itch.io

Honestly, a very interesting concept for a mini-game! I enjoyed playing it once I figured it out, and managed to finish it after like 5 attempts! 

However, I gotta nitpick the "figure out" part. I feel like the concept could be presented in a better way. My first two attempts I've spent trying to understand the controls, mostly because nothing communicated to me that I had to merge 3 or more (is it like a norm in tile-matching games? haven't played that much titles in this genre)

Additionally, I didn't spot any difference between different types of hexes. It would be interesting if there were special types of ghosts who'd react to certain hexes more, forcing you to prioritize some columns instead of just trying to maximize any of them. Imagine a scenario where you'd have a wave of yellow and cyan ghosts, and you could either get a spell of both red and blue or realize they both share green and just use that. Definitely a potential here!

Speaking of cool things, I think hexes having resets based on usage instead of time would be more engaging - at the very least, one less thing out of player's control 👀

Despite the lacks in gameplay I mentioned, very cool idea, and still quite solid execution for a jam! Good job!

Damn, this was fun! Simple gameplay with variety of interactions, and they're all taken care of quite nicely. Stuff like being able to place a rock to block a mole from moving between rows doesn't seem to be important at first, but these possibilities are what allows you to make micro decisions during gameplay that are engaging and fun! I've spent solid hour mastering the game and learning all of the spells and I consider it time well spent!

With that being said, the game can be a bit frustrating at the very beginning. Getting damaged or being invulnerable to the next hit (for instance, through heal on hit spell) isn't properly communicated to a player. I often didn't notice when I took damage, or even what gave me said damage (only after 30 minutes I've noticed not clearing the wave in time damages you). This is especially annoying considering the fact the hitboxes seem to function in a funny way (is it like tied to a tile instead of a sprite?) and sometimes the hit doesn't seem to be deserved - I had to strongly adjust to that.

Apart from that, very solid entry! I ultimately won by farming a couple of advance spells throughout the first waves, then using magma on the last column - this basically auto-completed the last couple of waves (some of them didn't even start, which I assume is a bug caused by not being able to spawn an enemy on claimed tile?). I'd say triple spells are a bit too OP but I kind of liked it LOL 

I think the gameplay loop could use some variety. Once you get some upgrades, it essentially boils down to applying the same strategy for the same enemies over and over again, eventually making gameplay not engaging after like 20 waves. I'm thinking the easiest way to work around this would be to add one or two extra types of enemies, for instance, ones that can predict your movement and shoot in that rough direction or something.

Other than that, visually it looks very nice and controlling the ship feels pretty good - you've definitely spent a lot of time on game juiciness and it shows. However, you get minus points for square grid in hex-based jam LOL.

It's said in the legend - you need to ascend and "merge" with the sun! But it's borderline impossible without figuring out the spell system, which is the main challenge. I guess reverse-engineering is not for everyone. I'll probably add some kind of hint system for the itch page at some point.

Glad you enjoyed the intro, despite it being the silliest thing ever LOL

The "merge" part is kind of just a goal of the game - you have to "merge" with the sun by ascending to it. I wonder how much of the logic behind the spell system you managed to figure out though! Hopefully enough to aid you in that quest!

You create blocks, but each block can have different physics properties. My idea was to create a reverse-engineering challenge, where you'd have to figure out the underlying algorithm behind the spell system, which would help you in achieving the goal of the game (ascending to the sun).

I guess it would also be fun if you could affect more stuff, like create wind zone or sth. I thought about it, but I guess it was outside the scope of this jam project. Thanks for playing through it though!

The concept is amazing! Definitely one of the more creative ways to utilize the theme. 

I got confused as to why sometimes my entire island would move to a different location, kind of destroying the point of preparing an entire tile around the surrounding. I would stay longer and paint for a bit more if it wasn't for that. The idea of claiming new colors could also be communicated a bit better - I tried to unlock them by holding it with color picker, while it seemed like I had to use a drawing tool for some weird reason.

