aw, thank you for the compliments! i'll take a look into the audio issues and if i can replicate them will try to have them patched by the next version.
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note: i don't think i'll push a new nightly build this week. i have not made a whole lot of progress on the game specifically (just a few new art assets)--i have mostly been focusing on just random other drawings for fun/practice, and on preparing a new (!) game page for the nightly version. itch support got back to me and reindexed this game page, so it should be safe for me to post a new one with the nightly build uploaded (so as not to break anybody's saves here).
for that page, i've been working on making it nice and pretty, but i also potentially want to consider setting up some sort of patreon or something before launching it just to make the most of the early spike in visibility. (by the same token, i would like the game to be in as good of a state as possible before launching it. but, i do think it will probably still be incomplete).
hope to have something good out next week.
do you mean something beyond zooming in/out? zooming is possible in the "nightly" version by scrolling the mouse wheel. (and, in case you missed it, the game has always had orbiting the camera by clicking the middle-mouse-button).
the nightly version is currently only available to download but i believe i will put it in the browser within the next few weeks on a separate itch page.
(or, if you mean on android/mobile, i do hope to add camera controls eventually but have not yet).
i'm sure i will fall off in terms of output soon enough. once per week is probably as often as it will get.
i would love to add at least cis-adjacent m/f, f/m, m/m, and f/f pairings to the game at some point. the main blocker is i really have no idea how. right now the metaphor is obviously quite focused on piv sex (for better or for worse), and largely from the perspective of the one with the penis. if i were to add other pairings i'm not sure if i could keep the same set of cards or if i would kind of need completely new ones. i'm not even sure what the sex animation would be... it does not strictly have to be related to the cards (e.g. i have previously considered making the current m/f pairing randomly include a cunnilingus scene instead) but it would be nice if there was at least some kind of sex happening.
on the one hand, having these other pairings have entirely new decks would be a way to add a lot of variety to the game, which would be cool. but on the other hand... wow is that a lot of extra work, both from a game design perspective and from an illustration perspective.
so the other option is to reuse the existing set of cards, but somehow make them feel appropriate to the other pairings. this option i just kind of blank on. like, for example, i would like to sometimes play as a lesbian mare with a vagina, and it feels like in that fantasy i wouldn't really want to be playing all these cards with a penis on them. so making many new art assets kind of seems like the inevitable conclusion.
and then the question ends up back at metaphor. what are you doing, as a mare fucking a mare? or as a mare fucking a stallion? as the player you are necessarily in control of the flow of the sex, which seems like it should be reflected in the metaphor. but then i always want to be as thoughtful as possible in how i depict sex and it feels like it is very easy to end up with something a bit... inconsiderate when you're starting from "sex where you have total control." (in particular, one of my most hated tropes in porn is sex that is essentially nonconsensual but that is treated like it is consensual. it feels much seedier to me than actual noncon. but poorly thought out sex can also be cringe to me in simpler ways, e.g. by just being too heteronormative for my liking. and although I am happy to indulge in cringe porn occasionally, the amount of effort i pour into my games makes me want to keep them more thoughtful).
for piv sex i don't stress about this too much because the bar is underground. improving upon the status quo of internet porn in terms of depicting piv sex is practically trivial. i'm sure my work still isn't perfect, but, oh well. i am less certain about my ability to make decently healthy depictions of other kinds of sex.
so, adding additional pairings is thus held back by this: it will probably be a lot of work, and it doesn't seem like there's any point in even starting work on it until i have an idea of how to do it in a way that is good enough for me.
but, hopefully one day! hopefully. i suppose now is better than ever to start thinking about it because i am definitely starting to get comfortable with throwing completely unfinished prototypes into these new builds. :P
introducing heart by hoof. nightly comments · Replied to TheCrimsonDM Vanillia in introducing heart by hoof. nightly comments
i think ultimately if i want to actually drive clicks, the best way to do so would be to find stuff to put on e621 (and maybe other furry sites). i've held off so far because the rules on screenshots / screen recordings are a bit limiting, but i think there is some stuff i could put together, and i've been considering just straight-up posting some of the new art if i think it is particularly decent. (another option is to just buy an ad slot on e6, which i will probably do someday just for fun).
