itch.io

I played till I captured the cat shadow, but was unsure of where to go from there. It seems there's more content past that that I missed from looking at the comments. Oops!

I think the idea of working a child's imagination into the world is a lot of fun. Seeing the different shadows each animal held within was very cute. I very much enjoyed how the dog was portrayed.

Good job with the game mechanics. I think combining elements in order to capture animal shadows turns what otherwise could be just creature battles into a series of interesting puzzles instead.

Impressive what you were able to accomplish in 2 weeks for the game jam! Great job! (The only bug I encountered was being able to win on the same turn I died and then die in the next fight I went into.)

I played till I captured the cat shadow, but was unsure of where to go from there. It seems there's more content past that that I missed from looking at the comments. Oops!

I think the idea of working a child's imagination into the world is a lot of fun. Seeing the different shadows each animal held within was very cute. I very much enjoyed how the dog was portrayed.

Good job with the game mechanics. I think combining elements in order to capture animal shadows turns what otherwise could be just creature battles into a series of interesting puzzles instead.

Impressive what you were able to accomplish in 2 weeks for the game jam! Great job! (The only bug I encountered was being able to win on the same turn I died and then die in the next fight I went into.)

Solid visuals and music.

The variety of tasks to do is good, but I feel some of them could have their interactions tweaked to improve the player's ability to interact as well as understand the interaction. Namely, I really wish I could just click once on the ladle in the pot and still move the ladle while my mouse is outside of the pot (having to re-click when I just clip outside the pot is quite frustrating). Also, I think one should be able to click anywhere on the game while I'm doing the ingredient smashing mini-game so long as I'm near it (if I click a bit off, my clicks stop being registered for it).

Additionally, I might just be really bad at it, but I feel like the pot stirring mini-game does not add enough quality % for the length of time it requires. I got shaking potions and stealing the skull's soul back-to-back about four times in a row and quickly shot past the needed % then had to stir the pot and didn't accomplish as much in that amount of time.

I like that you were able to, seemingly, randomize both the level mini-games and the potion names. Props for that. I know it probably wasn't easy making this in the span of 2 weeks so good job! (Even though there's a lot to my critique, it's still impressive that you got a game out in two weeks that is competent and has zero, to my knowledge, bugs.)

Solid visuals and music.

The variety of tasks to do is good, but I feel some of them could have their interactions tweaked to improve the player's ability to interact as well as understand the interaction. Namely, I really wish I could just click once on the ladle in the pot and still move the ladle while my mouse is outside of the pot (having to re-click when I just clip outside the pot is quite frustrating). Also, I think one should be able to click anywhere on the game while I'm doing the ingredient smashing mini-game so long as I'm near it (if I click a bit off, my clicks stop being registered for it).

Additionally, I might just be really bad at it, but I feel like the pot stirring mini-game does not add enough quality % for the length of time it requires. I got shaking potions and stealing the skull's soul back-to-back about four times in a row and quickly shot past the needed % then had to stir the pot and didn't accomplish as much in that amount of time.

I like that you were able to, seemingly, randomize both the level mini-games and the potion names. Props for that. I know it probably wasn't easy making this in the span of 2 weeks so good job! (Even though there's a lot to my critique, it's still impressive that you got a game out in two weeks that is competent and has zero, to my knowledge, bugs.)

The music for this game is very well done. Slow, easygoing, and quite fitting for the atmosphere of a coffee shop.

The art is also nice and there are a few funny visual gags around the shop. (It seems our main character may have two left hands judging from the intro sequence. Perhaps this is another reason for being jealous of Jerry.)

On the gameplay side things are quite confusing (with a lot of text that's hard to read in a small window to play the game in). The brewing mechanic has red and orange indicators on the bar that fills up when you press 'Q' but for the life of me I haven't been able to figure out what this is for (no other buttons seem to stop it; I was under the impression I was trying to stop the brew on one of those colors). I'm told to click and hold after brewing to fill the cup but it seems I can do this with 'R' as well (I only found this out through experimenting). Additionally, it seems I can tap 'R' or just click to serve a minimally filled coffee with no penalty.