You focused on a simple idea and made it polished and fun! It's missing some juiciness, but the core gameplay feels nice and fair! I guess one thing I would tweak is the length of later levels - at least for me, after like level 12, they felt unnecessarily long, and at this stage the game is still relatively calm enough to recover if you get accidentally hit.

Solid entry! If it was an 80's arcade machine I'd be stuck with it for hours!

I've played through and I had fun collecting those small guys! 

I kinda wish there was more combinations - a big majority of the ones I've tried didn't work, and ultimately I managed to find, like, three. I assume the button "Collection" in the pause menu that didn't work for me would reveal recipes for hexagons I've found, giving me knowledge of how to craft those high-tier ones, which would be super cool. Not sure if it just something that broke for me or you've hit a scope creep and haven't been able to properly implement it in time 👀 Either way, I managed to hit the quota before trying more combinations (spooky ending btw, won't be able to sleep at night now). 

Apart from some technical issues (not recapturing your mouse after user unfocuses the game, not being able to skip through cutscenes in caves which gets quite annoying after going through them like 20 times, and well, the aforementioned collection menu not functioning) it's a quite cute collectathon mini-game. Nice work on your first game jam!

It was surprisingly fun to try and figure out different mechanics. I would, however, very much appreciate some indications that your actions are actually doing anything - I figured out about 10 slams by pure accident because I decided to just spam mouse button while talking to someone. I had absolutely no indication that there's any action happening after the grill is closed and opened, making me wonder if you have to wait specific amount of time before reopening. Even the sprite change on cigar isn't that clear, I didn't even notice the change at first. Maybe some smoking VFX? I know that maybe it wasn't in your intention to make it so clear, but it would still be a nice way to tell the player that something is cooking (haha get it, because you literally cook...)

I'm still happy that I've managed to find out most of (I think) mechanics with no hints. Also visually it was a blast. I love the sprite work and the dimensionality of it. Definitely looks like a polished product! Well done!

cool

Very fascinating movement. I was unsure whether the pulsating velocity effect is a result of laggy playback on a browser or intended behaviour. Either way, it created a trippy platforming experience that was somehow fascinating?! I didn't really understand how boost thingies worked, especially in first level where they were seemingly just "teleporting" me next to the wall near the end (well thank you for leaving me a cool wall-jumping tech, not sure how intended that is LOL) and the respawn mechanics would occasionally always teleport me into the void, but other than that, very fun and very trippy experience! Aesthetics in some levels were amazing. I also liked talking with rats, they had... unusual dialogue! Just wish there was more platforming, but I'm just a gameplay guy, so of course I want more gameplay 👀

That was.... definitely an experience. Some games weren't actually that clear with control scheme even though the description promised this (like jump button in a platformer game, but I guess you can quickly bruteforce it through a range of most used buttons in platformer games, but then what's the point of the top HUD 👀)

Other than that, very neat recreation of a bunch of different genres. I'm impressed, considering you've managed to do it in a week, even though I could probably point out a bunch of nitpicks for every one of them 🙃

Big fan of the visuals and the background work! (also the itch.io page goes crazy)

Burying mechanic is interesting. I wonder if it can be expanded in any way. Specific shapes of graves that can fit only specific types of enemies? I don't know, I just love interactive elements!

Anyway, the ambience was pretty creepy, which didn't really fit to my feelings of laughter when I was burying a dolphin and then roleplaying Touhou near the end... but I guess that's how a fever dream would go 🙃 Also bonus points for letting me kill lobsters.

I guess what's missing in terms of gameplay is any kind of feedback to your interactions - the biggest offender here is shopping. I didn't even realize at first that I was even making purchase, but hey, at least I got myself 4 bucket upgrades!

I liked the simplistic visuals! Apart from missing audio and collisions,I'd complain about attack input being slightly confusing - not only a delay on it without locking the player's rotation makes it so you can change the angle of attack after the attack, but also by attacking again you can cancel the previous one - my friend was confused and thought that attack action broke 👀

The movement was fun to mess around with. But I gotta say, level design leads to some confusing moments. During my first playthrough, I was often finding myself in a situation of not knowing where I should go or what's even happening on screen as I was flying through some tunnel and couldn't get my bearing with a camera.

