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What a unique concept: Ratatouille's Remy as a gambling-addicted deadbeat dad with Tony Hawk skills. I'll have what the developer took to come up with this, please. Or maybe this is someone's elaborate way of remembering their 12-word Bitcoin key phrase?

The world-building is weird, done with a lot of "dirty" and "toilet" humor, but the visuals match that style completely. The characters are drawn with thick cell-shading, giving a nice cartoony feel. The music was funky, with an exceptional slapping bass.

The skating is fast and easy to pick up, and the skate park is nicely designed. My biggest suggestion would be a real tutorial area to learn the tricks, or to buy them one by one in the store. As amazingly fluid as the gameplay was, I had no idea what the hell I was doing or why it worked.

The other part was the gambling side, with a simple slot machine that has an extremely high chance of giving a return on investment. This makes it possible to buy everything in the store.

But you buy all that swag and then only see it when you go down the toilet or get shooshed away, not in-game or when you pay off your woman. Behind all that fuzz, it still mimics daily life for most people.

All you need to do now is commit to the visual style, add arenas, and create a bigger story about needing to pay off some criminal over an X amount of days to raise the stakes even more. Do I pay child support, the criminal, or gamble? Based on the feedback here, there should be massive potential. 

This was a surprisingly well-structured mini ARG disguised as a collection of joke “games.” Each stage follows a simple pattern: explore the files, find a link, and uncover a code to progress. What makes it fun is how it constantly looks more complicated than it actually is. There are red herrings, dramatic audio, fake emotional bait, and chaotic filenames but the real solutions are always hidden in plain sight.

The puzzles reward attention more than technical skill. I had my trusty kali image booted up, but no heavy cryptography, no obscure steganography tools required, just careful reading and pattern recognition. The repetition of themes (number ordering, file structure, obvious-but-easy-to-miss clues) gives the whole experience cohesion.

The ending is simple and fitting: no grand twist, just a clean “The End.” It feels intentionally meta.

Overall, it’s a clever, accessible ARG that balances humor, light mystery, and good structural design without becoming frustrating.

Does it belong in a video jam? That's a totally different story :)

This game stands out with its unique “avant-garde” vibe thanks to a super creative developer. The look and feel is miles above games that pour loads of effort into their visuals. This minimalist style fits the game perfectly; it’s clean and just works.

By focusing on dialogue, overall story, and the experience, you created something genuinely refreshing in a game jam full of fast-sliding objects or games that are suddenly “slick.” The world breathes a relaxing, immersive ambience and encourages exploration.

The physics are smooth and responsive, and the soft-body controls feel like chewy candy. Together with the fun mechanics, everything gives a polished feeling.

The writing for each character is distinct; humor here, functional there. On my second playthrough I could finish most of the level with almost no interaction and just pressing Z or X to fast-forward where needed.

The potential here is huge. As you can see, loads of people are drawn to it, so keep iterating on the brevity (world, colors, story) and you could easily create the next winner.

Personal note: You’re highly engaging, which I commend, but please stop apologizing. “The commenter is always right, but didn’t do anything wrong.” Keep that in mind, take the lessons learned, and just focus on improving. You clearly prioritized vision over scope. If you had gone the other way, it might have ended up half-baked in both directions. This was the way that worked best.

Everybody understands the limits of a game jam, and you still delivered more quality than most five-person teams in the entire jam. Think of it like this: everyone immediately got the idea you’re going for (“Ah… this is the direction/goal”) and can now give spot-on feedback. That means they want to see more. What more could you wish for?

Those eyes!!

This game feels like you took the best from Kirby, Gish! and Globdule and set them loose in a James Pond world. Everything matches everything. The character is cute, the music is catchy and the huge visuals are distinct. This aestetic is so well done. And the fact that eyes always face the right way up. Such a genius move.

I love it when there is no explanation whatsoever and within a minute you're only held back with by the puzzles. Everything makes sense. Each level has own small thing that is new, and than the next level stretches that to the max, while introducing some small new thing. That style of level design is almost perfect. The fail rate matches the interest to keep going. This is enhanced by restarting the whole room instead of using checkpoints. You force the user to get better and better in part they're not stuck, and use that skill in the part they are stuck.

Did I mention those eyes always face the right way up? Implementing physics (and the corresponding correct sound effect) is something every game should aspire. The more real they are, the more you brain starts to predict paths correctly and you start enjoying long intricate chains of actions. 

