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very cool, thanks for sharing!!

thanks for playing!! nice to hear you liked the title screen

I really liked how everything including the start menu and UI were upside down lol, very unique take on the theme, nice work!! The upside down bird sprite in the screenshots looks good, but in my playthrough I was only controlling a white circle. I made it through 4 pipes and then no more showed up, but I enjoyed that first little bit. If the bird moved a bit faster horizontally that would help too imo. Nice job on re-making flappy bird, but upside down, keep up the good work!

appreciate the comment, thanks for playing Dennis!

this was a trip, really cool stuff!!! loved how the whole village of gingerbread people had their own dialogues and personalities really nice touch. the one npc gingerkid who wanted you to spin him was a really clever way to introduce the mechanic of right click to react within the game world, the sfx and animation were really charming too. I had fun gliding around the map with the moon upgrade, but I think the player controller could be a little smoother overall (it was fine for the jam, but if you chose to keep developing the game I would recommend fine tuning it a bit). I really liked the feel of exploring the map, the layout is really nice and the focal point of the big mountain you will eventually have to climb was cool level design. I'm not sure if I beat the game or it bugged or something but I got to the floating donut thing and then kinda just couldn't move, it looked cool tho. I liked the overall look of the game but I think the snow fall effect looked too much like rain and was too visually busy, I think a less is more approach with slightly bigger particles would have worked better. That being said I really enjoyed my time with your game and I think you have a real knack for level design and world building. Great take on the them, keep it up!!

thank you :)) there's definitely a lack of content lol, but glad you vibed with what was there, appreciate u!

A well-polished puzzle game with a unique central mechanic that fits the theme perfectly, what a refreshing experience!! The whole game is executed very cleanly, from art to sfx to little bits of polish like the score text popping up after a round; it all feels like a ready-for-market mobile game already. It took me a minute to understand the mechanics but once I did there was a decent amount of depth to them. I don't really have any criticisms it was just a fun and well polished playthrough with the right amount of complexity and approach-ability. I think there is some decent potential for a mobile game here. Maybe adding progressive difficulty like 5x5 grid, a tile that is squashed if a rock falls on it, etc could help add more variety to the game. Really nice entry, keep up the great work!!

edit: I also really loved the colors/background, the presentation is great

Thank you so much, what a lovely comment!You can press R to restart the game at any point, I didn't think to add a "play again" button because the game is so short lol. Appreciate ya!

What a fun playthrough, great job mate!!! The 40-45 hours of dev time really paid off, everything feels well polished and the game loop is complete. The city layout is great feels very realistic and the aesthetic effects of switching to night time (darker lighting, black marks on the ground) really sell the upside down feel. You did a good job of arranging all the models, to the point it doesn't even feel like you used an asset pack.

The combat is really fun and there's a impressive amount of depth for a week jam. There were some real intense MOB-style fights where I was mashing around on my keyboard desperately trying to stay alive, 5/5 on gameplay/engagement for me. Looting around for weapon upgrades between waves was a great design decision and not only gave a much needed breather between the action but also helped emphasize the danger of the upside down. The boss fight at the end was a nice cherry on top too. SFX/music worked really well for the jam; if you keep developing the game some more sfx for weapons/enemies/etc would be nice too.

The only real criticism I have is the lack of a mini-map (understandable for a jam time frame) leading to me getting lost in the city quite a bit. Especially looking for the portal between rounds. It was fun to explore the city looking for upgrades but I think something like a little compass arrow on the side pointing to the portal would have been a much appreciated quality of life change. This was probably my favorite entry in the jam so far, awesome work and keep it up!!

edit: also like another comment said the game wouldn't run on Firefox for me, but did run on Microsoft Edge no problem

Thank you so much :)  Glad to hear you enjoyed the overall vibe. The game play is definitely lacking lol, I agree. Appreciate the thoughtful comment!

how do you do the level skip? I tried pressing 2 of the arrow keys at the same time but no luck.

