itch.io

Thank you for the feedback! Yes, ribbons unfortunately get cut off on the sides of the screen if a lot of them get bought. I plan to add a new mechanic that will remedy this in the future. I tried adding fullscreen but unfortunately the game isn't built for it so you end up seeing the boundaries of the game world (the gray void in Godot) so I had to remove it for now.

A great concept for a game. The fact that enemies take a while to spot you is a good design choice---too many other stealth games are unforgiving in this regard. There are some things that need improving:

-The UI is a bit overwhelming at first. Two different contracts to choose from felt like too much to track.

-Some tasks on the contracts felt bizarre. I understand the guild wants me to steal things, but why do they want an enemy to steal a spell from me? Why do they want me to drink an antidote?

-The button in the lower right corner of the game that takes the player to your other games needs to be removed. It's placed in the worst spot (right over the fullscreen button? really?) and it kept activating whenever I pressed space bar, so I couldn't pass the turn hiding at all. In addition, I don't think anyone would be interested in viewing your games DURING a playthrough. Maybe you should put it on the game over screen only?

I scoured the whole map and couldn't find bones. I think I needed to kill a skeleton, but I didn't know how to do that. Right when I found what looked like bones, I died.

I'd say this is an idea worth exploring further. Improve the conveyance and onboarding to new players, and maybe clean up the UI.

An elegant, exciting strategy game! The perfect amount of complexity. Levels are exciting and tense, and I love that I can adjust the game speed at any time. My only real complaint is that moving units seems to be aggravatingly slow. If I have four hexagons in a line with two units each aiming to conquer an unclaimed hexagon that has two units, why on earth does it take several seconds for it to do anything? I wish each hexagon had a small meter that showed you exactly how long it takes for a single unit to be produced, because right now it feels like the game is lagging when it isn't.

Hi, thanks for playing my game! Yes, I would love a link to the VOD. Live reactions and feedback are extremely helpful, and I'm curious to see what your chat thought as well!

Not cringe at all! I'm on an IdeaPad S340 Lenovo laptop. Intel CORE i3 8th Gen processor. Pretty old, but it can run Minecraft at a fairly stable 30 fps, for reference.

And good luck on your optimization, I heard Unreal is brutal when it comes to that.

You have most of the fundamentals down. Here's what I'd add:

-make enemies blink red to indicate they are being damaged

-make sure player always blinks red when taking damage (sometimes he doesn't)

-give the sword a more generous hitbox

-make sure the player can brush up against walls without getting stuck

-make it so the enemies can no longer swing their hammer if they are already dead

The combat was fun (I liked the quick shock attack a lot), but the main thing it needs is to give the player more feedback when enemies are damaged.

I couldn't figure out how to get past the door with the magenta squares. I cleared out the enemies, but they just kept spawning, so I gave up. Speaking of which, the enemy spawn rates are crazy high. There was a horde of dozens of enemies in a tiny hallway at one point and I got creamed.

Yes, I would be honored to try out future builds!

I don't think I could describe in great detail what I'm experiencing with the controls in a live video (I also keep my face and voice private on this account). I went back and played your game a bit more, trying to understand what exactly I didn't like about it. Here's what I didn't like and my attempt at understanding why I didn't like those aspects:

-the biggest thing I didn't like is the slippery-ness of the character. When I let go of WASD, it slides forward a bit. Sometimes, when I hop over a wall and onto solid ground (like a block), I'll overshoot it. Not enough times to get frustrated, but enough to feel like "man, I shouldn't have fallen off there".

-the weight of the character. Some game characters are floaty, and some fall to the ground like a brick. This character somehow felt heavy and floaty, and to me that felt icky. Like I don't fall as fast as I want to, but I still manage to slip off platforms a lot. Maybe the slippery-ness compounds the problem?

-walls. Trying to "wall-jump" and just barely not making it, and then sloooowly sliding down like heavy cream, feels bad. It also seems like, whenever I try to move away from a wall as I'm sliding down it, it tends to stick to the wall for just a split second before it "detaches", but that might just be the way the character turns around mid-air.

