itch.io

This is basically what’s going to happen to EA now after the acquisition

I liked the gameplay and the unique setup with the 3d real world and 2d game world, but performance will probably be an issue because it was kinda chugging on my 3090ti. I didn’t check the framerate but it was definitely dipping below 60 and the fans were spinning at 100% like if I was running an empty UE5 test scene

The 2d platforming was surprisingly fun and I actually found myself getting frustrated that I had to get up and go back to work to make more moeny to keep playing it. It was a funny gimmick but it did really help sell the effect you were going for.

The take on the theme is very literal but it’s not too far from reality so I’m giving you 5 stars for that

I really enjoyed it! I did a good playthrough and an evil playthrough but in the evil one because I was too reckless with the welfare and actually lost

The game was a little confusing at first with the sort of vague writing style in the tutorial, but once you get started it’s easy to figure out especially with the in game descriptions.

The presentation was expertly done. The UI, the fonts, the graphics, and audio were beautifully put together and is what hooked me in the beginning.

I think the best part of the game was reading all the choices that would pop up because of how much life they added to the world. The goals each term were so easy that I didn’t really think about them at all. I only wish that the decisions I had to make felt more impactful than they did. Maybe it’s the gameplay balance that makes them feel this way, or maybe there just aren’t enough mechanics to get more creative with the consequences.

Either way, the game is very good and extremely polished in its current state which is not something I can say about your GDD lol

I enjoyed at first because of the art, the music, and the overall vibe. It wasn’t until a couple rounds when I hit a wall that I bounced off of it.

I think if you clarify that the game is purely a random roll based on your chosen band members, it would be better received. Currently the confusion can lead to frustration because the game tells you that you lost but you have no idea why. It felt more like I misclicked an input or didn’t read the instructions properly than just getting a bad draw

But still, it’s a solid entry for a jam game as it is playable and fool proof as you say. Just needs some more clarity up front so the player knows what to expect

I managed to win, but the mechanics were a little confusing.

The entire point of the game seems to be figuring out how to end up with 4 eggs at the lowest level. If you find a chicken that you can interact with and fill up on eggs, you’ll be tempted to go all the way down but that results in losing all your eggs so what you should do is drop one level at a time, picking up replacement eggs along the way.

This whole thing is kind of unintuitive because you can’t really differentiate the levels. It just looks like youre on the ground surrounded by blurry chickens when you start the game. I would never have figured out that I was somehow floating in mid air and had to fly my way down by consuming raw eggs lol.

I think the game would have worked better if you removed the levels thing entirely and just had to steal the eggs. The game has functional combat and trying to steal the eggs from the chickens is pretty fun, except for the fact that the eggs all disappear for some reason if you kill the chicken.

Maybe you could’ve used those green block/grass areas as the levels that you physically climb up and down from, adding a bit of verticality to the 2d gameplay rather than the abstract concept of floating ferrets and chickens.

Strangeness aside, moving around and collecting eggs was pretty fun, the graphics were nice, and the BGM was a banger

I managed to make it without losing anyone (after 3 attempts)

Very stylish and well made. I love the graphics and sound effects. You did a great job of setting the mood and atmosphere of the game. The writing was also very intense and had me invested in the journey.

didn’t die of dysentery. 10/10

Interesting concept but really unclear.

I think I get it, you just have to make sure you have enough resources to keep the tour going, but is there anything you can do to influence this?

All I could do was click the next show and the van would automatically travel, automatically play the show, and eventually break down. Does my money/resources depend on the quality of the band members?

I like the grungy sounding music and the classic MS paint lookin art style, but the game needs more instructions and some more control and player feedback. It felt like I was just watching the game play itself.

I think you can fix the jump by having a minimum jump height when you press the jump button instead of having it completely depend on the input time. If you tap jump, player jumps a fixed x units, but if you hold it they gain a little more height. The problem is that every jump felt completely different to me and it was really hard to navigate all the platforming challenges.