Really cool game bro, nice job!! It reminds me of the Impossible Quiz kind of style game, loved how each level had a unique twist to it, turning the rules of the game on its head. Very fitting for the upside down theme. I stopped playing at the level where you move super fast because there was wayyy too many coins to collect and the movement was super hard to control. I think if there were only a handful of coins I would have pushed on and finished it, which is too bad because I was really enjoying the game and wanted to reach the rest of the levels. Some more sfx (like grandpa yelling in the potral) and background music would help a lot too. I liked the little walk animation of the player and the subtle sprite change when the movement direction was reversed. Nice entry and keep it up!!

thanks for playing!!

xD xD xD

(luv teh new pfp btw supa sick)

Yeah its definitely a bit short, I did what I could in the time frame ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Different acrobatics is an interesting avenue to explore, would fit nicely with the circus thing. Glad you appreciated the main menu, I spent most of my time on that instead of actually making a game lol. Encrypted upside down text puzzles would have been a super cool take on the theme, great idea. Appreciate the thoughtful comment, thank you!

Thanks for playing and the kind words, glad you enjoyed it!

Pretty neat experience, really unique take on a memorization game, nice job team!! Really like the background image and the way the nerves show up on the body after a correct sequence is super cool. The gameplay was fun at first but got stale pretty quickly. The music is excellent and the sound effects work well. I think the theme application could be a bit stronger. Good entry, keep it up everybody!

ahah glad you liked the main menu, I spent wayyyy too much time on it, probably should have spent more time on the actual gameplay lol. Thanks for playing :)

Cool game, the number of chess variations you were able to create are impressive! Some of the ideas are really clever.  The presentation is clean and the start menu is laid out in a sensible way. Sfx and background music would help the overall vibe a lot. The theme application feels like a pretty big stretch and the fact that you also submitted the game to like 5 or 6 other jams makes it seem like you didn't really care enough to take this jam seriously tbh. That being said its a cool idea for a game and everything runs well. Nice work!

Pretty cool game, nice job team, its an entry to be proud of! I really dig the underwater aesthetic and I think the visuals really fit well into the Upside Down theme, everything feels dark and like you are inhabiting a foreign place where the rules of the environment are different. The colors work really well and the little fishes swimming by and glow of certain objects adds a lot to the ambiance. The sound/music fits very nicely overall. I think your take on the theme (in terms of both game mechanic and aesthetic) fits very well.

That being said, I think the game play itself suffers from being too difficult. I think the main reason it missed the mark for me was the lack of consistency in jump angle. Sometimes it went far at a 45 degree angle and sometimes it went straight up, seemingly independent of my input as a player. This resulted in me feeeling like the missed jumps weren't always my fault, which I think is not ideal for a rage game. In a rage game you always want to feel like you messed up because of a lack of skill not from wrestling with the controls. Also, sometimes as devs its a lot easier to beat our own games than it is for a random player, so it might be helpful to have an outside person who is not part of the dev team playtest too. Just some food for thought. Cool entry, with a beautiful aesthetic and great take on the theme, nice work team!!

cool game bro! I liked the gravity effect a lot it felt very smooth to transition between up and down. The door animation at the end of the level and the attack animation were pretty cool. One small thing to fix would be the player currently floats a couple pixels above the platforms and it looks odd. I really liked the starry background, felt trippy. I would also recommend using a dedicated color palette (try Lospec to find some) because I liked the artwork but found the colors to be a bit too clashing. The player felt good to control too, nice work, keep it up!!

It's tough to find the balance between directing the player and getting in the way of the puzzle solving, I'm really glad you stuck with it. I agree that its hard to know what to do but I think the moment of delight in solving the puzzle is worth it. Thanks for playing :)

Congrats on the submission!! I was able to cook a burger and some fries(?) after reading the text tutorial on the game page. I found having to hold spacebar while cooking to be an odd design choice, as it didn't make the gameplay any more challenging or engaging and was just kind of annoying to have to hold down. I think before adding a mechanic to a game, it is important to consider why we are doing so (this is something I struggle with a lot myself too). Having to press the number keys as they popped up was a fun mechanic, and I think did a good job of simulating the overworked feeling of a kitchen. It fit the theme nicely in that respect. It was also cool that you could unlock different recipes, and that new recipes were more difficult to cook than the starting hamburger one. It was kind of hard to read the number text and I think having a larger game resolution would help the readability of everything. You did well to keep a consistent pixel style throughout the game, but I think the visual presentation has room for improvement. I would recommend using a color palette from Lospec to help keep the colors cohesive. Getting a friend or family member to playtest before submission would help too, as some of the confusing things might have been easier to see from someone else's perspective. Overall, I think you have a unique take on the theme and I liked that there was progression through the recipes. Keep up the good work!

