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Now don't you worry about that yellow stuff. In the words of the great Patches O'Houlihan; "It's sterile and I like the taste".

Thanks so much for playing and your thoughtful feedback. I certainly erred on the side of caution in regards to the handholding, I think adding a timer or at the very least making the clues a touch more cryptic would have been a really nice addition, but even getting it working in the first place was a nightmare. Honestly, it's the most brittle thing I've ever produced and held together with sticky-tape behind the scenes! It's certainly something i'm going to work on in the future, and I hope to be able to carry some learnings through to future jams.

I'm really glad the environmental stuff worked for you, and that you found some enjoyment from some those aspects. Many thanks for your time and for playing!

Thank you for playing, and for such a lovely comment. I'm so pleased you liked the environments; I wasn't confident in making a map so I'm glad that everything is unique enough to not need one.

I totally agree about the combat, but I was wrestling with how to actually make it fun and not slow down the gameplay too much. It's a question i'm still wrestling with!

Thanks again for taking the time to play :).

The atmosphere is so so good, I found it to be very unnerving in such a great way. Alot of games really try too hard to be scary, and it starts to self-satirising, however this really hits the nail on the head tonally for me.

Sure the movement isn't super snappy, but to me that feels correct due to the setting so I quite liked it, it also added to the tension of the combat while I was frantically trying to kite the shark.

Everything is really consistent visually and I liked some of the little easter eggs in there. Overall it's really great and was the perfect length for me. Thank you.

Hi, thanks for playing. I would have loved to have made it longer, if I could have kept it interesting, however it was simply a case of having enough time to implement new and interesting systems, as repeated the same ones over and over got boring fast.

There should have been a quit button when you finished the game, so I'm surprised you had to ALT-F4 out, it would be great if you could clarify where you got stuck and couldn't exit. Of course a menu with an exit button would have been lovely, but for a 10 minute game it was quite low on my list of priorities. I will be adding it post-jam however!

Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback, appreciate it.

Card games are always so tricky to implement in other genres I feel. While I'm a Gwent fangirl until the day I die, this was absolutely brilliant.

Already stoked for your post jam update with some more card variation. I would love to see an additional progress based mechanic introduced that would allow for the player to create a build or deck specialised around a certain type of abilities or playstyle. I understand that is an enormous undertaking and very aspirational, but this is really such a great foundation!

Art was beautiful, sound was excellent (bit loud, but you know that!). From what I can tell you're already addressing everything I have to say in the post-jam update and therefore there's really nothing more I can add.

Wonderful entry, thank you.

Such a great entry! Loved this. Honestly this is such an awesome self-contained experience, that didn't outstay its welcome.

The art was absolutely beautiful and everything felt nice and consistent, I take my hat off to SandySketches for that. By the same expression of admiration to you, the level and systems design was also excellent for the size and scope of the game. 

It is a very polished game and frankly I don't have anything bad to say at all. But as this is a jam I will at least try to give something I think could theoretically be better.

The sound mixing was a tad inconsistent on my headphones, I adjusted the volume a little in the beginning for the footsteps and music, then my eardrums were blown out for the rockfall / entrance collapse (I had the exact same issue in my own game in a particular moment). This might just be my setup, so take with a pinch of salt!

Secondly the narrative is lovely, but the writing I think could be even better (this is personal opinion only and doesn't affect my score one bit, so please absolutely disregard this if you don't agree!). I'm a big fan of 'show don't tell' and I prefer not being told something that I can already see or already know. Examples include the character's internal monologue pointing out the footprints or telling me that the view is beautiful -- you already showed me a beautiful view so you don't need to tell me. 

There was a conversation a little later on which was an example of the "as you know" exposition trope, where the two characters were talking about something they both already would have known as crew members, it just felt a touch strained, but I promise I'm literally just nitpicking so I can give you some feedback!

Genuinely amazing entry, it's the type of game I aspire to make. Like the other commenters I would love a puzzle perhaps, and I think you can really flex those storytelling muscles with some environmental storytelling to supplement your narrative.

The cutscenes were gorgeous and it was a great way to end, very well done and I can't wait for the next one.

Thank you for playing!

It's safe to say some thing were left on the cutting room floor, although many a few of the items you can pick-up are used for 1 quest as an optional objective.

