Just wanted to follow up and thank everybody for their suggestions. As you may know I went for Urlang, since it fit into Racket, which I was already using, and didn't require that I install Node.js (not a fan...).

The reason why I was looking to run it in the web browser was because I wanted to lower the barrier for people to play and rate my games. It turned out even better than I hoped -- nearly everyone eligible was able to take a look. So I did get lots of ratings!

Next time, I'll work on getting better ones! ; - )

Thanks for checking it out!

Really glad you enjoyed it! At least for this one, thanks to a curved space continuum, the fall is less traumatic for the cat than it was for old Q*bert!

As the writer/designer, of course you must serve your theme to say what you want to say. However, there are a number of narrative techniques that you can use to "soften" a hard info dump. These may be worth looking into, especially for something near the beginning when reader engagement is crucial. Once you've got 'em sucked in and they're dying to find out if the spat in the lunchroom was resolved or if soandso confessed to their crush, then you can pretty much get away with murder. But a lot of people will bounce if you drop a block of text on their head at the outset. ; - ) Again, just some thoughts!

I like that it tries to adapt the number of guesses to the range. Also my terminal had some issues if I tried to backspace when entering my guess, but at least it didn't use up my try.

Very fast, but definitely wants some sound!

"Our Sponsor " prayer was amusing, however you could have probably cut the infodump a bit shorter... ; - ) Seems like you have a nice PEG available... I wonder if you could leverage it a bit so your script didn't have to be so parenthesis heavy? (Anathema for a Lisp game, I know, but it could have the beneficial side effect of making it easier to revise. Just a thought.)

Windows build very helpful! Thanks for getting it working! Liked the bold menu design with unexpected buttons ("FLEE" indeed!).... Definitely the right time of year for this creepy game.

Once I got on Win10, worked fine! If only I could say the same about my jumping skillz... As others have mentioned a slightly gentler learning curve would be nice. ; - ) Parallax is good and I liked how the instructions were integrated with initial gameplay.

I never got to play Q*bert in the arcades, just remember watching the attract mode. Unfortunately, there's no way to (reliably) make a web browser do the "thumping" thing that the original would do when Q*bert fell off the pyramid... Thanks very much for giving it a go!

Thanks for trying it out! Yes, Thunder is the last level. It doesn't so much "crash" as run off the rails, since there's no further level to go to... This is my second or third try with iso controls, still haven't found the perfect combination!

Thanks, I think I can get access to a Win10 machine before period ends. ; - )

Just to let you know, got this from latest Windows build from GitHub (jupiter-candle-win10.zip) running on Win 7 (not Win 10, so maybe that's the problem...). Sure sounds interesting from everybody else's reactions though!

---------------------------
jupiter-candle.exe - Entry Point Not Found
---------------------------
The procedure entry point CancelWaitableTimer could not be located in the dynamic link library api-ms-win-core-synch-l1-2-0.dll. 
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

Never mind... Just replicated it. Did you have the yarnball on the screen when it happened? Thanks!

Thanks very much for taking a look! It's only supposed to "PAWS" for five seconds. Did it go on longer than that? I had a choice between being able to end (as in the double bounce mechanic of the last level would work) or having an ending screen, so I went with the former... ; - )

I really like Godot, so it's great to see that you've got Lisp working with it! And 3D too!

Definitely encourages a meditative mood! Would suggest that the character might move in steps aligned with the sprite grid -- it felt very sluggish compared to pointing with the mouse.

Took me a while to reverse the process of attacking obstacles and trying to jump enemies! That said, the crate is a sneaky one... Would be nice if you could take more than one hit, maybe take successive damage. That gives the player the opportunity to try to do better without restarting completely every time.

I like the idea of tying the game into a substantial body of historic outside lore. The presentation is appealing, but some kind of pithy in-game summary of the goal and how to move could be helpful. I was happy when my avatar turned into a peacock and crushed when I lost it all to go back to level 2...

This is a neat idea and I managed to bang my way through the first couple of levels. This would really lend itself to a "magnetic poetry" style presentation with skeuomorphic tiles which would also help provide cues for picking up and moving certain items (like the quotation marks).

Glad you liked it! I don't know if you checked out the Blender files but that cat probably had the best ROI out of anything in the project -- I just made the simplest model I could, rigged and posed it. It was really helpful to keep the look consistent.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any static screens I wanted (title, howto, win, credits) working before the end of the Jam.

Yeah, I know I can just reload, but it definitely took me out of the mood a bit... ; - )

Yeah, I wanted to get a title and score explanation screen, but... no time at the end. The ball wasn't even in the game until about three hours before the close of jam, because I like leaving everything until the last minute apparently. /scratches head

Glad you enjoyed it! In Qube*Cat land, ball interacts with you... As in, if it bounces on you, the game ignores your input for five seconds. This would be more of a problem if I had gotten the level timer wired in before the close of submissions...

Very atmospheric! Would be nice if there were extra ships so player doesn't lose context.

Thanks for checking it out! That's the problem with game jam games, no time for the subtle tweaks that really make something "jump"... 

Hi! Thanks for taking a look! I'm still getting over the thrill of actually having music/sfx (I wasn't able to do game sound in Racket until my previous game Zode Trip) -- I guess I need to learn some subtlety! I believe that weird controls were a criticism of the original Q*bert, so I guess in that sense, I'm carrying on a storied tradition... ; - )

This is a nice collection! I generally prefer to do my own assets (if possible -- I am not a musician!) but these are very tempting...

