itch.io

Hey thanks for the kind words, means a lot to me (especially from someone who's as bad as me at making tutorials)!
I tried to go with "no art" here (game literally have no asset files, everything is rendered with line primitives) to fit the "serious" part of this jam but failed because that's not so noticeable.
Also I find engine users pretty impressive, especially the new ones learning an engine for this jam: I'd freeze at the sheer amount of tools and systems meanwhile with small libraries you just have what's needed to draw things on the screen so it's essentially a real blank slate, which is easier for mah brain.

Oh team ASS how you doing? Yeah what you say makes perfect sense: I should've made levels to incrementally introduce players to the controls they had, which are really too much. Instead the game's got one level, the boss, a huge wall of text of a description on the itch page and basically tells the player to RTFM. Thanks for the feedback, will definitely add tutorials in my next projects before even thinking of adding "more features".

Nah I think there's clearly something wrong with my setup. Though if I need to point out moments it would be those when you spin the ball but that didn't affect the gameplay because the ball was always released in the camera's forward direction. Initially thought there would be some timing to it (like, the ball is released in whatever direction it was last pointing at when you player was spinning) but turns out this game is surprisingly forgiving!

I suck at being creative so please bear with me:

Clicks to damage the boss: Keep them
Soundtrack: same it's too good

What I'd like to see added: 
- You have an HP bar
- Boss constantly moves away from you (while awkwardly rotating in 3D), like those bosses in side scrollers flying away throwing attacks at you, here the attacks are black holes.
- After they lose a certain amount of HP, they get shields and to destroy them, you need to launch the spaceship at them just like how you'd complete a normal level, but this time you need to be fast. If you fail the boss heals a little bit and you're back to chasing it around
- A bad end (Hollow Knight gets kidnapped for real).

You don't really need many phases: I saw another game jam where the boss had a finite number of simple patterns but the timing to dodge everything was kinda hell. I personally like those kinda of bosses.

This is from one of your playtesters. I'd already seen this when a code was required to access the game. First time I played it, the level rotation was controlled with HJKL and everything in the level conspired to make you fail. I was capped at level 2. Second time around world rotation was bound to arrow keys, which made it easier to complete levels and I reached level 6. Game still conspired to make me fail because of the weird lava hitboxes. The finished product has none of those issues anymore, and the only reason I didn't complete this yet is probably skill issue at this point. Reached level 7, we have no more deaths when standing near lava pools, and Idk what you did but the game runs smoother than before and movement feels less snappy. This really is a great job and even better than that, it shows that you're a dev who listens. I won't talk about enjoyment, creativity and all that because it's obvious you clearly nailed those. Fantastic work, nice rage game.

Wow you actually read through my wall of text of a description? Really thankful for that. I kinda had the feeling that a builtin tutorial would make this way better but unfortunately didn't manage my time well. Should really work on how to improve user experience, thanks for the feedback!

I really like that take on "seriousness" and knew about this game from YT. Even more fun than I'd thought, yet the mechanics are so simple. 5 stars on everything except the theme obviously.

This one was crude and really enjoyable at the same time. The narrator cooked, the coder seemed to have had lots of fun doing the spinny trajectory thing for the levels, and then for some reason made a really lazy boss fight (though the rotating 3D image in SCRATCH of all things is impressive). Visuals were very chaotic but fine. And of course it's very serious because we have to save Hollow Knight obviously.

Most clickers are just boring to me but this one was kinda fun. Pretty satisfying "Numbers go down" game about a fans, fans of the fan, and child labor. Visuals are nice, audio is pretty much just sfx mostly, I am overall glad to have stuck around for like 2 minutes to finally see the fan spin faster and faster, and then got fired ig? Very serious game of course, no doubt on that.

Fantastic puzzle game. Wasn't too clear to me how it related to the theme, except the rotating perspective of the little spider. Artstyle is cute and there can't be anything wrong with that. Seriousness is real especially with the quote "I forget" from the wise old spider. So inspirational, wow.

Mildly fun little game. The player respawn could use some reworking because there were many times I respawned into lava which sucks. Music is decent and sound effects are obnoxious (specifically the death sound). Enemies could have benefitted a bit more from the theme instead of being standard goombas but that's still fine. Sometimes lava hitboxes were off so I died in ways that don't make sense. At least it's still beatable and functional. Pretty good for a Scratch game.

Nice art and music, really nails the retro feels. Mildly enjoyable, the janky platforming and the fact that losing one level brings you all the way back to the start killed a bit of the fun. The bouncing unkillable enemies were especially frustrating. At least it wasn't too long.

