Otherwise you have all the scores on the score board (except “give up” where giving up is enough)? If so, not losing the tictactoes should be enough to unlock all secrets.
Thanks for playing! And yeah, right now it goes too easy and then much later it suddenly kills you. I started untangling the code from the jam (now more than before I get why it’s called a game jam!) and I’ll try to get a more balanced and engaging beta out soon :)
Ha, that’s cool :) I focused on the arrows too much to notice what’s happening ;-)
What I meant is that it would be nice to get the “turn signal” from the environment (for example from observing the bubbles) instead of an explicit arrow. But it works as it is :)
I totally get that about the introductions — I was really happy that I could squeeze an animation into my game, but even that was a lot of work and I have just one mechanic in the whole game.
It was exactly the shotput that tripped me. Anyway, these compromises are totally to be expected when trying to do anything in <48 hours. I had reserved just 6–8 hours for the jam and in the end I spent 12 hours working on it late into the night.
And one more thing — I already spent more than those original 12 hours post-jam just trying to reorganize my code to squash some weird bugs in the game. So good luck with the rewrite! I can wholeheartedly recommend starting with clean slate and well designed outline and only then cherrypicking from the code from the jam :D
I love the art! And wow, there’s so many well made menu screens (intro, avatar selector, results). Seriously amazing.
I liked that there are so many ideas and each can go a long way in a possibly future non-gamejam version — some of these I did not get from the description, some feel a bit unbalanced (I was really afraid of the electric hurdles until I hit one :D), but all are interesting a play well after few tries.
The stamina mechanic in the races is magically balanced and feels really good. It would be great to be able to watch the character on the screen while checking the bars (my vision tunelled hard into the bars :D), but it plays well anyway.
LOL, I love that on Playdate I can rollback odometers and shred tax documentation. It’s the back door npc life in GTA ;-)
Everything’s really snappy and polished! I liked how tactile the game feels (breaking it, going slow or fast etc.) As the game progressed, I wasn’t sure what’s the optimal way of continuing (getting seriously low? going fast? adjusting to the given vehicle? etc), but that may reveal after few more runs.
Truly a black box! I didn’t know what’s happening but I checked the gifs and WHOA there’s a whole big super-polished game in there. I tried playing a bit and in the end I got the controls (especially finding the connectors took me while) but I never got to build anything functioning :D
Not sure how much of the lack of explanation is the black box energy :) but it might grip me a bit more effectively if there was a tutorial or a more verbal introduction at least on the core mechanics (what goes where etc.). However, a detailed manual is not something I expect from a gamejam game :)
Gosh, I feel like cheating in non-hard mode, but playing it just by crank is crazy punishing :D I did not finish this game — the crank seems to have a lot of delay / momentum and that probably got me into a bit of a rage quit :)
I like writing style and the overall pulpy ways of explaining the mechanics inside the game.
Nice art and the central mechanics work nicely — even though the sprites are large and detailed, making the game space very tight, I didn’t feel any gameover to be unfair.
One of my favs! Super polished! If I didn’t want to check out more games, I’d like to hit that 150 :D I would want to see how you would evolve the mechanics in lvl 2+.
Tiny note: For a bit I didn’t now where the target value was — I focused too much on the bar inside of the meter and lost the marker in the background.
I liked this! It’s a bit too strict, but I might have been too fixated on hitting the end of the gap instead of hitting the middle of the next platform.
I like the feel, animations and cute presentation. It’s a nice flappy-bird-like but it could be a cool crank-based mechanic a in a less punishing game :)
Tried playing in the Simulator (that autocrank comes handy :D) and like the clean interface — it took me a second to get it (I didn’t notice the tile selection shadow at first), but then it was nice.
I didn’t get past that first screen (is there another?) but I‘d like to imagine what are the next steps after getting through the first few stages (a la Universal Paperclips).
These are great ideas! Thanks! The turn into chaos comes around lvl 20 as it is right now, because the game starts shortening time of one step quickly (theres 12 predefined levels and after than they’re just randomly selected and fastened). I think that both a nicer difficulty curve and a better scoring system is needed. I probably won’t go towards unifying levels and score, but a penalty for missing is definitely something I want to try out.
I’m leaning towards procedurally generated levels (with a chart showing what awaits the player in the next level), but so far I haven’t tried it — I’m just fixing bugs and untangling the chaos code from the jam to eliminate weird bugs ;-)
Trying to somehow outlive harder levels and score in the easy ones, that’s a valid strategy I think :) But I’ll need to tune the level parameters to make it a bit harder (it becomes boring quickly, especially if there’s no zig zag between easier and harder levels).
I’m working on a simple system that starts with the level number and then distributes the difficulty into each of the parameters (as described in the devlog). That may bring some gameplay surprises, but I’ll need to look for extremes that are a bit too much (like too many slices or combination of too fast and too long sequence etc.)
It’s completely unrelated, but some of the humor and attention to detail found in Ikeda’s illustrations reminded me of another japanese artist mostly unknown in the West, Tiger Tateishi (I tried to create a Wikipedia page once and it got removed, but since then I got two of his books as a present from my wife… so next time it will be properly sourced :D).
Omg, this is so good! I’ll have a free update some time in October. And I hope I’ll be able to capture some magic of Flying Toasters without completely ripping them off :) Also wow, it’s great to find out how people in the playdate community are very cool even beyond their pd apps.
(Sorry for a belated reply, I fell ill with covid right after my last message.)
Thanks, it’ll definitely help :) I tried googling it a bit, but the original is pervasive.
I think that the variety of animations is part of its magic, but then again, I could do just a basic version and see whether it would be enough on its own :)
Oh, Flying Toasters are hilarious but also hella complex! Some of the animations and choreographies are magical and it all adds up :) I wanted to draw everything by hand and mimicking their style is hard.
However, I have some updates planned (not only because I already found one thing I built and forgot to include in the final game 😅), so maybe there’ll be one update with that little bit of a burnt toast smell :)
Stars of the Screen is a tribute to classic screensavers for Playdate (the tiny yellow console from Panic) and it’s full of surprises and secrets. Use the crank to load new screensavers, enjoy the classic visuals adapted to 1-bit display, and look for easter eggs. Complete high score challenge to unlock something nice. Wait what, high score challenge? Yep, that’s right.
