fuck it this games staying up

this page will be made private in two hours, its a honor that you saw this shitpost.

O O O by RexTGun (itch.io)

thanks! i should definitely consider remaking this game. ive learned so much since in terms of life and gamedesign

unfortunately not, instead of being some badass malware  attacker or blackhat hacker, or even working a stable job in software or web development, i am just a broke ass gamedev trying my luck at becoming the next big time success 

i played the game to set people on fire and accidentally was a good boss, fuck me

♡⁺◟(●˙▾˙●)◞⁺♡

also, SO MANY FUCKING GUNS AAAH its so fun to play around with all of em. go even crazier with the design throwing in some systems n shit like fire and freezing and holy shit you can do so much with this. also the thumbnail is fucking perfect

my absolute favorite from the jam, the guns feel beefy and evil, the aesthetic feels cute and grim, gameplay is chaotic and addicting though so fucking simple. i dont have many words for this except for please continue developing this i absolutely love it

no problem! as you continue gamedev your intuition for design will improve alot! just remember to always think about whats going to be in the players head at any given time

Overall a fun game,  loved the enemy designs and the art. but there are some things holding it back. heres what you can improve:

• Have a in game camera, with the size of the room aiming your mouse around can be hard and losing it is easy since the cursor is so dark along with everything being tiny. 

• Separate the  thematic and fun information from the vital information on the game page, most players wont have the patience to read everything on the page and those who do may have trouble interpreting it (as have i). Leave a separate area  with some space from everything else that has controls and mechanics explained in a short and concise way

• The combat design is uninteresting, there are no real tradeoffs or much risk even with the main mechanic.  The combat boils down to just clicking on enemies and not standing in their path. Its not a challenge to avoid them and the game does not force the player into making interesting choices. Your main mechanic is supposed to be stress, you can really use that for some interesting gameplay by having maybe shooting causing stress, or being able to recover stress at the cost of health, or enemies that cause more stress but dont damage you. these will force the player into choosing which is more valuable  (health or stress), think about where they are positioned, make them think about how they spend their shots, etc.  Maybe you can even make stress more punishing by having the player go completely berserk for a while randomly moving and shooting or randomizing the controls after stress reaches its peak for a while. these will make the player question if they should spend resources trying to maintain their health or keep their stress down, or if they feel like they can afford to  go berserk for a little. 

ty for the feedback

thanks hoe

thank you so much for the input! i know it wasnt communicated clearly but once hunger reaches zero health starts dropping too, the effect isnt to great though so mutants become the main worry, needs some balancing tweaks.

no problem! i will continue coming back to this game to see how progress is goin so ya better do somethin good with it (;

woah! now it feels alot more interesting having a enemy you can interact with, more than just a timer. it would be cool though if there was some mechanic to constantly bring them back to you so that you feel neck to neck tension. like a boost for those behind including the enemy.  that would also be cool to do in impossible mode having to deal with both managing the obstacles and managing the enemy, all adding depth without any need to explain things. 

alot less frustrating than having a immovable enemy, but functionally no more interesting than a time limit. collisions would add a ton of depth to something like this including letting the enemy respawn, would probably open up a whole new dimension to the game

i love the new obstacles too! the tripple zig zag one feels a little to narrow for the loose controls though, if only there was some form of speed control or if direction influenced speed. that would also contribute to the depth of the game choosing when to sacrifice speed for precision and vice versa 

its probably pretty hard, it seemed the way you made it was based around following a fixed path instead of physics and pathfinding. its amazing to see how fast you developed these changes!

haha well thats how jams go, I had to pull another all nighter to release just before the deadline... that was until they added another hour! Still would not have gotten my game to where it was at if i didn't forfeit sleep , had to do the same for the ludum dare.  I see you guys are tackling these problems in very interesting ways, great work!

Hey i noticed you were giving in depth reviews on other peoples games so thought you deserved the same respect, its really amazing what youre doing out there!