You asked for platformers with controls I jive with, and the one that came to mind first and most vividly is Super Mario 64. I know, using a n64 game as a reference for the pinnacle of good controls is strange. But there are a lot of things it does right:

-When you let go of the control stick, Mario doesn't stop immediately---he slows to a stop. That seems bad at first, but the degree to which it is done is subtle, and makes Mario feel natural and fluid.

-More notably, when you tilt the control stick, Mario doesn't get up to full speed immediately---he accelerates. This also makes Mario feel natural and fluid, but it never becomes a problem. You never think, "man, if only Mario moved faster, I could avoided getting hit by that goomba". That's because Super Mario 64 is a game that you take at your own pace. If you get hit by a goomba, it's not because you couldn't react in time or couldn't see it, thus it feels like your own fault, not the game's. Mario's acceleration would be a bad design choice in other platformers, but it's a good choice here because the levels are, literally, designed around Mario's capabilities.

-Mario's weight feels great. Sadly, I can't really "describe" why, as a character's ideal weight is just something we devs need to tinker with and find out.

I think the reason I did not like the controls in your game is that the levels don't feel like they are designed around the character. You have a game which requires a fair amount of precise platforming and evil clones chasing you, yet the character feels slippery, slow, and ever so slightly imprecise to control. If this character were put in a slow paced puzzle platformer, it would feel better, and it might even be perfect. But to make a funny analogy, and apologies for the trite comparison, it feels like I'm playing Celeste with a bag of pudding.

As a final note, if you feel the game plays great and everyone else feels the game plays great, it could be that the game just isn't my cup of tea. But I hope my comments are at least of some use to you for improving your game!

"The deeper you go, the more of yourself you lose."

Now that is good marketing copy right there. I knew I had to try this game when I saw that.

I liked watching the little guys run around on their own, and unlocking the king and realizing I could join the fight was a thrilling moment.

The concept is strange. Getting rewarded for "failure" isn't something I've seen in a lot of games. Roguelites do use this structure, where the game gets easier every time you lose a run as you unlock better stuff, but this is the only game I've played where you can't just beat it on your first try if you're good enough---you MUST fail before you can win.

I was spamming my unit buttons to make sure that my max soldier number was always topped off. Not sure if that was intended, but I felt it was the optimal strategy :p

Overall, an interesting twist on tower defense, with a lot of care and detail put in. I didn't even realize until I read the page description that my prophecy was personalized. Nice touch!

Note: This feedback is for the web build of the game, as that was the version submitted to this jam.

My first impression of this game left me baffled. The page description has an entire list of things of what NOT to do in the game, and the game itself has a whole menu of options, with no clear indication of what I am "supposed" to do. "Arena", "Skills" and "Challenges"? I think I clicked on the tutorial level, but I'm not entirely sure.

What is the point of having all of these options in the game that don't work yet? I'm unfamiliar with how your project is structured, so forgive me if I'm wrong on this, but in Godot you should be able to disable button nodes easily by toggling the visibility off. It's fine for a demo to have limited features, but adding features that you are aware don't work and aren't implemented is very strange to me.

Anyways, onto to the game itself. A platformer with clones chasing you is an exciting concept, but the controls are what matter in a game like this. It sounds weird, but it felt like I was controlling a bag of pudding. There's a delay to jumping, the movement is somewhat arduous, and when I stop moving the character slides for a little bit. It doesn't feel good right now. I could kind of double jump by launching against a wall, but even that felt kind of hit or miss.

There's also some sort of red slowdown mechanic that seems really cool, but I never figured out what it's purpose is.

This web build feels too ambitious, like setting the cart before the horse. 

My advice is to stop everything else and focus on the character movement. Fiddle with it, experiment, and keep tweaking until it feels fluid, responsive, and more fun to control. If you're already doing that in the playtest build, that's perfect.

Interesting dev fact: during development of Super Mario 64, most of that time was spent just on making Mario fun to control. Once Nintendo achieved that, then they built levels around Mario's toolkit. So keep at it, and good luck!

EDIT: I didn't even REALIZE there was a dash button! I figured out how to unlock it, and although using SHIFT is clunky, the dash itself is really fun. This is exactly the kind of experimentation I was looking for! You should make it a default part of the player's toolkit instead of making them unlock it, cause it's really good fun. 

