itch.io

Congrats on completing your first game jam! I had a lot of fun with your game - there was a lot of fast-paced action and a good implementation of the theme. I especially liked the twist in the second half of, it seems like, replaying the first half without checkpoints. It really recontextualized the placement of the health pickups and how much the player has to focus on them!

I followed HurricaneOf87's code and got to 14 of the 15 coins. My password is 6H25TTT.

The last coin is directly to the left of the starting area - I believe it's in the far left room, the one that has the chain leading upwards that goes nowhere.

Like HurricaneOf87 mentioned, that coin didn't appear to me when I passed through that room before, so there may be some kind of condition it needs to spawn. Hopefully it should be there and you can just pick it up and finish the game for us

I love the production values for your game! The hand-drawn visuals and mouth-made sound effects give your game a lot of charm that's really fun to enjoy. That being said, while I appreciate simple game loops, this one borders on pure random chance: either you roll a high enough number and/or draw the right card, or you lose. I'd like to see a bit more creative player choice to the game, like allowing the player to save a card from one round and use it in another. I also noticed that, though the math seems to be working correctly, the dice act weirdly when you try to go below 1 or above 6. Perhaps having the numbers wrap around might spice the gameplay up a bit?

Love the idea! The tires exploding off the car was a nice funny touch to the game. I think there could be a bit more conveyance to the play that this is a beaten up hand-me-down that gets worse as you drive. Things like sputtering noises, engine smoke, or a wobbly wheel are some small additions that could really help sell the idea the car is breaking down a bit more each lap.

Very nice job! You made a very fun game with a clear and engaging core gameplay loop. I especially like how the lasso starts to disappear if you start making it too long - it adds a twist as you start chasing your own tail and try to find a way to cut it off. I'd really like to see this concept be expanded on through additional enemy types, powerups, etc.

Just as a point of optimization, I never really felt the need to NOT be lassoing, so I think it might be beneficial to try out a version where you're always creating a trail? It'd be one less button to push and would allow the game to be easily played with just one hand

I think this was a really clever idea with a solid core mechanic and amazing audio and visual designs, but I just couldn't wrap my head around the controls, especially with regards to how the X's work. Sometimes the red blocks stopped me from putting a block down, sometimes it got placed no problem. Sometimes the green X's stopped a loop from playing; other times I couldn't even place a block there. Is it based on the individual block's size? Shape? Colour? Glitchiness? I honestly could not find a rhyme or reason for it, which made it super frustrating when I want to test out a potential solution only for the game to respond "nuh uh."

Thank you for the feedback! I completely agree, I spent so much time building the game that I forgot to make it fun or challenging. I'm glad you thought the concept was cool though.

Nice game you've got there! I really enjoyed your interpretation of the theme, it's a lot different from a lot of the games I see here. That said, I wish there was more to do at night - if you avoid the ghost's line of sight you can just sit in a corner and do nothing all night long, which is a bit boring. Maybe having a big ghost chase after you like in Spelunky so you have to keep moving at night?

Fun little game! I just wish there were more levels to play with!

Thank you! I figured some social media influencer featured another game with a similar name

Amazing game! Perfectly captures that 90's mecha game craze!

I would also like to voice my appreciation for the 3D models looking like 2D sprites, it made the whole thing super charming!

I haven't tried Downwell yet so I can't speak for how accurately this replicates it, but this was really fun to play! Everything came together really well - the visuals, the music, the controls were all fantastic!

It's been a loooong while since I made this game, but I think the trick was to create the skybox as a repeating Background, then changing the X offset relative to the player's angle

It's not an egg, it's a sphere! The camera's FOV is just so high the top got stretched out. I used it to keep track of the beat and I guess I just forgot to hide it lol. And I try to never have a lose condition in my game jam games - I think it's just too much to ask a player to pick up and master a completely new control system in a matter of minutes. Eliminating the lose condition means players of all skill levels are able to see my complete vision of a game while leaving them feeling, at worst, underwhelmed, instead of frustrated at being unable to get to the end (and it also means I don't have to worry too much about balancing the difficulty or about programming silly mechanics like "respawning"  :) )

If this doesn't win the jam then I don't know what will. This was the best entry I've played by a wide margin! Everything came together really well - the music was great, the controls were great, the shaders really added another layer of shine to this game! My only complaint is that it's a bit too hard - I think my high score is only about 40%, though I am notoriously bad at bullet hell type games.

Super great game! I think it was really creative that you staggered out the beat like that instead of doing a straight beat like a lot of other rhythm games. And I really dig the music! You're right, it is kind of funny that we both use the same off-kilter beat in our hardest song! Wanted to add more complexity to the game beyond just spamming more notes, eh?

Personally, I'm not a fan of the controls. I guess it makes sense to make the game one-handed, but I could never manage to remember which button jumps and which one switches sides. And it felt like I had to be airborne before I even crossed the white boxes, which meant I had to press a fraction of a second ahead of the beat, which felt awkward.

I like the wackiness of the visuals, and the voice acting was a nice touch, but I had a hard time correlating the vertically-arranged prompts with the horizontally-arranged inputs. Seems like it would make more sense for the chart to scroll vertically.

I had never heard of artcore before this game, so I guess I should thank you for introducing me to this genre!

I'm sorry to say, but I'm not feeling this one at all. I have no idea what to do once the paddle goes crazy, and that's only after about 20 seconds of gameplay - 10 of which is an unskippable cutscene. I'd definitely like to see a walkthrough or a playthrough, because maybe there's some deep meaning to this all? But I'm definitely not going to see it by myself.

