itch.io

This is a cool game idea! I like how you took a classic arcade machine game and remade it. I think there is a lot of potential for a roguelike, because you could have something like special types of balls (maybe explosive or homing or bonus points) as well as special pins to knock down in different types of rounds. It definitely could work as a Balatro type game where you just get as many points as possible.

I think the demo could really use some sounds to give it an arcadey feel and also to help communicate when a ball is picked up, thrown, and scores points and such.

Thanks for taking the time to review my game with so much detail! I'm glad you enjoyed the game design and yeah you were able to pick out a lot of the major problems that the game has. I was pressed for time near the end so I had to ignore a lot of these things in exchange for creating content for the game (creating level layouts and balancing the gameplay through all 100 laps).

This game is actually peak, I love this so much. The gameplay of circling around things to eat them is insanely fun and I also like the dialogue tidbits you get on the news. One detail I also love is that you can just straight up move over statues and trees and the roofs of buildings because you are a shadow creature. It took me a while to notice that because I was avoiding them from the start but once I learned the game became way cooler.

Here's a couple of problems I had. At the beginning the movement felt very laggy for some reason, but later on when I got bigger it became really smooth. I also don't really like the grimy static filter over the whole entire screen because it kind of hurts my eyes. I know you guys were going for a "live news report" look but I feel like it would still look ok without the static.

Also you guys gotta include screenshots SOMEWHERE on your itch page because it's so hard to tell how cool the game is just from the thumbnail. I feel like in the thumbnailinstead of the blue background you could have a dimmed screenshot of gameplay with the title over it and that would work better to get more people to play.

Intereresting game! I tried to get as big as possible. 

Cool game! I like the concept of exploring out but having to worry about running into a monster that might result in you not being able to make it back. One thing that felt weird was I died one time but respawned with all of my progress so it didn't really feel like a punishment.

Nice game! I was able to beat it quickly because I found out I could spam space bar multiple times per loop haha

Thank you so much!

This is such an awesome game! I love how the main character's expressions change as she hoops the loops. I also think it's funny how the hoops you drop just stay there and pile up on you.

HELP ME IM PLAYING TWISTER WITH MY FINGERS

This was a really fun game! I like how you can plan out your abilities and when they activate. One thing that I would appreciate is an icon maybe above the player or something that telegraphs when one of the player-activated abilities will activate (fireball or corpse explosion), because it is a little bit annoying to keep looking at the status of the loop bar on the left.

The artstyle and vibe of this game are really cute! I had trouble making it past level 5 and had to stop there, but I really like the idea. The rock levels were pretty interesting because you can move into the rock and not go anywhere but "save" that movement for later which is handy.

The difficulty for me comes from the fact that it feels like there is like 1 possible solution out of a million options and you have to get the perfect set of movements to solve the puzzle at all. For example, I basically solved the rock puzzle at level 5 but it didn't count because even though my character moved onto the winning tile, it wasn't their final movement and they just kept going.

Maybe there is a particular way of thinking that helps you solve the puzzles, but I felt like I did not get it from the first couple of levels. Overall I love the idea, it's just that the mechanics/design is tricky to teach I think.

This game is super cool! I love how zany the artsyle is. One critique I have is that it felt like it was too difficult (maybe it could have start out easier but ramped up in difficulty quicker) but overall it was fun to try to beat my previous scores.

This is honestly such an awesome game concept! I love the idea of your cargo being alien creatures that escape containment and then each one is it's own challenge to deal with. Also it's super cool that you made this game in Scratch! I also love the details like the dialogue, music ramping up, etc... Really good job!

It's an interesting idea but my main issue is that it is a bit hard to understand the gameplay and it is difficult to play.
I do understand that you didn't have enough time to implement everything you wanted to though, so I'm not trying to be nitpicky but say instead would could be improved in the future.

I think that the movement being having low acceleration made the game kinda difficult because I would stop to aim at an enemy and then slide away while slowing down and miss my shot. I feel like the movement could be snappier because there is already difficulty in moving around a ring as well as needing to line up your shot with the center.

Another thing that I didn't understand very well was the enemies. The enemies constantly move toward the player, so my first reaction was to dodge them and my second reaction was to shoot them. Dodging them doesn't work because they will just ram into the ring instead and hurt me, and shooting doesn't work because they don't die (Or maybe they have too much health to kill them before they reach). I think it's possible to keep them alive if I spin around them to keep them from hitting the rings edge but it doesn't feel like the intended gameplay.

