itch.io

very relaxing to play. - Natasha

cute and fun story! - Natasha

pretty cloths (but I don’t know about the ending…). - Natasha

Very relaxing game, I could play for hours. - Natasha

Nevermind! I figured it out. You need to extend the grace period to BEFORE the tween reverses direction too.

After replaying and careful examination, I was tapping the key just before the ball hits the wall and reverses, causing a fail every time. The ones i hit were by cutting it closer and closer until i accidentally would edge over into the start of the reverse tween and suddenly score.

Once i noticed what was happening, and conciously decided to press down after the change of direction, the beat became significantly easier to hit. This also explains why i didn’t even realise there was a “good” until you mentioned it, because the only ones i would ever hit were perfects.

It’s still possible that my other two theories are amplifying of course :P but basically my hypothesis is that the people finding it difficult are pre-empting the change of direction.

I can think of two possibilities off the top of my head:

1. The web version is messing with the latency. Have you tried it on browser to check the timing is what you are getting locally developed?

2. Selection bias - aka. Your audience is game devs worn out from a month long game jam, fat from christmas dinners, trying to rate as many games as possible >_< Maybe it’s fine but we’re a bad audience lol

I liked lots about your game, but i did think the timing was fairly punishing.

Thanks for giving it a go 🙏

I really loved the graphics style for this game. The gameplay was also very fun and addictive little loop. Ended up making it to wave 10 and defeating the boss, but the little army ships he dropped persisted and wiped me out in wave 11 :’)

One small criticism is that the initial influx of cash makes the rest of the game feel a bit too easy, i didn’t feel like i earned my first round of upgrades, and for the rest of the game i was better geared than all the enemies. A slight tweak to initial economy would improve this games difficulty curve imo.

Great work, continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Thanks for the kind words and critique 🙏

I really enjoyed this entry. The art style was great, especially loved the glowing confetti gun (though it got extremely hectic visually, it looked extremely pretty). The music was just the right mix of foreboding and arcadey, punctuated with great sound effects. The toy soldiers noise was great.

The gameplay was very polished and smooth. I especially loved that dashing reloads your gun. I don’t think I’ve seen that before, but it felt very smooth. The upgrade system got a little bit samey, I would have liked more interesting upgrades, and I kept getting repeats of the dash length / invincible dash mechanic. But overall felt great, and I liked the variety of the different weapons. The confetti cannon was flat out broken though, I only lost because I wanted to test the final weapon I hadn’t tried for review purposes, I feel like i could hold off death indefinitely with the confetti gun :P

Also I wanted to mention there are a lot of little juicy effects, like the wave number tweening in for example, that made the game feel very polished.

Overall a great entry and I had a lot of fun with it. Great work!

Great fun, enjoyable little tower defense with a interesting theme and clean interface. Great work!

Thanks for the kind words 🙏 glad you enjoyed it!

Fun little resource management game about the end of the world. Great idea, well executed. Great job!

Thanks for the feedback and for giving it a try 🙏

Thank you for the kind words and thoughtful critique 🙏 the final wave is way out of whack in the difficulty curve, definitely lessons learned there! Thanks for giving it a go 👍

Thanks for trying it out 🙏

Nice work! Continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Interesting storyline, but I couldn’t figure out how to get past the password :(

Nice work anyways, continue to grow and challenge yourself!

I really liked this game. I like the idea a lot, and the execution is very well done. I am glad i re-found this game and that you’d fixed the upload and glad i got to play it.

I had a small bug where a house popup UI element was stuck to the screen throughout most of my playthrough, and there was a small annoying gap in the fence in midas trith that let a bunch of guys run through and get at my main wagon, even though visually i thought i’d had it all covered…

Apart from those two niggles though, the gameplay is solid and enjoyable. The upgrade / choices system and solid progression path makes it feel like you are really journeying along the country side, stopping to barricade yourselves into every village you pass.

Really great work! Continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Nice work, the artwork in the game is well made and clean. I like the simplistic geometric style being applied to make such different and unique ships with their own personality. I found the ammo counter to be distracting, and didn’t think the moving ammo shells added much to the aesthetic.