The combat was fun, but the enemies didnt respawn so I barely got to enjoy it. 90% of my time was spent trying not to get killed by the spikes (and failing)

As for the main upgrade mechanic, I like it BUT I managed to softlock myself from being able to kill the 4th boss. I got glass cannon and gave the enemy the thorns skill which resulted in me always killing myself after landing a few hits on the boss. The one healing item in the arena wasn’t enough to save me :(

Overall solid foundation for a game here. The graphics, music, sfx, and especially the voice acting are all great. Fix the feel of the platforming, add some more content, and you’re set.

Awesome concept! I like how intuitive it is to play and didn’t require any kind of tutorial. The graphics are really nice, and the sound of the boiler with the creaking door added a kind of ominous backdrop to the whole being a lone sailor in a giant ship trying to outrun a storm thing.

In my first run I burned all the furniture but in my second I got away with only $1500 bucks worth.

Also my 5 yr old nephew who’s obssessed with the Titanic for some reason was really interested in what I was playing

I figured out that I was supposed to keep trying to kill the boss through multiple attempts, but after I beat him on I think the 4th battle, I was shown this screen and then nothing happened. Is this a glitch or was that all you managed to make in time?

I liked the intro and the overall vibe with the mysterious and spooky music, but the gameplay definitely could’ve used some more feedback for the player.

When it said to select the attack target, it wasn’t clear at first who the enemy was. And when I did click the boss, it wasn’t clear that my attack did anything since there were no animations or sound effects AND the boss’ health pool was so big that I couldn’t see the health bar change at all until I attacked multiple times.

The UI was also improperly scaled and the topmost abyss party member was cut off at the op of the screen.

Great presentation and concept, but needs a bit more polish and clarity for the player

Idk man it seemed extremely difficult after my ~20 minutes of playing. Maybe you should post a playthrough video on the itch page to show how its meant to be played because I think most players will struggle

Thanks for the review!

I actually considered removing the tutorial altogether because I figured it would probably mislead players. The tutorial tasks are just there to be a guide, they don’t actually affect anything progression wise so you should be able to fully play the game regardless of the state of the tutorial.

And yeah this type of game needs a lot of customization options. We plan on developing the game further and customization is going to be a main focus.

Thanks again for playing!

Slaughtering a village of pathetic humans in vengeance as the last of my race of lizard people was pretty fun

The only issue is that it’s very easy and light on content. I could’ve gone a few more rounds as the combat was acutally pretty fun. Dodging arrows and sword swings to go in for the kill was simple but engaging.

If I had to critique the graphics it would be that the grass being a flat color with nothing to break it up can make it easy to get lost/disoriented in open areas. A few blades of grass here and there would have helped, doubly so if you could cut them with your sword

Music was great but the quality was weird. It kinda sounded like it was recorded through a phone speaker or something

overall, solid jam entry!

I actually made a lightgun game for ludum dare a couple years ago and I remember how surprisingly difficult it was to make one of these, so good job pulling it off. The world needs more lightgun games!

The CRT effect and UI elements looked really nice and gave the game a needed visuals boost to make up for the complete lack of lighting (which i assume is a construct issue?)

While way too short, the game does feel polished and well made. I only wish I could play more than just the first level. Good job and I hope you develop it further!

This was really good

The amount of content and polish is incredible for 2 weeks of work.

The combat was pretty simple but the disappearing floor and jump thrusters gave it a lot more depth than if it were just a standard top down shooter. Jumping over pits and away from explosions kept the combat feeling fast paced and exciting

The difficulty curve needs some work though. I feel like I became OP very quickly because it doesnt seem like the enemies themselves ever get stronger. By the time i reached the first boss I could kill him in a couple seconds

Graphics, VFX, SFX, and the overall atmosphere were amazing, especially for 2 weeks of production!

Managed to beat it after 4 attempts. I only kind of like the main death mechanic. It works well and is intuitive once you understand that dying is part of the solution, but forcing the player to kill themselves over and over when they only have 10 lives and don’t know how many forced deaths await them is pretty stressful.