it is still too bad, though, as i really do like the idea of recording gameplay just on its own merits. the one route forward i see is that i already have some partially-implemented "disable sexual content" settings, and i would like to flesh these our more... which could allow for posting footage on youtube, lol. unless perhaps the card names themselves are too spicy.
the funny thing is ultimately i feel better off not associating in any way with these porn sites. live action porn feels fundamentally sketchy and unsafe to me in a way that my silly lil video games never could, and i guess i'm happy to stay away.
thank you for the well wishes and good luck with your projects in return. o7
that's bizarre! for me in both chrome (logged out), and firefox (logged in to a different itch account), i was able to download the file without any warnings. if you happen to have a screenshot of the itch warning i would be interested in what it looks like.
i also get the normal "Windows protected your PC" popup with either download, i'm not sure if that's what you mean by windows flagging it as malicious. i usually expect this popup with any unknown software, and thankfully it's pretty easy to bypass (just two clicks).
ultimately i guess i need to figure out how i want to make this build available on web. some users will not trust the download even if they are able to access it, and some users straight-up cannot download software.
i am working on pushing a lil update, with some new art and balance tweaks, etc.
this includes some build infrastructure on my end that will let the game check for updates automatically, so i was testing some new uploads on the itch page that i've hidden for now (and whether the game can correctly fetch their version).
i am also working on a long write up of the changes that i would like to release alongside the new downloads for some context, but I may just release them by themselves if that seems more appropriate / timely. (the gist is that this new version will be very "in-dev" in the sense that it is like, partially new art that is very stylistically distinct from the old art, so the game looks arguably more jank than it does right now).
i wasn't sure if itch was going to notify anyone of the new versions... knowing that it has, i may try to speed up my timeline a bit. :)
Mini Tiddy - Lily and the Haunted House jam comments · Posted in Mini Tiddy - Lily and the Haunted House jam comments
neat puzzles!
once i got to the warehouse it seems like nothing is happening--i'm just trapped behind a "no trespassing" sign and i can't seem to make any additional progress.
still, the various puzzle scenes that i did play were interesting! it did take me a while to notice the sparkles on the floor for certain things, but once i figured out that indicator everything started working better.
i'm not sure if the game really needs the ticking bar at the top--the time limit kind of makes me more annoyed when certain things take a while (e.g. walking around), but it doesn't seem to do much else.
i haven't been able to get very far in this game--once i pick up the final book in the magic room (the one near the bottom-left) the screen turns black and i can't see anything.
i do like the way this game essentially takes these relatively standard rpg mechanics and makes them very horny about boobs. it's a fun juxtaposition.
i'm not sure exactly what to think of the gameplay but a lot of the art here is really cool!
- the intro screen text is admittedly somewhat hard to read but i've never seen pixel art text done like that before.
- the invisibility effect looks super cool.
- all of the art in the sex cutscene looks great. i especially love the way the agent's clothes seem to have technology built in to them to take them off or whatever.
the one specific comment i have on the gameplay is that the rhythm game section feels pretty unforgiving. it felt like the difference between a correct hit and an incorrect one was very minor--i also don't think the notes actually lined up with the music (?) so it's mostly about visual timing if i'm not mistaken.
still, i was impressed by the variety of scenes and art in this game. very cool!
really cool game!
i especially appreciate how everyone is just kinda bisexual. makes the game feel a lot better as you don't have to worry about finding a particular kind of couple, and it's just overall kinda neat.
the car is fun to drive when you're going fast. it's especially satisfying to speed past a customer and pick them up along the way.
unfortunately, i do feel like the car is pretty finicky in some other cases. particularly when you are near where you need to be but not quite there, it is very painful to slowly do a 5-point turn and get the car there. i also might be totally wrong on this, but i feel like the controls for backing up seem backwards..? there is also some jank when you hit an invisible wall or other collider and end up kind of stuck and having to slowly maneuver your way out.
i also think the early game could have a few more customers available. often quite a few seconds are burned just looking for the very first customer, which also makes it harder to figure out what you're supposed to be doing.