Thanks for your time and feedback!

Cool game!

The art is nice and consistent, and everything feels very thematically correct in and place. I really liked your implementation of the sanity mechanic, and but I think the tuning is a little off, so much so that I abandoned my first run when I got locked in half-a-dozen fights in a row and just assumed it was a bug and restarted.

The combat mechanic is excellent, really cool concept and it's such a great design that it's immediately clear what needs to be done without instruction.

I agree with some of  the other comments regarding the flashlight.  It is an excellent way to create friction and adversity, however it's mostly just an annoyance, I would prefer a lit environment with the 'scary' elements coming from elsewhere, but that's just my own preference.

The music was nice, but it possibly felt too nice and relaxing? The movement felt excellent, nice and snappy and I had no issues zipping around.

All in all it's a great entry, thank you.

Lovely little game. The autobattling is very welcome and as a result the combat has a nice pace and feel.

The itemisation is done very well, with a number of vectors for scaling. I like that the base stats scale with level, so if you're feeling brave you can hang on to your rerolls. With more difficulty and more levels this could become a really great mechanic in seeing how long you can wait.

There are a few colliders missing and I walked through a wall next to a fountain. I would have loved a little more tile variety, but as it stands this is a solid entry with a nice enjoyable gameplay loop and meaningful progression of player power.

Thank you.

What a wonderful entry, all the more so its 3-day production timeline.

I found everything clear and easy to understand, and the game's simplicity is very much a strength in my opinion. Visually, the game is really appealing and i'd love to know what's happening under the hood to make it look the way it does. Mechanically I have no complaints, yes it's simple, but I sort of prefer it for nice and quick jam games.

I have very little in the way of critique. Of course I would want more, but I keep telling myself '3 days' and I'm enamoured. I wasn't keen on the mouse being locked to the window, however I can see you're aware of that and I could have freed it with escape. I can also see that you've commented previously on improving the movement, so I won't rehash that.

All in all, this is really fantastic, I would like to see what you can do in 9 days if you can do this in 3. Thank you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to play and your generous words.

A fair amount of content I wanted just didn't make it, as is the way with jams I suppose.  The camera is certainly not well placed, and I quickly learned my lesson when I picked up Dungeon Master after the jam!

Thanks again for your feedback, it's really appreciate and I'm over the moon that you enjoyed the game.

Hi, thank you for playing!

I couldn't agree more in the sense that much of the stakes are completely self-imposed and there is really no threat or stakes. I was quite concious of not having any saving and was concerned if I killed players that they would just drop the game without finishing, so I made everything way too easy. But you're absolutely right, it needs something to fight, or something to kill the player. 

I love your puzzles idea, and I think extending the problem solving should be something I try to add as I update, I'll certainly look to put something like that in as it sounds really fun.

Thank you for taking the time to play and your really helpful feedback.

This is far better entry than you would have had me believe from your comment to me. Genuinely very feature rich, and while I understand you are perturbed by having to cut content; this has alot going for it.

The environments are stunning. Many will put that simply down to Unreal, but the scenes are dressed well and a considerable amount of thought has been put into which assets to use and where to place them, which is a skill in of itself. The menu, UI and other 2D elements are solid and warmly recieved, there's a great deal of QoL baked in which is really nice. The collectibles and flavour text are all nice little touches that really build on the exploratory portion of the game.

You've had some really outstanding feedback from the other commenters, so I won't add to things that you already know. However there might be a few things I might be able add regarding my experience as a beginner. 

It certainly seems that filesize is directly correlated to the number of plays, and this is a beast. I'm not sure what resolution textures you're using, however I would assume due to the filesize that they are on the larger end. I have been porting my game to 3D and in my own learning post jam, I have realised that you can be really efficient in dungeon crawlers, as many meshes are only ever seen from one side within the grid. I've been manually unwrapping the UVs and shrinking all but the visible face to 1 pixel. You can essentially squeeze 4k of resolution into a 1k texture at around 1mb compressed and it's doing wonders for my filesize.

My firewall also popped on running the game, while I understand it's probably just Epic doing some data collection, it's not ideal considering I couldn't run this through the itch client.