The part that kept messing me up was the second body of water after blowing up the pipe. If you dont jump far enough on the initial bomb explosion you’ll end up having to waste a second life when you walk all the way back because you can’t reach the other side. The fact that you can’t see the blast radius of the bomb makes it feel like you have to guess at the detonation distance which can mess up your jump.

The visuals and sfx were exceptional. I think this game has the single most satisfying switch sound effect I’ve ever heard. Great job on creating something so tight and polished for the jam. I honestly forgot I was playing a jam game while I was locked in trying to nail the jumps

Very difficult and unintuitive.

The first thing you do in the game is place a simple house and then you get a dramatic warning that says “Stop building houses build farms!” then you build a farm and you get two warnings: “Build houses!” and “Stop Building Houses! Build Farms!”

It’s really hard to figure out what the right building to place is. It felt like every decision I made was wrong, which is not a good feeling to have in a game. I think if you made the game a bit less oppressive to the player, atleast at the start, it would be easier to get into. Maybe a tutorial that tells the player to place specific buildings and then goes over the effects on resources would be useful.

I like the idea of combining buildings to unlock new ones, but I was scared to put buildings close together because I knew whatever spawned was probably going to ruin me financially or starve my population.

The UI is a huge issue which makes the game difficult to play in either fullscreen or windowed. In fullscreen the tooltips showing the info for the purchaseable buildings appear offscreen and are unreadable. In windowed mode the UI elements clutter the screen because the elements don’t scale.

The concept was cool and the mood depressing, especially with the awesome background music and the intro sequence made me want to learn more about this desolate world

Really nice art and music. Idk why but it kind of reminds me of maplestory. Not the character portraits but I think it’s the music and enemy sprites that does it.

Gameplay wise, I like the idea of swapping out party members for their unique abilities, but why didn’t you label them?! I could not figure out who did what. The fact that they’re ordered on screen in a weird way made trying to identify them from the itch description impossible. You didn’t even name them in the GDD! I was able to identify them through process of elimination which was difficult since not all speical attacks had visual feedback

I’d say the game is definitely on the easy side once you figure out the special attacks. I was able to win very easily by spamming the tornado and doubling the power of damon’s attack.

One thing I don’t understand is the sacrifice system. Was it supposed to remove party members? Whoever I chose just carried on like nothing happened including the protagonist. Was it a glitch or just not implemented properly?

I like the gameplay concept but as it currently stands it is incredibly frustrating.

1. Why does the punch give you just barely enough height to reach the next level of enemies? It is so unsatisfying to smash the punch button and just whiff because the guy didnt go high enough. The only way to progress is to smash the 1 button in a group of enemies and hope it propels me high enough and towards another group of enemies.

2. Why is the punch button 1?! why not something sensible like left click or even just space? This added to the feeling of frustration while playing the game because of how unnatural it felt.

3. Why even have the player take damage? Trying to line up and chain punches with off screen enemies is difficult enough, why have the player die when making contact with an enemy?

4. I was only able to reach the 2nd upgrade once, and I didn’t even know it was an upgrade until many failed attempts later led me to read the GDD to see if I was doing anything wrong.

Honestly, I think this game could be fun but it is borderline unplayable in its current state. I think you should remove the damage system, make the player always get propelled high enough to reach the next layer of enemies after landing a punch, AND allow the player to jump off of enemies heads as they’re falling. That seems like an obvious and intuitive mechanic that would allow the player a chance to recover from a mistake instead of falling all the way to the ground every time.

Maybe also consider lowering the force of gravity a bit so it’s less brutal

You can’t really expect people to sit there for an hour holding a button looking at a number slowly go up. I managed to escape by jumping on the ladder in the shop and going over the wall instead of having to waste my time looking at a number going up

Maybe if you added the voice lines it could be interesting but currently it is just unplayable. The occasional need to have to walk away from the button and spend a couple of minutes worth of money on food is not exactly good game design. Running on the treadmill is kind of amusing but not enough to make up for the lack of a game.

