itch.io

Saw that this game got hit pretty hard in the rankings, so I wanted to come and try it out and offer a few positive words about what you have here!

The game is sort of turn based, like Pokemon, except you have two-three attacks per turn before the other player can play; the opponent attacks first.  You don't heal between rounds, making it feel a bit like a gauntlet, which feels fairly appropriate given the scenario of the game.  The music is also high-energy with tension mixed in, making it perfect for the game world, too.  And a lot of work was done making the werewolf, and even though the sheep and coliseum are more basic in comparison, they still work well as graphics conveying the different elements of the game.  The UI is pretty good as well.

I can't say I fully wrapped my head around the combat.  I got the general feeling that the three attacks had different tradeoffs between damage dealt and energy consumed, but I couldn't figure out which attack did what.  Similarly, I got the feeling that perhaps the combat was not intended to have three attacks per turn, as some sheep wasted turns performing parry, duck, or similar actions that seemed useless, but I couldn't perform an action quickly enough to see if I could act in between sheep actions.

The only real game-breaking issue for me was that when I lost (when a sheep pulled out a hunting rifle?), the game kind of spammed "YOU LOST" dialogues endlessly, so I had to force quit the game.  Other than that, I felt like swears and crass words were overused to the point of watering down their impact - I'd recommend maybe having the first few sheep start with more levelheaded complaints, and then maybe bring in angrier, more foul-mouthed sheep later on if you really want the language to have more of an impact.

Overall, although there's more work to be done to make the gameplay and narrative compelling, the theme decently matched that of the jam, the graphics were good for a jam product, and the audio was appropriate and fitting to the mood of the game.  Clarify the wolf's actions and their drawbacks a little more and convey that to the user (answering questions such as: What should I do when a sheep pulls out a hunting rifle?  Can I heal?  Which attacks are best for which scenarios?), and you have a good game with a unique antihero twist.  Good job on your submission, and good on you for working even after the jam to get rid of those nasty gamebreaking bugs!

This is a basic but good poker game (although I don't play poker, so take my opinion with a grain of salt).  There's a nice twist where you can bet double or nothing on your token earnings in a bonus round by guessing the color of a face down card, and you can guess as many times as you like before walking with your earnings or losing them with a wrong answer.  Winning, even if you lose your tokens in the bonus game, grants trophies depending on your hand that are used to rank you against other users.  The interface is clean and the graphics are crisp, too, and have potential for expansion into other modes, such as a slot machine. 

I also loved how easy it was to log in or make a new account - just press the login button, and you immediately have a new account with a username you can change once!  The delete account button was also immediately available and obvious, which is a transparency I wish more sites had.  Honestly, other than the potential problem of recovering lost accounts or transferring accounts between devices, the account system was very flexible and admirable.  Great work there!

A few minor quibbles here and there.  Some interface elements are oddly positioned or sized, and there was no sound whatsoever (and sounds feel fairly appropriate for a pseudo-gambling app).  But I guess what I most missed out on was how the game tied in to the jam theme of "a lot of."  I guess gambling does occasionally have large jackpots, but I felt like the connection was just a little tenuous.  Still, that doesn't detract from the fact that there's a lot of things this game does right, and by expanding on the modes that are not yet available, you'd have a nice clean poker app that could be fun to play now and then.  Great work!

Fun game!  The concept is superb, and the boss at the end was quite the formidable foe!  I appreciated the level design, and how there was flexibility in the number of coins needed to clear some levels, and how there were multiple ways to clear others.  That said, I did find aiming the cursor while platforming to be a fairly difficult task, but fortunately not too many levels required both to be done at the same time.  

I did encounter some bugs.  Running into a wall and jumping at the same time will cause the character's jump to be heavily nerfed, so it won't be able to jump onto whatever platform it was planning to, which is frustrating.  (Especially on that rising lava level!  I definitely missed having coyote time for that level, too, although that's a game design choice rather than a bug.)  But more curiously, I encountered a bug where I could generate infinite coins by shooting coins downward near the top corner of a room - the end result of which can be found in this screenshot:

Overall, you have an extremely polished game that is one of the few from this jam that is pretty much a finished product already.  It'd be amazing enough that you made this within three days for the jam, but I see you submitted with over a day left, so you really did this in just two days!  You should definitely be proud of what you made!

Hey, I noticed that this submission was missing out on ratings, so I decided to check it out!  Honestly, what you have is pretty good, especially for your first game jam.  This was my first game jam too, and I spent so much time learning my game engine and getting rid of bugs that I wasn't left with much of a game at the end, so I think it's neat that you have a much more visually interesting game that's still unique in its own right.

