itch.io

The itch page states: 

> You can use assets not made by you so long as you have the proper license to use them and credit the source

The more detailed rules states:

> Submissions must be original work created by the entrant or the Team and must not contain content created by a third party, such as images or artwork, other than appropriately credited open-source software;

This feels entirely contrary to me. Please clarify.

You were asking for play-testers, so here goes.

Who am I? Game developer by profession and hobby. I don't usually play auto-battlers, but I do enjoy strategy games.

First impressions (store page and trailer):

Your presentation and trailer are very nice. I like that you jump directly into gameplay. My first impression is that it's a mobile game, or heavily inspired by the style of mobile games. Art, juice, SFX, and especially the UI give me this impression. Nits: You have two screenshots (side-bar) and two screenshots (main page), along with first frame of the trailer that are all showing very similar backgrounds (beige). I wonder how feasible it would be to create different environments for the battles to take place? For the close-up screenshots, it would already be enough to color-grade the ground differently (e.g., one with a more vibrant brown, or gray). Second nit: Word mark is a bit hard to read. 

Tutorial:

The initial start-page was a bit overwhelming. There was a lot to read (home faction, enemy faction, hero, etc). And it triggered before the tutorial. I think maybe for the first play, you could try to guide the player through this page faster. It might be enough to have a flashing arrow pointing to the continue button or something similar. I spent time on this page that wasn't necessary, because directly afterwards the tutorial started. The rest of the tutorial was very good. I liked how you triggered tutorial pages as-needed (e.g., before the shop) instead of giving the player a ton to read up-front.

Gameplay impressions: 

The basic game concept was fun, and easy to understand. I was surprised that there wasn't anything similar to pass-through damage (I mean, if an enemy was in a row un-opposed, it just didn't do anything?). As a player, I felt motivated to make sure my people didn't die, but I didn't feel motivated to min-max my total damage. I would often ensure that my people were either in rows un-opposed (seems my total damage was always higher than theirs?), or ensure I had at least tied their damage in each row. In the play-through, I lost one unit in wave 9 due to a miscalculation.

In general the gameplay was a tiny bit shallower than I hoped. I would at least consider whether passthrough damage (e.g., Inscryption style) would fit into the game. 

Nits:

• You have some inconsistent  UX. For example the barracks and infirmary are without text (had to click them to know what they did), while the Continue button has text. 
• The large red numbers showing player/enemy summed attack seem hastily placed. Also maybe buggy: It didn't seem to correctly calculate enemy attacks (showing 0, when enemy had 2x3)
• "Can reposition twice" OK, but where is it indicated that I've already re-positioned once? 

That's awesome that you were able to survive on 1hp. Nice job!

Anger being the weakest was actually a bug :(

It was supposed to dash ~80% of the time, and only occasionally stop (giving the player a chance to do damage), but the numbers got mixed up so he only dashes ~20% of the time.

Great job! The art is very cute, and the animation for the first banana attack is awesome!

Maybe the game would feel more complete if you started with 1 attack, and then slowly unlocked the remaining attacks? That would also make it less overwhelming for the player to decide which attack to use.

Such a fun entry! I enjoyed hearing the rowdy playtests during development as well :)

What a cute game!

Impressive ammount of polish. I especially love the curtain animation, and how well you timed the music and spotlights. Very good juice.

Runs smooth as butter as well.

Really nice entry! I enjoyed playing through all of the levels. 

I would have enjoyed if there was a "fade to black" when you died. Sometimes it was dissorienting to be teleported so directly. 

The Web version also didn't work for me: mouse wasn't captured. I played the desktop version. 

Performance was also quite rough. Probably there were some simple optimizations you could have used (like instanced geometry) that would have solved that. I couldn't find source code though, so I couldn't snoop xD

So cute! I especially loved the level design. I never felt like I was seeing the same assets, or repeated sections of road. Making such a complete and interesting level with limited assets must have been quite a challenge.

Nice job! I love the theme interpretation.

I sadly ran into some duplicate-solution issues as well. I think it's probably very tough to eliminate them all. 

I could see this game being used in an educational setting, to show the basics of layers and filter. I kinda want to see a 3D version of this now with booleans and blender-style modifiers (e.g., array, twist).

