itch.io

It was nice to see a contemplative game with a pretty atmosphere like this one. I couldn't help but find myself rooting for the characters to find whatever peace they could.

One thing I wasn't sure about: The framing of the second photo seemed very different from the memory. I ended up finding the right angle mostly by luck. Was there an extra clue I was missing?

This was a super well-polished game. I really liked the artwork, and I especially liked all the twists in the countdown for the duels. They certainly kept me on my toes, and I was tricked more often than I would like to admit. Great work putting something like this together in only 96 hours!

It took three tries, but I was finally able to win. This was a cool gameplay loop, having to make several decisions on the fly. My main critique is that the time limit for making decisions was very harsh, requiring me to optimize some of the fun out of the game to be able to win. Rather than reading any of the text, I ended up having to just look at the indicators on the bars to see which would be favorable. I believe that a useful future enhancement is a more generous timer, and in exchange, the game no longer tells you what effect each action will have on the three bars until after you take it.

A charming game! I found it quite frantic and was really only able to keep up to about 5 flowers alive, as otherwise, the beetles overwhelmed me. I hadn't realized until later that the watering can countdown could be increased arbitrarily far, so I could focus on watering to give myself some buffer. I do wonder if some people are able to keep all 10 flowers alive at once. I feel like it would require very quick and precise mouse movements, especially since each tool can only be used once before it needs to be selected again.

This game took a whole lot of tries to get through the first round, but I was eventually able to kind of get the hang of it. On the run when I finally beat the first round, I made it to the third round. I do appreciate the balance of the different ability types, as they all seem to have their own use. I also appreciate the warnings for when an especially difficult wave is about to arrive.

Having two detective cases in a single game was quite ambitious. I was able to get the first case first try and the second case second try. The second case was reasonably tricky but fair. I think I would have preferred it if there wasn't a 5-minute time limit, though, since that makes the optimal strategy to skip through the text and read the clues, missing out on the dialog. That being said, having time pressure to solve a case seems like an interesting gameplay idea, so I wonder if there's a way to make it work more smoothly.

Hot potato is a cool interpretation of the theme. I haven't really seen many games where "be in a favorable state when the timer reaches zero" is the main win condition. My main concern is that waiting until the timer almost reaches zero followed by passing the potato is a foolproof strategy, although that is partially alleviated by the speedrun timer. I believe that additional enemy types with their own strategies could take this game to the next level.

For instance, while I don't know whether it would actually make for good gameplay, if the player had to hold the potato for at least 1 second, but they couldn't hold it for more than 4 seconds, and enemies had a similar rule, it would start to get some puzzle dynamics, where you have to figure out when to pass it so that the enemy can't get an advantage.

I really enjoyed the fast paced nature of this game! Despite the chaos, I felt like the game was always fair, and that with enough practice, I would be able to beat every level consistently, as all of my many, many deaths felt entirely fair. I did get tripped up every so often forgetting that I couldn't do a 180-degree turn on the spot.

I made it to round 12, but then I just wanted to see the lose condition. I feel like as long as I keep throwing grenades (and due to my increased range, maybe even just as long as I keep attacking), the enemies couldn't do a thing. I enjoyed zooming around the rim of the clock when I had way too many speed upgrades.

I did encounter a slight bug where some grenades wouldn't explode. My guess is that the center of the grenade was too high to trigger the timer because the grenade was standing on its end.

Interesting game. I was able to get two of the endings (including the one labeled "true ending"), although reading the comments, apparently, there are three. The vibe of the graphics reminded me very much of Lethal Company, although I'm sure there were games before that with that kind of graphics.

My main nitpick is that the "E" indicators showing up didn't always properly align with when I could actually interact. I think the hitbox for the E and the hitbox for interaction are slightly different, and some objects can only be interacted with at certain times, while the "E" always shows up.

Having a single timeline to decide when cards are cast is a cool interpretation of the theme. Since shields drain over time, and you only see the next three moves of the enemy, I feel like there must be some kind of tricky strategy one could figure out to do well in the game. It definitely has potential.

I do wonder whether some kind of overall timeline indicator would make the game easier to understand, but at the same time, just placing a clock on the card and requiring the player to do mental arithmetic is part of the challenge.

This game feels extremely well polished. I enjoyed most of the minigames, and the variety helped keep me engaged. I found the color matching puzzle to be very tricky, so I was pretty proud when I got a good score on it.

I liked the combination of all of the different puzzles that required me to assemble a 5 minute speedrun after gathering information. Awesome game! I especially liked the twist on the 6th floor that could softlock me if I wasn't careful (and did at one point).

That one person who talks for a while was tricky to deal with, since the "advance dialog" button and the "start talking" button are the same.