still, this game was very enjoyable to play. great job!
it took me a while to figure out what i was supposed to be doing, although part of this was compounded by the fullscreen thing not working the first time i played a few days ago, so i originally had no idea there was even a UI on the right part of the screen.
the gameplay with the cars became pretty tricky once it got to the later levels! i appreciate that you don't lose all your progress at once and instead only go back one level. i do think the gameplay got a little samey by the end, as you're going so fast that you only ever see one other car at a time, and so it's mostly about dodging out of the way of them.
i do think the way this plays out is pretty funny. i'll be focusing intently on the road and then when i hear the laugh sound i will try to quickly swipe over and click on anything before going back to looking at the road. it often took me multiple tries to actually locate any clothing to remove and then finally actually correctly click on it! there's definitely an element of "focus on the road" which seems pretty appropriate.
the art looks great!
i believe this bug is fixed now. i've had it somewhat fixed locally for a while now but there were a few additional issues that popped up that i hadn't fixed until now.
(as a fun fact, the reason this bug occurs is because i was locking everything to the grid, but in a lazy way. everything is 256x256 pixels, but offset by 128 pixels, so to correctly lock it to the grid you have to subtract off 128, then round, then add 128 back. what i had been doing is just rounding to the nearest 128 instead, which was easier, but apparently allowed the penis to glitch to be half-off the grid. the fix was just to lock it correctly.)
unfortunately, the game probably still runs at a pretty low fps. but at least it should be playable now, assuming i didn't miss any other issues.
man this is so cool, and i really want to be able to try it out for real, but i haven't been able to get it to work with about half an hour of messing around on my computer (i am using DS4Windows).
so, i'm trying with the "-b1" version, and with DS4Windows, it is able to rumble my controller, and it's able to detect the face buttons, but it seems to not detect any movement from the joysticks, even though the DS4Windows app does show the joysticks working. i really have no idea what's going wrong there.
from just the intro though i feel like the writing here is really neat. it does really feel like my physical controller just got up and is talking to me, it's super cool. the suspension of disbelief just works really well here.
given how close we are to the deadline & the whole median punishment nonsense, i think it's fair enough though for me to throw e.g. a 5-star novelty rating and such on here even with only being able to play through anything past the issue, so i've given my best attempt at an honest rating despite my technical issues lol.
neat game! i haven't played a lot of stealth games before so the mechanics were somewhat new to me. i think they worked pretty well! i found that it was often much easier to try to sneak past the enemies than to subdue them, although it was also satisfying to successfully subdue multiple of them with melee combat when that ended up being my only option.
i found i didn't really use the dash very much, maybe this is mostly because i forgot about it. it also might be because the cooldown seemed a bit confusing when it was first introduced (i wasn't really able to read the UI elements), so i couldn't really tell how reliable it was going to be.
(i did eventually zoom in on my browser to make the game a bit more readable, which helped).
i appreciated the availability of checkpoints, made it possible for me to lose a bit and get more comfortable with the controls. i also lost shortly after rescuing all 4 researchers but before i could find the exit, and i'm very glad the game didn't make me replay that entire part.
the story was well done, it was short & to the point but engaging. i liked being able to communicate with rowan over the terminals. there were a couple points where i felt like the dialog on the terminals was not quite up to date--specifically, i was trying to remember what the game had said about where to go after rescuing the researchers, but the terminal wouldn't tell me. but, that's a nitpick.
good job!
this is almost certainly at least partially a skill issue but i keep losing and i can't really tell why. the visual feedback for what you missed, especially when you actually game over, is very unclear. this is in part because it just deletes all the nearby notes, so you can't even tell where you were in the pattern when you failed. i think i would have appreciated a "no-fail" system or similar as i don't think i get much out of losing here besides an inability to really see the game through to the end.
it does feel like to me i kinda have to focus on the visuals over feeling the rhythm, as you're seemingly not punished at all as long as you hit the spacebar sometime when the circle is intersecting, and i can't always tell audibly what the circles are supposed to line up to in the track (this may be because i don't know what to set the offset settings to, although i was playing the download version). one part i really noticed this was the sections with the, iirc, three up dots + the one left dot, i just played all 4 basically in a 4/4 pattern, and didn't get punished at all (although, to be fair, the reason i was playing them was as 4/4 was because that's how i was feeling them, so i guess it worked out).
