itch.io

Ah OK. Yeah the cheese cubes and blablabla overpower any other sounds so it's hard to tell the reaction.

Congrats! Looks like a fun interaction model (watching Bastiaan's video). Unfortunately, like Copper I was unable to play this on my Pico.

Hmm yeah I haven't had much luck with Chrome talking to SteamVR. (I use Virtual Desktop with the standalone Pico headset, Chrome can talk to VD.) Did the Windows build work for you?

With the sound: I think I get the difference between the disgusting sound (it sounds like puking) and the success sound (it sounds like blablablabla), I just didn't associate the blablablabla with success, it's more like boredom. And the guy seems to puke cheese cubes at the same time.

With the plate: the item seemed to just instantly disappear which I commonly associate in VR with you dropping the item. Having it snap onto the middle of the plate and stay for 3 seconds while he "eats" it (or whatever) would communicate that you placed it correctly. 

Thanks, this is a great effort!

I love this concept. I think it has some really cool ideas that I haven't seen in a PC+VR hybrid co-op game before. We had a fairly difficult time playing it and it was a bit directionless, and we basically didn't accomplish much, but we didn't realize until later that there are more detailed instructions on the page, so I think I want to give it another go.

The biggest issue was that objects kept randomly flying off where they were supposed to be, and it wasn't clear whether it was a bug or the design (I think based on the description that is intentional). Perhaps it needs to be better tuned so it isn't happening right while I'm trying to fix something, and instead happens to one thing at a time somewhere in the base. We also didn't ever figure out how to stop the player's oxygen from running out - sometimes it was at 100% and sometimes it was just draining super fast. I think it just needs better instructions and a little less things breaking.

But having to go outside with limited oxygen and fix the solar panel while my partner quickly directed me to which one needed fixing was a very cool experience.

The most intriguing thing is that one of our playthroughs (which sadly ended too quickly) seemingly randomly, the AI player was given different role which changed the whole context of the game (I won't spoil it too much here). That is a super interesting direction the game can go in and I'd love to experience a full playthrough of that route.

I had a hard time with this one. It's a great atmosphere (especially love the fabric style trees and dinosaurs) but paired with VR it was hard for me to enjoy since it's a lot of being lost in the forest with a lot of assets that all look the same. I thought it was going to be you go through the manual in sequence but it ended up being you just discover all the elements randomly, and when I finished, I'm not sure I even got all the pages.

Initially I tried playing it co-op, but I don't think the second player could offer much advice. Unlike Keep Talking where the second player is constantly required to cross-reference clues for the VR player, in this all you can really do is keep encouraging them to explore and give them vague suggestions of what to look for (and again, the non-linear nature makes it hard because you have no idea what the next thing is they might stumble upon).

Very cool concept, super original. The lo-fi aesthetics (both visuals and sound) work in the game's favour I think. I think there could be a few more steps but the idea of cross-referencing the visual description of the date with the objects needed is solid.

I think the biggest problem is the physics (objects kept flying off the table and it was unclear when you actually placed it on the plate) and audio cues, which while endearing, were difficult to understand. A "success" seems to be indicated with the date vomiting cheese and making a gurbling sound which we did not understand meant success for quite awhile. (To be clear this isn't a commentary on the quality of sounds - you could keep the simple vocal sounds but make success be more like an excited "Mmhmm!!")

Also the colours can be confusing - "turquoise" is a difficult colour to differentiate with "blue", but when you're trying to communicate that verbally between two players it's very confusing. (Not to mention a colour-blind audience.) Using non-colour cues would be good.

Anyway, I think this was super fun.

Based off the description I really want to play this game, but I have a Pico and I assume this is a Quest-only APK. Any chance you could make a WebXR, Windows or Pico build? (I don't know what the jam rules are about making new builds during the voting, but I would be happy to play it afterwards.)

I suppose technically it is open source if I can read binary code :)

Thanks for the detailed notes! 

The calibration doesn't happen on the first level because it doesn't change the height or distance. But yeah I guess if you aren't centered properly then it can still be necessary.

The babies is probably the most janky - yes you do kind of need to be looking right in the center for it to trigger, which is simply a consequence of how camera-based tracking works (if the cameras can't see the controllers, then it will lose tracking).