Normally I don't write breakdowns of my reviews, but since you haven't gotten any feedback yet, I wanted to write more than I usually do.  I normally write a lot anyway, so this is going to be extra long - I hope you don't mind!

Game Design: I can really respect the work you put in for the chicks following the green duck.  Although they're somewhat floaty at times, they seem to have some manner of physics applied to them, and cannot fly up to the green duck if it's on a high platform and they're not, for instance.  With a little refining, this would make a neat game mechanic!  Between the dash mechanic, the triple jump mechanic, and the environmental mechanics, there were a lot of different things that spruced up the gameplay (and I may have even missed some other mechanics).  And I noticed you had a sort of achievement system in place after I lost a duck, which was also pretty neat!

On the other hand, I can't say I knew for sure what the goal of the game was, as getting to the yellow flag at the end of the level brought me back to the stage select without unlocking a new level.  The level select suggests that there could be 10+ stages -- do I just keep failing the level?  Some additional text in your game description could help me understand better what's available in the jam version and what's not.  No need for the jam version to have everything, but make sure to let the players know what to expect and not expect from the game!

Graphics: The sprites and background you have are pretty neat, honestly, and I see you worked on some particle effects too.  The only nitpick I have is that the duck and the chicks were very clearly different graphical styles, although that makes sense since you may not have had too much choice in the art available to you.  (I suppose comments about the UI and menus would go here too, but I don't really worry about those for a jam product, so no worries there.)

Audio: The background music is pleasant enough, and I did notice an appropriate sound effect for when the chicks are hurt.  I think that the level music should stop when the level ends, and not continue on to the level select screen, though.

Mood: The peppy background music was unfortunately significantly at odds with the grim factory scene and blood particle effects…  This is the only area I feel like the game was deficient in.

Theme: I think you’re going for “a lot of” chicks for the duck to protect as a theme?  There’s only one chick at first, although once it takes damage, an endless stream of chicks pops out of the first ceiling pipe.  It eventually becomes too overwhelming to handle!  I couldn’t exactly figure out what the benefit was to having multiple chicks, which is also something that could probably be addressed relatively easily with a brief description of the game on its main page.  But I think I got the main idea: as the game progresses, getting more and more chicks would make the levels more challenging.  And that’s a concept I can get behind.

Overall: There’s a lot of neat stuff here!  Though it’s not a finished product, your game is a neat exploration of concepts that have potential with well designed levels.  And as a game jam deliverable, it really doesn’t need anything more than what it has now.  But some of the goals and mechanics are not obvious to the uninformed player, so a brief description of the controls and deliverables of the prototype would help a lot in conveying the experience to your audience.

Again, great job on your first game jam!  You should be proud of what you were able to produce in just 72 hours.  Keep up the good work, and maybe see you in another jam sometime?

I kind of came in worried about what the game experience might be given some comments here, but after a bit of a learning curve, I was able to understand how the system worked.  This game gets pretty fun once you know what's going on, as it's not too hard to perform the commands quickly for the most part (other than the knobs, which have a disclaimer anyway).  That said, the game assumes a decent understanding of binary (even if it only ever asks players for values up to 15), so I can see those switches being pains for a lot of people...

Later levels with the rolling enemy things provide a good challenge, requiring one or more actions be performed in a short period of time, but are somewhat unforgiving for a player encountering the level for the first time -- I feel like it'd make sense to start the level's action after the player turns on the console for the first time, just so they can scope the obstacles and plan their actions in advance.  But I did like how there was time pressure both from the robot's environment and from the temperature level, especially in the last level, which was just the right intensity.

Overall, I'm glad I came across your game!  Very fun to play all the way through.  It would be interesting to see it expanded, especially with stages that utilize the "EXPERT MOVE" option, which I never had to use in any of the jam stages.  I think there's a lot of potential here, and the jam version has a great amount of content for players willing to figure it out!

This was an interesting entry to play!  From the name I somehow convinced myself that this was a physics game, but it's definitely not that.  Maybe closer to a top-down shooter, but still different?  It's definitely a unique gameplay experience, so congrats on the idea! 

I did find some frustration with the controls -- in full-screen, the character did not shoot towards the cursor, and not in full-screen, clicking off the game window spelt an instant game over.  Since my strategy basically was "hug the left of the screen, snipe the enemy that spawns above while it's offscreen, then shoot at the enemy that spawns from the right (at first sniping it offscreen, and gradually just shooting more and more behind me)," I guess I was more prone to clicking off the window than the average player would.  However, the game has an addictive quality that made me keep on coming back for more, and eventually I made it to the end.  Great job on the game, and I'd definitely be interested in seeing more!