I usually find it a little challenging in games when forward = where the ship points rather than up, so it was a bit clunky at first. Perhaps a little bit more time to acclimate to the controls might have eased that… but otherwise the control was smooth.

The upgrade system i loved. Simple straight forward, interesting upgrade choices. I will say though i wanted to see the purple and green (more interesting) varieties much more than i wanted to see the flat % upgrade ones. Even if I would end up choosing the flat upgrades; the more interesting ones were more exciting from an exploration / experience pov.

My main criticism would be that the optimal strategy seems to be running as fast as possible away from your lovely artwork and shooting over the shoulder at enemies you are outpacing. I’d like to see strafing and circling, more play and counter play, really putting your excellent artwork on screen at all times.

Great work! Continue to grow and challenge yourself!

This is a clever spin on the papers please genre. Nice work! Though I find this to be incredibly challenging, and I’m a full time software developer :P

Great work, continue to grow and improve yourself!

Oh man, I’m a sucker for an impressive shader. Well done, this game looks crazy hectic, but in a good way. I liked the music, though I would have preferred something darker / dubbier to go with the combat.

Most impressive to me was how clean the platforming felt. I felt like you’ve put an inordinate amount of time into making the character control feel great.

Great submission with a great vibe and style. Well done!

Great little game. Loved the satisfying chain reaction style upgrade. I made it to the 20 minute mark before being fairly certain i’d managed to outpace the rate of challenge and could survive indefinitely.

Well done, continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Well I killed a grandma, a hiker and myself. So my career as a park ranger didn’t go great :’D

I love the idea of this game, but i found the map to be very confusing. Wasn’t very obvious to me which way was left or right when trying to direct somebody away from the serial killer. Likewise I wasn’t sure if what i did caused the killer to approach me, or whether I was supposed to somehow close the door and prevent them from getting in. I think Some cleaner onboarding would help ease these rough edges.

The horror part of this game is great. I got jump scared by the murderer, and was definitely on edge due to the excellent ambient noises. This game had an excellent ambience and vibe to it. Though I didn’t figure out what was up with the ghosts.

Well done, continue to grow and challenge yourself!

What an interesting idea, very unique.

My only criticism would be that there are lots of keys to remember, and I’m not sure the powerful versions of the attacks add anything to the game. A tutorial / onboarding process to introduce us to the mechanics would have been appreciated.

Loved the art style and the music was solid. Overall a very unique take with an interesting execution. Well done!

The clear stand out here is the shader / art style and creepy dystopian future vibe. Well done!

I found it a little difficult to understand what the goal was, and what correlation the knobs had to what was happening.

Great work, continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Love the adorable little creatures, and how much of a horde they produce. I’d love to see this idea and style expanded into a more substantial game. Great work!

I still don’t understand Yahtzee :’) but I can appreciate the effort put into this project and the polish of the elements involved. Well done!

Interesting idea. As esk3letor said I’ve seen a few sine wave matching games, but this one feels the most “game like” and engaging. I also like the “lore” you’ve given behind it. Great work!

Wow! This came out great. So happy to see this project come to fruition over the course of the jam, from the initial concept art to this final version. Great work!

I love lots about this game, but I’ll highlight my favourite attention to detail… the minute pause in the center of the beat bar. What a subtle and clear UI/UX choice.

The artstyle and level design is great. Simple yet beautiful. The sprites are original. I also like how combat starts to sound like a symphony, excellent audio design.

Overall this is a really great piece, you’ve done very well. Nice work!

This is a very interesting and original mechanic. Great work!

I would like to see some expansion and iteration upon this idea. I was excited to see large explosions causing “back draft” waves, but wasn’t able to ever really utilize them well. Would love to see more chain reaction stuff / iteration on this interesting concept.

Nice work, continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Thanks for the kind words 🙏 and for the insightful feedback!

This is an outstanding entry, well done. I think with some polish and expansion, perhaps brining more of the emergent storytelling to the front… this could be a decent steam release. Let me start with the best parts first.