the idea of laying out the rhythm on a spiral like this is very cool. it's not a visualization i've really thought about before, and i can really see the ADOFAI vibes--in theory, all sorts of interesting rhythmic ideas can be represented just through different kinds of angular relationships on the spiral, and it seems like a neat representation. it's also pretty intuitive specifically because it's a circle.
i often find hypnosis-styled spirals pretty hard to look at but this one was pretty nice. there were definitely moments where i could just zone out and stare into the spiral (although, not if i wanted to avoid failing some notes). i think the spiral concept really does work here, both from a rhythm game perspective and from a more kink perspective.
the music is really neat. it is a bit repetitive, but this actually works really well for selling the hypnosis theme more. i definitely enjoyed it.
interesting tension here, as the various constraints of the game really force you to jerk off in a specific way if you want to win and don't want to fill up the red bar.
my best run so far did involve the red bar going up once, so maybe there is some value in it? i can't tell for sure if it jacks you off faster than you can go manually.
keeping track of what all the different bars do is a bit tricky but i think i got the hang of it. thank you for providing context in the game description!
nitpick: the game is really small on my monitor's default resolution, so i kinda had to change my resolution to play it. i think this game would be perfectly fine resizing with a fixed aspect ratio, e.g. with it blackboxed inside a resizable window.
i don't have too much to say that hasn't been said already, the writing that's here is great!
i like the sort of way each page has its own nested subpages--this seems like a nice way to provide more context for the reader, similar to footnotes, etc. but i think they're used super effectively with the potion ingredients scene, where we can imagine ourselves taking out each ingredient from the box, then putting it back, and i love this specific line from the black key: "You're okay. You're great, in fact. So great that you're going to drop the key right now and grab something else. haha." just a super creative & fun way to have the page navigation work.
to be clear: i truly was not triggered at all by the game. i honestly think this is kind of impressive. as i said, i really found Iana menacing and evil, but in a way that did not manifest actual bad feelings at all. i didn't even know this was possible, and i can't really explain it, but there you have it. it's pretty neat!
if anything, the only thing that might bring up bad memories was my own choice to write about abuse, sometimes that can be a bad idea lol. but that's ok, i wasn't sure if i wanted to say anything, but i figured the perspective was useful. like, it is true that Iana is basically an abuser, and i would say i am motivated to get the hell out of there by that fact. but, idk. i guess that wasn't triggering, it just feels like a really engaging and interesting story. i really have no idea why.
to be fair, i find i have a relatively high tolerance for specifically sexual violence in fiction. i think there were some scenes i read that i could describe as outright rape, and that is likely worth a trigger warning, but it didn't really phase me. idk. unfortunately my perspective is quite limited in that regard.
so as far as trigger warnings and such go: i don't really know lol. i wasn't really negatively affected by anything in the game. i mean, i really did find it a very good experience to play through, maybe even because it's sort of a safe way to experience standing up to an abuser. (although i guess that's less true if there's no good endings lmao).
i definitely appreciate the consideration though!
with respect to the map: i did sort of figure it was topologically a ring, and this definitely was very clear by the end, but during the scenes where you encounter other characters along the ring you seem to only be able to dive into a side room, and then you can only leave the side room into one of the two sides of the hallway, so it gets confusing if you're still moving along the ring in the same direction or not. but, on the other hand, this does mean that the hallway encounters provide a very real blocker to your progress--if you dive to the side and then leave, you won't be able to go back, and that has gameplay consequences. (the encounters are basically a "one way wall" in the ring, which seems perfectly fine).
this game is both super cool and somewhat frustrating. i think my perspective on it as a non-hypno-kinkster is perhaps interesting, and i played it for quite a while so i have a bit i want to say.
first of all: wow. the audio here is so excellent. and one thing i want to make very clear, so that what i'm about to say makes sense: i really, really hate this Iana character. like, i truly find them menacing and evil, and i so desperately wish to get the hell out of there. i don't know if that's necessarily the intended reading, but i am very much not here to be hypnotized... i am here to escape. and the writing really does a good job at making this place feel scary.