I like the idea, and sometimes it is fun to chill out and mess around with a little sequencer-type thing. But I felt this was really basic and lacked depth. Others have said to add some gameplay, but I'd say to add more complexity to the sequencing. Have an array of 64 loops to mess around with instead of just 16. Allow the player to build a couple of patterns and play them back in sequence. Stuff like that.

On a technical side, I found the audio started to clip when too many notes very being played at once. And that G# on the black cat is completely dissonant with the rest of the C Major scale.

I think you have very good production values, from the music to the visual flair (I especially like how the shapes morph - very nice!) But for whatever reason I just couldn't get into the swing of things. I felt like I hit a lot more of the notes than the game said I did, I just didn't know when exactly I needed to hit the note. Also, the connection between the shapes on screen and the buttons I need to press didn't come naturally.  I think I would have preferred to see it more like Gitaroo Man does, where the shapes fly in from the direction you need to press.

I dunno, I'm not feeling this one. Maybe my computer is just too old, but I had a really choppy experience that never quite clicked with me. On the Web version, the soundtrack and the notes became really desynced, too, so I barely managed to get a 25% hit rating. It was better in the Windows version, but I came across a bunch of weird little glitches. After the first song was done, it would immediately start a new round with no music and no notes. I'd press Escape, but it just froze the game without showing any kind of pause menu?

I think the first two levels were really fun to play - unique concept, bright vibrant visuals, awesome soundtrack - but once I hit the third stage the hit detection got way off and I had to spam the buttons just to move anywhere. 

You either have a very precise or a very lenient note detection, because I was getting Perfect's on every note. Very nice visuals, very nice game feel, it's such a shame you couldn't chart out the whole song

Very impressive visuals! Getting a lot of REZ vibes from this game. I also agree that it needs a bit more balancing - preferably keeping all the missiles on screen at all times so they can't come behind you and land a cheap shot.

Very nice game! Good visuals, nice feedback, bopping soundtrack. My only complaint, like I see below, is that you used a horizontal button layout to control a vertical action. Also, maybe I'm just slow, but when there were two notes at once it took me a while to figure out I was supposed to hold with one hand and tap with the other - I thought it was an either/or type of deal.

Very creative game! I appreciate all the little touches, like everything bopping to the beat and the flowers growing a bit to help draw the eye. Unfortunately, I think the second level is broken, as new blocks wouldn't spawn in after the initial population

I think this is a pretty cool idea, but it's just too difficult to play right off the bat. The notes came too fast, the shapes were too complicated to match right away, and like The Data Boys said below, trying to match a square shape with a linear set of inputs is confusing. Although I don't agree with the WESD input they suggested - that might make more sense logically but I think trying to actually press all those buttons at one would be fairly difficult. How about turning the shape 45 degrees and using a conventional WASD / arrow key input?

I also agree that, while you do have an excellent visual style with top-notch animations (especially for a 48 hour jam), I didn't really get the core gameplay loop. I'm not sure what the different powers were, or if I even got them in the first place. 

Click and drag with the left mouse button to pose the falling bread, hold down the right mouse button to speed up the fall

Thanks for the kind words :)

Definitely something else. Unless I need some more VBA experience to put on my resume (which is why I made this particular game in the first place), I don't see any reason to go back to PowerPoint for my game making needs.

You might be right about GetAsyncKeyState not running on a Mac or Linux. I haven't actually tested it. I think I figured it'd run regardless of which system because, hey, it's just PowerPoint we're talking about here. 

I used the GetAsyncKeyState command to check if each button was being pressed, then moved the player accordingly. I ran all the game code in a semi-infinite loop with a very short Sleep to limit the framerate, with DoEvents enabled to allow key presses. I think I commented the VBA code if you want to take a look with ALT + F11. At the start of the project I imported the GetAsyncKeyState and Sleep commands from somewhere outside of VBA - I think they're system-wide properties?

Have you bypassed all the warnings PowerPoint shows like enabling editing and macros? Sometimes it helps to open the VBA code for some reason. If it still doesn't work, then I'm afraid that's all I'm willing to do at this point. PPT Jam was a long time ago in a program not at all suited for game development, so I'd rather move on to new projects at this time.

Yup, that's the point!

Yes, I'm currently looking into it. In the meantime, the Windows version works, if you want to download it and check it out

Thanks for the heads up, I'm look into it!

I, also, could not get the .ppsx to run and had to use the html version, which feels a bit like a copout. I understand it's a last resort, but there are so many subtle things you can do in PowerPoint to give each screen some life and not feel like... well, like a slideshow.

I think the story is very charming so far, but there's something about the dialog that just seems off in a way I can't quite describe. Some of it just seems so unnatural, like no human being not reading a script would ever say it.

Like others have said, there seems to be some missing features (like music and hyperlinks), and a lot of the humor fell back on meme / internet culture references. I get that there's an audience for that kind of thing, but even then I thought it was rough in sections. Like, naming it Entitled Goose Game and making a goose with a Karen haircut demanding the manager? That's fine, I suppose. But just taking the official Steam page's artwork and adding a monocle to it? Randomly transitioning to an Undertale-like boss fight complete with Sans Undertale's glowing eye? That's more the territory of those sketchy mobile games with names like Super Hero Big Gun World Vampire.

From a gameplay side, there's a bit of a bug in the boss fights where you can die to a black bar with that fade effect before it's completely faded in - or in some cases before it even appears, leading to some very confusing deaths.