First of all I think the pixel art is outstanding, the quality level of the art assets and attention to detail on things like the shader effects is quite exceptional. My only criticism in the graphics department is that the important things (ammo recharge, upgrades etc) aren’t distinct enough from background details.

Being terrible at art myself I’m not so sure what the fix is. But in places like this: … the high level of detail matched or exceeded the level of detail of the upgrade stones / ammo refills. Later on in the game this was nowhere near as confusing, once i knew what i was looking for, but early on it was a little bit disorienting.

Overall though i was blown away by the level of artistic detail on display. Unreal that you made something this good looking in a jam timespan.

Next, I really appreciated the innovation on display in this entry.

In terms of the idea “fox with a gun” is pretty cool already, but i also liked the idea that the fox is stuck in some kind of futuristic facility is also fascinating. Pushed around by waves of causation beyond their understanding, with a vague idea that they need to confront and stop the source of the ever pulsating gravity wave… Loved it.

As a game mechanic, “shooting to move” is not as original in this jam, but I think you’ve done something interesting with it, with a set number of bullets and mechanisms to reset and refill you’ve managed to create some interesting platforming physics.

I didn’t like the delay refill when hitting the ground. I would frequently attempt a high velocity maneuver only to plummet to my death when i’d forgotten I needed to recharge my bullets. Getting the upgrades severely reduced this pain point over time, and when i noticed the refill noise it was easier to train myself. But I feel early on it stopped me from “high octane” speed running some parts in a fluid way.

My favourite innovation was the periodic wave. I like the idea of it from a storytelling / ambient perspective, and I like the usage in platforming. Being able to ride the wave with a precision jump felt great, and there were multiple shortcuts available once i understood a layout and could time a perfect wave ride upwards. It also added lots of timing challenge to some otherwise straight forward puzzles.

Finally, I should specially mention the audio / sound engineering. I think there was a lot of subtlety and ambience to the experience which added a lot to the vibe of the game, I also didn’t notice anything grating or poorly mixed. The sound effects felt very polished and professional. Great work!

Next let me address some issues i found with the game. I think the biggest of which is the aerial control feeling very floaty. Perfect platforming physics are ridiculously difficult to get right if i understand correctly (haven’t written one myself since being a kid, but i’ve heard horror stories), and overall for this jam your’s is one of the best controlled that I played.

However I found it frequently very difficult to land my fox in the precise position i needed it to go in, which i think was due to momentum being conserved while moving in the air.

Normally as the source of being airborne is a jump button followed by navigating in the air with arrow keys - the momentum being instantly halted by an opposite arrow makes for smooth navigation…

However in this game that would completely screw up the wave manipulation D:. So I’m not sure how you could add more precision to fix this. Perhaps things like “coyote time” or a tad more acceleration on the aerial movement would give it a bit more crispness, but it’s very hard to say exactly.

Likewise, the green / orange / grey areas were fascinating idea, but slightly let down by their inconsistent behaviour. This was most notable with the grey “launch pad” setups. Where I found that you needed to carefully position your fox right at the edge of the grey square and ensure you ride the fox the entire way along it’s length in order to get the full boost.

Running further into it would negatively impact the trajectory direction, and shooting downwards while inside it would counter-intuitively cause you to gain less total speed when exiting because you spent less time being accelerated within it.

If you decide to ever revisit this project and produce a full release, I think tightening up the physics and platforming should be #1 on the priority list.

Finally, I must confess I didn’t make it to the end. I got stuck here, and couldn’t figure out how to make the jump across to the other side:

The difficulty curve was great for me, and I’m terrible at these sorts of games :( but after many attempts i couldn’t figure out how to get this jump, and the checkpoint was some distance back, requiring a fair effort between each attempt. So eventually I gave up.

I’ll never know if my fox manages to put a stop to the wave or not :(

Overall this was an extremely solid entry, with a ton of polish and love put into it. Very impressive, well done! Continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Thank you for the kind words 🙏

Thanks for the kind words 🙏

When i first punted one of the business guys saying “I have to go to work” and he started spinning through the road; i realised i was playing a surrealist masterpiece :’D

Great work. Continue to grow and challenge yourself!