Maybe to improve it, you could make the ring bigger and leave more space to react to enemies, and then make the enemies themselves easier to kill?

We do actually have gamepad support for the character controls. The only problem is that we didn't add support for menu navigation with controller so you will have to click to start the game and click on the arrows to progress the tutorial section.

This is so cool the developers should make ROG 2

I didn't have time for an ending, but that's the end 😅

Damn this is incredible for just 9 hours

I think I hit the maximum limit for enemy scaling but my upgrades ended up being able to overwhelm them around the 4-5 minute mark. It was a super fun game and surprisingly addicting for how simple it is! I feel like scale could have been integrated into the concept better, because it isn't uncommon for games alraedy to present with bigger and badder enemies over time. The enemies did get bigger but it felt like it didn't change much about the gameplay other than them being harder to defeat and avoid, so scale as a mechanic wasn't too nuanced (edit: forgot that the enemies scale down as you shoot them, my bad. I think it presents a little bit more strategy because I actually ended up shooting them to make them smaller and easier to evade).

I know it wasn't intended to be played like this but I had to split my brain into two to control both robots simultaneously and it was extremely challenging but also extremely fun. I probably can't speak for everybody because I played through by myself but I feel like the timer is a tad bit too short. Maybe 15-20 seconds would be better especiall for the levels where some crates are placed out of the way. Anyways it was pretty fun and actually a creative idea that I haven't seen yet in the jam.

I would recommend updating the description of the submission page if you can with a short description of the control scheme because I had to figure it out on my own and it was especially hard to figure out that s and the down arrow pick up the box. I pressed it accidentally on numerous occasions and thought the boxes were glitching out and disappearing and reappearing randomly!

This is a very cool take on scaling object puzzle games! I like the amount of control you have with the blocks being able to both reposition and scale them freely. The artstyle was also simple but really clean, and I think is nice how the simplicity and greyboxing fits in with the theme of being in debug mode. One thing that really confused me was the grey blocks that the character passes through but the boxes collide with. It was cool as a puzzle mechanic but it was really confusing to me because of the two different "physics" of the player and the boxes. Even when I understood it I kept confusing it. Maybe there is some better way to communicate the behavior visually but it seems tricky so it's understandable. Otherwise the game was fun!

Interesting game. I was able to beat it at day 10 with 89 people! I think it had a really interesting vibe and the gameplay was pretty fun when I got the hang of it. It's pretty fun to strategize how to get the people of the same group together without blocking the others. The main thing that I would say it needs is some polishing.

For example the tutorial slide at the beginning only used pictures and not text, which is kind of a double edged sword in terms of communicating stuff. I ended up confused and not clearly understanding the mechanics until I jumped in the game and got context by placing a couple rooms, but from there I was ok and understood how it worked. Additionally in the bunker scene it's hard to tell at first what the boundaries are (only 3 rooms wide but it looks like more could be fit) because the same dirt texture is used, which again confused me until I placed a couple of rooms. The queue cam was probably the most important thing to have and I was glad to see it was there because it was super helpful!

I loved the puzzle design in this game! I think it made good use of the ability to scale objects, especially with details such as only being able to throw the cube when it is shrunken and not fully sized and heavy. Some of the levels were a bit hard to read because of the greyboxing but that's understandable. I thought the lighting was really good though and the little dithered background shader was also a good touch.

Thank you!

Sorry.... I ate the cheese.... and the black hole...

Thank you for the kind words! This game alone is actually such a huge achievement for me. If you don't mind me talking about myself a bit pridefully (I'm just really excited about this success). Rather than making a game with the goal of learning like usual, I wanted to use this jam as a chance to prove the skills that I already know and I ended up exceeding my expectations by a landslide. This is not only my best game in terms of quality by far, but it also had the shortest development time of 36 hours within the span of 3 days (not counting ideation on first day), which is so good that it doesn't even make sense. I didn't even know I had it in me to work so hard on a game so skillfully, but everything came together almost perfectly. Additionally I made a good change of plans for when I realized I wouldn't have time for gameplay content (at the beginning of day 3 I didn't even have enemies or turret code), and I ended up pulling everything together so it could at least be an enjoyable experience without the tower defense strategy.