I played through the whole game! I'm not sure how I feel about the satire, the tone bounces from absurdist comedy to serious commentary and back. But there's no denying that there is some fantastic writing here, and I laughed out loud a few times. The bizarre characters and unfolding lore about the world kept me glued to the screen and compelled me to stay till the end.

The highest compliment I can give is that it truly felt like a fun road trip; driving from venue to venue, making detours to talk to people, stopping for snacks and supplies, it was quite the experience. Each area felt different and distinct, and I never ended up getting lost.

I love the wicked art style and the soundtrack is the best I've heard (so far) in this jam. (That one song that plays in shops sounds like an 80s song! It reminds me of a Hall and Oats track!)

Sadly, the game lagged a lot, and it became aggravatingly slow towards the end. But that's just one blemish on an otherwise rocking game.

Ian did get weird at the end of the game and for some reason, pills didn't revert him back. Though I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.

A great idea with great execution. Many devs have trouble with puzzle platformers, often making levels too complex too fast. But this game had ease and flow to every level. The mechanics were introduced gradually and nothing felt overwhelming. The physics are well tested and integrate seamlessly into the puzzle design. I felt like a genius every time I found a solution, as if it were my idea! That "aha moment" is hard to create in a player's mind, but this game does it constantly. The game felt...very zen.

The graphics are gorgeous and I love the kanji characters being actual characters with faces. 

I don't have a single nitpick. I'm looking forward to the full release!

The cats are all distinct to me. There's a black cat, white cat, light orange cat, and bold orange cat (and possibly more cats in later levels I haven't tried). The personalities I can get a read on, but how those personalities translate into concrete game rules is what is confusing. Hope that helps!

Cute game with a great concept! I got through the first three levels but I unfortunately gave up on the fourth.

Figuring out where each cat should go was fun, but trying to figure out what each cat actually does sours the game experience for me. Every time I thought I knew what a cat's personality was, I was presented with conflicting information. In the first level, white cats seemed like they could go anywhere, but in later levels, they wanted to be left alone...but sometimes placing them next to another cat was fine? There were multiple other examples of that, where it really felt like the game was making up rules as the game progressed.

I get that figuring out what the cats do is meant to be part of the fun, but in practice it was just frustrating. I played several levels and I'm still not clear on the rules.

If the game gave you a description of what each cat does ("can be placed next to horizontal cats, but not diagonal", or something like that), you'd still have the fun puzzle solving element but the player can have confidence in knowing what the rules are. Because if a player isn't clear on what the rules of a game are, they get frustrated. Fix that, and I could see myself playing this for hours.

Also, bonus points for letting us pet the kitty. Pat, pat, pat, pat.

NOTE: I ran into an extraction error for the .zip file. The path name of one of the files was too long so I could not extract directly from my device, I had to move the .zip to a flash drive, and then extract.

First off, thank you for putting graphics settings in the options menu. I've played so many game jam games that are so graphic intensive but don't offer settings for older, slower devices. This shows a real level of polish and dedication to the user experience. The game still lagged quite a bit on my device, even on the lowest settings, but it ran with no crashes or bugs, and I had a ton of fun!

The graphics are seriously beautiful. The mix of 2D and 3D is well done, and the character designs are fantastic.

When I got into my first battle, it was a little bit jarring, as I was expecting an action game from the first few minutes of hopping around and slashing stuff in real time. I got used to it, and what we have here is a unique blend of tactical combat, action commands, and weapon management. It's very fun and intuitive (with a robust tutorial system to boot), and it allows for flexible strategy, like moving Bull out of the way so that the wizard can do their AoE attack, then moving Bull back into the fray to do his attack.

The weapon system feels loosely connected to the other mechanics. You are overwhelmed with a ton of weapon pickups, both in and out of combat, and at least in this demo, there doesn't seem to be a clear advantage to picking up certain weapons aside from one being just slightly better than another or just personal preference. The weapon throw mechanic kind of justifies the overabundance of weapons, but overall it currently feels like unnecessary information on the screen being thrown at me.

