itch.io

Impressive technical work! I enjoyed the ship building, and seeing the different enemy ship designs. Without obstacles or different options, though, flying to the signal felt extraneous. Using the mouse to fly and aim not immediately intuitive to me either. I could see myself getting sucked into this for much longer with some balancing and extra options, though. Great submission!

Yeah, Crumbling Castle was >95% complete, while SWAN SONG is in the 30-40% range. The original scope wasn't too big, but I hit unexpected hurdles with Fourier transforms, and my ambition far exceeded my ability.

Thanks for giving it a try and the detailed feedback! I'm glad the ending was worth it.

Sure! To clarify, I stopped at the puzzle with the door lock. Maybe I did decode the first signal, but the result felt more like a punishment than a reward, and didn't leave me with an incentive/hook to continue. That combined with the clunky feel of interactions and my lack of patience halted my progress. I'd probably watch a video of a streamer playing it, though.

Pushed a fix! Thanks again for reporting that.

Nice tower defense game! The art was nice. Cool water shader as well. Happy to see the theme play a role in the mechanics, though the lore/reasoning felt forced. I would have liked the ability to restart a level, instead of having to reload the whole game from the beginning. Towers would sometimes shoot at already dead enemies, wasting ammo, which was frustrating for a game where the munitions are the limiting factor. More variety, upgrades, and/or combinations of signals would have been nice, too.

Well done!

Really nice work on the audio and the atmosphere. I wanted to get into the decoding, but just felt like too much was getting in the way. The default controls felt rough and the mouse sensitivity range was pretty wild. Having to switch between keyboard and mouse to interact vs. leave didn't feel right, and the transition animations and movement felt slow. I think there could be some rewarding gameplay here if the game didn't ask so much of the player at the very beginning. As it was, I lost patience before solving anything.

Still, impressive work for a jam for the parts that I did see. The music and rainfall sound effects are definitely capturing a vibe.

The 2D and UI looks very clean! It's a cool color palette and the design feels very intentional. There is some neat technical achievements, too, with player/enemy visibility and enemy pathfinding. As far as gameplay, I had a rough time and never beat the first level despite trying ~10 times. Some feedback feels missing, especially the take-down mechanic. Whether I hold the LMB or press it a couple of times, I get the  "Restrained" message, but after a moment the first enemy turns around and kills me. I've gotten it to work by mashing LMB over and over, but it didn't feel rewarding, and I didn't want to bother with it on the mobile enemies.

I'm sad I won't see more of the game, because it seems like there are some cool mechanics in here that also remind me of Hitman. I may come back to give it another try, too.

Oh no, that slider is totally broken after the first stage. Thanks for letting me know.

Real nice polish on this! The graphics and audio were especially strong here. I appreciated all the accessibility options provided, too. I'm glad to see the theme tie into a mechanic, even a little. Though a stronger use could have made for more original gameplay, too.

Great work to the whole team!

Cute game! I think the graphics and music were probably the strongest elements overall. I liked the art of the towers from the level select screen, too. The controls took some trial-and-error to figure out, as it wasn't immediately clear to me that I could control the frog in the air, so I initially waited for the wind to go the direction I wanted. I would have liked to have seen the theme play some role in the mechanics, as well.

Good work to the team! I hope to see more.

Great work on the jam game! I couldn't figure out what to do, but the art and music are really nice. 

I appreciated the review of the template, too. I've made a lot of changes recently to address the feedback, and I hope to know if it helped or not. Thanks!

This is so cute <3 Congratulations!

It's missing proper instructions in the game jam edition. It allows the player to control the speed of platforms when standing on one. Hold up/down and interact inputs together.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for the feedback! I updated the description.

Thanks for checking. All licenses apply. `LICENSE.txt` has the MIT license covering the software in the project (the code). `read_me_ui.txt` has the license for the art assets from Cup Nooble. 

Legal use in a commercial product requires purchasing the asset pack from the creator.

https://cupnooble.itch.io/sprout-lands-ui-pack

Thanks for playing and leaving a comment!