So just to start this game was absolutely beautiful with the piano and the pixel art, it was a joy just from that to be in the world which is something not alot of games are able to do (i remember from the ludum dare the only game that did this for me was about playing as a rock!) , the game was a absolute joy but of course it isnt perfect, though if you and your team wants to get it to closer here are some things yall will want to conside (i will also include potential solutions but there are infinite ways to solve any problem so dont just go by what i  say):

Problem:

The Dialogue being real time was really unintuitive, after i read the text i found myself clicking to skip but to no avail, sometimes i would click at the same time as it skipped so i thought there might have been some weird timer system until i just let go and realized it was playing on its own. You were safe to give the players a generous amount of time to read which means no one missed any dialogue but still since everyones reading speed varies alot of players would have to sit through some unnecessary precious moments without playing the game. 

Solution:

Have some sort of button to skip, usually its just a click/press to fill out the text and another click/press to go to the next text box, this works very effectively since it allows anyone to read at their own pace.

Problem:

The spirits description would go away to fast, for some people it might be the perfect amount of time to read it or even to much time but for me it went by to fast and a couple of times i just had to figure out what changed on my own

Solution:

Dont let the text disappear until the player confirms! it can be a simple button press or if the player attempts move that can make the text go away but just something that gives player the control to read at their own pace. your words arent of any use if no one can read them.

Problem:

The level design can be unintuitive sometimes, I found myself at the rocky area where you had to wall jump early in the game and i thought it was going to be a learning section, after a while i just gave up until later i realized i needed a spirit for that. I also almost did not even notice the top right quarter of the map until i accidentally jumped into it by hopping around, i just assumed it was natural decoration  and not at all something for me to jump on.

Solution:

As for areas where you cant do something that feels like a core mechanic like wall jumping or something like that simple text can go a long way, i know it can ruin some of the silent elegance you might have wanted to pull off without having the text but text can be a really powerful tool when used sparingly and correctly, just something like "you cannot wall jump yet" would have communicated to me that somewhere i can gain the ability to wall jump and when i do i will come back here. maybe thats just a problem for me since this seems to be mostly targeted to metroidvania players and i have only touched like two in my whole life. though as for the platform i nearly missed that feels like a much more universal problem that could happen to anyone whether they play metroidvanias regularly or not, some simple solutions would be to make the platformable parts contrast alot more from the non platformable parts, or have some sort of item or collectible ontop so that i would know "oh i can go there".

Aside from these issues the game remained a solid experience and i enjoyed every second of it, the scope is absolutely baffling for a game jam game in terms of content and literal size. I really hope you develop this further and i cannot wait to see where you take this! will be looking forward to your future releases.

haha im really gonna have fun with that (:<

first of all this is a really nice looking and feeling game, sounds somehow dont get annoying and graphics dont hurt to look at. but i did notice some big design faults that you might want to address, if you have problems with them i will also offer some solutions 

Problem:

Lack of coyote time, in case you are unfamiliar with the concept coyote time is a small window of time after a player jumps off a platform where if they hit jump they will still jump even though they arent standing on any ground.

Solution:

Implement coyote time!  its fairly easy to implement in most engines and makes the platforming of any game feel WAY better,  humans are not computers so when we need to make a tight jump we will mostly hit a little late, this even exists in hardcore platformers.

Problem:

Re spawning, animation takes very long and it spawns you right at the beginning of the level, this becomes infuriating at even the second level and i was not able to get past that simply because of this, and alot of players will react in the same way

Solution:

Decrease respawn time possibly even to zero! and add checkpoints! its annoying to do some of the same challenges that you already beat over and over again just because you died to a different one further ahead, this is absolutely vital for difficult platformers but well used even in easy ones, it does not take away from the difficulty at all but VASTLY reduces the frustration since the player does not want to spend their time repeating old challenges and sitting watching their player die, they want to get back into the action and conquer new obstacles!