I wanted to design something around that concept. In fact, the last puzzle is laid out in a way so you could technically type out "right" in reverse for later use. However, major obstacle in this idea is that, whenever your cursor is ready to execute such word, you can just delete letters and type them again any way you like. For the future iteration, I thought it would be interesting to have pre-made letters you cannot remove but you can execute (like yellow text at the very end). Your idea with ignoring blank spaces and gray characters is interesting as well, although I think it could get confusing. I'll write it down for the future!

Oh, yeah, no, totally valid observations. I'll definitely consider them if I ever decide to continue working on this game (and I already have some gameplay mechanics in mind!)

• For me and people who I let playtest the game in VC, I think it felt intuitive that you just run the commands along the direction you type them, and it would've been weirder if they had to type the word the other way. But assuming you mean the last puzzle here, it was actually designed around that concept, but it is totally not necessary, as you can just use deletion trick from previous puzzles to type whatever you want.
• I've noticed Ctrl+Z can be slightly too destructive. In retrospect, I think I should've separated undo action every X amount of letters (or mark a separation when you enter a new level), so it doesn't just revert you a kilometer away.
• Yeah, this mechanic is not introduced well at all. We've already talked about it on Discord. A single extra puzzle before that would resolve this issue and I'll make sure to include it if I continue with the project (or maybe as a quick patch after the jam!)

This is good feedback. Thank you!

Short and sweet bullet-hell game! Sound effects for bosses are very creepy... I love it! Especially with how they contrast pinball-like sounds of combat 🙃

The only problem I've encountered is the crosshair not being clearly visible - it can easily blend with the background, especially when there's a lot of bullets on a screen (like in the last level). I'm also not a fan of how the player transitions between levels - it feels too sudden. I imagine that was the easiest to implement 👀. Even something like a teleport token that drops when an enemy is defeated would do, because then you separate an action of defeating an enemy and moving on to the next level. But this one is really a nitpick.

Very cool entry!

Maybe it's a browser issue? I let two people on Linux test it and they had no issues (apart from a french guy having AZERTY layout, which didn't work with the game apparently)

I always adore a combination of retro mechanics with modern solutions. ASCII gameplay with fluid simulation and shaders? I love it!

Gameplay was amazing as well. Some places actually rewarded the player for smart use of their spells, but didn't really stop them for going with a brute-force approach and hoping for the best. 

I guess the game can occasionally be hard to read. Sometimes I wasn't sure what's happening on screen, where I am, where enemies are, and that very often happened when I was switching between weapons. I guess part of it comes from the fact there's not enough time to memory-muscle your weapons, and my eyeballs were constantly switching between side-bar and the gameplay. 

Another complain I have is that there's no save system - the game froze twice for me near the end of a third-to-last level, and I had to do everything again (it was still a bearable level of engagement, as I always tried to get through those dungeons in a different way on my subsequent playthroughs). But that's just baby-crying from me, honestly.

Again, great work!

How do you delete your own code? That might be a good hint!

...but yeah, this mechanic is not well presented and I consider it a design flaw. People who playtested it struggled but said "oh im so stupid" at the end so I assumed it's good enough.

Fun entry! I played "Merge to win" for like 30 minutes and it was very relaxing for my brain. I always loved physics interactions in video games, and I think it encapsulates what's so fun about it. Those "pop" sound effects are just cherry on top. Survival mode is fun as well, it's amazing to see how funky physics behave with those attractions, but I'd recommend making a barrier of some sorts, or a magnet to map's center, because they would just keep flying out of the distance, meaning I would never lose.

For the "Merge to win" mode, my only complain is that some colors are kind of hard to distinguish - purple and pink are very similar to each other. I'd recommend messing around with different patterns or something. I see you've started on this variety by making some materials unlit, but I think more variation would be appreciated so types of cubes can be easily recognized, especially those at low levels.