Very nice job! The art and music are very pleasant, and fit the gameplay/theme perfectly. It's also quite cool that the game can be replayed (since the mask is randomized every time). Not many jam games have that!

Very cool entry! I love where you took the art style. The music, lightning, and models all fit together very well. 
I wish the gameplay was finished, so I could explore the world properly.

Pretty nice game! As others have said, some audio would have been really nice.

I really like that you took the time to add upgrade cards. It makes it feel like the start of a Roguelike.

Note: The game is easily broken by standing across two "planks" at once. This allows you to walk forever without gathering resources or building.

Also don't ask me to reply on your itch page. I'm happy replying here.

Very ambitious entry! The art was very cute and immersive.

The gameplay was perhaps a bit too hard though -I wasn't able to complete the game. Enemies hiding behind obstacles was very punishing! 

Nice entry! We considered doing something similar, before deciding it was a bit large in scope for a jam game. Nice job getting something playable. I scored 473. 

Feedback: Having different particles/SFX for different objects would have been cool.

Very fun! Often programming games are a bit too "thinky" for me (and I say that as a programmer!) but this one was very fun.

I think my favorite part was the "fun" variables that didn't appear to have gameplay effect, like the color of the player.

Interesting game! We played for quite a few minutes. Is there a win condition or end screen, or is it just the backrooms vibes?

Interesting game! We played for quite a few minutes. Is there a win condition or end screen, or is it just the backrooms vibes?

Very cute! The art was outstanding, especially some of the "reaction" poses (e.g., the crying hamster (?)).

From a gameplay perspective, it's of course quite repetitive. Did you have any more ambitious plans for the game loop that didn't make it into the jam?

Nice job! You got a good chuckle out of us in the first 2 seconds with your wonderful audio intro. In general the SFX are our favorite part. 
Nits: On some levels, the ball didn't align with the direction I was aiming. It also would have been nice if the physics objects aligned a bit closer with the visauals -the ball would often bounce on something I wasn't expecting, or conversly, pass through something I was expecting to be solid.

Very clever premise! The levels were nicely designed as well. One small nit: The collision boxes on the buttons seemed quite unforgiving -I often clipped through the corner.

Nice to see Godot represented :)

Interesting narrative, and polished art style. Nice job!

Interesting narrative, and polished art style. Nice job!

Interesting narrative, and polished art style. Nice job!

Very nice! As is mentioned already, it's not *quite* playable, but I can definitely see where you were going with it

It was very satisfying to uncover the head/body access, and disconnect the limbs. It's always good when a player can try something strange, and be rewarded for their curiosity. 

Thanks for playing! There  are definitely some UX issues and missing polish this time around. Having fossil info was planned, but never got in, sadly.

I will try to push a post-jam next week with some of these fixes. 

Yeah the fish hooks are buggy. For some reason they weren't spawning correctly. In hindsight this is likely cause I didn't reset object origin...?

My original intention was to make it very difficult to see the hook/line, and actually have it where you needed to find the real food (worms, bugs, etc) while avoiding increasingly difficult to detect hooks. As you can see, the final version ended up a bit more simplistic :)

Another fishing game! And this one was really good I thought :)

My favorite parts:
 - Slowly adding new food, so it wasn't overwhelming
 - A proper level-up system, which meant I played a lot longer than I normally play jam games
 - I liked intentionally eating the chilis (good XP), and then healing up. That's way more interesting game-design than just having some foods STRICTLY good and others STRICTLY bad.

My suggestions:
 - I would have loved if the slime grew in size as the game progressed, since I think that would have shown the progression better.

Fishing game creators unite! I think we're all required to play each others games, right? :P

What a fun game! I think this is actually my favorite 'anti-fishing' game of the jam (mine included!).

The best parts for me:
 - Swim animation reacting to the turn was very nice
 - The humans swimming back to shore
 - Generally the good vibes and silly voice acting

The top-down approach was really accessible, without making the graphics boring.

Thanks for playing! I'm discovering a whole little network of anti-fishing games. It's very enjoyable to see very unique take on the genera.