Problem:

The jump seems to activate when im holding down the jump button instead of just when i press it, this is not useful and becomes frustrating since often is the case i will make a hard jump but since im still holding down my character hops again and kills himself,  because of human reaction time we probably arent going to let go in time for the second jump as the player lands not to register. this game seems to be very based around precision movement and something as reckless as that feels like using a shotgun to snipe

Solution:

Only check for if the player presses the button, after that first press another jump should not register until the player presses the button again.  This way the player has fuller control of their own movements allowing for the precision platforming this game demands

Problem:

Unforgiving hitboxes. The hitboxes for the obstacles seem to be exact so if a player feels like they pulled off a narrow move they might just bump into it by a pixel and die, if its by a marigin that small the player will not feel like they deserves to die and get angrier. 

Solution:

Smaller hitboxes! in your case maybe about 1 or 2 pixels, this can make all the difference. as if a player feels like they shouldnt have gotten hit but they just barely hit the obstacle, what they expect to happen will happen and they will make it, this will leave them happy. if they feel like they should have hit it and they dont, they will still be happy cause they will feel like they narrowly avoided it creating thrilling rewards!

Problem:

Lack of feedback. When i first died i did not even realized i was damaged until i could not move.

Solution:

Add more feel and feedback! blood, hurting sounds, character flashing or getting bounced, anything to convey that you just took damage or just died.

Overall it felt pretty nice and was really fun to play while i did, but these problems did get in the way of the experience and it hurts to imagine how much more you might have poured beyond where i got that I and many other players never got to experience because of those issues.  Hopefully you continue developing this and release the full potential of this product! congrats on completing the jam and hope to see more from you soon!

first of all this is a really nice looking and feeling game, sounds somehow dont get annoying and graphics dont hurt to look at. but i did notice some big design faults that you might want to address, if you have problems with them i will also offer some solutions 

l

Problem:

Lack of coyote time, in case you are unfamiliar with the concept coyote time is a small window of time after a player jumps off a platform where if they hit jump they will still jump even though they arent standing on any ground.

Solution:

Implement coyote time!  its fairly easy to implement in most engines and makes the platforming of any game feel WAY better,  humans are not computers so when we need to make a tight jump we will mostly hit a little late, this even exists in hardcore platformers.

Problem:

Re spawning, animation takes very long and it spawns you right at the beginning of the level, this becomes infuriating at even the second level and i was not able to get past that simply because of this, and alot of players will react in the same way

Solution:

Decrease respawn time possibly even to zero! and add checkpoints! its annoying to do some of the same challenges that you already beat over and over again just because you died to a different one further ahead, this is absolutely vital for difficult platformers but well used even in easy ones, it does not take away from the difficulty at all but VASTLY reduces the frustration since the player does not want to spend their time repeating old challenges and sitting watching their player die, they want to get back into the action and conquer new obstacles!

Problem:

The jump seems to activate when im holding down the jump button instead of just when i press it, this is not useful and becomes frustrating since often is the case i will make a hard jump but since im still holding down my character hops again and kills himself,  because of human reaction time we probably arent going to let go in time for the second jump as the player lands not to register. this game seems to be very based around precision movement and something as reckless as that feels like using a shotgun to snipe

Solution:

Only check for if the player presses the button, after that first press another jump should not register until the player presses the button again.  This way the player has fuller control of their own movements allowing for the precision platforming this game demands

Problem:

Unforgiving hitboxes. The hitboxes for the obstacles seem to be exact so if a player feels like they pulled off a narrow move they might just bump into it by a pixel and die, if its by a marigin that small the player will not feel like they deserves to die and get angrier. 

Solution:

Smaller hitboxes! in your case maybe about 1 or 2 pixels, this can make all the difference. as if a player feels like they shouldnt have gotten hit but they just barely hit the obstacle, what they expect to happen will happen and they will make it, this will leave them happy. if they feel like they should have hit it and they dont, they will still be happy cause they will feel like they narrowly avoided it creating thrilling rewards!

Problem:

Lack of feedback. When i first died i did not even realized i was damaged until i could not move.

Solution:

Add more feel and feedback! blood, hurting sounds, character flashing or getting bounced, anything to convey that you just took damage or just died.