Sorry for being blunt, but I know you can do better than this

Some nitpicks after a couple of playthroughs:

The graphics are nice, especially the sprite work, but the harsh black and white palette really hurts the visbility of the game. I couldn’t even see the catapult charges at the top of the screen and thought I found a glitch when I wasn’t able to catapult anymore after running out.

The mouse cursor not being locked to the game and not being able to full screen resulted in a lot of misclicks outsied of the game window. In one level I lost all my progress because I accidentally clicked the button that took me to the jam submission page while trying to pull off a sick jump

The levels were well designed and the game was genuinely challenging. It was a bit frustrating at first trying to deal with the mouse situation, but I got the hang of it after a while and managed to get to the end.

I think that you should expand the tutorial sections to teach the player that they can jump multiple times in the air. since the gameplay is so fast, it’s easy to take the game one jump at a time and not realize that you can catapult yourself as much as you want in the air. This happened to me and I got stuck on some levels that would have been trivial if I knew that. Some tutorial text that explains this would have been perfect at the start of level 3.

Overall the game was fun and well made. A few tweaks and it could be great. Congrats on your first completed game AND submitting in time for a jam!

Kinda reminded me of Touchgrind

I couldnt nail the last line unfortunately. It was hard to keep track of the spins and I never seemed to be able to jump high enough onto or off the rail to get enough spins. Maybe it would’ve been easier with a visual indicator of how close you got. Like just a number that pops up to tell you how many spins you did on your last jump

The graphics and presentation were great especially the cutout style look of the crowd.

Great job making something unique for the jam. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 3D skateboarding game made for a jam

Very cruel but interesting idea

I loved how you contrasted the brutality of smashing the lil meeple into paste with peaceful piano music.

Obviously the game is unfinished but what you implemented was solid. The only issue I had was that the pestle item can physically push the meeples around the screen and I accidentally launched one to another dimension so I didn’t have enough to build the house on my first attempt.

I think a full game of this could be fun if you streamline the paste production process. Maybe unlock new creative ways to grind down the meeples with different kinds of industrial processes, or something like factorio where you build systems to process the meeples on a mass scale.

So after many attempts at trying to figure out this impossibly balanced game where it seemed like there was just no way to avoid bankruptcy, I finally was able to make sense of it.

All you have to do is work your employees to death, and have their ghosts do all the work. You don’t have to pay ghosts, they have nowhere else to go, and they work like 10 times faster.

I really like this mechanic, but I don’t like how its the only way to properly play the game, especially since it isn’t exactly explained anywhere and most players will try to play the game normally and have a bad time.

The main issue with the game balance is that employees do not improve at all. Idk if its a glitch or you didn’t have time to implement it, but employees never ranked up for me. This meant the only way to get better is to have MORE employees, but the cost of a new employee eventually outpaces the value of the contracts.

Some music and sound effects would’ve made the whole experience a lot better but overall I actually had a lot of fun. Furstrating at first but enjoyable once I understood it

The art style is cool and I like the jigsaw lookin shape of the maps. The music is nice but I think the loop is a little too short which makes it sound repetitive

The gameplay however, is really difficult. Unless I’m missing some crucial mechanic or concept, the game seems impossible especially since it costs 5 souls to get to the next level. The best I could do was enter level 4 but die instantly because of the soul cost. Did you play test the game? Is it actually possible to win?

You’re way too stingy on the souls and it’s really easy to run out because of how big the levels are. There’s a lot of empty space you have to cover to reach a soul pickup which barely gives enough to make up for what you spent to reach it.

It also feels like weapon pickups are a waste of time since the best strategy is to just avoid enemies. Why waste souls walking around the map to pick up swords to be able to kill enemies which reward no souls? Also having swords as potential rewards in the random box makes me not want to risk wasting souls walking towards them.