Thanks for playing!

I would definitely play more levels.

I forgot to add a suggestion on the button thing, which is to add a blue/yellow conduit leading from the button to the door, which lights up in that colour when you press it. That would clearly indicate that the button is now in a "pushed" state, and didn't simply have a one-time effect or required both to be pushed simultaneously.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

> Making a pico version was a given, the only headset I own is a pico!
I was wondering if I should go to the bother of learning how to make an APK but I figured I wouldn't be able to make a Quest build since I don't own a Quest (maybe it isn't too hard to do even if you can't test it - I see you also posted a Quest build) and nobody else would own a Pico so there'd be no point. Guess I was wrong on the second and maybe the first!

Very nice reinterpretation of Superhot. Extremely polished. I love having an AI friend in VR who I need to help out.

One quibble is that it's weird that I can pick up bombs off the ground but can't throw them, but I can catch already-thrown bombs and re-throw them. I would suggest adding a fuse that gets lit when a guy throws it, to explain why I can throw bombs with a lit fuse but not those without.

Oh. I didn't realize that was a bug, I thought it was actually pretty neat that you could continue even after he died, if you managed to make things fall into place (e.g. on the last level I had a bomb going towards the bad guys when he died, so I was able to carry on in his honour). I would leave that in and even celebrate it ("Next level ... in his honour" or something).

I like the minimalist aesthetic - it immediately made me think of the tutorial levels for System Shock 2. The Stephen Hawking voice was cool.

It was a pretty tense shooter (especially later in the levels knowing you would have to restart) and good tactical management of health (having to avoid picking up health if you're about to go into a fight).

I like the representation of screen brightness as health, though I would have liked some more feedback on the enemy attacks (I was not even sure at first what was happening because they don't shoot bullets, you just take damage, and you seem to not be able to take cover once they start shooting).

What a cool concept. As a dad, I thought the idea of mixing a cop interrogation with trying to get a kid to confess was quite well written. The dialogue is cheeky and fun.

I found the user experience pretty hard to figure out though, having to restart several times. (It would help if it only took you back to the start of that "section" - for example, once you're past the first toys bit, and you fail the peekaboo bit, going back to the start of peekaboo and not the whole level. I got frustrated having to skip all of that dialogue and play the toys game multiple times.)

It was not clear when the interrogation was working - I could see the kid's eyes light up but his sleepy bar kept draining and there was no other bar filling up. Also in some runs none of the toys seemed to do anything. And then on peekaboo, I could put my hands on my face and he would go red, but nothing actually happened and his sleepy bar just drained. So I didn't make it past that.

I like the idea of a deckbuilder + autobattler in VR. Getting to watch the battle unfold below you is cool. Nice interpretation of the theme: "It" takes two.

I played it twice and didn't feel I really had any agency. "It" always takes more cards than me, which I get is the implementation of the theme, but it means I'm outnumbered. I thought that would mean I would have some tools to beat the overwhelming enemy force, but I didn't find any a) unique units that my opponent didn't also have, b) combos between different unit types that can be exploited (all units were just variations of damage and defense), c) ways to influence the battle once it starts. Maybe I'm missing something, but it didn't feel there was any strategy other than picking soldiers/conscripts early so you can upgrade them later, but that doesn't help that much. Also once my army was defeated, the enemy just banged on my castle forever (there didn't seem to be any "health" on my castle).

That was a blast. I also completed it in one try, with 12 seconds left! I just was wishing there was at least one more level. There's a lot of potential here.

I've always loved puzzle games where you have to switch between two or more asymmetric characters (Lost Vikings, Gobliiins). VR gives it an added coolness because you can wave to yourself. Could be explored further by giving each potato different abilities.

UI confusion: I was quite confused about the orange box in the first room. I spent a lot of time trying to pick it up to give it to the other guy, but it turns out it was nothing. Also it wasn't clear when I pushed the door button that it was permanently pushed (so I just had to push both buttons) - I thought I would need to find a way to have both guys push it at the same time. A bit of user experience polish would help here.

But the thing that was super cool was shrinking yourself down to go inside the little house. Nice work.

Nice idea, I only player single player but it was fun taking turns with the CPU. It was fun once it got going fast and not too difficult.

