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Forest of Strays (2020) is a precursor to Forest of Strays (2024). It's a game jam entry where you had to make a single level. It's a pretty early Nether Lamp (before it was called as such) game, and it shows.

The gameplay is janky as all hell - the moving platforms aren't moving you along them, this is the kind of jank you'd expect in the first Mega Man. The sword feels like it has a deceptive hitbox - I suppose visually it doesn't have the middle, but it doesn't feel right, sometimes I would slash close to an enemy but it didn't register. However, I do like the idea of using a sword to turn bad things into good things, like those slimes, I think it's a unique concept that unfortunately doesn't come back in the remake. If you can look past the jank, I think there's actually some pretty good level design in here. Unfortunately, I cannot show specific examples because I haven't figured how to take screenshots of the game, but there are a few sections that are quite engaging, I might even like them more than anything in the remake.

The sound effects are pretty bad. Who would've thought that RPG Maker sound effects aren't very fitting for a platformer? The music does sound familiar to what's in the remake, so that's nice. The visuals are a bit rough around the edges, as you'd expect from an early project from the developer. The evolution of visuals between this and the remake is striking.

I managed to get the cat boss ending because I collected all leaves. I don't like how the lightning strike attacks give you little reaction time before striking, resulting in unfair death. Also, epilepsy warning - the game flashes white each time the boss takes damage, and sometimes it can take multiple on the same hit.

Overall, Forest of Strays (2020) is a bit unpolished and frustrating, but does have good ideas and bits of great level design. Just like Soulful, it's a blueprint for something greater.

Death Count = 23

Essentially a prototype for Soulslinger, Soulful is an autorunner, but without rouge-like elements, simply playing like a high score arcade sort of deal.

You use your scythe to kill soulful enemies, but take damage when you kill soulless enemies. You also take damage when destroying crates, which does not make any sense to me. I mean, I guess because they're souless too, but still. There are times where it's impossible to avoid damage due to generation, however, getting health back up is not super difficult. There are pumpkins that fully restore you and give you temporary invincibility. You can find money from defeated enemies, and it's only used for continues after you die.

The visuals are fine, and the music is okay. Not much to say in terms of presentation, partially because there's not much in the first place.

Otherwise, it's about as generic as it gets. The game is fine for what it is, if a bit mediocre. However, it is impressive that you managed to make this game in a short amount of time, about 3 days. And it did serve as a basis for something greater, so there's that.

Pretty fun, the controls are responsive and the platforming is satisfying with the abilities such as dash-bounces. The level design is solid and the exploration with cores reminds me of Super Mario 63, basically 2D SM64. The visuals are amazing, the music is good. There's not much to complain, the demo shows a lot of promise. The only thing I didn't really like is 100% completion reward was kind of disappointing, but that might be just me, as I'm not really into card games. But overall, it's a fun little demo, I highly recommend it to the platforming fans.

I joined this jam so I could focus on improving my art skills. I can handle coding and writing, i'll just make a short and silly visual novel. So far my progress is just doodling and figuring out stuff for in-game sprites. I'll need to draw just a handful of poses so it shouldn't be very difficult. The links to said progress:

Dev Day 1: [1] [2]

Dev Day 2: [1]

Dev Day 3: [1]

Dev Day 4: [1] [2]

(i'm taking things a little slow, since there's still plenty of time but hopefully I won't be lazy too much p)