itch.io

In the how to play section, i didn't realize there were multiple pages of text. I think it would make more sense if next to the OK button there was another NEXT button. I see your game is on NG now! They can be a tough crowd for sure. It can take a while to build a following, and gradual improvements to your game are a big help. If you release any big updates be sure to post about it too because that will make people notice.

I would suggest maybe lowering the bar for some of those achievements. Players can be motivated by achievements but you have to give them some right away and pace them out so they have achievable goals. 1000 points would make more sense for first achievement. High score boards would also help bring in players, you probably could use 4, for each combo of sheep/chicken chill/stress.

I did not realize the timer was going faster with each hand but honestly I don't think that's a good idea. Players expect timers to go at the same time. There are many other ways to achieve the same thing without changing the the rate. Maybe just give less extra time for each hand and start off with less time initially. If you give less time, presumably as little as 0, and have an upper bound on time, you can put a much better time lime on the game.  More options to increase difficulty would be add random junk tiles, add more colors of sheep.

Another small thing I noticed. I am not an expert player but it doesnt seem necessary to show the next piece for all 5 pieces. I'm sure it could help plan in theory but just feels like information overload. Or maybe since you already implemented that, only show it in the chicken mode since that is a more advanced mode? 

Amazing work, this game is beautiful and so complex. So here's some of my thoughts as I played a bit...

• Pacing is a bit difficult, especially at first when figuring things out. Like right away the first customer is asking for a monte cristo sandwich. Maybe just send customers in one at a time at first. For the first customer at least give the player unlimited time just to get started and start with something easy. 
• Remembering the recipes was really hard, maybe it could just show you the recipe for each order?
• It would be nice if was possible to put food items out on the counter. this way it makes it easier to juggle multiple things at once. Also there could be multiple sandwich stations and multiple coffee stations.
• Trash can to far away! generally it is better to not punish the player when they are already down as it just makes it even harder for players to recover when they are doing bad.
• Great music! It would be kind of cool if there was a radio in the store and you could switch between different tracks.
• If i take bread and put it on the sandwich station, and pick it up again, it shouldn't be bad!
• It would make sense if food burned if left on the stove for too long.
• The time limit for the day would be good to show so players know how much time they have left.
• Maybe it would make sense to start with a more limited menu at first. like day 1 it is just a coffe and sweets shop. Day 2 they have sandwiches. day 3 more recipes. etc. This would also help break up the gameplay into more digestible sections. Maybe you can even buy upgrades and rebuild the shop?

There are lots of really great things going on in this game. I hope you keep working in it because I wouldn't even recommend adding anything, just tweak and improve what you have. Help players to get in the zone of making food and they won't be able to stop!

This game is really ambitious and fun!

• I love how many different animals you managed to include here.  Great use of the theme!
• Thanks for putting in a little extra work to optimize it, seems to be running quite a bit better now, though there is still room for more framerate. 
• Awesome to hear the speech system being used. 
• It was a little counter intuitive at first to click through end turn to get some initial resources. Maybe the bovine tech should be unlocked on start?
• I like how the player can control the research.
• Great work integrating the tutorial into gameplay. 
• I'm not sure how the auto end turn works.
• It didn't seem that useful to explore with the dogs, maybe there could be more resources to find?
• I was afraid of humans the whole time but never saw any.
• I was able to eventually launch into space but was not sure exactly how to raise the level of my village.
  

Really great work, thank you for making this game, it feels very unique. I hope you continue working on it. With a game like this it can take a little while to figure out how to balance everything you have so just keep tweaking and listening to player feedback.

I love this game, incredible work! It really feels like a complete retro game experience. Here are some thoughts as I play.

• I love all the different kinds of animals you rescue. 
• The music is nice and works well with the game.
• The background art and atmospheric effects like snow also work great.
• The default time limit is a bit high for each level to make it impactful.
• Feels really nice with gamepad.
• There is a weird glitch with the camera when you respawn. I think you need to reset the camera pos to the player so it doesnt try to lerp.
• I got stuck on the boat once and my jetpack wouldnt refill.
• I like how the animals follow behind you, it feels like another subtle mechanic to take into account.
• If there were more levels I would keep playing!
• Great Tutorial! You should consider just including that tutorial in the first level automatically

This was an awesome experience and I hope you keep working on it. What you have here would also be great to show live if you ever get a chance, because it's a short game with easy to learn gameplay I bet a lot of people would enjoy it!