All of the mechanics I encountered seemed to boil down to just pressing or holding a key. For me this was not engaging. I can see the vision behind it, but I think there should be more elements added to spice the gameplay up (i.e. timing mechanics, turn it into a slower-paced Guitar (Coffee!) Hero, allow multi-tasking so I can brew one coffee somewhere and another elsewhere while waiting on one, etc.).

At night I was told to hover my cursor over some icons while pressing the "ZXCV" buttons (If these two modes are separate they should both use "QWER"). I tried to press the corresponding buttons, but nothing seemed to happen or progress. I tried to get to the ritual casting part again going through the game another time, but ended up at a screen of the coffee place at night where none of my controls worked anymore.

While there are is a lot wrong with the gameplay of this game, I do appreciate the effort. There was a vision here, and while not fully realized I don't think it's something to give up on. Keep up the work and I hope you can either turn this into a better game or use what you've learned here for future endeavors! Making video games is a difficult thing, so it's still really cool that you were able to make this (especially being given only two weeks)!

The music for this game is very well done. Slow, easygoing, and quite fitting for the atmosphere of a coffee shop.

The art is also nice and there are a few funny visual gags around the shop. (It seems our main character may have two left hands judging from the intro sequence. Perhaps this is another reason for being jealous of Jerry.)

On the gameplay side things are quite confusing (with a lot of text that's hard to read in a small window to play the game in). The brewing mechanic has red and orange indicators on the bar that fills up when you press 'Q' but for the life of me I haven't been able to figure out what this is for (no other buttons seem to stop it; I was under the impression I was trying to stop the brew on one of those colors). I'm told to click and hold after brewing to fill the cup but it seems I can do this with 'R' as well (I only found this out through experimenting). Additionally, it seems I can tap 'R' or just click to serve a minimally filled coffee with no penalty.

All of the mechanics I encountered seemed to boil down to just pressing or holding a key. For me this was not engaging. I can see the vision behind it, but I think there should be more elements added to spice the gameplay up (i.e. timing mechanics, turn it into a slower-paced Guitar (Coffee!) Hero, allow multi-tasking so I can brew one coffee somewhere and another elsewhere while waiting on one, etc.).

At night I was told to hover my cursor over some icons while pressing the "ZXCV" buttons (If these two modes are separate they should both use "QWER"). I tried to press the corresponding buttons, but nothing seemed to happen or progress. I tried to get to the ritual casting part again going through the game another time, but ended up at a screen of the coffee place at night where none of my controls worked anymore.

While there are is a lot wrong with the gameplay of this game, I do appreciate the effort. There was a vision here, and while not fully realized I don't think it's something to give up on. Keep up the work and I hope you can either turn this into a better game or use what you've learned here for future endeavors! Making video games is a difficult thing, so it's still really cool that you were able to make this (especially being given only two weeks)!

Who is Tim? Why is he living in my house? Why do I need to pay Tim to unshackle me from the bindings of his store? I suppose 1 gold is a small price to pay for freedom...

The animations for the character sprites are smooth. Good job on that!

When completing the game there's a promise of a lot more dialogue, levels, enemies, upgrades, items, collectibles, and etc. I would heavily suggest focusing on your core gameplay (character movement, interaction, and combat) before moving on to adding more things into the game. You have a vision for what you want, but it's important to limit the size of your project to what your current game development abilities are. There are quite a few bugs and elements of gameplay that are unclear. There's nothing wrong with this; it happens to us all. However, you should focus on correcting these error before expanding your game. I think it would benefit you and improve your abilities a lot to work on what you have here until the bugs are gone and the gameplay is much more clear to the player.

On that last note, try to have someone unfamiliar with your game play through it in the future to see what parts of the gameplay they have trouble immediately understanding. This will be a good way to gauge which portions of your game need to give more guidance to the player so they know what to do.

I know this comment is quite critical, but it's not meant to be harsh. Creating things is tough so good on you for putting this out here!

Who is Tim? Why is he living in my house? Why do I need to pay Tim to unshackle me from the bindings of his store? I suppose 1 gold is a small price to pay for freedom...

