itch.io

This was just fun, it gave me very a strong vibe of 2000's era Flash games (which I have fond memories of). You did a really good job incorporating the parts of the story naturally in the environment and being able to jump back to the heist to check things was a great QoL feature. I could see a bigger game taking this element and using it for several scenes with different characters, my advice then would be to try to add some 'noise' in the background. Things that look like they might be important, but aren't (or intentionally misdirect from the right answer). Anyway, good job getting this done! :D

Metagame cog 100/126 (nice milestone for your game, woo!)

Very nice short story! The art and music worked really well together and the characters had some good distinctive voices. I managed to only die when accusing the clowns (even with the rerolls) so I'm glad you added an easy mode! The ending was a bit of a bummer, but I enjoyed the ride, haha.

Metagame cog 99/126 (I can understand why you didn't manage to get the code working though, considering this was done in Ren'Py)

Nice! I've seen this sort of game a few times (e.g. with washing dishes) but this is a good implementation of the idea while adapting it to the theme. Not being able to advance the tutorial text irked me to the point of not realising I could load the machines while paused (I thought that was reserved for only the start of each day), so I struggled for a little while, but completed it comfortably with pausing. It also would've been nice to have a list somewhere of the combinations (as you found them if you still wanted the player to experiment) as that would've helped with planning. But like I said before, nice job! :D

Metagame cog 98/126

I see what you're going for, but this was a really difficult one for me. To put it bluntly, this game hurt to look at. The wheel slowing down at random times after hitting spin once confused me into not realising I had to press spin again to stop it, and it was only after the round was done that I realised what was even going on. I think even just a basic image of two heads with the wheels above each one would've made it instantly clearer. I had a go in the second round after blindly buying everything and seemingly ruined my build as I dealt no damage after 5 minutes. I think an important thing to take from this is to look at what the player needs to see (the values of their stats and what they represent) and what can be hidden from the player (the exact stat calculations, which could be shown when the stat is hovered, instead). All that said, good job making a game in 7 days, it's not an easy task!

Metagame cog 97/126

This was certainly a unique take on the "spin the game area" games. I think with the camera issues for this one, you needed occlusion (so you could see the player through objects) and some kind of 3rd person camera you could swap to that changed the movement controls to match the new angle (i.e. pressing W would always move the character forwards). I did get some semblance of strategy towards the end, but I almost felt like I was just abusing the physics engine seeing what surfaces I could jump off most of the time. I think the levels needed a bit more colour as well, as quite often I was having boundaries from different surfaces blend together. While I wouldn't say it was much fun, it definitely made me think.

Metagame cog 96/126

What a fantastic puzzle game, as a Rubik's cube enjoyer, I loved this. Gameplay-wise, I can't really fault it. If it were a full game you might want to increase the size of the cube as the game goes on and add more things etc. but for a jam scope, this is exactly what I would think is appropriate. The visuals and the music could do with some iteration, but I could genuinely see this as a mobile game some day in the future. Awesome job!

Metagame cog 95/126

A nice simplistic fighter, this was good! Parrying was pretty overpowered - I never seemed to win clashes when I dashed at the same time as my opponent so it's pretty much what I stuck to the entire time. It would've been nice to have had a couple of different arenas, or something else going on in them (like rocks or speed up pads), but for what this is, it does it well. Good job!

Metagame cog 94/126

Very neat! I only just managed to scrape enough by the end after some awful RNG in the middle of my run. It's a bit of a shame you had to deploy all of your heroes straight away, there were numerous times I wanted to hold off on deploying one because they'd get a much better turn. Similarly with the whole board resetting every spin - I would be planning my next turn, only for everything to fall away. But I suppose that's a different game by that point, I enjoyed my time, great job with it!

Metagame cog 93/126

Okay, here we go. I may be the only commenter so far who managed to understand the game, let's talk about it.

