itch.io

Thanks for the nice comment and congrats on the win! More features to come in the new year. I'm experimenting with different characters/loadouts at the moment and will add winning score to the completion page. Endless mode is definitely in the works too.

Nah, very easy to setup. From steam you just right click and choose compatibility mode, and usually the latest version of Proton works for most windows executables I've tried. Worst case you have to fiddle around with Proton versions, but usually you can get it running.

I've finally had some time to sit down and play this at more than a cursory level, and I like it a lot! It is my favourite game of yours so far, and feels a lot more like a full experience rather than a prototyping of ideas. Got it working on Ubuntu with steam Proton. Some random thoughts:

• The overall game loop feels nice. I like knock-back as a primary mechanic, and how crazy the chain reactions can get at a deeper level (even though it's sometimes hard to predict what is gonna happen on an action). I like the risk/reward mechanic of getting chests, and the addition of the timer helps it feel urgent.
• Shop purchases feel meaningful. I think it's a nice idea for a jam game to have a cheap way to refill hp 100% each round. Even though the game is deterministic i still make lots of mistakes so it's nice to start with a fresh character each floor.
• Difficulty feels about right, and once the more advanced enemy types appear you really do start feeling a sense of danger.
• Some of the ui features felt novel, such as showing the knock-back trajectory of enemies and I really like how the dash executes on key release.
• Originally I thought of a few balance issues: maps too big, pistol too weak, cyclone too strong, but I've since changed my mind because: maps really start to tighten up in the second biome, i realized pistol can perform knockback, and cyclone is really your bread and butter and sort of the main mechanic of the game. Still it could be interesting to experiment with some of these things.
• My biggest gripe are some of the controls. I would really like 'X' to also move you down, or at least not perform a wait action, as I've died many times accidentally pressing it. Also, it would be nice if numpad enter executed cyclone or shot nearest target so that I could fully use the numpad controls and keyboard without having to keep switching back to the mouse.

Overall, a really solid entry. Nice job!

Finally reached TOTALITY after some trial+error. Fun concept that could really scale out as much as your imagination allows. Polish and aesthetics are top-notch. Reminds me of those idle tower defence mobile games where you just upgrade and watch and nothing else; but then adding in player control via movement and munching adds an extra layer of skill which I think makes it stand out from those types of games. 

Amazing! Thanks for letting me know.

Hey thanks for the feedback! Hoping to make the UI more clear in future versions, and yes! It has been beaten a couple times afaik (although not by me yet lol). Balance is definitely a little wonky and I think a bit on the hard side now so hoping to tone it down or at least give player more control of difficulty.

What was the ultimate high-score?

I managed to get it running on linux with proton through steam. Pretty hard game! I haven't gotten a decent score yet. The can knockback is pretty brutal when you get in a tight situation. What was the one twin-stick shooter influence you showed in your presentation? I thought I knew of EVERY twin-stick shooter but didn't recognise that one.

Such a great interpretation of the theme! Well deserved award. Visuals and vibes are amazing and WoOW you are getting so good at pixel art!! (shout-out to the charli poster)

I LOVE how the ants have a probabilistic chance of going either way when they hit a node. Such a great mechanic and I've been thinking about it a lot. This could scale up to make such an interesting fuzzy-logic system with different node types and units when the networks get huge. 

*** SPOILERS ***

The artist anthology idea was such a good one for a jam! What a fun way to allow multiple artists to have their own vibe. The ending you showed in the demo was hilarious and reminded me of the OC "Mmm whatcha say" haha

The sprites are really cool! I really like the background sprites and the enemy sprites give me `Risk of Rain` vibes.

Hey, did you accidentally upload wizard's ascent or is my browser glitching ??

We missed you at the in-person event! Really amazing experience + vibe! Hope the other participants get to discover this one.

I thought my elite THPS2 skills would translate. They did not. This is a mad man mechanic. Awesome job guys 🍌

Thanks for checking it out DFuxa! Always a pleasure watching your vids. Sorry the framerate was so bad for you. Hopefully this is something I can improve on later games.

Thanks for checking it out Drew!