Overall it felt pretty nice and was really fun to play while i did, but these problems did get in the way of the experience and it hurts to imagine how much more you might have poured beyond where i got that I and many other players never got to experience because of those issues.  Hopefully you continue developing this and release the full potential of this product! congrats on completing the jam and hope to see more from you soon!

first of all this is a really nice looking and feeling game, sounds somehow dont get annoying and graphics dont hurt to look at. but i did notice some big design faults that you might want to address, if you have problems with them i will also offer some solutions 

l

Problem:

Lack of coyote time, in case you are unfamiliar with the concept coyote time is a small window of time after a player jumps off a platform where if they hit jump they will still jump even though they arent standing on any ground.

Solution:

Implement coyote time!  its fairly easy to implement in most engines and makes the platforming of any game feel WAY better,  humans are not computers so when we need to make a tight jump we will mostly hit a little late, this even exists in hardcore platformers.

Problem:

Re spawning, animation takes very long and it spawns you right at the beginning of the level, this becomes infuriating at even the second level and i was not able to get past that simply because of this, and alot of players will react in the same way

Solution:

Decrease respawn time possibly even to zero! and add checkpoints! its annoying to do some of the same challenges that you already beat over and over again just because you died to a different one further ahead, this is absolutely vital for difficult platformers but well used even in easy ones, it does not take away from the difficulty at all but VASTLY reduces the frustration since the player does not want to spend their time repeating old challenges and sitting watching their player die, they want to get back into the action and conquer new obstacles!

Problem:

The jump seems to activate when im holding down the jump button instead of just when i press it, this is not useful and becomes frustrating since often is the case i will make a hard jump but since im still holding down my character hops again and kills himself,  because of human reaction time we probably arent going to let go in time for the second jump as the player lands not to register. this game seems to be very based around precision movement and something as reckless as that feels like using a shotgun to snipe

Solution:

Only check for if the player presses the button, after that first press another jump should not register until the player presses the button again.  This way the player has fuller control of their own movements allowing for the precision platforming this game demands

Problem:

Unforgiving hitboxes. The hitboxes for the obstacles seem to be exact so if a player feels like they pulled off a narrow move they might just bump into it by a pixel and die, if its by a marigin that small the player will not feel like they deserves to die and get angrier. 

Solution:

Smaller hitboxes! in your case maybe about 1 or 2 pixels, this can make all the difference. as if a player feels like they shouldnt have gotten hit but they just barely hit the obstacle, what they expect to happen will happen and they will make it, this will leave them happy. if they feel like they should have hit it and they dont, they will still be happy cause they will feel like they narrowly avoided it creating thrilling rewards!

Problem:

Lack of feedback. When i first died i did not even realized i was damaged until i could not move.

Solution:

Add more feel and feedback! blood, hurting sounds, character flashing or getting bounced, anything to convey that you just took damage or just died.

Overall it felt pretty nice and was really fun to play while i did, but these problems did get in the way of the experience and it hurts to imagine how much more you might have poured beyond where i got that I and many other players never got to experience because of those issues.  Hopefully you continue developing this and release the full potential of this product! congrats on completing the jam and hope to see more from you soon!

Amazing to see a product made from people across the world, I am based in America and used to work with a composer in Russia. Getting anything done was excruciatingly difficult but we made it work and you can see what we were able to do here. Even for what it lacked it was still a really fun and polished experience!  Cant wait to see how yall handle the next one

No problem! I love to see developers find that inspiration to tackle the problems in their games and polish them to become something you can become super proud of! Will definitely give this another play when you come out with a new version.

nice game! but if theres one problem that needs to be addressed its feedback! when i shoot a enemy i have no idea if they even got hit or took any damage, i dont have any idea of how much health they have, the guns aim is off but it looks like thats for aesthetics shape, even then i cant tell if im aiming at the enemy or not and where their hitbox is. i came to assume their hit box is their shadow not as a player but knowing how someone might have made this as a developer. there was no tradeoff for sprinting so i found myself just holding shift the same time and this is a common mistake i see developers make, either just have one set walking speed or treat sprinting as a ability, like all things it should have some cost whether it be a cooldown (time) maybe a bit of vulnerability after running to long, or energy, etc. 

