itch.io

Dang, that is one high-quality polished production. Charming, fun, great pixel art - well done!!! The dialogue is funny and the whole setup feels very clean and intentional. I know going the extra mile this way demands multiple late nights in these jams, so I hope you're catching up on your sleep because you freaking earned it! :)

I was expecting/hoping to see a lot of these types of "pipework" puzzle games in this jam, and...this is easily my favorite implementation! This was well-conceived, flavorful, and intriguing. The puzzles made intuitive sense and shifted organically with multiple solutions. The aesthetics and dialogue establish the right mood, and it all comes together nicely. I really, really like it! :)

Heck yeah! Love this style of game, with the ability to grind out if you get stuck.

The connections aspect seems like it could be built into something really cool, but in its current implementation it needs restrictions to matter. There are a lot of directions you could take it! Maybe wires can't cross, or a limit of connections per gun, or a limit of total connections, including a way to connect upgrades together which changes what they both do...lots of possibilities!

In any case, the core game is definitely fun already, so awesome job! :)

Aww thanks so much, we're so glad you like it! :)

Yeah, I think the early difficulty curve ended up being a lot more RNG-dependent than we realized or hoped. I've had runs where I get off the ground really fast, which snowballs into getting a lot of points and making the next run easier...and I've had runs where I struggle for 10-20 minutes before it starts to take off because I'm losing too much to even farm the points.
And much of it comes down to what components the enemy ships happen to start with and how much of a chain you can form based on your colors. We were tweaking these things in the final 12 hours of the jam and had to prioritize some tasks, but such is the way it goes.

Thanks for playing!

I like the look of the game, and the way the cubes roll around is satisfying. As others have said, I struggled to understand the goal initially, and I didn't quite grasp what the description was saying about making a match. I think you could take a tiny little screenshot of a stack of 3 matching cubes and put that in your page description (you're allowed to edit your page as much as you want during the jam) or put it in your screenshots with some explainer text.

In any case, good work!

I like it! I'd maybe start the player off with a faster mining speed because I think being able to mine super fast would be really fun (and would the initial grind a little quicker which I think would also help) but this is nice, good work!

This game's definitely got a sense of identity. I love the intro text and I especially love the music to go with it! Gives this great kind of intense, heartless industrial vibe. The upgrades add some meaningful disruption and make every run feel unique. Well done!

I won! Dang, that's a good one! Really fun, polished, and the perks are designed very nicely for the space.

20 waves seems like a lot to me, at least for how slowly I was playing because I want to seek out the best words I can. For the complete game I can imagine you taking it way further than this though.

I think it would have been really cool if hunting for long words seemed more viable, and to that end I think you'd need something like "destroy one letter for free each turn" or "swap two letters" to try to build something. If there was a "long word build" with the gold brick I could even see destroying multiple letters per turn.

I'm also curious how the word detection works, because I definitely...punched in a lot of words I did not recognize at all. "Stap," for example. I couldn't figure out the rhyme or reason to it accepting certain "fake words" but not others. I assume English is not the only language it's tracking, because "ara" worked at one point too lol.

Anyway, very interesting, very well-designed. Great job!

Cool! Quickcast fireball is all one needs in this life 😎

The spellcasting phone stuff sounds pretty awesome in theory, but I didn't feel like pairing my phone and I'm a little skeptical it fits the quick pacing of a doom-like.

I opened the door with the iron key on the 3rd (4th?) floor, and there was an open elevator behind it but I couldn't interact with it. Did I reach the end, or is that a bug?

Anyway, great work!

The blocking feels perfectly satisfying, and it's fun pulling off the sequences correctly!

However, I feel like I got a bug that essentially breaks the game? At first I would be offered images that were among the offered choices, i.e. I have a banana, and one of the choices is banana, cool. But after knocking out the gorilla for the first time, that changed, and I'd have a banana or a coconut and it WOULDN'T be among the options offered to me. Is this intentional? What am I supposed to pick? I ended up picking randomly and sometimes it would be right, but it felt like a graphics misalignment.

I also experienced some confusion with the WASD popups, though I understand the way that works is a little tricky to explain and it got more fun once I figured it out.

Anyway, nice work!

Love the idea of taking control of enemies as the primary means of dealing with them, that's fun! I'm always down to be an escaped lab subject, haha.

Well done!

Dunno if I understand the title, but memory's a great choice for your first jam game! Well done!

Woah, what?? I'm pretty sure this is my favorite game of the jam, dang!! That is so fun, so freaking polished, satisfying and fluid. I played for half an hour, and it's tempting to play more.