All in all I think this is an great entry and I think you need to give yourselves more credit for what you've achieved. Especially considering your working commitments alongside the jam, well done. I hope you will considering entering again next year, because I think you could produce something really special with some tooling ahead of time and after applying everything you've learned. 

Thank you.

Thank you for playing, and thank you for such a lovely comment.

It is quite possibly all style and no substance, but I'm glad it is appreciated. I wasn't sure what to do coming in, so I simply decided to try and start and finish in a visually nice way and then figure out how to fill the middle in!

It seems that jams are a museum of tradeoffs and you've hit the nail on those, I certainly intend to address many of those elements in the future. I've been working my way through all of the textures and recreating them in 3d this weekend for a nice boost.

Thank you again for your thoughtful words and helpful pointers for me to take this further.

Hi! Thanks so much for playing and I wholeheartedly agree on all your points.

The freezing is completely my fault due to having loads of transparency calculating right at the start (oops). The shaking is a little much, sorry for the motion sickness! Oh and the walls, yes! I'm currently updating all the meshes and textures to get some nice chonky walls which should hopefully bit alot nicer.

I'm so pleased you touched it :D, I didn't know if people would want to, and would actually see the animation.

Thank you for your time and all of your really helpful feedback. I'm going to fix all of those points.

Thank you for your kind words, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Most people think the pixel dungeon was accidental, I'm so pleased you noticed the intention so thank you!

Blimey that was outstanding.  The combat, art, sound and level design are all incredible.

I wasn't aware of the secret passages until the 3rd level and seem to have missed a bunch on my run. That's completely on me though and didn't prevent completion. 

This really shows what is possible in one of these jams. Thank you so much for putting this together.

Such an impressive party system, both in the various interactions within the system itself as well as then losing those interactions through a run.

The art is great, shaky for sure, but it works really well and is consistent throughout. The sound is really well chosen and I would say that this is just a really cohesive experience. 

I think the challenge of losing party members makes for really interesting choices to be made as one becomes more experienced. Losing automapping in the first run is extremely punishing, but becomes less so with familiarity.

I don't know what you're intentions are going forward; but I would be interested perhaps in a kiss / curse system alongside this mechanic. Something where it doesn't feel like you're always only losing power, and might gain an alternative power or system to combine with other party members, and end up with interesting run diversity. 

This is a really great submission, tough for sure, but very well made and was really enjoyable. Thank you.

Bomberman meets Minecraft is very cool concept. I echo what the other players have commented that it just needs a little more to help it along and add some variety.

The destruction is excellent, and creates a great foundation for developing this further. Some additional block varieties / biomes would be great. I would love a little more varied lighting too, I think it would really bring the space to life. 

I enjoyed having to think about approaching the combat to not get blown up or trapped, and some telegraphing to the skeletons will help make it a bit more snappy.

Thank you.

The scope of this project is seriously impressive; doing all the art and design yourself is an incredible achievement,  and the art is of venerable quality. I never realised how challenging pixel sprites are, and to actually make them look nice and consistent. I would gladly insert a pineapple violently up my back passage to have a scintilla of the skill on display here.

Yes, I did encounter a range of bugs, however I was pleased to learn that simply speed-running through each objective was possible and made getting back to the same point nice and quick to finish the game.

I loved the RPG elements, they feel fleshed out for a jam and still extensible enough for this to be turned into something really great and commercially viable, should you be so inclined.

All in all, I think this is one of the strongest entries. I fear that the bugs might affect the score more than it deserves but I really loved this one and think it's a real achievement, and is aspirational for those who are new to this game and need projects to look up to.

Thank you.

This is so cool! I'm a big sucker for the entries with voice acting, especially with a humorous spin and this absolutely delivered in that regard. I just finished King Lear and I didn't think I would hear someone use countenance in a sentence unironically for a while, but here we are. Great dialogue.

I'm rather new to the dungeon-crawler eco system, but as I gather this is faithful to the older titles which is really cool. I wasn't aware I was 'supposed' to be doing the two step combat stuff and just face tanked everything and it seemed to work out. Loved the art and how almost all of it was done during the jam. 

Also the game page is excellent: It's clear you've put significant care into both presenting and explaining the game clearly, which can't always be said for the other entries.