Interesting concept! Everything is working really nicely but some art would help a lot! You could consider using open source art assets or even having AI help make the art. The round end screen works really well.  It's great to see that you already have something setup for upgrading weapons. It would be fun if the animals interacted with each other and the level in a more interesting way. I hope you keep working on this and consider arting it up. Also you can use the release build of littlejs to prevent the escape debug feature and it runs a bit faster! Great work!

Nice little game! The graphics are really nice and give me a retro vibe, feels kind of like a master system game. The gameplay could use a little more polish so the player has more interesting combat decisions and higher level goals. One thing you could do just to juice this version is greatly increase the amount of animals and player firing rate. 

Great start sequence, it is very exciting to see LittleJS used for a big ambitious project like this! It looks like you have a lot of the core systems in place and nice intro going. I see there is also an integrated editor which is very interesting. I can see the jam is just a start for this game and I'm excited to see more of this game as it develops!

Great game, reminded me of old school puzzle games like tetris and dr mario. Fun idea to let the player select the music like in those games. Great overall presentation with start menu, how to play, achievements and all! I like how it highlights any matches. Maybe there should be an upper limit on how much time you can have banked, like one minute or something, this could help increase time pressure. Maybe also reducing how much time is added when making matches. Strategy wise I found it hard to plan ahead but was easy enough in the chill sheep mode. Maybe instead of subtracting from score there could be a limit to how many times you can remove a piece, or a powerup you collect allows it or something. The chicken mode was more difficult though I still haven't fully figured out how to play that one yet. You should consider putting this game on newgrounds, I think they would really enjoy this there and it is easy to hook up your achievements to their api using the littlejs plugin!

It was a lot of fun looking for all the animals. Great use of the puzzle game starter project! It felt kind of easy to be able to move tiles around as much as you want without penalty, but with so many animals it would be impossible otherwise. You could maybe start with less animals at first and as player makes matches introduce more.

Great to see that you were able to mix LittleJS and Three.js, would love see more of this idea expanded into a playable game!

That was fun, I managed to finish in under 1 minute after a few tries. The mechanics are very simple but felt fun to search for the animals I needed left. You could definitely expand this with more stuff. Just keeping with emojis you could have another level with people, and another with sea creatures, etc.

Cool idea for a game, reminds me of my cat when he's hungry! I'd like to see this idea expanded more, I want to know what more animals sound like. The player interaction while simple worked really well like the red tint and shaking when wrong and green with particle effects when right. All you need is more content and I would keep playing!

Amazing work with this game! The art style is so good and vibe you created feels really complete.

• i want a button to just drag the screen around. i had issues with it moving the screen automatically.
• i started to get overwhelmed with how many humans there were at a certain point
• the npc voices are great
• initially it is a little overwhelming how to get started. it might help to start smaller, maybe with just one man and one woman then build out from there.
• there ends up being a lot of micromanagement when you get a large population and it can be difficult as a player to understand what is going on. streamlining this kind of thing so the player can work faster and more efficiently would help.
• it would be interesting to see how this plays in real time without the advance time button.

I hope you keep working on this game, it's off to a great start and you nailed the visual execution! It has plenty of content already so really the next step is just to rework it a bit and polish more.

Works really well with a gamepad, I noticed you even have the in game instructions auto change, nice touch! Good music too. Here is some feedback for you...

• gravity feels about twice what it should be. this contributes to the platforming being frustrating
• there is a weird bug when you attack, it puts effects in the place of the last thing you damaged
• the screen turning red can be a good way to indicate health, but it really only works if it refills quickly, otherwise the player ends up with a reddish screen. even after i died it didnt refill
• i dont think you need lives for the player for this type of game, just let them try as much as then need.

This looks like a great start to a game but just needs more content. Here's a little more feedback after I played for a while....

