, gamepad controls)
  
• font size (extra score for UI scaling options)

Gameplay:

• enemies have too much HP. when I see 99 damage I tell myself: "wow that's a lot of dmg, it must be dead..." and then 3 more hits to kill it...
• combats are too slow (the long animations are in part responsible for this)
• first combat make the character level up 3 times.. that's a lot

Sound: 

None... even basic free asset sounds make the game a lot more enjoyable.

Overall I think the game has potential but it's not very playable in the current state. Keep at it!

Unfortunately there's no macos build, even if the itch.io page states it so. I'll try play it on my Steamdeck. 

The rest of the UI is just perfect. Easy to remember and very functional!

Thanks for the great feedback! About the analysis system, I wanted to have keyboard and mouse controls and I couldn't figure out how to use items and analyse them with the mouse. I might have used a separate modifier for the mouse button instead of preventing analysis in the inventory... Thanks anyway!

So good! I haven't finished but I went far, will be watching Kordanor! One small but annoying thing: closing the map with enter. Just use the 0 key.

No worries, I'm gonna try on another machine, I really like your entry :)

Playing on macos here, so YMMV. When hp is at 0 I cannot do anything, is that normal for the build or is my mac being annoying? Interesting mix of clicker, autobattling and exploring. It has potential!

Very original concept! I really like the idea and I think it'd be worth to polish it. The music is stylish. The SFX are a bit weak, especially the shooting sound. Make it big, punchy! The GFX are kinda unique, I like those very much. There's a bit of inconsistency in how doors are interacted, it should be one of the very first things to polish. Keep at it!

Very original concept! I really like the idea and I think it'd be worth to polish it. The music is stylish. The SFX are a bit weak, especially the shooting sound. Make it big, punchy! The GFX are kinda unique, I like those very much. There's a bit of inconsistency in how doors are interacted, it should be one of the very first things to polish. Keep at it!

thanks for nothing

Hey, I thought the 9.99$ (or 50% of this during sale) price was for the whole collection but when downloading the only file I was entitled to I was surprised to find only about 300 poor quality files. 

You really must be make clear in all pages what clients get for which price.

 Here https://itch.io/s/137497/combat-rpg-full-collection-208-big-update it says:

This bundle includes the following:

⭐️ Free Version ⭐️

• 300 Characters (Dimensions: 128x128px)
• 32 Battle Backgrounds (Dimensions: 640x435px)

🌟 Starter Pack 🌟

• 100 "Waifu" Characters - Idle Animation (4 Frames, Dimensions: 64x64px)
• 100 "Waifu" Characters - Static (Dimensions: 64x64px)
• 100 "Waifu" Characters - Static (Dimensions: 128x128px)
• 100 RPG Items (Dimensions: 32x32px)
• 25 "Waifu" Portraits (Dimensions: 64x64px)
• 25 "Waifu" Portraits (Dimensions: 128x128px)

✨Extra Plus Version✨

etc.

I'd like a refund even if I downloaded once, I cannot see how to do it other than asking here. 

Waiting for your answer, cheers

I'm puzzled (...) by "The World of Roman Costume" riddle... 

I'm at 4/6 of the second part :) this is so much fun!

thanks for commenting. I enjoyed making a puzzle game. I have mainly made action game prototypes so far. Not having to manage collisions was refreshing. Adding text blurbs and basic graphics was also interesting. I'll think about adding more content after pushing a polished version of the prototype.

thanks for your comment. I admit I had to rush to finished the game loop and I forgot to add the focus pool regen function. As son as the voting is finished I'll publish a more polished and playable version. I may or may not add more content if I put my other projects on pause 🤔 

double jam submission...