I initially assumed platformers would just not pull the theme off. Well done killing that assumption. Game was a bit laggy on my end though but might be my PC. Enjoyed it a lot.

Updating my take: changed browsers from Safari to OperaGX and I actually get the audio now. Quite good tbh. Boss is still unkillable so the game is in an unfinished state.

This feels more like "compulsion to spin" than "spin to win" when weakening the cores, and it felt a little tedious but bearable. The actual boss fight was decent, with the phases, the attacks, bullets to dodge everywhere.. t'was not bad till I drained their HP to 0 and then for some reason the boss respawned with an HP bar that never goes down. Also for some reason I got no sound on the game page even though there's one comment right below praising the soundtrack. Could be my browser or the project, idk. But for now it feels unfinished unless I missed something. I even tried to replay and destroy 2 cores, the second HP bar of the boss simply doesn't go down.

Scratch is an interesting choice for a game jam. Game has potential and also some pitfalls:
#1 - Sometimes when night begins I am immediately hit by an enemy
#2 - The controls are clunky. A better way to implement what you tried to do would have been to increase movement speed  when moving the mouse around the triangle. Now users don't need to constantly spin their mouse.
#3 - Sometimes when getting hit by enemies I get no damage feedback (the red thing around the screen that shows you've been hit) and since I don't constantly keep my eyes on the HP variable, it took me a while to notice that.
#4- Rules to roll over enemies are unclear. Sometimes I spin relatively slowly and they die, at other times I spin really fast and instead they damage me. Could be because of those controls.

Overall it's a decent game considering what you used.

PICO-8 for a game jam is cute. Levels can get pretty boring because there ain't real obstacles to overcome. A global leaderboard would've been interesting maybe since the point is to solve it in the least possible number of moves. Also the help window mentioned linked rings but I saw none of those, having played till level 30 and writing this. Was that one of your original ideas?

Enjoyable game. though I don't see the point in multidirectional movement if you can only shoot in 4 directions (and the enemies can shoot in any direction). Would need some more balancing if you're gonna expand on this game because right now the game feels hard in the beginning with the enemies having collisions and swarming you, shooting in all 8 directions, and too easy towards the end when you've visited shops and got extra items. Boss fight is a little bland, game has nice visuals.

I'm still wondering how you made all this in just 7 days. This is epic, and the way the little puzzles combine into levels is clever and well thought out.

Easily one of my favourites in this jam, even the tutorial was fun which is wild. Interesting how you introduced electron shells before creation of molecules when at school it's the other way around. Overall lots of spin, lots of fun and undoubtedly serious.

A really nice game carried by its art and sounds and overall atmosphere. Really enjoyable even if a bit laggy on browser (I don't have Windows so couldn't download unfortunately). Makes good use of the theme with the spinning walls, my only nitpick would be on the move controls 'cause at first I thought the character was too slippery. Took me some time to find out that WASD does not really move your character, but just chooses a direction until you press another WASD key. Fairly serious game 👍.

A really nice game carried by its art and sounds and overall atmosphere. Really enjoyable even if a bit laggy on browser (I don't have Windows so couldn't download unfortunately). Makes good use of the theme with the spinning walls, my only nitpick would be on the move controls 'cause at first I thought the character was too slippery. Took me some time to find out that WASD does not really move your character, but just chooses a direction until you press another WASD key. Fairly serious game 👍.

Thanks for the feedback. If there's something I learned from this jam, it's that user experience is everything! Will definitely add in-game tutorials in my next projects.

A very enjoyable experience. Very simple concept executed neatly: enemy behaviour is so simple yet the atmosphere keeps things tense enough. Couldn't get past the 4th room though. Part of it may be because I'm using a trackpad, so no mouse. Also was the "Your dead" on purpose there? sorry to be 'that guy' here but it ticked me off /j.

Oh and the best part of it for me was the music. Nice mixing there, and really feeds into the retro feel.
Btw Löve and Emscripten? Mad respect! 

Overall a game with a very polished feel. The art is great and aligns well with the general theme of the game. Main issue I have with it is the movement (too slippery). There's also the fact that when on extraction box it will auto-clear the stage after a certain amount of time: you should give players the choice to do that. Finally, the skill-tree is opaque which I personally don't like (idk about other players) because I think games should give you a preview of what you could unlock by upgrading a certain skill. T'was a lot of fun though, took me way too long to realise that this was a ball rolling on the ground, hence spinning. I thought it was sliding (again slippery movement) and the movement itself is the only thing correlating to the theme here. Still doesn't change the enjoyment factor, so great work.

Thanks for pointing that out! I remember writing the description there but it got wiped out and I didn't realise.