The biggest problem with the game is its clunkiness. You can't earn distance until you click at least twice with very few indicators to tell you what to do in-game. Yes, you can multi-select, but that not only seems to be a nearly useless feature (I think you can use it to mass-heal satellites, but every time I tried I couldn't do anything with them), it also prevents you from doing things you want to do, like set up rockets to send to the launchers. Also, the upgrade menu auto-closes as soon as you choose one, meaning if you want to max anything out, that's a minimum of 6 clicks per feature.

The next issue is difficulty. To earn enough money to buy more satellites, you have to hit temporary targets using rapidly-spinning launchers, the slightest wrong timing and you'll earn about 40km. Even the seeker rockets need to be relatively close or you end up losing half of the value of the rocket in the first place.

Tied to that is deterioration and issues with spawning. You can easily be sitting at max zoom for minutes without a single target spawning. I went an entire run (5+ invasions) with no asteroids appearing. Also, your satellites may well break well before the next one appears - an exclamation mark is not descriptive enough to explain what's happening. If this was a hammer, that would communicate much more clearly what's happening.

Now the infinite issues. As it turns out, the medi-kit satellites keep themselves topped up on health, as well as whatever satellites are close enough in orbit. Seemingly, this also prevents those satellites being healed from dying at all. I had set up a single healer with 10+ poor defense units and I had to quit out because an hour later nothing was getting through or dying. The scaling on the enemies isn't enough for an arcade-style game, they should have been speeding up or getting more health as well. (Also, healers shouldn't heal themselves and you should be able to delete satellites regardless)

How I got the cog in the end was building up to 800+km, buying one healer and 4 poor defense units, and leaving it alone. I think it died in the 5th invasion. Really, the cog should have proc'd as soon as the third invasion was over, but that didn't happen to me.

This is a nice idea, with promise, but attention needed in a lot of areas. This feels like a case study in why you have to get someone not involved in development playtesting the game - so you can see where people are struggling and focus on that rather than adding new features. The time spent on implementing the ability to mine asteroids, for example, could have been spent on making targets way more frequent (think a new one appearing every 10 seconds) and giving base rockets a slight homing effect. The result would've been a game with less 'stuff' but instantly much more engaging and fun.

I hope this has been helpful, I'm not trying to be mean in any way so I apologise if I've come across that way. I'm just trying to help you understand why nobody seems to be able to 'get' your game.

Metagame cog 92/126 (but didn't seem to proc, even on death)

This is a nice survivors-like game, I really liked the overall mood and the art especially (even if the character looks bald from behind XD). Gameplay-wise, it would've been nice to have a bit more than just stat increases on the wheel, and a bit more feedback on hitting enemies than just a light knockback. But it worked well for me and I enjoyed it. :D

Metagame cog 91/126

This is a great twist on Yahtzee! The balancing was a little off, the first 2 bounties were pretty well done, but 3 and 4 were very easy (Lurker 15 is an especially easy bonus). I liked how the trash system worked, but without the risk/reward like you have in bounty 1, you weren't punished for just discarding them straight away. I could see this as a full game though, especially with mechanics that made it easier/harder to hit certain things on the spinner or extra bonuses for some hands, I really enjoyed it!

Metagame cog 90/126

Very cute platformer! Having the ingredients list in a physical space was a bit frustrating, it would've been much better as a menu I could toggle open/closed whenever I wanted. Also I was a little disappointed that we didn't have to spin the mixing bowl a bunch of times to mix the ingredients together. But the character felt great to control and I had fun!

Metagame cog 89/126

Really smart puzzle game, I was quite proud I managed to find (and beat) the secret levels too! (We'll just ignore the few that I completed purely by accident... >.>) The movement was super juicy and I loved how complex the levels got despite it always being just one box and one hole - I only wish there was some kind of background music, but this was an excellent showing overall!

Haha, hey Tunote, glad you could try it! Yeah, the camera was definitely the hardest thing to get right, but I'm glad the cosy factor shines through strongly enough. Thanks for the kind words!