The animations for the character sprites are smooth. Good job on that!

When completing the game there's a promise of a lot more dialogue, levels, enemies, upgrades, items, collectibles, and etc. I would heavily suggest focusing on your core gameplay (character movement, interaction, and combat) before moving on to adding more things into the game. You have a vision for what you want, but it's important to limit the size of your project to what your current game development abilities are. There are quite a few bugs and elements of gameplay that are unclear. There's nothing wrong with this; it happens to us all. However, you should focus on correcting these error before expanding your game. I think it would benefit you and improve your abilities a lot to work on what you have here until the bugs are gone and the gameplay is much more clear to the player.

On that last note, try to have someone unfamiliar with your game play through it in the future to see what parts of the gameplay they have trouble immediately understanding. This will be a good way to gauge which portions of your game need to give more guidance to the player so they know what to do.

I know this comment is quite critical, but it's not meant to be harsh. Creating things is tough so good on you for putting this out here!

Thank you for the kind words!

Strafing is not intended to work that way lol. I noticed it, too, but the upload is locked until after the game jam.

And yeah, music is the one thing I can't do on my own. I'll likely commission pieces in the future (also spending some time lately messing around with Garage Band on iPad; don't know if that will go anywhere).

Thank you for the kind words!

Strafing is not intended to work that way lol. I noticed it, too, but the upload is locked until after the game jam.

And yeah, music is the one thing I can't do on my own. I'll likely commission pieces in the future (also spending some time lately messing around with Garage Band on iPad; don't know if that will go anywhere).

Hey, thanks for playing! 

If you're pressing tab to inspect your Tamabuki make sure you're not moving around or aiming (I've updated the itchio game page to reflect this). I hope you get a chance to do this as I'm proud of how the pixel art attached to the Tamabuki's screen turned out. (Also, beyond eventually killing the monster there isn't much to do past inspecting a few different points of interest in the small map.)

And thank you for the feedback. I'm aware of the player being able to get off the map (lol). I did fix one passageway before I uploaded, but I didn't realize how many other ways you could get off the map at that point.

I'm not sure what you mean by the character behaving weirdly when they go up the stairs. I think you might mean how they teleport up each step and yes, that is a feature of Unity's character controller (it does look odd, though; in the future I'll likely stick to just coding my own controller and interpolating the player up the steps or using a sloped collider).

Finally, the blur is a post-processing feature (motion blur). I added it in because I liked it, but in the future there will be an option to turn it off. I'm sorry it bothered you!

Neat little game.

It seemed unfair that even though I had all drinks set up almost all the time the later nights brought in guests that couldn't get to a drink and would get angry waiting. Perhaps I'm missing something with how the drink brewing work.

Either way the core gameplay worked without any bugs which is very impressive in a 2-week game jam. The art is nice and easy to look at and the music is enjoyable.

Good job!

Neat little game.

It seemed unfair that even though I had all drinks set up almost all the time the later nights brought in guests that couldn't get to a drink and would get angry waiting. Perhaps I'm missing something with how the drink brewing work.

Either way the core gameplay worked without any bugs which is very impressive in a 2-week game jam. The art is nice and easy to look at and the music is enjoyable.

Good job!

Thank you!

This will definitely be expanded on in the future as continuing it will be my first foray into larger projects. As for the story and lore behind the game, here is a snippet from my game design document that goes into a bit more detail:

"In the far future, mankind has won a fruitful life off the technological advancements that paired the digital age with alchemy. The Tamabuki, once a weapon of war, is now a common trinket that holds the digital manifestation of a fully matured homunculus within it. Its abilities grant one the ability to live a life beyond leisure.

However, Tamabuki do not grow themselves. All who possess one now had to at one point delve into the Depths and gorge their digital homunculi on the essence of the monsters beneath Paradise City.

The Player, as part of the ancient ritual of becoming an adult, is now yet another who shall explore the Depths. With Tamabuki in hand, their future will be decided here."

There is quite a mysterious narrative I want to craft here (I've still left a lot unsaid) so I'm glad to see you thinking about where things might or could go!