I wish that I could place pieces more ahead of time; it seemed to only work when the train was very close. And sometimes a piece didn't place at all which was frustrating. Also I kept getting confused about whose turn it was; I believe the little levers on the side indicate that but they're too hard to notice. Something more obvious that it's my turn would be good. And I'm not sure the passthrough adds much gameplay-wise but it is kind of cool having your train track in your living room.

I love that I can pull the whistle.

Thankyou for making a Pico version! That allowed me to play it with passthrough.

(I tried recording a video for you, to return the favour, and I did, but it didn't record my microphone so there was no point uploading it.)

Sorry about those babies! My poor attempt at sculpting in Blender did not pay off, I should have just got MPFB to make some babies...

Thankyou so much for taking the time to record and post this video! I'm glad you enjoyed it, except for the bowling level, which I am sorry about. (I agree you were robbed several times, I could not believe how quickly those keys closed when you hit them in close succession, I wonder if there is a bug.)

Unfortunately there is no way to get into orbit around the moon - the gravity just linearly drags the ball towards the moon, it isn't a point gravity source (I tried that and it made it harder to actually hit the moon). But it was nice to see you theorizing about it - something I have been thinking about a lot on my main project but not something I had time to explore much here.

Also nice to hear a fellow Aussie accent. Cheers!

Congratulations on finishing. Hey just getting to the finish line is a big hurdle. Take the critical responses as things to think about next time and don't be disheartened!

Yikes, that's a good point. I usually use Ctrl and Space but I guess I also made Ctrl and W a possible option which as you say is catastrophic on the Web.

Thanks for the well considered review and constructive cricism!

Awesome replies. Yeah I totally understand the limited testing possible in a jam. I always comment honestly and hope to give ideas and constructive feedback. I have thought a lot about orbits as I'm building a game about orbital mechanics (not really like this at all but this stuff is always on my mind).

(PS I didn't realize there was a skip button. I might try it just to see what mechanics you had later.)

I'm so mixed on this. I love the core of the game and its presentation is lovely. It immediately gives the player an intuition of what an orbit is and how the initial velocity of a body determines its orbit. The first three or so levels are perfect. I like that it basically teaches you to make nice circular orbits as they are the least likely to collide.

But it gets really frustrating quite quickly, once you need to place 3 or more planets. Having them not collide with each other is much, much too hard and punishing. Ironically this game makes space feel claustrophobic: there's hardly any room. Even on the level with no asteroids, just a sun and 3 planets, there isn't really enough space (due to the large size of the planets and limited screen space) to have 3 planets in non-overlapping circular orbits. The biggest issue is that when two of your planets collide, you didn't just fail the new planet but you also broke your original planet. It's like reaching a checkpoint in a platform game only to have the checkpoint deleted because you made a mistake later. I wonder if it would be better to say when two of your planets collide, only the most recently placed one gets destroyed, so you don't ruin your existing planets. Or just add more space. Let planets go off screen by a few hundred pixels before they're destroyed. Or shrink the planets' collision radius so they can graze each other without being destroyed. Let the difficulty of this game be about figuring out orbits, not having to redo work because of a collision.

Another idea would be to show the trajectory before you take a shot, to take the guesswork out of it and make it more about intuitively understanding the mechanics.

I liked the level with many asteriods placed to one side of the sun, so you were forced to create elliptical orbits. I love the harmonies. I love the feeling of having completed three concentric orbits and watching them go around.

Cool theme, I like that the playhead is coming to erase you. Maybe would be better if instead of scoring based on "loops" it was based on "deaths", so you are rewarded for avoiding the playhead by running to the right. I found the platforming a bit annoying and stiff (the controls of WASD+Space are hard to use for a platformer; arrow keys or controller support would be appreciated).

I don't usually self-promote in these comments but you might want to check out my game, which had a similar theme of building up musical instruments through successive loops.

This is the best interpretation of the "draw a loop around things" theme I've seen. Good flight mechanics, pretty difficult but it's a great feeling to build up a big flock. The laser birds are great because you can go hunting them once you see which direction it's coming from (bug: often they are out of bounds so I can't get them).