super cool entry, loved the pikmin vibes and the lore was very funny, great entry! intro cut scene was a nice touch. 5/5 on presentation imo, there is a coherent artstyle throughout and everything feels like its part of the same world. I really liked the big slime and goon trapped in a lab experiment animations. The core mechanic is fun and exploring the world to craft stuff and feed their overlord was a compelling concept. I found actually manipulating the goons to be a bit janky (totally understandable for a 2 day jam) and think that is a potential area for improvement. For example, if I click an item and a goon picks it up, and then I click a work station or big slime, that goon will not automatically respond to the click. I have to click the goon again first in order to do so. It seems like a small thing, but when the whole game revolves around manipulating the lil goons, these minor pain points start to add up and effect player immersion. I think some camera smoothing would help with this too. Another area for improvement is with the sound design. The sfx used are good, but the lack of variety wears thin after a while. I noticed some variations in goon sounds (pause) but more "goons", varied footsteps, and an increase in background ambient sounds I think would make for a much more pleasing overall auditory experience. I only make those critiques because I think the game is a very fun concept and has lots of potential. Overall, I enjoyed my play through and your uniquely humorous take on the theme. The core gameplay is very neat and the presentation was awesome. Keep up the good work!!

Pretty cool platform puzzler, nice entry!! The start menu is absolutely gorgeous; animated title, optical illusion checkboard boxes, the hand-drawn character, snowflake particles, mouse joke. All that polish comes together very nicely, and makes for a lovely introduction to the game. The intro cutscene added to this vibe as well, it was funny and didn't overstay its welcome. The ragdoll-y physics movement was pretty fun and chaotic, even if it did cross into jank territory a few times. On more than one occasion I was able to skip giant parts of the level by just flicking across the whole screen lol. The player turning into a sonic the hedgehog esque ball and bouncy around was always enjoyable to see. I think larger level rooms may have fit the movement better as the chaotic controls didn't lend themselves to the typical precision platforming and jumping inbetween spikes kind of stuff super well. That being said, I enjoyed my time with your entry. There is some nice polish, funny moments, and good overall presentation. Nice work, and keep it up!!

Congrats on the entry team!! I'm a sucker for mixed media and having the irl image of the post-office juxtaposed with the pixel art delivery van was a cool touch. I found the car very difficult to control (which tbf it is driving on ice lol) and the environmental collisions to be frustratingly inconsistent. The car seems to turn much faster going right than left which also didn't make much sense to me. It was kind of cool to just be dropped in to the world and have to figure out where I was going and how to go, but some kind of player on-boarding would help too imo. The boost was a great mechanic and it felt great to use, plus the zoom particles were a nice touch. I think having a playtester or two, who don't have any prior knowledge about your game, would help make the gameplay itself much more approachable. The finger pointing to the next target was a cool way to indicate the goal to the player and more things like that would have helped imo. That being said, there was a lot of promise with your entry and the overall experience was very unique. Awesome job for your first ever game, and I hope you all continue to create stuff. Keep up the good work!

It's great that you are able to critique your own game so objectively! I had fun with it, keep it up!

Pretty cool concept, nice work! I liked your hand-drawn art style, it adds a lot of personality to the game. I think the game needs some more player feedback, it was difficult to tell the impact of my decisions or even if I was doing the right thing by clicking on the fireplaces. I could never get higher than like 25 seconds and I had no idea what made one run go longer than the next. Maybe it would help to start with 1 fireplace and the let the player upgrade to more fireplaces as they go in the game and start to understand things more. I think you had a really interesting take on the theme, and the idea of playing as a fire wisp desperately trying to heat the inn all by himself was a fun one. There is a fun clicker upgrade game here but I think it needs some more player feedback and on-boarding to take it to the next level. Fun entry, keep up the good work!!