Thank you!

I'm glad you enjoyed the visuals. I probably leaned far too much into those since the gameplay ended up lacking a bit.

And your criticism is right on. The pet care isn't balanced very well yet and the gun play isn't quite as snappy or free as it should be. I intend to expand on the pet care within the Tamabuki quite a lot in the future so it's nice to hear that you enjoyed the concept!

Thank you!

I'm glad you enjoyed the visuals. I probably leaned far too much into those since the gameplay ended up lacking a bit.

And your criticism is right on. The pet care isn't balanced very well yet and the gun play isn't quite as snappy or free as it should be. I intend to expand on the pet care within the Tamabuki quite a lot in the future so it's nice to hear that you enjoyed the concept!

Reminds me of old flash games I would play with constant waves of stick men to crush beneath my feet.

The upgrade menu comes up rather quickly and I hit an option unintentionally at least twice.

Great job finishing your first game. I hope you keep making stuff and progressing!

Reminds me of old flash games I would play with constant waves of stick men to crush beneath my feet.

The upgrade menu comes up rather quickly and I hit an option unintentionally at least twice.

Great job finishing your first game. I hope you keep making stuff and progressing!

The itchio page for the game has been updated to your preference. Enjoy!

Thank you for playing!

This is just a small showcase of my idea for a game. The only things you can do are explore, inspect certain points of interest, feed & wash your pet, and kill the singular monster roaming around.

Shooting your gun consumes two stars (or energy). Your virtual pet will regain energy as long as they have at least one hunger bar (you can feed your virtual pet by pressing TAB and E on the FEED option).

Neat little game where you can pull a Kirito from Sword Art Online & regenerate faster than you can take damage.

It took me a while to realize you go faster when running in the direction of your cursor. It would be nice to have the screen centered along with a static background. I also had my coins disappearing on me fairly quickly... Although that become much less of a problem as I got stronger later on; It quickly became a stepping-on-ants simulator as I flew across the screen.

I became faster than my own fireball.

Thank you!

I wish I could have added more care options and abilities to the Tamabuki but I was out of time...!

The combination I listed actually froze my game completely as soon as I built it. Not sure why that would occur since I assume you're calling your functions related to the wand set-up later on attack.

The combination I listed actually froze my game completely as soon as I built it. Not sure why that would occur since I assume you're calling your functions related to the wand set-up later on attack.

Thank you! I love virtual pets so I'm glad I've been able to incorporate them into fighting monsters in a way that... Well, while it's not fully fleshed out here, at least the concept can be understood and makes sense!

The environment/atmosphere was heavily inspired by the walled city of Kowloon. It's nice to see others appreciating this aspect of the game as well as it's what I'm most proud of here!

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed the atmosphere. That is what I am most proud of here...!

The Tamabuki / virtual pet gun thing didn't get as many features as I wanted it to, but that will be remedied in the future (after the game jam is over and I continue to pursue this project)!!

Thank you for the comment about the fullscreen. This is because I had set the dimensions manually myself without realizing it would impact the ability for fullscreen to adapt to your aspect ratio. This was a simple fix now and it should launch in fullscreen when you run the game (and stretch to your screen's aspect ratio!).

This is a game I'll likely continue to pursue in the future so you can bet the gun will have more impact in the future!

Thank you for playing and commenting!

Zelda atmosphere meets Noita mindset!

This is a game that allows you to combine elements with other elements & modifiers for emergent mechanics. The presentation is quite good and I'm impressed by the variety of sprite assets created (by one person) in such a short amount of time.

The ghost enemies are cute, but also quite dumb and do not seem to find pathing around doorways or themselves. If you kite them they will quickly stack up along the walls in the next area you're about to go into and you can pick them off like farm animals walking into the slaughter... Sorry ghosts!

Overall this is still a fairly competent game for the 2 week time allotment that this game jam had.

Good job!

(Also, do try to avoid the truly game-breaking combination below. It froze my game immediately because it was just too strong!!)