Dude, I wish you could actually collide with those cubes! That would've been trippy. Instead at some point you're just jumping on invisible platforms covered by visual floating cubes, which is a trippy experience on itself, but I think it's a missed opportunity! 🙃

I think a massive design flaw is to not give the player control over the camera in a 3D platformer game, especially considering the fact player inputs are dependent on camera orientation. While it may be argued it adds to a feeling of a fever dream, it would work only if the challenges were easy, like the first level. And instead, it took me a moment to deal with wall jumps in level 2 - not only the camera angle is very bad for it but I feel like wall slide detection is not very generous somehow. Not to mention, with everything that's going on, it's hard to feel the depth of the scene and I missed the collectible pills multiple times, thinking I'm going straight at them.

But it was nice to play, especially Level 1 - wish there was more simple levels like this one that I could just jump around in this simplistic, yet freaky environment!

I think the game should have more base rooms (as in, already existing in the game without contribution), considering the concept relies on community-built content, as the process is not really convenient right now. I, for one, am not eager to share my password through a third-party application, so I couldn't "leave a dream behind". Still, I see a potential of an idea, and it's very interesting. I think a good idea for building on top of it would be to add some way to rate other people's riddles to ensure some level of quality in a pool of puzzles a new player receives, sort of how it's done in this type of games (think Super Mario Maker or Dreams)

In terms of execution, there is an issue of the interface not being responsive to the window size - I had some text go out of a visible region when reached second or third hint, and even on full-screen, some parts were slightly cut off. Despite that, and the fact I had no indication that a textbox is currently active, the presentation is straight-forward enough that I didn't have any other complains. 

Much better than what I did in that one video a couple of years ago lol

One of the most polished entries on this jam! Wish there was more lasers though 👀

I'm giving you 0 in effort and 6 in fun lmfao

Certainly an unique recreation. You took me back to old days when I wanted to make my own game engine in Java myself! You get a point in effort for sure lol

Nice idea! I love how stuff like lighting is still possible in this limited ASCII environment - really makes you wonder what's the limit with this sort of artistic direction. Also, nice that you've decided to mess with something new!

I hope you'll also release the version that can be played in a terminal eventually - definitely something I'd keep in my hard drive for funnies LOL

Very solid entry with positively dumb writing that has put a smile to my face at least several times! Very polished as well. Wish it was more interactable but I guess it's really a problem with a genre rather than the game. Still, very nice job, and quite creative twist on our beloved test chamber. People gonna have crush on ceiling laser emitter now...

I downloaded tf2 just to play this

The fact you've recreated lots of assets and mechanics from the original game instead of going for the path of just making a workshop level is very impressive. Also, the concept is well executed, and there's an actual effort in story writing. There are occasional bugs but that's expected. Extremely solid entry.

Cool idea to make Triple Laser into Sokoban, but I wish there was more - you can win this in like 3 seconds. Still, I hope you enjoyed messing with the idea and the PuzzleScript thingy if that's the first time you used it!

Definitely adds up to the variety of the jam. The fact you can make visualizations like these in Desmos is pretty surprising. Just wish the rectangular shape looked more like Triple Laser :)

One of the most solid entries of this jam, despite some bugs (got stuck in a wall once) and stiff gameplay experience (difficulty of placing portals and picking up props). I like the puzzle mechanics you've managed to create fully around the limitation (even though the last couple of levels were quite difficult to solve).

Certainly an... interesting experience. I hope you've learned a thing or two about Godot while developing it.

I bet there could be something done gameplay-wise to make point-and-click in Triple Laser more interesting, but I'd imagine it would require an outstanding amount of work. But I hope you had fun experimenting with this genre!

The entry itself presents quite nicely! Also I chuckled at intro and laughed at ending lmao

There are plans to make it a full-fledged game. I imagine that's where we'll make an actual effort of keeping the leaderboards clean.

7 days.