Quite an interesting game for sure.  I've come across the general concept where performing actions costs certain resources and gains other resources in other games, but I can't say I've ever come across one with as many resources as this one.  The numerous resources and the constant threat of the hands meant you can't really sit down and calculate the most optimal actions to take, which is good - the lack of one clear ideal strategy means that the player can't optimize the fun out of the game.

On the other hand, it is really hard to get a grasp of everything going on, even with the various tutorials at the beginning and the occasional tips that appeared.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure of a good way to address the issue that would be tonally consistent with the rest of the game, since it wouldn't make much sense to start with a child with less responsibilities like is often the case in the real world.  And showing an example day to show how to balance things would inevitably influence players to follow a similar path, meaning that it's hard to be more helpful without limiting the players options (or their perception of optimal actions).

Still, overall I like what you're doing here.  I like the light, which gives the game a little more action, and which provides occasional inspirational quotes that probably inspire the main character.  Although I didn't make it far enough in the game to see, I wonder if that light gets dimmer as the game goes on, as a reflection of the programmer's fall into madness and increasing disillusion with the world?  In any case, Man of Sorrows leverages games as a medium in an unusual but powerful way, and I think it's a great contribution to the jam.

It took me longer to get around to writing a review for this than I would have wanted, but fortunately this meant I got to play the game both before and after your update.   Being able to drag an eggplant onto an Alot makes the game much more natural to play!  It used to be fairly frustrating to try to drag an eggplant onto the currently selected Alot only to fail, select a different Alot, and have the eggplant hop straight back to its original spawn location.  After the update, I found it a lot easier to immerse myself in the calm world of the game.

I feel like I got all of the different kinds of Alots (at least, one of each that shows up in the title image), but I wish I got feedback or congratulations from the game for having done so.  Even a simple counter like "Alot colors found: X/7" would go a far way in helping me feel like I accomplished a goal.  It's possible that there are more than 7 types of Alots, and perhaps if I understood the breeding mechanics better I would be able to find them, but after a while I gave up on the quest to search for more and just ended up satisfied with what I had found.

This game has a lot of charm.  Also, I can totally appreciate the Hyperbole and a Half reference!  Overall, Alot of Alot is a cute entry that's a welcome change of pace for this jam, with a less chaotic interpretation of the jam theme.  Great job!

I was really impressed by this entry!  Like other commenters, I found the game punishing but fair.  The timing felt strict at first, especially with the punishment if an attack didn't connect, but it wasn't too hard to get a hang of after I found an early game stretch of yokai that only spawned on one side of the screen.  (Having to manage both left and right, up and down all at once at the beginning makes it a little overwhelming for a newer player, so removing the left/right issue from the first wave or two might help ease beginners into the combat without making it too boring for too long for more veteran players.)  I felt like I was learning more and more about how to play each time I lost.

The only thing I felt was unfair was that, on my Mac, Ctrl+left or Ctrl+right switches desktops, which basically guarantees a lost heart when it happens (even though gameplay stops when the tab is no longer in focus, it will proceed enough by the time the original desktop slides back in for a yokai to reach the player).  Although it's nice to have an excuse to blame the game instead of my lack of skills for a loss, I'd recommend either an alternate control scheme or rekeyable controls so you can circumvent the issue entirely.

Beyond the game mechanics, I love how you incorporated the theme of your game to inspire the enemies - everything, from the enemies to the graphics to the sounds, feels like it "fits" with the world of the game.  And the over-the-top special moves were a blast!  Honestly, as far as gameplay goes, it's hard to imagine that this was made in just 72 hours, because I feel like it's good enough be a finished product.  You made an absolute blast of a game to play!

Thanks for making a Mac build!  The city is fun to go around, although it's hard to explore when the ghouls are around, of course.  Found myself often hitting the e key instead of the r key to reload, so I'd probably rekey it if I could (although I understand that the "r" stands for "reload," so it's the best default key for the action).  Aiming wasn't as bad as I would have guessed from the stream, although like in the stream, I think I found going out of the main building area made managing the ghoul horde much easier for me.

Great job overall!  There's a lot of polish here, and that parkour-ish shooter idea that you were aiming for is executed very well by what you made.  I made sure to leave a good rating for a job well done!

Thank you so much for your kind words and ideas!  I like your ideas with the text -- I wouldn't have thought of it myself, but it's something that would keep players on their toes, and it would introduce a little more "anarchy" to keep the game fresh for longer while still sticking to its core theme.  I'm definitely interested in exploring it further!

Wow, these look like great resources -- I'll definitely check them out.  Thank you for sharing!

How do you play or download this game?  I see the instructions on the left, a .png of spikes on the right, and a More Information link with some metadata about your game, but I cannot find the game itself.

