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Cool! Sorry, the snail is supper bugged in the jam version :x it is super slow and stops on the screen corners, we fixed it and buffed it for the next update. Also, you can revive your units without potions, which changes the game completely, but it is really hard to find out in the jam version. You can shake them to wake them up. We are making this mechanic more intuitive and teaching it more clearly on the next version.

We ware not aiming at an incremental, sit back and relax, tower defense style game. We wanted the player to feel a pressure to keep moving the units, using items and so on. But as we playtested, we feel like the balance of the game doesn't help at all on this side. The levels are hard and too tight to succeed, so you are always 'behind' on what you should be doing, making the player feel overwhelmed and stressed. We are updating the game soon, and we wanted to test the new balance, hopefully it will have more moments to relax.

Thanks a lot for the time and feedback! It was super useful and validated some points for the next update :)

Thanks for the feedback. The victory and defeat state is quite lackluster on this build, we ended up not being able to polish them enough. The next version is more readable and have a small level progress bar on the corner of the screen so you have a better idea when the level is about to end.

The wizard is actually a healer. We noticed the image is very confusing and we are trying a new visual for the staff on the next build. But the healer is also a bit dumb in the jam version of the game, which makes discovering its function even worse.

Thanks a lot for all the feedback and for the tim! We are planning on updating the game soon with a lot of new small additions and a new balance throughout the experience

Thanks! o/

Good job beating the game without reviving! Yep, the snail is super bugged in this version of the game :x and you nailed the problem, it tries to go off-screen, where the pathfinding doesn't resolve.

So glad you enjoyed! We are planning on releasing an update soon with more polish and a new balance throughout to make it more accessible. It is quite hard right now

Thanks a lot! We are already cooking a new version with more feedbacks on the things you can/need to do, and also rebalancing the whole experience to make it more accessible

Great artstyle and mood. I miss a background ambience sound or a soundtrack.

I have no idea what to do. I spent like 10 minutes breaking things and saw no real sense of progress or any guidance on what is my objective or what to do next, so It lacks guidance. By the theme, I guess I will build stuff and the game will become like an incremental thing? I tried to water the small walking plants, tried to pick the planks to build something, broke a chest that spawned nothing. I really have no idea

Our games have a similar premise, but are taken to very different directions.

I love how tiny and expressive this is! But I must say, I almost drop the game because it is kinda tedious in the beginning. Sometimes you would miss the blender or fail to pick an orange. Or in the later stage of the game, you would grab something unexpected and do something wrong. But as the game doesn't punish you so severely, it was fine.

The aesthetic is really well done, visuals and sound are great. And the juiciness overall is really good.

The only category I think this game misses on is the 'would buy a longer/commercial version...' because I can't see how this game can grow for a commercial product. But aside from that, it was fun and memorable. Nice job!

Simple and intuitive system, with a game loop that is already well tested and the magnum opus inspired twist. My biggest problem with the game is that I saw little investment in progressing further. After creating gold on the day side and seeing how the night elements interacted with the base elements I had nothing inside me interested in continuing with the game. It felt like a slog to try and achieve the same thing just with more steps and new elements. 

And to be honest I don't know how to solve this problem. Maybe having shorter levels in which you have to make a certain element with a limited amount of gold, and then a sequence of levels each having different items in the shop too would make me feel like advancing in a natural way. Or maybe adding a side loop of sorts, like selecting an element to throw into some random thing? Haha That would be fun. There are many tiny loops like this that are being turned into slay the spire-like combat mechanics. An example would be backpack hero, that uses a inverntory management for combat, or dungeonclawler, that uses a claw machine mini game.

The controls and responsiveness is very well implemented. I love how the coins fit the little stack on the right.

I feel like the left recipe/diagram could be always displayed. I was constantly opening and closing that. I don't feel like memorizing that diagram was fun, so it started to be a distraction and having to move my mouse over there took me out of the flow most of the times.

Great visuals and sound effects too.

Overall nice game! Hope this feedback can help the team :)

Simple and interesting. A bit lacking in the audio visual, but did do the job on setting an weird mood, I don't know why, but the aesthetic made me think about petscope, the concept of catching creatures, the eyes and the sfx.

At first I was trying to click with the mouse and that did nothing, but I quickly tried the arrows and thought it was not working because I was looking at the creature instead of at the net. Starting with the net in the upper left corner might solve this, because that is usually the natural reading order for most players.

