itch.io

Creative concept! It took me a little while to grasp though, it wasn't clear on my first few runs, resulting in game overs seemingly coming out of nowhere. Once I actually understood what was happening, it clicked and it caused many interesting gameplay considerations.

For example, when all coins gained enemy behaviour, I had to evade everything and make sure no coins spawned. Which is completely opposite of your instincts to blindly grab treasure chests and kill enemies. This made me constantly re-evaluate the circumstances and adjust my playstyle. Great use of the theme!

 Presentation and controls were good, the shooting felt nice and punchy. The main player graphics were a bit lacking though, it didn't make much sense to me that a generic skeleton would shoot without having any ranged weapon.

Lovely idea,  great execution! The whole game feels polished, and alternating between the sometimes challenging puzzles and the freeform drawing was great to keep it a digestible experience. The voice-acted developer commentary was great. One of the best and most creative submissions I've played so far during this jam!

Very fun concept! Managed to defeat the second enemy on my second try... And only figured out I could rotate items afterwards!

I liked how the amount of items you receive, was higher than what you could handle. It enforced me to prioritize between attack and health, but also allowed me to keep juggling items by dragging them back to the top of the screen. I think the juggling would be an even better mechanic if some items in the backpack would be consumed after use (for example, a potion that heals instead of increasing total HP). Then the player could keep juggling items to restock his backpack after a consumable was used up. This would also add something to do during a fight with an enemy, which was currently passive.

I enjoyed the color palette of the game and the music was soothing.

The text log felt a bit useless since you didn't have time to look at it during gameplay anyway, but it was a nice touch to read during downtime.

All in all, fun idea and great execution!

Interesting puzzler! Great pace of introducing new mechanics, it never felt overwhelming while also keeping me engaged throughout. I loved how the different mechanics interacted with each other, and that there wasn't a "wrong" way to do it, just more or less efficient ways. Music and graphics were also nice. Overall, very enjoyable experience!

Really fun idea and game! I like that the sidekick concept is not just a narrative, the gameplay really is different than a normal dungeon crawler. You managed to make escort missions fun, and all it took was a somewhat competent escortee!

Graphics are charming and clear (nice post effects), music also fits well together. Nice job!

PS: fun to see other (ex-)Chimps participate! Hope you guys are doing well. Rider Worlds is a blast so far, in case any of you worked on it.

-Rutger

Very clever game! Love all the unconventional strategies it allows for, like letting the second enemy nearly kill you, then swapping health bars with him and finishing him off. The system does seem easy to exploit, so I wonder if additional content could be made challenging without constraining the player's freedom... Anyhow, creative idea and good execution! The graphics also look good and the theming works well with the gameplay.

Like the best idle games, this game is very easy to get lost in for half an hour, even though it only seemed like 5 minutes. The "grinding" by just typing the randomized prompts, combined with the letter shop and the challenges, made for a complete loop that cleverly tied into one another and kept me engaged throughout, constantly giving me new goals to strive for. Great work!

Thanks for your nice review! We had indeed planned more mechanics.

We'd also thought of the deactivating platform, we envisioned it as a lily pad that would go underwater on every 8th beat. Another idea was to have frogs coming in from the bottom as well, although I also like your idea of differently colored frogs jumping on different beats!

However, on the final day of the jam we didn't progress as fast as we'd hoped, so these additional mechanics unfortunately didn't make it in.

Fun variation on Tetris! I enjoyed acting like a little helper to the actual Tetris player. I even managed to make it onto the highscore board!

The platforming feels satisfying, the squash-and-stretch and the VFX really elevate it. Being a Tetris derivative enforces a pretty simplistic aesthetic, but despite this the game's presentation still looks professional and polished.

Well done!

Quite difficult due to the amount of frogs and their movements. After a few runs you start to see patterns and can use these to create openings and to herd them together. Simple but fun!

It's interesting to see how all the variations on Frogger are so varied! You chose to make the car playable, while in our game you play as the rivers.

Intriguing concept. It's not much of a game, but I can imagine that there wasn't much time left for it due to setting up the underlying systems. It would be really fun seeing how your character fared in the hands of other players, and if you can create a character that gets unanimously killed/spared due to their answers. Would be cool to see this expanded upon, great and creative use of the jam's theme!

Soothing atmosphere due to the music and the slow movement. The game is brutally difficult, but the controls are tuned just right. It really gives that weighty underwater feeling without sacrificing any precision. The red blinking is good user feedback.