• more things to buy would really open up the gameplay
• have a way to buy an auto clicker so the animals can auto generate the resources
• the sound effects can be a little bit distracting when they are coming from offscreen. instead maybe focus on what the player is doing, like when you click on things it would make sense to give auditory feedback.
•  would be cool if the animals react to the environment, like maybe there is grass for the cows to eat.
• id like to see the alien also building outwards, it would really cool if you were building out a farm and the alien was building some alien stuff up there.

This is great start to a game, it felt like you could continue building this out into a large experience. The graphics and animation look awesome! Music works well to create good atmosphere, just needs more gameplay and I would keep playing!

Great game! The graphics and music work well together and it feels like a very complete and cohesive experience. Here is some more feedback after playing a bit....

• There should be a setup time, just let the player place all their spawners then that's the end of setup. 
• I really liked how you integrated saving the endangered animals.
• it seems like there is no way to know when your attack is recharged, there could be a meter or something visible.
• game crashes after game over and cant be restarted

This was a really interesting use of LittleJS, I love how it is more of an art piece then a game. I like the warm sound and use of the post processing shader. Keep up the good work, I hope to see more experiments like in the future.

That was very fun, and I love how the baby gorillas stack up on your back. I really enjoyed the retro style gameplay, it reminded me of games like donkey kong and pac man. The graphics worked really well and even the text along the top gave it a nice arcade styling. Here are some ideas/thoughts...

• a banana powerup, when you get it it works like a power pellet in pac man, allowing you to go into ape mode and knock out the leopards.
• it is kind of weird that the lepords dont attack the babys but it makes sense for the gameplay, not sure how to message that better to the player. 
• would be nice to see more stage variety as the game progresses. maybe mix it up with some different enemy types, or hazards to avoid. 
• you can use the release build of littlejs for better performance and it will remove being able to press escape to bring up the debug mode.
• some animation on the main player would go a long way, even if it was just a 2 frame cycle like the lepords.

Great work on this game! You should consider putting it on newgrounds with some achievements for people.

Definitely a cool start to a driving game! It reminded me a bit of excite bike or the driving game from the original ghost busters. You could involve the theme a bit better, like maybe you are a giant rat racing on the motorcycle instead of a person.

I was pretending that I was tranquilizing the pandas to save them from poachers! The gameplay was simple but good, could just use more variety. Maybe a scrolling view would be a good start just for visual variety. Also it would help to put some a time or bullet limit so there is a clear goal for the player.

That was a really interesting and weirdly dark game, I enjoyed the well written dialogue. I hoped there was going to be a way to escape into the void at the end. Like maybe one of the house has a secret door you can go through to get into the void area. Great use of LittleJS features, everything is working well here, I can even walk behind the trees! Nice graphics, quality and consistent pixel art style. Very cool, I would have kept playing for a while longer but I did everything!

This is a super fun and cool concept to connect the puzzle game with a farm type area the player can build in. I thought the graphics looked great and all the animals stood out well for the puzzle part. The core gameplay of matching up the animals felt great with making long chains. Good idea to start by building off the puzzle example, that's a great way to get started!

I was able to get most of the combinations of matches after looking at the spoilers but took a little before I really understood how all that worked.  It could help to somehow visually show what is happening and maybe have a special sound effect for some of these combos. Like when a player makes a carrot, how do they know that? This could even just display on the bottom of the screen to start with. 

With a very open game like this it can help to have an endgame so players have at least an overall goal, like maybe there are a list of things you need in your town for it to be complete. Also, I think even just in it's current state, it could really benefit from saving the town and puzzle to local storage. This way players can leave and come back to it like you would expect for an idle type game. Overall, great work, I really enjoyed playing!

This was a really fun entry to see, very interesting interpretation of the theme. I though that the gameplay needed a little bit of tuning because it was easy to win even without playing. Maybe for this version the win condition could be more then just one animal, like 1 of each species at least.  I felt it fun to try balancing the food and animals, and this could be a really great mechanic if balanced a little bit.

There were some confusing sounds going on, with so many objects moving around it can help to focus the audio design on just what the player is doing. 

That is a fun game, great music! I love the concept of mixing the classic snake type game with enemies to avoid. I  think it could help add depth to gameplay if the snake grew in length when you eat an apple like in the original game. This also gives another reason to eat the fruit while increasing the difficulty because you have more body segments to protect. 