Amazing game, I loved it.

I'm so sorry you experienced that bug. It's unfortunately the only one I know of that completely soft locks progression, so I'm really sorry I spoiled your run.

Thank you for taking the time to watch a video to form your opinion, that was very thoughtful of you and I appreciate it.

Thank you for your kind words! I'm so happy you enjoyed it.

There are some enormous performance issues, which are totally on me. Mostly due to the way I handled the alpha channels on the railings that are everywhere (why Slip, why?). The engine does an initial pass over the map at start for alpha and it just freezes. Completely my fault for being an idiot, and by the time I realised what I had done it was too late to fix! But I will be fixing it immediately after the jam :P.

Thank you for playing.

Thank you ever so much for the video. It's invaluable to see how people are playing it.

As a result I've noticed a massive issue with the UI scaling on some monitors. It was particularly apparent when the text explain is was 'escape' to close the menu had become hidden by the objectives bar! Sorry about that.

Really glad you enjoyed the humour, thank you for the time you've taken to record all of your runs for the community.

For 3 days it's crazy impressive to me, I don't even think my movement was working properly on day 3.

Of course I don't need to labour any of the points the others have made, but I really want to see what you can do for the next jam if you have the full week or 9 days if this is what you can do in a fraction of the time!

Hahaha, sorry! Hope your eardrums are still intact ;).

But seriously thank you so much, I'm over the moon people are enjoying this, really means alot.

Oh my, thank you for such a generous review, I'm beaming right now reading this.

Skyrim was the inspiration! I didn't quite get it right, but I'm going to give it a good overhaul and port it to 3D where I will ensure there is keyboard control for the pick.

Thank you again for all of your kind words, it really means a great deal.

This was awesome, the sounds effects really did it for me and gave me some laugh out loud moments early on. I'm just trying to imaging you recording the little squeals.

The combat was great, it did become a little tiring towards the end as I had gotten lost and done many extra encounters.

Overall this was such an awesome entry and it's really polished. The audio really seals it for me as one of my favourites. Thank you.

Enjoyed this! I'm quite a big fan of having to figure out systems and while it took me 3 tries, I think I got a fairly good handle on the combat and found it really interesting. I would however have liked a UI marker or something to indicate which items were single use as I didn't noticing anything to that effect, however I might have missed it!

The environments were nice, I certainly would've liked more to look at, but I understand the limitations of the time format and that's simply a nice to have and certainly not a requirement or affects my score.

You've absolutely the nailed the 'feel' of a rover or probe.  The camera, movement and sound really worked well together for the exploration.

Finished the game with no issues in the end. Thank you.

This is really great, a super nice and straightforward jam game. I do really like that's it's quite linear and holds my hand so that I could just enjoy the submission.

The art is lovely, and the voxel planets worked really well for me. The entire vibe is lovely and consistent. The combat was nice, again I like that you kept it simple and not too punishing, I really think that's to the benefit of this format.

I did find the ending confusing at first as it hadn't clicked with me that it was the infinite theme. I completely understand and commend you for fitting all of the themes into your entry, but I think a more concrete ending that completes the narrative would have worked better for me.

So great though, loved it. Thank you.

It's the nicest thing to have someone say they wanted more! Thank you.

I really swung and missed on the set dressing with the high-poly stuff, I'm going to be much more careful with that in the future so thank you for the feedback. The really low poly dungeon was supposed to be intentional, like you're going into a classic dungeon crawler dimension or something. I probably should have changed the UI from healthkits to potions and maybe animated a hand going for high to low to help make it clearer.

Thank you for your time and I'm glad you had fun :).

The dialogue is absolutely mint, and I came back for second helpings of the wicked witch of big bobsville.

The combat is really cool, but I'm absolutely terrible at it apparently. Timing the spear just right has a nice feel to it. I really love the art and texturing in the village in it's second form, it looks sooo good.

I'm probably not going to survive much longer rating this games with the number of jump scares I'm having, but this was really fun, thank you.

Believe I made it quite far into the second level before I also got locked out. I was very careful to ensure I never used the special attack without an enemy infront of me, and I avoided the bugged door at the beginning of the second level.