and so the way that this cheerful melody plays whenever we get near Iana. it's so cool. this melody that seems happy and delightful takes on a truly menacing tone and creeps me out. and this is just really awesome. it's something that i have never really seen before, the way the writing just makes me feel so freaked out that it literally impacts the emotional quality of the music in this way.
the audio is really effective in other ways too. for example, the first ending i did was just the immediate submissive one, and the way the SNAP sounds go is just really neat. the rest of the audio work is also great, the way it communicates hypnosis or ambience or whatever. similarly, the sparing use of hypnosis visuals is pretty effective, at least for the first couple rooms where you run into them. you can really feel the bright spiral bearing down on your vision when it's one of the only images you see in the novel.
however, as a non-hypno-kinkster, there are also some stumbling blocks for me. for one, i really was tryharding after my initial immediate-sub ending. the second ending i got was one involving me attempting to hypnotize Iana but failing. and i couldn't tell if i still had some chance of getting somewhere, and it took the novel a very very long time to confirm whether i won or lost. i remember at some point there was talk of like, a fire glove (?) or something, but i couldn't really tell what the game was even talking about at that point, and that plot thread didn't seem to go anywhere. i admit i may have been skimming though. but what was unfortunate is by the time i confirmed it was definitely a bad ending, i could not actually rewind all the way to where i was before. thankfully i had saved shortly before then so i was able to get my progress back pretty quickly, but had i not saved i might have had to quit there.
the willpower system seems neat but ultimately felt kind of silly as it mostly meant going back to the bathroom whenever possible. i mean, to actually successfully hypnotize the cat all i had to do was wrap around back to the bathroom, restock on willpower, and then re-do the same actions i had done before, which seemed kind of silly.
although, i will admit it was harder to find my way back to the bathroom when i hadn't yet hypnotized all the other heroes. there was a neat moment where i was trying to find my way back to restock, and i ran into one of the hypnotized heroes, and i had to try to hypnotize them back because it seemed like that was the only way back. and i just barely managed to do that with 10 willpower left, so that was a tense moment.
that said, i think the navigation was rather confusing while all the non-hypnotized characters are in the hallways... like you can't really tell if you're coming back to the same rooms or not. i mean, this is probably a good thing from a "your mind is hazy" perspective, but it does seem a bit strange that hypnotizing other people makes you a better navigator.
after seeing that the keycard itself was not enough to win, i put in quite a bit of time trying to go through everything else i had missed. there were a couple unmarked rooms i hadn't explored--one thing that confused me was, i thought the "unmarked room" next to the midnight office was the same as the "unmarked room" one step down the hallway from that (i thought that moving one step down the hallway just kind of shifted everything over by one--it took me a while to realize they were actually distinct rooms).
eventually i stumbled upon the safe, and i had absolutely no idea what the passcode might be. i'm pretty sure i had seen everything else besides a couple of the things that happen when you get hypnotized (whenever i saw myself kind of locked into a hypnosis loop i would just back out, when exploring the rest of the rooms). so, as far as i was concerned, the passcode was probably completely random. this is when i threw in the towel: i just looked at the HTML to see the passcode, and yeah, i have absolutely no idea where these values come from. turns out it didn't matter though--doesn't seem like anything in the safe will lead to a new ending.
i think i may have been tricked by the way the other endings were labeled "Bad Ending" -- i was definitely imagining there was a Good Ending somewhere that i just hadn't found yet. but at this point, i was pretty sure i had seen everything i could reasonably get to, so i decided to give up and start writing my feedback. from checking the comments, it seems like maybe there isn't actually a Good Ending. i guess that would have been nice to know earlier...? idk, i do think that saying "Bad Ending" sort of implicitly suggests there is a Good Ending to contrast with it, but that might just be a skill issue on my part.
anyway. that's basically what happened for me. the first half-hour or so of this game was really very cool, again with the menacing vibes and such. the last half-hour was just running in circles with the subdued cat in the hallway, so there was really no risk left (besides the other random ways to end up hypnotized, which i just didn't follow through with) and it became kind of boring.