You can extend this easily with loads of other forms, but I would keep restricted to a couple and doing those well instead of introducing 311 different shapes. Adding playable areas is way more worth the effort. As well as making the idea/story work with both the washing theme and what you're actually doing in the game. Bouncing goo, buzzsaws.. eh? The only thing you should never change are those eyes. ;)

If you ever want to show your kids why you should never go out driving when it’s icy, let them play this game.

If you ever want to know why people still go out driving when it’s icy, you should play this game.

The game is essentially a variation of the Crazy Taxi format, but made in the graphics style of early non/low-textured 3D games. If this was the idea, which I assume based on the skills in this production, then fully commit to that choice and include the fake shadows and fake lighting from that era to complete the aesthetic, plus it allows you to ramp up the fps even on less powerful systems.

The twist on the Crazy Taxi formula is twofold. Instead of picking up and dropping off people, it’s food. The seat that holds the food package is shown on the second monitor, so you hilariously watch the packages get flung all over the car as you drift from side to side trying to maintain the car in the center. That alone is worth a play.

The second twist is the ice road itself: it causes uncontrollable sliding, and when that’s combined with the flying food, you get an “Euh” score. But as you play, you actually learn how to circumvent the slips and even use them to your advantage. There’s a satisfying moment when you go from just holding down the gas to switching between long presses and quick tap-tap-tap-tap inputs on the four control buttons, maneuvering perfectly around corners and between buildings. That’s when you get your first “Slick” score.

These mechanics work so well, that even in a game that no other goal then going from A to B, you can't even spend your cold hard cash on useless stuff that would appear on the on-board monitor, time really flies by. This shows the power of a good concept.

If you were to continue with this, which you should, remember to always keep the car 'indestructible', this gives the biggest sense of flow and keep the time limit lenient enough to feel different from the usual clones. Let the stress come from other things: maybe the monitors glitch when you bounce or crash, so you can’t see the navigation app because the customer keeps calling and demanding an ETA, getting more and more annoying. Or you have the phone in your hand when the call comes in, creating a brief delay in steering. Or have different food types that affect how you can drive — for example, a temperature bar (“Must be delivered hot”), a flavor bar (“Contains two servings that should not mix”), or a filled bar (“Contains liquids”).

Even though it is more 'Mask' than 'Slick', it is another highlight of this jam. 

There are only a handful of rooms, but what is there really really impressive. Everything feels very polished. It has perfect room-chaining ("see all this harmless/hard stuff, just wait when we get back") and it even includes small things like "Star Wars"-swipes, "exploding Lemmings"-particles on death and environmental destruction of the wall and floor. A reminder of how often you failed ;)

The graphics are very clean and at exactly the right resolution-spot between pixelated and sharp. And the adaptive music, which I assumes crossfades between synced tracks and pitches up/down when needed, is both innovative and shines in simplicity.

But the "choose mask" AND "slowdown" mechanic is the real star. Basically you implement the normal controls we've seen hundreds of times but force us to use them indirect by adding a switch step, that is also a whole mechanic by itself. Defeating an enemy uses a mechanic that is opposite of what you use to get to the enemy is really smart. But also gives stressful situation. I like. But being sad.. I don't like ;D

The initial feeling was that the walking speed can be a tad faster or better have a dedicated 'run' button, especially for rooms you've been multiple times. But this addressed by progressions later in the game.

My biggest gripe would be that keyboard controls ain't the way to go, like I said in the chat: "my brain isn't braining the sequence x-shift-down-x-shift-left-x.  Kept dying on super obvious bits.." ;) Either have way more built-up rooms to force learning switching or try to look for something that would do the same (like using the cursor keys that implement the shift mechanic at the same time, so you get left hand: WASD+X and right hand: up/down/left/right/space) 

What could work in the next playthrough is adding a some mask budget per room, like 4 changes but you still get to choose with ones. And keep decrementing that value each playthrough. So different people will have different solutions, need to be more thoughtful and you mentioned TAS but speed runners really love that stuff.

TL;DR Looks legit like something that storm the steam charts if it was a full game. 

This game reminds me of the old game 'Abuse' both the extremely clean and functional graphics, but even more the wonderful gameplay. The run & gun feels easy to pick up, 'wasting' or trial-and-error is forgiving and the amount of deaths/respawn is just enough to give to make you feel like you accomplished something even though it is just a simple jump that you mis-timed. Thrice..

Like I said, the graphics are really well done and together with the music give a instant sense of really dystopian environment. This shows that world-building can be easy, without literally saying anything, by having people who understand their arts. 