It would be nice to see some more frames of animation for the graphics and some texture on the snake. I also had an idea that it could be fun if there was a powerup that allowed the snake to eat the mongooses like pac man. I hope you continue working on it!

I am disqualifying this submission because it is a black screen for everyone and also appears it was not made with LittleJS. Please reach out if you are able to fix it.

This game is so awesome, definitely my favorite start screen so far!

• I think this could be fun to play with the mouse. The way it could work is your cat just moves towards your mouse, and click to pounce. The right mouse button is alway available so you could optionally put points on right click and leave left click for pickup/drop.
• It could be fun if the kittens vary a bit in size and color, maybe even other attributes like speed, playfulness, etc?
• maybe there could be some toys for the kittens to play with. 
• There could be mice the kittens chase after?
• After completing a level it doesnt say press enter to continue. Maybe it would make sense to just let the player also press space to press start?
• you can remove the text in the top right by calling setShowWatermark(false) or just using a release build of littlejs.

This game is super cute, I'm looking forward to playing again soon!

Wow, this is super cute! I love the vibe of this game. The pixel art and animations are fantastic.

• It might help to add a little bit of texture to the background. There are many ways to do this but it may help to just draw some a bunch of slightly soft alpha blurred circles of different sizes and positions if that makes sense. Or maybe like a few blades of grass to help give the illusion they are outside. Maybe a few trees or bushes the dogs can hide behind and play around.
• I want to keep playing but I'm not sure I understand the core mechanics. Generally what I think would make sense is... try to keep the food bowl full, sometimes a dog runs away with it, try to brush all the dogs, keep all toys in play as much as possible. It might be kind of fun if instead of throwing the balls off screen there are walls around the edges of the screen and the balls bounce off. That way you dont loose track of whats going on.
• Adding a high score tracker would add some replay value to entice players to come back for a better score. You could even link that to unlocking more stuff like varieties of dogs and toys. 
• Maybe it's just me but I am finding the music a little jarring. Part of this could just be playing with zzfx a bit more to get better samples. A simple thing that could help is just making all the sound lengths shorter and reducing the volume to prevent it from getting too loud. You might even play around with a drum beat too. Weird idea but it could be fun if like yoshi you hear the drum beat only when holding an object.
• The font you chose looks great except there are some thin horizontal lines showing through, I think this is not LittleJS related but the font itself.

Keep up the amazing work, I will check back and see how you continue to improve it!

I really like this one! The pixel art looks great and the controls feel really good which is hard for a game just using the mouse. A few small suggestions...

- You can setup your game on itchio to start automatically without needing the user to click run game. always good to remove barriers from the player.

- Put a little effort into your start screen. You already have some great art to use, just draw it big, like an animation of the player running. Instead of just Click to Start, make it say the name of your game "Polar Bear Jam". You can click to start smaller below that if you want, or put your name there instead.

- I like how it shows the text of how to play in game. You might even do that more by first bringing the player through some obstacles that dont require the super jump to get them used to that. Then show them how to use the super jump.

- Maybe add something to avoid? Thin ice you have to run over.

- Try adding something to the background. The easiest way is taking a look at the Sky object in the platformer example and tweaking it to suit your game

- There is a little texture bleeding in some of the sprites. There are a few ways t o fix that, the easiest is to setTileFixBleedScale(.5) which will crop half a pixel from around every sprite. Another better way is to add 1 pixel of padding around your sprites and use the padding setting of the tile function. The platformer demo was recently updated to include this. it's pretty minor though, just something you can fix if you want to..

Great work! You can always continue building it and adding more stuff to extend the level. I'll be keeping an eye on how it develops!

Amazing stuff, I love all the artwork in this one! A few suggestions for you...

