itch.io

Straightforward and a pleasant distraction. 

It's not clear at this point if you're reading any of these comments, Pidroh, so I don't know if writing this will do any good. I like the game. But the current iteration make it hard to tell how to play it, or why I'm playing it beyond "number go up".

 Because there's an unexpected puzzle aspect to progress, wiping the log with each reload doesn't help the player

The internet loves cats. Including cats, and then not making befriending them a major path or class is a let-down.

The class system itself is hard to follow. For now classes only seem to exist to open up new options without cutting off old ones, meaning they don't really need to be called "classes" at all. You could call them "decisions" and the effect on gameplay wouldn't change.

There's no story yet beyond the title. That lack of story means you could reskin the game (survival as a student, graduate, programmer, housewife, Stardust Crusader, ship's mate, politician, rideshare driver, etc.) and no one would notice. There needs to be more of a narrative, even if it's just emphasis on making it to the next day (each class advancement is a new week, for example).

...Ah. Beggar -> Cat Beggar.

So is the Cat Master, Master Of The Cats class just not implemented yet? 

Yeah, short and sweet. Can't wait for the post-jam version with prestige and weird micro-transaction/gacha/Gatchaman/DLC additions!

It's alright! A prestige or new game+ mode would be nice though.

Alright, the 6/19 build feels like a separate game from progress knight. The prestige system seems to work well and the setting feels unified. It plays good. Needs a pause button though.

This is a from-scratch rebuild of Progress Knight, apparently. It needs to do more from the first click to NOT feel like the other Progress-style games. My suggestion would be to make the first loop a job WAY OUTSIDE of the city that the character leaves behind. (They go from their old life, with a level-capped job and no skills/shops/etc options, to the city and from there becoming a mage/soldier/whatever with the other options gradually opening up with further progress.)  And maybe expand with some minigames?

"Final Boss"? Ha! I AM the final boss!

There was no challenge at all with this build and it was my first run. Suggest a mechanic that enforces a minimum party size, or more obvious benefits to doing so.

The minion Quirk is overpowered with even a single Bumpster, especially in maps with small alcoves. Suggest heavily nerfing it (quantity cap?) or removing it entirely.

Suggest making it clearer that there are Stat caps, and if the Stat-boosting quirks boost past them. In general, while it works just fine with the short game loop, the game doesn't explain anything internally. Even learning what the Bumpsters' names are requires purchasing them, without the hovertext option Quirks and Stats have.

It was short and really fun though. The chance-based Beyblade battle mechanic is underrated and I think it works great here.

Short and cute and simple. Felt good to play.

Interesting and thoughtful. Hard to understand what role public support plays though.

The commentary on how difficult it actually is to distribute accumulated wealth as charity (without outright cheating) shouldn't be lost on anyone. If there's a later post-Jam release, I suggest making this clearer. The gameplay itself is good and makes the point of the Jam well, but I see two issues that make the game world far more dystopian than was probably intended. I bring them up not to complain, but to suggest leaning into them.

First, the game is still working completely within capitalism and its restraints. Charity is something that mostly only exists as a result of capitalism, after all, and reliance on it as a social necessity is one way of maintaining the economic status quo. There no actual fucking over of billionaires here, and I think that's a missed opportunity for this game. (Charitable organizations also distribute information and - strictly at the on-the-ground face-to-face level for legal and social reasons - can nudge along social change.)

Second, the human(?) distribution workers are unable to distribute charitable assistance faster than the charity founder can, and this has implications. With or without an autoclicker, the founder is someone who can convert and distribute $0.1 trillion, $100 billion, $100,000 million in charity by themselves. This suggests something uncomfortably extraordinary about the founder - superhuman, inhuman, eldritch, mechanical, etc. - as well as that it's not possible for humans to effectively help themselves through charity.

Still pretty rough. Couldn't figure out how to use stairs.

Reminds me of the old Spiderweb Software Exile games.

Nice and chill. 

Lost patience at the Oz guy. His healing and shield wouldn't be insurmountable with three 3~4 attack units in a row, but that doesn't happen so it's pretty much a softlock. What happened to the neat-looking attack pieces I gained?

Otherwise good.

Neat idea, but the game loop's too long to justify the high level of RNG (and crushing difficulty) without some kind of prestige or powerup system from the start menu.

Good premise, I think. Regular and homing rocks feel too powerful in the beginning and for a while after, while the damage field doesn't feel like it scales well. 

Feels odd that hunger drains faster than thirst in the desert during both day and night. Suggest making them day/night dependent (lose thirst faster during day, lose hunger faster during night).

I guess it's a good start? Seems to have the basic stuff there.

Looks good, works good. I enjoyed it! Cursor's a little slow though.

Okay start, but there's almost nothing to do in the first version. I can't see where you're going to take the concept, nor what the win state is going to be. Needs the option to mute (not that the music's bad).