i do think that the writing is really really good at portraying, say, an abuser, in Iana, at least if you're not here for the kink. just somebody who you really want to get away from at any costs, but where it's easier to just... not. for context, i have been in an abusive relationship before. and this game wasn't triggering for me, or anything, it was just really effective writing. and that in and of itself is kind of cool--i mean, maybe i'm just healing by now, but i also feel like the game just does a good job at making this scary without being like, so similar to real life as to be triggering. i think part of that might actually be the focus on hypnosis--at least from my understanding, hypnosis simply does not work like this irl. and so the idea that someone has control over you due to hypnosis feels comparatively safe (as opposed to say, having control over you through the threat of violence)--because it simply isn't something that can actually happen.
in summary, i don't know if i have ever played a visual novel as good at making me feel stuff. so, good job! but i was not turned on. lol
ok, this game was very cool.
i am not very good at freecell, as it turns out. but i got one game going that really was working out--i managed to play it through all the way to the end. that was super satisfying, as solitaire often is, and freecell seems to definitely have that energy even more (probably because it is even more restricted).
but what's super cool is how this game supports the winning run with the clown animation. once you have all your cards nicely stacked up in the tableau and ready to go, you get to just start going through the animations really quickly, and building to an orgasm. like, maybe i can see where this clown is coming from. once things start coming together, it really feels good! and it's just super cool to me how that ties in to the horny part.
i have discovered a very interesting bug in this game on my end.
the cards are in these weird stacks where i can take any of the top four cards off and put them in the foundation. if i remove all of the seemingly inverted cards, then a normal column is revealed underneath where i can no longer rearrange the cards at will (which as i understand it, is correct).
i tried both the browser and downloaded version. eventually i figured out the problem: my monitor usually refreshes at 240 hz, and this actually breaks the game. if i set the monitor to 60 hz it appears to work fine.
hopefully i'll be back with some more substantive feedback later.
neat game. i like the simplicity of the controls, and i personally enjoy a good mashing game every once in a while, although there are definitely health concerns / accessibility concerns with that lol. (i think after a few rounds i would only really try mashing during the slower tempo parts, as there it feels much more like just tapping along to the beat than actual mashing).
the melodies when you drink the water properly are very interesting. i kept trying to get the next bottle correct so that the melody would finally just complete the scale and release the tension, but it seems they never do that. this is a neat way to keep driving the player forward... just one more melody, i'm sure it will resolve!
the polish in this game is super good. the way the curtains move back and forth, and the low-res "wetting your pants" effect... all just super effective use of the pico-8. good job!
my observations:
- after getting to flop's room, it seems i can't make any more progress. i can't leave through the bottom door with F, or through the top door. i also tried to see if there was an option in the Escape menu to go back to the guild but didn't see one ("restart" seems to just restart the game).
- the art style of stuff is very varied in this game (especially in the sex scene with daphne & flop). definitely gives collage vibes.
- i appreciate the implementation of consent, at least in the scene with flop! i think more games should do this.
- the magic sounds are very loud. which did make me laugh. but i probably should have turned down the volume.
Gone Fishing (Strawberry Jam Prototype) jam comments · Posted in Gone Fishing (Strawberry Jam Prototype) jam comments
so, i played this game for quite a bit. i earned enough gold to buy the fishing rod, but it seems like rodney still won't sell it to me. there also doesn't seem to be any other progression happening in the dialog anymore--it seems each character only cycles through some set of options that are remaining the same.
and this ultimately is confusing to me, as the very first interaction i had with this game was seeing its main menu, pushing "trigger warnings," as one does, and seeing them refer to 1) sex scenes and 2) some other triggering content, both of which are, from what i can tell, not actually in the game.
now, it's fine if those aren't in the game. jam games are tricky, so much content has to be cut, etc, etc. but as it stands it is a very confusing interaction being told that the game has certain content and then seemingly having no way to make progress in the story. then, the game page itself also seems to indicate that there is more to the game than the dialog trees i reached, e.g. it says "and if you're lucky, you might get some action, too."
