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Lovely!

Loved towards never being discovered and secret games. The secret games one especially tickles me–it’s a great reminder to focus on what actually matters.

This was great. Thank you.

Very well put!

There’s of course value in talking about tools, too, but these kinds of questions rarely ever lead to interesting conversations about tools! Like you say, it’s just kind of small talk.

It’s like this with pretty much everything. Look up a random video of someone drawing something on a computer? Half the comments are “what brushes do you use?” A cool photo? “hey what camera is that? what lens is that?” I’ve even seen people share some AI-generated “drawings” only to be asked “what prompts did you use?” People just looking for a shortcut, thinking that the end result of creative process is only, exactly, the sum of the parts and nothing else.

The other side of it is that people are seemingly unable to invest time into something without making it their whole identity, and then need to seek validation. Some reassurance that they made the right choice or whatever.

Yep 100%. It’s even dumber because I wouldn’t hold anybody else to that standard but I do myself?! So yeah, a good reminder for myself to uh, not do that.

i didn’t make it for you, i was just generous enough to let you see it. so if you’re disappointed, have the courtesy to move on quietly

YES!!!

This was great, as painful as it was to read and see myself in there.

I wouldn’t say that I was complaining as much to others, but it definitely took me a good long while to get to a point where I’m actually enjoying the process. I wanted to make games despite not enjoying the process, just to make the idea real. What a terrible way to live. And now, I have a thing I’m working on, and am stuck creatively and otherwise, but that’s fine. I’m gonna get back to it when I feel better. Forcing it doesn’t help and I’m not enjoying working on it right now, so I’m not! I never want to end up in that terrible place again.

Another thing that came into sharp focus while I read this was how I struggle to call myself a game developer. I struggle to really call myself anything, frankly. I’ve been noodling around (see I’m doing it again!) in game engines for over ten years. I worked as a QA tester for years, slowly burnt out, quit and am now trying to make my own stuff. I have a bunch of projects, some WIP, some finished, but I haven’t released any of my own games commercially yet. I did ship games at work; I worked on a bunch of commercial games, big and small! But…there’s that thing. Am I really a game developer if I haven’t released MY OWN video game on store dot steampowered dot com? This is, of course, a stupid way to think. It doesn’t matter, and being able to call myself a game developer is not the goal. It’s not something I consciously think about often, but still, it’s a bit nuts that I have this block, so what you wrote about exceptionalism and how we think of our projects and ourselves really hit home for me.

Thank you for writing this, really <3

This was great, thank you for writing it <3

Very true, and the lore bomb at the end cracked me up :D

Me literally saying shit like “preach” and “hell yeah” and “100%” and “mmmhm that’s right” after every sentence. This is so, so powerful. Thank you so much for writing it, and for organizing the jam.

Fantastic. The use of “Lynchian” as a shorthand for weird media has been bothering me for a long time and you nailed it.

Thank you!

Hey, thanks for playing. Fair point with the controls, R would be better for sure. Pico-8 has a pretty limited control scheme and doesn’t include the R key. I’m not sure if it’s possible to reconfigure but I’ll look into it.

Thank you for playing!

This was both more difficult and more fun than I expected! Cool idea, well executed and felt great to play. After a few levels it was fun to get some where it actually wasn’t necessary to use slowmo at all - or at least it was a challenge that I made for myself and that felt really cool and tense. Almost gave up on the spiral level but got it in the end!

Cool little shooter. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but to be honest I found it difficult to play due to choppiness of all movement. It’s like some people get motion sick when playing certain games, I felt a little weird playing this one. I think this is simply just due to being Pico-8 game and it makes me wish it wasn’t. It feels like a game that would be instantly better if it was just smoother to play, if that makes sense.

Really cool game! Some head-scratchers in there and the art of constellations is beautiful!

I was super confused at first and took me a while to figure out the main mechanic, and even once I did, I couldn’t get much further :D Very clever but also incredibly difficult (for me at least). Like I get what I’m supposed to do, but there were times where I put down a shovel and was able to get it and pass through a narrow corridor and…I didn’t quite understand why I was able to turn without bumping into a wall that time. There’s just something weird about it and I can’t quite internalize how it works. There’s definitely something there and it feels very Corgispace-y.

Had a great time playing this on my phone while enjoying morning coffee. Simple idea well executed, with great visuals and music. Very relaxing

At first I expected there to be a point objective per garden and was a little confused when I couldn’t find it on the screen :D That’s not a criticism, just how I felt at the moment. I also wonder how it would feel with a “hold” mechanic, like you can hold a piece in Tetris and use it later.

Anyway, I really loved this. Reminds me of Topsoil and that’s a good thing!

Thank you!

Thank you for playing and for the kind words! I added the level counter after your recommendation. Had it on during testing but took it out for the first build, but yeah I think it’s good to have it.