Oh man, I love how simplistic and addictive this is. The decision making under pressure is so great, yet it allows you to learn and practice as well. What an outstanding game from such a minimalistic concept. Great work!

Great work guys! Very happy to see this one come to fruition after all the tantalizing art posted on the community discord during the jam. :) Nice work

Wow, what a labor of love this turned out to be. So great to finally see this unveiled after following tantalizing screenshots in the discord.

First let me start with the best parts. The pixel art style and the production value put into this project are outstanding, I think the artists on your team need a raise.. metaphorically i guess :P The spinning lighthouse beam title screen is just outstanding.

The audio is also very well done, and although the voice acting is admittedly amateur recording quality, lacking the extreme polish levels of the graphics, for a jam game it was excellent work and i really liked the characters by the end based solely on their voice acting.

The storyline was interesting to me, but I should mention that the tone of the game was not what i expected. I was geared up for a horror game of some kind based on the tagline “Worse than the dark… is what the light reveals” I kept waiting for something spooky to happen until i realised what the gameplay loop was going to be. Even so I appreciated the ambition of telling a true story and framing it as about balancing choices (family, duty, sacrifice etc)

Next some criticisms…. Starting with the game play

First off the gear puzzle sucks :| Sorry to be blunt, but it’s the only one i didn’t enjoy at all, and it’s not as well implemented as the others. I didn’t find it interesting to solve, I just trial and error solved it based on what gears could or couldn’t reach each other.

Second of all, the adventure game style framing with the lighthouse view would be much more suited to a full adventure game, perhaps finding a gear under Elisses bed… adventure game style puzzles etc.. would flesh this game out and address my third complaint…

Which is that the gameplay is a bit samey. The exact same routine each day is not very interesting. Although admittedly this experience doesn’t overstay it’s welcome - some variation in the daily routine wouldn’t go astray. By far the most memorable parts to me were the diversions in the daily routine. When Elisse was waiting in the kitchen for me I was suddenly very curious and immersed.

I think this game would have been fine with just 3-4 screens, 1 per mini game, and didn’t really need the walking up and down the lighthouse. Of course, the fantastic artstyle wouldn’t have been so clearly on display in that case, but purely in terms of gameplay the traversing up and down the tower didn’t do anything for me.

Finally, the loading screens are ass and very unimmersive imo. In retrospect, I would have preferred to play on desktop I think as the loading screens really break the immersion, especially taking you to a simple puzzle game and back warranting a loading screen seems excessive. What can be done though for a browser game :shrug so I get it.

Finally Finally, let me close this criticism sandwich with a disclaimer and a compliment…

So this is by far one of the most polished and ambitious entries I’ve played, and I’ve played almost 250 now :) I’m only taking extra time to go into close detail on my criticism because the high level of effort put into this submission warrants it.

And I wanted to make special mention that the first time I played the cooking minigame, I got a quality score of 0, slightly furious and ready to write a scathing comment about the cooking minigame being terrible. However by the end of the playthrough - and once I’d figured it out - the cooking minigame was my favourite part of each day, and would probably warrant an entire jam submission by itself.

All round very high quality entry with a clearly tremendous amount of effort put into it. Great work, continue to grow and challenge yourselves!

Edit: Oh! Almost forgot to mention, the suspicious german accented guy claiming to be an american is by far the most dynamic character in the entire game :’D Loved it

I’m very intrigued by this idea, but i fear i’m too stupid to understand how it works :(. It seemed to me that the market always went lower than i had purchased things at, forcing me to borrow, making the amount i needed to make even higher and more impossible to achieve. Also I didn’t really have a good idea of how I should guess if things are going to go up or down. At first I thought, “Aha, there must be a minimum, I’ll wait till it’s really low” then the market crashed :(.

So overall I like the innovation here, and the presentation / execution is very minimalistic and stylized which i love. However I feel I am too dumb to play this game, or needed a better onboarding to understand how things were supposed to be working.