Fun little vampire survivors-like, cool entry! The music fits the vibe very nicely and the visuals fit together mostly cohesively. There was a bug in my play through where the health and exp bars didn't really show up, just the vague outline of them. I think you nailed the speed/movement of the player and enemies,as long as you keep moving you are able to stay away, but if you get lazy they will catch you. I think this balance was very well-executed. The gameplay itself could use some kind of shop phase or level-up upgrades to add more variety and depth, but the core loop you have already is pretty fun. Another minor critique is that sometimes the snowballs would pass right through the enemy instead of hitting them. I think maybe increasing the size of the collision box of either the snowball sprite or enemy sprite a bit would help a lot with this. Some background decorations to break up the white background of the level would be a nice touch too. That being said, I think you have a good foundation of a game with lots of potential. Keep up the good work!!

Lol thanks for playing anways, and I appreciate the comment!

Pretty fun game loop, nice entry! The difficulty progression is spot on, I really liked the pace at which you introduced new gear/drinks/food, it made for a challenging but still fun difficulty. The time delay for making hot chocolates was great and added a nice layer of depth to the management of everything. The art style is clean enough, but has strong AI vibes imo that bring down the overall charm and personality of the aesthetic. Some more variety in sfx (especially the wahoo!s from satisfied customers) or some ambient background noise would be nice too. Adding a small amount of time to partially completed orders was also a good design choice. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for playing and the thoughtful comment! I agree that the game is missing the overworked feeling, some element of racing against the clock would have helped a lot. Maybe some kind of system where you need to complete 5 orders in Day 1, 10 orders in Day 2, etc.

Thank you :) Its definitely confusing, I didn't even have gameplay until the last few hours (worked on art and sfx for too long). It's my fault for not making it clearer, but if you click the list on the right it tells you which present each child wants and if they were nice or naughty. Then you are supposed to accept or reject the gifts based on the toy that pops up. This is done by clicking the blank paper, making your choice, and then submitting your answer by clicking on the far left paper. It is super confusing lol, maybe I will add a short description to the jam page. Thanks again for playing my game and the kind words!

Cool entry! I really liked the tilt animation of the player as he runs, helps sell the feel of slipping around on ice and adds a lot to the overall goofy arcade vibe. The concept of rushing around to deliver coffee to eskimos fits the Winter and Constantly Overworked themes well. The pixel art is lovely and the animated water in the background was a nice touch. Colors are great. Some more variety to the gameplay would be nice (powerups, enemys, obstacles, upgrades, something to add some depth to the gameplay) but for just a 2 day jam I think you've done a great job. Keep up the good work!

Pretty neat game, good job team!! The physics of the props and their collisions feel pretty good and I liked the funny sound and kicking animation the guy made every time. It was the first snowman I've ever made by grumpily kicking snow around and I liked how the full sculpture came together at the end. The presentation is the biggest area for improvement imo. The game would benefit from a more consistent aesthetic; there are large pixels, small pixels, vector images, blurry backgrounds, and sharp resolution objects in the foregrounds. I think picking a color palatte from somewhere like Lospec and sticking to a specific art method (for example all pixel art with 1-pixel density) would help the overall presentation a lot. That being said, I had some fun with this silly entry, keep up the good work!

GangMaker Game! er, wait GameMaker Gang!! Maybe my next GameMaker game should be a gang maker game called GangMaker? (sorry had to). Thanks again for the incredibly thoughtful comment! You have a real knack for blending valuable critiques with genuine kind words that makes it easy to accept the criticism. I really appreciate the effort you put into this comment.

Uncanny valley was the vibe I was aiming for so glad that came through to you. It was the only possible aesthetic that could make my terrible artwork somewhat presentable lol. Focus on drawing fundamentals is a great call and this jam has made it clear that I need to level up bit. Starting with shapes is a great piece of advice and I plan to follow it. Hopefully the next GoedWare Jam there will be some visible improvement :)

I had a blast making stupid sounds at like 3am on the day of submission, so its nice to hear you enjoyed them too. The ending seems to be confusing to everybody, I didn't do a great job of communicating my ideas. Its all a bit too messy and abstract. I'll put a paragraph at the bottom that I've been copy pasting that hopefully shows what I was thinking a bit more clearly.