aside from that you still have a very interesting concept here that can be taken in some amazing directions, for example ammo could also be your ammo and shooting will cost you progress to your goal or something like that. i really hope you do more with this and cant wait to see what you make in the future! congrats on submitting

Nice idea, game-play lacks any depth though. first play through even though I didnt understand the threat I just kept all the babies in one corner and I won. next play through I even tried to lose to no avail until later I found out that the babies would leave through the door. None of that was ever explained anywhere. 

After i got a hang of things i tried your endless mode and since there was no real goal or incentive to go further i told myself i would aim for 420, but i noticed at around 120 the babies started going really fast until they were practically just snapping into the door. it feels like you are using some sort of "x += (doorx - x) * time/200;" type thing for the movement, which feels very unnatural when they just start flying towards the door when i let go of them.  the best way to increase difficulty is not to make things closer to impossible but instead add more depth and force more decisions on the player, example would maybe be some babies are slower but take longer to pick up so you have to decide which one to spend your time on, or maybe furniture and stuff acts like obstetrical so locations actually have a strategic advantage aside from simply distance to the door, maybe the babies have hunger or happiness and the more upset they get the more likely they are to try to escape so you should keep them near somewhere where you can feed them and make them happy but those areas are easy to escape from, or maybe they need both feeding and something else like entertainment and those are in different areas and you have to choose where to put the babies. these are all things that will add more depth to the game and overall more interest. as the time goes further things could change forcing different decisions like some furniture moving or changing or the player gaining/losing abilities. so many potential things you can do with this incase you plan on developing this further.

Overall i could definitely feel the love poured into this project and it was a cute and nice feeling experience to play, i really hope to see you develop this further and i will follow to see what you do with it.  Congrats on submitting! 

well you asked for a in depth review so here ya go,

The aesthetic of this game is really amazing, feels like the weird art you would see on empty vhs tapes for recording, you could definitely hone in more on that aesthetic with some shaders and still have it not be intense for mobile devices. 

The use of the font for menu items and tutorial text though is hard to read and does not fit. it would be much better to use something basic and simple without any weird design choices, those things fit for a title but not for a menu item or text which is meant to be readable over aesthetic. 

The tutorial went a little slow and there wasnt really that much to learn that needed so much, with such simple controls and a physics based system though you have a ton of potential for intense depth. When playing against a ai i noticed that the ai player did not budge when i pushed them making the game feel very asymmetrical, when playing with another player though it added more depth and some risk reward play by being able to try to push off the other player but still worrying about the obstacles. This could be really really really fun if you capitalized on these aspects of the game more and maybe even in impossible mode had a ai player next to you who you could try to bump off

I noticed that the levels in impossible were random, if it is meant for the competitive community this is not going to sit well since they will want fixed situations to compare against each other. If you want to keep random level generation consider using a seed, that way you can have infinite levels but still have them be the same for whoever uses the same seed.

Whenever the player dies they start at the beginning of the level, this is perfectly alright when you are alone but when theres a enemy or another play this certainly does not sit well. i noticed you do have a speed boost for those who are behind but that does not fix the frustrating feeling of starting from the start, considering ai does not make mistakes and is not bound by the same physics as the player this becomes very frustrating. what you could do is have the player who died spawn a distance away from the leading player. That way they are still close and can catch up, but dying still has a consequence. 