so overall, it was just a very confusing time, as i'm not convinced that there is anything in the game past what i've seen, but the game is going out of its way to make it seem like there is. i suppose it's possible that the content is there but i can't get there due to a glitch (?), but it's just overall very very unclear.
and i will note that getting the 250 gold worth of fish takes a not insignificant amount of time on its own--so having it make no overall progress, and then also not work on its own, doesn't feel great either.
now, to be clear: this is all fine. i am fine playing unfinished jam games, this stuff comes with the territory. but i want to communicate exactly how it made me feel as a player, as i think that's helpful information to know. i think that especially for jam games, it is usually good to be very clear what the "end point" of the game should be for the average player, because otherwise it is impossible to know what is unfinished or what is inaccessible due to bugs, and i hope you can see where i'm coming from there.
one other point of critique: i found the story moved a bit fast for me. some of the dialog with rodney made it sound like i knew a character called "lorelai" reasonably well, which i didn't. similarly, i felt the dialog with cassidy when we see her in the woods makes it sound like we've known her for a while (although i might be off the mark here). these things do make a lot of sense for a jam game, though, as it's not really possible to implement a real sense of "time passing" without a whole host of other systems, such as a day/night cycle, more intricate relationship systems, etc.
now. all that said. there is a lot of great stuff here! others have already covered it in detail, but i'll point out a few things i liked:
- the music & overall vibes are pretty nice, despite the prototype-y 3d models in the scene. it really does feel like playing stardew valley or similar.
- i really like the use of platforming in this game. it feels like there is a legitimate ability to explore the island, e.g. jumping over the rocks to get to the skull cave, and this is something i haven't really seen in a farming game before. i think that this kind of low-stakes platforming is just awesome and would be great in a bigger island too.
- i agree with others that it's cool how the hook works in 3d. in general i just think the use of 3d here is very effective.
- i like the characters & narrative that i could understand. i love cassidy's design and i think there's something quite fun about having a secret animal people world on this little fishing island.
the art here is super neat. i remember seeing some of it in the discord during the jam but seeing it all here it really is impressive how much quality art you put together.
i found the number of choices at the beginning a bit overwhelming, so after somewhat thoughtfully assembling my own gear i just gave the ladies basically random choices. once i got to the actual gameplay i was a bit scared of running out of ammo so i figured i should mostly try to run past everyone... this strategy worked great but also meant the gameplay ended pretty fast lol. after going through a bit a second time i think my strategy seems decent though. chewing through all the guys does use a lot of ammo and takes a lot more effort than running past them (and my bad build seems to result in at least one of my helpers dying).
i agree with some other commentors that having companions accompany you on the missions is quite fun. i definitely liked seeing them gun down the enemies. i feel like the companion AI already has a decent amount of "personality" at least in the things i noticed (might have just been due to the weapons i assigned them?) and could definitely be taken even farther.
so, i tried running both the x86 and x64 versions (which, at time of writing, say they were uploaded 2 days ago) on my windows 11 laptop, with both the integrated (AMD radeon) and discrete (Nvidia) GPU. both of them have the same blue screen as others have mentioned. :(
i tried to see if i could step through the program in a debugger, but it seems pretty hopeless without debugging symbols.
i think your best bet for getting enough technical feedback to figure out where it's going wrong now might be something like:
option 1) just release all the source code. this would make it completely possible for others to look into it. i understand if you don't want to do this though. (and it would require someone motivated to looking into the bug to actually get anywhere, as they'd have to compile & debug on their system).
option 2) put in some pretty substantial logging, e.g. the glGetError() after every opengl call (with some identifying info so that users could point you to which line error-ed on their system). from what i can tell the program isn't dumping anything to the console right now so there's not much info i can give you. adding something like this would make it pretty easy to at least paste the logs here and then even the most nontechnical of users could give you helpful information for narrowing down this bug.
i will say i am a big fan of building games in these bare bones ways. i am impressed by the physics & sound modeling stuff you've talked about, although i'll admit i haven't looked into it in much depth. i'll try my best to come back to this game if you make any additional builds and see if i can at least get them running. (i may have to try to track down a controller though).