On the responsiveness bit, sometimes my input was 'eaten' because the creature was still moving. An input buffer would solve that, also you could make the net grayed out while the player can't move, so at least this state is clearly communicated

Thanks a lot for the video! Just watched it and was very informative, with very thoughtful comments. There a lot of things for us to improve, and we are really glad you enjoyed the experience!

Thanks a lot for the kind words! :)

Thanks! The revival mechanic is not signified enough :( sorry for that. Hope you enjoyed your time!

Thanks! :)

Very great game! I found it to be really compelling from the start

The only game design issue I found is that the fire  spell is super over powered compared to the rest, so kind of a balancing issue. The thunder is super hard to hit, kind of requiring you to mark enemies with your hand, which make you lose time. I was trying to vary spells and lost some levels, until I started to just use fire all the time, it is strong and have a big AoE. This changed the game, because now the levels got more monotonous and I was just spamming fire around the region with enemies.

I think the game would remain super compelling if it had enemies that was strong against some kind of spell, like coal miners with a fire resistant suit, a rubber guy that resist electricity and a guy with a huge hammer that could break walls, this would mean I would have to vary spells and counter them in specific ways, and not just spam no matter what enemies comes.

The writing works really well, but I was curious to try a version in which you write in the ground itself instead of having this layer of 'positional transformation'. It might be fun test and feel if the game gets better or worse, and which direction the project would grow based on this change.

Anyway, great game, congratulations! Hope this feedback helps you guys :)

Exactly, that's why playtesting is super important even on small game jam projects. Game jams are always packed with learnings and experiences

Congrats on the project! Some feedbacks from my end to improve the game

I found the laser pointer to be sluggish. It moves way slower than your pointer, making it feel quite bad to control. And on the interaction, maybe there should be a clear visual tell on the objects that you can interact with and drag, the first block blends so much into the background I bumped into it without realizing it was even and object. All interactible stuff should be more visibly different and have a common language. For example: your laser is red, so make all these objects have a red outline, or a red interior, or something like that.

There are automatically moving platforms and draggable platforms, and they look the same, so it is kinda frustrating to step into one and wait, to them realize you have to pull, or to jump into a platform that suddenly moves out of your jump range because it was an automatically moving one.

I felt the battery system to be very frustrating too, it doesn't telegraph itself clearly enough, and then the box go into the void because of that and I lose progress. I'm still not sure if I find the system itself to be frustrating or the lack of feedback that led me to errors and then to retry levels.

On the visuals, It looks like the wall tileset have a thin red line between each tile, maybe there is something wrong with the import settings or with the sprite cut. Also, if you wanted to be strict with the pixel art, making the player scale up and down is really jarring, because you are creating different sizes of pixels, you could also try to apply some pixelization to the laser pointer visuals, but that is a bit harder and maybe over the scope of the jam.

I didn't pass level 3, I dropped the box on the last jump, which made me restart, and then I just quit haha, sorry

Anyway, congratulations on the submission! Hope this feedback helps and has some valuable info for you guys :)

Ooh, I see! We should invest in making the blob merging mechanic more apparent too. Currently there is no signifier for this interaction, most players stumble upon it by accident or by trying weird things. Thanks for your patience!

We might submit an improved longer version in the future! :)

You can also revive them by shaking, yes, but we didn't communicate it well enough :(

Thanks for the feedback. We really need to change the drop zones, you are right, it checks for a radius around the 'feet position', but most of the visuals have the receiving section of the visual on the top. Thanks a lot for pointing that out

The restart idea is also a good idea. Noted!

Thanks a lot for playing, hope you had a good time!

Yes, already on our to do list! The biggest oversight from our side :( sorry for the frustration

Thanks for playing!

One of the initial design directions was to make it an endless survival, on the tower defense direction. But as you need too keep acting and picking and smashing, the loop didn't scale well. After some minutes, you would get overwhelmed by the amount of things to micromanage, so we decided to go a different way, more aligned to plants vs zombies, for example - shorter levels with specific threats to overcome. But your feedback is very interesting in that we should allow for more tactics to be viable, allowing for more strategic expression and playstyles.

We are sorry for the difficulty and the hard to discover revive mechanic.

Thanks for playing and for taking your time to write all the feedback o/

We are sorry for the difficulty!

About the blob, do you think it was a bug? Was it going offscreen or something? When you pick a blob you can drag it over other blobs to merge them into a bigger blob, making it easier to collect, do you think it might have been this behavior?