And to top it all of I'm getting so much positive feedback from people who say that they really like the idea and would like to see it expanded upon! I'm incredibly proud of myself and would never have thought I could make something that catches people's eyes anytime soon. I'll definitely be expanding on the game, but it might come slow since I've got college starting soon. I'm worried about what direction I'll take it in terms of gameplay and balancing, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.

SO TRUE!!!!

Thank you so much! I'm glad to know that you see potential the game!

I actually wasn't sure if my idea of having a tower defense with a growing tower was unique or not. Could you tell me what other games also explore this concept?

Yeah my initial plan was to have different tower types and upgrades, and much more enemy types in order to make it more of a strategy/tower defense game. Unfortunately I was running short on time and had to figure out how to still make the game as fun as possible with only one tower available. It's funny though because it ended up feeling like an idle game completely unintentionally.

This is probably the best and most creative game I've played in the jam so far! The level design is very creative, especially when it gives you control of multiple vines and you have to find a way to get them watered to control them. All of the puzzles were extremely fun and felt like they were in the perfect order.

One criticism I have is that sometimes I want to put the shiny down somewhere to stop controlling the vine and pan the camera to view the level ahead, but usually there aren't many good spots to do so. To rephrase it, whenever I want to the vine to stop moving for whatever reason it's hard to make that happen, especially when the shiny is still active even if dropped.

I think the concept of the game was interesting but personally I didn't enjoy it so much. Because small turrets cant attack the largest enemies and big turrets can't attack the smallest, I found myself keeping medium turrets and scaling any enemies to medium size.

Scaling turret to a larger size is annoying sometimes because there is often not enough room to do so. It could be nice to have a feature where if the turret has no room to expand then it will change it's placement to make room (if possible).

Also I really don't like the part where the camera zoom out because the first time I got there the enemies blitzed me before I had time to place down turrets there. If there was more time to react and potentially some marker to tell you what path the enemies are coming from for any wave I think it would have been great.

I really enjoyed the overall vibes of the game art and music though!

I really love the arcade vibes! Operating the crane was really difficult but I guess that goes for any crane game. I ended up also using the car to push the objects into the right position since placing them was hard.

Thank you!

At the beginning it was hard to tell what was going on due to lack of tutorial but it was easy to figure out after some trial and error. All in all though, this is an incredibly well done game! The voice acting really helped to nail the style, and you guys even managed to make a short trailer! How did you manage to coordinate so well with so many people on the team and so little time?

The game was short but it was a super cool and highly polished concept! I really like the ending where you fight the white worm and fuse with it since it was kicking my ass earlier. It's also cool how you start off microscopic and quickly scale to universe breaking sizes.

This game is super high quality! First of all there is so much attention to detail, such as the robot sleeping and having a wake up animation when powered back up, and stuff like the crates being pushed from walls so you don't get stuck and have to restart the puzzle.

In addition, the level design is good and takes almost full advantage of the unique mechanics, the only thing I have to complain is that the beginning levels should have slowly introduced the power window better. I remember particularly that room 3 and 6 were really hard for me despite being the first time having to use the window in a puzzle.

Also the sound design is really good. Usually having the character constantly play a noise while walking can be super annoying to me but this one was satisfying to listen to.

Unfortunately I got stuck on level 16. I assume you have to stack two boxes on the platform to have them hit the right buttons but the platform would carry them both. Maybe there was another solution I missed but I couldn't think of one.

NO WAY, thank you so much! That is the most impactful 8 word sentence I've read since starting gamedev. It will be a long while before I actually reach a quality level where I can even hope to make money, but I'm glad to know that my games are approaching the point where people can imagine themselves enjoying it to that extent. Based on all of the positive feedbacks I'm feeling really inspired to keep working on it if only to add more turrets and enemies. I will probably still keep the scope small (like a 10-25 minute game) since making even this simple demo took everything I had.

This was really fun! I was able to make it all the way to the top after getting the hang of the controls. It reminded me of GIRP by Bennet Foddy but with a rhythm aspect. 

This game is so simple yet so fun. It's like where's waldo but you have to find waldo every 10 seconds or you die. My high score was about 7000