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See you on the 30th! 🔥

Thank you so much! Really glad you liked the idea.

Thank you so much for playing, and for hosting such a fun jam!

Thank you for such a thorough playtest — really appreciate it! Glad the torch shader and the lit bonfires read well. I've noted the mobile title crowding and the missing PAUSED indicator, and I'll take a look. Thanks for playing! 🔥

Thank you! I love that we both built around a burning torch as the clock, just in opposite directions — yours sounds wonderful too. Glad the seven bonfires always keep the goal in sight. See you when rating opens! 🔥

Thank you so much for playing, and for the kind words! Really glad the raise-and-bank loop landed for you. The escalating spirits idea is a fun one — I've noted it, and I appreciate you taking the time to share it. Happy jamming! 🎃

Wow, this is so addictive! Very satisfying slinging the torch at various trajectories. Did you really make this fully with AI?

Cool concept. I wonder if the words that you type could be more like magical spell words instead of random letters, but I get that they are isolated in a narrow keyboard range. Or maybe it could be (magical) symbols instead of letters? Nice game.

I like old school rpgs like this, reminds me a little of a sci-fi Avernum. The first level was straight-forward, but level two was a bit confusing. Nice game.

Smooth gameplay and good music. The zooming was a nice effect. I would have liked to see a shorter spell casting / raise time and maybe an auto attack. Nice job.

The environment is so cool, grim, dark, this would make a nice rpg. I was almost thinking if digging out a skeleton would change the music/beat/instrument/etc and have different attack effects with that. Guitar Hero => Necro Music Hero?

I like this type of survival game and the retro console makes it even more original. It was neat being able to turn everyone into zombies until you have pretty much the whole board as your own army.

Level 35 @ 5:00 minutes and I was basically invincible. Amazing concept and execution! This was really fun. I'd love to see this built out more with increasing challenging and powerful monsters.

Very spooky ending screen! Great light effects from the staff. It would be great to see more playable content, like maybe the ghosts become an army.

I really like the concept of drawing spells with your finger like that, also the dripping blood effect. I couldn't seem to cast a spell though even when tracing the baseball shape in the help page?

I really like the graphics and intro style. I had a good laugh at the beginning. Love the lighting from the lantern too.

Thanks for flagging that! It's fixed now — the tap that starts the game was also registering as a steering touch, so the keeper set off toward it on his own. Glad you enjoyed it anyway! 🪦

I really enjoy RTS games and this feels like one. I could see playing this once more monster units are added and enemies or maybe even an enemy graveyard or base that you have to destroy (Warcraft/Starcraft/etc). Puchasing an auto-click upgrade would be nice ;)

Fantastic. This is like a story (great story, btw) and adventure game fit into one. It really fits the theme and brings a whole Pet Cemetery feel.

Nice, it's like Smash TV! Would love to see full screen support! Well done.

I really like this idea - so creative and very immersive! This is like the spooky operating system I wish we had": "AfterLife OS". I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing though. The text in the emails was a bit much to read. I wonder if the emails could be much more brief and give instant feedback when you categorize it like "Good" or "Bad" or just show a score increase/penalty if you picked the right option (actually, maybe an "afterlife" progress bar could be your life or something and it adjusts each time you categorize an email). I'd definitely play this more  if you complete the game and publish! Great job!

This is fun. It's like an RTS retro style and definitely fits the theme. I found I could just raise a whole bunch of zombies and just sit in the center and let them have at it. The retro pixel graphics are great, well done!

This is fun! I love the zooming in and pixelating retro graphics. The movement is very fluid too. It's also creative using your light as a laser gun like an alien movie while it charges up to blast the zombies in a line. The difficulty was kinda high though, maybe the laser could charge faster or the zombies could be more gradual appearing for the first stage. Well done on the atmosphere and effects, keep it up!

I really like this idea of a GameBoy console rom and the original artwork. The game is a little difficult though! Maybe the zombies could just go in a straight line and not follow after the player to make it easier to move from house to house - or a way to shoot/freeze the zombies or something. Nice job though!

Hi! Happy to explain — GRAVE TITHE was designed and built today, October 16, during the jam.
I build with AI assistance, which I disclosed on the submission form exactly as the rules ask: the code was written with AI help, and all art and audio are procedural, generated in code at runtime. That's honestly how it came together so fast — it's a single HTML file built around the NECROMANCY theme.
The timestamps are all public, if you'd like to check: the game file was created today at 1:20 PM EDT, and the GitHub repo was created today at 1:49 PM EDT with all 19 commits from today — the whole build and tuning history is in the open: https://github.com/retroromrunner/grave-tithe
Nothing was started before the jam began. I get why the quick submission looked suspicious, and I'm glad to answer anything else — please let me know if the entry can be reinstated. Thank you!

The manor has a new haunt — and this time it's in color. DREADHOLLOW MANOR is a haunted-house game for the Game Boy Color, rebuilt from scratch from my Atari 2600 original.

You are an explorer trapped in the manor. Each night, three relics — a chalice, a skull, and an amulet — are hidden somewhere in the six rooms: the Library, the Foyer, the Chapel, the Cellar, the Crypt, and the Attic. Find all three and the manor releases you... to the next, darker night.

On the first night a single wraith hunts you. Every night after adds another, up to five. They fade into existence — that flicker is your warning — then drift through the furniture toward you. Banish them with your lantern bolt (A/B), grab the relics, and don't let a fully-formed wraith touch you. Three lives, endless nights.

It's a free ROM download that runs in any Game Boy Color emulator or on real hardware with a flash cart — and the full C source (GBDK-2020) is on GitHub if you want to see how it ticks.

Play it here: https://retroromrunner.itch.io/dreadhollow-gbc

Thanks for playing UNLUCKY XIII — glad the corridor got under your skin. The figure thanks you for running. Also, thank you for recording the video — it's great, and I know an hour of playthroughs took real time to put together. Appreciated!

Black Mirror and Severance + PlayStation Portable style is a neat idea. Mobile controls please.

Cool idea using the "something is wrong" horror style. Mobile controls would be a great enhancement. Thanks!

Fun theme. A great enhancement could be mobile compatibility (mobile controls to move/shoot). Thanks!