Glad you had fun, thanks for playing!

Thanks a lot! I saw on a comment that you finished without reviving your units, well done! You played on the super hard mode

Are there some specific sprites that doesn't match with other specific sprites? Or do you think you just missed a background under everything?

Yes, we are sorry for the difficulty :( very harsh spikes throughout. You can revive your units by shaking them. Yes, not discoverable enough :( many players are having problems

Thanks for the feedbacks o/

Thanks a lot for the thoughtful feedbacks!

The discovery part was a strong pillar of game design, that meant some players had fun discovering things, but also meant other players didn't understand some aspects of the game. We should have ironed out these edges with better visuals, iconography, and other techniques.

We are really sorry for the harsh difficulty spike. I'm planning on making some balance changes and pushing a small update after the jam! It looks like a lot of players are having problems, we didn't plan well enough to allow some room for playtests and balance on the final days, lesson learned.

Good pointer on the boardgame thing. The game actually started as a random soup of ideas around objects that you could interact on a table. I have never seen a board game with living flies to kill and then turn into coins too haha, after some prototyping I thought the fantasy of a board game could make sense, but maybe I should think of a better theme to wrap everything around it if I take the project forward

Thanks for your time! Did you end up discovering you can revive your units? Just curious

Thanks! Yep, we missed on the difficulty, sorry for that! But glad you enjoyed your time

The game shaped itself into something interesting, maybe I should think about making something bigger out of this, lets see

Thanks o/ Glad you enjoyed, and sorry for the harsh difficulty curve .-. huge miss on our end

Thanks! Yes, we missed a lot on the difficulty curve. Should have taken more time to playtest with fresh players. Thanks for the feedback o/

Congrats!! And sorry for the frustration. Thanks a lot for playing and for the dedication haha hope you had a good time anywa

The sad story is, it had an indicator over your hand pointer. I removed after a playtest thinking that discovering would be more fun, as the HUD with the birds already shows the progress. But guess what? It looks like many players are not discovering it naturally T^T lesson learned.

Maybe it is actually more interesting to discover by yourself, but you run the risk of letting many players without more necessary info. In an ideal project, with more time, I could show the icon after understanding that the player is not reviving the units. Maybe after they lose a level without trying to shake any units or something like that.

Yes, as some pointed out, you can shake to wake them up. Yes, it is not discoverable enough :(

Beating without reviving the units is like a super hard version of the game, congrats! And sorry for the frustration... Hope you enjoyed your time anyway and thanks for the feedbacks!

I understand your pointer to the '5 minutes' thing.  have read the rules several times, and I took the next section as the spirit of the jam instead of trying to limit the game itself to 5 minutes

Something small, polished, and pleasing to interact with, rather than a tiny broken piece of some larger game you'd like to make

But as the game materialized itself, I just chose to let it grow and pursue what it wanted to be with new ideas and enemies without being too restrictive. Was so into the project that I started to forget the jam and started listening to the fun haha. Might lose many points on the ratings, but I'm totally fine with that.

Again, thanks for playing and taking your time to beat the game a leave thoughtful feedbacks o/ (here and in the submission page)

A arte tá interessante, o conceito é legal, mas está muito difícil entender as regras do jogo. Alguns feedbacks para ver se consigo apontar minhas frustrações e possíveis pontos de melhoria caso queira continuar o projeto.

Começando pela UI, eu achei difícil sacar que a barra de estresse era a que tinha o rosto do personagem. Lá tem uma barra com fill radial mas você só vê o que tem no fim da barra quando tá chegando no fim pra entender que ela é um problema, já que só o fill da barra vai revelando o visual dela. Acho que nesse caso deveria ter o background da barra sempre, com o ícone de problema lá no fim, e o fill ser um overlay que vai preenchendo. Assim você sabe que no fim tem um coisa ruim pra evitar, e até o tamanho da barra pra ter ideia do progresso. Não entendi até agora se o número vermelho também é o estresse ou outra coisa.

Até agora não entendi bem o objetivo do jogo e nem quais são minhas reais escolhas para conseguir suceder, parece que tudo que eu faço dá problema, pois o chefe vem gritar comigo com menos de 2 minutos de jogo sempre. Não sei se tem alguma forma de evitar que ele venha gritar com você? O dinheiro dá para usar para alguma coisa?

