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when a monster's hit is calculated, it also calculates a random number for how many times it Combos in that hit, between 0 and the "max combo" stat for the monster. Monsters also have levels, and, some monsters have their "max combo" stat increase according to its level. What that means is that there is a lot of randomness in how much damage each hit by a monster will be. It could be 1 damage or 20 damage.

Anyway I only wanted to explain that because, the note monster is actually a lower-level monster than the piano monster typically, although they both appear in some zones. In later zones you only get piano monsters. You have a defense stat, but it doesn't do much against combo hits because it just subtracts from the damage you take. So if you have 7 defense, and the monster has 6 attack and does a 0 combo hit, it will do 1 damage (any hit always does at least 1 damage). But if it does a 3 combo attack, it'll hit for 18, minus 7, will be 11 damage. 
And as for healing, you do passively heal while walking around.
Thanks for trying it out!

yes, you can change the font, as well as add notes to the game's page or change the banner background etc

great and thoughtful reply! I will give you my context and let you in on what I knew needed polish but didn't get any

there being a map is part of the vision I had of the mini-rpg I was creating. In the end, however, my available time was spent tweaking the main game logic and audio/visuals, leaving story and context out to dry.

For example, the pixel art was slapped together and was trying to both feel good and off-putting. One thing that I did not like was the player having to hike through 7-8 screens where the enemies are no longer relevant to get back to the hard fight, and the most obvious solution is to have a teleport or shortcut once you've reached there, or to have the respawn be close to there.

The applause/cheer bothers me now too. At first it was funny and I was ready to attend to the rest of the game. It's kinda grating though, being a bit loud and frankly rude lol. As well as incongruent with the atmosphere.

Something you didn't mention but which bothered me was the background in battles. It's fine, it isn't too distracting, but I also intended to have a few different backgrounds for battles for variety. In fact, my Original idea was to have a background that resembles the world around you but "first person", and which would also rotate when swapping from your perspective to the enemy's perspective. But I never attempted to draw that with the other things needing doing.

I loved this fun challenge. 5 days felt much better for getting this done than 3 would have, when a lot of time was spent remembering or looking up how to do things such as blit a sprite with an alpha(transparency) value, set up a sin table, save map data to a json, and several other code things that will go much quicker when I have done them more.

I'm glad you enjoyed it and that you notice the Nubby inspiration, though it was not inspired by Nubby directly, rather Nubby harkens to an earlier time in programming that I remember. One I played as a kid was "Ultizurk III: The GuildMaster's Quest," which was one of many Ultima-inspired PC RPGs that existed. But also this game was more directly inspired by Knuckle Sandwich, which itself is inspired by Earthbound. So anyway, I'm not extremely attached to that genre, but I do enjoy some amount of RPG mechanics.

So TL;DR I had a grander vision that I knew I wouldn't be likely to achieve, but I also had no idea how far I would get.

I think this one is the most complete submission to the jam, out of the web builds at least. I got stuck on one, I think it was level 7, but that's very normal for me and puzzle games like these. I was pleased to find out I could just skip it in the menu by pressing the > arrow haha. Anyway, solid puzzle game, well done.

A bug I found was that the cursor would disappear if you open the menu and then press escape (I think? I should have written this immediately after and then I wouldn't have forgot) but it would reappear if you got out of the menu or something like that. very minor bug, cool game, rather cozy aesthetic too

Thanks! Yeah it can use an introduction to who you are and where you are. I intended to do storytelling to introduce the world but didn't get around to it. 

The combat was also meant to show a stats screen showing your stats that went up as well as present a choice for how to spend a bonus point, and again I did not get around to it. But this has been a great exercise and getting back in the saddle.

You know, I never played Lisa but I might now. 

I did play Undertale. My actual inspirations are a game called Knuckle Sandwich and the game everybody knows about, Earthbound.
I felt nervous during the whole process, kinda like stage fright but for "developers" (It feels weird to call myself a dev), but I achieved my goals which were to make a fully functioning game. There were lots of things that need polish but I am proud of myself for getting all the important things finished for a working prototype of something I'd see myself come back to later.

