Fun game. I liked the character sprites. They were expressive, despite the sprite size constraints. I lucked into encountering the mosquito first, which really helped with later encounters. Stun felt a bit OP, but you covered that in the postmortem.
Kevin Hutchins
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Ah, so this is what this genre is like! I had fun with it. It was satisfying getting my weapons buffed to the max and seeing them melt through the enemies. Difficulty felt good to me, I was able to win on my third try. Very effective use of visuals, I stopped noticing that it was low resolution after just a little bit of time ingame.
Great atmosphere between the audio and visual design! I had fun with it (I think I got the final ending), and I liked how you had the option between running and crawling, but in the end I just ended up sprinting everywhere. The only minor issue I noticed was that clicking to dismiss text boxes/notes would also trigger crawling mode.
Great game! I had to try a few times on the penultimate battle, but once I remembered I had items that I could use, I managed to make it through. The visuals look great, and there was a playfulness to the animations that were fun. I like both Lisa and Earthbound, and you managed to nod to them in ways that didn't feel derivative. Probably a bit hard for a jam game (although who isn't guilty of that?), but I had fun with it.
Neat game, I loved the control explanation graphic. The control panel managed to evoke the feeling of train controls even with very few pixels. My first time trying it I seem to have broken the input somehow, as it wouldn't let me adjust the speed. Maybe a bug, or maybe just the browser acting up. Regardless, I could see coming back again to this to pass some time.
Fun game! I managed to get three of the discs, but got lost and worn down before I managed to get the last. My first run I didn't find any, although I suspect that was down to me getting lost. Maybe an indicator when the disc is in a room immediately adjacent to prevent accidentally skipping past them?
The music and sound fit in well and really helped set the tone, and the visuals were expressive and clear. Good job!
Thanks for all the kind words! I think the secret to having a little bit of variability in the tactics department is being bad at this kind of game myself, so people try things that I wouldn't have even thought of. I made an enemy that I didn't think anyone would be able to beat, but people trounced it!
I loved the style of this - it was very evocative, and the almost cardboard-cutout nature of the enemies fit perfectly. It was a clever way to (I'm guessing) overcome your lack of 3D models and make full use of 2D sprites that I thought worked out well.
I appreciated the explanation on the stats - it's always frustrating to me when I have to allocate stats at the start of the game and I'm in the dark as to what they do. I did feel like melee weapons were at a large disadvantage; my first attempt was full melee and I had a much harder time than when I built for ranged weapons.
The enemies sometimes blended in, to the point where I think they might have been facing so their thin side was towards me, but I'm not sure. I also would've liked a bit more feedback on the combat, but a week is a tight timeline and you really cut it close, so it's definitely understandable.
I had fun with this. Good job!
I'm very impressed that this is your own engine. That's awesome! I loved the UI; it felt authentic and has a style that modern games don't try to match. It took me a few attempts before I achieved victory, but that made it all the sweeter. Luther and I often disagreed on who was the priority for heals, but he valiantly sacrificed his life in the final battle, so I can't be too mad at him. Nice job!
I had fun playing this. It had a nice sense of progression, and the different ways of interacting with enemies added a nice bit of complexity to a battle system that might have felt a bit sparse otherwise. I chose to go for glory, but I ended up beating the boss too so I suppose I managed to achieve both goals. Certainly one of the more fun interpretations of the theme. Great work!
The combat was a bit tricky at first, but once I figured it out it was very doable, although maybe a bit too high stakes without checkpoints. The visuals were great, and I liked the contrast between the two settings. Great job, especially for your first jam. It's chock full of content, and with a full story to boot.
Cool entry. I loved how the environment moved around me as I worked on the puzzle. I was able to escape through the place I entered from at the end, but once I realized it was (probably) unintentional I went back in. The cube that we're holding clipping through the walls was a bit distracting; you could fix that by putting that block on its own layer and making a second camera with the clear flags set to depth only, the culling mask set to only that layer, and the depth set to 1.
Wow, great job. I'm impressed you managed to get the shooting satisfying despite the lack of aiming. A bit of a jump in difficulty on the last level, although it made sense once I realized that it was the last level. Cyberspace felt a bit underutilized, but it's all understandable given the jam timing. I'd certainly play a version of this with more levels.
I was impressed by how you managed to get such good-looking, coherent character art. The combat system was interesting, although it ended up being a bit too much on the easy side since I was able to build up my armor in easy encounters and have them transfer over to later ones. Later in the game it could get a bit tedious to try to figure out where I could swap; maybe some sort of UI indicator that indicated which tiles were swappable would help with that?
The combat system was a good time. My only complaint with it was that I wish the enemy moves were more difficult and a bit faster, although I understand it's usually better to make it easier for a jam. The sound on the enemy attack ending seemed a bit too loud, so it might do with some adjustment. All in all, I had a good time playing it, and I'll be on the lookout for the fixed version coming out after the jam. Good work!
Neat game. The day/night cycle was a nice touch, although it seemed like I never was strong enough to beat the night enemies, although maybe that was intentional to encourage the use of shortcuts. I found the shortcuts a bit difficult to find, as it was only a few runs in that I managed to figure out where one was. I appreciated the thought put into supporting the different control types; it's not often that I see a jam game supporting controller.
If you made a banner and put up some screenshots on your itch page (you can edit the page freely, just not upload new builds), you'd probably get more people playing.
Having to worry about your friend's hunger added an interesting level of restriction on how far you could explore. It was never all that strict about it, so I thought it added to the tension without taking away from the fun. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to actually hurt the enemies, but once I did it made perfect sense. I often get a little disoriented when there's two worlds that I swap between, but in this case it was designed so that I never got lost, which worked well with the hunger constraint. Good job!
Excellent use of minimalism. It does a good job of drawing attention to how much of the core of dungeon crawling is there whether you have the newest fancy graphics or wireframes. It made me want to go back and retry Akalabeth, but I don't think I'd be able to come close to beating it like I did this. Good job!
Very cute art style. The control dump at the beginning was a bit much, and I forgot some of the mechanics before it was over. It wasn't the biggest detail, as I managed to figure it out as I went along. I would've liked to be able to hold down a button to continue moving. Ultimately, those issues didn't ale me too much and I was able to get to the end. I could see the combat mechanics being really neat with a little bit more variety in effects and enemies (although I didn't trade coins as much as I should have, so maybe there were more effects than I noticed).
Went back to this to try again and beat it this time. Getting stuck was for the best, as I didn't miss the spear this time. I'm beyond impressed with how much work you both did. That murky area at the end was quite unsettling! My only suggestion would that it would've been nice to have some way to quickly add items to the inventory, as the drag target to put them into the general inventory was pretty small.