[Editing this post because I'm not sure my image is appearing. The combination I put in was as follows:

tri-shot, center, double-shot, spread-shot, ice above & fire below]

Zelda atmosphere meets Noita mindset!

This is a game that allows you to combine elements with other elements & modifiers for emergent mechanics. The presentation is quite good and I'm impressed by the variety of sprite assets created (by one person) in such a short amount of time.

The ghost enemies are cute, but also quite dumb and do not seem to find pathing around doorways or themselves. If you kite them they will quickly stack up along the walls in the next area you're about to go into and you can pick them off like farm animals walking into the slaughter... Sorry ghosts!

Overall this is still a fairly competent game for the 2 week time allotment that this game jam had.

Good job!

(Also, do try to avoid the truly game-breaking combination below. It froze my game immediately because it was just too strong!!)

[Editing this post because I'm not sure my image is appearing. The combination I put in was as follows:

tri-shot, center, double-shot, spread-shot, ice above & fire below]

I really enjoyed the intro sequence of the ship crashing in from space. This being part of a short game jam (2 weeks) it's impressive to see that level of work put it something that could have been left out in favor of focusing more on the core of the game.

The biggest part of this game, what you'll encounter again and again, for better or worse, is the giant tsunami that washes over the island every now and then. Its shadow starts to blot out the sun, the tide recedes, and your screen begins to shake as it rushes over the island leaving only a select few spaces of which to stand in and watch the water fly by. It's quite a spectacle.

Unfortunately, this set piece is something you need to wait for for at least two of the puzzles and you can find yourself waiting around for it to get to new places which isn't particularly fun. The puzzles themselves, while simple once you've completed them, are not telegraphed particularly well. I feel the game could have benefited from allowing for multiple approaches to solving them. Additionally, it can be quite slow navigating the map and I think the game would benefit from a faster player speed (and perhaps jump... like a big old moon jump).

With the bad out of the way, this game still has a great atmosphere and is pleasant in general to look at and walk through (even including the looming threat of an eventual tsunami). The low-poly retro aesthetic is quite fun, and the somber music is fitting for an alien and seemingly desolate or vacated world. It's quite the sizeable game for what was a 2 week game jam. Great job!

This is a game with a lot of potential.

I really enjoyed the intro sequence of the ship crashing in from space. This being part of a short game jam (2 weeks) it's impressive to see that level of work put it something that could have been left out in favor of focusing more on the core of the game.

The biggest part of this game, what you'll encounter again and again, for better or worse, is the giant tsunami that washes over the island every now and then. Its shadow starts to blot out the sun, the tide recedes, and your screen begins to shake as it rushes over the island leaving only a select few spaces of which to stand in and watch the water fly by. It's quite a spectacle.

Unfortunately, this set piece is something you need to wait for for at least two of the puzzles and you can find yourself waiting around for it to get to new places which isn't particularly fun. The puzzles themselves, while simple once you've completed them, are not telegraphed particularly well. I feel the game could have benefited from allowing for multiple approaches to solving them. Additionally, it can be quite slow navigating the map and I think the game would benefit from a faster player speed (and perhaps jump... like a big old moon jump).

With the bad out of the way, this game still has a great atmosphere and is pleasant in general to look at and walk through (even including the looming threat of an eventual tsunami). The low-poly retro aesthetic is quite fun, and the somber music is fitting for an alien and seemingly desolate or vacated world. It's quite the sizeable game for what was a 2 week game jam. Great job!

It was a teaser from the game I just released for the Pirate Software game jam!

Check it out if you please.

Thank you for your support!

Thank you. That's good to hear!

Have fun testing out even more games!

Thanks! :)

Yes! I felt that shooting with the paws might be too unrealistic as dogs do not have opposable thumbs!

Glad you enjoyed it! I really appreciate the comment!!

The EXE version has been added!

Thank you. It makes me happy to know that you enjoyed the game!

I have just updated it with some changes to the jumping system. Should feel less laggy and give you more control in-air!

Sure. I figured it would be easier on most people to have a browser version so you don't have to download it, but I'll add an EXE later today when I update the game (some minor bugs have been brough to my attention).