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't find anything regarding the `broth.itch.ovh` being deprecated before I asked, and all the current docs I found still listed it.

This is in the installation guide for butler.

https://itch.io/docs/butler/installing.html

The domain broth.itch.ovh doesn't appear to be responding. 

This prevents people from downloading `butler` and breaks some CI/CD pipelines that rely on it. Is there an estimate when it will be available again? Is there a reliable mirror for CI/CD that can be used in meantime?

I did find that there is an alternative source for individual downloads at https://itchio.itch.io/butler , though I'm not sure if that should be used for CI/CD.

Thanks for reporting the bug! I pushed an update today to fix it and updated the UI. 

I really liked the artwork, the music, and the ambient sfx. They worked together to immerse me in the little world. I  found the instructions initially confusing, because I didn't understand that a new behemoth would spawn after the first died. Then it was a matter of understanding the different effects depending on where it decayed. I liked exploring, finding the eggs, and hatching the birds. All in all, a very serene experience. Like others have said, I wish there was more!

Yeah, I managed to record that in the last hour before submission :-P

Thanks for giving it a try!

It is a very niche type of game, so I'm delighted to hear that people who can enjoy it are finding and connecting with it. I really didn't expect anyone to go through to the very end (I only just beat it yesterday), but I'm glad neither of the two earlier goal posts were enough to dissuade you from achieving maximum science! Well done!

That was a fun little puzzle game! I liked trying to plan ahead and figure out the best strategy. There seemed to be an issue with the resolution on the web build, so I'm not sure if I should have started with a wider area at the beginning? The icon made it look bigger to me. I would have liked to have more options to choose from, or the ability to rotate some pieces. Also, getting blocked from building too high in the early game felt limiting. Even so, I made it to 20 days before the sinking rate ate up everything.

Great work for you first GWJ submission! I hope to see more :-)

I agree. If I continue working on it, redoing the UI to fit the controls along the top and bottom is at the top of my list.

Thanks for giving it a try!

Great visuals, music, and accessibility options. Good use of the theme, too. The first time the platform I was on started falling and I couldn't step off, I thought I had just gotten stuck on something. I only once found a block to restore the level after it had started decaying, too. Otherwise, it was all over too quickly. I don't think the first person perspective and required jumping mechanic improved gameplay, but it looked great.

Awesome first GWJ submission. I look forward to playing your next one, too!

Beautiful art-style and well implemented it into the game. Each card was so different. I especially liked the visually trippy boss attacks. Well done for your first game and I hope to see more!

I really liked the art! The SFX also worked really well. The movement controls were pretty good, but I agree with other comments that clicking to shoot was awkward. I would have liked more audio/visual feedback for when I was at risk of losing, too. Still, this was fun and had a really nice aesthetic. I'm impressed how many mechanics are at play and how smooth it ran for just starting to program your first games in the last couple of months.

Great work on your first GWJ submission!

Very cute and pretty low-res art! Nice SFX, too. The placement mechanic was pretty interesting, although it was hard to read what each cat was on the tiny resolution, and then I couldn't find a way to see that info when choosing which one to keep. I liked the retro look, but it was used to an extreme that interfered with reading information. Still, a lot of cool mechanics and gameplay was packed into this. I had fun playing, and it had cats! Nicely done.

I loved the application of the theme, and the use of physics to cause chain reactions of decay. The physics also worked surprisingly smoothly at large scales. Was that the built-in physics engine, or did you use a physics plugin? The sound effects and music were also nice. 

I tried to the juggling act a few times of using the rods, but I would always eventually meltdown. Eventually, I tried filling the whole screen with neutrons from the very beginning, so they immediately reacted with any atoms that spawned in. Then it just became a game of picking the right upgrades until my reactor had no more heat producing atoms.