I remember thinking one potentially neat idea would have been walking numbers that are counting down, so I'm glad you made a game around this theme! I wasn't sure how that concept could be properly fleshed out into a game in a way that worked, but you nailed it. The fact that dying consistently takes you to the previous number was a bit tricky for me to realize at first, as I felt like I was randomly losing a little bit of progress, but it makes sense in retrospect, and since most of the effort is just figuring out what to do, it didn't feel too punishing.

I really liked the design of the puzzles. They were not too easy but not too difficult. The last puzzle took me a while, mainly because I accidentally got stuck thinking that I needed to block the left door from closing instead of the right. I also liked the design of the the two criss-crossed lights puzzle. Overall, this was a fun game!

I managed to succeed on my second attempt. On my first attempt, I didn't realize that sleeping through an empty stomach was possible in this game, so I passed out from hunger. The fact that every GMTK game jam has a countdown timer on the front page certainly makes the meta theme a natural idea to pursue. The need to decide which activity is most productive and healthy makes for an interesting gameplay loop, and I'm glad that sleeping is presented as a good strategy, as it certainly is.

I was able to beat this game on my second attempt, or at least I think I was. It's a bit odd that the winning message was "you died" with subtitle "You saved everyone beneath the ceaseless tolling of the clock." It makes me wonder if there's some kind of "true ending" that I missed.

Regardless, this was a neat game. The turn-based resource management makes for an interesting challenge. I felt like taking the gamble was the right strategy most of the time, although I think I lost the first four 50/50s on my first attempt.

After a couple of attempts, I made it up to wave 5. It's an interesting concept to combine the health and ammo into a single unit, although I'm not sure if it affected the gameplay that much, since the goal was still to defeat all the enemies, and taking damage affected ammo far more than shooting did. Regardless, it was a fun challenge.

I like the variety of the puzzles required for the four switches, especially with the right-side switch requiring multiple loops, taking advantage of the fact that things don't reset. I also like the narrative justification that it is just you who is stuck in a time loop, so the time machine is resetting your state (apart from your memories) instead of actually taking you back in time.

The lower walls seemed sticky for some reason, though. I wonder if somehow, the foreground tiles used for the 3D effect affected collision in some way.

Very creative premise! I like how all of the numbers had their own unique personality.

It took me a while to understand the controls, but I eventually got it. I like the way it makes you feel like you barely have control, even though it's perfectly fair. My main critique is that using the thrust drains your oxygen quickly, while your oxygen normally drains extremely slowly, which means that the optimal strategy is generally to drift from goal to goal at a slow speed, which is time-consuming.

I could think of a few potential ways to make the game more frantic: One is to adjust the ratios to punish the player less for boosting and more for taking a long time, and another is to reward the player for beating each level quickly, making them evaluate risk vs. reward of trying to beat the level with just enough oxygen after boosting excessively to save time.

I like the variety of enemy types, although I'm not sure whether I was skilled enough at the game to see them all. I'm also a fan of the different attack types. My main critique would be that it wasn't clear how well I was doing and whether I was making many tactical errors in my combat, or whether the damage I was taking was expected. I expect that more visual effects when the player or an enemy gets damaged could help with that.

This is a really neat concept! The puzzle elements work together quite well, although I'm not sure whether the 15-minute time limit is realistic. I managed to complete it on my third try with one and a half minutes remaining. Reflecting on how I solved the puzzle, I believe there too many things I had to discover and deduce in 15 minutes, but I wouldn't consider this to be too large of a problem, since I can basically just try again, picking up where I left off.

This puzzle was much more involved than I expected it would be, and I really like how well it was put together.

One small nit: One thing that slowed me down was the slower speed at which text is written into a terminal. I wonder if, although the effect is less cool, making it instant would be better for the puzzles. That being said, I had neglected to read the controls until just now, so I didn't realize the terminal was scrollable with page up/down and ended up rerunning commands I didn't need to rerun.

Another small nit: I wish tab completion worked a bit more like Linux, where it completed all the way up until the next character you needed to decide. That would have made reading the logs a bit quicker.

Neat idea for a game. It was certainly an interesting challenge trying to match the paintings, especially given how all of the paintings have a similar theme, which could make for a touch challenge if I wasn't careful with my sketches.

I love the concept of this game and its execution! I like just how many different things the number influenced, and I especially like the twist on how pushable blocks behave at "0" (although no levels currently require you to use that twist). One thing I would have liked to see more is the puzzle aspect of the game, with levels that would require you to think longer about what the level wants you to do.

I'm a bit confused by level 11, since some blocks seem to have multiple associated numbers, but there were no other levels like that. (Although it was a neat idea to also hide the player's number, but there's still a way to tell what it is by paying attention to the spikes.)

