itch.io

So... what did I learn?

• I learned that I want to help people make awesome games and be more active in the community. 
• I learned not to be concerned with ratings and that my definition of "winning" is valid. 
• I learned that I can't do all the things all the time. 
• I learned how to vlog... maybe...
• I learned that Juniper Dev takes games very seriously. But like really, her video content is up there with Masahiro Sakurai's when it comes to teaching game development concepts.

Thanks to Juniper and everyone involved for elevating the medium of gamedev to new heights. Hope my little learning thread inspires you all to keep making games!

Congrats on finishing your first gamejam! I agree that choices should matter even if luck is a huge component of the game. 

This is very much the most serious game I've played. 

Perfect execution of the theme of Spin to Win! Well, it's more like "spin to not get fired" but I digress.

Spaghetti code or not, you are on track to make more great games! 

Well done learning all that from scratch! It feels great to make something 100% original. I'll have to check out Bosca Caoil; I use LMMS for my music (also free/open source). 

I like how you leverage the rules of tetris in your game for accessibility (the way you put a spin on it was also really clever). It's kinda like using chess as a base game; pretty universally understood set of rules that you can build off of. 

I was able to get all the valves!

Slow start, but once I found out how to break the game it became a therapy simulator. I love how the floating numbers collide with each other! 

I broke the game and got to lvl 125 before I stopped. I enjoyed the moment I became unstoppable, but it also resulted in an endgame where I saw nothing but yellow. Better than seeing nothing but red I suppose... 

• Not sure if there's any exponential difficulty scaling but that would help finish a game eventually. 
• The fact that the leveling and upgrade choices felt meaningful and I was able to get super strong is actually a good thing! I had to put in an effort to get there, and it paid off. 
• The way the theme was implemented is literally perfect, though it does become a bit of a chore sometimes. 
• Good choice of music! Fits the incremental minimalist tower defense genre of game. 
• Using a white circle to display missing health is clever. 
• Not sure how serious the business is. Protecting your investments is pretty serious though...

You made a game that got me hooked from the start and kept me going. Excellent work!

I ended up scoring 13300 points! 

Other than the lag on the first hit, this game was smooth and well-balanced. I really enjoyed learning how to optimize the gameplay of gaining spin speed and avoiding spinners. The fact that health = damage and hp regen = slower movement creates such a fantastic game loop imo.

The slow-mo effects when you knock out the other spinners is awesome! Reminds me of the smash bros ultimate kill screen. 

I missed my first 20 passes. Still had fun, especially once I got better! The music sets a very serious atmosphere. 

For a first-time standalone game, this is a standout! 

• The driving game is well balanced, though learning how to slow down required some extra reading. 
• The first couple of spinning blade games can be won by avoiding the other spinner, so I found it was too passive. 
• The art/music/SFX made this feel like a complete experience, and I liked the hand-drawn aesthetic. 
• There is certainly room for something to connect the two games together in some way. 
• A bit of storytelling would help sell the experience of being a professional spinner. 
• Both games connect well with the theme. 
• Driving is serious. 

Great job! 

Ahh I think I know what you're talking about. Your game had an invisible wall which told me I couldn't cross it, but I didn't expect I could go over it until I accidentally discovered how. Many players won't do that and will get discouraged. 

A little direction goes a long way, though I agree it's fun to figure things out based on intuition. I like how Valve handles tutorials in their games: they imply what you need to do without interrupting the gameplay. 

meow.

(translation: I did the thing!)

I appreciate you defending your narrative! My main disconnect came from the contrast of negative text and positive visuals/music. I can suggest a small way to sell the fear: stop the music on certain dialogue lines. On example would be "you are small and weak so this should suit you" and then add an unsettling pause before the music resumes. Then it's clear that something is wrong to the player and they can ponder why.

Seems like I did pretty good :)

How does a human comprehend all these modifiers? Perhaps I shouldn't delve too deep, haha. 

A Good Game! You took this gamejam very seriously and I am impressed with how much this game offers in a short timeframe.

In terms of the story (wish I could add spoiler tags on itch lol), I didn't understand why the animals had to be mean to the protagonist at the start. It makes sense that the capybara wants to vibe with the animals and the animals though he would die if they didn't stop him from being too friendly, but that would work better in the middle of the story than the beginning imo. I think it would be stronger if losing the mother happened during the gameplay. Perhaps you get to play all the minigames the first time with positive feedback, then that happens and they don't want you to help because the mother being captured teaches them that generosity is dangerous. It's only until you are rejected by all the animals do you find the human to help, which leads to the positive ending.

I realize the story can't be too long, but that scenario would connect with me a little better. The current scenario would make sense if you put more emphasis on deciphering clues about what happened (like the scarf). What do you think?

The SFX for this game is seriously incredible; I wanted to break the lollipop so bad! I think it should have more acceleration/control so turning around isn't such a drag, but the physics are solid. 

This is a very serious game that perfectly simulates an office job. The puzzle of movement was fun to figure out, though I did tumble over one time and had to reset but it wasn't too frustrating. Sounds effects were realistic too! It's just missing a well-spoken narrator to point out your ineptitude. 

Fantastic nautical experience! 3D models are clean, the colors are vibrant, and the camera transitions were a nice touch (the credits sign was well placed) 

First game I didn't realize how the clock mechanic worked. I figured it out after opening the "how to play" tab, but my second game I spend too much time thinking and not enough time spinning so I lost early. In my third game I spun too fast. There was nothing that told me how I should play optimally, so it felt like I was running into unintuitive barriers. A little more direction and this game would be a fun challenge to get better scores with! 