This was still a joy to watch unfold, but not as fun to play. Maybe some upgrades should stack by multiplication instead of addition so the player never reaches 100%. [Edit: just saw the comment below, nothing new here :-P]

Overall, though, I still enjoyed this quite a lot! Great first submission to GWJ! I hope to see more :-)

Yeah, we had very similar takes on the theme. That's cool! For a clicker, I thought the different upgrades and costs were reasonably balanced. It seemed like every resource had multiple opportunities to become the biggest producer throughout a full playthrough. I did leave it running in the background for most of the time to check out other jam games, but it was always nice to check back and see I had a lot of buying options.

Nice work!

Great artwork and animations. This had a strong atmosphere. Mechanically speaking, there didn't seem to be any reason to leave the shrine, since it could heal any damage I took if I just stood still next to it. I ended up not moving at all and just safely exorcised whatever got stuck on the opposite side. I got to 66 kills before I intentionally walked into the void. I would agree with some other reviews that (even when I ignored movement entirely) some of the longer combos were easy to mess up and frustrating. The sfx really added a lot, especially the chanting tied to the combos.

Really good work on your team's first GWJ submssion. I look forward to seeing more!

Very well put together! Good art and music. Lots of mechanics and a lot of polish, too. As other's mentioned, being able to draw on the map and see it in-world helped quite a bit after I got very lost. I liked that the damaging areas did stay revealed, and seeing the tracks from the same day was helpful, too. Lot's of nice little touches. Sometimes the map and the in-game world didn't seem to line up exactly, but it was close enough. I did manage to complete all 3 goals and beat the game.

Great work to the whole team!

Great music! Great art and animation! Lots of mechanics packed in and very nicely polished.

I took me a little bit to figure out the strategy. I could have started with the smaller map size and highlighting, but I just jumped in. I think not being able to gain more than 100 HP became the bottleneck at the last stage. Luckily, I was usually within two tiles of something, though it sometimes took a lot of searching and some planning ahead. I liked that the world wasn't flat, but some of the larger differences in tile height added to a difficulty in playing, rather than just being a nice aesthetic.

Anyway, I scored 420 - I'm happy. I might try another round later, too. Great submission by a talented team!

That was fun! Good work on the art and growing mechanics, and the way those interfered with the attacking ghosts. It took a bit to get the hang of it, but I gave it a few tries once I understood it better. It played well on the joypad, too, except I found dealing with the camera to distract from the game. I didn't beat it after a handful of tries, either, but I may still try again.

Great work on your first GWJ submission!

Good work on the art and dialogue. Pretty impressed that you managed to put in two economies for getting upgrades. I wasn't a fan of the combination of the two controls; I prefer traditional movement controls for the keyboard. Still appreciate you trying something difficult, and I get how sometimes a game can veer from the theme during development.

Nice job! I hope to see more.

When my mouse turned to a giant hammer - that was unexpected! Great use of the theme. Great use of music and sfx, too. I wasn't sure if there was any penalty for letting cases fall, so I generally tried waiting for easy ones to hit. I would have liked to see a final score, or know if there was a win condition.

I had fun! Nice one.

It's not you. The UI was a lot in this submission. I never got it to a point where I was really happy with it. There are a lot of buttons, some are dependent on others, and there's not enough visual feedback. I hope people can manage to navigate around it, but I certainly will understand if it's asking too much of players.

Thanks for trying it, though!

I enjoyed that! It was on the lengthy side for a jam game, but the upgrades helped with the pacing. The art and music fit together to make a nice experience, too. A lot of content, mechanics, and polish for a jam game.

Well done!

Star Wars Death Star trench run feeling

This guy gets it.

Thanks for playing!

tutorial text in the beginning a little overwhelming all at once

I definitely agree. I was too lazy to split this out into levels to introduce things one-at-a-time. Then I saw the "Single Location" wildcard and thought, "nice save!"

I think I expanded my base a few times, but didn’t really see an indication of that beyond the potential number, but then it went back down to 0 later on?

The UI is pretty bad. All base sizes are shown at the top of the screen, so the expansion potential goes down as your base size goes up.

Glad you still had fun and definitely drop me a link if you make a space game! I enjoy these :-)