I like the artstyle, and the minigames definitely have potential. I would have liked to see a greater variety of minigames with their own challenges. While currently, the list of tasks is fixed and when they occur is fixed, I find myself wondering what would be a good way to expand on the game. One idea I considered is that the game could tell you to go to your car whenever you have no tasks remaining, but if a new task appears before you get to your car, you have to do that task instead. New tasks could appear randomly, or they could be event-based (such as a coworker seeing you and asking for help).

I like how the music is dynamic and matches up with all the enemies, and it definitely complimented the gameplay for me. The dream-based synopsis is also neat. Needing to shoot to the beat enhanced the game for me due to how it played well with everything else. I did miss quite a few beats, and based on the game description, that might be a technical issue due to me playing the web build (although it could also be a skill issue on my part). I am glad that it's not too punishing if you miss the beat, so that didn't detract too much at all for me. My one suggestion would be to make the shoot button something other than "space", since I find the "space" key to be one of the more annoying keys to press repeatedly.

Great game! The fixed time limit for the time loops definitely help solidify the puzzle mechanics, allowing for a good variety of tricky but not frustrating puzzles. Overall, I enjoyed playing through all the levels. If this game is expanded upon, it would probably make sense to add some quality of life features, like the ability to restart a particular loop, go back a loop to correct something, or potentially something fancy like the ability to retry a previous loop without having to redo the loops after it. For the levels this game has right now, though, such abilities are certainly not needed.

I am glad that the game lets me preview a level and decide when I'm ready to start the next loop, giving me time to think.

I like the blue field as a way to add a kind of restriction to the interact-with-past-version platform game mechanic. I did need to restart some levels a few times due to not knowing which buttons affected which doors and starting to have more clones on screen than I could handle, but I would say that this game has solid mechanics. My main suggestion would be to have a way to tell which buttons corresponded to which doors, a way to see the whole level at once, and a way to reset without leaving a clone (since it's already possible to do that in certain areas by dying).

This game had neat visuals/effects, and the puzzle mechanics of getting the two robots to work together were pretty neat. I ended up playing until the lava level. My main suggestion would be to try to streamline the mechanics to make the puzzles faster to execute once the player comes up with a solution. For instance, I believe I would prefer if switching players were instant (or had a 1-second animation), and I do wonder if there's a way to make deaths caused by platforming mistakes to be less punishing, as the lava level caused me some frustration.

Interesting concept. I do like how it illustrates the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. I was a bit confused at first, as I didn't read the instructions properly and just walked home without interacting with any other controls and still got a very high score, but I'm sure this could become quite a tricky game with some extra tuning.

I liked the power scaling in this game and eventually (after a second playthrough) learned how to reliably dodge all attacks from the final boss. As far as I can tell, I don't lose any progress when I die, but I do wonder if there's a challenge in beating it in as few deaths as possible. I do unfortunately crash after pressing the button after winning the game, so there might be extra content I'm missing.

Neat game! The idea of a cursed Simon Says puzzle is not something I expected to see in this jam for sure.

I definitely loved the atmosphere of this game. I did get tripped up thinking that there were only two story books (three total books), causing me to end up doing a bit of brute forcing. The owls were cute, and the narrative was quite mysterious. I do wonder what other kinds of puzzles would have been able to fit well with the narrative.

No worries. This might be specific to my computer. It's odd, as even when I am in the pixel-perfect center of the object with the label "BOARD" above it and press "E" early in the loop (which I believe one of the initial sheriff dialog options tells me to do), nothing seems to happen.

EDIT: With the help of a macro that spams the E key, I was able to beat the game. Definitely an interesting concept, taking advantage of information so that the 15 seconds are enough. I'd be interested to see how this concept could be expanded upon. (slight SPOILER alert: I can imagine a trickier puzzle that could be added that would require you to use multiple echos in a single loop to get all the materials you need, although such a puzzle could be frustrating if you fail the maneuver and have to do the whole setup again.)

I like the artstyle of this game! The red field is a cool mechanic for me to have to be deliberate in choosing where to place my echos. Some of the later levels did get a little frustrating, partially because I couldn't easily predict what targets enemies would try to shoot. I believe the rules are something like "closest enemy target", although I'm not 100% sure.

This is an interesting twist on the classic Snake game, it's interesting how colliding with yourself is a win condition instead of a lose condition. I am wondering what the intended way of beating this is, though, as it seems to be possible to win relatively easily by eating one or two apples and forming a tight loop.

This was a well polished game! It was quite enjoyable, and very punishing. I'd definitely need a fair bit of practice to make it to the final wave, but the difficulty level definitely seems fair. Awesome game!

I liked the combination of the cooking and the unexpected part at the end.  It's definitely an interesting twist on a standard cooking game. I enjoyed exploring the map. 

I like the difficulty in trying to fit all the items you want to use into a single loop. I expect this could remain engaging for quite a while with greater variety and a more complex strategy for which items to choose.