The dialogue is hilariously good. I especially loved banter of the leader rat to his henchmen ("MY BLOOD PRESSURE IS PERFECTLY FINE THANK YOU"), and the fact that he actually dealt real damage to his underling that you can see when the fight starts is just fantastic.

Loved this game.

This is a cute game! I love that you made the candy assets shiny, that's a clever use of the low poly art style.

Using the tongue is a fun mechanic. Having to essentially walk towards the opponent to aim the candies at them feels strange to me, and I never quite got used to it. I'm used to games where you pull back, away from your opponents to aim at them, like a slingshot.

The default controls need to change. the action button being right next to WASD is clunky, and it's strange that the arrow keys don't work.

The campaign mode has levels on timers, and if you don't make it on time to the level, the enemies come out and attack your base. Why? It doesn't seem to add anything to the game and doesn't fit with its chill vibe.

I did not test the multiplayer mode, but I can see this being a good party game for Switch.

Unfortunately, my device couldn't extract this particular .zip file, so I used your gamepix link below to play the game.

The rolling and the rocket transformations felt fun to use, though the latter was also unresponsive. The game says to double click, but that doesn't work, so I end up clicking a bunch of times until it works.

The mechanic with the platforms that turn upside down just does not work for this type of game. I'm having fun blasting through a level, and now I have to wait for the platforms to appear? And since this is a runner there are some points where I have no method of waiting, so the platforms turn over and my character just runs to his death.

The tutorial spouting long text while I'm in the middle of trying to keep my guy alive also wasn't that helpful. Maybe you can make it so that the game pauses when a textbox shows up? Or maybe you could design the early levels in such a way that a wall is there whenever there is a textbox, so that the player can read the text at their leisure without worrying about their character running to their death.

There was also some lag, but that might be the website and not the game.

Overall fun game that could use some reworked design in a few places.

A cool little learning project. The last level, while very janky, was very fun. I love the physics and momentum when wall jumping to the top. You should put texture on the walls to convey an even better sense of speed. I think I won the last level? But it's hard to tell since it just looped me to the beginning.

Some thoughts:

-The game feels zoomed in and claustrophobic. This leads the player to hit obstacles without being able to react to them easily.

-The music is WAY too loud by default, and there doesn't seem to be a way to turn it down in game.

-I don't know if this is true for all levels, but in the first one, if you go left, you fall off the stage completely and there's no way to reset. You could put a wall there so this doesn't happen, and add a menu that appears when pressing ESC that allows the player to restart the stage or quit.

-In the last level, you can actually go THROUGH walls, and although I touched enemies in that level several times, none of them could hurt me for some reason.

-There are some pointless spikes that are sandwiched so close between blocks the player can't actually reach them.

Hope this helps!

As soon as I saw the phrase "GPS Deckbuilder", I knew I had to try this one out. The game left me a bit overwhelmed in the beginning, as while the tutorial for the gameplay was well done, the main hub with the tabs had little upfront explanation.

The main question I raise to you is this: who is your game for?

I, as a "hardcore" gamer (i.e. someone who plays games on Steam and never touches mobile games), enjoyed the unique take on card battling with the sword mechanic and can tell that there is deep strategy here, and I enjoyed the story cutscenes that seemingly cropped up out of nowhere and can tell you had fun with the character dialogue. But it seems the full game will have microtransactions/timers/ads, which a player like me would have no patience for.

A mobile gamer would be the opposite; tolerant of the typical mobile game monetization methods, but impatient with any battling beyond a certain level of complexity, and impatient with a deeply involved storyline and lore.

The game tries to appeal to two very different audiences, and doesn't end up fully satisfying either one.

Even the core theme is stuck between two conflicting sides: a high tech, abstract, modern theme (GPS) and a traditional, medieval fantasy theme. While I'm not sure what style would be best for the enemies, weapons, characters, etc., I do think something more sci-fi and/or abstract would give the game a stronger presentation/appeal.