It’s not exactly clear what’s going on but I assume I’m some kinda billionaire or maybe a tax collector taking money from families which I then escape with to my private island? What does the enemy represent?

Gameplay wise, it’s a very simple platformer. No real challenge beyond avoiding the enemy and nailing a couple of jumps, but great job putting it together in time and delivering for the jam! Keep on making and keep on learning

I also got stuck at the log because I didn’t know you could kill enemies. Maybe placing the tutorial for attacking enemies in right front of the first enemy wasn’t a good idea. I kept jumping over him from the tree which made me miss the tip entirely

The music was fantastic! That airy flute(?) sound really added to the prehistoric vibe and the fast paced drums made me feel the pressure of the approaching meteor

Loved the graphics, and the ending with the short cutscene was a nice touch.

Great job!

by narrative element I just mean the whole losing your humanity/identity thing and the multiple endings. The only reason to not get upgrades is for that

Still human.

Gameplay wise, the game is very simple but the narrative element added a lot of weight to the decision to use upgrades. I like how it rewards the player for not taking the easy route

But what’s the deal with the artstyle mishmash? The cover image and the upgrade shop look significantly more detailed than the rest of the games graphics. This type of thing is pretty jarring.

The game might take a while to load on start up. It also does the ol’ freeze for a second when a new material appears for the first time. So expect a few stutters while customers walk in on day one

Based on the GDD it seems that the game is mostly unfinished. Walking around and clicking to swing a stubby little sword was not a very satisfying experience. Maybe if the sword was longer and you had a dodge attack it would be a bit more enjoyable. But again, obviously the game is in an unfinished state. The intro cinematics for the fights looked cool

Also thanks for alerting me to the hilarious existence of Redot engine lmao

my record was 4136 px

Very simple but fun for repeat sessions to try and get a higher score. The SFX were pretty funny and made the game more enjoyable. The missing pixel mechanic was also very simple, basically just health, but I liked how you represented it visually by shrinking the character down to a single pixel.

That was very fun and extremely polished!

My only issue with the game is the lack of instructions. From the start all you know is that you have to kill 7 counts, but it isn’t immediately clear what that means. I went around the whole map and got all the counts but didn’t win because draining them wasn’t enough. The game doesn’t exactly give you feedback on this.

I also had no idea what ‘flee’ meant in the first map. Flee sounds like something you do when you’re about to lose, so I avoided fleeing until I was down to 1 heart. I basically ended up farming villagers at the farmlands for a while building up currency, waiting for something to happen. Maybe flee meaning ‘exit to world map’ is obvious to some, but it had me stun locked in the first area lol

Maybe I was being dumb but some basic instructions in the itch page would be a good idea.

The music and graphics were very well made, I especially liked the little walking animations of the characters. Overall very good style and production quality

It took me like 5 rounds to start to make sense of it and I found it pretty fun after I got it.

I have mixed feelings about not knowing exactly when the ball is going to explode. I think if you let the player know exactly when the ball will explode, it would make the gameplay feel more strategic and less random. The randomness of the card draws is already a challenge. Forcing the player to guess at the state of the ball and potentially waste their cards which were randomly distributed seems a bit unfair. However I do like the idea of the ball being like a hot potato that you throw around, but not when you have no control over the cards in your hand.

MAYBE if you had an entire 52 card deck to yourself instead of splitting it with your opponent you could strategize better by keeping track of which cards are left in the deck.

It might instead be better to play more than one card per turn, or play a card plus a spell. This would increase the pace of the game but would also allow you to set up a finishing blow instead of getting countered based on the complete randomness of the card distribution

I don’t play a lot of card games but I had fun with this one. The presentation was very nice with a level of polish I didn’t expect for a jam game. Music is also very catchy.

well done!

I beat it!

The music and sound effects were great and I liked the style of the graphics, but the transitions looked a little jank as the platforms sort of persisted into the next level while blending out.