As for the combat difficulty scaling, I didn't want to sacrifice the game's gimmick of making it all about landing those perfect hits on the sphere. I also remember when I was young playing random home-made games from the internet, and many of them being utterly terrible but in a kinda cute way. So I was kinda just happy to re-create that "game dev early years" vibe I remember.

yeah, NGL the menu interface was intimidating like a graphing calculator and even though the game loop isn't complicated I felt like it was gonna ask me to build a ship oh wait It did do that lmao uh anyway I like this Type of game generally speaking so good instincts on the premise, the menu just makes me not want to engage

the blue guy is the main character sprite but inverted! lol. He's hard but thats where the game ends so I just made him the de-facto last boss. even though he can't truly be defeated

That is really good feedback. Unfortunately I won't be able to upload an update till the voting is over so for now I'll just tell everyone it's "nostalgic" and "meant to be antagonistic" haha. I really hope people can beat it but I realize it might just throw them into a challenge without any rhyme or reason. I put a paragraph in the game description to ease the pain! Thank you for trying and rating my game =)

bahaha

yeah, the piano has naturally high defense and the way defense works in my game is that it's simple damage-reduction. so if you do 9 damage it will reduce 8 of that, but if you do 20 damage it'll still reduce 8, meaning you'd do 12. so it's about combo'ing, and if you level up more you'll do more base damage as well as have more HP

did you try grinding on the first few rooms to level up? you're meant to grind a bit on each of the rooms to gain xp until you're winning fights easily before moving on.

comboing is actually the only way to play.. the damage you do is your base damage multiplied by your combo. So comboing means doing like 20+ damage whereas not-comboing is doing like 5 damage. Enemies have defense which essentially negates the first X damage, so it's Heavily incentivized to combo. You might be right that it's too hard. I only had myself to test it out and I probably am very biased since by the time I finished the game I had been "practicing" hitting the sweet spot for quite a while lol.

if you look down and jump before shooting, it boosts you up. you shot the ledge and it launched you up?

The graphics and UI look amazing!

https://oxxyjoe.itch.io/justhitit

Very lovely and fun to play

scored 11328. Great all around game. Too easy though.

I'd like to present this one-of-a-kind experience. Tank you in advance for playing my game and checking out my other two published games. <3
My submission for a game-jam, the second game-jam I have participated in.

https://itch.io/embed/3897393?border_width=2&bg_color=170c06&fg_color=92d6e7&link_color=f05620&border_color=a68d00

Thanks for giving it a spin :)

I would Direct-message him and let him know that the uploaded file has that bug at the end. maybe he'll want to play the corrected version on stream just for the sake of seeing the intended ending, while still rating it based on the one you had finished by the time limit

I get the premise. I got to the beginning of the pink bricks and then got pricked several times and frik'd off

I made it to the Medieval era and was earning tons of money but ran out of things to spend it on. Everything was maxed. And the era points were only like 800 out of 10,000 and moving up slowly. mad props though for a game that works, I played it until I hit this point of no further progress.

something fishy this way comes

On wave four, I gotta shoot the ground to boost myself onto the ledges, right? But I can't find all the ghosts so I'm just searchin' n searchin' for a ghost. which is not unlike searchin' for Jeezus

I love it! I don't understand it lol. But had fun

I get the feeling like my screen resolution wasn't enough to see the entire field even in full-screen. it's 1600x900. The planet was down and to the right some, rather than in the center, and the game-over text was also down and to the right.
I enjoyed the game though and was able to play it fine! It felt like the eating animation was frustratingly slow haha.

I became a big fat star and couldn't move hardly at all anymore =/ is that the natural ending then? great little game! I love it. 

wishing that the ore went to the silo rather than getting stuck and not being able to delete belts

Good game! I loved it. 2250 was my score. No idea how to escape the monster really. I think doing tricks in the air sped me up sometimes? edit: oh I should have read the controls. Right click to speed boost lol 

I got 50 cheeses. Oh i was supposed to go back to my planet? woops

I've tried and perished about ten times. it's a very hard game lol. Also, I wish I'd paid attention, the zoom-out feature helped a lot.
suggestions for improvement: adjust zoom-out so it doesn't go So far out. Make it so when you bonk a cat, you paralyze it or even put it out of commission. the cats were really awful! they knock you off course and you float away and waste time! lol. Best game so far!

got 1100

I was into it once I figured out what was going on lol. if you press A/W/S too soon it doesn't count. I love the way the light works and the pixel effect.

I dieded

I'm really bad at it lol

elegant, sophisticated, playable, cozy, reflective, but also it did stutter a little when there was some fireworks or something? Anyway, super pretty game! I spent the first minute of it not realizing that I hadn't used the spacebar and was like "hey I thought this used the spacebar" and then I used the spacebar and things made lovely sounds

I jumped and jumped and whoa I was free! and I went toward the yellow thing. And it said I found 1 out of 3 secrets. But if you ask me, I found the best secret :)

neat!

I don't think so, no