For a game jam game alone that would've been quite the achievement. But no, these guys then go and extend it with the mechanics/concepts that made games like Portal and Pedro go from good to great. Some polish can be added to make the visuals work more into your advantage (this stays, this moves, this was, this will be) with those mechanics. Amazing deliverable for such a short time and shows what a team with dedication can accomplish in a pressure cooker environment.

Whacking you character around and shifting the momentum somewhere else is spot on. Maybe you could add some more Canabalt-style sections to raise the "Weeeeeee" and "F**k Yeah!!.. Look at me" feeling while at the same time (travel) keep the flow high.  

Take this game (or it's concept) and built this into something bigger. Shouldn't be to hard for you, if you just commit.

Okay, this one was fun. The presentation was simple but effective, but the gameplay was spot on. The driving felt smooth and the enemy intelligence was perfect. Annoying enough to hit you when you need it the least, but dumb enough to let you slide just in front thought the corner.

Definitely keep the 3d-rendered esthetic. Maybe look at 'Super Skidmarks' for some inspiration, that game had a higher POV / smaller vehicles which could allow more players. But more importantly, it had a caravans that you could hitch behind your car, maybe you could implement that you carry the oil drum/powerup behind you once picked up, then waiting for the moment to blast someone in front of you literately becomes a drag, which then should change the sweeping around the corner physics, like really flung the back and some slow down through the oil. (powerup/trade off)

If you really want to pursue this maybe change the focus from  solely targeting BP and more like take all the big ecological disasters as each stage and educate the player before the stage what crap we did and the impact (and name BP there) and the after the race the state now/what happened afterwards. Edutainment is much easier to get funds or sponsors for. I just hope that if that works out, that there will never be a sequel or DLC. ;)

The top -down perspective with a large tiled playfield and big sprites gave the game an old skool overhead Amiga shooter 'look and feel'. The tracker style music helped with this as well. 

It is extremely easy to pick up, but the mechanic is much deeper than it seems. One thing is to have blobs of ink behind you, but because the ink blobs stay, you can preplan an escape route (slide yourself quickly away or slide the crabs against the wall) while entering an enemy hotspot. This add an layer of depth which is quite original.

You could take this to the next level with having multiple competing Octo's or teams of Octo's in one arena, so you can drag the crabs towards each other. And have the WASD shake expel the treasures to steal while they are busy escaping. I think that would be extremely fitting as a couch game.

Nice twist on the Vampire Survivor-genre. And I love the MagicTek-style visuals from FF6.
Simple but very effective. Nice upgrade paths and weapon have enough variety. 

This may sound counter-intuitive, but one thing that would greatly improve the idea is to remove the mini-map. You're too dependent on the small map and you specifically choose this opposite 3rd person view. Maybe replace it with 270 degrees wide rear-mirror. Or have the map/mirror as "weapon" with power up, so you choose visibility over damage.

I couldn't map the theme to the game, but that would be only big gripe. The name is funny, but gameplay is hilarious. It's sooooo frustrating when things get hectic, and that's not because there is not oversight or things are complicated. It's due to you brains inability to not screw up such a simple task.

You could easily expand this with  2 crocs across each other (one waits till the other one calls), emergency auto-crocs or dial time-outs when you repeat the same number to make it even more hectic, but then I would opt for a different control scheme. 

One of the most original games I have seen at this Game Jam. Or any for that matter. The name, the graphics and gameplay mechanics are all both fantastically thought up as well as theme-fitting.

My only gripe would be, it's a bit on the short side. So take that as a positive!
If you would add a whacky story and expand this to several themed groups, like the tribes in lemmings 2, of say 10 rooms each, this could really be a winner.

Simple but devilish gameplay. The tutorial starts out simple, but with each level we go from 'animal crossing' to 'bloodborne' to 'battle toads' real quick. Which might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I liked it. Every time you crash, it is 100% your mistake.

The game isn't just adding waaay more cars to crash.. it increases the road content as well, like jumping ramps and ducks, loads of ducks. 

The description says, steer with A and D, but I found it way easier to to use the left and right keys with my right hand and brake and spill with the left.

The music is really good but more important exactly what you need for a focus oriented game like this.
And the same goes for the visuals, it is bright, really colorful, but never distracting. And the rear mirror popping up is genius.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing this entry. The 'ice slide'-mechanic, with a tongue-twist and the speed of VVVVVV-room discovery is both fun and addictive. The gfx and sfx are simple but extremely fitting the experience. Bonus points for the CRT-look&feel.

You can get stuck at some point, so some more polish is needed, but for a game jam pressure-cooker deliverable this is understandable, speaking from experience ;)

Would definitely play this if you end up making a definitive release.
  
ps. Did you use the Quintet font (Soul Blazer)?