Thanks so much!

At first I thought "oh, it'll just be another platformer where the character has a spin ability", but this was really creative! I thought your level design was especially great, it did a really good job of introducing new mechanics in a friendly way. The game was a little difficult at times (and there was one level where staying in the spinner would cause you to get hit by spikes - glad to see that wasn't a recurring thing!), mostly from the spinner speed. I think if that was a bit slower (and the game was less laggy on the web build), I could've finished with way fewer deaths, haha. Anyway, I also really liked the visuals and great job with it overall!

Metagame cog 88/126

Always fun to see games about jam in a game jam. The reel in being so slow, coupled with the fact that you deal less damage the more reeled in you are, meant that if almost any enemy got past you it was basically guaranteed to damage you. Thankfully you were generous with the health restoration, and I did eventually get the hang of making sure I was always in front of the spawning enemies. Not sure how much score I needed for the cog, but got there in the end! (Oh, and side note in case nobody else has told you, the reason you have missing glyphs in the web build is because you didn't export that font in the project - but it's not like they got in the way at least!) Good job with it, I had fun. :D

Metagame cog 87/126

Haha, what a strange little game! It wasn't terribly intuitive (I kept trying to match the cards with the symbols on the table and didn't know why the fuzzball kept batting them off) but after giving in and reading the instructions I completed it pretty quickly. But all that said, the art was very cute, the music was relaxing, and I enjoyed my relatively short time with it - nice job!

Metagame cog 86/126

Fantastic game feel and UI, felt really nice to see this level of polish. As TheCatMask mentioned though, it was difficult to understand what was going on (I didn't understand I had titles I could swap out until day 3). With that level of strategy added, I saw some value in adding a bunch of small segments to try to soak any abilities the enemy had... until I got the VP title and went back to one solid colour. Also, does the President tag actually do anything? I used it towards the end, but it doesn't seem like any effect happened. Anyway, phenomenal visuals, but maybe there needed to be some extra restrictions on your wheel to encourage more tactical thinking (like 3 minimum segments). Great job, especially for 7 days!

Metagame cog 85/126 (although it didn't seem to proc for me when I purposefully lost?)

I think you made this the perfect length of time for a jam survivor-like game, really good job with the pacing on this one. The only thing that I felt was missing was some way to get health back, I got pretty beat up just before the boss arrived and had to play really safe to get the win. But still, great job with it and good use of the theme!

Metagame cog 84/126

Adorable incremental game, the rat animations were so cute and I loved how the tails stretched as you moved them around. Gameplay-wise, it's a bit of a shame you could only buy new rats and wheels (as the cosmetics didn't do anything) - that could've been a fun thing to add, like maybe they could add some speed/energy or give them skills they could use. Still, I had a fun time and the whole package worked well, great job!

Metagame cog 83/126

Very nice little incremental, great audio work especially. Unlocking so many things straight away with alchemy was a bit overwhelming, I would've appreciated a bit more time with just one skill, then unlock the second, etc. as you got several almost straight away, I was then expecting a lot more as the game went on, but that isn't really what happened. Still, this was well made and I had fun with it! :D

Metagame cog 82/126

Great side-on action game, wonderful art and animations along the way and some good polish with a lot of gameplay elements. I maybe wouldn't have music and sfx default to 0 volume, because I thought for a while that you just didn't have time to put any audio in. It was also pretty difficult at the higher speeds, I think if the camera zoomed out a bit as you sped up, that would've helped a lot. Regardless, this was great fun, well done!

Metagame cog 81/126

Very amusing setup, the only thing that was unclear to me was how to get more mudballs - it seemed to be mostly random? Perhaps tied to combo in some way? A bit more clarity with that would've been nice, but good job with it, I was entertained. :D

Metagame cog 80/126

A surprisingly intimate experience. That feeling of living through someone else's life is difficult to capture, but theming an incremental around the passage of time is an inspired way to do it. As a game, I found it a bit lacking (although the action of cranking was well implemented), but it shines brightly as a narrative experience. 