Urlang is pretty nice! There's no format function but most other things work the way I expect them to, and the interface with JavaScript libraries is pretty easy to get along with. This is an implementation of a game loop from a JavaScript game tutorial page and it was pretty straightforward:

#lang at-exp racket
; Implementation of browser game loop from this tutorial:
; https://spicyyoghurt.com/tutorials/html5-javascript-game-development/create-a-pr...
(require urlang urlang/for urlang/extra syntax/parse syntax/stx racket/syntax)
(current-urlang-run?                           #f) ; run using Node?              No: use browser
(current-urlang-echo?                          #t) ; print generated JavaScript?  Yes
(current-urlang-console.log-module-level-expr? #t) ; print top-level expression?  Yes (see console)
(current-urlang-beautify?                      #t) ; invoke js-beautify
(urlang
 (urmodule game-test
   (import alert console this Math isFinite Object window document Date)
   (define context #f) ; Needs to be "global".
   (define timestamp-old #f)
   
   (define (init)
     (let* ((canvas (document.getElementById "the-canvas")))
       (:= context (canvas.getContext "2d")))
     (window.requestAnimationFrame game-loop))
   
   (define (game-loop timestamp)
     (let* ((seconds-passed  (/ (- timestamp timestamp-old) 1000))
            (fps             (Math.round (/ 1.0 seconds-passed)))
            )
       (:= timestamp-old timestamp)
       (:= context "fillStyle" "#fff")
       (context.fillRect  0 0  200 100)
       (:= context "font" "25px Arial")
       (:= context "fillStyle" "black")
       (context.fillText (+ "FPS: " fps) 10 50))
           
     (draw)
     (window.requestAnimationFrame game-loop))
   
   (define (draw)
     (:= context "fillStyle" (if (< 0.5 (Math.random)) "#ff8080" "#0099b0"))
     (context.fillRect  0 100  256 256))
   (init)
))
(define (generate-html)
  @~a{
 <!DOCTYPE html>
 <html lang="en">
   <head> <meta charset="utf-8">
          <title>Game Test</title>
  </head>
  <body>   
     <h1>Game Test</h1>
     <p>Instructions could go here...</p>
     <p><canvas id="the-canvas" width="640" height="480" tabindex="1"/></p>
     <script>@file->string{game-test.js}</script>
 </body>
 </html>})
(require net/sendurl)
(send-url/contents (generate-html))

The "Invaders" example has a Big-Bang style game loop, but I had already started trying to implement this with Javathcript and figured I'd carry it on here.

Wow! Thanks for the pointer! This is almost /exactly/ what I was hoping for! 

Note in the space invaders example, maybe something in the latest versions of Dr Racket isn't playing well with the compiler, but it won't allow you to use things like "<=" or ">" in an n-ary way, that is, with multiple arguments, e.g. "(<= 40 x (+ base.x 99))". You have to break the expressions up into something like "(or (<= 40 x) (<= x (+ base.x 99)))". Once I fixed that sort of thing in the Space Invaders example it launched and ran perfectly in the browser.

I would have to jam my head into Common Lisp again, but it does seem supported and mature. If I can easily export the code so it can run standalone (statically serviced by the itch.io server) that could work. I'll check it out! Thanks!

Glad it worked for you! Out of curiosity, did the audio for Zode Trip work correctly also?

My main problem is I can't really provide support for platforms that I don't have access to and Windows is making it really hard for people to just run a program (for valid reasons, but still a bother for this kind of thing).

I normally use Racket, but I'm tired of people not being able to play my games because I can only compile for Windows, and then Windows flags them as viruses... 

So, in hopes of getting more ratings, I'm looking to do my next project in the browser. I'm aware of the Virtual Consoles like TIC-80, but would like to use the browser resources more directly. Can anyone recommend a good JavaScript based Lisp? Or something that compiles usefully to JavaScript?

Right now, I'm looking at https://kybernetikos.github.io/Javathcript/. It seems relatively straightforward and it has an interface that should let me use standard JavaScript libraries if I need to.

Thanks!

@mfiano will have the final ruling, but I think as long as Lisp is your primary language, you should be fine -- "Must be written in any dialect of Lisp."

Keep in mind that most of the people judging may not have a C64 available to test, so you should provide an easy emulation route for them if possible...

Actually, for anyone interested, I have just discovered how to change font size. You can do it with the themes in %config.js.

Every theme in %config.js has a base section. You need to add a new setting to it. Here's what mine looks like now:

"base": {
    "background-color": "#214c80",
    "color": "#e6f0fc",
    "font-size": "18pt"
},  

This gives me a nice comfortable reading size on my laptop. The "pt" means that the size is specified in points, but since this seems to work using web styles, you can probably also set pixels ("px") and so forth. This also means you can probably style other things about the text using web styles (CSS) too...

Note that if you want to have the same font size in all themes, you will have to copy that line to all of them.

Hope this helps!

Hi! This is a very nice writing program and even though it's simple, there's a lot I like about it!

Unfortunately, my eyesight is not getting better and the small font size combined with the small laptop screen makes it difficult to see what's going on. I'd like to second the call for a way to change font size. Even if it's just in the config file it would be great to be able to bump it up easily.

Thanks again for making this available!

Hi! This was a fun platformer. I liked the "credit card" to get new capabilities -- double jump really helped with some of those acid pits! Good work!

Also, for what it's worth, this worked very well with the Sony PS4 joystick plugged into my PC.

Fun music, but my game character fell over from the start and then he couldn't get up! There looked to be some neat mechanics in there, but I couldn't get to them.

Hi! I'm not very good at these types of games, but fortunately the second song was a bit slower... ; - ) Would be nice if there was a progress indicator to show how far you are through the song.

Also! Just so you know, itch.io lets you put your download and install instructions on the game page itself so you don't have to do a readme. Just scroll down to find it: