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Aaron

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A member registered Aug 01, 2020 · View creator page →

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Thanks for putting this up on the store so that I had the chance to try it out! I was able to save the world with potato power. This was a really unique genre of puzzle/adventure game; I didn't see anything else like it in the other jam submissions.

The artwork and animations are absolutely top notch, and the dialogue felt natural. I thought the rewind aspect worked out, and I like the idea of repeating the day to find different stuff at different times. I had to rewind maybe 6-7 times to find everything and win.

Most of the critique I have is just around the UI/UX. Panning around the level to move felt good, but at the ends of the level it would shudder oddly. Tapping through dialogue felt off a bit. The text speed was a bit slow for me, so I kept tapping to complete the text early and it would advance it before I could finish reading. Sometimes it would skip more than one line of text at a time. Lastly, some kind of soft highlight around objects of interest would have helped me notice when things had changed, like the alley with the bone. There is a lot of beautiful detail in the scene, so it's hard to know which pieces are important to gameplay.

Overall, this was a lot of fun to play, and I really hope I see more work from your team in the future! Thanks for finding a way to share this with us!

Hey, thanks for taking a look at my game! Oo, I like the idea of having better audio cues -- bare minimum audio was just scrambled in at the last minute in my case, but I can imagine that being useful for knowing when the rewind has caused buildings to disappear. I can also have the drills fire off or absorb little icons/models for the resources based on the time scale. I appreciate your feedback, hope you had fun!

Wow, I really enjoyed this game! I'm a fan of the stealth genre, and it was a unique take on the theme. I really liked some of the smaller details you managed to put in, like how the lobby area got more decorated for each victory and the sort-of rewind time warp sound effect. I also felt like the difficulty curve was just right; it took me quite a few tries to beat the last level.

Only a few minor grievances on my part: sometimes when traveling back up, spikes would appear overhead while traveling quickly and cut the rope before I had much time to respond (partly my fault for not having a better mental map of the level in reverse), it took a while for me to realize the spikes cut the rope and not the hook, the background music was fitting but got a bit repetitive for me, and I did not find the items/pickups to be of very much use at all after I got familiar with the hook's normal rate of movement and precision. The shield didn't seem to protect me from the things that were most dangerous to me (spikes, wall goo + spikes). Thanks for sharing your game, very fun!

Hey, thanks so much for taking the time to play the game through (a few times, from the looks of it). Your feedback was very thorough, and I'm really grateful. I had the need for a tutorial in mind while I was developing, and setting up everything for the fairly limited tutorial that is already in the game took a good chunk of time, maybe half a day to a day.. I eventually had to let go and move on to other gameplay stuff for the sake of time, but it was overly ambitious. I personally enjoy games with a longer progression arc, so I'm really happy to hear that you got a decent chunk of game time out of it!

I wanted to design the resource accrual and time reversal specifically so that the player would be forced to isolate buildings in time and rewind. (Not possible to win on the first time cycle). Maybe if I had done more work on the tutorial and, as another player mentioned, balanced the Crystalith towers a little better against the Corruption towers, it would have been a more intuitive and compelling progression arc. Also need better camera controls, definitely. I may revisit this project after the jam is over and release another, better version. Thanks again!

Thanks so much for trying the game out and leaving some kind words for me! I'm glad you had some fun with the game. =)

Hey, thanks for coming over to play the game! I really appreciate you taking the time to give me the step-by-step of your experience. I'm really sorry to hear about the audio experience you had; that's new feedback for me, so I'll definitely look into it. I thought I had the volume control working, but somehow you got two audio sources going at once. Really sorry about that! I've had tons of good feedback, yours included, about having a better tutorial. Gonna get that going as soon as I can. =)

Thanks for your time in trying out my game. I hear you, and I'm grateful for your feedback. I'd like to spend some more time on the UX after the jam.

Thank you for coming over to try it out! I agree, information isn't as transparent as I would like. After the jam I hope to make a better tutorial-type mode. Good feedback on the "how far the rewind is" bit; while testing, I guess I used the corruption spread as an indicator to myself. But this would be a great thing to have a meter for, so when I rework the UI I'll keep that in mind!

Thanks for taking the time to try out my game! I'd love to revisit this and add more interesting things to do with the time rewind.

Hi there! I played through all 4 levels of this one. I think you did an excellent job with the puzzle design! Each one took a little bit of time to figure out, and the challenge felt just right to me. I thought the co-op level with the AI was a pretty unique idea, too. Controls were the main critique I have -- sometimes it was a bit difficult to move the ball in the direction I intended. I also didn't realize right click was rewind for the purple blocks until I read some other comments, but I may have missed that info somewhere. Overall, great job on this one!

Howdy Gorilla! I gave this one a try. I didn't try out network mode at all, just local 2P against myself. I was pleasantly surprised when some of the typical Chess mechanics didn't quite work the way I expected them to! Interesting twist on a classic game, and the death scream sound effect was funny. I could have used more info/tutorial about the way things would behave in advance of the game (especially if I was really playing multiplayer). This feels like a stretch for a thematic fit for this jam, but the game is solid and I wish you luck in your other jam as well! Thanks for sharing!

Hi Alvaro, I just finished trying out your game. You have a really beautiful art style! The main character is unique and decorative. The menu, environments and font choice also look great. I also found the jumping a bit difficult, and the environmental hazards might want to have a slightly smaller hitbox. Overall, this was fun to play! Thanks for sharing!

Wow, this game has a lot going on! First of all, props on incorporating so many smaller games into this one. It took me a while to figure out how to do each room, but then I realized it was just a set of various mini-games. I actually think it's a pretty fun premise, but as the other comment mentions you would benefit from some instruction. The sound was nice, it felt very surreal. I also think the sports/goal disc game would be improved if the disc was a bit less floaty and fell a teensy bit faster. Thanks for sharing your game!

Hi HHenrichsen! I gave your game a try, and it was a pretty interesting setting. I liked the cool sci-fi ship, the character and animations, and the UI panels. It all felt very cohesive. I was also surprised to find the first person look mode, which I could imagine being used for some clever puzzles or just to take in the scenery. The movement felt odd at times, and in particular the camera follow was an issue. Although I realize the Q button was planned to look around, I think you should either give the player direct camera control or else make the camera follow the forward view more aggressively. Thanks for sharing your first game with us! Good job so far; I'd like to see some more cool sci-fi stuff from you next time!

Hi, thanks for playing! I appreciate the feedback -- I forgot to set up resolution scaling on my UI Canvas on that scene, but it's in place for the separate game scene. It's pretty unfortunate, and I know some people weren't able to play at all. I'm glad you got a chance to try it and have fun! Hoping to do more work on the tutorial after the jam.

Thanks for coming over to try out Crystallia! I'm glad you had fun with it, and I may just see if I can polish it up for a cool version 2 after the jam! If I do, I'll let ya know!

Thanks for trying it out! This is valuable feedback -- I agree, it would be cooler if there was more ways to utilize the rewind strategically. I'll spend some time thinking about how to improve that concept and reduce the tedium in resource gathering. Cheers!

This one had some fun puzzle/level design. I liked having to defend myself from the rockets as I explored solving the puzzles. It added some pressure that games like this don't usually have. The grab and drop mechanism could use a little polish still -- in particular for me, I would have liked to grab them from slightly further away so that I could build bridges a little faster once I realized what I had to do. The rewind gun was a cool idea, too, but its uses were rare and a little unintuitive. Nice work, overall!

Thanks for taking the time to check out my game! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and were able to start the game. I think I have identified the bug that causes the menu to fall off-screen, and it seems to be based on screen resolution. I'll make sure I fix it up after I can update the game post-jam. Much obliged!

I really enjoyed the retro TV vibe and the graphics on this game. The silhouette of the player on the screen is a great touch! I collected a couple stars and a few coins, but I have to admit I didn't know what to do next/what my main objective was. I liked the post-it note style information panels, so just a bit more direction than the signs would help me out. Nice work on the game!

Hi Pschnorbus, I went ahead and downloaded it again to try it out with the controls. Sorry I missed those on your project page before. With the controls, I was able to get much further to the third island. The story seems quite poetic, and I appreciate that the game is both a reflection on the past (Rewind) and a focus on the kite/"Wind" theme.

I have a few other critiques now that I've played more of the game, and you haven't had much feedback yet so: The player in "kite" form looks a little plain. Once I knew about the kite aspect of the story, it made more sense, but initially I thought it was a buggy model. Maybe add a texture there? The boat mechanics actually felt pretty good with the wind behind me, but going from the second to third island was rough because the wind wasn't pushing me forward. Took quite a while to get there. Maybe the wind can change direction toward the next objective? Overall, I enjoyed your submission!

This one was fun, and nice job with the character art! I thought it was kinda cool that you had to double-jump to "climb" the platforms. Maybe if you added a little 2/3 frame climb animation it would feel more natural -- right now it looks like a bug. Nice work, and congrats on your first submission!

This game was neat, and navigating through the levels got tricky. I like the way the camera has low field of view so you need to rewind to really see how to progress. I think it would be nice if the lava and the blocks were more distinctly different colors. Nice job!

Thanks for checking it out! Good feedback about the camera -- actually, you can zoom in/out anywhere, but you have to zoom all the way out to reset which object the zoom is focused on, and then it will zoom towards your mouse cursor. Still, nowhere in the game does it explain that to the player, so that's my bad. Really need to work on the tutorial and fix some of the controls to be more intuitive. Hope it was fun to test, thanks again!

Hi Liljosh,

I just re-downloaded my game from Itch.IO after reading your post. You're right, the date modified is showing up as July 15th. I don't understand why that happened, or how that is possible. I'm going to look into it further, but I'm wondering if it has something to do with Windows OS-level zip extraction?

Here's what I do know: I started the game on August 1 and submitted on August 8. All of the work was finished by me and my father within the week deadline. Here are some screenshots of my local filesystem, my GitHub logs, (I use both a PC and a laptop for development), and my father sending me files on Discord, which hopefully will put to rest any concerns as to the timeline of my project:



Hey Nyruk! I thought this game was incredibly well designed, and a strong use of your resources during the week. The 2D/3D art style is fantastic; the level layout is solid, really gets you thinking about how to navigate around. The music fits. It's also probably the first yoyo-horror-maze-puzzle-time-reversal game I've ever played. This is definitely one of my favorite submissions!

I only have a few small pieces of feedback: one, some minor smoothing on the camera follow would help; it feels a bit jerky when it goes around corners. Two, long rewinds can be a little dull -- maybe scale the rewind speed based on the amount of rope between the yoyo and the last checkpoint? Three, once the rope is long enough the extra string feels a bit.. extra? Not sure if this is a really problem or how to resolve it.

Super cool, thanks for sharing!

Hey Striladen! This one was intriguing and fun to explore; really great work on the audio recordings and branching pathways. The UI was clean and effective. I appreciate your use of subtitles alongside audio. I agree that it was a bit confusing initially as to how the rewind button was working. IMHO, the insults when behaving opposite to instruction were a bit too heavy-handed to come across as whimsical/humorous like the narration in games like The Stanley Parable. Or maybe enough humor right at the beginning would set the tone. Cool concept, keep at it!

Oh, shoot! I'm very sorry that happened. I think there are some issues with UI scaling, as one other player posted a similar problem. I made a foolish decision to put the play button right-aligned over the name. It must work fine on some screen resolutions and not others or something, and I'm doing my testing on 4k. Again, my sincere apologies for the issue. I'll fix it when the jam is over and I can submit an update. Thank you for downloading it and trying to test it, I wish it had worked for you properly. =(

Hi Oggal! I played this one through to completion. Very cool! I just want to say, your puzzles were very well designed. I would be eager to play a full, polished game of puzzles like this or progressively harder. They actually made me stop and think about sequence, so nice job on the rewind theme as well!