Metagame cog 79/126

Nice cosy incremental! It reminded me of a mobile one I played a while back, but with much fewer ads, haha.

I hit a rather unfortunate bug where if you open the upgrade menu on the day of a new quota, you couldn't leave it (refreshing fixed it, good thing you added autosaving!). It's kind of a shame that lower depths feel the same as higher depths, I would've expected bigger ore patches and more than 1 new ore by 500m depth. But the art is great, the music is chill, and the game is fun - great job!

Metagame cog 78/126 

Good job making anything! The first few steps are always the hardest. Next time you do a big open world thing like this, make sure there's a collider somewhere under the floor that kills the player if they clip underground (think Minecraft's void), and/or make sure there's a reset button in case the player gets stuck. Also, anything 3D is going to be harder, I'd recommend focussing on 2D games for now, there's a lot to learn about game dev!

Metagame cog 77/126 (Did you add the code to trigger the cog? I didn't seem to get one, despite getting the hat and winning - unless there's something I missed?)

Even though I won and got the metagame cog, I still don't feel like I fully understand what's going on. I only ever kept one pickaxe and one armour because that's how those things work, but the screenshots show multiple with different coloured circles - do they stack? How do you add more pegs to the circle? Mine only had one the whole time. I suppose I got there in the end, although I would've liked to see the boundaries for the different ranks. All that aside, I did get some fun out of it, good job for getting it working in the time limit!

Metagame cog 76/126

Very nice job, especially doing all the art and sound yourself! The ship feels great to control and I particularly liked the metagame notification when I hit the score requirement. I think it would've been a bit more skill-expressive if the planets exerted gravity on you when you got close, and I would've enjoyed little mini-quests like delivering packages between planets or something. But overall, good job getting it done! :D

Metagame cog 75/126

I really don't understand why people are so hell-bent on making games in Desmos, but I suppose incremental games are the easiest to do in it (this isn't the first one of these I've played). Kudos for doing it though, at least you realise how odd it is. XD I'd offer suggestions for improvements, but I think it all boils down to "don't use desmos", haha. All that said, good job getting it working in time!

Metagame cog 74/126

Indeed, serious people do not play games. 4/5 screensaver, just wish it didn't make my computer scream when opening it. XD

Metagame cog 73/126

This was a fun and creative take on the theme. The "increase pull" mechanic was quite difficult to fully grasp - it felt overly strong some times and barely noticeable at other times - and the random barriers felt like a bit of a cop out, when you could maybe have had asteroids or larger planets or something. But that said, it was a nice short-but-sweet game and good job getting it done!

Metagame cog 72/126

What a lovely experience this was. Such a nice atmosphere with the music and the graphics which complement each other nicely. I wish there was a little more structure, like different difficulties with more/fewer tiles or a different sized starting area. Also, possibly tying expansion to some ability you always have access to, rather than relying on RNG - it was good to overwrite previous parts of the village at times, but sometimes I felt so bad! Awesome stuff though, great job with it.

Metagame cog 71/126

I do wish I had put the maze after the crank level, but hindsight is 20/20. Thanks for the kind words!

No, I get it, it's a bit convoluted and I guess I really like making games with weird control schemes, haha. Thanks for trying it, I'm looking forward to getting your game in the metagame soon! Good luck getting past itch's comment restrictions going forwards. :P

Thanks for the kind words! :D

An earlier build had a big focus on treating your cursor exactly like a hand (discs would stop spinning if your cursor drifted off them, and stop quickly if you held your cursor still). You probably would've liked that version better, but all of my playtesters hated it, haha. Glad you still had fun!

You can get them all, I believe in you! Thanks very much, I'm glad you enjoyed it. :D

Haha, fair enough, I'm allergic to making things that aren't weird. Thanks for the kind words!

Thanks very much! :D