Dying after crashing feels just a tad brutal to me given how volatile the game is, though I'm sure that's the point. I felt there was a slight shortage of longer chains, and if I ever fully separated in an emergency ejection, I never recovered. As such, that upgrade seems like a bit of a trap to me, probably better to take something that helps preserve the chain. I also tried manual zoom and I'm strongly of the opinion that auto zoom is the way to go.

In any case, I can feel the immense effort that went into this. I get the feeling you're still catching up on sleep this week, so get some rest, haha. Fantastic job, you two!!

One of the things I enjoy most in playtesting jam games is seeing when a very simple and basic core concept (such as "your mouse cursor is your light") is tested and explored to see what layers of depth could be added to that idea. In this case, the little plantlike lanterns that capture your light, while annoying, were a good way to layer some additional challenge on there, and the zoom-out was a nice idea too (I just wish I had a sense for the zoom-out cooldown).

Also, the sense of atmosphere is great. I wish there was some explanation at the end of what is happening, but I can respect leaving that open to interpretation. Nicely done!

Haha, I love that aesthetically it's a standard space shooter, but then also you're a cow. Er sorry, an Ox lol.

I really like the formation changing in concept, however I'll confess I'm struggling a bit to grasp how to actually utilize it effectively.  In your playtesting, did you regularly change formation and spacing, or did you find you just settled into one or two that you liked? To an extent I can see how spacing makes a difference, but I'm not sure if the advantages/disadvantages of V formation versus O formation are apparent to me, for example.

Then again, I've never been very good at sidescrolling space shooters, but this is both creative and really cool, well done!

I love logic deduction puzzles like this, and this is a cool take on it! Once I understood, I found it fun trying to work out what the runes were.
I thiiiink you might reduce some initial confusion if you took that quickstart guide here in the comments and put that at or near the top of your game page description. Just my two cents. I found that much easier to parse than the game's description.

Overall nice work!

Always happy to play your visual novels! Love the creative formatting, and the art is wonderful. The tone is so eerie!
My only technical critique is the way all the messages in the chat vanish whenever Eli's typing. I understand the efficiency of going back to a blank/default graphic, I just wonder if having a tiny "typing..." graphic with alpha transparency that you re-use and show on top of the other images would have been quick enough to set up? That way you don't need a custom image for every single instance of it.
But hard to say; jam time is limited and it would still require manual positioning based on the most recent message in each image so I understand if that's too tedious. It is a small detail that I feel could smooth the narrative flow just a little by building the sense of immersion.

As for narrative critiques: I think for me, the emotional punch would have been stronger if I understood the motivations of the entity chatting with me, or could at least guess at them more. Tied into that, a little more substance to the conversation that helps reveal the intent or that digs a little more into what they gain from doing this (maybe this was explained and I didn't pick up on it). It felt a tad nebulous to me, but maybe that's just me.

In any case, really cool job!! I look forward to next year's!

Simple, elegant, and fun! I was curious if the infamous "four-color problem" would come into play but I'm not sure it does. I like the aesthetics, great job!

I really like the aesthetics! The music and sounds are subdued perfectly for the game's vibe. As someone who's sorta bad at tetris to begin with, I wouldn't mind fewer multiconnection blocks, but failing that, I just wonder if the original mechanics of tetris could be reincorporated to help somehow. Like if completing a row maybe caused the blocks in that row to close any down or sideways loose ends there (might not be possible, or way too difficult, I'd need to think that through a little more).  Anyway, some food for thought.

Well done!!

It took a bit for me to understand that I couldn't use the outer edge for trapping, but once the concept clicked it went pretty smooth. I'm not sure if I understand the incentive for buying more regular shapes in the shop, given that you never seem to run out and it would just reduce your deck's consistency. Some of the shapes are certainly worth adding to the deck, but I kept passing on the normal stuff and kept winning.

In any case, this is creative and I like the music! Nice work!

Good catch! FTL was a loose inspiration throughout development, particularly with how shields worked. Thanks for playing!

I love me some idle-style games, and this was quite fun! I really enjoyed it!

One thing, I wouldn't recommend using "Escape" as a hotkey for anything when making a browser game because if you're fullscreened, it just pulls you out of that and still doesn't do what you wanted. Even if you aren't fullscreened, I think it can be temperamental, so be careful with that.

In any case, very nicely done! :)

Haha I didn't mind the cat as much as others apparently did, but I was sort of hoping that jumping to the other side of the screen would get it off your scent right away (still, it's an effective tactic for keeping it far away).