This is the tileset I used: https://v3x3d.itch.io/demonic-dungeon

I have still yet to implement line of sight calculations on targetting so those examples you gave may actually be some of the lesser culprits of offense lol

Ahh I even wrote custom code to validate the map after generation... Sorry about that. I'll try to reproduce and get it fixed

hey thanks! I used python+pygame

hey, i'm having trouble selecting my character on the web version. maybe i'm missing something obvious ?

will do! I was actually just looking into pygame zero yesterday

Happy to see this game get featured! One of the best games I played during gmtk, but with so many games submitted it was hard for the gems like this to rise to the top.

Thanks! Your comment made my day. Hope to release an update at some point.

really fun! I had the most luck sending out some heroic bait peasants for the good of the colony.

hate camus. love this.

Will do 😃 I've also used your fonts in a lot of my projects as well (credited of course)

Awesome set! I think I'll use it on 14DRL jam this year

The melding of precision platforming with RETROWILL-style puzzles is an outstanding winning combo that i'm really loving. There is so much great polish and visual style in this one (sleep start state, death state, head smash, screen shake+freeze to name a few), but I especially love the animations!

I've cleared all the stages except the last green one, but it's giving me super meat boy "so you want to be the guy" flashbacks, so i'm going to step away and try later with a gamepad. Some of the collectables throughout the game I can't even begin to fathom how to obtain.

Fun! and deceptively much harder than it looks! I secured my spidey crown and then went on to get a high score of 860 in challenge mode. 

Some things I loved:

- The menu also serving as a gameplay tutorial

- Having the ability to make a frantic attempt at a save after you miss a  shot.

- The crrrrunchy synth hooks

I could it see it being expanded to have different types of webs (moving webs, webs that break after attaching to them, webs that are constantly falling downwards and pull you down too, webs that speed up your cursor rotation speed over time). 

I was thinking about Bee Game today, and mostly about how bad I was at it at the jam... I'm happy to announce that my new high score is 4800

🙌🙌🙌

Finally got a chance to check this out. Reporting back that it worked for me on Linux using Proton 9.0-4 in steam.

Some really interesting ideas here! I think being a go player might have actually hindered me a bit as I kept wanting to play for territory rather than captures, but it still translates in the sense that I could prevent the enemy from making life in larger regions. From what I could gather, the enemy plays randomly, with maybe a % chance of taking ataris? This gives the play an almost risk/reward type feel by seeing how big the chunks you can claim from the enemy are, before they create life. I think ultimately the time limit for hp loss was a great choice, as it gives the feel of trying to parse a large board when playing someone online and the clock is ticking down.

I think there is some deep strategy involved here, even knowing the enemy plays chaotically, since you need to quickly evaluate the value of specific areas on the board, and identify which positions you really don't want the enemy to play.

Anyways I managed to make it to round 11 (Giant) on my first play-through, but I believe I will do better on my next attempt now that I understand the systems better. 

As for feedback: It would be nice to have an indicator showing the last stone an enemy played, and I also found the square pieces made the board a bit hard to grok especially at larger sizes.

UPDATE: Round 15* is my current record. Some of the later board generations start with the enemy having so much life already that it is so hard to get a foothold! (although it does seem to help to exploit the unenforced kos)

lol I love this :D

Thanks for making the great video! It was really fun to watch, and I was incredibly happy to see how quickly you picked up on all of the mechanics.

Thank you! Haha yes it can get quite intense! Let me know later how far you make it.

Whoa, thanks for letting me know! I'll get it fixed up.

Hey thanks for checking it out! The music is done by a composer in my city and we've been working together on game jams for a few years now. I'm really grateful that I found her and that she is able to bring my projects to life!

Wow, thanks for trying it out and leaving the nice comment! Very true on the Dr. Mario, I didn't even think of it at first, but now I can't unsee it.

As for difficulty, it's quite hard for me as well! I can only make it to about round 6 or 7. When I'm doing these game jams, I tend to let my play-tester play it early and often. My general rule of thumb is that if they can beat it first try I tweak the difficulty up. Well, they just kept beating it, even at the state it's at now! I made them do it a second time in a row in case it was a fluke, and they still could beat it. I was really hesitant to increase the difficulty anymore than that, so I left it as it is now. I've had a very hard time balancing this, and I still have lots to do. I think the main reason is that as you mentioned, things can escalate and get out of hand extremely quickly.

Very excited to try this! I play a lot of Go so I'm interested to see how the mechanics work. I run Linux so I'll try to get it working on wine and  report back on how it goes.

Thanks for the great font. Purchased and used in: https://rentonl.itch.io/penelo