I had some issues with mechanics. Namely, the E button to pick up the cube was buggy and inconsistent. I was able to make it work, but in the very first level I had trouble figuring out how to advance just because the rewind did nothing and picking the cube up kept dropping it immediately. No worries, I got it eventually. I'm not a huge fan of the rewind meter in the middle of the screen; for one, in sections where I need to do a long rewind (near the end of the last level), it just felt clunky to have to stop a few times during the process. Secondly, it's small, faint and hard to see (on my screen, at least). Lastly, some subtitles would help the dialogue. My sound was on but a bit low, and so I missed instruction on level 1.

Despite the critique, I really did enjoy this game and the level design especially. Very nice work on this one, now go have some cake!

Hi Sigma! This was a fun one, and I like the rolling puzzle cube concept. The environments looked good, and the level design seemed appropriate. The rolling cube behavior worked pretty well, but a couple times didn't line up quite with the switches which was troublesome. I also walked into a fence and it got buggy. But I was able to get through most of the early puzzles and one of the three-switch ones. The second three-switch puzzle didn't seem to trigger, even when my ghost went through each one. I think you have a strong foundation for something here, and I'd recommend putting the world on a grid, and mixing up the puzzles a bit. Your friend's music is sweet, good choice! Cool game, thanks for sharing!

This was pretty cool! The mechanics were simple, but the rewind was well done and, more than some of the games I've tried, I actually found myself using it quite a lot and wishing I had more energy at times. The floaty physics of the jump felt lighthearted and good, too. Got lots of airtime to shoot with. The graphics were simple, but clean, and the audio fit (except the main menu music, which came on at pretty high volume right away). It was clear some effort went into enemy variety, but I think a bit more could have helped there -- most enemies seemed to have the same shot behavior with slightly different speed/timing.

I played it through and defeated the witch! I enjoyed the work on the camera, zooming in and out or shifting at appropriate times. It wasn't entirely clear where to go at the start, but the signposts were a good subtle indicator. Because the game was a bit short, the rewind mechanic didn't really work out in my case. I beat the witch with about 10 seconds left, so I didn't experience the rewind or what progress was lost/kept in that case. I did feel some urgency to complete in the time limit, however. Good job, keep working at it!

I'm a fan of twin stick shooters and bullet hell games, so I had fun playing this one! I was impressed by the number of different enemy types, and the size of the game. Visually, the enemies and main character were done well, as were some details like the little cross-shaped shells you leave on the ground when you fire.

Sometimes I got a bit lost with levels that large, so a map would be handy. Also, one enemy (the black ghost/wraith that fires a 360-degree burst) was particularly hard to see. I was trying to find out if I could rewind bullets into enemies (or myself) but it wasn't clear if that was working or not. Some feedback would be helpful there, otherwise it felt a bit like rewind was just reload with a cool visual effect.

I had fun playing, thank you!

Thanks so much for giving it a try! I'm glad you were stressed  ;)  -- well, I mean, I wanted players to have a sense of urgency even though time wasn't truly working against them. I'm very glad that came through in some ways!

Thanks for trying it out and for the feedback! Hope you had fun with it!

Thanks for stopping by to try out my game! I'm grateful for the kind words!

Thanks for taking a look at my game! I like your tips about visibility -- I wasn't super happy with the way I handled zoom, so the buildings definitely could have better silhouettes and colors. Good call about the UI, too; yours was very well done, and I'll see if I can spend a little more time on that aspect here. Pacing was hard.. I had a hard time getting the rewind to work accurately at higher speeds, doh!

I'd love to have some detailed feedback from you on my game, if you have the time:

https://randolin.itch.io/crystallia

Wow, doing things this way feels a lot tougher than classic Breakout! The look of the game is spot-on, and the audio definitely matches the look. I had a good time playing. The vfx were overall positive, but I personally found the vertical oscillating beam coming out of the paddle to be a bit distracting at times; looks cool, just a bit intense.