Scaling issues with different screen sizes, so relatable. I had that issue with UI elements in my last game; things that were meant to be offscreen were visible. 

Kudos to learning 3D in blender! 

Oh this is so good to learn! I always put so much time in movement that I forget to build the world itself. I like how you use Celeste as a reference; the levels force you to master the movement mechanics to make progress and that's what makes it fun. 

Also welcome back champ!

This game is super accessible, great first entry for a gamejam! 

I got over 100 points by hugging the perimeter. Would suggest slower moving objects for the difficulty progression. It would be fun to have dozens of things coming at you and enough time to plan avoiding them. 

Ah yes, I should've read that my bad. The definition makes sense, as does your intention to make the car uncontrollable. 

Took me a while to figure out that spacebar spins the wheel, but I was hooked! Managed to survive in the end. 

• The choices for spells were immersive and having to spin to cast them is really clever and thematic. I started with the doubles so it was funny since they didn't do anything until I leveled up. 
• Interesting how passive effect are attached to the wheel so you get less consistent spellcasting. I like how it balance out those effects, but I did feel a bit nerfed lategame. I would've liked if passive upgrades had to be hit like curse and were removed afterwards. You could play into the gambling effect better if a strong upgrade needed a 1 in 20 roll to activate. Would feel more like spinning to win than spinning to spin again. 

• The difficulty was noticeable at first and I almost died a couple times. However, I discovered being faster than the skeletons meant I could leave them in a big clump and just avoid getting in their way. 
• The lategame was too slow because I couldn't do enough damage to blow up the skeletons. It became a walking simulator at that point. I wish I had a vampire survivors-esque insanity build to go ham with. 
• Do the skeletons really care about your debt? Not sure how serious to make of it... 

• Collisions are pretty unforgiving. Sometimes the direction you drift is further into the wall which softlocks the game. Simple fix would be adding the option to go backwards and removing the drift movement effect. 
• I don't mind the speed of the car, but the fact that it doesn't stop sometimes makes it really hard to stay on the target and avoid crashing into walls. Consistency is key! 
• When breaking, some deceleration would work better than a sudden stop. 
• The theme "spin to win" isn't shown much. You can turn the car but that's not really a spin. I guess tires spin but you don't see them do that here. 
• Driving to work is very serious!

Hope my feedback is helpful. Keep spinning your wheels to make cool games! 

Congrats to all the winners!

Yup, this is pretty common in my experience. I work with physics a lot so it becomes easy to avoid mistakes when playtesting. Of course, if someone does end up screwing up then it needs to be forgiving enough to get them back on track. Perhaps that's the real issue instead of the game being "too hard to control" but I'll have to take a spin myself to see. 

Oh yeah good catch on shader compiling. Web builds take forever to compile the first time (especially in unity web builds with LFO) so it's good to have something uploaded before it's too late to change it. 

Glad you enjoyed making those crunchy sound effects!

You sold me on that concept. I'm curious what you learned with storytelling! I like to create short games that leave an impression on people, and I've learned to do that with music and minimalism. How do you make players feel like they earned their win? 

You can do all that in Unreal? Impressive! 

I use the classic Blender+Unity combo for 3d animation stuff but navigating Blender can get confusing and I always forget the hotkeys. The Unity animation rigging package is pretty cool but things gets scuffed with IK constraints from my experience.

One of the hardest things to do for a gamejam game, totally understand. When you build and play your own game, you get so familiar with it that it's hard to imagine what a first-time player will need to know. Seeing your game, I can imagine there's a lot to cover!

It depends on how complex the game is imo. I can imagine it must be difficult to implement one in a gamejam if there's a need for it, but a simple recurring popup with highlights/arrows and text to explain things wouldn't be too much work.

You can do lots of things! Perhaps not everything, but neither can anyone else. I could learn a lot from being a teammate working with someone who does what I can't do. 

Which part of game dev do you enjoy the most?

Lets go Unity gang!

That's pretty comprehensive, glad you got to delve into a lot of different components! There's a lot of technical stuff that goes over my head, but you learn as you discover where/when/how things go wrong. That's like where 80% of my time goes, haha. 

Wow, congratulations on getting your first game out there! Learning how to make a game from scratch is the best way to learn imo, so kudos on stepping outside of tutorial land to make something totally your own. 

I too am a huge proponent for "less is more" as a philosophy, especially for this game jam (despite the very serious nature of it...) 

My take on the theme of "spin to win" was about challenging the notion of what it means "to win" more than anything else. 

This is a great thing to learn! Game designers are artists after all. 

I think it's important to recognize that programming a great game is an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish compared to programming traditional apps. Getting a feel for the game isn't a binary operation. You have to playtest and observe all scenarios that your game is capable of and use art/music to sell the experience beyond the game logic. Whether you succeed or fail is entirely subjective from the perspective of the player. 

Cool that you mention board games too! Programming a game allows you to account for variables that would be hard to keep track of in a board game, so there's a lot more freedom to customize the experience without being overwhelming. 

Time management and scope are two of the most important things to manage in game dev. It's certainly more difficult when you have other priorities to take care of, so great job finding the balance!

That was me with Unity a decade ago.  Everyone's gotta start somewhere! 

Maybe I'll give godot a "spin" in my next project. 

Great stuff! Classes are the powerhouse of the game engine after all, hehe.