The farthest I got was the plastic bottle graveyard, although most of my runs ended much earlier than that. It certainly kept me trying for a good 30 minutes, but eventually I had to throw in the towel.

Fun game, nicely done!

A lovely twist on deckbuilding games. It looks at it from a completely different angle, but it still has all the same qualities as those games by making you think about how to optimize the synergies and pitfalls of each deck. It allows you to finally execute the perfect strategy that you never get the chance to enact during real card games like Magic the Gathering, due to other players putting a stop to your plans. Very satisfying when you succeed in making your strategies work out exactly the way you planned.

Difficulty was just right.  The hero's deck is quite weak so he really needs the player's help as Lady Luck. The second and the third fight required a strong strategy and each had their own approach.

The only complaint I'd have would be about the dialogue,I found the writing style a bit annoying. I ended up skipping through most of it.

All in all: amazing game, by far the best I've played in the jam so far. It has a lot of potential to be expanded into a full release. Really hope that it gets the attention it deserves and that you'll keep working on it!

The monkey mascot is a cute character design, I especially love how expressive his face gets when you hover over a very bad decision. The artstyle ties in well with the sudoku style, great job on the visuals!

I found the gameplay a bit difficult to understand, figuring out the hints was fun but most of them didn't quite make sense to me. Perhaps starting on a smaller grid would've helped with learning to understand the game? Nonetheless, it was fun to toy around with.

Very creative idea, to turn this joke into its own game! Nice to see ideas that are not derived from other games for a change :)

The music sets a relaxing atmosphere that fits the calm gameplay very well.

Definitely has that "one more try" feeling.

Clever way of tutorializing, by putting the controls on the signpost in the environment!

Haha yep, I bet we all have a list of things that we wished we could've worked on if we'd just had the time... But that's the nature of game jams! Nonetheless, you did an amazing job :D

Fun concept!

Switching up whether to help the player or not help him, prevented the levels from getting dull, and it makes you play it differently every time.

A little buggy sometimes but nothing that prevented enjoyment of the game.

Fun idea! Positioning your ghosts and slowly closing in on PacPerson McMan is quite satisfying.

It would've been fun to have more than 1 level. PacPerson's AI could get smarter, he could move faster, or he could get the power-up candies which would force you to suddenly have to move your ghosts out of range again and breaking formation.

The current state is a bit rudimentary, but I can see this getting expanded upon in lots of interesting ways :)

Ambitious idea, to have both perspectives playable!

I feel like the platforming gameplay of the hero needed some more time in the oven though, it didn't feel very nice to play.

However, it is impressive how much work you did in just 48 hours, and the visuals of both the game and the itch.io page look very nice. Good job!

Simple but effective! Easy to understand, and the power-ups add a nice risk-reward consideration.

The shield felt a bit overpowered since it lasts quite long and allows you to destroy a lot of balls, but it was a lot of fun to use and really made me hunt for it all the more whenever it popped up.

My highscore was 76s.

Cute splash art and UI!

I found the gameplay quite difficult due to the controls. I spent most of my time dragging my cursor to and from the cloud button, so much so that I wasn't really able to interact much with any of the other mechanics, like rotating platforms or tactically placing the special platforms. Making cloud the default when left-clicking would've avoided this frustration.

Also nice job on the visuals of the itch.io page!

Adorable art, a perfect balance between its own cozy aesthetic and the Gen 1/2 games.

Fun concept as well, although I'd have liked a little more player agency. The actions a player does don't feel like they allow for strategy or optimization (though perhaps I just missed that part?). This caused me to lose interest in the gameplay somewhat quickly.

Some ramping in difficulty would have been nice. On my first run, I was lucky enough to start with just 1 or 2 Pokeballs. On my second run, the game immediately dumped 6 Pokeballs on the counter, which resulted in a game over. I can imagine that could be a frustrating first-time user experience.

Very cute game nonetheless! The visuals really steal the show!

Controls were a bit difficult to understand at first, since they're only shown in the bottom corner. By the time you have figured them out, you'll probably have died already.

Once you get a hang of the controls though, it is easy to understand and becomes quite natural to play. The ramping speed works well to increase difficulty. It quickly goes from "I got this" to full panic mode when you mess up a single lane.

My highscore was 101.

Funny to see someone execute a concept similar to our own in a different way!

Thank you for checking out our game!

Let us know what you thought of it (a rating would really help!)

Did you manage to beat all 10 levels?