As for the actual rolling around it feels perfectly fine on flat surfaces but as soon as they start curving up and down and you have those twisting slopes the physics gets janky and it does not feel right, this is fun if two players are playing but when playing against a perfect ai who cannot make mistakes and cannot even be bumped off it just feels unfair. You could solve this map the physics to a 2D version of the platform and have the image of the player rendered just on the topographically highest surface. You could also solve it by having the players movement based on rotation instead of just offsetting the balls velocity left and right, this way movement also has a tradeoff where rotating means less speed forward. this would create even more depth and you could have a super interesting experience on your hands.

overall it was a pretty ok game but there is SO MUCH MORE you can do with this and i hope you do! i will be following and looking forward to your future releases so please keep at it. <3

will give your game a play (:

CATCUS

please give our game a play (:

do you want equally in depth criticism? 

hey no problem, know that indie dev is always about learning. im at 5 years of developing games and im still learning a whole ton! but some people can learn way faster and i hope that will be the case for you, keep at it and you will be surprised with what you can do!

haha well remember to keep a clear focused vision and audience in mind, whether you make this for any action hungry player or to satisfy the masochistic urge of those diehard players stay loyal to your choices,  look forward to whatever direction you pick!

Very nice! i dont see alot of people talking about that insane combat design, a few simple mechanics and theres already so much depth. both attacks are viable but depending on the situation one is usually superior to the other and there are so many tiny factors like positioning and your health that can determine which one you should use, the juice is absolutely amazing and it was absolutely fun to mow down hordes with the second attack and watch the counter go all LGHAKLSHGlshgmslghMSGsmgsukgsmgshbg. The most interesting situation i was in was level two where hordes were coming from me from two sides, one side had two possible paths and the other had one and was much shorter, but the longer one had health which i desperately needed. along with this i had to decide which attacks to use and when and it really was a fun and interesting choice to make.  The font choice and tone is all amazing and this was a really fun play.

of course there were a few faults though, one was that though alot of the controls were intuitive and most of the elements could be found out in a matter of seconds it took me about 5 minutes to even realize that using the second attack took health. also sprinting does not feel like it really offers any tradeoffs and i found myself just holding down shift while playing without any consideration, it would add a ton more depth related around escaping tough situations if there was some cost like HP or if it had a cooldown, aside from these though they did not take away from the experience at all and if resolved can make this game even more dynamic!  Great work and will be looking forward to the games you make in the future!

hey

 i know its a little late but i hope you might be able to check out our title,  we have been really excited to see gameplay of it. please giv it a go <3

CATCUS

Sorry for not responding was just thinking how to formulate this response.  If you are alright with me being perfectly blunt your games first and foremost lack any original assets, most images you grab off of google have some copyright attached to them not to mention the music you use so in all aesthetic regards your games do not feel like they have any personal touch.  Next is that the lack of any feel or juice, im sure you have heard of the concept of game feel but probably not explored it. When it comes to polishing games there are many ways you can make the actions feel nice and usually that is through sound and animation, these things combined with controls contribute to the overall feel of the game, there are many videos and articles on the topic so i suggest you take some time into researching that. Next is competition, your games are doing things that many bigger more experienced developers have done many times so in that regard you dont stand a chance, as a indie developer the safest bet for us is to play it risky and make something different,  if you have trouble coming up with ideas i suggest Jonas Tyroller's "But" method,  take a simple well known genre that you know you can develop and pitch it with a "but".  An example would be: bullet hell but getting hit by certain bullets damages the enemy,  or maybe a bullet hell but the enemy is also trying to dodge your bullets.  once you have something simple and different you can make all the smaller design decisions based around that core.  One final thing your games miss is a personal touch,  to me they kind of feel like they are trying to be other peoples games and not your own from your own experiences, some of your greatest inspiration and ideas will come from your own life. Anyone can copy a mechanic or a aesthetic but no one can copy you, and thats what will make you stand out in the large sea of indie games of varying quality. Hope to see more from you and hope this was helpful!

CATCUS

As your cats dead mamma you must escort your cats to their home while protecting them from mutants, you have to manage their resources and make sure your babies are fed while fighting off the mutants.  There are 4 end screens and made by two people in 48 hours for the Quarantine Jam

Please give our work a look and tell us what you think

Your cats are your inventory, Get them home safe.

i just hope you can make it our game too, long list you got (:

CATCUS