itch.io

Very nice game! This reminded me of those old Minecraft parkour maps where standing on different colored clay blocks gave you different status effects. 

The game was very charming, and I liked the little bit of story (and tutorial explanations) provided by the narrator. The movement also felt very clean, and the effects and particles was very satisfying, making death to a set of spikes a pretty fun experience. As many others have mentioned, the liberal amount of checkpoints throughout the game made it much more bearable, as this is definitely a game that got me frustrated after a few minutes of playing. With the "bug" theme where things act differently as you might expect,  however, I'd say this isn't a bad thing at all. Your team captured this essence very well! 

I'm unsure if I was supposed to be carefully looking at what colors the blocks were and then acting accordingly, or just blitzing through and trial-and-erroring. I kind of found myself doing the latter, just because the camera view was so small and the movement of the player was so fast. I think because I was doing this, I never really stopped and paused to think what the vairous blocks did (unless they were explained for me). I just kept jumping around where I felt like I could jump, and I ended up finishing the levels. At the beginning, I actually just ran through the original first "fake wall" without even knowing it was supposed to be a "fake wall".

For a game that is centered around bugs, the gameplay felt very smooth and entertaining! Loved it. Keep it up. :D

Ayyy!! I'm glad you found out the inspiration for the game! And yeah, the difficulty definitely scales significantly depending on what medium you use to play it. I'm sure it'd be more fun and replicate the Nintendo feel with a tablet instead. :)

Thanks for playing!

This is... beautiful. It's an artistic masterpiece. I've never truly picked up a game and wanted to keep playing it as much as I did with Rat King Riot.

Yay, thank you so much for playing! We're happy about the level of simplicity we were able to achieve, and the amount of variation we were able to get out of it. I agree on the balancing, though -- it's kind of strange, since with the (minimal amount of) playtesting we did, we noticed that it was extremely difficult for some and extremely straightforward for others. It's interesting to think of ways to balance this, given that fine motor control varies. Might be much better on a tablet. :)

Aw, thank you so much!! We're very flattered, love to hear it ^^

The look of this game is so professional! The subtle floaty-ness of the tiles, hexagonal consistency of the world and UI elements, and simplicity of the fonts make it almost seem as if it were coded into Tabletop Simulator; it truly feels like something I'd see on Steam or the shelf of a board game shop. The name of the game is also very clever.

Gameplay-wise, the onboarding phase of the game was straightforward and easy to learn. Although it initially scared me with the number of controls listed in the game's description, it turned out to be easy to master with the help of the important control scheme being listed at the top right of the screen. It wasn't long until I started just jumping through the different levels and planning where to place my tracks. (That being said, I think it's a bit difficult to figure out which tracks are ones you've placed, and which ones are locked on the map. I found myself stuck on the level with two trains for a while because I forgot I'd placed some of the tracks myself.)

Additionally, for the few levels I've tried out, the level-building is nicely done. I like how you balance the challenge of figuring out how to rotate the pieces, along with the fact that trains can collide with one another. The steady introduction of mechanics overall feels well-paced.

Overall, great job!

I absolutely love the aesthetic and game feel you created with this masterpiece! The simple (but very effective) music, monochromatic art style, and crunchy graphics all come together to make the game feel immersive, quiet, and even soothing.

The onboarding process was a little tricky for me, since there was a lot of text at the very beginning explaining what to do. It would've been nice to have a reminder of what keys I could press to start looping the meteors, but once I got it down, it felt pretty natural. It was nice seeing the meteors get caught in the nets and be absorbed by the research centers, which satisfyingly spewed out a ton of resources. :)

The movement has a very spacey feel, which adds a good deal of challenge when it comes to looping the meteors. With this said, I'm curious if there could be more challenges or obstacles (other than the lack of fuel) to make the game feel a little less repetitive after looping the first few meteors. Especially since you are described as "humanity's last hope", I was expecting something a bit more intense or extreme when I first opened up the game.

But overall, awesome job. Keep it up!

Thanks for playing, Josh! The difficulty scaling was definitely difficult to work with, it's really true what they say about developers finding their own games way too easy. Once we had someone new playtest, we really realized how difficult the game truly was, especially when you hadn't been looping mice for several hours already.