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Nice idea to make a game where you have to talk your way through and redo it to get the conversation right. I felt that the choices weren't really that interesting though - like nothing here really required you to have replayed the game to know what to say (except maybe the present thing, but even then you are allowed to back out of your wrong answer). I won on my first try just by being nice instead of mean.

Would be more interesting if there were things you have to know that aren't obvious to not offend them, like if you mention their partner, you learn that they broke up and now they're upset with you, so you have to go back and avoid that topic.

Beautiful. I will always appreciate something about the bittersweet melancholy/joy of growing older. The falling into the workplace got me. The twist at the end was amazing. I love it.

An interesting concept, but I found that it was too easy to get almost all the way around and get stuck, then blocked from retreating. Maybe that's "high risk high reward" but it was too hard to judge if you were going to make it. Maybe if you could press B to quickly retract the rope like a vacuum cleaner cable, you could more easily get out of these situations. Felt more fun when you level up.

That was bizarre. Great mood. Nice and short and fun game feel (squishy buttons, perspective squish when running). I did not really understand the "loop" aspect though as it was just going through a sequence of levels once.

Wonderful vibe - it captures the feeling of Mouthwashing, but with the gameplay of Outer Wilds. I got that same feeling from OW when the blinking starts and you are scrambling to quickly read one last note before it resets. Good progression where you're always feeling like you're reset but you have a new thing to try without having to do the same steps again.

I got stuck on the third floor. Could not find anything to do and the loop was too short on that level. Every door on Level 3 was locked out and I couldn't figure out how to enter the glowy red room. I will try to play this again when it's patched after the jam ends. Great submission!

It looks like a simple asteroids clone, but I think this has some really clever design elements that make it quite addictive and fun. I am firmly of the opinion that most game loops can be improved by being a roguelike. The choice of clever upgrades means you can go for different builds. It's very satisfying to start seeing the asteroids pop like popcorn. It has that Vampire Survivors like progression of going from being able to kill 1 thing at a time, to killing everything around you.

I would suggest one thing to borrow from the VS style of game is to start offering upgrades that "level up" your existing choices, rather than always presenting new choices (or basically have a higher chance to show choices you've already picked again, but it's important to present it as an upgrade on an existing choice, to reduce decision fatigue). I find that these choices are often fighting against each other so picking two opposing ones without realizing it can cancel out and take you backwards in terms of progression. Whereas if I could reliably keep enhancing the same upgrade my "build" would have more of a sense of identity.

Also controller support would be really good!

Nice simple roguelike loop. I know you got the audio assets from somewhere else, but I think the sound design was actually the strongest part. Very crunchy and good choices for the upgrade sounds, for example. Bit annoying that you can accidentally walk behind the border and not know where you are.

Very creative entry! I like the "the game is broken" aesthetic which subverts your expectations and starts digging into devtools and playtest notes. It works well narratively. I like the idea of reading playtest notes (i.e. someone else's bug report) to try and figure out the bugs you're meant to exploit.

I got stuck though, quite quickly, and I think in a game like this it's very hard to know what's a "bug" (i.e. a designed puzzle you're supposed to solve) and what's an actual bug, that will prevent me from proceeding. For example, I got a gold mine unlocked (after reading hints) and then could not place it adjacent to the gold mine deposit, even after exploring all the way there. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or if that was a bug. It's also frustrating that the first puzzle is clicking around randomly to find an invisible button.

I would suggest it's better to subvert expectations after you've established them a bit more: for example if you could build at least a couple of things "normally" before the developer stuff starts happening.

Yeah a good suggestion. You can actually sort of simulate this by turning off the background music in the settings. I just tried it with only the in-game music notes and it feels kind of flat and empty, even at the end.

Thanks so much for saying this!

Thankyou! I'm glad you discovered that little creative element.

Really nice tactility - I like the big hand and the sounds. Maybe the people move a bit fast - it was frustrating to see a nice cluster of about 4-5 colours but be unable to get around it in time. (Or maybe there are too many colour groups.) I could only capture 2-3 at a time, so it didn't have a big satisfying "yeah I got a huge group" moment.

Nice vibe, cute cats. Love the animation. I enjoyed building up resources in the early game. Got pretty bogged down with resources in the mid game (could not get past $30 for a long time due to increasing food costs). But there is a strategy to figuring out how to manage momentum.