Um bugzinho ou feature que me incomodou. Apertar esc sai do jogo. Então teve 2 vezes que queria pausar e acabei perdendo progresso e voltando pro menu sem um popup de confirmação ou algo pra evitar esse erro de usabilidade

Sobre a arte, está bem legal, mas a resolução do background está muito baixa comparada com a arte dos objetos, isso me tirou um pouco da imersão logo de início, e parece fácil de corrigir. Dá pra importar uma versão maior mesmo ou quebrar a textura em partes e aplicar como um tileset com uma definição um pouco maior.

Vários pontinhos de melhora, se eu fosse continuar o projeto voltaria para a base do jogo e faria alguns playtests assistidos para ver como as pessoas reagem ao jogo para melhorar principalmente o entendimento das regras

Parabéns pela entrega! o/ Espero que meus feedbacks tenham sido úteis

Tem gráficos legais, mas alguns efeitos visuais colidem um pouco com a direção. Especialmente um efeito visual meio 'pixe-art' dos personagens aparecendo durante a cutscene.

Eu travei antes da segunda batalha... Não sei se teve algum bug? Não faço ideia do que fazer ou onde clicar. As mecânicas não são explicadas direito, a UI é cheio de elementos, e alguns são muito pequenos, bem difíceis de ler. É um pouco confuso

Valeu demais! o/

Haha, legal! Hmm, se é um arroz com feijão, o que seria o bife ou a salada para você como uma nova camada nesse projeto? O que você esperava de diferente depois que começou a conhecer as mecânicas básicas?

Que bom que curtiu! Eu vejo um potencial também de extender a experiência, tenho visto em playtests q a mecânica básica de pulls e rituals é meio viciante

Valeu pelo feedback! Tem alguma página específica das revelações que ficou difícil de entender? Foi uma direção de design mesmo deixar o tutorial e onboarding mais soltos e dar agência para o jogador ir testando e descobrindo as coisas por conta própria, meio inspirado em Tunic. Sim, uma animação de caminhada ficou faltando mesmo :( tava na lista, mas não deu tempo. No fim da jam eu estava compondo as trilhas e corrigindo uns bugs da build windows e foi isso haha

Legal! Boa sorte com o projeto!
Consigo imaginar a vertente frenética sendo bem divertida também, só precisaria dar uma pensada no pacing para intercalar com momentos mais tranquilos e ter uma condição de derrota mais clara também para o jogador não ficar para sempre na tensão, e dar um high score ou algo do tipo

Ah, mais um feedbackzinho que lembrei. O background é bem colorido e as vezes o cursor some. Poderiam trocar o cursor na tela do jogo para uma coisa mais chamativa que tenha mais contraste

Jogo simples e redondinho. A escolha artística é esperta para diminuir a quantidade de assets, ao mesmo tempo tem bastante charme

Se tivesse um ponto para melhorar no design é que parecem não existir 'spikes' e momentos de variação de interesse. Quando você entende o jogo, parece que sua melhor escolha é sempre equilibrar tudo, então não são escolhas difíceis e fica sempre numa constante, inclusive muitas perguntas e eventos se repetem, então começa a ficar monótono depois de um certo tempo. O que esse tipo de jogo faz para tacar bolas curvas e fazer o jogador coçar a cabeça são eventos um pouco mais 'catastróficos' aleatórios, que podem mudar muito as 'barrinhas' da esquerda de repente e fazer o jogador tomar decisões diferentes depois disso.

Também daria para adicionar um recurso novo que funcionasse diferente dos demais, assim vocês tem um eixo novo para brincar com o conteúdo. Por exemplo, 3 pontos de carisma por dia, para resolver alguma coisa sem uma consequência negativa. Assim vocês podem adicionar mais eventos 'ruins' e o jogador tem essa opção nova para se livrar de alguma coisa as vezes e se sentir espertinho.

E se fosse adicionar uma última coisinha, seria um objetivo para o jogador mirar e ter como meta. Por exemplo: em 5 dias o carnaval acaba e uma nota é dada para o prefeito em como ele fez a gestão. Só desse final existir, a percepção dos sistemas e o peso das escolhas muda, mudando o game feel e o engajamento.

Está funcionando muito bem, mas como está agora é difícil imaginar alguma coisa maior ou mais longa. Espero que meus feedbacks ajudem caso queiram continuar o projeto o/ mandaram mt bem!