Thanks for the comment! :)

Aw thanks!! We spent a lot of time just trying to get the looping to feel right -- we went from having the player click down every single time the loop broke, to having it be seamless and just allow the user to draw as much as they want without needing to lift up the mouse.

You're definitely not wrong about the upgrade screen, though! We noticed that as we playtested once during development -- we just had a tiny bit of sunk cost in the current design that we wanted to keep grinding out new features. Thanks for the feedback! :D

Ah yes, this is something we noticed a little late into development! The white box that says "Upgrade" is actually a button, but it's pretty easy to miss. :')

But thanks for playing, we really appreciate the feedback! Hearing this is a good reinforcer for how we should pay attention to UIs in the future ^^

I did! Almoooost missed it :')

Okay, oops! Thanks for catching this! The Secret map is not supposed to be the map that you saw -- fixing this in a quick patch now! :')

Aw, thanks! I've heard of Wildfrost before, I'm in love with the art style -- I'll have to take a closer look at it! :0

Thanks for enjoying our game! It means a lot! ^^

how DARE you

Wow!! Thank you so much for the support, glad to hear it. ^^

I don't think your last message sent fully. But I hear your concerns! Seems like other people feel similarly about the Waterlogged event.

The dummy level isn't really supposed to be easily completeable, so it's more like an easter egg challenge! I've seen a few people beat it before, but it's definitely extremely difficult.

Oh yeah, that fourth level... I've only seen very few people beat it qwq

Thanks for the detailed feedback - I think the Waterlogged effect is really annoying for some people and really easy for others. I'm curious about how I could balance that... perhaps just reducing the effect stack like you said.

But anyways, thanks for playing!!

Thank you!! 

Just fixed this earlier today after reading your comment. This bug only happened to appear on the web build and not the executable or Unity editor, so much appreciated! :)

Thank you!! Glad to hear :)

This is actually so adorable I love it :3

Perfect, just as we intended!!

Oh pfft, thank you! I hope that entails your kitchen experiences were fun rather than chaotic! :')

Ahhhh! Right, forgot about audio stuff. Should've coded in a mute button or +/- controls to change the volume.

Thanks for playing, though! :)

Aw man, sorry about the soft-lock!! We also caught that issue when it was too late - honestly just a fault of not-enough playtesting. :(

I'm happy that you still found some sort of fun andnostalgia factor in it!!

Thanks for playing, will do. :3

It's interesting to hear about your strategy - it was definitely not easy balancing the benefits of utility versus decor. :)

We are also saddened by how the build cuts out the visibility of the ready button... but I'm glad that the description was able to help!

Thanks for playing!

We also noticed the door square problem a bit too late - definitely an oversight on our part due to lackluster playtesting. ":) This is also a reason why the resetting-money glitch exists (apparently, getting a jukebox is possible, but it's super annoying; this is a bug!).  Regardless, I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed the game despite these problems.

I love the suggestion about randomization in table-selection AI! This would place less emphasis on the player trying to figure out how the algorithm works for table selection, allowing them to consider the restaurant's overall layout more strongly.

Thank you so much for playing! :D

Oh yes, that's on the backlog of things to do!! I'm surprised there's not too much else like Bookworm Adventures already!

Thank you very much, I appreciate it :D

Glad you think so!! I typically haven't done much of the art for my games so I'm trying to make do with what I can :')

Whoa, thank you so much!!! :0

Love to see it, hope it was fun!

More content is definitely planned for the near future - and with this comes new levels and new treasures! That's an interesting idea for a treasure mechanic - I may play around with it and see what I can do in terms of balance!

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. :)

Thank!!

Thanks, very much appreciated :>

I am so glad you think so :)

Big thank you to the U.S. president for sponsoring this mission

That's the beauty of RNG! Sometimes you have broken runs, sometimes you don't :')

I think it's camera shy

PAIN.

please stop contacting me and my family we’re terrified

The Catastrophe card is mistyped right now - what it should say is:

When a card is played, deal 3 damage. Exhausts.

LOL, thanks for the feedback! But shhhhhh :)