itch.io

Another immersive and unsettling visual poem that was an absolute pleasure to experience. Well done!

Oh I definitely agree that games don't have to follow traditional gameplay structures. I much prefer things that are less rigid and more experimental in that respect; that's where my own working is leading me, and one reason why I enjoy your games so much. I never feel your pieces are too short though, and they definitely don't have the standard "game jam" (un)finish. They are very contained and resolve themselves in quite fulfilling ways, with unique aesthetics that round out the experience perfectly. 

But i do also understand the urge to publish something in a more "professional" format. With my latest game, I'm attempting that too. It started during a month-long game jam, where I spent most of the time working on the branching narrative and programming structure; I only spent the last 3 days working on graphics (and ended up supplementing with pre-made dlc stuff), and the last 3 hours  on composing and implementing all the music and sound :3  It's a bit messy right now, more like a beta version, but I am very happy with what I was able to achieve. I am spending the next couple of months on graphics, music, balancing and of course bug fixes, spelling mistakes and text editing. I'm aiming to release it on steam by the end of the summer. It's called Thistopia (working title) and you can check it out here if you're interested. I would love to get any comments or insights you might have about it while I am still refining. A play through takes about 15-20 minutes but it has some replay value ( i hope) since choices affect the story and gameplay quite heavily. Take a look; would love to hear your thoughts :)

As for lack of marketing skills, I am so terrible at that myself (and mainly uninterested if I'm being honest). I erased all my social media accounts last year, just before I stared releasing games :D and life has been so much better since! I know it means it is virtually impossible to make a decent living from my games, but I prefer to make money with my other work (painting, comics, music...), and just do small experiments with games; maybe even "fine art" games that are unique pieces experienced on location, like in a gallery or something, idk, we'll see. I'm heading off to grad school this fall to figure all that out and just trying to release at least one "steam game" before I get lost in my MFA. Which actually, I just realized, will get in the way of my participating in Brackey's 2025.2 cause that's happening last week of August, and I have to move to Oregon during the first week of September for Uni : |

Thanks for playing! and for your kind words <3 

I was trying new things with the programming and puzzle design that I hadn't done before and I failed tremendously in the latter :D  

I totally get why i didn't rank higher tho, since the only playable part of it is incomprehensible; it is a "game" jam after all. But most importantly, I learned so much and that's what matters the most to me. (Although, honestly, getting a special mention in Brackeys' video on his favorite games of the jam for episode 1 of this was a pretty frickin cool surprise :_) anyway, I would like to do episode 3 for the next Brackeys jam if i have time this year, but i would have to find a way to fix this one first. I'm starting to get attached to these characters and their dynamic. We'll see...

I played your game Bloodsong a while back when you released it and enjoyed it tremendously; it was very powerful and unsettling. I am really looking forward to playing your latest one too!

Thank you for playing! I'm really looking forward to watch the VOD. And thanks for the comments. The difference in the art styles was due to running out of time since I spent most of the month on making the writing work :D I am working on that now, as well as working on making the battles more unique and interesting. I am happy you enjoyed it in some ways.

Cheers <3

Hi Benny!

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with me! I am glad you saw merit in the game.

All your comments are extremely helpful and quite on point. This review will be of great use to me as I refine the game for official release. I am also very much looking forward to watching the VOD! Seeing how someone plays and listening to their live reactions is invaluable to the dev process. I hope you will be interested in playing it again on your channel once it is fixed up and complete :)

Thanks again! <3

<3

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! This will be very helpful for next iteration of the game (especially the bug that allows you to play defeated characters:) 

Cheers <3

Thanks for playing! And for your feedback. 

If you can tell me more about what was specifically confusing in the gameplay and navigation, I would be very grateful. I am trying to learn and improve as much as possible. Cheers

No I didn't encounter any bugs. At least not ones that I noticed :)

This game was really enjoyable! The story is well written and quite intriguing. It hooked me early and forced me to continue until done to know what happens. I absolutely love the graphics! The sprite and animation of the player character especially. And the reflection in the mirrors was so well done. Great music too. Wonderful job!

Really cool concept. Original and surprisingly very fun! Well done for a short prototype that proves your core mechanic has great potential. Hope to see a longer, more complicated version of this in the near future.

This game looks really cool! Wish I can play it, but unfortunately I'm on a Mac computer :_( 

Any chance of posting a mac or web build?

Yes I did. 

I'm on Mac OS Sequoia 15.4

Every time I clicked on save it would just make a buzzing sound and shake the screen slightly (the stantard reaction of rpg maker when you are attempting to use a feature that is no active) and all the slots would remain empty and dark.

This looks so good! I wish i could play it, but I have a Mac computer :( 

Yeah it's a different format file...

Oh could it be that simple? I'll give it a try, otherwise I'll play the web version you sent and get back to you. Cheers!

Yeah I kept trying to save from the main menu but it wouldn't let me do it regardless of location. But that's a very small bug compared to how cool the game is :) congrats

Yea I think it would help to either go over the top by adding more to make your trolling intensions obvious, or continue the more gradual increase of difficulty that has already been happening from the start of the game by giving us a couple more screens that are harder but not so difficult all of a sudden in between. I would personally encourage the second option because, as you said, it doesn't fit the serious tone of the game that you have built so far, and that works very well. (I don't know Unfair Mario, but will check that out. sounds interesting)

Man this game is cool! Love the mechanic that stamina is you hp and you lose it by being unable to catch your pray or hiding in the rocks, instead of them attacking you.  The story is really good too, and made me laugh a couple of times! "Attacking the paperwork" in a fight is priceless :D 

I can't figure out where I can save though, since it doesn't work in the Undercave where you sleep (or the beach). Wanted to stop and come back to after some work.