That's a great idea!  It would make the player more equal to the rest of the inputs in the stream, making the full stream more important for planning, and making surprise inputs from the stream more challenging to deal with.  It would probably also more closely resemble Twitch Plays Pokemon, where this game got its inspiration.  I'll definitely try it out if/when I continue working on the game.  Thank you so much for your feedback!

Definitely surprised that this hasn't gotten the attention it deserves!  If only I didn't have a Mac, I'd have tried it out myself, but honestly, I'm kinda tempted to install Wine just to try out this game.  It looks like your game showcases your art (which is amazing btw) really well.  Even if it's a shitpost, it looks like a really good, really high-effort one!

Perfect amount of birbs and film to make the game challenging without being too hard!  The island is gorgeous and fun to walk around.  The only minor quibble I can think of is it'd be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to see all the pictures you took of the birbs, so that you can figure out which ones you took, reason out which ones you didn't take, and see which ones took away your extra film.  But in any case, this a very fun and complete jam game -- great work!

This truly is a game of a lot of credits!  The main gameplay comes from the infinite scrolling credit level, so I'd recommend putting a little more emphasis on those credits over the "save the forest" story in the game screenshots and description.  With the double jump and slingshot, sliding between platforms with spikes and enemies that move and shoot feels very fair, and the names in the credits are often fun references, so I definitely enjoyed playing through the credits again and again!

Not sure why, but I really liked this!  I like how the difficulty gradually ramps up, and I like how exactly 100 nutzoids appear (since you win not when you hit an arbitrary quota, but rather when you save the world from the Nutzoid crisis).  The sounds were also very appropriate.  And I totally respect you for programming this entirely in javascript -- as someone who used js and Phaser 3 in my project, I can attest that that must have been a lot of work.  Really fun game!

Cute graphics, and cute ending!  That said, I'd warn other players to be aware that it takes like 13 minutes or so of waiting for the game to end.   (I guess that's a spoiler, but it's enough of a time investment I feel like it needs to be said anyway.)  But overall, this a cute Scratch game, and I'd recommend people who want to check this out at least walk through the house and see as many dialogues as they can find.

This is a really pretty game!  I love the pixel art.  Gameplay reminds me of rogue-likes where the enemies only move when you do., except with different combat. 

The enemy collision could use tweaks - if an enemy is a space away and moves toward your square, it counts as a collision, even if you were moving away from the enemy at the same time -- making the instadeath frustrating.  I'd also recommend that items spawn more, even if those items are just regular swords, if the enemy spawn rate stays what it is. Finally, it'd also be nice if enemies didn't feel like they immediately honed in on the player -- making them move a little more randomly, at least when they're far away from the player, would make the horde of enemies more manageable, at least at the beginning of the game.

Like the others have said, there's a ton of potential with this game.  Make a few changes to the game to be a little kinder to the player, and you've got a real winner on your hands!  Good work.

The theme is a little hit-or-miss, but gameplay-wise I love the risk/reward mechanic where you have to move close to obstacles to remove the other, um, rivals before the end.   It makes the series of obstacles not just merely obstacles, but also useful tools to win.  So even though the theme wasn't the right match for me personally, I still found the game worth playing for its unique and fun gameplay!

Wasn't able to play or rate this because I have a Mac, but I caught your game on the Twitch stream, and I've got to say it looked really neat!  I like how much you can explore the city as you go around and purge it of the phantoms.  The hitboxes seemed a little strict, but a little tweak here and there and you've got something that has a lot of potential.  Great work!

I like the core gameplay loop here a lot!  Running around and bubbling junk food or eating good fruit is a lot of fun.  I found the graphics a little difficult, though -- everything is pretty small, and it's a little hard to identify and distinguish between the different types of food.  (The particle emitters helped me a lot there.)  But I loved how atmospheric the environment was!  Great job on this project.

There was a lot of care put into the graphics, sound, and presentation to make this game shine!  The only nitpick I have is that the timer for each level was too strict to allow the player to take any time to push beanies into any whirlpool that might happen to appear.  I would have loved the chance to change my strategy for a brief period of time when a whirlpool appeared.  This does not detract from my admiration for this game, though!

For me, the screen was very narrow, leading to many jump scares with pigs, and making some jumps difficult to make.  I see a screenshot with a wider screen, making me wonder if there is a way to change the screen size that I just couldn't figure out.  In any case, it's a very cute game, and the ability to select a character is a nice touch.  Good job!

Thanks for the feedback!  My game is definitely lacking polish in its current state, but tweening the character's movement would be a great way to make it look nicer and intuitive to play.  I'll keep that in mind for future projects!

I liked the theme of the game a lot!  And the arrows are a great way to help the player learn the controls without needing a more boring set of instructions.  I often made the mistake of not ducking under trees, though, thinking they were background pieces.  Overall, you did a great job!