Thank you again for the kind words and sound advice! I plan to work on my art fundamentals (starting with shapes) next. Every jam I get a little bit closer to an artistic identity, like you said, and I'm really enjoying the process. The GoedWare Jams/Community are the best. Hopefully see ya again in the next one :)

P.S.
So I actually made my scene in the dumbest way possible lmao. There are 17 different scene objects. Each object just plays its sprite and then on Animation End it spawns the next object and deletes itself. Each sprite I made one frame at a time in GIMP and then exported as individual pngs. So there's no sequences, or movement code or anything else like that. Just playing the sprite that I hand animated in GIMP lol. It helped for managing the audio because I could just go through each object one at a time without getting jumbled up. For your audio issues it may be that your sounds are set to Mono instead of Stereo? GameMaker default sets them as Mono for some reason, and I have to manually switch every single sound I import to be Stereo (there's got to be a better way but idk it).

Re: the ending. The irl sketch is supposed to be a marionette/puppet kind of thing that has been ripped apart from the strings. The idea is that the main character has finally reached a point where he can't pretend to be someone else any more and the opening of the curtain was showing him kind of escaping. The parents coming to talk to him are 5 seconds too late, as he has already made his mind up. I don't think I did a great job of showing this in the cutscene lol.

If you make that complete Dick Storm project, I'll be the first to buy it! Big fan of the Storm cinematic universe. And maybe not a Grammy then, but an EGOT, Mr. Storm is a true Renaissance Man after all.

Really cool artstyle and nice dramatic scene, cool entry!! I liked how we didn't see the player's face until the very end after her mother has died and the deep emotion of the scene is revealed in her expression. The twist about the government executing her to prevent some kind of plague was a really interesting one and does a great job setting up a game world. I wish there had been a bit more urgency (both in character action and cinematography) in the early parts of the cutscene. There's quite a bit of time where the camera is slowly panning or when the mushrooms are fading in/out that makes it feel like the situation isn't very urgent. It feels like the characters has all the time in the world, and that she is kind of meandering through the forest. This felt at odds with the idea that her mothers life is on the line, and I think maybe some more quick cuts, maybe a montage of the mushrooms instead of fading them in one at a time, some things like this would help show the character's motivation a little bit better. That is just my opinion though, and that being said I really enjoyed your project! There are lots of beautiful moments like when the omen butterfly soars across screen. The moving backgrounds was a nice detail and helped with the overall immersion. Music fits well and is pleasant to listen to. Overall, you nailed the visuals on this entry, and the twist at the end made for a really cool take on the theme. Great entry, and keep up the good work!!

This was a really enjoyable watch, great entry! I really liked how you handled the theme. Many entries I've seen explicitly say/show "5 seconds too late" in the scene which I find a bit immersion-breaking, but I really liked the subtle twist with the wizard NPC popping out just a few seconds too late. It was a cool choice to have the audience (but not the wizard) be aware of the hero's fate. There are some great sfx like the player jump at beginning, wizard pulling out sword, slime emerging. But there are also a few places where I wish sfx had been added like player footsteps (in house, on grass) and maybe some kind of button mashing sfx for when Dude chooses to play Car Stealer 5 instead of adventure. The visuals do a solid job of conveying the story but don't stand out as particularly interesting or stylish; I think there is room for improvement there. The story itself was funny and I enjoyed how there were 3 distinct characters with different motivations and personalities, not an easy thing for a 3 day jam. Fun watch, keep up the good work!!

This was a really fun watch, awesome cutscene!! I was surprised how invested I felt in the lil robot guy's endeavors. The snow scene with the limping animation really made me root for him. And the desert scene where he's crawling and the dialogue becomes single words/short phrases (in contrast to the full sentences he is speaking when in a more comfortable environment) was a really good little detail that helped give the robot a lot of personality. As did the line where he says "I'm late. I'm always late." or something like that, really helped show him as a kind of goofy/klutzy (but charming) character in such a short period of time. The scene at the end with the dog was cute and it felt like the perfect starting point for an alternate universe Pikmin type of game. The only critique I can really think of is that there could have been more sfx throughout the scene (footsteps when walking though different terrain, space rockets, etc) to help emphasize certain moments. The music was a great fit though and really worked well in the long hike scene and the final scene. Great effort for a 3 day jam, keep up the good work!