However much further into that level (I had probably got through 3-4 doors or so (not quite sure as I wasn't counting) when I was able to use a key to open a door that took me off the map. I'm not sure if this is the same bug as point 2 in your comment. however I couldn't progress any further, I'm assuming because I no longer had a key. 

I was quite determined to finish to at least give you a decent appraisal but I then bugged into a wall and got stuck. I tried to reload but the load game button didn't do anything for me.

Really sorry I can't give you more regarding the complete game, but I will try and give you some constructive feedback anyway from what I saw.

I think the filesize is probably quite a big problem. Unreal definitely makes big files, but this is probably just too big for alot of people to want to download for a short game. Not sure whether you could have scaled the textures back or used lower LoDs.

The ideas behind the combat is a great idea, I like the thought having to charge a meter to heal myself instead of just looting stuff. The actual combat itself rewarded spam clicking so could use some tuning.

Overall it was really smooth sailing and fun for me until I hit the bugs, these things happen sadly, but I do hope you have another go for the next jam.

Ah I didn't pick up on the light thing! However that would have probably really changed the way I play, so it's interesting to think how I might have gone about things differently.

Really loved it so thanks for the further info.

My heartttttt. The you-know-whats scared the absolute shite out of me.

But wowee this was really polished and well put together. I think of the entries i've played so far, this had the best movement for my own personal taste, just buttery smooth and super snappy. The art through and through is stunning and consistent, and the music is beautiful.

The combat is really interesting and I quite enjoyed early on trying to work out what was the 'right' way to do it. I'd be quite interested to know how the calculations are done, and if it's a straight probability roll or if there's more going on behind the scenes. The only reason I say that is because I tried just spamming escape without using abilities and lost 9 60% rolls in a row, which is I think 0.0002%. 

Regardless, really great entry. I echo some of the other comments in the encounter rate was a little high, and having the save game there was an absolute godsend, as the nature of probability is that it can just be punishing sometimes when it doesn't go your way.

Thanks for such a great entry, it was a pleasure.

Thank you for playing, so pleased you liked the ending!

Completely agree the models are a little all over the place, I started by modelling everything myself but it was becoming quite time consuming as I'm not very good. The green power box at the start probably took me two hours haha. I'll be much more careful of consistency in the future with that in mind and your feedback is really helpful.

Thank you again for taking the time out to play.

Wow thank you!

The Godot animation player was really useful for spinning stuff up quite quickly, I certianly spent the most time on the visual bits, but it was very beginner friendly which helped.

Thanks very much for such a kind comment, and I'm so happy you enjoyed it :)

Apologies I think I meant ability points, with the weapon proficiencies. Anyways I promise you I wasn't seeing it through, I enjoyed it and was happy to finish it, you should be really chuffed as the verticality worked great, I think you're being too hard on yourself, and I think this is a cracking entry for the time taken. (edit spelling x2)

This was a fun one! I just finished the game in around 40 minutes. I was concerned I wouldn't complete it based upon some others' thoughts, however I was able to more or less find my way. Navigation is a little tricky for sure, however heading in the required directions and reading what the NPCs / items said was helpful. I do however believe that the map size is actually quite good, and instead it just needs some more landmarking and some visual clues to help guide the player a little more.

The combat and associated systems are lovely, the presentation is stunning and the skill-points, abilities and items were all very clear in what they did, and what I needed to do to scale them. I had a couple of tooltip bugs showing a bow as a sword, but  it unequipped the correct corresponding slot, so no drama's there. I was also able to infinitely allocate the mage's skill points into weapon proficiency. But for the depth of the systems you have produced in such a short time, I think that's completely normal and doesn't affect my views or rating. 

Visually it's beautifully presented through and through. I thoroughly enjoyed playing and I think others will too who can get to grips with navigation, because you have a really solid base for a more extensive, interesting game.

Thank you.

This is by far the most immersive game I've played so far. The models, textures, sound, scene dressing and level design was all sublime. It's really stunning. The VA is fantastic too and added real value.

The pacing was so spot on, I always knew where I needed to go and what I needed to do.  I did have a small bug about halfway through with the pistol. It would eat all ammunition on reload and then wouldn't fire; but it was fine as Derek is a brawler and handled it melee no problem.

Really enjoyed this, such a great vibe. Thank you