• Show me my stickers! LittleJS is super fast at sprite rendering, you can use this to draw all the stickers the player has. The artwork is so great for the animal stickers so it seems like it would be really worth showing them as much as possible and also provide a visual sense of achievement for the player.
• You can remove the text in the top right by using setShowWatermark(false), or just using the release build.
• The post processing may need some tweaks to work better in your game. Try disabling the vignette (darkening of edges) and maybe generally tone it down a bit. It needs to give a little warmth without being overbearing.
• For the reset progress button you could just use a confirm prompt. That way it is super obvious for the player what is happening and also makes it easier for your UI.
• When it says new over the stickers, if you have more then 1 of them, after keeping it the new should go away for the others since you already have one in your collection.
• Maybe simplify the sell process, like an auto sell button for everything you already have.
• Crazy idea but maybe there could be like a mini stock market where prices of things go up and down.
• Another crazy idea but it would be cool if you could actually stick the stickers. Like imagine there is a wall where you can actually place the stickers.

Keep up the good work! These types of economy based games can be tricky to balance so I hope you continue working on it and listening to player input.

Wow, really great vibe on this one. Lots of art to explore. I will try to give you some feedback for improvements...

• The startup is a bit slow, it could put you into the game quicker
• Instead of having separate E and Q to drop and pickup, maybe just E drops or picks up if there is one below you. This way the controls are a bit simpler. Also it could pick up regardless of whether you have that number selected.
• It should should you which sub you have selected
• The dialogue system looks really cool, I hope you get time to hook it up to gameplay.
• You can remove the text in the top corner by calling setShowWatermark(false)

Great start, I am looking forward to seeing how it progresses as you continue making improvements!

Disqualified, all games must be playable in browser and use LittleJS.

Disqualified, all games must be playable in browser and use LittleJS.

Wow, amazing work! This game feels very high quality and professionally made. I found the puzzles challenging and it was really great to have the save feature work automatically so I could come back and work on stuff. It's actually hard to give feedback because it's already so solid, I may need to think on it a bit. A few small suggestions for now...

• Disable the LittleJS watermark in the top right with setShowWatermark(false);
• Esc would make sense to have the same functionality as P.
• Make the start screen a bit more interesting, maybe incorporate some of the art from the game.
• After unlocking new worlds you should remove the "Complete X levels to unlock" text.
• When you eat a tile, the particle effect comes out the top right corner rather then the center. 
• There is an itch.io setting "Automatically start on page load", this is really good for small games that load quickly like yours.

I will keep playing, need to unlock level 4!

Disqualified, all games must be playable in browser and use LittleJS.

Great work, this is a really fun concept with solid gameplay mechanics. The player movement and controls are working nice. Cool explosion effect from the egg. I managed to beat the game. I have just a few suggestions for you, feel free to ignore....

• Allow the player to change facing direction while crouched. This would be very useful when laying eggs.
• Death animation could be more dramatic, and maybe speed up the respawn time too.
• I found it difficult to get close enough to the red wall to blow it up without dying. I was confused how sometimes I could blow up the red walls and sometimes not (like at the start of level 2). It would help the player if it was obvious which walls were breakable.
• Maybe give the player an unlimited supply of eggs or a way of replenishing them because you can get stuck without any.
• Visually could use a little more polish. It doesn't need a ton of work but for example, if there was a thin brighter outline around all the solid areas. Depending on your setup this may be super simple to do. Also try a little color or even particles to the background to give the scene some more depth. This could also help each level feel different.
• Instead of rendering to a super low res canvas, I think you could achieve the same pixel look with a high res canvas with better results. 
• A sound effect when you rescue the monkey would be nice.
• For the start screen, try arranging a simple scene by manually drawing some of your sprites really big behind the text there so it isn't just black. This kind of treatment may seem trivial because it is not gameplay but it really goes a long way to making players feel your game is complete.
• Give the game some narrative context. Why are you a super powerful ostrich rescuing monkeys? It can be a silly story, just a few sentences in the game description. AI could probably give you a few ideas to get started if you are stuck.

Looking forward to playing again soon!

Disqualified, all games must use LittleJS Engine.

For the toolbox puzzle, I see now that is tricky to get. Sometimes you have to make these things a bit easier at least at first. So what I would recommend is have all the roof tiles be brown except for 5 which are the colors in order you need them to be. Then like later on in the game you could have the more complex version of the same puzzle (the way it currently works) but you will probably need a npc near by to give a hint.

Small suggestion but you should consider creating a cover image for your game, even just a screenshot with the name of the game would be great. AI can also be good for generating the cover art, just tell it about your game and ask it to make a cover image.