Here are two possible directions to take your game:

1) It seems you have an eye for rich storytelling and engaging battle mechanics. If you're not married to the GPS theme, I would suggest you remove it and instead make this an open world deckbuilding RPG, keeping the deckbuilding, combat, and story, and remove the microtransactions and instead charge a premium price for the full release and put it on Steam (or other online storefronts for PC games)

2) If you want to keep the GPS theme and keep the monetization model, you should deeply consider whether or not a casual audience would enjoy the deckbuilding, combat, and involved story. I'm not saying they won't, but you should seek out mobile game fans specifically and have them try out your game. Unfortunately, most people on itch aren't super into mobile games, myself included, so if that's your target audience we won't be able to help very much.

Other notes:

-Some UX elements are confusing. It took me several minutes to figure out how to leave the reward page because I didn't see the button for picking up loot.

-When I tried to explore on the GPS map, the game stopped me and said "you can't stray too far from your spirit". Huh? If I was playing on an actual mobile device would I just have to stay in a designated area in order to play? What if I was out and about and I returned to my house, would the game no longer let me play?

-It seems I can't directly add cards into my deck, as they are tied to equipment. I understand this is to make the game easily accessible for casuals, but I was disappointed that I didn't have full control over what cards (and how many of each type) I could add to my deck.

Again, I actually enjoyed the game. But this isn't a game I would play a full release of because I don't enjoy mobile game monetization methods.

Thank you for the feedback! When I slapped the tutorial together I felt it was trash, but I'm glad that it was at least somewhat helpful. I built the game in a way that all players could have fun, even if they didn't know all of the combos/systems, and it sounds like I was able to accomplish that. Thanks for playing!

This is a game which appears to have great depth, yet refuses to explain any of it to the player. The controls are intuitive and pretty easy to figure out, but the strategy is not. The sword and shield icons seem self explanatory, but what about that explosion symbol? Is that supposed to be magic? And what about that target symbol, is that accuracy or range?

The health system is bizarre. There appears to be multiple health bars on characters, and they can deal damage in hearts and skulls. Why do my weak characters take four skulls of damage from an attack, but my strong characters take twenty skulls...from the same exact attack by the same exact enemy? Everything feels arbitrary, like the game just decides whether it feels like winning or losing that round.

I can tell you've put a ton of love and effort into this, so I'll tell you what: let me know when you have the core mechanics explained (either as a tutorial in game or as a description in the game's webpage), and I'll come back and give it another play. I just don't feel like I can give good feedback for a game that's currently so cryptic and explains nothing to the player.

Side note: I love the pixel art for the backgrounds! The world feels so crisp and vibrant. Reminds me of the best RPGs from the SNES era.

The more I played, the more I liked it. Getting good at the tracks seems to depend more on rote memorization of the obstacles rather than just pure driving ability, which isn't my cup of tea. But it's really fun to weave in and out around the furniture. Everyone racing to get to a chair at the very beginning of each race was funny and a charming touch.

I'm not a fan of the "health" mechanic. Being knocked off of your vehicle feels pretty punishing, and I wish there was an option in the settings to turn that off. It also was never clear what the electric vinyl-looking powerup actually did for me.

I don't know if this is just me but it feels like you can see more of what's ahead when you're going down instead of up? I could be wrong though.

Overall, pretty fun, with great controls and good sense of speed!

*minor spoilers ahead*

This gripped me from the very moment I started playing. Piecing together the narrative felt like a thrilling adventure. There's a good flow to the map and I never got truly lost. 

There were so many cool surprises. I found a man with a shotgun and presumed he was a surviving warden, but when I saw his face shift into a zombie I felt a real sense of dread. I was in awe when I discovered the underground tunnels and how far they sprawled out. The tarot cards unlocking shortcuts is great foresight and a cool reward. 

Using the axe felt great but the shotgun was a little clunky. There's a slight delay, and the game must "mark" the enemy before you can actually hit it, so there was one moment where I was missing point blank shots and then ran out of ammo before I could kill it.

The "cloud" graphics with the pixel art looks great, but the ground and bodies of water look a little too similar, which led to some confusing moments.

A minor complaint is that when viewing a map in the inventory, instead of being able to press Tab to exit, you're forced to press "d" to move to the next page before you can close it, which was a little annoying.

I was really close to getting all the pages and Tarot cards, but I spent a long time wandering around for the rest and couldn't find them. I don't think that's necessarily an issue with the game design though, I just have a lot of games in this Jam to get through. 