Gameplay concept is interesting, I like the idea of having to weigh the costs and benefits of taking a potentially useful looking item, but the way it was implemented made it feel on rails. Like my decisions didn’t really matter that much, they just slightly affected the platforming physics.

I think this could be cool if you pushed that core mechanic further. Reward the player somehow for using less items to force them to come up with creative platforming solitutions by taking advanatge of the lighter physics.

I did find some of the levels to be super frustrating, particularly the one thats completely in the dark, and the very last platform in the final room. Was there a way to rotate the flashlight? It was pointing down at an awkward angle that made it feel almost useless.

Congrats on releasing your first game! It’s obviously very simple but you managed to deliver something in time for a jam which is a huge milestone.

Considering it’s your first released game and you have nowhere to go from here but up, I do want to point out that you should always add some instructions on the game page, even if its just a sentence describing your objective or listing the controls.

While the game is simple, it isn’t clear what the goal is or even what button you have to press to interact. I had to come to this jam submission page and read your explanation for how it fits the theme to figure out how to play.

That was absolutely brutal. I got to day 4 but the computer virus screwed me all up

Gameplay could use some work. I found that moving around tiles felt unresponsive which made it unsatisfying to play. I think you could’ve used some kind of marker to indicate the currently selected tile. I noticed that there’s a glitch where the slight highlight effect on selected icons will randomly stop working which added to the feeling of poor responsiveness.

Having to pay 1 dollar at a time to buy items was very confusing at first, and I thought purchasing was either broken or there was an item limit to prevent me from buying new items.

The gameplay balance was very tight and I always felt completely hopeless until the last hours of the day where I barely managed to make ends meet. I did like this to a certain point, but the pace of the rounds and addition of new items and tiles each round made it hard to keep up and create strategies. It felt like matching tiles was futile and was hoping to luck into combos or some bombs and board refreshes.

I think the only way to win is to hoard items and use them in the right order all at once to nuke the board. Matching the tiles normally doesn’t seem to give enough money to reach the goal, and the timer is so fast that it gives you no time to properly set up combos. That leaves only the item hoarding and nuking strategy.

I did really like the art style and the music. The songs were catchy and kept me bobbing my head through 3 playthroughs and the little cutscenes were a nice touch. I did try out the CRT filter but after a couple rounds I could see why it was disabled by default lol. Maybe if you tone down the effect it would be less distracting.

Overall a solid entry with nice graphics and music, but the gameplay balance feels a bit too unfair which makes it difficult to engage wtih the mechanics

I got 1:47 and 281m which was the high score for distance but idk if it submitted.

I love the surpirisingly horrifying atmosphere. I thought the corpses were just obstacles to trip over. I did not expect what happens when you run into them. The sound and music did a lot for the atmosphere, but the main loop did start to sound repetitive after only a couple rounds.

Gameplay wise, I like it. It’s simple but engaging enough to force you to create a strategy, but also so intuitive that I didn’t even need a tutorial to figure out what I had to do. I think it would be cool to have occasional lightning strikes that brighten up the darkness momentarily. You could also have monsters that walk towards the player very slowly to increase the tension. Imagine being forced to stand still as they creep towards you, and in the darkness they speed up and you can only hear the heightend pace of their footsteps.

Congrats on the entry, it felt very polished and well made

I think the game might actually be possible if the bombs didn’t move so fast after they explode. I played a bunch of rounds on hard and braindead spending time carefully positioning the bombs so that they don’t nuke me every time but eventually I realized it was impossible to avoid taking damage.

Awesome idea for the jam theme! this was very satisfying to play and very intuitive right off the bat.

My only issue beyond minor polish details is that it felt like it was too low stakes. There wasn’t a goal or anything that I had to meet which made it feel kind of pointless after a while. Like imagine if in balatro you didn’t have to reach a score threshold to win. Just play the hand until you run out of cards and use the cash to buy upgrades.

Very early on I felt like skipping uprades after each round to just keep hoarding cash for the more expensive ones since I didn’t have any incentive to improve my score between rounds