I like memory games, and this one is a funny twist on the concept! Nicely done! :)

It's astonishing how much you have implemented here! So many layered systems in so little time, I'm very impressed!!
The aesthetic is also very pretty, and I love how good the game still looks in first-person. This is like the rudimentary beginnings for an MMO, it's so ambitious.
My main critique is that it seemed difficult to get a quest. I talk to someone and ask to meet them at the inn, and then I can't find them.  Or I just cheat and talk to someone already at an inn, share a drink, and then I can't find them. I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to build a relationship high enough to get a quest from anyone.

Regardless, I'm pretty blown away by all that's here, well done!!

"Is that island going to be worth building to?" Such a simple concept that allows for a surprisingly rich depth of puzzle-solving. I got stuck on level 4 for quite a while, though I'm guessing not at the same point that other people got stuck on (could be wrong).
Anyway, very cute and charming, well done!

I think you could have Tigey (was that the name?) be like "here's a free attack on the house!" after showing up, and that way you still have the initial moment of despair while getting the ability to farm score after that. Because I agree, the sense of despair is a fun part of that bit.

I wondered if it was possible to win without eating fish. There were a few spawn points that just made me way too nervous, anything where you had to curve near the edge of the screen.

Understandable about tying the song length to level length on Sunday, that makes sense! The music you used throughout the entire game was killer, I loved all of it.

Also, wanted to say I remember you from last year and your JRPG is still the game I've put by far the most time into during any of these jams lol

The voiceover, while unexpected, definitely added a lot to this. You had a thought-provoking theme you wanted to explore and I respect that. Well done!

That was awesome, hilarious, and fun! A ton of charm packed into one game. I have a few opinions I'm going to share but this game is way up there for me among everything I've played so far.

Personally I'd probably err towards not even having health as a mechanic for Electra's levels (a contentious take I'm sure, so take it with a grain of salt). I think it would still be very fun to complete them without having to start the entire level over unless you let yemmep get too far. I also think I experienced a bug where I electrified but still died to a fish early on and it led to me not realizing you can just decimate things for a while if you stay plugged in.

I love the retract mechanic, it's super satisfying and the sound effect is great.

For pemmey's sequence, just two thoughts: One, the possibility of having to start all the way over just seems...something I'd want to avoid at all costs as a dev. I love the idea of having your score from Electra's sequence matter, but I'd just start the player with a basic attack so score can be farmed there.

Two, I think the final funny bone progress bar could increase at least 5 times faster and I'd be completely cool with it. I could almost say 10 times and not be exaggerating; that final sequence just seemed weirdly very very long to me compared to the pacing of all prior levels (the funny bone level right before it was fine).

In any case, I very much liked it overall, definitely a fantastic submission for the jam. Well done!!

Aww, that was adorable! I'm very curious about how the characters are coded to line up with the responses, because the choices you get are so interesting. Also, I'm a huge fan of anyone learning Blender,  awesome job!!

A pleasant idea, constellations are one of the cooler ways to connect the dots! I do have one critique - the music was perfect, but I'd like if it kept playing seamlessly without restarting when choosing a new puzzle. Nice work!

That was really funny XD
Loved the background airport track, and something about getting up from your airport seat to sprint by everyone else has a kind of exhilaration to it that makes for an effective initial hook, haha. Well done!

What a polished, tidy experience! Great art style, clean execution, clever puzzles! I think a fast-forward option would be nice on some levels, while other levels I think you could consider cutting two of the patchlings out of it (namely ones where you're repeating the same sequence several times in a row).

In any case, I'm impressed and I think this comes together very cohesively. Nicely done!

The omni is the only component we put into the "rare" category so they don't show up often but we tended to see one or two each run on average, I think.

Thanks for trying it out!

They increase/decrease the game speed, so you can basically fast-forward through fights if you want (and there's no upper limit on how fast you can make it go, so it gets ridiculous if you click that button a lot lol)

Thanks for the feedback!

Totally understandable!

Dang, that was cool! I'm a bit bummed because I think it woulda been cool to *spoilers spoilers spoilers* but that was really awesome, well done!!

It's straightforward but honestly, I was hoping to find these types of puzzle games when I saw the theme was Connections. I like it, nice work! :)

Love the tone, love the art direction, overall this comes together really nicely. Well done!!

Yeah, we didn't properly test that button at the end. The tutorial is just the image that shows at the beginning and the first screenshot on the webpage itself, nothing fancy.

Thanks so much for playing! Glad you liked it! :)