But I might come back to this one! I had a ton of fun with it.

I don't know if it's just my device, but there's an input delay to every movement that made it hard to control. I got stuck on the first lava pit in the tutorial because I didn't realize you could jump (the delay was so bad I thought jumping wasn't in this game). The second lava pit with the two metal grates was frustrating because my timing had to be perfect in order to get across.

The gun was fun to use. It responded to my clicks fast and was satisfying to use. The special attack felt great to fire although it didn't seem very effective at taking out enemies.

Speaking of enemies, they're small, incredibly fast, and almost impossible to see from a distance. I often got hit with bullets without understanding where they came from. Enemies are also hard to hit accurately, partly due to the extreme motion blur, lag, and their small size.

My advice: keep the gun, remove the motion blur, remove the input delay and make enemies bigger and slower. That alone should make it a lot more fun!

I also really liked the physics objects that I could push and shoot to move. Maybe you could experiment with a level that incorporates those as a main goal or mechanic.

An unique take on the endless runner genre. At first I thought the acid was too easy to avoid, but on the second level the raindrops add some interesting strategy, as I sometimes had dive UNDER the acid to try to get some rain. It creates an interesting risk/reward dynamic that I found fun. Unfortunately, the levels drag on just a little bit too long. I couldn't play level 3 because I wasn't interested enough to see level 2 to completion.

I'm not usually a runner fan but the core concept here is great! Maybe experiment by also adding some obstacles that go upwards instead of falling down.

A solidly made solitaire with a relaxing atmosphere and great sense of place. The jelly creatures are cute and I like how they flee from the mouse. I had fun once I got the hang of it.

My only suggestions are improvements for the UI. it was difficult to figure out how to use the Transpose power, maybe make it more obvious when it is turned on and add text telling the player to pick a stack. The shop has a similar issue: "toggling" items on/off to purchase them feels strange, and sometimes the text is faded out on some relics, which in most games would suggest that they're locked or can't be selected, but here I'm not sure what the purpose is?

Also, I don't know if you plan on making this a commercial game but if you are, do note that the term "Jello" is trademarked, and could get you in legal trouble. Best to rename it to something else, like "Jelly".

This feels like a game I could like, but there are a lot of problems. 

If I had to summarize how I felt into one word, it would be "constrained". Most of the time I passed the turn because I had no moves and couldn't do anything about it. Luck is used in games to make things feel exciting, but here it felt like luck determined whether I was allowed to do anything on my turns.

There were times where I had a cool combo going, which felt great! But there was no real strategy behind it and, again, it came down to luck. Maybe if you drew three cards at once instead of just one, and you pick which one you wanted to use for that round, that would allow some bit of decision making to spice things up.

The enemy mechanics are not fun. They're either not easily understood, too constraining (like the "lock" mechanic on the wolf that prevents you from drawing cards, thus giving you even LESS options), or seem to be "pity" mechanics where the enemy deals damage to themselves, which feels unsatisfying.

It took me a while to realize how dealing damage actually worked. It honestly felt random. If you removed the charge mechanic, at least for weapons, and gave the enemies higher health bars, it would feel a lot more satisfying for the player because they would be dealing damage with every card they match.

Also, I was excited to see "Roguelike Deckbuilder" according to the game's page, but sad to find out there are no deckbuilding mechanics. There's only buying relics and upgrading them. That's fine, but that's not "deckbuilding", since you don't draw them from a deck and try to leverage the odds of drawing them in your favor. It's just typical roguelike fare.

I hope this gave you some ideas! As a sidenote, I'm a big fan of the artstyle! I love pixel art with thick outlines.

This game has great atmosphere, and I love the pixel filter you applied to the game. It took me a long time to figure out where the counterspace was for preparing burgers, but once I found it I was able to make my first order. 

During the second order, the lights went out. I think it was meant to be scary but I found it aggravating as I could not see what I was doing. I then got stuck in the freezer (not a bug, just couldn't find my way out) and then I gave up at that point.

I think the blackout section could be good if you put a white outline on the ingredients when you mouse over them. That way, the player can still be creeped out but be able to make the order without getting stuck or annoyed.

Otherwise, good first impression!