Also, even though the graphics are simple, I think you capture a very interesting, mystical and mysterious mood. In some ways it also reminded me visually of the Jaws game on the original NES <3

Over all, I am really impressed and definitely went beyond my expectations in more ways than one.

Very interesting game to make with RPG maker! The plugin you created for physics seems great. I was looking for something similar for ages. The game itself is quite interesting too. The themes are very relatable, especially to game devs i think, and the graphics are simple but quite effective. I also really enjoyed the responsiveness of the sword and arrows in game, the controls were tight in that respect.  But the platforming was a little more difficult to control. The game became excessively hard for me soon as I left the house entered that gian room with buzz saws and hidden pitfalls. All in all great job and definitely went beyond my expectations for this jam :)

Yeah that could work. Let me know if and where you set that up (you could just have a second itch page for it maybe? or would that be considered cheating by the judges? I don't want to get you into any unforeseen trouble as a result :|)

This game looks really good. I wish I can play it but I have a Mac computer :_(

If you can deploy a mac version, and dm it to me, I'd be happy to play and rate.

Thanks for playing and for your feedback! And that's a great idea to have typos on purpose just because they are kids, and mishearing the news or their parents talking :D I think I'll use that for the next iteration of the game <3

And thanks for reporting the bug! Super helpful :)

Really fun game. The 2.5D tactics gameplay witha didging mechanic is such a great idea! and you managed to implement responsively. Well done! The zoomed in sprites for the busts are compensating for the enlarged pixel art by texturing the edges and that s making even more fuzzy and hard to read. I would suggest finding a different solution for those. Otherwise the graphics look great. Well don!

I've saved into a collection to get back it for further play in the near future, and will get back to you with any detailed comments I have.  But I am only able to play it in browser at the moment.  If you have a Mac build it would help me play it more carefully.  It would be great, whenever you have the time, if you could check out my game as well :)

Very cool game! The graphics, visual design, sound design are wonderful. so well polished and coherent; including the menu and the battles. The game is also very fun, and I enjoyed being thrust into the dungeon without an over bloated intro.  Well done!

I love this game! First, the graphics are amazing! Second, the story and the mood are so engaging and creepy. Love the use of the orange color to bring player attention to interactable items. And great way to unfold the story bit by bit. So very well done! Looking forward to play it again and find the secret ending. 

Very interesting game! Love the graphics, both the pixel art on the map and the hand drawn elements in battle. Really interesting mood and creepy mysterious vibe. I quite enjoyed it (although I was killed by the first Red teetth :_)

Thanks for playing, and I really appreciate your thoughtful feed back. I definitely agree that balancing the battles further will improve the game; not in the sense that making the characters more equal in power (because as you said, power  imbalance is the theme of the game), but in a way just to make the battles more fun even if you lose because losing is also part of the game :) It's a difficult and abstract target to hit but I will definitely be working on that to improve the game, along with further text edits, and continuing work on the graphics as I am still using some rpg maker assets. Cheers

Awesome! So happy you enjoyed, and that you noticed the the ship taking the path at the end :)  I am planning to continue this story in tiny chapters like this in game jams in the future. If you're curious to know what happens, give me a follow, that way you can know when i do the next one. Cheers!

Also, I am sorry that I wasn't able to play your game, because I have a mac computer :|

thanks for playing <3

Ah that's so cool and disturbing. Just played it. Having to do that to yourself :_( very tough and I love it!

But i know what you mean about the frustration when people don't play the game how you intend and they end up missing stuff. The problem also with the browser is that I had to press escape twice to get him to ask if I wanna quit. Because I was playing the game in fullscreen mode, pressing escape once gets you out of fullscreen and that's it. By then you can just press the back button on your browser or just close the tab...

Also, if you're interested in seeing the ending of this chapter, I've uploaded the solution to the map puzzle on the game page. You can als find it here.

Thanks for playing. This idea to continue from jam to jam with the same story is a way to hone both my storytelling and game design instincts inside the high speed structure of the time limit. I don't have a planned story in advance, and i didn't think of it at all until this game jam started. So i'm definitely interested in hearing players' thoughts about what isn't working and why, so I can learn as much as possible from each chapter. That's what's important to me here, so  I really appreciate the time you took to give feedback, especially when there are thousands of games to be tried out. Cheers. 

No i didn't! Once i get hired, and the slice count becomes 1 billion, i just kept failing and nothing else was changing, no matter what I tried. So I thought that was the end. How do you get the final scene?

Hahaha! Really cool and funny idea! The itch to push a button inside every person! What a great way to take advantage of it. The graphics are simple but great. I would love to play a longer version of this> Well done!

Check out my game too please if you get a chance. thanks :)

Very nice game! Splicing plants together was a really cool idea and fun to play with. The art is pretty cool too. The one piece of advice I might offer is to make the storm outside where you catch seeds into one screen only. That way you might get to use some skill in catching, where as right now it depends on luck. All in all a great job though. Well done.

Would be great if you can check out my game too, please. Thanks

Oh damg! That hurt! The first time i cut my self it was such a painful surprise. Then the game became so much more tense. I love how a mechanic so simple can be so fun, but then suddenly the stakes get pushed much higher because of a player's mistake, instead of through more instructions from the game. And the "reminders" of your mistakes that stay on  screen, simply brilliant! Music and visuls go perfectly with the whole experiance too. Best game I've played this jam so far. Well done!

 ( you also had a very interesting game last jam, where you play as a blind person on a storm; I remember it well)

Would much appreciate it if you can check out my game too and give me some feedback on it. Cheers.

Really interesting game. It was addictive. I just wanted to keep everyone happy. Maybe it meansi'm a people pleaser at heart :D The simple pixel art was very well done and perfect for the style of the game. Well done!

Please check out my game too if you get a chance. Would love some feedback. Thanks