Really charming! Made me wonder what the rest of the world and characters could be like. What I quickly found myself doing was trying to hit multiple garbage piles with one swing once I discovered it was possible and it felt very satisfying :D

Hell yeah

Oh hi :D That’s a great guess! Thank you for playing and for the kind words, really appreciate it <3

You can do it, I believe

Hell yeah that’s the good stuff. Thanks for playing!

Uh oh :D Thanks for trying your best :D

Hey thanks for playing! I’m really happy that somebody actually tried to work out what the hell is going on in Sedem Blokov, that’s awesome :D Yes, the text is in Slovak on purpose. All I’ll say is that both the text and the game itself is just a joke/reference of another game, so that’s why it’s like that. People bouncing off and not understanding doesn’t surprise me, that’s actually part of it, but I’m really happy you gave it a fair shot haha. You basically got half-way there. Playing and using the available controls as in other game modes, you should discover the other half of those special functions. There might be a button you’re not using ;) Then it’s a matter of understanding what it actually does, learning what the icons represent and how the cooldown works.

I hope you don’t mind me not being explicit about it, and again appreciate you playing the game. I enjoy seeing what people can work out and how they bounce off :D

Hey thank you for playing and for the kind words! I’m really happy with Forgetris and it’s my personal favorite, too, so I’m glad to see some others share that opinion :) As for SB, it’s basically a joke I spent way too much time on and it is obtuse on purpose, so I don’t blame you haha :D

Thanks for checking it out!

Thank you so much for checking out all the games! Really appreciate it and glad to hear you had a good time. Means a lot <3

With a thumbnail like that, how could I not click?! :D The loud metal THUNK is funny every time. It’s cool how expressive the movement is with just a few inputs. I’m really bad at platformers in general, so I struggled to execute some moves and didn’t get super far, but it’s a really cool and funny take on the theme if the jam. One of the more surprising ones for sure :D

Thank you for playing and for the kind words! You’re right about the little goals/achievements. As with many things in the game, I just ran out of time but this is something I meant to implement - even just a single goal for each game, as something to guide the player a little. If I return to the project later, this is at the top of my list, so I’m really glad you brought it up. I do save the high score, but you only see it on the game over screen. Forgot to add it to game selection UI :D

Really cool little idea! Even though I played with a controller, I agree with LinsCd on controls and time limit. Very smooth movement of the ship with the very rigid, tile-based movement of the blocks is a bit hard to get used to, and it often took me multiple tries to actually select the falling block. Despite that, it’s a really interesting take on the jam! Also having to leave the board and rotate the blocks in designated areas is a fun idea. Overall looks and feels really polished.

I saw this on BlueSky last week and been excited to finally play it! Even despite my issues with it, it might be my favorite game from this jam so far. The consistency of style across the game is wild. The art, UI design, audio, music…everything perfectly aligned. This honestly just feels like a complete game that you could put on Steam and nobody would’ve guessed it was made in 10 days, or however many it took you.

I’m not familiar with hanafuda, so this was totally new to me. Even after reading the description on the page and tutorial multiple times, I still had trouble figuring out how scoring works. At first, I thought that numbers on cards denoted their score value and so I was trying to leave the cards with higher number on the board. That’s totally just my fault and I did figure it out after a bit. I think the real issue for me is that the scoring presentation at the end is wayyy too quick, and that I can’t check how stuff is scored while the game is running. I still haven’t internalized how each type is scored or what the special combinations are - I think it would be nice to have that accessible in a pause menu or something like that. Just…having a better sense of how scoring works while actually making decisions.

That seems like a very solveable issue, though. Like I said, one of the most stylish things in the jam. Astounding work.

This was lovely! I really like how snake’s movement is solved and that makes it a lot easier to actually go back and forth between the two. At some point I always inevitably made the mistake of controlling the wrong board, which is funny every time it happens imo :D Got to 1600 points I think, so not super far but still enjoyed it a lot. Was expecting it to be a lot more frantic just based on the concept, but it’s actually really relaxing and the music helps, too.

I was smiling the entire time :) Fantastic work! EDIT: Also the music goes SO HARD!

Love pretty much everything about this. Thought this would be just a blocky suika game, but some of the design decisions make it a lot more interesting than that. It looks, feels and sounds amazing and I played for way longer than I intended at first. Really well done.

Wayyy too hard for my dumb ass but it looks and feels amazing

Oh man this is super interesting! Trying to set up longer sequence was breaking my brain a bit but felt amazing to actually pull off. Also the blocks rotating but not the arrows, that took a while to get used to! :D I wonder how this would feel with some changes, as I played for a while and never felt like it was possible to actually get a game over after fully topping out the board. Perhaps a smaller board but weaker gravity? Or arrows not clearing if they just point at a wall, or at each other? But still a very cool thing, great job!