Looks like the Researcher's Epiphany might not work properly when something's being Published?

Seconded! An art pack where the game's the same but EVERYTHING is crappy MS Paint drawings, definitely including the player somehow. 

(Also a cat pack, where everyone has a photorealistic cat head, lol.)

I'm actually a little disappointed you took the opposing modifiers out. (*clapping* "BOOOOO!") There's room for comedy there, like if the crowd gets into a fistfight and takes each other out if the player triggers a reaction three times that competition or something. With each reaction louder than the last, until a dustball brawl happens, and the player character's all confused (but gets +1 Gain to the muscle in question somehow). 

Workout Draw... might need some re-balancing. (The specific combo is Cutx2 and Vitamin B, followed up with a Red Snule and Creatine. With enough Kettlebells you just keep drawing your stamina boosts from the discard pile. The Back and Chest gains are just from Gain Train.)

Here it is, the final challenge complete.(Yes it's with Leg-End. I dare any of you to get it with Purist!)

Looks neat!

I'm finding that, after some initial hesitation, the "per-action" experience speed boost works pretty well. Good call!

After so many times doing it, it really seems like there should be a "Prep Rover" option for Talos that gets all the initial stuff ready to go. (Leaving the optional stuff like the generator and such separate, etc.)

The game feels more polished now.

That "-1 strength per card used" kills the vibe and the run. Especially when there's no "end game" option.

Aside from that this is just the weirdest, most entertaining game I've player in a while. I had a great time and I'm coming back to play it again!

Well that's helpful! Thank you.

Struggling to figure out how the Fibonacci, 1/61, Pumpkin, and Advertising achievements are supposed to work. Help, please?

Took a few tries but I finally got 303.

Got 277 after several tries.

Knowing ahead of time that the Gazers have that area of confusion around them would have been helpful though.

Neat idea, once it gets going.

湖に墓地があり、その向かいの孤島に一軒家が建ってます。不動産屋の口車に乗って住んでみたのだが、やっぱり夜中の唸り声がちょっと...

Alright, now the next step...

NEW ROOMMATE OPTION

I did! Getting to the endgame was the most aggravating experience I've had on itch.io - but that ending, man. It really did give me something to think about!

You meta son of a b**ch. XD

That was amazing - point taken - and I hope you win the Jam.

After an unexpected loss of save data, my character has classes with Gemma, Gemma, Jazlyn, and Jazmyn. Commentary on the RNGness of the (Gen-Z) name generator aside, I think there needs to be a scene where same-named NPCs have a good laugh about the coincidence and/or gradually become a couple. ...double-dating AND being a wingman seems far-off on the development roadmap but I just can't stop thinking about this one specific meet-cute scenario.

EDIT : april fool's gag involves the character blind-dating Rover, the one from The Prisoner.

It's immersive and accurate, in ways I really wasn't expecting - but the places where it breaks with reality for the player's benefit are great. (I wish jobs worked like that in real life - just walk in off the street after an all-night party, your veins throbbing with coffee, and flip burgers for an hour.) I'm having a great time playing it and it's a great December distraction.

I have three suggestions. First, the QOL option to minimize/use drop-downs and otherwise chose the order classes appear in under School and Studying. Not needing to scroll down to find outstanding studying or homework would be nice.

Second, I have a suggestion for what to do with Writing (and I suppose the same format would work with Artistic and maybe Photography too): have the character submit stuff for publication after finding a posting in a magazine/on the wall in Chamberlain. The character would decide to write something and it would appear as a project under School, to be completed by Studying (the idea being that the character decides to organize their art creation using the same scheduling notebook as their classes, and happens to write or draw well in the same circumstances). The kicker though, would be to have the Skill only increase by a negligible amount per session, with greater increases coming after they get feedback on what they submitted (so on a 100-point scale, it'd be a 1 point increase per session, but like 5 or 10 points when their story comes back with feedback or gets published).

The writing projects themselves have certain word counts, say 2000, and each 1 hour session would finish +/- 500 words (a critical fail would be 0); published stories bring in $0.08 per word, so $160 per story or so. To keep this from being a cash cow the odds of successful publication would be low, maybe 1 in 4 (so $10/hr over 16 hours or so of effort). A higher skill level would mean more successful sessions but not necessarily an increase in publication rate, since that's out of the player's hands.

As a side-bonus, it would give the Mail Center more prominence. In the real world, of course, e-submitting has been a thing for close to 30 years; the character just likes analog stuff.

...Oh, right, third suggestion! Campus Landscaping as a job. Gets easier to do with each Physical level and counts as mild but paid exercise. Would require purchasing overalls and a hat, and it keeps the character on campus with opportunities to interact with students (the kind who either like or hate paper towel mascots). The boss comes in only two flavors: Marisa or Zangief.